Late-Round Perspectives: Kyle Dvorchak

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Kyle Devorceik is an analyst in NBC Sports rohto World
who previously did work at sites like Player Profiler, rotovi Is,
Number Fire and Pro Football Focus. He's an Ohio State alum.
He fosters dogs, He's a zoomer, and he too does
a podcast with Denny Carter. These are his Late Round perspectives.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
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Speaker 1 (00:34):
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Speaker 2 (01:08):
Now back to the show.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
Last night, Okay, I fell asleep right after I looked
at my calendar, okay, and on my calendar it said
that we were recording the show, you know, and I
fell asleep and I had a dream about you last night.
You were in you were in my dream. I missed
the I was a half hour late to this recording

(01:33):
for the show, and then in turn, I overcompensated.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
I got in my car.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
It is very rainy day in my dream, and I
drove to your house and we and we podcasted.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
We podcasted from my car.

Speaker 3 (01:47):
I got bad news for you because I recently moved.
We actually used to live pretty close to the so
in your dream, you drove a long way because I
live nearer to the beach now, So you drove a
long way in your dream.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Yeah yeah, right right, we like they it could have happened,
you know, before all of that went down. But yeah,
it was a really I mean, I'm glad that that
didn't come to fruition today.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
I'm glad that I was on time.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
I like made sure that I was on time because
you know, you don't want you or you.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
Didn't want to drive in my house.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
That's right, It's exactly right, exactly right. I also was.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
Thinking about this because uh again, like I always try
to like think about my history with whatever guest is
coming on.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
Sometimes it's guests that I don't know at all.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
I mean, obviously you and I know each other, but
I think that we have we done a show together.
Have we had more lunches slash dinners together than podcasts?

Speaker 3 (02:35):
There's like a non zero chance, like for some of
the Rotal World stuff we do, like the yearly Rotal
World drafts, where like, yeah, it's segmented off, so maybe
I don't think so, but it's possible we're on something
that together.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Yeah, that's all I could think of those.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
It's probably unlikely. So we have definitely had probably one
of the very very few people we've had more face time,
like in person RL experience with than online experience. Because
most of my like most of my minutes spent with
anyone in the industry is online. I'm not sure there's
a person that's the answer is not yes for that

(03:10):
except for you and like Matt Harmon, who we hung
out with that same weekend, and Cana.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
That's right, that's right, Yeah, we we we sat you
myself in Rotopad. We got like it was like an
early dinner and we did it while watching the gold
medal game for the USA team, the basketball team, and
we sat there and we talked and I ate a
salad I remember, and we watched you know, it was
it was. It was a really really high tea situation,
eating salads and watching watching basketball.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
You know, at some point we're in there talking about like, yeah, man,
I don't eat meat and I have a gluten allergy,
and oh man, these athletes are so cool.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
Exactly exactly yeah, although to be fair, to be fair,
everything did get picked up a lot when Steph just
kept hitting three after three. I think that that part
was fun. That part was fun. Said from that, it
was not the highest tee early. Not only that, but
we were eating dinner. It was like four thirty. It
was like five o'clock, like not even five, So it
was even even more insane of a situation. But Kyle,

(04:07):
it's great to have you on and finally do this.
Let's talk quickly. I like to do this with guests
that hop on. Let's talk about your past and how
you got to where you're at now with roat a world,
because I know that you've you spent time in a
lot of different spots before you know, ending up at
rodal World.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
I mean you should know it's better than anyone. I
worked at Number five, not for long, and Number five
was probably one of the places I worked, I don't
want to say the least, but just there were some
places where they were like, we need work, and I
was like, I will do anything. I was in college
in like twenty eighteen, if I had to guess, I
was like nineteen or twenty years old, and I didn't

(04:44):
have like a lot to do. I like stacked my
early freshman and sophomore schedule, so I was like going
to class all day every day, and then my junior
and senior year I had nothing to do. I was like,
that was a pretty poor allocation of my time here.
So I had nothing to do. So I just like
cold call. Pitched Matt Kelly previously on this show, maybe

(05:05):
multiple times, if I remember correctly, some fantasy article. I
don't remember what the first one I pitched was. He
was like, oh, that's good, we'll work with you, and
he published some of my stuff. Then I ended up
working at Rodoviz, at Number Fire, at a few DFS places,
rote a World Pro Football Focus. Sorry if I'm forgetting,
If you're out there listening. You're like, I was your

(05:25):
boss at this random fantasy website. How could you forget me?
Worked at a lot of places, my apologies, and just
eventually ended up doing enough at Rotal World that they're like,
you're destroying our freelance budget. Can you just work full
time for us?

Speaker 1 (05:37):
And I was like, there were a lot of people
that came through Number fire, right, And I actually was like,
like I wanted to like triple check myself and be
like Kyle wrote for us for a little bit. And
I actually messaged Brandon Gdula yesterday and I was like,
I was like, I'm not crazy, right, Like I remember
he was writing for us and doing stuff.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
Has nothing to do with like you. Obviously, it's just
that number.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
I mean I at that point too, it was very
my I was more hands off, and it was more I.

Speaker 3 (06:02):
Was about to say, when I was going to describe
what I did at Number five, I wanted to describe
you as my boss, but you really would have been
like my boss's boss, because it was like a team
of really talented writers, most of which Cadula oversaw. You
would have been like somewhere above that, so we maybe
were on the same emails at some point, but I
doubt you even sent me personally an email at any point.
And I ended up that was probably the final year.
Maybe I worked at Number five for two years where

(06:24):
I was working so much as a full like as
a freelancer that it was a full time job. And
it was the season of twenty twenty, and I was like,
you know, it's going to be a stable, normal season
twenty twenty, and so I quit my day job to
work just a ton of freelance stuff. And at some
point they started delaying games, like they kicked a few
games to Tuesday, and I think we even had a
Wednesday game, And I was like, oh boy, bad time

(06:45):
to buy the top on them playing football every week.
Luckily they played football every week and after that, after
the season, I think that's what would hired me.

Speaker 2 (06:53):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:54):
So I was glad that my memory like didn't completely
creator there and I did remember properly and correctly, but
it was a lot different like when I have like
Scott Barrett or grand Barfield on like I was, you know,
just doing everything on the editorial front and Number Fire
when they were writing back in like twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen,
and stuff like that, and then eventually Cadula took over

(07:16):
that like day to day role and I kind of
just like pushed aside and did more of the content,
you know, more of the podcasting and stuff on my
own before I ended up leaving.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
But Cadula's still over there, you know, running running ship,
crushing it him and him and jim'snas.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
So you know, I'm glad that that you were part
of that though in some way, because obviously you're a
great analyst. So let's talk about this this fantasy football
season so far. I'm curious what you think so far
through three weeks, and I mean, the overreactions are out
of control? Has it seemed like the overreactions have been
like crazier this year than other years from people? For you, yeah,

(07:51):
a little biting it's on part.

Speaker 3 (07:53):
Well, I don't know, man. We love to overreact. It
is our favorite thing. And it's it's weird because also
as a content creator, like the smart thing to do
to be like, yep, these are all just pieces of
the puzzle. Like I can tell you what happened in
week one, like a big one is like the Rotor
World Social team clipped us saying me specifically, but all
of us were in agreement, like this is very very
bad for ken Walker when fewer carries than his teammate,

(08:15):
and he immediately goes out and crushes the next week
on fewer carries than his teammate. And the comments section
was just insane. But like I could either sit there
and say, like I still think ken Walker probably out
carries Zach Charbonay over the course of the season, like
we should hang to our priors because like one or
two games of data are important, but they do not
entirely describe what's going forward. But as content creators, like

(08:38):
this is what we're here to do, is like dissect
in detail what has happened so far. Instead of being like, yeah,
priors are important. We can still mention that, right, but
we're here to talk about what happened, And so it's
very hard to strike the appropriate tone of like this,
I'm very interested in what has happened through the first
two weeks, the first three weeks, but I need it's
hard to convey that those things, those are tons of men,

(09:00):
massive data points, but they're also just pieces of the puzzle.
And they're not massive pieces of the puzzle. Our priors
are still very impactful. I don't think the like just
fantasy points per game starts beating ADP and predictiveness to
like I want to say, it's like week five or six.
I've seen people post a good chart of that. So
at this point I do still think like priors are
going to matter a lot, and so it's a weird

(09:21):
balance to strike as a content creator. For me, the
biggest surprise in terms of a more like slightly broad
structural thing has been the round two wide receivers as
being terrible, and especially because the profiles to me were
pretty bulletproof last year. Is in twenty twenty four when
we were taking Marvin Harrison Junior at the one two turn,
Like I understood it. That was a pretty fragile bet.

