Week 5 is behind us and Best Ball Bros rejoice as their
advance rates skyrocket with the ultimate Saquon Barkley floor
week. This is stat chasing Pat Fryer
Helmo. This is what This is what I'm
Pat. Anita Handjob.
Fix your side. Jamar.
Alpha play Chase. Tony, you can't handle the heat.
It looks like we're finding this voice.
You're right. Yeah.
Huge, huge Saquon Barkley floor game.
We all got marked safe from Saquon Barkley in Week 5.
Yeah, we also got Mark Safe from Alvin Kamara in Week 5 as well.
That was because I absolutely jammed him on the Showdown
slate. I had something like 42% Alvin
Kamara, captain, so he was destined to dud there.
So you're all welcome for my sacrifice.
Yeah, much, much appreciated. I I'll be honest, I feel a lot
more comfy about my Camara fate than I do Sequan.
Yeah, yeah, the as far as like in this specific outcome, what's
gonna hurt me the most this year?
I'm not super worried about the Kamara fade right now,
Definitely concerned about the Saquon fade.
But I think I think my best ball teams have signs of life right
now. So that's encouraging.
I mean, we had the Rashi Rice funeral last week, but now we,
we've officially got confirmation Rashi is out for
the rest of the season. We, we can just chalk that up to
it's two seasons now between the injury rehab and then the
inevitable suspension coming back next year.
So. Last Nail is now in the coffin.
He's not punching through. There will be no revival, no,
which is very unfortunate as a man who just watched, you know,
the rough equivalent of a Toyota Corolla of Rashi Rice.
Teams get totaled, so the process was fantastic.
Though Draco, yeah, we we'll always have the process.
Yeah, All right, let's get into some charts.
So here this is our quarterback chart and we've got three
different metrics here. So we've got expected fantasy
points from passing, which is kind of like our our metric for
quarterback passing volume. We've got our adjusted yards per
attempt, our metric for passing efficiency and then the size of
the bubble corresponds to rushing yards per game.
So then we have that. We kind of have all tree
components of of quarterback scoring captured shoot on.
Yeah, there were. There were a couple guys that
stood out to me. The the first one, I think we
just have to go over two weeks ago, you started pounding the
table for Burrow as a really strong regression candidate.
And then last week specifically, we called out that the match up
was really good. He was in a strong position on
the chart to be a candidate for positive regression.
And I mean, all the stars were aligning.
And that's not to say that we were the only ones on Joe
Burrow. I'm pretty sure everyone in
their mom was on Joe Burrow last week.
But I do think it's important to kind of highlight the process
and like how we got there so that we can systemically go
through that and and see if we're able to identify spots
like that exactly. So I I went through, I went
through my notes from from last week and the big things I had
kind of noted was like, Hey, his O line is playing well and he's
on. So he's he's his A dot is solid,
but he's underperforming on touchdowns.
Then we all then we also kind of noted that Baltimore are like a
big pass funnel. So like to me, tell me if you
disagree, but to me, those are all kind of like the, the, the
big markers to look for. And we got all of them last
week. And it was like, you have to be
blind to miss. That I think is what you're
getting at. Yeah, if if you had a checklist
for things I'm looking for in my ideal quarterback matchups, all
the boxes we checked last week for Joe Burrow, so you know, it
was a smash spot. He was my highest own
quarterback and the dog bowl and I played a ton of him in DFS
too. I.
Unfortunately, I don't, you know, the the thing about
repeating and Joe Burrow, I like.
That's such a fantastic spot. The weeks where we get that are
going to be few and far between. Right, right.
Yeah, It's not. It's not every week that the
stars absolutely align for a quarterback.
If you made me pick the guy, there's a couple spots this week
that I think are like the best spots for quarterbacks on the
main slate. The one I I've I've I've a a
choice as well, but I actually don't remember.
Oh no, I remember. Do you do you want to go first
or do you want me to go first? I can, I can go 1st.
And so it's, it's like I said, there's, there's not the, I
don't think any of these guys are going to be perfect because
Joe Burrow was perfect. I kind of like Stroud and I
think he's been kind of like buried because of the Nico
injury, but Diggs and Dell are still very, very, very good pass
catchers. He's another one where his his A
dot is good. His yards per tent are good, but
the the TDs have just been a little bit low.
I think he's basically been neutral on touchdowns and like I
know like that's like, Oh well, his expected touchdowns are
right in line, but it's fucking Cesar Stroud like he he should
actually be efficient on touchdown.
So to me that's like kind of like a sneaky and regression
spot and the I guess, and that the reason it's not a good
borough. They did lose Nico.
They're not quite as pass happy as the Bengals.
Their online isn't as good and but they are Ram.
It does look like they're playing a a pass funnel.
Yeah, in the in the Patriots, right.
And the Patriots did just lose. Gosh, I'm trying to remember
which defensive back it was. The name is escaping.
Oh, the the guy who punched his girlfriend.
Yeah, yeah, along with myriad other issues.
But yeah, he was, I believe he was arrested.
So he he will not be playing this next week.
Now here's so there's a couple things because I've I've thought
through this Texans and Patriots match up quite a bit because I
don't know if you've heard, but Drake May is starting.
So it is one of the lowest total games on the week.
It may in fact be the lowest total game on the week.
I think the over under is like 38 1/2 the last I looked.
Now, now hang on though, 'cause I'm, I'm here to the, the total
wasn't necessarily meant to be cold water on the match up.
Because this we, we had a spot earlier this year where we
talked about, hey, this is a place where you can attack some
input volatility because right. And, and I I think this Patriots
situation is really right for that opportunity.
We don't have data on what The Patriots.
Yeah. How?
Yeah, how you gonna model what the Patriots look like with
Drake May at the helm? And and especially their defense
is worse than it has been these last couple weeks just cuz
they're missing pieces. You get Drake May maybe, maybe
they're willing to pass a tiny bit more with Drake May than
Brissett. I mean, I don't think that'll be
their game plan. Oh, we win.
We, I mean, we saw Drake May in the preseason and like he looked
way better than Brissett, right? Like the the the there will be
positive improvement I think. Yeah, I think.
I think you do you. Do honestly have the potential
here for something that looks like The Jets game, the, the,
the Patriots Jets game where Houston is just like all over
them and and the the Patriots don't get anything going against
what seems like a pretty good defense.
But yeah, we we have no idea how good the sorry, I don't want to
say we have no idea. We we have a very imperfect idea
of of how good that the Patriots offense will be with me.
Right. And I I think that the path that
you have there to this game going substantially over is you
need the Texans to be able to put up points and push the
Patriots and really, really force them to not be comfortable
sitting back and running the ball.
And you also could get there without the Patriots getting
pushed quite as hard if May just goes out and immediately shows
like really, really positive things passing the ball.
You know, the the Patriots coaches.
I mean, the the incentives here were really interesting to think
through prior to them starting May.
Because I really think that if you think through this
logically, Jerrod Mayo was incentivized to start Jacoby
reset as long as he felt he could without starting Jacoby
Brissett being something that is going to jeopardize his job.
If that makes sense. Because the Jacoby Brissett
games are basically like a wash. They're they're considering
those like, well, we can just throw, throw those out.
Those say nothing about your ability to coach the team.
The plan was never Jacoby Brissett, right?
You throw those results out like you said.
Right. And so if you just if you just
assume that, hey, you know, Jerrod Mayo's job is safe
through X number of games, you know, assuming a a win loss
record of whatever with Drake May well delaying when the the
clock starts on that is very much in his bet.
You know, the guy's making six figures every additional game.
He coaches like it is very much in his best interest to push the
clock back as long as he can. But now that he has May
starting, the incentive changes a little bit because the games
need to be better now, like if things have to improve now the
clock is starting. And so I think he might like if
May can go and show something, he might be willing to shift
away from being quite so run heavy, provided that there's
something there. So really interesting spot.
You can get the Texans pass catchers way too cheap right now
on on double wrap. Yeah, like like tank, tank Dell
you can get at the 4-5 turn pretty consistently and same
with. So you can get a Dell Stroud
stack at the 4-5 turn. Like very very.
I I saw that Stroud was very cheap.
I was checking the ADP on him and I was like, yeah, that
doesn't make any sense. Right.
So I, I, I like that whatsoever. I like that spot for sure.
I've been attacking it. The one that I had as someone
that was a good spot to target one of the three highest game
totals on the week, I believe is Jordan Love and the Packers
against the Cardinals. So this one I think is
interesting just because we had the really big Jordan Love game
two weeks ago against the Vikings in a big trailing script
where he just has to drop back and Chuck it up and do the Brett
Favre impression right. Then this last game, he really
he just doesn't get there because of a lot of dantevion
Wicks drops. You know, a a ton of meat got
left on the bone. Granted, there were some
uncatchable targets too, but it's like I I think that what we
saw there was just like the variants going the other way for
a guy who's leaning into a a higher variant style.
He he's a deep passer like Jordan Love is consistently
attacking down the field. That's why he still hasn't
adjusted yards per attempt as high as he does even without
connecting on a lot of those like so I think you're in a good
spot for love. He's also like if you look where
he's at on the chart, he's in a similar place to where Joe
Burrow was on the chart before he had his big explosion game.
It's not quite as good a spot as, you know, the the Bengals at
the Ravens, but I do think it's a pretty good spot.
And also, I think with Romeo Dobbs coming back, that only
helps him. I don't think Dobbs like I think
it's a little it'd be ridiculous to say that getting Dobbs back
on the field is a net negative for the team.
Like I don't think that anyone really believes that.
So I'm I'm interested in love here in a bounce back spot.
And last week you could barely ever get him very far past the
2-3 turn. You're taking him in the mid to
early third round of the dog bowl.
Now you can consistently get him in the fourth round.
You could probably push him to the fifth in some drafts too,
but I think it's a pretty good spot.
I think the the some of the differences between him and
like, I know we're comparing to perfection here is I think the
Cardinals are like this are kind of like a bit of a run funnel.
The Packers have been pretty neutral on on on pass rate over
expected and with love. So trying out those Willis
games. And so I think to get there, you
do need, you do need them to be pushed.
You need the Packers to be pushed unless you get crazy,
crazy good efficiency. I think you need some
combination of like, I don't think the underlying volume in a
neutral game strip is is necessarily going to be there
and almost hasn't been. And but like Jordan Love is is
he's like the archetype of player.
I think what you're getting at is the archetype of player that
you're always going to be interested in in GPPS.
You just like that. You've got a little bit of a tin
part to get there. I think it can certainly hit and
and it sounds like that's that that tin part is like more than
baked into into cost. And but I guess that's kind of
the stuff I noticed. Yeah, I'm looking at the
Cardinals past defense numbers and this is this is one week
stale of data. This is just what Pat had put
together in his walkthrough article over on Leg Up.
But the Cardinals pass defense is 29th in EPA per drop back,
32nd in drop back success percent.
They're this is this is the one that actually stuck out to me
when I was looking at this earlier.
They're 31st in time to pressure.
And that was one of the big things that Pat wrote up last
week about the Rams being really slow to pressure and how that
was a really good thing specifically for the match up
for Jordan love. So I think it, it kind of sets
up to be like, hey, this is like a pretty comparable really poor
pass defense to the Rams. And we just love the spot for
love versus the Rams. And it, it just didn't, you
know, we didn't get the huge nuke.
And so people are off of it now. And it's like, you can go right
back to the well, it's honest. I mean, like I'm looking, I'm
looking through all these metrics like Cardinals.
Well, teams just haven't. The thing is, teams have not
been throwing it against them. They've been run heavy.
I wonder how much that like my, my question is how much of that
is like, hey, they're running this out of the pass or maybe
they're just playing very run heavy teams.
Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, the 49ers did absolutely
carve them up through the air though.
And you, you got a little bit less Jordan Mason last week, so.
So they they played the Bills. So that is a run heavy.
Team that's a team that they don't know what the pass is,
they've forgotten. And you've got the Rams where
the Cardinals just beat the out of them.
So like maybe control that out. You've got the the lines and
they. Do running the ball.
Right. Then you've got the commanders
who put 42 upon them. And I mean the 49ers, they got
23 and points against them and, and, and actually the 49ers and
then and the, and the commanders, they they were
slightly password over expected positive.
And so maybe some of maybe some of those numbers that I was
citing are are just from playing the the Lions and who who was
our first team. The Bills.
To the bills and so yeah, maybe maybe I'm I'm off there and I
still think they don't profile as a team that goes trose super
heavy. But like I'm I'm caveating that
with like Jordan love is always going to be a good for the rest
for the rest of his healthy careers.
Always go when he's cheap, will always be a good GPP play like
he just will be. Yeah, I think you're just really
hoping that the the game, if the game goes off, all the all the
ingredients are there. But we definitely can see, you
know, you can see how it doesn't get there through James Conner,
you know, just chewing up clock and the Cardinals being happy to
do that. So moving on to other
quarterbacks here on the chart, this was OK.
So these are two where they're not super sexy.
Neither of them have had massive games recently.
One of them was actually in a pretty big shootout recently,
and his numbers got a little inflated for that.
And they still were just OK. But they're both right next to
each other on the chart, and they play each other this week,
and that's Jared Goff and Dak Prescott.
This one's really interesting to me.
I mean, the Cowboys have been just absolutely atrocious on
defense. They looked a little bit better
against the Saints, but I think that might just be the Saints
more. Yeah.
And so I think maybe people like have too short of a memory on
how bad the Cowboys. Defense is I actually mixed up.
You say the the the the Cowboys looked better against the
Saints. Oh, I'm sorry.
I, I, I don't know why I said the Saints there, but I had the
Saints in my mind from last night, from.
Watching that. Oh OK, OK, that's why.
But they did look better. Yeah, they they did look a
little better, but sorry the Steelers same run heavy boring
ass team. Yeah.
But anyway I I think people might just be forgetting how bad
the Cowboys defense is after after watching one game where
they were OK. My question I I think there's
another one where you need the Cowboys to push the lines.
Yeah, absolutely. The, the Lions are going to be
so happy to hand the ball off and, and just like pound it into
the, the, the Cowboys like that's, that's their ideal way
for this game to go. Yeah, if I had to rank the the
games as far as like which one is going to be more likely to
have that big shootout potential, it'd definitely be
Packers Cardinals much higher than this Cowboys Lions one.
The reason I do like this Cowboys Lions 1 though, is that
when the Cowboys push the Lions, the Lions have a good offense
and they're willing to throw the ball when necessary.
