Second Chance Players + Ranks Alive, Burning Questions! - Fantasy Football Podcast for 5/7

We have a great show for you today. We're answering a lot of your questions, your voicemails, and getting into some debates. Now that our rankings are done, you don't want to miss a minute. Make sure you subscribe and enjoy. To the Fantasy Footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Oh, Appleman. Tuesday, May 7th. Jason Moore, Andy Holloway with you, the fantasy footballers podcast. You know, Andy, you, uh, you came in. You had a, you had a, you had your pointer finger up. Like you had a, you had a point to say. But I'm telling you from my perspective, the way you were holding that hand up. Yeah. Flipping you off? I thought you were flipping the camera off. I mean, I was like, what is happening? Welcome in, YouTube. I was like, okay. Well, Andy.

pulling out his best uh no no it's a pointer finger it was kind of directed at you like hey jason it's you and me today best friend's day mike is sick as a dog or sick as a bear sick as a bear jay gris sitting in today yeah so it's you and i and that's okay i think that makes for a great show you and i have also just completed our initial run through of The 2024 stat projections for every single offensive player in the National Football League. Yes, we have. It was a grueling labor of love. And this is only the first go through. We'll obviously be updating things nonstop when superstars like Jalen Geithen sign at certain places. Oval Beckham. Well, I said superstars. Sorry. Yeah, I mean, it's, but it took a lot of work. And it's nice to have the first set done.

I got away to a cabin and just like hunkered down because I'm very ADHD. It takes me too long if there's any noise, any movement. Jason and I have different processes for completing our statistical projections. Yes. Very different. Yeah, mine is really good. Slow. Mine is also very slow. Yeah, I think it is good. I think your process is good. It's just that... uh sometimes you end up in this place of desperation because uh normally i am done before you and that was not the case this year you started very early this was the first year you got away to a wilderness yeah our our 10th year uh doing this is the first year i was the first one to finish because of the wilderness i think the woodland creatures they helped they certainly did yeah so you and i we went through our first run through we've been

It's fun when you get done statting out all these players or at least the first, you know, draft of that, which all goes into the ultimate draft kit. That's where all of our rankings come from, all of our projections and everything are in there. It's also what allows your custom scoring formats to, you know, if you do things where, you know, whether you're six point or four point or you do a extra bonus for tight ends at this, you know, whatever your league is, you can plug in your stats and we have the statistical backing. Yeah, so you can, yeah, exactly, contort the rankings to your league style. That's part of the UDK's customization. But it's fun when we kind of get done with it and we look like, for example, my first run through, I have Marvin Harrison Jr., somebody that people are very excited to see where he gets statted. I have him at number nine. And I think you've got him somewhere around 16. I have him a little bit lower. Right now, yeah, I believe he's my wide receiver 17.

in half PPR scoring. His upside is through the roof, though. I don't blame anyone taking him as a top 10 wide receiver. Is there a name on your initial rankings at any position that you are embarrassingly high on and would have preferred I didn't bring it up? So you could adjust it and then come back and tell me the number later. So this is the weirdest one. It's, it's so, so, so silly to say that you're embarrassed to have this guy number one. Because he literally might be the best player of all time in the NFL. But I was genuinely wholeheartedly shocked when I finished my rankings and saw that Patrick Mahomes was my quarterback one in six points scoring formats. Now, obviously, he's been there before. So that's not like an outlandish thing, but.

You know, he was the quarterback eight last year. The system that they've been employing is more dink and dunk. And while I do think he's upgraded his weapons, I was just, I was surprised to see that's how it landed. But, you know, part of my process is going through the entire T of the teams and seeing the entire T of the teams. Because I, you know, I love a good high T team. And when you looked at. Markey's Brown added to this team. And you look at Xavier Worthy added to this team and you still have all the other cast of characters, you know, possible suspension notwithstanding for Ruchy Rice. It all compiled up to where I think Patrick Mahomes is going to have a bounce back season statistically. Obviously he won the Super Bowl, but for fantasy purposes, I'm more in on him, especially when you combine that with the fact that because he had a down year, he's not going to be like last year he was in the second round of your draft. Most.

quarterbacks that you would define as a pocket passer require an outlier to high-end touchdown season, which oftentimes is difficult to throw into your stat projections when you look at averages. So it's rare when a touchdown-dependent type of quarterback ends up that high in the rankings. Mahomes is very much like worthy, much like Rogers was during his peak of projecting those kind of years. But I have him at three. My surprise, I have DAC at four in six points scoring, which was different. And then I have Evan Ingram sitting at three at tight end. Yeah, that one. Which, you know, is not part of my brain. No, you're very anti-Ingram. And that is surprising. I've got Evan Ingram at my tight end nine. I think I, I just look at, I know. That's where I normally like to keep him. Yeah, you know, a low-end, tight-in one where he doesn't matter. No low-end tight-in one matters.

