Transcription
All right, we are back. We're going to go into our running back twos to target this year. Big beefy group here, Boon. We've got a lot of options. Let's get it started with Bree Hall, Alvin Chimera, James Connor, Chuba Hubard, Travian Henderson, RJ Harvey, Tony Pard, Isaiah Pacheco. Then there's a drop off. Let's let's talk through these names first here.
Um, I I think that some of these guys are in the same tier as some of the players actually that we talked about earlier. Again, maybe you view this a little differently, but what's keeping guys like Chimera, Chuba Huard, uh, James Connor, and Bree Hall from being kind of similar bets to like James Cook, Kenneth Walker to you? I mean, I get that you feel like they're they could be right up there. A couple of those guys are total household names. Like we talked about Chase Brown trying to become one. These guys have been around for a while.
I think Kamara, it's the uncertainty around that offense in general. And I'm gonna sit here and speak against him, but he totally could come out and have a great fantasy season as well. I don't have him. And you know how this goes, right? When people are, how come you're so down on this guy? And in reality, we're like splitting hairs a little bit. But he did turn 30 years old this summer. You know, he's coming off of back-to-back top five fantasy seasons. He's finished as a top eight fantasy running back in seven of his eight NFL campaigns. Kell Moore's arrival, I think, is going to be good for the offense, but we just don't know with the quarterback situation with everything going on there. Is Camaro going to be able to continue to put up numbers the same way when he's getting older and the offense around him is kind of a question mark. It's not the same thing as Derrick Henry, who we know is in this very productive backfield where it's going to be fine for him. Even if things go south a little bit, he's still going to be all right. He's gonna have a good touchdown total, have a good fantasy season.
Kamara, this is one where is this team going to be competitive? I don't think so. So, if things are kind of going south there, is this a situation where he ends up sitting out a little bit because why would you rush back if the team's not great? Like, there's a lot of reasons why I think the Saints could be an environment where Kamar doesn't continue his great fantasy success and just takes a step back into the RB2 range. Not completely unusable for fantasy, but takes a bit of a step back.
You are definitely not going to get me to say anything bad about James Connor because James Connor has been on so many of my fantasy teams. I do an article every year of players who could lead you to a fantasy championship. James Connor has made the most appearances of anyone in that article because he is always a discounted player and I don't get it. Ever since he went to Arizona, he's been a top 15 fantasy back on a per game basis. Every year when he's healthy for the stretches that he's out there, he produces for you. Now, does he miss a few games? Yes. But could you grab his backup Trey Benson in the later rounds and just pair them together? You totally could. And I've done that on a bunch of teams this year. I think James Connor is going to be just fine. This is a backfield that is the fourth easiest fantasy schedule this season. So, I think we get another good season out of James Connor. But again, can you trust a guy at that age in an offense that also has some question marks around it to be a guaranteed RB1 like some of those other names we mentioned earlier? I'm not totally sure about that. So, I'm just a little bit further further down here.
Chuba Hubard. Now, Hubard had a great season last year. I think this is one where we could start to poke some holes in because he wasn't that efficient as a pass catcher last season. But you know who was efficient as a pass catcher last year? Rico Dowel, who the team went out and added. And there has been some comments from the coaching staff that this could potentially be more of a committee backfield where they use Rico Dowel this season in that role potentially. So I think that's a scenario where maybe Chuba Hubard gives up a little bit of the passing work that bumps him down. And yet you and I talked recently on a show about the fact that the Panthers have a very nice run out at the start of the season. And I think Chuba Hubard for what he maybe will lose in the passing game, he could make up for it with this offense just generally being better being in scoring position more often. Um so I for him there's some question marks there about maybe other guys getting more involved but in general I think he's probably going to be okay but more as an RB2 has those occasional spiked RB1 weeks.
