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FantasyPros - Fantasy Football Podcast
Biggest Fantasy Football Takeaways For EVERY NFC North Team (Ep. 1934)
00:28:27
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- [00:00]
A
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human hello everybody. Welcome into the Fantasy Pros Football Podcast. I'm Ryan Warmley, joined by Andrew Erickson and Jake Seeley from the Athletic and we are talking takeaways for the NFC north today. If you missed it, we already did the NFC East. We've got all the divisions of the NFC coming out throughout the week. We did the AFC last week. If you missed any of those divisions and want to hear us bicker and argue about Zay Flowers for a good 10 minutes on one of those shows, you can go check out the AFC North. This is the NFC North. It was won by the two seed Bears who won a playoff game two and are on the divisional round. Good job for Chicago. Jake, let's start with you here. What's your fantasy takeaway for the Bears after 2025?
- [00:42]
B
Ooh, the Bears are I want to be involved with everybody on this offense, but mostly Luther Burden. Like Luther Burden. It's so funny. Like, I guess it's funny. It's not. But we, we've done this before with Jackson, Smith and Jigba. We did it with Roman Dunes a on this team to start before he got hurt and now we're doing it with Burden is like, everybody's like, oh, the talent's so great. The talent's so great. The talent's so great. And they go to these teams as the third option. Jackson, Smith and Jigba was the third option for the Seahawks when drafted Roma Dunes was the third option last year. Luther Burden was the third option. This year is like we can get excited about the talent and we can know what they are and we can get excited like if an injury presents itself for the opportunity. Which it did for Burden at the end of the year as it did for when we talk about the Buccaneers it did for Igbuka at the beginning of the year is sometimes these three third rookie wide receivers third on their depth charts can surprise with injuries, but more often than not they're buried for a year. And when do we want to be back in year number two? Give me some hell of Luther Burden next year, especially with Caleb Williams and that comfort level which by the way, as we just saw in that playoff game which you're talking about, has really made DJ Moore an afterthought, like beyond an afterthought. I don't know that Caleb Williams knows that DJ Moore is still on the team because whether A Dunes A or Burden or anybody else is healthy on this team. He like showed up that one time a few weeks ago only because there was nobody left to throw to, including Zacchaeus. Like, there was nobody. He had to go to DJ Moore. So I want to be in on the Bears and I want to be in specifically for Luther Burden at a value for next year. Because I see the same thing that just happened with JSN that happened with the Dunes A again before injury, that is going to happen with Burden next year. It's these year two wide receivers that are drafted in what is a luxury spot by their teams. As in, we can stash them, let them come along, produce when they can, but year two is really what we're looking at.
- [02:26]
A
Burden, I can just already tell, is going to be one of the most interesting guys to talk about throughout the summer because you can feel the hype cycle starting early already. Fitz, we were talking on the Dynasty show. Dynasty is a little different than just historically 2026 rankings. But in Dynasty, Fitz was like, I'm all in. He is my wide receiver 10 in that format in, like, overall rankings, like, just very much all on board with what this expected breakout is going to look like. And you see a lot of people who look at some of these efficiency and rate stats for Burden and say, like, if DJ Moore isn't there next, and there's a real opportunity here where this, with this passing offense is basically all centered around Roma, Dunes, Colson, Loveland. Yeah, but like, next year, if he's like, not even in the bill, like, you could see a world where it's like this passing tree is the two receivers and Loveland and that's it. And I mean, that's gonna be really exciting if he can maintain anywhere close to the efficiency here. And Obviously wide receiver 10 in dynasty is pretty aggressive, but he's inside the top 24 for 2026 rankings. In consensus, he's wide receiver 23W, which, you know, might look high given, you know, the actual production from this year. But like, you're talking about Jake there. There's a lot of reasons to be really excited here. Does wide receiver 23 sound high to you? Does that sound low to you or. Or where do you think you're going to have him? Roughly?
