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

as Kareem Hunt, and you can look back years and years. Jason talked about North Turner, liking one running back. Andy Reid prefers one player to be the heavy producer for his team. You can look back for very long time. It's still a small sample.

You can't extend that sample no matter what. And to bring up the contract, because I've heard that talked about a lot, you know, oh, they extended him right when they needed him. That's just brilliant, right? He knows the sesame music. Because it was two years, five million. I mean, two and a half million a year is. Carlos Hyde is making more money off the cap this year than Damien Williams. Carlos Hyde is on his fourth NFL team in 12 months. Which is. I'm making a point just to show you the difference in the financial piece.

Yeah, they're not paying anything. If a Carlos side on the fourth team in 12 months gets more money than Damien Williams does on the cap hit this year, it's just you need to be careful. Yeah. That's, that's why I have him at 18. I feel like that's a perfect hedge position for me is I'm going to wait and see. I'm not going to tell somebody out there in the fantasy universe to go over invest. Now, this is a lot of ticket because he could be the RB3 like you said. All right, Leonard Ford net. Jason's rolling his eyes. No, he can't be the RB3.

Um, okay. Yeah, I mean, that'll hurt. That'll hurt real bad. Yeah, that would hurt. Carry on down at 30. Mm-hmm. Next running. Yeah, when Damien Williams outproduces Kerry on Johnson, that's going to, that'll sting. That'll be a kick right in the grondle. Leonard Fournett. Speaking of kicks in the gruntle. Kick fantasy owners right in the grundle. Last year, intermittent availability due to injury, suspension.

just a lost season for Jacksonville overall. Now you have a new quarterback and some at least front office confidence. Those are the words coming out of Tom Coughlin's mouth. And to back it up, Alfred Blues, your backup right now. And I believe they signed one other. Benny Cunning. Yeah. So you're shut up, Leonard. We'll see if Benny makes a team. If you are a Leonard four-net owner, you cannot be more

possibly thrilled than having Alfred Blue and Benny Cunningham signed. They're saying, let's take care of the running back position now, but not really. We're just going to let Leonard Fournett really take the reins this year. They're giving him a shot this year. You still watch out for the draft based on those two signing. Really? Yeah, because Benny could not make the team. So you could easily have a situation where Alfred Blue does what he does. He loves to sit on the bench back behind.

uh somebody else and then uh just be available just be a body on the cheap and then i think they could signs i think they could draft somebody for sure yeah now i don't expect it so to that point um we know four net is motivated there's a bunch of money issues as to whether or not his contract will be guaranteed or not right it got yes i mean he but i believe he's appealing that so tbd right now his contract is not guaranteed and so

My point is he's got that motivation. He's coming up to where he either has to put up or shut up. I mean, I think that the team is, look, with Nick Foles there, I don't think Blake Bortles is an awful quarterback, but Nick Foles is an upgrade for Leonard Fournett to be able to run, you know, against not, you know, 11 in the box. Well, he didn't run against anybody for a bunch of the weeks last year. That was the problem, too. Right. Because he wasn't playing.

because he's always hurt. We all obviously believe it's going to be a better year for Leonard Furnett than last year because we're not factoring in anticipating eight weeks' worth of injuries. Because last year he was the 25th most consistent running back. Right. End of the year okay. Had a nice stretch. Had three games of reminiscence. He will 100% get volume. The interesting thing for Leonard Furnett was he had 22 receptions.

last year. I don't know if people realized that. And that was in eight games, which, okay, that's 50% of the season. I can play the game. That puts them up to a pace of 44 receptions. Joe Mixon had 43 receptions last year. If we can get that passing game volume for Leonard Fournette, that would be a huge uptick for the floor of Mr. 3.3 of Kerry. And T.J. Yeldon, it was replaced. He was replaced with Alfred Blue, who's not a pass catcher.

No, no, no, no. He's not even a ball runner. Sorry, Alfred. Man. That's true, though. This is a little peel back the curtain. Andy has always had it out for Alfred Blue. You have never, I mean, you just, but see, you don't even care. You're like, well, yeah, of course. Let's see, Alfred Blue. Give me the yards per carry for his entire career. That's what I was checking. Let me just predict it. I bet the number is like three. He's actually 0.1 yards behind Leonard Fournette.

3.6 to 3.7. From last year's Leonard or career? No, career. Career. No, last year Leonard got, Leonard was at 3.3. Meanwhile, his teammate, T.J. Yeldon was able to run for a clip. Is Leonard for net? Is he a Jacksonville Jaguar last, next year? Predictions. Ooh. Next year 2020. That would be, yeah. Yep. The only next year I know. Yes. If that money is not guaranteed, if that.

That stands? No, he will not be on the Jags. I might have a vote no. Jason, you say yes? I say yes. Okay. Not that work out with Ingram. We got one. Sony Michelle coming in at 15. I think I'm the most bullish on Sony. I've been talking about him quite a bit. Look, I just loved, loved, loved what I saw from Sony Michelle in the playoffs last year. I think we know what.

New England wants to do with him. I think he is the most talented player on that team last year through 13 games, 209 carries, 931 yards, six touchdowns. He does not catch the football, 7 for 50. And I mean it in two senses. His statistics, they show he doesn't catch it often, also watching him. He didn't catch it when it was thrown to him. I think that that will marginally go up just with utilization.

