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Is Tetairoa McMillan A League Winner? | Must-Have Players in Fantasy Football Drafts (Ep. 1672)
00:20:44
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This is an iHeart podcast.
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Hello everybody. Welcome into Fantasy Pros. I'm Ryan, warmly joined by Andrew Erickson and by Terrell Furman. Guys we are talking must have players for our 2025 drafts. Quick reminding for everybody. Reminder I should say before we dive in. All of our 2025 consensus rankings and tiers can be found at fantasyprose.com/ Rankings. Also a reminder to check out Real Time ADP. That's at fantasyprose.com RealADP it is a cool new feature we have a Fantasy Pros. ADP can be a bit of a lagging indicator at times. You see a lot of data kind of mixed in from early on in draft season. Real Time ADP from Fantasy Pros shows you where guys are actually going right now. So if you want to go out and get Bill Crosby Merritt, you know what round he's really going in, not what ADP on the sites you're drafting on will say. So be sure to check that out again. Fantasypros.com RealADP we're talking our must have players here. We're going to do some early round guys, we're going to do some mid round guys and we're going to do a couple late round guys. It's a shorter video so we'll dive right in here at the very top. Erickson, starting with you, who is your.
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C
Early round must have Drake London, wide receiver for the Atlanta Falcons. I think that he has the chance to really level up with Michael Penck Jr. Taking over as the full time starter and the Falcons offense. London in 2024 was an absolute red zone monster 23 red zone targets that was third most among all wide receivers. He also posted the third highest target rate per out run at 30%. I just think that this is Drake London's monster campaign coming. I think that he has a chance to score double digit touchdowns again. He hasn't always been used the right way through Arthur Smith's offenses the past couple seasons, but with this offense here I think that this is where he catches a ton of touchdowns. I think he's a dark horse Finish. Wide receiver 1. You look at the past wide receiver ones I believe over the last six seasons. The thing that all those guys have in common, they all led the NFL in red zone targets and that was something that put me onto Jamar Chase as the wide receiver one entering last season that he had just this monster red zone target rate with Joe Burrow as his quarterback. And I think that Michael Penck is going to do the same thing with London and 2025. So he is someone that if I had to take him in the first round I would but make available in the second round. He is an auto pick for me every single time.
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There are amongst all the experts in the fantasy pros consensus rankings there are only eight people who have him ranked higher than I do now. Two of them are Fitz and Debro and actually three of them are Fitz, Dbro and Ericson. But I have him. I've tied with you Ericson at wide receiver five. Like I he's wide receiver nine in real time ADP.
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He was wide receiver five last year 18 weeks.
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But yeah, it's just too low and like Fitz and deeper have him wide receiver 4 like they are even higher. I, I do have Nico ahead of him and then obviously the the top three are the same for everybody or for the most part. But yeah, I, I just think London's upside is immensely high and I don't understand how you can get him in the second round. Like his real time ADP is pick 204. That is crazy to me. There are a lot of really good receivers in that range. I get why people might have a personal preference but for me after those elite three, I'm taking Nico and then I'm taking Drake London and I'm sleeping happy at night. Honestly.
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C
Yeah, I mean his ADP is the same as last year and really it's not a reflection on him but just a reflection on how good round one and round two is. Just a lot of really talented players at the top of the board which is why again feel comfortable when I hey, I have to pick at the back end of round one. No problem because there's round one guys in past years that are available in round two.
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Terrell, you also have a receiver here for your first pick and how did I know that it was going to be Malik neighbors?
