Early Top 10 RB Rankings + Conspiracy Theories - Fantasy Football Podcast

the beginning of September to adjust. You don't have to make a knee-jerk reaction. You have to make a right and wise reaction, but you have time to make that. And I think that's what the NFL and Roger Goodell has put forth. They said, hey, can we make the draft safe? Yes, we can make the draft safe. We'll proceed with the draft. There are implications that go, you know, we think of it from the side of, oh, the NFL wants to protect his revenue. Well, you know what? The players want to get paid money.

They have jobs. They have a limited career span. So I think it's in everybody's interest to keep as much on the table for as long as possible. They've got a lot of time for it. We're all fully directed towards the NFL season. Yes, we are. All right. Anthony Lynn, Chargers head coach said Tyrod Taylor is, quote, in the driver's seat, but nothing is finalized. I'm my dynasty team. Let's go. You guys know how old Tyrod Taylor is by chance off the top of your head? Oh, I don't. I would guess 28. He's 30 years old.

Wow, all right. It's, you know, he feels like he's gone full life cycle of an NFL quarterback a bit, yeah, before the age of 30. But he is still young and we'll see what happens. That'll be that'll mean a lot to Keenan, Mike Williams, Austin Echler. He did great things for Baker Mayfield, and I hope he does great things for whoever this rookie they draft in the first round will be. I'm not, I'm not going to relitigate the Tyrod Taylor circumstances of days gone by. No one remembers that.

All right, this news so far out of the athletic, Jeff Howe talking about Jared Stidham. Oh, I'm my dynasty team. Thank you, Mike. You have all the superstars. You must have a really good dynasty team, Mike. My quarterback situation is dire. Barring unforeseen circumstances, he's got the inside track at the Patriots job. I was asked this question. You guys were asked this question a couple of weeks ago. To me...

It just made logical sense that they were going to turn to Stidham and trust their scouting, the draft process. They cut Cody Kessler as well. Yeah, and they paid Brian Hoyer like a million dollars. Oh, yeah, he's on my dynasty team.

Oh, my goodness. Yes. This is real dynasty season. This is real dynasty season when Mike and I are basically our teams are vying for the starting role of the Patriots quarterback. Well, if we had a Tayslam Hill story, I could get involved in this process. But, no, I think it will be Siddham's opportunity. He does have the advantage of being, you know, at practice, part of the scout team, playing against that top tier defense. I don't know.

if they need a lot from a quarterback to still be a pretty decent team this year. Their defense is great. So, yeah, I mean, I guess dynasty-wise, that would be the name to pay attention to for your team, as painful as that might seem right now. Not Jalen Hertz? Not yet. Yeah. Yeah, we could talk about Jalen Hertz sometime. The athletics, Ed Bouchette, predicts the Steelers. I don't know if this is news. This one, it's,

It's just fun to talk about projections. Look, sports aren't happening right now. So let's just get into heated debates about this for no reason. He predicted the Steelers are going to let Juju Smith-Schuster walk following the 2020 season. He's 23 years old. He had a very bad year last year. There were reasons externally. But it doesn't change the output. They had similar problems with James Connor. The prediction is that, you know, Juju is going to want to get paid.

like a top tier number one. And the Steelers, I mean, I think we've seen evidence that they don't always want to do that. So it could come to a head. Now, I think it just depends on whether Juju has a good year. I mean, if he has a good year, they'll probably pay him. And if he doesn't, he'll probably still want all that money and they won't pay him. Yeah, that's all this is. He's, he's one of the leaders in the locker room and the community already at a young age. So if he comes out and has a good year,

they're going to keep him around as one of the main faces of the franchise. If he comes out and stinks and still wants great money, yeah, they'll let him walk. So really this is just, I think this is the athletics, Ed Brescent saying, I don't think Juju's going to have a good year. Maybe it is. I mean, that's the only way that if he comes out and dominates, they're not going to let him walk. It's certainly one of the bigger stories this year as to whether Big Ben, the Steelers, that offense, especially like we talk about

it being related to Big Ben and him returning and being Old Big Ben. But this team identity has changed too. Old Big Ben might not need to come back for them to succeed. You might just need pretty good Big Ben and lower passing volume offense, and that could be an outcome. They could be a good team with a lower pass volume because of what their defense has been able to mature into. They need Old Big Ben to be rookie Big Ben. They just come in and be a game manager. The great news for Juju is

As Amari Cooper has shown, you just have to be great about half the time. And you can still get $20 million a year. Okay, that is a strong point. All right, I added this piece of news in here because I wanted to talk about it. We're looking for direction in Denver for the running back situation. On Tuesday, John Elway offered, quote, tepid words on a potential Philip Lindsay contract extension. I wanted to bring this up because Lindsay's in a very unique situation, very similar to what Austin Echler was in.

Los Angeles with the Chargers. Now, you know, Melvin Gordon, possibly in front of him. Yeah, that's ironic. But you have, from a contract standpoint, undrafted, proven themselves, not necessarily in every down running back, explosive, but defining the contract parameters of a player like that are difficult. You guys talked to Austin Echler on this show a little while ago, and he was quick to admit, it didn't look like he was getting a contract.

And then things came together. So the team has to, you know, because they valued him as an offensive weapon, not just as a every down running back. But when you combine the decision to sign Melvin Gordon with this information, it makes you wonder if the contract situation will phase Lindsay out of the offense potentially, or that is a possible outcome. How do you guys view this or is that overstating it? I don't think that the contract situation will affect.