In the final seven games of the season, he got three targets. So it's hard to judge his past catch. They just, they chose not to throw it to him. Tom Brady chose not. Maybe Tom Brady says Sony can't catch. But here's the jest. The Patriots want to run the football. Last year, they had the third most running plays in the league, the highest running back market chair in the league.

In the playoffs, the games I'm talking about where I became more and more bullets. He averaged 112 rushing yards a game and two touchdowns in three games played. He is the draft capital for Sonny Michelle, we cannot forget it. Okay, he was banged up. He was working himself in last year. He was on again, off again. But they drafted him in the first round. Yeah, and look, they had huge.

success with LaGarrett Blunt. And LaGarrett Blunt, I mean, you talk about how few targets that Sony-Michel got. That's the exact comp, not player-wise, but usage-wise, in the same offense through 16 games back in 2016, when LaGarrett Blunt was an absolute beast and had 18 touchdowns, he had a total of eight targets through, I mean...

That's just not using him in the passing game at all. And you could see that again. I think that Sony Michelle's upside is huge based on touchdowns. The question that I think fantasy owners want to know is will it be consistent? Will it be, you know, okay, let's say he has 14 touchdowns. Awesome. Yeah. But will it be, you know. Two here. Exactly. Three here. And then you've got a bunch of stretch where he's just.

not in that game plan because that's what Bill Belichick is known to do before. Yeah, that could happen. He could be the least valuable top 10 running back that people have had because, look, I like him because of what you're saying. He's going to get into the end zone. They just won a Super Bowl on the back of him running the ball consistently and getting into the end zone. What's his upside? What can go wrong for Sony?

What can go wrong, aside from injury, is utilization is unpredictable, and he hurts fantasy owners because you start him in games where he's basically not used. His upside, though, is monstrously high, you know, a top six type based on touchdowns. If you look at the Lagart Blunt comp,

and realize that this team needs to run the ball more. There was only one game that entire season where he had fewer than 13 carries, and he had 11. And most of the games that year, you're talking 18 plus carries. Legerrett Blunt's utilization was huge. So I mean, I think I need to move Sony Michelle up in my own mind because I am still stuck in the world where I don't believe Sony will be consistent. But...

You know, we have data to suggest he might get 15 carries every single game. All right. Moving on to Marlon Mack. I call him Marlon Mike because he's Mike's guys. Yeah. We all have Marlon Mac at 16. Now, one of the reasons I think this show connects with listeners that you've told us is that we're not sitting here just giving you advice without any context. We're not, you know, we're in leagues.

We're very passionate about them. I enjoy beating these two gentlemen very, very much. Now, in one of those leagues, the Marlin Mac owner, he's actually here today. He's behind the scenes, longtime friend. His name is Brian. He owns Marlon Mac. He is here listening to the show. It's at this time I would like you to please take off your headphones and not listen to this next portion. Well, no, no, no, no, no.

After looking into Marlon Mac, it just even more... Are you going to throw some shade on him? Am I going to be able to acquire Marlon Mac? You have to throw a little bit of shade on him. It's funny that he comes right off the heels of Sony Michelle in the rankings. Because you're talking about the exact same player, like the exact same role for the Colts. When he came back from his injury, 17 carries a game, 80 yards, averaged a touchdown a game. But in that time...

He was averaging one and a half receptions per game. He was an absolute monster when it came to getting carries in the red zone and the 10 zone. But Naheem Hines had that pass catching role on lockdown. So if he is going to hold up to being a high-end fantasy running back, it's going to be all about the touchdown. So...

That's why I keep talking about the Colts as I want the Colts running back. I'm not necessarily buying into Marlon Mack what he can do. I'm buying into the Colts offense. I think that they will continue to be one of the stronger offenses in the league. But the fact that they aren't utilizing or they didn't utilize Mac in the passing game, which I think he can succeed in. But they like Sony Michelle, I think Sony can succeed in that role too. But they have James White. So why even throw him the ball?

See, I don't really worry about that because we've seen Marlon Mac utilized in the previous year with heavy volume, you know, six targets a game, five targets a game. And so we know he can't do that. Didn't mean when Naim Hines was in there? Yeah. Sure. Very, very different situation. And you also have a factor in when, you know, the games as they stacked up when Marlon Mac was in the game. I mean, they.

They were ahead. They were winning. There's fewer dump-offs. It's a completely different regime, though. Like, this is, this was Frank Reich. This was his team. Let's just look, let's just look then at, so this is the one thing I would say in his favor, right? Okay. Marlon Mack played how many games, 10, 12 games, something like that. His 16-game pace with that regime, you're right, only 23 receptions. That's not great. But he was on pace for 1,200.

yards on the ground. If you can do that plus double digit 12 touchdowns for a great offense that's going to be in good game scripts. Yeah, I don't think the argument here for Marlon Mack is to make the case that he's going to catch a ton of passes. The same way I wouldn't make the argument with Sony, even though I think Sony can't catch the ball a little bit. Here's the argument. Frank Reich wants to run the football. And last year, in the season in which you said he was on pace for a potential 1,200-yard season,

They weren't that great of a running team. They were 20th in the league in rushing yards. They were 4.2 a carry. That was 21st in the league. Frank Wright came out. He talked about they want to be a top five, top seven rushing team. He says he has a super strong conviction that that's what it takes. Now, when push comes to shove for the Colts, Andrew Lux is going to have the ball in his hands? That's generally been the case. The question is, is that defense going to give them enough opportunity to fulfill what Frank Wright wants to do? Because if they're down,