Transcription
What's going on, man? Welcome back to the basement. I'm Ron. And those first few rounds of your fantasy football draft are so crucial because you can not only draft next year's Saquon Barkley or Jamar Chase level league winner, but you can also step on a landmine like Tyreek Hill or Christian McCaffrey last year who legitimately sunk teams right out of the gate. So, today we are going to identify six players you'll regret drafting early in your fantasy football draft this season. And all of these players are going inside the top five rounds of Consensus ADP. And as always, if you enjoy, leave a like, subscribe if you're new, and let's just get something out of the way off the top. I did this video last year, and we got buried on the thumbnail. Saquon Barkley is there. Saquon Barkley, of course, absolutely torched me and was amazing last year. The comments let me have it rightfully. So, if you want to watch this video and say, you know what, I'm going to do the opposite of what Ron does here, that is absolutely up to you. But what I will say is I will never run from an L. I will never hide losses and I will never be scared to fade players because a lot of the times people do just love to pump up every player, every breakout candidate, every player. And so then you can come back next year and say, "Oh, well, I called these guys as league winners. Here's my credibility." But they never took stands. So today, we're going to take some stands here. We're going to go against the grain and kind of poke holes in these players. A lot of these guys, first, second, third round picks, they're there for a reason. They're good players, but we're going to put on our detective hat here and find the ones that are a little bit shaky that I am staying away from this season.
Let's get right into our first player here, Malik Neighbors. Now, Malik Neighbors upside scares the hell out of me. There could be a situation here where he absolutely blows up and joins the ranks of Justin Jefferson and Jamar Chase as a 20 plus point per game wide receiver, but I'm not really drafting a lot of them. He is not very cheap at all. You can see here by consensus he's goes he's going at the 109 as the wide receiver five in your home league. I've drafted him 1.2% of the time over on underdog. And here's why. There is massive downside here with Malik Neighbors. This passing environment is not good. Right? He has Russell Wilson. He has Jackson Dart. They are projected for the 21st most attempts, 26th most yards, 28th most touchdowns in terms of passing by Mike Clay. And by Las Vegas, they are projected for the 30th most points scored in the NFL. That is absolutely brutal. And now they have an even better defense where now they bring in Abdul Carter. And this defensive line is Dexter Lawrence, Abdul Carter, Brian Burns, Tavon Tibido. It's a really, really strong unit, which means a lot of the garbage time production that Malik Neighbors saw last year isn't going to come. They're not going to be down three scores in the fourth quarter, playing uptempo, passing the ball a ton. They're going to probably try and play defense, preserve leads, keep things close, and that's not as lucrative for Malik Neighbors. Where last year, if you broke it down by quarter in terms of his production, Nick Colano did here. Quarter one, he was 41st in terms of receiving yards, 13th in the second quarter, 31st in the third quarter, and then second in the fourth quarter. I'm not saying that this can turn around and things can flatten back out, but that fourth quarter number is not going to be that high or that skewed towards the back half of games. games and I think that that's going to hurt him out the gate here in 2025. Now, also this is somebody you're drafting at 109 in a bad offense who's also banged up here last season. Concussion, groin injury, hip injury, knee and foot injuries, toe injury. Uh he only missed two games, but there was just a lot going on with him and now we're already seeing things start to pile up where he hasn't been practicing this week. He had a shoulder injury and then he said a toe injury he's had since college, which is just really scary. This is from Deepak Chona here uh saying that Malik Neighbors has a greater risk than other wide receiver ones. He has practiced but not in one week due to the chronic toe injury and he's been managing this since college. We'd lean towards him playing in week one but from the limited info so far we should expect relatively high reoccurrence risk. And to me that's kind of crazy. The fact that his week one status is like kind of up in the air and the fact that this could be an issue all season and nobody really cares. were just blindly drafting that 109 when again a lot of this comes down to price. I I don't hate players, I just hate prices. If Malik Neighbors was the 204, I'd have him in every single league. You know what I mean? But I'm drafting Aman Ross Shane Brown ahead of him. I'm drafting Nico Collins ahead of him. I'm drafting Devon Achan ahead of him. And I'm just not ending up with a lot of Malik Neighbors on my teams.
