Early RB Rankings: Top 10 Countdown, Dream Draft Picks - Fantasy Football Podcast for 4/18

That's the highest among running, the highest percentage among running backs. Smaller sample because he missed so many games. But are you comfortable with him as your one? Oh, man. We talked about it. I don't think I am. I think I'm going to watch from afar. It would just be shifting things. You've got to do the mosaic puzzle in your head of like, I'm drafting him as my one because I have to. If I don't draft him as my one, I will not get him on my team. So this other guy that I'm going to draft, maybe he's a little bit more of the consistent type of an archetype. There will be no player. I think I would do. At the end, if I'm set up where I'm in kind of that range where it makes sense to take H&, I'm going to do it. I don't think there's a player I'd be more, there will be many players. I'm more afraid to have on the opposite side of my team this year. Exactly. When I.

I think I had to play against Devon H.N. like three times last year because it got traded or at least a couple times. And it was like, it was torture because every play could end your week. So very dynamic, exciting player that we have sitting at eight. Yeah, I'm in. Wait, you're back in? I'm back in. Oh, gosh. Just going through the, like. You saw the pictures. I can figure out the rest, but you can't figure out. upside like this. Yeah, you really can't. He can win you weeks. How many touchdowns can these two guys have? Well, the thing with Achan is Achan's touchdowns are going to be from outside the five. You know, Rahim Moster when they get to the goal line, A chance is not going to be there. But, but Achan can easily bring a 20, 30, 40, 80 yard touchdown all the time. And that kind of explosiveness is very rare. Right now, you don't technically have to take him.

as your RB1. He is being drafted as an RB1 as the RB8, but that's about the middle of the second round. So if you wanted to go RBRB, you could go Bijan and A Chan. And, you know, someone that, you know, has a little bit higher volume, you feel safer with his. That'd be a pretty exciting tandem. The two numbers that are very tough is, you know, touchdowns, smaller guy, how predictable will they be to repeat? Especially long touchdowns, very hard to repeat. And then the insane numbers are not going to be the remainder of his career. He's not going, when you get more opportunity, you're not going to be 7.7 a touch. You're not going to, you know, he even had games last year where the big play didn't happen. And he played a bunch of snaps. And that ended up being, you know, running back 51 for a week when he was 7 for 24. You know, if he gets more work, he'll be okay, regardless of those. It's just a little bit of a gamble. But.

Yeah, I think in the end, you just got to take your gamble on the injury. I do believe if he's healthy and he's active, he's going to score a lot of fantasy points for your team. At number six, we have two players that are tied there, so we'll start with Saquan, Berkeley. It's Berkeley and Gibbs. Saquan arrives in Philadelphia, and it's exciting. It's exciting to have the opportunity to see him play someplace else. He has always been such a... Like put it all on my back to support this offense situation. He helped people last year. He really did. It's just new home. I mean, he had, he was, he was tough. Running back five, then 46, then eight, then 35, then five. It was like, can he get into the end zone for a team that doesn't get to the end zone very often? He was. Six on the year. I mean, when they lost Daniel Jones and they're playing a hodgepodge of backup quarterbacks with no wide receivers.

a poor offensive line. It was like a sacrificial lamb out there. It was just keep giving the ball to Saquan and hope he can do something. And every other game he did. And every other game it was like, I'm tired. I'm just sick of this. I'm thrilled that he's out of New York and he's playing behind. He's going from a bad offensive line to one of the best offensive lines. He's going to see giant holes. to run through. And you've got Jalen Hertz at quarterback, two great wide receivers. I think he helps the passing him. I think the passing game helps him. The issue will always be around the goal line. I don't care if you've got Sequin. If you're at the one, unless the tush push no longer works without Kelsey there, which I still think it's more Jalen Hertz than Kelsey under center. I believe he's going to score, like he's going to be involved in the passing game.

