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FantasyPros - Fantasy Football Podcast
Biggest Fantasy Football Takeaways For EVERY AFC West Team (Ep. 1929)
00:29:58
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- [00:00]
Podcast Announcer
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:02]
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Ryan Warmley
Welcome into the Fantasy Pros Football Podcast. I'm Ryan, warmly joined by Andrew Erickson and by Jake Seeley from the Athletic and we are talking takeaways from the AFC West. We have been taping these division kind of takeaways from the fantasy perspective all all day. This is the last one we're doing, so I believe the other ones will have been released already by the time you're listening to this. So if you missed them, be sure to check out the east, north and south. Like I said, this is our west takeaways. We'll start with the Broncos who won the division first time the Chiefs did not win in a very, very long time. It was Denver coming away on top. Jake, we'll start with you on this one. What's your takeaway from the Broncos this year?
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Jake Seeley
Stop expecting Sean Payton to be anything but Sean Payton because Payton is going to Payton and I mean that for the backfield and the wide receivers is we knew this when it came to the Saints and things changed a little bit with Camara during that time where it's finally down to mostly and I say mostly not because all the time, but mostly two running backs and then the wide receiver situation was a little bit different there but he comes over to the Broncos and he's back to what we've seen most of Peyton's career is multiple running backs and a lot of game script dependent and matchup dependent multiple wide receivers after Cortland Sutton and I know Pat Bryant's part of his was injury but it was Troy Franklin and Pat Bryant and like other noise here and there and it's just like and even the tight end position like just this is what Peyton does. Payton uses everybody up and down his roster. He uses multiple options any given week depending like I said depending on matchup, depending on game script. And the worst part about it is it's not like we sit there and watch Sean Payton go against a man heavy team and be like oh this is specifically what he's going to do against the man heavy team or hey, this team plays blank. This is specifically what he's going to do. It's just Sean Payton being Sean Payton and that's part of what makes him good and part of what makes him a successful NFL coach. But for us in fantasy, it sucks. And the thing here is just to understand that RJ Harvey can be a cool RB2 and it took half the year for him to finally get there and injuries and you know, Cortland Sutton could be a cool wide receiver too. But after that, when we try to chase our own tail of picking this person up and picking this person up and picking this person up, and then three weeks later we're all like, fine, we're done, we drop them. And then guess what? That player you just dropped is the one that has the good week right after that. So stop expecting anything more than what Sean Payton's going to do. You probably get two, maybe three if you want to include Bo Nix at quarterback, back fantasy pieces out of this roster. And that's pretty much what Sean Payton's just going to do to you.
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Ryan Warmley
Erickson, you are kind of going along a similar path here for the Broncos.
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Andrew Erickson
Yeah, this Denver Broncos takeaway brought me back to a slack message from you, Warren. When you asked me about some Denver Broncos player and I just responded, don't trust Sean Payton. Like you're like this player or a Denver Broncos player. And I was very much, hey, when in doubt, don't trust Sean Payton for fantasy football. I mean, look who did he tell us was going to be, the Joker? This Evan Ingram thing. You know who the joke, you know who the joke was on us. Like we're the people that are looking in the mirror with the clown mask on. Be like, I listen to Sean Payton again, don't want to do that. The thing that I feel most confident about with Sean Payton is he likes to use his running backs in the passing game. And that's about as far as I'll go when it comes to Sean Payton. I mean, we saw Troy Franklin get wide receiver, one usage in this offense despite being brutally inefficient. And it took second half surge from Cortland Sutton to kind of get him back on top. But there were weeks, where do I start? Troy Franklin over Cortland Sutton. Because Troy fuck is getting every single red zone target, he's getting every single two point conversion target and you're pulling your hair out. So you have to tread very, very cautiously when it comes to these Broncos players, especially when they get steamed up because of coach speak. Look Sean Payton, I'm in the coach speak discord. Greg does a great job. Points out that Sean Payton cannot be trusted when it comes to workload. When it comes to player usage, he's a guy that says one thing. Oh yeah. Want to get Marvin Mims so much more involved in the offense next game. Marvin Mims is fifth in routes run among the wide receivers. So that's something that you have to keep in mind. You need to really kind of keep yourself grounded when it comes to these Broncos players. Especially when we figure out oh well this guy is going to be The Joker in 2026. Remains to be seen.
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Jake Seeley
Well you just figured it out. You just unlocked the code. Erickson is just whoever he talks up, just throw him to the waiver wire. Just get rid of him.
