Early Busts & Values + Draft Strategy - Fantasy Football Podcast for 6/27

How are you feeling today? You feeling like you want to take it safe? Or are you feeling a little reckless? Because we're talking about values and busts, those fantasy football picks that are either really comfortable and safe or really going to hurt you. So you're going to take a look at who we think. We've got it in those positions. And you can leave a comment on who you think. The Fantasy Footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Welcome in the fantasy footballers podcast Tuesday, June 27th. Jason Moore, Mike Wright, Andy Holloway. Back with you. Busts and Values episode of the show today. Very excited to talk a little fantasy football with my friends. It's kind of what we do here. We just have a good time sitting around this table. Yeah. Making ourselves better at fantasy football.

And hopefully those that listen as well. I would hope. I would help. You made that very specifically about us. Well, no. They are at the table with us, Mike. They are the fourth person at this table. Fair enough. I'm excited. It should be fun. We both or all of us have picked out some early bust picks. I am very curious to hear the names that you guys have prepared. And then some values. Some players going late in drafts that. You know, I think we all look at it as opportunities to strengthen a roster. And so we'll go through all of those on today's show. Here at the top, I do want to thank everybody that submitted their UDK testimonial videos. We held that Garrett Wilson jersey giveaway over the last couple of weeks. A winner has been selected. I don't know if we have. Do we have some drum roll or some trumpets?

There we go. Come on. The winner. That's what we found? Yeah. That's what I got on short notice. Yeah. So the winner of the signed Garrett-Welson, Jersey. And again, thank you to everybody that submitted. The videos were awesome. Funky Dan. Oh, my gosh. We couldn't have timed that up any worse. Welcome to the show. Al, you acted like you were done with the pursuit of buttons. I did act that way. I could see why you thought that. And you're just like, if I find it, I'm going to slam this button. Even mid-inouncement. And I thought I was going to time it up perfect, but we didn't. Yeah. Well, you shot, you shot. And Funky Dan, he was announced during the drum roll portion. Congratulations to Funky Dan from Kentucky. That's a good bit, though.

Like to just use the drum roll right when you do the announcement. Congratulations. That's pretty sweet. Funky Dan. Funky Dan. Congrats. Twitter at the FF. Follers, if you want to follow the show over there. You can follow Mike at FF Hitman, Jason at Jason FFL. And you can follow me at Andy Holloway, the community. You can find that at join the foot.com. And we do have a quick question on today's show. Is this person's name Colonel with a K? Is that how you would pronounce this? Like a popcorn kernel? No, no, no, like a like a military colonel. Yeah, but current, but hasn't popcorn kernel spelled with a K? Yeah, it is. Okay. Yeah, but this is K-O-L-O-N-E-L like kernel. Oh, okay. Which. I've never seen that before. What English language? What are we doing? You have a regular.

like a regularly scheduled annoyance with the English language. Yeah. Like it is what it is, Mike. I've accepted that it is what it is. Like I can't do anything. Yes, we can. If we can cause enough of an uproar. Podcast tirades on a fantasy show. I'm not talking about just the podcast. I'm talking about the people. We need to stand up and say we will not tolerate. Is this your political platform? C-O-L. Kerr. Yeah. No. What is going on? I agree with you. And so this question comes in for Colano in Vancouver, British Columbia Canada. What is, isn't that a? Colonic? Oh, a colonic. Yeah. That'd be a worst name. Bonjure. Yeah. Vancouver, British Columbia. Colonel says, excuse my ignorance, guys. But could you please explain to me how the tears work? It's my second year watching you guys and my first year.

as a UDK plus member. Learned a lot, but do not quite grasp tiers yet. So tiers are extremely important. They take linear rankings that make someone think that player X is so much more valuable than player Y when really they're just about the same because they're grouped in the same tier or that player X that's right next to player Y are just as good as one another when really there's a tier break in. what the upside is, what the expectation is, et cetera, et cetera. Now, how you use them is really a matter of knowing what players are grouped in tiers. It is not, sometimes people think, oh, if there is this, if I'm in tier five at this position and tier four in that position, that I have to take the position that is tier four. That's not how it works. Really what it's meant to do is it's meant to give you.

