Fantasy Football - The Overreaction Episode! + Fantasy Freakouts - Podcast for 5/7

11:02Mike Wright:So Kenneth Walker, oh boy, we got this in here, huh? He expects to be used more in the passing game with the Chiefs. Mike is pleased. He says he's been working on getting connected in the passing game. Yeah, he has. And everything. So that's good, said Walker to Kay Adams. I feel like I'll be used more in the pass game. Mike feels that way.

11:25Andy Holloway:Let's get you just a nice, clean 10 % target share. Is that what you projected him for? That's where I have him at.

11:31Mike Wright:Where did he end up in your rankings? Or do you have yours done? We had a little bit of a ranking reveal for our individual rankings on the last episode, Mike.

11:39Andy Holloway:Let me see if I can pull that up real quick. He is, this is going to surprise you guys. I'm going to guess. He's higher than you would think. I'm going to guess he's eight. Okay. Twelve for me. He's 13 for me. You guys are all too low. Eight is too low? RB7 right now.

11:57Mike Wright:Woo! Are you still working on yours?

11:59Andy Holloway:My first pass is done.

12:01Mike Wright:Okay.

12:01Andy Holloway:so well that's unsurprising deal with it let it wash over you um that would be a that would be a

12:10Mike Wright:obviously his highest finish but he's got every opportunity in front of him you have him at a 10 target share i do i've got him at eight you gotta bump those those are rookie numbers gotta bump those up now i've got to look and see i'm pretty sure he had a 10 i have him at seven

12:27Andy Holloway:A couple years ago, he went weirdly into just a pass catching role. He was a 14 % target share two years ago.

12:34Mike Wright:If you want to see Mike somehow even happier than he was last year, Kenneth Walker having a top five season would get it done. Travis Hunter, general manager of the Jags, James Gladstone came out, said he's going to play both sides of the ball in 2026.

12:47Andy Holloway:We know he's going to play both. That doesn't help us. Now, I will say.

12:53Mike Wright:It's better than the report of he's not going to play offense.

12:55Andy Holloway:Well, I don't feel like that report was ever actually he's not going to play offense. It kind of.

13:01Jason Moore:That's what it was alluding to. It was like, oh, he's full-time cornered.

13:04Andy Holloway:That's what was said. Yeah. And then to me, that's, okay, he's doing 100 % of defensive snaps. So offensively, now his snaps are throttled. That's the part we need to know.

13:17Jason Moore:I pulled up an interview today with Liam Cohen where he flat out, and you can't get anyone better. this isn't a reporter this is Liam Coen thank you Liam this is the head coach saying their plan their plan for Travis Hunter is identical to when they drafted him which is to get him on both sides of the ball as much as possible that's what he said

13:43Andy Holloway:yeah look

13:44Mike Wright:we've had we're going to talk about this forever I have been very pro Travis Hunter playing offense he won the bulletin a call he is a fabulous wide receiver and he might be their best one he might legitimately be their most skilled wide receiver he is cert you can make an easy argument that his skill set is better than jacoby myers and parker washington you could argue we've seen brian thomas jr go put up that kind of a monster year i think his highest ceiling is the highest of the group but that doesn't mean that's the kind of snaps he's going to get that will be the risk with hunter i could see myself never drafting Travis Leonard because the reward might not be worth the risk.

14:24Jason Moore:It is really tough where these small little percentages make an enormous impact. When you say, okay, let's say he plays the majority of offense, but it's still not good enough. If he's playing 60 % of snaps on offense, you look at the players who are slot-only guys that can't get in on two wide receiver sets. they have such a hard path for fantasy plug-and-play relevance. I still am very skeptical. I agree with you, Andy, that Travis Hunter is a good wide receiver and too good to be off the field. They've got to involve him. They have a great wide receiver in that. But I also think he's not going to get enough snaps to be reliable for fantasy.

15:07Mike Wright:I think that's right. I'm more just speaking to Jacksonville. Okay, that's fine. Which, I mean, it sounds like Liam Cohn has the same mindset of basically you drafted him to be a special weapon on both sides of the ball. We're going to use him that way. Maybe his plan was not to get him more involved when he was breaking out in week eight or whatever it was. But I just think he's a really good player. Now it's hard because if I told you a game was happening tomorrow and I told you start Jacksonville wide receiver with your season on the line, you could argue for the other three guys already. Yes.

