Late-Round Perspectives: Scott Pianowski

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Scott Pianowski is a fantasy analyst with Yahoo Sports who's been there since two thousand and eight.

00:00:04
Speaker 2: He's a Fantasy Sports Writers Association Hall of.

00:00:07
Speaker 1: Famer, an award winning analyst, an avid golfer with multiple hole in ones, and he's honestly a sports encyclopedia. These are his Late Round perspectives. This episode is sponsored by DraftKings. There's no better way to get closer to the action. With DraftKings Daily Fantasy, the ultimate destination for football fans. New customers can play free for their share of millions and prizes with their first deposit of five dollars in more. Download the DraftKings Daily Fantasy app and enter promo code Late Round to play free for your share of millions. The Crown is yours gambling problem called one hunter Gambler in New York called eight seven to seven eight Pope ben Y in Connecticut called eight eight seven eight nine seven seven seven I'm in eighteen plus. The most stage eligibility strip of supply ends December thirty first see terms at draftings dot com slash promotions.

00:01:07
Speaker 2: Now back to the show.

00:01:11
Speaker 1: You're like one of the people that are just an Encyclopedia of Sports Knowledge. I remember, you know, growing up in stuff like you know, whether it be in like middle school, high school, or whatever, like, I was always the person that people would talk to about sports because I, you know, at least in my era and in my time frame, like I knew what was going on across sports. And then you go out in the real world and you see people from not just your little bubble and you're like, oh, these people really know a lot about what's going on. And I feel like you're one of those people.

00:01:40
Speaker 2: You just have a.

00:01:41
Speaker 1: Very wide breadth of knowledge across many, many sports. So it's always it's always a pleasure to talks involved with you.

00:01:48
Speaker 3: That's a really nice compliment. I appreciate that. It's just I always say when when people say something to me like that, and sometimes they say it, you know, with a little bit of amazement. I just point out that whatever you're naturally interested in, you're going to throw yourself into. You know that that could be cooking, that could be gardening, that could be coaching, youth league basketball, whatever it is. You know, everybody's got stuff, you know. I'm a big dog person, has always been a dog in my life. For like the last twenty five or thirty years, although I can't say I know a lot about that. I just, you know, try to be the best dog father I can. But of course, you know, so whatever it is that you're naturally interested in, and you know, jj when I was growing up, if you were to look at my house or in my library or you know, I had all these reference books, right, I had the Baseball Encyclopedia, and I had all these annuals, all these annual magazines. I didn't want to throw out because I wanted to, you know. And now the Internet comes along, and the Internet is one gigantic reference tool, and just the unbelievable stuff we have. Pro Football Reference is amazing, and the Fantasy Points data suite is fantastic, and there's just so much. And obviously you're you know, the work that you do is always data driven, and we could not do our jobs without the Internet. So I just feel so lucky to be in this time period where all the stuff that I used to get at the library or on microfilm or i'd try to buy, I buy old sports illustrateds at a garage sale or something like that. And then man's sad to see Sports Illustrate kind of die off because that was part of my childhood. But it's all on the internet now, so if you want to, you know, I love going back at old NFL drafts. I love I did a piece this week about Jonathan Taylor about how he stacked up historically in the first eight games of a season, and I can just go on to Football Reference and about thirty seconds. I had a list that I needed, you know. So I just love that we're in the era that if you love sports, if you love history, if you love stats data, we can watch any highlight and guy makes a great play. It's on social media and thirty seconds. So what a time to be alive.

00:03:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of nostalgia because I was probably at that like I'm like the last part of because I'm like right in a smack dad middle millennial, right, and so I'm like, I'm like right in the last area of when I was born, of growing up without really the Internet and stuff like like you know, as a child, like not having all of that at my disposal and stuff like to the point where when I was playing you know, NHL ninety four or something on Sega, I was going to the newspaper to see what rosters looked like, so that I could update rosters and trade players and stuff like that based on you know, what the newspaper was saying.

00:04:19
Speaker 2: Or you know, I.

00:04:19
Speaker 1: Collected baseball cars and hockey cards and football cars, and you'd have to get the Beckett right and like go through that to be to see what the card is worth. And so like it's I feel, in one way, I feel really lucky that I was, I mean born when I was to be able to have experience that. But then and then you get that nostalgia right of just like thinking back to opening up a sports illustrated and getting in the mail and just getting excited about that. But then at the same time, you're like, but it's so freaking awesome that we can literally just do all of that stuff in thirteen seconds as opposed to you know, having to spend so much time and doing But at the same time, you know, I do think that there's like a little bit of that, you know, the the fact that it took as much time as it did to do certain things, you know, with baseball cars whatever, you kind of you just naturally learn stuff a little bit more easily through doing that as opposed to just using you know, AI and stuff. I know, I sound like a boomer right now, but you know, instead of just like looking it up so quickly and so easily, because you're you're just learning a little bit differently.

00:05:22
Speaker 3: I mean, my fantasy football experience goes back to a time when we scored by hand. Yeah, and when the idea of having an advantage was you read the USA today and somebody else didn't. One of my early advantages was I was online. I was on the Prodigy service before the Internet really kind of popped. And I had a friend of mine and you might know Dan Williamson who's in the fantasy football space, and he was a Minnesota guy, and he told me the year Randy Moss was a rookie. He's like, well, they just had a practice and Randy mosscored seven touchdowns. You're gonna want to draft him. And this was back in an era where rookie receivers you don't want to go near those guys. You'll see you in year three, you know, it's a yeah, And I realized Moss was kind of a unicorn. Then that all changed in twenty fourteen, of course, but you know. My early advantages were, you know, I read newspapers. My early advantages were I had some Internet contacts when most people weren't on the internet. And now I think that news advantage, that information advantage, is just about nothing now because everything is shared and even the weakest manager in your league can get pretty good advice if they just have their eyes open and their ears open, if they have their phone turned on part of the day. So that's gone away. It used to just be by paying attention and maybe taking a little bit of an extra step. Manded you of an edge.

00:06:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, well I got to ask you.

00:06:32
Speaker 1: Your a hockey head, and I got to I gotta ask you post nineteen ninety. So this is my because I was a late eighties baby, So post nineteen ninety, give me your your hockey mount rushmore.

00:06:43
Speaker 2: Give me, give me, give me for this. This is on the spot for.

00:06:46
Speaker 1: The record, so I know that this is But there's going to be a couple that are givens here.

00:06:49
Speaker 2: But I'm very curious who who these four players would be.

00:06:54
Speaker 3: That's a great question. So I'm going to use my own rules, and I'm not sucking up to the host. But I'm Marilyn mew Is on the Mount Rushmore period, even if he took out the restrictions, so I know his career started in the eighties. I still think his peak offense is perhaps the best I've ever seen. So I'm going to get Lemu in there. Economic David is the best current player I've ever seen, the best stick hndler I've ever seen. I got to see an Edmonton Detroit game a couple of years ago, and regular season game, you never know what version of players will show up. I mean, David showed up. He had like seven shots on goal, it felt like twenty seven, and I just watched him all night. It was dazzling. So go with those two guys and a lot of other people I can name, but you know, I'm just looking up Ovechkin and Crosby. Obviously, Ovchkin set the gold record. Him and Crosby came into the league at the same time. There's the lockout, loaded time for an influx of talent, and hockey has done a lot of things. Look, Gary Bettman gets a lot of criticism. He deserves it, but the game's gotten a lot better in the last ten or fifteen years, and I think a big part of that hockey getting where it needs to go has been just the influx of talent. And you know, Ovechkin the most natural goal score we've ever seen. I think he would have scored one hundred goals if you played in the eighties. Yeah, and Crosby with his resume, that speaks for itself. The grace, maybe the best stick handler I've ever seen. What a great pass or what great vision. So yeah, I had to shoot Hoorn a couple of Penguins in there. I'm sorry, Boby's not going to make the list. It's not going to make the list, you know, maybe all to say Michael Michael, Michael Motorcycle. Yeah, Michael's there for the late announcer Mike Lang. Yeah, who was fantastic. But yeah, much love to the Pittsburgh area. I mean I was at Providence College when send It in Jerome happened. Yeh. Dave Danischeck and I are are longtime friends. He's obviously a Pittsburgh guy, and I just love the just the vibe of that city that all the teams have the same colors, which I think is cool. The ballpark is a gem, you know. I mean Steeler fans I think are usually you're really cool people. They obviously travel really well a road games, so there's so much history in that city that that I care about, even though as a Bruins fan, I always hated the Penguin. Yeah, of course, don't get me started on Alf sampleson. But I can never hate on I can never hate on you. He He was incredible.

00:09:06
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean, I know this is a football podcast.

00:09:08
Speaker 1: The Lemus stuff is crazy, just because he battled health related things that you know that people when they look at the statue, you know, and they do google and they look, they're not going to see that, you know that that that what he did fight. But yeah, I mean, look, to be fair, to be fair, you have your the Patriots don't have dominated.

00:09:23
Speaker 2: The Steelers over the last two decades.

00:09:25
Speaker 1: So let's let's uh, you know, at least at least the uh, you know, the Patriots have their dynasty that they can they can fall back on.

00:09:31
Speaker 3: Let me let me ask you this guy. I've never asked you this before. And I know there's kind of a split with Steelers fans on Mike Tomlin. A lot of people like, hey, you know, we have one of the right answers. A coach that's great, and a lot of other people like, well, what's what's this los in the playoffs every year nine and eight, ten and seven. That's not acceptable. Yeah, what's your stance on Tomlin?

00:09:50
Speaker 1: I genuinely I've been saying this to people, like I've been a borderline apologist because it's always grass is always greener with head coaches, as we know. But I do think that oddly, like the straw for me was that Bengals game. There was no there was no adjusting, you know, And even the things that he says, and I know that it's just they're just sound bites, you know, you know, through the media, but even the things that he talks about, like the first thing he talked about in his presser after this past game was the fact that the offense, you know, couldn't finish drives and stuff, when like very clearly and obviously and he's you know, saying that Arrell Austin's fine, Terrell Austin's fine, and that it's it's it's not the you know, d C's fault, and you know it's it's it's it's.