a visual glance representation of how many players are left at this position that are about the same value so that you know, oh my gosh, I'm running out of this quality of player. And that position has a lot of the tier that we're in right now, whether that's tier two or tier eight. You just say there's a lot of these players left at that position. There's a few left at this position. Maybe I want to think about going where, you know, that. that tier's about to run out. It really helps cross-positionally, where I can look at the, you know, the tiers, like that bucket of running backs. Say there's still four guys left in that tier. I know that I pick again in three picks. That means that I'm going to be guaranteed to get one of those running backs. Meanwhile, the tier or the bucket of wide receiver quality, there's only...

one or two of those guys left. So I would make the decision. I'm going to take that wide receiver and know that I'm going to get a running back who's comparable, at least in my rankings and projections, to these other guys. It helps you have a better value for return a better value for your draft pick. I was going to say sometimes maybe the word tears confuses people, but you brought it up with the language of like a bucket. It's a grouping of players at a specific value. That's the best summary, right? We're putting them together in a group so that you understand whether you have a bunch of them left so that you can maybe wait at that position or you need to make a move on that specific group. And they can be very, very useful. Tier-based drafting is what we've always recommended with the ultimate draft kit. It's why we build them out in that fashion. I mean, there are lots of different ways you can look at player rankings in the ultimate draft kit, including a top 200. But that is often produced by demand.

People want the top 200. They want, you know, you've got full player projections that are on there. But tier-based drafting is our recommended strategy heading into your fantasy football drafts. And so hopefully that helps you out. Yep. We don't have any big news to talk about on today's show other than, you know, the headline here, a couple of like fantasy footballers pieces of news, which is July is Saturday. And Saturday is July. And Saturday is July. It works both ways. And that is when we begin three shows a week. Oh, man. Which means the ramp up is here. That means that training camp is we can put together the little paper chain and count down the days. Until we have to break in with like random injuries and stuff like that. No, no. Let's not bring us down until we can come in with unnecessary hype about players. Yeah, there we go. Right? Yeah.

And maybe we'll, you know, maybe we'll eventually know where DeAndre Hopkins and Evan Cook and Ezekiel Elliott and some of those players are going. So. So episodes will be Tuesday and Thursday like they are now, but also a Saturday episode starting this week. We will be off on the 4th of July. We will be Americaning. Yeah. We'll be celebrating the holiday with their families. So we'll be back with another episode on Thursday, but there'll be a Dynasty episode on Wednesday for the Dynasty podcast. Don't worry about it. You're going to have plenty of content. But yeah, three shows a week, the rest of July, and then take a breath, boys. Get those smelling salts out. Five shows a week starting in August. Yeah, I'm working out. I'm going to start getting my pump on, get ready for the season. I'm going to need that. You're going to need cardio. You're in on that? That's pickleball. Okay. I came across a Twitter account that I had never seen. I shared it with everybody here at work. Yeah. And all it does is shows.

classic clips of NFL games. Yeah. And I got sucked in. I'm like, oh, you can give me a shout out. Tell them what the handle. It's vintage NFL. Okay, vintage NFL, something like that. But I just, I started watching some clips and it was, man, I really, I really like football. And I'm very excited that football is back. You just watch through vintage clips because you can't watch live ones. Uh-huh. And I mean, like, they're so old that you just, you don't remember everything that happened. Let's see how excited Brooks is about football. Brooks, are you pretty, you hyped? Oh, yeah. Oh, that's a big one. That was pretty good. Okay, all right, we're excited. It'll be fun. I mean, we're kind of in a lull for news right now. Like, we haven't had big player signings and a lot of big things happening other than, you know, that's why everybody's paying attention to them. Maybe Tyreek is under suspicion. Maybe he's not. Maybe he'll be charged. Maybe they can't charge him. Right.

So we're kind of staying away from that until we get some big answers. But football is on the way. Let's get into the bus picks. Bus. Eggman is back. Yeah, yeah. That was good. Okay. I'm going to let one of you guys go first with your bust selection. Early bust pick for this year. Somebody you are avoiding. All right. I will jump in. And this one is interesting because he's still ranked. Pretty high for me, but I just, I don't think that he is worth the cost of admission. I don't think he's worth the draft ticket. And it is tight-in T.J. Hawkinson of the Minnesota Vikings. I have him as my tight-in four. He is currently going as tight-in three over on underdog and on sleeper. And look at it last year. So his actual pace as a Minnesota Viking, if you take out the final week because he didn't play the full game, it's okay.