Now, another player I'm not ending up with a lot of on my teams is Ashton Genty. Now, this is very out of character for me to fade a secondyear player and now a rookie here, but I like young ascending players at cheaper prices. I don't want to have to pay a first round pick for Ashton Genty. Now, here he goes 112 by consensus. Now, these rankings are from the website I've used to compile the consensus default rankings that is across Yahoo, Sleeper, and ESPN. 112 is about fineish for Ashen Genty. I'm still taking Devon A over him, taking Nico Collins, taking Aman Ra St. Brown and just not ending up with a lot of him in general because in a lot of these draft rooms, there's something about Ashton Genty, him being a rookie, people loving him that there's some rooms where he just goes really high. This is from a stream we did with Jacob and Liam. He went 106 here in the FFPC. Now, before you say, oh, why is Bowowers in the first, Trey McBride in the first? It's a Titan premium league, but still, he went off the board here ahead of Saquon, ahead of Christian McCaffrey, ahead of Devon Achan. And outside of this high stakes league, which by the way, we stream every single night from now until kickoff. I'll be streaming after I post this video tonight as well. You also have the experts where in this like, you know, expert ESPN mock draft they did during their ESPN stream, Aston Genty goes 105 here again ahead of Christian McCaffrey, ahead of Saquon Barkley, and it's just a little bit crazy right now in terms of the Ashton Genty stuff. There's just some people that really like him. They really want to pull him up into like the 107, 108, 109. Uh, and I just can't get there. Again, I haven't really been drafting a lot of him. We've done maybe six or so high stakes reddraft streams here and I don't have him in a single league yet. And it's really crazy to say this for a rookie running back, but he kind of goes against the whole idea of draft an early round running back with legendary upside. The idea that if you're going to take a running back early, he needs to have upside to finish as the RB1 overall. The issue is that no rookie running back has done that really since Barkley. So I actually looked back since 2012. That's since the Trent Richardson draft and looked at the top 10 NFL draft picks over those years and what they did in year one. You of course have Saquon Barkley 24 points per game. You have Ezekiel Elliott 21 points per game. And then it falls off to like 1716 which to me is probably the more reasonable ceiling for Ashton Genty because when we look at the factors for these teams, you want passcatching upside or a good offensive environment. So I have their targets, their offensive points for rank and then their offensive line rank. Ashton Genty's projected for 80 targets, which is nice, but it's not 100 plus targets like Saquin Barkley had in his rookie year to the point where that's going to get him out of trouble. Like Bjan Robinson at 86 targets as a rookie, 14.5 points per game. Ashton Genty in terms of Las Vegas is on the 27th ranked offense in terms of implied points scored and then offensive line 18th. That's fine. Ezekiel Elliott's a great example of situation mattering. And really last year, that's probably the biggest lesson I learned from fading Saquon is that running backs really are environment dependent. You want good offensive lines. You want good scoring environments. And the Raiders just aren't really that. But when you look at Ezekiel Elliott back in 2016, they had the fifth highest scoring offense and the second best offensive line. Of course, you're going to feast to 20 plus points per game. Even Saquon Barkley, the 16th best scoring offense, 121 targets. Of course, that's going to get you there. But even other guys who were in the 17 points per game range of Leonard Fornette, fifth best offense, 15th best offensive line. If you remember, fifth best offense, that was the uh I think that was the Blake Bortles year where he was absolutely nuts. Trent Richardson, 24th ranked offense, but at least his offensive line was elite, fifth best offensive line. You're kind of then operating into the Todd Gurley like 16 point per game range. Of course, he had uh the ACL tear, but to me, there's just a lot of downside here that you take Ashton Genty, like the 109, 110, and he scores like 15 points per game and is fine. But you really need something a little bit better than that. You need, you know, like 18 plus points per game from that first round pick, or else you're going to kind of be playing from behind the entire season. And I just think it's a lot to invest in a rookie we haven't seen before. When we look at the projections with Mike Clay and Rich Reebar where I take two separate projections, average them together to just kind of get a non-biased look at where players project, it's of course McAffrey is always going to project first and I don't really do my rankings by projections, right? Like I personally have it Gibbs, then Bjan, then Seaquin, then McAffrey, then Chan. For me in terms of my