ETE Projections Special Part 5: NFC North with Ben Gretch

[MUSIC] >> Hello and welcome to another episode of the Establish Cedge podcast. I'm your host Mark Dengbring and we'll be joined today by the projections crew you know and love, Jack Miller and Ben Gretz. We are going division by division through the NFL breaking down our season long projections for each team across the league. Jack and I are part of the NFL projections team at Establish Runaan and are fourth year together doing this full time. Ben Gretz is our honored guest here throughout this series. You can listen to his other work and his podcast stealing bananas with Sean Seagull as well as find his writing at BenGretz.substac.com. We are on to episode five today of this series and we'll be going through all four teams in the NFC North. Has been a little bit since we've been behind the sticks here a couple of weeks since we have since recorded our last pod. Gretz, how was your fourth of July and time off here? >> It was great. Yeah, two weeks to the nose and Apologies to any listeners. If I sound weird, I think I have a minor sickness here. But yeah, I had some good time off. Fourth of July was good. I played in a couple golf tournaments. But I'm also pumped to get back. This is a super fun division. We were just talking about it before. I think it's my favorite division to play for fantasy this year. Three teams I really like playing and then the Packers. >> They're kind of fun too. >> A lot of fantasy goodness here sounds like Gretz was had a good time smelling the roses as well. Jack, how you doing today? >> I'm doing good. I feel like the past two weeks flew by without recording these. But I'm excited to get back into it. We're on the Packed Cap now. So yeah, good to be here. >> Absolutely. So yeah, as Gretz alluded to, this is a really fun fantasy division to talk through. While I was preparing, I also was just noting, man, the head coaches in this division, I think are probably the strongest across the whole league. Some exciting play-callers as well. Ben Johnson going into year two in Chicago. We have Kevin O'Connell with maybe a more competent quarterback at the helm here once again. So hopefully, reinvigorate the Vikings offense here and then in Detroit. >> We're not starting on the Vikings. Did you guys hear this quote from O'Connell on the day of Patrick's show just the other day? >> No. >> We want to try to get back to the standard of having the quarterback position be a driving force behind us winning by doing their job. Was that start of the quote? >> So yeah, so that's like the one where Dan Patrick then said, so it's going to be Kylie then and just kind of set in silence for five seconds and then laugh like a true politician. >> Amazing. >> Such an amazing quote. >> Yeah, Jay-Jay again. >> Back to the standard of having the quarterback doing their job. Oh, that's so good. All right, let's start in Detroit, though, where Drew Petsing is the new offensive coordinator and will be the play collar. Here, we had some interesting splits for the Lions last year as John Morton called plays for the first nine games and then Dan Campbell took over for the second half of the season and the Lions became a bit more pass heavy down the stretch. They were positive, pass rate over expectation and five of the nine games with Campbell calling plays and they were negative with negative pass rate over expectation. Every game that John Morton was the play collar there. So they do bring in Drew Petsing from Arizona here on a team level at ETR. We're at 62.3 plays on the Lions. Gretches at 63.3. We have a much higher pass rate here, though, 60.1% for Detroit and Gretches at 57 and a half percent. So, Jack, I want to toss this to you first and kind of break down our team level inputs here on the Lions with Petsing at the helm. Again, we are a bit higher. Pass rate was that kind of something you picked up on down the stretch when Dan Campbell took over or thoughts on our inputs here specifically on the pass rate for the Lions. Kind of. So we're just at Algo on the Lions pass rate. Like you said, there were some splits once Dan Campbell took over. Last year, their cumulative pass rate over expectation with Campbell calling plays wasn't anything crazy because they still had two games with really low pass rate over expectations. They had a negative 22% PROE and week 13 and minus 16% in week 17, but they did have more games with a positive pass rate over expectation. So I think it's still fair to call it more of a pass first tilt with Campbell calling the plays. I want to bring up Ben, something Ben Solak tweeted out about Drew Petsing as the offensive coordinator. He mentioned that Petsing always had really good run games relative to their talent in Arizona. They were 10th overall in Rush, EPA per play from 2023 to 2025 when Petsing was there, which is pretty good considering the talent they had at both running back and offensive line. The Lions were below average by EPA per play and successory last year despite having Gibbs and David Montgomery. So I think that having Petsing there is probably probably in hopes of getting the run game back to being where it was the prior two years. I think that with that in mind, it's possible that they do get back to being more of a run first team, but we are just that I'll go there kind of baking in where they were over the second half of the year with the slightly first, slightly past first tilt. Yeah, I'm part of it. I was really curious where you guys would be here. I started a little higher on the pass rate, although I've tended to come in a little lower than you guys overall. When we saw the pass rates come down a little last year, I think also because we've talked about this, I project fewer injuries and things. I'm projecting a more optimistic look at these offenses. So I'm comfortable with my pass rates being a little lower. A lot of the pass heaviest teams come from teams like the Cardinals last year where things go wrong and then they just start throwing a ton. For the Lions, one of the big notes on them is that they have a pretty easy schedule, easy schedule in the league by look ahead lines. Because of that, my expected pass rate based on their Vegas win toles 10.5, even though they went 9 and 8 last year and even though they do have some attrition at some spots, which is sort of the way that I look at the Lions, this is owing to them being such good drafters from that 2021 to 2023 stretch. They've had to sign all these guys to extension. So Almanra is paid and Penne Suule and Aiden Hutchinson on the defensive side and they had that class with Gibbs and Laporta and Jack Campbell and Brian Branch and they had two firsts and two seconds. And I think Campbell is the only one that signed out of that group. Like James and Williams have signed his extension too. Those guys have all been, I think everyone I just named was drafted between 2021 and 2023. They did really, really well on that stretch. A lot of, and then when you draft that well and you have to extend these guys, that's part of why these guys weren't able to move on from Montgomery. They weren't able to retain even like some key role players like Khalif Raymond and they bring in some really cheap replacements with the veterans that they added in some spots like Patekos contract is very cheap and Tyler Conklin's a tight end. They brought in for some depth, very cheap contract. It's a similar issue. I think a little bit along the offensive line. And so that was part of some other issues last year, but I do think Suule and some other things that their line could be okay. Having said all of that, the market knows this stuff or Vegas knows this stuff. They still have the 10.5 Vegas win over under. So that's how easy the schedule projects to be. And so my expected pass rate based on my just like linear model is 58.7%. I have a like 1.2% negative PROE. If you look at Petsing and Arizona, first year they were like negative 6% almost 5.8 is what I have. And then in 2024 2.4 last year plus 4% 24 was negative 2.4 and then last year plus 4. So jumped around. It was very run heavy with Kyler last year with Jacobi Berset very different. You could argue that Berset is a more similar quarterback to Jared Goff and you know, immobile pocket passer. But some of Jack's notes about getting the run game going again is what I was thinking as well. I think it's a really interesting thing to get to get down the team level. And I've run a little hotter than you guys on plays too, but I didn't really know where to land with the team level stuff. I do think because of some of that attrition with the secondary players, I was saying this is a division I really like for fantasy. Some of the teams we've talked about talk about the sub packages and stuff. We don't know how the things are going to get split. This looks like a team that's going to be really concentrated. This looks like a team that doesn't have depth and they're going to lean on the dudes that they've paid for the second contract set or in their primes. That's great for fantasy football. So this team level volume is important because the individual concentration to the key players can be really, really high. No doubt. You mentioned the Lions, easiest schedule in the NFL and we actually have them projected to score the most touchdowns per game at nearly three, three touchdowns per game for the Lions. So just fantasy wise, they're they're going to pop in that regard. And I do think it is worth hitting on the attrition they've seen in their secondary already. Obviously you have the the Terry and Arnold case where you know, he's in he's in legal trouble and the Lions released him and then towards the end of last season, Brian branched toward his Achilles. They're they're starting safety and then Kirby Joseph was dealing with a knee injury like throughout, you know, the the back half of last season and it may not be healthy. Kind of the rest of his career. It seems like that was that's kind of like a debilitating injury for for Kirby, Joseph. So you lose three of their their best secondary players already. And I feel like the story with the Lions over the last couple of years, like they they start out healthy on the defensive end and then their secondary gets gets, you know, depleted throughout the year and this year they're kind of starting down several key guys. So this could very well be just a massive shootout team this season. I think and I think also one one aspect to consider is is with Dave Montgomery out of the picture and engineer G. as the starting running back to they tilt a little pass heavier just just based on personnel and you know when you look at Aminara St. Brown, Jameson Williams, Sam Laporta and then Jameer Gibbs those guys are just all elite pass catchers and in the past game so I do think you know this year could tilt a little a little pass heavier here for the Lions all things considered. Let's get into Jared Goff his fantasy outlook this year we have you know pretty similar projections across the board on golf except for our yards per attempt on golf we are at 7.4 at ETR and in Gretches at 8.0 there on golf and and I was like man that's a pretty massive gap and honestly I didn't realize how efficient golf had been over the last four seasons he's at at least 7.6 yards per attempt in each of those four years and averages 7.9 yards per attempt overall across those those four and then he's also been a top 14 quarterback and points per game over the last four years so very consistent for Jared Goff you know it's not necessarily like the sexiest one quarterback league pick in fantasy but it's going to provide pretty consistent scores and then has the spike week games when when you can throw three or four touchdowns in there so honestly I came away a little bits you know shot like we're a little bit behind market on on golf right now and I think we could probably come up on his efficiency there a little bit but Gretches I'll toss it to you first on on your golf expectations for this season and his fantasy outlook and you know best ball redraft if you're targeting him in any spots well I think look at look at your scoring systems because some of the quarterback settings will benefit pocket passers more there's not going to be any rushing here but second in the NFL and pass yards and TDs last year behind only Matthew Stafford fourth and attempt second and completions like you guys if you guys is pass rate is right like he's gonna have volume I mean the and that's you know if you're doing the 20 yards per point as opposed to 25 yards per point if you're in a league that's six points per passing TD or like one of my leagues is five points because it's always six or four and so it splits the difference one of my homeligs those kinds of little boosts are gonna be good for a Jared Goff type passer but yeah he's I'm with you he's another one that joins this big interesting you know late QB one early QB two tier that makes late around QB a really good strategy this year we talked about it with a ton of these offenses that have less concentration where it's like hey maybe play this team through the quarterback this is one where I mean I think the skill players are great but you can definitely play golf to you so it's it's definitely the more that I'm we're getting through these these divisions and I'm getting through my projections I'm like it's definitely a late around quarterback kind of season absolutely yeah let's go to the to the backfield here though I don't think you know too much necessarily to discuss with golf but I do think again we could probably come up on his efficiency a little bit which which will help his his overall ranking for us right now we're at QB 18 on golf he's going at QB 16 on underdog but again like you know in that cluster of QB seven to QB 17 range where all these guys are extremely close yeah the backfield here is I think very interesting we have Jameer Gibbs as as the clear 1.01 and redraft and and the most bestball formats here obviously have the departure of Dave Montgomery they bring in Isaiah Pacheco who after you know a couple of like exciting seasons start his career in Kansas City I think the last couple has shown to be more of just a replacement level back Gretch mentions you know it's signed to a pretty modest deal here so I think you know that'll be clearly Gibbs backfield and then it's just kind of a of a you know how much does Pacheco really get in there I think looking back at last season's numbers I was I was even a little bit surprised by how much like Gibbs had consolidated the the snap share down the stretch over David Montgomery so I really think this will be Gibbs's backfield terms of projections here we're at 245 carries on Gibbs about 80 targets at ETR Gretches is higher in both both categories here 278 carries and about 100 targets there four Gibbs on Pacheco we're at 106 carries Gretch at 112 and then we're at 22 targets Gretch at 17 so both heavily tilted here towards Gibbs and the backfield Jack take us through our our split here in this backfield and kind of what what you think makes Gibbs on the 1.01 for us this season yeah so now surprised to see Gretch come in higher than us on the raw volume that's kind of been a trend where we're baking in more injury risk thing Gretch but yeah we have Gibbs is the very clear 101 I think what gives him the leg up over B. John is the strength of the offense once Dan Campbell took over play calling last year Gibbs out carried David Montgomery 130 to 69 that's 14.4 carries per game per Gibbs that's a 246 carry pace and despite the increased rushing workload he was still averaging 5.2 yards per carry during that stretch I think the big thing that is boosting up Gibbs this year relative the previous years is the Montgomery is vacating 14 carries from inside the five yard line he out carried Gibbs inside the five 14 the nine last year Pacheco famously never got the goal line working Kansas City in favor of Karim Hunt so I think that it's reasonable to expect Gibbs to basically get all of the goal line this year for an offense that like Mark said earlier we're projecting for the most touchdowns per game in the league when you combine that with the receiving work we kind of just get Gibbs is the the pretty clear 101 the running back depth here is is very poor Pacheco's on a one year 1.8 million dollar deal Cione Vaki has seven career carries Jacob sailors are before has two career carries so I think it's going to be all Gibbs and getting the goal line in such an elite offense is such a big boost to his value one of the there's a couple interesting quotes here one of the quotes from coach Big index that you know always shout out to him but was Dan Campbell saying very directly he's going to be our bell cow now and to me that was and the way that he says the word now there to me very clear indication they don't think Pacheco is Monty I think there's some people in the fiends community that still give Pacheco a little bit more name value from a good first couple of years but his peripherals really bad the last couple years you can say it's based off injury and stuff but the big thing with the contract as well is that it also tells you the league wasn't very into Isaiah Pacheco is a former seventh round pick and the lines didn't really have the the financial flexibility to go out and get a number two they think Pacheco is not David Montgomery and yet you noted last year they wanted to get Gibbs on the field more at the expense of Montgomery which was not something that they I think I don't think it was necessarily a knock on Montgomery when you listen to the quotes throughout the year and those things from from Campbell they really liked David Montgomery one of the things that they did last year that was really interesting is like in garbage time they would get David Montgomery more work is almost like they were trying to appease him the rest of the running backs combined had six total carries last year if you look back at 2024 Craig Reynolds had like 31 and the others behind him had 12 more than 43 total which is like RB three and beyond when they had more of a split between money and Gibbs they would go to the other guys in those situations last year it was like we got a pump pay for Montgomery some touches to keep him happy but they were trying to get everything they could to to jimmyer Gibbs last year and now they're literally telling you he's going to be our bell count now one of the other quotes we feel like this guy can play some receiver we try to tinker with some stuff last year we really grew but I think we just track scratching the surface on some of that he's a mismatch he's a mismatch piece man he's dynamic and he's a difference maker they don't come around often Gibbs targets per out run last year about 10 percentage points higher than Montia I always say when the teammates are like that at running back there's intent there to get them the ball in the past game he had a little bit of a positive area and I wrote a a dot I wrote a piece recently about running back air yards and I think it's a little bit of an overlooked thing it's something we've talked about with some of the other teams I think it's one of these like counter punches that's coming as we get into more of these tight-end formations where running backs are now one of the better athletes in the formation if you get into like 13 personnel you know that's one way you can maybe get a running back out it's it's trickier to get running backs out into these deeper routes out of the backfield but teams are splitting these guys out and that's something they're talking about here drew pet saying one of the things that I think is pretty interesting used his running backs used Michael Carter vertically and he got some air yards used even bam night vertically a little bit last year so he was doing some of this stuff last year and it's something that I think might be part of why they brought in petting as well to to do some more Christian McCaffrey like stuff with the running back in the passing game we talked about it with be John as well and he was getting that last year the difference with be John he changes coordinators this year so be John had a huge spike in receiving efficiency last year Gibbs has been consistent terms of something like yards per out run three straight years and it's been very good and it was a leap in college you go back to his Georgia Tech days before Alabama he had two seasons with a yards per run over three like this guy's a super talented player part of why I come in so hot with the golf efficiency is I think Gibbs is gonna do some vertical stuff and and the explosive he can create are not just gonna be on the ground and then their cheap points for golf and then the other reason is James and Williams who's a highly efficient player but we'll get into the receivers in a minute but yeah the Pacheco won year 1.8 million dollar deal off a season where's evasion as yards after contact breakaway rates work down they've never really been great they've been really poor the last couple of years he's a poor receiving efficiency player they don't even have Craig Reynolds anymore I think they go to Vocky and then some other guys after that I'm like he's the one oh one I guess it's more like an auction thing I don't know how I could be higher on this player I wound up like he's an explosive player I like the efficiency runners he doesn't he doesn't profile as a goal line back but as you guys talk about been very good at that and he looks like he's going to get all of the work. I wound up in my initial projection. I cut his Rush TD right way down because it not only had him projected for the most rushing TDs in the league, I had him like almost two rushing TDs ahead of anyone else I projected. Now haven't done the Ravens yet. That's one of the teams that we have not gotten through. I'm sure Derek Henry will be up there as well. But as far as I've done Jonathan Taylor and some of these other guys, I mean I right now have Jermir Gibbs leading the league in rushing TDs. In addition to having a ton of rushing volume and yardage addition to having this really potentially unique receiving rule, this is the year that it feels like they mean on him and we see the potentially the epic Jermir Gibbs season. And it's worth noting that Underdog has it right. Underdog has it the way that we have it where Gibbs is ADP is 1.1 in Bijon is 2.0. But there are some places where 30p's are like 1.6 and 1.7 and they're basically it's a coin flip on who's going as the 1.01. But both us and Gretch have it really not even that close with Gibbs being the first overall pick this year. Yeah, it could really be an outrageous season again Detroit projected for the most touchdowns in the league and then Gibbs is just a game script independent back. If they're trailing like he's going to be out there catching balls. If they're leading and he does indeed have the goal line work, a 15 to 20 touchdown season is certainly on the table here for Gibbs. I think it's really hard to poke many holes there. I'm interested to see where Brandon Thorn comes in on their offensive line ranking for us because that