And so he's coming off a season where he almost set the, you know, reception record, played a lot of games without Christian Kirk in that underneath area of the field where I think that boosted him up. Obviously, there's a ton of targets vacated here between, you know, the departures of Zay Jones and Calvin Ridley. So he's an interesting player to debate. Where is Jaden Daniels on your first run through when you talk about let's do the rookies? Sure. Rookie quarterbacks. Jaden Daniels. Jaden Daniels, I was surprised he is just outside my top 12. He's my quarterback 13. Okay, I've got him at 14. Yeah, when you have the ability to rush for, you know, the ability to rush for 850 yards and 5 plus rushing touchdowns, that's usually going to be a top 12 quarterback. It's just hard to, you know, we're never going to, you know, Jalen Hertz ran for 15 touchdowns last year. You're never going to project a number like that.

And so that's why also in the UDK, we've got an upside meter in there. So you can see like not just like here's what should happen. Here's the most likely outcomes. But also who's got the chance to just go nuclear? Who can explode? Who are you willing to take your shots on? And that's out of 10. What's your upside for Jaden Daniels out of 10? For Jaden Daniels? Let me pull. I have it while you pull it out. I have them at eight on the upside, which is very high. I have, let me see. I have them at eight and a half. So you suck.

No, I have the low end of the upside. Yeah, I'm just saying I feel like he's got more upside than you do. No, you do feel that way. Just mathematically. Caleb Williams at 18. So Caleb Williams, I still see with very high upside, but because of the weapons. He finds himself in a great situation, has as much talent as anybody that's been coming in. The only obvious difference for fantasy is he's not the... you know, 500 plus rushing yard type of guy. And because fantasy scoring is stupid and broken for quarterbacks, where they score more for running than they do for passing for the exact same amount of yards, it's just always unfair. You've got that very succinctly prepared. It's just, dumb. Just a drop? I think I want to drop where he can just explain his disdain. It's not going to change. No, I know it's not going to change. So just move on, brother. I've moved. I play moved on. I,

given my analysis moved on, but I still look, sometimes you need an agent for change. And I will try to speak truth into the darkness. Now, we didn't add testosterone levels to the rankings this year, right? Upside meters and risk meters. There's no high T. Because that would be the chargers this year, right? But I saw you put Justin Herbert, you had him a little higher than maybe. Yeah. Maybe you thought he was going to be. That was definitely maybe far more surprising than Patrick Mahomes because. Right now I've got him as a top 12 quarterback. And obviously Herbert is very talented real world quarterback, but he's lost most of his weapons. And this is a team that's going to run the ball. So, you know, for a pocket guy to really be up there, you've got to have 35 touchdowns. You don't see him throwing 35 touchdowns this year in this system with these weapons. But you have them in your top 12. I do. I have him running the ball quite a bit more. Well, I do as well. I think what people need to realize is like.

When you have rankings that go top to bottom, like to put Herbert there, that pushes other players out like a Jaden Daniels or a Tua or a Jared Gough or whatever, Stafford. So, you know, they can be misleading at times when you have rankings that go top to bottom because I was talking to you about this this morning, rookie wide receivers, for example. My highest ranked is Harrison at 9. I've got neighbors at 17. And then Roma Dunesay is down in the 40s right now. But that doesn't mean that Roma Dunesay is not going to be worthy of your roster just because he's outside the top 36. A lot of the times these players running backs, wide receivers at the, you know, when they're rookies, they earn snaps opportunities. Second half of the year can be a lot stronger than the first half of the year. So there's nuance there. That's what upside factors into. So I just thought we'd walk through a little bit of it. But.