top five, Achan is actually he gets pumped up here. 17 plus points per game for him is actually really, really nice. And then Genty doesn't give you a meaningful difference in the first round over second round running backs like Jonathan Taylor, Dererick Henry, Bucky Irving, Chase Brown, Josh Jacobs. So that's really my biggest holdup. Uh he's just not out projecting the running backs you can get in the next round. He's also not a better pick to me than like even Brian Thomas Jr., Nico Collins, Alan Rain Brown, all of those guys. So again, I'm just not taking him a ton. Now, this is kind of a throwaway line because I don't really believe that college touches mattered nearly as much as NFL touches, but he did have 397 touches last year. That's second only to Saquon Barkley in terms of total workload in the previous year. So, we'll see if that catches up to him. I I'm not going to bury him for that, but it is just another data point to be thinking about with Ashton Genty.
Then, we can talk about Garrett Wilson. And for anyone out there that wants to call me a homer, Jets jersey in the background, we're not drafting Garrett Wilson this year. He's going to 308 as the wide receiver 15 here. And I have only drafted him 2.5% of the time over on Underdog. Now, if you want to hop on underdog as well, we are streaming those drafts almost every single night. You can use promo code Ron. And when you play $5, they'll give you $50 in bonus funds all off seasonason long. So, make sure you check that out. Hop in the drafts, hop in the pick thems, look at what they have to offer, and if you want to go out there and draft Eric Wilson because you think that I'm wrong for fading him, you can also do that on your own dime on the dog app. Now, let's talk about Garrett Wilson here. And it sucks. This is my favorite player on my favorite team and I can't draft him because he's too expensive. Over the last three years, all we really have to write back with is a wide receiver 18 point per game finish. And now you're drafting as the wide receiver 15. So, you've already kind of drafted him at a ceiling, right? Last year he had over 100 catches. He had seven touchdowns. That feels pretty much like what the ceiling is with Justin Fields. And again, you're drafting him at a higher cost than where he finished last year. And on a per out basis, he's just not a transcendent talent in the same way that like a Malik Neighbors could be with Jackson Dart or Russ Wilson. Like you can at least kind of squint and see, okay, well, he already had 18 points per game last year with bad quarterback play. For Garrett Wilson, that's never been the case. Again, wide receiver 18 points per game finish is the best that he's had. On top of that, in terms of his per round numbers, yards per out run next to Drake London and Chris Olive, his 2022 classmates over the years, 1.69 yards per run is not good. 8.5% first downs per run isn't that good either. So, it's just tough. I know he scores well on reception perception. He creates separation, but his per route efficiency just isn't all that impressive. And I don't know how it improves with Justin Fields where if you look at the projections for this New York Jets passing offense, it's bottom three in attempts, completions, yards, and touchdowns. It is brutal. And we already saw this play out last year where George Pickkins had six games with Justin Fields where Justin Fields threw 10 or more pass attempts and then the rest of the season with Russell Wilson and he went from 10 points per game to 13 points per game. Justin Fields. I know that he has had DJ Moore feast in the past, but he really just isn't good for fantasy production with wide receivers. And really the broad idea here with the third round for me this offseason has been is just don't draft wide receivers here. This is Ryan Heath's anatomy of a league winner article over on Fantasy Points. You can see in that third round, you're just better off drafting the quarterbacks or running backs. I am drafting in that range. Sometimes Chase Brown will slip to you. Sometimes Amarian Hampton. Uh, I'll even pull up guys like James Cook into the third round. I'll draft the elite quarterbacks of course, like so Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, even Jayden Daniels and Jaylen Herz there if you'd like to as well because the third round's just absolutely brutal. And I will say if you have a draft coming up, make sure you check out the Patreon. patreon.com/ronon Stewart because I have my ranking set up in this way where yes, I'm lower than consensus on all the players listed on this video, but I'm also trying to make sure that you are drafting in a structurally sound way. So in round three, I'm pushing up the quarterbacks. pushing up the running backs and making sure that you are ending up with a smart team that is built very well. So, of course, patreon.com/ronstewart my top 200 rankings, they're tiered, my target rounds for every player, my targets, fades, all of that good stuff can be found there in the description or the comment section down below.
