Davis Mattek - Grinding the Variance: Michael Leone's First Draft of the Year
STACKED extracted the fantasy-relevant player signal from this podcast and kept the full transcript here for context.
1 hr 39 min
Duration
Estimated from transcript
Aug 11, 2026
Published
Tue, August 11, 2026
34
Player insights
30
Players mentioned
Topics
Dalton KincaidParker WashingtonRhamondre StevensonTreVeyon HendersonBrian RobinsonBrian Thomas Jr.Cam WardCarnell TateChuba HubbardD.J. MooreDallas GoedertDavante AdamsDK MetcalfIsiah Pacheco
Player analysis
Player insights
Brian Robinson
NegativeUsage68:09
Questions remain regarding the actual value of Brian Robinson Jr.'s workload, particularly in the context of an efficient offense with a running quarterback.
Insight pageBrian Thomas Jr.
PositiveProjection18:59
Leone remains bullish on Brian Thomas Jr. for his second season, despite the emergence of other receivers in the Jacksonville offense. He notes that he has moved Thomas ahead of his current ADP in his personal rankings.
Insight pageCam Ward
NegativeProjection43:53
Michael Leone is skeptical of Cam Ward, citing a high sack rate and poor efficiency metrics. Leone compares Ward's late-season improvement to Bryce Young's 2024 stretch, noting that Ward's yards-per-attempt remained low despite some multi-touchdown games, suggesting his production is volume-driven rather than efficient.
Insight pageCarnell Tate
PositiveBust41:58
Michael Leone is out on Carnell Tate due to a poor prospect profile, including a career target-per-route-run rate below 20%, and a concerning team environment. The team has the worst offensive line in the NFL, uncertain quarterback play from Cam Ward, and a low team total, making it difficult for Tate to reach his ceiling even if he earns targets.
Insight pageChuba Hubbard
NegativeRole7:18
Leone describes Hubbard as "just a guy" and suggests that even if Brooks is not the prospect he once was, he likely provides similar value to what Hubbard currently offers. Leone notes that the team's positive camp news regarding Brooks is often interpreted through the lens of his prospect pedigree rather than the reality of his injury recovery.
Insight pageD.J. Moore
NegativeBust56:09
Michael Leone expresses skepticism about DJ Moore, citing a 1.14 yards per route run metric and questioning if he can replicate his previous production in a new offensive context.
Insight pageDallas Goedert
PositiveUsage66:57
Michael Leone notes that Dallas Goedert is a primary target for target share condensation in the Eagles' offense, potentially limiting the upside of rookie wide receivers like Makai Lemon. Goedert is highlighted as a highly drafted player in ETR's models.
Insight pageDalton Kincaid
PositiveBreakout63:24
Michael Leone highlights Dalton Kincaid as an obvious breakout candidate, noting his per-route and per-target metrics are among the best for tight ends, comparable to elite players like Travis Kelce and Brock Bowers. Leone suggests Kincaid is a high-EV pick at his current price.
Insight pageNegativeProjection66:44
As Kincaid's routes scale up, his fantasy metrics are expected to scale down because he is not asked to do much grunt work and is only utilized in high-probability target situations; he has never performed as a full-time player.
Insight pageDavante Adams
NegativeValue53:21
Michael Leone expresses concern regarding Davante Adams' physical decline, noting his yards per route run dropped below 2.0 for the first time in his career. However, Leone acknowledges that Adams' elite goal-line usage and touchdown potential make him a "smash" at his current price, as his scoring ability can mask physical regression.
Insight pageDK Metcalf
PositiveValue57:07
Michael Leone views DK Metcalf as an undervalued best ball pick with significant spike-week potential. While acknowledging structural concerns regarding the Jets' offense and Aaron Rodgers' tendency to throw short, Leone argues that Metcalf's efficiency remains strong and his current ADP offers a discount.
Insight pageIsiah Pacheco
NegativeInjury71:55
Pacheco is considered effectively done for fantasy purposes following an MCL strain, with speculation that the team will trade for James Conner.
Insight pageJake Ferguson
NegativeValue67:14
Kincaid is considered 'light years better' than Ferguson, who is viewed primarily as a contingent value play.
Insight pageJames Conner
PositiveValue80:55
Conner is a target based on the expectation that he will land in a useful role, potentially via trade to a team like the Lions.
Insight pageJonathon Brooks
NegativeValue3:19
Michael Leone argues that Brooks is overvalued at his current ADP, noting he has only nine career carries and three targets, and is coming off multiple ACL injuries. Leone highlights that the Panthers' offense is poor, citing Bryce Young's 6.3 yards per attempt and a 25th-ranked offensive line, and questions if Brooks is still the same prospect he was before his injuries.
Insight pageLamar Jackson
PositiveValue62:16
Michael Leone notes that Lamar Jackson is a "screaming signal target" for math-based drafters, particularly when selected after the top tier of running backs has been exhausted.
Insight pageLuther Burden
NegativeInjury52:28
Michael Leone moved Luther Burden down his rankings due to a groin injury, though he remains interested in drafting him at his current ADP of 51.
Insight pageMakai Lemon
PositiveProjection64:15
Michael Leone is fading Makai Lemon, noting that he missed significant camp time with a hamstring injury and faces competition from Wicks for two-receiver sets. ETR projects Lemon for an 18% base target share, but Leone warns that target share may condense toward Dallas Goedert and DeVonta Smith, and Jalen Hurts' rushing usage could further limit pass volume.
Insight pageMalik Nabers
PositiveProjection47:26
Michael Leone ranks Malik Nabers highly, noting he led the NFL in targets per game as a rookie on a struggling Giants offense. Despite concerns about the overall Giants offense, Leone acknowledges Nabers is a "stud" and a high-end talent who would have been a consensus top-two round pick if not for injury concerns.
Insight pageMark Andrews
NegativeProjection67:25
Andrews carries significant downside risk due to age, but retains touchdown upside because he runs 80% of routes with Lamar Jackson; however, there is concern he may be physically declining.
Insight pageMarShawn Lloyd
PositiveSleeper70:20
Lloyd is identified as a late-round target who should be moved up further in rankings than the current market suggests.
Insight pageParker Washington
NegativeUsage19:04
Leone cautions against overvaluing Parker Washington based on a small sample size of games, noting that his production was not concurrent with Jacoby Myers' success. He suggests that the Jaguars' front office might prefer Washington due to contract considerations, but emphasizes that all Jaguars receivers are similarly talented and dependent on playing time.
Insight pagePositiveValue65:41
Michael Leone mentions that he has capitulated on his previous stance and is now actively targeting Parker Washington in drafts, marking a shift in his strategy compared to previous years.
Insight pagePat Freiermuth
NegativeProjection84:40
Freiermuth is viewed as a player who 'kind of stinks' and has limited upside compared to the potential of rookie wide receivers, despite having two previous top-12 tight end finishes.
Insight pageRashid Shaheed
NegativeUsage29:55
Leone compares Rashid Shaheed to Travis Hunter, questioning how many games Shaheed will run a full complement of routes. He expresses doubt that Shaheed is a significantly safer bet for route volume than Hunter.
Insight pageRhamondre Stevenson
PositiveRole33:23
Leone highlights that the Patriots clearly leaned on Rhamondre Stevenson during the playoffs last year, signaling a lack of trust in Trevion Henderson's ability to handle a full workload or pass-catching duties.
Insight pagePositiveProjection37:26
Michael Leone views Rhamondre Stevenson as the more reliable volume play compared to Trevion Henderson, projecting him to out-touch Henderson 1.8 to 1 in Week 1. Despite a disappointing previous season, Leone suggests the market is over-correcting against him in favor of Henderson's 'slappy' narrative.
Insight pageRico Dowdle
PositiveValue60:03
Michael Leone considers Rico Dowdle a strong value pick, noting that he displayed flashes of high-level performance last season and represents a relative value given the rising costs of running backs.
Insight pageTerrance Ferguson
PositiveValue48:57
Michael Leone identifies Terrence Ferguson as the single most plus-EV player in best ball based on simulations that account for positional scarcity, spike weeks, and playoff schedules. Leone notes that Ferguson's ADP has risen, but he remains a high-value target.
Insight pageTravis Hunter
PositiveUsage15:18
Leone expresses skepticism about Hunter's fantasy viability, noting he was inefficient last year (6.6 yards per target) and faces a crowded depth chart in Jacksonville. Leone argues that for Hunter to hit his 90th-percentile outcome, he would need to be a full-time offensive player, which is unlikely given the team's personnel groupings and his defensive responsibilities.
Insight pageTravis Kelce
NegativeValue67:03
Kelce is described as a safe 'eat your vegetables' pick who will finish as a top-10 tight end but lacks significant upside beyond that baseline.
Insight pageTreVeyon Henderson
NegativeRole31:46
Leone has downgraded Trevion Henderson, ranking him behind Swift, Judkins, and Tootin. He cites the lack of a consistent receiving role and the team's clear preference for Rhamondre Stevenson in the playoffs as major concerns, noting reports that Henderson still struggles with the playbook and pass blocking.
Insight pageNegativeProjection36:42
Michael Leone notes that while Henderson had a massive game against Tampa Bay, he is projected to be out-touched by Rhamondre Stevenson roughly 1.8 to 1 in Week 1. Leone argues there is no strong math-based case for drafting Henderson at his current best ball ADP, as he is a 'slappy' pick where the market is chasing upside without sufficient cost awareness.
Insight pageTyler Allgeier
NegativeValue72:04
Allgeier is viewed as a player to avoid in certain roster builds, specifically when already rostering Bijan Robinson.
Insight pageFull transcript
Episode Transcript
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0:53Anheuser-Busch. Michelob Ultra Light Beer. St. Louis, Missouri. Michael Leone has been touching grass while we have been doing nothing but drafting fantasy football teams.
1:02He comes back to an ADP landscape that he doesn't recognize.
1:05He is a stranger in a strange land. Michael is here to find the players that the slappies have completely lost their mind about.
1:13An average draft position so divorced from the mathematical reality that lives in Michael Leone's mind.
1:18First off, Michael, thank you for joining. I've been missing you.
1:22It was beautiful to watch you on so you think you can tell doing some math in real time.
1:28And the waters are warm, man. We've been missing you.
1:32I've missed it too. I've missed it a little bit, but it's been nice to take more of a break this offseason.
1:39But it's August. It's almost middle of August, which is crazy.
1:43So we're diving back in. Yes, 100%. All right.
1:46So you have compiled a list of players that the slappies have lost their mind on.
1:51I don't know who they are. I don't know what order you have them in.
1:56But go for it, man. Who's your first player?
1:59We're going to go Jonathan Brooks, number one. I think I could have predicted this one.
2:04I think I could have guessed Jonathan Brooks. He of, I mean, let me do the math here.
2:10He of nine carries and three targets in his NFL career as a 6'7 turn player.
2:16Only one more target than torn ACLs over the past three years at the NFL level.
2:21So it's tough. Also with this one, Carolina, I think Bryce Young is terrible.
2:26Even last year when people were kind of buying into this, oh, like he's figured it out.
2:31Like his yards per attempt. I know that's just like one kind of pedestrian metric, but it's just so low.
2:38Like even on a game by game basis, he very rarely has these spike weeks.
2:43It's still a number that correlates more than any other number with wins in the history of the NFL.
2:49YPA is the number one correlated number to winning football games, both quarterback number and defensive allowed.
2:55Yeah. So this Bryce Young breakout 6.3 yards per attempt, which is pretty atrocious.
3:006.3, 6.3 each of the last two seasons, 5.5 is rookie year.
3:04Thorne has Panthers 25th in his offensive line rankings.
3:07It's not a very good offense. You, and I understand Brooks was a really good prospect, but it's tough when you're on
3:14your third year in the NFL and you just haven't played.
