The 14 Players I'm Betting My Entire Fantasy Season Against

**Josh Norris** (0:00)
This time, I'm on the clock, and I'm telling you the players, I'm avoiding in every single draft this year. Now, that sounds harsh. Really, I want to take this episode to outline how these players do not work out this year, because too often we focus maybe on the positive ends and maybe don't reveal some chips in the armor, some chinks in the armor of these lovely fantasy players that we all like to discuss.
And that starts with round one. What an interesting and fascinating discussion there is, but I'm sure I'll shock you with that name. So stick around for this episode of Yahoo Fantasy Football with Josh and Hayden. We spend all summer telling you who to draft today. I'll tell you who to avoid. Yes, who not to draft the players that are landmines for me in rounds one through 14 Hayden, your episode is up already. That one, I believe, is titled the 16 players to avoid ahead of round 10 I'm taking you beyond round 10, 11, 12, up to 14 rounds. And I'm not playing it lightly here, Hayden. All these names are getting a lot of positivity out there, but I'm telling you why it might not end up the best possible outcome for them this season.

**Hayden Winks** (1:03)
Yeah, I like kicking other people's sleepers in the 12th round. That's what we're doing here. And remember, you don't dislike these players because they're price tags. You hate these players personally. It's a personal vendetta.

**Josh Norris** (1:15)
I think with every single player, and this is a good exercise for a lot of them, is you can go through, hey, the high end outcome, the positive outcome is this. And maybe too often, we associate the season going to happen with that, and maybe we don't talk about the negative pathway or narrative enough. And today, again, some of these players I actually like, but maybe we haven't highlighted that negative outcome enough. So let's do that here. And that kicks us off in the first round with Christian McCaffrey.

**Hayden Winks** (1:43)
Oh my gosh. You're killing me.

**Josh Norris** (1:46)
Yeah, he's the fifth pick. By the way, all of these are going to be from a Home League 80 piece. We aggregate every single site, every single platform that you use. And that is what is making up these 80 piece. So all of you get a taste of this. So yes, Christian McCaffrey, the fifth pick of the first round. I can't shake the idea that last year was the one year to draft Christian McCaffrey, which all of you did because of this channel. And now we're just chasing that all over again. As always, he has the running back one overall upside. He did that last season. But also, he has the red flags that maybe other running backs in the first round simply do not. Just not even talking about the injuries for a second. The underlying metrics last year made him look like one of the worst rushers in the league. He was 39th in yards per carry, 31st in success rate, 37th in rate of runs to gain 10 or more yards, 32nd in rate of runs to gain yardage, and 36th in yards after contact per attempt. That's not just one thing that the offensive line might have impacted, it's also him as an individual and a lot of those things too.
Then number one overall is the three previous running backs that had 450 touches, Saquon Barkley, DeMarco Murray, Arian Foster fell off an absolute cliff the next season. It was a drop of anywhere from five to seven points per game.
Those guys were 26 and 27 years old, and Chris McCaffrey here is 30th overall.
Obviously, if this works out, CMC, like he has been, can be the one that you need. But Hayden, the negative outcome here is one that completely derails your season, and it might not happen in back to back years.

**Hayden Winks** (3:23)
Yeah, definitely.
I will say if we were drafting solely based on last year, he would go 101, so it's like that sliding scale of how much risk you want to take on. I've been comfortable around Jonathan Taylor, but it seems like you're even pushing that further away after Ron Rossi Brown, after Jackson Smith and Jigba. Stop me when you hear a name where you would say, I'd rather take the risk.

**Josh Norris** (3:46)
It might be Saquon Barkley taking the risk ahead of CMC.

**Hayden Winks** (3:49)
Okay.

**Josh Norris** (3:50)
Like I keep saying it, like last year, CMC might be this year's Saquon Barkley. Like I sat here at this time last season and advocated for Saquon despite that 450 touch mark that I just mentioned to you. And I don't think Saquon fell off a cliff individually, but it shows that this entire thing can be environmental too. And in this case, everyone around CMC was injured last season, so they had no choice but to feed him despite the lack of efficiency and explosiveness. And again, like 2019, he had 400 touches. Then he played three games and seven games the next two seasons. In 2022 and 2023, he had 330 touches and then played four games the next season. So, I don't know.