Late-Round Perspectives: Josh Norris

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Speaker 1: Josh Norris is a football content lead at Underdog Fantasy who previously did work at NBC Sports Road to Work. He's the co host of The Underdog Football Show. He's a fellow JJ. He's got years of prospecting experience. Anyone's completely slayed the NFL COMBA. These are his Late Round perspectives. This episode is sponsored my Underdog Fantasy. I know a lot of you guys already play over there, but if you don't, you definitely have to check out their Best Ball drafts. You draft a team, which is honestly the best part of fantasy football, and then that's it. There's no trading, no waver wire, no lineupsetting. Your roster is optimized each week based on player performance. I'm gonna be doing a lot of content on best Ball this season, so make sure you're signed up and ready to draft for when that content drops. Just head to Underdog Fantasy dot com or download the Underdog Fantasy app. When you sign up, make sure you use promo code Late Round to get a deposit match up to one hundred dollars. That's promo code Late Round. Now back to the show, JJ.

00:01:11
Speaker 2: This is three years in the making.

00:01:12
Speaker 1: It really is really because we're now underdog bros together.

00:01:16
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, same shirt that we're wearing too.

00:01:18
Speaker 1: Look at we're matching and everything. Today I have my my I've become I've realized that I've become like not in the way that he is because he's brilliant or he was brilliant, But Steve Jobs, how he would just wear the same outfit every day. Maybe I should say, like Dug Funny, maybe that's probably the better, more appropriate comp for me. But I just wear a Dicky's tea every day. It's just my good. It's just an easy thing to just grab out of the closet and not have to think about what I look like. And I can just I know that it fits me. Okay, I feel good about it and then I move on.

00:01:47
Speaker 2: Question. Have you dabbled in the expensive T shirt market that is like targeted to dudes on Instagram now of like the forty plus dollar T shirt? I have not.

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Speaker 1: I'm very one day I think you will JJ Yeah, I mean maybe someday I'll grow up and be and be an actual adult. I just never. I don't know. I'm not someone who like really buys stuff often, like even even the upgrade of like a fifteen dollars Dicky's tea to like a Ford Like, it's not like that significant of a thing to like purchase, right, I've just never been like a like, like a big purchase for me is like a video game or something, got it?

00:02:24
Speaker 2: You know?

00:02:24
Speaker 1: You know I was like that my whole life. Do I saw you before you hopped on you were tweeting about Wave Race.

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Speaker 2: I saw that. Yeah, yeah, to Nate, Yeah yeah, I'm sure we all because we're all in the same era, you know, su where you actually had to go and pluck the ticket out of like the booth at Toys r Us and take it to the behind the checkouts, actually get the game, actually you pay for it, you know, or there's a line to even just try Pilot Wings or Mario sixty four or any of these you know. Yeah, class cases. I mean, if you can rewind yourself back to that moment, was there any greater place in the world than Toys r Us? And was there anything else that you would rather want in the world than to go on one of those Nickelodeon shows and win the prize of you get five minutes to pluck whatever you want of the toys r Us and fit it into your carts and that's what you got, and you got to walk out the.

00:03:17
Speaker 1: Door literally every twelve year old's dream. Yeah, everyone saw. And then I also like, I'm a very nostalgic person. I love like taking myself back, whether it's through music or whether it's through uh, you know, video what have you. And I I love thinking about going into a Toys r Us and knowing that you're gonna like purchase a game, right like you like that feeling of the anticipation of it. It's one of the most incredible feelings that anyone.

00:03:42
Speaker 2: And you're gonna read the manual and everything.

00:03:44
Speaker 1: Yeah right, right, you got you got the Nintendo power that you're gonna that you're gonna use with with the game that you end up going. What was your favorite? Is way Wave Race can't be your favorite? And no, no, no, no, no, no no no.

00:03:55
Speaker 2: Okay, I will add that I have a brother who's a year older than I am, and so I watched a lot of video games. So I was, you know, the IRL twitch streamer viewer because my brother would get a bunch of single player games and then I would end up watching. I mean I did gravitate to a lot of sports games, a lot of sports, but obviously sixty four you could try and fail and do all that stuff, and it was it was just an incredible era.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, sixty four. I mean you had you had like you could play Blitz, you could go play some Madden, you could there were some like Slugfest.

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Speaker 2: I mean I would I even remember, uh was it ten eighty the snowboarding game Sboard, Yeah with with I want to go back and listen to that soundtrack because I feel like I can still remember like Hakati Hayami versus whatever whatever. Yeah, and I could never do any of the tricks because I wasn't that advanced, right right, I even remember, God, now we are going deep down.

00:04:56
Speaker 1: No, this is great, this is great.

00:04:57
Speaker 2: I remember going to Circuit City at the time and they even had a little kiosk where you could play the Tony Hawk demo and that was on PlayStation. I didn't have PlayStation until later on when we sold like sixty and sixty four games and then got a PlayStation.

00:05:13
Speaker 1: All right, right, people don't know the struggle, yes.

00:05:17
Speaker 2: Right, And I just took from that the Tony Hawk demo disk and just would play that and not the actual full game, you know, but felt like it was just like the one hangar that you had that one thing and you, yeah, you did grinds on like the helicopter wing and then boom it went up and so on and so forth. Propeller. Man, the people will never know. They will just go on like Steam now and just download everything and it's on sale at all times. The people will not know the struggle, and the struggle is the best part of all of it, I know.

00:05:51
Speaker 1: And now I go to like Target with my daughter who's five and a half, and she now will like play with like a VR headset. I'm like, you don't even understand what the sixty four was like in the graphics that came with it, and we thought it was amazing back then.

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Speaker 2: I am not telling you how to be a parent, because I just am a dog owner at this point, a married dog owner, but just a dog owner at this point. And my brother has you know, I've got two nephews. Yeah, how what percentage of you if your child ever gets into video games, wants to force them to start with some of the classics and like have to beat those versus what they really want, which is the new and cool and end stuff.

00:06:32
Speaker 1: That's the path that I want my children to go down.

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Speaker 2: Right.

00:06:35
Speaker 1: So I have a daughter who's five and a half. I got a son who's a little over one. And my daughter is like, she'll play like Roadblocks and like the newer things that are like because her cousins play it and stuff like that. And I just I know that she's not gonna be a gamer gamer like, I know that she's not gonna be super super into that. But I'm holding out hope for my son that I can sit down play some Super Mario Brothers three, which to me was like the introduction for me to gaming, and then slowly get into like Sonic and then go into end sixty four a little bit and then let him kind of go see what he likes, you know, kind of go from there. But yeah, I mean, like I want to sit down and game with him for sure.

00:07:14
Speaker 2: To answer your in sixty four question from the beginning, I mean you and I were very in on the Perfect Dark Over GoldenEye.

00:07:21
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, yes, yes, I can talk podcast.

00:07:25
Speaker 2: Hopefully hopefully you can respect this correct opinion that JJ and I have in the minority. If you tried to pick up and physically play both games. You would prefer to play Perfect Dark then you would Golden Eye in twenty twenty four.

00:07:38
Speaker 1: Yes, it's literally the same game, but enhanced and better is Perfect Dark. Literally. Anyway, we have a show shoot, we've talked about fantasy football here in football in general. In this draft. I hope you saw in the show sheet, Josh that at the top I called you JJ because you are a fellow JJ. As much as you, you know, despise that. But I won't be calling you JJ Norris throughout this episode, but I'll I'll at least row that out there that you are a fellow JJ.

00:08:02
Speaker 2: Let's talk about JJ in this draft class. You know, I mean, JJ, Meeterer. It has to be reshuffled here.

00:08:07
Speaker 1: It is so confusing, so confusing for me to look at the late Round Fantasy Football discord and see people just saying, like referencing JJ constantly and things that they're talking about me, but they're just talking about obviously, like justin Jefferson was tough enough, and now it's this guy who's actually named JJ. But let's talk about prospecting a little bit. You started out at Rotal World NBC Sports. I actually remember this is something I've never told you before. I remember when you got that job and announced it on Twitter, and I was I had I It was about a year before I started doing stuff myself, right, so I was just a lurker at the time, And I remember having read some of your stuff and having followed you. I like remember sending you like a congratulatory tweet. So you're welcome for that tweet back in twenty was a twenty eleven, twenty twelve somewhere on that.

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Speaker 2: At some point we should try to find that tweet. I've done this with like Matt Harmon on Shows two and like, what was our first interaction together? I guarantee it was about Steve Smith, and so I'm sure we have a bunch along the way.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think mine was on a previous account, so fortunately no one can see how stupid I was, you know, fifteen years ago. But how did you get into all this? I mean, you've been doing this for a while. You were at NBC Sports for nine years, been an Underdog now for a few You just I think celebrated your third year correct with Underdog. How did you even get into the prospecting world coming out of the great University of.

00:09:30
Speaker 2: Elon, Yes, Elon University, same thing. Yeah right, So it honestly starts at Elon, And I'll try to be as brief about this as possible. I've always been obsessed with the NFL Draft, dating back to the days where it was just Saturday and Sunday, and we would even like in middle school and high school, you know, like there's that big field day that every school has, we called a Big Saturday at Charlotte Country Day School, and it would always fall in the NFL Draft, and I just remember having to leave that early to go see like Chris Winky drafted in the fourth round, or we when we got to high school, we would have lacrosse games on that day. And there was one time when I actually had a panic attack because I was missing the NFL Draft and had to like breathe into a brown paper bag because I was missing you know, the first rounds and the second rounds and all the type of stuff. Anyways, so just huge obsession with the NFL Draft. Get to Elon, going into junior to senior year, I would, you know, every single summer try to get an internship. I had one with Fox Sports Radio out in Los Angeles because I just applied to like this database, right, and you just put in your resume and cover letter, and you think you're never going to hear from anyone. That was just like cutting highlights. So like with opening Day today, you would it would be like the person at the top of the hour with like score updates, and then I would just be the person that cuts the oh and swings and home run three hundred feet deep right center. Blah blah bla. Anyways, that was my whole job for two months. Except Billy Devanny was the former general manager of the then Saint Louis Rams and he went to Elon. He was an Elon graduate and played football there. So like the week before school ended, everyone at the school got this email of hey, this alumni, this alum is opening up a scouting internship for training camp with the Saint Louis Rams to one Elon student and it was one of those moments JJ where you read it You're like, there is no one on this campus that is more qualified for this than me. You know, I had done like student media. That stuff's on YouTube if you all want to go watch it. I'm about forty pounds heavier and stuttering through my words and so bad. And I'd done radio for like four years on at Elon. That to me was like the huge advantage of of what Elon gives you is just on hand mistake learning, so then you're not as awful once you start. Anyways, it all kind of comes full circle there because spent training camp with the Saint Louis Rams. That was all the way back in Sam Bradford's rookie season. The wide receivers were Danny Amandola. Yeah, Marty Gilliard remember that name they had just drafted, right, Yeah.