He's going to see running lanes. He hasn't seen him forever. He's going to be a workhorse running back for a great offense. I'm going to go on record. I have no concern about tush push whatsoever. You brought him in there. There's a different type of, like, he's a different archetype of running back than what you've had. He's the man. Like, he's the man. Last year, if they were on the two, they could tush push to the one, then tush push again. Like, he's going to get opportunities. He only scored six times and ended up the RB12. I am putting that out of my mind. I'm making a formal declaration of that. Now, you could see an offense that's more well-rounded. You know, you've got past catchers. You just paid Devante Smith. You've got Goddard. You've got A.J. Brown. You've got, you know, the legs of Jalen Hurts. And so there could be games where Sequin Barclay's just not as big of a factor as you knew he was going to be in New York in terms of opportunities. But it will be made up for an efficiency, I think. It's completely fair to put that outside of your mind because I,

Again, when they get to the one, it will be a push push. But there were 14 carries inside the five for DeAndre Swift last year. He had the opportunity. Exactly. And he got them to the one. Oh, he was so good at it. And Sequin will get them to the... Zero, to the zero. To the kick. So I'm, I think this is a really exciting thing to see. Sequin is still in his prime. He has not aged out. He's not over a cliff. He might not be, you know, breaking away 70-yard touchdowns on the reg anymore like he did, you know, rookie season. But this is going to be a great experiment. And you want to talk about someone that you can have a little bit more confidence in both the workload and the durability. I would put my chips much more on the Sequin side than the A-chan if they're next to each other in a draft.

Mike, talk to me about Jemir Gibbs, 22 years old. There's a similar conversation with him and Devon A-chan. They're both 22. They're both big play guys. They both have great offenses. Last year, Gibbs managed to finish as the RB10. He was a my guy. It was not great early. No, it took a while. But then there was a, he had his time in the sun, you know, finishing three, two, one in the middle of the year. 7, 3, 3, and 15 and 16. But there was some volatility because David Montgomery is a very good running back. Yeah, so he finishes the year with 182 carries. And it started pretty slow in those first four games. And then he was injured before the team really started to trust him a bit more. But 180 carries over five yards in attempt. And on top of that, 71 targets, which that was the thing you knew you could kind of

basically guarantee of where the when they took him in the draft when the lines took him in the draft which was a big shock of last year if you if you've kind of lost context that I mean that was so wild but you felt like okay well the past catching is going to be safe how much of the groundwork are we going to get and the answer over the second half was we we got a ton of it when it comes to red zone carries you know like once he was back from the injury he was doing okay with that runs inside the five over the last three games, two against Minnesota, two against Dallas, not successful, and then one more against Minnesota. So he is, it is, it is very, very similar. Oh, even with most sort of Montgomery. So the most, yeah, the, the, the, the dolphins and the lions running back situation seems very aligned of, like it is, it doesn't feel like a bad strat to be like, just cross fade.

Okay, so get David Montgomery and H&M. Some leagues I'll go H& in Montgomery. Some I'll take Gibbs at the top and then I'll take Moster a little bit later. And I'm just going to diversify that way. Jason, do you believe that both teams, because this is what I believe, that they will give both the young guys a little bit more work this year. But neither of the old guys are done. Therefore, you know, it doesn't make sense. Monty Fifth and Red Zone touches. Is that your view that there'll be more opportunity for both of the young guys? I do think they'll get both second year players slightly more involved, but certainly not. They don't want them to usurp them and become the workhorse back. These are teams that want two awesome backs. They each one to spell the other. They each have their own role. It's very similar. When you get down on the one, two, three yard line, I think it will be more David Montgomery than Gibbs. Now, we did see Gibbs.

Still involved a little bit later in the season. So I don't think they'll completely go away with him the way that I think they will completely go away with A-chan when they're inside the three. Both these players can score from us. I want all four. Like I like all four players. I think the explosive upside is worth taking the shot on Gibbs and A-chan and the left-for-dead value of Moster and Montgomery. Those will be like auto picks for me. They're just... How many games that David Montgomery played in? Did he not score a touchdown? Oh, man. So he, just so you know, he played all but three games. So go ahead and tell me how many. Did he not score a touchdown? It had to be like two. Three games. Three games he didn't score touch. He's, he's great down there. They're not going to go away from him. With that offensive line, he's got the nose for the end zone. And Coach Campbell's not going to go away from that. Let me give you a snap count. That is the way for the lines. Snap counts for David Montgomery to end the year, 35, 52, 39, 39, 49, 49.

