Week 1 of the 2025 NFL season. Boy is it good to be back here
on stat chasing with my Co host Draco and the Harold Fan and
drafters are levitating. This is stat chasing Pat Fryer
Helmo. This is what?
This is what I'm hot. Anita Handjob.
Fix your side Jamar. Alpha play, Chase.
Are you kidding, Tony? You can't handle the heat.
It looks like we're finally at this point here, right?
How you doing, Draco? How?
How did Week 1 treat you? Doing good, doing good.
You know what, I'm, I'm just glad football's back.
We don't need to talk about Week 1 advance rates.
I feel like I've done that before and it's like, it's so
silly. Like it was fun, though.
It's always, it's always fun when when you've been waiting
all offseason. We start drafting in January,
February, we're thinking about NFL.
We're we're talking about it. And, and then all the, all the
offseason news trickles in. And then we then we get football
and and you get some surprises. You get things that work out how
you hoped and this is this obviously a very fun time of
year. How about you?
I I don't know what it was about this year.
It might have been how much extra work went into the The
Sims of the Sidekick this year where we had, we had so much
stuff where we wanted to see how it played out, just to know, did
we get all these inputs right? How I feel like there was so
much more I was excited for this year that even when stuff didn't
break my way this week, I was, I was just in a good mood the
whole time. I was like, I was wrong about
that, but that's cool. It, it was just a really fun
week one, man. There was a lot of stuff that we
got wrong, a lot of stuff that we got right.
Overall, I think we got a lot more right than wrong.
So it was, it was very fun. But we should we should dive
into these charts and start talking about it.
Yeah, yeah, I do. I just I I saw this comment
here. Why did Jill and Polk scare me
into IK being a fan and toot? And I don't know that that's a
philosophical question. Yeah, I mean, it's very easy to
realize how how mortal all your favorite analysts are and how
non omnipotent they are when we miss on stuff like Jalen Polk
and you know, we we have those flops and everybody gets some
stuff wrong. And sometimes you're not even
necessarily wrong. You just get that the outcome
doesn't break your way. You know, it's a a probabilistic
game, but it it's really easy to get gun shy on stuff when you've
seen someone be wrong about something.
And that's so vivid and visceral to you.
But enough about the philosophy stuff, let's play.
Yeah, that's a that's a, that's a good response.
Actually, before we go in at before you, you, you go into the
comments on this YouTube video or you at me on Twitter to tell
me that I use filler words and I stir too much.
Please don't bother. Like this is a nerd show about
stacks and if audio file stuff is your thing, this is not the
show for you. So I I promised myself that I
would say that at the start of this year.
So yeah, if you if you have beef with with Draco, you have beef
with me. So if you're going to comment
about any of that shit, just get the fuck out of here.
This isn't your show. We're not for you.
So deuces. So going into this chart, we
obviously we had a change in in our data provider PFF, they no
longer do expected fantasy points at all.
So maybe that was a garbage metric if they don't even like
it anymore. But we still we still want to do
kind of like a volume metric to have on this on this chart here.
And what we settled on was drop backs.
And so basically just how many times during during the game has
the has the team asked the quarterback to drop back in,
they're either passing or throwing it.
So that's kind of our main volume metric.
And then we have adjusted yards per attempt, which is it's, it's
an efficiency metric on passing. It's basically yards per
attempt. It rewards touchdowns, punishes
interceptions, not, not as sophisticated or as advanced as
EPA, but it's, it's to me, it's a lot more simple and intuitive
to, to kind of like understand and talk about.
And then the size of the bubble corresponds to rushing yardage.
So. Yeah, I guess that this was the,
this is this is probably going to be our most unstructured
part. This is the one where I said
let's let's just out of live this.
What's the I? I had a couple of guys that I, I
had thoughts on. I mean, first with the, with the
change in the chart, just in general what you're looking at
here every week, this is going to evolve each week as these
guys move and and their data becomes more stable.
Obviously there's a lot of noise in just a one week sample, but
in general, our favorite place for our guys to be is in the
upper right quadrant, right lot of drop backs, high adjusted
yards per 10th. So being efficient and getting a
lot of passing volume, that's great for fantasy.
And then it's icing on the cake where you're getting a floor
booster and a ceiling booster if their bubble is big, big bubble
equals big rushing upside, right and rushing floor.
And so that's kind of what you're looking at the thing the
the part of the chart that I think is like pretty, hey, you
really don't wanna be here. Like where there's, there's lots
of nuance to Hey, you're in the top left corner.
Well, that can be OK if you're like actually at the top of the
top left corner where you're just so efficient.
It doesn't really matter that you don't have a ton of drop
backs. You're just saying it it.
Unless your defense sucks ass if if if you're like massively
massively efficient then you're you're usually just ending
drives by by with long touchdowns or or big scores so
you're not actually having to drop back that often.
Yeah. The the ones that would concern
me is like where you have Tua and Cam Ward and you know, to a
lesser extent, Trevor Lawrence, you know, Joe Burrow, those guys
that are down in that range of the chart.
If someone's going to live there for the duration of the season,
that's probably someone you just can't really use in fantasy
unless the size of their bubbles really large.
They're just running a ton. Now caveat on Tua, he didn't
finish the game. The dolphins were so out of it
that Zach Wilson came in. So you know, I obviously I.
Feel. For him, but.
I feel like Joe Burrow rents a spot in this quadrant of the
chart every September before. Before the Flyers.
Should be over right by October. Like he's like a snowbird.
Yeah. The other ones that I would
expect to leave here, based on what we saw from the Cowboys, I
would expect DAC Prescott to get better adjusted yards per
attempt. There were a good number of
drops he gets, you know, vultured by Javonte Williams who
gets 2 carries from the 1 yard line.
One of them is CD Lamb, you know, gets taken down at the one
would have been a touchdown otherwise for DAC and all of a
sudden you see his adjusted yards per attempt go up.
So that's another guy I would expect to probably leave this
quadrant. I'd expect to see their drop
backs go up a decent amount as well.
I'm kind of surprised that they didn't have more in this game,
but they weren't. They weren't as pushed by the
Eagles as I thought they might be.
Their defense did a little better at keeping the scoring
down in the second-half. Really it was after that, that
rain delay or the weather delay. But the the guys that I thought
were really interesting to talk about, Spencer Rattler is
actually kind of interesting because the Saints, they had a
lot of drop backs and Spencer Rattler wasn't good, but he was
like, you know, serviceable enough that you could get some
fantasy usefulness out of it. Probably not out of him very
much, you know, like if he's at the very end of a best ball
roster for you, he might crack a line up or something.
But also him as a starter for the whole season is a little
ambiguous. But for the passing weapons in
this offense, I think you got to feel a little optimistic just
given the number of drop backs that they had.
Well, yeah, they they the what you call it, the the prices on
the Saints players as a whole was just that they were going to
crater and be just like a catastrophic atomic wasteland
where there was going to be nothing usable, nothing was
going to work. And like, what is it 49 drop
backs or whatever? And then 4.7 adjusted yards per
attempt is like this. That's that's I guess this is
yeah, this is per attempt is like not great.
It's honestly not not very good and but in the context of the
Olave price of the Juan Johnson price, the Shahid price, like
like a combination of a high drop back count and like not
like shitting the bad efficiency is like a map to me.
That's like a massive, massive win if that holds up over the
season. Yeah, and for me, all these guys
that are like in the low efficiency 2 quadrants of the
chart because it's just one week and so much of efficiency can be
driven by touchdowns here for adjusted yards per attempt.
Those are the guys where I'm looking like is is there a
chance that this guy, you know, either ran cold on touchdowns in
Week 1 or or could do better going forward?
So like Drake May, Joe Flacco, both guys that I think could do
a lot better. Joe Flacco actually could have
had such a crazy day when you think about it.
He had multiple bad drops by his receivers, multiple
interceptions that were not his fault.
It was literally just his receivers playing volleyball and
setting it up to the defense. So like you could, I think
Flacco and May are the ones where you're getting a good
amount of drop backs and I think that they could have positive
touchdown regression and see themselves being that really
favorable quadrant. So those are ones where I'm
willing to like play it before we see it type stuff for DFS.
The other one that I'm really interested in just leaning into
a thing before the market gets on to this trend is I think
Justin Herbert is gonna be the 6th quarterback drafted overall
in 2026. And there's a couple reasons for
that. Number one, the Chargers had a
15% positive pass rate over expectation, which is an
enormous number. That's like huge, huge outlier.
They probably will never get to that again this season, but it
does say something that they are willing to open it up and let
Justin Herbert throw. The other thing that I really
think is the big driver, to me, that's a a massive departure
from what he's been in the past and what he was last year is
this will be the season where Justin Herbert rushes for his
most career yards. You know, barring any injury or
anything crazy like that. We saw this shift happen part
way through last season in the first half of 2024.
Justin Herbert was dealing with, I believe it was plantar
fasciitis and and I think there is another foot injury too.
He he was all banged up where he was having a lot of trouble with
his mobility early in the season, weeks one through 7, he
averaged like I want to say it was 5 rushing yards per game.
And then in weeks 8 on he averaged like 25 rushing yards
per game. So a 20 yard rushing yard per
game difference on average in the first half of the season.
He's dealing with that injury to the back half of the season and
this is something that's been consistent in Greg Roman
offenses across his tenure in the NFL.
He does like to have his quarterback use their legs to
threaten the defense and and basically take away some
coverages that the defense might want to use by keeping them
honest with the quarterback's ability to scramble.
And Herbert is athletic enough to do it.
He obviously has an incredible arm, so he can threaten the
defense deep. I I think that this is going to
be the season where we see Herbert kind of ascend into that
lower rushing. You know, as far as like all the
rushing QBs go, he's not going to run for as many yards as
Lamar or Fields or or Daniels or anything, but he's going to run
for a a good clip. 500 rushing yards at the end of the season
wouldn't surprise me. 600 would be like starting to push it, but
I've Herbert is another one where I just want to slam this
before projection systems catch up and the field catches up.
Basically, if you're using a projection system and you can
see their detailed projections and Justin Herbert isn't
projected for greater than 20 rush yards on a week, I would
adjust his projection up and just say, hey, I, I know better.
I, I see this trend, I see the writing on the wall here.
This guy's gonna run more. And you can use that to modify
projections while there's still a lot of fragility there.
And, and just them, I guess the on, on the rushing yard thing.
And just so this, this, this point we clear to a lot of
people, but some not. So 20 rushing yards extra a game
is like 2 points, which that doesn't sound like that much.
But in terms of like being projected for 17 points versus
projected for 19 points, it's it's a big deal.
Yeah, so he's he's definitely what I'm excited about.
Any guys that you wanted to touch on here or should we move
on to the running back chart? No, I, I, I agree with kind of
most of what you're saying there where obviously my true term
take was that the, the Browns be fun bad.
My my kind of one concern in terms of like the Browns looking
like serviceable is that they were playing, playing the
Bengals. So like that that's kind of the
one kind of thing in the in the back of my head there.
I guess the other, the other note and we and we can touch on
this more in the receiver stuff that I had was Baker Mayfield
was pretty average, whereas the last couple of years he's been
like kind of pretty efficient where he didn't have like he
didn't actually have that great of a game.
I guess that that that's just something that I noticed that
will that we'll be keeping an eye on.
And then lastly, do want to mention just because it's it's
clear obvious point Geno Smith like is is just got his absolute
hog out where like almost 40 drop backs a game.
He's trying out a 10 yard A dot, like an out of a 10 yard A dot.
He's like 70% completion rate, which is like 10% over the
expected. So like he is just absolutely
bawling. And then I think that the the
Raiders pieces just become like they become targets.
I I guess it's other than the two kind of major guys, which is
Bowers and Jacoby Myers, none of them are kind of every week
starters. But when people are kind of
thinking about dark Dartros, like Raiders are pretty fun
Dartros. Yeah, great, great shout out.
Definitely glad that we gave Geno Smith some flowers.
He was one of my favorite late round quarterbacks.
I, I know in a ton of the drafts that we did, I was constantly
trying to get you to draft Geno Smith over guys that, that were
more fun. And I, I think that this is
going to be sticky because Gino's been good, man.
He's, he's been good since he, you know, got his second shot
when he was at the Seahawks. And I, I'm just excited to see
what Gino does. All the people who right, right
the longest. Stuff kind of kind of favored
him, him having a good start. And I know people have like kind
of like questions on like, hey, will Chip Kelly be able to stick
it in the league after getting relegated?
Almost Will Pete Carroll be able to like will Pete Carroll
offense make any sense? But Gino being good and their
and their offense being fun. I think we we were kind of
expecting it, but great. They got the confirmation.
Yes, Sunday. Yeah, I also, I think the
Patriots defense might be, you know, right now they're missing
Christian Gonzalez. So they're, you know, they're
secondary a little depleted compared to what it will be.
And, and he's one of the better corners in the league.