has been a staple like top five line for the last few years there for Detroit. Now you have some attrition and just moving pieces there. You have Penaisoul moving over to left tackle from where he's been an all pro right tackle in his NFL career. It might maybe a slight adjustment period there, but they have lost some talent with Taylor Ducker retiring at left tackle there and just some moving pieces. It's no longer Frank Ragnar in the middle of the line there for the lion. That's maybe the only hole to poke, but for the most part it can be a pretty monster season there for Jamir Gibbs. All right, let's transition over to the wide receiver room here, which is always headline by Amun Raat St. Brown. He was second among all NFL wide receivers last year with a 34% target for our run. We also have Jameson Williams here as the clear wide receiver to and then Isaac Tesla entering his sophomore season as a wide receiver three in terms of projections. We're at 143 targets on Amun Raat. Gretches at 160. We're at 93 targets on Jameson Williams. Gretches at 112. Then on Tesla, we're at 52 targets and Gretch is at 46. So I'm a little bit worried that we're higher on Tesla here because when I was researching this, you know, Tesla's target earning last year was was pretty horrendous. He was out of 141 players who ran at least 250 routes last year. He finished 140th in targets per round run at only 10%. That number only went up to 11% with Sam Laporta off the field. So just did not earn targets in this offense last year. So I'm a little skeptical of him making kind of a year to leap here and really think things will condense around Amun Raat and Jameson Williams. And then we can almost loop Sam Laporta into this into this conversation as well because we are a little bit hotter than Gretch on the port. We're at 88 targets. Gretches at 82 there. So a little bit of a, I feel like on previous teams, we've been pretty in sync on how we've had, you know, the targets are distributed here. So this team quite a bit different. But Jack, take us through our wide receiver room here and your thoughts on, we'll start at Amun Raat up top, who's been one of the most consistent fantasy wide receivers over the last few seasons. Yeah. I mean, Amun Raat has been the definition of dependability and consistency at the wide receiver position. He has 106 plus catches and four straight seasons. I think he's played 16 plus games every year of his career. So kind of just penciling him in for the same role he's been in the past few seasons. JMO has averaged at least 11 yards per target in two straight years. His target per Al-Ran actually went down slightly from 0.20 in 2024 to 0.19 last year. Although it did pick up over the second half of the season. I think it was really good to see that in the one game, Amun Raat St. Brown left early. Laporta was also out that game. JMO had a 37% target. So we did see some flashes of contingent upside if Amun Raat ever does miss a significant time. Tesla, I think you kind of hit the nail on the head. He was viewed as an athletic freak, but maybe not the greatest wide receiver prospect coming out of college. He was significantly outproduced by Andrew Armstrong growing his final year at Arkansas. Armstrong was an undrafted fridge and I think this year I think he's I think he might still be on the chiefs roster technically, but doesn't seem like he's actually going to make the final 53. He was at 0.1 targets per Al-Ran, 0.89 yards per Al-Ran. He is a clear wide receiver three this year with Lee Freeman gone, but I think like you said, significant questions about his target earning. And if if Amun Raat or JMO or Laporta does miss time, I think it would condense further around those three plus games rather than to slot sliding into like a big volume role just because he isn't proven the ability to do that yet. Yeah, and you mentioned on James and William C's he's been at 11.0 yards per target the last two seasons. We're at 9.3 yards per target on on JMO this year. Gratges up at 9.8. This is, you know, a spot we've seen a few spot a few times and like out Pierce comes the mind of guys that have just ripped off these really high yards per target. It's kind of hard for us to get to, you know, year over year in projections, but maybe JMO is a spot that we come up on in that all in change, you know, help our golf yards per attempt as well since our pass catcher efficiency flows back to the quarterback. But yeah, Amun Raat is just as unbelievable. He's been the wide receiver four and half PPR points per game each of the last three years. I feel like people think he only really has like strong upside or first round value in PPR leagues, but I think he's clearly proven otherwise that he's just a absolute beast in all forms of fantasy. Last year he led the NFL and Renzo targets was second in targets inside the 10 only behind Devonte. Adams, he was second in Renzo targets in 2024, six in 2023 and ninth in 2022. So, you know, top 10 in red zone targets. East of last four years that that role. I don't think it is going anywhere. Even for a player of his size, you know, he's been outstanding red zone and touched on score throughout his career. But Gracha, I do want to toss this your way for honestly, the James and Williams conversation first just because when looking through the Lions, kind of like target per out run data over the last couple of years when Sam Laporta has been healthy, James and Williams has been like a clear fourth in line behind behind Amun Raat Gibbs and Laporta in terms of target per out run. James and Williams only at 16% target per out run over since the start of the 2024 season with with Amun Raat St. Brown on the field and has, you know, kind of really, really exploded last year down the stretch with Sam Laporta off the field. So I think, you know, we're a little bit higher on on the port is target earning ability. You're a little bit higher on James and Williams kind of take us through your thought process there on on J. Mel. Yeah, I'm going to definitely get to him. I want to do a couple notes on a couple other guys first because Williams to me is the most interesting one. You mentioned Tesla. Among other things, I always compliment him. He made some really sweet circus catches. I mean, he's an incredible player of the ball. But it was I almost wish we could have gotten Tesla more touches than he got. He had 27 targets last year. So almost wish we could have gotten more wasn't, you know, like the ringing endorsement you hear in the offseason where it's like we're going to feature this guy more, you know, the in terms of the impending bump where he's going to get a ton more work. You mentioned the targets per route. I have the PFF numbers, which they have always come in with a little higher route numbers. It's 8.8% targets per out over there. So I am buying the high yards per target on him as something that could stick, but not a guy where I think the volume is really going to jump. And then you you mentioned Laporta and me being a little bit lower that he's taken a little bit of a cautious approach and his return from a herniated disc. I think he's probably going to be good, but I'm concerned that he'll be a little bit more limited than usual. The way that I look at the secondary guys here behind Omnerah is that they've sort of picked and juiced who they wanted to prioritize in the game plan at times. Then we'll get to James and Williams in that regard. But Williams that kind of his breakout year in 2024. And then in the first half of 2025, it seemed like they just weren't really prioritizing him anymore. And then when I went into the buy, Jared Goff actually was asked about it. I was looking at some of my old ceiling signals right up. I didn't quote the quote. I just paraphrased it. But essentially what I wrote at the time was that he basically was like, you know, different guys got to play their role in the offense. It wasn't like, hey, we're going to go out of our way to get more James and Williams. And so I was a little bit pessimistic about James and at the time James and Williams closed the season with over 70 yards and I believe the seven of his final nine games. There's 10 games post by his targets and catches rose to a degree where he paced for just over 120 targets over 80 catches at his efficiency. That was like a 1400 over 1400 yard season pace in the final 10 games. So this wasn't like a very small amount. It's just that in the first seven games, as you noted, when the portal was on the field, very much non-existent had had multiple really low games yet to goose eggs over the course of the season or another one under 10 yards. So there's going to be some boom bust to his profile. But the so anyway, my read on the portal coming back from a herniated disc is that it wouldn't make a lot of sense for them, especially early in the year to be like going out of their way to feature him in the passing game as opposed to use him as this secondary weapon. and that a lot of tight ends get used as. They sometimes get squeezed when there are a lot of other good weapons on the field. As far as Williams is concerned, when I think it's really interesting about him and why I got really high on him when I did this projection, because in year, years one and two, we know he had a weird early start to his career, the gambling suspension, et cetera. Year three in 2024, he breaks out 477 routes by PFF. He has the really good yards per target that you mentioned. The other thing that happened that year, the A.Dot the first two years was very small sample, but 19.3 and then 16.0 fell all the way to 11.6. They used to speed horizontally a lot as well as vertically, which is really crucial for this kind of player. When I was pessimistic about Outpears, because his A.Dot was over 20 the last couple of years, we didn't see that intermediate stuff. That may come down this year, the way it came down for James and Williams in 2024. Last year, James and Williams A.Dot was 12.7, still pretty low. The average for receivers around 11, within a couple yards of the average, not four, five, six yards above average, which is where you get into these like, peer deep threat ranges. You mentioned the target's proud run a lot lower. It was significantly lower when the porter was healthy early in the year, and then it was better later in the year. But the other key stat last year, after the 477 routes in 2024, was you're in 601 routes. And so his target's proud run goes down to a career low of 16.1%, more than a percentage point lower than his previous career low, which is back in 2023, actually. You look at that second half of last year after the port is out, and the target's proud run is not great, but the routes volume is so good, that that's where he gets to 120 targets, 80 catches as the pace. I mentioned when we did the Pierce show that he only had 47 catches that year, because James and Williams A.Dot is lower. He already had a season last year in 17 games with 65 catches, the year prior 58 in 15 games. So he's getting intermediate range that's bolstering the overall volume enough. But I also don't, I think there's meat on the bone here when you look at the really good 2024, not being a full routes season necessarily, and you only played 15 games. And then last year you see that he was in a much fuller routes rule, and there's other stuff that goes along with that. There's been stuff with him about the willingness as a blocker and that stuff, and they've emphasized that. And there's obviously, there's been maturity stuff with him. He's shown it during games, but obviously he took about the betting stuff on an off field things that have been an issue with him in his career. But as we got into year four, what we did see was 600 plus routes. And I think as we go into year five, he was only age 24 season last year, by the way. He was an age 21 rookie way back when we're still going into like his early part of his prime. He turned 25 in March. I think you can easily chalk this guy up for 600 issue. I mean, if he's healthy, for 550 to 600 routes, a full route share again this year. And then you start to look at the targets per route number and how that translates. As far as the yards per target, you noted I have him at like 9.8. That's meaningfully higher than Pierce. The concern I had with Pierce is that it's all deep efficiency. It's all Ariard's stuff. He has like no yards after the catch profile. Him and a guy we're going to talk about later, Christian Watson are two concerning ones for me. Really high eight dots. Both of them averaged four or fewer yards after the catch per reception last year. Jameson Williams averaged 6.9. He averaged 8.4 the year prior. So you're talking about almost double the yards after the catch per reception because of the lower eight dots stuff, because of the horizontal catch up. This is another highly efficient high yards per target guy, but because he does it, both as a vertical target and underneath catch and run stuff. And he has actually really good evasion numbers too. I mean, not elite, but he can make guys missing space as well. This is more like the Dishon Jackson profile that I remember from back in the day that that guy posted yards per target server through the roof every year. And it wasn't just deep volume. It was deep volume plus yak. It's something I emphasized. Or we haven't done an AJ Brown yet. It was a different show that I was talking about AJ Brown. But when we talk about them, I'll get into that too. But when I see high eight dot and I see yak, because those things tend to be inversely correlated together, I'm more willing to think that the efficiency is going to be more stable because there's multiple ways that that player's getting there. And Jameson Williams has that in the profile. So I honestly think 2026 is pretty clearly going to be a career season for the sky. I want to say that very firmly. This is a situation where last year he got the routes volume, the year prior, it was better in a yard per out runway. Both years, the yards per target very good in multiple ways, vertically and in lower target depths. And then post by how good he was and what he was pacing for. Again, pacing for over 1,400 yards, we've talked about how there are not a lot of 14 and under guard seasons in the modern NFL right now. And if you look ahead to this year, Samliporta being on the field is notable, but coming off our herniated disc, is Samliporta going to stop that? Or are we watching a slow ascension of Jameson Williams? And they're going to be like, oh, we can limit Samliporta by using Jameson Williams more effectively. And they have test slot as well to be that vertical option. Like when we did the piercing, I was like, who's going to run the vertical routes? The Lions have a guy that they run windsprints with, right? And then they use Jameson and the vertical stuff. They use him deep-- sorry, they use him in the horizontal stuff. They use him vertically, but they also will use him horizontally when they use guys like test law vertically. So I'm pretty excited about the different ways that I see Jameson's career building and how this year could be the year where the full routes volume efficiency and at least some targets per route comes together to be maybe not a 1,400 yard season, like I'm saying. He was pacing for post by. But a pretty clear career season that would make him a pretty good-- I mean, a clear value as ADP, which is about Y2C for 25 on underdog right now. And yeah, that's what I was going to say. Is the optimism for me is notable, because we are already a little bit above market on Jameson Williams, both in Bestball and Redraft formats. At this point, so the fact that your 20 targets clear of us and even a little bit more efficient on the targets as well, means Jameson Williams very well could be a massive breakout candidate going at the 4-5 turn right now in Bestball. And I came in a little bit hesitant just on his target earning ability. I was pretty surprised looking back at the last couple of years at LaPorta's target per outrun numbers were quite a bit stronger than JMO. But yeah, to your point, the routes are very secure for Jameson Williams. He led the lines in routes last season. So I think that can easily be transferable to 2026 here. And one last note on Tesla before we hit LaPorta was-- he scored six touchdowns on 16 catches last season, just insane. But we have him projected for an 8.1% TD rate this year, which was the highest we have of any player across all positions in our projection system. So we are projecting Tesla to be in outstanding touchdown score, the volume. I think it's questionable. And I wouldn't mind docking him a little bit volume-wise, honestly, but if you're relying on him in fantasy and any formats, you're really going to need those touchdowns to stay consistent. You're over a year. And I'm a little skeptical that they will. Again, we're projecting them just like outlier high in the TD department. And we're pretty much right in line with the best fall market at this point in time. I didn't say anything about Almanar. I just wanted to echo your notes. One little stat that I saw when I was doing the projections. 115 plus catches 10 plus TDs in three straight seasons, which is just an absurd level of consistency. He's been the overall wide receiver three in PPR all three years. He's the only guy in that span to finish top three in even two of the years. So it was Lam and Tyree Killah had of him the one year that it was Chase and Jefferson, then it was Puka and JSN last year. And it gives you that-- those names being up there, we can all kind of be like, yeah, those guys had great wide receivers. It gives you that reminder of how hard it is actually to back up top three wide receiver production year over year, which he's done all three years. I do think that type of consistency sometimes-- you have to pay full price for his production now. There's probably not a ton of meat left on the bone. I'm not betting against Amin Ra St Brown, but one of the things-- I think I tend to play in a way that I think consistency gets overvalued a little bit in fantasy football. Because things shift so dramatically year over year. But man, he's as consistent as it comes. I mean, he's just incredible. And it's going to be concerted there again. No, no. They did sign Greg Dorch. He is the wide receiver for kind of taking the place of Khalif Raim. And so maybe he could get some run there as well. But yeah, Jack, I did want to toss your way for San LaPorta. Because he's been-- a guy actually did a Twitter thread on him kind of investigating. Because we are well above the best fall market on the Porta. And I-- researching, I came away pretty bullish on him still. So just curious your thoughts on LaPorta here, as we are a bit higher than Gret which has been unusual as we've gone through teams here. Yeah, I think the big question that Greg's kind of alluded to is whether they change the target hierarchy with LaPorta coming off the herniated disc and the surgery. There is some recurrence risk with the surgery that he underwent for the general population. I think it's between 10 to 20% I'm sure it's lower when you're getting an NFL caliber athlete and NFL caliber care. But it's worth keeping in mind, especially with JMO being so efficient. We're kind of projecting it the way it's been the past couple of years. From a weekly DFS standpoint, the Lions have been almost absurdly predictable when all of their weapons are healthy, like not much has changed week to week, year to year. It's kind of just been the same thing over and over. But with LaPorta having the herniated disc and JMO kind of progressing each year like Gret, there is some possibility that JMO clearly overtakes LaPorta this year with the Lions playing it a little bit safer. And so maybe that's something that we could bake in a little bit more, especially given how bullish Gret is on JMO. But right now, we're kind of just projecting it the way. that it has been, which maybe is wrong from a forward thinking point of view. I want to ask you you've said since the beginning of 2024 with the JMO and LaPorta numbers. If you look at just 2024, didn't James and Williams have a higher target rate than LaPorta? Like my targets per out number have him a full percentage point higher. Maybe that's because they weren't like LaPorta was off the field at times or something. Yeah, so the the query I used was with both Amin Raus St. Brown and James and Williams on the field since the start of 2024 and now is incorporating both seasons. So let me look at 2024 specifically and real quick. Just for to start. Obviously there's some difference between sports and first solutions, which we're using in NFF, but our stuff with SIS has LaPorta at 0.209 targets per out-around in 2024 and JMO at 0.204. So 0.05 higher for LaPorta, but very close. It actually had LaPorta higher. Yeah, the PFF numbers have James and Williams as a higher target per out, but it's the difference in route classification certainly. LaPorta probably getting routes that were like blocking and not actual routes, which is what you guys are seeing, which makes sense. But yeah, that that closer split in 2024 is basically the framework that I was working off for 2026 because they only played together for like seven games last year. And LaPorta was on a streak, but it's like, you know, that's sort of a small sample. And they were already getting questions at the buy, like I said, about like, hey, why are you not incorporating James and Williams as much? What are you going to do? And so the I guess my argument would be even if LaPorta stayed healthy, they would have done more with James and Williams. I think that was inevitable and then LaPorta gets hurt and we're maybe making too much of a split here. Yeah, and I do think this is an offense where the targets are very, very likely to be condensed heavily on those top four options of Gibbs, St. Brown, James and Williams and LaPorta. So, you know, we are splitting hairs here a little bit. I think all four of those guys are awesome fantasy targets, but LaPorta does go four rounds later than James and Williams at this point and did show tied in one upside in his rookie season. Kind of when James and Williams did miss some time. So, I think it's a spot where like all four guys are going to get the volume or should be incorporated throughout the season. And then if any of the other get injured, then you could really see a massive ceiling pop off. And especially just given the prices on James and LaPorta, like the I guess cost or the outcome you get above cost for them could be pretty massive if Aminrov went down or or you know, anyone else in that past. Right. That's a huge part of the James and Williams thing that I don't think it's discussed is if Aminrov's same-pron actually miss his time. He's been so reliable, but I don't know what else they would be able to do. I think Gibbs, but we're already we're talking about Gibbs at one on one. I think they would have to rely on James and Williams way more meaningfully. And again, the fact that they've done stuff in the lower areas of the field, I will note on James and his first optimistic as I am if he goes in has a goose egg in week one, someone's going to be like, ah, this bangratch guy told me to draft him. He's very boom bust. You got to be willing to, I mean, maybe you think that's better in Bestball. I don't mind playing that in Redraft because I'm really about the upside element of it. And I don't mind the fact that guys will sometimes get a goose egg for you. Again, that 1400 yard pace in the final 10 games that I mentioned. That one actually did include one of his goose eggs from last year. It's zero yards in those 10 games. And still on the other nine was on a enough to make a 10 game 1400 yard pace if that makes sense. So you get the booms that come with the bus. That's where his over the last couple of years, his production and his explosive plays, if the yards per target are high, they reward you. But he did have three games last year, 10 or fewer yards, including two full on goose eggs. So yeah, I'm gonna have some of that. I think with the contingent upside, we have seen it play out like this in practice. There was the week 13 game where Almanar Al-Left early, the port was also out and James had a 37% target share. The slide I think the necking was over 80. Yeah, he ran 80. He ran around on 84% of drop-axe on a land and 8% target share. Tom Kennedy was at 15% of that game. So we have seen it play out where Almanar as out, Laporta as out, J-Mo gets almost 40% of targets into slot. Despite being on the field of bunch running a bunch of routes, just doesn't have the ability to earn targets. 