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Ryan Warmley
Yeah, I, I, I do. R.J. harvey, specifically Erickson. Where do you anticipate the range you're going to have him ranked amongst running backs next year? I know you don't like obviously have rankings done yet but like when I, when I ask you the question where does the first place your mind go as probably around here.
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Andrew Erickson
I mean he seems like a player that's probably the 2, 3 turn. We'll see what they do with J.K. dobbins. Dobbins is a free agent. We also know Dobbins is constantly banged up. So if it's McLaughlin is a guy that they're bringing back, I could see him going maybe mid second round. That's probably that range where we'll see RJ Harvey go.
- [05:38]
Ryan Warmley
Okay, that is, that's actually higher. Fitz has his mock draft we've referenced on a couple of these other division pre takeaways. He has RJ Harvey as a later third round pick in his so, so behind Travion Henderson, behind Henderson, behind Bucky, behind Derek Henry, Chase Brown, Kyron Williams, behind all of them.
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Jake Seeley
Behind him wear in Hampton.
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Ryan Warmley
Yep. Behind a Marian. He's got a Marion in the second round in that and that and that's just one, one guy's mock but just kind of using as a point of reference because there's not really a ton of rankings out there yet. Yeah. So he's a little bit lower on Harvey it sounds like then, then we're at Erickson. Let's go to the Chargers. Speaking of a Marian Hampton, Jake, what is your takeaway fantasy wise from the Chargers this year?
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Jake Seeley
This might seem, I don't know. Either you're a Chargers fan and you're gonna be like no kidding or you're gonna watch the Chargers and be like, what are you talking about? But I feel like the Chargers next year are, are going to be a team that, like, when we talk about offenses, I want a part of in fantasy, the Chargers are going to be part of it. And I know there was a lot of hiccups this year and actually even Justin Herbert looked great and then he didn't and then actually played through that brace contraption thing on his left hand and looked great again and then he kind of finished middling at the end of the season. So like you can look at different ways and it's just like. But what I saw is that when they were mostly healthy, I don't even think we could call the Chargers. Including what Erickson's going to talk about, I don't think we can ever call the chargers. Maybe week one they were 100% healthy because this team dealt with a lot, especially in the offensive side. But everything at times clicked in certain ways. Enough to say that, man, whether it's Quentin Johnson's number two or maybe you put Al Pierce on this team as the number two, sign me back up. I'm getting back in on lad McConkey. I am going to take a flyer on Gadson, who's somebody that people like Erickson and I and Fitz and everything. Like for people that are invested in rookies and pay attention to player knew that he was a name to Remember for potentially 2000, 20, 26 and beyond flashed a little bit when called upon because there was almost nobody Left but Lamb McConkey. At that point you have that Amarian Hampton as a bell cow potential. We have to see what they do. But just there's pieces up and down this roster that I'm going to want a part of and I can see this being a potential top five offense next year because despite everything that went wrong, there was enough in this offense to have some fun and fantasy to begin with, let alone when things were clicking for what we very rarely got to see. So back in buy low on lad McConkey, give me Samarind Hampton. I've never been a huge Justin Herbert fan, but I will be a Herbert fan next year. Gadson Johnston, whoever the number two is, like, there's just a lot to like on this team, in my opinion.
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Ryan Warmley
Yeah, one point that I remember making a lot over the summer was, and this is obviously before the offensive line injuries kind of reshaped what we thought about the offense was that I wasn't worried about Greg Roman like ruining this offense for Fantasy because there were some conversations we had on shows that was like, oh, well, it's Greg Roman, it's Jim Harbaugh, you know, you, you'll want to get whoever the RB one is. And besides that, it's just not going to be like a very good offense and I, I kind of pushed back against that and I feel like I will feel very similarly going into next year. Like I like the offense itself, I'm very excited about. Of course the line does need to get healthy, right? At a certain level of injury it just becomes like untenable. And Erickson, you are kind of looking at the offensive line for your takeaway here.