But I, I think that their defensive line is, is much
improved. You know, they get Milton
Williams and then they get a lot of help from the, the Vrabel
cronies. You know, that that were with
him. Vrabel brings over a lot of
guys. And, and I think that in
general, the Patriots saw like a pretty substantial defensive
improvement. It didn't totally show in week
1, but I, I would not be surprised to see them improve
over the course of the season. I, I guess what I'm saying is
I'm not really freaking out that Genti wasn't able to run against
that patriots defense there. You know, I think their
defensive line's much improved and, and Gino was still able to
dice them up. So I think it's bullish across
the board for the Raiders just on Hey, Gino can can be the
engine of the offense. Yeah, just on the ESPN pass,
pass rush and run, run at run stuffing, they were like #3 and,
and pass rush win rate #2 and run stuff win rate on the week.
So New England Patriots at the defensive line absolutely
dominate in that game. So that is that is kind of an
interesting note that Gino's still dominated and and makes
you feel better about the the future prospects for Janti.
All right, time to move on to the running back chart.
And so that was weird. I have to like zoom in for the
quarterback chart and then zoom back out for the the running
back chart. And so obviously the biggest
surprise for me on on week 1 was kind of how how much of a kind
of a bell cow Javonte Williams was.
I know you're kind of like the, the, the big Cowboys watcher
among us. So I, I, I'm, I'm more than
anything, I'm kind of curious as as what your take on that usage.
Yeah, I I thought it would be a little bit more split between
him and Sanders and it was to start the game.
But when you put the ball on the ground, you know, and what
ultimately ended up being kind of like the game losing play for
Miles Sanders, where he fumbles when they're inside the red zone
and then, you know, denies the Cowboys a score there.
Eagles get the ball. That that was kind of the thing
that turned the game. And Kyle Sanders, I don't
believe, saw the field after that.
So there, there's a couple things going on with the Cowboys
#1 their backfield's completely devoid of talent.
Their highest paid player in that backfield is their
fullback, Hunter Lipke. OK, Javonte Williams looked
decent to start, but I mean really the tail of this game is
that Javonte Williams got 2, you know, carries from the 1 yard
line and fell into the end zone and kudos to him for converting,
but you know, you're not going to get carries from the 1 yard
line all the time. His his long run was 11 yards,
you know, and the Eagles lost their best run defender before
the 1st snap even happened. So I'm not particularly bullish
on Javonte going forward from an efficiency standpoint.
From a workload standpoint, I think that he will probably hang
on to the majority of the work in the same way that we saw Zeke
hang on to the majority of the work for far too long last
season. I just, I think it's an uphill
battle for Jane Blue, who's not particularly talented himself.
His one thing that he has going for him is that he is fast.
Unfortunately, fast and bad is not so great.
I mean, that's why you're a Week 1 inactive.
If he I, I think if he gets on the field, he will deliver
enough explosive plays that he is, you know, able to start
carving out some work from Javonte.
I would hope that the Cowboys are able to self scout and
evaluate well enough to realize that Miles Sanders should not be
active on an NFL roster. But they do strange things, man.
So my, my kind of like calling card this whole offseason
whenever we talk about how to rank the Cowboys backfield was
it's not going to surprise me at all to see five different
players get touches out of the backfield in a single game.
You know, be that Javonte Williams, Miles Sanders, Jayden
Blue, Hunter Lipke and Kevante Turpin.
And Kevante Turpin is kind of the unsung character in this
story here where he is going to Leech points away from these
running backs where he's not particularly fantasy useful on
his own, but he is a thorn in the side of these low efficiency
backs that are benefiting from volume.
And when Kevante Turpin's taking that volume away, it's really
not super helpful. So I mean, if you have Jevante
and you can sell him in like a managed league, great.
Try and, you know, try and sell him off that two touchdown game.
If you're in dire need of a running back to to plug in and
start in a managed league, you could do worse than Javonte
Williams. He'll probably get the work and
he's on an offense that should score points.
But yeah, I'm, I'm not, I'm not buying that this is some
resurgence of Javonte Williams, you know, in spite of a, a very
strong Week 1 role. Yeah, yeah, love seeing the week
1 roll. I'm looking at his next John
stats stuff and he was like neutral on rush yard over
expected. So like that.
But that neutral is like 3.6 yards carry.
And I guess the the Eagles did play a pretty heavy box.
They'd like a 20. What is it, 26% and eight man
box rate? But yeah, I, I guess it, I guess
the take away is that he's still bad or still not great.
And, and what you, what you're kind of saying is like, hey,
they have a lot of different pieces that they can lean on
like rotationally. So like they just because the,
the, the individual pieces are not great and can't like
individually threaten them. They could definitely become
more rotational by leaning and so on some other guys more and
then I don't I don't know if the story is like if the book is
closed on blue eater where like he could they could definitely
decide to make him active over my Sanders.
They should and then they should right.
And, and, and he could definitely be much more of a
trap to, to that kind of usage going forward.
And I guess like what the usage is with the official, with where
the efficiency is, it's like, hey, you're probably going to
get 60 yards most weeks and you hope to get it out of touchdown
on top of it. Maybe you get get a couple of
catches. So like good weeks you're at 10
or so, good weeks you're at 15 and bad weeks you're at like 10
or like maybe. And I guess obviously had the
two touchdowns this week, which so he got more than that.
But your, your, your upside's still pretty capped.
And I, I feel like even that 10 point like floor is pretty
threatened to by all the factors we just talked about.
Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me at all if by Week 5 you're just
unable to start Javonte Williams in a managed league.
You know, I mean, even even now, like if you told me, hey, you
got to start Javonte Williams or you know, like, I'm not starting
him over James Conner. I'm not starting him over Amari
and Hampton. No, no, no.
Prob like I'm I'm starting him over Ramondre Stevenson.
You know, Yeah, yeah, for now. For now.
What, what do you think about like Isaiah Pacheco, Javonte
Williams? Who are you starting there?
And you're, you're probably right now you're probably
starting Javonte just because Pacheco is so committee
challenged. Here, here's a good one.
This this one actually, I think is the line.
I think we found it. Jordan Mason or Javonte.
And honestly, I think I'm like, I think I'm Mason.
Yeah, I'm Mason. Mason actually looked good,
right? Like Mason.
Mason is a good player in the NFL and he's on a he's on a team
that should look better than they looked the majority of last
night. I mean, God, it was that first
half was bleak, man. That was like, it was very
depressing. I I feel for Vikings fans that
had to sit through that first half.
But like when people said that when when we were hearing the
during the offseason that Mason was going to be like 1A1B it
with Aaron Jones, I was expecting Aaron Jones to be the
1A, not Jordan Mason I think. Actually, I think it's more of
just like the the utility that they want to get from them where
a lot of the time when they were running Mason, it's like the
these are going to be the hard yards type runs.
You know, a lot of the inside the between the tackles type
stuff and the Aaron Jones stuff was a little bit more like, hey,
we want you out here as a pass catcher.
We want you to run outside the tackles.
You're the space back. Yeah, exactly.
But yeah, I, I still, I was still expecting Aaron Jones to
retain maybe enough of the meat and potato runs that he would be
ahead. So I'm still, I'm still like a
little bit surprised at that. Mason is ahead.
I'm the only, I guess the one thing that we, we lose by not
having expected points is we're not looking at any, any Green
Zone touches. I, I, I assume, I think Aaron
Jones is still ahead on the on the Green Zone stuff.
Yeah, I'd, I'd have to look at that, but I, I would assume
you're right, although I, I know Mason, you know, definitely
they, they seem like they like him for short yardage stuff too.
So it could just really be a true 5050 as far as fantasy
value is concerned, where the average value of a touch that
Aaron Jones is getting is slightly higher than the average
value of a touch Jordan Mason is getting.
But Mason's getting enough more work that he kind of offsets
that difference in touch value. So I think I think they truly
are like 1A1B as far as fantasy is concerned here.
You know who does not look to be like A1A1B here?
So much so that I don't believe that the first back I'm going to
mention is on this first chart, he's not Kenneth Walker and Zach
Charbonnet. Man, that's a man.
Talk about a flipping of how the the market had it this
offseason. Do you think that's sticky?
I don't like honestly, I'm not, I'm not comfortable saying at
this point whether it's sticky or not just because it's so out
of that field. Like the, the noise on Kenneth
Walker was so strong, like, and he's like his, his, his strength
as a prospect and like what he does well is so good.
And, and like Chardonnay is kind of more boring.
I, I, I'm like, honestly so shocked by that.
I, I, I think it's a little, maybe a bit of a little bit more
premature to be able to call it one way or the other.
But you, you, you certainly you cannot ignore and you cannot
ignore this at all. Like if we get another week of
this, like, then it's it's, it's just that, oh, by the way, I did
look it up. So while Aaron Jones did get 11
red zone target, Jordan Mason got 3 red zone carries.
So he's got the kind of goal line rusher role.
Yeah, that is, that's good to verify there.
But yeah, so I think 1A1B is, I mean, really it's just like
they're both 1A. There's, there's no, they're
just, yeah. I I was expecting a little bit
more gap between them. Yeah.
Another guy that the market was expecting there to be, I guess
kind of a, a reverse from consensus on is the The Jets
backfield situation where you had all this steam on Braylon
Allen. I mean, man, I I didn't really,
this was a price that just like didn't really clock for me
because I was never clicking him.
But like at the end of draft season, Braylon Allen was going
in like the tenth round. Man, it was it was wild.
So Braylon Allen screams up. Meanwhile Breece Hall is like
going in the 6th. I'm, I'm watching people draft
on streams and I was watching a draft with Neil Orfield and, and
BP were on doing a, a DraftKings Millie draft and they pass on
Breece in the fifth round and I'm screaming in the chat like
he's the top of the sidekick. You click him and and then he
comes back to him in the 6th and thankfully he took him there.
But my God, man, the the market got so so out on Breece at the
end and so in on Braylon Allen, who, despite having the rest of
his life ahead of him, unfortunately is not very good
at football. Right, right, that that rest of
his life might be doing something else.
Yeah, he has. I'm being a little harsh, I'm
being a little harsh. But it it definitely on the
opening drives, it looked like The Jets intended for it to be
much more of a split where you're seeing Breece fucking
cook the defense. And then he gets to the he has
an 8 yard run on 1st down. And then they bring in Braylon
Allen and Braylon Allen just about gets the two for the first
down. And it's like it's just a stark
night and day difference. And I'm only counting rush
attempts for the backs here. But of 27 running back Russia at
rush attempts, Bruce Hall ended with 19 of them.
Like I feel like this is a he ended.
He ended on the whole day. He ended up with a 60%, like
kind of like he ended up with a 58% snap rate.
So like that's kind of like head of a committee, like on the face
of it. But by the end, the trend was so
clear, like Breeze Hall is, is, is the fact that they need to
make things happen. Like it's it's so clear to me
that like he's a better player. And then I guess the the other
chain that kind of factored into people's hesitancy on Breeze
Hall was he had a pretty damn, he had a pretty down or bad year
last year. And people were honestly that
that that was like a little, it was a little tough to chew on.
And but the fact that he looked fantastic in week 1.
It's 28 rushing yards over expected, 107 yards and 19
calories and looked so electric that and I think he's he's
literally like only 20. He's like he's I think he's like
24 or 25 like there he's 24. So like the the odds of that he
like aged out last year was it doesn't compute.
So Breece Hall is probably, you're probably getting this
year what you wanted from Breece Hall when people are drafting
them in the middle of the first round would be my would be my
take away from this week. Yeah, they they may have had
plans to involve Braylon Allen and Isaiah Davis more, but you
know, as the saying goes, the best laid plans of Aaron Glenn
off and go awry and and Bruce Hall, you know, put the the
plans in the dumpster pretty immediately.
Like they're right. There just was not a decision
really to be made and and you could you could tell it was
evident that the coaching staff knew too.
They're like, all right, we cool experiment, very neat.
Let's, let's we. Probably should have extended
this guy already. Yeah.
So it definitely extremely bullish for Breece.
I mean, obviously Justin Fields being there to help keep the
defense honest is really, really beneficial for him from an
efficiency standpoint. So yeah, it's it's wheels up for
Breece Hall. The only like fly in the
ointment, I would say is he didn't run as many routes as we
would have liked. And what we've come to expect
from him, it could just, we, we talked about this a little bit
offline. Yeah, yeah, we had a talk with
our but he called the war check about it.
Yeah, it may have just been game plan specific where you know, he
needed to stay in to help help block a little bit more against
the Steelers pass rush, things like that.
But anyway, something to monitor for sure because if his
receiving were 8. Routes and them and six pass
blocks so that they did have him pass blocking a lot more.
And what's what's strange is it's in combination is that they
they almost never blocked their type pass block their tight
ends. So they had Jeremy Rickards and
Mason Taylor running rights down the field and leaving Bruce Hall
into block like that. That's kind of where we're
getting into like maybe this was like game plan specific for the
Steelers. Maybe they've kind of determined
that they're weak, the tight ends and better recovering and
running backs. And but like you're saying,
it's, it's, it's a bit of a flying ointment.
We, we, we definitely prefer more routes.