It's 111 receptions, which that part is great. If you're in a PPR. That's Zachard special. If you're in a PPR league, that seems great, but only 950 yards on those catches and six touchdowns. Like I said, solid for PPR. But I think that he is being propped up because of two spike games, one when he was on the lines and one as a Viking. And he really overperformed. Granted, he had a mid-season trade. I don't know that we've seen a tight end of his. you know, draft caliber, change teams in the middle of a season, and then go on and be useful for fantasy football. When he got traded, I think all three of us were kind of like, well, I don't know if this is news because we just, we haven't seen a player make a transition and then have an impact. But here's the deal, even giving you that projection pace that he was on. Weeks 9 through 17, he was under 50 yards in five of nine games. He finished as a top five weekly tight end.

Once. So like in a real impact for your team, one time. And like top five is not a huge bar. Now maybe with the full off season and he gets worked in even more. But here is another piece where I am bearish on T.J. Hawkinson's outlook. In that same time period that I quoted, you know, where weeks 9 through 17 where he wasn't hitting real spike weeks, he's just kind of consistently putting up points. Adam Thielen, the wide receiver two for the Minnesota Vikings at that time, was averaging about four receptions, 40 yards, and 0.3 touchdowns per game. That is a pace of 62 for 674 and 6 touchdowns, 15% of the targets. That is horrific for a wide receiver 2 on that team. And they made some moves. They waved Adam Thielen. They spent their first round pick on Jordan Addison.

So that mark that I gave you, right, 62 for 674, I took a look back because I think I'm going to project Jordan Addison will have a bigger impact for the Minnesota Vikings than 674 yards. And just looking at the actual hard data over the last decade, 41 receivers in the first round, 18 of those wide receivers surpassed that Adam Thielen Marcus, and they were more involved, which takes action away from T.J. Hawkinson. And then if you look at the first round wide receivers that didn't hit that mark, there was only two of them that played a full season and those other 23 guys. They averaged 11 games. I know it's a lot of numbers. But essentially what I'm saying here, the chance of Jordan Addison beating out what Adam Thielen was doing in that time period is almost a certainty. As long as Jordan Addison is on the field, he is going to beat that out. And whatever Jordan Addison gets, it takes away from T.J. Hawkinson.

So again, T.J. Hawkinson's ranked pretty high for me, but to me it's an opportunity cost thing of I don't think he's going to be a difference maker at a onesie position and to be drafted in the fourth round or 50th overall like he is an underdog. This person has to make a difference. And if you want to make a difference at a onesie position, guys who are going right around that T.J. Hawkinson area, we're talking Joe Burrell, Justin Fields. Justin Herbert, like guys who I project will actually make a big difference at a onesie position. And I'm just, I'm not into what T.J. Hawkinson is doing at that draft price. You want a compelling case for a tight end you take in the fourth round to be able to be the one overall or the two overall. Which he was the number two overall. But as Jason has pointed out many times in his, uh, what you're showing your concern for Travis Kelsey's ADP is tight ends just as a group.

The scoring was very, very subpar. It was very low. And Hawkinson just snuck into the tight end, too. Well, yeah, Mark Andrews was injured throughout the year. Darren Waller didn't play football and George Kittle missed timing. Kyle Pitts was hurt for over half the year. So my point is I'm just saying I want to have a stronger case for a player drafted in the fourth round at tight end to be in that. I mean, we're all going to have them ranked there. And we'd all draft him if he was an eighth round draft pick. Yes. But it's all about, so to make the point, what a bust represents for us in fantasy here is not that the player can't perform to the standards of our projections. You know, you're not predicting that T.J. Hawkinson has a statistical disaster of a season. Correct. What you're saying is that that even if he hits these marks to be the Titan four, like we haven't projected,

spinning a fourth round draft pick is not going to make as much of an impact on your team as investing that maybe on a player like, look, there's cases for Justin Fields and Joe Burrow and Justin Herbert to be the number one overall quarterback or the number two overall quarterback or other players at different positions in that round. He's just being propped up so severely. Yeah, I mean, the gap, we talked just earlier about the tiers and the buckets of these similar type of players. I don't know that there is a massive difference between Dallas Goddard and T.J. Hawkinson or Darren Waller, you know, if Darren Waller ends the season with more targets, yards, and touchdowns than T.J. Hawkinson, I'm not shocked. And if that happens, you're getting him in the eighth round versus spending a really high draft capital pick on someone that.

