The Overreaction Episode! + April Fools’ Hate, Love Hurts - Fantasy Football Podcast for 4/1

produce for fantasy football. In weeks 10 through 17, if you look at the difference of Russell Wilson, he went from throwing 37 past attempts a game to only 33. This is not that big of a gap. What happened was he was really inefficient. He wasn't very, Russell just wasn't very good the second half of the year. Which is kind of the opposite of his M.O. in years past, right? He ended on fire. Right. And so, I mean, I think we would all bet, unfortunately.

on Russell Wilson, being good, getting the job done, winning ball games. Why is this unfortunate? I'm an Arizona Cardinals. Okay. I wasn't sure where it was coming from. But the point is here, the talent will win out. And I think that if people are afraid of believing in these wide receivers as top options in Russell Wilson as a top quarterback and just looking at the second half of last year and the coaching change and saying,

They're not going to pass the ball a lot. I think they're going to miss out on really good fantasy options. Yeah, it's that whole binary yes, no problem that you can have. I mean, I'm with you. If, if Russell Wilson is still the quarterback on day one. Right. If he is, it's because he's been persuaded that this team is going to.

not completely muzzle what makes him great, which is throwing the football and being efficient. You can't expect him to not demand a trade out of there if they're going to take the ball out of his hands entirely. There could be a very balanced offense. There could be an overreaction to the narrative. So I think that's a good point. And it's still going to make it difficult to know which wide receiver to grab and play. But that's been a problem for years, regardless of how past-centric they are.

All right, I've got my second overreaction. It's one we've talked about collaboratively, but it's a reminder. It is to not overreact to the touchdown outliers. Speaking my language over here. Talking about math and statistics. Yeah, it's just one of those things that is easy to do. A couple of like kind of talking point players might be, you know, a couple wide receivers. Devante Adams.

Adam Thielen. This past here, Devante Adams, he's a touchdown score. Yes. 18, okay? That is abnormally high. His average was 10. That's great. But that is almost double his normal average at the wide receiver position over the last four years. Adam Thelan's average over the previous four years was six touchdowns. He had 14. Don't forget DeVante Adams missed two games.

He had 18 touchdowns in 14 games. And both of those players were, they had seven touchdowns inside the five yard line. That's the most of any wide receivers over the last five years. The average for that is like 3.4. So those are a couple examples of players that far surpass their averages at the touchdown position. But I do have lists of the top 10 players.

who have the highest percentage of their fantasy points associated to touchdowns. Touchdowns are not predictable. They fluctuate year to year. We've seen it. Alvin Camara year to year. Even Devante Adams. Even great players. Left Bell in his prime was like some years he'd have a ton of touchdowns. Some years he wouldn't. Touchdowns are not guaranteed. So just to bring to light, and I'm going to bring the names up, and some are a little bit concerning and some of them aren't. But Adam Thielen is the number one.

38% of his fancy points came from touchdowns. So that one jumps out as like, hey, be a little bit careful there. Mike Evans, 36%. Not that surprising. Yeah, it makes sense. Double-digit kind of guy. And he wasn't at an outlandish total that was outside of a career arc. Devonthe Adams, 35%. Again, you expect him to score touchdowns. A.J. Brown, though, 32%. You know, it's not a high volume player in A.J. Brown. So if he doesn't score.

You could see some variability with AJ Brown. Tyreek Hill 31%. You still can see variability with him. Hollywood, 31% of his fantasy points to touchdowns. He will need it. Yeah, and that was all like the last four or five games. You kind of touchdown every week. Yeah. And then on the running back side, just to bring some to light, Alvin Camara is the number two highest percentage of fantasy points associated to touchdowns, 37%.

Nick Chub, 36%. DeAndre Swift, 36%. That one's kind of interesting. Antonio Gibson, 35.8%. Antonio Gibson scored a lot of touchdowns. The funny thing about Gibson, though, because I wanted to bring him up as an example of a concern. And we brought that number up a lot this offseason. It's like, oh, my gosh, 11 touchdowns. He had like 100 and something carries. I mean, that was the one.

counterbalance there was like, okay, you're crazy efficient, but you had a low amount of carries. Maybe you get some balancing out. That's how I feel about AJ Brown as well. I think his touchdown rate will come down. Gibson's touchdown rate will definitely come down. But their utilization rate might go up and just be irrelevant in the end. J.K. Dobbins, 33% of his fantasy points are connected to touchdowns. That is, you know, that jumps out a little bit to me because Mark Ingram had a big touchdown dependency year in that offense. And

You miss a few screen passes and the numbers change. These next two are hilarious. Josh Jacobs and Kenyon Drake. Both had 33%. Jacobs, you forget. He had, I think, 12 touchdowns last year. What? On the ground. Really? Yeah, he's got like this cloud over him that makes it hard to, like, comprehend that he was like a top 10 running back and fantasy and scored a lot. Yeah, he had 12 rushing touchdowns. The one that sticks out to me from this list, we talked about him earlier, but is DeAndre Swift.

I mean, if 36% of his fantasy value came from touchdowns, and then you go, I don't know how much, how many touchdown opportunities the Detroit Lions are going to have. Yeah. Swift had eight rushing touchdowns. Yeah, that's concerning. A little bit of worry there. So it's important to recognize those guys. And maybe, uh, Brooksie, maybe we can tweet out those lists just so that people can reference them down the line. But it would be, uh, it's just one of those things you want to keep in mind. You don't want to pay.

