1117: Players to Avoid

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Shop in, store, or online now, and earn your Sunday with help from Lowe's official partner of the NFL. [MUSIC PLAYING] This is The Lay-Round Podcast with your host, JJ Zacharyse. JJ Zacharyse. What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zacharyse. And in this episode, 11/17 of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, thanks for tuning in. On last week's show, I talked to Evan Silva about a handful of players that were targeting and drafts this year. That's just based off of where we have them ranked and where they typically get drafted. Today, we're doing the opposite of that. We're looking at players to avoid. And to help me out, I brought on my friend Rich Rebar of Sharp Football Analysis. I brought five players at the table. He brought five players at the table. It's not that we're fading these guys no matter what, but we do think they're a little bit overvalued by the market. Now, before getting that conversation, I just want to send another reminder to check out The Lay-Round Draft Guide. There's well over 270 pages of content that includes game theory, strategy, ways to spot breakouts and busts, players to target, players to avoid, and more. You get cheat sheets with the guide as well, and everything is updated weekly. Check it out, learn more, lateround.com. Now, let's get to these 10 players to avoid with Rich Rebar. [MUSIC PLAYING] All right, Rich, welcome back another year of targets and avoids. This year, you are on the avoid show. Always the more difficult show to do. It's a little bit tough to talk avoids, because people come after us a little bit more with these-- it's a tougher topic to dig into. But again, these are simply players that we like a little bit less than what the market does. That's what this really comes down to. It's not even a full fade situation. If these guys are available at the right spot, we'll still take them. But yeah, I mean, these are players that generally we're not drafting a ton of, because we don't think they should be going as high as they are. So with that being said, Rich, give us the first player that you're generally avoiding. Yeah, I also think, too, the avoids have gotten a little tougher in over the years, just because I think that the general consumer is a lot sharper in the markets, just being set a lot better in fantasy football. But yeah, I'm going to start over the couple higher price guys here. And it's not like you said, it's not that they're necessarily avoids. It's that I think that they're a little bit overpriced or like players that are typically go after them more than them. So yeah, I'm going to start with Jonathan Taylor. And I think that that one might be a little bit surprising to people, the guy that led the NFL in rushing attempts, rushing touchdowns, and had 85% of Indianapolis backfield touches really doesn't have any competition again this year. Those are all very high notes for Jonathan Taylor. He's finished as an RB1 score and four of his six seasons. The only blemish was something that we saw at the end of last year, even with Dean Jujones of Starks that's gone on for his career, it's that when the cult struggle as a unified team and winning games, this is where Jonathan Taylor typically slows down. He's the highest correlated running back in terms of like winning and losing. And that's been a thorn for his entire career. He's averaged 22.7 PPR points per game for his career and wins. That is the most of any active running back since he entered the NFL. He goes to RB 15 and losses. Last year, he averaged 32 points per game and wins 12.3 PPR points per game and losses. And even if we remove all the Philip Rivers, all the Riley Leonard stuff, and it's four losses that Daniel Jones played in full, he was the RB 21, RB 29, RB 28, RB 18 in those games. And why that is noteworthy as we head into 2026. We got Daniel Jones returning from Achilles injury. Michael Pittman's gone, Braden Smith's gone. We don't know when Alec Pierce is coming back at this point. Alec Pierce is a pretty big deal because he's the only guy in the offense that can stretch the field. Over the past two years, Jonathan Taylor has faced eight or more defenders in the box on 43.2% of his runs with Alec Pierce off the field. That's 155 attempts sample too. It's not like 25 carries or anything. And then with Alec Pierce on the field, it goes all the way down to 28.7% because you have to respect Alec Pierce, stretching the field, occupying a box defender. Right now, the Indianapolis Colts are only favored in six games on their schedule. That's 21st in the league. They have a really tough opening gauntlet. They go Baltimore, Kansas City, Houston. They have an international game in its Washington, which we're not scared of. But then after that international game, they forego the by-week, and on a short week, go to Pittsburgh, and then, so it's like, this is a really tough opening schedule for them. And then when you look at the Indianapolis Colts, this there are team when I do my team regression series. They just kept popping up week series after series. John and Taylor scored the most points from fantasy, from the one yard line last year, almost 20 more fantasy points that scored in any previous seasons. No team was better last year at converting goal-to-go opportunities than the Colts. They scored an offensive touchdown, 94% of their goal-to-go opportunities. There's a third best rate for any team in the 2000s. And it was a 32-trip sample too. Sometimes you see these teams convert 90% but they only have 15 chances or something like that. And then they scored on 51.5% of their drives, which was the most in the NFL. Since 2010, there have been 24 other teams to scoring at least half of their possessions. 20 of those 24 teams scored fewer touchdowns the following season with the average loss of 12 touchdowns per team. So yeah, when I line up all the things for Jonathan Taylor, it just kind of looks at, I look at other guys that are growing in his area like Chase Brown, even Sequan Barkley. These are guys I think that I just have a little bit higher than I'm gonna have more faith in their team environments than Jonathan Taylor. It's not that I'm out on Jonathan Taylor. I just have a more lower as like more of a floor-based RB1. Kind of like this year, Sequan, where we were with Sequan last year. Statistically, I think he's still gonna be an RB1 but are you getting like that weekly hammer with any consistency? I think it's me a lot more volatile this year. - I think straight up, the reason that this is an avoid for me too, if you wanna dumb it down, is simply that I like James Cook a lot more, or at least it's like a decent bet more, like a 70, 30 type outcome situation with the two of them versus Jonathan Taylor. You know, the thing with like a James Cook profile is that there's a very clear path of room for growth with James Cook and that's in the receiving column, right? Like they, if reports are true and they do use him more and obviously you have this like tie Johnson thing going on which actually could help cook a little bit. But with Jonathan Taylor, like there's not much room for growth, you know, he's seen 92% and 86% running back rush shares over the last two years. That's elite numbers that, I think projection wise, you can probably put him in that bucket but that's still a really hard to sustain number. And we've seen a very, very large sample now of Jonathan Taylor not being a huge pass catcher, wasn't really a huge pass catcher in college or not saying you can't do it but wasn't a huge pass catcher in college and then he still hasn't seen more than 11% target share in the NFL. So like there's not that much room for growth for him and then like you said, it comes down to that environment and the environment is very, very, very scary. I mean, the Colts through the first 10 weeks last year, they're first in points per game, first in drives heading in touchdowns. You know, first by a wide margin percentage of touchdowns that came on the ground too. You know, like they were scoring, you know, very much via the ground, which is something that regresses. So I'm with you at Jonathan Taylor, you're probably a little bit lower than I am but it's still a fade for me generally. Like he was a player in the draft guide, immediately upon release where I will say I cooled off a tiny bit because when I released that, Daniel Jones stuff was still very much up in the air. Sounds like that's at least a little bit better but now you have the Alec Pierce thing too and it's all, you know, just pointing to a scarier profile than I think people realize. - Yeah, and I still haven't like ninth overall. It's just like I've got him in a spot to where you're gonna, I always want to steer people to where they're taking James Cook, Chase Brown, and I've kind of Walker over him too, which a lot of people probably bristle at because we've done the kind of Walker thing before but definitely look at his environment and his opportunity as being a little bit more stable as well. - Yeah, all right, I'm gonna move on to a player that everyone's been making fun of me for because I bring them up on every show as like an example of the kind of player that I don't typically draft and that's Cortland Sutton, okay? This to me profiles as a single, not a home run type player and when you're in the middle rounds, I want that triple, I want that home run. Like I wanna go for a player that I think has a legitimately high ceiling. He average fewer than 13 PPR points for game last year in a wide receiver room that was beatable on paper. You had a rookie Pat Bryant, Troy Franklin who essentially lost his gig as the season went on. Franklin went from being their wide receiver one, if you will and I'll get to that in a second to then losing a lot of snaps and obviously now they've Jalen Waddle. But last year, Cortland Sutton had a 21% target share, his target's for a run run. it was under 20%. It's not like he was being hyper-targeted in this offense without Jalen Waddle, right? And this is also an offense that doesn't necessarily just feed their X. And I think that is very, very key for what they did in getting Jalen Waddle. Last year, Troy Franklin was playing that zero. And we saw, remember that five-week stretch where Franklin was like an eight-plus targets per game. And the narrative was, Troy Franklin is the Bronco's wider receiver one. I think that's very much role-based. But the difference is, is that instead of Troy Franklin playing that role, you have