Late-Round Perspectives: Kyle Dvorchak

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Speaker 1: Kyle Devorceik is an analyst in NBC Sports rohto World who previously did work at sites like Player Profiler, rotovi Is, Number Fire and Pro Football Focus. He's an Ohio State alum. He fosters dogs, He's a zoomer, and he too does a podcast with Denny Carter. These are his Late Round perspectives.

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Speaker 2: This episode is sponsored by DraftKings.

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00:01:08
Speaker 2: Now back to the show.

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Speaker 1: Last night, Okay, I fell asleep right after I looked at my calendar, okay, and on my calendar it said that we were recording the show, you know, and I fell asleep and I had a dream about you last night. You were in you were in my dream. I missed the I was a half hour late to this recording for the show, and then in turn, I overcompensated.

00:01:38
Speaker 2: I got in my car.

00:01:39
Speaker 1: It is very rainy day in my dream, and I drove to your house and we and we podcasted.

00:01:44
Speaker 2: We podcasted from my car.

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Speaker 3: I got bad news for you because I recently moved. We actually used to live pretty close to the so in your dream, you drove a long way because I live nearer to the beach now, So you drove a long way in your dream.

00:01:59
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, right right, we like they it could have happened, you know, before all of that went down. But yeah, it was a really I mean, I'm glad that that didn't come to fruition today.

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Speaker 2: I'm glad that I was on time.

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Speaker 1: I like made sure that I was on time because you know, you don't want you or you.

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Speaker 3: Didn't want to drive in my house.

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Speaker 2: That's right, It's exactly right, exactly right. I also was.

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Speaker 1: Thinking about this because uh again, like I always try to like think about my history with whatever guest is coming on.

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Speaker 2: Sometimes it's guests that I don't know at all.

00:02:25
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously you and I know each other, but I think that we have we done a show together. Have we had more lunches slash dinners together than podcasts?

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Speaker 3: There's like a non zero chance, like for some of the Rotal World stuff we do, like the yearly Rotal World drafts, where like, yeah, it's segmented off, so maybe I don't think so, but it's possible we're on something that together.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's all I could think of those.

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Speaker 3: It's probably unlikely. So we have definitely had probably one of the very very few people we've had more face time, like in person RL experience with than online experience. Because most of my like most of my minutes spent with anyone in the industry is online. I'm not sure there's a person that's the answer is not yes for that except for you and like Matt Harmon, who we hung out with that same weekend, and Cana.

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Speaker 1: That's right, that's right, Yeah, we we we sat you myself in Rotopad. We got like it was like an early dinner and we did it while watching the gold medal game for the USA team, the basketball team, and we sat there and we talked and I ate a salad I remember, and we watched you know, it was it was. It was a really really high tea situation, eating salads and watching watching basketball.

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Speaker 3: You know, at some point we're in there talking about like, yeah, man, I don't eat meat and I have a gluten allergy, and oh man, these athletes are so cool.

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Speaker 1: Exactly exactly yeah, although to be fair, to be fair, everything did get picked up a lot when Steph just kept hitting three after three. I think that that part was fun. That part was fun. Said from that, it was not the highest tee early. Not only that, but we were eating dinner. It was like four thirty. It was like five o'clock, like not even five, So it was even even more insane of a situation. But Kyle, it's great to have you on and finally do this. Let's talk quickly. I like to do this with guests that hop on. Let's talk about your past and how you got to where you're at now with roat a world, because I know that you've you spent time in a lot of different spots before you know, ending up at rodal World.

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Speaker 3: I mean you should know it's better than anyone. I worked at Number five, not for long, and Number five was probably one of the places I worked, I don't want to say the least, but just there were some places where they were like, we need work, and I was like, I will do anything. I was in college in like twenty eighteen, if I had to guess, I was like nineteen or twenty years old, and I didn't have like a lot to do. I like stacked my early freshman and sophomore schedule, so I was like going to class all day every day, and then my junior and senior year I had nothing to do. I was like, that was a pretty poor allocation of my time here. So I had nothing to do. So I just like cold call. Pitched Matt Kelly previously on this show, maybe multiple times, if I remember correctly, some fantasy article. I don't remember what the first one I pitched was. He was like, oh, that's good, we'll work with you, and he published some of my stuff. Then I ended up working at Rodoviz, at Number Fire, at a few DFS places, rote a World Pro Football Focus. Sorry if I'm forgetting, If you're out there listening. You're like, I was your boss at this random fantasy website. How could you forget me? Worked at a lot of places, my apologies, and just eventually ended up doing enough at Rotal World that they're like, you're destroying our freelance budget. Can you just work full time for us?

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Speaker 1: And I was like, there were a lot of people that came through Number fire, right, And I actually was like, like I wanted to like triple check myself and be like Kyle wrote for us for a little bit. And I actually messaged Brandon Gdula yesterday and I was like, I was like, I'm not crazy, right, Like I remember he was writing for us and doing stuff.

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Speaker 2: Has nothing to do with like you. Obviously, it's just that number.

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Speaker 1: I mean I at that point too, it was very my I was more hands off, and it was more I.

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Speaker 3: Was about to say, when I was going to describe what I did at Number five, I wanted to describe you as my boss, but you really would have been like my boss's boss, because it was like a team of really talented writers, most of which Cadula oversaw. You would have been like somewhere above that, so we maybe were on the same emails at some point, but I doubt you even sent me personally an email at any point. And I ended up that was probably the final year. Maybe I worked at Number five for two years where I was working so much as a full like as a freelancer that it was a full time job. And it was the season of twenty twenty, and I was like, you know, it's going to be a stable, normal season twenty twenty, and so I quit my day job to work just a ton of freelance stuff. And at some point they started delaying games, like they kicked a few games to Tuesday, and I think we even had a Wednesday game, And I was like, oh boy, bad time to buy the top on them playing football every week. Luckily they played football every week and after that, after the season, I think that's what would hired me.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 1: So I was glad that my memory like didn't completely creator there and I did remember properly and correctly, but it was a lot different like when I have like Scott Barrett or grand Barfield on like I was, you know, just doing everything on the editorial front and Number Fire when they were writing back in like twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, and stuff like that, and then eventually Cadula took over that like day to day role and I kind of just like pushed aside and did more of the content, you know, more of the podcasting and stuff on my own before I ended up leaving.

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Speaker 2: But Cadula's still over there, you know, running running ship, crushing it him and him and jim'snas.

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Speaker 1: So you know, I'm glad that that you were part of that though in some way, because obviously you're a great analyst. So let's talk about this this fantasy football season so far. I'm curious what you think so far through three weeks, and I mean, the overreactions are out of control? Has it seemed like the overreactions have been like crazier this year than other years from people? For you, yeah, a little biting it's on part.

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Speaker 3: Well, I don't know, man. We love to overreact. It is our favorite thing. And it's it's weird because also as a content creator, like the smart thing to do to be like, yep, these are all just pieces of the puzzle. Like I can tell you what happened in week one, like a big one is like the Rotor World Social team clipped us saying me specifically, but all of us were in agreement, like this is very very bad for ken Walker when fewer carries than his teammate, and he immediately goes out and crushes the next week on fewer carries than his teammate. And the comments section was just insane. But like I could either sit there and say, like I still think ken Walker probably out carries Zach Charbonay over the course of the season, like we should hang to our priors because like one or two games of data are important, but they do not entirely describe what's going forward. But as content creators, like this is what we're here to do, is like dissect in detail what has happened so far. Instead of being like, yeah, priors are important. We can still mention that, right, but we're here to talk about what happened, And so it's very hard to strike the appropriate tone of like this, I'm very interested in what has happened through the first two weeks, the first three weeks, but I need it's hard to convey that those things, those are tons of men, massive data points, but they're also just pieces of the puzzle. And they're not massive pieces of the puzzle. Our priors are still very impactful. I don't think the like just fantasy points per game starts beating ADP and predictiveness to like I want to say, it's like week five or six. I've seen people post a good chart of that. So at this point I do still think like priors are going to matter a lot, and so it's a weird balance to strike as a content creator. For me, the biggest surprise in terms of a more like slightly broad structural thing has been the round two wide receivers as being terrible, and especially because the profiles to me were pretty bulletproof last year. Is in twenty twenty four when we were taking Marvin Harrison Junior at the one two turn, Like I understood it. That was a pretty fragile bet. Like I made that bet, Like, look, I stepped on that rake, don't worry. But I was like, I understand that not all rookies come in and look like we expect them to. We were not taking a rookie who we had never seen play a snap in the second round. The second round picks late in the summer. You got Pooka in there, I wouldn't really count him most It's like, come on, guys, like imagine letting poock A fall at the second but so the the late for the second round picks wide receivers for the mostly the entirety of the summer. Brian Thomas Jr. Oh terrible A. J. Brown finally gets a good game last week, but he is not living up till just purely based on positional ADP. Lad McConkie not living up to positional ADP, Drake London not living up to positional ADP. And none of those bets to me looked like bad bets. In like, they don't look like bad bets even in hindsight. I'm like, yeah, I feel like we appropriately appropriately priced all these players. They're young, super productive, great peripherals, and it is just not mattering. I think there are some excuses and some things that could change for all of them, and it's not entirely their faults. The one that we'll talk about later, Brian Thomas Junior is like the closest to being his fault. I mean, but Lad too. Ladd is just like not earning a ton of targets on a team that Keenan Allen's fully revived on that. Quentin Johnson is taking another step. He deserves credit for improving massively from his horrific rookie year to a good second year to it looks to be a really good third year. Drake London dominating targets to terrible quarterback play and like you mentioned Aj Brown, like that team just does not want to throw the football and they don't have to they're winning. Yeah.