3:18Like I feel like some of the analysis out there is assuming he's the same prospect he was when he came into the league.
3:26And I think that's a questionable assumption. You know, I, that's the assumption I'm making, right?
3:31I'm going to, I'm going to be completely real.
3:34I have drafted Jonathan Brooks. I have not drafted him at this new price yet.
3:39I did a $1,000 Mastiff last night. We had planned on taking Jonathan Brooks at pick 79.
3:44He did not get there. He did not get to us at, at pick 79.
3:49Now there are two parts to this first being my relatively genuine belief that all that matters at running back is just not being bad.
3:58Like really all that matters at running back is having a really good role and being good enough.
4:04I mean, I think former Carolina Panther Rico Dowdle is a great explainer of this.
4:09I think my, my favorite of all time to highlight how easy it is to have a legendary running back season while
4:16like actively being aggressively mediocre is Alfred Morris. The RG three year where he had 1700 yards and 14 touchdowns and was never heard from again, James Robinson.
4:25Very good example of this. There there's an example of this every single year.
4:30So if you give, if, if you downgrade Brooks, Hey, okay.
4:34He's not the prospect he was. Let's give him 75% of that.
4:38That's still probably about as good as Chuba Hubbard is right now at his age.
4:43The reason why I have been sold on Jonathan Brooks is that I, everything you hear from the team itself is they
4:50want Jonathan Brooks to be the starter. Cause it's actually Michael, it is actually kind of rare for guys to continue to
4:57get these chances when they're injured like this. Generally speaking, a guy who bummed his ACL twice would just be cut.
5:04They would just be like, it was, it was nice.
5:08It was the Ravens gave up on Dobbins, you know, as a comparable example, like by and large, these guys do not get chances.
5:16Yeah. I mean, and I do think Chuba Hubbard very easily, like just a guy.
5:21So I do think that the idea that you've got like a young, exciting player, who's back up to a veteran who
5:28is the opposite of exciting is generally the bets that you want to make.
5:33It just, for me, I feel like you're stacking together a few different bets that like have to go right in terms
5:40of, you know, this offense could be really bad, even if he wins the job.
5:45We're assuming, you know, the prospect profile is sticking when it very well could not, which I know you're still buying into that.
5:52And the news out of camp has been very positive for him.
5:56And then there's like, what if he just doesn't even overtake or just the timeshare to begin with?
6:02So I just don't like the collective bet. Frankly, your side is clearly the correct argument.
6:08Like if I was, if I was, what makes it a slappy pick, right?
6:12It's like, it doesn't mean I'm right, but the, but if we're going to like the judges and like, uh, you know,
6:20just objective argument, I'm probably going to win. And that's what makes it the slappy pick.
6:25Yes. Yeah. But like, if I, if we were, if we were to put this in a debate class and the Jonathan
6:32Brooks people and the Chuba Hubbard people, you know, got together and gotten an argument, the Chuba Hubbard people would win for sure.
6:40Um, I mean, I don't, I guess there's actually some chance that no one has really talked about yet, which is that
6:47ETN actually plays passing downs too, which would just like, I mean, it would nuke both of them, but it would make
6:55the size of that pie so small. And so unappetizing, it would be like the most unappetizing, like rhubarb pie with no ice cream to be had.
7:04Just like, you know, one, no one, no one wants that pie.
7:08I I'm at, I'm going to award this one to you.
7:11You, you, you are on the right side of history on this one.
7:16Don't think I'm too, like as positive as the camp news is, I do feel like it's being interpreted again through the
7:23lens of, Oh, this is a, you know, uh, the top prospects, like the positive news, like maybe the benchmark should be
7:30this guy who hasn't played in two years and the news is positive.
7:35Like those are two very different ways to interpret positive news.
7:38I think the, the Rubicon for Jonathan Brooks passed.
7:41Once he went past the two Washington commanders running backs, once he got past Rashad white and Ja'Cory Krosky merit, there was
7:49no limit to how high he could go because at that point, people had just decided this guy's going to be the
7:56starting running back for the Panthers, you know, regardless of whatever else happens.
8:00That is slappy pick. Number one, the judges are awarding the points to Michael Leone, uh, Leone slappy player.
8:06Number two, the people have gone too far. First of all, I had told Levitan, you know, the prompt that you gave
8:14me and he wanted me to relay a message to you.
8:17And he says he didn't follow the prompt because he heard that slappies only take running backs now.
8:23So that's, that's what he wanted. Look, I am not one of these.
8:28I, I'm not one of these people. Um, I, I am not a, I'm not a sidekick drafter.
8:34So I, I don't from in certain drafts to do these crazy running back builds.
8:39I am more woke to, I'm more woke to running backs than I've ever been because I think after drafting an underdog
8:46for six years, I finally realized that it's half PPR and not full PPR.
8:51So I, I did finally get that into my head.
8:54I I've been more aggressive drafting running backs, but, uh, thank you.
8:58Thank you. You love it and love 10 big fan of the show.
9:02This, this was a tough prompt though, because you really are having me lean into what people think the most about me
9:10is like being like this boomer and anti these exciting players.
9:13I'm the content. So, uh, number two is going to be Travis Hunter.
9:18Here. This is, I mean, I I'm happy to discuss this situation with you.
9:22Um, because I think it's very interesting. He, to me is, is kind of the intersection between what we used to think
9:30of as a good best ball play versus what all the research and math has shown to be a good best ball
9:37play, which is in your mind, good best ball play is, uh, well, to show how old I am.
9:43Lee Evans, right? The, the all time, the all time add and drop King when in reality, you know what a really
9:51good best ball play is Calvin Ridley, Adam feeling, uh, uh, old, old man, old man, Keenan Allen, you know, Stefan digs.
9:58Like these guys who just kind of crank out nine and a half, 10 and a half points per game.
10:05Cause, cause you don't want to eat zeros. And regardless of which side of the aisle you were on, on Travis Hunter,
10:12I think both sides of the aisle would admit there's going to be a lot of zeros in there.
10:18Yeah. And you also get spike weeks just by, if you're out on the field all the time, you're randomly going to
10:25get some spike weeks more than people would think.
10:28The old Lemus and Crowder argument. Yeah. The issue of course is like in a typical redraft league, you'd never start this player.
10:36Their production's replaceable. You want someone like Travis Hunter who, if they become startable clearly in, but Hunter wasn't very efficient last year.
10:44Um, 6.6 yards per target of the main Jacksonville wide receivers this year.
10:48He's pretty clear fourth in yards per outrun. Uh, the they've said the defensive snaps are going to go off.
10:55I know I listened to the, of course the ETE with Gretchen Dank and Jack, those guys did a phenomenal job this year.
11:02And I know Gretchen pointed out that they did mention he'd still play offense and those snaps could go up too, but
11:10that felt like more of like a hedge comment to me than like the main comment.
11:15And I don't know. You just look at the way this plays out.
11:19It's hard for me to see the parlay hitting where he's good and he's seeing enough volume to really matter.
11:26Now his ADP is not like super high. So, you know, maybe I'll lose this one, but, um, I think you really need an injury.
11:34Uh, I'd be really surprised. I'm still kind of buying Brian, Brian Thomas.
11:39I know everybody's buying Parker Washington right now. The high, I literally capitulated this morning.
11:44I, I moved him ahead of ADP in my rankings.
11:47Literally, literally this morning. I just, I just clicked the, the export button.
11:51So I, I found this the other day. Uh, this is a guy who does some very good work on X, the everything app.
11:59And I was actually hoping that you could maybe, uh, interpret this a little bit.
12:04Uh, but basically this guy has done some analysis with Whopper, which is a number that people debate on the time.
12:11Uh, Connor LaFlein, it's meant to be a rough proxy for player talent, all for the Jags wide receivers in terms of
12:19their per game per snap stuff were very close.
12:22Uh, you know, it's funnily enough, actually, Jacoby Myers was the best on a per game.
12:27And then old friend, old friend, Josh Hermsmeyer showed up, which I thought was, I thought insane, insane to show this.
12:34But, uh, Herms says when there's not much of a target share gap predicting the wider super one, the next year is
12:41close to a coin flip as the gap increases in share between the wider super one and two, the chances of ordering staying the same next year increases.
12:50Uh, I'm not even going to try and say some word, some word.
12:55That means it's monotonically. Basically, uh, a long, I would, I would say it just becomes easier to project and all linearly monotonically monotonically.
13:03Yeah. Well, Hey, I mean, you're the math guy.
13:06I literally brought you in to do that, to do the math here.
13:10All of which says to me that based on what they all did on the field last year, when you accrue this,
13:17um, cause the thing that the Parker Washington people don't like to do, they don't like to include anything in the sample
13:25other than the four games where he played really good.
13:28If you got, God forbid you ever put anything else that Parker Washington has ever done on the football field in the
13:35sample, then people start, uh, kicking and screaming. The, the summary of this would be that these guys are all similarly good.
13:43And the only thing that differs is the amount to which they play.
13:47And if that's true, I mean, don't, I would love to fade Jacoby Myers and draft Travis Hunter.
13:53If those, if those things are true, because I actually think the market is getting something wrong with Jacoby Myers, which is
14:00that they're, they're misremembering the order that things happened in Jacksonville.
14:04They're, they're thinking that the Jacoby Myers smash weeks and the Parker Washington smash weeks happened concurrently, but they didn't.
14:11He actually, Jacoby Myers got the contract extension and then Parker Washington started smashing.
14:15I mean, I wonder if there's a little bit of like, well, I wish we wouldn't have given Jacoby that money and
14:23we would have saved it to give the P wash instead going on, um, in the Jacksonville front office.
14:29And, and that is just one of my many reasons of continuing to draft Travis Hunter.
14:34Yeah. I mean, Jacoby is a very good target owner earner.
14:38Historically, they traded for him and it just difficult.
14:41If we do have all, first of all, Hunter was worse from an efficiency standpoint than the other three, even if it
14:48was kind of close, he was worse. And you've got three guys that you're paying to play full-time wide receiver.
14:55Travis Hunter can do other things and he's starting behind.
14:58I just think it's a tough sell for him to be playing.
15:02Like what's, what's the bulk case? What's the 90th percentile percent of snaps he plays on offense.
15:08Of offensive snaps, not, not ratio to defense, just percent of team offensive snaps.
15:1275%. You think so? I don't, I don't even know if his 90th percentile is 71, one, one, one.
15:19I'd be, I'd say that's like the 98th percentile outcome.
15:22Like that's no one, one wide receiver injury and one defensive back who is better than the coaches thought once the snaps start flying.
15:30And you have Travis Hunter as a full-time offensive player, I think.
15:34Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm wrong. I've no, I am wrong.
15:38You're, you're right. It is more like 98th percentile.
15:41You're right. You know, he, I mean, he came out week one last year and had a 78% route share.
15:48So it's not like crazy. He did get some route shares in the upper eighties.
15:53So I might be wrong on that 90th percentile.
15:56I guess just for me, I'm still buying Brian Thomas year two.
16:00A lot of that happened before, you know, before the Jacoby trade and before the emergence of Parker Washington in such a strong way.
16:08Now you've got, I don't know. And then if you've, you've still got strange there who had a decent target per out run.
16:15They, they extended, they extended him as well. They drafted Nate Borkater who was like not even on people's draft boards.
16:22They drafted him at 54 overall. You're there. There is so much pressure on Travis Hunter from every side, right?
16:29Personnel groupings. The NFL is going away from playing three wide receivers, base personnel.
16:34Anyway, they drafted a tight end. They extended a tight end.
16:37They have, they don't have any good corners. In fact, one of their corners just got hurt at practice actually last week.
16:45So they're, they're down a corner in a room that was already kind of thin.
16:50And the, the argument for Hunter is an argument that I've been losing since I was 20 years old, which is an
16:57argument for rational coaching, which is that Travis Hunter is just a better wide receiver than he is a corner.