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I mean I'm only spitting facts here. This is not even any bias or anything. Weeks 1 through 4 Last season with Daniel Jones at as his quarterback, Malik Neighbors was wide receiver 2 and happy PR. He was great for the season. He was second in the league in targets only to Jamar Chase. He was top 15 in routes per route, in yards per route run. He was first in targets per game, first in his expected fantasy points per game with 20.3 points per game. And he had the first read percentage. And now he has an actual quarterback playing the position. Somebody that's going to actually throw the ball downfield because Daniel Jones couldn't get the ball 10 yards downfield without inaccuracies or anything else. Or Malik Neighbors having to run back to the football and then having to run back forward and trying to make something happen. Like, I think that this is just going to be an astronomically good year from elite Neighbors. And as somebody drafting in the back end of drafts, I think Neighbors could be wide receiver 1. You talk about Drake London a lot of these stats. Neighbors was, was surpassing Drake London last year. So I think that all those players are really good. But Neighbors, barring any injury issues, I know he's been dealing with what they say is a back or it could be a toe or all these other things. If he's out there, he's going to get targets. He's going to be immensely valuable for fantasy. He had seven touchdowns in a season where they really, really couldn't even get on that side of the field at all.
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I will tell you this, Terrell, if, if I could guarantee health, he would be my wide receiver for like, like that is, that is to me, that's why I have Nico and London ahead of him is because I'm like, there's just enough there for me to be nervous about, like the back, the foot, just like whatever it is. Because he's somebody who like obviously dealt with like some of the concussion stuff last year. Like, like there's enough there to make me nervous when there are other receivers. I really like. Setting the health aside though, he absolutely has as good a case as anybody to be number one this year. Like the volume. He had what, 170 targets last year, like as a rookie with poor quarterback play. I could only like if we get any Jameis Winston, if Jackson dart is a real thing, like it doesn't even matter. It's going to be a quarterback upgrade. And when he is on the field, this dude's going to get 15 plus targets a game and he's going to do a lot with those targets, I think. So, like, for me, like Terrell, it's just the injury. Erickson, do you where do you have Neighbors ranked?
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Actually I have them ranked lower than the guys you talked about with like Nico Collins and Drake London. I just like their quarterbacks a little bit more in terms of the combination and betting on those types of offenses. Taking the leap again, I do think that Malik Neighbors leading the NFL and Targets would surprise nobody and that definitely puts him in the category of being the wide receiver one overall. But I do have concerns about if the offense does stall out and he doesn't see the touchdown opportunities that maybe he saw last year or how, how high is that ceiling? Can he score 15 touchdowns? Because I think Drake London and Nico Collins can. And if Malik Neighbors isn't scoring 15 touchdowns, well, is he going to be able to beat those guys? That's my only hesitance with him. I would say though in full ppr. I mean it's really hard to beat Malik Neighbors just based on the volume. So I think it does matter in terms of format where half ppr you really want to lean into that touchdown upside down where I think in full PPR. I mean if neighbors is catching 10 balls a week, like it's just going to be really hard to keep up with him this month.
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If you want a chance to win a signed AJ Brown Eagles salute to service helmet for free courtesy of our friends@pristine auction.com all you have to do is subscribe to The Fantasy Pros YouTube channel right now, drop a comment below in any video and that is it. We will be announcing a winner right here on the channel. So make sure to turn on those notifications so you can know when new videos are up and to claim your prize. So every time I do that, read on an episode with Erickson, he does the little salute for us, which I appreciate. Let's go to the mid round. Must haves here. Terrell, we'll start with you on this one.
