Today on ADP Chasing, we are, for the first time in the show's
history, bringing in a guest that has watched more than a
single snap of football. It is, of course, the perceptor
of receptions, the king of fantasy at Yahoo Sports, Matt
Harmon. We're going to help you identify
edges in the best ball market at wide receiver in a year where
prices are higher than ever. This is ADP chasing.
Let's go. Pat Fryer helmo this.
Is what this is what I'm hot Anita hand.
Job. Fix.
Your side. And also play chase.
You can't handle the heat. It looks like we're finally at
this point here, right? How's everybody doing, Matt,
Thanks for joining us. You have a good 4th of July
holiday week. Oh yeah, man, I was off for the
first time, you know, and forever took the full week off
to not think about Both work well reception, perception and
Yahoo combined. And also moving across the
country didn't think about either those things for a week
and now it's like smacking me in the face being back today.
So yeah, that's the post post vacation anxiety slapping me in
the face all at once. But.
I'm happy to not think about at least the anxiety part here for
the next next hour or so with you guys, so I appreciate you
guys having me way too. Kind of an introduction and I'm
excited to chop it up today. Awesome.
Happy to have you. Very excited to talk about
Deontay Johnson and Brandon and I, You look great.
Well, we've been and yeah, we've been doing a lot of thinking
about, thinking about reception, perception and.
ESPN Open Score and like how to leverage these things to draft
teams, so I'm looking forward to a robust conversation.
Yeah, should be awesome. Yeah.
Before we get started, I think just to give the listeners a
heads up, we're basically gonna be looking through just wide
receiver ADP today, a little bit different from the normal show
outline and talking through Matt's reception perception data
and maybe trying to help find edges at ADP.
But before we go into that, Matt, if you want to just give
like our listeners or maybe I'm sure most of our listeners are
familiar with you, but just give people a quick overview of what
you do at reception, perception, sort of rough outline of your
process, that kind of thing, just to help people kind of get
grounded and what we're gonna be talking about.
Yeah, I think all of us that play fantasy or like watch the
NFL on a really intense basis, we all kind of inherently
understand that wide receiver production is, I mean it's.
One of the most, I would say they're like the position is
overall the most dependent on like outside variables to go
right in order to accrue production.
I think we all kind of understand that basically any
yards target, anything that, anything, any metric that
involves that stuff is taking the variable, the quarterback,
the environment, the offensive play caller, you know like you
need the offensive line to block the play correctly.
So my goal almost a decade now in that.
It seems crazy to say that I've been doing reception perception
for for almost about 10 years here.
It's been to try as best possible to isolate wide
receivers from outside variables.
So what I do is over an 8 game sample for NFL players and
college players is go in and chart like you said more than a
single snap chart every single route that they run, every
single snap where they line up. Cuz I think that's where the
discussion has to start is you know we we talked about like
outside receivers and slot receivers a lot and fantasy but.
When you really want to breakdown exactly like what
these guys are doing is a huge difference between like what the
X receiver and what the flanker receivers asked to do.
So that's where everything starts basically.
And then from there it's how often do they run each route,
how often do they get open on each route type, how often are
they getting open against manned zone press coverage.
So really, again, trying to the goal with reception perception
is to isolate the player as much as possible from outside
variables and then again, really try to understand what bucket
they fit in at the position. And really then of course, just
like how good are they, right, Because we like to think that
volume finds or talent finds volume, opportunity finds
talent. So really, I think it's just the
starting point of how you've got to understand the receivers,
you've got to watch them play and then everything else comes
from there. Yeah, two things I really like
about what you're adding is what's happening when receivers
aren't targeted. That's something that for like a
long time you have like no real information on.
And then some. I've been really enjoying
digging into the numbers. This offseason is just stuff
like, you know, you mentioned the flanker, the exposition
stuff. You track, how often the guys
are lining up on the line of scrimmage, which I haven't seen
elsewhere. I think that's pretty cool too.
Yeah, that to me it's funny like there are statements I said
about, you know the overall, like well not the overall, but
like the success rate versus man's own press coverage
statements even in reception perception and I wouldn't have
said like. I wouldn't say not say now, but
like 8 years ago I was like Oh yeah, you know, because this
guy's bad and man coverage he's bad.
But if these guys are really good against, the example I was
come back to is like Juju in his early career.
I think like reception perception had him pretty
pegged. And this is a guy that's a good
player because he's good against zone coverage, but he's got
clear weak points like against man and press, and I think
that's put like a cap ceiling on who he's become.
Later in his career and like, I don't think he's a bad player.
I just think he was a little overrated earlier.
But the fact that he lines up off the line, the fact that he
was lining up a lot in slot in Pittsburgh and elsewhere, it
gets him away from those coverages that he's not really
good against. So like you said, like I think
that's really an important piece of the conversation that does
get kind of lost because. What these guys are doing when
they're running that X receiver route tree like a true vertical
X receiver, they might as well be playing like a different
position. Like David should talk about IU.
That's a great example of like what IU is doing verse like what
Devo Samuels doing. It's almost might as well be
different positions even though they're both labeled WR and
that's kind of an extreme example CUZ DeVos does backfield
stuff. But yeah, I think it's important
to kind of always start the conversation there.
I think the Juju example is interesting too, right?
Because. There was so much talk, and it's
always hard in fantasy to like separate the noise from the
signal, right? And there was so much talk that
Juju's just a product of Antonio Brown taking away coverage.
He's just, he's a slot guy. But at the time, if you're just
looking at Juju's like raw stats, his yardage, his catches,
and you don't look at where he's lining up in the field, you
think he's on the path to be. Dynasty wide receiver one,
right. Like a lot of people had him
ranked super high after that, right?
So I think like you said, understanding how a player win
wins is really important. And understanding that Juju
create at what he does, or at least back then was, you know,
really elite at what he did as a slot, slot zone beater.
But yeah, understand that cuz when you try to project him into
that full X wide receiver role, it takes a little bit of extra,
yeah, skill to to get there. So I think that's really an
interesting one. Matt can you can you just kind
of like give people a quick overview of how you see like the
the two outside positions that the the flanker and the ex cuz I
mean I think like I don't really get it fully like I when I went
to look like I remember Michael Pittman really jumped out to me
is like oh I guess he's not the ex cuz he's like a big wide
receiver. I just like figured he was.
Well, these are these are designations.
These are it depends on the offense, too.
Like, not every offense is going to have a flanker because it's a
designation from Dan Coryell's offense from the 1970s that,
like most of the modern passing game is built out of.
But like, for example, Cliff Kingsbury's playbook, they
probably would not have had a flanker, They would have had an
X&AY and a slot, and no one would have been designated the
flanker because the route concepts are different.
So it it sort of depends on. Who's calling the plays and what
verbiage they're using? 100% yeah I mean kind of
verbiage is different across different offenses, but just
from like a very basic high level standpoint like that X
receiver is going to be like tethered at the line of
scrimmage. He's not going to be moving
around pre snap. Like a good examples of Robert
Woods with the with the Los Angeles Rams like he was always
kind of their pre snap motion guy cuz he was the off ball
flanker and then. Like Brandon Cooks is that vert?
You typically want your X receiver to be somebody who's
gonna stress the defense out, which is kind of why like Alec
Pierce is the X receiver in in in Indianapolis.
Just to come back to your Michael Pittman example, and
they love to move Pittman around prior to the snap, you know,
kind of get him on some quicker hitting routes.
So you want your flanker. Like, it's great if your flanker
is a big time. Man press beater too like that,
that's awesome. But you definitely want your Z
receiver, your flanker receiver to be good in the short to
intermediate areas and and it's OK if he's more of a zone beater
than a man beater. And then obviously again the the
flanker position allows them to be moved around prior to the
snap and they don't necessarily have to And it it just depends
like Davis said on different offenses and who your players
are. Obviously we want coaches that
are going to coach to the personnel on the offense but you
know the more like. I I think these, the Shanahan
offense is a great one that they do typically have that when that
offense is functioning at its best, they have like a Julio
Jones and Andre Johnson, like that big prototypical X
receiver. Iuka's kind of playing that role
now, so that's kind of just a little bit of a high level.
The main thing is, are they on the line of scrimmage or are
they not. That's kind of the biggest
difference between X and and and flanker and then you can kind of
get it over around from there. Gotcha.
So just. Based on your data here, like
Terry Mclaurin, Mike Evans, DK Metcalf are kind of prototypical
yes receivers. Yeah, yeah.
And and it's funny because we definitely do profile players
based on size. You know, everybody does it.
I I definitely think like, oh, you want that X receiver to be
built like a Mike Evans like that.
But then yeah, Terry Mclaurin, he's not, not like the smallest
guy in the world, but he's definitely like a prototypical X
receiver that's not moving around prior to Snap and those
guys, definitely. Have the, I would say you know
this is subjectively, but I think based on the routes that
they run, the coverages that they face like again, they're
going to run into more tight physical press man coverage.
They're not going to have the the benefit of working the
sideline or they're going to be tighter to the sideline than
these other players are. I think it's the hardest
position of the three to play. So you know when you see a guy
like a rookie like Drake London that comes in and and runs out
as that pure X receiver and and plays it in my opinion extremely
well. I think that, like, that's a
really good signal all in of itself.
Yeah that's and and I mean these are these discrepancies are like
very useful I think in season, you know I think like the
positional stuff because you want to know who replaces for
injury and and stuff like that. But you know another key is
people do miss on this with rookies.
I think a pretty obvious example is like Devonta Smith assuming.
So and a lot they actually like just thinking like these guys
are small fast like they can only you know if you're if
you're five, 10178 pounds is like oh you're a slot wide
receiver and the the paradigm has just changed and in the NFL
now like that just doesn't have to be true anymore.
I love that you brought up Devonta Smith because that was
one of the most, like, interesting things to me going
into last season because. I was so and this is how you
know I have you know no life is like I was so fascinated as the
where were these receivers in Philly going to line up.
You know like who was going to be the X receiver verse who was
going to kind of be that that priest, that motion guy flanker,
you know moving the slot because like you mentioned Davis.
Like we had multiple years of evidence that both as obviously
a collegiate player he won the Heisen but as a rookie too of
Devonta Smith being. Excellent against press
coverage, excellent against man coverage and doing it from a
true exposition. But you know A J.
Brown in 2020 and 2020? Well, really, 2019 and 2020 was
an awesome X receiver for the Tennessee Titans.
Like he had run out of that position.
But then you saw him kind of in 21 accommodate Julio Jones,
who's been one of the best X receivers you know of all time,
and play as more of a flanker, play more in the slot that year.
And I was interested to see like was.
The Eagles going to kind of put a J Brown in that spot where
they going to like move Devon Smith around.
But then what you saw them do last year was, yeah, Smith
basically runs out as the X receiver.
And it's incredible in that role too, by the way, which I think
is a real credit to him. But then also then it gives them
sort of matchup flexibility with a J Brown to move him around the
field. That's nuts to me, that Devons
like, just from my very rudimentary understanding of
like, like I when I think Crystal Lava Mike flanker.
And I think AJ Brown's like X, I'm like okay.