100%. All right, let's head to the Minnesota Vikings here. Head coach and play caller Kevin O'Connell remains at the Helm here. In terms of team level projections at ETR, we're at 61.6 plays on the Vikings. Gretches at 62.4. We are pretty even on the pass rate here. ETR at 62.1% Gretch at 61.5%. So once again, mostly in lockstep for the Vikings play calling, again, Kevin O'Connell kind of with Gretch tossing out that code early on. We have some actual quarterback play to rely on this season. Just some team notes for the Vikings last year. It is a 60.8% pass rate, which was 14th despite J.J. McCarthy being the quarterback for a majority of the season. In 2024, they had a plus 3.5% pass rate over expectation, which was the third highest in the NFL in 2023. There are plus 2.3% as well, which was 6th highest in the NFL. So we've kind of seen the few years before that with Darnell, and then cousins that they were league leader in the pass rate over expectation. I do think we could potentially get back to that a little bit here with Kyler Murray and Thormin, Pat Thormin, dropped his pace column in our time off here. He mentioned that Kyler Murray had his best seasons in Arizona when Cliff Kingsbury was at the Helm and had some elevated pace. That's something we've talked about with. It could be a league wide trend this year to help offenses dictate what the defense of structure is and that's increasing the pace. So I think the Vikings here, if you throw out last season quite a bit, this could be a high pass rate decent pace team here for Minnesota. So that's pretty exciting. But Jack, take us through our team level inputs on the Vikings. And it is hard. We mentioned this with the Raiders and some other teams like to disassociate from last season. It's kind of tough. So take us through our team level inputs here on the Vikings. Yeah, I think you mostly nailed it with the pass rate, potentially coming back up this year. They were top six in PRAOE in about 2023 and 2024 and then dipped away down last year and they dipped down right away. In week one, they had a negative 7% pass rate over expectation. I think O'Connell kind of knew that McCarthy wasn't it. They actually had a positive PRAOE in four or five cars and one starts. It's just that they had a bunch of games with McCarthy and with Max Brozmer that are really dragging down the seasonal pass rate over expectation. I think with a competent quarterback in Kyler this year, they could jump back up. So we have Minnesota's pass rate bumped up from our allego. We're a little bit higher than Gretchen actually, but pretty much in line and Gretchen mentioned being systemically lower on the pass rates just expecting health. So I think that we're kind of in line here expecting the pass rate to come back up here. Yeah, and Kevin O'Connell's offense is always tended to have solid pass rate over expected. Even when he had like Kurt Cousins hurt and was playing what was it Nick Mullins and the Trish Johnson's off mid season. And so you had, you know, I think we had a lot of evidence that KOC understands that you have to throw to make a modern scheme's work at, you know, at some point in he feels that passing is pretty valuable. So Calumery is interesting because there's some discussion around him that is like he was at his best in the more like shotgun spread offenses that are, we're training away from teams are talking about playing more under center and we've talked about the different defensive meta in these last few years and Kyler hasn't really played his best ball over these last few years. At the same time, I still strongly believe Kevin O'Connell's a good coach. I think you can make a case he could have been in the coach of the year. They were 98 last year with literally the worst quarterback plan. I mean, I think their quarterback play was worse than the Browns. It was so terrible. Like they want a winning record somehow. You're talking about some of the stuff they were doing down the stretch like to get Jay Jamm McCarthy into some efficient games. It was so fascinating because he couldn't get the ball to Justin Jefferson. He couldn't get the ball to any of his great players. They started using like Josh Oliver and Jalen Naylor on like leak routes and different things and then would create some really easy throws for him. McCarthy does like to throw to like the the secondary tight ends a decent amount. So you had like a game with Josh Oliver having like two touchdowns and and anyway, people convinced themselves that Jay Jamm McCarthy isn't as bad as he is because he had some decent stats. It's all Kevin O'Connell if you ask me and my argument on that would be you know, as we get into this offense, if you look at their 2025 data, if you look at Justin Jefferson's yards per out run versus the rest of his career, 1.882.5 plus every other year of his career. So like 0.7 lower than every than his previous career low. Jordan Addison way down, TJ Hawkinson way down and I think we're in some ways undervaluing as a as a market each of these individual Vikings from the like the fact that the the reality is that this was a quarterback issue. It all come at all points back to the same the same situation. But yeah, in terms of these team level play volume stuff that you said, I'm basically yeah, I'm not looking at the 25 data a whole lot. I think it's become pretty clear and I think O'Connell's been pretty clear and then we're just talking about that damn Patrick quote that made it as clear as ever that like I don't think he ever wants to have JJ McCarthy in the game again. Let alone like who's going to win the quarterback battle. I think just Kevin O'Connell has more or less made it clear that he is is ready to move on from that. So there's a team that coming into this year, I think has to have better expectations than what they had in 2025 when you look at 2024 and before. And for Kyler, I think one of the things I think is interesting about him is I think there's real concerns. I think the height is a real concern being able to see over the middle of field. Some of that stuff is proven to be pretty concerning. And yet I think he's clearly better than JJ McCarthy. And this guy had one of the most efficient college seasons ever for a passer, not just like, you know, per dropback or anything. He can, and that was more spread offense, but he can throw the ball accurately to places when he can see it and, and like the physical skills are there in a way that they're not there for McCarthy. And he's also in the best situation that he's ever been and not just with Kevin O'Connell, who is probably the best coach. But obviously from a skill position perspective as well, he's got Justin Jefferson and I think a much deeper group than he ever had in Arizona. So it's fascinating. I both have some skepticism, but I also think there's very clear, like symmetry and upward momentum here for both sides. I think one of my concerns here for Kyler and the Vikings offense. And in general, he's only played a full season once in the last five years. So I don't know if he's necessarily injury prone, you know, per se or if this year he could he could say healthy, but I am a little a little bit concerned that that if he misses a game that, you know, JJ McCarthy is going to start just given his first round pedigree even though, you know, we Kevin O'Connell doesn't seem interested in playing him. I'm not sure who the other option would be at this point in time. So I am a little bit worried of like completely tossing out last year's metrics, just just based on, you know, if Kyler goes down and JJ is back in there, then man, I think it could be pretty rough once again. So I do think that that risk is on the table a little bit. Hey, thanks for rooting my Monday. Yeah. And we've just also we haven't seen Kyler be much of a passing centric like fantasy performer throughout his career. You know, his his career high in touchdowns is 26, which is actually right right where you have him projected. Grat you have you have 26 touchdowns for Kyler. We're at 24. We're a little bit lower on the completion rate for him as well at 63% Europe at 66% and just looking, you know, he's at 67% in his career. So that's probably a spot we could come up a little bit as well. And I know like probably a lot, most of our catch rates for the receivers are algorithm driven and that's all going to be cratered by by McCarthy's starts from last season. So that might be a spot being come up on there. But but looking at Kyler's rushing contributions throughout his career, he's averaged 5.9 fantasy points per game just just from rushing output. He's averaged 37 rushing yards per game in his career and then has scored a touchdown roughly every three games there. So his his rushing output has been extremely strong. Again, I'm a little bit concerned that you know, in his age 29 season, having battled injuries much of the last, you know, handful of years that that he just won't stay healthy for all 17. But I think when he's out there and starting like his his you know, he clearly has could be one or you know, overall, you know, top 10 quarterback upside weekend and week out. One of the other things that he's going to benefit from that if you wanted to make a case to defend McCarthy and Brosmer in the quarterbacks last year is the offensive line absolutely got decimated last year for Minnesota. They acquired an entire new interior offensive line. They had three new guys and their center Ryan Kelly suffered another concussion and retired. They had most multiple other guys missing considerable time across the line. There's from the line stuff that I've looked at there seems to be optimism that the line play can be like average to above average this year, which is like they were very, very low on the other end of the spectrum last year. So that would be a huge improvement as well. But yeah, I mean, strikes with the mobility and everything you're talking about. I mean, he strikes me as one of the premier late round dual threat quarterback options like upside options you can have. This guy was once upon a time at top five fantasy quarterback. I don't think he's like a superstar or anything, but the mobility plus the potential efficiency bump that gets driven by efficient players on the other side of his throws is exciting in a system that could elevate his TD rate as well. Yeah, and it's worth mentioning that we actually don't even have Kyler as a full 17 game starter. We have him with a 95% pasture for the full 17 locked in guys. We have 98% we actually discussed this this morning and decided to leave him at 95 just because he's only on a one year deal a one year minimum deal. If things go bad in Minnesota, maybe they move away from him or do prioritize him and he does have the injury history. And despite that, we still are a good chunk above ADP on Kyler Murray. So I'm with you on on liking Kyler at his crew and press. Yeah, certainly a target for us right now and kind of all fantasy formats. And let's head to the running back room here because this is this is spot I've kind of struggled with all offseason and not me to get into this discussion to see if you know, I can kind of kind of lean one way or the other here. We have Aaron Jones returning who's going to turn 32 this December and then Jordan Mason as well comes back in this back field. They also draft the Mont Clayborn in the six round here. But overall, you know, I don't think anyone that really screams out at you as as like a great fantasy target despite the optimism we have around this offense. So inputs wise on Aaron Jones, we're at 128 targets or excuse me, 128 rush attempts at ETR. Gretches at 100 on Jordan Mason, we're at 151 and Gretches at 172 in rush attempts. So, you know, pretty even gap there in terms of like we're we're higher on Jones right now and lower on Mason by about about the same. And then in terms of the Mont Clayborn, we're at 57 rush attempts. Gretches at 72 there. Target wise, you know, we have Aaron Jones leaving this back field at at 43 targets. Gretches at 37 on him. Jordan Mason were about even right around 20 targets a piece and then Gretches quite a bit higher on on the Mont Clayborn in the passing game. He has them at 28 targets and we're at 13 there. So Gretches, I'm curious your thoughts on the split in this back field. You know, I mentioned personally, I don't have a guy I'm super super eager to target right now and wondering if like the Mont Clayborn is is a good last round. Dark throw at this point in time. What's your read on on the spikings back field? Hendens at 2026. So Aaron Jones might just be done. You guys will have to tell me about the like contract stuff. But didn't isn't he basically only back on the team because he like took a restructure or something. He did restructure. Yeah. Okay. And it was kind of just to keep him on the team. So he's 31. He'll turn 32 in December. Love the guy. Great fantasy player for his whole career. But we're we're at that point when you talk about a speed back. His mistakels force per touch was down to 0.09 for last year. The year prior was a career low for him at 0.161 or excuse me taking out his rookie season. I believe is the the way to say that. But even even still he like basically cut that in half from 24 to 25 in his prime. It was like 0.2 to 0.22. We're down at 0.09 last year. The yards after contact per attempt career low last year. Breakaway run rate has been gone for multiple years now. He's going to play. I think probably. I don't think like clayborn is going to immediately step into this or anything. But going into last year when they acquired Jordan Mason Kevin O'Connell had a bunch of quotes about liking the complimentary aspect of the two players. One is kind of an outside speed player and one is an interior rusher. And I think he kind of sees those as two different things. So I actually wanted to really excited about Jordan Mason because clayborn is like the air and Jones mold. He's the speedster the outside guy. There's there's some comps to like Devon H and he does not have the Devon H and profile quite to the level of like Devon H and some evasion rate and stuff coming out of college in the prospect profile. But he did get decent work in terms of like actual volume for a smaller back. And where's he from Georgia Tech? He came out of the SEC or Wake Forest. Yeah. Wake Forest. I always get those two gold. It's a color scheme that gets me every time. But he's a speedster. He had good a good breakaway run rates and he's a smaller but very fast guy. I think they basically drafted him in like thinking of him in that mold of of Aaron Jones's role. And I do think it means that Jordan Mason probably has a pretty good handle on like the book of the interior rushing. Right. Like I don't think it's going to be there for Aaron Jones. I don't think it's going to be there for clayborn right away. I think it's fascinating that Mason played 63% of the team snaps across the first six games and then was at 30.7% after that. Like this is I'm saying Aaron Jones is done and yet Aaron Jones came like was banged up and then came back and is the guy who completely stepped on Jordan Mason's playing time. They they use him in different roles but they're still going to be a you know, well, a lean one way or the other in terms of overall usage and it went way more Jones's way down the stretch. Now Mason had some injury stuff in there as well. And so I'm not sure really what to think of of the Mason thing but I think the way that I'm sort of playing this is like I want to fade Aaron Jones in his age 32 season basically. I don't think it's there anymore. I don't think the peripherals are there anymore. I don't even think like his yards per carry was 4.2 and it's prime. He was a 5.5 guy but even more recently he's never been as low as 4.2 yards per carry. He can still get in a space and run like 4.2 is not bad by any means but like his yards per target were at a career low as well. Again, everything other than his rookie year, way down at 4.7 yards per target. Some of that's on the catch rate side but like his yak perception was down from like I'm looking at all of his like yardage efficiency across the board is down which is it supports the peripherals as well. Just doesn't look like a guy who has much more than I think he's still a straight line speed but like if you can scheme him into space he's going to be able to run and I think he may have some explosive plays early in the year but the other part of it is I don't want want to beat like, I'm not inclined to project like, draft a guy that I think has super fragile volume. Cause like, like from a health perspective, I think it does probably have the inside track to work early in the season and being even maybe the lead back based on what happened at the end of last year. But it just seems to me as the season progresses, you're probably going to see more Mason. And then I think you're going to see some demon clayborn later in the year. And the reason with the receiving stuff is Mason's not a big receiver that used Jones in the passing game. It's like clayborn's going to take some of that over time. Yeah, last year, the Jones and Mason played about 10 games together in those, those 10 games Jones had 93 carries Mason 83. But really separating the passing game Jones 35 targets and Jordan Mason only eight. So, you know, pretty massive tilt there towards towards the receiving game for Jones. But the splits are all kind of tricky. If you, if you like, even starting the year last year, Mason had 24 rush attempts in the first two games, Aaron Jones in the at 13 before he got injured. And then Gretchen mentioned, you know, Jones kind of separated down the stretch. So it's kind of hard to know exactly what Kevin O'Connell was going for there in the split. But yeah, Jack, this is a spot we've moved some more volume to Jordan Mason recently. I'm curious your thoughts on the split here. And if you're leaning one, where are they? Because in Underdog right now, these guys essentially have, you know, the same ADP at 118. So it really is a toss up between the two here. Yeah, we recently moved a little bit because there was a quote from Matthew Collar. I believe it was Zane, the nanny. I'm sorry if I butt you the name, who tweeted it out. But Matthew Collar, Vikings Insider, said basically that he said, this is Jordan Mason's back field and Aaron Jones is mainly going to be a past on guy. That's kind of, I guess, a mix of maybe speculation and informed guests, but it makes sense, given what Gretchen said and what we saw from Mason versus Jones last year. Mason was at 4.8 yards per carry, 1.02 rush yards over expected per attempt. Those are really impressive numbers, given the state of the Vikings offense. It was kind of just a really bad situation for him because the thing with Mason is the upside is a little bit limited because they don't use him on past downs at all. They have Jones. If Jones goes down, they probably use Claibor and they're a little bit last year. They were using kind of no name, guys. I mean, they used Xavier Scott there. They used Thai Chandler at the end of the year in that role. A little bit. They were using C2 Ham on third downs the whole back. So I don't think that he has three on upside, but from up here rushing standpoint, he's been really efficient every year of his career, even in a bad situation last year. So I do think that with Jones getting older, having an injury history and kind of having a decline in efficiency, it makes sense to expect more Mason this year. So I kind of think that we moved a little bit off of that call, I think that seeing Gretchen's projection and we might want to move a little bit more because I do kind of think Mason is the guy that I would prefer talking through this. Yeah, as I hear, you say all of that. I didn't know that quote. That they and just talking about how bad of a situation it was last year for him in terms of the playing time. I mean, they were not in a lot of plus scripts. You're talking about a run only player. You got me more excited about Mason as well. He also did have the red zone and inside the five carry edge over Aaron Jones last year. Jordan Mason had 26 carries in the red zone. Aaron Jones only 14. And then he had six carries inside the five yard line. Jones only two there. So if this is a situation where the offense really becomes more potent and the ground game does start to contribute to some fantasy output last year. It was just mostly nonexistent outside of the bangle of the game they played against the bangle. And yeah, Jordan Mason. But my only concern here is that it is a pretty rushing dependent profile. I really don't think he's going to catch many balls, especially with Clayborne brought in as kind of like a secondary pass catcher if Aaron Jones does go down. But certainly the rushing upside I think could be there. Let's head to the wide receiver room. Headlines by Justin Jefferson again, just some great fantasy talents and targets to talk about in this division. Justin Jefferson, wide receiver one here, Jordan Addison as a wide receiver two. And then Johan Jennings as an offseason, signing they bring in to be the wide receiver three here in Minnesota. In terms of our inputs for these three receivers on Justin Jefferson, we're at 144 targets. Gretches at 159. We're at 93 targets on Jordan Addison. Gretchen, 102. And then on Johan Jennings, we're at 69 targets. Gretches at 54. So we are quite a bit higher on Johan Jennings there. And then if you kind of take all the way down to TJ Hawkinson, we can loop him in to this as well. We're at 67 targets on Hawke and Gretches at 91. So we have a lot more