The Show: Market Score Ceiling Comps, Tight End Talk, and More

This is an I Heart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. You're about to listen to the Late Round Fantasy Football Show which originally aired on YouTube. If you'd like to catch the show live this off season, you can head to the Late Round Fantasy Football YouTube channel youtube.com/atlateroundFF. We'll be live each Wednesday at noon eastern. Without further ado, here's this week's episode. [Music] Welcome in. Welcome in. It's the Late Round Fantasy Football Show, sponsored by a draft king's David Kitchen here alongside JJ. JJ, how are you doing today? Better than you buddy. Better than you. This is Kitchen's flu game everybody. So I'm going to bring the energy today. It's on me to lift. I mean, I still am too. If it's the Jordan, you know, flu game, it's like. That's true. But do we really, do we really believe you had the flu? It might have been food poisoning. It might have been pizza. Might have been a little bit too much to drink. The previous one. It could have been that. That wasn't me though. That wasn't me. No, that's not. But still, you know, you're Jordan. I'm Pippin here. Maybe. No, you're Jordan today. That's fine. No, no, you're Jordan. I'll be Steve Kerr, you know, John Paxton around those guys. Luke Longley action. I'll be, I'll be, go. I'll be, go coach. Yeah, I can tell you who coached. Is it a good Ron Harper, right? This is the basketball stuff that I can talk about because I was, I mean, who was it? Name a millennial that wasn't into the NBA in the mid 90s. Yeah. It's tough to find. It's tough to find. I'm sure there are some, you know, zoomers out there that are like, what are these guys talking about? Yeah, we, uh, my house, because we didn't have an NBA team in Pittsburgh. And so my brother, for whatever reason, got really into the Pacers. And so I kind of grew up like a pseudo Pacers fan in a way. Uh, just because he was into him. So like, you know, I'm loved Reggie and Rick Smith and stuff. Like it was a, those were fun teams. They just could never really get over the hump. I liked the bulls. And it wasn't just because of Michael Jordan. Drawing up and. Growing up in Yankees too, but no, actually, I like the Cubs. Oh, and guys growing up in Nashville. Carolina. There were two channels. TPS and, and WGN. And those were the two channels you could catch baseball games. And so all my friends were TBS with the Braves. And I was WGN with the Cubs. And with that came the bulls. And, you know, that was, uh, it was a good time to be a, uh, you know, bulls fan. There, uh, so, so it's funny because I live in Charlotte now as everyone knows. So I'm in the suburbs in Charlotte. And, uh, I've been here for about 12 years now. And I, when I moved here, I kept joking and telling people that I always was meant to live in Charlotte, because I have a bunch of like pictures of people. Yeah, wearing like Hornets gear. But it's funny because literally anyone anywhere had something Hornets related. Like I had a, one of those, uh, teal blue hats with like a purple hornet that was like covering the whole hat, you know, that I would wear all the time. And so I would have pointed that, but who didn't have Hornets gear growing up? But, no, that the Hornets were like the go to NBA. Someone was talking about NBA Jam in the comments. Uh, ranch dressing was about Rick Smith being an NBA Jam legend. Yeah. The Hornets were the best NBA Jam team. Grandmama Larry Johnson. You had Alonzo Morning, Mugsy Boggs. I mean, that's a, that's a fun, fun group to, uh, to play with in that game. We, I had to, this is just a behind the scenes, but that's okay. Uh, because we're still in June, but I had to fill out that survey for I Heart for like the host and it was like, what is his favorite teams? And I almost put like Carolina Panthers, but I just stuck with Pittsburgh. I mean, like I can say the Panthers are my second favorite team. That's fine. You know, I have, I got the Steelers, you know, as my, as my hometown forever team. But I like the Panthers. I'm happy the Hurricanes won the Stanley Cup. It's cool. It's a fun story. You know, it's, it's, it's local-ish. As people know, the Canes are in Raleigh, not in Charlotte, but my family loves in Raleigh. So I don't think I knew that until you told us that last week. That isn't one of the episodes. Yeah. I can't remember what episode there's so many episodes that we're doing. I can't remember if it's Bestball Bro or if it's this one or whatever. But yeah, I mean, like it's, it's, uh, it's, it's a Raleigh based team. It brings us into the next point. We are producing like JJ said more content and ever four episodes this week. I mean, we've never done that before. And so four episodes on your podcast feed this week. We've got becoming a Bestball Bro that hit the, you know, hit the podcast feed and the YouTube feed. I was actually watching on, on YouTube while I was working on the draft guide earlier with Neil Orrfield. So that's happening. We have a newsletter with market source stuff by Brande Gadoola. Just to get sent out already. Yep. Just went out. Okay. So just went out and again, all this stuff, light round dot com. You can sign up for the newsletter and make sure you are liking and subscribing to the YouTube channel. And immediately after this JJ, you are drafting a team lie. Immediately. Yeah. Right after this. After the stream, you'll be redirected to James Bestball stream. So stick around at the end of the show because I will be doing then a live stream. It'll take me like a minute or two to just get it set up. But I will be doing that. So if you're an audio listener, you can hop on the YouTube channel after you listen to this on Thursday. And you can rerun that live stream of the, of the draft that I'll be doing. Hopefully, hopefully it's not a bad one. That's some, have to have some decent ones last couple. But everyone's not going to get those stinkers, you know, where you walk away and you're like, what is going, I had, I had one. I was, I was away this past week for my daughter's dance competition. That on becoming a best ball, bro. And I went very running back heavy as just like, you know, change it up a little bit and like go, I'm talking like I'm going. Taking running back early, but I mean, like I got four in the first five rounds and I was like, okay, I'm done. I'm not going to get a running back. And then I had to walk away for a second because I was with my son. And he needed something. And so I walked away for a second. And when I did that, I was on the clock and I went RB RB and got Keith Mitchell and Woody marks. And so my team just kind of went to the, you know, what? Because when you invest that much capital early on and then you get those guys laid, it kind of ruins the flow and what you need for your team. We'll see what happens, but that one's probably, probably now. Yeah, last week when I was drafting on the, the later on stream, we had a troll. That's the only thing I could consider him is a troll because did not draft a quarterback to the last round. It was like a backup quarterback. Did they cancel the draft? I don't know if they did or not, but like everything else was fine. He just like his roster construction was messed up and he kept on taking tight ends. There's one team that had four tight ends and one team that had five tight ends. So I kept on thinking I'm going to get tight ends later. Nope. He