PodcastFrom The Long View Podcast

Our First Episode: The Evolution of NFL Offense

STACKED extracted the fantasy-relevant player signal from this podcast and kept the full transcript here for context.

2 hr 17 min

Duration

Estimated from transcript

Jul 19, 2026

Published

Sun, July 19, 2026

Player insights

Players mentioned

Topics

A.J. BrownBrian Thomas Jr.Brock BowersMarvin Harrison Jr.Chris GodwinColston LovelandGarrett WilsonJa'Marr ChaseJonathan TaylorJustin HerbertKelvin BenjaminMichael WilsonParker WashingtonTom Brady

Player analysis

Player insights

A.J. Brown

PositiveValue13:00

Long-view player who has clearly ascended; now in improved situation with Patriots after poor 2025 season. ADP has rebounded despite the down year. For the first time in his career, he's in a top-half pass volume offense, which should unlock his elite underlying ability. Host is optimistic on him in new digs despite some debate about age.

Insight page

PositiveProjection13:12

Brown is finally entering a top-half pass volume offense for the first time in his career with the Patriots; his ADP has rebounded even after a poor 2025 season, exemplifying the long view concept of betting on elite underlying talent despite situational challenges.

Insight page

Brian Thomas Jr.

PositiveValue3:00

High draft capital receiver with elite prospect profile; framework for evaluating him past short-term production struggles. The concept is to look past tough 2025 season and bet on underlying talent and college pedigree when a player has first-round draft capital and elite prospect metrics.

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PositiveBreakout3:18

Thomas Jr. is framed as a long view player in Jacksonville's pass-catching core; despite a difficult 2025 season, he carried significant draft capital and strong prospect profile credentials that justify optimism for future production.

Insight page

Brock Bowers

NegativeRole14:00

Talented player in poor situation; Raiders offense was a disaster in 2025 with offensive line issues and inability to get the ball downfield. Team had five to seven games with 100 or fewer total air yards passing vertically—dramatically higher rate than rest of league. Geno Smith couldn't get the ball out, had happy feet, and offense was poorly conceived. Everything that could be bad about a situation was bad for Bowers last year, in addition to his injury.

Insight page

NegativeRole15:00

Bowers faced a historically poor offensive situation with the Raiders in 2025; the team had 5-7 games with 100 or fewer total air yards passing vertically—a rate dramatically higher than the rest of the league combined—due to offensive line issues, poor scheme design, and Geno Smith's inability to get the ball downfield.

Insight page

Chris Godwin

NegativeUsage77:28

Godwin was a frequent target in Brady's 2022 short-passing Buccaneers offense, receiving short passes as part of the team's strategy to counter defensive coverage shells; he was part of an offense that ranked among the most pass-heavy in 20-30 years despite the short-yardage approach.

Insight page

Colston Loveland

PositiveBreakout18:00

Loveland is a second-year player that Davis Matic is optimistic about heading into 2026; Matic recently wrote a big piece on the Bears and Loveland explaining his optimism, positioning him as a long view player with breakout potential.

Insight page

Garrett Wilson

PositiveValue18:30

Wilson is available more cheaply in 2026 (fourth round) than he has been since his rookie year, and cheaper than 2025, making him a value play despite the Jets situation. Davis Matic is more optimistic about the Jets with Geno Smith and their weapons than he was last year with Justin Fields. Wilson exemplifies the long view concept: he was a first-round prospect disliked for his Jets landing spot in his rookie year, making him cheaper than warranted. He had a strong rookie season with career-high yards per route run, but production has declined each year since despite strong underlying play and route running. The decline does not make sense given his underlying talent and the games watched. Context: Aaron Rodgers tore his Achilles immediately upon joining the Jets in year two of Wilson's career, preventing what was supposed to be an upgrade at QB; in year three he did play but had a tough year, and the team traded for DeVonta Adams midseason.

Insight page

Ja'Marr Chase

PositiveUsage17:00

Chase exemplifies the pinnacle of long view players—an elite talent whose underlying ability is so strong that he can overcome defensive game plans keying on him; despite lower ADOT than expected, he gets open consistently and produces at an elite level because defenses cannot stop him.

Insight page

Jonathan Taylor

PositiveBreakout4:00

Long-view player who had one of the most impressive seasons of his career; demonstrates the value of sticking with elite talent through rocky periods. Taylor's underlying ability—being a workhorse back with elite athletic profile tested at Wisconsin—translates to sustained production even through career downslopes. With Shane Steichen's arrival, he showed how good that talent is when situation improves.

Insight page

Justin Herbert

NegativeUsage77:22

In 2022, Herbert's Chargers were among the most pass-heavy offenses in the last 20-30 years, with Herbert throwing short passes repeatedly to running back Austin Ekeler as a counter to defensive adjustments; his offense exemplified the extreme passing approach taken by teams facing the new defensive shell coverage.

Insight page

Kelvin Benjamin

NegativeRole72:11

Benjamin exemplifies how rule changes and defensive evolution from 2014 onward reduced the fantasy relevance of big-bodied receivers; despite a strong rookie season with 9 touchdowns in 2014, his career declined as the NFL shifted toward prioritizing athleticism over physicality, eventually forcing him to move to tight end where he faded out.

Insight page

Marvin Harrison Jr.

PositiveValue3:00

Insight page

PositiveBreakout3:18

Harrison is positioned as a long view player in Arizona's pass-catching core; despite a tough 2025 season, he had significant draft capital and an interesting prospect profile coming out of college that supports optimism for a breakout year ahead.

Insight page

Michael Wilson

NegativeRole3:18

Wilson is characterized as a short view player in Arizona's pass-catching core; he had a great 2025 season but is more dependent on recent production than on long-term prospect pedigree or draft capital.

Insight page

Parker Washington

NegativeRole3:18

Washington is characterized as a short view player in Jacksonville's pass-catching core; he had a great 2025 season but is more dependent on recent production than on long-term prospect pedigree or draft capital.

Insight page

Tom Brady

NegativeUsage77:28

Brady's 2022 Buccaneers had a very low average depth of target (ADOT), throwing short passes repeatedly to running backs and receivers like Chris Godwin as a strategic response to defensive coverage adjustments; the Buccaneers were among the most pass-heavy offenses in 20-30 years despite the short-passing approach.

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Full transcript

Episode Transcript

1,640

0:00The Evolution of NFL Offensive and Defensive Strategy and Its Impact on Fantasy Football.

0:04That's what we're going to talk about today on The Long View, a new podcast for myself, Ben Gretch.

0:10You can find my Substack Stealing Signals at bengretch.substack.com.

0:12And my new co-host on this endeavor, Jacob Sanderson.

0:15You can find his great Substack, Thinking About Thinking, at jacobsanderson.substack.com.

0:18A couple of Substack newsletter writers here. And this is our new podcast, Jacob, that we have been talking about doing for a couple of years.

0:26You and I have known each other for a while now and have talked for a while about potentially working together in

0:32one way or another, potentially doing a podcast together.

0:35We have been working on this throughout this offseason, made the decision a couple of months ago to be doing this.

0:41It took us a little longer to get this first podcast, this first episode recorded than we anticipated for a variety of reasons.

0:48There are some things about the pod that we want to go over at the top.

0:52But first of all, how you doing? Excited to be doing this with you.

0:56I'm doing great, man. I'm excited. We've been circling this, like you said, for like multiple years, like in some form.

1:02And I'm super pumped to finally have like an official show to do with you.

1:07I remember back when you were doing your own YouTube streams for a while and I hopped on those a bunch and we had a ton of fun.

1:15And I remember, you know, people seem to enjoy the pairing.

1:18So hopefully they're going to enjoy it because they're going to get a lot of it in that short order coming here.

1:25That's right. Yeah. So I was doing a stealing signal.

1:27I was doing slow drafts on YouTube and I would have guests on at times.

1:32And I mean, people liked a lot of the different guests, had a lot of fun guests on.

1:37But I did get a few specific pieces of feedback that were like, I love this combination.

1:42I love you two working together. Those who know our two newsletters will know that we think about things somewhat similarly.

1:48One of the reasons I'm really excited about doing this with you is that I like to work with people.

1:54I talk about this in the newsletter. I've talked about it with the different people I've worked with.

1:59We've both had the great luxury of working with Pat and Pete at Ship Chasing.

2:04I eventually left there after several years and you've been doing it since then as one of my replacements with Davis Matic.

2:10And I mean, they're awesome guys to work with.

2:13My opportunity to work with them and work with Sean Siegel, the different people I work with.

2:18What I always emphasize is I like to work with people who I think of the fantasy football very similarly to on

2:24a foundational level so that the conversations can be those second and third order conversations.

2:28Because there are times when I've done content throughout my career where without being able to necessarily agree on the base level

2:35things, you spend a lot of time. I mean, sometimes that's interesting too because you get different flavors and different angles of things.

2:42But you do spend a lot of time just sort of on the surface level saying I like this guy or I don't like this guy.

2:49And it's really for very different reasons. Analytically, we'll be more aligned.

2:53And that will be a lot of fun for hopefully for the listeners.

2:56One of the notes about both of us is we are a little bit.

3:01Both of us are a little bit longer winded and people will know that.

3:05I'm sure that know either of us. That gets to the title, The Long View, which for anyone who doesn't know anything about the concept.

3:12The Long View is a concept I've thrown out in the newsletter over the years as like a way of looking at

3:18players that are looking at players on a longer timeline, on a longer view.

3:22And the market often responds to things that have happened in really short order.

3:26I think two really good situations, there'll be better ones, but two really good situations this year are in Arizona and Jacksonville

3:33in the pass catching cores where you have like Michael Wilson and Parker Washington who both had great years last year.

3:39But they're like more, they'd be more like short view guys.

3:42You're kind of just building off 2025. And they have teammates in Marvin Harrison and Brian Thomas Jr.

3:47Who had a lot more draft capital, a lot more interesting prospect profiles coming out.

3:52And they would be more like long view players.

3:54You got to remember like what they did in college to think back to why you might be optimistic about a player

4:01like a Marvin Harrison or Brian Thomas after tough seasons last year.

4:04And so that's the kind of analytical framework that both of us do subscribe to and do a lot of our work around.

4:11And I think there's a real edge with that.

4:14And so that will also be a big part of, in addition to, you know, us talking a lot, that will also

4:20be a big part of the way that we discuss content on the show.

4:24Totally. I think that's going to be, I think last year in many ways was like one of the big years for

4:31that long view esque idea where you saw certain guys that were maybe a little bit more difficult to like strictly project

4:37wind up having these big leaps in their season.

4:40Like you think of like a JSN, you think of a Jonathan Taylor.

4:43Or you think of even like a guy like a George Pickens who gets in a new situation and really shines.

4:50Like I think there were, there was a ton of that last year and excited to talk through some of those guys this year for sure.

4:57I also wanted to go into a little bit of what the show is going to be.

5:02So we're, we're working on a, what we've been, we've been loosely calling the freemium model.

5:07So you're listening to this episode. Everyone that wants to listen to this episode can listen to this episode.

5:12And that's going to be the case for, for all of our regular episodes, which will be roughly one a week that

5:19we're going to be able to do. That's going to be available wherever you get your podcasts.

5:24We are also going to have a Patreon. And the way that I would put this is there's going to be some

5:30stuff that we will put there that'll be only for Patreon subscribers.

5:34That'll include some drafts that we're going to do together throughout the rest of the summer.

5:38It may include some other stuff. We'll, we'll see where we get there.

5:42Most of all, it's sort of, if you want to support the show, we would really, really invite that.

5:48And we're going to hopefully have, you know, a lovely community of folks who want to do that.

5:53But that's going to be, I think the, what, what we should expect going forward from the show.

5:58We're super, super excited for it. And we'll see how it evolves from there.

6:02Yeah. Main thing that we wanted to drive home with this model.

6:06And when we first talked, we didn't know if we were going to do it this way or another way.

6:12We both have had success at the sub stacks that we've written, letting our subscribers and our fans and people who like our content support us directly.

6:19We're going to do like no ads on the show and those things, at least for the time being.

6:25I don't know. There's a possibility of anything in the future.

6:28We have no idea where this is going to go.

6:31But for the immediate future, like we're not, we don't want to set up an ad model or anything like that.

6:37We just want to give people the opportunity to support us directly.

6:41Hopefully that allows us to make enough money to make this into something that we want to keep doing and can keep doing.

6:47And that's a model that's worked for us in our newsletters.

6:51I know it's less common in the podcast space, and I'm sure some people will not love that.

6:56But I want to be clear that we're not going to put a ton of stuff.

7:01Like we don't know what we'll put behind it.

7:03But you and I have talked through this and been like, look, we're mostly just creating this opportunity for people to have

7:10like the voluntary ability to support the show if they want to.

7:13And there will be some things that we then do to sort of justify that.

7:17But at the same time, one of the things you and I both don't want to do because we do have our

7:24own newsletters and other things that we're doing is over promise too much as it relates to a new subscription based thing.

7:30We're basically not promising anything. But as you said, one thing we will do between now and week one is we will

7:37do some drafts together that we thought that those shows would make sense as behind the paywall.

7:42So if you want to get our specific working together shows, then you'll get those.

7:46But all the shows we do on analysis and those kinds of things, our regular weekly show, we're just going to keep free.

7:53And we're not going to expect anybody to subscribe just to be a listener to the show or anything like that.

7:59So far more content in front of the paywall than behind, I would say.

8:03At the same time, we want to encourage anyone who does want to support us because that will help us continue to do the show.

8:10I mean, we're not – like who knows what will become of this, how long we'll be doing it, all of those things.

8:17One of the things with the freemium model is if enough people want to subscribe and it scales up and all of

8:23those things, then it gives us incentive to continue to do more shows and to make stuff that's free and paid.

8:30And make this something that is a big deal for both of us.

8:33So that's the freemium model that obviously exists out there in some places and people are aware of.

8:39But I think it's key for us to emphasize that we are not promising too, too much or anything.

8:44And we're also not expecting anything. You're not going to be left out from the bulk of the content if you're not a paid subscriber.

8:51So all those things are very important. But with that, Jacob, we're going to go to our first little segment.

8:57And so every episode, we've talked to kind of how we want to do this.

9:02We're going to probably go pretty long on some stuff.

9:05I remember two years ago, we did one of our drafts and we got into a discussion about Anthony Richardson and about the fourth or fifth round.

9:12It was the year he was going really, really high.

9:15And you were correct. I was a little more down on him.

9:19But what I remember about this specifically is the comments that we kept talking about Anthony Richardson until like the 15th round.

9:25Like in between every pick, we had a discussion about it.

9:28So the whole draft became a conversation about Anthony Richardson and the Colts and how that affects other players and projections and all of these things.

9:36And I think a really good conversation. People seemed to really like it as we really broke down the nuances of that profile.

9:43It's something that you and I both really like to do is roll up our sleeves and get deep into the analytical stuff.

9:49At the same time, because we're going to have a lot of those kinds of discussions on the show, number one, we're not going to limit ourselves time-wise.

9:58We may have some pretty long shows. And number two, those will be sort of our long view concept of the week.

10:04We're also going to start every show with the short view, which will be a quick rundown.

10:09Jacob will be – I'm super excited about this because I don't have to do the work.

10:14When I used to work at CBS, I loved working with Adam Azer, who's the podcast host over there.

10:19And he would always do a news and notes segment at the beginning.

10:23And I'd always pick up on some stuff that had slipped through the cracks for me.

10:28And I have two kids for people who don't know, and I'm a little bit less engaged at this stage of my life than I was prior.

10:36One of the really exciting things for me about doing this podcast with you is getting this like youth invigoration because I

10:42have my other podcast, Sealing Bananas with Sean, who's a little older than me.

10:46So now I'm going to have these two two-man podcasts, one with a guy that's a little bit older that's kind of

10:53a mentor to me, one with you that's a little bit younger who I think – I mean, I think you're just an incredible analyst.

11:00Coming up a little later than me on timeline-wise, but certainly in no way any less than or anything like that.

11:06But a lot more engaged, a lot more free time.

11:09You don't have children like I do. And so you in a lot of the – well, at least that you know of.

11:16And you in a lot of the – a lot of the – I'm pretty sure, for the record.

11:21Pretty sure. In a lot of the episodes and especially in these first few weeks and especially as training camp hits, this

11:28short view will be you maybe running down some news and notes.

11:31There will be other times where maybe it's an opportunity to talk about some specific topic or thing that you want to

11:38get, like maybe a quick thought from me on or whatever, or you want to – whatever.

11:43You're going to have full reign to kind of structure this how you want.

11:47But every show, the first 10 or 15 minutes – today we're taking a little longer to explain the podcast.

11:53But first 10 or 15 minutes will be the short view.

11:56We'll run through a few different topics. It won't just be one short view topic.

12:00It will be maybe three. It will be five.