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Andrew Erickson
Yeah, I just don't want to hold the performances from these players when they were playing behind a patchwork offensive line against them, so. Because when you look at all of the season long stats for all of these Chargers players, they're all going to be nuked because you had certain games where Justin Herbert is playing with a broken hand, they don't have any type of blocking, they're getting absolutely blown up by the opposing defense. And I think that we should be shifting focus to those ceiling games where all the Alpha sign was healthy, Joe Alt was in the lineup because that's what the expectation is in 2026, that they're going to have their starting tackles available for the majority of the season and if anything too, if they run into offensive line injuries again, they got, they have players with experience now because yeah, injuries are going to happen to every single roster. So usually you don't have injuries like this happen two years in a row to certain positions. So I would bet on their offensive line being healthier in 2026 just because of general injury regression. And I agree with Jake. It's like be back in on LA McConkey and again a player that we talked about, I think that will probably be drafted pretty close to each other. I would still take Lad over Zay Flowers, right? Like I, I know that I was the one that's the high man on Zay Flowers. I think that you guys would probably agree with me there. But even looking at the red zone targets, lad McConkey had more red zone targets this past season than say, Flowers did. And we've seen what Lad did as a rookie where him and Justin Herbert were playing at an elite level. He had an elite rookie season and I think you can definitely get back to that in year three, which is more consistency from the offensive line up front. I mean we saw Quentin Johnson have a kind of mini third year breakout after he was basically left for dead. At least me personally, I had no interest in drafting Quentin Johnson and he was breaking out all over the place the first month of the season when most of the players were healthy. So I, yeah, I want to be in on this Chargers team and I think that we're going to get a discount just because the season long stats are not going to look that great.
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Jake Seeley
To jump into your point real quick, worm about the whole Greg Roman thing. The Chargers were actually top three last year. I remember looking this up, it was top three, which was insane to think about. Passing and goal to go inside the 10. They dropped back this year, they were still ninth. So it's not like they're like run, run, run, run, run, run. Especially in the valuable time. They were ninth in the league in passing and gold to go.
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Ryan Warmley
Yeah, by the way, just. I was just looking at this. Not really relevant to the Chargers, but you were just making me think about the red zone targets conversation. Erickson, do you know. So do you. First of all, do you know who had the most red zone targets this year?
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Andrew Erickson
Yes. Adams.
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Ryan Warmley
No, he's actually second according to mean.
- [11:32]
Andrew Erickson
Wide receivers and tight ends.
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Ryan Warmley
So Trey McBride.
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Andrew Erickson
It's Amon Ross Brown. Sorry, it's.
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Ryan Warmley
It's Amon Ra, then Trey McBride, then Devonte Adams. They have 34, 32, 31. Nobody else in the league at either position has more than 23. It's like this huge.
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Jake Seeley
Yeah. Do you know who 23 is, by the way? I know you know because you're looking at it.
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Ryan Warmley
Yes.
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Jake Seeley
You know who 23 is. I was actually. I saw this the other day. I was beyond shocked at this one. Erickson, there's two really good wide receivers on his team. There's a big hint.
- [12:00]
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- [13:01]
Andrew Erickson
What's up?
- [13:02]
Cam Jordan
It's Cam Jordan. I'm back with season three of your favorite podcast, the off the Edge with Cam Jordan Podcast. Tap in every Wednesday to hear conversations with my friends and stars from the NFL, the sports world in general, and entertainment about anything from teams and players making waves to pop culture. And I'll take you inside my journey through my 15th season in the NFL. Looking forward to you joining me this season. The season of More on the off the Edge with Cam Jordan Podcast. Catch new episodes every Wednesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you.
- [13:30]
Jake Seeley
Get your podcasts brought to you by Liberty Mutual Insurance.
- [13:33]
Andrew Erickson
Only pay for what you need.
- [13:35]
Jake Seeley
Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.
- [13:38]
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- [14:07]
Andrew Erickson
Oh, so it's not.
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Ryan Warmley
It's studied me too.
- [14:12]
Andrew Erickson
Two receivers on his team. Okay, so it's not this play that I was thinking about. I don't know.
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Jake Seeley
Hurry up, hurry up. We gotta get Jake Ferguson. Isn't that insane?
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Ryan Warmley
Ferguson. And Hunter Henry's right behind him. That rounds up the top five.
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Andrew Erickson
Yeah, Dak loves targeting Ferguson.