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Yeah, and this is a guy I've been targeting and it doesn't really matter in what format but I just feel like he's going way too low. And that's Isaiah Pacheco. Isaiah Pacheco is being drafted all the way in the sixth round now, which is crazy because a year ago, prior to, you know, an injury that nobody could foresee in him getting that lower leg injury, you have Isaiah Pacheco who was being drafted in the second round. He was being drafted as a top 10 running back and, and there's nothing anything better. If anything, the offensive line is better than what it was a year ago. And so I think that now everybody is kind of turned off because they see what the numbers were for Isaiah Pacheco after the injury. But you gotta remember the first two games prior to that injury, he may not have been running the ball the most effectively, but he was killing in fantasy points, 15 and 14 fantasy points per game in those two games. So I think that Isaiah Pacheco is, has one the best thing, no competition. Because I don't think that Kareem Hunt or anybody else in that depth chart is going to compete with them for touches. And then he's going to have the option, the, the benefit of an offense that is mad, that is angry, a team that says, hey, we didn't have our guy for the majority of last season and when he came back he wasn't playing well. We really couldn't play into the run game and we still won all those games. Now we have our run game now we can control clock. Now we can start to pummel Isaiah Pacheco in the fourth quarter. I think that he's going to get a lot of usage this year and he has a role in the passing game. He still has that role in the passing game. So there. I don't think he's going to be a six round running back when it's all said and done. I think he's going to be closer to an RB2 and ceiling RB1 what he was projected to be two years ago before the lower leg injury. So I think Isaiah Pacheco is going to have a great year.
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Pacheco being available where he is is the reason that I love the wide receiver heavy approach early in Draf because I feel like pretty confident I'm getting a guy with RB1 not overall, but an RB1 upside in the late fifth, early sixth round. Like I just. If he never. Erickson, you might have been the first person to make this point. I can't remember where I first heard it, but somebody made the point that I thought was really great that if he never came back at the end of last season we would be ranking him higher. It's because he looked bad when he came back, but it's like he should have looked bad. He was coming back from a broken leg in the same season and so he just was. If he was just injured for the year and it's okay now he's back and healthy, I think he'd be going in like around three or four because this is the lead back for an offense that I think is actually going to be like pretty good this year which you know, it doesn't sound like it should be going out on a limb for the Chiefs, but it kind of is relative to the last couple of seasons. I think the addition of Josh Simmons make this offense more explosive. Like I, I, I'm kind of anticipating like a pretty explosive year from the Chiefs in general, which I think is going to mean more scoring opportunities and Pacheco is going to be lead be the lead back. I think he looks pretty good from what we've seen in the summer. Like I'm very, very in on Pacheco at cost right now.
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Erickson yeah, I agree. I think that he's a great value proposition and like Terrell's point, he was being drafted in the second round last year and he came back too early from the injury because his team was trying to win a Super bowl, not because they decided that he was all ready to go. And it's funny because if Rashi Rice had come back and looked terrible again, this is before all his suspension stuff, but if he had come back and looked terrible then he never would have been going as high as he was in some of these earlier summer best ball drafts where he was going as high as the second round because oh well now he looks good and healthy because we didn't see it. We just, we, we, we forget that when they come back and play through injuries. Yet yes, this guy's not the same but now that he's in a full off season removed from the injury, I think it makes total sense. And yeah, I think that you're getting closer to his floor rather than the ceiling, which I think can definitely be a low end RB1.
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And to add on to all of that, Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift just got engaged. That didn't have anything to do with anything but I just wanted to go ahead and put that in there and make sure that we got that in the show.
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Yeah, I was because Erickson and I joked about maybe turning our last episode into an emergency podcast for that, but we thought peop the listeners might revolt if we did. But worth mentioning when talking about the Chiefs, Erickson, who is your mid round.
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Must have he's a mid round pick but he's anything but a mid player. Tetaroa McMillan Wide Receiver 1 for the Carolina Panthers I think that he is being drafted at his floor. When you just look at the production on average of a top 10 wide receiver over the last four years, 80 catches, 1050 receiving yards and 6.3 touchdowns, that's the average. When you look at that in terms of half PPR points that's in the wide receiver 2 range and when we talked about on an earlier show about his real time ADP, it's outside the top 24 at the position. So I think that he's set up in a Dave Canales offense that we saw last year. Deontay Johnson in that role as the wide receiver one for this team be very very productive before he completely disappeared and now he's not even on the Browns anymore. So that being said they have filled that wide receiver role with a uber talented top 10 player in Tetro McMillan. I think that stylistically he fits exactly what Bryce Young needs as a big body wide receiver that can also win on the inside and the outside. The coach speak has so been strong for him about hey, he's going to see a ton of targets in this offense and I think we're going to see it from week one and I think that he's going to be A consensus top 20 ranked wide receiver in the week two rankings after he balls out in week one this Labor Day.
