Early RB Rankings Part 2 + Champion Challenge - Fantasy Football Podcast for 4/14

stopping defense. When you saw the Buccaneers matched up against your fantasy running back, you grimaced because you knew that that player was not going to give you a high in performance that week, unless your name was Khalil Herbert. So I think that Herbert could be worked in a little bit more, and that along with the offense is why I've got Montgomery down at a lower end RB2. Scoring opportunities could be very low. New offensive coordinator, Luke,

Luke Gexie calling plays for the first time. Zeke comes in at 17th. You're a wild now here with Zeke. Mike has him at 11. Thank you. Jason and I do not. But I mean, I need more information, Mike. I need to see what this offseason looks like. I don't know why he ended up here.

That's what I was saying about the mosaic puzzle is you just, you start trying to move guys up, but the natural consequences other guys just get moved down. For me, why I am bullish. Yeah, like forgiving of. That's a better word. Forgiving Zeke for this last year, which honestly was not that bad of a year for fantasy football. What was this fantasy finish this past year?

Let me pull up. Despite all of the... He finished at Running Back 6. All the arrows thrown out him throughout the whole season. So the guy finished at RB6 and the fantasy community is like, yeah, we're done here with... He's dead. That would make six consecutive top 12 years, by the way. A thing to look at that has already occurred for the off season is Amari Cooper had to be traded because of the contract of Ezekiel Elliott. This thing is an absolute complete albatross. It was...

terrible at the time. It's still terrible now. Why do they call them that? In Albatross, I believe it's because they're... I mean, that's a big bird. Yeah, I think they cannot really fly well. Oh, really? Because they're too big and bloated. Do they, do you have any... Get the team on it. Do you have any knowledge over there, Borogogan? It's a golf term, I know. It is? It's got to be based on the bird, though. It is. I'll get on that. Uh...

But here's what I call. They also use that exact phrase in golf. I don't have an answer to your question. So like I was saying about Tampa Bay, week one, Zeke terrible against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. But then rattled off RB8-1-66. And it came out after the season. What happened in week four? A partial tear of his PCL. So he was able to play through the rest of the season because the doctors told him. So you believe it. The doctor said it's not going to get worse. You can play.

And those first five games, he looked great. And then you could tell that things just weren't the same for him. Through the first six weeks, averaging nearly 87 rushing yards, that plummeted to 43 for the rest of the season. You could see it on the field. You could see it in the numbers. And I believe that he is closer to the beginning of...

the season that he was to the second half. And I understand, and that will 100% be the reason why people buy in. By the way, the word albatross is, used metaphorically to mean a burden that feels like a curse. And it comes from a 1798 poem by a good friend of the show, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the rhyme of the ancient mariner.

Oh. So a burden that feels like a curse is definitely a good way to describe the contract situation. Okay, but that still does not answer the bird question. I need someone to read the poem. Well, I mean, the rhyme of the ancient mariner, you have to anticipate that... Is the albatross, the mariner? No, the albatross is causing issues because they have big wingspans, right? All right, listen, here's the problem I have with that argument for Ezekiel Elliott. Okay.

You're a year old. Last year's running back six. You're a year older, Zeke. Uh-huh. You didn't look good. I like the excuse. I like the reasoning. But you've had your yards per carry diminish from your peak years. And you're going to have, you've have a ton of volume on your body, right? You've carried the ball more than anybody else in football over the last three years. So I know you're not at the Derek Henry level of injury.

But when you have a PCL injury, after years and years of a heavy workload, you have a very capable committee back in Tony Pollard. It's got to be a confidence of what ceiling you can hit for Zeke. So, yeah, I mean, one of the reasons he finished at six was because he played every game. Sure. So, you know, 13.4 points per game last season. He wasn't winning you any weeks. At the beginning he was.

He had a running back one finish in week three. Yeah, one number one overall. I would say six and six on the week helps you win a week as well. But it's funny, right? You finish at six, but you only ever finished above that number one time. Yeah. So that's a, he's a steady guy. He played the whole season so that always helps your end of your finish. Up till the bye week.

He was running for over five yards of carry. I mean, I really believe it was the PCL. And I was talking with Betsy, the our injury guy, and he said that should be completely healed up by the time the season starts. So that particular injury shouldn't be a concern. Now, if he starts running poorly again, will that mean that it's not completely healed up?

Or he's just old. Cam Acres at 18, Josh Jacobs at 19, Elijah Mitchell at 20. Any thoughts on these three? Acres is, to me, the most singularly terrifying player in the top 25 at Running Back. That's where I was going to start is I have no idea what to do with Cam Acres because it was a miracle of modern medicine that Kaymakers was able to return.

in such a quick time frame from his Achilles injury. But his numbers are so bad. In the time he returned. Yes. In the time he returned, that wasn't stopping. 2.5 yards per carry. Oh, gosh, it's so bad. That was not stopping Coach McVeigh from giving him the ball a whole bunch. And he'll have even more time for the recovery. And.

And they're an incredible offense, and they'll be great. Yes. But will he be the guy? I don't know. Because he should be. I think he will be the guy, and we're probably too low on him right now. But it's such a scary draft proposition to put, Kyle, give me his ADP, where he's going in baseball right now. RB 14, 309. Yeah.