12:03It will be eight, depending on what you think is interesting for that particular episode.

12:07And so people who don't have as much time to listen to us talk for two hours about Anthony Richardson or whoever

12:14the topic du jour is that day. Topic du jour that day.

12:17I just did the ATM machine thing, I believe.

12:20Yeah, topic today that day. Yeah. Yeah, you are a Canadian.

12:23You would know. You know, I like to mix in my French.

12:26I'm culture. Yeah, that's good. There you go. So anyway, let me kick it over to you for the short view.

12:32What do we got for this first episode, short view?

12:35So today's going to be a little different. It's not going to be a news-based segment to let people in behind the scenes.

12:42That's because we're recording this before we have a podcast yet.

12:45So I wanted to fix something a little evergreen.

12:48This is probably a few days before this actually goes live.

12:51And I also thought it would be fun to level set kind of what the show is about in player form.

12:57So we're going to talk about a quick rundown of some of the guys that I think best epitomize this long view concept.

13:04Some of the guys who've kind of already done that.

13:07Some of the guys we're expecting to see that from this year.

13:10And then a little bit into, you know, where the market is treating some of these long view ideas these days.

13:17So probably the first guys that I wanted to hit on is like the guys that have clearly ascended.

13:22And so we're talking about guys like Jameer Gibbs, Jonathan Taylor, AJ Brown were all profiles that I felt like we were very, very in on.

13:30The two of us. Certainly not only the two of us.

13:33But that we're very in on aggressively ahead of market when they were coming out.

13:37When they had success early in their careers. And all I think are interesting spots this year.

13:42Jameer Gibbs for the first time now is I think the consensus 101.

13:46He was both of our RB1s last year going into the season.

13:49AJ Brown finally getting into this really interesting situation where he might actually finally be in a top half pass volume offense.

13:56For the first time in his career. We've seen his ADP rebound even off of a poor season.

14:01And of course Taylor had one of the most impressive seasons of his career.

14:05Wanted to get your thoughts on those guys. And sort of how they epitomize this concept in your mind.

14:11And then we're going to talk about some of the guys that we think might be kind of the next generation of

14:17these longer view brand type players for us too.

14:20Yeah, those are great ones. I mean those are guys that have been big ones for, I know both of us.

14:26I was going to say for me in the last several seasons in terms of my own teams and my own play.

14:32And they're great examples of players that had the really great prospect profiles.

14:36Had the draft capital. In some cases didn't necessarily have the perfect landing spot.

14:40Like AJ Brown originally in Tennessee was the famous one where you had to bet on talent over situation.

14:46Brock Bowers going to the Raiders. I mean we saw last year how, I mean obviously in addition to his injury.

14:52But the situation was just such a disaster with the offensive line.

14:55And I think they had whatever it was, five games with, I say whatever it was.

15:00I mentioned this on a recent ETR projections podcast and I saw this stat while going through my projections.

15:06But something like five games or seven games where they had 100 total air yards or fewer as a team passing vertically.

15:12Like could not get the ball down the field.

15:15Which like the rest of the league combined for like roughly the same amount.

15:19Their rate of games that were like no vertical pass volume because, you know, Geno Smith couldn't get the ball out.

15:25And he had a happy feed and you had the offensive line issues and all these things was dramatically higher.

15:31And then just a poorly conceived offense. Everything you could possibly want to be a bad situation was bad for Bowers last year.

15:37We've had these things. We had it with JT for a stretch.

15:41Early in his career it was better. And more recently, obviously last year we get Shane Steichen in there.

15:46We get a more favorable offense. And we see again how good that talent is.

15:51Which goes back to the long view thing. And you stick with that.

15:55Even as a player underwhelms at points in given seasons.

15:58That's one of the advantages of this long view way of thinking is you're like, man, Jonathan Taylor back at Wisconsin.

16:04You know, we both believe being a workhorse is a skill.

16:07And this is a guy who could tote the rock like nobody's business at Wisconsin.

16:11Had the athletic profile tested like an absolute freak of nature.

16:14And early in his career showed off that that all translated.

16:18And he, you know, was essentially an immediate superstar.

16:20And so, anyway, these are great examples of guys that even as they go through rocky periods in their career.

16:26And there's always a downslope to players' careers. So, a guy like A.J.

16:30Brown is getting up there. There's, you know, going to be a reasonable debate.

16:34Some people think he's over the hill. I probably fall more in the optimistic perspective on him in new digs with the Patriots this year.

16:41But these are guys where the underlying ability. I mean, and that is so crucial at the NFL level.

16:47Can you overcome all the situations that you're in?

16:49The underlying ability is so, so strong. A more recent breakout example.

16:53Maybe it's like a JSN who had a great prospect profile.

16:56I'm just thinking of him last year. Just the underlying ability was so clear.

17:00Even as he got tasked with being like the only show in town.

17:04And he wound up having 44% of the teams receiving yardage.

17:07I mean, just absolutely absurd. And as teams are trying to key on that more and more throughout the season, he continues to hit.

17:14Because there's guys that are that good. I mean, Jamar Chase has been that guy over the course of his career.

17:20You can throw to me. And his ADOT is like lower than it should be.

17:25But it's like, because you can throw to me every single time.

17:28I'll get open even though everyone's trying to stop me.

17:31And there's only certain players that once they become the center piece and the focal point of the defensive game plan can still produce.

17:38And these are the pinnacle of the pinnacle of the long view types.

17:42Definitely. So this year, we had talked a little bit about who some of these guys that might, you know, that haven't

17:48gotten all the way up to the absolute apex.

17:51But that we're excited about this year and going forward in this type of mindset.

17:55And three of the names that stuck out. Two second year guys.

17:59So which are Colston Loveland and Tedaro McMillan. I know you've been working on the Bears projection just now.

18:04We were talking about a little bit pre-show. I just wrote a big piece about the Bears and about Loveland and why I'm so optimistic about him.

18:12I recently listened to you talking about Tedaro over on the ETR pod and got even more excited than I already was about him this year.

18:20And then one guy that I wanted to throw to that is a little bit further in.

18:25And he reminds me of guys like Stefan Diggs, DJ Moore, of guys who, you know, had the really, really strong pedigree.

18:31Didn't necessarily have it all come together right away for various reasons in the way that we might have hoped or that we thought was capable of.

18:39But then, you know, both those guys, Diggs especially, eventually wound up having a huge hit and a huge middle section of his career.

18:46We're hopeful this guy can find that too. And it's Garrett Wilson who's, I think, available more cheaply than he's been this year since his rookie year.

18:54He's going in the fourth round. And interestingly, more cheaply this year than last year.

18:58Where while I, you know, I'm not going to say that the Jets are like some great situation.

19:04But I find myself much more optimistic about the Jets this year with Geno Smith and some of their weapons than I

19:10was last year from fantasy at least with Justin Fields.

19:13I'm going to be, all these guys are going in a really similar range of the draft actually.

19:18I'm trying my best to be overweight, all three of them.

19:21And wanted to hear your thoughts on those guys as well.

19:25Yeah, I mean the year two guys I think are pretty straightforward.

19:28Wilson is super fun. He's a great example of the Longview concept because he was a really great prospect.

19:34And people didn't like the landing spot coming into his rookie year.

19:37And so he was way cheaper than he should have been for a guy with first round draft capital and the profile he had.

19:44And was a pretty big hit as a rookie with what's still his career high yards per outrun.

19:49And he ran a lot of routes right away out of the gate and had a very good first season.

19:55And then it's been worse every year since, which doesn't really make a lot of sense.

20:00Especially if you're somebody who does actually watch all the games and those things.

20:04I mean he's done some pretty incredible stuff. Year two he was supposed to have Aaron Rodgers.

20:09And Aaron Rodgers tears his Achilles immediately. And then I say Aaron Rodgers, a lot of people think that Aaron Rodgers sucks.

20:15But that was supposed to be an upgrade. And then year three he did get Rodgers.

20:20But often Achilles injury. I mean Aaron Rodgers had a pretty tough year.

20:24And then they trade for Devontae Adams midseason to try to kind of appease Rodgers.

20:28And make this version of the Jets team work in a way that it was pretty clearly doomed.

20:33But all of these things have been not great for Garrett Wilson's development and situation.

20:38Last year as you noted with Fields, I was pretty out on him too because of the...

20:43You have a name for it. But I always just describe the concept.

20:47Dropback inversion rate. Dropback conversion rate. I love it.

20:49Just the idea of the number of dropbacks that turn into pass attempts.

20:53There's three outcomes on a dropback, a sack, a scramble, or a pass attempt.

20:57And on the sacks and scrambles, you don't get a target.

21:00You don't get any receiving production. The quarterback holds the ball too long.

21:04Justin Fields is the poster boy for this concept.

21:07Yeah. Because he gets sacked at an incredibly high rate and he scrambles at an incredibly high rate.

21:12And it's like, at times as much as like 30% of his dropbacks don't even become pass attempts.

21:17Which is a crazy high combination of sack rate and scramble rate.

21:21For both of those to be like approaching 15%.

21:23For a lot of other guys, it's going to be like 10% total.

21:27Like 5% for both. Like historically, the guys who are the highest DCR guys like Dak, Matthew Stafford, Kirk Cousins when he was at his prime.

21:35Like they were living in like a 92% dropback conversion rate compared to guys like Fields who have been like in the

21:41high 60s, low 70s for a lot of their career.

21:44So, I mean, that's a big reason both. I know both you and I were a little bit more skeptical of Wilson

21:50from like a more of a pure projection standpoint last year.

21:54And yet he came out playing pretty well last year.

21:57He actually had his best yards per outrun since that rookie year.

22:00Was drawn a lot of volume. His targets per outrun has been very good every year.

22:05The yards per target side has kind of held him back.

22:08But his yards per outruns every year, like they haven't been terrible or anything.

22:12If you do, like I said, kind of watch it.

22:15You see a guy who looks for the most part throughout his career like the pretty clear number one.

22:20I say the most part that stretch with Devontae Adams maybe a little bit more where he was kind of the secondary guy.

22:27But most of the time, he has looked like the clear number one.

22:31He's also like made some really good plays at the catch point.

22:34And he has some awesome one-handed catches to this point in his career that kind of go back to what the skill set from Ohio State.

22:42His evasion numbers with the ball, like ball and hand stuff have still been really good.

22:47Though his yak hasn't necessarily been great. Just in part because like to like try to get him going.

22:52They've done some like short area throws and things.

22:55But there's always a tension on him. He's never really been in an offense that creates any kind of room for him to maneuver or operate.

23:02I think of him like DJ Moore who you said, who I was really into from a Longview perspective throughout his first few years in Carolina.

23:10And people were always really down on him. And they said he's never going to score touchdowns and this and that.

23:16And he did finally have a pretty big season in Carolina.

23:19And then he had the big season with the Bears as well.

23:23Ironically with, or not ironically, coincidentally with Justin Fields.

23:25And look, DJ Moore's never become like a really high-end number one, which, you know, if you looked at some of his

23:32prospect numbers, you may have expected at some point.

23:35But yeah, I'm excited. I haven't done the Jets projection.

23:37It's one of the last few I need to get done.

23:41But Garrett Wilson is one that I assume I'll wind up pretty high on again.

23:45And injured for most of last season. And I'm pretty excited to see what could happen for him.

23:50Because like, for a lot of people, they want what we've seen to be the only thing that's occurred.

23:56And, you know, every season is kind of a small sample.

23:59And it is sort of the Occam's razor, you know, explanation that maybe Wilson's just not that good.

24:04But the more complex explanation is sometimes accurate. And in this case, it may be that he's just been in some really bad situations.

24:11Even though it's been four years and a lot of people are impatient.

24:15They're like, when's it going to hit? Well, I mean, maybe it'll hit a little bit later for this guy.

24:21Because some guys do get the tough situations year in and year out.

24:25So anyway, he's another one. I love you bringing it up.

24:28Because, yeah, I do truly believe in that talent still.

24:31And then you mentioned McMillan and Loveland who are super, super fun.

24:34Loveland, a 21-year-old rookie last year. Didn't turn 22 until April.

24:38Has the huge breakout late. That I don't think everyone understands.

24:41Because it was sort of after fantasy season. It started in like week 16, 17, 18 into the postseason.

24:46But he had 80-plus percent routes. In like four straight weeks.

24:49And he had over 90 receiving yards in three of those.

24:53He had 10-plus targets for four straight games. If you haven't gone back and looked at his game log at the end of the year.

25:00And into the postseason. As they were trying to get into the playoffs.

25:04That's what a late season rookie, you know, upswing in usage can look like.

25:08And when it's a 21-year-old tight end. I think we've gotten kind of numb to how hard it is for rookie tight

25:14ends to be as productive as Loveland was late in the year.

25:18You're going into age 22. This is a first-round draft capital guy.

25:21And also, as bad as J.J. McCarthy was last year.

25:24I mean, this guy, two of his three collegiate seasons were with J.J.

25:28McCarthy. And he had good per-route numbers at Michigan.

25:31And it's made me rethink him. And his third season, like, I don't know.

25:35Like, they had like completely incapable quarterback play. They were playing like, they played like four or five different quarterbacks.

25:41And half of them were like only running. There were games that they were playing a two-quarterback system because they couldn't move the ball down the field.

25:48Like, it was, basically, his last season at Michigan, it was like their only offense was either run the ball, run the ball, run the ball.

25:56And then, like, six or seven times a game, they would try to throw the ball to Colson Loveland.

26:02And maybe they'd get it within his, like, area.

26:04And then he'd be able to catch it. Oh, Jesus Christ.

26:07You did the six or seven thing. My daughters would absolutely like that.

26:11Tedderoa McMillan. The kids I have around town that I don't know about would like that, too.

26:16That's right. Exactly. Tedderoa McMillan, another one. He only had like a – I say only, but he had like a 1.85 yards per out run.

26:24And then they weren't very pass heavy. The Panthers as a team, very low in pass rate over expected last year, had

26:30several games both when they were winning. They were trying to win low-scoring games.

26:34And when they got beat where they just went run heavy and basically allowed themselves to be blown out.

26:40I don't have the stat right in front of me, but when I went through the projections, it was something like all but like three of their losses.

26:48I think it was like six of their nine losses were double digits.

26:52And then they went eight, nine. I think like seven of their eight wins were by one score.

26:57And a bunch of them were just by a field goal.

27:00So it's like they won all the close low-scoring one-score games and then they lost.

27:05They just let themselves be blown out. They didn't even get garbage time and a lot of extra routes in those scenarios.

27:11But McMillan winds up with a strong year one per route profile in my opinion.

27:15I mean it's not – you love to see it over two.

27:19I'm using the PFF numbers. It was like 1.85-ish, but still very, very good.

27:23Good volume, solid enough efficiency. And then when you go to the long view and you say this is a three-year early

27:29to Claire who had the really great collegiate stuff, I think you have to look at him as a profile that – as another one.

27:37Was a young rookie. Is going to continue to develop.

27:40So those are all really great ones that could be the next class of stars of just really good – I mean

27:46the Loveland one, like that guy is just good at football.

27:49If he was that productive with J.J. McArthur and with the quarterbacks you were saying and then what he was able to

27:56do late last season at age 21 at the NFL level.

27:59Like that's the idea of the long view stuff where it's like you're just so confident this player is incredibly good at football.

28:05And those guys, the cream tends to rise to the top.

28:09Those are the guys that you want to be on when the market is maybe too fixated on situation or things like that.

28:15Loveland's price is obviously up there this year as a tight end three.

28:19But in other situations like Garrett Wilson, there's maybe the opportunity to lean into that.

28:24What I love the most about Loveland is – and kind of hard not to compare it to his teammate in this respect.

28:30Like for the entire season, his numbers were really strong.

28:33He had 23% targets per outrun, 1.97 yards per outrun.

28:36That would be an amazing season for any rookie wide receiver.

28:39It would especially be an amazing season for one who's 21 years old.

28:43And when you consider he's a tight end, I think it just gets even more impressive.

28:48But like you mentioned, he got the full-time role at the end of the year.

28:52And then his efficiency numbers actually got even better in the full-time role than he had over the course of the season.

28:59He finishes the year in those final four games with 2.75 yards per outrun.

29:03I love seeing – in a small sample, of course, but already proof of concept that, oh, we scale this guy up

29:09from a 60% routes roll up to an 80%, 85% routes roll.

29:13And he's actually getting even better. He's getting even more efficient.

29:16You love seeing that. And with Tedaroa, I think that's another part of it too where because he kind of just came

29:22in week one, he was already the number one wide receiver on that team.

29:26And I feel like there's a tendency for this industry sometimes where when guys don't have that kind of natural linear progression

29:33pattern where they start off in a part-time role, then they start to get more efficient, then they maybe get more snaps.