- [03:42]
B
It's higher than I expected. Honestly, it sounds about the right range. When we talked about on the NFC east show with the commanders, Terry McLaurin, I'd probably still go Terry McLaurin, mostly because he's the one. Whereas Burden, I would still say, is the two to Roma Dunes. Not that the fact that they both can't be productive as top 25 wide receivers. But yeah, actually speaking of referencing that show, I teased something which I didn't even bring up the pay attention to what the teams are telling us with the Gervontae Williams thing. This was the other team I was talking about. Pay attention to the fact that they told us DeAndre Swift is the guy. DeAndre Smith is the guy. DeAndre Smith IS the guy. And everybody's like, no, no, no, no, no. DeAndre Swift is the flipping guy. Kyle McGon guy was a nice share piece and I do want a piece of him for next year, which I'm sure Ericsson's going to bring up as well. But DeAndre Swift was told to us this entire season off season that he was going to be the lead option and he was. And he was actually a huge value, just like Javante Williams. But yeah, I would still say, Terry, I think 22 sounds like a fair spot low end wide receiver too.
- [04:35]
A
Thank you for saying flipping instead of like in our Zay Flowers conversation when we needed to.
- [04:41]
B
I haven't done a Pat Mayo show in a few weeks, so like I got the F bombs out of my head now.
- [04:46]
A
It's kind of funny because these guys are all in a very similar range. Like Burden's wide receiver 23. Terry McLaurin is wide receiver 22. This is in consensus rankings. And then Z. Flowers, who we just referenced his wide receiver 21. So those guys are back to back. Yes, exactly. Erickson, you not only you know, Luther Burden, but these, these Bears second year guys as a whole. You're very on for 20, 26.
- [05:07]
C
Yeah, I want all these bears second year studs because they're going to get a full offseason healthy with Ben Johnson just developing everything for all these players. I mean, Ben Johnson handpicked Colston Love and Luther Burden when nobody was pegging the Bears. Oh, they really gotta draft the tight end. Oh, they really gotta draft the wide receiver. Like no, it was Ben Johnson. I'm the head coach. I'm calling the shots. These are the two guys I want and you're seeing it start to blossom here. They're winning games because they're giving Colts to 11, 15 targets. Or maybe that's not the reason they're winning games, but it's helping them in their offense produce. And I just had another thought while kind of talking about this. Luther Burden, number three, yards per out run as a rookie, elite number 2.69, Colston Loveland, 15 targets, 137 yards, eight catches in the playoffs. It was only A couple months ago, Warren, when we were talking About Tyler Warren vs. Colson Loveland in Dynasty and I'm thinking like right now it's like yeah, Warren has to be ranked higher because he's the one that's actually producing. But my entire being was no, I think Loveland is the better guy. Like and now we're finally starting to see that play out because he has a full time role in this offense. So I know that Cole Comet has an out in his contract, but I wouldn't be surprised if he sticks around. But I don't think it matters because of how good Colson Loveland is and how they use him in the slot. And just this Bears offense in general I think is just going to continue to cook Caleb Williams another year in Ben Johnson's system. Maybe that's the take. Again, talked about this on the NS NFC E show where I thought Jackson Dark could be this year's Drake May what about Caleb Williams? Like where is he going in ecr? Like why can't he be the late round quarterback? Because he has elite weapons that we're all expecting to take a major step forward at tight end, at wide receiver, talented running backs and then you also have the rushing factor. Caleb Williams also runs around, but I don't think he's going to get nearly as much love as Jackson Dart entering year two. So if he's the guy that's going in that QB 10 to 12 range, Caleb Williams will probably be the guy I'm circling as, oh, this is the late round quarterback that I actually want to want to draft because of the upside and the fact that he's going a little bit later than some of the, you know, Jackson Dart type players.
