Fantasy Football - Early Breakouts & Sleepers - Podcast for 6/12

the last three years in rushing attempts. And two of those, one was last year with Najee, one was with Tyler Algier when he was the number one rushing attempt in the league. So they're going to have opportunities for him. And I just think his explosive nature, he's a young player, and everything right now is positive from OTAs. In fact, is the... Pittsburgh Gazette, I believe, said he was the rookie that stood out the most in camp based on the opportunities that they're seeing him get. So I'm very bullish on him. I liked him as a prospect. I think he lands in a good situation. And all the, I love, I mean, one of my favorite things to do here is just besmirch Aaron Rogers. But it is. It's mostly for fun. Like, I enjoy it. Because, yeah, I'm not taking that away from myself. Okay. I was a little concerned for you. I will allow myself to continue. But Aaron Rogers passes to the.

the running back. He's good for this offense. This could be a team that has a lot of scoring opportunities. And so, yeah, Caleb Johnson will be on a lot of my rosters. All right, probably unsurprising, especially if you watched the last accidental mock draft selection. To me, James stands out as kind of the premier breakout pick for my off season. I think, you know, if you're unfamiliar, wide receiver, Detroit. high draft capital. One of the more interesting things, we brought up lots of different reasons why James and Williams has the potential to break out. You saw it last year. He had big games for fantasy. This was a frequent occurrence. He's a sixth round pick right now. Wide receiver 30 in redraft, wide receiver 24 in basketball. He's a great basketball candidate because he has those kind of breakout games that go wild. He is a 200-yard potential type of player in a single game. But trying to give you a different.

set of information on Jameson and why I think he's one of those breakout guys. Let's take a look at the type of routes he runs and what he's most successful at. His highest percentage of runs are the highest value for fantasy. Posts, go routes, crossers. That's what he runs. That's what he's done well. He was over 50% of all routes on those three specific. The posts go, the crossers. The only other fantasy wide receiver that was over 50% was Tyreek Hill on those three routes. They're high value routes. And they design plays and routes to take advantage of what he does best, which is kind of like Jaylen Waddle, kind of like Tyree Kill. If he gets downfield, he has space. That's just what he does. He has a ton of space between him and the defender. And if you get the ball in his hands, on time, Jared Goff.

He runs. He just runs. Goff just needs to learn how to severely underthrow the ball. So Jameson can come back like Tyree killed those. The Tuah? Yeah. He just, he runs wild after the catch. So I just think he is an elite player. I really do. We got. You know, Amun Ra has his spot and his role, but I think that there is more ceiling for Jameson Williams in this offense. The offensive coordinator, no longer Ben Johnson, it's John Morden. He's come out and been very public about saying, look, we want to get the ball downfield more, where already Jameson Williams is 50 plus percent of his routes, high value downfield routes. They were not great last year in terms of getting the ball downfield. Third lowest.

percentage of their attempts 20 plus yards downfield. So for Jameson to put up over a thousand and do what he did last year with that level of efficiency on a team that just didn't prioritize downfield throwing, I think that that's interesting from the breakout projection standpoint. And look, he was the wide receiver 19 last year. So your margin for breakout. I'm talking he can get to 12. He can get to 11. He can get to 15, 14. I think he makes a step forward this year. And I don't think it's hard to do when you only had 60 or what is it, 58 catches last year. That can go way up. There's room for him. He can catch another, you know, he can be 8 to 10 touchdowns on a given year and get ball, you know, he gets the ball in the running game quite a bit. So for me, you're going to hear me talk about him quite a bit. I like the value on a player that I think could be a wide receiver 2 type of guy. So.

Caleb Johnson, Jason, Josh Downs, Mike. I'm going to go with James and Williams for the breakout. We got sleepers. Sleepers. Now, do we still want me to go first, even though mine is the deepest of the sleeps? I don't care who goes first. I've been waiting. I am the Senate. Yeah, baby. We are so back. If you're following me on Twitter, I've sent a public apology. that I have not been backing my guy, Ben, Senate, the senator. Washington. You better say where he plays, what position, all that stuff. We're getting there. We're getting there. He plays tight end for the Washington commander. So the, this is, this is all just, this is projection and this is the role in that office. Look, Zach Ertz is still, they brought him back. Zach Ertz is still there.