15:41Mike Wright:You could say Jacoby's the best one to play today. Brian Thomas is the best one to play today Parker Washington is the best one to play today Britton Strange is the best one to play today and then you have to throw Hunter in there so maybe the best path is just we'll watch from the sidelines Trevor Lawrence is way higher than I thought he'd be on my rankings that was one of our reveals Mike do you want to know where he is

16:03Andy Holloway:or did I already tell you I saw you threw out a number but you were not complete yet

16:08Mike Wright:four oh oh there he is there he is my guy horse boy uh we are into our overreactions episode players and situations that fantasy football managers will overreact to this year it is always a fun episode on this episode last year uh one of the ones we brought up was not to overreact to Saquon's dominance yes and believe that it's repeatable that was not met with a lot of respect maybe i don't know with a lot of agreement they're not happy to hear it usually think whatever

16:44Jason Moore:just happened is what's going to happen again like that is the the normal stance and it's sometimes true but i mean things change every single year yeah let's get into it

16:59Andy Holloway:i'm not gonna do what you all think i'm gonna do which is just flip out

17:07Mike Wright:all right overreactions i think we both picked a couple of them to go through i i feel like i want to start just based on what you just said jason which is that our default position is to say what happened last year is going to happen again we the first overreaction that i'm going to bring up is an overreaction to what our perceived stinkiness value is for a franchise. So we'll call this the poopy diaper club. This is the Browns, Jets, Cardinals, Dolphins. You could throw a couple other teams in there. We're talking about how bad are these teams? How bad is our perception of them? And how do we react in fantasy?

17:48Mike Wright:Our default opinion is, oh my gosh, I just had to watch 17 weeks of that garbage so it's coming again and i don't want any player to touch that team so my simple counterbalance the pendulum swing in the other direction of this look i stand by everything we've ever said you want players on winning teams okay so we're not taking that out of the equation here's part of it part of it is you don't know which teams are going to be winning teams you think you do and some you do some you will know you can tell me buffalo is going to win a lot of games i i will accept that yeah but 20 percent somewhere in that range some years it's 15 some years it's 25 somewhere in that range of teams that are below 500 become above 500 teams on a yearly basis the turnover at the nfl level so you've got you know a quarter of this uh of the league that is going from a team that we perceive as bad that was bad to a good team.

18:44Mike Wright:So you're going to try to identify those situations. The other thing is that you will get fantasy value out of franchises that are not necessarily the funnest to watch, right? Even in the worst year of the Jets, Brees Halls had success. Garrett Wilson, top 10 wide receiver. The Cardinals were full of, from Jacoby Brissett to Trey McBride to Michael Wilson to the running back, I mean, James Conner the year before. You do find value in those positions. And what I don't want somebody to do is completely remove guys from your draft board because of the emotional reaction that you had to their nasty performances on the field the breakout season for odell beckham came on a 6 and 10 season for the new york giants james robinson that breakout running back season came on a 1 and 15 jacksonville team brock bowers rookie season las vegas was 4 and 13 devon a-chan last year we didn't like watching the dolphins we liked watching him you talk about touchdown opportunities like part of why you have them ranked lower is you're afraid that they weren't a good offense last year right and so he still had a big performance harold fanon last year a big performance um to me you need to make sure that you're finding the diamonds in i guess the big jurassic park poop pile even if you don't like the team there's the opportunity a 20 chance that they turn it around and become a winning team that fits the category of draft players on winning teams and then there's a chance that talent just wins out on those franchises it's something i've been saying a lot with the draft this year with some of these wide receiver destinations some of the places where players have gone where you're like oh that's gross that's nasty look you might be right for some of these teams but if you if you have a player you really like and you have a team situation that you can at least paint a picture of a chance that they turn it around don't overreact to the stinkiness of these teams trey mcbride had the greatest tight end season ever on a four-win team.

20:38You can do it, and I think there is a difference between

20:43Mike Wright:middle of the pack bad and bottom of the barrel bad. I think those things are different too.