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I'll save everybody some time since this is a shorter episode. Go listen to our league winners episode with Erickson and myself to hear more about Tedro McMillan. Or go listen to pretty much any other episode from this month because we've talked about him a lot and we adore him. Couldn't agree more. We'll we'll move past him for the sake of this episode. But yeah, just like an awesome must round must have guy. Like I'm getting him everywhere I can. If I can get him in like round five even. I want to tell everybody about the Draft Simulator. You can use our draft Simulator on the Fantasy Pros app to run a realistic mock draft within five minutes and test how your team looks with your must have picks. If you need advice during that mock, just ask Coach, your personal fantasy football assistant. It taps into our reports, projections, rankings and news to give you applicable advice for whatever you need. Try both our Draft Simulator and Coach for free right now@FantasyProse.com Mock Let Coach Be your shortcut to smarter and faster draft day decisions. All right, late round must haves Erickson, who you got?
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Michelle Tutin, Running back for the Jacksonville Jaguars. I just think that this guy is going to be an absolute stud when he gets this opportunity in the Jaguars backfield. I know that Cohen hand picked him as their fourth round rookie running back draft selection. Yes, Travis Etienne and Tank Bigsby will be there in the beginning of the season, but I think eventually probably in the second half, I think we're going to see a 2 in takeover from the tugboat himself. So so impressed with what he did this past season. He was top 10 in the FBS yards after contact per attempt among running backs with at least 100 carries and according to Sports Info Solutions he was number one in missed tackles rates four per attempt and the guy that was in that category in 2023 was Bucky Irving So I think that this year's Bucky Irving is clearly going to be Bashal Tutin.
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Terrell, I saw you making the VT symbol over there. Given where you're.
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Oh no, no, no. Aggie pride. Aggie pride. He went to North Carolina A and.
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C. I don't know why I see you.
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I do, I do love Virginia Tech. So he's my guy.
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Pretty sure.
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Really my guy. Because you guys know I do love Virginia Tech but my alma mater is the North Carolina A and T Aggies and that's where he got his start. Yeah, I, I love to. And that's my guy for sure. Double double college team over there. But I'm just not a believer in it this year. Me personally, I think that is Tank Bigsby and I think Tank Bigsby is going to make it a very, very hard case for him to dominate the touches workload. I think he will push out ETN for the receiving game, but I don't know if the touch is going to be there. I think it's going to be a Tank basement kind of season.
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You guys had me rethinking everything. I was like, I'm pretty sure I've talked about him as Virginia Tech this whole summer. And when you said no, no Aggie, I was like that very much. Threw me off.
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Shout out to shout out to the Aggies.
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Yeah. Tootin, another guy that we talked about in the league winners episode if anyone wants to check that out. Terrell, who is your late round must have.
