Fantasy Football - The Overreaction Episode! + Fantasy Freakouts - Podcast for 5/7

to the fantasy footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Welcome in. Thursday, May 7th. The fantasy footballer's back again. Mike Wright, Jason Moore, Andy Holloway. Overreactions episode for 2026. Some news to talk about. Some golf talk if we want to. Yeah, some golf talk. You had a really poignant tweet today. Yes, I did. And it was very true. I thought it was. Why don't you read it just for those out there that share the hobby, you know, our new hobby of golf? I mean, it's something that I am working on. I am not good, but I have found in life when you work on things, you can get better. And so I tweeted out that my experience with golf is at the more.

work you put into getting better, the higher you can score. So it's great news, guys. And you've been accomplishing higher and higher. I did get a higher score today than ever before. So that's awesome. High score wins, right? Your points four went up. Yeah. I'm a football guy. That's right. That's right. Mike back in the building today. Chillo. We have a couple of quick announcements. The best ball rankings. are now live in the UDK Plus. So that's pretty exciting. Those of you that play best ball out there on the various platforms, you can find our best ball rankings in the UDK Plus right now. If you don't have the UDK, Ultimate DraftKit.com for that. Quick question of the day comes from Zach on Instagram. How can I convince my league to switch to Fab? Fab is a way to handle waivers. It stands for free agent acquisition budget.

And it means that each week teams blind bid on free agents. And when the free agents process, you'll find out who gets them based on who bid the most. Fab. A lot of leagues have like 100 fab budget, maybe 200 over the course of the year. Some teams have or some leagues have off-season fab budgets. But this is in opposition to kind of a default standard of like waiver priority rolling. One of the things. One of the things that's silly to me now is that I think most defaults are now a fab system. So it's like old leagues that you've been in for a while that have been running it as the old standard, which was just waiver priority. If you start like a new league on sleeper, I have to imagine that that just defaults to fab because that's the way that fantasy has been played for the last decade now. So if you want to convince them.

Just, I mean, I think that's one of the arguments is like, this is really the new norm for the majority of leagues. Two, the big argument is always about fun. I mean, the reason to change any rule in any league is to maximize fun. And it may be some fairness. Sure. I mean, that's a secondary. But I think primary, like number one most important thing for every rule is, is this to make my league more fun. It's also more fair. It's also another level of competition and excitement. And so you get to, you get to try to outsmart, outplan your opponents. It's another day of drama for your league that you get to look forward to in the waivers process. Most leagues do still default to rolling waivers. So this is a, really. This is a change. Even on Sleeper. Kyle said he fired up a test.

On sleeper? Sleeper. It was rolling waivers. Sleeper. Hey, Sleeper, you're listening. No, no, no. No, no. Yeah, we've got this platform. Sleeper. We love you guys. You love us. Change. That's all it takes. Just literally type some things on the keyboard and change your default to fap. You want to know why it's not? Exotic bird. I'll tell you why it's not is because it is more involved. It does take more effort to manage a fab budget. If you have reverse order of standings, it's very easy to understand how waivers are going to process. You don't have to do another action. So I think that's why. I think it's because of simplicity. Is it better? Fab is better. Yes. So, you know, when you talk about fairness, it gives everybody a fair shot at every free agent every week. If you have fab budget, you know what I mean? And there's a, we have fab trading in our league now. So you can actually include fab.

in your trade offers, which makes for another fun way to do it. And then you have to decide how much you can serve towards the end of the year. Do you need to spend it early because you've got to make the playoffs? Do you want to save it? So, yeah, that would be our compelling arguments to make to your league and just say that Jason Moore said so. You can also just shame them. You know, sometimes you've got to just shame people for being old busted. Okay. Shame is another way to do it that Jason Moore would do. News and notes from around the league. Well, always good when you're not found guilty of assault. Stefan Diggs found not guilty on Tuesday. I mean, good? Yeah, I mean, I hope he was not guilty, right? Like that is the hope here. Good. Okay. Now stop finding yourself in situations where you keep getting accused of this stuff. The old liar, liar. Stop breaking the law. Yeah.

