Tue Apr 25th 2023

My "Avoids" In This Year's Class

I recently made my final update to my pre-draft rookie rankings. After doing so, I looked at the Dynasty League Football's (DLF) rookie rankings to compare my rankings with theirs. I did this to see which players I am lower on than their consensus rankings. This process helps me determine my "avoid" guys. Meaning these are guys that I am lower on than they are, and, thus, guys I will not often draft in rookie drafts.

More than ever, draft capital will change a lot with this year's class. So I will shuffle my rankings after the NFL draft. That said, over the last month, I have listened to scouts and monitored mock drafts enough to feel comfortable writing about the differences I currently see in my pre-draft rankings compared to those at DLF.

Here are the players that I have at least six spots lower in my rankings, meaning I would draft them at least one half-round later than dynasty managers using DLF's rookie rankings.

Anthony Richardson

• DLF has him ranked 4th, but I have him ranked 11th.
• Richardson tested as the most athletic quarterback ever at the Combine and has removed any doubt that he will be a top ten pick in the NFL draft, most likely drafted in the top four. Still, I am not willing to draft Richardson ahead of the players I am absolutely sure will be productive NFL players. My top-ten rookies are fool-proof players, so I would want all of them before I am willing to take a player I have any doubt about. Richardson's 54% completion percentage and 12 college starts make him a very suspect prospect, and I choose to focus on his downside above his upside. Many, if not most, dynasty managers will focus on the upside, but I am not willing to waste an early first-round pick on a player whose upside is based on traits over the tape.

Will Levis

• DLF has him ranked 8th, but I have him ranked 16th.
• Mel Kiper loves Levis, and he, like Richardson, will get drafted in the top ten, if not the top four. Still, several of the scouts I have listened to and read over the last month see too many flaws in his game and have six or more quarterbacks in this class ranked ahead of him. If everything goes right for him, Richardson has far more upside, so I would be willing to draft him in the first round after the top-ten players I am confident will become NFL stars. Levis does not have Richardson's upside, so I'll wait until the mid-second round to draft him in superflex leagues. I hope Richardson and Levis get bumped up into the first round so some of the players I like ahead of them will fall to me late in the first round and early in the second round.

Zach Charbonnet

• DLF has him ranked 11th, but I have him ranked 17th.
• I have Sean Tucker and Israel Abanikanda ranked ahead of Charbonnet if you read my article from last week. As a result, I have Charbonnet ranked six spots lower than the pros at DLF. I fully recognize that Charbonnet is the odds on third running back to get drafted this year. I believe he will be too. However, if Tucker and Abanikanda are drafted in the same round or one round later, I would still have the three lumped closely together after the drafts. That is unless any of them were severely blocked by another veteran running back. I like Charbonnet, and he may be the most complete back among those three, but he did not wow me on film like Tucker and Abanikanda did. Charbonnet looked good at everything, but nothing looked great. The draft will determine a lot for me with this second tier of running backs, but I consider Charbonnet in the same tier, whereas DLF and others I respect have Charbonnet in a tier by himself.

Devon Achane

• DLF has him ranked 13th, but I have him ranked 35th.
• I expected I would be way lower on Achane than other dynasty analysts, and I was. I just did not know it would be by such an enormous degree. The bottom line is Achane is too small to play running back in the NFL, and he will be limited to a 10 to 12-touch role no matter which team drafts him. Speed is the trait I value least for running backs because it's rarely displayed in the NFL. You must get back the front seven to show your speed, and Achane cannot get past the front seven. His yards per carry decreased every season at Texas A&M because the more they tried to get him the ball, the less he could do. He's suited for a valuable role for an NFL team but not a valuable role on a dynasty roster unless it's a best-ball league.