>> Yeah, I mean Chuba Hubard last year 12th among running backs in target share so he was used in the passing game. Um the Trevor ETN, the fourth round running back that they took, you know, he could he was like a theory. Oh, maybe that he could take some pass catching work. Didn't look really ready to play in the preseason. Uh it was not not not a lot of highlight moments for him. Um but 68.7% total snaps for Chuba Hubard last year and he obviously missed time too, so he didn't play a full full season. He has a lot of room to give up some snaps and still be very useful for fantasy football. So, I I found myself kind of willing to bet on Chuba Hubard just cuz I I do find myself to be a little high on this Panthers offense in general. So, I have Chimera and Hubard the highest ranked among this group, 38th and 39th overall. um in full PPR formats, I definitely think you give a bump to Chimera because dude, the Saints offense could stink and Tyler Shuck could be, you know, pulling the rip cord on these plays like we've seen him do both in the preseason and his college tape and he's dumping that football off to Alvin Chimera, you know, like Alvin Chimera could catch 90 passes and the Saints could stink out loud. Like both things can be true there. So, I think those guys are interesting in that tier.
Um RJ Harvey uh and Trevian Henderson, two rookies you have in this tier. How aggressive have you been drafting those players?
>> Uh Henderson very very aggressively. And again, I say that as a Bills fan who at one point in his fantasy career during the Brady days just refused to draft Patriots. I was like, I'm not doing it. I don't care how good Rob Gronkowski is. I don't want any of them on my team. And then what was great was when Brady and Gronk went to Tampa, I finally got to draft them and and win fantasy titles with them. So, thank you for that, guys.
Um, Henderson to me looks like a player who I think I said this on the show, we were talking about Hampton one time, and it wasn't because the they were the same type of player, but Jir Gibbs' rookie season. He only played about 56% of the snaps. So, he wasn't like dominating the backfield, he was sharing the back field, and yet he still was the RB1 in fantasy points per game that year. I think Henderson has that kind of potential ceiling here where he could still be sharing with Raandre Stevenson. they could have some type of committee tandem backfield. And yet, you look at Henderson's pass catching ability, his ability in pass pro, just how electric and how fast he is. We saw in the first preseason game, right? The the first touch on special teams, boom, takes it for a huge return. He's the kind of player that is going to get people very excited, and we're already seeing that. We're seeing his ADP rise quite a bit, but who could catch a ton of passes, could become that safety net for Drake May in the offense where they get to dump it off to him and let him do the work, let him just explode through the defense and make these big plays. So, I think he's somebody that people should be very high on. Um, I have him in the top 20. I could see him definitely finish top 15 even if Raandre Stevenson is still out there getting even like 150 carries in the season. I think just Henderson has that passcatching ability that's going to put him over in fantasy.
For Harvey, it's a little more interesting because we talked about this too. I think JK Dobbins is going to be involved in this backfield quite a bit and JK Dobbins might even be the guy they rely on more early in the season. So, I think Harvey might get off to a little bit of a slower start and then as the year goes along take over the backfield more. I think he's a guy that you're drafting because you want him for the final three quarters of the season. You want him for the second half of the season to help lead you to a fantasy title. Not necessarily because in week one he's going to come out and dominate the workload and and have a huge fantasy week winning performance. Uh because Jakey Dobins is still a very good back, right? Last year before he got hurt was a top 15 fantasy back in fantasy points per game and they like him and they trust him as a veteran.
Um, so I think he is going to be quite involved and there's a chance that Dobbins still is even though the way we saw them used in the first preseason game where Harvey was out there a ton. I don't think that's indicative of what we're going to see early in the season because they didn't need to put Dobbins out there. Dobbins is a veteran. There's lots of tape on Dobbins. They know what kind of player he is. They need Harvey to get out there and prove himself so that he can get out there and eventually become that workhorse back or that true lead back in the offense. So, I wouldn't overreact to Harvey getting as much usage as he did in the first game. I think that's going to be much more of a tandem early in the season, and we'll potentially see Harvey take over as we go midway through the year.