Obviously AJ Brown's the XI. Don't even need to check like
what DuPont dismiss the X. That doesn't jive with kind of
my the basic understanding. Cuz I think, and I mean Matt,
you can speak better to this than me, but the things that it
takes to be a successful X receiver aren't just size.
And I think so many times we think of just like big guy he
can beat press coverage but the nuanced.
Yeah, the nuance. Aspects of like getting off the
line of scrimmage, like beating that initial press coverage,
sort of whatever, sidestepping all that stuff like Devonta
Smith is so technical and good at the very nuanced things, even
though he's like all of our sizes, basically, which is just
truly incredible, so. How different are these
positions in terms of cuz like one thing that strikes me out
this is like. Can I use this to predict snaps?
Like, you know, the Giants wide receivers are one where I was
like, oh, Isaiah Hodgins lining up on the line of scrimmage a
lot. You know, maybe that gives him
an advantage as we try to figure out where all these guys are
going to go. Maybe he actually has more of a
lead for the X snaps. And it's not all just there's
three wide receiver spots or there's two outside wide
receiver spots. Who's going to play outside?
Like, how different are these responsibilities and and duties?
Is it to the point where we can say, like, look, I mean, this
guy's shown the ability to line up on the line of scrimmage play
X that gives them an advantage over the other guys?
I think it's a huge part of it and the Giants are a great
example cuz like, let me tell you what, you're not running out
A3 receiver set of Paris Campbell, Wandell Robinson and
Sterling Shepard. And obviously, like there's
injury and you know, Sterling is one of the greatest reception
perception, what ifs of all time.
So all respect intended to Sterling Shepard, you know,
beyond the injury problems you're gonna have with those
guys. But yeah, like.
You're not asking Paris Campbell to play X receiver.
You're not asking Sterling Shepherd, when he's healthy, to
play X receiver. And you're definitely not asking
Wandell Robinson to do it and even like stretching those guys
into some some of those guys, you know, Sterling Shepherd
notwithstanding, like, I don't really think you're asking
Wandell Robinson or even Paris Campbell.
Maybe Paris Campbell can play like a flanker position.
I actually think he might be better than like the kind of
Bunny hop slot receiver stuff he's done at different times in
Indianapolis. He might be decent at that.
But yeah, I think. You can definitely use it to
predict like who these guys are going to, who's going to line up
in 3 receiver set especially. Nobody likes when you you talk
about this either but like that X receivers probably got to be a
pretty good blocker too. Like they're not.
They can't be like a stone zero in the run game.
And I think that's where we definitely get into problems
when we profile guys as like route running X receivers you
know versus like just big physical X receivers and
everything like that. Like you said, these smaller
guys can definitely run out there at that position but.
You want your outside receivers to offer you something in the
run game and two receiver sets. Again, I use a great example of
that. That like, I think part of what
got him out of the doghouse a couple years ago was he was like
blocking his ass off in the run game.
I think that makes him a good fit at that X receiver position
too. So somebody with a little more
size there in Isaiah Hodgins might provide them something
different than what these other guys do.
Oh, we normally spend about 30 minutes per show talking about
Isaiah Hodgins, So I'm glad I'm. Glad we still have 2525 more.
Don't worry, we'll get to it. Sorry, something like this is a
bit. Yeah, yeah.
Well, one thing I was just curious about, like sometimes,
like, so Deontay Johnson and George Pickens both lined up on
the line of scrimmage a lot. So, like, what's that's also
kind of goes against, like, what I thought, Like there's one guy
who lines up on the line of scrimmage.
One guy who's off the line of scrimmage is the flanker.
How how is it that you know those two guys must both be on
certain plays lining up on the line of scrimmage?
At some points you you do get a play call.
I mean Matt Canada. Matt Canada does some weird
offenses stuff. It's not really one of my
favorite offenses in the entire NFL for sure.
But you had also those guys can at different times.
You know one guy can be the X receiver on the play and then
the other guy can be the X receiver on a different play.
I think they actually have a pretty interesting combo there
and that George Pickens is sort of that like prototypical
throwback X receiver, a guy that's.
Not necessarily. I would say a great separator,
but he is combative at the catch point.
He does kind of profiles more of that player.
I wouldn't say he's, I wouldn't say he's like going to you know,
he can be kind of along. I just a guy talk about him like
every one of my shows, like the Devante Parker axis of X
receiver. Never a great separator, but
really good in contested situations.
I think he kind of fits into that bucket.
And then Deonte just been such a good separator and such a good
routerunner despite being, you know, not an A+ athlete and
being a smaller guy. He and he's definitely a mistake
prone player. You know that, no doubt about
that. But like he can be.
So yeah, he does get open and he can do that at the X receiver
position. So that gives him some
flexibility to like, all right, we can start to take some of the
off the line because also Deontay's like snaps on the line
have gone down last year compared to the year prior, if
I'm not mistaken. So like a lot of that is they
had a guy this year that could be or this past year that could
do some of that X receiver stuff, but they also do some you
know, untraditional things where.
You'll get both those outside receivers on the line of
scrimmage, or you'll get the receiver in the slot on the line
of scrimmage, and then you know the flankers off the ball or the
tight ends off the ball. So they do a lot of that with
Pat fire move to where he's off the ball as well.
That's interesting, interesting. Cool.
Well, it's all interesting until you realize that Alan Robinson
is getting 97 targets this year and there's nothing any of us
can do. I I could.
There's if I really if you get enough beers in me, I could
like, fall. Ass backwards into like Alan
Robinson gets more targets than George Pickens.
You know, like take this year I. Think that's be careful if you
gave me, if you gave me like 3 to one odds on that, I think I
might take it. Because I mean, to be honest,
yeah, were there target rates that I.
Mean three to one odds last year.
They probably were closer than we wanna admit.
Even last year, when Robinson was awful cuz Pickens was pretty
low. But anyways, let's while we have
Matt, I wanna I wanna get into some of this ADP debates for the
top players. I wanna quickly like Orient
people to what the numbers we're gonna be showing are here.
So these these are the charts that you're probably familiar
with with Matt stuff. Success rate, success by route
and route percentage for different players.
This week I dug into creating this metric.
Which is called success rate over expected.
And I just wanna quickly walk people through what that means
so they understand it cuz we're gonna be talking about it on the
charts. It's essentially a way.
And I know Matt, you've actually written about this, condensing
all of your work into a single metric is not the goal of
reception perception, and it's way more nuanced than that, but
just for the purposes of putting well, we.
Did it anyway. We did it, yeah.
Part of putting out like data is that.
You know, once it's out there, you kinda gotta let it go in
terms of like what people do with it.
So yeah, and hey, this is a lot better, Sam, what you've done is
a lot better than taking like, screenshotting one of the charts
and being like, here's some take that I would probably never
have, but insert person on Twitter definitely has.
And I'm like, all right, well, can't wait for this to come back
to me and so. Yeah, so I don't wanna say this
is. Kind of my metric and Matt is
not like fully rubber sampling or endorsing it, but I'll
explain how it works and then we can talk through it.
So for Crystal Ave. for example, you see his success rate by
route and his route percentage. What you can do then and this
table here kind of illustrates it.
We have NFL average success rates across all of these
routes. So say for example, look at the
corner route, the NFL average success rate is 62% on those
routes. Chris Alave last year had a 94%
success rate on the corner, which is extremely good.
So in that next row, success rate over expected, you see that
on a corner rate, he had sort of a + 31% success rate over
expected on that route. Then like if you do that across
all of the routes that a player runs and then weight it by the
percentage of the different routes they're running.
You get to an overall success rate over expected by route.
So essentially what this does is like if a player has a really
high success rate, but they're running a ton of easy routes,
say like just a bunch of screens, slants, curls.
This metric will actually harm them a little bit, but if they
have a low success rate and they're running a ton of tricky
routes, nines, posts, corners, etc, this metric will actually
make them look a little bit better.
So that's essentially what this is doing.
I also did this by that was by route and I also did this by
coverage. So a very similar idea, but we
can look at players, routes and success rate versus man double
teams, man single teams and zone and basically I'm not gonna walk
through it, but it's very similar math there you can get
to a success rate over expected by coverage.
So you have those two numbers and what I did is just average
them. I said there's probably some
signal in that success rate over expected by route.
There's probably some signal in the success rate over expected
by coverage. I average them together and
that's essentially the number that's going to be showing up on
these charts. So before we get into it, Matt,
I'm curious like does this, I realize it doesn't cover
everything. You do a ton more than this,
like you you track and test and catch, you track yak.
There's like way more to your analysis than just this, but.
I'm curious if you like your reaction to to this metric, if
you think it generally makes sense, or yeah, just just any
thoughts you have. Well, I think that it makes so
much inherent sense. And you know, this is something
I talk about a lot too, is that these guys who are running more
vertical route trees like you're in there is unnecessarily like a
lower expected success rate when you're running a lot of nines,
posts and corners. You know, we talked about
Pickens earlier. He's a guy who does a lot of
that and he like he does have some lower success rates.
Especially against zone coverage, some of that might not
necessarily be his fault or would maybe be different if his
route tree was mixed up a little bit.
Christian Watson is another example from last year.
But then you see a guy like a lot and I'm glad you know a lot
of is a guy that you put here on the on the slide is like he's
not running. He's running like an extremely
vertical route tree, but has like a 75% success rate versus
man coverage, which is extremely, extremely high, which
is why I'm so bullish on him. As a player.
So he's a great example and I think sometimes when you put
example to something like that it's why it kind of passes the
smell test to me and cuz yeah, it's something I talk about all
the time. Like it's it starts with
alignment for sure, but then you got to bleed into like what
routes are they running and and that might be very, very
different for a guy like Olave versus you know Garrett Wilson
from last year. Just another example to pit 2
rookies together to against each other.
Yeah, that that makes sense. Yeah.
So and I think just like a way that I thought about this, if
you're if you got lost in all the math there, totally fine.
I get it. It's a lot of numbers.
It's confusing. I'd say like generally success
rate over expected in theory, you can think of it as how often
a player gets open relative to expectation based on their route
tree and their coverage faced. So that's more or less what this
number is telling you. And the route tree one I think
it could be important for fantasy because some of the
deeper stuff like. Produces fantasy points in big
ways, right? We don't wanna penalize a lobby
for running 9 routes in any way cuz like, give us those nine
routes. Yeah, we want, We want.
Exactly. Yeah.
So this okay now what we're gonna talk through, we'll go
through the different sort of zones in the fantasy landscape
this year. This is showing the round one
and two wide receivers. So you see on this chart here a
ton of studs. All these guys have above
average success rate over expected.
The, the baseline for players in rounds one and two is around a 5
to 6% success rate over expected.
So these colors here highlighting the players that
are you know doing a little bit worse or much better to that
relative to where they're going in the draft.
So you know I think this is interesting like I think we
should be a little bit pickier this year in terms of the WAD
receivers were drafting very early, just cuz their prices are
so much higher. So again we're not saying like
you know. This metric isn't even saying A
Manra, Jalen Waddell or T Higgins are bad players.
It's just saying, like, compared to everyone else in this range,
they're not quite hitting on the level of the A.J.
