The Rookies We Got Wrong with Addison Hayes

Fantasy analysts don't love admitting they got it wrong, but owning your misses is how you get better. Addison Hayes from Dynasty League Football walks through the players who scored highly in his Marker System but still busted in the NFL, breaking down what his model caught, what it missed, and what he's still learning. Jeff adds a few of his own misses, including that one trade he still regrets.

💡 Key Takeaways

• How the Marker System uses production, athleticism, and draft capital checkboxes to grade college prospects
• Corey Davis is the archetype for why small school production remains a persistent source of model error
• The N'Keal Harry List: what it is, why it exists, and who's on it in 2026
• The Ladd McConkey List: the positive flip side, and why Makai Lemon is the only 2026 wide receiver on it
• Why Cam Akers and J.K. Dobbins are injury misses, not model failures
• Jeff's personal misses: Jalen Reagor, Zach Wilson, Henry Ruggs, and that Puka Nacua trade
• What the 2026 class's historically low average grade should tell dynasty managers heading into rookie drafts

⏱️ Chapters/Timestamps

00:00 – Why we need to talk about our misses
07:33 – Markers: production, athleticism & draft capital
16:41 – Adjustments to raw production that tell the real story
24:11 – Corey Davis and the small school problem
26:34 – N'Keal Harry and the advanced marker gap
28:55 – Cam Akers, J.K. Dobbins, and the injury caveat
33:23 – Jadarian Price and the CEH comparison
44:11 – Small school patterns and the zone-coverage signal
47:07 – Analytics vs. film: where each approach has blind spots
51:49 – Jeff's misses: Reagor, Darnold, Wilson, Ruggs, and Puka Nacua
57:51 – Lessons for dynasty managers and a warning for 2026
1:13:17 – Where to find Addison's work

🔗 Links Mentioned

• themarkersystem.com 
• Dynasty League Football 
• DLF YouTube Channel 
• Follow Addison on Twitter/X 
• Jeff's Dynasty Rankings on Footballguys
• Footballguys 
• Follow Jeff on Twitter/X 
• Dynasty Compass website 

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Transcript

Jeff: Fantasy analysts get a lot of things wrong, but we don't really necessarily talk too much about it. Much rather focus on when we're right, especially when we're right against consensus. But we need to be able to own when we're wrong, too, and that's what we're gonna do today. My guest is Addison Hayes from DLF. He has developed a model that helps him project future success based on how college athletes have performed, and it's not always right either. So he's gonna discuss that, and I'm gonna discuss some of my misses recently, and we'll do that next on Dynasty Compass.
[theme music]
Jeff: Welcome to Dynasty Compass. I am your host, Jeff Blaylock, the other Jeff B from Footballguys. Happy to be joined today by Addison Hayes from DLF, Dynasty League Football. Addison, thanks so much for stopping by, and welcome to the show.
Addison: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me come on here. I know, um, it's always fun to talk about rookies and stuff. And especially whenever you have the analytical view that I have. You know, it's always good to dive into everything. But I think we've got a really, really fun show today talking about, you know, some of the misses that a lot of people don't generally want to discuss 'cause it might blow back negatively on you. But I think it's very important to talk about.
Jeff: Yeah, I find people are gonna call you a clown whether you're right or wrong, so you might as well admit when you're wrong every once in a while. Certainly it's something I know J.J. Zachariason's really good about. Kind of planted the idea with me is that you just own the ones where you had it just wrong, a wrong read from the beginning. So I appreciate you coming on and being vulnerable like that and sharing some of the things that we didn't get right. Which we don't always get everything right. I know for me, you know, I do it more anecdotally. Like I know when I'm high on somebody and when they don't do what I want them to, they bust. And so that's kind of the ones I remember most. I do remember a few prominent ones that I was very low on and they hit higher than I was expecting. But you actually have grades that you have assigned. You've got a system and you've run it backwards a number of years, at least a decade, I think, to look at some rookies that your system would have been very high on, but yet it didn't work out for them. How'd you come up with that system that you've got?
Addison: Yeah, so the system, the Marker System, was my way of tapping into the modeling, prospect modeling kind of area. I mean, I come from a statistics background. That is my degree out of Penn State. So I could've gone the whole multilinear regression or done all of that other sort of stuff and dove really deep into the weeds of an actual regression model. But I wanted something that felt a little bit more simple and easier to explain that a lot of other people could... Like, I could actually be very transparent about what's in it instead of just saying, "Well, my model," and all of the different things that it weighs and grades just spits out this number. I want it to be like, "This is exactly why these players are graded highly or not graded highly or somewhere in between." So what ended up happening was it created a series of checkboxes, baselines essentially, that I'm looking for players and prospects to hit based on what previously successful players had coming out of college at the respective positions. So it's not the same group of metrics that I'm looking at for every single position. Generally, it's the same idea in terms of production, athleticism, and then a bigger weight on draft capital. But per position, I really dove into what metrics actually matter, which metrics showed more of a tendency to have a higher level of production from NFL wide receivers, NFL running backs, all that kind of stuff. And then can we translate that into how prospects are coming out of college? So I started this in 2021. I kinda had the beginnings of it in 2020, but 2021 was really the first year, just running backs and wide receivers. And then I developed the quarterback and tight end one in 2025. So that one's relatively new. And I iterated the running backs and wide receivers over the course of the past few years since 2021. But '25, being quarterbacks and tight ends, even though this is year two for those positions, it still has a lot of the lessons and iterations that I learned from running backs and wide receivers, so I was able to get a running start with those two positions. And it so far has done, I think, decently well for those. So that's basically where all this is, is that the Marker System are just checkboxes that, yes, they hit it, then check. They didn't hit it, move on to the next one, and you kinda tally it up at the end. And that determines if a prospect is, I guess, analytically good or not.
Jeff: So in some respects then it's kind of backward-looking. You're looking at their collegiate stats and what they did in their most recent years before they entered the NFL. Draft capital obviously is something that happens before you enter the NFL, but after college. And so this is not really so much a prediction of future productivity as it is a grade of how they stack up against other people in the position over the last few years who had similar or different metrics, right?
Addison: Sure. Yeah. Essentially, it's just like this is what previously really good players at running back, wide receiver, tight end, quarterback now had coming out of college. They had, you know, this degree of production, this degree of athleticism, usually drafted. Obviously we love first-round draft capital, but you can slide into day two, and that'll be totally fine for most of the positions, not quarterbacks. But running backs, wide receivers, tight ends, sliding into day two obviously is very fine. And then if you have that as a prospect coming out now, then historically that has been a very good signal. If you don't have that, we've kinda gotta piece together what do you have, and can that be successful in certain situations or any sort of that kind of stuff. So it gets harder whenever you don't hit all the things that we're looking for, but it becomes really easy when you do. Like Ja'Marr Chase. I mean, Jeremiah Smith next year is like, I've already put together some of the early 2027 stuff, just like if these players were to have declared this year, where would they stack up? Jeremiah Smith is like a 99 final grade right now. So like there's no doubt about it. It's just really easy when players are that good. And it just, when a player is 50/50 on some of the stuff or anything like that, that's where more of the discussion comes in.
Jeff: Well, our purpose today wasn't to launch tankathon in various dynasty leagues, but we may have just done that by saying that Jeremiah Smith is all the way at the top of your grade system. You know, the system you mentioned, it's got performance aspects, it's got athleticism, and then of course draft capital. Why those, and what specific measures are you really looking for? Some across all positions, and as you noted, some are unique to one position or another.