29:39And it's kind of easier sometimes for those players for people to project year two, year three, the growth for.

29:45But, you know, versus a guy like McMillan who just comes in as the eighth overall pick.

29:50He's the starter from day one. He's really good from day one.

29:53And I feel like a lot of the stuff I've seen around him is like, oh, well, you know, he's good, sure.

30:00But, like, is he really that great? Because he didn't even have over two yards per outrun.

30:05And he's got Bryce Young problems, which that part I think is very fair.

30:09I'm quite bearish on Bryce Young. And I think he is a legitimate limiting factor.

30:13But I think that there's an element to which people see McMillan as closer to a finished product because he came in

30:20so ready-made in a way that's pretty unfair, where you would almost see people, like, being more optimistic about internal growth and

30:26just, like, improvement, getting better at the game for a guy who came in less prepared, you know, whose role was more catered early on.

30:33And the fact that McMillan, you know, was immediately racking up 90% route shares from the jump, I think almost works against

30:40him in some people's eyes subconsciously, where, like, what if, you know, this year coming in as a 22-year-old player, like, again,

30:46another 21-year-old early-declared guy, he just shows up and he's better in many ways.

30:50And he was already really impressive. But, like, what if he comes in with significant improvements to his game?

30:56I mean, that's what we saw with, like, a JSN last year is, like, yes, you know, DK Metcalf was out of the picture.

31:03But, like, the Jackson Smith and Jigba we saw on the field last year was a fundamentally much better football player than

31:09the Jackson Smith and Jigba we saw his first two years.

31:12And that's part of what we're betting on with some of these guys is you have the signs of the talent ceiling they can get to.

31:20That doesn't mean that they show up in the NFL already at their highest point, already at their peak.

31:26You have that pedigree and you hope to see over the course of time them already start at a high level but just continue to have that self-improvement.

31:34I'm pretty excited to see how high the ceiling can get for Ted Arroa.

31:38And I don't want to discount the possibility that even if the situation remains relatively stable, he's just able to consolidate more volume.

31:45He's able to get more efficient. He's able to turn in a higher ceiling.

31:49I love that point. Wide receiver, he was basically going to build his offense around, structure his offense around.

31:54And he had done that the year prior with Mike Evans.

31:57And he was kind of making – he's like, you know, when I was at Tampa, I had – I remember the quotes.

32:04When I was at Tampa, I had Mike Evans.

32:07And we kind of built the passing game around this one, you know, wide receiver.

32:11That's kind of the way he thinks about his offense as sort of building it around a number one wide receiver or

32:17the passing game and then working off of that.

32:20Maybe McMillan – I mean, I think McMillan was clearly that guy last year for him.

32:25But I don't think from week one of your rookie season that Dave Canales is expecting Ted Arroa McMillan to be so

32:31established and so good that he can do that to the degree that he was sort of talking about it.

32:37Even with a Deontay Johnson, going into year two, that's one of the things that I'm really excited about with the Panthers

32:43is I do think that Canales is going to be more proactive of being like, all right.

32:48I mean, he showed it in year one. He showed that the transition wasn't impossible or anything, right?

32:54Like he's good enough. Now what's the next step?

32:56Where are we going to go? How are we going to lean more into this dude and make him more of a

33:03focal point of everything that we're doing? And that's really what I expect going into year two.

33:08So I think that one's really fun. Cool. So that is what we're calling the short view.

33:13It was a little longer today than it will be for most episodes.

33:16The idea – Medium view. The idea for us is that it's an opportunity to force us to talk about more topics.

33:23So we did still talk through several different concepts there, several different players.

33:27That's what we will do each episode at the beginning, first 15 minutes.

33:30Maybe it will be the first half hour, some shows.

33:33But it will allow us or force us to get into a few more topics than usual because we do like to

33:40peel back the layers of the onion and get pretty deep into individual topics.

33:44That's what we're going to do for the rest of the day.

33:47Today, as we get into our sort of longer view topic for today – And, you know, whatever.

33:53The structure may not be the exact same every episode forever, but that's sort of the way we're envisioning it.

33:58And for now – and the long view topic may be multiple topics sometimes.

34:02But for today, for the first episode, in that idea of – in that vein of sort of setting the table a

34:09little bit for the things that we want to talk about on this show and what we think is important right now

34:15in fantasy football, and this is our first episode in July and the season's right around the corner, and how do we

34:22get up to speed for draft season quickly. One of the big things that you and I both talk about a lot

34:28in our substacks and in our content is the macro level stuff.

34:32We've done some stuff on it together and sort of referencing each other's work and things like that.

34:37At the newsletter, we did some stuff together. We were both guests on a CBS pod recently and went into a lot of this stuff.

34:44A lot of you may have already heard us talk through the evolution of the NFL and offensive defensive strategy and the

34:51heavy personnel trend and more tight ends and those things.

34:53It's been talked about a lot of different places.

34:56It's very clear that in the NFL draft, we saw a lot of like blocking tight ends going on day two.

35:02And like those things, we were talking about Loveland a minute ago.

35:06The Bears took Sam Rauch on day two, and I think some people are probably like, hmm, that's weird.

35:11They drafted a tight end. Basically plays an entirely different position, which is something that you know better than I do, but

35:18he's basically a blocking tight end only. And if I'm remembering it right, he has like no more than 20 career receptions

35:24in a season, or 20 receptions in a season.

35:27Rauch actually has like some, he actually has production.

35:29Okay, I'm thinking of Borkercher then from the Jays.

35:32Yeah, Borkercher is the one. Him and then there's another guy, Marlon Klein, the guy that the Texans took.

35:38Those two have virtually no college production. Rauch is huge, but he does actually have two 40-catch seasons out at Stanford.

35:44Which is interesting because they called him in some of the quotes a wide tight end.

35:48They said it was important they needed to get a wide tight end at that spot.

35:53But, and then they, Ryan Poles, the general manager was talking about it.

35:57And then he sort of referenced Durham Smythe who played that role.

36:00Durham Smythe played 17 games last year and got six targets.

36:03And that's sort of the role that they. But he probably played like a ton of snaps.

36:08Like I felt like I was consistently seeing him on the field.

36:12Yeah, I went and looked at it. It wasn't as many as I thought it might have been as I was kind of writing up the Bears.

36:20But it was a decent amount. You're right. I mean, it was definitely a decent amount.

36:24He was playing every week. He was playing in packages every week.

36:28I don't know if it was double digit snaps every week.

36:31But there were some games where he even got up to 20 snaps and things like that.

36:36Which in average. And they also use Benedette as a sixth alignment pretty frequently.

36:40And so maybe they wind up consolidating. If they're really confident in Rauch's blocking.

36:44Maybe they consolidate, you know, the Smythe role and that extra O-line role.

36:48And it gives them a little bit more versatility where, you know, certainly Rauch more of a pass catcher than a literal sixth offensive line.

36:55So, I mean, not that we want to get specifically into this.

36:59But I want to hear your thoughts. How do you – so do you think Rauch was going to actually catch –

37:05because I ended up projecting him to not get very much volume at all in year one.

37:10And that he would mostly do a lot of the blocking and help in the run game.

37:15And then also help in the pass game. And Loveland gets a lot of the target.

37:20Because then there's Komet, right? And so I had Komet.

37:23Do you think Rauch – I mean, I guess – does Rauch impact Komet's target rate a decent amount?

37:28I mean, not that I projected him for even really a fantasy role.

37:32I don't think it's going to be a ton.

37:35Like, you look at a guy like Charlie Kohler, who's also actually kind of ironically at a different spot – at an interesting spot this year.

37:42But he was like a receiving tight end in college.

37:45I mean, he was a do-everything tight end in college.

37:48But he had three years of 44 or more catches.

37:51And then you fast forward to him at the pro level.

37:54You know, he's basically just been a blocking tight end for Baltimore.

37:58He has four catches, seven, nine, ten. And usually he's playing in these multi-tight end sets as a point of attack blocker.

38:04But like, because he has some of that receiving background within him, he's a guy who I think, if the defense decides

38:11to treat him effectively as a sixth offensive lineman, you know, he can make you pay for that by kind of leaking out a bit downfield.

38:18That's kind of what I see with Rauch. It's like, I think he's going to play – they're probably going to play,

38:25I think, a decent chunk of 13. I think he gives you a far more versatile formation if you're playing 13 with

38:31him, Komet, and Loveland versus, you know, two tight ends and like a literal sixth offensive lineman.

38:36So I think he'll get a little bit. But I think it'll be kind of like – not trick plays, but almost

38:42trick plays in the sense of like we're not really getting the ball done with intent.

38:47But if you treat this guy like an offensive lineman, you know, we'll throw him the ball.

38:52Yeah. And so I would project no more than like 8 to 15 catches.

38:56But I think he'll have like a meaningful NFL role that allows them to have a pretty interesting 13 personnel with three

39:03tight ends who all I think can block. And, you know, Komet and Rauch are nowhere near as dynamic as Loveland, obviously.

39:09But I think they can both like get out and catch the ball a little bit to the point that the defense

39:15can't just like treat it like it's a goal line formation.

39:19You mentioned Kohler, and I think that's really interesting.

39:21He's over with the Chargers this year as well.

39:2410, 9, 7 receptions the last three years. But as he hurts per target, 9.5, 11.9, 9.7.

39:29It's like we throw this guy the ball. Like it's going to be an explosive play usually.

39:34I mean they're going to leak him out essentially.

39:36He's a blocker first. But if you just looked at like rate stats, he'd be like, oh, this guy's a great tight end.

39:43I mean it's because of how he's used situationally that he has those kinds of numbers.

39:48But he has at least one receiving TD each of those seasons as well with no more than 10 receptions, four total

39:54receiving touchdowns on 26 catches over the past three years.

39:57He's now with the Chargers who also brought in Njoku and still have Arande Gadsden.

40:01So they have another situation with all these heavy tight ends.

40:05So why don't you talk a little bit about that?

40:08The broader – you wrote an incredible piece at your sub stack wrapping up a lot of what we've seen, where we're at, why we're there.

40:15People are really into this heavy tight end stuff.

40:18I want to talk a little bit about everything before that.

40:21But let's start there and then we'll kind of get – there's so much to discuss as it comes to this stuff.

40:27We kind of want to lay the groundwork. We may not get through all of it on today's show.

40:33But certainly as far as 2026 is concerned, this is a very highly discussed topic.

40:37And I think you do a really great job of talking about it.

40:41So what are we seeing with some of these teams like the Chargers and the Bears?

40:46Well, I appreciate that. I talked about both those teams in my piece.

40:50And I talked about a lot of things in my piece.

40:53First of all, basketball for I think probably about the first 1,500 words.

40:57But if you check it out on my sub stack, it's a totally free piece to read if you're not a subscriber.

41:03It's called The NFL's Tight End Revolution. It will not be linear, but it will be televised.

41:08And I kind of drew out a long-running analogy to when the Warriors way back, the 2015 Warriors, debuted their death lineup.

41:14In which it was the small ball Warriors. And there were, I thought, a lot of simplistic takeaways if you were following

41:21basketball media at the time that were like, oh, okay.

41:24We're in the small ball era. Everybody's going to play small ball now.

41:28And there were certain archetypes of players who really lost ground in the league.

41:32Like, you know, there was two guys I focused on in my piece, Andre Drummond and Greg Monroe, who were like pretty

41:38traditional bully ball centers who really fell out of favor when they were guys that were centerpieces for teams at the time.

41:44But also that it wasn't really quite as two-dimensional as some commentators thought it would be.

41:49Certainly wasn't as two-dimensional as I think some teams that were trying to do copycat tactics were able to have success with.

41:56And really, you know, if you were to come up with one takeaway of how basketball has evolved over the last kind of decade since that.

42:03And I went through it in a lot more detail than I'll say here.

42:07It's like the takeaways were kind of obvious. It's like, you know, oh, we want guys who can defend on the perimeter,

42:14who can defend the rim and can shoot. And it's like, yeah, no shit.

42:18You want guys that can do everything that's really necessary in the sport, you know, if you can.

42:23And it's like, obviously not every team is going to have guys that have the level of versatility of like a Draymond Green.

42:30I talked a lot about Al Horford as a guy who kind of became a perfect modern basketball archetype where he was

42:36just really, really versatile and how he could be used on offense and defense.

42:40And I think in the NFL, you know, we're going to see something similar where there's always going to be a benefit

42:47to versatility and unpredictability in any sport. If you can have guys that can do multiple things, that's a massive advantage for

42:53you because you're not allowing the defense to key on you.

42:56So, you know, we just talked about the Bears.

42:59I think the Bears are a team that is doing the 12-13 personnel stuff in a way that's actually very intelligent in

43:05a way that I think is going to set them up for success.

43:09I think that they have Colson Loveland, who is a, in my opinion, like on track to being one of the best players in the National Football League.

43:17I thought he was a phenomenal prospect. And he's a guy that, if you just call him a wide receiver tomorrow, you

43:24know, I think would have a pretty strong career, but also provides more as a blocker than a lot of the top receiving tight ends.

43:31Like, I think you compare him in line to like a Bowers, to a, you know, especially like a Kinkade or Pitts.

43:37Like, I think he's bringing you a lot more.

43:40And so you have a star like him and two guys behind him in Komet and Rauch that I certainly don't think are special receivers.

43:47But like, you know, I think on their own could at least be like a Kate Otten, where it's like you're getting

43:54a guy who can provide some stuff in the receiving game.

43:57And on top of that, provide an edge in the blocking game.

44:00And it's like, that's a really difficult formation to get your head around if you're a defense.

44:05Because they're going to come up with three tight ends.

44:08They can run the ball on you. They have a huge personnel advantage in the running game.

44:13And if you don't treat their passing game with respect, they're going to have two legitimate stud receivers with Loveland and whichever

44:20burden and a dune says out there and two more guys that can hurt you.

44:24And that puts you in a serious bind. But, you know, I made some analogies between other sports and football.

44:30But like, I think at the end of the day, if all you're going for is just trying to fill out the

44:36slots and you're just saying, okay, well, I just want to get as many tight ends on the field as possible.

44:42Because that's going to somehow unleash this hidden advantage.

44:45You know, that's not really seeing the board properly.

44:48Because you need to have a specific element of star power and versatility combined, I think, to create that type of advantage.

44:54And I think teams that are just trying to pack the line with as many tight ends as possible might not come

45:00away with that same type of advantage. Like, for instance, I look at the Jaguars.

45:05So, to this point, when I was going through the projection process and shout out to Coach Speak Index for doing so

45:11good with the coaching quotes, I came across a couple of quotes that I think are just incredible from the coaches this offseason.

45:18And anyone who's listening to my other podcast knows that I loved the podcast series called The Play Callers from The Athletic.

45:24I believe it was the summer of 2023. And we'll get into sort of how the league was progressing at that time.

45:31But the really awesome thing about that was it was mostly coaches from the McVay-Shanahan tree.

45:35And they got McVay himself and I think a little bit of Kyle Shanahan too.

45:40And were able to get these guys on the record talking about what was happening with the different offenses and defenses in the league.

45:47And those are the schemes that have then dictated what's happened in the years since.

45:51And hearing them talk about what was going on as we were starting to go through this shock to the system.

45:57I always describe what's happened about a half dozen years ago starting about 2020, 2021 as the shock in a way that

46:04Taleb talks about it in his anti-fragility piece. And we talk about anti-fragility from a fantasy football perspective.

46:09But the idea is like when there's a shock to the system, are you robust?

46:13Are you fragile? Are you anti-fragile? Those are these different ways that you can respond to a shock.

46:19But shocks are things that change the whole meta, the whole perspective, the whole landscape.

46:23And one of the comparisons I like to make is a 2008 financial collapse and subprime mortgages and how that changed the whole financial world.

46:30I always like to make that one because I graduated with a finance degree in 2009.

46:35And that's why I do fantasy football for a living.

46:38But this – so we had the quotes from McVay in 2023.

46:41And he was talking about how the defenses had become unregulated and some of those things.

46:46We had quotes from Robert Sala, who was famously Kyle Shanahan's defensive coordinator.

46:50And he was talking about how they could take – what they wanted to do now after the shift was to take

46:56the jabs from the offense but stay away from the haymaker.

46:59Meaning we want to try to stop the explosive plays.

47:02And this is where the cover to shell and getting more defensive backs on the field came from.

47:08So I'm saying all of this mostly just to set up that as we talk about the tight ends, we had another amazing McVay quote this offseason.

47:15Back in – I believe it was in March.

47:18It might have even been in February. And he gets asked about the tight end stuff.

47:23And I thought this was so great largely because it's in the part of the offseason where he doesn't even necessarily know

47:29what his roster is going to look like. And they were asking him about using 13 personnel again.

47:34It was back in March. And he says, yeah, I think if you have the guys that can bring it to life.

47:41We had depth at the tight end spot last year, so it was favorable for us.

