Late-Round Perspectives: Dwain McFarland

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Dwayne McFarlane is the lead fantasy analyst and director of Analytics at Fantasy Life. He previously spent time with Pro Football Focus, and he's best known.

00:00:08
Speaker 2: For his awesome Utilization report.

00:00:10
Speaker 1: He's a Texan, a dad, and he's just as big of a data nerd as I am. These are his Late Round perspectives. This episode is sponsored by Underdog. Underdog is the easiest place to play fantasy sports, and they give you a ton of different games and contests to choose from each week. If you think drafting is over because the season started, you'd be wrong. You can draft teams over there each week in literal minutes right now. If you sign up an Underdog with promo code Late Round, you not only get a deposit offer of up to one thousand dollars, but you also get access to my rest of season rankings. Those will be emailed to you once you sign up. But when you sign up, you have to use promo code late Round. Had an Underdog Fantasy dot Com or download the app to do so. Again, that's promo code Late Round. Now back to the show.

00:01:09
Speaker 3: I appreciate getting to hang out with you a little bit. A couple of years ago, in Canton. Didn't get to go this year, but yeah, man, thanks for having me on.

00:01:16
Speaker 1: I know, man, we missed you this past year at the Expo. It was definitely I needed. I needed a little bit, a little bit more you know, data NERD support, you know, hanging out there at the stadium and such.

00:01:26
Speaker 2: But also you know, for today's episode.

00:01:29
Speaker 1: Earlier today, I was getting ready and I was like, should I do my hair or should I wear a hat today? Because it's always a big question for me day to day is whether I'm just gonna throw the hat on and don't have to worry about anything.

00:01:40
Speaker 2: I even got a haircut today, But I.

00:01:43
Speaker 3: Come on, Jay, let the people see your hair.

00:01:46
Speaker 2: Look. Look, I'm coming on a show with you, mister. I mean you look.

00:01:51
Speaker 1: I've done a show with Denny Carter for like a decade now with Living the Stream, and I have to deal with him having great hair all the time. You might be the one a within the fantasy industry from a hair perspective, man, I mean, look at that thing.

00:02:05
Speaker 3: I don't know, I appreciate it. I'll take whatever I can get. My wife's a hairstylist, so I'll just go with that. So there we go, I have to be on brand, as she says, like my hair can't look bad and that's not that would be bad for her business, right, so we can't do that.

00:02:21
Speaker 1: That's amazing that that like, like I was thinking, like I went to the barbershop today, like I said earlier today, and it's a very standard barbershop kind of like situation where you're not facing the mirror.

00:02:31
Speaker 2: Everyone's just chatting with each other.

00:02:33
Speaker 1: It's an amazing spot, right, and they've slowly learned, like what I do for a living, so that we talk football basically every time I'm in there and whatnot. But it would be you know, as much as I love being there, it would be pretty convenient if my wife just knew how to cut my hair.

00:02:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny. Sometimes my wife protests though. She'll be like, no, you guys are coming to the salon. Other times she'll actually say it's fine, I'll cut it a home. But I got to kind of gauge it. And see, she likes the lighting in the chair her at the salon. She's got all of her goods. The good scissors are there, JJ, the clippers are there, you know, the stuff that she's used awhile and then she brings it home. That's the stuff that's here, and so yeah, yeah, I like the convenience. But you know, she says, you know you got to come up to the salon. I'm like, okay, Like, I guess I just do it.

00:03:17
Speaker 1: She says, I guess it's the equivalent of us like podcasting with like bad microphones or something like that.

00:03:22
Speaker 3: Right, like something else exactly exactly. We could get through it, but yeah, it could.

00:03:27
Speaker 1: Be right right, right exactly exactly. So look, I wanted to talk about a lot of stuff. I mean, I sent you a show. She you know, we're going to get through a lot of things, but I didn't put on there. And I want to get to it though, sort of like how you got to where you are now because you've been around for a decent bit. But uh, you know, I know that it took a minute for you to kind of make the jump to be full time in the space, and you know you had another career beforehand. So can you let everyone know sort of like what that path was, Like I like to ask my guests on Late Round perspectives that question.

