Fantasy Football - NFL Draft Recap: AFC Winners & Losers, Darn Tootin’ - Podcast for 4/29

to the fantasy footballers podcast with your host Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Welcome in. Tuesday, April 29th, the fantasy footballers podcast. We did it. We had a draft. Players were selected eventually to go to their respective teams.

And it's time to reflect. Good times were had by most. Not at all. I love Michael Keith. Most. Yeah, it was an interesting three days. And we are going to begin our winners and losers episodes looking at today, the AFC winners and losers from the draft will walk through the teams. Their relevant fantasy football selections and... the implications of those selections. And then we'll take care of the NFC on Thursday. But a lot happened. I mean, I don't know if you can summarize your, you know, overall thoughts, overarching thoughts of the draft in a couple words. But like, you know, was it, did it live up to the billing? Was it a letdown? I mean, what was your? I think, I think it did mostly live up. I mean,

If you take out the Shador Sanders fall, which was the only thing across all of media, and you just look at everything else that happened, you had a lot of running backs get great draft capital. You know, you had enough wide receivers go on the first round, tight ends, high draft capital. Like the skill position players really did. I mean, this is an impactful. So we've been spending this time since the draft is over, just scouring deeply through our dynasty rankings, player by player. making sure that they are perfected. And I'm really impressed by, because this wasn't to me going into the draft, like the deepest draft class, especially at wide receiver. But I'm impressed by how many of these rookies appear to now knowing their destination and their draft capital. This is an important year. Like they are higher than I thought they would be in startup rankings. Just.

a lot of opportunity in front of them? Yeah, yeah, a lot of opportunity and good draft capital. Both of those things matter. Yeah, and so our full dynasty pass post draft update when you're listening to this, it's either, I think it'll all be. Should be out by the time they're listening. I'm looking at Mike to try to see if he's like signaling me and saying don't say that, but I think everything will be ready to go. The rankings have been up, the rookie rankings were up Sunday. We're all finalizing startup dynasty rankings today. And then we get, you know, risers, fallers, things like that. Trade targets. Yeah. So you can find all of that, ultimate draft kit.com. We'll be given away that listener league spot on the show on Thursday. We'll announce the winners of that and the Baker Mayfield signed jersey and the signed. The Jamar Mini Helmet. Yes, Jamar Chase Mini Helmet. We had our, you know, for those of you that know our League of Record and League of Record format, we had our yearly keeper lottery.

And so for those that have followed the show or follow similar rules as our league, once a year we have the opportunity because our league is a keeper league. You have one franchise player that you keep and then three players you put into a lottery. And then once a year, we gather together. And one of those three names goes back into the draft at random. So in our league, the rule is you can keep a player at one position as your franchise, but the three players in your keeper lottery. They cannot match that position. So for me personally, Jamar Chase is my franchise player. Jemir Gibbs, Joe Mixen, and Lamar Jackson as my keeper lottery. You risked Gibbs. I risked Gibbs and I was very lucky. I was fortunate. I lost Lamar back into the draft.

I was very lucky as well. I risked Brees Hall and lost him. So fantastic. Get off my team. Oh, man. But how about Owl? Man. Al how'd that, uh, defending champion Al Borland over there. What was your keeper franchise situation? I can't remember. It went just like every other year. My franchise was Justin Jefferson in the lottery went Kyron, Bijon, and Trey McBride. You risked Bijon. I did. But, you know, 33% chance of losing him. Who'd you lose? I lost Pijon. Every single year, the one player I say, as long as I don't lose this guy, I'll be good. That's the problem. You should start franchising the guy you don't want to lose. Thank you. Thank you. And so, yeah, and Mike, I don't think your situation. Mine was. You didn't care that much. It was Harrison, Garrett Wilson, and T. Higgins. T. Higgins were your three in your lottery and you lost Higgins? Lost T.

I mean, that might be just good fortune for you. It could be, or it means. It means T. Higgins about to go off this year. No, no. It means I have another chance to draft him. Yeah, you can't draft them if you don't lose them. That's smart. But that's always fun. We do that right after the NFL draft. So those of you in a league like that, hopefully had your keeper lotteries as well and had a good time this weekend. Yeah, lots going on. So. I want to jump right into the winners and losers. We'll cover more kind of other news that took place in the NFL on Thursday. But you can follow the show. A quick reminder here on X at the FFBallers on Instagram slash fantasy footballers and YouTube.com slash the fantasy footballers. Subscribe, click the bell. We did a live stream on Friday. That was a post round one live stream. Got to hang out with a lot of you. That was a lot of fun as well. So without further ado.