going to the wide receiver three in Johan Jennings specifically here. And then Hawkinson Gretches is quite a bit further head on. So Gretches, I don't know if you want to talk about that right away. And then we can kind of get into the more exciting targets in the wide receiver room. But curious your thoughts on that split specifically. Yeah. So I had to know that my target share projection, I did it as a pretty straightforward. Like Jefferson as a one Addison and Hawkinson as a two, three in Jennings is like a solid four. You guys kind of have it more of like Jefferson, the one Addison, probably the two. And then Hawkinson Jennings sort of on par as like the co three, four. And I just think it's sort of like how you see that hierarchy. For me, I've thought the market was really low on Hawkinson all off season. He's been really good under Kevin O'Connell. He got hurt. He had to come back from the injury. And then he's dealt with, you know, dealt with last year, JJ McCarthy. And so the numbers have been declining. But he's not like at an age where he can't be productive anymore. This is still-- So I sometimes talk about the long view. And I think about this concept of like going all the way back to a player's collegiate profile. And this guy was once upon a time, the eighth overall pick, like an elite tight end prospect. And he's had very productive seasons at the NFL level. Just turned 29 on July 3rd of this summer. We're recording on July 13th, just a few days ago. So this is age 29 season. He's not beyond where he can be productive. Really good tight ends often can be productive well into their 30s, actually. And I'm not saying that Hawkinson is necessarily a really good one. But under Kevin O'Connell, this guy had a 95 catch season a few years ago before getting hurt in 20-- that was 2023. He gets hurt in 2024. And then last year is dealing-- excuse me, maybe he got hurt at the end of 2023, whatever. He was coming back in 2024. Last year, he had the J.J. McCarthy impact. And he has the lowest yards per out run of his entire career. The concern there is a targets per out run, went way, way down. So when we talk about Justin Jefferson, the targets per out run were still fine. The ball and hand stuff that I was emphasizing with James and Williams that I think is really important for player efficiency. Still great. Justin Jefferson, when he caught passes, was making plays after the catch. Like he's always done in his career. The entire issue with Justin Jefferson was just like, bring in the ariards. Like, did you catch the pass? Which sometimes can be drops issues or related to the player. And there were some drops problems throughout this offense last year. But I basically chalked those up to McCarthy because I don't know, I want to blame him. But if every throw is off target, and then you finally throw an on target, it's just catching your guys off guard. So we'll just call it his fault. But no, Jefferson had a great year in terms of creating separation, getting open and ball in hand and after the catch. And then like if you watch the games, you saw this stuff. Like Jefferson's running open on an out pattern. And the throw comes to his feet. And he picks it up off a skip and throws the ball. And he's just like furious that he can't get an on target, throw when he's wide open, that's 12 yards down the field. That happened more often than it should have happened in an NFL game or an NFL season. I believe that happened for basically everyone in the offense, and including somewhat for Hawkinson. And I think people are looking at the massively declining yards per out run for Hawkinson and seeing a player that is on the back end of his career. And like I said, I don't necessarily see that. This is a guy he's been around a long time, but he was a young prospect, a really good prospect once upon a time and has now played through a long career. But it's only 29 and somebody I think could still be productive probably. And then the other US about Jennings, sorry, I'm off on the wrong long view. The John Jennings long view is the other contrast of this, which is that he had never really been that big of a prospect. He had never been that big of a producer until he had the monster 2024 season. And that was awesome. I was into him last year. The target's proud run spiked. I thought it was going to continue to be good. Everything went back in 2025 to everything he had been prior. He goes down to a 1.39 yards per out run. His previous seasons before 2024, 1.15, 1.37, 1.41, all in that 1.1 to 1.5 range. 2024 is at 2.26. I mean, he's like a full yard better for one glorious season. And then he goes back down the other direction. He sits in free agency. He signs a low one year deal. He's also 29. He also just turned 20 on his. Basically, the same age as Hawkinson. I think people would guess Hawkinson's like four years older or two to three years older at minimum. This is a guy who San Francisco decided did not want to have they did not want back and probably could have had him back. But again, a cheap one year deal after he sat unsigned for quite a while. So I don't see him as a guy. For a long time, free agents who changed teams had a hard time hitting on the new team and new offenses. We've seen some more of that with some elite guys. We're some better examples of guys being able to integrate quickly. But I do think this is-- and they're similar offenses. But I do think this is a situation where part of the reason they brought in Jennings as well is he's always been renowned for being a run blocker and doing some of those things at the YRC position. I see him as like a clear answer-- you know, answer-- and Silarie. God, I always say that we're wrong. And Silarie piece in the passing game that is going to be helping out in the run blocking game and sort of the fourth guy. And then tied into that as me having a little bit optimism. about TJ Hawkinson, but sort of where you see those two guys, and probably Addison to a degree is gonna depend on, I think the difference in our target rates on those guys. - Yeah, I think there's a lot to talk through here, just given how last year went, and just kind of the off career norms that we saw from Jefferson Addison and Hawkinson for that matter. And then Joanne Jennings too, last year was utilized a lot different in San Francisco than he was and at prior in his career. Last year he was a 70% out wide receiver, 30% in the slot, heading into the last season, he was like 55% in the slot. So majority, big slot player. And so I am a little interested in how Kevin O'Cotton utilizes him and Gretchen mentioned like his blocking ability. And kind of, I'm like a little skeptical that, or I'm a little concerned that he can maybe take away some snaps from Jordan Addison and two Irish-evers sets, just to add that blocking ability on the field. And again, he did play more out wide last year. I don't think that's, there's a super high chance that that would happen, but I'm just kind of going through the splits. I was thinking, oh, maybe that's more of a possibility than I was initially giving it credit for there. And so, Jack, Jordan Addison is a guy. We've been higher than the market on each of the last two seasons. Once again, we are this year about a full round above ADP currently on Jordan Addison. So, I initially felt pretty good about that. Rank, he's been a very solid player throughout his first few years in the NFL. But some off-field concerns for Jordan Addison, some attitude issues potentially as well. He's dealt with suspensions, I think, two of his first three years in the NFL here. So, curious your thoughts on Addison specifically. 'Cause I feel like we're pretty confident Justin Jefferson is gonna bounce back with better QB play, but given we are higher than market on Addison, curious your thoughts on him as age 24 season here. - Yeah, I think our Addison stance is largely a systemic one. I mentioned earlier that we're high on Kyler, despite not projecting him to be a full 17 year soda. We're two spots high on Justin Jefferson. We're also 11 spots high on Joanne Jennings and TJ Hockinson. So, I think it's largely just being higher on Minnesota as a whole rather than being high on Addison specifically. Although, I do think Addison's role as the clear water seeker do here is not in a ton of question. I think it's fair to wonder if he could lose some snaps because of Joanne Jennings blocking ability. But I think that the routes are still gonna be good. And frankly, I just think that he's in a different dimension than Jennings as a receiver. He dipped down to 7.7 yards per target last year amidst quarterback struggles. That was actually, I mean, 7.7 is not absolutely horrific. That was higher than Justin Jefferson was. For example, and he was at 8.8 and 8.4. First two years of his career, he has a first round graph cap, but only shown big down field playmaking ability. Joanne Jennings, I think Retsch made a good point at the long view that he was never really this really awesome pass catcher until 2024. And then he lasted two months in free agency. So I think Addison is pretty clearly the wider seeker two here. I feel comfortable taking him at his ADP, expecting him to be the wider seeker two. And I think that our Addison position is largely just being higher on the Vikings as a whole with a more competent quarterback. - Yeah, you mentioned Addison as a first round pick. And draft capital doesn't matter. I think some of those people here and they're like, why does that still matter? Well, I mean, I managed to the teams among other things. It also was a proxy for the prospect profile. Joanne Jennings, formerly a seventh round pick. Addison, bullet and a cough winner at Pitt, transfer to USC. Had a great season there as well. Came in as an age 21 rookie and had 10 touchdowns. Then had 10 touchdowns and as age 22 second season. This guy's good at football. Last year is his first like bad football season dating to like, I don't know, high school. I mean, this guy got Kenny Pickett drafted in the first round. He's not just his own first round pick. He's a stud. The off field stuff is where I'm more concerned. Like there was a quote from Quasie before he got fired. That was like, 'cause they've talked about this stuff and it's like, yeah, no, I mean, think about Joanne Addison. 99%, I think it was 98% or 99% of the time. He's the most lovely guy to be around in the world. But like, there's an admission there that like the other one or two percent they think he's kind of a dick. Like, I don't know what the deal is there. - A bonehead, you know? - A bonehead. - Yeah. - Right, something. I think he's an incredible football player probably. And I think last year's down, you know, yards per out run season and all that does create some real opportunity for this to be a bounce back year. And again, to just know another number, I was looking at my notes. Justin Jefferson last year, 7.5 yards per target. First year in his career under 9.9, that may be the, the PFF yards per target numbers. They pull out like, un-catchable throws. But just a significant gap in his yards per target from the other, I believe it's like, six years of his career or something or five years of his career where, again, he was a 2.2 plus yards per out run guy and he was 1.88 last year. So, yeah, no, that's actually the PFF, or excuse me, the pro football reference has the, you know, the more official target numbers, I guess, 7.4 yards per target last year. He had been 9.7 or better every other year. This is one of those guys that maintains the really high yards per target every year. And then last year, it's completely at the bottom of the barrel. And again, it's on the pre-catch stuff. It's not the yards after the catcher or any of that. As far as Kyler's efficiency, one note that I did want to, one more little note of optimism, I did want to throw out, he talked about his injuries. He played hurt quite a lot in Arizona. His best passing efficiency in recent years was his one full season where he had 614 dropbacks. And any of his past four, that was his best efficiency year, the other three. Now, some of them, it's like he was just having a tough year and then he got hurt. And like last year is kind of what happened. They kind of just like moved on from him. It seemed like it didn't even seem like he was that injured. But I do think it's interesting that when he was fully healthy and playing well that one year, I don't know. I don't know how to have it in front of me, whether it was two years ago or three years ago or what it was. But it was really good. I also projected Kyler. You mentioned the efficiency for more efficiency than he's ever had, but still well below Sam Darnell in the Kevin O'Connell offense in 2024. So there's room, I think, for things to be better for Kyler in terms of a career year, but still not have to be what Darnell was or be the very best Kevin O'Connell stuff. Be positive for Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison and these guys. But also we're not overstating Kyler's impact on them. Some people are like, oh, you can't throw to anybody. That's not really fair. When he had DeAndre Hopkins, even when he had a washed up AJ Greene, he was able to get him the ball. And AJ Greene had some stretches of production. He's been able to get the ball to some wide receivers. He obviously never clicked with Marvin Harrison over the last couple of years. But I think there's reason to believe that the efficiency, like cratering in 2025 from guys like Jefferson and Addison, which again, for Addison, which is the age 23 season, you're thinking he's on an upward trajectory is not able to continue to take steps forward. He falls way down. And then-- Yeah, none of that can say that I mentioned a career low for him too, but those cratering are going to rebound in a major way potentially. To the Jefferson efficiency point as well, we're at 8.8 yards per target. Grete, you're up closer at 9.3. And we do have a bump from Algo. I mentioned at the top of this team that I think our Algo is going to have a tough time fully throwing out last season. And while we kind of want to do that in our heads and just say, oh, it's going to be way better this year. So we already have Jefferson's yards per reception. Bumps, I do think we could bump the catcher eight because I have a note in here. He had a 68% catch rate in his career entering last season. And then last year is below 60%. And our Algo right now is at 63.5% on Jefferson. So that's probably a spot we can easily take up a little bit. And we're also below Grete's in terms of Kyler's completion rate. So that would flow through a little bit there as well. And Grete was hilarious when you were talking through TJ Hockinson and being like, yeah, he's only 29 years old. I bet people would think he is way-- that was my exact thought process going through his profile. I was like, man, I kind of forgot TJ Hockinson was like the eighth overall pick. And like, geez, he's only 29. I feel like he's been in the league forever. So it's just kind of funny that I do think he's been kicked to the curb. But we're throwing out last season and all the efficiency issues that the other receivers had. But for TJ Hockinson, I think people are more keen to say, oh, well, no, he's in the client. He's just not a great target earner at this point in time, which is fair, given the metrics. But I do think it's hard to kind of disassociate just the quarterback play last year. And his role was way different last year. And I think that might have been Kevin O'Connell kind of compensating just for what Jay-Jim McCarthy can do. And TJ Hockinson's career, he never had an average set that target below seven yards last year as 5.2 yards. So like almost two yards lower than his career worst metrics. So I do think that's essentially a bump back up. But his role could just completely change last year. And then the targets per out. He had never been-- by PFS number, had never been below 19.5%. Even going back to his rookie year, with the Lions, he wasn't like a huge hit. He mostly hit after the trade to the Vikings. But 19.5% then he was above 20 for several years. And 2024 is at 19.7%. Those were good numbers for a tight end. 15.3% last year. One of the reasons I wound up with more targets for him is routes. He ran over 400 routes last year. I think he's pretty clearly locked into a pretty big routes role here. I mean, they do have some other tight ends. I'll do some big tight end stuff. But Josh Oliver's mostly a blocking tight end. This is a guy that, like, Hawkinson is a prominent enough player in their offense and in their organization. They're like, he's going to run 400 plus routes. He may push closer to 500 if they get a little bit more past volume this year or whatever, depending on how that develops. That A dot note you had, I hadn't noticed that. That's a really interesting one, too, where the targets per out are way lower and the A dot's way lower, which is-- are right like that both of those things are falling off but if he's running a ton of routes I want to bet on the outlier stuff with his AIDOT and targets per route from 2025 given that we know that that was such a weird season in a lot of different ways even like the O-line stuff if you're not as down on the QB play as us I want to bet on that being like regressing to some degree not being three or four percentage points lower or two yards lower in terms of the targets per route or the AIDOT when I know the routes are going to be there because he has to be like really bad per route to not be he's going really late it's bizarre well I was gonna say I'm like a little skeptical of his fantasy value in like a home 12 team you know fantasy league but he is he's essentially free right now in in redrafts and and then on underdog he's going as a tight end 22 we're about a full round ahead of ADP there so I think you know he's unlikely to like vary you necessarily if you're like fading TJ Hawkins he's never been a great TD score throughout his career but I do think like his role in the offense is probably a little bit better and you know we're 25 targets behind you and again we're we're around ahead of ADP there so are people doing the pattern matching with with Kyler and Tramik bride and they're like oh we just saw Jacobi percent finally unlocked Tramik bride and so Kyler can't throw it was tight ends is that's probably something that's happening here I'm sure I'm sure that's that's that's certainly an in excuse slash rhetoric that's that's out there and and I bet but you know TJ Hawkins and again he's he hasn't been a touchdown score his his whole career necessarily so I don't even think that's something that's like going to get taken taken away from him all right let's head to Chicago where again just another another monster fantasy team to discuss here Ben Johnson entering his second season as head coach and play collar obviously Caleb Williams remains the quarterback here last year the the bears led the entire NFL in plays per game and and rightfully so we have them projected pretty high once again this year we're at 62.6 projected plays which is the fourth highest in the NFL Gretches at 63.5 in terms of pass rate at ETR right 58.9 percent on the bears Gretches at 58 percent so relatively in locks up there again Gretches has trended a little bit more optimistic on the play calling but I think you know we we expect the bears to be kind of like top five and in the league in terms of plays run this season I thought Thormin once again just shouting out his pace column he had a great note here on the bears from week nine onward their games ranked first and combined snaps per game and finished six and total points at about 50 per game they ranked ninth and neutral pace and tied for first and overtime adjusted plays per game in that stretch so I think as Ben Johnson you know kind of got the ball rolling in this bears offense he was able to add some more tempo and and lean into the pass rate a little bit down the stretch they also had some some really high pass rate games in the final few weeks of the season plus 8 percent pass rate of our expectation in week 17 plus 4 percent week 18 plus 7 percent in week 19 so you know week 19 there their their first playoff game but bears lose DJ Moore didn't necessarily replace him and I think kind of the only question or the big question I should say on the offense this year as they did lose Drew Drew Dolman to retirement and Azutropilo who was there a left tackle for segments of last year ruptured his patellar tendon on January 10th so he's he's going to miss part of this season but I think Ben Johnson's you know coaching ability will elevate this offensive line to be you know at least at least on par here but Jack curious your your Chicago native what are your thoughts on on the bears entering year two here under Ben Johnson yeah the Ben Johnson lead offense has always been fast from a play volume standpoint they were fourth in the league last year and seconds per snap I wonder part of that is because of the gamescripts they fell into they kind of developed their reputation as as like the comeback bears down the stretch but and Ben Johnson from a seconds per snap standpoint wasn't super fast in 2024 he was faster in 2023 so the seconds per snap has been a little over the place the play volume has not so we have the bears near the top of the league as you said in play volume which I I think is fair and you can see Gretz is right there with us Ben Johnson has gotten progressively lower in past year over expectation over the past three years minus 2.9 in 2023 with the lions minus 2.5% 2024 down to minus 4.1 last year the league has also gotten progressively around heavier so I think that that kind of makes sense and you mentioned some of the splits down the stretch with the bears having some positive PROE games I do wonder we're a little bit higher on on pass rate than Gretz we've kind of talked about how that's the case with all of these teams but both of us are expecting the bears to be kind of a run first ball club so yeah pretty much and lock stuff I'd say here from a I think a team a team level standpoint yeah I think this is about the closest we've been I completely agree and even in the notes that you had or the same as me I think they're going to have a little bit of a run lean but they play fast I wrote that if they control some more games there could be a bit of a decline in play volume because it could be a little bit better this year their schedule is on the tough side but one thing over at sharp football they leave the league in net rest advantage which I'm pretty excited about I think is kind of a cool little stat because they only they they never play a team that has more than one day of rest on them so they ever play a team off a buy or anything they obviously have their their week where they're coming off a buy and they get a full extra weekend on a team they also have three other times where they get three more days than an opponent where they're coming off a Thursday night game twice and then before the fantasy championship which is against the Lions they have a Friday Christmas game the week prior and the