We prefer more targets and but something to something to watch
going forward. Yeah, if he made me bet on it, I
would say that we're we'll see the routes increase just because
they they kind of need him to, right.
Right, right. He's their second best receiver.
It, it's I, I think it's going to be a slower realization of
what they realized about the Russian game in Week 1, where
they're like, Oh yeah, this Breeze guy needs to touch the
ball more. OK, we, we'll figure it out.
And and because they were rational about that and made
that that change almost immediately, I think they'll be
able to get there in the past. Eventually, like the the running
team just slaps you in the face where you're watching the game
and it's like so obvious, like you have to be blind to not see
the running team. I think the the the routes thing
where's like it's going to be one of those things where he
gets a ball, he gets a target and he makes a massive play.
And then in the same game the tight end like does something
stupid where like they eventually go like, huh, we
should get him the ball. Like what you're saying.
Anyway, I, I think, I think we've made our, our self clear
on on brief, the other one, and this one is probably a little
bit more controversial. And I, I've kind of laid out
some, some of my initial thoughts on on Christy McCaffrey
on the discord. And but curious what you think
about like the combination of like what is it 31 touches but
then like 3 yards per carry on the ground on, on?
Yeah, I mean, it was a monster workload.
So you have to you have to feel good about that.
And I think how large the workload was, it gives you at
least a little bit of signal as to hey, the the injury stuff
truly it wasn't like a hey, this is a flare up that could be
really serious type thing. It it truly was a, you know,
abundance of caution type thing with him being limited this last
week at practice. So I think the volume helps you
just be a little less concerned about seasoning and ending
injury popping up. I'm dialing down risk just a
shade in the mental model. But we had people.
We had Davis Matic ready to jump off a Cliff.
Based on the. Based on the LP at practice and
then with the MP, like I, I don't know, we're picking on
Davis, but there was plenty of people who were like, it's
absolutely joking for this guy, like he'll never what, he'll
never play again, never be the same guy.
So having having the monster workload, like relative to that
concern, big, big deal. One thing I wanted to note on
like his raw play count is that the the 49ers had ran 75 plays,
like so like and it's funny, 75 plays and they gave it to him 31
times. So like 40% of their offense was
still CMC. But I do think that's like some
important context in his raw touch count is like they just
had like a what you call it, they just ran a lot of plays.
And what's funny is that Brian Robinson also had nine attempts
and ran 7 routes and maybe that what maybe that's more why are
more as a result of the 75 plays.
And but I did think that's important context and like, I
guess don't like 3131 touches in the game is unsustainable.
So it probably does come down. And then I guess the other thing
that kind of bothers me like, and maybe I'm focusing on it too
much, but, and this is kind of what I laid out, which is like
he was like the in terms of Next Gen. stats, he had the the most
rushing yards underexpected of anybody on in week 1.
And obviously you got 22 carries that that's going to help you
get there. But like he had like minus like
1.15 in the yards in the rushing yards under expected per
attempt. Like they, they ran against some
of the lightest boxes where like the only only 9% of his carries
were against an 8 man box. I, I do have a tough time with
that. And I guess it's, it's kind of
like it's on the other side. You do have the volume and then
he's clearly still the best receiving back in football.
So you still have that, which is is pretty nice on a team where
they're they're what you call it, their their receivers.
And then Kittle is struggling for injury And, but, and then
and then I guess the other thing about it is when I look at when
I look at the the San Francisco 49ers.
Their their online it was 27th in in run block win rate, so not
great. And then the the, the Seahawks,
their their run stuff win rate was 5.
So maybe, maybe the the Seahawks are just like a very strong run
stuff in defense. I think that's part of it.
I think the Seahawks defense might be for real.
Like they're fifth in the run stuff rate, so maybe that's it.
Yeah, I, I'm definitely, I echo your concerns though on the
efficiency stuff. It it wouldn't be surprising at
all to see a guy come off of, you know, bilateral Achilles
tendonitis and all of a sudden and, and also a totally separate
PCL injury that ends his season. You know, like the guy's wearing
a lot of injuries here and he's an older player.
So the efficiency declining should be yeah, right.
It it should be the rule rather than the exception.
So. And.
Then it's kind of like we're seeing that we're yeah, we're
seeing the low efficiency on week 1.
Like normally for these older guys, Week 1 is where they wear
it the best. And, and I like, I made the
counter argument to myself that like, Hey, the Seahawks run
defense might just be really good.
And, but that's usually for a player of, of CM CS caliber,
it's like it, it doesn't matter that the run defense is really
good. He's just like pimpin.
And but I, I, I, I, I think, I think we've, we've said what we
have to say on, on CMC, I'm ready to, to put a bow on it.
Yeah, the only, the only other running back spots I think we
should talk about here. We can hit these ones a little
quicker, but Pittsburgh, you see Kenneth Gainwell here on this
chart and I believe, did Jalen Warren not make this chart?
I don't think he did. He's on the the backups chart.
Is that right? Yeah, yeah, let me, let me
scroll. There he is, right here.
Yeah, right next to Kenneth Walker.
So yeah, you get a ton of heaping helping of Kenneth
Gainwell to start the game, which not great for Jalen
Warren. You know, eventually it seems
like it flips and Warren is the guy getting a bunch of the work
and Gainwell is is kind of on the outs.
But and also Caleb Johnson, just like if you got him on a managed
team, you can cut him and and churn him for someone else.
He not not saying he's dead for this season.
It's just going to take a while. And don't worry, there ain't no
risk of someone else picking him up off waivers like he's he's
got a ways to go. You're talking about home
leagues that have shorter benches, right?
You're not talking about like main event.
Everyone. No.
No, no, no, no, no. Yeah.
I just wanted to specify, Yeah. Yeah, no, in a main event,
there's probably not anything on your waivers worth churning
Caleb for, right? Like Caleb is the thing that you
would be holding. Yeah, but I here here's 1,
though, hypothetically say DJ Giddens is out there on waivers.
You want DJ Giddens? You want Caleb Johnson?
Oh, man, it's it's close, right? It's really close.
And you've probably still won Caleb Johnson.
And just because DJ Gidon is behind John and freaking Taylor.
So like, he's not, he's not like making serious inroads there.
Whereas I feel like Kenneth Gainwell is is over the course
of the season is is going to be easier to knock off.
Yeah. No, that's, I think that's fair.
But the fact that that's close is right.
Right. Much closer where he's like you
kind of evaluate them and like, hey, DJ Giddens actually did see
the field because he's the number 2 back, even though like
they they actually didn't want to play for second back.
And then Caleb Johnson and hey, he's got two guys ahead of him
and and they think Gamewell is better than him and it's like,
woof. Yeah, but doesn't bode super
well for him. But he's not dead, I mean.
He's no, no, he's not dead. And, and we've seen it before.
We've seen backs start off kind of like inactive or, or not
playing Week 1 and then become major, major parts of the season
once they kind of come on in their rookie year.
Like that's just that can just be part of their journey.
Absolutely. The the extra like the reason I
am a little overreactive on Caleb Johnson is just the the
stuff that we heard from camp about Rogers, just, you know,
ripping him a new one and and being like he Rogers.
Rogers chewed him out so publicly and loudly that there
were multiple different articles written about how like nasty and
loud Rogers was about Caleb Johnson's performance during
training camp. And and when you think about it,
like Aaron Rodgers doesn't seem like the most pleasant
individual to begin with. And so if something that he is
doing is eliciting, you know, multiple articles worth of
content about like, hey, this guy was a real asshole of this
rookie and really seems to not like him.
Like, to me, that's enough, especially with just who Rodgers
is as a player, where if he doesn't like you, you just won't
see the field. Like he has that kind of pole.
So that that to me is like extra concerning.
And then when Caleb Johnson gets what one carry and then he
fumbles on a kick off and it's just like, yeah, it seems like
it's gonna be tough sledding for him.
Again, not dead, but I think his Rd. is a lot more challenging
than other guys that would. You know, we've seen in in
similar situations historically the only other backfield that we
had a note on here, we had two more.
And and kind of. Similar.
Yep. We had the Commanders where
obviously we saw Bill. He I think he he didn't, he end
up being the the leading rusher. He was.
He was, yeah. He ripped off a really big, I
think it was like a 42 yarder near the end of the game that
helped make his stat line look a little nicer.
But he looked good. I think he had 80 something
total yards. You know, half of them came on
that one big play. Gets in the end zone as well,
but he looked good from from watching him.
He was fast. He's not a guy who when I had
watched him previously, like in preseason stuff, he didn't
really pop as like the fastest guy on the field.
To me. He looked, he looked pretty
quick here in Week 1. So that was like my previous
concern was I think this guy might not actually be that fast,
but maybe he just gets the Brian Robinson role and like at the
really cheap price that you could get him at before he shot
up. That's a great win, but he might
he could definitely turn into like Brian Robinson with juice
is my. Right, well, he he so I'm
looking at his numbers here. He had he had 10 rush attempts,
which led the led the the running backs for rush attempts
and then the other guys. So he had like the other guys
had six and four. So he's definitely their their
their main. But then again, I guess when he
was getting his rush attempts is when they were there firmly in
control. So like they they really could
afford to see what they had in him.
So maybe, yeah, maybe his rush attempts was like some of it was
was came about from the game script.
And however, him looking good doing it and and and and them
even even with even with the game strip them will being
willing to do that week one of his rookie year them making C
Rod inactive and him looking good.
Like I think that those bode really, really well.
Still have the limitation that Austin Eckler and Jeremy
Mcnichols have like just the iron lock on the passing stuff
or most of the passing stuff like that.
That really does not get ceiling.
But agree with you that we're we're looking at at Brian
Robinson, which is as we move forward, that's kind of like
where that row is going. Yeah, I, I don't think it was
too much game script related. It it really the what happened
was Eckler got, I want to say the first three drives was like
basically all Austin Eckler. Then Bill comes in and starts
getting work. The guy that actually came in
when it was more where it felt more game script related to me
was Mcnichols, where it seemed like, hey, Mcnichols is going to
come in and he's going to do the Eckler stuff.
Now he's going to take those Eckler snaps because we don't
need, we don't need Austin Eckler to, to have any more
miles on him in this game. This one's, you know, all all
done with the crying. So I I don't think the Bill
stuff was too game script related.
So you OK, so I I didn't watch too much of the game.
I do know that from for pretty much like it felt like 2 1/2
quarters at least. The Giants are just absolutely
dead. Like, yes, but that was when
that was when you saw basically no more Eckler and that's when
you got the Jerry Mcnichols carries where Bill started
working in before that. But it was a heavy dose of
Eckler to start the game. Yeah, Yeah, it seems like, hey,
this is a trusted guy. We're.
Gonna probably would have gotten still carries.
He may not have had such a wide lead on the carries is I I guess
is what I'm saying, if they if they weren't ahead.
So for so much of the game or or.
Eckler could have gotten more if it's if it's a tight game and
they, you know, feel like they need to have Heckler on the
field more. They might have, but I didn't
get the really the my like take away from it was there's one guy
that we trust the most to not make any mistakes, and that's
Austin Eckler. And and other than that, I don't
really think it's anything about like this is the best running
back or the most talented guy. It more was just like, hey.
We're. Right.
The game's still close. Let's just not make any
mistakes. Austin Eckler can get out here
and do the things that we need. And then as soon as they felt
like they had a little bit of breathing room, it was like, all
right, well, we can game was still within reach.
But Bill is is getting the work now.
And then as soon as it starts to get like, hey, it's, it's out of
hand. Giants are not in this one
anymore. That's where you get the
Mcnichols and Eckler gets to to rest it out for for the rest,
right? And and then I guess the other
point is that in in the in the go forward, Bill looked good
enough that he probably has increased trust going forward
that maybe he's not just a pure change of pace guy.
Maybe he has gotten more kind of trusted work going forward. 100.
Percent in the rushing sense. I would assume that as the
season plays out, he will get the majority of the snaps.
He'll he'll take over more snaps from Eckler where there's
probably never a true majority in this backfield because I, I
do think they actually. Like, yeah, you're saying?
Yeah. He gets the plurality.
Yeah. Yeah, I do think they like
Mcnichols a good amount. Yeah, yeah, they do.
They do they. I mean, they made him active and
played them. And then the last, the last back
we wanted to touch on, which was the Jaguars backfield, which
traded no good. Thanks Bigsby because he sucks
and to promote it appears at promote facial Tooting and to
being their their main change of pace back behind Travis ETN.
Yeah, the the stuff here, there's a lot to parse on the
Jags backfield #1 is you get ETN looking really good.
And if you've, if you've watched that chasing for a couple years
now, you'll probably remember back, I want to say it was two
years ago, you and I had a, a whole segment.
It might have been like week three-week 4.
And we're talking about where would you draft Travis Etienne
at? This Oh yeah, we were talking
about legendary season. Yeah, we're talking like, do you
take him at the the 1-2 or is he more like a 2-3 turn guy?
But like, that's that is, you know, the context with which
we've looked at Travis Etienne before.
I think for him, he's just the kind of back that does not wear
the work well. He doesn't wear the injuries
well as the season goes on and and you know, there's this
attrition he's got to hold up under the workload.
