Late-Round Perspectives: Matt Kelley

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Matt Kelly is a fantasy football podcaster who is the founder of both Player Profiler and Fast Raft.

00:00:06
Speaker 2: He's a dad, he's an analytics.

00:00:08
Speaker 1: Believer, he can sometimes be a little controversial, and he's the king of the long form podcast. These are his Late Round Perspectives.

00:00:28
Speaker 2: Here's the thing.

00:00:29
Speaker 1: I already know that this Late Round Perspectives episode is going to be the longest in the history of the show.

00:00:35
Speaker 3: I had meetings later today and I told people that this is all up in the air and out because I'm going to be going on with JJ.

00:00:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, would you agree this is going to be probably the I think the longest was actually the last Perspectives I did had Waldman on last a couple of weeks ago, and which is ironic that we have the Waldman to Kelly. I know that there's been there's been a little historical beef between the two.

00:01:03
Speaker 3: Very very long time ago, very very very long in a galaxy far far away, a fantasy galaxy, far.

00:01:09
Speaker 2: Far away, where I was.

00:01:14
Speaker 3: Very eager, an eager young man trolling on Twitter looking for takes I disagreed with so that I could rip them a part of my podcast, and sometimes they would get back to people.

00:01:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like.

00:01:25
Speaker 1: Though you've grown a lot as an from that perspective, right, Like you don't, that's not that's not that's not what you really do anymore, only because they don't have time to that degree.

00:01:36
Speaker 2: I'm saying, I would you you you are you are.

00:01:40
Speaker 1: A you have been a controversial analyst in your history. Oh you would agree, you would agree with that?

00:01:46
Speaker 2: Yes?

00:01:47
Speaker 3: Yes, And I just want people to know that that say, oh, I'm selling out and I'm not I've lost my edge.

00:01:53
Speaker 2: And all those things. No, it's all there.

00:01:55
Speaker 3: It's just I'm very busy with two companies, okay, and I just can't dig in to the bad takes on social media like I used to be able to and listen to all the podcasts I used to be able to so that I could, you know, really lean into that on the show. Now I just have to come up with my own takes and just trust the process. Get you just need your own awful take.

00:02:24
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:02:24
Speaker 3: Now I'm just stuck with myself. I'm just I'm stuck with all. That's all I got, man is. But fortunately over the years it wasn't just about oh, ripping apart other people, is about coming up with your own approach to things, and I know we're going to talk about that today. I'm excited to talk about it, your own process and figuring out what matters. And it's years and years to get to that point. So now, fortunately, as I no longer have some of those crutches, I have this this other sort of body of work that I've built up that now I have a prism through which I can analyze players and situations and strategies through.

00:02:59
Speaker 2: So I feel good. Would you say it?

00:03:01
Speaker 1: Because I think that anyone that listens to my show knows that I'm a generally agreeable person just in my nature, right. I mean, you and I have talked countless times in real life and interacted in real life. Yeah, And so the way that you approach things is or historically. You know, I'm not saying that that's you know, we just went over all of that, but like, would you say that that's just part of your nature to want to almost play the wwe heel at times as an analyst in the space. You know, I think because I want to come at this from the from the angle of maybe someone listening to this show who has heard you in the past, and you know, sees me talking to you and we're having this conversation, and they're curious about our approaches because our approaches to that kind of thing are totally different. Like obviously, I think Waldman has some some brilliant stuff that he brings to the table. I wouldn't have had him on perspectives, you know last week. I think he's a great human as well, and so I I only bring him up because that's one of the many, the many folks that you've talked about or talked, uh, you know, about their takes and such like on your show. But is that something that you that is innate or do you think that it's something that you have forced a little to make more entertaining content.

00:04:20
Speaker 3: I was a class clown and I was always bothering the teachers, and I was always, uh, this is.

00:04:28
Speaker 2: I don't know.

00:04:29
Speaker 3: I don't know what it is. I don't I don't know what it is. I don't know what my problem is. But I am looking for I am looking to, you know, mix it up, man, I'm looking to mix it up.

00:04:42
Speaker 2: It's interesting. I was just thinking about this, you know.

00:04:45
Speaker 3: When I came up there were the talk radio was still big.

00:04:49
Speaker 2: Mike and the Mad Dog and and and all that.

00:04:52
Speaker 3: And I used to listen to Dan Lebtard and he used to really have these like uh, you know, big time I'm uh, you know, back and forth with Steven A. Smith and many other people. In the current landscape, especially with podcasting now, uh and you know, influencer culture, you get a lot more rewards for just sort of being a nice, calm human. So you see a lot of the people that are maximum successful, they're not necessarily pushing the envelope. They're not necessarily hey, waving their arms around, look at me. Hey, I'm gonna I'm gonna start fights with someone because this is a this is a WWE style spectacle, turn whatever whatever radio show podcast into that. And so that's the era I grew up in, and I'm still wired that way. But now I look around and I'm like, well, actually, if I were reverse engineering this just to have maximum followers and maximum uh you sort of reach, then I think that you're you're better off now, if you're getting started in the content creation in any industry, you're better off just sort of being yourself in a nice, calm, level headed person that doesn't have these sort of emotional issues where you're starting conflict and you're trying to get attention.

00:06:23
Speaker 2: Uh so, uh, you know, maybe I.

00:06:27
Speaker 3: Think I had I definitely had a peak moment, but this was like seven years ago. And now that approach doesn't fly like it used to. It doesn't get the traction that it used to, it doesn't help you like use it. And fortunately, fortunately this is just dumb luck that I have.

00:06:49
Speaker 2: I no longer have time to do that anyway.

00:06:51
Speaker 3: So I've been naturally evolving with the space and that, thank god.

00:06:59
Speaker 2: Right, I don't even know if that I don't think it would. Uh, I don't think it would move the needle like it used to.

00:07:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, look, I think that everyone that consumes let's just sit talk fantasy content. Anyone that consumes fantasy content is gonna, you know, pick their flavor and stick with whatever flavor they they that tastes best, right, and that they that they appreciate the most. And so like, you know, if someone's like, oh, I don't like your fifteen minute podcast.

00:07:23
Speaker 2: It's too boom boom boom boom.

00:07:25
Speaker 1: It feels too scripted, even though I'm just you know, I'm saying things over and over, gonna make sure that it can get into that fifteen twenty minute you know, because that's what people, like a large number of people want because they have a twenty minute commute or only have so much time.

00:07:39
Speaker 2: My response is, you know, maybe I was I would get.

00:07:41
Speaker 1: Offended like ten years ago when I first started doing a lot of this stuff, at least in front of a larger audience. But my response now is like totally cool, Like I don't I'm not gonna hate on you for not liking the presentation. When the feedback that I read about my content is about like the tone of my voice, well, that's just what God gave me, you know, Like I that's something that I can't actually really control. So that's actually a great if that's the worst thing about me that you feel is about It's not my analysis.

00:08:09
Speaker 2: Right, it's the way that I sound. It's the way that I get excited.

00:08:13
Speaker 1: And my voice rises and stuff, you know, like like okay, fine, that's just the way that I am.

00:08:18
Speaker 2: And I can't really do anything about that.

00:08:20
Speaker 1: So like that to me, you know, people are gonna like whatever they want to like, you know, if they don't like that, I will be agreeable at times.

00:08:28
Speaker 2: I'm still gonna push back.

00:08:29
Speaker 1: We're gonna have a conversation today, Matt where we're gonna disagree on stuff, and I'm going to push and ask you questions and wonder why, because I think that's important.

00:08:37
Speaker 2: I did that, I've done that.

00:08:38
Speaker 1: That's part of the reason why I wanted perspectives in the first place, is because all week long, people are just getting my takes on the podcast. So let's get other perspectives. Let's get someone else on the show to where I can ask these people about the things that I've been talking about and see what their angles on those things are. You know, It's not that I'm avoiding conflict completely. I'm just not going out there and saying, hey, you're taking is trash, You're You're an awful analyst.

00:09:04
Speaker 3: This is yeah, this is why this is a misguided approach to uh analyzing a particular player. Yeah that that multiple Reddit threads dedicated to the Podfather and why I'm awful.

00:09:20
Speaker 2: So I'll say this.

00:09:22
Speaker 3: That, Uh, I gotta say, I have to admit kinda I kind of feel like I'm winning there. Kind of felt like I was winning in those situations, and I'll always feel that way. I always feel like hey this. Yes, there are people out there that will never listen to me again, but uh, there's a lot of people devoting a lot of attention and a lot of space, a lot of headspace to criticizing me, and.

00:09:53
Speaker 2: That that that isn't that bad.

00:09:56
Speaker 3: I'll forever believe that that that that's not again nowadays in twenty twenty five, that you just don't see that that nearly as much, especially in fantasy football.

00:10:10
Speaker 2: Uh, but uh.

00:10:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do look back at I do reminisce, you know, once in a while. I think a couple months ago, I stumped someone said something and I stumbled back upon an old uh Reddit takedown of me, and I was just just sort of flipping through, just reminiscing, like, oh man, remember remember back when they really hated.

00:10:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, see, like like you you you do? You do have a part of you that feeds off of that. I have this.

00:10:39
Speaker 1: I have no part, no being of my body enjoys that. Literally, no part of me. I just want to create content and talk fantasy football and hopefully do well at that right and come up with really cool and unique and new ideas.

00:10:51
Speaker 2: But I want to I want to.

00:10:52
Speaker 1: Wrap this up by saying this I've I've known you. We've seen each other at conferences. We sat next to each other.

00:10:58
Speaker 2: In the play.

00:10:59
Speaker 1: Remember that, Remember that that flight that we took, was it to Nashville? Do you remember that where you had a layover in Charlotte? And it just so happened that we were on the same flight. And not only were we on the same flight, we had seats literally right next to each other fate and we just sat and we chatted, you know, the whole way to Nashville. I know you well, you know as a human you, as a human is or are a better person than what others would probably perceive you as based on some of those things.

00:11:30
Speaker 2: I want to say that I appreciate that.

00:11:31
Speaker 3: Man.

00:11:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can put that on Reddit if you want. Yeah, people on Reddit can run and say whatever they want.

00:11:38
Speaker 2: I am.

00:11:38
Speaker 1: I Actually, I'm one of the few fantasy antas that kind of enjoys Reddit. I go, I go on there all the time, and I'm going back and forth with people and talking to them and you know, thanking them if they're shouting out my guys or something like that. Like, I think it's a decent community when you're just not like if you're not prepared, like you're at least prepared to be like, Okay, yeah, I'm going to take some heat because I'm being a dick right now. Right, I'm just kind of like, look, if people are gonna be kind then I'll I'll show them kindness back.

00:12:05
Speaker 2: That's great.

00:12:05
Speaker 3: It is good content, though, Like if you if you don't have if you had, you had no individual like analysis to critique, and you just wanted content, and it is it is to read some of the negative feedback about you and then and then fight with the nameless, faceless critic.

00:12:24
Speaker 1: That is always good content. You can always fall back on that, you can, you can fall back on it, but I wouldn't recommend it. All right, I want to talk about you though, and like you're you know, I do this with everyone on the show. You have a pretty unique sort of journey in the space, your process within the space, and what you provide. So just start to finish the Matt Kelly Show. How did this all come about?

00:12:46
Speaker 2: Well? I like talking as you can already imagine.

00:12:49
Speaker 3: Uh, and I like talking sports and I started playing fantasy. Well, if you really want to go back to when I really started playing fantasy, like in its in its most pure form. When I was in middle school, my friends and I we took football cards and we'd lay them all out on the floor. This was before the internet. Okay, just everyone just everybody knows very old, very crusty individual and this was pre internet.

00:13:18
Speaker 2: Pre AOL. You know, I'm I'm old in the space now. I know. It's crazy, isn't it. You remember when I was like you pop, yeah, oh yeah, Late.

00:13:27
Speaker 3: Round Quarterback the book, right, I mean, it was great, so cool.

00:13:34
Speaker 2: I was like, look at this kid. This kid's a go guterer old kid. Yeah, it's years old. Get love it. So uh yeah.

00:13:41
Speaker 3: So we were laying out all the all the football cards and then it was sort of like a fantasy Dungeons and Dragons, fantasy football meets Dungeons and Dragons, where you know, we would pick all the cards and then we would just narrate the season as it would play out with these you know, you just amalgam teams of players, which later would be called fantasy football. But we just kind of made it up with football cards. And so I remember doing that, and a buddy of mine sent me a t shirt of like, you know, of the game we used to play and it was like remember this, like this was actually fantasy football, and I'm like, oh my god. So then took over a fantasy baseball team for my buddy who was traveling so bad.

00:14:26
Speaker 2: So again, way way back, he was studying.

00:14:29
Speaker 3: Abroad in Germany, and he wasn't sure about the Internet and his ability to manage his roster, especially you know with lineup lock, you know, weekly daily with with fantasy baseball. So he's like, listen, man, I'm gonna be in Germany and I want to deal with this. Take over my fantasy baseball team.

00:14:47
Speaker 2: So I picked up Rafael Arcal.

00:14:50
Speaker 3: He like stole seventy bases in the second half. It was incredible, and then I was, you know, enjoying that. Quickly started a fantasy football league. In that league, I was the first to draft a tight end and the last to draft a quarterback in my first draft.

00:15:08
Speaker 2: Wow.

00:15:08
Speaker 3: So wow, right, look at you, right setting setting friends, I started. I remember how I started that draft, Marvin Harrison, Tony Gonzalez.

00:15:17
Speaker 2: M it was good. It was a good team, pretty good. It was a very good team.

00:15:20
Speaker 3: So then for always distracted at work, always creating fantasy leagues, always trying to you know, getting a group of people together to hide from our boss how much fantasy we're playing?

00:15:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, And then.

00:15:35
Speaker 3: That company ended up getting sold and then I moved to Connecticut and I needed to figure out what I was going to do, and I was in this new thing called podcasting, and I was like, well, we can do you know the fantasy sports podcast. Started a fantasy sports podcast, and needed all this information at my disposal, at my fingertips, and started creating what would become player Profiler. So player Profiler was built from the perspective of a podcaster who was just looking for confirmation bias of his own positions. Right, So I need I need numbers and data to back up what I'm saying. I need to pull it up in an instant. That's how player Profiler was architected and created.

00:16:15
Speaker 2: So if you're next time you're.

00:16:16
Speaker 3: On playerprofile dot com, remember this moment like, oh, actually, yeah, this makes sense that a podcaster needed this data at their fingertips.

00:16:27
Speaker 2: That's why it's designed this way.

00:16:29
Speaker 3: And so then the two things would feed off each other where people would find the podcast and then they would find the website, or find the website and find the podcast, and then the flywheel starts and you're you're experiencing the same thing with late rounds.

00:16:41
Speaker 2: So it's great.

00:16:42
Speaker 3: And uh, you know a few years ago, there was this big boom with best Ball. It was MFL tens, then this draft app, and then people that did the draft app did the Underdog app, and everyone was very excited about Best Ball and I was like, this is a revelation. You can just draft one hundred and fifty teams and then you can really home in on your on your exposure and kind of figure out, Okay, how much Jamar Chase do I have versus Justin Jefferson versus Iman Rossaint Brown. And I love this idea of portfolio drafting with Best Ball, and I assumed this would take over fantasy, And then a funny thing happened. No one did anything with Best Ball after Underdog. Everyone's like, well, Underdog's got this right, and they do they're doing They've been doing a great job ever since. But nothing new came along. Everyone was just trying to be the next prize picks, so there was no new Best Ball games. So I said, hey, if you know, if I do anything from here on, it's going to be to actually build a fantasy platform where we can do more with best Ball because best Ball, I felt was reaching a cap and how many people that could reach a lot of my friends weren't playing because they didn't know Ray Ray McLeod, they didn't know the week seventeen schedule, and so I thought, well, there's got to be a way that we can simplify best Ball and make it so that fifty million people that play fantasy can play best Ball. And that's when we created fast Draft, where it's like, Okay, I haven't seen anyone do this yet that has a podcast and a website to just decide they're going to do a fantasy app. That seems to be like two different worlds, right. They seem to always be coming from two different worlds, the fantasy platform people.

00:18:23
Speaker 1: It's only like the espns and the aaho's of the world who had who from a media company perspective, that's what they were, right, and then they built these games after the fact. But you very rarely in the New Age this is all obviously back like twenty five years ago. In the New Age, you just get this segmented. You're either like a content site or you're a gaming site. If you will or a gaming platform.

00:18:47
Speaker 2: That's right.

00:18:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, they seem to be very like I was always wondering, why did Football Guys never roll out a platform so people could play fantasy football on the Football Guys platform?