Oh, look at those stats up on the screen. Oh, yeah. Get those up there. Way to go, Josh. You know what? You don't have on their targets. You know what? It's not up there? 100% catch rate for his career, guys. How many catches does he have? Yeah, five? Don't worry about that. Can't have more than five. There's also one in the playoffs, guys. Oh, six? Yeah. 100% catch rate. I can't believe you. I feel like that was not a stat line you wanted to throw up on the screen. I did. Josh just took. He just put it up there. And also, unfortunately, we don't have it up there, but 100% dog meter. Ben Senate is off the charts. So just, so Zach Hertz. You have been a big, here's the big Ben Senate fan. Zachertz is still there. But here's the thing about Zacherts. He, it was the second oldest starting tight end in the league behind only Travis Kelsey. And yet last year, Zacharyts played every single game.

I cannot take that away from him. But the previous four years, he was averaging playing 11 games a year. Zachertz was having a massive injury problem, especially with the Arizona Cardinals. Let's see those ERT stats up on the screen there. You want to get those, Josh? I can tell you some of Zachert's stats. He had the ninth highest red zone target share among all pass catchers. Jaden Daniels looked for him. Then he led. All tight ends. Andy, you were talking about high value routes. Zach Ertz led all tight ends with horizontal breaking routes, almost 50%. These are, like, this is Trey McBride type of stuff. And so this is a, this is a projecting of, oh, there's the earth's, there's, thank you. Yeah, imagine that's Ben Sinit and the points for game. Oh my gosh, that's the best analysis I've ever heard in 10 years on this show. You see those stats now, imagine it's the other guy.

Oh my gosh, it's the best. The point is everything that Ertz did, Earth was very involved. Ertz is a shell of what he was. Ben Sinit is an up-and-coming player. He was the second tight end drafted two years ago. You had Brock Bowers in the first, and then Ben Sinit went in the second. Let me get you go on Mike. Commander's head coach Dan Quinn said Benson has been among the young players who has stood out the most in offseason practices. Yeah, he called him a leader. Says he has the potential to put up stats similar to Zach Ertz if he was indeed Zach Ertz. But I don't think any of us doubt that Senate would be productive without Zachert's existence. But just to talk about how productive. I'm saying if he gets the Zachert's role, the thing that correlates the most to fantasy points for a tight end.

It wildly enough, it is athleticism. Where we overrate athletic ability for wide receivers and running backs, we get enamored by it. We love it because it just feels better. You're like, oh, this player's got juice. But the things that point to a potential breakout for a fancy tight end is the 40-yard dash, the broad jump, and the vertical. In 40 time, Ben Sennett is a 74th percentile athlete. bra jump and vertical. So that's your short area explosiveness. Senate was a 98th percentile athlete when he turns 23 this Saturday. Hey, happy birthday, Ben. And like, that's the year. That's, that is the age that we see. Do you think he thought he'd have more than six targets by 23, Jay? I think he dreamed a dream to dream. Yeah, we definitely did. There's no way they'll bring Zach Ertz in here, will they? Yes. A wild thing is he was, I mean, he was making.

He was helping the team. He was being a dominant blocker, which was like, that's part of his game. That's what I mean of he is a dog. This is like George Kittle. When you go back, because obviously there's not a lot of targets to go watch of his pro production, but watching him in college. He seeks out contact. He wants to punish people. Zach Hertz wants to catch the ball and fall down. Because he's so old. In the end zone, preferably. Yeah, he would like that. So the, I'm bringing this up more of a, as a. Make sure that this name is in the back of your head. Because as of right now, he's in a redraft. He's probably even not really draftable. Like in a, if you're playing underdog and best ball, I'm going to want to get some exposure to him. Like I said, Zach Hertz has had an injury problem before this past year. It is obviously not the same thing, but it is shockingly lined up to be the Trey McBride career arc of.

Yep. Second round pick, just like Trey McBride. Zach Ertz was in front of him for a full year and a half, just like Trey McBride. You, uh, um, I think it's very important to this show that this works out at some point. I do too. And it's weird because I would usually- And Cliff is involved too. I would usually really not like bringing up a tight end who had five targets in their entire rookie season that they didn't like miss their entire rookie season of. But I can see the path for this. I mean, if Zach Ertz pulls something and Ben Sennett gets out there, the offense probably takes a step up. I don't think Ben Sennett is a bad player. The opportunity is ahead of him. You know, the truth is it's going to take that injury, though. It's not going to be... They brought Ertz back on purpose. Yeah, but I mean, that is what happened with Trey McBride. Like, Zach Ertz came back, and even though Trey McBride was that dude, it wasn't like he wasn't that dude. Right. Zachert still played ahead of him.