I mean, he didn't. He's not guilty. He is. But if you've been, like, can we make it a new crime? Like, it's a separate statute. Okay. If you're accused of the same thing three times, even if you're found not guilty, you are now guilty of a triple accusation. Oh, the crime is triple accusation. You put yourself in the position to be accused of. Insert crime here like I'm just three times we can we could take it up with the government He did I mean here's the thing Diggs is not done He had over a thousand yards led the you know Patriots in receiving last year 85 receptions. He's one of several old men out there waiting for teams him Tyreek Debo Keenan

I love Michael Key. He is. He's lowercase done. What we know about Diggs is New England who just made the Super Bowl. Super Bowl. They're like, yeah. Romeo Dobbs. We're going to get you out of here. We're going to bring some other people in. Tyrod Taylor signed with the Packers. He is the new backup to Jordan Love, which is often an important role considering Malik Willis Saul playing time. I feel like anywhere Tyrod Taylor goes. The starter does go down. But then he goes down. So now we have to care about who's the backup to the backup. Yep. That's always the case with Tyrod Taylor's team. The Packers General Manager came out and said that he expects Michael Parsons in tight-in. Tucker Kraft back, quote, early in the season. Tucker Kraft coming back from his ACL injury. This is not as optimistic as this Patrick Mahomes news around his ACL. I mean, Mahomes is talking about being ready for OTAs.

Well, I think it's different for a quarterback than for a tight end as far as what you have to be able to do. What's ironic is Tucker's injury was a much cleaner ACL injury than Mahomes. Mahomes had some extra ligament damage. I believe Tucker's was clean. But he should start the season. If Tucker Kraft is their week one, he should not be at full strength. And I don't know that he will be there week one. It makes it a really hard pick because. I know we were so freaking excited for the breakout that was happening last year. It looked like Tucker Kraft, who, Andy, you loved last off season. And then it was paying off and it just was outstanding. And now I don't know how you can view. Like, how do you view him in this year's draft? Nervous. Yeah, you have to be nervous. What's tough is that we've sat here and made arguments for Christian Watson and arguments for Matthew Golden.

being involved in the offense and those arguments all fit for tucker craft they they let go of dobs uh they let go of dontavian wicks you have opportunity to catch the ball in this office craft was already doing it like if you had to name those those out of those three guys he's the most reliable in a neutral injury situation sure i'd be looking at tucker craft and saying he's the one i have the most confidence in you throw the injury in there but then you throw in the fact that you don't have that many tight ends that have that kind of potential to really make a difference

I think he's going to be worth a pick if he slips at all in the draft just to, you know, if you start the season and you buy a couple weeks with some spot start tight ends and you can rotate into Tucker Kraft for the last three quarters of the year and get anything like last year, I feel like you'd be happy with where he's going to go. I just worry that people won't have the patience or even the ability to have the patience. If it does take a month, six weeks, however long, before all of a sudden the second half of the year, maybe Kraft is awesome.

But I think you're probably going to end up getting him off of waivers. Like even if he's drafted. He's drafted. And then week five, week six, you grab him off of waivers. He could have a good week one. You know, you never know. Kenneth Walker. Oh, boy, we got this in here, huh? He expects to be used more in the passing game with the Chiefs. Mike is pleased. He says he's been working on getting connected in the passing game. Yeah, he has. And everything. So that's good, said Walker to Kay Adams. I feel like I. I'll be used more in the past game. Mike feels that way. Let's get you a nice clean 10% target share. Is that what you projected him for? That's where I have a man. Where did he end up in your rankings or do you have yours done? We had a little bit of a ranking reveal for our individual rankings on the last episode, Mike. Let me, uh, we shared some. See if I can pull that up real quick. He is, uh, this is going to surprise you guys. I'm going to guess he's higher than you would think. I'm going to guess he's eight.