17:04And some people don't even believe that. Like I could even just be, some people say he's actually just fine as a
17:11receiver, but he's actually an awesome corner. You need him though.
17:15So again, with the assumption of rational coaching, you need him to be clearly better than probably two of these guys in
17:22front of him, either clearly better or an injury to two of these guys in front of him to like really hit that upside.
17:30Now the cost isn't that high. So I get what some people like Jacob are saying, we're like, traditionally, this is a
17:37bad best ball player, but in some ways it might make sense where like you could get some spike weeks while the
17:44role's low and then also bank the role increasing over the course of the season.
17:49He goes, he goes after that. He goes after the Seattle Seahawks version of him, Rashid Shahid.
17:55Like how many games is Rashid Shahid going to run a full compliment of routes?
18:00More than Travis Hunter. I really wouldn't even be, I frankly would not be that certain.
18:05I really, I would love to book Shahid routes versus Travis Hunter.
18:09I bet you would see this is all right.
18:12This is why I can't have Leon. This is where we move on.
18:17We're like, okay. This is, he's like, all right, well make me bet, make me bet for, for whatever it's worth.
18:24Leonie. I have, I am obviously drafting Travis Hunter, but he's not even on my first tab of exposures these days.
18:31Like I'm not saying absolutely hammering him. I do want to say this was also a tough task to find like pure,
18:38like what you would call slappy plays that we don't like in our rankings.
18:43You know what I mean? Like, Hey, lesson. There's lots of boomer plays we don't like as well, but it's, it's hard,
18:50but we can continue because you're just probably going to hate this whole list, which is what makes it good.
18:57Hunter Hunter. I'm actually keeping that one for team slappy because the boomers just don't quite understand.
19:02All right. We got Brooks. We got Hunter. Who's next?
19:06Trivion Henderson is next. You know what? Michael, I actually am basically fully capitulated on, on this one.
19:12At this point, I have got Henderson ranked after Swift, Judkins and Tootin.
19:16I, and I'm awful tempted to just go ahead and move to Darian price ahead of him as well.
19:22Yeah. I, I think that would be, I would have no problems with that.
19:27But the thing that was disappointing last year, there were two things disappointing with Henderson's rookie season, which is weird to say,
19:34because he had three massive spike weeks showed the home run ability, but the disappointing things were one, this standalone receiving role was never like at the level.
19:43Like we, we kind of thought coming into the rookie year, this dude could catch 50 balls.
19:49And even if he doesn't have these, you know, high volume rush attempts from Ramondre, he's still going to be super valuable.
19:56That didn't quite materialize, especially down the stretch. And the other thing was he had those huge breakout performances.
20:03And then when Ramondre comes back for the playoffs, they clearly lean into Ramondre.
20:07Now the AFC championship game was kind of weird with the weather and whatnot.
20:12So I don't want to like double count that against Henderson too much that he barely played that game.
20:18But ultimately this was a team that kind of doubled down on Ramondre, despite seeing what Henderson offered to them.
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21:22Louis, Missouri. And all the reports this offseason for Henderson have been, yeah, still doesn't really know the playbook or pass blocking
21:30or pass catching or anything like that. I would push back and I've given this pushback to Corain and to Jacob who
21:37are actually both not really that in to Trevion Henderson.
21:40And the pushback is this, which is that we already have on field demonstrated evidence that this guy can have a legendary
21:48upside season if things break his way. I actually don't think that's true for Judkins.
21:53I definitely don't think that's true. We do for Rico Dowdle too, so.
21:57Do we have evidence over, I mean, I guess it was two games for Rico.
22:02It was three games for Trevion Henderson. But Rico's two games were like historically good.
22:07They were. I think maybe my pushback to that, and I don't even know if I believe it, but this would just
22:14be my pushback, would be that Rico, I think, required over 28 touches in all in both of those games to get there.
22:22Trevion Henderson did his on 15 touches. And when you look at the legendary upside seasons, you find guys who score insane
22:29fantasy points over expectation not do the huge accrual.
22:32I mean, the huge accrual is nice, but when you find the forward, like when you do, when you project it, you
22:39find these guys who are insanely efficient in limited samples and then hold that as they scale up in volume.
22:46Any season where Ramondre Stevenson goes down fumbles is so bad that he just can't play.
22:51Right. Which it, frankly, it's very funny because Ramondre has been an outright giga mega flop as a third round pick in fantasy football.
22:59Right. Like we drafted Ramondre in the third round and he sucked.
23:03He was terrible. And he, um, I remember, I remember tweeting this during Henderson's big game, that game against Tampa Bay.
23:10Ramondre had been in the NFL at four points or four years up into that point.
23:16And Henderson's 50 yard touchdown in that game was a longer play than any play of Ramondre Stevenson's four year career.
23:23Now, funnily enough, Ramondre ends up having the massive 35 point game in what week 18 or week 17, week 17.
23:30That was, I think it was week 17 or it was one of the weeks that counted towards Sam Sherman's victory.
23:37Yeah. Well, shout out, shout out to Sam for that one.
23:40Um, all of which to say is that all reasonable people can see the path for Trevon Henderson and understand why people are drafting him there.
23:49The answer is just people disagree on the likelihood of him stealing that work because I, I mean, whatever, I would assume
23:56the, the, the virgins of sort of grinding the decimals for week one over at the solver.com.
24:02Um, but I would guess Ramondre is, is projected to out touch Henderson, like 1.8 to one or whatever for, for week one in terms of total volume.
24:11In many ways you've highlighted what makes a slappy pick, right?
24:15Like the path to an amazing, crazy season is there.
24:18It's somewhat clear in terms of the narrative that you form around it.
24:22It's just that as the price gets more expensive, as people see this, the slappies want to chase it no matter what.
24:30And at some point you have to have some cost awareness, right?
24:34Like that's, this is, this is the Antonio Gibson one-on-one, you know, um, Jacob actually had a really good tweet about this,
24:41which is that the Henderson or Ramondre people are like operating in silos where they're never interacting with each other.
24:48Like the Henderson people are interpreting the news entirely their own way.
24:52And the Ramondre people are interpreting everything entirely their own way.
24:55And they never cross and they never talk just right about right.
24:59Uh, this is a, this is a declarative victory for Michael Leone side there.
25:04There really is no good math based argument, I think for drafting Henderson at this cost in best ball.
25:10Really more. He's really more ping pong running back wide receiver running back wide receiver brings us to Carnell Tate as the next.
25:18So I, so I Leonie, I'm actually grad, I'm actually glad you brought this one up because I, you know, when I
25:25do my rankings, I check my stuff against ETR and I check my stuff against leg up.
25:31And one of the surprising things to me has been that one of the ETR brand plays this year is an injured rookie wide receiver.
25:39Who's not the number one wide receiver on his team.
25:43Meanwhile, the number four overall pick has no on-team competition for targets.
25:47If you're being serious. I mean, I, I mean, I'm one of those biggest supporter and I'm not going to pretend that he's in Carnell Tate's universe.
25:56So I actually am very curious about this one.
25:59Yeah. So Tate, I was reading, you know, JJ's draft guy kind of pointed out some of the analytical concerns.
26:05He likes Tate overall to be clear, but some target volume earning concerns at the collegiate level, career target per outrun below 20%.
26:13Um, I'm also just huge concerns for me personally on, on Carnell Tate.
26:17I'm also, again, similar to the Jonathan Brooks case.
26:20It's like the team environment is very concerning to me too, right?
26:24Like if I get the player talent, right. I want to definitely smash on the outcome and it's possible you get the player talent, right.
26:33And not smash on the outcome. Cause we have very uncertain quarterback play from Cam Ward.
26:38You have the worst offensive line, according to Thorne in the national football league.
26:42They're 27th in the look ahead lines, the team total.
26:46Um, I saw Jacob do a post the other day around Tua and drop back conversion, right?
26:51That's something that, you know, we're equipped to handle well at ETR because the way we project things, you know, injecting the scramble, right.
26:59And the sack rate Cam Ward's sack rate was like off the charts last year.
27:04Now the coaching was abysmal. I'm sure it'll be better this year with a new coaching staff with day ball in there,
27:12but I'm still worried about that sack rate being high and they're not for a team.
27:17That's bad. They're not turning into the number of team pass attempts that you would kind of hope, which is sort of
27:24what happened last year to an extent. So, you know, for all these reasons, I'm out on Tate.
27:30I, I mean, maybe you, maybe you picked a good, a good flacky here because I am out on Tate for similar, but like slightly different reasons.
27:39Maybe. I mean, the first is, is that I actually don't really like the prospect profile.
27:45Like Tate is kind of just, it's, it's, you know what it is, dude?
27:49It's a real trust me, bro. Prospect profile. It's like, yeah, he, he never really did much and he didn't earn too
27:57many targets and he was always kind of the wide receiver too on his team.
28:02But trust me, bro, this Ohio statewide receiver is going to hit.
28:06This is totally not Devin Smith. This is totally not, you know, the laundry list of, of highly drafted Ohio statewide receivers
28:13who, you know, it's just so hard. And it's only going to get harder by the way, with NIL stuff in terms
28:20of evaluating prospects, because some of these teams are going to be so good.
28:25Like the, the, the degree of competition is such that like a lot of these teams are going to play about like
28:32four serious games in your entire college career. And it's just going to be hard to evaluate those sorts of things.
28:39I'm also worried about Cam Ward. I'm also worried that Brian Dable is not like an offensive genius.
28:45Now it's, again, it's pretty easy to see how it pays off.
28:49Cam Ward takes a step. I mean, if Cam Ward gets to 6.7 YPA and Calvin Ridley does not run a full
28:56compliment of routes, I mean, Carnell Tate is going to be a top 20 wide receiver, like pretty easily, but those are two pretty big leaps, right?
29:05I mean, the last time we saw, I think the game before Calvin Ridley broke his leg, I think he had a hundred yards.
29:13If I remember correctly, that might be, it might, it might've been slightly before that.
29:18They also gave Wandale the bag. Wandale is not like, I mean, as we saw with Malik neighbors, Wandale can coexist with like a real alpha pretty easy.
29:28But if your team only, you know, if we're only getting 501 aimed throws and not 580 having Wandale as, you know,
29:35Wandale's 120 targets are actually pretty damaging. I think it's totally fine to draft Tyson ahead of him.
29:41And I've, I've capitulated on Parker Washington. So I end up not really being that into, to Carnell Tate.
29:47Yeah. And with Cam Ward, you know, his second half reminds me a little bit of the 2024 second half Bryce Young
29:55had where people were like, you know, look at this improvement that he showed over the second half.
30:01And there's one game in there above 6.3 yards per attempt, you know, over the, you know, from week 10 on.
30:08And that was a game against Casey that, you know, they were, they were kind of done at that point.
30:14So it's, it's a volume driven thing for Ward the second half of this season that has me skeptical.
30:21He had a lot of multiple touchdown games, but the actual, you know, yards per attempt wasn't really there.
30:27So yeah, I'm pretty skeptical here. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's team.
30:31That's team Leone. I'm given, I'm given, uh, I'm given another point to team Leone there.
30:36That was four. So we have, we have two more, Michael.
30:40Okay. Bay shell toot in is next up. Here we go.
30:43Here we go. I just, just, I knew it was coming.
30:47I knew it was coming. You knew it was coming.
30:50We, we actually don't have him. Like we have him the same running back rank as his ADP rank, just the wide
30:58receivers ahead of the running backs at that point in the draft.
31:02So this isn't a huge stand for us, but I'm a little surprised how much the slap he's like toot in, you
31:09know, the draft capital wasn't that good. The efficiency for him.
31:13He had 1.2% of his runs went for 15 plus yards, about as bad as it gets.