47:46I think the thing we've learned over nine years is that we can't get ourselves into thinking that the same things are going to be successful again.

47:53We've got to continue to adapt, adjust, and evolve.

47:56And the way that I wrote about that was that to me this quote is not just him talking about the Rams.

48:02It's Sean McVay giving you everything. I mean he's such a good communicator.

48:06He explains – would be my read that he explains the details of why they do things the way that they do

48:13in a way that like – Bill Belichick's coaching tree was always terrible.

48:16And I think Bill Belichick's the greatest coach of all time.

48:20But I think part of that's because Bill Belichick always probably kept stuff a little bit close to the vest.

48:25And it was more like he was the secret sauce.

48:28I don't know that he was like – I think it was like everybody do your job, including my coordinators and stuff.

48:35And then when they got into the head job, they didn't know how to do that.

48:39To me, Sean McVay is more the kind of guy that's like I'm willing to talk about everything.

48:45I'm not holding anything back. I'm an extrovert. Whereas Bill Belichick's probably an introvert.

48:49And McVay says I'm going to be – I'm going to give you everything that I'm thinking at all times.

48:55And we're going to just talk and we're going to collaborate and we're going to grow.

48:59And if you're coaching for a different team next year, I'll deal with that next year.

49:04And I'll continue to iterate and I'll continue to come up with great ideas because that's what he does.

49:10Even as his underlings go and are successful, he continues to come up with the next great idea.

49:15I think he's very clearly one of the best coaches in the league, if not the best, and probably the most influential

49:21offensive mind for modern football, just straight up, bar none.

49:24And yet what he's talking about here, he's asked about whether they're going to do 13 personnel in Los Angeles with the Rams.

49:31And what he says is applicable to every team.

49:33He says this idea that we've got to continue to adapt, adjust, and evolve.

49:38It matters if you have the guys that can bring it to life, that we had depth of the tight end spot last year is favorable for us.

49:46There's so much here about understanding that the defense is going to try to take away what you did well last year.

49:52What we've learned over nine years, we can't kid ourselves into thinking the same things are going to be successful.

49:58Again, because they're going to try to stop that.

50:01The defenses are out here trying to stop this stuff as well.

50:04He's got to continue to adapt, adjust, and evolve.

50:07And every team has to do this. You were just talking about the jegs.

50:11The other great quote was from Liam Cohen. And they are heading in a direction where they're definitely going to do some more heavy tight end stuff.

50:19But when he was asked about that, he said, I believe that there's going to be an uptick probably in the NFL next year in heavier personnel groupings.

50:27I'm not sure we're going to over-rotate to a point where we want to get slower or less explosive.

50:32We still have some pretty damn good wide outs that I like to use.

50:36And so that word over-rotate, I think, is really telling there.

50:40Because they did go out and draft two new tight ends and extend Brenton Strange.

50:44And one of those tight ends they drafted in the second round as a guy who never had 200 receiving yards in a season in college.

50:52Never had more than 20 catches. The other one, Tanner Coziel, is a guy that you got me on during Dynasty season.

50:58That's our goat. That's our goat right there. 94 catch season at Ball State and 74 the next year.

51:04I mean, he's a stud in the day three sleeper tight end that I'm actually legit super excited about.

51:09But he's buried in Jacksonville now. But Cohen's comment there is the same thing as McVay saying about where your strengths are.

51:16You have to understand what your roster is. And his comment is like, look, we have some pretty damn good wide receivers.

51:22We have Brian Thomas and Travis Hunter when he plays on that side of the ball.

51:27And Parker Washington and Jacoby Myers. And we're not planning to just run three tight ends out there every single time.

51:33So when I cut in, you were talking about the tight ends.

51:36And when you have three on the field, whether that slows you down or makes you a little less explosive, that's what McVay's talking about.

51:43That's what Cohen's talking about in this chess match.

51:46There's a lot of people that I think think that just jamming tight ends on the field like you were talking about is the trend.

51:53We're just going to put tight ends on the field and everything's going to be better.

51:58And that's not the trend, right? No, it's not the trend.

52:01I think that there are elements to this that are universal.

52:04And there are elements that I think are a little bit specific.

52:08But I think that the elements that are more specific are more likely to vanish.

52:12Because I talked about this and charted it through my writing.

52:16I've heard you talk about it very, very similar terms on shows and in your writing.

52:20But like there's a tendency in NFL discourse. And I would argue even from some of the less sharp front offices or

52:27teams in the NFL that they might view it this way.

52:30Of like every new iteration that comes out, it's like this is the thing.

52:34You know, this is the end point. This is the solve.

52:37And, you know, maybe if you're thinking about it that way, like it honestly must be kind of frustrating to see like

52:44the answer come up and then constantly go away over time.

52:47And you're like, I think of it's like you're playing a game of whack-a-mole where you're just constantly trying to hit on

52:53the last thing if something came up. And like really I think that this tight end thing, it actually makes sense in the context of a larger evolution.

53:01Which is, you know, you go back to like 20 years ago.

53:05Any defensive coordinator that you ever heard interviewed in any capacity would always say, you know, the most important job of a defense is to stop the run.

53:13You have to stop the run. And so you're constantly getting these base defenses.

53:17And like early on, like kind of when I was first coming up in the fantasy space was like right around when everyone started passing more.

53:25And it was like we kind of finally figured out like, hey, passing is more efficient than running.

53:30And, well, we're just going to pass a lot.

53:33And we saw some of these spread teams. Like I remember the Brian Dable-Bills teams were running like a bunch of four wide receiver sets at times.

53:40And they were passing constantly. And they were sometimes even doing like short passing.

53:45But they were getting these base defenses. And they're using these slot guys like a Cole Beasley, you know, who are getting

53:51matched up against linebackers and just destroying those guys.

53:54And you've charted so well the defensive evolution of saying, okay, well, we're not going to let this happen.

53:59And if you go out there and you play 10 or 11 personnel now, you're more consistently getting met with more versatile defenses.

54:06And I think the tight end stuff is like kind of a natural counter to that in a short term where if

54:12they go, hey, every time we show up with light personnel that suggests we're going to pass, defenses are going to play pass-based personnel.

54:19So, you know, maybe what we're going to do as a counter to that is we're going to go into run-based looking personnel.

54:26And we're going to hope the defense then matches with base.

54:29And it gives us like our only pathway to being able to pass out of a pass against base defense.

54:35And it's interesting because so much of the discourse around the NFL the last couple of years about the return of the

54:41run game and about, you know, teams reached the point of diminishing returns in the pass game.

54:46They have to recommit themselves to the run game.

54:49And there's elements to that that is fair because it's always going to be about a balance.

54:54But I think what's so interesting about the tight end stuff is that it seems like the sharpest teams, you know, the

55:00team that has used this, the heavy personnel packages most effectively is the Rams.

55:04And they're the team that's passing out of it most frequently.

55:08And they're the team that seems to be using it less about the run game and more about how can we create advantages for the passing game.

55:16And, you know, the team that's also used heavy personnel pretty effectively on offense, but that is defended against it very successfully in defense is Seattle.

55:23And their answer has been, you know, in large part, the two middle fingers, which is like, oh, you want to show up in 13 personnel?

55:31We're going to still maintain a flexible defensive backfield.

55:33And so you're not going to be able to just game the system against us and pass against us.

55:39And if that's what you're going against as a defense, well, then maybe you'd rather just have your receiver.

55:44So I think we're at one point of an endless cycle.

55:48I wrote in my piece, you know, that this edge, the idea that you're always going to just be able to make

55:54decisions for the defense, you know, that if you want them in base personnel, you just press this 13 personnel button, you'll

56:00get them in personnel, and then you can do whatever you want.

56:04You know, an edge, which is conditional upon someone else's error is not an edge, that's a bubble, and it'll inevitably pop.

56:10And I think that that specific aspect is kind of we're probably in a fleeting window of time.

56:16But there's elements to it that are universal, which is that you're always going to want to have versatility in the NFL

56:22to be able to run or pass out of whatever formation you're in.

56:26And defensively, of course, you're going to want to be as versatile as well.

56:30And I think that what's really underrated through all of this is just who are the actual players on the field.

56:36Because, you know, you talk about, we talked about the Rams tight ends.

56:40What I think is a little bit unsaid is that the Rams also have two really impressive wide receivers.

56:45And so it's not even as much about like, oh, how do we get all these tight ends on the field and throw to them?

56:53A lot of it is how do we get all these tight ends on the field so we can get a more

56:59favorable coverage matchup for Puka Nakua or Devontae Adams?

57:02And Seattle, similarly, how do we get more one-on-one coverage opportunities for Jack Smith and Jigba?

57:06And on defense, like, do I think other defensive coordinators can learn tactically from Mike McDonald?

57:11Certainly. But would they have the same level of success if they don't have a Nick Emanwari, if they don't have a

57:17Byron Murphy, if they don't have just the guys that Seattle has, who I think, you know, in many ways it's a

57:24credit to McDonald and Schneider that not only are they able to adjust tactically, but they're able to have an understanding of

57:30the types of players to target that make their scheme work.

57:33But like, you know, at the end of the day, it's like the simplest explanation in a lot of ways that I

57:40keep coming back to is like, well, you need to have really good football players.

57:44You need to have versatile football players and talented football players and then build your scheme to that.

57:50And I think that's the universal truth that's going to be the case, whether the pass rate is higher or lower across

57:56the league, whether there's more tight ends on the field or fewer tight ends on the field, that I think oftentimes, no

58:02matter how granular I feel like I dive into this, that I keep coming back to.

58:07For sure. And this point that you made in your piece about it being a bubble is the same concept of there are a lot of people.

58:15Well, so one of the things that we run into a lot, especially being fantasy football analysts, is people are like, well,

58:21real ball knowers think this stuff and real football people think this.

58:25And I mean, when I was coming up, there was always a stats versus film thing.

58:29And the film guys thought they knew way more than the fancy football analysts didn't understand how football worked.

58:35Nowadays, most people like us, most fancy football analysts try to pair the stats with film and understand that.

58:41And I actually think there's a pretty strong argument to be made that the market goes too far with some of the stats without contextualizing the film stuff.

58:49And so I wind up on the opposite side of the argument than I was when I was coming up where I was the stats nerd.

58:56And now I wind up being like, you guys need to watch football and understand the sport a little bit better.

59:02But this bubble and this evolution that you're talking about is this point that was always thrown out there that was like,

59:09you guys don't understand that everything in football is just cyclical.

59:12There's ebbs and flows and all of these things circle back to the things that already were and this and that and the other thing.

59:19And what I want to emphasize when I talked about that shock a half decade ago, a half dozen years, it was

59:26really a half decade ago, 2021 season where it really started to happen and impact the numbers in a key way.

59:32Quarterback ADOT's falling in all of these things. And then again, Robert Sala is acknowledging it like two off seasons later because

59:382022 was the first season where the offensive numbers were incredibly low, which was just on the back of 2020 being by

59:45any metric the best offensive season in NFL history.

59:47Now there was a weird element in 2020 that there were no fans on the field.

59:52And so road teams tended to be a lot better.

59:55They weren't dealing with noise. And so that was part of it.

59:58But it was also the culmination of increased passing trends that, again, we talk about these ebbs and flows.

60:04So I always laugh at people that went, so the change in the defenses was talked about as a cover to shell.

60:10And then you had a bunch of people be like, oh, this is not that big of a deal.

60:16This is going to, this is a bubble was what was the way that a lot of people talked about it.

60:22And it drove me nuts at the time. I was writing somewhat aggressively about this is not a bubble.

60:28This is like a legitimate shock to the system.

60:30It's one of the things I'm most proud of in my career that I was very aware of this early on.

60:36This was a meaningful shift league wide and what was happening.

60:40And then I've been emphasizing the play caller stuff, especially when we got those quotes from, you know, right when this was starting to happen.

60:47Going into 2023, everyone was like, well, offenses will just have their counterpunch.

60:51And it's like, no, they may not. And they didn't.

60:542023 was another really bad offensive season. 2022, 2023, really the worst ones.

60:57And then we've had some rules changes that have changed the way that we may look at offensive stuff.

61:03Scoring was back up in 2025, but yards were down, which gets back to like some of the return rules and the

61:09special team stuff that has allowed for better field position.

61:12Kickers are getting way better. And so there was a much higher rate of drives that ended in a score last year,

61:19which affects the points, which is fun to see.

61:21We want to see touchdowns. But if you go look at the yardage last year was actually a pretty low season for yardage.

61:28Now, I would argue that there are teams that are finding that counterpunch now and that stuff was going to come.

61:34But the ways that defenses were playing things, as you talked about back in the day, it was stop the run.

61:40And fundamentally, what Robert Sala was talking about, he was talking about the jabs and the uppercut was we want to stop the explosives.

61:47We are now focused on working from the deepest part of the field back to the line of scrimmage when we scheme

61:54up our defense, as opposed to you have to win in the trenches and then worry about the deep stuff later, which

62:00is basically the way that defensive football was played.

62:03I mean, since the advent of the forward pass, because that's the way they used to play it before there was ever even a forward pass, right?

62:11It was a game of like rugby scrums. And then the forward pass became this high risk, high reward thing for decades

62:17where interception rates were really, really high. And then over time, teams understood the value of turnovers.

62:22You had the Bill Walsh West Coast offense, which made the short pass, a high efficiency success rate thing, way more interesting

62:28in the 80s and in the 90s. And then as you get into the 2000s, so one of the ebbs and flows

62:35thing, I was talking about the, so that you have the cover two thing.

62:39And one of the things I loved when that was first coming up in 2021, 2022, this cover two shell, people would

62:45emphasize, well, the cover two rates aren't even up.

62:48And I was like, that's not what the cover two shell is.

62:51The cover two shell is about getting more DBs on the field and then this malleability of pre-snap and post-snap rotations.

62:58And I think most people understand that better now in 2026, but it wasn't about sticking in cover two.

63:03That's what Sean McVay talked about in 2023, about defenses becoming unregulated.

63:07He was saying he wanted them to be regulated.

63:09He wanted them to play perfect cover two defense because they had cover two beaters in the playbook.

63:14You can't call a play for a defense that is malleable from what they show you pre-snap to post-snap because you don't know what you're seeing.

63:22He used to famously, when Jared Goff was his quarterback, get them up to the line of scrimmage and tell Goff in

63:28the headset what to do based on the coverage, based on what the defense was doing.

63:33And he was part of the reason for this.

63:36And Patrick Mahomes was part of the reason for this with Tyreek Hill chucking the ball over everyone's head for long touchdowns.

63:42And it became untenable for defenses to give up these bombs in an era where the passing games had gotten so evolved.

63:49But anyway, the point was people were going, cover two is not some new thing.

63:53It's been around forever. If you think this, I mean, this is clearly just a bubble.

63:58Well, the Tampa two was Tony Dungy saying, I remember that coming up a bunch.

64:02And I was like, this is not the Tampa two.

64:05This is not what Tony Dungy was doing. This is completely different.

64:08It's an over-index on, like there's like a ball mower tendency, I think, to like over-index on what the very specific thing

64:15means while losing the forest through the trees a little bit.

64:18Where like, it's the same thing as like, you know, if you're over-focusing on specifically like the personnel grouping or over-focusing specifically

64:24on its cover two, you're losing what the overall trend is.

64:28Which is what you're emphasizing, which is a reorientation of defense around taking away explosive pass plays down the field.

64:33And if you want to call that the cover two for short, like go for it.

64:38But like, and I think it's, if you're, if you're over-indexing on like, well, actually, you know, the Tony Dungy played the cover two.

64:45And it's like, I know that that both means this, but like, it's a clearly, it's a different prioritization and orientation of how the defense is defending.

64:53And if you want to explain that in short and slightly imprecise ways or very long and more precise ways, you're still

64:59getting at the crux of the actual issue, which is that there's a reorientation against explosives.

65:04And this idea of the cover two really was the cover two shell.

65:08And the point of the cover two shell was it's a shell look that you can get to so many different defensive

65:14looks from, because you kind of have your corners wide and your safety is over the top.

65:19And either of them can drop back and be the guy who drops back and the other can step forward.

65:25And you don't have like a clear free safety, strong safety.

65:28You may have a third deep safety on the field or, or a slot cornerback and your, your fifth defensive back.

65:34Cause you're a nickel and maybe he ends up dropping.

65:37And one of the safeties comes up and you still get into a cover two, but it's different safeties than your pre-snap alignment, whatever.

65:44There's all sorts of stuff. This is, I mean, there's way more about the defensive stuff than, than I truly understand.

65:50You have the Vic Fangio has been a huge influence on this.

65:54Brett Coleman does great YouTube work and had a great YouTube video talking to, I believe it was coach Vass.

66:00And this was like last summer, a good one to look up.

