[Music] Welcome back to the Establish the Edge Offseason Projecting Special with myself and Ben Wretch. If you haven't listened to the first two episodes, you can do so. Obviously if you're listening to this, you're on the podcast video, you're on the YouTube channel if you're listening. Do know that we have this up on YouTube as well on the Establish the Edge channel. Also make sure you're following Ben in his content at bengratch.substac.com. You can find all my stuff over at Establish the Run. But AFCEs will jump right in with Buffalo. Everyone listening knows I'm a Bills fan. So the homework takes already, Gratch as I make excuses for some young Buffalo Bills players. But from a play calling standpoint, out of town here, we both have the bills slightly below average in pace at just over 62 plays per game. Have the bills a little bit below average in pass rate around 58% call pass rate for both of us. That leads to very similar play calling numbers. We're expecting around 31.5 pass attempts per game and just over 29 rush attempts per game. Gratch anything to add on the play calling side for Buffalo. Well, I wanted to ask you about that a little bit because their playfall volume kind of cratered. But they were second and points for was it just like their efficiency was so good. I mean, I think that's kind of the way they played. Their efficiency was good, but they do play a little bit slow under Brady and the neutral pace over expected. We have them below average, but not like bottom five or anything, just a little bit below average. So that's part of the real work, especially them to bounce back is we don't have them. We have them playing below average, but not like crazy slow. That's what I was thinking. That's exactly that's why our numbers are so close as I was viewing it the same way as it. Their play volume kind of cratered last year, but in a way that was probably because they were so good. And so it's either a good thing that they're that efficient or if they're a little less efficient, they're going to have to run more place like by by the mission to get through drives and things. And we're both a little bit higher on the pass rate kind of expecting a little bit of that regression and the offense being so efficient and just some game script stuff too. Obviously, you know, the pass rate generally correlates a little bit positively with with plays run your generally running more place if you're throwing more. So yeah, we're both baking in some regression on those two categories. Yeah, and then just probably with this offense stuff, it's probably a good thing to jump in here with some of their trends from a scoring perspective. So last year, their rush past TD splits, they had 32 rush touchdowns, 30 past TDs. So working backward, the previous four seasons, they were at 22 rush TVs, which is going to be the high in their four prior years. So they were all up at 32 this past year, 22 and 29 past 15 and 35, 20 and 36 16 and 40. So the in 2023, they're at 29 past TDs, they were 30 and 2024. Again, both under Brady. I think there's probably a real shift here, but you look at the 2020 to 2022 range, they're at 35 to 40 past TDs every year, 15 to 20 rush TVs. And so that difference in 2023, 22 rush TVs to 2024, where they got up to 32 rush TVs is what I'm looking at is I don't really know what how to play that. In part, because the market still, the look at lines still has this team expected to score the most points in the league. They're 32 rush TVs last year. I was surprised by this mic. Three more than the Eagles and Detroit. I don't know what you're talking to me. Three more than the Eagles and Detroit as the league leader, seven more than every other team. There was no one else over 25, but I would have thought the Eagles were still ahead of the bills and rush TVs, just I guess for my mental calibration. I guess I think it's fascinating that Alan still got there and was the MVP because he's the offense, even in a year where he didn't throw a ton of TVs. And so if some of the shifts back, I think probably there's meat on the bone for Alan's past TDs as part of the way that I was looking at it. Yeah, I think as you said, there is a market shift under Brady, but we still shouldn't expect it to be I think greater than 50% rushing touchdowns. We have the bills with 28 passing touchdowns, 24 rushing touchdowns on the season. Okay. I'm at about 29 and 26. So I have a few more overall projected to hit the numbers that I have as an expectation that because I was below expectation when I got done with my projection as well. And I had to like juice the touchdown numbers to get to where I thought Vegas, look at my minds, had them for points. But my stuff comes in a little hot as we've talked about. Yeah, we do actually with us, you know, that note, we do have them slightly leading Baltimore for the most touchdowns per game. And we've got three teams that are just over three touchdowns per game being Detroit, Buffalo, and Baltimore right now. So the rest it probably just goes a little higher. I mean, for reference, I have them for 55 total touchdowns. They had 62 last year. So I do have them coming back, but you guys are what they had last year led the lead league I think or at least led the league on the Russian side, right? 62 touchdowns is a ton to project. It's too high, right? Yeah. As far as I definitely think some stuff could swing the way of passing touchdowns for Alan, there's a ton of upside. I think bottom line is Alan's just so responsible for everything that they do that, you know, him in Lamar, I think are like just clearly the top two QBs. We've hit on there being some room to go late round QB in the first two episodes, but we did in the first episode in particular talk about formats like the FFPC main event where having this elite quarterback in those in that sprint from weeks 15 to 17 can be beneficial. So I think, you know, Alan's in play with that in basketball too when he slips in the fourth round, I think he's a lot more stackable this year, at least from a price perspective, there's still going to be some really annoying things stacking him with the Buffalo offense, being spread out target shares. And as we've hit on potentially low pass TD volume and low pass volume in general, which is because this team did seem to shift a little bit more to the run. The defense seems like it's always really good in the regular season. McDermott's really good defensive coach, but as far as price to the pass catchers, you can stack Alan a lot more easily this year than last year. Yeah. I think that range. Yeah, I think that range of non-QBs gets pretty flat and I mean, it's not that it's not enticing, but there are question marks with a lot of the profiles. And so usually the way that I want to play QB in drafts just strategically is when things are flat at other positions. That's when I want to be thinking about hitting on QB. I don't think the elite QB prices are, I don't think the opportunity cost is as bad this year. They're a little cheaper as you said, which is helpful. And I think that range is a little bit weaker than most years. The fourth round range is a little bit or third round on FFPC, depending on where you're playing is a little bit weaker than the profiles you would typically see in those rounds, which is not to say that they're all bad or anything like that. A lot of that comes down to whether there's some game breaker in those ranges. It's the guy you need. It feels like it may not be that this year in the sense that then having a player like Alan who does provide you a real benefit could be the right way to be building. Yeah, and I feel pretty good about our best ball ranks, but some of our redraft rankings, it's a little bit harder to like, from an automated system get these nuances and these wrinkles. And you know, I'm looking at our FFPC ranks and we're about half-round behind ADP on Alan. And it's just a weird dichotomy because some of the value quarterbacks you go so late when you're only drafting one quarterback in these that we don't want to push the quarterbacks too much because we end up being really far ahead ADP on those guys. But as a result, we're a little bit behind on Alan, but I am looking at like kind of the mid tier, especially some of the running backs that go on round four, Camera, Chuba Hubbard, definitely would rather take a shot personally on Alan or Lamar. We have Lamar as the QB1, but we have him back to back. I do probably slightly prefer Lamar to Alan, but not like a huge gap or anything. Yeah, makes sense. Let's go to running back because the rushing touchdown regression conversation affects James Cook in a big way. I believe he went from two rushing touchdowns to 16. So a tell of two seasons for Cook in terms of running bad untouched downs and then running good on touchdowns. You had the NFL and rushing touchdowns last year. It did go from two to 16. Both the rush TD stuff, like when you look at the rush TD rate when you're doing a projection, I think the league average number I use is like 2.8% for running backs. I tend to not go below 2.0%. You'll see the really good backs be up over 4.0%. and that's where you're like, okay, maybe I'll project up near four further.
