Sleepers & Values, Scary Performances + Kyle Rudolph

I was the last person to draft the tight end in our league of record draft, and I ended up with Ricky Seals Jones, and I'm cool with it. And then Graham Barfield, friend of the show, he went out and tweeted a couple of very interesting things about Ricky Seals Jones. One, basically saying he deserves a lot more hype as the late round tied in because the Cardinals have 271 targets available in that offense. He's played on 87% of first-team snaps in preseason, and they opened the season against Washington.

The Redskins have given up the fourth most, third most, and eighth most yards per game to tight ends over the last three years. I think he is a absolute sleeper. Teams can start him week one. You can go out there and get him and start him week one. I think Ricky Seals Jones is going to, and he flashed last year. I mean, he had opportunities. He scored touchdowns. Four games of over 18 yards of reception. And the team just likes him. And they need him. You know, it's not like a tight-in that's...

Got a bunch of talent, but you're stuck behind three or four, five, six pass catchers. You know, ASJ, like I like ASJ in Jacksonville. I just don't, I don't see a pathway to him being a week-to-week guy. At least I see the pathway with Ricky Seals Jones. Sure, I think that's fair. And while Mike McCoy has had, you know, Antonio Gates and great weapons, he has also utilized the tight-in position over the course of his head coaching and offensive coordinating. So there are a lot of things pointing towards a quality.

breakout year for Ricky Seals-Jones. I mean, look, you want to talk sleepers. Usually a good way to target great sleepers are look for undrafted rookies who really showed you something that year. Because, look, the NFL draft community, they put in all this time, they do all this work, and I'm talking in the NFL, the scouts. But...

every year they get things wrong and they make it up by going out and signing these guys that went undrafted who break out and that's another one of my sleepers that's where i'm going i'm going with an undrafted free agent wide receiver who broke out the second half of last year whether you realize it or not keelan cole we talked about him uh with the injury to marcus lee i mean he is now has the opportunity to be the number one wide receiver

for a team and he's going in the 14th round. Even after this, even after this injury, he'll get a bump a couple rounds. People, people are mad about Keel and Cole. They might say that he's rising. Oh, Paul Reiser reference. I like it. Here's a little bit that you might not know about Keel and Cole. Okay. First of all, he went to a powerhouse school. Ever heard of Kentucky Wesleyan College?

This. Westleton. Sounds made up. This is why he was undrafted. He went to a small school. Can you even trust it? Obviously, the competition must have been, I don't know, inferior because you've got a guy who for three straight years, here's his yardage, 1,516 yards, 1,345 yards, and 1,400 yards. Here's his touchdowns.

21 touchdowns, 17 touchdowns and 15 touchdowns. He dominated in college. It was inferior competition, but you can't argue that he wasn't dominant in college. And then he gets brought into the NFL, undrafted, works his way through the practice, through the, you know, between the Sunday's weeks, gets on the field. And what does he do when he's on the field? You might not realize, but the second half of the year, his target pace,

was over 100, and it was 114 targets. That was his pace the second half of the year. And if you just look at the last five games where they really started getting a connection going, I mean, this is a little ridiculous because he had some touchdowns, skews the numbers. But over the last five games from week 13 on, you want to take a guess where he was in the wide receiver rank? Weeks 13 on, I'm going to guess number 10.

That's my guess. Hot guess. I'll go higher because Blake the Snake was the number two quarterback. And he had the number three wide receiver. Keel and Cole was on fire. So the point is not that, oh, he's going to be a top five wide receiver. It's that he's done it. It's that he can.

do it. He now has the opportunity with Marquise Lee injured, and he's who I would take my shot on because he's shown it in college. He's now shown it for a small sample in the NFL and has the opportunity. If there's something that exists, that's called a safe sleeper, Keenan Cole feels as close to that as possible right now because of the circumstances surrounding Lee, the fact that they need to lean on some people. And he's, I mean, you know, Moncrief is new, right?