is all the time. Neil revealed that he's been draft. It has some five tight end teams that he talked about on becoming a basketball bro this week, which I, I was surprised by. I pushed back a little bit and was just like trying to get more out of him from that. Yeah. He talked about why he was doing it. I thought it was a really interesting conversation, especially like he's going heavy tight end sometimes even with Brock Bauer's. So I think it's just a, it's a good conversation. I really enjoyed talking to Neil this week. Neil is a good guy. Speaking of basketball, though, we do have our promotion. The draft Kings is a sponsor for this show and we appreciate them. It is draft one, get one into their $20 million draft Kings bestball millionaire maker. So you draft one and you get a bonus entry with that. And let me just say other than that, because I know some people like, oh, best ball, you know, stop talking about best ball or whatever. It's just like mock drafts. This is how we used to talk about mock drafts. And even I get it, like if you can't max in or you don't have the funds to play the best ball mill, like, you know, you can still draft three dollar teams. And they're incredibly fun. And you can do a slow draft three dollar team that takes you, you know, that takes like two weeks to complete, but you're at least in that draft. So they've got a ton of contests over at draft Kings and we appreciate them. And with that being said, JJ, we also have the draft guide that's releasing July 10th, where in the final stages of putting that together, wrapping it up. I feel way less stressed than I was a week or two. And you can tell. Yeah, you can tell, you know, oh my gosh, I was getting really, but then, but then I started getting in a flow with. What I would I forget is that a lot of the way that I write the draft guide when I do the positional breakdowns is that some of the background of like what the league is doing and some trends there and what I'm looking at versus ADP expectation. I get that in the quarterback and running back sections, this is the first two positions that I do. And I realized then once I get to wider see for intent, and I don't have to rehash that over and over again, which takes a lot of time to kind of establish that. So it was a lot. easier to do the wide receiver and tight end sections than I anticipated. So now I feel like I'm in a good place and I don't have to like go absolutely nuts. I still need that July 10th release date, but yeah, it'll definitely be going out by then. I feel good about where we're at right now. And speaking of, you know, the July 10th date is because like we still have like some news when it talks about player takes and stuff. We are getting, we still kind of gathering items, gathering reports. And I don't know, you know, for me, it's more like confirming my priors, but you know, we still have some news items. There wasn't a, there weren't a ton of news items this week, but it's a lot of like speculation and practice reports. So with that being said, let's get into it. It's today's news. Today's fantasy news. All right. I just put Josh down his rocket right here because it seems like he's lining up different positions for the the Colts and maybe not just like a gadget slot guy. Yeah, shocker, right? We've only been talking about this for four months. I remember I did the reddit AMA and someone asked me, this is back before the draft and someone had asked me what my recent dynasty trade was. And this is again, this is pre draft. And my most recent trade was that I sent the 208 for Josh Downs. And people were, you know, a lot of people, it was more favorable than not favorable. So, you know, I'm not going to, you know, do a podcast about Roma Dunes Aversa Mecha Buka in this way, right? Which people did some, some people did not like the rewind episode of that. Some people loved it and they're like, it's a great reminder. And some people are like, you know, why are you beefing with people? And like, if that's your takeaway, man, that's really not why I did that episode. But I bring that up because at the time, you know, I just, I feel good about the way that I've read the Josh Down situation. I'm not that surprised that he's getting the run that he's getting. And then you add on the Alec Pierce stuff. And it's just like, there's going to be a lot of opportunity for Josh Downs to at least prove himself. And yeah, I mean, Market Score doesn't like Josh Downs as much as I would like, which is a little bit scary. But if you think about it, like Market Score is basing things off of historical, you know, numbers and what we've seen in history. And I think Downs' situation is a little bit different than what we've seen from him historically. I still think, though, that Indianapolis has a lot like, I don't know if the market is really considering how volatile the quarterback position could be for anyapolis issue. You know, where we're hoping for the best with Daniel Jones, right? And Jones himself actually hits a lot of the like decent criteria that you would want for a late round quarterback. But we obviously know why he's going as late as he is because of the sickilles. And, you know, we've seen Kurt Cousins not look right after the Achilles Aaron Rodgers wasn't really, I mean, definitely wasn't right until sort of like the end of that first year back from it. And so I'm a little bit concerned about what that might look like. But Josh Downs has always been someone that I liked a lot as a player. Love them as a prospect. I thought he was under drafted whenever he came out. And so I think that he can play more of a perimeter role. So we'll see what happens. I mean, there's not much competition. I've been saying for a while, it's like Nick Westbrook Akine. Are we really afraid of that? I think the bigger issue that we could run into is if Keenan Allen does sign with Indianapolis, which there is some rumor of that happening. And I think it makes a ton of sense for Indianapolis to do that. So keep that in mind instead of like, like, I don't know, I don't feel like Josh Downs is at an unreasonable price tag in Best Ball and on draft Kings right now. But I don't think he's like a smash where he goes necessarily. You know, like, I'm not super overweight despite everything I just said about like getting him in certain spots and whatnot, you know, before a lot of this hype happened. And if the Keenan Allen signing happens, that's actually that's pretty bad news because Keenan Allen was not that bad last year. Like, I actually think I was going to you're doing it right now too. I was going to add it to the free agent list that we have going here because the more I've like looked into Alan, the more I'm like, why am I not throwing the 20th round dart like really frequently with Keenan Allen right now? Like, he wasn't that bad per out run last year in the context of what that Chargers offense was doing, which was not a lot. He wasn't that bad of a player. Like, I don't I don't think he's like definitively toast just because he hasn't kind of team yet. So I think that would that would hurt Josh Downs and something to at least keep an eye on if they do go out because right now with the Alec Pierce stuff, with the lack of depth, they have a wide receiver. I would not be shocked at all if they go that direction. There was a, you know, again, the time of year where just you have to filter through all sorts of beat reports