WR & TE Rookie Preview + Diggs Blockbuster! - Fantasy Football Podcast for 4/4

it's not normally the player that you run your offense through. Now, things have changed, and we know that more and more players are starting to be called slot players, but they're dominating in the NFL. So that's where the difference can come to me, where if you prefer that, then you're, you'd probably want Malik neighbors. If you want the larger guy on the outside, then you want Harrison. Deep down the field slot production. um in college doesn't always translate we've seen that over and over and over but malik neighbors has intangibles and other things on film that just say yeah he's absolutely that dude his explosiveness is crazy and the comp for me is and i i don't know if it's just an it's just like kind of feel stupid to say it but the comp is jemar chase

And I don't know if it's just because it's LSU, you know, but he reminds me so much. He's compact. He's so explosive. I mean, he's six foot 200, ran a pro day 435 with a 39 inch vertical. That's, I mean, Jamar Chase is six foot 201. Ran a 439 with a 41 inch vertical. Like they're, they're very similar archetypes where you can, you can, you know, get them on a screen or you can get them downfield either way. What's funny is I. thought you were going to talk about a different LSU product. Yeah, Jefferson. Which was Justin Jefferson because Jefferson ran 575 of his 583 routes in the slot. And that was the critique coming in as a first year guy. But, you know, that translated okay. Yeah, I mean, either one. Either one. Take your pick. But I do think. Ellis, you can really churn out some wide receivers. Yeah, Terrace Marshall. Come on, man. Well, we got another one in this draft, right? We do.

Brian Thomas. He'll be probably the fourth wide receiver drafted. Did you have something you wanted out on neighbors, Mike? No, just that it's the, if you're going to put a knock on him, it's that he was in the slot, but it's very difficult to not point immediately to Justin Jefferson. Yeah. And say. I remember those conversations. What's crazy to me too is like, I think if you're in a dynasty league and you're like, darn, I don't get Jefferson. Like this is the year to be really happy, I think, with the next couple of guys where. Yes, they are technically competing, but at the same time, you can look at it like, wow, I got a top 10 wide receiver at the four or the five in my dynasty draft. Well, I'm very fortunate this year because that didn't exist in previous seasons. So Roma Dunzei out of Washington is the third name of those big three. Okay, yeah, this is the number I wanted to grab, by the way, just circling back real quick. I asked the guys for the slot rate for C.D. Lamb.

When you think about the kind of player that Malik neighbors can be, CD-LAM is a 51.3% slot rate guy this year. So teams are being more creative in moving people around to be able to get them the ball. Roma Dunzei, 6-2-15. It was a big boy. Absolutely dominated last year, 16, 140 yards, 13 touchdowns as a senior in Washington. a junior, sorry. And tons of big plays off the arm of Michael Pinnick's Jr., who can really throw it. When I watched the film on Adunze, it was body control, it was circus catches, it was just body awareness. What do you guys think his situation will be? And do you view him, you know, you said you have Harrison in a different tier, but is Adunzei with neighbors to you?

No, he's not. It feels a little easy, but it's true. For me, I've got Harrison his own tier, Malik neighbors at his own tier, and then Adunzei in his own tier, and then the next like 12 guys are all together. Adunzei is my number three, but he has a few more red flags in the sense that, you know, when you look at man versus zone. And, you know, when you've got a guy who's so good at contested catches, which Adunze is, you love to see the trait. You want to know that when you throw the ball up to him, he's going to grab. But you also want that. You don't want him to always have to be making contested catches because you want that separation. And I saw plenty of times where Odunze separated. He's not a guy with a backpack on him like some college players are where there's just a defender. His contested target percentage last year was 16 and a half of which he caught.

nearly 48% of them, which is a tremendous differential. He is a wonderful athlete who is the size of a prototypical guy who can have 150 targets over the course of an NFL season. You love to see that. His draft capital is going to be high. He's going to go to, you know, he's usually mocked to the Bears at 9. I don't know if that is so chalked that it can't happen now. But, you know, he is a very, very good wide receiver. There are a few flags in his game that I don't see in neighbors in Harrison. All right. Anything to add, Mike? Or do you want to move on? No, even if you want the numbers. So he was better. His yards per route run in man was about 0.8 yards better than in zone, which is kind of what Jason was highlighting of the league.