really good guys are above four in some cases, but in the threes is like really strong. I just say that to tell you what I tell the listeners what the cook rush TV rates were the last two years, 0.7% in 2023 and then 7.3% in 2024. It's just just multiply it times 10. It's crazy. The cook conversations that we both have, we were around like nine to 10 rushing touchdowns. Well you've got them at 245 full PPR points. We're at 207. The cook conversation is interesting. I feel like right now he's a decent value just betting on the efficient player in a good offense with people being I think a little spooked by the potential holdout stuff that's been going on with him. I'm not really worried about that. It doesn't seem like too much has come from it. It's hard to quantify the real risk of these things. They have not reached a new deal. I don't that's certainly think they're going to reach a new deal, but I don't think he's going to end up holding out. So I think with that he's a good guy. I could see if they reach a new deal or people just become unconcerned with the holdout risk and his ADP rises come August, he could get too rich. Your concerns for me with cook if the ADP were to get more into the third round, especially the early third. He has a lot of games been where you're looking at like 12 carries, three targets. It's just, and he's an efficient player, but he's not like otherworldly efficient. This isn't Jumir Gibbs efficiency. He's been high fours in yards per carry last two seasons. Very solid, but not anything crazy. It's just hard to make a living with a high end ceiling at 12 carries and three targets. Again, unless you're for 16 touchdowns again. Yeah, and I think a big part of that, they're bringing Ray Davis. They're going to use him some and they may use him a little more if cook him as a whole off season or what have you. The third guy is a guy we talked about on the show last year and I think talked about him being more draftable than people realized is Ty Johnson who I remember us having that discussion where I think Josh Allen or the coaching staff said they think he's the best third down back in the league. They treated him that way last year. He had a good year. He actually got out and routes yet 229 area yards, most in the NFL for a running back by a ton. I think Seikwon was the only other back over 100 last year. They were throwing. He had like a real Aida. They were throwing him a lot of like wheels and deep routes. That's that is very interesting as well because Ray Davis also has 50 areas overall and typically this just means for running backs that they had a couple downfield throws because their Aida also are usually about zero. They're right around the line of scrimmage and so this is okay. Ray Davis did have a couple deep passes and I remember he caught one deep and so his yards per target winds up looking incredible for a running back in part just because he catches like one 30 area yard throw or something. Over the course of his season. Had Johnson had a few of those. They both had really high receiving TD rates. James Cook only had four area yards for the whole season. So he was one of those running backs that's right around a zero Aida but it's fascinating because he has something I highlighted as a positive in his profile last year because he had 76 and 112 area yards over the first two years. So the downfield opportunities for the running backs in this in this past game were still there for some reason they didn't go to cook this year. I guess I don't think that's like definitely going to stick. I do think the third down stuff with Ty Johnson is true but that's one thing that was weird about Cook's 2024 that actually might come back and I do project it to come back a little that I don't think he's just suddenly not going to be running some of these wheel routes and things because he's an explosive player as well. I just think that the ball went to the back when it wasn't Cook who was running the route. Maybe there was lots of tension on the back when it was Ty Johnson or Ray Davis running the route but Cook probably should get a few opportunities to be explosive in the past game. I know you look at the 16 rush TVs and immediately I think that has to regress. He only had two of the year prior but they talked about it all off season. Joe Barney was his new coach. We expected a little bit of a shift. The rush TVs did shift dramatically and 16 is a ton. You can regress that and still see him as an above average touchdown type of runner. Again, we just got done talking about we're both projecting this team to score the most touchdowns and the league based on market factors. Look ahead lines and those things. They're expected to be a team that scores a bunch of points and if James Cook's out there it seems like he would be it's hard to be like he's going to have a below average rush TV right again. That's not the way that it's going to shift back. That wouldn't be the expectation. There should be some regression but the rush TV regression has baked in and has cost. But then the ceiling point is another one that you just made that I think is a really interesting one and a really good one because I don't know there's a lot of opportunity for him to be the workhorse because of Davis and because of Ty Johnson. The whole thing is really tough. I think goes for the receiving weapons to a degree as well. You listen to them talk about this offense. They talk about everyone eats and they want everybody to have their role and be role players around Josh Allen is basically the way it works which is not necessarily great for fantasy. James Cook is the best thing going for consolidation of volume and there are some ways like I said with the receiving that could swing back favorably for him but he probably is just going to kind of work back from that and when I got to the projection I got a really high number form but I also felt like from the reasons that you said that this is close to his ceiling that there's not a lot of meat on the bone for him to have a monster upside season above it. Yeah, I think we see it pretty similarly which is like a little bit underpriced right now but if you got very expensive you'd be concerned about the ceiling. Ray Davis I think is a solid RB2. I think there's opportunity for him to maybe cut into some of the Russian touchdowns that Cook had last year and just a good contingency back. Ty Johnson as you noted he's going to play the role he's going to play but if Cook were to go down I do think we'd see a heavy dose of Ray Davis as opposed to like an even split between Ray Davis and Ty Johnson. Yeah, I think that's it. At receiver the receivers are tricky again because they spread things out like Ben said everyone sort of a role player in this offense which is tough when a team doesn't throw a ton and has a lot of TV about him coming from the ground so you do get ceiling concerns but you get some pretty cheap price tags and there's not a ton of target competition if someone were to kind of emerges a more reliable player. That's Ben Klyoshek here. His targets per out run really strong. He gets all the easy stuff for the bills. His catch rates the last two years because like 80% two years ago mid 70s last year and if you look at any advance like expected catch rate metrics he's pretty high up there so I do think there's some sustainability in terms of a player that's pretty safe for volume and going to convert a lot of that volume into catches. Concerned for Shakira of course is just you know can you hit the high end efficiency from a ceiling perspective. We do have him right now a little bit ahead of ADP across most sites. Yeah, the tricky thing for me is the first two years as targets per out were 12.1% 13.6% at higher ADOTs and then last year is when it really breaks out he's up at a 24.9% target per out basically combining his first two you know seasons are doubling his first two seasons at a way lower 8 out 5.6 and that's because of what you talked about was they added a specific role in this offense. Part of why I was excited on Dalton King K last year is I expected him to get more down fieldwork but he in 2023 got some short area stuff and I thought that might be his work last year. It very much wasn't it was all Khalil Shakira these swing passes these designed they were a sort of a run based team and they use Alan's rushing as well to keep a lot of players in the box and then they just throw swing passes to Khalil Shakira get him on the edge moving laterally and he cuts up field where he can he's very good with the ball in his hands to into your point these are really high catch rate plays their design plays their quick release like low time to throw and so as far as like target earning Khalil Shakira targets per out jumps and ton he sees a ton of targets in year three but I also think that development is fascinating from the perspective that it feels very skeamed it feels very you know this is what the role is and defenses could theoretically try to take that away or the bills offense could evolve in a way that it's not as much of a priority and if that's the case. What else does he have with the first two years not earning a ton of volume he has the efficiency which you mentioned he's always been efficient even at the higher a dots he makes plays down field in a big way I do think he's a high floor player but I think there's more risk to him maintaining the target rate than there really is upside for him because he hasn't shown an ability to really earn volume in a lot of different depths and a lot of different ways. However, there's not other like key players in this passing game that feel better ways to play like I think Shakira is off like the obvious way to play it you look at like what they did in the post season he had six seven and seven targets in the three games and was like clearly their main guy in the post season games like he that's that's the way he's doing
That's what he's kind of be is like six or seven targets a game and be efficient on those. He's going to catch him at a high rate like you said and those things. So I think he's a high floor player. He's probably a lot more viable in basketball, I think, than managed where you're kind of looking for a little more ceiling with the you have to pick which weeks to start guys and all that stuff. But yeah, to me, he's a little tough of a pick because of the lack of ceiling, probably more of just a stack guy. Yeah. I'm a slightly more optimistic by definitely get that point of view. Particularly the best ballers, redraft consequences. Keon Coleman. This is where my Homerism will come out because I'm holding a light on for Keon Coleman here in year two. I feel like the vibes on Coleman are pretty pretty bad. But like if you look at his season last year, from the yards per out run standpoint, I mean, he was better than Ricky Peer saw on more routes and Ricky Peer saw. And I just see so much Ricky Peer saw hype. He's going like 30 to 40 picks earlier. And that's something that I don't like fully get. Keon Coleman had a lower catch rate. It was kind of like the opposite of Cleo Shakir, but he had a lot of downfield success. His total yards per out run, his yards per target were very solid. I think he's got, if there were a guy to break through with double digit receiving touchdowns in this offense, it's probably him. I don't want to overplay how much I like Keon Coleman, but I do think he's a little bit, you know, I think there's a bit more upside here than the market gives credit for for a year to receiver. I like that. I like that a lot. He had a solid targets per out for the eight out that he had a 15.28 out of the very high to your point. He was still pretty efficient. And despite some minor concerns, the coaching staff, it's been interesting to hear him talk about him this off season. They talk about how he got a little banged up when he came back. He wasn't as consistent. He closed the season poorly. There's some of some of those things, but I think they still feel like there's a lot of room for growth going into your two and that kind of a thing. So it's 1.7 yards per out run. All that stuff, very fine for rookie. It's not like stuff that you can ignore or throw away to your point. The other thing, and this is where, you know, I will get in trouble with concade and I've gotten in trouble with players in the past