RB Rankings Countdown: 20-11, Kamara Suspension - Fantasy Football Podcast for 8/7

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 now. To the fantasy footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Oh, welcome in. Monday, August 7th, the Fantasy Footballers podcast, Jason Moore, Mike Wright. I'm Andy Holloway. Welcome you to another week.

The NFL season approaches. We're with you every day. I just spent about four to five minutes watching every Jordan Love throw from the Green Bay Packer game. Please give us the review. I mean, it's, you know, interteam scrimmage. So they're not like trying to harm each other as they do in an NFL game. I thought he looked okay. Like it was, I was looking more for also like, does he have any tendencies? And it was. Interesting that it started with two deep shots to Romeo Dobbs. I did see some Romeo Dobbs deep highlights when he beat Jayaeer Alexander. Was that one of them? Yep, it was the unfortunately there was an overthrow. I think Jordan Love is underrated. I brought him up on, for fantasy purposes. On last week on the dynasty pod of like, when we broke it down in the division of just like he set up for such success that I don't, I'm not calling for.

Jordan loved to be the next big thing, but it's, we should leave a little bit of room for margin that what if, like, if he's good, then he is, then he is set up instantly to have not top five, but like he can be a real solid streamer, even a top end quarterback too. Jason, we talked about this a little bit. The fact that their structure is set up in a way that he could come in and be very successful. It's a little reminiscent of like Gino Smith coming into the Seattle situation where. You know what to expect. You have talent. You have a defense, a head coach. You have a, you know, a number of years where they've been competitive. So you put him in a position. He wasn't, he's not a rookie, right? He's been behind Aaron Rogers, who, for the record, he has a great relationship with. Yes. Very close. A little surprising, but true. Yeah, no, I like betting on.

well-run franchises. Like it seems maybe a little too simple, but I find that when you've got an organization that has just succeeded for a long time, and obviously part of that has been they've had great quarterbacks for about 30 hundred years running. That's accurate. But still, organizations that build rosters in smart ways and have good coaching are usually good fantasy bets as well. Yeah, and players like Aaron Jones certainly help you out in the passing game, and we don't want to underestimate that. Lots to talk about today. We got news. We are into the running back rankings countdown. A couple things I want to remind people about at the top. Now that we're into August, I want to let people know, we will be having our Megalas show live event in Los Angeles, end of this month. Tickets available at ballerslive.com.

Not a lot of tickets available, but there are some remaining. We have a lot of, you know, we've done multiple cities in the past. This year we've got one big, huge, larger than never before show at the Palace Theater, August 26th. Check that out at ballerslive.com if you were within, I think we said 3,000 miles. Yeah, if you're within 3,000 miles of L.A. We expect you. Yeah. If you're within 3,000, anything beyond that. They have an international airport for sure. But if you are in the L.A. area, you've got to come and check it out. There's some seats left. It's going to be a wild and fun and awesome night, the biggest show we've ever done. And there may be some more surprises we'll tell you about here soon. So grab your ticket while you can. And then the ultimate draft kit is available. You heard our good friend at the top of the show. Great, just great friend. Yeah, and definitely, definitely him.

Ultimate draft kit.com. Always updated. We got some big news on Alvin Camara. We're going to talk about momentarily. That has already been accounted for in the Ultimate Draft Kit. Got more news about the Saints backfield beyond Alvin Camara this morning as well. Always up to date. Gets you prepped up for your draft. Lots of premium resources in terms of analytics. So you can break things down. We've got consistency charts. I don't think we talk about those enough, but you can look at. players and how they perform week to week. We actually give them consistency grades based on their week to week performance. Their volatility. Their beta, so to speak. If you're into the stock market world, they're beta. I like it. I thought you were attacking the alphas. We have alphas in there, too. We got betas. We got calling them low T. Carrotene. Ultimate draft kit.com to check that out. Is that a beta carotene joke?

