Tyjae Spears vs Tony Pollard - Who to Draft?

we're going to go through this together man we're going to just have a look at each player and how they did last season I think that's a pretty decent place to start so quickly looking at sleepers um player cards for each of these guys so Taj Spears clearly inexperienced right he was a rookie last season not only that he was playing behind Derrick Henry so he had very low volume he's got pretty much red charts all over the place so you could see that uh he only ranked 35th in half PPR obviously playing by Derrick Henry only 100 Rush attempts but for 453 yards now where he really made his money or made his cheddar is in the receiving game so he had 70 targets 52 receptions for 385 and a touchdown so didn't get into the end zone very much um didn't really produce much in terms of volume but he did kind of you know challenge Derrick Henry so a lot of these games as you could see he's over 50% snap rate um there were some games where he was above Derrick Henry right and he remained essentially involved but I think crucially with Taj Spears that he looked really good so anybody who had Henry or had or had Spears or was just a Titans fan watching these games you could see that he had juice so anytime he had the ball something good would typically happen um so that's kind of like the snapshot of last year for tajj Spears moving over to Tony Pard we kind of have the opposite effect we have a lot of green charts all over the place now I'm just going to quickly say this I think Tony Pard has been getting over on so I think I think he was a little bit better than a lot of people are saying now don't get me wrong I still think he was bad and I still think he was worse than he's ever been in terms because he's always been a very efficient very Dynamic very explosive player now the the reports were that he was unhealthy right that he was dealing with nagging injuries all season so that could explain why he wasn't effective but over the course of his career Tony Pard kind of has like this ascending chart right so it's like backup as a rookie in 19 backup as a rookie in 20 starts to get a little bit more work as you could see just his Ascent continues and when he finally takes over the starting job in 2023 you see that his volume increased into like a lead lead back type role but all of his numbers decreased so he had his worst Seer ever right so this is kind of like the fears that a lot of people had with Alvin chra and Alvin CRA kind of had a similar type of career trajectory right really effective and efficient when he did get work but as soon as he got the starting role we see his efficiency really go down now little side note dude I'm just thinking about this right now Devon could could the same thing happen to hn that makes me a little bit worried because I I am in on him in many leagues but that's essentially the situation I do think uh he's a little bit better than than you know we saw I mean he starts the season with 21 16 and 13 fantasy points in half PPR pretty solid very you know involved as a receiver especially um you know he had two touchdowns in the first game which I think many people were like nice well looks like I got you know an r a top five RB and then kind of like you know was pretty pedestrian these kind of middle weeks until like week 10 where he kind of wakes up again he has like a nice little four game stretch here where he scores a touchdown in each game or gets you know decent amount of receptions to make up for a lack of that touchdown but but essentially he looked slow he really wasn't hitting gaps very well he wasn't really turning Corners well like he used to he used to be that guy who would hit the sideline and could outrun linebackers and safy and stuff but we really didn't see that right they kind of turned him into a between the tackles type guy and it was kind of unfortunate now moving on I wanted to look deeper into the advanced stats so I did go to PFF brought up the premium stats and I was actually really surprised by what I saw here so essentially Tony Pard was better last season according to PFF when you look at the 2023 stats um if you look down here where I am currently highlighting um he had a 7 seven in total offensive rating right so 77 keep that in mind with Tony Pard actually having a 77.5 so that's something I did not expect right and I think Tony Pard even had a higher run run percent so 84.7 as pure rushing versus 77.8 so Taj spear is a little bit better like across the board in passing and pass blocking and in running but Tony Pard obviously was a better Runner which I did not expect maybe that's what's bringing his average up because you can see that he's got like orange yellow and light green and some of these other categories not really what you want to see as I mentioned it's like an efficiency thing he just wasn't very good but overall looks like he was better than Taj Spears now if you look at like the breakdown over the course of the Season tajj Spears was you know pretty average most of these weeks I you know you can make the case you can make the argument that well he wasn't getting the volume right like how do you get momentum how do you establish yourself if you're just not getting the opportunity right Tony Pard was getting the opportunity and really had a very similar chart right like in week 18 TJ Spears was fantastic it seems um only played what 17 snaps so maybe that's why I guess I guess that's more of a um low low volume equals efficiency type of argument but moving on I I was looking everywhere on Twitter on YouTube looking for stuff about Spears vers Pard in terms of like Camp reports there's really been not much let me know if you guys have found anything but I did find that yesterday or no M okay one second I'm going to go back so yesterday there was a report from Callahan Brian Callahan their new head coach we're GNA talk about Brian Callahan and the impact that I think he's gonna have or that you know some people think he's goingon to have on the team so we're gonna watch these two videos together coach's standpoint is it a little bit more unique um in the running back's room just with two similar backs in terms of deciding who will be the starter with Taj and Tony yeah I don't that those two doesn't I don't really look at them as as one starting over the other truthfully um I I think they both have really unique skills um that we're going to find a way to use in a lot of different ways then that's the fun part uh for me right now is is how are we going to deploy those guys and U maybe they both play at the same time maybe one's one gets hot and we let him run maybe one gets you know maybe we just rotate back and forth I don't know what that's going to look like yet um but they're both going to play uh quite a bit of football for us and and I don't view either one of them as a as a starter or a backup they're both starting starting players to me um and then real quick so he basically said he views both of them as as rb1s or starters um