and speculation and predictions and there was a report that's I think Alec Pierce could see two times. Yeah. Okay. Can we talk about that for a second? I don't want to be like 170 targets. I don't want to put the reporter up last, but this is exactly why like the best beat reporters are the ones who are not making up random projections. They're the ones that are giving us information and telling us how they generally think from like a percentage standpoint, like a backfield could be split. Like look at Nick, Nick Underhill is always kind of like the go to best beat reporter. You can find for an individual team and he doesn't do that. It's kind of stuff. He's not like, but yes, what you're saying is there's a report that says that Alec Pierce could double up his targets from last year, which would put him in like Jamar Chase territory, right? Like it's just it couldn't happen short. Maybe there's like a 1% chance, but I've said it all off season two. Like like Pierce has never been a high target share type player, dating back to college too. Like it's just never been part of his game. I think that they're like he's evolved and he's gotten better. And I think there's a chance that we see like a 23 to 25% target share from him this year, which is why if he were to be healthy, I went from thinking I wasn't going to be on Pierce at all in season long this year to being like, you know what? This cost really isn't that ridiculous. Now the reason he keeps on falling. Yeah, the injury's thrown a little bit of a you know, I wrench into the into the whole plan, but like I do think that if he were fully healthy and his ADP were in like the late six or something on draft games, where you know, after you know, maybe around where like Marvin Harrison Jr goes, like I if Alec Pierce were healthy, I'd be taking him over Marvin Harrison Jr is essentially where I would be at. So he's going way after that at this point. And because of the injury. And so I part of me wants to buy in, but this stuff about him seeing 170 targets and stuff like what are we doing here? Like what what what's going on? Leave, leave that to the nerds. Okay, leave it to the nerds. Let's skip down because you mentioned Nick Underhill. It's a good segue. Alvin Camara. RB2 territory. This was by Underhill, triplets, a few other Saints, beat reporters. They don't know what the end game is for Camara being there still. But he is RB2. And we've seen his ADP climb with just a little bit on DK. Yeah, the weird thing though is that Travis ETNs hasn't really changed that much from from what I've at least experienced anecdotally. I think that this is a reason to not be in on Travis ETN right now. Like I haven't really been that aggressive. I love the wide receivers in that range. I think you could easily argue Javante Williams over Travis ETN if you're going to make a volume play argument. It's like like especially if you're not like ETN is not this like prolific pass catching back that I think some people think he is. He's he definitely was able to do that in college and like that was what he was sort of projected to do in the NFL. But he hasn't been that guy necessarily at the NFL level. And so when you think about it and you're going to compare and contrast like Javante to Travis ETN and Javante usually goes after ETN in a lot of these drafts. When you and I'm not even a huge huge into Javante guy, it's just that like if you were to compare and contrast Javante has a weaker death chart if you're assuming Cameras sticks around Javante has a weaker death chart to compete with and he's in a better offense. He's in a better situation. He's going to see more work on the ground. Now I worry a little bit about what Javante might be able to do from a ceiling perspective as a receiver. Like I think he's one of those players that you're drafting to maybe exceed expectation by just a little bit. But I'm not sure top five outcome is really possible given the way that they're going to likely use him and what his peripherals looked like as a receiver last year. But I kind of feel similarly about Travis ETN. ETN was not that good last year from like a efficiency standpoint and you know, yards over expected and stuff perspective. I believe yards over expected definitely success rate. I know that Bay Shaltoton had a way better success rate than ETN did last year. And so the way I'm thinking of it is like is is Alvin American have standalone value in your season long league? Probably not. I don't know that's going to happen. Can you throw a dart and best ball? Sure. But I think that he could dig into ETN just enough to make ETN a less desirable player to choose like more of like a more traditional dead zone back if you will where you're kind of making the assumption that you're just going to see a lot of work. But maybe the body of work really isn't totally there for ETN. But then at the same time, I really like the offense and I want to you know, I want to invest in the sands and such. But right now today I do think that Camera is more of the hurting ETN than having standalone value himself. And that's a problem though because ETN's that three, four turn type pick and there's a lot of good wide receivers going around there. Yeah. And you talk about the dead zone because that range of running backs is Kyron Williams Breast Hall ETN. Like you know, all that have a a little bit of question marks surrounding them. - Yeah, I mean, to me, like, I think Breese is the easy go to among those guys, I still worry a little bit about Kyron just because we saw more and more Blake Kornum last year. And you could even throw Javante and David Montgomery into that mix too. I think David Montgomery's really scary, has a really scary profile. Javante has somewhat of a scary profile, like I've talked about on the show. And last week with like alarming numbers and stuff, but the situation is clearly there for Javante. And then you get into the sort of like the younger players. You know, the guys who have this like, you know, like, like, face all toot and and such, but in Quinch on Judd Keynes or Camp Scataboo. But a lot of those guys have have question marks. I mean, once you get past the Jeremiah Love and maybe I'll throw a breeze hall, I'm becoming a little bit more bullish on breeze hall. Maybe like once you get past those guys, you really do start to feel uneasy about the running backs of your draft. And the wide receivers though have a lot of upside, you know, in that area. All right, it is tied in you week. So all these tight ends gathered in Nashville, Taylor performed a concert last night apparently. So, you know, that's happening. But we're kind of focused on what's happening on the field. You have Darren Waller at tied in you. And I don't know if he's gonna be like a fly in the ointment kind of deal or if he has any sort of stand load value, but the fact is he said, he's been working out six days a week and he's not working out for nothing. That's what he said. - Yeah, I mean, by the way, I wanna address this really quick in the chat. Says another season, another year, people bashing Kyron, yet he continues to produce. Okay, go look at his peripher, like last year, yes, he exceeded expectation, but not by much. Like the volume argument and the idea, the Rams offense was spectacular last year. Matthew Stafford won MVP and yet Kyron Williams wasn't like out of control league winning type player because they did, he is a volume