Jalen Freaking Waddle playing that role, who's one of the most efficient, better wide receivers in the entire game. So much tougher competition for Cortland Sutton. Not only that, last year, he ran the third most routes in football. Like, there was a team that I do expect to still drop back to Pasadise and Bit. We saw that the last couple. Basically, since Bonix has taken over. But he had the third most routes in football. He barely eclipsed a thousand yards despite that. He had a 1.62 yards per out run rate. And now he's entering year nine. And he hasn't topped two yards per out run in years. I mean, he hasn't been that efficient of a receiver at all for a while. So my TLDR was Sutton. Is that like, he's fine. I just don't want to draft fine when I get into the middle rounds of drafts. And I know that people who play best ball are sitting there being like, first off, this is not a best ball take so much. Like, I think that he can have spiked weeks. But people look at best ball ADP. And they think that that's like where Sutton will go in a season long draft. But he goes a lot higher. There's platforms like on on Yahoo, where he's going ahead of guys like Parker Washington, Josh Downs, even some running max that I like more. If you look at ESPN, he's going way higher than he's going over some very, very legitimate, you know, like, like guys that I have my top 25 top 30, a wide receiver on that platform. And maybe not nearly he doesn't that doesn't happen. But I mean, I've been in drafts already where Sutton's a more of a brand name household name and it's a good offense that we want to invest in because of Sean Peyton. And he's just not giving you that crazy upside. I just worry a lot about what this looks like with Jalen Waddle entering the picture considering the fact that Sutton still only had a 21% target share last year without Jalen Waddle. I think it's a big, big problem. So he's just not some of them going after this year. Yeah, it's hard to disagree with that one at all. I mean, he was outside of the top 40 and targets per outrun and yards per outrun last year. And like you said, just the against way weaker competition will have this year. And the run games should be better. That's when they really swerve into the past last year was after the Dobbins injury. And now that they have Jonah Coleman as insurance for if and when Dobbins, you know, Mrs. Time for the season that they won't have to go extremely that past heavy that they'll be able to be a lot more balanced. And like you said, I mean, it wasn't even a five to say, but those from weeks 2 to 11 that Troy Franklin out sat in Tim out target at Sutton out sat in Tim too. Yeah. And that what's crazy about that was especially with Jalen Waddle, because you think about Sutton and you're like, well, he'll still have like touchdown equity, right? Like he's the big clash here. But it was actually Franklin was out targeting him in the end zone. And Troy Franklin, one of the weirder things about him is they had all these plays dialed up for him in the end zone. And he had like three two point conversions to which don't even count on like the end zone target stuff. But like that's all stuff like Jalen Waddle can do. And the other thing too with adding Jalen Waddle is Sutton's going to have a lot more deeper like depth of target. He's going to be not he's going to lose some of those intermediate like those fantasy smoothing routes. We don't want to lean just in on those guys that requires like playing the the boundary X. It doesn't get a lot of those free squares. So he's a guy I haven't I haven't even thought about drafting once in like a manage league yet. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like I said, I think you could you could make the case easily in baseball because you your consideration set should be pretty wide in a bestball environment. But yeah. And season long in a manage league. It's a lot more difficult. All right, Rich. Give me your next player here. Yeah. This one is one that I think some other gamers have to and you've probably heard this one before too. But similar adjacency to my Jonathan Taylor take is not that I think this guy is going to be like like brick out. But but Devon H and is you know, he's just in a very unique case here. And especially was like a lot of the conversation that goes around him. So one thing I didn't bring up with Jonathan Taylor here because it definitely applies more so for Devon H and the Jonathan Taylor is you look at since 1990 yearly top three scores at the running back position. Like you talk about ceiling, right? Like ceiling is what we look for. They've played for teams. They have a 9.9 wins per season. Just 17 of those backs with just 16.7 percent played for teams that won fewer than eight games. If we extend that out to top six scores per year, those go that goes to 9.6 wins per season. And over that same period, only 18.8 percent of those guys for top 12 guys that is have been on teams that win six or fewer games in a season. Like you can do it because you know, 18 percent. It's what you know out of out of 12 guys. We're still getting one to two of those guys a year, right? So you still could be that one. But are you going to cut your teeth and say, I'm going to get the one. We have a and we have a few of these guys down here at the bottom this year. You know, you know, asked to jade these down here. Jeremiah Love was pushing. I think we're going to see him not get there in terms of ADP. But the other thing too with H and is, you know, he's clearly the best player that Miami has an offense. So it's easy to expect him being like the centerpiece of the offense. But we still need to price in some fragility with all these moving parts. The crazy part to me is that we already have a sample of this, right? Like, he's played eight games without to a tongue of a low over the past two seasons. And in those games, you have just 10 and a half PPR points per game. He has one RB one scoring week compared to 20.3 PPR points per game with to a tongue of a low. And now we lose Mike McDaniel on top of that. In the two games that to a miss last year, like things that bottom out use the RB 14, the RB 17, because again, that touch value, right? 18 touches, 21 touches in those games. But we didn't have the ceiling that we were accustomed to. Now we're getting, you know, this offense with Malik Willis, and it's just going to reduce the overall passing upside of this team, you know, with Malik Willis on the field for his career, offense has thrown the ball 40% of the time. You know, in Green Bay, it was 38.7%. It's probably going to be proxy just be higher than that. But they're going to be a run-based team here. We talk about all the time too with like running backs attached to mobile passers. Malik Willis is number one in the NFL. He's an NFL and scramble rate, highest league 14 and a half percent. Now his target rate to running back is only 10.2%. But it's going to go up by default with throwing the H&N versus, you know, Josh Jacobs and, you know, Derek Henry. But it's still going to be something that lowers based on two. We saw H&N play with Tyler Huntley. He ran 85 routes with Tyler Huntley and Tyler Huntley starts. He was targeted six times on those 85 routes. And then when you talk about a lot of people say, well, Miami was already bad last year, right? I want to, let's add some context to the 2025 dolphins. This was a way more competent team that I think anyone remembers them being. They won seven games. They were 16th and rate of snaps led last year, one spot behind the Buffalo Bills. They were 14th and snap rate trailing ahead of the Lions, ahead of the Bills. They even led by double digits at the 7th highest rate in the NFL last year. Like, this is not the same environment for a team that is favored in one game right now. They're protected to be 31st in scoring. They have an average margin of spread of minus 6.9 points. It's only the Arizona Cardinals are worse. Like, these are not, these are not competitive, comparable, you know, apples to apples, you know, environments. Like, this is not where we haunt for upside in terms of team environment. Again, I think this is another guy that can maybe flirt with like being like an overall RB1. But we talk about this all the time, JJ this time of year where people cite like, this guy was the RB9 or the RB11 or even it from a points where game stands and just like, they don't apply any context like what that actually meant, right? Ask anyone if they own, owning action JT as an RB1 last year felt like they had an RB1 when they set their line up. Right. And I think that's what we're getting here. I think this is going to be a very volatile weekly RB2 that could finish as an RB1. Yeah, just to give you some more context and some more data around the team environment stuff, we look at team environment score in the draft guide this year. It's really just a way of putting a number to player ADP. So it just takes ADP of a certain team and it brings it together from an expected fantasy point score perspective. And the number itself doesn't need to make any sense to you. But scores below 75 team environment scores below 75. There's been since 2014, 14 running backs drafted in the top 10 at the position with team environment scores below 75, which is where HN finds himself this year. 12 of those 14 then played at least eight games that following season that upcoming season. Only three of them outperformed ADP expectation and the average running back played two points per game below expected, which is not good. I mean, that's a really, really bad hit rate. So everything you said, I totally agree with and I know that people are going to say again, in best ball, he goes later than what he goes on some of these platforms, CBS, ESPN, he's the RB five. Realistically, do I think Devon HN is going to have a higher target share than like Chase Brown this year? Probably, maybe, but I think that it's probably closer than we would want to admit. And if it's closer than what we would want to admit, why would we be so anxious and ready to draft a Von HN over a guy like Chase Brown when we know the environment is completely stable? So that alone is a reason for me to be a little bit lower than the market on Devon HN. Okay, next on my list, I already talked about one player from the Denver Broncos. So why not just double dip here and go with another one. I'm going to go with JK Dobbins as another player that I'm generally avoiding this year. And honestly, the logic's pretty similar to what I talked about with Cortland Sutton