>> I'll let you talk about the two exciting young rookies because I'll take the last two guys that you have in this group, like the boring kind of, not that either of these guys are old or washed up or anything like that, but Tony Pard and Isaiah Pacheco. I'm glad you highlighted them as maybe like potentially different than the next group of guys where you see a little bit of a drop off here. And I I thought I was going to be high on Tony Pard and I pop on the overall rankings there at Yahoo. I'm at 57th overall. I was like, "All right, cool. I'm going to be like getting some Tony Pard this year." And I have been getting some Tony Pard as a running back, too. Especially now that Taj Spears is out. I definitely think the appeals on the rise. And then I see you're one spot higher and Scott's up at 51st overall. So, if I maybe need to bump up Tony Per just a little bit, but I I think he definitely stands out. Pacheco stands out obviously that if he continues to there's like a Bashard Smith hive, and I think Bashard Smith could be an interesting player, but he's also a seventhrounder. Like, I know Pacheco used to be a seventh rounder, but he he seems pretty entrenched to me as the top running back for uh you know, just the Kansas City Chiefs offense. Like, gonna score a lot of fantasy, gonna score a lot of points. So, somebody in fantasy is going to matter in that back field. I like those two guys as sort of they're they're again sort of the most interesting and what might be a little bit of a tenuous and boring tier after some of those um younger exciting options. But let's get into that group where you see a little bit of a drop off here. If we can bring the board back up. It's a it's an interesting group of Caleb Johnson, David Montgomery, Joe Mixon, DeAndre Swift, Aaron Jones, Tyron Tracy Jr., Brian Robinson, Jordan Mason, Jaylen Warren, JK Dobbins, and then you got two Jags backs here, Tank Bsby, Travis ETN. Before we get to the cliff, um, a lot of guys with a wide range of outcomes here in this tier, Boon. Um, talk me through a couple guys that you are you're ranking here, but you're definitely not drafting too much.
>> Well, very quickly, you said the boring veterans at the end of the last tier there, and I agree there's a big drop off. very quickly. I'm really excited about those two players and it's not like Taj Spears didn't die or anything. He's going to be back. He suffered a high ankle sprain that can sap a running back's effectiveness certainly and we'll see how long it takes him to get back up to speed. But Tony Pard last year had a great season. It looks like he's going to be able to have another great season. They've invested in the offensive line. They've upgraded at quarterback. So really, really excited about Tony Pard as an RB2 for your fantasy lineup. And then Pacheco, I mean, he was hurt last year. That's the last time people saw him. wasn't the same player, but you look back to what he did before that, right? Like before he got hurt in those first two games last year was the RB1 17 in week one, the RB19 in week two. The year before, the entire year before was the RB-15 in fantasy points per game. So, this is a guy that I think people have just forgotten about a little bit. And Bashard Smith, a very interesting player. I think maybe a better real life addition for the Chiefs in that kind of passcatching role than he's going to be. He's not going to come in and take over this backfield. So, I just wanted to say that about those two because I think they deserve to be highlighted, especially cuz I'm not that excited about the next group here. But anyway, we mentioned David Montgomery earlier.
>> Just somebody that I think we saw last year his carries dropped back a little bit. Um, he got through with receiving work. He got through with the touchdowns like he always has, but is that going to continue? Are they going to be able to continue to to be in scoring position as much as they've been in the past without Ben Johnson with some of the losses on the offensive line? like that tweet earlier is they're not going to get to play the Miami Dolphins defense every single week, right? It's going to be some some tough matchups in the NFC North. Um, so you worry about that a little bit, I think, for Montgomery based on the fact that the team has just made it clear this is Gibbs backfield. Gibbs is their guy. He's going to get the majority of the work as long as he's healthy. So, it makes Montgomery a little bit less exciting and a little more of maybe an injury away guy who can give you that, you know, RB3 flex kind of production, but might become more of a touchdown or bus kind of player.