(09:43):
Like I made that bet, Like, look, I stepped on
that rake, don't worry. But I was like, I understand
that not all rookies come in and look like we
expect them to. We were not taking a rookie who
we had never seen play a snap in the second round.
The second round picks late in the summer. You got
Pooka in there, I wouldn't really count him most It's like,
come on, guys, like imagine letting poock A fall at
the second but so the the late for the second

(10:04):
round picks wide receivers for the mostly the entirety of
the summer. Brian Thomas Jr. Oh terrible A. J. Brown
finally gets a good game last week, but he is
not living up till just purely based on positional ADP.
Lad McConkie not living up to positional ADP, Drake London
not living up to positional ADP. And none of those
bets to me looked like bad bets. In like, they

(10:25):
don't look like bad bets even in hindsight. I'm like, yeah,
I feel like we appropriately appropriately priced all these players.
They're young, super productive, great peripherals, and it is just
not mattering. I think there are some excuses and some
things that could change for all of them, and it's
not entirely their faults. The one that we'll talk about later,
Brian Thomas Junior is like the closest to being his fault.

(10:46):
I mean, but Lad too. Ladd is just like not
earning a ton of targets on a team that Keenan
Allen's fully revived on that. Quentin Johnson is taking another step.
He deserves credit for improving massively from his horrific rookie
year to a good second year to it looks to
be a really good third year. Drake London dominating targets
to terrible quarterback play and like you mentioned Aj Brown,
like that team just does not want to throw the

(11:07):
football and they don't have to they're winning. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
No, I like that answer a lot, because that's that's
basically been Like I did a mailbag episode technically will
have been released once.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
This is released, but I recorded it before we recorded this.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
Show, and I got a lot of questions about you know,
Brian Thomas and about Drake London. And you know, if
you look at history. I mentioned this on that show,
and you look at just wider rookie wide receivers who
scored fourteen or more PPR points per game as rookies,
right since twenty eleven, there's been twelve of them or
twelve of them that had next season data enough next
season data, So like Kelvin Benjamin didn't play year two,

(11:39):
so he gets thrown out. And then we had three
guys last year, you know, Molik Neighbors, Lad McConkey, Brian
Thomas who got there nine of the twelve scored fifteen
PPR points per game in their sophomore, you know, their
second season, which is an absurd hit rate, right Like,
that is an insane in fantasy football to find a
seventy five percent of a certain cohort, even though it's
just you know, not the massive, massive sample, like you

(12:01):
would lean into that, you know, nine times at twelve,
right like, you would lean into that frequently, like all
the time, because.

Speaker 3 (12:08):
They don't worry. I did. I did, Like, But to
your point, the pipeline of really good rookies too, really
good throughout the rest of their career, it's a pretty
straight shot. It is hard to veer off course. I mean,
you just outline the data and it is not hard
to see that if you look at it and other
metrics to target earning a yards perd outrun as rookies,
every metric that like that we can say is like

(12:30):
something predictive when rookies do it. It is really predictive
going forward. And for some of these players, I think
they'll course correct, right It's but I don't know, it's
it's shocking truly that they are all underperforming, and not
just slightly like some of the second round running backs
two are underperforming slightly, like Josh Jacobs is like the
RB nineteen right now, and Win is the RB ten
good volume, he'll probably end up getting there. But the

(12:51):
wide receivers are just not even close to what we
paid for. And to me, that is why it's the
most shocking, is they're not just a little bit off.
It hasn't been a mile just appointment. They are so
far from what we paid for, and they historically have
been such good bets. And I, like I said, I
think some of them will bounce back, but at this point,
like you got to, the bounce back has to start soon, Like.

Speaker 1 (13:12):
At some point, you know, going back to like the overreacting,
Like you can't not react, as you noted, you know,
like you have to react to some degree, and like
when I kind of like, I I've noticed that I
try my best to stay as level headed as possible.
And I think that people like often you know, like
if you have subscribers or if you have people that
are listening to your show, oftentimes the average fantasy football

(13:35):
consumer and player and listener of podcasts and consumer of content,
they're probably going to go through a larger roller coaster
of emotion towards and about a player than you likely
would as an analyst, because you, as an analyst, have
seen this thing go on, you know, year in and
year out, you know, so you have this backbone of like, Okay, yeah,

(13:56):
I've experienced this before with a certain player, or I
know that things generally regress and all that kind of stuff,
and so to me, like it's it's my job to
at least stay level headed for people, like to be that.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
Backbone for them.

Speaker 1 (14:08):
But at the same time, it doesn't mean that I'm
not reacting to stuff, you know, like Chase Brown has
fallen in my you know, rest of the season rankings,
Brian Thomas Junior has fallen in my rest.

Speaker 2 (14:16):
Of season rankings. But to your point, the crazy thing
with with Brian.

Speaker 1 (14:20):
Thomas, let's just get to that right now, because I
did have a question about Brian Thomas Junior, you know,
on the show sheet on the show sheit, I said,
on the scale from one to quite panicked, how panicked
are you with Brian Thomas Junior. The wide receiver position
is just kind of a disaster right now in terms
of after you get outside the top, I don't know,
like five or six like, there's not many that we

(14:41):
are comfortably relying on right now. And so even even
with the way Brian Thomas Junior has performed, I'm still like,
is he like a low end one and high end two?
Still just from like a like where you know the
rest and how the rest of the position is performing.
But I want to hear you out because you said
that of the guys you were talking about, you think
that this is his fault more than the other guys,

(15:03):
you know, like Drake London having to play with Michael
Pennix and all that kind of stuff in the way
that they performed last week. So tell me how panicked
you are about Brian Thomas Junior. Like, do you think
that we're looking at a wide receiver three rest of
season or is it wide receiver two?

Speaker 2 (15:15):
Or do you think that he can get back to
his wide receiver one status.

Speaker 3 (15:18):
I mean, I definitely think he can get back. They're
like two competing things going on. He's earning the ball
a lot, and I think earning the ball is a
very good proxy for talent, especially at the wide receiver position,
but frankly anywhere, but at the wide receiver position, he's
still got a really strong target share, really strong air
yard share, strong expected fantasy points, and guys who get
thrown the football a lot. One they tend to score

(15:40):
because volume is a very predictive stat But two, I
just think it tells us a lot about their talent,
and so that's great for him. On the other hand,
like next Gen NFL's next Gen stats has him as
bottom three and yards after the catchover expected, bottom three
in catch right over expected, and bottom three sounds bad.
It is so much worse when you realize he is
the only one who who sits there at the bottom,

(16:01):
with Xavier Lagette like him and Xavier for Band as
the worst mine receivers in the NFL. And I think
so these two things are competing. But our prior on
his talent, like purely what you think of him as
a good player, because of what you said about rookies,
Rookies who are productive in any sort of way you
want to measure production being typically very often very good,

(16:22):
not only the next year, but just throughout the career.
Our prior should be relatively strong that the micro talent
X over expected YZ stats are going to be shaky
in a small sample, and we should hang to our
priors a lot on someone like Brian Thomas Junior. He
is both horrific in the metrics and really not looking
good when you watch him play, but the team does
not care. They're trying to get him the ball just

(16:44):
as much as they were last year. And we know
that is at least our most important stat when we
want to look at like how are you going to
perform in fantasy? Do you get the ball? Lot? That's
usually pretty good, and like you said, wide receiver is
pretty I mean part of the reason is guys like
Brian Thomas JUNI you're underforming. But it's so ugly right now,
that guy who has not done a lot and it's
getting the football a ton still has to rank as
like a top fifteen weekly wide receiver. I mean, if

(17:07):
he does this for the next month, of course we
can continue to say, like, guess he's just not who
we thought he was. But three games mostly isn't enough.
I my talent evaluation of him has come down. I
wouldn't would not have thought a player as good as
twenty twenty four BTJ would be capable of three games
as bad as the first three games of twenty twenty five.
But I don't think that means mean to throw out

(17:28):
the pre twenty twenty five talent evaluation. I still think
we should lean on it pretty hard. So I six
point five out of super worried or whatever the question was.
That's what I'm at, six six point five, six point five.

Speaker 2 (17:39):
I like that, you know.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
I also think that the Travis Hunter storyline is kind
of being downplayed when it comes to what that could
do for Brian Thomas and just having a floor of
volume and not feeling as concerned about Travis Hunter maybe
you know, overtaking a role.

Speaker 2 (17:53):
Like a very very significant role, you know, in that offense.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
And then obviously, you know, doanmy Brown is banged up
right now in any other world, Brian Thomas right now
is like everyone's favorite wide receiver from a fantasy perspective,
because I do think conceptually like the things that I'm
seeing out of the Jags offense, I like, you know,
like it's it's exciting, and they're they're scheming players open
the way that they should, and we're seeing some of

(18:17):
the concepts that we saw from Liam Cohen and Tampa
transfer over into into Jacksonville. They're just kind of not
on the same page. Yet you know, they're they're they're
doing stupid things. Wide receivers don't seem like they're in
the right place. Trevor Lawrence hasn't played well even in
a clean pocket, you know, and he's not being pressured
at a very high rate either, so he should be
playing better than he's playing. But I think that there's

(18:38):
just like a possibility here that a lot of things
are just all happening at once and it's like a
perfect storm for Brian Thomas to not produce and that
and that very soon we could see that turn around
a little bit. So I'm with you, like I think
six point five is a very good maybe six point
six would be my would be my number, you know,
and just just say that, Uh, we should be a
little bit panic for sure, But I don't want to

(19:00):
go too too far in one direction because look, we
keep mentioning like like rookie season peripherals and metrics and
production metrics and all that kind of stuff. If you
watch the dude too, no one disagreed with this, you know,
like people like every facet of the football world said
Brian Thomas is you know, maybe there were some concerns
about how complete he was as a receiver and there
was still some room to grow from like a route

(19:22):
running perspective, but he still was a very like, very.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
Good player that no one would have really disagreed with.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
So I don't want to lose you know, Hope, just
based on this this three game sample, same question to you.
You don't have to give me a number, but if
you want to give me a number, I think numbers
are fun. How worried are you about these Bengals skill
players after what we saw in the first week with
Jake Browning under center.