00:10:29
Speaker 2: More on the offense.

00:10:30
Speaker 1: And I think anyone with with you know, two eyes, that's watched football for any amount of time knows that the problem in Pittsburgh is is the defense. And if you were to if you were to say that Pittsburgh was going to get this kind of play from Aaron Rodgers, you would probably say that they would be a top comfortably a top three to five team in the AFC, probably like entering the season. And so, you know, I think that they're stuck in you know, like the two thousand and five to twenty ten time frame in terms of how you play on defense. What matters what you stop and what you do offensively, and there's just not enough adjustin going on.

00:11:04
Speaker 2: Obviously, a player's coach, people love to play.

00:11:06
Speaker 1: For him, and that matters to a degree, but at some point, you know, it's just a tiring thing. I mean, they've literally been doing the same thing now for eight years defensively.

00:11:15
Speaker 2: I mean I mean literally the whole time.

00:11:17
Speaker 1: But I mean like it's been a problem for a good like eight years or so. And because of that, I'm now more you know, I'm probably more in the middle because you know, I go to Facebook or something, and all these yensers are just screaming about, you know, firing Tomlin and they've been doing that for the last couple of years now.

00:11:33
Speaker 2: I'm probably not like.

00:11:34
Speaker 1: So so far in that extreme, but I can understand that sometimes in these situations you need to kind of move on and let that person hopefully thrive somewhere else, and then you find someone that can that can thrive in the environment that you're in, right.

00:11:47
Speaker 3: I mean, you think about the Patriots. You know, there was a time when the Patriots and Tom Brady needed a divorce. There was a time when the Patriots and Belichick needed a divorce. And it's kind of been sad to see Belichick kind of devolve into the Tyson zone, where any headline that you hear about Belichick now would sound somewhat plausible, no matter how crazy it was. NFL coaches all coaches, by the way, we were talking about hockey earlier. The shelf life of a hockey coach is incredibly short. But NFL coaches generally there are more mediocre ones than good ones, and long term answers are extremely rare. And even with that, at some point that comes a time where the Steers maybe saying, I know they're so prior to their coaching legacy, they've only had a handful of them they've had. Chuck Noll was coached for such a long time. Cower was such a long coach and decorated coach and all that, and wonder if people remember, why do they keep calling him coach? Kywer Oh, you actually used to coach the steel It feels like a hundred million years ago. But at some point you just say, I know this is a good man here, and I know this is a good organization here, but it's just time to do something else. Yeah, you know, and Mike Tomlin would you know, he would have an announcing job if he wanted one. He would have a head coaching job in several places if he became available. But at some point it just you need to move on. As a Patriots fan, man, I'm just thrilled that Tennessee. I think wrongly did that with Mike Vrabel. I don't think maybe it was the time to move on. I realized there was a power struggle going on there. Jonathan Mayo was obviously nice guy, obviously over his head last year. I guess Kraft had promised Mayo at the job, which is why they didn't hire a Vrabel the earlier year. But it's just It's just so nice to have these press conferences where Verbel says all the right stuff. He's smart enough to appeal to the smart players, he's emotional enough to appeal to the emotional players, and I've always felt that tom One was that too right. He's great emotional, great motivator, and he's obviously dealt with some mercurial talents, shall we say, during his Pittsburgh time, but he's smart enough to appeal to you intellectually as well. There's not that many You Usually coaches do one or the other, either the egghead, you know, or they're going to get you to run through a wall, but somebody else is doing the excess to nose. If you have somebody you can do both of those things. He's really got it knocked. But I've been I think we probably line up on Tomlin. I've always been the apologist or on his side, But at some point things just have You're not meant to be a head coach for thirty years, you know, on one team. Eventually you have to go do something else. And I wonder if they're getting to that point.

00:14:03
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:14:03
Speaker 1: I also think today's NFL is is going to be driven by smart play callers and good you know, offensive schemers and he you know, he he Tomlin Steelers were best when they had good offensive coordinators and good you know, the ability to do things that were different offensively, while you know, the NFL couldn't necessarily adapt to what he was doing defensively where they have now. And you know, I also think that that the way they've built the team. They went through years Kevin Colbert, their old you know, GM who's running the squad. They had horrible, horrible drafts, like over and over and over again, and they couldn't replicate what they were doing in like the late two thousand you know, the the two thousand and five to twenty ten time frame, into the into the twenty fifteens. I mean, it was just bad draft. Go look at this, anyone listening, Go look.

00:14:48
Speaker 2: At the Steelers drafts from like twenty fifteen to twenty you know, twenty two, basically when the Kenny.

00:14:54
Speaker 1: Pickett draft happened. Horrible draft after horrible draft, and that can take, you know, and push a team back pretty tremendously as well.

00:15:01
Speaker 2: So we'll see, we'll see.

00:15:02
Speaker 3: You could point that out because I think I probably overlooked that sometimes because they've hit so many times on receivers outside the first round. Yea. And for fantasy obviously, we're always going to be focused on the skilled position players, even though everybody is important to the shape of a roster, and maybe that it just obscures that so many misses they've had at other positions. So I'm gonna have some fun. We talked about the internet and you know, getting lost in football reference. I think after we finished this call, I'm going to go do some it's most facto drafting, and man as a Patriots fan, you know, nik kill Harry is like a trigger for me. Yeah, that year they had all these right answers at wide receiver. I just like seven or eight guys who were screaming values that they took to kill Harry, who basically couldn't play in the NFL. Yeah.

00:15:41
Speaker 1: I mean, look, if you're looking at the Steelers rafts, you're gonna you're gonna be prepared to just your jaw will drop with some of these some of these selections.

00:15:48
Speaker 2: Let's talk a little fantasy football here.

00:15:50
Speaker 1: When we look back on this fantasy season, what narrative or narratives do you think that we're gonna walk away with, like, do you think that, given the way that tight ends are performed, we're gonna see that position a certain way, maybe late round quarterbacking, Like what would that thing be?

00:16:04
Speaker 2: Maybe multiple things be when we look back at this season.

00:16:08
Speaker 3: You're certainly right the tight end. This was a year that the second tier was the place to shop. And I'm curious to see how people spin that at the end of the year. And I'll do a series where I go over every position at Yahoo at the end of the season and do kind of I call an exit interview. That's certainly one of the themes. You know, last year, other than McCaffrey, the running back position generally just so low with the injury rate, and a lot of the older running backs had really great seasons. A lot of running backs escape bad teams, went to good teams and they smashed. And then this year, you know, it's been a reality bites kind of season for Derrick Henry, although he's been okay, but he hasn't been quite what we expected. Obviously, Jackson's injury has been tied to that. Alvin Kamara looks like there's maybe nothing left with him. I know Barker has had a disappointing season, although that's tied to a lot of different things. And this year, you look at before the season, people are like, you know, who do I stack? Where are my stacks? How am I going to win this big contents? And I'm talking to people before the season trying to locate the right ones, and man, you look at the top three or four rounds and almost every major receiver quarterback stack you could have come up with has failed for different reasons. A large part of that is the injuries at the quarterback position. Obviously, once Joe Burrow gets hurt, the Burrow Chase stack is dead on the vine. It's been nice to see Joe Flacco at least make that offense somewhat competent the last few weeks, so that we have to be realistic with Flacco expectations. But I think this is a year where stacks have fallen short, and I try to figure out what that means and really simple trade off it. Last year talk about Burrow right, Cincinnati, perfect fantasy setup, leave the ball concentrated, target tree usage, Tree can't stop anybody weekly forty or thirty nine football. They played the Ravens twice, I think, and they're still scoring points. Yeah, this year Dallas has become that team. Maybe not quite as explosive as that carnival was in Cincinnati last year, but defense stinks. Dak has largely been very good. I realized he didn't play great against it, and you know, they pulled him early because the game was out of hand. But you know, he's had a really nice season. Pickens has ascended. They have lamdback now Ferguson because that concentration is so tight. He's kind of the third of me, Go and Javonte Williams. Man, there's something I didn't see coming. Yes, I thought, you know, I have him one of the EXPO teams I drafted him. It was just one of those exactly the same thing that happened to me too. Yeah, and it was not a target. I can claim no credit for this, JJ. It was like, oh, I got to pick somebody. Devonte Williams is still a football player. You know, maybe I thought he might just be like, okay, I might have to play him if injuries hit. You know, right, you always say it running back. I always say, can I get ten touches projectable? Here? Can I get touches projectable? Now that there's so many platoons around the league that makes somebody playable. So I thought maybe Williams had the slightest amount of value. I saw no upside. If somebody said to me, what's the upside Javonta Willams, I would have said zero.

00:18:50
Speaker 2: Right right, floor play not a ceiling play or floor.

00:18:53
Speaker 3: Play, depth play and somebody I'll cut in week five. That's where I thought was coming, and instead he's turned into like one of the five or six most important guys to land on.

00:19:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, same exact thing happened to me.

00:19:03
Speaker 1: I do think that there is a like people always ask like, oh, do you dominate you know, home leagues and versus analyst leagues and stuff like that. I'd say, like, generally speaking, I'm probably a little bit better in like home leagues and more casual leagues especially, But there's a thing with like, you know, you're mentioning the Expo drafts and you know the King's Classic drafts and stuff, and there's definitely a sense of you know, this isn't to like trash any of the analysts that we play with, because we're guilty of it too. There's a sense there's ego to this right where like we feel like we know what's going to happen to a degree, like we want to stake our claim on certain players. And when you realize that, when you're drafting amongst other players or other managers who are thinking the exact same way, you end up finding really great values. Like the I tell this story all the time on the show, but like when I drafted Javonte Williams and the Snake Draft, I literally right before I picked him, I said, I'm about to vomit. I'm gonna take Javonte Williams, and and I literally got booed by by the people who were in there. Like it was just you know, fun atmosphere, we're all just joking around and stuff, but like nobody wanted him.