00:18:56
Speaker 2: You hear that, Joe, You hear that, Joe Bryan.

00:18:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, I was always think there was some in the back of my mind. And then I started exploring the process and I was like, Oh, these are all these complications and this is why only certain companies end up doing a fantasy football platform and going all the way with it. And then I was like, you know what, I think I just need to try to do it, even though you know, some might discourage it.

00:19:17
Speaker 2: And we did.

00:19:19
Speaker 3: We did fast Draft, the fast Draft app, and now we essentially you just draft six guys in the top four into your lineup and that's the core game. And now we're rolling out a fifteen round game, and we have an all defense game. We have an all rookie game called Origins, and a lot of these are live now and it's it's becoming very popular, and I'm very blessed that there seems to be some real grassroots momentum around the game, which we haven't seen in a long time, but there hasn't been a new fantasy app that's really gotten like a grassroots push like Fast Drafts. So I'm again, I'm just very very blessed and working very hard, but still not going to give up the podcast, right, not gonna give up player profile er not get to give up the podcast because I get asked this all the time, and I'm.

00:20:08
Speaker 1: Like, why would I what what do you mean I did this? I mean, I'm assuming time would be the why I know, but no.

00:20:16
Speaker 2: You can make time, then you make it? Do you make it?

00:20:19
Speaker 1: You make a compromise somewhere else. I didn't do this so I could. I got into this from the beginning.

00:20:26
Speaker 3: As a podcaster, and I just don't see any reason why it ever stopped. Every year we get a new draft class, we get a whole bunch of new rookies, we get a whole bunch of new new situations that come up, and it's fascinating every year. I mean, one day I'm probably gonna look up and go, you know, Jalen Knowle doesn't interest me, and uh, you know, I don't have a good take on Rashie Rice and how he probably there's a range of outcomes where he doesn't get suspended at all, and he's a total smash.

00:21:04
Speaker 2: In Best Ball.

00:21:06
Speaker 3: But I have those takes and I like talking about it. So that's you're stuck with me.

00:21:12
Speaker 1: Everybody we've had this com I mean, we had a conversation a couple of them early on when you were first starting to think about Fast Draft, and I remember, you know, I was just like, I was just like, you're crazy, because I know what goes into creating content and I know the hours and the effort and all of that, and I enjoy it, so like I'm you know, I came about it from the from the perspective that I'm very content.

00:21:38
Speaker 2: I never I don't have this like aspiration to build this.

00:21:41
Speaker 1: Giant fantasy platform game company and gaming company.

00:21:47
Speaker 2: And that's the difference between.

00:21:48
Speaker 3: What told me, you know, a couple of years ago, you weren't gonna build a website and you're just gonna do a podcast.

00:21:55
Speaker 2: No no, no, no, no, no no, We're gonna do this.

00:21:57
Speaker 3: And the thing is, because you're so excellent at what you do, success just sort of follows you like a lost puppy.

00:22:06
Speaker 1: And well, I can guarantee you, I can guarantee you I Am never going to be that kind of entrepreneur in terms of building out a game, right, I'll get Look, if if someone wants to old Takes or Old Takes expose me in twenty thirty, feel free, because there's no way I'm going to build a game.

00:22:25
Speaker 2: That's just not happening. It's not happening. Sure, zero percent chance.

00:22:28
Speaker 1: I know. Yeah, there's a there's a I have. I can't even tell you how little desire I have to do that. I'd rather I'd rather sit on the toilet for twenty four hours than do that and and and do nothing but feel awful with my bowels.

00:22:44
Speaker 3: Then I have to say, you are not wrong.

00:22:48
Speaker 2: That's what I'm saying.

00:22:49
Speaker 3: Is never painful, and it does feel, yes, it does feel like you're you're it's it's it's it's humiliating. There's some humiliating aspect where with these state regulators, they want to know everything about you, of course, and they want to make sure that you under you are humbled, and so it has been a humbling experience. Maybe that's part of that's maybe that's part of the softening of my approach a little bit.

00:23:20
Speaker 2: Who knows. Maybe here here's the thing.

00:23:22
Speaker 1: I feel very lucky that I came from the perspective of I got a job at a startup in the fantasy space pretty early on, right at number five. We then got sold to FanDuel, So I worked at a gaming company for eight years.

00:23:35
Speaker 2: Right at fandel I knew.

00:23:38
Speaker 1: Maybe seven years I now got experience and exposure to that to both the startup world, like a true startup world, not like what I'm doing with with Later Round Fantasy Football. I mean like raising money and trying to go that route. And then I got exposure to the gaming side of the business, and you know, I walked away and I wanted to do this because this is exactly what.

00:24:00
Speaker 2: I want to do.

00:24:00
Speaker 1: And it was hilarious whenever I started Late Round Fantasy Football, the number of people who would approach me. And look, I feel very lucky and blessed that people did approach me in the first place. But they're like, well, instead of doing this, why don't you just write content on our site? And I'm like, I literally just walked away from all of that. Why would I just want to go right back by? That's not the point. The whole point is that I want to do this because I can do the type of content that I want to do, no like have no one overseeing it.

00:24:26
Speaker 2: And this is what I'm passionate about and what I love.

00:24:29
Speaker 1: I am obsessed with doing the prospect Guide and talking about prospects and updating my model and doing all of that. And I feel very lucky that there are sickos out there who are ready to consume that stuff, you know, And so like that's why I like when you, you know, you make the jokes that like, you know, oh, eventually, No, it's never This is what I want to do.

00:24:50
Speaker 2: This is what I was meant to do, and I don't want to do anything else. You're doing a great job. Thank you. Oh I appreciate that. But like that's not even you know, I'm I literally.

00:24:58
Speaker 1: Am saying that to the world he you know, to or whoever whoever listens to the late round perspectives that like, I am doing exactly what I want to do, and there is not there is no better feeling than feeling that contentment about what you're you know, doing with your life.

00:25:14
Speaker 2: You know. It's just I don't want to change that. Why would I change it?

00:25:17
Speaker 3: One thing I just want to be very clear about, though, Okay, you're very talented. Okay, like you know how to do web design, Okay, you know like audio engineering. There's a lot of things. Is that you have a lot of skills, and you have a lot of just natural talent for presentation. Uh, and the way your brain works it's just uncommon. So it's just you know, thank you.

00:25:42
Speaker 1: This is this.

00:25:43
Speaker 2: These are facts I don't need. I don't need to hear. You don't need to be kind. This is this is Matt.

00:25:48
Speaker 1: Kelly's Late Round Perspectives episode. This is this is about you. Matt, this is about you. I appreciate it. I mean it doesn't mean a lot.

00:25:56
Speaker 2: I appreciate that. So what got you more into like the prospecting side, Like.

00:26:00
Speaker 1: Was it that made you feel that? Because I feel like you've always just done more Dynasty content and you've always sort of focused more on Dynasty content.

00:26:08
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:26:09
Speaker 3: I had one of the original Dynasty podcasts, the Sonic Truth Dynasty podcast of the first What was it?

00:26:14
Speaker 1: What was it that made you attracted to that side, you know, the dynasty and the prospecting side as opposed to the typical season long one.

00:26:20
Speaker 3: Well, I think one of the early edges we had ten fifteen years ago, was better understanding of rookies and better understand and having to draft. Even though right now, right now we have a flex four game on Fast Draft. We just draft any any running back, wide receiver, tight end, and guess who's available in the sixth round of these all flex drafts Judkins, Tredyon Henderson. And I'm like, well, okay, these guys are being drafted at their worst case outcomes. What if they land here here here right then, where are you gonna draft? It is guys lands in Dallas. How many rounds are they gonna jump up? If they land you know, pretty poorly, They're just gonna be where you're drafting them now. So it's like even today, ten years later, there's still the people that are that are consuming a lot of you and me and our content.

00:27:18
Speaker 1: They're playing on Fast Draft and they're still they're still hesitant to draft Trevion Edderson and they're drafting James Connor instead, and it's like, what is happening?

00:27:28
Speaker 2: So this was always the case.

00:27:30
Speaker 3: This was it was even worse, like it was even more inefficient ten years ago. So we really thought that was an edge and that was part of the thing we leaned into with player profile, which was, let's go find all these workout metrics. Let's go find all the vertical and the and the broad jump and all these things, and let's present this to people in a way that's easy to find, because it was difficult to find. So a lot of these advanced stats and metrics we just it was difficult to find and calculate. Let's present them in a way that's much easier to digest. And it just so happens that in seasonal leagues in DFS, we were getting maximum edge with rookies, Like when there would be a free square running back in DFS and it was a rookie, that's where the edge was maximized. And so then that just naturally led me to have this affinity for the NFL Draft. And then naturally you're like, hey, there is this thing called dynasty where you can have these guys for their careers. And then a lot of these guys that I liked, they had a season that was just derailed for whatever reason outside their control, but they were good. And so now I can actually be on the winning side of a position even if the immediate season isn't a success, Like if I liked Roma Doonza, I can still like wave the flag for him in a couple of years and feel good about it, which probably will be feeling great about it. So that's that was the appeal of dynasty, and dynasty has really has really grown. It's one of it's the growth industry within fantasy football that if you looked at the different verticals, there's significant growth.

00:29:15
Speaker 2: In dynasty people.

00:29:16
Speaker 3: I love that that the whole concept of dynasty, dynasty trades happening throughout the year, being able to do football analysis throughout the year, and then the high stakes of the rookie draft is also exciting. So there's a I think there's a lot to like about it, and it just so happens to be that that was where our edge was early on and we just leaned into it.

00:29:38
Speaker 1: Well, you brought up a couple of running backs from this year's class. Let's start talking about this year's class.

00:29:42
Speaker 3: Let's talk about it like I wanted to start talking about this class.

00:29:46
Speaker 2: I know, I know, yeah, Well, look you're you're a podcaster.

00:29:49
Speaker 1: You know that you got to get the segues down, and you know, I know that you're helping the host here kind of move the conversation.

00:29:54
Speaker 2: Forward, I have access to the show sheet. That's right, that's right. How are you viewing this running back class?

00:29:59
Speaker 1: Is it as good as the twenty seventeen one? Is it better than that class? Is it worse?

00:30:06
Speaker 2: Is it? I mean it's better than.

00:30:07
Speaker 1: Last year's class. Well, we all can agree there. But where would you sort of place this class? Like, are are we going to see sort of this like revolution and new wave of running backs stepping into the league and becoming really fantasy relevant.

00:30:19
Speaker 3: I have gone on a real journey with this class. This class was very difficult to figure out. Super enigmatic and I had had a big show with rich Reebar, our mutual friend, rich Riebar from Sharp Football, and we did like a two hour and forty five minute podcast. Just go type in player profile or podcast any podcatcher you can episodes dropping very soon. And he really hit something home with me, and he was talking about how not only are these running backs going to cannibalize the existing like landscape of running backs and all these depth charts that they're going to get destroyed. There's so many running backs in the NFL right now that currently have jobs and won't have jobs as of September.

00:31:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I would.

00:31:14
Speaker 3: Argue more than people realize, right, a lot like and then there's gonna be a lot of udfas that steal jobs. And so there's a lot of guys need to be looking for the real estate license, need to be looking at Okay, what's the depth charts in the CFL and get that figured out and you get out.

00:31:29
Speaker 2: Ahead of it.

00:31:30
Speaker 3: So and then I was thinking, well, okay, why was last year was such a great class?

00:31:36
Speaker 1: Right?

00:31:36
Speaker 2: It was such a great class.

00:31:38
Speaker 3: And then and I remember having some debates early on about hey, could this class potentially it hits, if it hits just right, compete with last year just in terms of overall fantasy points in the production. The fantasy point production that you get from this class can rival last year. And the running backs would be the way, right, the running back class, it's a special running back class. Is it twenty seventeen level special?

00:32:02
Speaker 2: No?

00:32:02
Speaker 3: Because twenty seventeen you had multiple elite running backs, right, and you had you had play you had some of the best running backs. Like in our model, like you know, we have a breakout finder. It's an app and it looks at all the data that we have and you have a model as well. You know, Leonard Fournette performs incredibly well in models.

00:32:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, as I look, I'm looking right now.

00:32:26
Speaker 1: He has a ninety eight point eight score in this that model, which is better than where a mari and Hampton more than likely because the draft capital will be an input, but more than likely it's gonna be that's better than Mario and Hampton.

00:32:35
Speaker 2: Yeaheah, yeah.

00:32:36
Speaker 3: And so the the thing with that class is it was just it was so good. It was so good at the top, it was so good throughout. I just this is much more twenty eighteen class. Saquon is genty Genty's is a lesser version of Saquon. And then if you if you follow it down through the chubs and and there's gonna be some Ronald Joneses and and it's it's gonna be very similar. So I think that it's gonna it's much more similar to the and I wish it was twenty seventeen. But the more you dig, the more you realize it's just not.

00:33:11
Speaker 2: It's just not.

00:33:12
Speaker 1: And because it's not, it can't possibly compete with last year. You mean, in terms of the overall class, the class cannot the hope with this class is the running backs were so good and last year's running backs were so bad, But somehow this running back class, if we get some hits at the wide receiver position and Tyler Warren is what.

00:33:33
Speaker 2: He was sold to be an aug if overall overall class.

00:33:37
Speaker 3: Then the overall twenty twenty five class could somehow rival the twenty twenty four class and have come to the conclusion that that's.

00:33:43
Speaker 2: Impossible, and it's impossible.

00:33:46
Speaker 3: For this reason, the twenty twenty four class elevated all of fantasy football.

00:33:52
Speaker 2: Just look at the total points scored from Washington.

00:33:55
Speaker 3: From twenty twenty three to twenty twenty four with Jaden Daniels. When you add receiver talent and quarterback talent and tight end talent like a guy like Bauers that can produce right away, you're expanding the pie. Right You're growing the whole potential for fantasy points scoring across the league by upgrading lots of different quarterbacks, like the backfields of for like I said, Washington, Denver, and now Atlanta. So many teams had massive upgrades at quarterback and that actually helps fantasy overall because the offenses score more points. The wide receivers can perform better. I know that Roma Dunze had some of the least accurate passes thrown his way by a rookie quarterback. But it's going to get better and over time, Like the presence of Roma Dunza being dynamic and making plays that another receiver would not have made will just lead to more points being scored, more fantasy points being wrung up in the overall tally. The problem with this class is it's a bunch of running backs that aren't necessarily going to grow the pie at all. They're just gonna they're just gonna bump out other running backs.

00:35:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's fair.

00:35:08
Speaker 1: They're just gonna cannibals other guys, and they're going to cannibalize themselves.

00:35:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, because of them.

00:35:14
Speaker 1: Because of the impact guy, Yeah, because of the impact that running backs actually make. Like, like that's the thing that like, running backs are so difficult from a projection standpoint when you're projecting, uh, you know, like for instance, my year two model where I'm looking at year one numbers and I'm looking at the prospect stuff and I'm trying to project how they're going to do a year two. There's a reason that in the year two model. Things are anchored more to the prospects stuff than the year one production stuff at running back because at the end of the day, how a player performs in year one at running back is going to be dictated by did that team Maybe that team just had a really crappy depth chart, and maybe the coaching staff was just like, yeah, I want to do coaching decisions drive running back production more than they will at wide receiver and even tight end, right because there's only gonna be onerunning back on the field more than likely on once. You know, some teams will deploy multiple that's only gonna be less than ten percent of their snaps.

00:36:05
Speaker 2: And when that's.

00:36:06
Speaker 1: The case, then that means that there's only one running back that's going to be getting fantasy production, you know, throughout that game or what have you. There's just gonna be more of the wide receivers. And what you're saying is when you have a goaded wide receiver class like we had last year, and you have these quarterbacks stepping in and doing what they did, and you had Brock Bauers step in and be you know, the obvious tight end one. Now, when you enhance the passing game, in the real NFL, you're opening things up so much more to like now, now a team like Washington, they you know, they might address the running back position. They probably will adress the running back position in the draft, but even if they didn't, the situation for Brian Robinson and Austin Eckler is so much greater that the talent level of that running back.

00:36:48
Speaker 3: It's not that big of a deal. It's not as big of a deal anymore. Yeah, it's it's just that it's an element that I had failed to consider fully and now I realize, like, this is this is just a this is a class of cannibals. They're just gonna go out. They're just gonna be bumping each other off in eating each other's touches. That's really what's this class is going to accomplish. Where last year it really was a blessing. And I think we're not gonna realize it, fully realize it until we're into this twenty twenty five season. We're gonna be like, oh, yeah, wow, they really that last year really was helpful to get all these quarterback think think about the difference between any given target to Gabe Davis and Jacksonville versus a target going to Brian Thomas.