00:12:15
Speaker 1: But because he crushed Pitt in the Big East Championship Cincinnati.

00:12:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, they had just drafted Marty Gilliard. He was awful from the start. Roger Staffold was there, Chris Long, James Larnida, so and so forth. Steve Spaganola was the head coach. So go through that training camp and then they invite me back for the twenty eleven NFL Draft, So I got to sit in the draft room with them for and that was the first year. It was three days. That was also the lockout year. That was the Cam Newton Draft. I mean, just a loaded draft class, right, We're all because there was no free agency ahead of the draft. Every team that needed a quarterback took a quarterback, so you got like the Christian Ponders, the Jake Locke or Jake Robbers, Blaine Gabbert, that group, right, And I learned a ton during that week. I've sheared some of my show. I won't go into all of it, but it was a really enlightening process. And obviously I wanted to con now little pin in that I had started talking to Evan Silva just through DMS prior to that, because Evan grew up in Saint Louis was a RAMS I think supporter at some point and was saying things about what they might or might not do, and I was just as college student who would respond to them being like, well, actually they think this way, Actually they're leading in this direction. And I've already told this story, so I'm not never going to get in trouble. But when I got to the RAMS draft, I go into their draft room with their board, and quickly, after twenty minutes of somewhat memorizing it, go and like sit the bathroom floor at the Earth City, Missouri RAMS complex and basically text Evan Silva what their draft board is so and by the way, that Rams team was not good. But like Brad Holmes, Lions general manager, was like their director of college scouting at the time, basically Ray Agnew his right hand man was also there, JG. Jonathan Gannon was just the team's combined scout and obviously now the Arizona Cardinals head coach. So like, I run into Brad Holmes at these NFL combined things and he's just he remembers, which is great, which is great. So yeah, I mean from there, did not get a job working with an NFL team. Who knows why, you know, but stay in contact with Evan, you know. And so I think that's why you might have seen some of my work at the time, because it was basically freelance. I just worked like the shrin Game and the Senior Bowl, and then I pitched them to turn their college football fantasy section into an NFL draft section and that worked out. And then the man there, Brett vander Mark, who was head of retal World at the time, saw my college reels, saw my on camera work and thought it was okay. Because at the time, NBC Sports was opening a new headquarters in Stanford, Connecticut, and they had we're going to have these digital studios and the digital host was ka Adams And so my first year or two I got to do digital video work and I was so freaking bad, so bad, but it got to work with k Adams with all of that stuff. And then it kind of grew from there and obviously morphed into more fantasy stuff and then caught up in the NFL Draft. But it's kind of been a whole process since then. But like, really just the stars aligning for those three or four years. I'm sure we all have stories like that, but it was it was really cool. It's really cool to look back on.

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Speaker 1: So you basically you got a job at NEBC Sports because you stole the Rams picked. So if you wouldn't have done that, maybe you would have gotten a job with a team and then you would have gone down a completely different career trajectory. Instead, you got stuck with Evan Silva for nine years.

00:16:15
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, basically the second round of that draft was wild because so Josh McDaniels was the offensive coordinator for the Rams during that time. Okay, yeah, and it was his first year there. He had just failed, I guess in Denver if I'm not mistaken and got that job. They had all these players up on the board, but Josh McDaniels was like, hey, guys, I need two tight ends. And so basically that morning the entire scouting staff was watching tape of remember DJ Williams. I think he was the tight end out of Arkansas, a smaller guy versus Lance Kendricks, and that was going to be his new Aaron her Namd as in Saint Louis, and the tall guy the gronk was gonna to be Michael Hoho Manawanui. And so his goal was to recreate Groc and Aaron Hernandez with Ho Ho Manawanui. And then they decide on Lance Kendricks. And by the way, Lance Kendricks was like fifteen or twelve spots down when they got up to the board in like the forties to make their next pick, and Billy Devana gets up there and says, like, guys were taking Lance Kendricks because Josh Brittain just basically walked in and just like folded his arms and didn't say a word wow. And so I mean, at that point it clicked for me, like, oh, when all these teams say that best player available, YadA YadA, No, absolutely not. The team also like needed running backs and that was the Daniel Thomas, mikela Shore, Kendall Hunter years, you know. And they also drafted two wide receivers. They drafted Austin Pattis because when he got up on the white board he knew like what every wide receiver was supposed to do, and they absolutely love that he stunk. And they drafted Greg Sallis as well. And basically them drafting Greg Salas meant that Danian Mandola was going to leave. And obviously dani Amandola went to have a better career than like both of those other guys. Anyways, long, long stuff, but there's so many conversations and so many stories and moments of that stuff that while it was just one NFL draft, I constantly look back on and be like, oh, this makes sense, this makes sense. Especially their late round process. Their late round process was like truly horrible, truly, Yeah, yeah, I'll stop there.

00:18:27
Speaker 1: Well, I'm sure that you walked away from that and you said, hey, if a front office just has a process, then they might be able to gain that edge, right, Like I always And what's really interesting is that I always talk about how like like my prospect model for instance, and I actually talked to Hayden about this last week on Twitter, but my prospect model when it comes to draft capital definitely gets more like the guys who get drafted in the first round and into the second round and into the third a little bit that draft capital wait gets it is heavier, if you will, than the late round. I mean, like the difference between a late fourth round pick in a mid sixth round pick is just not very significant. I think that just plays into sort of what you're saying here is that they're literally throwing darts. Yeah yeah, yeah.

00:19:10
Speaker 2: So when I got to the sixth seventh round, he basically just went around the room and like figured out which area scout had not had a guy drafted from.

00:19:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, like there is the area.

00:19:22
Speaker 2: And so they're like, hey, who do you want? Or like a position coach who was like, man, I need more players in my room, and they're like, Okay, who do you want? And that was it. That was the process, and so it kind of led me to when I got started working on the draft, figuring out, Okay, what would be a better late round process, right, And a lot of it entailed you know, athletic testing and finding the dudes who were great testers at certain positions where I think athletic testing really does matter, and then cross checking that with obviously the film and you know, like the Minnesota Vikings do a great job of that. And it's because I talked with one of their directors of analytics one time at a conference, and it's because again, their analytics department pools the best testers, the ten best at each position that are going to go in this certain range, and then basically that position coach picks his one or two favorites, and then that gives you know, the position coach a lot of motivation and excitement of oh week, this is my guy, like he's going to be my project, and so and so forth, and gives them some ownership of it too, while also the analytics staff having some ownership of that at the same time. So obviously Billa Deivanni really appreciate the time, but I think there's also a reason why maybe he has not been a second time triple manager.

00:20:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, right exactly. So you, like I said, you started in twenty twelve an NBC Sports full time full time right, But as it relates to so you've been in like the fantasy football space in that arena for a while. Obviously you're doing other scouting that's not necessarily as fantasy football driven. You know, you're looking at like d tackles and stuff which we don't care about like a ton. But as it relates to fantasy football, what have you seen over the last decade? What have you seen change the most? Whether it comes down to the way that fantasy managers manage their teams and look at this stuff, or whether it's how analysts like ourselves are looking at this stuff.

00:21:13
Speaker 2: Think it's a golden age of quality content. Number one. You know, growing up, I really wanted to be like you know, Milk Hyper, Todd McShay or those types. Right. I think in some ways there might be a younger generation of football content, people that want to be like Bill Barnwell or even like Billy Bean or Aaron Chats.

00:21:37
Speaker 1: You know.

00:21:38
Speaker 2: Of it's not just hey, watch the tape and this is all I see. There's also this whole new wave of information. I think that's a big part of it too, that is readily available to the public via PFF or nextion Stats or SIS or wherever. Right, and I do think that there is a different kind of thirst and hunger to utilize that information in many different ways and different visuals, you know. And so I still think at times, and especially what we hear from like you know, insiders or NFL coaches when they do speak, it can still be oh, it's stats versus film. And we even obviously have a show that's called that. But man, the where they meet in the middle, like to me, is where it gets so much fun. Yeah, and where all the answers do lie, you know, and where there is like debate but also an understanding of how many potential outcomes there can be. I think that really shows up in this wide receiver glass. I'm sure we're going to talk about it, but yeah, I mean just the quality of content plus Twitter on top of that to share it all, plus YouTube on top of that to share it all, to me is the big difference versus you having to be at ESPN or a television network to get your point across ten years ago.

00:22:56
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, it's a great point. I mean I wouldn't be prospecting probably if not for the data side, right Like it Just to me, it's always been a do what you know you can do and what you're good at, but be open minded to the things that other people do and that they're good at, right, And so like I always use this example, but like you know, with Harmon and in Reception Perception, and last year my models spinning out Jayden Reid as it's like, wow, no one's really talking about him right now, So I'm going to talk about him. And then I go, hey, Harmon, have you charted Jayden Reid? And then he goes and charge Jayden Reid and he's like, wow, he's really really good. When I get that, I mean, it's a little bit of confirmation bias. But whenever I get that from someone who's like going about this in a completely different way, why would I not feel more confident than in touting a guy like Jayden Reid? You know, Like I think that that side is just as important. It's just that we're approaching this as analysts the best way that we can individually while being open minded about what other people are generally saying. Let's look at this class. Let's start with the quarterback position. I do a lot less at quarterback than I do at running back and wide receiver, so I'm definitely curious on your thoughts, JJ McCarthy right now, fellow JJ, getting steamed up. He went from I feel like in like December, no one was really talking about him at all as even like a like they were saying maybe like a second rounder. But he's getting steamed up right now You're getting hearing reports about Washington potentially taking him at number two. You know, is there a legit shot that he goes second overall? Do you think? And then also do you think that you know number one?

00:24:27
Speaker 2: Is he good?

00:24:28
Speaker 1: You know, what was your general view on him there? But also do you think that he would or could end up being the QB two from a fantasy perspective behind Caleb Williams, assuming that Kayleb Williams would be the QB one.