- [14:26]
Ryan Warmley
So just. Just a fun note there. All right, let's. Let's tell everybody about playoff blitz. Check this out. If you're like us and hate when your fantasy season ends before the football gets good, you've got to try playoff blitz.com. it's fantasy football built for the NFL playoffs. No draft, no waivers, no sweat. Members just pick a lineup each week from the playoff teams. They can only use each player once, so once they start them, they lose him. That's where the strategy kicks in. And remember, no need to hold a draft. Just create a league and invite your friends. Starting a league is super easy. Takes less than a minute and you're all in. From wildcard weekend to the Super Bowl. PlayoffBlitz.com is your home for playoff. Fantasy football leagues are just 79 bucks and you can invite as many people as you like, run an office pool pool. Invite your regular league group or even your grandma's bingo league. Join today@competopplitz.com where fantasy football meets the Super Bowl. Enter promo code Fantasy Pros for a discount. That's playoffblitz.com promo code fantasy Pros for a discount on your league. Let's go to the Chiefs, finishing third in the division this year. Obviously quite a fall from grace for them for what the last decade has looked like. Erickson, I'll start with you on this one. What's your fantasy takeaway for Casey?
- [15:33]
Andrew Erickson
I don't fear early season suspensions. This goes back to a show that we did in the off season with Rich Rebar and I thought that he did a excellent job of kind of outlining what the actual risk and the hurdle you have to overcome when it comes to a player who has a early season suspension and how it's really not that hard of a thing to kind of overcome because your roster is at full health for the most point. You haven't been hit by a ton of injuries. And and I think Rashi Rice and what he was able to do when he came back to the lineup is a clear example of yeah, it sucks for the first six weeks, but I think that if you are a good manager, you can work your way around Rashi Rice basically putting up zeros in your lineup or, excuse me, on your bench because you can use the waiver wire, you can access other players. You don't have a lot of bye weeks, so it's really not. Or maybe it's overblown. You should take advantage of early season suspension, especially when players fall in adp. Again, if Rice had not got suspended, I would have been way underweight on him and I would have been totally wrong about Rice because if he had done what he did in the second half of the season throughout the entire year, I mean he would have finished easily inside the top five. He was a top five wide receiver points per game. And going back to red zone targets, Rashi Rice seventh in red zone targets in eight games played. So the only player who had more red zone targets per game than Rashi Rice. And this is where I thought Devonte Adams. It was Devonte Adams. So Adams was number one in red zone targets per game. Rashi rice was number two. St. Brown obviously played 17 or the more games. So he led the NFL in red zone targets. But yeah, that's my takeaway.
- [17:08]
Ryan Warmley
Yeah. And I think to your point, like you're not saying don't fear them as in draft them as if the suspension didn't happen. You're saying take advantage of ADP falling because they it will fall several rounds if you have this four or six game suspension like Rice had. And that's where you can really take advantage. And like the my best team I had this year didn't end up winning the title because it just had a bad semifinals. But the best team I had by a mile in any of my leagues was a league where I took Rishi Rice and it was just. I was good. And then you add this elite top five receiver to an already good team partway through the season, as long as you manage to survive. And it just became a wagon the rest of the way. So. So yeah, I think this is definitely a smart one. Particularly your point that Rich was talking about, about early in the year is the best, the, the easiest time to, to manage it and survive not having one of these guys. And again, especially if they're going later in adp. What do you think about the suspensions, Jake?
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Jake Seeley
I think what Ericsson said is the key here is that also it's the beginning of the year. I think some of these situations, like depending on when this was happening and you were drafting, there was the uncertainty of who would start the season. But as long as it's the start of the season, it's something you can easily make up because like I said, that's. When are you healthiest? Week one and going after that, the Chargers were the healthiest at that point. You go back to Le'Veon Bell. He missed those couple of games. He was number one in points per game and he actually finished his RB2 overall that year even with the missed games. So you can more easily make up when you're talking about elite talents. And we're not saying that if some wide receiver three gets suspended for the first four games to be like, yeah, yeah, I got to go get them because I know it could happen afterwards. But when you're talking about what this could do, you're basically getting a free nothing trade coming back your way at week four, five, six, however long the suspension might be. I think the biggest thing here was that it was six, which is a little bit tougher to swallow than like the normal four that we've seen in a lot of situations. But if you set your team up right for it, we reap the benefits. If you did this year.
- [19:08]
Ryan Warmley
And then what's your takeaway from the Chiefs, Jake?
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Jake Seeley
I think, and regardless of how bad things went for the Chiefs this year is that we kind of touched on it earlier and like we were talking about the show with the north or not the north, the south with the Texans, is that the ancillary pieces aren't always worth chasing, even on some of the better offenses. And I know the Chiefs are normally better than this, but even so, like, we saw Xavier Worthy with and without Rice was a disappointment trying to figure out who's the next wide receiver after that. I mean, honestly, how many years have we been doing that with the Chiefs in general? It's like, oh, who's the next wide receiver? It's going to be this guy, it's going to be that guy. It's going to be, I mean, Sky Moore.
