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ETE Projections Special Part 7: AFC North with Ben Gretch

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ETE Projections Special Part 7: AFC North with Ben Gretch

The discussion focuses on projecting the Cleveland Browns for the upcoming season, highlighting extreme uncertainty across multiple positions. The quarterback situation is the most complex, with veterans like Joe Flacco and Jameis Winston likely starting early, while rookies Dylan Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders get playing time later in a likely lost season, with the team eyeing a top draft pick in 2026. This makes the Browns one of the hardest teams to project, especially given their grueling schedule, which includes games against the NFC North and NFC West, resulting in the lowest projected scoring in the league despite a fast-paced offense. At running back, Quinshon Judkins faces a potential suspension for a domestic violence issue, opening the door for rookie Dylan Sampson, who has a strong college profile and could take over the backfield. Pierre Strong Jr. may also see early volume. The wide receiver room is led by Jerry Jeudy, who is undervalued by the market and projected for high targets, making him a potential fantasy steal. Overall, the Browns are a team with many moving parts, making projections highly speculative and dependent on how playing time and suspensions unfold.

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[Music] Welcome to Establish the Edge on your host Mike Bioni here with Ben Gretch. You can find all his work at vangretch.subdech.com for the seventh division of our offseason projection special only two to go and we'll hit the second and the last one here will be the AFC North. And Gretch let's start with Cleveland who is one of those teams that just has a ton uncertainty in play calling given the quarterback situation. This team has more potential people to play quarterback this year than I think any team since we started doing this projection series. So I was kind of hoping we would start with Cleveland. This is probably the hardest projection I've ever done. I don't have a my sheet isn't set up to account for like three quarterbacks because I mean there's probably been situations where I maybe wanted to project small amount of play in time to three quarterbacks but I never felt like I needed to. It seems to be four bad possibly four probably four here right like we're going to get one of the veterans probably to start the year they're talking I'm thinking Joe Flacco but then you know I think I do think we're going to see something unique in the second half of the year where for years in the NFL it's been if you have two quarterbacks you don't have one but the analyst community has often been saying that's especially when you're rebuilding you should try to go after multiple options and the grounds have done that this off season they've brought in two rookies they're probably heading for the 2026 first overall pick or top five overall pick and their future franchise QB this looks a little bit like the Davis Mills Texans year where you kind of see what you have in this later quarterback the probably isn't your franchise QB I think they'll see what they have in both Dylan Gabriel and Shooter Sanders but then probably still wind up drafting their franchise quarterback in 2026 one of the weird things I mean because when I say this is a tough projection it's not just the quarterbacks there's so many weird things with this team there if you use look ahead lines they come in at the lowest scoring team by kind of a lot behind the Saints which at first blushed doesn't make a lot of sense because the the the grounds at least play fast and their offense is at least like even with like with Joe Flacco with James Winston with the Sean Watson playing bad QB they've played fast both Dylan Gabriel and Shooter Sanders played up tempo in college and I think that's why they targeted these guys and I expect them even when they're playing to play with some tempo so you would actually expect this offense to be not like fun bad but probably not like horrible bad bad in the in from a tempo perspective but they're projected for the fewest points by a mile and that's because of another weird thing where despite the last place schedule they've got like a bottom three schedule the only because they match up with the NFC North they put that's the private toughest division football one of their last place teams they match up with their 17th game from the NFC is the NFC West Division which is the Niners was you know now that's a team that's projected to actually compete for a division title but that's supposed to be the benefit of getting the last place schedule as you go play some other last place teams so if you look to the brown schedule they get the Raiders and Titans as their other last place teams they play the AFC East but I mean their division games they don't get to play the Browns because they are the Browns they got to play the Ravens the the Bengals and the Steelers twice each and so you get a really tough division schedule they got like five games that look like they can win I mean anyone can win any given Sunday they they may win another game on that schedule but the other eleven or so games of their schedule look like you're expecting them to be pretty big dogs and all those games and that's where the look ahead lines hate their point scoring potential because of the play volume and I guess because I'm probably I'm expecting a decent amount of garbage time production over the course of the year I maybe want to be over on the the look ahead you know what I mean like it's it's the whole and then you factor in how do we split up the volume how do we split up you got Harold Fanon as a rookie in the past game you got obviously the rookie running backs we have the Quinchon jug kids legal situation the only I don't know how to project this team you're muted of course I love myself I'm mute there it is tough to project we're a little bit different on plays right off the bat which is I guess foreseeable given all the insert parts you're at 64.5 and you went through a lot of the pace stuff we're at 62.7 we might be low we were just so afraid to give such a bad team a ton of plays now they were bad last year and they ran I think like the third most place in the game because they do play fast as you mentioned I do have the sense they want to run the ball a lot more than they did last year so that plays into the plays and if they do get Gabriel or Shadour Sanders I just want her to just scout back a little bit but you make some good points about how they played up tempo in college so that's a difficult one we're both around a 61 to 62% called pass rate but again this could change a lot if we get if you got like a ton of flacco you know this team the play count would be higher the pass rate would be higher a lot of these guys would pay off ADP because it would be kind of the fun bad offense that you mentioned and I think if we get about a half a season of that's kind of what I'm projecting so I'm really intrigued by your guys play while I'm at a really hard time with that as probably isn't surprising based on my little monologue here but I have them at 64.5 plays per game last year they're at 65.8 so 1.3 higher the year prior 70.9 that's the year that flacco was playing down the stretch in 2023 for the Browns year prior to that 65.6 so they've been at least a full play per game higher each of the last three years in mostly bad offenses now with veteran quarterbacks I think it's a good point that even if these rookies are from aggressive you know college offenses that they're probably going to run more they're probably going to be a little slower I think your guys is number I like it more than mine but I'm projecting them my point was at least a play per game less than each of their past three years in bad offenses which is it's hard yeah and there's admittedly maybe a slight dummy of the scale for us where it's like we don't we don't want to be too overweight on all these Cleveland players you know not that we don't think our play projection is right but it's easier to run conservative just thinking through the fantasy lens standpoint and looking at the quarterback stuff we also like it's the only for us to give the split quarterbacks we can split the quarterback volume up but we sort of have one set team efficiency on the quarterback stuff so your flacco numbers on efficiency are decent bit higher than ours so I'm curious if that's flacco specific our flacco efficiency is really like team QB efficiency for the season so we've got a 62% completion rate and 6.6 yards per attempt you're a bit higher closer to a 64 65% completion rate and a 7.37.4 yards per attempt that's usually how I do it what you said is kind of like a team QB efficiency in rare cases are like manually change my efficiencies like I don't have a spreadsheet set up to like easily like tilt the efficiency but I'll manually change like the end result of the QB projections and then my QB 2's like the total team minus the QB 1 numbers right so then I can kind of tweak it that way so I do have flacco projected for like 0.7 more yards per attempt 0.7% higher TV percent because I actually think I mean that's a bigger gap than the yards per attempt gap because I do think they're gonna score more points when flacco's their quarterback higher completion percentage all those things but it was even so my second QB spot I did Dylan Gabriel slash shitter Sanders and even that's difficult because they're different QBs Dylan Gabriel had a much lower eight ought shitter Sanders much higher more vertical in college Gabriel's like a really high completion rate guy Sanders is a high completion rate guy too but probably a little bit different different and their like scramble rates and things in college it like I mean even the two rookies are gonna have meaningfully different profiles and I I jammed them together in one of my lines so I mean it's it's tough it is very challenging let's step away from quarterback Delphur's second get to the running back position where hey if you wanted certainty we don't have it for you here either because we've got Quinshaw and Juddkins almost assuredly facing some sort of suspension with domestic violence and issue and the amount of games and I hate talking about this stuff because obviously the fantasy stuff's like much less important than the real life stuff but this is you know a projections fantasy podcast so that's how we're approaching it and you do have to kind of make a guess on how many games the NFL is gonna suspend him for I think we're at like five-ish games right now but there's there's some uncertainty there you're a little bit more bearish on him and I do wonder if maybe we're kind of too quick to assume like oh five games but then he's the lead and not considering enough like oh if he starts out suspended you know it might be harder for him to work into the role we would have expected him to have so to put numbers on it we're at a 185 carries you're at 123 carries and that's almost you know I guess to both running backs you're higher on the the backups with Dylan Samson at 136 for you 87 for us you're at 127 on Ford and we're at 95. So the Juddkins ADP obviously is tanking a bit. I've been in some drafts where it's been easy to pass on him and I've been in some drafts where he's fallen closer to Pickle-100 and you know I've kind of made that selection. So curious your thought and on top of all this we're doing with two rookies in the backfield too. Like we're talking about the Australian playing him. We're also dealing with two rookies. You know, Juddkins the battered prospect drafted earlier but Samson has you know some pros as well. It was already going to be a really tough projection to talk through this. Part of where I'm at is that I think Samson was being overlooked. He's quite a bit smaller about 200 pounds and Juddkins is a 221 back. So the expectation that Juddkins would kind of be the lead you know early down volume back isn't just on draft capital but I do want to make a point that while the Browns took Juddkins ahead of Travion Henderson as the RB3 early in round two and clearly like the profile. They also took Samson pretty early in round four and this was a really deep running back class. Samson was for some people as a prospect likely to go in day two. It was kind of a slide into day four. He was in that group that was expected to be you know where Caleb Johnson and RJ Harvey went later round two in round three for a lot of people. He goes high in round four. So it's a little bit of a slide that's maybe a little bit concerning but also the point is that Dylan Samson's profile was good in its own right and the Browns saw that slide as worth grabbing when they had already taken a running back in a season where they're not expecting to contend and they are kind of a little bit more analytics focused a little bit. I mean it was it was an aggressive pick with Dylan Samson and I think they do see something they like. They had a lot of picks. They obviously took the both quarterbacks as well in this draft but they see things that they like in Samson I think. I think there was a minor element that Samson even if there was no issues with Judkins could wind up playing as much as or perhaps more than Judkins if he was just a better pro because we're projecting rookies forward. It's difficult to do. It's a little bit like this is obviously a callback but well I mean it's not exactly like but the comparison for how Samson could maybe displace him. Judkins would be like when the Packers took both Jamal Williams and Aaron Jones in the same draft Williams was the bigger back people thought Aaron Jones was this smaller whatever. He became Aaron Jones right like that can happen just because he had lower draft capital and the same draft doesn't mean he can't become a really good pro. So the look at just Samson as who he is from a projection standpoint has some like he said to be a much better pass blocker despite a much smaller size has better peripherals better yards per carry better yards per tart target his per out receiving was better than Judkins like a lot of his stuff his productivity numbers were just better. He's very fast again smaller back but Judkins has a good profile as well played it at a really tough conference just didn't necessarily have a lead efficiency numbers vaciveness breakaway numbers receiving numbers any of those things use a good well rounded back but not a great one. So there's for me part of this is I already was kind of pretty high on Samson. I was probably going to come on here and tell people Samson was one of my latest or favorite late round running backs now that you have the Judkins element if you get suspended it's a question of like how much does the draft capital advantage really work in Judkins favor once he's coming back once there's you know maybe some outside pressure because there's you know obviously a very sensitive issue as you're talking about I mean Samson may just establish himself in the early part of the year and I you know I also bumped your own forward now to also to be clear with you Leoni I'd already finished this projection and after the news broke and I went back and like tweaked it really quickly and didn't spend a ton of time on how I split out the running back yeah I think it's super influx we have we don't know he may not get suspended at all I mean that's one of the things that a lot of the sort of legal experts are saying is the the DV stuff is really hard to prosecute it does seem like in this case you know if you actually read about it and are interested in the details that the victim is interested in per you know cooperating or she was said to be in the initial report and that's one of the big parts as far as the difficulty of prosecuting DV cases is whether the victim is actually going to cooperate as the process you know goes through and so it's it's really really hard to know what's going to happen as far as where that goes but you would I'm with you I would expect a suspension of some sort and then because of all the uncertainty because they're rookies the potential for Samson's really good profile to play up I I think he has a real path that just kind of taking over the backfield yeah I think we might tilt a little bit more from Juddkins to Samson hearing you talk through it right now the underdog ADP on Juddkins has fallen to 90 Samson's at 166 storm boards at 184 I use underdog because there it's a little bit quicker