That's just something where as we've seen it in his career, he
kind of wanes in his efficiency as as time goes on.
And so there's definitely there are lots of seasons where this
guy just runs good and stays healthy and doesn't get dinged
up. But like, getting dinged up is
kind of inevitable at the running back position.
Maybe he wears it better this year, but I would say history
has told us that he probably won't.
And that's kind of what opens the door in my mind for Tootin
so. I.
It wouldn't surprise me if Tootin comes on slower than all
the all the Tootin slappies want because ETN is looking good.
He's looking like the ETN that we think is really good.
And so he just might be good enough to keep Tootin in more of
a, a complimentary role for a while.
And then also you get Laquint Allen and I, I don't have this
pulled up in front of you, but I was looking at the PFF pass
blocking grades for the backs and they have the quint Allen
Gray is a pretty good pass blocker.
Like he and, and that's what the Jags were using him for.
They were using him as you know, that that third down back, he's
out there, you know, running routes and, and pass blocking.
That's bad for, I mean, if ETN maintains the role that he has,
it's like whatever you'd love to have the, the extra pass
catching stuff for him, but like it's OK.
But I think it's particularly bad for Tooten.
You really hope that Tooten can kind of rest that away from
Laquint Allen. But it does seem like Tootin
might be a little bit less of a polished player than people
want, just with the fact that it does seem like they're trying to
progress with him a little slower.
He does have the fumbling issues you know you end up with.
Yeah, Laquint Allen has to lock on the on the turn down like
long passing distance and stuff. He he does for sure.
And then I guess what, what you, what you hope for with Tooten is
that he kind of consolidated what tank base we had.
So like tanks, we had five rush attempts, Tooten had three.
So you get 8 and Travis Etienne had 16.
So like maybe he's kind of like a true like change of pace back
and if he can look really, really good at that, maybe he
does like as the season progresses on, he does kind of
and and take more of it. But I, I agree with what you're
saying where we've had it, we some of the news here is that
they do actually want to use Tooten.
Like I remember Adam Schefter said on the podcast late in the
offseason, Hey, everybody, you should draft a Basil Tooten.
He's going to get a lot of looks this year.
And I'm like, well, if Adam Chapter said it, I'm actually,
I'm going to buy that. We all like them anyway.
I'm going to do that. And and then you get that, the
Bixby news, which is hugely positive, but part of the news
we've had this weekend is that Travis, Ethan looks like a dog.
And and I guess like you're saying, part of the story for
Tootin depends on how well does Ethan hold up for injury.
And he's he is kind of getting being older back.
How long does he maintain that efficiency?
And if he does, it's going to be extremely difficult for Tooting
to make inroads there. But I, I, I do, I do think it's
pretty positive that that the team has like kind of gone out
of their way to open up the path for him.
Yeah, they they very clearly like him a lot.
I mean, when you you follow the bread crumbs all the way back to
before the draft, when is it is Gladstone the GM?
Is that the name? I'm I'm blanking right now.
But when he's or excuse me, but when he's interviewing for the
job, he specifically cites Tootin as this is the type of
player that we can draft in the fourth round that would add a
lot of big play potential to this offense.
So that's that's a thing that we think that, you know, we need to
go and get and then they they followed up and do exactly what
they said. Like, hey, we like this player.
We think he fills a need for us on the offense.
It's important. Here's here's how we would
execute that strategy. Then they go and do it right.
So that's like, OK, they're following up with what they
said. Then you get them trading
Bigsby, which is additional signal where they're like, yeah,
get this guy out of the way. We we want to play the guy that
we like. And so then they go ahead and
and clear the lane for Tooting there.
So you have the you know, it's advantageous that the team likes
him so much. Honestly, like you probably
really need that to help overcome the fumbling red flags
where it's like you, you definitely want the coaching
staff to like this guy so that one fumble doesn't just like put
him in the doghouse or send him to the shadow realm forever.
So you do have like that little bit of extra boost to him like
he'll he'll get the opportunity is what I'm saying.
But you do have the the path is a little.
You're just expressing concern that hey, another rookie has a
lock on the on the long down distance stuff.
The guy in front of him actually looks good.
And by the way, he fumbles too. Yeah, it's just a slightly
narrower path than you'd hope than we thought during the
offseason where we thought Travis ETM is not gonna be an
impediment whatsoever and we were paying no line to Lequint
Allen, right. So that's for me like the
ceiling for Tootin still remains the same.
It's extremely high. It's just what we were
previously thinking, you know, happens 30% of the time, might
actually happen 20% of the time and, and that's meaningful.
But like I, I still think he's a very exciting player.
He's definitely a hold. He's not someone you're going
out and churning or or anything like that.
Oh, and Neil, then he missed that.
Neil just joined their listener. He missed that.
He missed you at you you describing your viewing
experience of his podcast. Oh yeah, yeah, I did.
I did shout you out Neil when you infamously pass on Bruce
Hall on the 5th. Also some comments about how
painful it was to watch the Vikings first half last night,
but thankfully they pulled it out for you backup running
backs. I think we we pretty much
touched on everyone that we really wanted to talk about
here. Yeah, yeah.
Let's see. Let's see some for discussing
that Week 2. Yeah.
So next we have the tight end utilization and efficiency
chart, which is essentially the main part of the chart is, is
what percentage of of routes are you running on team drop backs,
which is. And then we do look at kind of
who's pass blocking because like the reason I like to add that in
is because like if you didn't have that context, you would
think that they weren't on the field.
Like we actually, we don't care if you're on the field for the
pass blocking, but it's nice to see that even if you're not full
time on routes, at least the team wants you out there.
And then we also look at targets for a run.
Obviously we want guys who are out there and then also getting
targeted and then a dot. I think this is the last
meaningful in week 1 and but we do want that the targets down
the field also. Yeah, I guess this this, this is
this is the the Harold Fannon part of the show where?
Yeah, I mean, we gotta, we gotta start with Fannon.
One, one thing I have to bring up 'cause we're gonna talk about
all the all the other stuff, I'm sure.
But Harold Fannon, you see him with a very little bit of pass
blocking. There was, I believe it was a a
run. Yeah, it was a run play where
he's tasked with run blocking and he is out there against Trey
Hendrickson, one of the best defensive ends in the league.
And Harold Fannon has a run block win against Trey
Hendrickson. Rookie Harold Fannon, you know,
he's only a receiver. He's not not even really a tight
end. He can't block or do anything
except he blocks Trey fucking Hendrickson successfully.
So I mean, it is. It's wheels all the way up for
Harold Fannon. He can.
Oh, he's he's not Brock Bowers. I won't.
I won't disrespect Brock Bowers like that, but God, is he close,
You know, like he he does so much.
I mean, the man's taken Wildcat snaps in his first game ever as
a rookie. He's lining up in the backfield
like he's running routes, he's playing in line, he's playing in
the slot, I mean. He is.
He had 18 run blocking snaps in week 1.
Yeah, he he is a weapon. Harold Fannon is just a weapon.
And I'm just gonna say it. Harold Fannon is the best player
on the Browns offense right now. You know, full stop.
It's not close. And and the gap will widen over
the course of this season. It would not shock me if Harold
Fannon leads the Browns in targets by the end of the year,
which is kind of a crazy thing to say.
I think that happens 20% of the time, which is pretty insane for
a rookie third round tight end to potentially lead the team in
targets. When there's another tight end
that David and Joku is like a very legitimate tight end.
That's competition for him there.
You know, Jerry, Judy, you know, earns targets like there, there
are other people here to take targets away from this guy and
he's still out here with 29% targets per route run.
Yeah. Right on a on a pretty
meaningful at route count as well.
Yeah, yeah, the brown, I mean, you saw the Flacco drop backs,
right? Like Flacco is one of the
highest drop backs in the league in Week 1.
And we think that's going to be a trend for the Browns.
Like we expect them to drop back and pass a lot.
That's that's kind of yeah. I was thinking about it too.
I know Sean Siegel had this comment where they're probably
going to play like that. Even when and if the roofies
come in, they probably will still have a high drop back
count. And then like I, I know that the
rookies probably won't be great efficiency wise, but I feel like
they can keep pace with four or five yards adjusted yards per
attempt. Just on your point of like this
is the this is what the the Browns are going to look like.
Yeah, I'm, I'm a little worried about the rookies.
I mean, I'm more I mean, gosh, there's a stretch during the
offseason where I started to get a little hope for Shadur, but
that after the like one decent preseason game, But that that
kind of crater when you are getting your chance as like the
third quarterback on the depth chart in a preseason game and
then you get benched in the at the end of the game.
It is the fourth quarter with like barely any time left in a
meaningless preseason game. And the coaching staff is like
get the fuck off my field. Like we do not want you
anywhere. I mean short of just outright
cutting him during the game. Like that is the most bearish
thing you could really possibly see.
I thought they wanted to get some reps for Snoop for.
Snoop Huntley Yeah, Yeah, You got to see what you have in
Snoop Huntley. Oh, I.
Thought they were like trying to do them a favor.
I was like, thanks for coming in and covering for us.
Let's let's get you some tape, buddy.
That that was my maybe. Maybe that was too roasted.
That's that's the most charitable interpretation you
can make. But but maybe you're right.
Maybe you're they're, they're just good guys at heart and
they. They really want to the Browns,
they they just really take care of people.
But. Yeah, the only thing I wanted to
note on them you were talking about like Fannons alignment.
So I was 55 offensive snaps, 29 of them came in line, 16 of the
slot, 6 out wide. So like truly all over the field
tree in the back one at quarterback with for the wild
card Wildcat snap. Like we had one of the major
concerns I had at least on Fannin on this year, not too big
of a concern was just like maybe he couldn't be like a true tight
end like that. That concern has evaporated.
Yeah, I mean, the, the only reason we weren't higher on this
guy is because we said, I mean, it might take a while.
You know, it's hard, hardest position, you know, to learn for
a guy. He he might just be, you know,
true receiver only where they're only having him come in a little
bit really limited snaps. And I mean God, if if we had
known, if you could have shown me the Harold fan and stat line,
I I would from week 1 back in May.
If you have 100% stats, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's it's truly. This is in the 12th round.
Yeah, this is a like generational with where you were
getting him. I mean, not not to over
exaggerate, like Harold Fannon is going to be the closest thing
to a Puka Takua that we'll have this season.
You know, like for how much he benefits you from his draft
costs, like he could very easily be the largest win, you know,
cost adjusted. So pretty, pretty exciting stuff
from him. Huge.
I mean, if he's somehow on your waivers in FFPC, like in a main
event or a big gorilla, what are you?
What are you doing? How much are you bidding there?
Oh you, you unload the clip. It's everything, right?
You, well, you need that. No, you, you FFPC, you need
that. You need.
Like you saved 2020 bucks to do their?
Defense, but yeah, defenses. And stuff, but.
Yeah, it's you. You unload the clip because I
was about to say, I think if if I was doing like week 12
projections now, I'd project like pretty close to 100% snap
rate for for famine. Yeah, some of the, there's so
much stuff where I feel like this year we did a lot less
leaking of the alpha that we had when we were, you know, in the
rankings chat. We we all, I feel like do a
really good job, you know, being news hounds and consuming lots
of stuff during the offseason. And, and I think the synthesis,
like actually synthesizing the information correctly is a thing
that a lot of people get wrong. Like, for example, there are
people out there that completely failed to synthesize that.
You know, the trading of Brian Robinson was directly connected
to the new rookie bill and not at all related to Chris
Rodriguez, who had been cut multiple times last season and,
and was, you know, a a multi year vet at this point.
Like, so people do a poor job synthesizing information.
One of the ones, the pieces that got me, I mean, we were bullish
on Fannin the whole way, but the thing that really like made me
all systems go where I was, I just started taking him in like
the 15th, 16th round in my drafts was like, I don't care.
I'm going to take whatever of these other three players to
close out my draft anyway. The one I can't be without is
Harold Fannin, and the piece of information that kind of flipped
that switch for me was the Browns beat reporter from The
Athletic is talking on a podcast and he accidentally misspeaks
when he's talking about Harold Fannon and David and Joku and he
says Harold Fannon is going to be the reason David and Joku
isn't on this team three months from now.
He says this in the July beginning of August, implying
that it is known that David and Joku is getting moved before the
deadline. Then he catches himself and says
or eight months from now, now, and that right there where, hey,
we're getting signal where a guy with information from the
organization is telling you like, yeah, they they already
have plans to get David and Joku out of the way because Harold
Fannon is the truth. And and then you get him sitting
with the starters and resting in the preseason.
And then when he is playing in the preseason, he's heavily
targeted and catching touchdowns like it it all.
The drum beat was deafening and every shred of evidence we got
along the way was just more and more bullish and it's just
really fun to get to watch it all come to fruition with Harold
Fannon very possibly a season defining player.
So what you're saying is the best college Titan of all time
might be good? That's dude, that's the other
thing. Like sometimes the guys that are
really good at football just stay really good at football.
And and I mean, there's nuance to it, obviously.
