Head-to-Head Mock Draft! - Fantasy Football Podcast for 8/5

Listen up everybody. Your fantasy football drafts are coming. It's time to show your league what puny and pathetic trash bags they truly are. The Ultimate Draft Kit from the fantasy footballers is the easiest way to annihilate them. Tier rankings, full projections, sleepers, breakouts, it's got it all. Go to Ultimate DraftKit.com and secure yours immediately. I said do it. No. To the fantasy footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Welcome into the podcast. That's the fantasy footballers podcast, if you are nasty. I'm your host today, Mike, the fantasy hitman Wright, with my best buddy. Jason Moore. Oh, man. It's Monday, Jason.

It's Monday and we're here, which means it's August. This show is going to be hot. And I mean that physically. Physically. Yes. Our AC in Arizona. Of course, in the studio decided the morning of our first morning recording. It's like, I'm not going to work. I'm broken. Yeah. That's fun. So yeah, this show is going to be fire. Going to be hotter than the devil's butt crack up. But. We're here. We're not going away. Is that a particularly hot place for the devil? That's most people's hottest place, I think. I was not aware. It's my hottest place. Good to know. It is August 5th. Like Jason said, so the AC doesn't work. I come in here. I walk in the room and I go, it's like being punched in the face with a heat glove. And then the deucers.

are superhero men. They really are. Because they're like, hey, the AC's out. And I'm like, well, that means one thing. We call a professional and they say, well, hold on, let us look at it. What do you mean look at? What do you can't look at it at an AC and diagnose it? So they start breaking things down. They realize that this, that the power source for the air conditioner were like, oh, no, it's actually plugged into power in the roof. I better run up on the roof and see if. And I'm like, Well, first of all, you can do that? I didn't know you. I can't get to the roof. I thought only. You take a chopper? Like, Arnie? Did you like, how do you get to the roof? I have no idea. Somehow he teleported onto the roof. Saw that we had a bad circuit breaker or circuits. A fuse. A fuse. And he said, oh, I can just run to Lowe's and get this. I'm like, what are you talking about? No, you cannot. And that's what he did. And so it's not.

awful in here. We're surviving. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's fixed, but it's starting with a warm box. But it's all right, because the show's already going to be fire. And our fearless leader, Andrew Holloway, is out. He had a, uh, he's working on his tooth problem. Yeah, he had some sort of steel. He had a surgery. So he's, he's recovering and we'll be back soon. Yeah, we're hoping he is back tomorrow. But that does, it doesn't matter. Jay Gris, aka J. Riz, the cardboard bear extraordinary. That's even stupider than I remember. Yeah. But yeah, he's sitting in the chair over there. He is holding it down. Welcome in, everyone, the fantasy footballers podcast five times a week. You heard our great friend at the beginning of the show. Arnie? Recommending the ultimate draft kit. If you are getting ready for your draft, which if you're listening to this podcast, you definitely are. The ultimate draft kit is our flagship product. It is our baby.

Keeping this thing updated. There are a lot of updates going in right now as training camp news is unfolding. We're going to get into a lot of that, but check that out at ultimate draft kit.com. And a reminder, the 10th anniversary Megalus show presented by Sleeper is live in LA. Saturday, August 24th. We will be at the Palace Theater. We'll be cutting it up. Doing a live recording of the podcast, a live AMA after that is done, giving away incredibly cool stuff from pristine auction. We're working with Fantasy Cares. This said, we're blowing it out. Mm-hmm. Absolutely blowing it out and the tickets are going fast. Ballers Live.com. Okay, that was a lot of intro. Jay, how are you doing today? I'm doing fantastic. Had a great night of sleep and I'm excited to hope you in the mock draft. We are doing a mock draft today.

But before we get into that, we have a brand new segment to unleash upon the general public. Welcome to Ready to Roll, presented by Nissan. That's hot, Mike. Thank you. That's good stuff. So with Ready to Roll every week, we are taking a deep dive. We're trying to go, you know, this is what we do. We make jokes and we have fun, but we're looking as deep as we can on metrics to make sure that the actual quality of the information on the show. is good as ahead of the curve is going to help you find the right players. You know, it's like you always have those drafts where it's like, oh, you, the key to the draft is just draft the best players. It is. That is my secret sauce. Right. You just, you know, don't, don't draft the busts. And so we're looking each week at something deep, something unique. And so this week, we took a look at Red Zone looks.