00:20:04
Speaker 2: Nobody.

00:20:04
Speaker 1: And a lot of that though, is definitely you know, we're all guilty of piling on and having you know, similar takes based on you know, just just it's not groupthink per se, but it's it's this idea that like we respect one another, and if one person is seeing something and someone we then go look into that thing and we're like, oh yeah, I kind of see that too. But a lot of times in those leagues, you can go against the grain just a little bit, and you know, get Javonte Williams, and he's a he's a sliding value, and then all of a sudden you're like, oh, I ended up having a really good team, and that team that I drafted seven and one right now because largely because of Javonte Williams.

00:20:39
Speaker 2: So it's it's just an interesting dynamic for sure.

00:20:42
Speaker 3: And it's hard. I mean, if I have a stance on something, if I'm not dugging on something, and I see you feel a certain way, and which Rebar agrees with you, and Pat Fitzmorris agrees with you, and Ian hart Tits agrees with you, Evan Silver agrees with you, it's hard to think, Okay, well, these are all smart guys. I like your perspect you know. I mean, it's it's hard not to line up sometimes. But it's funny. My friend Mike selfhi know, a lot of times, talks about he's trying I think he goes too far with this, of course, but he's always trying to avoid the hipster picks. He's trying to not make the picks that are going to win the favor of the room. And he's trying sometimes to go with the ugly picks, and again Williams comes under that heading. The thing about Williams is that I thought maybe if he was going to have that spike year after the injury, I thought was going to happen last year. He did so little last year, right. And also we talked about like, so, okay, JJ feels this way, Ian feels this way, Pat feels this way. I Drew Davenport feels this way. Right, we feel good about that. The converse to that is I've seen Dallas do so many dumb things over the years that when they added Gervonte Williams, it almost made me like him even less. I'm like, of course, Dallas is adding Javonte Williams. What you know, they couldn't get seek Elliott on the phone. What's what's going on here? And you know, the first week he had the touchdowns against Philly, I'm like, that's a fluke. You know those are going to be touchdown passes eventually. You know, somebody eventually is going to emerge and push them out of the way. And it's just a great reminder that nobody knows anything. I mean, we have guesses, we have all we can do. And then you know this as well as anybody. You put the work in, you watch the games, you run all sorts of data, and you have such intelligent you have an intelligent, smart reason for what you project. But it's still a projection. It's still a guess. It's a it's an intelligent guess, it's a reasonable guess. It's the way to play, but there's still such air wide error bars and everything that we put out one hundred percent.

00:22:27
Speaker 1: I mean, look, there's a peer to peer game right where we're playing other people who also are going to have those very wide range of and they're going to have errors as well. And I think that's part of the problem with the way that people consume fantasy content. If I'm being honest, is that and I try to be so honest about what I'm saying about players like this could go this way, but this is the media and outcome. Let's think in terms of range of outcomes. And I think that like what we what we do need to realize though, is that it's a game of probability. And in that game of probability, you're playing amongst other managers who are also playing a game of probability. And so if you can just increase that probability. You don't have to be perfect. You're you're never gonna be. Like I look back at drafts where I diversify or I make certain choices that I'm like why did I? And I see people in my discord all the time where they're like, why did I draft this guy over this guy? You can play that game all day long, all the time, as long as in the moment when you're making that decision, you were logical with what you were doing. You can't hurt yourself and be mad at yourself over that decision that you made. That that's my stance at least, right.

00:23:27
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:23:28
Speaker 2: What pisses me on yeah yeah.

00:23:30
Speaker 1: What angers me more is when, like I think my process with Javante in hindsight wasn't as strong as it should have been. If we're just gonna use Davante as the example, you know, I was like four or five running back spots even below the market with Javante. It is one of my biggest like errors in my rankings this year. You know, obviously there's good stuff, there's bad sotuf. There's just the way that it goes. But one of the errors that I made is that part of my process is to not overstate running back metrics in general, because we know they're so dependent upon what's going going on around them, et cetera, et cetera. And then you add on, like you said, there was the injury with Javonte, we did expect more last year. Totally agree with you there, But then you look at like, Okay, we know that Miles Sanders is almost definitely dust right, and.

00:24:13
Speaker 2: Then you look at Jayden Blue. And I like Jayden Blue.

00:24:16
Speaker 1: As a prospect because I thought he was very electric and he had an interesting ceiling like maybe they could use him in like a in like a Tony Pollard rookie year, you know, early career Tony Pollard type of way, or even like a Jumior Gibbs, but you know, not as much and he's not nearly as electric. But at the same time, doing all the prospecting work with with Jayden Blue, I knew he wasn't a.

00:24:35
Speaker 2: Bell cow back.

00:24:36
Speaker 1: Like I knew that the whole time, like even the offseason. Go read any of the blurbs or anything that anything that I wrote and talked about with Jayden Blue.

00:24:43
Speaker 2: Never did I say he would be a Bell cow back.

00:24:45
Speaker 1: So why didn't I just merge all that together and say, no, Javonte is actually a decent pick. And there's one other player that I did this with from a process perspective that I look back and I'd love to hear if you have any of these two.

00:24:57
Speaker 2: But like Calvin Ridley, Okay, I decided.

00:25:00
Speaker 1: In like earlish August that I was going to buy into Calvin Ridley at ADP, and I am very upset about it because I've done so much research in my history on wide receivers with rookie quarterbacks very rarely beating expectation, and I decided to buy into this player who was decent last year, but not necessarily elite. Like there wasn't this like obvious and massive elite trait to Calvin Ridley that I absolutely needed to buy into. And so those are the two players I look back on the season. You know, I miss stuff like Trayvon Henderson and all that. Kind I get all that, and like, I have regrets for some of that stuff, but the process in which I went about, like getting to those players wasn't as frustrating as it was, specifically for Calvin Ridley and Javonte Williams.

00:25:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, I got Ridley wrong too. I thought, well, if he could succeed in that offense last year, if cam Ward can be even half a step better than the bad quarterbacks they had, then how can Calvin Ridley not be successful? There's just not that much behind him on the depth chart. Well, the award played a little bit worse than I thought for the first month, and the coaching staff was over its head. I also wonder why I wasn't picking and or betting against Brian Callahan for his entire career, because he basically never covered. Now that's gone, we'll never have We'll never get that back again. That's this wasted opportunity. And this stuff all makes sense in hindsight, but you have to live life forward. Life only makes sense looking backwards, but you have to live it moving forward. So really was when I got wrong, And I also thought much in the same vein. I thought, well, Brian Thomas was so great last year, and look a lot of it was with Mac Jones, who I probably wasn't giving mac Jones enough credit for that. I just thought Mac Jones was just another kind of guy, kind of a goofball, as my colleague Matt Harmon might say, and I'm like, well, I know Hunter's good, but he's going to play defense some and I like Liam Cohen, and I didn't want to give up on what the ceiling might be for Trevor Lawrence, which I've clung to that way too long, and I'm wondering if maybe I shouldn't cling to that anymore. I just thought Brian Thomas was too good to fail, and I'm seeing through two months of the NFL season that's that's actually not true. And I feel extremely lucky because a player like Thomas, you're gonna have to have very specific draft slots to take him right. And I didn't have those slots. I would have been overweight on Thomas. If I had reasonable, maybe just an average distribution of draft positions, I would have had more Thomas stake. I just didn't have the positions that made sense for him to be taken by me, and so I avoided that. But that was just happenstance. You know, if you followed my advice on Brian Thomas, I've led you into a ditch. Yeah.

00:27:26
Speaker 1: You know, what's interesting is that I don't remember there being a season where it was so obvious which draft spots and slots you would ideally want to be in. I mean, if you were in the front half of the draft from a snake draft standpoint, you're probably crushing right now. There's at least a good chance that you're having a good fantasy season. Whereas the back half, you could have taken multiple wide receivers that we all thought were in a really good spot and they failed. And then there was that wall that you would hit in the third round where you start to get question marks and you're like reaching for running backs and stuff like that.

00:27:54
Speaker 2: Hopefully you fell into James Cook, you know, in that three four area.

00:27:57
Speaker 1: But if you're in the front half, you get a CMC type, you get a you know, a Bijon or a Jamier Gibbs. Second round you could have gotten Josh Jacobs or Jonathan Taylor. Potentially third round you get JSN and you know there's just there there were so many more and better outs in that front half that I mean, it's wild because it just goes to show that, you know, don't be so overconfident in your ability to project that kind of stuff. Because over the summer everyone was talking about how this was the deepest first round and the best you know, first round and a half that that we've seen in fantasy football in some time. And you know, looking back, it's the front half of the first round and then the back half of the second round. So it was those spots that were like in the one to six, one to seven range.

00:28:37
Speaker 3: Yeah. Let me let me tell you a quick story about Jonathan Taylor, who's on one of my expot teams that also has Javonte Williams. That team I think is seven to one, and it's I got to call that team an accident because I saw draft Taylor in the second round. That was the Snake draft team we do. We do a draft in an auction during that weekend. What a fun time is try to get down to it. By the way, I you haven't gotten to the expot. It's a great chance to just hang out with people in the industry and talk and share ideas. And then we played golf this past year as a blast. So I draft Taylor if Taylor and Jacobs were on the board, thought about it, thought about thought about took Taylor. They have me on Fantasy Radio, serious radio after and I'm kicking myself. I'm really beating myself up for not taking Jacobs, well, you know, you get a bet on the safer infrastructure, and at that point we don't know who the Colts quarterback is.

00:29:25
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, you could argue as leaning Anthony Richardson at that time.