Hey, rookie. Welcome to the NFL. All right, we're going to start in the AFC South and just kind of walk through the relevant offensive draft picks for these teams. The Titans are 3 and 14 last year. They spent three fourth round picks on two wide outs and a tight end. Pass catchers. Chimray D.K., drafted with Pick 103, Gunner Helm at pick 120, and then Ehrlich. I Aminor. Nailed it. Yeah, I Amanor. There we go. We're going on with that one. It's one of them. That's our best guess. I am manner. But when you look at the film on these guys, this was a team that I think in my predictions, I thought that Luther Burden would go here because I figured they were going to invest at, you know, put some more weapons on this roster for Cam Ward, who was the number one overall pick. I mean, I'm not intending to skip Cam Ward here, but.

When you look at what Cam Ward has been given in the fourth round here, what he's going to, you know, Calvin Ridley returning. The opportunity here for a pass catcher is it's a great landing spot. They also signed Xavier, how do you say his name, Restrepo? Restrepo. Who was Cam Ward's wide receiver in college. But this was a place where it was like. The slowest 40. Yes, it was like 7.300 is what they said. But you had Calvin Ridley and then Jack Squat. Also breaking news. I know we skipped the news section today, but it does not look like the Titans are going to pick up Traillen Berks. Actually, you know, what we shouldn't have skipped is they did sign Tyler Lockett. So if you look at a rookie wide receiver emerging in year one, Lockett seems like he's going to be there as a, you know, a veteran presence for a one year.

term. Another person for Cam Ward to throw the ball to with Calvin Ridley and company. And they still have Chigacquo. I don't see Tyler Lockett really getting in the way of a rookie's opportunity, but definitely helpful for Cam Ward. I personally, I was telling, you know, two fourth round picks. D.K. went first. I like Io Manor from Stanford. He's big bodied. There's some highlights of him, you know, going up, you know, contested catch. He dealt with drops. There's a great video of him going head to head with Travis Hunter, who is number two overall pick in the draft. I like him as a fit for this offense, a little bit more than DK, but DK is a speedster, ran a 434. Yeah, I mean, it's not headline wide receiver names. They didn't take one of the higher draft capital wideouts, so, you know, it's kind of harder to identify who's going to emerge. And this is one of those teams you might pay attention to camp a lot.

Yeah, you're not excited about fourth round wide receivers playing for a rookie quarterback, generically speaking. But when it's the 101 in the NFL draft pick and there is a lot of opportunity here, one of these guys can emerge. Well, I mean, you know who we all get to get excited about again. Tell me, Calvin Ridley. Well, yeah, I mean, he is not a loser from the draft. No. You know, he is their number one wide receiver for sure. And Cam Ward is a much better quarterback. I mean, I like Cam Ward. Yeah, I think Cam Ward has a chance to be an actual franchise player. If you look at Calvin Ridley's season, which had moments, but also had, you know, I mean, he had a wide receiver eight finished, wide receiver six, wide receiver three. And then he had, you know, disappearing X, one for nine. And he finished the season with a thousand yards. Yeah. So is he over or under that number? I think he's over. I agree. He will be.

Very interesting to see how people respond to the ADP burns of last year, but he's a major winner this year coming out of the draft of being the only guy in an upgraded quarterback. If his ADP stays late, it's going to be. It will definitely stay late. Then you should be targeting Calvin Ridley. I think I'm going to let you two guys take that on for this year, though. I'm not proclaiming. league winning calvary just saying this is a the flex type player who i mean jason's already got a dune's a so mike you're going to have to go with ridley uh jacksonville four and thirteen last year they traded up they made the big splash they got the day started uh in a very excited way they busted everyone's mock drafts 10 minutes into the yeah we did not get travis hunter's destination right and when you say we you mean

100% of everybody in the world. Right. Because it seemed like it was a done deal that he was going number two. And he did go number two. But what was surprising was that the Jacksonville Jaguars traded up and traded a lot. They did. To get this hopefully star wide receiver and star cornerback for fantasy purposes. The most important thing is that it appears pretty definitive that he is going to be a impactful snap count offensive player for fantasy football. That's what I... at least I've seen that Cohen said. He's going to be offensive first, and we're going to work him in on the defensive side of the football. And, you know, some of the quick reactions on draft day was, oh, no, what happens to my Brian Thomas Jr. He soars on the wings of an eagle, my friend. So panic, you know, for those. He's fine. Okay, that's the calming words that people want to hear. He's fine. He's, Brian Thomas is a true number one. Like, we're all really hopeful for Travis Hunter.