- [07:07]
A
Erickson, you took the words right out of my mouth. I was going to say until you brought him up that the one name you guys aren't mentioning in this is it's year two for Caleb also. And even if you weren't interested in Caleb for your for your fantasy team, the fact that it'll be his second year in this Ben Johnson offense and just his third year in the league I think is really exciting for what he can do for Rome and Luther and Colson Loveland. So I I'm totally with you on Caleb by the way. He's not even in the 10 to 12 range. He's QB13 in early ECR.
- [07:34]
B
So because he's that's I'm a Caleb apologist coming out of college. But he's still the problem is he's too he's too off target. He's 50%. 50 was it 57? 58% of his throws are on target. Like, I love some Caleb Williams, but that needs to change for him to hit the top 10. That's the biggest. That's the biggest thing holding him back.
- [07:55]
A
Yeah, it definitely needs to be more consistent. The highs are really high. The lows are really low.
- [08:00]
B
Save everything for the fourth quarter.
- [08:02]
C
Just get D.J. more off the field. Get D.J.
- [08:03]
B
More off the Field. That'll fix it.
- [08:06]
C
Go get D.J. moore. Alim Zakas, please get this guy off the roster, man. He's going to be a free agent. So the fact that their best offensive players are going to be on the field for the entire season, which has not been the case for Caleb Williams this year, I think that you're going to see everybody flourish. I'm going to be. And I think too the fact that, sorry, I don't mean to cut you off for him, but the fact that there are a lot of mouths to feed, I think that'll kind of muddle up some of the ADP where you can't rank Luther. You can only rank Luther Burns so high because, well, Roma Dunes is still a factor in this offense. Like Colcomet is still kind of hanging around. So if you have these other pieces that just are in the backs of people's mind when they're drafting, maybe I just want to draft this guy instead. If you just buy so much of this talent and if Caleb Williams really does hit in year three, like we see quarterbacks take that third year leap, especially second year in Ben Johnson's offense. Well, I think everybody could hit.
- [08:59]
A
Yeah, I was going to say like if Caleb, if, if the hype comes with him and then he's going as like QB9, I probably won't be in on him. If he's still going outside the top 12, I will be drafting him and. And taking that swing as a later on quarterback in drafts. Let's go to the packers here. Jake, what's your takeaway for Green Bay?
- [09:17]
B
Yeah, the draft capital doesn't always mean success and fantasy. And I fell into this victim trap too because the packers, mostly because Christian Watson was injured and looking at this opportunity and being like, we all did it, we all made jokes as soon as like, ha ha, you're not with the team anymore, Aaron Rodgers, it's time to draft a first round wide receiver. And like we all laughed, we all made jokes. And what did that mean at the end of the day? Jack Diddly, because Matthew Goldman couldn't Even get past Dobbs and how healthy Jaden Reed and even when Don Tammy Wicks was splitting opportunities with him. It's just golden couldn't get out there. And whether it comes down to a talent factor too, like I remember doing the shows back with Bogman at that time, because then I bring him up because he's a Texans Texas fan, is that I made the case that Isaiah Bond was the better wide receiver than golden at Texas. And there was a lot of, you know, discussion about that. But even so, looking at the fact that what golden can do in the big play opportunity was saying hey, he could step into that vacated Christian Watson role because of the injury and it just never clicked. So just because the wide receiver is drafted in the first round. I did an article about three years ago on the Athletic talking about the hit rate of not just wide receivers in their rookie year, but first round wide receivers specifically. Do you guys want to know what the hit rate was for just finishing top 30 every like in 8 not like points per game but playing like a bare like a minimum where it factors in like 10 games. I think it was just get throw off the top of your head, what's the hit rate for fantasy purposes? Top 30 if you're drafting in the first round wide receiver as a rookie?
- [10:47]
C
20%?
- [10:48]
B
50? 50. It was actually 50. It was legitimately 50 on the nose.
- [10:52]
A
Nailed it.
- [10:53]
B
It's like yeah, so but the point being that's 50. So like you know, you have a year where four are drafted, only two are going to even be fantasy relevant. Not these aren't wide receiver ones. This is fantasy relevant is that they're 50. 50. So anyway, bring it up to say that remember that going forward, if we have four or five wide receivers next year in our draft class landing spot draft capital, they matter. But let's also remember the draft capital part of it is probably only going to be 50% at best.