Brown, Diggs, Avante, Adams. So I wanted to start with with a
Manra. I think some of the stud guys on
the left hand side here like what's the point of talking
about Swan Diggs or Tyree Kill? We all know those guys are just
absolute studs, so let's dive into a Manra.
He shows up here with just a 1% success rate over expected
again, that's that's still good. I think part of the reason why
he doesn't flash as much as other guys here is one, he
struggles and sort of some of the harder routes in your data.
Matt on the post and the Nine, he has sort of a higher
percentage of socalled easier routes, flats, slants and
screens. He also faced zone coverage a
bit more than players. In this range did so that's why
he shows up there. Yeah.
Just curious your thoughts on a Manra sort of at the, you know,
back half of the first round, early second round, What are
your thoughts on on him in that range?
Yeah, super unique role, right? I mean he's we're talking about
3% of his route, 3.8% of his routes were 9 routes, 4.2% of
his routes were curl routes, 2.7% excuse me, post routes, and
2.7% of his routes were corner routes.
He's not run a lot of downfield stuff he's running.
Almost. You know, when he came into the
league, I called him Bud like Cooper Cup, you know, and like
the ideal role that he would play was that type of role.
And I think that's again what he's gone on to play here with
the Detroit Lions. So what what he's doing is so
different from, you know, a guy like A.J.
Brown or Stefan Diggs certainly or you know any of these guys
he's. He's run extremely different
route tree than these players. So a lot of what I call Sam like
in terms of saying easy routes, just call him like he's run a
lot of layup routes, right. Like in which is great recorder
back like Jared Goff who loves to throw those layup routes.
We come do it with actual Cooper Cup.
We've seen him do it with this player now and I'm on Ross St.
Brown. He's tough though because I mean
dude like who who is stretching the field here for the Lions in
the first six weeks of the season when Jamison Williams
isn't playing like. Is it this version of Marvin
Jones? Is it, is it Johnson?
It's like, I mean it, it's it's tough to say.
So can you run? Look, I don't think DJ Truck's a
great player. I think he's, you know, he's
lost a lot of juice after all the injuries the last few years.
He's not really much of A separator, but he's a downfield
ball winner that that can stretch the field from that X
receiver position in that way. I mean, I don't know that any of
these other dudes are necessarily doing that.
And, you know, can you run a healthy, functional passing
offense? You know, is this guy going to
score a lot of touchdowns in the first six weeks of this year?
I mean, shoot, we also, by the way, like, we're talking about
Jameson Williams. We don't know who Jameson
Williams is going to be like, right?
There's a lot of projecting there, so.
He might be John Baldwin, buddy. Right, right.
A J Jenkins. I mean, if he's Galen Geiten,
it's still would help Aman, Ross and Brown, right?
Like, I think a little bit could help.
Yeah, yeah, I I just, I love Aman, Ross and Brown the player.
You know, I was really bullish on him last year cuz he'd shown
a lot of the skills that you want in this big power slot
receiving role. You know, a guy that can beats
own coverage, a guy that's really good on those layup
routes. But I think this kind of shows
that there's some things that he's not as good at as some of
these other players, like that's Okay and when he's playing in
this specific role from like an NFL receiver standpoint.
But when you're thinking about it from a fantasy standpoint,
like trying to hit a high ceiling, he's gonna need a lot
of things to go right. Cuz even all the things went
right for Cooper Cup a couple years ago when he, you know, won
the Triple Crown. He was awesome.
But you know, he had a quarterback that could stretch
the field vertically. He had, you know, some receivers
that could stretch the field vertically and Odell Beckham.
And then obviously Robert Woods was good and even Van
Jefferson's like, not a bad player either.
So. I don't know.
It's just those same ingredients aren't quite there for for Amman
Rah and and the Lions, but he's definitely about to get a
boatload of targets. It's just like how how a
efficient are those targets going to be and be like how far
down the field of those targets going to be?
Probably not very far. I I think on underdog,
specifically St. Bron's prices, it's probably
pretty bad. I just don't.
I don't see him developing into a 13 touchdown per season guy.
Now that doesn't mean he can't do it once.
Or a couple. It's not like obviously I think
he's very good. He got tackled at the one a
bunch last year and touchdowns are are sort of noisy.
Anyway, the Reeves made this comp to me and I've never been
able to get it out of my head, which is that he's Keenan Allen,
you know, he just he he is super dependable.
He's going to catch 100 passes a year, but you are just going to
be begging for 33 point weeks, you know like what you're going
to watch DK Metcalf. You know, just put some poor
49ers quarterback in an early grave and you're going to be
like, you know, say Brown is not doing that now on DraftKings,
which we have not talked about a ton here.
I think he's way better, right? Because he's going to like those
10 catch games. I mean, shit, he could get.
Multiple 10 catch games in that first six weeks before the
combination of 1 waiting for James and Williams to get back
and two just figuring out like can Sam LaPorte play 80% of the
snaps or do we need to be playing Brock Wright for the
first couple weeks anyway? And the Cory and I want your
take on this but like. It feels especially and this is
backed up by the data but like drafters getting scared of
Devonte Adams because Jimmy Garoppolo like may or may not be
the court. Like what are we doing here?
Do we did Does anyone really think it matters if Brian Hoyer
start like Devonte Adams is just going to be Devonte Adams.
It does like he I Zach Wilson could be his quarterback and I
wouldn't be concerned. Like what?
What are we doing letting Devonte Adams be like?
I see Jalen Waddell go ahead of Adams.
I got Adams at 16. In a draft last night, what are
people doing? I'm curious your thoughts pat on
on that, like the the atoms of Manra waddle grouping.
To me it's so clearly Adams, but do you have anything else to say
on like why? I don't know.
Do you have a different take on that?
Well, I don't want to be underweight really any of these
guys. So to me, like the thing with
Adams is that he is now falling. So if I'm sitting at like 11.
I think Adams might be more likely to get back to me
certainly than like a CD Lam. So I've taken, I've passed on on
Adams just to get exposure to the other guys and also to be
like I would like my discount that everyone else is getting.
But I don't really get it. I I I want to be overweight,
Adams and I am. We don't have to go really deep
into this, but I have just been wanting to make this point,
which is that we we draft teams like, not exposures.
So like, I'm not I'm not passing up on a guy I think is a good
value, just cuz I think I might get four more picks of value a
couple times in August. Like I I still want to be
drafting Devonte Adams instead of Oman Ross St.
Brown. But I also don't want to be
under I I guess my thing with Oman on Saint Brown is like, he
is his charts, really interesting, his reception
perception chart because he he kind of looks like he is who he
thought he was. It's like my take away from it,
like he does the things he does really well, he sucks, are the
things he doesn't do well. But like he's with Jared Goff,
like there's no, yeah, that's not a problem.
Like who care? Like if he does, he does the
thing that you would want Jared Goff's primary receiver to do
really well and he does it exceptionally.
So my goal with that group is to be as close to even on the non
Devante guys as I can and then overweight Devante Adams because
I think he's he seems like a pretty big value when he's in
the second round. Yeah.
Let's jump over to Waddle. He's the other guy we've alluded
to here. He also shows up again, 2%
success rate over expectation is still good.
I can't overstate that, but again, not as good as other guys
in this chart. I think that again is primarily
driven. He's definitely a different
architect than a Manra, but he still did have a high percentage
of his routes being flats, slants and screens.
This again, this is also 2020 to 2022.
So maybe part of that is baking in his routes from 2021
actually, which were a lot more in the short area than they were
last year. I believe his success rate,
first man. Kind of plateaued from year one
to year two. We didn't see a huge jump there.
And he also, this is kind of a minor note, but he faced a low
rate of double teams relative to a lot of these other wide
receivers. I mean that actually is baked
into this number a little bit. I'm guessing that's because.
Obviously Tyree kills on his team, so Waddle is not facing
the same, you know, press double coverage that some of these
other wide receivers are facing. So I think that's all baked into
his number here. But Matt, I'm curious your
thoughts on on Waddle. Do you think he has the
potential to to jump up into sort of the next year of guys or
do you think this assessment that the chart shows of him
being overvalued is, is accurate?
Yeah, he's a tricky 1 and I'm glad you brought up the
difference between year one and year two cuz like if you watch
Jalen Waddell in college and then you watched him his rookie
year, you'd be like, well, that's not like that, like his
rookie year is not what he's really supposed to be doing, you
know, that's really not like, I mean you you definitely want him
on some of these underneath and lay up routes like these really
good after the catch. Obviously he's got it really,
you know, he's got a ton of speed.
But yeah, in his rookie year, 24.4% of his routes were slants,
14.4% of his routes were flat routes, you know, and then 5.2%
of his routes were screens. All three of those numbers came
down, especially the flat route came down by almost like 50%,
you know, Which is great because he was certainly his best stuff
as a year two player was like running dig routes, was running
post routes, was running out routes and like beating zone
coverage. And he's really good.
I think in that area he's he's not.
Like some of this stuff against press coverage is not.
It's not bad, but it's not up to the the level of some of these
other players, like an Alave or Devante Smith, or even
especially like a Devante Adams for sure.
So I think there are some some holes in his game but still a
really good player and I mean I I think a great player and you
know is he ever is he like a one beer is he a true really good
high end number two I think that's kind of the from a like
talent perspective that's sort of where I'm I'm kind of
juggling him a little bit but it is worth noting too and I think
this is kind of be a good and a bad thing that.
The Dolphins last year used Tyree kill his.
His numbers aren't up on the site yet from last year, but
they will be by next week. He's the guy who they used him
more off the line than they did Jalen Waddell.
They had Jalen Waddell run like more of the X receiver route
tree as much as you can have. Like a true X receiver in that
offense. He was more on the line not
doing as much pre snap motion stuff.
So like again, that could be a good and a bad thing.
It's a good credit to Waddell and what he did last year, but
like they're the more like. Created touches stuff was
definitely Tyree Kill than it was Jlo Waddle last year.
Yeah. And that shows up in the targets
data for sure. I think Tyree had like 50 more
targets than than Waddle or something like that.
Pat, curious, you mentioned you wanted to be at the field with
Waddle. So yeah, curious just like in
your your bowl case for him, what makes you really excited
about him in the second round? Well, it's interesting that, you
know, you talk about the route. Changing, you know, his the the
mix of routes that he's running changing because that
definitely, like, you know, worked its way up into a dot,
which I is a number that I look at it a lot and you know, people
will be pretty familiar with. His a dot jumped from 7.0 as a
rookie to 12.7 last year. And to me, like that's huge.
That's like 2 completely different types of receivers.
Like that's an underneath, like a limited underneath, you know?
Probably primarily a slot guy. Ran 60% of his snaps in the slot
corner. PFF as a rookie, dropped down to
26% last year out of the slot. Mostly out wide last year and
his A dot jumps to 12.7. It's like he became, he like
literally became two different types of receivers by these
numbers and it sounds like that's backed up by the route
data And then. Waddle Waddle's interesting in
that in that way too. Just because you know.
I like made an offhanded comment in my Discord, you know the
other week it set out and then like logged off and you know set
off like kind of a firestorm And I said like yeah you know like a
dots not always a it's not like a why I said it was not a wide
receiver stat and what I remember that is that it's not a
wide receiver isolating stat right because you can look at
Jalen Waddell in 2021 with that like 7 yard average depth of
target and a lot of that is the circumstances around him.