Let's put it this way. Trading value, you don't want to pay 18 touchdown value for Devante Adams, even though he's Devante Adams. You don't want to pay, you know, whatever it was, DeAndre Swift's eight touchdown value if you don't think the opportunity is going to be there. So just be careful because they fluctuate. Yeah, and I actually have a little bit of that built into my next overreaction. Oh, I don't even know what it is. I want to talk about last year's darling who turned into a bit of a disappointment.

Clyde Edwards-Alair running back for the Kansas City Chiefs. And I just want to lay out what he did. There's in some players being drafted ahead of him that I think it's a little egregious. But just a reminder, last year, Clyde had 1,100 yards from scrimmage in 13 and a half games since 1990. Rookie running backs who hit that threshold in fewer than 14 games, Marshawn.

Lev Bell, Todd Gurley, Leonard Fournett, Josh Jacobs, and now Clyde Edwards Aller. The season wasn't as catastrophic as people are making it out to be. So Clyde hit the 1100 yard mark, 13 and a half games. Miles Sanders, 1,064 yards from scrimmage in 12 games. My champion, Antonio Gibson, had fewer yards from scrimmage than Clyde Edwards O'Lear. He had 1,014, or 1,042 yards in 14 games.

Here's the problem. Consensus ranks out there have Miles and Gibson being drafted as running back one, as a running back one. Meanwhile, Clyde is being drafted as a middle tier running back two. Okay, running backs that you think of as these are elite past catching running backs. Aaron Jones, 63 targets. Dalvin Cook, 54 targets. Clyde had, Clyde Edwards had 55 targets last year.

And here's where things went south. So why do you suck? Here is where things went south. Guys right around him in total touches, okay? Todd Gurley scored a touchdown on, he averaged 24 touches per touchdown. Ronald Jones, 27 touches per touchdown. Cream Hunt 21. Clyde averaged a touchdown every 43.4 touches. The average of...

Top 15 running backs, their touch to touchdown ratio was 25. And Clyde was at 43. He was 16th in total touches, by the way, at the running back position. He had, he was snake bit with touchdown luck. He still produced. Before the injury, he was still, I believe, the running back 16 or so. And I just, I think people are overreacting. The pendulum is swinging too far. I'm not saying.

that Clyde Edwards O'Lear is going to be a top five running back. I'm not saying it's looking back now, if you took him at one in your rookie draft and Jonathan, you passed on Taylor, yeah, that sucks. That now I think was the wrong decision. But I don't think that we need to bury Clyde as being a middle tier running back too while we're just full on locking in Miles Sanders as a running back one. Yeah, it's interesting because I'm sitting here and I'm.

pondering why there's some hesitation around Clyde, because the numbers that you're saying, especially that positive regression number, the 43, you know, the touchdown every 43.4 touches, that's assonite. And I think what it is, part of it's the draft capital and the hype and the, but part of it was, do you believe? And maybe Jason, you can answer this in a completely neutral fashion.

Do you believe the team wants to hand the keys to the backfield to Clyde Edwards-A-Layer? Like Miles, he's the guy. Antonio Gibson, he's the guy. Something about Clyde's season, I think, made us feel like I don't remember him taking over, and I don't remember feeling like this team, like Kareem Hunt took over. Something was missing there for me saying,

Well, I don't know what the future of Clyde is. Does he, does his role increase? Do we have any guarantee of that? Like, that's my reaction. Now, I don't know if it's a overreaction, but Jason, what do you think? Yeah, I mean, I was, I was down on Clyde before the NFL draft last year.

So I was not thinking he was the best prospect ever. Obviously he went in the first round and was disappointing for fantasy for where he was drafted. But when I watched the games last year and there was some infuriating utilization choices, I did feel like some of this is the fact that he is a rookie. You know, ahead of Pat Mahomes. I do think that he will be more involved this coming season.

than he was last year. So, you know, he had, what, 181 carries? I expect that number to go well above 200 this coming season. Obviously, he'll have more games to do that. But with the touchdown regression paired with, I believe, more utilization in the offense, yeah, I think he will go north. I think he's being underdrafted right now. It's pretty difficult to find a situation you'd prefer more.

than Clyde on that offense. And I added it wrong. He 1100 yards in 12.5 games. He missed three games. So he missed three and a half games. And he was 16th in total touches at the running back position. So there's opportunity. There is still a large amount of opportunity for Clyde to bounce back and finish as a low-end running back one. He's still on the highest-powered offense.

There will be, there will absolutely be maddening times. Like Andy Reid with his running backs, even when it was Jamal Charles. I remember several times after a game of a press conference. Hey, Andy, why didn't Jamal Charles touch the ball more? I wanted to. You're right. I should. My bad. I'm going to get them more involved. Like, it was your choice. It's going to happen. So let me, let me ask you this because it'll kind of connect the dots on a couple of these points on a reaction episode.

Miles Sanders, Philadelphia. I told you, I don't think that they're an upper echelon team. I think they're a bottom third team. Let's just be generous there. I'm sorry, Philly fans. I've backed you up for two years. I've backed you, Carson Wentz. I've predicted you to win a Super Bowl. I'm not, this isn't payback. It's just reality. This could be good for you, Philly fans. He guaranteed that you guys won a Super Bowl. He'd come back from the future. That's true. It was the wrong alternate 1989. They're all happy right now.

Yeah, they're thrilled. Philly fans thrilled. That's how I associate them. But Miles Sanders in a situation with Jalen Hertz or Clyde, who you said, you know, you said Miles is going ahead on your board. Are you drafting Clyde ahead of Miles Sanders? I am. I had announced you had taken off for the day, but I had when I was researching for this. That's surprising. Yeah, he's a big slacker. I had announced to the office, I'm like, I'm done.