is maybe giving them too many excuses on the injury out. But Coleman did seem like he was starting to really find his footing a little bit there. You know, back to back, seven target games, you know, a four for one, 25 against 10 a C five for 70 and one against Seattle. And then he gets hurt in that Miami game. And I know the team had some comments about being a little disappointed how he came back from injury, but just noting it's past the last season one, you know, a very different way if he does not get hurt against Miami. And that's, I mean, I guess that's part of it explains part of my concern on Shakir. It's just like if Coleman is able to break through in your two concade, we'll talk about how to very injury plague season. If he's able to do just basically anything more than he did, they brought in Josh Palmer, Curtis Samuel is in this offense. Elijah, I don't even know who like, they got a million dudes in this offense that are probably Dawson Knox still. Shakir is the obvious one and the guy who was really efficient and should have more volume because of the efficiency, but there's opportunities for other guys to do more this year. Coleman is like, I like your point. He's like the primary option for that, the likely is to lead and touchdowns when I went through the touchdown or receiving touchdown rates. I had his highest. And he's the other guy that if you're making a bet on someone taking a step forward, but if he doesn't, I could see being higher on Shakir is basically why I'm tying that back to Shakir. If he does, if some of that inconsistency plagues him in year two, then they have to rely on Shakir. Like they're not going to not rely on the guy that was really efficient last year. Beyond that, they've got Josh Palmer, Curtis Samuel, Elijah Moore. I spent a lot of money on Curtis Samuel and that just did not go as anticipated. I think Josh Palmer, you don't keep late rounds, that candid and best all, probably going to have some slash weeks down the field. I don't know if we really have to talk in depth on any of these guys. With beginning of the season, maybe would keep an eye on Elijah Moore if he were to carve out a more significant role. The tricky thing with Moore is he's both not earned a lot of targets per row. The reason he was a little bit interesting last year is the Browns ran a ton of routes with James Winston down the stretch. So he more was like ninth in the NFL and routes run last year or something. He ended up very, very high, but his numbers per route didn't really improve. So he's both, I look at yards per out run in the component parts, targets per out and then yards per target. He's both not great before the catcher earning a ton of volume for a low eight out guy and he's also really bad at yards per target. So he's like for a low eight out guy, his catch rates are like below 60 percent and in the moderate NFL, a lot of these guys at those catch at those eight outs are catching over 70 percent. Like you mentioned Shakira, he's catching him probably over almost 80 percent. I mean, like, I think Elijah Moore's probably not as good as people want him to be. So that's the tricky thing there. Josh Palmer are talking about very favorably as a blocker. He's going to be out there running routes like Mac Hollins kind of was in this offense last year. So I like that point about he's a stack candidate. We'll have a higher eight out. We'll have some splash games and some touchdowns and some longer catches sometimes and can be somewhat efficient was in Los Angeles with the chargers, but he's not going to be a big target earner. So he's just sort of a stack candidate in my mind and then you mentioned it with Samuel just didn't make a huge, a huge splash last year, but he had 46 targets and five carries. Like 50 opportunities is not nothing when you're doing a projection. He's going to be a part of the offense probably as well. To put numbers on things, Gretchen has Shakira 108 targets were at 94. We're both in the low 70s for Keon Coleman. Gretchen's Palmer at 70 were at 56, so just have the back end a little bit more spread out right now going to tight end. Which is at 85 targets for Kincaid were at 84 were both right around 35 for Dawson, Knox. Kincaid very disappointing year two. There's a lot of concerns here in terms of just finding the volume. Will the routes ever be there like Dawson, Knox is playing kind of more of the regular tight end roll. We see that in the red zone too, which you know, it's tough. I know Karens done a lot of stuff about having the tight ends that run block because then they're involved in the play action game and the red zone area and Kincaid loses that. They also have to talk about Shakira. There's this weird dynamic of like, well then if Shakira's playing in the slot, where's Kincaid playing and they had some better team success when he was off the field. But he was also very hurt. When he was out there despite being hurt, like his targets per out run was really strong. The targets per out run combined with Adat was actually like pretty unique for a tight end. He was fourth in targets per out run, 27%. John Smith of an Ingram Trimic Bride were the four ahead of him. Those guys all had Adat's around like five to six. Kincaid was at eight. So there's part of me that with him going so cheap wants to just play that and just be like, I don't know, maybe there's some wave that chaotic season plays out where he just ends up earning more routes. If he does earn a lot of routes, it's a lot more meaningful, you know, tight end upside than you typically find in that portion of the draft. I don't think that's likely to happen. I just think it's a decent gamble. The touchdown stuff that you mentioned is so odd because he started at San Diego. And then transferred to Utah. The Utah didn't really play in 2020. He didn't really play. But in 2018 and 2019 in San Diego, he had 11 and eight touchdown receptions. And then in 2021 and 2022, he had eight touchdown receptions both years at Utah. Basically, all four of us main college years other than the COVID year. He had eight plus receiving TDs. So that seemed like something in his profile that he was maybe going to be able to bring to the NFL. But I don't know what to make of him either. The hope was more routes, as you said. Interesting things. Tarras Sprout Run was so extremely high, despite his eight out rising this year. His Tarras Sprout Run was 26%. Nox's was 10%. There was a massive gap there in terms of which tied in their prior ties when they're actually in a route. But Nox ran way more routes because of the concave injuries. And I do agree with you that it doesn't seem like concave's probably going to consolidate the routes. You're kind of betting on something that seems unlikely, but not certain. We make their scenarios when we may seek incade run more routes for one reason or another. I will say his quiet playoff run does concern me a bit. Only nine targets in three games. When he had been back for a few weeks and they needed him to probably do something and they're trying to run their offices efficiently as possible. And they just basically didn't use him. And I was like, all right, well, maybe, you know, I was into it. I dropped the fourth down pass to end the season. That's probably not great either. I was into incade last year. I think the way that last year went as far as, you know, a year to season is pretty poor for what you're thinking. This former first round pick is going to ultimately be, but I'm with you. He's cheap enough that you can take some stabs at him because of stuff like that really high targets per route because of some of the potential, at least for him to maybe capture some of that touchdown stuff from his prospect profile, et cetera. But yeah, I mean, to me, again, feels more ancillary at this point. And it feels, this passing game does not feel like a super fun one unless you're stacking with Josh Island because it does feel like they're going to spread the ball around and keep defensive guessing about where it's going to go.
Yeah, I do like can get a little bit in the FFPC redraft just If this if the breakout happens, it's gonna be catch volume like I Don't think he's gonna get the routes to get there But if the ceiling case happens. It's not that like he ran in the score 10 touchdowns You know, I'm like a small amount of targets. It's that He catches an extraordinary amount of balls for a tight end and then at one and a point per reception You're really getting paid off for that bet. So less interested in like a half PPR redraft League for him Let's go to Miami They're difficult to project. They just had so many random issues the last couple of seasons whether it's to his injury All-line stuff We still kind of know who they are Gretchen Iroppel if I like 63 plays per game Around a 61% called pass rate. We've got them at 35 pass attempts 25 and a half rush attempts per game We're pretty dialed in on the play calling stuff They weren't as slow as they've been in the past last year. I know at times McDaniel has been slow with the motion stuff They we have them actually though in terms of like the pace over expected the last two years is like pretty Pretty neutral and fine. So that's why the the place expectation is there two of the three seasons with McDaniel he's averaging 269 passing yards per game that would have been you know across a large stretchy games I would have been good for fourth in the NFL last year. So This isn't offense. I'm intrigued about like you can see a lot of ways where it could un I'm forgetting the word that I'm trying to come up with I know we're yes unraveling you see a lot of thank you a lot of ways it could unravel but if it goes right some really good prices Chance at a condensed offense a chance for some real league winners here in my opinion and Yeah, it's price tag in particular right now is it's just I just think it's way too low You know in a single quarterback redraft league I Don't know you know how much you're even getting in the QB 20 but for Underdog to get to and the 150s is pretty exciting to me right now His scramble rate collapse last year. I think the rush yard should be expected to be very low And part of that was because he got another concussion one on IR for four games early in the season He did return after for people were talking about his career might be over he was It seems like never really in doubt to return after four years They kind of put him on IR to give him the time to recover. We talked about it with a lava a little bit the concussion stuff is really scary but It is I mean as far as the immediate impact on on Health you're waiting for the brain swelling to go down and for the players to not have symptoms anymore But then they can probably play through it But you know if he has another concussion you would expect him to miss more time than the average player getting a concussion So there's some some some concern there for sure. He missed six games last year It feels like the really bad concussion year was maybe 2023 it was actually 2022 He did play all 17 games in 2023 he threw 29 touchdowns. He was pacing for 29 again in 2024 So the rushing stuff might not be great But to your point the passing yards and the passing TVs Should be there. I mean they're they're gonna throw the ball in the red zone a little bit more than most teams They did a lot of the quick hitting passing in the red zone and in the in the green zone You know in the inside of ten they're throwing to H& they're throwing to John who Smith kind of quick hit stuff to get the ball in the edge Broadly this system has been great for fancy. He talked about the possibility for concentration I just want to emphasize that that I mean you have it with Tyree kill and his routes weren't at the top of the league But his per-route stuff in 2022 and 2023 was massive Waddle in addition to that had really high per-route stuff where like even though Tyree was number one in the league in like targets per-route Waddle would be like number six in the league, you know I mean that type of concentration start difference from what we're talking about with the bills and we saw it last year With H& we saw it with John who John who starts the year with nine catches in Four games basically not being involved. He's cut in like most managed leagues I know he was cut and tight deep tight and premium look on FFPC because