00:24:42
Speaker 2: So a couple of notes here. One, I am like no longer in this draft sphere where I have like summer takes that then I get take locked on during the season. You know, I really do love to pick up on this stuff once the NFL combine hits, because I did feel like I used to get like takelock to be honest and give excuses this way or the other. And I just love and now that we have all this film to go back on and watch and obviously the stats are finished at that point. To me, it's easier to paint a clear picture in that way versus previously. It's just easier to do, especially when we have an athletic profile, like how often JJ do you watch someone and then think like, oh, he's super athletic, and then he tests like an average athlete and then like, you know, I saw this back in the kendall Right days where I was saying like, oh, he just had a bad start or the timing's off at the com Like, I'm not into that excuse making yes, exactly right. But to answer your question about JJ McCarthy, he was in an incredible situation. But what I've been able to do is go back and watch really the scenarios that were pure passing situations like third and five plus, third and seven plus, because you know that Michigan harball offense was very much hey, we're going to be super efficient. Were not efficient per se, but very successful running the football on first and second down and give us these, you know, winnable situations, and he arguably has the best like third and five plus tape out there on top of that, and I think it was maybe Dynasty Zultan or someone else. I'll send it to you. Maybe you can put in the show notes who had like this great, great Twitter thread about this yesterday of just some JJ McCarthy statistics. Underlying numbers, like only thirty eight percent of his attempts from the second half of the season, fourteen percent were in the fourth quarter. Average halftime lead was eleven points. You know, it's like all these situational things that you talk about that, oh, this is conducive to a really successful quarterback play. And so when things go poorly or he does go into a worse situation, how is he going to is he going to be able to like lift his teammates in those moments a lah like we talk about with Caleb Williams, or we talk about with Drake may Or we talk about Jade Daniels, who also had a fantastic situation. But where he differs from a lot of those guys is honestly, where the NFL is in terms of creating super explosive plays right now. It's that under center deep play action and attacking over the midle of the field. And I thought he did that at a really really successful level. And again this age conversation is even more prominent now than it ever has been before. And this really shows up to me when we talk about Drake May. But he's what twenty twenty one years old, and we're also having to compare him to guys who have played five or six years of college football, and so even the mental plus physical development of it all is something that I think now is more important but also more difficult to gauge. Whenever, Yeah, the.

00:27:44
Speaker 1: Age thing is incredibly important, I think for a lot of prospects across every position this season, at least in the fantasy positions because you know, we'll get to him in a second. But like a Romadunze, for instance, who played the full four years in college, but then he enters the NFL a little bit younger than some of the than a typical four year wide receiver would. But there's there's like the the thing that we always have to remember is that, like, you can't give a Jade and Daniels type the benefit of the doubt because he was a from a statistical perspective, because he was able to play those extra years, and then discount JJ McCarthy because we have no idea what would happen over the next two or three years of his collegiate career.

00:28:23
Speaker 2: Totally. That really pops up for me with Drake May because you can talk about him spring passes or being inaccurate here, or they are making some bad decisions, so and so forth. But like, if you just look at his first year as a starter, it's better than any Jade and Daniels season except for this past one that we saw, which is like fourth or fifth years of Sorry, same with bo Nick, same with Michael Pennox, you know, and so like just imagine in college football if he was able to play for three more years, and then you would have a different time to compare it to question for you because obviously COVID plus nil is allowing people to transfer be much older than before. How much previously had you factored in age into draft models, because I know in the dynasty community it's been a big thing breakout age for a very long time, or just age when entering the draft, and have you changed that? Have you been forced to change that? Really this year because I think it's this year is more pronounced than ever before.

00:29:19
Speaker 1: One hundred percent is if you look at the number of running backs, especially that are twenty four years old entering the other like there.

00:29:25
Speaker 2: Are from Purdue. Yeah, yeah, I like the guy from Purdue, but he's like twenty six, right right.

00:29:30
Speaker 1: Ray Davis is over twenty four. You have Dylan Lowby coming out of New Hampshire who's over twenty four, and like, we have like a handful of them. I can't remember the exact number. There's like six or seven of them since twenty eleven we had like nine in total, right right, And so you have to look at that and understand that we're in sort of a different era. Now do I think that it is going to continue down this path to this degree? I think that COVID had something to do with what we're seeing today in twenty twenty four, right. I do think NIL is going to have an impact to some degree then in twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six and so on. But I think the COVID effect is gonna be lessened, you know, as we go on, because it's gonna be We're gonna be like eight years removed at some point. So what I'll say is I actually, you know, breakout age for instance, I threw away breakout Age out of my model this past year because there's a lot of flaws. I think to it, it's really binary hate the binary nature of it where it's like this guy broke out, this guy didn't. And if the guy didn't, but he had, like, you know, a decent stat line he looked he's looked at it as the exact same as a guy who caught three passes, which to me just doesn't make any sense. So I created I created a breakout score for running backs and wide receivers which looks at different thresholds, and it looks at yards per team pass attempt for wide receivers and total yards per team play for running backs, and it just says, okay, you were this age when you hit this threshold. And there's a ton of different thresholds in it, right, So it's not just you know, did you hit what whether you use a twenty percent dominator or a thirty percent dominator, did you hit that mark yes or no? This is a much more like you know, gray area, non non binary way of sort of looking at breakouts. So from that standpoint, you know, I can look at a guy like Romadounze or someone or someone who played for four years and say, okay, well, well this is gonna properly wait when those good numbers really hit instead of just saying did he hit this one standard line during this season and then kind of go from there. We'll talk about him a little bit later. I think Xavier Leaguette is the most interesting of that fascinating. Yeah right, it's one of the craziest profiles I've ever seen. But he's like the perfect example of that. Where and I'll talk about it in a little bit, you know, once we get to wide receivers.

00:31:36
Speaker 2: I even remember this being like a conversation just a couple of years ago with like Chris Olave.

00:31:40
Speaker 1: Yes, it was ridiculous. But here's the thing, Josh. The problem and I've ranted about this on my show before. The problem with it is not so much that some of these metrics. It's not that these metrics don't get any signal.

00:31:51
Speaker 2: It's that it's just the binary nature of it.

00:31:53
Speaker 1: Yes, And it's when people actually go to utilize these metrics right like like they are out people are gonna be out there fading. They did fade Chris a Lave simply because he went to school that extra year where a Lave's best numbers didn't even come from that final season. It was irrelevant, like it didn't even matter to his overall profile. He had his own reasons to go back to school. And I think we're going to run into a similar situation with Romadunze to some degree here in twenty twenty four.

00:32:19
Speaker 2: And I there might be an added layer on top of that now because I remember back when I, you know, was working the NFL draft section of Rotal World, where if you transferred you had to set out a year, you know, And now with anil you like at an I Mitchell for example, like you can transfer play immediately and get paid to transfer in ways. And I don't know if that was his situation, but like now we it used to previously be basically one reason why a prospect transferred, and now and then plus he had to set out a year unless it was, you know, a graduate degree. But now you can transfer for whatever reason and get playing time on top of that out there on the field. And it's just to me even that process and then who know the how along you stay there or so on and so forth. I'm so glad you said that you've kind of changed how your model approaches this stuff, because I don't even have a good grasp of where college football is at at this moment exactly. And I don't know if I everyone, because I'm I honestly do not watch college football on Saturdays anymore. I just catch up through it from February and on. But it creates so many more fascinating situations. And how we kind of utilize the data and even just our eyes is to compare it across decades or previous draft classes or previous players. And because of that different story arc or career arc these guys are having in college football now that becomes even I think, more difficult to, like you said, be binary about it. Yeah.

00:33:51
Speaker 1: And the other problem that we're going to run into, I think, and this is not something that I've really like fixed or adjusted for in the model because I don't know how you necessarily, but when a guy transfers, I do think that we have to inject a little subjectivity when it comes to the analytics about that player getting acclimated to that new offense, right, Like, yeah, I don't think it's nothing. You know, when just think about, like yourself, if you were to transfer in college and go somewhere else, Like there's an adjustment period for you, Right, it'd be no different than what would happen for a college student going from a one program to the next. And so, you know, you look at someone like Keyan Coleman, you look at someone like Adnai Mitchell, and you're like, Okay, their numbers are definitely not totally there. But then you have to at least, like, you know, take a step back, not be just like this slave to these numbers, and take a step back and say, hey, I wonder if these numbers look the way that they do because these guys went through a pretty big life change.

00:34:45
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I think the other aspect is And again, I don't know how anile works at every single school, but maybe prospects coming out of high school are more likely to kind of go to these bigger programs, right, and then if it doesn't work out from a playing standpoint, or a coach leads or so and so forth, now they don't have to wait that extra season to transfer. They can just transfer out. And so like again, breakout age is easier to do at Kent State than it might be at Michigan State. Yeah, you know, and yes, then when you get to your final season, that's the one time you finally got in the field and then you produce after, you know, not having to have the penalty that people in the last decade previously did from making that first decision and then trying to transfer schools.

00:35:30
Speaker 1: Yep, that's why with breakout Score, I adjust for program too now, which I didn't do before when like breakout age doesn't adjust for program like like like sky Moore broke out because he played at Western Michigan as a freshman.

00:35:42
Speaker 2: Hey, night, I talk about this all the time.

00:35:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean you have to, like what I one of the biggest learnings for me was this this this offseason, while I was sort of adjusting the model and fixing things and coming up with breakout Score, was just the idea that, like, I think the biggest flaw with the numbers driven community and fans is that they look at all of these situations as totally apples to apples, you know, Like there's a reason that Javon Baker went from Alabama to UCF and he was able to finally have like monster seasons at UCF, where he wasn't able to do that at Alabama because Number one is Alabama. But also he's competing with Jamison Williams, Davonte Smith and these really good wide receivers, right, Like, it's fine to give that stuff context instead of just saying, oh, this guy broke out when he was eighteen, it's like, okay, well he played at freaking Dartmouth or something, you know, just some random collegiate school you could find great breakout scores for D three players. Constantly doesn't mean that they're gonna be good NFL players.

00:36:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you're so much better interpreting all this stuff than I am. I'm constantly learning with it and trying to incorporate it. But to me, it's almost, Hey, let's give praise to the people who did break out at eighteen, yes, exactly, not necessarily take it away from the people who took them to twenty one or twenty two years of age when they finally did get their opportunity and then they maximize it.

00:36:56
Speaker 1: Yes, And we'll get to the Lgette thing because that is easily so so well, we'll.

00:37:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think I have any answers on that one, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, But.

00:37:03
Speaker 1: I think it's really interesting because there's some really interesting data on it as well. Let's just wrap up the quarterback stuff with erail Us. No, it's it was a really good conversation. Uh, this is why I have Late Round Perspectives to begin with. I just want us to kind of just it's it's sort of I had Sigmund Bloom as the first guest of Late Round Perspectives three hours. Yeah, you know, it was just just the hour, but uh, you know it's like on the couch is sort of the vibe, right, It's just like, let's just hang out and just literally talk about anything that's on the top of our dome right now and just go from there. But let's just talk about Jaden Daniels. I do still have a show sheet. Uh. Jaden Daniels obviously has. I mean, speaking of long collegiate careers and the breakout coming late that's Jadeen Daniels, right, But then he also had two really really good wide receiver prospects on his team. But then on the other hand, and then he has this the big pressure to sack rate that everyone's been talking about this offseason is like the new big thing with quarterbacks. There's just a lot of stuff going mom with Jayden and Daniels. So I got to ask you, where are you at with him, and then where you're at with him, does that align with where you're at with him, like on a fantasy from a fantasy perspective.

