The “My Guys” Episode + Risers/Fallers

14 PPR points a game, which would put him fourth right behind Zach Ertz's 14.5 last year. To give you an example, Evan Ingram, who was fourth in PPR scoring, was only at 11.6. That's the talent that Burton has, and he just hasn't had the opportunity. Now, that's too small of a sample. I'm not sitting here going off of a four game as a starter sample and projecting stats forward, but it's about the film. You watch him play and you go,

This dude runs good routes. This guy's built more like a wide receiver. He's got incredible hands. He knows how to find the hole in the zone. He's spelt. Yeah. He's sveled. He's slippery. Look, there's very little I don't like about him. Then we always say follow the money, right? What are the teams showing us with their most valuable commodity? If you don't remember, Trey Burton signed a four-year...

$32 million contract this offseason, including $18 million guaranteed at signing, which is the most in the NFL this year at the position, and the third most of all time. They're not bringing him over to not use him. With Adam Shaheen being banged up right now, you saw what happened this preseason with Trey Burton. Graham Barfield tweeted out a great tweet just kind of laying out of these two preseason games.

Trey Burton's been on the field for 92% of the Bears' first team offense. He's been targeted on six of 18 Trabisky passes, 33%. And if you look, 47% of his routes have come split out in the slot, which is very similar to Travis Kelsey's 50% rate last year. So let me ask you a question. Sure. Let me see if you're my guy, how far this goes. If you're in a Dynasty League and you've got Trey Burton and Rob Gronkowski.

Are you shopping grunk? There is no doubt I'm shopping grunk. And are you confident to start Burton this year as a top tight-in? I am. In fact, I took a look at the stats, and I actually went back to where I started, where what I originally believed, I'm fully convinced. He is 100 target titan this season, and he is now my titan number four. Oh, yeah. Ahead of. Oh, me and Andy been warming this sea for a month. Ahead of. Welcome. Kyle Rudolph. What?

Who I have a bad water bet from early in the off season. So look, I'm on Trey Burton. You should too. You can get him in. Just get off of these guys, though. You're weighing them down. You can get you can get them in the eighth round as a great. I'm imagining Jason. He's just like Yoda on Luke Skywalk. He's sitting on the back. Yeah. It's either backpack style or, or, you know, pool chicken style. I'm either on the shoulders or I'm backpacking. Are you, do you sit Indian style? Is that something that's?

In the realm of possibility? I don't know if I can do that. All right. Number three. Now look, there ain't no rules about these my guys. You can go back to back. Sure. And that's what I'm going to do because I say accuracy, schmaccuracy. I'm going to be Mr. Redundant this year. That's what he, this quarterback says that too. We're going. We're going. My guy number three. Josh Allen. It's booty scooting Cam Newton. Whoa. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on.

How long have you been sitting on booty scoot and Cam Newton over there? On the drive-in today, Mike. Mike, Mike, what? Booty scoot! Booty scooting Cam Newton!

I'm all over in this year. He was my guy last year, and he came through, and you know what? He came up all sevens, baby. 700, 77 rushing yards led the NFL at the position, but here's what I love. 651 of them came when he wasn't pressured. He runs because it's in his soul. That's what he does.

That's why they call him booty scooting Cam Newton. That's why they call him. JFK over there is getting very heated about Cam Newton. He's got the best weapons he's had in a while. He's got the best draft price of a quarterback with number one upside going in the middle of the seventh round. He's got the best legs in football. He's got the best week winning upside. He can win you a week by himself. And he's got the best buns. Highest opportunity to run in all circumstances.

And, yeah, accuracy smackuracy is what I say. Give. You can throw it anywhere near DJ Moore or Devin Funches or as we saw this preseason. Tori Smith making plays in the offense. Greg Olson back. CMC out of the backfield. Draft Cam Newton. I'm ordering you to do it and let him run you to a title. It worked out last year. It's going to work out again. Mr. Redundant over here.

Cam Newton for a second year in a row. Now, Brooks, our producer, our fearless producer, he's always in our show doc making sure we're getting, uh, maybe, maybe there's a hot stat that he just came across. Yeah. And we got to make sure that the people know. And Brooks put in a good note here for, yeah, he added to my Cam Newton argument. Maybe he didn't feel the booty scooting part was compelling enough statistically. Oh, I did. No, just a little bonus. But he threw in a little bonus. Here's Brooks bonus note. He's a lot of fun to use in Madden.

Thank you, Brooks. You bet. That's what I'm here. Fair point. Always watching out for the people. All right. That was, I was much more impassioned in that argument than I thought I was going to do. Because you dropped a booty scooting reference. You can't, you can't calmly drop a booty scooting Cam Newton. That's fair. That's a fair point. I'm going to have to pull up the Teen Titans booty scoot song, and this is going to be a thing now. This is going to be a thing. I apologize for nothing. All right.

All right, my last guy, Rex Burkhead. Sexy Rexy was flexing in this position for a very, very long time. But then apparently he tore his knee, whatever that means. It's got a slight tear in his knee. So it is not Rex Berkett. So it is not Rex Burkhead. He's been sitting in here. But then the tear in the knee got me a little spooked that I had to remove him from the mind. Official statement, by the way, for Burkhead was sprained knee. That's what they said. Still love him. But a man I also love, I was, I had to pivot.

Same team. The wide receiver won for the New England Patriots. Chris Hogan. His ADP is also rising for a good reason. It's going in the back of the fourth round as the wide receiver 21 last year from weeks 1 through 8. He was the wide receiver 7. He saw more targets than the high-priced Brandon Cooks. He was averaging over 7 targets a game, over 50 yards a game, and 5 touchdowns in that time.