The usage of Philip Lindsay, I don't think he resigns with Denver. And I really hope that Lindsay gets paid somewhere. I mean, he's not going to make, you know, the girly Zeke money. But hopefully he can play his way into an awesome type of contract. Yeah, that would be great. That would be great for Lindsay. Yeah, and he, you know, he's just been a very dynamic, invaluable player to that team. So it'd be nice to see him rewarded for that.

Yeah, the whole draft process is just, that's a tough one. That is a tough one for an athlete like Philip Lindsay and Echler, where it's clear, it's very clear that the NFL teams just screwed up. And because they screwed up and didn't evaluate his talent properly, they got screwed and had to play these, play these years on no money. Think about this, though, and this is getting very, um,

Almost a conspiracy theorist avenue. But when you look at a situation with a player that has a contract on the way, and then you look at the team paying Melvin Gordon, and you say, well, why'd you spend that money or how'd you pay? You have to wonder if the contract to Melvin Gordon doesn't drive down the future contract for Philip Lindsay. It certainly could. You know, in that situation too, where you save maybe your total savings is better than you think, even though you paid a guy like Melvin Gordon.

I don't know. That's a good point. Before we get into the top 10 running back rankings, want to thank today's sponsor, Manscaped. Look, if you're listening to this podcast, if you're stuck inside the house with your significant other, you need to be paying attention to this. You still got to take care of yourself. You've got to take care of your hygiene, man. Now more than ever. I used it. I used it on my neck.

Good. Whatever, man. Look, it's a great. My neck was looking, I was going full on mullet. I thought this was like this is the month of mullets. And I didn't want that to happen. Look, Manscaped is helping you out. It's the only men's brand dedicated to below the waist grooming and hygiene. And right now they have the perfect package 3.0. It's a kit. It comes with the lawnmower 3.0, which is waterproof, a cordless body trimmer. And they got a bunch of other liquid formulations to round out.

The manscaping routine. It uses Nick-free, advanced skin-safe technology, and subscribers are going to get a new replacement blade refill for your lawnmower trimmer to deliver to your door every three months. And for a limited time, subscribers get two free gifts, the shed travel bag, and the high-performance, anti-chafing, manscape boxer briefs. I've got it all. I've got it all. Look, I've got a new package. I'm still using my lawnmower.

3.0, I'm making sure that things are, the things are, uh, they're, they're right and they're tight. Let's, we'll just put it that way. Even under quarantine. That, even under quarantine, quarantine does not give you an excuse to look like you're living in the 1910s.

I don't know how people looked back then, but I'm just, I'll make them have Manscape back then, that's for sure. That's really close to the last quarantine too. So you almost zoned in on there. Sure. So you get 20% off and free shipping with the code Footballers at Manscape.com. That's 20% off. Free shipping at Manscape.com and use code footballers. Help your relationship out during this quarantine. Your partner and your body will thank you. All right. We're moving on. Running bags.

All right, it's time, the early top 10 running back rankings. Very excited to get into this. We've each individually ranked our top, I think we rank maybe the top 24 as of right now, April, heading into the 2020 season. And we've got our consensus top 10 rankings. Anybody have a guess who might end up at the top of the list? Well, let's say this. He's not the consensus number one.

He's the consensus number one. He's not the unanimous. Unanimous. Yeah, thank you. That would be Christian McCaffrey. And you are correct. I do have him at number two. Jason, Mike, you both have him at number one. He is our consensus number one. Last year, absolutely ridiculous. The most consistent running back that you could ever hope for or imagine ran for over 1,300 yards, 15 touchdowns, and then 116 receptions.

He was a beast, man. It's the third time a running back has ever done the thousand thousand. It's McCaffrey, Marshall Falk, and Roger Craig. It's a historical performance this past year. And when I took a look at what McCaffrey did, honestly, the rushing totals and the yardage and things like that, it doesn't feel like an outlier what he was able to do with that work. I mean, the 15 touchdowns possibly could be an outlier. But the big questions for McCaffrey are,

You have Teddy Bridgewater now. You have head coach Matt Jaw Rule coming in, changing up the system. What does it look like? And I can't speak exactly to what Jaw is going to try and implement. But I took a look at Teddy Bridgewater, you know, because what we want to know is how much work is Christian McCaffrey going to get through the air? That's the huge, that's the huge story for McCaffrey. And I went back and looked at Teddy Bridgewater's targets in 2014. So his first year,

23% of his targets went to the running back position the following year 19 and a half. And then last year in his short stint where he actually saw playing time, 23.5% of his targets went to the running back position. That's all good. So that means if Christian McCaffrey is seeing the snap totals, he at least has a quarterback who's going to distribute 20 plus percent of his targets to the running back position, which that's very positive news.

For me, I hadn't gone through those numbers yet, so I'm still very bullish on what CMC is going to do. Well, and also think about, you know, the offensive coordinator, they're bringing in from LSU, a lot of love given to Clyde Edwards Allaire in his receiving work at LSU. That's the system. And they did pass. So you've got both a system and a quarterback that look like they're willing to pass the ball to the running back. So, you know, the question is the snap percentages?

I don't think that that will be anywhere near where he was. And so if you want to take him off that number one pedestal, it's rare for running backs to finish as the number one running back multiple years in a row. So if you're just going statistical odds on that alone, it probably won't be Christian McCaffrey who ends up number one. That's pretty much why he wasn't number one for me. It was part the offense changing. I don't think 141 targets is reasonable again. And then we've, you know,

We've talked to some people specifically around Matt Rule talking about him pretty intensely scouting the running back class coming into this year, recognizing the fact that you can't do what you did with Christian McCaffrey indefinitely. And yes, it seems like because he made it through a season unscathed, that that's somehow validation that you can do that every single year. I don't think you can. Well, basically, too. I mean, because he was.