Late-Round Perspectives: Rich Hribar

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Rich Reebar is a fantasy football analyst for Sharp Footballanalysis dot com. He's the king of providing context with data. Some may call him the Swami of Kanami. He's got the best worksheets around, and he actually looks nothing like Zach Morris. These are his late Round perspectives. I was like starting these shows, man, with a little bit of background. You and I have been buddies for a while.

00:00:34
Speaker 2: Now.

00:00:34
Speaker 1: I know your background pretty intimately. Obviously you know more than just your career at this point. But you know you're you're to me obviously, you know you're a sounding board for me. You and I go back and forth.

00:00:46
Speaker 3: Literally. I don't think this is like an exaggeration.

00:00:48
Speaker 1: It's like literally every day of our lives talking ball and stuff and just talking about.

00:00:52
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, I mean like pretty much.

00:00:54
Speaker 1: But I think that you're the best in the business at you know, finding data nuggets, data trends. You do that so well with your worksheet column that you've been doing for years.

00:01:04
Speaker 3: Now, what do you think?

00:01:06
Speaker 1: And I know that you're gonna have to pat yourself on the back a little bit here, and you're not one to really enjoy doing that, But what do you think gives you an edge in finding the information that you find.

00:01:18
Speaker 2: It's funny, the person that comes to my mind is not pagging myself on the back, it's asking why do I hate myself to this degree and put myself through this? You know, because you know the one thing that you know, definitely, I do take a tremendous amount of pride in with something like the worksheet that I've actually been doing over a decade now, which oh my goodness, oh my, it feels so crazy to think about. We've been doing this over you know, ten years of our lives at this point. Yeah. But you know there's been other columns, you know, Evans Matchups column, you know, being like kind of like the highlight of the industry. Obviously, you know, we had, you know, the great primer from Tags, you know, recipes Tags. You know, we miss you now Derek's taken over that. You know, we have these other matchups comes in the industry that you know make me want to raise my game. And mine comes out first, like mine comes out before everyone else's. So I'm I don't have like any outside influence. I'm not saying that those people like read mine and like go into theirs either, but you know, I take pride that, like, hey here it is like out in front early, it's ahead of all these other, you know, big ticket items you get. But I've had the benefit of doing it for so long that I've been able to kind of, you know, a lot of experience in streamlining understanding what I'm looking for. I have a pretty hard process Monday and Tuesday. Literally Monday, I pull everything like you see in like the bullet points for the worksheet, and I have like a process where I update specific files and kind of go through and I know exactly kind of what I'm looking for from like a team stuff, because that's like more of like your team package. You don't really get any player stuff like up in those bullet points on the worksheet. But I'm giving you, you know, several bullet points per game that that impact the game, that are important and relevant to the game on a team level that you can kind of have there. And then I start doing my player stuff on Tuesdays and writing up literally games on Tuesdays. I do actually start writing up the games a little bit on Monday night overnight and then just dive into it like real head first on Tuesdays. But it really is just amount of just effort and put forth and just having a streamline process of And then I also have the benefit I have access to literally the best information that we have available. You know, we've always had like PFR you know, subs and everyone. I think everyone should actually have a PFR sub and donate to their website. I think it's actually agreeing to it's something that people should should prop that product up. And then obviously, you know, we've had things like Pro Football Focus come along the way and be able to get behind the doors there. Now I have true media access, which is like literally being plugged into the matrix. So much stuff that I've uncovered over the last two years, and I feel like I've only using like five to ten percent of it, like maybe not even like hardly end of it that you can get access to. So all of those things kind of coming together. But yeah, I mean, it's it's been a fun ride. I'm really happy that people still enjoy the column. I try to make it bigger and better every year. But yeah, it's it's good man, It's crazy how old we are at this point.

00:04:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think though you bring up a good point, like whenever I do that like data dump right every Sunday night, and you know, throughout Sunday, I'm just kind of jotting things down that I'm seeing while I'm watching the games and all that kind of stuff. But a lot of people will hit me up and be like, how are you coming up with these data nuggets so quickly and all that? And first off, again, I have to be very clear, I think you are the best at coming up with those types of nuggets and making them relevant too. You know, a lot of people can just come up with whatever that's not actionable, and I think that you do very good things with making actionable items.

00:04:37
Speaker 3: But what you said is really key.

00:04:38
Speaker 1: It's the process of like having sheets, you know, whether it's spreadsheets or however you're working with data, having things set up so things are very automated.

00:04:47
Speaker 3: You know.

00:04:47
Speaker 1: Like I'm not saying everything is going to be just like, oh, I click a button and these these data nuggets get pooped out. It's not really That's not really what I'm saying here. It's more so like you have a process with how you're inputting that data, and as a result that process, you're able to quickly uncover things that other people aren't necessarily able to uncover. And I'm speaking also what a lot of folks don't realize is a lot of that has to do with looking at history and looking at previous years and not just in the singular year. A lot of the nuggets that you're gonna bring up or that I'll throw in the data thread and stuff that are gonna be most impactful and most interesting are the ones that are comparing what's going on presently to history, and not just what's going on. You know, it's week eight, and here's what happened in week seven versus week eight. But I'm talking like, here's what happened in twenty fifteen to twenty twenty, and this is the ex best target share that we've seen, you know, et cetera, et cetera, over this timeframe. And your ability to have that all set up to then at the tip of your fingers just be able to search for something and look look something up goes a very very long way.

00:05:49
Speaker 2: Now.

00:05:49
Speaker 1: I know that I'm speaking sort of to like the fantasy analyst here in a way to like get yourself set up in that fashion, but I do want to say that, like it's just common nation of like having that set up and having things ready to go alongside experience. You've been doing this now for so long, you know what you're just generally looking for, you know, like you've seen you've seen these stories play out to some degree, and so you can kind of search that way as well. To that point, you're someone who you know, like me, we like to look at sort of the high level stuff with the game before we dig into the team level and the individual player level. What did you see in twenty twenty three that you think could make a big fantasy impact into twenty twenty four.

00:06:36
Speaker 2: Well, I think still ongoing for the last couple of years, and we knew, I think something was going to happen coming out of you know, twenty twenty and twenty twenty one, like the COVID years of the NFL, just the impact of COVID and not really understanding exactly how things were going to regress from those you know, ultra high scoring seasons. Obviously we played one year without fans. Also the NFL in twenty twenty I did to just not call holding like this real phantom outlier year, Like they just were like, hey, like what if we just don't call holding? For entire year. It's really crazy outlier stuff like the amount of holding, so it's like nothing that like it definitely was clearly told to the referees because it's like the offenses just didn't stop doing it or anything, because it's gone back up afterwards. Just very very odd thing that kind of happened that year. And then you know, we got fans back and there were still kind of some weird like uh stuff in twenty twenty one with COVID, just based on the amount of games missed, especially remember that December of twenty twenty one, Like it was like and then magically COVID went away for the playoffs, which was really cool for the NFL. But then you know we're like, all right, well, where does this all kind of go? Like what do we even take from these seasons? They're like they were just manipulated by the you know, this event and obviously all of our lives were manipulated by this event that happened. And then we come back out of it and it's just a disaster in twenty twenty two, right, like it's just everything bottoms out, we crater off. It's like all this regression hits at once and we're like, well, what what's going to happen? Now? What do we even take from this? Right? And I do think that there are some things to take about from it, because now we have a two year trend where defenses have had an advantage and we're waiting for kind of a CounterPunch. And I think there's multiple pulling threads here that we'll get into, and I'm sure people have their own, but I'll just highlight a couple because one I think is going to be an ongoing theme throughout the show, which is the mobile quarterback. But first we'll talk about like the defensive meta. Right now, the NFL has made a conscious shift league wide where you're just seeing a lot of passive defense being played. And there was a like NFL teams blitzed a little bit more this year than last year, but we're seeing just far less man coverage than we've seen in the NFL. We're seeing teams force opposing offenses have to drive the length of the field. They want you just to make a mistake, give our defense as many chances to get a negative play, a sack, a turnover, a fumble, anything. We just don't want you scoring in one play and We kind of saw that again this year because again we had five point three yards per play. It was the fewest yards for play with the NFL has had since twenty seventeen. Success rate on passing plays this year was the lowest since twenty thirteen. Only forty two point one percent of all completions in the NFL this season gained ten or more yards. It's the lowest rate in the two thousands. I couldn't even find another year that was lower. And like I said, so that defensive meta is still going on. Then you talk about like, well, mobile quarterbacks are impacting things to a degree. I'm going to jump into that in a little bit too, and then the offensive line play. But like I said, look at the amount of man coverage. Just in twenty twenty, man coverage is being played at thirty one percent of snaps. That goes down to twenty seven point nine percent twenty twenty one, twenty four point four percent last year, down to twenty three point seven percent this year. We're talking about four year span where it's almost dropped ten percent of passing plays. And from an analyst stance, like we're starting to see if you were like remember when we came into the industry and PFF first started. Cornerback wide receiver stuff was kind of everywhere. It was kind of like the next thing people were branching. You don't see any of that anymore, really, like you because nobody's playing man coverage, so it certainly matter. But like you see stuff like cover one. You know, just four years ago the amount of cover one is being played in the NFL and twenty six percent of snaps it's one every four plays, eighteen point seven percent. This year it's dropped. Eri yards per target went down again. It's the lowest rate in the two thousands. We saw the highest rate of pros at or behind the line of scrimmage in an NFL season as data I have in the two thousands. That's a byproduct we see like things like the middle of the field is open now because you're getting more of like obviously no your grandma knows, like teams are running more two high safeties, right. We joke about it at our text start because Denny always likes to bring it up, you know, but the middle of the field was open on forty four point two percent of dropbacks this year. That's the highest rate in the last decade. And what's interesting is we're seeing two teams in the NFL are they're taking deep shots still, Like the amount of deep throws necessarily aren't decreasing the efficiency of them are. We're seeing still like a lot of the uh, what was the Rockets analytics guy, Darryl Mooney? Was it Mooney? More? Yeah? More, Daryl Moore. Yeah. So we're seeing a lot of layups and three pointers in an offense, like an offensive approach right now, the James Harden offense, I guess you would call it. Right, we're seeing a lot of that. And what that's kind of done now is we've seen like a league wide increase like to tight end targets, I mean, tight end target shares up again, the highest since twenty fifteen. This year, he's gone up five straight years. Running back targets keep dropping again. Mobile quarterback stuff. We're also seeing an influx from the college game again tied to our mobile quarterbacks. I mean, this year, seventy one percent of all plays we're taking out a shotgun, highest rate ever in NFL this year. For context, if you just go back to twenty ten, we're talking a decade ago, it was thirty five percent.