Keenan Cole was there and has the report. I like it. I mean, I still think it's going to be a week-to-week thing where some weeks you're happier with a different guy, but still he's a super late-round guy. You're not drafting him to immediately plug into your starting lineup. Yeah, you don't have to draft Cole until at least the double digits. All right, the guy I want to talk about. He's also a wide receiver who's going currently in the 11th round on fantasy football calculator. That's Alan Hearns.

Dallas's situation so similar to Jacksonville's and I, Hearns went in the last round of our League of Record track. Which you can think whatever. You can think whatever you want about Alan Hearns. And I will. Good. I'm glad. But it's, but he has the opportunity to be the number one wide receiver on this team. Des Bryant and his 132 targets are gone. Jason Witten and his 87 targets are gone.

Bryce Butler only had 23 targets, but they're gone too. Alan Hearns could be the number one guy. And here are players who are going in front of Alan Hearns in the draft. Rookie, DJ Moore, rookie Calvin Ridley, Sterling Shepard, Kelvin Benjamin. These are wide receivers who are in worse situations. You would not take Alan Hurons over Kelvin Benjamin.

Over Kelvin? No way. Yes. No way. Yes. That's stupid. How is that stupid? Because Kelvin's the guaranteed one, and Hernes can go anywhere from one to three behind Gallup and Terrence Williams. It's stupid. But they guaranteed one for a worse offense. Yes. What happened to all the hate for Dak Prescott and the offense? Well, there's concern. There's no guarantee that Dallas is passing offense is much worse than Bill Buffalo's. Oh, did Buffalo? Do you want an Alan Hurons versus Kelvin Benjamin Waterbet? Yes, I do. Put it on the board.

Waterbed. That offensive Buffalo is going to be atrocious. Atrocious. And we've actually seen competent play from Dallas. There's not a past first team, but that doesn't matter when you are the number one. And DAC is flashed. All those names you mentioned were totally fine, but throwing Calvin Benjamin in there is strange to me. It's strange to me that he is going a full round and a half in front of Alan Hertz. Sure. The situation is definitely similar.

But who's the one in Dallas? Right now it's Alan Hertz. On the depth chart? I don't know. I don't have the depth chart in front of me. I can look. But to me, it is Alan Hertz. There's just, there's such a tremendous opportunity there. And he is, he's an actual good wide receiver. He's had a season of a thousand yards and ten touchdowns. I know Kelvin Benjamin has been a touchdown machine, but that was a long time ago. So.

I just, I believe in Alan Hurts far more than I believe in Kelvin Benjamin. Kelvin Benjamin, I fully believe, will just be a, a clogger of your roster bench. And you'll just hold on to him. Wow. And go, man, when the buy week comes, I'm going to be so happy that I have Kelvin Benjamin. Ah, crap. I still have him and I missed out on waiver. I can see the arguments for.

both sides. I could see the argument to taking Alan Robinson, who could be the one for a better offense. What about Alan Hearns? Yeah, I'll take Alan Robertson over both of those guys. Alan Hurons or. There's no doubt. Yeah, we're going to talk about. But I side with the Kelvin side. I definitely, if I was on that position, in fact, I have been in that position where I had to draft one of those two guys, I chose Kelvin. Well, we're going to talk about Kelvin in a minute. People are. That's my point. But Kelvin is, Kelvin's my value on today's show.

Okay. Because he's a ninth round pick, and he's the guaranteed number one on that team. We'll get into that. Okay, so look, I have no problem. I lost there is I have no problem with Hurons. I think Hurons is a sleeper. I just don't know if Gallup emerges. I don't know if Williams emerges. I don't, goodness gracious, they don't have a tight-in situation that I like right now. They're going to miss Witten. They're going to miss Witten a lot. Blake Jarwin looks like he's competent at best, and then Rico Gathers is probably going to get cut.