- [11:20]
A
Yeah. Ericson, what's your takeaway for the Packers?
- [11:24]
C
Tucker Kraft was going to be so good on this team and it was someone again. He's been my guy for the past two years. Just like when when it was him versus Luke Musgrave. I was so convinced. No, Tucker Craft is just better than Luke Musgrave. He's going to win this job and he balled out as a rookie in the second half and what really got me onto him was he was so good with the ball in his hands, yards after the catch per reception and that specific metric. I know that we point out a lot of efficiency numbers for wide receivers, for running backs, broken tackles. When I'm looking at tight ends, I want who can make plays with the ball in their hands, who creates yards after the catch. So that's what I'm trying to suggest to people when you're looking for, oh, who can be a late round tight end that smashes well, who's good with the ball in their hands. Like who's creating yards after the catch. So I just pulled from 2025 the top tight ends in terms of yards after the catch per reception. Any names that stick out to you guys that might be late round options? I'll tell you my favorite. So Darnell Washington, Dalton Kincaid, Colby Parkinson, Tyler Warren, Pat Friarmouth and Chig Okonkwo, who will be a free agent as well, so he could be on a new team. For me, it's Dalton Kincaid that kind of stands out because he's a former first round pick. He has this nagging injury thing. But what if there's a scenario where Dalton Kincaid is actually healthy in 2026 and he's going to be a late round tight end. He has Josh Allen as his as his quarterback. I know we talked about we don't like the receivers for Buffalo. Well, maybe we just need a tight end. Maybe Delta K could be the answer because I think he's going to be a late run tight end again even though he has had a hyper high target rate per route run this season because he's not playing all the snaps. I think Kincaid's kind of interesting just because he is good with the ball in his hands and that has been a key indicator to success at tight ends is yards after the catch per reception.
- [13:08]
A
Like Tucker Kraft, he's tight end 10 in the early rankings. He was the one that stood out to me. When you were listening to those names as in terms of like where they'll be going to like Tyler Warren you mentioned, but he's, you know, tight six.
- [13:19]
C
He's going to be. Yeah, he'll be expensive.
- [13:20]
A
Exactly. Jake, what do you think about Dalton Kincaid? Just kind of following this line of thought from Erickson here.
- [13:27]
B
I am okay with the value if it stands. I have a feeling we're just going to go right back into the trap of chasing Dalton Kincaid again. I say we as in like the industry people like just he ends UP tight end 7 because of the talent, because of the upside, because of the potential. But I go back to what is kind of like my takeaway with the Bills is stop chasing pass catchers on the Bills because it's just it's Josh Allen spreads it around and he doesn't need to target anybody and he doesn't need to specifically go to anybody. They play a lot of matchup games. We saw it in the playoff game and they run a lot of 12. Dawson Knox. I just double checked to make sure I was right. Is still under contract for 2026 with a big dead cap. I think it's like 13 million. I quickly glanced at it. So he's still going to be involved. Not that I think he's a threat talent wise, but this is what the Bills do. So I would love to say, yeah, I'm 100% in on Kincaid, but it's really going to depend on his ADP. He, he hangs around QB or QB, tight end. 10, 11, 12. Absolutely. He gets back into that 6, 7, that second tier range like he was this year and then I'm out.
- [14:25]
C
I just want to add one thing too Worm about just Tucker crack because this wasn't really a takeaway about the Packers. But just so with Tucker Craft specifically, you never know how guys are going to respond from ACL injuries. But the way that I saw Christian Watson come back from his torn acl, if Tucker Craft just follows whatever Christian Watson did, I think you should be in on Tucker Kraft next year and.
- [14:49]
B
Then go get them from there.
- [14:50]
C
Yeah.
- [14:51]
A
Where do you think Craft is ranked in early ECR?