Goodness. News and notes from Around the League. Presented by USAA Insurance. Alvin Camara has been suspended three games for his role in a fight outside the Las Vegas nightclub in 2022. And now we know. We didn't know. Would it be four, five, one? I mean, what other numbers are there? What other numbers are there? Could have been two. Mike actually said he had to increase his ranking of Alvin Camara because he had, he had, kind of pre-guessed four way off. My bad. You know, it is a really difficult thing. The Alvin Camara draft costs. Mike just brought him up on our ice and fire episode. Obviously, with the suspension, you're going to be without him during a very important part, the beginning of the season. You don't get to put them on the IR.

which is something that, you know, if you knew you were missing, let's say, Giovante for two weeks, which apparently you're not, but somebody like that, at least you could put them on IR. Now you know the 28-year-old Alvin Camara, former fantasy superstar, is going to be on the shelf for three weeks. You have a rookie and Kendri Miller, who we all really like the talent of. You have Jamal Williams, who was very effective in the Red Zone last year. And then they're kicking the tires on Kareem Hunt this morning because Eno Benjamin. uh, Torres Achilles, who was part of their depth chart at running back. I say all this because, you know, one of the beat writers that I know we all trust quite a bit is Nick Underhill, uh, in, in New Orleans. And he released an article recently just talking about some of the things that the team observed about what made Alvin Cameron less efficient last year, that they fixed this off season and they are very excited about his.

his potential in the offense. We talked about Derek Carr. He throws to the running back about middle of the pack in that regard. Did you read the part where they were, they had to balance out his legs? It's one of the keys to running. Like, apparently there was an asymmetrical muscle situation. Yeah. With his legs. Yeah. So I look, Alvin Kamara was in the one strong leg club last year. We just didn't know about it. And so I didn't. I guess I say all that because there's going to be a draft price of Alvin Camara that is very cheap. And he's a big name. And the ice show said maybe just pass on that. But I mean, if Alvin Camara is, I'm going to be real with the people. I'm going to tell you, if I'm sitting in the fifth, sixth round, and I see Alvin Camara's name, and I'm making a decision between Alvin Camara and give me a running back and A.J. Dillon. Okay. That is going to be a hard.

situation psychologically for fantasy players. Well, let me tell you right now who he's going around. So maybe it won't be so hard. Yeah, I don't think it'll be quite as easier, difficult. Alvin Camara or Joe Mixen. They're going right next to each other right now. That's stupid. Joe Mix is going to go way, way higher, should go way higher. That one's not, doesn't make sense. Okay, Alvin Camara or Aaron and Jones. Well, that's stupid. Okay, that's not hard. Alvin Camara or Miles Sanders. Yeah, that's stupid. Yeah. So Alvin Camara still needs to drop a little bit in the ADP to get where we are comfortable drafting him. In ADP, he is right now in the 4-11. We're looking at this is ADP based off of the sleeper platform. That's going to change. But just in case, let's throw him into the sixth round for you. That's where I think I'll be. Yeah. And so if we're in the sixth round, we're talking about Alexander Madison, James Connor.

Javante Williams. Okay, this ain't that hard. Yeah, I'll take all three of those. Yeah, let's just pass on Camara. Glad we figured that out. Here's now. Now, what if you put them in the eighth round? Because they signed Cream Hunt and people freak out even more. Okay. So you want some eighth round guys? Yeah. All right. That's where AJ Dylan is. Yeah, I'll take. You got one? Camara over AJ Dylan. James Cook. Antonio Gibson. I'll probably take the shot on Cook. Gibson's tough. I would go Gibson. I think that's the line right there. That would be, uh, If I had enough running backs in the eighth round and I can wait, I'll take him here. Yep. But it... Yeah, all right. So he needs to drop four rounds. Yeah, so he needs to pretty much plummet, which is... His ADP is interesting because even at the 4-11, it's like we knew a suspension was going to happen. I guess people were betting that it was just going to be a game. And then... I thought, yeah, I thought two was in the carts. But even at two-game suspension at 4-11, when you could be...

like Miles Sanders, Pierce, Acres are going way after that, or at least a full round. I don't know, it was just interesting for someone who was so inefficient last year. I don't know. I have my concerns about, does Camara still have the juice? I mean, maybe now that his, yeah, or has Super Camaro fallen into the wrath of the Goombas? I forgot we had that. Yeah. That didn't sound good. But it's, again, You know, we're just giving you our opinions and we're trying to help you build up the best way forward for you to make your own decisions. Because there's going to be people who are still in on Alvin Camara. Today's a running back show. So we're getting into the running back countdown shortly. Camara, not in the top 20. Not in the top 20. The Saints, Rashid, Shaid, Treyquan Smith left practice with groin injuries. Are they officially on groin index.com? Yes, always.

