Early Top 10 RB Rankings + Ball Boys, Yeti Analysis - Fantasy Football Podcast for 4/12

bald men only works for one of them so that's not going to work we're still workshop yeah no we'll keep trying the bald men the bald men uh brandon cooks cashing in two year 39 million dollar extension 36 million in guarantees hope you got a no trade clause i like davis mills and i like him more with brandon cooks still on the roster so i was in a dynasty startup draft and david and it was a super flex and

Davis Mills was so interesting to me because I actually like him. I think he's, he showed more promise than most of the, you know, quarterback rookies last year. And if he's good, he is super valuable. He's young, rookie. He's got, he's got an upward trajectory. But the problem is this is a team that projects to at least have a top five pick. Yeah, they're the lowest win total. Right. So they could have five, five and a half wins. If Davis Mills performs admirably.

But they end up with the number two or number one pick in a good quarterback class. Wait, if General Mills produces Admiral Lee? Oh, yes. Admirally. Then he's out. You know what I mean? The team's not going to be like, they're going to be like, yeah, you did, you did just fine. Thank you for your service. We're getting a franchise quarterback now. So long term, you know, speaking of these running backs going to Davis Mills seems very similar where there's just no, there's almost a guarantee he can't keep the job long term. He would have to.

get this team to be middle of the back. I would bet the over on the Texans. If it were me. Well, what's the win total? I think is it five, Kyle? On some places it's four or three and a half. Yeah. I'll take that. 17 game season, Davis Mills. Brandon Cook's back in tow. Lovie Smith and that defense playing hard with whatever they got. I'll bet the under on the Bears and I'll bet the over on the Texans. I'll put it that way. Aren't you like listing what they had this year? Sure. For part of the year.

I mean, Davis Mills wasn't the guy from week one, right? Not week one, but they still get to play the Jags twice. So an overbat is not a bad. NFL hasn't banned that yet? No, it's ridiculous. No, I like, I like Davis Mills. Davis Mills played most of the year. Other than the fact he has two last names, I like him. You guys want to talk rankings?

That's just an arbitrary. Yeah, take that, David Smith. Don't want to. It should be David Mills. It just throws me off. I always think I'm saying it wrong. All right. Let's talk running backs. Running bags. All right. All the ball boys. The laughter's for the YouTube group. The what? I was going YouTube crew. Yeah. But I'm pretty sure I put a B on that.

It's a hot one tonight. Oh, boy. Early running back rankings, our early top 10 consensus rankings, we all went through and put together our initial lists, put them together, and here you go. Half PPR, that's how we are breaking it down. I'm going to get through the top 10 today. If you want to see some big-time deep dives on these players, you can go back to the truth episodes early in the offseason as well.

And obviously, rookies are not included in these rankings because we don't have destinations for any of the rookies. But Numero, not a surprise, number one on all of our boards, Jonathan Taylor, the 23-year-old force, who's going to be the number one pick in the majority of all fantasy drafts. He had 11 RB1 performances in a row from weeks four through 15.

That's outrageous. If you go back to Christian McCaffrey's superstar 2019 year, he had a stretch of nine straight. So Taylor surpassed that, surpassed Gurley's 10 straight in 2018. It's kind of incredible. He only averaged 15.6 carries a game for the first nine weeks. Week 10 on, 24.4 a game. Matt Ryan coming in. Really the question.

is how can anything go wrong for Jonathan Taylor this year? If we think Matt Ryan is at worst a neutral change at quarterback. I mean, injury, that's how it goes wrong. And he's a young guy who's got a body that could take a workload. So you're not going to speak on the negatives here. There are.

negatives to the next two guys, but there's a reason why Jonathan Taylor is the consensus 101. He's young. The way that they ended up utilizing him the second half of the year shows like they figured out what a superstar he is. And if they utilize him that way, give him 20 carries a game the entire season, which is very reasonable. He should be the running back one on the season. You know, he can catch the ball. He's...

the goal line back. He's unbelievable. He introduced our show today. There's nothing about to love about this guy. 1811 yards, 18 rushing touchdowns. The way it goes wrong, the only way I can see is if Matt Ryan is worse this year than last year, like if he's just completely washed. But I don't think that that is the case. So I think that if Matt Ryan, and like let's say Matt Ryan just really can't get anything done,

Does he end up checking it down to Jonathan Taylor more? And in the production profile of Matt Ryan of the history, he throws to the running back far more often than Carson Wentz has in his career. So I think that there's really nothing to be scared of for Jonathan Taylor at the 101. Going into week four of this previous season, Jonathan Taylor was the running back 29.