00:03:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, Like many in life, things come down to you know, hard work. You know, you got to decide is it something you really want to go for. But it also comes down to timing. It comes down to some luck, some good fortune, other people you know, treating you kindly and giving you favor and things. So I mean, it's like all those things, right, it's not any one thing. But like my journey, I started off really just being someone who loved playing fantasy, Like that's really how it all started. And I slowly started kind of getting the high sticks bug. About twelve fourteen years ago, I started really getting into that realm and getting into these you know, sick o leagues where there's no one ever on the waiver wire. You got to be thinking multiple steps ahead. And I just loved it, you know because like that that's kind of like where I feel like maybe I can grind out, you know, an edge. And so I played. I did pretty well at it, And so I was doing all this research anyway, I was doing all my research all that that that was like my hobby. You know, I'd come home from work, hang out with the family or whatever. The way the way I would unwind is coming here and dive into spreadsheets and start researching, like does this matter? Or does this matter? No, this doesn't matter. Should I use this in my process? Should I not? And just constantly tinkering with it and trying to figure it out. And then I decided, you know, from my political not my political role, from my political role, from my good God, from my corporate world, which was very political by the way, which was the thing that drove me away from it, Like I just got tired of office politics. I treated like a game for a long time, and I was able to gamify it and have fun with it. But eventually I was just like, I can't do this anymore. Can we just make decisions and move forward? But anyway, I just got to a point where I was like, hey, we're in a really good spot financially. My wife and I talked about it for a really long time. If we ever met like ABC thresholds, we were at a certain point in our life, I would take a sabbatical, and so I did. And when I took that year away from the corporate world, I was able to really start writing. And that's when I was able to get my voice out there. And I was just doing it for fun, you know, I was we were doing other things, but I was like this will be something like to keep kind of you know, the creative juices, still be productive, be doing some things I would like to do anyway, And I started writing about it, and I started off with a fighting chance fantasy. I remember Brian Drake on Twitter reached out to me, Hey, man, you want to do a show? He had never even done a show before. I thought he just wanted to have me on for one show. No, it ended up being a show that we kept doing over and over and Brian's awesome. So we you know, an Eagles fan and a Cowboys fan coming together and finding some common ground. And so that was the fantasy football hustle. We got that going and people just liked it, and I mean it did pretty well. So from there I just kept writing and then eventually football guys and Matt Walman I got to do some writing for them. Then that led to an opportunity with Establish the Run, and then that led ultimately when I was back doing my full time, you know job again and back in the corporate world in the political world, I got a call from PFF and there and who I was just writing for part time at that time. They were like, hey, what if you could do this full time. What if we could make you an offer? And I was like, well, here's the kind of offer I would need to make it. And one thing led to another, and I honestly, man, I didn't I didn't know five six years ago that I would get to do this full time. Yeah. I did eventually decide I was gonna be dedicated enough that if the opportunity came up, like right time, right place, that it would be something I would want to do. But I didn't know if they would ever be able to support, you know, I when you start off, you know, like I did over on the corporate side, and you work your way up like I mean, you kind of have a way of living, you like, you know, you worked your way up already in one industry and then I had to I had to take a big pay cut to go in fantasy football.

00:07:35
Speaker 1: And you have a family too, like that that matters to right, Like, there's there's definitely a cost benefit to all of this of like, you know, it's it's I think a lot of people face that same dilemma, especially as they are not in their twenties anymore, right Like, you're once you're out of that age range where like that's when you can really easily take risks. I feel very lucky that when I was in my you know, I was only three years out of college. Whenever I was like, I'm just going for this, I'm just gonna do this, you know, so it was low stakes, Like I always tell people, like, the biggest question I had every week was where am I going to get drunk? What bar am I going to go to, you know, to to party and hang out with friends this weekend? Whereas now it's all about my kids and all. You know, it's just a totally different set of responsibilities where it then becomes a lot harder to sort of make that leap.