00:37:30
Speaker 1: Right right, Yeah, Yeah, I mean, like I think that it plays in the idea that hopefully we see better offensive production across.

00:37:38
Speaker 2: The league year over year and it continues to grow a little bit.

00:37:41
Speaker 1: And you know, you're talking about these running backs that essentially are just gonna replace other running backs instead of growing that pie, because it is impossible for that to happen.

00:37:50
Speaker 3: It's literally literally it's Travis Etn to Trevory tn.

00:37:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, right right.

00:37:58
Speaker 1: The one thing I will say though, is that at least we're at a point in time where it's not like the twenty seventeen class happened and then this class happened in twenty nineteen, right where there has been some like like, this is a good point in time for this running back class to come through, because we're seeing a lot of these older running backs be more like last year's In season long, we saw some of the not only the best injury rates obviously for running backs, which really drove why the running back position was so successful in fantasy, but a lot of the aged running backs we're also getting a lot of work and staying healthier. And when you get this young class in that's gonna like, I think this is the right time for that sort of shift and revolution to happen as well. So at least that timing is right. It's perfect right, that timing is really good.

00:38:46
Speaker 2: We need it. We need a spring cleaning with running back, we really do.

00:38:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, right, But but to your point, the strong running back class, if you were to look at the twenty twenty five class of all rookies, you know, as a whole, running back is not going to move the needle for the NFL the way that last year's wide receiver class would.

00:39:04
Speaker 3: And the quarterbacks and everything else. Now, it was deeper than last year. So in a rookie draft you do want fourth rounders and fifth rounders more than you did last year. And no one did anything like in this origins all rookie bestball game we have. I mean, the guy that won last year, he drafted you know, Daniels, and then Allen and then Bucky Irving and Tyrone Tracy. Still, even though it was a strong receiver class, no receivers were drafted by the winning team. Yeah, but THEO the fourth round pick was Tracy. Fifth and sixth round pick were almost irrelevant. Last year no one did anything. People were drafting Stover and just trying to get any guy with a touch, any guy with a maybe a path to a target. Where this year I think you're gonna get because of the running back class, it's gonna be nice.

00:39:57
Speaker 2: Hey, Before you listen.

00:39:58
Speaker 1: To more of this episode, I wonder mind you to check out the Late Round Prospect Guide. The guy does everything you need to crush your rookie drafts.

00:40:05
Speaker 2: This year.

00:40:05
Speaker 1: You get profiles for eighty running backs and wide receivers who are at the NFL combine.

00:40:09
Speaker 2: You get profiles for year two players.

00:40:11
Speaker 1: There's information on the prospect and the year two models.

00:40:15
Speaker 2: And so much more.

00:40:16
Speaker 1: And once the NFL Draft is over, that guy's going to be updated and send to your email inbox.

00:40:22
Speaker 2: Learn more about it.

00:40:23
Speaker 1: Check it out now over on lateround dot com.

00:40:26
Speaker 2: Now back to the show.

00:40:30
Speaker 1: You talked about all these running backs that you know are coming into the into the league that could take over and you know, remove some of these aged running backs in their positions. I'm actually kind of interested in which running backs you think are at most risk of losing their job in the draft, And then on the opposite side of that, which running backs do you think could be like low Key Buys right now, because if you look at you know, their their their situation. You know, let's look at Cincinnati right now. I'm not saying this is gonna happen, Okay, just giving an example. If Chase Brown only gets a Day three running back as competition, that's gonna be huge for his fantasy value as opposed to Cincinnati spending a Day two pick on a running back. Like, the difference in quality there is is not nothing. So in that case, if you were if you were to guarantee that Chase Brown's competition would be a Day three running back from this class, obviously would depend on who to some degree, but you might say, hey, maybe by Chase Brown right now instead of selling him away and trading him away pre draft. So are there any like low Key Buys or are you just kind of looking at this and saying this class is too good that I don't even want to risk it and go after a veteran running back that's already established in his backfield.

00:41:41
Speaker 2: It's a very dangerous game.

00:41:43
Speaker 3: You're still gonna have to pay up to get Chase Brown's No one's gonna give him away just because there's a specter of a running back landing there. Though they did what they visited with the Treveon Henderson, they don't have any depth behind Chase Brown. So one of the exercises I like to go through every depth chart and look at Okay, if I'm an NFL general manager and a coach and I don't play fantasy football, when I look at my running back room, do I think we have needs or not? And if you're Cincinnati, yeah, the Cincinnati coaches in front office looks at the backfield going we need a lot of help here. We have no depth. Yeah, and we were putting a guy that's not great in past pro and and has some has some flaws in some situations that were where he was a little bit out of his depth, but he really came through for us. But I don't know how sold they are on Chase Brown, the bellcow in Cincinnati. From everything we're we're hearing and reading out of Cincinnati, they don't feel that way. So no, I you don't need to be a hero going out and taking a shot on a guy just hoping that it's gonna work out. I think that there's a lot of risk and there's not as much reward. So when you're trading for veteran running backs right now, you need to be very very very careful. I mean, only the best, right, Like Bjon Robinson is safe. They're such a handful of guys. Jamiir Gibbs is particularly safe. So guys that are safer are those with significant passing game roles because there are a bunch of running backs in this class that caught twenty plus passes, but you would never confuse them with a true like target magnet in the passing game. Damian Martinez, Right, I mean, but there's a lot of running backs that look like these explosive satellite backplus type players like RJ. Harvey, but they're more slashers, they're more Tevin Coleman. They can hit big plays, but they never really rung up big numbers as a receiver in college. Ye, Like, if you're a UCF, I'm surprised they didn't throw more to RJ. Harvey than The bottom line is, he's actually not that strong of a receiver. And when you go down the board, you see that as a weakness of this class, that they're not as efficient in the receiving game as you might think because they put up these consistent numbers like oh, twenty plus catches three straight seasons in some cases, but still at the NFL level, not gonna be super efficient as receivers out of the backfield. So that's where if I'm looking at trading for a running back that's a veteran, I would absolutely want that running back to have high quality receiving skills. And there's actually not that many of them out there that you could even target. I mean, Jamir Gibbs is obviously elite. He's not at risk. Bijon like I talked about, is not at risk. Most of these other guys there is some risk. But when you go down, when you go down the list, do the Cowboys have a satellite back that commands a lot of targets out of the backfield?

00:45:05
Speaker 2: No?

00:45:06
Speaker 3: Do the Chargers know, do the Broncos, Texans, Titans.

00:45:11
Speaker 2: I mean it's like.

00:45:13
Speaker 3: Taj Spears for example, Taj Spears is at risk, right.

00:45:17
Speaker 2: Because he's a Pollard's at risk.

00:45:21
Speaker 3: Not just him, yeah, of course, but Taj Spears might be a guy that you can get as a throw in, and if he can fade a running back, he can actually accrue more value and he will have value regardless because he is a receiving back. The same thing would be true with like a Warren.

00:45:39
Speaker 1: That's exactly what I was going to bring up because I think Jalen Warren, of all of the sort of like established guys, is kind of the most intriguing still to me, because I the number one.

00:45:49
Speaker 2: The Steelers won't have a second round picks. That's it. That's one thing.

00:45:52
Speaker 1: You don't have a second rounder, but you're afraid of the biggest thing you're afraid of as a second round running back pick. And are they going to make the same mistake? And here here's the thing that's really I want to ask you about this. This is something that's not necessarily like a show sheet related, but you know, Naji Harris signs with the Chargers.

00:46:07
Speaker 2: Actually, I want to say two things. First.

00:46:09
Speaker 1: First thing, I think your point about the receiving portion of this class is interesting because in my model, for instance, I think you bringing up like, there are players in this class who have a lot of like decent receiving seasons right the very solid and that's where the like because because now breakout score at running back for me is based only on adjusted receiving yards per team pass attempt at running back. I don't have any rushing metrics in the running back model anymore. And I look at that and I say, you know what, that does make sense because overall the class looks good from a receiving perspective when you look at the entirety of their careers, and even best season reception share is pretty strong across the board. But a lot of it is, like you know, when I look at best season reception shares, like the best players that are great receivers in the NFL are typically over like the fifteen sixteen percent mark in terms of best season reception share. There's a lot of guys in that like ten to thirteen percent range in this class, which yes, I think what that tells me is, you know, there's gonna be something like Burschard Smith is going to be a specialist in terms of being a pass catcher or someone like that, right, Like that's what they that's how they project in the NFL, or like a Jaden Blue Let's say it would be like a.

00:47:15
Speaker 2: Justice Hill type or something at the NFL.

00:47:16
Speaker 3: I mean you just had the whole list just now, yeah, yeah, I mean that is the list in terms of this cash light backs.

00:47:22
Speaker 2: Yes, you know we're going to.

00:47:23
Speaker 3: Earn targets in the NFL. On third down, you listed the two.

00:47:29
Speaker 1: Guys, Yeah, right, But I will say there's obviously Travon Henderson I think is a pretty great pass catching back that will be able to play a pretty significant pass catching role at the NFL level.

00:47:41
Speaker 3: No, no, not question. But like wherever he goes, we know exactly. That's what I'm trying to say, Exactly, whatever incumbent is there is very much screwed.

00:47:51
Speaker 1: Basically, I'm going back to the thing that I always say on the show, which is I see prospecting a running back, and I bucket these guys into three really basic receiving buckets. You're either elite, you're just fine, and you're terrible. Right, the just fine bucket is very large. That's where you get like the Kenneth Walkers of the world, right where they're they're gonna like they could have a spike season at as a receiver and you wouldn't be like shocked out of your mind.

00:48:14
Speaker 2: But we shouldn't. We shouldn't expect that, you know, year in and year out from that player.

00:48:19
Speaker 1: This class has a lot of that where there are going to be players in this class that have good early down work and then maybe though they're able to get a ten eleven percent target share in a in the right environment.

00:48:30
Speaker 2: Right.

00:48:31
Speaker 1: But I think that you're right from the standpoint that there are not a lot of running backs in this class who are going to command fifteen or sixteen percent target shares at the NFL level that.

00:48:40
Speaker 2: That we can feel that comfortable with.

00:48:43
Speaker 1: Now, I want to go back to the established veteran running back piece to this where the thing that's been really confusing to me is the way that the fantasy community and Season long and Best Ball and what have you have reacted to Naji Harris and not reacted to Jalen Warren, where the reaction for Naji Harris was this is amazing. He's gonna be an RB two in fantasy football obviously because he's playing with Justin Herbert. And I will say that, of course, the fit with Greg Roman is fantastic with Naji Harrison what he does. With that being said, if you look at the depth charts and you look at what is more replaceable at the NFL level, and you look at the decision that the Steelers just made, the Steelers quite literally said we're going to take Jalen Warren over Naji Harris, right, So there's like multiple layers of us pointing to Jalen Warren being a more impactful player than Naji Harris is now.

00:49:37
Speaker 2: Of course Harris could get a great runout.

00:49:39
Speaker 1: They don't take a running back in the draft at all or Day three or something like that. But if you look at their depth chart, I would look at the Steelers depth chart and the Chargers' depth chart and say, maybe, I mean, you're a big Kenneth Gainwell guy. Maybe the Steelers actually have a better depth chart right now than the Chargers at running they do. I'm saying that's not even up for dispute. So there's a big there's a to me, it's been.

00:49:59
Speaker 3: More efficient the last few years than Harris and Gainwell is is was a was a kind of steal in free agency.

00:50:06
Speaker 2: Right. He's a nice all purpose back.

00:50:08
Speaker 1: And he's a really good comp He's he's a really good duplicate and replacement type player of Jalen Warren. So I do think the Steelers, like the Steelers should be in the market for like an Allie Gordon type back or something like that.

00:50:17
Speaker 2: To reactly you know, to compliment, but that kind of not that bad for Warren. Warren's a nice player to target. Yes that that that kind of back does not.

00:50:25
Speaker 1: Do it for me at all, you know, Like I don't, I don't really, you know, I'm not like high or lower what have you on Ollie Gordon. I just he's not someone that I'm like, really really aggressively, like, hey, I gotta get Alli Gordon. And I don't think that the Steelers, if they were to get a guy like Ali Gordon, are gonna sunset Jalen Warren.

00:50:41
Speaker 2: You know, I don't think that.

00:50:43
Speaker 1: That's why I think Warren is one of those few cases around the league right now where he's safe unless the Steelers go Round one or they trade pickens, they get a second round pick and they go you know, I don't I.

00:50:55
Speaker 2: Can't project that.

00:50:56
Speaker 1: It's it's really difficult to project, you know, a team trading up to the second round or doing something like that. I just think it would be unbelievably stupid for the Steelers in their position right now to prioritize running back in Round one, given what they have going on in that team and what just happened with Naji Harris. Right, So what I'm saying is that their first crack at a running back is looking like Round three, and by that point in time, you're at least getting the potentially elite running backs more than likely at least projectable elite guys off the board. And that's gonna give Jalen Warrens some sort of role, you know here in twenty twenty five, whereas some sort of role yeah, sure, yes, I'm just saying he's gonna have a role because.

00:51:38
Speaker 2: Of what he's gonna have it. He's gonna have a nice role, I know.

00:51:40
Speaker 1: And so that's why it's been so confusing to me when I juxtapose that situation to the Naji Harris one. When I see Naji Harris, and not only that Harris didn't get that much guaranteed money, he didn't know his contract is not it's a one year contract.

00:51:55
Speaker 2: I could see.

00:51:55
Speaker 1: Here's one thing I could see the Chargers do is not be aggressive at running back in the draft.

00:52:00
Speaker 2: Get JK. Dobbins back or something and go that route.

00:52:02
Speaker 3: Sure, but even still, no one's saying that Najie Harris didn't get a value bump.

00:52:07
Speaker 2: Of course, exactly exactly my point is it's not over yet. You know, we got it.

00:52:12
Speaker 1: We gotta at least just wait and see, because I don't think that his situation, like you have to look at the archetype.

00:52:18
Speaker 2: Of the running back himself. Is what you're really alluding to?

00:52:21
Speaker 1: And is this running back doing something on a football field that is more replaceable? And I think we got four years of seeing that from Naji Harris and the Steelers even acted that way, you know. And so that's why, as a you know, random dart, if you really I'm not going after veteran running backs right now, I'm not playing that game similar to you. But if you were to do that, go after the Jalen Warren types. Like I go back to the situation back when the Falcons were the number one team to draft a running back. This was before Bijon, when they had Mike Davis, okay, and my advice at the time was to try to just extract value from Mike Davis in terms of not selling him until maybe after the draft, because if the Falcons didn't draft a running back, then his value would rise. But Davis was an afterthought, right, you want to do that with the afterthought backs. You don't want to invest in a or not invest in a player that a running back, that's pricier because when you're doing it with a cheaper player, that's when you can actually extract some value out of that situation and position.

00:53:27
Speaker 3: I'm only interested in the veteran running backs that everyone thinks are going to be.

00:53:31
Speaker 2: Replaced, exactly exactly.

00:53:33
Speaker 3: That is the only because I'm because the guys that people are like, oh, no, he's safe, that perceive safeness is the thing that I am not going to get near, like I'm not going to touch that rail, like there's electricity there. So if there is a team that everyone's assuming, oh, the Browns are definitely going running back in the early second round. Really, so if I just fade running back and trade for Jerome Ford, who was top ten and yards per touch number thirty team and juke rate Evada tackles per touch number six and catch rate last year's Looking at Player profiler, then Jerome Ford is an efficient running back and doesn't matter how good the offense is. If you're the primary back in that offense and you have an all purpose skill set, you're gonna put up Fantasy points. You're gonna be a valuable player. So just fade the few picks that a team has that could blow up that running back, whether it's Warren, whether it's Ford, and extract value there. But don't get in a situation where you're paying up for a player that is actually quietly at risk. There's a lot of these. Okay, So if we go to Buffalo, Okay, James Cook is at risk for a lot of reasons because the depth chart behind James Cook isn't actually as strong as maybe fantasy gamers think, right, Ray Davis isn't. I don't think fine. I don't think the Buffalo is in love with Ray Davis. I don't think they're in love with James Cook. James Cook is like James Cook is like ever running back in this class. James Cook should be in this class. There's a lot of James Cook's.

00:55:04
Speaker 1: Honestly, the the closest analytical comp to Cook in my in the zapp model is Travion To be honest with you, like the or RJ.

00:55:13
Speaker 3: Harvey, Like he's not that that archetype. Yes, he's much more RJ. Harvey actually because he's just not the receiver that Travion Henderson.

00:55:20
Speaker 2: Sure, sure, I just mean strictly by looking at the we can.