20:47Jason Moore:Yeah, you do need to have a little bit of thought behind it. There are examples in the past where teams that you thought were going to be putrid were good, and it is shocking. I think of the Texans a couple years back when the Cardinals acquired their next year's first and we thought, oh, this is a top five pick for sure. And then they were really, really good. But also, they got a new rookie quarterback who was surprisingly way better than we thought. And so I do think you can take a look at these teams, these bad teams, and kind of get a good idea of like, okay, sometimes it's a player is alone.

21:26Jason Moore:So he's going to soak up so much of the target share that they can still be bad. But other times when you're looking at the bad teams that are going to get better, I just look at the quarterback and say, is there a chance? So, for instance, Shadour Sanders, right? Is there a chance that he could surprise and be better? I think probably. I think that is more likely that he could have a surprise. Better than what? Well, I'm saying as opposed to if we're looking at these four teams, and saying, you know, Geno Smith at this stage of his career, is he going to really rescue and turn the Jets into a really good team?

22:08Jason Moore:Probably not. Now, I think probably not with Shadour as well.

22:11Mike Wright:Browns were in 9-1 score games last year. There were a lot of games that their defense kept them in. It didn't mean that they had great offense. I mean, you can talk about the Browns and Quenchon Judkins. Judkins and Fannin had great seasons.

22:22Andy Holloway:Yeah, but that stat is such an indictment of the offense. Because of how. They were in nine one-score games? They went four and five in one-score games.

22:32Jason Moore:Their defense was that good. Their offense is that bad then. Exactly.

22:37Mike Wright:Every week you would look at the score and you'd be like, oh, the Browns are in it again? Yeah. I know, Jason, you don't have high expectations for the Dolphins. A lot of their personnel is pretty similar to last year, but you bring in Malik Willis, the performances by who they had on the offensive side last year was terrible. Two is gone. just keep an open mind don't shut these teams out don't don't completely take them off your list for the black uh for the draft board because i think there's opportunities to find value and i think the overreaction is to say oh my gosh i don't want you know what i like about that andy i like your

23:11Jason Moore:positivity thank you i like how optimistic you are you're looking forward and you're saying it can be better it doesn't always have to be worse uh but now it's my turn uh not yet oh man

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25:59Jason Moore:my i'm so back here baby i am back to my old ways no i know what this is yeah my overreaction is don't overreact to the onslaught of rookie tight end success recently. Okay. And so now here's just another off season. It's I mean, it feels just like another off season. I will. I want to qualify this because I have completely changed from saying that rookie tight ends, you know, they take time to develop. They can't hit the ground running in year one. That's the old NFL. It's obviously changed. Obviously. This last year, you had Warren Loveland Fannin. You had Brock Bowers. You've had Laporta. So I am not stuck in that.

26:41Jason Moore:But what I am saying as an overreaction is because we have this slew of really good fantasy impact rookies, there's at least Sadiq this draft, and if you want to throw Stowers in there, where people are going to be drafting these players higher than they should be based upon the overreaction of what's happened recently. And I want us to be smarter than that and look at the nuance of the players. First of all, Warren and Loveland were unbelievable talents. These guys, their production profiles, their landing spots, we could see this coming. Brock Bowers, literally the best prospect at tight end that we've been doing this show for over a decade.

27:26Jason Moore:He was a perfect prospect. We knew about him years in advance. that's not what Kenyon Sadiq is even Eli Stowers especially where he ended up behind Dallas Goddard you know when we look at historical trends that's great but it's not predictive it describes what happened it doesn't automatically mean that Sadiq is going to be good if you look at Sadiq as a prospect he is way behind those other guys yards per route run he only Hayden Hurst was lower over the last decade for a first round for a first round tight end um you look at a dominator rating which is the percentage of a team's yards and targets only Hurst and OJ Howard were lower for first round tight ends you look at yards per team pass attempt and the reason I'm throwing these three stats out it's because these are three of the most predictive stats that we have for you know pass catchers coming from college to the NFL he's the lowest of any first round tight end over the last decade.

28:31Jason Moore:Now he goes to a team where he's not going to be in a Brock Bauer situation and soaking up the targets. He's behind Garrett Wilson. At the very least, Garrett Wilson is soaking up the targets. So I believe he's going to be overdrafted based on the hype of this is a top-end first-round draft pick. Those have been dominating. I'm just going to take my shot. I'm just going to swing for the fences in the early middle rounds, especially when it comes to late August. A drafts are happening. People are going to push them up a round or two too high. I don't think that we have a breakout rookie tight end this year, even though I love Stowers, and I just don't want to overreact from the run we've been on.