updating it's a 48 hour going average for them there's still a lag though in terms of the behavior of the people in drafts and whatnot so I would still expect Juddkins to drop further in Samson and Ford to probably move up some right now and Ford we didn't really talk about he was someone that like our projections kind of like before the Juddkins thing and I was mostly ignoring because late I was like I just don't think I need this profile of like you know part time back who really is blocked in terms of upside on two guys now there are some RB rooms where if I'm like looking at the late running backs and they're all dart throws quote unquote I don't mind taking Ford just knowing you are going to at least get you may get some more assured volume to begin this season assuming Juddkins does get suspended completely agree I had been saying in the early part of the offseason in some of the places where I was talking about this backfield really in the in the post draft segment that Ford sort of had to be an afterthought they brought in two rookies they're going to see what those rookies have especially late in the year they're going to be playing those two guys as a one two punch felt like you know he was a total after after thought with all this draft capital sunk into the position and so I was basically not taking serious at all then I go through the projection and I I'd noticed that he I mean kid meaningful career highs in mistakels force per touch yards after contact per attempt last year more than a half a yard better per per attempt on the yards after contact stuff than either of us you know first two years he barely played in the first year mistakels force stuff over point three which is like really strong very good 5.4 yards per carry and only brought his career number up to like 4.4 because he was sub four in 2023 I'm not confident that he's good now but there was enough in his 2024 data that I guess I didn't really remember from watching all the games that I was like all right I mean now that this whole situation has occurred there's some paths for Ford to I think have some meaningful volume especially early that there's probably no way that we get away from Juddgens playing late in the meaningful way because again lost season and they're going to want to see something of him and the Browns have dealt with this with some of the other players just to be real about it and they've played Watson through it they've played other guys through some of the when I say dealt with I mean like PR type stuff right and so I wouldn't necessarily expect them as an organization to be afraid of playing Juddkins so probably Ford's not a late season hammer but he could be good early in the year I think more for Manage League's. Let's go a wide receiver position and it's one of the ugliest wide receiver rooms that we have in the league I've been on Juddys to start this off season we've got him with 119 targets you're at 137 targets so you've got a lot of volume for Juddys definitely interested to hear if that's like hey I had to project it this way about not necessarily like him or if you actually like him I think he's a little bit undervalued by the market not exactly a Chris Alave situation where Chris Alaves had a much brighter start to his career but there's some elements of this was a really good prospect he had a strong yards per out run last season and the market is just kind of saying we're really scared of the Browns so I've been not like hammering Juddys but definitely overweight to you know at this point in the draft season which is mid July yeah I'm with you I think the market has clearly been behind on what Jerry Judy is he wasn't good in early in his career necessarily but he was okay relative to situation pretty good per out stuff each season I think we talked about it on the show last year where he wasn't coming off his best year in 2023 and Amari Cooper was coming off his best year but if you looked at the multi year like ranges of their targets per out earned their yards per target even their A dot what that meant for you know they're where their yards per out run could fall Judy and Cooper looked a lot closer than their ADP suggested going into last year and I liked to play Judy as a later round guy that the market basically said Jerry Judy's bad I didn't think that was necessarily clear when the Browns had went and traded for him and given him a big contract last year and then they traded away Cooper mid season and transitioned into Judy being their number one he runs the most routes in the NFL so the weird thing about his profile was coming into last year he had never run 500 routes since his rookie year then he runs the most routes in the NFL last year over 700 him in Jamar Chase the only two guys the NFL who ran over 700 there's only like six more that ran 600 in the entire NFL so as per out profile in some ways doesn't look elite because of the peer your routes volume, but when you run that many routes again, it's a team being like, this is our clear number one. We're putting out there a bunch. And you do with everybody on this team, what they're past volume, you do have to keep in mind that for the majority of the season, a little more than half, Dishon Watson was playing at a level that was incredibly poor. It was probably it was the worst quarterback play in the entire NFL. There was an account. I can't remember what account it was, but during the season every week, one of the national, like, not fantasy writers, but more like real football writers, every week, they were referencing how Dishon Watson, through that week, had a slower start to the season than any Cleveland Browns quarterbacks since 2000, which was absurd because Cleveland Browns have notoriously had like 97 bad quarterbacks since 2000. And then it became that his his his start to the season wasn't just worse than the all the Browns quarterbacks. It was worse than any quarterbacks since 2000 on any team. I mean, his efficiency, whatever they whatever that was looking at, I can't remember exactly the yard's part attempt or something. There's a very anecdotal, but it's trying to drive home that Dishon Watson was basement level bad from a pass efficiency standpoint, which really hit a lot of these players. And then James, James Winston comes in and they start chucking it. So then you get a ton of routes. It's a lot harder to consolidate volume in a really route heavy offense, but Judy goes off a little bit. I mean, he's coming off now a 145 target breakout year 90 catches 1200 yards. Again, former first rounder, pretty good per route profile throughout the course of this career. This is the list of QB's Jared Judy seeing 25 targets from in order of targets in his career. Russell Wilson drew lock. James last year overwhelmingly his best production pairing, Teddy Bridgewater, Dishon Watson, Brett Ripon, and Dorian Thompson Robinson. I mean, this is I you may be a lavet comp. I think it's a really good comp. You're you're also dealing with the issues of like, how good is the QB play going to be this year? And it is problematic. But I think these guys are both multi round discounts to what they actually are as players, the market on Judy is probably looking at some of the per route stuff and not accounting for the fact that the per route stuff was actually mildly good coming into last year. The routes just weren't there. But then we checked that box last year that it was like, yeah, he can be in every down number one wide receiver who gets a ton of routes again, led the NFL. I mean, if this team does play fast, I do expect him to get a lot of targets and be their main guy. And I think both of us have Judy clearly had a set of till men were both around 78 targets for Tillman. There's been some Tillman hype. I know in DFS, you know, there were some weeks we were projecting Tillman as good or even a little bit ahead of Judy. You want to know, Judy, you know, it's your point. He had like four weeks last year where he had greater than three yards per out run in like a five week span, which is just kind of absolutely naughty. Two of those came with Cedric Tillman before he got injured. Another kind of comp for me on this situation, just a little bit. The people are very pro Tillman remind me of when we had like tanked out and Nico Collins and tanked out got hurt. And there was that brief stint where it looked like Dell was overtaking Nico in the better play. But Nico have this much larger sample of being really, really good. And I was guilty to this too. Or I was like, well, in DFS, we were projecting Dell, you know, with with Nico, why wouldn't we just, you know, assume he's the better play? Like of course, Nico did better without. And that's where you get in trouble when you chop up the samples, where like you think you're getting more relevant, but you greatly reduced the sample. And I kind of see that with the Judy Tillman stuff where it's like, yes, Tillman had a good stretch of targets per out run there. But ultimately over the course of the season, Judy was significantly higher. In yards per out run and had that really great close and just had more volume and doing it over more volume is a good sign that makes it more sticky and more real. And obviously the prospect pedigree is much in Judy's favor. So I have not gotten, you know, any Tillman really in drafts. And then the wide receiver three we both have is Deante Johnson. You've got him at 63 targets where it's 33. We talked about another wild card like really who knows kind of that there. There's just not much beyond that at all in this wide receiver room. Right. So very limited contract for Johnson. I saw some talk early on the offseason. He might play in the slot for them, which you'd think his skill set makes sense for, right? He's like a really good route runner. We've talked about in the past. Like even last year, you know, he bounces around a bunch of different teams and doesn't actually stick anywhere. And the rumor, the idea or the thought on Deante Johnson is not that he sucks necessarily. I do want to make that point clear. It's that he's like an asshole. I mean, we can swear on this bot, right? Like I think everybody behind the scenes is not a big fan of the ante Johnson is sort of the point that we're getting repeatedly. And yet the Browns are willing to bring him in. Now they don't give him any guaranteed money. They can easily cut him at the end of training camp and everything. But I will note that in his like seven games where he ran real routes six or seven games with the Panthers last year. He had 10 targets like 75 plus yards and a TD three times. Again, he wasn't doing horrible. His per out run stuff as far as the volume was really bad. The yards per target was really bad. But the targets per out still like show that this guy gets open and earns volume. He was earning volume in like a 25% targets per out like a really high number. He's always had the after the target efficiency issues, drop rate issues. He's not like great with the ball in his hand. The yards per target stuff is not going to be good. And then the yards per out run overall is going to be a mix of a high target rate, but a low ability to do anything with the ball. His ability to run routes and draw a lot of volume and create separations is why I think he thinks of himself as higher than probably a lot of the teams when they see the fact that he can't actually like catch the ball and do, you know, exciting things with the ball in his hand. He seems to think he's like a true number one. But I think that's all very relevant because if he's on the team, I mean, he could very much factor into the target question that the problem being with the slot thing that I brought up is he's never I that's kind of a skill set, but he's never actually been a slot player. He's played like 80% plus of his routes out wide every year of his career. This is a guy that is a like a clear outside player that would be undergoing a significant change in role to be the slot guy. And then I said 80% I guess it's 78% or higher just to be accurate on that. And then the other thing is I mentioned Harold Fanon and how he factors in. And so this past game gets really tricky, but Fanon kind of to me looks like a slot receiver. He's as a tight end. They've talked about him a little bit. We'll get to the tight ends, but that's about him a little bit about, you know, being able to use him in different blocking ways and in Joku. I see them as playing very different tight end roles. And if Fanon is breaking out, they're probably running two two tight end sets where Fanon's kind of the slot receiver. And so he's probably the answer to that lack of depth that receiver you were mentioning. As far as Tellman, I just do want to say, I don't have a strong take on him other than, you know, when I went to the projection, I guess I didn't realize that he got hurt in week 13 and didn't play again because the one thing I did remember about him is right after the trailer to Mara Cooper, his snap rate shot up just from running the weekly columns where he was sub 40% offensive snap percentage in each of the first six games, only five total targets. And then the very next game week seven, he's at 80% 82% offensive snaps. And then he was at 90% 96 96. So the next four games, he's an every down player. Like it actually seemed like the Browns were trading a Mara Cooper to create the space for Cedric toman to be an every down player. And he did that for four weeks. And he earned pretty good volume those four weeks, at least eight targets every game. And then he gets hurt in the fifth week and doesn't play again the rest of the year. So we do have this really small sample. But I think there's a, you know, a factor there that is worth noting that the team seemed to be freeing up playing time for him and liking him. And he looked like he was moving forward in a positive way. The overall, you know, per route profile was pretty strong. And especially after he became a full-time player, looked decent. But I do think as you said, I agree. He's meaning flea behind Judy. And then the Deontage Johnson thing does meaningfully impact like where toman's going to be at this year. If Johnson factors into the outside wide receiver routes equation, I mean, I finished this projection. And I went back and I lowered Deontage Johnson's targets. And I'm still much higher than you guys. I'd at first thought that he based on his per route target earning, he would factor in quite a bit. And then I started thinking about where he'd run his routes. And probably he doesn't run a lot of routes. Probably he's the backup outside receiver. And maybe that becomes a problem for him in the clubhouse. And maybe he ends up getting caught again, you know, I the whole thing is really challenging. And for me, Deontage, given all those challenges, like, I don't really, it's, I don't think there's any format you're really drafting him right now, but he is one of those guys you can be quick on the wire. Like if he's earning routes, we have the TPRR, you know, history to look at. I mean, God, even look at last year before he got traded, he was, it was great. And then then he's gone and then it just goes completely south. So keep an eye on him. Let's go to Tidein where in Joku has a little bit of the Judy vibes to him where it's like, okay, we got to give this guy a lot of volume. He also is kind of, well, not kind of, he's a very athletic Tidein to have sort of this later breakout at Tidein, which quite often happens. So I've been pretty in on in Joku market starting to catch up to us a little bit, but I'm underdog, especially this T10-ish range, I think the market has just overreacted in general in drafting that group of Tideins to low and in Joku, even though we're in line in position ADP, we're ahead an overall rank relative to overall ADP on him. Gretch has ju- or sorry, in Joku at 113 targets, we're at 100 targets. That's a pretty similar projection for us. You're much higher on fan in at 63, we're at 42. And that goes back to the two tight ends that you're talking about lack of depth at receiver. So I think there's a chance we get fan in up a little bit higher. He's been someone I've been coming around to a lot in best ball when I draft these three, four tight end teams to get this pure upside throughout, very athletic tight end who contingent value but might have more base value than appears at first glance. - Yeah, another really interesting positional group. And Joku, last year we talked about how in 2023, he had a really big spike in targets per route, his ADOT came down and talked about the specific usage of, they did a lot