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All right. Late round must have. For me. He really ruined this because he just requested for a trade but honestly they're not going to trade him. And so Jacoby Myers. Jacoby Myers is a late round must have. Now I understand the trade request and people are going to be actually this is making it better because he's probably falling in drafts currently as we're speaking because of that. And what people don't realize is one, it's pretty hard to just trade somebody out of the blue. There are a couple of options. Maybe the 49ers make a call, but they just went and got Sky Morris. So I don't think they might be looking for anybody anymore. But the Raiders also have the money to just go ahead and pay him. He just wants to get paid a little bit more. He wants some guaranteed money on the year for somebody who had a thousand yard season the year before. He doesn't have any guaranteed money this year for somebody who, despite Bowers being on this team a year before, after Devonte Adams got traded weeks 1 through 14 led the team in target share and receiving yards and he's just asking for some guaranteed money. So I think the Raiders are going to figure this out. I don't think that they're going to go into the season. Yes, people saw the Amari Cooper News. I think that was a tactic on his end. And this is a big chess match between Myers camp and the Raiders. But I think they're going to figure this out because this is a wide receiver since 2021 that has outperformed his ADP in every single season. Wide receiver 3033 Wide receivers 24 Wide receiver 23. He's been amazing and guess who he's been catching passes from. Cam Newton, Mac Jones, Chair Stum A Connell Garner Menu. Now, I'm not saying Joe Gino Smith is Joe Montana or anything like that, but he's way better than those guys. Especially Cam Newton in that version of Cam. Not Cam, you know, we. Hey, Cam, you know. Yeah, I ain't. I'm not Gilly. I'm not Gilly. Cam, I'm not throwing those shots at you. I'm just saying when you was playing in New in New England, it wasn't the same. It wasn't the same. So with that being said, Jacoby Myers is going way below where he could finish if he continues this season with the Raiders, which I do think he will. I think this is just a tactic on both sides to try to get leverage in negotiations and all he wants is some guaranteed money and the Raiders actually have cap space to just go ahead and pay him. So I think they're going to end up going ahead and paying him and he's going to be a very, very good asset for Geno Smith alongside Powers.
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I love looking at guys where sometimes it's as simple as like, this guy's been productive and now he gets a quarterback upgrade. Like that is sometimes like the, the most baseline level of fantasy analysis, but I think it is really applicable, especially in this situation. Erickson, I do want to quickly get your opinion on Myers before we get out of here because I do think he's a really good value. I strongly agree with Terrell. He's a great target. Do you see the upside with a guy like Jacoby Myers or is he more of like a high floor value type of pick?
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I think I probably lean towards more of the the high floor category just because we've kind of seen him what he can do at the NFL level and at his peak it's really not been, oh, he's going to be a top 12 wide receiver now, maybe just because he hasn't had that quarterback yet to kind of elevate him to that next level. To your. Like, to the point that Furman made. But even with Geno Smith, you know, were those Seattle Seahawks receivers, like, winning leagues between DK Metcalf and Tyler Locke? And I think they end up being good values for where you drafted them, especially when Geno Smith was thought of as a just a backup journeyman quarterback. I think Myers, like you said, I don't think you're gonna be disappointed if you draft him. Obviously, if he. The only concern is if he gets traded and then he has to figure out a new offense or a new depth chart. But there's also scenarios where he gets traded and he gets an even better quarterback or gets a bigger upgrade. I mean, if he went to the 49ers, like, like there's no one left on that receiver room. And we know we've seen this Kyle Shannon offense Cook. So we saw what it did with Juwan Jennings last year as a older receiver, that maybe was a little bit undervalued. So, look, I'm always going to be in the camp of Jacoby Myers again, guy that started out with the Patriots and that the Patriots didn't feel like they had to keep him and let him walk and decide to sign Juju Smith Schuster instead. You know, when I first heard the trade request, I said, jacoby, come home, baby. Please, Please come home to New England. Like, we could definitely use you.
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I would love that. As a Drake May investor.
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We saw Drake May ball out, you know, in unc who is a slot receiver, Josh Downs. Pretty good. Pretty good slot receiver, quarterback connection. I think the buyers would actually ball out on the Patriots. So, yeah, if he doesn't get traded or if he does get traded, I hope he goes to the pats.
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Does history repeat itself? Jacoby Myers would ball out on the Patriots. If we went back in time about four years ago, I think we had this same discussion.
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He knows that McDaniel's offense, man, he balled out within the Raiders, too.
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A
All right, we'll go ahead and wrap things up there. Those were our must have players in 2025 drafts for Erickson and Terrell. I'm Ryan. Thanks 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 positive review on apple podcasts, at fantasypros.com review or on Spotify follow us on X Instagram and TikTok antasypros and subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube.com fantasypros.
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