00:11:09
Speaker 1: No, I like that answer a lot, because that's that's basically been Like I did a mailbag episode technically will have been released once.

00:11:15
Speaker 2: This is released, but I recorded it before we recorded this.

00:11:18
Speaker 1: Show, and I got a lot of questions about you know, Brian Thomas and about Drake London. And you know, if you look at history. I mentioned this on that show, and you look at just wider rookie wide receivers who scored fourteen or more PPR points per game as rookies, right since twenty eleven, there's been twelve of them or twelve of them that had next season data enough next season data, So like Kelvin Benjamin didn't play year two, so he gets thrown out. And then we had three guys last year, you know, Molik Neighbors, Lad McConkey, Brian Thomas who got there nine of the twelve scored fifteen PPR points per game in their sophomore, you know, their second season, which is an absurd hit rate, right Like, that is an insane in fantasy football to find a seventy five percent of a certain cohort, even though it's just you know, not the massive, massive sample, like you would lean into that, you know, nine times at twelve, right like, you would lean into that frequently, like all the time, because.

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Speaker 3: They don't worry. I did. I did, Like, But to your point, the pipeline of really good rookies too, really good throughout the rest of their career, it's a pretty straight shot. It is hard to veer off course. I mean, you just outline the data and it is not hard to see that if you look at it and other metrics to target earning a yards perd outrun as rookies, every metric that like that we can say is like something predictive when rookies do it. It is really predictive going forward. And for some of these players, I think they'll course correct, right It's but I don't know, it's it's shocking truly that they are all underperforming, and not just slightly like some of the second round running backs two are underperforming slightly, like Josh Jacobs is like the RB nineteen right now, and Win is the RB ten good volume, he'll probably end up getting there. But the wide receivers are just not even close to what we paid for. And to me, that is why it's the most shocking, is they're not just a little bit off. It hasn't been a mile just appointment. They are so far from what we paid for, and they historically have been such good bets. And I, like I said, I think some of them will bounce back, but at this point, like you got to, the bounce back has to start soon, Like.

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Speaker 1: At some point, you know, going back to like the overreacting, Like you can't not react, as you noted, you know, like you have to react to some degree, and like when I kind of like, I I've noticed that I try my best to stay as level headed as possible. And I think that people like often you know, like if you have subscribers or if you have people that are listening to your show, oftentimes the average fantasy football consumer and player and listener of podcasts and consumer of content, they're probably going to go through a larger roller coaster of emotion towards and about a player than you likely would as an analyst, because you, as an analyst, have seen this thing go on, you know, year in and year out, you know, so you have this backbone of like, Okay, yeah, I've experienced this before with a certain player, or I know that things generally regress and all that kind of stuff, and so to me, like it's it's my job to at least stay level headed for people, like to be that.

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Speaker 2: Backbone for them.

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Speaker 1: But at the same time, it doesn't mean that I'm not reacting to stuff, you know, like Chase Brown has fallen in my you know, rest of the season rankings, Brian Thomas Junior has fallen in my rest.

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Speaker 2: Of season rankings. But to your point, the crazy thing with with Brian.

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Speaker 1: Thomas, let's just get to that right now, because I did have a question about Brian Thomas Junior, you know, on the show sheet on the show sheit, I said, on the scale from one to quite panicked, how panicked are you with Brian Thomas Junior. The wide receiver position is just kind of a disaster right now in terms of after you get outside the top, I don't know, like five or six like, there's not many that we are comfortably relying on right now. And so even even with the way Brian Thomas Junior has performed, I'm still like, is he like a low end one and high end two? Still just from like a like where you know the rest and how the rest of the position is performing. But I want to hear you out because you said that of the guys you were talking about, you think that this is his fault more than the other guys, you know, like Drake London having to play with Michael Pennix and all that kind of stuff in the way that they performed last week. So tell me how panicked you are about Brian Thomas Junior. Like, do you think that we're looking at a wide receiver three rest of season or is it wide receiver two?

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Speaker 2: Or do you think that he can get back to his wide receiver one status.

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Speaker 3: I mean, I definitely think he can get back. They're like two competing things going on. He's earning the ball a lot, and I think earning the ball is a very good proxy for talent, especially at the wide receiver position, but frankly anywhere, but at the wide receiver position, he's still got a really strong target share, really strong air yard share, strong expected fantasy points, and guys who get thrown the football a lot. One they tend to score because volume is a very predictive stat But two, I just think it tells us a lot about their talent, and so that's great for him. On the other hand, like next Gen NFL's next Gen stats has him as bottom three and yards after the catchover expected, bottom three in catch right over expected, and bottom three sounds bad. It is so much worse when you realize he is the only one who who sits there at the bottom, with Xavier Lagette like him and Xavier for Band as the worst mine receivers in the NFL. And I think so these two things are competing. But our prior on his talent, like purely what you think of him as a good player, because of what you said about rookies, Rookies who are productive in any sort of way you want to measure production being typically very often very good, not only the next year, but just throughout the career. Our prior should be relatively strong that the micro talent X over expected YZ stats are going to be shaky in a small sample, and we should hang to our priors a lot on someone like Brian Thomas Junior. He is both horrific in the metrics and really not looking good when you watch him play, but the team does not care. They're trying to get him the ball just as much as they were last year. And we know that is at least our most important stat when we want to look at like how are you going to perform in fantasy? Do you get the ball? Lot? That's usually pretty good, and like you said, wide receiver is pretty I mean part of the reason is guys like Brian Thomas JUNI you're underforming. But it's so ugly right now, that guy who has not done a lot and it's getting the football a ton still has to rank as like a top fifteen weekly wide receiver. I mean, if he does this for the next month, of course we can continue to say, like, guess he's just not who we thought he was. But three games mostly isn't enough. I my talent evaluation of him has come down. I wouldn't would not have thought a player as good as twenty twenty four BTJ would be capable of three games as bad as the first three games of twenty twenty five. But I don't think that means mean to throw out the pre twenty twenty five talent evaluation. I still think we should lean on it pretty hard. So I six point five out of super worried or whatever the question was. That's what I'm at, six six point five, six point five.

00:17:39
Speaker 2: I like that, you know.

00:17:40
Speaker 1: I also think that the Travis Hunter storyline is kind of being downplayed when it comes to what that could do for Brian Thomas and just having a floor of volume and not feeling as concerned about Travis Hunter maybe you know, overtaking a role.

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Speaker 2: Like a very very significant role, you know, in that offense.