66:03If you want to know about all of the like calls on defense and what they're doing and how they're doing it

66:10and how they're making these decisions in the Fangio scheme.

66:13Very, very interesting stuff to me. But the point was that a lot of people were trying to discount this shift as

66:19if it wasn't that big of a deal. And the offenses were just going to get a counter punch.

66:25And I was trying to say that if it was that simple, not all of the quarterbacks, Ados would be shrinking and not have answers.

66:32And it's like some offenses would have answers and none of them did.

66:36And so now the flip side of this point about the bubble and the way that things shift, how do you identify

66:42what's a, what's a shock to, you know, a legitimate shock.

66:45And how do you identify that? One of the things, one of my favorite other things where I'm on the other side,

66:52I'm being the cover to Tony Dungy guy is.

66:54I love hearing people talk about how quarterbacks are getting under center more because that's helping the run game.

67:00And that's helping, it's helping pass efficiency to be under center.

67:03That's the next evolution. It's like, that's not the next evolution.

67:06That's how they played the sport for 50 years until I don't think people understand that the shotgun formation was a sub package until like the 2010s.

67:14I, I, when I was an early writer, I would go back to the old football outside or this old football outsiders,

67:21which unfortunately RIP no longer exists as a site, but they had a, an article that had a table with data in

67:27it about the rate of shotgun usage. Uh, league average.

67:30And then it was like the top team and the bottom team.

67:33And it was, uh, each of five years. And I believe it was, I want to say it was 2008, 2013 and 2018.

67:40I may be off a little bit, but it's sometime from like 2005 to 2015 ish.

67:45Um, cause I think I wrote this article in 2017.

67:48So I don't know why I would have been using that table, um, with 2018 data.

67:52So that anyway, uh, I can't remember the exact years, but the point is that the, the rate of shotgun usage in

67:59the NFL had climbed a massive amount over a 10 year span.

68:02And from the first window that football outsiders were showing the league, the team with the league leading shotgun rate had a lower shotgun rate.

68:10Then you had five years in five more years.

68:12So 10 years later, the last place team, the 32nd place team, if I'm not mistaken, it was something like 35% for the league leader.

68:20But 10 years later, it was like 40% for the lowest team in the league.

68:24And so as far as how I think about what happened in the last half decade and how we got to where we do, we did.

68:31When I think about the 2000 to 2010 era, I'm still thinking under center quarterback play, running the ball, stopping the run, Zach Thomas at linebacker.

68:39Those guys don't exist anymore. Um, you know, you had the Dick Vermeule priest Holmes teams and LaDainian Tomlinson and Sean Alexander.

68:45And those guys were great, super fun for fantasy football.

68:48And then you started to get more shotgun later in that decade.

68:52Drew Brees was doing it a lot with Sean Payton and thrown 600 times and using the short passing game.

68:58And Tom Brady was doing it, uh, as his offenses started to evolve in his new England era.

69:03And then in the early 2010s, you had the Legion of Boom, the Seattle Seahawks defense that famously were basically like, we're

69:09going to grab receivers every single time and force the referees to throw flags more than they want to throw flags.

69:15So then we'll eventually get away with stuff. They led the league in like defensive pass interference and stuff, but still had the best secondary in the league.

69:24They went on and won the 2013 Super Bowl and then went back to the Super Bowl in 2014.

69:29Pretty similar to the OKC Thunder to make another basketball analogy where they, they like foul you on every single play.

69:35And they're like, I dare you to call a foul on every single defensive possession.

69:40You're not going through. Right. It puts a lot on the refs because they're, they're trying to keep the flow of the game going and all these things.

69:48After 2014, Dean Blandino, who we all know from TV now, but he was the, the referee, the head of referees at the time.

69:55Um, there was a, his memo was on the internet.

69:58It's no longer on the internet. I quoted this one in an old article.

70:02It was a memo we sent out after 2014 about the increase, uh, about this exact stuff.

70:07And they were going to increase the emphasis on illegal contact and defensive holding.

70:11Those weren't new penalties, but they were penalties that existed to that point.

70:15And then, um, they were deciding that, Hey, we're going to start throwing these flags and call these five, five yard penalties

70:21that we see all the time in the NFL.

70:24Now I, for people who don't really understand, but my point is that the shotgun trend was already progressing a little bit

70:30at that point, but that's when all of this really took off was 2014.

70:34And it's not that long of a timeline. If you think about it from that perspective, the, the, the passing, um, if

70:41you go look at, the season by season numbers, the, the, the increased passing trends, both volume and like completion percentage and

70:47all of those things start really escalating in the 2010s.

70:50And then 2020 is sort of the culmination of that.

70:53What happens? Another thing that happens, cause I remember early in my, my road of his years, I can't remember, um, the

70:59name of the author of the piece, but we had a guy who did had a PhD, I think from like Northwestern.

71:06And he did some great stats work and he had done a piece on weight correlating to fantasy production for wide receivers.

71:12And he did it about in 2015, which is when I started working with Rotovis and I was an editor there at 2016.

71:19And I was working with him on some follow-up stuff.

71:22And I remember giving him my theory that maybe the reason 20, I think it was that the 2015 didn't work out

71:28as well with that, um, relationship was, was this rule change or this emphasis on, um, defensive holding and illegal contact.

71:34You needed weight when the rules were a little bit more, uh, defensive back friendly in terms of grabbing and holding and,

71:41and getting in the way of guys. Like we, you watch the NFL now, you can't stop their progress at all.

71:47That used to be a thing as recently as 2013 and 20.

71:50I mean, the Seahawks won a Superbowl doing it in 2013.

71:54So you have this entirely different meta in the NFL.

71:56And since then, and that's, and that's ultimately, I, I bring up the, the weight and wide receiver point, because again, if

72:03you remember 2015 and earlier, and you were looking at stats and, and, um, models built and trying to identify things that, that correlated to fantasy production.

72:11And those things at the time, you would have absolutely have seen weight as really relevant for wide receivers.

72:16And then you would have seen over the next several years, which is what everyone in the industry saw that it became less and less important.

72:24And it was directing you the wrong way. You had guys like Kelvin Benjamin, who in his rookie season, it's a bigger,

72:30big bodied, uh, wide receiver that the Panthers drafted in the first round.

72:34His first season had like nine touchdowns and had a good, good season.

72:38And he went on to a career that was very, he was during that era as that got less and less important.

72:44Those, uh, physicality elements of the position got less important.

72:47Then teams started prioritizing the athleticism and those were the things that now won.

72:51And, and, and defenses started prioritizing defensive backs that were smaller and more athletic and those types of things.

72:57Those were the things that won on that side of the ball as well in a, in a, in a landscape with, with different emphasis on different rules.

73:05And so now we have way more light receivers that are able to actually stay healthy throughout an NFL season and be very productive.

73:12And you had guys like Kelvin Benjamin by the end of his career, have to change positions to tight end and basically

73:18fade out because he didn't have the skills that were then transferable to the changing landscape in the NFL, which you talked about the evolutionary timeline.

73:26And that's, I mean, I, I've talked about this a ton as well.

73:30And I always try to emphasize that when I talk about the macro trends at any given point, like when we're talking

73:36about this right now, we are just at a point in a timeline that's going to continue into the future.

73:42And the different things that happen tomorrow and next year and the year after are going to create a different meta.

73:48This sport is constantly evolving. The rules are changing and the ways that you can win are always evolving.

73:54And it gets back to that McVeigh quote from this off season where he says, you always have to adapt and grow

74:00and understand what's going to win next year. And that's the same thing we do in fantasy football, by the way, is

74:07try to figure out, Hey, what's the market doing?

74:09What's the landscape doing? How can we win? It's not just about understanding what the sport is doing, but it is very helpful.

74:16And that's why we're starting here in our next shows, Jacob.

74:19We're going to start talking a little bit more about fantasy specific stuff and where we're going, which we're excited to do.

74:26But this, um, this whole timeline again, from, from late Oh, Oh, to closer to 2010, you start the increase of shotgun and you get to these.

74:33And you talked about like the bills and using 10 personnel, which is four receivers on the field.

74:39Cliff Kingsbury gets hired famously by the Cardinals and loves talks about how he's going to go for wide receiver all the time.

74:45And he tried to do it a lot and found that that was kind of tough.

74:50And he went to more three receiver and stuff, but a shotgun spread more college formations.

74:55We saw a lot of that in that time.

74:57And because of these changes to the ways that defenses could, couldn't stop receivers from running and couldn't impede them.

75:03And those things, you had a lot lighter receivers able to just run free.

75:07And we saw passing offense get much, much better all the way through that 2020 season.

75:12Then I said, by any, any metric you want to look at, it's a, it's the best season offensive season in NFL history.

75:19And then 2021 is when you see the shock, when you see defenses start to say, look, we're just going to put more DBs on the field.

75:26We're going to take away the deep stuff. And even though we've always thought that we wanted to stop the run and

75:33be tough guys, we're going to let you run efficiently.

75:36And then you see in 2021, so that was midway 2021, 2022 and 2023, really poor offensive seasons.

75:41You see offenses trying different things. So what I wrote about at the time was in 2022 was shocking to me.

75:47The Falcons and the bears were among the most run heavy offenses in decades.

75:51They had more rush attempts, whichever team had that, because that was the Arthur Smith Falcons.

75:56I think the bears had even more had, whichever one had more, had more rush attempts since like the 1990 Raiders that

76:02had like Bo Jackson and Marcus Allen on this team.

76:05Like the Tecmo Superbowl Raiders. It was decades before even the Dick Vermeule and Sean Alexander era.

76:10I was talking about a decade before that, but decades before where we were in 2022.

76:15And the arc of this sport has always trended toward more passing.

76:18These are, it's not all ebbs and flows. Some of these things are always moving one direction, even though there are some, some, some changes along that timeline.

76:27We are moving toward more passing. So for there to be more run heavy offenses in 2022 than anything since 1990 was absurd.

76:33And yet the exact same year, the Bucks and Chargers were among the most pass heavy offenses in the last 20 years or 30 years.

76:41Because their answers to what defenses were doing. And this is gets back to this unregulated versus regulated thing.

76:46The way that I've talked about it a lot with what defenses did and what the shock was as they prioritized what they wanted to do more.

76:54I think defenses in the past, and we get back to this conversation that we're having about the tight ends and matching.

77:00Because what defense started doing 2021, 2022, 2023 was not let the offense dictate what they were going to do.

77:06They were going to call things that were more malleable and be able to shift to what the offense wanted to do.

77:13And so then the offense could, they're like, okay, well, you know, Arthur Smith famously in 2022 was like, if you're going

77:19to give me run looks, I'll just run every single time.

77:22And that's why the Falcons had so many rushes that year.

77:25Bucks and Chargers, that was the Tom Brady bucks.

77:28And then I believe a early career Justin Herbert season.

77:31We're both, we're going to throw every single time.

77:34We'll just throw short passes. Like Herbert's like, I'll throw to Eckler every time.

77:38And Tom Brady's ADOT was really, really low. And he's just throwing really short passes to his running backs and to Chris Godwin and all these guys.

77:46And Gronk was on the team, I believe, at that time.

77:49And so you had, in the same season, teams shifting at the bottom end of the spectrum toward among the most run-heavy

77:55offense in decades and among the most past-heavy offense in decades.

77:58And statistic, like the statistical improbability of that is what gets back to this point of that being a legitimate shock to

78:05the system and not just your consistent ebb and flow.

78:08So where one team's doing, same thing with the declining ADOTs, which is when I first started talking about in 2021 and

78:14stealing signals, where you had not just a couple quarterbacks, but like 12 of the whatever it was, like 18 quarterbacks that weren't injured around that time.

78:22That were, you know, started each of these like eight or 10 week span I was looking at, where their ADOTs just

78:28suddenly fell off the cliff, like sort of in the same spot around like week six or seven.

78:34Oh God, we've done it twice now, six, seven.

78:36But you had all of the offenses starting to see defensive looks that were forcing them to throw underneath more, all sort of at the same time.

78:44And we know it's a copycat league and I don't know who started that, whether it was Vic Fangio or whoever, but

78:51you had a lot of defenses clearly starting to do things the same and take away the vertical stuff, take away the deep stuff.

78:58Famously, Josh Allen was part of that equation. I remember they, they lost to a bad Jaguars team on the road that

79:04year because Allen couldn't get anything down the field and they had like a horrible offensive game.

79:09And then the way that that Bill's offense has evolved since has been Allen's gotten a lot better at short passing early in his career.

79:16That was a high ADOT quarterback who would chuck it deep and was thought to be in, uh, inaccurate in the short area of the field.

79:24He worked really hard to on his mechanics to develop his short area accuracy and he's got a lot better at it.

79:30And their whole offense is about like short passing these days, but that's also one of the most past happy offenses.

79:36In the league when Allen had his first breakout to now being one of the most run heavy offenses in the league too.

79:43And they're a team that uses like a dedicated six offensive lineman a lot.

79:47So it's been a complete change in identity for that team.

79:50And so that was through, I'm doing this whole run up.

79:54That was through 2023. This is, and I'm talking about league wide, but this is a great point about the bills that

80:00you're making that like, and, and it's important to remember whenever we talk about league wide trends that we have 32 teams.

80:06We have a sample of 32 teams. When you get into one of the other reasons that there's these different eras and

80:13an evolutionary thing is like you, after the Seahawks had all that success, all of the defensive, uh, all the, the, the,

80:19the next several years, everyone wanted to do cover three.

80:22Cause that's what the Seahawks did, but they didn't have Earl Thomas as a sideline to sideline safety to make that work.

80:29And so you had Gus Bradley and Dan Quinn getting these jobs at other places and their defenses kind of sucked without

80:35the same Seahawks personnel, which gets back to the same point we're making about offenses today, having the personnel to do the tight end stuff.

80:42And you have a lot. So then suddenly you have like five or six, and that's a good chunk of the league

80:49defenses shifting toward a type of defense that probably isn't the optimal defense.

80:53And then we're playing shotgun and we're attacking the seams against your cover three.

80:57And you don't have safeties that can actually defend that as well as the Seahawks did.

81:01And suddenly the cover three defense past defenses were one of the reasons that pass offenses got so good in the, in the 2010s.

81:08At any rate, 2022, 2023 are bad offensive, uh, seasons.

81:11I think in 2024, and especially in 2025, we've started to see some improvements, especially at the top.

81:16But what's important to be noted as we talk about this tight end shift and we talk about the different things that are happening.

81:23It's still within this realm of defenses taking away explosives and the defenses are evolving to one of the big things that

81:30we saw last year, which is for me, an additional understanding of what defenses are doing in 2025, as opposed to even 2022 or 2023 was that.

81:38They're doing a lot more with the, the standup defensive fronts, the muddle muddle fronts or whatever the stunts and things.

81:44I remember seeing Nate Tice talk about how the protection, the full slide protection things and some of the, the protection shifts

81:50that they're the offense that will, will try to do are we're getting hammered last year.

81:55So there's some defensive and offensive line things. I think that's probably a part of the reason why we saw so many

82:01rookie running backs not play as much in past protection was probably a big element.

82:06Like you had Travion Henderson was supposed to be a good pass protector and he has a really rough first year in that regard.

82:13But guys like RJ Harvey, who we kind of knew weren't going to be good at pass protecting, certainly weren't playing a lot.

82:19There's a lot of teams. Even on my team, the Colts, like Giddens went from the clear RB2 to a healthy and

82:26active because he couldn't handle the pass pro. And they went out and they got Amir Abdullah, who's like obviously not a

82:32dynamic player, but, but could, could handle that veteran leadership in the pass protection game.

82:37Yeah. And one of the things I wrote this off season was a piece called, I wonder if the paths for rookies

82:43are more complicated or something like that, because as we move, one of the big things, I think the multi tight end sets is doing.

82:50And I'll be interested with you as we get into the, what, what's going to happen next element of this.

82:56Cause 2024, 2025, we start to see defenses continue to evolve, but we see offenses making improvements.

83:01And you talk through the multi tight end sets, getting defenses into base, then throwing out of that, taking advantage of that.

83:08But the big thing is, as you talked about, if the defense does what the Seahawks do, when they go into nickel,

83:14what do you, what do you do offensively? You're not going to want to just run tight ends and routes against the nickel defense.

83:21Are you going to just run the ball forever or do you want to get your wide receivers back on the field at that point?

83:28Cause they're going to be more likely to win on the routes.

83:32Cause they're the better receivers than tight ends in terms of, of that stuff.

83:36And one of the other really fascinating things right now that gets back to this whole idea of there has been a

83:42shock in the last half decade is we have 20 new offensive coordinators this year.

83:47I think it is. And they are all young.

83:49The league doesn't care about your knowledge of scheme from before 2020.

83:53They don't care or 2015 or whatever. You have a coaching resume that's three decades long.