And now, let's talk about Marvin Harrison Jr. Again, this is a weird one for me. I've kind of changed my ways. I'm trying to learn from the past, right? Last year was a lot of old heads, right? It was Derrick Henry. it was Saquon Barkley. And now it's like I think that we're getting to a a point with the market where we're probably pricing up these breakouts too high. And Marvin Harrison comes off as that for me. He's going at the 402 in your home as the wide receiver 17. And this is where he ranked in terms of PFF grade, targets per out run, first downs per out run, and yards per run. He wasn't that much different than Michael Pitman and Romeo Dos. Like he was fine. He was the wide receiver 39 in points per game last year, you're drafting at the wide receiver 17 and he still has plenty of room to improve on wide receiver 39 without paying off at wide receiver 17. Like he could improve and then finish at wide receiver 27 and still be a bad pick in the fourth round. So for me it's really tough. He doesn't create separation. About a third of his targets last year were contested. Just a lot of 50/50 balls on the perimeter which just isn't really Kyler's MMO of like throwing into tight windows and really trusting his receiver like that. And it's just he he's he's essentially playing wide receiver on expert difficulty. There's no layups. There's no easy button stuff. There's no screens. But also, he's not really a yak guy. I think he only had like one miss tackles force last year. And now we have this marriage of him and Kyler. We have the same offensive coordinator. Nothing has changed here. So, it's really tough for me to be optimistic and be like, "Oh, well, there's a new OC or there's a new quarterback and there's a new reason why he might thrive here." But the situation's exactly the same. When we look here from uh FF Datarama here, Marvin Harrison on vertically breaking routes in 2024, 83rd in separation score, 49th in win rate, 59th in yards per out run despite having the 19th highest usage in terms of vertical route percentage. Then Kyler on these routes, 36th in yards per attempt, 37th in adjusted net yards per attempt, 32nd in completion percentage over expected, 24th in catchable throw percentage. So it's just a brutal marriage of skill sets. And if Marvin Harrison Jr. is going to be the next AJ Green or be the next Nico Collins stud ex- wide receiver that can just win on hard mode without those easy button touches. He needs more of these inbreaking routes over the middle. That's what we've seen from Nico Collins where he's thrived really well of like these 15 to 20 yard dig routes. You're just not getting that with Kyler Murray. This is a staff from Football Insights. Kyler Murray has six total pass attempts over the deep middle since the start of 2023. One of those is a Marvin Harrison target which happened to be caught for a touchdown. So, it's just not happening enough to give Marvin Harrison Jr. a legitimate boost. So, for me, it's a really tough sell to take him in that range in the fourth round.