It meant he could do that stuff really well.
But like if you took that. 7 yard average depth of target and
be like well he can't win downfield.
It's like well again no, we're talking about like look at the
guys 9 route success rate the dig route success rate the out
and corner route in his year one data in reception perception
like yeah this guy can clearly win downfield it's just his
quarterback was not throwing it downfield and.
Obviously you know that offense was really weird with all the
RPO like quick hitting stuff anyway.
So yeah, it's like sometimes, and this is not always the case,
a lot of times, like guys, a dot is what it is and like it is
very descriptive of the player. But I think this is a very good
example where that's not always the case.
It's a role stat. I think, you know it's like he's
he was being used in that underneath role.
He did it pretty well but new coaching staff and I love that.
You know, we can go see like OK he's being used in this role.
It's underneath role. But what what was his success
rate on the deep stuff? I was good.
OK yeah it's used in a slightly different role now which is
exactly what happened. I mean he jumped the the thing
with me with wattle is that the Tyreke, his efficiency and like
just in terms of target earning and target per outrun, all that
stuff like off the charts and then you just go to wattle.
So like to compare him to Tyreke.
He's going to look like Oh my God is it clear secondary option
also as a second year player. He was unbelievably good like
that. That's to me, that's the the
bull case for wattle. Like it's a very simple clean
bull case. Actually.
It's like I let's stop talking about Tyra Hill for a second and
just focus on wattles numbers compared to what we would
normally expect for a wide receiver to be drafted here.
Like you want a yards per hour run.
He had 2.46 yards per hour run last year's second run player.
He's a, you know, a very high draft pick.
Got elite speed this I think a lot of reasons to be excited
about him you know and then also now we're not sure what's going
on with this Tyree kill situation.
So there's like that's just like another reason for me to be like
God if I if I'm underweight this explosive second year player or
third year player now and he has a big season that's really going
to hurt. He has a big season and he he's
like the the clear top option on the Dolphins for six of those
games or whatever. Probably not that high of a
chance, but it's another reason that I really don't want to be
underweight him. Well, there's also outs with him
too. So like let's say maybe Jalen
Wattle if if there was a way for us to like truly distill skill
level, which is like kind of what this exercise is attempting
to get at. Obviously you know, true skill
level is sort of unknowable, but let's say it was knowable,
right? And let's say Wattles true skill
level is. Maybe we think he's an A minus
right now, but let's say in reality he's just a B or maybe
even a B minus. For fantasy specifically, I'm
not even sure how much that matters because there are other
options in terms of distributing the ball are chosen Anderson,
Durham, Smite, Eric, Umaku, Zama.
You know, just like Braxton Barrios, like anonymous players
who are not going to earn targets like, so I'm, I'm with
you. I mean obviously the other nice
thing about taking Waddle is that you kind of know what
you're doing with your team. You're like, OK, it's like, OK,
all right, I am taking to a in round nine, I'm taking Bateman
or Flowers in round eight like you have.
Like it's just. He lines up really well with
Lamar. If you want to try to do Lamar.
Exactly, exactly. He, he he builds really nice
teams for sure, yeah. Yes, Matt, we're referring to
week, week 17 correlation aren't off.
You're as as sick in the weeds as we are with the best Lamar,
yeah. I'm no, I'm.
I'm familiar. Carmen took a vacation and like
saw his family. So, like, you know, I mean, I
think, I think, I think maybe he's not thinking about Nelson
Agalore leading the Baltimore Ravens.
Now that correlates with Joe Model.
I'm not. I'm not thinking about it.
But I understand why you guys are talking about it, if that
makes it clear, Yeah, no, the whole time, Pat, you were
talking, I was like. Yeah, who's their third
receiver, right? Like, yes.
Yeah, that offense was great last year.
And they're like, hey, what we're gonna do is we're gonna
throw the ball to our good players and we have three
really, really, really good players.
And there is a scenario if this Tyreke thing goes S like they
could have one excellent player, maybe not an elite player, but
like an excellent player in Jalen Waddell and then.
Yeah, like Chosen the Artist, formerly known as Robbie, you
know, with a Y&E i.e. at one point.
You know, like we're not looking at it very.
So, weirdly enough, on Underdog he's chosen Anderson.
On DraftKings he's Robbie chosen.
So I don't yeah, which which one is?
It that screwed up my DraftKings rankings for it that we like,
added them to the DraftKings rankings and they broke.
He's Robbie shows he's the guy. That we're I'm like merging data
sets from like Matt's data from like all these different sources
and he has a different he's like Robbie Anderson with a Y in some
data like Robbie Anderson. I he's like different different
name on every source. I'm like please guys let's pick
a name for this guy. I was about to say he's like,
yeah, he's like a data scraping nightmare.
There was a, you know, when I, when I merged, like my old
reception perception data when I was, you know, with the fantasy
footballers and doing their draft kit stuff and then like.
Merging it with the site there was for whatever reason in in
that old data set DK Metcalf was like D dot K dot Metcalf and
then I had just written him in as DK Metcalf because I think
that's how it's pretty like 95% sure that's how it was supposed
to be. And I got so I got like one
insane e-mail or like comment or something about how like how can
I even trust you with like reliable data if you don't even
know what the geez yeah so I feel you on the on the Robbie
Chosen Anderson thing. Yeah, final thing on wattle I
think or final two things we'll say.
I think that the risk with wattle I think is not like the
skill level risk. I think you guys have outlined
that well. I think the risk is just Miami's
systemic risk like you, you look at the second-half splits with
Miami and they really did fall off a Cliff that could have been
to a injury related that could have been you know defenses
playing these guys differently related, I don't know.
But I think there is some systemic risk with Miami
jumping. To that.
Yeah, they started defending the middle of the field a lot more.
There was a lot of film takes on that I saw.
Exactly. And that's secondly, I'll say we
talked about Chosen, Anderson, all these guys, Braxton Barrios
to get three and a half million guaranteed.
So I I think he's going to be the third guy here.
Don't I know it. He's an extremely good round
twenty thing. Yeah, yeah.
But anyways, let's, let's move to Devonta Smith.
We've alluded to Crystal Lava, I think kind of outlined the case
here. He shows up really well here,
but let's, let's move on to Smith.
He's a guy shows up here with 6% success rate over expected,
which you know among this grouping in the back half of the
second round is really strong. Matt, curious, we talked about a
little bit with Smith versus versus A.J.
Brown, but I think the the sort of hot debate in the fantasy
community now is like can Devonta Smith like even
surpassed A.J. Brown or at least like equal,
equal his production from a fantasy standpoint?
Do you think like would you put that in?
Can we frame this too? Is Devon Smith versus T Higgins
a little bit because they're going right next to each other
in ADP. And I think in some ways it's a
similar kind of overall situation in terms of 1A1B type
wide receiver stuff. Yeah.
Yeah, I think that is a really good way to frame it because
like if you just ask me the question like who's the best
#21B receiver, like in this bucket right here of Jalen
Waddell, Devon Smith and T Higgins, I think.
Smith is the best player of the three.
Like from just a pure individual standpoint, is he better than a
J. Brown or is that like possible.
I mean a J Brown's just so good. Like we're talking about a guy
who's been number like he's been in the top three or top five and
success rate versus man and press coverage for three
straight years now. Like in among the very best
receivers in the league of beating man and press coverage
and he had his highest success rate versus own coverage last
season last season of his entire career and like.
Yeah, he's been one of the best receivers in the NFL for
basically since he got into the league, so it's tough to say
whether Smith could be better than A.J.
Brown. But I think if you're just
looking at it versus T Higgins or versus Jalen Waddell, from a
pure individual player perspective, I think he's the
best of those three guys and what he does really well.
Is route running. It is nuanced and he does it
from a vertical perspective, which is why he pops up here in
a success rate over expected because he's running, you know
20.4% of his routes or 9 routes. He's running above average rate
of corner routes. He's it within the NFL average
in terms of post routes. He's not running a lot of slants
and flats and stuff like that. He is definitely winning big boy
down field NFL routes. He's running against press
coverage, 87th percentile success rate versus press
coverage in his second season. Just a really good player now.
Again, I think he's better from an individual standpoint than
these other guys, and that's no disrespect to them.
They're really good players too. I just happen to think he's a
little bit better. Do you see like the Cuz when
we're taking a guy like Smith, there's that upside of Kenny
maybe force a little bit more of A, you know can he become the
one A / A J. Brown even.
But even if he doesn't like, can he just kind of keep that like,
I mean he did lead the team in targets I believe.
So can you kind of maintain that?
But then there's also the, the important thing of is this guy
just so good, you know in combination with the other wide
receiver who's so good, can they just kind of gather all the
targets? And so like if you look at Smith
versus Higgins, do you see a big difference there in terms of
like how their talent will kind of protect their situation and
create upside for them or are they?
Both good enough to where it's kind of the way people generally
perceive it. I think that yeah, there's
probably, there's probably a chance that he could be better
than A J Brown but it's probably like a 5% chance, like just
better as a pure individual. But by the way we're talking
about 5% that he's better than one of the guys that just said
has been the one of the best receivers in the NFL, like a top
five receivers since he basically.
Got into the league right? So it might be a small
percentage chance, but the fact that the chance exists is just
something. Yeah, it's a high bar to clear,
but the important thing is kind of what you're saying too about.
We just had this conversation with the Dolphins like who's the
Eagles third receiver? Obviously they have Dallas
Goddard, which is a pretty big difference than what the
Dolphins are doing. But after that.
I love. I love these, you know?
Concentrated. Offenses.
Yeah. I mean yeah cause Watkins, he's
he's he's there he's a guy but I mean you know if you're you're
going out there you're throwing the ball to A J.
Brown, you're throwing it to Devon Smith, you're throwing it
to Dallas Goddard for the most part.
So yeah I think that I think it's going to be a concentrated
offense. I think it's going to be a huge
part of it. Again the I'm I'm only saying he
has such a small percent chance to be better than A J.
Brown from a player perspective just because that's how high I
view A J Brown. And he's probably never going to
be better than A.J. Brown at like yards after.
Like there's some stuff that's not captured in the success
rate, stuff like the yak ability.
I think Devant is actually a little underrated for his yak.
Like he's not, as he's not Tyler Lockett falling down after every
catch, but he's he's not going to be A.J.
Brown, just stiff arming dudes in the turf and taking it to the
house. Right.
Let me let me ask this, who do you think of these three guys?
Waddell, Higgins, Smith, Who do you think has the most
contingent value if the other guy were to miss if all three of
the top? Options in their offenses miss
the entire season, Begin entire season.
Out of all three of these guys, who do you think has the most
upset? That's a great question cuz I
think all of these guys are capable of being #1 receivers.
Like I think T Higgins could be a number one on a team.
I think Jalen WADA could be a number one on a team.
I think Devonta Smith could definitely be a number one on a
team. I think the best.
That's where I think it's hard because I think the best
situation for all of these guys is probably like if there's no
Jamar Chase and like T Higgins steps into that role.