We're trying to adjust how we are looking at coverage in the NFL and see if we can find some takeaways, some actionable like, hey, this might be really good for this player or that player. So we've got some three takeaway pieces based upon adjusting our red zone look. So we've talked about how the NFL is becoming more and more zone. And these are the number since 2019. The NFL was 58% zone in 2019. Then 62%. in 2020, then 65%, then a very nice 69.5%, and last year, over 70% of coverage was zone. And so you go, oh, well, we want zone beaners. Beaters? Beaters. But here's the thing, is it the red zone, the value of red zone targets is worth a lot more than a regular target.

Okay, so if you get a red zone target's worth 1.7 normal targets. If you're inside the 10, it's 2.1 targets. And if you're getting an in-zone target, that's 2.6 targets. That's the value of fantasy points per those targets. And inside the red zone last year, once you get inside the 20 and the defense collapse, it's 39% zone and 34% man. You see a lot more man. And you might be smart out there and go, That's not 100%. And that's true because once you get down to like, you know, the two. The goal line look. Yeah, you got a whole different, you got to sell out defense. If you've ever played any sort of football game, you know that way. They're like, hey, you get to the goal line and they offer you that. And it's every man on your defense just crush forward. That's the entire plan is don't let them run it up the middle. So what we're trying to find here are players that are good against both man and zone.

But specifically, once they get into the red zone, who are first read targets who excel at man coverage? Right. A.J. Brown is one of them. Now, he's obviously super high in the drafts. You've got to get lucky to have him. I'm all in on both AJ Brown and Devante Smith, but he is eighth in man yards per route run, 14th against zone. The only five other wide receivers were top 15 at both. That's Tyreek. Nico, Nico Collins. My man. Dude, he's, I mean, I was really surprised to see him here. I know he had a great season, but like both zone and man, he's great. Brandon Ayuk, Justin Jefferson, and Mike Evans. Inside the red zone, he had 18 red zone targets, but here's a thing, 17 of those were first read targets. They're designing things for AJ Brown in the red zone. By comparison, Devante Smith only had three. So it's like, okay, that's.

That's why he's in the first round and Devante Smith is later. Two other targets, I think, in drafts. We just talked about this guy on the fire show. Jaden Reed. Jaden Reed had 17 red zone targets, which is pretty good, 18th among all wide receivers. That's not like, you know, top five, but he was a rookie and he missed games. 16 of his 17 targets were first read targets. When they get in the red zone, they are designing plays for him as a rookie. I think Andy is correct. I have started a shift. I was always the Christian Watson guy. I'd rather take the value and have the upside of the athleticism. But the more that I've thought about how they use Jaden Reed when they get in the red zone, I think he can repeat his touchdown prowess. And then the last one, a guy you've kind of stand for over the last little while, the last year, Brandon Cooks, another surprising one. He lived off of touchdowns last year, and you might think like, oh, well, he's old.

But he was first read on all 12 of his red zone targets. So he's got the history of beating this kind of coverage. And if they are designing plays for him in the red zone, those touchdowns are far more repeatable. So the main takeaway here, red zone usage benefits players who excel both at man and zone and focus on first read targets. So hopefully that helps pick a couple of guys. Maybe we'll get some of these guys in the mock draft. That was ready to roll presented by Nissan. Find your path in the 2024 Nissan Pathfinder Rock Creek with a roof rack with up to 220 pound dynamic capacity. Learn more at NissanUSA.com. Cargo unload capacity, limited by weight and distribution. Always secure cargo. Heavy loading of the vehicle with cargo, especially on the roof, will affect the handling and stability of the vehicle. News and notes from around the league. Presented by USAA Insurance. Where's that money drop, boys?

Do you have it? Do you have it? There it is. Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill. When it all started blasting out, first we had the cryptic tweet from Tyreek where you go. I believe he said, I'm not going anywhere. You're like, well, yeah, I know you're not going anywhere because you're under contract for a couple more years, man. What are you talking about? And then it was announced. It was a three year. 90 or I think it was like a 60 million contract extension is what it was reported as. Whoa. More years for Tyreek? No. No, no, no, no. Just cash. Just guaranteed dollars. Straight cash, homie. Do you hear that, Dallas? Oh my gosh. Do you hear that? Every single time. Every single time that I see one of these wide receivers get money, I go, what does C.D. Lamb feel right now? What does Dallas do? Anger, rage, fury. I mean, what?

