Rankings Mailbag, Part 2

Kyren, Saquon, Kincaid, and more

It’s always a tricky balance this time of year where I absolutely love the feedback, and also love talking ball with you guys on the thoughtful questions you’re asking that challenge my perceptions, but I also have so much content to get through. I note that because I don’t think you should expect mailbags to become a regular occurrence, and to apologize to those of you who have sent longer, more detailed questions about specific league formats and those things. It’s really tough for me to spend the time reading and contemplating each of those types of longer questions this time of year (but if you can boil down, say, a keeper question to a one-for-one discussion of which of two players I like better at cost, that’s infinitely more likely to get answered).

The other thing is so many questions are coming in about topics I intend to get to, including strategy, so I get this urge to just start trying to write everything at once. But if I don’t get to a question like that, please know in some cases that I intend to get to the topic in a future piece. Sometimes I don’t always do a great job of replying to mention that.

Specific questions about what I generally think about a player or multiple players will be covered in Offseason Stealing Signals, and I really wish those pieces were done, but I’m laboring through them and they will be coming. I’ll also be layering in stuff on tiers and draft strategy and all that soon, while I continue to work through team-by-team stuff. I’ve started writing the promised home league strategy piece, and I’m really excited about how it’s coming together. It should give you guys a clear plan from all draft slots that covers most formats.

I did get some questions about where’s the best place to get your question answered, and in truth it’s probably by subscribing to my YouTube and popping in to one of the livestreams. I do a pretty good job of getting through a lot of the questions in the chat during those, although obviously no guarantees. I tend to go long on some topics and have a habit of falling way behind the chat and then having to skip a lot of stuff. But even in that case, if you drop your question in the comments there, I’ve been hitting all the comments on the videos because that supposedly helps the channel, and I’ve been trying to grow it this offseason. If you’re interested in that, you can turn on notifications to be informed of when I’ve gone live and am taking questions.

Anyway, I’m back today because after yesterday’s mailbag, there were more good questions about the rankings. These are the types of questions I do love to see, where they understand some element about a profile that I would typically be interested in, and challenge the logic behind my ranking. So let’s copy a few of these over as there’s some good player-specific and tiers-based stuff here that I had an urge to answer.

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I started off the year high on (Dalton) Kincaid, but I feel like most of the people I follow are getting spooked off of him because they have so many guys who can win from the slot, play volume & pass rate w/ Brady, and statistical and narrative complications w/ Knox. Do you share these concerns and does that imply a somewhat larger dropoff between T1 and T2 of TEs or do you have a much more bullish position?

I'm getting somewhat spooked on Kincaid, but I just think the scenarios where he isn't playing a big part of this passing game are incredibly difficult to believe. Who is then? They've been talking up Shakir, and maybe he makes a truly massive leap from a sub-14% TPRR the first two years of his career. Maybe Samuel sets a new career high in targets rather than landing in the 90-105 range he's been in 4 of the past 5 years (I think of him as a definite piece of the puzzle, but not a huge one). Maybe Keon hits in a massive way, but that seems unlikely, particularly from big target-earning potential. Knox keeps getting talked up, but Kincaid's rookie year TPRR was more than two percentage points better than any season of Knox's career (it was 19.6% to 14.5% last year). We're starting to ignore profiles and pedigree and the first-round draft capital Kincaid got to lift up questionable other profiles due to early camp reports.

And then ultimately, the question with most picks is not whether there's some risk to their bad outcomes, but "Can you envision real ceiling?" and that side of Kincaid's profile is not in doubt. Again, I'm mildly concerned about this stuff, but trying to keep it framed because I don't think it really matters to the degree most analysts are using it in their conclusions. But in terms of the gap between Tier 1 and Tier 2, if you're kind of out on Kincaid, I think you can make a case Kyle Pitts belongs not just with Kelce but ahead of him, as the clearest upside case at the position other than McBride and Kincaid. People aren't ready to ask the "What if Pitts is actually the 1 over London?" question, and it's keeping his price down, but no, even if you're low on Kincaid, that second tier is not without intrigue. George Kittle's upside is massive as well, and he'll rise if that Aiyuk trade goes down.

(On that trade: I haven’t let myself consider where I’d rank guys in all the Aiyuk eventualities, but if that trade does go down, I’ll cover the changes in their own post, because some of the possibilities are massive for fantasy. I’ll likely have to dust off the projections and do some work on the two teams.)