00:55:23
Speaker 3: Go down the board Miami, right, you think Miami's a lot to avoid running back?

00:55:27
Speaker 2: No, no, not at all.

00:55:29
Speaker 3: They think about these teams that just let a running back go and didn't replace them. They didn't technically replace most dirt. They believe that they need to replace most dirt, that they have a hole in their roster. We don't, as fantasy gamers think that because you could just play Jalen.

00:55:43
Speaker 2: Right, what are you doing? But but again, you go back right, it's a day three pick. He's a Day three pick. There's a chance that James doesn't have a.

00:55:51
Speaker 3: Job at the end of August. It's very possible, I mean, Stevenson very much at risk. Chase Brown that the rumors around Henderson have already exposed. How what a dangerous situation Chase Brown is in. Joe Mixon is near the end of his career, and Houston knows that Jacksonville is looking to replace Etn for the future. You can go down the board check is another one. I mean, Pachecko is They're already flirting with and visiting with players, you know, Judkins, Caleb Johnson. These are all possibilities for Kansas City, you can absolutely see them moving on from a seventh round pick. I mean, if you just have the process, that's like if I hit on a seventh round running back and I flip them pretty quickly. Sure you're gonna miss out in a great season from an Austin Eckler once in a while, but in the aggregate, you're going to come out ahead constantly selling high on guys like Pachecko, Yeah, Damian Pierce, you know, whenever those seasons kind of happen. I do think I think we'd agree that, Like I think Bucky Irving is probably a little bit different from a Day three perspective. Well, Bucky Irving is in one of the few I think stable backfields where yes, they're going to have to move on from White eventually, his contract's going to be up, but we know that they really like Sean Tucker, and so this is one of the rare backfields where we know the coaching staff likes all three players. It's just that Bucky Irving was so good and had such an incredible work ethic last year that they couldn't deny him even though they did like Rashad White. And they're all three of these guys including Sean Tucker, are good players. So the Buccaneers are one of the few I think safe backfields. Minnesota is also safe because Minnesota only has a handful of picks, and they went out and they traded two picks to get Mason, and.

00:57:47
Speaker 1: That's they did the Mason thing because they knew that they had limited capital to be able to build up that.

00:57:54
Speaker 2: Running back room.

00:57:55
Speaker 3: You know, I think there's actually a higher probability that even Atlanta drafts a running back than Minnesota. I think Minnesota might be the least of all. Minnesota, Tampa might be the least probability of all to draft a running back.

00:58:09
Speaker 1: Like again, going back to what we said at the top, there's going to be surprise teams that probably even take a Day two back that you did not expect to take one day forty nine ers. I meant to do that all the time. Anyway, they let go of Bason why because they love this class.

00:58:25
Speaker 2: This is the most obvious.

00:58:26
Speaker 3: I mean, just put yourself in the shoes of front office personnel and coaches. It's even easier when we know these guys very well. We already know the sensibilities of Kyle Shanahan, some of these guys have no idea. The hell those guys that gonna really think. We know what Kyle Shanahan thinks. He salivates over these running backs. So it's clear that Gonendo is not enough behind McCaffrey.

00:58:52
Speaker 2: We all know it.

00:58:53
Speaker 3: And so there's gonna be there could be a grinder back landing in San Francisco, someone like me and Martinez, because if you think about it, that's what they think they might need. Yeah, we don't think that. Wait, you have McCaffrey. It's fantasy points.

00:59:08
Speaker 2: What are you doing?

00:59:08
Speaker 3: You You can't displace our fantasy points? How dare you? They don't think that way? They think we need a grinder back. And then all of a sudden, there are some touchdowns and some yards missing from McCaffrey's stat line because of it. Seattle's like, we have a big hole at our number three running.

00:59:25
Speaker 2: Back and You're like, no, you don't.

00:59:27
Speaker 3: Wait, you have two running backs. We don't need any more competition there. Next thing, you know, Zach Charbonet's like fighting for his role.

00:59:34
Speaker 2: Like what happened? I thought I had charbon At was teed up to be the next guy.

00:59:37
Speaker 3: Wait, what happened? Did Charboney have no value anymore? Where are we? So you can see this roster after roster after roster even say David Montgomery, right, David Montgomery feels very safe, but they may be looking to upgrade Craig Reynolds because they have so few needs and like, we could upgrade Craig Reynolds. Next thing you know, David Montgomery's looking up at camp going, oh, this guy's.

01:00:00
Speaker 2: Killing me right, or you hit on Tyrone Tracy.

01:00:04
Speaker 3: That could be the Pacheco corollary where you're like, okay, I hit on Tracy, I'm flipping him. Because next thing you know, the New York Giants are like they're still tilting over Barkley and they're like we we we're not done yet at running back. We gotta we gotta go hard at running back. We got to make the owner happy where you know, I betrayed him with the trade and we have this singletary motor not good enough. We have no one behind him. We tried it last year.

01:00:33
Speaker 2: We need we need we need to do.

01:00:35
Speaker 3: We need to get a couple more Tracys. We need three Tracy's that could be their ratitude. And then you have Tyrone Tracy going well, he was really good last year?

01:00:43
Speaker 2: How dare you?

01:00:44
Speaker 3: And it's like that's see, that's they're they're not thinking that way. They're thinking, we need to fill out our running back room. And there's just a lot of these guys when you go down the board to from DJ Giddins, R J. Harvey, there's so many guys where you go down the board and you're like, well, if it's him versus Devin Singletary, or even him versus A Tyrone Tracy, I don't know, Yeah, I don't. I don't know who's better. Actually, there's a lot. There's a Devin Neil is a very good player all back. Yeah, a super all purpose talent. Not the fastest, most explosive, but.

01:01:24
Speaker 2: It's only in in.

01:01:26
Speaker 3: Comparison to this class that when you look at Devin Neil versus NFL running back X, he's far superior. So this is this is the big danger where Devin Neil lands in New York. That's not good for Tyrone Tracy.

01:01:44
Speaker 2: Man.

01:01:44
Speaker 1: Are you of the belief that Ashton gent is generational? And I don't want to throw that word around loosely, I mean, I mean honestly generational. I mean like Saquon Barkley level is good of a of a player here? Maybe even CMC levels good obviously very different. I'm just you know, throwing it out there. Is Is he that good?

01:02:03
Speaker 2: I hope?

01:02:04
Speaker 3: So, I don't know, though I don't have enough data on him.

01:02:07
Speaker 2: He didn't work out here. Many concerns about the lack of workout.

01:02:11
Speaker 3: That is that he played in the Mountain Whack and he didn't work out.

01:02:14
Speaker 2: What are you mean to do? I mean, what do you want me to do? Dude?

01:02:17
Speaker 1: My thing though, is that the only thing I really really care about from an athleticism standpoint with backs is speed score. And what are the odds that it would be such a detrimental speed score for Gente? You know that that that he would be that bad. That's sort of my my way of looking at this is like, we know his production profile is great. We know he's going to get great draft capital. Those two things combined historically has brought only elite fantasy success.

01:02:48
Speaker 3: Athleticism matters in athletics, and you need to be athletic to do athletic things. So to put up twenty six hundred rushing yards, uh, you.

01:02:58
Speaker 2: Gotta be fast. That's what I'm saying, like past, I'm just saying it would be nice.

01:03:04
Speaker 3: It would be easier for me to say he's definitely generational if I had Saquon Barkley level workout metrics. I do know he's quite a bit lighter now. He's two eleven. He's not two twenty five like Sequon Barkley. So is he a Saquon Barkley level talent. No, but a generational back comes along. It's a generation ten years. It's been almost ten years since Barkley, so we're due for a guy that we would consider generational, and he with Barkley's contract, given the discount that we've seen over the last ten years on the running back position. As finally, analytics starts to permeate these NFL front offices. If someone pushes the button on genty well into the top ten, I'm sold, yeah, because think about.

01:03:55
Speaker 2: It, like they.

01:03:57
Speaker 3: Are very certain that he is going to be a time playmaker. I wish the class was a little bit better overall, you know, just because there's just it's it's it's a relatively weak overall draft class, like from an elite player standpoint, just from you know, whether it's edge offensive lineman, Like there's not an offensive lineman in this class everyone's drooling over either.

01:04:18
Speaker 1: Think about that, like you think you think that could lift you think that could lift Gent's draft capital, Like you think if it were if there were more elite players, the Raiders.

01:04:26
Speaker 2: Would even be remotely in.

01:04:27
Speaker 1: The conversation for Gent correct, Like if Joe Alt was there, get out of here.

01:04:31
Speaker 3: You know they're going Joe all right, or they're going, uh, you know, Penney Sewell whoever has been drafted at that particular slot over the last few years. But there isn't even a like a Rashawn Slater level tackle in this class. So it's it's a problematic class in that way. And it's just from a fantasy standpoint because we have the running backs and that's the glittering thing that we've been talking about for three months. Sometimes we forget that overall this class is pretty weak. Now you get reminded about that when you start to see rumors that you know, Sanders falls out of the first round or whatnot. Then you get you get jolted back to reality like, oh, yeah, this class sticks, got I get what? Yeah, Yeah, this is doesn't matter. He's that good. It's going to be exciting to see him play. And yeah, like watching Saquon last year was really fun, really was really fun to see a running back do things that are special to actually make a difference. Running Backs do matter when they're that good. And I think he is going to be a difference maker for his team. And I think he's probably going to the Raiders. That's the place that makes the most sense. But we have seen some pretty crazy stuff and some NFL teams that we thought were not in need of a running back take a guy like Ashton Genty, Like, I don't know, the Jets, could you put it past them that he's just top of their board?

01:05:58
Speaker 2: And that's teams teams think that way, that's all.

01:06:02
Speaker 3: That's what they do. They think top of the board. And this guy's a playmaker. And then what would happen to Breese Hall?

01:06:09
Speaker 2: So I love the this is the exercise that we're doing.

01:06:11
Speaker 3: It's like, oh, yeah, this is also low probability, you know, yeah, but still if this happens, how fun. Yeah, if Genti goes to the Jets, he's still going to be almost as valuable as would he have gone to the Raiders. Sure, but then maybe we get Breisee Hall going to in a trade to Washington something like that, where it's like that's even better, That's like that's the best case scenario.

01:06:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, Amari and Hampton is generally considered the consensus RB two right now, do you agree with that? And then my other question, my follow up to this would be, if he does go round one, let's say he goes in the twenties or something, maybe early twenties, would you be taking him over cam Ward in super flex rookie drafts? And then I guess I'll also say which running backs you're taking over ward? Like what would you take any running back that goes round one? Like if Trayvon Henderson goes round one, would you take him overward?

01:07:05
Speaker 2: Or are you just ward? One oh two? Good to go.

01:07:08
Speaker 3: Very thankful that I had this podcast with Rich because we talked about this, and there are some things that I've changed my mind. Having great analysts on I changed my mind. This is one of those areas where I'm not ready to change my mind. I'm not ready to go all running back over cam Ward as Riches. I'm more of a take the one oh one quarterback in superflex. That's my general disposition. Unless it's a gent level running back, then I'm gonna go cam Ward. That's just been my approach here. The one guy that could get me off that is Henderson because of what we talked about, the difference making as a receiver and the fact that he is a great pass protector and you can easily see him getting one hundred and seventy five carries, And if he gets one hundred and seventy five carries, then he's getting all the valuable touches that exist in a particular offense out of the backfield, which is just delicious. I mean, we've been waiting for another Alvin Kamara type player. If he lands in the right offense, if he lands in a place like Cincinnati, See that is so good, Like, oh wow, what if Henderson goes to Dallas? How great would that be? I'd rather see him in Cincinnati because Chase Brown does not matter at that point. And now he's in the most prolific offense by far and away, where Burrow was number one in every counting stat that exists last year, and it's not like their defense is getting any better. So that's where you could get twenty five fantasy points per game. Alvin Kamara twenty twenty type season from a Trayvon Henderson he's the only one that has that in his range of outcomes, where Hampton is this big, rocked up box stuffing guy. But it's also possible that he's just a better version of Zach Charboney.

01:08:53
Speaker 2: At the NFL level.

01:08:54
Speaker 3: Sure, Travion, I know, is like a more electric version of Alvin Kamara. That's just the fact that's what he is. And there's really no other way to to to to analyze him. When you go back and see what he did as a freshman, it's crazy. I mean, yeah, just go back to his freshman year. I love, whether it's receivers, running backs, freshman year matters man. When you put up twelve hundred plus yards as a freshman on that team point eight yards per carry on that team, where there's you don't think they had other great running backs on that roster.

01:09:31
Speaker 1: I mean even the fact that he had is the receiving numbers he did with those with literal like like Pro Bowl wide out after Pro Bowl wide out is crazy.

01:09:39
Speaker 2: Crazy, Yeah, it's crazy.

01:09:40
Speaker 3: So I've really I've come to the conclusion that it's it's all about Trevion at the one oh two now.

01:09:48
Speaker 1: And that's if that's if he gets first round. Capital to you, like, if he goes round two, you're not you wouldn't be faking us.

01:09:53
Speaker 2: He gonna fall. I don't see it.

01:09:55
Speaker 3: Man.

01:09:55
Speaker 2: You think he's gonna go round one. You're saying, I think he's going round one.

01:09:58
Speaker 1: I think that would that would create a really interesting diet because I think my model would still like Hampton over Henderson because he just checks the right boxes, right. But I think that would be one of those situations where I'm just gonna let landing spot kind of dictate, you know, which direction I would go between those running backs, you know, rankings wise, because like if Hampton goes to like Denver, that's very but then obviously if if Henderson goes to Denver or something in round one, then that would be more attractive.

01:10:25
Speaker 2: But the point the.

01:10:26
Speaker 3: Point, I'll well, I'll agree with the percent our model breakout finder same thing. Hampton is number two, Hampton's RB two. I think when you're looking at the cloud of data that's available and what's predictive, Hampton is number two. But I'm looking at how do I hit on the highest upside in the range of outcomes that's Henderson. Yeah right, because our model just looks at what's the probability you put up a thousand yard rushing season or two hundred fantasy points, yeah right, or like, you know, twelve hundred plus all purpose yards in a season, Give me one season of that. It's not like, what's the probability you put up twenty five fantasy points per game in a season? Well, I think you have to give that that nod to Henderson. I haven't done I haven't I haven't run those numbers, but I'm pretty sure that's what it would come back with.

01:11:17
Speaker 2: I don't think. How does Henderson get past Washington at twenty nine? I don't see.

01:11:21
Speaker 1: I don't think now that there's reports too, I saw some stuff, see it, dan Quinn was saying, and yeah, I mean like, I wouldn't be shocked at all if he's the first round pick.

01:11:28
Speaker 2: I'm just saying that. If he's not, I think.

01:11:30
Speaker 3: But but the thing is that we're not gonna be We can't have nice things. You don't how the draft works. You know what's gonna He's gonna end up in Houston. Yeah, he's gonna you know, it's it's it would be fine if he isn't with the Chargers. Yeah, as if, as if not, I mean, what's more likely that the Chargers draft running back with the Steelers draft running back with those back to back picks in the first round. I think it's more likely the Chargers go running back. They have lived a lot, fewer.

01:11:55
Speaker 2: Needs, get everything.

01:11:56
Speaker 1: Odds Yeah, I think the I think odds wise, it's the Steelers are a little bit ahead, but it's not by much at all.

01:12:01
Speaker 2: That's just odd don't buy I don't buy that. Yeah, you're right.

01:12:04
Speaker 1: I'm saying that it's fine to have the opinion that they wouldn't because I think that, you know, odds makers wouldn't even really disagree with that. The one thing I'll say about cam Ward and where I actually would would push back a little bit with what what Reeves evidently said, you know, and going with the running backs typically with in super flex, with quarterbacks, you get a free first year look at these guys.

01:12:24
Speaker 2: Where their market value.

01:12:27
Speaker 1: I agree from the standpoint that a running backs like like an RB one season is going to be more valuable than almost anything that hypothetically cam Ward could create.

01:12:37
Speaker 3: Right hypothetically, especially because he's not super mobile.

01:12:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, like median outcome wise, I definitely think an RB one season is going to be more valuable than what cam Ward brings. Now, if you look at ceiling, maybe you can make a different argument, but if you look at media outcome. But what I'll say is from a market value perspective, so not production standpoint, but a market value perspective. Quarterbacks that have great draft capital and soflex, they maintain market value better than almost any other asset and fantasy football year over year, you can see a running back drop in value year over year if that running back, especially if you get a first round running back who doesn't get any work, which usually doesn't happen. But let's say second round running back that doesn't get any work, that guy can fall in market value in the way the market's viewing him. Canny Pickett, Zach Wilson, these guys maintained market value justin fields after horrific rookie seasons. As passers like you're going to if you get cam Ward, You're not only going to be able to see, oh what if he is really elite, because that's still in his range of outcomes.