Addison: Sure, yeah. Well, production is pretty easy 'cause analytically, that's basically what we're looking at is, in the situations or the college teams that they were on, how did they end up producing? Because production largely is one of the biggest factors when translating into NFL production. It's just like not all high-end collegiate producers produce at a high level in the NFL, but almost all high-end NFL producers produce at the collegiate level. It's just a very easy translation. So for all positions, it's basically a grouping of either best season and career production. And that is also categorized between raw production and team-adjusted or age-adjusted production, depending on the position. So for quarterbacks, I'm just looking for some raw best season and career stats, basically to show that you have some level of experience at the collegiate level that can easily translate to the NFL level. When you kinda lack that experience, like historically, one-year starters in college are really rough translating into the NFL, but guys that are, you know, multi-year starters, two, three, maybe not four years 'cause when you get too far, like a Carson Beck, for example, my argument against him this year has been if he was actually that good, he should've been drafted way earlier than staying five or six years in school. So it becomes a tipping point at the end to where you can't stay in school too long because that usually indicates that you weren't good enough earlier to have declared and then produced in the NFL. So collegiate experience for quarterbacks through production. Running backs, it's raw production too, but it's also like yards per team play, some modicum of receiving and receiving shares and stuff. Earlier production is always generally better from running backs if you were able to come in and be the team starter, maybe not as a freshman but as a sophomore is super helpful rather than being a guy that sits for a few years and then has like that one year as a junior or senior. That's still good, but not as good as somebody that immediately comes in and can start right away. Wide receivers, it's, you know, breakout age, Dominator Ratings, yards per team pass attempt, market shares, all of that kind of stuff. Same for tight ends. Athleticism then after production. Obviously you wanna have some level of athleticism. You don't wanna be, you know, a 4.7 wide receiver or a 4.7 running back. But it's baselines, right? So that's why when people say that the Underwear Olympics doesn't matter, a lot of my athleticism numbers basically come from the Combine and then I'll fill in the pieces from pro days from guys that don't run at the Combine. But it does matter to a degree because you need to see at least some level of athleticism. Now, do I care whether somebody ran a 4.38 versus a 4.48? No, not at all. I just need them to basically hit a 4.55 40 or lower and then like a 100 speed score. So those aren't really tough numbers to get. Some players don't get them. Some players get them really, really easily. But it's just like I don't care what the actual number is. It just needs to be in that range essentially. And then of course draft capital is
Jeff: It's draft capital.
Addison: the end all be all for a lot of players.
Jeff: Yeah, that one's the easy one. You don't really have to do much to that. It is where they got their name called. It's interesting you mentioned about breakout age a couple times and producing early and coming out earlier, particularly with you talking about Carson Beck. If he were really a hotshot, he would've come out earlier. I'm curious to see — and it's probably not a question you can answer today, I need to bring you back on in three years and see what you thought about this and how it played out — but with NIL being what it is and being such a force now with just the amount of money that these kids are able to make, as well as this transfer portal that causes them to change teams every year, what do you think that's gonna do? What are your thoughts on where you're gonna take your model with that as these two things kind of play out through the collegiate system over the next couple years?
Addison: Yeah, it's definitely becoming an interesting factor. And even as I was kind of starting and iterating on this in '21, '22, '23, that was still being impacted by the COVID season that granted an extra year of eligibility to basically everybody. So players that could've been early declarers just decided, "Hey, I lost a season and I might as well just come back and play another one too." So it is gonna definitely be something that I've already dealt with through COVID a little bit, and we're still kind of feeling the effects of COVID I think for this '26 class. This one might be the final one, I think, where we really feel that. But dealing with that, then going into NIL and all that stuff. I heard J.J. Zachariason talk about this actually, and he said that through this whole new system with players being more willing to stay, it might actually be more impactful that players are declaring earlier because that means that there is a big enough draw and pull to the NFL based on their level of talent and stuff, that we should actually care more now about early declarers than we had originally. Now I do 100% agree with that, but I'm also willing to give a little bit more leeway to players that, like, if they're a fourth-year wide receiver. Had you been a fourth-year wide receiver in the 2010s, that's like a horrendous hit rate. But now, fourth-year or fifth-year wide receivers, we've seen some of these guys like Zay Flowers was a fourth or fifth year, if I remember correctly. Travis Hunter was a four-year player because of two years at JUCO. We've seen a lot of these other players now come out having four years worth of data. Jordyn Tyson this year, my wide receiver one, is a four-year player. That was largely due to injury, but he's a four-year player nonetheless. And so I'm willing to give a little bit more grace to those guys, 'cause it's especially being weighed down in like the tier two, tier three, tier four type of players in rookie drafts, that they could be swayed to stay in college if they get a couple million dollars of NIL versus going to the NFL, then try to raise their draft capital to then go into the NFL at a higher draft price and then make more money. So I'm being a little bit more lenient, but I'm also really interested in the guys that do end up early declaring because that means that they're being told that their talent is too high that they just can't miss out on the NFL.
Jeff: Yeah. And I think too, another interesting tension is going to be — and you mentioned it as well — you've got Carson Beck on the one hand who stayed in college seemingly forever and played a lot. And then you have someone like Ty Simpson on the other hand, who started, I believe, 15 games in his collegiate career, who may have benefited from an additional year in college before coming out. So that I think is another interesting tension that a model like yours will be wrestling with over the next few years. Particularly at quarterback — is it really good for them to declare early, or is it good for them to get another year as a signal caller, perhaps even at a different school where they have to learn a different system?
Addison: Yeah. I think, well, quarterback is very interesting 'cause you want that level of experience. That's why I was arguing all, you know, like through the college football playoffs and the whole Dante Moore situation, I was like, "I think he would benefit from an extra year in college," because the NFL has really become hard to truly develop into. The NFL is not a league that really is in the developmental mode anymore. So if you're not getting that development and growth early on in the NFL, if you're a player that needs that, it might be more beneficial to stay in college. And I was in that camp with Dante Moore, and Ty Simpson maybe would've also benefited from that as well. Now, Ty Simpson then also ended up landing in like the perfect situation to develop, where he could sit a couple years behind a Pro Bowl and Hall of Fame level quarterback in Matthew Stafford on a Super Bowl franchise, with a Hall of Fame coach as well. So he's in the perfect situation to where he just went right into the NFL and is still gonna be able to develop for a couple of years before actually fully starting. Not all teams or situations offer that, though. Like Dante Moore, if he's gonna go to the Jets or something, now it might be better, but if he was the Jets' first overall pick or something like that this year, it might've been a little bit iffier. Their plans might have changed depending on some of the other stuff. So it's just, quarterbacks especially, it's a very, very difficult position in general. So having that collegiate experience, which my Marker System really, really favors, I think is just of the utmost importance.
Jeff: I think you mentioned a few moments ago that you do make adjustments based on their age, based on what the school's overall... I don't know if it was the school's overall offensive character or if it was the level of competition that they face. Can you talk a little bit about what kinds of adjustments you are making? These are not just the raw numbers that you're pulling out for production. You're actually doing some things to them.
