Early RB Rankings Part 2 + C.J. Trolls Jason

over T.J. Eldon in a heartbeat. Sure. And that's the perfect example of what you're talking about. He's a specialist in a certain area. He's a better pass catching back than T.J. Yeldon. All right. Let's go ahead and jump into this beautiful signing. Mediocre signing of the wig. This one stings a little bit. Why are you doing them like this? I know. Raiders have signed wide receiver Ryan Grant, formerly of the Colts, formerly of the Ravens.

Uh, one year contract. Supposed to be worth up to something like $2 million. Um, Ryan Grant, if remember last off season, signed a four year $29 million deal. Only he didn't because the Ravens, the Ravens said, no thanks. Passed. Well, yeah, Michael Crabtree. Yeah, I was going to say they went. Oh, Michael Crabtree is out there. Um, so Ryan Grant, uh, he may not even make the team, but he's a depth player on the Raiders. He's a fantasy irrelevant.

uh is that it for news are we good yeah all right that is it for news and notes today we're going to get into early running back rankings i don't want to remind people switch your dynasty league over to sleeper they're adding new features all the time just go download the app it's free it's not a paid platform just just go go do it it's a great platform check it out i promise you'll like it and a quick reminder to check out the ultimate draft kit uh you heard the intro the very timely intro

Uh, what? Because we had the Joker. Yeah, we had a good friend of the show. Jackie N. Yeah. Nobody calls him now. What? What? What? I didn't mean to do that. I don't know why Derek Carr is being sent in. It's probably just because of the huge Ryan Grant news. Yes. Now that he's got Ryan Grant. Thank you. Thank you. Alongside Antonio Brown and Tyrell Williams. They may have slipped on the soundboard. Sit in the car.

Maybe that was a prognostication. Maybe Derek Carr is destined for glory. Didn't you just draft him in a dynasty league? I sure did. I drafted him in a dynasty league, and he is the reason that I continue drafting quarterbacks and got Case Keenham later because if... Is that why John Gruden spent an extra few hours talking to Kyler the other day? Yeah, exactly. I'm like, oh, they're stacking up all these wide receivers. This is great news for Derek Carr. Unless Cardinals don't take Kyler Murray, in which case, Rutrow. So we're going to get into the rest of the rankings.

Real excited about the UDK. Real excited about the UDK app. The UDK app is out. You're going to have all the rankings available on your phone, all of the features, the breakouts, the bus, the research, the analysis, videos. Videos. You've got player profile cards now, a part of the app. Be able to watch the exclusive videos we do for the UDK and see the player blurbs and the projections and last year stats. So it's a lot of pretty sweet stuff in the Ultimate DraftKit. You can check that out at Ultimate DraftKit.com.

Running Bags. All right. Let's go ahead and get into the heart of it. Last episode on Tuesday. Our top 10, it was Ezekiel Elliott, Saquan Barkley, Christian McCaffrey, Melvin Gordon, Alvin Camara, Todd Gurley, Joe Mixin, James Conard Alvin Cook, and Levion Bell rounding out the top 10. So we're jumping right in today with none other than David Johnson. I still can't do it, man.

I feel like that's at 11. Is that why? Yeah. You're giving him the business because he's not 11. We can't even get him in the top 10. Here's the reality. He could very well be in the top 10, but it has been two years. It's been a while now. I mean, he had a disappointing year last year, and that's following the year, missing the entirety of it with injury. So now he's an older back relative to the other, you know, top 12, top 15 running backs.

who hasn't done anything of spectacular note in two years. It's hard to trust the Arizona Cardinals' offense and say, let's sing David Johnson's name and his praises. Well, you haven't met 10, so it makes sense that you were the one to sing by yourself there. Yeah, the cheese. I haven't at 12. Mike hasn't been 13. Now, last year, he only had one game that would have been classified as a week-winning week. So it's exactly what you're talking about. He could not overcome either.

the offense, Mike McCoy, but how much was, you know, San Juan Barclay had a bad situation too, he overcame. Right. What we know is things did get better for David Johnson once Mike McCoy was fired. He went from 8.3 yards per reception up to 9.3, big jump. His yards per carry rose from basically three to almost four. So it got better, not drastically.

