The TRUTH: Top 10 Fantasy RBs + Yeti Shoes - Fantasy Football Podcast for 1/26

certainly take some of the young stud wide receivers out of him, but for running backs, is he the number one running back? Yes. Has a nice big contract, even though he's a little older. He's just unbelievable. The truth about Christian McCaffrey is he's unbelievable. He's 26 years old. How old is Derek Henry? 29. Okay. Give me three years of Christian McCaffrey. He's my number one. Yeah. He'd give me three years. And he catches passes, right? So there's this. I think the cliff is not going to be, it's going to be a slow hill down probably. All right, let's move on. Josh Jacobs finished at number three. What a season for Josh Jacobs. His consistency rank was seven, 65% good, 24% great, 18% bust. Beat up on bad teams over 20 fancy points per game. It was a weird year. I don't think we knew what to expect. It's going to be weird going forward. This is a fourth round pick.

Yeah, I mean, by far the best value. He won the award for running back of the year in the footies because of where you drafted him, the value he represented and how good he was. He had a couple of weeks where he just, you know, 32 fantasy points, 35 fantasy points. 45 fantasy points. They were beyond week-winning weeks. They were weak-winning weeks that also gave you points for tiebreakers to get you in the playoffs. It started really slow to start the year. You know, it looked like the fourth round value and fantasy drafts were correct. Yeah, just what you expected. But then they were like, wow, the gap between the number one and the number two running back on our team is the Grand Canyon. And so they just started playing Josh Jacobs, giving him everything. His workload was outrageous. And he was, obviously, he didn't have his fifth year contract picked up. So he's a free agent. We don't know where he's going if he's going to resign with the Raiders or not.

go after the bag on the open market. He certainly deserves it after what he did this season. What did he tweet out? Because that's our number one source for player contract disputes. I think he tweeted something out recently. Like, it's got to work for me, something like that. Kyle's looking at it. It's very important information. Look, Josh, go get the bag. You're a running back. Get the biggest payday you can go wherever is going to pay you the most. And I want to be clear here. Like, we're wrong about Josh Jacobs. Yeah, well, when you say we, you mean everybody but Brooks. Yeah. Because Brooks did chime in and was always supportive of Josh Jacobs. And so. Yeah, I mean, if you were reading the offseason, we misread it. I mean, Zemir White was somebody that you thought they would come in and have a role, Josh McDaniels with Brandon Bolden. It looked, and then not picking up the fifth year option. And then playing them in the Hall of Fame game into the like third quarter. Yeah, but I just, I don't want to give like all the kind of.

Like it was just a wrong call. I mean, it would have been a great one to get right. Yeah, no, we were 100% wrong on Josh Jacobs. And he was, you know, one of those more rare examples, but does happen of the quote unquote dead zone running back in those rounds like four through seven that do come through fantasy football. So if you believe in a player's talent, even if some of the things around them is pushing them down in a draft, call your shot. You know, because no. I don't think any of us here thought Josh Jacobs was a bad running back. I don't think I thought he was this good. Like he was legitimately, he deserves to be thought of as maybe the best running. And he's the rushing title winner. And he looked it. He looked awesome. Every time he got the ball, yards after contact, just had a brilliant season. And so there is the possibility. We know Derek Carr won't be there.

And if they choose to pay to bring Josh Jacobs back, there's a chance that Tom Brady is a Las Vegas raider. The Jimmy Garoppolo is a raider. And so this might be one of those things where Jacobs has, let me put it this way. Has he played well enough for long enough to where you don't care who's going in there at quarterback? You'll just play Jacobs as a top tier option. Yes, if he is a raider. That's what I mean. If he's a raider, you don't care about the quarterback because you'll know. He's coming back to do what he's done. I will 100% be in on Josh Jacobs as what he was this year to continue that next year if he is a raider. 1,653 yards rushing. 53 receptions, which is nice. I mean, to have on top of that, that's the fifth most rushing yards over the last decade. It was the RB1 from week nine on. And it was awesome. I mean, it was a really.