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Speaker 1: And then obviously, you know, doanmy Brown is banged up right now in any other world, Brian Thomas right now is like everyone's favorite wide receiver from a fantasy perspective, because I do think conceptually like the things that I'm seeing out of the Jags offense, I like, you know, like it's it's exciting, and they're they're scheming players open the way that they should, and we're seeing some of the concepts that we saw from Liam Cohen and Tampa transfer over into into Jacksonville. They're just kind of not on the same page. Yet you know, they're they're they're doing stupid things. Wide receivers don't seem like they're in the right place. Trevor Lawrence hasn't played well even in a clean pocket, you know, and he's not being pressured at a very high rate either, so he should be playing better than he's playing. But I think that there's just like a possibility here that a lot of things are just all happening at once and it's like a perfect storm for Brian Thomas to not produce and that and that very soon we could see that turn around a little bit. So I'm with you, like I think six point five is a very good maybe six point six would be my would be my number, you know, and just just say that, Uh, we should be a little bit panic for sure, But I don't want to go too too far in one direction because look, we keep mentioning like like rookie season peripherals and metrics and production metrics and all that kind of stuff. If you watch the dude too, no one disagreed with this, you know, like people like every facet of the football world said Brian Thomas is you know, maybe there were some concerns about how complete he was as a receiver and there was still some room to grow from like a route running perspective, but he still was a very like, very.

00:19:25
Speaker 2: Good player that no one would have really disagreed with.

00:19:27
Speaker 1: So I don't want to lose you know, Hope, just based on this this three game sample, same question to you. You don't have to give me a number, but if you want to give me a number, I think numbers are fun. How worried are you about these Bengals skill players after what we saw in the first week with Jake Browning under center.

00:19:43
Speaker 3: That's much closer to like an eight and Jake Ronnings like I'm sorry, Like godspeed for Jake Browning, I believe you got a contract extension. Like last offseason played, I would say he played well with the Bengals in twenty twenty three. I think he went four and three as a starter, but weirdly it did not manifest in any production for Jamar Chase or t Higgins. Both of them were banged up at the end of that year. They missed some time out, they were out of the playoff hunt late in the season. Like I think Jamar Chase just left we were eighteen early because he was just done, so like when you look at his splits, they're gonna be a little unfavorable to him. But the target share for Jamar Chase in those games was around twenty two percent. It was twenty five percent last week. Twenty five percent is good, it's also not what you spent the number one overall pick on, especially when it's twenty five percent of Jake Browning's targets and T higgins target share in the games Jake Browning previously was something like ten or fifteen percent, and it's again it's around that ten percent as well. To me, like Jake Browning is a good enough backup and that he can execute the very bare bones of an offense. But like, you didn't again, you didn't draft Jamar Chase the one on one to be like, well, this is gonna be the most bare bones offense in the NFL and I'm gonna get about a quarter of the targets. So given that we have to say, like what is the expectation going forward versus the price we paid to get these guys, Jamar Chase twenty five percent target share is still good. I still think they'll find ways to get him going. T Higgins the concern is like a nine point five out of ten. I agree, do not know if and I I think I do know if Jake Browning is capable of feeding him these difficult to complete but high value targets. I think I know the answer, and I think the answer is no. At least Chase can dominate at any level of the field, on screens, on deep stuff, middle of the field. Whatever Jake Browning is capable of, Jamar Chase will be doing some of that. So Jamar Chase is like a seven to seven point five out of ten concern, mostly because I just don't think he's gonna pay off ADP with Jake Browning as his quarterback. But I think he'll survive as a wide receiver. One Tahigan's super insane massive concern. I'm sorry, Tagans Raptors the same. Your year every two years is Tagans year and this is cour of course the other year. So doesn't look good. And I mean Chase brown I don't think the situation can get worse than it has been because ESPN has them as the worst run blocking line in the NFL. PFF has them as like a bottom five unit as well. Of course, they have the backup quarterback in I think we've seen maybe the worst three game stretch, But on the other hand, like we've sort of lost the dead zone in that I think Fantasy drafters have price dead zone style running backs, if you want to call them that, pretty well over the past two years, much better than we did in twenty fifteen, sixteen seventeen. But he was the prototypical dead zone where you're like, he's getting all the work. I don't know if he's that good, but boy does he get all the work. Because his peripherals last year in terms of like PFF rush grade, yards after contact, breakaway rate all had him around like twenty fifth in the NFL. He was very Naj Harris in that capacity. And Nase is a really good running back if he plays on the best offense in the NFL and he gets all the work. So of course never really saw that for him. But if he told me Nase Harris say he was the one who was the Chargers loan starting running back right now, You're like, yeah, he's gonna score a lot of Fantasy points. They give him the ball a lot. And that's what we saw with Chase Brown last year is they gave him the ball a ton and he was solid on that. And when you get when you're solid and you get the ball a lot, you're a clear RB one. This is not a good offense, it's not a good offensive line, and he's playing poorly enough that I'm not sure he will continue to get all of the work going forward. He is up there for that, Like he's probably like an eight out of ten concern, i'd say, But at least he's still he is getting all of the work, which is good. That matters a lot. It also matters that he's not playing well and the team is doing nothing to help him at all, obviously.

00:23:15
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:23:15
Speaker 1: No, I think the Chase Brown discourse has been really interesting this week because you know, speaking of reaction at being reactionary and panicking, I've seen, you know, I got an email this week I'm not even kidding from someone asking if they should drop Chase Brown for what he marks.

00:23:29
Speaker 2: You know, like there's there's like that.

00:23:31
Speaker 1: Kind of dialogue going on right now and discourse going on, and like that's the part where I'm like, guys, you need to relax a little bit, Like to me, if you want to look at this as objectively as possible. You could argue that they've faced the worst, one of the worst possible opponents in Week three for their situation and circumstance where the Vikings are coming off a loss. They're playing in Minnesota, we know the Vikings front can just be ferocious at times, and they're playing INSA's backup quarterback. They make these mistakes early in the game, things just start to kind of crumble and just sort of fall apart once that starts to happen, and so like when you think about it from that perspective, you're like, oh, yeah, like this could just end up being, in hindsight, a bad game, a blip.

00:24:13
Speaker 3: Right.

00:24:13
Speaker 2: The problem is that upcoming the next few weeks they don't have the easiest schedule in the world for Brown.

00:24:18
Speaker 1: But I do think would you say that he's just given the sentiment and this is always hard because there's no like this is the market, you know, but given the sentiment, do you think he's a sell like a cell Low or do you think that he's more of like a hold right now?

00:24:32
Speaker 3: I think he's probably more of a hold, mostly because guys who are getting all of the work tend to score fantasy points. He hasn't toored any fantasy points yet. I if you gave me a bet of first three weeks PPR points per game or week four onward PPR points per game, which is higher, it's got to be week four onward. Like, you can't get much worse than what he's done through three games, So I would say probably makes him a hold. At that point. The offense is potentially has the you know, has the potential to be so terrible that I'm not sure he's like a screen by And like I said, he's not playing well himself either, right, Like, he's not making the most of a bad situation. It's possible that costs him work in the long run. I don't know if it's likely that it does, but it's at least possible, especially if the team is like this is a lost season. I'm gonna be honest, there's totally lost season when you lose grow like, hey, there's some great nick Full stories out there. Most of them are not great nick Full stories. Most of the time you're starting to quarterback, the season just over. So I think there's a not an impossible chance, like Toshbrooks starts to pick up a little more work down the stretch, but I wouldn't call himsel because I think this is at least like the lowest meaningful value he will have for the short to medium term.

00:25:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly where I'm at.

00:25:35
Speaker 1: I'd like, the expectation can't be his pre draft cost whenever or his draft day costs whenever they lose Joe Burrow, Like, that can't be the expectation. And if that is the expectation from someone in your league, then sure, like it's that that's not reasonable. But realistically, there are other running backs in the league who are volume based running backs behind bad offensive lines in not desirable situations, and no one is like overly emotional about those players.

00:25:58
Speaker 3: But people are used to Hubbard last I mean, I know Bryce Young turned it on the second half, right, and he's doing a little bit of that this year. But over the past two years, even Chuba has just played on a truly a dreadful team like de Panzer's not been a good team their line maybe, I mean almost certainly he's been in the Bengals are this year, but the quarterback play at times was quite literally the worst in the NFL. Al. Yeah, and Chuba's good, right, But he's not a world beater, but he's still managed to overcome the bad situation because he's a good player who got all of the work. And I think that's at least like on the table, if not a relatively likely outcome for Chase Brown right now.

00:26:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, same, And like I don't think that again, like you nailed it where it's like, I don't think anyone would say that Chase Brown is like a top ten running back in the league. But if you're a top twenty, top like maybe fifteen type player in the league and you are in that offensive environment with Joe Burrow, yeah it could be game over, like the ceiling is crazy. But without Burrow, then all of a sudden, you're a pretty you know, above average running back in a not great situation. And like you said, we've seen this before, players have been RB two's I still think he can be that RB two wouldn't be like, you know, so panic that you have to.