00:11:33
Speaker 3: That's crazy.

00:11:34
Speaker 2: So we're doubled. And you see the average time to throw this year was the highest rate ever two point eight seconds. Guys are holding on the football longer. We also see like tied dophensive line pressure rate this year, highest rate since twenty ten, with the first highest sack rate in the NFL since nineteen ninety eight, first time it was over a seven percent sack rate since nineteen ninety nine. And I've done a lot of work on this, if you followed me on Twitter, sack avoidance and understanding that sacks are like a turnover on a drive. I mean you basically your scoring chances triple when you don't have a sack on a drive, and your touchdown rates more than double when you don't have a sack on a drive. The difference the thing that happened this year versus last year, though, is where last year teams were like, all right, well we got a counter punch here, We're going to run the football. Running games are awful this year. It was one of the worst rushing seasons in NFL history. Yards before contact down runs was the lowest rate in the two thousands. They said offensive line and health played a huge deal. Only nine teams had the same offensive line combo on the field for fifty percent of their snaps the season. Just three or at seventy five percent. Ten teams were at twenty five percent or lower. Only two of those teams made the playoffs, Houston and Miami. Props to them for working around all the issues that they had. And like this said, the NFL is cyclical. There's gonna be calibrations encounter where the offense is going to start to figure some of these things right now. But right now the state of the game is being driven by this current defensive meta health of kind of quarterbacks and offensive lines, and the flux of mobile quarterbacks, which again i'll set up my host here to you kind of let a bridge up some more things to talk about.

00:13:06
Speaker 1: What a segue. Look at him helping me out here. So look, all of that is incredibly interesting. I will add to with the sort of lack of like these big plays and down the field throwing and such. It does feel like, and this is totally anecdotal, but it does feel like and I'd say this sort of felt this way last year too, where in fantasy football there's just like this group of halves in terms of like the individual players like a Tyreek Hill or what have you, and then there's just a large, large, large, massive group of have nots. And if you don't have the have nots, or if you don't have the halves rather and you just have a bunch of have notts, canna be really difficult to win fantasy football. And essentially we've gotten to a point where, especially like a wide receiver for instance, you're either gonna be a big play receiver who can get by on a twenty twenty two percent target chair, but that's becoming rarer and rarer, or you're just getting pounded with the football and seeing a thirty percent target chair, and that's the way that you can sort of make up for that. It's just becoming increasingly more rare, which makes you know, the CD LAMB season and you know what Tyreek did this season. It makes those those years you know, that much more important and valuable for your fantasy squad. So I think all of that does tie into just having those halves, and if you landed one of those guys, chances are you had a pretty decent fantasy season just because they really separated themselves as unicorns.

00:14:28
Speaker 2: The interesting thing that's changed is we're getting more wide receivers on the field than ever in the NFL. And you know, but we're seeing that now the like you kind of hinted at the the target trees almost condensing, and we're seeing NFL teams. One of the counters they have is using their wide receivers in terms of versatility, like Ceedee Lamb's a great example, you know, basically plays fifty snaps in the slot, fifty percent outside. Tyreek's a good example. You see how Mike McDaniel use him. And they're just trying to find ways to get the ball to their best players now. And that's kind of way the position is kind of changing. We we we no longer have just like a guy. It's like, you got to get this X wide receiver like old school Julio Jones, right, you just got to have this guy. The alphas of the wide receiver position have changed now and it's manifested to these guys that can kind of do everything.

00:15:12
Speaker 1: Yep, one hundred percent. All right, So let's talk about these mobile quarterbacks. I don't think everyone listening is realizes they've probably seen the notion of Konami code. Quarterbacks get thrown out there on social media or even talked about on podcasts before they might not realize that you Rich were the one who coined the term back in like twenty thirteen, I want to say, over on number fire.

00:15:33
Speaker 3: Dot com a couple yeah, yeah, I was.

00:15:36
Speaker 1: I was the editor in chief at number fire dot com at the time, and you came over write wrote a couple of articles and one of them was on the cheat code of quarterback rushing. It was I mean in that article you talked about Tim Tebow, Torrell prior, just to give people context of like how long ago this was. But over the last decade it's really come to fruition. We've seen these guys really dominate, especially over the last five years or so, where not only are the mobile quarterbacks getting it done on the ground, but now they're getting it done through the air as well. They're these just complete, you know, unicorns, if you will, I keep using the term unicorn, but they truly are, you know, compared to the rest of the position.

00:16:15
Speaker 3: This year, though, I think was at least a little interesting, and I'm.

00:16:18
Speaker 1: Curious to hear your thoughts because at the top, you know, you had the typical guys you had, you know, Jalen Hurts and Josh Allen doing their thing and scoring an obscene amount of rushing touchdowns and being able to get it done that way. But this year you also had Dak Prescott, who's not the same rusher that he used to be, you know, back in his heyday when he when he was younger. I guess, I guess his heyday is still current because he was almost the MVP of this season. You had Joe Flacco step in for that five game stretch and he was scoring twenty Fantasy points per game. Brock Purdy obviously got it done for most of the season.

00:16:49
Speaker 3: CJ.

00:16:50
Speaker 1: Stroud coming out of nowhere, not a big mobile quarterback. There were some usable pieces with these non mobile quarterbacks. And I have to ask you, do you think that we're at the point now where we're overstating the mobile aspect of these guys games.