Okay. 12 for me. He's 13 for me. You guys are all too low. Eight is too low? RB7 right now. Are you still working on yours? My first pass is done. Okay. So. Well, that's unsurprising. Deal with it. Let it wash over you. That would be, that would be obviously his highest finish, but he's got every opportunity in front of him. You have them at a 10% target share? I do. I've got him at 8. Got to bump those. Those are rookie numbers. Got to bump those up. Now I've got to look and see. I'm pretty sure he had a 10%. I have him at seven. A couple years ago, he went weirdly into just a past catching roll. He was a 14% target share two years ago. If you want to see Mike somehow even happier than he was last year, Kenneth Walker having a top five season would get it done. Yeah.

Travis Hunter, General Manager of the Jags, James Gladstone came out, said he's going to play both sides of the ball in 26. We know he's going to play both. That doesn't help us. Now, I will say it's better than the report of he's not going to play offense. Well, I don't feel like that report was ever actually he's not going to play off. It kind of, it was, that's what it was alluding to. It was like, oh, he's full-time corner. That's all, that's what was said. Yeah. And then to me, that's, okay, he's doing 100% of defensive snaps. So offensively, now his snaps are throttled. That's the part we need to know. I pulled up an interview today with Liam Cohen where he flat out and you can't get anyone better. This isn't a reporter. This is Liam Cohen. Thank you, Liam. This is the head coach saying their plan for Travis Hunter is identical to when they drafted him, which is to get him on both sides of the ball as much as possible.

That's what he said. Look, we've had, we're going to talk about this forever. I have been very pro Travis Hunter playing offense. He won the bulletinacal. He is a fabulous wide receiver and he might be their best one. He might legitimately be their most skilled wide receiver. He could be. You can make an easy argument that his skill set is better than Jacoby Myers and Parker Washington. You could argue. We've seen Brian Thomas Jr. go put up that kind of a monster year. I think his highest ceiling is the highest of the group, but that doesn't mean that's the kind of snaps he's going to get. That will be the risk with Hunter. I could see myself never drafting Travis Hunter because the reward might not be worth the risk. It is really tough where these small little percentages make an enormous impact. When you say, okay, let's say he plays.

The majority of offense, but it's still not good enough. If he's playing 60% of snaps on offense, you look at the players who are slot only guys that can't get in on two wide receiver sets, they have such a hard path for fantasy plug and play relevance. I still am very skeptical. I agree with you, Andy, that Travis Hunter is a good wide receiver and too good to be off the field. They've got to involve him. They have a great wide receiver in that. But I also think he's not going to get enough snaps to be reliable for fantasy. I think that's right. I'm more just speaking to Jacksonville. I'm more just... Okay, that's fine. Which, I mean, it sounds like Liam Cohn has the same mindset of basically you drafted him to be a special weapon on both sides of the ball. We're going to use him that way. Maybe his plan was not to get him more involved when he was breaking out in week eight or whatever it was. But I just think he's a really good player. Now, it's hard because if I told you a game was happening tomorrow and I told you...

Start Jacksonville wide receiver with your season on the line. You could argue for the other three guys already. You could say Jacobi's the best one to play today. Brian Thomas is the best one to play today. Parker Washington is the best one to play today. Britain Strange is the best one to play today. And then you have to throw Hunter in there. So maybe the best path is just we'll watch from the sidelines. Yeah, Trevor Lawrence is way higher than I thought he'd be on my rankings. That was one of our reveals, Mike. Do you want to know where he is?

Or did I already tell you? I saw, you threw out a number, but you were not complete yet. Four. Pooh. Okay. Pooh. Oh, there he is. There he is. Oh, horse boy. We are into our overreactions episode, players and situations that fantasy football managers will overreact to this year. It is always a fun episode. On this episode last year, one of. the ones we brought up was not to overreact to Sequin's dominance. Yes. And believe that it's repeatable. That was not met with a lot of respect, maybe. I don't know, with a lot of agreement. People are not happy to hear it. Usually think whatever just happened is what's going to happen again. Like that is the normal stance. And it's sometimes true, but I mean, things change every single year. Yeah. Let's get into it. I'm not going to do.