He was one of those players where a lot of championship teams had Josh Jacobs. Because where you got him, it was a free week winner. Yes. All right. Let's take a quick break and we'll jump into some very big shoes. All right. Look at us in these humongous shoes. Derek Henry comes in at number four. He was actually number two in consistency. If you would like to know why Jason Moore won a championship in our League of Record, He has the number one and number two, most consistent running backs according to our truth metrics. Yeah, it's a pretty good year, which ironically both of those players, the number one and number two had rough starts to the season. The first couple weeks, it looked like they were done, but the Tennessee Derek Henry's really got going. I mean, they, he had 39.6% of Tennessee's team.

yards and touchdowns. That's the number one in the NFL. That's the highest of his career. He was everything to this offense. They obviously had a few games where Ryan Tannehill didn't play. He was even more everything. There's going to be concerns about age. There's going to be concerns about workload. And there's going to be concerns about the... offense as a whole yeah new new offensive coordinator coming in new offensive coordinator i i presume based on the contract situation how this year played out that it will be ryan tannhill if they can't like trade for an aaron rogers or someone i don't think they're drafting a rookie so um if you throw away if you throw a if you throw age yeah let's just pretend he doesn't age which yeah i'm fine with that if you because because so far he hasn't we don't know how yet he's yeah yeah like dog years it could be the reverse where it's like

He's 12 years old right now. I mean, he could be 12 years old. You tell him you don't want a 12 year old running back that's this good already? So if you throw age out, this team, I think, will be a lot better next year. I really do. If you, I don't remember the exact numbers, but this has like been the most injured football team for two straight years. Their offense of line was extremely injured. Obviously, they lost Taylor Luan for most of the year. just they replaced AJ Brown with Traylon Burks who missed most of the year. It's not going to be worse as an offense in Tennessee next year as far as personnel going into the season. The only thing that will change my opinion on Derek Henry next year is not going to be age. It will be if they make a high draft capital investment on another running back. Sure. To plan for the future. But Derek Henry.

41 targets, 33 catches, 1,500 yards, 13 rushing touchdowns, beat up bad defenses, despite the offensive line being ranked 32nd in the league, and it was special. 75% good games, 44% great. A few more duds than we were used to seeing, but they were up against it. Quarterback, you know, was changing all the time. Yeah, I mean, it was certainly unfortunate what happened at the end of the year, missing championship week in Week 17. because of nothing to do with football, but the, you know, the way the schedule worked out, Tennessee didn't need that game to matter, so they rested him. And he was still phenomenal. 6% bust rate is a great number. He never really, really let you down on a regular basis. What he did, the...

previous season was disrespectful because of his age. What he did this season will be disrespected because of his age. Everyone wants to call their shot when it's over. And here's the truth. When it's over, it's over. You fall off a cliff and it's a worthless pick. It's the reason why I didn't draft any Adam Thielen this year because you know you're getting to the cliff. You don't want to be holding the bag when you're at the cliff. I will be drafting Derek Henry. There are a few people that are outlier human beings. Yeties. There are a few yeties. There are a few that are outlier yeties. And I'm going to keep taking the shot on those players. And I will hold the bag when it runs out. There you go. So Nick Chubb is the opposite of Echler and Henry. He was the most dominant running back in the first half of the season. His consistency rake on the year. And I barely got through that word right there. Yeah, I was going to say, I don't think you did. Okay.

Well, I shouldn't have drawn any attention to it. You were probably to let me go. I was being kind. His consistency ring? Yes, go on. Was six on the year, but number two in the first half of the season. Number one, number nine, number 11, number six. Another player that you kind of looked at and you said, well, okay. Nick Chubb was a lot like Josh Jacobs in the sense that whatever was going on around him, he was just Nick Chubb. He's just one of the best running backs in football. 1500. more rushing yards this year. Never catches a lot of passes. So we never finishes at the tippy top of the position. But I mean, weeks one through eight, this was the very best running back in football. It's almost like something changed in Cleveland. It's almost like, you know, when they were scoring 23.9 points per game as a team 11th in the NFL. And then the last six weeks, something changed where they.

They just couldn't score the ball a lot. You know, they dropped down to 16 total points per game. So that affected Nick Chubb. He went from 94 rushing yards game to 81. Didn't score touchdowns as much because the opportunities weren't there and seven fewer fancy points per game. You're talking about Voldemort. I am talking about Baltimore. When Voldemort took over at quarterback, this offense struggled. Deshaun Watson sucked this year. Now, we, we. We threw up all those red flags. We talked about he hasn't played in a year and a half. He didn't get to practice with the team. It wasn't like he wasn't just playing, but he was in the facilities. He's been gone from the game. I think if you're looking at it next year, you have to ask yourself, what do you believe about Deshawn Watson? Is he get the whole offseason, the OTAs, the training camps, the preseason, and he's going to be ready to go? Or is this more of a Tigerwood situation where he's going to come back and never be the same as he was before? Where do you stand?