What's his ceiling to you as a rookie? Because I think that could be the other, like you could swing the pendulum too far and say, okay, Brian Thomas is even better because they've got this other wide receiver that's a weapon, but maybe ignore the weapon. Touchdown upside definitely moves up, but it, we haven't, we're about to dive into the stat docs, the statistical breakdown for every player for the ultimate draft kit. I'm guessing that. Travis Hunter will end up like a 800-yard type of a receiver. Yeah, that's probably the median outcome. I think if you're talking what is Travis Hunter's ceiling as a rookie, you're probably talking around wide receiver 15. You know, he's got the ability to have big breakaway touchdowns. And you might hear that and think that that means that Brian Thomas Jr. has a bad season. It absolutely does not. It is very common, very, very common for NFL teams to have.

two top 24 wide receivers in the same season and even two top 12 wide receivers from the same team. You know, you're not scared when you have Jamar Chase and T. Higgins. Right. You're not scared when you have two great wide receivers for another team. Obviously, they don't have Joe Burrow here. Yeah, I am scared of Trevor Lawrence being able to sustain two high-level fantasy wide receivers. They don't have Christian Kirk and Evan Ingram anymore. They do still have Gabe Davis. It could just be good for Trevor Lawrence. Yeah, he's a winner from the draft when they invest in that. What's ironic, too, is that because they traded so many assets to go up and get Travis Hunter, it sort of eliminated them from a high draft capital running back decision. Yes. And so this was a team we thought, like my prediction was Genti there at number five, which, you know, Travis E.TN and Tink Bigsby, you could bury them at that point.

They did spend a fourth round pick on Bay Shul Tutin. Oh, my God. Oh, yeah. If you don't think on this show that I'm not giving a fart noise whenever we talk about Bayshel Tootin. No, that was not a, you're not dismissing the player. See, it sounded like you don't like him. No, great player. Actually, I think he's, those are words of encouragement. Yeah, he's got. He's speaking his language. Great juice. He's a little guy. He's a fast guy. He ran a 4-3-2 at the combine. I don't know if he picks up extra speed from the wind. uh behind him or not but oh my gosh but yes he's a he's a really he's a really exciting prospect obviously these is like did you load up on beans young man right yeah come on those pinto or black beans what are we working with here um but yeah i mean he yep

This is a player who last year in college 1100 plus yards, 15 rushing touchdowns runs 4-3, a very exciting prospect, but it is fourth round. It is. This one's hard, though, because the running back class of this year in particular was so good that I don't blame teams for waiting until the fourth round to grab a guy. Generally speaking, all historical data is if you're drafted in the fourth round or later at the running back position, your odds, your probability of ever. emerging is it's drastically lower than anyone drafted day one or two day two however tutin's a he's a good player and are you are you booting travis etienne off your team i is i will be very i'll be very nervous to draft travis etienne and a redraft i think we were nervous if no one like this made it worse to me yeah i mean he's still a winner to me that's how i see it too i still look at him as a winner

This allows Travis E.T.N. to go into this season. He'll be the starter. He'll be the starter. He's going to have the chance to establish himself as a quality player the way he was two years ago. Still a young running back in Travis E.Tian. You got to hope he still has gas because you know Tudin does. Absolutely. Nice. Swish. And Tudin is, you know, the two years at Virginia Tech, he was an excellent pass catching running back. It's like that's the issue for. for ETN. That's been a progressive issue for him for years. Yes, it has. And did the, did the Jaguars pick up Tootin because they see, we got a real big problem with this, too. We can't get away from it because it's his actual name. It's not like we're nicknaming him Tootin. And if his real name is Tootin. If he comes in and he takes some of that work away, you got an issue. And neither, uh, Tank nor E.T. These aren't Liam Cohen's guys. Like,

Etienne had 58 receptions in 2023. He should he could catch a lot of passes. He had 39 last year. That's not the end of the world. It'll be interesting to see how it breaks down, but not having not drafting Gentie or Hampton or one of these guys, not having a second round pick that you could use on one of them. I do think that that was a winner situation. It'll just be a slower fantasy death. Yeah, it could be. Have you guys seen Bayshell talking about himself, talking himself up? No. I'm so afraid of what you're going to say. Yeah, wait. He's tooting his own horn, baby. It's sweet. All right, let's move to the next team, please. I guess one of the situations you could look at is like, imagine that they were. It's not funny. It's not funny. How long were you sitting on that one waiting for space? About two seconds. Uh-huh. I knew your sentence. It was bad. It was bad. I apologize. For me to you, I'm sorry. For me to you, I'm sorry. But it's not going to stop. Was there more excitement around Ramander Stevenson or ETN in a dynasty league before the draft?

