Who Should I Start? Geno Smith or Tanner McKee

Friday, May 30, 12:13 PM

The Athletic's Tashan Reed writes that so far this offseason, things have gone smoothly as Las Vegas Raiders quarterback Geno Smith and offensive coordinator Chip Kelly have acclimated to one another. "Geno's literally like a second coach," Kelly said. "When you're in that room with him and Greg Olson, there's a lot of ideas going around. And then it's just a matter of corralling it. Because sometimes you can have too many ideas. Like, let's try to do a million things, and then you don't get good at one thing. But his football acumen is really off the charts, and it's impressive to be around him." Under Kelly, the Raiders want their offense to remain amorphous with flexibility to apply to their personnel groupings. Kelly is well-known for operating with plenty of wideouts, but Vegas also plans to use multi-tight-end sets frequently. Smith has a better TE to work with, but his weapons overall will be a downgrade from his last few years in Seattle. Consider him a high-end QB2/low-end QB1 in fantasy in his new digs.

Wednesday, May 21, 2:46 PM

Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Tanner McKee is likely to be the direct backup to Jalen Hurts in 2025 despite the team drafting Kyle McCord (Syracuse) in the sixth round of last month's NFL Draft. The team's decision to trade Kenny Pickett to the Cleveland Browns signals confidence in McKee, who was a sixth-round pick in the 2023 NFL Draft out of Stanford. McKee appeared in two games (one start) last year, completing 30 of his 45 passing attempts for 323 yards, four touchdowns, and zero interceptions. While he's not on the fantasy football radar as a backup, it's worth noting that Hurts missed Weeks 16 and 17 in 2022 due to injury before sitting out Week 17 again in 2024. We've seen his backups, such as Gardner Minshew and Pickett, deliver fantasy-relevant performances in his absence, so McKee could be one of the top backup QBs to monitor in deeper superflex or two-QB formats.