of blocking release and they basically used him as their outlet player. And a lot of people at the end of 2023 said, his production only spiked with Joe Flacco, which is really interesting because Joe Flacco might be their weak one starter in 2025. But last year, Joe Flacco's not there anymore in 2024. He can't keep those targets per out run gains. Joe Flacco does love to dump the ball off. He's always had really high, he's not a mobile quarterback. He doesn't do the one reading then run. He gets to his check down. But the Browns are kind of using in Joku as a check down as opposed to like a running back on like some blocking release stuff. He gets the spike in targets per route of like three to four percentage points over his previous career high in 2023. One of the things I was talking about last year is I thought that usage might stick because in Joku was really good with the ball on his hands. And I felt like they had basically unlocked the best way to use in Joku, which wasn't necessarily Joe Flacco dependent. Now it's fascinating because as yards per target was really good in 2023, in 2024, he kept the targets per out run gain. He did keep that usage. The Adot was still low. He's at now a new career high, 23.7%. He had been 23.1%, 20, 23, no higher than 20.4 previously. So three percentage points higher these last couple years. But his yards per target cratered last year as he dealt with injuries. Now that to me looks like a clear outlier because when you look at like the depth adjusted race or stat I like to look at, he's been meaningfully above average every year. And then last year he's meaningfully below average. One of the other really interesting things, his past block rate was less than half of his previous career low last year. They got him out into more routes. Now the addition of fan and might impact that because fan and is kind of more of a route first tight end. But if it does impact in Joku's routes, I think it just pushes him back toward his previous past block rate, not like to where he's going into the Mark Andrews category where Isaiah likely really stepped on the Andrews routes, at least from what I'm seeing. And then the fan and specific thing, the way the teams talked about it, and they see him as a mismatch piece. They emphasize he's a different type of tight end than in Joku. They said that despite him being small, it's a quote lazy narrative that he can't block. They'll use him as a movement style blocker, they said. I thought that was all very positive notes for playing time for him that he's not behind in Joku. They see what are his skill sets in him. And that's why they took him. And they gave him pretty good draft capital for a guy that some people said was too limited at what he can do at tight end. That he's like too gimmicky. They took him high in round four as well, similar to Samson that we talked about a minute ago. And the big note on him is the production profile was incredible. And college people talk about it, he runs duck foot, this, that, the other thing, he's undersized for a tight end. He led all of NCAA division one last year in receptions and I believe yards and I have like a 107 catch it. I mean, he had an insane season at bowling green. People point out that it was bowling green. They played Penn State who was in the college football playoff and Harold Fanon had a monster season, or a monster game against Penn State. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but against toughest competition, he was bowling green's whole team and it wasn't garbage time. They almost upset college football playoff team. They lost by like six points. They also played Texas A&M and Fanon was, it was the same deal. They lost by like seven points and they had one good player and it was Harold Fanon. So against like two legit high end schools and SEC team and a big 10 team that played in the college football playoff and finished ranked fifth overall. Harold Fanon went out there and was a carry to his team basically. He was his team's whole offense and almost led to upsets in both of those games. So you'll miss me with the competition stuff a little bit there. I mean, that's incredible. He had 11 for 137 in a TD against Penn State in a 7 point loss and 8 for 145 in a TD against Texas A&M and a 6 point loss both on the road. So I mean, this is a guy that I think is potentially a unicorn and we're looking for unicorns in fantasy, but we look for production and how that can translate to the NFL level, whatever his skill set is, he can clearly turn it into scoring at the college level or he could at the college level even when he played against some tougher competition. They also played Arkansas State and their bowl game was a good team, but he had 17 for 213 in a TD in their bowl game. I mean, it leads against a bowl opponent. Anyway, I just I think Fanon's very unique. I think there's a potential that he grows into a slot role in a way that doesn't step on in joke. I agree with you. And joke was one of my favorite tight ends in that range because I do think he's going to be their traditional tight end. But this is a team that's used a lot of two tight ends sets. Last year with Injoku at 97 targets, they had Jordan Akens at 58 as their tight end too, which is a lot for a second tight end. Injoku did miss some time and in 2023, when he had 123 targets, the two backups combined for just 43, but that's still like, if you have 120 target tight end for another couple tight ends to combine for over 40 more tight targets that position. That's kind of a lot. I have the positional tight end target shirt increasing quite a bit this year. Leoni, I think these guys are both going to have like specific roles. And Fanon's going to have the potential to be a meaningful part of the past game. Unless Deonte Johnson is unless, you know, such a tillman is. I mean, again, it gets back to the Browns being very uncertain. Yeah, and just one final note before move on. I meant to mention with Judd Kins, but there's a lot of these round two guys that are unsigned that I'm not too worried about. But with Judd Kins being unsigned and doing the dispute, there's just kind of a little bit more additional uncertainty there. Let's go to Baltimore. Much more certainty for us in play calling. Gretchen, I have like basically identical play calling just under 63 plays per game, a 54.5% called pass rate. So we're extremely similar there. That puts Lamar Jackson just under 4,000 yards passing and under 30 touchdowns for us. Gretchen's just over on those two things. In terms of rushing, we're at 124 rushing yards with four to five touchdowns. Gretchen's at 931 rushing yards with four to five touchdowns. As well, we're both projecting between 140, 150 rushing attempts on Lamar. We've got in our quarterback rankings. I think we actually have Lamar slightly ahead of Alan. Let me just double check that. We have Lamar slightly ahead of Alan, which is opposite of the market. In basketball, I haven't been drafting it that way because I don't have strong enough stance to like not get any Josh Allen and get a ton of Lamar. I'm not drafting a lot of lead quarterback anyways. But just noting that we do have Lamar ahead of Alan slightly if you were to take out ADP completely. I do as well. And I mean, you look at what Lamar did last year. And one of the things I want to note is his scramble rate in particular was down a little bit, but his sac rate was down even more. And like meaningfully so, it cratered to 4.4%, which is obviously good. He wasn't taking as many sacs. There's I think a clear correlation here with an intent to get the ball out versus kind of that playmaking style he's always had. They didn't get rid of the playmaking style. The scramble rate was down, but it wasn't nearly as down as the sac rate. Essentially I'm saying Lamar evolved his game. How many of these just getting better and better. This scramble rate was still there. It was just slightly blows career average. It had been above his career average in 2023. So it came down, but it's not like it's gone or we can't expect the rushing to be there. But I just think essentially you got this trade off. He took fewer sacs, but I didn't necessarily mean less running that is just so promising for what Lamar Jackson is as a player. And it's probably a big part of why he was better from an efficiency standpoint. Or those things work together that he had guys open more or whatever you want to say. But I think they were trying to kind of work on him getting the ball out and not extend so many downs. And yet he was also clearly better at choosing which downs to extend. But his 8.4 attempts per game to put a number on it. That was a career low. Still led to position in rushing yardage. Jane Daniels was the only player within 250 yards. So I mean, he's probably not a big rush TV guy. Obviously, you just mentioned Alan and Hertz is the other one. But those two guys are like the only ones that the do score time to these a weird stat I saw was that both those guys have doubled as it rushing to these the last two years. No other quarterback has more than six in a season in the last two years. So it's like this huge gap between what Alan and Hertz are and every other quarterback Lamar is going to be in that other group that you know, I was going to rush for five or six TVs or something in a season. But the rushing yards are going to be meaningfully higher than everyone else, not named Jane Daniels probably. And yet they did come down a little bit last year as he got so much better as a passer. Derek Henry, we've each got 264 carries. We're at 1,270 rushing yards. You're at 1,4201, a little bit more efficiency. He was insane in the efficiency last year, 5.9. nine yards per carry. We both have 'em at 13.2 touchdowns. I'm pretty sure that's our highest rush to the projection on any player in the league. I was way wrong on Henry last year. I just kinda thought the way they often set up that he was going to be more in this kind of carry range that we're projecting now to 64, except when we're doing a season long projection, that's a little bit more pessimistic because we're being a little bit more conservative, especially the ETR side of things. Henry got up to 325 carries last year. I really didn't see that coming and was definitely wrong. And of course, he also had the huge efficiency boost playing beside Lamar Jackson, one of the best Russian quarterbacks and just a really good offense and a really good team. So yeah, after being kinda out on Henry last year, with some exception on Underdog, if that market just hated him so much, I think he's a solid one-two turn pick, but it's a very loaded one-two turn. So definitely prefer him more and half PPR formats where I think sometimes that distinction between half and full at the top of the draft. People don't really factor it in quite as much. And the guys he's competing with at that one-two turn are either receivers or backs like H&N who are gonna catch the ball a lot more than him. So just wanted to point that out. - Yeah, we both have the Ravens shifting a little bit toward the past because they were so meaningfully toward the run last year, closer to their 2023 pass rate, but not quite there, gaining a little bit of play volume as a result if you were running clocks, those things. And basically in a projection is saying, they're kind of getting 325 carries last year is what it is, but it's really hard to bet on that every single year and a projection and those kinds of things. One of the reasons for me and we're gonna talk about this with the past volume, but when I got to the past volume, it was really hard to dial in the targets. All their key players are guys that I would like to make a case earned more of a role or for some reason or another deserve more targets in 2025. And so then you can actually do that in a projection, it becomes a problem in terms of how to dial in on the targets and where they're gonna go and who's actually gonna get more volume. But I do think from a team perspective and with how good Lamar played passing the ball, there's a lot of incentive for these guys to actually, and the incentive being to keep Henry as fresh as possible for a playoff run and just acknowledging that he's an older back on those things. But I mean, we don't really have to tell the audience what's the deal with their category. It's just a question of like, how much do you think he can take on, right? 'Cause he's gonna be amazing. As you mentioned, the Lamar Jackson efficiency boost was there. The one minor thing I'll note is we talk about the backups. I mean, Justice Hill, 20% targets per out run last year compared to just 12% for Henry, which I mentioned these targets per out run numbers with the backs to talk about which backs that the teams are sort of proactively throwing to as opposed to just checking down. They used Hill, I think, proactively as a passing weapon in certain game plans. He really spiked the production together in a way that like if you had him, and Best Ball was pretty sweet because he would catch a lot of the balls in bunches. And so then he had usable weeks in those spots. But I will note that his Russia Tempts were caught nearly in half with Henry there and Keaton Mitchell was banged up. And now you have Keaton Mitchell back. And he's a guy I wanna throw out there that his 2023 was legit, at least 8.4 yards per carry. He had 5.7 yards after contact per attempt. He had almost 15% of his runs went for 15 plus. It wasn't a ton of volume, but really, really strong. And then he also only had 11 targets in eight games, but he had huge yards after catch numbers in the past game as well on those 11 targets. And he caught like 10 of the 11 and had just like a ridiculous yards per target rate. I don't think Keaton Mitchell's value can be captured in a projection when you're projecting Derek Henry for a ton of volume. But I do think he's a guy that if Henry were to miss time, is a pretty exciting handcuff play and upside play and may even be an issue for Justice Hill this year in some of that past volume stuff. I think he tore his ACL in 2023, didn't ever really seem healthy in 2024. They're talking about him favorably this off season, second year back from the ACL. And I think if they do limit Henry, it's probably because they'll keep Mitchell a few more touches here and there. And that's kind of the way that I did project it. But also just a shift toward the past a little bit. - Yeah, I think Keaton's the guy that you would want if Henry goes down. So he's really your upside swing late. Just as Hill is your, hey, I've got a real shaky running back room and best ball. And it would be who've made a half a guy that's gonna at least score some points on a weekly basis. Going to the wide receiver position, Zay flowers in the context, Ben and I are both expecting Baltimore to throw the ball a little bit more. We're still even a little conservative there, given that have him at 105 targets under a thousand yards receiving, scratches at 122 targets, just over a thousand yards receiving. I'd note though, between our base and ceiling cases, we're ahead of ADP on Zay flowers on most sites where he's going like end of the fifth round. So he has been someone I've been targeting pretty heavily where I think like in the base scenario, he's gonna be fine at this cost 'cause he's just really good and the offense is really good and there's the efficiency is gonna be there. But any of like Henry goes down or the team's just worse and has to throw a lot more or Mark Andrews goes down. Any of those sorts of things could really lead to, I think a ceiling for Zay flowers that maybe the market's not seen. - Yeah, I think I like that point. There's a sort of an anti-fragile element to it where things could, you know, injuries to other players and things, things could open up to create volume. There's been a lot of interesting quotes from them shout out to Coach Peak Index again. A lot of interesting quotes about Zay from the team, this offseason Todd Monkin, the officer corner talked about how it's a deep team, how it's difficult to get everyone touches, they've used this term a few different times. There's only one ball when talking about Zay. But always in the context of like, Zay flowers has earned more work. We wanna get Zay flowers more work. Monkin talked about how he's great at multiple things and that allows your volume to go up in terms of both the short catch and run stuff and also getting opened down field. They want to get this guy the ball more. They're actively talking about how can we get the ball in Zay flowers hands more. And it doesn't surprise when