Electrician Contractor in Atlanta, GA

The fantasy football running back landscape received a huge boost during the NFL Draft, when the Atlanta Falcons selected Bijan Robinson in the first round. We all know running back has been devalued in the NFL, as more and more offenses open up the passing playbook, but that should just go to show you how good of a prospect Robinson can be. Andy Behrens explains his outlook in detail here.

Of course, the Falcons already have a productive running back. Tyler Allgeier was one of the better per-carry RBs in football last season. But if the last few years have taught us anything, it's that teams will give the backfield keys over to the more talented player, no matter what the current state of affairs is.

Bijan Robinson is that talented of a player.

[Join or create a Yahoo Fantasy Football league for free today]

The question now is, where should we draft Robinson in 2023? Is he an automatic first-rounder based on age, pedigree and landing spot alone? All signs point to a resounding yes, but should there be any concerns of a committee, or rookie growing pains or the lack of upside in the Falcons offense?

Check out where Robinson and the rest of the running backs land in our analysts' half-point-per-reception draft rankings for the 2023 season:

MIAMI -- One of the biggest changes the Braves have seen in starter and former Top 30 club prospect Bryce Elder has been his maturity. Sure, his pitching has improved and he’s turned into a reliable arm in the Atlanta rotation. But all that circles back to his maturation.

“It's nice watching him mature here in the big leagues and kind of figure things out,” manager Brian Snitker said. “He’s come a long way in a year -- where he's at, maturing, he's getting really really good. Credit to him, his dedication and work ethic.”

Elder’s growth was on full display at loanDepot park in Atlanta’s 6-0 win over Miami, in which he trusted all of his stuff. The 23-year-old righty threw seven scoreless innings, allowing just three hits to the same offense against which he gave up three homers in his previous start.

“Even my misses … they were down, and that's where I'm always gonna [aim] to miss,” Elder said. “I was pleased with it. I thought [catcher Sean] Murphy did a really good job and just kind of worked around their lineup pretty well.

“The sinker -- I think the past couple starts [it] had been just kind of a little, just okay. It got the job done, in a sense, but tonight, it was really good. And hopefully I continue to build off that.”

Elder utilized his sinker, which pairs with his slider to make up the majority of his arsenal, to get three of his six strikeouts. Not only was the pitch “really good,” but Elder’s sinker was particularly venomous on Tuesday, something both his manager and his center fielder noticed.

“I was thinking [that his sinker was nasty] to myself in the outfield, just watching the ball move,” center fielder Michael Harris II said. “Nothing he throws is straight, and it's pretty much unhittable.”

“That sinker was unbelievable,” Snitker said. “He had a good slider, I thought, from the get-go too, but the movement on that sinker was just crazy. Crazy. And he was efficient. … After yesterday and all the guys that we had to use for the doubleheader, that was big right there.”

Tuesday’s outing marked the deepest Elder has gone this season. He’s tossed at least 5 1/3 innings in each of his six starts so far, a marked improvement from his start to 2022. Last year, Elder made four starts in April -- the first he went 5 2/3 innings, then he went 4 2/3 innings or fewer in his next three starts -- before he was optioned to Triple-A Gwinnett.

Back in the Minors, Elder buckled down. He got some words of wisdom from Triple-A coach Devon Travis, which he took to heart, and he learned how to trust his stuff -- even when it wasn’t his best.

“Travis told me, ‘Play the long game,’” Elder said. “Not to be arrogant, [but] I plan to play this game for a long time, as long as I can. And so I just try to be prepared every day and see where it gets me and see how long I can play.”

Entering 2023, Elder wasn’t guaranteed to make the roster out of Spring Training. He was optioned to Triple-A on March 15 and finished the spring in Minor League camp. Then Kyle Wright and Max Fried went on the injured list in the first week of the season. Elder was called up three days later and has been in the Majors ever since.

“Nothing really affects him,” Harris said. “And then when his name is called, he knows he has a job to do, and he does it each time out. It’s just more impressive because he just keeps doing him. A lot of people don't notice, but we notice for sure. He's a big part of this rotation.”