00:38:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of this fantasy stuff really doesn't matter about team fit, you know, and where they go. Like if Drake May goes to the Patriots first the Minnesota Vikings, Like that situation is wildly different to me, you know, in terms of surrounding talent, in terms of offensive play caller, in terms of offensive line, so and so forth. So it's like the same player in both, but like, hey, things can be more effective and efficient with one versus the other. When it comes to Jade and Daniels, Yeah, the obviously the counting SATs are unbelievable, and he was in a great situation, but guess what he maximized it? Like that might be underselling it at some point. It was unbelievable. What thirty eight hundred passing yards, eleven hundred rushing yards, fifty total touchdowns and four interceptions. Not bad, yeah, but like the underlying metrics give you concern and maybe questions of hey, that's not as clean as the rawstats might point to, you know, You've talked about the pressure rate and how it's you know, above that twenty percent market even higher than that, and like most of the quarterbacks I think other than Joe Burrow at that point are kind of like failed or failing in that area. But it goes even beyond that. Nate Tyes had a great article on Yahoo about this. Fourteen point one percent scramble rate ranks third among one hundred and ninety six qualifying quarterbacks since twenty nineteen. So basically he's scrambling what fourteen percent of the time. Malik Willis is like the only other NFL prospect that's near him in that area. There are some more like seventeen percent of his throws beyond the line of scrimmage were over the mill of the field in the last two seasons. I really equate his LSU offense JJ to the Philadelphia Eagles when you had obviously Aj Brown DeVante Smith, and they can be interchangeable on sometimes we using the slot, but mostly outside water right and so hey, if it's single high stuff or especially in college where the hash marks are so wide that the field side has so much space that can kind of turn it into one on ones even if it is too high shell stuff that, Oh, I've got these two alphas on the outside and we can throw. I think league neighbors like sixty three percent or Brian Thomas sixty three percent of their targets last year where either goes or hitches. So it's just like everything on that plane, right, And because of that, you rarely had to do anything over the middle of the field. But then when his first read was not open, like how does he handle those pressure situations? And some of those scrambles are insane? Right, But just fifty point six percent of his pressure dropbacks resulted in a pass attempt that also ranked one hundred ninety third out of one hundred and ninety six, So it either equaled a sack or scramble on fifty percent of time that he was pressured. How often do you see that type of game at the NFL level? I think is the thing here? And so typically you want like those small, confined movements in a closing pocket to find like the little piece of space to hit that second or third read. And I don't know if I saw that enough to be as confident as some other people that he is like the locked in quarterback too. In this class.

00:41:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think the one thing from a game theory perspective. And interestingly, I did an episode earlier this week on sort of how quarterbacks appreciate in value from a dynasty perspective, and it's wild how well they appreciate in value.

00:41:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why I'm trying to trade for one of yours in our dynasty.

00:41:41
Speaker 1: Yes, that's true. Yeah I do. I do have like six starters in that league.

00:41:43
Speaker 2: Well you have more than that. You think you have like twelve quarterbacks in the rosteria last one for value, you are so much we need to tell the people about this. You are so invested in last year's quarterback class. You have all three of them. I do have all three of them. I do have throughout Antheyrinchon and Bryce Young. We can only start too. You also have brock Perty, you have all these other dudes, and it's just I think pinpointed at me. So I sell you the farm. I'll give you the farm in order to try to get one of these.

00:42:09
Speaker 1: It's coming, that's coming. Look, I took over a team, it was an orphan, took it over and I had to rebuild. So I'm just gobbling up as much value as possible. I had a ton of picks last year, and people were laughing very hard at the rookie draft because I had three like top six picks or something like that, and I'm just getting three all three of the quarterbacks last year. Yeah, but it's amazing how well they appreciated value. Like Bryce Young has an appreciated in value. He's more of the exception to the rule. But like Zach Wilson, from year one to year two, he actually saw an increase in startup ADP despite you know, not showing us much. Justin Fields, who I think from like a game theory perspective, like if you look at you know, obviously the mobility and stuff with Jayde Daniels and whatnot, But I think with Jane Daniels, like if he has a bad rookie season, it would probably be like a Justin Field's rookie season, right, like, like from like a production standpoint and sort of how things came together. Justin Fields saw a drop of nine spots in startup ADP from year one to year two. And so my thing is, yes, I agree, Like I think there's a lot of volatility to Jayden Daniel's profile overall. I talked about that on the show, But I think that what's interesting is that you can probably still confidently invest in him from a dynasty perspective just because chances are he's going to be starting wherever he goes, he's going to be a top five pick probably, And then if he starts, we know the mobility aspect's going to be there. We know he's probably gonna put up some fantasy points. If he puts up some fantasy points, then that stability from a value perspective is going to be their year over year. But then you get like a one year look to see, like, well, what if this does transfer? What if he does find the right coordinator that can unleash him and unlock him, because we've seen that happen in college, right, and so like it's sort of this like no downside situation unless he's just dreadfully terrible.

00:43:48
Speaker 2: But I think the the rush, he's actually not, Like he's super accurate right right, right, right, a motion over and over again. So like maybe some areas that could be fatal falls for someone else, to me, that's not the issue for him, that's for sure. Yeah what you're saying.

00:44:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I think that there's It's one of those things where just it's important to sort of separate the difference between you know, a Drake may or JJ McCarthy potentially being a better real quarterback and then understanding that maybe after year one you just reevaluate and you maybe force yourself out of a situation with if you have Jayden Daniels on your roster, but or you can just ride it and see what happens.

00:44:24
Speaker 2: Just a couple more notes about his game. I got to break down one of his games start to finish with Colt McCoy, and like one thing that we noticed was like there was a third and eight. He takes off for a nine yard run, so it's a first down, so it's a positive play. But the exact same time he chooses to take off, there's like this twenty yard in cutting route that he kind of turns down instead that could have gone for thirty two or thirty five. So again it's a positive play, but it's not like the best result. I will say, in that same game, a very similar concept he does sit in there and hit that dig cut does hit that in cutting route. There were similar things said about Anthony Richardson last year where like in the same game you could see him learning on the fly, missing a read in the second quarter, but hitting it at the end of the third. I will say, Anthony Richardson had basically played like nine games and Jane Daniels is in his like fourth or you know what nine you're playing. Yeah, so you know, there was a bit of a difference in terms of how many opportunities and reps they had at the thing. I don't know, man, I'm I'd be curious what the comment you just made about changing in startup ADP where it is with Anthony Richardson, because in some ways everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong last year, where like he gets knocked out of two or three games, missus the entire season. But man, I'm obsessed with Anthony Richsons. I think he's going to be a star.

00:45:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, yeah, right, I mean, and his value hasn't changed, if anything, I think it's increased, right, And so it's just one of those things where like we know that quarterbacks have a lot of value in super flex Lea's just naturally and so you know, I think the reason that I that the two reasons that I came up with as to why this fascination exists and this thing exists is because number one teams that invest in quarterbacks is we're talking about hiring quarterbacks only, like we're not going to talk about this with like an aid and O'Connell or something like that. And so you know the teams. Teams are going to invest in these guys, and when they invest in these guys, they're not going to give up on them after one year. They do do that at times with some wide receivers or maybe maybe running back not so much, but we've seen it with wide receivers, and wide receivers have to win on their own and more independently than what a running back would have to. So it's it's this investment, but it's also just the demand right from a from a from a fantasy manager standpoint, They're like, man, I got to get a starting quarterback who has upside because who knows what's going to happen. And so I think it's more so like really figuring out what happens after year one with these guys, because I do think they're relatively safe investments at least, you know, entering year one.

00:46:59
Speaker 2: You know, I did this in another Dynasty League and it's only single quarterback, but as fourteen teams where for like multiple years, I took the quarterback that draft Twitter hated because he kept following over in overgen And so I have like Justin Herbert, I have Daniel jo Josh Allen. Yeah, you know, I've got guys because guess what quarterback evaluation is difficult, you know exactly. We stink at it, NFL stinks at it. You know, it's just the name of the game. There's so many factors that go into it. So I'm totally with you that the investment that spot unless they are I mean the point about Zach Wilson and how it barely changed.

00:47:38
Speaker 1: Like that is Kenny Pickett's barely changed.

00:47:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that that is the biggest tell of it all because those guys stink big.

00:47:45
Speaker 1: Yeah. And look, Bryce Young is still a fifth sixth round startup pick, like he's not. It's not like he like completely lost all value. And I think that you know, there are reasons to still maybe invest if you're into like the new coaching staff there and staid, but well, we won't go into that.

00:47:58
Speaker 2: I'll tryge you a second round pick for Bryce there we go, well.

00:48:00
Speaker 1: Here, we're gonna we're gonna do a deal live on air. Let's move on to wide receiver. Audience would love that, Actually they probably would. Let's move on to wide receiver. I'm just gonna ask you the question that everyone would probably ask. We have Marvin Harrison Junior, we have Molik Neighbors as probably the consensus top two in general. But Roma Dunza is lurking, he's there, and Matt Harmon drops reception perception this past week where a Dunza has only green on his chart, he's looking like an unbelievable route runner with Harmon's process. And I think that, honestly, I mean, I think that Harmon really got a lot of people riled up slash excited about a Donsay, so how are you viewing the three of them? Do you have a clear one two three? Do you think that they are in one tier all together? Or do you think that it is Harrison Neighbors and then a Dounsay.

00:48:51
Speaker 2: And any given year, any of these dudes could have been the number one ranked wide receiver. And we could look to last year's class, you know, and any of these guys would have been five top ten pick easily right. So in some ways it's the luck of the draw of which draft class you are in, you know, in comparison to being wide receiver three or wide receiver one, so and so forth, I mean all three kind of play the game differently. I would say, like Marvin Harrison Junior and Romadoonsy might play it the most similarly compared to Molik Neighbors. What's fascinating and like, I'm sure you've seen this, the continuous buzz from Daniel Jeremiah or Dane Brugler or Lance Zerline and now we're getting shifter and so and so forth, mentioning like, oh, Malik Neighbors could be multiple teams wide receivers ones. I mean, I totally could buy it, you know. I think we see a small microcosm of this in terms of fantasy football. When you fall in love with certain traits or certain aspects of a profile, I will say, there are multiple different ways of creating fifteen plus yard gains explosive place in the NFL. And while the super flashy yards after catch pulling away from people's stuff is awesome, it really is, And Molik Neighbors is awesome. So is route running being pinned along the sideline, creating a sliver of separation going up and getting it. Because like over the last two years, I think Marvin Harrison Junior has sixty eight games of fifteen plus yards and Moleague Neighbors has sixty six. You know, so like their neck and neck in terms of those effective plays, both their games translate. It kind of just depends on which one you like. And on top of it, Ramo Dunesday is a freaking awesome prospect, Like how often do we like, take, for example, Gabe Davis just got the bag in NFL for agency, right, How frustrating is it to watch and invest in Gabriel Davis on an annual basis, on a weekly basis, even figuring him into your lineup? You know, And I think you and I have learned over the last few years he's basically been the same exact player throughout that it's just us interpreting it correctly. Yes, But the reason he got the bag is because he's an outside X wide receiver that you just line up on the line of scrimmage and ask him to do the dirty work down the field. That's the role that Roma Dunsday is going to do. He's just exponentially better at it. So you know, when he does get contact man, his second or third movements to create that sliver space and create that separation is just leaps and bounds ahead of someone like Gabriel Davis. So again, they might do different things and play different roles, and one be put in fly ands, you know, jet motions like Molik Neighbors and work over the millfield or be pinned along the sideline, but all three are are just stellar sellar prospects. That's a cop out, like I'm just trying to put it in my brain.