you look at his numbers. His like, mistakels, four stuff with the ball and his hands are really strong. Even as yards after contact for a smaller receiver, like he's able to break some tackles and create some space and do some things. Yack just generally yards after the catch is really good. His catch rate's been good as yards. The target's been good as depth adjusted. Racer has been really good both years. This is a guy that looks like a, like, a lot of times I just talk about the prospects that I really like and then I tell you that they were good and all these things. I didn't really like Zay flowers as a prospect. I thought there were some concerns in his prospect profile. Thought maybe he was a little overdrafted. I feel like he shown me in two years that he's a much better player than I thought he was. And I think he's a really dynamic playmaker and yet you run into the volume issue. But I liked your point that, you know, there's some ways that volume can open up. I think when you're taking him, you're thinking, you know, really high floor of production because I really believe in the skill level. I believe in the offense. I believe in Lamar Jackson. The concern is, where does this ceiling come from? Does he get enough volume? Does his team pass enough? Does he get enough targets and touches and all of these things that the team talks about? I mean, his target sprout run did climb from 19.9% to 23.8% from year one to year two, while his eight out jumped from 8.8 to 10.7. So he's earning more volume at a deep rate, eight out, very good. All of the things around Z Flowers are favorable and the way that they talk about him and what they think about him going into year three. So yeah, I really like the play. I just, obviously, from a projection standpoint, it gets tricky when you have Bateman and the Titans and everything else. - Yeah, and Bateman had, you know, a mini breakout year running a lot of routes and really efficiency on a really efficient on a per target basis, 10.7 yards per target, one of the better marks in the entire week. We've got him at 65 targets, you're at 75. You kind of mentioned how you have the offense a little bit more condensed in general. I do have a tough time with Bateman at cost where some of the positives I said about Zay do apply to Bateman, but he's also got the Z hurdle in front of him and on full PPR sites in particular, like this is really an efficiency play. I just think he's going a little bit too early for that base volume on a week to week basis is tough. Like Zay flowers can still get you some like eight to 10 catch games in certain situations. So I haven't been getting a lot of Bateman. I actually had a lot of Bateman last year, but the price has gotten too rich for me. - I completely agree with everything you said. I mean, he was super efficient. They're talking him up a ton again. They're saying he had this breakout year. He had a really high 8 out 15.2 and it also had a red zone rule. So you had the really big yardage efficiency and the vertical profile, and he caught a bunch of touchdowns. The problem is he had a 15.0% targets per route. It was a career low with, you know, Zay likely breaking out as a second tight end was a flower stepping forward with their canary now taking over the offense and that impacting routes. You need a good per route number for volume wise. So if this was the right time, the Bateman breakout year and I've liked Bateman every year and I think he's a really good player. This was the Bateman breakout year and whether it's the high eight odd or whatever the role in the offense, it was actually a career low in terms of target sprout. He's the one that's getting squeezed and he got there through sheer efficiency and there's not really room for him to be more efficient than what he just showed you. I mean, I love betting on efficiency to lead to more volume, but that's the case for everybody in this past game. Bateman last year had a 10 plus yards target nine touchdowns on only 72 targets. That touchdown rate is going to put him in a class or if we looked at a cohort of 10 plus percent receiving touchdown rates, you're going to see that they come down the next year almost certainly. I don't have the great numbers in front of me. You always mentioned that great work, JJ Zachary. I know JJ is dead work on that. That's got to be out for a summer. Behind, there's not a lot of meat on the bone there. Behind Bateman, they do sign Deandre Hopkins and then they've also got a couple guys they've drafted in recent years who hung around in Devon Tez Walker, Tylen Wallace, a couple of prospects, honestly. I think we've liked more than market and a dynasty perspective. They're not likely to make a mark. I just kind of point them out in terms of I don't think Deandre Hopkins has a fantasy viable role here. I think if Bateman or Zay were to go down, it's not necessarily like, I think Deandre would do better if Zay went down, but Bateman went down. I think we could see Devon Tez in Thailand stepping and fill that role and where Hopkins maybe is somewhat valuable to the team in some real life circumstances. I don't think he's totally dust, but I just don't see any case from a fantasy perspective. I mentioned that just because he is getting drafted a decent bit and best ball draft still. Yeah, great. He drew a decent amount of volume on KC last year, but a very different offense. If you look at just his raw targets and he wasn't super efficient, you're going to have a lot harder chance to get a lot of volume here. He's probably a little bit more of an annoyance for the big four wide receivers and tight ends that we're talking about here than Nelson Eglar was, but two quotes from the team about him this off season. One was comparing him to the Eglar role. I think that was from Monkin. Then the second was somebody referred to him as a contest. He's going to be their contested catch guy or something like that. They seem as like a situational player. I don't think he's a real threat to the main four guys that all look like they're ascending young players. Hopkins looks like we want to make a post season run. I want to win a super bowl late stage of my career type edition. Completely great. The tight ends, Andrews and likely, they both had their fantasy viable stints last year with Andrews closing the season really well, very efficient, but the volume wasn't quite what it was with Zay performing well and Isaiah likely being there. We've got Andrews for 65 targets, likely with 60. You've got Andrews with 74 targets, likely with 62. A little bit more gap than we have. I've struggled with Andrews where I just like batting on this offense in general, so I think it's going to be really good. I think he's a good player. Like a few guys in this offense, they restart difference in Andrews when you start going from half PPR sites, even like tight end premium and some of the higher volume tight ends can start to catch him because he's just not going to compile a ton of catches. We're neutral, a little bit above ADP and underdog, but then the full PPR sites, we just don't have the market docking him for those enough. Yeah. Andrews, yeah, again, like I've been saying, I want to be able to get him more volume and a projection. He was efficient again. They tried to get him more volume late last year. The fact that like Lamar during the season got frustrated in an oppressed conference when asked about Andrews role and he was like, they were acting like Andrews wasn't producing. Lamar basically was like, you guys don't know all the things he does for our offense, of locking all these things. It's crazy to act like you know, Mark Andrews. Throughout this off season, he had the potential to potentially move on and the Ravens made a point to bring him back. They really like Mark Andrews. Both him and likely, they played a lot more together last year. One of the things, it just gets tough in the two tight ends. That's especially on a team that plays Patrick or Cardiff full back some like you can't play these guys every single down together. Both of them wound up setting easy career highs for a past block rate last year. Both likely and Andrews independently, which limited both of their routes. Now, they also both had very strong depth adjusted racers, yards, protagonists. Both of them had TD rates. I think over 10%. All three of the tight ends had, you know, Charlie Kohler had a cottage short touchdown. So they all had big touchdown rates. Both likely and Andrews were really high in touchdown rates in 2023 as well. These two years under Monkin. I think I think we're card caught at TD last year too. I think we're seeing the full backs. Last tight end like usage in the red zone. Be a very clear focal point. So to your point about moving from tight end premium to half PPR, half PPR is, you know, you're talking about touchdowns with tight ends. And I think Andrews is super interesting over there at his price now because I think you have the talent based element and you have the potential for more volume just coming around. And then the other thing I want to note on Andrews, he got his first carry in week 12 last year. He got four by the end of the regular season, four more in the post season. Those were the push pushes. They started doing them late in the year. They asked, I believe it was John Harbaugh. It's another shout out coach speak index. He has the quote in his discord. They asked directly if that would continue with the push, not being banned. It was a big talking point a couple of months ago. And the answer I believe from John Harbaugh was, if we run the touch push this year, it will be Mark Andrews doing it again. And so I do think there's the potential for Mark Andrews touchdowns, even if his receiving TDs are looking at a little bit of regression, even though all the tight ends are carrying these big numbers, the touchdowns to spike because of Russian TDs. I mean, what if if he's doing the touch push and we have a confirmation, and when we may see more of that, some of the non-QBs doing some of the touch push, I think we have confirmation from Baltimore that Andrews is going to do that, you could have two or three Russian touchdowns here as well that would boost Andrews profile. So it's a really weird projection where you got two tight ends. They're going to step on each other's routes. It really is problematic from the base case. But if either of them miss his time, the other ones probably playing a lot more. Andrews, I think, is the better play because you have the potential for rushing TDs as well. Like Lee's an interesting later on play where he had kind of a breakout year last year, very efficient. Looks really good at football. All those things that you want. And if Andrews were to miss time, I think likely steps into a bigger role. They're both like, is that in Bateman guys that I would in a normal situation, look at their efficiency and want to be able to project more volume the next year, but you can't do that for everyone on the same roster. The Ravens are just really good. And so again, it's why I think there's the potential for a pass rate to really spike. It's why Lamar, you get back to Lamar and you're like, he's going to be the QB1 probably. Anyway, yeah, fascinating. How to play those tight ends. Let's go to Cincinnati. Another team were like pretty identical on play calling 63.5 plays per game, about a 64 and a half to 65% called pass rate. They have really leaned into being a very positive PROE team. And there's no reason that won't continue with the big three PRO Chase and Higgins running it back. Again, BRO, we've got at about 4,500 yards passing around 33 passing TVs. Those are huge numbers from a passing perspective. I do want to know how most formats, even with those numbers, we have them QB5 with the market, but we have him a bit overvalued. I think he is a more legitimate case for pure pocket pass or holding like a very high ceiling, but they did have sort of the perfect run out last year in terms of like playing very desperate from behind. They got into some nutty games. They were, you know, they started the year poorly and they were chasing a lot. So I think he's over valued in most settings. There's some basketball stacking elements, but in a typical redraft league, you know, tough for me to get there on BRO where he's going. This is the whole discussion of the whole team is the, you know, their office of corner and talking about Chase Brown's usage talked about how, I think it's a concept that's super important that you just reference that how that in the second half of last year, the urgency was high. So you want to rely on your best players and we counted Chase as one of those people for us, referring to Chase Brown, not Jamar Chase, which I think was, you know, a very bullish quote for Chase Brown, but it also is like the reason that he played so much late last year is, you know, because we were in these certain game situations and we're trying to make the playoffs. We're in a hole. As far as a team level stuff, Pat Dorman is amazing pace article that everyone has to read, noted that no teams games average more total points last year and then over the last two years because of bad defense. They've been above average and play volume despite being below average and pace. We should see that again. One of the weird things with this team that I wanted to get your thoughts on and see if you have the same thing is my TD numbers, I mean, I'm coming in a little hot on all my projections. This is one of the few teams where the market expectations, or sorry, putting this differently, they were tied for fifth and offensive touchdowns last year at 54. They were six then points. My look ahead lines have them 10th and projected points for 2025. So coming back and I came in. above where I thought that it should be by the market when I went to check that and I had to cut their rates, their TV rates back pretty meaningfully. Do you see that in the look ahead lines on your side too? Like, should we expect to be more like 10th? - We've got Cincinnati with the second highest over projection in touchdowns relative to their market, if that makes sense. - I think it's done. - It like pairs last year and these trends that we're talking about with the play volume and the chaoticness with what the market's saying. - And there are some teams that just seem to be able to outperform their team totals at a higher rate. Again, team totals are median, not a mean. So the distributions aren't always gonna line up exactly. And obviously, especially with these look ahead lines, some argument can just be wrong. But yeah, so we've got since these team total is 24.5. Yeah, it's not a huge number. It's a very good number, but you're a point behind like Casey, Detroit, those teams. And you're a point ahead of like, in Arizona, a Chargers team, just to put the context. And you just see the uncertainty in these lines. I mean, even when you mentioned Cleveland's line being so low at 18.6, it's like three and a half, four points higher than some of the worst teams last year. Because of the uncertainty element that's baked into these look ahead lines. - Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Media, not a mean. It's probably a reflection of this team being pretty concentrated in their, like if Jamar Chase gets hurt or T Higgins or Joe Burrow, like this offense is creators, right? Like they only have a few good players basically. Their offensive lines not great, all of those elements. But yeah, you mentioned it, at least plus six in PROE three years running, it does seem clear we're gonna get a pass for approach overall when they were talking about the backs. Again, the backs that they wanted to complement Chase and they were trying what they were talking about. Hey, where a pass team, we wanna look for some passing down backs. We'll talk about that when we get to the running backs. But I thought that was an interesting little quote that there early in Zach Taylor's tenure in Cincinnati, it was like, are they gonna ever be an aggressive PROE team 'cause they hadn't always been that. And at times they look like they're a low key running way too much. These last three years, they've really pushed it forward and they are gonna do that. They're gonna continue to do that, Burrow. Very efficient last year. One thing I'll note on him with the numbers you said, I had the same thing, I had his passing yards and touchdowns and everything meaningfully higher than basically anyone else. But he also had some decent early career rushing when not coming off an injury in his second year, he was coming off an injury and