31:18And I, I, I'm stopping you. I'm stopping you right there.
31:22First off, I'm going to stop you right there.
31:25Cause I actually saw a, or I wish I could pull it up right now.
31:30A such a good Twitter thread about that fake stat on by shell toot in the other day.
31:36The first one was 15 of his rushes came inside the 15 yard line anyway.
31:41So he only had 15 yards to go. And in fact, eight of his rushes came inside the five yard line, I believe.
31:48So there's already out of 86. So there's already, what's like the average benchmark there?
31:53I actually, I don't know what the league, what, what, what the league average for breakaway run rate would be.
32:00I would assume, I would assume, I mean, well, for, for breakaway run rate, I had it in front of me a second ago.
32:08The, the, the point is, and frankly, I'm just saying like you're, you're, you're giving lots of excuses for why he had a poor breakaway run rate.
32:17Cause he couldn't possibly have gotten it on a large percent of his carries.
32:22But I would just say that every running back has, you know, a decent chunk of carries.
32:27Yes, but not every running back only gets 86 rushes.
32:31I mean, you should know this as a numerate man, which is that trusting the data on 86 interactions when.
32:37Okay. So let's strip out, let's strip out, let's strip out all those runs.
32:42How many inside the 15? We have 15 rushes inside the 15.
32:46I'm about to pull up his. So he had one.
32:49So even if we take that out. Okay. Yeah.
32:52We're up to a 2.8%. Breakaway run rate. I'm not, listen, the argument is about not even, you know, about half of what is good.
33:01The, the context of my by shell toot and his talented argument has very little do to analyze the runs that he
33:08put on tape last year, or actually just the runs that he generated statistically.
33:13It's that 86 rushing yards is not, or 86 rushing attempts is not enough to evaluate the talent profile of an NFL runner.
33:20And that you're going to get more information doing it in concert with his collegiate profile.
33:26Another, I bet this is, this has been another good comeback as well, which is that after two years of B.
33:32John Robinson's career, one of the big things that people are saying is this guy's never had to play over 30 yards.
33:40Yeah. Guy's never had to play. Can you be, you guys are taking this guy one-on-one.
33:45He's never had to play over 30 yards. And obviously famously, he has a bazillion explosive touches.
33:51Last year. Tootin has the physical profile of a guy who is going to generate explosive runs.
33:56He actually had an explosive run in the post season against your Buffalo bills.
34:01Some people, not me have been saying that the Buffalo bills would have lost that game.
34:06If the coaching staff doesn't lose their mind and turn it over to Trevor Lawrence, instead of just, they were dashing like eight.
34:14I think it was eight yards per carry when they decided to start throwing the ball.
34:19I actually think the Byshell Tootin argument for me has not been so much on the talent level of like, dude, Tootin is so good.
34:28Now I might believe that, you know, we actually both read this same book, Mike, the, um, Oh, what was it called?
34:35The, the, the, the sports betting book by Matthew David Allen, Ed Miller, Interceptor.
34:40A logic of sports betting. Logic of sports betting.
34:43And there's this great piece in, uh, one of the chapters where he talks about like, when you get things close enough
34:50that you can bet a hunch, like you, you, you have, you've arbed out enough that you can bet.
34:56You're like free rolling. If you're wrong, you're like breaking even.
35:00And if you're right, you're, you're. So that's where I'm at with the, this is where I'm at with the Tootin talent
35:07bet, which is that the other running backs on the roster are so bad that I can bet the hunch that Tootin
35:15is probably good at close to risk free. I know people love Chris Rodriguez jr.
35:20I'm just, I'm not having it. I just am so not having it.
35:24I, and this is the Tootin's the one on this list that we have closest to priced appropriately.
35:30But I think he, it's just a weird slappy pick to me, just given, and you are right with the small sample stuff, right?
35:38Like we don't want to overly extrapolate. This isn't to say he can't be explosive.
35:43It's just weird to me that this is a guy that's turned into a slappy pick because he doesn't really have your typical slappy background.
35:51I think there are legitimate concerns over the high value touches.
35:55You know, he only had 14 targets last year.
35:58They play LaQuint Allens on obvious pass downs. I understand they play him on some throwaway pass downs that aren't like a huge deal.
36:06And Tootin's targets certainly are going to go up.
36:09You mentioned Chris Rodriguez, which coaching staff has familiarity with and some of the yards before contact data, you know, strongly prefers him to Tootin.
36:17At least here though, out of all the players on this list, like you're getting an offense that if you are right
36:24on Tootin, you're probably going to get paid off because the offense is going to be, have the correct, you know, ecosystem around him.
36:32For sure. And, uh, oh man, this was another good tweet.
36:36I'm on a, I'm on a streak right now of miss attributing tweets, which is shocking.
36:41Yeah. I believe why I believe this was, I mean, you know what it is.
36:46I'm just on my phone. I remember the staff, but I don't remember who tweeted it.
36:52I believe this was Jacob, which was that, um, only 23% of all running back targets come on third downs, which is
36:59means the greater proportion of them come on first, second down and fourth down.
37:04I mean, as you would imagine, but people just talk about third downs like, well, if a running back doesn't play on
37:11third down, there's no way he's going to catch the ball.
37:15Right. Which is just not the way it works.
37:18In fact, good offenses often throw the ball to running backs and design plays on early downs.
37:23And if you have a good running back, like a really good running back, you didn't necessarily like third down backs block a lot.
37:31You want, you want them running rounds. No, it's like, it's like the Joe Mixon.
37:36Like you can still get 10 to 12% target share just on your base work, but he's splitting some of the base work.
37:44Yes. Yeah. He, well. So if you're splitting the base, I think if you're splitting the base work and you're not getting,
37:51even if the obvious pass down stuff is overrated, which I agree it can be overrated, but it's still not like a good thing.
37:59Yes. I guess, I guess frankly, uh, oh, there you go.
38:03It was Hayden, sorry, not Jacob. It was Hayden.
38:06Um, where I would ultimately land is that my prior is that Chris Rodriguez jr.
38:11Was a guy who was signed and waived by the commanders 19 different times.
38:15That's true. Not that's actually not a Davis Maticism.
38:18It really was like he signed and waived that many times, got his job taken by Ja'Cory Krosky Merritt.
38:25Got it. Only we only ever saw him play with the commanders because Jaden Daniels got injured and Marcus Mariota came in
38:32and that was like not a great stylistic fit between the two guys.
38:36Um, I'm, I'm awarding, I'm awarding this one to me, but the chat can decide who wins between, uh, between, between, uh, team boomer and team sloppy there.
38:46Uh, your final one before we, before we hop into a draft, do you want to guess?
38:51I feel like you could guess it. It's gotta be burden, right?
38:55It has to be burden. No, no, it's not burden.
38:59It's Makai lemon. Oh yes. I mean, I should have known this and, uh, you know, frankly, team, team ETR are going
39:06to be proven correct on this one due to my, my boy with the, the bum hammy, but yes, Makai lemon.
39:13I actually just moved Makai lemon down in my rankings right before we, right before we hopped on.
39:19I feel like we're being pretty aggressive. Uh, just people know we have him with an 18% base target share, 23% ceiling target share.
39:27We've kind of juiced his ceiling odds, which we do for early round rookies, you know, with decent profiles.
39:33Do you think people do know that? Do you think they know?
39:37Yeah. ETR has Makai lemon for a base 18% target share.
39:41Do you think that you think they have, no, they don't know that, but I just want people to know, like, I
39:48think people think like we're not giving any targets to some of these younger players like, Oh, don't they realize that AJ Brown's gone on the opportunity?
39:57It's like, like we're being like aggressive and we're like generally aggressive on the rookies, which is what makes them a slappy
40:05pick that we can be what feels like aggressive and still be behind ADP quite a bit, which is another tough bet,
40:12which is like the team total pass volume, probably not going to be great.
40:17You could see a lot of target share condensing to Goddard and Devante Smith.
40:21He missed a lot of camp with the hammy issues.
40:25There's some fit concerns with like the high slot rate and like how that meshes with where Jalen hurts has been successful throwing the ball.
40:33And all of this is before we even talk about that, he's got to beat out wicks in two wide receiver sets,
40:40which he's probably a dog to just to start the season at least.
40:44So it's, it's an uphill climb. Yeah. You know what?
40:48I actually have no pushback on this one. It is every time I have ever taken Makai lemon, I have done.
40:55So knowing that I'm making a gigantic leap of faith, actually not only in Makai lemon, but actually an additional leap of
41:02faith in Jalen hurts his ability to control and throw over the middle of the field, which he has done at stages in his career.
41:10But I think even he would say it's not his greatest asset and strength.
41:15And it actually sounds like they're going to be more aggressive with his rushing this year, which takes even more pass volume off.
41:23It's also a bet against Dallas Goddard, which I know the, uh, the ETR base ranks love Dallas Goddard.
41:29I believe, I believe Goddard is Herzig's most drafted player, uh, up until this point.
41:34So, you know, I'm, I'm with that. Frankly, lemon of, of the six players we just argued, he's the most, just trust me, bro.
41:42He's really good. Dude, just trust me. Makai lemon.
41:45Yeah. Really, really good. Yeah. All right. I'll take my victory.
41:49That was a win. That was, that was the list.
41:52That's the whole list. That was a win for, that was a win for team Leone.
41:57And now Michael, literally, I, I, I would not have guessed this was true.
42:02I would have guessed that you had maintained some level of drafting while, while around this is literally your first draft of the year.
42:10This is literally my first BBM of the year.
42:13No joke. Uh, if you haven't seen on X, I've been doing some analytics work for Palantir.
42:19So, uh, yes, I did. I did. I did see that.
42:22It's taken up a lot of my time. But mostly Levitans had me, you know, locked in a room, working on the DFS projections for the upcoming season.
42:32Um, making sure her methodology there is squared away.
42:35So I'm excited, uh, for us to bicker and you to ask me my opinion, just so you can pick who you want to pick anyways.
42:43Uh, no, I'm, I don't, I don't do that anymore.
42:46I just take, I just take whoever you want.
42:49It's a great, it's great diversity for me. I, Leone, I, I actually, as of right now, I believe I only have
42:57two players on over 20% of my teams. This is, I don't know.
43:01Didn't you do this last year too? Didn't you spread out last year?
43:05Are you even more spread this year? Uh, I, I'm actually probably a little bit more concentrated than last year.
43:12Last year I made, I made like a true, uh, concerted effort to be as much of an 8% bro as possible.
43:19It's, it's, it's less of that now. Just a little bit more.
43:23Or I, I mean, I, I'm trying to be much more serious about things while also remaining humble.
43:29Like 2024, I never would have capitulated a Parker Washington.
43:33And actually now, or like last year, I would have like overly capitulated to the point of stopping at 8%, but now I'm like actively targeting Parker Washington.
43:42Well, I would definitely just go Bijan. Um, the thing with best ball too, I know people hate to hear this, but
43:49like so many players can be useful on so many different like roster constructions that you make.
43:55Um, especially after ADP last year, when I was doing the ET projections with Ben, I think we talked about like the
44:02redraft player pool for us is like a third, the size of like our best ball player pool.
44:08Like almost anybody in best ball, I would take at the right price on the right team.
44:14So it's hard to get like crazy concentrated. Whereas I get redraft.
44:18You might just have some bets that you think are going to totally flip this season and you want to make those bets.
44:26And if you miss, there's like easier ways to correct it.
44:29Whereas best ball, it just works differently. And especially in BBM with how the playoff weeks are structured, there's even more nuance on top of that.
44:38I mean, yeah, people are saying Sam Sherman was the luckiest winner of all time.
44:43Someone proved that with math, not me, someone else, someone else did and proved it.