00:17:07
Speaker 2: Actually, I think it's not. It's it's something that I think what we're seeing is something that you wrote about back in twenty eleven when you started, you know, the the Late Round Quarterback Ebook. Because the guys that are still like the true like Konami guys that have the access to well, let's take a step back. The original Konami code was written, like you said, about guys like Tim Tebow, the most accurate representation. I think of what we have as the original Kanami code as that laid it out as probably justin fields right now, a player that doesn't necessarily have elite passing output, but is like a relevant quarterback and a QB one mindset because of how weighted rushing production is scored compared to passing production. That's like how the original comic code is, like, hey, you can exploit this these guys. These guys have perceived bad quarterback, but he's a good fantasy quarterback. Then things started to change throughout the course that climate because when you wrote that, you know when I wrote that in twenty thirteen, you did the e book and twenty one eleven, the quarterbacks that were pacing the fantasy position were Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Drew Brees, Matthew Stafford. Guys. They didn't run, but they were throwing forty passing touchdowns. The reason why you wrote about that is because you can arbitrage passing points. It's harder to arbitrage rushing points in fantas football. Then what happened is the guys that were now running started throwing forty passing touchdowns. They started throwing thirty five pass and you're like, OK, what do we do? Like, we can't you can't combat this. Like twenty fifteen, Cam knew it well first twenty ten Vic kind of came and you're like, oh my goodness, Like you saw a guy like Matthew Berry. Mate, he's like could be the number he should be the number one pick the next year because you can't combat this guy. He' scoring thirty points a game. There's only one of him. And then you had like twenty fifteen Cam. Then we started to see that be happening a little more regularly with multiple guys per year. The thing is we still had that this year. Josh Allen, Jalen Hurts, Lamar Jackson won two to three in quarterbacks scoring points per game. Actually, two of those three guys were not good passers this year. Josh Allen, Jalen Hurts were not good passers. They got their kind of like more. They did not flirt with thirty passing touchdowns each. I think Leanard's like twenty three twenty four and then now on the like twenty nine, but they both through a ton of interceptions and they just had the touch push. They both kind of had the same outlet, the rushing touchdown production. But what is still fragile to people is the guys that don't have that, don't fit that archtype. And you've seen it happen with that with Patrick Mahomes, Joe Burrow, justin Herbert the past two years. Those guys are way more fragile and their ADP should not be where they are if you can't get a Josh Allen, a jail and hurts Lamar Jackson, a guy that has that true ability to give you kind of thirty five to fifty percent rushing point production while still even combating like the qb ones from a passing angle too. That's the archtype and gamers have realized for a couple of years. You know, I know you've done work with it, like Mike Leoni's done work with it, like they're the accuracy of people knowing what archtype wins in fantas football when you hit that. But we still see the fragility from the Burroughs. The Mahomes had his first year so granted it could just be an outlier for his career, but we saw like when Mahomes like he's susceptible because he's not an elite runner. He gives you rushing production, but he's giving you in like that realm of like two to four rushing points per game, right like you know, one to three that ara. He's not like a traditional it's all icing on the cake, you know, you know, toppings on the Sunday type of things. With a guy like Patrick Mahomes and like Burrow and Herbert, those guys that aim not. Those guys are fragile, and we've seen that, and it opened it up to guys that could match them in terms of passing act Maen, a guy like Dak Prescott, who he knew he already had that kind of passing and he already had a thirty seven passing touchdown season for you know, almost five thousand yard season as resume. You know, guys like Cousins Perty got there. But when that era, that archetype of quarterback is still being elevated too highly. And what happens is, you know, gamers get in these rooms and they're like, oh, QB one goes off the board, QB two three goes off the and the're like, well, I've got three receivers, I've got my two running backs, and you start the roster phill right and just take the next guy. We see this all the time in your fantasy drafts, but like you need, that's the area where if you don't land one of the the archetype guys that I said fits in that bucket, just keep waiting because the rest of the guys are all very similar from a fantasy stance, and they can be arbitrage. We see outliers spike every year in that sense. You know, last year we had like Geno Smith. This year we had Baker Mayfield, Jordan Love. You mentioned Flacco for like his you know spurt. But then when you look at like, you know, a guy like just like c J. Stroud, Right, Like c J. Stroud's gonna go really high in fantasy drafts next year, but he fits that that secondary archetype we talked about, like the Trevor Lawrence is in the world, like he's he's exploitable and from an arbitrage stance. C J. Stroud. Ever, it's the same amount of Fantasy points per game as Kyler Murray as Anthony Richardson, right, like guys that definitely aren't as good as passers with him, but probably are gonna go way lower than him, Right, So I mean it hurts like I would like to have CJ. Stroud into fantasy teams next year, I probably won't am on any raft teams, like, probably not a damn one of them, right, So it's just funny, Like I think it still goes back to original things you wrote about about how the rest of the position has scored. I think there's a specific arch type we know that as elite, and it's hard to really combat. But the frigility of some of the other guys, even a guy like Patrick Mahomes had this frigility.

00:22:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.

00:22:20
Speaker 1: And the difference too though with Mahomes and let's say a Joe Burrow or a Justin Herbert is we're gonna have a better sense of him as a passer from a from a numbers perspective, like we're gonna have more confidence in what Patrick Mahomes will be able to do. But to your point, if he has even a slightly worse season just in general passing wise, we're gonna get what we got this year, right, which is a low.

00:22:45
Speaker 3: End QB one, high end QB two season. I mean, he was just not that great of a fantasy quarterback.

00:22:51
Speaker 1: The other thing to point out here, too, I wrote about this extensively in last year's Draft guide because I think it was a very very important point to make, is that we see so much volatility year to year with the quarterback position in terms of the guys who end up like like the names that are on top of the list, the names even that I had mentioned whenever I asked this question, Dak Prescott, Joe Flacco, Brock Purty, CJ.

00:23:12
Speaker 3: Stroud. These guys came from nowhere.

00:23:14
Speaker 1: They weren't the Trevor Lawrences of the world, where it was this pocket passer who we were drafting in the middle rounds, you know, hoping that this was the year that he was gonna throw thirty eight touchdown passes. You know, these are all players that were drafted relatively late, and you know, I didn't even like like, for instance, there was a lot of instances where I was fading Dak Prescott at first, and then people dropped him in such because he had a bad like first five weeks of the season. But you're gonna get these like like be able to capture these these moments in time in season with these players where they can go on streaks and help you out.

00:23:46
Speaker 3: And it's like streaming.

00:23:48
Speaker 1: It's not streaming in the sense that you're adding guys off the waiver wire. It's more so streaming in the sense that you're going after the hot quarterback at that moment, maybe he has a good stretch from a matchup standpoint.

00:23:58
Speaker 2: You know.

00:23:58
Speaker 1: The Dak thing is something that a lot of people, including myself called out after Week five, where they had these really weird game scripts and you know, the matchups weren't the easiest in the world. They had a cake schedule during the second half of the season that definitely played a role into him having the numbers that he had. And so to me, I think the approach into next year and I'm gonna research this more and get into it more. And I talked to Sean Siegel about this a little bit at the beginning of the twenty twenty three season. He was one of the first Late Round Perspectives episodes. But one of the ideas that I have is, if you don't get the you know, Josh Allen or Jalen Hurts, which I think there are arguments depending on where they land. ADP wise, you're not gonna want to go after them just because of opportunity costs. Like we saw that gap shrink this year, exactly what we thought was gonna happen. The gap shrunk from these elite guys on top and what they did versus the rest of the position. It shrunk this year because the middle round or sorry, the middle tier quarterbacks, the middle qb ones were just a little bit better. That's all we needed for them to just be a little bit better, and that's what happened. So the guys like Josh Allen and Jalen Hurts weren't giving you as much of an advantage. But let's just pretend next seat, next season, you don't get a Hurtz or an Allen or a Lamar. And you know, I think that in smaller leagues it's easier to go after those guys, and bigger leagues it's more difficult to go after those guys. But let's just say that you don't get one of those players. The idea might be to just throw darts at a couple of maybe high end qb twos or a cute like like don't be afraid to roster multiple quarterbacks at the end, Like I think that that we've sort of shifted and moved on from streaming. Streaming is not super super viable in most leagues at this point, Like with like Denny and I, Denny Carter and I have living the stream. We stream quarterbacks every week, we're tracking it. And over the last three years, when people have gotten smarter with the mobile stuff and understanding which quarterbacks are more valuable, it's become more difficult when you look at percent roster numbers to find quarterbacks off the waiver wire who are going to be viable. And so the alternative to that might be that you get multiple high end QB twos who don't have high opportunity costs. That the biggest opportunity costs in getting that is having a bench spot be used on a cornerback, you know, like that's that's that's the big thing.

00:26:11
Speaker 3: That matters when you go that route.

00:26:13
Speaker 1: But I do think that it's something that people should be thinking about a little bit more as opposed to how we've been approaching the game over the last you know, five to ten years, where you can very easily just go to the waiver wire and find guys that are gonna be usable in a given week.

00:26:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the most important thing to take from both both points that we bring up is and I think you've done some work in this too with adp is. I mean, you just don't want to be the gamer that's like taking like QB five through QB ten, Like you just don't want to be that gamer. That area is where you're kind of losing, like you're you're you've already lost all your positional leverage largely, and then you're you know, the opportunity costs just isn't worth what you're able to tarboritrage later on, like you said, so, Yeah, and most people play at home leagues to where you know, they have to roster multiple correcs just because the rest of their league is and let a guy go you know that, you know, I mean it's like mostly well the most most most gamers are playing leagues where multiple quarterbacks are on each roster. So benefit is beneficial to you to maybe take two that maybe their schedules line up, or maybe you like one guy for upside or that line up with each other to give you kind of those outs or just to be able to pind up, play the field, play opportunities and see what kind of comes along. I mean, I love that. Basically, I said, just don't be that gamer that that takes like you know, QB five through QB ten.