If you grab Hawkinson in the fourth round, he has to perform in weak winning fashion. And Mike, I think the most telling stat was that in his time with the Vikings, even though he accumulated a lot of stats, he did not win you weeks. Just what, one top five performance? Yes, he was the number one. That was a good one. It was a good week. T.J. Hawkinson has that in him because he did it twice. This past season, when he was with the Vikings, it was week 16 against the Giants, 109 and 2. But, I mean, you got to have, you need more of those than just one. And you didn't bring his name up, but KJ. Osborne, over the last four weeks of the year, he had 117-yard game, 157-yard game with 16 targets. He put up the same stat line that Thielen did, essentially, over the course of the year. So you do have the possibility of him.

you know, based on what they've been talking about in Minnesota. He's 26 years old. Like he's going to be involved in this offense. It's not all going to be, you know, Addison and no Osborne. Right. So there will be distribution around that offense, and there is some risks there with Hawkinson. So, you know, there are times in which we've been bullish about T.J. Hawkinson or Jason has been a big supporter in previous years because of the value. But right now, he does seem very high. Like, you have shares of him in bestball? I have one sheriff in the best ball. Stupid auto draft. All right, Jason. Yeah, look. Give me your bus pick. I'm going to give you my bus pick and people are not going to like it. And I'm going to tell you straight up, I don't like it. I hate bringing this up. This is a player who's extremely talented. He is super young. He is super athletic. He is everything that I target in fantasy football. And I am not targeting him. Specifically, I'm talking about.

Last year's rookie sensation, Kenneth Walker, the third running back for the Seattle Seahawks. He was awesome last year when thrust into the starting role with Rashad Penny injured. He was talented in college. He was talented in the NFL field. And we know he can get the job done. And if at the end of this year, he ends up being a bell cow and being awesome, I'm certainly not going to be. I'm not going to be. you know, surprised because he obviously can do that. In fact, um, our early running back rankings show that we did on the fantasy footballers for this coming season, we had him as our running back six. That is the level of upside that we see in the talent of this player. The problem is right now he's being drafted as a top 15 running back. And in the second round, Pete Carroll had to ruin our nice fun things and draft.

Charbonnet, Zach Charbonnet out of UCLA, a, I believe, a sensational running back, a very, very multifaceted, talented, big-bodied, pass-catching pile moving back. Super positive reports out of OTAs. Yeah, I mean, he's a good, both these guys are good players. And this is good for the Seahawks. I think that those two guys are going to be incredible one-two punch because Kenneth Walker last year. He had a ton of big plays. I mean, you know, his, he had 17 runs of 15 plus yards last year. And that's really where all of his fantasy juice came from, were those, those big plays. Because on a play-by-play basis, he was actually pretty negative. You know, he wasn't always a positive gain. It's kind of like Sequin, where it's like you deal with a bad play, bad play, bad play in order to get a 25-yard, you know, big moving play.

The issue I have is that where fantasy points are scored are usually in the red zone, in the, you know, scoring touchdowns, and in the passing game. Getting those PPR, those half PPR points, they are, those two plays are worth so much more than just a handoff that goes for yardage and yardage alone. And that's my fear for Kenneth Walker, because Zach Charbonnet is a big body back who can move a pile. Big to B. And when they get down by the goal line, I mean, last year, Kenneth Walker was the only player in the NFL to receive all of their teams carries inside the five-yard line. And he converted that into only two touchdowns. That's not necessarily his specialty. And I could see them saying, hey, let's get the big body back. Let's get the BBB in here and have him inside the five-yard line. So if you take some touchdowns away from Kenneth Walker, that's.

That's really bad. And then Zach Charbonnet is a really good pass catcher. So if now Kenneth Walker's not involved in the passing game and he's not involved in the red zone, I think you're going to have big plays. Kenneth Walker's too good. Like he'll have games where he's awesome because he rips off a 55-yard touchdown run. Thank you. The issue is, will it be consistent? What happens in the games where he doesn't have a big touchdown run from outside of the red zone? Will he end up with eight fantasy points? Probably not. I mean, you know, this is, if he's, if he's splitting time, not catching the ball and doesn't score a touchdown, I think you're going to have a lot of games where you're going, he's got 70 yards on the ground. He was efficient. He had a good game. And that's seven fantasy points if he didn't catch the ball and he didn't score touchdowns. And so right now to be drafted in the top 15, I've got him at running back 22 in my personal rankings. I just think he's, he's a little, he's a little scary to me.