44:48But yes, the, I like where I have always, what has taken me a long time to realize is that, um, in
44:55a game that has as much inherent randomness and variance, you, you kind of don't get paid off for being right as
45:03much as someone like me would think. Right. Like, let's say I'm so like, so let's say I'm super right about my,
45:10my biggest stance, which I I'm assuming, you know, but I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna spoil.
45:15Cause I'm at the pull at my exposure tab here in a, in a second.
45:20Um, let's say I'm Patrick Mahomes. It's not Patrick Mahomes.
45:24No, I I've got like, you know, 15% of him or whatever.
45:28Um, let's say I'm right. And this guy completely smashes in the regular season.
45:32And I advanced a bunch of teams cause this guy like super, super mattered.
45:37That dude has one seven point game in the post season and, and effectively all of the leverage that I created with
45:44first, the field with that guy is negated immediately.
45:47Like just gone because it doesn't, like it helped you generate the EV to get there.
45:53But in terms of actually winning the money, uh, it did, it did nothing.
45:57All right, Leonie, I've got my, I've got my exposures pulled up.
46:01I would like you to guess my most drafted player.
46:05I, can you give me a rough draft range or, or no?
46:09Uh, started, started off stone free, started off not being drafted.
46:12And every single draft is now getting drafted 100% of the time in the 14th, 15th round.
46:18Uh, NFC team, not a chief. Well, okay. Okay.
46:21NFC team. This is so, it's so fun. Like this, this to me is very fun that, that we, we, we, is
46:28it a team that you cheer for? Uh, I don't cheer.
46:32I don't cheer for an NFC team. It, no, it's, it's not a, it's not a, it's not a, it's not a cowboy.
46:40It's not a cowboy. Um, I feel like I have, I mean, I have to just take a guess here at some point, but.
46:48How do you, how do you feel about, um, London?
46:51I thought it was going to be Cyrus Allen.
46:54No, no, I have been, I've been taking some Cyrus Allen.
46:58I'm, I am, I'm buying that. I guess, honestly, Leone probably is far enough removed away from the best ball streets to
47:05not know, which is, which is going to make this, uh, even more is going to make it very surprising.
47:12All right. We are on the clock. Nico Collins, neighbors, Rashi Rice, Jeremiah Love.
47:16Um, I think it's Nico, Nico or Love. I think, what do you, what do you got here?
47:22Uh, I actually have Malik neighbors ranked the highest there, but.
47:26I still like have some concerns that I like, I get that the, the news has been great, but I have just
47:33concerns on the offense in general, even if he is healthy.
47:37All right. We could, we could go neighbors. If you want, I would probably go Nico.
47:42Uh, Nico just went neighbors is still there. Neighbors, Rice, Devonta, Brees, Michael.
47:46Okay. Um, we could go, let's go neighbors. I'm a, if you don't want to take the league neighbors, I'm, I'm fine to pass.
47:54No, I'm good with neighbors. I just would have taken the other two, but those two are gone.
48:00Right. So it doesn't matter. I, I mean, the neighbor stuff to me is pretty simple, which is that he led the
48:08national football league in targets per game as a rookie on not a particularly good New York giants team.
48:14And yeah, he's a stud. He's just so good.
48:17Right. He's just, he's just so good. We were like going back and forth though.
48:22I'm like, if he never got hurt, where would he be going?
48:26And we didn't really have consensus. He'd be the one to, I mean, he opened the big board way back in, in
48:33January base rankings at the one, two turn and people took him there for a while.
48:39Yeah. We had some people that said like, and around one and some other people that were like mid two is where they would take them.
48:47It'd be it's, it's, it's, it's, I have him ranked back to back with Bowers is where I have them.
48:54Here you go. Leone. Here's my exposure list. T Ferg.
48:57Oh, I should have known here. I've seen you tweeting about Ferguson.
49:01Oh, tooting. Tooting. Worthy. Burden. Gunnerhelm. Ken Walker. Jadarian Price.
49:05Stowers. And a lot of that Stowers is from pre-draft stuff.
49:08Zachariah Branch. Stefan Diggs. Travis Kelsey. Adonai Mitchell. I can get on board with Terrence Ferguson.
49:14Honestly, I feel like that's a good. And a draft.
49:17Big time. Overweight. Yes. Yeah. And now that he is, is much more expensive.
49:22I did a, I did a Mastiff last night and he got taken directly, directly ahead.
49:27I was working on a sim, like a best ball sim thing that it didn't like totally go anywhere.
49:33So take this with a grain of salt. Hopefully like next year, it'll go somewhere more.
49:39But the pick that most stuck out as plus EV for my best ball sim was Terrence Ferguson.
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50:16And it was kind of like assuming the ETR slash ADP mix was like the correct order of players.
50:22But then just like doing it based on positional scarcity and spike week and playoff schedules and whatnot.
50:28And Ferguson was the most plus EV. The most EV player.
50:32You guys heard it from Michael Leone himself. You didn't hear it from me.
50:37You didn't hear it from anything I built. You heard it from Michael Leone himself.
50:42The single most expected value player in best ball is my goat, Terrence Ferguson.
50:46I'm sure Davis will relay this information exactly with all the caveats that I gave.
50:51No caveats. No caveats. Well, Leone, I had an absolute banger of a tweet.
50:56If you are as nerdy in the streets as we are, I'm actually going to pull it up right now.
51:03Because it was such an insane banger directed at your co-workers, Jack Miller and Mark Dankenberg.
51:08I was very, very proud of this one. Dankenberg.
51:11Which is that I searched the ETR change log.
51:14And there was a note. They bumped Terrence Ferguson's base target share slightly after internal discussion.
51:19And that internal discussion was, do we really have to change a ranking because of Davis fucking Matic?
51:25Which I was very proud of. That's a good one.
51:29I also like Jack's reply to that. Jack's reply was very good.
51:33Which is exactly what I did. That is exact.
51:36I didn't, I did not go in there for anything else.
51:39I went in there strictly to do that. All right.
51:43Leone, your first best ball mania team of the year.
51:46Bijon Robinson, Jeremiah Love, Malik Nabors. Structurally, how do you feel?
51:50Do you feel this is a good team or is this a positive?
51:54I mean, it's three picks. I don't know if we can make a structural determination after three picks, but I do think
52:01just eyeballing the rankings and what we've talked about in our internal slack that the wide receiver picks at this point are
52:08better than the running back picks generally. So I do like, you know, starting RB RB in that regard.
52:15I do. I do too. I mean, I like taking the wide receiver in round four.
52:20I actually like the running backs in round five quite a bit.
52:24I know. All right. Well, decision time on Luther Burden here, who is.
52:28Yeah. I'm not really worried about the Burden injury.
52:31I'm in on Luther Burden. I mean, this is probably this about right where we have him.
52:37We haven't ranked at 51. So it's a little ahead.
52:40But what would the. Do we have time? I took him.
52:44The first sign of agreement, you were like, yeah, I'm in.
52:48Well, I have him ranked at 49. So I'm not I'm not massively.
52:52I moved him down a good bit with the growing.
52:55The only thing I think was thinking about like navigating this turn with it does seem like he's dropping a little bit
53:03if we could have gone elsewhere first was. Well, what's the difference between 47 and 50 in the grand scheme of things?
53:10Well, and and the guy you were going to want to take is not going to get selected by this drafter.
53:17Devonta Adams is still going to be here. I will be.
53:21I will be curious if you do still really want Adams, even though we just have these two wide receivers here.
53:28But Evans, Tootin, Adams, J-Mo, Judkins, Henderson, TJ Moore.
53:31Yeah, I think it's Adams here. Yeah, I see you're pretty low on Adams.
53:35This is this is a good price on Adams.
53:38So I'm I'm very consider me. Oh, no, I guess that's not as bright as ADP.
53:44I consider me like. A panic in on on Devonta Adams, like I am.
53:48I hear the hoof beats of the four horsemen of aging on Devonta Adams, like one point eight five yards per out run.
53:56First time in his career has been below two.
53:59You know, he led the National Football League in receiving touchdowns last year.
54:03Any kind of philosophical realignment from Stafford and McVay against that is brutal for him.
54:08Like like life force losing degrees of brutal for Devonta Adams.
54:12Yeah, I think we're getting a nice price, though, for the age being priced in the touchdown stuff.
54:18The if there was someone you were going to bet on an absurd touchdown rate, though, it's probably him.
54:24Like the actual goal line usage is incredible. It's not that he's just running pure on touchdowns per target.
54:30If you look at where the targets are coming from, it does somewhat support an extremely high touchdown rate for a wide receiver.
54:38And it's a team that is going to score a lot of touchdowns again, depending on quarterback health.
54:44You also do have even if he's not as good anymore.
54:48If something happens to Puka. It's still a slant, absolute smash, you know, at this price tag.
54:53An absolute smash for Terrence Ferguson. If anything happens.
54:56Yeah. Um, no, I mean, like, am I am I willing to dig my heels in and get entrenched that Devonta Adams is a bad pick?
55:05No, particularly because any kind of physical decline for Adams can be masked over by the touchdowns.
55:11I mean, we actually saw that after Devonta Adams was already limited by the hamstring injury.
55:16He still was scoring like a frickin touchdown per game.
55:19Even, even as his in season, like target earning numbers went down.
55:23Now, I guess you could have structural concerns that the NFL has now had an entire off season to look at the
55:31Rams offense with the 12 and the 13 personnel and be like, okay, we're going to start to defend it this way.
55:38Stafford is 39. Yeah. Like, yeah, I feel like that would help Adams, you know, more than because they'll take away.
55:45Maybe some of those freebie tight end touchdowns that they, they get those, those freebie, those freebie tight end touchdowns are, are,
55:52but you know, if we didn't take an old and Devonta Adams, I might've made you take an old and Mike Evans.
56:00So it was old, the old there. I think more, it was old, the old, the not quite old, but getting close to, Oh, DJ more is undraftable.
56:09Come on. Come on. I don't think he's undraftable, but 1.14 yards per route run.
56:14Yeah. I can't, I'm really, I'm honestly like I'm bills fandom aside in fantasy players.
56:19I'm like extremely curious to see how this plays out.
56:22I, I, I'm pretty curious because if he can do a Stefan Diggs facsimile, I will end up being wrong.
56:29I just don't know if he still can. That's what's interesting about, well, let's see who we're gonna pick because I'm, I'm, this is draft number one.
56:38So I'm, you know, we are, we are in a, we are in a tough, we are, we are in a tough pocket of the draft right now.
56:47Um, this, this is some of the hardest decisions you have to make.
56:51Do you, I also don't know the week 17 stuff at all.
56:55That's fine. It'll, it'll pop up on my screen.
56:58If there, if there is a week 17, it'll pop up.
57:02Oh, there's two very dusty brand plays for me.
57:05I would, I would happily take Ramondre here. I don't really want to take DK Metcalf.
57:10Why don't we take Ramondre? Did Tyler Warren go?
57:13Tyler Warren did go. This, these are, these picks that we are making right now are my least favorite picks on the board.
57:21It's like, all right, we are going to take a, okay.
57:25All right. We are, we are back up. The guy to our left is auto drafting.
57:30Can you go to wide receiver? Just, just wide receiver.
57:33Yes. You really, if you really want Metcalf. I think it's, I think Metcalf's the right pick.
57:39I know it's dude. He's, he's the best ball pick that we were talking about that is undervalued, which is like there's
57:46spike week potential more than you think. And he's like, he's going to see a certain amount of targets.
57:53He's going to be useful. It's just, people are frustrated with the offense and how it turned out last year.
57:59But God, I mean, that's, that's a good pick.
58:02Can I, can I give you the very obvious feedback?
58:06Yeah, go for it. He is like the worst structural fit of all time for his quarterback.
58:11And they acquired two players who are just way, way, way, way better stylistic fits for Aaron Rogers.
58:17You know, you know more ball than me. That's, that's your thing.