- [14:54]
C
It's probably, I mean it's probably outside the top 12. Bad guess. People. People. No, people are people.
- [14:59]
B
I was shocked at it.
- [15:01]
C
I was like, we don't care that he tore his ACL. It's Christian 100.
- [15:04]
B
Now take, now take the ranking guess with 100. We don't care. Where do you think he is?
- [15:08]
C
Those tight end like four, three.
- [15:11]
A
You're still too low. He's tied in three. Well, he's. It's literally tier one.
- [15:15]
C
That sucks.
- [15:16]
A
Oh, tier one in early rankings is McBride and Bowers and then tier two is like seven names and craft is at the top of tier two. It's craft then, love.
- [15:24]
B
Well, it's going to be six names.
- [15:25]
A
Soon because of George K. Yeah, K's going to fall out of that.
- [15:29]
B
Yeah.
- [15:29]
A
Craft is currently tight end three ahead of Colston Loveland behind only McBride and.
- [15:33]
C
B. I didn't think there'd be a.
- [15:34]
B
Price by the way, for everybody out there. I'm not laugh. I, I legit feel. I love George Kittle the person, the player and everything. Like so I'm not laughing at KD entry. For everybody else, they're like oh, Jake's laughing. I was laughing at the situation for Craft.
- [15:45]
A
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B
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- [17:32]
A
All right guys, let's get to the Vikings. Jake, what do you have for us?
- [17:37]
B
Not everybody is QB immune. Or maybe how about the fact that like quarterbacks do kind of matter a little bit here because we all sat here. Justin Jefferson, by the way. Oh, yeah, like he did it with Nick Mullins, he's doing it with Carson Wentz this year. And we didn't know that in advance, but quarterbacks can kill wide receivers, even elite ones. Hell, I joked about it on another show, but Jake Browning killed Jamar Chase when he was supposed to just pick up. I actually thought he would pick up from what he did two years ago. I was part of that Jake Browning just disaster, honestly, of saying everything should be fine. So as much as we can sit here and say elite wide receivers can be quarterback immune because they're going to get the targets and going to get the volume and why wouldn't the quarterback just throw to him 16 times a game and blah blah, blah, like no quarterbacks can matter. So before we're just going to carte blanche being like, oh, elite wide receiver is fine. Like, I don't want to put it out there into the universe, but just because we're talking about this division, it's just like preseason next year Jared Goff gets hurt and we're just like, oh, I'm all around St. Brown will be fine because he's a mile around St. Brown. Let's take a pause and associate a little bit more of the risk with the quarterback playing the position and realizing that yeah, they do matter a little bit more than we wanted to let on for Justin Jefferson this year.
- [18:50]
A
So Jake phrased his takeaway as quarterbacks can kill elite wide receivers. Erickson, you have the same takeaway, but you go into a little more detail with yours.