But I don't know man, that's a hard one.
I think. I think it's, I'll take the guy
who I just think is the best player though and I think that
is Devonte Smith. So I'll just double back on that
and. I agree with Matt on all three
prongs. I think he would have the best
season. I think he's the best player.
And I I think he would have the most to game because I also
think his coaching staff is the best and would figure out how to
optimize losing a guy like a J Brown.
Like I think like a lava. I mean also one like for a lava
and speaking about these guys like Michael Thomas is going to
be done playing after like 6 quarters.
So like I'm like basically counting a lava like that.
This just going to happen for him.
Anyway, waddles the other one guy?
No. I was thinking, I don't.
It's just in my mind. In my mind, Devonta and Alave
are forever mingled. The same person, Yeah.
But like, I feel like WADA would actually.
Probably. Be worse without Tyreke?
That's what I was going to That was a big argument for, like,
the offense looks so broken. So bad. 21 without Tyreke and
like, who is playing on? Is it chosen Anderson on the
outside? Like man, I think that gets
tough for water lift. Tyreke's not there.
Obviously the volume ceiling could be crazy, right?
But like, is that offense functional?
It's. Chosen it's chosen Brios,
Durham, Smythe. Yeah, I think like, whereas
Philadelphia, I think the offense can still be functional
without A.J. Brown.
Just cuz Jalen Hertz is so damn good.
You know, they got talented running backs.
They got Dallas Goddard. I think obviously it's worse
without A.J. Brown, but it doesn't get to
like just unusable. I do worry a little bit about
Miami without Tyreke. Like is that even a functional
offense? Yeah, I get.
That we're getting definitely into the weeds a lot with like
the the Dolphins part of it, but.
You know, you mentioned the one you guys said that they were
like film takes about like when they, you know, closed up the
middle of the field. They're not offering that to Tua
and how he struggled with that a little bit.
A lot of that too is like they're playing physical press
coverage on these receivers on the outside.
And because a lot of teams early in the year were just scared to
get like, all right, you, you pressed Tyreke, you pressed a
little while, but you're going to get ripped over the top a
couple of times per game. And that is true.
But you know the rest of the snaps can be.
Problematic for the quarterback. I mean these guys can beat press
coverage, but the guy who struggles with it more is Jalen
Wattle. So you know that's that's and it
struggle in like a relative term, right.
He has like a 69% success rate versus man.
He's he's weaker against press coverage and some of these other
guys we're talking about. So it's not like a, I would say
a true weakness in his game. But when you're picking nits
among talk receivers here, it's something to point out.
Got it. Let's I'll give the four Davis,
Pat any final questions about any of these other round one or
two wide receivers while we have Matt that you wanna pick his
brain on or Pat, do you have something I could say in
response? No, I don't.
I have a question about a guy on the next slide.
I think so. Okay, David.
David, does that have any questions?
Go ahead. No, no, I'm good.
I think this data to me is like, way more interesting with guys
worth arguing about. Like no one's gonna stake their
reputation on Jalen Wattle being bad, but someone might be
someone that we know might even be like, oh, DK Metcalf's a
little overrated. Well, that's what I want to talk
about. Yeah, I know.
OK, Yeah, dive into Metcalf then then.
Well, I mean, I guess so it did. OK, so Tyler Lockett made this.
He's been great. I think he was.
One or two. And ESPN's open score last year
as well, yeah, he was second behind Deonte Johnson there.
So the dude is has not fallen off and DK Metcalf obviously
very good as well. But this is kind of as we talk
about the concentrated offense question like I think sometimes
people get a little bit too concerned about who the one it
you know the one versus the two. It's like if you're an explosive
offense and it's a concentrated offense.
You know, it doesn't always matter that much who the top
wide receiver is, who the secondary wide receiver is.
Partly I think, because wide receiver talent is such an
important part of this whole question, like the reason
there's a reason why the Dolphins offensive is so
concentrated. I mean, Mike McDaniel literally
built a system around getting two guys to ball because those
are the two best guys by miles. You know that he can get the
ball. The guys, he can get the ball
into their hands, so. Concentrated offenses with two
wide receivers, great. Maybe even better than just one
really good guy. But when you get to 3, then it
can get a little bit more tricky.
And now we have this with the Seahawks, where you've got DK
Metcalf, Tyler Lockett and Jackson Smith and Jigba, who
looks like he has a pretty high ceiling as a target earner.
And I think the specific way that he wins could be a real
problem for the other guys in the offense, because he could be
more of just. You know, target dominator and
just getting a lot of volume, sucking volume out of the
offense for the other guys. So how protected do you think DK
Metcalf and Tyler Lockett are from Jackson Smith and Jigba
hitting the ground running? Yeah.
I mean look I've been a tire lock guy for Davis knows this
you know I've been a tire lock guy for a long time.
You know we've had it we've had a lot of discussions over the
years That's like back in the NFL podcast days Davis about
like Tyler Lockett when I was too too high on him too early
right. I I love Tyler Lock I think he's
a great player. I think you I can easily make a
case that DK Metcalf has been an awesome player the last two
years. I can just as easily make a case
that tire lockets been the best receiver on that team the last
two years even though like Metcalf checks the.
Prototypical size, speed barometers we usually like to
see. I think it's really tough like I
I don't think that that my problem with these two receivers
is that I don't. I think there's like other than
age, which I guess is, is, is, is certainly a variable, there's
no doubt about that. But like you said, Pat, I don't
think there's any evidence that Locket has fallen off to this
point. I don't understand like if we're
talking about who's protected of the two.
Why Lockett would be less protected or less insulated from
Jackson Smith and Jigba than Metcalf would be.
I think it's like kind of a coin flip.
I guess the the one thing you could say, too is that like,
Metcalf has been a true X receiver.
And you know this like one of these guys.
And like that's probably not Jackson Smith and Jigba's role.
But to me, I just think they're going to come out there and
they're going to play in 11 personnel a ton.
I don't care what B Carroll says about, you know, two tight ends
like the way NFL coaches are. He's not, he's not going to come
out there and be like. OK, well, we're playing 11
personnel now because. When the rubber meets the road,
he's not playing Will Disney over Smith and Jake.
But like if Smith and Jake shows up and he is who they think he
is, it's 11 personnel from the jump.
My and I know Corrine doesn't agree with this, but my thought
has always been Metcalf is the one who is completely insulated.
He just is going to do what he's always done.
He's going to score 10 touchdowns.
Maybe he never achieves the peak of what he could with his
physical gifts, because he's always playing with another
great wide receiver. And maybe Metcalf is a B plus
wide receiver and not an A minus wide receiver.
So we'll never be Jamar Chase or Justin Jefferson or whoever, but
nothing Smith and Jig but or Tyler Lockett could do would
change. The base role that he has, like
I I just, I don't. I do not foresee an offense
where DK Metcalf ends the season with 85 targets because Lockett
and Metcalf were just that much or Lockett and Smith and Jigmo
were that much better than him. And maybe I'll maybe I'll eat
it, but I feel pretty good about.
This is that like when we talk about like blocking Matt,
mattering Matt, like that's what I'm thinking like.
We get to Week 14 or get to the end of the year and two wide
receiver sets. We're in there when they're at
the goal line, there's no way they're taking DK Metcalf off
the field or. No2 of.
These that, right. Like he's locked.
So that's where I kind of agree with you Davis.
And that like in terms of like physically being on the field
and two wide receiver sets, I feel like he's pretty safe.
Whereas I can see the argument for lock it being pushed out by
the end of the year. I can see that.
I can see that happening lock it's also it's possible.
Lockett's also at that stage where what we talked about 3
weeks ago, like where when you look at things at an aging
curve, it looks nice and gentle, but it's not nice and gentle
when it happens to a single guy and that's far more likely to
happen. So like obviously Metcalf is
still on the ascendancy of that. Like if you told me this was
Lockett's like, you know, Larry Fitzgerald season where he was
100 receptions, 1000 yards and then had 600 receptions and we
never thought about him again, that could that could be.
I mean Tyler Lockett's also very susceptible to like.
If he did get hurt, I mean, you know, at 31 years old, like his
recovery is going to be harder. His role could change and he
could get Wally pipped pretty easy.
Like, I just, I I don't, I don't think any of there's no debate
about who DK Metcalf is, right? Like it's just it's honestly,
his fantasy season will be decided by if he scores 8
touchdowns, it's going to be a bad season.
If he scores 14, it's going to be a really good one.
And that feels like it's that's just it.
But Matt, can I get a little more of your thoughts on just
how good Metcalf is? Like, do you agree that he's
kind of like a B plus wide receiver?
Yeah, probably just because I think he's, you know, you look
at his success rates from last year, which wasn't.
Wasn't one of his best years but was still a really quality
season. Like we're talking 80th
percentile against man, 77 percentile against press and
32nd against zone, which is pretty typical of these like non
elite X receivers that we've talked about.
You know, Mike Evans, I think it fits into that group.
Evans is great, like you might be like a Hall of Fame player,
but I mean, I don't know, that's actually an interesting debate
if he's like a Hall of Fame player because I don't think
he's ever necessarily been like a top five player at the
position. He's gotta be if he keeps just
hitting because. He's such a compiler.
Yeah, right, he. Went two more years and he's in.
Yeah. 1000 yards at his age with Baker Mayfield.
He should get in for that, yeah. He should get in for that alone.
It's gonna. It's yeah, no doubt about it.
Yeah, yeah. Finest accomplishment.
But I think that that's kind of where I'd view him.
If I'm like ranking NFL receivers, I think he's like a
beep. I think both him and Tyler
Lockett are probably A to B plus type receivers as opposed to.
Like A plus type receivers, just and and and I I think that's
saying a lot. I think they're really, really
good players. But yeah that's probably where
I'd I'd view them. Yeah, my, my thing with Metcalf
is like, I guess it just feels expensive, like I have to pay
like early to mid, maybe the late sometimes third round price
for them. And you know, it's like if it's
not a concentrated offense, I mean like how how much better is
DK Metcalf than Brandon I U. Did I?
You're asking the wrong person that question, but.
Am I because I'm not drafting a lot of Metca?
What I mean I think that's a I think that's a bit of like you
got it, you got to read the boards like Metcalf to me is
unquestionably better than Ridley.
He's not unquestionably better to me than Debo.
But I think you can play that you can just middle those guys
when they're on the board unquestionably better than
Cooper situation because one. They're going to be spending the
entire back half of the season playing in a polar vortex and
like the worst destruct, like the way that stadium is
constructed, makes the wind swirl around.
It's why Cleveland plays a bunch of games every year with the
this is, this is true. They go look, they play, they
play a bunch of games with totals in like 32, like more
than any other team. They have these super low
totals. No one, no one here is
disrespecting Keenan Allen. He's a bad fit for the scoring
system in .5 PPR, no bonuses. Christian Watson.
Sure, Whatever. Maybe he's this year's a Monroe
St. Brown.
Maybe he's this year's. You know McCall Hardman.
Right? Judy Obvious question marks.
London Obvious volume question marks.
Weirdly enough, no question marks for me, really, about
Mclaurin Hopkins, like all these guys after him have such giant
question marks. And really your only question
mark about Metcalf. I I just.