Addison: Yeah. Well, some of the big ones are, you know, team-level adjustments would be like yards per team pass attempt for wide receivers, which I think is a very, very good analytical metric just in general to kind of compare everybody on a fair basis. Obviously a wide receiver who has 1,500 yards on a team that throws 600 times is not the same as a wide receiver who has 1,500 yards on a team that throws 400 times. Like those are very different offenses in terms of volume, and having that level of production is a different accomplishment depending on the offense that you play in. So that's a big one. Yards per team pass attempt. Dominator Rating is another one, too, 'cause that's all market share based. And then Dominator Rating will feed breakout age. If you hit a certain 20% or 30% threshold for Dominator Rating, the first year you do that is your breakout age for wide receivers. So that's market share of yards plus market share of touchdowns, all divided by two — the average of the two percentages. Those are two big ones. Yards per team play for running backs, essentially the same thing as yards per team pass attempt for wide receivers, just per play. And for the running back position, it's more of a measurement of how involved are you through the running and the receiving game for your overall offense. The more workhorse or bell cow running back that you are, the higher that number is going to be. And if you are just a specialty player or a backup, that number's gonna be lower. So those are kind of the big ones. Age-adjusted production, that's kind of where breakout age comes into as well. But the team-level stuff is definitely much higher of a signal because it is putting everybody on even ground and valuing every team pretty evenly, even though we know not every team is basically the same.
Jeff: You come up with a number, it looks like between zero and 100, although I don't know that you've gotten either of those. It sounds like Jeremiah Smith might get one of those numbers when he comes out. Is that final grade just purely the matter of the math or is there an additional judgment layer that goes into it once the machine spits out a number?
Addison: It's math. It's technically just a percentage. For each position there's an X number of markers. I think for quarterbacks it's 17, running backs it's 12, wide receivers and tight ends it's 14. So obviously you'll get a percentage of, you know, if a player hits 10 out of however many, there's a percentage right there that you could have as a final grade. I have one extra layer of adjustments on the raw markers, which is another layer from draft capital. So it's actually a — I can't remember if it's like a logarithmic regression or if it's some... it's a, uh, that is where my mathy statistics stuff comes back in. But
Jeff: much for easy explanation.
Addison: I know. But it's essentially just a curve to where it values the first round, like top 10 picks. Like eighth overall is not the same as 32nd overall, but they're in the first round. So if you just blanketly put a first-round adjustment on everybody, everybody would get the same. But we know that a player drafted top 10, it's not the same as a player drafted 32nd. And a player drafted 32nd versus a player drafted 33rd, that's a first round versus second round grade, so that's a major difference if you were doing it by round. But numerically, they were just picked one pick apart and they just happened to be 24 hours apart. So the curve, the adjustment for draft capital, is basically just a curve to kind of weigh that a little bit more, where you're weighing higher-drafted players over lower-drafted players, and then there's a sharp decline through day three and stuff like that. So that feeds to an adjusted markers, and then that adjusted markers is where the final grade comes from as a final percentage. So the players that hit on, we'll say, 17 out of 19 at the wide receiver position, then that is, I don't know what that number is, like a 90% or something like that. But that'd be like a final grade of 90 essentially — it's just a final percentage on how you did after the final draft capital adjustment.
Jeff: Yeah. I used to do a lot more mathing than I do. I didn't have a statistics degree, but I had to do statistics to get the degrees that I ended up with. So, logarithmic or log linear scale sounds about right for draft capital as an adjustment because it's got the tail, then it drops down like that, and then it stays kind of flat. And I also thought, you know, it's funny that 32 and 33 shouldn't make that much difference. And we've thought one of the big differences is 32 is usually a really good team, and 33 is usually not. And I've often wondered if that plays more into it than the fact that it was first or second round — just, you know, if you go to a bad team, you're gonna struggle more than if you go to a good team and they have an ability to play right off the bat.
Addison: Sometimes it's not though. What if those bad teams trade back up into the first, then the good teams from the back of the first are sitting there in the more mid-30s? Sometimes it's not. So that's a — I don't take landing spot or anything into consideration. It's all just purely, here's what you did in college and then here's where you were drafted. So trying to take situation out of it, but of course situation is gonna feed, you know, subjective rankings or anything like that more so than what I have, which is situation agnostic.
Jeff: Right. 'Cause even on bad teams, players could have great seasons. It's just maybe a little bit more difficult, especially as you get farther down on the draft board. So you know the model works. You've run through enough rigorous tests, and you've probably done enough regressions and other things on it to see that it's got the efficacy that you're looking for. Fancy words, sorry guys — and I should have given a trigger warning, there's gonna be some mathing involved in today's show. So if you're still with us, just be forewarned, we may throw out other terms like that coming up here soon. But the guys who tend to do well score highly and do well, and the ones who don't, don't. But there are some misses, and that's really what we are here to talk about today. Primarily, we've set up what your system is and that it is a mostly objective way of delivering a perspective, or at least a how-this-person-grades-against-other-people, against other people who have come out of college at that particular position. It's not necessarily how they're gonna do. You say landing spot's not taken into account. So let's start with some of the guys. We've set it up where you'll do some of yours, and then I'll do a couple of mine. So it's not just you who's admitting that you've got some wrong. I'm gonna admit some too. And then we'll just kind of see what the lessons are from all that. So I will just sort of let you drive from here with any names you wanna bring up as the guys that were the misses.
Addison: Sure. Yeah. I mean, if you were to just filter — I, in the website that I kind of built out before the NFL draft, it's themarkersystem.com. There is a tab in there that shows you player outcomes, which is a really quick and easy way to kind of filter by the final grade, see how players do. And you know, as you mentioned, like generally the players that when you filter for, you know, 70 and above, 80 and above, 90 and above, a lot of those guys are the high-level producers that we have known and loved for the past decade or so, if you filter down to the past decade. Jefferson, Lamb, Saquon, Bijan, Gibbs, like all those guys. Obviously there are misses in there. I would be suspect on any model that does not have misses. If it's a 100% hit rate, something's fishy there. You should have misses, especially because the NFL has misses all the time. So even if you were to just follow the NFL, you're gonna swing and miss on a decent amount of these guys just because the NFL swung and missed on a decent number of these guys. So, Corey Davis I think is the big one, obviously drafted fifth overall in 2017. He had a final grade of an 89.1 and did not have a single top 24 season. He did have two top 36 seasons. I don't remember if they came... I think it was the one final year in Tennessee, and then maybe he would've had another one in New York. Can't remember, though. But he was basically nothing in Tennessee for the first three or four years of his career. Obviously, major swing and miss. Now, he was a four-year player, so that was, you know, something was going on there that despite having three phenomenal seasons as a freshman, sophomore, junior, he did not decide to declare for the 2016 draft, and he stayed another year and basically repeated his 2015 season in 2016, and then declared for 2017 as a four-year player. So four-year player there. Also was a Western Michigan player, so that's a small school. Gaudy production from him at Western Michigan. His numbers were off the charts, but it was at Western Michigan. The level of competition that he would've faced would not have been the same as somebody that was playing at a much bigger school. So he was a major swing and a miss from the system.
Addison: Obviously N'Keal Harry. I feel like if you just said who's the biggest wide receiver bust in the past 10 to 15 years, most people would probably point you towards N'Keal Harry. Maybe they'd say Laquon Treadwell or somebody like that. But N'Keal Harry was, by all accounts, the best wide receiver in that 2019 draft, and was a major swing and a miss. So he's up there. He had an 83. You could look at the quarterback position, like Mitch Trubisky graded out as an 82. Zach Wilson graded out as an 82. Treylon Burks is another big one, graded out as an 85. And maybe you could blame injuries to some degree for his lack of production in the NFL. But man, that's not looking good. And it's kind of interesting that we've already mentioned two Tennessee Titans first-round picks.