29:15Andy Holloway:I don't disagree with you at all. The prospect of Kenyon Sadiq, I am concerned of if you're that awesome, why aren't you dominating in college ball? OJ Howard is kind of, and he's at Alabama, he was, sorry, in the SEC. Josh Jacobs was similar. As a running back, his production profile was lacking, but you could understand why. Sadiq, you can't. Why aren't you better? I'm just chuckling the whole time because your topic is don't overreact to rookie tight ends. Just call it what it is, Jason. I don't like Kenyon Sadiq. Thank you. Yeah, okay. Just be intellectually honest with the people. Just say don't overreact to Kenyon Sadiq.

30:03Andy Holloway:Okay. But the reason, my point is the reason. You have to briefly mention Stowers just so you're like, no, I'm talking all the tight ends. No, you're not.

30:12Jason Moore:All right. Talk about one guy. Look, last year Andy's was about Saquon, and this is about Sadiq. Don't overdraft Sadiq. Thank you. He's not going to be special. Get Stowers off the graphic. Yeah, honestly, I think Stowers could do it. Stowers is so good, man. Oh, my God.

30:28Andy Holloway:I would take Stowers over Sadiq. He still has to get by God. Yeah.

30:32Mike Wright:You know what I think has actually happened? I don't think that fantasy football players are capable of reacting in either direction to rookie tight ends. I think all we do is we take the young unseen upside in the spot of the draft where it's ugly, old and boring. Yeah. And we've gotten lucky three years in a row. Yes. And it's worked out spectacular. So maybe we maybe we. That's why people are going up a little bit.

30:59Jason Moore:They're going to say, well, it's worked out three times in a row. I'm going to.

31:01Mike Wright:And you know what? When I get to some late round pick and I have to choose Mark Andrews or Stowers. Wish me luck. Don't overreact. Wish me luck. Grab Mark Andrews. Mike, go ahead.

31:15Andy Holloway:I just want to talk a little bit about some touchdown regression. We call it positive regression because we just want you to understand we're talking about going in the right direction. We're talking about touchdowns specifically for the running back position of saying last year's touchdown droughts will not last forever. James Cook, he's become the poster boy for this type of talk where his first two years in the league, he scored a total of two rushing touchdowns in each of those consecutive years. Breaks out in a huge way, and it's like, oh, yeah, he was hitting some bad luck. Maybe he's hitting a little bit too much on the good side, but he's a great player.

31:58Andy Holloway:It can't be just simply, oh, this player will never be able to score. So I wanted to highlight a couple guys to pay attention to because it's not as easy as, you know, like last year's Matthew Stafford threw a touchdown on 7.7 % of his passing attempts. That number's probably going to come down just based off of a huge history of Stafford. Running backs are more difficult. But one player I do really want to highlight, Ashton Gentry is in this category of last year we had 266 rushing attempts for him, and he only scored a rushing touchdown for for every 53 carries. These are numbers we can look at and say, you're getting way too much volume.

32:48Andy Holloway:Your touchdown expectation should be far better than you performed last year. We have some guys talk about carries inside the five where the success wasn't there, but the opportunities keep flowing. David Montgomery, only five of his carries inside the five turned into a touchdown. he should be seeing exactly the same amount of volume he was seeing in the side of the five this year compared to last year maybe even more and I expect those numbers to go back up but along with Ashton Gentry you know going on the good side Blake Corum is very interesting when you're talking about this because he stands out dramatically of a player who had 13 carries inside the five and he only had four touchdowns and I think people will see that number and be too dismissive and say, well, that means he's not good in it.

33:39Andy Holloway:It's all Kyron. Or look at the actual amount of carries that the team is giving him inside the five and be like, maybe I need to be a little bit more hesitant about what's going on. He has some touchdown regression coming for himself. Maybe I need to be more worried about the timeshare. I guess last episode, you guys were talking about the report of Kyron and Blake Corum being more of a 50-50 split.

34:03Mike Wright:Pretty big debate about it.

34:06Jason Moore:How many carries inside the five for Corham?