00:29:29
Speaker 3: It just feel that way we drafted in early August, I felt like it leaned Richardson. And I want to be you know, I know you're extremely transparent. One of your strengths as an analyst, I think is your process is so transparent and you you explain what you're doing, You own your your wins and losses and all that, and this it's why you're such a great follow in this space. So transparently. I want to say that I thought Jones was the quote unquote right pick. I never in a million years saw this range of outcomes that he would have the season that he's having, this renaissance and the Colts would be. When I rewatched the games every Monday, JJ, I can't wait to put the Colts tape in. I don't want to watch the Browns, I don't want to watch the Saints. I want to see what the Colts are doing because there's so much fun and the receiver room compliments each other so well, and Jones is playing in such a high level, and Steichen is reminding us while we fell in love with him like four or five years ago. But at the time I took Tailor because I've always loved Taylor, and then I thought, now Jacobs was the right pick. He's just got such a safer backdrop, and Jacobs has been a perfectly fine player. Taylor is smashing. Taylor is is just having a season where if the person who has Tailor in your league is almost guaranteed a great team. Right in many leagues, it's the first place team. And it's just so funny. How after I made that pick, I'm kicking myself. I'm like, I should have taken the safer pick. I should have taken Jacobs. And it turns out that Tailor. I fell into Taylor, loving the player, not trusting the infrastructure, And it turns out that was the right answer.

00:30:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's usually the right answer.

00:30:49
Speaker 1: You know, usually we overstate our ability to and I've tried really hard to lean into that more from a process standpoint, you know, you know, over the last handful of years is you know, target town, make sure that you're focused on that first and foremost and the rest will hopefully fall in place, and sometimes it doesn't, and you know, sometimes you get situations like I've been. I've been really upset look the Traveon Henderson stuff. You know, like I definitely think that he's had his own issues and I think he's in his own head. I mean, fortunately we finally saw a little bit more from him this past week before that fumble. But the Travon Henderson stuff just drives me nuts because I think it's a combination of the two things. I think that New England's not using him properly, and I also think that he has not lived up to the prospect that I and others thought that he was right And so it's just this combination of just honestly, you know, fantasy football hell, where where you finally see them last week. Get him on the outside, more tons of toss plays, you know, a lot more, because that's where he can shine. Like that's why anyone thought, like from a pass catching standpoint, we all just generally were like, yeah, like he can do a lot through the air, and maybe this is their new like James White type toy that they can just get on the outside and just throw him some dump some dump offs, and he can like let him do his thing because he's got so much burst and ability after the catch, and we just haven't seen.

00:32:04
Speaker 2: That that much.

00:32:05
Speaker 1: And so I do think that, like, you know, the talent evaluation for Travion so far has been an l but also you need that infrastructure still, you know, like that that still needs to be there because sometimes you're going to get mediocre talent evaluation, you know, mediocre talents I should say, in really really great environments, and that still can work out and pan out for those players too.

00:32:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, I find myself every week in one way or another saying bet on talent, bet on talent, bet on talent, we know, trade advice or a start st a question or something like that. And also just one point I meant to make about Givanta Williams. We were talking about him, how running back is different than the other positions because whoever has the baton, whoever has the usage, that's such a huge That's the one position where ordinary talent great usage, you're fine with it, or the other positions, I think you're so much more talent driven against. Alfino has talked about comparing this to closers in base in fantasy baseball, where you're not necessarily in the weeds about what their stats are. If somebody is in the ninth inning and is competent, they don't have to be that great. They're getting saves. You need saves in fantasy baseball, and you roll with that. So a lot of times, just who's got the touches, who's got the baton, who's got the high value touches, who's getting the catches, who's in third down? Hurry up? Obviously the goal line is always going to be important, and because I think it's kind of liberating to just throw out there just the stuff you got wrong. I wasn't just in on Henderson like a lot of people were, but I was pounding the table and saying, you know, I remember when the Patriots took the wrong Georgia running back. I remember when they took Sony Michelle, and then Nick Chubb went after that, And obviously Belichick had his ear with the Georgia coaches. I'm sure they probably leaned him towards Michelle. But whatever, Sony Michelle was an okay player. Nick Chubb is a great player before the injuries hit, and then this year we saw it with Ohio State. My take was Cleveland took the wrong guy. Judkins. Henderson is really who you wanted. The Patriots are going to get it right this time. They went second. The other team picked wrong. Not that I thought Judkins was bad, but he obviously had the suspension cloud over his first season, and then he hadn't even signed yet and they had other guys in the backfield. Aren't that bad? Sampson had a pretty good college career as well. For it's, you know, a player of some talent. So I'm like, yeah, man, this year, the two two running backs, same team, Cleveland and New England. This time New England's going to win that one. Now, of course, Henderson's story the future is unwritten. It was nice to see him pop in Week eight. And I love that you mentioned the toss player. I can see it in the back of my mind where they do that misdirection left tossed to the right and Henderson makes a chunk run. But most of the first part of that run was like open space. And so that's a play design win for Josh McDaniels, a play design win for the Patriots. And there's no reason why Henderson has been a disappointment. He's been a miss, he's been whatever you want to call me, call him a bus if you want. For a long time, people just couldn't play him. You couldn't really cut up. Nobody wants to trade for him. I get all that, but the future is unwritten. There's no reason why Trayvon Henderson, you know, a week from now, two weeks from now, might be an automat starter. He's just one game away from Because I just don't think Stevenson is ever going to be a ceiling player. And I still Henderson younger, fresher legs, obviously, the profile we liked at Ohio State. I still think there's a ceiling to be excited about. And it may just be him gaining some confidence and maybe the coaching staff being a little bit more proactive with him.

00:35:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I totally agree.

00:35:17
Speaker 1: Right now, you know, at the time this recording, Stevenson has that that toe injury that we don't know that much about. There's rumors right now they're going to trade for running back and that they're and look, I think that that people hearing that, they're like, oh, they hate Traveon Henderson. I mean that's part of the part of it is that like Henderson was never like the early down bruiser type, like that's not what he projected to be. And in fantasy, we care more about the receiving types. We care about those guys that can make those big plays and those splash plays in today's game, like that's that's the the Jumior Gibbs way, if you will, right, And obviously Gibbs can do a lot more. But with the rumors and stuff, I see it more as a let's see what's going on with Ramandre Stevenson, and they they don't have someone that they can rely on comfortably at this point because Trayvon Hendersin is not that between the tackles guy.

00:36:01
Speaker 2: He's proven that he's not that guy yet right now, I don't know if he ever will be.

00:36:05
Speaker 1: And so they're they're looking at this like, hey, we have a shot this year, Like our team is actually playing really well and Drake may is arguably the MVP.

00:36:12
Speaker 2: We got to get a player.

00:36:13
Speaker 1: Here that that can handle that workload between the tackles And that's to me where these rumors are stemming from. And maybe by the time you hear this podcast, they trade it for Tony Pollard or something, right, But I do think that, like, you're right, Like I've not been you know, early on in his career. I was okay with Ramandre because I generally, from a prospecting standpoint, will lean into players to bigger bodied players and running backs who can catch passes. That's always just like if you want a shorthand for a way to spot a decent running back prospect from day three, there it is, you know, pass catchers who are big and so Stevenson was attracted from that standpoint. But yeah, I mean, like, I don't think that he's got I mean, the only two games where he really popped, we're against Miami and Tennessee this year, you know where of course, you know most running backs are popping against them.

00:36:57
Speaker 3: I will oddly be Sean Robinson didn't happen last Yeah, forget about that. I've been a Kirk Cousins problem. Nobody you had a nice career, Kirk Cousins. If you just walked off into the sunset and roam the earth like Jules Winfield and pulp fiction, I think we'd all be fine with that. You know, carry a briefcase around if you need to. But man, that was frustrating, But Stevens is somehow lived through fumbling too, which which is you the Belichick would have sent him to Siberia. I give Rabel credit or the coaching staff. And again, you know, Rabel gets credit for everything. He's the top of the food chain, but a lot of decisions are made by his coaching staff of course too. At least they didn't mothball him. And I like, I love that tip about the bigger receivers you can catch the ball. That's such a great shorthand for we've seen now in the NFL it's not unusual for second day, third day running backs to be fantasy viable and pretty quickly. So that's an excellent, excellent thing to look for when we're trying to figure out some of these guys when when the combine hits and when the drafts hits next spring. It's certainly something I'll have in the back of my mind.

00:37:52
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:37:52
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:37:53
Speaker 1: Pass catching in general, man, it's always it's always something that even like Woody Marks, I didn't think whatdy Marx was going to be that big of a early down player in the NFL, but he had such a good receiving profile, and I'm like, sure.

00:38:03
Speaker 2: You know if you have that, that's so important to fantasy football. So we'll we'll lean into that a little bit. Speak about the talent.

00:38:12
Speaker 1: I think that there's a chance too that we see more base Shall Tutan like, I think that we could see more of that starting to happen, and look at the trajectory.

00:38:18
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that he's playing as well as Bucky Irving did last year.

00:38:22
Speaker 1: He's not, and they're not the same kind of running back at all, but it is nice to know that you had an offensive coordinator in Liam Cohen last year lean on the talent profile and say, I ever Shad White. He's an okay player. He's a great pass catcher, but he's not that great, you know, on the ground, and not as reliable on the ground. I'm gonna start using Bucky Irving more down the stretch. Again, I don't want to. I'm not making the comp that Bucky Irving is Basehall Tutan. But what I am saying is that Travis Etn really lived off of some big plays early on in the season, and if you look at his metrics right now, it's not like he's been an unbelievably amazing back and you look at how he's performed over the last X number of weeks, especially outside of garbage time, like it's it's not been butterflies and rainbows for Etn. And you got to wonder, there was that shoulder injury for Tutin that he kind of dealt with weekend and week out where he's on the injury report and then he would just play. Maybe he healed up during the by Maybe they want to use him a little bit more. I still think Tuton is a really good stash in fantasy Lea.

00:39:17
Speaker 3: I love it too. And remember they they drafted Touting, they drafted Hunter for that matter, they inherited the other guys. I mean, everybody would love to inherit Brian Thomas Junior. But Travis Etn has kind of proven to be maybe a Jag on the Jags the last few seasons. And Tooton also got the benefit of bigsby being traded, so at least thinks at least the backfield is a little bit cleaner. Right, we can get down to two backs of note.

