7 BUSTS You’ll Regret Drafting Early in 2024 Fantasy Football

Intro what's going on man welcome back to the basement rron and the more I think about it the more the early rounds of your fantasy football drafts are like a game of Battleship of course you're trying to draft next year's CD lamb Christian mcaffrey and get the studs up top but you're also trying to avoid those landmines and huge bust that can just completely derail your fantasy football team so today we're going to try our best to look into a crystal ball and identify the seven players you'll regret drafting inside of the top six rounds of your fantasy draft these are guys that I think have huge bust potential are over priced and I have not drafted them so far through the 10 or so high stakes teams that we've drafted on stream as always if you enjoy this video we're almost at 50,000 subscribers which feels crazy to say so make sure you subscribe leave a like if you enjoy let's [Music] goze my now first up we have saquin Barkley Player 1 now for honestly because we have like a week left of draft prep everybody has their home leagues either today tomorrow this week next weekend whatever we're going to start using this for the players I am working behind the scenes with a guy who knows how to do API and we'll eventually maybe have like a a a a small web page you guys can use to kind of see the consensus rankings but this is just ESPN default rankings sleeper default rankings Yahoo default rankings which is their xrank all put together for consensus into a consensus pick so our first player here is saquin Barkley he is the consensus 112 he's going as the rb5 by consensus and then you can see individually ESPN he's going 11th sleeper 11th Yahoo 14th so the deal was saquin I can't justify taking him anywhere in the first round even the early second feels Rich I'm taking AJ Brown over him I'm taking Garrett Wilson I'm taking pukaa and on the running back side of things as well I'm taking Jonathan Taylor I'm taking jir Gibbs Ken Williams and Devon Anan all over saquin Barkley when we take these running backs early we talk about it all the time with the legendary running back upside Theory as laid out by Pat carine a few years ago if we're taking a running back early they are very fragile they bust at a high rate last year we had mcaffry up top but then you also had Austin Eckler beison Robinson Tony Pard uh Nick chub a lot of guys drafted highly didn't pan out so if I take one of these guys early and we know how fragile they are and how much these running backs bust I need the upside case scenario of hitting like 20 plus points for or being the rb1 overall and I just don't see how sequin gets there he hasn't hit 20 plus points per game since he was a rookie and this isn't the same sequin that was the prince who was promised best running back Prospect I've ever seen I sometimes even go back and watch Pence state saquon Barkley highlights he was a monster then rookie year was a monster ever since he tore his ACL he's getting older as as a running back as well we just don't see very long careers at the running back position right you can think back to Todd Gurley and Levan Bell and all the Running Backs from my childhood outside of of like the true Hall of Fame Blue Chip you know Adrien Peterson types and I guess sort of leanian Tomlinson these guys fall off a cliff and for seon I'm not saying that he's falling off a cliff just yet but he's not that same guy like I know he holds a lot of name value as saquin but this is a good string of tweets here from Jacob Gibbs we use his stuff all the time make sure you follow him on Twitter atj gibbs2 and here from 2021 to 2023 the last three years of data saquin is sixth worst in his tackle avoidance percentage and it's a bad list to be a part of man we're talking Zeke Elliott forette latavius Murray Joe Mixon Jamal Williams Rashad white AJ Dylan Antonio Gibson some of the least efficient runners in the NFL now everybody was in his comments saying what you guys are about to say as well well the offensive line sucks he was probably getting hit before or at the line of scrimmage he then dispelled that myth where uh initial contact met at or behind the line of scrimmage on average was 20% and then average avoided tackle rate beyond the line of scrimmage 17.5% so you actually by having a bad offensive line the running back of course has to now evade that tackler more often which actually leads to higher avoided tackle rates saquon's bad offensive line should have helped him it did not his avoided tackle rate has actually still been super super low and then if we look at as well well maybe he was going up against heavy boxes on a bad Giants team we look here he dispelled this myth as well when you look at runs against light boxes over the last three years I believe he's 39th in avoided tackle rate 41st in rushing EPA per snap 45th in rushing success rate among 46 qualifiers so all I'm saying is that I don't think that he's the talent that He once was and taking him in the first round at the 112 or 111 like he is on ESPN is a really thin bet and then you add on top of that I I know that it seen as a positive that he's not on the Giants anymore but D McFarland laid it out here you look at the year-over-year correlation of running backs changing teams we usually want them to stay on the same team their PPR points their Rush attempts routes targets are all much less sticky when they move to new situation and we also have a scenario here on the Eagles where yes the offense will be better it'll be the best offensive line he's had it'll be the best scoring environment he's had in his career but this is also a team that doesn't really feature a running