already, where I just see Dobbins as someone who is a single and not a not even a double, I would argue, but just just a single uh, definitely not a home run type player in the middle rounds. And, you know, I know that that people will look at his ADP and say, oh, but RJ Harvey's going higher than Dobbins and yada yada. Well, first off, on some platforms, it's not the case. Dobbins goes ahead of RJ Harvey on some platforms. But on the other side of that is, again, I'm shooting for upside. I would argue very strongly that the upside sits more with an RJ Harvey type, uh, who's a second year player, yes, had very questionable between the tackles numbers last year, but was a very good receiver way better than Dobbins. I'll just talk about that now because I'm talking about Dobbins. So I would argue that Dobbins was in a near ideal situation last year before he got hurt. Uh, RJ Harvey wasn't playing a ton on early downs. We were getting that rotation in Denver, but Dobbins was seeing a lot of work in that Denver backfield. So my first question to people who are very pro Dobbins is, do you still think he's going to see that same kind of work? I think most would say who are drafting him would say, yes, he's going to see that, that kind of work and that, you know, what, what he was getting pre injury, I, I would argue them back. Why are you so excited about this, right? His workload, he ran around on just 30% of Denver's dropbacks last year when he was healthy. He had a 4.2% target share. His yard per route run rich was 0.32, which RJ Harvey was actually really strong on a per route run basis, so I see no reason for them to all of a sudden change things up and not use Harvey in that past catching role. And there's really no indication that that's going to be the case. Dobbins was good on the ground. There's no doubt, but the receiving profiles is really, really questionable. And if you look at how he actually performed on a points per game basis last year, he averaged 11.6 PPR points per game through week 10 last year, JK Dobbins was the RB 24 and fantasy football under relatively ideal circumstances for him right now. And I say that because I don't think the workload is necessarily going to get better. All they did was add Jonah Coleman this off season who already has looked the part. I thought, you know, I think you and I both really liked him as a prospect within the context of this class, of course. And then, you know, RJ Harvey's another year better, another year in, he might end up being a little bit better. So I just see Dobbins really paying off only if RJ Harvey gets hurt and he and Denver's able to use him more as a pass catcher. But even if that's the case, I think Jonah Coleman is still going to block him to some degree. And also we know that like I'm making this argument against Dobbins without even mentioning the fact that he's hurt every year, right, that he's been banged up year and a year out. And I could see a scenario where Denver wants to keep him fresh and keep him going where they don't feed him that same workload that they did last year. And I think that's a huge reason as to why they went out and they got Jonah Coleman in the first place is that he's a very steady all around back. He can play a backup role to both RJ Harvey and JK Dobbins. And then on top of that, again, like Coleman himself could end up taking some of the goal line work in this offense because of his size and not wanting Dobbins to be so, so banged up. All of that to say, this is an ambiguous backfield and I want to attack ambiguous backfields. I will attack ambiguous backfields. I've been drafting the mo, if I look at this backfield and the three of them, I've gotten the most Jonah Coleman of the three because it's very cheap to just go that route. And I can see what happens more of a bestball thing because I haven't drafted so many teams to be able to say I'm definitively one way or another, but I definitely have been taking more RJ Harvey than JK Dobbins because again, if you look at trends and what's worked out historically with middle-round running backs, year two guys pass catchers and not overstating and overrating what they did on the ground the previous year because ground game work does fluctuate quite a bit year over year. I don't think Harvey is more than likely going to be special or anything, right? But I do think that there are outs here where he could still outperform ADP and be better than where he's being drafted right now. It's just really hard for me to get there with with JK Dobbins and making that same argument. So to me, we've had this discussion before and I know that you're a big arbitrage guy, but all summer long, my arbitrage with JK Dobbins has just been Jordan Mason who goes after, at one point who's going three or four rounds after, it's the same kind of bet. You could even squint and say Chris Rodriguez is the same kind of bet even later, right? I would much rather be spending those costs on these two down profiles than going for JK Dobbins. Yeah, 100%. I mean, there's a place, there's a bummer because JK Dobbins is a guy I think a lot of you want to root for. Of course. He's just snake bit. He was, there's a place in the multiverse where this dude probably already has like, you know, 7,000 rushing yards, you know, at this point of his career. He was such a good prospect. He's just been like said, really snake bit, but 11, 11 receptions last year for 37 yards like this. He had one week last year where he finishes a top 24 running back without a touchdown. So if he doesn't score a touchdown, he's basically giving you one unusable production, and even with touchdowns, his highest scoring game was 15 and a half PPR points. I did an article like five or six years ago on, you know, how running back to production in your weekly lineup is like the most replaceable commodity that you can find. And that's like what we have here. Like there's no sense of paying a premium for this archetype, even in non PPR, even if you're doing something that's half PPR or standard touchdown driven, you brought up Jordan Mason, typically goes about two rounds after him, almost two four rounds, Chris Rodriguez. You can even squint and say when Zach Scharbernay comes back, this is what Zach Scharbernay is. You can even tell yourself a song, and like this is what Tyler Algier is, which is probably not, but, you know, maybe, but, you know, this, this type of guy is just so replaceable. And it's a bummer, because like I said, he's on a good team and you think like this archetype is going to get elevated because of that, but it's just not the case. Yeah. I know his ADP is an out of control, but I don't want to use that as an excuse to draft players that I don't think can really give you that upside, right? Like there's still an opportunity cost to a degree in that area of draft because the opportunity costs are players who do have that kind of upside, right? And like again, it feels like I'm on an island with this take because it feels like a lot of analysts are way in on Dobbins this year and really do like him and hate RJ Harvey because he just wasn't very productive on the ground last year, but it's one of those things where like we know historically ground game numbers fluctuate. And what is stickier is the passing game work and how they, how they're deployed that way. Not only that, we know the Sean Payton offense favors past catching running backs and has historically, I'm not, I'm not, this isn't a pro Harvey argument by any means. Like I've been like one or two running back spots ahead of market with Harvey. It's not like a strong stance or anything like that. It's more so me just saying, I want to sit with the upside case and go with the upside play as opposed to drafting a player like JK Dobbins, like maybe in some environments if he falls and you really, you know, you went like hero RB and you really need a running, you just need some production and running back. You click Dobbins name, but it's even in that scenario, I'd rather just wait and try to get a Mason or something like that. Who I, I think Mason might even have more upside than Dobbins because there's just less in his way in terms of competition and in terms of really past catching stuff. And like I said, Dobbins past catching work last year genuinely horrific. I mean, like the yards for our run stuff, 0.32, you almost never see a player come back from that and give you a good target share of the following seasons. So just a lot of reasons why I'm out on that. All right. Give me your next player, Rich. All right. I started with at least the players at the top here and now I'm a soften up a little bit. And this one's interesting because usually one of the tried and true ways I play fantasy of ball is, you know, if a guy makes like a giant bright market jump from the previous year, it was like a cheap player that became really expensive. I'm always kind of, I always kind of question that of paying the iron price. And then inversely when a player was really high price than falls, I'm like, you know, more open to saying, Hey, I'm going to buy the discount. But in this case, I've had a really hard time warming up to Brian Thomas, Jr. He's coming off of that down second season. You know, obviously I just don't think he was a fit for Liam Cohen's, you know, system which more of like the intermediate crossing routes. And, you know, he played through, you know, wrist and shoulder injuries, you know, they will help those things. But when the Jaguar is kind of found their footing, because this is, I think a lot of people forget like the Jaguars were like an awful offense for like the first eight weeks. Like, it was absolutely horrendous. But when they found their stride is when they made the trade for Jacobi Myers and then the elevation of Parker Washington to the Travis Hunter injury, everyone kind of found their stride with Brian Thomas, Jr., that and that point was playing the X wide receiver in this offense. We had Park Washington and Jacobi Myers kind of fluctuated between slot Z, we had a little bit sprinkling for slot stuff for Brian Thomas, but it was mostly those two guys that were intermixed. And when all three wide outs were on the field together, they were on the field for 106 routes together. And Thomas was third on that trio and target rate per out run at 17 percent, 21 percent for Myers, 26 percent for Parker Washington. I mean, Liam Cohen has said some positive things about Brian Thomas Jr. this season. But dude, he talks like he talks about Parker Washington like he is blood like, but, but the