I crin cuz I don't even think. Like do you really see him
seeing less than 100 targets, even if it's making?
Jig but. I don't is.
That good. It's just that I don't want to
I'm with Sam on the you know, Sam and I have a very, very
strong disagreement. But it's like essentially boiled
down to like if we're on the clock in the second round, do we
want to take Crystal Lava or Tony Pollard.
And actually not sure at this point what else we disagree on
with this 2-3 turn situation because like.
I just don't why should I have to rip open this wide receiver
tier when I can take a running back who normally cost me a
second round pick. So that's where I'm just like,
I'll take Josh Jacobs. I'll take reminder Stevenson,
I'll take Derrick Henry, I'll take Priest Hall.
Yeah. That's what I do too, but I find
I still get. I'll take Mark Andrews.
Yeah, I find I still get more than enough Metcalf playing it
that way. So that's, yeah, that's where
I'm at. I wanna move on to other guys,
but I'm in the same boat where if those running backs are all
gone, I'm kind of with you Davis, that I like Metcalf
better than the otherwise receivers in this tier, but.
I do too, to be clear. Yeah, it just so often happens
to me that yeah, like I have Bree staring at me, or even like
Mark Andrews and I can set up the Lamar Mark Andrews stack
that might be staring at me like it's just hard for me to click
Metcalf. Just because of where he's
placed on the boards, but let's move on to to Calvin Ridley.
I think he's a super interesting player to evaluate through the
reception perception lens because A we haven't seen him in
a year and a half and B he's switching teams, so figuring out
who he is as an isolated player is actually particularly
important in this instance. So this data, obviously there's
no data from 2022 on Ridley he didn't play.
This data is from his 2020 and 2021 sample.
And Matt, your data shows really good things for Calvin Ridley.
Some reasons why he's popping in this success rate over expected.
He faced a high rate of double coverage and actually did pretty
well against it. High success rate on challenging
routes down the field, the corner of the 9, the post and
just overall very diverse route tree, sort of low percentage of
the Mickey Mouse gimmicky routes.
So that that bumps them up as well.
But just yet really curious like.
That the Ridley stuff is so tricky this year.
Really, really curious. Like how you're valuing him with
all this unknowns in 2023. Yeah, I thought it just on the
Kim and Metcalf to to me are like everybody that comes after
with the exception of Keenan Allen, just cuz he's a tough
player. Like Davis said to read in the
scoring format and also just like from an age curve
perspective. But like these two guys are I
think properly valued over Samuel and Cooper and Watson and
Judy just because they're all. These two are much better
players than any of those guys and that includes like Ridley
versus Metcalf is interesting just because I think they're
both kind of the last time we the last time we saw Calvin
Ridley, he was in that like A minus, you know, B, you know, a
level tier to me as an individual player, great route
runner, especially downfield like you mentioned.
And he's a guy that was doing it a lot as a true X receiver in
2020 and 2021, despite being a smaller player, he's just again,
such a good technician, so explosive.
He's so hard to to read just because is he going to look like
even in 21 when his efficiency sort of went down a little bit
like from a yards for target standpoint, you know he's
playing with what was Matt Ryan. And like we know what Matt Ryan
ended up being the year after that.
Like I think it's reasonable to conclude like he wasn't a great
great quarterback and as an individual perspective in 21 and
there were just some small mistakes from Ridley and like
contested situations and some you know some bad drops and
stuff that didn't like A5 game samples going to mess with you a
little bit but. He's a tough player to read
because again, last time we saw him, I think he was like an A -,
a level receiver. It's just like, what is he gonna
be after a year and a half off? But I think from a player
isolating sample, he's very good.
And how sticky do you think these skills are?
Like, you know, just in general, cuz I think really such a
interesting example of, you know, he got suspended for
something. He's missed time not because of
the injury, right. He's yeah, hopefully, you know
he's gonna be very similar to the guy that we saw.
But at the same time, he's not young anymore.
He's sneaky old. Yeah, he came in really old,
right? So how?
He was. He was like, he was like 33 when
he graduated at Elton. Yeah, he turns 29 in December.
So yes, yeah, he's he's truly sneaky old.
Yeah. He's he's closer in age to
Cooper Cup than DK Metcalf, for example.
Yeah, yeah. So, like, interesting.
It just is sort of like the kind of the.
Base rate or like you know pull back and and kind of look at the
macro view here like how risky is it to look at a guy's you
know 2020 success rate and be like whoa it's awesome then now
it's entry 2023 just should we how much weight would you
generally suggest putting on on that on that.
Evaluation I think. I think it's really risky.
And like that risk is no and it's a kind of an unknowable
question. I think like I have no idea
because we've we've never seen really a player take this type
of gap like Josh Gordon's big season was prior was prior to
reception perception. So like I don't actually have
you know Josh Gordon's numbers from like like 2012 and 2013 and
stuff like that. He'd be the only one that.
Would be a good example. You should.
Chart his breakout season that seems like a good use of time.
When, When? Yeah, yeah, cuz I definitely
have so much of that on my hands.
I've you don't know. You do not know how many like
randos get suggested in my Discord like on a daily.
Basis. Oh, I suggested some randos.
Brandon Lloyd do Brandon Lloyd. I, Brandon Lloyd actually came
up in a discussion one. But when when I thought there
was like some risk that this 2020 season was gonna get
cancelled for COVID, that was one of my ideas, was like.
Yeah, definitely try to pay the bills on like, hey, come
subscribe to this website with historical data from like Josh
Gordon and like Randy Moss's Big Caesar or.
Something like that. It would have worked on me.
Yeah. I mean, yeah.
I've already subscribed, but I would have maintained my
subscription. One of these days, one of these
days, I would love that but never seriously like there was a
time to and like Gordon came back, I think it was in 2017
that day. That season is in the RP
database and it was really good. And he's a guy that from a skill
standpoint is different than, is definitely different than Ridley
because I think like Ridley's more of he definitely kind of
has like old man game already and that he's a great route
runner and he's not like the he's an explosive player.
But I wouldn't say that. He's on like the Olave level of
explosive route running, but they're kind of in the same
bucket. So I think it's game that should
age well. It's just the, you know, year
and a half layoff that's that's tough and I think the risk
really isn't baked into his is ADP at all.
I'm totally with you. They're they're just treating
him like Calvin Ridley is back and is a member of the
Jacksonville Jaguars. So and like how like how likely
is that to be the case cuz I think that that.
If that if, like we're three weeks into the season, he's just
Calvin. Ridley it would be.
It would be way weirder. It would be way weirder if he
came back and was just Calvin Ridley, like the same guy that
we just saw then. If he came back and like, got
tackled once and was like, holy shit, I've been tackled in two
years, that was wild. I don't know how about this
anymore. Like it would be way weirder in
my opinion. I'm kind.
I'm kind of like, I don't know, I kind of think I'd be.
Not surprised at all because I'm like, yeah, good players are
just good. But like good players taking a
year and a half off is is, is tough to to measure.
So I don't know. I guess I won't be surprised
either way really, which is the stupid.
Thing. Do you have any thoughts, Do you
have any thoughts on like the, you know, you mentioned kind of
the old man game and you know some parts of wide receivers
games maybe aging a little bit better like that.
That is such an interesting idea to me because I think we kind of
get like I'll hear stuff like oh big wide receivers don't age
well. And it's like generally because
a couple big wide receivers have have fallen off or like, you
know, Common Johnson retired really early or some stuff.
But you know, some guys seem to be aging very well as big wide
receivers. And then like, you know, Juju
Smith, Schuster is aged not even like old yet and he's already
super old, you know. So it's like there's it doesn't
seem quite as intuitive as that is like, oh, it's tough to be a
big wide receiver as you age, but I do imagine like.
You know, we've all kind of played basketball with like the
old guy at the park who doesn't, you know, knows everywhere to
be. He's got the the nice old man
game. I kind of think there's
something to that, right? Like certain skills are going to
age. So might be more around skills
rather than kind of physical archetype.
But what what are your thoughts on kind of how wide receiver
games age? I think the fact that we are so.
Kind of variable and where these guys line up.
It helps a lot with these aging curves because like especially
the big receivers. You know we talked about Larry
Fitzgerald got mentioned when the title Locket discussion.
He's a great example of a guy that went from being a big
perimeter to receiver beats a living like that big slot
receiver in like a power slot Cooper Cup type of role that we
think about now. He was kind of one of the first
guys playing that position and that helped offset some of the.
You know that, like the explosiveness might have gone
down, like running a different type of route tree.
You know the Alan Robbins thing we talked about?
Like, I can totally see him being an absolutely poor fit as
the Rams X receiver at this point of his career, but maybe
being a decent fit, decent to good fit as a big slot receiver
for the Steelers this year? Like that what he was for them
was he kind of a. Classic.
Yeah. True.
Like.
They sold us a lot of that bullshit about like we can't
wait to mix up his route tree and move use him at a lot of
different positions and then like up until he got hurt
basically he's he's stuck to the line of scrimmage and not moving
around and running like a true like a very, very, very vanilla
route tree. So and you know there's a lot of
excuses for why that might have been whatever.
So yeah I think that but but he's a guy that might recover a
little bit better in in a different type of role.
But I think another thing I said earlier was like.
People taking the charts of guys and just put it on Twitter and
like, Oh yeah, this this is a thing that I think people do
that with a guy like DeAndre Hopkins right now.
And Hopkins was very good last year in reception perception,
but there's a clear drop off from what like his elite seasons
in like 2019 and 2020. So I, I, and I'm willing to say
that, like, I have no idea then what 2023 is going to look like,
right? Like if it's another season that
looks like 2022 where he's not at his best, but he's still
pretty good. I guess that wouldn't be
surprising, but like, you look at a guy like Dez Bryant, 2016,
71.1% success rate verse man coverage and then 201752 point
1%, like a massive drop off basically where it looked like
he's aging gracefully. But then his last season in
Dallas was kind of a disaster. He gets cut, nobody picks him up
until like November, he gets hurt and then like he's playing
for the Ravens, you know, at some point in like a bit role.
So honestly, it's one of the hardest things I think to
predict using reception perception data is.
Like aging curves and when these guys might.
Fall off, yeah. The aging stuff is, yeah, is
super interesting. And sort of along those lines I
wanna move on to trail on Berkshire.
I guess on the other side of aging, there's the the year to
year 3 breakout aspect of fantasy, right, that everyone
talks about. And I'm really curious with a
guy like Burke showing up here with a below 4% successor to
expected, it's kind of by far the worst on this chart.
But at the same time. He's a young player.
He was asked to do something completely different in year one
in Tennessee than he did his entire collegiate career.
He's basically a slot player in college, played off the line a
bunch, and the Titans asked him to be a true X wide receiver on
the outside. So you gotta give some credit to
him for learning something completely new.
I guess the question for you, Matt, is like.
How often do we see big jumps from year one to year 2 with a
player like Burks who doesn't show up super well in your data
in year one? Do you think pricing him in this
low end wide receiver 3 range is fair or do you think that's
still overvalued? I think it's fair, despite the
questions, that the clear questions I have about his game,
like you mentioned there were. He was playing a totally
different position basically in the NFL than he was in college.