Lions have to play Monday night that week and then they play the following Sunday so the bears and this could be like a division deciding game the bears get the the whole weekend you know I mean Ben Johnson's going to work through that weekend over Chris's weekend I promise you before a week 17 game so that's probably going to be a shootout in week 17 we talked about being excited about the Lions I'm really excited about the bears as a fantasy offense to I'm projecting above average play volume as Jack said but they yeah they ran the second most plays in football one more stat on on you said that they had some close games you play the 11 games within seven points or fewer last year so if they do you know have some some bigger blowout that's going to bring down some play volume probably they had a lot of tight games but again the schedule still on the tough side a little bit here I don't know I think they're going to play a lot of fun football games this year another team that looks great to yeah talking with with resident bears fan Evan Silva you know and on our ETR retreating in in the slack you know he continues to comment how how poor their defensive outlook looks as well and they just really profile as as a shootout team this season so you know it could be a just massive fantasy outings you know across bears games consistently throughout the year does that mean that a week 17 we just I mean just draft all bears and lions for weeks 17 for sure I think I think I think the only issue is that game is in Chicago so you have some potential weather concerns there in in January but otherwise yeah it's it sets up as a as a massive week 17 shootout I did want to mention personnel wise here last year they had 45 percent of their snaps came with two or three tight ends on the field that was the sixth highest in the NFL and then they really ramped up their 13 personnel usage from from week 11 on now is at 15 percent which is you know would have been clearly a second in the NFL behind only the Rams last year in terms of 13 personnel usage they end up drafting Sam Rausch this year at tight end obviously of Colson leveling coming into their second year and Colcomett so on a pretty healthy deal there for the bear so I do think it's going to be a heavy heavy personnel leaning team and then you know you lose DJ DJ Moore they drafts Xavier and Thomas here but he's not like a doesn't profile as a high volume guy at all so I think that I think the targets could be really condensed among the top top guys here so this is I think just an awesome fantasy offense to target in that regard you know just a lot going for them here in high high play volume every good quarterback play yeah Ben Johnson obviously great offensive minds and then you have the potential condensing of targets and opportunities here I think that that should be pretty clear especially if they continue to lean into the heavier personnel sets so I'm looking back to to have a good offensive line despite center drew Dolman retiring and the rookie left tackle you mentioned tours Patel are 10 in and and like they they acquired some potential replacements and they're still expected to have like the average rank I have from the sources I'm looking at is like five like ranked top five back end of top five everything that I look at from a team perspective I talked about I like a lot of the teams in this division I got really excited about the bear is going through this whole process like the the schedule stuff is going to push them the defense you said the pace the play collar being a really and a play designer some of the heavy to personnel stuff you said that can concentrate volume on and then the fact that as we'll get through to the skill position players it looks concentrated just like the Lions let's get into Caleb Williams because we are a little bit behind market on him but the fantasy market is is I think equally excited about this bear's offense you know you're not necessarily sneaking this by any one Caleb Williams currently going as the QB 6 on underdog we're at QB 8 so a few spots behind him there but in terms of terms of projection inputs we are are pretty similar to Gretz here a little bit lower on the efficiency side but completion percentage we're at 64.1% on Caleb which is a massive jump from where he was last last year you know he's been sub 60% last year is 58% completion rate in his minus three and a half percent completion percentage over expected was the second worst in the NFL behind only Michael Penex you know and Ben Johnson came in last year like he kept saying we're gonna we're gonna try and boost the completion rate for Caleb Williams and that's not happened in his in his first year under Ben Johnson and that's kind of been the quotes again this year so we have a pretty massive bump there and so Gretz it's just like interesting to see that you're even a little bit ahead of us closer to 65% again we're we're right around 64% and then you're a little higher in the yards per attempt we're at 7.3 Gretz is at 7.9 there so so Jack I think this is an interesting discussion just in terms of like a natural player ascension. He's in his second year with this head coach that we all believe is an offensive genius per se. He's got solid weapons and yet we still are a little bit behind market on Caleb Williams despite kind of boosting him up ahead of where he's been the last couple of years. So I think it's a hard one projection wise to nail down. So curious your thoughts here on Caleb Williams and kind of where the fantasy market is valuing him and where we might be a little bit low here. Yeah, I think it's probably partially the efficiency where at 7.3 yards per attempt, he was only at 6.9 last year. I think if you ask people at his yards per attempt those last year they would probably guess higher than 6.9 because that's not a very good number. But the offense is projected to be really good. So I think it's easy to see where the fantasy market is coming from. I think Caleb deserves a big shout out. He dropped his sac rate from 10.8% as a rookie to 4.1% last year. And I think that the completion percentage note which is a big point of emphasis for the second street off season. I think there's a little bit of nuance to it because Caleb was on the part in my take podcast and he mentioned how often he throws the ball away. He had a 6.8% throw away right last year. I think that was second in football only to Carolina. And so that's 6.8% of his throw. That they're just 0% completion probability. The average is around 4%. So that's 3% higher than average. And he mentioned doing that so that he can keep Ben Johnson in position to go for it on fourth down and avoid those sacs. So I think the completion percentage and the sac rate kind of go hand in hand with one another. And I think if given the choice between the two, Ben Johnson is OK with the completion percentage being lower as long as the sac rate is lower. But yeah, I think it mostly is just the yards per attempt. We are expecting him to be 0.4 yards per attempt. Higher than he was last year, there is some upside on that obviously if this bears offense goes as nuclear as everyone expects. But from an average standpoint, that's kind of just where it nets out. I think that 0.4 yards per attempt improvement is-- you know, that's a pretty solid improvement. But it's kind of like the charges offense where it's kind of a scary fade. But that's just kind of where the number pans on. If he hits the ceiling outcome, it certainly could look very wrong in hindsight. We also have him bumping up a little bit in TD rate. We project 5.1% last year. It's only at 4.8%. Looks like Gretches is essentially in line with us there as well. We project 27 touchdowns for Caleb on 20 fewer pass attempts. Gretches at 29 touchdowns on Caleb. So a little bit higher there. But I think percentage wise, we're in the same ballpark. So Gretches, I'm curious your thoughts. I know you haven't done a ton of drafts this off season. But Caleb, I do think is a scary fade kind of for all the reasons we've mentioned about liking this offense. But in terms of projection wise, we're essentially in lockstep here. So I'm curious your thoughts on his fantasy outlook specifically. Yeah. When we talked about the Texans, I had the same note as Jack about the Sacrite. I talked about the Sacrite thing with Stroud, where his efficiency dipped a little bit. But while he also dramatically cut a Sacrite, so I described it as improvement. Because you're getting the ball out, you're not taking these negative plays. That Sacrite thing is huge for all the real football stuff. And then that's what gets captured in a lot of the EPA models and stuff. I think the EPA models have some issues. But you're going to see Caleb look a lot better in EPA per play than in completion percentage over expected, because he's taking in completions instead of sacs, which are negative plays. Obviously you'd prefer a zero yard gain to a negative gain or loss, obviously there. So the difference with Caleb from Stroud though, is he actually improved. Like you mentioned the 6.9, his completion percentage went way down. And his yards per tenth actually went way up from just a horrible, rookie season that it really needs to be contextualized what happened in 2024. I mean, you had a lame duck coaching staff that didn't devise a very smart offense at all. And then both of those guys got the head coach and the opposite coordinate or get fired reasonably early in the season. And then you're coaching out the rest of the season with an interim coach. And Caleb is basically just free to do whatever he wants. And he's holding the ball too long and he's taking a ton of sacs and a ton of hits. He's trying to play make all these things, which is how he plays. But there's no structure or anything. And so in the first year under Ben Johnson, trying to change the way that you play, like you can't be come exactly where you're going to become the very next season. And something that I talked about with some of the guys who had tough rookie seasons or early career inefficiency and then built up like Devonte Adams, I always come to mind when I think about this totally different position. But it took him multiple years of building from the really poor first couple seasons where you look at like his per out run stuff. It bounced a couple of years secondary breakout. And I think there's like even a tertiary breakout after that in Devonte Adams numbers. When you look at Caleb going into 2026, clear room for a secondary breakout. The completion percentage fell as you guys talked about, but the efficiency rose. His time to throw still highest in the league. He's still doing the playmaker stuff. But he's finding a better feel for when to get rid of the ball. And he does deserve a ton of credit for that. Sacrate absolutely cratering. I mean, he got sack more than anyone in the league the year prior. And then it's like a very good sacrate in 2025. Well, I do want to I do want to mention one thing there just because so the Sacrate dipped a ton, but his pressure to sac ratio in 2024 was 28% which was the second worst thing. And I fell last year was 10.8%, which was the second best. So he essentially, you know, was one of the worst quarterbacks at like when he was pressured, you know, getting sacked his rookie year. And then last year completely flipped. So is that something you ever looked into? Gretchen like kind of how sticky that is year over year. And is can we can we feel that jump is like reliable in his sack of avoidance? I haven't I haven't looked at it as as how sticky it is. But that's that's the improvement that we're talking about, right? Like he's feeling the pressure better is getting it out. And so in terms of like so Ben Johnson talked about completion percentage all ass off. He's I remember those quotes as well. It's clear to me that it was also a huge year one together. Ben Johnson year one talking point to not take so many sacks. I mean, and that's the stat you just gave the pressure to sac. You start feeling the pressure. Get the ball out. You have the arm strength. Throw it. I mean, don't take intentional grounding, but throw it over a guy's head out of bounds. Like he's got a cannon. Even if you're in the pocket, he can chuck it from a off platform out of bounds easily and not have to take a penalty. Even from inside the pocket and they say amazing stuff about his development, taking coaching doesn't make the same mistake, you know, more than once. Any of those kinds of things. Everything you want to hear. So what I think is going to happen actually this year is like the sac rate got so low last year, you may actually take a few more sacks. I think the next step now is getting back to that completion percentage. Just why we're hearing it again more is like now. Okay, we got to get it out into more completeable spots. Part of the reason the completion percentage fell all the way below 60% as well as had a lot of drops last year. But sometimes because he just those absolute bullets like he's got to get a little more feel for it. But I think that comes with trying to get the ball out. So he's throwing. He's got the really high throw away rate that Jack said. I think I he also had a really high rate of like tougher to catch balls that are than people realize that didn't even go down his drops, but are probably not a high part. You know what I mean? Like they're at the guys feed or the throwing away from the defender. Because again, it was such an important element to get the ball. And those are the kinds of ones that really hurt the completion percentage over expected as well, which some of the sites take out throwaways. They still had a really bad completion percentage over expected. But those throws that have a small expected completion rate, but are typically almost always going down as incompletions. I think it's funny. He has a really low interception rate as well because he just throws a absolute cannon. I don't even think defenders can catch it. But I think yeah, I think he took a clear step forward from a completely non-functional year one for like everything around him, right? To a very highly functional situation. And I don't think we should have ever expected 2025 to be perfect. And now we're going to 2026 and I think it's really easy to project another step forward because we saw that bump. The long view stuff. This is a great quarterback prospect. Somebody that we expect. There's going to be more bumps in the road, but we expect I think frankly last year was a smoother than reasonable expectation for year two over year one. And I just have nothing but optimism for where that goes from here. I think it kind of profiles as like a small miss big hit type of fantasy quarterback. I think we all feel pretty confident in the floor here for Caleb Williams. And then yeah, if it really does connect in terms of the completion percentage and just taking that year to and Ben Johnson's offense leap, he also does have a 6.8% scramble rate on his career, which is well above average and kind of in the like that second tier of quarterbacks. So you do have that athleticism angle that will help his fantasy output a little bit as well. It's a again, we've kind of bumped him in multiple spots to try and get him closer to ADP, but still lagging behind a little bit. So I'm not exactly sure how to like completely close that gap between us and market, but he's kind of a guy I've been taking a little bit ahead of our rank, especially in basketball when you know, I went, I've drafted his his stacking partners earlier on in drafts. Yeah, I love the small miss big hit thing. I mean, that's the point. You're like, well, sometimes we're looking for outliers. We're looking for unprojectable stuff, you know, even as we go through this projections process. This seems like a player that could be. I don't think that he's definitely going there. I think he could have a small secondary breakout. There are some small miss things like you said, but this is if you told me at the end of the year that he took another huge step forward and hit on that one on one draft capital ceiling, I would be like, yeah, that makes perfect sense in year two with Ben Johnson. The backfield is a fun one to discuss here as well. Deandre Swift and Kyle Menungai remain the two backs that we expect to get the vast majority of the work here in this backfield in terms of of projection inputs. We have Deandre Swift at 194 rush attempts, Gresh is at 196. We're at 39 targets on Swift's, Gresh is at 40. So essentially, it enlocks up there across the board on Deandre Swift. And then Kyle Menungai, we're at 152 rush attempts, Gresh is at 174, we're at 26 targets on Menungai Gresh at 31. So I think that just comes out to us being a little bit different on the past rates there. But essentially, it enlocks up on Swift. And Swift was a guy that like when we did our initial run of projections coming into the year, we were like a full round ahead of ADP. And we've kind of gotten some pushback on that, I think. But you know, market has come to us a little bit, but I feel solid on the Swift inputs. He's I think quietly handled 220 plus carries in each of the last three seasons has Deandre Swift. He also has three targets per game in that stretch as well. Last year, he had a little bit better efficiency metrics than the Kyle Menungai, which I was a little surprised by. I feel like Menungai was viewed as like the bowling ball more yards after contact type of, type of rusher, but Swift was actually a little bit better than Menungai. They were pretty even honestly across the board and kind of the yards after contact and like Broken Tackle metrics, which I feel like the rhetoric is like Kyle Menungai is a stronger runner in that department. So I was a little encouraged to see that honestly from Swift. So, you know, Jack again, we've been ahead of market on Swift, kind of all offseason. Curious your thoughts there on on the Swift between him and Menungai. And if you think that will converge at all as Menungai enters his second season, 'cause last year, you know, he's a seventh round pick. We had Rocheon Johnson penciled in as RB2 and then it was Menungai the whole way. So curious if you think Menungai will eat more into Swift this upcoming season. - Yeah, we're kind of projecting it similar to how it was last. Your like you said, Swift was more efficient on a yards per carry basis as well as rush yards over expected per attempt. He was actually double Menungai and rush yards over expected per attempt, but they were both positive. By the end of the year, it really settled into a super predictable consistent split. Over the last five weeks of the season, Swift had between a 53% and 59% design carry share. That's really incredible consistency from a week to week basis. It was, I mean, it was pretty much the same thing every week. I think it makes sense to expect them to roll with that again this year. I think the nice thing about both of these guys is the RB3 is Rocheon Johnson. So if Swift or Menungai goes down, the other one likely vaults in the pretty much an every down roll. It's kind of similar to Kyron and Quirman that regard and that we know what this split is going to look like with both of them healthy where Swift is the RB1. Swift is going to get more of the pass down stuff. But if the other one goes down, we're looking at an every down record on one of the better offences in the league. Yeah, and we're a little bit-- I mentioned we're ahead of Mark and on Swift. And we're a little bit behind on Menungai, which he had won came last year when Swift is out. Coincidentally, it was against the Bengals who were just the worst Rush defense, like almost just one of the worst in history and just an absolute Sib last year. And Menungai went 26 periods, 176 yards on the ground. He also caught three of five targets. So he did show that kind of that RB1 workload. I remember going into that week projection wise, we were like, man, is he going to seed the passing game work? He did have a solid route share and caught three balls that came on top of the massive Rushing workload. So agreed like the handcuff upside is really strong there. But I think just kind of going into the season, I much prefer Swift as the fantasy target. But Gretchen Curious, how you see this backfield entering the 2026 season? So it's funny, because I thought I was going to be maybe light on Menungai a little bit. I wrote about notes. I'm normally into the younger guys in these situations. But I mean, the younger Swift looked better than Menungai for most of the year last year. When I was running still in signals every week, I was emphasizing I did not think that this was like the takeover was clear. Like a lot of people think, oh, the rookies progress. And they're going to take over. I was like, Swift looks better. It's just a way that I mean, when I was watching the games and I was looking at the numbers, you mentioned at the end of the day, their evasion numbers and yards up to contact breakaway stuff. Very similar for Swift. It was mostly in line with his recent seasons. That's down from his peak, like back in like 2022. But again, Menungai was like writing that exact same range for all the peripherals, which is for him is fine. Like it's not great, but for a rookie, like should have a little bit more burst probably, but good enough to be optimistic for year two. But Smith did have a Swift did have a better yards per carry and yards per target than Menungai, which I basically was like, that's the burst that I think I was seeing on the screen, which is like stepping aside from like the evasion rate and all this stuff. Like when there's room in front of them, Swift would eat up that room quicker than Menungai, which is like an important running back trait, frankly. But their numbers were very similar. Menungai was good. He did look very good at times. You mentioned the huge game with Cincinnati. It was very telling that the very next week when Swift was back, even though Menungai just had his breakout game, Swift was back in the lead role. It wasn't even like a one week switchback. It was back to 1A for DeAndre Swift. And Jack broke down the numbers. What I had was that Menungai for the first few weeks, first five games or so was in a smaller role. He got quickly into that 1B role by about week seven and then kind of beyond that, he never moved. His snap shares just sat in the 40s and Swift were in the 50s. And it's the 55-45, like Jack was kind of talking about. And the final postseason game I believe Swift actually ticked over 60% in Menungai below 40, which was like the first time their snap shares had diverged that much in a long time. When the season was on the line, they went to Swift a little bit more. So this isn't a situation where they think Swift's like the old guy. And you mentioned the green zones really close. Everything, the usage very similar across the board, like he's using them interchangeably. Now because of that, I do think that there's potentially more ceiling from Menungai if Swift gets hurt than Menungai or then Swift if Menungai gets hurt. 'Cause I kind of wonder if Swift's held back by a desire to keep him healthy. 