58:21No, no, it's literally, I actually think this is like a very easily model.
58:26This is a very easily modelable thing, which is that I would guess I'm going to pull up the stats right now.
58:33I'm going to guess Aaron Rogers was dead last in the NFL in intended air yards per pass attempt.
58:40I'm going to, I would guess you're wrong. I think he actually went downfield.
58:44I would guess you're wrong. I'm interested to see.
58:47Let's check it out. We're about to look. All right.
58:51Intended air yards per pass attempt. Aaron Rogers was dead last in the national football league.
58:56You know, but if we look at the distribution, man, when he does take his shots down.
59:01Well, I was going to say, if you, if you look at the, if you look at the distribution, it is actually
59:09probably slightly more favorable to the Metcalf rose, which is that yes, on average, because he throws behind the line of scrimmage
59:16so much that, that it does mess up the distribution.
59:19However, bringing in Michael Pittman Jr. and drafting Jeremy Bernard are that's, that's two more binkies to play for four yards off
59:27the line of scrimmage while Metcalf runs clear out routes.
59:30Yeah. I just think you're getting such a discount.
59:33His efficiency was still really strong. I mean, obviously the target volume isn't where you want it.
59:39That should be more bearish that his efficiency was still good.
59:42And he did fuck all. No. Cause you want good players.
59:46You, you're getting a grown ass man who's still averaging, you know, Look who wants to draft good players.
59:52All of a sudden, Michael Leone's turned a new leaf.
59:56If it's, I mean, to be fair, can I, can I make a, this is my first draft hot take, but I
60:03drafted, I started talking about him already. I think Rico Dowd was like a really good pick this year.
60:09He's, he's a pretty good pick. I, I, I agree with that.
60:13Yeah. Structurally with, with running back floors priced way up.
60:17He, he, he's a relative value. I agree. My, my riff just, and I brought it up when we were talking earlier
60:24on the Henderson thing, but there is kind of that, you know, Ron Chandler from the MLB days of like, if you display a skill, you own it.
60:33Like he's got three somewhat kind of insane games last year on a really shitty team.
60:39And I can't like get my, my head off of that.
60:42But yeah. Okay. What do I don't, I don't know what the QB landscape and stuff looks like.
60:48Like we need at least one quarterback here. Okay.
60:51Dart, dart would be the stack or Stafford who would be dart or Stafford here.
60:56Okay. Are we OTC? Okay. You, you, you pick.
60:59Cause I'm, I think it's dark, right? No, we're taking Stafford because we've made our, we made our bet on, on Adams.
61:07Um, can we, can we take both here? Is that unreasonable or no, no, it's, it's definitely reasonable because our running backs would be Hubbard or Monungay.
61:16I'm not really in on either big fall or Alec Pierce.
61:19We could do Purdy and take Stripling or Debo or Kittle, uh, later.
61:23Um, yeah, LaPorta looks pretty solid too. LaPorta, LaPorta is good here.
61:27LaPorta is a small dipper Reno. I know that you should, or should we just get the stack done or I would go with our dart.
61:36You know what? Let's push it. Let's push it.
61:39A quarterback. We have got, um, we have Rogers later for Metcalf.
61:43We have Tua or Brissette that if we want to do a three quarterback team, we could take them correlated.
61:50Pretty good chance that golf comes back around to us.
61:53Um, these are, yeah, that's, that's, I, you know, I got to shake the rust off, but that's where I like making
62:00picks like LaPorta where you, you give yourself more outs later.
62:04Oh yeah. This is Davis. I like, I like that comment by Socrates.
62:08Davis is pretending it's for Adam's reasons. He's just laying the foundation.
62:12No, that's okay. For the point. I legitimately believe.
62:15Do you know how to make the most plus EV player in the tournament more plus EV?
62:21Stack them. Stack them. I, I, I actually, this is a, this is a true thing that I, I would guess would bear myself out.
62:29Put, put, uh, Jack and, and Mark on this.
62:32I would guess the heavily touchdown value receivers like Adams and Evans correlate at a stronger level in a sim with their pass only quarterbacks.
62:41Like I would guess like some of the most valuable correlations you can get would be Evans, Purdy, LaPorta, golf, Adam Stafford.
62:48Um, you know, spike week stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe not as much for like this season long correlation where like, you know,
62:55you might want a guy that could go new can throw for 5,000 yards, but for literal, but even still like dart dart is the opposite of that.
63:05Right? Like even though neighbors is going to be insane target share dart has so much of his ability on the ground.
63:12I don't know though, but if neighbors hits darts probably having a pretty good year.
63:17So I don't know if that's, that's really true.
63:20Yeah. Well, I'm, I mean, I am, um, I actually share the structural concerns about the giants that you were talking about.
63:27Like, I don't think the coaching staff is very good.
63:31I was dart was actually my most drafted quarterback last year, but I don't think he is a particularly gifted passer or anything like that.
63:39Um, like I, I think he's, I think, you know, I think he's fine.
63:43Um, but I don't expect like a, a, a big year to leap would be a little surprising for me.
63:50Yeah. Um, we would have taken Caleb at six, seven turn, right.
63:54Or if he was there, I'm just curious what you've been doing.
63:58I kind of play that one by ear, by, by feel.
64:02Um, he, he's been falling a little bit. Like I, I would guess his, the distribution of his ADP over the last
64:0910 days includes more seventies than sixties in it.
64:12Um, the Lamar and Jaden prices look pretty incredible on this draft.
64:16Every math based drafter I've talked to this year has said Lamar is like a huge target for them.
64:22Any, any SIM or math based drafter has Lamar as like a screaming, uh, signal target at like, and especially when he
64:30goes after the running backs, when that whole running back tier is gone, the Judkins, Tootin, Montgomery, ETN, Swift, Bucky tier is gone.
64:37Um, we survived the St. Brown drafters should get golf here.
64:41Okay. Can we push them around the turn or no?
64:44Is that, um, the guy next to us only has Herbert and he does have Gibbs.
64:50So I would say, no, I would say we, we take it.
64:54Okay. Let's take golf. And then I know who I want next for sure, dude.
64:59You know what? I'm actually going to surprise you when you suggest this guy's name.
65:04Cause I am, I am drafting him this year.
65:07The Homer pick. Yeah. I actually think he is one of the most obvious breakout bets on, on the whole board.
65:14I, I, I am. I'll make, I'll make my pitch if we actually get them.
65:19I, well, if it's Shakir, no, it's not Shakir.
65:22Yeah. Okay. Then yes. Yes. It's one Dalton Kincaid.
65:25If you, his per route and per target metrics, the last two years are like among the best of any tight end.
65:32So top, he's top five. He's similar to Kelsey, similar to Bowers, similar to McBride and, and all of those numbers.
65:39The, for me, it is kind of what you were saying about Tootin.
65:43The, if we're wrong, we're kind of like breaking even.
65:47And if we're right, we got a lot of EV.
65:50That's sort of how I feel like with Kincaid in this range.
65:54Um, if something happens. You are a hundred percent correct.
65:57Like you, you have never been more correct about anything in your life.
66:01Truly. Like he's probably break even in his old role at this price.
66:06And you're not having to pay any tax for what if he runs 76% of the routes.
66:11Yeah. And just, there's some, I mean, I doubt the offense changes much given obviously the offensive coordinators now the head coach,
66:19but we don't know if there's any philosophical game plan type stuff that was, you know, flowing through from McDermott that could
66:26have them throw more frequently this season than they did last season.
66:30And again, that's just, you know, gravy on top.
66:33I wouldn't expect it, but it's at least a level of uncertainty that kind of only works in your favor.
66:40And the defense being, they've always had a great regular season defense.
66:44Like that's uncertain now too. More, more pass heavy.
66:47Josh Allen, he's disrespected. He wants to win. He wants to win another MVP.
66:51He wants to win a passing title. No, I'm, I'm completely with you.
66:56I mean, my estimation would be that as Kincaid's routes scale up, his fancy metrics are going to scale down because he's
67:03not asked, he is just not asked to do very much of the grunt work at all.
67:09And he's only out there in situations where it's quite plausible for him to get the ball.
67:14You know, he's never done it as a full-time player.
67:18Doesn't mean he doesn't mean he can't do it, but compared to like, so like Kelsey is a total eat your vegetables pick.
67:25Like he's going to finish as a top 10 tight end, but doesn't have much upside beyond that.
67:31I mean, I think Kincaid is light years better than Ferguson.
67:35He's basically only a contingent value play. And then you've got a ton of downside with age with Andrews.
67:41Like I think Andrews actually has quite a bit of upside just in terms of the touchdowns because anyone who's running 80%
67:49of the routes with Lamar can score 10 touchdowns pretty easily, but he might just be like cook physically.
67:55Yeah. I'm surprised. I thought there was a chance you would want to go Rashad White there actually.
68:01It seems like the news has been moving more heavily in favor of JCM recently.
68:06People are, people are saying it's my year, brother.
68:09People are saying, people are saying that I keep skating where the puck is going.
68:14What if the answer is, is none to the Washington backfield?
68:17It's pretty unlikely. The answer is none, right? Just because it's so easy to be, it's so easy to be efficient with a running quarterback.
68:26So easy. Yeah. I don't know. I remember last year when we got rid of Brian Robinson Jr.
68:32It was like how valuable even was Brian Robinson Jr.'s workload?
68:35Like before, and then we moved up, you know, talk about the JCM stuff.
68:40Just because you're not getting. JCM had 15 points in his first NFL game.
68:45People forget. Oh my God. Not, you won't let people forget.
68:48Well, people also forget. Hey, people also forget he was the running back three in week 17 last year.
68:55I mean, come on, dude. People, people do actually forget.
68:58On a, like a game day scratch that like he wasn't even going to play barely.
69:03People forget, Michael. The result is the result, right?
69:06I've never seen. We should just draft. Yeah. We should just draft Katron Allen.
69:11I'm not going to be nice and shame him the way the chat is.
69:16We can take, we can take Katron later. All right.
69:19This is basically just the war again, the seven, the six, seven turn.
69:23And right here, I would nominate Denzel Boston here.
69:26Do you have anyone you like? I'm cool. We can get some rookie wide receiver injection into this room.
69:33Yeah. And, and I, sadly, I am going to have to veto you on Cooper cup when we get a little bit later in the draft.
69:41You pre vetoed me. What's the, what's the running back?
69:45It's, it's, it's very dire to the point that I, I personally am ready to start dragging up Jane blue, Marshawn Lloyd.
69:52Okay. What do you, what do you, would you rather take Tyler Algier?
69:56Oh, we already have love actually. So Spears blue or Lloyd.
70:00Um, I think I'd go con Lloyd just, no, I'd go blue.
70:04I'd go blue. I'd go blue. Okay. Well, I, my fingers were pretty nimble there, but they weren't nimble enough.
70:11We got Marshawn Lloyd. Yeah. That's not me. That's not me.
70:14I was going through my cards last week and I found a Marshawn Lloyd autographed on the card.
70:20So to the moon, see if I can find that sucker.
70:24All right. I actually, I, as you, as you go to find that, I actually have an argument that I'd like to
70:31make here, which is that the fantasy market has gotten pretty good at responding to things, but they get too comfortable with
70:38their late round picks and they're not comfortable enough to bring them up.
70:43I actually think Lloyd blue. Lou, some of these guys should be moved up further than the market is doing right now.
70:50Uh, and Isaiah Spiller auto, uh, pick was Coleman.
70:53I, I, I mean, we've got very little to go on with this Dobbins thing right now.
70:59Yeah. But I mean, that pro that probably is right though, just because it was so close that Coleman was already the
71:06best pick by ADP that like you were, again, free, we're talking about free rolling.
71:11You're probably free rolling the news there. That probably was the pick that I wasn't given Coleman as an option though.
71:18I, you know what? That's on me. That's on me.
