32 Teams. 32 Fantasy Football Facts To WIN Week 7

Welcome to week seven and welcome to Stats Versus Film. Yes, this is the flagship show where we watched every single freaking game and tuning two on Monday Night Football. Watch the tape and then compare that with the stats, the spreadsheets, the underlying metrics in the hope of finding you the answers to continue to win in your fantasy league.

Hayden, since you know we are one-third of the way through the calendar, through the fantasy football season, I always say reset point, uh, but it's a forward-thinking program. So, I think it's like a good moment. It's like that first mile marker in whatever 5K that you're running. Yeah, this is huge. I think we'll do over what, top 12 rest of season rankings as kind of the jumping-off point. And then I think also as we go through the show, I want to start figuring out, are there any elite NFL teams? Who do we feel best about? It's been like, like you said, a third of the way through, we should start looking at, you know, MVPs and Super Bowl teams and that type of stuff, too. So, I think this is going to be more of a show about the rest of the season than just only looking back at the last week. But trust me, we are going to go through every single franchise here and talk through basically every single fantasy-relevant player.

But Hayden, hit the nail on the head. Let's kick things off since, again, one-third of the way through with, if fantasy drafts happened today for the rest of the season, what would our personal top 12s look like? What would our personal first rounds look like? We have not compared notes here. So, I guess we go through one through 12 for you first, unless you want to do one through six. It's totally up to you. Let's go one through six. I think we'll probably have a lot of the same overlap and then we'll go from there. So, my top six: Bijan Robinson, Jonathan Taylor, then it's Puka Nacua, CeeDee Lamb, Christian McCaffrey, and then I'm going to go with Amon-Ra St. Brown as my six, but I feel very good about the top five and it's a little bit of a drop-off.

Very similar for me. I'm favoring running backs a little bit more. I have one Jonathan Taylor, two Bijan Robinson, three Christian McCaffrey, four Puka Nacua, five Amon-Ra Brown, and six Jaxon Smith-Njigba. Uh, just quickly on the JT note, um, we'll talk about this when we get to the Indianapolis Colts, but he has the most carries inside of the 10-yard line and he also has the most plays of and carries of 20-plus miles per hour this season. Uh, one of the followers over on X pointed out that if you could point me into one stat that I could have had prior to week one of this NFL season that would have guided my fantasy drafts, I would have wanted to know that one because he's getting the high-value touch opportunities inside the red area, obviously getting receptions at a higher rate than usual this year and also reeling off big plays and getting up to speed and that's just like the perfect, I think, encapsulation of where JT's at right now and that's why he's number one for me.

Right. I, even though Christian McCaffrey has been just as good, I think Bijan, Jonathan Taylor feel better about their situations. They're younger players as the season progresses. And with Christian McCaffrey, who's I have at five, still absolutely love him. I'm curious to see how the offense is going to look because they're running like the most pass attempts and neutral pass, uh, pass plays in the season. They're going to eventually get some competition back, but I'm kind of giving up on the rushing production. He's going to get goal-line carries, but the offensive line's not very good right now. So, a note on that. We always joke and it's actually the truth that he's a wide receiver one on the season and basically a running back two, three in that department. They are what, 31st or 32nd in rushing success rate, EPA, whatever you want to look at. So on one hand, Hayden, yes, we might want to give up on that. The other hand, he's still a top three scorer in fantasy football despite all that and that also might improve. There's only one direction for that to go and it is up. So to me, there's a chance that obviously some of the passing stuff goes down when George Kittle is back healthy, when Ricky Pearsall is back healthy, even Brandon Aiyuk in week 10 or 11 as Kyle Shanahan suggests. And so if even we get a little boost with the rushing stuff, then that's fantastic for me.

Okay, moving on to my back half of round one. I have it as Drake London seventh, Jaxon Smith-Njigba eighth, Jahmyr Gibbs ninth, Josh Jacobs number 10, Ja'Marr Chase 11, and then Devon Achane number 12.

Okay, I have Josh Jacobs seven, Jahmyr Gibbs 8, CeeDee Lamb, nine, James Cook 10, Drake London 11, and then Devon Achane 12.

Justin Jefferson, Ja'Marr Chase, and even Rashee Rice were like the next three out for me as like a trio at wide receiver. But I was looking at it over the last two weeks like Ja'Marr Chase has been simply incredible. But then if you also look at Drake London's last two games, they are exactly the same in terms of points per game. And I just kind of trust that passing offense and trust that offense environment in general more so than kind of the structural environment of the the Bengals right now.

Yeah. So the only difference we had in the top 12 in terms of players is James Cook and Ja'Marr Chase and I had James Cook 13th and you have you just listed Ja'Marr Chase. It's basically we have a consensus building right there as well. So it's like Saquon Barkley is outside but for both of us and I would draft him in the second round. Rashee Rice I thought was interesting. Then like players like Justin Jefferson, Davante Adams, Nico Collins, and then you get to Michael Wilson, George Pickens, Jaylen Waddle, and then like a couple of the Cam Akers, Ashton Dulin types, but really it feels like there's a kind of a big drop-off after you get through some of these like defined RB1s, and then you get into like I think Rashee Rice can end up getting there and he'd be even like my next name at wide receiver.

Totally agree. I, and even to me, I think it is that first six versus the final six. Uh, and the biggest conversation is what you said. One, we're dealing with some of these injuries. Puka Nacua at the top, CeeDee Lamb coming back from one. We don't know exactly how that fares. If I was definitely going to play this upcoming week, would he be in the fold for maybe top 12, top 13, top 14 for you? Yeah. Uh, maybe not quite that high, but he's definitely in the second round. He's still like my 21st ranked player if I was doing it right there. Um, one, one just big picture thing. I posted these fantasy points over replacement charts onto Twitter. I'm sure we've has been throwing them up here as well. What I've noticed is there is a pretty big drop-off in terms of the elite usage wide receivers. Like typically in years past, there's been like five, six, seven, eight wide receivers who are getting like monster targets, monster air yards. This year, there's only a couple of them and instead, like players like JSN, who's definitely has huge target share numbers, but we're not getting like the dominant Michael Thomas years before. Like the only player that's truly been doing that has been Puka Nacua, who's dealing with an injury. I think that CeeDee Lamb can do that, but even like Amon-Ra St. Brown types are down a little bit. So that's why I had like the pretty aggressive ranking on Drake London because I think that Drake London is one of the only guys that has a chance to have this like crazy, crazy double-digit targets per game for the rest of the season outlook. So I would feel very good if you end up having, uh, USC legend Drake London right now.

Put a pin in the Drake London conversation because if you just look at, you know, fantasy points per game over his last four, Drake London is actually the wide receiver 12 in points per game. But there's something, a major shift over the last two that we highlighted prior to the last two that uh is a reason why you and I are so uh optimistic about his rest of season outlook. By the way, I would love to hear and read your top 10, your first round picks the rest of the way. Leave them in the comments down below. I love to read them on Twitter and then obviously here on YouTube at the exact same time. So, we appreciate you sharing that. Yeah, leave it to us, Hayden, for not to share notes at all and have 11 of the 12 same names for this exercise. They make it pretty obvious sometimes, too.

Okay, let's kick things off since we didn't get to talk about the Sunday night and two Monday night football games with the teams that played in those and let's talk about those Atlanta Falcons and lead with Drake London. So, I don't know, it was like late September Stats Versus Film episode. Everyone was wondering, well, why isn't Drake London doing anything after a 4.4 and 8.0 outing? Uh, yours truly dug into the numbers, did my best to send, you know, smoke signals over to Zac Robinson and say, "Hey buddy, what unlocked Drake London last year was his usage in the slot." In the opening three games, he only had five slot targets, four catches for 30 yards. Over the last two, in weeks four and week six, that's 12 targets, eight receptions, 125 yards, and two touchdowns just out of the slot. And even Hayden, I would argue that it's not just static lining up in the slot. It's these motions, these shifts into little stack formations to give him these free releases. And whenever he lined up against the Bills and was running into those soft areas and curling back towards the quarterback, it just was so different when Michael Penix was targeting that versus every other Michael Penix throw in this game.

Yeah, it's not even close. Strickland and he's so big and physical and that's why I like him in the slot because he can work over the middle or just like absorb a big hit in the red area and he had, uh, using that big frame for that touchdown extending out for a play. But his field for zone coverage is also really, really good. Like a lot of like these like typical like ex-wide receivers struggle in that department. Drake London is exceptional at that, too. So that's why they can move him around the formation. So I'm like looking for, like, could you name a single negative thing about Drake London the football player? Like, there really isn't one. He's one, maybe just like a tenth or let's say a hundredth of a second faster before the end of halftime, you know, he gets six points rather than being one yard short.

For sure. For sure. So yeah, that that's what you can nitpick here. Over the last two weeks, uh, since we've talked about the slot stuff, 14.3 and then 22.0 expected half PPR points. If you just look over the last month of the season, he's wide receiver two in usage. And like you said, they're obviously getting crazy production out of Robinson. Allgeier is a great change-of-pace, like thumper type, but we're not seeing as much Kyle Pitts in the offense. The other wide receivers have not been healthy or very productive. Right now, you can pretty much just pinpoint who the ball is going to through the air and it's to Drake London. And and I'm also saying this, there's still some times where Michael Penix is just inaccurate or when he's throwing the ball over the middle, it is late and nearly intercepted. If you throw, if you only look at his passes between the hashes, it's almost 50/50 if the ball is going to go to the other team or to a Falcon. So, they're still working around some of these limitations, but I do think the change-up for uh Drake London being in the slot a little bit more is something that should absolutely stay.

Yeah, you tried to give that game away a couple times. Yeah, it was almost a true Falcons-ing in the in the second half for that one. Yeah, it's not like London is seeing pure, uh, increase in terms of slot snaps. It's just, once again, once he is lining up in the slot, he is the targeted player at an incredible rate. And that's even with, you know, Ray-Ray McCloud and Darnell Mooney inactive for this game. So, if they ever get like back to a trio of wide receivers, that's only going to open him up even more with his powerful hands and just absolute strength of a man in terms of a wide receiver. Just one final note, obviously Bijan Robinson is incredible. He's my second-ranked player the rest of the way, your first-ranked player the rest of the way. Couldn't argue with either one. The big difference here, and it's crazy, he had never had a run, I think, of over 40 yards, which a lot of that, you know, we talk about blocking impacts, distance runs, but such a difference of, hey, if he lets that safety have a really good angle and make that tackle of a 30-yard run, which is still spectacular, then the specialness is breaking that tackle along the sideline and turning it into an 81-yard touchdown. Not taking anything away from Bijan Robinson. I was sharing some images of him. His jump cuts and his contact bounce for how like he's not slender, but he's slender versus some of the other like top-end running backs we've seen in in history is super impressive. The Bills have a massive safety and linebacker problem. I mean, Bijan Robinson was putting these dudes on skates and when they weren't on skates, it's because he just simply ran right by him. So, that's a massive issue. We should be targeting Buffalo Bills for fantasy matchups and obviously Drake London and Bijan Robinson are the latest examples of that.

Well, let's talk about those Buffalo Bills because that was my first note for them that their linebackers and safeties just seem so light. I mean, it's so different. Yeah, it's different than the days of Tremaine Edmunds and Matt Milano and Micah Hyde and Jordan Poyer and how that is a spine of your defense. It's fast and aggressive and they hit hard. They fill lanes. They don't allow you to have these chunk plays and we've seen it on nearly every game so far this season. uh that they can just get run over. And as we know, the worst thing for a football team is if you're giving up chunk plays or just long sustained drives because the other team is successful running the football. Then you just can't get on the field off the field. Um, I guess my question to you is this. The four wins for the Bills this season have been that crazy comeback in week one against the Baltimore Ravens, the New Orleans Saints, the Miami Dolphins, and the New York Jets. Does that say anything to you or is that just, hey, they've beaten the bad teams that they've played so far?

Well, they've also just given up a bunch of yardage to some, I think, bad offenses in general and then the Falcons, which are like a decent offense, go absolutely crazy on them. So, I I don't think the defense is really going to be uh something that's going to be able to like all of a sudden be solved the rest of the way. And there there's a couple quarterback injuries that they were dealing with too in the middle of this game. So, we have to pay attention to those long term. The Bills offense, it's very good. Obviously, the ground game is exceptional. Usually they've had a couple bad turnovers. Uh, some fluky fumbles and then this one Josh Allen felt a little bit pressured. What was interesting about this one on rewatch was the Falcons defensive coordinator was a complete psycho on third and fourth downs this last game. He blitzed on nine of the 10 dropbacks in those situations. And aside from the one that they didn't, where of course Josh Allen works back to the backside for that Dawson Knox, the one time they did not blitz on all the other ones, it was absolutely working and I never really see Josh Allen feel a little bit spooked out there, but they could not get it right. I think it's just shout out to the Falcons defense, just well-coached right now. They're getting a little bit more one-on-one wins with their new edge rushers, but I think for the most part, this has been like kind of big schematic wins, and that's been pretty impressive for the Falcons. And in a really weak NFC South, the Falcons are are one of these teams I do think has a has a pretty good chance of making some noise as a wild card team.

According to NextGen Stats, Falcons blitzed Josh Allen in 56% of his dropbacks. That's the highest blitz rate he's seen in a game since the 2021 season, which was a roller coaster. Um, you know, there was a key third down where he got isolated coverage for an outside wide receiver named Keon Coleman. And it felt like that was an imperative, you know, moment that, you know, they can really use an ISO ball winner in that matchup. And we know that Josh Palmer's out. We know that, you know, Curtis Samuel's out. Some other Dawson Knox is out, too. Yeah, but for Keon Coleman to open the season like electric. I mean, fourth quarter against the Ravens, 795 and one. Ever since he's caught 17 passes for 142 yards. Yep. And one touchdown. It's it's an interesting conversation where when the Bills are doing great, it's, oh man, they don't need an X wide receiver. They don't need a go-to player. They just spread the rock around and whoever gets it and is open, you know, makes a play. But then when it's not going well, it's, oh man, they could really use one of these types of players. And that's what I felt on Monday night. They don't have speed on the perimeter. So Josh Palmer, Keon Coleman, there's just no speed out there. And on one of those, I think it's the same play you're talking about. Keon Coleman just like never got out of his break. Josh on staring right at him and waiting to throw this out route and Keon Coleman just weaved a big banana route and he has to turn him down and it was ended up being a negative play for the Bills. So I see the same thing. They don't have speed out there. Khalil Shakir here can still make a couple guys miss and he had a pretty clutch conversion underneath and then Dawson Knox has been a real weapon for them and he wasn't out there, but yeah, the the lack of the Stefon Diggs is just somebody that can stretch the field vertically and I mean actually use Josh Allen's arm strength that you do feel that at times. That does not mean that they can't win the Super Bowl, but you do feel it sometimes where they are like chasing some points where that can be, um, the the big negative of the offense. So, they're four and two right now. They're in a bye week. Are these things that can be fixed during a bye week? I just think the defense is going to be mediocre and the offense, Josh Allen's going to have to play. Haven't retooled or reloaded on defense, you know, like they they hit this stretch of time like I mentioned with that those linebackers and those safeties that it was peak Bills and they could build their defensive identity around that and they had some, you know, players up front. Really good rotation at Oliver in the middle and then now it just feels like they totally missed the boat in terms of kind of reloading and and retooling that back half.