Jeff: I was just
Addison: we'll see if Carnell Tate
Jeff: that I see a pattern evolving here, emerging out of
Addison: Just don't draft Tennessee Titans. That's been a good motto so far. We'll see with Carnell Tate. Skyy Moore obviously is another big one. You could look at Elijah Moore, Jahan Dotson. I don't know if you consider Charbonnet a miss. He graded out as like a 70, but doesn't really have production. I don't know if that's necessarily his fault, being behind Kenneth Walker his entire career. Rashod Bateman, there's another one. People will point towards Jalen Reagor. And Andy Isabella is another one in here too. Rashaad Penny, J.K. Dobbins maybe is a miss just based on expectations. Cam Akers could be a miss as well. Although Akers and Dobbins, and even Penny feel like injury misses. So there is some of that in there. But those are just some of the really, really big names. Like, I'm just looking at players that are ranked or graded 70 and above. Oh, Michael Mayer's in here on this list. I haven't given up hope yet for Michael Mayer.
Jeff: I'm gonna put an incomplete on that one. Tight ends, you know, we've gotten used to in the last few years tight ends breaking out immediately. That is an abnormality when you look back over history, so we're gonna hope that maybe Mayer will break out at some point. If you've got him, hang on to him. You're not gonna get anything for him anyway, so you might as well just keep him. But yeah, Treylon Burks, that was another trigger warning we should have given before we got out there. I know a lot of people watching and listening have got shares of him over the years and regretted it from day one.
Jeff: And then you also mentioned the injury part, and that's something that no model can really predict. I mean, I don't think there's any markers that you would have found in performance or athleticism that would suggest that somebody's gonna get hurt most of their first three years of their career and not live up to their potential. But that still is something that dynasty managers face, 'cause you still use a high draft pick on somebody and they don't live up to their potential 'cause they're hurt. They still didn't live up to their potential. Just wasn't as much you could really necessarily do about it. I mean, the model that you've got suggests that folks like Akers and Dobbins had the potential at least to be very successful, and we don't know what would have happened if they hadn't gotten hurt.
Addison: Right. Exactly. It could happen to anybody, and it's just Akers and Dobbins. I think it happened in like the same month too, I think, for both of them, didn't it? As they were both from the same class, heading into that '21 or '22 season. I mean, man, they just... to just completely blow out your knee like that, and then just to not ever come back anywhere. I mean, Dobbins, to his credit, I think Dobbins has been phenomenal, you know, with the Chargers, with the Broncos, and so he's kind of come back, I think, much more than I expected that he would have, especially after his initial return in Baltimore. But still, I mean, just nothing compared to what you would have wanted. I think he would've had an argument to have been the RB1 in that 2020 class. I mean, that was the Jonathan Taylor class. That was also the CEH class who got vaulted because of being drafted 32nd overall. And Dobbins fell a little bit more into the second round, but Dobbins had just about everything you could've possibly wanted from a running back coming out of college. So did JT, but Dobbins was phenomenal, man.
Jeff: Yep. CEH, another trigger warning for folks who drafted him high, either kept him or kept acquiring him and kept hoping, and it didn't work out. And of course, now we've got a number 32 pick running back this year that may be in a similar sort of situation. Landed with the same — not the same team. Landed with a champion team, and that being Jadarian Price. Where does your model, what does your model think about him before the draft, and then kinda where does he land now that he's gotten that first-round draft capital?
Addison: Yeah. So I will say that I didn't have CEH in my miss list, 'cause I was only filtered on players that hit a 70 or above grade. So even with the first-round draft capital and the adjustment that Clyde would've gotten on that, he still finished with a 65 final grade. So the model didn't really like him all that much. And then the first-round draft capital helped. It boosted him up 'cause he should've been on our radar for sure after that, but still wasn't really enough to put him over the top of some of the other players in that class, and then ultimately was just kind of fine but never really ended up doing much. So with that, Jadarian Price, very similar. Now, not completely his fault. He was behind Jeremiyah Love for his entire career, and I'm sure you can make the argument that had Jadarian Price gone to, I don't know, Florida or something and still had been in more of like an SEC, ACC situation or a Big Ten situation, and had been an actual starter for a college team, that he would have much better production metrics. And I would tend to agree with you. I think that he's a better player than just being the backup to Jeremiyah Love. But his production numbers in my modeling system, they're just not there because he was not a starter for his team. So he finishes a final grade of a 57, which puts him in the same tier as, you know, KC Concepcion and Omar Cooper. Jonah Coleman is still in there, so that's a really interesting one where Coleman was viewed very highly pre-draft in my marker system. His analytics were very great as a starter for Washington — receiving back, goal-line back, touchdown scorer, all of that kind of stuff. Then he falls to day three, and so he's being dragged down by his draft capital. Price is being pushed up, and they're both almost identical in final grade, meeting in the middle here as a mid to high 50s overall player. So that's just kind of a fun discussion, I think, between the two, and we'll see how ultimately it pans out for both of their careers. But I'm willing to take the shot on Jadarian Price. I have him after all the wide receivers and then obviously Jeremiyah Love. I would take Mendoza over him in Superflex. So he's my 1.06 in Superflex, 1.05 in one QB. I'm willing to take the shot on him over Concepcion and Cooper and Sadiq and Stowers and stuff, 'cause that first-round draft capital is there and I tend to believe that he is a good running back. Some of his advanced numbers point that way as well. But I won't deny it's risky and it's a lot of projection. And historically those late first-round picks, especially like Clyde Edwards-Helaire is kind of like the premier example, it doesn't always work out even if the NFL believes it can.
Jeff: Yeah, of course, Clyde Edwards-Helaire's landing spot was considered to be a really good one by dynasty drafters at the time. I mean, it's a great system to land in, it's a really good offense, and it just didn't come together. The way I'm sort of approaching Price is, to me, he's almost more of a contender kind of a draft pick, because at this moment, he's basically slotted to be the starting running back for Seattle, potentially for the entire season, for at least two downs at a time. And that kind of production is hard to find from rookie running backs wherever they're drafted, wherever they are on the board. But I'm with you on that. I'm not sure what the long-term look on him is going to be. If he didn't have all this volume just handed to him right off the bat, would he actually be able to take it away from a healthy Zach Charbonnet, or from whoever they draft next year, or from the free agent running back they pick up in the coming years? So to me, he's kind of more of the contender play. What's your thought on that?
Addison: No, I mean, I agree with it. And you look at his age, he's on the older side of 22, so he's gonna be 23. I don't know if he turns 23 in... I don't have his birthday, it just says his name is 22 years and 7 months. So I guess add five months from today, he turns 23 in season.
Jeff: of season to season.
Addison: So we're talking about a rookie that is effectively gonna be 23 years old, and then he's gonna turn 24 in year two. And as you mentioned, Charbonnet is a free agent at the end of the year, so Seattle's gonna have a decision on him — whether they retain him and then is Price good enough to beat out Zach Charbonnet on a second contract, or do they look to the free agent pool? Do they look to the running back pool? Running backs next year, if Seattle were to kind of spend up again, it's a much better running back class next year at the top. So it'd be interesting to see what they end up doing — or do they find a Bucky Irving type of player or this year's Jonah Coleman, the guy that slips a little bit and they're able to pick him up and that guy's more impactful than we initially thought he would be based on the draft capital. Or whoever the free agent ends up being as well. I mean, there's a lot of different ways that it can go south for Price, but I do generally tend to agree that he is much more of a contender option. And it's just kind of annoying because he's being pushed up draft boards, so the teams that are picking at four, five, six might not be in that contender window to really benefit from a player like Price if he's only gonna give you top 12 or top 15 production for the first two years of his career, then kind of dips on after that. So I don't know if those teams are really gonna be able to benefit from that. Or maybe he's just really good. He could just really super exceed expectations and be their long-term guy for the next five, six years. That could be nice, but there is risk. There is risk.