I was adding him in some cases And I wasn't even really into John who last year But then he comes back late in the year and in full PPR He has double digit points in the final all of the final eight games which is a type of consistency at tight end That's very valuable in five of those he was over 19 PPR points per game in five of the final eight I mean just a lot of volume for a tight end there, right and that's the kind of thing that I mean the point that I wrote here is the base projection in some instances to me almost doesn't matter Like it's super hard to dial it in you look at those splits with John who nine catches in four games to start the year And then later in the year he's getting double digit points every single game if you get into that role in a Mike McDaniel offense Whether he's running the offense through you when he's calling the place for you It can be super super valuable another note on this would be a Chan in two is 11 games He averaged 6.1 receptions per game in the six that to amiss he averaged 1.8 An absurd split and that 6.1 receptions per game is so high that a Chan Had more running back or more receptions than any running back by 10 in the NFL Which is I mean a massive way to gap the the league when the quarterback that was throwing all the passes to you misses six of the games and Basically, Mike McDaniel stop calling those plays though the quick hitter plays on the perimeter get the ball in a chance hands on like wide receiver screens That he didn't want to run with the other quarterbacks. He just called handoffs and that's why you see a chance Receptions crater and so maybe that's a concern for a chance receiving I also look at it like if if two of what I played 17 games a Chan might have caught 30 more balls in every other running back in the NFL I mean he might have had a hundred catch season and just really gapped everybody So this offense is very fascinating in that in that way and I do think because of that because of that because of the way we look for upside You do have to be as you are saying be willing to take some steps Yeah, it's really interesting to figure out though like how it's gonna play out You mentioned the very positive John and H and stuff if you're zooming out and taking a longer view You'd expect Tyree kill and Jalen Waddle to be more involved in passing game than they were so Difficult throughout those projections and let's look at H&M. We do have a discrepancy in Tariots as a result of that you're at 95 where it's 69 But we do have like a better ceiling case on him a lot of guys with Miami are gonna have You know a wider gap between our base volume case and our ceiling volume case I'd say H&N is one of the players in the first couple rounds of the draft said I'm most like more than our rank Our ranks a little bit behind ADP, but my thought on H&N is like He went at the one two turn last year in the hopes that he would get the volume that he did get last year O-line issues some health stuff with to a And the efficiency wasn't there, but we've seen the home run upside from him in a season more so than like any other player So you're gonna tell me I get that home run upside and we've got a documented season of the type of workload that can win leagues I really really like H&M This is when I'm going like more auto and a limb against our kind of projected ranks right now So I'm very pro H&N not totally sure what to do with running back position behind him. So curious Your thoughts on the running back room altogether and how you feel about H&N in that like Early mid round two spot that he goes I Love your optimism about it because it reinforces mine as well. I agree with everything you said we get the two different Types of seasons where you can put it all together. You can be the RB1 overall basically you get the real efficiency that you need to have the real ceiling with the legendary upside You need to be an efficient player and we saw that as a rookie and then in year two to your point if the volume comes his Advanced metrics really fell off as far as like the mistakels force some of that stuff like talk about still had 4.5 yards per carry Because this is a guy it's so explosive that like the yards before contact stuff A lot of people think about that just as the blocking but the more explosive backs tend to have higher yards before contact because they hit the holes harder and quicker And so he doesn't need to make guys miss as much or have Dynamic mistakels force numbers or broken tackle numbers to still have a decent yards per carry So the floor for rush efficiency does actually seem pretty high and then to your point the ceiling potential Yeah, yeah, just like seven yards per carry or eight yards per carry as a as a rookie It was only on like a hundred carries But it you know the ceiling is there if the explosive plays hit on and that's like how segwan got there last year We know defenses are getting lighter. We know that like run D is not as prioritized in the NFL Explosive runners that can that can hit on a lot of long touchdown runs Feel like a way to get there in 2025 fantasy football So you have that and you couple it with the receiving you were talking about the gap in our receiving I'm very hot on it projecting him for basically the same number of receptions is last year But that's because as I said, he had such huge splits in games to a played and to a mistakes games What if to a place? I mean, I do think it's very similar to what I was saying about Shakir It's scheme stuff that could go away and we see that when to a miss his time and they just stop calling those plates And I and that goes back to the difficulty I have with Shakir It's like that stuff can just go away it did for a chance last year and yet His season played out in a way that there does feel like meat on the bone for that reception projection So I just put it basically where it was last year thinking there's room for it to go up or down which is Means that there's a huge healing to your point. I really like it. Chan too behind him Jalen Wright was not very good last year and that's tricky He was around four pick all he was around all the Gordon was there round six guy this year, but from a better call
class and he's the new guy and he has size. And so he's the one that I kind of like playing. There's some uncertainty upside there that, you know, right was especially bad in receiving. He had 78 routes, only six targets, three catches and eight yards and absurd. 1 yards per out run. 78 routes is in the ton, but like did absolutely nothing with the routes that he did get. I don't think Goliath Gordon's gonna run a ton of routes. I think that's just reinforces the H&N stuff. I actually have in my notes here that if H&N isn't getting those targets, I don't actually think his receiving market share is transferable to another running back or if he gets hurt because it's a specific play design thing and they didn't actually throw the back a lot before him. And if you go back to MacDinnell's offenses with the Niners before, McAfry was in that offense in a specific back that Shanahan's now calling past plays for. They didn't throw the back a lot. They didn't throw it well, I was your Mitchell when, you know, he was a rookie and was the lead guy and those, those types of offenses. So this offense, I think if H&N gets hurt, I actually think it's upside for John Smith on the quick hitters and I think it's upside for Tyrie who can waddle to be more of the focus of the offense and those things. But I think the way I play this behind H&N is the rookie Aldi Gordon having the potential to be like a green zone hammer with size and get a lot of touchdowns away most dirt. And most of that 20 touchdowns two years ago and I think Gordon is the best bet to kind of have that most dirt role. I don't know if they did have a 20 touchdown upside but that's the way I like the backup running backs. - Well, it's good to receive her. And Tyrie's a really interesting one. We are very conservative on our inputs with him just due to age and just kind of some vibes around there. Like just could see if the season doesn't start off well, things maybe not going great as far as how he's meshing with the team. We have met 115 targets. You've got him at 140. You run a little hotter, but I think that's kind of, if we were just looking at the numbers, our projection would be much higher. We're kind of building in a little bit more of a conservative thing with Tyrie. And I'm really torn on it. I know Adam's very spooked by Tyrie. And I get it, but I also am like, man, I looked at other receivers that go by him. They're not going to finish your top three in fantasy points for game. And we know Tyrie could potentially. So definitely curious your thoughts on Tyrie because I'm torn on this one. I love that we have this range in our targets. 115 to 140. In some cases, I'm like, what did I do wrong? In this case, I'm like, we're just playing the risk differently. And this is a good representation to the audience of the fact that, as I said, the base projections almost don't matter in this offense. You just acknowledged it. He has the ceiling. He also has a lot of risk. He was over three yards per hour on both 2022 and 2023. He was at 1.75 last year. What's weird is you have Jalen Waddle should be in his prime. He's over 2.5 yards per hour on about 22 and 23. And I'm thinking he's got contingent upside if Tyrie ever has a year like you did in 2024. Tyrie has that year. And Waddle goes all the way down to 1.53 yards per hour. And it's like frequently leaving games. And I this little note where like, I mean, he should be in his prime. Tyrie is 31, but who is less reliable here? Because Waddle is, that's been the deal with Waddle, dating back to Alabama. He never ran full route share. He never could really stay on the field. I just don't know if he's a player that has the ability to play a full season or run all the routes and everything, or all these just sort of a situational guy, basically. Early in his NFL career, he did get more routes and more volume overall and stay healthy in those things. But he just seems to always kind of have some injuries. I think his price came in a little hot. I expected him to be-- after a frustrating 2024, I expected him to be cheaper. I expected him to be around 7 pick. He's like around 4 or 5 pick depending on format. And so I'm not really into Waddle. And I mean, I think you can view these guys interchangeably and that either sport 2024 can be used to kind of talk about the others 2025 rebound. You can look at the fact that Hill is so old and you can say he's over the cliff. And that means that Waddle's got real ceiling to be the number one going forward. But you can also say that the fact that Waddle didn't capitalize last year means he's never going to be that reliable. And the one guy who has shown the real ceiling in their good years is Hill. And that Waddle's basically a second fiddle at best. And it works off of that. And so the fact that Waddle couldn't take over in 2024 improves the fact that Hill may have a chance to rebound at 31 years old. It's really tricky. I tend to like Hill more for the reasons that I'm sharing about Waddle and that we're talking about with the offense. And that range of receiver, like you said, to me, the guys he goes around are-- we'll talk about one like Garrett Wilson. I really like Garrett Wilson's talent. I have a hard time seeing where Garrett Wilson's ceiling can match what Tyra Kill's ceiling can be. And I tend to chase ceiling in these spots. The other thing I'll just throw in is it's really only these guys that I think are all that draft. Well, they brought in Nick Westbrook at Kineh. He's going to have some volume. But because I'm projecting such a concentration of the offense, which is kind of the way it typically plays out, I have NWI lower than you guys in targets. I don't know what the ceiling could really be for him. It's like, well, they brought in a little back on the last year. They're talking about using it. It barely got used. And Lee is a Washington. These are round 18. It's like, who are you? You got two, and you need to stack around 18. Who are you taking? You're taking-- And I still don't know if I'm doing it. It's sort of my point. Malik Washington probably would be my answer. Because he's a year two guy, and there's probably some uncertainty upside. He's