00:27:02
Speaker 2: Sell well is basically where of that.

00:27:04
Speaker 1: All right, let's talk about Jackson Dart who's taken over the Giants quarterback job. Do you think that this like, when you see stuff like this happen, are you changing your expectations dramatically for the pass catchers or is it more of a wait and see thing for you.

00:27:19
Speaker 3: I mean in this case with quarterback injury, Like with quarterback injuries you go from Joe burn or Jake Browning, we should dramatically change things with Dart. It's a weird situation because russ was playing fantasy friendly football and that the Giants were just passing a lot, and he had one of the highest aid outs in the league, like all of us. Every play for the Giants was like, this is like one point one expected PPR points from Elie Neighbors because it gets all the targets and these are just like the Lak Neighbors down there somewhere throws and those are really good for fantasy, even if it's ultimately a doomed, doomed prospect for the team actually trying to win games. So from that perspective, at least, Russell Wilson was trying to get his fantasy past catcher's points. And as much as like I like Dart as a prospect, a lot a lot of prospects fail, like you look at more, was clearly a better prospect than in the NFL evaluated cam Ward as miles better, and you look at how much cam mord is struggling, and you say, like, that's also pretty reasonable to expect cam Ward to struggle. Most rookie quarterbacks will come in and struggle. It is not normal for a rookie quarterback to come in and elevate his pass catchers. So I feel like the like to be reasonable. The most likely outcome is the passing output is worse. Like if you look at the line movement for a team going from even Russell Wilson to their backup quarterback, Like bookmakers will still say the average rookie quarterback is really a sink on your team. It's just not fun in their first few starts, even their first entire season. But that being said, I do think one there is a like stylistic comparison of Dart was a super aggressive and pretty good deep ball thrower and intermediate thrower in college. Some of that is the system he I mean a decent amount that is going to be the system he played in. But he rocked it in the system he played in, and it's the same types of throws I was talking about Russell Wilson making. He's just super high value. You're gonna gain a lot of yards, and they're throwing them a lot type of stuff. And I just saw I think it was Daniel Jeremiah saying he expects them to come out and play with a ton of pace Spreaderman Treadham's type of stuff. It's exactly what they did in college, because that's kind of the scheme he played in. So if Dart succeeds, I think the ceiling is really high.

00:29:09
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:29:09
Speaker 3: Probably should have to have like reasonable expectations of most freaky quarterbacks are just not that good in their first few starts.

00:29:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree.

00:29:16
Speaker 1: I totally agree, And not only that, like the Giants weapons, I think at least compliment each other really well, Like they have the right pieces around him. You know, It's not like he's walking into a situation that would be as poorly or as poor or as bad as what cam Ward is dealing with. Right, And I think at this point, you know, say what you want about Brian Dable, but I trust him more than Callahan and Tennessee and that coaching staff. So I am cautiously optimistic about Jackson Dart. Like you said, we always have to bring it in a little bit because rookie quarterbacks tend to be more disappointing for fantasy purposes than exciting. But I said it before, I think that Jackson Dart has sort of that like Josh Allen's psycho mentality to him, and that's fun.

00:30:00
Speaker 2: It's at the very least we're gonna see a.

00:30:02
Speaker 1: Very fun offense with him, and like camp Scattaboo back there now with the Tyrone Tracy injury. Obviously, Milieue Neighbors is a stud so I'm very excited to see what they can do there.

00:30:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, Dark was a big runner in college too. He ran for like you have to take away sackyards because stupid NCAC count sackyards rushing, so he gotta find some database to strip those out. But he ran for like two thousand combined yards over his final three season college football. I think, at least for him, he himself is a really fun super flex asset to have right now. Again, you have to kind of recalibrate your expectations for the pass catchers, but he himself should be like I think he might just walk right into QB two just based on rushing and we Drake made it. Drake May was like a spotty hit or miss thrower as a rookie, but he was a runner as a rookie, and I think we could get that from Dark in the same way that like Josh Allen even early in his career, was a really scattershot, poor passer, but the rushing always kept him afloat.

00:30:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, one hundred percent, all right, other rookies, these these rookie running backs. We saw Mari and Hampton finally sort of break out in week three. Now, obviously Naji Harris's injury helped make that happen and helped that happened, but I thought Hampton at least like started to look the part in that game. Finally we saw him sort of like live up to what we thought we were drafting, you know when we got him, you know, in like the middle of round three. Do you think that that there will be better days ahead for the other guy? So Trayvon Henderson, Ashon, gent R J. Harvey will go with those three. We can go one by one with each guy. And if you want to talk about Caleb Johnson, feel free to talk about Kile Johnson.

00:31:23
Speaker 3: Look, there can literally not be worse days ahead for Kleb Johnson. Not possible. The worst game for a player for especially like a young player, you will ever find is you're like only or maybe your second only touch of the day is a kick off your muck because you don't know the rules. Yeah, but look, they could cut like it's not impossible. But unless that happens, better days are ahead for Caleb Folks. Good news there. How much better? I don't you know, Probably not that much better, but I mean getting zero touches will be better, and he's doing that right now. So Chevon Henderson man, Look I get it, fantasy and bio. Why are they doing this to us? Like you gotta be kidding the lease And to be fair to both Josh McDaniel and McDaniels and the head coach, Romandre's played well. Take away the horror FicT fumbles, which is a staple of his game. Right he actually has popped in all the nerdy metrics and he looks when you watch him like he had that really nice catch that was supposedly designed for Trevion Henderson two weeks ago and he ends up being the one out there. I think it was because Trevion Henderson was messing up consistently in pass Pro. But you look at the two players the active leaders in fumbles per carry, and they are both on this roster. They're Antonio Gibson and Ormandre Stevenson, and they did that thing they do. Stevenson fumbles twice, and of course the frustrating part, they don't bring Trevion Henderson and to replace Stevenson they bring Antonio Gibson and he does of course what I mean, it's fantasy and bio guys like, yeah, totally, he fumbled. Who could have seen this coming? I think after that you have to give Trevion Henderson more work. Do I think he will come out and just dominate all of the touches. I'm a bit skeptical. He didn't even dominate the touches in college, let alone something we'll maybe project him to never do in the NFL. But I do have to think that the role for him through the first three weeks is maybe going to not resemble in any capacity the role from week four onward. Do I think he'll come out and just start to the way Bucky Irving just completely shut out Rashad White from the lineup. I don't think that will ever happen for Trevion Henderson has a rookie but I think this is probably the lowest value you have. I mean, really last week, heading in the last week was the lowest value you're gonna have on Trevion Henderson. I do think it'll get better from.

00:33:32
Speaker 1: Here, Yeah, I mean I think that it's like if you want to look at the positives too, like environmentally, the Patriots have not had any sort of pass catcher really emerge on that team. And that's obviously like Travion's bread and butter, like where he can really thrive his get him out in space and let him do things as a pass catcher. You know, he brings that to the table that you know, Ramandre had that nice play, like you said, but that's probably the best receiving play that Stevenson has had over the last year and a half, you know, and so like.

00:33:56
Speaker 2: Like that's what Trayveon can do.

00:33:58
Speaker 1: And if you drafted Travion, you did so knowing that the likely outcome is maybe a fifty percent running back rush here. Maybe like that's the like we knew Ramandre Stevenson would be involved. It's just that we know that targets and pass catching and receiving is very very important at running back in fantasy football, and if Travon Henderson could steal that eleven twelve percent target share and get up to that fifteen percent mark as like a very staple part of that offense, then he would easily pay off at his at his eight even as his increasing ADP that we saw, so he was like a he was like a floor play that had a ceiling, if you know.

00:34:34
Speaker 2: They just decided to use him more.

00:34:36
Speaker 1: On the in the ground game than going with a guy like Stevenson. But I agree, I think after what we saw last week, we should see more Travion. Now let's go to Ashton Genty, who you know. I mean, the usage has been weird, and obviously the offensive line play has been horrible, But where are you at with Ashton Genty right now?