Ramandre Stevenson. So it could have been a flip situation, right? Like if Tootin went to New England and Henderson went to Jacksonville, 100%. We would be talking a different story. Henderson would have ended ETN. We got to be on a first name basis here with Bayshel. Is that how you say his name? That's the problem. Is it Bay Shul? It's Bay Shul. Bay Shul? Yeah, so you're going to go right back to Tootin. I'm Tudin. All right. Colts at eight and nine. First round pick. Tyler Warren. Was that you saying Me Too? No, I said B-Tooten. Oh, okay. Tyler Warren, who was projected to be the number one overall tight-in selected, ends up the second tight-in selected. What a loser. 14. He's amazing, though. He's a really, really good player. In fact, just like a general comment on the tight-ins drafted in and where they went, I think we're, this is just a thing now. We've had two consecutive years where the rookie tight-in is the number one overall. For fantasy. For fantasy.

I'm not saying that's happening this year, but Loveland and Warren, both in the top 15 picks, and then other tight-ins that I like, going places that I like, you know, Mason Taylor with New York. I don't mind that. I think that that's an interesting landing spot. Ferguson with the Rams is a good landing spot. The guy that I liked a lot, Harold Fanon Jr., not such a good landing spot behind David Najoku, but at least he is a round three pick. Well, we know, you know, like Najoku, it takes eight to ten years to form into a full tight end. But Warren in year one, the question that we all have is not whether he is a great player. It's whether his quarterbacks are good enough to get him the football. But we do have a case study here. We have a John Mackey Award winner last year with no quarterbacks that broke fantasy. Yeah. And Brock Bowers. So, you know, the potential is there because titans make life really, really easy.

on the quarterback, no matter how good the quarterback is. Yeah, a lot of people. I would say the majority of people have flip-flopped the dynasty startup rankings between Loveland and Tyler Warren. I am still on the Tyler Warren ahead of Loveland's side. I liked the film better, and yes, I do think Tyler Warren has a slightly worse quarterback situation. I mean, we don't know what the future of Caleb Williams is. Maybe he's great, but maybe he isn't, and he just continues being mediocre. I know that he's better than Daniel Jones and Anthony Richardson. But regardless, When I look at fantasy football tight ends that matter, there's not a ton of them, but when they matter, they are usually number one or number two on their depth chart in targets. I mean, you know, they, you look at the rookie last year, Brock Bowers, Bach Bowers, he comes through and he has 140 plus targets because there's not a lot of other.

targets to go around, whereas DJ Moore, Roma Dunes, they bring in Luther Burden. That's a tough thing for Loveland to come in and be fantasy awesome, even if he is the best tight end. Yeah, he can come in and catch 41 meaningful downfield passes, help the bears a ton and not be as good for fans. You're kind of, I think you're persuading me to, like, they're close. They're like back to back for me. I think you're right. Tyler Warren could be the number two target. He could be the number one target. Yeah, I mean, you've got Josh Downs and Michael Pittman there, so you're like, okay, it's not nobody, but certainly you're not afraid of that. No, I think you're right. They dropped the DJ Giddens in the fifth round, six foot, 212 running back out of Kansas State, 98th percentile explosiveness score. He's a fun player. We've spent quite a bit of time on DJ Giddens on the Dynasty podcast.

the round five and clearly behind Johnny Taylor. But, like, Giddens, you know, they've been, they're trying to figure out who their backup actually is. And I think there's a strong chance that it ends up being Giddens as the true insurance running back for Johnny Taylor. So he has value in your rookie drafts. Just don't expect him to be starting for you. You definitely want to Giddens him as your insurance package. Dude, what are you doing? Dude, it's worse when you laugh like that. I laughed because it was so bad. I just want to know how long you were searching. No, it was immediate. In the middle of Mike talking. Oh, man. Getting me a break. We got, look, this is all new. This is all new.