Speaker 3 (19:43):
That's much closer to like an eight and Jake Ronnings
like I'm sorry, Like godspeed for Jake Browning, I believe
you got a contract extension. Like last offseason played, I
would say he played well with the Bengals in twenty
twenty three. I think he went four and three as
a starter, but weirdly it did not manifest in any
production for Jamar Chase or t Higgins. Both of them
were banged up at the end of that year. They

(20:04):
missed some time out, they were out of the playoff
hunt late in the season. Like I think Jamar Chase
just left we were eighteen early because he was just done,
so like when you look at his splits, they're gonna
be a little unfavorable to him. But the target share
for Jamar Chase in those games was around twenty two percent.
It was twenty five percent last week. Twenty five percent
is good, it's also not what you spent the number
one overall pick on, especially when it's twenty five percent

(20:26):
of Jake Browning's targets and T higgins target share in
the games Jake Browning previously was something like ten or
fifteen percent, and it's again it's around that ten percent
as well. To me, like Jake Browning is a good
enough backup and that he can execute the very bare
bones of an offense. But like, you didn't again, you
didn't draft Jamar Chase the one on one to be like, well,
this is gonna be the most bare bones offense in

(20:46):
the NFL and I'm gonna get about a quarter of
the targets. So given that we have to say, like
what is the expectation going forward versus the price we
paid to get these guys, Jamar Chase twenty five percent
target share is still good. I still think they'll find
ways to get him going. T Higgins the concern is
like a nine point five out of ten. I agree,
do not know if and I I think I do
know if Jake Browning is capable of feeding him these

(21:09):
difficult to complete but high value targets. I think I
know the answer, and I think the answer is no.
At least Chase can dominate at any level of the field,
on screens, on deep stuff, middle of the field. Whatever
Jake Browning is capable of, Jamar Chase will be doing
some of that. So Jamar Chase is like a seven
to seven point five out of ten concern, mostly because

(21:29):
I just don't think he's gonna pay off ADP with
Jake Browning as his quarterback. But I think he'll survive
as a wide receiver. One Tahigan's super insane massive concern.
I'm sorry, Tagans Raptors the same. Your year every two
years is Tagans year and this is cour of course
the other year. So doesn't look good. And I mean
Chase brown I don't think the situation can get worse
than it has been because ESPN has them as the

(21:52):
worst run blocking line in the NFL. PFF has them
as like a bottom five unit as well. Of course,
they have the backup quarterback in I think we've seen
maybe the worst three game stretch, But on the other hand,
like we've sort of lost the dead zone in that
I think Fantasy drafters have price dead zone style running backs,
if you want to call them that, pretty well over
the past two years, much better than we did in
twenty fifteen, sixteen seventeen. But he was the prototypical dead

(22:15):
zone where you're like, he's getting all the work. I
don't know if he's that good, but boy does he
get all the work. Because his peripherals last year in
terms of like PFF rush grade, yards after contact, breakaway
rate all had him around like twenty fifth in the NFL.
He was very Naj Harris in that capacity. And Nase
is a really good running back if he plays on
the best offense in the NFL and he gets all
the work. So of course never really saw that for him.

(22:35):
But if he told me Nase Harris say he was
the one who was the Chargers loan starting running back
right now, You're like, yeah, he's gonna score a lot
of Fantasy points. They give him the ball a lot.
And that's what we saw with Chase Brown last year
is they gave him the ball a ton and he
was solid on that. And when you get when you're
solid and you get the ball a lot, you're a
clear RB one. This is not a good offense, it's
not a good offensive line, and he's playing poorly enough

(22:56):
that I'm not sure he will continue to get all
of the work going forward. He is up there for that,
Like he's probably like an eight out of ten concern,
i'd say, But at least he's still he is getting
all of the work, which is good. That matters a lot.
It also matters that he's not playing well and the
team is doing nothing to help him at all, obviously.

Speaker 2 (23:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
No, I think the Chase Brown discourse has been really
interesting this week because you know, speaking of reaction at
being reactionary and panicking, I've seen, you know, I got
an email this week I'm not even kidding from someone
asking if they should drop Chase Brown for what he marks.

Speaker 2 (23:29):
You know, like there's there's like that.

Speaker 1 (23:31):
Kind of dialogue going on right now and discourse going on,
and like that's the part where I'm like, guys, you
need to relax a little bit, Like to me, if
you want to look at this as objectively as possible.
You could argue that they've faced the worst, one of
the worst possible opponents in Week three for their situation
and circumstance where the Vikings are coming off a loss.

(23:51):
They're playing in Minnesota, we know the Vikings front can
just be ferocious at times, and they're playing INSA's backup quarterback.
They make these mistakes early in the game, things just
start to kind of crumble and just sort of fall
apart once that starts to happen, and so like when
you think about it from that perspective, you're like, oh, yeah,
like this could just end up being, in hindsight, a

(24:11):
bad game, a blip.

Speaker 3 (24:13):
Right.

Speaker 2 (24:13):
The problem is that upcoming the next few weeks they
don't have the easiest schedule in the world for Brown.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
But I do think would you say that he's just
given the sentiment and this is always hard because there's
no like this is the market, you know, but given
the sentiment, do you think he's a sell like a
cell Low or do you think that he's more of
like a hold right now?

Speaker 3 (24:32):
I think he's probably more of a hold, mostly because
guys who are getting all of the work tend to
score fantasy points. He hasn't toored any fantasy points yet.
I if you gave me a bet of first three
weeks PPR points per game or week four onward PPR
points per game, which is higher, it's got to be
week four onward. Like, you can't get much worse than
what he's done through three games, So I would say

(24:53):
probably makes him a hold. At that point. The offense
is potentially has the you know, has the potential to
be so terrible that I'm not sure he's like a
screen by And like I said, he's not playing well
himself either, right, Like, he's not making the most of
a bad situation. It's possible that costs him work in
the long run. I don't know if it's likely that
it does, but it's at least possible, especially if the
team is like this is a lost season. I'm gonna

(25:13):
be honest, there's totally lost season when you lose grow like, hey,
there's some great nick Full stories out there. Most of
them are not great nick Full stories. Most of the
time you're starting to quarterback, the season just over. So
I think there's a not an impossible chance, like Toshbrooks
starts to pick up a little more work down the stretch,
but I wouldn't call himsel because I think this is
at least like the lowest meaningful value he will have
for the short to medium term.

Speaker 2 (25:33):
Yeah, that's exactly where I'm at.

Speaker 1 (25:35):
I'd like, the expectation can't be his pre draft cost
whenever or his draft day costs whenever they lose Joe Burrow, Like,
that can't be the expectation. And if that is the
expectation from someone in your league, then sure, like it's
that that's not reasonable. But realistically, there are other running
backs in the league who are volume based running backs
behind bad offensive lines in not desirable situations, and no

(25:56):
one is like overly emotional about those players.

Speaker 3 (25:58):
But people are used to Hubbard last I mean, I
know Bryce Young turned it on the second half, right,
and he's doing a little bit of that this year.
But over the past two years, even Chuba has just
played on a truly a dreadful team like de Panzer's
not been a good team their line maybe, I mean
almost certainly he's been in the Bengals are this year,
but the quarterback play at times was quite literally the
worst in the NFL. Al. Yeah, and Chuba's good, right,
But he's not a world beater, but he's still managed

(26:19):
to overcome the bad situation because he's a good player
who got all of the work. And I think that's
at least like on the table, if not a relatively
likely outcome for Chase Brown right now.

Speaker 1 (26:29):
Yeah, same, And like I don't think that again, like
you nailed it where it's like, I don't think anyone
would say that Chase Brown is like a top ten
running back in the league. But if you're a top twenty,
top like maybe fifteen type player in the league and
you are in that offensive environment with Joe Burrow, yeah
it could be game over, like the ceiling is crazy.
But without Burrow, then all of a sudden, you're a

(26:50):
pretty you know, above average running back in a not
great situation. And like you said, we've seen this before,
players have been RB two's I still think he can
be that RB two wouldn't be like, you know, so
panic that you have to.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
Sell well is basically where of that.