So huge difference from the top of the year. The top of the year, 79, 71, 75. Yeah, I think that's what you're going to see is 40 to 50% of the work going to David Montgomery. And that's enough, obviously, because he's got the touchdown role. He does not have the past catching role. That's like gone all the way to Gibbs. So that's really the downside with Montgomery. But I love both players. And I do think you've got to caution a little bit like, you know, Gibbs had two. top three weekly performances in the two weeks that David Montgomery was gone, week seven and eight. So, you know, that's kind of pumping that up a bit. When you look at once David Montgomery was back for a couple weeks, like you said, Andy, the end of the season, it was pretty 50-50 on the split. It's tough. It's worth mentioning. I have Gibbs at three overall. So I have him extremely high. You guys have them at seven. He ends up at six in our rankings.

Also, when Gibbs missed time, Montgomery had like a top five numbers. You do have, for both of those situations, if one of them goes out, you have like a top three running back, which is kind of nice to know that that's in the realm of possibility. At five, we're going to talk about Jonathan Taylor, but we're going to take a quick break first. All right, Jonathan Taylor was not a real party last year. It was a weight. It was Zach Moss emerging. It was a re-injury. It was greatness when he was out there. It was greatness with a quarterback that's no longer there. In an offense, we didn't get to see Jonathan Taylor play football with Anthony Richardson. We're still waiting to see that, right? Yeah. So that is, you know, you can't both score a red zone touchdown.

And Richardson is very active. Richardson could dump it off to him. You know what I mean. Sure. You're saying that like a rush. You know what I meant. They can't both run in a touchdown on the goal line. I mean. Well, no, I genuinely the way you said that, I was like, they can, they can both score a touchdown. This guy. Anyways, Jonathan Taylor ended up with seven touchdowns last year, missed with a thumb injury week 13 to 15. And then the first four weeks with contract fund. I think we all know the talent of Jonathan Taylor. We are a couple of years now removed from the number one overall finish that made him kind of the lock number one pick. I mean, for whatever reason, the facts are the facts. He's finished as the RB 34 and 33 over the last two years. He hasn't got to play full seasons. But on the time.

You know, that'll be a thing to pay attention to. Can he catch the ball, you know? It will be. But it was once he was on field, it was incredible. His first game back, it was only 15% of the snaps. If you played him that week, which I would have, that would have felt really bad. But from then on, every time he played, he was at least a top 24 running back. It's all green on his consistency chart. And the targets are worth talking about because a, The true numbers are a dual threat quarterback. It does lower the ceiling for running backs. Like this is just, it is played out overtime in statistics. So he's here at five. We're not saying Jonathan Taylor is the number one guy, but we're saying he's very, very helpful for your team. And last year, even with, you know, with the backup quarterback player where you're expecting more targets, it was still an average of two targets a game.

I mean, this is not a, what the performance he had last year, with the targets, that's not a high bar for Anthony Richardson to choose to dump the ball off instead of running every once in a while. I think that with Richardson, he will get at least two targets a week. Yeah, the two targets a week, I think that number is relatively safe, but it's hard to imagine that with two targets, if that's like what he ends up with. that that has like a top three potential. You'd have to have, you know, 14, 15 rushing touchdowns, which is not outside of his potential. Last year, he was the running back eight in points per game. And that is including his 14% snap game where he's basically scored 15 fancy points game. He's a star player. Zach Moss is now gone, which is helpful for him to get even more of the workload. And we like Shane Steichen's offense, what we saw last year, the pace of play.

So I'm pretty bullish on Jonathan Taylor, a little worried about the receiving game. And number four, Kyron Williams. I have him at seven, Jason, at two. And so those balanced out the four there where Mike has him. Last year, you know, super impressive season. He saw 37% of the Rams rush attempts and targets in the 12 games played. That's not true. 37% of the fantasy points came via touchdown. What is, what are you trying to say here, Kyle? Kyle, you get to chime in and defend yourself. He saw 37% of their attempts and targets when he played. He's basically saying he was 37% of the offense. Okay. Which is an outrageous number because Christian McCaffrey's 39%. Yeah, I must not have mental put targets into my brain there because the rush attempts, obviously, it was their one back kind of.

kind of guy. But now I see what you're saying. So from an offensive focal perspective, he was 37% of it. He was monstrous, which CMC was the only running back higher than that. But a lot of it was touchdowns. You know, when he was coming out of Notre Dame, Mike and I were very in love with the film, didn't have the opportunity. And then when he did, it didn't look amazing. But then all of a sudden, it's a breakout campaign for Kyron Williams. And their identity was Kyron Williams down the stretch. This was a home run league winning option. And now the question for people is, you know, do you believe? Jason is all in. He's got him at two. I've got him at two. That's what he was on a points per game basis last year. You had an outrageous season from Christian McCaffrey, one of the, you know, an all-timer where he scored 22.4 fantasy points per game. Kyron was right there with him. Kyron scored 20 fantasy points per game and half PPR.

