AFC North Breakdown + Hot Takes

Hollywood, first round pick. And he's still hurt. I was going to say he's progressing well, should be back on the field in the next few weeks from the list rank injury. But I wanted to highlight that. You're right. I mean, there are some similarities between what Baltimore did and Arizona did in as much as like they invested two early picks on wide receivers. The Cardinals did the same. In the Cardinal's situation, their veterans, Larry Fitzgerald. You got Willie Sneed in Baltimore. But let's turn to the running game.

Mark Ingram has not been discussed a lot, right? He was the complimentary back with Alvin Camara in New Orleans. I haven't seen a lot of people excited to draft him, but he could come out very hot. His first four weeks of the season is nice. Miami, 31st against the run last year. Arizona 32nd. Kansas City 27th, Cleveland 28th. Now I expect some turnover with those defensive fronts, but you're talking about four teams that.

We're pretty much the worst in football at stopping running backs. The team is projected to have the seventh best offensive line according to the huddle. Could Mark Ingram come out and make a lot of owners regret not investing in him higher in drafts? I think because of the opening schedule, he could get off to a hot start. But I personally don't think people are going to have major regrets because it's not like Mark Ingram is this late sixth round pick that you can get.

and he'll overperform. Right now he's going at the back of the third, the top of the fourth, right at the three, four turn. That is, I mean, you know, he's going ahead of David Montgomery and Sony Michelle, Philip Lindsay, Chris Carson. Those are players that I would prefer over Markingham because while the Baltimore Ravens, they're a great running team, and they're going to run the ball a lot. I don't believe at all that Mark Ingram is coming in to be a lion.

share type of back. He's always his entire career been a running back by committee veteran, and they've got Gus Edwards, who was on pace for 1,500 yards over those same weeks that Lamar Jackson started. Carrying the ball 18 times a game. I mean, he was an absolute beast. They're not going to just throw him, you know, to the curb. They just needed depth. Under the bus, Jason. Under the bus. Right there. When Gus bus goes under the Gus bus.

It's troublesome. He does a flip. Do you guys have any excitement about Justice Hill? Fourth round draft pick, physical freak. I mean, he's fast. He'll be good for the role, assuming that they commit to him being the past catching role, but that's about it. You don't think you're going to merge to be something beyond that in this office? If all of a sudden they turn him into Theo Riddick, then I'm interested, but.

Other than that, not really. And Lamar Jacks... 95th percentile burst score, 97th percentile 40-yard dash. He's fast. How big is he? He's 198 pounds. Yeah. So he's 5-10-198. Yeah. It's the same same weight. Yeah, I mean, he's fast. I don't think that he's going to get involved as much as a lot of... I think he's the third back here in the rotation.

Maybe fourth if you include Lamar Jackson as a running back. I think something good. By the way, Justin Forset was 5-8-198 on that Baltimore offense. Sure. And took it by storm. Sure. Shout out to Justin Forset. It's not impossible. It's good follow on Twitter. And there was also not a, well, because he don't make the law. That's right. Justin Forcett. Though, once Lamar Jackson took over, I mean, there's not a whole lot of targets to go around to the running back core.

That could change. It was his first year, but these are the numbers we have to go off. The only other piece to discuss really is Mark Andrews. Real quick, are there any wide receivers you're willing to draft? No. Mark Andrews. Okay. I mean, honestly, that's the only receiver that I would be willing to touch here in a draft because while we brought, I mean, we just brought up, right? He's got a bunch of rookies. He's got Willie Sneed.

Like, he needs Mark Andrews, who was on pace in those same, you know, seven games with Lamar Jackson. He would have had the second most receiving yards of any rookie tight end since 2000. You're right behind Jersey. Go ahead. That's off the heels of a huge place for Mark Andrews. Because even in that time with Lamar, where, I mean, he was great, you know, he was getting about 44 yards a game.

his snaps. He never saw over 40% of the snaps. He was averaging about 34% of those Lamar Jackson games. And that to me, that's not going to get it done. But that to me is exactly an indication of a player to target. This is a guy who was not on the field that much because he was a rookie tight end. Rookie tight ends take a lot to integrate into snap counts. They couldn't have him on the field for all run plays. They brought him in as the past catching guy. Coming into year two,

being an important part of this offense, if he ends up going realistically to the 60, 70% on the field numbers, and he becomes the number one target, I think Mark Andrews is, you know, look, if you miss out on your top tight ends and you don't want to play around with the middle tier and you just want to punt the position forever and use your last pick on Mark Andrews, I'd be fine walking away in a draft. I've done it a few times. And you're right. If he can show us that a laud George Kittle who was.

You saw the flashes he just wasn't getting on the field and wasn't getting hyper-targeted. But if Mark Andrews can earn that role and Hayden Hurst remains kind of beat up. Hayden Hurd? Oh, it's right there. It was really not a big leap. Hayden Hurd. All right. We need to move on from receivers in Baltimore to, well, let's just say receding.

The Steelers. All right. The nine, six, and one. I like it. I like it. The nine six and one. That's right. You start with ties and then they become losses, Mike. You didn't know that. We were having long discussions before this show. Let's get into it now. About the Steelers and, you know, Mike Tomlin and where this team is heading. And I was talking a lot about, look, Lev Bell gave him five solid years. And I think people are going to miss him. But we'll find out.

Last year, they didn't make the playoffs. James Connor did have a monster fantasy season. Juju Smith-Schuster cemented himself as one of the best wide receivers in football. This year, no Antonio Brown. That's the big subtraction, and it's a monster one. Yes. As far as additions, they brought in Dante Moncrief on a one-year deal. They drafted Deontay Johnson in the third round. Benny Snell in the fourth at running back.