Speaker 1 (27:04):
All right, let's talk about Jackson Dart who's taken over
the Giants quarterback job. Do you think that this like,
when you see stuff like this happen, are you changing
your expectations dramatically for the pass catchers or is it
more of a wait and see thing for you.

Speaker 3 (27:19):
I mean in this case with quarterback injury, Like with
quarterback injuries you go from Joe burn or Jake Browning,
we should dramatically change things with Dart. It's a weird
situation because russ was playing fantasy friendly football and that
the Giants were just passing a lot, and he had
one of the highest aid outs in the league, like
all of us. Every play for the Giants was like,
this is like one point one expected PPR points from
Elie Neighbors because it gets all the targets and these

(27:40):
are just like the Lak Neighbors down there somewhere throws
and those are really good for fantasy, even if it's
ultimately a doomed, doomed prospect for the team actually trying
to win games. So from that perspective, at least, Russell
Wilson was trying to get his fantasy past catcher's points.
And as much as like I like Dart as a prospect,
a lot a lot of prospects fail, like you look
at more, was clearly a better prospect than in the

(28:01):
NFL evaluated cam Ward as miles better, and you look
at how much cam mord is struggling, and you say, like,
that's also pretty reasonable to expect cam Ward to struggle.
Most rookie quarterbacks will come in and struggle. It is
not normal for a rookie quarterback to come in and
elevate his pass catchers. So I feel like the like
to be reasonable. The most likely outcome is the passing
output is worse. Like if you look at the line

(28:23):
movement for a team going from even Russell Wilson to
their backup quarterback, Like bookmakers will still say the average
rookie quarterback is really a sink on your team. It's
just not fun in their first few starts, even their
first entire season. But that being said, I do think
one there is a like stylistic comparison of Dart was
a super aggressive and pretty good deep ball thrower and
intermediate thrower in college. Some of that is the system

(28:44):
he I mean a decent amount that is going to
be the system he played in. But he rocked it
in the system he played in, and it's the same
types of throws I was talking about Russell Wilson making.
He's just super high value. You're gonna gain a lot
of yards, and they're throwing them a lot type of stuff.
And I just saw I think it was Daniel Jeremiah
saying he expects them to come out and play with
a ton of pace Spreaderman Treadham's type of stuff. It's
exactly what they did in college, because that's kind of

(29:04):
the scheme he played in. So if Dart succeeds, I
think the ceiling is really high.

Speaker 2 (29:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (29:09):
Probably should have to have like reasonable expectations of most
freaky quarterbacks are just not that good in their first
few starts.

Speaker 2 (29:15):
Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 1 (29:16):
I totally agree, And not only that, like the Giants weapons,
I think at least compliment each other really well, Like
they have the right pieces around him. You know, It's
not like he's walking into a situation that would be
as poorly or as poor or as bad as what
cam Ward is dealing with. Right, And I think at
this point, you know, say what you want about Brian Dable,
but I trust him more than Callahan and Tennessee and

(29:38):
that coaching staff. So I am cautiously optimistic about Jackson Dart.
Like you said, we always have to bring it in
a little bit because rookie quarterbacks tend to be more
disappointing for fantasy purposes than exciting. But I said it before,
I think that Jackson Dart has sort of that like
Josh Allen's psycho mentality to him, and that's fun.

Speaker 2 (30:00):
It's at the very least we're gonna see a.

Speaker 1 (30:02):
Very fun offense with him, and like camp Scattaboo back
there now with the Tyrone Tracy injury. Obviously, Milieue Neighbors
is a stud so I'm very excited to see what
they can do there.

Speaker 3 (30:12):
Yeah, Dark was a big runner in college too. He
ran for like you have to take away sackyards because
stupid NCAC count sackyards rushing, so he gotta find some
database to strip those out. But he ran for like
two thousand combined yards over his final three season college football.
I think, at least for him, he himself is a
really fun super flex asset to have right now. Again,
you have to kind of recalibrate your expectations for the
pass catchers, but he himself should be like I think

(30:33):
he might just walk right into QB two just based
on rushing and we Drake made it. Drake May was
like a spotty hit or miss thrower as a rookie,
but he was a runner as a rookie, and I
think we could get that from Dark in the same
way that like Josh Allen even early in his career,
was a really scattershot, poor passer, but the rushing always
kept him afloat.

Speaker 1 (30:49):
Yeah, one hundred percent, all right, other rookies, these these
rookie running backs. We saw Mari and Hampton finally sort
of break out in week three. Now, obviously Naji Harris's
injury helped make that happen and helped that happened, but
I thought Hampton at least like started to look the
part in that game. Finally we saw him sort of
like live up to what we thought we were drafting,
you know when we got him, you know, in like

(31:09):
the middle of round three. Do you think that that
there will be better days ahead for the other guy?
So Trayvon Henderson, Ashon, gent R J. Harvey will go
with those three. We can go one by one with
each guy. And if you want to talk about Caleb Johnson,
feel free to talk about Kile Johnson.

Speaker 3 (31:23):
Look, there can literally not be worse days ahead for
Kleb Johnson. Not possible. The worst game for a player
for especially like a young player, you will ever find
is you're like only or maybe your second only touch
of the day is a kick off your muck because
you don't know the rules. Yeah, but look, they could
cut like it's not impossible. But unless that happens, better

(31:46):
days are ahead for Caleb Folks. Good news there. How
much better? I don't you know, Probably not that much better,
but I mean getting zero touches will be better, and
he's doing that right now. So Chevon Henderson man, Look
I get it, fantasy and bio. Why are they doing
this to us? Like you gotta be kidding the lease
And to be fair to both Josh McDaniel and McDaniels

(32:09):
and the head coach, Romandre's played well. Take away the
horror FicT fumbles, which is a staple of his game.
Right he actually has popped in all the nerdy metrics
and he looks when you watch him like he had
that really nice catch that was supposedly designed for Trevion
Henderson two weeks ago and he ends up being the
one out there. I think it was because Trevion Henderson
was messing up consistently in pass Pro. But you look

(32:30):
at the two players the active leaders in fumbles per carry,
and they are both on this roster. They're Antonio Gibson
and Ormandre Stevenson, and they did that thing they do.
Stevenson fumbles twice, and of course the frustrating part, they
don't bring Trevion Henderson and to replace Stevenson they bring
Antonio Gibson and he does of course what I mean,
it's fantasy and bio guys like, yeah, totally, he fumbled.
Who could have seen this coming? I think after that

(32:53):
you have to give Trevion Henderson more work. Do I
think he will come out and just dominate all of
the touches. I'm a bit skeptical. He didn't even dominate
the touches in college, let alone something we'll maybe project
him to never do in the NFL. But I do
have to think that the role for him through the
first three weeks is maybe going to not resemble in
any capacity the role from week four onward. Do I

(33:14):
think he'll come out and just start to the way
Bucky Irving just completely shut out Rashad White from the lineup.
I don't think that will ever happen for Trevion Henderson
has a rookie but I think this is probably the
lowest value you have. I mean, really last week, heading
in the last week was the lowest value you're gonna
have on Trevion Henderson. I do think it'll get better from.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
Here, Yeah, I mean I think that it's like if
you want to look at the positives too, like environmentally,
the Patriots have not had any sort of pass catcher
really emerge on that team. And that's obviously like Travion's
bread and butter, like where he can really thrive his
get him out in space and let him do things
as a pass catcher. You know, he brings that to
the table that you know, Ramandre had that nice play,
like you said, but that's probably the best receiving play

(33:53):
that Stevenson has had over the last year and a half,
you know, and so like.

Speaker 2 (33:56):
Like that's what Trayveon can do.

Speaker 1 (33:58):
And if you drafted Travion, you did so knowing that
the likely outcome is maybe a fifty percent running back
rush here. Maybe like that's the like we knew Ramandre
Stevenson would be involved. It's just that we know that
targets and pass catching and receiving is very very important
at running back in fantasy football, and if Travon Henderson
could steal that eleven twelve percent target share and get

(34:20):
up to that fifteen percent mark as like a very
staple part of that offense, then he would easily pay
off at his at his eight even as his increasing
ADP that we saw, so he was like a he
was like a floor play that had a ceiling, if
you know.

Speaker 2 (34:34):
They just decided to use him more.

Speaker 1 (34:36):
On the in the ground game than going with a
guy like Stevenson. But I agree, I think after what
we saw last week, we should see more Travion. Now
let's go to Ashton Genty, who you know. I mean,
the usage has been weird, and obviously the offensive line
play has been horrible, But where are you at with
Ashton Genty right now?