Last season, last season on a whole, Chris Hogan was responsible for 20% of New England's red zone targets. Last year, Rob Gronkowski, who's a monster, he was tied for the 10th most 10-zone targets in the league, Gronk, 10th most. Chris Hogan had one fewer, and Chris Hogan played nine games last year. He is a go-to target in the end zone. He's also bigger than you realize. Chris Hogan is 6-1-2-10.

And he can run a 4-5. He's an absolute athletic monster. And he can be the big play guy if that's what they need from him. In 2016, he was almost 18 yards of reception. He led the league. Can I ask you a question? Yes, sir. I don't know how to think about Chris Hogan. So I'm so glad that I have this podcast to tune into. Sure. So I can listen to you talk about him. The thing that scares me about him, and maybe you can assuage this, or maybe you're scared too. But the thing that scares me is I feel like he is going to be.

a downward, it's going to be a downward trend over the season because as time progresses, Brady will have Edelman back, Brady will have Sony Michelle back, Brady will have other weapons back. So Hogan may be the product of opportunity through the first four, five, six weeks. I'm afraid about the end of the season. Is there anything you can do to give me comfort, Mike? Are you talking about Julian Edelman, the guy who was playing with Chris Hogan when he was dominating target share and everything in that preseason game? Yes.

That's how I'm talking about. Edelman is great. He's going to command targets when he comes back. But Chris Hogan can settle the score. He can make things even with touchdowns. Chris Hogan has 10 touchdown upside. They need a guy. Brandon Cooks is gone. They do. They need a guy. Right now it's Chris Hogan and Philip Dorset. Dorset from games last year when Dorset actually got to play, games 9 through 16. He was averaging over 50% of the snaps.

He was getting one and a half targets per game. Brady just was not going to Dorset. He will go to Hogan. If it's not Gronk in the end zone, it's going to be Chris Hogan. I think he is going to be an absolute beast this year. I love...

the Chris Hogan play. I think that what you outline, we forget because of the games played last year, how good he was when he was playing. That's one of the things that I know early in the offseason, I had to redo my rankings on Hogan because I guess I just didn't really factor in his pace that he was on when he was in. I loved him to the point of when I was struggling, which I was struggling. I mean, I have.

scratched and clawed my way to my third my guy. But Chris Hogan was in consideration and then it was like, oh, you got him. So here's what that. James just about did a my guy thesis this weekend. Oh, I really did. With the amount of notes he was passing along in our Slack channel about all of his thoughts and considerations and evidences. Like Jason goes to bat for you out there. He won't get a doctorate for it, but he did the work. Honorary, hey, if there's any, you know, professors out there that would like to offer an honorary doctorate, I will accept.

So let me tell you guys a little story along the lines of what Andy was saying. I was really struggling with locking down. There's a lot of guys I like here, but I wanted to try to get this one right. And originally it was Joe Mixen, who was going to be my third my guy. But there were struggles that I saw that, you know, were just too reminiscent of last year, both from reports out of camp. I mean, I really like mixing. I'm, you know, I liked him, but I wasn't sure. Juju.

obviously is one of those guys that I have been in love with since last year. A star is born. He's talented. You know, but he's being drafted as the 18. I love Jordan Howard. He's great. He's got huge upside. But I've already doing Trey Burton. Can you double up on Bears? Can you know, Kenyon Drake is a guy I fully believe in. If he gets the workload, he will be a top 12 back. But, man, is he going to get the workload? So here's what happened.

I literally, after doing all this research, looking at schedules, looking at offensive line, looking at everything, I consulted with my wife. And I said, look, I got to describe these. My wife does not know fantasy football, does not watch. And I said, I need a sounding board. So I talked to her, and I'm describing these people. And in the end, she said I should go with Juju because his name is Juju. So I knew I had to call someone else. Okay. I knew I had to go elsewhere.

Did you talk to one of the co-hosts of this show? I called a good friend, a very large guy, and Jay Gris told me it's got to be Jordan Howard. The only reason I would not have selected Jordan Howard is because I didn't want two Chicago Bears and my guys. And that's not a good reason. Because I actually believe that Jordan Howard is a phenomenal pick this year. Double Bears. Double Bears. Double Bears. Double Trouble. Making Jay Gris proud. Two growls for two bears.

Speaking of double trouble, Jordan Howard's first two years in this league have been double trouble. I thought he was talking about how he tries to catch the ball twice on every play. His 16-game pace over his first two seasons averages 1,257 rushing yards, 8 touchdowns, and surprisingly another 218 receiving yards.

along with another receiving touchdown. That's his 16-game pace over these first two years, and that's been with a putrid, John Fox-led team. Look, we talk about rankings in a weird way here. Last year, Jordan Howard and the Chicago Bears ran the 31st best number of plays, also known as...

the second worst. They were terrible. The total plays that the Chicago Bears ran were. That was bangles and Bears' problems last year. Yes, absolutely. Exactly. And that's why when I looked at Jordan Howard and Joe Mixin, I loved the fact that you can look to last year's ridiculously slow pace and few offensive plays. And you know already with nothing else changing, without them getting more efficient, that there is huge room for growth here. I look for those things.

But when I compared the Bengals and the Bears, one of those teams has a massive change in culture, a massive change in offensive mindset with Matt Nagy coming in and replacing John Fox. The other has... Wow, you're getting worked up over here. I'm hot and bothered. The other has the exact same situation going on as they did last year and will probably be lower in the league on total offensive plays ran.