Like if you you know, for example, you look at Trey Harris
where it's like, Oh my gosh, the Trey Harris yards for route run
were crazy. And it's like, yeah, but like.
He played. He was older.
He played with Jackson Dyard and Lane Kiffin at Ole Miss.
Yeah, I mean, how many, how many times have we seen the Ole Miss
scam happen for, you know, like it's a thing.
But anyway. The Lane Kiffin, the Lane Kiffin
just like, creates these guys. Yeah, All right, let's let's
move on from Harold Fanning because I I can talk about him
all. Yeah, on our late round tight
end smash, Juwan Johnson, like we're talking about New Orleans
Saints been fun bad, lots of drop backs.
So them having close to 50 drop backs and then Juwan Johnson
being #2 in the chart in percentage of tight end routes
and then an 8.2, A .22% target per run, like that's in.
That's nuts. It's like, that's like, I, I
don't know, it's just nuts. Yeah, I know it's a it's a big
departure from how he was used in the past.
I mean, if we go up and and if we go pull up, you know, our
charts from last year for Jalon Johnson, like it's a major,
major difference. And I guess this one's on.
I feel like I have egg on my face with this one because the
whole offseason, even after we we got some information that,
you know, sounded like they wanted to change how they
utilized him. I just didn't really buy it
because I I felt like we had kind of seen it all before.
But yeah, they're just they're using him like he archetypes,
which is he is a receiver. He's not really a tight end.
And that's what he was coming into Lee's converted receiver,
right? And so now you get a coaching
staff that's actually going to use him this way and it seems
pretty good for him. I there's like some small shred
of me that's like I want to, I want to see it one more week
before I'm like, OK, Yep, I was super duper all the way wrong.
Right now I'm like pretty confident I was wrong on it.
And I'm it's not one where I'm like going to avoid playing
Jawan Johnson if it's a good spot to play him.
I'm like, no, I need to see more.
But it's just one where I'm like, OK, maybe maybe he just
got like a bunch of targets this week and and he'll run more
routes but won't get as many targets in the future.
But I feel pretty confident saying this one was a a big miss
by me because I was saying the guy that I've been on.
For snaps, yeah, so like it wasn't just passing game stuff.
They were also using him a bunch and and and they were on game.
I'm I'm I'm pulling up the exact number now and but they let me
see. Sorry.
He he had 22 run blocking snaps. Wow, Do you have his?
Do you have how he his alignment numbers follow?
Yeah, yeah. So he played 74 snaps total,
which is that's this huge count and 28 of them were in line.
So he played a bunch. Slot, yeah, yeah, yeah.
He had a snap on the O line. Then yeah, he's he's just he's
just their slot receiver effectively, you know, slot
receiver. And then also we'll get some in
line stuff, but he's just he's going to be on the field all the
time. He is, you know, you know, you
get those slot only receivers where you're like, oh, well,
they're not going to play all the snaps.
It's like, yeah, Jawan Johnson is like the slot only receiver.
And then when you'd normally take him off the field, they
just bump him to. Yeah, you're right.
You're right. That's exactly right.
So he he looks like an awesome late round tight end dart man.
Never wrong, just absolutely Johnson.
He's absolutely kind of like a main event and and priority in,
in, in, in the waivers, right? Yeah, he's one where I had
someone ask me about this, where they have good tight ends
already. Like I think they had they had
Dallas Goddard and someone else that's like serviceable.
Where where it's like, OK, like am I going to start Jawan
Johnson over Dallas Goddard? Like is it close?
And, and I just told him Jawan Johnson is like, you have to
price enforce there. You can't let some other team go
get Jawan Johnson for cheap. Like you, you need to, you just
need to go out and and put in a bid that you think is what he's
worth. And if you don't get them and
you and you already have functional tight ends, that's
OK. Like you're just trying to stop
someone from getting a steal that makes some other team much
stronger in your league. You don't want to have to face
that later when you could be just, you know, blocking those
points from getting onto someone else's roster, so.
Yeah, I agreed, Agreed 100%. We had somebody here ask you
about Valet. I'm just pulling up that.
So they're in the NFC South, right?
Yes, they are. And so Valet he got, he got 9
routes, Lava 43, Joan Johnson 47, Shaheed 46, Brandon Cooks
got 42. So just to just to synthesize
this, yes, Valet could play more and but he'd be cutting into
Brandon Cooks. Yeah, probably, probably comes
out of Brandon Cooks pie, not not Joan Johnson.
Yeah, like they they they didn't fight another tight end or no,
that wait, that's not that's not true that this report only pulls
in this report that I'm looking at only pulls in people who've
gotten and not another tight end got a reception.
OK, is that is what I should say.
Let me be more accurate here. They played two other tight end.
So Jack Stahl got 18 snaps. Malachi Metabo got 1 snap.
So like, yes, they I'm I'm I'm a 75 play count.
He's out there for 74 of them. And then the other guy is like
got like what, 3030% snaps like just every down player for the
Saints, which for a receiving archetype is huge.
Yeah, big, big bummer. That's one where I'm going to,
I'm going to regret not drafting more of him.
He was one of my highest owned players last year and I had a
ton of them the year before as well and unfortunately did not
get on the train this year. But kudos to the Jolan Johnson
drafters. Definitely, definitely one of
those where paying attention to what the team said and and how
they're going to deploy him. Ended up bearing some fruit
there a couple guys that did not bear fruit.
In fact, the fruit is rotting on the vine.
Travis Kelsey and Mark Andrews. It's Jover.
Those aren't, they're not like fantasy tight ends anymore.
Those are names. They're they're, remember that
guys now, I mean. The one that the one that seems
most egregious to me is is Travis Kelsey where they had the
big Xavier wordy injury like the Chiefs.
They dropped back a bunch of times.
Like I think I I forget how many times they dropped back, but it
was a lot. Yeah, they were second highest
PROE this week. So they were.
They were slinging it. And and so they had damn it, I'm
not, I'm not they they they, they were slinging it.
And he's still like not really getting there.
Like I'm glad that he was still playing good snaps, but yeah,
yeah, Joe, Joe over. I, I, I could leave a little bit
of a light on. No, no, I could leave a little
bit of a light on for Mark Andrews.
That like their drop back count. I agree.
So Low and Zay Flowers is dominated so much and maybe
there's something there for him and but it it it very, very
disappointing overall for America.
Andrews especially like to me, it's like it's the sequential
stuff as well. We're like last year was a
disappointing year, then week 1 and another disappointing year
or week and they don't play likely.
He's still only 80% on pass rate and and then 6% target spread
run for a dot, which is super low for America Andrews.
I think Travis Kelsey is being sent to the to the horse factory
and America Andrews is on the watch list for that.
Yeah, yeah, very, very well put, man.
A guy who could not be farther from being sent to the glue
factory. Tyler Warren, you know, rookie,
rookie tight end. So a lot of lot of life left in
and before the glue factory calls for him.
But man, he he really, really seems like very high first read
target. Definitely someone that they are
going to be getting the ball to early and often.
Seems like he is. He's gonna be set up for a very
strong season. I expect the targets for route
run to come down just a little. It's not gonna stay at 38%.
But I mean, his first read rate was really high.
It it definitely seems like he is going to hurt Downs and
Pitman going forward now. Downs and Pitman were so
severely discounted. I don't really think you're
terribly concerned with the price you got them at.
And then the Warren price got to be so high near the end of the
season that it was like, I mean, you know, you're happy if you
drafted him. You're not like, this isn't
paying off the price. You know, you're very happy
about it. But for me, the the bet was just
a little too expensive when you're considering the range of
outcomes like this outcome of Tyler Warren is good.
The Colts make him the focal point.
Like, that's far from assured. You know, it's not a thing that
you're like, oh, I'm drafting him here in the 70s because it's
guaranteed that this is happening.
It's like, no, there's definitely other stuff that can
happen. But yeah, it's it's definitely
one where if you ended up fading Tyler Warren like I did, you're
you're kind of the Squidward staring out the window at
SpongeBob and Patrick having all the fun meme, you know, would
love to have more Tyler Warren. I did get a decent bit of him
when he was going really cheap. He like kind of fell during a
middle part of the summer. I got some in like the one 20s
and stuff. And so that's where I'll get to
to enjoy the Tyler Warren show from.
Got him on some high stakes teams there.
But yeah, he's definitely a player I'm underway to and he
seems like he's going to be 1 where he's going to pretty
handily pay off his tag. I'm just not so confident that
the process was was wrong given the cost.
So I think I think him being a focal point was kind of expected
and but him being a focal point and then the offense being so
functional is like as it was like, I think they they never
pointed. They scored in every draft
against the Dolphins. And that's the part where it's
like in terms of like the outcome on the fantasy points,
like I'd like to see them do it against somebody order down the
Miami Dolphins and before I crown Tyler Warren and but
obviously great to see him be a focal point.
Great to see that work out for the the Colts and.
I, I I. Ended up overweight and but not
wasn't drafting me at the end FFBC it was like you had to
draft them over like Travis Hunter and like I'm going to
drop Travis Hunter over Tyler Warren even in Titan premium
and. Yeah.
But and then the other one, I think, I don't think this will
be that much of a surprise to anybody on the OR listening to
this podcast. Whereas people were kind of like
they were shouting from the mountain tops.
Brock Bowers is only getting 50% snap rate in the first three
drives. And then in the Fort, I don't
know if it was exactly the Fort, but in the subsequent drives,
they like definitely went back to featuring him And then even
even on a kind of like and then obviously his his snap count
here comes out lower because he also he got the injury.
So he came out of the game, but even on the on the low snap
count, they were targeting him so heavily when he was out
there, he got over 100 yards. And so I think, I think you're
still like, I think the Brock Barrett's faders got off very
lightly with the injury and last weekend and it's still all the
way wheels up for Brock Bears. Yeah, you know, he gets 8
targets in a game where he misses a decent chunk of the
game, comes out due to injury near the end and then early, you
know, the involvement was a little less pulling up his his
snaps here. Yeah, only ends up playing 32
snaps total, 10/10 in the slot, 8 out wide, by the way.
So if there's room for Bowers to play more, it's that I think
really what it is. And I, I want to look into the
splits on this, but they just might not be having and it's
when it's a play where they want him to be lined up out wide or
in the slot. They're just not going to have
him out there on a run play 'cause they're like, yeah, I
just saved this guy. We don't.
We don't need you getting banged.
Up weird is they they didn't have them.
They they had a bunch of plays early where they weren't playing
him. It was like the first two drives
and then after those first couple of drives they were like,
yes, back to 8090% snapshare and Brock barriers.
So I like I, I, I don't even know I'm not even ready to
concede that his snapshare is going to be low.
I think it's super bullish that even wit a low snapshare he
crushes. But I think I, I think you could
very easily see next week he's like at the top of his chair.
Yeah, it it would not surprise me at all.
It it also, it very much could be one of those things where I
mean, this this was actually how his rookie season started as
well, where he's getting fewer snaps.
And then it did not take very long for the coaching staff to
realize, yeah, we can't, we can't do that anymore.
This guy needs to be on the field more.
And this is a new coaching staff.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if after some, you know, self
scouting, they realize, OK, yeah, we just need the best
tight end in the game out on the field more.
So I wouldn't be surprised to see him move up in this chart.
Meanwhile, the targets per route run of 31% with a 10.4 A dot is
pretty incredible. He had two targets greater than
20 yards down the field. I don't know if you saw both of
them, but they're just like, dude, Gino is just yeah, like it
was, it was beautiful to see, man.
Brock Bowers, like he's a verifiable deep threat on this
team. It's not like a oh, he's only a
run after the catch kind of guy. It's no, no, Brock Bowers is
dominant at all depths, right? Got it.
He's he's very fun to watch. He's pretty, I mean, for how big
he is too, like he's pretty graceful out there.
Like watching him on those routes I mean.
He's fast. Yeah.
He ran like a four or five coming out of high school.
Yeah, like he is. I think he has the fast like one
of the fastest ever mop per hour runs in college football
history. Now granted they're not tracking
it that long but still. Still like he is a fast man.
Yeah, I, I definitely agree with your, your sentiment that the
Bowers faders got bailed out a little bit here in week 1.
I mean, shit, you get in, you know, not missing those snaps at
the end of the game or, or he gets a touchdown or something
like, right. All of a sudden this stat line
goes from like, wow, that was a good day to Oh my God, I, I'm
I'm getting buried by Brock Bowers.
But my advice, if you faded Brock Bowers and you're not
feeling totally buried yet, you still have a shred of optimism
for your season that you're not going to end up buried by Brock
Bowers. And I guess this only applies if
you also didn't draft Harold Fannon.
So if you faded Fannon and you faded Bowers, there's a.
What are you doing? Well, hang on, there's a trick.
There's a trick that can actually make this season work
for you in Best Ball. And that's going to sound crazy
'cause you're like, Zach, what can I do about my Best Ball
teams I've already drafted? Here's what you can do.
You need to go and find the apps you've drafted on.
You need to hold down the little thing on the phone where it
starts to make all the little apps shake and you can move them
and you click the little delete button.