back Jaylen Herz has never had a running back finish inside of the top 15 in points per game now of course we're talking my sanders we're talking DeAndre Swift but I just showed you saquin the name value is there I 100% get it but he is not by and large a massive upgrade over those players and we're going to have Jaylen Herz squeezing for receptions he's not going to check it down as often as a guy like Eli Manning when seol was a rookie and had that massive year and then the goal line rushers are going to be split so he's definitely going to have more touchdown upside than he had in New York but it's still going to be capped at a ceiling now I get all the time wasn't Jonathan Taylor dealing with the same stuff with uh Richardson yes but I would rather bet on the talent of Jonathan Taylor Who's 25 years old no torn ACL history is still on the same team has juice it's just not the same bet to me because he's not on the the set the you know the back nine of his career yet JT is still firmly in his prime where that's not really the case with saquin so again I would prefer a bunch of other running backs in the early second I'd prefer a bunch of receivers at that one-w turn and I think saquin is going to be a pick that people end up regretting especially you know in these home leagues where he's going 111 110 I've seen him go as high as 1 n 109 Player 2 in some places uh and I just can't get there now I do get a lot of comments on these do not draft videos of it's a lot of running backs you guys know I do enjoy my wide receivers I take wide receivers early and often but I wanted to shine some light on some receivers here because honestly the way that I started this outline for this video was not even early round busts but really more so players I haven't drafted yet in my high stakes draft that we actually stream all the time we I think we've streamed la like four of the last four nights High Stak straps we stream every night until kickoff make sure you check those out but I was looking through it like guys I haven't drafted yet and then I also don't think I'll probably end up with any of them and Mike Evans fits that build now Mike Evans isn't necessarily like an awful pick but I think that he is a pretty brutal pick especially at that Yahoo rank of pick 20 and he's also in your home League he's just a a bigname player so he's going to go inherently earlier and I think at the the back half of the second round like 212 211 210 and even in the early third when in these consensus rankings you have to take him over Cooper cup over Malik neighbors over Jaylen wadle I just can't do it even guys like DJ Moore and DK meaf I would take over Mike Evans and here's why when we look at Mike Evans he's on I I'm hesitant to call it a bad offense but it's a bottom 10 or so offense in terms of Vegas projections as highlighted by Connor Allen here he looked through all the Vegas lines before the season and found which teams are projected to score the most points Tampa Bay is 22nd on top of that you have Dave Canalis leaving with this tweet from Ryan Heath every single spot that Canalis has come to the quarterback play has improved if Baker Mayfield goes back in terms of adjusted net yard yards per attempt with just passing efficiency if he goes back to that 483 2022 number this whole offense is going to really struggle and Mike Evans isn't going to be as good as he was last year where he was a wide receiver 10 finisher in terms of points per game and you drafted him in the sixth round which was massive right that was a huge win and somebody we were drafting as well on this channel but now we're drafting that in the late second and last year was actually kind of an outlier for Mike Evans over his last five seasons he had a really really strong year but I would bet against him beating it we can see Over The Last 5 Years 13 touchdowns was up to par with 2021 and 2020 what happens if that goes back down to 6 to8 touchdowns his targets per around 23.5% was a 5year high what if that comes down now with the addition of Jaylen McMillan a new offenseive coordinator Chris God now going back full-time into the slot yards PR run 2.32 again a five-year High coming off of a baker Mayfield career year if Baker Mayfield's efficiency dips so does Mike Evans and then PFF grade 83.2 His Highest since 2019 we're talking about a 31-year-old wide receiver you can kind of expect a lot of these to regress back to the mean and if we're talking like under two yards per out run under 20% targets per out running like six to eight touchdowns he can still get I'm not saying that he's not going to get his 10,00 yard season he will I mean that's just what Mike Evans does and I'm not going to bet against that but he can hit a thousand receiving yards and be like a backend wide receiver to instead of that wide receiver 10 and points per game he was last year and what you're drafting him at at the late second so I would just rather pass you know you can take other good receivers later you're going to get you know Malik Neighbors in the fourth you're going to get Stefan Diggs in the fourth in these home leagues you're going to get Wadd cup in the third you're going to get even in the fifth tank Del T Higgins R Rashi rice so I would just rather shy away from Mike Evans if there's a guy like Devon Anan on the board or nicoo Collins that's the direction I'm going and just to put a cherry on top again I'm not calling for the fall off here but he can absolutely get like if he ends up with like a th000 yards and seven touchdowns that's a loss in the second rounder at the two3 turn this is where he's at in terms of Ryan Heath's wide receiver performance by career year year 11 at this point this