Yeah. Yeah. I see it the same way. We're It's going to be a very fun fantasy team just because the defense stinks and the offense is is pretty good. So, we're going to have some crazy shootouts for them. Well, and again, this makes the playoff stretch and most likely the playoffs entertaining, too, because the Bills on their best day can put up, you know, 41 points and then on their worst day and the last two games, they've only scored 20 and 14. So, it's one of these teams already that you don't really know what you're getting from them. I think at this point we've done like a mini burial on every single team this year just talking about the flaws and that's just the state of the NFL this year. Like there's there's really is a lot of parity. So we we've done this with the Lions, Eagles, Bills, Chiefs, you name all the best teams. Like the only team we really haven't done this with is, you know, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, which has been super impressive.

Okay, Chicago Bears are next. The other Monday Night Football game. By the way, this next week, I cannot even begin to tell you how irate I am that there's a 10:00 p.m. Eastern Monday Night Football game. Second one. Second one. Are you kidding? These staggered ones are fine. Do 7:15, do 8:15. Look, life goes on. You get double up on a monitor. But one at 7 and then one at 10 p.m. Do they just not want half the country to watch? Like, what is happening to this game that we love? It's capitalism. Come on. Are you ready for for Friday night game soon? It's coming next.

Okay, let's talk about the Chicago Bears. Um, everyone knows for many years I've been a D'Andre Swift skeptic. Well, in this game and in totality, this was the best performance of the Bears' rushing attack all season long. Swift goes 14 carries, 108 yards, and we know that he goes two catches for 67 and one. So, I went through the tape and tried to figure out why in this game versus all the others, because this comes out of a bye week. What did they solve? What did they figure out? Well, it was edge run off the tackle's hip, tosses, cracks, all these types of things relentlessly. And this backup to the backup left tackle that the Bears found out of the CFL is an athlete. And when you get him on the move, especially against Frankie Luvu and dare I say, Bobby Wagner looked like he was running in molasses all night. So instead of the Bears trying to run between the guards and between the tackles like we used to see the Lions do consistently, at least in this game, it was very matchup-focused that, hey, if we can get D'Andre Swift out in space and not have him touch until the third level frequently, we're going to have success. So, I don't know how much of this is going to be able to translate into future weeks with with teams that can actually like hold an edge and force things back inside. Just the Commanders were totally unable to do that in any level and their linebackers couldn't even put a finger on the running backs. 4.7 yards before contact for D'Andre Swift here.

So, I saw the same thing with all those big pitches, you know, and just get them to the perimeter. And that's just smart coaching. And like you said, the offensive line is just in a much better spot right now than it was even in week one where they're dealing with injuries and kind of hosting tryouts. And then definitely versus last season. So we're going to see some better D'Andre Swift, uh, weeks. They used Cole Kmet a little bit, but for the most part, the most successful runs they had were just to the perimeter and that's not even including, uh, his reception where he just got a ton of speed and we saw them, there's a couple times where, yeah, he wasn't touched in the backfield at all, but his speed was the difference on getting to the second level, too. So it was one of his best games and it was just one of the best utilized games for him and that's how I would use D'Andre Swift if he was my running back and Ben Johnson sees the same thing. So, it was just a, a great game plan, more under center, more play action, more of these pitches and stretch runs like you're talking about here. So, I thought it was a great game from the offensive line, though. Even I saw DJ Moore and Rome Odunze blocking down the field for D'Andre Swift. That was refreshing. Uh, so I thought it was just a great game for Ben Johnson. The offensive line, they stole one from the Commanders, got a couple turnovers here, but Caleb did not play well, and they still put up a lot of points. And that just shows you the infrastructure around Caleb is so much better than it was last year. Caleb Williams has played well this season and that was not one of them. I mean, he still erratic on passes, you know, had some dropped interceptions, all that type of stuff. Uh, yeah, you mentioned the wide receiver buy-in. That is massive and that's very different than the buy-in that we saw from the Chicago Bears wide receivers last year and maybe even during training camp and now again out of the bye. I mean, you see Rome Odunze driving dudes, the defensive backs into the linebackers and sealing off edges. DJ Moore is doing that as well. Tyler Scott is doing it on top of it. Uh, yeah, Bobby Wagner, we're not talking about the Commanders right now, but Bobby Wagner is a total liability. And I understand he's made All-Pros and still gets votes because of name brand stuff, but it is so clear this season. Heck, they might have lost two games defensively because they can't get off the field because of him. He can't move laterally. So this easily was a game that Ben Johnson said, "Oh, I'm going to put a microscope on Luvu and Bobby Wagner and ask them to move sideline to sideline and they can't do it and we're going to create explosives off of it."

Yep. Yep. See the same exact thing. Did you see anything new from this is a the post-bye rookie bump team there? Anything new that you saw either Tyler Scott, Cole Kmet, Chase Claypool? Your choice.

Well, we're we're kind of waiting on news here on DJ Moore. I know that he stayed overnight, uh, in the DC metro area in order to get extra looks on his lung, I guess, is the issue here. And who knows if he misses time. If he misses time, I think Tyler Scott goes on to play 70 to 80% of snaps. He is the direct backup here. That is not like we bump up Olamide Zaccheus into DJ Moore's role. Uh, whenever DJ Moore's needed snaps, you know, on the sideline, then Tyler Scott pops in here. And look, the one downfield catch that Scott had, he caught it. He makes someone miss, he goes for an extra 10 yards down the field. Just shows like a stop-start ability. To me, he doesn't look out of place at all. Like we see other rookie wide receivers making mental mistakes, not lining up correctly. That is not a Tyler Scott problem right now. And I just would caution anyone saying, "Well, they're out of the bye. He's not going to play anymore." We also had the D'Onta Foreman revenge game factor here against the Commanders, so, you know, Tyler Scott continue to stack like these positive performances. Maybe an injury breaks your way and once it does, I'm very intrigued by Scott here on this offense.

Right. Most people that go to the hospital don't play a football game the next week. So, we'll see with DJ Moore. Uh, Tyler Scott should be on every single bench there is and just waiting for the moment. I I agree. They're not going to put Zaccheus in two wide receiver sets. It would be Tyler Scott, uh, in the DJ Moore role. So, uh, one to keep an eye out for. Cole Kmet had a season-high in usage, but it was not this complete graduation. Cole Kmet and Luke Getsy definitely going back and forth. And then just quickly on Cole Kmet, uh, they got him in, uh, like pretty early in the game. So he got some first quarter touches and then also opened up the half, uh, getting some touches, too. But it was D'Andre Swift in that last four-minute drill situation, which was super impressive because you don't think about D'Andre Swift in that role, but they kept throwing the ball to or pitching the ball out to the perimeter and he was getting it done. So I think Cole Kmet, you can keep him on your bench, but I don't think we're going to see him usurp D'Andre Swift right now. And also Rome Odunze was this close to having a very solid day. His touchdown gets called back. That was a great throw. That was a great catch, but an illegal formation penalty there. And then, uh, there's also another one where Caleb didn't get his feet set, but Rome Odunze had them beat over the top and he could have thrown that one down the field. And they're they're at least attempting some huge downfield shots. They didn't collect those this week, but those are good signs for future weeks. So, I I still view Rome Odunze as a high upside wide receiver, too, even with the bad game here.

Fellas, we know this Saturday is the last time ahead of every single one of your Sundays, Mondays, Thursdays are accounted for. So, go and do something special for your significant other before every other weekend is accounted for. This is your last opportunity to do it. And if you're fully out of ideas, I'll direct you to the SeatGeek app because it tells you tons of events in your area. For me, I can look at this and see Breaking Benjamin concert in my area. Man, that song and the Halo 2 soundtrack, I think it was like "Blow Me Away." Magnificent stuff. Or Chevelle. Look, maybe we got some real heavy metal couples out there. Chevelle, "The Red" was an anthem in varsity football for me in the locker room. And of course, I have a code for you guys. You can use code FANTASY10 for 10% off your next set of tickets at SeatGeek. That is 10% off any tickets, whether you're a new customer or old, with promo code FANTASY10. Make sure you click the link in the description to download the app and have the code automatically added to your account so you can use it later. Thank you, SeatGeek.

Washington Commanders on the opposite end, post 24 points here. They are three and three on the season. Even off his knee injury, Jalen Daniels does scramble 10 times, go for 52 yards here. But the big talking point is, you know, after Austin Ekeler went down, there was a trio of backs this team was using. And even after a fumble, J.K. Dobbins, Merritt, totally, and I mean totally dominates this backfield. And it wasn't, you know, overly successful. 17 carries, 61 yards, barely pops up in the receiving department, but more positivity is coming when you have this type of usage on a team that can put up points, right?

Really unfortunate that he kind of spun out and then you can't spin in the the freaking B gap in the NFL. You're just going to get the ball poked out, but they stuck with him. The other one with Jalen Daniels, like that fumble was just a weird snap and in the rain or whatever. So, that wasn't really his fault. Just the fact they stuck with him. It's going to be McNichols in passing situations. We see him in the two-minute drill and on third downs a bunch and then Breece Hall is going to be the early down guy. So, the Bears defense like stepped up too, just in general. So, they got some pieces back. Remember how injured they were to start the season, but Bill Breece Hall over the last month, he is the running back 17 on running back 33 usage and that includes a couple like the beginning of the month where he wasn't all that utilized. So he's he's still a strong like RB2, low-end RB2 is what I would call Breece Hall depending on your league in a full PPR league. He's a little bit less valuable. There's going to be some massive weeks. Um, yeah, out of here. I would call him a solid RB2. It's the last two weeks of the usage that have been the big key here. The last two games. Um, and then just a bad Samuel game. You know, if you're not getting the ball, you're not going to perform. So, he's done enough this year to give us like a little bit of leeway for me. Obviously, he's banged up and it sucks when Deebo Samuel gets banged up, but I to me at least he has enough goodwill in the bank that I'm not panicking here.

Yeah, totally agree. Okay, let's go to Sunday Night Football as we're recording our instant reaction show. By the way, thank you all for tuning in to that episode every single week. Thank you all for, you know, doing what's totally free out there and hitting that subscribe button and leaving a thumbs up here on the channel. Uh, I guess we'll talk about the Chiefs first, obviously. I mean, they improved to three and three on the season. They're 500. They score 30 points. And while we've seen Patrick Mahomes post about 17 and a half fantasy points per game over the last two seasons, uh, this one is different. This one, this offense is running at a different gear. They understand that their rushing attack from the 20s and in between the 20s is not great and they are leaning into the passing game and they also get their wide receiver one back in Rashee Rice. Now they're just so back, you know, like this team's just all the way back. They're after week two, so the last month of the season, the Chiefs are first in EPA per play, first in success rate, second in pressure rate allowed. Their offensive line's actually playing well, and that was without Wanya Morris. So, they actually have some depth at the tackle position, which is refreshing. And they're also third in rushing EPA. Uh, largely thanks to Patrick Mahomes who still continues to get it done there as well. So, but like I'm noticing, are you guys noticing this? Travis Kelce looks good. Like he's making plays after the catch, so he's had some like he's had some hands. Not really a fantasy asset, but yes. Uh, he's doing pretty. I mean, he's he's a top 12 tight end, but he's not in like that top group as a differentiator. And I'm nervous for him now as a fantasy asset now that Rashee Rice is back because they went in the exact same areas. That's all fine. Rashee Rice is going to be a very, very big deal. But just looking forward to this team, just trying to find out who should be the Super Bowl favorites for this point moving forward. Who should be the MVP favorite this point forward? I would put the Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes in the driver's seat for for those spots. And just like getting Travis Kelce not like being completely washed, I think a win. Wanya Morris and having a swing tackle look the part. That's a big win. Guys like Hollywood Brown, Kadarius Toney, or at least making some plays in smaller roles. And honestly, Xavier Worthy, his tape has been a little bit, uh, more distracting for me. There was a play where he runs like a little whip route situation where he can't outrun Jack Campbell, who's got what, nearly 100 pounds on Xavier Worthy, and that's because he's just super banged up. So hopefully by the end of the season Xavier Worthy starts like actually looking like himself and in the meantime, you're just going to get fresh-legged Rashee Rice into an offense that's number one, two, three in all the key metrics over the last month. So I feel extremely good about what the Chiefs are, uh, at this point.

100%. We haven't gotten this version of the Chiefs yet in that Xavier Worthy being a full-time player and totally healthy, hopefully at some point in the season. Rashee Rice on the field at the same time with Travis Kelce and with good offensive line play, like all those boxes have never been checked at once. And while you can point it out and say, yeah, the rushing game is not really explosive in terms of the running backs, uh, they do have a short-yardage guy in Jerick McKinnon, so they can convert inside the five-yard line. And then Pat Mahomes is just scrambling at a ludicrous rate now, like higher than we've ever seen in non-playoff, non-playoff games before. I mean, 10 scrambles in this game for 32 yards and a touchdown. He does it every single week. He knows that he is like the key to this team at times moving the chains with his legs and it's super important for this team.

Yeah. And I think Isiah Pacheco is actually playing better as well. So I think the Chiefs are going to be projected for 26 to 30-ish points depending on the matchup and if they're at home and on the road. Jerick McKinnon and Isiah Pacheco. I'm waiting for one of them to take one of each other's roles here, but I do think that in deep leagues for flex consideration, they're both kind of in the mix there. So Jerick McKinnon's going to get the goal-line carries, but Isiah Pacheco had a better day than usual and hopefully they can ramp him up, but just in general, super impressed with what the Chiefs have turned into after opening the season record-wise, really, really in a tough spot.

