ETE Projections Special Part 8: NFC North with Ben Gretch

[Music] Welcome to Establish She Hedge. I'm your host Mike Meowani back with Ben Gretz of BenGretz. at Substack.com for our final edition of the off-season projection special. We've gone through all eight divisions. This is the eighth today. We will be looking at the NFC North in Ban. Let's get started right away with Detroit. A team that is difficult to project. More difficult than you would think to project given Ben Johnson taking the Bears job, leading to an O.C. switch in Ben Johnson. A lot of the offensive success of this team has been attributed to him. And then a team that was just frankly kind of pegged for some regression anyways. They averaged 33 points per game last year. That was like three more points than Baltimore and Buffalo, who are the next closest teams. Detroit's team total drops actually to a full point behind Baltimore and Buffalo in terms of their projected team total for the upcoming season. It's a little bit closer to league average. I still have them pretty high in touchdowns. So I think given the aggressiveness of their play calling and what not, they're going to be a team that exceeds their kind of median TD expectation relative to Vegas. But still a lot of ramifications for how that will affect game scripts. A team that's generally run heavy but very efficient passing. So yeah, you know, with all that said, if we take a look at the play calling, I've got them at 64.2 plays per game year at 65.2. We're definitely pulling that back a little bit given their run heavy slant and then just some regression. You're pulling it back some as well, just not as much as us. In terms of the call pass rate, we both settled on 57%, which is an increase for them from last year when they were at 55%. It's the last show. So it's funny for me to do this, but the little behind the curtain thing that we talk about sometimes is that we just throw our stuff into this spreadsheet and don't really talk about it until we get on. My big note here is the same thing that you just said that the touchdown scoring is very fascinating. They're now projected for the six most points for a team that last year scored 68 touchdowns. Led the NFL 57 year before, 52 year before that. I've come in hot on my team touchdown projections throughout this process and I have them below 50 at that number with the six most points. And so it was frustrating for me, allocating the touchdowns, not being able to get to 20 rushing TDs and 30 passing TDs because that's sort of what this team is. They're going to rush for 20 touchdowns. They're going to throw for 30. And so that does change a lot of things and I thought that was a great point that you made. I'm a little hotter than you on play volume, but we're both below last year's number and the year prior, which was like, you know, they've been an aggressive team and they tend to play fast. They go four on four downs, they tend to sustain drives at the same time like you expect them to be a little bit worse. One of the big things is the offensive line is going to be a little bit less dominant. Brandon Thornet at the stabs your own or at least his offense and line rankings. Recently, he ranked six. So that's still good, but he notes that they probably won't be as dominant, but the bones are in place for a top 10 group. The interior of the line, they get frake right now, retiring. They lose zeitler or whatever's name is the guard. They could take around two interior offensive lineman to help that, but that's where there's going to be some trouble. The stuff, great tackles, tennis, school on the right side, probably the best in the league from, you know, the O-1 people that know better than me, but that may impact their ability to sustain drives at the same level. And just the fact that they've been so good the last few years is going to be difficult as you noted without Ben Johnson. So all that stuff, a big part of what's going forward. Yeah, and we do get to go off as one of those pass catchers that are pass catchers, passers, pocket passers that we've hit on all series of been a theme, the pocket passers being over undervalued based on what they did last year. He's one that we have as a little bit overvalued well to what they last year. I think his price has come down a little bit since early in the off season, but we've still got him, the QB 16 on underdog with the ADP baked in. He's QB 15 according to them. And someone in your home league sets, you're probably going to go a little bit too early with the TDs likely to regress, but this is a team that should also throw more than they did last year, just given the game script expectations being a little bit different. It's tough to say though, because as strong as their win lost record was, they did get in a couple kind of nutty games like the ones they were trailing with the bills. They have shown that they will throw at least last year under Ben Johnson and when they have to and they get in these desperate situations, it's just they prefer not to be in those situations. So all in all, think off is like slightly overvalued, but I think his pass catchers ironically, you know, doesn't really extend to them, which we'll talk to when we get there. Yeah, I think that's a great point and I agree. I don't think I'm really on goff with the complete lack of rushing. I think you really need to tell yourself the story that the past numbers are, you know, the potential can be really, really high and it has been in the last couple of years, but that still doesn't give you a huge ceiling. But I mean, especially in single QB leagues, I think it's a different conversation for Superflex, but I guess I just don't really think in single QB managed as well. I guess it's a different conversation in Best Balls as well, but single QB managed to me, the ceiling is just not there. Like it's just not worth even chasing. When you talk about Ben Johnson being gone in the potential for the TVs to regress and it's just probably not the year for Goff to have a huge statistical ceiling passing and he has to have that specifically for his, you know, famously profile to work. Let's go to running back and it looks like you're on team silver here with Jemir Gibbs. I bought on the projection. Silva has said that Gibbs is his 101. Gratitude at 241 carries for Gibbs and 167 for my Montgomery. So a pretty wide gap between the two also 76 targets for Gibbs and 38 for my Montgomery. We have a much tighter rush blade, 199 for Gibbs, 194 for my Montgomery. And that's kind of a big question this year is without an injury, how much more do they slide to Gibbs off of Montgomery? And even if you think they do, how do you place Gibbs relative to, you know, the top half of the first round in fantasy drafts? Yeah, I think the big stat for him that's been going around is just how dominant he's been on Montgomery's been out of the lineup in late last season, how good, you know, how good he was down the stretch. He's been close to a 30 point per game back in PPR and games in Montgomery's midst over the last couple years, which is a very small sample. The two games that I think for Gibbs are really instructive and don't always get captured by a lot of people because people will pull out the week 18 numbers and the playoff numbers, but we gave team they had to win to win the division against the Vikings. Gibbs has a foretouch down game, Montgomery not in. And then their playoff game against the commanders, Montgomery's back, but not 100% Gibbs has another monster game. Those are just two of highest PPR games of the season. And so we saw a really huge ceiling at the very end of the year. On June 5th, when Dan Campbell was asked about sort of the the different offense, he said that they tweaked a few things here and there, referencing the new offensive coordinator, John Morton, who was he was under Campbell and Ben Johnson in 2022 with the Lions, then spent the last couple of seasons in Denver. That was the Lions first winning season under Dan Campbell, Dan Campbell's second season. And anyway, when he went when talking more about Morton and what he wants, they referenced James and William, Jimi are Gibbs and the Porta honing him on their versatility and there was this, you know, these quotes that like how many times in ways can we isolate one of those guys, get it in their hands, let them go to work. Gibbs is going to be 23 this year, 22 last year, turn 23 and march. Montgomery for the record is still very good and turn 28 this summer. So he's not like he's old, but he's not too old. His Miss Tackle's Force per touch and yards after contact per rush attempt stuff, which I look at as sort of the peripherals were career high numbers last year. He was really good in the past game. He had a huge yards per target and actually got a really high rate of targets per route. And so he had a 2.24 yards per out run, which is observed for him running back because their eight outs are so low. But he ran less than half the routes of Gibbs, only 152. I think there's an element here where like when when he was on the field defenses were maybe less concerned about the running back for schematically and that helped them kind of utilize Montgomery little, but I mean, not taking away from anything that Montgomery did. He was down to 4.2 yards per carry last year on the rushing side and you have Gibbs at 5.6 that gap widened. He was Gibbs was 5.2 in year one. Montgomery was 4.6. So Gibbs went up from 5.2 to 5.6 Montgomery from 4.6 down to 4.2. And suddenly Gibbs is like a yard and a half better per carry in terms of the you know, the rushing efficiency. Gibbs's numbers are just elite is receiving stuff 8.2 yards per target elite. And then when you have this new offensive coordinator who when he talked, he was talking about Jameson Williams in March and was talking about his explosiveness and then just brought up Jermir Gibbs, unprompted and then comped him to Reggie Bush, which I was like, I kind of love that little note as well where when he's asked about one explosive player, he regoses to Gibbs and then makes a player comp. He's like, I used to be around a guy, Reggie Bush, because he used to coach him apparently. So anyway, for Gibbs, I see the potential for him to take more of the work under a new OC who seems to really like him. The Silva you mentioned, he referenced the Jamal Charles early career with Thomas Jones and Charles III season, yet a 1900 yard season and didn't even lead his team in Russia attempts. Thomas Jones had just a little bit more Russia volume. The next year's when Charles tore his ACL and Thomas Jones aged out a little bit in the years after that. When Charles was back, the 2012, 2013, 2014, those are the years where Charles actually finally gets the full workload. He has a 300 touch season in 2012. That next full season he plays after that 1900 yard committee season, which is what Gibbs just did last year, basically, although Gibbs did get some of the backfield to himself. But Charles did get that going into that next year after that ACL year and has the peak of his career in 2012 and 2013. And so I think those seasons are coming for Gibbs. I think from a talent perspective, he's clearly, I think he's the best running back in the league. I think he's clearly in the top tier of the very best running backs in the league in terms of what he can do as a runner in terms of what he can do as a past catcher. The fact that he's done the things he's done in two years at age 21 and 22, it's just turning 23 in March. It's tough to be, to hate on Silva much at all for having him 101. I mean, this is a superstar. I'm going to hate on it. So I think Gibbs's talent is undeniable, clearly at least in the middle of the first round pick guy. Some of the pushback, like the Thomas Jones Jamal Charles, just kind of misses me a little bit. Jamal Charles, Thomas Jones when he played for KC was 32 and 33 years old. I average like three and a half yards per carry in two full seasons of starter, only saw 27 targets total. This was not the same backfield split that we're looking at with David Montgomery still in his 20s, still efficient and effective and still used in the passing game. It's very different. Also Jamal Charles, the most efficient Russia in literally NFL history. Not that Gibbs can't be that, but I think that the comp over looks a lot of like the actual nuance of the two situations. It's a good take. But the most Jones is Dave Montgomery is not Thomas Jones. I like that. Yeah. Gibbs, if he's Jamal Charles, that's great, but that's the absolute sealing is these Jamal Charles. There's nowhere to go beyond that in that comp. There's no sealing in that Jamal Charles. Maybe there's nowhere to go beyond that. Maybe Jamal or Gibbs becomes that. I mean, Jamal Charles had seasons averaging over six yards per carry. And he had 104 target season as well, which is the one you're referencing. And maybe Gibbs can get there. Gibbs's pass catching hasn't been, I think, as good as people like to think it is or want it necessarily to be. He had 63 targets in 17 full games last year. Three of those in which David Montgomery didn't play. Those aren't big numbers. He had 71 the year before. I expect those to be up in a full season, given this team's going to throw more. And I do expect them to shift a little bit more to Gibbs. I just think the way this team wants to play, there's still productive to be good too, like with all this regression. So I think David Montgomery, you see in those scripts when they're winning, like I don't really see them just maintaining like a 65, 35 split on the ground. And in favor of Jamir Gibbs in those situations. So we'll probably move some base carries from Gibbs to Montgomery. But I think these are all really, really good points. I want to be clear. Like I do think when you take Gibbs in the first round, you're running the risk of him being like kind of a small miss player. We talk about the like the small miss big hit type plays. I like to target. I do think you're on the risk of him scoring. He's going to have a high floor because of all the things that in your acknowledging that of all the things that we're talking about. But him scoring a little worse than most of the other first round players being like a second round type player. I guess from like the way that I play the, I in those seasons, I don't think that's going to kill me necessarily. And then I do think what I'm what I'm seeking or the reason I'm talking about him so favorably as you're seeking. I think it's pretty clear the potential is there for him to break fantasy football. And like that's the part of it where you're like, well, if I get into that season, you know, his age 23 year from his timeline. Now I agree with you, Dave Montgomery's not going to go away. It's not Thomas Jones. I think it's a very good point. And the other thing I, you know, to circle back like put a ball on it, but you comparing Gibbs to be John Robinson who can break fantasy to say, well, I'm part of who just did break fantasy. You're comparing him to Justin Jeffers and Jamar Chase, you know, two of the best past catchers imaginable. We just did the NFC West podcast where we talked about if you project a full season of health for CMC, does anyone have a higher ceiling than him, probably not, especially in full PPR, you know, he's going to beat Gibbs in reception volume for sure. And he's, he's going to have a higher percentage of his team's rushing touchdowns for sure. So