what you all think i'm going to do which is just flip out all right overreactions i think we both picked a couple of them to go through i i feel like i want to start just based on what you just said jason which is that our default position is to say what happened last year is going to happen again we the first overreaction that i'm going to bring up is an overreaction to what are perceived stinkiness value is for a franchise. So we'll call this the poopy diaper club. This is the Browns, Jets, Cardinals, Dolphins. You could throw a couple other teams in there. We're talking about how bad are these teams? How bad is our perception of them and how do we react in fantasy? Our default opinion is, oh my gosh, I just had to watch 17 weeks of that garbage. So it's coming again and I don't want any player to touch that team. So my simple...

counterbalance, the pendulum swing in the other direction of this. Look, I stand by everything we've ever said. You want players on winning teams, okay? So we're not taking that out of the equation. Here's part of it. Part of it is you don't know which teams are going to be winning teams. You think you do, and some you do, some you will know. You can tell me Buffalo is going to win a lot of games. I will accept that. Yeah. But 20% somewhere in that range. Some years it's 15%, some years it's 25%. Some are in that range of teams that are below 500, become above 500 teams on a yearly basis, the turnover at the NFL level. So you've got, you know, a quarter of this of the league that is going from a team that we perceive as bad, that was bad, to a good team. So you're going to try to identify those situations. The other thing is that you will get fantasy value out of franchises that are not necessarily.

the funnest to watch, right? Even in the worst year of the Jets, Breece Halls had success, Garrett Wilson, top 10 wide receiver. The Cardinals were full of, from Jacoby Brissette to Tray McBride to Michael Wilson to the running back, I mean, James Connor the year before, you do find value in those positions. And what I don't want somebody to do is completely remove guys from your draft board because of the emotional reaction that you had to their nasty performances on the field. The breakout season for Odell Beckham came on a 6-10 season for the New York Giants. James Robinson, that breakout running back season, came on a 1 in 15 Jacksonville team. Brock Bowers' rookie season, Las Vegas was 4 and 13. Devon A-chan last year. We didn't like watching the Dolphins. We liked watching him. You talk about touchdown opportunities. Part of why you haven't ranked lower is you're afraid that they weren't a good offense last year, right? And so he still had a big performance. Harold Fanon last year, a big performance.

To me, you need to make sure that you're finding the diamonds in, I guess, the big Jurassic Park poop pile. Even if you don't like the team, there is the opportunity at 20% chance that they turn it around and become a winning team that fits the category of draft players on winning teams. And then there's a chance that talent just wins out on those franchises. It's something I've been saying a lot with the draft this year with some of these wide receiver destinations, some of the places where players have gone where you're like, oh, that's gross, that's nasty. Look, you might be right.

for some of these teams. But if you have a player you really like and you have a team situation that you can at least paint a picture of a chance that they turn it around, don't overreact to the stinkiness of these teams. Trey McBride had the greatest tight-in season ever on a four-win team. You can do it. And I think there is a difference between middle of the pack bad and bottom of the barrel bad. I think those things are different too. Yeah, you do need to have a little bit of thought behind it, you know. There are examples in the past where teams that you thought were going to be putrid were good. And it is shocking. I think of the Texans a couple years back when the Cardinals acquired their next year's first, and we thought, oh, this is a top five pick for sure. And then they were really, really good. But also, they got a new rookie quarterback who was surprisingly way better than we thought. And so I do think you can take a look at these teams, these bad teams.

I kind of get a good idea of like, okay, sometimes it's a player is alone. So he's going to soak up so much of the target share that they can still be bad. But other times when you're looking at the bad teams that are going to get better, there's got to, I just look at the quarterback and say, is there a chance? So for instance, should do her Sanders, right? Is there a chance that he could surprise and be better? I think. Probably. I think that is more likely that he could have... Better than what? Well, I'm saying as opposed to, like, if we're looking at these four teams and saying, you know, Gino Smith at this stage of his career, is he going to really rescue and turn the Jets into a really good team?