Speaker 3 (34:52):
Yeah, you don't have to call it weird. The usage
has been pathetic, Like obviously he's getting a lot of
the between the tackles work. But Ashton Genty was one
of like three players drafted in the first one hundred
picks to have a single season yards per out run
over three running backs that is in the past fifteen years.
Like he did not do a ton of pass catching
in his final year at Poise State, because like, why
the hell would you just hand him the football and

(35:13):
that's what they did. But the year before that, he
was like a five hundred yard receiver while still being
a really efficient between the tackles player. He is, or
I mean, at least in college. Maybe he just that
was all an aberration, like he was playing in the
Mountain West or whatever, and none of that is replicable.
But he is, at least in my mind, a really
talented pass catcher, and they just don't seem to think that,
or at least they are concerned enough with something like

(35:34):
pass protection that they are not willing to put him
out there for passing downs, for the two minute drill,
that kind of stuff, and the fact that they are
just taking that portion of the fantasy production pie off
of his plate entirely, and they're not replacing with like
scheme targets that much either. It's not like they're doing
you know, Alvin Kamara rookie year stuff, or maybe he
wasn't taken like the third down back, but John Payton
loved to scheme his running back targets. They're not even

(35:56):
doing that either, And the offensive environment looks really bad,
much like Chase Brown another team where between Pro Football
Focus and ESPN's offensive line stuff, they're one of the
two or three worst and basically every metric the AR
four contact, which is also in part a running back
stat But I do think it's a little bit helpful.
He's worse than the NFL. He gets hit hind the
line scramage like every single attempt he gets, and then
they're not letting us pad out the poor games with

(36:18):
PPR production. Another spot where adjusting for the cost you
paid to get him maybe the most concerning of the
rookie running backs, just because you needed him to come
out of the gates as a top fourteen back and
then progressed into a top five back or maybe just
stay as a top ten back in the entire year.
But you needed some really strong production early and elite
production late, and at best you're probably getting like really

(36:40):
good production late. But this role needs to change drastically
to get to elite production. So I still think he
can rebound, but like we're burning games quickly in which
is actively hurting you, I think it almost certainly he'll
go down. Is at least a smallness, and it's very possible.
There's stuff like this continues, it ends up beeing big bores. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (36:57):
You know what's funny is that my rankings were lower
on gent than than consensus this year. And this is
gonna sound like a victory lap, but it is not,
because the reason I had him lower is because of
those wide receivers that we talked about earlier that we loved,
and they obviously aren't, you know, coming to fruition. But
the problem I think you nailed is that they're just
not using him as a pass catcher nearly enough. Last

(37:18):
week long down in distance snaps. This is, according to
Fantasy Life data, eighty nine percent snapshare on long down
and distance downs for Zamir White. Like, what are we
doing here? What is going on? You have a negative
game script and you're gonna be using Zamir White? Are
we kidding? A guy who has literally never been a
pass catcher at any level of reasonable football.

Speaker 2 (37:41):
He was not one in college.

Speaker 1 (37:43):
He obviously has not really been one in the NFL,
and we saw him perform last year. You know, not
to expectation too. You have to imagine that that Gens's
gonna see more and more work. But this could easily
be a situation where the coaching staff is like, yeah,
we're gonna we're gonna slow play this because we can,
and this is the way that we think we should
be doing things, even though Gent probably should be getting

(38:05):
the ball in more ways than he currently is. Another
player who is disappointed at running back rookie running.

Speaker 2 (38:10):
Back is RJ. Harvey, So where are you at with him?

Speaker 3 (38:13):
Yeah? Speaking speaking of frustrating usage, the gent one has
to be more frustrating, but like, this one's pretty frustrating too,
because I get it.

Speaker 1 (38:20):
JK.

Speaker 3 (38:20):
Dobbins was signed to do a specific thing, which is
handle like bolt carries between the tackles, stuff boxes like
short yardage stuff. And he's played really well. Like I
don't need to bore you with all the data in
terms of rush yards over expected, his success rate yards
after contact. He's played really well and he's earned the
role he has right now. I don't think you should
just as like it would even be too fantasy in

(38:41):
bio for me to be like we've seen too much JK. Dobbins.
He's playing really well. The frustrating, stupid part is the
Tyler baty slash bidet usage, which I will note finally
quieted down in Week three his role almost completely vanished
in week three, but that did not result in an
increased route rate for RJ Harvey. There was like, hell,
just put JK. Dobbins out those time of the day snaps.

(39:01):
It makes me hopeful that when you cut one of
these pieces out that that leaves room for RJ. Harvey
to pick that roll up, even if he didn't pick
it up last week. But like, god, that's frustrating, and
it increases the or it extends the timeline of like
here's when you're gonna be starting RJ Harvey in fantasy
weeks out from now potentially, So I think this one
is one of the most exciting potential because he's looked really,

(39:22):
really electric. Another guy who really pops in all the metrics,
largely because of one long run. But like, wait, you
do like if you don't count the long runs, it
doesn't look as good. Yeah, I know, it doesn't look
its gonna be don't count the long runs. He did
pop a long run, got three targets last week as well,
really high targets per rout run. Hopefully they're trying trying
to scheme him up a little more stuff even if
he doesn't actually hold that two minute drill type of role,
but another one where you paid for at least some

(39:45):
amount of early season production and you've gotten none of it. Like,
he's not startable in week four on the role he has,
and if he gets up to like thirty five to
forty percent of the snaps, like twenty five to thirty
percent of the carries, he's still vaguely startable at most
in week five. So fresh trading. Albeit the talent does
seem to be there, and we know Sean Payton's kind
of a king maker for running backs, So I feel

(40:06):
maybe the best about this one hitting in weeks I
don't know, twelve to seventeen. You're the fantasy playoff push
and the playoffs, but the fact that's where we're at
is probably going to make them go down as a
slightly if not meaningfully overpriced pick.

Speaker 2 (40:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:21):
Yeah, I mean I think that we're all learning and
seeing firsthand, and I mean we knew this going into
the season that rookies tend to start slower and then
they can come alive during the second half of the season,
and that's part of the allure for them, is that
that's the more important time of the fantasy football season.
And even when you look at season long numbers and say,
and see how well these guys like perform eight outperform

(40:42):
ADP expectation. Even when you look at the season long numbers,
rookies tend to look pretty good. I mean, especially a
wide receiver, but even at running back and so across
the season, when we look back, I still think that
some of these guys will look Okay.

Speaker 2 (40:55):
You know, there's gonna not all of them are going
to just pan out and work.

Speaker 1 (40:58):
You know, but like you said, said Tyler Biday, not
seeing the work that he saw last week, I agree.
I mentioned that in the ten Trends show this week,
how it's nice to have a two headed monster instead
of a three headed monster. You know, like at least
that tells us that maybe there's gonna be a drive,
one extra drive that R. J. Harvey gets or something,
and you know he's able to just just slowly get
more and more work. And then obviously JK. Dobbins hasn't

(41:19):
been able to stay healthy throughout his career, so that's
that's another thing to keep in mind. But Dobbins, obviously,
you know, rest of season, you have to at this point,
you know, if if you haven't adjusted you have to
have JK.

Speaker 2 (41:29):
Dobbins ahead of RJ. Harvey rest of season.

Speaker 3 (41:31):
Yeah. Absolutely, And I think this is like a good
reminder of like we are not drafting players, we are
building teams. And if RJ. Harvey finishes from weeks fourteen
through seventeen as a top five fantasy running back, he
probably goes down as like a good pick from a
ten thousand foot view, even if he does not outproduce
his He was drafted as the RB twenty five and

(41:53):
finishes the RB thirty six type ADP, he goes down
as a great pick if you took if you ate
your vegetables and drive, drafted a Travis Etn who got
you there, and maybe Etn fades down the stretches bas
Shall Tooton gets more work. Like, I love drafting rookies because,
like you said, the data generally supports that not only
are they really good during the fantasy playoff push, but
they're just generally at least a little bit undervalue. We've

(42:14):
been drafting them more lately, but especially in your home drafts,
like pretty good value to just like keep drafting the
rookies who seem like they're in decent spots who seem
like they're good prospects and just hope for the best
because it typically ends up being better than ADP suggests,
Like I love drafting them, but it would have been
and I tried to do this much more this year.
Very smart to build out your roster to take advantage
of those rookie hits, even if they end up just

(42:36):
being a hit in weeks ten, eleven, twelve or fifteen,
sixteen seventeen.

Speaker 1 (42:40):
Yeah, I think that that's one thing that I want
to research more and like focus my writing more on
this offseason, like and the draft guide is talking about okay,
like for instance, I had, you know, Tory Horton as
a late round Darth Brow, which is coming to fruition more.
And by the way, we're recording this before the Thursday
night game. But looking back, you know, maybe that's a
terrible example. Maybe if it's like, I don't know, a

(43:02):
wide out like or even a running back like ba
Shall Tutan, because you know, Tutan obviously isn't like getting
it done yet, but a player that you might be
able to just get later in the season in some way,
whether cheap through a trade or off the waiver wire
or something like that. Tutan's probably terrible example, but a
player that you could get later in the season or
off the waiver wire. Instead of using you know, a

(43:23):
last round pick to draft that player you know like
and then holding onto that player because you can't assume
that people are gonna hold on to him, it might
be just be a better idea to, you know, just
just wait on it and get those kinds of rookies.
But at the same time, if you're not spending on
some of these rookies, you are missing out on some
of the guys who do end up, you know, doing well.
Like Phukunakua was a late round Darth throw in the

(43:44):
draft guy when he was a rookie, and if you
didn't draft him, you were you know, not you were
you were fighting for him off the waiver wire with.