So I, I mean, it's definitely a spot where you need the Cowboys
to be scoring points. So to me it probably reads like
maybe you play it through Dak Prescott and have Lions bring
backs because the Lions are probably.
It's just hard to. Goff would need to really
monopolize all the touchdowns to get there.
'Cause you know, even even if the Lions are losing, like
they're still gonna involve their backs.
So I think it's probably a play it through Dak Prescott angle.
But then like bring, bring Lions bring backs in in a pretty heavy
way if you're doing it 'cause I think if Dak is getting there,
the game is probably going off. So I don't think this is one
where you want to just do like a Dak CD skinny stack like the the
Lions are not going without a fight on this one if the Cowboys
make it competitive. Right, right.
I think on the other hand, we did just get a game where
Dallas, I think this was against the Saints, where Dallas did get
the get beaten up by the Saints and then that Prescott got there
in kind of garbage time. Yeah, that's true.
So yeah, I guess that's just you've got like the two ways for
for good outcomes for DAC and it's it's just a lot thinner for
golf, right? Because even when when the game
goes well for Goff, that might not even be that great a thing.
If he plays well, his volume will be low.
Yeah, yeah. Which is a problem.
So yeah, I think, I think I'd probably prefer DAC here, but I
think it's an interesting spot. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
I mean, the game. The game of the week, though.
It is these two behemoth quarterbacks here in the top
left hand corner of the chart, Lamar Jackson and Jayden Daniels
facing off. I mean, if there's any game that
was going to challenge the the Ravens and Bengals game for the
most enjoyable game of the season to watch, this one seems
like it could be pretty fun. I mean, both these guys have
been ludicrously efficient. Like when you look at these
adjusted yards per attempt, these guys have been incredible.
And it's it. It's also showing.
We already talked about last week what a what a good pass
funnel the Ravens are. Yeah, and, and the, the
commanders are definitely not, they're not an imposing defense
either. So yeah, you've got a, you've
got a really good situation here.
And, and the tape lines up with what the numbers are saying too.
Like when you watch both of these guys, it's very clear that
they're very talented passers. Lamar is making these incredible
out of the pocket off platform. The the throw where he literally
he leaves his feet and throws an absolute dot to Isaiah likely.
Like it's literally just all arm talent.
Like Lamar Jackson is making throws that like, I mean, this
is like vintage Aaron Rodgers type stuff.
Like, you know, the stuff that where people would just glaze
Aaron Rodgers forever about what incredible arm talent he no one
else in the league can make a do you just simply no one has an
arm like this man. Like, OK, well, Lamar Jackson
has that arm now and I feel like it's going under appreciated.
So I'm I'm pretty into Lamar this week.
My my big problem is he goes really early in dog bowl drafts.
He's like 4th or 5th pick overall, so it's kind of hard
for me to want to play it through Lamar.
Meanwhile, Jaden Daniels goes basically in the same spot on
the board, but in the second round.
So I kind of think like. If if I, I just looked it up,
Jaden Daniels is like pick 14 or 15, right?
So that's like 2O22O3. He he'll in the in the dog,
though, he falls into the middle of the second round.
The the AD PS are all set by the six man drafts.
And so it's just different in the the 12 man drafts and how
they they shake out. But he'll usually go in the
middle of the second round there.
And so it it's often lining up to where the Lamar drafter and
the Daniels drafter are and. So where did where did Jayden
Daniels go like last week? I think he was going earlier in
that. Round he was.
No, he's going early in the week he was going like 2-3 turn, I
want to say. And then by the end of the week
with projections out and everything, he was going like
closer to 1-2 turn. So yeah, a little, little
earlier. Because what now I did, I do
want to note, I think I, I, I remember saying about Daniels
that his like one of his issues is as as a mobile quarterback,
his time to TRO is like high, despite the kind of low A dot.
And that might be an issue against them.
A really good Browns pass rush. So here's his time to throw it
for full season or for weeks. 124 is like 3 seconds.
It's just 2.3 against the the Browns.
And so like to me, like the Browns kept them in check last
week and so kept keeping them in check is like 20 points.
Yeah, so. Yeah, your ceiling there was
really good. Yeah, I I definitely like it a
lot. The the like only the only
caveat I have to just jamming the 100% Jayden Daniels this
week is that because of all the bye weeks, the slate gets pretty
thin that the skill position players like especially running
back when you get later. And so if you're taking a
quarterback in the 1st 2 rounds, you just, you need to have some
guys that you're comfortable scrolling down for to be able
to, to make that work, I think. That makes sense.
And, and, and, and there's a
bunch of guys that we talked about that we're interested in.
Yeah, we will definitely hit on some later tonight as well.
One, one other guy that I, I really like and he he's showing
up in a pretty good spot on the chart is Baker Mayfield, who's
absolutely free in dog bowl drafts.
You can get him fifth, sixth round every time, basically
playing against the Saints indoors.
I mean the Saints. And the the the Tampa Bay they
like to pass this year. Yes, yeah.
And you're saying he's his volume is good, he's playing
well, concentrating the passing attack the way he is and he's
getting volume? And their their preferred way to
do it is the death by 1000 cuts ways they're not doing as much.
Right. It's like 6 yard A dot.
Yeah, they're not. It's not as deep as Baker was
throwing last year when it was literally just like, all right,
it's Mike Evans and we we live and die by Mike Evans.
Now. It's been a little bit shorter
in general, but I mean, it's working pretty well.
Baker's been really efficient. So I really like this spot.
You just saw the Saints get destroyed by Juju Smith Schuster
from the slot. You know, like Juju Smith
Schuster and the ghost of Travis Kelsey, who, you know, to his
credit went out there and put up a vintage Travis Kelsey game.
But man, I mean, if you pull off the name plates and you show me
Travis, Kelsey and Zach Ertz you know, side by side, it's, it's a
little hard to distinguish physically what's going on, you
know? Yeah, yeah, Kelsey has
unfortunately given us a prime Zach Ertz season.
Yeah, but he he does. He knows where to be.
He knows knows where to find the soft spots in the zone and sit
down and so and there's no one else on that offense.
So he's he's going to be effective.
But but back to Baker. So you get this defense that
just got absolutely torched by little to no talent from the
past catchers on the chiefs and Baker's been very good and Mike
Evans and Chris Godwin have been very good.
I mean, this is like a all systems go spot for me.
Like I'm good with Baker double s.
I if you, if you told me that you could get a Baker triple
where you got, you know, Mike Evans, second round, Chris
Godwin, third round, someone else, fourth round, Baker
Mayfield, fifth round, K dot and sixth round.
I'm into it. I think that's pretty good.
I think they're going to score enough points and you're getting
them all cheap enough that you're basically just saying,
like if I hit on the first round player that is, is a, you know,
weak winner, then I'm doing pretty good and the rest of the
guys are just gonna score enough to get me up to the top.
Not him. Yeah.
That makes sense. That makes sense.
I mean, it's tough to say Baker Mayfield in like a GPP, but like
he's a he's a good play. He's just a good, he's going to
be a good solid play all year. And this is like, this is a good
spot for him. The if I if I was going to pour
cold water on this spot, it would be that the Saints aren't
functional on offense without Derek Carr, not that they looked
particularly functional last night.
I mean, the only thing that's been functioning for the Saints
is Rashid Shahid, who will definitely talk about here, but.
I mean, I honestly wonder though, with, with I, I, I, I
think Tampa Bay are like a team that does not need to be pushed.
They're perfectly happy to throw the ball all over you and so if
you're just giving them possession after possession like
like that, that could end up being a lot of points.
Now, maybe they got pulled in the fourth quarter, but that
just means they've scored a lot of points to that point.
Yeah, that's a, that's a good point.
There's only one other guy I wanted to talk about here and
it's really just a, a very mild, like the most mild victory lap
you can take. But it's Bonex because from week
one, we talked about that Week 5 was gonna be a good spot for
Bonex. And while the stat line might
not be terribly impressive, 200 passing yards, 2 passing
touchdowns, and a rushing touchdown, if that had happened
in a week or we didn't get these absolutely nuclear quarterback
games from Lamar and Burrow, I think you probably could have
gotten there with the Bonex team.
Now granted, you couldn't really play it with any of his weapons.
Yeah, I think that's the thing about.
Nick is like. If you play him, you have to
play him. I was like, you play him naked
as a way to unlock a really expensive pass thing or on, you
know, those DraftKings slates where it's really heavy priced.
It's really hard to play the players you want to play.
You have to find savings somewhere.
I think that's the kind of week that you win with at Bonex.
Yeah, and, and I mean, really, I'm what my actionable take away
from this is just proof of concept that Bonex could
technically score enough fantasy points to be relevant.
And like, although Cortland Sutton did not get anywhere
close to any fantasy points this week, his role in previous weeks
has been really good basic if you go and if you're just being
a box score scout, you look at the box scores pretty much every
week is like, wow, if Cortland Sutton had a touchdown this
week, he would have had a pretty good week.
And so the way that I'm looking at this is OK, I think this
there are situations where it might work like this could be a
break glass in case of emergency play.
And so where I'm looking at it again, the next stop on the
Bonex Express, I think for me is gonna be Week 8 when they play
Carolina, who has been a really fun defense to target.
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Like, especially with the Bears
tearing them up on the ground. Yeah, like that.
Like, seems good. Seems attractive.
We got a question here. Isn't may slash plus poke a
better play than Knicks at the same cost?
I mean, I what's that? I wouldn't play Knicks this
week. I don't even think Knicks is on
the slate this week, but yeah. I, I, I wanted to kind of like
circle back that we did talk about at May and being like
playable it, it's something that you could do and with the input
volatility at the very start of the show.
Yeah, yeah. Is is he even on the slate this
week? So while you're looking that up
at one other note I had was about Kirk Cousins, where it
does feel a little bit like you're getting the play out here
where they're just they're just letting they're letting him be
like they're giving him the key city offense where I know they
they were trailing last week. So they they had to pass a lot,
but they were even pass rate there.
There was part rate over expected was positive even then.
So he passed even more than they had to.
And then you you get the good result.
So I think the thing about Kirk Cousins is you're never going to
get any rushing. You're not you're just not going
to get any rushing. It's all going to be from pocket
pocket passer stuff. So you need to you need that
passing volume to get there. And like you don't want to chase
like a high passing volume, high efficiency week from pure pocket
passer. But he he, he feels pretty solid
as like a as a play for the rest of the year.
Yeah, and he's he's in an interesting spot this week.
He gets the Panthers, who have been again, a really, really fun
defense to target. He's just he's a little priced
up this week in dog bowl drafts. I just, I feel like going.
Ahead of Kyler Murray, CJ Stroud.
Yeah, and, and Drake London is like a back of the first round
pick and Darnell Mooney who has like damn near the same target
share as him. And like I, I get it that if you
maybe pick in a vacuum, I'll take Drake London over Darnell
Mooney. But when I have to choose Drake
London in, you know, the mid first round or I can take
Darnell Mooney in the fourth round, like I'm just going to
take Darnell. Like, as disgusting as that is
to say, like never thought that we would have an outcome where
that was something that I would say out loud, but.
I don't think it's a play this week, but it's, it's just like,
you know, I, I, I think what we got there is pretty legit.
It's like it's going to be a volatile spot week to week given
his profile, but like he's you're clearly getting vintage
Kirk Cousins right now and the team believes in that.
Yeah, those are all the quarterbacks I had notes on.
Was there anyone you wanted to talk about or should we move on
to the running backs? No, I think, I think we covered
it. We covered it most comprehensive
quarterback review show of the week for sure.
And so this is our running back snaps and usage chart.
And the green bar corresponds to rush attempts, the yellow bar
corresponds to routes. With rare exceptions, most
running back targets are just from running a route.
The plan is usually not to target the running back, but the
play broke down and and they happened to be the check down.
So that's why we track that as kind of like an underlying
usage. Then we also like to see who's
trusted as a pass blocker and then just around things out, we
also look at run block. We don't focus on it at all, but
it helps us get the full picture of their of their snap count.
Yeah, the the first guy, I mean, I think we have to talk about
him. He's put up two really good
weeks in a row after I mean, I think we I think I said that he
was cuttable in like week 3 or something.
That's DeAndre Swift. He's he's kind of risen from the
dead here. The Bears, often the only.
Thing about Swift is he actually last week he ran bad on
touchdowns. Yeah, he did.
He got vultured twice by Roshan Johnson.
So he was like. -9 on on on fantasy points.
So he was like -1 1/2 touchdowns under expected.
Yeah, so. He got, he actually got goal
line carries, he just didn't convert.
And I guess that that's kind of nuance because you would, you
wouldn't expect, you would expect him to convert those some
of the time and, and some of those.
But then when when you're missing it and and the other guy
gets it you, you do start to get concerned that maybe they start
giving it to the other guy more. Yeah.
I mean, what are what are your thoughts on on Swift going
forward? Because I think it's difficult.
I mean for me, like in a, in a redraft home league, this is
like a sell high spot for me, like I'm trying to trade them
away. But I'm curious on your
thoughts, is this something where you're kind of buying this
the new normal or I? Think that's a right framing
where I think that Swift, like it's like we said last week,
this is kind of who Swift is like he's going to be somebody
where you you do get like world beating plays where he just
looks incredible. He's making guys miss, he's
taken like the touch, he's getting deep rushes and then
you're going to get plays where he just looks like absolute dog
shit. And we've got we've gotten 2
weeks now where he's actually looked pretty good.
But I still, I still would would expect that you're going to get
weeks where he doesn't look great.
And like it's kind of profile is is also to not convert rushing
touchdowns or goal line touches. And so it kind of would make
sense if he was if he was to lose those.
But I like I still think our like our projection should be
that you get you will get good swift weeks going forward.
You just won't know when they come.
Well, this week he does travel to London to take on the
Jaguars, so. What do you?
Think about that spot. Well, the Jaguars are just an
awful of that defense. Yeah.
And so like the if a team has good run fits, it's going to,
like, give him trouble. The Jaguars will not have good
run fits. And so, like, he might actually
look really good this week again, like he probably will.
Yeah, yeah, I, I hate to say it, but I think he's probably a
pretty good play this week. The nice thing is he is not on
the main slate. OK, OK.
Yeah, it's like a prime time. Kind of, yeah.
I I did get, I think I mostly faded him in prime time.