01:13:36
Speaker 2: What if he is really, really, really good.

01:13:37
Speaker 1: Okay, then you have cam Ward and you have a top five dynasty asset, and then if he's not good, you're still gonna have an exit for cam Ward after year one because dynasty managers love making excuses for quarterbacks, and so we will be able to say, Okay, he had a pretty pretty mediocre rookie season, now's the time to get off that guy.

01:13:58
Speaker 3: And he was the one on one. Yeah, but the one on one as a special place. Now Bryce Young ruined that for the first time, right where we always could, maybe not Jameis Winston, whether it's Jared Goff, we've had one on one's flame out and then come back to life. It's tale as old as time With Bryce Young. Unfortunately, it could happen right now. He could be fully rejuvenated this year, but there was a measurable dip in his dynasty value after just one bad season. I think it was a confluence of factors. It was so bad and the Panthers are so inept as a front office, and then no receiver. I think I really think the moon and the stars aligned for the first time to see a one on one quarterback lose value after one bad season. But you're right that Other than that it's never happened, it doesn't. So yeah, and cam Ward has a hell of a lot more upside than Bryce Young because cam Ward has a lot more size. Cam Ward has an incredible arm. Cam Ward comes from a wishbone offense in high school where he wasn't recruited at all and then had to sort of circumnavigate his way to Miami over the course of five years. And he's still developing, and so there is a little of that Josh Allen like, there's still some development left to go and there is some real, you know, next level arm talent there where I have to get some upside excitement in order to make a move if I'm gonna I've already said I'm going Travon Henderson over Camp because of the upside, because I'm so I've been sold on on that upside.

01:15:52
Speaker 2: And again I don't want to speak for rich.

01:15:54
Speaker 3: He he he got me from cam Ward to pivot to Henderson. I couldn't go all the way and pivot to Hampton and Judkins over cam Ward. I just couldn't do it because there is some real upside in super Flex. If cam Ward hits I want access to that I.

01:16:15
Speaker 1: Would say that it like, and this may be a cop out answer, but this is the truth. And even in my pre draft prospect guide I had Ward and Hampton in the same tier because Hampton had projected first round draft capital. If Hampton and Travon Henderson go in the first round and cam Ward obviously goes one on one, I would likely rank them in the same tier, in the same bucket and say and say, look, you can make this decision based on what you're right, Like, very very rarely am I going to needs base decision at that, yeah, right, Like very rarely do I do that In rookie drafts. I'm usually just trying to gobble of value and just gobble up the best player or whatever because you.

01:16:50
Speaker 2: Can, you can trade for need.

01:16:51
Speaker 1: But when it comes to a situation like that where I think that there is reason to go either direction, I think it's fine to say, hey, look, I have two and a half, you know, like two really good starting quarterbacks and super flex and maybe a decent enough QB.

01:17:06
Speaker 2: Three. I'm not gonna afforce the issue with cam Ward.

01:17:08
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna get because we know that first round running backs dominate in fantasy football. You know, like we know that if I Mari and Hampton goes in Round one, there's a two thirds chance that he's gonna give us an RB one season across the first three years of his career. And that's based on history since twenty eleven, and the only guys who haven't have gotten hurt or they were cech and Sony Michelle. You know, it's like, you know, like that's basically what we're looking at for first round running backs. So I would take that safety all day long because we know the upside is also there because RB one seasons matter that much. But you brought up quinn Shawn Judkins. I'm curious if you do view Judkins similarly to Hampton as players and then also Caleb Johnson. Let's throw Caleb Johnson in here and talk about him. Are there any because to me, analytically, I have way more concerns about quin Schewn Judkins and not really Caleb Johnson actually as much as pass catchers, but quin Shawn Judkins his pass catching profile scares me more actually than Amari.

01:18:09
Speaker 2: And Hampton's pass catching profile.

01:18:11
Speaker 1: So I'm curious if you are there or do you just see this as what I was talking about earlier as these are both in that middle bucket where they're just you know, maybe there's going to be a season where they see a twelve percent target share and then maybe one year it's eight percent because they're not going to be elite guys doing that skill and having that skill.

01:18:28
Speaker 3: Didn't Carlos Hide have a seventy six catch season, I don't remember, I think so something like that, right, And the lesson we've learned again and again and most recently with Kenneth Walker is that there is a range of outcomes that is very system based with ninety eight percent of running backs, and there's really it's very difficult to entangle the talent from the system when you're talking about, you know, does quarterback run?

01:19:02
Speaker 2: You know what?

01:19:02
Speaker 3: What is the where is the checkdown and the reprogression and all these things. So it's becomes a very.

01:19:08
Speaker 1: Difficult game to play where what I'd rather do is say, is this guy a truly special.

01:19:16
Speaker 3: Target earner out of the backfield? Does he get down field? Is the target depth you know not ordinary? Is the the target share just disproportionate year over year. If that's the case, then we could be looking at a brasse Hall Camara level receiver out of the backfield, and then put those guys in like the special category. And then again the lesson we've learned from the Carlos Hides. Okay, Carlos Hide, I don't think it was.

01:19:49
Speaker 2: It might have been. I think it was that had been the targets.

01:19:52
Speaker 3: I think he had a seventy five target season and in that season he had fifty nine receptions.

01:19:59
Speaker 2: Wow.

01:20:00
Speaker 3: Right, if anyone so some young people out there listening to the show that weren't paying attention to NFL football in twenty seventeen or even care who Carlos Hyde is. This is not a pass catcher, guys. This is a Kenneth Walker level guy. He more than doubled his single season high for catches in this one year just because of the system he happened to be playing in. Therefore, I don't parse Judkins versus Caleb Johnson as receivers. It's just very difficult. It's really it's a fool's Errand.

01:20:42
Speaker 1: So my here's how I do want to talk about the receiving stuff a little bit, because, like I said in the ZA model, now I'm looking at breakout score from the standpoint of receiving yards per team pass attempt. And then the other main production metric that the model looks at is pro rated best season reception share.

01:20:59
Speaker 3: Okay, husband guys score well on that metric, it puts them in a whole different class of player in the NFL. Yes, and it's all the chargers, that range of outcomes. That's why that's so powerful.

01:21:10
Speaker 1: It's also it's also to me, this isn't just about finding pass catchers, is about finding talent because well rounded players are generally more talented than the two down back in college.

01:21:22
Speaker 3: Right, So this is also pot that's that you could do that with receivers with special teams.

01:21:27
Speaker 2: That's exactly what I do.

01:21:28
Speaker 1: You know, we'll get to Jalen Nolan a little bit, but yeah, you know, like like I look at Marion Hampton. His best season in reception share was seventeen point nine percent, which is on it.

01:21:39
Speaker 2: That's where we see elite running backs get to.

01:21:41
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that a mari And Hampton has that general skill set of being you know, lining up all over the field, because I think that's another way that you could look at these these receivers, you know, from how they're going to translate to the NFL. Is you know, are you can be able to line them up in the slot, maybe out wide at times, or are they going to just be able to catch swing passes or are they going to be zeros like Gus Edwards, you know, And so like a mari and Hampton, I'm not saying he's gonna line up as a slot, but I do think that there is some reliability there. At least there's a talent signal there showing you that not just maybe he's not going to be beefed up as a receiver, but he's at least beefed up as a player, right because he's getting that production as a pass catcher. And the really interesting thing I gotta I gotta call this out here because you know, I've talked about Kenneth Walker so much in the past, and I had written threads about it on Twitter about how his best season reception share was horrible in college. We know this, like it was not good, right, Well, I built breakout score for running backs this offseason. I changed it from total yards per team play to receiving yards per team pass attempt, so he was only receiving. Kenneth Walker has one of the best breakout scores at running back in the model right now, and the reason for that is that, no, he didn't get a lot of work through the air, but when he did, he did really really well with that work. Similar in the screen game, similar to similar to what we see. You want to try to him in a screen pass situation. His yardage totals were there, which is why his age adjusted profile with from a receiving perspective is there.

01:23:07
Speaker 2: And then you bring up.

01:23:08
Speaker 3: Like, just so everybody knows, we didn't talk about this before the shot.

01:23:11
Speaker 2: We didn't know we did.

01:23:12
Speaker 3: Okay, this may seem like this is choreographed. None of it is, no, dude, it's just yeah, there's I know, I know where I could you know, No, look past my friend.

01:23:26
Speaker 1: Here's the thing, Carlos Hide. You bring up Carlos Hide. His metrics sucked across the board. Right, His breakout score was like twenty six is bad. And then the other point of that with Hyde, he didn't get to that number as a receiver until like year four, year five, right, it was. It was not immediate in his career, and the model is looking at the first three years. That's what's going to be most important. You know, from a dynasty perspective and such.

01:23:48
Speaker 2: And I look at Quinn Shawn Judkins and his marks are below average across the board, both in reception share.

01:23:54
Speaker 1: Now obviously take that kind of with a grain of salt, because his final season was with Travon Henderson.

01:23:59
Speaker 2: And and then breakout score was also below average.

01:24:02
Speaker 1: And the only guy that we've seen over the last you know, fifteen years that have come out the only two players, I think it was, one was Jeric McKinnon, who didn't have the profile because he didn't play a traditional running back position in college, and the other one was Doug Martin, who had top one hundred draft capital with as low of scores as quinshad Judkins had, who hit a ten percent or better target share during their first three years in the league. And so I am more concerned about Judkins as a receiver based on what he accumulated in college than to me even at Caleb Johnson, because Caleb Johnson, at least in the last season, when you give it context of Iowa being the sixth, you know, run heaviest team in the country, his reception share was fine. You know, his breakout score is fine. I just don't think he's going to be I think a Mario Hampton is more of a plus probably as a receiver in the NFL than Caleb Johnson is going to be right, But I do have I think.

01:24:58
Speaker 2: You have to have Hampton ahead of Judgin for that reason. Yeah, I think that's That's what I'm saying.

01:25:02
Speaker 1: Like, and draft capital aside, and then you layer on draft capitol and you're like, yeah, I'm gonna go Hampton over Judkins of course because of this draft capital thing. You know, well, I mean Judkins looks pretty impressive.

01:25:14
Speaker 2: I mean he did.

01:25:15
Speaker 1: He his cage adjusted rushing profiles insane, cannibalize a truly elite talent in Henderson.

01:25:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he played with that showed up in his sophomore season. He was like that matters. Yeah, yeah, in the breakup find we had with the teammates score and it's very interesting. So and he went and size adjusted quinch On Judkins had the best athletic profile in this class among running backs. Gent didn't test, as we know, And it's just it's they're gonna put up similar Fantasy points. It's just how you get there. One guy's gonna get there with a few more catches. One guy is gonna get there with more breakaway you know, yards and touchdowns like you know. So Judkins' best compound player profiler Nick Chubb makes sense, right, and you'll have fantasy seasons where Nick Chubb has a very similar profile, very similar fantasy point output. I should say to a running back with an all purpose profile who's catching more passes, but he just doesn't have the big playability like Judkins has. And that's what Caleb Johnson's missing. Yeah, he's missing that big playability. So you're gonna you're not getting the forty yard touchdown, but you're getting a bunch more catches and it all equals out.

01:26:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, and all and all plays together.

01:26:34
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna group a bunch of guys together here so we can move forward with some of the the other running backs in his class. Which fringe Day two or Day three player excites you most from this list, And I'm gonna add Scamp Camp.

01:26:46
Speaker 2: Skataboo to this list as well.

01:26:47
Speaker 1: Okay, So Camp, Scattaboo, Dylan Sampson, Basechall Tooton, DJ Giddens, Devin Neil, R. J. Harvey, Damian Martinez, or maybe someone else that could go Day two that excites you the most.

01:27:00
Speaker 3: Man, there's they're all Tutin and Harvey and Neil are all exciting for different reasons.

01:27:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're very different.

01:27:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, Right, So Totin, bottom line is you run a four to three to two, the NFL is gonna like that. They're gonna draft him in Day two most likely. If he falls to Day three running a four to three two, there's something the NFL does not like about this guy, right.

01:27:28
Speaker 1: That's actually I've I looked at this while I was doing research for the guy this year. A lot of the things I care most, we all care most about day one and day two picks in fantasy right at the end of the day, and so the model is focused on that archetype most and when you get to day three, a lot of the things that matter for day two backs don't matter that much anymore or as much for the Day three guys, because, like you said, more and more teams have now passed on that player.

01:27:55
Speaker 2: That's a signal that something's going wrong.

01:27:57
Speaker 3: They're super flawed in some way that we can't even perceive, whether it's pass pro, whether it's just can't get on the field for whatever reason, and could be the interview process, could be whatever it is. It's the Israel Abana Kanda sure corollary, right, it's the it's the Israel Abana corollary.

01:28:16
Speaker 2: So it's it's it's what it is. You can't wish it to.

01:28:19
Speaker 3: Be true that n if the NFL is gonna want to unlock this guy just because he's best comparable to CJ. Spiller, there's something else going on.

01:28:27
Speaker 2: We just have to deal with it. We're not coaches, Okay. R J.

01:28:31
Speaker 3: Harvey might be in a similar situation. So these guys are pretty similar in that they're they're incredible athletes. They caught enough passes, but you wish they caught more and you wonder why they didn't. So they're very similar in that way. I think one of Tuton or r J. Harvey will go in the second round or maybe third round, but ideally second round, uh and Day two whatever it is, and I'm gonna be very excited about that guy. Devin Neil is just a much better player. Devin Neil is a great football player. He just didn't run like those guys. I mean, I would love Devan Neil if Devan Neil ran a four to four flat him. I'll be over the moon for Devon Neil. So because forty time and speed matters a lot more for running backs than it does for receivers, sometimes we can get a we could accidentally end up fading a guy that doesn't deserve to be faded as much like a Devon Neil. And so I like shook it off, right, I shook off my disappointment of the Devon Neil forty time, And I was like, what are we talking about here?

01:29:42
Speaker 2: Yeah?

01:29:43
Speaker 3: Right, this guy has average speed as long as he can hit the crease, as long as he has good vision and contact balance and all those things. We're gonna look up and be like, this guy's making plays left and right in the NFL, and we know him to be a good receiver. He is actually in the upper percentI of just efficient receivers in this class. So and he was just a metronome of a producer. I mean, I love that.

01:30:08
Speaker 2: I love that.

01:30:09
Speaker 3: It was like the exact same stat fourteen hundred yards boom, fourteen hundred yards boom. You can set your watch by it, or you know, yeah, fourteen hundred actually close to fifteen hundred total yards all purpose yards and you know, ten plus percent target share, seventeen touchdowns every year, twenty five catches every year. So I really like him, and I think that that's an opportunity. So I'm seeing the four, five, eight, forty time as an opportunity to buy Devin Neil in all formats, not just Dynasty. But I think Devin Neil's a great I think he's the type of running back the NFL teams will like, he'll go a little bit earlier, and no one's allowed to be surprised when he goes earlier than Towton and Harvey and Oust. Analytics guys are like, that doesn't make any sense, and they're like, well, yeah, but he's way better in pass pro and he did better in the interviews, and it's like, you know what, like you weren't there for the process, and you analytics guys have to deal with it.

01:31:02
Speaker 2: And I'm like, okay, I'll tell you this. In the is that model do that model likes Devin Neil?

01:31:06
Speaker 1: Like, right now, he has a I have Draft Capital Delta, which looks at a player's score versus where he's projected to get drafted, and it gives him a plus or minus. You know, sort of a risk profile. He's a neutral risk profile, but he's almost a low risk profile because he's he's his receiving numbers are strong.

01:31:21
Speaker 2: His weight, his size is good, all that stuff. RJ.

01:31:24
Speaker 1: Harvey actually doesn't look that good in the model. Mostly I feel like his age is being a little bit ignored right now. He's over twenty four years old right now, and that's something that I don't think we can totally ignore, especially when it comes to the way that a team might invest in that player. But that's why Chase Brown was his top comp, because Chase Brown was not the youngest guy either coming out of He wasn't twenty four.

01:31:50
Speaker 2: Though.

01:31:50
Speaker 3: It's a very good comp. It's a very close comp. Yeah, it's a lot of guys like RJ. Harvey has a lot of comps, Yeah, but the closest, and it's very close, is Chase Brown for sure. Devin Neil's comp is Kareem Hunt and that's just a it's a very interesting comp. And at running back in Dynasty, you have three extra years of your prime. Remember the AJPEX for production in Fantasy football for running back is twenty four point five years old.