Nobody tracks off-season groin injuries, in-season groin injuries like the fantasy footballers podcast. That thing is very fast. If that's what you're about, if you need the latest, greatest groin news, we've got it. And don't forget, if you haven't been to groin index.com, we do have their most recent quotes on all of these players as well. That's true. We've asked each player to tell us how they're feeling shortly after. Jason or I do? No, I do. So, Treyquan Smith is, he said, AK, my groin. Kenneth Walker is, ah, McGroin. Right. So, I mean, there's a slew of different quotes here. All right. And then tomorrow is our top 10 running back. So today is 23-11, counting down the top 10 tomorrow. However, I'm not holding this. Josh Jacobs, this is why it's really, really difficult.

when a player's not in camp is because you don't know what's truth, what's reality. You know, NBC's Mike Floreo reporting the Chiefs and Broncos both have interest in Josh Jacobs. There were reports that the team may rescind his franchise tag and make him a free agent. There was an interview with the general manager that I watched this weekend talking about, they were asking about the Saquan situation. Did that open the door? There was talk that Josh Jacobs already turned down $12 million, which I think is what Sequin ended up getting. And, you know, I don't know where this team's going to be. Josh McDaniels came out. He said, I don't blame a player for doing what they think is right for themselves. It seems like the team's mindset is they want him in camp. Like here's the confidence I have. If he comes back, I think you'll see utilization that is the same as last year because this team wants to run him into the ground and say goodbye.

The GM basically said that. Like they want them to come in here. Their argument is have a season like you did last year, and then you're going to get paid a bunch of money. And then Josina Anderson on X said, my understanding is the Raiders are open to restarting talks with Josh Jacobs in hopes of getting him to rejoin the team. I mean, this feels like something put out by the team as well. Yeah, and Devante Adams. He's come out and he, you know, he obviously wants the best players there in town. He'll be alone on an island without Josh Shakespeare. It is a murky situation. But in the end, the running back has no leverage and really almost no choice. So I believe he will end up playing this year for the Raiders on the franchise tag because when push comes to shove, it's just the only.

option in his control. He just, he has no power. Zemir White's a discussion worth having because he's the backup running back, now running with the ones. Amir Abdullah will be heavily involved. Unfortunately, if Jacobs didn't play, you will see both of those players, which will be annoying because there's not a lot of confidence in the success of this team. However, like pay attention to this. does heir white because yeah he's a six foot 215 pound running back who has great speed he ran a 4-4 that puts him 96th percentile weight adjusted speed score that's what you really want for a running back and if he's got opportunity that is vacated by josh jacobs uh certainly certainly worth the shot i really like the part where it's the two divisional

opponents who are like, yeah, we'd be very interested in our division. See, this is where you don't. It's like, what, stop it? You don't know if Josh Jacobs puts that piece out. Right. And then it's just tough right now. A couple other injuries, rookie running back, one of Jason's secret, my guys, Devon A-chain, day-to-day with an injury, was injured in Saturday's practice. Chase Edmund's expected to open as the Bucks third downback. I saw more praise for him this morning. That's newsworthy. Yeah, it is because of Rashad White. Rashad White is a volume-based only pick. Like, he didn't do anything on the field last year with Tom Brady to make you believe that he was a really great NFL player.

But the opportunity that he has without Leonard Fournett and his past catching ability that says, hey, he could just volume his way to a decent fantasy finish. And that's why I think a lot of people, there's a handful of people that are really in on Rashad White at his current ADP. I have not been betting on Rashad White. I think he's interesting. Yeah. But if he loses some third downwork and the past catching work without Tom Brady throwing the ball 700 times, all of a sudden, I mean. You just lose a lot of the lustre. I reacted strongly to it immediately when I saw this news. And then it was like a little bit of a correction back to where like Chase Edmonds has been a bad football player for two years. And so do I believe that Rashad White's a more capable, talented player? I do. You know, it's something to pay attention to. Certainly.

