Fantasy Football Podcast 2017 - The Rookie Show, Fantasy Outlook, Draft Day Foods

Pretty cool. Like, he's the fastest player ever. I think that it's almost like you can't really undersell that. You know what I mean? But if you do want to look beyond just the...

all world speed. In his reception, he did show well, again, he was above the two-year prospect average at beating man, zone, and press coverage. You see him run a lot of deep routes, of course, but you look at like the out routes, the dig routes, the curl, the comeback. Those are all routes that he grades out above the prospect average at creating separation, some impressive scores there. And I think that speaks to...

Yeah, he gets a lot of cushion from your pack 12 defenders because of his speed. And, you know, he's not going to necessarily get that same sort of treatment at the NFL level, although he will.

get a lot of respect because of his speed. I think that also shows you he can sell that vertical route really well and then break off into the intermediate zone or the short zones and really pick up chunk yardage that way. So I kind of liken him more to a T.Y. Hilton level deep threat, like he can go along that higher end of the archetype more than the Will Fuller or Ted Ginn version of that small speed receiver archetype. So you see him as a better prospect than Will Fuller, who was fast coming out last year?

With, like, without a doubt, Jason, no question in my mind. If you look at their reception perceptions last year, one of, one of Will Fuller's weakest points was his success rate versus press coverage. And John Ross is obviously smaller too. But I think a lot of times we just kind of internalize and like extrapolate size to things that.

you know, a skill, like a contested catch rate or a success rate versus press coverage. But technique comes in into a lot of it, too. And I think Ross shows much more of a balanced game than Fuller. The biggest question with Ross is injuries. And that's something, that's a big elephant in the room that just like the speed can't be undersold either. Ross has had a lot of injury problems. He's also had off-season surgery this year. He could easily become a what could have been player based on those injuries. But, you know, that's hard for me to measure. Do you view him as a player that?

is going to succeed better with a big one on the outside wherever he lands? Like is he a player that, you know, because of his size and because of the nature of what he does, do you feel like he can come in and, you know, Will Fuller came in, ran out of the slot a bunch last year. What is John Ross going to do? Is it going to be successful with a big guy outside or is he going to be able to come in and kind of own an offense? These players typically don't ever become...

Target hogs and offenses, you know, like I mentioned, T.Y. Hilton, I think he could be that player because Hilton has, has developed that far down the, the small receiver, small speed receiver archetype.

It just would, I don't want to cop out of the question, but it would just depend on how he develops as a pro. I can easily see, though, Ross being a much better real-life NFL receiver and helpful to his football team than he's helpful to fantasy owners, though. So that's a whole separate conversation, but I can easily see that being the case. The offspring, I'm not sure if you're familiar with the band The Offspring. Well, they had a hit track.

It wasn't really a hit track, but they had a song called, but Mike knew it. But it was a song Mike knew. It was a song called Cool to Hate. And this next guy reminds me of that, Mike Williams, because lately it feels like it's become very cool to hate Mike Williams. And so what is, what's your temperature on him? So you guys know I kind of detest.

ranking things. That's one of the things I don't like to do. Although I did start ranking these players for our fantasy hipsters podcast download on iTunes, leave a five-star rating. Nicely done. So I did do that there. And I put Williams as my wide receiver four, which I don't know if that's slanderous or whatever, but there's just another prospect that we haven't talked about that I like better than him that I'm sure we'll get into later.

And if you look at Williams, though, you're right. It has become trendy to hate him. A lot of players, and I wrote about this in the reception articles on your guys' site, the thing with Williams is you see him making a lot of contested catches on draft breakdown cutups or when you're watching games of him from the broadcast angle. And that's true. He's great on contested catches. 81% conversion rate for me. That's a top five score over the last two years. I think then people tend to extrapolate to those players. Well, he must, you know.

not get a lot of separation because he's always making those contested catches. But that's generally just a trick that your brain plays on you and fills in the information. So for me, for these players, because I get to watch them on an all 22 film and I get to chart all their routes, excuse me if that is a humble brag, but you know, just whatever. For Williams, like I kind of look for those players to just separate well enough. And Williams...

graded out at the 55th percentile for success rate versus man coverage. So I think that's much like an Alshan Jeffrey type of player who also is an NFL player doesn't have dominant success rates against coverage, but they're just above the league average. So I think he can separate well enough. You know, my buddy Matt Waldman kind of compares him to a Dwayne Boe type of player. And that might give people fits. Yeah, it's going to free people out. Dwayne Bo had one great year.

Yeah, I mean, when, when Dwayne Bo, you know, maybe he's Dwayne Bo without the concerns about whether he's just going to kind of take years off in his career. But I think stylistically, they're pretty similar in like guys that can definitely make plays the ball in the air. And then the.