Would would you say they're the best team in football right now? Like obviously this changes due to injuries and stuff, but they got a pretty good case. To me, it's either the Chiefs or it's the Rams. I think the Rams have a really good case for this because they're just kind of some fluky blocked kicks away from beating the Eagles and then the goal-line fumble against the 49ers of being 6-0 at this point and they're still 4-2. I know that, you know, we'll see how long Puka is out, but I think it's the Rams or the Chiefs right now.

For weeks on the trade show with Farz, I've been pleading with people to go out there and trade for Rashee Rice. Again, I mentioned him as like my 13th or 14th player the rest of the season. Uh, just running down here the list of the top scorers at wide receiver over the last, I don't know, four or five games. Hayden, can I just ask you this question? Like, would you trade, it's a tough one. Would you trade George Pickens straight up for Rashee Rice rest of season? Yes. Okay. Would you trade Rome Odunze straight up rest of season? Would you do we already talked about Drake, he's ranked higher and JSN and Ja'Marr Chase and Amon-Ra St. Brown. So basically anyone other than that and maybe Justin Jefferson, you would trade.

Yeah. I mean, him versus Justin Jefferson is pretty damn close, man. In my like initial rankings, which I hadn't spent so much time on to only take these as a conversation starter, I got Rashee Rice right next to Justin Jefferson and Nico Collins. And the reason I bring that up is every single national insider unprovoked has talked to someone inside the Chiefs building and they just glow about, "We can't wait to get Rashee Rice back. He is going to be our go-to player. He is going to be our wide receiver one." I mean, literally four, five, six times I've heard that from different people on some type of national broadcast. And when there's smoke, there's fire. So, that could be the tipping point for them to clearly look like the best offense in the NFL. And and that's before we learned that Xavier Worthy is just playing through injuries. He's not the same player. He he's doing fine. He's he's very useful still, but he's not the fastest player in the NFL when you turn on the tape right now. Like right now, like I think Hollywood Brown and Kadarius Toney look faster than him. And that's just because he can't pump with his shoulder. He's got this ankle issue going on. So I think right away I'll be ranking Rashee Rice over Xavier Worthy and they'll probably be in my top 10.

Okay, let's talk about the Lions. Uh, because I think it's only fitting they only put up 17 points and Jameson Williams is the leading scorer for the team. Goes seven targets, six receptions, 66 and one score because basically in every other good performance this season he has been an underperformer. Anything you want to say about the Lions here? I mean, I went back and while we were recording watched that Jared Goff touchdown catch that wasn't a catch because you can't motion and not be settled out of the quarterback. Anyways, just come on, let's have fun plays be fun plays. Uh, anything you want to bring up here about the Lions? Just compared to last year, their EPA per play was at 15%. This year it's at 4%. Success rate 50% last year, 50% this year. So, it's largely the same exact offense. I think just a little bit harder because Sam LaPorta is actually healthy. David Montgomery got a lot of run this last game and afterwards they just said they want to kind of even or Jahmyr Gibbs had a lot of run and they wanted to get David Montgomery going again. So, I I don't really have anything new to add here. No, the the defense is is so injured that I think this team's going to get into some shootouts. So they were a couple little plays away from, uh, having the same Lions performance. It just makes it tricky because you start like looking at all the usage like Jameson Williams this month is the wide receiver 54 in usage. Sam LaPorta's the tight end 21 in usage. David Montgomery's RB 29 in usage. And we all know that these guys can pop off at any moment. So they're they're difficult to rank and you're going to have some have to live live with the duds. And eventually they'll have some big games because they were so good last year. Their schedule certainly is not easy. They face the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this week, then the Minnesota Vikings, then the Washington Commanders, then the Philadelphia Eagles over their next four games.

All right, let's do alphabetical order the rest of the way. Only fitting as always, we start with the Arizona Cardinals. Uh, with Jacoby Brissett at quarterback, Hayden, I thought it was interesting because we have, you know, a different size player and just a different style of player if Drew Petzing would change anything on route to Jacoby Brissett for throwing over 300 yards. Well, the Cardinals went under center on 49% of their offensive snaps in this game. Weeks one through five with Kyler on the field, that number was at 21.7%. So, I don't want to make any, you know, sweeping conclusions here. But the offense looked just as capable, if not more, in certain areas with Jacoby Brissett at quarterback in a Drew Petzing offense as it has kind of looked disjointed with Kyler Murray at times, too.

Right. And that was without Marvin Harrison. So like the perimeter wide receivers that he was throwing to, it's they just have no juice. Say Jones, Michael Wilson, and those type of guys. Just no juice on the perimeter. So I just paid attention to the Trey McBride usage and it was a season-high at 22.4 expected points. He uh got tackled at the one-inch line. The next play they made sure to give him a touchdown. I thought the fourth down in the red area to more or less win or lose the game, he kind of got held, I thought, and that was going to be another red zone look for him. He had one of the best routes of the entire week where he was like lined up at the number three spot and kind of sells a shallow cross just to get over the top of the nickel defender or linebacker just to run the deeper cross across his face. It was so sick to see this. So I think Trey McBride's in a really, really good spot. We'll see if Marvin Harrison's going to be able to come back from this concussion this week. But even with or without him, Kyler Murray doesn't really matter to me. Trey McBride, his usage is going to go up because the defense definitely has some holes at this point and they're not going to be able to run the ball with as much consistency as they did with James Conner. So, I think by default, Trey McBride is going to have some crazy target games. And if you look at these like the last eight games going back to last year, he's still on pace for eight and a half touchdowns, too. So, we can't play this game where he can't score touchdowns. Like, that's just simply not the case anymore. Now, the points do need to go up just overall. I understand the usage is there because right now he's the tight end six in points per game when looking over the last five weeks with Dallas Goedert all the touchdowns he's scoring, Jake Ferguson being the de facto wide receiver two on

The team, all the Darren Waller crazy stuff that's happening. And then we have like two guys ahead of him that honestly could stay ahead of him the rest of the way, just in overall points, in Tyler Warren and Tucker Craft. So far this year, like we do have some top performers at the tight end position, like two guys at 14, one guy at the other guys at 11. So that's why really Trey McBride wasn't even in my conversation for like top 12, top 15, top 20 picks the rest of the way. I, I would take him at the two-three turn right now. His usage just stands out, and I think there's a chance that he like really starts to dominate down the stretch. I just think that's just where the team feels like it's going towards. They're, they're out of their what they wanted to be. So now they're just going to have to pass the ball more, and I think that's just going to be continue to be Trey McBride.

Okay, let's talk about the running backs then, because we got the reports on Sunday morning that Bam Knight was going to be the starter. In fact, when you turn on the tape, Michael Carter was the starter, but then very early on, Bam Knight goes and takes over the backfield. Uh, did anything stand out in either department for you?

Not really. I think that the report was good though, that Bam Knight's going to have a bigger role. You know, just in general for Michael Carter, it's one of these situations where we don't even know what the final answer was going to be, because Amari Marcado leaves uh early, and he was getting touches in like around the first quarter as well. So, as long as he's out, then it becomes a situation where Bam Knight is the more physical downhill rusher, and he got both the goal line carries in this one. And then Michael Carter, compared to Bam Knight, would be the better pass game guy, and he was out there for the two-minute drill in this one. So, it's just going to depend on the matchups. I believe they have the Packers in this one. So that makes me lean a little bit more towards Michael Carter than Bam Knight, uh, just because of potential game script. But this is going to be probably a pretty frustrating committee, and I don't think they're going to have that much success rushing the football. And Bam Knight and Michael Carter are replacement-level players. So I think stylistically, Bam Knight between the tackles, Michael Carter more perimeter runs, more pass down situations, and then we'll see when Amari de Marcado gets back.

Final point, I thought Jacob really stuck in there. Like he was throwing through contact, he was hitting stuff down the field. I mean, there was one, he was basically wrapped up in the backfield, was able to shed that sack and then just throw it directly in front of his face over the middle of the field about 10 or 12 yards. Yeah. Uh, but Jonathan Gannon says as soon as Ker is healthy, he's going to be the starter for this team. So, yeah, you know, I think we have to think of that moving forward versus this Brassette. Um, it kind of did back up my overall thoughts though, that like the Kyler and Drew Petting thing, just they're never going to be on the same page. It's just never going to look smooth. Uh, I did feel like kind of this operation, especially going under center, was more of the flavor that they probably wanted. And at the same time, the Colts at one point were using Ashton Doulan as a a defender because they lost so many defensive backs. Like, not even exaggerating, they were down their top five or six corners, if you count the offseason injuries that they've had, too. So, completely fluky game, once, you know, your starting corner goes out with a uh concussion pregame, the week before your other starting corner uh decides to retire. So, the Colts secondary right now is is one to keep noticed.

Baltimore Ravens are next, as everyone knows, one and five on the season, heading to their buy, hoping to get back Lamar Jackson and half their roster. Hayden, are the Baltimore Ravens going to make the playoffs?

Yes, they'll make the playoffs. It might be too challenging to win the division now that the Steelers won another game, but it'll be close. I'm not riding this team off. Like I said, like there's no truly elite teams. So, I'm not writing off any team. Eagles, Ravens, Lions, you pick the the bad part of their schedule. They lose in games. Nobody should be written off here. The good news this last week is the defense returned some starters. Kyle Hamilton was a total madman out there against the Rams. So, the defense is getting a little bit healthier. I think they're going to get Rocoan Smith after the by-week. So, uh, they're going to be fairly healthy coming out of this. Uh, assuming Lamar Jackson can can turn around the corner. But there's, there's no more wiggle room. Like Lamar Jackson has to play like an MVP candidate. He can't be holding on to the ball and taking those sacks that he was in the beginning of the year, which was pretty out of character for him. So hopefully they get left tackle, quarterback, linebacker back coming out of the buy. I think a ton is riding on their first game out of the buy against the Chicago Bears at home, because after that, there's a bunch of winnable games. It's the Dolphins, it's the Vikings, it's the Steelers, uh, all three on the road, and then it's the Jets and the Bengals. And then the Steelers, the Bengals, the Patriots, the Packers, and the the Steelers again. So again, a ton of AFC North teams, a ton of the worst AFC North teams on the docket, but it's like that they they need to win at least one or two of the other games. Like they have to beat the Bears. Uh, most likely they need to beat the Minnesota Vikings, right? And then sweep the Steelers, Patriots, you know? You catch the Steelers twice, then all of a sudden the the difference is just a couple of games, you know, because if we're getting to that seven-loss territory with all these teams that are kind of in that nine and eight or 10 and seven territory, like they're going to be battling for it. So, you only have maybe one or two losses left the entire rest of the way.

I have nothing to say about individual players here at all. Do you? There's really nothing you can say. You just have to throw everything away. So, I mean, maybe my advice, I know you've talked about Derrick Henry being a buy low, which I agree with. Zay Flowers, his numbers with Lamar Jackson the first three weeks, if you're just looking at like the per drop back numbers and how much he was dominating, he might be the guy that if you want to find a guy that goes from like wide receiver, what 40-ish so far to being a top 15 wide receiver rest of the season, Zay Flowers might be the best candidate out of anybody. And they get the Dolphins the second game back from the buy with Derrick Henry. So, that should be fun.

Next, the Carolina Panthers. Uh, lots to discuss here. Where do you want to go with this? Because, you know, the running back dilemma has kind of been sweeping the fantasy football landscape at this week. Um, how would you handle it if you were Dave Canalis?

I mean, I would hit the media with the the "we'll see" and go talk to these guys and figure out where we're at. I, I you probably have to start Rico Dowdle, and I'm going back to Chuba Hubbard for maybe it's a drive. Like maybe Rico gets two drives, Chuba gets the next drive, but I mean, you can't turn away either one of them is kind of where I'm at. Right. So, I got a bunch of questions on, well, could they trade Chuba Hubbard before the trade deadline? And my answer from a team management, player management standpoint is no. I mean, they just gave him an extension last year. He's actually quite cheap among all running backs. Uh, and it's a team-friendly deal. And you can't just send away, you know, team leaders like that when you actually, you're 500 for, they're trying to win. They can make forever. They are trying to win. And then the other part here, Hayden, is well, then would you trade Rico Dowdle? So, let me ask you this. Rico Dowdle on a one-year $2.75 million deal, an expiring contract, right? If a team offered a fourth-round pick, would you trade Rico Dowdle?

Yeah. Yeah. But nobody will, you know. Okay. Yeah. I, I, I mean, they are not going to trade Rico Dowdle at the same time, right? Again, they are trying to win games. They're finally winning some games. They can make the playoffs. That is entirely like more important to them than like a fourth or fifth-round pick, right? If if they don't make the playoffs, you can justify cleaning out everybody. So, they're going to try to keep, you know, they only have a couple really good players. They should probably keep all of them. Yeah.

So, Dave Canalis was asked how he's going to handle this, and he basically said that they're going to look at other split backfields across the league that are successful and try to emulate them and take things from them. I'm trying to think of what those could be. I mean, the one that obviously pops to mind is the Detroit Lions, albeit those are like very different style of running backs. Uh, but, you know, running back, yeah, running back fantasy usage is we know the Lions are up there every single year. And Hayden, while the Panthers opened the season like near the top in neutral pass rate in the first three games, over these last three, and it makes sense when you're like the highest success rate team in the league, just in terms of offense and especially the rushing game, you're going to lean into that even more, including the opponents that they played, right? And Bryce was making some big plays uh down the field, and they got that Rico Dowdle, you know, that Rico Dowdle wheel route. I, I loved all that. Canalis, just they're playing functional football right now, and they're getting, I think they're putting the right players in the right spot right now. So I think they'll, they'll survive, and the defensive line looks a little bit better this year than it did previously. So this team's definitely in the mix for the wild card spots, and um, I think Ted, it's ironic, quickly on Tedaro McMillan. This was his season low in usage, and this is the week, you know, where we get to catch all the regression. So he scores the two, the two touchdowns on actually the the the week that he was used the least, and he had that uh interception drop pass too. So it's just funny how, you know, the world works where you he wasn't supposed to hit this week, but this is the week it does. I don't know if you saw it, but the Jets actually opened this week favored by one and a half at home against this Panthers team. The 0 and 6 Jets were favored by one and a half, and then, I'm not saying it's just because of this news, but overnight that shifted the Panthers being favored by one and a half with Garrett Wilson uh going to miss multiple weeks. So, I'm sure that was part of it, but it was also people being like, "What the hell is this line?" Uh, that that we are seeing. I, I mentioned in the Sunday recap that, you know, of Bryce's nine wins, eight have been in fourth quarter comeback situations. The part of that is the defensive line, and it's the defense playing at like an average at best to below average level. Like, they're not great, right? But at the very least, they give you a chance to have these opportunities. They give you a chance when he has, you know, a turnover or two, like he did in the Miami game, or in this game, Ted McMillan makes a mistake and drops a pass that goes to an interception. Like previously in the first two years, if the offense had, you know, three and outs or turnovers or mistakes, then there was just no chance for them to even be in ball games because they couldn't get off the field on defense to stop the run. And so again, the passing game, the pass defense needs a little bit of work, but they are shutting down running games, and again, that gives you opportunities to win in fourth quarters.