Yeah, Kyle's pointing out since 2014, 3.7 rookie-wide receivers per season finishes top 36 options. So maybe it's not on Dunesley, maybe it's McConkey. Maybe it's Roman Wilson. Yep, I've got McComkey in my top 36 right now. So I believe I've got three rookies right now in my top 36. All of the player-by-player statistical projections, they launched with the UDK on June 1st, Ultimate draft kit.com. The best ball rankings normally launch on June 1st. Best ball rankings are live right now. They're live today. People are playing it now. We've got them now. We needed to get them out. So we bring it to you the people. So if you've got the UDK Plus, boom, bam, check your rankings. You've got best ball rankings. That's right. And you can also get in on the Discord channel, the best ball discord channel, people talking all the time because you're playing, you're drafting right now. And the best ball primer comes out on June 1st as well. All right, quick question of the day, Jason.

Oh, boy. This one comes from Marcus. It's Marcus with a K, Marcus, M-A-R-K-U-S, Marcus. It's not how we spell it over here. Well, he's from Germany. Oh, bonjour. Thanks for the great work. Do you guys believe in Chargers wide receiver, Quentin Johnston? I don't get why so many people seem to quit on him. Seems to put in a ton of work, and a new coaching staff could mean a fresh start. I don't know if the ton of work is correlating to the video circulating right now of him working out with Cardinals, rookie phenom Marvin Harrison, Jr. Have you seen that? Yeah, I've seen that. Don't use that as a video in favor of Quentin Johnston. You watch those two guys go. They're both first round picks and it's like one of them looks like a sensational super route running gazelle. And by comparison, maybe. Harrison looks much better. Yeah, maybe it's just by comparison because you're running next to Marvin Harrison.

Junior, but Quentin Johnson does not quite look as fluid. But let's talk about Quentin Johnson. There's a lot of people that invested in him in Dynasty Leagues. Last year had some, I would say, headline catching drops. The kind of drops that were played over and over and over again on Twitter, where people laughed. Very consequential as well in the games when they happened. I went back and I watched every target and reception of Quentin Johnston. last season. I heard tale of that. It took 11 minutes. I don't know if that's a lot, but I don't think it is. That's not a lot. No, that's not a lot. That's the problem. But continue, what did you see on film? So I say that because what the film doesn't show is every play he's not targeted. And there were a lot of those. His targets per route run, 13.7%. That's 39th out of 42 first round rookie wide receivers over the last decade.

So didn't get targeted a lot, low yards per outrun, 33 out of 42 in target percentage and had opportunity with Mike Williams going down. But I will say this, I watched every single play that he made on the entire year. Every target, every drop, every PI call, several of his drops came on plays where he did draw pass interference penalties. There were three real bad, real bad drops. He did make big plays. He made hands catches across the middle. He made plays down the field. You know, there were back shoulder throws and some rapport he was building with Justin Herbert that I thought were pretty great plays. So I thought it was better than the drop for Vade, like the story of opportunities. Like when he got them, there were more plays that he made than I thought he did. But the question isn't going to be.

Like that should be the given to me. Your first round wide receiver, you should make some place. The question should be how many opportunities are you getting to make them? You know, and then could he be the one? Okay, so let me ask you this to rewind just like two seconds into what you said. Your first round wide receiver, let me give you a hypothetical situation. Okay, you are a first round wide receiver. You go to a good quarterback. Yeah. And you are the number two. in targets. Like, you are set, you know, Jordan Addison last year is an example of this. First round wide receiver goes to a decent quarterback. He's the clear number two in the offense, but like he's not on the bench. He's on the field. Given just that generic thing, you're not a person, not Quentin Johnson, not Jordan Edison. What stat line would you be expecting for a first round wide receiver on the field as the wide receiver two for a good quarterback? Awesome question. Let me come up with an answer for you. Yes.

I did it. So you're on the field all season long? All season long. Game one to 17. Where would you? Let's say you play 75% of the snaps. And what number would you need to be to where you said, oh, that's an okay rookie season? Yeah. I would say probably just a hair above what JASN did last year. Because I don't feel like J.S.N's rookie season was. Jayson was what? Like 650 yards. Yeah. So I would say about 750 to 800 yards. I mean, it's a 17 game season. Yeah. So 700, 750, 800 yards, and 60 catches. Okay. So 55 to 60 catches. Let me give you a sample of Quentin Johnson. Now Quentin Johnson got off to a slow start, but also Mike Williams was there. Got up to a slow finish. But the finish was without Justin Herbert. So that's not fair either. Okay. So you've got a rookie year in the beginning where it's not really fair. You're brand new, your first couple games, right? The first couple of games of Justin Jefferson's incredible rookie season, he didn't play.

and you had Mike Williams there. The end of the year, no Justin Herbert. However, there was a six-game period where he was the number two. He was, Mike Williams was gone and Herbert was there, six games, and he has a great quarterback. Here would be his, and for the record, he played 74% of those snaps. So he was on the, he was the wide receiver two for this team. Setting up real nice. Here's the total stat line if he played that stretch for 17 games. It would have been 53 receptions for 504 yards and three touchdowns. So that would be. To me, that's not the end of the world. It's not the end of the world. But it is absolutely a doubt, which is not surprised. Nobody's surprised. Very underwhelming. I would. But going, jumping up to, you know, 67 to 70 receptions, 700, 800 yards and putting, you know, five or six touchdowns at six four to 20.