Until he got injured. Perfect example because Zachertz was productive in Arizona, not nearly as good as McBride, but still took all his snaps. Right. But once Earth went down. Once the trust is there. Once Earth went down in Arizona and you had a true talented wide receiver go and play that role, you know, Zacherts used to be that dude, but he's not. And so once that happened, I mean, the rest is history. He was. you know, the second best tight in in the league. I'll give everyone out there a chance. We'll take a break. We'll come back with a couple more sleepers. I'll give you a chance to put your waiver wire claims in in Dynasty right now. I saw somebody pick it up, sent it for some fab earlier this morning. So deep sleeper for sure, but an athletic second round tight in with upside if Ertz gets hurt. We'll be back in just a second. Jason, I'm going to let you go. You can bring up your sleeper pick. I am now, you've mentioned his name enough to where I'm.

Oh, yeah. I'm trying to think you were just like, this is your dude. Like this is. Yeah. He is probably my favorite end of the draft wide receiver to get. Which I wanted it to be. I want to hear it. I wanted it to be Roman Wilson because I loved his film, but the fact that he is not. establishing anything so far as second year. Calvin Austin is the wide receiver too on this team. Exactly. Like that's not good. But Cedric Tillman, wide receiver for the Cleveland Browns, he's going into his third season, is a good wide receiver, I believe. And I think we saw that on the field. He reminds me a lot of Nico Collins. He is that 6-3, 215-plus pound wide receiver. He's a rare body type. And we saw a very slow career

arc for Nico Collins, right? First year goes out there, plays 60% of the snaps, was on the field, did pretty much jack squat. Nico did. Well, it was very similar for Cedric Tillman. His rookie year went out there. He got injured, dealt with some hip stuff, but did nothing. And it just seemed like at that point, both guys were just busts. And today's modern NFL, you come out your rookie year and you're not good, you're a bust. You come out your sophomore year and you're not good. Nico wasn't good his sophomore year until the second half. The second half, we started to see flashes of Nico Collins emerging. He had a stretch of games that was really special. Then all of a sudden, boom, he's Nico Collins, the fantasy superstar in his third year. With Cedric Tillman, we saw this transition that this transition happened to him. And it happened when opportunity was given to him. Amari Cooper was traded between weeks six and seven.

And then starting in week seven until he got injured with a concussion, I mean, it's a small, it's four games. But those four games were absolutely incredible. He had 300 yards, three touchdowns. He had 24 receptions in. Aren't you anti, are you anti-Judy? No, I'm not anti-Judy. Oh, okay. I couldn't remember which one of you were so. Mike is, because I know. I know that. I'm anti-Judy's ADP. Okay. I just wanted to figure that out because I know Winston was quarterback for Tillman. Yes, he was. It is. Yeah, it is part of Cedric Tillman's story. Yes. So some of those numbers, like, you know, the pace 1,200 yards, 13 touchdowns and 102 receptions, those are juiced Jamis numbers. However, they weren't all Jamis. The first game that Cedric Tillman got that snap count up, that was actually Deshawn Watson. And then Deshaun Watson got injured. And then Dorian Thompson got injured.

And then James played like a couple snaps at the end of the game. So this was like, and how did he do? He had 12 targets. He was eight for 81. He's a, I think he's a good wide receiver. And you look at this depth chart and he is a full time wide receiver, I believe. I think it's going to be Jerry Judy and Cedrick Tillman here on a team that's going to throw the ball so dang much. Now, the obvious bad situation here is who's the quarterback? I don't know. Kenny Pickett's not going to make a superstar. Now if it's Joe Flacco, heck yeah, man.

We don't know yet. This early, we're not sure who it's going to be. Maybe one of the rookies can step up. But I do know that he's going to be on the field in every two wide receiver set. I do believe he is a good wide receiver. I think this team is going to be throwing the ball a lot. Last year, I believe they were number one. So it's like this is a situation, an option, a young rising player where he missed, once he got concussed at the end of his sophomore season last year, they shut him down. They didn't bring him back.