thing is, they've already said like Brian Thomas Jr. is basically going to play primarily X in this offense. And from week 10 on, he averaged 17 air yards per target, 33 percent of his targets are 20 and more yards down field. That is a very, very tough way to live as a viable weekly fantasy target. I mean, it's just really, you need those, like we talk about those smoothing targets, those freebies in a sense like this, he was basically operating like Jacksonville case on booty. That's like what his role was in the offense. And so if we think he's going to play primarily X and like say, he could still get a little bit of sprinkling, this Jacksonville schedule in terms of what they face in terms of outside perimeter play. And I'm like, know like wide receiver cornerback. Like we have to fade all these guys. But listen to this schedule for Brian Thomas Jr. Denzel Ward, Patrick Sartane, Christian Gonzalez, DJ Turner, Quinyan Mitchell, Derek Stingley, By Week, Saw Scardener. That is eight weeks of the seat. You're eight weeks into the season. Well, what week are you gonna be like? I am confident in putting Brian Thomas Jr. in my weekly lineup. Like you're just hoping he scores a touchdown or cash isn't a big play. Like it's, it's just really hard for me. I think with all the T-leaves that saying like he's in a role in the offense that's not gonna be conducive for consistent fantasy points and then it's gonna run up against I think the worst of the defensive opponents that Jacksonville faces over those opening two months. I have a hot take. I think we might see Brian Thomas Jr. in some like shallow manage leagues, outright released like at some point earlier in the 2026 season. Yeah, I mean, I could see it. That was, I remember, you know, I was doing that early season schedule analysis episode. And I referenced a lot of sharp football stuff with the secondary rankings and whatnot. And Jacksonville popped up as a, okay, this could actually be pretty tough the first half of the season. Like it's a very, very tough schedule. And obviously, you know, you noted him seeing the toughest matchups and then often so wide receiver could end up being really tough. I hate to use this. I do think he is a better and best ball type player because the big playability is certainly there for a player like him, right? But I do think that there's gonna be a lot of that unpredictability to your point, you know, in the way that this offense functions. And it's just, you know, all these, all these signs just point to Parker Washington, just being, being a, I mean, some of these platforms, he's still going so late, Washington. I'm still getting him at, you know, way past wide receiver 30 price tags. And to me, he's just like easy, easily the best Jacksonville wide receiver and fantasy this year. And this just plays into that a little bit more. - You made a great point. It's, I think a lot of people think about better and a best ball is just like the big play archetype. But it's not necessarily that. It's, it's, it's, because J.K. Davins fits that mold too. It's just knowing that you get the weeks that they hit in your lineup. - Right. - But in a manage league, like you have to guess that. Like if you want to get Brian Thomas Jr., like you basically just have to leave him and you're, you're gonna have to just leave him in the lineup. - Exactly. - And you're always gonna question it. Like when you're looking, you're gonna be like, "Oh, Brian Thomas Jr. is going to "it's Patrick's retain this week." Well, my wide receiver five has a pretty good matchup. Should I go with, should I go with him instead? Like that's what it's gonna be like, I think for the first two months of the year. - I've taken, I've taken Brian Thomas and one league so far out of the many managed leagues that I've drafted. And the one that I took him in was one of the King's classic ones. It was the auction. And the reason for that. Well, I was kind of getting, it was kind of scary with one of the players and that. I mean, it's a crazy draft. 14 team. - Yeah, 14. - But there's deep starting, starting lineups too, right? Where I think a player like this is a lot easier to take on when you don't have to make those decisions, right? Where you're just like, I'm just gonna take the lows with the highs and then allow the other guys in the lineup to just kind of, you know, be the baseline for me. But if you're starting two or three wide receivers, especially if it's like a two wide receiver one flex league, you just not somebody that's very appealing because of how unpredictable and volatile that production's gonna be. So, and again, like I was gonna say this, like the dobbin thing, you bring that up. I think that he's another guy in Chris Rodriguez and they're probably better in best ball players and they are in managed because yes, they're gonna fall into the end zone. We don't know exactly when that's gonna happen and you don't have that baseline of them being, you know, reliable receivers to give you at least some production on the ground. So, I'm with you. It's not only the big playability 'cause I mean, certainly JK Dobbins, you wouldn't look at him and be like, "Oh, this is a huge big play guy." But, you know, it's just the unpredictability aspect of things. - And it used to be the receiving running back. So, that archetype has kind of gone away a little bit, like the James White's, because you never knew when James White was gonna catch 10 passes. But, best ball, he actually was undervalued because you'd just get those weeks when he got 'em. - Yeah, exactly. One game's great for oneself. Yeah. All right, I'm gonna move on from the Broncos. I'm not gonna name all of them. - Give us another Bronco, do you bonus? - Yeah. - Waddle would be on the other side of this list, you know? - We'll go with Matthew Stafford right now. I think that the quarterback market is pretty sharp this year and it's kind of hard to really have like a hardcore fade. I'm just saying Stafford, because if you do look at some season-long platforms, QB8 on ESPN right now, which is a lot higher than I expected. QB12 on CBS, I think Yahoo, it's a little bit more reasonable. The market is getting smarter, though. Dating back to 2014, we've had 13 quarterbacks earn an ADP after posting a touchdown rate of at least 7%. While averaging fewer than five fantasy points for game via rushing the previous season. So they weren't doing much on the ground, but they gave you that outlier touchdown rate season. Every single one of those quarterbacks the following year were top 10 options. And the majority of them, the average, was in the QB5 to QB6 range. So the fact that that Matthew Stafford is at the highest being drafted as a low-end QB1, tells me that the market's getting sharper because we know that touchdown rates regress. Stafford at a 7.7% touchdown rate last year, of those 13 quarterbacks I just mentioned, 12 of them played at least eight games of following year and of those 12. These are guys who had a 7% touchdown rate or better. They averaged only 18 points per game the following year, which the majority of them played below expectation. You know, obviously the Rams are gonna be good this year more than likely. So I don't want to discount that. But dating back to 2014, I think we also have to recognize that last year's Rams were third in passing touchdowns per game. They were sixth in total touchdowns per game. That's all NFL teams across all those seasons since 2014. That was on a team though. There was also 28th in yards per play. So they weren't asked for, they were just really good at converting last year. They were just a very, very strong offensive team. And they were ninth in percentage of drives across that time frame that ended in a touchdown. So, you know, it was a very efficient offense that I questioned, you know, will they be able to do that and repeat that year over year? I'd also argue that the defense could end up being a lot better. I just think that it's a tough bet. When I don't really see much of a difference between Matthew Stafford and Jared Goff, you know, like I don't think there's any real difference from a projection standpoint. I'd maybe give Stafford the edge, like a 52 to 48 type edge, but that's not what ADP's gonna show. You're gonna be able to get Goff multiple rounds after that, you know, on a lot of these sites. And then obviously there's players that you can draft late this year that are gonna give you that three to five point per game with their legs that's just really difficult for, you know, we know Matthew Stafford's not gonna get there. He's gonna be under one this year. So, you know, all that, I don't think Stafford's terrible and like the QB 15 range to QB 17 range, that's fine. But if you're drafting as a low-end QB 1, this is the kind of profile that we generally should be fading year over year. - I mean, this is, since we've been doing this show, I'm trying to think how many years we've actually done this home and home, if I think five or six. And I think the previous year quarterback that had the seven and a half percent touchdown rate has been a staple of this program every year. We don't think it was Baker Mayfield last year. I don't remember who it was, but if you just go down and check each year, it'll be that guy. And you know, just unfortunate Stafford, I mean, the Rams definitely were trying to get him at one point, get him to MVP. Like it's just, it's just tried to, I mean, - It's like crazy how many more touchdowns he had last year than the pre, and you can't just say it was only Devante Adams, you know, like you can't point to that and be like, oh yeah, he threw 17 more touchdowns because of that. - He does have one other 40 touchdown season with the Rams, but I mean, you look at, so last year, the Rams as a team, they reached the red zone or scored a long-range touchdown by proxy, just skipping the red zone, on 54.2% of their drives. Only the 2007 Patriots had a higher rate than that. And then you just look at the short yardage touchdowns that he had, 73% of their touchdowns were through the air last season, the previous three years, the Rams were at 59.5%, 59.1%, 51.6%. Like it was, it's just so much stuff lines up where they were just trying to get him these touchdowns. Like natural aggression, probably a little bit of boost for the running touchdowns to be up. Like you said, they're probably gonna be in a little more, if the defense is this good, they'll be in better scripts. You remember at the end of the year, when their cornerback Scott really banged up, and you know, they had Trent McDuffie