01:32:21
Speaker 1: Right which is r J. Harvey's twenty four point two. Mayfirst he's already.

01:32:25
Speaker 2: At the ajpecks.

01:32:26
Speaker 3: Now, I think with these these running back and all producing out in their late twenties, this might get pushed out to say age twenty five or twenty five point five, especially if guys like you know, Aaron Jones and Saquan I'll have big years again. So we'll we'll see what happens with that. But I mean, Devin Neil being twenty one years old is also attractive in that he's got a lot of room to grow, where RJ. Harvey's kind of a He's he's a fully formed football player at this point. That all said, that's mostly anecdotal because the data suggests that you're age at draft for a running back is almost negligible, where your age at draft for a receiver much more predictive.

01:33:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's talk. We'll get to receivers really quick.

01:33:09
Speaker 1: Do you have any Day three running backs that you want to shout out before we get to the whiteouts.

01:33:13
Speaker 3: I just think there's a there's a bunch of these guys that are very similar that I like, Jarqus Hunter love Jarq Wes Hunter love it right, There's guys like jarq Wes Hunter where I'm trying to find the guys that, hey, if they were in another class running a four to four four best comparable to DeAndre Swift with again one of these one of these profiles where he has the twelve hundred yard season, he has the twenty catch season. Yeah, he does the things you're looking for, just enough receiving skills where he can be a fifty catch guy depending on the system. Yeah, and he's coming from an SEC school and you could just see an NFL team anointing him as the backup. And then this is something we we I don't hear hardly anyone talking about, is because the injury rate was so wild for running backs last year, just nothing like we've ever seen. Where of the top twenty four to twenty five running backs and fantasy points per game.

01:34:17
Speaker 2: Only one of them won missed more than three games. Yeah, you never see that. It has never been done.

01:34:26
Speaker 3: And so what I think the value of these free square running backs has been lost on.

01:34:34
Speaker 2: I think the fantasy community slightly where it used to be.

01:34:37
Speaker 3: And that's part of the case, that's part of my cam Ward case, is that you know, if I'm in a superflex rookie Draft, and I go cam Ward and then running backs. I'm feeling pretty good about It's what's the alternative?

01:34:52
Speaker 2: I just go all running backs, right, okay?

01:34:55
Speaker 3: And then I look at origins the all rookie tournament on fast Draft last year, and it was a quarter back with all running backs.

01:35:02
Speaker 2: Sure that won it? All?

01:35:04
Speaker 3: Right, So the guys like Jarques Hunter, you only have so many roster spots in Dynasty, and I'm very interested in banking the value on all of these Jarqus Hunters. And that also then again gives you the opportunity to take a shot in the first round on a guy like a cam Ward or in like single quarterback.

01:35:25
Speaker 2: If you wanted to, do you know, a Travis Hunter, You know you could do that.

01:35:30
Speaker 1: Look at you another segue right in a wide receiver, Travis Hunter, Do you have any concerns about the talent profile there?

01:35:35
Speaker 2: Because I think that.

01:35:37
Speaker 1: You would probably agree that if you look at his analytical profile, just the analytical profile, you remove all of the you know, additional stuff that Travis Hunter went through in terms of playing ninety snaps a game or whatever and barely being in the wide receiver room and all that kind of stuff. I mean objectively, Travis Hunter's analytical profile as a wide receiver is not that strong for a first round wide receiver.

01:36:02
Speaker 3: No, No, it's it's you wish he would have done more as a sophomore.

01:36:08
Speaker 2: He's not actually that young. He should be a year younger.

01:36:12
Speaker 3: So there's a there's a few things because he transferred from Jackson State, and there's just it's just one of those things where part of it is that the way these models are, they look they're backward looking, and you just didn't have all this NIO money creating all all these transfers and the transfer portal and all these things, and you have guys staying in school longer. So there's there's a little bit of uh, incongruence I agree with with with the landscape now where you can't hold it hold his age against him like you maybe could have five years ago with Travis Hunter, so that I give I give some leeway there. There were a couple other receivers are going to end up on NFL rosters on Colorado, so that matters his team score. So that in the fact that he's you know, catching the ball at like a seventy seven percent rate, there's a lot.

01:37:05
Speaker 2: To like there.

01:37:07
Speaker 3: But is he an elite wide receiver prospect? No, there is not an elite wide receiver prospect in this class. I think it's very close between him and Teed McMillan. Tet that oh On McMillan is a great receiver. It's like it's boring to talk about him because he's been there. It's been the narrative around Hunter and what position will he play? I think has really hurt Tet in the you kind of you take him for granted, where I think that you're right. They're right there there, neck and neck. Whenever I hear someone say, well, Hunter by far and.

01:37:40
Speaker 2: Away the best if he were to.

01:37:42
Speaker 3: Dedicate himself to receiver, I'm like, well, that's an unfalsifiable hypothetical. We don't know the numbers. They know the numbers, say McMillan and Hunter are like great there.

01:37:50
Speaker 2: Oh, I think I think the number.

01:37:51
Speaker 1: I think the numbers in my opinion favor McMillan from a production standpoint, and that that he he looks better, at least in terms of breakout score in my model, he looks better. You know, if you look at yards paraut run, he'll look better. If you look at you know, receiving yards, team pass attempt he looks better. And you know I'm adjusting that for program strength. But both programs aren't you know, they're not SEC programs.

01:38:13
Speaker 3: And so you know Hunter did only play nine games two years ago.

01:38:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it'll all I'm looking at the pro rated stuff too, and things like yards par out run obviously is gonna be pro route run.

01:38:22
Speaker 2: I'm my my.

01:38:24
Speaker 1: Look, anyone who's listening to the podcast over the last two months, you know where I stand with Travis Hunter.

01:38:27
Speaker 2: Where I'm like draft capital, take the wheel.

01:38:30
Speaker 1: I'm the I understand this is a really this is the most unique circumstance probably ever, that we've ever that we've ever come across, where we have not never seen a Heisman winner like this play both ways and be as good as he is playing corner as he is wide receiver and I and not only that, but Colorado I think I think some of the metrics aren't gonna fully capture. You know, you mentioned the other Colorado wideouts that are gonna be going pro.

01:38:53
Speaker 2: That's one thing. So teammates score obviously, you know, matters.

01:38:56
Speaker 1: Here, but also they've ran like a lot of four wide sets where we know that like things like yards per out run, even yards per team pass attempt aren't gonna be as strong in that environment versus if you had you know, two wide receivers on the field, you know, playing alongside that player. So, like, I've gotten the point where I'm okay with pushing this aside a little bit. I think at the end of the day, man, even with the lower production scores in the ZAP model, because of the draft capital, and because Tet is kind of like I think Ted's good, Like it's a really solid wide receiver. I agree with you, Like the narrative has been weird and I it's it's you know whatever. But like I think that if he falls a little bit, just a little bit, then Travis Hunters is gonna be the wide receiver one in the model because of draft capital at the end of the day, even if the the marks for Tet look better, you know, uh, in that model.

01:39:45
Speaker 2: So if there was ever an excuse to go tinker with the model, it's Hunter.

01:39:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, if you're if you're gonna want to overfit, yeah, sure, go ahead, and.

01:39:52
Speaker 2: You could you could discount the drip.

01:39:54
Speaker 3: You can say, well, if he didn't play corner, you'd be you know, sure.

01:39:57
Speaker 2: I'll throw spots, draft capital.

01:40:01
Speaker 3: You can add, sure you can add some some receiving stats because he was so tired.

01:40:06
Speaker 2: Whatever fits our narrative is what will you can do whatever you want with him?

01:40:09
Speaker 3: I mean that's the thing. I do want some exposure to him, especially in a single quarterback.

01:40:13
Speaker 1: I wanted to Yeah, so Ted McMillan, do you do you think he's more Drake London or Courtland Sutton.

01:40:21
Speaker 2: No, I think he's more Drake London.

01:40:22
Speaker 3: And the nice thing about where he's going to get drafted is that he's going to get drafted like a Drake London draft Capital, which will give him the opportunity to play more slot, give the opportunity to be more of a Queen Chess piece. The problem that a lot of these receivers have is they end up in a place where they're an auxiliary option. They're forced to just play a role for the good of the team, and they don't get that. They don't get that featured treatment.

01:40:49
Speaker 2: And sometimes it's good.

01:40:50
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's good, Like Jordan Addison right, going to play with Justin Jefferson is perfect.

01:40:53
Speaker 2: Jordis Jordan Edison, No, no, no, no.

01:40:55
Speaker 1: What I'm saying is I'm agreeing because the the thing that I don't think people think about is that when a wide receiver gets drafted later in the first round, he's going to a better team and team environment, but that environment could very easily still include other stud wide receivers where they aren't that queen as you're talking about, right, Whereas when you get a stud wide receiver going in the top ten or top fifteen, then that player is more than likely going to be sort of the sole focus of that Look at Brian Thomas last year, where.

01:41:22
Speaker 3: You want him going to a place where there's not going to be a lot of target competition, and they're going to have to move him around the formation and let him let him yeah, and try to get him the football and put him in the best possible position to succeed, as Drake London has been right, Or it's you know Terry McLaurin, right, Terry McLaurin was always used this way and was always a quarterback away from being an absolute smash. So maybe there's somebody last year you have to admit just can we just talk about this for just two seconds before we go back to sure, there were so many no brainers that that fantasy gamers left on the field. There was so much left on the field last year, from Saquon to Derrick Henry to Terry McLaurin, just baffling ADPs and almost like a conspiracy, like I don't understand the forces that were suppressing these ADPs when we've been begging for the forces to align to propel these players to a particular place. It all happens exactly how we would have planned it. Sure, and then you can still you know, as of kickoff week one get McLaurin at least around later than any logical person would have driven. How was it possible?

01:42:43
Speaker 1: No, No, Look, I had McLaurin pretty high. I had them on a lot of teams last year. The funny thing though, with the running backs, not Saquon so much, but Dereck Henry in particular. I had Derreck Henry ranked ahead of Kien Williams, which was the opposite and consensus consensus said Kien Williams had of Derrick Henry. And typically, historically those types of moves are our borderline league winning type moves because usually one of those two guys will not come close to living up to expectation. But last year running back was so good. But they were both good. There was no wrong choice. At the end of the day, I finally was like, I'm done, you know, being because there were years aside from the last couple, but there were last few, but there were years where I was wrong about Derrick Henry, wrong about it. I'm like, I'm not doing that this year not doing it.

01:43:28
Speaker 2: And then it was.

01:43:30
Speaker 1: At the expense of you know, a Kien Williams, let's say, And so I didn't have much Kiro Williams, but I had Dereck Henry me either.

01:43:37
Speaker 2: But but yeah, I know you're you're a you're a hater, Kien Williams hater.

01:43:40
Speaker 1: But like it's it's just interesting because at running back, those decisions when you're just looking within the position. Obviously if you went running back over a wide receiver, it was a win, but at running back itself, it was.

01:43:52
Speaker 2: Like, well they were all good. So yeah, they were all good.

01:43:55
Speaker 3: We're never gonna get So that's the sad thing is we're not going to get that again.

01:43:59
Speaker 2: We're not You're not gonna get.

01:44:00
Speaker 3: The no brainers, the no brainer adp inefficiencies from last year.

01:44:04
Speaker 2: We're not gonna see that again, everybody.

01:44:06
Speaker 3: Sorry, but if you didn't get a bunch of Saquon in the second round and Derek Henry in the third round and McLaurin in the fifth round, let h you're not gonna get that's gone. You'd have to get a time machine. Like, we're not gonna get that again. The one thing though on fast Draft with this Flex four game is Judkins, Henderson and Johnson, those three rookie running backs all going in the final round.

01:44:33
Speaker 2: That is the closest thing we're getting. I think there is right now to an adp inefficiency.

01:44:37
Speaker 3: But with these so talking again, but the receivers, it is, it is an interesting thing where if you're an ex receiver, where you go from a landing spot matters more so it's gonna like, for example, Higgins versus Knowles, really where it's interesting. And so I think basically, I like, I like very rarely am I out here drafting receivers in round two or round three of a dynasty rookie draft. You've been in these rookie drafts with me, you know what I'm doing.

01:45:08
Speaker 2: Sure, going running back?

01:45:09
Speaker 3: Sure, right, but we now may be at a jump the shark inflection point where now everyone's doing that, where somehow these Iowa State receivers can leak into the third round and superflex.

01:45:23
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I mean, look, here's the other thing that I want to add to that is if you're doing a draft, pre NFL draft, don't be overconfident with where you think the running backs will be drafted. Because we know that if a running back falls to day three, I mean, or a wide receiver will fall to day three, it's bad news, right, And so we have more.

01:45:41
Speaker 2: Confidence that the Iowa State guys are going.

01:45:43
Speaker 1: To go Day two, maybe even maybe Jaden and Higgins steaks in the end of round one, which some people have said. But we have confidence that the Iowa State guys are going to go Day two, which means if.

01:45:54
Speaker 3: Xavior League can leak into the first round, then absolutely Higgins can I know.

01:45:59
Speaker 1: But my point is, know if these running backs are going to be if they're flimsy, you like I listed off earlier, all of those fringe day two, day three running backs, you know Camp Scataboo or base Shall Toot and Dylan Samson whoever, right, don't have too much confidence with where they're gonna get drafted. Pre draft, post draft is where we can be a lot more confident. See a lot of the running backs going earlier and such in these rookie drafts because we're gonna know.

01:46:23
Speaker 2: That they got that capital or not.

01:46:25
Speaker 1: I think that's been a little like like my pre draft rankings are more wide receiver heavy than my post draft rankings will be.

01:46:32
Speaker 3: You want to have some fun. Sure, you know how people talk about Jalen McMillan. Yeah, and how you should have known what Jalen McMillan if you weren't pounding Jalen McMillan in your rookie draft just because you have some process that favors running backs and rookie drafts that you're a full sure, right, I mean it was obvious, right. Can we just for the day three receivers last year?

01:46:53
Speaker 2: Can I just go name them? Do you mind?

01:46:56
Speaker 3: Sure? I'll make this very quick, I mean just very quick. Troy Franklin, remember him, Javon Baker, Tez Walker. Okay, it keeps.

01:47:07
Speaker 2: Going and going and going and going. Oh here's one.

01:47:10
Speaker 3: How about this guy? How about Jacob Cowing? And I can just go down the list. And this is every year, This is every year. And this is not even talking about Jermaine Burton in third year, third round picks right that also that had a lot of hype and went absolutely nowhere and their dynasty value has been vaporized. And you can just go down the board and last year, the year before that, year before that, year before that. People give people all the respect in the world that they drafted Jalen McMillan, but as as as as uh, you know, as many hits as I've had, I have no confidence in my ability to find that guy.

01:47:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's tough.

01:47:55
Speaker 1: I mean even even like like I think that we can find we can be better than consensus.

01:48:01
Speaker 2: And I did a study on this. Actually, like over the last month or two on.

01:48:04
Speaker 1: Day three picks, we can be better than consensus at finding and spotting who those guys are gonna be. I have confidence in that. But I don't think that people realize that number one, how difficult it is. But number two, when you look at rookie draft ADP and I looked at the data this is from Dynasty League Football's ADP data, there is zero correlation when you're looking at day three picks in rookie drafts versus how they perform across their first three years in the league. So a fourth round, Day three guy is very similar to a third round, Day three guy. And I'm talking about third round and fourth round rookie draft pick, right, So like, and you think about it, and it's like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. Pouka Nakua was a fourth round, you know, rookie pick. Kyen Williams was a fourth round rookie pick. Isaiah Pacheco was a fourth round rookie pick. The guys who were hitting, even Bucky Irving fell and you know, into into the latter rounds, you know, in rookie drafts last year, and so like, I think it's important to remember to not be over confident in day three picks.

01:49:01
Speaker 3: Oh but they might say, well, you just listened a bunch of fourth rounders. Well, Jalen mcgilan was a third rounder. Yeah, you mean the same round as Malachi Coraley, Right? Is that the same round? And we talked about Jermaine Burton already. Is that that the same round as Roman Wilson, right?

01:49:16
Speaker 2: Because? Or is that was that the round?

01:49:18
Speaker 3: Wait?

01:49:19
Speaker 2: Let me look, was it the same round as Luke McCaffrey.

01:49:21
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I don't think that people even realize second round hit rates a wide receiver.

01:49:27
Speaker 2: Like it's freaking tough out there, but really really tough. It's tough to be a good wide.

01:49:32
Speaker 3: Receiver is but we're basically it's a tough position to play at a super high level.