Jeff: The other thing I'd be curious to see — and we were talking earlier about NIL being a thing that causes players to stay later and affect that coming-out-early aspect of the model — is did we see kind of a sea change in the way running backs, aside from the very top ones, are looked at by the league now? And then if you don't go in that first or second round, you're kind of in this jumbled pool with a whole bunch of other people, even if you're a really good running back, if you're the third or fourth best one in a class. You think that's gonna be kind of something that we're gonna be looking at for several years? Or is it just sort of a happenstance of the way this class just happened to exist?
Addison: I think it was basically how 2026 was viewed by the NFL. I feel like we've had this conversation or somebody has at least asked this question within the dynasty community in like each of the past seven or eight years where we'll have a class where no running back gets drafted in the first round. There's only one or two in the second, maybe another one in the third, and then most of the guys are fourth rounders. And then we'll be like, "Oh, see? The NFL is telling us that they're stopping, they're not valuing the running back position anymore." And then something always happens to where now running backs are being valued in the next draft or the draft after that. And I think it's just all dependent on the actual class and the players that are in. I mean, you could've asked the same question in 2024, right? We didn't have a... The first running back in 2024 drafted was Jonathan Brooks, 46th overall. We had to wait 46 picks before the first running back got taken off the board. Then we had only three other ones drafted in the third round, which was Trey Benson, Blake Corum, and MarShawn Lloyd. Then we had this slew of fourth and fifth rounders. That's where we got Bucky and Ray Davis, Braelon Allen, Audric Estimé, Tyrone Tracy. We had a bunch of those guys in there that have all had kind of... Isaac Guerendo was on that list, Jaylen Wright, Will Shipley. Like some of these guys have had really impactful seasons already, or at least stretches, or they're at least guys that we're interested in as handcuffs to starting running backs right now. Kimani Vidal was a sixth-round pick actually. So some of these guys have had really impactful seasons already, or at least stretches. But that was 2024, and I feel like you could've been like, "Well, the NFL's not really telling us that they value running backs all that much." Until then, 2025 hits, and 2025 is arguably one of the greatest running back classes that we've seen over the past decade or so. Jeanty gets picked sixth overall. Omarion Hampton also first-round pick. In the early second we get Judkins and TreVeyon Henderson off in the 30s. We get RJ Harvey at the end of the second. We get Kaleb Johnson in the third. Skattebo, Bhayshul Tuten, they fell to day three, but they were like two of the first five picks that round. We also got Woody Marks in the fourth round. We got Jaydon Blue that everybody loved and was attached to,
Jeff: Another Kansas City.
Addison: There it is. So it's just... Dylan Sampson was a fourth-round pick, so. But like overall, if the NFL thinks that you're a good running back, they're going to draft you highly. Now we can disagree with specific players. Like, I think Jonah Coleman is much more of a second-round talent than a fourth-round talent. But I also thought that Troy Franklin was much more of a second-round talent than a fourth-round talent. So, and I swung and missed on him. Not saying that you're gonna swing and miss on Jonah Coleman if you take him highly or want to bet that you're right and the NFL is wrong. I would like to bet that the NFL is wrong on Jonah Coleman. But we've just seen time and time again that the NFL will value the players much more accordingly to how they should be valued rather than trying to tank a position that they don't view as highly valued. You know what I'm talking
Jeff: You're a math guy, not an English guy.
Addison: Right. Exactly.
Jeff: It's fascinating that 2024 class — I hadn't really thought about it, but it's something in our earlier part of the conversation — you had those four guys, three of whom have had chronic injury problems throughout their careers. MarShawn Lloyd's hardly seen the field at all. Jonathan Brooks has hardly seen the field at all. Benson has had opportunities to be the guy and has gotten hurt. And then you've got Blake Corum, who has been healthy but stuck behind a bell cow running back until very recently where that split's getting a little more manageable, where he's getting enough work to be a flex candidate at least. But those were the top four two years ago, and that's quite a — all of that, of course, not related. I mean, one injury wasn't related to another one, but just to sort of see that happen to that draft capital is a bit sobering. And then of course, you know, you said a second ago, if they really think you're a great running back, they're gonna draft you. Jeremiyah Love is now the highest-paid running back in NFL history, and he has the same number of NFL carries that you and I do combined.
Addison: That's right.
Jeff: Very, very interesting. And we can of course debate whether that was a good move for Arizona or not, but that is nonetheless a clear signal that he was our running back one coming in, and he's still that coming out. When you're looking back at these misses that you've mentioned, are there any patterns to them aside from going to Tennessee that kind of stand out and you're now looking for these kinds of things in the markers going forward?
Addison: Yeah, the small school one I think is definitely, especially from the wide receiver position. Running backs it's a little bit easier to kind of... I would say the small school running backs don't generally get drafted highly, so you don't really go all in on them and then they fail. And draft capital for running backs I think is so much more important. Like, the hit rate for a top 15 running back is just like 95% or something ridiculous. So like, if they're drafted that highly, it's for a good reason they're going to be used. Wide receivers could be a little different, especially because all wide receivers can be utilized in different ways. Teams could have visions for how those players could get used, as more of a X or a flanker Z or just a deep threat slot guy or, you know, a kick returner even. There's a lot of different roles that you can play on an offensive level, and teams will just go get those guys to fill those roles where they deem it best to take them. So that's why wide receiver gets a little bit more iffy with the draft capital. But yeah, just to answer your question, I think the small school one is definitely one of the more prevailing factors that keeps coming back up. You know, when you look at like a Corey Davis, or an Elijah Moore or a Skyy Moore or anybody like that. Elijah Moore, sorry, went to Ole Miss, but Skyy Moore for sure. Some of those guys just had really, really gaudy numbers at a small school level, looked good compared to some other guys, and then ultimately didn't translate because they weren't playing against that competition level in college, so it was a much harder translation for them playing against that level of competition in the NFL. Some of the other misses — I have like lists and stuff that there are these little signals here and there throughout the profiles that you can kind of point towards. A big example of that maybe this year would be the big run that we saw with career yards per route run versus zone. If you're an active Twitter user, you might have seen that throughout draft season, people just recently discovered that this stat could be highly indicative of either elite production at the NFL level or, more importantly, could be highly indicative of a rough translation if you can't succeed against zone at the collegiate level, and zone being the predominant 75, 80% defense that's run at the NFL level. If you can't succeed against it in college, probably not gonna succeed against it in the NFL. So there are little signals mixed throughout players' profiles that I've kind of found and attached to their profiles to let me know like, "Hey, just an FYI, this guy's got this, and historically that's pretty bad." So we see that with a decent number of the players that even the players that I've graded highly and, you know, you could consider a miss, I can still at least point to a signal saying, "Well, if we had followed that at the time," and I'm trying to pay more attention to that kind of stuff as we continue moving forward. And I try to learn from a lot of this as well. Like Ladd McConkey was a big miss of mine in terms of a player that I did not grade highly who then exceeded my expectations. A lot of film people were on him for sure, but I didn't see it analytically and, looking back on it now, it's kind of like, well, no duh, 'cause he played with Brock Bowers and obviously if you had the choice to throw to Ladd McConkey or Brock Bowers, Bowers is gonna win. But Ladd did a lot of things well on a per route basis, and at the time I was not really evaluating that and didn't have that in my process. So then that was also an introduction in 2025 because of Ladd McConkey, where I started integrating at the wide receiver position per route data, and then I started incorporating some of that more advanced stuff for quarterbacks, running backs, and tight ends as well. And that's another one where some categories and lists can be formed based on how players succeed on an individualized basis versus more of a season-long basis. And if those two match up, that's generally pretty good. If they don't match up, that could either be a positive or a negative thing depending on which way they go.