00:51:44
Speaker 1: No, I think it's totally fair. I mean I I have I have it ranked Harrison Neighbors, and then I do have a tear drop to a doonsay, only because the way that the model is seeing things right now, right.

00:51:54
Speaker 2: And just quickly on that, I would put the three together at the top, but own because I think the next wide receiver is that steep.

00:52:03
Speaker 1: Yeah I agree with that. Yeah after that, yeah, yeah, I definitely can can understand that for sure. You know the Marvin Harrison thing. You know, so technically Malik Neighbors looks very very slightly better in the mod like he is a ninety nine point five score. Marvin Harrison is a ninety nine point three score. Okay, pre draft and I ranked Harrison above Neighbors, And people are like, why are you doing that? And the reason I did is because we've seen Marvin Harrison now in multiple offenses with multiple quarterbacks. Just ball out right. The Neighbors thing was last year Neighbors twenty twenty three is better than I think any other wide receiver season in this class. But I do think that, at least analytically, But I do think that, you know, there's a lot more safety in a guy like Harrison, just because we've seen the change of scenery, the change of circumstance, and we can feel a little bit more confident, you know, in that as a result.

00:52:50
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I love that interpretation of the numbers, Like you're not just sticking to exactly what the numbers tell you, Yeah, Like you are obviously interpreting and trying to put it into the context of different systems, different quarterbacks. Like going from CJ. Stroud to is it comic Cord? Is that his name?

00:53:05
Speaker 1: Yeah?

00:53:05
Speaker 2: Yeah? Like huge difference, huge difference, you know, Like his quarterback didn't win the Heisman this year. His quarterback is not going to be a top five selection. So yeah, I mean putting context to what what the model spits out is is the name of the game.

00:53:18
Speaker 1: Right, I just I tell people all the time, I use it as a guide. So I'm not doing anything stupid, you know, because it's really easy.

00:53:23
Speaker 2: Oh we still do stupid stuff despite that.

00:53:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, of course I'm still going to do some stupid things. And it's it's really mostly I think, you know, with the model stuff, it's really mostly like spotting some late round guys and spotting values and stuff because, like I said, Draft capital is going to get more weight early on. I'm not going to stray away that that dramatic. There's some guys that I probably will, but you know, it's not going to be this like you're looking at my rankings versus Draft Capital of the first like round and a half and you're like, wow, these are totally different. No, there's going to be a pretty strong alignment. Where things really need to differ is when you get into the later rounds because that's where things differ with the NFL in the way that they're approaching these guys.

00:54:00
Speaker 2: How much then does situation they landed in matter with that, because like draft capital, like what we saw last year, three wide receivers going back to back to back their draft capitals all the same, you know, right, And like, at what point does the situation they went into, the reliance of needing this type, the coaching staff, how good the team is factor into that as well.

00:54:22
Speaker 1: Not as much as it used to for me, because I've just experienced what I've experienced in players falling to the right spots and us being a little bit arrogant in the way that we think that they fit, and then teams kind of seeing them in a completely different light and using them a completely different way, you know, whether it's like guys who played ninety percent slot in college and then their perimeter receivers or what have you. You know, So there's some of that going on. I think it matters though, Like I think that the landing spot thing is number one, really difficult to quantify, and so it's not something that I input into the model. But also you know, the landing spot stuff. Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, you are evaluating talent first and foremost, and talent is going to create that opportunity. And so if I have a tiebreaker, you know if it is you know, you mentioned the guys last year going back to back to back. If I had my updated model from last year this year would have been easily I would have been easily able to rank. It would have gone JSN, would have gone addison' z and then Quentin Johnson looks horrible and this new iteration, right, So it would have been probably pretty easy. Because I also think that landing spot plays a role there in JSN. It just likes it, just like JSN like it was probably a miss. Just liked him, right, But yeah, I mean, like, I think it's fine to use it as some sort of tie breaker. The thing that we have to remember is that like how a player gets off to the start of his career is very very important to his overall value, right, And so if he isn't a spot where we know that he has an opportunity to immediately produce and then you can reevaluate how that player is and how his fit is in the offense and stuff like that after year one, that's still a win for you. Damian Pierce is a great example of that. Damian Pierce falls to a completely open backfield. Yeah, completely open backfield in Houston, and obviously what happened last year happened with this completely new scheme, which you know, I think that no one saw that coming to that degree, I don't think. But at the same time, you know, there you can look back and be like, oh, yeah, okay, there are some signs that this might have gone down the way that it went down. But regardless, people were drafting Damian Pierce. Yeah, he was a decent prospect, but people were drafting him mostly or partially at least because he fell to a backfield in Houston where he was the dude, like he was going to be potentially the guy. There's not a lot of competition and so you could hypothetically have flipped that, you know, after year one. So I do think that you should still pay attention to landing spot. It's still definitely should be a factor.

00:56:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, I kind of wonder if wide receiver landing spot is more important than running back landing spot because like the quarterback are attached to But obviously quarterback things can change.

00:57:03
Speaker 1: Like Drake London, but like but yeah, like Drake, but Drake Lennon is a great example right where where if they didn't make the investment in Kirk Cousins. I think you and I would sit sit here and say, Drake London is probably like a top fifteen at least talent at wide receiver in the league right now, Like he's he's up there and so yeah and so like like you know, we're we're sitting here and we're like, just give him a good quarterback. But that also could have just tanked his dynasty value and we could do nothing about it. You know, I I get in like it goes both ways. Like I get in trouble sometimes for Weianghg landing spot too much, whether it's redraft or dynasty, and then I get in trouble, like last year I was drafting Drake London in redraft because I'm like he's good, you know, Like I'm like, he's I just think he's a good player, and I want to invest in good players. I think I generally lean that way more, you know, when the when the models saying something, when my eyes are saying something, when other people are saying stuff, I'll lean that way more. But you know, I think landing spot match like Devon a Chan is not Devon a Chan outside of Miami Pooku Akua is not pookin Akua outside of latally, and we gotta be okay with that, Like, we got to be cool with that because I do think that it does matter.

00:58:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just quickly. Yeah, this is what makes us all so fun because if there was an answer for all of us to follow the same exact checklist, then this game would be boring, you know, So figuring out what matters when with who like that is the entire name of the game and why no one's going to get one hundred percent correct or eighty percent correct or you know, seventy five percent correct.

00:58:28
Speaker 1: I think that it's it's maybe I'll put it this way. I think the landing spot stuff is when there's like a very glaringly obvious good or bad fit, right like like like devon Chan, Like pre draft, I was like, okay, I don't know for sure, Like he's smaller, like you know, there's all these this data that suggests that this Like he was Okay, he was because his production profile was like out of control in college, so like it was it's not like the model didn't like him, but uh, you know, the size thing was a question mark. But then he got drafted by Miami and even in my prospect guy last year, I'm like, yes, like go like draft him. You know, like this is this is quite literally the best landing spot for a player like Devon a Chan right, And so I do think that you can go that hard in that direction when you know the landing spot is that good as opposed to you know, I think it's kind of lazy to just say, oh, this wide receiver has Patrick Mahomes, therefore a draft him, right, you know. I think there needs to be a good scheme fit.

00:59:19
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I think coaching obviously, like you talked about the McDaniel makes sense, Like with Andy Reid for example, Rashi Rice literally ran or had like five big boy targets. Yeah, you know, like like literally that that is it. That is not an exaggeration. And still he's being put in a where he wins scenario and it's totally working out for him. Final question on this, For years years, I've gone back and watched every single post draft press conference of all these NFL teams after the NFL Draft. Do you think that that is pointless? No?

00:59:52
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I don't think it's totally pointless. I mean, I don't have any sort of process or have tested anything related to right, But I think if you are able to consume information and not be weighed and swayed so dramatically by that single piece of information, you know, I do think that it the information can be helpful, right.

01:00:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just a matter of like I think, almost inevitably, it's gonna help and it's gonna hurt, And it's like help in certain ways and then hurt with others. Like you'll, like last year picked up that the bills want to be eleven and a half personnel, you know, and then all this stuff gets recycled, and so yeah, they ran that a ton early on, but then it was super unsuccessful, you know, so like you can be right in the usage but then wrong with how it turns into you know, or the production that comes from it.

01:00:44
Speaker 1: Right, But the question would be for me, was it logical?

01:00:47
Speaker 2: Right?

01:00:47
Speaker 1: Is it logical to think the way that you're thinking about that thing? And if it is, then sure, right, But if it's not, Like if you're talking about you know, a running back that's gonna be catching a lot of passes or something, or like the team steaming them up for that, but like the math doesn't really work out that way or like I think right now, like Josh Jacobs is a really interesting example of that with yeah with Green Bay, where they're gonna come out and say, oh, he's a bell cow, he's gonna catch a ton of passes, YadA, YadA, YadA. I think he's capable of catching a lot of passes. But at the same time, if you look at Matt Laflour's history dating back to even Tennessee where he was splitting a backfield with Dion Lewis and Derek freaking Henry and how they used Aaron Jones throughout his time there. Who Aaron Jones to me is the superior pass catcher compared to Josh Jacobs, And it's like, why would we necessarily logically make that connection. I think that Josh Jacobs would be so dramatically better than what Aaron Jones was, right, So, like, I think it's just that like matching it all up. Whereas if they're like, yeah, Devon a Chan's going to Miami, he's gonna play in this zone zone scheme, like yeah, like let's go you know, like this, like he's going to destroy there. So I think it's just a matter of how logical you know you can approach those those topics.

01:01:51
Speaker 2: Thank you for indulging my tangents.

01:01:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, dude, this is this is great.

01:01:56
Speaker 2: All right.

01:01:56
Speaker 1: We got to talk about a little bit more of these wide receivers. You mentioned that after a doone's say, there was a gap you saw from a tier perspective. Is Brian Thomas your wide receiver four? Uh?

01:02:07
Speaker 2: Is?

01:02:08
Speaker 1: What are your issues with him as to why he would because it sounds like he's pretty firmly the wide receiver four from like a projected draft capital standpoint, right like if you look at NFL mock draft database right now, like he's firmly in the top twenty at this point, and so you know, he's very He's a really weird vow for me because his numbers look really good in the model. But he was very, very difficult to find matches for from a from a comp standpoint, and that scares me a little bit. Like his top comp was actually Quentin Johnston, which is frightening.

01:02:40
Speaker 2: Perrman pop up in any.

01:02:42
Speaker 1: No, but Brashot Perryman did pop up for Keon Coleman, got it.

01:02:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think Brian Thomas like one potential outcome could be.