00:27:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, and don't fall into the trap either that when inevitably one of the QB five to QB ten's have a good touchdown rate season, like like Joe Burrow had a couple of years ago, or what have you. Like, like, don't don't fall into the trap thinking that, oh, this is the type of quarterback that I should be drafting because this one singular outcome or two outcomes went in your favorite. More often than not, what we're saying here is a probability driven outlook. More often than not, those quarterbacks are not going to pan out the way that you want them to pan out.

00:27:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean rock Perty will probably be a great example of that, you know, moving forward, you know, even from a fantasy stance, just to assuming that he's going to be the future quarterback for the forty nine ers next year and you know his sample, but I mean brock party for him to compete as a QB one from a fantasy stance. His margin of air is literally throwing for ten yards or past attempt and and you know, flirting with thirty five passing touchdowns like that's like that's an extremely high bar to hit, even for these guys like Burrow, who we you know in Herbert or like you know, guys that we believe in, like these elite prospects they come from Blue Trip, They're like a guy you would want to sink your franchise into. And poor als like those guys from a fantasy stance, their margin for air is so thin and they have to be perfect. And that's that's kind of what we've seen exposed, and we've seen kind of, like I said the lead in for where we are with this current defensive meta game, it's just not existing, like those opportunities are are just getting expounded and highlighted. It's different when everybody scoring touchdowns right right.

00:28:49
Speaker 1: Right, and to be and to be fair, look, I'm not sitting here saying that I was right about this call, because I was beyond wrong about this call this year. But this is why I was okay with attacking Deshaun Watson and drafting Deshaun Watson this year is because look, I understand, the passing wasn't there, Like, the passing still needs to be there, and the rushing still needs to be there, right, Like, he wasn't quite the rusher that we had seen before, but he definitely wasn't the passer. But the idea behind that is what was most important, The idea behind getting a dual threat guy, you know, after a player like Trevor Lawrence was being drafted, like I had Deshaun Watson straight up above Trevor Lawrence this year in my rankings. And to be honest, Rich, like you could look back in the season and say, that wasn't that bad of a call because Deshaun Watson got hurt and then you just stop using HI. Whereas Trevor Lawrence you're plugging in fifteen points. Hope you're starting court. Yeah yeah, just hoping that that something turns around.

00:29:42
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean you're taking hostage. You're taking hostage on your hostage, right. That happened to listen, I mean that largely happened with me. I mean, you know, with Tony Pollard. Yeah, oh yeah, I mean me, yeah, me too. You just yeah, but I mean I think the guy that stands out to give you like who I think might be early values, And I don't know. I haven't done on any of these early underdogs. I have no idea what ADP is whatever. But to me, like a guy, I think from perception that people are probably gonna undervalue initially as Kyler Murray, I mean, Kyler Murray came back off of the ACL injury and we all thought he wasn't gonna really run or do anything, and all he did was deliver QB one scoring weeks and like I and and really did do with any passing production or like any wide receivers like so the direction has to be like they're gonna get more better skill players. He was already good and and they obviously people I think just generally don't like him as a player and don't want to don't want to roster him for that reasons. But I imagine, and like I said, I'm just guessing. I'm I'm guessing he's undervalued though to open the offseason, oh one.

00:30:41
Speaker 3: Hundred percent, and he did that.

00:30:42
Speaker 1: Like you said, Marky's Brown was hurt throughout the second half of the season when when Kyler was back, I mean, Michael Wilson was banged up, and I mean it's not like he was just like premier prospect they didn't have much going on. I mean, he's throwing a Greg Dortch and Rondell Moore. Uh, you know, within that offense. Fortunately Trey McBride emerged, but like, yeah, I mean he was, he was getting it done with not a lot going on around him.

00:31:02
Speaker 3: Let's shift our focus to running back.

00:31:03
Speaker 2: Now.

00:31:04
Speaker 1: I have not flushed us out whatsoever, so I'm curious to like where your head is at with this topic. But it seems like anecdotally this past year, you know, we didn't see see fantasy production from running backs who had like massive, massive ground game workloads. You know, I'm talking Devon ah Chan obviously, Jamier Gibbs two sort of, you know, Han especially more undersized, but even like Breece Hall, like Breece Hall was not carrying the ball that much in the Jets backfield. When you look at the season in some right, we're talking players right now who are touching the ball on the ground twelve thirteen times per game. And I'm wondering if you think that we're at a point sort of like an inflection point of and we saw this with like Tony Pollard last year, not twenty twenty three, but in twenty twenty two we saw with Austin Eckler earlier on in his career. But are we sort of like shifting to this world where we should be focusing more on a fit see then workload at the running back position.

00:32:03
Speaker 2: Well, and I'm gonna make this about running quarterbacks too again, So it's it's it's interesting that you know, the as the economic code long live, long lived. With economic code, it's still it's still thriving. But what mobile quarterbacks have done now is changed a lot of the meta game on offense, and it's forced, i think some of the meta game on defense because you know you're counting more now defense start accounting for the quarterbacks as part of the offense where it used to never exist. Like I said a decade ago, But yeah, mobile quarterbacks have bled into what's going what we've seen happened to the fantasy position at running back and again this year we had one guy on kind of his own island for fantasy football and Christian McCaffrey, and the rest of the position was the position. There were definitely other guys like people will highlight you know, hey, Rashad White ended up as the r or whatever.

00:32:50
Speaker 3: Hey our boys White he got it done, baby, he got it done.

00:32:54
Speaker 2: He did. He did. But like a lot of what still happened with Rashad White in the context of like when you're going to see the off season you know, we always talk at the offseason stats where people are gonna be like, hey, he was the RB five. It's gonna say something a lot more about the RB five that season than it is about Sean White necessarily exactly. And what has happened is that, you know, we've seen kind of now that you know, the league wide kind of you know, passing game involvement with the quarterbacks like paired with like touch reduction from running backs all around purpose all purpose backs are just a scarce resource for fantasy. They just have been. And it's really allowed the depth of position to have kind of more volatility and you have these more kind of spike things. It's almost like not the Dyani fragile approach to the fullest, but like, yeah, it has opened up the door for like a lot of these guys that don't necessarily potentially even catch the football a lot to just compete to be RB one's given the right season, if they run into the right touchdown production, we're not seeing enough guys to touch the ball and all three facets of the game anymore. And they're just like a real finite resource at this point. And you look at it. So last year, qbs once again accounted for a higher rate of league wide runs, the highest rate in NFL history. That just keeps happening. Eventually, this mic cap, But we don't really know because not efren as mobile quarterbacks yet.

00:34:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, right, and look at look at we don't look at the college game. Yeah, look at the college game. Look look at the influx of guys who are generally coming in and getting looked at.

00:34:13
Speaker 2: Uh.

00:34:13
Speaker 1: And then as long as mobile quarterbacks hit, that's obviously key here too. As long as mobile quarterbacks then hit and continue to be starters for their team. Yeah, I mean, like we could become like we could see like, like what percentage of the NFL right now has a starting quarterback who's seeing significant work on the ground.