They were playing for, you know, a quarterback pick in the draft as high as they could get. And so, you know, they just, they shut him down, but I don't think that was like a catastrophic injury. I don't look at it the same as like Chris Oliva, who's had so many concussions that I worry every time he gets on the field. So if you've got talent and opportunity, youth size, you know, this is a pretty explosive athlete, 85th percentile explosion rate as a big, bodied wide receiver. I really like Cedric Tillman, and I think he could, I think he did level up. I think we saw the level up, but because of the injury, he didn't get a chance to just cement that. So he's last round in your fantasy picks. If he played the rest of last season, I feel like he'd be right there with Jerry Judy. Because when they were both playing together, he was right there with Jerry Judy. Yeah, they were both very productive. Yeah, it'll be, I forgot it was a sophomore season.

It felt like a rookie season. Yeah, that's because he did nothing in his rookie year. I realized while you're talking, and again, a sleeper is somebody that I think we would categorize as maybe you didn't see it coming. Right. Because this is supposed to be like the, if everybody saw it coming, their draft capital, they'd be drafted. You know, Cedric Tillman's undrafted and redrafted right now. Ben Sen, it's undrafted and redrafted. I realized about halfway through you guys talking, I don't even want to talk about my sleeper pick. Oh, why is that? But I think that's because of the fact that he fits that category of just like kind of, I mean, he has drafted technically. He's about a 13th round pick. But I mean, I'm not, we've said so many negative things about the chief's passing game. And we haven't really had value in the chiefs.

passing game other than a couple games of Rashi Rice and a few games of worthy, but a lot of seasons without Tyreek Hill where we're going, okay, Juju caught a touchdown and Watson caught a touchdown. Oh gosh. Now, no. Noah Gray is catching touchdowns in this game and that game. So who is your not sleeper? My not sleeper that I don't want to talk about is Hollywood Brown. Oh, dude. It's Hollywood Brown. I am, I am intrigued. I am very like a hard stance of I am Rishi Rice over worthy but I think Hollywood Brown here sitting at the end of drafts there's do we there's we got Hollywood drop we're not we don't have many opportunities to play this that still exist he's probably in the wrong jersey holy Lord though look at those stats so 91 receiving Ben Senate

wishes he had 91 yards on the year. Barely played last year. He was the free agent signing. This segment brought to you by Ambien. We're sleeping. Yeah, I mean, he barely played. We're just getting out in front. So he played, here's what he did last year. He played two games and he had 27 and 40% of the SNAS. He basically was non-existent. He got hurt in training camp. Played two games for the Chiefs. And Rashi Rai Zavier Worthy and Hollywood never played a single game together. That never happened. So we don't know what it's going to be like in Kansas City. And the most likely outcome here is that Hollywood Brown will have four games where he pops off for a big play and be irrelevant. However, at this stage of his career, he is 28 years old and he is, I believe, still the most polished of all the receivers that they have. Yeah, he probably is. Rashi Rice has his thing and he does it well. He's a gadget player. He's very good at it.

and worthy similarly he can run in a straight line he will mess up catching by the sideline but he will take a screen pass to the house and it's so athletic like those are the two athletically gifted guys but a pure wide receiver standpoint please don't forget how talented hollywood brown was in baltimore and arizona in that capacity and they paid him last year he finally gets to play with him this year You know, Patrick Mahomes came out and said that the role would be expanded. It was really hard when you start in week 16 or whatever for the very first time to give that guy a role in the offense. It's just almost impossible to do. And they were going for a third straight Super Bowl. But I think this is a super late round. You know, we always talk about drafting a guy and see what happens for the first couple weeks in case you need to drop them and use it on the waiver wire. If you take Hollywood and you go out there and this is an 80, 90% snap wide receiver, Hopkins is gone, right? He's competing with.

Rashi Rice, who's coming back, will have a role, a declining Kelsey, worthy. I just want to see what happens. Here's what needs to happen, genuinely. They need to start the progress of Kelsey's retirement. I love Travis Kelsey. Zeus is awesome. He's an all-timer. But they need to do what Baltimore did with Mark Andrews and say, you know what? We've cut. It's not. working as well to make him the 25% target share. Let's use them around the goal line. That's fine. But they need to stop with the 24% target share to Travis Kelsey and use these other wide receivers. Let Xavier Worthy and Hollywood Brown and Rushie Rice go out there because you know Patrick Mahomes can go out and throw for 40 touchdowns and have a great offense. But I think they need those targets to go away from Kelsey for this because we all want the chief's offense to be great. We want to see something exciting and fun and downfield. And I think they have the humans to do it.