and Jalen walks in this year or two, that's when they started to get involved and they're like a little bit of shootouts at the end of the year. You know, they had, they outright just lost to Atlanta chasing points. They actually had to score a lot of points against the Cardinals even in like week 18 when they played their starters. They played that crazy game against Ensiaddle, right? They got pushed, the Lions pushed them in a game as well. They ran away in the second half. So just all these things lined up, it just converged on Stafford, you know, hitting that touchdown rate. I think he's still like a solid bet. Like if you want him and like your two QB leagues and stuff, you can at any is affordable. Like if you still want to just like, if you break glass, right? Like if you keep pushing the position and he's there. Yeah, I don't think he's going to be like a throwaway pick at like QB 14, QB 15 when he slides in those leagues at all. But that's where he should be priced because you're not getting any rushing equity in these pocket passers. We just have so many of them down the line. Even he going where he is at a fair price. Like you said, has arbitrage options. You know, Jared Goff, but I would argue Jordan Love is an arbitrage option on him as well. So like yeah, yeah, there's just no there's basically this. It's the PSA to just not reach for Matthew Staff is what this really comes 100% for adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms. Every choice matters. Traumfaya offers self injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Traumphia is administered as injections under the skin, or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self-inject Traumphia, proper training is required. Traumphia is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease, and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis, serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections, or lower ability to fight them, and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Traumphia today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more, or visit trimphiaradio.com. Every player in the league has a scouting report, strengths, weaknesses, history, tendencies, everything an opponent wants to know, but what if somebody built a scouting report on you? Data brokers collect your personal stats, your name, address, phone number, family details, and other private information. Then they package it up and legally sell it to anyone willing to pay, sometimes just for pennies. And then what? The person buying your information may not be looking to draft you, they may be looking to scam you, steal your identity, and start using your name like it belongs to them. That's where LifeLock comes in, LifeLock's automatic data broker removal tool helps you find exposed personal information and remove it from those data brokers. If you fall victim to identity theft, LifeLock's restoration specialists will block and tackle for you, which means they'll handle your case from start to finish and restore your identity guarantee, because only LifeLock truly protects your name and your identity. To go get LifeLock at LifeLock.com and use promo code football for up to 30% off your first year. That's LifeLock dot com code football again, LifeLock dot com code football. All right, man. Next one for you. I'm going to stay at quarterback too. Like you said, it's really hard to like really push back and anyone that says like, Hey, I'm in at this quarterback. I think the market's price fitty fit pretty fair. But I think in the pocket where he still goes, Patrick Rahulm still been the toughest click for me. I think at the position for like guys that you actually like that get drafted in every draft. You know, Patrick Rahulm set the bar so high in his career that I feel like we've one overlooked exactly what the chiefs have given us passing and what he's giving us passing the last like three years. And then like us just like always are constantly chasing like that ghost of what that what we saw the ceiling, right? When something when a player or like a team shows you their ceiling, it feels like man, like what if they just get that back like because this is the cheapest mahalms ever been. That's the argument. You always hear right like this is this is the cheapest mom's ever been. And I do think if you're in like a two cube super flex keeper league, he is appealing in those formats because in 2027, the offense could just be outright different again. And he's a year removed from the ACL. But over the past three years, Patrick Mahomes is 17th in the NFL and completion rate. He is 23rd in yards or pass attempt. He is 20th in touchdown rate. He is 20th in interception rate from just that passing points perspective. He's not been good. And now what has helped him last year was that he was the QB4 and points per game because he ran more than ever. He had he had 25% of his fantasy points came from rushing alone. That was the highest rate of his career. He himself even before we get to the injury, I said, I think I maybe was running too much last year. And he's coming off the ACL so we just can't count on that. Even if he does like start to ramp up and he does scramble more as the season goes on, the passing stuff is really hard to bank on coming back. Some of you will say, well, Matt Nagy's gone and they're getting Eric B enemy. Eric B enemy's overlap also is Apex Tyree Kill, prime Travis Kelsey. What did Eric B enemy do after he left Kansas City to like give you a vote of confidence to say, you know what? It was probably Eric B enemy's like, that's why this law worked out. So bringing him back is going to work out. Matt Harman brought this up and you know far be it from us to push back on anything Andy is going to do in his career because he's going to walk right into the whole fame and he's been an incredible head coach. But when you look at the way the NFL has tried to solve for this defensive meta and you could argue the chiefs were at like the forefront of make driving us to this point. They have not done like the easy button stuff, like they're not doing the under center pre-sand mode stuff. Now they're going to do some of that more this year with Kenneth Walker. But they never changed anything with their wide receiver room. I mean, the big thing that's happened while the NFL has changed defenses is the chiefs go on the opposite way. Teams is just required to play more man coverage against them because they don't respect their wide receiver room. You know, you'll get the man coverage stuff from a home is the past year is being 26th in quarterback rating, 21st in completion rate, 28th in yards or pass attempt. And so they run this offense through a very debos Samuel S. player and Rishi Rice great for fantasy that he's used that way. Xavier Worthy, you know, if you want to give him a hall pass for a year or two, that's fine. But like we still have to take a step of faith that he's going to play better in year three. He still has an undersized receiver. He put hands on him is can he beat man coverage and then on top of all this, I mean Kansas City has like is a gauntlet. I mean, they have a rough paper. They open the year with Denver and week one. They have a little soft little pocket. But remember, my home is a week five by. So he's the earliest by so you have to plan on like you might not want to play him in week one because he faces Denver and then he has a week five by so you need a quarterback for him and that's you're probably taking two quarterbacks would patch my homes in one quarterback leagues. And then outside the buy charger, see Hawks Broncos like those aren't going to be spots where you're going to count on like your passing volume to get you there. And then you know, in the fantasy playoffs and the end of the year, it's it's rough and like that there's fluidity there like we could have injuries. These defenses could not look as good by the time we get to that point of the season. But you know, Patriots, 49ers, chargers, like you're not excited about those on paper either. So when I look at my homes and some of the guys going after him, I just think like they're still just outright better clicks to keep waiting at the position. And there are still guys after him that I think give you do a little bit of that dual purpose that like duality that give you a little bit of rushing, you know, depending on, you know, where, where, you know, Jackson Dark goes, we got bone nicks in there. Like we brought up, you know, Stafford going after you're like Stafford is probably arbitrage of my homes now. And maybe it's even better than yeah, so yeah, I get it. I get all the things like the cash A of the my homes brand and the prices as cheap as there been. But I still think he's a really tough click where he's at. Yeah. No, I'm with you. Look, he had 5.2 points per game last year via rushing his previous career. How was three and a half? I mean, it was very clearly a totally different season on the ground for him. Now he's coming off an ACL and oh, by the way, they finally invested in a running back who is good, right? That can create explosives. I think that there's a very real chance that we just see them completely change the way they operate to close the end zone, which is going to be a really big deal for his fantasy value. He's also been like the crazy thing is that there's been all this Cyrus Allen hype, which, you know, I think is, it's fine. Like he was, he was an interesting day three pick. But they almost like need him to hit the way that this offense is situated right now. Like they need that peace and that versatility to the offense because like Cyrus Allen's profile was pretty vertical and in college and he was able to, I mean, he played a decent bit in the slot, but he played outside too. He had some verticality to his game. And I think it would, I mean, it would be mega helpful if they just like had a hit at wide receiver because it's just how they've been operating is just not, as you said, not been working. But with you, with my homes and him coming off the ACL, assuming that he can maintain some of that rushing production is, to me, a little bit foolish, especially because they added Kenneth, Kenneth Walker to the next. All right. My next player, I will go with, I'm going to go with Travion Henderson next. So I look, I was in on Henderson last year. I was a mistake. Okay, I regret my, not really, well, sort of my process, but obviously the end decision. He had his moments. I don't think he was nearly as big of a bus as he could have been, but obviously it