Probably not. Now, I think probably not with Shador as well. Browns were in 9-1 score games last year. There were a lot of games that their defense kept them in. It didn't mean that they had great offense. I mean, you can talk about the Browns and Quintan Judkins. Judkins and Fanon had great seasons. Yeah, but that stat is such an indictment of the offense. Because of how. Like if they were in 9-1-score games. They went 4 and 5 in 1-score games. Yeah. Their defense was that good. Every week their offense is that bad then. Exactly. Every week you would look at the score and you'd be like, oh, the Browns are in it again. Yeah. You know, I know Jason, you don't have high expectations for the dolphins. You know, a lot of their personnel is pretty similar to last year, but you bring in Malik Willis. The performances by, you know, who they had on the offensive side last year was terrible. Two is gone. Just keep an open mind. Don't shut these teams out. Don't.

don't completely take them off your list for the back for the draft board because i think there's opportunities to find value and i think the overreaction is to say oh my gosh i don't want one you know what i like about that andy i like your positivity thank you i like how optimistic you are you're looking forward and you're saying it can be better it doesn't always have to be worse uh but now it's my turn uh not yet oh me and now it's your dude i've been waiting forever um My, I'm so back here, baby. I am back to my old ways. Oh no. I know what this is. Yeah. My overreaction is don't overreact to the onslaught of rookie titan success recently. Okay. And so now here's just another off season. It's, yeah, I mean, it feels just like another offseason. I will, I want to qualify this because I have completely changed.

from saying that rookie tight ends, you know, they take time to develop, they can't hit the ground running in year one. That's the old NFL. It's obviously changed. Obviously. This last year, you had Warren, Loveland, Fanon, you had Brock Bowers, you've had Laporta. So I am not stuck in that. But what I am saying as an overreaction is because we have this slew of really good fantasy impact rookies, there are, there's at least. Sadiq this draft, and if you want to throw stowers in there, where people are going to be drafting these players higher than they should be based upon the overreaction of what's happened recently. And I want us to be smarter than that and look at the nuance of the players. First of all, Warren and Loveland were unbelievable talents. These guys, their production profiles, their landing spots, like we could see this coming.

literally the best prospect that tied in that we've been doing the show for over a decade. He was a perfect prospect. We knew about him years in advance. That's not what Kenyon Sadiq is. Even Eli Stowers, especially where he ended up behind Dallas Goddard. You know, when we look at historical trends, that's great, but it's not predictive. It describes what happened. It doesn't automatically mean that Sadiq is going to be good. If you look at Sadiq as a prospect, he is way behind those other guys. Yards per route run. Only Hayden Hurst was lower over the last decade. For a first rounder? For a first round tight end. You look at a dominator rating, which is the percentage of the team's yards and targets. Only Hurst and O.J. Howard were lower for first round tight ends. You look at...

yards per team pass attempt. And the reason I'm throwing these three stats out is because these are three of the most predictive stats that we have for, you know, pass catchers coming from college to the NFL. He's the lowest of any first round tight end over the last decade. Now he goes to a team where he's not going to be in a Brock Bauer situation and soaking up the targets. He's behind Garrett Wilson. At the very least, Garrett Wilson is soaking up the targets. So. I believe he's going to be overdrafted based on the hype of this is a top in first round draft pick. Those have been dominating. I'm just going to take my shot. I'm just going to, you know, swing for the fences in the early middle rounds, especially when it comes to late August. A drafts are happening. People are going to push them up a round or two too high. I don't think that we have a breakout rookie tight end this year, even though I love Stowers.

And I just don't want to overreact from the run we've been on. I don't disagree with you at all. I know the prospect of Kenyon Sadiq, I am concerned of if you're that awesome, why aren't you dominating in college ball? It's like, OJ. Howard's is kind of, and he's at Alabama. He's in the, was, sorry, in the SEC. Like, Josh Jacobs was similar. You know, like as a running back, his production profile was lacking, but you could understand why. Sadiq, you can't. Like, why aren't you better? I'm just chuckling the whole time because your, your topic is don't overreact to rookie tight hands. Just call it what is, Jason. I don't like Kenyan Sadiq. Thank you. Okay. Just be intellectually honest with the people. Just say, don't overreact to Kenyon Sadiq. Okay. That's, but the reason, my point is.