And just to put some numbers behind that, you know, in it
like it is a year one player he lined up almost 75% of his
sample snaps were on the line of scrimmage and was outside for
83.5%. His final year at Arkansas and
reception perception, he took 80.5% of his snaps in the slot
or backfield and was 84% of snaps off the line.
So like basically a complete flip of those two numbers there.
And that's a really hard transition to make for a guy in
his rookie season, especially somebody who like dealt with
offseason issues. You know the conditioning stuff
he didn't like hit the ground running right away.
You know he then he gets banged up in season.
I think he's he's a tough player to read because of that.
There are things he's really good at like his slant route,
success rates awesome. His dig route success rates
pretty good too. Like he.
Runs those big in breaking crossers against play action.
He's great at that. So I don't think he offers
nearly the same juice after the catch that people thought he did
this because he kind of had that like goofy Mickey Mouse role in
college. But I think there's a chance
he's like, I think the ceiling on him is lower than people
think, but I think he's got a chance to be a decent player and
then. Yeah, I think the fact that he
hasn't gotten too steamed up is probably fair because I think
there are real risks with him as a player.
I I've entered the question about like guys who have made
the jump. There are a couple of like DJ
Moore was really Rawls the route runner, had a bad season, took a
good season. Second season jump.
You know, I can think of like Kenny Golladay is another one
who took a big jump in his second season.
Then third season obviously didn't go so well and then
Cortland Sutton's like another one.
There are a lot of guys who just are what they are.
Sometimes you'll see a guy who's really like Raw as a route
runner take that step in year two and year three.
I think Burks could be that guy cuz he shows some signals on on,
like I said, those in breaking routes.
But he might be a guy who gets kind of pigeonholed and stuck in
that role, if that makes any sense.
That makes sense. Pat, I know you're bullish on
Burks. Curious your your thoughts on on
all that? No, I mean, I'm bullish on
Burks. So I just heard.
To me, you were gushing about Burke.
So I'm. That was that was all I heard.
All I heard was he was asked to do something really hard and he
didn't completely flail and and shit himself.
So goodbye me. Yeah, yeah, no, that's that's
true. 100% reasonable take off of his rookie season.
I think that's just. Then again, if you look at it,
it's like, well, he's still a limited player, incomplete
player and he always is that guy.
I think that won't be surprising, but I think there's
definitely, there's definitely a chance that he takes that that
that jump that we're talking about just because he didn't
completely shit himself it doing something very hard and very
different from what he was doing as a as a collegiate player.
I'm also encouraged that he does, you know, have some clear
strength, clear strengths as a wide receiver and it's like if
he can be good enough just to be out there all the time, have
them design the offense where he's seeing a lot of.
First reads, getting a lot of kind of, you know, maybe some
maybe he does get some design stuff from time to time and he's
just out there enough. The weaknesses don't even need
to be like, they just need to be not bad enough to where he, you
know, is turning them off, right?
Yeah. I think one thing I'm concerned
about those that the offense might just be a disaster right,
which which I think that's I think that is a risk.
He's a risk a little bit as an individual player which is why I
think like. I'm not freaking out at where
he, you know, like wide receiver 35.
I'm not freaking out to take him.
I'm not freaking out to fade him, I guess at that price, if
that makes sense. Yeah, I think he moves up cuz it
apparently Levis is behind Malik Willis right now.
I think the drum beat is going to be Tannehill this summer and
then. I mean, every day that Tannehill
remains on the roster, it's more likely they're at least
competent. Yeah, right, exactly.
If that concern disappears. And they don't sign Hopkins, I
think. I think Burks is gonna move up.
And so the Hopkins thing is what I was gonna bring up.
Apparently, in the reporting, the Titans are sort of the
favorite right now. They've been more aggressive
than New England is what I've read.
So I like, I think that's like an ADP risk, but not like like,
I actually kind of hope for Burks that Hopkins is there and
the offense is better. No matter what your thoughts on
how would these, how would those two mesh together?
Like, would Burks not playing X? Or is Hopkins still an X?
I I think Hopkins would like last we saw him was still as
much in in that offense. As Davis mentioned earlier like
there is a true X receiver he's still profiles as that should
be. His best role is like as an X
receiver. But like I talked about when
these guys get older sometimes it helps to to move them out of
that position and then that could keep Burks in the X
receiver position. I don't feel the same way as
like when Julio Jones got to Tennessee and even though that
remove didn't work out like. In hindsight we know that.
But I was like OK, I'm still taking a J.
Brown because I think I really believe bullishly and like a J
Brown's talent that way. I don't really feel that way
with with trailing Burks. But I think I think they're
these guys can complement each other and it could even be from
like an alignment standpoint if they're gonna have Hopkins go
out there and just be the true ex.
Like it could be good for Burks to be an off law an off ball
player as opposed to a strictly on the line guy like he was in
year one. And I mean to that point to
like. I mean, shoot, who?
Who else was playing X receiver for the Titans last year?
And who is gonna play X receiver other than trailing Burks this
year if they don't sign DeAndre Hopkins?
Like, yeah, it's not gonna be Kyle Phillips, it's not gonna be
Nick Westbrook, Aquina, or whatever.
Yeah, so I mean. Yeah, the depth was bad last
year and it got like even. Like, at least they had Woods
and and Austin Hooper. Like those guys are not stud NFL
players, but they're confident they lost both of those guys.
Now it's like, man, Chris Moore is Chris Moore starting at X,
like, like. I don't.
Yeah. Racy, racy, Mcmath, yeah.
I want to know. Weird out in that Hype Brain I.
Want to ask you about Jerry Judy on this chart because that to
me, I've had a tough time with his ADP.
But it's, you know, I know Sean Siegel really likes him.
Pete Overset likes him. There's kind of been this drum
beat around him. It's like, you know, he's shown
he can do a couple different things.
But one of the things you always hear about Jerry Judy is he's a
great route runner. So to see him here with a -, 1%
success rate or expected jumps out to me as a red flag because
this is supposed to be what this guy does well.
So where are you at on him? And it's kind of a crowded or
sort of maybe not crowded but uncertain situation in Denver
with the amount of wide receivers they have.
Yeah, one of my strongest takes last year was that I thought
this offense, I didn't think it was going to be as bad as it
ended up being. But I thought this entire skill
position room was was super overrated.
The the Broncos like receiver room.
I was not not in on any of those dudes last year, you know,
especially where they got steamed up to being.
And I I had my concerns about Russ going from Seattle to
Denver and again, those were worse than I I thought they
could have been. So.
I'm I've never been the biggest like Judy or Sutton fan as
individual players. I think they've got at best a
bunch of like wide receiver twos there.
And you mentioned that the route running stuff with Jerry Judy.
He's still living a lot on his like collegiate reputation as a
route runner and like. The practice videos that even
like even last week like. There.
Literally there. Was literally there was
literally one going around last week.
Like, are we ready to talk about how Judy is gonna finish as a
wide receiver one this year? And it was just.
Him beating a traffic cone like, yeah.
They I might have. I might have.
Won that route. I might have been, might have
been like 10 land sharks deep on the beach, but I did manage to
see that one latio. Yeah, that.
And that's a great example of like why you see stuff like that
and you your brain fills in the information like great
collegiate route runner. He's still beaten, you know, XFL
players on a field, you know, in Alabama somewhere or whatever.
And you know he's still a great router.
I don't think he has been as a pro.
And like, there's a reason he's been a volatile up and down
player from a production standpoint, because he's a
volatile up and down player. Like, he's not bad.
He's got a 70.6% success rate versus man coverage.
That's a 63rd percentile score. That's not bad, but. 49th
against press, 5th percentile against zone coverage.
Some of that can be poor offensive design, but a lot of
that is because he's not a consistent player like he's he's
very sort of like he's actually pretty similar to Amari Cooper
who is another like up and down producer because he's an up and
down player and I think he had a great season last year, but he's
had some lesser seasons throughout the course of his
career and I think some of those concerns have have stuck with
Judy as well. So I'm I'm with you that like.
Maybe I look like, I don't think again, you're not going to sit
here and like find anywhere where I'm saying Jerry Judy is
bad, but I there's no way like widers.
He were 21. There are other guys going after
I'm. I'm 100% taking over Judy.
Are you in on? Are you in on Dolsic?
Do you think Dolsic is a good is a good route runner?
I mean, dude, I don't do tight. I don't do tight end.
I'm just. Trying to I know it's like I am.
I literally have no opinion on if Greg Dolsic is a good NFL
tight end or whatever. It's just like the role seems.
Appealing, but I also thought the same thing about Alberto and
I learned. My yeah.
I mean there's other, I mean we got more of a Mims here, we've
got Tim Patrick here. Like thoughts on on like how
protected are Sutton and Judy from those guys?
Like I don't think they're protected at all and and but and
that's kind of my thing is I think it's weird to that like we
look at this receiver core that like you said probably goes 4
deep and I don't think any of these guys are true number ones.
I guess that's the that's like where you really have to have a
stance that. Judy is a is not just a good
player, but like a true, legit #1 receiver.
And like we're talking about like he's the same quarterback
too. You know, I think Russ is going
to have a good, a good, a better season this year than he did
last year. Like, I think Sean Payton is an
offensive elevator. And I mean certainly the
coaching change from Nate Hackett to Sean Payton is is
dramatic. But I think Marvin Mims is was a
really good prospect and like could be a guy that hits the
ground running as a speed slot receiver.
A lot of the speed slot receiver stuff is what Jerry Judy's been
best at, too. I think Cortland Sutton is, he's
was overrated last year, but I almost think, like he's getting
too discounted this year. Like he's a fine average, maybe
slightly below average starting X receiver, but he's probably
the only X receiver on the roster, so I think it's.
Cuz he's not on the site yet, is he?
If you did him, no he's not a guy I've done from this past
year but his prior seasons are on on the site.
There's a few I have like from the in season charting data that
I that I did so like 3-4 games I think are in the in season
tracker and yeah they weren't they weren't very good but
neither were neither was his 2021 season.
In open score, Jerry Judy's 11th and Sutton's 12th, so they were
like dead even in that metric last year.
So yeah, Strange. I don't know.
I've been wondering if the Sutton is dead now.
Narrative has kind of jumped the shark a little bit.
I think it's jumped the Shark almost just like he was a true
#1 elite player ready to break out with a good quarterback.
Had jumped the Shark last year. I think there's a truth there.
It's probably somewhere in the middle, which is that I don't
think like. It's actually funny.
I posted the I I did the thing I I said I didn't like where I
just posted the chart with and like made a joke about it type
of thing on Twitter where like they had there was that headline
that they had Cortland Sutton looking at Michael Thomas tape
from 2019 or whatever. And then you look at like the
route, the only really route that that that Cortland Sutton
runs really well is like the slant route.
So I think it is kind of interesting at least to think
like if there's going to be. Yeah, right.
There's gonna be like an X receiver just running a bunch of
in breaking short routes. Like that is actually the thing
that Cortland Son does really well.
He's not really a vertical X receiver.