34:08Andy Holloway:He had 13 last year. So Kyron had 18. There's a lot to go around for that team because they're scoring off, but the point is – Well, Kyron is. Yeah. Okay, so that's where you stand on this side of the argument. That's where he stands on the argument. The touchdown – the numbers are the numbers, man. Analytics, they bounce back to the mean, and I think that Corham really underproduced in that area.

34:33Mike Wright:And younger players tend to get better and older players tend to get worse.

34:36Andy Holloway:And then, you know, to highlight, like, Bill, only three of his carries inside the five, three of 12 turned into touchdowns. So make sure you're paying attention to these. We give you access to these types of numbers in the Ultimate Draft Kit. If you just want to go look at a red zone report, see who's getting a bunch of carries inside the five, I mean, this is part of the process that I go with. So you can build it into yours as well. Look for signs because guys don't, like Chase Brown scoring on 31 % of his carries inside the five. It's just, it's low. It's low. Look for opportunities for them to bounce back.

35:12Mike Wright:If you were to stimulate that season 100 times, that's going to come up as one of the lower performing seasons relative to the mean.

35:20Andy Holloway:And the big boy is Saquon Barkley, who had one touchdown from inside the five. like that doesn't make you know how many attempts on 13 attempts you we you highlighted andy like be careful with his performance i will say the same thing now of in the other direction yeah like don't don't bury barkley just yeah rank check yeah i so i i really did not like where saquon

35:47Jason Moore:ended up for me he's he's a player that i'm going to move up because he finished where i had him it out at running back 15 that feels too low he's got i got him at 10 i felt pretty good about that i feel like that's the right the right range yeah i agree and maybe a value uh for that team that's

36:02Mike Wright:going to lose uh by all you know counts aj brown yeah and yeah we can like stowers and lemon but that's not the presence of aj brown on that offense i would not be surprised if you saw a very similar run heavy scheme with a little bit more bounce back to the mean my second overreaction is the it's ironic because we i don't think we knew we were going to talk about travis hunter in this jacksonville offense but my second one was just that brian thomas jr is not dead

36:29Andy Holloway:oh man when i was doing jacksonville brother hard time it it's so it's so difficult to not react

36:42Mike Wright:drastically to what happened last year you you talking about the fact that he finishes the wide receiver 43 he missed three weeks due to injury but only had 48 catches 700 yards two touchdowns his catch rate was it totally bottomed out it was not it was at all too different than what you saw

37:00Andy Holloway:from a book a second half of the year he caught 65 of his of targets in his rookie season that plummeted to 53 and it's like i i needed mac jones targets man he can't be at 53 look he's

37:15Mike Wright:It doesn't make sense. He's a rookie. It doesn't make sense. But maybe it does. A lot went sideways. The challenge here is that you've only had a handful of rookies that have finished as top five wide receivers in the history of the game. Beckham was one. Chase was one. Puka was one. Brian Thomas Jr. did that two years ago. That's why he was a top ten pick in a lot of drafts. the fall off of expectation to performance that difference is the most impactful thing that you could have in fantasy in terms of like he is the bust of the year probably for the when you relative to draft position he has to be what's wild is that all the other sophomore wide receivers struggle they all went down yeah malik neighbors barely played but he's his points per game was down from his rookie year.

38:04Mike Wright:BTJ's was the most extreme, went from 14 to 8. But Ladd McConkie went from 12 to 9. That's not that different than Brian Thomas Jr. in terms of the actual output in points per game. 14 to 8, 12 to 9. Marvin Harrison went down a point per game. Xavier Worthy went down three points per game. These were all standout.

38:21Jason Moore:Malik Nabors wasn't even in the top 90 wide receivers.

38:25Mike Wright:That's true. Thank you. Thank you, Jason. I did mention he was injured. but this was a new offense and when I look at that receiving room and I I've been through it Mike you just said you had to go through it I had to go through it there's a lot of different mouths to feed he was he did not end up I think he ended up basically tied as my target leader on the team with Jacoby Myers and total targets but the true purest upside potential the biggest bang for your buck in this draft for somebody that's going to make a difference on your team is is still placing a bet down on brian thomas jr to bounce back to the type of form or close to it that he had in his rookie season jacoby myers we know what that dude is we do we've seen him on multiple franchises the patriots the raiders jacksonville let me give you a word for him The heart.

39:21Mike Wright:Solid.