Is that ahead of Aaron Jones? Because that's ahead of Aaron Jones, right? Yeah, and Zeke. Zeke is late 4th. Yeah, so I'll take both of them over Acres. It's just a terrifying. It's terrifying because what you saw last year, like, you can't really hold it against him if he's just, you know, he didn't have an offseason to train. He was just rehabbing. He didn't have time with the offense. He just got thrust back into it. And Sean McVeigh was willing to say, you got it all.

He's young. He was drafting high. He was he 22? Yeah. And he'll be 23 pretty soon. I loved him coming into the league. We all did. That's why this conversation is so bizarre of like, I don't really know which side of the argument I'm going to plant the flag and choose to believe about Cam Acres. Because watching him, when he came back, he was atrocious to me. Like my eyeball test and not an official NFL.

Scout, I thought he looked real bad. Agreed. He also, to me, looked undersized. Well, he's a smaller guy. Only one player in the last three years has more rushing attempts in the red zone than Dalvin Cook. I'm sorry, only one has, it comes in second to Dalvin Cook here. Dalvin Cook has the most. Josh Jacobs is second. Oh, man. Josh Jacobs had nine touchdowns, 54 receptions. Finished his RB 14. I've got.

Josh Jacobs fever, man. Do you really? Yes, I do. And, yeah, I don't know. Take it. Take it and run. I've had that for too many years. I'm out on that. That's what's so funny about it is. I've caught Josh Jacobs fever, he says. I was so out on Josh Jacobs last year. Is this Josh McDaniels related? It's McDaniels related. He was the running back 14 with.

64 targets. We finally saw him getting targets. You're bringing in a true elite wide receiver to make this team so much better. And I just, I, like Josh Jacobs is the dude. And he keeps doing what? Like running back 18, running back 8, running back 14. Yeah. It's, I'm not going to bet against him this year. And I think that the Raiders are vastly improved.

And I want running backs from teams that are improved, and the market does not reflect that improvement, where right now he's going as the running back 21 in the fifth round. He is another example of the Gibson situation where when he came into the league, aspirationally, top five. Yes. And because he didn't deliver on that kind of potential, there's a fatigue there where Jacobs is a very, very solid RB2, RB1 upside week to week.

You know, did he win you a lot of weeks? No, but as an RB2, he was very, very solid. Yes. And so, and then Josh McDaniels should mean good things for the offense. Elijah Mitchell, another player with, you know, he finished at RB25 last year, missed a bunch of games, but was outstanding. He's the only rookie running back with more than five 100-plus-yard performances in the first 11 games played. That's kind of crazy.

Yeah, that's... Only AP has more than that, but since then, it's been Eli Mitchell and nobody else. Okay. Eli and Adrian. Eli Mitchell is like, this is just a pin in the cardboard, or a cardboard's not the... A pin in the bonnet, a bee in the bonnet? No, no, no, it's, it's a... We're going to move on from the feather in the cap. A feather in the cap? No.

A pin on the map? A bird in the hand. No. I was so far off on the right word. Okay. That your metaphors right now are not even close. So like if you were going to. Was this a good thing for him? Was the pen a good thing? Yeah. This pin is bu, I can't even. This is a placeholder for Elijah Mitchell that I have to see what happens in the NFL draft.

You're not even going to attempt a new analogy? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay. Because my brain is completely stuck trying to find the word while I'm talking. No, this is not going well. Here's the reality. For the 49ers, I believe this is the sixth consecutive year. They've had a different leading fantasy running back. So it's either the fifth or sixth straight year where that's happened. So we've gone through it all. We've gone through the Rahim Most year. Now Elijah Mitchell's there. Everything you saw in the field was elite.

Right? You didn't think he was going to be the guy. Trace Herman was drafted higher. He was the guy. He's 24 years old. He's very fast. But he went out multiple times to injury over the course of the year. This team has never rested on, you know, one back. They've always gone out and made it annoying. They've always gone out and added Tavin Coleman to the offense to mix with Jerich McKinnon back. And you're like, why can't you just give me one back in the Shanahan system? And that's because they know that they'll break three or four of them.

Because they all get hurt. Oh, my gosh, you figured it out. Corkboard. A pin in the cork board? Yeah. I'm like, I'm just holding the note up. You're holding a note up for you. Yeah. Yeah. See how it makes more sense now? It makes more sense, but it's not really the best, like, most profound. It's a cork board. Right. I mean, it's a cork board. Come on. Cardboard, cork board. Oh, that's what you, because you said cardboard. Yes. A pin in the cork board. Yes.

And it threw everything off. Boy, yes, it did. All right. Eli Mitchell, the strange thing is he doesn't belong at 20. The old cork board. Is that his nickname? He doesn't belong at 20. He's ranked at 20. If they don't add more people in the draft, and it's his job, we'll have him rank higher, right? Yes. So that's what it comes down to. Can his body hold up? Do you get a carousel of running backs? He can be a top 15 back if the...

existing depth chart stays the same. Fair? Fair? Yeah, but can he actually stay healthy? Yeah, I don't know. At 24, the answer was no, or at 23, the answer was no. J.K. Dobbins, Saquan, Barclay, Clyde Edwards, Allaire, Damien Harris, Rashad Penny. That's 21 through 25, 26, ETN, 27, Dillon, 28, Cream Hunt, 29, Cordero Patterson, the Rebirth Project. And then number 30, Devin Singletary.