0:00Oh yes, you know what time it is. Stats vs Film is back and it's extra special this year.
0:05We have Matt Harmon on for the first 10 teams, the first headline teams of the season.
0:10And we cover everything. I mean, we talk about every single team in this one.
0:14Another show does that here on a Tuesday. Everything from the CMC-Kaelin Black split up to, is it time to bench Cam
0:20Ward all the way to, hey, what the heck happened to Colson Loveland and all of the Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver.
0:26So stick around for this episode of Stats vs Film on Yahoo Fantasy Football with Josh and Hayden.
0:31Oh yes, we are so back. Welcome to the flagship show.
0:34Yes, this is Stats vs Film. As you know, we go and watch all 16 games from the weekend, look at the
0:40underperformers and most importantly, your weekly winners and compare that to the stats, the spreadsheets, the analytics, the underlying metrics in the
0:46hopes of helping you bully your league mates and your friends.
0:49Here in week two. And boy, have we leveled up this year?
0:53Obviously, we have Hayden Winks joining for all 32 teams just like normal.
0:56But the addition. Yes, the big man himself. Matt Harmon joins us for the first half of this episode.
1:02Matt, welcome to the party. Boys, it's good to be here.
1:05This is one of the best, if not certainly the most ambitious shows in the fantasy space.
1:09So I am very excited to be a part of it this year.
1:13I've listened to it. I've watched it before. And, you know, now I'm good to be a part of it.
1:18So I'm very excited to chop it up with you guys.
1:21Also very excited that you're here. Throw you in the deep end.
1:25Josh, I was gonna say the one thing big picture wise heading into this week is already you feel the difference between
1:31the good teams and the bad teams. And that's concerning because typically we like get that like week eight or so like
1:37the fact that we're already there on about three or four of these teams in week ones.
1:42It's not good. And something we'll hit on during this is so many new quarterback and play caller tandems.
1:47Some of them hit the ground running and let's say many of them did not.
1:51And we'll see if that improves in week two and week three as we go along.
1:55For everyone out there, we start with about 10 headline teams and, you know, the biggest talking points, either injuries or let's
2:02say depth charts and changes for new starters. And then we'll go in alphabetical order after that.
2:06So if you're new around here, hit subscribe. We do this every single Tuesday.
2:10We're going to try to do it live every single week at six o'clock Eastern.
2:14So we kick things off with the primetime games that we missed on our Sunday night recap show.
2:19The Kansas City Chiefs only one place to begin here.
2:22Hayden Kenneth Walker has the most rushing yards ever for a running back that has played next to Patrick Mahomes and only
2:28took him one game to do it. He already topped the number of 20 plus yard runs of any Chiefs running back that they posted last season.
2:36He is the franchise altering player that we were all over at the one to turn this year.
2:41Yeah, I think that he would be in contention to be the RB three if you're redrafting teams this week.
2:46And he had this 29th touch of week one with 11 minutes to go.
2:50The neutral pass rate for the Chiefs was a step down from where it was more under center stuff, more at you
2:56runs for Kenneth Walker, the fastest ball carrier they've had since 2019.
2:59So like to me, this reminds me of like LaShawn McCoy, Jamal Charles, Brian Westbrook, like back in the day, Andy Reid had guys like this.
3:06I think they're going to get him the ball through the air, which we saw this one.
3:11He obviously had that little receiving touchdown on like 1936 play design there.
3:15But really, it's just like the explosiveness and just the best offensive line is probably played behind, including that no namer undrafted
3:21free agent left left tackle sprung him free on a couple of these runs as well.
3:25Yeah, Khalil Benson shout out man Hayden. You and I talked about this game on the nightcap for the forecast yesterday.
3:31Yeah, God days man. What are what are we doing at this point anymore?
3:35But it was the biggest takeaway from from this one for me is just like it is truly as Josh said, the transformative player that is Kenneth Walker.
3:43So much is different about this offense, specifically in the run game.
3:46I have a stat that I put together with Nate on one of the coaches shows that we did earlier this year
3:52when we looked at like the new play callers and new places.
3:55I called it static score. Essentially, it's like your blend of plays and heavy personnel packages under center plays with motion play action.
4:02The Chiefs were 31st in that last season. They're the 14th ranked team coming out of week one.
4:07And they're under center percentage way up. The motion percentage is way up.
4:10Play action is up like Kenneth Walker is awesome.
4:13And I want to keep talking about that at some point.
4:16I do want to come back to the, you know, maybe negative vibes with the receivers.
4:20And just oh, that's part of the process. But yeah, I mean, Josh, Kenneth Walker is exactly what we were all hoping for.
4:27Yeah. And there's like a million awesome stats we can bring up here.
4:30One of the nuttier ones to me was that Kenneth Walker also averaged negative rush yards before contact per attempt in this game.
4:37He actually ran for 179 yards before contact, excuse me, after contact.
4:40But that only told 173 yards overall in his department.
4:43That's the second lowest mark per rushing attempt in the league this week.
4:46And still, he was one of the best assets, if not the best asset in fantasy football just overall.
4:51Hey, now you have to ask this question. Is this too much?
4:55Like, did we get a bit rich here for Ken Walker in week one?
4:59Like, what are you expecting his workload to be every single week?
5:02Factoring in that he was, as Matt noted, the only operational aspect of this entire offense for many large portions of this game.
5:08I think he'll touch the ball 20 plus times almost every single week.
5:12The Chiefs defense was obviously had a really standout game.
5:15A lot of their rookie defenders were making impact plays on top of that.
5:19Noel Williams, like a good sleeper corner, had a really nice game as well.
5:22So I think he's going to touch the ball 20 plus times.
5:26If you are concerned about it, and you should, I think Emmitt Johnson is somebody that needs to be rostered in almost every league.
5:32He had a couple of nice plays as a receiver.
5:35He helped run out the clock as well. They really appreciate him.
5:38And with Kenneth Walker's injury history, I do think that he's one of the premier handcuffs.
5:43He should be someone that we talk about in the waiver wire shows, and obviously that those happen tonight.
5:48So I would say Emmitt Johnson would be somebody that you should be picking up, especially if you have someone like Kenneth Walker.
5:54He should be rostered like 80% of leagues. Yeah, Matt, can I send it to you on the wide receiver front?
6:00Quickly with Emmitt Johnson, by the way. He was one of these players at Nebraska who, you know, had some really high
6:06underlying metrics in terms of force missed tackles. However, he like would constantly get tackled immediately after he broke a tackle, I felt.
6:13But Hayden, I thought he looked better here in week one than almost any tape that I watched in college.
6:18And it was very clear that this is like the one, two.
6:22And I do kind of wonder if we see a little bit more Emmitt Johnson sprinkled in in the future.
6:27But at the same time, that shouldn't stay in the way of Ken Walker just being nutty here.
6:32Matt, you can take it from there or we can talk about the wide receivers because it was almost Jekyll and Hyde
6:38situation that these Rishi Rice, Xavier Worthy types could not, let's say, unlock the man-to-man coverage that the Denver Broncos were putting on them.
6:45Oh, man. Yeah, 100%. I'll come on to that in just a second here.
6:49Just the positivity on the run game. I do want to give a shout out to Eric Biennemi here because like he's
6:55a coach that I was a little bit hard on when he was the single play caller, like the guy in Washington.
7:01But it, you know, spent a year in Chicago with a lot of under center, heavy personnel, play action, the whole deal.
7:07And that is certainly what we saw in week one.
7:10But it is a shame, Josh. Like, I mean, I feel greedy almost looking at this Chiefs offense and thinking like, can
7:16we just get one, one guy to make a play here in the passing game consistently down the field?
7:21Because like you look at the passing chart for Patrick Mahomes last night, it's ridiculous.
7:25It's pathetic. It's ridiculous. It's just to me, I think that it's just tough with these guys as receivers.
7:30And, you know, with Rasheed Rice, like obviously there's, you know, he's coming back from the injury, rehabbing in jail.
7:36Like I want to be fair and intellectually honest about that part of it.
7:40But, you know, he was targeted on 6.9% of his routes in that game last night.
7:44Like that's the lowest of his career if you throw out the one game that he ran three routes before tearing his ACL in the 2024 season.
7:52Like you've got to go back to his rookie season to get games consistently where he was under 20% targets per route run.
7:58And yeah, it's just like you said last night, the Broncos just decided to play man coverage and took these guys away down the field.
8:05And in week two, they get a Colts defense that played over 60% man coverage on second to fourth down.
8:10So that's a matchup to watch certainly this week.
8:13But yeah, it's just a shame that I don't trust like either of these receivers to consistently make hay on what's going to be some good favorable looks.
8:21Like maybe worthy at some point. But I also just thought worthy's route running on Monday night was just left a lot
8:27to be desired in terms of breaking at the right times.
8:30Yeah, with Rasheed Rice, just real quick, the neutral pass rate, it dropped by 10 percentage points.
8:34It was at 58% over the last three seasons.
8:37And then this last week, 48%. It's super dink and dunk like Matt was saying.
8:41But if that's going to be what this new offense is, like the PPR scam stuff from Rasheed Rice is a long ways away.
8:48So I think he's like somebody that no way we would be drafting him like the third round right now.
8:53I think that he's like probably gonna be sitting in my like wide receiver three territory as the season develops.
8:59I couldn't believe it when I opened up the fantasy pros to do the rankings this morning and he was like wide receiver 11 in consensus rankings.
9:06That'll probably come down over the course of the way.
9:09I know he scored a touchdown. That's part of it.
9:12But yeah, I was I was shocked to see that.
9:14Like to me. Yeah, he's he's going to be below a lot of folks as we head into week two.
9:20Yeah, I will say he was still out there for 88% of routes.
9:24So we've seen, you know, worse performers this week in terms of expectations of being out there, too.
9:29And look, the more and more Ken Walker is success with his runs.
9:32You would like to think that this passing game can at least create a little bit of juice.
9:37But they certainly look like an organization that spent their entire budget on the franchise altering running back and then didn't improve
9:43at all at wide receiver and tight end. OK, let's talk about their opponents in the Denver Broncos.
9:48Hayden, I did not expect Jalen Waddle to have a single game this season for one catch and two yards, but we got that in week one.
9:56So when you went back and reviewed the tape, what happened?
9:59Yeah, so I thought that the offensive line, particularly the center and then the running backs and tight ends didn't block well.
10:05And then Bo Nix didn't play well. I thought that the scheme actually ended up being like just OK.
10:10They got Jalen Waddle moving around a lot more than I was kind of anticipating.
10:14There was a lot of switch releases that gave him some free looks.
10:18He was in the slot on 59 percent of his snaps, a third and seven seven slant that he just dropped.
10:23Like that's got to get created, got to get corrected.
10:26But there was a route out of the backfield on top of it.
10:30There was a choice route on third and four.
10:32So to me, just like looking at this, Bo Nix felt like so panicked.
10:36And sometimes that happens against Steve Spagnuolo. I did not think that Jalen Waddle was like being kind of like pushed away in the offense.
10:43Like to me, he was the featured player out there.
10:46And the Broncos were first in neutral pass rate.
10:48So it was a terrible game from Jalen Waddle.
10:51But like on review, it seemed like what they were trying to do was get Jalen Waddle more involved.
10:56And Bo Nix just played so poorly that it was not able to materialize.
11:00They were the worst offense in the NFL. If you look at a lot of like the metrics that matter, you know, below the Titans, below the Steelers.
11:08They were one of the worst offenses that we saw in week one.
11:11And, you know, in hindsight, guys, it is kind of tough.
11:14Like Davis Webb making his debut as the man like the buck stops with me now on offense going against Steve Spagnuolo in Kansas City in week one.
11:22You know, maybe that was a lot to ask of Davis Webb.
11:25But I thought the offense looked sloppy, particularly with protection rules.
11:28As you mentioned, Hayden, like tight ends, running backs.
11:31I thought missing assignments there schematically. Yeah, I went back and watch like I thought Waddle's role was fine.
11:36I thought he played fine. Definitely ran into like some zones and stuff where he's just not an eligible receiver at that point.
11:43Like not somebody you're going to throw the football to.
11:45But the slot stuff that was promised was there.
11:48The layup opportunities were there. Bo Nix just really never got the football off.
11:52And like this is part of who Bo Nix is, too.
11:55He's got a little bit of Baker Mayfield to him where he can play in chaos and then create some more chaos.
12:01I mean, there were times last year where, you know, Corlin Sutton would disappear for long weeks at a time because he
12:07wasn't able to use again playing in chaos. It wasn't able to get the ball down the field.
12:12That's just kind of part of his game. Unfortunately, I did think there were going to be more like easy button touches for Waddle.
12:18And we didn't see that in week one. That was the problem.
12:22Yeah. I mean, I can understand when Corlin Sutton disappears where Troy Franklin goes on to be, you know, the team's leader
12:28in red zone targets for a stretch of last season because, you know, those guys are a certain level of talent.
12:34I thought Jalen Waddle was brought in to be the guy, like the metronome, the consistent piece of that.
12:39And then when we're getting and I love Pat Bryant, but like wide receiver screens to Pat Bryant and like Marvin Mims is still getting snaps here, too.
12:47That was the frustrating aspect to me. So, you know, there's going to be a whole conversation coming out of this of,
12:53hey, is, you know, is Sean Payton going to do the I'm the captain now thing to Davis Webb at any point?
12:59I will say rap sheet was on, you know, ESPN today saying that the reason why Sean Payton gave this up is
13:05he said, I would rather give up play calling than lose Davis Webb to another organization.
13:09And Hayden, I guess the point is we sat here 365 days ago and you and I advocated for everyone to draft George Pickens.
13:16And he goes out there for targets, three receptions, 30 yards in week one last year against, you know, the Philadelphia Eagles.
13:22And we said, hey, stay patient, stay calm. That's a tough defense for him to face.
13:26Can we sit here and say the same thing with Jalen Waddle?
13:30I hope so. I think the fact that they were number one neutral pass rate and they're going to play with enough
13:36speed that there should be plenty of routes for Jalen Waddle.
13:39I thought that scheme was like totally fine. The role is totally fine for Jalen Waddle.
13:43So I'm not panicking on him. I will say the one potential thorn is if just Pat Bryant is like that level of player, 22% target share.
13:51A lot of that stuff was kind of underneath.
13:53And if he's like an actual like third weapon in the past game, like that's where Jalen Waddle ceiling like could be
13:59a little bit more capped than we were hoping for.
14:02But I would say no panic for now on Jalen Waddle.
14:05I think that he's still a very boom bust wide receiver too.
14:08Panic meter, Matt, for you. I mean, I know that you do this episode every single Monday.
14:13And since this was a Monday night game, you didn't get to have a panic meter on Jalen Waddle.
14:18So give it to us. Give us the exclusive.
14:21Yeah, we did a little bit of this when Hayden and I talked about it for the recap show.
14:26But I mean, like, I guess a little some panic, right?
14:29The guy has one catch in week one. You don't want to see that.
14:33Like, I agree with you, Josh. I thought the floor would be higher.
14:37But if you were giving me like what I buy or, you know, not buy Jalen Waddle, I'd be buying rest of season.
14:43You know, next two matchups are Jaguars, Rams. I think we're going to see more than that.
14:48I guarantee like the sentiment with Jalen Waddle because I saw it on, you know, on Monday night during the game is
14:54going to be so low because he was kind of a weird risky player to buy into.
14:58I think he feels like it's still a good buy at this point.
15:02I mean, they're not going to have games where they just look that bad and that disorganized throughout the course of the season.
15:08And yeah, Pat Bryant, definitely an interesting variable. The one thing I would just say some panic about is they do constantly
15:14talk about from like all the Broncos coaches and, you know, even some of the beat reporters.
15:19And you kind of saw it during the game, too.
15:22Like, man, this guy is going to really create a lot of space for our other players.
15:27I'm like, how about, you know, we need to actually get the guy who creates space.
15:31Yeah, cool. That's great. We also should probably get the football in his hands a little bit more.
15:36Yeah. Hey, I want to ask you about the running backs real quick.
15:40So if we look at targets and red zone work, RJ Harvey completely outpaced J.K.
15:44Dobbins in this one. Obviously, the game got away from the Broncos, but 51 percent of snaps for RJ Harvey compared to 43 percent for J.K.
15:51Dobbins. Look, I still doubt games go like that again for Denver, despite them like leading the league and missed tackles on defense.
15:57But to me, Hayden, it is notable that RJ Harvey still seems to be a target player for them, not just obviously in the passing game.
16:04Once they get down to the red zone, we saw some of his best work last season was that cool ass play stuff in the red zone.
16:12And if it stays that way, like what is the point of J.K.
16:15Dobbins in fantasy football other than just early down carries?
16:18I still think he would get the goal line carry if they got there.
16:22We they were nowhere near the goal line for a lot of this.
16:26J.K. Dobbins still started. He handled eight of the 11 running back carries.
16:29Now it's like such a trap back kind of profile here.
16:32And I think there's like really like no ceiling with J.K.
16:35Dobbins right now. I think the good news for both of them is that Jonah Coleman pretty much didn't play at all.
16:41Some of the snaps were like when they were kneeling the game out, kind of surrendering out there.
16:46RJ Harvey, RB 40 in expected points. Both of them had really bad mistakes in pass protection in this one.
16:52So I think it was kind of a sloppy game all around in the backfield.
16:56But because this team is going to be pretty pass heavy, I just don't think that either one of these guys are
17:02much more than just kind of like desperation flexes.
17:05I'll say this about Jonah Coleman. If neither J.K.
17:07Dobbins or RJ Harvey like show some spice to their game and the offense like continues to be a bit stale, I
17:13could see that being a pathway to Jonah Coleman potentially getting a shot here, you know, as an injection of some other type of talent.
17:20So I understand he like didn't touch the ball at all in week one, but the season is very long and the
17:26Broncos look quite bad in week one. So if you want to change the look from being bad, maybe adding a new
17:32piece onto that is one pathway for him to do that.
17:35OK, Matt, that's really the interesting part about the pass rate over expectation real quick is just like, yeah, that did not work in week one.
17:42And that felt like one of the things that stuck in Sean Payton's crawl the most.
17:47So I would expect him to at least try to establish the run in week two.
17:51Let's see it. So about Sunday night football here with the New York Giants.
17:55Isaiah likely is the headliner here. Is he not Hayden?
17:58I mean, he eight catches, 78 yards and two touchdowns.
18:01You know me. I have a thing for part time players, but we can talk about that with Isaiah likely and even
18:07Duncan Cade a little bit later on. He was still a part time player.