that's just the battle for me. It's not that I don't see the outcome for Gibbs. Gibbs ended up second in the NFL in half PPR fantasy points per game last year at the running back position with Dave Montgomery point 14 games. It's not that the ceiling's not there. It's just that is a thorn that these other players who I think also have really lead ceilings do not have to deal with. Yeah. And I'm not, you know, Gibbs at six or, you know, whatever I'm not, not taking Gibbs. And our first round so tight that I know in like in half PPR, we have Gibbs, I think like six and then a little bit lower and full PPR, which again seems counterintuitive, but goes back to that reception volume not being quite really what it was. And I just kind of view Gibbs to me, maybe a little closer to like H and then he is to, you know, B John Barclay types, but well, that's okay. I said, I should have the highest ceiling of anyone. So, yeah, we had a few guys on this series that the highest ceilings of anyone, CMZ H and Gibbs. No, it's okay. The listeners know that you hate Schmier Gibbs. I'll remember that. It's just like I just, you know, the way I play fantasy, I'm not taking Gibbs one or one. And clearly that's not an indictment against Gibbs. It's just. Sounds like it. Trying not to be too cute. I think it's just too cute of a play personal. Okay. I think you want to take him five, six, that's fine, but yeah, I just don't think it's the right play at one or one. It is also interesting how you, you know, comes back to David Montgomery who is surprised, surprised, given this conversation. I am drafting a lot of David Montgomery. My case for Montgomery is he finished last year in per game production at the running back position is RB 13. Now it's not a world breaking performance by any means, but he's going and all the games he played last year involved Jimier Gibbs. Gibbs did not hurt. He played a clean season. So to me, you're getting David Montgomery RB 25 on underdog ADP. That's a big drop off from where he finished last year when Gibbs was 100% healthy. And you know, the contingent value for these guys works both ways. Like, Gibbs is the RB one overall of David Montgomery is not there. I will say that, but David Montgomery also has a big scene. At least the top 10 running back. Gibbs is out there. Yeah. Gibbs is out. So and you don't have to be, you can be pro both of these backs. I think last year that was actually our position. I think we talked about this on this exact podcast. Like you like both of these backs at cost and Gibbs is lost to be clear. His ADP is not 101. It's middle of the first round. And I think that's absolutely fine. And I agree with you. I think Montgomery is a fine play as well. I mean, I do think I think he's a small hit probably, right? And then with a lot of the small hits, you don't get a ceiling, but I think you just made the right case that there's actually a ceiling here as well that is being missed. And so he's underpriced because there's this really dynamic backfield made and he may just lose work even in the base case. I mean, I do think if I was going to counter your counter, that's the one thing that I just think with a new OC, there's the potential that they're just like we have to get the ball and we Gibbs hands more. He's a game breaker every time he touches it. And Montgomery is very, very good, but we don't have to like prioritize getting him touches because they don't necessarily potentially shift the balance of the whole game every time we get force feet him touches. And so that may be a calculation that happens with the new offensive coordinator. But Montgomery, I think, at his cost is going to be a small win almost regardless. He's not going anywhere. Dan Campbell loves him. very highly of him, you know, how he's a heavy runner, all these things. And like you said, we were on both these guys last year and again this year, I definitely think you can be on Montgomery. And it's funny, we both have the exact same combined Russian touchdown projection for the two players, 18.3 combined like to the decimal. We have the same Russian touchdown on Gibbs plus Montgomery. So the backdrop, of course, I do want to mention, you know, against kind of what I'm saying is that there's going to be less fantasy points, probably scored in this backfield than last year. So saying David Montgomery was RB 13 is upside, you know, we do expect him not to be RB 13 again if Jamir Gibbs plays the full season because we're expecting less fantasy points. It's just still. But you get this, you get the scenario where they're the clear one two, the like Craig Reynolds is still the RB three, the RB three's not going to be involved if, you know, like maybe a little bit, but not going to be meaningfully involved if one of the top two is out like they're in this depth chart and this is still favorable offense for running back scoring. So both of their individual profiles like are are strong at the base because they're going to consolidate basically all the running back volume and then include this contingent ceiling you're talking about it. So you, I mean, you can play them both that way. We have to move on before I just have visceral flashbacks to when I would argue with my friends about why Jamal Charles needs more touches than Thomas Jones and they would tell me that Thomas Jones plays an important role and needs to get his touches. There were some heated arguments back in the day. I feel like history has been on my side there. So I'm I'm pro Jamal Charles for sure. It's really the key out. The key point. All right. Wide receiver. We are higher than the market on Amman Ross St. Brown. You've got a 144 targets where 134. I think there's a notion that, you know, he's not a really high ceiling player. The way it's picked out for us is this offense even with regression still expects to score a lot of touchdowns. He's the clear number one. I don't think his target share is really going anywhere. So I'm still very into Amman Ross. It's just, you know, it is a loaded first round. So I get him falling to the back end of it. But I think he's you have very viable selection. It's just tough if you want to take him versus Nico or Malik neighbors. Those are kind of the guys that are going ahead of him, even Brian, you know, Brian Thomas not as much, but Nico and Malik. And yeah, I do worry a little bit about like the overall ceiling. But I'm with you. I'm going to like Cape for for Amman Ross, whenever possible. There's another team that we talked about a lot on the, I believe the NFC West pod recently that there were like a lot of teams that didn't have a lot of wide receiver three plus targets. You get these teams that run a lot of two tight-end sets and are concentrated on their top, you know, wide receiving options and they use a running backs in the past game. There's a couple in this division. We'll talk about the Vikings are similar as well. But Tim Patrick played 16 games last year. Randall Goodamann around. So only had 44 targets. Khalifa, Amman's a rotational wide receiver four. He only had 22. The rest of the receivers had 11. So you have 77 targets total going to the wide receiver three through like wide receiver six. And they're they're tight end three. By the way, only had one target, I believe. And so you have Brock Wright as the tight end two, you know, getting a little bit of volume in these two tight ends. That's occasionally, but you're not incorporating the depth tight ends. They do have some, you know, touchdowns that have gone to like offensive tackles in the last couple of years with the Ben Johnson stuff. So we were talking about the touchdowns may be coming down. For me, I consolidated the touchdowns more on the key players. But the point I'm getting at here is you have Amman on you of Jamison, you have Sam Laporta. And I think that's the extent of the offense. And what happened in 2024 is with Jamison breaking out, we've got to go back to 2023. Jamison suspended for a lot of that season. He comes back and he's not playing the full snap share right away. He finally hits a season high 72% snap share in the playoff loss to the 49ers that year. He broke that 72% number. He's not 100% snap share guy, but he broke that number in all but three games in 2024. So he like last year, very different than 2023. And what that meant was more pressure on the overall targets. Right Sam Laporta 2023 rookie tight end has this monster year. What we saw the Jamison Williams breakout impact was Laporta more. He goes from a 23.3% targets per out to 17.3 in year two. We'll talk about him a little bit more. There's some splits that are maybe favorable for him. But Jamison comes out, has an 18.4% targets per out last year and meaningfully draws targets away. Amman Ross targets per out also falls, but less. It goes from 28.8% and 27.4% in 2022 and 2023 down to 25.0 in 2024, which is still very strong. And I the way that I would say this and the way that I'm kind of talking through this is sticking out of 25% targets per out in an offense with a year to tight end like Laporta who would actually broken out now at this point. And Jamison breaking out is a positive for Amman Ross saying Brown and what he is. This is a legitimate slot superstar. His yards per out run did fall a little bit because of the targets per out falling, but his 8 out actually had risen a little to offset that 2.29 yards per out run still very good. The two seasons prior, he's 2.4 plus. The three-year sample shows that this guy is a superstar and and importantly last year showed that he can succeed statistically in a big way, even in a really concentrated environment where there's a lot of good options. And to my point, I mean Laporta has that great rookie season going into 2023. I think with the Jamison suspension and all that, people were too low on Amman Ross. We liked him on this show two years ago. Going into last year, I thought his price was a little rich because you did have the Laporta breakout already and now you have real competition and the potential for the Jamison breakout because he closed well in the playoffs in 2023 and those things. Now we're going to 2024 and his prices has kind of overcooked to the other way. So to me, the way that the market has played Amman Ross each year has been a little bit off because now we're at the point where he actually established that even with Jamison being good, even with Laporta being good, he's still a dominant target hog. I think he's a really nice play in full PPR especially because you're going to need the receptions to really play out. But there's so many good profiles, as you said. So I understand why he's slid a little bit as far as the pricing is concerned. It doesn't make him a bad play. He's not a boring play in the second round. Yeah. And your point maybe like the true true like 90, 6% tile plus ceiling isn't as good as some of these other guys but really high four play, you know, which isn't a bad thing, you know, necessarily. So let's look at Jamison. You mentioned he broke out in a real way last year. He's had an interesting offseason. I don't even remember why the vibes at like the very early portion of the year, like even before drafting season started, weren't that great. And then there were some really positive quotes from the new OC and the team and what not. And the vibes seem to like completely shift overnight from negative to positive on Jamison Williams. Another guy that Silva likes a whole ton. We've got him kind of like a neutral value, I guess, which is, you know, happens with a lot of players. I know it's a boring side of things. We've got him at 94 targets. You're at 102 targets. Very similar fantasy output between the two of us on Jamison Williams. Yeah. The one big note other than what I had said about he actually played a full snap share all last year. Stay's healthy. Has a really great season because he's really efficient in addition to the 18.4 targets. Browdy mentioned not being super high. The big notice is a dot fell from 16 point out the year prior to a much more like average 11.6, which really he still gets the the deep targets, but it's signal more underneath targets. Many were on drag routes to use his speed horizontally. And he was really great after the catch. And he didn't even necessarily break a bunch of tackles or anything or have a high evasion rate. It's just like they were good at getting him on the run, catching the ball. Now, some of that could have been Ben Johnson. I'm like mildly concerned about the impact without him. But when you hear the new OC constantly talking about how explosive he is and wanting to get the ball to him, you know, you still feel pretty favorable about that 11.4 yards per target on a low eight. It is really, really good. I think there's some volume concerns to him overall, right? But I also think there's contingent upside here. It's kind of similar to the running backs where things are so concentrated. If either Laporta or Ammonon were to miss time, I do think it just means that they would have to focus more of their offensive. They're passing game on to Jamison Williams. So I think overall, like you said, a nice play. And part of the reason the volume is concentrated, we don't really have a clear wide receiver three that's going to make a meaningful dent in targets. Creativity of any interest in Isaac Tesla, late round rookie, as part of Detroit Stacks, just given, honestly, for me, I've taken him some is just like, I'm blindly taking a rookie with uncertain depth chart on a team that's going to be good, not even so much about anything to do with Tesla specifically. Yeah, I mean, round three draft capital, probably a big part of that. Definitely athletic. Had a huge yards per target last year. He had a tiny target targets per how do you think in college of 13.4%. Brad Holmes, the GM, talked about how he really liked what he saw at the senior ball called him a pass. He was like, you know, annoying the deep, the DBs and these things. It seems like He was sort of one of these senior bull guys. We see these guys every year and some of them end up being good in the NFL for the record. But got out there with the other competition at the senior bull and made a name for himself a little bit. I have a hard time when you struggle to earn a lot of volume in college, but at least the yards per target was there. I guess I think early in his career, especially because of how limited the White Receiver 3 production has been in the last few years and because they liked the Tim Patrick role. I'm projecting Tim Patrick to still run the most routes as the White Receiver 3 because he's like a run blocker in those. I kind of see Tesla as the handcuffed to James and Williams to make sure they have an explosive like manufacturer touch guy if James and were to miss time or something. But my concern is when he's actually out there running routes that it's maybe a lot of empty routes, a lot of like running off safeties because of that limited targets per hour. I think there can be some explosive plays for sure. I give him good efficiency numbers, but I do have him for a few fewer targets than you guys. You guys aren't projecting a huge volume season either at 38 targets and I got him at 27. It doesn't, I mean, it's possible that he hits a little bit, but my worry is even if he hits on some of these explosive plays, it's like a two catch 45 yards and one touchdown game. That's why I'm mostly just using him in stacks as far as it's supposed to