That doesn't seem unrealistic with no Mike Williams, no Keenan Allen. Yeah, so this is why I've got Ladd McConkey as high as I have him. Yeah, you have him the highest there, right? Yes, not only because I believe in the talent, but Quentin Johnson has a role to play, and he's still figuring out how to do that well in the NFL. He's, you know, going into a second year. I'm not betting, well, I am betting against him, but I'm not like closing the door. I don't think it's a guarantee that he's, you know, he can't be better. But you did grab the handle.

Oh, yeah, I'm like, closing the door, but I'm like peeking out first. I'm like, is it going to make it in? Probably not. I'm ready to shut it. But the thing is, is he was not a target earner. That's the biggest thing. He was on the field for 74% of snaps for that stretch and did not earn enough targets. Like you said, 39th out of 42 first round draft picks and targets per route run. That is. objectively awful. I think that Ladd-McConkie will be a target earner. He's going to be open in the spot where Herbert is expecting. And so that's why I've got Ladd-McCarkey coming in here and being immediately the number one, you know, I've got Quentin Johnson with about 100 targets and I've got Lab McCawkey with 125. It's a good discussion. I haven't closed the door on Quentin Johnston. One thing I didn't get to add from watching every single play, there were a number of plays where

He did not achieve separation down the field. Thus, no target, usually. And it was mostly intermediate routes. It wasn't over the tops down the sidelines, some of the bad drops. He actually had separation on those plays. And then they did involve him, not enough underneath using the yards after the catch. But in the intermediate routes, not enough separation, kind of Kelvin Benjamin-esque in that sense. Percentage chance he's their number one fantasy producer at wide receiver. I have it like. 20%. Yeah, exactly. 25%. He's definitely not the leader for odds on favorite. I don't know if that helped the deucers alley over there. I know Papa Josh had some dynasty investment in Quentin Johnston. Have you, uh, yeah, do you see what we just said as a pro Quentin Johnson or as an anti Quentin Johnson thing? He's on my team. I'm pro Quentin Johnson. So he didn't hear it at all. Yeah. It's whatever you wanted it to be. Okay. That's fair. Yeah.

Quentin Johnson's not going to work. You don't think? No. There's ways that we can paint and narratives we can paint, but it's not going to work. Yeah. Yeah. I know you're probably right. At least the historical situation is not good. Dotson, like Josh Dotson, Laquan Treadwell, John Ross, Nikiel Harry, Jalen Rager, those are other rookie first rounders that... that are on the field and not earning targets. Yeah. That's the problem is that he had opportunity. If you sat behind someone and you got on the field for 20, 30, 40, 50 percent of snaps, okay, but like. Yep. Yeah, it's good for them that they weren't the Brock Bowers destination because I think that would have made it easier for me to like the door would be locked. Oh, right, right, right. All right. Let's take a quick break and come back with some news. News and notes from around the league.

Not surprising to me, but the Steelers did decline the fifth year option for running back Najee Harris. I've got to be honest, I was a little surprised. Because you thought they liked him more than, they liked him more than they should? Yes, 100%. It was not my opinion on Najee and that I think he should have the fifth year option. I'm surprised that the Steelers didn't do it. Very proud of you, Pittsburgh. Yeah, I mean, they're a well-run organization. And I think it does tell you something about Najee that is not. A rosy outlook. You know, Naji has not been bad. No. Noggi has not been what they thought he was. Both of those things can be true at the same time. Last year, Jalen Oren was the better running back in basically every metric. He had a ton of targets. Explosive run rate was 7% higher than Naji Harris. Naji still gets into the end zone. And you and I talked before the show, Pittsburgh's.