Palooza. I got some, but I think I'm
underweight on him. OK, You know, another another
running back that is actually in that same game that I wanted to
talk about. Really it's 2 running backs.
It's Travis ETN. And then of course we can't talk
about Travis ETN without talking about Tank Bigsby.
Etn's role through these this is, you know, through the season
so far still looks pretty solid. He's right there with JK
Dobbins, Josh Jacobs, you know, he's he's getting a decent
amount of the work. This last game, ETN got out
carried by Bigsby. Now he did.
There was a shoulder injury that he's dealing with that the team
reported. And so that could have something
to do with him losing more work to Bigsby.
But Bigsby also looked pretty good.
He's, you know, significant rush yards over expectation, like big
breakaway runs. So it's hard to deny Bigsby, but
I feel like a lot of people are suffering from vividness bias
with this where it's like, Oh my gosh, Tank Bigsby is the one
that looks good right now. He's done it more recently.
Travis ETN that bum, he hasn't scored a bunch of fantasy points
this season yet. And I, I kind of think that
people are just forgetting like we've, we've got a decent amount
of sample that Travis ETN is a pretty explosive rusher.
So I think, I think if, if you were, if you taught with high
confidence that the touch split and the snap split from week 5
and would just project all the way true, you wouldn't want, you
wouldn't want to play any of these guys.
It's a it's a pure tree headed committee.
And the nice thing about Travis ETN is that he actually does
have a lock on on the receiving work.
So he does have that receiving floor and if if you buy if you
buy the injury explanation and then it becomes closer to a 5050
or 6040 to in his favor on the rush split, then on underlying
usage goes back to pretty strong for Ethan and you.
So for, for Bigsby, you have to believe that, oh, he looks great
and therefore like he's going to get all these extra different
outlooks or outlets to play, which I, I, I feel like maybe
his, the fact that he, he got so little of the receiving stuff
and with, with an injury at the end, he's probably pretty capped
from a full season long perspective.
Maybe ETN can go back to being like the usage that he got and
but that it but it is tricky. Like I said, I think if that if
that touch split committed, then you couldn't you wouldn't play
any of them either. Any of them in a GPP like ETN
will be just a bit startable in like redraft.
Yeah, that's that's a really good point.
There's two things that I want to talk through #1 is the
passing role for ETN versus the passing role for Bigsby.
I know that we haven't seen Bigsby be used really at all as
a passer during his time in the league.
I'm wondering if we just kind of throw out his rookie season
'cause he was atrocious. Like the the reason why I did
not draft any Tank Bigsby is because if you play this game
for long enough and you draft guys like Tank Bigsby after
their rookie year, you're going to lose a lot of money drafting
players like tank Bixby after the rookie year that he had
right. So I don't, I don't really think
it's when when. They get that when they get that
usage at the gate and they stink.
That's bad. Yeah, I don't really think it's
the kind of thing that you chase.
It's just it's the cost of doing business.
It's like good process tells you don't, don't draft the really
shit players when they're given opportunity as a rookie and they
do nothing with it. But when he comes in, in the
second year, the coaching staff's been really vocal about
wanting to involve him more. He's getting the work he's
producing with it. I I'm more inclined to just
throw out the whole rookie season then and say, all right,
we're la tabla rasa. We're starting brand new here.
And so I don't necessarily know that ETN is a block on the
receiving work because Bixby did catch passes in college.
It's not like it was something he was totally incapable of
doing. Yeah, you're right, You're
right. And he actually like he was a
pretty solid right back in college, so.
So that's that's one where I'm like, if I want to think through
the bowl case for Bigsby, it's just that the rookie season was
just the weirdest aberration of all time.
And he just kind of morphs into the lead back in this backfield
and ETN is more of like he spells him.
I had to be clear. I don't really think that's the
most likely outcome, but I I think it's.
And I think, I think it the reason I, I, I sort of like
suggested it's unlikely is because if ETN is injured and he
still has this lock on pack on receiving work, then that's not,
that's not great for Bigsby. Like even when he's looking good
when they're trying to showcase him more and he's still not
touching that. Like that's something that would
have to evolve pretty dramatically from here forward.
And what, what you're saying is, hey, that can happen.
Like he was a good receiving back.
That can happen, I think is what you're.
Saying, yeah, but but your point about the injury is actually
dovetails with my second point, which is this is extremely
small. We're trying to we're trying to
parse the way that the humans on the Jaguars coaching staff think
through and handle workload in the face of injury for their
running back. So we're not going with a ton of
data here. We're really, really working off
small stuff. But I got tricked earlier by
this coaching staff with how they handled an injury to Bigsby
earlier this season where Bigsby got injured and he is eerily it
was actually his shoulder as well.
So both these guys have had these shoulder injuries this
season. Bixby gets injured, I believe
it's in Week 2. Andrews his shoulder doesn't see
the field on offense for the rest of the game.
However continues to play special teams.
I read that coming out of Week 2 as like injury didn't actually
mean anything in this game. Yes, he left the game with a
shoulder injury, but if the injury was that serious you
don't put the guy back out on the field for special team
snaps. Like, you got someone else that
can do special team, you know, But that was not so week three.
I assumed, like, all right, it might, it might just be they're
done with Bigsby. They're tired of it.
D Ernest Johnson's coming back to take the job like he did last
year. And so I thought Week 3, we
might see D Ernest Johnson usurp Bigsby in a running back
hierarchy. There wasn't the case.
The Jags coaching staff really did just, I can't explain why,
but they they had more information about the situation
than I did. But they decided we certainly
cannot put the sky on the field for another snap in the game in
Week 2. And he injured his shoulder
early. It wasn't like, oh, he injured
in the third quarter and then didn't see any more snaps.
He saw zero offensive snaps after the shoulder injury saw,
you know, a handful of, you know, there were only a handful
of special teams snaps to be had.
He saw them, though, in the second-half of that game.
So then you get this same kind of similar treatment with the
ETN injury where and ETN is obviously not a special teams
player, but they're like, all right, we still need you to do
this role. We need you to do the pass
catching stuff because like that's actually what we really,
you're not as replaceable here, but in the running game, we view
you as more replaceable here. We're going to go ahead and let
Bigsby do more of that this game.
That's kind of the way that I'm reading it here.
I think a lot of it has to do with the injury and I I just
want to try and take what I've learned from how this coaching
staff has treated a similar but not identical situation earlier
this season. And I want to try and apply that
context. This situation.
So seems like a really good sell high spot for Tank Bigsby if
you're in a home league and you have them like this is a smash
sell spot for Bigsby. And then yeah, like what you're
saying is it's not really a like how you gonna how you gonna play
either of these guys in AGPP going forward?
Like the requisite ceiling is just like it's really hard to we
just got the ceiling outcome for Bigsby and yeah, it was a great
game, but it like that's the ceiling.
You know it was right 2020 some odd fan low 20s fantasy points
like woo Hoo, you know like. Right.
You got 13 carries and and like he he gets 100 what, 101 yards
with them. Yeah, or something like.
That moving on to another running back.
We have a question in the chat. That's also a note that I had
here. Pollard looks like the smash of
all smash spots this week versus the Colts.
Is he a target for me and his Spears viable and the Dog Bowl
are too thin. Yeah, Pollard's definitely one
that I'm interested in. When I set my rankings for the
Dog bowl prior to any like public projection sources being
out. I do have Pollard in a spot
where I will definitely draft some of him.
I, I haven't gotten a ton of him so far 'cause I, I think kind of
the market is frothy on Pollard. Two, people just want to attack
this cult spot. It's not a state secret or
anything. So I just think it's, it's like
there's not as much meat on the bone as we want to be there
'cause people, it's not a, it's not sneaky, you know, But I do
think it's a good spot and I do actually really like Spears.
I, not to blow my, not to blow my own stuff up, but I, I've
been taking Spears in the last round, like with the last
overall pick on some of these teams, just cause running back
gets really gross late. And I mean, yes, Pollard's
favored in getting the workload, but you certainly it would not
be out of the question for Taje Spears to score more fantasy
points than Tony Pollard in a given week.
You know, like stranger things have happened.
So I, I, I think it's a pretty good spot.
What do you think about it, Jerko?
Yeah, I I agree. It's like particularly in the
fourth game and against the Dolphin or Week 4 game against
the Dolphins, they were a lot closer in in rush attempts than
than in prior weeks. So I I guess earlier in the
season, Pollard was the like the strongly preferred rusher or, or
that's how they deployed it. Some of the coach speak being
that like they kind of see it closer to 5050 and then getting
an outcome where it actually is 5050.
I think. Yeah, I I like, especially if
you're getting a fraud. If it's fraudy prices on on
Pollard, then you you probably do prefer to play that True,
true Spears. Spears is free like Pollard will
be 100% drafted. Spears will go maybe, maybe
forty, 3040% drafted unless projections really love him.
In in A10 running back week and like what, 8 of them kind of
what you're hoping for is a breakaway run.
Right, yeah. And I, I think this is a pretty
good spot to go after that one. One thing I'm looking up right
now is I want to see the the total number of rushing attempts
in each of those weeks. Because I kind of think that the
way they might be divvying up the workload is, hey, when we're
really just hammering it on the ground and establishing the run.
We do want to take a little bit of the work off of Pollard's
shoulders. And that's why they got it a
little closer to 5050 just cause the rush volume.
Yeah, it was. So 22 attempts for Pollard, 15
for Spears. OK.
And do you do you see how that compares to their other?
So yeah, week 1 was 16 to four, Week 2 was 17 to six, and then
it was six to two in Week 3. Yeah.
So definitely their highest, their highest volume week for
sure. So yeah.
Yeah, easily their highest volume week, but I do think they
want to be. It does feel like they want to
be closer to maybe like a 6040 time like.
Yeah, I mean, really what that tells me, though, is that in the
outcomes where you're getting the game to play out the way you
want it, the Titans are rushing a bunch, right?
They're productive on the ground.
It's coming through, you're getting a lot of volume and then
it's coming more even on the back.
So the. Increase actually goes to
Spears. Most of the Pollard in attempts
goes to Spears, yeah. Pollard is much better in when
both backs are gonna hit a median outcome.
Pollards median is much higher than Spears, but when you get a
ceiling outcome here, I think their ceiling outcomes are
probably a lot closer and they're probably also not quite
as negatively correlated as we might think just because their
ceilings are coming through substantially more volume.
And then I haven't seen the reports on if Levis is going to
play this week or not. But I mean, gosh, I would I
would think that regardless of who's playing, like the the
reason Levis didn't come back in was certainly injury against the
Dolphins. But you have to think that the
coaching staff was kind of breathing aside, they weren't
slow to make that switch to Mason Rudolph, right?
They're like, oh, thank goodness, an opportunity to put
someone other than Will Levis out there because Will Levis has
already done some stuff where Brian Callahan looks like he
just wants to do the, you know, Homer Simpson throttling Bart
thing to him when he's leaving the field.
So. And, and the game plan for
playing, yeah, the Colts is pretty like the Packers laid
that out pretty good, yeah. Yeah, I, I really like this
spot. The, the more that I think about
it, I'm I'm kind of into, I'm into playing both.
If you right there, there's actually 2 spots this week where
I'm like, I'll play both running backs from the same team and
it's the Lions and the the Titans.
I think. I don't think anyone's going to
do that, and I think it's pretty.
You mean boat on the same team? Oh wow.
And like but it's a dog bowl on A10 running back week.
Yeah, there's only so there's 5000 ish total entries in the
tournament. Like it's not that massive of a
field. You know, I definitely think and
based on just the game totals so far, like from from what's out
right now from Vegas, like there's three really good games
and then there's a lot of stuff that's just not quite as
exciting. So it might just be a slate
that's a little bit lower scoring and really like so the
Lions 1 is is harder. The more that I think through it
because it's like for both the Lions backs to get there just by
the nature of the ADPS, you exclude yourself from some of
the best game scripts. Like you're not going to get
Jaden Reed, then you're not going to get Lamar or Daniels.
Maybe you can sneak in a Terry Mclaurin or as a flowers to get
access to that game. You know, maybe you could sneak
in a Marvin Harrison to get access.
You could do like a Jalen Tolbert or a a Jameson Williams.
So or while you you've got the Lions to occupy the Cowboys
game. So, yeah, I I don't know, it's
AII think it's probably a better idea for the Titans just because
Spears is free and Pollard is is cheap enough that you know
you're not paying, you're not. The opportunity cost is much
lower. Right, right.
Another another guy who is, you know, in a pretty good workload
situation that I I think could be an interesting spot here is
JK Dobbins. I really, I'm really interested
in your opinion on this one because I couldn't decide if it
was a really good play or, or just kind of stupid.
So it's it's into the Broncos who have a really good defense
on paper. I went back and looked at the
Broncos matchups. They played a bunch of teams
that can't really run the ball successfully.
Like the best running back they faced was Breece Hall.
But that was in that like super, you know, monsoon game and The
Jets offense just looked absolutely terrible, like, I
mean, entirely ineffective. So the Broncos did not.
Embarrass the Tampa Bay Bucks. They absolutely embarrassed
them. They they did, yeah.
They they stopped the worst running back in the NFL Handily,
Yeah. And what's what's interesting
about Tampa Bay, though, is they they're if you look at their
ESPN and run block success rate, it's actually like really good.
Like let me let me let me pull this up.
They they're run. Sorry, maybe really good is a is
an overstatement. It's at 14 in the NFL.
So it's like that that's they're solid and.
Yeah. It's not like they have like
this cupcake and what you call it online and then the
underlying metrics for for for the Denver Broncos, they're like
9th in the NFL for a run stuff, right?
So like I think like obviously they have beat up on on like
some of the worst offenses, but I think there's enough there
that they're like probably pretty legit.
Yeah, no, I I mean, the the most likely thing is the Broncos are
a good defense both against the pass and against the run.
They are really they're really good against the pass.
Like I, I don't, I don't think it's disputable that they're
good against the pass, right. So I'm just wondering, I mean,
the Chargers want to lean into the run.
They're coming off the bye what they're saying.
About the bye is do you think there's any chance we get like a
Vidal like rookie bye week bump? Maybe, but I I don't think it's,
I mean, to me, that's like more along the lines of copium from,
you know, nerdy fantasy football players than it is anything that
Harbaugh is likely to. Actually Harbaugh and Greg Roman
are like JK Dobbins is the fucking man.