I stand there. I don't think he gets back to being one of the best three quarterbacks in real life or in the NFL. And I think he's probably going to be a middling running back, which will have a real life or the NFL. I did say that because real life to me is fantasy. Okay. Okay. When I say real life on this show. I actually like that a little bit. That's pretty good. That's fantasy football. Wait, fantasy football is real life. That's right. Real life is fantasy. That's right. Got it. And then NFL is like. you know national football league so happens there so i don't if you set the bar at number three i don't think he gets to that point six i think he could do that yeah you think he can do that sure that's a cop out do you think he will be a top six quarterback uh in this current landscape no not with the other talents i think are out there but i think you'll be top ten

And that's a bar he didn't come close to reaching this year. And I think that's enough for the offense to get moving. I mean, if you played Nick Chubb at the back half of the year, you would look at the box score. And you'd be like, oh, he's running for like a nice yards per carry. Oh, he's getting a bunch of carries. And then you'd be like, why is he the number 29 or the number 32 or the number 23 running back this week? And it's because he wasn't getting anywhere near the painted area. They couldn't get the ball down there to give it to him.

Now, I do think it will be better than the putrid final six games for the Cleveland's, for the Cleveland Browns. But I... For the Grover Cleveland. Right. Yes. But I don't believe that they will be good enough to make Nick Chub a great running back because he does need touchdown since he doesn't catch the ball. So Nick Chubb, 27 years old, has one more year of big money left on his three-year contract that he signed. Dynasty Outlook, Nick Chub. Would you trade, I mean... You couldn't trade Nick Chub for the 101 right now, right? How old is he? 27. Nick Chub Dynasty Outlook is a little sketch, but he's really good. I think there's a strong argument that he's the best peer runner in the game. Yeah, yeah. I mean, every play that you watch, you go, he picks up incredible yards after contact, he's fast, he's strong. They should give him the ball more. If a situation like Tennessee with, with,

Derek Henry didn't exist. We would use Nick Chubb and the Browns as the example of he's your offense. So I think you'll be all right for a little while, even if he ends up somewhere else. Okay. Two years left on the deal. So they can get out in 2024. So these last two running backs, Derek Henry, Nick Chubb, very similar, a little bit older. Would you rather have Bajon Robinson than both of them in Dynasty? I think so. Yeah. You did it. I'm just saying he just keep, when you look at the run, he just keeps climbing up, not just because of his potential, but because of the aging out of the great running back. Well, just like our discussion earlier, though, which got qualified by this gentleman writing in and saying, hey, I've got, I've got plenty of wide receivers and I need a running back. Would you trade D.K. Metcalf for one. I'm qualifying that answer by, am I one of the three juggernaut teams in my league that's about to win a title?

Because I'd rather play Derek Henry next year than Bijon Robinson, unless we find out a destination that changes that. And I'd rather play Nick Chubb next year than Bijon Robinson. Because my odds of winning a title are, the odds are higher with the established than the unestablished. Certainly before the NFL draft. Too much unknown. At least before the NFL draft, yeah. But yeah, I mean, you could talk about Bijan all day. I could. Because we were, you know, where the best destinations for him will be, where he could get a lot of work early, where he's the goal line back and it's not a rushing quarterback. That's the centerpiece. You know, we talked about, okay, you end up in Buffalo, you end up in Philly. That could be great. Yeah, good offenses, a lot of opportunity. But when you want to be number one, you got to have the whole plate.

You get, we talked about this. Philadelphia, the Eagles, you get on the one yard line. That is not a running back touchdown ever, ever, because you have a guaranteed touchdown with the quarterback's team. Yeah, so you need to come up with your, your, you're rooting five. Okay. Your five bejean destinations, okay? Yeah, I'll sort. And then, and then if they'll, you got to do something special if he goes to one of those five. Just not the lions. It's all I ask. Oh, my. And with their extra pick of the first round. If he goes to Detroit, if he goes to Detroit, it might be the greatest day of my life. Because you hate me. No, I don't hate you. I enjoy watching you react to things. Yeah. And it's like, you know, when you think they're done with a great movie series and you're like, man, those were great. I know they're never going to make another one.