00:34:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, you don't have to call it weird. The usage has been pathetic, Like obviously he's getting a lot of the between the tackles work. But Ashton Genty was one of like three players drafted in the first one hundred picks to have a single season yards per out run over three running backs that is in the past fifteen years. Like he did not do a ton of pass catching in his final year at Poise State, because like, why the hell would you just hand him the football and that's what they did. But the year before that, he was like a five hundred yard receiver while still being a really efficient between the tackles player. He is, or I mean, at least in college. Maybe he just that was all an aberration, like he was playing in the Mountain West or whatever, and none of that is replicable. But he is, at least in my mind, a really talented pass catcher, and they just don't seem to think that, or at least they are concerned enough with something like pass protection that they are not willing to put him out there for passing downs, for the two minute drill, that kind of stuff, and the fact that they are just taking that portion of the fantasy production pie off of his plate entirely, and they're not replacing with like scheme targets that much either. It's not like they're doing you know, Alvin Kamara rookie year stuff, or maybe he wasn't taken like the third down back, but John Payton loved to scheme his running back targets. They're not even doing that either, And the offensive environment looks really bad, much like Chase Brown another team where between Pro Football Focus and ESPN's offensive line stuff, they're one of the two or three worst and basically every metric the AR four contact, which is also in part a running back stat But I do think it's a little bit helpful. He's worse than the NFL. He gets hit hind the line scramage like every single attempt he gets, and then they're not letting us pad out the poor games with PPR production. Another spot where adjusting for the cost you paid to get him maybe the most concerning of the rookie running backs, just because you needed him to come out of the gates as a top fourteen back and then progressed into a top five back or maybe just stay as a top ten back in the entire year. But you needed some really strong production early and elite production late, and at best you're probably getting like really good production late. But this role needs to change drastically to get to elite production. So I still think he can rebound, but like we're burning games quickly in which is actively hurting you, I think it almost certainly he'll go down. Is at least a smallness, and it's very possible. There's stuff like this continues, it ends up beeing big bores. Yeah.

00:36:57
Speaker 1: You know what's funny is that my rankings were lower on gent than than consensus this year. And this is gonna sound like a victory lap, but it is not, because the reason I had him lower is because of those wide receivers that we talked about earlier that we loved, and they obviously aren't, you know, coming to fruition. But the problem I think you nailed is that they're just not using him as a pass catcher nearly enough. Last week long down in distance snaps. This is, according to Fantasy Life data, eighty nine percent snapshare on long down and distance downs for Zamir White. Like, what are we doing here? What is going on? You have a negative game script and you're gonna be using Zamir White? Are we kidding? A guy who has literally never been a pass catcher at any level of reasonable football.

00:37:41
Speaker 2: He was not one in college.

00:37:43
Speaker 1: He obviously has not really been one in the NFL, and we saw him perform last year. You know, not to expectation too. You have to imagine that that Gens's gonna see more and more work. But this could easily be a situation where the coaching staff is like, yeah, we're gonna we're gonna slow play this because we can, and this is the way that we think we should be doing things, even though Gent probably should be getting the ball in more ways than he currently is. Another player who is disappointed at running back rookie running.

00:38:10
Speaker 2: Back is RJ. Harvey, So where are you at with him?

00:38:13
Speaker 3: Yeah? Speaking speaking of frustrating usage, the gent one has to be more frustrating, but like, this one's pretty frustrating too, because I get it.

00:38:20
Speaker 1: JK.

00:38:20
Speaker 3: Dobbins was signed to do a specific thing, which is handle like bolt carries between the tackles, stuff boxes like short yardage stuff. And he's played really well. Like I don't need to bore you with all the data in terms of rush yards over expected, his success rate yards after contact. He's played really well and he's earned the role he has right now. I don't think you should just as like it would even be too fantasy in bio for me to be like we've seen too much JK. Dobbins. He's playing really well. The frustrating, stupid part is the Tyler baty slash bidet usage, which I will note finally quieted down in Week three his role almost completely vanished in week three, but that did not result in an increased route rate for RJ Harvey. There was like, hell, just put JK. Dobbins out those time of the day snaps. It makes me hopeful that when you cut one of these pieces out that that leaves room for RJ. Harvey to pick that roll up, even if he didn't pick it up last week. But like, god, that's frustrating, and it increases the or it extends the timeline of like here's when you're gonna be starting RJ Harvey in fantasy weeks out from now potentially, So I think this one is one of the most exciting potential because he's looked really, really electric. Another guy who really pops in all the metrics, largely because of one long run. But like, wait, you do like if you don't count the long runs, it doesn't look as good. Yeah, I know, it doesn't look its gonna be don't count the long runs. He did pop a long run, got three targets last week as well, really high targets per rout run. Hopefully they're trying trying to scheme him up a little more stuff even if he doesn't actually hold that two minute drill type of role, but another one where you paid for at least some amount of early season production and you've gotten none of it. Like, he's not startable in week four on the role he has, and if he gets up to like thirty five to forty percent of the snaps, like twenty five to thirty percent of the carries, he's still vaguely startable at most in week five. So fresh trading. Albeit the talent does seem to be there, and we know Sean Payton's kind of a king maker for running backs, So I feel maybe the best about this one hitting in weeks I don't know, twelve to seventeen. You're the fantasy playoff push and the playoffs, but the fact that's where we're at is probably going to make them go down as a slightly if not meaningfully overpriced pick.

00:40:20
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:40:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think that we're all learning and seeing firsthand, and I mean we knew this going into the season that rookies tend to start slower and then they can come alive during the second half of the season, and that's part of the allure for them, is that that's the more important time of the fantasy football season. And even when you look at season long numbers and say, and see how well these guys like perform eight outperform ADP expectation. Even when you look at the season long numbers, rookies tend to look pretty good. I mean, especially a wide receiver, but even at running back and so across the season, when we look back, I still think that some of these guys will look Okay.

00:40:55
Speaker 2: You know, there's gonna not all of them are going to just pan out and work.

00:40:58
Speaker 1: You know, but like you said, said Tyler Biday, not seeing the work that he saw last week, I agree. I mentioned that in the ten Trends show this week, how it's nice to have a two headed monster instead of a three headed monster. You know, like at least that tells us that maybe there's gonna be a drive, one extra drive that R. J. Harvey gets or something, and you know he's able to just just slowly get more and more work. And then obviously JK. Dobbins hasn't been able to stay healthy throughout his career, so that's that's another thing to keep in mind. But Dobbins, obviously, you know, rest of season, you have to at this point, you know, if if you haven't adjusted you have to have JK.

00:41:29
Speaker 2: Dobbins ahead of RJ. Harvey rest of season.

00:41:31
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, And I think this is like a good reminder of like we are not drafting players, we are building teams. And if RJ. Harvey finishes from weeks fourteen through seventeen as a top five fantasy running back, he probably goes down as like a good pick from a ten thousand foot view, even if he does not outproduce his He was drafted as the RB twenty five and finishes the RB thirty six type ADP, he goes down as a great pick if you took if you ate your vegetables and drive, drafted a Travis Etn who got you there, and maybe Etn fades down the stretches bas Shall Tooton gets more work. Like, I love drafting rookies because, like you said, the data generally supports that not only are they really good during the fantasy playoff push, but they're just generally at least a little bit undervalue. We've been drafting them more lately, but especially in your home drafts, like pretty good value to just like keep drafting the rookies who seem like they're in decent spots who seem like they're good prospects and just hope for the best because it typically ends up being better than ADP suggests, Like I love drafting them, but it would have been and I tried to do this much more this year. Very smart to build out your roster to take advantage of those rookie hits, even if they end up just being a hit in weeks ten, eleven, twelve or fifteen, sixteen seventeen.

00:42:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that that's one thing that I want to research more and like focus my writing more on this offseason, like and the draft guide is talking about okay, like for instance, I had, you know, Tory Horton as a late round Darth Brow, which is coming to fruition more. And by the way, we're recording this before the Thursday night game. But looking back, you know, maybe that's a terrible example. Maybe if it's like, I don't know, a wide out like or even a running back like ba Shall Tutan, because you know, Tutan obviously isn't like getting it done yet, but a player that you might be able to just get later in the season in some way, whether cheap through a trade or off the waiver wire or something like that. Tutan's probably terrible example, but a player that you could get later in the season or off the waiver wire. Instead of using you know, a last round pick to draft that player you know like and then holding onto that player because you can't assume that people are gonna hold on to him, it might be just be a better idea to, you know, just just wait on it and get those kinds of rookies. But at the same time, if you're not spending on some of these rookies, you are missing out on some of the guys who do end up, you know, doing well. Like Phukunakua was a late round Darth throw in the draft guy when he was a rookie, and if you didn't draft him, you were you know, not you were you were fighting for him off the waiver wire with.