Like how what they spent the bye week on was watching the JK
Dobbins breakaway runs and like, how do we get more of this?
Like I just I don't know that they were if anything, you're
just going to get like maybe you get Vidal coming in and taking a
couple Gus Edwards touches instead.
But I really don't think it's going to hurt Dobbins workload
at all. It's going.
To eat into Dobbins. Yeah, that.
That's pretty fair. That's pretty fair.
And so the the warts on the frog here are you got Rashawn Slater
and Joe Alt, who are both listed as questionable when I checked.
Now, you know, it's early in the week.
So this is just a situation I want to monitor if both of those
offensive lineman are healthy for the Chargers.
This is a spot where I think I'm just going to say, you know
what? JK Dobbins has shown us the
explosive plays before. And sure, like the, you know,
the Broncos have looked pretty good against the run, but it's a
spot where I'm interested in testing it on a weak running
back slate where JK Dobbins goes undrafted, you know, he gets
drafted occasionally. Like his is is he's way under
drafted versus his use of metrics is what that's what
you're getting at, right? Yes, and it's.
Like, do we really respect the Broncos defense that much that
we're like, oh, this is unplayable, right?
It's not unplayable. It's certainly not unplayable.
So that's that's kind of how I'm, I'm thinking through it.
Let's see the other notes I had on running back.
OK, so the Romandre benching, yeah, I guess rumors of his
demise have been greatly exaggerated because it was not
really a benching. It was basically the exact same
role that he had every other week.
So. This the the only thing for
Romandre where Antonio Gibson had more routes than him.
So like he he he is their he is their rusher.
He is their lead rusher, no doubt.
But he went from like in in the first couple of weeks, like
Romandre had way more routes than than Antonio Gibson.
And then it's sort of getting closer to even and and and last
week Gibson had more routes like I'll be interested to see if
that continues. But that was the one kind of
like usage node where like like if if you're looking for Drake
main to kind of unlock the offense, maybe maybe Antonio
Gibson gets more of the benefit of that.
And but they certainly it. I guess the other way to look at
it is if Reminder is their preferred rusher and they start
scoring touchdowns, he's probably going to get a good
bunch of those. Yeah, I think.
I think just for we're going to talk about the Patriots a decent
amount, I'm sure because Drake May is starting.
But I think with the Patriots, the analysis, really it should
be something where we keep it pretty simple and broad and not
try to get overly granular with this.
Because there's a lot of spots where you know you get a
systemic change in the offense and people are too quick to try
and like 0 in on this is the way it's going to go.
And instead I like to take a rising tide, lifts all boats,
approach on, stuff like that. And say, hey, Drake May is in
the offense, it's going to look functional.
They're going to have the opportunity to score more
points. And if we think about this
probabilistically, every Patriots player has some
probability of scoring a touchdown.
And I'm just saying that all of those probabilities have
increased a little bit because. They're yeah, yeah, no, that's
pretty fair. My, my, I guess my, my, my base
kind of point is him losing the routes last week is a
significant development, potentially significant
development. And if it continues, it does put
a big game a big tap on his upside.
The rest of the way, yeah, absolutely.
OK, let's see, I think the next guys I had notes on were on the
backups chart. Was there anyone else you wanted
to talk about on this chart before we move on?
And no, no, I think we already talked about Gibbs and
Montgomery. They're scratches, yeah.
So we can we can move to the next chart.
So this one, yeah, this one, Rico Dowdell is the one that I
really wanted to highlight. You finally get the game where
the Cowboys seemingly understood that Rico Dowdell is far and
away our best rusher, which is has always been clear.
Now, there's an interesting thing.
The Cowboys changed their run scheme this game and it seemed
to be a lot more successful. So I'm, I'm hopeful that they
stick with that and I, I think that could bode really well for
Dowdell going forward. Now they did lose Tyler Smith to
injury in this game and I haven't seen how serious that
injury is. So that's a little bit
concerning. But overall, I, I think it's
hard to take away anything but really bullish sentiment for
Dowdell after this game. I mean, the if, if you're
wanting to throw cold water on it, the, the cold water is that
the Cowboys kind of suck and the offense looks much worse than it
has in recent years. And so, you know, the cold
waters, there's just not as many touchdowns for, for the running
back there. So the role's less valuable.
But I still think it's if he, if he drafted Rico Dowdell in
basketball and you're freaking out up to this week, I think
you're breathing a huge sigh of relief because if you get 3-4
games with this type of role from him, he's absolutely
smashing his cost. And if the role like this
continues for the rest of the season, you're you're absolutely
cooking. And then you also have the house
to maybe the Cowboys get their shit together just like they did
last season after their bye week and doing some self scouting.
So definitely encouraging there any any thoughts on Dowdle and
his role as the as the season progresses here?
So I guess it's important to note.
So this is the fourth week in a row where he's led the Cowboys
and carries and but this is the first week where he just
completely clear and away obliterated the other guys.
And so I think they're thinking about if if we had just one week
where they gave him a lot of carries, it'd be like it'd be,
it'd be harder to like put a lot of stock in it.
But now that we have 4 weeks in a kind of in a row and and as
they actually rushed more, it consolidated to Rico.
So as they as the game plan became to run more consolidated
to him, that feels like pretty decently strong signal.
And I mean, obviously with a running back, you'd like the
Reds to come as well. Those are curious.
Still split kind of like three ways and but pretty positive
development. And then games where the Cowboys
do run a lot, it does seem like he's going to get the majority
of those, which you're like you're I think you hit the nail
on the head at the cost. You're pretty happy with that.
Yeah, the the other, you know, good indicators there deuce fawn
healthy scratch Cowboys are done the the nepho baby deuce fawn
experiment. Wow, fun.
I I, it was super fun to watch the deuce fawn college
highlights. It was very heartwarming to
watch his dad get to, you know, draft him for the Dallas
Cowboys. Yeah, the the nepho baby deuce
fawn stuff is over. Unfortunately seems like a
wonderful human. Unfortunately got dealt a shitty
genetic lottery card because he's really really.
Small then we are we all wish we had NFL there level of genetics.
That's that's true. So yeah, Deuce, Deuce, healthy
and active, what what they really look like they're doing
is what exactly what they described in the offseason where
it's going to be running back by committee.
They're going to use all these guys.
Turpin's going to be involved back there, which he was.
Zeke is going to be involved, Dowdell's going to be involved,
Lipke's going to be involved. So all those guys are involved,
but finally they're, they're starting to be like, OK, no one
else is actually all that productive.
They did give CD Lamb a, a carry out of the backfield.
So I would expect stuff like that to continue.
But I, I think it's, it's consolidating enough on Dowdell
that you're, you're pretty happy with it.
Yeah, yeah, completely agree. Is he is he playable in like the
dog bowl format this week? Because I've been toying around
with with taking him, but I'm really not certain about it.
He's he's relatively undrafted. You basically get him in the
last round. That that feels like a step too
far. It's pretty thin, right?
Like the? It's pretty tin.
I I like. Like what kind of scenarios do
you see Rico Dowdell getting 20 carries?
Right. Yeah, I, I think it's, I think
it's pretty tough. I just think the ceiling games
happen too infrequently. And I also think the ceiling's
probably not that high. So it's like.
Right. Yeah, probably not like.
Jason Dobbs is better is a better play.
OK, that's a that's actually really good insight.
What about Taje Spears? Yeah, I think he's a better,
Yeah, he's a way better play. OK.
All right.
That's that's good insight there.
All right. We talked about this last week.
I just want to hit it again so listeners can avoid this and and
have this little bit of alpha, but when Joe Mixon is out, you
do not play Cam Acres. Even in your home leagues, don't
play Cam Acres. It's not Cam Acres.
It's Daria Goombawali. OK there.
Daria actually got more work than Cam Acres this week.
He's getting the passing game stuff too.
Listen, Cam Acres is a is a psyop.
He's not. He's not real.
He doesn't exist. He's just he's just out there.
They they literally make fake stats up for Cam makers.
They put them in the box score. It's just like they they do
random number generator under 3 yards per carry.
Here's the Cam makers stats. Let's just throw those in there
so. So here, here's here's the one
for you, Diary. Aguna Balle.
I probably said that Wrong had more than twice the expected
fantasy points as Cam makers in Week 5.
He actually had 17 expected points in Week 5 versus 8 for
rare and count makers. Man, Draco, sometimes we know
Ball and it just feels so fucking good.
God, I mean, I'm, I'm more proud of the Daria Goombawali call
last week than I am the Joe Burrow call.
I feel like we nailed that one and.
Yeah, we did, and we definitely did.
I wish I had money. I wish you had won a dog bowl
seat. But we too, we got the process
win. Got it.
I know I told you this, but I'm just gonna you you triggered me.
I'm just gonna bitch on the on the airwaves here.
Just needed one. Tyrone Tracy touchdown 1.
Javonte Williams touchdown any of those.
They both had multiple opportunities for that Bonex.
Bonex vulturing. It was I, I guess the the most
painful way for it to go for me because I was talking about how
Bonex might be a viable play in week five.
And then he vultures the touchdown that would have sent
me to the dog bowl if Javonte just got it in.
By the way, on the play where he does get that Bonex 1 yard
rushing touchdown sneak, they were lining up and it really
looked like they were going to do a Javonte Williams run and
then the play gets blown dead. I can't remember if it was a
timeout or a substitution or what, but then the next play is
the Bonex sneak. So there's that.
All right, back to actual stuff is helpful.
Yeah, OK. I know your notes said about
Roshan eating into swift goal line, such as I think we touched
on that where we like we're on watch for that we are on watch.
For that, I wanted to talk about Chase Brown though.
So Chase Brown finally getting more opportunities than and we
can actually go to the efficiency charts now for this.
OK, Chase Brown getting more opportunities than Zach Moss.
You can see him, he's right on the line there, just barely
breaking into the 10 to 15 expected fantasy point category.
I don't believe Zach, oh, Zach Moss is on this chart now.
This is this is what is interesting to me.
Zach Moss had been getting more opportunities than Brown.
That's flipped. If you look at the size of their
bubbles too, Zach Moss has been less efficient than Chase Brown
with those opportunities. If we really think this is a
changing of the guard type situation.
Also, you've got the Moss ankle injury too, where that could
lead to more Chase Brown playing time.
I mean, not to not to get too simplistic with it here, Draco,
but what if I just simply transpose the location on the
chart of Zac Moss and Chase Brown, but Chase Brown gets to
keep his efficiency. I mean, that seems pretty good
to me. I think Chase Brown is the
better rusher and the Bengals recognized that now they gave
they gave Chase Brown and the majority of the rush attempts.
I don't know how much the injury played into that and but it was
trending to 5050 anyway. Zach Moss is clearly the
preferred trusted passing down back.
Like they asked him, they, they actually asked him to pass block
a decent amount. They do not ask Chase Brown to
pass block and he runs routes and like he gets touches that
way, but they, they, they just don't ask that pass blocking of
Chase Brown. So I think that gives some
security to the Zac Moss kind of like passing down role, but he's
pretty I think he's pretty vulnerable on on, on the rushing
and it's already sort of sort of the materialize where Chase
Brown is, is getting more rush attempts now.
Yeah, definitely agree with you there.
So I I think it's wheels all the way up for Chase Brown.
If you paid, if you paid the cheap Chase Brown price in the
offseason, you're really happy right now.
If you paid premium Chase Brown price, I think you're you're OK,
but you're not ecstatic. Yeah, I was trying.
So one guy I'm trying to look up here, I'm trying to look up
Kenneth Walker. How does Kenneth Walker have so
many expect receiving expected fantasy points here?
What is going on? That is a good question.
Let me. Hang on, better, better
question, did you know there are two Kenneth Walker, the thirds
in the NFL? I actually had no idea.
That's very interesting. Can you guess what team the
other Kenneth Walker the third plays for?
No. PFF has enlisted as a receiver
for the Jacksonville Jaguars today I.
Wow. And he's also Kenneth Walker,
the third. He's also Kenneth.
Walker the third. That's amazing.
And so the reason that the reason that Kent Walker has so
many expected receiving points is because he missed a lot of
games. And so then week 5 is weighted
pretty heavily. And then week five he had 13
1/2. And I think if I'm remembering
correctly, they trailed the Giants pretty much all game.
So I mean, in in trailing game scripts.
And I think sharps missed time too.
And if sharps had missed time and you saw that kind of like,
hey, they're trailing and then Kenneth Walker is getting all
this great receiving work, he'd be pretty ecstatic that he's
kind of like game strip proof. I think that that's what the
take away there is that what moneys the water a little bit
is, is the sharps injury. Yeah, I mean, man, Kenneth
Walker definitely looking like a pretty big smash here.
I did not think the this amount of receiving work was in his
bag. So if this, I mean, he's not
going to get 8 targets every week, you know, but if this can
continue even like 3 targets a week, 4 targets a week.
Yeah, he got 7 targets this week.
I I had him as 8 targets. Oh, oh, oh, sorry.
I I counted reception. Sorry.
OK, you're right. But yeah, pretty, pretty
incredible role. I got AI, have to be honest.
So I was listening to the the stealing bananas episode with
Ben and Sean Siegel. And Sean is has listed Kenneth
Walker as his overall RB1 next year.
They're talking about the, you know, early 2025 first and
second round rankings. And I, I love, I love listening
to Sean's takes. Like I more often than not, I'm
I'm with him on stuff, but every once in a while he says
something where I like so strongly disagree with it.
I so strongly disagree with it. And I'm like, that is
ridiculous. I'm just, I'm throwing that one
out. I don't even understand how he
got there. And then like I, I was like, it
was so overreactionary just off the huge, you know, 3 touchdown
game against Detroit. Like, that's not, it's just, you
know, vividness bias. Then he goes out and yes there
was the Sharks injury, but it's also like I did not think that
there was a situation where Kenneth Walker would ever get 8
targets in a game this season so.
Five last week. I I know, but I thought, I mean,
I just thought like that's a huge shootout against Detroit.
Like they're just like that game was insane, you know, like the
the total play volume was crazy. Like I didn't think.
He thought that was a high watermark.
Yeah, I, I, I literally thought that game against Detroit might
not be his highest fantasy points for the for the season
cuz he didn't actually have a ton of yards in the game.
He just had a bunch of touchdowns.
But man, Sean, Sean looking clairvoyant again with this
Kenneth Walker RB1 early prediction.