when we start to see a little bit more of a dip again I think that he can be okay but wide receiver 13 uh I think he's more likely to end up as like wide receiver 23 than he is wide receiver 13 Player 3 now moving on from that you know we're putting we're putting our neck on the line here right these are early picks for a reason but we're going to again try and look into a crystal ball and talk to the players that might Bust or underperform in their ADP and Sam leaport is one of them now I have no issue with Sam L pora the player I think he's a good player it's really for me more that you can get Trey McBride in the fifth round and you can get D con Kade in the fifth round and it feels Rich to have to take leaport at 302 with those guys available later when we look at Underdog's projections they their pick them lines where they have higher or lowers you can see here with Sam loraa he's projected for 12.6 PPR points per game right 81.5 receptions 875 and a half receiving yards 7 and a half receiving touchdowns and that's you know a sizable advantage over McBride Andrews cancade uh Pitts KD right I I included like the top seven or so tight ends here and you can see their consensus rank on the end here's the thing when we talk about just receptions and yards though and we take out the touchdowns right points per game with no touchdowns samor at 9.9 Trey McBride at 9.4 dong kid at 9.3 so you're paying two rounds extra really just for touchdowns and when we look at correlation this is a really cool stickiness chart from Ryan Heath yards have a 71 correlation year-over-year targets 73 whereas touchdowns are just. 52 they're all over the place right we just saw that Mike Evans chart where sometimes he'll score 13 sometimes he'll score six sometimes he'll score eight and you're really just paying a premium on the Porta for those 7.5 receiving touchdowns and who's to say even though canate is a 5.5 projection McBride is a 4.5 projection who's to say that they can't outscore leaport in terms of touchdowns it wouldn't be all that crazy for that to happen right especially being concade in a really good offense that's going to score touchdowns it just feels like you're paying a premium I think you know if you could get aort in the fourth versus McBride In The Fifth and Canad in the fifth and find one round differences in anything but 302 is a premium pick we're talking 254th ranked on sleeper I haven't drafted Lea yet and it's just because I see those top five tight ends Kelsey leapa McBride Andrews and Cade almost all in the same tier to the point where I don't really want to pay extra for lorta and pay that premium and you're kind of looking at a 2v2 here of you take leor in the third and then you come back around later and you probably take like you know Z flowers in the fifth so you can either have leapor and Z flowers or you can take like Cooper cup or niik Collins in the third and then come back around in the fifth and take Trey McBride or King Kade I like the trade-off of the the TR McBride concade and just get cup or niik Collins to me it's just a bigger tier gap between the receivers there in terms of round three versus round five so again it's not even necessarily like Sam laor the player I think is bad but we could see some regression where last year a lot of his production came off of like 10 plus touchdowns he didn't even hit 10,00 receiving yards which is something that Kyle pittz has done in the past as a rookie we'll see he could definitely make take a step forward here Alan R st Brown is still in this offense as well uh I just don't think that he's he's worth taking two rounds ahead of the other tight ends we have a a big crop of good tight end Targets this season so I'm a little bit less likely to take Sam lorta at the two3 turn then we have Brandon auk man Brandon iuk and I think Player 4 it's because these home League sites right he's at the consensus 303 as the wide receiver 14 these consensus play uh places right ESPN actually has him ranked just fine at 36 but sleeper has him 26 and Yahoo has him 24th that feels like a lot right that feels like a lot we're talking about on sleeper I would have him you know he's ranked 26th I would have him behind Devonte Smith at this point in time and here's why he is somebody who is of course Uber Uber talented right we have this tweet from Jacob Gibbs in terms of players with over 300 routes and over three yards per rout run he is one of the youngest players to ever do it second youngest after Nico Collins in a list with just Julio Jones Cooper cup Tyreek Hill that is rare air that means he's a very very talented receiver and last year we saw as well his efficiency numbers were crazy expected points for game at 10.5 he ended up being the wide receiver 41 in expected points per game this is just based off your targets your Red Zone targets your ad do and he outproduced that by 5.2 so he was the wide receiver 41 in usage the wide receiver 15 in points per game and I say this to say he's a very talented receiver but you're threading such a such a fine needle he hit one of the best efficiency seasons of all time right three plus yards per out run five plus F per game and even still he was just the wide receiv receiver 15 in points per game that was maxed out efficiency wide receiver 15 in points per game consentes wide receiver 14 and the biggest concern I have is that before the hold out stuff I was open to making that bet and saying you know what he's just that good he'll have that efficiency again he'll be a top 15 wide receiver again I have a hard time you know again three plus yards per out run just a list of niik Collins Julio Jones Cooper cup Tyreek Hill you have to be on your game to