Just another piece of it is like, okay, well, if Chase Edmonds is the guy that the team wants on the field in those obvious passing situation, it's does Chase Edmonds then become like also the two-minute drill type of player? Because we do, for football, we can overreact to, oh, well, this player's there on third down. Well, it's, you know, how many passes are running backs actually catching on third down? It's not as high as you would think. But. Yeah, Kyle, you're on, are you on the microphone, Kyle? Yes, I am. What was the percentage of? Just running back to the, yeah, I'm here. What was the percentage of third down plays last year? You were doing some analysis on third downs. It's about 20% of the plays. So it's a lot less than we realize. I think often when we use the phrase like the third down back.

It's really passing down. It's past catching back. It's a two-minute drill back. And comeback player when you're trying to get back into a game. Exactly. It's not specifically just how often they're out there on the third down only. I think you make a good point. Kyle's analysis is kind of just worthless. Yeah, you can go back to the fridge now, Kyle. Full sprint to the microphone wherever it is. Cardinals. Oh, do we have the button? Can somebody help me? Mediocre signing of the wig. Marlon Mac, Kenyon Drake have both been signed to play football this year. The Cardinals bringing on Marlon Mac and the Colts adding Kenyon Drake. There you go. Okay, dokey. That was today's news and notes presented by USAA Insurance. Learn more at USAA.com slash insurance. Running bags. All right, here we go. The running back countdown begins with none other than...

Alexander Madison at number 20. He snuck in. He snuck into the top 20. Mike has him the highest at 16. Shocker. Shocker. I'm at 21. Jason's at 23. I don't. Well, I have a good bit higher than Jason, but me and Andy aren't that far off. Running back 22 by ADP 6th round pick. So, yeah, I'm taking Madison over Alvin Camara, as we said earlier. Dalvin Cook is gone. And when... He's been absent due to injury. Alexander Madison has taken advantage of those limited opportunities. He's averaged 16.9 fancy points per game when he's been out. You know, we have a head coach that we like for this offense. Dalvin Cook ran a ton of routes last year, and so that's part of the discussion here around. It's not that Alexander Madison should be played in fantasy. Of course he should. It's really a discussion about what.

What's his range of outcomes? How good could he be in this offense? What is the ceiling for Alexander Madison from a talent and involvement perspective? How many other backs will be involved? I went back to 2020, 2021, kind of looking at different running backs that had okay years, right? Like David Montgomery in Chicago had a couple of seasons that were like, all right, he finished around where we have ranked. It's 20th. But you wouldn't have put, he wasn't a. key cog to a championship run. So when you take Alexander Madison, you seem to be getting a discount due to the fact that he's unproven as a starter. He's not been, you know, ratcheted up draft boards like Crystal Lave and Garrett Wilson are at the wide receiver position where you expect a huge monster top 10 season. So what do we think about Madison? Yeah, as the lowest ranked analyst on Madison here.

I'll say that he has an extremely high ceiling. The outcome for him to have success is a very obvious path. They've talked about using him in a three-down role to where he is more involved in the past catching as well. The routes run is a huge question mark here of like, is he going to be very involved in the passing game? Because to me, you've got him 200 to 250 on the carry count. Like that's where I think he's going to land somewhere. And that's a valuable role. So that's good for being a running back too. The question about your upside will become what is the passing role. And if he takes a big share of that, I mean, this is a good offense with a bad defense. It's going to score a lot of points. And he's been talented on the field. I also believe that he's going to end up a value on draft day because.

ADPs lag. They just lag. We spent this whole offseason not knowing about whether or not he was the guy. If you started this off season, if we left the last season and we cut Dalvin Cook immediately, the Vikings shipped him off. Alexander Madison's ADP today would be much, much higher. He'd be in the fourth. And so I think by the time drafts roll around, it's still going to be nerfed a little bit from the ADP fears of... over drafting a player. My hesitancy around Madison has just always been related to how good I think he is relative to other people. The efficiency numbers for him are nowhere near where Delvin Cook was historically per Warren Sharp over the last two years among 74 running backs with 100 attempts. 68th out of those 74 in yards per carry, 43rd in explosive rush rate, 42nd and yards after contact per carry. You...

