Who is the John Calipari of the NFL? (The answer is Mike McCarthy)…
In today’s Fantasy Life Newsletter presented by Moby:
The Athletic mocked some INTRIGUING QB landing spots
Justin Fields vs. Russell Wilson…Choose your fighter
Free Agency Winners and Losers: LONG LIVE KYLE PITTS!
It’s 3/22. Take it away, Ian Hartitz…
The Athletic released their second NFL beat-writer mock draft of 2024. Intriguingly, five different QBs went off the board in Round 1 — and three were pretty surprising landing spots.
Check out the full article, but let’s dig a little deeper into these QB possibilities and what they could mean in Fantasy Land ahead of next season.
🐻 1. Chicago Bears (from CAR): USC QB Caleb Williams
Rock chalk, and for good reason: The 2022 Heisman Trophy winner is really freaking good at football. Here’s to hoping a suddenly solid-looking offensive environment featuring not one but TWO objectively dope WRs in D.J. Moore and Keenan Allen leads to Williams’ tenure in Chicago going better than … well, pretty much every other QB to ever play in the Windy City.
🐆 2. Washington Commanders: LSU QB Jayden Daniels
While ace Commanders’ beat reporter Ben Standig did note, “There’s no public or private consensus on whether Daniels or Drake Maye is the better prospect,” Standig is one of the most accurate mock drafters of the last five years, so it’s probably a good idea to listen to what he has to say.
The 2023 Heisman Trophy winner might be the single-most fantasy-friendly QB in this class. Fantasy Life’s Matthew Freedman wrote the following on Daniels in his way-too-early 2024 top-150:
“Jayden Daniels (QB14) is the late-round QB I want. He impressed as a true freshman starter at Arizona State (9.4 AY/A), he dominated as a Heisman winner last year at LSU (13.6 AY/A), and he proved himself as a legitimate runner (1,134 yards, 10 TDs rushing in 2023).”
😮 3. Minnesota Vikings (from NE): North Carolina QB Drake Maye
Trade! And it makes sense: The Vikings moving up into the top five to get their guy seems inevitable after acquiring an additional first-round pick from the Texans last Friday. Beat reporter Alec Lewis additionally wrote a great article on the relationship between Maye and Vikings QB coach Josh McCown — AKA the 21-year-old prospect’s former high school assistant coach.
With all due respect to our next QB: Sending Maye to Minnesota would objectively be the best thing that Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison could ask for at this point. Don’t confuse the near-consensus top-three QB as a completely finished product — but there’s a TON of upside here.
Drake Maye
👀 8. Denver Broncos (from ATL): Michigan QB J.J. McCarthy
Another trade! This time Sean Payton gets (in this scenario) his guy. And, like the Vikings, a trade-up of sorts feels likely after the Broncos released Russell Wilson and traded Jerry Jeudy to the Browns for some extra late-round draft ammo.
Fantasy Life’s Chris Allen recently broke down McCarthy’s game in detail. It’s easy to hate on the Michigan Man’s lack of overall passing volume, but then again, the Wolverines defense hardly ever forced the national champions into pass-first situations in the first place, and man oh man was McCarthy lethal when it mattered.
JJ McCarthy is one of the most efficient QBs on third down we’ve ever seen enter the Draft.
He practically broke the chart (@LuckIsMadeFF) with how clutch he was.
McCarthy should be a top 5 pick when it’s all said and done.
🤯 21. Las Vegas Raiders (from MIA): Washington QB Michael Penix Jr.
A THIRD TRADE! CAN YOU IMAGINE THE RATINGS!
One of my top takeaways from Week 1 of NFL free agency was the fact that the Raiders’ current QB competition between Gardner Minshew and Aidan O’Connell features two signal-callers who failed to finish inside the top 20 in basically any meaningful passing efficiency metric last season.
Enter: Penix, who boasts the best pressure-to-sack rate (6.5%) of any relevant recent QB prospect. There’s not much dual-threat upside here (unfortunate for fantasy), but the primary question facing the 23-year-old product is how much his LOADED WR room at Washington had to do with his production, so landing in an offense with Davante Adams, Jakobi Meyers and Michael Mayer must sound pretty, pretty, pretty good to all the truthers out there.