dependent type back. Fortunately, he sees a lot of goal in work. I'm not saying that he's a fade. I'm not fading him at the moment, but what I am saying is it's a volatile profile given how they started to deploy Blake Horum down the stretch. I mean, it was a very real like ding to Kyron Williams upside when they started using Blake Horum more and more. So look, I get it, people, I do think that the narrative with like the bashing Kyron is a little bit overblown. It's not like he's been the starter there for like that. People act like he's been the starter for LA for like six years and it's just like every year people are just bashing Kyron Williams. He's fine guys, I just don't think he has a top five ceiling, like legitimate. And then again, so like the question is Ram's D is so much better this year, don't you think they run more? Sure, I don't think Kyron Williams, like a terrible pick. I'm just saying that they don't throw to their running backs in the system very frequently. And Blake Horum is getting more work in the offense and it's a little bit scary. Like I still think that when I make the point that Kyron has a volatile profile, I think that's a pretty reasonable take to have that with Blake Horum there and them coming off such an efficient season offensively. I don't think we can just assume that continues year over year. Let's talk about tight ends though. You have Kyle Pits on here too, that we didn't talk about Kyle Pits. Yeah, I was going to after the tight end new stuff. Yeah, Pits go back to the Pits deal. Three years, $54 million for the Falcons. There were some possibilities that he might not go, he might not stay with the Falcons or their trade him, you know, whatever, but he is there for at least another three years. Yeah, so Pits, actually, I wish I had more in Bestball because he does check a lot of like the Trend boxes in general that you would want. He is in that like traditional like tight end dead zone area where there's no correlation from like tight end seven to tight end 18 historically, which is a little bit scary. But again, there's just not that much competition there and that's really what you're aiming for with a lot of those players. So good for Kyle Pits, you know, getting the bag, getting some money. And really just having like an unfair, just having some unfair expectations attached to him, I think is what that comes down to. I will say though, like we talked about this with the alarming stats, like his numbers were pretty scary without, or sorry, with Drake London last year, they were way better without Drake London. So keep that in mind as well. And there's a new system that's going to be in place there that hypothetically could be favorable because to Fanski's been a pretty tight end heavy coach in the past, but I don't think it's a lock that we know exactly, you know, that Kyle Pits is going to be a high end tight end one. But Darren Waller looks kind of the part last year when he got run for Miami. I wouldn't be shocked if he can find somewhere and like be like a 50% to 60% route share guy and be a red zone threat kind of like what he played for with Miami. I mean, honestly, if the, if the chargers had and signed David and Joku, you got to wonder if maybe they were a team that would want to go after him and use him, but maybe they wanted a little bit more of an all around tight end than what Waller is at this point. But yeah, I think it's a player to monitor. I don't know if you draft him in best ball right now, but it's at least a player to monitor, you know, as the summer goes along. If you're if you're found with a zero, he's available there in the end point of the round. Yeah, there's a very legit chance that he would be a zero for you. He say wants to go to a contender. We can have contenders George Kiddell looking good at tighting you. We have some video of him running drills. I mean, it just seems like he has defied all odds there. Yeah, I mean, but look, there was an Achilles injury that apparently a coordinate doctor was in like the bad part of the Achilles. So there people aren't as shocked that he's able to bounce back. But I do think that, you know, there's there's two trained like thoughts that I have about Kiddell from a weekly upside perspective. You could argue that almost no other tie down has as much weekly upside as George Kiddell does. Like in a given week, we know that he can blow up. But I do think that we have to be realistic and realize that he's on the bad side of the age curve. He's coming off a pretty tough injury. You know, they get Mike Evans, who's a red zone threat. So like, I don't think that you need to go crazy for Kiddell, but I do think that, you know, if you haven't drafted Kiddell, you probably should draft some Kiddell and have him as part of your portfolio. If you're looking at this from a best ball perspective, and then one season long starts, we'll see what is where his ADP settles. I don't think that in season long, he's gonna necessarily be like a target, but I don't think he's a void either, just because we know the upsets there. - Okay, we have more glowing talks. Someone posted this on our discord in the news rumors channel that Chick continues to impress there in Washington, and that he and Jane Daniels are getting on the same page. - I'm glad I drafted a lot of Chick-a-Conqo before I wrote the draft guide this year, because the way that your Titans deployed him last year was not great from a predictive standpoint. And for me, we were such a vanilla offense last year, and like, they replaced our offense in the middle of the season. - Yeah, no look, we can excuse away a lot of this stuff, because some of the big things that Chick does not like check, right, are really poor per-route efficiency because the offense was not very efficient through the air. So obviously there's a correlation there, but also he had a pretty low A dot last year. Like, he was not getting down the field, and that's also something that we want more of from previous season data. Like, if we get higher A dots from these Titans, it gives us signal of not only were they being deployed as receivers, but they were down field threats, and that shows probably a little bit of a talent profile to be able to get some of those looks down the field, and his weren't there last year. And so there are some scary trends with him, but it's a completely different environment for him. And if you look at the team environment, you only have Terry McLaren there that you're seriously worried about. Like, McLaren is gonna project for a higher target share than a Conqo will, but outside of him, there's a lot of question marks who are already talking about like a wide receiver rotation in that second spot. Maybe they get IU, maybe they don't, but there's a very real chance that a Conqo, is the number two target getter unwashed in this year. And if that's the case in this new offense, that's pretty attractive. So I do think that he's still a pretty good late round pick. - Yeah. Also when he was in Tennessee, he was having to compete with the Titan, with the last name of Helm, who has just dominated as well. - Yes, he did. - He might be one of my most owns Titans. - He's top four for me. - Oh really? - Yeah. - It's 'cause I just get the late Titan stack whenever I have an aniquing. - Yeah, okay. Good. We're on our team Gunner Helm. - Yeah, you're taking a W now? You're going to be on last year. - I just say