You give a player like that a ton of volume. Are those numbers going to change? Right. That's kind of the worry. We've heard Ty Chandler has not been impressive in camp. When you look at the depth chart, you got Dwayne McBride. He's a seventh round pick. You've got Ken A. Nwangwu who's been special teams historically. I don't know how heavily involved. Like it almost feels like the Las Vegas backfield room last year where we all should have just known who was going to be Jacobs because nobody else really had what it would. takes. And I still think Minnesota is going to be a pretty good team. So they have confidence in Madison. Yeah. Otherwise they would have brought somebody else in. Their actions thus far have said that. I've also seen the reports, though, that none of the backup running backs have really taken control over that, over being the second man up, which that puts the Vikings on watch for me for a team that could be in the in the sweepstakes to try and pull Zeke, Leonard Fournett. One of these.

known veterans. I would think that even if they add one of those players, Alexander Madison, still going to be the first player up. But it comes down to like, what are the coaches going to decide here? Because it had been with undercoach Zimmer, you had Delvin Cook and Madison. They were sharing a lot more of the snaps. But this past season, because you had a new regime, you have O'Connell in charge up there in Minnesota, 72% of the snaps for Dalvin Cook, which is by far the highest snapshot that he had seen in his season. Is O'Connell a three, is he really a three-down running back type of coach? If that's what happens with Alexander Madison, with the amount of points that the Vikings' offense are going to have to score, because the Vikings are in sneaky, soft rebuild right here, their defense is going to be really bad, really, really bad.

They're counting on their offense to keep them in game. So I'm very excited. I think the ceiling is tremendous for Alexander Madison. We don't know if he's NFL good yet because he's good when he's the guy, but the last couple years as the backup hasn't been tremendous. 320 opportunities for Dalvin Cook last year led to a running back 10 finish. And the pass catching was 39 receptions. So those are some numbers to keep in your mind. I don't know if that puts. Number 10 around the ceiling for Madison. If he had a season like Cook, I know a lot of people believe Cook lost a step. But that's kind of the landscape for Alexander Madison. Let's take a quick break and move on to our number 19 running back. All right. At number 19, we recently revealed a quote from him on the show. Kenneth Walker, the third, just 22.8 years old. The RB 15 right now.

By way of ADP, we all have him below that at 17. That's where I have him. Mike at 20, Jason at 21. He makes me feel so stupid. Me or Kenneth Walker? Kenneth Walker makes me feel so dumb. Explain. I'm terrified to draft him because I love Charbonnet. And we've talked about the fact that he's a pass catching back, Charbonnet is. He's a bigger move the pile type of back. So. goal line, touchdown, receiving second round draft capital. And so I'm so terrified to draft Kenneth Walker. And in the end, that could be just outrageously dumb. Because what did we see last year? We saw a young stud, awesome running back who was like a top five fantasy running back. And he's on a great offense. Like we, I, I, I.

We should love Kenneth Walker. We should want him on our team. It feels like there weren't really problems with Kenneth Walker until Zach Charbonnet was drafted. And because he was drafted, we're going to find problems with Kenneth Walker. Exactly. It feels a little bit like that. And we have talked extensively and we'll repeat it because, you know, a lot more people listening here in August. But we know some things about Seattle. The running backs get hurt. They draft first round running backs all the time. And we don't know exactly how that first round running back is going to have what kind of impact they're going to have. You know, you had Chris Carson, who when Rashad Penny was drafted, people faded him, and then he was really effective. It's a very difficult situation because like you said, we could all look really, really dumb to have him down in the fourth round here. And Kenneth Walker could easily finish as the number five running back on the season. Yes. And all that has to happen is the team has to give.

him a bunch of work and say that Zach Charbonnet is more of a compliment. The only threat to Walker is Charbonnet being a kind of a timeshare 50-50 type of back, which we don't have, right now we've had injury to Charbonnet in training camp. We don't have a reason to believe, and Walker, but we don't have a reason to believe that Charbonnet is going to have that opportunity, or maybe that opportunity happens 10 weeks into the season. And you lose 10 weeks of great Kenneth Walker play because of fear. So it's tough. Walker's so young, so dynamic. He's fun to have in fantasy because big plays can win you a week. Yeah, he's a home run hitting running back who was not tremendous in short yardage. So last year, here's some of the inefficiencies. You had 17 carries inside the 10, only two rushing touchdowns. That's not the numbers that you want to see. 24% of his carries failed to gain a single yard. That puts him at 63rd among running backs.