00:08:19
Speaker 3: Uh.

00:08:19
Speaker 1: But look, man, we're we're very lucky to have you in the space because you do amazing work. Now you're at Fantasy Life, you know, doing amazing stuff over there. How has that been? How has that transition been? Going from PFF, which, by the way, people don't realize this. I was at PFF for three months. Whenever I first my first year of doing analysis, it was just you know, a part time like I'm just I'm just trying to get my name out there kind of thing. And it was right before I got my full time job at Number Fire, I was working under Ratcliffe and Clay uh and what do yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, but it was it was literally like I I joke with Ratcliffe and I joked with him about it, I think even on perspective because he was on a couple of weeks ago.

00:09:00
Speaker 2: But yeah, like I think.

00:09:01
Speaker 1: I wrote three articles for for It was like when Roddy White was a thing, like it was it was a long long time ago, but we at least have the PFF thing in common. But you made the jump from PFF to Fantasy Life, Like what has that been like? And you know, it seems like just like the situation at Fantasy Life just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

00:09:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean number one, Like, I've had great experiences every where I've worked. You know, I've been really fortunate in this industry. Everybody has treated me really well, given me great opportunity to do things. They've given me latitude, And I had a really great time at PFF, which obviously fit with the way I think. And I love to have access to all that amazing data and at PFF, I like I had data upon data upon data, like I couldn't even get to all of it. There was so much right. But the transition to Fantasy Life has been amazing. You know, Matthew has been absolutely great to me. Elliott Chris our CEO, he has been awesome. Like, we just have a really good leadership team. Now we have Dan Kaufman who came over. He had formerly been at ESPN and the Athletic and we've just grown, like our talent based so much. I mean when I came over, it was I was one of five people and we were already awesome. Like we already had Pete, you know, Pete Overzet's one of the best. I love Pete. Hilarious but super smart and sharp by right, I don't think he's just a funny guy. Like Pete is smart and he's good, and he's good at this stuff. He's very good at this stuff. And so we had Pete, we had myself, We had Kendall Vealezuela, you know, we had some a few other folks. But then it's just continued to grow. We added Ian Harditz right then we had Matthew Friedman, and we've expanded our betting side, you know of things, and this year we added on the college side. We bring four over. So yeah, we just continue to grow. And again I'm missing tons of people. When I started there, there were five of us. Now we're thirty full time employees.

00:10:44
Speaker 2: Crazy, that's great.

00:10:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, so absolutely growing. I mean we're growing the data side of it, We're growing all these different avenues. But yeah, man, it's been great. I'm I couldn't have made, you know, a better decision. Again, timing is everything. When Matthew reached out to me and Elliott reached out to me about this role, Like, I was super happy at PFF, you know, like I'd have been at PFF a year. I thought I was gonna My plan was, Okay, let's give PFF two to three years. I like what I'm doing here, and then we'll be open. I didn't anticipate after a year like that this sort of thing would happen. But when they came to me and they were like, hey, we're starting really a company almost from scratch, and here are the things we want to do. We want you to be part of it. Like that's very exciting to me.

00:11:23
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, I feel that.

00:11:25
Speaker 1: It's like whenever I left FAN Well, first off, I mean when I left FanDuel, people are like oh JJ got fired from FanDuel. It's like, guys, stop, this is not I wanted to change. I just wanted to to switch things up. It wasn't that I was unhappy there. I just was wanting to do my own thing. More so, it sounded like you were wanting to be there from the ground up as well at Fantasy Life. Now you're doing all this data stuff over there. You're a data heavy analysts as I am myself, and you and I have had plenty of conversations you know about different analysis or different data trends.

00:11:55
Speaker 2: What have you.