Speaker 2 (43:51):
People, you know.

Speaker 1 (43:52):
So it's this balancing act that I do want to
look into more and more from like a usability standpoint
of how we actually use these rookies within our team.
Like you said, we're drafting a team, not these individual players.
I think it's really really important. All Right, I'm gonna
say this player or that player, and you're gonna tell
me who you prefer rest of season more between these

(44:12):
two guys. Okay, you're ready to play this really really
fun game.

Speaker 3 (44:15):
This sounds great.

Speaker 1 (44:16):
Yeah, Okay, let's do it first one Amarion Hampton, another
rookie running back versus Kien Williams.

Speaker 3 (44:24):
Amario Hampton. I think really the Kyen Williams, like Omarion
Hampton is just going to become the next Kyron Williams
and that like Hampton hasn't looked great through three games,
and his profile was like the best aspect of his
fantasy production profile coming out of college was like they
give this guy a whole lot of touches, and that's
what we care about. Like you know, at the end
of the day, that is the best value you can

(44:45):
have at almost any position. Is like your team trusts
you to take twenty carries a game. That's a really
cool thing in fantasy, even if he's not the best
actual running back in the NFL. And kyrone was that
the poster child of that for two years. Like he
ran all the route towards like past for those routes too,
got all the carries, got all the goal line work.
His fancy metrics said he was kind of just an
above average guy. But now we're actually seeing the mix

(45:08):
and Blake Korm a little bit for some goal line
work for some more routes, like both the snapshare, the
route rate, the carry share have all fallen for kyrone,
he was the perfect player who cannot sustain even a
small amount of drop and just overall cut of the pie.
It's like Hampton, even if it doesn't work out, is
probably similar to Kyroen, and maybe he does turn things around,
maybe he is great, which I think is the bones
you get on taking him versus Kyron.

Speaker 2 (45:29):
Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 1 (45:30):
I was actually surprisingly ahead of the market when I
compared my rest season rankings to Fantasy pros rankers this
week on Kyrien Williams, which hasn't always been the case.
I think part of that is just that again, once
you get into that like high end RB two range,
you start to get into like, okay, what are these
guys you.

Speaker 2 (45:46):
Know you have to place? So like a lot of
it is just like the stability of Kyrien.

Speaker 1 (45:50):
I still think there's gonna be a floor, but I'm
with you where you know, if you look at like
Blake Korm's also looked really good, like very good, and
so you know when that's happening, he's losing some of
that work.

Speaker 2 (46:01):
We know they don't target running backs at a high rate.

Speaker 1 (46:03):
I know that Kyron had that receiving touchdown this past week,
but that saved his day in a way, and so
you know, I'm at least a little bit concerned.

Speaker 2 (46:11):
I still have him as like a low end one,
high end two, but I have.

Speaker 1 (46:13):
A Marion Hampton higher Zay Flowers versus George Pickens.

Speaker 3 (46:17):
I mean Zay Flowers. This one wasn't even close to me,
like say, Flowers is just a star. I think he's
very clearly he I mean he fits the bill. He's
not wasn't quite as special. He wasn't as special as
a Brian Thomas or like Lak Neighbors. But he was
a good prospect who's good as a rookie and then
gets meaningfully better in his second year. Ups his targets
per out run, his yards per route run while also
operating any farther depth down field, so he's earning more

(46:39):
per route of higher value targets. He was the clear
like upward trajectory toward I don't even to say superstart. Right.
He still has probably another step to get there maybe,
but he was clearly just from the moment the NFL
started considering him as a first round pick to Week
one of the twenty twenty five NFL season, just consistent
upward trajectory. I get that the passing attack is probably
not going to be as good, but I will just

(47:01):
take the player who is right now dominating targets super efficient.
For George Pickens, who's like obviously ceedee Lamb's not going
to be there for a while, he should see a
meaningful uptick in targets, but there's like a step forward
Pickens has to take to be the fantasy producers that
save Flowers.

Speaker 1 (47:14):
Is all right, Let's go to Chase Brown, who we
talked about earlier, versus Chuba Hubbard, who we also kind
of indirectly talked about it.

Speaker 3 (47:21):
I didn't realize that I made that connection without I mean,
maybe there was something in the back of my head
Chuba Hubbard, like as we talked about, Like we've seen
Chewba Hubbard quite easily survive a very bad offensive outlook,
and I think at least it's going to be better
this year. Probably sill pretty high variants, like Bryce has
pretty shockingly low lows but he has some legitimate high eyes.
I just think the offensive environment for a similar player

(47:43):
is better for Hubbard.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
Yeah, yeah, no, I'm with you. The thing that scares
me a little bit with Hubbard is is they are
mixing in Rico Daddle a little bit more. Like last
two weeks, Daddle has had like a thirty five percent
running back rush are when it was like twelve percent
week one, and then weeks one and.

Speaker 4 (47:55):
Two, Hubbard saved his day both weeks with this like
late garbage time receiving touchdown, and both both games were
I might have even been the same play, but he
was like wide open on both.

Speaker 2 (48:06):
Plays and he ended up scoring.

Speaker 1 (48:08):
And so there is a little bit of that where
I think you're right where it's like RB two type
production because there's just a lot of RB twos, you know,
Like that's kind of but like I doubt Tuba gives
us that RB one season, and there might be some
inconsistencies there. But again, we already talked about how Chase
Brown has sort of been that bucket too.

Speaker 2 (48:24):
All Right, We'll go to JK.

Speaker 1 (48:26):
Dobbins, who we just talked about versus David Montgomery, who's
coming off a ridiculous game against Baltimore.

Speaker 3 (48:31):
I did not have a strong answer for this one.
I went David Montgomery mostly because I think David Montgomery
just is what he is, and that is a really
good committee back on what turns out like obviously a slow,
I mean, really bad week one, still one of the
best offenses in football, and even being clearly behind JK.
Dobbins terms of like how many what percent of your
team's carries, what percent of your team's routes, all of

(48:52):
the market share type stuff, Clearly JK. Dobbins has the
advantage there. You still have a straight up just more
expected fantasy points no matter how you measure like PFF
so Rodo has expected fantasy points. Dave Montgomery comes in
ahead of JK. Dobbins because he plays on maybe the
best offense in football and you get in a lot
of advantageous situations there, and there's at least a reasonable
expectation that Dobbins's role is going to shrink going forward.

(49:13):
I think the lines have probably proved that that is
not going to happen with the Gibbs Montgomery split. They
just like Montgomery too much and he's really good at
what they ask him. To do.

Speaker 1 (49:21):
Yeah, yeah, I mean contingent upside too, right, Jamir Gibbs
goes down.

Speaker 2 (49:24):
Knock on wood, everyone.

Speaker 3 (49:25):
The top three fantasy running back of Jamir Gibbs goes down.

Speaker 1 (49:28):
Yeah yeah, I mean everyone, please please please knock on
wood everyone right now.

Speaker 3 (49:31):
Please.

Speaker 1 (49:32):
We don't we do not need Jamiir Gibbs to go down,
but yeah, we have to think about the upside there,
whereas JK. Dobbins doesn't really have that kind of out. Okay,
three rookie running backs. I think this one's really interesting
to talk through. Cam Scataboo, Trayvon Henderson, quinnschod Judkins. Who
do you like most? You can even rank them if
you want to.

Speaker 3 (49:49):
Risk, Yeah, I think scatibo Quin, Shawn, Trevion Henderson. I
actually feel like all I mean clearly all of them
are on the upswing right now. I will just say
Scott bo right now is in a pretty good position
to get all of the work both carries and catches
on a team that without Tyrone Tracy has like like,
they do not seem interested in giving Devin Singletary work.

(50:10):
I mean they don't even see him anymore, and interested
in giving Tyrone Tracy work. He's doing the thing that
like Ramandre does where man every chance he gets, he
makes you want to play the backup if you're a
head coach. Like he has had fumbling issues, he's had
drops issues. He's not good in past prone of course
he's hurt right now. And Scatabo looks really good too.
Not to say that like we don't think quin Shawn
and Trevion hendersons are gonna look good. If you're telling me,

(50:31):
Scatabo ranks really well in PFF. I think he's like
PF's third ranked running back right now, and he's getting
all the work. I'll just like that feels like I'll
just take the one who has pluses in all categories
where I do not know if travi On Henderson is
going to get all the work, and he hasn't looked
as good as Kim Scatabow. It's a small sample. I
still think we should expect him to be a better player.
But right now, the combo of work plus looking good

(50:53):
is both the most in favor of Scatabow because he's
going to be a pass catcher, but also really does
favorite Quinn Shawn Judkins as well. He came back and
just immediately took to the backfield. He was immediately getting
the majority of the carries in his first game back
from not practicing the almost entire summer, and then the
next game he almost completely shuts out the rest of
the running backs. Dylan Sampson doesn't appear to have any

(51:13):
bit of a role anymore. Jerome Ford is just out
there for pass catching. The only flaw in the Judkins
profile is that he probably is limited to primarily between
the tackles. Work on a team that I believe is
ten point underdogs this week, and they're going to be
This will be a you know, a crazy underdog situation.
They believe here road tripping to Detroit. I know they
play Detroit. I think it's on the road. They won't
play the one of the best teams in football on

(51:33):
the road every week, but they will be underdogs every week.
And that makes Judkins a very like I hope he
gets in the end zone because he's just not going
to catch enough passes. But like, who knows, they could
also just start playing him on passing downs too, because
he was an okay pass catcher, perfectly acceptable pass catcher
in college too.