Uh, I got to ask you, would you trade Rico Dowdle in fantasy? Like, put Panthers aside, like where would you rank him rest? Like, is he a top, let's say 25 running back in fantasy rest of the season?

So, I, I asked on Twitter, what are your top 12 elves rest away? And maybe jokingly, some people did say Rico Dowdle in theirs. Top 25 running back. Yes, I believe he is. Because if you look at, you know, the top 25 running backs, you're going to have a bunch of split guys in there. Like over the last five games, Jaylen Warren is in there. Uh, JK Dobbins is in there. Ken Walker's in there. Dobbins, the perfect one. We really have Dobbins or is that kind of the line we're talking about? Rico Dowdle and Dobbins. You know, Dobbins, like a very functional fantasy. I think he's not going to go crazy. Yeah, I, I think I'll go D over Dobbins. Okay. Would you rather have Harvey or Chuba?

I'd rather have Chuba. I, I mean, again, I just think the Panthers are going to be so much higher in in their in their uh running back usage on on top of it. Uh, obviously, these are the two best games he's going to have of probably his NFL career and of the rest of the season. So he he most likely drops into people's flex category and flex conversations than being a locked-in top 10 running back over these last two weeks, right? Yeah. Maybe like throw out a couple if you have Rico Dowdle. Throw up a couple wacky trade offers and see if you get lucky and people just want to ride, you know, ride the Rico Dowdle way. Rico for Rishi Rice, you know, like stuff like stuff like that. Like just see it. Find your dumbest league mate. Throw him something special for Rico.

I do believe Jaylen Koker comes back this week as well. They help him out one extra week with the quad injury. Uh, and he should send Hunter Renfro to the inactive list and be out there in three wide receiver sets, which can really help. I mean, Panthers also got awesome blocking from their tight ends on top of it. And their rushing schemes were so much fun. It was like tosses and pitches and cracks and counter plays. And Mitchell Evans, one of our favorite like late-round draft prospects, massive gap in his teeth, and he creates massive gaps in the rushing game, too. He's He and Tommy Trimble are like two of the best blocking tight ends in the league right now. That's why you watch the damn film of the offseason. So, you victory lap a couple blocks. Love that.

Okay, Cincinnati Bengals are next. We spoke about them at length on Sunday night. Anything you want to add here after going back and reviewing the usage?

It was just a dominant Jamar Chase game. So comparing the expected fantasy points, he had 16.5 in the one game with Joe Flacco, and the games with Jake Browning, that was at 9.5. So it's just a, it's a substantial upgrade. Maybe not for like wins and losses for the Bengals, but for fantasy and watchability factor, he was sensational. I just still couldn't get how, you know, the Packers were defending Jamar Chase. Like there was way too many one-on-one opportunities. Like the only, the only way they were going to move the football was with Jamar Chase back shoulders and slant. But the other part was a lot of them were good coverage. Best. They were. But that's my point. You can't you can't do press man coverage iso ball against the best receiver in the league, him and Justin Jefferson. Doesn't work. Yeah. Um, and this should have been their most difficult game for the next few. I mean, it's the Steelers defense and the Jets defense over the next two. So, yeah, maybe that means like obviously we got a big Chase game, but maybe that means some positivity in the direction of T. Higgins, and maybe that means some positivity uh on top of one of the most promising performances from Chase Brown recently too, right? The other note for the Bengals, they are among the lowest in offensive plays per game because they went for so many stretches where there's like three-and-out punts, but they're actually the fastest team, like the how quickly they snap the ball between plays. They've now passed the Saints in that category. So, this is like the recipe for full PPR scamming coming up here. So, I think that if you want to buy low on even someone like T. Higgins and stuff, I do think that T. Higgins could be startable. And then, like we said, Jamar Chase would be in the first round or the top 13, 14 picks uh in both of our rankings. And I would not rule out Jamar Chase finishing us at like a top five wide receiver the rest of the rest of the way.

Okay, Cleveland Browns. There are about three topics to hit on here. Uh, the first one I would bring up is Quinchan Judkins, because I think this is a bit of a difficult situation from this last game where he played 40% of snaps, only ran the ball what, 10 times. Meanwhile, Dylan Gabriel had 60 dropbacks. That's not a recipe for success. However, I feel like we can use that to our advantage this upcoming week if you play Battle Royale or if you want to flip Rico Dowdle for Quin Judkins, because this week they have the Miami Dolphins, and that's the perfect outline and matchup for someone like Judkins to run through the heart of the defense and get back to his 20 touches, no matter how many points the Browns put on the board. Ironically, we're back to the same exact Nick Chubb conversations during his prime, when, you know, the whenever they were in bad game script, he was completely erased. And that's always what prevented Nick Chubb from ever being like a top six, eight fantasy running back. Uh, and or at least for a large majority of that prime. And I think Quan J is going to be the same way. So, season low usage last week, like you said, only ran about like a quarter of the the routes in in the dropback game. So hopefully they can keep this a little bit tighter than what it was this previous game, but they got to get like players like Dylan Samson on the field. So I get why they're going to use him this way. He's still so damn impressive that he's going to make the most out of a pretty bad situation. Again, that's very different than what we got two games ago prior to the Dylan Gabriel move, that they were down by 17 points in the fourth quarter, and they were still giving Quinchan Judkins carries. So now if like with these young quarterbacks, if they're wanting to throw more in those obvious uh negative game script situations, and that is a slight change for him of about four or five carries per game, right? And and this is why the overall, you know, just profile of a of a player does matter. So someone like Cam Scataboo, who who's just not as good as Quinc Judkins, but the fact that he catches so many passes gives him just this, you know, game script independency, which Quinc Judkins is not going to be able to have. So he, he's an RB2, and we're going to have to pick our spots, and like you said, next week is a great spot for it.

Okay, well, if Quinchan Judkins wasn't getting the football, that means Jerry freaking Judy got 13 targets in this game. Only caught five for 43. I mean, this usage was absolutely insane. And some positives there, like they were getting him in these full-speed fly motions into routes, outbreakers, inbreakers. At the same time, the timing was off between him and Dylan Gabriel. He was going back to his vintage excessive movements that were not necessary, and like not sitting in zones perfectly, too. And then he had two drops. One of them was a like perfectly thrown pass as he sat in zone, and for some reason he decides to jump out of nowhere, and then the ball just goes straight through his hands. Like it's the opposite of what we keep talking about of like, hey, we look for these grounded receivers through the catch, and leave it to Jerry Judy to do the inverse of that, right? Yeah, very tough game from him, but uh, at one point he was the highest uh utilized wide receiver uh this last week. So this month, he's a wide receiver 13 in usage, wide receiver 74 in actual points. So that's about as big of a gap as you're going to see. So I guess buy low on Jerry Judy. We're going to be chasing these expected points all year. My when I went back and watched Dylan Gabriel, he moves and looks exactly like Tua, but he's just not nearly as accurate. It's not a great combination, you know. I think that he kind of, he's like you said, he's a tad late on some things. I think that he because he's a tad late and he doesn't trust his arm, then he also like really wants to like try to rifle passes in underneath, and that's when the ball can kind of spray. So, we'll see. I think that we're going to get a good PPR scam going here because they're they're playing fast, and they're going to have some games where they're going to drop back a ton, and the only way they're going to move the ball up and down the field is just these little dinks and dunks, and that's going to get a lot of these guys a bunch of catches. Um, but you can see the limitations and why he was a third-round pick. Like within just like the first 20 throws of watching him, you can see exactly where he is as a player.

Do you want to close this conversation out with Harold Fannon? I know you discussed him a lot with Jacob. Uh, it's kind of a high variance thing. All tight ends are for the most part, unless your name is, you know, Jake Ferguson or Tyler Warren or Tucker Craft or Trey McBride. Um, but, you know, two games ago, that was four points and three and a half, and the last two have been 9.3 and 11.6 points. Yeah, just two crazy charts. You can see Browns in targets per game, they're the only team above 40, which is insane, but that's helpful. And then if you look at the tight end usage right now, number one, they're, it's the tree man. We always talk about this like we stress it literally every single offseason that primary reads in a Kevin Stefanski tree, to also Drew Petting, they go to their tight ends, and would you look at that? But even the Cowboys, that's, you know, there's some influence from the Arizona Cardinals too, uh, this year. So, there's, yeah, it's pretty impressive stuff. I think Harold Fannon is awesome as a receiver. There were multiple plays where after the catch, he's not like just because you think he's tiny, does not mean he's just like slithering around like no, he's he is a pain in the butt to tackle. So, he's very impressive out there. He had some great route running on top of it, too. So, season high 13.1 expected points. So, we'll see if David Njoku is gonna miss. If he does, you will see Harold Fannon pretty, pretty high in my tight end rankings.

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All right, let's talk about those Dallas Cowboys offense is simply amazing, and sounds like CD Lamb is likely to come back via Jerry Jones for this one. What are your expectations for CD Lamb?

I mean, we both had him in our top 12, so those are pretty high expectations. Ball all the way out and just, you know, usually players coming off of, you know, high ankle sprains at this position, it takes a couple games to get going, but the way Dak Prescott is playing football right now, man, even if he's not at full capacity, he's going to go crazy. I mean, Dak Prescott's playing, he's he's an MVP candidate. I know they don't have the wins to actually win the MVP, but just on tape, the throws he's making, it's it's insane. So, um, obviously you have to start George Pickens and CD Lamb. I'll have both of them easily inside my top 20. I think both of them will be flirting with top 10 numbers. It'd be very similar to Puka and Devonta Adams, where both of these guys could be top 12 uh players down the stretch. George Pickens have been phenomenal. Uh, my notes on Pickens, just a lot more, you know, he's in the slot now. Now we got crossing routes, and there's some yards after the catch potential, and then he's hurdling guys, and he's trying to hurdle the next guy. It's it's it's insane what George Pickens is doing. He's he's the most fun wide receiver to watch. Just you don't know what you're getting. He's he's the best. And I think we should give Brian Shottenheimer a little bit of credit. You know, big time. Obviously, he's been a lifer in the NFL with his dad for so many years, but when they let go of Mike McCarthy and, you know, Brian Shottenheimer gets elevated to head coach, you don't know exactly how much carryover there's going to be. The George Pickens usage really stood out to me because, you know, I mentioned the boundary and the field stuff that the Panthers are doing with their corners. And in order to keep George Pickens on Mike Jackson, this team just kept the same personnel out there, did a whole bunch of no-huddle stuff, and just got to the line. And so that prevented the Panthers from flipping their corners and getting JC Horn over on George Pickens. And that allowed for fourth down conversions, that allowed for third down conversions, that allowed for big gains. And so just the knowledge of that versus, oh, we need to get to this perfect play, we need to get to this perfect set, we need to huddle up every single time. That shows to me some just really good situational coaching and understanding of matchups that you have and advantages you have out there on the field. Yeah, they're just not pressing buttons just to press buttons. There's there's there's some actual thought process going behind, and on top of that, they're just playing really fast. Like you said, the no-huddle stuff that comes up in the metrics as well. So, right now, the over the last month, the Cowboys are seventh in wide receiver usage, and that's without C. Lamb. So, both these guys are going to eat like crazy. I think Ferguson's going to take a a big drop off. you know, he's still going to be a tight end one most likely, but I think Ferguson is winning in the same areas that CD Lamb does. So, I think if somebody's a sell in this uh situation, it's going to be Jake Ferguson. And then Javonte Williams. One bad game, but the usage was still phenomenal. Just didn't have the same uh production that it usually has. They have zero interest in relying on Jalen Blue for anything. No. So, it is it is the Javonte Williams show. And then Hunter Henry is the one who that caught the slip touchdown uh near the goal line.

Okay, before we go any further, if you want to support us, the best way of doing that is to go and support Underdog. It's the Dog app, and it's in at least 40 of 50 states out there. I always bring this up, but, you know, two, three years ago, uh, when Underdog was growing, which we still are, many of you could not play on the Dog app. Your state would not allow it. Now again, 40 to 50 states, including like Texas and California, these big massive areas of listenership for us. So again, go and play Underdog. Download the app, use promo code the show, or click the link in the description down below. And if you play $5, we'll give you $100 straight out of Hayden's pocket. So again, that's promo code the show and go play on Underdog. Generous Denver Broncos, they win a tight one over across the pond. They are 4-2, and Hayden, they're 4-2 with arguably not playing their best game of football yet so far this season. Offense just been very mediocre. They're getting great performances out of Sutton and Dobbins. Uh, and on occasion, one of their other guys steps up, but for the most part, offense has just not been very good. Bonix just did not take the the year two jump that we were hoping for. I will say this was a pretty rough matchup because Corland Sutton is like the drum beat, you know, the heartbeat of the of the pass game, and when you have Sauce Gardner, who's playing very well this year on him, that's just going to limit everything. So Corland Sutton had a season low in in usage, and there the offense wasn't wasn't getting it done. So, yeah, it's really frustrating because the offensive line's still very, very good, and I think the running backs are are playing pretty well. Uh, but we just have not gotten anything out of their secondary players with any level of consistency. Uh, and I think a lot of it's just because they're not trusting Bonix in the normal dropback game. And I think eventually Sean Payton's just got to let him, you know, at least try it a little bit more. It's like, it's almost like too gimmicky. Like Bonix is not so bad in the standard dropback game that you can just like never run it. Like at some point you have to just throw him out there and live with the consequences. I, I do wonder if like the first three weeks of him being honestly bad made him lean into that even more over the last three games, but hopefully at some point it kind of evens out.

