You're Drafting Rookies All Wrong - Here's How To Fix It

**Josh Norris** (0:00)
Today is only about rookies, because whenever we look back at the end of the season, the championship-winning teams, they got tremendous value on first-year players. We're going to talk about 32 of them. Yes, what to expect week one, early in the season, and then late-season expectations, because we are here to help you find the gems, the first-year players that will maybe not start your lineup, but then carry it later in this Fantasy Football season. And tune in and stay tuned to this episode of Yahoo Fantasy Football with Josh and Hayden. We love to point out how rookies shape Fantasy Football at the end of each season. So today, we talk about every single rookie. Yeah, I have 32 names of rookies heading into their first season. We're going to talk about where they stand currently on the depth chart, maybe some projected stats for every single one, and Hayden, maybe most importantly, when we think they're actually going to take off in their lineups this season.

**Hayden Winks** (0:57)
And sometimes those players don't ever take off. I think we will have to have some of those takes as well. Yeah, 32, this is going to be a test of, can I remember the 32nd player and what team he's even on? That's a pretty deep list.

**Josh Norris** (1:10)
So I was looking at, again, all rookies when researching for the show, and it really set out to me that only 11 rookies are consistently being drafted inside of the top 15 rounds on Yahoo right now, including just four, four before the start of the 10th round. This is just anecdotal, Hayden, but that has to be a record low number.

**Hayden Winks** (1:30)
Well, we knew this going in, just talked about these guys as draft prospects. This was not going to be a great class. I will say this, I think that redraft is the best time to get some rookies late on because they're not in your starting lineup where, best of all, theoretically, they can be. We're not banking on rookies until later on, and because the ADPs are suppressed, there are going to be some rookies this year that pop up. I think that the wide receiver class that was almost underrated, that's the tier of player that we're going to talk about today.

**Josh Norris** (1:57)
It definitely is. Now, again, we'll talk about where each of these names are being selected on Yahoo right now. But MacKyla Lemon would go ahead of the 10th round if he didn't miss all training camp.
KC Concepcion would probably be going ahead of the 11th round if he wasn't on the Cleveland Browns. We also had some of your favorite day three running backs or day two running backs that landed behind obvious starters and not ambiguous backfields. Mike Washington and Jonah Coleman and those guys could have been top 10 round picks if they were on the Tennessee Titans, for example.

**Hayden Winks** (2:30)
Maybe the Yahoo 80Ps are just wrong and that these guys should be priced way up. I have a couple of those takes here.

**Josh Norris** (2:35)
100%.
Again, if you tuned into our ultimate and final running back in wide receiver rankings, you have some of our favorites at rookie spots in both and some of those are the best value not just on Yahoo but in whatever platform that you use. Let's go and watch those videos after this one. We're going to condense it down into one episode. I'm going to go in ADP order here. Our first rookie actually isn't off the board into the fourth pick of the third round running back 14
That's Jeremiyah Love of the Arizona Cardinals. The latest from NFL Network's Mike Garofalo, he reports that Jeremiyah Love is, about 50-50 to play in week one against the Chargers. Hayden, we know 14 touches in his first preseason action, suffered a high ankle sprain at the end of that second quarter. So, what are your expectations for week one? And then, what are your expectations beyond for Jeremiyah Love?

**Hayden Winks** (3:28)
Yeah, let's say he misses zero to two games. I think that's about right. I think that the rest of September, there's going to be a ramp up period with him and Tyler Algier. Keep in mind, Trey Benson was waved. James Connors on injured reserve. He has not practiced. It's just going to be Algier. It's going to be Jeremiyah Love. We know how this one ends. Jeremiyah Love, I thought as a prospect, was even better than Ashton Gentile. I would put him in the not that far away from the B. John Robinson type of prospect. It's going to take some overcoming the interior offensive line. They're missing a second round guard in Arizona. The tackle play can be very hit and miss. So it's not the ideal landing spot. All that said, typically, a top three overall pick at running back does not go in the third and sometimes fourth rounds of fantasy drafts. So I think that we've fully baked in the Cardinals part of the equation, the early part of the season equation. Now I would be pretty surprised by October 1st on, if Jeremiyah Love is not a top 12 fantasy running back, he's somebody I'm heavily targeting in the top 30 But sometimes you can get him like 32nd, 33rd overall. I think that's absolutely stealing.