83:57The league does not care right now. They are hiring guys that were backup quarterbacks two years ago on NFL rosters, David Blau and Sean Mannion.

84:05These guys are getting offensive coordinator jobs in a way that's we've tried to toward younger coaches in the league for a

84:11while now, but it's never been this dramatic. And I think that also gets back to this point of we are in

84:18a different landscape, a post 2021 or a post 2020 shock landscape.

84:21And it makes the shotgun formations more difficult, for example, which is why we're just shifting back to under center.

84:27That whole spiel is me getting to this point of people saying under center is the new evolution.

84:32And I kind of feel like the boomer and I'm like, did you guys watch football 15 years ago, 20 years ago?

84:39Because that's all the sport used to be. It's not like some new evolution.

84:43If anything, we just found out that shotgun formations as a dominant offensive system were short lived.

84:48And we're going to have that was the evolution.

84:51And then it got that was the bubble that popped was was shotgun formation, spread formations.

84:55We got a decade of that, basically. And then it's gone or it's not it's not entirely gone.

85:00There's still a lot of shotgun in the league, but we're moving back away from that for the reasons that shotgun wasn't

85:07a big deal in the 1980s and the 1990s, even though it was a formation that existed in the 1990s.

85:13There were the Warren Moon Colts, the running. Yeah.

85:15Yeah. Yeah. There was a bunch of I mean, there was there's examples of it, but it was not super popular because

85:22there's advantages to being under center and those types of things.

85:25So that is one of the ones for me that is a ebb and flow element.

85:30But anyway, I did the whole the whole 20 year spiel there.

85:33And I apologize for Jacob for for so long.

85:36But maybe I'll try and jump up. I'll I'll put a question to you and try and recap some of what we were saying there.

85:43So I think the biggest curiosity point for me, it's like we talked about this 20 year evolution.

85:48And like from my from my standpoint. And again, I always keep thinking about how this aligns with other sports because I

85:55think that both baseball, especially and basketball have both been faster to adopt to some of the ways that we can incorporate analytics.

86:01And just high level North Star decision making into the game and football has been.

86:06And so I'm always trying to keep an eye on on lessons from that.

86:10You look back to the mid 2000s. I feel like neither side of the ball was particularly well optimized because you had both sides of the ball.

86:18I thought the majority of offenses were were oriented around running the ball and defenses were oriented around stopping the run at

86:24a period of time in which you mean like 2005.

86:27Yeah, exactly. OK. In which it was like demonstrably true that at least within that within that world, like passing the ball

86:33is way more efficient than running the ball. And in large part, it probably was because both teams were optimizing around the run.

86:40And I think it was the offensive play callers who were the first ones to evolve.

86:45They were the as a group, you know, it's never universal, but as a group, the offensive play callers were the first

86:51ones to, I think, try and figure out where the point of diminishing returns was on the pass.

86:57Right. You talked about the shotgun formations as a bubble.

86:59You know, I view it similarly as that point of diminishing returns where they were like, how far can we just press

87:06passing it until we start to see the efficiency drop?

87:09And the defenses were slower to react. They obviously have reacted and we've talked about how.

87:13Now, my question, and I certainly don't know the answer, is like I talked about in my piece and I've talked about

87:20it a lot in various writing is the concept of the Nash equilibrium, which folks want to go watch like a beautiful mind for a deeper dive.

87:28But basically, it's a game theory concept of when two players are both more or less taking the optimal path relative to

87:34one another, that there's no further counter moves available.

87:37And where is that in football? And I guess the question is like, are we closing in on it?

87:42Because I don't think that like the specifics of, you know, we're going to run 13 personnel and pass out of it.

87:49I don't think that's the end of the evolution.

87:51But like the broader trends, you look at now for the first time, the EPA per rush, the EPA per pass are converging.

87:58It's almost the same now. Overall, passing remains more efficient than running, but the gap is way smaller than it used to be.

88:05There are some teams for which they're actually able to run the ball more efficiently than pass the ball.

88:10Like, what is that Nash equilibrium endpoint? Does it exist?

88:13And if it exists, is it defenses just allow you to run the ball and offenses just run the ball constantly because

88:20that's the only thing they can do efficiently against these defenses?

88:23Or is it teams go back to passing the ball more with an acceptance of we're never going to be able to

88:29pass the ball as efficiently as we used to when defenses were poorly optimized to stop it?

88:34Like, is that a different answer for different teams?

88:37Or is there something that's completely different altogether that offenses can access?

88:40Because I guess I'm a little bit of the mindset of like, okay, there's always going to be moves and countermoves.

88:46There's always going to be smart iterations. But are we veering towards a point where now that I think both offenses and

88:53defenses are more correctly optimizing around explosive plays in a way that they never really used to?

88:58If they're both optimizing around that north star, are we moving to a spot where just we're never really going to get

89:04back to the offensive efficiency that we were in in like a 2019 to 2020?

89:09Because that's kind of my lean is that like, I think now that equilibrium is both of those teams, both offense being

89:15like, we'd really like to be explosive. The defense is being like, we're going to do everything possible to make you not explosive.

89:22And is this 13 personnel explosive passing stuff kind of a dead cat bounce that is just eventually going to lead to

89:28offenses having to decide either we're going to have to just throw into extremely disadvantageous environments and live with it.

89:34Or we're going to have to run the ball way more than we want to.

89:38And depending on your personnel and your strengths, who your quarterback is, who your receivers are, running back, et cetera, choosing one of those two paths.

89:46And that could create like a very, very interesting fantasy environment where some teams, unless you're investing in their running back, you

89:52know, or maybe their wide receiver one become pretty difficult and inhospitable environments for fantasy.

89:57Because the only way they can maintain reasonable offense in this world is to just run the ball repeatedly.

90:02Because if you don't have a quarterback who's able to throw on hard mode, then you might just be better off, you

90:09know, taking the increase in rush efficiency that defenses are letting you have and, and just grinding through that way.

90:15I mean, you think of the Panthers, we talked about TMAC at the beginning of the show.

90:20They're a team that I think realized that like, we do not have the horses to throw the ball on hard mode because Bryce Young sucks.

90:27And we have, you know, one wide receiver we really trust.

90:30And so our best path forward to win games is to run the ball as much as humanly possible and play slow.

90:37And the defense is going to let us do that to an extent.

90:41And we're going to try and win on the margins of some really close games.

90:45And if you are the Bengals or the Cowboys or the Chiefs, you know, when you have a quarterback who's capable of

90:51performing more in more adverse situations, you probably come to a different conclusion.

90:55And you probably come to the conclusion of, hey, you know, we should certainly, it's better to run the ball well than run the ball poorly.

91:03And we're going to keep that as a part of our team.

91:06But like when push comes to shove, even if the defense is making it as difficult as possible to throw, we believe

91:13that we have, you know, the quarterback and the pass catchers, especially for the case of a team like Cincinnati or Dallas,

91:19to just grind our way through it. And we're going to throw anyway, and we're going to throw less successfully than maybe we would have five years ago.

91:27But that's still going to be the best path.

91:30I think different teams are going to come to different conclusions.

91:33But I don't know that any of those conclusions are going to be as successful as the apex of what teams were

91:39able to do a half decade ago. And I'm not entirely sure that that's even going to be possible.

91:45Because you look at, again, other sports, like there are just new equilibriums.

91:49Like in the NBA, there will never be, I don't think, another era of basketball barring a rule change.

91:54In which the NBA finals is decided on an 83 to 79 game, which is what it was decided on 15 years ago.

92:01You know, because now teams have realized like we can shoot threes and there's defensive counters to that.

92:06But there's not really a defensive counter that will ever make NBA offenses average 90 points a game again.

92:12Because the light bulb went on and everyone realized three is worth more than two actually.

92:16And I think it's basically the same light bulb moment for the NFL where everyone realized explosive plays are more damaging to us than three yard runs.

92:24But it's gone the opposite way. Where it's defenses, it seemed to have walked away from this newfound understanding with a more systemic advantage than offenses have.

92:32Which is really interesting and it makes the sport, I think, pretty unique.

92:36So, the way you started talking about that was asking me, and it's a great way, for people who have listened to

92:42me do the whole spiel I just did about the last 20 years on stealing bananas or in my writing so many times.

92:49And it's been building every year since 2021. And my understanding of it changes slightly, but they're like, man, why do you constantly talk about this?

92:57You did such a great job of crystallizing sort of what my point is, which is exactly what you just said.

93:03It's never going to go back. That's what evolution is.

93:06And it's exactly what you just described with the NBA.

93:09You asked what the equilibrium was, and when you were talking about the 2018 era, like pre-shock to defenses changing the way

93:15they're doing it, you were like, teams are just passing more and more and trying to find where the end point was.

93:22My answer would be the equilibrium was different before the shock and after the shock would be my first answer.

93:27And before the shock, it's kind of hard to remember, but the overwhelming analytical perspective at the time, because analytics were still

93:34like the outsider's thing, was that every team should be throwing way, way, way, way more.

93:38Way more. I don't know where the equilibrium is, but we're nowhere near it.

93:43Teams run way too much. They're all boomers. My buddy Josh Hermsmeyer would always tweet about this and catch a lot of

93:49flack for being a know-it-all or presenting it that way.

93:52Ben Baldwin would often get that and another, I don't know if I'd call him a buddy, but we've followed each other

93:58for a lot of years and I've talked to him and I think highly of both of those guys.

94:04A lot of people don't. A lot of people think that they're very arrogant or whatever.

94:08Kevin Cole, got a chance to work with him at Rotovis as editors in 2016.

94:13Another one. And those guys were, I think, correct in the landscape that we were in.

94:18The way that I described the shock and why it's so different, it's not just the defenses were like, oh, we're going to take away explosives.

94:25Or we're going to make explosives the first order thing and then work back to the line of scrimmage.

94:31The way that I, when I had the aha moment was that everyone in the analytics community was saying we need to pass more.

94:38Passing is way more efficiency than running. And it was defenses that realized that.

94:42Passing is more efficient than running. That's what we need to prioritize.

94:45That's what we need to optimize to stop. And I was like, man.

94:49In like 2022 or 2023, I wrote about this in the newsletter a bunch.

94:53I was like, man. How did I not see that coming?

94:56Why would I have not? I felt like I understood all the things.

95:00Right. It's like everyone ascribed all this agency to offenses without forgetting that defenses also get to make choices.

95:06Why would you not think that the defenses at some point would be like, hey, we're going to prioritize passing as well.

95:12Offenses can call more passes, but you're telling me they're idiots because they won't pass as much as they should.

95:18And every team should be passing more, et cetera, et cetera.

95:21Or maybe we should stop the pass as a first order priority instead of employing these.

95:26You know, I made the Zach Thomas comment before, but it's even the type of person.

95:30I talk about the versatile personnel and stuff. It used to be we need a middle linebacker that can fill the run fit and fill those gaps.

95:38Those guys don't even exist anymore unless they can pass, protect, and cover the field.

95:43It's not downhill linebackers that go stop the run.

95:45You need to be able to stop the pass.

95:48And then hopefully you can also fit the run.

95:51Right. Like that's what we're hoping for our linebackers is they can also do that stuff.

95:55And then they're pretty exciting players. So the pre-shock equilibrium was clearly we need to throw more.

96:00The post-shock equilibrium has shifted because the defenses are now prioritizing stopping the pass.

96:04And it's what you said now. And my answer is we're a lot closer to the equilibrium.

96:09Now it's individual teams are going to land on that spectrum and individual spaces.

96:13I do think originally, and that's what we saw in that 2022 year, which is so important.

96:18It's like you had some teams like, oh, we're going to run every single time.

96:23And some teams like we're going to throw every single time, even if it's short passes.

96:27And you see the ADOT come down and people have hammered Patrick Mahomes for his per attempt efficiency.

96:33And I always talk about how like, and it's ADOT coming down.

96:36I always talk about like, you have to look at the volume of dropbacks.

96:40You can't compare that to a guy who's dropping back a hundred times less because he's only dropping that back.

96:46Or a higher rate of his dropbacks are an obvious pass or non-obvious pass situations.

96:50Whereas Mahomes is dropping back against these obvious pass defenses and then taking the underneath over and over and over.

96:56Which is what Tom Brady did that year for the Bucs.

96:59And I mean, it's what the team was deciding.

97:02I want Tom Brady to have the decision every single time, whether he's going to push vertically or throw underneath.

97:08That's the best version of our offense is the ball in Tom Brady's hands.

97:12That's what you described with the Bengals or the Cowboys and how they may handle things with Joe Burrow and Dak Prescott.

97:18Some of these offenses need to be willing to throw into defensive looks that five years ago or seven years ago would have been a clear run look.

97:27And I think some of the teams immediately did say, okay, we'll just run.

97:31And last year, it was funny, the pass rate over expected league-wide shifted toward the negative.

97:35And I've commented in some of my writing, maybe we need to rethink the expected pass rate because that stat was developed.

97:42Right, there were only eight teams out of 32 last year that were above zero, I believe.

97:47Yeah, so you have three quarters of the league and a negative pass rate over expected.

97:51So obviously our expected pass rate needs to be recalibrated to some degree in this landscape.

97:56Or maybe that's just the offense is really pushing the envelope right now, but then we're going to work back from that.

98:02I do think that makes sense where defenses are giving you the run.

98:06And so one of the things we haven't talked about is why this makes sense.

98:11It's because the per attempt efficiency is so much higher for passing.

98:14And then it's not just explosives, but even if you get like 10-yard gains in the passing game, you're getting a first down.

98:21And so when you let teams run, even if they run what's efficiently, which is like four yards per carry is about average.

98:27If they average four and a half yards per carry, they got a third and one.

98:32Or if they get a five-yard carry and then you can hold them to three, they got a third and two.

98:38The idea is get them into third downs, and then maybe you stuff them on that third down.

98:44Or their quarterback slips. Maybe they convert three first downs in a row, but the next time they have a holding penalty and now it's first and 20.

98:52Exactly. You get a sack when they drop back to throw or they have to throw on a third and six because

98:58you did stop the first and 10 run that time.

99:01And then they throw on a third and six and they get a drop or any of these types of things.

99:07Put them in the situation where the one play can stop their drive as opposed to chunk gain, chunk gain, chunk gain, score.

99:14Which is a little bit about that explosive versus success rate orientation.

99:17Even if you let teams run effectively, they have to be in third down more basically to sustain these drives.

99:23Now what I think we're seeing as teams went to the run more is we're seeing and then the success rate of drives.

99:30The percentage of drives that ended in a score last year was at 20-20 levels.

99:34Scoring was back up, yardage was down, but the percentage of drives ended.

99:38And so the number of drives is coming down because the plays per drive and teams are staying on the field and

99:44they're running the ball and they're running clock. And so we're seeing plays come down and drives come down pretty meaningfully the last couple of years.

99:52And that affects fantasy football. Now when you talk about the 32 different teams and what this is in terms of action

99:58ability for 2026 and beyond, the way you were posing it is absolutely how I'm thinking about it, which is some teams

100:05are basically going to be disasters for fantasy football.

100:08Because we are not going to go back to where defenses are going to do things differently.

100:12And if some of these offenses basically don't have answers and their only answer is to run way too much, get back

100:19to the Raiders and how they were throwing fewer than 100 air yards in so many of those games.

100:24Now the Raiders wound up the very worst offense in the league last year in terms of yards, in terms of points, in several categories.

100:32All the rushing categories, rushing yards, rushing yards per carry, rushing touchdowns.

100:35They were awful. They were very, very, very awful.

100:38They're not the only way that this can go, but you also get this deconcentration.

100:42And we talk about concentration in fantasy football. The tight end thing, what people have emphasized, I do think in a good

100:49way, is that you're not going to see teams run the multi-tight end or heavy personnel 75% of the time.

100:54Even when the Rams are doing it a lot, it's like 40, 50%.

100:58They're still getting into 11 personnel a lot as well, which is three receivers on the field, as opposed to, and then

101:05one running back and one tight end. You have five eligibles.

101:08The numbers relate to, the first number is the number of running backs on the field.

101:13The second number is the number of tight ends.

101:15So 12 is one running back, two tight ends.

101:1813 is one running back, three tight ends. And you have five total.

101:22And so the number that's not listed is wide receivers.

101:25So 12 leaves two receivers. 13 leaves one receiver.

101:27For anyone who doesn't know the personnel nomenclature, but that's the way that that goes.

101:3211 personnel is one running back, one tight end, three receivers.

101:35It's the most common formation. And you see that a lot.

101:38You're still going to see it a lot, even as there's more tight ends.

101:42But the way that I've been thinking about the increased use of 12 and 13 personnel is more sub packages generally, which

101:48it's, there are players that are going to play in every package.

101:52And so it does make the guy, the wide receivers, like you talked about JSN for Seattle last year, who's playing in

101:5812 and 13 and getting an advantage in those formations because he's running routes against fewer wide receivers, which we know to

102:05be an advantage in yards per outrun and those types of stats.