Why don't we use this period to talk about the chart that you posted on Twitter about fantasy points over replacement for rookies? Uh, we know rookies are a massive talking point during the offseason in our drafts on this very channel. Um, Hayden, why don't you outline like what this chart is and what it explains?

So it's on the bottom, that's where players were drafted on Underdog at the end, uh, of of August. And then fantasy points are replacements. Basically, the quarterback 12 on average in a week, you only get fantasy points if you scored above the quarterback 12. Same thing with the running back, you know, 30, the wide receiver 40. Trying to adjust for the flex spot. So, uh, you have to like have a really big game to get fantasy points over replacement. And if you can see, there's only so many rookies who are actually performing better than the like all like rookies and non-rookies. There's only a couple guys that are actually standing out. Cam Scataboo is like the big one, but like you said, with R.J. Harvey and Trevor Henderson, Caleb Johnson, these guys have been definitely underperforming. Yeah, let's call that out because again, rookies often define second halves of seasons. Obviously, with many of them, we would have loved like and others that you mentioned to have performed so far through six weeks. But if we just take this chart, which by the way, if you're a running back, you want to be above the green line. If you're a wide receiver, you want to be above the purple line. Tight ends above the blue line. Uh, and then we won't even talk about the rookie quarterbacks yet. Uh, so if we just take this on face value without any context added, the only rookies that have paid off so far above replacement have been Amari Cooper, who was injured for the next at least four games, maybe five, maybe six, Tyler Warren, Jaori Kroski Merritt, Cam Scataboo, Quin Sean Judkins, and Woody Mars, and Harold Fannon. Not great again, if the rookie that you drafted is not mentioned in there yet, guess what? All the other rookies are not either. So, trust me, I would have loved for R.J. Harvey to get a bigger workload than he has so far, or obviously Trevor Henderson, we'll talk about with the Patriots. Um, and then Matthew Golden, even we're about to talk about here with the Green Bay Packers, but they have not yet. We're a third of the way through. And again, many times look at Aman Ra St. Brown. I can throw out many examples. This can happen in week 10. It can happen in week 12. I wish it happened now, but it hadn't. I do think by the end of the season though, we'll see a number of the names that are below these lines, above these lines come week 15, week 16, week 17. And this is Underdog ADP, and the Underdog drafters go absolutely wild for rookies. And in your home leagues, when you were talking about uh the Mecha Ibuka at the time, they were like closer to 10. So all these kind of rookies, this is at the highest their draft capital's going to be. And hopefully in your league, you were taking these guys a little bit later. But I think just in general, it's it's been even slower than than most classes, even adjusting for the rookie performances. And, um, really Cam Scataboo is the the rookie running back that you wanted to draft at cost.

Let's now talk about those Green Bay Packers and Matthew Golden, because he's our first true post-bye rookie bump contender of the season. His first reception, it was a little hook versus zone. He made two people miss, 15 yards after the catch on a 20-yard reception. Next catch, a 35-yard vertical route along the left sideline. Very little separation that he created on his own despite the speed that he has, but he did create create a little sliver of space uh with a little nudge, better move to catch the football. Also need to mention two manufactured touches out of the backfield on top of this, off of motions. So to me, Hayden, there was a concerted effort to get Matthew Golden the football here, and he paid off for them in a big way. He was fantastic. He was forcing so many missed tackles, too. And then that one where near the sideline and it was tightly covered, but just his hands and the that little veteran move at the very end was was very clutch. I was super impressed with Matthew Golden. There were some other opportunities where Jordan Love like either didn't have enough time or decided to check the ball down where he could have threw it up to Matthew Golden as well. Unfortunately, we did not get this 90% route rate participation from Golden. And this week or the next week afterwards, Christian Watson's going to be back out there. And Matthew Golden, Christian Watson, there's a lot of overlap in different ways, just how they're kind of manufactured touches down the field. So, there's going to be a little bit more competition here coming up. So, I'm I'm a little bit nervous for my boy Matthew Golden. For for best ball, he's going to have some crazy weeks, and we have not had the 90-yard touchdown that's coming. But in redraft, his floor is gonna be pretty reminiscent of the Jaden Reed stuff in the last couple years. I think that Matthew Golden's a better player than Reed is. Um, and he's not only a slot player, but I think some of this rotation stuff and how much they spread the ball out and how much they run the ball in the red zone, all is going to end up working against him.

Okay, I'll say a positive for him then. Hear you on the usage and the snap share and all that type of stuff and Christian Watson coming back. But with that caveat involved, you have to also factor in who they have in the upcoming schedule. It's the Arizona Cardinals and their depleted secondary. It's the Pittsburgh Steelers and kind of what that secondary is. And it's the Carolina Panthers and what that secondary is. Those are the next three games. So again, to me, it's not exactly the same of other, you know, wide receivers or running backs that we are nervous about their snap shares when it's Jordan Love throwing the football down the field and, you know, LaFleur calling plays. So I do like those next three. If you need a by-week or injury fill-in to have Matthew Golden in your lineup, I think it'll be hopefully similar to like what Jameson Williams has been the last couple years, where on average he ends up being the wide receiver 37, and you can just have to pick your spots with them. And this is why we talk about the post-bye rookie bump all the time. Like only a few teams have been on by so far, and look at the difference in what Matthew Golden's usage was immediately afterwards versus what it was before. You know, these teams, these coaches, these play callers take a look at their roster, maybe time slows down for those rookies just a little bit, they can catch their breath, and they say, "Okay, how can I utilize them a little bit more moving forward?" And that hasn't hit for basically any of the other rookies that we've talked about other than Luther Burton, who also had a nice Monday Night Football game. And Golden had one of the best post-bye rookie bumps of any college player ever last year at Texas, you know? I mean, I mean, his December numbers versus September were were insane. Um, yeah, he had he had the Thanksgiving turkey bump. It was wild. It was wild. Um, last note for the Packers on my end. Green Bay Packers inside the 10-yard line, their pass rate 32%. Only the Colts and the Seahawks are lower than that. When they get down there, it's Josh Jacobs and Josh Jacobs only. And by the way, Josh Jacobs this month is a running back three on running back three usage. I feel like whenever I'm doing rankings, he's my either my running back two, three, or four. And then you always say, "Oh, in consensus, he's running back eight, nine, 10." When are we going to start adjusting? I mean, how good does he have to be? He's just not flashy, and no one wants to tackle him. You know, that's this is why he's scoring so many touchdowns, and also he is their only running back. So, it's it's a perfect marriage for fantasy points as being Mr. Vanilla running back, and yet he just constantly scores for us.

Houston Texans, they are coming out of a buy. Hayden, what do you want to see? More of that, you know, max protection play action under center stuff that we're getting into Nico Collins on the field. Um, I'm we'll see if they're going to try to get either of the wide receiver, the rookie wide receivers coming out of the buy, but I think it's largely going to be Nico Collins, Christian Kirk, and then a big rotation behind them. And then the other thing would be, could we get Woody Marks completely overtaking Nick Chubb? That that's the big post-bye rookie bump that I'm talking about in this offense. I wish I had dug into a little bit more. I did someone report or did it come from like a Dan Gratziano Jeremy Fowler context of ESPN articles saying like, oh, they view him as a three-down player who was banged up at USC. I feel like I saw that quote floating around, but don't quote me on it. Um, that's not great because to me, Woody Marks has shown a lot more than that since the preseason and since on the field, but obviously it was discouraging the game before their by-week against the Baltimore Ravens that he didn't totally, you know, overtake that backfield, that it was a ton of Nick Chubb and just less Woody Marks than that, right? So, it's going to be a very difficult one for me to rank this next week. I know for the rest of the season, I would still rather have have Woody Marks. So, yeah. Yeah, we'll see. I agree. The other part of this too is they face the Seattle Seahawks and here on the road off a buy on the late Monday night football game. The Texans are only projected for 18 and 3/4 points. Yeah. Seahawks defensive line right now is, and that's, you know, the weakness of the Texans right now is that guard center guard combination, and that's totally the strength, like what you're saying, of the Seahawks right now. Yeah, they're just have the pass Collins for sure. We'll talk about that a lot in the wide receiver and running back stuff.

Okay, Indianapolis Colts. Forgot who posted this on Twitter. I wish I could give them some more credit, but right now Tyler Warren has a higher yards per route run than Brock Bowers did last season. Uh, obviously what happened last season with Brock Bowers is they couldn't run the football. They just turned from a negative game script stuff and throwing it short intermediate to Brock Bowers over and over and over again. And conversely, the Colts have just been too good. You also get Jonathan Taylor running the football too well for him to get all these opportunities. Uh, with that said, when they got into the red zone, his usage was nuts. He had three red zone targets, I think, on the first drive, and two of those were like in the end zone. So, Tyler Warren to me, I don't want the Colts to be worse, but if they somehow have to start throwing the football more than they are right now, which they're already doing at a pretty high level, uh, he could go nuclear. Yeah, they're they keep getting him on this like kind of leak out of the backside of of the play where he's just wide open, and then also these, I feel like check and release blocking, then the other ones, the big check and release, you know? So they're getting him in in areas where when he catches the ball, there's often not a player within four or five yards of him, which is I think just really good coaching because that's the best of of Tyler Warren is is so just so crazy after the catch. So they're using him well. They're moving the football like crazy. All their per drive metrics are the best in the league, and Daniel Jones still playing good football. So Tyler Warren this month is tight end six on tight end four usage. Last week was a season high for him and expected points because all that red zone work that you're talking about. And then he's also somebody that is very live for just some goal line tomfoolery. You know, just going to be some craziness going on with with Tyler Warren there. So pretty, pretty dope over his last three games, 15.8, 12.4, and 15.3 fantasy points. Uh, I would argue though that Daniel Jones showed some warts in this game that we had not seen so far in others. I think he had what the pick to was it Buddha Baker was number two, uh, just right in front of his face. Made a great play, and then he basically tried to give another one away late in the game that was thrown directly to a defensive back. Um, but with that said, I mean, they are still winning. They face the LA Chargers this week. So, that's a really fun tight end matchup, too, of Tyler Warren versus Derwin James and Deion Henley and these guys. Yeah. Uh, wide receiver room still super hard to get it right. Josh Downs had a season high in usage. Alec Pierce, Michael, uh, Pitman both had season lows. There was like no reason for that to happen. Josh Downs a really good football player. We know Michael Pitman's a good football player. Did want to mention Alec Pierce, typically think think of him as like a vertical X receiver staying by the the sideline, just run these huge post route go balls. They're starting to use him like on these little motions to run dig routes. Like he had two of those catches.

LA this last game. So his route tree has been growing year after year. So they have three legitimate wide receivers and one of the two best running backs in the NFL and one of the top five uh tight ends in the league. So good stuff. And again, I'll repeat that if you could have known one stat prior to your fantasy drafts, it would have been that Jonathan Taylor has the most carries inside the 10-yard line and also the most carries of 20-plus yard 20-plus miles per hour. That's a sick combination.

Next, Jacksonville Jaguars. They are playing in London this Sunday. Uh, they've already, because of traveling over there, ruled out star linebacker Devin Lloyd, which is a huge deal in the back half and moving forward. Uh, I think we should open though with Brian Thomas Jr. because he was the benefactor of a Liam Cohen dialed-up play that bluff screen into a walk-in touchdown. Uh, however, we've also seen the warts of Brian Thomas Jr. also in this game. Third and five, down eight, nine minutes to go. The 15-yard drop on an inbreaker over the middle of the field with no defensive back three yards around him. So, it was a great game, but it was also kind of the same frustrations that we've seen from BTJ so far, which to me are individual and nothing about Shane Waldron. Yeah, definitely. Unless Shane Waldron's like tying his hands behind his back or something, but I don't think that's the case. It was 13.1 expected points and they're manufacturing some touches. It's not the screens. We're not getting like automatic free plays, but like you said, there's there's a couple designs every single week where he is, you know, getting schemed up for some yards after the catch opportunities. So, like to see that he was going to have some big touchdown games coming up here. Uh, yeah, he's been struggling versus the expectations. He's not taking that final leap into complete stardom from his rookie year. Um, yeah, there's for Travis Hunter, I think we can talk about him at corner and stuff, but really on offense, it's the same exact thing. He's played zero snaps out outside of 11 personnel and plays pretty much all of them inside uh 11 personnel and he can make some guys miss uh right after the catch. He can, you know, go up and catch it, but everything in between those two things, it's a complete wild card. Just a quick mention, this will be our shortest conversation on Travis Hunter. After they traded away Tyson Campbell, I was intrigued about what the cornerback use would be. And it was actually a pretty noticeable change here for Travis Hunter. He played 11 snaps at right cornerback, which is a massive leap versus only lining up a handful of times at left corner and being in and out of the lineup there. So, it's going to be even more pronounced moving forward potentially because the Seahawks force the Jaguars into nickel only 20% of snaps in this game versus other teams might force him into nickel or dime 70 to 80% of snaps. So, if Travis Hunter now is and who knows what Greg Newsman is going to be also when he came in that was the 61-yard touchdown for Jason. Wasn't totally his fault. Obviously, you had he was expecting safety help over top, but that's not a great nine snaps that you play overall. So, I was expecting Travis to only play that left quarterback spot. And now that they're also testing the right side, it does make me wonder if maybe that's one of their answers here and one of the reasons why they're trading away Tyson Campbell, even though they weren't showing that beforehand. Yeah, it's all good notes. You can drop him. I think that's where I'm at. You don't have to, but even though he's like good and like two receptions in the previous two weeks like helped them win games. Yeah. How many how many fantasy wide receivers can redraft my top 40 rankings only play in three wide receiver sets? It's right. That's the hard part. Yeah. At the same time, he's really good. He's really good. He's getting uh when the ball's in the air. Okay. Obviously, you had the illegal formation offsides away a fluky Brian Thomas Jr. injury. I just want to point that out before people point that out in the comments. Yeah.