got the athleticism. If Tyreeks not good enough, I think Malik Washington has to fill that role from an athleticism standpoint in the offense. So if somebody comes out of nowhere and concentrates volume and certain types of usage, she's the one that would be my bet. But it's tricky beyond these two top receivers. Yeah, I think Malik's more of like legitimate upside bet. West Virginia is probably your better bet to just get a guy that's on the field more frequently. For sure. I will say I am higher on bottle here. I think-- and the price varies. It's come up on underdog, you decent bit. But FFPC is still going like the 6/7 turn kind of right now in our late season long ADP poll. I do think that the wide receivers here are just going to see their target share increase a decent bit over last year. And with that, the possibly efficiency in this offense, I think he can be fine even if Tyreeks very good and still have that upside. I know it hasn't come through yet, but still have that upside if something happens to Tyreeks. So I'm a little bit more into Waddle by kind of just into this offense in general. And we take that to John O'Smith. And I don't know how much of it is the-- people are just scared of Miami, or people are really buying into the trade rumors of John O'Vide to Pittsburgh. His price-- we kind of liked him to start the off season, and the price has just gotten cheaper. And this is where, especially on underdog, I'm like, man, I got to pull back to our stack out. I don't have a tight end. And it's round 10 or round 9. And John O'Vide is there. I can take John who knows when I can get to a in round 13 or whatever. And I'm really fine doing that, even if I don't end up with one of the receivers early, just because of the cost of that stack. I think there are people that are concerned about the lack of involvement early. And the fact that a lot of his stuff was these sort of designed quick hit passes when the season went awry, and it's not what-- McDaniel actually really wanted to do. It's kind of correlated with the wider receiver down years, and that's not what they're going to plan for. That said, there's no other tight end in round 10 or beyond that has the clear and obvious projectable ceiling that John who Smith has for the reasons he just said. I mean, it's pretty straightforward. To me, if you play fantasy a certain type of way, and you're like, I need to get a lot of things right to win these big basketball tournaments and things, I get to those spots, and I'm like, I think John who Smith-- if I've got to get lucky and mail a top three overall tight end in this range, John who Smith's the best bet for it. If he gets traded, obviously, I already think I lost. I think that would be a major hit. It'd be very concerning. And I was concerned about the trade rumors for a bit. It seems like that's probably not going to happen. And I guess I don't think that he's going to have no production, especially when you see the Wider Sheavers coming off the tough year. And there is risk with it. I mean, John is the other guy. He's the other dude that you're looking at and saying, as I said, if H.H.N. misses time, I think that's a benefit to John in the sense that they used him in the same type of quick hit, wide receiver screen, catch and run, yak play, type of way. And I think the play calls might just go towards John. If Hill or Waddle are not great, I think you're talking about more volume toward John. It's an offense you want to piece of because of Waking Concentrate we saw in this final eight games, how good he was. I think, yeah, he's definitely another target from this offense. Yeah, so a lot of optimism from us on my amy. It's a good place to potentially finally winners. And that's what we're in here for. Let's go over to the Jets. And we do have a little bit of discrepancy on the play calling here. We're at 62 plays per game. Gretches at 61, a lot of the difference in place is attributed to us having a higher pass rate at 60%, Gretcher at 57%. I know before the show, Ben was saying how he was interested to hear about our pass rate. And I told him not to get too excited because I'm relying on our model here a little bit. And we have, man, we lowered it from the model. It tries to strip out different things like quarterback and offensive coordinators. So I don't know if it's just, you know, giving fields, you know,
bit more of potential pass rate with this negative expected game script for the Jets. You know, their average spread is four. You know, they still were winning games with him in Pittsburgh, and there's also the Arthur Smith component. But they were also, I think, at the 57 percent pass rate Gretch has when he was in his last year in Chicago. Correct me if I have that. Number wrong. But I think it was right around the 57 percent. Long-winded way of saying, our models got them closer to league average. All things considered my gut feel if I was just looking at things and manually putting a number on it would be a bit closer to Gretch's. But we do have lots of sacks and scrambles with fields, which is always the case. He was a little bit better in sack rate last year, but we still have a high number on him. So it nets out to us being at about 30 pass attempts per game, 29 rush attempts per game, Gretch at 29 pass attempts per game, 29 and a half rush attempts per game. So it was that end up being like huge, huge differences. But yeah, that's that's it on the play calling from me. Yeah. And I want to give a hat tip to the coach, Peek Index. I pulled some of my take here from some of his compiling of the different quotes and things on the offseason. But Aaron Glenn, new defensive minded head coach talked about fields athleticism. He said he brings the dimension to this game that a lot of people are trying to create around this league that we could take advantage of that sort of obviously multi-dimensional run game that you can use your quarterback in. It has been something that has been a way to combat. These lighter defenses, the cover two shells, the trying to take away deep passing and that type of focus from defenses that we've talked a lot about. And I think they're they I mean they're also talking about how they have the best three running backs in the league or Aaron Glenn had made that comment as well. And you have Breese Hall. You have a young Braylon Allen who was like 20 years old last year. Didn't necessarily have a great year. But I think has plenty of potential advanced metric wise for Allen. And then I say Davis, the third back also had some interesting elements to his game as a rookie. So you have all these running backs. You have Justin Fields. And then you also have you have the way that they built their offensive lines. They drafted Armand Membu. I think his name is seventh overall. He's more of a run blocking guy or like first and foremost or the expectation is. And the expectation overall I think is that this is kind of a really good run blocking unit. Very good interior. All five guys have better run blocking grades than pass blocking grades. And so after like looking through some of the online stuff as well. And then just like the strength of the team being in the running back position field strengths, the comments, the OC comes over from Detroit as well. He's been a passing game coordinator the last three years. Obviously a very different QB styles from the Detroit offense with Jared Goff who's not mobile. But that offense was very run based even with Jared Goff. Now you start to talk about Fields athleticism maybe being utilized as a challenge it can create for defenses. I think the the mix of all of those things is pretty straightforward including how Detroit has led with the run the last few years. And I have the same number as you on Fields in Chicago 57% pass rate. That's kind of how his offense was in the past as well. I looked at all those things and I came through even though they're expected to be pretty bad. I think they're going to be a pretty negative PROE team because the worst team leads to a higher expected pass rate they're going to be trailing. I still think they're going to run the ball enough that it's going to be a low low pass rate. And so the other big part of that also is other than Garrett Wilson there's not a lot of pass catching talent on the offense. So the running backs really the strength of the skill position. Yeah that's a good point. I'm just going to note tired guys. I think we'll probably end up 58.5% maybe a little bit closer to Gratchpin out all the way down there just giving the model some credit. But regardless we're pretty in on Fields at his cost right now. You know he's I think he's like just good enough passing and then has the really strong rushing upside. And this year you know it's tired Taylor behind him. It's just hard to imagine a situation where they don't just play it out with Fields. I think the bench risk on 1110 degrees is pretty low here which you know it is optimistic for Fields because I think that's more what you're worried about is like the real life production and what's at risk there more so than the fantasy production for him. So are you buying Fields at like QB 10 inch right now? Yeah I agree with that. I think the bus risk is pretty low. They didn't give him a massive QB contract but they did give him a decent number in like the 20 million dollar a year range. I think there was some contract people talking about how it created sort of a new tier of QB contracts. It's not one of these cheap veteran contracts. It's not one of the you know all the good quarterbacks or top quarterbacks are just resetting the market in the 40-50 million dollar 60 million dollar range a year. Fields I think got like two years 40 million enough of an investment I think from the team that you would expect them to be viewing him as their starter. I mean it's not it's more than backup on the east the point I'm trying to make. His tendencies impact the we were talking about the called pass rate but they also impact the run pass attempts overall. We've talked in past years about how Fields is a unique player in terms of really high sac rates really high scramble rates. You have to go back two years but coming off his 2022 he had a 28% of his dropbacks were non-pass attempts. We're a combination of either sac or a scramble which are the other outcomes which is an absurd number like no one else hits 20% even mobile quarterbacks are typically below 15% most mobile quarterbacks. He's gotten that down in the last couple of years so his last year in Detroit that 2023 or where he's a full-time starter he was at 19% and then last year last year in his six games he was at 18.3%. But that's still going to be like close to league high. I mean that's right around where the highest other players were the rookies that's one of the issues with rookie QBs is they tend to hold the ball longer they can't read out the offenses they're going to take some sacs they're going to scramble those kinds of things and so it will impact the total pass attempt volume so I have them pretty low and called pass plays I also have these tendencies to turn called passes into non-pass attempts leading to an expectation I haven't finished all my projections but an expectation that this team will be last in pass attempts in my projections and maybe meaningfully so I do think that's it doesn't mean that they're going to definitely finish there but if you think about the range of outcomes what's the ceiling in actual pass volume and those things it is pretty tricky if you're worried about pass rate and the ability to turn passes into attempts so but fields as far as that related to field sorry to tie that back to what you were asking I think the rushing will definitely be there I do worry that his passing will be almost like too bad to to give him the real ceiling even though the rushing will be solid like Anthony Richardson last year he still had great rushing numbers but the passing was so bad sometimes that it didn't even matter the passing yeah fantasy points he might be kind of like old school tyra italar who's backing up behind him where it's like ends up being more of a floor thing than a ceiling thing for him I still think he's goodbye like where he goes but I do get the point that this is you're looking to get pretty firmly a qb 6 through 12 here as opposed to you know a top 5 qb and we