Of course, I made this personal about CD Lamba. Congratulations to Tyreek Hill. They just gave him more money. That's all they did. They just gave him a whole bunch of more money. Wide receiver from the Los Angeles Rams, Pooka Nakua is considered. Jason bows his head. This is so upsetting. Pooka Nakua is considered week to week after suffering a knee injury this weekend. Adam Schaefter had one source describing it as not serious, but that was compounded. by a report, like I believe that was just before it from ESPN's Jeremy Fowler saying the Rams offense clearly runs through Cooper Cup. That was his observation after watching the team have a training camp practice. Where are we with the Rams wide receivers now? Yeah, I mean, because Puka is basically he, Puka is taken on like the turn. Oh, in a 12 team league. So like right at the end of the first, early second.

Cooper Cups going a couple rounds after that. Is that a giant mistake? It seems like right now it is probably the wrong gap. Puka is a guy in most of our mock drafts. We talk about like he's ranked there at wide receiver, I think appropriately. But it's too high compared to other running backs that are on the board. We almost never draft him there, especially considering you can get the value on Cooper Cups several rounds later. And Cooper Cup could be the one in this offense. I still like Puka's odds to beat Cooper Cup, but it definitely doesn't seem like a multi-round gap. And then you add in this knee injury, and it's like, okay, I'm happy that it's described as not serious. But it's going to keep him off the field for weeks, and it's a knee injury. I mean, that's not nothing. That's not good for the player. You know, we see people all the time.

You know, you're talking about, oh, this player gets off to a strong start when we're recapping their last season. They got injured in week three. And then it took them, you know, they missed two weeks when they came back. It took them like three or four weeks to get back to full strength. And obviously, I don't know the details of the knee injury, but I would really like to not have to excuse a slow start for Puka. Right. Especially since he's on my keeper team. He, I've talked about a lot where if I'm on the turn. Like, the Rams feel like the picks. But I don't want to overload with the Rams. I just, I don't personally want to do that with my first and second round pick. You're saying Kyron and Pek. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kyron Williams and Pooka and it always ends up being, well, I go with Kairn and then I bypass Puka. And this was enough information for me. I have moved Puka down at least a couple spots in my projections and my rankings to the point where.

unless his ADP actually moves from this information, he's not going to end up on any of my teams. Yeah, this really stinks. Also, another one that stinks, another wide receiver I love this year. Ladd McConkey came up limping in Saturday's practice, did not practice on Sunday. You know, nothing is, I haven't seen any reports of it being serious. I think Harbaugh said, you know, he's not concerned. But I don't know, so I don't know if you saw this. The, the giants let their kind of draft board leak through the hard knocks. Okay. And they had color coding on certain players. Now, we don't officially know what the color coding meant. Right. But there are guesses. Could be like, this guy's handsome. Right. Like, yeah, green. Green is like, those are the handsome guys. Yeah. Markable. Yeah, it could be. Yeah. Really marketable. But there were some red.

on players. Red is not handsome. The assumption based on who the players were, and it really makes sense, was injury related, is what it seemed like. And one of them that I was a little bit surprised to see a red marker on was Ladd McConkey. I don't know of any, you know, I don't know what the... The specific injury is or what the medical is revealed to the Giants. And again, I'm not 100% positive that Red means injury. This is kind of hypothesis. But then like you come up limping here. And this is his second time kind of being a little injured. It's like, come on, me. Yeah, it's brutal when rookies miss time at all during training camp. Let's just complete that. Jason, another guy that you really like the talent. I like him as well. Panthers rookie wide receiver. Xavier Leggett.

He is considered day to day after undergoing an MRI on his injured foot. We are still waiting for more news, but someone leaving practice, immediately getting an MRI. We do not like that at all. So there's something to monitor. More Panthers news. Jason. Man, it was a rough weekend for you, Jay. I know, because it's all the guys I like. Jonathan Brooks. I've been saying like I don't want to. Rookie running back for the Panthers. I don't want to leave a draft without Jonathan Brooks because he's, you know, he doesn't cost you much. He's at the end of the draft.

