Breakout Picks + Austin Ekeler Joins the Show! - Fantasy Football Podcast for 8/24

Very excited to try some season long. I'm sorry, I apologize, some DFS this year as.

We're making it happen in Arizona. And experience season-long wins without the season-long wait. Sign up today at fendual.com to claim your bonus and start playing today. That's fendual.com slash f-ff, age and location restrictions apply. Bonus issued as non-withdrawable site credit that expires after 30 days. And want to thank Head-in-shoulders. Great sponsor. Head-and-shoulders scalp shield technology is never not working to give you 100% dandruff.

protection even between washes and our never not working segment presented by head and shoulders it's never not working i mean people loving that and you want to know why because it's great we're never not working for you we are coming up with the uh what to do when three wide receivers are drafted together on the same team in adp the second and third round rookie running back picks go listen to those segments last week the week before and stay tuned for thursday our never not working segment is going to be awesome and

Use head and shoulders, scalp shield technology. It works day and night. Be gone. Oh, yeah, you don't want them flakes. No. Get out of here with that junk. No, you look at bad. You can get up to 100% dandruff protection that's never not working with head and shoulders scalp shield technology available at walmart.com. Breakouts. All of our sleepers, breakouts, bust and values are in the ultimate draft get. You can check those out. Those are all of our consensus picks for each of those.

Today we want to bring forth kind of a individual breakout pick, and I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to kick it off. I'm excited. This guy was on the cusp of a my guy. In fact, the reason he wasn't selected or was removed from consideration is because his teammate was selected by my teammate, Mike Wright. But it's Deontay Johnson wide receiver for the, I think, resurgent.

Pittsburgh Steelers offense. Okay. All right. Let's go. We've talked a lot about how good it's looked in the preseason. It has looked as good as the Cardinals' offense has looked bad. It has been one of the more. I don't like that comparison, but it is fair. It is accurate. Yeah, Cardinals, I believe, went three possessions, all three and out gained negative one yard with the starters. Well, that's how you stay safe. Yes. Just don't play. Just don't play.

But Deontay Johnson last year in 15 games had 144 targets, 88 receptions, 9.6 targets per week for Deontay Johnson. And the reality is, is in this preseason, in my opinion, and you guys can weigh in as well. He's looked like the go-to receiver once again. Had a big play in the last preseason game. Hasn't been coming off the field. Whereas when they're in two wide receiver sets, Juju and Claypool have been, you know, sharing some of that time.

And volume is king and fantasy. And for whatever reason, like, Deonte is not getting a lot of respect for a player that's top five in targets. His average draft positions in the late fifth round right now. I don't know where you could find guaranteed volume that late in draft. And he had the highest target share per snap in the entire NFL. And this is still a player that is ascending, in my opinion, as an athlete, as a young wide receiver.

And everybody's emotions went to the drops of last season because he led the league in drops. But when you lead and target share per snap, you have the higher probability or opportunity for drops. And if you look back over the last few years, I think we get too emotional about that. Leaders in drops in 2019 was Edelman. 2018 was Landry, Ridley, and Julio. 2017 was Keenan Allen. That.

doesn't mean that those players are getting benched, and this offense doesn't function without Deonté Johnson. So to me, it's another one of those draft value elite upside combinations that makes me really, really excited. In Dynasty, I was offered Corey Davis and O'Dell Beckham in exchange for Deontay Johnson, who I have on my roster. I said no to that offer. I'm not willing to give up on the elite upside.

of a young man that's averaging 10 targets a week. So I, to me, he is a great breakout candidate to go up over 1,000 yards, go up over 100 receptions and really, you know, if he gets in the end zone. Right. Watch out. He's a very safe option in the middle rounds for volume. It is there. And the thing that you said that I like the most when I look about, look at Deonté Johnson is.

He doesn't come off the field. And they drafted Pat Friermouth. This is going to, they're going to be in more two tight-in sets, more two wide receivers on the field. And Claypool's the supreme athlete here. That's why Mike loves him that breakout. You know, he makes Deontay Johnson look.

you know, unathletic. But Deonti is the wide receiver won for this team. When it comes to targets, snap percentage, that type of stuff. I think he is very, very safe. And then it's, you know, the touchdowns, the non-sticky metric. If those happen to go his way, he will have a great season. He had three games last year where he was injured. So he had two targets, one, and then didn't play at all. So he was banged up to start the year, still ended up at 144. And.

While he's safe, he still had, you know, he had a number three overall finish, number five overall finish, seven overall finish. So he still gave you some elite weeks. And then at the end of the year was the like benching problem in week 17. So I don't think we've seen the best of Deonté over the course of a year yet. Yeah, I like Deontay Johnson a lot. I see where the ceiling that Chase Claypool, if he really takes the second year leap like I'm projecting,

He can jump into elite category. I don't think that Deonti Johnson can make that jump, but he is extremely solid. And I would love to have him on my team as wide receiver two, wide receiver three. Now, he's in that range. He's in the Tyler Lockett round for me, which is the fifth round. But depending on team makeup, maybe you have a couple wide receivers earlier that are the...

higher variance, big play type of receivers. And you're like, well, I just need some safe half point or full point PPR points here. And Deonti Johnson is an excellent target for that. If you have a safe wide receiver one, you should go Tyler Lock in the fifth round. If you have a up and down wide receiver one, you should go Deonti Johnson in the fifth round. Yeah, if you went three running backs or you grabbed one of the early tight ends, and so you only have one other wide receiver on your roster, Deontay is fantastic.