00:39:42
Speaker 2: And I love what you said, guys.

00:39:43
Speaker 1: You don't have to agree with me, just you know, at least you can walk away and say Okay, that was that was rational, you know, like that's that's fine. That that that's that's how it should be. You know, like I don't want only agreement and only you know, I want disagreement. Let's just have it, you know, in a in a nice ration.

00:40:00
Speaker 3: Agreement for sure, a reasonable disagreement. I will not only why, I always welcome it. But that's how you learn, right, That's ultimately what you should do, dear listener, is find the people in your find your people, find your circle and the people you respect the most. But I used to do this with my friend Kevin Kuzo, who's a great fantasy player. I've done it with Dan Williamson I mentioned before Drew Davenport and I will do this sometimes have a summit before the season and talk about find like five or ten things you don't agree on and try to hash it out and then talk about the stuff you do agree on, talk about the different offenses. And before the season I was talking to Kevin, like, what do you think of this new coordinator, this new coach? You know, and hash it out with the people that you respect, and especially focus on where you don't agree, because that's where you you're most likely to learn something, you most likely to pick up something that may be useful to you because you have to be careful. Again, it's so easy to fall into the group think, into the herd think, and a lot of times the herd is right. A lot of times there's a wisdom of crowds that applies. But I think the great learning moments some times, or find the smartest people you know and where you'd not agree and you can learn something from that.

00:41:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, love that, Love that.

00:41:06
Speaker 1: Speaking of rookie wide receivers, that with Travis Hunter, are there any other rookies that you're excited about down the stretch, whether they be obvious ones like a Teero McMillan or a not so obvious one.

00:41:16
Speaker 3: Well, I'll give you. I'll give you three names I wrote down. I believe it's him Ray DK. I've seen it pronounce a couple different ways. He's really been a nice player the last couple of weeks, and I think people forgot that. You know, I am minor was getting a little bit of buzzer in the year, and he hasn't been bad by any means, And obviously that offense has been hard to trust for much of the season. But DK was drafted earlier, and because he runs the slot routes, those are easier throws, they're quicker to find, they have a higher chance of being completed. I really He's obviously made some splash plays on special teams, which impresses me. Also impresses Evan Silvia. He loves guys who make punt return plays and stuff like that. But DK's impressed me. On the tape, his stats looked good. Ward started to play a little bit better. I wonder if some of his early struggles Broncos rams some of the better defenses the coaching change. Of course, He's already on his second staff essentially, so a lot of up people there. I think Tennessee will gradually improve in the second half and not be a joke offense. They were a joke offense for the first month of the season. But DK is a guy, and he's roster tagging yah, who's like twenty percent or something like that. I was looking at sleepers for week nine and I'm like, why is DK still here? He should have aged out of this now. He should have graduated from this column, but I guess he hasn't. I'm also really curious and I Remember the days were tight ends, rooking tight ends. You just laugh them, laugh them off and ignore them. You know. I talked about that was the receiver mindset for a while too. And then recent years, you know, Bowers was great and Porter was great, and obviously there's one of the McBride was really good as.

00:42:48
Speaker 2: A rookie, Tyler Warren obviously of course thinking.

00:42:51
Speaker 3: A Warren and the poor Bears fans, right, they're wondering if Caleb Williams was the right pick. And now they're wondering if Colston Loveland, who can still be a fine NFL player, if he was just a colossal miss. Because Warren looks so freaking good. Wore he catched like two hundred and seventy eight passes at Pennsdale last year. I love Ty Warren. I don't have a lot of ty Warren. But again, the Colts have been so much fun. I'm really impressed that in a Browns offense that has very little to hang it's hat on. Judkins has been good. Of course, Yeah, Fannin has been You notice him. This is one of my things. I call it the Grandmother test, where I want, okay, we drafted a rookie tight end. We're excited about Grandma. Can you pick him out? You know, you pick out the first round player. Some players passed. If I told my grandmother who's the best player on the Edmonton Oilers, just watch five minutes this game, I don't sure. If you know nothing about hockey, point to economicc David's it's him. Yeah, I think there's some of that with fann In the first week, they're lining him up in the backfield, and the route diversity was there. If and Djoko gets traded, and I realized usually the trade deadline is more talk than it is action, although it's been more interesting since they moved it back. But if and Djoko gets removed from that offense, Fannin's ceiling becomes exciting. But even if it's not, the fact that he has survived despite a lot of stuff that would sink a lot of other players. I'm interested in him and Mason Taylor to me jets on By he may get cut in some leaks this week because people have more immediate needs, and I'm always looking this is the time of year where people cut people they don't want to because they have to win. This week, it's getting really important. Taylor at worst is the second target in this offense, and if Garrett Wilson isn't healthy, he's the first target. Now I realize it's a justin fields offense. It's just to Rod Taylor offense. Perhaps maybe they'll even go down to their third stringer. So I this is a low ceiling here, but I've liked what I've seen a Mason Taylor, and tight end isn't a very deep position. Be on the lookout for him possibly getting cut because I think he'd be a great ad for depth at fantasy's most beguiling position at times.

00:44:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, great calls.

00:44:45
Speaker 3: Love that.

00:44:46
Speaker 1: Another rookie that at the running back position that we were all very excited about and he was crushing and he was really changing the culture of his offense and helping change the culture was Cam'scattaboo. Oh yeah, And obviously you know he has this this horrific injury last week. He's now out for the year, and now we have Tyrone Tracy stepping in as there RB one.

00:45:06
Speaker 2: So I want to play a game.

00:45:07
Speaker 1: Been doing this on perspectives for you know, across different topics, different players, But we're going to say, Tyrone Tracy, are this guy and I'm going to go.

00:45:15
Speaker 2: Through a bunch of this guys.

00:45:17
Speaker 1: Okay, first one Tyron and this is for rest of season, Tyrone, Tracy or Ramandre Stevenson.

00:45:23
Speaker 3: Yeah. Remember when the comedian Tracy Ellman used to have an HBO show called Tracy takes On. So I guess this is like Tracy takes On Fantasy football style. It's going to be Tracy over Stevenson because it's just more competition. It's easier for me to tell myself a story that Tracy's workload is. Say, if I don't know that Singletary is going to be much of a factor, he'll catch the occasional pass. But I think Tracy has enough market share. And you talked about the importance of guys who have receiving chops. I mean, Tracy obviously was a receiver for much of his college career. Maybe he's a dire college career, so he's got that part of the game in his bag. And Dart's been better than expected. I saw the list you mentioned to me. Some of them were tougher calls. We'll get to those guys. Tracey. See Stevenson was a clear Stevenson win. I'm sorry, a clear Tracy win for me.

00:46:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, what about what about Tracy versus Kenneth Walker.

00:46:08
Speaker 3: This is hard because betting on talent, I want to say Walker, betting on the roles, especially with Sharbonnay gobbling up those short guarded touchdowns. Seattle I think maybe the most underrated good team in the NFL. They don't get a lot of hot They're not even seen as like a favorite in the NFC West, and they could win that division. Maybe people don't want to trust Sam Darnold, but man, he's been good for a year and a half now and that's accepted as a real thing. Bet On talent would say Walker, but Tracy's role is so much cleaner. I got to go Tracy. I'm curious how you see that one.

00:46:37
Speaker 1: I got Tracy as well. Yeah, all right, let's go with j Cory Krosky, Merritt or Tyrone Tracy.

00:46:43
Speaker 3: It's just not enough passes for Merrit and we saw last week what can happen when they fall behind. He just gets mothballed. Right. He hardly played in the Green Bay game. It's been a lot of the standalone games. By the way, he hardly got in the field against green Bay, hardly got in the field against Kansas City. Is Jadon Daniels one hundred percent this year? Maybe not. Terry mclaurin's already been ruled out for a week nine. That's a warning sign. So I'd really like Merit as the player, and I feel like they've left a lot on the bone here. He's impressed me with his decision making, with his quickness, and just to see somebody hit this late in the draft or as a free agent. I forget to a seventh rounder on drafted, Yeah, seventh rounder, Yeah, seventh round, that's right, so you know you see it once in a while. Pachecka was the seventh round pick. I love Merit as the player, but the way and Washington's kind of paying I realize Merits a rookie, but they're paying the price for having the oldest team in like fifteen years. Right, It's the team is crumbling and I hate to see it. I hate to see Daniels get hurt as well. That to me was a clear trace you win.

00:47:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, same.

00:47:37
Speaker 1: I mean the lack of receiving for Krosskey Marriot's definitely been a problem. And I actually talked about this on the ten trends episode. I tweeted about this too. He's just not like when you're so reliant on rushing work, which is what he is, because he's not seeing that much through the air, you've got to be really explosive. And he was very explosive to start the year. But over the last handful of weeks he's had like a two point six percent rate of gaining ten or more yards, which is horrific, right, really really bad. He's gonna regress a little bit. It's not gonna be that low for the rest of the season. But like, that's that's the narrative shift, right. You go from oh, we're so excited about this guy. His numbers looked really good, and they did look good, but that's because he was breaking off some really big runs. And then he doesn't break off those runs. Oh he's terrible. Why are we relying on him?

00:48:17
Speaker 2: Jeremy McNichols is better all this kind of stuff. It's somewhere in the middle. It's always somewhere in the middle, and that's where it is.

00:48:22
Speaker 3: I think right now, you know, I think he's actually gonna be a good value next year in draft season.

00:48:26
Speaker 1: Could very easily be I mean they have a decent schedule rest of season. I stithing that he can He certainly can be usable. It's just that I'm never gonna, like heavily buy into a player who is not gonna see much receiving work. And I think mcnichol's playing as well as he is in that role is what scares me. Like early in the season when no one really like when he wasn't when Crosskey Merritt was in a three way backfield and Chris Rodriguez was getting a lot of work and stuff. I had actually had Krosskey Merritt as like a very cheap buy, you know, just throw him on your bench and see if something develops here. I think that something has actually developed. It's just that I don't think we're going to see the potential full fruition and what we could get from him, you know, throughout his career this.

