Lindsay, how are you?
Hi, I'm doing well. I'm just trying to wrap my brain around this Cooper Cup post. Have you seen this?
Yeah, I just was alerted to it right in the break as well. Well, I mean, you got Pukinokua and then you got Cooper. He wants his money and a future elsewhere, huh? Wow. Well, no, he doesn't want it. It says that he was informed that the team will be seeking a trade immediately and will be working with him and his family to find the right place to continue competing for championships. I don't agree with the decision and always believed it was going to begin and end in LA. Wow.
Wow. We know money talks. Well, let me ask you this, Lindsay, what are your thoughts on how he would fit in? We know he came back from injury now to share the ball with Pukinokua. Matthew Stafford, they're trying to figure out his situation financially.
What does this mean for the Rams and the hole? Well, I think, I mean, there was already some people wondering about like how Cooper fit in. I think prior to this, I don't think this necessarily comes out of left field at all. I'm going to try and pull up his, as we talk, his numbers that we have for him here this season at Sumer Sports so I can add some context to this conversation. But of course, this kind of came out of left field.
So I'll get to those as soon as I can. But I mean, obviously Pukinokua hitting in the way that he did. And I think Cooper Cup, I mean, people who play fantasy football know the way that Cooper Cup kind of was a little bit of a roller coaster this year. I think it poses a lot of questions that I had just yet to get to the part of the offseason where I was even getting around to asking or answering those questions about why the roller coaster existed. It makes you wonder if he was injured, if injury was impacting his play. Clearly Pukinokua was, I guess what you'd call kind of like a target earner. And so the offense sort of went in his direction and away from Cooper Cups.
But I always just sort of wondered what the story was and what was going on. So I pulled up his numbers that we have for him that are our specific metrics that are pulled through our tracking data. And let's see. So he, his overall grade that we have for him. Why am I not finding this? I'm so sorry that I'm all over the place. No, it's okay. This is news that just came down, Lindsay. Don't worry about it. I know, right? This is wild news, by the way.
Let's see. His route running metric that we have for him has him in the 46th percentile, ranked 79th this season. Yeah, I don't have him ranked above 45 in anything. And that's in first, which I don't even know if that's specifically, you know, that's kind of a, I mean, is that relevant?
So in terms of his overall receiving grade, I think we had him in the 63rd percentile, ranked 56th at his position. So there was a clear drop off in play this year that, again, like I was saying, probably really just opens the door for more questions to ask, right? And it seems like the Rams don't like the answers that they have in terms of continuing on with him and thinking maybe they can upgrade the position.
I just don't know why that is. Lindsay Rose is here with us from Sumer Sports. So you think about Cooper Cup and contributing to that championship. And we knew this day would come when Les Knead stood in front of the media and said, you know, screw the picks.
And we thought that at some point in time, the chickens were going to come home to roost. And despite success, even coming off of Aaron Donald to go to the playoffs, it appears that that is certainly the case. The other big trade, at least request. This was very clear earlier today was from Miles Garrett wanting to be now kind of sent off from the Cleveland Browns to pursue somewhere where he can win a championship. What are your thoughts? The team says they're not going to move him. That's just a matter of bluff right now, huh? I mean, I mean, I think they have to. I just don't know. I guess I don't know that Cleveland has enough goodwill built up to have their next move be we're going to take one of the best players in the league who's pretty well liked very popular in our town and we're going to hold them against as well.
I just don't know if that's the play. And I had actually said a month ago, a very unpopular opinion in Cleveland when I was on Cleveland when I was on Cleveland radio that I thought that it might be the best move that they had any way to move him because while that feels counterintuitive because he is clearly still playing at such a high level, the way that I'm looking at the Browns build and how much money they sunk into the quarterback position and will continue to for years to come, a quarterback that is not going to play for them and played poorly the entire time. I just think that they're so behind the eight ball in terms of rebuilding that roster in a way that's cap compliant and competitive. And so one of my thoughts was even though they have so many draft picks this year, a lot of draft capital, they're way over the cap that I thought maybe the best move was to move this guy who could return a massive return for them and try to upgrade.