But that does transition me into my next point, which is I don't
think we're going to get any legendary running backs this
season. Do you think that's a a
reasonable assessment? No one hitting the 23 fantasy
points. Yeah, yeah, I think, I think the
RB1, the RB one season you got this year is probably not a
legendary season. Yeah.
And I, I think we can move on to the next chart because there are
a couple or actually, we'll, we'll stay on this one for one
second. Sorry, but I, I wanted to
highlight two of the guys that were probably two of the
favourites to put up legendary seasons going into the year.
And that's Bijon Robinson, who he can see now this is, Are you
ready to be depressed if you're a Bijon Robinson truther in this
10 to 15 expected fantasy point band, You can see Bijon
Robinson. He's right here, right behind
Naji Harris smack in the middle of the chart.
Now you know that that could be OK.
He you know, he was a little banged up.
Algier got more opportunity than we, you know, we might expect
maybe over the rest of the season he gets more opportunity.
Bijon isn't even the best B Robinson on this chart.
Brian Robinson has more expected fantasy points than Bijon
Robinson. So little little concerning.
But I do like this week as a good get right spot for Bijon
into the Panthers. I it to me, it's like a don't
overthink it kind of spot, like here you go.
Here's the match. If you dream of.
I mean, you just saw the Falcons clear.
For better or worse, the Falcons care about public perception of
their players and how they're accumulating stats, which I I
know that we all hated Arthur Smith saying like stats are for
losers. I don't care about stats.
I I don't want to be like the antithesis of like the Arthur
Smith hater here, but I also think that team saying like, Oh
yeah, you're right. We def because everyone's upset
about us not involving that guy. We're going to involve that guy
like Kyle Pitts getting forced a bunch of targets where he looked
OK, but like, I'm pretty sure that if those targets had gone
to Drake London or Darnell Mooney, like they were just or
be Sean Robinson, like they were better served.
So. But the Falcons seem to care.
Like the Falcons care about what Jason Kelsey is saying that, oh,
you need to use Kyle Pitts. And then they come out and say,
oh, don't don't worry. We yeah, that's a good idea.
We're going to do it. It just it, it feels weird to me
that you're going to let public sentiment dictate the usage of
your players, especially when it seems like Kyle Pitts might not
be very good. But I think Bijan Robinson is
very good and I kind of think that this just might be a spot
where they want to get him going.
So and it's. The only thing about Pitts, so
he he he did only have 15% targets per at run like in in
getting involved. And so I I do wonder if like
that was just a function of them passing more.
It happened early though in the game too.
Like Pitts was schemed a couple things very early.
I think he had three targets in the first, maybe not the first
quarter, but like he had three targets almost immediately and
there there was some scheme to stuff there too, so.
Anyway, you you noticed a concerted effort to get him
involved. Yeah, but let's let's move to
the next chart here 'cause But you know, we talked about Dijon
Robinson as one of the favorites to to have a legendary season.
The other guy we would have expected to be in contention for
that is Breece Hall, who has just put up an absolute, Yeah,
this one, it's Breece Hall up there in the 15 to 20 expected
fantasy point range, but terrible efficiency.
I mean him and Devon at Chan, two of the the least efficient
backs in the league. Now that that evil man Robert
Sala is gone. God, I mean the.
Sun will shine upon Breeze Hall once more.
The Jets just seem like such a dumpster fire.
I don't know. I really, I do feel strongly
that he's a very, very talented running back.
I mean, I'm a little confused as to what we've seen these last
few weeks. He hasn't.
I think he hasn't forced any missed tackles in these past
couple weeks. It's a good, good stat nugget
that I heard. Yeah, just not looking great.
I mean, the opportunities weren't incredible this last
game. But I mean, and then you've got,
you know, your your two games removed from the really
atrocious Broncos game. So I don't know how, how worried
are you about Bree Saul? And I'm honestly, I'm not that
worried and I do feel like stuff like efficiency stats can like
wax and wane over time. And the big worry I guess would
be like just true jets, systemic stuff.
That's that's my biggest concern because I think.
Bruce is good if The Jets like haven't an epic meltdown and
then your sealing case is just gone.
I think you still have some floor where like a lot of the
offense has to run through him anyway.
So like, you're not going to get it's not going to be abysmal,
but your ceiling is just gone. And if The Jets can kind of get
it figured out, circle the wagons like he's going to get
going. Like, I'm not worried one way or
another. Like even if he has a tough time
in the box and he's, he, he will get targets, he's going to, he's
going to have breakaway runs. And I like I, I, I think you're
going to be OK. And I, I, I agree with you that
like the legendary season is kind of off the table now, but
I, I still think you can get something like 16 to 17 points a
game the rest of the way. I like think that that that
scenario is still like pretty pretty plausible.
Yeah, he yeah, I'm I'm pretty worried about The Jets systemic
stuff, but who knows, maybe the Robert Sala.
Apparently Robert Sala was really not liked by the players.
Is some of the like early rumor mill stuff that I'm seeing
Makai. Well, Makai Becton did.
Did you see the Makai Becton thing?
No. He posted the RIP Bozo picture
right after Robert Sala got fired on his Twitter.
Immediately deleted the tweet but man.
That's it. Got out there.
Yeah, Oh yeah, I got out there so harsh criticism from a Kai
Beckton, Robert Salas. So who knows, maybe, maybe the
sentiment in the locker room changes.
I don't know. I'm glad you're you're less
worried the the Devana Chan efficiency stuff also
concerning. But I I think, I mean, I didn't,
I didn't go and actually do this because I kind of know what I
would see if I did it. But really, I think a big part
of it has just been like, yeah, there hasn't been Tua in a bunch
of their games that they've played now.
They haven't had Mostert up until this week.
And him just having to carry the full workload is probably not
ideal for him, like having peak efficiency and being able to be
maximally explosive. And I think if you just went in
there and, you know, fudge the numbers a little bit, What if
what if you inserted inserted 180 yard Devana Chan breakaway
rushing touchdown his stats? What if you just pretended that
it happened this year? Like I'm pretty sure the
efficiency numbers all of a sudden go back to pretty good,
right? So it's like, like you said, the
efficiency stuff can wax and wane.
I'm not concerned about a Chan. I don't think that, you know,
you look like he did last season just by accident.
So he's definitely one we're down the stretch.
He could be interesting. Oh, Cream Hunt looking like the
waiver pick up of the year, just very solid.
Like in in your home leagues or high stakes leagues like cream
hunt, absolute smash. He's getting, he's basically
getting the Pacheco roll, like more or less, you know?
So just I'm just looking up some of these advanced stats here.
This does. No, this does include week 5.
Actually, those include week 5 advanced stats per Rotavis and
like 2 of the highest of the top five highest stuff rates.
So Devana Chan has been stuffed on 29% of his runs, hit at the
line 52% of his runs, Breece Hall hit stuffed 28% and hit at
the line 51%. And their their evasion stuff is
where is it at? Divine and chance evasion has
been bad and Breece Hall's evasion has been like actually
solid. I think you can pretty easily
tell yourself a story of how like the Dolphins turn that
offense around with you of being healthy and with Breach's stuff
like a lot of that still seems pretty solid.
It's like a lot of this the kind of like advanced metrics seem
solid, but it that does feel like the offense is truly
failing him. I don't know how that improves,
but maybe maybe they end up playing like weaker defenses and
you and and and The Jets kind of figured that out.
Sorry to bring it back just. No, no, I think that's that's
useful context. I didn't, I didn't really have
any other running backs to touch on here.
I feel like we got through most of them.
Did you have anyone before you move on?
And no, no, no, I think, I think we're good to move on.
So on to the tight end chart and so tight end utilization and
efficiency. So the green bar is what
percentage of team dropbacks are they running a route?
Then we also look at what percentage of those team
dropbacks are they pass blocking.
So we get that kind of full pass, our dropback participation
rate and then we also look at a dot, we look at targets for our
run. And one thing I wanted to note,
I should have said this much earlier, I think we said it in
last week, a lot of these charts are four week rolling.
So I'll just point it out. The running back charts and the
tight end chart are four week rolling.
So it's week two true 5. I, I believe we did.
We did say that last week, but I I should have said it sooner.
Yeah, good, good shout there because for these positions
where, you know, utilization is really, really important for
them, we want to be on top of the current trends.
And we don't want to let what happened, you know, say we're in
week 8. We don't want to let what
happened in week 1 drive what we're thinking about a player
all the way in week 8. It gets good context to have,
but we don't want to miss out on emerging trends because we're
keeping, you know, week one in there when we we just kind of
need to file that away for context on the player's stats.
But we want to be able to catch that as it.
Emerges and so Travis Kelce, a good example here where since
week 4, so week four and five, he's up to he's up to 90% rate
of participation, 27% target for a run versus 21 on the full
season and a 7.2 A dot in the last two weeks.
And so like that, that that's the kind of stuff that we're
trying to catch. Yeah, Travis Kelce is back to
Travis Kelce now after Roshi Rice went down.
So the the only solace you can take if you're a Roshi Rice
drafter was that if you're drafting a lot of Travis Kelce
as well, congratulations, you're you're Travis Kelce.
Shares are now saved because they certainly looked dead while
Rice was out on the field. So one one guy I wanted to point
out here who's I would fully expect his TPRR to come down
substantially is Dallas Goddard. You're, you're getting right now
we've got four weeks in here where you were either missing
A.J. Brown or Devonta Smith in every
week, but one of these four weeks here and then last week
you're missing both of them. And then or, or yeah, last week
you're missing both of them and then this week you get the buy.
So I think that coming out of the buy this week, you're you're
going to see a little bit less of Goddard and more of A.J.
Brown, more Devonta Smith. So I don't, I don't really think
there's too much actionable here to do with it.
Like if you have Dallas Goddard and he's your best tight end in
the manage league you're probably starting in.
Like I don't think he can really get one over on your league
mates if it's a league where you have trading and trade in.
Like unless people are really not paying attention to the fact
that the Eagles were missing weapons.
Like maybe you can just do like a desperation try and sell high
thing for Dallas Coddart and get more than he's worth.
But I think he'll still be fine the rest of the season too.
I'm not saying he's dead now, it just.
But he didn't suddenly become an elite, elite tight end, right?
Right. So one, one note I had here.
So Trey McBride, his underlying metrics last week was awesome.
So he he actually had a, he had 17 1/2 expected fantasy points
last week. He ran bad on on touchdown, so
he didn't quite get there, but he had a 33% target for run on a
6.6 A dot and obviously some some good, some good touchdown
equity that he didn't capitalize on.
But I I feel like an elite tight end season for Trey McBride is
is pretty well intact. Oh, it's, I think it's it.
We're currently watching it happen.
You know this. This is the.
Right. Well, we haven't, we haven't
seen that. We haven't gotten the points yet
is what I'm saying. Even though we haven't gotten
the points from Trey McBride, like the underlying metrics say
that a Smash Trey McBride game is, is, is is going to happen
and we're going to get, we'll probably get a couple of them.
Well and people, So what people don't understand about the elite
tight end stuff, the elite tight end does not mean this guy nukes
every week. What it means is most guys suck
every week, but this is one of the few guys that can
legitimately nuke and right now. And then your.
Four games are still pretty good and your four games are a lot
better where when everyone else sucks and they're getting two to
four fantasy points a week because they suck.
Trey McBride is getting like 6 to 9 fantasy points per week
when he has his four-game. And so that's you might not like
it. This is what elite tight end
looks like. If you didn't understand that
when you're signing up for the elite tight ends, like I hate to
break it to you now, but this is what it looks like.
And, and it's part of the reason why it works Like you're, you're
really hoping that that this is the way that things play out.
Because in a, in a basketball tournament where you're, it
literally is all going to come down to single weeks when like
like this last week, Tucker Kraft and Brock Bowers were
literal gods. You know, like if you didn't
have Tucker Craft or Brock Bowers in your tight end slot, I
guess George Kittle also had the touchdown to like kind of keep
him in in there. But outside of those three guys
is like, all right, well, there weren't, weren't really any
tight end points to speak of this week.
And so that's just that's what the whole thing is about.
It's like there's not going to be very many good scores, but
it's a lot easier to identify where the scores come from
because these guys have these profiles that are just different
and like it's not even that it's not that hard to identify.
Like just look at this chart. The chart kind of tells you
everything you need to know. Let's see Travis Kelsey, ton of
ton of routes, great route rate, 21% TPR, pretty solid 8 dot 7.8.
All right, next guy Trey McBride 26% TPRR lot of routes 7.6 A dot
looks pretty good like. It's George.
It's kind of self-explanatory. 27 percent 7.8 A dot looks
pretty good, you know, like so. One that we can throw out though
down here that is pure noise is Greg Dolcic.
He had, he had like an aberration game where he got
something like 8 targets. I want to say in Week 2, this is
just a feature of the rolling charts.
And then I believe he also missed some games in there or
missed a game. I want to say anyway, Greg
Dolson's stuff is fake. It was it was literally just all
one weird game or he got a shit load of targets and then did
nothing with them. So that's not.
A and he he may run. He probably ran routes in other
games, but he didn't get a target.
He doesn't get picked up in the data.
So that's we could, we should probably just remove Greg
Dulcich next week and that's a great call.
Yeah. But again, it's it's part of
why, you know, as much as we are spreadsheet virgins and we're
like in the data, we always talk about like how critically
important it is to provide context with the data and like,
pay attention to how these stats are being compiled, watch the
games, understand what's happening because it can give
you quite a bit of context. And it's just so like what one
piece of context that I got from this week and it's it's actually
lining up with the stats, but it's it's contrary to what
you're seeing in the box scores is Dalton Kincaid.
So with Khalil Shakur out, I mean, the Bill's already putrid
passing game looked even more putrid, but not for lack of
trying to get Dalton Kincaid going.
They they tried. He was pretty close to a really
big play. Josh Allen actually missed him
on a deep shot. It was just a badly thrown ball.
But you know, it is it is what it is Dalton Kincaid.
There is a universe where Josh Allen hits Dalton Kincaid and he
has an absolutely monster game. He's the Titan one on the week.
And you like if you've listened to this show for the last, you
know, year and change that. We've been doing it, you know
that. I'm like captain of the Dalton
Kincaid Hater fan club. Like, I promise you I'm telling
the truth if I tell you that Dalton Kincaid looks like he's
in a halfway decent spot. The only like the warts on the
Dalton Kincaid frog are his route participation hasn't been
fantastic this season, but I to me, this reads like a situation
of necessity. The Bills have nothing they they
cannot pass the ball to save their lives.