Okay, let's talk about the Las Vegas Raiders. I think Michael Mayer is flying under the radar here as like a priority pickup at tight end. Um, it's easy for him to fly under the radar, but as long as Brock Powers is held out, uh, which might not be just this week. It might be, you know, a couple after that because it's a freaking knee and what PCL injury, then Michael Mayer is an every-down tight end for this team. And simple as sitting in front of Gino Smith and catching these passes and especially a red zone threat on top of it. Last week was a season high. No surprise there. and it was enough to be a top 12 uh performer in usage and points. So, he's a good player. He doesn't come off the field and they can run the offense if they want to with him out there. And I think it's this week then there's a buy uh for Brock Bowers. So, we'll see if he comes out of the buy healthy then. Uh, other note was Jacobe Meyers is just not performing as well and he's not as utilized uh in the last couple weeks versus to open the season and that's pretty shocking because this comes with Brock Bars out of there. He should be traded. This team's not very good. I was going to bring that up. He asked for a trade. They did not come to a resolution at the time. Jacobe Meyers, you are a Pittsburgh Steeler in a couple weeks. Fill in Jack Bash in that same spot. Easy. I mean, that's that's what they're going to be in 2026 anyway. So, why not just kick start it? I'm I'm sure that they didn't want to trade him ahead this season because again, all the moves were win now. Yep. But now that you're not winning Yep. they should make that move for sure. I think I think he's the most likely wide receiver to get traded. And then Ashton Genty's usage continues to be astronomical and fantastic. Uh, and yet, you know, the run blocking is still incredibly suspect. We really just need like seven to eight well-blocked runs per game in order for Ashen Genty to consistently be a top 10, top 12, if not even higher than that, scoring running back on a weekly basis. Just give me eight good blocked runs on a weekly basis. Right this month. He's RB9 and RB7 used to think the rest of the year he'd be like my RB 11, 12. Uh, Trey Tucker, we just have to mention him. He makes a lot of plays on tape and he had a huge crazy outing, but the other games even when he's like not like crazily involved, he's still making a couple plays. If we think that Jacobe Myers can get traded, I don't think that Jack B can be some like target dominator. So, I think that Trey Tucker is he's on pace to be a darn best receiver and and their best receiver. He's fast as Yeah, their best receiver.

Let's talk about the Los Angeles Chargers. I know you all spent a lot of time uh on this backfield in the waiver show. Hopefully, you all check that out. Uh, we do need to begin there with Kamani Vidal actually getting the start in this game despite the Hassan Haskins reports. Uh, you know, they played the Miami Dolphins. So, I went back and looked at a whole bunch of these long gains. The first one, a 38-yard gain. It was a toss on third and one. No one was within five yards of him until he was tackled, you know, 30 yards down the field. The 27-yard was another totally untouched play off the edge. The two runs though that stood out to me, a 19-yard run, that was more impressive. He was supposed to go between the guard and the tackle. He bounced it off tackle because that lane was clogged. He broke contact at the line of scrimmage and picked up again a 19-yard chunk gain off of that. And a 13-yard. Another bounce after backup backfield penetration. Uh, good-looking run there. But he did get a few red zone targets that stood out to me too that we've seen from Amari and Hampton in recent weeks and had added to his value. So, I don't think Kamani Vidal is, you know, an overly talented football player, but one, he's probably the best on the Chargers, which is notable. Uh, and two, I wish he played the Miami Dolphins every season. That would be helpful. That little play-action sprint out uh to Kamani Vidal was was really nice. He he closed out the game too. So even though he was smaller uh it was all Kamani Vidal down the stretch and only one Hassan Haskins carry like once he got into about the third, fourth quarter. So it was a season high 20.1 expected points. You have to start him. You can drop Hassan Haskins if you'd like to. Um, it was nice to see Lad McConkey with a season high in production. And then I'm not sure if you went back and watched Aronda Gadson. It wasn't like anything too spectacular uh on tape, but he was trusted out there despite fumbling. Season high 12.4 points. So, we'll see if Quint Johnson comes back uh with the hamstring injury, but Vlad McConkey, Randy Gatson are also um some shout outs for this last game. I do think just insert blank Chargers running back is incredibly valuable to fantasy football. I mean, again, this team scores points. You have a freak show in Justin Herbert who can dish it out in the receiving department for these backs on top of it. And so, you know, so much analysis this week is, oh, well, they play the Dolphins and, you know, it's not going to be that easy on a weekly basis. I would still rank Kamani Vidal, and we'll see where he is for you in these upcoming weeks as a top 20, top 18 running back pretty easily. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We lost a lot of those like six-round running backs um from this offseason. They're like no longer with us. So, we have to fill fill those type of players in with some replacements. I think that Kamani Vidal he can be my running back 14 depending on by weeks in matchups and stuff the next couple weeks. Yeah. And again Hampton out for longer than the initial four games of injured reserve and at some point they'll get Joe Alt back too. I mean, they're projected for 25 points this week at home against the Colts, which is a very, very high number.

Okay, let's talk about the Los Angeles Rams. Number one is the Puka Nacua injury. First reports were like a high ankle potentially and now it's just an ankle. Maybe it continues to get lower and lower and lower as the week goes along. Hayden, who is the replacement? Whittington. I'm pumped about Whittington. And uh Jacob was too. Whittington's somebody that has when he's been out there has flashed. He's also somebody if you guys listen to Rams games on the broadcast when they talk to the coaches, they're always like the one catch Whittington has a game, the broadcast booth makes sure to say, "Hey, like this team really likes this Whittington guy. He can do a lighter version of Puka. He's not nearly as strong as Puka is, but that's gonna be the role he's going to be in. And I don't think that Puka is going to play this next week uh because they have the by-week after in the travel. So, Dvonte Adams, you're going to have a huge projection for me and really high ranking. And then Jordan Whittington, I think, will be in my top 36 just kind of y thinking about this. So, he's one of the guys where if you want to pick him up to start just even just for a week, I think there's some value to that. He's not gonna have a bunch of like rest of season value, but for this next week, if you're searching for somebody, if you lost Calvin Ridley and Garrett Wilson and these types, I I think that he's a plug-and-play type. Just for the people out there, let's talk about why him other than Tutu Atwell, which by the way, Tu Outwell was inactive for this game. So, I want to throw that out there. It's just the styles and the body types, right? With how Puka Nakua wins, it's a lot of these crossing routes into dangerous territory over the middle of the field. Yeah. And even last year at the opening of the season like when Puka was hurt, Jordan Whittington was the one stepping in there. And so while again they gave 22 out one year $10 million in free agency, I'm not calling him a gadget player, but he's a stretch the field work in the cavities off of you know, motion fly all this type of stuff versus Jordan Whittington every-down do the dirty work type stuff. Could you imagine Tutu in the Puka role? He he would suicide. People are going to see Rams wide receivers and depth charts and saying, "Well, why isn't this 22?" Well, it's because they basically play different positions. Yeah. I'm just like imagining like, "All right, 22 go make sure to go crack down on Bobby Wagner." Yeah. Oh, it'd be amazing. Uh, yeah, that's exactly right. 22 Owl could have a big game, too, if he's healthy and ready to go. And but they already got their $10 million worth on that. You know, when there's 10 men on the field and he scores the 80-yard game game winner, like they already got their $10 million worth there. It's time for Jordan Whittington to step up to the plate. Anything else you want to say about this backfield? I mean, Karen Williams one butt cheek catch was pretty sweet stuff. And I mean, on fourth down and three and Matthew Stafford making that throw in that moment and it looking live on broadcast like, oh, there's no way he's in, but somehow his left buck cheek comes down. Yeah, super impressive play there. Blake Horm was getting like a big chunk of that game before his injury and then just couldn't play the rest of the game afterwards. So, we'll see if if he's like actually going to play this next week. You just never know how these ankles and whatever uh come out of the out of the game afterwards. The thing with Puka Nakua is he's truly superhuman. I mean, we already had one game this season where, you know, he gets a gash in his eye and goes off for like 200 yards. Then even last year, you remember there was like mentions and rumors of him dealing with a knee issue in camp and then he gets injured in week one. But then literally the first game he comes back off of, you know, missing contest, he goes nuclear and goes insane. So he has like some Wolverine skeleton inside of him to like heal magically and as soon as he comes back, you know, some of these other wide receivers take some weeks to get back into it. And for him, it's like immediate. Wasn't his the the Thursday night game where like he's going to be limited to like 30 snaps and then finishes with the wide receiver one. And that changed the entire course of like the entire like they would have traded Puka Pooper Cup potentially. Yeah. All these guys and like given up on the season. Yeah. Mc like I'm retiring unless Puka comes out and finishes the wide receiver one this week. Puka's like I got this man. Don't worry. Don't worry. Yeah. Unreal.

Okay, let's talk about the Miami Dolphins. Uh, we extensively spoke about Tua's comments. Um, yet Hayden, despite this team being one and five and maybe, you know, the wheels coming off, I believe you and I both had Devon Achane inside of our top 12 or top 13 the rest of the way. So, why do we still have so much confidence in him when it feels like this thing could combust at any moment? Yeah, he's a difficult ranking because right now he's kind of like the the running back fiveish going into each week for me. Especially like if you're in a full PPR league, he obviously gets a bump there as well. Um, but you never know if the wheels are just going to completely fall off with this team. Like more more so than they already have. Like this team's still very watchable. If you guys watch their offense only, it's still a very fun offense. And I think that Mike McDonald every single week there's five or six plays that he is completely schemed up for chunk plays. And that would be my worry if you're going to ever get rid of Mike McDaniels like that. It's hard to find coaches that make that big of a difference on the football field. So, yeah, I don't really have any new notes here. Um, only just wanted to quickly mention that uh Jaylen Waddle is at uh 12.9 and then 10.7 um expected points without Tyreek Hill and last week was a more difficult matchup for him. So there's going to be some bigger days and then Darren Waller was out there plenty just didn't get the rock nearly as much once again difficult matchup for him individually and he at least saved the day with a touchdown. Yeah, I really want to watch these Achane rushing performances because uh this was over, you know, 120 yards on the ground against Chargers. Didn't have time to do it. So, I'll try to do that before we hit the uh running back ranking show because that's very different receiving stuff. Okay. It's all dependent. Same same. If you've seen the Chargers defense, it was the same exact runs that you've seen.

Okay, let's talk about the Minnesota Vikings. They are also coming out of the buy. What do you want to see from them? Which quarterback's playing would be my answer there. We still don't know. Kevin O'Connell, they asked him, "Hey, how's JJ McCarthy doing?" He's like, "Well, he's got to get his footwork right and we're waiting for him and we hope it works out." I mean, it was it was a very I think another odd press conference because he dodged the question, didn't name a starter. He doesn't he also doesn't have to. So, they probably know who it's going to be, but yeah, they might, I think, hide behind injury again here. We we'll find out probably on Wednesday once the reporters show up for practice, but I have no idea. Yeah, and it's a pissed-off Eagles team after an extra few days off of Thursday Night Football. Hopefully Jaylen Carter plays for them. We'll see with his heel injury. But yeah, that's a big one to return to uh off a by-week. So, and if it's Carson Wentz, then uh, you know, there's some history there with Philadelphia at the same time. It's in Minnesota, but it is a revenge game. Okay. Yeah. Interesting. Um, Jordan was on. If I had to guess, I'm going WZ, but just a guess. I think it has to be JJ McCarthy if he's able to play. It has to be. Uh, I understand that you can treat quarterbacks differently and there's no like rulebook or dummies guide to this and you know, we've seen this with another number of quarterbacks you know everywhere and by the way, maybe if like Sam Darnold or Baker Mayfield or Daniel Jones or some of these other guys have gone on to have success elsewhere if they were able to like sit down and take some breaths in their original spots and like get fully healthy before going back to the field. Maybe that would have allowed them to have more success in their original homes. Uh, at the same time, I do think JJ is quite different. I'll just keep going back to, you know, preseason competition, even if it wasn't with Sam Darnold last year, has one good game and then after, you know, winning and playing his entire career, it goes into surgery and like darkness for the entire season. And then like, hey, you build the thing around you. We believe in you. And then if he knows his, this is what I'm saying. If he knows he's healthy and they're going with someone else, then that is just gonna screw up anyone's mentality, anyone's mental at what, 22, 21 years of age. I I did see Jonathan Grard was on the K. Adams show and they're talking about just J.J. McCarthy's attitude and Grard was like, "Yeah, last year was pretty bleak out there for J.J. McCarthy." Like he kept saying like how bad it got, which makes sense. Right. Right. It just I don't hear this very often to this extent where everyone's making sure they talk about this. It's like it's the only guy I can hear about this. It's just always him. It's just different. The only thing is and this can be taken both ways. Like the locker room knows like if they're being lied to and if they're not, you know, and so that's twofold. Like JJ McCarthy knows, hey, I'm healthy enough to play and if they choose not to start me, then that's a certain type of way they feel about me. On the other end, the other 52 people on the roster, if they go back to JJ and the locker room thinks that Carson Wentz gives them, I'm not saying they do, if Carson Wentz gives them a better chance to win, then they also know that, oh, the coaching staff is doing this to kind of hold his hand, right, or all that type of stuff. So that's why it's so challenging. There's no right answer here, you know? Totally. There's no right answer. And a lot of that was just theoretical stuff. That was nothing firm. Just an interesting conversation in a league full of Yeah, you don't see this very often. So, I'm glad we got to talk about it. Um, Jordan Addison has had a couple really strong performances since coming back from uh his suspension. Anything you want to add to him? I mean, it's just a different offense than the one that we've seen over the last two years. Yeah, there's been a couple coverage busts that have definitely aided him and the game scripts have been pretty wonky in his in those two games. So, he he's played very well and we'll see what happens rest of the year. It also just comes down to the offensive line. We'll see who returns. Uh, if I think O'Neill, Jackson, and Kelly are going to be out um again here. And that just that's a big deal. And like that's another thing that complicates the quarterback uh conversation is do you want to put JJ McCarthy back out there if three of the five starters are banged up? Is that part of part of it? Do you give him another couple weeks here where it's Carson Wentz, they can tell us, ah, his ankle injury is not very, it has not rehabbed the way we wanted to, and then all of a sudden once the offensive line gets back healthy, then he's going to be out there. Who knows? It's just, it's another wrinkle to this where it's it's nothing straightforward with this Viking team, right? Except the defense is elite and Justin Jefferson's a total stud and then they're kind of just figuring the rest out.