You delete those apps. You never fucking look at them
again because this season is going to age very poorly for
you. And that's the trick.
You just never look at it again. Next year when you go to play
again, you look for that app on your phone.
Never mind. I'm not going to put any more
money into Best Fall. This money is going directly
into a money market account for my family, where it stays safe,
where I will not lose it again by fading the greatest tight end
to ever play the game. And don't worry about any
winnings here. Yeah, you you will not need to
check back in week 17. Do not worry about that, OK?
Only only one other actually 22 Quick notes on tight ends 1 is a
guy that I need to capitulate on to you.
You were correct. I was wrong.
Evan Ingram definitely a rotational player.
In Evan Ingram's defense, he does get hurt twice in the game.
The second time he leaves the game for good, but he goes to
the blue tent twice in the fourth quarter, he exits for
good. He got a couple targets, but
it's it's the classic Evan Ingram short, scammy shit.
And you were saying this all offseason where it's like he's
going to be a rotational player. And I'm just so disinterested in
rotational Evan Ingram. You were very right.
He is he is rotational. It's it's pretty jover for him.
I like the only light I could possibly leave on for him is
that, you know, they use him more over the course of the
season, but I do not think that's particularly likely.
I think it's probably done for him.
You know, good targets for route run, but it's only on, you know,
40% of the route. So it's really and and again,
it's the classic Evan Ingram 3A dot where I just I don't think
that that's going to be enough to get you there.
So Evan Ingram probably dead and buried.
The other guy that I don't think is dead and buried, but is here
on the chart with Evan Ingram and and also has pretty pretty
bearish numbers for his week 1 is Colston Loveland.
This is 1 where I think it requires a lot of nuance because
you were pounding the table for Colson Loveland all offseason.
The rest of us were just a little bit more bearish on him,
not from like a, you know, over the full season ceiling, like
what he could do, but more that we we were really confident he
was going to start slow. Just given the shoulder surgery
and the, you know, shoot in June, we thought he wasn't going
to be ready for camp at all. And then, you know, he he gets
ready for camp, he's back. It seems like a fast start is
all of a sudden in the cards. And so I got it personally a lot
more optimistic on Colston level and there, but then he ends up
with a slow start. Cole Comet gets the majority of
the snaps. So it's it's something where I'm
not panicking yet about Colston Loveland.
I think that he definitely will earn more work as the season
goes on. I think he's probably very good.
But yeah, just a little disappointing that it's going to
be a slower start out of the gate.
I I I'm disappointed too. And the one thing that makes me
feel better. I remember you you had you had
made a note separately. Hey, if you have Loveland over
Warren, this that this is not good for you.
I my one note on Loveland is like, hey, the opportunity costs
on Loveland was so much lower than tower warrant.
And so you can afford to be a little bit more patient on a
breakout, but obviously would have liked to see more routes,
more targets. And I've done more with the
targets he did get. And and then the last guy I I, I
made a note on here was Janu where he's still on a scam and
PPR bullshit. So yeah, I.
I honestly think Janu is like kind of usable in Thailand
premium and if you're super like super desperate.
Yeah, he's, he's definitely usable.
I mean, the other thing is I think nothing else.
I think he's got actually decently high touchdown equity
as well because Arthur Smith likes him so much and will
dissolve enough around the goal line for him.
I'm I'm dead serious, you know, and so.
It's. You, you get that added benefit
where it's like this guy, the profile just looking at this
where you're like, OK, he's only out there running routes on 50%
of drop backs with an 8 out of 0.
Like you look at that and you're like, there is no shot that I'm
starting this guy. He just happens to have these
anomalies where the targets per route run are going to be crazy
high because stuff is schemed directly for him.
And then the touchdown equity is crazy high because it's schemed
directly for him. So it's a very weird anomalous
profile, but it's one where if you understand the context of
it, it it makes sense for why it works.
He's probably he'll be one of the really good late round tight
end clicks in best ball just because like all you really need
is a touchdown from those guys to be good.
And so yeah, Jonnu going to be an awesome best ball click in
managed. It's going to be a harder start.
But like you said, in tight end premium where you're getting
these scam targets, the high targets per route run a low A
dot. So it's easy for him to, you
know, be easy catches. It's going to be a thing where
he he could be usable on a pinch.
Yeah, I agree. I'm I'm I'm just tonges the
49ers guy. I I, I don't really have
anything to add order down like it seems like he's the direct
replacement. The Kittle like decent targets
and obviously scored the touchdown.
I I don't know how like sustainable like him wrestling
like taking balls from defenders should have been pick stuff is,
but obviously he he he's a good pinch start with with kill out.
Yeah, good, good shot there and and good shot about his
wrestling the ball with man. Brock Pretty had some really bad
looking throws, yeah, but also also had good throws.
But man, there was some. There was some stinkers.
He put the ball, yeah, he put the ball out there.
It might, you know, with the, with the injury stuff, maybe he
was hurt for, you know, a good chunk of that game and and
that's why it looked so bad because he he looked awesome
last year and and did not look great in week 1.
Yeah, yeah, maybe, maybe he, he wasn't getting the power on his
throws that that he, he wanted to.
But yeah, moving on to the the receiver's charts and the ones
that kind of stuck out to me the way when when when we first
started doing these charts that we always kind of taught the the
to the to the the the top and to the left part of the the chart
is kind of like the regression candidates.
The one that that kind of looked interesting to me is relative to
the reaction from a Mecca Bukas start is kind of like he he's
probably a little bit weaker here, even though he he ran so
many routes. His his target spread run of
only 17% and a dot 12.7. That's pretty good.
And then getting the two touchdowns, obviously, like
you're not, you're not going to project anybody very well, very
many players to score 24 points per week.
So I mean, obvious regression candidate, but I, I do think
the, the per route target stuff was a little weaker than maybe
what what people were kind of signposting.
You love seeing the full routes out the gate and you love seeing
them score the touchdowns. You love seeing them get stuff
down the field. And but I, I, I don't know, I
I'm a little less, maybe a little less impressed than than
other people are at the gate. Yeah, I think he's one where it,
it would not shock me at all if we see a trend of, you know, his
targets for route run going up and and we see him getting more
involved week after week after week where he carves out a
bigger and bigger role in the offense.
Wouldn't surprise me. But I I agree with you that it's
one that we need to watch because the Week 1, like what
the actual Week 1 peripherals say is not as good as the Week 1
fantasy score. Obviously, it's still like in,
in a vacuum, the Week 1 peripherals for, Hey, this is a
rookie wide receiver in his first game ever.
You're like, great, Yeah, this is awesome.
Very, very stoked about this guy.
But it's not, you know, the the two touchdowns are doing a lot
of heavy lifting on the, the perception of him where I, I
agree with you that the perception is just slightly
overinflated, which I hate to say because I, I thought he
played awesome and, and looked good.
But yeah, he's one. It wouldn't surprise me to see
the peripherals improve and him him earn more targets.
Like let me let me come up with a a comparison where Travis
Hunter, he didn't run the full routes.
He was 82% routes. So he's not on this chart and
only a 7.3% A dot. Well, he had a 30% target spread
run in his first game ever. So like, I guess maybe maybe
that's an unfair comparison where Travis Hunter is one of
the best at rookies ever. And but yeah, and maybe Emeka
Buka just isn't quite in that category.
So him hitting here is good relative to some expectations,
but. Yeah.
The you need to see that improve.
I think for your fifth round, pick to and probably higher in
some other formats to hit. Yeah, for me, the difference.
So Ibuka has a couple deep targets, got an intermediate
target and then 3 short or behind the line of scrimmage
targets where Travis Hunter, it was all short or behind the line
of scrimmage. And then he did have one deep
target that helps make his A dot look not quite as low as it
actually was. But if you watch the game,
almost every Travis Hunter target was an immediate, like,
this was a Liam Cohen designed play to quickly get the ball out
right away. Here's Travis Hunter.
It's a little bubble screen. It's a quick slant.
It's like. That's the Liam Cohen like that.
That's yeah, yeah, MO yeah, yeah, for sure.
It's not not to knock anything on Travis Hunter, but just to
like when making the comparison between him and a Mecca Iguca.
I feel like for Hunter, it's I don't want to say like less of
it is earned, but there there is more that is by design for
Hunter where and I don't think that's going away by by any
stretch of the imagination, you know, but I do think Igbuka is
what. You're saying is he's happened
to do more to earn those targets?
Exactly. Yes, and I think he's live to
earn more of them, but also Travis Hunter is live to earn
more targets. So I just want to make the
comparison there and say like, hey, Hunter might have had a
little easier sledding out of the gate to get that higher
targets per route run and and and that's a good thing.
You know, like the team wants to get you the ball.
This is good. And so I, and I think it could
continue to grow, But I, I do think Iguca probably is going to
have to earn it a little bit more, but I certainly think that
he can So excited for both of those players, but just wanted,
wanted that context there. I do like your your comment
about the regression candidates, though, because we see Quentin
Johnson and Keyon Coleman up there close to that median line
where they're going to be on the left side there in that upper
left quadrant. But basically all these guys up
here in the top are guys who either, you know, they all
scored at least one touchdown. And had like high, high
efficiency where Keon Coleman's catching a bunch of deeper
stuff. Quinton Johnson gets the two TDs
and Mecca and Buka the two TDs right.
So from a fantasy point standpoint, you're obviously
gonna expect regression from a, from a role like, hey, what is
this guy? I think Ibuka is directionally
accurate here. I I think like if anything you
will see him come down on fantasy points per game, but I
bet you will see him move a little bit to the right on the
weighted targets per route run. Quinton Johnston I think is
going to move down and to the left where his weighted targets
per route run come down his fantasy points per game come
down. Keon Coleman is 1 where I, I was
like certified fader of the Keon Coleman fan club.
Really thought he was in the same archetype as Quinton
Johnston of just this hey kind of flame out rookie receiver
didn't see a lot of redeeming qualities to his game last year.
He did have the the short stretch where it seemed like
he's starting to put together that has the wrist injury comes
back and it it just doesn't stay put together for him.
So maybe that was the the actual truth there.
But Kian Coleman's the one that I am the I think there's the
widest range of outcomes for him here.
I mean, Mecca, Gbuka, extremely wide range of outcomes, but.
Yeah, I I agree more so he had 22% target rate run at 12.8 at A
dot. So he's getting he's getting
down the field at targets from from Josh Allen and he and he's
he's earning down the field targets.
He's he's in the 90 to 95% ninety 4% right rate.
He's our ex receiver and and obviously he got a touchdown.
We're not going to expect him to score 25 points a game.
But upon upon kind of looking at the Keon Coleman saying like
it's probably like obviously him being up here, you can't expect
him to score this many points a game going forward.
You're not expecting Josh Allen to drop back like 50 * a game,
but very, very strong early game for Keon Coleman.
Yeah. And and that.
I I I'm I faded them too and I'm feeling bad about fading.
Them the the point you made about Josh Allen is not going to
drop back 50 * a game That to me is the strongest piece of
evidence for hey, like cool, cool The Jets on Keon Coleman
last year, the Bills did not want to pass like if if given
any opportunity to not pass, they were happy to accept and
so. I have to do it.
They have to do it in this game. Yeah, I'd fully anticipate that
to come down a lot and that might hurt Keon Coleman.
And so then rather than getting there from volume like he did on
this game, he got there from volume and efficiency on this
game. But when you're stuck with just
efficiency in a low volume, that's that's more where I think
that you'll probably have Keon Coleman live for the majority of
the season, which to me it probably lends him more to like
a a better like spike week. Like harder to know when to
start him for a managed league type player, but probably
probably a decent pick at cost for best ball.
Pretty probably a pretty strong pick, Yeah, get it.
It just we don't know. We don't know when those weeks
are going to come where they have to drop back a lot.
Yeah, let's see other receivers. Yeah, I mean, guys, guys with
really, really strong usage profiles that didn't score a ton
of points, but not only like had the the peripherals and looked
really good, you know, just actually watching the game, like
watching them play like pass the eye test, like Yep, this is the
alpha receiver. This is clearly the best
receiver on the team. Lad Mcconkey, Ted McMillan.
I mean, to me, both of them had very, very strong games.
Like every time you watch either of their targets, if you if you
didn't get to watch these games all the way through, I would say
at the very least just go back and watch.
There's a good like Ted McMillan, every target cut up,
it's floating around out there. He looked awesome.
Like he he's the real deal. Yeah.
Just certify. 88% rate rate. He had a 12.8 at 8 odds.
So like absolutely kind of like 8A usage at 1.9 yards per out
run, 23% targets per out run. He's winning like every route
too. If you if you watch the routes
like he's, he's just a good route runner.
Like everything's smooth. There's, there's separation like
and even on the routes where there's not as much separation,
like he's just winning at the catch point.
Like he, he's an awesome receiver.