Hawthorn defender Denver Grainger-Barras is being monitored by a number of clubs after falling out of selection favour to start 2023.

The sixth pick in the 2020 National Draft, Grainger-Barras has managed just two appearances in 2022 after 16 last year.

The 21-year-old enjoyed strong junior form that had him rated among the top draft prospects in the country, but is yet to show the consistency needed to make it at AFL level.

While Sam Mitchell has sent him to the VFL to gather some form, AFL Media’s Cal Twomey suggested other clubs could be willing to take a punt on Grainger-Barras.

“He’s a top 10 pick in the 2020 draft… only played a couple of games this year, in and out of the side, mainly out of the defence, I think a few other defenders have gone past him,” Twomey told SEN Breakfast.

Is Luai Under Pressure To Keep His Origin Spot (Mornings With Ben Davis)

0 seconds of 1 minute, 18 secondsVolume 0%

“He’s under the watchful eye of a few clubs at the moment monitoring him to see if they shoot for him as a trade target at the end of the year.

“He’s spent the majority of the year in the VFL. A key defender, he still needs to do some work to build up his body and his defensive traits, he’s a really good attacking player out of the backline, but they’ve probably got a few of those at the Hawks at the moment.

“He’s got a year to go on his contract, we know that means pretty much not much at all when it comes to the end of the trade period if someone is after you.

“So he’s being looked at at the moment.”

Grainger-Barras signed a two-year extension at Hawthorn prior to the 2022 season and has played 23 games since debuting in Round 15, 2021.

He kept Giants tall Aaron Cadman to one goal in Round 5 and Crow Riley Thilthorpe goalless the following week.

But he gathered just 12 disposals across those two appearances.

Melbourne great Gary Lyon added: “It looks like a relationship that hasn’t quite taken off between he and Hawthorn.”

Grainger-Barras appears to have fallen behind Jams Sicily, Sam Frost and Changkuoth Jiath in Hawthorn’s tall defender stocks, although at 195cms, he has shown his ability to play on smaller opponents as well.

Assistant coach Chris Newman last year told Hawthorn’s website of Grainger-Barras: “He played 16 games this season after playing five games in his first year and showed some real improvement in his aerial craft. There’s no doubt that he’ll continue to apply that to his game heading into next year. He’s a real competitor that thrives on the contest, which is something we love about the way he goes about it.”

On this date 103 years ago, a kind of Boston marathon happened.

It was your standard early May matchup between the Atlanta Braves and the Los Angeles Dodgers -- or, as they were known at the time, the Boston Braves and the Brooklyn Robins. Two future Hall of Famers would take the field that day -- the Braves' slick-fielding shortstop Rabbit Maranville, and the Robins' slugging left fielder Zack Wheat, who would go on to hit a whopping nine home runs in 1920, good enough for sixth in the National League. Cy Williams would lead the NL with 15, while over in the American League, Babe Ruth, then in his first season with the New York Yankees, would hit ... 54.

At its outset, this game seemed to be fairly straightforward. Pitchers Joe Oeschger and Leon Cadore, both nurturing ERAs under 1.00 at the time, settled in for a duel. Brooklyn struck first in the fifth inning with Ivy Olson driving in Ernie Krueger with a single, but the Braves struck back in the sixth, with Walton Cruise tripling and then coming home on a Tony Boeckel single.

That was the last time either team would score that day.

The game went to extra innings with the score still tied. Then it kept going. And going. And still going. Runners grounded into double plays. They were caught stealing. They were stranded in scoring position. By the time the game was called, it was the longest, by innings, in MLB history.

Let's take a look at it, by the numbers.

26

All in all, the game lasted an incredible 26 innings. The Braves would leave runners in scoring position in the bottom of the ninth and 15th innings, while the Robins would do so in the top of the 17th and 22nd, but other than that, neither team came close to scoring for the overwhelming majority of a seemingly endless parade of innings. The two teams must have had incredible bullpens, right?