00:34:30
Speaker 2: I mean it's not even like nine to twelve teams right right exactly, And so we don't really know where the cap is. But once again this past year, quarterbacks accounted for the highest rate of league wide runs and they high and not only that they because you know, scrambles are always factored in the raw rushing attempts for quarterbacks, they actually also accounted for their highest rate of designed runs. Again, they also accounted for twenty four percent of the league's rushing touchdowns. That was the highest rate ever. And this is another thing that keeps happening. It's like, so not only are we seeing the quarterbacks re deuce natural touches that would have gone to running backs. Right now there's mobile run quarterbacks. There's less handoffs to go around because our quarterbacks now running the football more. That also now has impacted the green zone, the money zone, whatever you want to call it, Like those those those touches near the goal line that we just we clutch onto so greatly. Now quarterbacks are getting even more of those because you know, you have to make the defense play eleven on eleven football in that area of the field. I mean, quarterbacks had twenty two percent of all rushing attempts inside the five yard line, twenty four percent of all rushing touchdowns. Running Backs had their highest the lowest rate of carries in that area of the field than they have had, and it's just something that's been dropping, you know, precipitously. You know, the last five years or so is where it's really sorry to spike and again you talk about you come into this year, We've got Caleb Williams, We've got Jaden Daniels. You know, we'll see what happens. And as a byproduct of that too, not only are we taking away carries in the run game from this position, running back targets per game now dropped for the sixth straight season in a row. The eleven point nine targets per game running backs have seen are their fewest per game since twenty ten. And what you're happening now is like you know, not only in the middle of field open now and tight ends are getting used more, but quarterbacks are just running like you're not gonna check that you're not checking down as much. A lot of people have done work with that where like they're not checking down as much. Obviously you do have some, you know, examples where it's part of your offense, like the Bills, like it was it was definitely a part of their offense to throw to running backs. When you know Joe Brady took over and you see a guy like that's mobile with Josh Allen, you know, be able to throw to running backs. Probably something else we'll talk about as the point of the show, but you know, it's just what all this is done now, like the way offense is being played through these mobile quarterbacks, the way defense played, Like we we get reduced the amount of resources we have at the running back edition for these guys that can do a little bit of everything. So now it's just that you have a guy that can do a little bit of everything in terms of the way he used but just only has a cap on touches, right, like a Jamior Gibbs, maybe a Devin h Chan. Those guys are now more valuable than they would have been in years past, right, you know, because you'd say, oh, well, this guy's in a time shore. It's only getting you know, forty to fifty percent of the backfield work. But wait, he is still getting goal one carries, he is still catching the football. It's just you know, we're just not getting twenty touches out of him anymore. And though those amount of guys have just really dried up, I think there's a secondary I get to have like when you should be taking those guys in fantasy drafts and it's opposed to where they should line up in the context of the position. But that's kind of what's happened, and it's created like this real just like I said, real scarce resource at the running back position. We're at an all time like bad point for fantasy running backs. Like it is real bad. I know you've done like dynasty ranks and stuff, and like it's it's rough. Man, it's a real bad time for the position. Yeah.

00:37:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I also think you know, to your point about you know, there's just being I mean, the overarching point being that there's just fewer touches for running backs to get essentially right now, right, And I think if you compare like and we'll talk about Devon h Chan here in just a second, because I'm curious about your thoughts with him, But let's compare like a Devon Chan to like a Rashad White, right, and let's think about a year over year. Let's think about it from like a dynasty perspective, if you will. You know, obviously, Rashad White as an extra year in the league, so you know, age by whatever. But let's just compare the two. You know, I think the difference between a Chan and a White, you know, aside like let's just push like talent and stuff aside, is that a player like White is coming off a season where he saw like an immense number of touches in his backfield. You could even say this for like a Kyen Williams, who was actually very good even when you look at like his his peripheral numbers and stuff like Kyian Williams had a great season as a running back. The fear when you invest in these players, not necessarily in redraft as much, but especially like in Dynasty, the fear is that there is sort of that natural volatility of is this guy truly an elite player where you know that they're not going to be adding any sort of competition to dig into that workload in any way. And I'm not saying dig into the workload where Kyan Williams all of a sudden becomes not the number one or at least the one A in his offense. I'm just saying, like he was top six in the league and running back rush air this season. You know, he had a twelve percent target chair per game. You get one player who's at least semi capable in that backfield, and if the Rams decide to use him a little bit more, Maybe the Rams aren't the best example, just because we know that Sean McVay will seem to seemingly ride these guys, even if it's a.

00:39:21
Speaker 2: Random or like a Travis ets Yeah.

00:39:24
Speaker 1: Right, right exactly, these players where like that was a fear for sure with Travis Etn going into the season with Tank Bigsby. Bigsby just ended up not really hitting and who knows what's gonna happen there. But like Rashad White, probably the best example that we can look at right now, where is he good? I think he's good. I liked him as a prospect. I think you liked him as a prospect.

00:39:43
Speaker 3: Like is he elite?

00:39:44
Speaker 1: I don't know that we would sit and watch Rashad White and say that he is absolutely gonna see a Saquon Barkley workload year in and year out. And so what that means is is that if they add one small piece of competition that's not Chase Edmonds and Keyshan Vaughn or whoever's gonna be back there, there is that fragility to Rashad White's workload and then all of a sudden, you know, he can't back up into just being a really good player unlimited touches. All of a sudden, he's not going to necessarily see the fantasy totals that he saw, whereas a guy like Devon a.

00:40:15
Speaker 3: Chan, we know that in a singular game, in a singular.

00:40:19
Speaker 1: Week, and we know there's a week to week game in fantasy football. In a singular week, there's a chance that a guy in his backfield gets hurt. There's a chance that they just decide to give a Chan a little bit more work than he typically sees. And then in that singular week, obviously he has talent where he can just take anything to the house.

00:40:35
Speaker 3: We saw that this year. But in that singular week, he can still get you that w and he can.

00:40:41
Speaker 2: The Lions are the greatest example of that this year because not only those guys co exist, and there'll be a whole off season to talk about. You know, how stable the amount of rushing touchdowns that team had, but the you looked at any at the front half of the season when Gibbs missed that two week stretch to what David Montgomery was for fantasy and then later on in the season Montgomery missed that or four week stretch what Gibbs was for fantasy, and that's what you're gonna have a lot of fantasy moving forward. And that's why you're gonna see a lot of people adopt either the or not adopt the zero RB approach, the anchor RB approach, which you're goly going to see that extended further, I believe in fantasy. And what's gonna happen though, is you're going to see eventually some of the because of the context of the position where guys are going to be ranked. Let's just use Jamiir Gibbs for a great example, because I think he's going to be the probably the guy that's gonna end up with at least if he doesn't end up in the first round next year, he's going to be at the turn yeah, and is probably gonna be the more fragile turn players that we've probably had in recent years. And it's because of where he is going to rank in context of the position where he's gonna be in like ranks, but where should that player be going in fantasy drafts? Right? Should he be going over a thirty percent target share wide receiver, right, which will be happening, which will be happening. And not that those guys are all tried and true, but like you have to understand what you're buying first, what you're paying for at just a face value.

00:42:03
Speaker 1: Right right, Like there's nothing, Yeah, there's nothing wrong with Jamir Gibbs within the kin bring him RB four or whatever within the context of running back, but there is a problem taking him over Justin Jefferson or something like that. Yeah, like something I mean, obviously that wouldn't be the case, but someone yeah that stable and good.

00:42:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, and that's gonna be where we are. That's kind of where we were I think with like Jon Robinson a little bit this offseason. You know, we did get the workload for some of the guys that just ended up not hitting like a Pollard, But that's where we were. With Bijon Han, I don't think is going to get like that kind of capital because of the stuff you kind of touched upon, like you know, just you know, some of the fragility he already showed as a rookie. But yeah, a guy like Rashad White's like a great example. I think ETN will be interesting because we saw the team maybe try to get him to have a reduce workload, but Bigsby was such a disaster. Every time he touched the football, he basically cost his team points. That like he just got himself in the doghouse quickly. But there are very very few guys of the course of a season you talk about Hiroan like that are getting now seventy percent of their backfield share, Like it just doesn't happen anymore. So we're gonna have these guys there in like the fifty five percent range where we would tear down like previously historically that are in the context the running back position, like have elevation now right right.

00:43:17
Speaker 3: And look a guy like Williams.

00:43:19
Speaker 2: Uh.

00:43:19
Speaker 1: You know, I actually surprised myself whenever I was digging into his numbers, Kyan Williams numbers. I surprise myself in that I'm actually not nearly as out as I thought I was gonna be with Kyan Williams just in general. I mean, like he was pretty good this year, and really it just comes down to, is this ram staff gonna want to use him similarly next year?

00:43:35
Speaker 3: I think that there are reasons why they might not give him as big of a workload.

00:43:38
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, if you're sitting there and redraft next year and you're like, I think Kyrian Williams is gonna see eighty five percent of this team's backfield share, then I'll sure draft him, like draft him high if like that's what you think is like if that, if that's a real outcome that you think is going to happen, because those players are outliers at this point, there just aren't many of those guys. And even if they're not, you know, again, Kyen Williams is fine this year, But even if they're not that fantastic as players or his prospects or his talents, it doesn't matter when you're looking in that one year window. But I want to look in a bigger window and in dynasty. As some of these guys we've talked about, Devon a Chan, he is one of the strangest prospects to look at, you know, especially af Like he was already an interesting prospect entering the year because he had a great production profile, landed in the best spot imaginable for his particular skill set, but he was undersized obviously, and you know, he did what he did in year one where it's just kind of this roller coaster in and out of being injured. Where are you at with with Devon A Chan and dynasty?

