Jakob Sanderson's 5 Favorite Fantasy Football Picks

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**Hayden** (1:10)
He's still gonna be on the show, I promise you guys. Things look different around here. It's all good. You guys know Jakob from the WaverWire show. You guys know him from all the writing he does. One of the best analysts in the game. Honored to have his five guys that he can't stop drafting over on Best Ball. This also is gonna matter over at Yahoo as well.
The first name, we disagree, and it's in the top of what, 10 or so picks. Ashton Gentry, tell me why you're on him.

**Jakob Sanderson** (1:35)
Yeah, so this is probably my biggest stand in the first round. He currently goes right at the one-two turn. I have him ranked eighth overall in my Best Ball rankings on both Underdog and DraftKings, which you can find over on Thinking About Thinking.
And largely this just comes down to the fact that I think of all of the running backs going after those very consensus top four. He is the one guy that I'm most confident in having just an all around every single box checked part of the role in terms of, I see a pathway for him to get a ton of receptions. I see a pathway for him to get a ton of carries. And I don't see any sort of backfield competition on him for goal line work. Probably I'm guessing the area of biggest disagreement from you, because I know you've been a little bit lower on him this year, is just what is the touchdown upside on the Las Vegas Raiders. And I think that's where I'm putting a lot of faith in Kubiak. And I'm putting a decent chunk of faith in the combination of Cousins and Mendoza to at least reach competence. And I'm putting faith in a improved personnel and health on the offensive line. Like for me, looking at last year, I also thought the Raiders would be more competent than they ended up being.
I didn't know that Chip Kelly was going to be calling old plays that weren't in the play sheet from the box. I think Kubiak is going to be a little bit more locked in than Kelly & Carroll company were. There's no longer a nepotism factory running the offensive line. And I also think they had basically two offensive linemen that to me were worth a crap on their team last year. One of them was playing out of position all year and got hurt. The other one also got hurt basically immediately. So hopefully we get Miller, JPJ back healthy. Linderbaum is going to be a massive addition to the interior of the offensive line, even if he was probably way overpaid.
He's going to still be easily better than anyone that was playing in their interior last year. And so I think it's going to be reasonably functional. And with that, I'm just banking on like 300 carries and 80 targets for Ash and Gentie in a Clint Kubiak design run game that I expect to be pretty darn competent.

**Hayden** (3:42)
Yeah. And that was a flawless argument. I really can't like nitpick any of that stuff. Like to me, it is just the like upside for touchdowns. Like Saquon Barkley can have a similar season. I do think the differentiator is just the receptions versus Saquon, Derek Henry, those types out there. And then Devon Aitchin, James Cook, Kenneth Walker. I would guess that they're going to have fewer all around touches. And like those are the guys that he's competing with. So like he's one of the highest floor backs there is because like, I mean, Mike Washington is not going to get in there and get too involved. Like the touches are going to be there. I think he's around one, two turn pick. To me, I was like, could Saquon have like the Saquon season? I mean, like maybe that percentile outcome is probably just a gear that Gentie can't hit right now unless I'm like really low on what his actual skill set is. I thought he was like fine as a rookie, but I did not see like this is B. John Robinson. This is Jamir Gibbs. You know, this is Saquon Barkley. I see more like this is Josh Jacobs, like totally fine.