have talked about some of the pocket passers that go qb 15 to 20 that could also you know make that lead to like qb 8 to 12 with just a really really strong passing season keep in mind the context of everybody's listening what Ben said about the sack and scrambled how that affects everything because we're going to go to the skill players now we're going to breeze hall really tricky projection for us we recently bumped him up we were decent bit behind adp now like right at adp we've got 200 rush attempts at 55 targets you're at 215 and 61 kind of thought your numbers might be a little bit higher so it seems like you might be have a touch concern here with breeze they did rotate more last year his efficiency dropped off and another guy that's really tough to know what to do with because he does have kind of the the archetype of back that we generally want to buy in these rounds if you especially if you were to cover up last year a little bit but you can't you know ignore the most recent sample and braille and Allen was a strong rush here so what are you doing with breeze yeah he's tricky I do still believe in the talent even though the numbers weren't great last year that all the backs didn't have great numbers because Aaron Rogers is already talking about how the run game was so poorly designed and all these things I do think there's something to the fact that the offense was not well designed last year and it hurt the players ability to be very good the issue with breeze for me is so much of his values been tied up in his really strong receiving ability he caught 76 balls two years ago 57 last year I don't think he touched those numbers I don't even think those are really in the range I do think 40 seems doable because about 20% of fields targeted passes have gone to running backs the past couple years which isn't horrible for mobile QB but the reason I don't think it is is that stuff about fields tendencies directly relates to running backs guys like
Tom Brady or pocket passers who don't take Sachs and don't scramble, they get down to the check down and they throw to running backs. Tom Brady's running backs, I always caught a lot of passes. These immobile quarterbacks that can process really well. Fields is the exact opposite. He doesn't process particularly well. I think he's really talented, very accurate throw over the football. I'm a big field's fan, but his limitation is processing in the play, which is why he holds a ball so long, take Sachs and things. And with mobile quarterbacks, what we often see is they read out down field and then instead of the check down, they run. So he does get to the check down more than most mobile quarterbacks, but you're going to see Sachs and scramble take away from the check down to the running back. And so that's a big problem for Breeze, particularly when he's been reliant on big receiving numbers the last two years for a running back. 55 plus catches both years, 75 plus two years ago in his great season. I do think is rushing ours for carry should see a boost for the reasons we talk about with mobile quarterbacks. Defences have to be afraid of the quarterback pulling and going onto the edge. It opens up the internal rushing. You have the strong interior of the line that I was talking about, really strong running back, run blocking grades on the interior of the line and then scheme and all of that. Stuff, I think should be beneficial to Breeze. So you're going to see, I think, good rushing numbers, a concern on his passing stuff. He's talented. I think the efficiency can be there. But the fact that they're talking about using all three backs, they're talking about Braille and Alan and Isaiah Davis, like really liking them and it's a new regime. And I don't know that they see this as big of a gap in talent as we in the fantasy community probably do. I think they see it as closer and you look at what the lines have done the last few years where to me, Jamir Gibbs is just way, way better than David Montgomery, but they've always seen that as closer than I've seen it. Like they like to use multiple backs over there. I'm a little concerned about Breeze ability to get the overall volume and then especially with the receiving stuff. So I don't love clicking them where is that? Yeah, I think I'm mostly with you there. Looking at Braille and Alan, in my head he had a better rushing efficiency season than he did. I'm looking at it though. He finished at sub four yards per car. He actually had a really strong stretch out of the gate, which is probably in my head, about above four yards per car. He's the first four games. One of those was one carry games. Can really count it. But he literally only had one other game all season long where he exceeded four yards per car. He knows 4.3 and he finishes at 3.6 on the season. So was it as good of a season as I expected? And he will need to ice Isaiah Davis for him to have fantasy value as a handcuff here or as someone that has maybe a touch of standalone value. If they are run heavy and sprinkle in multiple backs, so are you drafting any of the backup running backs for the Jets? I think you hit it well. I, I, I, I, I, I'm in Braille and Alan was only 20 years old at the start of last year. I traded for him in a dynasty situation early in the off season because I was like, yeah, this guy had a good year last year and he's super young and he's a talented player and he's got a long career ahead of him. And then as I dug into these projections and dug into it more, I was a little concerned about the efficiency, a little concerned about Isaiah Davis, even if Bruce misses time. And then the fields acquisition and the fields tendencies and all of these things. I sang about with Bruce. They relate to any back in the offense as far as how it could play out. And then, you know, the thing with Braille and Alan is a bigger back. I think you're talking about the ceiling for him is a high touchdown rate as well. And this is not an offense. It's expected to score a lot of touchdowns either. And so, I guess, yeah, I don't love clicking Breason as range. I also don't necessarily love playing it through the cheaper running backs either because of it's just a crowded room. Yeah, it's a tough set of skill players to get behind and we'll go to Garrett Wilson. I know we were burned on being low on DJ more a couple of years ago. I think we both still stand by that that was one of the biggest sun running outcomes. I have a reason for this. There's room for us to have been wrong and for DJ more to have sun run a bit that season. The volume concerns really come through when you're putting an expensive price tag on a receiver. Now, there's like no target competition whatsoever. So the target share potential for Garrett Wilson is through the roof, but it is just tough for me to take even at very talented young wide receiver where he's going when you're on a team that's not expected to score a lot, not expected to throw a lot. And the QB is not the most efficient of quarterback. So you've got Garrett Wilson 142 targets, 240 full PPR points. We've got him at 123 targets, 207 full PPR points. We do have quite a high ceiling target share on him that's not reflected in these base numbers. You know, we're into the 30s, which we don't get into for that many players. So that's definitely a good sign like relative to players he goes with, but the overall environment still keeps us for the most part a little bit behind ADP. I'm Garrett Wilson. Yeah, and I was kind of pushing my target share to see how high I saw the target. I have him at 29% in my base here. So that's why he's at 142, even though I talked about the low overall pass attempt volume. He's a tricky dude, man. I think he's super talented. I think he's better than he gets credit for. He was really good with the ball in his hand. Last year he forced a lot of missed tackles and that stuff. And yet his efficiency, his yards, protagonist, efficiency has been bad every year of his career. You can blame a lot of that on QB play. He's had really bad QB play for the most part. And then last year when he had Aaron Rogers, they hit the ones at Adams and Rogers is just like thrown to Adams every play it feels like. With the addition of fields, you have the addition of probably RPOs. The first read stuff can be huge there. That's part of why I think the target share can get really concentrated. We talked about it in the last show, but RPOs lead to more target share for the number one wide receiver. That's research I did at my newsletter a couple of years ago. But that does hold our buddy, JJ Zacharyson, also found the same in studying that. And I don't even really know whose second in target share on this offense. It could be a few different guys. We'll talk about that. The upside proxy for him is DJ Moore 2023, which was with fields. The thing about DJ Moore's 2023 that's interesting is his yards per target really spiked. He was in the sevens the two years prior with Carolina. He got over 10 with fields. Part of the second scramble stuff with fields leads to higher per target efficiency because it leads to lower pass attempts. They don't throw the ball away these quarterbacks. And therefore you're going to get only the more efficient targets are the balls when they get actually released. Another target quarterback who is like this is Russell Wilson this time in Seattle would take a lot of sacks and scramble at a high rate. And Tyler Lockett always had these crazy yards per target numbers and catch rate numbers. And it's like, it's because anytime they're going to have a low probability throw Wilson's taking a sack instead of instead of throwing the low probability throw. Wilson's a little bit like that. So I do think Wilson's typically low after the target efficiency yards per target stuff should bounce up. It should be expected to bounce up because of fields tendencies. And yet there's just a little bit of a new like a statistical trick there. It doesn't necessarily mean that it gives him more ceiling because it's coming with the fact that the pass attempts are low because of the sacks and the scramble and the ball's not getting out. And like I'm into Garrett Wilson having a good year. And I think Justin feels good enough he's going to have a good year. I'm not into a third round wide receiver type of stealing. I want that guy to have a top five overall ceiling. This is a dude that goes right by Tyrick Hill and to me it's pretty straightforward. I like the young guys. I like Garrett Wilson's talent. I'd way rather be in on Garrett Wilson, but you look at the offensive structures to me. It's very straightforward. Which of these players can be the dude you needed in fantasy and it would be Tyrick. Because of what we've seen him do before in the last couple of years. Garrett Wilson has a really tough time being anything other than just a small hit in this offense. Unless, and you mentioned Tyrick Taylor's the backup even if fields isn't the QB anymore. You have a mobile quarterback backing him up. And just the whole structure being very run based. It's really tricky. Then we go to tight end rookie Mason Taylor there. We're at 43 targets. Stretch a little lower at 47. You're a bit behind 80 Pian. A T-E3 late in best ball. Any thoughts on Mason Taylor? Never a much volume per route. Doesn't have great yards per targets in college. I'm pretty skeptical of the profile career 109 yards per out run. His high was only 1.23 last year. The film people really like him. He got a lot of draft capital. And he's young at least as an early declare. But you're talking about all these volume issues in the offense. And I think it's a pretty big problem. I think Josh Reynolds are talking about is probably the number two. And I think him and Taylor are sort of the best bets to see volume behind Wilson. But when I gave Wilson the 29% target share, the way the rest of my projections split out was like Reynolds has 54 targets. Mason Taylor has 47. And then I have all of like Alan Lazar, Aaron Smith, Malachi, Corley, Jeremy Ruckert, and Stone Smart getting at least 20 targets like between 20 and 35. Like some volume like down the rest of the depth chart. Again, there's not a lot of overall targets. And you are probably talking about the running backs getting some. And you're talking just from a talent perspective. And you're talking about Garrett Wilson getting a lot.