And then they make another one and I'm front row in the theater. I've got the tickets. Yeah. I mean, I didn't. Don't do it, Detroit. Build that defense. Build that defense of the draft. Oh, don't do that. That's doing me dirty. Carry on Johnson. You know what's funny. I want to see the next movie. Carry on Johnson affects me in so many different ways. Like I'm watching tape and like, but you're just afraid of the next carryout? Absolutely. I'm watching, uh, is it, uh, Bigsby's. Auburn, right? Tank Bigsby. Yeah. So I'm watching Take Biggsman. It's actually Eleanor, but go on. I like them. And I'm like, oh, this better not be an Auburn trick. These, a lot of these wildcat running back formations. Oh, no. Yeah. Well, that's, that's fantasy PTSD. Yes, it is. All right. At six, Sequin Barkley, who's the number three in consistency over the first half of the year, 10 and the second half, five on the year.

It was a bounce back season. He was amazing for the first eight weeks. A few bumps and bruises over the second half of the year, but not physically, which has been the key, right? 75% good games, 19% great. The offensive line wasn't great, but Saquan is going to get paid. Yeah. I believe his comment was something like, I don't think I've played the last down in a Giants uniform. He said he's not interested in resetting the running back market that he's realistic with. his situation. Seems like he does want to return to the Giants. I think he'll be back. I think he'll be back as well. But Daniel Jones is the big question mark. I don't think Daniel Jones is back because they're not going to franchise him. That would be too much money. And I don't think they want to give him a big contract. They've seen him long enough and they've kind of seen the peak. And based on what Daniel Jones did, not they though. They as an organization. Barely. I mean, Gettleman's gone and you have, you have, you have,

a good playoff season. I think he'll be back. That would be my vote. There is. He's going to be, let's say they don't franchise him. That means he's a free agent, right? And if he tests the market, there could be a team out there that says, hey, Daniel Jones is going to come in and take us to the playoffs. Let me put it this way. The league has seen him as much as the Giants have seen him. Right? Everybody's watched Daniel Jones. Nobody knows what the heck he is. Well, let's talk about what Saquan Barkley is, which is a very, very talented running pack who

dominated the first half of the season. Yeah, does Daniel Jones being back make any difference to you for Sequin? I mean, is there any situation where it's not like Daniel Jones was, no, if anything, he was hurting him around the goal line and with the rushing yardage. Yeah, obviously who comes in instead of Daniel Jones is a big question mark. Always Carson wins. If. It's always Carson Wins. He's the last guy that just like... There's seven or eight of them out there. Carson Wins is. It's literally musical chairs. And he's like, oh, that's the last one left. All right. Give me Carson Woods. It's Matt Ryan. Oh, Matt Ryan's done. Same number of touches for Sequin this past year is his best fantasy season. It was nice. It was a good season for Sequin. You knew right away, too, that if you had taken that shot in the late second, mid-second, you won.

You won the price. It comes out week one, has the number one fantasy finish that week and looked awesome in route. So, yeah, you knew he was great. I do think second half of the year, people were very disappointed. And I think they were disappointed in part just because of how good the first half of the year was. And they were hoping they had, you know, the Austin Echler consistency. But he did have some dodds along the way in the playoff weeks and leading up to it that were rather disappointed. I can't really explain them either. They never made sense to me. The Detroit one was the huge one. That was the, you know, I think we were surprised it was that bad against Detroit, even though they were being better. But then Philadelphia, okay, you can explain that away a little bit. Week 17, championship week, Colts defense shut them down.

It seemed like the team just avoided him sometimes. Yeah, it is certainly weird when he went away. And you hate to see that, especially from someone who's a pass catcher because usually that is what's going to allow you to be consistent in a bad game script. But next year, Seaquin Barkley, who will turn 26 years old, assuming he is a New York giant again, I think he's probably going to be drafted in the top five picks. He'll be up, you know. You're going to... Do you take an Echlor over a sequel? I will take Echlor over Sequel. Assuming they don't go out and get another... You know, if they draft Bijon, then flip-floppy. Obviously, obviously. Tony Pollard was number seven. Zeke was 19. So we'll handle them in tandem here. Pollard ended up 11 inconsistency rank. Mm-hmm. This is the shocking part. Zeke ended up at 8. Yes. In consistency. Zeke had a higher percentage of his games...

as good games than Pollard did, but he had no great games. And Pollard had 20% of his games, those weak winning type of performances where he finished one, two, six, seven, three at the position. Zeke's highest fantasy finish on any week was eight. Right. But his low was rare. And this metric that we have for kind of our true score about how the players did takes out injuries. So obviously if you had Zeke, You felt that middle of the season when you lost him. And, you know, it was part of the plan we kept talking about on this show, how the schedule was going to be really nice for Zeke down the stretch. And then right when that was supposed to come to fruition, he was gone. And that was, you know, that hurt fantasy managers. It hurt their playoff chances. But when you go back to the game log and you look at what Ezekiel Elliott did, he was really solid. He surprised me going through the numbers to see, man.