it. - So one might have made fun of me last year for the last year. - Was that wrong? - I just, well, we're talking about like the career. I just think people were looking at his, his team is 40, he was hurt. - Yeah. - Anyways, this isn't a, - It wasn't like a camp miss profile though. - Right. And he still might not be that great, but he is one of your top four Titans. So maybe you do a suit. - Exposure box. - Not ranked for the record. - Yeah, right. Chris Alavec cleared. His ADP has dropped quite a bit. just because this news and now it looks like he's cleared. He's gonna be off blood thinners here soon and he'll be back to playing football. - Yeah, I mean, look, I think that Alave, I've said it before on the show, like I'm a little bit worried about what the target share could look like. I like the Saints offense this year. So, I'm throwing darts and I'm still drafting Alave, but a lot of that has to do with the fact that there's become this like more ambiguous area in round three of these drafts, which is where Alave goes. So, it's a little bit easier to draft in there. I think I still like Devante Smith more than Alave, which is probably a contrarian take, but only maybe by like a spot. It's not like dramatic or anything. And so, you know, and then once you get into like the Zay flower range and the lad range, I have Alave ahead of those guys at the moment, but I mean, we'll talk about one of them. I think maybe both of them today. So, I'll have some more takes on Zay and Lad, but I think Alave is fine where he goes. I just, I worry about players who are coming off these like career target share seasons. And obviously Alave is great. And I'm gonna Alave truth her. I've loved him since he entered the league if you followed my work. I'm just saying like, if Jordan Tyson is healthy, I don't think Chris Alave is going to see a higher than a 27% target share more than likely when he was at 30% last year. And so, there is some of that volume concern year over year, but he can still pay off and be fine. So, I'm not, he's not like someone that you gotta like clear fade. I'm just saying that there's gonna be some people that are like really bullish and I'm not part of that group. - Okay, there continues to be steam. And like Good Thing said about Brian Thomas Jr. they're in Jacksonville. Apparently, you know, it was reported that he and Trevor Lawrence weren't on the same page for the past couple of years. The chemistry this off season has been building. He's gonna be a long distance threat for big plays. You know, what are you doing with Brian Thomas Jr. now compared to Parker Washington? - I'm gonna keep the take of I am going to draft these guys in Best Ball. And I'm probably not gonna be as excited in season long. Because I do think there's a lot of good players and they're also hyping up Breton Strange right now. Like there's a lot of love for Strange that he's gonna be a focal point in the offense. Like you can't have four focal points in an offense. It's just it's not, it's just all that means that all these guys are gonna see 18% target shares, you know? So, Brian Thomas Jr. Like where did they go is fine? I'm drafting both part, I know we were in a draft together. Serendipitously. Couple days ago. And you got the Parker Washington BTJ, - Trevor Lawrence's stack. - Five Dic turn and then T law and the next round stack, which I think is the way to go. And but like I think that's a great five, six type look at that turn area. Just because there's kind of like a drop in wide receiver talent there. Or I mean, I really like the rookie tight or rookie wide receivers, but regardless, like you can go Parker Washington, you can get Brian Thomas and then you can get Trevor Lawrence and you got a great stack there, right? But my issue is that I think Parker Washington checks a lot of boxes from from previous year data and his ascension and what he's been doing. Or sorry, what he did and he's getting a lot of hype too. So I think I'm gonna keep Parker Washington like one spot ahead of Brian Thomas for the time being and like a full PPR format. If you wanna look at it from like a standard perspective and go Brian Thomas, that's fine. Just because I think there's a little bit more touch down upside. But yeah, I mean, I think my opinion is not changed from last week of just saying like, these guys are more attractive and best ball in my opinion. I'm not saying you fade them in season long, but I'm not gonna be as aggressive in season long as I am in best ball right now. What could happen that would make you flip them before the season? We get word that Parker Washington is not going to be playing in heavy personnel. Like that and that's a real possibility. That's a very real possibility. I don't think that because like, when I think could happen with Jacksonville is 'cause their personnel right now is best suited for 11. Is best suited for more wide receivers in the field 'cause Jacobi Myers is there too, who's good. Like he's a very solid player and it's bizarre to me that he's getting no love even though I like the other two more. But like Jacobi Myers slips in drafts. Like no one cares about Jacobi Myers. - So Antravis Hunter. - Antravis Hunter's there. You have four really good wide receivers and you force the issue a little bit at Titan. Tanner Coseal is getting a lot of love, which is funny the day three guy. Does that model liked him more than what's his face? They drafted in round two. I've just ignored his last name at this point because I was such a good-- - Walking Titanic. - Gidulla is in the chat so he can tell us. - Yeah, so like it's one of those situations where like, I think they might start the season and be like, we gotta go heavy because this is the NFL meta and we're gonna force the issue a little bit and then they're gonna be like, why are we doing this? Why is Parker Washington not on the field more? And then we get to see him more on the field and we're like, oh right, we dominated last year when we were able to rotate these guys around more. And that's where this offense, yeah, bow ricker. I was, or, or, or, what, I don't even know how to say it. Bore Kirkker. - Bore Kirkker. - Yeah, I always, I always, for some reason, he's the one player in this entire draft class that I-- - That's honestly Gidulla's fault for not phonetically just going it out for you. - Yeah, there you go. But yeah, like I just, it's a situation where I think Jacksonville is just like, what are we doing? And they then go to those players a little bit more. But BTJ, like works better on the perimeter and he could be out there, you know, in the heavy personnel more than Parker Washington. That's my fear with Washington. That's where, if we get a clearer picture there, that's where I would flip them. - Okay, lots of tight end talk for today's news with tight end week. And we are just going to continue that with today's data. (air whooshing) - Today's data. - All right, JJ, we have early round tight end hit rates. - Yeah. So this one is a new one in the guide this year. And I thought it was really interesting. So if you look at top six tight ends historically and you look at their previous season touchdowns per game, the tight ends who had a higher touchdowns per game, now there's not a massive sample because we don't get a ton of top six guys that qualified, you know, in terms of games played and stuff like that from the previous season. But, but the players who, so