39:22Andy Holloway:Yeah, that's the issue is, is he just a good wide receiver or is he good enough to be that for them? Brian Thomas? No, Jacoby. Jacoby is, we know who Jacoby is. But that's what I'm saying. He's not enough. He's not. That's my question. Is it enough?

39:43Mike Wright:Let me say this.

39:43Andy Holloway:You'll have to answer that as a drafter.

39:45Mike Wright:If you overreact to Brian Thomas Jr. struggling and you end up right and he's horrible, I promise you Travis Hunter is the thing if Brian Thomas Jr. is nothing I promise you it's not just going to be Jacoby Myers and Parker Washington it is going to be somebody else I think BTJ can bounce back we've had some big time standout rookies that had a struggle as sophomores and bounced back Mike Evans went from the wide receiver 12 as a rookie to 24 to 3 Calvin Ridley from 19 to 26 to 4 Cooper Cup 27 to 51 to 4 Garrett Wilson 19 32 four I'm not saying it will happen I'm saying that the draft value it's almost it's one of the

40:24Jason Moore:best picks you can make it is absolutely one of the best picks you can make one of the things that is a high predictor of future success is past success we know that it's obvious but this was in years past Andy you had a my guy prediction of Todd Gurley and then he was the running back one that year you had a my guy prediction of cooper cup and he was he was the number one wide receiver afterwards because they had shown that they could do this in the past right now depending on your your source i'm seeing an adp of wide receiver 31 he's being drafted at wide receiver 31 now i have his median outcome at wide receiver 22 so i think he's a huge value but this is a guy who two years ago was the wide receiver for his seventh or eighth round pick potential yeah i mean

41:09Mike Wright:it's a wonderful shot to take there is more talk of jacksonville moving to two tight end sets BTJ is not the guy coming off the field in those situations. He's the X receiver. He's going to stay out there. He led Jacksonville in first read target percentage, even in his crappy year last year. You talked about the catch percentage. With two or fewer wide receivers on the field, he's still the dude. You know, Liam Cohen has come out and talked a little bit more about the fact that, you know, he didn't realize what BTJ is capable of doing in the slot. They need to do some better stuff with him. I don't think the utilization was questionable.

41:40Mike Wright:He had 25 % of his routes, his pure go routes. last year they're only a handful of guys and they're not names you love you know marvin mims

41:49Andy Holloway:darius slayton dk metcalf the nine route warriors yeah that your catch percentage is going to be low

41:55Mike Wright:you know kayshaun booty kind of got it done with that he had the highest percentage of go routes but not to the degree where you were reliable in fantasy yeah i mean they also figured that out a

42:04Jason Moore:little bit to start the year last year brian thomas jr was way worse than how he finished like before their bye week he was catching 49 of his targets is after the bye week is 58 so i do

42:17Mike Wright:think that they are going to figure that out he's going behind courtland sutton who do you want to take a shot of course he's going going behind dk metcalf mike let me throw that one to you never met calf is what mike is lived his life there's players drafted after and he's going behind jacoby myers by the way one pick wow that that won't happen exactly why

42:40Andy Holloway:because everyone's like huh i don't know yeah i think there's going to be a big overreaction

42:44Mike Wright:maybe it's even an appropriate emotional reaction but don't let it affect how you draft 20 26 all right is it your turn it is my turn i'm going

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44:45Andy Holloway:Sign up now. Games not included with DirecTV require separate paid app subscriptions. Service renews monthly unless canceled. Local channels vary by market. Blackouts and other terms apply.

44:59Andy Holloway:Mike, what do you got for us? I don't think we can do that now with the screen. Oh, it must be Jason.

45:04Jason Moore:All right, I'm up. injuries have one of the biggest effects in fantasy football and they are not predictable however there's a lot of data at different positions for how often players get injured or don't and I want us to be aware of what happened last year at the running back position and not overreact and think it's going to happen again because it ain't running backs last year were so healthy. No one got injured. It was unbelievable.

45:36Mike Wright:I feel like part of it was you. You made the proclamation about B. John Robinson. We knew it was the player. Part was Mike, sheer will, kept Christian McCaffrey on the field, plus an electrical station, plus he siphoned the powers of his other teammates.