71:21Hey, Leonie, this is our first time doing a draft together in, in over a year.
71:27So we're finding our rhythm and our cadence as well right now.
71:31Shaking the cobwebs off. Yeah. I, I, I believe we are going to get our silver bullet.
71:36I did one NFFC. Um, I'm going to do another this week.
71:40So I, we got to set that up. Our, our silver bullet.
71:44Um, I need to send an email to the NFFC guys, but, uh, as you know, as you can see, you're not
71:52getting any of these guys on the next turn.
71:55Jaden blue went one 49 Coleman went one 52.
71:58We were, we were most certainly not getting them.
72:01Isaiah Pacheco actually should not have even been drafted.
72:04He is a, he, he like, I mean, I would guess his career is basically done.
72:09He, he strained his MCL today. They're going to trade for James Connor.
72:13It's over. The Pacheco stuff is done. Yeah. It's, it's not looking good.
72:18So that takes a draftable range out of there.
72:21We would not have wanted to take Algier with Jeremiah love.
72:24And so then that basically only had like undraftable got like Charbonnet.
72:28Yeah. I mean, we were kind of in, in reach.
72:32We went for some upside swings there. We got a good base with what's our structure here.
72:37I know this. Our, our team is a little different this year, but two, four, five, two with Stafford, Goff, Bijon, Jeremiah, love, or Mondre Stevenson.
72:46Marshawn Lloyd, Malik neighbors, Luther burden, Devante Adams, DK Metcalf, Denzel Boston, Sam Laporta and Dalton Kincaid.
72:51So we probably need one more running back. I think this is leaning towards being a three quarterback team in, in all likelihood.
72:59I don't know. I don't think Stafford and Goff is quite enough.
73:03So three, three, five, seven. Yeah. I think we should probably just take Rogers right now.
73:08Yeah. We around the 80, if we're around the ADP, we should do that.
73:13His ADP is one 76. We took him at one 67.
73:17Yeah. So that's fine. And then if we want Ferguson, we have to take him now.
73:22If we really, I mean, I feel like we have to leave this draft with Ferguson, whether it's smart or not.
73:29He will not, he will not come back to us.
73:32I don't think Ferguson's the right pick here, but I think we should just do it because.
73:38What do you, what do you think is, what do you think is the right pick here?
73:44You have 10 seconds. Um, I mean, Jennings me.
73:47That was not convincing enough. You had, you had 10 seconds and it was not convincing.
73:52I'm not, I'm not, I'm too rusty to give you a convincing in 10 seconds.
73:57I can give you questionably convincing in 10 seconds.
74:00You know what I, you know what I, you know what I did?
74:04It's definitely Jennings. No, definitely Jennings. Instead of taking Juwan Jennings, I took Michael Leone's number one, most plus EV player in fantasy football.
74:12The thing about that though, is it is, was assuming a certain cost.
74:17No, Jennings was definitely the pick there. As I'm looking at it more closely.
74:21I don't even think it's really close. Uh, yeah, I have noticed actually going through stuff that you guys are quite bullish on Jennings.
74:29And I would like to interrogate that further. I would, I would like you to explain more of that to me.
74:36Bullish on Jennings or just Vikings in general? Uh, both, both actually.
74:40I think, I think it's mostly just stems from what we think the Vikings will be really concentrated offense in terms of
74:48the receivers that they're applying out there. Uh, anybody, but JJ McCarthy has been able to feed pretty good fantasy and real life production for this offense.
74:57So not really buying that. It's a McCarthy Kyler competition.
75:00I know people really just really don't like Tyler, uh, all things equal for, you know, he's just one of those players
75:07people seem to be against, but I think he's people are.
75:11So generally speaking, we have a literacy crisis in this country.
75:14Anyways, it's, it's really been no more evident to me than the way that people talk about Kyler Murray and, and fail
75:22to understand, um, the value that he provides. Yeah.
75:25I think that I think he's fine. Um, you know, I think some of the Jacoby Kyler stuff's overplayed because of how impacted fantasy football.
75:33I know we're playing football, but correct. Again, um, couldn't be more correct.
75:37And it's going to be such potentially such a massive upgrade at quarterback from last year that it's going to change, could change everything.
75:45Even if Kyler is just league average, it's going to change everything.
75:49This offense had to operate in a certain way last year because JJ McCarthy, it's hard to describe and put numbers to how bad he was.
75:58He was, I mean, he, he was one of the worst quarterbacks.
76:02Like the numbers were obviously terrible. It was like somehow worse to watch.
76:06Like sometimes the numbers for these guys, like he, he's just, he, he was unbelievably bad.
76:12The other thing about him being bad, the way in which he was bad.
76:16We talked about that drop back conversion rate for fantasy, really bad.
76:20And I know Kyler runs a little bit, but he hasn't scrambled a ton lately.
76:25And, um, his sack rate last year was his worst of his career, but he's generally around six, six and a half
76:33percent, which is not ideal, but it's fine. You know, it's fine.
76:37It's like league average, like maybe slightly worse than league average.
76:40All right. We are up in two picks. We are done at quarterback.
76:45We are done at tight end. We need one more running back.
76:49We need two more wide receivers. Oh, I've got a slappy pick that I want to make.
76:54Yeah. You want to take two slappy picks? Neither a Cyrus Allen, but.
76:59Oh, we should take germ. We got to take Jeremy.
77:02I mean, but I liked Jacoby lane a lot.
77:05And, um, there was somebody else there. We took, we took Jacoby lane in the Mastiff last night.
77:11Uh, all right. I like Jacoby lane a lot.
77:14Would you like to take K-tron or do you want to wait and take a wide receiver here?
77:20Um, we still got another wide receiver to go, right?
77:23Yes. I think Bryant or, I mean, Bryant's probably the right pick, but.
77:27Bryant, Bryant is definitely the right pick. Yeah. Yeah.
77:30I mean, I actually. My slappiness wants to take Lane, but Bryant's the right pick.
77:35I would have been, I would have been fine with Lane there.
77:39I did. I did. Bryant. I, we, we did.
77:42I, I did take Jacoby lane in a Mastiff last night.
77:46So my, uh, my year end exposure screenshot on Jacoby lane will be fine.
77:51And, uh, now, now we need to take, we need to take a running back in the end to, to finalize a running back room of Dijon.
78:00I mean, frankly. Oh shit. I did not do this math.
78:03Okay. We have to take a running back that does not have a week 11 by because we have three running backs.
78:11Come on. That caught me. That caught me. I was going to say that's on me.
78:16Yeah. We were already playing it a little dicey with this running back room, but I think this is old school, hyper fragile team.
78:24Yeah, dude. This is what everyone did after Herzig won.
78:27Remember? Remember that whole, remember that whole off season of everyone being like, dude, I'm fricking four running backs, just like Justin Herzig.
78:35That strategy. I understand you want to adjust to the draft landscape that you're drafting in and that it's different each year.
78:42Each year is a different slate, but that strategy has worked basically year in and year out to some extent, almost regardless of what's happening.
78:51Well, if you get, it actually makes total sense to me because wide receiver scoring after like the top 10 or so
78:58guys is so flat that it's going to like the teams that get not even four, two really good scores at running
79:05back and then pile on the wide receivers. You're laughing, dude.
79:09Yeah. You're maximizing your running back picks by just having them count.
79:13Like they're healthy and they count. It almost doesn't even matter if they're like the, uh, what's the, um, what's the term
79:20we use for the running backs that not no man's land, the, oh, the silent killer, the silent killer running backs and
79:28redraft that are like, are actually good in best ball.
79:31Yeah. If you don't draft too many running backs, like just use their scores.
79:36It's like actually really good. Yes. Yeah. You, you really, you really couldn't be more correct.
79:41Um, it's just, I, I think this off season, it's very funny to say this as someone who's been doing this for so long.
79:49I think I finally understand best ball this off season, like structurally is like what you're attempting to do with every team,
79:56as opposed to thinking like, you know, there's this old statement.
80:00I believe our, our old, old friend fantasy douche wrote this, that fantasy football is a math based game about football, not
80:07a football game using math to keep the score.
80:10Like best ball is an even mathier fantasy football version.
80:13Like it's even further divorced from like my top 10 breakouts and busts of 2026.
80:18Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. Oh, we almost got Allen coming back to us.
80:23Um, all right. We're not going to get Katron justice.
80:26Hill, uh, Claiborne. And P Ryan is very sexless.
80:29McGowan is actually getting very interesting. Uh, well, nevermind.
80:32He went, can't have you can't do it. Tell you what you can't have shit in August fantasy football drafts.
80:39You can't get anything. Nothing. Absolutely. Nothing works. Uh, Singleton.
80:42Also, I, I, I quite like here. What, uh, what are your thoughts for running back?
80:48Um, I like Claiborne just betting against Mason and Aaron Jones and like for that offense, but I'd be fine with him.
80:55Singleton. And we have James Connor buried in the ranks, but I keep feeling like he's going to end up somewhere where
81:02he's actually like kind of useful, but it's just a really boring pick.
81:07You know what? Leonie, let's get ahead of it.
81:10Let's take James Connor. And we're going to take James Connor because I'm, I'm connecting.
81:15I'm connecting the dots right now. The Pacheco dots.
81:18The Pacheco dots. I done connected it. Like the thing that had to happen before the season, like this, this trade could happen today.
81:26Now, like now, like we're here, dude, the, the, the, the lions running back room has one healthy guy.
81:32His name is, his name is, um, Jamir Gibbs.
81:35That's it. Easy is pointing out that we have to use Connor and love in week 11.
81:41Little does he realize the whole thesis is that they will not be on the same team together.
81:47Simple. Absolutely simple. My tout wrote a run accomplished his feet 10 minutes ago.
81:51Uh, yeah, I actually, I'm pretty surprised that, that Leonie is on team Claiborne.
81:56Claiborne is like, Claiborne is so slap that like Jacob and Karain won't even join me on team Claiborne.
82:02They're, they're out. Yeah. Like he, I mean, he's, he's like, that's like, that's not even left wing slap.
82:08That's like communist slap. This message is brought to you by Apple Card.
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83:05Anheuser-Busch. Michelob Ultra Light Beer. St. Louis, Missouri. But I love him.
83:09He was the fastest guy in college football last year.
83:12As in college football, the video game. Not measured speed.
83:15Team speed, baby. I'm also, I would say the number one player that confuses me most for math-based drafters, and this is true for the solver.
83:24This is true for the leg-up sidekick. The Jeremy Bernard thing is so mysterious to me.
83:29Like, I do not get it. Because it, to me, I think they're obviously a team that is going to use a shit ton of 12.
83:38They're like the most obvious 12 team. And everyone's like, no, dude.
83:42Michael Pittman Jr., Jeremy Metcalf. It's crazy. I think the, there's an element with the rookie wide receivers that's always tough each
83:49year when we're ranking them of, to some extent, you're betting on the uncertainty.
83:54And a lot of times we end up behind market on the receivers people are more excited about and like ahead of
84:01the people that they're less just because it's like, oh, we're getting this rookie wide receiver.
84:07What do we get them around, you know, at the 16, 17 turn?
84:11You know, it's just a very different bet that, like, are you worried, you know, Robin Wilson's going to beat them out and, you know, all the things.
84:20And it's like, it's a 16, 17 bet. Like, like all of these guys have major boards at this point.
84:27We're just kind of blindly betting on a rookie talent.
84:30Like there's not sometimes a super sophisticated, you know, argument beyond that.
84:34Yeah. Yeah. No. And I, I mean, I guess, and, and shady is shady is making fun of me.
84:40I guess my, my inputs were, were there to be a, a Davis Matic, uh, input sim.
84:46Um, it would just be Friermuth is the third target earner on the team, not Jeremy.
84:51And that does not line up with the way they are drafted.
