The Show: Mike Tomlin, Way-Too-Early Quarterback Rankings, and More

**JJ Zachariason** (0:00)
You're about to listen to The Late-Round Fantasy Football Show, which originally aired on YouTube. If you'd like to catch the show live this off season, you can head to The Late-Round Fantasy Football YouTube channel, youtube.com/atlateroundff. We'll be live each Wednesday at noon Eastern. Without further ado, here's this week's episode.

**David Kitchen** (0:32)
Welcome in, welcome in. David Kitchen here, COO of Late-Round Media, one of three now, because we do have another guy, Brandon Gadula, who's with us. He's not on the show with us, but if you are a newsletter subscriber, you saw his newsletter this morning. Yeah. Well done, Mr. Brandon. And I also have a CEO, the man, the myth, the legend, JJ Zachariason, free. No more burdens of that stealer's laundry, JJ.

**JJ Zachariason** (1:04)
The only burden in my life is Luther Burden. That was good, right? I got to say one thing before we get going. Everyone, it's David Kitchen's 30th birthday today.

**David Kitchen** (1:17)
Yeah, sure. 30

**JJ Zachariason** (1:18)
30, right? Yeah. Happy birthday to our COO.
Very happy that you are the COO. And yeah, I hope you have a good one. Hope the girls treat you right. I hope. And by the, for the record, I mean- For the record, daughters. Daughters.

**David Kitchen** (1:36)
Daughters, wife. Yes, gotcha.

**JJ Zachariason** (1:38)
He's not, he doesn't have like multiple wives.

**David Kitchen** (1:39)
Not some advisor over here. Yeah.

**JJ Zachariason** (1:42)
Yeah. Hope they treat you right. You can, after this show, you can take off the rest of the day if you want. How's that?

**David Kitchen** (1:49)
I've got some work to do, JJ. So, I will not be taking off. I did though, did you, just a little bit behind the scenes, did you do your Super Bowl NFL stuff yet?

**JJ Zachariason** (2:01)
Super Bowl NFL stuff? No, I have not. I have not.

**David Kitchen** (2:04)
No. Let's do that. It's going to be awkward if we get to Radio Row and they're like, you, Kitchen, you can come in.

**JJ Zachariason** (2:13)
Kitchen is just going to do the Late-Round show from Radio Row this year.

**David Kitchen** (2:17)
That'd be like the worst ever if it was just me and not you. Sometimes I worry that my edition, Brandon's edition is putting too much on your plate. Have you ever done a way too early QB rankings like this before?

**JJ Zachariason** (2:36)
No, this isn't really my wheelhouse slash the kind of content that I always do. But look, I know that this is the kind of content that people really want, and they want some early takes, and I get all that. I want the caveat, though, the blank statement caveat. This is insanely early. The research has only just begun. This is definitely not how I necessarily will feel come June, July-ish whenever I'm actually producing some of those, maybe May, producing those rankings for redraft purposes.
But I do think it's a fun exercise to go through and talk about where I want to rank these guys, these quarterbacks. We'll do it by position, so the next four weeks. Well, technically, it's five, because we're going to take a break for the Super Bowl. But the next five weeks, we're going to go position by position. So next week, we'll do running back, then wide receiver, and then tight end. But to me, this is our first real off-season with The Late-Round Fantasy Football Show. This is the playground, if you will, from a content perspective where we can do stuff like this. Whereas, the flagship show, The Late-Round Podcast, you're going to get more of the boom, boom, boom, very serious takes. This is a little bit looser and more of a place where this is where my mind is generally going, as opposed to my concrete takes, which you're going to find on the flagship show.

**David Kitchen** (3:58)
There you go. That is what I was going to tell everyone, is just that don't hold JJ to it. But it is good just to think about. And it is fun.
And we've talked about this, Pat, when you have a dynasty team, if you're not in a dynasty league and you're listening to the show right now in January, get in a dynasty league. If you are a Patreon member, we've got a League Finder in there where tons of dynasty leagues open up. So join the Patreon, join the LateRound community. On Discord, it's a great community. Also, again, JJ, newsletter. We're just beefing it up this year.

**JJ Zachariason** (4:36)
It's popping. Gidula had a great newsletter that went out today about how, and I didn't even realize this, but he wrote about how playoff snap rates for rookies are actually more predictive of next season snap rates for those rookies. So they turn into second-year players, obviously, than the whole season, regular season snap rates. So then he highlighted at each position, the guys who saw really good snap rates this past week, and what that could mean for 2026 in that season. So it's a great newsletter. Brandon's doing awesome work. We have a lot more coming. Also, just so we're clear, Kitchen's not 30