Man vs. Machine 2026: Evan Silva and Michael Leone Debate Their Biggest Rankings Discrepancies (Episode 1008)

**Adam Levitan** (0:15)
Hello, and welcome to Episode 1008 of the official establishtherun.com Podcast. My name is Adam Levitan, and it is time for the summer's most anticipated event, the battle the entire fantasy football world has been waiting for. It is time for Man vs. Machine 2026 edition in one corner, representing the basement dwellers, the quants, the spreadsheet socialists, the pale ones, the scientists, the no sex havers, the machines.
It is Michael Leone. Leone, how's it going today?

**Michael Leone** (0:58)
It's going well. Is this my time for remarks to her?

**Adam Levitan** (1:02)
This is your time. With the floor is yours for remarks, yes.

**Michael Leone** (1:05)
Okay. I just want to speak to the people from the heart right now.
You know, we have the man ranks on one side, the machine ranks on the other side. The man ranks. There's no checks and balances over there. That's a man who's declared himself king and does whatever he wants to help a select few with his rankings. On the machine side, democratically derive the every person's ranks. Hard work, knowledge, anyone can use these ranks to succeed. It doesn't matter.
You know, if you identify with a certain league or you select a certain scoring system, this is the American dream is the machine ranks.

**Adam Levitan** (1:46)
All right. Well said. In the other corner, representing the grass touchers, the patriots, the ball knowers, the alphas, the intercourse havers, the humans, the men.
It is, of course, Evan Silva. Evan, how's it going today?

**Evan Silva** (2:05)
It's good to be back. I feel like we've been doing this for five or six years, but it really got serious the last two years, I think, and I beat Leone in 2024, and he won on a technicality with an asterisk last year. So this to me feels like the rubber match year, very, very important for both of us.

**Adam Levitan** (2:25)
Yes. Stop the Steal, if you will, was Evan's mantra from the last results of the Man vs. Machine.

**Michael Leone** (2:33)
I'm glad to know we're in the it's rigged portion of the FilmBro Fast Vision Timeline.

**Adam Levitan** (2:40)
For anyone not watching this on YouTube, number one, you should be watching this on YouTube. Number two, though, let me describe the scene here. Silva is wearing a literal American flag shirt with a historical USA flag hat. I am wearing a referee jersey and Leone is wearing standard ETR nerd attire.
On today's show, we are going to pit the man, Silva, against the machine, Leone. To be clear here, Silva is representing his personal top 150 fantasy football rankings for this season, which are from his human mind. Leone is representing our ETR rankings, which are more model-based with a lot of human-based but still mathematical interventions. They will debate their biggest ranking discrepancies this year. And I, your humble referee, your humble judge, will declare a winner based on their argument. Not which ranking I agree with. I'm going to try to do this based on who had the better argument. Once this NFL season is over, we will revisit these debates and name an official winner of Man vs. Machine 2026
Before we get started here, I just wanted to make it clear. We are adding a weekly Man vs. Machine show during the season this season. That show will be for NFL in-season product subscribers only. The idea of this show is each week, there's going to be five or six big fantasy football storylines. Just going to allow Silva and Leone to debate them. Be sure to pick up our NFL bundle now while it's still on early bird price. That combines Draft Kit Pro and in-season. You can purchase that at establishtherun.com. Head to the subscribe tab there. That is the bundle, early bird bundle price at establishtherun.com.
All right, without further ado, let's let the dogs off their leashes and get into it. We are going to cover 17 players, 17 ranking discrepancies here today.
First player, and I'm going to give Silva the floor here first. First player, Justin Jefferson. Silva is at 16 overall on Justin Jefferson. ETR ranks come in at 8 overall on Justin Jefferson. Silva, the floor here for being low, lower than ETR and lower than market, frankly, on Justin Jefferson.

**Evan Silva** (5:14)
So I think it's at least just a little bit worrisome that Kyler Murray couldn't shake JJ McCarthy right away to begin Vikings camp. I also think it's true that Kyler Murray hasn't been better than league average in terms of passing production since 2021 Kyler Murray has been in the NFL for seven years. He's never thrown more than 26 touchdown passes in individual season. I mean, you go back to Arizona, like people thought that Trey McBride was incapable or allergic to the end zone because of Kyler Murray.