00:11:55
Speaker 1: My question I want to open up with you know, aside from your story within this, but it is, what do you think that the masses sort of get wrong when it comes to data because we're in an era I would say, where data is pretty accessible, Like there's more and more stuff coming out that we didn't have three or four years ago at all. I mean, we didn't even know what kind of defensive personnel these teams were thrown out there, and we had very little data of like man versus zone and stuff like that. And now it's just I mean, we're seeing so much stuff. So do you like when you look at the landscape, and you look at how people are consuming data and also how other analysts are using data.

00:12:37
Speaker 2: What do you think instead of what they're doing right, what are they doing wrong?

00:12:41
Speaker 3: So I would break this into like kind of two things, two categories, and wow, you picked a real zinger, Like I could do the whole show just on this, Like I am a real So all off season I spend studying this stuff, Yeah, trying to figure out what matters. What's noise? Okay, maybe it's kind of noise, Maybe it kind of matters. What if I I like weave it in with this other context, Now does it matter? Like I spend so much time trying to tase all these things down, and honestly, it's what keeps me going. I love that stuff. I love digging into that stuff, even though ninety five ninety eight percent of the time at least to nothing. You learn something along the way, but there's not some big, you know, pot of gold at the end of the damn rainbow. You're like, oh my god, I found like this one thing that's going to solve everybody's fantasy football questions like that, that's that's not out there. So just trying to incrementally get better. So I want to break it down into two buckets real quick. But the first bucket just being generally, like everyone, what I think is going on that people are getting wrong. And this is more for like people that are listening that just love playing fantasy football, but it also applies to the analysts. And then I want to talk about that second part real quick that you mentioned, which is where we are with data in advanced data and where it's going and some of the things I see there. But the first part right, and it just plays so easily right now because we are at the beginning of the season. But number one is that people think they need to be so polarizing in their takes. And look, it is an industry. I get it. We're all creating content. We all know that there is a game that has to be played to get people to listen, to get people to click on things. I understand all of those things, like I spend time guys researching those things too. I mean, I've tried to be good at all aspects of my job. I want to reach as many people as I can. I've tried to adapt the way that I present information to really be able to get it to more people. But what I would say is the way you free yourself in this space is to realize that everything is really a range of outcomes. Yes, and I have two examples that we can work through that people can actually apply and use. These two players. Today, I'm going to ask you a question JJ. Okay, let's start with Garrett Wilson. Is Garrett Wilson I buy low or a sell low? You can't be sell high?

00:14:51
Speaker 2: Is he a sell low?

00:14:52
Speaker 3: What is Garrett Wilson to you? Right now?

00:14:54
Speaker 2: You know what's really funny? You bring that up?

00:14:55
Speaker 1: And last week on the fifteen Transaction Show and the newsletter that I right, I talked about Garrett Wilson and the headline was that he was a sell last week, right, So before that game against the Broncos, because obviously the schedule if you look at the next month, right, the schedule is not when you count the Broncos game, the schedule.

00:15:13
Speaker 2: Didn't look very good.

00:15:14
Speaker 3: Right.

00:15:15
Speaker 1: So we're sitting here and like peripherals wise not bad, right, Like things aren't looking horrible for him from you know, twenty eight percent target share, you know, the offense should hypothetically get a little bit better, you know, But now you have this new wrench of DeVante Adams and what could happen there. And so to me to your point, probably I think that there is a wide range of buying and selling with Garrett Wilson to the point where there is not a singular answer.

00:15:42
Speaker 2: My stance last.

00:15:43
Speaker 1: Week, if I were to just go with that, was that Wilson was a sell if you needed that immediate production, if you needed to win, and you know, you started zero three, you weren't feeling good about your squad. Second half of the season. You know this pre DeVante Adams, you know, trade rumors and stuff. But second half of the season, you know, if you're going to a twenty eight percent target share from a really good prospect where we have a pretty good backbone of him being at least a well above average wide receiver that's going to hit eventually, especially in better matchups. Right, So it was more of a second half of the year by immediate sell. That's kind of the way that I looked at it.