01:49:36
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness.

01:49:37
Speaker 1: All right, I gotta ask you about Matthew Golden because I know that that you probably see a really really crappy production profile. Are you outright fading or are you seeing the market doing that too harshly? And you're like, you know what I might actually be in?

01:49:50
Speaker 3: This is the thing, man, I haven't seen this in forever. I mean it's been since I thinks Tony because he's gonna go exactly where at Arias Tony was drafted by the same draft slot. Yeah, but Canarius Tony was a running back turned receiver who went to the Senior Bowl and wasn't even that impressive there. Matthew Golden is coming out at age twenty one. The NFL told him, listen, you don't need to go back to school, even though really he only was a featured option in the second half of the college season because he transferred from Houston and he came to a team that was loaded with talent, that.

01:50:32
Speaker 1: Had Isaiah Bond that transferred to and they wanted to give Bond that opportunity.

01:50:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, and others.

01:50:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's like, okay, fundamentally, he's got some really nice compsun player profile or the best one. Santana Moss. Santana Moss also on a loaded team basically was the Houston or the Texas Longhorns of his era, the Houston the Miami Hurricanes. So Moss is on a loaded team, right, A big producer runs of four to three plays on special teams. This archetype exists.

01:51:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, did you guys, did you guys have a did you guys have a Ladd McConkey comp.

01:51:13
Speaker 3: No, I think that I don't know what it would have been. A lad mikonkak should ran a sub four four forty Yeah, but he also the differentiation. So my the that model is not looking at yards per out run.

01:51:23
Speaker 1: And that's where Lad McConkie thrived because Georgia wasn't using him right a lot, and that's why his numbers were suppressed a little bit.

01:51:30
Speaker 2: But that was that was the comfort, that was.

01:51:32
Speaker 1: The top one for Golden in my stuff now he had bad ones outside.

01:51:36
Speaker 2: But but again, I don't want to throw a blanket on.

01:51:41
Speaker 1: Matthew Golden and just say there's absolutely no chance that this profile can hit, because I think that there is still somewhat.

01:51:46
Speaker 2: Of a chance that that it can that it can work, and.

01:51:49
Speaker 3: The fantasy markets reflecting that it very much, it very much could happen.

01:51:53
Speaker 2: It very much could happen.

01:51:54
Speaker 3: I mean, dude, his his similarities is Santana Moss are pretty crazy. Yeah, but that's a it is a fun but he's a fun player. And listen, if I was in the market for Canarius Tony, I admit it. If you're gonna have a first round receiver with athleticism fall to the end of the second round and it's between him and you know, some tight end, man, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be interested.

01:52:20
Speaker 1: You're gonna see Matthew Golden and we're already seeing it. But I'm saying, even post draft, you're gonna see Matthew Golden in the second round of super flex rookie drafts. And when you get a if he goes in the top half of the first round and you're getting that kind of capital in round two, now we can always play Oh what about Henry Ruggs, What about Canarius Tony?

01:52:37
Speaker 2: I get all that, but we do a lot of these guys. Yeah, yeah, I get it. I get it.

01:52:42
Speaker 1: But don't overstate though, Yeah, yeah, don't overstate what a second round rookie pick is, you know, and what that what that means in terms of actual value.

01:52:50
Speaker 3: And again we're in this new world where they're always transferring and trying to pick up a new offense. Yeah, it's not, it's it's just different. Man, guy you look at now came.

01:53:01
Speaker 2: From somewhere else. Yeah, that's true.

01:53:04
Speaker 3: And so I give him a little bit a bit more benefit of the doubt than most because he didn't play a full season as a sophomore. Then he goes to Texas and then he thrived in some of the biggest games.

01:53:16
Speaker 2: So there are.

01:53:17
Speaker 3: Some some things that you can't home in on exactly just by looking at the overarching stat line.

01:53:24
Speaker 2: You can't see it.

01:53:25
Speaker 3: You gotta go in. You can go into the game log. You got act, you know. So that's where having like a Matt waldman on right. So okay, wait to bring this full circle. If this, if I were the man I was ten years ago, I would hate Matthew Golden.

01:53:41
Speaker 2: I would I would be.

01:53:42
Speaker 3: In shaming everyone that even you know, tried to entertain this notion that he could be good. Right where now, I've seen some things, you see the gray area, right, And I've been through a lot, right with Jeff Janis and so many things I've been through, mostly late round guys betraying me and even getting run over by first round picks. That Okay, I'm now in a much better place. Okay, let's let's hear what the guys at roster watch are saying. Let's talk to Matt Waldman, and let's start to factor in this a little bit and realize, like, what are you really getting at the end of the second round of those running backs. They're equally if not more risky look at because they were a fourth round guy. And what you don't know is the NFL doesn't trust them at all in a lot of situations and is going to play them sparingly as a rookie, and they're going to collapse in value, just like if Matthew Golden were to bust. But Matthew Golden is always going to have at least a year where you could unload. You could even have unloaded Cadarious Tony because Canarious Tony gave you that one game he had that.

01:55:00
Speaker 2: Against Dallas, right, wasn't it against Das? Yeah?

01:55:02
Speaker 3: And you he was actually flippable after a year, So it could be it could be true that Matthew Golden is much easier to flip after a down season than say an R. J.

01:55:12
Speaker 2: Harvey would be.

01:55:13
Speaker 3: And so this is where, yeah, I feel myself being a little more tempered with these kinds of decisions. Uh, And actually you end up you actually end up netting a little more upside in your roster this way.

01:55:26
Speaker 2: Yeah. First off, I'm really proud of your growth. That was really good to really good to hear.

01:55:32
Speaker 1: Second and this is kind of uh, you know, the the analytics world, especially over the last five to ten years, has really driven home the point about early declared status, right, and how early early declare status gets signal and it matters because it's showing us that a player is talented and he's leaving school early because he's so talented and he's able to play at the NFL level, you know, early early in his career. The one thing that doesn't get talked about enough with early declared status is that it's limiting that player to not having that extra season in college to accumulate better numbers. Right, So, Matthew Golden, when we sit here and we compare Matthew Golden's best season in yards per team pass attempt to other wide receivers in college football, those other wide receivers had an extra or more season to accumulate that number, which goes back to RJ. Harvey, And my sort of negative m con to RJ. Harvey is that his production profile is also a little bit beefier because he's older, Right, He's a He was able to play a little bit more in college, which is fine.

01:56:36
Speaker 2: Just recognize it, right, Well, you could do.

01:56:39
Speaker 3: You could really go far with Matthew Golden if you really want to, right, Because if you really want to run this odd experiment out, yes, what would a year of Matthew Golden as the alpha with Arch Manning look exactly?

01:56:51
Speaker 1: That's what I'm trying to say is that we have to think about it not just in terms of.

01:56:56
Speaker 2: This is what this guy did.

01:56:57
Speaker 1: And this is why early declared status in age and such is in breakout related metrics are important because not only is it showing you that that player was able to do something crazy at a young age, which is a signal for talent. But it's also a metric that's not gonna be biased based on how many years that player played in college. Right, you guys use breakout age and you can look at you know, dominator do a degree, but like you know, breakout age, which is going to be based on Dominator rating, and I'll look at breakout score. We're looking at that metric and saying, Okay, this is a metric that is going to be universal for all players because all players are going to be playing at some age, you know, at the collegiate level, Whereas we're not gonna get a universal senior year from every wide receiver because not every wide receiver plays four years in college. And so I do want it to be known and thrown out there that when it comes to Matthew Golden and his production profile, we can't just stop and say and look, I do it too, like we all do it right, Like I can query and filter and be like, hey, the only wide receivers who have done well with this number are X, Y and Z and it's a really low hit rate. But I also you know, I think it's important to at least throw in that cavea on that context that he only played three years in college and one of them was a transfer year, you know, so it can elevate that player a little bit, which is why early declare status does you know, get a little bit, give a player a little bit of a boost.

01:58:22
Speaker 2: In the Zapp model, he's gonna go to a good team.

01:58:26
Speaker 1: Are we just gonna are we just gonna? Are we are just Matthew Golden first rounder?

01:58:32
Speaker 2: Is that what we're doing here?

01:58:33
Speaker 3: It could it could be. I mean, what's the the best fit is what Seattle?

01:58:39
Speaker 2: Sure? They don't have they don't have any speed on the outside.

01:58:42
Speaker 1: I mean, look, I think I think if he I think if he ends up going to Dallas, it's gonna be great.

01:58:48
Speaker 2: Like I mean, like that's the that's still Dallas, that's twelfth pack.

01:58:51
Speaker 3: They have to trade down, I think. I mean, people are I guess Henry Ruggs was like the twelfth pick one he's been.

01:58:58
Speaker 2: He's been mocked to Dallas plenty of times. I mean, that's no. I just can't get my head around. I mean, look, I can't eat sometimes you get my head around this thing.

01:59:04
Speaker 1: I can't either, because that means that there's a chance that he Yeah, that would it would be a chance that he would be going over Tet in that scenario, which.

01:59:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't like. Listen, if he goes to.

01:59:14
Speaker 3: Of course, if he go Dallas doesn't have any speed on the outside either, and that's just a better offense. So yes, I'd love him, and Dallas would be really cool. And him in Seattle I think just makes sense. And then well, see the thing is if he goes to let's say, well, I think it's.

01:59:31
Speaker 2: The Broncos really don't have anyone. They don't.

01:59:35
Speaker 1: Sean Payton has said, and he talked to Kay Adams about this, that he is not that he feels he seemed to feel better about the wide receivers than we do.

01:59:44
Speaker 2: Good.

01:59:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, I mean that means that that whatever running back comes is probably gonna see decent target share. You know, Evan Ingram could have a decent season if he does play the joker role like that. Yes, and Courtland Sutton will probably be fine. You know, Like I don't really fully diss longer term.

01:59:59
Speaker 3: Wouldn't that be a nice spot for Golden if you somehow Oh, of course, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, I think I.

02:00:04
Speaker 2: Think that would be fantastic. I don't think term. Also, Tampa Bay not the worst place. Yeah, if you're thinking, if you're thinking longer term, yeah.

02:00:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, longer term. There's a lot of interesting spots for him. I mean I think, you know, Atlanta would be a massive upgrade over Mooney. There's just there's some interesting spots. Houston would be cool.

02:00:25
Speaker 2: Houston be great.

02:00:26
Speaker 3: I mean, Houston be great. That we talk about a nice a nice talent that is where you get the proper like a pure X receiver in Nico Collins. Then you have a pure Z in Matthew Golden on the other side stretching the field.

02:00:39
Speaker 2: Oh I love that. Yeah.

02:00:40
Speaker 1: I mean they can both get downfield too, because Nico is a is a field stretcher himself.

02:00:45
Speaker 3: But they would just help Nico and then, oh my god, it would be great.

02:00:48
Speaker 2: It would be great help Stroud. Oh.

02:00:51
Speaker 3: Man, So wow, the draft can't happen fast enough.

02:00:54
Speaker 2: Man.

02:00:55
Speaker 1: One player who didn't transfer throughout college was Luther Burden, and the usage that he had at Missouri was interesting. It was very and I brought this up plenty of times in the show's very Wandell Robinson esque in terms of the you know, behind the line of scrimmage targets, the screen targets, the you know just wasn't what we typically want from in terms of prospecting. Now, I've always viewed this as it's not necessarily a con It just kind of makes the range of outcomes wider for that particular player, right, because it's harder to that envision. But when you look at the usage comps, just usage, not production usage comps, you get Paris Campbell, you get Kadarius Tony, you get Rondell Moore, those kinds of players.

02:01:38
Speaker 2: So are you in or out on Luther Burden?

02:01:41
Speaker 3: Like?

02:01:41
Speaker 2: Would you let me let me ask you this.

02:01:43
Speaker 1: If Matthew Golden goes firmly in round one, let's say like sixteen to twentieth overall, are you going to be drafting Matthew Golden over Luth Burden and rookie drafts?

02:01:51
Speaker 2: Is Luther Burden that impressive? I I let's talk about this. Let's talk about this. But what am I missing had? Here's my You're the you're the sophomore season guy. I like this, I like I love a good sophomore his sophomore season was incredible. His sophomore season was incredible.

02:02:09
Speaker 3: But you just said he there's a thing with these former remember the remember the Big twelve.

02:02:15
Speaker 2: Sure, there's been so many of these receivers.

02:02:21
Speaker 3: And it's not just I, you know, I can go back to Corey Coleman and and and and Docks and Josh Dox and all these guys. But recently quin uh Quinton Johnston, he was used near the line of scrimmage and everyone talked about his yack per target was better than any other receiver, and that that just doesn't translate that well to the NFL. There's gonna be drafts where Burden goes second round, Golden goes first round, and Burden gets drafted before Golden.

02:02:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's I think that's probably what's going to happen.

02:02:54
Speaker 3: I'm just saying, even even once the draft capital is locked in, there's still gonna be people going with this second rounder thinking he might be Lad McConkie and he ain't Lad McConkie. Man.

02:03:04
Speaker 2: No, I don't think that's that. I think that I think that if you want a.

02:03:08
Speaker 1: Realistic both film and analytical, because this was one of his one of Burden's comps in the in the ZAP model for the prospect guy was Brandon Ayuk, where a lot of the same concerns were there for Ayuk entering the league yack guy, but he had to work on his craft, right. Remember he was in the doghouse. But Matt Harmon and I talked about this last week on the show where you know he was in the doghouse, like he got better, and I think that Burden and the thing that Harmon said that I think really resonated with me was that the thing that's in Luther Burden's way. He thinks that Burden and I don't actually disagree analytically because my model if the ZA model, I said this in the in the guide, if the ZA model had a baby, he'd probably name him Luther because the breakout score for Luther Burden is incredible because that sophomore season, and it's not looking at the usage profile. But I more subjectively understand, you know, the range of ALcom here and how scary the downside is. But from an upside perspective, Harmon and I would agree thinks that Burden has more upside if he can really bring it together.

02:04:10
Speaker 2: Because there were some plays that he took off that kind of thing.

02:04:13
Speaker 1: Dude together, if you can bring it together, he has the highest upside a wide receiver in this class.

02:04:20
Speaker 2: I don't think that's true.

02:04:21
Speaker 3: This is a I get that he's young. The agent draft is super predictive. The effect is coming out at twenty one point three, so we have the decimal point on player profile and because it really matters, and he was he was a dominant producer. And then what happened. He took a year off in the year that mattered most. And there's there's where people that watch the film are saying there were lackadaisical.

02:04:45
Speaker 2: Routes at the college level. This is a very bad signal.

02:04:49
Speaker 3: I mean his comparable on player profile or Sammy Watkins, and Sammy Watkins was a phenomenal prospect. And I think Burden has a quote ulity breakout rating in our Breakout Finder similar to yours because he's.

02:05:05
Speaker 2: The best one in the class. In mind, this.

02:05:06
Speaker 3: Class is not that impressive, sure, and he's he just exemplifies a lot of what's wrong with the class. And that if this guy is near the top, you know, again not not blazing speed good enough certainly, who was a four four one is what you were hoping for from him, and he delivered.

02:05:26
Speaker 2: He gave you that.

02:05:27
Speaker 3: That incredible season at Missouri is just like, Okay, I just can't. I just can't anymore. Man.

02:05:34
Speaker 2: I just I'm sorry.

02:05:37
Speaker 3: There there there are tendencies here where you don't you don't know, but what his work ethic is, what it? You know? I just yeah, there was with Ted McMillan. I I don't have any concerns.

02:05:52
Speaker 2: Well, he doesn't watch film. Did you hear that? Or McMillan. McMillan he hates watching film. Oh god, damn it, bratching off the list. I don't know. I don't know, man.

02:06:05
Speaker 3: This this is why time and time, this is why I'm getting chased out of these guys in the first round. Normally I want to get my receiver in the first round, right with it.

02:06:16
Speaker 2: Typically it's a.

02:06:18
Speaker 3: Great it's a great idea, right, you get neighbors in the early part of the round. You can get Maconkey at the end of the round and you're you're feeling great and then you can just pound running back. And that's been a very sound methodology for many, many years in single quarterback rookie drafts. I'm having a hard time with this. I'm having a very hard time where I'm like, actually, can I just take Golden in the second round to be done with this? Or can I even wait and take Higgins in the third round.

02:06:44
Speaker 1: Look, I think there's definitely an argument to be made if Golden goes in round one and he's still like a if he's an early to mid super flex round two rookie pick, and Luther Burden is going ahead of some of the early second round running backs we then see that are locked in and they found good landings, Like, there's a very easy argument to make that Matthew Golden's a better value out of the two wide receivers.