I'll just try to like do all of it as much as possible with young players and start your rebuild here. And then you have more assets to take more shots at quarterback because you know you're picking second this year if you're at the Browns. My guess is they probably take a quarterback.
That's all I'm hearing is that they are likely to do that. This is not the year that you want that pick frankly. This quarterback class is not a comparatively good quarterback class. And so the guys that are going at the top that are probably going to go in the top three, there's two of them, I'm not talking to anyone who's saying yes they're for sure a for sure thing. That I think most people are looking at Cam Ward and at Chidor Sanders and saying like maybe they're good. But is maybe they're good what you want to take with one two or three?
I don't know. So if I'm the Browns I want a lot of early picks just stashed so that I can go again and go again and or and or get a bridge this year strengthen the rest of the roster and then next year you know try to to go again with one of my first round picks that I could pick up in a trade for somebody like Myles Garrett. Lindsay Rhodes is joining us host of of Sumer Sports with Thomas Dimitrov former GM for the Atlanta Falcons.
Well you were just out at the Senior Bowl and you do talk to folks. Is there anyone who is impressing you as we kind of I don't want to say transition we got to get through the game first but the next big thing will obviously be the draft and a combine. Yeah so in general the position groups that you're going to hear the most this year in the draft in terms of like the strengths of this year's class it's the edge group there's a lot of depth at edge that's good that's good news for the Browns if they're looking for another edge if they have to trade away Myles Garrett. Also the tight end class is very very strong and I also think that based on what we saw down in Mobile you might sort of see a little bit of a reshuffling of you know the rankings at that position group. Arroyo is the name of a guy who I think stand out and really helped himself at the tight end position. The running back class is also a good running back class now that doesn't mean that you're going to see a ton of running backs go in the first round because we all know about positional value and how that's kind of bumped running backs down the charts.
I mean my guess is that we probably will see one at least you know maybe a couple go in the first round but you're not going to see a ton of them. It's funny I'll tell you watching running backs in Mobile because practice practices and practice scripts the way that those are designed for evaluation at like a senior bowl you know there's not a great environment to evaluate running back play you almost have to watch the tape and see them in a game environment because they're not tackling to the ground and so you know you're hearing a whistle as soon as it looks like the defender's on you you don't get a chance to see if the running back can force a missed tackle or how they get to that second level and how they can pick up speed as they get through the line. So I didn't necessarily get a great read on those guys or frankly Jalen Milro who has a skill set that I don't think is designed for an evaluation in practice you really need to take a look at him in a game and my guess is that once we get to the combine and people start doing the athletic testing that he'll we'll start hearing more and more about him but it's not a particularly good year for the quarterbacks like I mentioned.
Well Lindsay we we know two quarterbacks that we're going to see on Sunday is certainly still scrutinized to different degrees and for different reasons here. Jalen hurts for not throwing the football enough despite picking up these victories and in my homes people are saying hey this was a this was a down year with a least or less explosive type team. What do you expect from both of these QBs on Sunday? I am expecting Patrick Mahomes to do all of the Patrick Mahomes things. My guess is so outside of what we know to expect for Patrick Mahomes I'm a little bit interested to see if he scrambles more. He has been taking off a little bit more in the postseason this year than he did in the regular season and has 27 plus yards rushing in four of his eight games against Fangio in the past. Interestingly for those of you who are interested in betting the prop for him is set at 29 and a half which is pretty high but I kind of see a script where like I don't know if they're the running backs are going to be able to run I don't know I just I feel like we might see Mahomes run the ball a little bit against his defense his eagle sequence is insane. So what we know to expect of Patrick Mahomes is that he's going to somehow elevate his play and we're going to see the best version of himself in the biggest game because that's a consistent pattern that he has established. It's been a down year for Patrick Mahomes in terms of the numbers and so he's been a perfect example for someone like me who's going around and talking to a lot of local affiliates this week about their teams and looking at our Sumer Sports metrics looking at Patrick Mahomes and sort of using him as an example of like he ranked 27th in our passing all-in-one metric this year right. Is he the 27th best quarterback? Was he even this year?
