Yahoo Sports’ Fantasy Football Live crew looks ahead to the best part of the fantasy season – the draft – and give you an early glimpse at the players that fantasy managers should target next fall.
Video Transcript
If you’re like me, the fantasy playoffs ended before they began.
So we’re going to look ahead to next year.
It’s time for a way too early first round mock for next season.
Lots of candidates who should or could be the top overall pick in fantasy drafts.
We did a randomized order on this.
It is not a snake draft.
This will be helpful.
Y’all can save this and help, help you get ready for your draft.
Matt Harmon for the first overall pick in the way too early first round mock for next season.
Who do you take good sir?
Listen, if you people out there thought I was gonna come in here after the resurgent year of the running back position as the lead representative of big wide receiver and not take a wide out here at the first overall pick, you were kidding yourselves.
And he gave great analysis of how much of a difference maker Jamar Chase has been this season.
I think he should be the number one overall pick.
Next year.
Nothing’s going to change for him.
He’s gonna come right back into a monster workload.
He’s gonna come right back with the quarterback he’s playing with, been playing with forever.
T Higgins maybe even finds his way back on this team.
That’s only going to make the Bengals’ offense better.
So there’s a lot of volatility as there always is at running back no matter what happened this year.
I think Chase should be the first overall pick in draft next season.
Our champion Tara Roberts with the 2nd pick.
Who do you got in this way too early 1st round mock?
I 100% agree with Matt, um, but it’s the 2nd overall pick.
I am going to running back and I’m going with Saquan Barkley.
Um, when you finish as the first overall quarterback when you’re first overall running back when your quarterback is pushing all that push, uh, I mean, it gives your rights to be the first running back off the board in 2025/18.
00 rushing yards when it’s all said and done, it could be over 2000.
Only concern here would be maybe, you know, the career year in terms of carries and maybe having a little bit of a slump, but Sawan has never shown any of those type of tendencies here, so we have to give it to him.
The crown of the overall B1, we’re going with Sawan here.
I, I love that pick by you, and I love continuity.
If you’ve listened to Yahoo Sports inside coverage, you should.
If you haven’t.
I’ve broken down on quite in detail why I think the Miami, Miami, the Minnesota Vikings are gonna franchise tag Sam Darnold.
I think he’s gonna be back.
He’s their quarterback next year.
I like continuity, which means I like Justin Jefferson with the 3rd pick in the draft.
He’s still Justin Jefferson.
I still think that no matter.
Who’s throwing the ball to him?
He’ll be Justin Jefferson, but I think the Vikings have a good shot at bringing basically everybody back.
This is not the end.
It’s the beginning of a window for Minnesota, and I love Justin Jefferson to continue his level of dominance, which means never parents.
Andy Barns, you are up next.
Who do you like?
I’ll take Bijon Robinson, and this is basically where he went in this year’s drafts, right?
Uh.
Season has gone almost under the radar because Sawan is doing historic things.
Derrick Henry is living in the end zone, but Bijon is going to finish with over 1800 scrimmage yards this year.
His highlights are just absolutely of the highest quality.
He’s the centerpiece of an ascending offense, so I think he’s in a great situation for next season, could plausibly finish as the overall RB1.
All right, that means we are back to Harman.
Who you got for us?
Yeah, I’m going to go with Jamir Gibbs here, uh, on this one.
Like I mentioned earlier, he’s shown he can handle a massive workload.
Now David Montgomery’s on a contract extension.
He’s going to be back next year, but the Lions is just such a beautiful ecosystem, uh, and Gibbs, like I said, has shown the ability to be a true running back one both in the NFL and in fantasy.
He doesn’t need to dominate the workload to be the 5th overall pick in fantasy drafts next year.
Terry, you’re back up on the clock.
Who you got?
I got Pukanikua here.
The Rams’ offense is occasionally peculiar, but there’s one thing that is very clear about it.
Pukanikua is the dominating force in the Rams’ offense, and that is not changing anytime soon.
Puka is the wide receiver 5 and average points per game prior to this week, and that average includes two games where he played less than 50% of snaps due to injury and ejection.
But Puka is for real.
He should be a first round pick.
We should have that confidence in him.
He has taken over that receiving court and he is absolutely dominating.
Uh, there are some big name running backs left for me to take here, but am I gonna do that?