- [18:58]
C
Yeah, I'm a little bit more specific with mine about it being young, inexperienced first year quarterbacks that can kill elite wide receivers. Just thinking back years. So Jake Browning is probably more of an outlier than anything else because of just how bad that he was specifically to. Because to your point, he had shown that he was competent in that offense. But it does kind of go back to another thing that I was thinking about too. And I think that when you have these, and maybe this is an explanation of why Jake Browning was so bad, maybe he wasn't playing with as much with Jake, Joe Flacco, for example, like he was playing with the total like effort, right? Like whatever, I can do, whatever. Whereas Jake Browning came in and I think that he kind of felt the pressure of I need to keep this offense afloat so that we don't get knocked out of the playoffs. Joe Burrow can come back and we can make a playoff run. So I think that playing with pressure, what is the quarterback under with veterans, like you said, like Nick Mullins, like, do. Do you think he cares whether they win or lose? Like, no. Like, he doesn't. He's like, I don't care. Like, I'm just going to go out there and chuck it. So I think that's where you're seeing. And a lot of these backup quarterbacks, Jacoby Brissette, you think Brissette was playing with a lot of pressure this year. Again, not talking about him actually on the field, but he doesn't care. Like, I'm just going out there to check the football. So I think that when you have young, inexperienced quarterbacks that are like J.J. mcCarthy, like, he's trying to prove that he can be the franchise quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings. So he's under a lot of pressure. Whereas Carson Wentz, again, this guy was like on the couch and then he just shows up, like starts slinging the ball to Justin Jefferson. So I think you're starting to see this kind of dynamic where these veteran quarterbacks off the couch, we don't know how good they are, we don't know what kind of, you know, shape they're in, but they're not under a lot of pressure because they just kind of show up and, hey, let's run the offense. Like, that's all we have to do. Whereas these young rookie quarterbacks. And J.J. mcCarthy, basically a glorified rookie because he missed his entire rookie season, he gets thrown into the fire as the starter for the Minnesota Vikings, misses a lot of time because he's dealing with a ton of different injuries. Again, his last start was his 10th start of his NFL career. And if you guys recall, Jaden Daniels his rookie year, Bo Nix his rookie year, the receivers, Terry McClure and Cortland Sutton, those guys were not good to start the first half of the rookie year. J.J. mcCarthy didn't even play a full season. I mean, he basically got to the halfway point and it wasn't even in consecutive games because he got injured halfway through or like after three games. So I think that's kind of where I'm starting to press pause. And with a player like a Tyler Schuck, for example, not a young player, like very experienced. And I think that's why guys like Bonix and Jayden Daniels eventually turned it on in the second half of the season because they were older quarterbacks, they played a ton of games in college. So I think that the age of young quarterbacks, rookie quarterbacks, does matter substantially. I mean, Drake man, Kayla Williams, we didn't love their Wide receivers in year one as rookies, but we saw them start to develop in any year two. Okay. We like a lot of these players that they're attached to. So I think rookie quarterbacks for the most part are bad for fantasy football. However, what we found the last couple of years is because so many guys are staying longer in college that the ones that come out that are already 24, 25 years old, that have played 60 plus games of college, I think those guys are actually a little bit more confident in trying to target their pass catches. Whereas a 21 year old rookie quarterback coming in to start for an NFL team, maybe not the best bet to make when you're looking at oh, should I draft this guy's receiver?
- [22:17]
A
Jake, where are you going to be ranking Justin Jefferson this year? Year two of JJ McCarthy still not.
- [22:25]
B
Inside the top 10. I say still not as in not. I didn't ever have him inside actually I mostly outside my top 20 for the past five, six weeks at the end of the season. So I hope be inside the top 20 because he is Justin Jefferson. And even as bad as it got, he was still scoring. It was very low double digits but it was 11, 12, 14, like that range of points per game even with how bad things were. So you would expect that hopefully McCarthy can get better or there's a new quarterback, whoever it might be next year. So I would expect that kind of to see an uptick. But that uptick is not going to get him back inside the top 10, at least not for me. And I know some people want to put him right back in there and even consider him as a fringe first rounder next year. I think the whole conversation we're having right now is proof and testament that like we need to factor in who the quarterback is and as of today that's a giant question mark. He could get back to be in a back, say back end of the top 10 wide receiver, but I think that might be the final limit.
- [23:23]
A
He's wide receiver 9 in early ECR rankings by consensus. Let's go to the Lions here. Jake, what is your big takeaway in Detroit? A surprising last place finish.
- [23:34]
B
My big takeaway is Ericsson copy pasted mine because it's, it's kind of. I love it.
- [23:39]
A
That's why I went to you first by the way was so you can get credit for having put this one first.