I just don't see the path for the other guys. Let's go to New England. We both have them below average in plays between 61 and a half and 62. It's about a play and a half below league average roughly. We're at a 61.6% call pass rate. Grouch is at a 59% call pass rate. So that does lead to some discrepancies where two pass attempts per game hire for New England. One and a half rush attempts lower than Grouch there. I think the, you know, just we're hoping they rely on May a little bit more year two and that kind of offsets. The game script expected to be better. They did throw a lot with May last year, but that was with a negative PROE. They had a 65% pass rate in his starts. That's they were traveling a lot, you know, with a negative 1.3% PROE with May at the helm. So hoping that that becomes a little bit more neutral as the game scripts. And the scoring is expected to get much better for New England too. They've got one of the biggest discrepancies positively between what they average last year in their team total this year. I think it's like a five point swing in their favor. Yeah, I, uh, I love that you guys are more aggressive than me on the pass rate. I didn't know really where to land with a young QB, but that win total point or point scoring point that you mentioned. It was fascinating to me to get into the projection and see that they're, you know, they're projected for 8.5 wins and expected to be a pretty good offense because the market is buying in to Drake May a little bit. And that's. I think fair. I thought he was very good last year. I think you talked to basically anybody who watches a lot of the games and does kind of film study and stuff and people think the Drake May has it that he has. And what you need. And. They tried to add some talent around him that a bat really bad old line last year by basically every grade, but they brought in three probably average free agents and then they also took will Campbell 4th overall plus a center 95th overall and a third alignment late in the draft. And then they got three free agent additions, three rookie, three draft picks really trying to address the offensive line this off season. And that Campbell pick in the top five overall he's expected to be a long term starter at left tackle, obviously. If they can make the offensive line. And then they can make the ball like they're trying to do make it, you know, at least in like an average unit or a solid unit. I think you're going to you're talking about a much better situation for May to to operate in. And so. I, yeah, I mean, you're looking at the potential for some decent plays, even on an offense that we don't think of as super exciting. A little bit of tempo, probably they did play with a little bit of tempo with May. I like your guys is passed right more than mine that it's up over 61% I think that's certainly viable and certainly the way that I would expect this team to be trending if May is kind of the center piece of the offense, labels comments this off season, he said. A little bit about how when they had the really run based offense when he was a coach at Tennessee, it's because they had dare canary and he was like that's not. Specifically the way that we want to run our offense and so it I mean, he's basically acknowledged look, I mean they brought Josh McDaniel, Josh McDaniel likes to throw the ball a decent amount and so. Yeah, I'm expecting the going through the projection mostly is what made me expect that I wasn't expecting at all all off season, but going through the projection and looking into it, I'm expecting a reasonably fun New England team. And May is you're pretty affordable, he's QB 15 right now on underdog we have him, QB 13, but admittedly there's a lot of like guys that are closer pretty tight there, but he's got enough rushing shots, you know, to have the ceiling. They do go out and get stuff on digs who will talk about, you know, his his range of outcomes here, but if digs can be good, hopefully that can help me take a step forward. There's definitely some question marks with some of the other pass catching talent around him. They've drafted guys the last couple of years, but guys last year didn't have good rookie seasons and then Kyle Williams wasn't a super early pick this year. At running back one of the guys they drafted, they'll trade the on Henderson is someone where a little had an 80 P on just comparing to RJ Harvey, we kind of like Henderson is the better value there right now. Just a little bit better prospect profile in our opinion. There's some question marks over how much rushing volume he can get up to, but he is you know a fun player that's supposed to be like very good in past protection and like really supposed to be out there a lot despite maybe not having great college receiving numbers just keep in mind. And a ton of team any competition for him in college, both at you know with judge comes out running back but then just for targets in terms of the white receivers that are being very good. You've got him at 50 targets where 46 total 266 PPR points for you 179 for us, but yeah, we're running back. I think you know we're in on just a little bit. You know one of the better costs relative to the draft capital and prospect profile. Yeah, I'm super in on him. I did want to mention I really like may as well you said the QB 15. I think is rushing up sides higher than people realize he had 49 rush attempts in his 10 main games, which is like an 83 rush attempt pace, which there's only like five or six QBs who had more than that last year. Pretty meaningful amount and he was very efficient. He played 13 games, but a third of his game he was under a third of the snaps in three of those games. So I'm referencing the other 10 and then you mentioned the win total stuff and I had to bump up the TV rates when I got down with this projection to get in line with that. I'm expecting I'm mentioning the win to you mentioned the look ahead lines, but the expected point for the offense, which is positive for May's past TD rate. It's positive potentially for his rush TD rate as well, obviously being a mobile quarterback can hit him on the touchdowns both ways. He's you went asking about fields like maze the one that sticks in my head when I think about fields like I can just get made cheaper. He's got way more passing upside. I was kind of thinking about that as like I was like, well, I just talk of fields and I'm looking at it and I'm like, and this is two where the best ballers redraft friends a little different where like best ball, you know, you're going to need to draft two to three. So you can't just be like, well, get the fields guy later. But in redraft, you can kind of have more of that mindset of like just give me the better skill player that now, similarly making one or two quarterback beds on Travion. Yeah, I thought you said it really well. He's a really interesting prospect. Really good explosive play, right? They've talked up how explosive he is since they've drafted him in all their comments. I mean, I'm looking pretty aggressively. I mean, Quinch on Junkins went ahead of him, but they took him ahead of the bear. So a lot of people, I think, wanted him to land on the bears. The bears have taken Luther burden. This, I mean, I think a lot of people thought the Patriots were going to go wide receiver there and they end up going. Kyle Williams a little later. They go get Travion because they're just looking to add talent is basically the way they've talked about it and they think he's that good. I think that's very favorable when you think about the draft capital and what it means. The big question for me on him is not really again about a base projection. I didn't have an amazing base projection on him. And I think Ramandre is still good and you'll still stay involved. And I have to mention that Antonio Gibson had really good efficiency numbers last year. Surprisingly amazing in like a vision rates and some of the stuff. The backfields probably pretty solid at this point. But the thing with Travion to me is like, you're basically. I'm feeling really good about him being a game breaker and fantasy playoff time that he's going to be playing a lot more at that point in the season. The question is sort of how soon does the backfield tell towards him because he's just so dynamic. I mean the comp that came up a lot in prospect season from people who do more prospect work than me was Jumir Gibbs that he was sort of that kind of guy. He's got the good receiving profile very explosive in the receiving game is like yards per target or like wide receiver numbers. He's breaking a bunch of plays in the passing game breaking a bunch of plays in the run game as well. Judkins was sort of the hammer in this offense. But Travion was or the thunder and Travion was the lightning if you will. And I think that's the way they're going to use him early and maybe his volume won't be super strong from a week one volume perspective when I think about a projection often I'm thinking about what we know now. He's an anti fragile pick from the perspective of like anything that changes breaks favorably for him if anything happens to Steven sin or Gibson or just they're not very good this year. You know because they're just kind of older and I mean one of the big things on Steven sin he said really poor receiving efficiency for three straight years under five yards per target all three years. And I think that immediately is beneficial to Henderson Gibson played a lot in the passing game last year but you don't take Henderson to sort of let Antonio Gibson play more than him in the past game. So the whole thing is just a question of how soon until he takes over and I do think towards the end of the year he'll more or less get as much work as makes sense for him without real limitations even if it's not a massive amount of overall work. But he'll be able to it's sort of similar to Bucky Irving last year how he worked into a big role and then white became sort of an afterthought but he was still not like 100% of the backfield is just kind of whatever Bucky can take you'll take and he'll be good and you'll be efficient. And that's the way I expect the end of the season to look it's just a question of I mean if you're taking a remondre you're like how long can I do that.