02:07:05
Speaker 2: There's very easy argument. I just don't. I also don't love that he was like the five star prospect. Yeah, I get it, I get I just don't.

02:07:13
Speaker 3: I don't love it like he unfortunately these are his own expectations. But the track record for these guys, these five star prospects that end up underwhelming and then coming out anyway.

02:07:26
Speaker 1: Oh god, there there are there are That's why I said there are things that are very very red flaggy to this profile.

02:07:34
Speaker 2: But instead of me saying I'm gonna fade this.

02:07:36
Speaker 1: I think it's more so recognizing the range of outcomes here where there is a very real chance that this goes a maybe not quite canarious for Tony row because I mean Tony himself had stuff you know, off the field and whatnot that was not understood. But you know, maybe not that to that point, but there is you know that maybe a Paris Campbell direction or something like that. Uh, that's that's in his range. Come sure, But I still I agree with harmon that. I think that of when you look at the the sophomore season, when you look at the age of justin program adjusted UH breakout score in production that Luther Burden had, there is no wide receiver in this class with a better ceiling better ceiling, I think that the floor is much lower than Tet. And how do you want to approach that in your rookie drafts? Do you want to go with an Amecca Buka, who might be the safest option in this class? Do you think he's the safest option more so than even a guy like Tet or do you are are you? Are you more so fading a guy like Abuca because of that slot probable role that he's going to play guy with.

02:08:41
Speaker 3: The highest ceiling has got to be got to be Higgins, isn't it. You think Higgins has the size and the athleticism and.

02:08:48
Speaker 2: The he drew.

02:08:50
Speaker 1: He drew a Nico komp As one of his top three in the It's hard for me to see Burden ever being having a Nico Collins level production in the league. Maybe, but I think Burden could be a could be peppered in a way that Elak Neighbors is peppered.

02:09:03
Speaker 2: It's from a seat again, from a ceiling perspective.

02:09:05
Speaker 1: It's that same kind of archetype of player, where like good Yak ability to to just see a lot of the like we I talked about this with Harmon last week, but it's like we ding the players who have this kind of usage tree and profile in college, but then we want that.

02:09:22
Speaker 2: Same usage and in fantasy because of PPR and such, right, Like We's that's a good point. It's so strange, that's a good point. What if a team uses Luthor Burden the exact same way, then he's awesome in fantasy?

02:09:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I get so, I guess that's where And honestly, like Molik Neighbors the the way the Giants deployed him was not.

02:09:43
Speaker 2: I mean they they try to just get in the ball as much.

02:09:45
Speaker 1: As possible, right, And so like what if Burden goes to a team that does use that for like what if he does get late first round capital and they're more invested in and they're like, Okay, we're gonna use this guy. We're gonna deploy and we have a plan for him. And that plan is a duplicate of what happened at Miszoo. Then all of a sudden, you can see this path to him because he has good skills with the ball in his hands. The dude is good after the catch objectively, and so I just think there's something there, even if this the floor is really scary.

02:10:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd much rather guys be good in the air while the ball is in the air.

02:10:21
Speaker 2: They're just gonna be talking about rather guys be good just been while there on the ground with the ball in their hands. It's it's all fair, it's all been.

02:10:29
Speaker 3: It's just I just yeah, I'm not gonna go as far as Canarius Tony. But that was the selling point of Kadarius Tony, that he was incredible with the ball in his hands.

02:10:39
Speaker 1: It was, but he's Luther Burns Away not only I wasn't even gonna go there.

02:10:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm just saying when you say.

02:10:46
Speaker 3: Some of these things, I get, I just get triggered a little bit with some of some of the strengths that these guys show in college, and I'm like, I don't think those strengths translate that well. What from from an upside standpoint, what I like to see is a imagine what if Jaden Higgins, you know, can can have some of these nuances in the NFL to get open, like let's say, a like a Brandon Marshall, and what he could be that's very exciting, you know, what he can be in contested situations, what he can be, you know, getting leverage on defenders in the red zone, all these things. Then it's much easier for me to see that guy being like a top ten fantasy option, whereas, yeah, a burden. It's harder for me to envision it. And he also just has this thing where he seems problematic and he seems like a guy that's you know, even if his numbers were incredible, the interview process would lead him to go second round. And just those guys have such a poor track record where it's like the numbers suggest this guy should be going in the top ten. The NFL says, no, no, no, no, a second round that's not great.

02:12:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll see, we'll see what the draft capital says. For sure.

02:12:06
Speaker 1: I think that's gonna go a really long way to put a bow on the burden stuff. If you do compare him to the other kind of gadgety usage players that we've seen going with good draft capital over the last couple of years. I'm talking about first or second round over the last handful of years. You know, again, you get like Paris Campbell, you get Wandell Robinson, you get Kadarius Tony.

02:12:25
Speaker 2: There's one.

02:12:26
Speaker 1: Rondell Moore was another one. The difference though, between him and those guys, there's two things. Number One, his age justin profile is generally better than all of them, even though you know Wandell and Rondell both had pretty good age justin production profiles.

02:12:40
Speaker 2: But compared to those two guys, he's much bigger.

02:12:43
Speaker 1: There's a difference in size there, and so I don't see a scenario where this is like he's just gonna be Wandell Robinson, getting these cheap targets in the slot because Wandell Robinson's a big deficiency of his is literally his size. At the NFL level, he can't do as much, and so I do think that there is some intrigue with that as well. Like this, the usage only takes me, you know it does. It does give me concerns and raise red flags. But when the production profile, the age, justin production profile in that sophomore season was as good as his was, and I'm not as concerned about the bad junior year because we've seen other guys in the past, like jsn al Seon Jeffrey, guys who have good sophomore or second years and maybe not have the best third years in junior seasons still thrive. There's really not a difference in hit rate from the research I did with those guys. Basically, the peaks matter a lot more than the valleys with these guys, right, And when.

02:13:33
Speaker 3: You see still it's a first round pick around then even in super flex, you're talking like the what the one twelve?

02:13:39
Speaker 2: He goes m M. Put that on the block.

02:13:43
Speaker 3: It's tough to be, Yeah, yeah, it's it's a tough spot to be. There's a big tier break we know at running back after Caleb Johnson. If Caleb Johnson's off the board, my advice is simple, just put that goddamn pick on the block, move down around, try to pick up a first round or next year, or try to pick up a bunch of picks and an upside player and and get the hell out of there and and you'll you'll be happy. You'll get probably a better player in one of these Iowa state receivers if that's the direction you want to go, or with one of these super slasher running backs.

02:14:18
Speaker 2: So do you think so?

02:14:19
Speaker 1: I'm I'm going to be probably still a little bit above consensus with Burden. I think just because the model loves him so much and I recognize the downside. I recognize it and go south, so so so south. I wish you all the best with this.

02:14:30
Speaker 2: You obviously won't be You obviously won't be no, which is good. I like the disagreement. A mechag buka. Are you higher on him than you would be Burden?

02:14:39
Speaker 3: I know he's safe, but I mean that the safest guy is actually McMillan. Again probably yeah, more than likely. He always gets he never gets listed in anything. He's just I'm surprised he gets drafted. Yeah right, if if Ted McMillan actually gets drafted, it's going to be a shock at this point, you know. I mean, this guy, no one has him at the top of any list on anything. And I'm like, no, he's awesome, and yeah, the safest by far, and yeah, Buka is also safe. But I just don't you know, Yeah, he's going to have to land just right and he's never going to be the super featured guy.

02:15:19
Speaker 2: And I would rather have.

02:15:21
Speaker 3: Tyler Warren and take a shot on a true difference making tight end or get the hell out of there?

02:15:27
Speaker 2: Is the is the move aout?

02:15:29
Speaker 1: What about Kyle Williams, who's getting a ton of steam right now, like he in the Prospect Guide he was at the time of the release, he was projected to go like two hundred and fiftieth to three hundredth overall in the draft, and now he's up in the top one hundred comfortably, Like he's like ninetieth overall.

02:15:47
Speaker 2: Do you have any strong feelings about Kyle Williams.

02:15:50
Speaker 3: I mean, I love guys that had early breakouts, you know, I love guys that were dominant runs A four to four.

02:15:58
Speaker 2: I mean.

02:16:00
Speaker 3: He's a lot more similar to Luther Burden. People want to I mean this is again I like the I'm going arbitrage at receiver this year. You want to twist my arm and put my face in the dirt and make me draft Matthew Golden with a late second, I will Otherwise I'm going arbitrage at receiver.

02:16:18
Speaker 2: And he's the perfect arbitrage receiver. Yeah, he has an interesting production profile for sure.

02:16:24
Speaker 1: And then look, I know that we've we've gone long, So I have two more questions for you day three, Wide receiver, Is there any that that jumped to mind that you are going to be interested in with your with your arbitrage plays here?

02:16:36
Speaker 2: Well, Jalen Nole better not better not go day three? He better not go day three. That's my big fear. I don't know.

02:16:43
Speaker 3: Why he's not more respected. I mean, he again is one of the safer picks, He and Higgins. He and Higgins because they were competing against each other throughout their college careers make them they themselves are much safer because of it. Yeah, which is I think an interesting and interesting thing that that's happening there. Ty Felton's pretty interesting. I like ty Felton. He's very athletic. He's similar to bow Melton, which is weird because I think they both went to Maryland. Their names rhyme with each other, and they'll probably get drafted at Oh no, Melton went to Rutgers. But yeah, the exact same sort of color colors.

02:17:26
Speaker 1: I do the same thing with colors all the time with the prospecting stuff.

02:17:29
Speaker 2: Is it weird?

02:17:29
Speaker 3: It's in my head, Like I think of Rutgers in Maryland, I think the same anyway, they had the same color uniforms. They're going to get drafted in the same round. They have the same athletic profiles, and I like bow Melton right. So it's just an interesting thing to talk about it this time of year. There are going to be players that could be really productive in the NFL, and they will never get an opportunity because they will never be in the you know, getting enough reps in practice to show coaches and earn an opportunity to move up. Uh, And then they're gonna end up getting cut, and then they're gonna get picked up by another team, and then the other team is You're gonna They're gonna have to reset button again. There are players that just they have to keep hitting the reset button and showing and earning opportunities and and and showing the coaching staff what they can do in like very very small windows. And actually Tom Brady talks about this. He talked about this at Michigan when he was behind Brian Greasy and he's like, I don't get any opportunities and then like you you get four reps with the with the with the ones. You need to make every single one of those reps count, right, And he's like, Okay, now I'm gonna get one extra rep and I'm gonna get one extra rep. And it's like chipping away, chipping away, Yeah, because you're there for five years and you could eventually become the starter in like year five. Okay, then that that's that's how. But with these guys in the NFL, it's not like that at all. They barely get so there. I think in every class there are guys that, you know, like if Julius Chestnut instead of going to Sacred Heart, if he somehow got recruited to go to Alabama, he could have been Najie Harris, right, if things had broke differently for a guy, especially getting to like. That's why I love like the whole situation there in Carolina because it's like, oh, we have a guy that was an undrafted receiver. You know how rare this is?

02:19:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, right, for.

02:19:30
Speaker 3: An undrafted receiver from a teeny tiny school to actually rise that quickly up the depth chart. I'm actually trying to trade for him in everything every dynasty league. Jalen Cocher he is. And the funny thing is he even has a mentor like Adam Thielen, having such a having those four years in Minnesota where he could climb the depth chart slowly but surely as an undrafted receiver to get to that point.

02:19:59
Speaker 2: It's just there.

02:20:00
Speaker 3: There are There's gotta be every year a handful of players that had things broken differently in their life in the recruiting process to go to college whatever it is. Even cam Ward is an interesting case because cam Ward was just, by the grace of God able to end up where he is now. Because he was in a wishbone offense in high school and he had a zero recruiting rating. No colleges were interested in him at all because they never got to see his arm.

02:20:28
Speaker 2: Because he just happened to be at a team that.

02:20:30
Speaker 3: Was only running the wishbone, and it's just it's just we're about to have the NFL Draft. It's a week away, and there's gonna be a couple of guys that get drafted late and they what could have been had they been drafted in the second round. And then there's gonna be these guys that get drafted in the second round that are you know, we're five star prospects from the beginning, and they just think that they deserve to be there and they're just going to coast through. It kind of heartbreaking to see those guys squander it, whereas the guy in the sixth round or the guy that went undrafted would have given anything the types of opportunities in practice that that guy is getting, So all the more reason to like cheer for a guy like Jalen Cocher, but also he's still underrated. It's still we talked about, Hey, let's do a trade where I can trade down, I can trade out of the one to twelve, try to get Jalen Coker in that deal. That's the type of that's the type of move that I would make. And then you know, the guy just talked about from Maryland. Ty Felton, he is one of those guys where he's probably gonna go a little bit late. He's probably gonna end up on this bow Melton situation where he's for whatever reason, going to be behind Romeo Dobbs, and every time he gets an opportunity, he's efficient, and yet he's gonna be on a different team the next year. But you can be a coker if you.

02:21:55
Speaker 2: Land just right.

02:21:56
Speaker 3: But I mean, think about how important landing position is. I can't believe that still a debate where we have a we have Garrett Wilson getting one hundred and sixty targets a season and putting up like thirteen Fantasy points per game because he's competing for targets with Devonte Adams, with the slowest paced quarterback in the league. Yet landing spot really matters. And this wide receiver class, there's a lot of guys that I wouldn't touch, like Sabean Williams, he's not even a receiver. Yea, there is not a lot of depth here.

02:22:26
Speaker 2: The one guy.

02:22:29
Speaker 3: Is ty Felton and then Tory Horton. I think they're they're adjacent on the player profile or dynasty rankings, but these are two guys that are interesting. They have interesting ranges of outcomes. The best comp for Tory Horton, by the way, is Robbie chosen one Anderson, who also went undrafted. So you know, there, these are two guys that I like. But the only way I'm drafting them is if I have two or most likely three picks, and I can't just completely load up on running back. If I have one pick, let's say in the fourth round or the third round, I'm going running back every time. But if I have extra picks, I might dabble on, you know, a couple of these receivers, but typically my list is a little bit longer. I can really just Felton and Horton's all I got.

02:23:21
Speaker 1: All right, give me one bold take about the drafts happening next week before you head out.

02:23:26
Speaker 2: One one bold take. My bold prediction is that there is a shockingly few running backs get drafted in the third round. And this is very specific.

02:23:39
Speaker 3: Is specific, This is very specific, but I think that a lot of people are predicting a lot of these running backs to go either second round or third round. After the tear break from Caleb Johnson, I think there's a possibility that all these all these backs, including Scataboo Tootin, all these guys on down the list end up going fourth and fifth round, and the NFL does not like them as much as we the analytics crowd does that we love the forty times, we love these box stuffing profiles that they're giving us, But I think there's a lot more running backs in this class that the NFL believes are flawed. You don't hear a lot of NFL teams expressing the excitement about this running back class like you do in fantasy football. That gives me a little bit of pause. And my worry is that a lot of these running backs we like are gonna all fall into Day three. So that is that I'm gonna I'm gonna go ouad and say that's a bold prediction. I think day I think Day three is gonna be very exciting because we're all gonna be like in this state of shock that like more running backs didn't go on Day two, and then it's gonna be bang bang bang bang bang in the fourth round.

02:24:52
Speaker 2: Well, we've done it.

02:24:53
Speaker 1: This is officially the longest Late Round podcast or late round perspectives in history. You've you've done. I didn't expect to not be. I think I think we knew that going in. That's why I brought it up at the top. But I appreciate your time. It was great chatting, great breaking down this class with you, you know, and reminiscing a little bit. Let everyone know what you're up to, what they can see with Fast Draft and all that good stuff.

02:25:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, Fast Draft is the the app, the new best ball app that is accessible to everyone that plays fantasy football. Go to the app store, Google Play, get Fast Draft and use code podfather. You get a fifty dollars deposit match when you use code Podfather. And we're about to roll out a brand new rookie draft. The last rookie draft just filled because this thing is so damn popular. But we are going to be rolling out a rookie draft that's going to be happening during the draft. So whereas you know it's not easy to find best ball games in contests during the NFL Draft, we're gonna have multiple the Flex four game and we're gonna have this special Origins tournament, So stay tuned for that. Follow at Fast Draft app on social media to learn more. We spend all this time talking about rookies. You can take that knowledge and go make some money on Fast Draft.

02:26:07
Speaker 1: And I can be found on Twitter at let round QB all the stuff that I offer over on lateround dot com. Appreciate everyone for sticking around for this longer show. I hope you guys got something out of it. I'm sure that you did. Thanks again to Matt and thanks for tuning in.