18:1149 percent of snaps. 67 percent of dropbacks, though he did play.
18:14So when you went back and watched it, how did really everything funnel through Isaiah likely in the passing game here?
18:20All of his routes looked like the Travis Kelsey routes.
18:23He was kind of doing the thing where he stopped in the middle of the field, cut back to the other side of it.
18:29He got schemed up in the red area. That's how he got that touchdown on the coverage bus as well.
18:35I was pretty impressed with Isaiah likely finished second and expected half PPR points as well.
18:39And he just can be the number two pass catcher on this team, like very clearly, especially we'll get to Cam Scadwell.
18:45But they didn't throw the ball to the running backs pretty much at all, at least not Cam Scadwell.
18:50So I think that's like the optimistic angle with Isaiah likely Malik neighbors was not a full time player either.
18:56But both of them looks good. And Jackson Dart, I think like that was the big takeaways.
19:01He did not miss underneath. He only had one incompletion on every pass under 10 yards.
19:05And this offense was very dink and dunk. Lots of like get Jackson Dart outside the pocket.
19:10Get some easy completions. And a lot of those are going to go to Isaiah likely.
19:14So I think we should be riding this one.
19:17There's a ton of fantasy busts at tight end.
19:19And I think Isaiah likely should like very firmly be a top 10 one.
19:23And I think that there is a lot more upside maybe than we were giving him credit for.
19:28Josh, we've talked about this where sometimes you say something in, you know, May, June, July.
19:32You're like, man, I really, you know, I'm feeling this.
19:35You've changed your opinion. And, you know, as the summer, you start to change your opinion.
19:40And then sometimes the season starts. Like I should have stuck with my first instinct.
19:44Like June, July, Harmon was all about Isaiah likely.
19:46And then neighbors, you know, kind of get starts to get the positive views.
19:50I start to back off likely. And I just did not draft enough of him because I agree with Hayden on this one.
19:56I wish I could go back to my June opinions where, man, I thought likely was just set up really well in this offense.
20:03I also thought it was this was one like new coordinator, you know, Matt Nagy, Greg Roman kind of holding hands up there in the booth together.
20:11They rolled out a good game plan in week one, and they just ran the Cowboys off the field.
20:16Literally kept them off the field by running the football consistently out of these heavy personnel groupings with Pat Ricard.
20:21And I thought Dart who I think you could like Dart's rookie season was a little bit of like a Rorschach test.
20:27You could kind of see whatever you wanted to see and maybe just like confirm or deny, like really just confirm your
20:33priors off what he was as a rookie one way or another.
20:37I thought this game in week one, he played really under control through just like a very catchable football for especially a
20:43guy like likely who can be a yards after catch monster because he's just bigger in the open field than some of these other players.
20:50And obviously at some point that'll happen for neighbors as well, but really impressive debut.
20:54I thought for this giant coaching staff here organized everything and Dart was definitely really impressive here.
20:59Just I'm interested to see like where it goes from here because this is kind of pretty typical of a Greg Roman ish Greg Roman coded offense.
21:06Like we start off well and maybe it Peters down the road or maybe that's 2027 problem.
21:11Matt, I do want to boomerang this back to you with Malik neighbors because on only 52% of offensive snaps, he still
21:17gets nine targets, six receptions, 69 yards. We literally didn't know until an hour before the game that he was going to play.
21:23Matt, all things considered, all things taken in. That's very promising to me.
21:27And on top of it, it felt like he just hadn't played football in a long time in terms of once he
21:33caught it and he was trying to set up for yards after catch, he would kind of slip or go down a bit too easily.
21:40Yeah. And you could tell that frustrated him on top of it.
21:43So maybe that changes even as soon as week two.
21:46And if that's the case, then we have some real explosive plays coming up here from Malik neighbors.
21:51Yeah, there was one play where he cuts on a it is an out cut and he catches the football and the
21:57guy kind of like just tackles him at a bit of an odd angle.
22:01And he just immediately hits the turf because he knows that like at 100% he breaks that tackle.
22:06And we're talking about a big explosive play here.
22:08I thought neighbors like that's the worst he's going to look all season.
22:12And it wasn't all that bad. Neighbors and my homes are the guys that just like when you're a top, top percentage
22:18athlete, like you get to break the rules for typical comebacks and everything like that.
22:22Because typically you don't want to take a player with this type of injury coming off all the negativity at times during the offseason.
22:29And, you know, even him casting some doubt on it right before week one.
22:33And he did look like all the things he said.
22:35I think you could back that up on tape where he looked a little bit hesitant, where he didn't look totally comfortable
22:41in situations where there was contact coming. But, you know, as a separator, as a guy that's like running these routes, you
22:47saw plenty of impressive stuff from neighbors. And I think it will only go up from here.
22:52Explosive in a straight line. He did slip the three times like you guys are talking about.
22:57But I thought just the explosiveness was was awesome to see there.
23:00And then wider receiver 14 and expected half PPR points in the debut.
23:04103 air yards, 31% target share. Like that's like the type of profile where by the end of the season, like he
23:10could be a top five fantasy asset. I think like every single month, he's just going to look a little bit more
23:16comfortable out there, but really promising debut, especially because they were running the ball so well.
23:20And they were not in negative game script. And they certainly will be at times like the fact that they still funneled
23:26the ball to him at all levels of the field.
23:29I thought was like really, really promising stuff. Hey, any closing thoughts in the running back room here?
23:34Obviously, Kim's got it was the one that gets 18 carries.
23:37Despite everything that they said all summer, Jackson Dart still takes some big hits and gets 11 cares for 54 and some
23:43doesn't sign stuff for him as well. And then we all saw that one drive with, you know, Devin Singletary with the
23:49four straight dump offs to the left flat like the Cowboys defense had never seen the easiest play in the playbook.
23:55And, you know, that's where he gets 22 yards and touchdown.
23:58Yeah, the one concerning thing was Cam Scott with zero targets.
24:01He averaged three receptions per game when he's a top 12 back on a per game basis last year.
24:06And he hadn't gone catchless in a game since 2023.
24:09So that was like maybe the negative spin on this.
24:12I would just take the positive one where I think the Giants offense is going to be pretty competent this year.
24:18And he is without question. Their top guy, Dodgy Harris, was in a healthy scratch.
24:22Tyrone Tracy barely plays. And Devin Singletary is going to be out there to catch some passes.
24:27But he's going to get all the goal line work.
24:29And he's a little bit more of like a standard league guy at this point.
24:34He's probably not going to be the top 12 fantasy asset that he was last year because he's probably not going to catch as many passes.
24:41But he ran so physical like he's like kind of like the backbone of the team right now.
24:46So I think that he's he's probably a low end fantasy RB2.
24:49That's kind of where you're drafting him as. All right, let's go on the opposite end.
24:53Talk about the Dallas Cowboys. Matt, I'm going to open this with a defense stat because I think it kind of tells
24:59the story of where the Cowboys are at right now from our buddy Shio Kapadia.
25:04Based on EPA per drive, the Cowboys had the worst defensive performance by any team in week one.
25:09It was worse than all but one of their defensive games last year among 574 games since the start of last season.
25:15It ranked 571st for touchdowns, one punt, one fumble, and then they ran out the clock.
25:19That was what they allowed. So, Matt, if the defense is that bad, this is why I get concerned when we prop
25:25up when defenses are bad in fantasy football and say it's a good thing.
25:29Because, Matt, then this limited the offense only to seven possessions as well.
25:33Like, that's a big deal. It can impact that group.
25:35And that led us to only 12 Javante Williams carries.
25:38That led us to only 22 completions here for Dak Prescott.
25:41So, hopefully this improved Cowboys defense actually hits the field in week two.
25:45Yeah, and you see this sometimes with guys that come off the Fangio tree that it takes a little bit for everything to come together.
25:52Now, obviously, the stats bear this out. It couldn't have been worse than just some super basic fundamental things that the Cowboys defense is getting wrong.
25:59Like, how can you leave the flat open that much?
26:02And, like, there are times where I get it.
26:04You want to bracket or make sure there are two eyes on neighbors.
26:08And there were definitely moments like that. But you can't then sacrifice entire space there because Dart, who, again, who was making
26:14good decisions, was just picking them apart with, like, layup throw, layup throw, layup throw.
26:18I think in that way, Josh, it's a little bit of the just two kind of outlier variables with this defense that
26:24can't stop this one thing and a very heavy physical offense that's just going to bleed the clock on you.
26:30You know, in a couple of weeks when they play the Ravens, well, obviously, you're not going to feel good about that.
26:36They play the Ravens in a couple of weeks.
26:38They know how to make explosive plays. Like, that's the type of offense that they want to be.
26:43So I think in that way, if you're galaxy braining how this can work out from a bad defense, good fantasy perspective,
26:49it's like an outlier, like, you know, kind of two very combustible variables in once in week one.
26:54But it's definitely a concern. And, you know, it makes you regret saying things like, well, it can't get worse.
27:00It can't get worse. It can always get worse in football.
27:03I will say with George Pickens, because I think he's probably the one people are having concerns with because there's like CeeDee Lamb on off splits.
27:10He did draw a 41 yard defensive pass interference on the third down.
27:13He had three underneath catches, I think, on pretty strong route running 20 percent target here, 104 air yards.
27:19Like, I still don't think there's any reason to panic on either of the wide receivers.
27:23They're going to run a lot more plays than what they did in the week one.
27:28I thought that the biggest takeaway was just the Javante Williams stuff.
27:31He turned 22 routes into six targets. He had 27 percent of last year's receiving fantasy points in this debut right here.
27:37They just don't have anyone else. Is it Mario Di Mercado?
27:40They were using their fullback Hunter Lebke in like the two minute drill going into halftime after losing Malik Davis.
27:46So Javante Williams is going to be like he's like just pretty much not going to come off the football field.
27:51And he was top 10 in usage last last year.
27:54He was top 10 in usage in week one.
27:57Like, this is what a low end RV one in fantasy looks like.
28:00And there's like really like no threat to anyone taking his job.
28:03Hey, Javante Williams is just going to absolutely cook in like the grossest way possible.
28:08Fine. Don't care. He's going to be a great pick in fantasy this year.
28:11Just doubling back on the George Pickens things. Listen, if I told you guys out there that George Pickens is going to
28:18have a game where he drops two like ugly passes.
28:20And, you know, there's some maybe questionable route running against zone coverage.
28:24You would 100% believe it. It's just a shame that it happened in week one, the first game instead of like a
28:30random week seven game or something like that. Yeah, it's good to get that out of the way in week one.
28:36Let's put that way. All right. Sure. Think you know which players are about to have a big Sunday.
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29:16All right. Let's talk about some big topics. And the first one here is a lost in the Chargers.
29:22Disappointment. The biggest one for me in week one.
29:24Hey, when I went back and watched every single play of this, I'd love to get your input on this.
29:30I felt like every single play was a different formation, personnel grouping, motion shift that almost Mike McDaniel was trying to do too much.
29:36Like there was misdirection. There was the order of operations that he kept from, you know, the Miami Dolphins days.
29:42And to a tongue of my low and needs that to run a high powered offense.
29:46I don't think Justin Herbert does. So I wonder if that's going to change in week two or if this is just
29:52who Mike McDaniel is as a play caller. And that's a bit too complex to grasp a hold of and run efficiently in week one.
29:59Yeah, I think he's just going to stick with it because it's worked for so long.
30:04I think it is like the best way to run an offense.
30:07Even if you do have Justin Herbert. I think the reality is, is it takes a long time to like get your
30:13system in place, especially when you're bringing in new players, especially on the interior.
30:17They couldn't really block anybody one on one. So I thought there was like some scheme issues with with them.
30:22But I really just thought that the skill players didn't play all that well.
30:26Their center and right guard were really abysmal. I think they lost with power and with some communication problems.
30:32And I just thought that Justin Herbert was like not seeing the field well at all.
30:36Had a couple like, you know, inaccuracies, which he typically doesn't have.
30:39I thought QJ wasn't creating a whole lot of separation.
30:42So like everything went wrong here. I will give some credit to the Cardinals.
30:46Their ability to kind of swarm the middle of the field really did stand out to me.
30:51And they have like some some pretty interesting linebackers right now.
30:54So I don't think the Cardinals are gonna be like quite as bad as we thought maybe going into the year, but definitely very concerning.
31:01And I don't want to make too many excuses for Justin Herbert.
31:04I got that was, I think, largely his issue in this one.
31:07And there was not many positive plays from anybody.
31:10I think the only guy, you know, outside of the tackles who can't come out of this feeling pretty good about themselves
31:16is Ladd McConkie, who also comes out with an injury, too.
31:19So you're not feeling great about Ladd McConkie in that way.
31:22Yeah, that was a bad ball from Herbert that got McConkie pinned on the on the play that he gets hurt.
31:28It was not a good Justin Herbert game. It's interesting, like to compare the Chargers and Cardinals in this game from an
31:34offensive standpoint, because I'm with you, Hayden. I said this a little bit on our recap show where, yeah, they, you know,
31:40in terms of the Chargers, you got to give them credit for the fact that it's a big offensive change.
31:45Their plays from in heavy personnel went from 31st to 8th this year.
31:49Their play action went from 17th to 1st, like motion 18th to 2nd.
31:52These are big changes. And sometimes that does take a minute to adjust.
31:56On the other side of it, the Cardinals, you know, that's a new offense, too.
32:00And they did not need time to adjust. Like, I think.
32:03But it seemed like much more traditional for the Cardinals.
32:06Like if I was watching them, Matt, you know, it was like, hey, stuff Jacoby Brissett has done for years and years
32:12and years versus, you know, no one is running with the amount of personnel changes and the motions that Mike McDaniel brings to the table.
32:19And to me, like we we can put, I think, a lot of the issues on that.
32:24That is just it took two years to do that.
32:26You know, we're just expecting Justin Herbert and company to get that with the landmarks and the interoffensive linemen when they did things correctly.
32:33They allowed a ton of disruption, too. So maybe I'm, you know, wish casting here a little bit.
32:38But that is, I think, a big hurdle that maybe didn't have enough conversation heading into week one.
32:43Yeah. And the other thing, too, is that like Mike McDaniel didn't do much that I wouldn't expect him to do.
32:49That's not necessarily a dig. It's just like this is what the offense is going to look like.
32:54And Michael LaFleur knows that offense at the back of his hand.
32:57So I think that was my point that, you know, when you said, Hayden, they swarm the middle of the field.
33:03Yeah, because that's where they know they're going to over and over again.
33:07And there just wasn't like a real lack of counterpunch there, which I think from a concern perspective, if they don't have
33:13McConkie, I am worried that they don't have enough.
33:15Like all of these other guys are, you know, interesting.
33:18Like QJ is a passable number three, but he's kind of overcast as a number two.
33:22Don't really care if he fits the offense or not.
33:25That's who he is as a player. Trey Harris, interesting depth player.
33:28The tight end's fine. But it's like you need the one superstar to revolve this whole thing around, which should be McConkie.
33:34So his injury is big, not just because he was I mean, it was very obvious watching this game.
33:40Like, yeah, he's going to cook and he's going to have an incredible season.
33:44But not only are you losing that, you lose him.
33:46I think the whole offense kind of starts to fall apart.
33:49Hayden, anything you want to say about the running backs with, you know, Amar and Hampton had a really nice early touchdown
33:55run where he did his typical I'm big, I'm strong.
33:58I'm going to shake off these tacklers. But then, you know, coughing up a fumble by running into your own man is not a great look.
34:05And then I think there are other ways where we love when Mike McDaniel can give, you know, his backs a runway.
34:11But they really struggled, I felt, to give him a runway.
34:14And when that happens for Amar and Hampton, he gets kind of indecisive and choppy.
34:19Yeah, he really just can't turn. And I think that's like where I think this system is going to be like there's
34:25a difference between Devon Ajan and Amar and Hampton here, even though they're both fast players.
34:29And he's going to rip off some big plays there because I thought the tackles did play well.
34:34You're just not going to be able to overcome the center and right guard play.
34:38And I thought the left guard, they were kind of in a rotation.
34:42I thought that wasn't that big of a deal in the in the run game.
34:46But that was a concern in the past game.
34:48And part of this is zero targets to the running back position.
34:52If you look at my expected fantasy points to running backs, the Chargers were dead last in usage because they were not involved there at all.
34:59Keaton Mitchell got some of the carries in the first half.
35:02But Amar and Hampton still had a 75% carry share.
35:05I think just maybe zooming out, if he's not going to be as involved as a receiver and maybe the Chargers are
35:11not going to be the top five offense and maybe they're 14th this year.
35:15I think that's how Amar and Hampton is not going to kill you in fantasy, but there's probably going to be a
35:21lot better picks in round two, like Derrick Henry.
35:23If you were doing Amar and Hampton versus Derrick Henry, like that's already looking pretty suspect.
35:28All right. Let's talk Chicago Bears next. Ray and I talked at length about this on the Sunday night recap, by the
35:34way, insane numbers for that Sunday night show. Thank you all for watching.
35:37I mean, when people watch it for over 32 minutes, that's instead of, you know, an HBO program.
35:42So shout out to all of you. And if you're new around here, hit subscribe, leave a thumbs up.
35:48It helps us out truly. Hey, I know you went back and watched the light show, the fireworks of this offense.
35:53What do you want to talk about? There's a million things we can bring up here for the Chicago Bears.
35:59Yeah. So I think the first thing that's like maybe the most questionable is just like what the heck is Khalif Raymond doing out there?
36:06And I think like that's a pretty big deal because he fit the offense kind of perfectly.
36:10Luther burden blade, like some slot, but it was not like just like entirely like a Monroe St.
36:15Brown role and all the other like ancillary players like stepped up.
36:19Cole commit on that wheel route. I mean, what a perfect pass from Caleb.
36:23I thought Caleb was super dynamic at 20 miles per hour a couple of times there.
36:27The throw to Roma Dunsay down the sideline was as impressive as it gets.
36:31And then Deandre Swift, like continuously, he just does not make nearly as many negative plays as he had previously.
36:36And when you have the right side to run behind, that's how they got his first explosive.
36:41Like you're at such an advantage there. Kyle, the nun guy, he got sprung open because players like Luther burden and Khalif Raymond are blocking out there.
36:49So this is an offense where everyone's going to get home.
36:52I'm not worried about Colson Loveland. He played almost every single snap out there.
36:56Like everyone's going to eat here. There's so many different options that it's going to be a little bit volatile week to week.
37:02But I would expect the Bears to be a top five offense this year.