hit a three plus yards per out run season and that's why he needs to hit wide receiver 15 numbers in this offense and if you're holding out and you're taking time away from football I just don't expect him to just get right back on the field and carry that same efficiency it might start slow you know you have sort of established connections with Debo and KD and some of you might say well what about the volume just going up well you still have Debo there you still have KD there you still have mcaffrey there and this is a team over the last three seasons that has been 32nd 26th and 29th in pass attempts this is not a team that's going to pass the ball they're a low volume passing offense they still have a ton of weapons you would need an injury for his volume to go up and then we also have these reports now apparently the 49ers are still working on a deal with auk Niners Insider says that the team has had talks with the commanders and Steelers and don't expect him in the team huddle in week one now our week one status is up in the air he's taking time off from football to the point where I don't know that he's going to be able to sustain the efficiency he had last year and then we also have the idea that he could go to the commanders and have a worse quarterback or he go to the Steelers and have a worse quarterback so I've moved him down to the bottom of that tier where you have you know Devonte Smith DK meaf DJ Moore uh all of those guys I've just moved him to the back I'm not taking him until like the very very late third or early fourth it's just too much is up in the air and it's too thin of like again you need 99.9 percentile efficiency from a player that could potentially start slow and hasn't been in practice or you know getting game reps in so I just think it's a tough bet to make even though I do like the talent and before this hold out stuff was very Player 5 much fine drafting in the third round then we have Michael Pitman and we we honestly shout out Michael Pitman in like every single one of these do not draft videos but his price is just ridiculous man 306 by consensus he's going as the 20th ranked player on ESPN as the wide receiver 10 on ESPN uh pick 40 on sleeper pick 35 on Yahoo and this is how you know that his price is out of whack is on Underdog where it's wide receiver heavy he's going in the fourth round on Underdog he's going at the 306 by consensus he's going in the second round of ESPN he's going in the third round of Yahoo again fourth round on Underdog which is best ball three wide receivers One Flex usually is pretty wide receiver heavy now I will say shout out to Underdog fantasy make sure you check them out use promo code Ron when you sign up and they'll match your first deposit up to $1,000 we now have like a cool look at this thing go we have a cool animated uh promo code thing here but you can find the link in the description the comment section down below and you can hop into these lobbies and kind of just get a feel for what these drafts look like uh and you can kind of see even if it's a wide receiver heavy format the players are ranked as efficiently as possible where these rankings here are from Real Money real money is on the line the sharpest drafters in the world are drafting here and that's why Michael Pitman at wide receiver 25 on Underdog but he's wide receiver 17 by consensus that is just awful value any way you cut it now when we talk about why he's ranked this way on Underdog and why people who are putting money down don't really like Michael Pitman it's for this reason he last year was very good and he was actually somebody we were drafting a ton of he was wide receiver 14 in points per game he had 109 receptions but just 15 of them came from came from Anthony Richardson and we look here he had 12 games without Richardson 16 points seven points per game that's amazing four without him just or four with Anthony Richardson but without Gardner mchu he had 13 points per game not so great and to me he's just a bad fit for Richardson who is going to scramble a ton there's not going to be a lot of Pat stems in this offense then you also have Richardson who likes to push the ball downfield he had the highest Ada among the first round quarterbacks in 2023 right that's Bryce young that is CJ strad and pitman's average up the target over his entire career is 8.6 J L his career a do 8.1 so we're talking about like a really low a do player the same reception upside of 109 still isn't there you have ad Mitchell running out of the slot instead of Michael pman now you have a guy who's like operating on the outside but his ad dot super low and then you also have the idea that Shane styken likes to run the ball in close this is a good tweet from Jacob Gibbs here the past three Shane styken seasons have all resulted in more rushing touchdowns than passing touchdowns even including the Herbert rookie season Sten has a 41% Red Zone pass rate only four teams post at a lower rate than that in 2023 41% Red Zone pass rate that is going to be a lot of Anthony Richardson Zone Reed a lot of Jonathan Taylor up the gut four touchdowns in this offense most of these touchdowns will be to Anthony Richardson or Jonathan Taylor leaving Michael Pitman as the odd man out so now we have lower PPR upside in terms of receptions just based on Richardson scrambling instead of checking it down or looking to throw the ball deep and then less touchdowns because it'll just be Richardson and it'll be Jonathan Taylor pounding it into the end zone so I have a very tough time taking Pitman anywhere near where he goes in these home League drafts I personally have him right now as a fifth rounder in my rankings now our sixth player is