These mailbags likely won’t be crazy long most weeks, but you guys shot over a lot of good questions related to my rankings release Friday, and I wanted to get to as many as I could. Let’s jump right into it.
From a Discord DM:
How would you summarize the reason for ETN being a tier above Breece?
This didn’t feel right, and in the draft notes I took from last Thursday, I literally wrote, “Should these guys be in the same tier?” So this is a great question.
It’s a change that might come, but ultimately for version one I think Breece Hall has a little more risk of being in a committee all year, and I’m probably higher on Etienne’s receiving line from floor to ceiling. I’m pretty low on James Robinson’s return to be healthy all year, and I’m a little more concerned about LaFleur and the Jets having the Shanahan influence, as well as Michael Carter being a very good back but also Ty Johnson and Tevin Coleman and La’Mical Perine all still being there. I might be underselling Breece a bit, and there’s an argument to lean into the uncertainty with any prospect like him, but I don’t feel great about pulling that trigger as much as I did when it was Jonathan Taylor in his rookie year in a similar spot, and I think that’s a notable thing to articulate in the rankings. Hall is a great prospect, but there’s a fear from a football perspective he was a luxury pick for a team stockpiling talent for a longer-term window than 2022. Typically I’m laughing at that type of fear about a talented rookie, but this is a case where there are enough concerning elements and his price is aggressive enough that I’m just not finding myself above market on him.
To be clear, it’s all very close, and one thing I’ll discuss through this mailbag is not all tiers are created equal — it’s one of the things that’s hard with rankings in the first place, which is why I love tiers, but then I’d say I’ve had a really tough time with the specific tier breaks this year, too. The way to think about it, though, is tier breaks within target areas at certain positions as more subtle than tier breaks that go into dead zones. I will lay this all out, position by position, later in August, but this specific tier break is in my opinion before the RB Dead Zone and it’s a thing where I’m more willing to take Travis Etienne before a WR I might like, but Hall is one I want to get at a better price. It’s a much bigger tier break behind JK Dobbins in my rankings. Similar more subtle tier breaks are found in the WR target area in the middle rounds, while another example of a big one is found after the top-five TEs are off the board.
From Neoptolemus in Discord:
I have trouble understanding why the ADP for Breece Hall is so high, can you go into a little depth as to why that is? And I don’t mean specifically yours, just around the industry. I understand he is the incoming rookie but are the Jets an offense that we are really that excited for the lead back? I just see the Breece/Carter pairing in a similar vein to Singletary/Cook and Buffalo is an offense that is expected to be far more productive.
I think I touched on the concerns above, but I also reference the reasons to be in on Hall. He was a fantastic prospect with three-down upside, a great size/speed combo, and it’s important we’re not too exact when we analyze how rookies might fit. That’s the mistake the people fading Taylor in his rookie season made.
The other big thing, also like Taylor’s rookie season, is there is a clear multi-year trend of rookies coming on stronger later in the season and being a huge piece when it matters most. As for the Jets and Bills comparison, I’d add the overall RB value in the backfield here. The Bills tend to deprioritize the position, though maybe this gap won’t be as wide as it may seem. I do think the questions Neoptolemus asks are worth considering, and another interesting comparison is how the rookie WRs from this class are so undervalued in drafts, which is in stark contrast to the team-agnostic buy-in on Hall. I do want exposure to Hall, but I want to be price-conscious.
From Scott in Discord:
After all that, Pitts isn’t even above Andrews?!