The third, the number three was three points behind. Rahim Moster scored 17 fantasy points per game. So you've already seen it. And I've got to put him at number two right now before the NFL draft because he is the only player here that we're talking about on like the top of the top. They're like, I don't know, next week could change things for it. This is, McVeigh has been a one back guy that's gotten fantasy. value out of whoever it is. If it's girly, great. If he's deciding that Cameron is out of the doghouse and it's him, great. Kyron was awesome. It's just a matter of he could be replaced because he doesn't have the same pedigree. So we'll see. But two weeks from now, he will be my number two if they don't do anything in the draft. Mike, what's his floor? It's assuming we make it through the draft.

His floor to me would be a floor is in the top 10 regardless. So he seems safe in that point of if we enter the season that he is clearly the guy. The only thing that can take him out is injury. It won't be he gets removed from the offense or things change. Sean McVeigh is, we have a lot of data now for how McVeigh does things. He's really smart. He gets his running backs. He gets the defense to empty the box against his running backs, which really, really helps them. The red flag, which I don't even know if it's a red flag or just like a holy crap, is a stat of the only running backs to score 15 total touchdowns in 12 or fewer games over the last 40 years. It's Kyron and Priest Holmes, which not all of our audiences old enough to remember Priest Holmes, but that dude was gnarly.

gnarly. Also, you might, if you're not old enough, you also won't know what that word means. That is true. That is a word from Priest Holmes era. Are they, is that bad? Yeah, the Mike set you up and then explained it with words you won't understand. Number three is Bijon Robinson. It was buss and bussing. Yes, thank you, Mike. Bejohn, 22 years old. He sits at number three in our early rankings. He had 86 targets with Arthur Smith. He saw a perplexing amount of time on the bench. So this year, expectations are very high. You're going to have a drastically different offensive personnel situation this year. Kirk Cousins, just even how they line up on a weekly basis. There's so much optimism around Atlanta. We can't be let down again, right? I don't think we can.

I mean, fantasy football is made to break hearts, so of course we can. But Bijon is coming into a situation where he is in his prime, extraordinarily talented, and now is finally the workhorse, the projected workhorse, where you're not going to get Algier. You know, we were halfway through the season where we were looking at the numbers of Bijon's carries inside the five and all the players in the league that had more than him. backups to the backups who had experienced more goal line opportunities than Bijon while you've got Cordero Patterson and Tyler Algier, Arthur Smith in their way down there. And the freedom is there. So I do think with this, we've seen that Kirk is good at checking it down. Dalvin Cook was very valuable in the passing game. So I'm not worried about the, you might go down from 86 targets.

I don't think that that is a guarantee, though. I mean, you could stay there still as a valuable piece of that. So this is an offense that projects to be good. They have the easiest strength of schedule going into next season. He's going to be the dude and he's talented. So I don't see how it goes wrong. Number two is Breece Hall, also 22 years old. Mike and I have him at two. Jason Hayes. Jason. Jason has him at four. Four is, you know, shame. Like twice as far down as me and Mike have him. Yeah. Double. Yeah, I mean, I, Breece Hall is a, just such a good player. He's just such a good player. He had 95 targets, 76 receptions. He finished it RB4. The offense was one of the worst I've ever seen in my life. And you talk about what Sequin did in New York for a long time. He was what Brise Hall was doing it in New York. I mean, he was just putting the team on his back. The targets let all the running backs.

He's explosive with the ball in his hand. It's just so impressive. They had the least plays inside the five in the entire NFL and he finished it RB4. If you fix the quarterback, and I don't mean like you have the best quarterback in the league, I mean you move the ball down the field like an adequate, mediocre middle of the pack offense. If you can just do that, you won't be 31st and red zone plays. You won't be 32nd inside the 5. You won't be 29th and points per game. You know, this was with a offensive line that ranked 27th.