He's going. To yeah, he's who I should have
come to Abuka to as like, hey, here's a guy who can win
straight away, is getting the full target slot right away, but
he's in a worse offense, so he probably will under undershoot
Abuka on touchdowns. Yep, that's that's the warts on
the frog. Here is Bryce Young is throwing
this guy the ball and Bryce looked like he was turning back
into a pumpkin. You gotta you gotta hope that's
just inconsistency and Bryce will be able to have games where
he's good. But I am I'm, you know, feeling
a little concerned about Bryce there.
I'm not feeling concerned about Ladd Mcconkey's quarterback
play. Ladd Mcconkey might be set up to
have a really, really fun season with how good Justin Herbert
looks, how good the charged offense looks and the fact that
they were willing to pass so heavily, you know, I would
expect their pre to come down. There's no way it's going to
stay at 15% week over week. But I think that what you'll
likely see happen is in those games where the Chargers don't
pass as much, the guys that are more, you know, the tertiary
options and the Quinton Johnston and the Keenan Allen.
I I think those guys are the ones that probably see their
opportunities dwindle and Ladd is the one that that manages to
maintain of that target share. He's just he wins it all depths.
He's he's just good. He's good at everything.
He's a extremely well-rounded wide receiver where hey, after
the catch, I am super happy to have lab Makaki with the ball on
his hands, right, like route running guy is winning on damn
near every route. Like he's great hands too.
Like there were a couple pretty difficult catches.
He like he's he's just a he's a full package receiver man.
He's really good, excited for the year 2 ascension to continue
for him. Yeah.
And the order, the the biggest surprise, honestly the by far
the biggest surprise when I was looking at the data behind this
chart is looking at the Steelers, where you look at the
Steelers and obviously DK Metcalf, he got a 21% target
spread run and then he got 2.5 yards per out run.
So he was pretty good. He still ended up with 21 yards
per section, but his A dot was 4.1.
And then you look at Calvin Austin, who also had a 21%
target spread run, who had a 15-A dot.
And and maybe that's just one of those weird things of like if
you're looking at a single game sample size, but I'm kind of
shocked that Calvin Austin kind of got alpha route rate, alpha
target spread run. And then he did at a pretty high
A dot if Aaron Rodgers sticks this year and it's looking like
Calvin Austin is a league winner.
Yeah, I'm, I mean, I would love that to be true.
I drafted a good like. That's a lot of ifs.
That's a lot of ifs to make that happen.
There are a lot of ifs and I, I think the thing that I am most
skeptical on is that the passing volume will be there.
And I, I think the thing you're more likely to have is that
Calvin Austin gets a couple deep shots a game, you know, 123 in,
in a normal game, but this game was a shootout like the, there
were a lot more plays running this game that I would expect a
normal Steelers game to have in it.
So I'm, I'm tempering expectations probably just
because I don't want to get too over my skis and excited because
some of my favorite teams have Calvin Austin on them.
Like looking at my 555 teams, like 20th round Calvin Austin,
19th round Harold Fannon. That's pretty fun.
But yeah, I just, I don't want to get overly excited there.
I think that it's it's one where the the trap door could drop out
from beneath us really easily, where we're like, Oh yeah,
Calvin Austin is just like, we'll get three games out of
them in the course of the season.
Where? Yeah, maybe not just an area
yards guy. Yeah, but week 1 was fun.
I don't think I, I don't, yeah, I don't think they went.
So they had 34 drop backs, 30
attempts, and they were -1% PROE.
And so like, nothing crazy there from the volume perspective, but
maybe maybe they're they're behind for a lot of the game.
So maybe in a normal game they're just like running the
piss out of the ball. And yeah, I think, I think even
though the drop backs look normal, it's like in the context
of an Arthur Smith Steelers office with Aaron Rodgers, the
slowest motherfucker to ever play the game.
Like I think that I saw that dude, I was cracking up.
Such a just absolutely inexcusable.
Like, dude, at the very least, like call this time out.
Like you just take this bare minimum.
Of stuff. Dude, that was atrocious.
But yeah, that's that's the concern with Calvin Austin is
that the baseline is 25 drop backs per game and then you're
they're not quite as excited about it.
Any other receiver. I the the thing that I.
I mean, I I don't think we have to talk too much about like
bounce back games for yeah, week 1 Devonta, A.J.
Brown, like you, you guys get the idea Like we're we're we're
not, we're not we're not trying it.
We're not going to spend too much time on that.
And so then you look, I am manure that that one is kind of
surprising and where he he like dominates here in the way the
target sprout run like. And I I my note was like, is, is
he just like an air yards king? And yes, he is an aired, but
like he's 25% target sprout run 19A dot where like they're not
that good of a team. And and so they might have to
throw a lot at we the buck is still out on how good Cam Ward
is. So like how, how useful is a lot
of getting a lot of these deep targets.
They didn't hit hit on them this week and with only 6 1/2 years
per reception. And but that's one where you
probably you're probably going to get some big spike weeks from
my menorah. Yeah, I think he goes as Cam
Ward goes this season where Cam Ward is is functional, which my
my lean the entire offseason was, no, I don't think he's very
good. I'd be so happy to eat my words
on it because I still drafted a decent amount of them.
Because, you know, there there are people that I really trust
their opinion in their process that thought he had the
requisite upside to make it worth it at the price that he
was going. So yeah, IO man ore is a really
nice compliment to the Cam ward bet where if that works out,
he's going to be pretty fun. So I think like the the range of
outcomes is wide, like to the extent where it's this guy never
has a startable week or this guy is like a a very startable wide
receiver level of wide. So pretty, pretty fun there.
Like you could do worse for a bench dash, right?
Like what? Cause 'cause the thing with, you
know, rookie quarterbacks. Much worse.
He's a starting receiver getting
targets down the field, and we just don't know how good the
offense is yet. Yeah, and the thing that, you
know, you don't really want to be behind on is if you get the
good Cam Ward game where all of a sudden, like you see that it's
it's potential to start clicking and like how, hey, this this
could be a good rookie season. You're going to miss the plane
on Iron Man ore because that that good Cam Ward game probably
comes with some awesome Iron Man or points.
So anyway, that's that's all on Iron Man or the ones that I want
to touch on are the dusty olds in the top right of the chart.
You know, Keenan Allen, Debo Samuel.
I think they're both pretty interesting.
You and I had a discussion about Debo off the air where you saw
it as, hey, Debo was a, you know, we were ahead of market on
FFPC. You were like, oh, this is a
good process win. Like nail Debo and I, I was
like, when you say nail Debo, you mean as as like a fade,
right, 'cause we were, we were behind market on underdog.
And I think that it's kind of a, it's a beauty is in the eye of
the beholder thing 'cause I can definitely see where you're
coming from where he gets all these targets.
He's heavily involved in the offense.
Like he gets the touchdown. My my perspective on it was, I
mean he's getting a lot of these little rinky dink dump offs,
which yes, that is a feature, not a bug in the Kingsbury
offense. Like that's going to be a thing.
But he looked pretty bad to me like he has he has some bad
drops. He looks slow, like he just he
doesn't look anywhere near like the explosive Debo that you used
to have. Now granted the the run like he
gets into the end zone by doing Debo stuff right.
But if you watch that run, like go back and.
I watched that one like two or three times.
Especially you saw something different to me.
How many players on the field are moving faster than Debo
Samuel is the thing that you. What I what I saw, what I was
looking at is how many players tried to tackle Debo.
'S that's and that's. Unable to.
I, I think, and that's the, that's kind of the dichotomy
here where it's like, if you think that that is and you were
very right and like, but dude, that is what Debo is.
Debo is hard to tackle. That's what makes him special.
My thing is, it's kind of like the running backs with the high
missed tackles forced where it's like the David Montgomery's of
the world. It's like the Naji Harris I'm
going to shed 6 tackles for one additional yard.
That's kind of my nightmare with Debo that I'm seeing here.
Where? He got now he did have to break.
He had to break 2 tackles to get the last 10 yards and touch
them. The run was very well blocked
too and not it. Was well blocked, but it wasn't
like he was just walking in behind his blockers like guys.
No, he didn't. He didn't.
He did not. Yeah, I can't take that away
from him. He did break those tackles at
the end of the run. But man, go go back and watch it
one more time. There was also a guy, yeah, once
he turned the corner, the, the, the inside linebacker tried to
tackle him and like he just like went straight into Debo and like
it was like the the Taco, even though it was an inside
linebacker or our safety trying to hit him as hard as he could,
the Taco had such a little impact on it that it was like, I
don't like it might not even encounter as a like, as an
attempt to tackle. No, I think that's fair enough.
Mind to it? I think it's really good.
When you look at, when you look at like prime Debo.
He. He was never a burner.
Like his 4/4 time was like a 448, so like never a burner.
But he did used to be a little bit faster.
Like I don't think he's quite slow, but he did used to be
faster. Like he slowed down a little
bit. And then because of that, he's
going to have to break more tackles now to get the like last
yardage, which means more miles on the clock.
So like he probably is a first half of the season guy, but I do
think the first half of the season is going to be strong
because like you're saying where it's like Debo fits the the the
offense so well where he has rinky dink shit and then it's
fucking Debo Samuel. You can't tackle them.
So he turns that rinky Dick shit into like something good.
And it's it's well, or when it's well orchestrated and the blocks
are good, the play is going to be awesome.
Yeah, that's I, I'm, I'm coming around to your point of view on
it. I think my after like
synthesizing my opinion after watching the game and watching
him and I I think where I stand is cautious optimism on him
where like I definitely see, I see the good a little bit better
than I did previously just from hearing you lay the case out.
But yeah, I I would the upside seems a little capped to me in
that like. Yeah, it is it.
Is but the like vintage demo Samuel season's not happening.
That's not on the right. That's.
Not in the car, no. No.
But you could get, you could get a pretty good outcome for what
you paid for him. The one that's a little more.
I, I, I'm conflicted with this one.
I want to talk through it with you.
But Keenan Allen to me, there's, there's a lot of stuff going on
here. Number one, we saw him look
totally, totally washed last year in Chicago.
Now I I think that that might have just been some bears stink
on him. I think that that was the bears
stink. I really, really do.
Yeah. I mean that DJ Murr Stone too,
and I think DJ Murr is still awesome.
Yeah, that's, that's very fair. I just I wonder how useful
Keenan is going to be as this season evolves at, you know, we
we talked about it earlier, like the older guys, you know, are
going to look better at the start of the season than they
will at the end of the season. So I wonder how he holds up in
that regard. I'm also wondering how when the
Chargers don't have quite as many drop backs, you know, what
it looks like for Keenan Allen, because he's more like, you
know, he's not getting tons of like super, you know, high, high
A dot stuff like he got the touchdown.
You know, he still can do the Keenan Allen stuff where he's
like he's good at getting open and he he can find the soft
spots in his own. And but I'm, I'm just a little
concerned that as the season goes on, he just ends up being a
the kind of guy where there's really not a lot of ceiling.
And then the thing that that used to make him great where
it's like, yeah, but it's so consistent.
You'd get so many targets. That's also gone.
And it's like it, it's still consistent, but it's like 3 to 5
targets. That's the, that's my.
Oh yeah, the the prime, the prime Kane of the Allen thing is
gone. Like I, I, I agree with you.
Like where it's never going to be like Kane of the Allen is
just Kane of the Allen anymore. But definitely I do think like
in terms of like even like what the closing price and that was
the most expensive where you're getting 78% route share, which
is like not really part time. Like to me, that's not part time
at all. Like that's that's borderline
starter for the team. Like he got like I know they
dropped back a ton, but he said he did get 32 reps and then.
And then you also, you get the element of when he's out there,
it's to get Keenan Allen the ball because he moves the
chains. Yeah.
And obviously, so he scored 20 points here and that's helped by
the touchdown that's helped by the massive PROE and, and, and
maybe his maybe his projection should be like 10 points and
every game. And like we all have a bunch of
team. Hopefully nobody's teams.
Like that's like, oh, I have to start them.
Maybe some Xavier wordy teams that you have to you have to
start them now, but hopefully not too many.
And so I don't think like I'm not super at juice, but like I
do think relative to my expectations going in where
Keenan Allen was kind of washed and, and they were kind of
saying what they had in them, like there's, there's still
clearly juice left there. It was just kind of my, my take
away. And like he's going to have
like, maybe this is the high watermark and 20 points is kind
of sad as a high watermark, but like.
That's. That's fantasy juice.
Yeah. And you take that I as I think
through like our process in the offseason and as far as like
ranking him and the inputs we had on him.
I I don't really think that our, you know, the probability of him
retiring, not playing in the NFL this year.
I don't really think we were that off on that.
We didn't have it terribly high, but we did.
We had it, you know, non 0. Right.
Right for the summer, 'cause he was.
Silent for a lot of the years on signed.
Deep into training camp, you know, like.
There's a definitely no noise like with with Nick Chubb, like
even before he was signed, it was like Nick Chubb would really
like to sign somewhere, right? Right, so we're.
Quite getting that. And then we also got a Mary
Cooper who retired. Yeah, exactly.
So I I kind of wonder if we just ran a little bad on Keenan
process wise or if really like the spot where we were weak is
the inputs for hey, what would Keenan Allen actually do were he
going to be playing? We probably attributed too much
of the bears stink to him there and and I think that might have
been the weakness in our Keenan Allen projection.