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Ryan Warmley
Cool.
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Jake Seeley
Like, we keep trying to chase this because of the offense when sometimes we'll go back to, you know, Erickson joked about we were talking about the Zay Flower situation, but the Ravens offense, the Bills offense, the packers for years is just because the offenses are good. You got to look at how these teams use their weapons. And if they're using their weapons and they're only on the field 65% of the time, the target shares are only in the teens, the low teens. That doesn't mean you chase them just because It's a top 10 offense. So you got to pay attention. It's twofold. You want a top 10 offense, but you want some kind of clarity of usage. The reason the Pickens appeal hit so well for so many people this year is not just because Dak Prescott and the Cowboys offense in passing is because you had a very concentrated target share between 2, 3 players when it comes to Ferguson. And honestly, Ferguson wasn't so much the target share as it was as what we just brought up is in the red zone. Outside of that, he was actually a distant third between Pickens and CD Lamb. So remember that when we're chasing even the most talented offenses. To go back to my point about the Chargers and wanting to chase that, that goes out the window. If it's Gadsden, Quinton Johnson, they sign Alec Pierce, and it's three guys competing to get 30 combined target share percentages between the three of them because somebody's going to fall off and more likely than not, they're just going to continue to cannibalize each other. So ancillary pieces are attractive a lot of times, especially if somebody gets hurt, but they're not always worth the chase if the cost is prohibited.
- [21:12]
Ryan Warmley
What do you think about that, Ericsson?
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Andrew Erickson
Yeah, you usually want to go for these discounted ancillary pieces where you really want to pay up for the most expensive number two wide receiver on his real team. Probably not. And I know that, I've written and done a lot of studies on that specifically. Whereas the best values are the guys that are the cheap ones, right? If you're paying for a wide receiver two on, you know, real life wide receiver two at a top 24 draft price, that's where you run to issues where it's a waddle or a Devonta Smith and there are like times where it's like, okay, that you make that pick, but then you look at it and you don't feel as great about when you made the pick versus some of the other receivers you could have drafted instead. So yeah, I agree.
- [21:56]
Ryan Warmley
Let's go to the Raiders to wrap up the AFC West. Here they have the number one overall pick. They were the worst team in football this year. Pete Carroll is out. We'll see what happens with the coaching staff there. But looking backwards at 2025, what was your takeaway? Erickson?
- [22:10]
Andrew Erickson
So for me it goes down to the elite tight end strategy. And this is something that we debate all off season. It's like, do you go elite tight end, you go late round tight end? And there are paths to success with both strategies. But for me, elite tight end still remains the riskier approach because every single year we see tight ends get drafted really, really late and end up being top five, top six guys. So Trey McBride was obviously the best tight end pick you could have made in terms of raw points scored. He outscored every single player and it was by a vast margin. Obviously took the Kyler Murray injury for him to really take off, but he was the best elite tight end you could have drafted. Whereas Brock Bowers, George Kittle, they miss time because of injuries and they kind of ate a little bit of a hole in your roster. And what I found is that these injury rates, these happen a lot with some of these tight ends, especially these early ones that you have been that we have been drafting and ranking really high. So I guess for me it's if you don't want to take on the risk of a Bauer situation or Kittle or any of these other elite tight ends that bust, then you just wait because every year we get Harold Fannin, we get Kyle Pitts, we get Tucker Kraft, where there are guys that just totally smash their ADP and you don't have to lock and load with your one elite titan that you draft much earlier on. Now again, if you can nail the right guy, if you got Trey McBride, then, you know, kudos to you. And if you feel really confident that you know which elite tight end is going to actually have that elite season, then I think it's fine to go with elite tight end strategy. But for me, my big takeaway is don't draft the player that put up an elite season. Draft a player that's going to be put up elite season next season. Like that's the way that I viewed and that's why Tucker Kraft, he was my favorite tight end because I felt like when we're talking about Tucker Kraft in 2026, he's going to be an elite tight end that we're going to be drafting. Now the injury is obviously going to cause complications with that, but I think that needs to be at least that's going to be my focus at tight end is not kind of try to parse between, well, is it McBride again? Is it Bowers this year? Do you go back to Kittle one more year? As entering age 34, I'm gonna probably say no because I'll just take who can be this year's Kyle Pitts or Harold Fannin or Tucker Craft, someone I can get much later on, maybe take multiple shots at the position versus locking and loading with an elite tight end that I Hope is Trey McBride from 2025.