then that took a little bit of a dive that year. But it took a dive last year as well. Scramble rate was a career low. I think some of that was him improving as a distributor and it's not a coincidence that he had a big passing year last year while his Scramble rate was declining. But again, they were playing in a lot of frantic games and there was this urgency and you see like Josh Allen run more in those situations and I do think it's relevant that Burrow didn't. His response to the frantic games is, I gotta make plays out of the pocket. He's not like trying to create plays with his legs. And so I do think his, for me when I went through the projection his rushing ceiling or the potential for him to add some value rushing was weaker than I thought and it really is just like, this is the peer highest upside pocket passer we have in the league right now. How high can that get without a lot of rushing value? - Yeah and it's from a fantasy perspective that value conversation is like, hey Burrow is a bit overvalued. It doesn't mean the team's overvalued because we want like these high amount of pass attempts on a pretty good scoring team and a very concentrated offense is a team that doesn't particularly at the water seeker position like it's gonna be chasing Higgins running like all the routes. We get to running back where last year we entered with like Zach Moss versus Chase Brown. Chase Brown shows his efficiency upside. Zach Moss gets damed and then as you mentioned, they really leaned on Chase Brown down the stretch when they were desperate. You've got them at 241 carries where it 215 carries with a little bit more efficiency on the reduced volume for him. Behind Chase Brown you've got Taj Brookes with both at like 60 carries, 20 targets and then Zach Moss behind that. We were giving Zach Moss a little bit more work which explains the gap between you know our Chase Brown numbers. You've got Zach Moss more or less buried here. I know Silva absolutely loves Chase Brown. Early in the off season he was such an easy click at like the three, four turn. He's now come up to the one, two turn. We still have him a little bit ahead of ADP there but you know a much more appropriate call. Three was going earlier. I'm sorry. You just do three. I apologize, yeah. Two, two, three. He moved from the three, four turn to the two, three turn. Yeah. I really liked the Chase Brown talent. I was really in on him last year. I talked about how he had more work horse credentials at Illinois than was being discussed. He had a bunch of games where he had 25 plus touches and these things and people were saying it's a smaller back and Moss is the only one that can handle the three down work. And I think Chase Brown answered that question last year. But when I got it and I love the talent but when I got into the projection, I got a little concerned because of the, I mentioned the discussion that they were talking about wanting to pair him with a basically a pass down back. They bring in some Ajay P. Ryan. I don't think P. Ryan's like a threat or I really don't think he has much contingent upside or anything. An interesting thing stand on him is he has more targets on Russia attempts, two years running. On teams that like the Broncos moved on from him two years ago and then the cheese had opportunity but didn't really wind up using them a lot last year. And then they move on as well. So P. Ryan's 30 plus and probably not a real threat but I do think he's going to play on third downs especially early in the year. And that note that he had more targets on Russia attempts. I mean for a guy who saw 91 total targets over the last two years, 45 targets a year. So only have 73 rushes really tells you that like, he's playing in a very specific role which is on these passing downs. And then Taj Brooks is actually really interesting from the perspective to me that he caught 25 plus balls each of the past three years over a hundred first college career. He's 214 pounds at just five nine. So he's thick. He's got good pass blocking grades. And so again, they were talking about wanting to complement Chase Brown with a back that has a little bit of size as well. They talked about maybe one a bigger back as they acknowledged in some of the offseason comments that Chase Brown's not a big back. They're aware of that obviously. Now they love Chase Brown. They talk very favorably about him. One of the big things about him that they said was that he made them right to bet on him and the trajectories on. And like it's kind of what you would think or we would talk about in the fans community that going into last year, they weren't certain that he could be anything but they were kind of betting on him to potentially be that. And he was that and he showed that. And for a team that had to pay a bunch of money to get to more chase extended and to get T Higgins back. And obviously Joe Burrow has a big contract to have a running back like this on a day three rookie contract and be able to just add another day three rookie and bring in some Ajay P Ryan as a veteran is huge. The fact that they can build their running back room cheaply is huge. And I do think they're willing to be like Chase Brown even people think he doesn't have the credentials to be a workhorse is our workhorse basically. But the concern is will he play enough on pass downs? One of the one of the answers from this offseason was he's our first and second down back as they were referring to the third down play. And so I think they they're going to give Chase Brown a ton of work but it may actually cut into his receiving work a little bit which is maybe a little bit a problem. Now this team's going to drop back a ton and I still have Chase Brown projected for the most targets on the team but just a smaller share of the overall running back target pie than I otherwise would have. And it's maybe a little concerning on an offense where he's probably not going to run enough because the team's throwing so much to have like a monster rushing production season also. I don't know, it's another tricky one. It's tough because the two sides of it are, he had a very good run out the end of last year and was super efficient. And then it's like you're regressing that efficiency a little bit but also is a good sign and it's tough to know exactly where to pin the middle ground. And I should have mentioned P. Ryan was mentioned the back up running backs. We both have him a little over 30 rushing attempts but almost a one to one ratio between rush attempts and targets at about 25 to 30 targets for P. Ryan. Going to the wide receivers, you've got Jamar Chase at 173 targets. We're at 148, you've got T-hings at 130, we're at 112. We're just sliding a little bit more conservatively overall and I think we might still have burrow with like a slightly higher scramble right you mentioned that which is leading us to just a little bit less in terms of past attempts per game even though we're like very close on the overall play calling. We have Chase even with that as our number one overall player with 284 full PPR points. You're up at 356 full PPR points. Are you taking Chase 101 in most formats? - I think it's close. I mean, I wound up with a really aggressive projection but I did get a little concerned from the perspective that his targets per out and weighted targets per out were pretty much on par with Higgins last year. The big difference is that Chase's yards per target, the after the target efficiency is just through the roof and so it creates a real gap in terms of the yards per out. Run figures and those things but the fact that Higgins went out there is basically earning volume the same as Chase is a little different than some of the other Elite number one wide receivers. Now Jamar Chase is probably just the best wide receiver in the NFL and so you don't like fade that or anything. And Higgins was really good too. 2.05 yards per out. Chase is a 2.41. The other way to look at this, Chase is over 700 routes last year. The only other guy with Jerry Judy that was over 700 routes. There's actually probably some meat on the bone in terms of the per route stuff and yeah, or flipping it the other way like the ton of routes probably held it down. If the routes come down a little bit, I mean, what about if there's a year where they actually concentrate a lot of targets on Jamar Chase and he gaps Higgins in targets per out because the efficiency is there and no end doubts that he's the focal point of the offense and the star and all of those things. He's a wide receiver one for me for sure. As far as the 101, I guess I do have a little bit of a question relative to the really high end running backs this year in particular. But I mean, if I'm in bestball, I'm taking him 101 because I want to get exposure to him. I'm not going with the market. I'm not going to not be in on Jamar Chase. This is a really, really strong profile. Yeah, there's a top 4 to 6 that are just really strong. Arguably, depending on how you feel about Gibbs and CMC, maybe even a top 7 guys that are really strong and then maybe a little bit of a drop off and a really strong stretch that we've talked about back in the first round as well. I feel similarly, I think he's the 101, but I don't think it's mega clear. He is our 101. I do think there's some stuff to like better about like Adjust and Jefferson in terms of, you know, some of the just the pure volume stuff that you've mentioned. Yeah, or lay out. Some of those guys have some real volume ceilings. But it gets offset with just the perfect offense for him to plan with the play between the play calling and burrow throwing him the ball. T Higgins is going at the 2-3 turn. I have him as like a fine pick there. The receivers get a little weird there, especially now with the Rishi Rice suspension and maybe dropping, well definitely dropping him out of that 2-3 turn. Yeah, I don't have a lot to add on Higgins. Higgins, you did hit on, there were times last year where we had like the target shares on these two guys like pretty close in DFS. And Higgins, it's not like he's not an efficiency play either. So it was nice to see a little bit of ceiling out of Higgins while Chase was on the field. You know, not it just being contingent value, which has always kind of been the case if you've been drafting Higgins. It's like he can still be really good even with Chase there and then you get the contingency value. I think that was this year, but yeah, thoughts on Higgins. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, in 2021, I think it was, he still had his best yards per out run year. And we've been kind of, and that was the the Jamar Chase rookie season. And we've kind of been playing like that's where Higgins ceiling could be. This past year, he goes over two yards per out for the first time since that 2021 season and we see that. But he only plays 12 games again. I want to note, 109 targets really close to his career high of 110 should have gone over the career high. But also it's the fourth time in five years. T Higgins has failed to hit 500 routes because of health-related stuff. I'm not entirely certain how the per game stuff actually fits over 17 games or whether he's sort of reliable enough to get there. I I struggle with this cost because of that and because you're playing alongside Jamar Chase and how high is the ceiling really unless of the contingent contingent scenarios. I will note that Higgins saw a ton of volume and the targets pro out and all those things were really good. But the Higgins splits are really interesting. Chase's targets per game actually dipped slightly when Higgins was out in the five games. He was out. He had more yards, TVs and fancy points with Higgins on the field. Burrows attempts came down a little bit, which is the biggest reason. So they threw more when they had Higgins on the field kind of makes some sense, right. But his efficiency spiked as well. Oh sorry his attempts came down when Higgins was on the field weirdly. But his efficiency was spiked which kind of drove that as the way to say. I said that backwards. But yards per attempt was over a full yard higher which led to essentially fewer pass attempts because they were such an efficient passing offense, more touchdowns, more fancy points with T Higgins on the field. You'd expect all of that. Micah Sikki is the one that's really intriguing because we're going to tie it end as well. His role cratered in the five games Higgins missed. He had a 13.8 PPR points per game. In the 12 games Higgins played. He was at 6.2. His targets were 7.2 in the five games that Higgins missed down to 3.9 in the 12 games that Higgins played. I do think some of that is like they needed him to step up when Higgins was out and now he's established. They talked about him favorably this all season. There's I think the potential that he has more of a role alongside Higgins going forward. But I will note that like the way that I'm playing that in best balls, if I take Higgins, I'm maybe not as interested in adding to Sikki. I mean there's multiple ways to look at that. You could say, well, maybe Higgins is the guy you need in a week 16 and then gets hurt early in week 17 and then to Sikki's the guy you need and then the burrow double stacks work. There's basically any way these things can work. But for me, I think the Sikki ceiling is tied to basically Higgins missing some time. And so I like adding him when I have Chase and Burrow, but not Higgins. And I'm probably not doing like burrow Higgins, Gisikki. I probably want Chase to do it, you know, a full double stack and really go, you know, at this passing game. And if I get Chase Higgins Burrow, then I don't know that I just want to throw Gisikki on late. I'm curious your thoughts on that, because obviously you want them in a fest own. I don't know if they're in the net. There's some of the like over stacking can be maybe a little problematic at times. And I feel like this is maybe one of those situations. Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm I'm probably more likely to take Gisikki than not. If I have that start just because I'm like really betting on the offense and you know, with Bestball obviously not being managed, you don't have to decide who gets what on a given week. Even if guys miss time throughout the season and you're really betting on, you know, some of those playoff weeks burrow having, you know, a three four touchdown game, which can really elevate a lot. And for a late round tight end, it's not like you need a ton. So I'm trying not to be too narrow with it. I definitely get the the point though on Gisikki's ceiling is coming when one of those other guys is off the field. So do you want to draft them all together? Ultimately, I'd probably just bet on the offense and some other chips fall where they may. But I do think that the Gisikki stuff's particularly relevant when you talk wide receiver three because in the past, we've had interest in the potential wide receiver three thinking like, oh, they have condensed route. So they're like, okay, as is. And then if Chaser Higgins go down, we get an expanded role. But really the expanded role went to the tight ends when we didn't have, you know, Chaser Higgins and the lineup as opposed to going to Yoshevass or burden. I mean, they did have increases, but it wasn't this. It was a more spread out increase rather than a huge elevation for the wide receiver three, which has me drafting a little bit less and speculating less on the wide receiver three position than last year. Also, Jermaine burden last year was more attractive scene lead target than then Yoshevass. Yeah, asked at the beginning of the offseason during a Q&A with the Cincinnati acquirer, what Jermaine burden had done to earn a spot on the roster de facto GM Duke Tobin said he's done nothing and he's going to have to start doing something quickly. We knew we were taking a risk. So they're not high on burden and Yoshevass had about a 10% targets per out. Gassicki was basically double at 19.5% and was, you know, factors into their slot equation. I mean, he's like their third receiver. Interestingly also, Gassicki had a good year, almost 20% targets per out. They had three secondary tight ends with 20 plus targets. Hudson, Eric Hall and Drew Sample all had 20 plus targets. Some overlap there due to some injuries, but that's a lot of targets to the non-tight end one when the tight end one was sort of the third option in the passing game. Again, emphasizes that Micah Sicki is essentially their slot receiver. Emphasize all the things you just said. I like Andre Yoshevass. I think he's probably pretty