37:06Oh my God. Yeah, they're definitely gonna be a top five offense.
37:09They were a little higher, like no huddle percentage than you might have thought to just like a little tiny tweak.
37:15I thought their pass rate over expected was a little bit higher as well, which was which is crazy because they were
37:21an elite rushing team in week one. Caleb was amazing in this game.
37:25Oh, yeah. Like it's he was incredible here. The scrambles, the being decisive with the football, just feeling things out.
37:30Like I think that's one of the reasons that Khalif Raymond has this big game is that like he was he was
37:36the right read for a lot of these plays.
37:39Like he's he's open. He's finding him, which is stuff that just like did not happen.
37:43You know, like there were times last year where Olamide Zakiis would ruin drives for this team as the number three receiver.
37:49Like having Khalif Raymond in there is a big deal for the Bears and like keeping the train on tracks.
37:55I charted Luther Burden this morning. That was like an OK game for him.
37:59He was really impressive on some of the in cuts, like the digs and stuff like that, which are key to this offense.
38:05Made a couple of great catches there where he snags the football away from his frame, probably still like working back into 100 percent.
38:11But I would agree with Hayden that this guy's not playing the Amon Ross St.
38:16Brown role. Like he's much more of a vertical receiver than St.
38:19Brown was in his second season. I thought a dunes.
38:22They looked really good to fluid down the field.
38:24Hopefully he gets a higher snap share going forward.
38:27But yeah, I mean, they do have some really interesting ancillary players.
38:30Khalif Raymond and Jada Walker's like got a little something something to him.
38:34Matt, you mentioned the Amon Ross St. Brown role.
38:36Should we kind of just eliminate that from our vernacular when you're talking about this version of the Chicago Bears?
38:42Like obviously, Caleb is so explosive with his downfield ability.
38:44They have Colson Loveland. They can run 12 personnel.
38:47You know, I don't know if this is a carbon copy of what he was doing in Detroit.
38:52And you can disagree with me if you want with that statement.
38:55No, I think we should have dropped this like two years ago, man.
38:59I thought that was if you were still talking about that after watching this offense in the first season with Ben Johnson.
39:05Like you're crazy. This this is a different unit than what we saw with Detroit, by the way, because they're two different style of quarterbacks.
39:12Very good in their own rights. But two guys who play the game differently.
39:16And that's what good coaches do. Like Ben Johnson created the Amon.
39:19I know he's had other slot players. Yada, yada.
39:21That's cool. He created the Amon Ross St. Brown role because Amon Ross St.
39:25Brown is really good at doing exactly that. And it's really good with Jared Goff.
39:29Yeah. So that's not a knock on any of these guys.
39:32They're all very good at what they do as well.
39:35Yeah. Like Caleb's second phase plays are just outstanding.
39:38And actually, the Panthers did a somewhat decent job at times taking out the first reads.
39:42And then they just couldn't stay sticky on wide receivers, like literally running across the field at full speed.
39:47And then Caleb was able to find them. So like that's impossible coverage here.
39:51Hey, now I do want to bring up Matt mentioned Alamide Zaccheaus.
39:55Alamide Zaccheaus had one of these Kali framing games last year.
39:58He had like a wide receiver 13 week. And so I'm kind of attributing to that, that this is this version of Khalif Raymond.
40:04Tell me if you disagree. I also think the reason why, you know, Rome might not have as much other than, you
40:10know, him being limited in participant and, you know, Luther Burton being and missing a whole bunch of training camp pending into this.
40:17It's because Caleb had two long touchdowns and you had the Raymond stuff.
40:20So like as much as a big pie and they score 59 points at some point, seven people can't score fancy points in a backfield, you know?
40:28Yeah. Rome is going to run way more than 58% of routes that he had last week.
40:32I think that's going to get pretty close to 100% of the routes.
40:36Jaday Walker, he was out there for a lot of like the other, like, you know, 12 personnel looks out there as the second wide receiver.
40:43And I think that's the player that was actually taking Luther Burden off the field.
40:47Khalif Raymond was out there for all the three wide receivers set snaps, but so was Luther Burden.
40:52It was actually like Walker versus Burden. I think that was something that was probably not projected across the industry.
40:58So like, I think there's of anyone that you can have some concerns with.
41:02It would be Luther Burden in the, in the fourth round.
41:05There's a lot of good picks in the fourth round right there.
41:08So I think that he's more likely going to be like a boom bust wide receiver three.
41:13And at the same time, just looking ahead, they're projected for 27 points next week against the Vikings defense.
41:18And that's one of the better defenses in the NFL.
41:21So like if you're going to start all these guys live with the results, I think you're going to be happy with it.
41:27But yeah, I'm not worried about any of them.
41:30I don't want to put the worry tag on, on any of these Bears players.
41:34And yet you guys mentioned Caleb scrambling the most carries of 20 plus miles per hour over the last two seasons.
41:40Caleb Williams actually is tied with Keith Mitchell for the most in the NFL among all running backs.
41:44That's crazy. That is crazy stuff from a running back.
41:47Look, Matt, I'm going to send to you first here with the Jacksonville Jaguars.
41:51I mean, I was going to leave with the running backs, but since you're the wide receiver guy, let's go there first.
41:57Like Parker Washington is a name all three of us mentioned over and over and over this summer.
42:02And he hit in a big way. But there were some, I think, interesting wide receiver rotation pieces along with BTJ getting
42:08banged up that other than maybe Parker Washington, it still is a bit murky of what exactly we know from a series,
42:14a series standpoint from this Jaguars wide receiver trio.
42:17Yeah, it's also really hard to get a glimpse of what this offense wants to be from this game as well, because
42:23let's be honest, the game was over after, you know, like 20 minutes.
42:26They were the Browns were never going to come back.
42:29So I don't want to take like too much from all of it.
42:33You know, I think actually the run game was the most interesting part to talk about.
42:37And I'm curious to hear your guys' thoughts on that, because in the past, I'm like, yeah, Parker Washington, like, I mean,
42:43dusts the guy off the line of scrimmage for his touchdown, like the deep corner route.
42:48It's just a reminder. And, you know, his reception perception back this up, too, that once they finally got him in that
42:54role as a slot receiver, he just like checks every box.
42:57It was when he was playing as an outside boundary receiver early on last year.
43:01Just was that was when it was kind of hit or miss.
43:04It was just a miscasting of the player. He's been great there ever since.
43:08I think he'll be he'll continue to be good.
43:11But he's like one of the most productive receivers coming out of week one.
43:15And he didn't even play every single snap. The other guys are interesting, like Jacobi Myers, Jacobi Myers.
43:20You know, I think he's going to be what he's going to he's going to kind of continue to be the metronome that he is.
43:26I don't know what to make of the Brian Thomas Jr., you know, work in week one, because I thought he actually
43:32did have some nice moments and nice plays in this game.
43:36But they kind of are still limiting him. Is that because of the shoulder injury?
43:40He got banged up in this game again. And that's just something to keep your eye on, because, you know, Josh Cameron got some play out there.
43:47And there was some buzz on Josh Cameron out of training camp from John Shipley.
43:51And, you know, I did some charting on Josh Cameron.
43:54He is a profile on the site for prospects and obviously super raw player.
43:58You know, he's definitely not. He's a Baylor wide receiver lining up on one side of the field running like two routes.
44:04OK, so that was what he was as a prospect.
44:07But big physical guy. And I mean, his his throw or his touchdown from Trevor Lawrence is probably like one of the
44:13best throws you're going to see all season long, too.
44:16I think that Brian Thomas stuff there. I'm reading into this one because the role was like pretty defined with him.
44:21I know he missed some time, but he didn't miss that much time in this game.
44:26He was out there for the non three wide receiver set snaps on two of 27 of them.
44:31That's only through the first three quarters. Like I'm like eliminating a lot of the garbage time.
44:35And the guy that was coming in there, it was rotation between obviously Jacoby Myers and Parker Washington.
44:40But Josh Cameron was out there a lot. So that's the reason why none of these guys were full time participants is
44:47because there was a rotation in the two wide receiver set snaps.
44:50And then the three wide receiver set snaps was the top three guys that were expecting.
44:54But it's pretty evident on tape. I agree, Matt, that Brian Thomas like he still had a pretty solid game and a
45:00nice play over the middle toe tapper on top of that.
45:03He's still eligible for like an ADR touchdown from time to time.
45:07But he's running so many clear out routes and like a couple of those Parker Washington plays down the field.
45:12You can just see there goes Brian Thomas, like sometimes maybe not at full speed because he knows the ball is going over to Parker Washington.
45:19So 29% target share, 102 air yards, even if even if Parker Washington is not a full time player, he is absolutely
45:25a candidate to be a top 20 wide receiver in fantasy this year.
45:29And I do think that Brian Thomas, his floor is non-existent, probably to the point where if he is your wide receiver
45:35three in fantasy, you're probably in trouble. Josh, this is the designated X, by the way, the guy that does it.
45:41He's not the X and two receiver sets, but he kind of sounds sacrificial to me too.
45:46Well, he's see, I think he might be both.
45:48I think he might be both. Whereas like Marv is definitely the sacrificial X in Arizona, but at least he's the X all the time.
45:55Brian Thomas Jr. might be the sacrificial and the designated X based on week one, which, you know, that doesn't feel good.
46:01I hope Hayden that it's, you know, because he was banged up late in camp and he's got he's like dealing with this shoulder thing again.
46:08Like this is kind of sounds like a lot of excuses to me, though.
46:12Yeah, sure. I mean, that's it's it's either reasons or excuses.
46:15And like we'll find out. Like, I do think the thing with Thomas is that he is a talented player.
46:21You saw it in this game, but, you know, he's kind of got like a limited application.
46:25And this is an offense that likes versatile players.
46:28And they happen to have two really good, versatile players on the roster and Myers and Parker Washington.
46:33Totally. And yeah, the Josh Cameron stuff. I mean, he has a role in the offense.
46:37He played red zone snaps. He played 13 personnel snaps.
46:40I also bring up the 12 personnel stuff here from the Jaguars because so much conversation is about the three receivers plus
46:46Travis Hunter plus Josh Cameron that they have. They led the league with 42 percent of their plays out of 12 personnel in this game.
46:53Now, a lot of that might have been towards the end, but that's notable to me as someone that loves Britain strange,
46:59because in that moment, like Nate Borkercher is a heck of a blocker, was creating a whole bunch of canyons.
47:05But then that can make Britain strange the second or third option in the passing game there.
47:09So Britain strange is someone that I'm looking at, especially in tight end premium leagues and even as like a top 12 tight end at moments this year.
47:17Hey, I want to send it to you with the running backs.
47:20So much conversation this summer from Liam Cohen was about efficiency, but it was also about, you know, creating yards on your
47:26own, picking up more than what's blocked. I thought Basial Tootin was fantastic at that in this game.
47:31And the more and more runs he stacks like that, I think he's going to become undeniable in this backfield.
47:37He started and he also finished the game. I think they were just giving him more touches so they can like get him some more experience out there.
47:45I thought that he was pretty good. He's like very clearly way more athletic than Chris Rodriguez.
47:49That takes like one touch from each of them to like get that feel.
47:53I did think that he bounced in like kind of missed a couple reads there, but I'm really nitpicking.
47:598.1 expected half PPR points. That was RB 33.
48:01He had a screen reception that went for a nice gain there.
48:04We did not get a clean look at the goal line carries.
48:08Chris Rodriguez was out there for that play action touchdown to Josh Cameron in the red area.
48:12Chris Rodriguez also got a wildcat run on a third and one, but Basial Tootin also had a couple third and one carries as well.
48:19So I think this is like a kind of an incomplete.
48:22Like when Allen was out, Amir Abdullah played a little bit.
48:25Maybe like the biggest surprise was when this game was like clearly over.
48:29They gave Basial Tootin a lot of like closeout carries where I maybe would have thought that was going to go to Chris Rodriguez.
48:36So I thought kind of incomplete here, but I think it's fine for Basial Tootin.
48:40Maybe not like round five fine, but I think that he did enough to like leave the light on.
48:45Matt? I felt pretty good about what I saw from Basial Tootin.
48:48Me too. That's a little pessimistic for me. I really thought he looked good in week one.
48:53It's just again like can he and I felt really good the fact that like they came out.
48:58Liam Cohen did right after and was like quick to praise Basial Tootin because I think that's going to be a big part of this.
49:05Like continuing to earn more and more. I'm I mean, yeah, he's definitely going to have some issues in terms of the
49:11other guys in the backfield, but like Chris Rodriguez is fine.
49:14Like he's totally fine. He's not a guy that that is a total impediment here to Basial Tootin.
49:19So I'm hoping he can continue to slice off more as things go on.
49:23Yeah, like see Rod. We know what he is, you know, and Liam Cohen knows what Chris Rodriguez is.
49:28And so I could have painted a narrative of this backfield kind of going in two directions where if Basial Tootin struggled
49:34in pass protection in week one or, you know, had some negative runs that he tried to bounce a bit too often
49:40and fell flat in his face in the first game.
49:43In the second game, they kind of give more of the pie as it goes on to the metronome that is Chris Rodriguez.
49:49And Matt, to me, this was the opposite. You know, it was Basial Tootin like claiming some opportunities saying, hey, I've improved since last season.
49:56Like he had a pitch to the left early on.
49:59He has to work around a block in the backfield.
50:02Yeah, he's hit by two defenders at the line of scrimmage.
50:05He runs through that and drags them for another five yards.
50:08The very next play, it's off tackle on the opposite side to the right.
50:12He's at one yard short of the line to gain by two fill safeties.
50:16He falls forward for an extra three yards in the first down.
50:19He has another one off tackle on the left side where he ducks under an arm tackle.
50:24Then one on one at the second level, he easily avoids that and then picks up 13 yards.
50:29It is like Liam Cohen's all about the hidden yards this year.
50:32And Basial Tootin was fantastic at the hidden yards here.
50:35And so that's all I wanted to see with Basial Tootin in terms of him being a somewhat risk as a fifth rounder.
50:41But Matt, to me, this is only going one direction.
50:44Again, these performances continue to stack. Yep, I agree with that.
50:47And just in closing here, I do think, again, I just want to caution taking any big, big takeaways here from just
50:53like splits or workload or this, that and the other from Jacksonville.
50:56Because I can't stress this enough. This game was over so quickly.
50:59I know like we can do it. Where do we define garbage time or anything like that?
51:04This was one of the games I, for some reason, had up on this screen.
51:08I've got the four TV. I got three TVs.
51:11One of them splits four ways. And I got them the secondary monitor turned to the secondary monitor around for Jacksonville Cleveland on Sunday.
51:17That was a quick change because Deshaun made sure that game was over very, very quickly.
51:22So just want to note that. Okay. Okay. Let's talk Buffalo Bills here.
51:25According to our buddy Robert Mays, 48% of their passes went beyond the sticks in this one, Hayden.
51:30They were 22nd in that category last season. So a nice improvement there.
51:34DJ Moore, Duncan Cade, that even changed Khalil Shakir's role, I felt, a little bit here.
51:38And maybe they stunned, shocked this Houston Texans defense with how both spread they were and then other times condensed and compact.
51:44And I thought Joe Brady was fantastic in week one.
51:47I thought it looked a lot different than last year.
51:5048% neutral pass rate for the Bills in 2025.
51:5356% neutral pass rate. A lot more downfield shots.
51:55There was definitely some Khalil Shakir. Certainly there was.
51:57But Dalton Kincaid was working way down the football field.
52:0016.3 averaged up the target for him. He was pulling away from defenders.
52:04He was dunking on defenders. Dalton Kincaid looked like one of the best receiving tight ends in the league.
52:09He played a little bit more than he typically does.
52:12And then DJ Moore, he showed up a little bit of like a, not a complete broken play, but kind of like
52:18a third read on that touchdown near the sideline.
52:20And then also had a slot target, multiple downfield shots beyond that.
52:2447-yard defensive pass interference in the end zone on top of it.
52:27That was an under center play action play. So I thought that all the skill guys, either with DJ Moore coming in
52:33or Dalton Kincaid being healthier, you felt that in this offense.
52:36And I think that did come at the detriment of James Cook just a little bit here.
52:41So this seems so explosive. Like the fact that they put up that many points on the Texans, like all these guys will get home.
52:48But I think like rating positively for DJ Moore and Dalton Kincaid is like the biggest takeaway from week one here.
52:54A thousand percent. I'm really excited about what I saw out of Buffalo's offense.
52:57Their seconds per play went from 32nd last year to eighth in week one.
53:01And they played faster. They played with more just like pass first intention.
53:05And man, this is your 13 personnel team this year.
53:0843% 13 personnel in week one. And it's because of Dalton Kincaid.
53:11Like last year, I said this a lot during the offseason.
53:14I know you guys said the same thing. Last year, the Rams were able to pull off 13 personnel because they had
53:20a tight end in Terrence Ferguson who could be a downfield threat and could actually lift the lid.
53:25The bills have that now in Dalton Kincaid. It's kind of taken four years to get there.
53:30A lot of injuries, everything like that. But, you know, I've dogged Dalton Kincaid for being way too small to be like a real tight end.
53:37I thought he looked bigger, clearly more explosive in week one, over 100 yards gained as a receiver out wide.
53:42And, you know, he's just running these big downfield routes.
53:45Then you can get like Dawson Knox, who's kind of a, if we're doing the Rams comparison, you know, a little bit
53:51of like a Colby Parkinson where he can be in line, but also can catch passes to Jackson Hawes is like that pure, pure blocker.
53:58So I think he, I was like Dalton Kincaid is a big stock up for me after this game.
54:03DJ Moore was used the exact right way where it's these big, like break.
54:07It's like bigger downfield routes, like stops, goes, stuff like that, as opposed to like timing routes that he was used last year in the Bears offense.
54:15I think both these guys are big, big stock ups.
54:18And, you know, obviously that's good for Josh Allen too.
54:20Yeah. 72% snaps for Dalton Kincaid. He didn't get close to that number last year.
54:24I think it's only three games of over 50% of snaps last season.
54:28So it was very cool. Like you guys keep saying this balance of, Hey, we're going to have two wide receivers way
54:34outside the numbers, like spread everything out and then also run some 13 personnel stuff and very condensed and closer.
54:40And then also we run the tight ends. We can then spread you out and go empty out of that formation.
54:45So again, Joe Brady has obviously been the play caller here for a while, but he put his own twist show, baby, put his own spin on it.
54:53Yes. Um, now, Hey, I do want to say if you looked at the first three plays, I think in the last
54:59couple of seasons, you'd expect it to be an awesome James Cook day.