- [24:31]
Ryan Warmley
What do you think about the tight ends, Jake?
- [24:34]
Jake Seeley
I really, I agree because it's the opportunity cost. And yes, Trey McBride was a game changer because if we were drafting today and we knew what we knew, you could argue for Trey McBride at the end of the first round if you knew the Travis Kelsey seasons when he was scoring 16 fantasy points, not the 13 because it was the difference between having those three point per game averages over the next closest tight end. It was like alternating years with Kelsey. The problem was, is like if you don't get that and he still has a good, not amazing season, you've lost at the other positions and now you've, you're basically behind the eight ball compared to everybody else because you're just, you're on the same page as three or four other teams at tight end where the advantage that you're taking by taking the Kelsey in his prime years or knowing what we know now about what happened with McBride this year or what Bowers did last year, like you need that three point per game average, otherwise you're just throwing it out the window. So I agree. And that's why I've never taken a tight end the first two rounds. I've always been the Erickson approach and usually it's the fourth, fifth round if one of those top tiers but I usually avoid that second tier always just because there's more landmines in there than there are good ones. So we are on the same page. I'll just jump right into mine. I was sticking with the Raiders and saying oh actually we're all talking about the Raiders so of course I'm sticking with the Raiders. I was sticking with like concern here. The fact that Ashton Genty we talked about with the AFC east and I brought up like why I had concern on that show about Achan for next year and of course things can still go right for him. But the example I wanted to give at the time was Ashton Genti when the offense is that bad, when the offensive line is that bad. Ashton Genty, despite I was one of the lower people and I still wasn't low enough on Genti because he was RB12 overall and RB19 in fantasy points per game. There's two running backs in there that played eight and nine games. So even if you throw those two out, he's only RB17 fantasy points per game. He didn't even have 1,000 rushing yards despite being seventh in rush attempts. Like this is how bad it can go. Nobody watching Ashton Genti was questioning the talent. Like you watch him and you saw it, he was doing that. He had almost 1000 yards including receiving yards after contact because to start the season, I think it was through the first five games he actually had more yards after contact than yards because he was continually at negative yards before contact. That's how bad it was. So I say all to say is like we need to say sometimes the opportunity cost which we're talking about in general here now is understand how bad some of these offenses could be. And I brought up Taglier when we talked about Devon A. Chan as the cautionary tale is when you're on a bottom five offense it's super hard to be a top ten running back, let alone top five. And Genty is the perfect example of why I have some concerns of Achan. So we just not and I bring up Genti as his own right to say he's also somebody I'm still concerned about for 2026 where the Raiders are maybe they take Mendoza, maybe they take Dante Moore and try to develop more. But there's more issues than the quarterback. There is the game plan calling and I know they fired Pete Carroll, but that's a big question of how that's going to work. Is the offensive line going to be any better. Similar to my Browns concern, they need multiple pieces, not just one or two. So I just have a lot of concerns of that. I don't know that Genti is necessarily a buy low and that's really what it comes down to.
- [27:58]
Ryan Warmley
To your point about that again, if you know to reference Fitz's early mock, he is gentee at the 201. He does note in there that if we were drafting literally today, he wouldn't come off the board that early. This is just kind of belief in them adding it off.
- [28:13]
Jake Seeley
What RB is that? Is that like RB 1112.
- [28:17]
Ryan Warmley
Let's see. He's got.
- [28:18]
Jake Seeley
It's got to be higher than that.
- [28:20]
Ryan Warmley
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 he's got. It'd be RB7 say and I'd be.
- [28:28]
Jake Seeley
Like I love Fitz. Obviously done a ton of shows with them. Way too high. I don't want to talk about Genti for me and there's a lot of assumptions that can move him up. But I think the best case I could see Genti getting to is fringe RB one for me at this point.
- [28:43]
Ryan Warmley
What do you think Erickson, about Genty specifically?