Of course not. So some of these things just because you don't get a chance to see the best that a player has in any one game or any one year even it doesn't necessarily tell the whole story right. So I think that that he's in an interesting position after a year that I would just evaluate in general as being a roughly down year for him. Hertz is fascinating because of the way that people talk about him and whether or not they will be able to have much success in the passing game I think will be very important here.
They did in the last game against the commanders and did not in their first two playoff games. Well the commanders are a different defense than we're seeing for these other defenses that the Eagles have faced like they're they're just not as strong on that side of the ball yet. But so I'll be interested to see if he can move the ball through the air what kind of impact Trent McDuffie has against these wide receivers because he's been a stud Chris Jones. You know we talk about the the players on the Eagle side of the ball top to bottom that roster I think is the best in the NFL but you could make an argument that the Chiefs have the best high positional value players just across the board like is Chris Jones the best defender in this entire game you know and I think the answer might be yes and so I think it'll be really fascinating to see how the specific you know guys here and there for the Chiefs what they're able to do with Spagnuolo who I think is a total game changer the coaching staff for the Chiefs in this game. Well Lindsey I mean we we see and hear all of the work that you do on a summer sports show with Thomas Dimitrov and it's very data driven. Tell us a little bit more about the company in whole and why it was created on the back end to allow professional teams and colleges to use some of the data that you guys find. Yeah I think in general football is evolving to the point where now we have the capability to really do a deeper dive on the things that we used to evaluate just with our eyes which is problematic in a lot of ways because you could have a guy who has been very very good throughout his career but what you're looking for is maybe maybe the moment when he no longer is as good you know and your eyes you would continue to give that person the benefit of the doubt. I think Aaron Rodgers is the perfect example for me this year where all of the deeper numbers suggest that Aaron Rodgers had a like actually a very bad year but people who see the passing yards number and Aaron Rodgers name attached to it are like but and so I think it the way that you have a chance to kind of go under the hood here and ask questions that are player agnostic and allow teams. Sumer provides a lot of information to teams who are clients about you know when a player there are little small things that will show up in their tracking metrics that could indicate that a player has maybe started to drop off and so maybe that's something that a team wants to know so that they don't go offer him a new five-year deal and then also on the flip side players it helps you evaluate players that are good before you've given them the opportunity to consistently prove that in terms of the box score metrics and so I think that this is also interesting once you kind of broaden out and you think about ways that you can make this information available to the fans I just think it helps make create smarter football fans in general but then also people who play fantasy and we're going to be getting into the fantasy space this summer this summer which I'm really excited about it affords you the opportunity to just make smarter moves because you're better understanding what is actually happening on the field takes a little bit of the guesswork out of the game yeah well there's certainly a lot of data we see all the technology modern technology used all across sports the NFL are no different Lindsay thank you so much for the time where can people follow you and listen to the show I am on the twitter at lindsey underscore roads you can follow me there with links to all of our work and please go check out the sumer sports website because I know I'm mentioning a lot of these like you hear about EPA and yards per outrun and some of these like nerdy stats that we like to use that we think are a little bit more predictive than like passing yards and stuff like that and it's hard to find some of those stats in places that are not behind paywalls so the sumer sports website has a lot of data for people who are interested in that but don't want to pay for it and there's also a way that you can sign up on the website right now to be a part of a beta test for a product that we're launching called sumer brain which is effectively like a google search but for football stuff if you put a lot of football related questions into google they're going to send back some bad information your way and so we are currently in the process of training that to answer some high level football questions so you kind of have an all-in-one one-stop shopping thing hey Lindsay thank you so much for the information and insight enjoy the game and enjoy new orleans thank you you as well