00:43:51
Speaker 2: People, you know.

00:43:52
Speaker 1: So it's this balancing act that I do want to look into more and more from like a usability standpoint of how we actually use these rookies within our team. Like you said, we're drafting a team, not these individual players. I think it's really really important. All Right, I'm gonna say this player or that player, and you're gonna tell me who you prefer rest of season more between these two guys. Okay, you're ready to play this really really fun game.

00:44:15
Speaker 3: This sounds great.

00:44:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, let's do it first one Amarion Hampton, another rookie running back versus Kien Williams.

00:44:24
Speaker 3: Amario Hampton. I think really the Kyen Williams, like Omarion Hampton is just going to become the next Kyron Williams and that like Hampton hasn't looked great through three games, and his profile was like the best aspect of his fantasy production profile coming out of college was like they give this guy a whole lot of touches, and that's what we care about. Like you know, at the end of the day, that is the best value you can have at almost any position. Is like your team trusts you to take twenty carries a game. That's a really cool thing in fantasy, even if he's not the best actual running back in the NFL. And kyrone was that the poster child of that for two years. Like he ran all the route towards like past for those routes too, got all the carries, got all the goal line work. His fancy metrics said he was kind of just an above average guy. But now we're actually seeing the mix and Blake Korm a little bit for some goal line work for some more routes, like both the snapshare, the route rate, the carry share have all fallen for kyrone, he was the perfect player who cannot sustain even a small amount of drop and just overall cut of the pie. It's like Hampton, even if it doesn't work out, is probably similar to Kyroen, and maybe he does turn things around, maybe he is great, which I think is the bones you get on taking him versus Kyron.

00:45:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree.

00:45:30
Speaker 1: I was actually surprisingly ahead of the market when I compared my rest season rankings to Fantasy pros rankers this week on Kyrien Williams, which hasn't always been the case. I think part of that is just that again, once you get into that like high end RB two range, you start to get into like, okay, what are these guys you.

00:45:46
Speaker 2: Know you have to place? So like a lot of it is just like the stability of Kyrien.

00:45:50
Speaker 1: I still think there's gonna be a floor, but I'm with you where you know, if you look at like Blake Korm's also looked really good, like very good, and so you know when that's happening, he's losing some of that work.

00:46:01
Speaker 2: We know they don't target running backs at a high rate.

00:46:03
Speaker 1: I know that Kyron had that receiving touchdown this past week, but that saved his day in a way, and so you know, I'm at least a little bit concerned.

00:46:11
Speaker 2: I still have him as like a low end one, high end two, but I have.

00:46:13
Speaker 1: A Marion Hampton higher Zay Flowers versus George Pickens.

00:46:17
Speaker 3: I mean Zay Flowers. This one wasn't even close to me, like say, Flowers is just a star. I think he's very clearly he I mean he fits the bill. He's not wasn't quite as special. He wasn't as special as a Brian Thomas or like Lak Neighbors. But he was a good prospect who's good as a rookie and then gets meaningfully better in his second year. Ups his targets per out run, his yards per route run while also operating any farther depth down field, so he's earning more per route of higher value targets. He was the clear like upward trajectory toward I don't even to say superstart. Right. He still has probably another step to get there maybe, but he was clearly just from the moment the NFL started considering him as a first round pick to Week one of the twenty twenty five NFL season, just consistent upward trajectory. I get that the passing attack is probably not going to be as good, but I will just take the player who is right now dominating targets super efficient. For George Pickens, who's like obviously ceedee Lamb's not going to be there for a while, he should see a meaningful uptick in targets, but there's like a step forward Pickens has to take to be the fantasy producers that save Flowers.

00:47:14
Speaker 1: Is all right, Let's go to Chase Brown, who we talked about earlier, versus Chuba Hubbard, who we also kind of indirectly talked about it.

00:47:21
Speaker 3: I didn't realize that I made that connection without I mean, maybe there was something in the back of my head Chuba Hubbard, like as we talked about, Like we've seen Chewba Hubbard quite easily survive a very bad offensive outlook, and I think at least it's going to be better this year. Probably sill pretty high variants, like Bryce has pretty shockingly low lows but he has some legitimate high eyes. I just think the offensive environment for a similar player is better for Hubbard.

00:47:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, I'm with you. The thing that scares me a little bit with Hubbard is is they are mixing in Rico Daddle a little bit more. Like last two weeks, Daddle has had like a thirty five percent running back rush are when it was like twelve percent week one, and then weeks one and.

00:47:55
Speaker 4: Two, Hubbard saved his day both weeks with this like late garbage time receiving touchdown, and both both games were I might have even been the same play, but he was like wide open on both.

00:48:06
Speaker 2: Plays and he ended up scoring.

00:48:08
Speaker 1: And so there is a little bit of that where I think you're right where it's like RB two type production because there's just a lot of RB twos, you know, Like that's kind of but like I doubt Tuba gives us that RB one season, and there might be some inconsistencies there. But again, we already talked about how Chase Brown has sort of been that bucket too.

00:48:24
Speaker 2: All Right, We'll go to JK.

00:48:26
Speaker 1: Dobbins, who we just talked about versus David Montgomery, who's coming off a ridiculous game against Baltimore.

00:48:31
Speaker 3: I did not have a strong answer for this one. I went David Montgomery mostly because I think David Montgomery just is what he is, and that is a really good committee back on what turns out like obviously a slow, I mean, really bad week one, still one of the best offenses in football, and even being clearly behind JK. Dobbins terms of like how many what percent of your team's carries, what percent of your team's routes, all of the market share type stuff, Clearly JK. Dobbins has the advantage there. You still have a straight up just more expected fantasy points no matter how you measure like PFF so Rodo has expected fantasy points. Dave Montgomery comes in ahead of JK. Dobbins because he plays on maybe the best offense in football and you get in a lot of advantageous situations there, and there's at least a reasonable expectation that Dobbins's role is going to shrink going forward. I think the lines have probably proved that that is not going to happen with the Gibbs Montgomery split. They just like Montgomery too much and he's really good at what they ask him. To do.

00:49:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean contingent upside too, right, Jamir Gibbs goes down.

00:49:24
Speaker 2: Knock on wood, everyone.

00:49:25
Speaker 3: The top three fantasy running back of Jamir Gibbs goes down.

00:49:28
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I mean everyone, please please please knock on wood everyone right now.

00:49:31
Speaker 3: Please.

00:49:32
Speaker 1: We don't we do not need Jamiir Gibbs to go down, but yeah, we have to think about the upside there, whereas JK. Dobbins doesn't really have that kind of out. Okay, three rookie running backs. I think this one's really interesting to talk through. Cam Scataboo, Trayvon Henderson, quinnschod Judkins. Who do you like most? You can even rank them if you want to.

00:49:49
Speaker 3: Risk, Yeah, I think scatibo Quin, Shawn, Trevion Henderson. I actually feel like all I mean clearly all of them are on the upswing right now. I will just say Scott bo right now is in a pretty good position to get all of the work both carries and catches on a team that without Tyrone Tracy has like like, they do not seem interested in giving Devin Singletary work. I mean they don't even see him anymore, and interested in giving Tyrone Tracy work. He's doing the thing that like Ramandre does where man every chance he gets, he makes you want to play the backup if you're a head coach. Like he has had fumbling issues, he's had drops issues. He's not good in past prone of course he's hurt right now. And Scatabo looks really good too. Not to say that like we don't think quin Shawn and Trevion hendersons are gonna look good. If you're telling me, Scatabo ranks really well in PFF. I think he's like PF's third ranked running back right now, and he's getting all the work. I'll just like that feels like I'll just take the one who has pluses in all categories where I do not know if travi On Henderson is going to get all the work, and he hasn't looked as good as Kim Scatabow. It's a small sample. I still think we should expect him to be a better player. But right now, the combo of work plus looking good is both the most in favor of Scatabow because he's going to be a pass catcher, but also really does favorite Quinn Shawn Judkins as well. He came back and just immediately took to the backfield. He was immediately getting the majority of the carries in his first game back from not practicing the almost entire summer, and then the next game he almost completely shuts out the rest of the running backs. Dylan Sampson doesn't appear to have any bit of a role anymore. Jerome Ford is just out there for pass catching. The only flaw in the Judkins profile is that he probably is limited to primarily between the tackles. Work on a team that I believe is ten point underdogs this week, and they're going to be This will be a you know, a crazy underdog situation. They believe here road tripping to Detroit. I know they play Detroit. I think it's on the road. They won't play the one of the best teams in football on the road every week, but they will be underdogs every week. And that makes Judkins a very like I hope he gets in the end zone because he's just not going to catch enough passes. But like, who knows, they could also just start playing him on passing downs too, because he was an okay pass catcher, perfectly acceptable pass catcher in college too.