He got the job done. He was a touchdown machine, and he's playing on a great offense, and they're going to keep using him as, you know, a goal line back. He's not going to be drafted higher. He'll be drafted lower next year than he was this year, and he was a third round pick. So I don't think he has the upside potential that he ever, you know, that he once had. No, he definitely doesn't. I mean, yeah. The door's closing. It might be closing slowly. What's a little weird to me when you look at the numbers for Pollard and Zeke is that this was the backfield where when you sat here on the show and you previewed games each week, if you said this is a great week for Dallas's backfield to run the football, it was. Like if they played a bad defense, you know, they were great. Both players were great. Zeke was 15.6 fancy points per game against bad defenses. Pollard was 17.79. When they played a great defense, they were under 10 points.

Like it was a huge disparity for both backs. I mean, it was massive. So, you know, you could come here and be like, oh, man, I'm going to go with, I don't know which cowboy to go with on these bad matchups. And it would, both of them would be fine. Yeah. Now, obviously, talking about Tony Pollard, got injured in the playoffs, we'll be back by week one. But what team we do not know yet. Dallas. I do think, I think the injury makes it more likely he's back in Dallas. Yeah, I just think, I think Zeke will take a pay cut. He said he will. And I think that will enable the team to, you know, maybe it's a shorter deal for Pollard because he wants to cash in again. I don't know. Because of what Tony Pollard did. If Tony Pollard is back in Dallas, Tony Pollard will be drafted ahead of Zeke, right? He finished ahead of him this year. And because of that, I'm just curious how far Zeke is going to fall in drafts. He looks to me to be the player.

that no one will want to touch under any circumstance. He's the backup. He's a year older. And even though we talk about, well, he was actually pretty good this year. His truth metric was good. He wasn't good. He let people down and people felt like it was a dud because he started the year slow and got injured in the middle of the year. But when he was out there playing, he was actually pretty good. So, you know, could he fall to like the sixth round? No. No, not as, I don't think the sixth round. I guess you're going to see maybe fourth or fifth. More what happened like with Josh Jacobs. Yeah, fourth round probably, especially with what you said. If Tony Pollard's injury makes any headlines in training camp, if he's slower to get back, if he takes the pay cut, I don't know. The landscape has changed. Dallas is not a one-headed monster anymore. No. The lions aren't either. Jamal Williams finished at eight, D'Andre Swift at 22.

Jamal Williams was eighth in total fantasy finish with 17 touchdowns. An incredible 16 targets. He basically didn't catch the football. So his consistency rank that truth metric is at 20. He had 35% bust games. Yeah. I mean, if you're not, if you're so touchdown dependent, I know he scored a ton of touchdowns. But if that's all you do, which is pretty much all he did most of the season, then you're going to be inconsistent. You're going to bust a lot. And the truth is not as good. You know, Jamal Williams finishes the running back eight. He did not help you in fantasy as much. Now, he was helpful. He helped you like a running back two or three. Yes, he was helpful because of where he was drafted. You know, our truth metric doesn't like factor in draft value or even waiver wire value in Jamal Williams in some leagues. He could have been found on the wire.

He was outside the top 36, six different times. He was probably the most annoying player for fantasy managers to play against if you drew the short straw and got one of the weeks where he finished it two or five or nine or four or four or three. If he got in the end zone, you were like, oh, my gosh, why did I get that week from Jamal? Well, and if he got in the end zone a lot of times, he did that again. He's like, oh, come on. Yeah, going forward. He needs a double. Going forward, Lions, please resign him immediately. Do not look towards the draft. That's all I'm saying. Now, the other tandem teammate here, DeAndre Swift, this is what people are like, oh, why isn't Mike here today? He didn't want to talk about DeAndre Swift. Yeah, he asked, he got a doctor's note. He said, is DeAndre Swift going to be brought up on this episode? You probably bring up his name. I'm out, he said. I hate DeAndre Swift. I won't be here.