Jeff: Yeah. You mentioned the film guys being able to see some stuff, particularly with McConkey, that didn't really translate from the numbers, and part of that was just you're up against a unicorn for targets, and the unicorn's gonna get targets. But then the other fight that's been on Twitter for years has been analytics versus film and your model's clearly on the analytics side. Do you think that some of the misses your model had — do you think the film guys had something on those that said, "No, this is not gonna... The stats, the numbers aren't what the real picture is. You need to look at this too"? Or did they just make the same basic mistakes and land on the same conclusion that your model landed on?
Addison: I would say that they're probably equal in terms of the amount of hits and misses that they have, and I'm sure that they can identify players where the film overall was higher on the analytics miss and it worked in their favor. But I think that same process could work in the opposite direction as well — players that film didn't really like but analytics did like, and that worked out in the analytical favor. But I'm sure, you know, if you're talking about Ladd McConkey specifically, film people were really on him. I believe Matt Harmon was really out on Treylon Burks, saying that a lot of his utilization in Arkansas was really rough and not something that translates well to the NFL level. And his film separation just really wasn't all that good. So that would've been a win if you were on the film side of not liking Treylon Burks versus his overall production. I'm trying to think of some other maybe bigger names. I'm sure a lot of people really gravitated towards George Pickens — he wasn't analytically phenomenal, mainly due to injury, but obviously if you watched him at Georgia, like this dude just... I mean, he's doing the same thing in the NFL now. It's just the acrobatic contested catches are just all over the place. And I'm a Steelers fan, so I saw it all the time in Pittsburgh, and obviously we saw it to the nth degree in Dallas, and I'm so frustrated that we ended up trading him for Drew Allar. That was the trade ultimately culminated, by the way — we got a third that we used on Drew Allar.
Jeff: Yeah, well, you know, as of the day we're recording this, Tuesday, May the 12th, you still need a quarterback in Pittsburgh. So Drew Allar might be that future Hall of Fame guy. Probably not, but we won't
Addison: know till we
Jeff: know till we know.
Addison: If he turns into the next Ben Roethlisberger, I'm going to be so excited. But the odds that that happens, man, and the fact that we basically gave up Pickens for him is rough. But yeah.
Jeff: Yeah.
Addison: Going back, I think there's a lot of things that the film guys can do really, really well. But not to call anybody out — I think it's just the film community in general can... There's some real blind spots, I think, in the film community for the analytical side. And there's blind spots on the analytical side for film as well, that, you know, a lot of people are just like, "Well, why would I ever watch film when the analytics are just telling me all I need to know?" I do think that there is a small truth to that. I think that you can get to the bigger picture quicker analytically. But I think the film — especially if you have a really, really good process like Matt Harmon or, you know, JetPack Galileo from the FF Astronauts has a very good process. Dynasty Nerds have a very good process with their Nerd Score. Lot of other guys that I could mention too. So if you have that kind of rigorous process that you have created and honed in on, you could do really, really well, just as the same if you have a really, really good analytical model like J.J. Zachariason or anyone else out there doing that, that you can get to these answers really, really quickly and have a really good hit rate. But then there's also the other side where if you don't have that process and you're just kind of flying by the seat of your pants, you're not gonna hit as many of these players as you might like or think that you do.
Jeff: Yeah. Or if your definition of film watching is looking at the three-minute highlight reel of their collegiate career, because obviously they're gonna look really good at that. Nobody puts their terrible plays on the highlight reels or their bad route running or whatever it happens to be. And acrobatic contested catches — well, it's either you're really good at that, or you couldn't get open against collegiate coverage. And when you get to the pros, it's a good thing you can catch contested balls because that's what they're all going to be.
Jeff: Well, I promised some misses as well, so we'll get into those. You've actually rattled off quite a few of them already — Cam Akers, Treylon Burks. At least on those, I wasn't on an island, so I don't know if that means I was particularly good or particularly lucky at just missing with everyone else on those guys. But there are some that I wanted to raise, and you actually raised one as not being as big of a miss as I'm gonna call him, and that's Jalen Reagor. And he's a TCU guy, which I'm a TCU guy. If I had the wide shot on, you would see the TCU Horned Frog stuffed plushie over here over my shoulder. But as I — and that was the lesson there, was what I just mentioned. I was more of the highlight guy back in those days. And seeing... I watched a lot of TCU play, but I only really noticed him when he had the ball in his hands, and that's the problem, is because he has to have the ball in his hands to do anything.
Addison: go.
Jeff: When he didn't have the ball in his hands, he didn't do anything to even try to get there. And so they kind of scheme up offensive guys that get the numbers, that have the electric plays. How did they get them in the first place? If it was because, you know, it was a handoff jet sweep and just outrun the edge, you can do that in college. You can't really do that in the NFL. NFL is much faster and much more onto that.
Jeff: Sam Darnold and Zach Wilson to me were misses. Darnold at least has proven over time that he really did have it. He just landed in a terrible
Addison: Don't go to the Jets.
Jeff: Don't go to the Jets. Zach Wilson, same. So you know, an inept franchise. You said earlier the NFL's not really into developing quarterbacks. There are a few franchises that do, the Rams being one of them, so there's hope for Ty Simpson. But yeah, landing with a team like the Jets or landing with the Browns, who have just churned through quarterbacks — some of whom have done very well. Darnold won a Super Bowl. Baker Mayfield, you know, was right up there in the MVP conversations before. So there is hope. Darnold was a miss for a while. I mean, he's not a miss anymore, but in the timeframe that you and I typically think of for dynasty, he was a miss. He was not good during that whole stretch, and Wilson's never been good.
Jeff: And then, you know, Henry Ruggs, another guy that I was high on and I... Yikes. He's a freak athlete, five-star recruit, fast as blazes. He averaged almost 20 yards a catch one year. You know, he was great against press, he was great against physical corners. I'm sorry, he was not great against press or physical corners. That was one of the flags — he could be taken off the board very, very easily. And then of course he took himself off the board later in life with some off-field choices. But the other lesson there for me, for him, was he was never the guy when he was at Alabama. And he put up great numbers, but he was never the guy. And I think that's probably something your model, I bet, caught because if you're looking at the volume share and the yards per pass attempt, some of that was propped up by just the fact he had long catches. But I bet your score on Ruggs was pretty low compared to some of the other names you've mentioned. So you wouldn't necessarily consider him a bust because you didn't think he was gonna be that good in the first place.