186

Well, not exactly. Oeschger and Cadore both pitched the entire game. We're not quite sure how many pitches they threw, but Cadore faced 96 batters, while Oeschger faced 90, for a combined total of 186. By comparison, Gerrit Cole, 2023's leader in innings pitched, took four games to face as many batters as either of them did in one. Cole is averaging about 6? innings pitched per game, by the way.

6:50 p.m.

The reason the game ended is also worthy of comment: darkness. Fields didn't have lights back then, and games were often called or postponed due to the players, umpires and fans no longer being able to see. The first actual night game in MLB history wouldn't come until 1935. May 1 was the first day of 1920's daylight saving time, meaning that, when the game was called at 6:50 p.m., there was still enough light to play, but can you really blame them?

3 hours and 50 minutes

That ending time is the other interesting aspect of this whole thing -- the game started at 3 p.m., which means that all 26 innings came and went in under four hours -- 3:50, to be exact, more than twice as long as the average 1920 game length of 1:51. It's fascinating to see what was in essence three games fit into, say, a typical Boston Red Sox-New York Yankees contest from the past decade or so. Just by comparison, the average game length from 2021, which had the lengthiest average time on record, was 3:11. MLB's pitch clock has reduced that to 2:38.

5-2

For what it's worth, though the Braves had a terrible season, the Robins went on to lose to the then-Cleveland Indians in the World Series, five games to two. That's not a typo, by the way, as the 1920 World Series was a best-of-nine affair. Though the basics are the same, in many ways, it's almost as if the Braves and Robins were playing a different game entirely from the one we enjoy today.

The Brooklyn Nets are still curious if they can acquire Atlanta Hawks big man John Collins in a trade, according to Sean Deveney of heavy.com. This news isn’t particularly surprising given that there were reports during the season that Brooklyn was interested in trading for Collins in an effort to improve its depth in the frontcourt.

In Deveney’s piece, he says that an NBA executive spoke to him about Brooklyn’s interest in getting players who can score and what it would take for the Nets to get Collins from the Hawks. The executive pointed out, according to Deveney, that if Brooklyn wants to make any substantial improvements this offseason, they have to find a way to get rid of injured star Ben Simmons.

Simmons had a rough 2022-2023 season as he played in just 42 games due to a variety of injuries related to his back and knees, including a nerve impingement in his back that ended his season prematurely. Collins had a similar determination of his season as Atlanta was reportedly trying to trade Collins throughout this season because of his odd fit for how the Hawks wanted to run their offense combined with the fact that Collins seemed out of place as a floor-spacer for Trae Young and Dejounte Murray.

Deveney notes that both players have similar standing in the NBA, but that Collins is more available compared to Simmons. Both have unattractive contracts as Simmons is owed $78 million over the next two seasons while Collins is owed the same amount of the next three seasons with the third year being a player option. Here’s some of what the league executive said about the situation per Deveney:

“The Nets want some guys who can score, and (Collins) can score. But, the only way they (the Nets) can really do something big, can really get someone who can score in there, is if they can get a taker for Ben Simmons,’ one league executive told Heavy Sports. ‘There aren’t a lot of teams where that would make sense, but Atlanta is one of them, because you need to build a defensive group around Trae Young. Now, if you’re the Nets, you still have to convince Atlanta that Simmons wants to play. Obviously, that is the question around him right now.’

‘The Nets like Collins, they had interest there even before they blew up the team, they’re still curious but, they would have to do more than just Simmons in that kind of deal,’ the executive said. ‘You’d be looking at taking back (Bogdan) Bogdanovic’s deal if you’re Brooklyn and giving up a Royce O’Neale or Dorian Finney-Smith. Maybe too high a price, and maybe that is why they wind up holding onto Simmons in the end. They also have to ask, are you going to play Cam Johnson at the 4 permanently, can you play him with a big guy like Collins? But both teams are kind of in a holding pattern and even though it’s scary to do something big, that’s the kind of thing it will take.'”

Woj: Nets part ways with Igor Kokoskov, Brian Keefe, and Tiago Splitter