'Cause they do seem to think he's the better back and they're using him as a lead, but he's older and he's had injury issues. And Menungai, we saw last year when Swift went down. They gave all the work to. But if I think if Menungai went down, because he's kind of like non-special, I feel like he's just sort of taking on some of the work from Swift. Maybe it's Roshan Johnson. Maybe it's Brent Brown who got a little bit of work at the end of the year. And I think in a situation that didn't really matter, but looked okay. I think maybe a secondary back would maybe factor in alongside Swift a little. So that was one sort of specific take about how the handcuffs stuff could work out. But yeah, the handcuffs upside can go both ways or the contingent upside can go both ways. Younger guy can get hurt. Then I do think Swift would get more work. But maybe it wouldn't get as big. Because like you said, the Bangles game, Menungai got like 26 carries and like five targets just to reiterate that. Now I will say low running back target right here. Caleb's not gonna check down. He's gonna extend. Part of the reason the catcher right is so low is he's vertical until he throws it away. His eight dots very high. That's an element. And then I they added Roshan. I think they're gonna do some multi-tied end stuff. And I actually have them giving up a fraction of a percentage point more in the target rate over to the tight ends this year with Loveland moving on or progressing as well. So it's not like a it is a high upside situation because Ben Johnson's run game. And I this is a place that I thought was the best running back landing spot in the entire league. 'Cause I don't think either of these guys are particularly special, but they didn't add anybody. I still wonder if they might. You know at the end of this like we talked about the Cardinals guys, Tray Benson and those dudes. You know, one of them lands here. I'll probably be into the Cardinals guy. But I think these guys, that's not to say that Swift and Mennon and Guy are bad. I think they're fine. And I think both are very playable 'cause it's a good situation. Yeah, and I do think it's a spot where we expect pretty much all the running back touches to go their way. And in close games, not like a Jag spot where like LeQuinn Allen will work in on their downs or in Denver, you know, you might get three guys mixing in there. I do think it'll be a pretty strict two-man rotation akin to the Rams set up as Jack alluded to as well there. So I think both pretty strong fantasy targets. You do get a little bit of a discount on Mennon guy just in terms of ADP, but again, Swift is here. I feel pretty solid about both guys just given their expected roles in this offense. All right, let's head to the wide receiver room. Again, DJ Moore out here. They did draft Xavier and Thomas. They also did sign Caliph Raymond who is in Detroit with Ben Johnson. So he figures to slot in as wide receiver three here. You could, I think, debate a little bit who's gonna be the wide receiver one in this offense in terms of target shares. They're gonna be Luther Burton or Rome Adunesay. So I want to start out there on Luther Burton. We're at 98 targets. Gretches at 116 on Roma Dunezay. We're at 95 targets. Gretches at 105. So we are both a little bit ahead on Luther Burton in terms of raw target volume there. Gretches, you know, a little bit even further ahead of Luther Burton 18 target gap there. Only a 10 target gap in favor of Rome Adunesay. So I want to start out there because Roma Dunezay, you know, was a full-time player last year. Still pretty strong or, you know, pretty solid metrics, 23% target per out run. 1.75 yards per out run is including the playoffs and that's SIS data as well there. So maybe a little bit skewed compared to some rego season PFF data only. But and then Luther Burton just, you know, massive, pretty limited route share about massive, massive metrics when he was out there. 26% target per out run and at 2.49 yards per out run just outstanding there for Luther Burton. But he finished seventh on the Bears in terms of overall routes run. Dead Burton. So Jack, this is I think a pretty big fantasy question. And one that the market is tilting Burton over Roma Dunezay right now. He's going like around and a half ahead of Rome. So I think that is the consensus. And again, both of us are projecting Burton to lead in targets and be more efficient. But curious how you see this. He's kind of top two guys in their role shaking out this season. - Yeah, we've been low on Rome relative to market all off season. It's not. not because of the target. I don't think we have Rome and burden pretty close in targets. I think it's mostly driven by efficiency because so far, three, two years Rome hasn't been all that efficient. He's been at 7.3 yards per target in back to back years. He had some drops, he had some uncutable balls that I think are docking his yards per target. So we have him up at 7.8 yards per target that's higher than he's been in his first two years. But we still come in pretty low and it's mostly just because burden has been so good. I mean, burden's numbers are ridiculous. 26% targets per hour on 2.49 yards per hour on 9.8 yards per target. It wasn't in a full-time role. He never had a game above a 65.7%. Rout rate, they were playing a Lama-Dezakia Sanjade Walker over him at times from a snap standpoint and only playing burden in three wide receiver sets. It sounds like he's going to be in two wide receiver sets this year. That's kind of been the talk all off season the expectation given how good he was last year. So I think that that difference in efficiency is kind of driving the difference in ranking for us and Bert. And Adunzai had the foot injury last year. He said some quotes this off season that are a little bit concerning. He said that his 2025 foot injury created quote a different type of foot structure with those bones. And he said this is his new normal. The target earning from a per-route standpoint was still fine for Rome last year. He was at 23% target per hour on that's good. But it's not anything like super hyper elite by any means. The earth per hour run did jump along with the whole offense getting better last year. But 1.75 is still nothing crazy. So I think that despite having these two guys close in base targets, burden has kind of just shown a lot more upside from a playmaking standpoint. And that difference in efficiency is kind of driving the difference in our ranking. And one of the things that has really negatively affected Rome's efficiency is just his his catch rate. Including playoffs, he's seen 203 targets. He's caught 102 of them. So essentially a 50% catch rate in his first two seasons, which is just really hard to be an efficient player when you're only when you're only catching 50% of your targets. So that was a point. I was curious to see where Gretchen land. And we're actually pretty much identical. We're at a 56.4% catch rate Gretchen. Which is at 56.1 there. So, you know, we do have quite a bit of a big boost there on Rome. And we're still lagging quite a bit behind market. And so again, this is another spot where it's like man, early early round one capital on Rome and offense, we love we boosted his his efficiency metrics from from our algorithm. And we just can't even come close to his his ADP right now. We're like a full round behind on underdog and and in season long as well. We're like way behind on FFPC is going 60th overall. We're at 93 on Rome. So just I mean, just a massive massive chasm there. Gretchen, curious your thoughts on on Rome. And if you think he can, you know, bounce or if that catch rate can come back up if he's a target for you, or if you're just kind of leaning into to Luther burden in this wide receiver room. This is I think the most interesting receiver room. And I think you pull in love and in the league. And so I'll try not to do like 20 minutes on it. I think it doon says the least interesting of the most interesting part of this, which is that I think he's just sort of what he is part of the step forward. So like his rookie years, same as Caleb's rookie year, I talked about how bad of a situation that was right. Like he had a really bad year. And you'd expect a little bit of a step forward. He does have a step forward. But it's interesting when we talked about Quentin Johnson. I talked about how much worse he was the rest of the year after like the beginning of the season. A doon says similar. And then he was coming into the year. Like needing to to show something and get going. And he comes out in the first four games and has five touchdowns. He averages 74 yards per game, five receptions, 8.8 targets. From there on, he averages three receptions on 6.9 targets for 46 yards with one more TD. The rest of the year and his eight remaining regular season games. He had two two catch postseason games as well. He went over 55 yards just twice in those 10 games from from week five from the week five buy on. So that I mean that the split stuff it tends to be not as predictive. But when it's a player who's coming in with some concerns about last year and need to take a step forward and it's a very limited step forward. And then we see that the rest of the year. I'm a little bit concerned. Now you mentioned some of the health stuff. The catch rate was was real. I think on the show last year, I talked about a doon's a catch rate being a problem because of like the on target pass rate. And a lot of people were hammering Caleb for that last off season. And there was some more that at times this year with some of the throwaways. A doon's a was like the work like just from like variance, I think probably he was like the the biggest got hit the hardest by that in their their respective rookie years. He was wide open multiple times on like some vertical routes on the sideline. I remember going back to it multiple times last off season where Caleb just missed him and it could have been some big plays. It could have been pretty meaningful. I think to his efficiency, we saw some of that in year two. I think we also saw that Roman doon's a is probably not going to ever live up to the draft capitals basically the way that I put it. I think it's going to be a good number two and a stable guy and it's going to run a lot of routes, assuming health. You talked about the foot thing is very concerning. But I think he's the third guy and you have these two really exciting year two players. And if they hit then a doon's a is to me like the per route stuff and the efficiency that the jack was talking about makes him the third guy. He's the third fiddle. He's not on their level in terms of what he could be. If either of them doesn't hit and it would probably be burden who feels like the wider air bar guy, then I think you're talking about a doon's a maybe because he's going to run a ton of routes and being in there maybe being pretty interesting. There I do think it's going to be really concentrated on those three. So I came out with a hundred plus projections on all of them and sub 50 for everyone else are going to do the multi tight end stuff. They drafted Sam Roush in the second round. They said GM Ryan Paul said it was important for us to add a Y there, which is a blocking tight end that typically lines up in line. They're going to go to multiple tight end. They already have commit as another guy who does a lot and they reference Durham smife when they talked about Roush. They lost smife. I mean, you'd have to get in the second round because you lose Durham smife, right? Like that's absurd. He played 17 games for them. He got six targets all year, but he's a guy that was playing a role for them. So I don't think Roush is going to it is likely to be very fantasy or often even though he had somewhat interesting prospect profile, but they add him when they have commit as the number two. That's a clear sign. I think that you're going to see some three tight end sets. You're going to see some concentrated route shares at wide receiver. They're number three. They brought in Khalifa Amin from Detroit. He's always been really efficient per target. Never really run big routes over into Troy. I don't think people realize I don't think I realized it. Until I did the projection, Khalifa Amin was a special teams guy for like five years before he ever started running some routes for the Lions. He's 32. So this guy is like that's like their wide receiver three rotational special teams and wide receiver three for the lens. He knows the Ben Johnson system. Ben Johnson speaks very highly of him. It's a 32 year old player they brought in. It's not even like a Lama de Zikias in my mind in that regard. Like you were talking about Zikias Jack being in the way of burden last year and and and he was and and but like DJ Moore is gone and Zikias is gone. They still have today Walker and they drafted Xavier Thomas who's super fast and I do think Ben Johnson's going to scheme up some stuff for him probably use his speed horizontally. Like we talked about with Jameson Williams Ben Johnson was the one who started doing some of that stuff back in Detroit. The guy runs a legit four two nine or whatever it is like sub four three 40. But that's a guy who doesn't have a huge prospect profile. There's some talk from from both polls and from Ben Johnson about how it's going to be a challenge for him to break through in year one. They talked a lot about the kick and putt return stuff with him and they talked about him in the backfield as well, which is potentially really interesting for for Swift and manungai. But my point is the I don't think the secondary receivers or the secondary tight ends are going to play a lot. I think I play a huge role in the target total pull and then I mentioned the running back target shares pretty low. So at first this off season I see burdens price and I'm like man it's pretty high. It's projecting a lot forward for a guy who only ran 242 routes last year and everyone's talked about his yards per out run one of the very best rookie yards per out run in a lot of out of years. But he only ran 242 routes and that's really important when you look at per route numbers that are this high. You want to see it on full routes rates because if guys can't stay on the field for all the responsibilities that makes their volume more fragile to shifts in the offense and those types of things over time. It also means that probably they're putting them on the field to use him a lot like some examples of that in recent years like a couple years ago Marvin Mims had like a 2.5 yards per out run on a really low routes rate and then people wanted to draft them super high last season. Add nine Mitchell had a super high targets per out with the colts on a super low routes rate and they were constantly talking about how frustrated they were with him because he wasn't doing the other stuff so they could keep it on the field. They eventually traded it right so that that was the evidence that the team is actually having issues with him beyond what we look at in fantasy. So Luther Burns yards per out run I think is really good. The flip side of it is when a guy's this strong and this efficient do you get to a point where Ben Johnson says he's so dynamic we have to have him on the field regardless and I'm going to deal with some of the headaches and some of the other issues that he's not able to do the other stuff. And so I'm not saying he's had nine Mitchell and Marvin Mims and I don't even think he was last year if you look at the different samples. I'm saying that's what the risk could be with the low routes numbers in burdens case when I got into the projection I was like man he is going really lofty. I came out of it like he's run 500 routes this year because who else is going to that's why I'm going through the Caliph Raymans and everything else they have cleared this for Luther Burton to be in this huge role and so I don't think it's just lip service when they're talking about him in a huge way they're talking about loving him they're talking about his run after catch they're talking about all of those things his efficiency last year was great his depth adjusted racer I've talked about was through the roof is catch rate was 78% some of that's because of the the manufacturer's stuff that's going to come down. But that's part of why his efficiency was so high as per route and all that. I will note that if you add in his Postseason games as yards per out comes down everyone talks about that 2.69 Which is just the regular season you bring in the the postseason included it comes back down a little bit my so then I bring in Loveland and why he ties it loves and more straightforward love them. It's a 21 year old rookie turned 22 in April And he looks like a star like the long view stuff is great I just talked about how bad JJ McCarthy is he was great for two years in college with JJ McCarthy on a per out basis somehow Justin Jefferson couldn't be good with JJ McCarthy but Colson Loveland managed to I mean this guy I think is just an absolute superstar who's going into his age 22 season I can't really overstate how good what he did at the end of the year was when you contextualize it with him still being a 21 year old Rookie tight end it takes guys time to develop at that position We've known that for a long time just because it's been more commonly doesn't mean it's not you know still a thing His his routes scaled up the way that we've typically seen and like a more straight like linear thing He didn't run around on more than 50% of the teams dropbacks through week six then he mostly lived in the 50s and 60s All the way up until week 16 he had one game over 70% at 73% in week eight and then in week 16 he got to 84% Rats then 87 89 85 and their playoff win then he's back down to 60% in the final game He got a concussion in the fourth quarter of what became an overtime game so we missed out on some You know overtime routes as well he had 10 plus targets in the final four games he went over 90 yards and three of those It is his run at the end of last season was absurd and these 80 plus percent routes rates are so so high for a rookie Period they're so so high for a tight end What I'm bringing this in on the on the burden thing because burden never got To to Jack's point never got to an 80% route share at any point He got higher than the love lent earlier in the in the season and then sat at like 67% or 70% or whatever All the way through the postseason I do think when I got again when I got through this projection All the ball and hand stuff all the optimism about hey, we want to get the ball in this guy's Hand and utilize the skill sets and all these things And I don't think he's as limited as a guy like a Marvin Mims or whatever because burden was running real wide receiver routes like Mims is like really limited routes profile was just swing passes and bombs Like burden was running intermediate routes So there was the one play that he had we ran like a 15 yard stop and the cornerback was just blown like five yards down field And then it is like after the catch he like broke a tackle and everyone was like going nuts about it on social for like that whole week I was going through some of my own signals and those just reading what I had written about it and remembering that like yeah That was a sweet play. It was a sweet route. It was a sweet after the catch play like this guy can play a wide receiver And that's what was in the collegiate profile as well. I mean, he was a three-year guy early to Claire But he did have some limited routes in college too. So there's there's some stuff that it's like he's a really unique Play I think he's one of the most interesting players for 2026 fancy football Maybe the most important player to get right because I do think there's a very valuable fantasy offense And I do think it's gonna be very concentrated and I do think he has some real real ceiling Loveland like I said more straightforward. I want to be in on that profile year two ascending 22 year old rookie tight-end Round one draft capital extremely efficient rookie year even before he was in a big routes Roll yet the huge game and since an adi were ends up catching the game winner late in the game and then late He was having all the consistent volume and production if you just scale that up and say look He worked into a full-time role and he's clearly gonna be in one and you're two I want to put a really aggressive Loveland projection more so that I kind of anticipated going in like close to McBride and I thought I'd have him closer to Warren I have a pretty big gap between Loveland and Warren and I bullish on Warren but Loveland and burden I came out really really high on for year two guys that I think could Could take those year one efficiency yards per route run type efficiency stuff and scale them to bigger routes numbers and The efficiency probably comes down on bigger routes numbers, but it could be really exciting A couple notes on burden before I toss tosses to Jack on Loveland because on Loveland I do think he's worth diving and even a little bit more but on burden There's a few a few things that I found interesting about his rookie profile as well and one of the one of the things he only ran 53 and a half percent of his routes Outwide 45% of them came in the slot and a lot of the vacated routes are from DJ Moore who predominantly played Outside and then when you have cleaf Raymond coming in cleaf Raymond's been 58% out wide in his career 40% in the slot So like maybe Luther burden could potentially lose some snaps or routes out wide It You know if that role doesn't like completely grow to it's a burden being more of an outside receiver like I do think rooms Roll in terms of being that that X receiver is is like more secure necessarily than then burden It's not I don't think a huge work, but something something to keep in mind And then also on burden he had one contested target all of last season That came in in the in the regular season one out of 60 targets was Contested which was by far the lowest number in the NFL like you looked at guys around him in terms of target numbers that there was one That's like out key on Coleman also had 60 targets and like 14 of them were contested obviously quite a bit different profiles there But just in terms of like the schemes easy looks that Luther burden got last year You know, Gretchen mentioned his 78% catch rate like I do think that is going to come down a little bit this year Just playing a more legit kind of wide receiver role But Jack I do I do want to get your take on Colson Loveland because this is a guy too that through research and kind of the offseason You know, we've been a little bit ahead of Mark and he's a guy that man I'm really excited about and I want one on a lot of my fantasy teams this year especially in redraft where I think he he almost has a path to To potentially being the tight end one overall and it's just a guy you know, you can feel confident starting Every week so curious your thoughts on on Colson Loveland or if you have any you know notes on on the wider see recorder to wrap up there But this