Addison: Yeah, he graded as a 60. Really being vaulted up again by that first-round draft capital. Like right next to him actually is Gabe Davis, who was a fourth-round pick. So Gabe Davis had a — I mean, he had a bunch of production at UCF, so you could argue there's some smaller school stuff going on there, but another example there. Tee Higgins is actually not too far behind. Had Henry Ruggs fallen into day two, he probably would've been closer to like a Tee Higgins or a Chase Claypool kind of player. So he's just got vaulted up quickly because of being 12th overall. He was the first wide receiver drafted in
Jeff: First wide receiver drafted, yeah. But the Raiders making another head-scratching kind of first pick overall. I didn't think Ruggs was that good, but I did think he was better than Darius Heyward-Bey, so, you know, improvement there. Same outcome, sadly.
Jeff: And then I'll miss the other direction too, which those don't hurt as badly for dynasty managers generally. If you didn't invest low capital in a guy and he hit, okay, you've just missed him. Puka Nacua was that, and for me it's because it was the worst dynasty trade I've ever made, which is what led me there. I had my eye on him. I was in the third round and I traded that pick — for Allen Lazard, shortly after Rodgers had signed with the Jets. They had traded for Lazard. They gave him a lot of money and thought I had a decent enough connection. It's gonna give me a decent enough floor, so I traded that third-round pick when I was eyeing Puka. At least the manager I traded to also has the same horror story because he didn't take Puka Nacua either. It fell to the pick after that. But my lessons are there too on that one, you know. If you have a shine to a guy in those later rounds — third round, fourth round, fifth round — just take him. Just go ahead and take him. Don't fret it. Don't try to outsmart yourself on what the outcome might be. And the second is don't chase floors. Again, with those later picks, go for upside, and Puka Nacua had lots of upside. Everybody in the third, fourth, and fifth round of a rookie draft has the same floor — zero — but the upside is really there. So those are some of the lessons from my misses. Don't take guys that go to the Jets. Clearly a wide receiver that's going to Tennessee is problematic, so we will see if Carnell Tate can break that curse or not. And what I just mentioned for Puka Nacua — as well as schemed up touches and what that means. Any other lessons here that dynasty managers should take out of the guys that we've been talking about for the last, you know, 40 minutes or so?
Addison: At the end of the day, a lot of rookie evaluation can really just be a crapshoot. You're just at the roulette table just hoping that it lands on the number or the color that you picked. So if you have a conviction — like you mentioned — if you're really in on a guy that consensus is kinda saying, "Hey, don't go that direction," and you go with consensus and then consensus was wrong, you were right and you went with consensus, you're gonna kick yourself. Sometimes it works out to where consensus steered you in the right direction, but there are a lot of times where we also get it wrong. And again, because the NFL gets it wrong too. So if you have conviction on these players, go with your own conviction. At the end of the day, I try to just be here to be as informative as possible so that you have all the information that you possibly can. So that's why I have Carnell Tate as my rookie wide receiver three. I made a whole video post-draft about why he's my WR3, why Tyson's my one, why Lemon is my two. And I wanted to just feed people that information so that — and a lot of people, there were enough comments in there that were kind of like, "You've offered a different perspective on Tate that I had not heard," because it was just the whole community basically saying that he's phenomenal, he's a WR1, and you've offered this kind of alternative perspective. Don't know if people are actually gonna follow my direction or anything like that. I don't know if they're gonna go with me or go with the consensus. But if I can at least get people to think about what they're doing and not just hit draft just because somebody's telling them to hit draft — I at least want people to form their own opinions, and I'm just here for the information side of it. So as long as you're forming your own opinions and not just blindly following everybody else, because a lot of people get stuff wrong, everybody gets stuff wrong all the time, from the top to the bottom. So yeah, I think especially from a rookie evaluation standpoint, make your own opinions, have your convictions, and then go with it at the end of the day.
Jeff: But before we close up, I do wanna ask about one thing. If you visit Addison's website — which is themarkersystem.com, I believe the "the" in front of it, so themarkersystem.com — you'll see little things attached to some players like the N'Keal list or NFL "Not For Long" that you've attached. What are these... Some are green, which I think are probably positive, and the red ones, because we're missing, so the red ones are the ones I kinda wanna look at here. What are they warning us about? What — if I see one of those red little labels on there, what am I supposed to be thinking about that, regardless of what their overall score or situation might be?
Addison: Yeah. So these are the categories that I had mentioned earlier of I've found these little signals that historically could either mean generally pretty good things or generally not so good things. And if those signals in future players' profiles pop up, that alerts me, and that's what all of these tags or labels are on the site. There is like an info button — it's kinda hidden, it's not really put in the greatest position, I think. But if you're just on the player grades page, which is the first page that pops up when you go to the site, there is a little question mark labels button that when you click it, it pops up with a modal that will explain what all of these are. And then it will give you like a list of who the players are that fall into that category historically. Now a lot of these are just kind of through the past eight or nine years. A lot of it depends on more advanced analytics numbers that we don't have data for obviously back to like 2010 or earlier than that. Like it starts at like '16, '17, '18. So that's why the sample size isn't as big compared to my entire database. But that's where all of this is. So that N'Keal Harry list that you mentioned, properly named after N'Keal Harry, it is a negative. That is where it's the inverse of what I called the McConkey list, which was based on Ladd. Where that, as I mentioned kind of before, when you compare at the wide receiver position success on a per route basis from advanced analytics like targets per route run, yards per route run, first downs per route run, all that kind of stuff — compare those numbers to my season-long production, which is through my markers, you know, breakout age, yards per team pass attempt, fantasy points per game, like all that kind of stuff. When you compare the two, generally they should line up to a certain degree. Not to say that you have to hit on the exact number of each, but they should relatively line up. And if you're a little bit above or a little bit below, it's not necessarily bad. But if you're a lot above or a lot below, that is an indication. So the McConkey list is that you hit on twice as many of my advanced markers as you do regular markers, which means that you are way more successful on a per route basis than what your career or season-long stats have shown. And that historically has been a pretty good indicator through the first about 200 picks or the first five rounds. So you could look at — obviously Ladd McConkey is on that list, he's
Jeff: He's Ladd McConkey. He's named after him.
Addison: Puka fell onto that list. So have you used this to say, "Yes, I would like to draft Puka"? Then you could have gone there. Diontae Johnson, Hollywood Brown, Tee Higgins, Jaylen Waddle. Makai Lemon is the only player from this year that falls onto that list. There are some other misses like Javon Baker, Tre Tucker, Dwayne Eskridge, Parris Campbell, who are on there too. But a lot of those guys are lower-level rookie picks — thirds and fourth rounds — and I've always said like if I got a miss on four Dwayne Eskridges to then hit on one Puka Nacua, like sign me up, man.
Jeff: I'd do it every year.
Addison: Every single day. But I think it's interesting that Makai Lemon is the only one that hits on this list and obviously is a consensus top three wide receiver. But that's a feather in his cap for looking really good. Now the N'Keal list — as I mentioned, it's the inverse of the McConkey list — where that is players that have half as many of my advanced markers hit as the season-long stuff, meaning that their seasonal production looks really good, but on a per route basis their metrics are rough. Meaning that maybe they were just fed a lot of volume because of the offense that they were in. Maybe they were just fed volume because they were a better athlete than a wide receiver. They don't have the per route success at the collegiate level that you would then expect to see a smooth transition into the NFL. And I'm only looking at rounds one and two wide receivers. If you're a day three pick or anything and you're on this list, it doesn't necessarily matter. I wanna know who are the top guys that don't have that success. And this has also been... So obviously N'Keal Harry, that's a big one, he's that's who the list
Jeff: It is, yeah.