They were not utilizing him the right way. And then once they figured out like this dude is beyond special, they're not changing it. He is the center of this offense. Could they have been overutilizing Carson Wins? Yes. Well, yeah, because he was behind center. So they were. Okay. No, I get it. He touched the ball on like every play. Yeah. Which was starting in, that's starting from a negative position. Right. If Carson Wins begins to play with the ball. Yes. Exactly.

Real big fans of Carson Wins here in the studio. Number two, Christian McCaffrey. He's actually number two for all three of us. I don't think that that will be a guarantee across fantasy football. There are so many people who are burnt to a crisp with what they've experienced with Christian McCaffrey over the last two years. He has been injured. I mean, this has been...

The story of Christian McCaffrey has been, you hope you get what you had in 2019 and you don't. So when he's played, he's been elite. Ten total games in the last two years, though. That's not a lot of games. When he played, he was top five, seven of those ten times. He's so good. And this was with different quarterbacks in different situations. He is a difference maker when he's on the field. He is a positional advantage. But I think a lot of folks are going to take the approach of,

I'd rather not be burnt again. And so I might roll a different option at running back, which could mean that McCaffrey drops in some leagues, but should he? I mean. No. I don't blame people for wanting to avoid the burns because part of fantasy football. That'd be triple burns. Yes. And, well, like, I'm sure Christian McCaffrey spread that love out because being the first overall pick two years in a row.

and getting multiple different fantasy football managers. But in healthy games last year, he averaged seven receptions and 66 receiving yards. In four of his five healthy games, he was a top five running back. And that included in two of those, he didn't even score a touchdown. The guy was the running back one in week one without a touchdown. That's how absurd his production can be. And it's the Panthers are going to try.

to have it not be Sam Darnold, but it's going to be Sam Darnold at least for the first portion of the year. I mean, Sam Darnold was 3-0 with Christian McCaffrey. Sam Darnold throws the ball to Christian McCaffrey, and like, he barely played, and he finishes the running back 39. Like in the end of season rankings, he finished barely behind Chuba Hubbard.

The guy who played essentially the whole season for the Carolina Panthers. And in just five healthy games, Christian McCaffrey was right behind him. You can look at him as a risk, but the injury risk of running backs in the first round is gigantic for all of those players. But very few of those players can actually do what Christian McCaffrey can do when he's on the field. Yeah, the thing is, is when you look at the next few players, you're going to.

be willing to draft. There are big worries and question marks with all of them. There's none with Jonathan Taylor, and then you get to, everybody else kind of has some little strike against them. The next player that, you know, was better than Jonathan Taylor last year, was unbelievably dominant, is Derek Henry, who we all have number three as well. So this is, we haven't changed in our personal rankings that we did this independent of one another. We all had it go Jonathan Taylor, CMC, Derek Henry.

But obviously, Derek Henry has his own issues. He's coming off, what was that, Jones? Yes, the Jones fracture. The Jones fracture and the foot. And, you know, he's older than McCaffrey. So there's no guarantee there. So this is why when Jonathan Taylor's off the board, I'm going Christian McCaffrey because everyone has risk and his ceiling is the highest.

Yeah, I think for things to go wrong outside of recurring injury, the team should appropriately try to spread his workload around. I mean, they shouldn't have Sam Darnel of the quarterback, but they did. So who's to say that they don't try to run him into the ground? He has the most guaranteed money coming his way over the next two years. That's why there were trade rumors around Christian McCaffrey. I don't know if the team could potentially...

plan to move on from him in the off season next year. So then they try to draft somebody to be the next man up, but it seems unlikely. I think they just restructured him a little bit ago. So they did some of the passing the buck forward of you're even more committed to him. I don't know how NFL teams do wild stuff with their salary cap, but I don't know how the Panthers can move on from him in the next two years. All right. Let me press the pause button real quick and then we'll get into Derek Henry.

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