1115: Players to Target

**Evan Silva** (0:02)
This is The Late-Round Podcast with your host, JJ Zachariason.

**JJ Zachariason** (0:11)
What's up everyone, it's JJ Zachariason, and this episode 1115 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, thanks for tuning in. I've been doing episodes in August on players to target and players to avoid for years now, basically since the podcast started. But over the last handful of years, I've been doing these episodes with a guest, and those guests have been the same guests each year. Two of the absolute best in the fantasy football industry, and Evan Silva and Rich Rebar. It's sort of become tradition at this point, and these episodes, I look forward to them each and every year. So today we've got Evan Silva from Establish the Run on the show to talk about five players he's targeting in drafts this year. He sent me over his list of five, and then I added five more of my own. We don't automatically agree on each guy, but you guys can hear the reasoning, hear why we're thinking the way that we're thinking, and then hopefully make better decisions during your draft.
Of course, with this being a players to target episode, we're doing this based on where these players typically get drafted. We're talking about values here. We're not just telling you to draft Jameer Gibbs. We all know that you should draft Jameer Gibbs. We're instead looking at this from the perspective of value. Before getting to my conversation with Evan, I just wanted to send another reminder to check out the Late-Round draft guide. There's well over 270 pages of content that includes game theory, strategy, ways to spot breakouts in busts, players to target, players to avoid, and more. It's all updated weekly directly to your email inbox. Check it out, learn more over on lateraound.com.
Now, let's look at 10 players to target with my guy, Evan Silva.
All right, Evan, here we meet again. Last year, we did some players to avoid. This year, we're going to do players to target. We each have five guys that we will be talking through, kind of giving our takes, having a little back and forth about them. But I'll kick it to you first. Give us a player that you want to start with that you are targeting in a lot of your drafts this year.

**Evan Silva** (2:16)
Kenneth Walker, I mean, I think he should be a first-round pick, like a consensus first-round pick. He pretty consistently lasts until the early to middle portion of the second round. But I strongly believe that he belongs. I have him number nine overall. I have him as my RB five overall. I think he makes all the sense in the world for the Chiefs to build their offense around Kenneth Walker. I think that's what they're planning to do, especially with Patrick Mahomes, coming off of December surgery. It was in December to rebuild his ACL and LCL.
Patrick Mahomes has already talked openly about how he's not going to run as much this year. He ran a lot last year before he got hurt. That will translate, I think, to more check downs, more screens. The Chiefs want to go back to using more of the screen game, which was a staple of Andy Reid's offenses for many, many years. They kind of have gotten away from that in recent seasons, but they've talked about how they want to get back to that. The Chiefs gave Kenneth Walker almost $15 million a year and almost $30 million guarantee. That is a lot for a running back. The Chiefs' top pass catchers right now are Travis Kelsey, who turns 37 a month into the season, and Rashi Rice, who had knee surgery in May and had to rehab from knee surgery in literal jail.
Our offensive line guru at Establish the Run, Brandon Thorne rated Kansas City's offensive line eighth best in the league. And I think you can strongly argue that Kenneth Walker is the Chiefs' best skill position player aside from Patrick Mahomes at this point. His top backups are Amari Demarcato, who was in Kansas City on basically a veteran minimum deal, and rookie Emmett Johnson, who lasted until the fifth round of an historically bad running back class. So Kenneth Walker has so little in-house competition for work, this offense is going to revolve around Kenneth Walker. I like him as a longer shot bet to win NFL offensive player of the year at 40 to 1

**JJ Zachariason** (4:26)
Yeah, I love the call.
You look at what the Chiefs had last year with Pacheco and Kareem Hunt, they were eighth in rushing success rate as a team, they were 27th in rushing yards over expected per attempt. And the reason for that, that we see that sort of dichotomy is, well, first off, we know that Kareem Hunt and Isaiah Pacheco are not explosive runners, right? They had one 20 plus yard run on over 280 carries last year, where Kenneth Walker does the exact opposite of that. Last year, they were like 8.5%, 6%, 10 plus yard run rate. Kenneth Walker, 15%, 10 plus yard run rate, right? Like, Walker's been the home run hitter, lower success rate kind of player. And we even see that, you see that in his runs, he bounces the outside and he'll try to outrun defenders. And that, he can do it because he's very fast, but that also, he'll get tackled behind the line or just make a stupid play, and then that lowers his success rate. But with this offense, you're going to see high success rates. They faced the highest percentage of light boxes last year. And so I think what we're going to see is at the very least, a potentially just annihilation on the ground for Kenneth Walker and what he can do in the offense. And like you said, the big question mark, I think, is the receiving stuff. But at the very least with him, he had that one target share spike season with Ryan Grubb when he was offensive coordinator.