he did say that they're both going to be very involved so coache I don't know let's let's continue the rest of the running back room it's going to be fun to to see how that shakes out I mean we still need guys to contribute on special teams from the running all right so he pretty standard here just says you know we need other guys but he used them as 1 a1b now in this little thread from coach beak index where they're kind of gathering all these different like this is back from May 22nd where he spoke about them um he talks about Spears's route running I don't think we really need to watch this one but he does say and this is important I think it's worth watching at least the beginning let's watch the beginning of this Tony and uh Tai have such SK similar skill set from what you've seen of them so far how do they distinguish themselves from Le um that's a good question I I think taj's got um a little bit a different route running ability where an Tony's got a he's a smoother Runner they're both really explosive um those guys are the ones I'm probably of all the of all the groups that we have I think those guys are the ones that are the most exciting for me just all the different places you can put those guys in the formation all the different all right so pretty clear to me what he what what we can decipher from that he essentially views tajic Spears as a little bit of a better route Runner or a different route Runner like he said he views Tony Pard as more of a smooth Runner more of a between the tackles Runner pair that with the fact that we do know based on PFF Tony par was a better perer Runner it seemed um and Taj spear seemed to be better kind of across the board kind of as a pass blocker as a receiver seems like I now here's my expectation here's what I think it it turns out being that Tony Pard gets a lot of the early down stuff maybe first and second down and I think Taj Spears gets maybe some third downs and some drives where he gets like first second and third potentially but I do think you're going to see both backs on most drives maybe they switch drives you know one one or the other maybe a negative game script it's just Taj I can see that happening too now the reason this is so confusing in my opinion is because Pard is also a fantastic receiving running back right he's one of the the better running receiving running backs that was his original role before Zeke Elliott was gone right so that's makes all of this kind of a cluster like again offensive coordinator Nick Holtz views them as interchangeable as 1 a1b kind of just echoing the same sentiment so let's talk about Callahan talk about what this offense is going to look like you guys might recognize the name so he's the son of Bill Callahan an old old head coach I don't really know much about him but basically draft sharks creates this every year it's super good where they talk about kind of like the the head coaching impacts on different teams right so I found Tennessee Titans basically the the the takeaway from this is that we can expect their passing rates to potentially go go higher so Brian Callahan to sum it up played with some pretty good quarterbacks right Pon Manny Joe burrow Matthew Stafford and some various like assistant roles and stuff like that quarterback's coach so he's kind of an offensive-minded head coach to begin with right so that's kind of the the main thing the second main thing that we like a lot is that um Callahan comes from the Shawn McVey system in some way I let's see let's see where where I saw that um so Holtz is kind of an unknown guy that's the offensive coordinator but it does look like Callahan will be calling the play so I don't know how how that's going to shake out we really don't know um but you know his most recent stint Callahan was as the offensive coordinator for the Bengals even though Taylor the head co coach of the Bengals was doing most of the play calling uh you know K had a had a say in it and I do think they were a pass heavy team they were ranked top five and 11 personnel rate and um the Titans were never top were never top 20 right under Mike Ville so um Cincinnati also ranked top six in pass rate that's something that we do want to see especially for you know backs like par and spear I they kind of fit that M perfectly of like a pass heavy team um so Run game impact let's have a look at this uh spread out base formational lighten boxes for Tony Pard and Taj spear so I think a combination of the style that these guys play with as well as um the fact that they'll be passing a lot more and the fact that they have two kind of distinguished players means you kind of can can start to to see where their roles might shake out right so you know a better offensive line also with cushenberry and then they spent a round one pick on JC leam so they're their line should be better so that should help Pard but they should be you know pass heavy which should help both of them but maybe Spears more so that seems to be my takeaway I think it really comes down to whether will Levis can operate the offense and kind of keep defenses honest if they can score points stay in games they can be a neutral game script or even positive game script um but that's a big if right so you b you basically have like two realities that can exist will Lis belows Cox and they struggle and they're a negative game script tajj Spears is very you know involved um they're in he's fine and they're in neutral game scripts or even positive and then I think you'll have both guys but I think both guys are pretty safe picks here is my my thoughts on the matter I think Taj Spears is the guy that I'm going to be going after I've already drafted him in some leagues I just think that he showed what he could do last season I know there's a new coaching staff but you know he's been with the team he has some juice while Tony par the last we saw of him is that he did did not have a lot of juice and if he was injured and he's fine now and he has juice I'm wrong but I do think like seniority him being on the team I do think that like if he pops off early I do imagine them leaning on him now Kanan did say in one of those videos we watched that they're going to play like a hot hand type approach so anything could happen any week and that's what makes Mo both of them kind of risky that's why both of them are kind of later round picks but I think they're both valuable picks to be honest that's like my my total you know my takeaway the takeaway they're both value I lean towards Spears because he's a little bit more of a value because you can get him a t tiny bit later maybe like a round later than Pard uh those are my thoughts man I let me know what you guys think dude if you guys found any type of info on these guys I would love to hear it I'd love to to see any any you know beat writer reports or anything I've been scouring the web dude scouring I've been I might get fired for my job because I've been spending so much time on this but anyway let me know what you guys think peace [Music]