like an upside rookie I'm taking all over the place. Love a tang just dropped a note in our slack from a Dan Campbell press conference today. Believe me, David Montgomery is not forgotten. We know exactly who he is, where he is and what he's capable of. And the one two punch with he and Jimier Gibbs is special and it's a rare in this league. There's a place for David. He's going to help us and we're going to use him and we'll use he and Gibbs together. We'll do some of those things. We know he's one of our best offensive players. It's not changing right now. It's just the note on the Gibbs Montgomery. Big, big moment in the series right there. I think Sam Laporta at tight end here is undervalued. It's hard to say that two macro just because the tight end 80 p's are all over the place by sight. That seems to be like one of the positions that like really varies a lot. Sight to sight. Like everyone has them as the tight and four, but where the tight end four goes is very different. On both FFPC and Underdog, we have him as a value. Started out the year with a really sketchy role. It was kind of odd. Not entirely sure what was going on. It was here where you have to say, but he did close this second half of this season really well. Was more consistently around a 20% target share. If you get a tight end even close to that and then the efficient offense, he's a very high TD score year in and year out. I think he's, I don't think he's, I don't think his rookie year is priced enough into his current price. Yeah, I'm not the most recent season, but I'm in a Laporta. Yeah, so to that long view, we like to talk about sometimes. This is a guy who was a really good prospect. Had a great rookie year last year was a little disappointing, but he's very good at football. He's a good tight end. You want to be in on him. He was an active week 11 prior to that. That's a one-gamey mess prior to that. This season, I was just six targets and that had come just in the, I think he did it twice in like the three weeks leading into that week 11 in active the first like seven or so weeks. He was even below that. He averaged 3.6 per game prior to week 11. After that week that he missed, he hit at least six targets in each of the team's final eight games, averaging 7.25. So that was the season I prior. He's hitting in every single game after you asked, you know, kind of what my read on that was. I think it's fairly straightforward, actually. I think it's the James and Williams thing where this is a guy that they really wanted to get back in the fold. Former high end first round pick, they took them in, you know, first half of the first round, a couple years prior, had all these issues, had some, you know, off the field issues with the gambling stuff. He's got, got suspended the year prior, late in the season, started to come on. They talked him up all off season. They really want to make a point to get James and Williams into the fold. Early in the season, they were doing so much to make sure that James and Williams was going the right direction in 2024 because he was a key part of their offense that they weren't really doing anything with Sam LaPorta. And that's just kind of what happens to tight ends sometimes when the receivers are really hitting in an offense. You already have almond or all same brown. You have the running backs as key players. They get asked to block a little more. All those things can happen to a tight end. But the key point is that they basically course corrected within the season in 2024. That they're like, yeah, I mean, we still have a really dynamic tight end in Sam LaPorta. We don't want to stop using him. And then in his final nine games, he had six plus targets in every single game. I mean, that's to me validates what you said that he's undervalued. I came through the projection feeling even better about it. The numbers that I gave earlier about his targets per hour really falling from year one to year two, still not in a terrible range in year two. And then if you split it as the first half and second half of year two, obviously would be much better in the second half of year two. He's not going to probably be in the really strong targets per hour market share range that he was in his rookie year again, because that was a year where James Williams was suspended. And then I've been playing a ton when he came back. But he's going to be better than he was last year. I agree with you. I don't think the 2023 season's being factored in. And when you kind of average those things and put them in it, it's not a great tight end class. I mean, it makes him a pretty strong tight end for the season. And I like taking them if you miss out on one of the big three. Yeah. And the weird context with Detroit is on one side, you've got Ben Johnson gone and maybe a little bit more risk on these guys, systemically than we're talking about. But at the same time, you don't have depth. Wide receiver three through five. There's not much there. Beyond La Porta at tight end, you've got Rock, Rock, Shane, Zillastra. These aren't players that are going to be involved in the same way that La Porta is if La Porta goes down. So that's always a good team. And indicator for the other key pieces from the running backs to Amman, Ron, and James Moe and everyone here. Yeah. That's a great point. La Porta's production last year was purely because of other good players in the offense, but he has contingent upside as well. I mean, if Amman, Ron misses or Jameson misses, you're talking about La Porta playing a big role right away. He's a core player in the offense. Let's go to Minnesota. In terms of play calling, we're pretty close here. I'm at 63 plays per game here at 62.5. Called pass rate. We're both right around 62%. J.J. McCarthy is one of the quarterbacks that I've been most in on at cost in Bestball. Redraft, you know, it's tough to do single quarterback redraft strategy because you do start to wonder about like pure ceiling stuff here. But in Bestball, where you're drafting multiple quarterbacks, I think he's very undervalued. We've got him at 7.5 yards per tenth. You're at 7.9. So it seems like you're reading this similar to us where the combination of the play collar, the skill players around him, the dome environment, all that, probably going to keep J.J. McCarthy up and probably propped up Sam Darnold a good bit last year. I think it propped up, Darnold. I think we saw in the second half of the year the overall passing volume and production got a lot worse. Like Justin Jefferson finished with a career low 2.5 yards per out run. It was just 2.11 in the final nine games, including the post season, which I have as a cutoff just because it relates to when Jordan Addison started to seem more volume late in the year. But I do think that the defense has sort of found out, Darnold, a little bit in the second half of the year. But overall, you get this really great season. I'm with you. I'm in on McCarthy. I think you're talking about McCarthy being a potential upgrade on Darnold, the way that we've talked about with some other young quarterbacks taking over. I think I talked about it with Penex and Cousins and essentially Cam Ward and Tennessee over Will Levis, which is more straight forward. But Bo Nex last year, over Russell Wilson, the year prior, as an example, where I think K.O.C. felt handcuffed by Darnold late in the year. I think K.O.C. is a really sharp coach. And I think one of the very best young coaches in the NFL, they've gotten this team to over perform the last couple of years. And one of the issues is they actually didn't have a great offensive line necessarily last year. And they were still able to kind of get Darnold to really produce despite Darnold not being great under pressure necessarily. They really attacked improving the interior of this line. They bring in that fries or freeze guy from the Colts and Kelly, the other guy from the Colts, he drafted a first-round lineman. Their tackles were already like decent, but they have like this really good core now. Brandon Thorn noted he only didn't have them the top tier because of continuity issues. But they pretty clearly have the upside to have a top three offensive line. And now you have JJ McCarthy coming in behind that. If I think the best three receivers, including Hawkinson, I guess top three group in the league, because I think Addison's a little bit underrated, obviously having Jefferson in that group is key. And then Hawkinson being a really high on tight end, you know, in the second year off as an ACL. I think you have really dynamic weapons there. You have a dynamic running back in there and Jones out of the past game. I mean, the last finish I want to say I'm McCarthy. I think there's this vibe. He's a rookie QB. It feels meaningfully different because he's been in the meeting rooms all year. And one of the big things in February, the GM, Quesiodofo, Mensa called, he called JJ McCarthy conversational in our offensive language, said he understood the why behind the thing, all these things. That wasn't actually the point I wanted to mention though. It was that KOC reportedly spent an hour with Gigi. McCarthy every week last year, blocked off time in a busy schedule for one-on-one meetings to keep them engaged in the development, sort of that long-term planning. Despite the fact that they were obviously trying to win in 2024, but that was cited as a reason that McCarthy has gotten to this, you know, more advanced understanding of the playbook and those things. I think, again, gets back to me believing that KLC is a really sharp coach. I think that was super-forward, you know, looking and forward-thinking and smart to spend an hour a week. His coaches don't have a ton of time. They have six days between Sundays and they've got to install a whole new game plan and all these things. But he blocked off an hour every week to make sure he was, you know, keeping JJ McCarthy engaged, even though McCarthy was on IR. And I think it's going to be pretty darn helpful going into year two that he's not a rookie quarterback, that he's been around the offense and what they're expecting and what they're seeing on film and all those things for a full year is very favorable. Yeah, and I mentioned the positive play call or two to put numbers on it. Minnesota was actually third highest in the NFL on our numbers in Passport over expectation last year. Now the PRIE came down league wide, so it wasn't a huge number, it was 3.5%. You know, they were closer to just as close to the middle of the pack as they were to KCN Cincinnati, the true outliers there, but it's still notable. In the year before, when they had disaster, actually disaster at the QB spot, that Josh Dobbs coming in, not knowing the playbook, they had Jiren Hall in there at time, Nick Mullins, they were plus 2.5% in PRIE. So like that's who they are. I think maybe there's an inkling that they're going to, you know, rookie quarter back, they're going to take it easy. I don't see that happening. They've also been above averaging pace, over expectation and neutral situations the past two seasons as well. We get another interesting running back split to talk about here, Grach, Aaron Jones versus Jordan Mason. You've got this split a little tighter than we do. We're at 186 carries for Jones, 141 for Mason. You've got it 179 for Jones, 163 for Mason, but you've got a bit more in the target department for Aaron Jones at 63, we're closer to 50 and about 20 for Mason. So a little tighter in carries, not a crazy amount. We both do have Mason with the higher rush TD rate of this duo, which kind of makes sense. We think he could take some of that goal line role a little bit from Jones, but I have a tough time evaluating these San Francisco running backs when they move on. The yards per carry stuff for Mason, incredible last year. So I'm curious how you read this room. Yeah, no, I mean, I think that's a great point about what Mason actually is. There's a lot of quotes that we got on the Mason stuff in the off season. So I'm going to mention a bunch of those, but Koc said he's a big fan. So anyway, he was also sorry, this first quote's about Aaron Jones. He said he's had his best one we can keep him fresh. He called Mason a perfect fit, not only to pair him with Aaron, but schematically with what we want to do. He later said on Jones when he has historically had that 1a 1b backfield structure, he can be a total game changer every time he touches the ball. And then importantly, he emphasized Mason, when talking about Mason, he emphasized goal-to-go, goal line short yardage stuff. Shout out to the coach speak index discord, right? I grabbed a lot of these quotes, but he noted they struggled there last year. They had just nine rushing TDs last year, one of only four teams below 10. And surprisingly, the other three teams all had losing records. This is a team that won a bunch of games, right? And yeah, weren't able to run the ball. It does seem like they brought in Mason because he's one of these heavy backs, like the David Montgomery thing they see in their division, and they want him to be able to run in the red zone and those things. They like Jones a lot. They talk about him as a Koc mentioned, particularly his work in the past game and as a past protector. So I mean, I do have a big, I actually have a wider gap on targets than you guys. So I have a big role for Jones in the past game. I do think they're going to use him as a dynamic player in space. But I do think like it's going to be pretty situation specific to a degree, not entirely because Koc has also said that they don't want to be like too obvious what they're doing. He said that Mason probably doesn't get enough credit for being a good past blocker. So they have talked about potentially using Mason in the past game as well. But just a lot of those quotes that they've brought up and then the fact that they really improve the interior of the line, I think it's really favorable for Mason. Mason's the one that I really like playing here. I love Jones and I do think he's going to have a lot of targets. I think he's, I love his dynamism and his potential to score a lot of fantasy points quickly. And I do think he can still have a red zone role on the outside runs and on the past stuff. He's caught a lot of touchdowns over his career. But I just think I think Mason's pretty underpriced based on all these comments and I do think they're going to use him quite a bit. I think he's got the potential for a strong rushing TV role. And I do think because they really upgraded the interior of this offensive line and do want to be able to run the ball to a degree that Mason's, especially they both have contingent upside. This is similar to Detroit and Thai Chandler still the RB3 here. They didn't really like Chandler last year. The other quotes that Koc had was like we had to get a second running back because we didn't have one. But I think they're going into this year thinking they have like two running backs, not three or more. Very similar to the line stuff where they both probably have contingent upside on each other. But I think Mason's in the case where Jones might miss could be pretty meaningfully strong because he could, you know, he could really be a workhorse behind a really good offensive line. Yeah, I'm definitely making a no on that. And the way another matter, no, we do have. Aaron Jones, a little bit more favorable. I think relative market than Gretz does, but the no on