00:16:16
Speaker 3: Now, look, you're actually being rational here, and you just kind of gave a band of things that could really happen in different caveats and all those things. The problem is, right, people just want the SoundBite that's right, sell him high or sell him? Or what do I do? Do I go buy him? Or am I selling him? Which am I doing? And what you hit on is really important because if you look at like his profile, and let's take the things that we know wide receivers own. They own their target share, they own their air yard share. Are there other factors? Of course there are, Right in any one game, they may not own hardly any of that, but like over the course of their career, over the course of the season, over a larger sample, they own that. And so one of the things I did this offseasons, I created the utilization score. And while it says utilization like there are talent components built into it because we know that the player's talent, and guess what, Fantasy points are built into it because fantasy points, guys. As much as you may hear people talk about a lot of things, do you know how hard it is to have a metric that's actually more predictive than fantasy points?

00:17:11
Speaker 2: Exactly?

00:17:12
Speaker 3: It's not easy. Exactly, it's really the gold standard. It's like, if you're going to do something with NFL draft, you at least need to be able to beat NFL Draft Capital. That's how I think about fantasy points. And so with the utilization report, it actually counts fantasy points in because it acknowledges their outliers that can be good or bad based on these based on history and probabilities. And so let me just tell you real quick. With Garrett Wilson, I went in and isolated it down to the things that I knew you were going to talk about. Tariet share Are Oarshart. Why because you've done your research and you know what things matter. But here is the Here are the percentage of players that have finished as a wide receiver one that had those similar data points to Garrett Wilson, going back to twenty eleven, seventy percent, seventy percent of them were wide receiver ones. Okay, fourteen percent of them finished as a wide receiver two. Fourteen percent of them finished as a wide receiver three in two percent. There's a small portion finish as a wide receiver four. Right, So what that tells me is there's really a range of outcomes here. But the way I want to think about Garrett Wilson, and let's set aside the DeVante Adams thing. That's a real thing like we would need to talk about that. If we just set that aside for right now and pretend like that's not even a factor, what that tells me is Okay, at worst, I want to sell Garrett Wilson as a wide receiver too, and I'm probably being kind giving him away at that process. Let's say I'm just done with the experience. I can't freaking take it anymore. Man, Well, okay, sell him as a wide receiver two, but don't sell him as a wide receiver three. Right, It's probably not happening. And like, if you still like him, then hold for a high end wide receiver two, not just any wide receiver two. And if you're going to buy him, you're probably profiting anywhere from a price similar to a low will wide receiver two to mid range wide receiver two. You're probably profiting. We can't guarantee you're gonna profit, but we're grinding out these trades as if. And I know this doesn't work perfectly, but you're making fantasy trades all the time every year, and you have to keep the big picture in mind from a probability standpoint. But there's a flip side of this, like so for me, Garrett Wilson like, there's a range there, and depending on where you are, what your team needs, how other people value him in your league, he might be a sell, he might be a bye because there's a range. But if you understand that, you can be adaptable and you can know what the best move is for you instead of just saying, oh, well somebody told me to buy lower, sell high. You know how this goes. People don't see the lower the high. They see sell or buyactly. I'd get screenshots. Dude, look at the trade I pulled off, and I'm like, that's terrible. Yeah, you missed the low part. By low, you paid for Garrett Wilson like he was a high end wide receiver. One, well, you said all this data sets, I know, but I still told you right to go buy him as a wide receiver. Two right, let's do one more go and I'm gonna go, and I'm gonna go. I'm gonna, I'm gonna I'm gonna go.

00:20:07
Speaker 2: With you here.

00:20:07
Speaker 3: JJ, let's Jaden Reid. Hmmm, what would you say to do with Jayden Reid? Is he a by low or US all high?

00:20:14
Speaker 1: Can I can I say that that he's look hypothetically speaking Hypothetically speaking, he's he's a massive regression candidate, right like, like his his peripherals, he's got what like an eighteen and a half percent target chair or something on the season. Uh, you know, it's it's a it's an offense that we know spread spreads things out. I also, though, don't know if from a market perspective, like from a production standpoint to where he'll likely finish, he would be a cell like where he's how he's produced with Jordan Love. Let's say, now you know, forget about the non Jordan Love games. So if you're assuming that he's gonna be like a twenty five PPR point per game wide receiver, sell.