fresh names that we get to play with. This is more of a... Yeah, Jason's a little boy in a sandbox right now. That's what it feels like. I'm looking up at the cloud seeing shapes. It's just workshopping. Tooting. Yeah. Riley Leonard, quarterback out of Notre Dame, took him in the sixth. You know, it's worth just mentioning it because they don't... What the future will be in Indianapolis. Sure. We'll see. That dude might get a start or two. But ultimately, whoever is the quarterback... benefits in Indianapolis when you talk about winners and losers from the draft pick of Tyler Warren. We'll talk about the Texans and then we'll take a break. Let's let's cover the Texans first so we can finish the division. Jaden Higgins in the second. This one's wild man. Jalen Noel in the third teammates from Iowa State. Yeah. And Tim, you know, Mike, you were kind of talking about this. Houston drafts a couple of whiteouts with pretty good draft capital. And we're sitting there, you know, Higgins is a

big guy, 6-4-214. This is a team that is telling us with their draft selections what their depth chart is like in reality. And Christian Kirk, they took a flyer on him, a veteran, bring them in, not too different from Stefan Diggs last year, a one-year trial, except for Kirk is not as good as Diggs. We have a massive recovery that Tankdale has to undergo. That's, I mean, outside of Nico Collins, those were the guys that you had. And they go out and they're saying, hey, we're going to reinvest on behalf of C.J. Stroud. So when you talk about opportunity, Jason, these are a couple of names, I think, that probably added to what you said at the top. Yeah, this is, you're going to have to call your shot and try to get it right, whether Higgins or Noel ends up as the primary rookie wide receiver for this team. But you've got a great quarterback in C.J. Stroud and a real need for these players to step up.

into the void left by Dell and Diggs. So good draft capital, both day two picks. You can't be much happier with the landing spot for either of those guys. The only complaint is that it would be difficult to see them both dominating. You know what I mean? Was it the Dobbs Christian Watson combo draft? Were they in the same draft class together? Second and fourth round. It just kind of reminds me a little bit of like. I think maybe they did it a couple years in a row where they had a few names, different rounds, and it's hard now to call the shot. I mean, obviously, what is your shot call for these wide receivers, I guess I should say? You know, even though Noel, even though Noel went second, I kind of like him better for the style of play if Dell can't come along. I mean, Jaden Higgins, you know, almost kind of reminds me.

Um, you know, a little bit of their, you know, the, he's a clone. Oh, he's a Nico clone of Nico. Yeah. You know, a big six four, two hundred and fourteen pound deep field stretching. It's like, where's he going to fit in in the off. I know where Jalen Knoll's going to be. Jalen Knoll come in. I think he can play the slot, you know, move outside, but he has a outrunner. He has direct competition in front of him, uh, with Christian Kirk. Like Higgins will be a start a day one starter. I don't know if Noel will start day one. Yeah, maybe. I mean, they both have competition in front of them. I would rather be competing with Christian Kirk than competing with. Yeah, I mean, Tank Dell? Is that what you're going to say? I don't think Dell will play. No, I don't either. It's good for C.J. Stroud that they're finding more weapons for him. His production and the offense is ineptitude. They came with the injuries.

You know, it was struggling all year. They let go of their offensive coordinator. We're going to have a new OC coming in this year. So you're going to see a lot of new things on offense. But I think not enough was made of losing digs, losing Tankdale. And then all of a sudden we're like, is CJ Strout still good? It's like, okay. Hard, hard situation. Yeah, and Nico was hurt last year as well. By the way, yeah, Watson and Dobbs were together in a draft for Green Bay. Reed and Wicks were together in a draft, and then this year. They did it this year again. This year as well. We'll talk about them soon. All right, we'll take a break and then we'll move on to the AFC North. Oh, by the way, tanked Al a fantasy loser because of this situation. I think so. I would definitely put him as a fantasy loser. There was also Woody Marks running back in the fourth round who was drafted here. So getting a little bit of youth behind Joe Mixon. I don't view it as a negative for redraft for Joe Mixon, but you have to, you know, he's, he's.

older. Yeah, just like in Jonathan Taylor's situation, figure out who the depth piece is. I will say this, there were articles coming out of Houston. There were rumors about them drafting a running back higher, thinking about the next man after Mixon. I think mixing comes out of this pretty unscathed in a one-year run, you know, which is how you're looking at things. I think there's a, there's probably a pretty strong chance that Marks moves up to be the number two guy. This is like he, he's got to beat out Damien Pierce who. Yeah. It's. It seems like the coaching staff. I don't know why they let them back in the building. That's harsh. We'll take a break. Be right back. Okay. Here we go. Can't believe it happened again. Yeah. But Cleveland, they had, I think, when I was watching the draft, I think they had like 5,000 picks in this draft. Or it seems like they were always, the team I was keeping my eyes on because you always thought Sodor Sanders might go to Cleveland at every opportunity. It took a long time. He finally did.