Mason being under price. It's a different cost on different sites under dogs got these two price a lot closer together. And FFPC, they're like two four rounds apart. So that's, yeah, I've seen them as for as far as like three to four rounds on in some drafts on some sites, which is, yeah, I mean, that's one I think you really want to be on Mason. The last thing I was going to say is just they didn't give up a lot in trade to get him, but the 49ers had put a second round tender on him. So if anybody signed to Mason, they had to give up their second round pick to the 9ers, it basically said you're not we're not going to do that. But once that that tender expired, he would have been I think able to be signed elsewhere and they were never going to be able to afford him really. The 9ers have like they let D. Bo go. They let a lot of guys go this off season. Financially didn't have the ability to really do that with Grendo looking good and CMC under a big contract. They didn't really have the ability to give Mason the contract he deserved. So anyway, the Vikings, rather than waiting for that tender to expire or anything went out and traded not great draft capital, but I do think that's important context in terms of what they did trade. They traded for him to make sure they were the ones to get him on their roster and then gave him the contract. And so I do think the the draft capital is maybe something that that that went and traded is something that's being held against Mason, maybe a little bit for some people, but there's some context around that with the tender that like I think they actually wanted to go out and get him and you know, I think that's favorable. Justin Jefferson, you've got for 161 targets, what 141? Clearly top half of the first round player. We talked about Chase in the recent episode when we talked about Cincinnati and Chase just the efficiency there and the willingness for Cincinnati to throw so much as him as probably the top overall player, but I wouldn't fall anyone if they had Jefferson one. You know, I was a little more lukewarm on Jefferson beginning of the off season, but sometimes I feel like we put like our true, true feelings into these projections on Minnesota. They could be like extremely optimistic on Minnesota, which would be more past the time with an even more pass efficiency for JJ McCarthy and Jefferson to me is the best wide receiver in the NFL. They use them at all depths. He wins at everything, touchdown upside, big playability, high catch volume, everything. So I think he's ahead of CD for me and like kind of a 1B to chase. I love the way you said that. So my note was that Jefferson came out behind CDMI projections in terms of the raw like PPR points, but I wrote that I'm not aggressively playing that way. It's a reflection of more offensive uncertainty and JJ McCarthy's efficiency, whereas Dallas projects as an easier team volume and QB efficiency combination mostly just due to like the length of the data we've seen there. So I like had this really minor note to myself that like, Liam has situational downside from what's probably somewhat of a favorable projection. Jefferson has situational upside of JJ McCarthy really hits basically what you just talked about. Just like just in terms of where I'd shade like their ranges relative to what those projection numbers actually were, which for me is I come to one number. You talk about you guys use do a better job of trying to capture the whole range of outcomes and use like stealing cases and those things. But if we really did get into like, oh, what happens if the Vikings really hit? I mean, I do think I agree with you. This is a team with the way that KOC has coached and what he's gotten out of the different quarterbacks that you listed earlier and the fact that they upgraded the online and all that stuff. There's a potential for a really great year in Minnesota for sure. I'm projecting. a pretty big gap between Jefferson and Addison. I do think the third game suspension for Addison is that we were kind of expecting, I guess. I probably hasn't been announced yet, but I ended up leading you, or what have you, you'll have better information than me on that. But I do think that's meaningful 'cause I do think it's worth noting that late last year Addison's age 22 season, there's some JSN with Addison, where he's a 21 year old rookie in 2023. Age 22 season, he really takes off in the second part of that season. Guy already has 19 touchdowns through two years. He actually had a better 21 year old rookie year in 2023 than JSN. He's going into his age 23 season. Those final nine games I mentioned earlier when Addison really started to take off. It's as similar as that to LaPorta. He never saw, he saw more than five targets just once through week 10 last year, and then he never saw fewer than six after week 10, including the post season. That meant that in that span, he had a targets per route of 20.6%. And Jefferson was actually quite a bit down from his normal numbers at 22.2%. Their volume really converged. Jefferson had 80 targets over those final nine games. Addison had 70. Obviously, Jefferson has a way better long view and we think Jefferson's potentially the absolute best player at the position in the NFL. So I'm not projecting it that way to be really, really close between the two of them. I have Jefferson at a 28% market share. Addison for a full season, I would project at 21%. So I'm projecting a pretty big gap. I do think that's a meaningful note with Hawkinson coming back in his second year off the ACL that there's two other really good players in this game, and I'm at least a little bit aware of that. Yeah, and Addison is, he goes in a range, we're honestly, I'm like really drafting wide receiver heavily. So I get a good amount of Addison and Bestball thus far. I don't necessarily have him like way ahead of the receivers in his range, but I'm comfortable taking him, the suspensions in Bestball is not that big of a deal. That's when your team is healthiest. Those are the three games. If he's gonna miss three games, those are the three games you want him to miss. And there's not really a risk of the role reduction. When he comes back, you should slide right in. Behind him, there's not a ton either. You get Jalen Naylor kind of as a slot play. Curries view of any thoughts on the rookie Ty Felton there, and if he can challenge Naylor for playing time. - I think he may. I basically think they're both gonna play a little bit, and then I mentioned this when we did the Lions, but this is another team where very little wide receiver, three plus of volume last year. Naylor had 42 targets. Only two other wide receiver saw targets at all. They combined for 19. So 51 total between the wide receiver, three plus, even fewer total than what Detroit had. They're gonna be a little bit of opportunity when if and when Addison is missing the first three games, a little bit of opportunity for these guys to maybe get a foothold. But Addison missed some time last year as well. And Naylor was doing a little bit. So I mean, the fact that he finished with only 42 targets, I think really gets back to this point that this is gonna be a concentrated passing game on Jefferson, Addison, Hawkinson. I really like Addison too. As you said, I do think just to wrap up what I was saying, the favorable stuff that I don't, I think the perception of him right now is highly influenced by sharing the field with Jefferson, both in terms of what he's done so far. We're not accounting for that enough. And kind of discounting is sealing into the future, whereas I think if Jefferson were to miss time, I think Addison would be the clear number one. This is a former first round pick I wanna bulletin a coffin college, was really good in two different colleges. And then it's been really good immediately at the NFL level with multiple quarterbacks. And even cut into Jefferson's targets late last year, even though I just said that, I'm not discounting Jefferson on that. But that's a very favorable note on Addison that late in his age 22 season, he's taking target share from Justin Jefferson in a meaningful way. 70 targets over a nine game stretch. And so this is a really good 23 year old year three receiver after it gets back from his suspension. And because of that, I don't really have a lot of interest in the wide receiver three I can merge in. - And with the volumes of concentrated, I do have interest in TJ Hockinson. Similar to LaPorta, just think these two guys, as a parent kind of underpriced a little bit relative to the market, you've got Hockinson at 112 targets. We're at 98 targets in terms of tight end premium points, like FFBC, you're at 226, we're at 202. I end up taking them a lot in Bestball, where it ends up being, I wanna get this right, but in terms of the round that it's in, he goes pick 88, so that's what round is that, Gretchen, help me. 88, it's the eighth. - Yeah, it's like the eighth round there. The beginning of the eighth round, first 30 eighth round, beginning to the middle of the eighth round. And at that point, a lot of times, I have not taken any week quarterback or McBride or somebody. I've got seven running backs and wide receivers on my team, and I wouldn't say I have a huge, like, have Hockinson is way undervalued compared to the receivers there, but with already filling those positions of need, I find myself taking a good bit of Hockinson over, you know, Michael Pittman types, you know, at that point in the draft, or Darnal Mooney at that point in the draft, and those are two receivers that I like to be clear, just from a roster building standpoint, you do get some upside from Hockinson. This concentrated offense that is going to throw more than I think people give credit for Hockinson to someone that didn't have a great catch rate last season, but he was at 60, or he was up at 75% the year prior, and you remember last year, you know, he missed the beginning of the season with injury. Yeah, I like Hockinson here as age 28 season. - Yeah, very good short season for a guy coming off an ACL, 19.7% targets per out is good for a tie down, 7.7 yards per target in his normal range, good, not great, 1.52 yards per out. He looked more like the Detroit version of himself than what he had done in the early Minnesota years, but again, coming off an ACL, and all of those routes came during that stretch. I mentioned where Darnal was getting found out a little bit more by the league, at least as far as, that's my opinion. If you follow that opinion, obviously I mentioned Jefferson had some significant splits over the second half of the year. Addison was coming on a little bit, but I think there were meaningful concerns. Certainly the last two games that Darnal played in the Wegate team lost to the Lions, and then the playoff game, he looked really pretty poor, and the team was ready to move on from him at that point. So that's the version of the passing game that Hockinson was running all his routes in, and looked decent in. Yeah, I'm with you. I take a decent amount of him. He's another one that I think, if you miss out on tight ends up to that point, I'm like, well, this is probably the last best good profile. It's kind of how I feel when the port is there, then it's kind of how I feel when Hockinson's there. - Let's go to Chicago. A team that, very early on in the off season, I was worried was maybe a little bit overvalued. The prices have come down. I feel like since the beginning of the off season, they didn't add a lot to the running back room, and I find myself really wanting to buy into the uncertainty here of a team with a quarterback who was the clear number one pick in his draft class, entering year two, with what seems to be a pretty massive upgrade at head coach, particularly on the offensive side of the ball with Ben Johnson coming in. So there's different ways to attack this, though, even if you like the offense, you might disagree on the best way to attack it. In terms of play calling, we both have Chicago slightly above league average, we're at 63.5. If you've listened to the previous versions of podcasts, Ben's noted that the league average did drop last year to below 63. And in pass rate, you're at 59.5%, we're at 61.5%. Team did run the ball a lot, obviously in Detroit. They're not, Chicago not expected to be in his favorable games. The transcripts is Detroit was, is kind of why we have it leaning a bit heavier to the past, but we're still relatively close on those numbers. And what it nets out after scramble sacks and everything is we're both at like 32.5 pass attempts per game in about 28 rush attempts per game. We're very close enough the final output there. - Yeah, I thought I was going to be maybe too high on the pass right here. I was kind of unsure where I wanted to land on it. I like your guys' number. It's kind of what I'm going at. Their PROE last year in Chicago did wind up negative. The Lions, obviously under Johnson negative. But I kind of agree with you that the circumstances point toward potentially being a little bit more of a pass forward team than either Chicago last year or Detroit last year where Ben Johnson comes over from, which is not necessarily the expectation when you look at the data and the situations and typically. - And do you want to note here was Chicago too off the outset. The O'Line was an issue last year. Dorn released his O.L. rankings has the bear seventh says they made the most significant improvement among all units from last season. - Yeah, Brad and Joe Tune from the Chiefs. Brad and Drew Dahlman, I believe in the Falcons, Jonah Jackson. So remake the intro. entire interior of the online also had it around to tackle for depth like a bunch of online improvements. This is a team that is really like one of the hardest projections. I at the top of my notes, I just have some like overall notes sometimes and I have like five for the bear sometimes I don't have any for a team. I have like five for the bears. One is that I don't really know what to do with Chicago of 2024 data because I was really down on Shane Waldron and Matt Eber Flues and then they get fired in season. They leave a poorly conceived offense without any leadership which arguably it never really had. I mean, it's a brutal spot for a rookie quarterback. The market has a middle of the pack here for 2025. So the projecting significant improvement relative to that. I think with the different players and you bring in two rookies in Colson, Loveland and Luther Burton. It's a really hard to dial in the target shares in this past game. It's also really hard to dial in the carry shares in this run game. The other random overarching note, Ben Johnson has talked this off season about Caleb Williams history, dating to high school being in shotgun. They want to try under center. That's Ben Johnson's offense. The offensive coordinator also mentioned this. They want to pair their run game with their past game with their under center stuff. But both Johnson and the OC said we're going to see how Caleb Williams does with that and then we'll maybe have to rethink some things. Basically, they're like, we don't know if our quarterback can run the offense that we want to run. They're obviously very committed to Caleb and have a lot of very favorable things to say about him, but he's just never really done a heavy under center offense. So that's something that they are going to find out in training camp and in the preseason and could be a