So I think the fact that, yeah, like the ATP assumes that Jerry
Judy's just so much better than these guys, I don't know if
that's really the truth. Yeah, All right.
Speaking of Speaking of inconsistent guys, if Jerry
Judy's inconsistent, I don't know what we call Darius.
Tony, he, he shows up here on this chart.
Sam, first of all, how dare you? Sorry Terry.
Tony's very consistent. He never plays and he gets open
when he does. It's incredibly consistent.
He's. Consistent of playing less than
20% of the snaps. But yeah, Tony I think is one of
the the most polarizing guys in fancy this year.
I don't get it at all why he's going this high.
So maybe I'm just, you know, confirming my biases here with
looking at this chart. But yeah, Matt, can you talk
through, can you talk through Tony, I guess my question for
you like more specifically is like.
I think Tony is perceived as this guy that has this
unbelievable ceiling because in my mind because he has cool
highlights and cuz he plays with Patrick Mahomes, but have you
seen anything in the data or your chart?
You're also talking him up a lot, is their number one.
That's true, but like. But like, are they really?
Or is that? Are they really?
Or is that like extrapolating some, like positive quotes is
like they're really high on his talent.
But does that really, really mean they view him as like a
true #1 receiver? I think when you really
critically read what they've said, that's not necessarily the
case. It's the same organization that
keeps posting. They keep posting Justin Ross
clips, so I don't think. I think we can shake it all with
a grain of salt. Yeah, they're they're clearly
trying to you know get the get the clicks and and stuff like
that from somebody in their in their social media department
has to be like on fantasy. It has to be like on.
Dime. No.
Someone.
Someone in their social media department had to have gone to
Clemson. They had had to have.
It has to be a Clemson connection.
That's the only explanation for how there's a new Justin Ross
quote or video once a week for a guy who's like 19 string.
Yeah, I mean. Either either a deep dynasty.
Sick or winter club. Maybe he's good.
Maybe there's one chief that Davis won't draft the history of
the organization. It's Justin Ross.
So I drafted Clyde, I've drafted Clyde, I've drafted Generic
Prince more times and I've taken Justin Ross.
Oh God, Matt, I'm hoping you're stuck with Tony it.
Might be a good take. Through the data.
Could you or could you squint with Tony's profile and like see
like if you were forced to make the case for him being?
A wide receiver one like could you even do it?
Or like, I just wanna know how bad is it?
Yeah, How does cuz we're I think are you on Tony Davis, are you
drafting him? Just when I take Mahomes that
that's I probably, I probably literally through like 300 teams
like probably have no Tony without Mahomes.
So we're all gonna be pretty underweight, Tony.
Well, my home is my second most drafted quarterback, so I'll
probably overweight Tony. OK.
All right. Okay.
All right. So two of us will be
underweight, Tony. And how does he like Matt?
Just tell us, like how he buries us.
That's kind of what I'm. I wanna hear.
He would have to be doing stuff that we have never seen him do
like he would have to. He would have to be playing and
excelling in a role that we have not seen him play or excel in as
an NFL player or even his final year at Florida like he's.
I said in his collegiate evaluation that like his NFL
team was going to be starting from square one as a route
runner. And I mean I think that's more
we talk about Mickey Mouse routes like he's the king of
Mickey Mouse routes. I couldn't care less about what
he's doing on 17.1% of his routes are screens, 14.5% of his
routes are, are are flat routes like.
And he has not shown the skills at all that he's going to be
like a Pressman coverage beater at at the NFL level at this
point I think. He showed a couple of games and
we're talking again. We're talking about a player
that, like, barely ever plays. So I made this.
I've said this at the beginning of his profile from last year,
that like, Tony hits the mark of a full reception perception
sample, and that, like, I got eight games on him, but that
eight games contained 127 snaps and 76 rounds.
Say like 6 routes. Yeah, yeah, so, so like, keep
that in mind. This guy barely ever plays, but
even. In his rookie season, he had a
decent success rate verse zone, but some of that is on the
Mickey Mouse routes. And again, there's nothing that
that he's shown as an NFL player that like he can go out and like
line up outside and beat pressman coverage, period like
that. He would have to be doing stuff
that we have never seen him do, which maybe that's possible, but
I really don't even think the Chiefs are are banking on that.
I think that's kind of like nonsense.
Can I pitch you at some content for the site?
I think YouTube shorts are kind of blowing up right now.
TikTok obviously taking off. You should just do his Super
Bowl. Just chart his Super Bowl
routes. As a quick talk, hey 5 routes.
His Super Bowl MVP caliber performance.
Totally. Things inside the lab.
Yeah, that pun returns you chart punt returns cuz that was a
really key punt return. You might.
Have I'm closer. I'm closer to chart and tight
ends than than punt returns. And I will and I will never
chart a tight ends. Can we can we can we end can we
end the show with Matt dunking on Alan Lazard who was the worst
pick on the board last year and somehow is trying to is trying
to do people into also being the worst pick?
Again, walking matters 3. I think.
Bro, blocking matters. That's why he's gonna get on the
field. That's fun.
Blocking matters and like listening to Aaron Rodgers, some
like, some Up the Loose Change documentary at lunch every
single day matters. Like, I think that's how Alan
Lazzard ended up in New York. Jet and if as we're wrapping up,
if we can get your thoughts on Dobbs too in that scene.
Yeah, that was gonna be the one because in sort of the, I don't
know, there's a Dobbs contingent and I I just like, don't get it.
I got it when he was really cheap, but like, I don't know
the the. Yards per route run stuff
doesn't look great on him. You know he was day three guy,
they brought in Jaden Reed and day two like the charting stuff
on him doesn't look great either on Matt stuff or the open score
stuff. So I guess Dobbs the guy that I
have not gotten the price rise at all.
But yeah, Matt, curious what you thought of his Ricky year.
I think he showed as a day three receiver that he could be like a
functional NFL receiver, which is.
Which is pretty good. Like if you're getting a guy on
day three who ends up being your longterm, longterm wide receiver
three. I think that's probably the best
you know, not most ideal fit for him.
But. And Christian Watson is much
better. And I have my question about
Christian Watson. But I think he's much better and
I think Jaden Reed is probably a better receiver longterm.
So yeah, I'm. I'm not.
I think Dobbs showed he can play in the NFL as a first year
receiver. But he's also, I don't think he
showed anything that would lead you to believe he's a longterm
highend starter by any means. Yeah, that's not right.
And thoughts on Lazard is kind of because he's going to be out.
I mean, you know, Roger's going to make sure he's out there.
Yeah, man, I I think blocking. I think blocking matters, bro.
That's what I'll say about Al Lazar.
You said you don't do tight ends, but yet you've.
Charted, but he's the he's the he's like the closest guy he
has. He has a pretty similar role to
like a tight end I think. Then like what?
We think about with these guys. League and inline snaps, right?
Yeah, yeah, I think he did. And I think that actually he's
actually not bad in that role because he's fine on like some
shorter routes and he's, you know, he's got good hands and he
wins in contested situations and he is a good blocker.
But I think he ideally is like a wide receiver three, like a
third guy in the passing game. But I don't know the fact that
Corey Davis is still on that roster.
I'm like Davis is a much better receiver than Al Lazard, so
we'll see about that. Yeah, once underdog.
Any thoughts on just him, What we're talking about blocking
dudes? Who, who, who?
We say. Gabriel Davis.
Geez, yeah, I think that was a rough price tag on Davis last
year, but I think almost like it's a little bit too far.
The other direction now where like him at wide receiver 41 is
like Per is a perfectly good, like capable pick.
Cuz I think he's shown he's on that.
Devante Parker acts as ex receivers.
I talked about where he's actually a really good downfield
route runner and he's good in contested situations.
He's just not a true #2 receiver like period and I thought that
last year. I think that now.
But he's a guy that can win vertically.
He can win on some of like we talked about, like give us guys
that went on 9 routes, give us guys that can win down the
field. He's he can.
He's definitely that guy. Like, he's not terrible.
He was just like really? Grossly overpriced last year, so
I think the truth is somewhere in the middle with him.
Yeah, that's fair. And it seems, yeah, it seems
like you mentioned like he's a guy that in fantasy, maybe we
can be more excited about them. What this charting shows, he
plays on the Bills. I guess the only way you get
buried here, right, is if they bring in Hopkins and that Davis
doesn't play anymore in two others.
Like that's the only way I see you.
Really. Yeah.
Like, if this quarterback is not Josh Allen, that's tough.
But his quarterback is Josh Allen, so it's it's fine where
he's where he's going and viewing him that way.
Awesome. Well, we would love to, I mean,
chat about wide receivers all day here.
I could do this for two more hours.
But yeah, we basically have Matt.
That was a ton of fun. I know you mentioned that you're
still charting some players. I guess tell the people, what
else is coming out on reception perception the next couple
weeks? Yes.
A lot of like some of the bigger name veterans who are not
already on the site will be up on the site next Monday and then
I'm going to try to hit 80 players Like like I said, you
know I don't I don't have time necessarily to go back and chart
Josh Gordon's like epic season. But I'm I'm trying to hit 80
players added to the site between NFL players and rookies
by week 1. So robust database that
continues to be added to will is what you can find at reception
perception.com. But like I said a lot of the.
Cooper Cup type players and then some guys like Christian Kirk
and Chris Godwin, like all across the board, guys who
aren't up on the site yet. Next Monday and the entire next
week is when I'm gonna try to hit those big name veterans.
Cool. Can I ask one thing?
Are we gonna get Rasheed Shaheed in reception Perception?
I would almost guarantee it that he if I'm hitting eighty guys
he's gonna he cuz there he's in the in season tracker right now
the two like 2 games he had. Last year and I kind of think
he's pretty good. Like I think Olave is in a great
situation where the he has a functional quarterback and the
guys around him are just good enough to keep defense.
Like even with, with or without Michael Thomas, like I think
Shaheed and Juan Johnson, like Foster Moreau and all the
running backs to got there are just good enough for the offense
to be of high quality, but not enough to threaten his like,
target share basically. Yeah, exactly.
I like that. Pat, what?
What's going on for you at Legendary Upside?
Took some time off last week so gonna be writing and trying to
get an article out by the end of the week on some running back
success rate stuff. Wrap up that series I'm doing
over there, but you know, best ball rankings, underdog
rankings. Been updated regularly so go
check them out. So yeah, a lot of drafting, a
lot of drafting coming up. Good stuff, Davis.
Same to you, a lot of drafting. Same deal.
A lot of drafting posted best ball ranks on the Patreon take
cast have dynasty ranks there as well.
But to go do a dynasty pod with Pat, where we're finishing up
our magnum opus on dynasty rankings and yeah, we'll be the
Sports Good Famous football podcast feed is going to be a
lot more active than the next 60 days because we're getting down
to the nitty gritty and we're we're very soon.
We're about to leave the theater of the absurd that has been this
program for the last six months where we just think about what
Adp's should be. And now we're about to get real
life events of real life humans interacting and then dictating
what we do on our phone screens with these drafts.
So I'm pretty excited for that. I'm excited as well.
Well, thanks again Matt for joining.
That was awesome. We will be back next week for
ADP JC. See you guys.