Addison: Will Fuller, Denzel Mims, Jalen Reagor, Terrace Marshall, Tyquan Thornton, Jonathan Mingo, Adonai Mitchell, Xavier Legette are like the major, major names from that list. Now, Michael Pittman was on that list as well, so had you used it to fade Michael Pittman, you would've had a miss there. You should've drafted Michael Pittman. Tyler Boyd, Sterling Shepard — I don't know if you count them as hits or misses. I don't know. They're just kinda in there.
Jeff: Guess it depends on what you wanted them to be. If they were gonna be your WR1, miss. If it was your WR4, yeah, fine.
Addison: Sure. And then BTJ — so he's the other, I would say is a hit just based on his rookie year. But I guess we'll kinda see if he continues to repeat 2025, you know, he might Kelvin Benjamin his way into being a list ruiner for future lists of wide receivers. Or he could just be — if he falls back towards the rookie version of BTJ, obviously he would be more of a success for that list. But not all these lists are gonna show 100% accuracy. But they're just kind of there to point you in the direction of saying, "Hey, this guy has this. Historically, that's either been really good. Historically, that has not been so good."
Jeff: Who, anybody in the 2026 class — for those who haven't had their rookie drafts yet or are doing a startup and will be looking at adding the rookies into their rosters — anybody in the 2026 class that scored pretty well on the markers and maybe had great draft capital, but we should be approaching a little bit more cautiously?
Addison: Um, most of them. Most of the players in here — so one of the funny things about this class is I have a class breakdown tab on the website where you can go and view the average grade and the top graded players for each class per position. And 2026 is by far the worst average grade among the top 50 overall players. They're one of two classes with an average grade lower than a 50. And the other one was at a 49.7, and they're at a 46.9. So this class is rough. It's not good at all. Now, if we're talking about players that have not great signals, the career yards per route run versus zone — that's a list that I have in here just because I found it's just a really, really interesting signal. I talked to J.J. Zachariason about it, and he was kind of — not pushing back entirely against it — but was just kind of like, "Don't use one number," especially a number where for wide receivers, yards per route run could be so dependent on the success and the talent of the quarterback as well, 'cause obviously in order to have yards, you need to catch the ball. And if the ball is uncatchable more often than not, then you're not gonna get the yards on those routes run. And that's a big one — KC Concepcion fails to hit even the lowest baseline for yards per route run versus zone. He's highlighted with the label called Crushed by Zone, where they have a sub 2.25 yards per route run versus zone in their career. Concepcion has a sub two. So he's not even relatively close. He's well below it. But I know Matt Harmon kind of went against it. He's like, "If you watch Texas A&M, their quarterback is atrocious." The number of times
Jeff: was
Addison: was just open and, yeah. I mean, you see it. I've watched some of KC's film, and it's just like that quarterback is awful.
Jeff: Yep. One of which was a league winner last year because — if you were lucky enough to have Michael Wilson, but I wouldn't count on that going forward. That was a cautionary tale there. A lot of highly touted guys, including by me. Matthew Golden will end up — if we did this show again in two years, Matthew Golden will end up on my miss list, unless he gets it turned around. Coleman's another one. I was higher on this than your model was, and I'm going to be wrong on both of those, it looks like.
Addison: Yeah. For the quarterback position, I would say as well, Mendoza and Ty Simpson fall in that NFL stands for "Not For Long" label. For quarterbacks, I have a green light, yellow light, red light label, where it's essentially looking at their advanced analytics and their collegiate experience level based on certain passing metrics, like passing yards and pass attempts and stuff like that. Basically, do you have the advanced success and the collegiate experience to have a smooth translation into the NFL? It's not to say that if you were a green light quarterback that you're 100% going to hit. But most of those guys have been hits. Red light basically means that you don't have the advanced success in terms of like big-time throws. Is ADOT on there? Maybe. Interception percentage, sack percentage. I'm blanking on what all the other ones are. Advanced analytics for quarterbacks essentially, though. So you don't hit on enough of those, and you don't have the collegiate experience for that smooth transition. So this list — I mean, you get Paxton Lynch, Mitch Trubisky, Josh Rosen, Sam Darnold, Dwayne Haskins, Tua, Mac Jones, Zach Wilson, Kenny Pickett, Stroud and Bryce Young, J.J. McCarthy. Josh Allen is on that list. Josh Allen was an atrocious quarterback prospect, by the way. So if he was not on that list, this list would look horrendous, but the fact that he's on there at least gives you a glimmer of hope. And Darnold, as you just mentioned, has shown that when he's put in the right system, that it was there — it just was not there in New York. But I think that's kind of an indicator that these quarterbacks need to land in the right situations for them to succeed.
Jeff: Stroud was pretty decent. Yeah, Stroud was decent when his offensive line could block.
Addison: Yep, for sure. And Mac Jones maybe. We'll see. He's kind of become the San Francisco reclamation project for Kyle Shanahan, so we'll kinda see what goes on there. But Fernando Mendoza and Ty Simpson fall into that category. So it's not to say that they can't — it's just that based on their collegiate experience and their lack of elite advanced analytics, their transition might be rough. Now, Mendoza's playing with Klint Kubiak now, has Brock Bowers to throw to. We'll see what goes on there. Ty Simpson, as we talked about earlier, is in like the perfect situation, the heir apparent to Matthew Stafford in a McVay offense, probably throwing to Puka Nacua at the time, maybe some other wide receivers. So we'll just kinda have to see. But historically, it's not like they fall into these uber amazing lists of other great quarterbacks that we've seen come out in the past.
Jeff: Yep. Well, man, this has been a lot of fun, very insightful. Thanks so much for spending some time with me today. Before we go, why don't you let everybody know where they can find you and your great work that you do to make analytics approachable. Because I think we have a tendency in this industry to come up with weird acronyms and make it sound like we're dealing with wizardry when it's really just math. So you do a really good job of breaking it down and making it approachable. Tell everybody where they can find you.
Addison: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me on. This is — I always love to talk about advanced analytics and just regular analytics and the Marker System and everything like that, so thank you so much for having me on. I am @AmazeHayes_ on X and Bluesky. Basically 99.9% of my work can be found on the DLF YouTube channel. Sometimes I will write in-season articles, but everything's basically over there on the DLF YouTube channel for Dynasty League Football. And then, yeah, themarkersystem.com if you're curious about what's going on with my modeling system. That is the website that I kind of generated before the NFL draft, and all of the data's updated for post-draft 2026. So you could see where all the 2026 players are, where other players have landed historically in the past since 2010. So there are a bunch of cool little ways that you can visualize some of the data that I have in there and specifically dive into 2026 for your rookie drafts.
Jeff: Yeah, definitely check out the YouTube channel. There's great stuff there. And then themarkersystem.com. It's just a terrific resource. It's available for free. You just put it out there for all of us to use as data points in our rookie evaluation. That's outstanding that you do that. And thanks everyone who has watched this episode on YouTube or listening to it on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting platform. Do us a favor and click the likes button, five-star ratings, positive reviews. If you put comments in YouTube, I respond to all of those personally. All of those kinds of little actions will help this show grow and reach more dynasty managers, and give them great advice and insights like what we got today from Addison. And we will have another guest next week who will offer a different set of insights, and that'll be next week on Dynasty Compass.
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