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Was just BBM drafting with the ranks and one thought jumped out to me: for how high you are on Houston and how relatively low you are on Mixon (currently 9 spots behind ADP), I'm really surprised to see Dameon Pierce so low (and below the Mattison cutoff).

Taking names out of it, seems we'd want to draft the RB2 in such an exciting, up-and-coming offense like Houston, even if the RB2's stats aren't ideal. For example, is he really that much worse of a bet than Bigsby or Sermon? In rounds 17/18 of drafts where RB dries up early, I tend to think Pierce is a decent, asymmetric bet at a flier price.

The Joe Mixon ranking is more about being out on RBs in that range, and I’ll have more about the RB Dead Zone soon enough to talk through that some more.

But I was there on Pierce earlier this offseason, until the Jawhar Jordan stuff and then the Cam Akers signing has me where the difference between Pierce and Bigsby/Sermon/Mattison is purely my confidence that he's actually the RB2. The latest news does sound like Pierce is pretty locked into that role, but one thing we know about handcuffs is the guy we peg for the role in August often isn't actually the beneficiary when an injury occurs in Week 8 or whatever. That's a long time to hold that role, and the relative gap for the player ahead of RB3 is meaningful to me when ranking these relatively low-upside bets.

I could see feeling more confident in Pierce than I do, for what it's worth, but that's the reasoning for why I land with him lower right now. There has just been such clear info that he wasn't a fit for their running scheme, and they've then tried to address backup RB depth in multiple ways this offseason (draft, random late FA add) which doesn't signal confidence or certainty. Even if he begins the year as the clear RB2 and Jordan and Akers aren't in the picture, I'd still be worried that if/when Mixon went down, Pierce would ultimately realize the contingent value (versus them finding another name at that point, or some point in between).

This is always an important consideration with handcuffs, but note that it’s not always the only consideration. In some cases, I’m actively propping up a player who isn’t getting buzz right now because I think he’s clearly the best fit long-term. The idea there is that between now and if/when the starter got hurt, that player’s likelihood of being the beneficiary of that role will increase, or else if it hasn’t by then (assume the starter gets hurt in Week 1, for example), that as things develop, that’s the player I’d want the bet on in the backfield to eventually win out in a scenario where the starter isn’t there. I’m not sure after last year and the offseason moves that Pierce is the obvious answer to that question for the Texans. In fact, I kinda think they’d do almost anything to not have him be that answer if Mixon were out of the picture, at least not in a workhorse way, which is what we’d need since he’s not a particularly efficient player.

If you compare that to a Will Shipley or a Deneric Prince, I’m not at all confident those guys would be the clear No. 2, but I do think both have intriguing profiles, Shipley’s more clearly as a strong athlete and producer, while Prince lacks for production in his background but is much more athletic than CEH and the situation is great for a floor of RB scoring (because defenses more or less give that). As I sit here today, I’m not all in on Shipley or Prince, but just thought it worth using them as Round 18 comparisons to Pierce. (The Bigsby/Sermon/Mattison group is more just about thinking they are pretty likely the No. 2s and would get a lot of work if the starter went out, but I still have those guys ranked very low and don’t take them much; if in a pinch, though, I’d take them before Pierce.)

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i get that you formulate projections/rankings assuming perfect health, but that leads to asking:

how shook of Kyren Williams ongoing foot issues are you?

as somebody who always goes out of the way to get McVay backs since the consolidation makes legendary outcomes possible, i was all set to Lock Button Kyren--they love him, and look at last year--but those foot injuries are *terrifying* and now i'm getting nervy.

lot of rankers (JJ Zacharison and a few others) seem to have him as a full-fade, and are prioritizing leaving with Corum accordingly....but man if the foot turns out to be nothing, Kyren is a monster play.

what say you??

First of all, I don’t formulate rankings assuming perfect health; that would be pretty silly in my opinion. I’m not super into predicting injuries, and probably weigh that stuff less than other analysts, but I absolutely consider injury, and one of my big shifts over the years has been to be cautious of guys with August injuries, a lesson I needed to learn again last year when I mostly ignored the early Cooper Kupp and Jonathan Taylor news, and then watched it carry into the season.

I’ve moved Puka Nacua and DeAndre Hopkins down my rankings pretty considerably. For Hopkins, it’s tough, because I do still think he has a certain type of upside that isn’t available in the later rounds, and there’s only so far down he can go. I would likely still take him before the low-upside floor-type WR plays outside the WR Window. Nacua’s also tough because he’s right before a tier break, but for now — and likely just in the short term — I’ve moved him behind that tier break in the redraft ranks. We’ll see how his situation evolves, but if I was drafting today, I’d be a little more likely to go over to a Tier 2 RB like Jahmyr Gibbs as my foundational first-round pick than pay Nacua’s price.