45:47Jason Moore:I mean, it really was. You have guys who have massive injury history, like Christian McCaffrey, Jonathan Taylor. A lot of guys just didn't get injured. In fact, if you look at the players last year, Christian McCaffrey, 17 games, Jonathan Taylor, 17, Bijan, 17, Jameer, 17, James Cook, 17, A-Chan, 16, but he was just benched in Week 18. All the guys that were 16 were benched in Week 18. That was, you know, Devon A-Chan and Javante Williams. There was basically only one injury of note, which was Josh Jacobs. Bucky. oh yes sorry two Bucky and Josh Jacobs those guys were injured but to give you a little bit of numbers of how wild it was in 2025 the top 12 by ADP averaged 16.1 games and it's really higher than that because most of those were week 18 sit downs from their team Saquon Barkley didn't play wasn't injured usually you look back at the the previous decade they're only averaging 13.6 games And that is a big difference because when you have those injuries, like Josh Jacobs missed like two games.

47:01Jason Moore:Not really. He was injured. He was playing injured. He had games where he would play like 29 % of the snaps, not touch the ball. It was a very bad end of the season for Josh Jacobs. So how does this apply to not overreact to it? Well, one, you're going to have the pendulum swing like it will. Running backs were great last year. Running backs will be highly drafted again this year. which means you're going to have some value in the first two rounds at wide receiver. I also think that this is a very good year to focus on depth at running back because, you know, people are going to be like, oh, I've got my studs.

47:37Jason Moore:I'm solid. But also what that kind of points me towards, I'm not the hugest fan of this, but the years where you want to try it are years after what we just saw. and that's zero RB. Zero RB is the methodology of drafting where you are going to take the backup insurance running backs late in a draft, the fodder, and you're going to wait for the injuries at running back. The reason it's probably a good year to do it is because it didn't work well this last year. When you have a bunch of - I call it the no-dub strategy. When you have a handful of people playing that strategy in the same league they kind of cannibalize each other and it doesn't work well for them to succeed but when it's like not popular it's like oh that didn't work people aren't going

48:25Andy Holloway:to be in it and especially in the running backs are being juiced up you you get access then to

48:31Jason Moore:elite wide receivers and the elite tight ends exactly so I don't I don't want to look back at last year and think man somehow running backs just figured out how to exercise and stretch better and they're not going to have big, massive, devastating injuries this year. It will sadly happen, and take advantage of it.

48:52Mike Wright:Way to not be positive like me. Draft depth. Just talk about injuries coming. You're kind of like the Grim Reaper. You know what I mean? That's kind of your thing, man.

49:02Andy Holloway:What are you trying to do over here? I don't know.

49:05Mike Wright:I don't know. Trying to rebrand live on the air here?

49:08Andy Holloway:You can't do that, man. You're not fooling nobody. We're like 12 years into this.

49:11Mike Wright:We'll leave them as double stuff.

49:13Andy Holloway:Mike, what do you got? So, like Jason's talking about with the running backs, we have a situation to monitor here with the elite top-tier mobile quarterbacks. Okay. Because they did not come through last year. I want you to read it verbatim.

49:30Mike Wright:I want you to read your headline verbatim.

49:31Andy Holloway:Which the do not.

49:32Mike Wright:For your section here.

49:34Andy Holloway:Do not let last year's quarterback disappointments brainwash you. Mortal mobile quarterbacks still slap.

49:43Mike Wright:that's it

49:44Andy Holloway:alright wrap it up that's a Kyle Borginoni trade oh is that what he did yeah Kyle loves say things slap

49:52Mike Wright:Mortal Kombat

49:53Andy Holloway:still slaps which it does there you go there's a new movie coming out hashtag non-sponsored I hate being old enough to where and a Street Fighter

50:02Mike Wright:everything has come out three or four times do you know what I mean yeah like I don't that is not a great part of growing up is just seeing the same exact movie want to see some new stuff He made three or four times is wild.

50:15Andy Holloway:They're just still trying to get it right, you know, any time now. Crazy. But so, you know, like Lamar, ADP of quarterback two, finishes at 20. Jaden Daniels, lost season to injury. Jalen Hurts, not nearly as good as you hope. Bo Nix, like it was – Bo Nix was a weird season because sometimes it was fantastic. And then, of course, Kyler Murray, who loses his job to injury, and the team just no longer wanting to play him.