He is now being reported. He will not play in preseason. And they are hopeful that he is ready for week three or week four. So this sounds like he will start the season on the pup. Now, Mike is making a grimacing face. That is brutal. That is brutal. I don't think it is completely and utterly unexpected. You hold on to those roots, brother. I mean, I'm out. You're okay, okay. That's, that's, that's totally fine. I will say. Historically, not buying the injury dip is the right transaction to make. He'll fall a little bit in ADP. He might be a value in the 10th, 11th round, wherever he falls to. If you're starting with a player that obviously, hopefully you're going to be able to put an IR spot if you've got it in your league. But he's going to start slow for his career. He's coming off the ACL injury. This was known from college. But I believe he is.

the best running back in this year's draft class. And he was drafted as the first running back off the board. I believe the Panthers traded up to acquire him. I don't recall that. And Canales will utilize him the way that he utilized Rashad White. So I still believe that if you have an IR spot and he drops into the double digit rounds, he's a stash I would want to make. If you have an IR spot, I'm okay with it. A glimmer of hope. There was Todd Gurley's rookie season, which he was recovering from his own knee injury. Different level of prospect drafted in the early first round. But he missed two games. Week three, he played 27% of the snaps. And then after that, it was just off to the races. And he finished as the RB7. Yeah. So it's not impossible. It's just a...

If we know for sure that he's not even going to be ready to play football until week four, and then there's the ramping up period, it's tough. Chuba Hubbard, who's going right now is the running back 43. We've talked about him a little bit in the offseason when we had no idea exactly what the health of Jonathan Brooks was. Chuba Hubbard could be another one of these zero RB heroes who just supports your team for a chunk of the season. Even if... Brooks comes back and week six or whatever takes over the backfield. I get, you know, what, four or five weeks of a starting running back who was good last year to end the season for fantasy? If you look at week 12 on last year, Chuba Hubbard finished as the running back 11, running back six, running back 24, running back 18, running back 20. I mean, it was a good, it was a good serviceable stretch and that was for the Putrid Panthers. Yeah, so keep.

Keep Chuba in mind when you're at the end there. And then Saints wide receiver Rashid Shaheed. He has missed consecutive practices. Hamstring tightness. You don't want to see wide receiver hamstring issues before the year. Those things, they just stick around, man. Yeah, absolutely. That was today's news and notes presented by USAA Insurance. Learn more at usa.com slash insurance. We will be right back. with the mock draft. So I'm going to set it up before I hit the button. We are doing a mock draft on the sleeper platform. We are doing a 10 team full PPR, two running back, two wide receiver, one side end, two flex. Jason, do you have your rankings prepared? Dude, I made them. I used them. Yes, yes, I got them. I made them. I used them. I win. That's right.

The fantasy footballers mock draft. All right, the draft has begun. Jason, you pulled the number three spot. I pulled the number nine spot, which that'll be a fun experiment where pretty close to the edges and 10 team ends up looking very different when you're drafting from the edge as opposed to the standard 12 team league. So again, Jason got the third pick. Christian McCaffrey, C.D. Lamb are the first two off the board. You're up, Jay. What are you doing? This is... pretty easy for me. You know, when I look at my rankings, how they bear out, I would prefer to have Tyree Kill over C.D. Lamb. So if I was at the two spot, I would have taken Tyree Kill. You just look at how consistent he was last year, how unbelievably dominant, the extra money that they gave him. I mean, put it this way. Who's paid? Who's paid? CD Lamb or Tyreek Hill? I love it's just like, hey, Tyreek, you're real good.

Here's more money. Just take this. You don't have to do that. Yeah. Just take this money. If you look at sleeper picks, that's the in-season DFS game and you look at the lines, Tyreek for week one is already at 98 and a half yards, which he crossed that nine times last year, most in the NFL. So that's the consistency I'm looking for. So this is an easy pick for me. I'll take Tyreek. All right. Tyreek goes, Jamar Chase, Justin Jefferson, Amman Ross, St. Brown, Pooka, Nakua. Brees Hall. So we had us a mighty fine run of wide receiver. Jason, Jason shakes his head. Is that because I get Bijon? Yes, it's because you get Bijon. You shouldn't get Bijon at the nine. Bison should not be that far. Oh, that's. I'm not even going to sit and elaborate on it. I am taking Bijon Robinson. It's the Bajon. Okay. McCaffrey, Breesall, Bajon Robinson. Those are the running backs that I give the best probability to to finish.

as the overall number one, getting him at the nine spot. I mean, that's, that's, that's, that's pretty hot. I'll take that. Yeah, so this is, this is the full PPR version, which is pushing wide receivers up, but obviously when you're talking about Bijon, Christian McCaffrey, Brees, Gibbs, those are, those are PPR machines as well. So, yes, that's a, it's a great pick, way to play so well. You got to let the draft come to you sometimes, man. A.J. Brown finishes off the first round, then J.mere Gibbs. The rookie sensation going into a sophomore year. Gibbs in a PPR is also in a what? In a PPR? PR PR. Did I say a PR PR? I don't know. I don't know. It sounded weird. You're just mad. I am a little mad. Yeah. You're just mad. So that puts me back on the board. Looking at the wide receivers who are available ADP wise right now, at least on sleeper, it's Garrett Wilson, who are you buying into this anything that there's?