The problem is the Cardinals offense. In 2016, the monster season where he was putting up Todd Gurley levels of touchdowns. He had 33 attempts inside the 10 zone. That is money in the bank for a fantasy running back. 2018, 15. 15 attempts. How many was the year before? In 2016, it was 33. Yeah. And down to 15? Yeah.

That's not going to get it done. That's a problem with the offense. Now, on the other side, if you want to speak his praises, you say, well, okay, he only had one week winning, weak, defining week last year. We only had one bust game, too. And this was on a bad offense, pretty much worst case scenario for the Cardinals last year. And in some scoring formats, ours, he finishes the running back 10. So how can you project him to go anywhere down from last year's version of the Arizona Cardinals?

I don't blame anyone if you want to say, hey, he's a top five back. To me, when I look at the rankings, the reason I've got him at 10 isn't because I don't believe he can't finish higher. It's just because I like those other players who are breaking in versus trying to hope David Johnson gets back. Yeah, his draft price will be much better this year. I mean, the reason we're so disappointed because he was a top three draft pick last year. So he'll go right around the range where...

I think it's a fair value where you're getting a running back who's the workhorse guy and can shoot into the top five. So David Johnson could be a steal, but I think he's a fringe RB1. Yeah, I agree with that. And you still have the variables involved in David Johnson. Look, can it be as bad as last year on offense? Probably not. But you do not know who his quarterback. You don't know who his quarterback is right now. You have a brand new head coach bringing a new system into play. So there are variables there that don't exist with the other guys. Number 12.

Nick Chubb. We've all got him ranked around the same spot. I have him at 11, Mike and Jason at 12. Last year he was the number nine in terms of consistency that was based on Week 7 and on. Once he was the starter. Pretty much once he was the starter, he only had 16 rushes from Weeks 1 through 6. Maybe had he had more, they could have been pushing for the playoffs. Maybe.

But your favorite player, Carlos Hyde, was letting things down. Yeah, somebody wanted to play Carlos Hyde and Tyrod Taylor. Don't know Hugh it was. Yeah. All right, I got one, fellas. You got one, yes. I'm back, baby. So now here's that one was good. Here's the thing about Nick Chubb. Nick Chubb has the cream hunt scare for the second half of the year, right? When I.

It's fair, too, because we know that Cream Hunt is suspended. If you don't know, he's suspended for eight games. That's, that's been finalized. We had thought, hey, it could be 10, could be 12. No, it's eight games. Yeah, done. It's settled. So you know that the first eight games, it's going to be Nick Chubb and presumably Duke Johnson as of right now. And when I end up statting these guys out on the season, Nick Chubb's stats are not going to be as good as where I will be willing to draft him. Because I want guys that get off to a hot start.

I want the player who, for the majority of the regular fantasy football season, is the guy in the backfield of a great offense. I think Nick Chubb, you know, it's one of those things where this is a philosophy decision. Do you take the guy who might, you know, get off to the hot start, but see a bunch of work later in the playoffs where you will hopefully be thanks to him? Or would you rather not to deal with that issue of the future?

oncoming problems and go somewhere else entirely. And Nick Chubb is a running back. You're taking very high who, while he's an adequate pass catcher, he just doesn't play that role for the team. When he was the guy, he was getting about three targets a game. But he's a great runner. Right. And last year, he was pro football focus's highest ranked, highest elusive ranking for players with 60 plus attempts.

But you can go, like, to your point, though, Jay, just to piggyback real quick, to your point, if he's going to get you to the playoffs, if he does what you expect him to do, he is still the guy on a great offense. And that, if that translates for your fantasy team, maybe we overemphasize the Kareem Hunt involvement for the second half, right? Like if he's producing at otherworldly levels.