Speaker 1 (51:48):
Yeah, yeah, I kept comping him to just like from
a usage standpoint to Jonathan Taylor whenever he was coming out.
You know, it's like not not to say that he
was as good of a prospect as Jonathan Taylor, but
in terms of like he could be like a nine
to ten percent target share player. And then obviously you
know JT's seen his workload and stuff even get better
this year. But regardless, Like the reason I brought them
up is because in my rest season rankings, they're basically
all in the same tier for me. But I think

(52:10):
it's one of those situations where it's like what do
you need for yours?

Speaker 3 (52:13):
That made the question so hard? Go ahead, Yeah, that
was my first thought. It is like I can think
of different teams I have where I'm glad to have
one player and I wish I had the yet.

Speaker 1 (52:21):
Yeah, Like I think I think Henderson's probably the stash
candidate of the three, like the highest upside candidate, right
because you know Tyrone Tracy is gonna come back eventually,
and there could still be more of a split back deal,
but if you.

Speaker 2 (52:32):
Need that production right away, I'd go Scataboo.

Speaker 1 (52:34):
And then in between the two is kind of quinch
on Judkins right, and so that's kind of why I
wanted to see if if theyre But I'm glad it
seems like we're on the same page of just like,
these are guys who all do different things for your
fantasy team depending on what you.

Speaker 2 (52:47):
Need for your squad.

Speaker 1 (52:48):
Right now, all right, let's look at DK Metcalf versus.

Speaker 3 (52:54):
T Higgins oh Man neither I mean Metcalf. I think
I think the answer is Metcalf. I mean, I will
say that the Steelers are kind of interesting in that, like,
I think Rogers is like seventy five to eighty percent cooked,
but everyone in a while he does do something really cool,
Like there are three flashes where his old man's strength

(53:15):
surges to a truly incredible peak. Rogers as play, the
valleys between them are just pretty stunning. But they are
also playing at like a relatively neutral pace and a
neutral pass rate over expected, which is like they're finding
some sort of probably relatively unhappy, but some sort of
medium between the type of football that Aaron Rodgers wants
to play, which is pass heavy but super slow, and

(53:38):
the type of football that Arthur Smith wants to play,
which is the most runt heavy in the NFL. The
fact that that volume in theory is there for guys
like Metcalf or the tight ends or Calvin Austin as
opposed to there's a scenario which they were the most
run heavy and slowest team in the NFL that has not,
you know, come to pass. So there's at least like
some meat on the bone for Metcalf. These are both bad.

(54:01):
I don't like these.

Speaker 2 (54:02):
Yeah, No, it's tough because I don't think Metcalf.

Speaker 1 (54:04):
I think I think he's proven at this point he's
not a target earner, you know, like he's not He's
just not going to be that, Like, because the way
that he was going to really pay off this year
was if he was like a twenty eight percent target
share player, right, and I think we're seeing that. I
don't know, if I were to project rest of season
target share for him, twenty two percent maybe something around that.

Speaker 3 (54:22):
Quite literally just the same as any other year of
his career. Yeah, right, Yeah, he played with some good players,
like obviously he played with JSN who didn't break out
until the second half of DK's final season. Played with
Tyle Lockett, who's really good. Even if it was towards
the tail end of his career, but he proved there
at least you know, there was a chance he didn't.
But it turns out that the guy's target shaw was
pretty stable with him as a player, and the same

(54:42):
way that like player adots have a surprising amount of
stickiness year to year because the guy runs a similar
route tree last year as he did this year. Dk
Metcalf is no more laterally agile than he was five
years ago. He is to day like there are just
certain things he's not capable of and that limits his
ability to just go out and be like every third
play he's a target.

Speaker 1 (55:00):
Dk Metcalf, Yeah, one hundred percent. All right, this is
a fun one. Caleb Williams versus Daniel Jones.

Speaker 3 (55:06):
Look, I I was, I was. I'm picking the obviously
the fell forward again ward Daniel Jones, Like this time counts.
He's finally good. But Caylo was really awesome last week
as of right now that's week three, but he's still
on the year, Like we can't just say, like, well,
the last thing he did was pretty awesome and not
ignore the fact in the first two games he was
pretty terrible on the year. He's fifteenth in EPA per

(55:29):
play twenty fifth in completion percent over expected. PFF has
him as one of the least accurate quarterbacks in terms
of accurate throw rate. Daniel Jones is crushing all that stuff,
and like, if it's a gimmick, I'm fine with that
and saying that, like they're running right now, a ton
of play action, a ton of RPO. They're generally keeping
him clean pocket too. All of this stuff has worked
in the favor of Daniel Jones. But I also don't

(55:51):
see why that stuff wouldn't persist. Maybe it comes down, right, like,
maybe they aren't the most play action, heavier, RPO heavy
team in the league going forward, but it's not like
they had the world's a schedule, right, Like one of
the wins came against a really good Broncos team in
which he played really good football against those Broncos. And
maybe the if you if you want to just say,
like this is all like two pie in the sky stuff.

(56:12):
They're using Daniel Jones as a goal line running back.
He has one He has one pewer carry inside the
five than Josh Allen and Jalen Hurts. So if you
think Caleb is better, perfectly acceptable, And I don't want
to be the one going to bat for Daniel Jones.
But if for fantasy purposes you need the very clear
tie breaker, it's a guy who's like a goal line
running back.

Speaker 2 (56:31):
We get it. You love Daniel Jones and you think
he's the best quarterback in football, we get it.

Speaker 3 (56:34):
Man, he's playing really well.

Speaker 2 (56:36):
He is playing well. Yeah, it was crazy.

Speaker 1 (56:38):
I was like, his pressure to sack ratio right now
is by far, not even close, by far the best
in the league, which is crazy because two years ago
that he was horrible in that within that metric, and
we know that that's often a quarterback type metric, you know,
from a from a stickiness standpoint. I'm very this is
what I'm gonna I'm gonna put this out there into
the universe. I think this game this weekkend against that

(57:01):
Rams front is going to be the most interesting test
for me with Daniel Jones, just to see.

Speaker 2 (57:07):
How that offense is able to handle more pressure.

Speaker 1 (57:10):
Like you said, they played well against Denver, so I
don't want to, you know, say that they haven't faced anyone,
but I'm you know, they're on the road.

Speaker 2 (57:17):
It's just gonna be a really interesting matchup. In my eyes.

Speaker 1 (57:19):
I'm not saying either way, like I'm just kind of
living in the middle with Daniel Jones, which is a
really really very much a cop out type answer.

Speaker 2 (57:25):
And I like Kleb a lot.

Speaker 1 (57:28):
Just because of that environment that he's in, you know,
like he's scrambling a lot, he's got the weapons, and
their defense is absolutely putrid.

Speaker 2 (57:35):
So I'm excited about like what that upside might look like.

Speaker 1 (57:39):
But I understand if people want to go Daniel Jones
with this one last one. I think this one's fun too,
because Travis Kelcey's been doing what he's doing, which is
not a lot, and then Juwan Johnson has had insane usage.
But Juwan Johnson versus Travis Kelsey, who do you want?

Speaker 2 (57:53):
Rest of season?

Speaker 3 (57:54):
I didn't like for a lot of these. Obviously it
came with a lot of stats. I was like, I
don't mean stats. Travis kelce is so washed. I mean,
you could look, okay, he's on pace for like career
worse in yards for outrun targets per outrun PFF for
steven grade. Last year was his worst year in yards
run out run The year before that worst year maybe
until like his first or second year he didn't actually
play it his first year, but ten year lows basically

(58:14):
across the board three years ago, two years ago, in
this year, like that is, there is no more obvious
player in decline in the NFL right now than Travis kelcey,
and he has the benefit of not having a single
pass catcher of note to compete with right now because
everywhere he's played what like three snaps or whatever it was,
and Rashid Rice has not played a snap yet, so
things are only getting worse from here and he's barely

(58:36):
doing anything. Whereas Juwan, like like it or not, is
one of the highest usage tight ends in the NFL,
his usage will probably fall because our prior should be
that like, he's not the best target earning title. He's
not McBride, is not tra McBride, and if he falls
to just Hunter Henry, he will probably still outscore Travis kelcey.
And the truth is probably somewhere in the middle that

(58:56):
he probably will continue to earn targets at a good
clip even if not. Tramick I didn't even have to
think about this.