clearly the number three over Burton, based on that quote I just gave, but I would be much more interested in Gassicki than playing the wider receiver role. A wider receiver three role, as you said. I really quickly do want to say as well though that I really like Taj Brookes. I kind of talked about Chase Brown too long, but I'm a little worried about Zach Moss actually getting cut. They reworked his contract to maybe keep him and they gave him more guaranteed money and that's the way that most of the people in Cincinnati were reading that contract restructure. They moved his non-guarantees way down and I think just the fact that Moss was willing to accept that was not a great bet on himself. The Guarantees he got were about 375,000. They're still an issue with roster constraints at the end of the day and I do think they're going to keep P-Rine and I think they're going to keep Taj Brookes. It's a question of whether they carry a fourth back. I think they gave him the more Guarantees as kind of like a nice sign and kind of an optionality sign, but I'm questioning whether he's actually going to make the roster at the end of the day and if he doesn't, again P-Rine probably doesn't have the rush attempt upside as a backup and so Taj Brookes is a late round rookie to me. It's pretty intriguing. You mentioned a lot of like tight end targets to go to non-tight ends. You've got Gassicki with 76, Hudson with 32 and Sampled 19. We're somewhat similar on that spread. A little bit lower base on Gassicki with him at 62, Hudson at 29 and Sampled. at 18, just plays into that wide receiver three conversation a bit, and it being the reason why we're not as high on it this offseason as we were last offseason along with the burden stuff. Let's go to Pittsburgh. We've both got Pittsburgh below average in plays. In our pace metric last season, we had the Jats of the slowest pace team in the league. That's a pretty normal Aaron Rogers type thing. Arthur Smith also is going to run the ball a ton, so it's just hard for the play volume to get above average for Pittsburgh. Gratitude got Pittsburgh at 58% called pass rate. 56.5%. Little bit tough to tell, Rogers team last year was more PRWe positive than expected, but he was also playing with Devonte Adams and Garrett Wilson and it was a little bit of a different offense and obviously a different coordinator. So Rogers isn't really fantasy viable. Most circumstances, I mean, can do some stacking stuff with him late as like a third quarterback if you've got Matt Caffer early. I think there's a lot to say on his fantasy value directly. We'll talk more about him when we get to the receivers though and look at this running back room that gives us Jalen Warren, the guy we've kind of been on in past years is like he's going to catch more passes than Najia and it's more explosive. So if you were to get more work, he's exciting, starting to be concerned that the ceiling's just not there for Warren, we're at 155 rush attempts and 48 targets. You're at 145 rush attempts and 55 targets. Caleb Johnson is the rookie brought in who has a pretty clear runway to the Najia role. If you look at all the running backs on the roster, they've got Kenny Gainwell, quarterback Patterson, these are more Jalen Warren threats than Caleb Johnson threats. You've got Caleb Johnson at 216 carries where it's 200 and four, the average for our target totals is around 30. So thoughts on the RB group here. - It's really tricky because you mentioned it, you're gonna have a negative pass rate or we're expected, you're gonna play it a really slow pace with Aaron Rogers. You're probably not gonna have a lot of play volume overall. So which of the guys is gonna really be able to consolidate what little volumes there? And all know Aaron Rogers' backs have typically always been good in his offenses. He likes to throw to the backs, check down a little, both Breeze Hall and Braille and Alan got a decent number of passes and TDs. He'll throw to him in the red zone, Aaron Jones used to catch a lot of touchdowns. Isaiah Davis had a high receiving TD rate last year as well, the backs with the Jets last year caught some touchdowns. That's probably Jalen Warren. They've talked about his past protection. He'll probably be the third down back. Caleb Johnson didn't do much as a past catcher and grit him up poorly in past blocking, although at Iowa he was like, the whole offense was just like running the ball when Jalen Warren, they played football right at Iowa. Arthur Smith when talking about Caleb Johnson. So that to me, it starts me on the path of like, well, Jalen Warren has more upside. He's gonna play on past downs if he can consolidate some rushing work. When Arthur Smith was talking about Caleb Johnson, he talked about his ability as a volume runner, getting better as a game went on. He referenced his fourth quarter yards per carry as a stat that they liked. When I hear that, I'm just like, all right, Arthur Smith is up to the older there's Smith stuff. They talked about how he's an explosive runner and his breakaway rate was good last year. It was a little weaker the prior two years, but they wanted to get more explosive. And I think that was the sort of a knock on Najee Harris a little bit in moving on from him. I do think Caleb Johnson's gonna be the clear lead overall rushing volume guy. I think the lack of overall receiving and overall play volume is a problem for where his ceiling comes in. Then as you noted, I also get a little concerned about Jalen Warren's ceiling. I think he's gonna clearly play on past downs and Aaron Rogers's backs may catch some touchdowns and some of those things, but I worry about him getting enough rushes. And so you kind of hit on it, but I'm a little worried about the overall play volume and a pretty clear split between the two. If one of them goes down the other one, I think it'd be really interesting, but I don't take a lot of either of these guys probably lean towards Warren. I will note on Gainwell, when they talked about him, they referenced offense, but also multiple facets of special teams. That's about him on coverage. Talked about his tackling on the coverage units. And I think this was Mike Tomman. I think he said he's a football player, which is awesome. Great to hear. Gainwell's gonna be active on Gainday. He's gonna play on special teams, but he also probably is in a massive threat to the top two backs, which is nice to know. Yeah. Let's go to the wide receivers and they trade for DK Metcalf and then trade away, George Pickens, which clears the runway for Metcalf. They have a pretty sizable target share here. I'm a little more optimistic on Metcalf, maybe than the market, just because we did see Pickens into a larger target share than I thought he kind of had in him last year. And I think Metcalf has more of that in him, just as a talent and archetype standpoint. So you've got Metcalf at 121 targets, where 108. And he's been going now like the four, five turn. There's a handful of receivers, honestly, that I like there that you can get Devon Te Smith there. I like George Pickens, but Metcalf is in that group. And when he slips to that four, five turn, I do like him. And I should say, when I made that note on the market, his ADP actually isn't that bearish. It's actually a little bit bullish ADP. It's just I've seen the point made that he doesn't have upside in this offense and I don't think that's necessarily true if he can just command enough of the pie, especially now they have a better quarterback than they had last year. And one that in the red zone has shown a propensity to sort of up the touchdown for a big body primary receiver. Yeah, that was my note on Rogers. I mean, not Scramble as much. Yardsport Temple is in gray, but the past TD rate was still strong. And so I do think that's your path with Metcalf. I in my notes had a couple of things that basically said that. It would be TD based upside probably, and then it's tough to dial in Metcalf's number one share and then what comes behind that. I, for me, the John Smith trade was a pretty big knock on Metcalf because I do think that both tight ends are going to be involved as sort of like co-number two's and potentially combining for a pretty big target share. And I also have the running backs for a pretty big target share for the reasons I said that, you know, Rogers does like to dump off a little bit. I mean, obviously, I'm, Metcalf's going to be the clear target lead and obviously is the number one. It just, it comes down to how big that number one share is as you were kind of just talking through because the past volume overall, the play volume overall, this is a team's going to win through defense. Rogers seemed fine with it last year. He was so slow at the line of times. He was taking delay games. I mean, he's going to play very slow. He's OK with it at this point in his career. He's trying to win a Super Bowl. He's not, you know, cared concerned about like, fantasy stats basically. And Arthur Smith thinks fantasy stats are the dumbest thing of the entire world. So it's not, not a great deep target for fantasy production. Yeah. And behind Metcalf, you've got a smattering of receivers, Calvin Austin, who showed some downfield ability with Russell Wilson last year, Roman Wilson, who we didn't get, you know, the look at that we wanted last year and Robert Woods, the veteran. When they first traded away pick ins, there was maybe some thought that someone could emerge from this group. But yeah, they bring in John O'Neal and I think we're both expecting a lot of two tight-on stuff. I have not-- these guys are completely off the board, I think, in redraft. There's some argument to a late round dark throw on Austin or Wilson. I really have strayed from that. But do you find yourself taking Austin or Wilson, you know, very late or think that someone could? Yeah. No, I think you want a better team environment when you're making just like that kind of a dark throw. I think it's appealing to think that, yeah, he can be the number two riders he run as team. But when the running backs are going to get a high share and two tight ends are going to be involved in the target tree. They're lower down the target tree than it assumes. The other thing about Arthasmas offense that's annoying, they both tend to be low volume. But they also throw targets to like the ninth to the twelfth guy on the target tree. Like the fourth tight end will get 10 plus targets over the course of a year. And that stuff adds-- there's like four extra guys that maybe get 10 extra targets. It cuts like 50 targets off the board that other offenses don't necessarily have. Some of them will. Other offenses will, especially when other offenses run into injuries. But you'll see some of these condensed offenses not have that. And almost every Arthasmas offense has that in addition to low pass volume. And so it just steals from the main guys running the routes that they do these specific play designs for Darnell Washington. They're going to do some of that. Makes it harder for-- and especially when you have Metcalf and you have Friar and with Injano. Makes it harder for Calvin Austin, who's out there running a lot of routes to be more than a 10% target share, which 10% of nothing is nothing, I think. Yeah, let's go to the Titans. And we both anticipate a lot of two Titans stuff. We've got Jano at 68 targets, Friar and with 58. You've got 73 targets for both of them. So definitely curious your thoughts there. And that's more of you having more Titan targets and those going to Friar and with them it is you having-- your total Titan targets are higher, I guess what I'm saying. We both are. similar on Jano, but then you're extra higher than us on firemuth and putting him in Jano with the same volume. That was curious what you guys had on this and I wanted to ask about it because firemuth's younger. He's turned 27 October. Jano is 30 in August. Firemuth had good depth adjusted race. He'll ask your catch rates, TD rates. He's probably a good player. They've talked about him favorably all off season. I didn't see the trade for Jano is like they don't like Pat firemuth. I think they think Pat firemuth is a three down tight end one and then Arthur Smith wants Jano as a tight end two basically. At least my read, right? Like two years ago when he was in Atlanta and had a career high season, Jano Smith, he had 70 targets while Kyle Pits had 90 targets. This team had 160 tight end targets. One Jano had that big role under Arthur Smith and then Jano went to Miami and took that up a notch in Miami in a different offense and a different scheme. Very different type of usage. I don't think the Miami stuff carries over the way that Arthur Smith has used Jano because he also remember had him back in Tennessee is like. You know interchangeable, probably it's a little bit like the Baltimore situation talks about with Andrews and likely like Jano definitely hurts firemuth. But I thought Jano should have fallen a lot more in ADP after the trade than he did. He's still going in a range that I think puts way too much weight on his Miami season. The Atlanta season two years ago again 70 targets not a big season was a career high for Jano and then Miami was a meaningful career high jump from there. But if you go look at his career of receiving production, it's typically been lower. It's typically been he's one of two tight ends and it's situational and he's a good ball and hand guy and we have some plays for him. But we don't think he's like run a bunch of routes and earn a bunch of targets necessarily firemuth probably is that to a degree. And especially in the red zone firemuth has a little bit of a skill set there. It's a tough thing to dial in, but the ADP gap is why I mean, Jano is completely off my board like the mid-around range where he's at. Firemuth still quite a bit cheaper and did slide a little when Jano came in. And I think is at least somewhat intriguing in the later round he had 78 targets last year. Rogers has had some good things to say about him or there's some stuff there that were right where firemuth's trying to buddy up with Rogers at least a little is a smart guy in that regard. Maybe they're locker buddies or something. I can't remember what the note was, but I guess if I'm taking either of these guys, it's definitely firemuth from a cost-adjusted perspective. Yeah, we're we've got Jano a little bit more positively is like kind of a break even value at ADP is not really a target for us, but not as much of a fade. And it's difficult there. I do find myself personally in drafts like preferring some of the volume plays in either Brenton Strange at a similar cost or Kate Auden later to Jano, but I do think there's some positivity for Jano just being able to earn that target to Prat Rony, but that was kind of an outlier and the familiarity with Arthur Smith and just the factor in play a lot of two tight on stuff. And Jano might play more of like the receiver side of things and that two tight end set. But I do think that firemuth points interesting a good note to not like completely cross him off, especially talking about like the 20 round basketballs where it is viable to maybe take four tight ends. We could see surprising total tight end production from this team if the offense is decent. Yeah, the offense is bad. I don't think you either run matter much, but the offense is like solid like the production's got to come from somewhere in the passing game. Most of it's going to be decaying that calf, but I do think the tight ends. You could could surprise a little bit. So mostly neutral here long when you're saying that. Yeah, well, I want to put a little some numbers to some I said, but 70 targets and 50 catches for Jano in 2023 in the Arthur Smith offense. He could be higher than that. But those were career highs. And then last year he was at 111 targets, 41 more and 88 catches 38 more because his catch rate was significantly higher to 38 more receptions than his prior career high in that Miami offense. I think that was probably pretty scheme related and usage related in a way that I agree with you that that year did happen and I could definitely be wrong here, but it's a big jump. I just wanted to give the numbers. It was a big jump last year over his career. It's 30 years old in in August. All right, that'll do it for us. Only one more episode to go on the offseason projection special. Appreciate everybody. We're tuning in and sticking with us throughout the offseason reminder to find Ben's work at Bengrach.subzac.com and all my stuff over at Establish the Run. Have a good weekend, everybody. [Music]