55:03Like you had a run of nine yards, a run of 11 yards and a catch for three yards.
55:08And then now in this version of the Buffalo Bills, it was just kind of mediocre.
55:13Are you, Jimmy, takeaways from that? I thought James Cook looked really good.
55:16He had that, uh, was like the fumble out and out in open space.
55:20Um, but, uh, it just didn't have like the same volume late in the game.
55:24Uh, and then you also have Josh Allen, push, push, touchdown on a fourth and one.
55:29They went Josh, Josh Allen in a wildcat, uh, formation as well.
55:32So like, that's where it just gets a little bit more difficult.
55:35He led the, uh, NFL in, uh, carries per game last year.
55:38I just don't think that's going to happen necessarily.
55:41Like the increase in neutral pass rate, like those type of like downfield shots where instead of like, there's probably gonna be
55:47more like six play drives for the Buffalo Bills rather than like 10, 12 play drives, uh, this year round.
55:53So I think that James Cook probably a little bit stocked down target share did jump from 8% last year to 13%.
55:59It's a really small sample size there. But, uh, I would say like for around one players, like I would be definitely
56:05be concerned if I was drafting today. Uh, I think that he'd firmly be like middle of the second round, if not a little bit later.
56:12Hmm. I hate that as the guy that took James Cook eighth overall in our, uh, Yeah.
56:17If the producers could throw back on that, that running back fancy usage chart, um, the bottom five, there's a lot of
56:23round one slash one, two turn running backs there.
56:25Um, I mean, look at Philadelphia at 27th Buffalo 28th Miami 29th, and then the chargers at 31st.
56:30So Matt, you, me, and probably Hayden too, cause we have, I think all of these players are hoping that that changes
56:36fast, including in, in, in, in, in, in. I mean, Josh, I agonize so much.
56:40Like, do I take James Cook? Cause that's like the, the player that I want to take, or do I take Saquon
56:46Barkley to, to troll you in the, in the analyst draft?
56:49And I should have just taken Jackson Smith and Jigba and logged out.
56:53Well, we'll talk about, uh, actually let's do Saquon Barkley right now.
56:56Let's talk about the Philadelphia Eagles. Okay. Producers I'm skipping a team.
57:00Uh, maybe this is cope. Okay. Landon Dickerson basically benched himself this, this past week.
57:04Uh, he's on IR for four weeks. He was truly one of the worst players I saw in week one.
57:09And again, some will say I'm coping here. Hayden, I think this is a positive.
57:14I think it's a positive for the offense. I think it's a positive for Saquon Barkley.
57:18Again, he was clearly the, the weakest link on that team.
57:21I understand that he has been part of Superbowl championship rosters in the past, but they get the Tennessee Titans here in week two.
57:28So from what I saw with my own eyes, Saquon Barkley, when given the first level still looked freaking awesome.
57:33However, he was hit behind the line of scrimmage on seven of his opening 12 carries.
57:38And I think that can change and get better with a second team left guard.
57:42Yeah. I thought after rewatching this, I felt pretty optimistic about what the Eagles are going to be able to do here.
57:48I think the negative for me was obviously Landon Dickerson, but I think the backup is just going to play better than he is.
57:54I thought the four other offensive linemen actually blocked pretty well.
57:57I was pretty impressed with Cam Juergens and my lot.
58:00Obviously, I think Steen actually had a pretty good game clearing guys out.
58:04There was a couple of times where the commanders and the commanders have like a Brian Flores disciple calling their defense.
58:10And like you felt that watching that. There's a couple of times where it was just like a unblocked player in the backfield hitting Saquon Barkley.
58:17I think that Sean Mann has got to figure that type of stuff out.
58:21But I did think that the offensive line looked healthier aside from Dickerson.
58:24And I thought Saquon Barkley looked awesome. And Jalen Hurts, I thought, played pretty well, all things considered, too.
58:29So it wasn't like the cleanest game, certainly. But I thought that there's probably going to be some like 150 rush yard
58:36games from Saquon Barkley at some point. Yep. Yeah, I generally think that this was not a good week, debut week for
58:42the I was a backup quarterback yesterday. Play new play callers.
58:45But I think I think Sean Mannion actually probably had the best of the bunch.
58:49Now, there's definitely still some things to work on.
58:51You know, I mean, listen again, the bar is like, was it better than Davis?
58:55Webb or David Blau? Yes, I think the Eagles offense was better than was better than that.
59:00I'm like, I'm talking about the lowest bar here, Josh.
59:03But I think the one thing to note, too, is like, again, we talked about this with the Chargers and the Cardinals.
59:09Like, were you a first time play caller who caught the defense off guard?
59:13I think that happened with the Giants against the Cowboys defense.
59:16I think that happened with the Cardinals offense against the Chargers defense.
59:19New play caller there. I think the inverse happened here where they weren't quite ready for some of the blitzes and some
59:25of the chaos that Washington threw at them. Because you kind of had to split the difference of like, is this going
59:31to be Dan Quinn's defense or is this going to be Durante Jones defense?
59:35I think it was more of the latter than the former, which, you know, that's just part of it.
59:40When again, it's a new play caller who was a backup quarterback two minutes ago.
59:45The other thing on the Saquon Barkley tape is he only had one reception in the box score.
59:50He also caught a pass that was called a run.
59:52It was a swing pass that just the ball barely went backwards on that one.
59:56So that was like a designed target to him.
59:59He also had a reception called back on the hold and then he dropped a ball out in the flat.
60:05So I thought there was more like receiving work hidden here, like in the box scores wouldn't pick that up.
60:10But he nearly had four receptions and we haven't had four receptions from Saquon Barkley in quite a while.
60:15Yeah, look, the viewers watching us right now here live on YouTube know that my favorite start in drafts this year was Saquon Barkley and Ken Walker.
60:23Obviously, half of that I feel immensely proud of.
60:25And I still feel really good about Saquon Barkley moving forward.
60:28Matt, I want to throw it to you about the wide receivers.
60:32I mean, all of us expected Dallas Garrett to go 77 yards and two touchdowns in week one.
60:37But other than that, it was Dontavian Wicks, 73 yards and a score.
60:40And that, you know, long 64 yarder was out of 13 personnel.
60:43He was the wide receiver on the field for that.
60:46Devontae Smith, three for 53. And then Makai Lemon, three catches, negative five.
60:50So what'd you see when you were looking at these wide receivers?
60:53Oh, boys, it feels good to talk about Dontavian Wicks in like a positive way again.
60:58You know, it's nice. We'll see how long it lasts.
61:00But yeah, I mean, I thought his role was a little bit more versatile, too.
61:04That was what was interesting. And because that's the type of guy he was for Green Bay.
61:09I mean, it was pretty much like Devontae Smith, you know, welcome to X receiver zone.
61:14And he even talked about this after the game where there was a lot of like cloud and bracket over to his side.
61:20So he even he said he went to Dontavian Wicks during the game and was like, let's go.
61:25You know, it's up to you. Make some plays.
61:27And he made two really big plays in this game, one of which.
61:31And you could see this by the design of the play that it was supposed to just basically be a clear out route.
61:37He said he never got that target in practice, did Dontavian Wicks.
61:41But he's like, hey, Jalen is going to throw you that clear out route every now and again.
61:46So you've got to make a play. He did make a play, which, you know, for Dontavian Wicks, that's good.
61:51That's progress. I still like Wicks' fluidity and his timing within breaks.
61:54Knows the offense, knows the motions in the shifts, which is really good to see.
61:59There was a lot more motion in this offense overall in week one.
62:02They went from 30th last year to 8th in week one in terms of motion percentage.
62:07I'm optimistic about Wicks, especially these next two weeks.
62:09If you need wide receiver help, they get the Titans and the Bears.
62:13The schedule is really good. I think Smith will have, you know, rebound days.
62:17Lemon, I thought, obviously, the targets, like, they were gross.
62:19Who cares? I did think he showed at least some decent separation route running ability when not targeted, though.
62:25Yeah, McKay, it was like complete, like a slot only.
62:27Like, he had his eight out was negative. Not a good, not a good sign.
62:31He also did have a, I believe it was called for him.
62:35A, like a little bubble screen where he wasn't on the same page and Jalen Hurts had to throw it away.
62:41I think that was designed for McKay Lemon. So, I think he's a work in progress.
62:45He's firmly a bench staff. Dontavian Wicks, that touchdown, that was like an option route that he was like kind of, uh,
62:51uh, uh, uh, uh, for like 12 yards against Mike Sandris.
62:54It was one of the funniest routes I've seen the entire weekend for a touchdown.
62:58And then I think that... Oh, Sandris still was in a blender, bros.
63:02It was not good. Not a good debut for him.
63:05Um, but I thought Jalen Hurts, for the most part, like there were some really funky looks from, from the commanders.
63:10And maybe they weren't like fully expecting those. I thought he generally played pretty well.
63:15There's a couple of times where he had to scramble around.
63:18And I thought he looked a little bit faster than he did last year.
63:21And there was like four or five touch throws.
63:24You had one to the sideline to Devontae Smith.
63:26Like incredible play. Uh, the Dallas Goddard touchdown was amazing.
63:29The Dontavian Wicks, uh, uh, go ball that Matt was talking about.
63:33So, I thought for the most part, it wasn't completely clean.
63:36Um, they have some things to clean up. I think for the most part, I thought Jalen Hurts like actually played, uh, pretty well here.
63:42Yeah. And like you guys said, Titans next week.
63:45That's on the road. And then it's the Bears on the road, but Monday night football.
63:49So those could be two defenses here that the Eagles like really look good from, from a fancy football lens.
63:55Okay. One more here before we let Matt go.
63:57And let's talk about the Cincinnati Bengals. Matt, after all the conversation this summer of under center play action, blah, blah, blah.
64:03The Bengals went under center for just 31% of their plays.
64:06That was 24th in the league. And guess what?
64:09Despite all of that, they still ranked fifth in explosives passing play rate on offense.
64:13So this team, and we talked about it on Sunday night are notorious slow starters.
64:17I think you saw that a bit with Joe Burrow in this game.
64:21And yet they actually won this game when other times they would not.
64:24And they were still explosive. Won this game because of their defense.
64:28Let's be real. And Baker Mayfield. Let's, let's be real.
64:31That's, that's why the, the Bengals won this game.
64:33Um, at the same time. Yeah. I think you could kind of come away with some positives, some negatives about the offense.
64:39I generally think that they're going to just throw this under center stuff in the trash.
64:44Like, I mean, they'll do it a little bit.
64:46Um, there'll be some kind of like illusions to it.
64:49You know, maybe it's a little bit more often than previous, but I do think for the most part, they're going to
64:55do what Joe Burrow wants to do because he's the most important person in for the franchise.
65:00And you know, that's what they want. Now. I think the offensive line played well in this game.
65:05Amarius Mims. He just, he just, that's a tough draw for Ruben Bain where, you know, all the conversations about your arm
65:11length and then you go against Amarius Mims. That's right.
65:13You go against truly like a physical freak. And yeah, it was not a good debut, uh, for, for Ruben Bain.
65:19Josh, you know, this, I have a personal trainer shout out to me.
65:23Uh, and he, he's a Bucks fan. I'm not looking forward to tomorrow's session where he's going to be asking me about Ruben Bain.
65:29Cause he was jacked up about Ruben Bain. Uh, we're going to have to get some more sets in tomorrow for Ruben Bain.
65:36Um, my God, that was not a good debut, but yeah, Amarius Mims was awesome.
65:40I think the under center stuff was whatever. I think this offense will generally be what we know it to be, which will still be frustrating at times.
65:48Cause they don't really blend the run in the past game.
65:51Like their runs out of shotgun were pretty pathetic in this game, but when they did get under center, it was at
65:57least good for, for chase Brown there. So, um, we pretty much know like what the, the bangles are.
66:02And I think we'll continue to see it be that way.
66:05The under center stuff. I thought like had like some positives.
66:08I chase Brown had, uh, the touchdown, um, under center run where both, they have two blocking tight ends.
66:13Now, Eric all Andrew sample out there. Like that's also like a little bit of a bonus for, uh, the under center stuff.
66:20And then the big difference was, uh, as you guys can see here is, uh, in shotgun, eight dot 6.3 yards downfield,
66:26got the ball in two and a half seconds when they were under center.
66:30And this is, this is typical. You hold onto the ball for a half second longer there, but the eight out goes to 14.3.
66:36Now Nate ties put it in a pretty funny way.
66:39He said like some of these were performing, like there was like a T Higgins, uh, ball way down the football field
66:45where there was like a safety sitting right there, but they did create a couple of explosives like over the middle on it.
66:51Um, so I think like, they're probably going to stick with like kind of this, um, formula here where it's going to
66:57be a lot of the shotgun stuff, but there will be more under center stuff.
67:02Uh, and I actually don't think that's going to be a bad thing for T Higgins or Jamar Chase.
67:07Josh, maybe I'll kick it over to, uh, to you on this one.
67:10Jamar Chase. I thought that he looked like mostly the same.
67:14There was a couple of times where I thought he stumbled a little bit.
67:17So like maybe he's kind of working back from things, but a third and neutral pass rate, like Jamar Chase, I think
67:23even if this is like a little bit more under center play action stuff, I think that Jamar Chase probably a little
67:30bit more likely to have some explosives. Yep. I mean, I'm, I obviously zero concerns here with Jamar Chase and we only
67:36have to go back to week one of last season, Hayden, where he had five targets, two receptions and 26 yards.
67:41So I talk about slow starters. The Bengals are notorious for this.
67:45And, uh, unfortunately it's been Jamar Chase over the last two seasons.
67:48Final closing thought here on the Bengals. I mean, was this not the theory of the play and theory of the pick with Chase Brown?
67:55We talked about their struggles and under center and blah, blah, blah, but yet the environment is so freaking good.
68:00They still get 16 carries 56 yards into touchdown, which is fine.
68:04Three and a half yards per pop, but then also gets five receptions for 22.
68:08Like it's just an environment that points are going to be had.
68:11And he's the only guy, uh, in, in the backfield, Matt, you're not the only guy here.
68:16It's been incredible to have you on this new episode with us every week.
68:20Um, we'll see you next time. That's it. Yeah.
68:22Good to be with you guys. And, uh, I'm excited.
68:25I'm excited to do this every single week and, uh, you know, just more tape watching, more spreadsheets.
68:30What, what more is there to life guys than that?
68:33All right, Matt, we'll see you next time. Hayden, you gotta stick around because we still have, you know, just 22 teams
68:39to talk about after we already 67 minutes in shout out to all the viewers right, right now, uh, leave a like,
68:45leave a thumbs up and leave a comment where you love showing those on the screen at this moment.
68:50Okay. Alphabetic order. Let's talk about the Arizona Cardinals.
68:53And I know you want to bring up Jeremiah love from Michael floor after Jeremiah Love got 32 snaps, 11 carries two receptions quote.
68:59I thought Jeremiah love had the perfect number of reps and we will see where week two goes.
69:04Did you think it was perfect? Um, I can use a little bit more.
69:08Jeremiah love. I thought he was sensational. Like his stop start ability is just outrageous.
69:12His touchdown. Like he ain't really like no business scoring there.
69:15And he pretty much went untouched on that 13.2 expected half PPR points.
69:19Like that's enough to be a boom bust RB two.
69:22I think there's going to be more targets available to him when they're not like blowing out the chargers, for example, uh,
69:28Algier did start Algier did get, um, a goal line attempt there as well.
69:32So it's not going to be like as clean as like, he's just going to be a fantasy RB one yet, but
69:38I'm pretty confident that the RB one days are coming, especially as the Cardinals looked a lot better.
69:43So I just, I just see someone that's like very clearly a pro bowl caliber player, if not even better than that.
69:49And that there's a very clear difference to me between like Algier between the tackles and Jeremiah love.
69:54Yeah. I just keep going back to Michael floors first season as a play caller with breeze hall as a rookie.
70:00And it kind of took until week four for him to really explode and become like the one a, and they gave
70:06him anywhere from 12 to eight touches and all that type of stuff.
70:09So all that we care about right now is one that the Cardinals are functional and they showed that they were functional in this game.
70:16And two that Jeremiah love looks good and it looks healthy.
70:19And that's it. Like once we keep checking those boxes, that's really, really good.
70:23And it's pretty amazing that Jeremiah love actually had negative rushing yards before contact, just like Ken Walker did.
70:28In fact, he was the lowest out there. So we go to a player Hayden that looked athletic and looks spry.
70:34Now we have to have the Marvin Harrison jr.
70:37Conversation. My big fear with Marv after in this game, just one catch for 33 is, and I think we can say
70:43this over the sample of his career so far.
70:45He has not put together stretches of, oh man, that was a special skill ever.
70:49Like he just hasn't. And he kind of just disappears here.
70:52He disappeared for Kendrick Bourne in this game and he disappeared for Michael Wilson.
70:56So where are we at with his wide receiver trio at this moment?
71:00And would it be outlandish to project Kendrick Bourne as maybe like third in receiving points at the end?
71:05Oh man. I don't think it's outlandish. I wouldn't project it forward.
71:08Uh, I thought that Marvin Harrison, like his one catch was phenomenal.
71:12He always has like one catch. That's phenomenal. I think what you're saying though, is like so true.
71:17There's just like, to me, like a lack of energy with Marvin Harrison.
71:20I posted a route out there where if he knows he's not getting the ball or like, if there's like even like
71:26a 20% chance that he's going to get the ball, he's just like not putting in that much effort.
71:32Like, I don't like calling out effort because like, you just never know, but like he's just not coming out of his breaks with much energy.
71:39He's not firing out, uh, as well. And all of like the schemed up stuff is going to go to trade McBride
71:45who absolutely roasted Derwin James the entire game. And then I think that Michael Wilson is maybe a better player straight up than Marvin Harrison at this point.
71:53And the Kendrick Bourne stuff was like extremely effective and he's going to work underneath.
71:57Like if they're going to drop into quarters coverage and there's like some, some alleys underneath there, he's just going to gobble up those targets.
72:04Like Marvin Harrison is never going to have those targets.
72:06So I'm extremely worried about Marvin Harrison. Um, he's a bench player to me right now.
72:11The Cardinals once again against the Seahawks are only projected for 18 and a half points.
72:15I think they're going to like continue, like kind of beat those numbers because the rest of the offense looked pretty capable,
72:21but the offense is not flow through Marvin Harrison.
72:24It really has never done that before. And I think there are reasons why as players like training, bride and Kendrick Bourne
72:30get the ball more, uh, because Marvin Harrison's kind of like run like lethargic routes down the field.