102:08And then he's also staying out there in 11 and he's still the clear number one in those, those formations as well.

102:15But what you, what you're seeing on a team like that is there's no secondary receiver that even matters.

102:20Cooper cup was like, not very good. That like Marcus Valdez, Scantling was their number three early.

102:25We had Torrey Horton had a few touchdowns. I don't think, you know, if people think he was as good as, uh,

102:32or better than he actually was, if you go back and get five TDs, he had like 12 catches, 13 catches and five touchdowns.

102:39So people like, Oh, Torrey Horton was kind of hitting.

102:42He had 13 receptions last year. Like he was not hitting, um, the tight ends out, uh, AJ Barner had some touchdowns and ran hot on TDs.

102:49And so people think he did a lot more than he did.

102:53But if you go look at his receptions and his, his usage, it's not that impressive.

102:58And he's probably somebody who's going to regress this year.

103:00It's a rotational aspect. Essentially the heavier tight end personnel answer is that we are close to equilibrium.

103:06And now it's more about scheme. Now it's more about the, the chess match, getting them into base.

103:11I wrote a piece earlier this off season called scheme is more important than ever.

103:15I think we are at this point. This is where they brought in all these young OCs is they want, I think what the Rams wanted to do.

103:23And especially as you talk about a longer season, 17 game season, they wanted to be able to have multiple different sort of base offenses.

103:31They could go to at different times when Puka got banged up, that's when they started using 13 more and they use Adams as the one receiver.

103:39And people were like, Oh, this is hurting Puka Nakua's value.

103:42It wasn't about that. It was about Puka Nakua not being a hundred percent healthy.

103:46And the Rams being like, this is a 17 game season when Nakua is out there, we'll use him a bunch, but

103:53we're basically finding success in a different base and a different type of offense.

103:57They used to be the most 11 personnel heavy team in the league.

104:01And Sean McVay would make everything look similar in 11 personnel.

104:04And then it would be slight variations of the concepts.

104:07It's different. Now he wants to have multiple different base formations and rotate guys.

104:11It's what the bills have been doing for a few years.

104:14It's what Sean Payton loves to do. And it's one of the reasons that I think he's one of the boomer coaches

104:20that still has success because I argue the league moved back toward him.

104:24What he was already doing with the saints is what works optimally.

104:28Not every coach's scheme and system makes sense in the modern NFL, but Sean Payton loved to do that kind of stuff years ago.

104:35And so he's the one that's sort of fortunate that the trends and everything worked back to like, oh, this is, he

104:41already has a whole system where he implements a variety of different personnel packages and likes to use guys in situational ways

104:47and knows how to coach that, install that, and teach that all offseason, build his offense that way, and have his position coaches on.

104:54There's a whole thing that comes with that, and that's going to work for him in the modern NFL.

105:00It's not going to work for guys who do strictly 11 personnel stuff.

105:04But when you're as sharp as a guy like McVay, you can evolve.

105:08And you can have 13 personnel that you use for three or four weeks.

105:12And then their numbers dropped off a little bit again, even going into the postseason.

105:16They didn't think 13 personnel was their very best offensive situation.

105:19It was an answer to a separate problem. And it gets back to this idea of how like projections in football are

105:26very challenging because it's a moving target. It's every NFL season is an evolution.

105:30We talk about it with rookies and young players seeing more volume as the season goes along.

105:35But the offenses are going to evolve too. And the good ones understand that in the modern NFL.

105:40And to your point, when you talk about it team by team, some of these teams are going to be bad for fantasy.

105:47There's teams that I went in and projected, and I'm like, I don't want to make any bets here.

105:52Someone's going to win. But the risk-adjusted bets here are really challenging for me.

105:56I do think there's going to be. A good example of that is the Jaguars.

106:01And maybe you can make the bet on the running back there on Basial Tootin.

106:05And I do like that bet. But last year, they went into the season with Brian Thomas and Travis Hunter as the

106:11guys that were like, this guy's going in the 1-2 turn.

106:15The other one's going in the 4-5 range. And they're the studs.

106:18They're the two recent first-round draft pick wide receivers and long view guys, right?

106:22And by midseason, one of them's hurt. The other one's not clicking with their quarterback.

106:27He had his breakout with Mac Jones and Brian Thomas.

106:30And he's no longer clicking with Trevor Lawrence or maybe never did click with Trevor Lawrence.

106:34They traded for Jacoby Myers. And Parker Washington, a fourth dude who was on the roster all along, winds up having the

106:41third best yards per route run from the point of the Jacoby Myers trade after week 9 until the end of the postseason.

106:47That's not like a stat with a lot of qualifiers there.

106:51Literally after week 9, including the postseason, until the end of the year, the only two players that had a better yards

106:57per route run than Parker Washington were Jackson Smith and Jigba and Puka Nakua.

107:01And this is on a team that we were talking about Brian Thomas and Travis Hunter.

107:06And then you tell me they traded for Jacoby Myers.

107:09And I would be talking about Jacoby Myers and Brenton Strange as the tight end.

107:13They went out and drafted a new blocking tight end and a great receiving tight end.

107:18So if Strange goes down, they can still go to 12 personnel and they can do some things.

107:23They're going to have some 13 personnel with all those guys out there.

107:27Koziel, Borkercher, and Strange. I think Koziel is probably, he's probably not going to do a lot, but he's 6'6 and he's super athletic.

107:34And they've talked about liking him in the red zone.

107:37I think he's a bummer for Strange. If you like Strange, Strange will run a lot of routes.

107:42Koziel might catch three or four touchdowns. And like Strange may only be in line to catch five or six.

107:48And he may catch two as a result of Koziel.

107:51That's one outcome, but if Koziel runs hot in a red zone role, that's going to be tough for Strange.

107:56He may take some of those routes. And so this sub-package and situational usage and the reason you would do something like

108:03that is in the modern NFL with an advanced starting field position where the scoring percent per drive is elevated, the difference

108:09between getting three and seven on any drive is massive.

108:12That's what the game becomes a little bit. Getting into field goal range, kicking a field goal is one thing, but converting the touchdown is the other.

108:20And so now it gets down to when the field shrinks and the offense or the defense can actually take DBs off the field.

108:27They don't have to worry about explosives. The back of the end zone becomes their umbrella over the top of the deep routes.

108:34How can you score? How do you have the situational sub-package usage in those ways?

108:38And that's, again, something Sean Payton's done for years and it's been frustrating is secondary tight ends scoring touchdowns and using different running backs in the red zone.

108:46And it's always tilted me in fantasy. And I think it's going to tilt a lot of people in a lot of different offenses this year.

108:54Again, the Bills did some of this last year.

108:57Different teams. Dalton Kincaid had great per route numbers, but the excitement about that would be if his routes are going to spike out.

109:04They're not going to. Dude, he's not. I don't see a reason why they should.

109:08I mean, there's a misalignment in a big way that you're hitting on between what is good for some of these teams and what is good for fantasy.

109:16And it's like, you mentioned the Jaguars. I'm in the middle of, I had mentioned I'd written one up on the Bears.

109:23I'm doing this ambiguous receiver rooms series. And I'm like about 90% done my Jaguars one.

109:27And I'm like, I'm not even 100% sure I'm closer to the answer.

109:316,000 words in on like from any level of certainty.

109:34But like, it's a fascinating team. The other team I find that's really fascinating from this standpoint of sub packages and difficult

109:40to decipher is the Chargers, who I've had the hardest time with all offseason because I'm really optimistic about this offense.

109:46I think it's going to be good. I'm a huge fan of Herbert.

109:50I'm a huge fan of McDaniel and all the individual prices I'm having difficulty with because I mean, you want to talk about sub packages.

109:58They currently have four receivers, three tight ends, three running backs, and a fullback that I expect will see snaps on a fairly regular basis in their games.

110:06Probably more. Yeah, but like... They may use even additional receivers.

110:09Yeah. Maybe even more. But like I can clearly envision a offensive role and maybe it's not a very productive box score

110:15offensive role, but like a legitimate will-see-the-field role for each of Ladd, QJ, Harris, Brennan Thompson, the rookie that they drafted, who

110:22is I think an interesting deep threat. There are three tight ends in Kohler and Gadsden and Njoku and all three of

110:28the running backs with Hampton and Keaton and Vidal.

110:31And then the fullback, Ingold, who's not going to have any production, but it's probably going to play and he's going to

110:37eat snaps from somebody and take someone off the field.

110:40And like, what do we do with that? It's a crazy team in fantasy where I can see a world where they're

110:47a top five offense in the NFL this year, but they might still have multiple players who are big losers at cost

110:53because, you know, if someone like Ladd, but maybe it's not Ladd, is a guy that plays in all these different personnel

110:59packages and he's benefiting from guys like Ingold and Kalar eating up a lot of routes, you know, that could be a huge win for him.

111:07But what if they decide it's not, what if it's Trey Harris is out there playing in 13 personnel again, but then

111:13he's not a big focus of the team in 11.

111:16And it's going to be an interesting team to monitor week to week.

111:20And this exact point is why your buddy Ryan Heath that you do the Dynasty Points podcast with made the Ladd to

111:26sort of JSN, like somewhat comparison of, and I'm not trying to put like words in his mouth because I don't think

111:33he thinks he's going to be JSN necessarily, but this idea that if Ladd's out there running routes in more 12 and

111:3913 personnel with more tight ends on the field, that would be very good for him in the way that part of

111:46JSN's breakout could be described to have been somewhat similar to that.

111:49I've talked about this idea of the 60-40 rule a little bit in my writing this offseason, which is that for most

111:56models that are built in football, as people try to predict stuff, a lot of the stuff that we're talking about today

112:02is why those models can't get to like an R squared of 80% or 90% or anything like that, unless you use really simple stats.

112:09Like you can say yards predict, you know, fantasy points, but like literally they are the points, right?

112:15Like touchdowns predict fantasy points pretty well too because they actually are fantasy, but we give a fantasy point, a number for that.

112:21But a lot of the like advanced models and things that people try to do for fantasy and otherwise in trying to

112:28predict like what's happening with the NFL, there tends to be a lower R squared and anything beyond that number, like if

112:34a 0.6 R squared means 60% of what you're trying to predict can be explained by the, you know, the factors that

112:41you're looking at 40% is called unexplained variance. And I call this the 60-40 rule where we spend a lot of time

112:47talking about the 60% in fantasy, but the 40% unexplained variance is really the thing that drives these outlier hits that we're looking for.

112:54And so like when you talk about Ladd McConkie versus JSN going into last year, I see a huge difference in everything

113:00you just described about the Chargers, and that's the 40% unexplained variance stuff that ends up happening.

113:05I can see a lot of optimism for Ladd McConkie and his profile, but JSN did not have that type of team

113:12situation and sub package, like clear sub package usage, like on the horizon in a way that isn't clear and how it'll impact McConkie.

113:19There's a lot more risk there. And just look what they did last year.

113:23The point I was trying to make with the Jaguars, they came into the year with one option at wide receiver as their main focal points.

113:30And then there was different dudes at different points in the year that were like their main focal points.

113:36Brenton Strange was hurt for a bit. Then he had a nice stretch helping out at tight end.

113:41Last year, Quinn Johnston was a stud to start the year.

113:44His first four or five weeks, he had massive numbers.

113:47By the end of the season, he was doing basically nothing.

113:51And I don't think that gets talked about enough with him specifically.

113:54Now, I do think McDaniel is likely to use Johnson in some different ways.

113:58But the notes that I have on Johnson, I'm just pulling them up real quick.

114:03He started the season with 70 plus yards in each of his first four games and four TDs in that span.

114:09And one of the things we've often done in fantasy over the years is this idea of what's called the primacy effect,

114:15where the first month the production sticks out in your mind more.

114:19The first in a series of things sticks in your mind more.

114:22And we do that with fantasy. Quentin Johnson's a hit in 2025.

114:26Because he had that start, 70 plus yards, four games in a row, four TDs.

114:30From that point forward across 11 games, he went for more than 53 yards twice.

114:34He had 30 or fewer yards six times. And he had four more total TDs across 11 games after having one per

114:41game in the first four on average. That's a great example of them prioritizing him in the early part of the season when their line was healthy.

114:49Then their line gets hurt. And people talked about the Joe Alt effect.

114:52And I understand that. But that's the point about these sub packages and these different ways that teams are going to do things.

114:59They started to do a little bit more with the tight ends last year.

115:03And that's part of why they went out and got more tight ends.

115:07So they have the ability to do that again this year.

115:10If they have offensive line injuries and the things that do happen.

115:14And then what ended up happening is in 13 personnel, they were using Trey Harris.

115:18That's the sub package that they wanted to go with.

115:21They were using one. Their one wide receiver was Trey Harris.

115:24And that's a guy going into year two that they really like as well.

115:28And so how that affects McConkie. How that affects Quentin Johnson.

115:31How that affects any of those guys as you were talking about.

115:35Is very challenging to predict. Not just for week one or week four or that first month.

115:40Or whatever decision people are going to make. Like when they declare winners for fantasy three or four weeks in.

115:46Because everyone does that every year. It's going to be different in week eight.

115:50It's going to be different in week 12. And those are the offenses that you kind of want to avoid.

115:56I mean, I guess if you get it right in the first month.

115:59And you're in a league with active trades. You can maybe make trades and get out from under these guys.

116:05Because you're afraid that the offense may shift and be malleable.

116:09But I expect that from the Jaguars with the depth they acquired.

116:12And their ability to go three tight end or four receiver.

116:15I expect that with the Chargers for the reasons you said.

116:18Including the Alec Ingold thing. Which Mike McDaniel was apparently hugely supportive of.

116:22He really wanted Ingold who he had in Miami.

116:25To be a part of the offense with the Chargers.

116:28Which as you said, he's going to take snaps from somebody else.

116:31There's only five active player or eligible players on a given play.

116:35If he's out there with a running back and a tight end.

116:38You only have two receivers. It might be two tight ends.

116:41It might be in some heavy formations at times.

116:44And if they're doing that kind of stuff in the red zone.

116:48I mean, who's the one wide receiver, right? Because now you're starting to affect our touchdown rates.

116:53That are so important. Johnston, big athletic receiver. Maybe prioritizing those scenarios.

116:56And I know there's people that are fans of him.

116:59And Mike McDaniel. The way I think of him is he's the guy that's always used that line.

117:04That I love to reference. Which is think players, not plays.

117:07He famously likes to think players when he devises things offensively.

117:11I do think they're going to be way less concentrated than they ever were in Miami.

117:15I'm not saying it's going to be like Miami.

117:18When he would just dial everything up to individual players.

117:21But I do think there's situations where I could see him thinking.

117:24Hey, Quentin Johnson's athleticism is something that I size speed.

117:27Is something I want to utilize. And so maybe I've.

117:30I was pretty out on Johnston early in the offseason.

117:33I've come around on him quite a bit. Because I do think that McDaniel is going to find answers for him.

117:39But it is a situation that is pretty tricky in LA.

117:42As you said. And there's probably going to be winners.

117:45Because this is going to be a good offense, man.

117:48I like playing the running backs. Both Amari and Hampton and Keith Mitchell.

117:52McDaniel has talked about wanting to get Justin Herbert to get the ball out a little quicker.

117:57And they've talked about changing his mechanics a little bit even.

118:00To get the ball out quicker. Which is something he did a lot in Miami with Tua.

118:05And they used, not just for the running backs.

118:08Devon HN was the big answer for that. The most recent seasons.

118:11But they did it with Jotun Smith a couple of years ago famously.

118:15And other guys to get the ball into the hands of.

118:18They did it with Tyreek Hill a decent amount.

118:21To get the ball into playmakers hands. Quick passes.

118:24And they used motion. They used different things to get these guys into space near the line of scrimmage.

118:29And then they throw it to them quickly. But I do think.

118:33Because they really wanted to get Keaton Mitchell. I do think that's one of the things that when I did the ETR podcast so far.

118:40I've had the biggest discrepancy. Where I'm probably out on the biggest limb in my projections.

118:45I think Keaton Mitchell is going to get a lot of targets.

118:48I think they're going to use him in the passing game.

118:51Because he's a smaller, super fast dude. McDaniel wanted.

118:54And he likes to devise stuff. To get that kind of a player into space.

118:58In a quick passing game. A lot A-chan. Right?

119:01Is a guy that's been a very common comparison obviously.

119:04Under McDaniel. That Keaton Mitchell is the speedster. But I do think they're still going to throw to Omari and Hampton a ton as well.

119:11I think they're going to use the running backs both.

119:14And so those are the two guys that I like betting on in that.

119:18And I have a hard time drafting any of the other guys.

119:22Other than playing it cheap. So I'm okay playing Trey Harris.