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. The Cleveland Browns have an extremely uncertain quarterback situation, potentially involving Joe Flacco, Jameis Winston, and rookies Dylan Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders, with a likely focus on tanking for a top 2026 draft pick.
  2. The team's schedule is brutal, including matchups against the NFC North and NFC West, leading to the lowest projected points in the league despite a fast-paced offense.
  3. Running back Quinshon Judkins faces a potential suspension due to a domestic violence issue, creating an unclear backfield alongside rookies Dylan Sampson and Pierre Strong Jr., with Sampson potentially emerging as a lead back.
  4. Wide receiver Jerry Jeudy is undervalued by the market and projected for high target volume, making him a potential fantasy value pick.

Summary:

The discussion focuses on projecting the Cleveland Browns for the upcoming season, highlighting extreme uncertainty across multiple positions. The quarterback situation is the most complex, with veterans like Joe Flacco and Jameis Winston likely starting early, while rookies Dylan Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders get playing time later in a likely lost season, with the team eyeing a top draft pick in 2026. This makes the Browns one of the hardest teams to project, especially given their grueling schedule, which includes games against the NFC North and NFC West, resulting in the lowest projected scoring in the league despite a fast-paced offense.

At running back, Quinshon Judkins faces a potential suspension for a domestic violence issue, opening the door for rookie Dylan Sampson, who has a strong college profile and could take over the backfield. Pierre Strong Jr. may also see early volume.