72:35Yeah. I mean, this point by Levitan Marv has never had a game with eight plus catches.
72:39Kendrick Bourne just did that eight for 75 in his debut with Michael Thor, who, by the way, they have history on the staff together.
72:46He started his career with San Francisco. LaFleur was on that staff as well.
72:50It was kind of tongue in cheek with what I said, but Hayden, when you watch this game, it truly was, Hey,
72:56Kendrick Bourne knows the offense really well. And it was just a bunch of sit routes versus zone underneath stuff.
73:02Some in breakers while Michael Wilson and Trey McBride and Marv were just pushing down the field, he was kind of the underneath option on top of it.
73:10Um, you know, this when we did the show every single week last year, I love what Jacoby was doing because he
73:16would stand there, rifle passes down the field in, in heat, you know, in the face of pressure.
73:21Um, I wish I knew that we were going to get 17 games of Jacoby Brissett this season.
73:26I can't still sit here and say, I really hope we do, but I don't know if we do.
73:31And the other part of this Hayden is that Chargers defense, while it was good last year, that was with Jesse mentor calling it right.
73:38Right. And it didn't look like they were prepared for this one.
73:41And now over the next three games, let's put it that way.
73:44It's Seattle's defense. It's the 49ers defense. And then it's the giants defense with all their pressure and other pass rush up front too.
73:51So it is on my radar that yes, Arizona, uh, over-performed expectations here in week one.
73:55Um, I'm still, I'd maybe a little more skeptical than you are that they're going to continue doing that each and every week.
74:02Well, the good news is Trey McBride looked like the best tight end in football.
74:06Uh, he had a ton of production here, but so much of it was just straight up one-on-one versus Derwin James, who could not tackle Trey McBride.
74:13Trey McBride routed him up multiple times, scored touchdowns.
74:16To me, it was like as impressive of tape gets, uh, at the tight end position against like the most difficult matchup,
74:22uh, with Derwin James playing all that nickel stuff.
74:24I do agree. The chargers defense like was not very potent in terms of the pass rush.
74:29Uh, and then I just didn't think that their communication on something like the zone stuff was, was quite as crisp as
74:35it was with, with Jesse mentor, who I thought the Ravens defense, they did handle that pretty well.
74:40So, uh, Trey McBride, this chart looks exactly like the chart from, uh, last year.
74:44So Colson Loveland and Brock Bowers gets healthy. Like they got their work cut out because Trey McBride got all the easy
74:50stuff in this offense and deservedly so. Atlanta Falcons are next.
74:53Unfortunately, signs point to Cooper rush starting again. On top of that, Chris Lindstrom, their best offensive lineman is in concussion protocol.
75:00Hey, and I covered this game on Sunday, regrettably.
75:02Uh, hopefully you went back and watch this offense.
75:05I mean, they built literally 90% of the touches close to it around Bijan Robinson and they could barely function otherwise.
75:10And they barely function with him touching the football 90% of the time.
75:14I love Bijan Robinson. 45% target share is not a good sign.
75:17You know, that's just the reality of the situation.
75:20Uh, Cooper rush was so immobile, like horrible. I thought Kirk cousins was moving around better than Cooper rush.
75:25Uh, so just to hit on like something like the, the stuff that we can like actually take away from this, uh,
75:31Drake London, his slot rate went from 34% last year to 16% in this year.
75:35They they've added more slot bodies. I didn't necessarily love that for them.
75:39And then the Kyle pit stuff, he straight up beat Jalen Ramsey down the field, like up the seam.
75:44And that should have been a 60 yard touchdown and Cooper rushed through the ball.
75:48What? 10 yards, but, uh, behind them. Um, so like super frustrating usage here.
75:52Uh, but we should expect this with Cooper rush, uh, next week.
75:55So, um, you, maybe you could sneak Drake London inside like the top 30 wide receivers, but obviously his floor is non-existent.
76:01Bijan's always just going to get there because it's so easy to get him the football.
76:06Uh, but Kyle fits, you can't play with Cooper rush.
76:09And you're like, we're just like waiting for, uh, Michael Penix to get back.
76:12And he just said that he wasn't confident enough to play.
76:16So yeah, I don't want to take too much away from this, like in terms of like season long projections, because like
76:22once Michael Penix gets out there, like that's way better than Cooper rush, like Cooper rush, like he's probably should be an
76:28offensive coordinator in the next couple of years instead of being a starting quarterback.
76:32Yeah. And Drake London's numbers have been way better with Michael Penix than any other quarterback that he has played with.
76:37Now the Falcons only posted 13 points in this game.
76:40Uh, they do at home get the worst defense in week one in the Carolina Panthers.
76:45Uh, and they're projected for 20 and a half points.
76:47Hayden, do you think the over or under that 20 and a half?
76:51I mean, I'm not sending the lines over here.
76:53I wouldn't have said them at 20 and a half.
76:56Uh, maybe they're hoping that to, uh, or, uh, Michael Penix can get out there.
77:00I mean, it's not going to be because Cooper rush.
77:03I mean, I, I, I think they believe it's Cooper rush.
77:06I think that is just maybe appropriate disrespect to what the Panthers put out there.
77:10And yeah, I guess fair, but we'll see. Baltimore Ravens.
77:13It sounds like Zay Flowers has a chance to play this week.
77:16And if not Hayden, correct me if I'm wrong.
77:19It's at worst one game. He's going to be sidelined here.
77:22We also got Jacoby lane, uh, with surgery on his wrist.
77:25Uh, that's a fracture on top of it. Uh, after he got like three red zone targets and was going to maybe
77:31be like the featured wide receiver after that, I'll say that's just overall.
77:35And the Zay Flowers injury stinks because he was, you know, the fastest man alive on that Indianapolis Colts turf.
77:40But as we've talked about other OCs and quarterbacks that were new to the pairing, just were not ready.
77:45But Lamar and Declan Doyle were in sync from snap number one, where we got that 49 yarder Tuesday flowers.
77:51Yeah. How'd you like to finish third and EPA per carry fifth and EPA per drop back sixth and success rate.
77:57And also a second and explosive plays like everything was working.
78:00Derek Henry was a total monster. The usage from Zay Flowers was very encouraging and fun.
78:04Like you just love when wide receivers in the backfield, getting easier matchups there.
78:08He looks extremely fast. I don't know if he's going to be out there or not.
78:12Uh, I will say this. There is zero depth, uh, at wide receiver.
78:16Um, they were using LaJonte Wester, uh, and Chris Moore and Rashad Bateman out there in three wide receiver sets after lane and flowers, uh, weren't out there.
78:24Uh, that's enough for Mark Andrews to, to be a start in fantasy.
78:27Uh, I can't say that I love the Mark Andrews tape.
78:30It was like kind of a lot of, you know, just sit eight yards down the field, catch the ball and kind of just, that's it.
78:38Um, but if Lamar Jackson is going to look like an MVP and he certainly did in this one looks super explosive.
78:44And I think Declan Doyle was the best, uh, uh, first year play caller here.
78:48You got to start Mark Andrews. There's, there's really not a wide receiver that I can recommend beyond that.
78:53If safe hours is out though. Yeah, I totally agree with that.
78:56Um, I'm just hoping say comes back because I mean, doing all that in the first half and then us not getting
79:02a second half from it, uh, say looked fricking incredible here.
79:05Yeah. And they get the saints defense that we know had, you know, some struggles at times against the Detroit lions in, in week one.
79:12Okay. Let's now go over to the Carolina Panthers.
79:15Um, I talked to this game a lot again on Sunday, Coker T Mac, Chuba Hubbard were the big winners here.
79:21Hey, and they had the fourth highest explosive play rate in the NFL in week one at nearly 20% of their passes
79:27going up 15 plus yards down the field. Uh, 15 plus yard gains.
79:30Now over the next three weeks, they get the Atlanta Falcons defense, the Cleveland Browns defense and the Detroit lions defense.
79:36Nice. So dare we say that there's some optimism in Carolina that this is, you know, somewhat of, again, one of the more explosive offenses in the league.
79:44Well, I'm not sure if I would say that, but they are going to have to be because that defense was so bad.
79:50And, uh, both these players on, on the perimeter were, were really excellent.
79:54Jalen Coker, a couple of double moves down, down the football field, like really took advantage of facing Tyree Stevenson.
79:59Uh, but over like the last 10 games, it's, it's pretty much a toss up between T Mac and Jalen Coker.
80:05And that's like the, the split when Jalen Coker, uh, went to like a full-time player, uh, out there.
80:10I think maybe my, my film takeaway here was, uh, Tedrow McMillan.
80:14Like I felt those 12 pounds on, on a couple of those reps.
80:17Like there was a one kind of like a downfield curl route where that, uh, there was like not much separation, a couple of crossing routes.
80:24And I thought last year, uh, people that weren't watching the tape were like Tedrow McMillan slow.
80:29And he was running by guys down the football field in this one.
80:33It wasn't quite as clean as that. Now he's still routed some players up.
80:37He's going to work over the middle. He's going to still be an effective player, but, uh, I will say that I
80:43kind of felt those 12 pounds, um, that he put on this off season.
80:47And, uh, I do think that the gap between Coker and McMillan and fantasy drafts is probably, uh, was not tight enough
80:53versus what the reality of the situation is going to be moving forward.
80:56Yeah. Just like you said, over the last eight games for this team dating back to week 12 of last season, including
81:02the playoffs, I believe Jalen Coker, 39 receptions, 548 yards and six touchdowns.
81:06T-Mac 26 receptions, 422 yards and three scores. And that's on a very similar number of, of targets, uh, your read of
81:12the Chuba Hubbard backfield, uh, worked out very well towards the end of draft season.
81:16He had 71% of the backfield snaps. Compare that to Jonathan Brooks is 19%.
81:20That 40 plus yard catch that he had along the sideline.
81:23That was just a sensational throw and ad lit play by Bryce Young.
81:27Uh, he's not going to have one of those every single week, you know, Jonathan Brooks.
81:31So I, Hey, I didn't make Brooks a dropless player in the waiver column.
81:35Would you have? Uh, no, I would hold on to him.
81:38Um, but there's like other players that I think I would like straight up have like Haylin black, like comes to mind.
81:44Um, but, uh, Chiba ran away with this one.
81:46It was not even close. He got both of the goal line opportunities.
81:50He started each half. Uh, they threw him the ball a couple of times.
81:54The, the Jonathan Brooks stuff was not like a design to play.
81:57That was like just out of structure stuff from there.
82:00Um, and yeah, this is how he finished the season.
82:03Like that game against the Rams. He was the player that got the ball the most.
82:07And I do want to rewind back in 2024, pretty much in this exact role.
82:11He finished as a top 15 fantasy running back.
82:14I'm not expecting Chuba Hubbard to do that this year.
82:17Um, but there's at least like some precedent of this kind of like dead zone profile kind of paying off.
82:22So long football season ahead, Jonathan Brooks, uh, survive, stays healthy in this one.
82:26Uh, I'm not sure if the gap's gonna be quite as large, uh, moving forward, but Chuba doesn't do a whole lot wrong.
82:32Um, and I think that Jonathan Brooks kind of has like his work cut out to like overtake Chuba Hubbard.
82:38Yep. I thought Monroe Freeling after maybe without the first quarter really settled in at right tackle did a very good job.
82:44And then again, an under discussed change this off season was Dave Kowals giving up play calling and going to Brad.
82:50I remember like week 10 of last season, I went on a monologue talking about how, yeah, Bryson 2024 finishes one of the most efficient downfield passers.
82:57And then for the first nine games of last year, they just refused to throw the football down the field.
83:03And then from like the first series in this one, they were targeting, like you said, the out and ups, the double
83:09moves and really trying to push the ball down the field.
83:12And along with some hurry up stuff and, you know, spreading it out.
83:15I thought there was just a noticeable change from Brad calling plays to Dave Kowals last year in a good way.
83:21Yeah. I thought Bryce played really, really well in this one is.
83:25And I think that his touchdown the field is like probably his best trait.
83:28And he can evade some players as well. And he did in this one for that score against Jalen Johnson.
83:34I guess like to kind of wrap this up, Jalen Coker last eight games, he's the wide receiver 11 on wide receiver 27 usage.
83:41Like if we do the wide receiver ranking show and he's my wide receiver 24 in rankings this week, like is that like that outlandish?
83:47No, no, not at all. I mean, he closed draft season this year as wide receiver 55.
83:52And I think at worst, he should probably be ranked as a top 36 wide receiver each and every week.
83:58So you got with a what? Wide receiver five price tag, a wide receiver three the rest of the season.
84:03Like that is already one of, if not the biggest winner of week one in terms of value out there.
84:09And that's why I always include the postseason stats.
84:11Like those were those are the ones that matter the most.
84:14That's a two huge victories. Jalen Coker and Chuba Hubbard like the huge players in that game.
84:19And those are two huge winners right right here.
84:21Cleveland Browns. Oh, boy. There's not that much to talk about.
84:24We're going to talk about them, though. You hate to see injuries, Hayden.
84:28Let's start in the backfield. But does Dylan Sampson going on IR dim the lights up maybe like one notch for Quinchon
84:34Judkins in that maybe he gets a little bit of passing down usage?
84:38And that's going to be very important in this offense that looked horrible.
84:41Maybe. Maybe, but they were playing. Was it Rocket Sanders kind of out there at times?
84:46It wasn't like all like Quinchon Judkins. And this week it's going to be Tampa Bay Buccaneers, which is like forever been a pass funnel out there.
84:53And we'll see. I thought Quinchon Judkins had a really nice reception in the flat made a defender miss.
84:58But there was just like not a whole lot of rushing lanes for him.
85:02And Deshaun was like completely pathetic. Aside from that Denzel Boston stuff.
85:06They're doing like weird things as well. Like they're doing like seven step drops out of shotgun, which Nate Tice was talking about.
85:12Like nobody does that. They did like a couple times in this game.
85:16So either Deshaun is like completely just like freestyling back there or like they're just kind of doing funky stuff in this offense.
85:22Concepcion fumbled the ball, but he was clearly their manufactured touch player.
85:25Denzel Boston full time player. But it's going to be hard to kind of track down stuff.
85:30I guess maybe Josh, Harold Fannin temperature check because like he was the PPR scam.
85:34You didn't get that in this week. Like is he a top 12 tight end?
85:38They're projected for 16 points. I mean, I think he was one of the players I faded all draft season, you know,
85:44in terms of as soon as we saw Casey Concepcion out there and he was getting the easy buttons.
85:50Then that put alarm bells off for me that.
85:52Yeah. Hey, that's how Harold Fannin got home in a bad team last year.
85:56And if they're a bad team this year, then if he's not going to get those in case he is, then where's the path to production?
86:03By the way, Casey Concepcion. There were some good moments.
86:06Okay. Some good moments. I thought against a good Jaguars secondary.
86:09There was one really nice route that he had as a top of a stack that he faked the over route.
86:15Jordan Lewis kind of looked back towards the quarterback and at that exact point, he broke it out towards the sideline.
86:21Made a really nice catch on that one. And then Trayvon Walker stopped what would have been like a 60 yard touchdown.
86:27Now, I don't know if, you know, Deshaun Watson would have made an accurate pass or a pass that could have gotten 60 yards on the field.
86:34But Casey Concepcion on a vertical route burn number four out there had him reaching, had two steps on him.
86:40And that would have been really nice. So, look, it's going to be tough to watch the games if you are playing any Browns out there.
86:47But there was nothing wrong, I felt, with Casey Concepcion's rookie debut.
86:50Yeah, I totally agree. I should say. Yeah, the fumble was, yeah.
86:53But, you know, those are fluky, so you can pretend that didn't happen.
86:57Yes. Okay. Let's talk about the Detroit Lions. Might be a boring team to discuss every week, Hayden.
87:02It is the most concentrated offense in the league.
87:04Shootout slow for the next weeks. As I mentioned, some of the teams are going up against and they're down both safeties and down cornerbacks.
87:11And they're playing on Thursday night football against the Buffalo Bills.
87:14What do you want to say here against the Lions?
87:17The secondaries complete trash. They were losing players due to injury in that game as well.
87:22Well, Jameer Gibbs, 30.9 expected full PPR points in this one.
87:25That is unconscious stuff. So I didn't have many big takeaways here.
87:28Amon Ra did his thing, some choice routes. I got a touchdown.
87:31We had some Sam Laporte, like traditional work over the middle type of stuff.
87:35I think he's going to be heavily utilized this year.
87:38And then JMO, I think he's going to be back to the boom bust category.
87:42Maybe more downfield stuff. And that was like what the splits were with and without Sam Laporte last year.
87:47So it was kind of like exactly what I was expecting.
87:50I think the defense is going to really struggle.
87:53Jameer Gibbs is not going to come off the football field very much.
87:56And then I think all these wide receivers and tight ends are going to eat eventually.
88:01Yeah. JMO had a huge drop on a 41-yard pass.
88:04Then another one 18 yards down the field too.
88:06His box score would have looked entirely different if that happened.
88:09Sam Laporte had one end zone target here. But like overall, Hayden, 14 targets for Amon Ra, 8 for Sam Laporte, 9 for Jameson Williams.
88:16Again, this is going to be one of the most boring teams that we talked about on a weekly basis because you
88:22got in Jameer Gibbs and we know what we're getting here each and every time.
88:26By the way, if you're watching us live on the Yahoo Sports Network, we're signing off on there.
88:31But you can hop on over to Yahoo Fantasy Football with Josh and Hayden on YouTube to catch the rest of the show.
88:38Okay, let's jump to Green Bay Packers. Hayden, the Packers.
88:40The Packers in this game, actually last season, excuse me, ranked 18th in neutral pace of play and 24th in pass rate over expectation.
88:47In week one, they ranked second and sixth in both departments.
88:50That is from Paul Patterson here. This is exactly what you expected.
88:53This is exactly what we needed to happen. And after watching the tape, it even makes more sense.
88:58Now, I am worried that the offensive line is in such bad shape that Jordan Love could get injured or that the
89:04ground game is going to be so bad that this team is just going to be either explosive play or punting the football.
89:11That's how drastic the offensive line was. Now, because they're playing with so much pace and because Jordan Love's so good and
89:17because I think all these skill guys are so good, this is going to be a team that's going to be top
89:23five, top ten in passing production this year. I feel very confident.
89:26That's what Jordan Love was in this last game where he was the quarterback 10 in fancy points.
89:31I think the big storyline here is number one, Christian Watson.
89:34We know what he can do over the middle, take it 81 yards.
