What is up? It's the rant. My name is Jeff Rackledon. It is Wednesday, August 11th, and you know. You know. It's fantasy football season when hard knocks, premieres. I know not everybody loves hard knocks, but I can't get enough of it.

I love the behind the scenes look that unique angle. You just don't get it anywhere else. So love some hard knocks. We're going to do some hard knocks until on the show today every week that the episode airs. I watch it, but I watch it like a fantasy analyst would watch it, not like a normal person because we are not normal. That's for sure also on today's podcast as you can see from the title of this podcast. I'm going to tell you the running backs that I think you should be drafting in the middle rounds of your drafts. That's a crucial area for

running backs, especially if you punt the second running back spot. So we'll dive into that in just a bit, but I want to hit the ground running with my hard knocks until the episode, the first episode, if you haven't seen it, I mean, hey, all right, spoiler, you're probably going to have to fast forward a little bit. If you don't want spoilers here, but I will tell you some of the key details, first and foremost, the episode was obviously about that press. I mean, huge surprise, right?

It was about to ask Dak Prescott and then early, very early in the episode, he revealed that he actually had two surgeries, not one. So that was interesting. He said, we kept that on the down. No one knew that about the second surgery. But early in the episode, they highlight him. Look, pretty good. But the coaches realized that they were over using him initially, and they wanted to sort of dial that back. Obviously that was, I don't know if that contributed to the.

The injury, but a lot of focus was on the injury in this episode. And the team, even the trainer consulted with a few baseball teams, Yankees, the Texas Rangers, to basically get their take on on how to get him past this. It really does seem like it's an injury that just requires a little bit of time, which is basically what they were they were doing.

Dak was obviously frustrated through a big chunk of the episode for his inability to throw or his inability to get reps, but I think they are taking while they're taking the cautious route. And I think they're taking the wise route with him. It doesn't change my view on him. He's number four or number five fantasy quarterback him in Lamar, kind of back to back in my rankings, they've been fluctuating regardless of injury, regardless of Lamar's COVID situation.

They may be sort of bouncing back and forth between me. So they're basically on even turf. And both of them are likely going to go earlier than I'm willing to draft them. It's just plain and simple, if I don't get two rounds of value on those guys, I'm not going to draft, which means they have to be there in like the seventh round, I highly doubt that's going to happen unless you have people who are legitimately that concern with Dak and I don't think they are.

There's also a buddy episode. So Dak and Zeke, very, very good friends. We had a humanizing moment with Ezekiel Elliott in this episode, where he was wrapping a gift using a YouTube tutorial, some of us have struggled doing that in the past. And you get to see these guys as human beings, not as football players who are on our fantasy rosters, which, you know, it drives me nuts. Sometimes when we, we detach the player from them being an actual human being. So I thought that was a good moment right there.

Otherwise, not much here. Other than Mike McCarthy is obviously a player's coach. He is not a disciplinarian. And generally, there's a very lighthearted vibe at camp right now. You even had Jim Fossil talking about kidding snipped and then having that reversed, which was a humorous moment in that episode.

I don't know. I don't know how I feel about an Austin Powers reference. At this point, if you don't know what I'm talking about Mike McCarthy, one of their little vibes here is a mojo moment. And he is quoting Austin Powers. So quoting Austin Powers, like 20 years later, I guess there are some movies that are so quotable. Like I still legit on a golf course, no matter what, give at least five catty check references. And that is really old.

But I don't know. Did Austin Powers age well? I think that's the question. I'm not quite sure it did. I don't know. But anyway, is it corny? Maybe is he a player's coach? Definitely lighthearted vibe. And then they did highlight Michael Parsons, which dude looks like he's going to be a stud in your IDP leagues. But otherwise, not much from the first episode. We'll see what happens next week in the second episode. So let's dive in to the second portion of today's podcast, which, of course, I'm going to

use our the running backs. We should be targeting in the middle rounds of our fantasy football drafts. Yesterday over at FTN fantasy.com, I dropped the 2021 edition of my fantasy football draft plan. This is basically the entire approach to

really any draft. I mean, I guess you could say two quarterback in there as well. But any draft in generally speaking, normal leagues and normal means a wide range of things. But whether it's PPR, hand-pulled PPR, not

or not PPR, two quarter back, whatever it is,

this is the approach.

Now, if you're in like guillotine,

all right, I have somebody asked for guillotine content.

I'm sorry, I'm not gonna do that this year,

maybe next year,

because it's still not a widely played format.

It's growing, it's growing,

but we're not quite there yet.

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