Speaking of trades…
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📺 Who will be the Steelers starting QB? Answers to all the post-free agency questions.
🏀 The madness continues on Friday. Projections for the day’s March Madness games are live.
👀 The Ravens are bringing a veteran WR in for a visit. OBJ’s replacement?
⚡ Will Jim Harbaugh bring out the best of Justin Herbert in 2024? Employing professional-caliber WRs would be a good start.
📈 Free agency REALLY helped the fantasy stock of certain WRs. In Curtis Samuel we trust.
🦅 The Eagles add another ex-Giants weapon to the squad. And he can FLY.
🤓 Helpful tips from Pete and company on acing Underdog’s Big Board contest. I don’t like it, I love it.
🙏 This incoming RB could be a fantasy stud on the right squad. Please Baby Jesus PLEASE.
The Free Agency dust has finally settled, so today, Pete is going to check the scoreboard. Who really won, and who lost? Take it away…
Last week, we covered the big ADP (average draft position) movements in the wake of Free Agency, but this week let’s zoom out and take a more spiritual approach to assessing the fallout.
If you don’t know what I mean by spiritual, you’ll understand shortly…
🚀 Winner: Kyle Pitts Truthers
Gather around for a story…
Ever since Kyle Pitts was drafted 4th overall in the 2021 draft, a cult of Pitts obsessives was born.
He was the chosen one, a TE in Calvin Johnson’s clothing who would re-invent the position and deliver us true believers unfathomable riches in the form of fantasy championships.
We selected him in the 5th round of drafts as a rookie — a price that seemed absurd to skeptics considering the historical lack of production from TEs in their first year — and yet he mostly delivered!
As a rookie, Pitts hauled in a nearly very nice 68 receptions and crested 1,000 yards receiving. But the rub? He only scored one measly TD (and it wasn’t even on American soil).
Us truthers understood the trajectory our TE savior was on. TDs are a volatile thing. He was due for regression. We doubled down even harder in year two and aggressively selected him in the late-2nd and early-3rd rounds of drafts. We could taste the breakout. He would be our generation’s Travis Kelce and Julio Jones mashed into one mega points-generating Voltron.
But it wasn’t meant to be. He tallied 28 receptions for 356 yards and two TDs before tearing his MCL in Week 11.
Flash forward to 2023 drafts and the market was finally giving us a discount on Pitts. You could get the former 4th overall pick in the 7th and 8th round of drafts!? Gimme dat. Like the Falcons hashtag, surely Pitts would #RiseUp from the ashes like a phoenix and deliver us a league-winning season in his third year.
But again, it wasn’t meant to be. A neutered offense directed by Arthur Smith and derailed by Desmond Ridder eroded the passing volume, and Pitts finished with a paltry 667 receiving yards and three TDs across the full 17-game season.
The bottom had fallen out. There was no way we could martingale him again. It was time for us card-carrying truthers to give up the ghost and shift to over-drafting another TE who would never hit their potential, like Dalton Kincaid or something.
But then 2024 Free Agency happened. Arthur Blank finally said bye to the FedEx heir who loved nothing in life more than spite-funneling Jonnu Smith targets over his generational TE. The team replaced him with Sean McVay disciple and your humble narrator’s preschool pal, Zac Robinson, to lead a modern offense.
And then the real coup? They backed up the Chick-fil-A truck for Kirk Cousins.
Cousins asked us Pitts’ truthers whether we “liked that!?” And we said, no Kirk…WE LOVE THAT.
Kirk Cousins then asked our hero for his No. 8 jersey. He even offered to donate a large sum of his new contract to a charity of Kyle’s choice. And Pitts said, get the hell out of here with that virtue signaling, I just want the damn ball:
Who's gonna get No. 8? 😂
@KirkCousins8 or @kylepitts__?
And so, as if we never left, us Kyle Pitts’ truthers are back. We are so f*cking back. I don’t even know if I’m allowed to say that in this space, but we’re going to make an editor remove it if not (Editor’s note: Looks good to me).
LONG LIVE KYLE PITTS. LONG LIVE THE TRUTHERS WHO ALWAYS BELIEVED.
Hate to break it to ya, but Justin Herbert is a loooser…