Okay, let's talk about the New England Patriots who are next here. Drake May, total stud. Big fans of this channel. He's appeared on this channel before, broke down his game, I believe, against Syracuse. Uh, just cool stuff. Uh, you know, in the back of my head, and look, we all have pre-draft evaluations. It just never made sense to me how like all the former quarterbacks who do great work out there just like didn't like Drake May's tape, but all of us non-playing professionals really like Drake May. But now we all do because he's freaking electric out there and is throwing down the field. I did think that Josh McDaniels is not getting enough credit for his coaching because a lot of those downfield shots are wide open and he's obviously hitting them. Obviously, there's some tight window ones, too. But Josh McDaniels is in his back right now, too, in the passing game. Yeah, it's it's insane. He's getting all this tight end and running back usage and like running back receiving usage and then he's creating shot plays like Pop Douglas way down the field and those two absolutely ridiculous penalties uh on on Diggs just still can't get over those. But yeah, Drake May the success rate is super super high. He's not taking a bunch of sacks and now we're getting explosives down the field too. He's he is on a huge huge heater. It's it's it's impressive. He's he's he's I think well ahead even like the Drake May bowls in the second year. Like this is it's possible that he's going to do that. The fact that he's already here for how inexperienced he is is pretty remarkable.

Okay, let's talk about this backfield because it was the first one without Antonio Gibson. I brought this, you know, line of thinking during the instant reaction show, but I'll just re-re-repeat it here that, you know, the trees when we can focus on those, it's arguing about the snap share between the two and the touches between or Andre Stevenson and Trevon Henderson and the frustration we always get. But if you zoom out and like look at the forest of what this rushing attack is, does it really matter? Because no one, neither of them are successful at running the football right now behind the offensive line and tight ends. The Patriots are 31st in rush yards before contact per attempt across the league. There were multiple times against the New Orleans Saints if like one guard got to the second level or if Hunter Henry off a double team picked up the closing safety that there was going to be a nice big explosive lane for Trevon Henderson or whoever else, but they're just blowing these blocks and the tight ends are really at play here. So, wow. Like Hunter Henry, who I love and adore, has been great in the receiving game. He had a couple massive mistakes here I felt and I'm not in the room but I'm just watching this that if they were to spring like any of these then we would just had like a different idea of what this rushing attack could be because right now it sucks. Yeah, it yeah, it sucked the entire year. So, uh, last week in terms of expected points, Raandre 10.5, Trayvon 5.9. So, it was two-thirds to one-third split, give or take, and we'll see if Trayvon could pick up the pace and close close the distance on Raandre, but I'll be ranking Raandre ahead of Trayvon until proven otherwise because I think that he's the favorite for goal-line touches. Um, also wanted to mention just Kan Booty. He had a a great interview where he was just like taking ownership of what he was doing at LSU and like why he's was struggled for like well, what three or four years in a row and now he's turned it around. He's totally locked in and I just think it was cool for him to take some ownership of that and big time rooting for him. He's been a great player at the catch point all year long. So he's he's part of this explosive pass game um and some of the shot plays that Josh McDaniels is is creating. Because he's quite frankly earned it. Do you think we'll see Kyle Williams at all this year as like a plus 40% snap player? I don't know. I mean, it was supposed to be at the expense of Kan. We'll see. It would be I think rotation. Yeah. Yeah. All there there's too many guys in like very unique scripted roles. It's going to be tough. So that just means if he doesn't do anything this year that we'll all just again talk ourselves into Kyle Williams this offseason as like, oh, it's going to happen in his second season because, you know, Josh Daniels and Mike Rabel don't play rookies. That's right. And yeah, we're like the EPA numbers for Drake May like fourth in EPA. Like Kyle Williams going to be like go even earlier this year. I'm ready for it.

Okay, we'll talk about their opponents here in week six. That is the New Orleans Saints. Still just a really fun team. It's so obvious. Nothing else needs to be said about them. It's just a repeat every single week. Well-coached operation. Defense gives up a little bit too much cushion in space for my liking. But it's the split backfield between Alvin Kamara and Kendry Miller. Chris Olave as a top wide receiver for them and even down the field in this one. And then Rashid Shaheed as a solid wide receiver but a bit more high variance than that. Pretty much no notes. Alvin Kamara's playing a little bit more in the first half. Kendry Miller is playing a little bit more in the second half. They said that Kamara doesn't want to get traded, so he was a guy in theory you could trade, but it sounds like they want to do right by him and he's gonna remain a Saint. Taysom Hill is still mixing in there a bit. And like you said, we're going to get a spike week out of Chris Olave or Rashid Shaheed. He'll probably go back and forth there. And I think both of them are very strong players. I keep seeing Olave and Shaheed in the trade conversations um for the Saints as well. That would be bold. I would just keep both of them. You have two young players who you can just sign long-term. Just do that. It's hard to find these guys. Just it's kind of difficult to get talents like this, especially when you need you're going to have a young quarterback. Like if you have a rookie quarterback, you stick with Rattler, which I think is going to be an interesting decision. It would be nice if you had, you know, two speed demons that could run the full route tree.

Okay, let's talk about your team, the uh New York Football Giants. Off a big win on Thursday Night Football. We know here the two and four Giants have the Denver Broncos, the Philadelphia Eagles, and then the San Francisco 49ers, the Chicago Bears, and the Green Bay Packers, so on and so forth after this. But at the same time, I'm slightly surprised that you didn't get to shove in Cam Akers into your top 12 overall for this very reason. Cam Akers was second in the NFL with nine carries inside the 5-yard line. And, you know, he barely even played in week one. But I was just kind of jotting down my rest of season. I had him as my running back 10 as the 23rd overall pick. Okay. So, um, yeah, we'll see how long this lasts. Tyron Tracy was out there. He scores three touchdowns, 18.8 expected half PPR points, can catch the ball, and he's a focal point. It's going to be a pretty balanced offense. They really need somebody to step up uh down the field. This last week it was Little Jordan Humphrey. Um, maybe that can be Darius Slayton when he comes back from his hamstring injury. Maybe Theo Johnson can become a little bit more stable player, not just some big moose out there. They can do something more than, you know, play a little bit more consistent at the catch point, but they need somebody to step up to kind of keep this, you know, pass game actually threatening. But in the meantime, it's going to get like crazy vibes and headbutts and whatever. And I'm here for it. I'm sorry. Like this stuff matters and I'm loving it. Yeah, the meme compilations have been truly truly electric with Cam Scataboo. I'll save that conversation for another time. I mean, we we always have it. Just like the He was so much fun to watch as a prospect. Just so much fun. Just watch the Texas game again. It was insane. He almost beat everybody. I mean, think about how many top 50 picks were on that that Texas team last year. He almost beat him by himself. Yeah. I mean, it was the long speed that people cared so much about, but then when you looked at it, it was like the same size as Dave Montgomery and James Connor and these guys and nearly the same speed. Like again, it's something that we outlined. He had a ton of 10, 20, 30-yard runs. It's okay if he doesn't have the 40, 50-yarder. That's focusing a bit too much on just the 40 when all these other things really impactful. And he was a great athlete, too, in terms of his jumps. Like his jumps were sick. He's explosive. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And and you see his jumps too when he's, you know, diving out of bounds like a torpedo. At defensive backs. So, okay, New York Jets. I mentioned that they went from one and a half point favorites to one and a half point underdogs basically overnight. Who knows if the news of Garrett Wilson being out multiple weeks with a knee injury played a part in it or if it was just at large what this team looked like and they reviewed the film because the Justin Fields stuff, he was given time in the pocket. I'm not saying like the route concepts were fantastic or earth-shattering or groundbreaking, but at the same time, they're probably schemed up for what the quarterback is willing to read out. Uh, and he wasn't willing to read them out and throw the football. It was just brutal to watch way on the way back. Yeah, took some brutal, brutal sacks. There was not a lot of guys open either. It was obviously going to be a very tough matchup for Garrett Wilson just facing one of the best defenses in the league. And their backup wide receivers or I guess their rest of their starters are miserable. So, I don't know what you're gonna do. I I think the only question I have for you because we have like the Breece Hall stuff figured out. Garrett Wilson's removed. We're not picking up any wide receiver. We can't even get Garrett Wilson fantasy points. Mason Taylor because two weeks ago lit it up. This last week caught one damn pass. You know, even if Justin Fields' worst games typically aren't negative uh net passing yards, usually it's in the hundreds still. Where are these 145 passing yards going to? Like you start naming the wide receivers and stuff like is Ma could we fire up Mason Taylor as the tight end 12 or is that insane? I'll answer your question with another question. All right, the Jets this week are actually projected for over 20 points. Okay, they're projected for more points than the Cardinals, the Bengals, the Texans, the Dolphins, and then obviously we get down to like the Titans, the the Raiders, and the Giants. For a rushing defense in the Panthers who just shut down Miami, who just shut down Dallas, how are the Jets going to win a game or even get to 20 points without, you know, a rushing a great rushing performance against one of the top three rushing defenses in the league right now. I don't know. Probably be running the ball. They're have to beat have to beat the Panthers. I don't know. They're not going to pass the ball, you know? That's why I keep going down Mason Taylor. Like I screwed up that ranking last week, but I'm tempted to go back to it because there's nobody else to throw the ball to. That That's what happens with bad teams, you know, like Yeah, it happens. It that that's just when you get into bad team territory. The unpredictable is what pops up way more often than others. I mean, it's Josh Reynolds at wide receiver and who else? Oh, Aren Smith. Yeah. Um, Tyler Tyler Johnson. Yeah. Is Alimacard hurt? I mean, uh, yeah, he he's on injured reserve. What is this offense gonna look like? I mean, what? This is wing T. Here's my thing. The Panthers pass rush is actually quite bad. Now, they are powerful and they kind of like compress the pocket. Yeah. Whatever Justin Fields higher on his rushing totals is, that's what I'm going to take. That's what I'm going to take here. Yeah. Because that to me that is the only way we get like two spectacular plays from Justin Fields as a runner and that's how they get to 20 points. Yeah, fair enough. I mean, am I am I going to have to rank Fields as a top 12 fantasy quarterback? Yeah, I mean, they're basically projected for the same points as the Vikings and the Jaguars. And I mentioned seven other teams that they have more points projected for this week. All those teams eliminated from Super Bowl conversation. I'm sorry Texans, you guys are you guys are interesting, but if you're lower than the Jets, you're done. You've been eliminated. Yeah. And you know, Garrett Wilson, while he might freelance a little bit and is stop starting his movements, he was getting open at times against Patrick Surtain. And the ball was just late and behind him. Like he was getting his hands on it. And sure, like how you're paying him, you want him to catch all of those, but a lot of those were just how off target and off frame they were to him. It was just a bad day. Putting it lightly. It's one of the worst days I've ever seen. Yes.

Okay, Philadelphia Eagles. I mean, bad days here. Uh, 17 points. They do have a few extra days to figure it out. My question to you, are we going to look like idiots not having Saquon Barkley in our top 12s at the third way mark of the season? Well, this month he's the RB 20 on RB 15 usage. The interior offensive line just is just not the same. Like all the players just not the same. And they keep talking about how tired and injured they are. So I think that Saquon Barkley looks fine. Like you see him out in space through the air and stuff. He looks extremely fast. So better days are ahead for Saquon Barkley, but the team total is not going to be as high because the team's just not moving the ball enough. And he's not going to replicate the 60-yard touchdowns that he had last year. And then when they get down at the one-yard line, it's Jalen Hurts. So he kind of has like this like little middle ground that he has to be scoring his touchdowns from. So, I think it's possible that he can be a top 12 overall player from this point forward. It's not the most likely scenario. He's I think a low-end RB RB1. Um, and then the other thing is Dallas Goedert's getting all of the goal-line touchdowns. I mean, this is what they've removed, unless they do four tush pushes in a row. And we also had that Saquon Barkley misdirection. They're just doing these like lateral shovel quick passes to Dallas inside the red zone. He's the tight end one overall on the season with 14.6 fantasy points. That 14 mark is like hovering near it's Travis Kelce stuff over the last couple years, but so much of it are these touchdowns obviously, but then we are getting, you know, targets between the 20s at the same time. So, he's a really good player. To me, he has been one of the more underrated pure tight ends across the league because, you know, he's playing with AJ Brown and Devonta Smith and has also gotten banged up quite often. But um, if you ask me if he finishes as a top four tight end the rest of the way, I think I would say no. But it's pretty sweet that he's already paid off this pick. His touchdowns have been from three to 52 and then he had the 33-yard um right way back then. But I think the team probably should start taking away that look and then it's just going to be more runs up the middle. It's been a great wrinkle. So, um, yeah, and then hopefully AJ Brown wants to, you know, get after. I thought he showed a little more want to this last game. Um, but been up and down.

Okay, final question. And we open by saying, look, we've picked at the warts of the Bills, the Chiefs, all these other teams. At four and two, where are you at with the Philadelphia Eagles? Like to you looking at all the others through six weeks, do you think the Eagles, they didn't even they weren't even mentioned in our top two team conversation here? Yeah, I'm not ruling them out from winning the Super Bowl. I It's just one of these years where we're going to have some really really weird spots. This team would lose to last year's Super Bowl team by 10 points. Uh, so it's it's not the same team, but they can still turn it around. Them Packers, Lions, you know, there's only so many teams. I think the Commanders are kind of in the in the mix there. There's only so many teams that are like definitely better than the Philadelphia Eagles even when they're playing like this. So, they have to get healthier and they have to make some adjustments and then they have to hit the deep passes. Like I I think you just some of these deep misses. If those were long touchdowns like they were last year, it wouldn't look as as stinky. But, there's definitely some some issues and I think a lot of it's just they played so many snaps, they're so injured on in the trenches right now. Yeah, we still haven't seen a four-quarter display from them. In last year or in previous ones, it's like we got different versions of the four quarter. Like they could pass early on and then run in second half just to grind it out. Yeah. Like again, the Rams, they won that game because of second half ISO ball stuff to AJ Brown and blocked field goals. Tampa Bay, the second half was brutal and then we know what happened against the Denver Broncos and then we had this Giants game in prime time. I'll say this for the defense though, obviously they're going to be worse when it's no Quinyon Mitchell, Jaylen Carter, and Nolan Smith on the field. Like those are arguably other than Zach Bond, their three most important players on defense. Yep. And then they lost multiple huge starters like to hundred million dollar contracts this this offseason, too. So it's Milton Williams, obviously Josh Sweat, all those guys, depth pieces. So, and I their second quarterback spot is way worse, too. Brutal. Brutal. Brutal. Brutal. So, I think they're going to maybe like trade get an upgrade at cornerback too uh on the outside, something like that coming up here. So, how Rosman's number out of these trade talks. I keep forgetting to mention the Bucks and the Rams as part of the the NFC. Those two teams are also there with the they're obviously up there. Again, I think Rams arguably best team in the NFL. Pittsburgh Steelers are up next. Hey, admittedly, I did not get a chance to go back and rewatch this one. I will before we get to the rankings episodes, but from what I can infer, it was a vintage Aaron Rodgers get the football out very quickly before the pass rush gets there and he was making good decision after good decision. Yeah. So, you can like nitpick like Brenley was talking about the the downfield pass where he completely underthrew it, but also a lot of the vintage Aaron Rodgers stuff. It's it's just an offense that it's working and they're getting DK Metcalf to play really good football. So you had some guards for the catch opportunities and then a big double move touchdown as well. So Metcalf is playing good football even though like the usage is really low. He's outperforming my model by a ton. So credit where it's due. That's been working out for them. And then I think the big thing for fantasy purposes is figuring out what's going to happen with this backfield and it's just going to be complicated. You know, Kenny G was playing a lot. And then that's two or in two different situations Caleb Johnson uh was out there. So you got like the end of the game stuff, but even in the first half gets a couple carries, which it doesn't sound like a lot, but like you remove six carries from from the backfield, like that does make a difference between being the RB18, the RB 25. Overall for me, there was a game three weeks ago that Jaylen Warren had 80% of the touches. We just aren't going to see that unless yeah, you know, an injury happens to to Kenny Gainwell because Arthur Smith is just the type that hey, if you get thrusted into a role and you perform well in that role, then he's going to reward you and, you know, keep it at that same opportunity. So, the Warren Gainwell backfield split uh is here to stay to me. It's probably going to be what the the Panthers backfield is where like both of them are involved because they both have shown well at different parts of the season. So Warren was season low 7.9 expected half-PPR per runs last week.