01:02:51
Speaker 1: I think there's a high high range of outcomes for Brian Thomas. Yes, yeah, So what what are you seeing with him? Like, what do you see with his game?

01:02:57
Speaker 2: Yeah? I really struggle. Hayden is like all in, we're gonna record. Actually, so right now on the Underdog NFL Draft channel, we are going through and doing like nine to fifteen minute prospect profiles and like all these guys and hey and I never share notes ahead of time frequently, as you know, frequently we come to the same conclusions beforehand. Yeah, because we somewhat look at like we do shows like seven times a week together, like we we kind of consume the same tape and the same you know, statistical information. Anyways, I can tell he loves Brian Thomas Junior. I never want to throw a six foot two hundred pounds six foot three, two hundred pound freak athlete wide receiver in the garbage, you know, sure, But I think like a lot of development needs to happen with him to be like more than a hitch or go ball like Bryant type exactly right, Like I think the Brashad Perriman to Martavis Bryant spectrum like is where he's at right now. But hey, what if he's one of these dudes that as he gets older in the next one, two or three years, like gets in the lab or is next to like a stuff on Diggs and he's like, hey man, this is how I study corners. This is how I learned to have no wasted fat on my routes and create separation over the middle field. Again, this entire Jade Daniel's conversation that we had earlier kind of applies to Brian Thomas in a way, because hey, we don't have multiple breaking routes. We don't have him against press coverage having to displace a corner back and then work over the middle of the field. You know. Yeah, he's so good at these downfield bucket catches and and tracking the ball in that manner. But like after the catch, I don't know what the numbers say exactly, but to me, he went down easily. There are a couple occasions obviously when he breaks that or takes almost a step back and then turns the corner and out runs everyone. So the like his averages might be super high, but I kind of wonder if we look at his yards ever catch numbers if a few of them would be like twenty five, thirty five, forty five and like big numbers, and then everyone other one would be like one two one two three one one one yards. Yeah, yeah, it would not shock me based on his production profile last year and just speed speed, speed, which was very difficult to come by in fegency this offseason. If he is a you know, top fifteen pick, I think that is in the potential range of outcomes here. But again, his individual development on like the more nuances of the game would take him from being like a really good downfield play making role player into a legit two wide receiver. Hey, this guy's gonna uh take advantage of isolated coverage beyond just nine rounds.

01:05:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's scary, man. I uh, I definitely like my model really really likes Brian Thomas, But I more subjectively am like, Okay, yeah, he's younger, you know, as a decent breakout scorer, and he played alongside Malik Neighbors. All that stuff is great. But then you know, you just dig in a little bit more and you can kind of see just general issues with his profile and the contested catch rate type stuff and just the the fact that we're drafting him seemingly on ceiling. Scares me a little bit. And I had this discussion with Pat Krane on his podcast last week or two weeks ago, and I think that and I think Pat might have brought it up, So I don't want to take credit for it, but I think we get the floor ceiling idea wrong a lot of times in fantasy football, And when we're making rookie draft picks, we're gonna say, oh, I'm gonna take Brian Thomas because he has such a great ceiling, whereas you know, you might look at Ladd McConkey and be like, you know, mconkie has a great floor, but maybe the ceiling isn't there right. But I do think that there are times, many, many times where we just get the ceiling evaluation completely wrong, and maybe we should just be drafting for floor, right, Like, like, what's to say that Ladd mcconkeye in X offense can't be more productive than Brian Tomas an X offense, right, I don't. I mean look at like Cooper cup or something. You know, these situations of these like sort of slot can probably plan the outside kind of hybrid players going like a Keenan Allen or even where if they're in the right spot position. Obviously, you know a guy like Keenan Allen's and Cooper Cup, they're elite at what they do. But I think in general we probably get this arc type of ceiling wrong, where we assume the ceiling in fantasy football, the ceiling player is the prototypical X is the prototypical size guy who can get down the field. But I don't know if that's especially in today's game, right, especially in today's game.

01:07:36
Speaker 2: So I think maybe another way to frame it and tell me if I'm taking your words or misconsruing them here, I think if Brian Thomas stays who he is right now, he will be a high variance type, you know, and maybe the ceiling comes in where that variance becomes consistency of targets and opportunities that aren't just you know, Jalen Hyatt esq routes, which obviously some weeks, especially in Bestball Fantastic right, but like on a managed week to week basis, can be somewhat frustrating. But like even we go through a period of time where like Christian Watson, for example, had that stretch of hitting hitting, hitting, but then we again, it's still this high variance nature of it. Just one final point on your thoughts about ceiling and floor, I think that can be converted into quarterback evaluations too, where like Anthony Richardson last year, for example, his ceiling was viewed as high because of his rushing ability. To me, we should almost have viewed that as the floor that we're getting. And then the ceiling is the game slowing down from the passing standpoint, right, And so he brings this insane skill set as a runner already as a floor. I thought that he was undervalued in terms of his pocket management feel for pressure. His pressure sack rate was unreal and I don't think people still will appreciate that. Yeah, But then just you know, the reps that he would get in an actual legitimate NFL offense then just makes that ceiling even higher with the passing numbers that come on top.

01:09:13
Speaker 1: Of Yeah, And that's how it is in fantasy football too. People think of rushing mobility as a ceiling for fantasy quarterbacks. Really that's the floor, and then what really creates the ceiling is when they're good passers too, is when you get that combination. Really quick, let's talk about the the Texas wide receivers. You have Adni Mitchell, Xavier Worthy. Adni Mitchell analytically does not look great. Xavier Worthy analytically looks great. And I'm not even talking about his forty time. Where are you at with these guys?

01:09:38
Speaker 2: So why does Adani Mitchell's statistical profile out look great? I'll throw it one because it kind of goes back to exactly what we're talking about earlier. I think it was a three star recruit coming out of high school. He goes to Georgia, a national championship team his freshman year, and if you want to use the term earns, he earns fifty two targets on that team that has Brock Bowers, Lad mcconkeye, James Cook, Jermaine Burton, Darnell Washington. That's the second most on that team, right in the College Football playoff that season. In the next year, which by the way, he missed the entire year because of a high ankle sprain, comes back just ahead. I think it was like the Alabama contest, They like force feed him the football in those situations. I mean to me, that is actually statistically, while the efficiency was not there, but statistically really impressive for a dude to do that his true freshman season.

01:10:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say that the reason his analytical profile looks weak is because, I mean, obviously you can look at things like yards per out run or because yards per out run numbers really I think actually the worst in the class. His best season, yards per out run, yards per team pass attempt really really low. And but the reason I think that, you know, the greater point is that the consistency just hasn't been there. But that's also partially you know, like we talked about earlier, the transfer right goes to Texas from Georgia. And also he's an early declary. He only played three years in college, and so I do. And so like there's these other non production factors of the models looking at like teammates score. He obviously gets a really nice boost there, and he's an early declared. He does get a slight it's not nearly as big as probably other models, but like there's stuff like that where it's getting factored in. This is the problem, though, that I have, And I'm not saying that I'm going to be higher lower than consensus on Mitchell. I do want to see how the draft kind of unfolds because he's just one of those players where I really want to see draft capital a lot, but right now he's getting first round love. Okay, Yeah, he has a forty two ish breakout score, which is out of one hundred, so it's, you know, a below average breakout score. I'll just read the wide receivers who are drafted in round one since twenty eleven who had a breakout score below sixty, so this is well below higher. Yeah, right, right, he's well below this number. Cordero Patterson, Tevon Austin, Kelvin, Benjamin, Kevin White, Philip Dorsett, Josh Dockson, Henry Ruggs, Jalen Rager, Kadarius Tony.

01:12:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's it.

01:12:06
Speaker 1: There just hasn't been a hit from this profile. Right. I'm not saying that there's a campat.

01:12:10
Speaker 2: Is that is production that actually happened versus the opportunity of getting the fifty two correct correct.

01:12:18
Speaker 1: It's it's the actual what did he end up doing. It's it's really based on I mean, it's based on yards per team pass attempt, right, and it's it's number one, it's pro rated for games played, and then it's also adjusted for program that he played at. So technically his Georgia numbers are getting boosted way more than you know, any almost any other program. And then even Texas gets you know, it's fine. It's not like a negative weight or anything like that. And so my thing with Mitchell is more so you know, I sort of approach scouting with numbers by this prospect is perfect, right now, let me find the red flags. Let me let me drill into this guy and just see where things are wrong. And you can look at Marvin Harrison Junior and league neighbors and Romadunze and you can find some things, but not many.

01:13:00
Speaker 2: Clearing are you kind of doing the opposite here?

01:13:03
Speaker 1: And while I'm looking at Ady Mitchell so.

01:13:04
Speaker 2: Like that, the model spits him out as not great. But then you're looking for positives.

01:13:08
Speaker 1: In a way, in a way I am, I am trying to find the silver lining with a lot of this stuff with ad Mitchell, Yes, and I think I think there are things like don't get me wrong, like like again, there's a chance. So I have this thing called Draft Capital Delta, which compares a player's prospect score to where he was drafted, and it finds the difference who's overrated and underrated, and it does that by sort of attributing a low risk, high risk or neutral risk to his profile.

01:13:33
Speaker 2: This tag.

01:13:34
Speaker 1: Right, there's a chance he's even a neutral wide receiver despite all of these things, because he had, you know, he only played for three years in college, his h you know, he had the teammate stuff going on in his favor. And maybe he doesn't get drafted obviously if his if his draft capital is lower than what's expected right now, there's a better chance that he would then be a neutral type play, wouldn't be a high risk type player because the higher you go, the higher the expectation. And so oh, I just think there's a lot of red flags with Mitchell right now. And I I let me ask you this, do you think that that Mitchell would be even close to this kind of draft capital projection if not for the combine? I say close. Like, let's see, let's say he goes twenty fifth overall. I don't even know who's drafted twenty fifth overall. Let's say he goes twenty fifth overall, but he would have gone like do you like like fortieth overall? Pre comp like do you do you do you think that it's because the combine that he would be a first round picker. Do you think that people would have gotten here regardless?