The wide receiver room is led by Jerry Jeudy, who is undervalued by the market and projected for high targets, making him a potential fantasy steal. Overall, the Browns are a team with many moving parts, making projections highly speculative and dependent on how playing time and suspensions unfold.

FAQs

The Browns have multiple potential quarterbacks, including veterans like Joe Flacco and rookies Dylan Gabriel and Shooter Sanders, with a possibility of using four different QBs. This uncertainty stems from their rebuild and likely aim for a top draft pick in 2026.

Despite playing fast, their schedule is very tough, including games against the NFC North and division rivals like the Ravens, Bengals, and Steelers. This leads to low point projections, though garbage time production may boost actual scoring.

Judkins faces a possible suspension for domestic violence, estimated at around five games, creating uncertainty. This opens opportunities for rookies like Dylan Sampson and veteran Jerome Ford to gain early-season volume.

Sampson has better efficiency metrics, pass blocking, and receiving numbers than Judkins, despite being smaller. If Judkins is suspended, Sampson could establish himself as a lead back, similar to Aaron Jones overtaking Jamal Williams in Green Bay.

Jeudy is undervalued by the market; he had strong yards per route run last season and led the NFL in routes run. With Amari Cooper traded, Jeudy is set for high target volume, making him a potential fantasy value.

Ford has shown strong metrics like yards after contact and missed tackles forced, and could see meaningful early-season volume if Judkins is suspended. He's a late-round dart throw, especially for managed leagues.

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