Transcription
Good morning, friends and enemies. Today, we are recruiting some of my good friends, some of your enemies, Las Vegas, to run the numbers for us. We are looking at all the player props going into the 2025 NFL season and gleaning the secrets that we could take away that are going to help us for fantasy football.
All right, we're going to go position by position and just talk about some of the most interesting numbers that you guys are probably not aware of, 'cause you're not diving into the books like I am. Next week, we're going to be going into the single best and worst values in fantasy drafts based on the Vegas lines for the upcoming season. So, if you want to tune in for those, make sure you subscribe to the channel.
And we're going to start with the most fun position in fantasy football, and that is the running back position. And before we dive into the position, just a very overarching, you know, sentiment here. This is going to be a free-flowing conversation that we have in this video. Vegas lines should be used as bumpers for you guys, right? I think it kind of brings people down to earth. You've got to understand Vegas. When you think of Vegas, you think of money and power and [ __ ] greed. And I think that's the right way to think about it. But within that, they also employ and hire the smartest people on the planet to run the smartest algorithms on the planet. All right? They were doing AI before AI existed. Those people work for Vegas. So when they set these lines, they have all of the data points that lead to the correct numbers. And a lot of times they're wrong. But here's the thing, they're correct way more often than some fantasy football guy on Twitter that just continuously year after year after year references yards per route run over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. And that's the only thing that he ever looks at. They take every number imaginable. So Vegas is probably the single best tiebreaker in fantasy drafts that you can find.
I want to start with the offensive player of the year award and the odds that are floating around there at Bet MGM right now. And it should be no surprise to anyone except everyone in fantasy football somehow now that Saquon Barkley has the best odds to win again to be the repeat offensive player of the year. 5 to 1 odds, plus 500. There is no one else in the three-figure odd range here. Okay, you have Saquon at plus 500. The next highest odds are at plus 1,000. There's been a lot of discussion throughout the summer, like if you're a casual fantasy football player and you're just getting back into content, your mindset is probably like, it's Saquon Barkley or Jamar Chase at the 101 every single time. Right? Right. It's like that uh Star Wars meme where it's like, right, no, there. I just listened to a podcast legitimately yesterday, this is not hyperbole, that Saquon was their seventh-ranked player in half PPR scoring. You want to talk about the definition of doing too much? Like, let's just do less. This is overthinking to the maximum. Philly's incredible. The offensive line is incredible. Let's talk about Saquon Barkley like not even playing until the fourth quarter in a lot of games. Him sitting the last game. Yeah, Saquon Barkley is going to be just fine. All right.
But the next player behind him, the two players that are tied for the second highest odds at plus 1,000, 10 to 1, are J.K. Dobbins and Jamar Chase. Jamar Chase, no surprise there. J.K. Dobbins was a little bit surprising though, but not to Vegas. And it didn't matter that Frank Reich and Ben Johnson left because when these Lions opened up, he was the second highest odds to win the award at plus 10,000. And then they lost both of those pieces, Ben Johnson and Frank Reich. Guess what Vegas said about the Lions and the Lions and the Lions and the Lions and the Lions? They don't give a [ __ ]. Those guys were gone. And J.K. Dobbins' odds did not change whatsoever. Still 10 to one. Okay. So, as much as everybody's like freaking out about the losses of those those two guys, and yes, there could be a little bit of regression for the Lions in terms of maybe like win total and total domination, but they don't care about it and they don't see it happening to J.K. Dobbins. So, do not factor those losses too heavily into J.K. Dobbins because Vegas ain't doing it. The top guys, that's obvious to to talk about those guys and just say, "Hey, they're going to be really, really, really good this year."
When I'm thinking about running backs or when I'm thinking about fantasy football in particular, one thing that I think is like really important for for people out there to know, especially like the casual fantasy player, if you talk to or consume content from the best fantasy football players in the world, uh the guys who are like really in this stuff, the guys who play for big big money, high stakes leagues, the guys who win these like Millie Maker tournaments, the guys who win the the the underdog tournaments that pay out, you know, $3 million, those types of things, there's a very common theme amongst them that they care more about strategy than they do about specific player picks. And by that I mean when you're in a draft, right, and you are deciding between RB16 and RB17, when you're on the clock, it is pretty much a coin flip. It is a 50/50 chance that you're going to get it right, despite your subjective like talent preference on a guy. And those types of players, those types of fantasy players, the guys who are really good, don't typically waste too much time thinking about player A versus player B. They think a lot about, you know, what makes a tiebreaker work, what makes the strategy work of a specific pick. And I will tell you, more so than any other position for running backs, one of the best tiebreakers and the one of the most simple, and it should be common sense at this point, the most simple tiebreaker is picking running backs on good teams, on good offenses, on teams that give running backs more opportunities, on teams that lead and win games, 'cause that means more carries and more touches. And you would be shocked by the amount of people who like can conceptualize that, but then don't draft and play fantasy football based on that. Draft players on really good offenses and really good teams. And more often than not, your team is going to do really well. And this applies more so to running back than any other position.
So, when we go back to last year's top 10 running backs, you'll see the top 10 of them overall finishes. Three of the top 10 played on teams with losing records. So 70% of the top 10 running backs last year played on teams with a winning record and only one of them, you can see Chase Brown down there, running back 10, finished on a team with fewer than 10 wins. So the majority of them had double-digit wins. More staggeringly, shouldn't be surprising though, the three players on losing teams: Robinson on Atlanta, 8 and 5; Bijan Robinson on Miami, 8 and 9; Alvin Kamara in New Orleans, 5 and 12. Those three guys on the losing teams ranked one, two, and three in running back receptions last year. Kamara led, Alvin Kamara was two, and Bijan Robinson was three. Pretty obvious, right? If you are on a team that's not going to win a lot of games, that is not going to score a lot of points, you probably have less rushing opportunities, you probably have less goal-line opportunities, you're probably going to score fewer touchdowns overall because it's harder unless you're a breakaway player like Kamara, whatever, unless you're catching a ton of passes. And that's what those three did in order to qualify for the top 10 running backs.
So, I wanted to look at this year and look at the win totals of teams. Who does Vegas project to win a lot of games? Who do they more importantly project not to win a lot of games? And then of those running backs that we don't project to be on good teams, do we reasonably, you know, genuinely project them to catch a lot of passes? If they're not hitting both of those marks, then there should be real concern over drafting those guys where their current ADP is. I think the majority of them check this box.
So, when we look at the top 15 running backs right now per ADP, we'll put it up on the screen for you. A lot of them are on good teams. A lot of them are on okay teams. What I'm trying to pinpoint is like, okay, does Vegas project this team to win seven, eight, or fewer games? Then we look at those running backs and say like, okay, are they going to catch a lot of passes? We have Bijan Robinson with Atlanta. Vegas has them projected at eight wins. But again, not concerned about it because Bijan's obviously a phenomenal pass catcher, as he was third in the NFL last year among running backs. Saquon in Philly, 11 and a half wins. J.K. Dobbins in Detroit, 10 and a half wins. Austin Ekeler, the the Raiders are projected to win six and a half games. So the question you have to ask yourself is, do we expect Ekeler to catch a ton of passes? If I had to lean one way, I would say he's he's probably going to be north of that 50 mark, which qualifies you to be a top 10 running back in most years. So, you know, do you think the Raiders far exceed expectations? 'Cause his rushing touchdown total for this year, Austin Ekeler, is seven and a half. Okay. So, if he finishes at seven and he catches 40 passes, he's not going to return value at running back four where you need to draft him right now. So, I'm not saying he's a bad pick where he's going. I, you know, the draft capital six overall tells you that he's going to get an insane amount of work, but there are a few red flags there, which, you know, if you're drafting and you feel safer, like you don't have a very high risk tolerance, it might make more sense to go with a Derrick Henry over an Austin Ekeler just based on again the overall projection of what this Raiders offense is going to be. Ekeler was not a great pass catcher last year. But if you look at his receiving season two years ago, he was basically the best back in college football in terms of just pure pass catching. His numbers, his analytics, his statistics were phenomenal. So, I'm not worried about his talent as a pass catcher, but there's no guarantee that he comes out and catches 60, 65 balls as a rookie. And there's also no guarantee that he scores 10-plus touchdowns as a rookie because of the makeup of this offense. So, I think that's the first player I would really highlight on here. CMC in San Francisco is up at 10 and a half wins. Derrick Henry of Baltimore, 11 and a half wins. Bijan Robinson in Miami, they're all the way down now at seven and a half wins. But obviously, we're not concerned about his reception total whatsoever given what he did last year, plus Jonnu Smith's departure.
The one player that I would really highlight on this list is probably Jonathan Taylor with the Indianapolis Colts. Their win total, despite being in a really, really, really soft division, is seven and a half. Okay, so Vegas projects them to win either seven or eight games. We're under 500 at that point. And there's no reasonable projection for him to catch a ton of passes in that offense, right? You have a mobile quarterback, no matter which way you break it, either Daniel Jones or Anthony Richardson. And he's just never been a career pass catcher. Like, we know that to be the truth. So, Jonathan Taylor, if he were to really exceed his expectations here, would be an outlier based on what Vegas is telling us right now. Seven and a half wins for the Indianapolis Colts. Jonathan Taylor's reception totals over, I mean, we'll just go through the five years since he's been in the NFL: 18, 19, 28. This is starting from 2024, so 2024 he had 18. Last year, 19. 28, 40, 36. That 40-catch season, that that's a good season, obviously, that like we would take that reception total for a dude like Jonathan Taylor any day of the week. So, for JT, I just think it's reasonable to have real concerns or red flags when you have to take him early in drafts when you're taking him around where like a Bijan Robinson would. So, I'm taking Robinson over Taylor in any draft that I have that opportunity to do so.
If we keep moving down the list, you got Bucky in Tampa Bay, nine and a half wins. The Tristan Wirfs news did not move their win total up or down, so projected to be a winning team. Josh Jacobs and the Packers, nine and a half wins. Kyren with the Rams, 10 wins. Chase Brown and Cincy, 10 wins, which is kind of suspiciously high. And the last guy that I really want to touch on here is Breece Hall with the Jets. They are a six-win projected team. Now, as I said, the other side of this equation is, is can we reasonably project this player to catch a lot of passes? Do not conflate the talent level of him as a pass catcher with whether or not we project him to catch a lot of passes. Breece Hall is one of the more polarizing targets or fades in fantasy football this entire offseason, right? Like, I'm not really going to be drafting him at where his current price typically says you have to, like early third round in most drafts. But every time I pass on him and someone else gets him, I'm like, damn, did I just let go of like a league-winning player? You know, Hall has that athletic ability and that type of upside. It's not a question of his talent in a pass-catching manner. He's a phenomenal pass catcher. It's a matter of the Jets offense and the situation in New York with Justin Fields now at quarterback. Now, Justin Fields, like he doesn't have a crazy low percentage in terms of like rate of targets that go to the running back, but when you look at the raw numbers, like we have three years of data with him starting at quarterback for the Chicago Bears, the highest reception total for a running back in that time, back in 2021, was 42. The next two years, the highest running back reception total was 34 and then 34. So, it's a matter of Fields playing the way that he does. He runs a lot as a quarterback. This will not be a high-volume passing attack whatsoever, especially not with Aaron Glenn and a defensive-minded coach coming in and changing the culture here. So, I don't know where the volume comes from for Breece Hall. And then you look at the touchdown totals for Breece Hall. He's at 5 and a half touchdowns on the year with juice on the under, meaning they expect him to go under that. Justin Fields is also at five and a half. So, I don't know where the touchdowns are going to come from, especially if Isaiah Davis and Breece Hall get more involved both and or in the passing game on the goal line. I just think it's like a question of who Breece Hall is as a player at this point, but it's also a question of the situation. It's also a question of the maybe committee in New York. It's a question of now Vegas is telling us we don't expect wins for the Jets. We don't expect touchdowns for Breece Hall. It's like, all right, if you want to say for sure that you know he's going to catch 70 passes from Justin Fields, then he's a great pick and you should go for it. I just don't feel that confident in saying it. So, those are my biggest takeaways per Vegas right now from the top 15 running backs per ADP.
If you are curious what my rankings look like for the upcoming fantasy football season, you can now get them in the BDGE draft guide. All right, it has everything that you need for your fantasy football draft. And it is cheap as [ __ ] thanks to Bet MGM. We've got a promo running right now that if you are a first-time player, if you go deposit just $10, that is it, using code BDGE. When you sign up, not only will you get our draft guide absolutely free with our rankings, with our must-draft players, with our fades, with everything that you need for your drafts, if you're in any of these qualified states, they are available to you to go play. 10 bucks. Use code BDGE. Get the draft guide. If you are unfortunately not in any of these states, you could also go pre-order the draft guide right now on bdge.co. It is a discounted price right now until August 1st when the draft guide goes live. But the cheapest way to do it is on Bet MGM. So if you're in a qualified state, 10 bucks, you get the draft guide on August 1st when it goes live.
And quickly want to touch on two more running backs here. And this is just a simple tweet from Hayden Winks over at Underdog. He just put the team totals of projected points for the season. So the way you read this chart is basically on the left side, you see Buffalo, Baltimore, Detroit. Those are their projected points per game. So Vegas has Buffalo projected to score 26.7 points per game. And he said, "At least one running back on the Chiefs is going way too late." And this was actually a point I made in my running back rankings video a couple days ago where I put Isiah Pacheco and Brian Robinson Jr. in the same tier as a lot of these exciting rookie running backs like the Quinshon Judkins. Because these guys are playing, as I've been saying thematically throughout this entire video, in offenses that are projected to be really good. Kansas City is projected to be the fourth highest scoring offense in the NFL. Washington is tied with them to be the fourth highest scoring offense in the NFL. Isiah Pacheco is the starter there. Brian Robinson is the starter there. Maybe they don't get all the pass-catching work. Maybe they're not in for two-minute drills. But I'll tell you where they will be in. They will be in on the goal line when these teams are scoring rushing touchdowns. So, Pacheco, Brian Robinson, they could end up being floor plays where they just rush for 800 yards and score five or six touchdowns and they're be they're a little bit tough to kind of swallow that pill when you put them into your lineup weekly, but they could also luck into a little bit of that touchdown play and score eight, nine, 10 touchdowns because their offense is [ __ ] dynamite. All right, so shout out Hayden for this. Shout out Bet MGM for the line. Shout out your mother.
I want to talk a little bit about uh the quarterback position here. So, I think uh Vegas does a good job of helping you kind of pump the brakes on on some potential breakout quarterbacks. And one thing I think is really important if you're going to look at these lines, there are a few different ways to look at them. If you are doing it from a pure betting perspective, obviously the raw number matters to you 'cause you're trying to either go over, under, and figure out like, do I think this guy's going to have more yards than this in particular, or I think he's going to go under. When you're looking at it from a fantasy perspective, especially a lot of casual players, and I don't really mean that in like a negative sense, but if you're not someone who's like really looking at these numbers all the time, the first time you go on to like a sports betting app, like let's say you, you know, you go download Bet MGM and you deposit 10 bucks using code BDGE, you're going to go look at the lines and you're going to be like, "Oh my god, everyone's going over. This guy's going to throw for more than this amount of yards. This guy's going to catch more than this amount of passes. This guy's of course he's going to rush for 1,000 yards." Everybody likes to bet on the overs. A very large majority of the time, the unders hit on season-long. And let me tell you why. Because in order for a player to hit their over, in order for like let's look at for instance, Kyren Williams, his rushing touchdown line right now is at 11 and a half. So in order for him to hit the over for his rushing touchdown line to hit 12, basically everything throughout the season has to go right. He needs to have, I won't say a perfect season, because you know, a perfect season might be like 15 or 16, but he has to have an 85th percentile outcome in order to hit the over. And this is the majority case for almost all of the players on this list. In order for them to hit their overs, they need to have an 85th-ish percentile outcome. In order for the under to hit, there are a ton of things that can go wrong, right? It could be the player simply gets hurt, right? If he has like a high ankle sprain and he misses four games and then retweaks it and misses a fifth game, you're hitting the under 100% of the time. If a player plays 11 or 12 games, you're not hitting the over on your line. If the quarterback of that team gets hurt, very unlikely, like Kyren Williams, if Matt Stafford gets hurt, he's not scoring 12, 13 rushing touchdowns. The team just obviously tanks. If the offensive line gets destroyed, gets hurt, he's not going to hit that number. If he just gets a little bit unlucky in the touchdown department, like if he gets tackled at the one-yard line five, six, seven, eight times, probably not going to hit that rushing touchdown line. If another running back emerges in the backfield and it becomes a little bit more of a committee than it's been in recent years, probably not going to score that rushing touchdown line. If Devante Adams scores 10, 12 touchdowns, Puka has a breakout year and scores 10, 12 touchdowns. Again, just like so many ways for things to go wrong. And I don't mean wrong in the sense that like he's a dud or a zero, but so many ways for him not to hit an 85th percentile outcome with very few ways for him to hit the over. So again, if you're just looking at it from a betting perspective, don't be so quick to pull the trigger on the over. There are a lot more ways for things to go wrong than for them to go right.
So when we're looking at the numbers, what I think is most important to you guys as fantasy players is to compare the numbers to other players, not necessarily just hone in on the raw numbers because I'm telling you the raw numbers always look too low. But Vegas always knows there's a reason those [ __ ] stay in business. So we look at a guy like Caleb Williams, his passing yardage line is 3550 and you say to yourself, he had 3,540 as a rookie. Like, of course he's going to hit that line. New offense, new system, new everything. Year two, Caleb Williams. Like that's a guarantee. The thing you're not really thinking about is like, one, this Chicago team is going to be a lot better and Caleb Williams had 562 pass attempts last year, seventh in the NFL. So you're talking about like Earl, Mahomes, Baker, like those are the guys above him. He had games where he was throwing the ball 50, 55 times. That's not going to happen in Chicago this year. They're going to be a more balanced offense that doesn't need to throw the ball 40 times. Their defense is going to be heavily improved. Like they're going to be a different team. While the efficiency might go up, the pass attempt number is going to go down dramatically. He also played all 17 games. So, usually, I think when Vegas makes numbers, they're factoring in, as they should with every football player, like a half a game to a game to a game and a half, depending on what position you play, missed into those numbers, which is another reason why they look a little bit low. So, if we're talking about a little bit less injury luck, he, you know, he tweaks an ankle and he misses a game or something like that, you don't have room for error on these.
One player that stands out to me in terms of kind of like throwing a little water on him for the breakout year is Bryce Young. His passing line is set at 3150. That is lower than almost any non-pure mobile quarterback. Actually, the only player I think on this entire list that has a lower passing yardage total is Justin Fields. So, while I think what Bryce Young did at the end of the year in those like three or four games, and as fun as it is to project him to have like a little bit of a breakout year continuing into this year, Vegas clearly does not agree and they think he's still a bottom-of-the-passer of the football.
And speaking of Justin Fields, now uh one thing that Vegas does not have up for a lot of players and in a lot of books right now, they don't have reception totals this early in the summer. Like come August, they'll have most of these numbers available for everybody. They don't have pure reception numbers for uh wide receivers. They don't have receiving yardage numbers for running backs or receptions for running backs. And a lot of the quarterbacks do not have rushing yardage totals up. So Justin Fields's line is set at 2550 for passing yards, which is 600 lower than Bryce Young and by far and away the lowest on the entire board available right now. Again, obviously that does not take into effect what Fields is going to do on the ground, but it should give you an idea of like what they are projecting these passing numbers to look like. So, everyone's projecting Garrett Wilson to be so good and be fed 170 targets and have 1300 yards and then Breece Hall is also going to be phenomenal in the passing game and and catch 600 yards worth of passes here. It's like it's just not reasonable when you actually look at the numbers and start breaking down what they project Justin Fields to have.
On the flip side of things, when we're talking about the best performing quarterbacks or their lines, like Burrow is pretty significantly number one in the field in both passing yards and passing touchdowns. Mahomes is right behind him. And again, I'll dive way more specifically into the single best values and worst values next week on the channel. So, make sure that you are subscribed for that if you're not already. But there are guys like, you know, I mentioned Jared Goff. I mentioned J.K. Dobbins and how the Lions are not expected to really have much of a drop off, at least offensively. You know, I tweeted this out uh yesterday or two days ago. Make sure you're follow me on Twitter. Jared Goff's current ADP is the quarterback 15. If you look at just his Vegas Lions, his passing touchdown line is quarterback two. Joe Burrow is the only one that has a higher passing touchdown line than Jared Goff. His passing yardage line is quarterback three. Joe Burrow and Patrick Mahomes are the only ones with higher Vegas lines than Jared Goff. And yeah, I get it. He would be projected as the quarterback 742 in rushing yards if they had his lineup. But that's baked into the ADP. Quarterback 15. He has finished as the quarterback 7, seven, and 10 over the last three seasons despite zero rushing. And now they are still projecting him to throw a lot of touchdowns and throw for a lot of yards. So Goff is one of my favorite values on the board that you can get at quarterback 12, 13, 14, 15. I really like Purdy to have a strong bounceback as well, as does Vegas. Vegas has Purdy up at 3850 for passing yardage, which is tied for the third most in the NFL. And they do have his passing touchdown line down at 24 and a half, which again, I think it's more important to wrap them up in like comparison to other players and just look at like, oh, if he throws 25 passes, it's not that good. It's more the sentiment of like, who else is he in a tier with? And there aren't that many players that have a higher passing touchdown total than Brock Purdy. The list is Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes, Joe Burrow, Jared Goff, Baker Mayfield, Lamar Jackson, and oh, Jordan Love just got moved up as well. So, those are the guys that are expected to have more passing touchdowns than Brock Purdy. And Brock, unlike Jared Goff, actually does sprinkle in a little rushing upside for you there. He had like five or six rushing touchdowns last year. So, I think Vegas is telling us that Brock Purdy's one of the better values on the board as well.
Okay, so we're about 30 minutes into this video already. Um, and again, the videos that I make next week are going to be a much deeper dive into the receiver and tight end position. So, I actually won't dive into them right now. But listen, we got all summer. So, if you guys enjoy this type of video, I can make a ton of these and try to help you as much as you can per what Vegas is telling us going into the year. I do think this information and these numbers are just as, if not way more valuable than a lot of the random fantasy numbers people are going to throw at you and tell you that they're predictive even though they're not at all. Another side tangent, but if you enjoyed the video, hit the thumbs up button. It lets me know like I I look at those numbers. Like I legitimately will look at my videos and say like, "Oh, this one has a lot of thumbs up." Like people clearly like this one. So I I make videos based on what you guys want to see. So let me know if you enjoyed this style of video. Subscribe to the channel if you want to see more of these next week. Best values, worst values. And most importantly, again, if you want to support the brand, if you want to support me, but if you want to dominate your drafts, go to depositing $10 or more with code BDGE. You will get the draft guide for free. I love you. I'm out of here. Smooches. Hey.