I split this up by 0.4 or fewer touchdowns per game, 0.4 to 0.6 touchdowns per game, 0.6 or more touchdowns per game, okay? And you get 28 in the first bucket, 19 in the second and 14 in the third. The guys in the third bucket, the 0.6 touchdowns per game or more in the previous season, they've underperformed against expectation most the following year. And it's likely because the market is looking at those players and saying, "Hey, they were really good last year, they're gonna be really good this year without factoring in that touchdown regression is going to come." Not a single one of them outperformed ADP expectation by four more PBR points per game the following year, only 7% of them did it by two or more points and only 36% of them outperformed expectation. Whereas the other two groups, you see a lot higher numbers, like much bigger numbers. Now, you look at the 0.4 to 0.6 group, they've been very, very volatile. You get high ceilings and low floors, which is likely because the guys who are scoring a lot of touchdowns the previous season probably have a talent profile associated with them, that's pretty good. And that's why they have better floors than you would expect. So, the higher ceilings aren't as good because their ADP's are just too high, right? And then the guys who didn't score many touchdowns at all, the previous year per game, they do very, very well against expectation. And so, when you look at this year's landscape, the big red flag here is Tramac Bride, which is hilarious because we were talking the opposite about Tramac Bride throughout his career. But then last year, I mean, I've talked about it before, he had a crazy number of end zone targets, he ran an absurd amount of routes. I mean, Rich Rebar sent a tweet out today basically saying that Tramac Bride last year ran the equivalent of 22 games worth of routes at tight end. Like it was, like, like, like, McBride is not going to see the same kind of usage year over year, Marbin Harrison Jr. is healthy, right? So, I think that this trend in particular is bad for McBride, it makes Brock Bauer's who's in the middle bucket a little bit more volatile. And then the other two, like elite tight ends is your, our Tyler Warren and Colson Lovelin. And a lot of this stuff doesn't apply as heavily to the year two guys. We just haven't seen many year one and year two guys in the top six at tight end. In general, I think we've only had five since 2014, one rookie being Kyle Pitts. But of those guys, they haven't performed very well, but it's a small sample. And both those guys were under that point four mark last year per game. So this is a trend that I'm a little bit concerned about regarding Tramac Bride. - Okay, and we did have in the comments, it's Bore Couture. - Yeah, Bore Couture, yeah, that's what I've been saying. - Yeah. And Brant said, I said to you guys, I'm pronunciation guy. - I mean, he did. And I'm like, I'm like, I've said it so many times before in the show, like I'm very big on the pronunciation stuff with these players. But I refuse to care at all about Nate Borkacher. - Yeah, yeah, we don't care about blocking tight ends or anyone who's not gonna be relevant to any of our teams for dead does for right now. - Well, yeah, just wait till people clip this into your heart. and he's a Titan 3 in fantasy football. - It's kind of what happened with Gunner Hill. Many people are saying, all right, so let's get on to the main event. - The late round main event. - All right, again, this is Market Score Week. If you haven't already, after this episode, go back and listen to Market Score 2.0, the episode that dropped yesterday on the podcast feed. Where JJ is talking about, where JJ's talking about basically revamping the Market Score. He and Brandon revamping the Market Score. And you just put on the sheet for the audio listeners. This is for fun. - This is a fun exercise, guys. Although Brandon and I are working through some ideas of how we can get projections from this, because we essentially have projections via comps for players based on Market Score, which is very, very cool. But we're trying to figure out the best way to sort of communicate some of those ideas. But what I'm doing here on today's show with the main event is I'm looking at players here in 2026, and I looked at players who had similarity scores in the past 80 or higher. So they were like 80% matches or higher. And this is all based off of career year, that gets the lowest amount of weight, positional ADP, so where they're drafted within their position, overall ADP, and then obviously Market Score, right? So Market Score being something that feeds off of ADP in general. You should listen to the episode that dropped yesterday to get a better idea of that. But anyway, this is for fun. I'm looking at the top outcome among players who had a comp that had 80 similarity score or higher. So a fairly decent comp, and then of those fairly decent comps, here are the high end ones, and I picked out 10 that were just interesting to me. That's really what this is. Fun. It's fun. We're doing this for fun, guys. The first one's Ashton Gentie. I mentioned on the show that he is the RB4 by a corner market score right now. He is ahead of Jonathan Taylor and Market Score. Market Score really likes Gentie. He's about 10th overall, but his number one ceiling comp is Christian McAfry in 2018, which was also his second year, where he was going RB 10, Gentie RB 5 right now, but he was going 13th overall, Gentie going 10th overall. And their Market Score is very comparable. 80.4 for Gentie, 79.5 for Christian McAfry, and that season, Christian McAfry scored 25.4 PPR points per game. I don't think Gentie's anything else. As prolific, this is an important caveat here is that these are not stylistic comps at all. Like you could get, you know, one of them is very obviously not a stylistic comp, but you could get a mobile quarterback that we're looking at and he gets a pocket passer comp. This is just based on those four factors of positional ADP, overall ADP, a career year, and market score, right? So, and also with the career year stuff, when you get to like year seven, year eight, it kind of lumps in year seven to like year 15 is like the same thing, because they're just, they're deep veterans at that point. But aschen Gentie, Christian McAfry 2018, that's the first comp. Okay, next, this is interesting 'cause we've had some talk about this player. It's Garrett Wilson and his comp is Cooper Cup from 2021. Yeah, no big deal. Just Cooper Cup when he scored 24.3 PPR points per game. Yeah, I mean, look, I have not been super high on Garrett Wilson because of situation, but I probably should be a little bit higher. I'm looking at his market score right now and it's dead even at zero. Okay, so like he's, he's basically, in terms of above or below expectation, it's 55.9 is what his market score is, which is what we would expect for a player that's going at his overall ADP a wide receiver. So, Garrett, what it's basically saying is that, like Garrett Wilson should be a three, four turn player, right? The thing is though, his high end comp, 80, 80 plus similarity scores, Cooper Cup in 2021, when he scored 24.3 PPR points per game, both year five guys, fairly comparable market score, only about a point or two away, very comparable overall wide receiver pick, and fairly close, seven points apart, or seven spots apart in overall ADP. It's making