meaningful storyline throughout their season that needs to be thought about. The final low high level note I have, Leonie, is that in the pre draft discussion, Ben Johnson was talking about passing EPA being important to winning games and that they want to inflate that number with a higher completion percentage and run after the catch opportunities. Obviously, added some of those profiles in the draft. I think that's a really important thing that the way that he's thinking through the past game. I just talked about James and Williams when we did the Lions had his A dot come way down and had a bunch of you run after the catch last year in Detroit. That's something that Ben Johnson's going to bring to Chicago, I think, as well and get to the point of their past rate, maybe a little higher, but with short passing opportunities and some of those things, extension of the run game stuff. So how this offense is going to look, you mentioned the online improvements. I mean, how this offense is going to look is very up in the air, very hard to parse. It's definitely going to be better than 2024. I do think we can really strongly say that and that concern about Walden and stuff. That's in the numbers as well. There's a bunch of numbers from last year that suggest that the offense was just really bad. Let's go to, actually, I guess Caleb, let's talk about fantasy value for him. He is sort of at the start of this range where I really love taking quarterbacks in Best Ball. We have him as the QB 10, but he goes off ADP wise as QB 12 at pick 109. And that's where I'm really like these three quarterback builds in Best Ball. You can get a bunch of guys that we've liked over this series that go between ADP positionally 12 through 22 at the quarterback spot that are very stackable that have, you know, maybe not top five upside, but QB 6 to 12 overall upside. And I'd include Caleb in that stretch. And he kind of starts him in fields to an extent start the quarterbacks in one quarterback leagues that I'm interested in if missing out on the elite grouping. Yeah, he's kind of a, you know, prey that the profile shines through in your two kind of a pick. And I think that's a little bit like for, you know, how bright youngs your tool, to mentally went, but I do think we can be a little bit more optimistic that his rookie season was just purely situational. He missed a lot of throws last year. I will note that he missed a lot of throws. It could have been big plays. I'm a UW guy, but and so maybe I'm a little biased towards Roma, do you understand? But I will note that a lot of those went to a doonset. He missed the whole shot between a cover two, quarterback and a safety like five times last year that could have been long touchdowns. And it was like four times to Roma doonset and then once to to keen an Allen where he's just like sailed this throw that they got open down the side. And it's like one of the few plays that actually worked effectively for the Bears at times. And Caleb just kept missing that throw. I don't know if that's just being sped up in the pocket because of everything else that was happening all season. And they're not typically being open routes. But I mentioned there's some stats that support this offense being really poor. One of them is Caleb Jones. Caleb Williams took 16 more sacks in any other QB last year. Now some of that's on him holding the ball too long. But some of that when you look at the individual profiles of the receivers is on the fact that like the routes concepts could not have been very promising from the fact that all of them were way worse in terms of stuff like targets per route. Like if in some of that does drive back to okay, you're the sacks and chicken before the egg kind of a thing. If they're running routes and not getting a target, that's because they're not getting open or that's because Caleb's holding the ball too long and not seeing them. Or what have you, but every player in this offense basically had what Roman June says a first round rookie who has a 1.18 yards per out run. That's not great. But I think requires context. Keenan Allen's per out data targets per out way below his previous numbers. Okay, maybe he's just old. Whole commit as they're tied in massive career low and targets per out. He's around like 10%. Even way below his age 21 rookie year, he's never been below like 16% targets per out. So he's just apparently running a ton of empty routes. DJ Moore, 7.38 dot career low. He got a lot of quick hits, but he had been up at like 11.9 in 2023, which is above the wide receiver average. Two of the three years prior to that, he was at around like 14 a dot, which is well above average. Those are his final years in Carolina. It's not as typical profile. They have a 7.38 on. It's also like the only reason he caught 70% of the passes that were thrown to him, but Keenan Allen's at a 58% catch rate. Roman Dunes is at a 53.5. Again, like not good in terms of even the catch rates. To me, when you have everybody in the in the offense showing like meaningfully career lows in some way, DJ Moore's a dot being way down here. We're not getting in the ball down the field. Keenan Allen's targets per out being way way down here over his career. Yeah, maybe he's just old and bad now, but also Roman Dunes a as a first round rookie, not being able to do anything. Also, Cole, come at like supposedly right in the middle of his prime as a young tight end, having per route data that's like 6 percentage points below is, you know, previous career low. That to me speaks to the offense, probably, you know, the route concepts, probably not being very favorable, which I mean, yes, Caleb also misses throws in those things, but I think it's leads to and he holds the ball too long and all that, but it leads to, okay, here's why I'm taking too many sacks. Here's why there's all these issues. And then also you just think about what are we talking about during the week and how are we making adjustments and all that stuff in a rookie year? Apparently Shane Waldron didn't want to watch a game film with him. And then again, it's fired in season. They had coach gets fired in season. So you don't have who's now coaching the team who's coaching the quarterbacks and like, what it becomes a really tough situation to expect Caleb Williams to rise above. And so I do think sometimes we give too many caveats and too many, oh, you know, this wasn't his fault. You know, get too defensive of players, but I do think this is a situation where when you factor in all of that and then you factor in that in Ben Johnson's numbers, he has shown his offense his numbers and ability to create great opportunity for pass catchers and great run after the catch and all of those things. I think the hype behind Ben Johnson is valid based on what you see in his offenses and you see the improvement in the offensive line. You see all of that. The situation goes from zero to 100. I mean, it goes, it's, it couldn't be a bigger switch in terms of what it means for Caleb Williams. So I'm in on him. It's very hard to tell what he's going to be this year, but I'm in on making the bet. Yeah. We see that similarly. I am glad you brought up though by him missing throws because there is a risk element here that maybe he's just not, you know, as good as we all hope to be and expect him to be, but ultimately the uncertainty, probably in our favor that goes to receiver DJ Moore, starting to fall to like middle of the fourth. I've been in on that. We've got him for 111 targets and 202 full PPR points. You're at 121 targets, 217 full PPR points for Roma Dunes. We're at 101 targets. You're at 98. You've got a bit more in the way of Luther Burton, where at 69 targets, you're at 81. Burton's interesting too. If you had asked what the biggest ETR fade was two months ago, it was probably Luther Burton without changing anything. We're now ahead at ADP on Luther Burton. It's completely come back to us. Now I'm drafting him and I know people think it's boring, but it's not like a binary in out on some players. There is like a cost adjusted point at which you're willing to take the risk and not willing to take the risk and at that point, the point that it's gotten to now, definitely willing to take the risk. I'm not sure how much at ADP drop is due to the soft tissue. He had a mini camps that injury, but he's expected to be fully ready by the start of actual training camp. There's a lot going on here. Roma Dunes ate the disappoint year one, but amazing draft capital and could be a sophomore. Bounce back. All these guys get the benefit of the coaching upgrade. So lots of digest Ben here. I've been buying all the past catchers just because I've been trying to not a single one crazy above the other, but just collectively a little bit overweight at their current prices. Yeah, agree. I think at Dunes A maybe is the one that I'm like, I have the hardest time with because even though I think that 1.18 yards per hour requires content. It was a really high rate of uncatchable throws. I do think it probably also reduces the peer ceiling. I think the concern with him as a guy who was in like an early declare, he got really good draft capital, but he was a four year player was that he might be very good and polished, but not great. It was very somewhat similar to Corey Davis years ago. Had a great collegiate profile, but because he was a four year player and goes in the top 10, he winds up. I guess the concern would be does Roman Dunes a his career look like Corey Davis is a little bit, which is good, but not living up to the top 10 draft capital. I basically essentially another guy who wasn't an early declare and needed the four years in college to get to that level of draft capital. Basically is the way to think about it. I think I'm probably a little bit concerned about the peer ceiling for a Dunes a at this point, and particularly in an offense where the new regime comes in and. Grab's two pass catchers in the first and second round, right? And so. Burden has had this off tissue thing that's caused the price to fall, but I do feel like he feels like a smash going through the offseason quotes again relying on coach begin to. It's a lot here, but Ben Johnson talks pre draft about wanted create easy easy pass opportunities. And then post draft he's gushing about Luther Burton stop and start his ball in hand is playmaking. He calls him explosive the offensive coordinator comes in and calls him explosive. All this stuff about Ben Johnson creating these run after catch opportunities for James and Williams where James is eight ought really fell last year and got him those opportunities. You got the running backs in Detroit really involved in the past game and I do think you know I think we skipped the running backs here, but they're. I was so excited to talk about Caleb. I did we will. But I mean, I think burden factors into that as well because the big knock on from prospect people is that too much of burdens production and college was manufactured. And I and that's looked like other busts in recent years like like the McEel Harry stuff and some of these guys, Loviska, Shenaltz and these guys and I've liked a lot of them. Burton's production, I mean, not even like necessarily through the roof, but was good. It's notable that he was supposedly a really high end prospect at a high school and had really good offers but decided to stay at Missouri because kind of his homeschool never transferred away had opportunities to and then had to play with sort of like worst quarterbacks as a result. And maybe that's part of why his downfield stuff never really materialized the obviously still gets good draft capital. I guess my whole point on him is you have all this stuff in the profile, the prospect profile that's concerning that oh yeah, a lot of this is ball and hand stuff. And then he goes to a team where the coach is like we want to do all the ball and hand stuff and we drafted Luther Burton because that's what he does. It's really hard for me to see him not being a huge part of what they want to do as they install the offense. I think the big question is how big is his role, but I'm pretty confident Luther Burton is going to have a role right away in year one. And I think people are probably too caught up in the limitations of the profile and not seeing that there's like real ceiling here too if he also has downfield stuff if a dunes a is kind of a bust if you know DJ more is an issue. The more thing I talked about the low eight out last year that the thing that's been thrown about with him is that there's some body language stuff that quote by the way came from DJ more himself he was acknowledging that he was told by Ben Johnson. The body language stuff just can't happen and that it was nipped in the butt and he was basically coming out and saying. You know it's not going to happen again I'm not going to let it happen again I think that's a pretty notable thing to where it's not a coach talking in the media saying this guy has bad body language it was the player saying. This is how our our new coach wants to do things and it was you know interesting it's a different approach and I'm on board like I'm not going to do it again I'm you know I'm totally fully on board so I mean I'm not taking anything negative about that as far as DJ more is concerned. But again just a ton of uncertainty I mean he's and he's one that I don't mind taking in the range where he goes but a lot uncertainty with you know multiple young receivers behind them. Yeah as far as the personnel allocation here. And we'll do running backs at the end because I think it just makes sense to talk about the tight ends now while we're talking about the wide receivers because the loved ones one of those you know recupacters that they add they also have cold commit. We see what's the breakdown between two tight ends stuff versus three wide receiver stuff you know if burden breaks out. Is that at the cost of a dunesay is that at the cost of Baldwin commit because they're playing more through wide receiver stuff. It's difficult to sort of discern and you you've hinted at that but let's talk about it more in light of you know giving the tight ends involved in the conversation here. Yeah the the lions ran I think the third most two tight ends sets last year the talk after they drafted leveling was they definitely want to be able to do that in Chicago Ben Johnson's offense wants to be able to feature some of the two tight ends sets. Loveland gets great draft capital has a really interesting per out profile like a really high rate of targets per out last year for a tight end. I also think what's going over looked a little bit is the raw production is not that great it's in a lower overall. Volume passing game and then loveland just didn't run a lot of routes he never ran more than 273 routes in a collegiate season which is a concern because he also has a shoulder thing that he's been missing the whole offseason program they're hoping to have him back by training camp. I do think he's going to play plenty but Ben Johnson said at one point this offseason the tight ends a second hardest position to learn behind quarterback he did right after that say that loveland has a capacity and that it shouldn't be a problem. But you have caught commit another capable young tight end and they're talking about the two tight ends sets and all those things I'm interested to see that we were both really close on the loveland and commit