One of Bo's really good years with the Andy Reid chiefs was when they got him on slant routes a lot. And that's one of Williams outside of just a vertical routes where he can post up defenders down the field. You see him have high success rates on slants and post routes. So I think that's kind of actually pretty encouraging for his NFL prospects. I feel like this year, Mike Williams, is last year's Tyler Boyd in the sense that I know I like Tyler Boyd.

A lot more than you did last year, Harmon. This year, I like Mike Williams. But, yeah, we'll fight, fight, fight. But you're a Chris Godwin guy, right? Is he the reason that Mike Williams is number four? I am. And just to circle back to the Tyler Boyd thing, too, there's another player in this draft that I would, I feel very, very similar to how I feel about Tyler Boyd last year. But we can touch on that later. But yes.

Chris Godwin this year is one of my guys. I have him as my wide receiver three in this draft class above Mike Williams because when you look at Chris Godwin, he came out with the top score on contested catches for me over the last two draft classes at 85.7%, narrowly beating out Josh Doxton from 2016, who we know had one of the best, was just really good at winning the ball in the air. So with Godwin beating out, at least being Williams equal or better on contested catches,

It's then when you go into a success rate versus coverage scores that Godwin really shows out with the 73.5% success rate versus man coverage. That's at the 76th percentile over the last two years. Above average against press, above average against zone coverage. Really, his separation scores, he has above average separation scores on all routes except the straight go route. So to me, and he also.

smashed the combine. He's really done himself some favors in the pre-jave process. I love Chris Godwin. I think he's a complete player. He does everything well. And he's one of my favorite wide receivers in this class. Do you got Chris Godwin as a sneaky day one guy or is he most likely to fall to day two or a little bit lower? So when we started, the funny thing is like when we started this process.

back before, you know, the Combine or the Senior Bowl or anything, when I'm going through and charting these players, which is a lot like during the NFL playoffs or, you know, the end of college football season, I see on a lot of places that he's like a third to fourth round pick. And then I go in and chart his games and he's just much, much better than that. And since then, I've heard from a pretty reliable source that some teams have round one grades on him. Maybe he's a candidate for like a team like the Steelers in the back half of the first round who've had him.

on a pre-draft visit, but more likely than not, I expect him to go in the second round. I would be pretty shocked if he falls to round three. All right. So, you know, the NFL drafts coming up. Every team is going to be watching, you know, wanting to see what their team does. I want to know who is the guy that if you are a super fan of an NFL team, when your team drafts this guy, you're going to go, no!

No, they've made a mistake. I want you to make a lot of people unhappy days from now. Who is that player?

Well, with all of these guys, you know, it just depends on where they get drafted. But a player, like what round your team decides to take that tumble. No, who's going to bust? Who's going to be terrible? Right. One player who I don't see meeting expectations is a guy, D.D. Westbrook, who is the last player that I profiled for the fantasy footballers. He had the worst success rate versus press coverage score over the last two years at 33.3%. I don't see him as somebody that can line up on the outside.

outside and win. Even when you saw him make vertical plays at Oklahoma, it was against a lot of like big 12 defenses, it offered him a lot of space. He didn't have high success rates on almost any route. I think he can maybe be a player that's successful like after the catch, but not only is his reception poor, he also has a lot of.

red flags in general in terms of off field concerns. He is an older prospect. He's had some injury histories. He's also 180 pounds, less than 180 pounds. So he can easily be somebody that just doesn't hold up to the NFL level. He's someone that I would be concerned about as well as a player like, I think if you take like Malachi Dupree from LSU who I didn't write about for you guys, but I have my database and there's a reason I didn't write about him. There's just not a lot good to say. So there are some players from.

bigger schools that, like, they have bigger names. They've been on the scene for a while in this year that I think are disappointing NFL prospects. But then there are guys from smaller schools that I think you should be excited if your team takes. Let me ask you kind of the opposite question here. And we obviously, we get tons and tons of questions of people who are sitting there in their rookie drafts and saying, who do I target with this pick? And, you know, so much up to now is, okay, we got to wait and see where these guys land to determine that. Now, for you, is there a.

perfect marriage out there? Is there some sort of this player to this team, if it works out this way, that you're looking forward to or that you would say is the combination of NFL and fantasy success? Or is there something that you're zoning in on and saying, hey, I'd love to see this happen? Yeah, I think Carolina has a lot of opportunity in their wide receiver core right now. But they're drafting Leonard Fernette, Matt. Everyone knows that.

God, I hope they draft Christian McCaffrey at 8th overall. God, please. Yeah, that would be great. But I think in general, this draft is going to be really offensive focus for the Panthers because they've talked about evolving their offense, but they've done.

Nothing to really do that in the offseason in terms of player additions. You know, they lost Ted Ginn. I think John Ross would be a fantastic fit, but I don't see him falling to the second round. And I don't see him being the pick at eighth overall. Like I said, I think they're zeroing in on McCaffrey or Leonard Fournett there. If they draft a player like a Carlos Henderson, who is...