me think a little bit differently about Garrett Wilson. I'm still more on the fade side than the target side, but it is making me feel a little bit different about him. Okay, we have next Chase Brown and Demarco Murray from 2014 with the Dallas Cowboys. This is a really close comp, very, very close comp, because you look at their overall ADP, it's only one spot apart, their positional ADP, one spot apart, their market score is 0.7 away from one another, and they're both in year four. And Demarco Murray that year scored 22 fantasy points per game, PPR points per game. So, I think this is another good, Chase Brown generally has pretty good comps, market scores, views him favorably. So, it's just another reason why I've been buying the Chase Brown and Best Ball so far. - All right, next we have Justin Herbert and Tom Brady from 2015. - Yeah, so this is what I'm saying. So, that's Tom Brady's 16th NFL ECs, and which is also crazy, because it was 2015, and seems like he just played for like a year. - Yeah. - Yeah, but yeah, I mean, like this is that year, Tom Brady scored almost 23 points per game. QB8 for Justin Herbert this year, Tom Brady was QB6, overall ADP not as tight. This wasn't as close of a similarity score as some of the others, but I wanted to throw a couple of quarterbacks in there. Market score 51.3 versus 50.7. Right now from a market score standpoint, I can pull it up, but right now from a market score standpoint, Justin Herbert looks pretty favorable. He's at a 51.3 market score a quarterback. If you were to sort that for passers this year, he's a top 10 quarterback. So, the market score likes Justin Herbert, a decent enough, in general, and having that comp of Tom Brady can't hurt. - Yeah, that's also when I think Gronk went off as well. But you should know that this could happen, because if you hear, if you've heard Mike McDaniel is telling everybody that they're gonna be Hall of Fame players, that they remind him of Hall of Fame players. - I love the chart. I don't care how chalky it is. - Yeah. - I'm all in on the chargers this year. - Instead of Mario and Hampton, reminds him of Trail Davis. - Yeah, it's so funny. - You know, and-- - That's my thing, I don't know. - That QJ could be like one of the best inside the five wide receivers. He's just pumping them up, and I'm here for it. So why not have a ceiling comp for Herbert to Tom Brady? (whooshing) - This one was the one I found interesting the cover boys, Zay Flowers, comp to DeAndre Hopkins in 2017. - All right, so I wasn't as in on Zay last year. He really boosted his numbers in a worthless fantasy football week to be clear. He was not very usable from a ceiling perspective for a lot of the year. And then towards the end, especially I think it was week 18 when he had like a crazy, crazy week. And then everyone's like, he was a top 10 wide. It's like, okay, let's be realistic about what was you. - Week 16, he did knock me out of a baseball chain. - Yeah, I mean, he was better, you know, obviously when Lamar got hurt and stuff. But even when Lamar was healthy, there weren't like, it was, Zay Flowers is a floor play rather than a ceiling play for the most part. There were some ceiling games. So I wasn't that into Zay last year. This year, the more I've researched, the more I've written in the draft guide, the more I look at market score, the more I think Zay Flowers is one of the best picks you can make at Widers' Evert. So you get Deandre Hopkins 2017 as his top ceiling comp, which is, you know, a 80 similarity score or better, but just outside that is Jackson Smith and Jigbus 2025 for Zay Flowers. Like there's so many good comps and so many of the trends that I look for in this range of the draft, Zay Flowers checks that box. So I'm moving him up my rankings. I think he, I honestly think I'm to the point where he probably deserves to be more in that Devante Smith Chris Alavé tier than the Lutherburden, Lad Maconkey, you know, Jalen Waddle, Terry McLaurean type tier. Like I think there's a very real chance in it with the new, like the biggest wild card is new offensive environment, but I think that new offensive environment would be a good thing for Zay. So yeah, I mean, like the Deandre Hopkins comp very much aligns overall ADP and NFL year, all that kind of stuff. And his PPR points for a game that year, Deandre Hopkins was 20.7. I don't know if we get that high with Zay 'cause he hasn't been that much of a red zone threat, but if the switching offense of coordinator, like part of the reason is that he just has not been deployed in the red zone, like at all. And if that changes in any way, there's definitely a ceiling there for flowers. So I'm in on Zay this year. I think he's a good pick. And I gotta move my rankings. - Yeah, and you know, we've talked about the other offices, but as far as this new offense, I think there was Lamar Jackson where he's talking about how the offense is blowing his mind. Till Lamar, it might be my second highest on quarterback right now. Yeah, I mean. - Okay. - Look, I'll say this, market score has, I mean, it has Jalenhurtz right ahead of Lamar, so Lamar's QB3 technically, but yes, I have Lamar QB2. Zayflowers that wide receiver 11 right now. - Yeah. - He's right after Drake London, who's after George Pickett, basically that range goes Nico Collins from market score perspective. Nico Collins, AJ Brown, George Pickett's Drake London, Zayflowers, and then it's Chris Alave, Devote Smith, T-Mac, Ameca Buka, T-Higgins, right? So, little spoiler alert for those of you who are getting the draft guide, because in the draft guide, we are going to list market scores and update that weekly based on ADP 'cause their scores will change. But Zayflowers, man, it's just a lot of the things, a lot of things are coming together from a numbers driven perspective. And I think he's a really good player, too. He's always been a really good player per route run. I even noted that last year in the guide, it's just that the situation hasn't really been there for him, but what if the situation is there for him this year? - Yeah. - Should be fun. All right, Lad McConkey, we just talked about this Chargers team, Compton, Chris Godwin in 2019. - Yeah, I think Lad, so if you look at his Compton, his market score Compton, they're very, very volatile, which is not surprising because he had a pretty iffy 2025. When you look at like first downs per route run or yards per route run, whatever the case may be. Now, market score has him as a pretty neutral player, so he's going where he probably should be going. And his top comp is Chris Godwin's 2019, where he scored almost 20 PPR points per game. It was Chris Godwin's best career season, if I recall correctly. So it's good news for Lad that he has that, but there are, I talk about this in the mail bag that's going to come out on Friday. There are still some concerning parts of Lad's profile, which is another reason why it's just easier to elevate Zay flowers above him and just draft Zay, and not have to worry about the volatility as much, because it's not like the Raven's offense is likely to be really, really bad when Lamar Jackson's their quarterback. Now, I do like the Chargers offense more, but there's a little bit more that we're working against with Lad versus Zay. This next one made me laugh or chuckle. Brock Bowers is comp. Tray McBride in 2025. - Yeah, they both have perfect market scores of 100. Bowers in 10 and one