the NFL defenses are moving more and more to zone, which maybe then you get a bounce back. Yeah, pendulum swing. Eventually we'll get the pendulum swing back, but that's not so large of a gap that I'm concerned about it. Brian Thomas Jr. out of LSU is the next wide receiver we'll talk about. He's fourth in our rookie ranks. He was a touchdown machine at LSU. He's 64201, 17 touchdowns last year over 1,100 yards. Pretty impressive on film. I do see Mike giving him a nickname, which is basket catch Brian. So talk about that. It was just, I mean, for a guy who's, I mean, over 17 yards of catch, 17 receiving touchdowns, it just felt like I didn't see him high pointing the ball as much as too many, too many. Yeah, too many try and catch it in the gut for me. Not that it makes him, I'm not, you know, not completely knocking him for that.

He's a very interesting player of the size is there. The final season production is there, but that's what he has. So it's two years of being a 350-yard wide receiver, one year of being an 1,100-yard 17-touchdown guy, making his breakout age, being almost 21. That's a little bit higher than we want to see. But his current age is also 21, and that is what we want to see. Yes. So it's, they're... He's a, he, he's, we're nitpicking here, but he's not in the same tier as the other guys. No, no, no. He's certainly not. When I, when I watched him the first time, I had concerns. Um, I saw the same thing you saw with basket catches that we're not needing to be made that way. Now, he is a late transfer. He's no Xavier Leggett, my right, Jay. Yeah. Um, he, he's, um, a late bloomer at wide receiver. He changed to wide receiver later in his athletic career.

doesn't have as much experience. So the way he catches the ball is a little concerning. I also had concerns of like, well, how much is he benefiting from Malik neighbors? You know, on the other side of the field. You don't have the defenses focused on Brian Thomas. But he is an exceptional athlete. You know, one of those really better than you athletes ran sub 4-4 at, you know, 6-4-200. And when I went back and watched Jaden Daniels, I was a little bit more impressed with Brian Thomas. When I was watching, instead of trying to focus on him and kind of watch the offense go when the downs were needed, he was there a lot. It's really surprising to me the games where he kind of was extremely important and or took over for a stretch, considering his targets per route run is the biggest red flag. Yes. In his entire, I mean, his targets per route run, 19.3%.

There are only four first round wide receivers since 2015 below 22 percent, and he's at 19. And you don't want those names. Yes, they do. Those names are Cadarius Tony. Yeah. Jalen Rager. Gross. Henry Ruggs and Philip Dorset. And they've all kind of got a type. They're real, real fast guys. And that is his type. So I have concerns with Brian Thomas. At first through the scouting process, he wasn't even my... Wide receiver 4. When I went back through, I do think because of where he's going to be drafted, his athleticism, his young age and newness to the position, I think his ceiling is good. But I do worry, like, what if he just becomes, and for fantasy purposes, he just becomes a downfield stretch big play guy where it's like, you know, those guys aren't that great for fantasy. It's funny because that is exactly.

how I feel about the player we're going to talk about next. Oh, shame on you. After the break. So we just got done talking about 64201 Brian Thomas. Very slender. Not as slender as this guy. Troy Franklin, 62176. 183. 183. Okay. So you can tell these two guys have them ranked higher than I. This is the first time we have a departure, by the way, in our rookie rankings of these guys. Troy Franklin weighed in at 176. Franklin. What this? Wow, you have that drop. Nice. He weighed in at 176 at the combine. Later in his pro day. He weighed in at 183 and it came out that he was sick before the combine. So he had lost a bunch of weight and gained it back. Yeah, he performed to the combine like a sick guy.