00:44:42
Speaker 2: So in context position, I'm extremely high like he's because he's again like I want to be at running victors. I want to be drafting guys that have that ef everything lines up, they could be difference makers and they can still be difference makers on a reduced opportunity, right, Like I said, I mean not to just still at the draft good play, but I want players that are proven to be good and that can that can be explosive players on their own, and then when the opportunity comes along from nev increased workloads, they go absolutely bonkers. Yeah, and that's why I think you have to be kind of kind of bullish on him. Now, obviously there's gonna be some things you say, all right, look at the Devin Chan size. He's not even you know, ten pounds later than a guy like Gibbs. And you know, Kyrien Williams we talked about that he missed time and he's not a big guy either. And a lot of these teams, you know, we're seeing teams being forced in to give these guys big workloads, which never really happened in the NFL. And it did a little bit like when we'd have like a Ray Rice come along or a Christian or Samal Charles, and then we went through this period where like nobody got those touches. Then Austin Eckler kind of knocked the door down a little bit again, like kind of reopened the door for these guys to get bigger workloads, and we're seeing it kind of happen again. But you know, he missed the time at one hundred and eighty eight pounds at the combine. Who new knows what he played at, but he's he's in just a tremendous spot though. I mean, first of all, look at all of like his production and I know some this isn't going to be sustainable to a degree, but you know, the do you't average eight almost eight yards per carrie the most of any player with over one hundred and kicksies?

00:46:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, just totally dumb.

00:46:09
Speaker 2: He had a runner of ten or more yards on twenty one point six percent of his carries. Only Alvin Kamara twenty seventeen was a player who at a higher rate in the two thousands, So he's in like that arch type of like the Kamara, the Jamar Childs like what like, And if we run into a season where he gets a workload he's gonna eat stands to be good. Also, I think when you look at a chan what he's probably going to be working against next year. And we'll see what the Dolphins ad But let's just assume they bring Moster back on a one year or something. They keep just kicking the can. Moster, as long as you want to keep playing, we would like to keep having you. You fit in the system. He's still going to be in a backfield with a thirty two year old running back like that that also has had you know issues, you know, staying on the field. So when you look at compare this, like so you compare him, and I keep bringing up Gibbs, but like, I'm curious to where his ADP is going to match up with Gibbs is because to me, they're very similar. They're just very similar fantasy assets to have. And if he ends up being you know, twelve to fifteen plus spots away from Gibbs, I know one player that's gonna be on my team versus the other, like pretty easily and then also if you're telling me I can start a team with Justin Jefferson Tyreek Hill and also come back and add Devin h and a guy who can anytime he touches the Buck's score a touchdown that is appealing to me from a team building stance. Yeah, you know, as opposed to maybe I have to take, you know, a little bit more of a bite, a bite of the apple on Gibbs being there. So like if a chance the two three turn guy, he becomes very appealing for his archtype because then your team structure becomes very high upside, very very high upside, which is very appealing. So I'm very curious to see like where those two ADPs go. Because the system's great, right, Like we know we're buying Mike McDaniel stock, like he's shown he's gonna use the right players, like he's not here given touches the Braxton Barrios and like stuff like the Durham smitees, not cutting into targets. Like like Mike McDaniel understands the simon the best players get the football, and we have to believe the way the twenty twenty four Dolphins are lining up that Devin a chance's gonna be one of those guys.

00:48:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, one hundred percent.

00:48:06
Speaker 1: You mentioned Alvin Kamara as sort of like an interesting you know, comp ish to agent. You know, the Kamara stuff was always frustrating last off season when people were like comping like sniggers and yeah, he's bigger, right, but but but I do think stylistically it's it is similar, right, Like it's fair enough to say that's what they look like.

00:48:24
Speaker 3: And what's interesting is do you think to.

00:48:27
Speaker 2: Start seeing smaller athletes? And I don't want to use the rephrase smaller, but we've seen this happen at the wide receiver position too, where the yeah, the the the crux of the wide receiver position. Now the guys are leaner and lighter. And we talked about what the new wide receiver one looks like in NFL offense as they're doing multi things are we do you think there's a period where we start to see this now trickle to running backs or just in general.

00:48:48
Speaker 1: But here here's the thing that this is my response to this all the time, is that that we both know that there is signal to running back weight when when we're doing analysis, like when we're when we're prospecting and stuff. There's signal to it because historically this is what's happened, right. But I think you and I would both agree that the reason they're signal is not necessarily because we think those smaller running backs are incapable. The reason that their signal is because teams are just choosing to do what they do with from a volume perspective, right, They're not giving those guys a massive workload. I don't think twenty twenty three change that narrative per se. You know, I like, look at Devon a Chan didn't see massive, massive workloads like Keaton Mitchell, you know, as interesting as he was as a player, and I still think he's in this bucket as like an even cheaper, cheaper option who you know, doesn't have necessarily like the profile and stuff that a Gibbs or an a Chan has, but you know, it's still sort of this archetype of player. Keith Mitchell wasn't seeing a lot of work either. It's just a he can break a long run and do these crazy things with a ball in his hand. I think teams are going to be more willing to give those guys just enough more volume to where they're gonna be more fantasy relevant. But I don't think they're going to make them more courses like I because it didn't even happen this season, you know, like we might see them become more accepting to it, which is I hope, right, Like I I have a stylistically, I love smaller running backs, like like, whenever I'm I'm watching these guys, like I always like lean into that kind of just player naturally a little bit more because they're more exciting to watch thereisthetically more pleasing.

00:50:19
Speaker 3: Yeah right, it's way more fun.

00:50:24
Speaker 1: Hell yeah right, But then you have to just be objective and be like, okay, well this is not how teams have generally, you know, used these guys. But with a chan what's interesting is I have my year two model, which looks at Prospect Score and then looks at some metrics that these guys accumulated during year one his number one, and then I have journey comparables, which a journey comparable just looks at the prospect score, finds guys in a similar arrange in Prospect Score, and then looks at their year two models score, which predicts year two and year three in the NFL, and it combines those two and says which players kind of made a similar jump or decrease from prospect score to year two score. Davannah, his number one comp and journey comparable is Alvin Kamara. Like it's like like a guy who had a pretty decent prospect scorer, but we didn't expect what we saw during the rookie season per se. And then you know is your two score looks pretty good and you know, similar ish enough draft capital between the two to two. So I do think that we're, you know, on our way to seeing something special from an Chin and the jumior Gibbs obviously being thrown in that too.

00:51:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, people are just I keep using Gibbs as the example because he's going to be like he's already being regarded, like we already know where he's going to be dressed.

00:51:33
Speaker 3: See an he's Alvin Kamara now in fantasy Yeah, exactly right.

00:51:37
Speaker 2: But you know again, like you know, David Montgomery is gonna it's gonna be there, there'll be stuff to talk about, whereas like AHM might be going like set against the thirty two year old running back like it is. We'll see what the Dolphins at I assume they'll probably be like the old adopting nine ers and probably add a running back at an offseason or something, considering you know, Jeff Wilson and how many bodies they went through at the position this year. But yeah, I mean, it's it's gonna be fun to talk about. I mean, Bijien, that's gonna be one of those guys, like, you know, he's not gonna drop because everyone knows the upside and obviously are the ghost of Arthur Smith is gone, so he's gonna But where he goes it drafts like he's one of those guys that we believe definitely could be one of those guys that comes up with like a lot larger spike in terms of opportunity, Like maybe he doesn't get back to maybe he doesn't approach like the eighty percent or like seventy five percent, but if he goes from a fifty five percent backfield chair to a sixty five percent backfield chair, that's pretty significant.

00:52:26
Speaker 3: That's big.

00:52:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, that matters, That matters a lot. Someone else that's sort of in this bucket, if we're being honest, it's Taj Spears. So you know he's walking into a situation where Derek Henry is seemingly gone. I mean Henry grabbed a microphone and basically thanked and essentially think Tennessee after that game, Yeah, that you know that he was gonna be gone.

00:52:42
Speaker 3: So where are you at with Taj?