So you basically stacked everything against Brees Hall known to man, and he said, well, just throw it to me and I'll figure it out. That was the plan. A lot of the time is, hey, Brees, what's the play call? The call is, Brees, do something. Well, we can't hand it to him because when we do, he's got 12 guys on him. So we're just going to throw it right on the other side of that offensive line over and over and over. It was great. In fact, the last 11 games, he was on 119 target, 97 reception pace. I don't think that's happening. Well, no, and that's part of the issue here. It's like they're going to have a real offense this year that's going to look not like some comically inept. We don't know what else we can do other than dumping the ball off to Brees. Aaron Rogers will be throwing to two good targets and the offensive line is better. So you're going to have some give and take here. There's no way Brees catches the same number of balls because he doesn't need to this year.

And that's a good thing because the offense is better and his scoring opportunities are up. But it's also awesome that you know he can. I mean, Breece is just, you know, I love Breece Hall. I've got him four, but that's because I love all fourbacks. I love Christian McCaffrey. I love Karen Williams. I love Bijon Robinson and I love Breeze. If you look at the numbers, now do you remember he had 37 carries in the final week? No. So he got the ball 37 times in the final week. Sorry, Breece. That's rude. If you just took 23 carries off of that game, he would have been under 200 for the year. So it shows you, like I remember this happening with Cleveland years ago with Isaiah Crowell and the Marvin Lewis years. Best laid plans running the football go away if your offensive line can't perform and if you're down by three scores or you can't produce in the passing game. And you're just like, but you have to keep passing. So, you know, 200 carries is not the Breece Hall situation that you want as a team. Right. And so I think that you're going, I mean,

It's so good. He had a stretch of games last year where he averaged 1.4 a carry, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3, 1. So he had a stretch where he was averaging 2.2 a carry over 6 games. It's not fair. Which is 450 yards on the year pace for the season. So he had an entire stretch where he didn't exist as a running game. Yeah, in the running game. And ended up as the RB4. You know, I personally think he's going to be a great friend to Aaron Rogers. Rogers is coming off a devastating injury. He's old. He's not going to be mobile Rogers like he was before. And he has shown that above all things, the most valuable thing to Aaron Rogers is his historical completion percentage. So I think he's willing to take the underneath balls with the running backs. You know, that was one thing he was criticized for tremendously in Green Bay towards the end of his tenure there was.

When are you going to threaten the ball down field anymore? He took the easy stuff. That's what he's going to do, coming off an injury. Breach Hall has RB1 overall potential. I mean, you saw Aaron Jones be very valuable for many years in the passing game. 49 receptions, 47 receptions, 52, 59 receptions with Aaron Rogers. So certainly, Breece is great in the receiving game, and he'll be used that way. And then a player that needs no introduction, Christian McCaffrey sits at number one overall, finished at number one overall, had 1,500 rushing yards, had, what is that 21 touchdowns, 7 through the air, 14 on the ground, had that incredible run of consecutive games with a touchdown. So, you know, you talk about consecutive, what does he have, running backs with multiple seasons of 24 plus PPR per game. Which that's outrageous. Which is insane. He's, man.

He's broken. He's broken the game. Well, he went to a situation in San Francisco. Yes, he did. Where common sense prevailed. Like Kyle Shanahan was like, he like did the fantasy thing. He said, all right, I'm a run. I love running the football. So who's the best guy at that? Okay. I need to be able to pass it to my back. Who's the best at that? Okay, let's just trade stuff for him. All right. And then when you get him, let's use him like we traded a bunch of stuff for him. Like every play. I mean, and it doesn't fail. Like, it's just right now you can't put anybody else above him. He would have been the RB5 on the season if you only used his fantasy points from first down. Shout out to Borgogan for that hot stat. He had four games last year where he wasn't an RB1. And don't hear what I'm not saying. He was still an RB2 in all four of those games.

But there were only four times he wasn't an absolute weak winner for you. He's invulnerable. He's involved. Well, he's gone down to injury a couple times. Well, win on the field. He's as guaranteed for production as you can get since maybe LT. He's got to be the 101 in every draft. He's just too valuable as a nineer. You've got a good offense. He's unstoppable. He's still 27 years old. When you're talking about a guy with this kind of work ethic and the age cliff, you expect to be around 30. Yeah, for that kind of a production. Yeah. Dude, I saw a reel of him talking about, you know, just how insane his work ethic is and like basically essentially what his father is like, hey, you want this is what you want? Okay, we're trained. We will train.