Now, this is a more uh classic Ron Stewart fade, but we're going to talk about Alvin Kamara. He goes at the 407 of the RB7. And here's the deal. The Saints project for the 31st most points in the NFL by Vegas. He's essentially just a highf flooror PPR scam, which I get the appeal, but there's also massive downside here with Alvin Kamar. Again, the touchdown upside isn't really there. You also now have him along with this entire 2017 draft class going into their year 9 season, which is where we see things start to get really ugly in terms of age curves for the running back position. A lot of these guys are going to fall off and kind of drop like flies here. And then we also have this trends here where Alvin Kamaro, when things matter the most for your fantasy football season, he flames out. Over the last three seasons, from weeks one through nine, he's at 20.3 points per game. From weeks 10 on, 13.6 points for him. If you want to just make that the fantasy playoffs before the playoffs, 18 points per game. In the fantasy playoffs, 12.7 points per game. So, he's very much someone that can get you there. But it really does suck. He's somebody that's not going to win you your league. like he is very much a get you to the playoffs then you lose in the first round and that was your year in fantasy football is kind of the experience with Alvin Kamara and there's just too big of a sample to say it's not a trend at this point and on top of that the Saints are favored with the Browns to get the first overall pick this year this is a bad team there's a very good chance new coach that towards the end of the year Kamar gets traded which is like maybe a positive but could also get ugly or maybe they just want to see what they have in Kendra Miller and Devin Neil or maybe Alan Kamar even like sits out and looks towards the offseason to get moved elsewhere. There's just a lot of downside here again in the fourth round for Kamar to really sink your team. And I do think that he's going to really hurt by not having G uh I was going to say Garrett Kubak, Clint Kubak as the OC here on the Saints. You can see this is from Jake Gibbs. The real winner if he can stay healthy would appear to be Kenneth Walker. Alvin Kamar was ripping off explosives in this run design early in the season. His explosive rush rate under Kubak was his highest since 2020. So he found a lot of efficiency in that Kubiaak offense. Of course, now Kubiak is with the Seahawks and is why we like Kenneth Walker a bunch. And now all of that efficiency, explosiveness is now kind of getting zapped for Kamar who has been trending down in terms of efficiency across the board since 2020.
Now our last player here, our sixth bust that you'll regret drafting early is Courtland Sun. He's going at the 504 as the wide receiver 25. He's fine to me, but taking him in round five of your home league when guys like George Pickkins and Tedo McMillan and Trevon Henderson and all of these guys are still on the board to me, it's just not my philosophy. He is very much a small win big miss kind of player where maybe he gives you, you know, you drafted him as the wide receiver 25, last year he finishes as the wide receiver 24. Maybe you drafted as the wide receiver 25 and he finishes as like the wide receiver 19. That's fine. you know, you hit a single, you got on base, but in the fifth round, this is where legitimate league winners are drafted. So, I would just prefer not to take them there, right? When we look at the league winner rates, you can still see in round five, you're getting a lot of league winners at running back, wide receiver, tight end. So, going for a single and like just getting on base and just wanting to draft a wide receiver, too. It just doesn't really make a ton of sense for me. I just think that you can get that archetype later on, right? if you want to get Jacobe Meyers or like he even looked in terms of per route similar to a guy like Adam Thielen, but I think Jacobe Meyers and Joan Jennings and Michael Pitman all kind of represent a similar archetype to Corland Sun for much cheaper. We now have a seven-year sample of him only finishing as a top 24 wide receiver once. Yes, this is the first time he's had a decent quarterback in Boon Knicks, but Bon Knicks threw 29 touchdowns last year. There's a chance he takes a step back. there's a chance he's already maxed out. There's also a chance that Corin Sun benefited a lot from really bad competition where the second leading receiver only had 70 targets last year. Evan Ingram is going to definitely clear that. You're going to have Marvin Mims kind of taking a step forward into his role. I don't know. Again, I think he's going to be fine, right? He's going to the widers for 25. He probably finishes around there, but it's just not the kind of bet I'm looking to make in the fifth round of drafts.
But that's going to do it for us today. Again, if you have a draft this weekend you are cramming for, I know a lot of you guys are, make sure you check out the Patreon, patreon.com/ron Stewart, my top 200 rankings are all there for you guys to use in these drafts all weekend long and it's what I use in my drafts. I eat out my own restaurant when I stream high stakes manage leagues with you guys. I am drafting right off the checklist on another monitor. But if you can't support there, which you can find patreon.com/Ronto in the description in the comment section down below, all I ask that you leave a like, subscribe if you're new, and I will see yall in the next one. [Music] Leave me as stones like this froze ice cold. My body like I'm frozen.