00:52:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's another one of these guys just in like the deep bucket of guys where I want to see, like where the cost is. He's definitely a prospect I was into though. You know when you look at his pressure, I don't think anything change from like his rookie year production either, Like when he got a chance to touch the football, he was good, very similar guy five to ten, two hundred. The difference from a Dynasty stance versus Uh Spears and Chan is obviously like the bon On Bonnie stuff that we saw like Jji, Like Jaji went great until he did it, so like is that a thing with Spears? And that's when we again when we get back to like the context, like where we are just with this position, the position in general in Dynasty, I mean I have very few running backs, like even competing with wide receivers. And then when you get in secondary tier of running backs, like when you get into the guys like Thereshad Whites, the James Cooks, the Taj Spears. I think all those guys are in a bucket like that. Maybe are guys that could give you an RB one season in terms of overall production, but probably are more weekly RB twos. Those guys are really tricky from like a dynasty perspective. Those are the guys you typically want to get out on early and you want to you want to move while the the the the opportunity is good. But then again, you know, if you're a gamer with these guys, you're like, well, I got this guy in my second round pick. Or say, you know, if you got Isaiah Bachecko, you guys say it, but checko maybe off waivers, like and those guys are hard to like go because you're like, why I got this dude for free. It's not like I'm losing anything. But then like, you also want to play the market value game. You want to max out what you have. It's like, you know, that's exactly where I see Spears slotting in though, but this is a guy I could catch the football. He was great in past protection at Tulane. Kind of checks all the boxes. We just don't really know what Tennessee is gonna be right, Like we're We've got a lot of moving parts. You know, with the addition of Callahan, are they going to be an eleven personnel team? Is he going to bring that with him? We don't really know, Like a lot of things are up in the air. What do they end up adding? So it did all be cost But I definitely like the player. I definitely think he fits into the same thing we talked about. I would have him lower than a Chan a little bit just because of a Chan's like I think absolute ceiling potential. But I think Spears is definitely in like that Rashad White, James Cook area of like where you would treat those guys in like a Dynasty stance, probably even a Kenneth Walker who does it in an inverse fashion, but as a high upside, high variable running back.

00:54:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I agree. I agree.

00:54:54
Speaker 1: Whenever I did my first jan like I do updates every month for my Dynasty rankings, I did one at the beginning of January, and I had Spears around like the RB twelve ish range. But that was, like, you know, it was ranked like like low, like lower than like the wide receiver thirty six and stuff. You know, I was like more interested in just getting out going after like the some of those higher upside wide receivers than a Spears. But I had Spears, and someone had questioned it at the time, But the market's definitely corrected itself or at least leaned the way that I was thinking back then, like I had him above, like Remandre Stevenson for instance, Like it just seemed like an easy call for me, when realistically their outcome, I mean, like like Tajre Spears is a higher sealing outcome at this point in my opinion than like a Remandre would in a given singular season.

00:55:39
Speaker 3: And I think with a lot of these guys.

00:55:41
Speaker 1: You're really looking for like a two year runway with these with these running backs before you you know, are gonna want to want to get out with them. All right, let's move out to a wide receiver. We got to talk about Pukakua. Man Uh, what in the world happened his rookie season. I've never seen anything like this. I'm sure you've never seen anything like this, but right now I just got to throw out there. His year two model scorer is a ninety nine, which is basically where we only see incredible incredible talents like Jamar Chase, et cetera, Justin Jefferson, you know, after their crazy rookie season is the obvious difference he did not have even close to the prospect score and profile and such that those guys had. When I look for like a real comp from a journey comparable standpoint, it's like, you know, maybe Terry McLaurin, but it's not, but he's you know, obviously McLaurin wasn't as good as Cooper Cut or as as Pooka Nakua his rookie season. Then Cooper Cup is also sort of one where Cup had a really underrated rookie season and you know, but he wasn't as bad of a prospect objectively as Nakua, and then you know, he didn't do what Niakua did his rookie season. What I'm getting at here is I'm confused out of my mind because I have this dude as a clear cut wide receiver one in Dynasty, like top five, top six type wide receiver in Dynasty, And I need to know if you agree, yeah.

00:56:59
Speaker 2: I do, because we don't really have any inclination that you know, one McVay is going to be leaving h everytime soon. And you know, Stafford definitely has multiple seasons left as long as I think he keeps want wants to keep playing, and then obviously they'll they should be planning for the future there as well. But I mean, we saw all the the videos of less Need and Sean McVay talking about him. They talked about him like we did, like we talked about when you watched Pook and a Kula, Like the guy had just like some injury stuff at YU, but he was he was a demon like anytime he got the ball, and he got it in a multiple ways, but like his whole like tape was littered with stuff of not just running through guys like he did this year, but like sideline catches and everything. And you saw like when less Need in that video, like they were like a sta we gotta get like wait till we get it, yeah, yeah, and get him in this system. They had a clear plan with him, They knew what player they were getting, and he fell like into the perfect infrastructure for his talent. I think he was gonna be an undervalued like you did. Like the results be on that, just like I did ound a table. A lot of people liked him, but he literally we had the dream of like a player going to the to the ideal spot, and he was good versus man coverage. He was good versus own coverage, same thing he was in college. They get involved in the run game as extension of that, and as long as he's be with McVeigh, I mean I think that there's gonna be exist to be a high ceiling. Even playing alongside Cooper Cup, we saw both guys coexist when when he came back Cup that is during the course of the season, and Nakua even almost was like still the wide receiver one like even to close the season for them with Cup kind of aging out. So I mean, yeah, I don't think there's any reason to move down. I think when you look at where the dynasty landscape is and you get to kind of like ranking these guys in order, I don't see any reason why he doesn't belong with like the chrys Alavi, Garrett Wilson guys. You know you might want one of those guys higher. I don't take umbrage with you if you do. But I think when you factor in his age only going to be twenty three years old at the start of next season, he definitely belongs, you know, higher than even that. I think the group of guys people maybe are still latching onto, like even like an AJ Brown right, who still has a clear wide receiver one. But you're talking about a four year difference, and I think that that absolutely matters, especially from a dynasty stance. So I don't see any reason to move them out there. It's the Maya Angelou kind of law. You know, when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. And you know, Puku nakuas and shown us he's nothing but a good football player basically throughout his old college tenure and his first year in the NFL.

00:59:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, easy to root for it too, that's all I mean. It's always fun to have like fun guys in your dynasty rosters. So all right, I want to I want to hit you with one more wide receiver question before I get you get you out of here. You have Jayden Reid and Rashi Rice from this draft class where they weren't flawless prospects by any means. I like j Jayden Reid more than Rashi Rice straight up this past year, and as prospects now, I think you can make the argument for Rice over Reid. But I talked about this on my Mailbag episode last week where I think it's fairly close between the two because I think there are marks where there are question marks with both of them in different ways. So I'm curious where you're at with both Rice and Reid.

01:00:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, both are tricky from I think a dynasty overall perspective, like where you would rank them. I think you feel positive about there. You're you're happy if you took either one at this point though you feel good. I'm not saying like there's a reason to get out, but there there is some reason to say like maybe like these guys cap at a certain point and maybe don't have like the full like apex of like say, maybe some guys that are like maybe floating around them, like say like a Nico Collins or a Drake London or even like maybe Michael Pittman take Dell and a similar rookie right, like you know some of those guys I mean, for she writes, is very tricky because SMU didn't really run like a real offense. All he got was screens and deep targets, and really all he got was screens. Is a rookie, and it's very hard. He's a unique player. He's in a wide open target try and granted she's might even have maybe not even don't have traps Kelsey next year, and you're attached to the holy grail of inflation. Patrick Mahomes, right, like, we've been done it. We did it with Micole Hartman, we did it with Sky Moore. You get a chance to play the Patrick Mahomes like, you're gonna go along for someone is eventually was gonna go along for the ride, right, Like eventually someone wi it.

01:01:07
Speaker 3: Was gonna finally work.

01:01:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, But there was one hundred and fifty one wide receivers this year to run one hundred or more pass routes. He was one hundred and forty nine out of those guys in air yards per target, ahead of just Paris Campbell and Cadarius Tony. Seventy percent of his yards are after the catch. That was fourth in the NFL. But give you some context, sixty one percent of Deebo Samuel's yards come after the catch, even ten percent higher. He goes fourth in the league in screen targets, and you just got to ask yourself, like where does the growth and expansion go because we don't know because he didn't do anything differently as a rookie that he really didn't do it SMU right, and so it just takes a lot more projection and a lot more willing to lean into say, point at Patrick Mahomes and say yes that. So there's the reason you would say, like, you know, like how high does it go? We don't really know he's gonna be great to his initial draft capitals to be interesting too. We assume the Chiefs are going to do some stuff this offseason, but we've said that for.

01:01:59
Speaker 1: Years and they have, like so maybe they don't they and they keep making the Super Bowl, so maybe maybe they're not gonna put the resources though.