I hold him off, right? And if you're taking Travenon, you're like, how long do I have to wait until he's just a clear every week player in my weekly managed leagues? Yeah, that makes sense. Let's go to a wider receiver. Stuff on Digs. You've got 106 targets. We're at 96 targets. He's coming back from the mid season, ACL tear last year. I really struggle with these guys coming back from injury. Guys have come back from the ACL stuff pretty routinely. Recently, as long as it's been the normal ACL tear, which really digs his was, the concern that you get layered on with digs is that he's entering his age 32 season, has seen a little bit of a drop off in efficiency. The last couple of seasons, not like bad, but definitely a little bit of a drop off from when he was in his prime, and it is over 20s. Yeah, I was curious. Your takes on him and you started with it. I had a hard time with it, and I'm like crap, because I do too. I mean, I say like kind of a gun going so late, and they just really don't have much there. That I think they're really going to try and make digs work, and have digs try to be the guy that helps you know, may take the next step. So gun on my head, I think the situation is good enough that if digs is just isn't dead, that it's going to be pretty good for him. We talked about Darnal Mooney last podcast, who I like, but they go very close to one another. And I think end of year ceiling, if digs is healthy, there's not really a competition there as far as actual ceiling, like pure ceiling on digs versus Mooney, for example. Digs is also going near Shukir, Jaden Reed, Josh Downs type. So he's not going with why receiver wants. And obviously, it has the ability to be a why receiver want. I just don't know. This stuff that's hard to quantify in terms of odds of him being dust between the age of the trick injury is just is tough. Yeah. So last year, the eight out was down for him. The targets per out run was down. So like I look at this weighted targets per out run stat, it was down. It was expected to be down. And it wasn't down that bad. For several years, five years in a row, he was between 0.64 and 0.69. And this weighted targets per out stat, he was down at 0.54, which is still good. It's comparable to some of his early seasons in Minnesota. 23% targets per out at an 8.3, 8 out. It's not amazing, but it's not terrible. What I think is kind of interesting is his yards per target run it up, wound up pretty solid about eight. After the first couple games, the 8 out was so low that it looked like maybe he would just mean, he had a yards per reception under 10 in each of his first three games. But then in the next five games, he played eight. He had a yards per reception over 12 and four of the five. So I've said a couple of times this off season that Diggs was, I thought starting to fit into the offense and starting to come along when he got hurt, where he was actually starting to hit on some bigger plays and some more efficiency. And his receiving lines looked like normal receiving lines, like six catches for 77 yards. And that kind of thing, as opposed to 10 for 94 he had in week three, where it's like, you're not getting down the field enough for me, buddy. Had at least six targets in every game, had at least four receptions in every game. All eight games that he played with the Texans last year gets back to this like 23% target per out still being pretty good. I don't like you said as long as he still has something in the tank, the situation's really good. And I completely agree with that. And it feels like he probably does still have, I mean, based on the way that he played last year, I just don't know about the ACL recovery, right? But based on the way that he played last year, he probably still has the ability to be a guy who earns volume, like I said, six targets every game, earn some catches. He's 32 in November coming off an ACL. That's tricky, but he's always been a dude that's earned a lot of volume. The point I was making about his way to the target's power run for like five years straight is that it was always strong, even as his efficiency is weighing to times. He's always been a guy who gets the ball. And I think part of that is the personality stuff where people say he's a cancer. I think he's vocal in a way that a lot of these number ones, they get the ball because they demand it, right? And I think digs is that type of personality. And in a room like this, what they have behind him is they basically, they're like, they brought back everyone from last year. They don't have KJ Osborne back, but tomorrow Douglas, Kashon, Boutet, Jalen Polkin, Javon Baker, the two rookies are still there, Kendra Boren is still there. And then they add digs, they add the rookie cow Williams and they add Mac Hollins, who had his career high season 690 yards under Josh McDaniel's playing for the Raiders three years ago. And it's had a meaningful role in two other offices since then. And now he's back working with McDaniel. So they had three guys to a group of five that were all there last year. And it's like eight receivers deep. I think that's bad for the guys like Jalen Polkin, Javon Baker, who they're the rookies from last year. I think they're kind of already moving on from. But the point being that there's not really a clear, the other point being as it relates to digs, there's not really a clear number one or somebody with any kind of veteran presence or anything to compete with digs. Hollins has a veteran presence, but he's a clear ancillary player, doesn't like demand volume. Digs is going to come in and be the vocal number one in the off season program. He's going to be the guy that's leading by example and all of those types of things. If he has it, I mean, Josh McDaniel's offenses have always really liked the wide receiver one. And, you know, to your point, they're trying to give a guy for May to be his wide receiver one. If digs still has it, I think he's the situation, as you said, sets up well for him to be that guy. Yeah. And then looking at the other receivers in terms of the AVP, I have a tough time getting behind the Kyle Williams AVP right now. Sometimes I think I'm buying the rookie receivers in the situations where the market's overly concerned about landing spot. And sometimes I'm fading them when the market seems overly optimistic about landing spot. But I think because of this opportunity for Tariots, his AVP is really getting driven up. You know, the other receivers that he's drafted around, like, you know, Tesla was one pick later. I mean, he's around 18 guy. Batch goes, you know, a couple rounds later. Trey Harris goes later with the burden went a full run earlier and has about the same ADP and a better prospect profile. So I'm a little weary about where Kyle Williams is going. I know, you know, in Redraft, I'll always bump up the rookie a little bit more just because we're only caring about that ceiling, but I do, you know, I hate to be out on a rookie while I receive it, but right now I'm out on Kyle Williams. Do you, are you more optimistic in Kyle Williams or any thoughts there? It's interesting. You're talking about it from a draft capital perspective. I have a hard time with it from, you know, as I talk through prospects listeners probably aware that I'm more of a production based analyst, I guess, than more film based Kyle Williams, I think is really liked by some people who look at the film and dig into that stuff. I think it's tough when the production doesn't necessarily follow what people are seeing on film because I want the ability to actually translate those skills to stats at the lower level. What I can't get over with is he played with Cam Ward, the number one overall pick in his fourth college year for Kyle Williams. He was already pretty old and he wasn't very good. He just had a pretty, it was one of his worst college years actually. He had spent three years at UNLV transferred to Washington State. They played together there and Kyle Williams wasn't very good. He had a really good fifth year at Washington State after Ward moved on to Miami, but other than the fifth year, the overall body of work is not great, not horrible. There's some decent target earning at times. People thought to buy them as a big play thread, a deep threat and that does fit well with May. And again, the film guys seem to really like him. So I'm open to being wrong on them, definitely. I'm always open to being wrong on any of these stakes. But for him particularly, the body of work and the production profile and the fact that he didn't really have a great season until he's a fifth year senior and he's much older than some of the competition. We know the age of adjusted stuff is what it is. It's a little concerning, especially then when you go into, there's a lot of not threats in this past game, but just the guys that could at least take away routes from a rookie and that kind of stuff. And then the moment that he's going to play, I think a decent amount. The coaches love him. Demario Douglas, I don't think it's amazing or anything. And his targets per out really fell from 23% as a rookie to 19% last year, which is meaningful at a lower 8-0, specifically for a guy like him. You want to be at the 23% higher rate. So he looks like probably just a role player at best, a low 8-0 kind of slot guy. We didn't get to see the year too, strong year too, to build off a decent rookie year. And yet he's going to be out there in the slot, probably a decent amount running amounts. Kashan Bhutay, probably, or Polk or Baker, whoever those guys, the younger outside players plays Kendrick Bourne possibly. They still have both Hunter Henry and Austin Hooper who we're going to talk about, who both had decent numbers for tight ends last year. They're on the wrong side of 30, but they're going to play in some two tight ends sets together. I think they did that a decent amount last year, and I'm sure they'll carry over some of that. Very well did some of that earlier in his Tennessee days. And it helps with protection and a lot of different things. You have two veteran tight ends. I think you kind of lean into that, probably. Maybe not a ton. The point is I think how when
has some threat to overall routes. And the profile is not so stirling that I would expect a rookie smash. And so it's, I mean, the opportunities there, the same way that it's there for digs. And if digs is too old, that it's really there for Kyle Williams. But I struggle with it too, as you were saying. Yeah, just overpriced. I know you mentioned the kind of shaky analytical profile reading GG Zach Reeson's guide kind of has Kyle Williams like a good early breakout, but then just didn't really improve much upon things after that. And that freshman season came in one of like the pandemic years. So it's also a little bit tougher to get a full gauge on. The other guys, you know, I'll take tomorrow to Douglas very late in Drake May stacks. I just think there's a chance like he's out there a decent bit. Aside from that, you know, both the rookies last year Baker and Polk were just really disappointing that they're not even really in consideration this year. I don't really think anyone's draftable. Hunter Henry certainly is especially in best, you know, in best ball where you're drafting two to three tight ends on most teams. Gretch has Henry at 77 targets. We're at 61. So a little bit of a wider discrepancy there. It seems like in general, you just have the tight end targets a bit higher as you've also do. Group 45 and we're at 28. Yeah, they were at a 30% target share last year. And obviously May was the primary quarterback. They they add the receiving talent. But Hunter Henry led the team with 97 targets and Hooper had 59 last year. So I'm quite a ways down on both of them. 20 targets fewer for Henry about 14 fewer for Hooper. And I wanted to move it even lower, I guess. And I like that you guys did. And I probably should move it even lower because I do think a lot of that's going to transfer over the receivers. I just had a hard time because I was like, this is who may played with last year and found a little bit of connection with as a rookie. Maybe he relies on them a little bit. And just not really wanted to push Diggs target share too high, not me and sure about the ACL, not really being sure about the profiles at wide receiver behind Diggs. I do think these guys had the potential to take a decent target share, but probably a little bit split as as you know, we're as I'm talking through it. I don't know that Henry's like a huge target for that reason because Hooper was good last year. He was pretty efficient. Yard's per target was like a full yard better than Henry had one extra touchdown despite far fewer targets overall. I don't think Hooper's like great. I think some of that was a little bit fluky, but or a small sample, I should say, but you know, you have two veteran tight ends like this. They're they're going to kind of step on each other a little bit. But the question is whether the tight ends take a huge share. And if they do, or at least an above average share, if they do, it does, you know, further, ding like a Kyle Williams probably. All right, that's going to do it for us on the third edition of the off season's projection special. Thanks so much for tuning in everybody. Ben always appreciate all the hard work you put in prepping for this. And also my guys at ETR, Jack and Dink in particular. You can check out all
[email protected]. You can find friends content at @BenGradge.substac.com. Appreciate y'all tuning in. [Music]
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