stuff because loveland came out a little below 80 p in mind and I. I felt like I was pushing him a little bit because I am concerned with an offseason injury and a profile where he never ran big routes volume in college how we get to a the rookie tight end stuff is real and the coaches acknowledging it's a hard position to learn how we get to. Big routes as a rookie I do think people are pointing to ben johnson with sam la porta a few years ago sam la porta by comparison finishes college career with back to back 300 plus route seasons in a low volume iowa pass game he was very clearly more of a full time player than loveland was at michigan last year michigan also kind of a low volume pass game but. There's very clearly loveland was more of a part time player loveland gets hurt in the season last year only plays 10 games but to just put some stats on what like the per route data was crazy 37% targets per route but is yardage totals in those 10 games because he's not really running a massive amount of routes 112 was a season high 87 83 70 67 41 i'm going down from best to worst 41 was his sixth highest yardage total in a 10 game. Season where his per route numbers again look fake there's their massive but he's below 41 receiving yards in five of those 10 games he he did catch three plus balls in every game and again like it's important that he has a really strong profile and got really good. Draft capital but relative to that and relative to his 80 p i'm concerned about him as a year one tight end being a monster fantasy piece. Yeah i have concerns about the monster ceiling we do like him a bit more relative to 80 p similar projection is you on him were both around 160 165 tight end premium fantasy points 77 targets but. Quite often your projections are a little more optimistic so when we're the same on a guy we're all we're kind of implicitly a little bit. Higher on the guy it is a tough projection for sure i think just baking in some upside of the offense the draft capital and we might switch some stuff from him to burn in here and you talk through it i am you know. Reconceive bias to have a conkey my mind is like the monster per route guy that we're concerned on volume and then they just used him in the NFL and he was able to do it tight end as you know is a different position johnson notice the position to learn so. It's it's tough on loveland i'm buying but not. At a crazy high clip is ultimately what i'm doing here i like those points and i do want to say like i'm not going to not draft loveland because of the things that i said i'm concerned relative to where i'm always really in on rookies. And he has monster draft capital i think everything you said is really favorable and important to keep in mind. Yeah i don't want to be like completely out on a guy that they took this high and i think really like it took him before burden right burden was a second round pick. It's a little odd that i'm like oh yeah they have a clear role for burden and not for colson loveland in your one that's not the way that the draft capital went right so anyway i'm with you i think he's definitely someone to just bet on the uncertainty and the upside of the per out. Sealing it's just you know relative to all that i just i have a hard time in the projection. Yeah it's an easier bet to make if you are willing to spend a couple of spots at tight ends you know in a redraft league to kind of see how this plays out. In a redraft league you're giving him i think at a cheap enough cost that he's essentially free in a redraft league in basketball i can convince myself that i'm just building the tight end room in the correct way to take on the risk. It is generally how i talk myself into it let's talk about the running back though because it has been noted i actually just skipped over the running back position this is. a hugely important position. Our ranks are a little bit low on Swift and Roshan. I find myself drafting both backs ahead of our ranks. There aren't a ton of players where I'm you know, D8 from our ranks. This is a spot where I do. You've got Swift at 195 carries in 63 targets. We're at 185 carries in 45 targets. So definitely lighter on the volume, especially the pass catching. Roshan, we're at 117 carries, we're at 115. We both have him for about 24 targets. And then the rookie Kyle, I'm going to butcher his last name, Managi at 60 carries for us. 72 carries for you. Ben is smirking at me. And I've been saying Mananga. Mananga, that's sounds better at the very least than whatever I said. Mananga, I guess that all in jokes aside, like, is this guy going to make it then? You know, we like to ban rookies on uncertain backfields, but it's not a highly drafted rookie. They don't add anyone else though, which really good for Swift and Roshan. I've been generally a Swift sucker over the years and just seeing how much fantasy production was in that backfield in Detroit. I find that I find myself willing to wish cast a little bit here, which is why I end up drafting these guys that have our ranks sometimes. I was going to ask you, because I thought the projection would make things clear. I'm glad to hear that you're kind of in on him, but it doesn't sound like you have a lot much clarity. I was going to ask you if this is another one of these Jop the Shark situations that you famously nailed on Josh Jacobs a few years back where the situation seems so favorable. And we have liked the Andre Swift in the past. But the flip side of it is like Swiss peripherals weren't good last year. His Mistakles 4 stuff notably created Roshans were also bad. Mananga is not actually, I mean, if there was a rookie running back here with a really good profile, that would be fun. But I mean, this is a guy who, he gets some positive stuff for past protection, but he's a bad receiving back. He did not have 100 receiving yards in any season, four collegiate seasons of like playing. He didn't have a hundred yards one time as a receiving back. His targets per out stuff for a running back very low, even, you know, just never really use that way, I guess, but also his like ball and hand yards per target after the catch stuff very poor. Like didn't do much of anything as a receiver below average. Rass like poor 40 time despite weak size, poor shuttle. I do think there's like a little bit okay stuff on the rushing side. But they've also had some comments that they there's a lot of things they need to coach up with him was one of the early offseason comments. They later said that he's picking up stuff quick. I mean, I probably want to have some exposure to the to the late rookie here and he needs to at least be a part of the conversation because this is a like you said, very favorable running back situation behind a remade offensive line with Ben Johnson calling the plays. Swift played under Ben Johnson for one year. It was 2022, I believe. He only got 99 carries. He did get 70 targets. So like you can take that favorably or unfavorably. I'm not entirely sure. Jamal Williams got 262 rushes at a 4.1 yards per carry that year. That was 100 over Jamal Williams previous career high and he's basically been done since that year. So they're giving a ton of volume to basically a replacement level back. You did have a bunch of touchdowns that year. He had a 4.1 yards per carry. Swift had a 5.5 and got 99 carries relative to that. But again, the 70 targets is the favorable flip note on that. I guess I think Swift is probably the clear receiving back. Rochon, a big back has been praised for his past blocking in the past as well. Like Minongi, but was it very good in the past game? I think you kind of have to project a decent amount of targets for Swift, which is the thing that probably tips me over to yeah, he's probably a fine play in the end. But there's some similarities to previous dead zone backs where we tell ourselves that this is a good play because the situation's good and there's not any other good backs on the roster. And sometimes guys can come out of nowhere. This it would not surprise me if the Bears are a team that somebody that is I have not named one of these three players winds up having a meaningful fantasy role at some point this year. The very first year I did dead zone research. I had talked about Alex Collins had a top 100 fantasy ADP the year prior. And UDFA Gus Edwards came out of nowhere to have 150 carries in a meaningful role. And that's always kind of been a point of, you know, what we're looking for in this dead zone running back profiles. Like Mike Davis and Atlanta comes to mind a few years later. Somebody did point out to me that typically those are guys who have never been the starter in an offense. And at least Swift does have some credentials in that regard that he's been the lead off lead back in offenses. And he had 250 carries for this team last year. And so maybe, you know, maybe this time around Ben Johnson's going to give him the bulk of the work. There's a part of me that thinks he's going to give the bulk of the work to Rocheon Johnson. I do think there's going to be kind of a one to punch here. And Johnson's going to be as Dave Montgomery is heavy runner because Johnson's a bigger, more physical back. But and it's also worth noting, by the way, Swift's only going into his age 26 season. Rocheon's going into his age 24 season. There's only a two year gap between these guys, both born in January, like almost to the day. The whole thing is really difficult for me to project, but I'm with you that there's more value here than these guys ADP, which I think is all this uncertainty is being reflected in the market. But I think you got to take some bets somewhere in this bet. That's where I think like, and I'm, you know, relaying notes to our guys as we talk through this. I think it's our ceiling case that might be light on these guys. Especially like the basic efficiency we have for both players is pretty low, but we've noted the O.L. improvements and Ben Johnson being here. It wouldn't be shocking to see like a half yard per carry jump, you know, in the yards per carry on these guys and then a big jump in Russian touchdowns. So I think I just want to bet on, you know, these ceilings are pretty good for where they go, and you know, willing to take some chances. There, Swift does go like similarly to David Montgomery. So it's kind of an interesting way to pit these two where, you know, Montgomery has the ceiling if there's an injury, but the base values much more shared than Swift. Swift doesn't necessarily need the injury to hit that ceiling, but the base value is much less assured because as you said, with the dead zone stuff, like maybe he just doesn't get the punches even though if they go through August and they're like, okay, Swift's fine. We can play in the passing game. We really don't like what we're seeing from Roche on Johnson. Kyle Menongai is not ready. He's going to, I mean, this is a round seven guy. We're going to have him on the practice squad. This is a team that could add one of those late August cuts and have that running back come in and actually start to play. Like last year, Samosha Peeer and got cut from the Broncos and the chiefs picked them up. They didn't end up using him a ton, but we've seen those types of moves matter in the past. Not a ton, but it's possible to me that Ben Johnson's like, oh, the lines, I know the lines, Deb, chart, they got to cut somebody. And he's like looking at somebody on the back end of Detroit's running back room as he's going to bring him in. I mean, he just was coaching there last year. So it like would not be out of the question for somebody who's not on the roster to take volume from these guys as well. So there's risk there, but it's still, I think the prices are pretty solid. I tend to go towards the cheaper prices, the option cost being lower on Roche on and the rookie Menongai. Let's go to the Green Bay projections. We're at similar plays per game under 62, a little below the average for Green Bay. Have them about 58% called pass rate, which is below average. I've heard some rumblings that we could see love, throw a bit more, was battling the injuries and stuff last year. I'm a little skeptical of that take. It just seemed like there were a lot of opportunities down the stretch. I remember we were projecting them for DFS where like this could be the week that makes sense for them to throw the ball more. They just never did seem like they really wanted to rely on Jacob. So I'm playing it where if that happens, it's a bonus for me because I do like some of the Green Bay pass catchers, but I think it's a little risky to assume that from the jump. It is, but the extent to which their season was limited pass attempts is notable. Third few as passes in the NFL, ahead of only the Ravens and Eagles with mobile quarterbacks, a massive shift to a negative 8.4% pass rate over expected in 51.8% pass rate over 2023 where they were like 0.002 to the positive on pass rate over expected in a 60.6% pass rate. So they drop about 9% and that's the average points both in the over expected and pass rate essentially 8.5% and over expected. So you get this like pretty huge, I mean adding Josh Jacobs is the big note there right in between those two seasons, but the pass rate being neutral in love's first year starting I think is meaningful. Thormin noted in his pace right up that they were last by a mile in situation neutral pass rate at 47.9% which gets back to some of these other teams that were actually down there with them and pass attempts had mobile quarterbacks and some of that stuff, but this team is like as far as having like a pocket passer, they're just calling runs every single play and it's not what they did in 2023. So I'm probably buying it more than you in terms of thinking that it had a lot to do with love's injury and health. And you know, you get like a rolling stone gathers moss kind of a thing. You get this, this is the way we're playing offense and so we're gonna keep playing offense that way, element. When asked about it this off season, like what their offense is gonna look like this year 'cause they're asking them these questions. LaFlor said that they like, they don't know. They're gonna try to figure it out. So I do think there's probably too much optimism that they're gonna throw more 'cause LaFlor's comment was straight up like, we're gonna figure out how we want our offense to look. Which is, I mean, I think that's sharp. I think that's like smart that the team is taking that approach. I talked about with some other teams, like the idea of like fitting talents, the scheme versus fitting scheme to talent. Like this is a team that's like, we're gonna see what we have and then build our offense around that, call the plays that, you know, that work around that. And maybe that's back to Jacobs. I mean, Jacobs was really good. Yeah, and to be clear, we are both projecting them to pass more than last year, 58, 50 and a half percent. In the Jordan love games, they averaged a 54.7 percent pass rate last year. So we're expecting a mock. The Malik games really brought it way down, right? Yeah, the Malik games were insane. We're just not expecting it maybe to come up quite as much as I've seen in the market. I think there's potential for that, but not building in above average or even a league average pass rate relative to GameScript at this point, still expecting them to be a little bit minus PROE. And we both got Jacobs getting a lot of the work. You've got him