00:49:09
Speaker 2: Year, you know, just because the receiving work just isn't isn't there for Crossy Merrit.

00:49:13
Speaker 3: Totally agree.

00:49:14
Speaker 2: All right, We'll go to Tyrone Tracy versus David Montgomery again.

00:49:18
Speaker 3: And I'm not going to say Tracy against the world, but again I'm going to take Tracy over Montgomery only because Montgomery can never hit any kind of ceiling. If Gibbs is playing this well and they've shifted before it was like, oh okay, it's like sixty forty, it's close to fifty to fifty. They've finally Detroit has leaned into the idea that gives is the alpha, and Montgomery's a really nice secondary piece, but he is just that it's an A and a B. It used to be a one A and a one B. Now it's a clear line of delineation. Gibbs has ascended, Montgomery is the CounterPunch, So Tracy just has more opportunity upside every week.

00:49:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, and injury is really the only way I think that that would switch for me. This is where I think it starts to get a little bit interesting.

00:49:58
Speaker 2: Is JK. Dobbins versus Tyrone Tracy.

00:50:00
Speaker 3: This was the hardest one of the names that you listened to me. I went back and forth on it to the point that if somebody just said they really felt one way or the other, I'm not sure i'd want to talk anybody out of it. I'm gonna lean. I'm gonna lean to Dobbins because he's played so well and I realized he's not catching passes, but they do like him in pass pro, so he stays on the field. Harvey is a really weird player right now because he's what four touchdowns in his last thirteen touches, but his role hasn't expanded that much. Also, do we count the touchdowns against the Cowboys to count on them? I'm not really sure if they do or if they should. So that's a difficult situation. And maybe that Tracy's got a better floor because not much competition. I lean Tracy on that one, but I would have no problem with Dobbins too.

00:50:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I'm Tracy.

00:50:45
Speaker 1: I had Dobbins as a cell this week, just because the schedules really tough, and it's you know, with him not being as much of a pass catcher and with their being the chance that they use RJ. Harvey more down the stretch, it could be a chance for you to get out with Dobbins. But yeah, I mean it's not certainly not easy. Rico Dawdell is the next one.

00:51:03
Speaker 3: I'm smiling. It's a little bit of a rueful smile because I don't think I have Reco Dawdle anywhere. And I was convinced when Hubbard came back that Donald would still be the guy, and they have been stubborn about that for two weeks. They've split the work. But I give Dave Canal's credit another coach who's not afraid to be kind of forthright in the media. It's a I've covered football on all levels, high school, college, pro, and they generally don't even want to admit there's a game on Sunday, let alone what they're going to do with their team. But Canals pretty much said, Okay, it's going to be the reco doubts. So I'm not paraphrasing here, but he basically conceded that Dowdell has won. Hubbard's the two and reco Donald to the moon. Man. I realized his big games came against ideal opponents. We talked about Dallas just giving it away, but Rico Dowd's their best running back. And this is from somebody who had a lot of Hubbard shares last year and has more Hubbard shairs than I would like to have this year. Not a ton, but enough that I'm more if they're even going to be useless in a week or two. I think Rico o'donald's shoves Hubrid out of the way. They have to play their best players. They have to respect the integrity of the competition in the locker room, and that's going to happen this week. So Rico o'donald is going places.

00:52:11
Speaker 2: How about Travis Etn you're there.

00:52:13
Speaker 3: I'm going to go with Tracy because we talked about this new staff. They inherited Etn, they targeted Tutin. This is right, and we're going to see it again. This is a reveal week. You know, all these teams coming back. If Tuton's going to have a role on this team, I think some of it will show this week, and I'm thinking it probably will. Not that people are banging down your door to get Travis Etn, But this is the case with how do you make trades right, especially if you wanted to trade Etn, who I think is a great person to trade. Right now, you say to somebody, hey, I got good running back depth, looks like you could use a running back. Let them come to Etn. You don't scream out I'm trying to trade Travis Etn. It just seems fishy. People are on guard. Ask them, hey, wreck my running backs? How do you rank them, how do you sort them out? Let them tip their hand. If you can just have a conversation. You know, sometimes you talk about boiler room. Just get them to say, yes, it's something. You know, if you were drowning and I through your life preserver, would you take it? Yes? You know it's kind of a silly example, but Ben Affleck sells it. You know, just have conversations with people and don't necessarily lead with where you want to end up, and see if you organically get there. I think it's a great time to get out of the et in business. I think toot is a good chance to ascend it. Even if that doesn't happen. Etan's upside is pretty tempered. So that's a Tracy win for me.

00:53:26
Speaker 2: All right.

00:53:27
Speaker 1: Last one, and I want to ask you where you're at with this guy too, But Chase Browns versus Tyrone Tracy.

00:53:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a Chase Brown for me. And it's just nice again. You know, Flacco older guy. I mean, I guess he's forty. It looks like he's fifty two at times, but I mean he's playing better than Browning. I will see who plays this week. Hopefully the shoulder entry for Flacco isn't that bad? He obviously loves nothing more than the pump targets. To Jamar Chase, He's got man eighteen targets a game, but no catches over twenty yards.

00:53:56
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean he like, it's crazy. I talked about this my mail bag that when we're recording this, the mailbag's not out. But it's just wild that Jamar Chase over the last two weeks is like a fifty four percent target share. I mean, we're we're talking like there's only been five wide receivers since twenty eleven who have had multiple fifty percent target share games in a season, and Jamar Chase has done it in back to back weeks.

00:54:19
Speaker 2: Like it's just the amount of volume he's seeing. No one could have predicted this, you know, to this.

00:54:23
Speaker 3: I know on pace can be kind of a silly game, but if you take the three Flacco games, yeah, Chase his production and on pace it for a full season, he had over three hundred targets.

00:54:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just ridiculous.

00:54:33
Speaker 1: It's ridiculous, and clearly it's not going to maintain to this degree, but for sure, for sure.

00:54:37
Speaker 3: But here's here's the thing. Here's the thing, Blacko is competent, right, the offense is competent again, and I realized p Ryan, you know, he had the nine carries last week, he had a touchdown, he had ten touches. Overall, They've always teams like him as a pass blocker. He's got the chops to play in the receiving game. So Brown, we always kind of knew. Last year's snap share and participation rate was, you know, at the high end to like those Matt four tay type stats like never coming off the field. That was a little bit unrealistic to keep that. But all Brown really needed is that the offense to show the ability to be competent. And I realized part of that was the coaching Burrows injury. Of course, as a killer, the offensive line has been very bad. But now that Flacco can make this offense at least competitive. Yeah, to meet Chase Brown is an easy punch. I would take him over Tracy and I actually think he'll just be a kind of a set and forget running back to the rest of the season.

00:55:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that'd be great.

00:55:25
Speaker 1: I mean I think that that that Chase Brown, you know, yes, he was a volume play in an offense play, you know, a situation play like where we were drafting him and stuff.

00:55:36
Speaker 2: But at the same I think he's good like I too.

00:55:38
Speaker 1: I don't think that he's like a bad running back that oh, now that this is not many running backs could do anything in the situations that he was in, the in the line, in the way that was performing earlier this season, that he was running behind. And I think we've seen if you watched last two games, granted you know easier opponents, and you know, obviously we're gonna we're gonna see him shine a little bit more, but he's created a lot on his own too, and you just give him a little bit of space and can do that. So, you know, I think that if there is any downside here, it's that again you mentioned this Smajhi p Ryan. The receiving stuff hasn't been as strong under Flacco. Hopefully that regresses a little bit because his route participation rate hasn't changed that that dramatically. This is sort of where, because I'm I'm relatively high on Tracy, I think that this is sort of where, you know, the Rico stuff after after all the coach speak and whatnot, I feel better about so I'm pretty much on par with you, with with uh with everyone that you had you had mentioned there do you.

00:56:27
Speaker 3: Have Tracy share? So? How how it's because once Scataboo came in, I just thought Tracy was almost valueless.

00:56:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, like I I, I was mostly splitting the two in drafts, you know, best ball wise, I probably had a little bit more Tracy because I got nervous down the stretch when I'm drafting a little bit more volume about the Scataboo injury that he was dealing with, you know, throughout August and whatnot. I liked Scataboo as a prospect just fine, like I. He had the I said in in the in the late round prospect guy that he had the second best production profile in the class behind Ashon Genty.

00:56:58
Speaker 2: I mean it was literally those two guys, you know.

00:57:01
Speaker 1: And he comped a Kareem Hunt too, which was obviously pretty interesting and in attractive. But I've been a Tyrone Tracy guy too, Like I think they had a situation where both running backs are just good, and I think Tyrone Tracy is still a good player, and so I'm I'm excited to see what he can do, you know, in this role, you know, with a more competent quarterback situation, given what they're doing offensively this year, and they had last year when when Tracy was was getting a lot of work. It's crazy because I talked to you know, Late Round subscribers and they're saying, you know, some of them are in like pretty casual leagues, and they say that, like some of their leagues didn't even bid on Tyrone Tracy, Like there are people who just don't think that this is going to be like a very fantasy viable thing. But I think Tracy's a really good player. To me, there's not a big gap and talent between Tracy and some of the running backs we just talked about, And so I'm fine with buying into that and leaning into him as an RB two.

00:57:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. And if you know, I was telling people if they were in a position to be bit on him this week, I would have been aggressive with it. You know, obviously by now that that stuff has sorted itself out, but right, and who knew? I thought Jackson Dart was going to be you know, kind of fun but ineffective, and he's been I realized he makes mistakes every game, and it still takes on too much contact, but at least he's made the Giants. Even with malink neighbors being heard they missed Slayton for a while. Who's at least a useful player. I had no idea I'd actually look forward to watching the Giants, but that's been the case since Start took over.

00:58:24
Speaker 1: Once again, I got to give my guy, Jim Snis, who comes on the show every every winter and spring to top quarterbacks. He's a quarterback model and that model pre draft had Jackson Dart as a top ten quarterback over the last decade and he nailed it.