The lover's quarrels going on with Aaron Rogers. Have you seen them, I saw a video of them yelling at each other. But then I saw Aaron Rogers, he shut that down. Oh, really? Yeah. He said, I was telling him how much I love him with passion. But then there was another one of like, they just seem a little. The thing is, is they are both elite alphas and they are playing against the Jets defense every practice. Which is great for, you know what I mean? Like the Jets defense is way better than the Jets offense. So they're going to have frustrations. They're going to look out of sync, but they're not always going to have to play it against the Jets defense. So it's Garrett Wilson, Marvin Harrison Jr., Devante Adams, Drake, London. These are the guys who are at the top of the wide receiver, ADP-wise anyways. And then I look at the running backs, Jonathan Taylor, Sequin Barkley, and Kyron Williams is there. There certainly is risk that they don't use him as much because they drafted Blake Corum.

who in the third round who profiles as someone who can step in for Kyron when needed. But I think that Sean McVeigh, he loves himself a one running back rotation. So I'm going to start very high tea. Yeah. Very macho. Body hair everywhere. Bejan Robinson, Kyron Williams. I was, uh, I was really wanting Kairn to drop to me. I know different platforms have different rankings on an underdog. I get them in the third oftentimes. Um, I figured in a 10 team he might make it back to the back of the second, and he might have had you not take him. So you got Bijon and Kyron. I love that start. I like it. Yeah. So after Kyron, Jonathan Taylor went, Garrett Wilson, Drake London, Marvin Harrison, Devante Adams, another monster wide receiver run. We'll see how I feel about my wide receiver room with all of them flying off the board. But Jason, you're back up. Tyreekill and who? Who? Whom? Whom? Whom?

sorry does anyone does anyone know is that who or whom so what should i have done i get a lot of blanks i feel like it's whom i would go with whom okay tyrie kill and whom yeah that's right what is it it sounds right wait i feel like when i don't know i just i just go whom yeah it's it's it's more sophisticated and the thing is the thing is is if you say whom yeah no one's correcting you because no one uses whom That's a great point. You know what I mean? They're like, oh, oh, he knows when to use whom. Mr. English over here. All right. Well, do you have a degree? Whom I shall take is. All right. So I'm going to play the game. I'm going to risk it. No risk it, no biscuit. I've got Tyree Kill. It's full PPR. I want Devon A. Chan. That's who I want.

All dolphins all the time? Yeah, I don't care. There are certain players, and it's rare, you know, going back to where it was Antonio Brown and Levion Bell. It's like, no problem. You could spend your first and second round pick. And I think these are two of those type of players. But I don't want to do my first and second. So I'm going to gamble and assume that I can get Devon A. Chan, you know, there's four picks between this pick and my next one. So I'm actually going to go with. Sequin Barclay. Okay. Try to have two great running backs. Make you pay. Yeah, baby. Yeah. So Devon A. Chan fell to me after I took Barclay. So I really like this story. If I've got such a stud at wide receiver in Tyreek, if I'm spinning that early pick, I often do this like in reverse. Like if I was the Christian McCaffrey drafter, my next two picks are probably going to be wide receivers. And I kind of have that foundation piece.

So Tyree Kill will be my foundation. I will add his teammate Devon A-chan with Saquan Barclay. So you take Devon A-chan. Travis Kelsey went next to I was, I had a small dream that Travis Kelsey would make it all the way back, which that means he went in front of La Porta. That'll be interesting to see if that starts shaking up over August. That's how my rankings are. You still have Kelsey up top? I still have Kelsey up top. For PPR, I would especially. Like I'd rather have Kelsey. La Porta was. low volume, really high touchdown success. We'll see, look, he was a rookie. Maybe he gets more utilized in the offense, but they're a very high team as well where they're not, it's not going to be as many targets as Travis Kelsey will get. But Kelsey goes at the 304, Josh Jacobs, then Sam LaForda. I'm just looking at the- Isaiah Pacheco and Nico Collins. Looking at our rankings. I didn't realize you've got, you've got Kelsey at four. I do? You do. You've got.