ended up being not a great season for Travion Henderson. I look at what's going on right now in New England. The drum beat is pretty loud in Ramondra Stevenson's favor. I would say at least it's not moving in Travion Henderson's favor. In our baseline, in my opinion, should be that Ramondra Stevenson is the lead back in the backfield, or at least like the RB1A. Look at what happened in the playoffs last year. Stevenson had a 71% snap share to Henderson's 31%, 13% target share to Henderson's 5%, 55% route share to Henderson's 25%. And last year in total, because of this resurgence that Stevenson had during the second half of the year, he was so much better the second half of the year versus the first half of the year. He was first among qualified running backs and rushing yards over expected per rush according to next gen stats. He was also first and catch rate over expected among qualified running backs, according to next gen stats. So he was both good on the ground and through the air, Ramondra was all while being as we know, the better pass blocker and the guy, the guy who was better in pass pro. And so I look at what's going on here and I worry, you know, I know there was a recent report about how we could see a 50 50 split where Ramondra gets the early down stuff and the short yardage and goal line work and Travion plays more on third downs, but there was a caveat that said, if the pass pro holds and that's a big caveat, like that's a really big deal. Last year, when when Ramondra Stevenson was healthy, he had an 88% long down and distance snap rate. Whereas Travion Henderson, if you include the games that Ramondra was out, was under 30%. So they used Ramondra Stevenson in those scenarios. And I think the pass pro stuff is a very real concern because as they were using Ramondra, the Patriots last year ran just 27% of their plays while trailing. That was the lowest in the league. The schedule's tougher this year. So that's a number that's going to be hard to maintain. And if that's the case, Stevenson played twice as many snaps as Travian Henderson did last year when the Patriots were behind so I'm just very very we're like I get the allure with Travian Henderson trust me I fell into it last year. I get the big playability and historically rich like What he did is a rookie running back if you look at his explosive run rate You know his big playability those guys do generally pan out at a decent rate moving forward the difference between What I talked about with like the the Denver backfield to what I'm talking about here with New England's because you know Everyone knows that I'm an analyst. I want you that that will tell you to chase upside once you get into like the middle rounds and stuff Travian Henderson's got a pretty big opportunity cost where he's going. This is not a RJ Harvey situation where you can get him two rounds later or three rounds later when there's a very very big drop in the kind of wide Receivers and honestly other running backs that you will be drafting him over You know like I'll take Deandre Swift over Travian Henderson all day, you know like I I think he's a a far better pick than Henderson I would argue very strongly that they shall Tutan despite the reports right now has a higher ceiling than Travian Henderson does Because the environment he's in Maybe you could say is a little bit worse. I wouldn't even argue it's it's substantially worse But the competition is Chris Rodriguez or is Ramandre Stevenson, right? Of course you would say oh the Travian Henderson's You know talent profiles better sure I get it But I think that you're at least like having those discussions very very easily and clearly and so There's a lot of opportunity cost of running running back But there's also opportunity cost at wide receiver like Christian Watson types like guys who have a lot of upside as your wide receiver Three that you're going to be drafting Travian Henderson over when Henderson to me, you know I think he's gonna enter the season as it at the very best the one B in this backfield So at this moment and I had this decision that I had to make in our apex league that we're in and Where there was a big drop off where but I needed to go running back and there was a big drop I've both running back and wide receiver so it was fine to to go this direction But I just took Ramandre Stevenson straight up over Travian Henderson in that draft and To me, it's just the safer bet at this moment And one where if you are a little bit thin at running back And you don't have the opportunity to sort of just like shoot for the moon and chase that ceiling I do think you should go Ramandre in those situations and I do have Ramandre I think in the same tier But ranked ahead of Henderson right now because I'm worried about what this will look like when we saw the success that they had when Ramandre was more so they'll lead back This is a very tough backfield to diagnose like for in terms of just like because all right So let's say we simulate this season ten times. I would say what six to seven times out of the simulation It's just like both these guys are like hurting each other and then you get a vice versa like when You know guys go down and so it'd be very hard I think when you because it's even Ramandre outside the playoff stretch When the kind of the chips are on the table and remember Henderson had like a late season concussion I'd open the door back up for you know Stevenson like the Stevenson stuff is like very small sample stuff too Then when you look at just kind of like from a ceiling perspective I mean Henderson had the highest yardage total for either of these backs and it came in a game with Stevenson playing That was the Buffalo game and then he had Henderson actually had seven to the top 11 yardage totals of this backfield of the season last year But then it's just like if you so like how does this work with both guys like you almost have to have a Detroit Lions type run out where it's Your pattern matching like Henderson is Gibbs and Stevenson's Monty right and like that's this really hard like It's just really hard to have two running backs on a team operate to that degree. This Patriots offensive line is good Like if you would get it, but he said that the the schedule is a lot harder to bank on that they added AJ Brown They had a Gromio dobs. So they're gonna have like two full-time receivers when last year they had no full-time receivers It's a very tough team. I think from a fantasy Projection stance outside of just saying you know AJ Brown's gonna be a good pick. Yeah, so I've had a real hard time And then so the thing is like I want to be in on Henderson the player He's like what I look for you know the the upside like it the the four 50 yard touchdowns We haven't had a rookie running back to this in Saquon We haven't had a player have two games at multiple 50 yard touchdown runs since Chris Johnson in 2009 This is the level of player we're working with But you brought up the big thing with Trayvian Henderson is the cost like this guy is going in just a hotbed of one How I've been building my teams in 2026? I'm almost always taking wide receivers where his pocket comes up And then like you brought up to even the running backs He's going like even in full PPR He's going like right after David Montgomery who we know is gonna have more touches and maybe more touchdown equity You know, you're you brought up baseball too, and he's kind of sandwiched in between those guys You know Jadarian price Kajadarian price like hit early in the season enough to like where if Charbonne comes back He's just if the things are in motion and he's got that that body of work and he's taking over There's just a lot of stuff around his pocket You can even kind of start to talk yourself and they're like looking at the QB ones in that range too I really am but also the the tight ends in that range too are a little bit more appealing to you So he just really falls into a pocket where he's just a tough click because I just feel like so much more confidence and in every other player around him Even for him being so auctions are where I'm targeting him like to kind of dabble just the seeks you mitigate some of the Opportunity cost and auctions and then maybe some large field stuff We're just the running back pole gets diluted because everyone's hammering these running backs earlier and you know who knows we have the if the next three Weeks go like this weekend the whole there's be some jostling in that RB two range anyways Yeah, I mean like I do want to be clear like I think that Trayvian Henderson is fine in a running back heavy build If you if you go that direction like the problem though is is You know if you're going running back heavy and you're starting robust RB and you have like two or three in the first four rounds My argument would be you should be taking a wide receiver in round five You know you shouldn't be thinking about going Trayvian Henderson's direction at the early parts of that of that round But let's just pretend that he slips right and you have a couple of wide receivers and you already have two or three running backs early I think it's fine if he slips to like the sixth and he's there and that totally, you know That's what we're talking about when we're talking about liking players Not liking players on today's episode versus their cost. I think Henderson makes a lot of sense for a lot of builds My bottom line is that you know you have to speak to what is most likely going to happen which is ADP and Again, I just think that there's a lot of running like there's there's there's to me. There's a lot more There's just more safety concerns with him. Mm-hmm based on the fact that Ramondre is is More likely at least going to start the season as as their lead guy and then maybe Trayvian starts to take over a little bit I just don't see this as the same kind of scenario as like a Denver backfield or something where the cost is so much different and Where you and honestly, too like once you get into like the early 60s and drafts That's when there's a very clear drop off in my opinion at both running back and wide receiver and and right before that I can see him being at the bottom of of that like Final tier of guys like at the you know I end of the end of the fifth into the sixth round That's where I think he belongs more, but he's not usually there in the end And like I said if you want to play it a little bit safer and you need you know again That was my RB two situations. I went really wide receiver heavy in that draft I would then just take Ramondre