I'm so worried about Joe Mixon. I mean, the injury situation, the way that they've talked about it, the way that they're sort of dismissive, they don't even want reporters to ask about it. It's very strange. And this is one player I will say that if he gets back out there before the season, if he ends up being okay and they were just kind of hiding that information from us, I'm going to get burned because I've had him ranked very low and I have not really drafted Mixon anywhere this year. And we saw what he did last season and yet even if he does come back and ends up healthy at some point, they went out made a concerted effort to get other players to get competition in that backfield. Nick Chub is there now. Is Nick Chub potentially on his last legs? I think so based on the way they're talking. Unless Demecco Ryan is just like totally throwing smoke screens over everything like he knows Nick Chub still has it. He knows Joe Mixon is healthy and he's just trying to throw everybody off descent. I don't think that's the case. He seemed pretty honest about the fact that Nick Chubb's near the end of his career, but still Nick Chub is there. Could he vulture some touchdowns? For sure. They brought in Woody Marks. I think Woody Marks is very interesting especially in the passing game. So this isn't the backfield that Mixon had last year where he kind of had it all to himself. we see these other guys involved. Even Damen Pierce was hurt this summer. He's back out there. People are saying he looks pretty good out there right now and he's got the fresh legs, too, because he missed a little bit of time with injury, but he's another guy that early in his career looked like he could be a player and then last season just didn't really have it. Could he potentially get back in the mix? So, those are guys I'm worried about.
DeAndre Swift I'm very worried about and we've mentioned that the show a bunch of times about this Bears backfield some of the tough matchups that they have early this season. Could we see a scenario where Swift ends up losing more and more work as we get through these early weeks and if he's struggling and that entire offense could potentially struggle a little bit out of the gate as they try to gel and get used to that Ben Johnson system. So, I think Swift is a guy that could start to seed touches to the rookie Kal Manungai, potentially Roshan Johnson if he's healthy, though. I'm a little bit worried about Roshan being injured here because they've brought in some backs for tryyous and for workouts. Is that a sign that maybe Roshan's injury is a little worse? We'll see. Either way, Kal Manunga, he is getting hyped up quite a bit. I think he's going to factor into this backfield and I think that could be bad news for Swift because he's the kind of player that needs a lot of volume to perform and I don't know that he's going to get it this season.
One other theme of this group here is that you've got a lot of these kind of ambiguous backfield duos. You know, you've got both Steelers backs, you've got both Vikings backs, you've got Tanks Tank Bsby and Travis ETN. There's a third guy in the mix there that we'll talk about later. Um maybe maybe let's talk about the Steelers backfield situation. Uh Caleb Johnson's getting roasted on Twitter for being slow. Um 40 yard dash time already told us that. So not really new information there. Maybe we're double counting. Um I like taking Jaylen Warren uh just because I think he's a good player. Um, you know, I'm not like trying to super invest in this Steelers offense generally, but talk me, you don't have to talk about the Vikings because I know we're gonna we're going to talk about uh their running back too later on in the show, but this backfield's like the Steelers, backfields like the Jacksonville Jaguars. How are you handling Actually, you know, let's just focus on the Steelers because we're also going to talk Jaguars later. How are you handling that running back split there between Warren and Caleb Johnson? I people freaking out about the Caleb Johnson thing seems really funny to me because we knew all of this like you said like Warren excels in that area. Caleb Johnson does not. Warren is going to be the passcatching guy. He's going to be the more explosive guy. Caleb Johnson is going to come in and be the naggy replacement. That's they've outlined that. They've said that that he can come in and be that kind of early down grinder back probably be the goal line guy and it's going to make sense. They just got a younger version of Naji to put out there. And fantasywise, I think that's frustrating because it's going to result in probably what we've always seen from this backfield, which is Caleb Johnson, once he's comfortable out there and they trust him, is going to be kind of a borderline low-end RB2. You're going to hope for that touchdown to get him over the top.