They also don't want to pass the ball.
So like the motivation part of it is troubling, but I think
that they're going to lose enough games playing like
they're they're they're not playing great football like they
were they were in the game against the Texans.
By the grace of God, Like if Nico Collins doesn't pull his
hamstring on that play, I think the Texans just dog walk the
bills all day because I don't think the Bills are all that
good. They're just like they're
they're feisty, They're hanging in to games because they have
Josh Allen, who's one of the best quarterbacks in the league
and he could just do magic stuff.
But like, the way they're running the offense is stupid.
Like, full stop. It's not the way that you win
football games in the NFL in 2024.
And so I think that eventually they will figure that out and by
sheer necessity have to utilize Dalton Kincaid more.
And we're getting enough of these peripherals that if the
route rate goes up, I think Dalton Kincaid's actually pretty
interesting. Yeah.
So when they pass a lot his route rate goes up a lot.
So he he was he was up to 78% in week five.
He actually had a 21% target rate run A17A dot in in week 5.
And so if if, if you can, if if you change the projection so
that they actually had a lot of drop backs and Kincaid was
participating in a lot of that, he would project for a decent
amount of points. And the problem is that like
you're getting double hit on the on the low drop back games where
like there's not as many and he's getting less of them and.
Yeah. But I agree with you, if you got
a kind of situation change there where they actually did start
tossing the ball more, it'd be like an asymmetric increase to
his his projection. Yeah, it.
Took her craft is kind of interesting too, because you
kind of noted that, hey, he was one of the big scores on the
week. I'm having a tough time seeing
how to like think about that because like the I guess you're
getting you are getting Rep participation.
So he's like at 80% last week and then I guess that's what the
most grave injury to and you're getting target spread run and
over the full season or close to 20%.
But then it's just like a tree, a dot, so.
I think it's yeah, my my read on that is that's the role that he
serves in the offense. Kind of like, yeah.
It is for The Jets. Because a lot the.
Way he converts that into points is if he catches a short and
then makes the big plays like he did that.
That's probably pretty swingy week to week.
Yeah, it's swingy week to week. It's, I think it's pretty good
in it's pretty good in tight end premium formats, though, because
I think that you can end up with weeks where Tucker craft earning
enough of these little dinky targets where he's just going to
PPR scam his way to a really good game.
The other thing about Tucker Craft now when they, when they
drafted Musgrave and Kraft in the same draft class, both of
these guys were really good athletes.
So that was that was the appeal of both of them.
And I, I remember being at least interested in Tucker Craft last
year just because of his athleticism.
Now it seems like that's playing out where he, he's getting this
big yak. Like I, I'm pretty sure like the
Packers really like him. They're using him over Musgrave.
Granted, Musgrave was hurt this game, but we already saw Kraft's
role emerging prior to the Musgrave injury.
And also, Kraft had Kraft had an uphill battle to get this role
because Kraft tore his pack off the bone this offseason and
missed a big chunk of camp, you know?
So it's to me, it's like he had every chance to, like, Musgrave
had every chance to win the role, and Kraft still ripped it
away from him. So I kind of think they like
Kraft a lot, yeah. And I just, I feel pretty secure
about his role given that he he had it from the jump.
The way the offense operates just hey, it's a very efficient
offense that wants to pass the ball deep down the field.
And then you have craft for these easier underneath thing.
Like I kind of think that when you get into tougher matchups
for the Packers, you're playing in stronger defenses.
Like those are probably going to be some of Tucker craft's best
games because if defenses are able to successfully take away
all this deep stuff they want to do, then Tucker craft might just
eat out a necessity for the Packers to keep moving the ball
down the field. So I'm I get that, you know, we
want to, we want to flag really low A dots like that and say
like, hey, maybe this is a concern, but.
At least for Tucker Craft right now, like I'm, I'm not overly
concerned about it, but I I need to see it play out a little bit
more to see if it's something where it's like, Oh, yeah,
actually that is a concern because he just does, he does K
dot things most weeks, you know? Right.
Like I, I guess Sam, So obviously we play, I, I play a
lot of FFPC. You played a lot of FSPC.
So we're happy with that in tight end premium, but then in
dog bowl stuff after he puts a ginormous week, like I don't
think you can chase that in like how people you are, can you?
He's like he goes probably like fourth round ish right now,
like, you know, 334 turn, I want to say in the dog bowl
currently. It's been hard for me to get him
just because a lot of people are are taking him early.
So you probably don't chase it, but I do.
The, the tricky part is I like the game environment against the
Cardinals as a spot. And now you know what the, the,
as I think through this, you know what the sharp way is to
play it is you just go back to Dantevion Wix or you go to Romeo
Dobbs cause Jaden Reid's like, you know, early first round
pick. Wix and Dobbs are both mostly
undrafted. And it's the same thing that we
talked about last week with Wix. And you know, like it can, it
can go to anyone here. It doesn't have to just be read
like we saw it go to Kraft last week.
I think this is just a good enough offense where you can you
can take, take the Perry and play.
And I know, I know the ADP is is driven by yeah, six there and
person drafts, but I'm looking at this ADP.
So it took her craft 29.3. But then you have barriers 25.6,
you have LaPorte at 27.1 and it's like you're paying like
you're getting like a two or three pick discount on like way
better place. Yeah, I mean, I, I, I don't even
want to tell you how much Brock Bowers I have this week.
I, I've been getting Brock Bowers at like pick 28, pick 30
in a couple drafts. And I've had to do smash that.
Oh, I've had to do everything in my power to keep my pants on.
It's been, it's been one of one of God's toughest tests for me.
But yeah, man. Any of these other tight ends
that you wanna talk? True.
I feel like we hit on a lot of them.
I think we got most everyone here that we had notes on.
OK, OK. And I think you had a note him
about Hunter Henry being kind of excited about how he, yeah,
might elevate with me. Yeah, just, I mean same same
thesis that we talked about with CJ Stroud, Drake May, you know,
and that game, there's a lot of input volatility here.
It's the rising tide lifts all ships thing.
If you're playing any kind of weekly format here, I think you
just lean into this uncertainty And you know, you you take
Hunter Henry while he's free. Like this might be the last week
of free Hunter Henry that you get.
What if Hunter Henry is Drake May's favorite target?
What if Drake May is, what if Drake May is, you know, a better
quarterback than some of the other rookies that like it's, I
know this sounds a little ridiculous, but it's not
unreasonable for Drake May to be just as good as Jayden Daniels.
Like there were teams that had Drake made over Jayden Daniels.
You know, in fact a lot of the pre draft stuff that I've heard
come out was. It's in his range.
You're not saying like we should expect this it's but it's in his
range. It's something that could
happen. And so it's just like, while
people aren't willing to price that on, on a player or on a
team, like this is the game. This is the game guy.
Like we're we're trying to find these outlier out.
And when people don't pay for the outlier outcome, you just
take it like, right, you're gonna lose money.
In a GPP, yeah, when you get upside dot cheap, that's how you
play, yeah. By the way, 31% Brock powers so
far for me. That's a lot of Brock.
Bauers. No problem, no.
So anybody here on the backup chart?
I mean, there's a guy on the starters chart that I didn't
talk about that should be on the back charts.
And no offense seems giga dead. You got guys like Pharaoh Brown
and I can't even remember the other guy's name.
But dude, the Seahawks using a three tight end rotation will
just forever tilt me. It might just be the Noah fan.
It's not that good. I was meant to say, like,
doesn't that kind of suggest that he's not?
That good? Yeah, so.
He does have like a 72% route. He did have a 72% rent run last
week on like what seemed like a high volume week for that team,
but then an 8% targets per run. Yeah, I he's probably, he's
probably not very good, which is a bummer.
Really like it. He's a bummer.
He's a he's an athlete, but apparently not one that they
want to give the ball to. Joan Johnson on the rise here
you get wait, Juan Johnson, make it onto the starters chart,
right? And he's right here.
Wow. Sure enough.
So yeah, made it onto the starters chart also with this
little rinky dink A dot. Here you go.
You want the most disgusting play of all time.
You don't play any Saints this week against Tampa Bay because
you're going to have either J Kaner or Spencer Rattler except
for Jawan Johnson, the emergency outlet 2.9 A dot guy.
You play Jawan Johnson here. Now that's a caveat with Tase of
Hill being tase of Hill inactive still with his broken ribs, but
Jawan getting more routes, looking like he's getting worked
in more fully. So he's a, you know. 68% right
run and 19% targets per run lot just just against the chiefs
Yeah, for a dot and all of that stuff is is volatile and but
good. Good to see him kind of emerge.
And, and if you if you think that they're going to have to
throw a lot to stay in the game, then Juwan is probably going to
play a lot. Yes, that is that is what I
think. OK, sorry, back to the backups
chart. There's only one other guy we
need to talk about on the backups chart, and it is the
sneakiest of sneaky plays. Probably a play to lose all of
your money. You'll get no fantasy points
from this player, but if you want to feel really smart, you
can play Jetavion Sanders because Tommy Tremble got like I
watched Tommy Tremble's soul leave his body on the field.
I really like in a in all seriousness, like hope Tommy
Tremble is OK. It was a brutal hit that he
took. I hope the guy who hit him is
suspended for a game that's just some fucked up stuff.
Like I'm all I, you know, as all or most football fans do.
I certainly enjoy a, you know, nice big hit now and then, but I
don't enjoy the hits where I'm watching a guy just get
absolutely speared to the head. And I watched, you know, him get
Alzheimer's 10 years sooner. So didn't didn't love that.
But Jetavion Sanders maybe gets the start this week.
Maybe a little interesting. We liked him a lot because he's
a good athlete. He was 74% at Rhett run in week
five. Yeah.
So like I'm assuming a lot of that was a Tommy Tremble injury?
Correct. The Tommy Tremble injury came
almost immediately. OK.
So we already know, actually maybe not know, but we kind of
know what is what, that he has a full role.
Yeah, that that was that was my my point, that hey, the the door
opened and Jatavion Sanders at least got to walk through the
door. Now, the other stuff that is
interesting here is they played a really good defense in the
Bears so that the offense was kind of stymied.
Like Deante Johnson really didn't get anything going.
Chuba Hubbard is the only one who put up even a usable fantasy
week for for the Panthers. So you get a much friendlier
match up against the Falcons here.
I definitely think that this could be a spot where you know,
you just get a little bit of a bounce back.
And the other thing is the target competition outside of
Deante Johnson is like non existent because Xavier Legette
is injured. Jonathan Mingo is like, I
thought it was hard to find a receiver on the Panthers that
was gonna be worse than gosh, who's their their former LSU guy
whose name I'm forgetting right now.
Terrace Marshall thought it was gonna be hard for them to find a
guy worse than Terrace Marshall. Congratulations to the Panthers
organization. Incredible front office found
another guy even worse. And Mingo Mingo is terrible.
So Jacavion Sanders might just be able to get there because
there's no one to take the ball other than Deonte Johnson and
he's going to be entirely free. Probably not good in the dog
bowl because like, they're the the like the minimum.
OK. So he's what you're saying is
he's a desperation and waiver wire pickup where where like
you, you lost a tight end or you have somebody on a bye week?
He'll probably I haven't looked at the DraftKings pricing yet.
I bet he's 2500 though. That's more where I would play
him just because like the, you know, the last round cost of a
tight end on underdog is not the equivalent of a 2500 salary.
It's more like getting a $4000 player.
And so I think you just wanna, if you're gonna, if you choose
to lose your hard earned American dollars playing
Jetavion Sanders this week, probably do it in the format
where you get the largest benefit from it, which is where
you'd save a ton of salary because he's not he's not going
to be owned any no one will play.
The only people playing Jetavion Sanders are the people stupid
enough to listen to me. So you know, if you're if you're
watching this right now, it's going to be you and like maybe
one other person playing Jetavion Sanders.
So anyway, that's that's all the Jatavion Sanders talk for this
podcast. OK, I just I'm looking up his
salary now, looks like 20 this week is 2600. 100 more than the
stone men. I'll I'll tell you what, I'll
probably have at least one Jatavion Sanders team on
DraftKings. Make Sam.
It makes sense. You don't have.
It makes sense. It doesn't make any sense.
Well, we, we just pitched them. I, I, I if, if we just gave us
some speech for him, I'd hope that you're, you're also playing
them. My my my last stack chasing Co
host also had an issue about touting tight ends that he
didn't play. Oh, that's a good call.
Good shout. So receiver opportunity versus
fantasy points, and this is the starters chart.
Do you want to kick us off? Oh, I can't hear you.
It's something wrong? Nope, sorry, I had my mic off
there. Can you hear me now?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, can hear. You Jamar Chase is being sneaky
and hiding up in the upper left hand behind the route share
legend. Now this this chart's
interesting just because Malik Neighbors is skewing it so hard
that the minimum X axis value is 40% weighted targets per route
run. So it looks Jamar Chase's
weighted targets per route run kind of like artificially looks
lower than it even is. Now granted, T Higgins got a lot
of targets as well. So that's that's also part of
it. But yeah, I mean, I I would
fully expect Jamar Chase to finish moving on over up into
the upper right hand quadrant to live with wide receivers of his.
Chase had 29% targets per at run, 6068% weighted targets per
at run in Week 5. I think we can pretty handily
ascribe the the low start to the year because of the holdout.
Yep, and and and normal Jamar Chase underlying usage trends.
Projection forward. Yeah, agree.
OK. This is if you want the the flag
plant of all flag plants here. The guy who is going to
absolutely erupt this week is in a similar spot on the chart that
Cortland Sutton was last week. When I said maybe Cortland
Sutton's like an OK play. He's getting a lot of weighted
targets per route run. You know he's he's in a good
spot. Terry Mclaurin against the
Ravens pass funnel defense with Jaden Daniels, who it's looking
more and more with with each passing game.
It's looking like Cliff Kingsbury is rotating the
horizontal raid 90° and allowing them to do the vertical raid and
just huck it deep to Terry McLaren.
I mean, listen, if you get just two.
Terry McLaren had 176 area yards.
That's what I'm that's what I'm saying.
You get two of those deep bombs to connect to Terry and and he
keeps his feet through him because this last week he caught
one and fell down short of the short of the end zone.
Like, I mean, I'm not, I don't mean to sound hyperbolic here,
but a Terry Mclaurin 40 burger is squarely in the range.