It's just, will they choose to throw to them? Because it's a lot riskier to throw downfield to Hollywood than a quick little short dump off to Kelsey. Well, and they finally, I agree with you. I think the other personnel and I think Hollywood on the field at a minimum helps everybody else. Like if you, if he's out there and he can get downfield, look, they were 29th in the league and market share to wide receivers. Gross. So they didn't throw it to the wide. That was 50% of all. That's what I want to see change. 50% of all targets. The.

the two appearances he actually had week 16 he is on the field for 27% of the offensive snaps and he got eight targets the next week he's on the field for 40% of the offensive snaps and he got seven targets he got eight targets and 27% of that that is where it is intriguing to me of real real small sample and the uh the playoff run. He wasn't used in the Houston game and then five targets and six targets. So I was just going to look that up. It didn't fully, it didn't go from that and into an explosion. But out of that, I feel like there's something to. Yeah, targets per route run on. Oh, there's got to be a leat. They were through the roof. So look, sleeper, right? And like I said, no, 43% target per route run in those games. I mean, that is.

Yeah. And you saw it. I mean, you went out there and it was like he was being targeted all over the place. Because they need, they have weapons, but you still have to have a wide receiver. I just don't know how Andy Reid's going to move the chess pieces. We don't know what Kelsey still has and gray and worthy and rice and, you know, the juju's there. I mean, it's. That's weird that juju's still there. I know. I know. Why? Well, he needs to be somewhere, doesn't he? I don't know. But there's this. What a, wait up, what a. Just since we had all the RJ Harvey talk, an elite quote here from Sean Payton on R.J. Harvey. He's looked good with his receiving, but hasn't earned his Joker wings yet. Joker wings. Yeah, you know, Sean Payton is always talking about the Joker. Who's going to be the Joker in the offense? Sean Peyton better have an entire back piece of a Joker card. The way that this guy is. We know who the Joker is the Joker.

Sean Peyton. Let's let me tell you some more wide receivers on the Chiefs. Okay. So they got juju. Yeah. They got Jalen Royals. Who's been new draft pick? I mean, at least offseason stuff. His name's coming up. Would you believe that Justin Ross is still on the roster? Of course. Yeah. They're not down to 53 yet. What about Skymore? Oh, come on. For real? Yeah. I do. What about what about former superstar Tyquan Thornton? Thornton. Thornton. He's got that weird inn in there. I don't know why they did that. Because he's a thorn in the butt cheeks of this depth chart. Thornton is on this monster. Yeah. So in other words, Riceworthy and Hollywood are the main guys. I mean, they have a bunch of nothing. Yeah, but the superstars gone. Oh, uh, Watson. Can you get there? Justin? Yeah. Oh, my gosh. I'm not sure of those. Hopkins. We all have our guys. Leave us alone. Um, okay.

Well, there you go. There's some deep sleepers to annoying, kind of hesitant to mention sleepers there for you. Well, we've got all of our consensus sleepers in the UDK. We're always keeping that up to date. You know, sleepers are really, really important to get a few right. You're not going to get most of them right. There's a reason that, you know, Cedric Tillman is being drafted in the 19th round, which is more than most rounds in your drafts. But when you get those right and you get that free money, it takes you to the playoffs yeah and you do want to like in the later rounds you want to give yourself a shot at a week one or two explosion from those players so you can leverage that in trade even if you don't use them because i love the first thing i want to do is i don't want to drop one of my picks to go get a waiver wire guy i want to trade two of my players for one

and then go get a waiver wire guy and leverage that first week of, you know, whether Tillman had a break up. Maybe Tillman has two touchdowns in week one. Maybe Hollywood catches a bomb in week one. Oh, he's the guy. I don't know if I'll believe he's the guy after one week, but I sure as heck will tell people I do. So that is going to do it. This guy is so good for your team. Remember I mentioned him on the sleeper episode? But UltimateDraftKit.com if you want to check out all of the other. breakouts and sleepers and values and bus that we've picked together and we'll get into an early values and bus show that's coming up on our next episode we'll do some underrated overrated and an aMA episode another mock draft all on the docket very very soon so thanks for tuning in thanks for listening make sure you click that follow button on spotify apple wherever you're listening helps the show out we'll catch you next time goodbye