89:38It's Matthew Golden. He was wide receiver two in expected points.
89:41He had the explosive over the middle. They got him kind of going in like the Romeo Dobbs plus role here.
89:47If they're going to drop back this many times and he's not going to come off the football field, which he didn't
89:53in this one, like Matthew Golden, no doubt about it.
89:55Fantasy starter immediately. And I think that there is a chance that he is like one of the best picks that you could have made.
90:02And I think that all like the sleeper appeal came through right away with him.
90:06No doubt about it. Using that phrase. If you watch this channel all summer long, you left your draft with one of Christian Watson or Matthew Golden.
90:14And hopefully that happened because both these guys, I think it would be fantastic assets really all season long.
90:19And it's why to me, I loved opening with running backs because I could get later on wide receivers like Jalen Coker
90:25and like Matthew Golden and felt comfortable as I went along in my draft.
90:29I did want to bring up that I really feel like the Packers need a running back.
90:34If it stays this way, we don't know how long it is going to stay this way.
90:39Like there is a strong chance to me that Marshawn Lloyd is a replaceable level back.
90:43Now, I don't know if his snaps in this one are going to stay true.
90:47And even Chris Brooks, you know, open this game.
90:50And we've talked about it that that likely was because of the defense that they were playing and pass protection and all that type of stuff.
90:57But I keep saying it. And this dates back to the preseason.
91:00Like when Marshawn Lloyd gets the ball, I just don't really see it with him.
91:04Yeah. Well, I don't think he sees that. I think that's kind of the problem.
91:08I think that his vision and like when he's just kind of jumping around the football field, it's like more like Frogger style running back.
91:15Like that's not like teach tape out there. And they clearly don't trust him in pass protection.
91:20Like that's why Chris Brooks started and played like a lot of the snaps ahead of Marshawn Lloyd.
91:25We knew that was going to be coming against the Vikings.
91:28They are four and a half point favorites moving forward.
91:31So Marshawn Lloyd looks a little bit better this week than last week.
91:34But this is a low end flex play. And I thought like he was very clearly like the most obvious sell high going into this last week.
91:42I think we're already at the point where people are probably feeling more optimistic that Josh Jacobs is going to be coming back like probably around week seven.
91:50And Marshawn Lloyd completely flopped. Like I don't even know what you can get from Marshawn Lloyd right now.
91:55And I would still trade him away. I agree with you.
91:58Like this is just like unacceptable running back play, unacceptable offensive line play.
92:01And I just don't see how anything's really going to change.
92:04The other part of this Christian Watson is a yes in your lineups every week.
92:09My Matthew Golden is a yes. Tucker Craft is a yes.
92:12And it was awesome seeing him play so many snaps and creating some explosives out there to Jaden Reed, who was being
92:18drafted almost in the exact same round as Matthew Golden.
92:20To me, Hayden is a good luck with your week and knowing what you're going to get.
92:25He's in that high variance wide receiver four ish territory.
92:28Completely agreed. Ran 29 routes on 46 dropbacks. Now, 29 routes.
92:31If they're going to drop back this much because they're playing faster, like that is enough for him to get home.
92:37But I think that Matthew Golden is a real player.
92:40Christian Watson is coming on. And I think that once Tucker Craft is out there for even more routes, like it's going
92:46to be pretty hard for Jaden Reed to be trusted.
92:48Tucker Craft, by the way, 22 of 46 routes.
92:51They said that he played 45 snaps. They wanted to play 40.
92:54I think every week we can just like add, you know, four or five snaps per game.
92:59And I think by the he said about Halloween, like week eight, somewhere in that range is like when he anticipates to be fully back.
93:06I thought that his tape looks good and that they were just kind of holding him back.
93:10But I do think that that's going to be the status quo for a little bit.
93:15Let's talk to Houston Texans. All right. On the box score, the Dave Montgomery three touchdowns.
93:19Hayden makes it look like the run game is fixed and that it was an excellent week overall for that Texas running game.
93:26Underlying metrics kind of point in a different direction.
93:28And Hayden, my eyeballs kind of do to like was the running game actually fixed?
93:32Because to me, he was hit the line of scrimmage very often.
93:36And, you know, the touchdown was even three straight runs from the two yard line, which is great that DeMont had that opportunity.
93:42But it took him multiple times. There were other short yardage things that, you know, were not fixed.
93:47We'll talk about some other aspects, but just overall, what do you think of the running game?
93:52I don't want to sound like a salty hater because I was telling people not to draft David Montgomery.
93:57And he absolutely goes crazy in this one. And like he's got the goal line role and like that was excellent.
94:03I agree with you on what happened on tape and then what the data is suggesting as well.
94:0816 of his 19 carries went for under five yards.
94:10And that's removing the actual goal line touchdown that he had, which was the third attempt with that.
94:15I thought that Woody Marks looked better on tape.
94:18Like it's just straight up. David Montgomery's touchdown was an untouched one up the middle that I think you and I could have scored on.
94:25And Woody Marks did play more snaps by one than David Montgomery.
94:28So this team, like if St.J. Stroud played, like I thought he had a pretty good game.
94:33And I think the offensive line maybe was a little bit better than last year's, but it was not an offensive line
94:39that was wowing me by any capacity. They still have no depth as the skill group.
94:43So like if people are going to be viewing David Montgomery as like a top 15 running back, I would still fade that.
94:50But I know that sounds kind of weird because like that's what I was saying.
94:54And I'm just like not that moved, I guess, after this performance.
94:57Right. Now, there are stretches of the season like their fourth game is against the Dallas Cowboys.
95:02Their fifth game against the Tennessee Titans. That two game stretch, we can again have some fireworks from Dave Montgomery.
95:07And I understand the headlines of the 50-50 split drew some attention.
95:11And it, again, doesn't look like it in the box score.
95:14But as you said, when you look at it, snaps were 40 for Woody Marks, 39 for David Montgomery.
95:19Carries were then 20 for Dave Montgomery, nine for Woody Marks.
95:22Routes 14 apiece. And then targets three for DeMont and one for Woody Marks.
95:26And yeah, whenever Woody Marks got in there, he looked explosive to me.
95:29So yeah, I barely drafted David Montgomery this year.
95:32This was an awesome debut, but I'm just a bit hesitant to make the leap that, oh, they have fixed this one.
95:38I will say one thing that they did fix was they went four or five in red zone touchdowns in this game.
95:44And last season, they finished 29th in the league with 49% of their red zone touchdown success rate.
95:49So again, if Nick Kelly can improve on anything, that was a huge number for him.
95:53And Woody Marks was a part of that, getting three straight goal line carries.
95:57Yeah, definitely. So my last note here was with Nico Collins, though, didn't want to mention the Bills defense.
96:03A little bit different. New defensive coordinator, Christian Benford, one of the better corners in the league, was like pretty much shadowing Nico Collins.
96:09I think that's like something we need to take away as we are raking players against the Bills.
96:14The rest of their corners were kind of like battling like in the middle of the game while Benford was kind of shadowing.
96:21Now, Nico Collins got the best of them for most of those reps.
96:24A lot of press man coverage there. So very difficult assignment for Benford.
96:28And then Nico Collins just beat him up straight up.
96:30So I'd really like to see a 27% target share for Nico Collins in this one.
96:35And I think that's going to continue because the rest of these guys like a big rotation.
96:40And then Kay Sean, Jalen Hutchinson, all those guys are going to be rotating and it's going to be all Nico Collins this year.
96:46Indianapolis Colts are next. Again, that first series that they had against the Baltimore Ravens was fantastic.
96:51They marched down the field and then they ran into a bit of a buzzsaw where all of these pieces on the
96:57Ravens that might have been questionable in the past or had some down seasons like Roquan Smith, for example.
97:02Even Marlon Humphrey has had some up and down moments.
97:05They were fantastic. You add in Kyle Hamilton, who was awesome against Tyler Warren.
97:09And then Nate Wiggins was like a shutdown corner on the outside.
97:12So the Colts could do absolutely nothing. I will say I think this was a rough matchup for Tyler Warren.
97:18He still got a touchdown late, which helped. He still played 93% of snaps.
97:22I think we're going to be fine with Tyler Warren rest of the season.
97:25Yeah, I'm not concerned about like any of these guys.
97:28I thought just watching the tape, I thought Daniel Jones was pretty statuesque in the pocket.
97:33But I don't think it was like so, so, so bad either, especially for a debut.
97:37Hopefully he gets a little bit better. I don't think that he was like throwing the ball with like a bunch of
97:43zip and maybe there's like a 10% discount versus what some of those sideline throws would be looking like.
97:48But Alec Pierce, they said that they were going to play him in a part time role.
97:53They did. That's going to scale up. Tyler Warren's going to have much easier matchups.
97:57I think that the Baltimore Ravens defense was flying all over the football field and throwing the ball over the middle, especially
98:03against that defense with Kyle Hamilton over there is like a very dangerous proposition.
98:07And that's where the Colts were like lighting people up last year.
98:10So I think a difficult matchup for them. I thought they looked fine enough.
98:14So I'm not I'm not really moving any of these guys up and down.
98:18If I was like doing the same redraft as as last week, I wouldn't move anybody up or down.
98:23The unfortunate part, though, is our schedule. It was the Ravens in week one.
98:27Then it's on the road against Kansas City on Sunday night football in week two.
98:31Week three is the Houston Texans who might fix their defense by that point.
98:35And then week four, as you mentioned it, the Durante Jones now led Washington commanders that do some funky stuff up front.
98:41So that's a tough four game stretch, I think, just overall for for the Colts.
98:46But we know that they overcame a lot of tough defenses last year and hopefully can get back on track here in 2026.
98:52Las Vegas Raiders are next. Hayden, Ashton Jenty and the Raiders offense smashed the easiest opponent on their schedule for months.
98:58What I like most, though, was the receiving work in this game.
99:01Like I love the angle route touchdown that he scored.
99:04Even his second reception while on the TV copy didn't look like it.
99:07When you look at the all 22, it was a designed one as well.
99:11They had two crossing routes from the left side going to the right side to take away the coverage.
99:16And then he just leaks out into space behind his fullback for a walk in score.
99:21So that was very promising usage from Ashton Jenty.
99:23As good as it could have gone, I think he would be a first round pick.
99:28We were redrafting today. I didn't see any signs about the ankle sprain and the receiving stuff was like the headline story.
99:34It was two screen targets, two choice route targets, one of them like a choice route, Texas routes.
99:39It's almost like the same exact thing. That play action leak route they're talking about.
99:43And then he also had like a kind of a return route as a check down, but more like a design check down.
99:49So like everything just like felt smooth and that's like what we should expect with Clint Kubiak.
99:54Played 74% of the snaps. So that's down from last year.
99:57Mike Washington played a little bit. But if Ashton Jenty is going to get all the designed receptions in this backfield, then who cares?
100:04And I thought like the entire team looked pretty competent over there.
100:07So yeah, RB5 and RB2 overall usage, 22.7 expected half PPR points.
100:10I didn't draft any Ashton Jenty. I'm not feeling great about that right now.
100:14You guys probably did. You guys should feel good about it.
100:17The good news is I was drafting at least Kenneth Walker ahead of Ashton Jenty.
100:21So maybe I get bailed out. Correct. Yeah. You know, Clint Kubiak was asked about the downfield passes because as we have
100:27discussed in both his previous stops, New Orleans Saints, Seattle Seahawks, neither one of those teams reviewed it as an explosive passing offense.
100:34And yet he transformed them into that. He said, you just have to throw it down the field in order for it to work.
100:40I don't know if Kirk Cousins can necessarily do that.
100:43No. With at least how he is operating right now.
100:46So again, if maybe he gets some frustration or doesn't get the feeling that they can operate in that way, Hayden, that
100:52might again, make the time speed up to the Fernando Mendoza era here.
100:56Yeah, definitely. So now if they're winning ballgames, it probably makes them a little bit less likely to do it.
101:01Yeah. Pretty difficult schedule over the next couple, couple like month or so here.
101:05But I saw that Clint Kubiak has had this team a little bit more subtle.
101:09I don't think the offensive line is great. Like there's they just still missing a couple of guys.
101:14But there was not like guys in the backfield like the entire game.
101:18Hayden, there is some buzz that Brock Bowers might suit up in week two.
101:22If it trends in the direction that he's playing, would you play him in your lineup?
101:26Yeah, of course. But like what can go wrong here, Raiders?
101:29Like, can we just like take a deep breath?
101:32You want to know, can we can we wait a second week?
101:35I agree. Like wait a week extra than you think you should for Brock Bowers is how I would handle it.
101:41Let's talk about the Los Angeles Rams. They're up next.
101:43This was a losing effort and the backfield snap looked like it was a losing effort.
101:48As I kept mentioning with last year stuff, when they were trailing or tied, Kyron Williams played about 75% of snaps in this one.
101:55Kyron was at 64% like Corbin 23%. Kyron played on 23 of 33 dropbacks.
101:58Corbin just three of 33. So while we don't expect the Rams to trail or be tied very often heading into this
102:04year, Hayden, maybe just maybe it's slightly likelier now with Myles Garrett on injured reserve and Jared verse also not on the roster to take his place.
102:12Yeah, maybe so. We'll see about Aaron Donald playing shortly.
102:15I thought that was like a pathetic game from Matthew Stafford in particular.
102:18Like it just seemed like like kind of the fundamentals and like he's like trying to do too much stuff.
102:24Like I know that he had all those like no look passes, but it just seemed like he was just putting a little bit too much out there.
102:32So I was pretty discouraged about that. I was a really sloppy game in general.
102:36Now I was in Australia. They just got off the flight.
102:39I'm sure Matthew Stafford's back was feeling not great because they probably didn't bring the immortal chamber across the world.
102:44So maybe that was what we can write off here, but not a pretty showing by anybody.
102:49Any Terrence Ferguson thoughts? Um, he played like just enough for like to give it another week here, but I don't know
102:55like Colby Parkinson pretty much didn't come off the field and like, I think a good bold prediction would be like Colby Parkinson outscores Terrence Ferguson again.
103:02But I think both of these guys are like tight end to like just hoping for something to develop.
103:08They're projected for 28 points. They get the Giants here on Monday Night Football.
103:12So like any of these guys can pop off.
103:14I thought Devante Adams, like maybe that's probably where I have like the most like concerns just in general of anyone.
103:20Um, but we'll see. The T-Furk stuff was interesting because he played about 77% of dropbacks or snaps.
103:25And I think it was dropbacks in the first half and then down to like 22% in the second half.
103:30Uh, so we need, we need more sample size.
103:33Let's put it that way. Yes. Okay. Miami Dolphins.
103:35I don't think I need a bigger sample size to say this.
103:39Hayden. Caleb Douglas was one of the players that impressed me most in week one when reviewing the game.
103:44He is an easy mover. He's going to always be on the field.
103:47He's going to learn on the job. So even when he makes mistakes or doesn't get two feet in bounds, or maybe
103:54he has a tight window drop, that's okay. They're going to live with it.
103:57And just hopefully the offense just improves as the season goes along.
104:01But even if he doesn't, he's going to run a ton of routes and I think command a number of targets.
104:07He might be my true waiver wire favorite pickup this week because he's going to be available in 99% of leagues out there.
104:13Couldn't agree more. My opening statement. And by the way, I do write.
104:16You guys should probably read this over on Yahoo.
104:19But my opening statement for him is Douglas needs to be rostered.
104:22I think it's like as simple as that. He was the wide receiver 23 on wide receiver 38 usage, 26% target share near full-time player.
104:29He had a nice route in man coverage, a dig route over the middle where he literally turned him around.
104:35That was pretty cool. A lot of downfield looks, a lot of downfield routes is what you want to see there.
104:41Malik will toss up a total prayer for an interception way down the field, but that was to Caleb Douglas.
104:46So yeah, I think the Dolphins defense was as pathetic as we anticipated to be like Ashton Gentry like went untouched over the middle for the entire game.
104:54Uh, and that's going to make Malik Willis have to drop back, uh, plenty here.
104:58So of everyone, it's Caleb Douglas for now. We'll see how much more Chris Bell is going to play as the, as he ramps up here.
105:05But Caleb Douglas needs to be rostered. Like the number one receiver on NF on every NFL team needs to be rostered in fantasy.
105:12And like, he's clearly the top guy. Yeah. And even Willis had that cover two hole shots to him as well.
105:18Like, well, this is going to throw it on the field whenever he drops back multiple times per game.
105:23Uh, and yeah, like you said, the awesome gain of 30, where it was basically a seven route, like he voided the
105:29space and then attack that as well. It was, it was cool stuff.
105:32Yeah. He played 35 of 40 dropbacks. Um, his 42.7% team yardage market share ranks third highest among all week one rookie
105:39wide receivers over the last six seasons. Wow. That's from Kyle MFF on Twitter.
105:42Anything you want to say about Devon Achan or Malik Willis or should we just move on?
105:47Uh, I think so. Just because probably people are scared of the Devon Achan stuff.
105:51The Dolphins, I will say this, they ran the third slowest offense.
105:55And I think that's going to be something that's going to be a little bit difficult to overcome.
106:00Um, Malik Willis did have a 13% sack rate.
106:02Now, one of those was because Devon Achan just did not pick up the blitzer.
106:06So I can't really say that was Malik Willis's fault.
106:09Uh, they only ran 50 plays. That's most likely going to be an outlier.
106:13Like the NFL average is around 60 plays. Uh, even the worst teams in the NFL do not run 50 plays on a per game basis.
106:20So that should go up. I will say with Devon Achan, like the, the run game, they didn't have like that many
106:26carries, but it did look like the Mike McDaniel run game, like a lot of stuff to, to the outside.
106:32And I think that eventually that will kind of come together.
106:35But like, to me, it just looked like the same kind of run offense.
106:38Um, and then on the, the past game stuff, there was two wheel routes down the field.
106:43There was a Texas screen route as well. There was two check downs on top of that.
106:48He was only credited with four receptions. I swear I counted five of them.
106:52So we need to look, uh, look into this, maybe build another data center or two to figure out why he didn't
106:58have a fifth reception in this game. Uh, but I thought in general, like the usage, like wasn't that bad for Devon Achan.
107:04Like that was a pretty bad performance, all things considered.
107:07And like, that was the, the low end outcome that people were projecting.
107:11Uh, but he was very clearly like the focal point of the offense.
107:14Yeah. I guess my thing is it can look like Mike McDaniel's offense that was successful running the ball, but that doesn't
107:20mean it's going to be Mike McDaniel's offense that it's successful running the ball.