>> And Warren's going to have some weeks where he makes a big play where he gets a bunch of catches and he's also okay and kind of in that range. But I don't really see a scenario where Warren completely overtakes or sorry where Warren completely overtakes Caleb Johnson and dominates touches in this backfield and blows up all some of these other guys all like you know an Austin Eckler when he was with the Chargers kind of thing. I don't see that happening here because also Arthur Smith is the offensive coordinator and when does Arthur Smith just feature one guy and give him all the work? He doesn't. He loves to get everybody involved. He loves to frustrate fantasy managers and let different players get involved. I mean, we're even seeing reports that Kenneth Gainwell could be getting touches in this back field and could turn this into like a weird three-way committee potentially.
>> Forget it, bro. Yeah,
>> forget it. Then if Kenneth Kane was involved,
>> it's just it's a situation I told you this before. It's a situation that I don't know that I want to dip my my toe in this water too much. I think Johnson's the one that I think he could get a decent touchdown total potentially and give you that low-end RB2 production on the season if he gets more comfortable if he starts to come on as the year goes along. But overall, this is a backfield that I don't find myself getting involved in too much for reddraft because I'm just worried about that Steelers offense as a whole this year. Worried about the Aaron Rogers of it all and I think this backfield's going to be kind of a frustrating committee for most of the season.
Last thing I noticed in this tier and and quickly because we do have to get to another break here. Uh, one guy I noticed that you have and you don't have as running back too even though these guys are pretty have been close in ADP over the summer is Tyron Tracy. No Cam Scataboo in this group for you, but Tyron Tracy Jr. you've got here. Um, is there any value in a guy like that this year?
>> I really think there is. And early in the off season I I felt that I had it ranked that way. And this is one of those spots where, you know, all the highlights, I fell victim to it. Cam Scatter making these crazy catches, really getting people fired up in Giants camp. And I started to question my thought on Tyron Tracy and I started to move Cam Scataboo up. But Cam Scatoo got hurt. He came back. He aggravated the injury. He's out for a little bit. We don't know when he's going to come back. We know how valuable these summer reps are for rookies. Rookie running backs need to be out there. They need to be getting comfortable in the offense. He's not doing that. And then you look back to what Tracy did last year and I wonder whether we're just kind of all overlooking him a little too much because last year once he started getting the majority of the snaps, it was around week five, he was the RB21 in fantasy points per game from that point on. The team speaks very highly of him. Now with Scatabo out, I know Devin Singleary is still there, but we saw the transition happen last year where Singleary took the back seat, Tyron Tracy took over, and then you have ESPN's Jordan Renan coming out and saying that this is not a competition that the people that are there at practice seeing this know that this is Tracy's backfield and Scataboo is a long way. Now, it's easy to say that after he had the injury and that is when that report came out. So, you know, it's it's easy to just question how much Scataboo can get involved. It's going to take a while. It's going to delay really any involvement that he's going to have in the offense because he has this injury in the summer. But I certainly think that Tyron Tracy is a guy who can get up into the RB2 range and maybe be like a sneaky RB2 for you this season that you can get at a much much cheaper price than the other guys we've talked about.
>> I really like this call out because I haven't really known what to do with these two guys when it's been like, "Hey, this is maybe a two-way committee." If it's not, if it's just Tyron Tracy, I'm disgusting enough and hate myself enough to try to find value in the Giants value Giants backfield. No question about that. Especially for a guy that like if if you're going to go for a running back and what's probably a bad offense, you want a guy that is a pass catcher. Uh Tyron Tracy's a converted wide receiver. From week 12 on, he was seventh among running back running backs and catches. It was only behind Achan, Jamir Gibbs, James Connor, Amir Abdullah. Bet you could have never guessed that one. Uh Aaron Jones, Bucky Irving, and Jaylen Warren. and him were tied at 20 receptions a piece. So yeah, he's got the receiving background and Russell Wilson, we know he likes to throw the deep ball. If he's not doing that, he's checking the football down. He is number one in checkdown rate over the last two years combined. So Tracy could get a lot of passes and you could kind of scam your way some uh PPR value among Tyron Tracy at the running back position. So I'm glad that you called him out because he hasn't been somebody we brought up on the show very much. So good reference to get him