Next is the San Francisco 49ers. Uh, we know this is a mash unit and the losses are starting to pile up a little bit, which is not fun. Uh, only 19 points in this game. They are 4-2. Now granted, they do get the Atlanta Falcons here. A little Kyle Shanahan not revenge game. I mean, they didn't hire him as head coach. They kept what? Mike Smith instead. Or was that Dan Quinn? Dan Quinn. One of the two. One of the two. Um, let's talk about it. Wide receiver one, Kendrick

Boring. Yeah. For one more week. I don't think Paw is going to play. I don't think uh Brock Perie is going to play. I think that KD is going to play. That's where I was going to go with this conversation.

So Kendrick Bourne, he's been a complete stud the last couple weeks. Got to start him for this next week. But over the last month with M. Jones, they are number one in neutral pass rate. The San Francisco 49ers. So when you get George KD who does not have wide receiver competition right now and typically they've been like dead last because their defense like back in like the George KD like two, three years ago, the defense was top three and then they were able to run the ball so well. Both of those are no longer part of the the conversation now. So I think George KD, if you're going to say like, who's going to come out of nowhere and finish like a top 15, 20 overall player for the rest of the season, George KD, I think has the potential to do that. I couldn't rank him that high in our little discussion earlier, but the the pathway for George KD going absolutely nuts down the stretch, it's it's looking pretty obvious to me. Yeah, love that.

Right now, the 49ers are 28th in red zone touchdown success rate at 42.8%. Uh, that could go up a lot with George KD in the fold. And we have seen in the past like high low concepts, levels concepts with KD and CMC in that area. So that can open up things for the passing game for them on top of it. Or, you know, just rushing stuff too, being more successful in the ground game because George KD can seal it on the edge. So yeah, that should be improved. Yeah, their run blocking stinks right now. Their offensive line's tattered, bad, and everything. So KD, hopefully he's healthy. Pun, who was awesome as a rookie, I think he got banged up in training camp, right? Missed a handful of weeks and he got rolled up on like week two, like where he was left the field limping and stuff. I do wonder if that is just like really carrying over as as the season's going along.

Okay, let's talk about the Seattle Seahawks. Uh, this again can be another, hey, we can focus on the trees where, you know, no player had a higher stuff rate with 10 plus carries in week six than Zack Sharpet. Uh, despite him seeing a season high in snaps. Uh, at the same time, you know, things can be true where we can all say that Kenneth Walker is the more talented player. He doesn't get stuffed at line of scrimmage as often. He's actually has explosive ability to reel off 20, 30, 40 yard runs. But does it really matter in the end when the Seattle Seahawks not only want to keep it this way uh with like drive in drive out, but uh even if I threw those stats in Clint Kubak's face, he wouldn't change it. I think they're just trying to keep Kenneth Walker fresh. He's always been dealing with these injuries, soft tissue injuries. He runs hard for his size. So I I think that largely explains. They also drafted Charbanet in the second round. So, you don't just like full-blown bench a second round pick in Charbanet, too. So, I don't see how this is going to change. And then Charbanet is just more trusted in the two-minute drill. So, he got some extra action in that capacity. And then it's just more of like a series by series, drive by drive rotation right now. So, uh, Charbanet had more run this last game. It's pretty much dead even split. So, I don't think this is going to change the rest of the season. So, they've made their choice and this is how it's going to go. Hopefully, Kenneth Walker plays the entire season.

Next also is JSN and Sam Darnold down the field. I believe on 15 plus yard throws, Sam Darnold is perfect. I mean, I to me, I I don't remember any misses. Oh my gosh. I think he's perfect. So, um, Jax Smith and Jigba had this out route where he sold it on the inside to go back outside and I think that corner is still sitting there and spinning, just he still doesn't know where he's at. Uh, he's so Someone called him the fastest slow looking player in the league. And I think that's perfectly apt in that there's just zero fat to his movements. Like you can't tell at all if he's cutting a vertical route outside, which direction he's going in. Like the stem and the first seven, eight yards looks identical in the full route tree and he can peel it off back from there. Also on that, the big touchdown he was looking, I think fairly fast. So yeah, like I don't know. He created a bunch of separation, just they were both running full speed and he won the race. So maybe he's just in his development is just getting a little bit faster on top of things. But yeah, and then also shout out Cooper Cup. That was a nice out route win in the end zone and Sam Darnold put it right on the money. I mean, Sam Darnold is he does not miss any throws right now. It's wild.

We are also getting tagged in AJ Barner tweets now which to me is like peak uh, we're doing our job and people are actually watching. All offseason long, AJ Barner right now over the last five games is the Titan. Eight uh, 8.6 fantasy points. Once again, he's out there all the time in a good offense. Good things can happen. Yep. Big play action stuff with tight ends. Like they are sometimes the focal point of that. And yeah, he's a big boy out in space. That's for sure.

I meant to bring this up with the Giants. Hey, don't think I don't see what you're doing. You're trying to steal Theo Johnson away from me and like become the Theo Johnson guy. People remember. Okay, if don't don't try to do this. I'm just saying he's big. I'm just saying he's looking massive and I'm getting a bunch of tweets people saying about look how big and massive. Oh, come on. Do I need to pull out the tapes? What is happening here? I was just saying I was watching him and I noticed how big he was and you thought he's just some tiny undersized tight end and I was like, "No, he's the biggest tight end outside of Moi Cox." I see what happened. All right. I see what you're doing. Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He's not that great. Theo, by the way, he he has some issues out there.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Let's talk about uh, this wide receiver room. Loved our clip. Loved our moment about Barton College being 33 minutes away from Lizard Lick. However, might it not matter if Mike Evans returns this week? It was never going to matter. Let's just be honest. It was just a side discussion. It It was just trivia. Um, yeah, it sounds like Mike Evans is going to play out of necessity. I'm guessing they would love if Mike Evans can miss another game and come back from his injury, but Amech is out. Chris Godwin is out. Bucky Irving has also been ruled out again. So, it's they're they're fighting and even with that, Baker Mayfield's getting it done. So, super impressive team and only fitting that with all these wide receivers getting injured, it was actually a season low in usage for Sterling Shepard. I know. Super tough. What could you do? Super tough. What could you Uh, and the TZ Johnson clip from the sideline was hilarious when he thought they were chanting MVP for him after literally one catch. He's like, "I haven't done anything all year." I mean, so great. Oh, so good. So good.

Okay, we'll close things out here with the uh Tennessee Titans uh because they closed the door on their head coach. They fired Brian Callahan. I went on a bit of a tie raid on Sunday. First time I'd watched live the Titans all season long and was a brutal experience. Uh, and now they face Mike Vrabel. So, what do the Titans do there? You know, we've already gotten reports from like Ian Rapaort and Peter Shrager that names like Arthur Smith or Matt Naggie could get involved here. Uh, it kind of depends on one ownership but also the two people who are in charge under her which is Chad Brinker who is president of football operations. He has a history with the Green Bay Packers which that's why Mike McCarthy went off in my head a little bit. And then obviously Burggoni the GM comes from the Kansas City Chiefs and Matt Naggi connection there. But come on. Uh, I would say the Arthur Smith and Naggie stuff don't really get me juiced or excited. Yeah, I think way too early. Let's Let's I mean, it better not be those guys. We'll we'll see.

Um, did want to mention just with with Callahan, some of the coaches after the games talk to the reporters and just talk about how pathetic the Titans are just managed wise and how brutal their roster is. And it is absolutely true. You know, JC Laam is not looked very good. Uh, they got Scransky. That's that's a start. Jeffrey Simmons is a total alpha. Running out of I'm running out of names like already like this team is so so so so far behind. Um, but Callahan was, if you look at it and measure it, which is like ROI on a week to week basis, if you look at the betting markets and just if you were to bet on the Titans every single week, he had the worst ROI of any coach in the last 20 years. Think about Urban Meyer and like we've had some disasters out there. The Callahan one is is right up there. And if the Titans were a little bit more center of attention, then we would really be talking about how bad the Tennessee Titans are. And I think it goes all the way up to ownership because it didn't seem like from the pressers that the two guys that they've put in front of the mic, it didn't seem like they were exactly like ready for this or wanted to and how long the press conference was after the announcement and then the initial uh reports were that they didn't know who the interim coach was going to be. I mean, all that is that is all tough. That's all coming from ownership to me. And look, uh, I've certainly seen some head coach firing press conferences mid-season and usually the owner's there to like say, "Hey, this is why we did this. This is what we're looking for in the next guy. This is why we made this decision." Uh, you know, my line like bad teams stay bad because of ownership. Y and you know, Greg Rosenthal put the timeline together. December 22nd, Tit Titans fire GM John Robinson power struggle with Mike Rael. January 24th, Titans fire Mike Vrael after power struggle with new GM Ran Carthon. They hired Brian Callahan, which by the way was the first hiring of that cycle. Uh, January 2025, fire Ran Carthon after he like got another title on top of GM. And then Bill Brian Callahan helps select new general manager Mike Banzi. And then here we are in October, they fired Brian Callahan. So I'm not saying like they shouldn't have not fired Brian Khan at all. I'm just saying four to five massive moves since December 2022 just shows a lack of decision-making process, patience, direction of the people at the top. And that's what sets you further and further behind is not hiring the right people uh and putting the ones in place.

Yeah. When the head coach and GM aren't hired together, they're not going to have the same vision. And they were making trades, remember, like trading for Legarius Sneed and like they're making some of these moves where they had no business making them. So I hope they just try to, you know, trade away Tony Coller for a pick, Ridley for a pick, that type of thing. You know, the head coach and we like Kim Ward as a player, as a prospect. He's done some difficult things this year. And you and I even suggested that he's going to have some Will Levis moments because he had some Will Levis moments at Miami and those are only accentuated when you are the worst team in the league. But even that, like they had an opportunity if they didn't believe in Kim Ward to just go out there and sign Sam Darnold or sign one of these other quarterbacks and then spend that first overall pick on something else. But obviously I'm not out on Kim Ward at all.

You mentioned I think this was from a uh Mike Silver piece. Uh, some quotes coming out on the opposite end from opponents here. Quote, "That might be the worst team I've seen in the last 25 years." One Raiders coach said of the Titans after Sunday's game, quote, "They don't have any difference makers other than Jeffrey Simmons and the whole thing was a total mess." And then from inside the building, according to several witnesses, Mike Silver says Simmons stopped Thursday's practice to point out what he considered a poor showing by second-year first-round pick right tackle JC Laam, who had missed the previous four weeks with a hip injury. Quote, "I've watched you for the last 10 plays, and this ain't it." Simmons told Laam, "We need more from you." They're they're so far away. I mean, they are truly so far away. They This team needs to trade down in the draft and just pray that all the picks that they're going to end up having are going to end up hitting. I mean, they have they have just no they have no talent. And again, this is the issue. Like the last four quarterbacks that were selected number one overall have gone four for four in mid-season firings. And it totally derails an entire year of development. I mean, we saw that with Trevor Lawrence and Urban Meyer. Like Doug Peterson came in and said, "Okay, this is actually his rookie year." Because he learned absolutely nothing and only got worse. He regressed from his first year. Bryce Young, Frank Reich, we don't need to repeat all that stuff. Uh, and then you had Caleb Williams with Matt Eberfloose, Shane Waldron, and Thomas Brown last season. So, this is a quarterback who, you know, had tons of years during college and can't really hit the ground running because the entire environment is again just going to accentuate the negatives on top of it. I think those those coaching quotes are very accurate. Like this is one of the worst teams just top down. Aside from player two to 53 after Simmons, it is it is terrible. And I do wonder if like part of the reason of hiring Brian Callahan was so Bill Callahan could come as the offensive line coach, but he was brutal his final season in Cleveland and then this offensive line was brutal this year despite all the investments that they made. So it wouldn't stun me if we see like a slight upgrade. like they could play better without this coaching staff. But at the same time, like three I I haven't actually heard anything about Skip Holtz, but I don't even know what he does since he's not calling plays and they skipped over him as the OC. But like both Callahans are out of the building and we'll see. I don't know if they win another game though moving forward. It's bad. So bad.

Anything you want to say about them in general? Like Taj Spears had some moments, but it really doesn't matter. No. Uh, if they trade Tony Pard, I think Taj Spears is worth picking up now just in case they do that. They should do that. There's no excuse for them to keep Tony Pard and Coby Ridley around. They need Coby Ridley to be healthy so they can trade him away.

All right, that does it, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you for watching. Go and support Underdog and the dog app. Promo code the show link in the description down below. Hay will give you a hundred bucks out of his pocket. If if you use promo code the show and you get an at least play $5 on the first go round. Uh, shout out to Weaves Mosho. Shout out to Hayden up the villa. We'll talk to you'all soon. See you.