is a very key offense to get to get right as Gretchen alluded to Yeah, I think Loveland's unbelievable I think it's I think it's good that we're above market on him He was a 25% target career run that's basically the same as burden But Loveland for the season ran around on 61% of ran around on 61% of dropbacks versus 44% for burden That's a really sizable difference in the fact that Loveland was able to basically match burden In targets per hour on despite that uh speaks to his ability He got a full-time role. I think it was in week 16 from there on out he had a 15% 24% 39% 31% and 24% target share That's McBride and Brock Bauer's level volume. Obviously I've I've said a few times I think it's important to caveat that with it's easy to have it's easier to have an outlier level run in a small sample size But that does coincide with when he got the full-time role so once he got the full-time role He was getting Bauer's McBride level volume. Obviously he's on a significantly better offense than either of those two guys So the ceiling is there for him to be the overall tight end one He had six touchdowns on 82 targets. He tied with DJ Moore for the team lead in targets inside the 10 to loop it back to burden I do think it's worth pointing out that burden had zero targets inside the 10 last year So I think Loveland could be the primary red zone guy there this year too Obviously I've realm who can fill that role as well And we saw Ben Johnson really turned to Loveland in in high leverage spots down the stretch I think it was the playoff game against the Packers It might have been the week 18 game where they had a big two-point conversion that they needed to convert and Ben Johnson did a bunch of motion And basically ended up dialing up an ISO with Loveland on the left side just going at a corner back and he won that battle So I think Ben Johnson has a ton of trust in Loveland So I think Loveland has overall tied in one upside. I like the were ahead of Mark And I think that he could have a really monster season Even with the limited routes for Loveland Sorry, one thing real quick even with the limited routes He had a double digit target share in 18 straight games to close the season Which I was like blown blown away about you know a lot of those are in like the 10 to 14% range But even and even though he wasn't on the field very much He was consistently getting targeted by Ben Johnson And then and then that that continued when we saw the route spike So it just you know in his age 21 season like it's just all the signs are just extremely bullish Yeah, I was just going to emphasize that it's such a cleaner thing than than Bernos Some of the notes that you guys both just threw in there with burden made me even a little bit more concerned again Like I it's such a unique profile like your contest a catchpoint mark And you know jack about the red zone role I mean like it was I was a kind of a skeamed role right like that's why someone this was limited And like how does that project to a larger role? I think you want to be in on a Luther Burton when you just look at him independently from year 1 to year 2 and what he is Close and Loveland you definitely want to be in it from here 1 to year 2 like by comparison Like it's it's a lot cleaner. It's a lot clearer wider air bars on burden and if burden is a miss And if like a dunes a foot is an issue or it continues to drop passes the catch rates not there Where's I mean I do think like some of the secondary guys are gonna do some stuff I do think Koleef Raymond's gonna he's like a vaguely interesting like late-round Bestball guy and like Colcomets gonna do stuff. Xavier Thomas made do like that Colson Loveland may have to be the the vast majority of this passing game in some scenarios where burden a dunes a Aren't really hitting So he's either like a part of a three-man weave that is like the main the main target focus or He's rising above even that. I mean lovely. That's just right. I mean one It's it's a big projection on burden to not run to not have a single game above 65.7% routes is That's that's really bad like that is not a high bar to clear as a rider seer That's a low route chair for a guy that we're drafting this high We've seen Loveland dominate and a full-time role running 80% or higher routes over over a fairly extended stretch of five or six games than the season So I definitely agree there's really wide error bars around burden and Loveland I think despite having you know a one-year sample. I think he's I'll fairly say play and someone that we can be pretty confident is just kind of a stud. Yeah, I will say the coach week quotes from around Ben Johnson on Luther Burton have been like insanely bullish and that he's like, I'm buying all the stock in Luther Burton this offseason, you know, like he's he's come in and and given extreme effort like on on these, you know, practice plays and like spring practices and stuff. Like he's seen a real noticeable jump in Luther Burton. So I think that optimism is kind of easy to tag along. And just feel confident that that Burton could take that jump, you know, potentially, but there is there is some risk there and and I think to, you know, like the the bears propensity to run out the heavier personnel sets. Colson Leveland ran 55% of his routes from the slot or out wide last year. So like he's going to be, you know, and not necessarily a strict inline tight end and can almost be, you know, a glorified YG3 or or if they're in 1213 personnel, like Colson Leve and can be split out wide and run those YG3 routes, which is, you know, as Gratio alluded to, like even if one of these top wide receivers goes down, it could just continue to condense on Leveland's given his given his role in his kind of like repertoire in this in this offense. All right, let's head on to our last team of the division. That is the green Bay Packers once again head coach and play collar here is is Matt LaFloor on a team level, not a whole lot of of changes here other than the wide receiver room thinning out a little bit here, but on a team level, we are in in lockstep at play's brigade. We are both at 60.8 at ETR and and Gretchen and then on a pass rate, ETR, we're at 58.4% on the Packers Gretchen at 57% there. And that's a spot that we have ticked up a little bit throughout the off season. I know Levitan and Silva both are somewhat optimistic that the Packers might lean more into the past this year. We also have kind of the uncertainty around Josh Jacobs at this point in the summer again, it's July 13th. We're recording this. You know, there are some legal issues surrounding Jacobs. Nothing has been announced or decided on that front. But if he if he were out there running back room is is extremely thin. So that could lead to more of a pass heavy style offense here. But Jack, here is your thoughts on kind of the team level here for the Packers, given that Jacobs uncertainty and the continuity here between Matt LaFloor and Jordan Love, who's entering his fourth season as a full time starter. Yeah, there's the Jacobs uncertainty this year. I think it's worth pointing out that the pass rate last year could have been impacted by Jacobs injury as well because he was just clearly not himself for a significant stretch of the season. To the point, it was almost absurd that they kept trotting him out there and he refused to take a week off because I think it was ankle and knee issues and they were weeks where I'm annual else and just had a significantly larger role than that he would have had if Jacobs was healthy. But their PROE jumped significantly last year from negative 8.4% in 2024 to negative 3.6% last year. I think a big part of that is that love got hurt in week one of 2024 and might not have been himself for a big part of the season. The Packers had some Willis games last year. They had a 57.7% pass rate with Jordan Love playing the majority of snaps. We're at 58.4% and it's a 57% pass rate. We don't have them running very many plays. We're at 25th in the league in terms of that 60.8. That's 25th in the league and then pass rate at 58.4% is 26 in the league. So even though we're a bit ahead of Gresh there in terms of pass rate overall, league wide we're still pretty low there on the Packers. One note that Thormin had to is they've been top 10 in motion rate each of the last six seasons under Matt LaFlor. So again, we kind of mentioned that I think in episode one that higher motion rates lead to typically slower pace in terms of just more play clock running off in between plays. And then one concern I have with the Packers this year is their offensive line is pretty questionable heading into the season for the first time. I think in a long time, you know, at least since I've been doing NFL projections, I feel like the Packers have had a very consistent, you know, top half of the league offensive line. I think this year it's fair to question where they'll kind of fall in that realm. So Gresh, I'm curious, you know, at the top of the show you said there's there's three teams you're really excited about and then the Packers. So are you just kind of down on this team in general or what's your overall team macro read here? Yeah, I mean, probably not out on them. I do think they're like going to be their thinner at the skill positions and it even kind of seems when they thinned out at receiver. I mean, with with craft returning from an injury and Jacobs concerns there that you mentioned, I'm actually like a little worried about, I mean, especially if like if Jacobs's health is an issue or any of the legal stuff, like they don't really have, I mean, Martian Lloyd, I've been trying to do that for years. Is Martian Lloyd going to be a thing? They're wider receivers are more concentrated. So like there's that's that's good for fantasy, right? But yeah, my thing on them is they just they move way too slow. And they throw too little for how good Jordan loves supposed to be. You look at the EPA based stuff. People love to talk about how Jordan loves like at the very top like Packers people love to talk about how is the very top of like EPA per drop back and all of that. I think it's very instructive what the volume of passes is here. I mean, that's a that's a if you have love is like that elite. You do need a record and with how much of his passes are not obvious situations off of play action off of those situations. And why does Matt LaFlaur not put more on his plate? I think he needs to and I'm excited to hear from from you that Silva and Levitam both really like them to pass a lot more this year or at least some more. But this like they had a they lost 16 to 13 to the Panthers at home and got seven possessions. They lost a similar game to Cleveland. They get into these games with teams that want to play slow as well. And they'll play slow. You can't play a game against an inferior opponent at home and get seven possessions on offense. It's just inexcusable. And you end up losing it because of some breaks. And that's what happens in football. But anyway, as far as the passing efficiency and some of that stuff, I do think it's going to be there. It's going to be very high. One thing that's interesting is dobs and wicks are probably the least lesser efficient of the of the past catchers. And they got rid of those guys. And they're going to concentrate on dudes that have all been really efficient. Well, I mean, we don't have a ton from Golden, but he was efficient per target last year actually. I think it's vaguely interesting. We'll talk about him in a sec. But Watson, hugely efficient, talk of craft hugely efficient. J and read hugely efficient. And if all the volume starts to go to those guys like maybe Jordan love hasn't even more efficient season or if the volume increases, he's able to maintain a degree of the efficiency because they're just the rowing to the better players. But yeah, let's get they have some offensive line issues as well as going to just throw in there that they lost a couple starters. They replaced internally some concerns there as well as far as the depth stuff. Yeah, and let's get into the Jordan love of it all. We are pretty much locked up across the board here on the Jordan love projections. We're at 64.5% completion rate, Gretchen at 65%. We're both essentially at 29 touchdowns here. And then we're at 7.9 yards per attempt Gretchen up closer to eight there. Jordan love in 7.6 yards per attempt in his career. So we are projecting a little bit of a bump there. I do think that is probably in relation to Gretchen's comment there on he lost some of the lower efficiency target earners that he's had over the last couple of years. And now we're giving more targets to Christian Watson, Jane Reed, Matthew Golden, and Tucker Craft. So that should positively help Jordan love out a little bit. In terms of the fantasy market, we are at quarterback 16 on love. He's going at QB 18 on underdog. So a little bit ahead of market there. Last year is QB 19 and points per game. He was QB 16 in 2024 and then QB 5 in 2023, which is the only season we've seen the passive volume really elevate for Jordan love. So it is kind of like a contingency factor of man. If we could get these packers, this packers often stuff throw more than I do think there is some fantasy upside in Jordan love. But overall, I think it's fair to have some pessimism there. So I don't know if there's a whole lot to talk about love from a fantasy standpoint. Honestly, you know, we probably a lower target in QB 1 links, but certainly find it in super flex. And then in basketball, obviously, you're stacking them up. So I do want to get into the backfield. Josh Jacobs, the clear, clear RB one here. We're at 232 rush attempts on on Josh Jacobs. Gretchen's at 256. In terms of targets, we're at 41 and a half. Gretchen's at 46 there. So we, you know, we're still projecting full workloads for Josh Jacobs when the initial allegations came out against him. We did dock him a little bit and we ended up giving it more to unlisted running backs than we did like to Marshawn Lloyd and Chris Brooks, mostly because we've kind of created almost like a link of man that the Cardinals have a surplus of running backs and if Jacobs were to get suspended at all, we think, you know, maybe the packers would make a move for a back or there's always, you know, kind of some offseason cuts that I think maybe the packers could add to their to their running back room here. But I do think it is notable that they let a manual Wilson walk who only had a five only has 550 K guaranteed from Seattle this year. So I feel like they internally have to feel okay about their running back room. Obviously that transaction happened before the the Jacobs allegations and everything. But I don't know. It's a it's a pretty interesting spot here. Jacobs has been such an efficient or excuse me, such such a prolific fantasy score in Green Bay has been the RB eight and RB seven and half PPR points for game and is in his two Green Bay seasons here. So Jack, take us through your thoughts on the backfield here. What to do with which Jacobs at this point in time with the uncertainty and then is there an RB two that you're willing to target right now or just kind of waiting to see how how the chips fall out with with Marshawn. who's played one game to your NFL career, and then Chris Brooks, who is essentially a primary special team player has gotten some run in the backfield, but never many touches there. - Yeah, if Jacob's is available, I think it'll be good to get him healthy again. He had the knee and ankle injury, basically all of last season, is yard-tock or contact for his time, yards-tock, carry-broke, and tackles for carry, via profile ball reference, were all down last year, and I think given the state of their backup situation, he could have a pretty monster workload again, if he's available, and if he stays healthy, he had 300 plus carries, 301 carries, and 2024, he was down at 234 carries in 15 games last year. I think if he's available and healthy, you know what you're gonna need from Josh Jacobs, I think that the backup situation is more interesting. This feels like a spot to me, maybe more than any other one we've talked about, where it feels like an addition should be coming. I feel like this would be a great spot for one of the Cardinals' backs, either James Conner or Trayvon, and if they end up elsewhere, because Marcia and Lloyd has not been able to stay healthy. He has six carries in two seasons, and in college, he never had more than 116 carries in a single season, so he hasn't shown any ability to stay healthy at the pro level despite not actually playing, and in college, he never handled a big workload either. So I think even if Jacobs goes down, you can't really expect a ton of carries from Lloyd, even though he was. He is the more interesting of the backup options because Chris Brooks has played pass down throughout his time in Green Bay, but he's never had more than 36 carries in a single season. He seated early downwork to a manual Wilson throughout their partnership together in Green Bay. So if Jacobs goes down, the split is pretty interesting 'cause I don't think Lloyd can handle all that much, but Brooks doesn't really profile, or he's never really gotten a significant carry share for an extended period of time, and he mostly has just been a pass down guy, which brings me back to the point that they kind of should add someone, and if a trade incident ends up here, he's immediately like one of the more interesting handcuffs in fantasy, but it's kind of a weird spot because Jacobs has the legal stuff, he said, injury stuff, and despite that, it's kind of hard for me to get overly excited about either Lloyd or Brooks at this point. - So it's a spot that is important for fantasy too, 'cause you just mentioned how much the MATLA floor typically loves to run the ball, and Josh Jacobs kind of output as a fantasy back in this offense. It's tough on July 13th to make a huge claim on where the other here, but Gretchen, how are you doing? - Cool. - I guess, and Bigger's back feel a little bit, or is it just like, hey, Josh Jacobs right now is going as the RB18? Should we take a shot on that? What's your read right now? - Yeah, to your point about the rush volume, and loves first season of starter in 2023, they were middle of the pack and pass attempts, and they were 30th in 2024, 27th in 2025, after getting Jacobs, coinciding with getting this dependable workhorse back, this player that has had 260 plus touches every season of his career, seven straight years to open a career with 260 plus, and 270 plus every year after his rookie year. I mean, that's what he had last year was 270 and 15 games, even with all the injuries. He takes on a ton of work. I agree with Jack. If he's out there, he's going to play a ton. If he's not, it's work, it's interesting. And I came into this with some of the legal concerns, and then the fact that he's 28, and I tend to get worried about running backs at it, or 28, when they've had 260 plus touches for seven straight seasons. It's hard to maintain that forever. I mean, I don't think he's over the hill, but some of the efficiency stuff was a little bit down from last year. It's not down from his full career or anything, but his invasion was actually really good in 2024. And as yards after contact part attempt, really good in 2024, it was back down a little bit in 2025, which again, playing hurt, you know, was going to do that. But I went into it thinking, I'd like one of the two backs of the backups. And you know the Lloyd stuff, you know, change a pace for honor, flash a big play upside, but can't stay healthy. And so my thought was, I'm going to probably wind up actually being in on Brooks, who's like kind of the boring, do everything back. You go look into him, advanced metric, stating all the way back to college have never been good. He's older than you think at 26. As you noted, he's basically been a special teams guy. He does have size and decent athleticism and he does everything they need in the past game. And so like he could just stand the field due to dependability and all of that, but it's hard to look at his profile through the years and be like, this is like a exciting handcuff. So I go back to March on Lloyd then, 'cause it is a really exciting profile back to college, where if there was gonna be ceiling of Josh Jacobs' off the field, I'd think he would come from Lloyd. Again, you have to assume that he can stay healthy which he's never been able to do. And so it's tricky. And I completely agree with Jack, this seems like a spot where, 'cause you don't want to depend on Lloyd. It feels like right now they're like, being optimistic about March on Lloyd. I probably don't think they can assume that they're gonna get too much out of Chris Brooks. Like again, I wanted to go into it like, ooh Chris Brooks, the guy I want to draft a bunch, I just don't see it there. So I think if something happens to Lloyd and Jacob's, I agree with Jack, I think you're gonna get it outside. Name that's gonna wind up being a pretty important part of the backfield. - Yeah, and I think it's a hard, hard backup situation to target in Bestball at this point too. Like I kind of wish I was drafting more read draft leagues and was able to pick off March on Lloyd towards the end, 'cause it is a spot like, it stays healthy and there is any sort of suspension on Josh Jacobs. I think that's probably where he has more value. I think it's hard to assume that he is gonna play much, if at all the season just given how the first couple of years of his career has gone. So I don't know, it's a really tough spot again. I think it's fine. We're still almost two months out from the season. I think there's gonna be a lot of fallout in this backfield and we can react accordingly. But certainly an important spot as we inch closer towards the season here. Let's talk through the wider see-through room though, because doing just like seasonal projections, year over year, it's like, man, how are we gonna get? How are we gonna distribute all these targets to the Packers six wider see-throughers that we know they're gonna play and the room is thinned out considerably this season where Christian Watson gets paid. He profiles as the probably wider see-througher one here. You also have Matthew Golden coming into a second season as a first round pick last year and then Jaden Reed who has been explosive and efficient. His first few seasons in the NFL as well. After that, a saving on Williams who was used, mostly is like a gadget guy last year. He had 10 targets, but it was a one yard eight out for saving on Williams. So he was mostly kind of like a backfield screen guy last year. I don't know how much true wider see-througher he can really play and he can loop Tucker Craft into this as well. But things can really condense along the top three in terms of inputs here too. And this is a team that we have kept away a lot of unlisted targets. So right now we have 9% on unlisted wider see-through, which makes out to 47 targets. So we've been a little bit hesitant just to glom on a lot of volume to these top three wider see-throughers even though it seems likely