That's like, I think that's like a 90.
It's not even 99th percentile. That's like 98th percentile.
OK, but I I think this is an insane spot for Terry Mclaurin.
He's going way too late. I'm I'm ruining my ability to
get Terry Mclaurin right now in dog bowl.
I only have 23% of them right now.
I would, I hope that before rankings come out or projections
come out that I'm able to get to like 50% Terry Mclaurin cuz
he'll be at the end of the him and Jaden Daniels would be the
1-2 turn in dog bowls right now. So I got, I managed to get a
Terry Mclaurin in the third. I think I, yeah, it's Terry
Mclaurin third round, Jaden Daniels second round team, which
I am just over the moon about. I, I think if you can get a
couple of those, you're going to have a really good shot at
stealing a seat this week. So Terry Mclaurin, that's my,
that's my spot this week. The that makes sense.
So we talked about this briefly on back, way back on the
quarterbacks chart. We talked about Drake London and
Darnell Mooney, you know, with respect to Kirk Cousins in this
good matchup against the Panthers.
Drake Lennon and Darnell Mooney are spider man meeting each
other on this chart here. Basically identical weighted
targets per route run. Just a couple fantasy points
difference. You know, which over the the
small sample that we have pretty attributable to just a little
little bit of variance. I do think that, you know,
straight up, you know, cost agnostic, I'd take Drake London
over Darnell Mooney. However, in pretty much every
fantasy format that we're playing, cost definitely matters
and you're getting Darnell Mooney a lot cheaper than Drake
London. So I'm I'm pretty into Darnell
Mooney this week. Gosh, things you never thought
that you would say. Yeah, that that that's an odd
one where he just had like a really, really like mediocre to
like non like viable career and now just an utter revival.
He did. He had the one really good
season, right? But.
He had he had a solid like rookie year where he got like
our sophomore year where he just about got to 1000 yards.
I thought he was over. 1000 I thought, I thought it was like
1000 and like 40 or something like that.
Yeah, the the the semantics between like a thousand 1040
doesn't matter. Darnell Mooney, like I think we
had all pretty much left for dead.
But anyway, he he seems to be experiencing a late, late career
resurgence here with Kirk Cousins.
And it's to me, it's just kind of the thing where there's too
much name value still being ascribed to Drake London, not
the Drake London isn't good. I think he's good.
I just think that kind of if we go back in time and kind of look
at this as the like when Kirk Cousins had Adam Thielen and
Justin Jefferson both doing like, I'm, I'm talking way back
when, when Adam Thielen was, was really good.
The sorry, it's more more like Adam Thielen's Seth Diggs when
it was like pretty concentrated offense, right?
Like you can get both these guys now this is a little less
concentrated, but I mean, it's, it's constant than that.
But that was like one of the all time concentrated offenses.
Just think of think of Darnell Mooney and they're totally
different player archetypes. It's it's purely just like the
role and the and like the cost relative to what you're getting
for the targets. Like Darnell Mooney is just like
that second piece in the Kirk Cousins offense that is going
too cheaply. People will get there
eventually. Like it's not.
I mean, it might already be too late.
Like people might already be on to the Darnell Mooney stuff.
And but from what I'm seeing in dog bowl prices, they're not.
And so it's probably one of your last opportunities to take
advantage of the Darnell Mooney to Drake London arbitrage
opportunity. Yeah.
And yeah, I think I think that's that's fair, but not non
derogatory. It's it's pretty gross.
It I have a tough time seeing like how Darnell Mooney, like
it's hard for me to actually envision him continuing to play
well enough to like earn these targets over over a full year.
But like that's what he's doing. That's what he's doing.
And the offenses that he's been playing on it have been so rough
that like, it, it's not that. It's also not that difficult to
tell yourself a story of like him just being misused his
entire career. And, and, and like we've seen
we've we have seen veterans have revival career revivals with
good quarterbacks. So like, that's probably what's
happening. And by the end of the year it
it'll, it'll just be like accepted.
Yeah. OK, this was one that I was
interested in your thoughts on. So Jameson Williams and Alman
Raw, St. Brown, you know, pretty close on
the chart for now. A lot of this is just Alman raw
is going to dominate the raw targets more than Jameson.
At least what we've seen so far this season is he's gonna get
way more raw targets. But Jameson is now, he's not
just getting deep stuff. Jameson's operating in in all
quadrants, but he is also getting stuff that much deeper
than Amanra. So it's kind of buoying his his
weighted targets per route run a little higher just because he's
getting that deeper stuff. But I really my question for you
is, is the emergence of Jameson Williams as like a legitimate
viable weapon for the Lions now eating into these other Lions
pass catchers like Amanra, like Laporta?
And is that causing them to be a little bit muted versions of
what we've seen from them last year?
I think, I think you've kind of got two things going on where it
does seem like they're running the ball more and then so the
receiving volume is down and then he's taking a bigger chunk
of it than before. So you're kind of getting a
double double blast there, which it does kind of suck that all
those kind of expensive pieces are underwhelming.
They're probably still like, they're probably all still like
great GPP plays. Like it's kind of like similar
to how the San Francisco team has been where like they're they
run too much, they cannibalize each other.
But then there's going to be games where one of those guys is
just somebody you absolutely need.
Yeah, definitely. To week consistency isn't what
it was before. Something I, I think I might
want to dig in. I've I've done this on pass BBM
data, but I think I have some ideas for how to kind of dive in
to this problem in a deeper way. But doing kind of like a
sensitivity analysis on the price of team stacks for some of
these pretty expensive team stacks, like what you actually
need from the pieces. Like, for example, if you team
stacked the Lions this year in best ball, took Almond raw in
the first round, took a Porta in the fourth round.
Or I mean, you can't, you can't take Gibbs and almond raw, you
know, except for that brief stretch of time where Gibbs was
falling with a hamstring injury. And then you get, you know,
Jamieson in the seventh round. It's like, is that going to be
good for best ball? I mean, right now it's looking
like David Montgomery cost adjusted David Montgomery and
Jameis Williams were the way to play this in basketball drafts.
But there's a long season and I'm I'm pretty optimistic in the
Gibbs thesis playing out where at the start of the season I was
like a little hesitant to believe it.
I I just thought that it was a little too wish Cassidy that
like just going to usurp David Montgomery.
He's going to take so much of it and dominate and and his passing
role has been less. I think that's also just a side
effect of Jameson just eating again, eating into that passing
volume. But man, Gibbs just looks so
good and they're willing to use him in situations that I think
prior to the season starting, people would have ascribed to
like purely David Montgomery situations like, you know, goal,
goal to go, you know, short, short yardage, goal line stuff
like they're happy with Gibbs there.
So I think the path for Gibbs getting there is still still
alive. But you know, with, with a
Monroe and Jameson, yeah, it's it's probably a lot like the
Niners, like you said. I think that's a really good
comparison. I I know you, you had a note
here about like a Brandon Ayuk revival.
Yeah. That that that was how I wanted
to segue the the Niners and and Lions here.
But I mean, man, I, I played a bunch of Iuke last week.
I thought it was a good spot. It's just, it's something where
I just have to remind myself like I, I wish I remember this
prior to to watching this week play out.
But when a major projection provider is like so, so heavily
over on one player in one of these like volatile good
offenses relative to the other pieces like ETR was so much
higher on Debo Samuel than the rest of the industry and so much
higher on Debo Samuel than Brandon Iuke that even though
their projection represents a range of outcomes, what we're
telling you is the median projection and here's the
ceiling. So they're not necessarily wrong
by projecting Debo that much higher, but the way that people
are consuming the data that they're providing is wrong.
People are seeing that and saying, Oh my God, I got to play
Debo. Samuel's the best projected
player on the slate. And so then you get this weird
overreaction where, you know, if you sat down and had a
conversation with the ETR projection team, they'd probably
tell you, yeah, all of these guys could go absolutely nuke
this week. We just think Debo has the
highest probability of doing it. But they fall victim to this,
like, you know, snake eating its own tail thing where they told
everyone Debo's the best bet, therefore everyone plays Debo
and jacks the ownership way up and it makes the other plays
better. So it's just to me, I just want
to remind myself that when you get a spot like that where the
market is going to be way too overconfident in how a really
good offense is going to get there, when there's a lot of
very similar weapons, like we're not talking like Garrett Wilson
versus Mike Williams was the projection gap.
You know where one of these is like clearly a different tier of
player is Debo Samuel and Brandon Iuke.
Where and George Kittle were all of these.
One A1B. 1C yeah, yeah. So I, I just, this is me saying
it out loud to remind myself and also to tell the listeners.
Like when you see a spot like this where you, you get just
such a huge projection on one player relative to players of a
similar tier on their offense. Like, like if you got a Mike
Evans is projected for 20 and Chris Godwin is projected for 14
type of situation, you know, that's a spot where you just
say, yeah, that the projection could even be right, but the
field's going to overreact to that and not synthesize that
data correctly. And so I'm I'm just going to
lead into people not understanding how probabilistic
range of outcomes work. And and also not, not not
realizing that other people are also going to to, to play that
projection. Yeah, yeah.
And it's such a simple thing. So like, I mean the, the one
that I really want to attack right now and sorry, I'm, I'm
just shooting from the hip here. I didn't have this one in the
show notes, but I feel like everyone is so gung ho about DJ
Moore now. DJ Moore just had a really big
week. Caleb Williams is looking good.
Like I feel like everywhere I, I look, I see all these people
talking about how DJ Moore is the alpha in the offense.
He's about to feast with Caleb Williams and it's like a man.
I kind of think that Roma Dunze and Keenan Allen both could
probably get there in any given week.
Like maybe DJ Moore is the projection favorite, but I don't
think it's quite as clear cut as people are think.
Like DJ Moore and Keenan Keenan Allen and Roma Dunze through the
1st 4 weeks have like identical targets in the games where they
both played. So it's like I kind of think
that both of these guys, they're not identical in the same games,
but they each had the same number of targets in different
games. So I just kind of think they're
both live to put up the same type of game.
We just saw from DJ Moore and people are just overconfident
because DJ Moore just got had a really big game.
So that's another one where I'm yeah, want to fade to
overconfidence there. All right, we'll, we'll speed up
here. I had a note.
This is a really important one, but if you look in the bottom
left hand corner, you know right around 40% weighted targets per
route run little under 10 fantasy points per game.
I'm just wondering when is Jerry Judy supposed to bury me?
Yeah, he's that. He's not, is he?
No. He he buries you when when Flame
Flamez becomes a starter. Yeah, if we get some Jameis,
maybe Jerry Judy can bury me. But man.
I haven't watched the Browns play but I've seen some comments
that what's his name? Deshaun Watson is having the
worst stretch of QB games. Among the worst stretch of QB
games in in in the modern kind of like.
Some of the passes are just weird.
Like there's somewhere it looks like, oh, that's like a, that's
like a normal miss. That's like a miss that a normal
quarterback would have. But every once in a while
there's one where it's like, what the fuck just happened?
It doesn't like like I don't see any other quarterbacks missing
that same way, if that makes sense.
Like I'm watching, we're like, I, if you want my, my theory on
what's happening, like biomechanically, his body did
not do what he expected it to do there.
Like the ball comes out, like he thought his arm could continue
moving in it, like his shoulder got caught or something.
It's very right. His body's not doing what he
thinks it's going to happen. So seems bad.
All right, we'll, we'll speed up here.
Let's let's move to the next chart.
Unless you had anyone else on this to talk about.
OK, Brian Thomas, breakout season.
It's here. Despite poor quarterback play
from Trevor Lawrence, Brian Thomas is inevitable.
It turns out the guy who scored a million touchdowns even though
he was running opposite Malik Neighbors target domination.
King happens to be very good at football.
Yep. Yeah, I don't even have anything
else. Sorry.
Sorry, I'm pretty tired. And you're good.
We're. He's he's playing well and then
hopefully his route chair can kind of creep up.
I don't see how it does it. He's very Gabe Davis is like
such a caricature next to Blake. Gabe Davis next to Brian Thomas
looks like they literally signed Gabe Davis to make the Brian
Thomas pick look that much better.
Sorry, Gabe. Yeah, he's still hanging around.
He's been firmly in that around 80% range.
But like they, they have to find a way to increase that.
You know he by the end of the season, he will absolutely be
the alpha on the team. OK, Josh Downs, man, this is a
really interesting one with Flacco.
Flacco got out there and was just slinging it.
Josh Downs absolutely looked like his favorite target.
Looked like the best receiver on the team by my eye.
I was watching a lot of this game because I had a ton of
Colts and Jag stacks played a lot of Joe Flacco in in the dog
bowl and DFS would have would have been really good if we
didn't have the nuclear Bureau week because Joe Flacco was was
kind of crazy. But anyway, Josh Downs, I I
think is asserting his dominance as the wide receiver one on the
team. Like he he will be the one that
leads the team and targets. But there's one small wrinkle to
that analysis and that is when Anthony Richardson comes back.
I don't know how good that is for Josh Downs game because it's
just gonna the amount of pass volume is gonna shrink it.
It transforms into this like deep ball, like low completion
percentage type stuff. And I don't know what, what are
your thoughts on Josh Downs here going forward?
So Josh Downs, I guess what one thing that that's kind of
standing out to me is so he's in this 70% route share and then
you look what where his routes are and it's almost all from the
slot. So it does seem like they seem
as a kind of exclusively a slot receiver.
But then when he plays, he's getting like, if I just do a
pure average here, he's getting like 35% targets per run.
So absolutely overcoming the, the lack of of route share
there. And and then so last week he got
12 targets, 6.8 yards a dot. Some of that probably was and
Joe Flacco, but I, I think you're right.
It's it's not like he's getting these crazy, crazy deep balls
and you kind of that solid player kind of doesn't really
work when Anthony Richardson is is a quarterback or Anthony
Richardson needs to play a whole lot better.
Yeah, that's, that's my assessment too.
Exciting because I really like Josh Downs.
He's a really good player. Drafted a bunch of them.
Would love to play him in, in weekly formats.
I just don't think that I will with Anthony Richardson.
I, I think, you know, certainly off of a good week, his price
will be too high. His ownership will probably be,
I would assume that his ownership doesn't, is not high
this week 'cause I think it's not a state secret that his game
probably doesn't mesh the best with Anthony Richardson.