- [23:43]
B
The copy paste. I just love that it's the exact word for word like I'm pretty sure he copy pasted as a proof. Offensive coordinators make a significant impact. And this goes back to our NFC east show. You could talk about Cliff Kingsbury. This goes back to look, the fact that they are probably firing Kevin Petrulo with the Eagles is that offensive coordinators can make an impact to the weapons on the team. We see it with quarterbacks from time to get you go back to Eli Manning. Remember Eli Manning had that changeover and it took him about six, seven, eight games with that whole Gilbread in between situation until he was back to being Eli Manning. I'm not saying like oh my God, Eli Manning is amazing. It's just schemes take time to develop and we heard going into the season that Morton was going to change some things slightly and I think the wordage they use was something like if you pay close attention you'll see some of the changes. There was a very clear one and it was let's go back to using Jameson Williams like we did two years ago when he didn't do anything but run a route 20 yards downfield and out go routes post and that's all he's going to do. And then you know, we saw Dan Campbell said that's enough of this. We're going to go back to Jameson Williams being Jameson Williams and he went back to being a top 20 wide receiver top 15 towards the end of the season. I'm kind of leaving some of the Jameer Gibbs stuff for Erickson in this whole conversation, but that offensive coordinators we need to pay close attention to what this we have a huge coaching cycle right now. I mean we're talking eight teams, offensive coordinators changing, Blau took over for the commanders, just how big of an impact they can have on not just the quarterback but really like the wide receivers and the usage for the running backs and everything.
- [25:15]
A
Erickson, what's your totally unique and original takeaway for the Lions?
- [25:20]
C
Well, I think that this is just the fact right the they lost their coordinators, they took a step back on offense and although that didn't completely derail the offense, I think that was something I tried to be vocal about on shows was yes they're going to be worse in 2025 but that doesn't mean they're going to be necessarily bad because they weren't like outside the top 10. Like it was still like a top 10 offense that had a really had explosive playmakers, had a ton of guys that were great for fantasy. I was lower on Amrad St. Brown first consensus that was wrong. But I still loved Jameson Williams. He was a major draft hit. Obviously Jir Gibbs was an absolute monster. But what ended up happening was because the offense fell off just a little bit. What would happen to Dave Montgomery? Right? Like, he had one of his worst seasons in terms of how productive he was for fantasy. So when you're starting to see clusters of personnel usage in terms of they lost their coaches, the interior offensive line took a major hit, and that started to take pits and pieces of these ancillary pieces like Dave Montgomery. So when you're looking at the ADP landscape and all these lines, players, I felt like, for the most part were being drafted like this was just going to be the exact same juggernaut that it was from 2024, which when you just looked at the optics of the situation, because of the things that they lost, you could feel, okay, well, I think that bits and parts of this offense are going to take a hit here, and that's always going to be most of the time, like the lesser pieces. So. And I think, too, when you have a new office coordinator coming in, maybe you try to simplify things. What's more simple than, okay, let's just give the ball to Jameer Gibbs a billion times and not David Montgomery. Right? Like that, to me, sounds like a really simple way to, okay, I want this offense to cook. How do I do that? Just give it to Jameer Gibbs and not David Montgomery. So, again, that doesn't mean that Dave Montgomery is totally cooked. I'm not even actually sure if he's going to be on the Lions next year. They already talked. The GM talked about how we love to have David back, but not necessarily a guarantee. We'll kind of see how things shake out. So, again, Dave Montgomery I don't think fell off from a talent perspective. I think that he still showed that, you know, he's a very good in between the tackles. Runner still very good in the red zone, but he was someone that I was worried about heading into the season because of a potential fall off in offensive production. And that's kind of how we saw things shake out when Dan Campbell wasn't calling plays, especially in the first half of the season.
- [27:26]
A
Mike McDaniel is interviewing for the OC role in Detroit. That would be something if we. If we get that, that was our NFC north takeaways. Be sure to stick around all week for every division that we've got coming out for you. And if you missed any of our previous ones, we've already did the AFC and the NFC East. For Jake and Erickson, I'm Ryan Wormley. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in. 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 place. Positive review on apple podcasts@fantasypros.com review or on Spotify. Follow us on X Instagram and Tik Tok at Fantasy Pros and subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube.com fantasypros. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.