that they get a lot of that volume. So on Christian Watson at ETR we're at 91 targets. Gretches at 108 on Matthew Golden. We're at 80, Gretches at 83. And then on Jaden Reed we're at 80 and Gretches at 93. So Gretches has Jaden Reed with kind of as a wider see-through too in terms of target volume here. And then it's quite a bit ahead of us on Christian Watson. Christian Watson an interesting guy because he hasn't-- his season high in targets throughout four years of his career is 66. And we're up at 90 and Gretches at 108. So for me when I was looking at this I was like, man, what's the difference really between Christian Watson and Alec Pierce when we're looking at their profiles in terms of their deep down the field? Can Christian Watson really earn more targets this year as he's just going to continue to be kind of an explosive field stretcher where the volume is limited there. Yet a massive 18, almost 18 yard, 8 out of the last two seasons has been 16 in his career. So he's only had more than four catches and five of his 48 career games. I mean, he's really just been an explosive big play threat. So Gretches, I do want to toss this to you because I think you even mentioned this comparison earlier in the episode. And it's one I came to as well. You have these receivers signed big off-season contracts. There's theoretically more volume to go around in offense. But it's like, is Christian Watson really capable of adding more to his route tree? So I'm curious to your thoughts there because you're at 108 targets, which is, again, more than 40 more than he's ever had in his career. Yeah, and I felt like I was really low. And I'm like, I think in my projections. I mean, I started coming harder than you guys on some stuff in my projections. I felt like I was low on Watson and high on golden. And that's the way when I wrote it up, that's the way that I'm feeling. I love that you guys are lower than me on Watson and closer to me on golden. Because that's more like how I see it. I think I was just trying to kind of like default to ADP a little bit. I haven't, Christian Watson's been a player that's ADP has been hard for me all off season. Very, well, he's going a lot higher than Pierce, but very similar to Pierce as you, I've made that comparison in some of my writing and in my head certainly as well. He's never, you're talking about yardage and stuff. He's had some injuries and like some of the rod numbers, people might point that out. I'll say, he's never posted more than 13.2 PPR points per game, even with really lofty yards per out run figures, including last year, he was up above 2.5 for the first time. He's been over 2.25 in three of his four years, but it's a high 8-up profile like you said. It's the opposite, like I was making that James and Williams out, because Pierce thing, out, out, out Pierce thing and Watson fits right in there on the Pierce side for me. Maybe a little bit more, early in the career, we saw a little bit of a lower 8-up. We saw a little bit more in the intermediate range from Watson. And I think it's a little easier for me to see him, potentially come down, it is a not come down with. So it would the comparison appears as like Michael Pitman's gone and I've said, well, who would run the deep routes of Pierce is not running them in terms of how that impacts the scheme on this team. Jaden Reed actually gets vertical some annual Matthew Golden. So I could see some scenarios where Watson actually is doing some underneath stuff and they're pressing the safeties with other guys. It makes a little more sense schematically to me. But the big contract you talked about this. I think Pierce was paid for scheme more than fantasy football production. I think Christian Watson was paid for scheme more than fantasy football production. He is a vertical threat who wins with deep efficiency and then is a skill set. The NFL teams are paying for right now. I think Cardinal Tate was drafted on top five for the same reason. I mean, that's what it's the same sort of skill set. But at his peak, he's basically on a hundred target pace. I'm projecting more targets than the Christian Watson's peak to this point. In the second year, multiple years ago, last year, he was below a hundred target pace. Now, we know the past volume was down. So if you're projecting past volume to come up, maybe, but where he's going in ADP, I know the targets are going to concentrate and everything. It doesn't really fit with the way that the projection comes together. You're just projecting all the efficiency that's already been there to still be there. And I guess a lot more volume that I mean, that does come from dobs being gone. I guess that part of it could make some sense. I think the really big question here is, where does the intermediate volume go? Because I don't think dobs was ever special, but he soaked that up because he kind of had to. He led the team with 419 routes last year, which was very low for a team leader, by the way. But when I got through the projection, I actually felt like it might be golden going into year two, who makes some sense in the more intermediate range, like Tucker crafts eight outs, like 4.8. He's a short, like, catch and run guy. Jaden Reed has been like a really short manufacturer touch or deep threat guy, kind of the barbell, target distribution. They don't have a lot of dudes on the roster that have run a lot of routes into the intermediate range so far. So the reason I say golden is just because it's more of an unknown and maybe they see him in that way. Yeah. And I may be as Watson. Maybe that's where the Watson ceiling comes from. I don't know. I will say despite the massive A dot on Watson, the target earning isn't that bad. And it's kind of the same point I tried to make with Alec Pierce is that he, Kristen Watson was at a 24% target per hour out run last year. He was at 22% in 2024. Those numbers aren't like awesome, but they're pretty good. And he had at least a 19% target year and five of his final six healthy games last year. Health is always the big thing with him because in week 15, even during that hot stretch, he left him the third quarter with a chest injury. But the per route target earning numbers aren't terrible despite having a monster A dot. So I don't mind projecting Watson for a solid target share. If he stays healthy, it's just that I have big health concerns because like Mark said, never more than 66 targets in a season. I think over the past three years, he's topped out of like 55 or something. So just hasn't been able to stay on the field. A pretty major caveat to that late season stuff you're talking about though is that they work throwing. So it's like five and six targets in terms of the good per route and the target share stuff. It's not like eight, you know, I mean, it's a big difference, I think. Yeah. I do think, Gretz, your point of like, where do the intermediate routes and targets go in this offense? I do think when looking at the Widers' he room, it's a lot of projection of like what these guys are going to do, kind of similar to Luther Burton in a sense of that, you know, the roles could change quite a bit and who are going to fill those roles. And so kind of going through it, I became even more like optimistic on Tucker Kraft, just given his ascension last year. Like, you know, if he wasn't coming off of a torn ACL, I think I think Tucker Kraft would be going multiple rounds higher, just kind of given the vacated targets and kind of the lack of consistent volume earning we've seen from the other options in this offense. But before we get to Kraft, I do kind of want to hit on Matthew Golden because, you know, first round pick last year, you mentioned like his his per route metrics weren't as bad as I think like the public perception was, but again, just a low low volume offense. The volume wasn't really there, but he did have his best game of the season in the playoffs against against the Bears, even on a limited route share, you know, he only ran 46% aroused in that game, but, but was able to produce four catches 84 yards in a touchdown in that game. He also had, you know, I noted here that he has a 12 and a half yard eight out, which was essentially the same as Romeo Dobbs. So kind of your point as well, like who kind of fits in that intermediate or intermediate target area. I do think it could be Matthew Golden quite a bit and you have the, you know, I'm curious you take on his prospect profile. I think it was a little bit of a surprise that he went in round one last year and, you know, made waves as like the Packers hadn't drafted a round one wide receiver in decades. So I'm curious your thoughts on, you know, the runway is clear, I think for Matthew Golden because Jane Reed only has only played 20% of his career snaps out wide. So like I think that the two Irish he was set's going to be Watson and Matthew Golden. You know, I really don't think Jane Reed's going to take that lead to play more outside. So the opportunity is there. Can he can he capture this opportunity? Yeah. Reed's a guy I've always really liked and last year argued with Leoni that he would play more in the two receiver sets, which he didn't. And he obviously got hurt right away. But he, I don't think he was really in line to do that. We talked about it with Josh Downs. I'm kind of optimistic. It could happen for Downs. It's a very similar player that needs two wide receiver sets and I don't think it's likely for Reed because it does seem like they really like Golden and they want it to go to him. My, one of my, my field tipper series that I write in the early off season, my line was if you went in with low expectations due to a prospect profile that had some real question marks, I think it was easy to see how there could be some positives from the rookie year about Matthew Golden as far as the prospect profile. I mean, he was very efficient per target in his final season, but yeah, he didn't really earn a lot of volume. There wasn't a ton of production. Had some good touchdown numbers at Texas after starting his career at Houston, but he wasn't even a big producer at Houston. Now he was a three year early to clearly play his age 22 season last year. No touchdowns, which is one thing that keeps people off of him. But if you look at just the, like per route run stuff, his targets per out run were not good, but his yards per target were good. And he was playing in a pretty competitive passing game. And he was efficient despite, Jordan love actually missing him a couple times in for some potential big plays and he was kind of used as a shot play guy. There was a game against the commanders like week two or week three. Golden got open on a deep post. It would have been like a 40 yard touchdown and love hung it up there and a quarterback got back into the play and dove and tipped it away. And then a little while later, they were backed up in their own like five yard line and Golden got deep. It's a tough throw, but he had a step and love over through it. They both could have been long touchdowns and he ended up that game with two targets and no catches. I mean, there were some moments like that. There was a Browns game where Golden got open vertically and love threw it over his outside shoulder and Golden caught it, but faded him out of bounds on what could have been like an 80 yard touchdown, potentially. It was like a 20 to 30 yard gain. There are a few of those moments early because I was out on Golden. That's why I read that quote that I wrote. I was out on him last year and I was writing stealing signals and saying, man, he's actually close to hitting for some of these people that were saying that he was decent. There's been some spots that could have actually went pretty well for him. And he still winds up with a 9.0 yards per target despite missing these big explosive plays that can juice efficiency. He's a very athletic player. They love him for his catch rate. They said that he has like big hands and they had drops issues and they, so that's part of why I think the intermediate stuff may go in his direction a little bit. They liked the potential for him to hold the ball. This is also a team that has drafted and developed over the years. I mentioned Devonte Adams. They've done this with everyone. Jordy Nelson for years and years and years. A lot of guys, James Jones, etc. And then they had like limited early career roles and then they developed it into the second year and the third year and move forward. Not every single guy, but they liked this too. They drafted him in the first round. They didn't use him a massive amount. And again, I was not in on the prospect profile when you asked that question. I had some real concerns about it. I felt like his rookie year. Basically the people that were out on his prospect profile are getting too much confirmation by us and the people that were in are probably maybe too disappointed in it. Like I think he was actually better than where reasonable expectation should have been. And now they've cleared the decks for him. I mean, they've very clearly with dobs and wicks being gone created some real opportunity. We have way more of a sample on Watson and what he is. And Jade Reid for that matter. And both of them are very efficient players. Reid, great per route player. It's just his drop back. His routes are going to be limited probably. And the team's going to limit the drop backs and all those things. Golden's the one where I'm like, you know, at cost, especially he's going pretty late. I haven't done a ton of drafting. Like you said, I've taken golden a decent amount of the drafts that I have done because he's going pretty late. And I'm like, this one, it wouldn't shock me if he takes a big step, step forward in year two. Well, that's the thing is he's going third out of his three wide receivers. You know, even after Jade and Reid, and if we are relatively confident, he's going to be in two wide receiver sets, which I feel like he will be. And then you kind of have the target earning upside. Like I don't think it's, it would be a huge shock if Matthew golden led the packers and wide receivers in targets this year. And so the fact that you are getting, you know, a discount he's going in the ninth, tenth round, right now, an underdog. We're essentially in line with market. But I mentioned, you know, we still have a lot of unlisted targets here because not many, not many guys have proven to be able to handle the volume in this offense. We've kind of held back some just out of caution and like overloading, you know, kind of, I think I mentioned this on previous shows, like, you know, the dead zone running back thing of like, oh, well, the targets have to go somewhere. We got again, give it a go. them to these guys like it's not necessarily that straight forward, but I do think where he's going and drafts is it could be a huge hit if he is able to earn that consistent volume. One more note that I meant to mention was his best game of the year was in the playoffs. I don't think people realize this. The Packers lost to the Bears five targets, four catches 84 yards in a TD, which again, five targets is like a pretty good target share for the type of volume they tend to have. But Matt Leflore in the offseason said his final game last year was his best performance and I'm not even talking about catches or yards. It's just the play style that we're looking for from him. He showed a lot of competitiveness. That touchdown in Chicago was pretty spectacular. So I think you got a glimpse of what he's capable of becoming on a consistent basis. It elevated, like if you're looking at his per or his regular season yards per outrun, it was 1.35. It elevated his yards per outrun to 1.53. So if you can collude the playoff game like a 1.53 rookie year is actually like, it's not great, but it's not horrendous or anything. Like people are acting like he was this massive, massive bust. It would have been nice to see him get on the field more as a first round pick. That's some of the stats you'll see on him and the cohorts he gets to run in there like guys with this draft capital tend to play a lot more, but it's not abnormal for the Packers and then they've cleared it for year two. So they cleared a playing time for year two. Big, big air bars on this player too, like Luther Burton. Yeah. And then I mentioned Savion Williams. Last year he had he had more rush attempts than targets. He had 11 rush attempts and only 10 targets. The offseason coach because mentioned they're continuing to lean into developing him as a wide receiver, but you know, it was mostly kind of a gadget guys. I don't think he's going to necessarily take too many true wide receiver routes there. You also have Bo Melton who kind of rounds out the wide receiver room who has transitioned from wide receiver to corner back now back to wide receiver. So again, I don't think much of a much of a threat there either. Let's get into Tucker Kraft Jack who, you know, towards ACL on November 2nd last year, it was the tight end to and half PPR points per game, you know, ahead of George Kiddell, ahead of Brock Bauer's last year. And then, you know, was was posting some monster numbers. Gretchen mentioned he has a pretty low A dot and he is he's led all tight ends and yards after catch per reception last year and has like left the field last year. He had 10.8 yards after catch per reception just in saying yards after the catch. I know. Yeah. 10 yards after the catch. A first down after the catch per reception. So that's so that was like three and a half yards clear of the next closest type end who was who was Darna Washington and then the year prior, he was also first among tight ends at 9.3 yards after catch per reception. So for the last two years, Tucker Kraft is essentially average 10 10 yards after the catch per reception. And then again, you kind of get the scenario where the targets have cleared out a little bit last year before he was injured. He ran 73% of the routes in weeks one to eight. So I think it could be a pretty big year for Tucker Kraft. We're at tight end five. He's currently going as the tight end five there. So relatively appropriately priced, but curious your thoughts, Jack, on Tucker Kraft's outlook. Yeah. I mean, he's developed into a monster. He was a 24% target per hour on 2.6 yards per hour on 10.9 yards per target last year, six touchdowns on 44 targets. His targets per hour and yards per target have improved in each year of his career. Improving the per-row target earning alongside the yards per target every year of your career is really special stuff. The eight out is low. Like you said, he's such a monster after the catch that it kind of cancels out. The big thing is he's coming off of a Torre ACL. He himself said he expects the playing week one with no pitch count. We've heard players be optimistic on their own injury timelines before. So we'll see if he's actually on a pitch count in week one. I expect him to start training camp on the public. Then we can kind of see what the reports from training camp are. But it sounds like he's definitely going to be active for week one. It remains to be seen if he's running 80% of routes right away. But with the wide receiver room cleared out, there is big potential once he's fully healthy for really big target shares. Here's last two games before he got her last year. He's at 34% and 27% target shares. There's a real volume ceiling here. He's gotten better every year of his career. Pending health, I think it makes sense to expect really big things this year from craft. I love the per-row run stuff, obviously. So I had the exact same note. I love when you give a great stat that I have in my notes. I just want to emphasize what you said. Adding the target to the target's per-row run and the yards per target every season of your career. That's the two component parts of yards per-row run. The yards per-row run is skyrocketing every year when you're adding to both sides of it, volume and efficiency. I'm worried about coming off injury for a highly efficient player. I talked about it with George Kiddell too. The 10 yards after the catch per reception, you're that much better than every other NFL player on the field that they can't tackle. You for 10 yards every single time. That's absurd. It's not just, because some people will be like, "Well, it's a knee thing." Once as ACLs is okay. Part of it is how hard can you hit the weight room in the off season? How hard can you train? How hard can you get everything? All the quick, twitch stuff. The fact that he's gotten that much better every year probably speaks to a guy who has absolute peak last year. How much better could he even get? It's a little tricky for me at a tight end five cost. He's a superstar. You guys, I am totally as optimistic as you guys are about how good of a player he is. You have to pay full price for a highly efficient player that has coming off a major injury. He's been rehabbing all off season. It's a little tricky. For sure. We've hit on two other tight ends, Colson Levelyn and Sam Laporta that I love taking Tucker Kraft is also in that realm for me. I agree I am a little hesitant just coming off a major injury with the explosiveness that he has shown. How much of that can he regain? With a limited passing volume offense, ideally there's a rubber band effect a little bit where his efficiency comes down a little, but his volume also goes up in tandem. Again, with the vacated targets. I think when you look at this wide receiver room, at least just profile wise, Tucker Kraft would profile as the best red zone and end zone target here out of the group in any short area targets. The touchdown upside is there. anecdotally, Tucker Kraft, I feel like is just a player I've always loved because I remember early on in his Packers career. They had this segment on TV where he's from this like Poe donk town and South Dakota. There's like 500 people from his hometown. He was enough of a standout athlete that when he was in high school, they had Tucker Kraft day in his hometown. This do was just an all time legend in the small town from South Dakota. But that was hilarious. This kid's like 18 years old and he's that much of a freak athlete that they literally make Tucker Kraft day for him. He's very my daughter. Yeah, he's since go on to just continue to be an absolute beast in the NFL as well. If anyone's going to return from major injury and continue to outperform, kind of efficiency expectations, I do think Tucker Kraft can be there. He's a guy I want to be in on. I do think in redraft though, he'll probably be end up a little undervalued. I think the best all market is probably a little more in tune with just how elite of a producer he was last year. That will do it for episode five of this Divisional Projection series. Appreciate all of you tuning in with us today. Thanks again to Jack and Grach for all of the great insight. Be sure to follow them on Twitter at Jack Miller, zero two and at yards per Grach on their at mark. Thank you. Next episode will be featuring the AFC North coming out later this week. So appreciate all you guys tuning in. Have a great day, everybody. Peace out. (upbeat music)