Prop Points | August 12, 2026

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
This is Prop Points on VSiN, the SportsBetting Network.

**Nick Whalen** (0:11)
Welcome in to the Wednesday edition of Prop Points here on the SportsBetting Network. I'm Nick Whalen. He's Jeff Erickson. We're with you from rotowire.com. And boy, do we have a show for you coming over the next 60 minutes. Plenty of updates rolling in from NFL training camps. We've got six preseason games starting up tomorrow night. We'll start to dig in on some of those. The PGA Tour playoffs begin tomorrow. So our friend Len Hochberg will stop by the show to preview the FedEx St. Jude. And we welcome back Theo Gremminger, our lead fantasy football analyst at rotowire.com. We'll talk about his training camp winners and losers from a fantasy perspective. And it all builds toward Jeff Erickson giving us some plays for the Wednesday MLB card. As always, make sure you are subscribed. Make sure you are downloading the Prop Points podcast. You can find us on Apple, on Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. Search VSiN, search Prop Points. You will find us and you will find all VSiN programming in podcast form.
Jeff, let's dive right in on the NFL. And we were putting together some headlines we wanted to talk about. And then, you know, within the last 60 minutes here, another one popped up. And that is Ebeka Abouka limping off the field at Buccaneers practice earlier today, got rolled up on after taking an end around. There was about 10 or 15 minutes of Twitter silence where I think the entire fantasy football community was holding its breath. Now, we're still awaiting a true update on this, but Abouka was spotted walking around on the sideline, got some treatment from trainers. So it doesn't appear that this is anything overly serious. Obviously, his practice stay will be done.
But this put a scare into fantasy football managers, Jeff. I mean, I met Abouka up to an ADP of 25 right now at the NFFC. That makes him the wide receiver 12 If you rewind back to May when yes, there were people doing fantasy football drafts in May, plenty of them. In fact, I met Abouka for that month was the 47th overall player, the wide receiver 20 So he's up over 20 spots just over the last couple of months.

**Jeff Erickson** (2:13)
Yeah, absolutely. And the guy that we expect to step in and be the lead wide receiver on this Bucs offense, Baker Mayfield in a contract year.
There's a lot of things pointing towards possible big numbers. But I think we have to remember last year too, Abouka second half of the season slowed down a little bit. And it turns out the hamstring injury that was bothering him had a bigger impact than we were willing to give it credit. I think Baker's play also was a big factor of that as well. Mike Evans came back later. Mike Evans is gone. Chris Godwin another year older. They did draft Ted Hurst, but I still expect Abouka to be a guy that steps in and becomes a lead dog on a team that should be throwing the ball a lot. But yeah, this is something worth watching for sure.
And just hopefully we get accurate reporting on it as best as we can.

**Nick Whalen** (3:00)
Yeah, Abouka now going ahead of names like Rashid Rice, Chris Alave, Zay Flowers, Devontae Smith. Again, that wide receiver 12 in the NFFC, which if you're not familiar, these are big money leagues, these are expert leagues. So that's some of the ADP that we'd like to reference.
You know, we had a note, Jeff, on Pukinakua. He, of course, departed practice yesterday, dealing with some minor soreness in his groin. I don't think this specific injury is overly concerning, but he would be my odds on favorite to lead the NFL in trips to the blue 10s. I think he was right near the top of the list last year. Now, he always came out of the blue 10, which is great. But you combine the way Pukinakua plays, the fact that he's constantly banged up, even if he's not actually missing time, plus what has been a very turbulent, to put it nicely, offseason for him. Do you have any reservations if you're picking third, fourth, fifth overall? Are you comfortably clicking on Pukinakua in fantasy?

**Jeff Erickson** (3:56)
I haven't been put to that test. I've either had the three pick and I took Chase, which is who I have ahead of Pukinakua, or I picked later and he's already in Nakuwa, he's already been gone.
It's a weird spot.
He is my fourth rated player right now. I have him over JSN., I have him over McCaffrey, I have him over Cook, anybody else that you want to put in that spot. I think it's interesting. We're in this training camp fog time right now where every injury that comes up, every practice miss, there's a little bit of an uncertainty because the teams aren't really required to disclose a whole lot to us here. Last year, I stayed away from Puka a little bit because of the injury factor, and obviously, I got burned by that. I got burned by the Matthew Stafford immaculate chamber story, the thing that whether he was resting his back. I think you and I were both kind of wigged out about that a little bit there. Turns out, Stafford stayed healthy. It was a great season. I think there's a lot of things that still work in that favor there. You mentioned earlier when we were talking about a Puka, Devontae Smith has got injuries right now, that he's missed a series of practices. Zay Flowers has missed some practices recently. One of these injuries, Mike Evans just returned to practices yesterday, but he missed a bunch of time as well. Some of these injuries might end up being something important that goes into the season. It's hard to tell which one exactly though. I think that's one of the needles that we have to thread during training camp, the draft process.