50:46Mike Wright:We need to know where he is for you right this minute. Oh, Kyler? Yeah, so this is part of our rankings surprise yesterday. Me and Jason had a big differential on Kyler Murray.

50:59Andy Holloway:Right now, I have him better than ADP, but he is quarterback 15 for me.

51:08Jason Moore:23 oh jason has him at 10 uh he is just call me baby bear he's currently 12 now but yes i had him

51:16Mike Wright:at 10 at the beginning but to your point jason also has jayden daniels very high which that's

51:22Andy Holloway:that's what we want to bring up here is the forgotten man is the adp is it has shifted so last year lamar jackson was going around the two three turn right now in basketball he's going in the late fifth. Jaden Daniels went from a third rounder to a sixth rounder. This is value is being placed upon you. And these are still the guys. Jaden Daniels last year, if you look at only his six starts, his rushing numbers were exactly what you wanted. They were nearly identical to last year. He got hurt. The completion percentage wasn't as great, but we need these guys to run. And we need to know that they're going to run all year long.

52:05Andy Holloway:And Jaden Daniels is now giving you a discount and like his scramble rate was even higher in those first six games compared to his rookie season. Then Jalen Hurts, it's the same thing. You had a weird lower rushing touchdown year for Jalen Hurts. Is that the new normal or is it the couple years prior where it's just, it's automatic? Last year, only eight rushing touchdowns on the season. It was the fewest carries inside the five since 2021 for Jalen Hurts. The chance for him to regress to his mean there, I think it's very strong. I'm not saying I'm for sure calling these things to happen. It's just about finding value where the market is presenting it to you.

52:49Andy Holloway:And regression studies should be a huge part of what you do when you're getting ready for drafts, because that's how you know when people are we're a little too excited for them or the the mob is too scared of this

53:02Mike Wright:player yesterday we got a question mike on the mailbag portion about our process for statting players out in the udk jason and i got to answer for ourselves you weren't here we talked a little bit about you looking at pace of play yes um do you want to sure fill in some more yeah the way

53:18Andy Holloway:i started as i i start with the top down of just kind of the whole team the team environment of Their pace of play is very important to me, and that's based off of the history of the team, coaching staff. You know, there's definitely some projection that goes into it when, you know, like last year, Kellen Moore goes to the Saints. He plays way faster than Peyton in, like, the previous regime. Or not Peyton. Dennis Allen. Yes. So you've got to just kind of anticipate that's going to go on, but we have enough history of Kellen Moore. And then I look at that coach, the quarterback, just who they have.

53:59Andy Holloway:Their pass-to-rush ratio is really important to me of is that going to stay about the same? Is it going to rise? And then that essentially just feeds my quarterback statistics of knowing those things and then, of course, knowing how the quarterback performs. And then I just kind of filter that down to the rest of the players.

54:20Mike Wright:Now we kind of talked about different starting points for what you're looking at as we build those out. Obviously the entire set of player by player, team by team projections for all three of us and our consensus rankings are all going to be in the 2026 Ultimate Draft Kit. We just released the best ball rankings in the UDK Plus available right now. All that at ultimatedraftkit.com. If you never want to think about it again, you can just become an Ultimate Foot Clan member. you'll get access to both the udk in its highest form the udk plus and you'll also get in-season tools including the lineup optimizer everything we add all the time everywhere extra episodes every week it's a great way to support the show just go to join the foot.com for that we are going to say goodbye to today's episode and we'll be back with dynasty week next week trade targets rookie sleepers an autographed jersey giveaway next week and a a whole lot more from the fantasy footballers.

55:17Mike Wright:Until then, I wish you good luck on the golf course. Oh, I need it, man. Swing straight. Hit the ball. Definitely hit it. Sometimes. Step one. Goodbye.

55:31Jason Moore:Thank you for listening to another episode of the Fantasy Footballers Podcast. Join our fantasy football community on jointhefoot.com and follow us on Twitter at the FFBallers.

55:49Andy Holloway:On September 25th... No one's coming for us. It's just you and me, boy. 58 miles. Part of the Beast is the must-see adventure of the year. An incredible story of survival. I got you. One of the most extraordinary on-screen bonds you'll ever see. Odie, the greatest dog to ever walk the Earth. Brad Pitt. I'll get you home.

56:42Thank you.