He did. He had a really, really bad day at the combine, weighed in under what we wanted to see, ran slower than we wanted to see. He wasn't slow, but you expected him to be sub-4-4. Yeah, his film, he looks like a rocket ship. His film is blazing. This is one of my favorite prospects in this year's draft. I love how open he gets at all levels of the field. Now, you're talking about you see him working primarily. Deep down the field. Yeah, I think physically he's not built to be one of those top tier guys that we talked about earlier. I think, you know, some of the comps size-wise is like, you know, Robbie slash Chosen Anderson, Tyquan Thornton, body size. I saw the best of him to me at Oregon. The best of him was over the top, down the field, stretch the defense, scorch him in the secondary. But to me, that doesn't necessarily translate into.

you know, and coming from Oregon that doesn't necessarily translate into a consistent, you know, wide receiver one caliber type of player. Destination is going to play a huge role and I should say that now, like reiterate it now because we did on the last show, but like we're talking about our prospects based on what we're watching. The destination for these guys is going to make a tremendous difference. You know, if they come into a situation we believe they'll be utilized correctly, higher volume. Troy Franklin concerns me. Sometimes you see him projected in the first, late, late, late first. More often than not, he's not there. So you're talking about a second or third round wide receiver, you know, big difference between landing in Kansas City or Carolina. Oh, for sure. Yeah. I mean, destination's going to make a big deal here. But on the tape, what I saw, what I enjoyed, his routes to me were very good, the way that he uses them to.

combined with his speed. Like he has, not everybody has a, you know, a Trump card where it's like, I just, you, you can't keep up with me. Troy Franklin on film can glide across the field in a few gazelle swoops, and he's just gone. You're not catching him. And whether that's on a slant, whether that's on a screen behind the line of scrimmage, or whether that's on a bomb down the field, I've seen him do it all. He struggled with a few drops this year, but that was, not how he was, you know, the year prior. I love his mentality, too, when you watch him play. You know, he's got that dog in him. I love that for a wide receiver. He was one of the most fun prospects for me to watch on a play-in, play-out basis. I am curious, though, like when Ed and I Mitchell gets drafted ahead of him, how much will that hurt? It will feel so much better when he gets drafted ahead and busts because I will be right.

And the NFL will be wrong. Right, right. It is unique. You guys both have them at five, by the way. Yeah, I have him at 10. I like him. Five. I'm not a sheep. Yeah, but what if I did this? Are you a turtle? What if I do this? It makes him like a, he moves up to nine. Of the, it's funny having the balance of his theme song being based off a very slow animal. And yet he is such a fast man. It comes from a green school, the Oregon. Okay, okay. Turtle color. All right, all right. Thanks. Ladd-McConkie. Oh, oh, laddie. I think we are universally, I mean, consensus-wise, we're a little bit higher than most on Ladd-McConkey. I just saw a mock draft with him projected as the receiver that the Buffalo Bills ended up with. And it would be perfection. At 28. He's six feet tall, 186 pounds.

I ran a 4-3-9. And that shows up on film. This dude is really, really fast, but he's also very quick. You know, some guys... There's a difference. Yeah, they've got a top speed. This guy just starts and stops, so jitterbug style. He was the best player at the Senior Bowl, in my opinion. He's in and out of his breaks at a Cooper Cup, Pooka Nakua last year kind of level. I think he's going to be a best friend of quarterbacks if he lands in the right situation. So Jason and I have him at six. Mike, I do have him. I had moved him at six as well. Yeah, I moved him up six because I am calling my shot on the Buffalo Bills or draft him. Yeah. The strangeness, though, if you're not familiar with Ladd McConkey, is watch his highlights and you'll go, whoa, like this guy's on a, on Georgia. Like this guy's, I think he, do we have two championships for? Yeah. So, like it's a multi-championship.

wide receiver on one of the best teams or the best team of college. Look at him go. He's absolutely incredible. This guy must have been a huge part of the Georgia offense. And then you would be sadly mistaken because he was not. Even his sophomore year, 58 for 762 and 7. That's not. That's his best. That's not the worst numbers in the world. But then this last year. 30 for 478 and 2. And it's... He dealt with injuries. Yes. Only played nine games. Yeah, he didn't play them all. But it still is very bizarre because his per route analytics are amongst the top of these wide receivers. But his overall total production and his importance to Georgia was not... It doesn't match how good it seemed like he was. Yeah, he has red flags in his...

profile and they are the production aspects because there is the argument to make if he is as good as we believe he is on film as plenty prognosticators believe putting him in the first round in recent mock drafts then why did the team why did Georgia not utilize him more as a primary weapon as a we've got to get this guy involved they really didn't now can't really complain too much they won two titles doing it they also have the best players at every position Yeah, so there's also the concern. I've seen it said, you know, one of the things you look for, especially in wide receivers coming out of college, is their breakout age. That is a really sticky important step. Does he even have one? He does not have one because he never broke out. That is kind of not true, though. And I want it said because I've seen a lot on Twitter about you don't draft guys that never broke out and he never broke out.