84:55And I, Hey, I could be wrong. I mean, Pat Friermuth kind of stinks.
85:00Right. But what's the ceiling on Friermuth versus like, if Jeremy's randomly like good.
85:05Uh, I mean, Friermuth has been a top 12 tight end twice, I believe.
85:09Uh, yeah. I mean, just in terms of like target share and whatnot, like if Jeremy just happened to like there's an X percent chance that.
85:18I mean, last year was the worst year of Friermuth's career by a lot.
85:23So it's, it's pretty clear why I would be wrong, but he has an 18% and a 17%.
85:29Target share season, which is if you've got Metcalf at 22, Pittman at 20 and Friermuth at 18, even that's tough for, for Jeremy.
85:37Yeah. I guess maybe the argument that I'm poorly making is that there's X percent chance that wide receiver is just really good.
85:44And then at that point, none of that math matters.
85:48I understand what you're saying. You're saying to model it probabilistically, you have to assign a percentage that Jeremy is the second best wide receiver on the team.
85:57You have to assign, you have to assign a percentage that Jeremy is a huge hit in the third round of the
86:04actual NFL draft that he's just like very, very good for a team that you probably have modeled above league average and pass rate over expectation.
86:13Um, and, and that probabilistic that does not exist with Friermuth because we know he's not very good or we know he's just fine.
86:21There's yeah. There's only so much uncertainty with Friermuth.
86:24Yeah. Yeah. More, more, more uncertainty, which I guess is actually kind of funny because people would, people would label you as
86:31a guy who would never draft Jeremy. They would be like, Oh dude, Leone.
86:36Leone's just slamming Michael Pittman Jr. and your brother.
86:39It, and it was as it wasn't, he was a second round pick by the way.
86:44There you go. Well, everyone, everyone knows that when you're doing an argument with me, I will always overstate the negative by one.
86:52So a second round pick becomes a third round pick.
86:55A 29 year old becomes 30 that this is just, everyone knows this.
86:59Do you know what's hard to do rankings? And if shady's still in the chat, I'm sure he can sympathize with doing
87:07the Sims, but like this comment from Jim that there's X percent chance Jeremy is good.
87:12So you've got to take him 35% of the time.
87:15Like what we're doing is trying to like figure out where guys are good bets at their costs.
87:21And to some extent we're just putting in the inputs.
87:25Right. And then the cost is what it is.
87:28So if we think a guy's under price in round 16, 17, yeah, if you click them at the top, every time you'll get 35%.
87:36We're not saying you should draft 35% of them necessarily.
87:39Like there there's a misunderstanding of how the rankings work and like what we're telling to do you to do with the portfolio.
87:47You're, you're, you know, risk tolerance is not part of what you're trying to model.
87:52Right. That, that is not, that is not in the model.
87:56Right. We're telling you, this is where we think he should be.
88:00If you were drafting players purely off rankings, this is where he should go.
88:04But that might mean like he's slightly ahead of these other receivers that are going just after him.
88:10And that's up to your personal risk tolerance. You want to keep clicking on, but I, there are some people that get
88:18tilted that are like, Oh, I got to draft 35% this round 16 guy.
88:22It's like, I don't know. It's true. It's true.
88:25The real time assistance meta has evaporated all the, all the free thinkers.
88:30You can't, you can't, you can't take anyone until your, until your precious tool tells you, you gotta, you gotta do it.
88:37I actually think there's, um, been a real impact on ADP from the prevalence of tools where I have noticed that there
88:44is a latency period where the providers have not updated their rankings or SIMs or inputs or whatever.
88:50And you can, I did this the day that, um, Malik neighbors was at practice running those routes.
88:56I fired up. I fired up. I was like, I was like eight tabling drafts because I knew that rankings had not been updated yet.
89:04And I, I took a bunch of them in the third round.
89:08Cause that, that opportunity to do that evaporated within like four hours.
89:12Yeah. And there's, there's lots of things like that.
89:15Like the actually one, you just very smartly highlighted, I think James Connor, like the, the wheels are now in motion.
89:22Like the thing, the domino that needed to fall for James Connor to get traded.
89:27We, we actually saw the domino and the chances of James Connor just not playing seem pretty light to me.
89:34Like what, where's the scenario where James Connor just straight up doesn't play football this year feels, feels low, right?
89:41Just overall. Yes. But never forget Will Fuller. So, well, I think I bet more, more, uh, appropriate for, for the ETR conglomerate would be Leonard Fournette.
89:50Drew Dinkmeyer having Google news alerts for an unsigned Leonard Fournette, just waiting, waiting for him to sign.
89:56That's a, that's an all timer. I mean, you know, people bring up the Brashard Perryman stuff, Leonie.
90:02They don't even, they don't even remember Kenny Stills.
90:05Kenny Stills over Devon. Perryman was before Stills, wasn't he?
90:08No, you are, you are misremembering this. Am I?
90:11You are, you are going back. Stills was back when you and I were coworkers.
90:16Perryman, Perryman happened later. Okay. Yeah. Perryman was ETR.
90:19Perryman was ETR. Uh, Stills was perhaps, actually not even perhaps.
90:23It was during, back when draft existed. I think it was either, I think it was 20, was it 2019 or 20?
90:30I thought it was that year with the dolphins that it didn't go well with.
90:35It was. Who was that coach that it was?
90:38Flores. The Flores. It was this year right here.
90:41It was the 2019 Miami dolphins. We had modeled out a ton of work for Kenny Stills, who looks like was not even on the team.
90:50Uh, Preston Williams was involved. Alan Hearns, Albert Wilson.
90:53I want to say that. Did he get traded to Houston?
90:56I don't remember if he was traded or if he got waived.
91:00Uh, looks like he got, looks like he got traded to Houston before the season.
91:05Yeah. August 31st, he was traded to Houston. Yeah.
91:08So, so people, you know, people who don't have as much of a long and storied history with you, they bring up,
91:16you know, they bring up Rashard Perryman, but I, I go back.
91:19Yeah. Perryman and Kenny Galladay are the biggest, it used to be Rashad Penny, but he actually was on, I think the BBM winning team that year.
91:28So then people, well, he was famously on, okay, we don't have to say who's BBM winning team.
91:34Hey, that's my guy. That's my guy. Respect, respect my goat.
91:38Uh, so what are, what are your plans for, for best ball drafting?
91:42Michael, are you going to be, are you pressing the edges?
91:46Are you like the winner's already been drafted? I'm definitely not a winner's already been drafted at all.
91:52I think now is actually a pretty good time to draft, but I am very busy getting prepped for the season and whatnot.
92:00And a lot of the weekly stuff we have that, um, and for a lot of redraft stuff that this will probably be my lowest best ball.
92:09Like, I'm not going to start multi-tabling so I can max BBM, but, um, I'd be, I'll probably get to like 20
92:16BBMs just being honest, which is boring after maxing it the last couple of years.
92:21I was going to say, like, how, like, does that, how does that make you like, truly like, how does that make
92:28you feel to be, to be like, yeah, this thing that consumed so much of my time that I spent so much time thinking about?
92:37I literally wrote how many people write a manifesto and then give up the activity that the manifesto is centered on.
92:44Yeah. I mean, I think next year I'll probably draft more, but my son is at an age where like I've only
92:51got so many super fun summers left with them.
92:54So yeah. Hey, it's, it's definitely been a worthwhile trade-off in that regard.
92:58And like I said, just doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes.
93:03I have a hard time like middling stuff. Like a lot of people are a lot better than me at that where
93:10like Dink can like pound out a million drafts, like half paying attention to the NFL.
93:15And like, I have a harder time doing that.
93:18So I'm like kind of either not drafting at all or drafting a ton.
93:23So, um, I hope I get some more time to do more like manifesto-y type stuff this off season, even not participating as much.
93:31Cause I really do enjoy that aspect of it.
93:34And I, I enjoyed Max and like, it's super fun following your teams.
93:38I'm sure I'll be like annoyed with myself. I actually, I actually wouldn't say it's that fun.
93:44Generally speaking, following your teams. I'd actually say the, the, the fun part is now.
93:49And then for like week one through 17, it just gets progressively worse.
93:53It's not that fun. Come on. Who, who, the guy, the guy who wins.
93:58It's more fun when you know, your advance rates are like mine instead of like yours, Davis.
94:03My advance rate was fine last year. It still wasn't any fun.
94:07It was not, I had, I had 10 finals teams last year.
94:11It was not fun. No, no part of it was enjoyable.
94:15Really? I don't know. I feel like it's, I feel like it's enjoyable.
94:19I like watching the math that play. Cause usually my teams rise a little bit, like as this season goes on, just
94:27cause the construction starts to win out. So I don't know the nerd in me like does enjoy that.
94:33I just don't, I just don't have any. I mean, the thing is that the inner, like just being on the internet has ruined all of it.
94:42It was, it was a lot fun. It was a lot more fun when I worked at, at sports grid and Roto experts.
94:50And I just got the vibe and no one cared how my teams did.
94:54Right. That was fun. Well, there, there's an element that's annoying.
94:58That's an element of being like a streamer. I guess that is like, for sure.
95:03Probably adds some unnecessary pressure and makes you deal with idiots who don't like really understand how this stuff works.
95:10But I guess I feel like I don't, I feel like for whatever reason, I don't seem to get as much of
95:17that or maybe I just pay lots of attention to it.
95:21But you, I mean, you are, you are a benevolent figure in the community.
95:25I don't think, I don't think anyone's like, I'm less feisty than you.
95:30So maybe that's, that's part of it. And you have a, you have a less front facing job.
95:36Yes. A huge portion of what you do is in the, the ETR Slack channels.
95:41But yeah, I mean, ultimately best ball is not fun anymore because of the portfolio websites.
95:46It's just, it's straight up no fun. If I win this year, like that's it, dude.
95:51I'm drafting like, I'm drafting like 200 teams next year and they're all going to be on stream.
95:57I'm not doing a single slow draft. None. Like this is, do you want to see what, do you want to see
96:04what my slow draft tab looks like right now?
96:07You probably don't. Do you know, you know what my ideal drafting would be is you're probably gonna think I'm a sicko,
96:15but if I had like a solid two week span to do like two hours, slow drafts would be my, that's what
96:22I, cause I have a tough time carving out like two hours at a time in a multi-table live draft, like a bunch of teams.
96:30No, I actually agree with that. It's, but the eight hour clocks like last too long.
96:36So yeah, if I had like two weeks where I could just go ham on two hours, slow drafts, I think would be the nuts for me.
96:45I actually agree. I would be, I would be in, I would be in on that.
96:50Um, the, the fast wraps are my, my slow drafts are like 90, 90, 10 these days to, to fast.
96:57I like, I do my, I do fast on stream obviously, but, um, yeah, I just, I just straight up, uh, I
97:04just straight up don't have the time. Now I do, I, I do, I actually do this when I do, not only
97:11do I do the last pick, I generally will pre-select my 18th round pick and hit on autopilot and, and do that.
97:19Um, but they're just, there are so many drafts.
97:22I mean, frankly, were I to optimize all of these teams together, were I to do that for all of these, I
97:29mean, that would take an extra hour of time to go through and optimize all these.
97:34So I just have to, to make the, to make the clicks as they come.
97:39I'm also, well, I'm also, um, slow drafting the EPL best ball contest as well.
97:44So, um, so there's, there's, and those have switched to four, those have switched to four hour clocks.
97:50So we're, we're coming there. Yeah. I wonder how many of those you're going to hit fast draft hell, but they're slow draft.
97:58All right, everyone. Everyone, Leonie's getting out of here.
98:01Everyone make sure to like the scream, uh, check out Leonie's work over on, uh, establish the run.com and get all my stuff over on flock fantasy.com.
98:10Make sure to like the video. I'll be back with all you guys tomorrow.
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