107:24Like, again, this is the Las Vegas Raiders defense that we're talking about here.
107:28And he got 11 carries for 36 yards. And then you look in their schedule, it's the Raiders next, then it's the chiefs, then it's the Vikings.
107:35You know, those are some tough defenses to run on.
107:38And that's the sled that, you know, Devon Achan is going to run up against.
107:42So I just want to keep that in mind.
107:45Okay. Speaking of Minnesota Vikings, let's talk about them.
107:47Ian Rappaport says Kyler Murray will likely be the starter once returning from his concussion.
107:51Um, I didn't even know about that early interception until I turned the film on, like just threw up the lollipop.
107:57Yeah. That was not good. Yeah. I mean, we only got what, like 10 snaps of him out there and it was a total mixed bag.
108:04So I don't want to, you know, write what his Vikings career might be like off those 10 dropbacks.
108:10But, uh, Hayden, it wasn't a good start. Uh, no, I'm trying to remember.
108:14It was the one where I think it was like a quarters, uh, coverage and he put way, way, way too much arc in there.
108:20And then the other corner, like got back to it in time.
108:24So like, that was just one where like, you just got to have the right loft on the pass there.
108:29Uh, and that was against like an all out blitz if I'm remembering it correctly.
108:33Um, yeah, incomplete. I will say Carson Wentz, like he threw the ball downfield.
108:37Uh, Justin Jefferson's touchdown was, it was such a funny play because it was a free play and Justin Jefferson was to
108:43the left and Carson Wentz for whatever reason was like, I'm going to look to the right at first.
108:49And then he remembered Justin Jefferson's on the field halfway through the play and finally threw it over to him.
108:54Uh, some nice stuff like underneath, like running behind the offensive line lineman for Justin Jefferson.
108:59Like that's how he got his second, uh, touchdown.
109:01So, uh, pretty cool performance. Like at least like the, there's a floor in place with Justin Jefferson and then, uh, the
109:07running backs is a rotation, like kind of as expected.
109:10Yeah. They get the bears defense this week. Uh, and so I would pick up Carson Wentz and play him super flex.
109:16If you need a quarterback, like if Sam Darnold went down for you or Kyler Murray went down, obviously.
109:21Um, and then, yeah, I mean this, it's so obvious that if you know where to go with the football and you
109:27just trust the offense and just throw it there, that the system is for Justin Jefferson to have fancy points.
109:33If the quarterback does that, I will say the one thing to keep and keep an eye on is they had a
109:3938% neutral pass rate in this game. Um, I don't know if that's because they just thought their offensive line could just
109:45take over the, the, the Packers defensive line, which, uh, they did for a lot of this, or if this is like
109:51a Carson Wentz thing, but they are typically top five neutral pass rate.
109:55That was second lowest in week one. It's like not panicking.
109:58There's something I'm going to be monitoring moving forward.
110:00Yeah. And that could be notable because again, both Jordan Mason and Aaron Jones get in the end zone, uh, in, in this one.
110:07And this is one of those backfields that, Hey, if they don't score points, then it's split down the middle and it
110:13doesn't matter in fancy football, but maybe there are contests or even a trend like you just talked about that.
110:18If that's the case, then maybe both, uh, do work out in some capacity in some contests.
110:23Okay. New England Patriots are up next. I mean, this was a weird one.
110:27Wasn't it? Like, obviously the Seahawks are a tough defense and that's really back to back games against the Seahawks defense.
110:33The first one, immense amount of pressure leading to sacks on Drake may.
110:36And then in this one, Drake may throws it away in terms of at least sending it to overtime.
110:42But Hayden, I think the most shocking thing to me was the Romeo Dobbs usage.
110:46Like he was destined to be the widest. He were four in snaps on this team and maybe just maybe his season
110:52is saved in part to AJ Brown going on injured reserve.
110:55Yeah, he wasn't playing. Like, I don't know why they paid him that much and they just weren't playing him.
111:00So I would not put him in my fantasy lineup.
111:03I think there's a chance he can pay off with that, but they got Matt Collins in there for a lot of
111:09snaps and that's because they want to run the ball.
111:12And like, that's their best run blocker. Uh, Kyle Doug, uh, Kyle Williams for, for a couple snaps in there.
111:18Pop Douglas has like the primary slot. But there's a lot of moving parts.
111:21Josh McDiandle is so infuriating because like there's some times where I think he's a decent play caller, but there's like just
111:27way too many times where his pass protection rules just get completely eaten up, especially against the best, uh, defensive coordinators, like what the Seahawks, uh, had.
111:35They threw a bunch of stuff at them and they were just like not prepared.
111:39So, um, Drake made did not play well, but I don't think the scheme was doing him any favors.
111:44Um, and then we'll see about, uh, it sounds like Travion is going to be returning for this one.
111:50So we can pretty much throw out all the room laundry stuff out the window from, uh, week one.
111:55Okay. Let's talk about the new Orleans saints. Another shocker.
111:58What did you make of the Travis H and split?
112:00Um, because he didn't play as much as I was expecting to in the first half either.
112:05No, I was going to ask you, I was just go flip it right back to you.
112:10What am I supposed to make up this? Like, this is like so shocking to me that there was nothing about the like game plan or anything.
112:17Like there was, I wasn't reading anything. So tell me, can we do some Brian Windhorst stuff?
112:22Like, I don't know how a team can pay someone that contract and also Alvin Kamara get injured and then get to
112:28week one and be like, actually, we're going to split this backfield three ways unless something maybe Travis H and is not a hundred percent right now.
112:35And I'm just theorizing, but it doesn't make any sense to pay him that contract and then not play him like Ken Walker was yesterday, for example.
112:43Yeah. I have no idea what the hell happened.
112:45Uh, he's not a good pass protector. So like, that's why CJ Donaldson was out there.
112:50It was more than just like the Kendra Miller stuff.
112:53Like he was playing like, like on early downs at his expense.
112:56So this is like going into halftime, this tweet that you're seeing on the screen here.
113:00Uh, but yeah, I was like every other play was like Kendra Miller on early downs and he just was not playing the passing down snaps.
113:07Um, and then at halftime, Tyler suck just went into like, just chuck it down the field and like everything was working out.
113:14And that was super impressive. But, uh, luckily Travis ETN got a bunch of, uh, targets.
113:18Um, but that was also because of the game script was so lopsided.
113:22They ran a ton of places like 80 something plays in this one.
113:25Like that's because they run the fastest paced offense in the NFL.
113:29Uh, but it was also because they were in chase up mode.
113:32So it was a really wonky game all around, but credit for the saints for hanging in there.
113:37Yeah. A chance day was kind of saved by that second half and then remembering that you can catch passes.
113:43Um, but you could say the same thing about, you know, Jawan Johnson, for example, who ran the most routes of any tight end in week one.
113:50And he got there on the final drive because of the touchdown and some catches that he had in overtime too.
113:56And then like Devon belly Hayden, I think you can say that anyone has upside if they play 91% of the routes on a team with 67 dropbacks.
114:04And that was the case with Devon belly here.
114:06He was the wider super 10 and wider super 14 usage.
114:09I think that he is like, you know, the, the worst version of like Jalen Coker, like for the next couple of
114:15weeks here, like he's a full-time player and there's, there's enough past attempts and he's just good enough to kind of squeak by.
114:21I know Coker is really good at football. I don't think that Bay lays to that caliber.
114:26So definitely like, that's like the big difference, but will Bay lay be a top, uh, 50 wide receiver in these rankings this next week?
114:33Probably. So the unfortunate part is they're in trail mode, but it's against the Ravens.
114:37Like the Ravens defense is so much better than the lions one.
114:41And he's going to have to go up against some Nate Wiggins and some Kyle Hamilton over the middle as like a power slot player.
114:47So, um, yeah, that maybe next week's asking too much, but he in deep leagues, he should be rostered.
114:53I think the Saints are only projected for 19 points this week, uh, and our eight and a half point road underdogs, New York jets.
115:00Let's talk about them. Their offensive line gives them a platform to succeed every single week.
115:04That's why they continued investing in it over and over and over again.
115:08Like even when they faltered too, I actually felt in this game, Hayden, that Gino didn't crumble.
115:12Um, you know, there's that third and five at midfield only up seven to three and he escapes the pressure runs it to make it fourth and two.
115:20They go for it. It's an ISO slant win for Garrett Wilson.
115:23There's a first down. Uh, so I thought all the pieces that we were hoping for, uh, performed at the level that
115:29we were hoping for when we drafted them. This is the first team I have not actually watched the all 22, so
115:36I'm not going to make up notes aside from fifth and success rate ninth and yards per play.
115:40Um, and the ground game, uh, looked really good by the numbers.
115:44And I know what you just said and what Ray was saying, the same exact thing.
115:48So I think promising debut. I'll watch them, uh, maybe tomorrow.
115:51It's exactly what you were expecting. Like, and I Mitchell on these big outside breakers and vertical stuff that he catches some big time passes down the field.
115:59Uh, Garrett Wilson, shimmy and shakes his way for some separation and some important ISO targets.
116:03Uh, I will say Braylon Allen did get a third and one and fourth and one carry on a singular drive, but
116:09at the same time, Brees Hall's touchdown was a goal line one.
116:13So, uh, I know Omar Cooper is sidelined right now and they got Kenan Sadiq in some funky looks and got him a rushing touchdown.
116:20I will add that there was one set that I believe Frank Reich throughout, you know, four tight ends on the field
116:26and they spread it out as well. Um, so maybe Frank Reich is trying to beat the allegations from me that, uh,
116:32the NFL has passed them by a little bit, but let's also keep in mind that was the Tennessee Titans they faced.
116:38Well, I mean, what we're talking about like Oh four personnel, like that's bonkers stuff like that.
116:43Maybe, maybe that's overthinking it to the, to your point there.
116:46Um, Isaiah Davis didn't play. I will, I will say that like just looking at the, the, the snap counts.
116:51That's a big deal because like that points, this was a three back, uh, committee.
116:55If it's at least down to two and Brees Hall got both the goal line, uh, carries in this one.
117:01Um, that's still pretty good. I think that the big story here is like if the offensive line is not terrible and
117:07it's average, if not even better than that, that's how you find underrated offenses.
117:11Pittsburgh Steelers. You drafted a ton of Jalen Warren this summer.
117:14How are you feeling after one game? I felt pretty good about it.
117:17I thought that he was very clearly the better player on tape.
117:21They both split time here. Very clearly Jalen Warren did have the fumbles like huge caveat aside from that, but he had a pancake block in pass protection.
117:29Rico Dowdle. Uh, it was a play action rep where Aaron, uh, Rogers was trying to hand the ball off to the right.
117:35Rico Dowdle ran to the left. Then there was a blitzer coming in and he missed the blitz pickup and then got Aaron Rogers hit.
117:42Like that's the type of stuff that Rogers is not going to like.
117:45And Jalen Warren was much better at that type of stuff.
117:48I think that Warren like looks just way better on, on film to me.
117:52Uh, now I think the big takeaway with this one is the Steelers were fourth in neutral pass rate under Mike McCarthy.
117:58He's like just notoriously very pass heavy. Um, but we'll see if that like continues because like, I wouldn't say it was
118:04like the cleanest game from the past game on top of that.
118:08Um, and they'll face much better defense. And shouldn't you be a running team and the environment that they were in against the Falcons too.
118:15And then like, they were still just a neutral pass rate team on top of it.
118:19Yes. I think you can kind of do whatever you want against the Falcons, uh, defense for right now.
118:24They just like don't have enough bodies there. Um, but for, for Jalen Warren, 13 and a half expected half PPR points.
118:30Uh, Rico Dowdle was at 10. I feel more comfortable with Jalen Warren.
118:34I think he's the better player. That's that was my kind of, I guess bias is my, my evaluation of the two.
118:40And that's what I saw in week one. Yeah.
118:43I wonder if Mike McCarthy agrees, you know, like that, that has to be the jump and the leap for him to take too.
118:49Because if you just look at the, and this is just pure snaps, Rico played 58% Jalen Warren, 37%.
118:54He also played more passing down snaps, 22 to 15.
118:57Now Rico had nine pass pro reps compared to zero for Jalen Warren.
119:01And that's her Jalen Warren, you know, gets the receptions by not being there in, in past protection.
119:06So it was an interesting backfield split that again, if you're also fourth or third or whatever it is highest in neutral
119:12pass rate, then if we're splitting a backfield that has a limited touches with that in half on top of it, then,
119:18uh, I get a bit nervous how relevant that's going to be on a week to week standpoint.
119:23Uh, Jalen Warren, RB 17 expected points. Rico Dowdle RB 27.
119:26The big difference, like in the numbers, Rico Dowdle had an 8% success rate rushing the ball, negative 60, uh, percent rush yards over expected in this one.
119:34So, um, we'll see the season's not about one week.
119:36Nope. And speaking of, I mean, DK Metcalf, I think had like the most hidden or lost yardage in week one.
119:42Some of it was because of some mispasses down the field, but also some OPI and DPI on top of it.
119:48So it was going in both directions here for, for DK Metcalf.
119:51So Aaron Rogers talked him up constantly in August saying he had a fantastic camp.
119:55Uh, Hey, I don't know if I really want to buy another than our expert league.
120:00Where I have both of these, uh, see there's pass catchers somehow, some way.
120:04Uh, but DK Metcalf, if we're looking at like the, the air yards model is popping.
120:08204 air yards. He was a wide receiver six and expected points.
120:11He had a 27% target share 20, uh, 0.4 average depth of target.
120:15Like that's what you want. Uh, we'll see if it continues though.
120:18Like some of that stuff was not very effective.
120:21He had that drop over the middle. Like you, like you said, OPI and DPI.
120:25Um, so really interesting game, but they were throwing the ball down the field.
120:29Now is the big takeaway from last year is like, they did not do that ever with DK Metcalf.
120:34And this week, uh, completely flipped. Michael Pittman, like not really involved.
120:37Yeah. And the move did its work. You know, we, we listened to Aaron Rodgers and towards the end of draft season,
120:44I had my, you know, ear to the ground and started drafting more and more Pat Fryer move.
120:49And especially in tight end premium leagues. And it worked out.
120:52And I think that's going to continue in that way.
120:54Unfortunately, the negative news here, Hayden is that on the road against the Patriots, the Steelers are only project for 18 points here.
121:01Yeah. Yeah. I think that Jalen Warren's a flex play DK Metcalf is startable and then everyone else is, is not startable.
121:07Um, my last note, Darnell Washington out in the flats against that DB.
121:10I mean, just like send them to like the earth's crust.
121:13I mean, it's the funniest thing ever. The sideline absolutely erupted.
121:16Like it might be the funniest play in football is Darnell Washington, like leaking out.
121:21Like it is lookout. San Francisco 49ers. It feels like they played two weeks ago, but let's talk about this running back split.
121:27Okay. This was the first time a 49ers running back to and Chris McCaffrey both saw 10 plus carries in the same game since 2023.
121:34Now there's a lot of other factors going on here.
121:37Uh, one is that the game was in Australia too.
121:39We heard about CMC's cramping, but Hey, maybe I'm on an Island and saying, I think that this is close to the goal.
121:46Like, I think that this is what the 49ers kind of want it to be.
121:50Maybe not necessarily, you know, Kalen black getting more carries than Chris McCaffrey, but Kalen black hovering around that 36 to 40% snap stuff.
121:56Because when CMC got the ball either as a rusher or as a receiver, it paid off.
122:01It was proof of concept in terms of him actually looking explosive and him, you know, getting to the second and third levels.
122:08Yeah. There was a quote from Shanahan back in May that he just was like, we can't do this again with Christian McCaffrey.
122:14And I think most people read into that as like, he always says this like easier said than done.
122:19But then they drafted Kalen black in the third round.
122:22None of the people, uh, grinding prospects, uh, in the spreadsheets thought that was a good idea.
122:27But Kalen black at Indiana, like, what was he good at?
122:30Pass protection, just kind of like running hard, like up the middle type of thing.
122:34Like you're not wowed by him, but you're like, I trust this guy.
122:37Obviously, you know, Fernando Mendoza and, uh, the entire Indiana staff, which is obviously very sharp, uh, organization right now.
122:43Like they all trusted them. And so I think they trust Kalen black.
122:46And I think that this will be a real split.
122:49I think like maybe Kalen black can do like Blake Corum type of stuff.
122:53I don't think that he's like startable. I think like if he's starting your flex, like that's not it.
122:58Is he power manungai adjacent? Yeah. Um, possibly I'm leaving the light on for it.
123:02I wouldn't rank him that way currently, but I think he has to be rostered in every single, uh, Yahoo league right now.
123:09And then for Christian McCaffrey, like that's like the big storyline.
123:12I would drop him in rankings, but I wouldn't like bury him in rankings.
123:16Like he's still going to catch the ball. He's still going to get the goal line carries.
123:20I think that I would still draft him at the round one, two turn.
123:24Like when I draft them fifth overall, probably not, but now he's more likely to stay healthy.
123:29He was without question looking better, uh, on tape, like the couple of carries right after halftime, maybe he was all pissed
123:35off because Kalen black was playing so much, but that was like the best he looked, uh, between the tackles in quite a while.
123:42So I think like if he plays a little bit more, he's maybe a little bit more efficient on the ground.
123:48It's not as good as like getting all the work, but I would still probably take him as like my RB five.
123:54So can we be selfish here for a moment and only look at this through a fantasy football lens, right?
123:59Would you rather have as a fancy football player, Christian McCaffrey with the running back one and expected points every single week with horrible underlying metrics?
124:06Or would you rather have the running back 12 and expected fancy points with him looking a bit spryer and explosive?
124:12You want what happened last year with Christian McCaffrey, where it did does not matter.
124:16He had like 25 expected fancy points. Like this year, it's going to be like, you know, 17 expected fancy points.
124:22And he might like average 18 fancy points per game, uh, which is not 23 or whatever it was last year.
124:28So I think like, that's the difference here. Uh, if Kalen black gets hurt, I don't think the rest of the running back group would get this role.
124:36Like I think they're like appreciating what Kalen black could offer, see how long this lasts.
124:40And then hopefully Christian McCaffrey, um, just looks a little bit more explosive.
124:44Now, I think the other big takeaway with the McCaffrey stuff is the offense.
124:47Like so functional, like Mike Evans played well, Debo Samuel had a couple moments.
124:51The offensive line really held up against miles Garrett.
124:54Um, who's obviously playing through injuries, but like if the 49ers aren't, you know, eighth in scoring and they're back to first.