That guy was playing in the fourth quarter of the last game. Balls balls bouncing off his chest. They don't seem to like him. His awareness of the football is the problem. He's enormous and he's a big guy and I think he could do stuff, but he's not aware. He's still never caught a single pass in an NFL game. Is that true? I believe that that is true. You believe or you're just, wait, you're just throwing it out there and now your backup is, oh, I believe that's true. I declare it. It is true. He's only done work in the preseason.

All right. He's a big boy, but you don't get fantasy points for being large. That's true. All right. Let's move on to values. Values. By the way, I don't know why I do that sometimes. Just so excited. Yeah, you have your Value Hit Squad article that's released, and you can go read it and then get a value in every round. We each picked out a value. Might as well start with Kelvin Benjamin. Look, you said some of the things that are true about him, which is.

He's a red zone talent, right? He's enormous. He's looked pretty darn good in the preseason. I don't care if it's Peterman. I don't care if it's Josh Allen. I don't even care if they only throw for 200 yards a game. I mean, he's the number one option. He'll be the most targeted option. The talent, I believe, of Josh Allen, his ability will...

you know, he'll force the ball downfield, and he's got a wide catch radius. I mean, if you have a guy, say what you will about Josh Allen. I know this was a bad start compared to the first two. You need a guy with a wide catch radius. He has the comp that Josh Allen is like Cam Newton, which a lot of people like to make. Cam Newton found a home in the arms of Kelvin Benjamin. And Kelvin Benjamin is going in the ninth round. I snagged him in our league of record draft. I was extremely happy about getting him where I got him.

There's no competition at all. Corey Coleman might not even make this roster. Charles Clay has never surpassed 500-something yards on this team. Calvin Benjamin is just locked and loaded. I mean, if you, we were going into last season and there were people hyping up about Quincy and Noonwa being the de facto number one on a bad Jets offense. Like, you just got to take the targets and receptions and know that it's better than having a third or fourth option on another team.

Yeah, I mean, if you want proof that we believe it, you just look at the fact that in our league of record, you drafted him. And in the listener league draft, I drafted him. It's not that we love Kelvin Benjamin or think he's talented. It's the value. The value he represents for where he's going in a draft. It is people have been burned by Kelvin. People have made a lot of fun of Kelvin. You know, he's not the fastest. He's not the best route. He's just a big guy. And so you kind of look down on him. And because of those narratives,

People don't want to draft him. They don't want to hear when they draft him someone else in the draft room go, oh, have fun lumber down the field with that guy. But the reality is he's going to get targets. He's going to get targets around the end zone if the bills can ever get near there. And, you know, for where he's going. I agree, Andy. He is a value. My value is a really easy, obvious, buy-the-dip guy that should absolutely, I mean, you want to talk. Here's, I don't even need to.

Tell you anything else about this guy other than this. A couple weeks ago, he was a fourth round selection. Going in the fourth round, people want him. Gets a little nicked up. He's banged up. He's going to miss preseason. Okay. He's back now at practice. So he's ready to go. You're not worried about him missing. And he's in the eighth round. That is the definition of a value. He was a fourth rounder until he got injured. He's no longer injured. He's an eighth rounder. I'm talking about rookie running back.

who, you know, I just threw some shade on rookies for the Patriots who I just threw some shade on it. My fitness consigliary Sony Michelle. You know, that's what fantasy football is about. It's about price. You said it, buying the dip. Value and buying the dip. And, you know, regardless of my, my, you know, they're not mutually exclusive, right?

In the eighth round, Sony Michelle, whether or not he's a top 15 back, is a value. You've got a guy who is a first round NFL draft pick. That's some serious capital to spend for a team that has been historically great and needs him. You know, with some of the injuries and the suspensions that the team has had, they want him, they need him. You know that they have the coaching staff to utilize him. That's why he was in the fourth round. And so, yeah, buy the dip. If you have not drafted yet,