You know, maybe it's Alvin Camaro weeks one through four versus Alvin Camero once Mark Ingram came back. You're not going to have a situation where a successful Brown's offense with a dominant running back says, man, we signed Kareem Hunt. He hasn't played all year. It's week nine, it's week 10. We need to give him 40% of the work. 50% of the work. Maybe. They might. Fresh legs, take some work off of Nick Chubb. It'll be really hard to figure that out.

once you're at that point. But what I was going to say about Chubb is the 1 through 11, all of those running backs, all of them have pass catching in their profile up until we are at Nick Chubb. And that's, I love him as a player. I think he's a fantastic running back and he's set up to succeed in a big way. But if you don't get those targets, like bad things can happen for fantasy. Ceiling wise. Yes.

Yeah, I mean, he was pretty darn impressive last season, but you're right. I mean, there are a handful of players that we'll talk about in that same vein where, you know, Derek Henry, we just had this conversation in the studio yesterday. We'll talk about it with Derek. What do you do with Derek? What do you do with Derek? It's interesting. I do see some similarities between the way you would look at Nick Chubb and Damien Williams. And Damien Williams comes in at number 13. Now I have them at 18. Jason and Mike much higher. Mike at 11. Jason at 13.

That means Mike does have Damian Williams higher than Nick Chubb, which means that Mike, you must be reading in more to the Kareem Hunt situation and having more confidence that Damian Williams is going to get you from point A being week one to point B, which is the end of the season. Yeah, Damian Williams at this point of the offseason is extremely difficult because I don't think that any of our rankings are going to be anywhere close today when you go after the NFL draft.

If after the NFL draft, we know that Damian Williams is fully projected to be the lead runner, I won't have him at 11. I will have him higher than that. He will be inside my top 10. And the same can be said that if they draft somebody in the third round or higher, Damian Williams will crash out of my top 20.

There is a ton of risk to Damien William. It's why he's ranked to where he is for me, because I actually factor in more than just the NFL draft. I think the NFL draft is a variable that could be a detriment to him. The reason you love him is he was the RB3 from weeks 14 through 17 when he was the starter. Now, he could have the most fluid rankings of any running back in the top 25 for the duration of the offseason. We're talking into preseason because there's still a world where...

You're seeing things from Carlos Hyde in Kansas City or in training camp, get ready for the buzz time. You're going to see things that, oh, no, why did Carlos Hyde run with the ones two days in a row? Exactly. Why did he run with the ones again? Carlos Side doesn't scare me. Well, I get that he doesn't scare you now. I want to see you so resilient when the buzz comes in because it could happen. I do get that. Damien Williams hasn't earned it. We cannot ignore.

Carlos Hyde, because if you told any one of the three of us, at this point last year, hey, here's what's going to happen. Next year, Kareem Hunt is gone, okay, and the Kansas City Chief's great offense is going to bring in Damian Williams and Carlos Hyde. Who do you want? I mean, there's no question. At the beginning of last year. We would have all wanted, we would have said, oh, Carlos Hyde is way better than Damian Williams, especially. I would have said that. Yeah. So.

Now, I got two words for you. What Damien Williams did can't be discounted. He knows the offense. He knows the system. But we can't just throw away Carlos Hyde. And what's the difference, Mike, in your mind, to be honest, between at least having a part of your prognostication attached to Alex Collins and Gus Edwards. Did you know Gus Edwards' name before last season? No, but Gus Edwards. Alex Collins exploded at the end of the year before. Sure. So everybody drafted him really high.

It was supposed to be set up to succeed. But Damian Williams exploded, and then three weeks into explosion, they extended him. They didn't do that for Alex Collins. Damian Williams, when he was the guy, he averaged 19.6 points per game. You know how many? Of course, small sample. I won't argue that. But Kareem Hunt, up in earlier in the season up to that point, you know what he was averaging? 19.7. He was giving you the exact same production, fantasy-wise.