No, I’m gonna be a man of the people and I’m gonna do what everybody does in this situation.
I’m gonna overdraft somebody from my favorite football team out of sure hope and manifestation, which means, let’s run up to the podium and take Brock Bowers.
Come on, at least hear me out on this.
If Andy Barns pointed out that the, we are on record watch for Brock Bowers, and that was with Gardner and Aiden as quarterbacks.
Like he can’t get any worse.
Quarterback unless Harman’s lining up behind center.
So the way I look at it, it’s only gonna get better.
And next year when you’re going into this thing from day one, there’s no Devote to take touches.
Brock Bowers from day one is just gonna be a target monster.
So much like Cookie Monster, he’s gonna feast and I’m gonna be happy.
Brock Bowers with the overdraft from my heart for manifestation, and then because it’s a way too early mock draft.
If I can’t take him now, when can I take him?
Andy Barrens, tell me how brilliant I am and then go ahead and make your pick.
It’s a little bit brilliant.
Um, I was actually, I was thinking about taking Bowers with the final pick of the first round, so I don’t hate it.
Um, the positional edge is, is pretty clear.
Um, I’m gonna, I’m going to take Derrick Henry at this spot, and, um, man, we’re, we’re like 7 or 8 months away from a huge percentage of the fantasy analyst community telling you that we can’t trust Derrick Henry.
He’s 31, he’s too old.
History is against him.
All that, all the same things that we’ve been saying for 2 years, and then Derrick Henry is going to go out and score 16 or 18 touchdowns for the Ravens.
At age 30, he just gave us by far the best yards per carry of his career, the second highest rushing total of a Hall of Fame career.
He has shown no signs of aging or decline, so I think he’s a pretty clear first rounder next season.
I love that call by you, Matt Harmon, you’re back up.
What do you got for us?
Yeah, uh, Josh Jacobs here for me.
Uh, Terry made a lot of great points about him, uh, talking earlier and they’ve just really built the whole thing out of the run game and it’s hard to blame them.
The run game has been fantastic there in Green Bay.
Josh Jacobs has been everything that they wanted him to be, which was a guy that they could.
For us to run multiple run schemes, they could lean into a lot of gap concepts.
It’s, it just has such, such, such a, such a signing that’s worked out really well for this team.
And I don’t expect anything to change next year, uh, in terms of the way they structure and design their offense.
So I think he’s a very worthy first round pick in fantasy.
All right, Tara, who do you got?
I’m staying on the running back train here with HN.
His rushing numbers obviously dipped this season in terms of efficiency, but his receiving upside rivals that of Alvin Kamara, very similar there.
We have to put some respect on his name.
We knew that HN wouldn’t be a high carry back with his utilization, but from a fantasy perspective, It is absolutely insane and perfect.
The only thing holding HN back is potential absences for Tua.
Uh, HN’s numbers are obviously skewed there by Tua’s stint on IR, but when Tua is active, HN is a top 5 pack.
All we need is a competent backup quarterback to be signed, and we are all full systems go here.
I, I finished my draft the way I’ve drafted all year by cheating, uh, and looking at smarter people’s report cards around me.
Tara Roberts won this thing and earlier in the show she told you about the quiet season that I’m on Ross St. Brown is having, and I look at that and say, all right, when you talk about continuity, what’s going to come back?
It’s still going to be one of the best offensive lines with the quarterback.
That’s gonna be able to run whatever the offense looks like and weapons everywhere for the Lions.
I like I’m on Ross abound for my last pick in this draft, and it comes in and continues to be exactly who he’s been.
I don’t think anything changes that day, which means Andy Barns, you get to finalize our way too early first round mocked with one more name.
Yeah, I suppose there are splashier names that I could take, but I’m just going to go CD Lamb.
This is a pretty nice discount on his 2024 price.
Obviously.
Lamb will only end up playing 15 games this season.
He still gave us over 100 catches, nearly 1200 yards.
He did it with Cooper Rush at the controls for much of the year.
Uh, he’s going to remain the centerpiece of the Cowboys’ offense.
Obviously one of the top receivers in the game, a very good bet next year for 120 catches, 1500 yards, double digit touchdowns.
What I’m sure of is that this is gonna be clipped off and sent to the world and yeah, it’s gonna go well.
This is gonna go really perfectly and absolutely nobody’s gonna give us grief on it.