00:58:38
Speaker 2: He had Jayden Daniels last year, nailed that. So the model has been and it was high and Drake.

00:58:43
Speaker 3: May two those are huge hits. All of those.

00:58:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's been. He's been crushing it. So I want to because he That was what really got me on. Jackson Dart was talking to Jim talking through it and all the the data points that he was making, and I gotta I gotta give him some love because he absolutely crushed it.

00:58:59
Speaker 3: That's another thing. Another tip, right is that if you have somebody who specializes in something, you know, just have their brain. You talked about Jim how well he's evaluated the quarterbacks that I obviously work with Matt Harmon, who's known for his wide receiver work. So whenever I'm unsure about wide receiver stances, I just you know, I send that a text or you know, I send him an email and and I say, look, you know this stuff, you study this stuff, You've charted this stuff. What do you got for me? And you know, if somebody is such a smart but in this case, specially you know, Matt Harmon is all about receivers, you know you're calling. Jim is all about the quarterback evaluations. And they both have the track record that back it up. So if somebody specializes in something, you know, have a trouble putting, go go to the putting guru, you know, Cose, I'm not afraid to. I'm not afraid to crib off the people who know what they're doing.

00:59:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, one hundred percent.

00:59:44
Speaker 1: I've been texting Harmon every week, just commiserating about Caleb Williams and not being able to get Roma Dunes the ball and being so inaccurate over the last ye Finally, last week we had a more competent.

00:59:56
Speaker 2: Performance from Caleb to Rome. But yeah, I mean Harmon. Harmon's my with a lot of the just making sure that I'm seeing this properly, right, Like I had a I was doing research on Quentin Johnson this week and I'm like, hey, this is what I found and is this what you're seeing too? And I think it's you know, it's a it's a good thing to do.

01:00:11
Speaker 3: What would a QJ takeaways?

01:00:13
Speaker 1: QJ takeaway was that over the last couple of weeks they've been running a lot more go routes with him and basically using him like they did last year as sort of as what Harmon would call the sacrificial X.

01:00:23
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, yeah, And so I don't know if that's going to continue.

01:00:28
Speaker 1: But I think that the bad part for QJ is that Aronde Gatston has emerged, and that's the like the offense is cooking, and so why would they really change it up that dramatically.

01:00:39
Speaker 2: That's the issue.

01:00:40
Speaker 1: But then you could also tell the story of like, this is what's happened after his after he came back from injury, and maybe that injury still lingering, and so there could be an opportunity just shouting this out to everyone listening. There could be an opportunity to really really buy low on QJ if this continues, because then we could latch onto the injury narrative and say, may they start to change it up a little bit and use him in different ways. But if we're looking at strictly from like a descriptive perspective, which is what that really is, like my QJ take isn't so much like this is what's going to continue happening.

01:01:12
Speaker 2: It's a this is why this is happening. They're just using him, not like they were at the start of the year, which is a little unfortunate.

01:01:18
Speaker 3: I know this will feel like cheating, But at the same time, I feel like QJ stock is down. And yet there's a possibility that people who roster him right now may have just bottomed him out, Like you know, they don't trust him anybody exactly. They see the bad drop exactly, they see Gatson emerging, which is obviously a thing. So while I have to rationally lower my expectations for Johnston, it's also possible there could be an overcorrection by the people who've coster him right now. So those two things can exist in the same.

01:01:44
Speaker 1: World exactly like in my opinion, the if this continues then he's basically Jamison Williams, you know where where like sure we can use him during bye weeks and then a pension, you know, fingers crossed that they do, like speaking of coming out of the buy and changing things up, there's already been some coach speak about them using Jmo Moore. Let's hope that that happens because I think it just makes that offense a lot more dynamic. But regardless of that, like like this is you're you're totally right. When a lot of times when this stuff happens over like a two or three game span, you will see fantasy managers just not want to have anything to do with that player and just think, you know, the absolute worst about that player. It could be a time if you haven't gotten QJ, or if you want more exposure, find someone on your bench that you can trade away that might even just be a one week start like a BAM night or something like that, and get QJ and say, hey, maybe this turns around and maybe this is this is just really an anomaly that's going on.

01:02:35
Speaker 3: Right, And never forget too, that wide receiver is a variance position. You know, there's just going to be it's boom and bust and one play, one play being called a catch or not a catch or a foot out of bounds or whatever it is, will radically change what their outlook is and how we feel about them, the taste in our monels at the end of the week. So and even the best players, you're justin Jefferson every once in a while, ever three for twenty four game, it just happens. It just happens. This position, It's is just more variance deposition, which is why you need to take these broader views sometimes to make a good decision that makes sense moving forward.

01:03:08
Speaker 1: All Right, one more for you before I let you go. Been asking for some bold takes for the upcoming week. We've had some pretty big hits. The biggest one I think so far, James Co said that Stephan Diggs was going to be the wide receiver one the week, like overall wide receiver one the.

01:03:22
Speaker 2: Week that he played Buffalo, and he was I think the two that week. So he I mean, I'll give him the w who for that one.

01:03:28
Speaker 3: That's a great one.

01:03:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, give me a bold take for week nine.

01:03:31
Speaker 3: Yeah. James Co another smart guy and he and Harmon do a lot of work together. So certainly somebody on the Fantasy approoved list. I'm not sure this is going to be anywhere near as bold as that, But so Pete Carroll gets hired for the Raiders job he's in his seventies, and Chip Kelly takes over the offense and beat the Patriots in Week one. Almost nothing has gone right since Bowers obviously got hurt. Gino Smith has been a mess. We know that's you know, the red zone problems are kind of a Geno Smith thing anyway, and Ashton Genty, their high priced rookie, really hasn't done much. I have to believe that chip Kelly didn't forget. Not that I'm at all bullish on the Raiders long view, but Genty was a really good pass catcher in college. I have to feel that they are going to eventually realize what they're missing here. I think this is the week Genty finally catches like seven passes.

01:04:17
Speaker 2: Nice. Nice, I like it.

01:04:18
Speaker 3: I like it. Yeah. There.

01:04:20
Speaker 1: He's been one of the players that every time I post my rest of the season rankings, there's someone that is like, why are you still relatively high?

01:04:27
Speaker 2: And it's not relatively high.

01:04:28
Speaker 1: It's just like I'm at market with with Genty, but no one has you know, they don't have that context with what the market is generally saying about him.

01:04:34
Speaker 2: You know, why are you so high on Genty? And it's just he's go a do it all back, He's you.

01:04:39
Speaker 1: Know, like we talked about Travon Henderson earlier and how he hasn't it hasn't clicked for him yet. Don't forget. It didn't really click for Genty the first couple weeks this season. It didn't click for Mari and Hampton the first couple weeks of this season. Sometimes it just happens like sometimes they just they just realize, this is what I gotta do. And I do think that that it did click for Genty, and hopefully you're right, hopefully that that Raiders coaching staff decides to use him a little bit more in ways that they should be using him because he is a very, very talented player.

01:05:09
Speaker 3: But Scott Man, big big reveal week Man again. Yeah, six teams off by We look at those six teams very carefully. I'm going to give you one more tip by the way, just for fun. Yeah, because we're still in the teeth of by Week season, right, Yeah, remember that anybody who's on by Monday morning, go over to Yahoo, find someone in your bench who lost value, and pick up somebody who's on by you didn't play because they're a free agent in your league. People forget that, like all those gap pickups. People even get mad at me sharing this tip because it's such a like a It's like the bar without a sign on it. You know. It's like, you know, you mentioned NHLPA ninety four. That's not so much for me. It's ronic he's good, right, but so good? Yes, so good, but dead. So remember Monday morning, make those gap pickups. And again in by week season, people are cutting guys they don't want to Mason Taylor. Maybe one of those guys he's on by. Maybe you don't have room for Mason Taylor. And then Monday morning one of your backups get hurt or something. He's not worth anything anymore. Like I had to cut Kendrick Miller, who I was really high on a few weeks ago, because he got hurt. He's out for the season, you know. But then I made a gap pick up on Monday morning. So yeah, if you're playing at Yahoo, and I hope you are, just keep that in mind for your Monday plan.

01:06:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can do that with with streaming defenses at the very least, you know, I love it. Yeah, that's that's the easiest way to do that. But man, this was this was awesome. I love chatting with you, love talking ball with you. Let everyone know what you're working on, where they can find you all that good stuff.

01:06:27
Speaker 3: Sure. Yeah, Scott Panowski easy to find on Twitter and Blue Sky. I am part of the Fantasy newsletter of it. Yeah, who get to the points which you know you should be reading. Right after you read JJ's stuff in the morning, we come to you, I think three days a week periodically on the podcast as well, and then you know, all sorts of NFL content and I will cover fantasy baseball when that comes around too. But if you follow me on social media Twitter, Scott underscore Pianowski. I arned Blue Sky just searched Scott Pianowski. Pretty unique name. You'll find me and I'll linked all my stuff and also love to talk about anything nonsports. You've seen a great movie, you knew album, you like, you got dog pictures, whatever it is. You know, we're all human beings too. You give food food a food food photo to show you know cost the recipe. You know, I'm open to anything. Let's have some fun. This is all supposed to be fun. It's a game about a game, and I'd love to have you along for the ride.

01:07:16
Speaker 2: I see you, I see you golf, and I saw that you had that hole in one right like a month ago or so.

01:07:20
Speaker 3: I did my second one. Yeah, that's very lucky. I wish everybody can have that once. I'm about a fifteen handicap, which means I'm an okay golfer. I can shoot in the eighties, I can shoot in the nineties. I'm never going to be great, but the gods have smiled on me twice. And you know that's I wish everybody who plays golf gets experienced that at least once.

01:07:39
Speaker 1: Did you have any urge to just quit playing after that that hole in one, like just just to end it on a high and just be done.