00:51:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I kept comping him to just like from a usage standpoint to Jonathan Taylor whenever he was coming out. You know, it's like not not to say that he was as good of a prospect as Jonathan Taylor, but in terms of like he could be like a nine to ten percent target share player. And then obviously you know JT's seen his workload and stuff even get better this year. But regardless, Like the reason I brought them up is because in my rest season rankings, they're basically all in the same tier for me. But I think it's one of those situations where it's like what do you need for yours?

00:52:13
Speaker 3: That made the question so hard? Go ahead, Yeah, that was my first thought. It is like I can think of different teams I have where I'm glad to have one player and I wish I had the yet.

00:52:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I think I think Henderson's probably the stash candidate of the three, like the highest upside candidate, right because you know Tyrone Tracy is gonna come back eventually, and there could still be more of a split back deal, but if you.

00:52:32
Speaker 2: Need that production right away, I'd go Scataboo.

00:52:34
Speaker 1: And then in between the two is kind of quinch on Judkins right, and so that's kind of why I wanted to see if if theyre But I'm glad it seems like we're on the same page of just like, these are guys who all do different things for your fantasy team depending on what you.

00:52:47
Speaker 2: Need for your squad.

00:52:48
Speaker 1: Right now, all right, let's look at DK Metcalf versus.

00:52:54
Speaker 3: T Higgins oh Man neither I mean Metcalf. I think I think the answer is Metcalf. I mean, I will say that the Steelers are kind of interesting in that, like, I think Rogers is like seventy five to eighty percent cooked, but everyone in a while he does do something really cool, Like there are three flashes where his old man's strength surges to a truly incredible peak. Rogers as play, the valleys between them are just pretty stunning. But they are also playing at like a relatively neutral pace and a neutral pass rate over expected, which is like they're finding some sort of probably relatively unhappy, but some sort of medium between the type of football that Aaron Rodgers wants to play, which is pass heavy but super slow, and the type of football that Arthur Smith wants to play, which is the most runt heavy in the NFL. The fact that that volume in theory is there for guys like Metcalf or the tight ends or Calvin Austin as opposed to there's a scenario which they were the most run heavy and slowest team in the NFL that has not, you know, come to pass. So there's at least like some meat on the bone for Metcalf. These are both bad. I don't like these.

00:54:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, it's tough because I don't think Metcalf.

00:54:04
Speaker 1: I think I think he's proven at this point he's not a target earner, you know, like he's not He's just not going to be that, Like, because the way that he was going to really pay off this year was if he was like a twenty eight percent target share player, right, and I think we're seeing that. I don't know, if I were to project rest of season target share for him, twenty two percent maybe something around that.

00:54:22
Speaker 3: Quite literally just the same as any other year of his career. Yeah, right, Yeah, he played with some good players, like obviously he played with JSN who didn't break out until the second half of DK's final season. Played with Tyle Lockett, who's really good. Even if it was towards the tail end of his career, but he proved there at least you know, there was a chance he didn't. But it turns out that the guy's target shaw was pretty stable with him as a player, and the same way that like player adots have a surprising amount of stickiness year to year because the guy runs a similar route tree last year as he did this year. Dk Metcalf is no more laterally agile than he was five years ago. He is to day like there are just certain things he's not capable of and that limits his ability to just go out and be like every third play he's a target.

00:55:00
Speaker 1: Dk Metcalf, Yeah, one hundred percent. All right, this is a fun one. Caleb Williams versus Daniel Jones.

00:55:06
Speaker 3: Look, I I was, I was. I'm picking the obviously the fell forward again ward Daniel Jones, Like this time counts. He's finally good. But Caylo was really awesome last week as of right now that's week three, but he's still on the year, Like we can't just say, like, well, the last thing he did was pretty awesome and not ignore the fact in the first two games he was pretty terrible on the year. He's fifteenth in EPA per play twenty fifth in completion percent over expected. PFF has him as one of the least accurate quarterbacks in terms of accurate throw rate. Daniel Jones is crushing all that stuff, and like, if it's a gimmick, I'm fine with that and saying that, like they're running right now, a ton of play action, a ton of RPO. They're generally keeping him clean pocket too. All of this stuff has worked in the favor of Daniel Jones. But I also don't see why that stuff wouldn't persist. Maybe it comes down, right, like, maybe they aren't the most play action, heavier, RPO heavy team in the league going forward, but it's not like they had the world's a schedule, right, Like one of the wins came against a really good Broncos team in which he played really good football against those Broncos. And maybe the if you if you want to just say, like this is all like two pie in the sky stuff. They're using Daniel Jones as a goal line running back. He has one He has one pewer carry inside the five than Josh Allen and Jalen Hurts. So if you think Caleb is better, perfectly acceptable, And I don't want to be the one going to bat for Daniel Jones. But if for fantasy purposes you need the very clear tie breaker, it's a guy who's like a goal line running back.

00:56:31
Speaker 2: We get it. You love Daniel Jones and you think he's the best quarterback in football, we get it.

00:56:34
Speaker 3: Man, he's playing really well.

00:56:36
Speaker 2: He is playing well. Yeah, it was crazy.

00:56:38
Speaker 1: I was like, his pressure to sack ratio right now is by far, not even close, by far the best in the league, which is crazy because two years ago that he was horrible in that within that metric, and we know that that's often a quarterback type metric, you know, from a from a stickiness standpoint. I'm very this is what I'm gonna I'm gonna put this out there into the universe. I think this game this weekkend against that Rams front is going to be the most interesting test for me with Daniel Jones, just to see.

00:57:07
Speaker 2: How that offense is able to handle more pressure.

00:57:10
Speaker 1: Like you said, they played well against Denver, so I don't want to, you know, say that they haven't faced anyone, but I'm you know, they're on the road.

00:57:17
Speaker 2: It's just gonna be a really interesting matchup. In my eyes.

00:57:19
Speaker 1: I'm not saying either way, like I'm just kind of living in the middle with Daniel Jones, which is a really really very much a cop out type answer.

00:57:25
Speaker 2: And I like Kleb a lot.

00:57:28
Speaker 1: Just because of that environment that he's in, you know, like he's scrambling a lot, he's got the weapons, and their defense is absolutely putrid.

00:57:35
Speaker 2: So I'm excited about like what that upside might look like.

00:57:39
Speaker 1: But I understand if people want to go Daniel Jones with this one last one. I think this one's fun too, because Travis Kelcey's been doing what he's doing, which is not a lot, and then Juwan Johnson has had insane usage. But Juwan Johnson versus Travis Kelsey, who do you want?

00:57:53
Speaker 2: Rest of season?

00:57:54
Speaker 3: I didn't like for a lot of these. Obviously it came with a lot of stats. I was like, I don't mean stats. Travis kelce is so washed. I mean, you could look, okay, he's on pace for like career worse in yards for outrun targets per outrun PFF for steven grade. Last year was his worst year in yards run out run The year before that worst year maybe until like his first or second year he didn't actually play it his first year, but ten year lows basically across the board three years ago, two years ago, in this year, like that is, there is no more obvious player in decline in the NFL right now than Travis kelcey, and he has the benefit of not having a single pass catcher of note to compete with right now because everywhere he's played what like three snaps or whatever it was, and Rashid Rice has not played a snap yet, so things are only getting worse from here and he's barely doing anything. Whereas Juwan, like like it or not, is one of the highest usage tight ends in the NFL, his usage will probably fall because our prior should be that like, he's not the best target earning title. He's not McBride, is not tra McBride, and if he falls to just Hunter Henry, he will probably still outscore Travis kelcey. And the truth is probably somewhere in the middle that he probably will continue to earn targets at a good clip even if not. Tramick I didn't even have to think about this.