01:14:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't. I am not the right person to answer that question because I literally had no opinion of him. I actually yeah, But like you know, big and fast win a six to two, two hundred and five pound guy has a nine eight percent top road jump and nine percent vertical jump, ninety four percent inel vertical, seventy six percent til ten yard not bad? Right bad? And again I go back to like that was a national championship Georgia team that was awesome on defense. Now, what I was trying to do on the second screen was find like screens, you know, because I think screens are kind of the easy button in college football for production. Like we see that was Savior Worthy, you know, yes, And I'm assuming since in my brain and you can correct me, since Xavier Worthy had a bunch of those, I'm sure Ad and I Mitchell like did not like that was not a big part of his game. And then there's from like a pure film watching standpoint, there's even questions that aren't covered in what you're talking about now, where there are moments where he like shuts down to seventy percent on his routes. He's even admitted to this, saying that the reason I don't go full speed on all of them is because I want to run routes for the entire drive. I'm sure the Kansas City chiefs loved hearing that, with all the Kadarius Tony stuff and so so forth and so on. But man, the body can and this is like such a scouting jargon thing, but the body control that he does play with and to adjust to passes is tantalizing, and it's just like it's uncommon. It is honestly Ceedee Lamb esque. When you think of off frame throw my back, shoulder, go up and get it, or outstretched hands like my body's moving this way, I'm going to change it to this way and pluck this ball out of the air. With that said, obviously, Ceedee Lamb had an amazing yards after catch profile at Oklahoma. I think Adni Mitchell's yards after catch numbers are pitiful in comparison, so there are tons of flaws there. I just do not see many prospects moving in the way that he does, and I am always going to gravitate to that with the understanding of, hey, if he fails, it's for all these reasons that JJ spoke about in this hour and fifteen minute show, or that Hayden's going to throw in my face and so on and so forth. But I am lucky that that is basically only impacting my Dynasty fantasy teams and opinions that I put out there on podcasts, and not an NFL roster.

01:17:10
Speaker 1: Right right, right, exactly exactly. So do you have Mitchell ahead of Worthy?

01:17:15
Speaker 2: Like?

01:17:15
Speaker 1: Do you like him more than Worthy as a prospect? Are there?

01:17:17
Speaker 2: I think I'm gonna have an I Mitchell as my wide receiver for Are.

01:17:21
Speaker 1: You ahead of Brian Thomas? And wow, look at you man, So do you have any any size concerns with Worthy?

01:17:29
Speaker 2: I honestly have not fully watched saver Worthy? Okay, okay, And I know that his production profile was fascinating in comparison it's crazy to his size. Yeah, but yeah, I mean, look just as last year when we were talking about all these top guys and not even JSN but like Save Flowers and Jordan Addison for example, and then we saw what tank Del did too, and we're like, oh, this is the new wave of wide receivers. They can be one hundred and eighty six pounds or one hundred and seventy nine pounds. Okay, then we get to twenty twenty four draft and we get whole bunch of freakazoids back in there. You know. It was kind of that back to back second round where one year we got DK Metcalfe and A. J. Brown, and then the next year the Rams take too too at Well and the Seahawks take D. S Gridge. You know, it's just like whatevery draft gives you, and I will I just think someone of his size typically doesn't move like that, and he is not going to be like a huge yards after catch burner and all that stuff. But yeah, I just I really like ad and I Mitchell and the transfer thing. I tried to dig into this a little bit just from my blurbing days back at Rotal World. Apparently he had a two year old daughter who's two hours outside of Texas. Wasn't able to see her at all at Georgia, and so that was a huge reason for him moving back. Is again now in Il and all these things, He's able to go be around her and visit her way more often and obviously he would have been on George's campus.

01:18:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, Keon Coleman, he's another transfer. He had a fascinating proof outperformed. I know, I want to like, I'm like, man, we're talking a while, but like these guys, I gotta get your opinion on three more guys, including Keon Coleman. So Keon Coleman outproduces Jayden Reed at Michigan State, Like, I don't think we can like just push that aside, right, I think that's something goes down to Florida State has kind of a whatever type. I mean, look, Circus catches for sure from Keyon Coleman. But his production profile wasn't that great. I can I can throw out some stuff just to give you an idea of.

01:19:30
Speaker 2: So it isn't like his EPA per route per play and then obviously yards per out run like all of it is kind.

01:19:35
Speaker 1: Of it's not great. So he has a best season yards per team pass attempt that's below two. Okay, he also has a breakout score that's below sixty. So he's another one of those like Ady Mitchell, you know that grouping. But his best season yards per team pass attempt was below two. Since twenty eleven, only two of seventeen Top one hundred picks with a sub two number in that category scored ten or more PPR points in one of their first three seasons. Was Terry McLaurin, who really beat the odds from a production profile standpoint, and then Nico Collins was the other one who you know, you could probably put in like a similar ish arch type as like a Keon Coleman. But only two of seventeen, right, that's a twelve percent rate. When you look at top one hundred picks who did get to a two yards per tem pass attempt rate, which is many of them, that goes from twelve a twelve percent rate of hitting ten or more PPR points per game in one of their first three years to a fifty two percent rate. So it's not everything, it's just Keon Coleman's overall profile has flags, has a lot of flags. I would argue there are more flags with his profile than Ady Mitchell's profile, because Ady Mitchell has sort of these like you know, tertiary things going on from like a situation standpoint that favor him a little bit more in my opinion, Like you look at like Johnny Wilson, he outproduced like he had a better like a yards per team pass attempt than Keon Coleman. And it's like, like, what are we Like, what's going on? Like, is is Johnny Wilson in that good or is like what's going on here? Because I think that most people say Johnny Wilson should play tight end at the next level, right, And so there's just a lot of red flags's profile and I I'm very curious to hear where you're at.

01:21:14
Speaker 2: No, I'm and even like from an athletic testing standpoint, right, like if you just talk about just point blank forty times because in many ways that's how the combine is conveyed to the people out there. You know, that's in like the Lacron treadwell Devin funist aldentate territory for someone of that size who's playing outside wide receiver. But then and when we open this conversation with just way more tools and information now GPS tracking on top of it, we finally get that this year, I will say with GPS stuff, like the reason to me why the combine is so significant is again being able to compare athletic profiles via composite scores which I want to add weight should be heavily added. People love ris out there, and I don't think it's a bad directional thing, but to me, it doesn't factor and weight enough. Yes, because think about like, okay, Xavier Worthy versus Xavier Logette, we're talking about wide receivers. Yeah, you got fifty six pounds difference, right, you know, And that's what makes wide receivers so much fun. Like think about even running a forty with two ten pound dumbells in each, you know, like how much.

01:22:21
Speaker 1: Slower are you gonna You know, it's not only not only that, but but guys are manipulating their bodies for the forty time at the combine. Like Xavier Worthy might play ten pounds heavier than what he was at the combine, but he knew that even if you if you weighed one hundred and seventy five or one hundred and sixty five, it didn't matter, Like they were gonna say, you're a small wide receiver, so you might as well just aim for the freaking you know, forty record whenever you're going there.

01:22:44
Speaker 2: Right, So we have forty, we have ten, we have the jumps, we have the agilities, all that stuff, even though no one's ever doing the agilities anymore. Anyways, that allows us to compare these guys athletically over decades, decades literally Now with GPS, it's like the last three years. Yeah, so the sample size is much smaller, but obviously with him being the fastest and the gauntlet at GPS allows for you know, interesting Oh I love them, and then boom directionally, look he runs fast in a straight line. Here. His contested catch stuff is fascinating to go back and watch last season at FSU, because I mean, it was abysmal, right, It was like like thirty three percentile over, like I think he had no one had more contested catch opportunities and he only converted like ten of thirty YEA. A major part of that was in the second, third, and fourth games of the season, he had ten contested catch opportunities and only caught one of them one of them, and that was against Clemson, and so that kind of derailed his entire season and all those metrics. There were actually a lot of I thought contested catch opportunities he should have won at the start of last season and did not. But then when they got to the back half of the season, especially when their quarterback went down. He was the dude. And when you like go and dig into his weird profile, you see that he had twenty screen targets at his size when no other wide receiver on that team had five. Again, he's what six three and two hundred something pounds. How often do you see that guy being force fed screen targets? And they were bysmal Like he was one hundred and thirty first in the country and yards per reception on screens and only forced two misstackles on those twenty attempts. Right, Yeah, that's rough stuff. He's also a punt returner, so it kind of just it speaks to he had twenty five punt returns.

01:24:41
Speaker 1: I wish I knew. I wish I knew a lot about that team, like the depth of it, because right, my first inclination is, like, he's oddly the smallest of their two main wide receivers they were using there, Right, So.

01:24:55
Speaker 2: That exactly gets to the point where he was their playmaker, and so they had to force feed him these situations where they probably shouldn't have, and they were very reliant on him, and so it kind of put him in these weird and awkward situations and That also extends to in the back half of last year, when let's say the primary or the secondary read was gone for the quarterback, the answer was, let's just throw it up to Keon Coleman and hope he makes a miraculous play. And so again, those opportunities are opportunities, but they're not advantageous ones and just quickly on Like I would say, he's probably best at creating separation early in his routes rather than like those second and third movements down the field elongated plays. And then he does have to win those situations that he failed to in the first half of last season in order to be successful with the NFL. But in terms of like body control and body movement, he is not like a Calvin Benjamin I think, or like a Laquon Treadwell like. I think. He just carries his weight and change of direction a lot better than those guys have.

01:25:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, at first he had some really bad comps and then stuff adjusted in the model and and one of the guys that popped up was Courtland Sutton for for key On cole Yeah, and I actually thought that that made sense after watching him a little bit, and I was like, yeah, I could see you know the comparison there are you? Are you Keyon Coleman over Brian Thomas? No, okay, okay, just curious how high? Okay, so we know we generally are you Ladd McConkey over Keyon Coleman right now?

01:26:24
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, okay, I might let's talk about last My my conversation is Ladd McConkie versus Brian Thomas.

01:26:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I have I have LAD right now. Well, I technically have Worthy after Brian Tod so I've Lad at wide receiver six right now in this class. I think that the weird thing with him and his production profile is he had a horrible yards So yards per team pass attempt correlates pretty strongly to yards per route run, right, he has an unbelievably bad yards per team pass attempt number, but his yards per route run is out of control, and it's because he ran the class. Right, he ran the fifth most routes at Georgia this past year. And so when you're not and whether it's injury, because I know he's banged up a little bit throughout the year. Georgia obviously being ahead in games, so they're not going to use you know, their studs necessarily, So there's a lot of like reason for that, and so I'm leaning into those reasons because I think it's logical to lean in on those. What did you see with McConkey, Like, do you think that he you know, I know we touched on this briefly, but do you think that he could have still a decent Cause I think lot of people would lok at and be like, oh, he's a high floor slot guy, yes, but I think that there's probably a little bit more there than just that. Yeah.

01:27:26
Speaker 2: I mean, I think his ceiling is better than people perceive it to be because again, skin tone, they look at it. Yeah, and then the comparisons are to like, you know, Edelman or Cooper Cup and like, hey, from a production standpoint, not awful. But at the same time, he can be an outside wide receiver in the league, no doubt about it. In my opinion, it kind of goes back to the team construction here because Brock Bowers was basically used as like a move tight end for this team and so he got all the easy stuff. Yeah, Bowers had thirty screen targets last year, lad McConkie had just seven, and twenty twenty two both had twenty one screen targets, but Bowers had fifty slot targets and Ladim McConkie had just twenty five. So again, brock Bauers was basically the slot guy and the screen guy, which again is the easy button when it comes to production. Here, Ladd kind of had to do the difficult stuff, the big boy stuff of the intermediate and downfield routes, and then when you look at it, thirteen of his thirty catches this past year went for fifteen plus yards. The year before that it was twenty of fifty nine. He dealt with an ankle sprain, came back, I believe against Alabama, it was obviously hurting him a little bit. So like I'm a huge fan of Ladi McConkie, I think he's gonna be terrible in the league when it comes to winning contested situations. Like it's not just his size that is different than the Brian Thomas's or the ad Nine Mitchells that we're talking about. I think the timing of it, or like fighting through contact when like on underthrown passes or having to change his direction not great again when it comes to going and fighting for the ball. But like if we can use the terms sneaky, he's sneaky after the catch too. So I really like Ladi McConkie, But I don't know if it's my simple minded brain JJ of oh, I'm taking a risk here with Adnai Mitchell. Do I then want to be pretty safe here with my ranking of Ladi McConkie, and those balance each other out?