Stevenson over Trayvian Henderson But I have them in the same tier because that's giving you this idea of okay What does my team build look like right now? Okay? I can then pivot to which guy want based on what I've done earlier in the draft But I think there's a lot of risk with Henderson. I like him as a player I'm still optimistic about his future. I just worry a little bit about what we're gonna see here in 2026 I think that that apex draft that we're we're in and you know a lot of people That are listening to show a lot of people that they are familiar with are in that draft You know, Ian Harder. It's Mike Clay Sean Seagal Matthew Harmon and in Trayvian Henderson I believe that's where he was priced appropriately and he went to a team roster construction that made sense for him Right, I actually had a chance to take him and I took Jerry and Price over him as my RB three and he would have been my RB three But he went RB 27 at pick What 60 71 he had picked 71 Honestly, it might even be later than where I would have taken him You know what I mean like it what like I but you're right I think that's about where he should probably be going just given the risk Yeah, and he went to a team that had Jamir gives it's RB one and then just hammered wide receiver afterwards and said I'm fine having this volatility, but upside as my RB two and that team also grabbed Jordan Mason later It's kind of like the even maybe maybe like an installation on that part too But that's kind of I think where you see like a group of I don't want to pet us and maybe removing myself sharp individuals You know, does this kind of where you see like when you get a bunch of people that are like playing the game inherently like the way We believe we're playing it optimally all in the same room and where he's priced. It feels right Yeah, yeah, agreed agreed For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms every choice matters Traumfaya offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start Traumfaya is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks Followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks If your doctor decides that you can self-inject Traumfaya proper training is required Traumfaya is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis Serious allergic reactions increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them and liver problems may occur Before treatment get checked for infections and tuberculosis tell your doctor if you have an infection flu-like symptoms or need a vaccine Explore what's possible Ask your doctor about Tremphaya today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit TremphayaRadio.com. Every player in the league has a scouting report, strengths, weaknesses, history, tendencies, everything an opponent wants to know. But what if somebody built a scouting report on you? Then they package it up and legally sell it to anyone willing to pay. Sometimes just for pennies. And then what? That's where LifeLock comes in. LifeLock's automatic data broker removal tool helps you find exposed personal information and remove it from those data brokers. If you fall victim to identity theft, LifeLock's restoration specialist will block and tackle for you, which means they'll handle your case from start to finish and restore your identity guaranteed. Because only LifeLock truly protects your name and your identity. So go get LifeLock at LifeLock.com and use promo code football for up to 30% off your first year. Again, LifeLock.com code football. All right, you have one more to go over, but it's more than one here. So let us hear it. Yeah, I'm cheating and it's funny because you know, you were heading down the Denver Broncos path, but obviously there are Broncos you want to draft, but my last kind of, you know, fade here is the Arizona Cardinals as a collective. Let me break this down as it goes to each position too, and I'll try to do my best here because I don't want to just like hammer, I don't want to take like 15 minutes in each player. The Cardinals are the only team this year not favorite in any game entering the year. They're attracted to score the fewest points in a foul. I do believe there's enough talent here to where they aren't 30 second in points. Yeah. But then this team got absolutely ramrod it by the schedule this year. So the NFL, we know your opponents, right? Like it's set, but the where you play and when you play these teams is up to the league. Arizona opens the year against the Chargers, the Seahawks, the 49ers, the Giants, the Lions, the Rams, the Broncos, the Cowboys, the Seahawks, the Rams, the Chiefs, the Commanders, and the Eagles week 14 by. There are two spots on there where you're like, eh, that can be okay. Not only are they front loaded against teams that literally I just ran off a bunch of Super Bowl contenders to compound matters. They play four home games through 11 weeks. And their four home games are going to the Seahawks, the Lions, the Broncos, and the Rams. So like they have to go on the road when you're like, yeah, Giants could be fine, right? Or like, you know, Commanders, they have to go on the road for those games too. So they don't even get a hall pass on there. This team too, I think a lot of people are looking at the Cardinals and saying, hey, what what happened last year if they're bad again, we can run that back. And like, it just can't like, you have to look at what happened to the 2025 Arizona Cardinals in isolation. Like not only did Kyler Murray get injured, their entire backfield got injured. No running back even carried ball 100 times for them this season. The offensive line, their most frequent offensive line combinations on the field for 23% of their snaps. It was 26 in the league. The defense was obliterated on injuries at every level. The final nine games of the year, the Cardinals led for 47 offensive plays. Only the Raiders and Jets had fewer. And just that intersection of events created an offensive environment that you just don't see a year over a year, be sustainable. At the end of the year, Tramock Breider and 694 routes, just under 700 routes. It was the most ever by a tight end since we've had route data. The previous high was 623. To get add some context to this, the average Tyden, Tyden one, like a high usage Tyden runs 30 to 35 routes per game. So this, so Tramock Breider essentially last year played 22 football games last year. He ended up running 120 routes more than the next Tyden, which was Kyle Pits, which is basically four extra games worth. And what that did is it created the largest Tyden one to Tyden to disparity in league history. Kyle Pits only produced 66.7% of Tramock Breider's total. It was only the third time since 1990 that a Tyden to failed to produce 75% of the Tyden one output. And just the 10th time over the past 35 years, we've had the Tyden to be fewer than 80% of the Tyden once you have it. So even if you believe Tramock Breider is going to be the Tyden one again, which I still think he's going to be fine in the context of Tyden scoring. You just have to bet on the field being better versus the Tyden one this season. And then, you know, that all bled into Michael Wilson was, you know, second, the NFL was 630 routes run. We had a 330 route sample with him with Marvin Harrison on the field. And he only was target on 12% of his routes. Even when the back half of the season, you know, happened and Marv came back and played. And we already saw Michael Wilson, like, build up some head of themes. It completely reverted back to Marvin Harrison, you know, his target parot rate was only 17.9% of his routes with Marvin Harrison after Jacobi percent took over. And then Marvin Harrison, Jr. We're just three years in. And you're saying like, what do we have here? Then when you look at the Cardinals and I said schedule that week 14 by is the big point that I want to bring up because if we don't believe the Cardinals have enough wins by week 14 and their schedule actually is okay for the fantasy playoffs. We have to believe that's at least the point that the final firewall where Carson Beck's not playing it. And they're just giving him a look the final month because they're going to be in the mix to draft of 2027 quarterback. And they just have to see him against live fire. We could see him earlier than that too. But that's the firewall where I think we see Carson Beck. And then we're counting on Carson Beck and the fantasy playoffs to carry our guys. And it's just a really tough bet. I'm actually pretty neutral with the market like in Jeremiah Love and where it was before this weekend. We'll see kind of what where everything kind of settles at with where he kind of is. But like I just look at this team and I look at their whole team environment and I factor in like where we're going to be looking at these guys down the fantasy stretch. And I just kind of say like I'm going to probably go in another direction versus all these guys. Yeah, I'm 100% with you. Even, you know, Marvin Harrison Jr. I'm a couple spots below, you know, consensus, wider, super wise. I'm a decent bit below with Michael Wilson because of the splits last year. And Tray McBride, technically my, my tenant too still, but like where he gets drafted in the context of where Brock Bowers goes, I have a much, much bigger gap between those two. And I think McBride should go like more in like the later third as opposed to like the late second, you know. You know, you mentioned the routes run stuff. I wrote this in the guide where McBride average about 0.45 fantasy points per route run last year. If those 120 routes were declined, you know, were taken away from him. So he just, he still ran the most routes in the NFL at Tide. And he just ran a normal number of routes. He would have ended up scoring 15.4 PBR points per game instead of 18.6 PBR points per game, which is a dream. I mean, look, 15.4 points per game is good, really good. But it's certainly not like what you're drafting for. Not only that, but he had some unsustainable stuff and end zone targets, the way that he was targeted, you know, in the in the red zone and, you know, it's touched on scoring something that we never thought that we would be saying about Tramick Bride after the way that he started his career and what he did in college, too. But yeah, I'm with you. It's a very scary offense. I think you could even take a step backwards and maybe this will sound idiotic by the end of the year. But like, are we this confident in Jacobi Berset lead offense? You know, like I know that he played better last year than what was