But I do think there was a pretty substantial amount of
risk there where if you're drafting Keenan Allen, you did
manage to dodge a bullet, especially when the price rose,
you know, at the cheap price. That probably was like our bad
for for assuming that the bears stink was was not because of the
bears. And then that part of it was
Keenan was washed. But I do think you want to be
pretty cautious on on guys like this when you start to see the
fall off because it it can go quick.
So just wanted to talk through that as a process thing and like
and think through it. I mean, it's definitely going to
go down as as an L like I, I've got to got to hold the L on it
for the Keenan Allen Fage from the result.
But I I don't know if like probabilistically if it was as
big of an L, but I I do think I. No, I, I get you.
I, I think process wise it was OK where we, we were baking in a
lot of a decent member retirement risk, which was a
real risk. Then once that retirement risk
kind of got somewhat eliminated, it was never fully eliminated as
seen by Mary Cooper retiring. And we still like there was
still some probability that is going to come back and stink.
And I, I don't, I don't, I don't think, I don't think that we
were terribly wrong on that. But like that's like we're
reacting to news. He's not retiring and he's kind
of good like that. That's that's where we are.
Yeah. Anyone else on this chart or did
you want to move on to the next one?
I, I, I have made a note to talk about Travis Hunter and, but I
think we kind of covered him with him getting kind of like
him getting the quick a dot stuff to get involved.
He did get the downfield shot and we're we're excited about
Travis. Hunter, he's he's going to be
good. He's going to be fun.
I think the floor is quite high just with the way that Liam
Cohen likes to run his offense and the role that he's already
got carved out for Travis Hunter.
So it's you got to be excited after this first game, although
it wasn't a huge fantasy game, you got to feel good.
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And then moving on to the the
kind of like not quite backups, but like very rotational guys.
It's kind of funny seeing puka on on this chart.
He did it last year too. It's it's Evergreen.
Took it to cool on the backups chart.
He came out like other game two or three.
Times it was 3. Times he was like his eye was
bleeding. Then the independent evaluator
said, yeah, you're you're a fucking nick, mate.
Like we're checking, we're double checking you for
concussion. And but then when he came back
out, like we need to get this guy to fall.
Yeah. It is kind of weird like
obviously just that I don't know, not a lot of signal in
that kind of like wacky usage. I did.
I did see, I do see Jayden Higgins.
He came out pretty heavily targeted and and and you kind of
consider targets errand like for somebody who's more rotational
as a rookie in in their first game, you do love to see them
earning their targets. I did.
I did see a note that he he dropped the pass that ended into
a pic. I I don't I, but I know you did
have did you watch that game? I don't think I saw him drop the
pass into the pic. There was there's a play where
he got a target that I think I'm remembering this correctly.
He got like a low target that ended up in the dirt that I
thought that he he could have caught.
Shouldn't he caught OK? He had a drop.
Is is basically OK, so maybe a maybe I'm remembering a note?
I, I could, I could be wrong on that one too, though.
I I need to go back and watch that one.
But yeah, definitely encouraging to to get, you know, as high a
weighted targets for route run as he did first game as a
rookie. I would expect that to grow.
You know, the the barriers to him there of like the Xavier
Hutchinson and the whatever else the Titans or the taxes were
rolling out entirely unconcerning to me.
So think you have to feel good about Jayden Higgins just going
to be the classic rookie, you know, journey of a little little
bit of a slower start for him, but definitely see this as a a
bullish start for him in spite of.
Right. He got 21% targets per run with
A17A dot. So he was half he was definitely
having to earn those guys. So like maybe he's starting out
as kind of like a rotational deep shock guy and but like it
for them to even though they're they're they're they're bringing
them on as a rotational deep shock guy.
He's he's earning the targets when he's doing it.
So you do feel hopeful that that will lead to the role expansion
that we that we want. And then the other one that I
guess so like Stefan digs on this chart, obviously a big part
of that is coming off the ACL tear.
And but normally when you see guys who are being eased back
from injury and not played that much, you see a huge targets per
out run because they're like, OK, well, now we're good players
on the field. We're going to target them,
which I'm not really seeing with that with Steph Diggs.
So like that has me, yeah, that has me a little bit concerned.
Yeah, I don't think it's particularly bullish for Diggs,
especially given that the offseason reporting was how
healthy he was and how far ahead of schedule and he's, you know,
wheels up all systems go. So I also think that in this
game, early in the game, he wasn't on the field as much.
It actually was that he he got on the field later in the game,
which is a little weird to me. So yeah, not not feeling
particularly bullish on digs. I mean, the Patriots had a ton
of drop backs. So I mean, if you if you look at
all the Patriots weapons, they all had a lot of targets.
Like Demario Douglas I think had 7 targets.
Hunter Henry had 7 targets, 6 targets for Treveon Henderson, I
think it was 7 for digs, 8 for booty.
Like everyone got targets. It was pretty spread out and
that's actually that's kind of what we saw last year as well in
that May sort of spread it out. I, I, I don't know if that's
anything to do with May's tendencies as a passer.
And if it is more just like, hey, there's not a dominant #1
here to like earn all of the volume and have it consolidate
on them. So it'll be cure.
It'll be definitely something I want to keep an eye on as the
season progresses. I I think that should someone
step up and be able to consolidate, there's some
opportunity here with what we hope is a, a really good
quarterback. You know it, it seems optimistic
for me. Like I, I do want to say like
jury's still out though, 'cause I, I mean, the first season it
was just such a dire situation that, you know, you, you just
take the good and you throw throw out the bad because so
much of it was situation. But I would have liked to see a
little bit better here against what's supposed to be a pretty
poor Raiders defense. So that was that was just like
slightly concerning to me as someone that's really in on May.
But maybe it's something where as the the better weapons emerge
in the offense, it consolidated a little bit more and the
offense becomes more efficient. But yeah.
Yeah, it wasn't so bad. And and to me the the spread
around nature of the targets is kind of highlighting to me that
what that's highlighting is that none of them are very good.
Yeah, I agree. And so maybe Drake May isn't
spectacular himself, but I think, I think I think he's
doing just fine given the weapons.
But yeah, I know what inner deepest, most enlightened
fantasies of Drake May in his rookie year, he was going to
elevate things. He was going to like drive all
the spectacular efficiency. And maybe he'll have games like
that. Yeah.
But yeah, it, it, it, it you got the Week 1 where it's a little
disappointing. And it it's, it's hard to see
Dada stop playing out at this point.
Yeah, got to talk about I what I think is the winner from the
Broncos, you know, rotational, who is going to be the guy that
Sean Payton likes, Marvin Mims. You can just throw that one in
the trash. That one's done.
The Marvin Mims role did change in that he is on the field now
more than like 40% of snaps. The Marvin Mims usage did not
change and that he's only targeted on these, you know,
behind the line of scrimmage or close the line of scrimmage
bullshit things. Troy Franklin is eating his
lunch for the deep stuff. So Troy Franklin is the guy that
Troy Franklin is what you wish Marvin Mims got to add to his
game. Troy Franklin actually is the
one getting to do that. So he is he's the one that's the
most exciting Broncos pass, catcher, net or receiver rather
outside of Cortland Sutton. Know you got some upside there
where if Troy Franklin can consolidate stuff and and earn
more snaps, then he could be a little exciting.
I mean, we, we've already seen like how Troy Franklin hits at
the end of last season. It's like, Oh yeah, Troy
Franklin can just like get behind a guy and go for a 60
yard touchdown. And that is that's the thing
that he does. So that part's exciting.
You know, the flies in the ointment and the warts on the
frog. It's the wartiest frog covered
in the fly, flyiest filled ointment because Sean Payton
does the Sean Payton bullshit where, you know, next week Troy
Franklin might run fewer routes inexplicably, you know, or we
learn the name of a new receiver that Sean Payton has become
infatuated with like or Tyler Bidet is out there getting
Staffs, a wide receiver now who could have thought?
You know, he frustrated us in week 1 as a running back.
Now he's out there taking. So there's so much stuff where
it's scary. There's there's lots of ways to
like derail the Troy Franklin train from leaving the station.
But I think at least at this point, like the train is on the
tracks and you're just hoping that it continues on down over
the course. Here's what's interesting, I
don't know if there was an entry to Mims or something like this,
but Tri Franklin actually had more routes than Mervyn Mims
did. It was 65% from Franklin versus
63% for Mims. And, and while they do have,
they have the same A .88 and a half, yeah, Marvin Mims was like
mostly scam targets with then one big deep shot to like make
the average. Whereas Franklin was getting
mostly kind of intermediate stuff and then also better
earning after he got 21% targets per run.
So earning those targets better. And so I what I'm saying is I
actually, I agree with you that like, hey, Franklin is actually
firmly the number 2 receiver right now.
And that's not a that distinction is not helping you
win fantasy games right now. And we're hopeful that that he
expands that, especially as he continues to play well.
But yeah, I like your note that Sean Payton is that he's he's
prone to frustrate us. So he may do that here also, but
hopeful that Franklin's play continues to impress and get him
more playing time. Yeah, the only the only other
guy I actually quick note on Elama de Zacchaeus.
Elama de Zacchaeus is like currently occupying the role.
We would hope that Luther burden eventually takes over, right?
We'll see how long he hangs on to it.
He seems cromulent, you know, like he he's reasonable.
He he did fine. I would expect Burden to be able
to wrest that away from him. And then of course, we have to
talk about Jayden Reid. Jayden Reid setting all kinds of
records. First NFL player to play with a
Jones fracture. It's never happened before.
No one else has ever played with a Jones fracture.
First NFL player to catch a touchdown with a Jones fracture.
First NFL player to return a punt with a Jones fracture.
Most punt return yards by a player with a Jones fracture.
Most receptions by a player with a Jones fracture?
Draco. I'm starting to think maybe
Jaden Reed didn't have a Jones fracture.
Is it possible that the Packers radio host who said that he had
a Jones fracture may have not had correct information?
Right, that's what happened at this point, like I was a like it
it's a little worrying when you see I I was definitely worried
where you see that throne out there and it's like, hey, nobody
is ever able to play with this. And then I expanded like I did
like a search where I looked at where I, I did one of the the I
think it was Google or Twitter where I did like, Hey, give me
some comps of players that have played through drums factors and
it's like none exists. OK, expand this to expand this
to all sports ever. Has anybody ever played a
professional sport? And they're no, it cannot be
done. Like somebody tried in soccer
and they were unable to. Yeah, I, I did some similar
research where I, I found all of the instances of Jones fractures
that were reported in the league and then the prognosis and what
happened after the fact. Everyone either goes on IR, gets
season ending surgery. Like no one, no one plays in the
Jones fracture, Right, Right. Yeah, what a lot like.
The narratives that they were like, what if this is just a
crazy guy? Like he just has so much dog in
him that he's going to try and do it and, and, and, and you're
right. It's like, it's just like it's
an impossible thing, like. So, so yeah, one of my one of my
big takeaways this offseason is, you know, being a newshound
consuming the information is a very important part of the
process. Being able to successfully and
accurately parse the information and think critically about stuff
is such a huge advantage that you have over the vast, vast
majority of your competition. Like, again, we had people that
were saying Chris Rodriguez is actually the running back here.
He's the starting running back for the Commanders.
You buffoon. The coach said that Chris
Rodriguez could do stuff at the goal line.
Like just the ability to think critically and like pay
attention. Right critical time is so
important. And put together all the
evidence and and having. So and so said this is going to
happen. So therefore this isn't it.
Like Marvin Mims ran all the routes for for the the starters
in Denver pre season. So that's just how it's going to
go. Brock Bowers is the backup to
Michael Meyer. I don't know if you heard like
there's just, and, and the crazy thing is like the market reacts
on stuff like that. And like, so I feel like this
whole offseason, some of our largest advantages came from us
simply talking through situations like that and being
like, all right, what's a reasonable interpretation of
this? What it, what is the range of
outcomes, you know, given this information that we have?
And so many times I felt like I was watching discourse happen
around these things where we had logically deduced what the most
likely outcomes were. And not only were people like
not getting to what we thought the most likely outcomes were,
they were 180° in the wrong direction.
So just a, a little PSA that you can like, it does not take very
much to vastly, vastly beat your opponent's.
Like all you got to do is like spend a little bit of time and
think critically about the information that you're
consuming. Agreed.
And so I think that I think that finishes us for Week 1 and start
chasing. I had a great time as always and
that we'll we'll talk to everyone next week.
He's duck footed. He looks really weird when he
runs if it walks like a duck. Wasn't his run like compared to
like a duck and toad good, duck footed bad.
There's trouble. You call DW.
Duck, duck. Maybe it's a duck.
He's losing like a round of draft capital because of the
direction of this beat point. I'm taking the duck footed
discount. Would he be better if he wasn't
duck footed? Probably.
But like he just was happening offense.
I'm pretty sure he can fucking move.
You're right. The the running style is crazy.
Like Russell Wilson, it's not good.
Incredible clip. Have a great week everybody.