So I’m definitely somewhat shook by Kyren’s injury, as well. But I also don’t think you can draft scared — the stuff about his foot does make his bust risk higher, but he’s a case where the ceiling outcomes are still clear, and some of the risk is baked in at this point. It also feels a little more precautionary, like they might just be using it as a reason to keep his offseason wear and tear low.

I’m not saying I’d smash him in my highest-stakes leagues, but I have a healthy overweight position in best ball because on those teams I’m playing for the upside scenarios that this commenter and I agree are very important to Kyren’s range of outcomes. And in most cases upside scenarios should be your focus, not slight shifts in downsides, as I talked about in the Kincaid section.

Hopefully that’s consistent with how I’m thinking through Nacua and Hopkins right now. For what it’s worth, I also moved both Cooper Kupp and Calvin Ridley up, although Ridley still profiles as a fade to me; Hopkins’ injury just has me that much more concerned about the Titans’ offense.

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I’m curious to hear your thoughts on having Saquon (Barkley) ranked behind guys like Mixon & Jacobs, when he seems like a pretty similar bet. Is it because Hurts isn’t known to target RBs much, or is it more Saquon’s peripherals declining?

Great question here, as I’ve been asked about Saquon a couple times but this frames it really well. And the reason I’d defend having him behind those two backs in particular is a bit of both Column A and Column B, that the question alludes to.

In both Joe Mixon’s and Josh Jacobs’ cases, we’re talking about maybe the two most exciting young QBs in the NFL, with upside cases for the offense that could see them really take off. I don’t love either Mixon or Jacobs, but I do think there are scenarios where they get “brought along” for stable production all season because of a lot of work in this type of offense. Crucially, both of those QBs are more pocket passer types, and the RB target rates could be strong, especially in Jacobs’ case (they’ve talked about wanting to throw to the RBs and Jacobs specifically), whereas Mixon’s claim is more about a clearer hold on all the backfield work (they’ve talked him up as a workhorse, and I just got done talking about their unsettled RB2 situation above, whereas Jacobs is likely to split to some degree with Lloyd).

I have both those backs projected for 44 receptions each, while I have Barkley at 36 receptions, but I more or less had to fudge the numbers to get there, and to me the ways these three RBs hit statistically are much more fantasy-friendly for the first two veterans. Then of course you add in Barkley’s peripherals being down for several years, since his major injuries started, and you’re left feeling like you have to get a few things correct there — his health and efficiency have to be strong, and then you also need him to see different work than Philly RBs have in recent years, particularly with more receiving and/or TD potential. I do get that people are leaning in the TD upside, but that’s not enough, unless he goes on to score something like 15+ times, in which case we’d probably be talking about Jalen Hurts being somewhat overvalued.

In truth — and my rankings reflect this — I think if you set aside ADP, this is exactly the tier Saquon belongs in. His usage profile can’t manifest the same way Mixon’s or Jacobs’ can, but you can make more of a bet on his former pedigree (and the way Philly bought into that with their contract, although many former high-pedigree RBs have gotten too-big contracts after their primes; that’s the far more common outcome in the past than the Eagles knowing something the data isn’t showing) in telling yourself a story as to why he will outperform the projections-based concerns here. But the idea he can outperform those concerns to such a degree as to be a Round 2 pick is pretty difficult to follow, and even when I really tried to go hunting for upside in my projections to help myself understand the market rationale, I wound up with him belong both Mixon and Jacobs in those results (which aren’t an end-all, be-all, but again, it’s another data point that that’s probably the actual tier he belongs in). For what it’s worth, I have him rebounding to a 4.4 YPC (3.9 last year, but maybe this is light to his upside, and yet a little more rushing efficiency isn’t going to fix all these problems) and a somewhat-conservative 2.6% rush TD rate (that’s still close to league average and much higher than other recent Eagles’ RBs, and if I go too much higher than I’m really sapping the Hurts’ rush TD upside, as I said, unless you just have the Eagles as one of the three or so highest-scoring offenses in the entire NFL, but lookahead lines have them just behind Houston and Green Bay and all three have similar claims to that type of upside on a team level, with — again — the payoff likely better for the Texans’ and Packers’ lead backs than the Eagles’ in those upside scenarios).

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Until next time!