01:02:06
Speaker 2: Jaden Reid very similar. The question for Jayden Reid, I think immediate picture is what happens like with this Green Bay wide receiving corn general. Do they all end up just cannibalizing each other. Jaden Reed is a rookie phenomenal. Showed he can win against man coverage. He was tops of the teams in yard on the Packers in yards per out run against man coverage, top target earner against man coverage as well. But again he only played in essentially eleven personnel when they were in two wide receivers on the field the end play he came off the field. We've seen them get ancillary production out of guys like Dontavian Wicks. Of course this over the course of this season, even Bowl Mountain towards end the season, and they had a player that they already invested in in Christian Watson basic essentially not really be available this year. So what happens next year? How do the snap shares kind of get divvied up around the Packers receivers? Is it a rotation? Is it? Is it kind of weird? So I feel good about Jada Reed player obviously like you did coming in. He checked out, He affirmated everything I believed him in as the player. There's just like some some nebulous stuff that you have to place faith in it from a projection stance moving forward. That's why I say, like when I kind of lay those guys out and you see a guy like Tank Dell, I actually think Tank Dell maybe for being more I don't want to use the word limited, but like in terms of like stature because he's smaller than those guys. But like I feel more confident in like Tank Dell's like environment in his situation in from a twenty twenty four stance than I do either of the two guys we talked about.

01:03:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Look, your answer honestly really echoed a lot of the stuff that I found, which is good.

01:03:39
Speaker 3: You know, obviously, perspectives.

01:03:40
Speaker 1: I want people to give their perspective, and I'm not gonna hate whenever they disagree with me, but it makes me feel a lot better whenever there's agreement, because the key thing with Jayden Reid for me is that competition Dan Tavian Wicks was really underrated. I mean, he was good this year, coming from nowhere, Like I didn't think he was that good of a prospect, and you.

01:03:57
Speaker 3: Know, he did what he did.

01:03:59
Speaker 1: I just have a hard time, like, I don't think either of these players are elite players to the point where they're gonna dictate a twenty five percent target share year in and year out right no matter their environment. And so if the environment does have reasonably good players like Jayden Reid's has, that's a little bit of a concern. And then with Rashid Rice, I agree totally. I I worry like like Rashi Rice looks a little bit better in the year two model than Jaden Reid does because his yards per route run and such were out of control this year.

01:04:26
Speaker 2: But I had imagine if you would have just played like a full route Like the thing is that it almost helped him in a sense.

01:04:32
Speaker 3: Dred percent.

01:04:33
Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying, Yeah, one hundred percent, like like getting these screens and like no one should question his yak ability either, Like that's what he showed in college and that's what he did obviously this year too. The fear is Kansas City might have just used him that way because he's just not I mean, and this is beyond just what I'm watching or what you I mean, Like Matt Harmon charted this stuff and he he showed that Rashid Rice was not that great of a route runner. And so what if he doesn't develop number one or what if he's just an average route runner in the NFL, which is fine, you can still be a good fantasy asset. And then what if they do make a splash and free agency and do something at wide receiver. What if they you know, do a little bit more wide receiver in the draft. I mean, there are ways where that target chair isn't as consistent as it was down the stretch for Rashi Rice in year two. With that being said, I think both of them are good players, and I would like both of them on my fantasy rosters. I just think they're more just like Holds, you know, then, like I got to aggressively go after this guy, or I have to aggressively sell him. You know, if you have them in Dynasty, you got him at you know, you've already profited, like you're already in a in a good spot getting them in the mid second in super Flex, late second in super Flex.

01:05:36
Speaker 3: You're feeling pretty.

01:05:37
Speaker 1: Good, all right, before I let you go, Rich, give me one player that you're probably I say, probably, because you know, the market's the market, It fluctuates, and people aren't necessarily feeling the same way about these guys you know, every hour of every day. But give me guys you're you're probably buying, and maybe one player that you might be selling this offseason in Dynasty.

01:05:55
Speaker 2: Well, I mean definitely, Drake London would be my number one target if you could do, if you could, if anyone is disgruntled after two years obviously again Arthur Smith leaving. Now, I think gives it kind of boosts up people's hopes. You know, Drake Lolenson would have be a guy I wanted to buy if Arthur Smith was still there, right like, because big picture, this is still I mean I ranked one hundred and fifty wide receivers and he's still the ninth youngest wide receiver one hundred and fifty that I rank, Like he's gonna be younger than Pukinnakua at the starter next year. You know, he's gonna be younger than Garrett Wilson's younger and Chris Love's. Like this is a guy that still profiles I think as an elite wide receiver. We haven't seen the best from him. Hopefully that is true for the number of Atlanta Falcons. Then Kyle Pitchtruther, so eventually I have their moment too as well. I'll say longer. I mean, listen, nothing from Trey Palmer's rookie season deterred me to just believe the dude can play. So like, granted, maybe we don't see Mike Evans return, what do they do with Chris Godwin? I don't know, necessarily believe that they maybe got like what they were hoping for Chris Godwin at this stage's career, so maybe this opportunity opens up for him. I don't know what's gonna happen with Andre Yoshabas if we do see, you know, T Higgins move on on. One guy that I'm trying to get thrown into like a bunch of back end dynasty deals like for throwings is is Noah Fan. And it's not because I necessarily believe that Noah Fan is gonna hit, but we know, like the tight end trajectory is a slow burn. He's only gonna be twenty six years old at the start. Last year kind of got buried in Seattle, but is probably gonna move on to a new team. He already has two ninety target seasons and as the resume to as well. So he's just the guy I want to say, like he's an aim small miss small guy. Yeah, it's a I think he's just a real good guy. And we know just that the at the tight empis and everything's wide open, right, So what if he has like an Njoku kind of run, right, Because Djoku to this point of his career to where Fant is now, Fant actually has two better years than Njoku had had on his resume to this point so as the first round. So like I'm still holding out like an opportunity to say, like all right, well I'll see where he goes and see if it turns into anything. But he probably doesn't cost you anything to get tacked on the deal. So like a throw no a fan here man, just yeah, no, one's gonna hold up the deal, right, Guys like Jalen Watt, all those guys in that mold. Like, I think that what you're looking at is that we talk talked about that tier of running backs. We talked about if you can sell that tier of guys up the James Cooks through a Shad White, the ta Ja Spears, the guys you believe are definitely good floor running backs, I probably could give you an RB one season, but like aren't like tide turners at the position, and you can turn those into even the guys like like the tier like below, the elite guys. Any if you can get a DeVante Smith, a jail and Waddle anybody like in that area that we know is going to from a longevity stance, give you floor based production, then has potential to be a wide receiver one big picture that obviously you know, some gamers we'll see through that, but you know, definitely that group of guys, you know, can you get even a T. Higgins or Michael Pittman even I still think those guys are guys that I would still want for like that arch type of player as well from a dynasty stance. So that's kind of where we are right now. Uh, you know, it's early, it's not even February. First, I'll see what comes along. Like we talked about before we even jumped on Live, like I'm still you know, right been writing up play games and stuff, so I haven't fully got the off season mindset. This was kind of like the first stepping stone, so it's kind of fun to talk about some of the stuff that happened during this year and kind of where we'll be moving forward. You know, fans football, whether there's two touchdowns scored a game or fifty scored a game, like, it's going to all be relative and things we care about hundred percent.

01:09:19
Speaker 3: Man, it's so good to chop it up. I hope everyone enjoyed it.

01:09:22
Speaker 1: I know everyone will because you're one of the best, man, why don't you let everyone know where they can find you.

01:09:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm meant sharp. I fanalysis, still writing stuff up. I believe they're going to do the super Bowl week worksheet for free. The playoff ones were free, but I still have one more game to write up. Still on the super Bowl, and then we'll be into Dynasty mode hardcore here, you know, Prospects season. I know you're ready. Everyone's ready for the Late Round prospect guys. You had a great promo. I love all these I love these, the throwback graphics here, they're like the Tron Yeah, the the Tron vibe. I like the aesthetics of them. Yeah.

01:09:54
Speaker 1: The brand is definitely you know, more of like the retro vibe is usually this, you know, the kind of stuff that me and my buddy work on, you know, with Late Round Fantasy Football. I hope people enjoyed it. You guys can check out the Prospect Guide over on lateround dot com for pre order. Right now, it's only eleven ninety nine. It'll be fourteen ninety nine when it launches in March. I'm on Twitter at Late Round QB. But thank you everyone, as always for tuning in