00:20:54
Speaker 2: Of course.

00:20:55
Speaker 1: My thing is I do rest of season rankings every week, and I think that that Jayden read is a good player who's going to be above because you know, as we look at like regression, I mean, you know this better than anyone. As we look at regression, there are going to be players every year who buck regression trends to some degree, right like not to like a an insane degree. But and I'm not even saying that Jayden Reid is gonna be like Tyreek Hill. But you know, guys from like a from like an expected touchdown perspective and such like when you're good, you're good, and you will be better than what that norm is and what that average is.

00:21:28
Speaker 3: You can't regress a player like Jayden Reid to the NFL average.

00:21:31
Speaker 1: Right to the same way that you would regress Alec Pierce or something right like, it's it's different. With that being said, I to me, Jayden Reid is more so of a hold than anything else, right, as like an actionable thing. I only say that because I don't know if the market has realized his talent totally right, But I would imagine that a lot of you know, formulaic ways of looking at it would call on the south.

00:22:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so look again, you're being very reasonable, and the answer is he could be either. So let's just take a look like at is comps well number one. You know, he's scoring, you know, when we look at nineteen point seven Fantasy points per game, but he's got a utilization score he ranks thirty fourth. It's a six point six. Historically that's average twelve point four points per game. But like that's only part of the story, right, It's like, Okay, what are those ranges of outcomes on Jaden Reid, and whenever we really dig into, you know, his profile and we start to say, okay, what might this player be, you can't completely ignore the fact that he has scored nearly twenty Fantasy points per game because we see, to your point, players that are outliers. We know that there are the guys that come in the fifteen percent of players that despite the fact he's under an eighty percent route participation, despite the fact that right now his targets per route run is only twenty one percent. Those things are both wide receiver three territory. Yeah, right, right, But we do also know and like last year, the quickest thing I can think of is running backs, right, a Chan. If you had a Chan, it didn't really matter if he was in a split backfield, you wanted to play him. Jamiir Gibbs, Alvin Kamara when we go back to his breakout season when he was still sharing the backfield with Mark Ingram. We have these guys that every year that are so good and you turn them on and you watch it and you're like, okay, like they're really good at football, But also I know he's not going to average twenty yards per reception in fifteen yards per rush the rest of the season, because like it's just not possible. But what do I regress him to to? Like what like Deebo Samuel territory? I mean, where am I putting this? So I dug a little deeper on this one, you know, JJ. And So going back to twenty eleven, if we look at guys that were between a seventy and eighty percent repreticipation because I think they're going to kind of keep him there because they play him in the slot. They don't it could get better, It could get better, but we've got four games. That's what they're doing with him. Okay, they did it with him last year too. If we look at guys that are between eighteen and twenty three percent targets per route run, okay, and I use that to normalize because target shear is not really fair because he's not on the field enough. Targets per route run is the better way to look at player in a part time role. And then his aer yard share fifteen to twenty five percent is where I put it right now. At this year, he's like an eighteen or nineteen percent for the team. Okay, But I also said he's getting rushing at tops, so we got to have somebody getting three to ten percent. And it's four comps. Curtis Samuel fourteen point one fantasy points per game. That was wide receiver twenty six and twenty twenty, Deebo Samuel twice twenty nineteen, twenty twenty three, that's sixteen point two and twelve point six fantasy points per game, So that's wide receiver twelve and thirty three, respectively. And then ted Gen Junior. I was mostly just adding that for Ian Hardtz because I was on a show with him and he loves the freaking Ohio State Buckeyes. That's back to two thousand and seven. I broke the twenty eleven barrier just to go add ted Gen for Ian ten point two fantasy points per game. So like, look, when you average up together, it's thirteen point three. That's a wide receiver thirty two. So my truth on Jayden Reed is I bet he doesn't finish as a wide receiver one this season, but I'm not gonna go as load to push him down to a wide receiver. Three debos my favorite one in there, because Deebo had those two kind of different years, one as a wide receiver, three, one as a wide receiver two, and a lot of the same arguments existed, people saying, man, he can never keep this yak up. Well, he's been doing the yak thing for three years now or four years exactly, and he's keeping it up because we couldn't. We couldn't regress Debo to a normal yak. We could we didn't know what the We didn't know what to regress him to yet because we didn't know who Debo was. But now you regress Debo to Debo, and that could be the case to your point for a player, you know, like what we're talking about with this, So I would say wide receiver two. Yeah, well he probably ends a year.