for 265 carries 43 targets where at 241 carries 43 targets. I know last year some of the offseason was well the floors you split back fields in the back, you know, they're not gonna give Jacobs the full workload. He gets it, pays off his price tag. This is a tough one for me because he, I've been taking him in round three, even in the beginning of round three, but of the backs I'm taking that early. It's probably the one I'm most worried about 'cause there is a pretty big dependency on volume, but the floor does seem to be able to generate a high floor for this offense kind of regardless of situation and it does just seem clear that they want Jacobs to be an integral part of that. At the same time, it is a volume dependent back. At this point, we're not getting a ton of the efficiency from Josh Jacobs in terms of big plays and whatnot. And, you know, those types of backs are someone concerned. I say he's volume dependent. He was at 4.4 yards per carry, which I know it's not the best metric to view things, but it is better kind of than I guess I recall than in my memory. - Yeah, he's like a really good success right, Russia. You're right, he lacks any rate of breakaway runs, like really low rate for like a heavy volume, like running back. I mean, most of the leagues, other high end running backs that get this kind of work have higher breakaway run rates, like 15 plus yards, rate of rushes that go for 15 plus yards or what have you. His evasion and yards after contact stuff was improved last year, he's still good. 260 plus touches, all six years of his career, a true workhorse is probably not too old yet. He just turned 27 in February. Krishmick Afery had 2000 yards at 27. Saykwan Barkley was 27 last year with his 2000 yard season. Derek Heterney was 30 last year. He had 300 plus touches each of the last three years, 28, 29 and 30, ironically to this discussion, he did get injured in his age 27 season, but clearly, you know, wasn't too old at that point. Kamera had one of his bigger seasons in the later part of his career at age 27. He played 15 games, which for him is basically a career high. He's only been over 15 once way back in his rookie year, had a big year at age 27. I, Jacobs is fine from an age perspective. I think he's probably in line for a huge workload again, as you say, but he is a volume dependent back in the ways that you said. I completely agree with that. And they do have good backup, so I'll note that. Like, I kind of want to be in on Marshawn Lloyd. I still like the talent profile. We'll need to make that bet some. They're talking about like what he can still bring to the offense. This isn't like the Kendrick Miller thing, we're like the next year, the Saints are like, we don't like this player anymore 'cause he couldn't stay healthy. Like the Packers are like, we're really excited to see what Marshawn Lloyd can bring. Again, this off season. And beyond that, Emmanuel Wilson was very good last year and Chris Brooks was in kind of like a third down role and was very efficient as well. And so now you have the reason I'm not super into Lloyd is I think the RB three and RB four question here is more impactful than a lot of the other places. Emmanuel Wilson, Chris Brooks, these guys are actually probably gonna play a decent amount. But it's all like, it's enough talent behind Jacob's that when you get to the point of him being a volume dependent back. And there's only 72 targets for the running backs total here last year. They were also under 123 when they threw the ball more. Jordan love pushes the ball vertically. There's been a lot of talk of getting like, Tucker craft more involved in the short area of the field and these things. So I don't love the running backs to be a big part of the past game either. So it is a little tricky. The touchdown rate has been really high though and was really high for Jacob's last year. I think that's the play. And I think you like him more non PPR formats. Yeah. If you are taking him. Definitely. I've taken some Marshawn Lloyd late in best ball. It's an easier redraft play though where if he doesn't win the RB two job, you know, it's a drop. If he stuck on your best ball roster, that's a wasted pick. If he doesn't win that job or at least win it throughout the season at some point. Structurally, I'm kind of just trying to avoid having too many of these really late running back picks right now because of that. But I do take Lloyd from time to time. You mentioned they have some RB depth very manual Wilson was solid last year. And it's not a given that Lloyd, just because he's the younger back is going to get that RB two job over Emmanuel Wilson. Receiver, we have some-- we have a big discrepancy on Jaden Reed. So I want to talk through that. You've got Jaden Reed at 113 targets. We're at 77. This is probably one of the bigger. So last team we're doing it might be the biggest target discrepancy we've had the entire series. So definitely interest here your thoughts on Reed. I'll let you talk through them and then kind of note why we have him where we do. Yeah. I mean, as far as this being the last team, I do think Jaden Reed may be one of the most important players for fans he footballed this year. And so that's-- we'll talk about him. He started hot. He said, does the past rate say he was still over two yards per hour run for the second straight year where the jump in efficiency, his 8-Ot was higher. He's produced in a lot of different ways. He got 20 Russian attempts last year. What's weird is in the off season, they talked about him wearing down. There'll also coordinate how to comment, again, shout out to the Coach Begindex that had a comment that he wore down a little bit late in the year or that was sort of what they thought in terms of-- they wanted to keep him fresher in these things. I think it's interesting that they brought in Savion Williams, who's a guy who can probably take some of that work. And be a guy who-- I'm sorry, I'm noting in our spreadsheet or I'm seeing in our spreadsheet that my projection for him didn't populate for whatever reason. But I haven't projected to take a lot of the rushing work off Jaden Reed's plate. I wonder if the fact that they talked about Jaden Reed getting a little worn down had to do with the fact that he got 20 carries last year. Because what's weird is he only had 389 routes in 17 games. It was actually down on a per-route basis from his rookie or he had 387 in 16. So it's weird to me that they talked about him wearing down late in the year. I think it's very possible that I'm too high on Reed. But I think what I strongly believe is the clear best talent in this wide receiver room when you look at the back-to-back years of 2 plus yards per-route run and getting their different ways. His target sprout came down. But his yards per target shot up last year. It's very reminiscent to me of Debo Samuel 2021. Going into his third year has not run a lot of routes. This is the same as Debo was going into his third year. Has had his usage a little bit pigeon-hold. And people are talking about that usage as being limiting and then the usage opened up for Debo. The positive note on Debo was the per-route stuff. He had been a 2 plus yards per-route run guy two years in a row. And we talked about it at the time. Our buddy Pat Grayen had a cool stat that the guys who start with 2 plus yards per-route both of their first two years basically all tend to be superstars. And Reed has run enough routes to at least hit thresholds over the first two years. But like Debo has not run a ton overall. Has had been limited those first two years. And I think it's masking what he actually is as a player. The ball and hand stuff is all great. He has great like evasiveness and like after-contact stuff. And again, they manufacture touches for him. They give him rushes and those things. But they're trying to find ways to use him less, which is why it's kind of odd that I have him for so many targets this year. But he actually-- another one, Matt Harmon is really on him at reception perception. And he noted that he ran a huge number of post patterns, like one of the highest rates of post patterns in his sample, of all time in his sample. So they actually do run Reed down the field some. And early in the year, he had some big plays down the field. And that stuff just kind of disappeared late. I think that's why they drafted Matthew Golden because obviously Christian Watson coming off an ACL. They have some issues with the down the field stuff. My read is what the Savedon Williams pick. They may be trying to lighten Reed's load around the line of scrimmage, potentially using him vertically more. The big knock on him is he does. doesn't play in two receiver sets. And that's the point that people keep bringing home. And I do think is fair. But as the, I guess I want a bet and a uncertainty there, because this is a guy who's only played two seasons and it'll cross the first two years that might have been the way they used it. But going into year three, there's always a potential with sending players that their coaches rethink the ways that they want to utilize the player. I don't think it's impossible that they could think that Jayden Reed's a guy that need to get out there in two receiver sets, especially with Christian Watson and Andrew, right? And I think, you know, Don Tavian Wix was a disappointment last year and Golden's a rookie, Dobbs had some concussion issues and things. We're going to talk about those other guys. But if they think Jayden Reed is one of their best players, just because they haven't used him in two receiver sets up to this point, which by the way, is fully baked into his prize, I don't think that it's impossible that they wouldn't change that. And if they change that, it's a lot like another, you know, breakout from 2021, when Cooper Cups routes suddenly spiked that season, his efficiency spiked as well. He went on to have the greatest receiver season of all time, not saying Reed's going to do that. But there's some of this stuff here in the Per Out profile and the actual peripherals and the ball in hand and all the things Jayden Reed does. And the fact that he actually does run more vertical routes and he's good down the field than I think people realize. I think he's kind of just a gimmicky player. He's not. This is a receiver that can do everything and just has not run 400 routes in a season yet. And if he does and if he gets the opportunity to play in those two receiver sets, I think at his price, he's fine if he's not running in two receiver sets. I think that's over baked in. He's too efficient. He's too good. He's going to have a high enough floor. He's still a good pick there. And then if he does run in two receiver sets, then all these people that are unwilling to draft him, because they're so confident his role can evolve in year three are going to look, they're going to really regret that, basically. I mean, if his routes really jump. Yeah. I don't know if it's fully baked into his cost or I would disagree. I do like Jaden Reed and we do take him. I think we'll probably up his ceiling target share. In the case, he does play more. It's concerning to me that he was so successful on a per-route basis again, and they still wouldn't give him any more of those. He ran two wide receiver sets in 2023, 4% of the time, and in 2024, 6% of the time. So it's a very low number, two years in a row. You mentioned only two years, and he's had a great start to his career. So they could definitely do things differently. But it seems like they prefer other guys on the outside, including even though Don Taving works with disappointing. He ran a lot. His player participation overall is a lot less than Jaden Reed's, but he played 55% of two wide receiver sets. From your doves is over 50%. They draft Matthew Golden, who I think will play in those. And even Bowel Melton and Malik Heath, Bowel Melton, who switched positions, played 29% two wide receiver sets. So it's a very conscious coaching decision to not have him in two wide receiver sets thus far. You're definitely right that it could change. It's interesting to me how even these wide receiver 4, 5, 6 on the team are leapfrogging him in the two wide receiver sets. Yeah, that's not great. One of the things we talked about on the show the last couple of years with this passing game is they went and got a bunch of young receivers. And then they kind of let these guys grow together. All those names he mentioned, young players, including Christian Watson as well, who's rated two wide receiver sets. I'm sure it's very high, too. I guess I think that they may have had that limitation on Reed because they had enough other guys. They wanted to give opportunities to. But once you see multiple years of underperformance, really. With like Wicks earned volume, he got it a really high rate. But he could not translate targets into production, 5.6 yards per target. Dobbs was actually quite a bit better. A guy that you were higher on than me last year. And definitely were right on. He was very strong, just the concussions ended up being unfortunately a problem. But he was like their best player in routes per game, had a career high yards per target at 8.6, had a good year for sure, other than the health stuff were a problem. I guess I feel like that could have some of the stuff that drove the two receiver set trends in the past. The way that I would look at it to be probably too optimistic is that there's only room for that to go up with Reed. You're telling me-- Well, there is only room for it to go up. I mean, that's-- But I guess the question is the probability-- we want to play the uncertainty, but we also want to be aware of the probability that goes up. Last year, I thought it was maybe a 50/50 shot that went up. Now I'm thinking it's like 15%, 20% shot, that it goes up. Probably a little higher than that. But what do you think is sealing as if it goes up? Well, that's the other thing I want to get to. The targets per out run stuff-- he was at 21%. Dobbs was 22%. Watson, 22%. Craft, 19%. Jacob's 22%. Melton, and he's 22%. This is the target per out run. Very spread out. He was awesome on a perturret basis, but it's not like he was-- and then wicks up at 29%. Which is really the only guy who elevated in terms of target per out run. So it's not like Reed was earning a ton of targets, even in the three wide receiver sets, relative to his routes run. Yeah, so his targets per out were 4% of his points higher as a rookie, and they fell way down. But then he offset that with really strong yards per target efficiency. And we usually see the efficiency lead to more volume. So the way I'm reading that is the two sides of the yards per run equation. He got there as a rookie with pretty good efficiency yards per target after the target efficiency, and a stronger target earning rate. And then this past year, it was flatter to your point. I completely acknowledged that. But then he was also really efficient in yards per target and actually raised his yards per out run, even as his targets per out fell meaningfully because of how many plays he made with the ball in his hand. So I mean, I guess I'm not completely discharging that. I'm just saying sort of long view, long view, whatever. One of the guys that he got comped to a lot as a prospect was to fond digs. And to me, a somewhat reminiscent of the first couple of years of digs career until he got a fuller usage and things got a lot more exciting