01:29:14
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, No, I feel I see the same things though, and I think that, you know, if your concern is contested catch stuff, I'd rather have that be a concern than sort of the opposite, where a guy's good at contested catch stuff. Is that sticky to you?

01:29:27
Speaker 2: Is contented catch sticky to you?

01:29:28
Speaker 1: Not necessarily. I haven't tested it a ton, but like I don't I care more if a guy is just bad at a lot of things, you know, So like if like like Quentin Johnston, I think was interesting because he was so bad statistically with the contested catch stuff, but yet that's what he was like supposed to do, you know, just like archtype wise and stuff, and so it was just like there's a lot of stuff not matching up here. And so that's why the key on Coleman thing is really interesting. But also like I don't think that that's something that we need to really be concerned about with like a Maconkey, Like it just doesn't like how many targets are going to come that way with a player who's a technician the way that he is, you know, so it probably just doesn't matter that much at the end of the day. Let's let's let's finish this off and talk about the weirdest wide receiver profile in this class. I shouldn't say wide receiver and end it there, because he might be a totally normal dude. Although when I listened to Xavier Lagett's interview, I was not expecting the Southern draw that yeah he's from yeah, yeah, right, like he's you know, I'm in Charlotte and he I hear that accent all the time. I just did not realize that it was gonna come from from leget So, yeah, Zavier Lagett, let's talk about him. He plays five years of college ball, and when I say he did not trans South carline entire time, hunter, I think his max season in yardage for the first four years was one hundred and seventy six yards receiving, and then last year just goes absolutely nuclear, like like just an unbelievable production season and just like that's the reason why people are looking at him the way they're looking at him right now. Where are you at with Leged?

01:31:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, he nearly had more returns in the previous season in twenty twenty two than he had receptions. I mean, it's just a crazy profile. And then it I think this first game this year was against North Carolina, I could be confusing that he goes out there and dominates. Yeah, he was unbelievable right in that North Carolina game. And what's crazy is he looks like he's not just a vertical hit or miss high variance receiver, you know, like sometimes I think profiles can lead to that, and that's why there's a blow up here, you know, like a new coordinator comes in, a new quarterback that transfers in and boom. These are moments that never hit before, like Jalen Hyatt for example.

01:31:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, are like a Diami Brown or something like that, right right, Yeah, this was.

01:31:49
Speaker 2: Like legit routes, legit, I'm gonna win after the catch. At the same time, if we can spend age back into this he played this year. At twenty two, he turned twenty three. I believe in Jane. Worry if I'm not mistaken. So a twenty two year old freak athlete, all muscle built, beating up on you know, maybe some smaller guys might have something to do with it. I don't know, man, I'm like kind of low key obsessed with Xavier leget Nice. But it it it. It's worrisome because I have no answer. You have no answer unless like you talk to him individually or talk to his coaches of hey, why did it take into year five? Because it doesn't look like your normal year five, come out of nowhere type who like just learned how to play football. Because the dude like knows how to play football. It's pretty stunning what he did this year.

01:32:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, look, you don't do what he did that last season by being bad or or by you know, like like that's the glaring thing for me. I'll say this about him. His statistical comps were pretty bad. One of them was actually Jonathan Mingo, which yeah, yeah, would be would be funny, would be funny, Well, it would be funny if if Carolina goes that route, because he's been tied to the Panthers a lot, but has and so but here's the thing. This is what I want to leave with with Logett that I think is pretty intriguing. And this goes back to the breakout where we're we're gonna bring things back to the breakout score conversation we had and sort of going against breakout age and such. But Lagett had a decent I say decent, but it was above seventy five his breakout score, despite you know what he did the first four years. The reason for that is number one, like you said, he's a little bit younger than most five. Like most guys would be twenty four at this point, he's twenty three. So you know, that's one good thing. The other good thing, though, is that his production last year, which is that good. And so it's weighing that in a way that something like breakout age would not be wang right, it's only looking at a binary. This looks at it as how good was that season, which is why like a Molik Neighbors has a really good breakout score as well. But I'll leave you with this, it says, and this is from my prospect guy. It says, and maybe this super late breakout isn't that big of a deal since twenty eleven, there have been just four top one hundred non early declare wide receiver drafts elections who were older than twenty three years old, one picked, and who also didn't, who also hit a breakout score of seventy five or better. And then I say, to put that mouthful another way, they had an okay breakout score despite getting drafted at a fairly old age, right, and they had good draft capital. Those four wide receivers Sterling Shepard, Deebo, Samuel Cedric Tillman, and Jayden Reid. So three of the four are fantastic pros, right or you know, we think Jane Reid.

01:34:25
Speaker 2: Is actually I think somewhat of an intriguing comparison even though they're different sizes, they're built kind of differently, but I could see them being used in similar ways on an NFL offense. Like obviously, look at was a do everything dude for South Carolina this year, but how powerful and strong he was, And you know the motions that we saw with Jade Reid, some manufacturer touch stuff at the line of scrim mentioned then you know, get the ball in his hands and let him work. I do think like that kind of similar vision for a player can definitely work here with Savior.

01:34:56
Speaker 1: Well, what's what's interesting too, is that two of those guys, I mean, you know, Sterling Shepherd obviously, but Sterling Shepard was a pretty good yack like type slock guy who just never could really really hit the ceiling that we thought he could because of health. But two of those guys, and Deebo and Jaden Reid both do things in sort of unconventional ways, right, which I think is probably why it took them a little bit longer to maybe either declare or you know, produce what have you. But yeah, I mean, I think that what we could be looking at with Lagette is the fantasy industry being fairly low on him because of the standard things that the fantasy industry looks at, and it could be an opportunity to just, you know, go against the green and just be like, hey, there's at least something there that we can point to that's to say that he's not gonna be as bad as you think.

01:35:44
Speaker 2: And just a quick mention of the Mingo point that you made earlier, the mention with Mingo you basically had to make excuses of even like his final season or the year before, like why the Cisco profile just didn't work out. Hey, at least we have one blow up season, yeah, from Xavier. Yet you know, like there isn't even close that Mingo did anything production wise in comparison to what Xavier look At did this year. Yeah. I mean again, it's not just the profiles that are fastening or the ages that are fascinating, it's also again having to rank Xavier worthy next to Xavier look At when the dudes are fifty six pound difference and have the same wr and their chest at the combine and the same checklist or however you want to do it. I mean, it's just to me what makes the wide receiver position so much fun in comparison to everything else because there they won't be asked to do the same things, but they're drafted the same exact position.

01:36:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, it's it's it's by far the most fun position for fantasy analysts in particular.

01:36:46
Speaker 2: Two and then I really do think, like even freaking Tank Dell changes my perspective on this this year. Yeah, because I've even seen this year during for agency people saying that like the textans should go out and get like T Higgins or so on and so forth and like, oh, just plug Tank Dell into the slot. The dude is an awesome outside wider. Yeah, yeah, I mean unbelievable. I don't want to move him. I don't want to do anything. I want him to like keep corners on their heels and the way he's just able to break off and play bigger than a size too. Like Tank Dell is despite hundred and whatever pounds, not a slot wide receiver to me, He's an outside playmaker.

01:37:25
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think people have to be open minded about that too whenever they're evaluating these guys from college to pros, because it's really easy, you know, like you look at Tank Dell's profile, and even last year in in my prospect guide, like I was like, yeah, he's probably gonna play slot in the NFL, right, like that that was what I thought was gonna happen. But I thought the same thing for like an Elijah Moore, and Elijah Moore goes out and year one dominates the perimeter, right, It's just that his teams have not been using him that way. I think that he should be used that way more, or at least wrote like more of a rotation with a guy like more. But I think we need to just at least be open minded to these posts disabilities, that a guy who was either small or stable to the slot throughout college be open minded the fact that a team might want to use him in a different way.

01:38:09
Speaker 2: And like with the Texans for example, versus let's say what the Jets were doing previously with Elijah Moore. I mean, so many of Tank Dell's big plays this year happened again off under center, mayring, the run to the pass, deep play action, basically two vertical routes. Because what Bobby Sloke did so well this year was keep one or two or even three extra protection extra blockers in to allow Nico Collins, big fast dude, Tank Dell super mover right that it's tough to stick with on three three and a half yards on the field, and then boom, we get these explosive plays. Yeah, when Amari Cooper went down for Kevin Stefanski this year, Elijah Moore steps in there for like that one game with Joe Flatcho and it's under centered deep play action. Hey, we're going to make these things happen down the field. So again it comes to the fit where oh if it just let's say like the opposite of that, which is Joe Burrow ninety eight percent shotgun. I'm going to catch it and throw it quickly right tanked own might not be as good as he is with again these big deep shot vertical routes off play action, but the fit where he is right now, I definitely want to keep him on the outside, that's for sure.

01:39:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, Josh, I could talk to you for hours, man, like literally, I mean, I I.

01:39:25
Speaker 2: Well, this is again three years, three years, been waiting for this one. That's where they got one hundred or one hour and thirty eight minutes in.

01:39:30
Speaker 1: I know, I know. We got to just do six more of these and then we'll we'll catch up.

01:39:34
Speaker 2: Showy. If the people who listen to this want more JJ and Josh shows, let us know because uh now it's a possibility.

01:39:42
Speaker 1: Now it's a possibility for sure. Let everyone know where they can find you.

01:39:46
Speaker 2: Just go on YouTube. That's where I live. Now, It's all I think about at this point. It's currently called the Underdog NFL Draft YouTube channel. We will change it after the draft to back to Underdog Fancy Football likely, but we have been churning out content. We will do that through the NFL Draft, and obviously as soon as that turns, new Best Bamania opens, and so immediately after the draft we'll talk about where all these guys fit, new rankings for every single position. And it never stops. It never stops. But I really am enjoying the YouTube life aspect of it all and appreciate you all tuning in and watching and supporting both of us.

01:40:30
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, you guys are crushing it over on YouTube. Really awesome job, both you and Hayden. I am on Twitter at Lee round QB. You can find prospect Guide all this stuff I'm offering over on lateround dot com. Otherwise, everyone, thank you for tuning in.

01:41:00
Speaker 2: Yeah,