And Jesse James has gone too, guys. Oh, I'm aware. Yeah. I'm aware. There's a starting tight end. So 35% of the targets have been vacated. That's the fourth highest number in football. Which is really Antonio Brown and a little bit of Jesse James. That is absolutely correct. Yeah, level wasn't on the field to absorb any. But last time he was, it was 85 receptions. So that's a lot of...

targets and receptions that this team doesn't have that it's had over the past few years. We've talked a lot about James Connor. Mike is as bullish about James Connor as a person can get. I've been tempering the excitement. I've said it before. I'm a 12 to 15 finish for James Connor. I'm not burying him. I don't think he's a bad player. I think it's going to be tough sledding for James Connor. You started to see it in the back half of last year. He was not a top six guy over that period of time.

but he was also banged up. Yeah. And so I know James Conner's going to be the guy in this offense. I just don't know if being the guy in this offense is going to mean the same thing it did as when Antonio Brown was running rough shot over the secondary. Yeah, I mean, if you look at what Levi-on-Bell did in the offense, he was never a huge touchdown volume guy. A lot of times he would get by with crazy passing work. Yep. An incredible workload percentage, you know, of the carries for the team. Do you ever have double digits on the ground? Ever?

Not off the top of my head. No, 97388. The question for me with James Connor, I think he is the guy that's going to inherit the role. I don't believe that they're going to go to some committee, and we should mention some beat reporters do believe that they're going to go to a committee. I think Tomlin has been around the league long enough, had enough opportunities with different backs going down, to know he uses a workhorse. However, we did see after James Connor came back.

when he got right back into that workhorse role, that they used Jalen Samuel more in the receiving game than they did James Connor. And so when I'm projecting out Connor for this season, I think he is the man. I think he's going to have a great season. But if his touchdown stayed where Love Bells were historically, and some of that passing work goes to Jalen Samuel.

I'm a little bit lower. I still like James Connor. I think he's a good back, but I've got him right now as my running back 13 in half-point PBR. One of the features of the ultimate draft kit that we put into our rankings is a risk factor for players. And so when you talk about upper echelon, like every year in the first and second round, you have bust. You have guys that look like they're going to be the best players in fantasy that drop off. I don't believe that Connor will bust, but I think he is a higher...

risk factor because he does not have a track record beyond a season, and the financial investment on Connor isn't what it is on other players. So, Mike, do you think Connor is a risk in any capacity, or is that out of your mind as well? The risk to me for James Connor is only related to Antonio Brown. Can Mike Tomlin, can Ben Rothersberger, and more specifically, Judger Smith-Schuster, can they keep?

the offense trucking at as this elite upper echelon offense. Because before Antonio Brown was going off, the Steelers were still great, but they weren't in the upper echelon when it came to offense, when it came to total yardage and total points. So the question to me is scoring opportunity for James Connor. He's going to be fed the ball a ton. I'm not really worried about Jalen Samuels. What you're talking about, Jay is.

The very, very last game of the season, where James Connor had just come back from his injury, and it was a game where if they won, it didn't matter. If they lost, it didn't matter. They won, and they didn't make it in the playoffs. And that was where Samuels came in. He got eight targets. James Connor still saw three targets in that game. So that's...

It's hard to really move forward with that type of information. No, I agree. It's one game. But I'm just saying we have a super small sample. But we did see that after Connor came back. And it did not look like they were taking easy on Connor. He still had a ton of carries in that game. It was just interesting to me because we had not seen that kind of utilization with Jalen Samuel prior to James Connor getting injured. One of the reasons we like Dante Moncrief to have a interestingly.

A really good opportunity. Yes. Now, maybe you like, maybe you're a James Washington guy and you like him more. I think we like Moncrief. But one of the reasons we love him is because of what he's walking into. The Steelers' wide receivers as a whole had more receptions than any other team in football last season. They had 283 receptions at the wide receiver position. I think that's why I think you just go and take a shot with a non-juju option. Juju's not going up. Juju's not going to be getting. Okay, yes, maybe he goes up.

five catches or 15 targets. He was so high right now in career totals. He had 166 targets last year. That's my point. And so when you look at Vance McDonald, Dante Moncrief, James Washington, Deontay Johnson, I think you've got to take a shot at a non-juju option you believe in if you believe that the Steelers are going to do what they've done. Yeah. So a little pushback on that. From my perspective, I think the reason that the

that the Steelers had the most volume, you know, the most yardage and targets for any wide receiver court is because they had two of the five best wide receivers in the National Football League. We have a history where Antonio Brown was there with other secondary options that were good, not great, and they usually were not a top 24 wide receiver in fantasy by the end of the year. And Juju, to me, still has room to go up.

Certainly not in targets. I mean, he could. But the touchdown. Antonio Brown, sorry to cut you off, Jay, but Antonio Brown had back-to-back seasons in 2014 and 15, 181 targets, 193 targets. So it's not completely outside of the realm of possibility. No, but the comp there is A-B. Right. Right. The comp is A-B. But I just wanted it said that, like, I believe it is very within the-

realm of possibility that Juju is the number one wide receiver at the end of the year. I mean, he had seven touchdowns. Antonio Brown is a double-digit averaging touchdown machine. And if he can end up getting to that point to where he's at 10, 11, 12 touchdowns, that puts him right in that number one wide receiver conversation. Yeah. Look, all my bins on this offense are in the negative capacity for the Steelers. I think that they're going to have, I think there's going to be a struggle for Connor.