News and Ranking Changes: Kyler Murray Wins Job, Luther Burden Hurt, Chargers RBs, and Silva's Top-150 Changes (Episode 1007 with Evan Silva and Adam Levitan)

**Adam Levitan** (0:15)
Hello, and welcome to Episode 1007 of the official Establish The run.com podcast. My name is Adam Levitan. I am one of the co-founders here at ETR.
As always, joined by fellow co-founder Evan Silva, and we are now two weeks into training camp for most teams. But more importantly, we are on the eve of the Mann vs. Machine recording. Evan, how are you feeling today?

**Evan Silva** (0:43)
It's going great.
At Establish The Run, we've had an eight-year standing policy of never asking or begging for people that watch our show to contribute subscribes or likes, but today, that ends. And I'd like to ask the people to hit the subscribe button. And if you're already subscribed, hit the like button because it really helps us. Today, we start the begging.

**Adam Levitan** (1:11)
Wow.
You know, we're not really YouTubers, if you guys can believe that, but we are on the YouTube streets now. Silva begging for subscribes. And by the way, it is free to subscribe on YouTube. Never thought that I would see the day. But you ignored my first question, Silva. Did you see the Leone rap that we dropped today ahead of Man vs. Machine? And how are you feeling heading into tomorrow's Man vs. Machine recording?

**Evan Silva** (1:37)
It was incredible. I mean, I want to make it clear, though, that Leone did not write a single syllable of the lyrics that were spit in that video, but the video itself was incredible to the creator of that video.
Awesome. You know, it brought me some motivation too. Not that I needed any. I'm like kind of nervous. I'm on pins and needles. You know, this is really the rubber match Man vs. Machine because, you know, we were doing it in previous years, but the last two years, it got really competitive because people started to like love it. And I mean, I love doing it. And I beat Leone in 2024 handily. And then this past year, he scrounged out a victory that was, you know, and we put an asterisk by that. But this technically will be the rubber match year, 2026, Mann vs. Machine. I'm excited.

**Adam Levitan** (2:24)
If you want to see the video that we're talking about, you can head to my Twitter. It really is worth watching. The people that create these videos and person that creates these videos is truly a deranged individual. And this is a peek into his mind. So be sure that-

**Evan Silva** (2:38)
Also a genius.

**Adam Levitan** (2:40)
Also a genius, yes. Many geniuses are deranged. Anyways, on today's show, we will be discussing what has happened at training camps over the last seven days and how we should be adjusting our fantasy rankings for that. We are doing these news slash rank change shows once a week on Tuesdays. So as Silva said, be sure to subscribe here on YouTube. If you have a fantasy draft coming up, and I know almost everyone listening to this does, we can help. Season long players can either look at our Draft Kit Pro, which includes Silva's Top 150 in tiers, all our ETR rankings, My Draft Strategy player by player notes tons more. You can either look at that or you can look at Bundle, which combines Draft Kit Pro with our in-season product. In-season includes all our projections, Silva's matchups, Thorns Offensive Line, Defensive Line mismatches, all the premium shows including in-season Man vs. Machine this year and tons more. Details on both of those products, Draft Kit and NFL Bundle are at establishtherun.com.
All right, Silva, let's get into it here with the news. We have about 18 stories to cover here today. Let's start with number one. Shortly before we came on to record here, Vikings do the expected, name Kyler Murray their week one starter.
For me, looking back, the competition we talked about last week on this show, it was probably just a charade. From an organizational standpoint, I think they felt like they could not let the new guy, Kyler, come in and just hand him the job without doing some kind of competition for the locker room, for the media, whatever. So, Evan, initial reaction to Kyler Murray officially getting the nod here for the Vikings in week one.

**Evan Silva** (4:29)
Well, I think that it was largely a charade because it was almost close to 100% probability that Kyler Murray was gonna start week one. I mean, that was locked in, I think. But I think that it was not necessarily a charade in that there were reports from beat reporters that JJ. McCarthy had actually outplayed Kyler Murray in specific practices and in specific scrimmages. But I think that the noise kind of maybe got to Kevin O'Connell and he wanted to put that to bed. And we still got what, four plus weeks until the season, but he wanted to get out in front of it because this had started to almost unravel into one of the biggest stories across any training camp, across the NFL. And so putting that to bed now, I think it's the smart move, but it was almost close to 100% probability that Kyler Murray was going to get it.