in his profile as well. I'm not certain he's going to be a star. That's why I was saying, I think he could be one of the more meaningful players in fantasy from the perspective that if these trends, like sort of foretell a really long career, you could be talking about year three being a really good break out season. I mean, there's similar names, the Dibo and the digs comps that I'm giving, they looked like this after two years. Very similar to this in my opinion. - Let's go on to the other. And also, I'd note that I'm drafting read at cost. I'm just not ahead of ADP as far as Ben is. I do kind of prefer golden depending on the room, just taking it back on the wide receipt, the draft capital early for golden and the opportunity there with Watson likely out most of this season, Gretchen's Watson for 27 targets, we have 21, so expecting him to play maybe a little bit back and of this season probably doesn't make a meaningful dent into this room, but it is notable that when he does play will be playoff time for fantasy playoffs. - Yeah, that's tough for golden, right? Oh, start going. Well, you know, golden or dobs potentially tough for those two, but I think if golden hits, it's not gonna matter and if he hasn't hit, like the situation that it matters, it probably didn't go the way you wanted it to go for golden. Golden definitely much lower floor than Reed though. You mentioned the Reed efficiency. He's gonna be solid because of that per route, or per target efficiency that he's been pumping out, it's gonna be hard for him to be bad, where his golden is a bit warm and unknown. I just like to take that shot, given the capital, ungolden combined with probably more upside in terms of routes run. And then you see him relative to where you were on Brian Thomas this time last year, if you can remember that. - I'm not nearly as high. I'm not nearly as high. I was very high on Brian Thomas. Thomas just seemed like he was a great prospect. I don't know, the prospect stuff for Thomas was more favorable than gold. You can speak better to that than me. I think the prospect was more favorable. I also like, this is a receiver room that might just turn out that nobody matters a ton because they run the ball and they spread the ball out of time. So there's risk there. The guy I draft most, once again, is dobs, just because he's, it's got 75 picks after reading golden. And I think he's the favorite to run the most routes, which it's a boring argument, but that's, and you mentioned he was like kind of fine on a perturget basis. He's the one I do most, but again, the distinction between basketball and redraft, I think he's an amazing basketball pick where you're getting pretty solid production that you can't get elsewhere at the point in the draft where he goes. It does not necessarily lead to the ceiling that you're looking for in redripe. a lot of times in Redraft, that's like a bench spot that you're just devoting to an upside stash at that point. So you'd rather turn it off. Yeah. Yeah. You'd rather turn this job. Yeah. He's like a roster clogger in Redraft. I grew with that. I think that's a really good distinction on him. I think it does really like Reed by the way. So you're in line with Silva. Yeah, because he watches ball. David Wicks, I mentioned the concerns and I think what you said about Dobbs is right. The big question is golden. I'll note on Watson. He had rebranded and looked really good in 2024. Had a 2.26 yards per out run without even really earning a ton of volume. It just was making place down the field was really racking up high target efficiency. I think that's very favorable for his future. Obviously has a late season ACL as you noted. Gonna miss most of 2025. I haven't missed in half the year. The target rate wasn't super high. He now has competition in the form of golden. So I don't have him projected for a lot of targets. I do think he factors into the routes in the second half of the year. And I think that's a hidden downside to the golden play. Where if golden's like not developing well, most first round receivers will just get opportunity after opportunity. There's a possibility this team's heading towards the playoffs or in a playoff race because this is probably the best division in football. They're going to be going at the minds and the Vikings and maybe even an improved Bears team might be in the equation. That you know, they may just move some of those routes to Watson and kind of not bench golden. But anyway, the golden stuff. I've been trying to understand golden. That's why I asked you about the Brian Thomas thing. Where I may be missing. The profile is not strong. He like so Brian Thomas didn't get a lot of volume per out in his first two years. And then they're both three year early declares in his third year in college. He has the monster season. Some of my concern on him last year was the lack of volume earning that year. But then acknowledging that he was really efficient. Crazy, crazy efficient. Had 17 touchdowns. And it was like 12 games. Golden's profile's similar. That's why I bring it up because he didn't earn much volume. Wasn't very good the first two years. He actually earned a little bit more the second year, but his yards per out run still very low. And then he has a breakout third year, but that breakout third year had an even lower targets per out run than Brian Thomas by a point and a half. And not anywhere near Brian Thomas is efficiency. The grind Thomas 13.5 yards per target that year 17 TDs in like 12 games. Matthew golden 11.9. So 1.6 yards per target lower, which is still very high by the way. So you get the same element of didn't earn a lot of volume, but very efficient target from that final season, which is a good note and scored nine touchdowns, which was very strong, but he played 16 games because Texas went into the college football playoff. So 9 TDs and 16 games versus 17 in, in maybe it's a 13 for Brian Thomas, whatever well over one touchdown per game for Brian Thomas in his final year well below for golden, basically 0.5. I mean, nine touchdowns and 16 games, almost one every two games. I did watch some golden film and I mean, his tape's fun. He's a cool looking dude. He's got a cool aesthetic. He wears his pants up above the knee. They look like shorts out there. I mean, it makes him look even faster and he's already a super fast receiver. He they talked about his hands and the floor early in the off season talked about their drops issues last year. And they've mentioned golden's hands a lot. They really like that he catches the balls that are thrown to him, which again gets back to why they took him in the first round. And I think he's going to run a lot of routes. I just think that lack of target earning that I was concerned about Brian Thomas and didn't lead to a big issue for him. I mean, he earned a ton of targets right away as a rookie. He offset it with otherworldly efficiency. Golden offset it in his final year with pretty good efficiency. But the bigger concern on golden as well. First two years, he's at Houston. And then he transfers to Texas. He's not even able to really crack good production at Houston. And then doesn't earn big volume when the transfer is over to Texas. He is still a three year early to clear with draft capital. You still have to be in on that to a certain degree. I'm not not drafting him. I do think there's more risk that golden is not an immediate big time producer. For the reasons that you said as well that the whole past game may not, dobs and wicks are going to be there. They're going to run routes. And I think Reed is just an established star basically. And then we'll go to tight end. I think Tucker Kraft is a guy that they really want to use a lot more. And they've talked about all offseason. They've talked about even potentially making the offense, you know, feature a tight end because of how good Tucker Kraft was last year. And so if Kraft and Reed are kind of the focal points or it's too run heavy as you talked about, it may get tough for golden, especially with Watson coming back in the back half of the year and coming off. What was a good 2024 before his ACL. But at the same time, you play into the rookie upside a little bit. I just the comparison of Brian Thomas I've seen made. I don't think it's really there. Like you said, you're a little bit lower on him, but still willing to play him. I think that's the right approach. Yeah, I mean, golden has more flags in his prospect profile. I think Thomas did. I think it was very different drafts, different conversation. But so I was definitely like Brian Thomas as a prospect. I guess with golden, it's more, hey, there's an opportunity for this guy to run the most routes and the first round draft capital overlooking kind of some of the analytical flaws in the profile from a prospect perspective. For sure. You did mention Savian Williams they have. I mean, if there's a team for someone to break out without having the higher draft capital, though, this is the team. Like people are going to get shots to play. They played anyone at certain points. So he's someone to keep an eye on it in the red drafts. It did talk about part of the reason I'm down on him. They talked about him being unpolished as a route runner this season, which kind of matches the data. And then they talked about him being good on the manufacturer stuff. I do think they're going to get manufactured touches to him and get, like, uses ball and hand stuff. But that that when I hear that word on polish, I'm like, oh, like, you know, later around guy crowded room, probably not going to crack a big role in your one. Maybe it's more of a longer term play. Yeah. In basketball, if I take a shot on a green bay wide receiver, really late, it's Wix who has just been really bad from a per target standpoint. But for whatever reason, he's been able to earn targets and get opportunities. As you know, like, maybe they give up on him, but it's a decent profile of bet on at the very end of drafts where, you know, some, some of the guys you're taking are really shaky or like really have limited ceiling. And Wix is kind of has like a little bit more safety in terms of opportunities while still possessing a ceiling late. So I do like him a little bit more than our rank. Let's go to craft who you've got 83 targets, where it's 69s, we're a little bit lighter. Most of that is just having Musgrave play a little bit more. We have 35 targets for Musgrave. You have 23. Neither of us have the third tie down and factoring into this much. All craft did show great efficiency. And we're projecting him like for pretty strong yards per target, both of us in the high eights for Tucker craft. Just to matter really of how much volume he's able to earn. Yeah. He's tough. He actually led the team in routes over all the wide receivers, which was mostly because Dobbs missed some time because he was dominating in routes per game. But he clearly beat out Musgrave early in the year. Now the split, it doesn't mean that you guys are wrong to have like a little bit of a different split, but Musgrave then got hurt, which was a big part of it. And then craft really consolidated. Craft had a very strong 10.9 yards per target. As you know, we're both expecting that to be really good. Really good ball in hand, numbers like evasiveness and yards after contacting all these things. And yards after the catch. And he was just dominant as far as that part of it. And as why the team is getting questions, can you have a tight end be a focal point of your offense? Because for people who maybe don't remember that, especially early in the year, he had some long catches. There were some stats floating around mid season that were like, these are the players that have catches of 50, multiple catches of 50 plus yards this year so far. Remember that stat at one point. It was like five guys and it was like four explosive wide receivers and Tucker craft. And you're like, okay, well, the site ed is pretty sweet. The way that efficiency can lead to volume is kind of being discussed here in the off season. The question really is just targets. He had only a 14.8% targets per out last year. Can that rise? I'm projecting that, you know, maybe it will. Maybe because they've talked a little bit about wanting the ball in his hand a little bit more. And also just I'm projecting more passes than you guys, right? And so I, but as you said, it's more than I think he's going to really leave muskray from the dust a little bit for these tight end targets. I'm not like hyper confident on that, but that's what the play is. You're making a play on a similar to Reed. You're making a play on a guy who was really efficient last year. And you're guessing that the passing game for the Packers will be more consolidated going forward or hoping, I guess, when you take the read or the craft picks, but those are the two guys I do really like to play in this passing game. All right, Ben, it's been a pleasure. Another eight divisions, eight episodes down for us. Appreciate everybody tuning in for all these. The longest episode to end. Longest episode. I knew this one was going to be long. Yeah. Just because there was a lot to talk through. It's a really interesting division. I think we we talked on the side. It just seems like a pretty interesting year in fantasy in general, where we've had more areas to spend more time on. And then we had to go and jade and read at the very end. I'm sorry about that. And I mean, I'll probably be wrong on that. Like a good disclaimer. Oh, it's good. It's it. It's a good discussion, you know. Good disclaimer at the end. We're passionate about the stuff. I want to say thank you to you and to Stopson Run and for the opportunity to come and talk about all the stuff. A great example is when we did the NFC West recently, I was, I share a take that I didn't think it made sense for the C-OX to cut no off. They cut it before we even finished the project. I think you guys were all over that over at a salvage the run. So that, you know, that's going to change the way that we look at the C-OX tight ends for sure. But we're doing our research and we're having our strong takes. We're going to be wrong on a lot of them. I'm probably wrong on Jaden Reed, but it's a, I don't take it lightly. I really appreciate the opportunity to come on and share all the things that I feel passionate about. Yeah, I mean, mutual respect here. It's kind of fun talking through this stuff with you. And the fan thing, I mean, it's a good close in the sense that you said we're going to be wrong about our last step. But also we get focused on the projections. But the reason we try to talk through the range of outcomes is there's going to be chaos. There's going to be things that happen that, you know, maybe some, you could have guessed maybe what had happened, but other things you don't know what'll happen. You know, maybe Jaden Reed does play in the two-hour secret sets, those sorts of things. And it's important to think through and challenge those assumptions. So yeah, really appreciate you giving us your time, Ben, and to the listeners out there again. I know they're long lessons. And it seems like people get through them. And we really appreciate that and all the shout outs that we get people look forward to this series each year. But this is it. Time to finish the show. We check out Ben stuff at BenGrads.subst.com. My stuff over at EstablishTheRun. And bust a look this season. [MUSIC PLAYING]