He played 15 games last year and was the running back 16 in terms of fantasy finish. And he didn't get a lot of opportunities in those first few weeks. You can kind of throw those out. And he was electric. He was great. This is one of those situations where you brought up some of these points earlier in the off season. And unfortunately, they persuaded me to lower him in my rankings. I wanted to really dig in because when talent is there and you see it on the football field, like there was a part of this past off season where I'm like, is he the –

you know, pre-draft. Is he the best target at running back in Dynasty leagues? Like he should, should he actually be considered, number one? Mm-hmm. Because of just the talent that he possesses, because you went into this season saying he's going to be just the guy. But if Charbonnet's strengths are the things that are strong for fantasy, it is a, it's a scarier proposition to rank him that high. Is there a possibility he's a steal? I think so. But that'll come more down to, you know, are they happy with Charbonnet on third down? Does he do what we think he can do on third down? Will he pass protect? Yeah, I mean, I will say, Mike, you brought this up in favor of Kenneth Walker. And this is good information to keep in mind if you, you know, look, if you want to just bet on Kenneth Walker's talent, I don't have any problem with that. Back in the day, there was.

when they drafted Rashad Penny and they spent a first round first rounder. You had Chris Carson as the incumbent. And before Penny got injured, when Penny was a rookie, it was the Chris Carson show. They did not use Rashad Penny very much through those, you know, first 10 weeks or so. They were, they were using Chris Carson as a bell cow. So who knows what happens last year. Yeah, that is. If Rashad Penny didn't get hurt. I mean, you've got both cases where, where. They stuck with Carson because health was there. And then you have Penny went down and Kenneth Walker. I mean, we were here last off season. Yeah. And this was not a backfield we wanted to mess around with because you knew, you know, Rashad Penny was injury prone and Kenneth Walker is a rookie. And we had just seen the rookie not get an opportunity. So, you know, part of it to me is also Kenneth Walker got hurt twice last year. You went into the season hurt. He got hurt in the end part of the year. They've been dealing with injuries. We saw Dallas or DJ Dallas and.

Who's Travis Homer and, I mean, players that don't get, shouldn't have had that many snaps. And so that makes it a little bit nerve-wracking. And it just, I haven't had the fortitude to stick to my guns because I believe what you're saying. So he's, he's interesting as that I think we've laid out a good case here of, he could go either way. And so it'll be up to, you know, just drafter's choice of do you believe in Walker? You could be heavily rewarded or you could be heavily penalized. I think Jason is just saying that the way that he's looking at that situation, he's going to choose to let someone else either get the glory or hold the bag. Yeah, I'll probably be drafting more Charbon A than I will be Kenneth Walker. Because I think both guys are talented. So give me the one with the opportunity for fancy points. Quick break and then we'll be back with my bus pick. All right. I am going to go with a...

quarterback as my early bust pick here. And I guess I'm a little bit, I root for this guy, but I do wonder if we may be moving to a different stage of his career. And it's Dak Prescott. Boom. Interesting. Mike doesn't like it because he has Dak ranked at number seven. He's being drafted as the quarterback nine right now in Sleeper. And Jason and I have him at 12. and he's turning 30 this off season. The biggest red flags to me on DAC are connected to the things that kind of made him impervious in fantasy in previous years. One of them being, he just doesn't run the football the way that he used to run it. First three years, he had six touchdowns every year. The last four years, it's been three, three, one, one. He averages 13 yards per game rushing the football. Those were some kind of...

cheat codes to keep him in the top six, top seven. He's had some catastrophic injuries that have led to that. I look at his career stats right now, and you see the past attempts per game have gone down three consecutive years for DAC. There was a time when this defense wasn't very good, and the offense was very, very good when Amari Cooper was there and DAC was throwing the ball all over the field. So the attempts per game are coming down. You have a change in offensive coordinators. All of the enthusiasm you guys have shared repeatedly about Kellan Moore going to Los Angeles, his depart, if his presence in L.A. means something, then his departure in Dallas means something, regardless of whether you're happy or sad with Brian Schottenheimer. And Mike McCarthy's come out and said, look, we want to run the football more. Well, why do you want to run the football more? Here's why. Because.