greatest accomplishment in the draft was the offensive line in upgrading what Najee and Jaylon Warren will have to work with slash Cordero Patterson. Thank you. Arthur Smith. Yeah, and they got a quarterback upgrade. Say whatever you want about Russell Wilson and Joseph Fields. They're not great. Oh, I will. But they're they will threaten the defense more than Kenny Pickett did. And so that should help the running backs. Honestly, both of these guys, Najee and Jalen Warren. are huge winners after the draft. You know, you want to talk about the sneaky veteran winners. It's not that they just didn't draft a running back. It's that they drafted no running back and totally improve the offensive line. I, this will probably be the nicest thing I've ever said. But if you want to get boring and take Najee later, because nobody else wants to get boring, it'll probably help your team. Wow, that is without a doubt the nicest thing you've ever said about Najee. That's what I thought. You've been anti-naji as long as I can remember. He was the running back for his rookie year, running back 14.

two years ago and running back 21 this last year. I expect. And fun fact, nobody has ever won a fantasy championship with him. That is actually inaccurate because Najee Harris is a second half of the year champion. They definitely won one the first year because that was when Mitch Trubisky gave him like 9,000 receptions. Dude, the last two years. And what last year was RBAed over the last half or something? Yeah, and even two years ago, he was unbelievable when it came to the second half. Sucked the first half. But the second half, he was very good. He's going at RB22 in basketball. That's about where he belonged. I was going to ask him. All right. We have a bunch of new players on new teams. Mediocre signing of the week. O'Dell Beckham Jr. to the Dolphins. DJ Chark to the Chargers. By the way, DJ Chark put up better numbers than all of those. Quentin Johnston season-long numbers.

So that one is something you could pay attention to because he's probably better than Quentin Johnston. Yeah. Chase Claypool to the Bills. Boston Scott to the Rams. And this morning, Rashad Penny to the Panthers. And you said, well, maybe Miles Sanders is not long for that roster. Yeah, I mean, they've got some dead cap to deal with if they were to get rid of Miles Sanders. But the fact that they drafted Jonathan Brooks, they weren't part of bringing Miles Sanders in. Miles Sanders still has a big name. They're grabbing Rashad Penny. They've already got Chuba there. It's like, I feel like, you know, maybe a team is knocking on Miles Sanders' door saying come on down. You either deal with Dead Cap or a dead running back because he is done. Dead Cap or dead back? I don't. Just remember this time last off season. Frank Wright was a head coach of the Carolina Panthers and Miles Sanders was supposed to get over 4,000 targets. So I wanted to bring this up in not here, but I will.

Specific to the Frank Reich, when I was doing the statting and, you know, and all of this, I was looking at the Panthers situation and I like Dave Canales. I like what he did for Gino, for Baker, for this last year for Rashad White. Yeah. But last year at this time, I did like Frank Reich. Like I thought Frank Reich was a good hires, good for the offense, it's a good offensive mind. He has had success in the past. Thought the Colts did him dirty. Now, it was bad. It was very, very bad. But I don't think that he had the weapons. It's not like the Panthers got good when Reich was gone. From the top down, when organizations are run poorly, whoever the coach is, is set up for a harder time at succeeding. This is a David Tepper. This is a David Tepper comment. This is David Tepper at the top.

I know he came in and when he bought the franchise, it was like all exciting because he's got plenty of money. He's going to go hard. He's going to be aggressive. That's exciting. Look, we're sons fans. The Matt Isbia. We get this. We're excited. Matt Ispia comes in and buys a team and wants to throw money around and make big trades. And it doesn't always work out. Sometimes you've got to get out of the way. David Tepper seems very much in the way. So like I like Dave Canales. I like some of the moves they've made. But if I have to bet on whether a franchise succeeds or loses, a lot of times I take that bet at the top.

I've done that for years and years and years and years with the Browns, and most of the time it's worked out. Yeah. Like, you know, so. Are tepering your expectations? Oh, oh, baby. 10 out of 10 swish. Teppering my expectations. Well done, Andrew. It's tough when you have a coach that you have a lot of confidence in. Yeah. I mean, this is a good point. Frank Reich. You liked him. Yeah. I mean, maybe that was the foolish part. He's just, you know, not good, but he didn't get the chance to show it with tepper. Stepping in. All right. We have some mailbag questions to get through, which will be fun because we just did our rankings. So we'll be able to talk about it with kind of a deeper look on each of these players. Now, who's doing the mailbag drop? Because there ain't no Mike. Oh, I believe Josh put his hand up first. So Papa Josh, it looks like it's on you, baby. Mailbag. Mail bag. Not.