00:59:02
Speaker 1: It was very clearly Juwan, Yeah, I've found myself like every week since week one, being higher than the market considerably with Juwan Johnson, just because I mean, what more could you ask for from a usage standpoint, And like the Saints are playing in these negative scripts, they play at a fast pace. Like the Saints are actually not a horrible environment for fantasy because of that and because of the passing volume that we might be able to see there, And so yeah, I mean I think this is I mostly wanted to, you know, just like bury the Travis Kelcey talk at this point and just not have to do it anymore.

00:59:35
Speaker 2: So thank you for doing that.

00:59:36
Speaker 1: All right, a few more questions by candidate, favorite by candidate right now for the rest of the season.

00:59:42
Speaker 3: I mean, you just mentioned how good the Saints environment is, and mine is Chris o'lovi. He is the number one receiver in expected fantasy points. He is in terms of PPR expected fantasy points, the number three overall flex player, behind only Christian McCaffrey, Engaineer Gibbs. Like you said, I get the Saints are not going to throw the football, particularly a f They're going to have to do it a lot, and they are leaning into that as a fast paced team. That is I mean, at worst, right now, you're getting PPR scam the targets aren't that great in terms of like accuracy, but they are enough of enough of the targets to support wide receiver two ish production. But if he just comes close to living up to just capturing the equity of the volume he has, he is a I mean quite literally, if he comes close to that, he's a top five fantasy receiver because he's seeing the ball more than any other player in the NFL. And we have I think a pretty strong prior that I think he's really good. He's another player who you talk about comes into the NFL immediately I think eleven hundred yards two plus yards per out run and back to back to back seasons to start his career. I am very confident, at least I'm reasonably confident that he is, at his core, a very good real life football player. And now the team is just pumping him with volume of the likes we have never seen before for him, and we are not seen with anyone else in the NFL, and he just hasn't made good on it, and maybe he never will because maybe he's not as good as I think he is, And of course his quarterback plays pretty poor. But when we're getting as much volume from a player I think is as good as I think Olave is, and he hasn't lift up to the expectation yet. I feel like that is the most obvious bisignal.

01:01:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, love that. How about a cell candidate.

01:01:12
Speaker 3: We talked about him earlier, This one, I think you could lump into a lot and maybe maybe fantasy has advanced too far for this to be a viable strategy. But in the like vein of JK. Dobbins or like Remandre heading into last week, obviously he's not high anymore, but I had Travis Eten. He is just greatly outkicking the coverage on in terms of his efficiency and what the volume says he should be getting. And I think that's fair to say he probably will do that to some degree. This wileam Cohen Offens is super friendly to getting running backs fantasy points. But he's twenty second and percent of team carries twenty fifth in route rate. But he's a ppr RB nine and also like total slappy move Base Duton looks good Man Basechill Tuton looked really good and he didn't play a ton last week. He still plundered a short yardage touchdown. He didn't play a lot last week. I think because he's dealing with his shoulder injury that I would assume they're kind of protecting him from. But every time he gets on the field he will great. I think he will force a true fifty to fifty committee. I don't know by like week ten or something, at which point Travis Etn probably falls back closer to that RB twenty range. Still a good fantasy asset for right now, he's easily outproducing that.

01:02:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, look, I mentioned this in the mailbag. It's not even released yet at the time of this recording, but that is a play. Like someone asked me about Travis Etn and my answer was, like, he's outside the.

01:02:21
Speaker 2: Top twenty and every volume.

01:02:23
Speaker 1: Related metric that we care about, where we're looking at rush share, you're looking at route participation and so on and so forth, and he's clearly outperforming how he's been used in Last week, he scored a touchdown because the Texans let him score a touchdown and happened at the end of the game. They let the jag scores they could could get the ball back. He should have just fallen out in the one, and they talked about that after the game.

01:02:44
Speaker 2: I am a.

01:02:45
Speaker 1: Massive, massive bashall Tuton Stan and so I am a believer that he's going to steal more and more work as the season goes on. And it's been wild to me looking at because again I create my rest of season rankings and I just compare it to how other people were ranking, because then that way I can say, hey, I'm higher or lower on this player, Travis Etn. This week has consistently been like a high at least a high end two for people high end RB two, whereas I have them more in like the RB twenty range like you mentioned, and so I am definitely more in the cell camp for Etn. So very funny slash not surprising that we have agreement with both the buy and the cell candidate. Or the last question before I let you go, I do this with every guest during the season. Give me a bold, a fire prediction for Week number four.

01:03:29
Speaker 3: Lad McConkie. We talked about him earlier. It's been frustrating and I don't know if it'll change over the course of the season, but Week four looks like an absolute smash spot for Lad McConkie. I'll say one hundred and fifty yards in a touchdown. This is the breakout spot we've been waiting for.

01:03:43
Speaker 2: Are you? Are you a belief?

01:03:44
Speaker 3: Like?

01:03:44
Speaker 1: How would you rank those three wide receivers rest of season? Because there was a viral tweet going out that the ESPN guys had lad third of the three, all three of them did. And this is not I love all three of those guys. This is not saying they could easily be right. So I'm not saying anything negative about how they ranked them. How would you rank the because I don't have it in that order, But how would you rank the Chargers wide receivers rest of season?

01:04:05
Speaker 3: No, they're super nice people and like sometimes you just disagree with nice.

01:04:08
Speaker 2: Face, just disagree with It's fine, yeah, right, but I do the.

01:04:11
Speaker 3: Thing is I do. If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. And I'm not falling for this. I don't want to say nonsense because both Keenan Allen and Quentin Johnson have legitimately played well, Like I don't think they're doing anything that like they don't deserve. But like I said earlier, there is this very tricky tight rope to walk of our priors coming into the season versus three weeks of data, and to me, the three weeks of Lad being disappointing but not atrocious like Brian Thomas Junior has been atrocious. I still have faith in Brian Thomas Junior. He's played like garbage. Ladd has not played like that. Even in Week one he had a deep ball that Justin Herbert just missed him on. And if he hits on that one play, I am confident we are not talking about him in the same way that we are right now. I would rank them Lad, Keenan, QJ credits QJ. They're like I did not think he was a good prospect. I felt very vindicated when he played poorly in his entire rookie season. He is a legit good football player. I think the targets just have to go somewhere, and I'm so confident that Lad is the most talented of them. And Keenan is really quite a good fit for what Justin Herbert is doing. Anytime he doesn't want to look deep, Keenan's there and he's open. But I'm still going to cling to the fact that Lad's rookie season was so elite that he will bounce back great spot versus the Giants too. The Giants have given up more yards, more yards and targets two slot receivers than any other team in the NFL right now. And of course Ladds running about sixty three if I remember correctly, percent of his routes from the slot. So to me, just very clear spot where again I don't know if he lives quite up to my very lofty expectations for him, but Week four actually strikes me as a game where he.

01:05:40
Speaker 2: Does lad McConkey smash. I love it, Kyle, this was great.

01:05:44
Speaker 1: Let everyone know where they can find you, what you're working on, and what they can expect from you rest the season.

01:05:49
Speaker 3: Find me. You try and keep up with tweeting all of my stuff out on Twitter at Kyle tweets here, but if not always on the Rotal World Football Show and always dropping like a few weekly articles on Rotor World.

01:05:59
Speaker 1: I can't believe that we didn't mention Denny Carter once on this show where where you were one of the rare people that actually get to experience doing a show with Denny consistently, and you know the you know how how awful that experience can be.

01:06:12
Speaker 3: Look, we've developed a system where anytime Denny says something we don't like, we just make fun of him or remuse Mike, and then at the end of the show like it wasn't that bad of take for being honest, But we don't concede that until the joke has fully run its course.

01:06:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, Denny, Denny, I mean, especially on Living the Stream, because Living the Stream is not I mean, it's basically not even a football show, fantasy football show anymore. But the kinds of things that he's said in the past have have made my jaw drop many times, but I love him for it.

01:06:36
Speaker 2: You can find all my stuff over on lateround dot com.

01:06:38
Speaker 1: Make sure you subscribe to the Late Round podcast wherever you get your podcasts, and also subscribe to the YouTube channel YouTube dot com slash at late round FF. Thanks for living listening everyone greatly appreciate it. Have a great weekend, and thanks for tuning in

01:07:00
Speaker 3: Printing by people to pay