McBride in two last year. McBride went a little bit later than where Bowers is going right now, but this is a situation where I do, like I said this on the market score show, market score is obsessed with Brock Bowers. Things that he should be firmly a first round pick. Now, I'm not going to go that far, because there's opportunity cost related things. Market score is looking at these players. It does use wide receiver expected points via ADP and running all that kind of stuff. Market scores can change based on their team ADPs as well, but with that being said, it's not working in conjunction necessarily with the other positions and to show you where these players should go overall. Like it's not going to recognize as well that Brock Bowers is a tight end and mostly he's don't value tight ends very highly, et cetera, et cetera. It's looking at historical ADP and where these tight ends have generally gone. And this is basically telling me the Brock Bowers stuff that we're in like old school, Gronk territory, Travis Kelsey territory. You know what I mean? This is what we should be expecting with Brock Bowers this year is that there's a very real chance he gives us that like really truly elite tight end season. And look, Tramik Bride last year was that, right? He scored almost 19 PPR points for a game. - Okay, this next one, Devon HN versus, or is comped with Todd Gurley in 2017. - The really interesting part about HN and Market Score is that he doesn't grade that poorly. I think right now I'm looking, he's the RB9 in Market Score. So that's fine. That's about where he is where he's going, right? He's the RB9 in position ADP. The problem is that when you really uncover things and you look, the comps for HN are scary. Like there's just a lot of low end outcomes that, you know, if you were to look at the point per game projections, if you take the top 10 comps and you weigh similarity scores versus the points per game of those players scored and you kind of project a point per game output for these players, which is what I was talking about Brandon and I are working on right now. Devon HN's point per game projection is worst among top 12 running backs right now. So, you know, this comp is good. Todd Gurley in 2017 scored 26 PPR points per game. And so, you know, that's obviously a really good outcome for him. And there's a lot of alignment there with overall ADP, their career year in Market Score. But at the same time, I do think that HN is a very, very volatile asset where there is a low floor, unfortunately, despite him being a very, very talented player. All right, next on Liz, we have Jackson Darts and his comp is to Lamar Jackson in 2019. Yeah, only Lamar Jackson's MVP season, the second year in the league where he broke fantasy football and scored 28 points per game. Look, I mean, undeniably, the marks that we're looking at here for for comms are very similar, very similar overall ADP, QB 11 versus QB 12, Market Score is about a point apart and they're both year two guys. You have to keep in mind that this is an objective way to measure things, Market Score is. And it looks at Jackson Darts and what he did last year as a Russia and it says, wow, this was actually pretty impressive, which it was pretty impressive. But it doesn't necessarily know that he's not Lamar Jackson, you know, from a athleticism standpoint and consistency standpoint, and what we should expect from a rushing perspective. What this comp tells me is that Jackson Darts, I think is a really high upside pick. And in a regular season long league, that should go a long way. Like that's the kind of quarterback that you should be going after because you can make up for the mistake. It's not as attractive and best ball, because he's not easy to stack either right now. You know, it's like, he's not as attractive and best ball in my opinion. Whereas, especially because you can gobble up three quarterbacks and like, you know, have spiked weeks at the right time and such. But I do think in a regular season long lead, Jackson Darts is going to make a lot of sense. We can make the downside case very easily, but I don't really care about downside when it comes to my quarterback, when I'm drafting him relatively late. So it's a crazy comp, totally understand that, not stylistic, but it is showing you that there's a pretty high ceiling there with dart. - Yeah. And I'll push back a little bit and say, you know, he has dropped a little bit in a draft, on draftings. - Yeah, I'm so drafted. - Yeah, yeah. - So I think from where he is, because people are comparing him, you know, to that Lamar Jackson, Jalen Herge, Jaden Daniels, tier and saying, you know, how much difference really are they with that drop? All right, so next we have, and I think this is the last one, Luther Burton and Keenan Allen from 2015. - So as Brandon's newsletter today said, Luther Burton has some scary, like there are definitely some scary comps for Luther Burton, but we're only looking at ceiling comps here. And Keenan Allen was the one who stood out most. I wanted to throw that in here just because, I think Burton is one of the more polarizing players the season. Market scores just not gonna love players who are in these offenses that have multiple early round pass catchers, just because it's looking at more of like a median, more of a projection than anything else. And obviously if Roma Dune's A is being drafted, where he's being drafted, of course, the loved ones being drafted, where he's being drafted, then that's, that tells us that there's pretty decent competition for Burton. And so this is where I do think comps, and looking at comps can be helpful, because you can see, oh wait, what if there is a player that kind of emerges from, you know, those types of situations, or what if there's a player, you know, are there players in the past that have been in this situation and done well? And for Luther Burton, the top comp was Keenan Allen in 2015, who scored 20 PPR points per game. I'm very much still in on Luther Burton. Market score doesn't like him as much as I do, but I'm still drafting Luther Burton in that tier with like a team-back in a mecha of Buka. All right, just to remind her immediately after this, you were gonna be redirected to JJ's Bestball Stream. So it might take a minute or two, but you just keep the video open. It will go there automatically. You'll get to see JJ draft a team. You'll get to interact with them, talk with them. Much like the show, those draft, those Bestball drafts are also like interactive, where we enjoy people that comment on the shows. So make sure you're doing that. And if you're having to already, go ahead and just turn on notifications for our YouTube stream. With that being said JJ, we have our membership, we have newsletter, we have the draft guide, even the prospect guide over there on latround.com. And I know it's late, but if you want to get all access to your, you get the prospect guide and the upcoming draft guide included in that. We also have promo code latround, again shout-out to our sponsor, draft kings for sponsoring this show. You have anything else to add? No, gotta do this draft. Let's draft a good one. All right, I appreciate everyone tuning in and for commenting and providing pronunciation guides. We appreciate you. We'll see you next time here in the latround fantasy football show. Peace. (upbeat music) This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.