Speaker 1 (59:02):
It was very clearly Juwan, Yeah, I've found myself like
every week since week one, being higher than the market
considerably with Juwan Johnson, just because I mean, what more
could you ask for from a usage standpoint, And like
the Saints are playing in these negative scripts, they play
at a fast pace. Like the Saints are actually not
a horrible environment for fantasy because of that and because

(59:24):
of the passing volume that we might be able to
see there, And so yeah, I mean I think this
is I mostly wanted to, you know, just like bury
the Travis Kelcey talk at this point and just not
have to do it anymore.

Speaker 2 (59:35):
So thank you for doing that.

Speaker 1 (59:36):
All right, a few more questions by candidate, favorite by
candidate right now for the rest of the season.

Speaker 3 (59:42):
I mean, you just mentioned how good the Saints environment is,
and mine is Chris o'lovi. He is the number one
receiver in expected fantasy points. He is in terms of
PPR expected fantasy points, the number three overall flex player,
behind only Christian McCaffrey, Engaineer Gibbs. Like you said, I
get the Saints are not going to throw the football,
particularly a f They're going to have to do it

(01:00:02):
a lot, and they are leaning into that as a
fast paced team. That is I mean, at worst, right now,
you're getting PPR scam the targets aren't that great in
terms of like accuracy, but they are enough of enough
of the targets to support wide receiver two ish production.
But if he just comes close to living up to
just capturing the equity of the volume he has, he
is a I mean quite literally, if he comes close

(01:00:22):
to that, he's a top five fantasy receiver because he's
seeing the ball more than any other player in the NFL.
And we have I think a pretty strong prior that
I think he's really good. He's another player who you
talk about comes into the NFL immediately I think eleven
hundred yards two plus yards per out run and back
to back to back seasons to start his career. I
am very confident, at least I'm reasonably confident that he is,

(01:00:45):
at his core, a very good real life football player.
And now the team is just pumping him with volume
of the likes we have never seen before for him,
and we are not seen with anyone else in the NFL,
and he just hasn't made good on it, and maybe
he never will because maybe he's not as good as
I think he is, And of course his quarterback plays
pretty poor. But when we're getting as much volume from
a player I think is as good as I think
Olave is, and he hasn't lift up to the expectation yet.

(01:01:06):
I feel like that is the most obvious bisignal.

Speaker 2 (01:01:09):
Yeah, love that. How about a cell candidate.

Speaker 3 (01:01:12):
We talked about him earlier, This one, I think you
could lump into a lot and maybe maybe fantasy has
advanced too far for this to be a viable strategy.
But in the like vein of JK. Dobbins or like
Remandre heading into last week, obviously he's not high anymore,
but I had Travis Eten. He is just greatly outkicking
the coverage on in terms of his efficiency and what
the volume says he should be getting. And I think

(01:01:32):
that's fair to say he probably will do that to
some degree. This wileam Cohen Offens is super friendly to
getting running backs fantasy points. But he's twenty second and
percent of team carries twenty fifth in route rate. But
he's a ppr RB nine and also like total slappy
move Base Duton looks good Man Basechill Tuton looked really
good and he didn't play a ton last week. He
still plundered a short yardage touchdown. He didn't play a

(01:01:53):
lot last week. I think because he's dealing with his
shoulder injury that I would assume they're kind of protecting
him from. But every time he gets on the field
he will great. I think he will force a true
fifty to fifty committee. I don't know by like week
ten or something, at which point Travis Etn probably falls
back closer to that RB twenty range. Still a good
fantasy asset for right now, he's easily outproducing that.

Speaker 1 (01:02:12):
Yeah, I mean, look, I mentioned this in the mailbag.
It's not even released yet at the time of this recording,
but that is a play. Like someone asked me about
Travis Etn and my answer was, like, he's outside the.

Speaker 2 (01:02:21):
Top twenty and every volume.

Speaker 1 (01:02:23):
Related metric that we care about, where we're looking at
rush share, you're looking at route participation and so on
and so forth, and he's clearly outperforming how he's been
used in Last week, he scored a touchdown because the
Texans let him score a touchdown and happened at the
end of the game. They let the jag scores they
could could get the ball back. He should have just
fallen out in the one, and they talked about that
after the game.

Speaker 2 (01:02:44):
I am a.

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
Massive, massive bashall Tuton Stan and so I am a
believer that he's going to steal more and more work
as the season goes on. And it's been wild to
me looking at because again I create my rest of
season rankings and I just compare it to how other
people were ranking, because then that way I can say, hey,
I'm higher or lower on this player, Travis Etn. This
week has consistently been like a high at least a

(01:03:06):
high end two for people high end RB two, whereas
I have them more in like the RB twenty range
like you mentioned, and so I am definitely more in
the cell camp for Etn. So very funny slash not
surprising that we have agreement with both the buy and
the cell candidate. Or the last question before I let
you go, I do this with every guest during the season.
Give me a bold, a fire prediction for Week number four.

Speaker 3 (01:03:29):
Lad McConkie. We talked about him earlier. It's been frustrating
and I don't know if it'll change over the course
of the season, but Week four looks like an absolute
smash spot for Lad McConkie. I'll say one hundred and
fifty yards in a touchdown. This is the breakout spot
we've been waiting for.

Speaker 2 (01:03:43):
Are you? Are you a belief?

Speaker 3 (01:03:44):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:03:44):
How would you rank those three wide receivers rest of season?
Because there was a viral tweet going out that the
ESPN guys had lad third of the three, all three
of them did. And this is not I love all
three of those guys. This is not saying they could
easily be right. So I'm not saying anything negative about
how they ranked them. How would you rank the because
I don't have it in that order, But how would
you rank the Chargers wide receivers rest of season?

Speaker 3 (01:04:05):
No, they're super nice people and like sometimes you just
disagree with nice.

Speaker 2 (01:04:08):
Face, just disagree with It's fine, yeah, right, but I
do the.

Speaker 3 (01:04:11):
Thing is I do. If you don't stand for something,
you'll fall for anything. And I'm not falling for this.
I don't want to say nonsense because both Keenan Allen
and Quentin Johnson have legitimately played well, Like I don't
think they're doing anything that like they don't deserve. But
like I said earlier, there is this very tricky tight
rope to walk of our priors coming into the season
versus three weeks of data, and to me, the three

(01:04:32):
weeks of Lad being disappointing but not atrocious like Brian
Thomas Junior has been atrocious. I still have faith in
Brian Thomas Junior. He's played like garbage. Ladd has not
played like that. Even in Week one he had a
deep ball that Justin Herbert just missed him on. And
if he hits on that one play, I am confident
we are not talking about him in the same way
that we are right now. I would rank them Lad, Keenan,

(01:04:52):
QJ credits QJ. They're like I did not think he
was a good prospect. I felt very vindicated when he
played poorly in his entire rookie season. He is a
legit good football player. I think the targets just have
to go somewhere, and I'm so confident that Lad is
the most talented of them. And Keenan is really quite
a good fit for what Justin Herbert is doing. Anytime
he doesn't want to look deep, Keenan's there and he's open.

(01:05:14):
But I'm still going to cling to the fact that
Lad's rookie season was so elite that he will bounce
back great spot versus the Giants too. The Giants have
given up more yards, more yards and targets two slot
receivers than any other team in the NFL right now.
And of course Ladds running about sixty three if I
remember correctly, percent of his routes from the slot. So
to me, just very clear spot where again I don't

(01:05:34):
know if he lives quite up to my very lofty
expectations for him, but Week four actually strikes me as
a game where he.

Speaker 2 (01:05:40):
Does lad McConkey smash. I love it, Kyle, this was great.

Speaker 1 (01:05:44):
Let everyone know where they can find you, what you're
working on, and what they can expect from you rest
the season.

Speaker 3 (01:05:49):
Find me. You try and keep up with tweeting all
of my stuff out on Twitter at Kyle tweets here,
but if not always on the Rotal World Football Show
and always dropping like a few weekly articles on Rotor World.

Speaker 1 (01:05:59):
I can't believe that we didn't mention Denny Carter once
on this show where where you were one of the
rare people that actually get to experience doing a show
with Denny consistently, and you know the you know how
how awful that experience can be.

Speaker 3 (01:06:12):
Look, we've developed a system where anytime Denny says something
we don't like, we just make fun of him or
remuse Mike, and then at the end of the show
like it wasn't that bad of take for being honest,
But we don't concede that until the joke has fully
run its course.

Speaker 1 (01:06:24):
Yeah, Denny, Denny, I mean, especially on Living the Stream,
because Living the Stream is not I mean, it's basically
not even a football show, fantasy football show anymore. But
the kinds of things that he's said in the past
have have made my jaw drop many times, but I
love him for it.

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
You can find all my stuff over on lateround dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:06:38):
Make sure you subscribe to the Late Round podcast wherever
you get your podcasts, and also subscribe to the YouTube
channel YouTube dot com slash at late round FF. Thanks
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Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

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My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark