Transcription
Oh yes, we are back. Your favorite series returns. The five players I cannot stop drafting with a weekly guest. You all know him, you love him, you hear about him on this show even when he's not on the show. It is Reach Rebar from a Sharp Football Analysis, Lord Reeves. How you doing, my friend?
I'm doing excellent, guys. I appreciate you guys having me on. It's like a little roto world reunion. I still miss the days of just, you know, coming into Connecticut and just throwing Josh's whole workday like chaos, uh, and making him just not get any work done.
Uh, I'll say that, Reeves, that I'm a, uh, very routine oriented person when it comes to work. Um, I try to space out my head of how much free time I can have and procrastination I can have in it. So, you coming to the table and you coming to the desk, uh, certainly did throw me off during those periods of time. But uh you know I've done the same thing right back at you.
I'm like Josh, what if we just watched like 10 minutes of Josh Allen drop backs?
It was all the soccer whenever I was there. Everyone just like watching the soccer. I can't can't believe how people can actually write in a cubicle. It's crazy to me.
I'll always say this. I didn't realize how little work people got done at work until I went to the NBC Sports offices. Uh literally playing putt putt for hours on end. Uh Xbox all that. So uh what a place. What a place. That's where we grew up. I mean, every single show you can go on Reeves, uh, there'll be some type of RA world link. It's like the, uh, nine degrees of separation type stuff. That That's what Rot World has brought to the table.
Yeah. Like, it's like the Shanahan coaching tree.
Yes, that's that's what it is. 100%. Okay. Speaking of, I'm sure we'll talk about some coaching trees and coaching changes during this. As I noted, you brought five of the players you can't stop drafting this summer. Again, it's early on May 27th as we are recording this, but who's up first? Uh, who's the name that you cannot subdraft?
Yeah, I'm gonna start with uh Terry McLaren. Uh, you know, from the Commanders. I think the Commanders in general are kind of an undervalued best baseball team. I think they're kind of really built for best baseball. You know, they got the ambiguous, you know, running backs. You know, JCM, Rashad White, even Kron Allen. Interesting. You know, late pick in these uh especially an underdog. He's got like that Kyle Manangi vibe from a year ago. You've got Chig and Antonio Williams as like some late round guys. And you can even if you want to get cute, you know, mix in guys like Diggs and AU and hope that maybe one of them end up on the team before the summer's over. But Terry McLaren is kind of uh where I start with this team. He never really got on track last year. He missed, you know, nearly the entire summer due to that hold out. Uh then he had quad and core injuries very early in the season. Obviously then, you know, the Commanders were just in in dire straits, you know, with the quarterback situation up and down all year. Uh he only ended up playing in 10 games. He only appeared on 41% of the offensive snaps and 46 and a.5% of the team drop backs. But when he did play, he remained a really effective player throughout the chaos of this offense. He had 2.2 yards per route run. That was 14th among all active receivers uh with 100 more yards or 100 more routes on the season. And he when he was on the field, he had 31% of the team's targets and 46% of their air yards. 55% of his targets resulted in a first down or touchdown. Uh which is actually third in the NFL. But what makes him interesting now kind of moving forward here is not just when you look at this depth chart and say, "All right, it's Antonio Williams and some guys behind him, he's going to get a bunch of targets or David Blau kind of coming in and saying like we're going to give Terry McLaren 10 targets a game. We want to just create explosives with him." It's that kind of top- down marriage of, you know, Blau and the opportunity he has because, you know, Blau comes from the Ben John, it's our first Ben Johnson coaching tree hire, right?
Yes. like is this like the new McVey coaching tree because everyone's like half the league now is like some iteration from they've come from Shawn McVey who comes from Shanahan. Um so I'm very interested to see how this works especially playing with Jaden Daniels because he's already stated that they're going to feature more balanced offensive approach. Uh they're going to have more patches with Jaden Daniels under center and that's just something we haven't seen since Jaden Daniels has been in the NFL. He's been under shotgun for 93% of his drop backs. 33 drop backs from under center so far through a year and change, however you want to, you know, dissect the season last year. But being in in shotgun so much, uh, has led to, you know, only a 45% pre- snap motion rate, which is 24th the past two years, and a 24.8% play action rate, which is 18th in the NFL. Those are going to go way up. When you look at Ben Johnson, what he did year one, you know, coming into Chicago and what he did with Caleb Williams, that completely flipped, right? I mean, those offenses in Detroit and Chicago, uh, 66% motion rate, 88% play action rate when they were under center. So, we're going to see Terry McLaren get these kind of plays that just equal like fantasy high cholesterol targets, right? Motion, pre- snap, uh, or play action. Like, we just haven't seen that. Even when he was getting targets under Cliff Kingsbury, I mean, he was just stuck in that static role lining up on the line of scrim scrimmage for 85% of his snaps. He was at left wide receiver for 75% of his snaps out wide. We always joked about just winding it up over there. He only ran 13 routes per game with pre- snap motion the past years just wide receiver 60. So I look at Terry McLaren. I look at the target opportunity and then the role change him getting more like intermediate crossers. What I really want to see David Blau do in year one is what we saw Ben Johnson do and that's he he's able to create guys with horizontal spacing and we haven't really had to see got to see Terry McLaren do a lot of that in the NFL and I think he's completely capable of it. So I look at Terry McCorin and he's kind of where I start like when I get like my second wide receiver I'm just uber happy to grab him.
Yeah, looking at the underdog projection lobby he's at 949 uh receiving yards for the season. that's uh more than players that are going in the third round. Like I'll throw out Tedo and McMillan is in that category. Um so you're getting a discount versus the the projections. And then uh just if you look at the sample size in the games with Jaden Daniels, he's the wide receiver 14 on wide receiver 26 usage. So he's being priced as the wide receiver 25. So you're getting a discount on that. So even if it's just like the same situation as it has been the last two seasons and there's a chance that it's even better this year, uh this is a discount. So like if we can kind of like parlay where it's all together where Jaden Daniel stays healthy, he improves going into his third season. Blau is an upgrade over Cliff Kingsbury and the depth chart around him is worse and the tackle play is better then all of a sudden like you can have like a wide receiver two run out for Terry McCorm quite easily.
Yeah, Reeves, I knew that you and Hayden would come with some amazing uh underlying metrics. So I went back to the tape uh and watched all of his targets from last season. Something like really stuck out to me was everything just looked really basic. Uh, and maybe this was going to, you know, Marcus Mariota and him coming into the lineup. There just so many hitch and curl routes. Then I went back and like dug into just how many there were. 37% of his targets last season in Terry McLaren were hitches. Uh, that is drastically different than where it was in previous seasons uh, and throughout the rest of his career. So those are just static routes without much crossing action, without much movement. And what we always talk about with Ben Johnson is, hey, I'm on Ross Brown on these crossing routes. Jameson Williams, get the ball in his hands, yard up the catch. We saw it with Luther Burton. We saw with DJ Moore, Coulson Lovelin, all these guys. Like that is just going to be such a different use case for Terry McLaren that to me with his athleticism I understand is going to be coming up on his age 31 season, but it's just so much better than these like catch and fall attempts in zone cup.
He's got 435 speed. We don't think of him like that fast because we don't see the yards after the catch uh stuff recently, but like he could do all the Jameson Blair stuff that that you're mentioning.
Just to put a number to that, 37% again last season were hitches. That's compared to 15.2% 2% for the rest of his career at Reeves. I guess I do have a question.
David Blau didn't necessarily coach with Ben Johnson. It was just a player in the system that Ben Johnson was coaching. Uh I do remember going back in press conferences and Ben Johnson noting that David Blau like drew up some plays that worked for the opposition on any given week. But uh that is something I do want to factor in here that uh hey and Ben and and David Blau was actually on this you know commander coaching staff last season. So it's not like oh this is the quarterback coach or passing game coordinator or so on and so forth directly from Ben. But I assure you that this is the direction they want to go in based on um you know just the coach speak and the player speak that we've heard so far this offseason.
Yeah 100%. I mean he's he's doing he was there when they were doing all that stuff in Detroit. You know, I'm assuming that he absorbed a lot of that and we're looking to see kind of what he pried away uh from Ben Johnson. Hopefully, he proves to be as adaptable too as Ben Johnson was in his year one in Chicago.
Hey, I know we just talked about Terry McLaren versus Dvonte Adams on yesterday's show. You and I were both on the Terry McLaren end of this. Uh Reeves, would you be taking Terry over Dvonte Adams this year?
I would. And it's only because of the, you know, the factoring in just the Devonte Adams is in the same spot this year that Terry McLaren was in last year where we knew like there was just inevitable regression coming like touchdown regression. And Devonte Adams has made his whole career out of scoring touchdowns. I don't act like he's not going to score any touchdowns with the Rams next year. But when you just look at the opportunity that had the most end zone targets since that data has been recorded, uh Matthew Stafford with a 7.7% touchdown rate, like we know that those are coming back to the pack this year a little bit. When you actually look at Adams's usage when he played, I mean, he was right around wide receiver 30 type of like production and like um without the touchdowns, like his his yardage was amongst the lowest in over 10 years. So, I do think when we remove some of the touchdowns from Devonte Adams, we're going to start to see like some of that um you know, kind of pull away from him. Uh because Puka, as long as Puka's on the field, like Puka's getting the ball a lot.
All right, sending it back to you, Reeves. Uh second player, who is it?
I'm gonna stay in that same kind of bucket of cluster because I I do take these guys often. The way I've been drafting, especially early on. I mean, we're recording this before June is, you know, I'm in the title wave of getting largely, you know, two to three running backs, you know, before round five.
Was doing it last year. So, we're we're shopping for wide receivers in like this bucket, you know, of rounds, you know, five and six. Like, you know, I don't have a lot of teams where I'm like, oh man, I'm looking at Basil 2. It is my RB2. Uh, so this is where I'm grabbing a lot of receivers with upside. A lot of my draft approach last year was actually written about like the the wide receiver dead zone and starting to grab guys like in round five plus. And in the same area, another guy that I usually piggyback off off of with Terry McLaren if I can get both or pivot if I don't is Christian Watson who goes like a couple spots after him like in that wide receiver 28 wide receiver 29 29 range. Um he's a guy when you look at last year, you know, recovering from the ACL. When he came back was another guy that was just really hyper efficient. You know, came back in the 10 games he was in had over 600 yards and six touchdowns. From weeks eight through 17, see play in week 18. He was seventh among all wide receivers in yards per out run. He was wide receiver 13 in air share. Uh he's had three years on his rookie contract. He's been over two yards per out run. He's the wide receiver 15 in yards per out run since he entered the NFL. the wide receiver 17 in fantasy points per outr run and the wide receiver 13 in fantasy points per target. Now you look at the Packers, Romeo Dobs left during free agency. Dantavian Wixs uh traded away. Dubs was the only Packer wide receiver to run a route on over 50% of the drop backs last season. He was at 75%. Jaden Reed is so far, we'll see if his role gets extended, he's only run eight career routes and one to two wide receiver sets. It's like one of my favorite stats I keep using till like eventually he starts playing. uh in those plays, which is like so when the Packers are are playing their base offense, I expect Christian Watson to be on the field all the time. Now, this is the rub, right? And this is why I like him a little more, especially on a site like Underdog that's not full PPR. It's a little more explosive play driven, and you can kind of insulate yourself of not having to worry about maybe the injury factor as much as like in a paying the price in a reddraft league, right? A managed league. Uh because the rub with Christian Watson, again, he's missed multiple games every year of his career. uh he has like kind of that Jameson Williams though style of like upside paired with like volatility. And then listen, we're recording this a day after the Josh Jacobs news. I don't know if that's going to have any impact on the season at all, but the Packers are pretty limited if Josh Jacobs is going to miss any time this season and pivot options that they have right now in terms of free agency. Maybe they pull off a trade. And if we get any type of situation where the Packers are just forced to throw more than they have these past three years, there's another, you know, domino kind of following in his favor where we're just getting a lot more routes than we've seen Christian Watson have over his rookie contract.
So last year he was the wide receiver, 40 in fantasy points per game expected just based off his usage. Like how high how high do you think that can climb to if he's going to, you know, run 25% more routes? Like cuz he's always going to be efficient. Just like Jordan Love's too good, Laflur's too good, Christian Watson is too good. So, we always know he's going to have outproduce like his usage. Like, do could we have like the wide receiver 25 in like expected points where he can get like all the way up into like a top 15 season? Like, is that that crazy?
I I think you could look at just the last two years like when Jameson Williams has run hot like that type of player, right? Like, you know, that kind of upside. And we have no idea, like I said, are they going to play Jaden Reed in those one to two wide receiver sets that we and we still don't know what we're going to get out of Matthew Golden. I don't mind even taking grabbing those other two guys. I prefer Golden just because of the underdog scoring format than Jaden Reed, but I don't mind getting either of those two guys either just because the and we don't also don't know when we're going to see Tucker Craft be Tucker Craft again. Uh it could be earlier than expected, but we also have seen the you know in we've all died on the injury hill like the optimism hill. So, it's like uh a a lot just just lines up, I think, for Watson based on, you know, the format of this type of tournament and, you know, scoring out of sight.
I I love this pick uh for many of the reasons that you said, but also if round five is typically when you grab one of your first two wide receivers, then you're giving us a name at the top of round three or excuse me, round five and Terry McLaren and at the end of round five with Christian Watson and the 11th pick there as a wide receiver 29. I went back and just asked myself, okay, why was last year when he was on the field for those 10 games more consistent than in previous years? I mean, you know, the highest catch rate he's had in his career, the most yards per game at 61. Uh, and again, when I went back and watched, a major part of it was that there were more gimmies and there more outside breaking routes. and then dug into the numbers again here.
His out routes jumped from 7.7% of his targets in his first what three seasons up to 35% of his targets this past season. And those are also, you know, lower A dot plays. And it's just we know how explosive he can be. We know how much of an ambitious thrower that Jordan Love can be. And those plays do break models and the expected points. Um, but if we also get the gimmies here of, hey, third and four, he's the player, he's the one in motion, he's the one that's getting the separation, and he's the one they're targeting underneath, then that just adds like a baseline performance and baseline production, Hayden, to like a player who has struggled with that stuff and has kind of been a spiked weak guy in previous season.
I know one of the Packers wide receivers, if not two of them, are like severely underpriced. I have the same read as you, Reeves, where I know that Christian Watson's good. He's going to play a lot. I think there's a chance that Matthew Golden's going to be good and that he's going to play a lot. And then I think Jaden Reed, I I know he's pretty good, but I have my doubts he's going to play. So, I'm I'm kind of looking at Watson and Matthew Golden as the two Packers players that I'm like most intrigued by. And if you really like look at the the projections of it all, Christian Watson's like not that dissimilar to like you said Jameson Williams, uh Luther Burden, uh some of these players out there where like we're anticipating their their roles to increase or that there's hyper efficient players. He's the one that's just priced way after those guys. Um and like not next to like Coulson Leland who I want to be drafting. So, uh he's definitely the target out of this patch.
And and we know it's it's because of the health, right? Like and you're injuryprone who you're not. and he's missed time every year and that's what's kind of kept him in that at the bottom of I think that kind of tier. I think you can conclude Alec Pierce kind of in there too and then I think that's like the firewall. Then you start to get into some projection with some of the other guys like when you get to Marv the rookies, what are we going to get out of BTJ? Uh that's why I think he's at the bottom of that of that list. But if you just run into one season where he just stays on the field, we know we're getting fantasy points
and he's healthy right now and he's 27 years old. So, like it could have just been bad injury luck and then for the next five years he doesn't miss any time. Like that's just how it works sometimes.
All right, you kick things off with Terry McLaren and Christian Watson. By the way, Reeves has and is a part of one of the best draft guides in the draft kits in the business. That's over at Sharp Football. He already has top 250 rankings, positional rankings, dynasty rookie rankings, all that type of stuff. So, we'll definitely link that in the description down below for you all to check out. I know a lot of you did last summer. All right, let's talk another position. Uh, give us your third player that you brought to the table here today.
Yeah, my third guy is my my favorite guy. It's actually the player when I run my my rankings against ADP. It's the large it's the the guy has the largest gap and it's Justin Herbert. And and you might say, well, Justin Herbert goes as a top 10 quarterback. Yeah, that's how aggressive I am on Justin Herbert this year. Um, and I know that like a lot of people he's like kind of like an eye rolling inducing player to to many because they're like, "Oh, until he wins something, right? Man,
I care about I care about fantasy points, man. And Justin Herbert is literally set up to score a lot of fantasy points this season. I mean, we know we know what happened last year, right? Like, we don't really need to to talk about like the complete ringer he went through, even though we'll mention it, you know, starting the year without Rashan Slater. Uh Joe Walt only appeared in six games. Uh Justin Herbert was hit on 129 dropbacks last year, uh while being ninth in the NFL in dropbacks, led the NFL. uh to kind of put some perspective on that. Bo Nicks had 669 dropbacks most in the NFL. He was only hit 71 times. Uh yep,
it's just absolutely crazy. And we talk about the Chargers offensive line. Their most frequently used offensive line combination last year, and this is already accounting for Sean Slater not even starting the year was only on the field for 16 and a half% of their offensive snaps. It was the lowest rate in the NFL. It wasn't just Joe Wall being injured. It wasn't just Rashawn Slater not starting the year. Uh Bradley Boseman and Zion Johnson are the only guys up here
in every game.
Neither one of them is on team anymore.
That's derogatory by the way. Yeah.
Reeves. What blows my mind though is we always talked about the the tackles being injured and bad, but that was the guard center guard combination that the Chargers wanted to start every single game and they were brutal in terms of every single phase of pass protection.
Yeah. Mai Beckton didn't work out. Uh and and you just and we've seen we've seen Justin Herbert operate at a high level fans quarterback. Obviously his second year in the league. He had the QB2 overall finish. He was the QB3 and overall points before Alt's injury last year without Rashan Slater and some kind of moving parts and he was the QB4 in expected points at that point. Then everything just fell off a cliff with this offense after Alt's injury. They were like one of the worst teams in explosive plays. Uh they actually fell to 27th in yards per play. Um he averaged 0.56 fantasy points per drop back with Alt on the field. Went to 0.43 without him. That was a difference between QB7 on the season and QB21. Um and now we're getting this kind of big boom with Mike McDaniel coming in. And I do think that this is a huge deal, even bigger than I think everyone like knows it's good, but think about this. If you just look at the Shanahan side of the coaching tree, the Mick Shanahan side, because I want to remove the McVey side for a little bit because McVey was the first kind of guy to like alter it. His thing when he broke off the Shanahan coaching tree and created his own like kind of branch, he's I'm getting rid of the fullback. I'm adding a slot receiver. We're going to start using our, you know, guys like Robert Woods and Cooper Cup and now Pukanua. We're gonna get them on the move, get them blocking on linebackers. And you know, we want to be able to run against all this big nickel while we're in nickel. And then when we have to throw, while we're in 11, and then when we have to throw, we've got a pl we have a fullback on the field. We've got a plus guy that can help us. You know, it's funny is last year now he's turning the tides and say, "We don't really have a good third wide receiver. What if we just uh get teams to go base and to try to create explosive passing plays?" But the Shanahan side where Mike McDaniel comes from, he did, he's like more tried and true. He added more pre- snap motion than we usually see from the Shanahan side, but he's playing a fullback. They brought his guy over again, too. Like, just put he he's like his Al Gald is his his use check, bringing him everywhere he goes. But, uh, we know we're going to see a lot more tighter splits. U, we'll get to some of that more pre-stat motion. But when you look at the Shanahan side of this coaching tree, this is a system that has had high-end efficiency from guys like Jimmy Garopolo, Brian Greasie, Matt Shaw, Derek Carr, Sam Darnold last year, even Nick Mullins, a big year from Kurt Cousins. Tua Tungoa had a 4.8% touchdown rate every year with Mike McDaniel. To add some context to that, Patrick Mahomes has even had a four and a half% touchdown rate since 2022. Jordan Love, who is playing under the same iteration of this offense, is one of four quarterbacks that have a 5% touchdown rate or higher in each of the past three seasons. When you look at when this system has had an elite caliber quarterback, these guys have won MVPs. Aaron Rodgers 2020, 2021, MVP, MVP, 48 touchdowns, 37 touchdowns. Matt Ryan in 2016, 38 touchdowns. this this s that's it really. You got to go back to John Elway then to find another guy that played in this Mike Shanahan coaching system that was an elite talent. They have made water into wine out of a bunch of guys and now we've got another elite talent. That guy has all the tools and we're putting him in this offense with good weaponry and improved offensive line just by proxy of having his two tackles back on the field. Uh man, I think Justin Herbert is is a guy that you want to bet to win MVP this year. I think he's a guy that's going to score a ton of points. Um, I think the sky is the limit for him.
He also was running around a little bit more last year. Obviously, that was more out of necessity, but that like that's a good fallback plan that if everything kind of starts falling apart, he can run around a little bit more. Yeah. Obviously, the talent's outrageous.
He's kind of modern Elway like to be honest.
Mhm. Yeah. Spin the football uh down the football field like that. My question to you, I'm totally sold on this. Which wide receivers and tight ends are you bringing along with him? Like are you also like really into Quinton Johnson? Is it Lad Mcconi all the way into round three? Is it Dadston? Is it all of them? I mean, if you're thinking you're calling yourself an MVP, it's probably going to be all of them, but clear.
Am I off base just being like, "Hey, I want to draft Lad Mani as often as humanly possible this year. I mean, he's the fifth pick in the fourth round right now."
Um I Yeah, all it's all these guys. I don't want to like necessarily have to just force them. It's kind of I think dealers's choice. think we're going to see all these guys play a little bit with Maki being the guy that is going to be probably more locked into the um route participation stuff that's going to be fluid. But even Quinton Johnson, like I know he's like a punching bag, but he's gotten better every year in the NFL. Like he creates explosives. You don't think Mike McDaniel is going to create explosives with Quinton Johnson? Then you have Trey Harris who factors in like he's a he's good in the run game. Does he weasle his way in and playing in some of these tighter And I know Aronda Gadson is a guy that I'm not gonna want and reddraft, but in this type of format, you should still want a Ronda Gadson because his per target stuff is going to look awesome. The the thing that's going to hold him back is from a reraft stance is you're never going to know when to play him because you never know he's going to have a 40% ro participation or like a 70% ro participation. Then you have like all the the injury stuff that could happen. But in he's fallen I think he opened at like tight end nine, tight end 10 and I think he's dropped since the addition of David Njoku who you can also throw in here too as a late round kind of guy that to to soak up maybe some touchdown production or some dominoes a windfall through injuries or just them playing more two tight end stuff. I mean yeah I think all these guys are just in board on board to add here but I think it's going to be a conglomeration like it's not going to be like a Julio Jones 2016 right? I think it's going to be just everyone kind of contributing. I think we're gonna see Mike McDaniel really back in his bag this year uh with this with this just talent pool that he has.
Yeah, I mean it's pretty simple to make the case that you mentioned the offenses and just overall points that Mike McDaniel produced in Miami and that was with the quarterback that defenses caught up to his physical limitations. You know, certain other areas of the field he just could not attack. Extended plays just were not an option there. With Justin Herbert, he doesn't have any of those limitations. And it's like there there is no ceiling to this in a crazy way. So, uh, yeah, and you even mentioned, Hayden, some of the rushing performances, they were outstanding rushing performances. I mean, 60, 62, 57, and a touchdown and 66 yards. I'm certain if I went back and watched those, a lot of those would be scrambles and running for his life. So, hopefully he doesn't have to do that as often, but we know the athleticism is there if he has to the team.
Yeah, he had a career-high scramble rate. It was 2% higher than his previous high. So there was a lot there was a lot of I got to get the hell out of here.
But he was so banged up like you said all those quarterback it's like when he was scrambling around you can see in how much pain he was in. He was still like going to war. So like yeah this is this is a great call. This makes me want to like do a lot more research on Quinton Johnson because if we're going to get some like 35 plus touchdown season out of Justin Herbert in this offense. I mean Lad Mccon is not going to score 15 touchdowns most likely given his size. Like it's going to be somebody else in this offense. I I just want to make sure we're not overthinking Quinton Johnson right now. And the thing about this this this take, which I know is completely, you know, very bullish, is there are those people that just don't want to deal with Justin Herbert.
He's not gonna really move.
Yeah.
Hayden and I have been going through the tight end conversation and in previous years, Reeves, uh, we've loved to, you know, build this Dr. Frankenstein late round tight end room. I think that's becoming more and more difficult because, uh, those tight ends that we drafted late last year are now being drafted earlier and earlier. So, uh, is there a tight end on the board that, uh, you can't stop drafting this year?
Yeah, I and I've I've tried a bunch of approaches this year at tight end. And, you know, one of the things I keep getting hung up on is I I love the top three from a talent perspective. There's a reason that the top three, right? Like,
these are very good, diverse players, you know, in Trey McBride, uh, Brock Bowers, and Coulson Lovelin, who I would include in that, especially when you factor in like the way Coulson Loveid ended his season. Like, there's a lot of upside here. And again in that Ben Johnson offense uh and Ben Johnson was kind of copying that McVey approach with way better personnel to end the year. Like when he saw Shawn McVey running that 13 personnel, Sean McVey kind of like had to do it too. Like when you look at like he couldn't run the old McVey offense with the player personnel he had, Ben Johnson kind of looked at was like, man, I've got better personnel to do this with. Cole KT and Coulson Lovelin are way better than Kobby Parker who's a little bit underrated, but like you know uh you know Davis Allen and if Tyler Higgby is available, right? And Terrence Ferguson doesn't really count in the 13 personnel. I refuse to acknowledge that he's allowed to count as a tight end because all
he's too fast.
All he did was run 25 yard rounds.
I loved it. I loved it.
Yeah. He's also a fun guy, too. That didn't make the cut here for me.
But if you look at the tight end position, the past five years, like it's had a lot more correlation to just like raw opportunity. The last five tight end ones have just outright run the most routes at the position. And to me, that's a hangup for Lovelin and Bowers completely nuking is that both of those teams are going to be playing with very runoriented philosophies and maybe they just don't run the raw routes. And the McBride just has so many pulling factors of just natural aggression. He ran 121 more routes than the next closest tight end last year. That's like four game. He basically played four extra games than the next closest tight end.
Cardinals were number one in in neutral pass rate last year. No chance at repeats. And you have like the the quarterback stuff like the way the Cardinal schedule if anyone is like really you know a week out week and a half out from the schedule stuff the Cardinals got absolutely nuked. I really think their schedule unless Jacobe Brassette absolutely wins this whatever hold out he's doing that we're going to see all three guys because there's no on quick onboard for Carson Beck. I think it's going to be they're getting rubbed and they're going to have to go from Brassette to Mchu then to Beck. We probably see all three at some point this year. Um, so like with and paired with the natural aggression, like it's hard to just like go all in on McBride and we know there's going to be a boy. He had the he provided the highest positional leverage from tight end one to tight end two in terms of tight end two scoring a percentage of the title one's points ever in in the history of fantasy football. So like that's just going to naturally make you want to go to the field and like even loving Bowers and Lovelin it's like man like are they going to just get the raw routes in the offenses they're in? Maybe there's a chance, right, that the Raiders are that bad and you could get it. But then we also have the rookie factor, too. Whenever fan Fernando Mendoza starts, no. Oh, no tight ends ever been the tight end one overall attached to a rookie quarterback that started half the games or more. And we haven't seen we've only seen three guys be a tight end three or higher uh in overall scoring. So, there's a lot of like pooling factors. I've tried some teams where I grabbed Bowers in Loveland and I end up still just like really loving the depth at still tight end versus kind of the depth of running back wide receiver. So, I've found the teams I like the most so far. And I say like subjectively, it could will you look at the 10,000 foot view come February and be like, "Oh yeah, you just needed that Kyle Pittz game, right? That you got in the playoffs last year." But I really like the later round guys. And one of my favorite later round guys is Isaiah Likely right now. So, if you want to look for like tight end breakouts in terms of historical like ADP or just guys that hit, you want guys that can potentially be the the lead target in their passing game or at worst the second target in their passing game. Since 2010, 65% of all tight end one scorers uh were either the first or second pass catcher on their team. Only 19 uh.1% of all tight ends selected after their team's wide receiver two finishes at uh tight end one that year. likely goes after Neighbors but ahead ahead of the other guys. So, he's right in this bucket of what we look for. We don't know when Neighbors is going to be back 100%. Like, could he just lead the team in targets? It's in the range of outcomes, I believe, because I think we're going to see some cannibalization from the wide receivers like Mooney, Malachi Fields, and Darius Slayton. There's a lot of overlap where those guys want to run routes.
So, like, will those guys kind of eat each other like snapshares up? Uh, we know that there's a Matt Naggie like question here, but one thing Matt Naggie has done at all stops, he's another guy that run likes to run a lot of two tight end stuff. Um, Jackson Dart and last year was right around the league rate in targeting tight ends. But here's the thing, he was the QB8 and on target rate to tight end throws, but he was QB27 and drop rate is why Theo I like Theo, too. I like Theo and I think he's a play in the two tight end, but there's a reason they wanted to upgrade a pass catcher. He left a lot of plays on the field. And then the other thing is too is like I brought up the where Theo Johnson's going. Like look at some of the running backs and wide receivers, you know, going against him. Like you're taking him in a range where you're at going against like Tyrone Tracy and the Jonah Coleman's and Katon Mitchell. Khalil Shakir, who's this is not the format for Khil Shakir. Uh you know Jaylen Coker, who I do like like guys like Omar Cooper. Like I'm just way more comfortable shopping uh at the price range for the tight ends. And there's some other tight ends I like in this range, too. But I actually have a higher projection on likely than and I think he's underpriced. So, I've been getting him the most out of that group.
So, for reddraft, I think he's even a better pick because most likely we're assuming Malik Neighbor's going to miss September. And there's tight ends who are being drafted ahead of him or right around him and George KD and Tucker Craft who we don't know about their uh early parts of their season coming off of injury. So, I think in like reddraft leagues, if you drafted Tucker Craft and then a couple of rounds later wanted to go Isaiah Likely and maybe there's a chance you're just starting Isaiah Likely out of the jump while Malik Neighbors is banged up and then afterwards you can drop him, move on, find the next breakout guy if Isaiah likely doesn't even pan out. So, uh I hear your case in baseball. I think in just reddraft leagues, I think when week one comes around, I think we're going to have a pretty sweet projection for for the new free agent.
Reeves, that was an interesting pitch. Uh let me pitch you on something. How different of a profile is it with what you just said about Isaiah likely target competition, top two target getter, all that type of stuff on the team uh than Chigo Quano who goes about two rounds later at the eighth pick of the 13th round as now a member of the Washington Commanders.
And I do like Chig a lot too. The one thing I worry about Chig is just like he is the worst run blocking tight end in the NFL. And it may not matter. It's like you you want to be on a team like you want to have the Harold Fannon run out of last year if you're a terrible run blocker where your team just has to throw and you're high enough on the target packing pecking order you can score fantasy points. So I do think there is some like kind of uh a conquo like Harold Fannon adjacency that you could draw to. So it's not a big massive difference. I think likely is going to play on a little more rundowns uh than a conqu. But I do like a conquo as well. Like I led off with the commander pitch. Yeah, I think he's my most drafted player at this point, which uh maybe says something about where I'm drafting uh in in late May. Yeah, with likely I went back and and watched some of the stuff. To me, some of his best plays were the uh offscript extended play stuff, like staying on a string with his quarterback. And Jackson Dar is going to do that. I mean, he's going to drop his eyes and, you know, pick up and create space and then look down the field. He did it last year as a rookie and he'll do it also during his uh his second season. All right, one more name. Richie Bart, I know this is a uh Lord Reeves special. Hit us with it.
Yeah, I mean it's been so long since we had a little, you know, Konami that's available at cost, man. You got to hit him with a little up down down left, right, left, right, BA start. Uh Malik Willis is my guy here, especially, man. And you talk about like this is like the format. You're telling me I could get a a running quarterback that fits all builds. He can be your QB2 where you go powerhouse QB, you know, Josh Allen or spending on a Joe Burrow or anyone up top. He can be part of your QB3, you know, uh Frankenstein. Uh, and I never have to pick which week to start him, right? I just get to soak up the weeks to get him. Like I can't think of a better kind of pick in like the QB20 range. Uh, we we we know he was able to kind of resurrect his career in Green Bay. Uh, I don't know like how much is real from the efficiency on the small sample because when you look at like fantasy points per snap, he's number one with a bullet the past two years. Like 0.73 fantasy points per snap. For some context, Lamar Jackson 0.62. Then Josh Allen 0.61 up next. He's not going to be that kind of player. Not on this Miami Dolphins team, which is definitely being priced in. It's really to me like about like the the cost at first because even guys like Justin Fields last year and we didn't we didn't even know Justin Fields was going to get the be able to start like that was we we knew he'd start the year but we didn't know he'd survive the year and he ended up not because we knew he was not a good quarterback to surv like in the NFL like he was on his third stop what or fourth team in four years or he's on his fourth team in four years now and he didn't make it long enough but like Malik Willis has a lot of runway here to at least finish the year as the starter and he's being priced in as just like hey he's he's He's a QB3. Uh you can grab it down. But when you look at
The game that we talked about before I got on here and you guys were going over bust the names. The game that kind of won me over a little bit was the last time we kind of saw him start against the Baltimore Ravens in that Saturday night game. I can't remember if it was a Christmas game or not, but Derrick Henry ran for like a zillion yards. But in that game, Green Bay had a 75% drop back uh rate in that game. It was the highest that Malik Willis has had in his career. Josh Jacobs didn't play. left that game with an injury and he was out there winging it uh and was playing well. We know he can he can run, right? Like he had a 15% scramble at Green Bay. It was the highest rate in the NFL. Uh behind him, Jaden Daniels is second um over the past two years and he averages nine yards per scramble uh which is fifth in the year. So the rushing production is at least going to insulate him for having like a high floor.
He's the original throwback Konami guy when I started when I wrote that original article which is 2013. date myself here. It was about Tim Tibo. It was about, you know, and we didn't It's It's about how these guys have a high floor. Remember when Taesm Hill started a couple years ago at quarterback, having that high floor? Well, since 1990, there have been 47 quarterbacks that have run the ball a 100 times or more in a season. 41 of those 47 quarterbacks have been a top 12 quarterback in fantasy points per game. Uh 30 of them have been top six scores. I don't think we're going to get that out of League. Not with this infrastructure. But the only guy that was even lower than QB18 in points per game. Now, mind you, this guy's going QB 21, QB20, right in that range, was Lamar Jackson in 2018. And he only has his uh production dinged because he only started seven games. It was like come in for like rushing plays. But when he took over as the weekly starter that season, he was the QB1 in points per game. And we're talking about some bad QBs. We have that that thousand yard rushing Justin Field season. We've got guys like Tibo, who I brought up, Terrod Taylor. Like I think format for best baseball, he fits everything that you're looking for. That that big stigma of the Miami Dolphins is glossed all over his ADP. So Malik Willis is kind of the throwback of the original brand and I got to bring him back. He's easily my highest drafted quarterback right now.
>> Yeah, this is just like it's like the easiest call to me this year. I have him and Kyler Murray just like ranked way higher than where they're currently being drafted. Now the issue is we've talked about there's like 17 quarterbacks I really like and they're kind of hard to parse through. Um, I like Justin Herbert is kind of the statue guy and then Malik Willis is the last guy where I think there's maybe a tear dropped to somebody else. Josh, in our little chat here, I want to show off this advanced stats page. If you can open up this link on the the shared screen where Malik Willis is in EPA per dropback and then also uh in success rate or in completion percentage over expected, he is totally by himself. We're not talking about EPA per carry here. We're talking about EPA per dropback. So, in this small sample size going back a couple seasons now, he is completely by himself. So, we're factoring in that he's most likely not a good quarterback, but there's a chance that he's actually a good quarterback who also runs a ton. So, if that's the case, then you're going to like talk about all the stuff that Reeves was talking about, plus that he actually might just like carry this Dolphins offense to a level that most people can't expect right now.
>> Yeah. I mean, I went back and watched all 50 of his dropbacks from last season. I thought there was a real rhythm to his game. Obviously, there's athleticism when working outside of it and out of structure, either throwing on the move or straight up scrambling. But we talked about that Ravens contest. And again, I understand that >> everyone threw in the Ravens last year and their defense just wasn't as good as in some years past. But what really caught my attention was one, his willingness to throw down the seam, outside the numbers, these big time vertical routes, some really tight window stuff, too. But also there were chunk plays from under center and like some real comfort from under center too. And I think when they signed the Miami Dolphins Malik Willis and I looked at who the new play caller is and Bobby Slowick in my brain I instantly jumped to okay this is drastically different than rookie season CJ Stout. How is this going to work? This gave me a bit more optimism for it because, you know, he kind of took on the mannerisms of Jordan Love and really, I think, embedded himself in that Green Bay Packers offense. And with Bobby Slo, some of his best stuff during that rookie season for CJ Strad was going from under center, five, sevenstep drops, a protection plan around him and these big-time vertical routes, and these big-time crossing routes. And so, I actually think the fit is a lot better than I originally thought uh as soon as they signed Molly Quz. So, I really like this pick and Reebs. I I love that like, you know, here we are and can make a pick in 2026 that in 20 2016 it was uh easy to do and it feels like over the last five years that everyone has caught up to, you know, the strategy and finally we get the one chance to do it and yet Malik Bliss is going, you know, after Baker Mayfield and Tyler Shuck and a bunch of other names. So, uh this is pretty cool.
>> Yeah. And part partially was just the room got smarter. I mean, they saw they saw the the floor that these types of guys held. And I think recent recency has kind of, you know, crept in. Uh, some guys that maybe were overpriced based on their acu acumen of quarterback play. Obviously, Justin Fields like we we already saw Justin Fields changed teams twice and he was still getting drafted as like QB1 last year. That's like and then everyone's kind of burnt. And then the Anthony Richardson kind of fiasco. But I think that's kind of being overded here. And it's it's actually insulating especially like said in baseball because and obviously the Dolphins, right? Like everyone knows like the Dolphins are they like what 200 in dead cap like this year they're openly like kind of retooling here >> but uh it's it's all priced in here like like if he just runs around he's going to give you weeks that are usable and no matter what build you have and then if like Hayden said if there's just a couple games where you get a a two passing touchdown game with the rushing he's going to he's going to have a spike week and he's going to easily be in your lineup.
>> Yeah. Last two notes. The Dolphins they have at least three quality offensive linemen. Their center might be the best in the league. their left tackles emerging as well. They added Kaden Proctor early on. So, I think like keep the offensive line separate from the skilled guys. And then second to that, >> in baseball, everyone's so focused on stacking as we should. When quarterbacks don't have pass catchers who are ahead of them on the ADP board, there's no reason to be drafting those players. Everybody else is focused on the other quarterbacks. So in the rare circumstances when we do have a quarterback where all of his pass catchers or just one of his pass catchers is going ahead of him, those guys traditionally have been a little bit underpriced just because everybody else is so focused on drafting or stacking their quarterback with the guys that they had already drafted. So I think that if Malik Willis had one pass catcher going in round five, we would see him jump up a full round or so. It's just one of these weird scenarios because the the pass catchers are so bad. There's no reason to be bringing him up. So, I think there is an arbitrage opportunity just based off of how people are drafting in basketball right now.
>> Great, great points, Reeves, you said it all. Anything else you want to leave us with how people can find your work?
>> Yeah, you can go over to sharp footballanalysis.com. Uh, you know, last year I had a fun promo. Uh, I'm going to do another one this year. It's going to be different at least, but if you do use promo code underdog, you can get $10 off of the bundle, which kind of gives you the draft kit for free and it makes like the breakdown basically be $7 uh a week for inseason stuff. So you can follow along with the worksheet stuff that Josh is quoting and Winkx is rolling his eyes like why are you doing this stuff every week?
>> No, it's so good. I mean, if if he's not doing it, I'll do it. I just leave it up to him. I know I know he's got my back.
>> All right, Rees, thanks so much. Thanks everyone for watching out there as well. We'll have another episode for you tomorrow. Hit subscribe, watch along, and we'll see.