But yeah, OK, so I've I've got so look where Deonte Johnson is
on this chart. Like pretty incredible 70%
weighted targets per route run averaging strong, you know, 12
1/2 ish fantasy points per game. Pretty pretty solid roll here,
right? Yeah.
Right below him is Lad Mcconkey, rookie wide receiver for the
Chargers, like very quietly becoming the wide receiver one
on the team. Now the problem with Lad
Mcconkey like and making a one to one like, hey, he and Deontay
Johnson are right next to each other on the chart comparison.
You can actually see it, the example right beneath him is
George Pickens. The problem is the pass volume,
right? Like they're, you're just the,
the volume for the Chargers pass offense is going to be pretty
low just 'cause they they don't like to pass.
They they haven't been. And I mean, I don't even know
what if the Chargers get pushed? Like, do they even pass that
much? So now here, here's the thing.
They're coming off the by. Maybe, just maybe they off the
by. They realize we should pass like
a little bit. I don't think that's likely.
Now they're Broncos, too. No, I don't think you're going
to get this moment of self reflection for Jim Harbaugh.
It's like, you know, my entire career, Greg, what's Greg Roman?
My entire career has been based around running the ball, but I
just had a week off. Fuck it, the big.
Scare now you also don't have a great match up against the
Broncos too, right? Like I think their past defense
is pretty for real now. Yeah.
I, I don't know if if Mcconkey draws Sir Tan or not.
That'd be interesting. I mean because like if QJ draws
Sir Tan, that actually seems kind of bullish to me.
I just think you might end up with Mcconkey getting just
everything he can handle in the limited pass attempts that they
throw. Now, I I'm spending all this
time on Lad Mcconkey because he goes undrafted in dog bowls.
And the receivers that are going ahead of him are a little gross
to me. And I wanted to hear your, your
thoughts on this. And like what?
I'm just gonna read some receivers and I want you to tell
me stop when I get to 1, where you would take Lad Mcconkey over
him. OK.
Amari Cooper, Rashid Shihi, George Pickens, Dante V on Wix,
Jalen Tolbert. Yeah, these are all guys that
that are like, you know, I can see how they get there, but
like, I'm not, I'm not crazy about them either.
Right, these are all every one of these players, Devante Adams,
Calvin Ridley, DeAndre Hopkins, Michael Pittman, Rashad Bateman,
all of them go ahead of live Mcconkey.
And like with I, I don't know, I just I think that he's squarely
in that tier of I mean, like shit, he's right next to Pickens
on this chart. Like he's and they're they're
both in offenses that aren't passing very much like and and
like lad, Mcconkey is not some like short yardage guy.
Like he can operate downfield too.
Like he he has he's he's A-44 speed guy.
Like I just I kind of think that just like people played George
Pickens and and got there on the, you know, the big Justin
Fields eruption week, I think you could do worse than last
round lab Mcconkey pick this week on a heavy bye week.
That's all I'm saying. That's all.
Yeah, yeah. So and and then the concern
there is, is the volume, but it's not like that bad.
Like and Justin Herbert's expected points from passing is
11.6. Like that's low, but it's not
that bad. Like their car is 12.2 and Lamar
well Jaden Dino's is 11.8, Josh Allen 11.7.
Yeah, yeah, but you're you're listing all these guys here who
I really am not wanting to play any of their receipt.
Like I don't want to play a Josh Allen receiver.
I don't want to play a Jayden Daniels receiver outside of
Terry Mclaurin who gets everything.
Now, I guess you could say, well, lad, Mcconkey is going to
be the gets everything guy. I think that's.
What you have, that's what needs to happen.
Yeah, yeah. And I it's a bet I'm willing to
make because I just the secret is stillwell kept on lad
Mcconkey. This is one where you can get
you can you can be ahead of the field on this one.
It's a bad matchup, like they're going to run the ball a bunch,
but I I just think I believe in the talent of the player enough
to get there. Yeah, yeah, make, make makes
sense for sure. All right.
Let's let's move to this last chart.
We'll take us home. OK.
There's only, there's really only two guys I had on this
chart and I I've got notes on them.
I can knock them out pretty quick.
But I wanted to give you a chance.
Was there anyone other than these two guys I've got in the
show notes that you wanted to talk about here?
And no, no, nothing, nothing really stands.
I mean, you're, you're kind of still disappointed with the CK
on Coleman still in this like really low route share.
It is. It is progressing positively for
him though. You can see he's up to the 65%
to 70% all the seats are now. Yeah.
So I'm just looking at the week to week.
So his his most recent, OK, OK. So it's it's being knocked down
by a 31% route share and week tree.
And that was the. Two, we could be disciplined.
Yeah, the last, the last time 2 has been 7372% and so still not
great on a low volume offense. And then just 15% target for
outrun in, in week, 419% in week 5.
Like I, I think, I think you have to be a little bit
concerned about Keon Coleman. Yeah, I would be concerned.
The the reason I'm I'm not as concerned about Keon Coleman is
that they're nothing is working for them in the passing game, so
they have to try something and to.
Try something. But The thing is their early
receiver, yeah, it's really weird that they're not getting
involved. It's really weird.
I think they're stupid as fuck. I think, I think the Bills
organization hit their head a few too many times because.
Why isn't Josh Allen targeting him more?
I don't know, it's not working like what you're trying isn't
working like. So I I think that this it's it's
one of those things where right now the bills keep touching the
stove. They're like maybe if we just
what if we throw I I had a note. I don't even I.
Don't think we hit this it this is the this is the JSN root tree
where it's or. No, not the JSN root tree.
And who's this George Pickens root tree from two years ago
where all they're doing is trying to go routes?
Yeah, it's just the. Same type of route.
So like, yeah, I guess you do need that to be mixed up a bit.
But I I had this note on Josh Allen.
I think it's it adds good context to to Keon Coleman.
They have a 58% pass rate that's the same as New England with
Jacoby Brissett. The highest attempts that Josh
Allen has on the season so far is 30.
Last season, prior to firing their offensive coordinator and
switching to Joe Brady, he only had two games lower than 30 pass
attempts. So this this like revert back to
the Stone Age thing that they're trying isn't working.
They've they've managed to win a couple games because Josh Allen
will do Superman things. But there's only so many times
you can touch the stove and get burned and keep putting your
hand on it. And I've got to think that as
Trogola did it, as I believe that the Bills coaching staff is
that there's only you can only burn your hand so many times
before you realize like, man, this isn't working anymore.
So that's why I think like Keon Coleman in the short term,
definitely agree with you. Like it's probably, it's going
to take a little bit, but I think eventually when they
figure their shit out, they might have to switch to using
Keon Coleman a little more the ball more.
It's it's it it there, you've got some probability there that
it's just mismanagement and it's not per play I.
Think it's a high probability of mismanagement, but OK, we'll
we'll hit these last two guys I had notes on.
OK, hear me out. We talked about the running back
versus the Colts, but can I interest you in some DeAndre
Hopkins against the Colts? Does he still have his his his
knee injury? So, OK, I actually did some
digging on this because there were people there were some
people that were floating the DeAndre Hopkins is going to get
traded to the Chiefs. Nonsense.
And I, yeah, And I, I said that's not going to happen
because this player cannot even pass a physical for the Chiefs
right now because they're going to examine him and be like,
yeah, we don't really want to sign you.
We don't want to trade for you because you have no, you've torn
your MCL. So here's you're not going to
pass this physical, bud. Sorry.
So I, I, I threw that out there and I was informed that back in,
I think it was week 3, DeAndre Hopkins came out and adamantly
denied that his MCL was torn, which is very weird because
DeAndre Hopkins is the one who gave the interview before the
season that he tore his MCL. So I went back, I looked at the
original story, DeAndre Hopkins explicit the, the exact quote
was that he tore his MCL and that these things take up to a
year to heal and that he'd torn his MCL before, so he had
experience with it. Sounded like a torn MCL to me.
But then in week 3, he explicitly says he did not tear
his MCL and then it was more like a more like a sprain.
He said it's more like an ankle sprain.
So one of one of these two statements is is clearly false,
right? I don't know which one it is,
but we have seen his route rate increase, you know, from.
Increase to 57%. Yes, but it's increased from the
start of the season, so increased.
From 24% in week 1 to 57% in week 4, right?
So you're not into the DeAndre Hopkins against the coals thing?
It seems pretty tin, OK. More or less than the DeAndre
Hopkins is getting traded to the Chiefs.
I mean, I think he has a much higher probability of scoring 20
points as we getting traded. To the Chiefs, I think DeAndre
Hopkins has a much higher chance of being the first NFL player on
the moon than being traded to the Chiefs.
All right, last last guy. Are we doing the Juju thing?
Is he just Diet Rashi? You know, you see, you see these
vets come out and, and they have good games.
Like so he had what he had a 4.5 yards per out run, that 28%
target per out run. I like, I don't, I, I can buy
that he has his role now. I like, I don't really do not
buy that it's gonna work, that it's gonna work.
Very often. That's a, that's a good
assessment, yeah. That that.
That's what I think about it anyway.
Like he he got cooked. Didn't he get cooked by the
Patriots? He did like he didn't get cut by
the Patriots, so. They were like, you know what,
you're the worst receiver we have.
Like, see you bud. The Patriots decided booty KJ
Osbourne, Kendrick Bourne on IR with a torn ACL like all those
guys were better than Juju so. And he didn't have like, some,
OK, so they did own a big a big salary, but they're gonna have
to pay him anyway. Yeah, I mean, listen, I don't
think Juju is very good, but that's welcome to the Chiefs
wide receiver room. You know, no one, no one here is
very good. There's Xavier Worthy who is
still getting the Andy Reid like, well, he's a rookie, so
we're going to bring him on slowly.
Think Xavier Worthy is going to do the same thing that we saw
from Roshi Rice last year? Or it's like, Oh my God, why
aren't they using Roshi more? We're so frustrated or so
frustrated. Then like by weeks 8:00 to
12:00, there's going to be signs of life.
And then down the stretch, you're going to be really happy
about Xavier Worthy. But it's like, I've seen this
show before with Andy Reid and. You know, I think the, I think
the Xavier wordy piece is a little bit different because the
issue with Rashi, it was like, oh, they're only playing them on
40% of snaps, but those 40% of snaps he's getting like a 25%
targets per out run. And then he looks incredible on
it. So Wordy is he actually has a
pretty solid route rate. Like I think it's like in the
80%, but he's not getting targeted that much on it.
And I, I mean, I bet the reason for that is that they literally
just have running go routes. So you need them to expand it
rather than like playing more. They need to expand this route
tree and like that can happen with young players where they're
like, yeah, we're just going to ask you to do this one thing and
that's it. And similar to Keon Coleman.
Yeah. And that's, I think that's
really good analysis because it is, it is different than the way
the Rashi situation developed. I think it's, there's a couple
reasons why it's different #1 like they, they kind of needed
that skill set from Worthy on the field.
They needed that deep speed to be able to take the yeah.
They probably still do. They do.
They also had going into the season this the plan was very
likely. Rashi works the underneath
stuff, Hollywood's kind of the intermediate guy and Xavier
Worthy takes the top up the defense and Travis, you can you
can chill. We won't pepper you with a ton
of volume. We'll kind of save you tell the
playoffs and then you and Rashi, you're both the dynamic duo
underneath. You're the two option.
Now we kind of add you into the fold and ramp up your volume.
We're seeing the plan have to change, changed before our eyes.
And so I guess what I'm saying is I, I just think over the
season, the plan can change with worthy, like you said, where
they add more routes for him, because one thing I've seen a
lot of people get wrong about Savior worthy is I've seen a
bunch of people say, Oh, he was, he's an incomplete prospect.
He's a project. He's just a, he's just a burner.
It's like don't don't talk about that if you don't know what
you're talking about. You're just you're telling on
yourself that you never looked at his prospect profile because
Xavier worthy won it in all areas throughout his like he did
different things in each year of his college career and he's the
only player to get in the same echelon as Marvin Harrison
junior and Malik neighbors as far as his targets per route
run. So like just, excuse me, his
yards per route run in college, like he was the only one to get
close to those two guys. I believe he had a better yards
per route run than them in I. Want to see he had him.
He I think at the time he had the best freshman year of all
time for a receiver. And they, they changed how they
used, yeah, they, they changed how they used him over the
course of his collegiate career as well.
Where he was, there was a season where he was more, more of a
deep ball guy. There was a season where he did
a lot of short underneath scheme stuff.
He, he had some intermediate passing in there as well.
And so, and then you also get the season where he has the
broken hand. So a bunch of the like he has,
you know, issues with efficiency because he's not catching stuff
because he's playing with a broken hand.
And then you also have Quinn, you were so he's playing with a
broken quarterback that can't actually throw the ball that's
catchable. So like you get a guy who is a
much more complete prospect than I think people realize.
And I so I, I just think that the, the breakout is like pretty
clear to me, like how it happens for the Chiefs.
And so I, I think to bring this all back to the are we doing the
Juju thing? Juju kind of seems like a guy
who, if there was someone who is going to lose work to a more
talented player, Juju is here as a stopgap until they feel more
confident that they can deploy worthy in all quadrants of the
field. And then you're really just
asking yourself like, well, is Juju going to be in losing snaps
to Mikkel Hardman? So Mikkel can run the deep clear
out stuff and then you're getting worthy operating is more
of like the secondary receiver behind Kelsey.
But anyway. So I stopped sharing just
because I found this chart which shows his like I guess it was
this year his target profile where you see where it is on the
field. You can see this is literally
all over the field. Yeah.
This is on stots BOM and thought that was interesting.
It's not if you're trying to share it, it's not currently
sharing. I forgot to press that button.
I wish I had like a better sure view.
And no, I can see, yeah, you can see it's all over the map.
Looks like a guy who operates in all quadrants.
And then and then It's also put next to.
You can see it's put next. To.
Tyree kill. Yeah, interesting.
This is interesting. Is it for us?
Yeah, I think we'll end on that note if you managed to make it
through the whole 2 1/2 hours with us.
Thank you. We appreciate you.
I hope that we gave you some actual info for this week and to
Drap who took down his second dog bowl seat this last week and
messaged me about how he he appreciated us talking about Joe
Burrow because we we partially put him on to Joe Burrow last
week. You're welcome.
And also I'm really sad because you continuously sniped me on
all the Bengals stuff I was trying to do last week and you
won your second dog bowl seat. So Congrats to you.
Maybe say one for me this week and we'll see you next week,
everybody. See you next week, everyone.