01:07:45
Speaker 3: I'm kind of obsessive about golf. Yes. In fact, the joke I always tell people that said, if you knew how much I practiced, you'd wonder why I'm not better. Right, I love it. You know, all the people the driving range know me, and the people at the putting green know me and stuff. What really happened, JJ is when the pandemic hit. Yeah, and I always liked golf. I really loved golf, but I didn't like practicing. I used to actually dread it. Yeah, And when the pandemic hit, one of the few things we could do was was get outside and do things like play golf. So I went to the drive and range a lot, and you could play. They'd have the whole setup, so nobody's going to touch the pin, spread germs and all this stuff. And so golf kind of kept me saying as much as it could during the pandemic, right, I mean that March of twenty twenty was the longest month of our lives. Right, I think we're crazy. Is the NFL even going to play? Right? They had a truncated baseball season. I don't know how they played an NFL season, but whatever they did, and golf kind of kept me kept me going, and I practiced a lot and got better again. I'm mediocre by anybody's account, but I I'm always working on something. I'm always watching golf videos, you know, or whether it's practice tips, the nineteen ninety five Masters, you know. I just love that stuff. So the other thing too, is that JJ. Growing up, I played everything. I played hockey, I played basketball, I played softball, and even my adult I really can't do any to play. I couldn't skate now, you know. I couldn't I could run in a basketball game, you know. So golf is the one sport I can play for the rest of my life. It's a great social game too. Yeah, much much love to the game.

01:09:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's it's a great game. Ever since kids have come for me, it's been a lot more difficult to play. But I'm making I've told my wife, I'm like, I'm making it my New Year's resolution next year to play more golf. That is my That is my my official resolution for twenty twenty six.

01:09:24
Speaker 3: Let me ask you a fun question on the way out. Yeah, as a UNS there, as a Pittsburgh guy, who's your all time favorite Pittsburgh athlete? Oh?

01:09:32
Speaker 1: Man, I mean I think that I have to say Lemieux because of what he's meant to the city. I'm not I'm too young for Robert Clemente uh and to be you know, to say him, although I know that.

01:09:44
Speaker 3: The meaning is stargel and stuff like that, right.

01:09:46
Speaker 1: Right, I'll say that my favorite Steeler of all time is heinz Ward because he embodied sort of that era really well, and he was just a really fun player to to watch. But I think it's got to be, you know, just based on I mean, he saved the franchise. He literally saved the franchise from from moving, and since then they've won three Cups. So I you know, it's just that that man himself has brought me a lot of joy.

01:10:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, do yourself a favor. Gone to YouTube, not you, but the people listening and look at some Mario Mu highlights and it always Damagedeck and I always talk about this. The nineteen eighty nine MVP, well, Lemu had eighty five goals, Gretzky had fifty four goals. They both had one hundred and fourteen assists, and Lemieux did not win the MVP because Gretzky had gone to La and Lemieux, who would eventually have unbelievable teammates eventually, you know, they had Ron Francis and all the all the other stuffs and everything. That year he was playing with Bob Airy and Rob Brown. He made Rob Brown into a fifty goal scorer. Just because Lemieux was a god and Bob Ary was like a third line player who was on this line with lemou because they had nothing else at the time. Yeah, he was basically playing with a two journeymen, you know. And he had one hundred and ninety nine points and thirty one more goals. You know, I know, I'll never and the supporting Castinelli was actually pretty good. I mean Bernie Nichols, who was a very good angel player. I think scored seventy goals that year. No disrespect to Gretzki or anything. That was one of the all time wrong picks. I got to say one more thing. I know we've gone way over, but as far as MVPs go, NFL MVP, all right, it's become the best quarterback award. The only non quarterback who's won recently has been Adrian Peterson. That was like thirteen years ago. Taylor's having this great year. He'll never win MVP. I just wish he was most outstanding Player, the player who defines the season, because to me, like Cooper Cup was that guy in twenty twenty one, j J. Watt was that guy the year that Rogers beat him out, Jerry Rice could have won In eighty seven. Randy must didn't even get an MVP vote the year he had twenty three touchdowns. I realized he can't separate him and Brady. Brady had fifty touchdowns whatever. Brady was a great pick, had nothing wrong with that, But man, it's funny how receivers can win or running backs can win an MVP in like a game and a Super Bowl. But why can that be the MVP of the season If it was most outstanding player, if it didn't turn into everybody's personal definition of what valuable means, Yeah, then I think we just have a more interesting voting for that award. I gat I thought Cup was the guy in twenty one. I think Taylor could easily be that guy this year and he'll never win it.

01:12:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's yeah, exactly. I mean, I do think that It's just one of those things, like I've distanced myself since I've been at uh, you know, since I was at number five where we had to write more of that kind of content and stuff like that. I've distanced myself from like having strong opinions on coaching hires and you know, MVP stuff, all that all that kind of you know, and like real football stuff. I'll randomly throw out some takes, but it's you know, nothing that I'm the expert on. But I do think sometimes with like the MVP, I'm like, can we just dumb this down and just be like, who do you think is the best? You know, like like just very simply without you know, going into that nuance, because yes, when you go into that detail, it would be a quarterback as we know there you don't have that player, you know, like the Jonathan Taylor thing. It's it's it's pretty interesting because the biggest change year over years is Daniel Jones, right, like, nothing like what has dramatically dramatically changed for Jonathan Taylor. And it's it's that that would be the biggest change is the changing quarterback. And yet we're seeing such dramatically different results from from Taylor. So then you could deduce and say, okay, well then he's not the MVP because there was there's this other piece that would hypothetically be that MVP. But then that other piece is not nearly the best player at his position, so you can't call him the MVP, right, And so like, yes, you can get into that detail, but I do think that You're right, it's like who defined that season and right now it's got to be what Taylor is doing unless we see, you know, the continuation of Drake May playing as well as he has to me, like I think, I think Drake May has been the MVP so far.

01:13:45
Speaker 3: Like like that, you know, the average cast around him, Diggs is not the same player unless James co is on your show promodium. You know, Booty's a nice player. And was it interesting that he had better stats than Thomas and neighbors that one season at l you who's actually there kind of their alpha receiver?

01:14:02
Speaker 2: He was a good project.

01:14:03
Speaker 3: But May, Drake May is so freaking good, Okay, I swear. Last question, Yeah, I is the pumpkin risk for Daniel Jones. When I say pumpkin risk, it's the risk it Oh my god, he just forgets everything. He goes back to being mediocre. We're getting close to zero pumpkin risk on Jones and you still have a little bit of that. It's almost Halloween, you know, the monsters under the bed, the monsters hide in the closet. Daniel Jones is going to get me. Where are you at on that?

01:14:27
Speaker 2: I think that it is still there.

01:14:30
Speaker 1: Because I do think that we can see certain quarterbacks and certain situations even get hot for twelve games and it's still you know, exists because it's such a cerebral position and such a mentally based and mentally driven position. But yeah, I mean like he's he's to me, he's going to get a contract with them, like a long term contract, and he'll he'll probably be their quarterback for the immediate future.

01:14:54
Speaker 3: So I probably comps pretty similar to Darnold last year, great season, Oh my god, what is Minnesota gonna do? And then he plays terrible against Detroit, he plays terrible against the playoffs, and it's like, Okay, well they're gonna wave.

01:15:04
Speaker 1: And I think that's a very real possibility for Daniel Jones. You know, I said it on Living the Stream this week on you know, more of a of a relaxed I mean this is a pretty relax show too, but more of a you know, relaxed style show. I wouldn't be surprised and this is this is just completely vibes based. But if this is the week that like the Steelers beat the Colts, right, like just the most NFL thing of all time, the most Mike Tomlin thing, of all time, and then all of a sudden, we're having these conversations in the opposite direction. For Daniel Jones, I don't think that's the median outcome, but I think that, like that's the way that the narratives are are driven in this league and in this game is and this is what we talked about throughout this entire show, is like one game from a player that's not up to some standard that they've set, we almost take it too far then in the other direction, so, you know, defending depending on how you would define like turning back into that, he's gonna have a game or two where he's not flawless or we're not even flawless, but like you know, he's played well basically every single game, and so he's gonna have a game or two in there where people then start to question and he's not gonna have the same kind of leash that you know, a younger up and coming quarterback like a Drake may or like an established one like Patrick Mahomes or Josh Allen when.

01:16:15
Speaker 2: They have a bad game, Okay, it's just a bad game, they're gonna bunce back. But we just don't. We will never have that with a player like Daniel Jones. Unfortunately, when we probably should.

01:16:22
Speaker 1: I think the Colt's front office though, will like they'll they'll sit there and be like, Okay, we know that we have something okay that can that can function in this offense.

01:16:29
Speaker 3: And that speaks to the fact that nobody hits the high end of their range every week. And that's why we always talk about outlier performances, good or bad. You're never probably as great as you look on your best day, and you're probably not as horrible as you exact worst day. And you know, how do the Falcons beat the Bills and then get trounced by Miami? You know that that's football, right, It just happened range of outcomes in football.

01:16:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like just just be okay, Like that's the thing. You don't have to have answers for all of this stuff. You just have to be okay that this stuff happens. You know that that just like when you go out for a run, you're gonna be slower one day than another day and you don't know exactly why, but there's reasons why.

01:17:03
Speaker 2: These are all humans as well, right, sure, and.

01:17:06
Speaker 1: There's going to be days where they just don't have it together. Where the coaching staff is calling horrible plays, where fumble doesn't go their way, where it does go their way, that kind of stuff is just gonna happen. And if you don't let yourself react too harshly to those things, you can be a better fantasy player and just football watcher in general, you know, over the long term.

01:17:23
Speaker 3: So well said, you have to make peace with the variants.

01:17:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, you really don't, You really do well. I appreciate the time man.

01:17:28
Speaker 1: As always, everyone can follow me on Twitter, on Blue Sky at Late Round QB, check out my work lateround dot com. Make sure you're subscribed to this show, both via podcast, but also on YouTube YouTube dot com slash at Late Round FF. Happy Halloween everyone, Thanks to Scott once again, really appreciate it, and thanks to all of you for tuning in.