- [28:46]
Andrew Erickson
Yeah, I think that the Genty season is really obviously disappointing for the expectations. Whereas ADP was and even Jake alluding to he wasn't low enough on Genti. I clearly I was too high on Ashton Genti and I guess like the reason for those that were kind of fading him because he didn't fail because he was a rookie. Right. Like everything about Ashton Genti, like the thesis of the Genti play was always gonna be a tackle breaking machine. He's gonna play on all three downs. He's going to be using the passing game, check, check, check. Like he did all the things that we were expecting. It really was well he's on the Raiders. Like that was what held him back and that's what Jake kind of just outlined there. So it's kind of. I'm trying not to let that cloud my judgment of like future rookie running backs where Ashton Eddie didn't fail in 2025 because he was a rookie. He failed because he was on the Raiders. Like you could have dropped any running back on the Raiders and they would have been disappointing. So just one point, I wanted to be clear again, I wasn't right about Genti but in terms of the player like and the usage that we projected, 6th in total touches, 16th in yards from scrimmage, 10 touchdowns, he had over 1300 yards from scrimmage like a pretty solid rookie season. But when you play in the Raiders.
- [29:59]
Jake Seeley
Solid.
- [29:59]
Andrew Erickson
Yeah. You're going to have a. A cap ceiling just given the state of that offensive line. It just got worse, progressively worse as the season progressed. And the other thing I wanted to add that Jake made a great comparison when we were talking about genting the off season was he compared him to Bijan Robinson, his rookie year. And Jake, I don't know if you know the exact stat line. How far off do you know was Bijan Robinson's rookie year from Ashton Genti's rookie year and half ppr.
- [30:24]
Jake Seeley
Oh, like points per game or total points?
- [30:27]
Andrew Erickson
Either. Or points per game or total points?
- [30:29]
Jake Seeley
Well, I would say total points. I say Bichon scored 12 more than he did.
- [30:33]
Andrew Erickson
Scored half a point more.
- [30:35]
Jake Seeley
Oh, wow.
- [30:36]
Andrew Erickson
So. So your. Your comparison was just like completely spot on. He put basically the exact stat line that Bijan Robinson. Although Bijan did have that one weird, like, migraine game where it counted.
- [30:47]
Jake Seeley
Right.
- [30:47]
Andrew Erickson
So I think Bijan technically did outscore him in terms of points per game and he would have been in terms of raw points per game. So I just thought that was a really good call by you. And yeah, just. Can we get some offensive line for the Raiders, please? Because Genty, I mean, we saw against the Houston Texans, right? This guy is so talented and can be an absolute monster.
- [31:06]
Jake Seeley
Absolutely.
- [31:07]
Andrew Erickson
Yeah.
- [31:07]
Jake Seeley
You throw them on 20 other teams top 10 at minimum, potentially even top. And I'll say this, and this isn't trying to be like, oh, I'll take blah, blah, blah. But you told me they both get 270 touches next year. Just both these running backs, Amaran, Hampton and Genti. I'm taking Hampton 10 out of 10 times because of the teams. But again, I'm assuming that's why I brought up touches, because watch the Chargers bring in Kenneth Walker or something like that, and we're all screaming at the top of our lungs.
- [31:35]
Ryan Warmley
Don't even put that out of the the world, man, till the end.
- [31:38]
Jake Seeley
You heard it here first.
- [31:40]
Ryan Warmley
Yeah. All right, we'll go ahead and wrap up the AFC west show there. We did all the AFC divisions here throughout the week, so if you missed any of those, please go check them out. East, North, South. And now wrapping up here at with West. So thanks everybody for tuning in throughout the week to these. For Ericson and Jake, I'm Ryan Warmley. Appreciate you checking us out. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening to the Fantasy Pros Fantasy Football podcast. If you love the show, the best free way to support us is by leaving a positive review on apple podcasts@fantasypros.com review or on Spotify. Follow us on X Instagram and TikTok antasypros and subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube.com fantasypros.
- [32:40]
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- [33:10]
Cam Jordan
It's Cam Jordan. I'm back with season three of your favorite podcast, the off the Edge with Cam Jordan Podcast. Tap in every Wednesday to hear conversations with my friends and stars for the NFL, the sports world in general, and entertainment about everything from teams and players making waves to pop culture, and I'll take you inside my journey through my 15th season in the NFL. Looking forward to you joining me this season. The season of more on the off the Edge with Cam Jordan Podcast. Catch new episodes every Wednesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you.
- [33:39]
Jake Seeley
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- [33:42]
Andrew Erickson
Only pay for what you need. Liberty.
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Jake Seeley
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- [33:49]
Ryan Warmley
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