expected. But I even think if you just dumb this down to that degree, aside from buying into the volume stuff, because like, I think you can make the argument that Michael Wilson, if there's one profile that looks like last year's Jerry Judy, it's Michael Wilson, where, you know, the splits look really good when that's what happened with Judy when Central Tillman was injured and when he had James Winston and like, it's exact same kind of scenario. You know, I think that there's at least a little bit more to like about Wilson and maybe there is just a slightly later breakout with him, regardless of all of that. I just think it's scary to be investing in Jacobi Berset lead offense the way that we're, you know, investing in. So there's just a lot of scariness to the, the Arizona Cardinals offense, but maybe they surprise us. We'll see. Yeah. And like I said, when you, when you just put dollars for donuts where all these guys go in ADP, you know, excluding Berset, who's not going to go and hit one TV leagues, you know, you could, if you want to take them into, you could be out, no pushback, really. But it's just where they go in drafts, there's just another guy in that point where you just have more confidence in their terms of, you know, offensive environment. And that's what makes it really tough. Cause I think like Marvin and Michael Wilson are largely probably fairly priced where they go. But like again, like, are you going to take, you know, you know, Marvin Harrison Jr., you know, over, over even Christian Watson, right? Right. Like no, no chance. I'm doing that. Or Parker Washington, who we talked about earlier on the show, are you taking him over where we start to look at quarterbacks? Are you going to take him over like a kale Williams, Dak Prescott where he usually tip goes against the, you know, so it's just, I just think it's, it's just really hard when you get to each portion of the draft where those guys come up. And even if you think they're fairly priced, there's just no insulation there. Right. Right. All right. My last guy is Tony Pollard. You know, we, we actually talked before the show and some of the hiring guys you mentioned, I like, I certainly would have mentioned like an HN. So I'm just so people know I am in agreement with, with everyone, everything that, that Rich brought up today. But Pollard's a guy that I have pretty heavily faded this year. Even in Bestball, like I just have not clicked his name, you know, that's a, a range of, of Bestball drafts where there are those really elite quarterbacks still going, like Jaden Daniels and Jalen Hertz and the, the upside guys. But even some wide receivers will slip there. And just straight up, like I want Ramondra Stevenson over Tony Pollard, for instance, right? I would, I'd rather just, just go that route. Contention Upside still sits there with Stevenson in a way better environment. But let's just talk about Pollard. I just think it's a very traditional dead zone kind of archetype of player. He's not quite traditional dead zone. He's not quite as high, but he's the next year down from a lot of those guys. You're, you're definitely not buying Pollard because of his environment. You know, there's questionable quarterback play. We already saw that in the preseason. Bad offensive line. You're doing it because of projected volume for Pollard. But I'm worried about that. You know, he posted a yards per out run rate below 0.8 last year for the third straight year. Again, very predictive of future, or at least pretty predictive of future target share and that target share did dip to just 8% last year. And he also, he had that stretch without Tajay Spears last year where his usage numbers looked really good, right? But when Spears was healthy, so in that four game stretch without Spears, he had an 89% snap share, 69% route share, great. They were using him as a bell cow in that backfield. With Spears, those numbers were 54% in terms of snap share and 40% in terms of route share. Now, we don't know exactly how this coaching staff is going to deploy this backfield. But Spears has been a viable pass catcher. We saw Spears play a lot with Camp Ward in their preseason game for what it's worth. I'm not saying that that's definitive, that that's the way they're going to deploy things, but I think that he's a legit threat. And then also, maybe later in the season, they want to see what they have in Nick Singleton. I know he had a bad pass pro rep that was going viral, but they might want to see what they have in Singleton also later in the season. It's just to me, I want to, in this range of drafts, I would much rather be shooting for the better offensive environments than going with a guy like Pollard, who's getting closer to 30 years old. Just hasn't been the same back that he was, even a couple of years ago. And now that Tajay Spears is healthy, and obviously they drafted Nick Singleton, I just worry about what that volume's going to look like as the season goes on. - Yeah, Pollard, the only caveat I'll say for Pollard is I will take him when I take two in originarian price, like, 'cause he's a bit of insulation. It was like the same process that got me to like, so I was not bullish on Travis ETN or Javonte Williams last year, but when I was taking, and I recommend this in the draft guide, was when I was taking Trevian Henderson in RG Harvey last year, I was like, this is where you take ETN at Javonte Williams, just as like, hey, these guys can at least, they'll be, they won't be a zero for you if these guys turn out to be zeroes. - Right. - That's the only time I take Pollard, but yeah, I mean, you just look at the profile, you just have more than six touchdowns in one NFL season. You know, how many touchdowns is he gonna score? I tend to see tie the ends. You brought up the splits with Taj A Spears, who got a little bit of usage. At one point, you know, this is a guy in a contract year who they were talking about, maybe, or cutting or trading this off season. If they're just, you know, going down the drain, do they just play Singleton, just to see what he has? There's just a lot of, you know, outs here, where you just don't have a lot of upside or like, true median. Like I said, the only spots I'll take him is when, I'm looking just for like that glue, just like to patch up like where I took a little risk. Like, if I take a Gibbs, Abija on a CMC, then I treat it like almost like an anchor build, and then I'm taking like a Giderian price or one of those other guys. But that's really it. That's the only time I'm taking him. - And he'll fall sometimes, but like a lot of these platforms have him at like RB27, RB25, like I'm like four or five running Mac spots below that. And that's, again, that's, that's not just four or five running Mac spots. It's also overall ADP where I'd rather be going wide receivers instead of going after, you know, that you're not forced to take a running Mac in that range. But like, you know, if you're in any sort of PPR format and you're staring at like Jalen Warren versus Tony Pollard, like I'm taking Jalen Warren, I'm taking Ramondra Stevenson for the upside case of what they can do as receivers. You know, like Warren, especially just someone who's just been a unbelievably good football player. You know, I know that there's risk of split backfield, but I would argue there's a risk of split backfield here with Tony Pollard too. Well, I mean, they're contingency upside is far greater 'cause we've seen it with Pollard already. Like he's, the lead running back for the Tennessee Titans, he's basically been the last two years. - Exactly. - Right, like what are we really hoping for here? So yeah, so Pollard's been someone that I just haven't clicked very often in all this year. But Rich, this was fantastic as usual. Let everyone know where they can find you and what you're gonna be working on, you know, over the next couple of weeks until the season starts but then also in the season. - Yeah, like you, you know, finishing up the draft guide, kind of, you know, please turn injuries off these last three weeks. I mean, it feels like every week and, yeah, I don't know about you, but it's not the big injuries like we can deal with because like there's things that go in motion. Like if a guy's gonna be out for the year, we can kind of divvy up. It's these, the injuries that we've had, like the Agbuka, Breast Hall, Jeremiah Love, like could they, could this get into the season? Could it not, like what do you adjust? Like these are the toughest ones to kind of diagnose 'cause you also wanna keep one foot in on some guys you like too. And it's like, all right. Like, so those are tough. But please turn injuries off these last three weeks. But so finish up the draft guide. And, you know, last year you guys helped me out a lot on this program 'cause, you know, J.J. has the best podcast in fans football and the best audience. And you guys love the promo I dropped last year. So I'm gonna drop one more here for you. And it just J.J. and you guys are all my people too. If you like J.J. stuff, you probably like mine. But you can use promo code draft at sharp football analysis and you get the draft guide for free. I'm gonna say give it to you guys for free. So check that out. And then I also do this show at J.J. We oscillate where the voids were at his show this year. We're gonna do my show. We're gonna do the targets. And J.J. will have first pick of the target. So look for that next week to see the guys where we're not pessimistic on them. - Yeah, this is the downer episode. We get to do the one next week where we're excited about these guys. But Rich, appreciate it as always. Everyone listening, make sure you check out layround.com. Check out the draft guide. Make sure you are subscribed to both the podcasts in the YouTube channel, youtube.com/atlayroundff. Otherwise everyone, thanks for tuning in. (upbeat music) - Scams don't always look like scams anymore. AI can make a fake ticket offer, look legit, or a sports book tech sound official. And then what? Granger knows when you're a procurement manager for an office park, you're not managing one building. You're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and around corners. Lights about to fail, filters ready to clog, H back on its last leg. If you wait until something breaks, you're all ready behind. Count on Granger for quality products, easy reordering and 24/7 support. Call 1-800-GRanger, click grainger.com or just stop by. Granger for the ones who get it done. This is an I Heart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.