Zach Evans

• DLF has him ranked 18th, but I have him ranked 34th.
• I've had a hard time ranking Evans higher than I have because he's never dominated the backfield in college, even though he was a top recruit. He never earned the lead role and TCU or Ole Miss, resulting in a lousy production profile. Even if he gets drafted by an NFL team without a proven veteran back, I'll have a hard time believing he'd win that job outright. I do not think he will get drafted until day three and will get drafted after the second-tier running backs I wrote about above. If I am wrong and he is drafted ahead of some of the running backs I have ranked ahead of him, I still think he will only move up a little in my dynasty rankings. The early third round is the earliest I consider drafting him, no matter what team drafts him.

Kendre Miller

• DLF has him ranked 19th, but I have him ranked 31st.
• I have Miller ranked a little closer to the pros at DLF than I did Evans, but there's still a pretty big gap of 12 spots. Unlike Evans, however, I'd be willing to change my mind if Miller gets better draft capital than I expect. Miller at least had one incredible final season at TCU, with 1515 total yards and 17 touchdowns, barely less than Evans had on his career. Plus, he has more than ten pounds of weight on Evans and is a more versatile back. He was recruited as an athlete rather than a running back, which I also ding prospects for but may need to reconsider with Miller and the next guy on my avoid list.

Roschon Johnson

• DLF has him ranked 26th, but I have him ranked 37th.
• Last week, I wrote that I need to reconsider my ranking of Mohamed Ibrahim and lower him after doing this exercise comparing my rankings with DLF. Johnson is my mulligan this week. I should have Johnson ranked higher, but for the sake of the exercise, I will still write about him here. It's unfair to look at Johnson's production profile, given that he played behind Bijan Robinson. Still, I knocked him for it because he, like Miller, was recruited as an athlete rather than a running back. Last week, I wrote about how I moved some of the bigger wide receivers up in my rankings because I am convinced some teams will draft them simply because they want a bigger receiver. The same will be true for running back, and Johnson is one of the bigger well-rounded backs in this class at 219 pounds. Johnson will be drafted earlier than I thought, and I need to move him up in my rankings. He's proven to be a valuable and trustworthy backup in college, and I believe he'll get drafted to do the same in the NFL. If he's drafted by a team that does not have a dominant RB-1, he'll move up even more than where I should have had him ranked today.

Luke Musgrave

• DLF has him ranked 30th, but I have him ranked 38th.
• There's no massive difference in our ranking, but it is the difference between a third-round pick and a fourth-round pick. Musgrave's college production, though limited by injuries, was not enough to cause me to rank him any higher than I have. I can't draft a tight end who only scored two touchdowns in college in the third round of a rookie draft, no matter what his draft capital or the team that drafts him. In fact, after writing this article and processing things more, he's a player I want to move down even more and would instead take stabs at wide receivers in the early fourth round.

Tyler Scott

• DLF has him ranked 34th, but I have him ranked 40th.
• I rightfully moved Scott up my draft board after his fantastic performance at the Combine, but I couldn't move up into the third round as DLF has. Scott's production profile at Cincinnati keeps me from doing so. He averaged 16 yards per reception over the last two seasons, proving he can be a big play and down-the-field target in the NFL. He will likely get drafted to play a role like that in an NFL but cannot develop into a receiver that is more than a big-play threat. He'll help an NFL team but won't help dynasty rosters except in best-ball leagues. The only thing that could change my mind about him is if he was drafted on day two, but I would be shocked if that happened.

Eric Gray

• DLF has him ranked 37th, but I have him ranked 53rd.
• I was stunned to see that the pros at DLF ranked Gray as almost a third-round pick when I have him as barely draftable in the fifth round. If you've read my articles, you know I add recruiting status to my rankings. I would give a player a bump in my rankings if they were highly recruited, as Gray was, and even extend my hope for such a player. However, I place more hope in a highly recruited player if they had at least one collegiate year proving they could live up to the hype. Kayshon Boutte and Tank Bigsby are players in this class who I have held in higher regard because they each had a breakout year. Zach Evans and Eric Gray have not, so I have considered their recruiting ranking far less because of it. Perhaps the pros at DLF have kept their recruiting profile in mind more than I have because they are both on my avoid list for this class.

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