Breaking News. A couple bits of news just broke. First one, Robbie Anderson. Bantthers. What did I say? Boke. Just broke? But you dropped the R. It was a silent R. I won't concede that I did. Two-year $29.5 million extension for Panthers wide receiver, Robbie Anderson.

Jason's just nodding silently. Look, I'm just thrilled because I didn't know what the breaking news was. Oh, yeah. And I heard Robbie Anderson. I'm like ready to die over here. I just assume Robbie Anderson has been lost. We cannot find him. He went on an airplane that disappeared. I don't know. But that's great. That's great. I trade for him in Dynasty. It's good news. Amelia Earhart. So I'm not sure right now since it just broke from Adam Schefter whether or not it's a two-year extension on top of the.

existing year, I would assume that's the case, as opposed to just a new deal. But Robbie got the bag, 20.5 million guaranteed for Robbie Anderson. Good for you, man. Let's go. And then also there is a report from Dan Campbell concerned that DeAndre Swift will be not ready for week one. Ooh. Well, here's the full quote. That's not great. We don't know if he's going to be there. We don't know even if he is how much we're going to get out of him. Wow. So.

that's a problem. And where you have to draft Swift, I assume most people are hoping to drop him right into your starting lineup in week one. Oh, that's brutal. Yeah, where Swift is going, he has to be a starter. So that makes it very difficult to draft a guy that you're not sure is going to be there week one. We'll obviously have more information for tomorrow's show. But if the Swift targets are not there in week one, Jason, who's going to get them?

It goes right into my breakout. I don't want to cheer this news, but it does add a little bit of fuel to the fire of... Wait a second. Wait a second. I'm a little worried that if you say the name, there could be the final justice to Jason. Someone else say it. Jason's going to talk about T.J. Hawkinson. Thank you, Mike. Let's talk about T.J. Hawkinson. What if you just start calling the players like their number? Oh, that's, that's... Would that protect them? I don't know. Or we can try something.

Now I'm hurting more players. Now I'm going across all NFL teams. No, but T.J. Hawkinson is my breakout pick. And I'm really excited we had this show because I don't think we've talked enough about T.J. Hawkinson's potential to break out, certainly not for my liking because I'm very, very confident in a breakout for T.J. Hawkinson. In fact, I don't really know how it doesn't happen outside of obviously getting injured. But if he's out there.

Here's just a reminder of who T.J. Hawkinson is over the last two years, right? He was drafted number eight overall three picks behind. You know, all everybody's up in arms of number five overall pick Kyle Pitts. Now, Kyle Pitts is a more talented prospect leaving college, but he was the number eight pick in the NFL draft. He was drafted to be great. His rookie year.

He had a rookie tight-in year, 32 receptions, 367 yards, two touchdowns. Pretty meaningless, as most rookie tight-ins do. 48 drops. And then he doubled, over-doubled, every single one of those numbers last year as a sophomore, which is still not the year.

that tight-ins breakout. I've been talking about my report we just published on year two running backs, year-two wide receiver breakouts. That report found that the year breakout for tight-ins is year three. From Weeks 1 through 14 last year, he was the tight-in three. He was within 30 points of Darren Waller last year. And since the year 2000, there have only been nine second-year tight-ins with 100 targets, and he is one of them. And the list is pretty much all Hall of Famers.

But to give you an idea of how good this second year, you're like this second year, oh, he kind of broke out and you think, yeah, but we've seen it and it wasn't that special. This was really special for second year tight ends aren't usually what breaks out. Here's how special it was in this last century, the only tight ends who have had as good a sophomore season. Here's the list. Rob Grancowski, Jimmy Graham, Antonio Gates, George Kittle, Jason Witten, Mark Andrews, Aaron Hernandez, Todd Heap.

Chris Cooley and Travis Kelsey. That's a shout out to Todd Heap. Oh, yeah. I mean, if you haven't been playing long and you don't remember Chris Cooley or Todd Heap or even Aaron Hernandez, these guys were. That list is crazy. Yeah, that list is 100% hit rate. I mean, maybe Mark Andrews disappointed and doesn't go on to something. And Chris Cooley's not a Hall of Famer, but like those guys are awesome. That's what he did. That's what he already did. But now look at year three. He's coming into a situation.

which is the best possible situation outside of replacing Travis Kelsey. Like the argument for Darren Waller a couple years ago was there were no other guys to target. There's no other guys to target. No Kenny Gallaudet. No, Marvin Jones. No, no, no, no, Danny Amandola. They lost over 300 targets. To be fair, to be fair, there was no, Kenny Gallaudet and no, Marvin Jones last year. They lost the majority of the year. No, no, no. They lost over 300 of last year's targets.

are gone. And yes, they got a slight downgrade at quarterback, but this isn't, they're not going to Tyrod Taylor. They're not even going to some promising rookie. Jared Goff is serviceable. I mean, we were, he's pretty good. He's pretty good. He's not great. But I mean, he's supported Higby. He's better than bad. He's better than bad. He's good. I mean, he's supported Robert Woods and Cooper Cup and these other options. And the replacements here are literal scraps that have fallen off the dinner table. I mean,

Tyrol Williams and Brashad Perryman. Come on. Both these guys have been in the league for five years. Both of these guys have a very not nice career high of 69 receptions. Brashad Perriman's never even hit 700 yards. And the reports out of camp has been basically that they're not that great. And now apparently DeAndre Swift, my point is he is going to dominate.