going to be Alvin kamaro he's Player 6 going at the 410 by consensus pick 33 on ESPN um he when we talk about dead zone running backs of guys that are just simply projections for workloads and nothing else Kamar fits the bill I just simply can't take him when we look at it year-over-year from jaob gibes here his avoided tackle rate by season has just gone down every single year since 2019 last year he was sixth worst in tackle avoidance rate and when we see that this is where we can kind of see running backs start to decline and yes I understand okay well he just has kendre Miller and Jamal Williams behind him but that's the Trap he's on the 25th projected scoring offense it's going to just be a PPR scam but not as good as it was last year uh and in the fourth round you're passing on Malik neighbors you're passing on um K meaf Devonte Smith here in these consensus rankings in terms of Home leagues I just can't get there I'd rather take Kenneth Walker who goes in this range I'd rather take James koku goes in this range if you really want a running back here this is where I'm also taking like tight ends and Elite quarterbacks to me Alvin Kamara is just a pretty brutal bet uh you can also get you know right at this four five turn as well tank Dell Rashi rice T Higgins so to me Kamar in the fourth round just very clear Dead Zone running back uh that I want nothing to do with and our Player 7 last player our seventh player that I am not drafting inside of the top six rounds of fantasy drafts is Keenan Allen he's going at the 607 as the wide receiv receiver 31 as high has picked 64 over on sleeper and people don't understand like yes he had the best year of his career last year but it wasn't it wasn't because he played his best football if that makes sense he was a big beneficiary from Kell Moore uh here you can see when Allen was used in pre- snap motion Kell Mo usually uses this guy out of the slot with pre- SNAP motion it's why people are very high on either AJ brown or Devonte Smith based on who they think is going to have this role in Kell Moore's offense in Philly uh he had a 35% Target Prout run as a pre- snap motion guy 13.2% first downs per route run without motion 26% targets per route run 99.9% first downs per route run which is just fine but it's not like Keenan Allen was a monster and had his best career ever this is like a pretty standard Keenan Allen year and I think that we're going to have a bit of a come down here he's changing teams new quarterback new system and and he has looked pretty brutal in the preseason so far now I will say it is just preseason but so far he has ranked 250th of 285 qualifying receivers you have guys like Hayden Wings looking at his film and saying he doesn't move the same way that he's moved in the past and then you also have the downside that Shane Waldren puts him in the jsn role that we all hated from last year people keep saying oh it's going to be Roman dun I don't think so Roman dun's final year in college he had a 15.5 yard ADOT downfield only played 17.4% of his snaps from the slot on the the other side Keenan Allen has much similar numbers to jsn where he's at 9.9 yard adott 59% slot rate to jsn 6.4 yard ad Dot and 69% Slot rate now I might say well 9.9 yard ad out is much further downfield than jsn 6.4 well jsn ad out in college was n yards plus and Shane Waldron then took that down and forced him to pee in this role we could 100% see this happened to Keenan Allen so the downside of age falling off due to you know age and injury he's missed a ton of games over the last two years we've seen these wide receivers change teams then completely fall off right in the past where we've seen Julio Jones go to Tennessee you've of course you know seen a lot of other ones that I don't really I don't want to mention it in a bad way but of course you've seen like Andre Johnson go to the Colts you've seen uh a lot of things not work out Brandon Marshall to the Giants I'm trying to think there's a lot of these guys that later in their careers they change teams and it just doesn't work out as planned here so I just can't do it there's almost never a time where I'm on the clock and Keenan Allen is available but romad dun isn't either I just prefer romad dun straight up I know that that's aot a hot take but if I'm on the clock and they're both there I'm taking Rome uh it would have to be a scenario for me where Roman dun is not on the clock but Keenan Allen is for me to ever end up with him on my roster and that just hasn't happened and we do structure our teams for the back half of the season and usually these veterans sort of tail off as a season goes on whereas the rookies end up being the league winners down the stretch like Rashi rice Jaden Reed Z flowers and puka AA all were last year and I think romad dun has a much better chance of being that than of course a guy like Keenan Al now that is going to do it for us today if you want to make sure you're avoiding sinking your team with busts in these early rounds make sure you check out the the rankings over on patreon.com Ron Stewart you can find them in the description and the comment section down below I have my top 200 cheat sheet with tiers and my target rounds for each player and they are based completely off of all the research we do from all these videos where I have all of these guys pushed down so you won't be drafting them you'll be drafting the guys with rb1 upside early and filtering your teams down the strategies that we outline on this channel but if you can support there just leave a like again almost at 50,000 subscribers so make sure if you're not already subscribe if you're new and I will see yall in the next [Music] one like this fr I