119:25And I'm okay when I do Jacksonville playing Travis Hunter.

119:28If you want to play that way. Right? Like.

119:30But I have a hard time paying for Brian Thomas right now.

119:34I have a hard time paying for Quentin Johnson where he's going.

119:37And those guys in these offenses. Even if I think they're going to be good offenses.

119:42Which I do on those teams. Now another team we talked about that's doing the heavy tight end stuff is the Bears.

119:48And I told you before the show. I think they are a team that's going to wind up pretty concentrated actually.

119:55Yeah. And I didn't really expect that coming in.

119:57I think that just the roster that they have.

120:00I think that they're. The way that they're going to do some of the heavy personnel stuff.

120:05I think it's more clearly beneficial to the players.

120:07That we're betting on than it is for Jacksonville and the Chargers.

120:11Just because they have so many fewer guys. Right?

120:13And so I think with the Bears it's exciting when you think about their offense.

120:18And like I project their most common personnel formation to probably be 12.

120:22With Kemet, Loveland, Burden, Adunze. And you know they're going to get into 11 personnel looks.

120:26Where they rotate in guys like Raymond or Walker.

120:29The rookie Zavian Thomas. They'll get into some 13 personnel looks to get Rauch in there.

120:34But like to me it's very clear they have three guys.

120:37That they probably want to get the ball in the hands of.

120:40And people will disagree on the hierarchy of those guys.

120:43I think we see it more similarly than differently.

120:46And then they kind of have a bunch of other guys who are going to get snaps on the field.

120:52But I don't think are going to be as much of a focal point.

120:56And shouldn't be as much of a focal point.

120:58And so when you do their projection. It gets pretty exciting because you can see.

121:03You know one of the highest concentrations of any team in the NFL.

121:07On three main guys. And I think that that makes it very different.

121:10Where it's very easy to see very high route rates.

121:13For each of those three players. It's very easy to see a really high cumulative target per route rate.

121:19For those three players. Versus a team like the Chargers and the Jags.

121:23Where I found myself. Like I mentioned I'm in the middle of doing this big article on the Jags.

121:28And it's like last year. They have a section where I go through this pretty granularly.

121:33Like last year they averaged 2.58 wide receiver routes per pass play.

121:36Total. Cumulative. And you. How many routes are you giving Hunter?

121:40Because if you want to give him like a 30% route rate.

121:43That basically leaves you know an average of 75% routes maximum.

121:46For each of the three other wide receivers. Without factoring in any other wide receivers on the roster for any routes.

121:52And without factoring in the likely reality that there's actually going to probably be fewer wide receiver routes per pass play this year.

121:59With the added tight ends than there was last year.

122:02And so you start doing this and it's like are they all going to rotate in at you know 70 to 80% of the routes.

122:09That would be not great. You know or is one guy going to become like a 50% routes player of those three?

122:16And if so who? And then the nightmare scenario is you look.

122:19They played five games only with Washington, Thomas and Myers all playing the entire game.

122:24So no like in-game injuries or anything like that.

122:26And the one guy who ran the most routes who ran I think it was like 98% of the routes was Jacoby Myers.

122:33Myers. Yeah. Who is the least interesting from a talent perspective I think and a ceiling perspective.

122:38And so you could see a scenario that's kind of Packers-y.

122:41Where the one guy who's out there every single play is Dobbs.

122:45Who's like not the guy you'd really want to be out there every single play.

122:49But he's the guy that's out there every single play.

122:52They gave me a huge contract. They traded for him and gave me a huge contract.

122:57Right. And so like there's a scenario where like Tom you know not really this year with the Packers.

123:02They actually think they're going to get more consolidated.

123:05But you think of the previous two years for the Packers where like no one is particularly trustworthy.

123:10Because the more interesting talent bets are like Watson or Reed or potentially Golden or Wicks even.

123:15But they're not. Their playing time is pretty sporadic.

123:18And so it's hard to bet on a guy running 65, 70, 75% of the routes very consistently.

123:23And then Dobbs just by the nature of who he is.

123:26Like he's not a guy that's going to be a top 12, top 24 wide receiver.

123:31Because he's Romeo Dobbs. And it's like there's a world where Jacoby Myers is out there you know earning 18% targets per route run on 95% routes.

123:39And the guys who flash more efficiency upside, more targeting upside per route are routes limited.

123:43And you get to a world where it's like yeah maybe the Jaguars have a really good offense.

123:48Trevor Lawrence has a really good season. But you're consistently frustrated by the wide receiver production that you're generating.

123:54And I think that's definitely – I probably am predicting that if you look at my projection.

123:59The other thing I talked about when I wrote them up was even if they lose somebody, it probably – because you

124:05have this enigma in Travis Hunter, it probably just means that Travis Hunter's role expands in a way that you still have target pressure.

124:12Like five or ten years ago, whenever, I guess probably five years ago, I used to emphasize because it was when like CeeDee Lamb was a rookie.

124:20And they had Amari Cooper and Michael Gallup. And maybe right after that, the Bengals had Jamar Chase and Tee Higgins as young guys.

124:27But they also saw Tyler Boyd. And those are the two teams you mentioned that have been very pass-heavy since then.

124:33And back then, they were still very pass-heavy. And you had three really good receivers that all had ADPs that were draftable.

124:40The thing that I love to emphasize was you wanted to target that because their ADPs in that landscape, especially in that

124:46time frame in fantasy football, were all held down collectively by the projection-based element of this is hard to dole out targets.

124:53But these guys are all good players. And they're all going to probably earn a decent amount of volume.

124:58And then if somebody goes down, it's going to concentrate on those players even more.

125:03And we saw some of that. Or if one guy really ascends.

125:06We saw some of that at times. And I do think that's very possible with the Jags.

125:11But the difference is when you take another 20% of the play volume and slice that off because they're going to do

125:17some heavy tight end formations and things. And you have now the fourth guy in Travis Hunter when you're talking about the

125:24receiver stuff that even if a guy does get hurt, you still have three dudes.

125:28He just accelerates his usage almost certainly on the offensive side for that stretch of time.

125:33It just makes it a really challenging thing to see how individual guys can separate and really be productive.

125:38Now, having said that, Parker Washington did have very good production on a per-out basis at least.

125:43But I was looking back at his game log.

125:46And even during that stretch, the late season last year, he had some games where he just didn't play quite as much

125:52or maybe got banged up or whatever. But the production wasn't insane week in and week out like you might expect when

125:59you hear that he had the third best yards per-out run over that course of the season.

126:04But, yeah, to your point about the Bears, it does seem like really regardless it's going to concentrate on – to me,

126:10it's Loveland and Burden as the ceiling guys. And then Adunze is kind of the Jacoby Myers of this analogy.

126:16He's the – yeah, he's going to run a lot of routes assuming the foot is healthy enough.

126:21But he's going to be out there a lot.

126:24But if the two – your two guys, you know, really break out, then Adunze is going to be the third guy.

126:30And there's not going to be a clear fourth.

126:33My projection has all three of those guys for over 100 targets and no one else at 50.

126:38That's the way that I see that offense. Yeah.

126:41And that's good, right? And the Bears are a team that – we're talking about all these teams that they look like

126:47they're going to score a lot of points. They're going to run a lot of plays, right?

126:52The Bears look like a very fantasy-friendly offense. You've got a good play call.

126:56You've got a good offensive line. You have a tough but not really absurdly difficult schedule.

127:01I think it will push the offense. You have some rest advantages.

127:04Warren Sharp does the rest advantage stuff. Theirs is the most favorable.

127:08So, like, one of the weird quirks of their offense is going into week 17 against the Lions.

127:13The Bears will play on Friday the week prior, and they'll have nine days off.

127:18The Lions are coming off a Monday night game.

127:20So this is a late-season game that may help decide the division.

127:24It's also fantasy championship week. Bears are going to get three extra days of preparation.

127:28And Ben Johnson is going to use those days.

127:31Like, it's week 17. I think that's kind of tough for the Lions.

127:34A little unfair there. But the Bears get that multiple times this year.

127:38They get three extra days in their opponent. They also never face a team coming off a bye, and they never face

127:45a team that has more than one day of preparation advantage on them.

127:48So, anyway, the Bears end up having the most rest advantages throughout the year.

127:53They have a little bit of an up-tempo pace.

127:55They have the potential for the concentration. All of those things for the Bears, when I went through their projection, they point favorably.

128:02Most teams, you have some things that point favorably, some that point unfavorably.

128:06The concentration point is one of the most important as we kind of wrap up this show for today and this concept.

128:12And the reason that we wanted to lay this groundwork with this show first is it gets back to this as we

128:19start to talk about the specific examples. It gets back to this idea of concentration and what we can target and what we think.

128:26Because I do think the meta and the scheme and the ways that teams are building depth at all these positions is

128:32going to drive fantasy value more than it ever did when I was coming up in this industry 10 years ago.

128:38And everyone could be in 11 personnel all the time and have three receivers on the field and do the same kind of stuff.

128:45There were still some run-heavy offenses, etc. But what we're in right now is a different – and we talked about that equilibrium point.

128:52We're in a landscape that's closer to that equilibrium, I think.

128:55And so the good offenses, the ones that are going to score points and be fun for fantasy, are the ones that are going to find their edges.

129:03I think increasingly they're going to find it through sub-packages.

129:06Look at the Broncos. That team, they didn't have the greatest offense in the league last year, but they won the number one seed in the AFC.

129:14They were a successful regular season team, and they did it through all of those sub-packages.

129:19You talked about the split routes. The way that Peyton likes to do it, he'll have one receiver with a lot of

129:25routes, Cortland Sutton, in the last couple of years.

129:28We'll see how that evolves, and we'll have to talk about Jalen Waddell and stuff on future shows.

129:33But everyone else rotating. And you look at 2024, especially 2025, they got Franklin into a few more routes.

129:392024, I think they had nobody over 400 routes beyond Sutton.

129:42And most of them were in the 200s to 250 range, which is just not fantasy viable.

129:47I mean, you had some spike efficiency from Marvin Mims that year and different guys, but it's really hard to play.

129:53Because fantasy football is ultimately a volume game. It's really hard to play those dudes.

129:57It's really hard to play anyone other than Sutton and Franklin last year in that offense.

130:02It became really tough for Evan Ingram. You and I had a team together where we ended up drafting Ingram.

130:08I talked you into that after I was way out on him because I bought into the Joker stuff, and I thought Ingram would run more routes.

130:16But he ended up being same inefficient Evan Ingram on fewer routes is what we got.

130:20You look back at Jacksonville, he was inefficient, but he got a lot of routes, and he was fantasy viable there.

130:27He had a season where he caught 100 balls or whatever it was and was very good for fantasy.

130:32So that's a great example of a guy who the difference in his fantasy viability in those two offense really came down to this concentration concept.

130:40Which offenses are going to run the same guys on a ton of routes, which offenses are not.

130:45And it's something that is going to get missed by your average fantasy player.

130:49There's a lot of smart fantasy analysts talking about this stuff.

130:52But I see a lot of fantasy analysis that looks at every player like they're in the same offense.

130:58That looks at it from an apples to apples when it's not.

131:01It is never an apples to apples. Each of the 32 teams have their own situations from a lot of different angles.

131:08I was doing the Lions projection this morning as well.

131:11One of the things I think is why they're going to be concentrated is they drafted so well from 2021 to 2023,

131:17and then the bill came due for a lot of those guys, and then it becomes tough to have depth because of that.

131:24They paid Panay Sewell and Aminra St. Brown and some of the defensive players like Aiden Hutchinson and a lot of these guys.

131:30They've already paid the linebacker Jack Campbell, but they also got to save money because they're going to pay Jameer Gibbs, and

131:37they're going to pay Jamison Williams, and all of these guys, Sam Laporta.

131:41I think they already paid Jamison Williams, actually, but Laporta and Gibbs, those contracts are coming, and that's all dudes that they

131:47drafted between 2021 and 2023, and there's more on the defensive side, like all their defensive starters.

131:52That's why they had that little window that was like, man, they got all these guys on rookie deals.

131:58Well, now they're paying them all, and that's why Khalif Raymond plays in Chicago now, and David Montgomery's no longer on this

132:04team, and they signed Isaiah Pacheco to a one-year, $1.8 million deal.

132:07I don't think they really even like Isaiah Pacheco.

132:10If you listen to their quotes, they're like, yeah, Jameer Gibbs is going to be our workhorse this year.

132:16Like, Dan Campbell straight upset it. I mean, tacitly admitted they have a downgrade at number two running back, and if you

132:22look at that one-year, $1.8 million contract, it's the league telling you as well.

132:26Nobody thinks Isaiah Pacheco is that great anymore. We have more of an affinity for him in the fantasy community probably than the league does at this point.

132:34I do think he has some handcuff value. I'm not saying you can't draft him in any situation, but I think Jameer

132:41Gibbs is about to get a massive amount of work because when you pay these guys in their prime, I think Almanarossian

132:47Brown is and Jameson Williams is because that's where we're at with the Lions right now.

132:52Their offensive line has seen some attrition as well because of this concentration of the contracts because of how they drafted so

132:58well and those second deals are coming up, and then you're like, okay, those guys are in their primes.

133:04We got to lean on them more than ever, and that's, I think, what you're going to see this year, especially with Laporta coming off a herniated disc.

133:12I'm not super optimistic about him from a health perspective, so that's a team that I look at and I go, well,

133:18their landscape is contractual and it's a salary cap-related one where they can't pay good money for backups, and that's going to

133:25impact your depth, and then you're going to lean on your stars a little bit more because those are the ones you're paying.

133:31Those are the ones that you expect to get you to the promised land.

133:36And that's a team that, by the way, has the easiest schedule in the league this year, a 10.5 win total over under.

133:42Got through that, and I was like, they're going to score points, and they're going to score points in a more concentrated

133:49way, I think, than maybe I had realized before I did the projection.

133:52So, I mean, Jameer Gibbs is going one-on-one, but I got even more excited about him.

133:57But I think the other guys in that offense are pretty fun.

134:01Jameson Williams probably a little bit underrated. Anyway, important things.

134:04We've had our first episode so far, our first episode over two hours, so that bet hits at probably minus 1,000.

134:10So, I think if I'm trying to tie this up a bit, talk about a lot of different stuff, I think what

134:16I enjoy about my work, what I enjoy about reading your work, what I always really, really enjoy about our conversations together

134:23and why I'm so excited to do this show together is the blending in of so many different elements from the micro-analytical

134:29focus to understanding sort of that larger picture to understanding some of the ways that we can weave in the real football aspects with the fantasy football aspects.

134:37We spent a lot of time today on the macro trends, the more NFL-focused stuff.

134:41We're going to get into more of the fantasy-specific stuff, but I think you get to see a sneak peek into how

134:48we sort of dive into that from a pretty specific angle.

134:51And excited to do a lot more of these.

134:54Excited to do some drafts later in the season.

134:56We're going to get into some of the specific conversations that guys were drafting, not drafting, and then put that to work over the rest of the summer.

135:05And yeah, I really, really enjoyed the first episode.

135:07Make sure to go and subscribe to us if you want on Patreon.

135:11Make sure to keep an eye out for wherever you get your podcasts for these to keep continuing.

135:16Do you have anything else to add, Ben? I would just echo your thoughts.

135:20Yeah, man, I would echo your thoughts. I'm excited.

135:23I appreciate anyone who listened. And yeah, we're going to have plenty of two-hour long, the long view, right?

135:28Two-hour long discussions. I'm glad. Yeah. So as you were saying, we wanted to talk about this topic first to kind of get it off.

135:36It's an easy one to go too long on.

135:38We wanted to get it out there, and now we can reference it.

135:42We can just say, hey, first episode, we discuss this stuff and be a little bit more player-specific as you were just talking about.

135:49And we got into here in the last half hour or 45 minutes where we got into some of these teams and

135:56how it impacts the players and how we're thinking about the bets on some of those teams.

136:01But yeah, I'm excited to get into a lot more of that.

136:04That's what we're going to do in the near future is get into more of the positional stuff, what plays we like

136:10at different costs because we've got to get our listeners up to speed quickly.

136:15It is almost, I mean, when they're listening to this, it's probably already past mid-July.

136:19We were recording it on July 12th, but as we said, we kind of wanted to pre-record this first one and get

136:25our feet wet and then get the first couple out.

136:28And anyway, we'll have a lot more coming on the micro level, on the different positions and on how we want to

136:35play things and you said do some drafts together.

136:37And I'm really excited to be doing it with you.

136:40I think this was a fun one to start.

136:43I'm pumped, man. This is a blast and I can't wait to see you guys for the next episode.

136:48We'll see you guys at �ossary Banchenых or Masks.

136:51And yeah, but we have a fella queen with ember But I mean, it's a bit partie last year one of the

136:57things that's up and then you see and mystical

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