The breakout is an arbitrary line. It is universally seen as 20% Dominator rating in a season. He was at 19.9 in his sophomore season. So it's like, okay, you're telling me he didn't break out because of 0.1%. He had a breakout. And that would have been a good age. That would have been 21 or a 20, 20 year old breakout. Just to break in on the breakout, the college dominator is the percentage of a team's receiving yards and touchdowns. And so if you're over that 35% you're in. incredible place, which Marvin Harrison was 47%. Yeah, he's, because Marvin was that guy. I mean, my last note for Ladd-McConkie is when you're talking about landing situation, the guy destroyed zone. Like his zone yards per route run, 4.27. I mean, it's outrageously high compared to his man yards per route run, which is just over two. So if he finds the right spot, I just started.

thinking about the Rams having him. Sure. And the comedy of that. Of that trifectus. When I would watch watching him, there was so much of it that was like Travis Kelsey-esque of him just finding like running an intermediate route and then going, oh, there's nobody around me. I'll just turn around here and be a wide open target for the quarterback. And so. High football IQ, good routes, great hands. He's good across the board. But I will say from a fantasy football perspective, if he doesn't have the draft capital to kind of force him into being the lead of a team, he could be relegated to a slot role that is, you know, it could very easily become someone like a Christian Kirk, a Sterling Shepherd, really good players. They had great careers.

But they weren't really fantasy dominators often. Yeah, they were used like Ladmanconki at Georgia. Right. Yes, exactly. So there is a little bit of hesitation there from a ceiling outlook from a fantasy perspective. Well, let's talk about the pair of Texas wide receivers and then we'll throw out another name or two that we like from the remaining bunch maybe as a sleeper draft selection a la, you know, the Amman Raz of years past. But let's talk about Xavier Worthy out of Texas. You guys both have him ranked ahead of Adonai Mitchell, who I have ranked ahead of Worthy, both dynamic athletes. Xavier Worthy is 165 pounds. He ran a 421. The fastest man in the history of the combine. So this is a burner. He had more production at Texas than Mitchell did. Mitchell was a transfer.

also did very little in the competitive Georgia environment as a freshman and a sophomore. But, you know, for me, I like Adonai Mitchell more. I think he's more versatile. This was a player that ranked as the third most athletic at the Combine, ran a 434. 434 at over 200 pounds and 6 foot 2. 40 pounds heavier than. Yeah, if you looked at Franklin as disappointing at the combine Mitchell did the opposite of that in impressing his way maybe into the first round. I think he combined his way guaranteed into the first round. I liked him as a tackle breaker. I liked him as a player that was great around the boundary. Off target throws. He found a way to catch them. Very, very quick receiver. Like you said, 6-2-205.

I preferred him. I think Worthy is in that potential one-trick pony category that I'm concerned about, which you know, you're going to see that speed and then you're going to be the next Darius Hayward Bay. But you guys... Long career. That's true. That's true. was in the league for a long time. He was in the league for a while, but... MVS got another big second contract. Yeah, I don't want to allow my opinion of Mitchell versus Worthy to be the only one. And you guys both, you know, would be quick to point out. Worthy had the youngest breakout age in the wide receiver class. He broke out at 18 years old. Tell me some of the reasons why you might believe that Worthy could do more than just stretch the field. Yeah, I mean, it's ironic because earlier in his career, he was used down the field. And then as he got, you know, this last year, there was a lot of behind the line of scrimmage stuff. And I think that's just a matter of knowing that.