125:00And by the way, they're projected for 30 points against the dolphins in this one.
125:04Like even if Christian McCaffrey is not getting all the touches, if this offense is going to be elite, like he's still going to be an awesome player.
125:12Yeah. The reason I called Kalen black Kalman on guy, Jason is kind of for this matchup this weekend.
125:17Like, as you said, the 49ers are supposed to post 29 and a quarter points last year when the bears projected for,
125:23you know, 26, 27, you were able to put Kalman on guy in your flex.
125:27Yeah. Like if there was a case of both guys getting in the end zone.
125:31And I think there's a case to make that Kalen black and Christian McCaffrey both in the end zone, at least once
125:37for CMC, if not twice for him. That's why I think I'm, maybe I'm still leaning towards like Blake Corham because I
125:44think Kyle menunga would get goal line carries. I think like when push comes to shove, Christian McCaffrey is still going to
125:50get those type of looks where like, that's where like Kyron Williams gets a little bit more of an advantage.
125:55Uh, especially like, you know, you're talking about the Kyron Williams plays a whole lot more in passing situations if they're trailing, like that's what would happen here.
126:03So I think this is like, you know, yeah, Kyron Williams plus, and then, you know, Kalen blacks, like, you know, Blake Corham.
126:09Yeah. I don't want to, again, say it too loudly because they face the dolphins and they should obliterate them this weekend,
126:15but I don't necessarily know if CMC is going to pay off as the fifth overall player, but like as a 12th
126:21overall player, uh, that's about the range where it makes sense.
126:24So it's, it's not, he's going to, he's not going to tank your season, but he just might not be the league winner.
126:31Like he kind of was last year. When you talk about the wide receivers, cause we know the strip club is closed.
126:37It's empty. It's under renovations here for the next four ish weeks.
126:40Uh, unfortunately it was going to hit. And I understand he didn't have any targets or receptions or any of that stuff.
126:46But when you play the most snaps on this 49ers team, uh, there were going to be targets in his direction.
126:52So it freaking sucks that we have to sit here and say, well, the process won out, but in actuality it did not.
126:58So Hayden, what is the replacement opposite Mike Evans here?
127:01Cause we saw both DeMarcus Robinson and Debo Samuel in this game.
127:04Yeah. I think we kind of know what both those guys do.
127:08DeMarcus Robinson, which, what we saw is work down the football field on very low volume as like a clear out guy.
127:14And that's what he was on the Rams. He's going to play enough snaps where like in the deepest of leagues, you can pick them up.
127:21I think that Debo Samuel is going to be like flirting with enough production to like actually start him.
127:26So last week, for example, he was the wide receiver 13, a wide receiver 16 usage.
127:31That was not going to be the case if scribbling was, was out there.
127:35But I think that I will be considering Debo Samuel as like a top 36 option this week as they're projected for
127:41the most amount of points in week one. And then Mike Evans, he was running some like quick out stuff.
127:46And like, this was a little bit more, uh, kind of bankable volume type of stuff for Mike Evans.
127:51And like, if is what he was saying was true, which was all the ice around my knees and my, my groin
127:58and my, my calf and all that stuff in August.
128:00Like maybe it was to cool them down. Maybe it was to keep them fresh, but if he's going to be out
128:06there full time and like look good, then he can be an awesome pick, uh, in the fifth and sixth round.
128:12Yeah. Yeah. No, it was as if Debo never left.
128:15He got like three targets out of the backfield and they were in all different looks and sets and two.
128:20So like that, that's always cool things. Cause if Debo lines up in the backfield, I would give it an 82% chance.
128:27He's getting the football on those snaps, uh, Seattle Seahawks.
128:29Let's talk about those Seahawks. Um, we'll begin with Jadarian price.
128:32I think this is the main talking point of this entire conversation.
128:36I mean, the rookie was shot out of a cannon Hayden.
128:39Uh, he has the juice. It's so clear to see when watching live and going back on the tape, I guess the
128:45question though, is can Jadarian price get to the point where he is undeniably better than George Harlani over at least these next three games?
128:52Or did the Seattle Seahawks see a proof of concept last year with Ken Walker, who also shot up a cannon and
128:58really good and that they're just going to stick with it.
129:01Cause it won them the Superbowl and it's going to be a 50, 50 split no matter what.
129:06I'll probably take kind of like the middle ground between the two, but I think for now it's more of like, they're
129:12going to kind of stick to this formula. And like, you can't like project in like rankings like that.
129:17Things are going to flip until it kind of flips.
129:20He didn't play a single snap on third and fourth downs.
129:23And I think that's okay. I think that's okay.
129:25If he's going to get the goal line stuff, cause like whole on, he's like, he's not going to get that.
129:31The unfortunate part was Emmanuel Wilson played four snaps.
129:34Three of them were being subbed in for plays with two or fewer yards to go, including at the goal line.
129:39Like that is the part where, but they did fail.
129:42They did fail. They did fail. Um, some of the Charbonnet stuff failed as well.
129:46And they didn't care about that. So I think that's where it's like, man, if they couldn't get Kenneth Walker out of
129:52this, like, I'm not sure if they're going to get with Jadarian price out of this as well.
129:57I think he's still absolutely flexible. Is he an RB two?
130:00He's not like, he's not until he proves that he's getting a role here.
130:04I, I agree with you. He looked really good.
130:07They drafted him in the first round. Like the Seahawks team is going to be pretty good.
130:12Uh, but like with, with drew lock out there, they're projected for 23 points.
130:15It's middle of the road this week. Um, he's definitely a flex, not an RB two.
130:20The other part of this. And again, we can paint whatever narrative we want outside of week one is that they were
130:26the early game on a Wednesday after Jadarian price missed some training camp.
130:29This was his rookie debut. So highly doubtful. He would go in there because rarely running backs do as rookies and get 75% of the work, you know?
130:37So I could see his role increase from week one just because of that and not even, Hey, he looked freaking awesome
130:43whenever he got the football at this game. Yes.
130:46Uh, and then Charbonnet comes back and then I think it's just going to be Jadarian prices in the Kenneth Walker role.
130:52Charbonnet, uh, is in the Charbonnet role, by the way, just like put some context here.
130:56Uh, when Charbonnet was healthy last year, Kenneth Walker was the RB 22 on RB 28 usage.
131:01Um, and I think that's kind of like the best case scenario for Jadarian price because that Seahawks team was like averaging like 28, 30 points.
131:08And I just don't think that this team is going to be able to do that quite as well.
131:13So firmly flexed to me until proven otherwise. Anything you want to say about the wide receivers, the tight ends or should we move on?
131:20You're still going to start Jason with Drew Locke.
131:23So yeah, that's it. Yeah. I mean, of course.
131:25All right. Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Buccaneers. Um, I think the big talking point here is Bucky Irving.
131:30His touchdown was from inside the 10 yard line.
131:32He saw seven targets in this game. The fourth, most of any running back.
131:36You guys brought it up on the Sunday night show that if Kenny Gainwell and negative game script is not just like
131:42dominating the targets, then like, what is the use of Kenny Gainwell?
131:46Especially if Bucky Irving is getting the goal line work to.
131:49Yeah. It's RB 58 and expected points in a game that he should have been more involved.
131:53And Sean Tucker is coming back. And like Sean Tucker, I think is going to get some level of work because they
132:00are giving him like two and a half million dollars.
132:02So, um, yeah, I don't get the point with Kenny, Kenny Gainwell at this.
132:06Uh, Bucky Irving looked really good. Like that looked like James Cook type of tape.
132:10Uh, really good offensive line as well. Um, they're not going to be trailing as quickly as they were in this game as well.
132:17So I thought Bucky Irving looked really good. A bunch of passes, a career high, seven targets, had a drop, uh, also
132:23had a fumble here, but I thought he looked healthy and that's all you can ask for.
132:28Yeah. He was attacking the edges and I thought he was doing a good job, like pressing the lane and then kind
132:34of working on the flow of the offensive line too.
132:37Yeah. So, uh, yeah, Bucky was a riser throughout draft season for me.
132:40And, uh, again, week one didn't dissuade that at all.
132:43Uh, anything about the wide receivers? Andy Mekicbuka, Chris Godwin.
132:46I mean, this was, you know, derailed by Baker Mayfield wanting to take over the game, uh, like he sometimes does.
132:51It just started a bit quicker this year as last year.
132:54He started on fire. I thought there was a huge difference between Chris Godwin and Mekicbuka.
132:59Um, I think Chris Godwin's just kind of done.
133:01Uh, I think that he does not have much, uh, juice like in straight line.
133:06I will say this. He's still so big and so physical.
133:09He caught the ball underneath. He had three of his four targets were behind the line of scrimmage.
133:14And on a couple of those, he just pile drive some guys to the, to the ground.
133:18He can still do that. I just don't see him like opening up and like running down the football field.
133:24And then meanwhile, with the Mekicbuka, that was the most like Rams coded, uh, wide receiver usage that you'll see.
133:29They had him in motion all the time. They had him like on a motion, like to get up to full speed,
133:35to send them on a big wheel route up the sideline.
133:38Uh, he also had multiple routes where he was running like through the B gap as well.
133:43Like there's only a couple of wide receivers that get like this type of usage.
133:47Like this was like, you know, kind of Zay flowersy from, from this, this week where all the fun stuff is going to him.
133:54And he was by far the most athletic wide receiver that they had out there.
133:58So like, I think very encouraging stuff from Mekicbuka.
134:01We didn't like totally see it in the, in the box score, but in terms of just like, who's the ball going
134:07to, who's supposed to get the ball. It's very clearly a Mekicbuka.
134:10And I feel pretty good about him as a, as a fourth round pick.
134:14Yeah. This is one of those occasions where that might all pop up the underlying stuff that you saw with your eyeballs
134:20in week two, because they get the Cleveland Browns.
134:22Uh, they're projected win by eight and a half points total of 25.
134:26And that Browns defense, let's just say the tackling looked a lot worse with whoever the DC is now versus, you know, Jim Schwartz last year.
134:33That's one way of putting it. Yep. Uh, okay.
134:36We got two more to go. Tennessee Titans. Um, okay.
134:38On plays where Cam Ward was not pressured. So we can't blame the offensive line here.
134:43He had the third highest off target rate. Despite ranking 27th and a dot at 5.2 yards.
134:47That's from our buddy. T track. I'm just going to leave with the big question here.
134:52Hayden, are we entering bench and take a breather territory with Cam Ward?
134:55Like Bryce young got to early in his second season.
134:58I'm so glad you said that because I literally almost interjected on the recap show and saying like, we, we needed Bryce young, this one.
135:05Um, and I'm glad that you pointed to the exact same situation.
135:08Look, you can't be that lackadaisical with your, with your throwing motion and be an NFL quarterback.
135:13It's like kind of as simple as that. There was two, uh, throws behind the line scrimmage.
135:18One was dirted like three yards in front of the receiver.
135:21The other one was like completely thrown over his head.
135:24And then down the football field, there was like, I think it was a wheel route to, I think it was Tony Pollard and the ball.
135:31Cause there's the green grass. And then there's like that big white chunk of turf.
135:35And then there's the rest of the green, the ball hit the other green, like way out of bounds.
135:40And then there was another play to Carnell Tate, uh, near the sideline where Carnell Tate did not even try to jump
135:46because the ball was thrown so far over his head.
135:49And then beyond that, we almost had a couple of those like cam ward moments, which were running around to the point
135:55where he almost got safety three plays in a row.
135:58He almost did a Daniel Orlovsky out of bounds, uh, in the back of the end zone.
136:03There was a couple of times where David Bailey was chasing him, uh, outside the pocket.
136:07He almost threw the ball away to get a, um, intentional grounding, uh, in the end zone as well.
136:12It was really bad. Um, I don't know what to say.
136:15Like, this looks like a bus, like until, until proven otherwise, like this looks like what a first overall pick bus looks like.
136:22And it could get worse in week two. They're at home, but they face Vic Fangio and the Philadelphia Eagles.
136:27I guess I would just say you can't start anybody because the split between Tony Pollard and Ty J Spears got concerning
136:33in the second half of that game. Yep. And then Wondell Robinson was not PPR scamming that much.
136:38Um, he was like out there plenty, but like not enough to like fully do the scam stuff.
136:43And he's going to be facing Cooper to Jean Carnell Tate, just to hit on his tape real quick.
136:48Like all four of his receptions were like quick outs against off coverage or like a blitzer.
136:53Um, and then he had a crossing route. It didn't create that much separation, but completely missed.
136:58I talked about the ball over, over his head near the sideline.
137:01So a couple of quick outs type of stuff, but like, man, there was like, they weren't even like attempting stuff down the field.
137:08Um, that's concerning. Yeah. Like, I think you could look at the box score and think of some preseason stuff.
137:13Think of a couple of years ago, think of last year and say, Hey, this was an offensive line problem.
137:19I'm not saying the offensive line was good, but I don't think it was the reason why this thing crumbled.
137:24I also want to put some blame on, on Brian Dayball.
137:27I mean, some of the calls were just ridiculous as we discussed on Sunday night football.
137:32But while like the entire league spent all off season draft for agency, you know, adding heavier bodies, tight ends, fullbacks to run, you know, heavier personnel groupings.
137:40The Titans had the fewest amount of 12, 13 and 21 personnel snaps at eight in the NFL.
137:45So it was just like, Hey, we're going to play Wondell Robinson and three wide receiver sets.
137:49And this is what we're going to be. And we're going to be totally predictable and good luck out there.
137:55So it's an all encompassing thing, namely from like the OC to the quarterback.
137:59And then I might throw like Robert Sala in here as a head coach.
138:03The punt was egregious. And that was against the jets.
138:05You know, the jets defense, they look at, you guys can look at our lads and look at their depth chart on defense.
138:12You cannot tell me that's a good defense. I will say this, David Bailey.
138:15That is a real NFL player chasing you down.
138:18Like that guy was as impressive as like they were hoping for.
138:21I mean, all the young defenders, you can point to like Arvel Reese chasing down and swarming to the outside.
138:27You can look at Sonny styles running over Saquon Barkley.
138:30Maybe the one I didn't isolate them, but Caleb Downs and that Cowboys defense.
138:33Okay. We'll close things out with the Washington commanders here.
138:36I think there are better days ahead for Terry McLaurin.
138:39He got Vic Fangio, just like, you know, George Pickens did last year.
138:43I will say there were 63% of snaps for Stefan Diggs in this game, which was a tick higher than what he
138:49played with the New England Patriots, which was nice.
138:51And he took Cooper to gene to task a few times and now he gets the Dallas Cowboys.
138:56So I am contemplating starting Stefan Diggs in a few leagues.
138:59Yeah. Consensus rankings early is wider super 37 commanders projected for the 18th most points this week for, for the Terry stuff.
139:05Like you face Quinn and Mitchell, you go to the fantasy bench.
139:09It's as simple as that. It's like fat facing Patrick Sertan.
139:12There's a couple, uh, top corners and top defenses where it's like, it's just, it's just not going to work out.
139:17So I'm okay with Terry McLaurin. I was expecting him to dud.
139:21He dudded and that's kind of it. This is one of the teams I've not watched on all 22.
139:26I do remember Antonio Williams crossing up Cooper to gene.
139:29I was like, and Traylon Burks was a healthy scratch and Luke McCaffrey was a healthy scratch.
139:33Like in the deepest of leagues, if you just want to like say Antonio Williams is like the rookie that's just going
139:39to like over the next couple months play more, uh, and it has some theoretical upside.
139:44Um, that was kind of like my takeaway from the couple of snaps that's off of him.
139:49Yeah. The Antonio Williams stuff was fascinating because I believe he only played like 14 snaps and entirely, um, yeah, 12 of
139:5541 routes, but on those 12 routes, he saw four targets.
139:58So like the targets per route run is incredible.
140:00Part of me thinks that he got more run, especially in the second half because Chigo Kwankwo went down with an injury
140:06and maybe that gave him a chance at the same time.
140:09When you take advantage of that chance, when you are a rookie, that should earn you more snaps.
140:14So it's a blessing for Antonio Williams to, to get that opportunity.
140:18And again, he took advantage of it. Yeah. Also, it's like the trail and Burke just going from like, he's the number two to literally inactive.
140:25It was like stunning. Yeah. Uh, maybe you'll see the same thing when you turn this on Bill Krosky merit is by far and away.
140:32This seems best runner. I mean, not even close.
140:34Rashad white just looks like he's running at 0.85 speed whenever he's out there as a ball carrier and on top of
140:40that, like didn't get any receiving usage on it too, because when you're attached to Jane Daniels and he's back to scrambling,
140:46uh, kind of like the Kenny Gainwell stuff, I am trying to figure out what Rashad white might bring to your fancy lineups.
140:53He's going to be out there in pass protection.
140:55That's the, but you don't get points for that.
140:58Um, to Corey Krosky merit, uh, over the last four games.
141:01So like including last year and week one here, he's the RB 22 on RB 27 usage and he looked like the best player, like you said.
141:08So, um, I think that he is flexible, uh, even, even in some shakier matchups.
141:12Uh, you should turn on the, uh, Katron Allen, uh, handful of carries that I got to end your night as well.
141:18Hey, you'll like them. Okay, good. Cause I was going to say a little bit.
141:23Sometimes I'd like those type of players make me nervous because like, Oh, that's that, uh, day three running back that you liked.
141:29It's like, Oh my gosh, it's not going to work, but okay.
141:32Now I got something to look forward to. Uh, and just to close this out, the commanders actually on the road against the Cowboys are now favorites.
141:40The markets have flipped on that one. Uh, the Cowboys opened as four point favorites and now the commanders again on the
141:46road or half point favorites over the Dallas Cowboys.
141:48Do you buy that? Yeah. I mean, this, this is, this is news to me.
141:52Okay. Well, I mean, it's already been like a four and a half point swing, uh, since, since that I think you're,
141:58I think you're getting, you're getting AI right now.
142:01You need to check your sources. No, I'm looking at it right here, right here, right now.
142:06Uh, anyways, we'll be back here tomorrow with the running backs ranking show.
142:09Uh, that'll be in your feeds tomorrow evening. Thanks for taking us this long episode.
142:13It's been live. It's been fun. Shout out to the producers behind the scenes for, uh, allowing us to go to the
142:19go for two hours and 20 minutes. Um, let us know what you think in the comments after you're watching this video,
142:26if it worked out, if it didn't, we'll take all the feedback and, uh, we'll be even better next week.
142:31So leave a thumbs up, hit subscribe up the villa.
142:34We'll talk to you guys soon. See ya.