For Texas, Worthy was their number one wide receiver. And he has, he established himself two years earlier as like a really special athlete. Obviously the fastest test in the history of the combine. He plays, you know, he's just a little tiny rocket ship. And so they wanted to get the ball in his hand, have him run away from guys, you know, special teams, wherever they could get him involved. It is concerning to have a guy who's only 165 pounds. That doesn't usually work. Now, we have adapted over the last few years. Tank Dell is a... We've seen very few wide receivers at that weight. But that is exactly Tankdale's weight. Yeah, so he gives a little bit of hope. To me, the things I liked about Xavier Worthy, I felt like he was a more complete wide receiver than Adonai Mitchell when I'm comparing the teammates together.

I am personally like way down on Adonai Mitchell. And it feels bad. It feels stupid because he's going to be a first round talent. No, he's going to be a first round draft. No, you said the right thing. He's going to be a first round. I just remember scouting going like, how do people have a first round grade on this guy? What's crazy is, and I don't know what it, what the discussion out of it will be. But like you and I both watched Adnan Mitchell a lot of film on him. Yeah. We both watch a lot of Troy Franklin.

We did not come away with the same opinion. Not at all. And some of that can be biased by what we like to see in wide receivers in general. How are you a fan of football? What do you like from your wide receiver? What kind of prototype or archetype do you believe that these players can be common? To me, it was like I brought up Adnan Mitchell as the Anquan Bolden, the tackle, the tackle breaking, falling forward yard after the catch. He's not a yard after the catch guy? He has a good ability to break tackles. He is a great tackle breaker.

I think he has a, he doesn't track the ball well. He quits on plays. Oh, gosh. I mean, I just, I didn't see it. There were, you watched the wrong games. I mean, that is true. Which is a fair, that's a red flag for Adnai Mitchell is there was intensity levels in certain games that weren't in others. And so that is a, I mean, that was an actual weakness for him is that sometimes he just didn't put in the effort. So I think it's a fair critique. I don't know where these two guys are going to go, Mike. So. You know, I think Mitchell is going to go ahead of Worthyville. My big red flag for Adonai Mitchell, and again, this is, what are we looking for? Where Andy's excited by the strength of, like, his contested catch percentage was he caught 54% of them. That's amazing. But nearly 40% of his targets were contested, which is telling me, this dude is not getting.

open the way that he needs to be getting open. I mean, I'm trying to talk about two fast receivers. I'm trying to go back through my database and even going to like, so back to 2020 guys in their draft year, you know, their final season of college production and then getting drafted, there's like no one even close to adonize 39.8% of his targets were contested. Speaking of the dominator ranking for those guys, he was at 32%. He had 44% of Texas' touchdowns. His dominator's insane because it's all touchdown. It's not the yards. But Worthy was at 39%. So he got it done as well in terms of the yardage. So that's where they alternated. It was like, you know, you kind of saw that way from Brian Thomas sometimes. They just get around the end zone and he just caught a bunch of them. You know.

When looking at some other names before we get towards the end here, I mean, it's perfect to me that Michigan would have a wide receiver that is exactly like the running back in the draft, Blake Corum. That is exactly like the quarterback in the draft, J.J. McCarthy, who is Roman Wilson, who, look, those are like, all three of them were like work pale type of players. They don't have these. perfectly prototypical combine numbers, and yet all three of them production-wise, eyeball-wise, like Roman Wilson is the player to me that profiles is the next Alman Rae St. Brown type of better than you thought he was kind of player. I love Roman Wilson. I really do. When you look, he's similar to Ladd-McConkie in that I'm so confident in a long valuable career in the NFL.

I'm not necessarily confident that he's going to be a superstar fantasy asset, but of that same like Sterling Shepherd type, he is a very, his hands are great. I think he has the second best hands of this entire draft class. He is tough as nails. He's very, very fast. And so, you know, if you can run a good route and catch a ball, you should be an NFL wide receiver. I like him a lot. The other name I'll throw out there from me is Xavier Leggett. We talked about him. comically on the Dynasty podcast a few times. This is a guy who found the cave of wonders after his fourth year in college of being an unproductive, worthless, non-existent wide receiver, wished upon that lamp to become the best wide receiver he could be and was granted that wish. And then all of a sudden, in his fifth year, which is a giant red flag, as like a 23-year-old playing amongst teenagers, which is a...