00:25:32
Speaker 1: At that's yes, And to be fair, that's where I have him ranked right now. And I was surprised because I always what I do with my with my rest of season rankings. Every week, I put them together and then I download what Fantasy Pros is doing and what the analysts there are saying, and I just compare and contrast because it helped me to me, yeah, it helps me see where I'm higher and lower on and not be influenced while I'm actually doing, you know, the actual rankings. Jaden Reid was like, like at the time when I did it earlier this week, was that like wide receiver twenty five, twenty six or something along those lines. I was kind of shocked by that because I had him in that like fifteen sixteen range, like in the like like mid wide receiver too. I also think like, yeah, like again, of course the regression stuff is there and what you're talking about from a comps perspective, which is really interesting, especially with like the Deebo stuff because he kind of plays that ish role for uh for Green Bay. We are in a situation right now though, in the NFL where there are so few haves and so many have nots with NFL offenses that when you can attach a good talented player and I want to hear your thoughts on this, Yeah, when you can attach a good talented player like Reid even knowing regression is coming and we almost you know, I felt this way about Devon ai Chan last year too. Where not to say that like Jayden Reid is going to break efficiency marks like Devon a Chan did, but when you have only a handful that you can that you can really pick out in the NFL handful of offenses and you say, Okay, we know that Jaden Reid's a talented guy, right. I mean I liked him as a prospect. He showed up in year one, he had great peripherals in year one. He's already doing what he's doing in year two. Right, So far, small sample. But when you have that talent and you're associating it with what should be a top five to seven offense in the league, and you know that the drop off from that offense to even an average offense at this point is pretty immense, that alone makes me nervous about actually pulling the trigger with a regression type cell with a player like this.

00:27:34
Speaker 2: Would you agree with that?

00:27:35
Speaker 3: Yeah? And I think that's where the range again becomes so important, because really, Jayden Reid could be a sell or a buy.

00:27:42
Speaker 2: Right.

00:27:42
Speaker 3: If someone is willing to pay me, they think he's gonna average nineteen Fantasy points per game, and they're gonna pay me a high end wide receiver one price to come get Jaden Reid from me, I'm gonna take the deal. Yeah. If someone wants to offer me a low end wide receiver two or a high end wide receiver three return on Jaden Reen. I'm not taking it. Yeah, I'm gonna just stick with what I have and I'm gonna ride it out, and I'm just gonna enjoy having fun just watching the dude play football. That's the other fun part about what we do. So it really comes down to like that range, and I think you did a really good job of painting the picture and one of the components surely, yeah, I mean for sure, Like it is the quality of the offense. Like this actually leads into like the other question that you had after this one for me, But I know we had one other component of this one, but the quality of the offense absolutely matters, especially in a year where we're seeing that offenses have not found the CounterPunch to what defenses are doing yet. Right, so it's even more important this season. Yeah, so just real quick, we can quickly touch on the other components.

00:28:40
Speaker 1: I think I think we should talk. We should talk about this as long. People will rather us talk about this than freaking you know, Trace Sermon or whoever.

00:28:48
Speaker 3: So Okay, well I love this kind of show me do.

00:28:51
Speaker 2: Man me too, Yeah, keep rolling with it.

00:28:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I mean, but to take it to the other component you're asking about, which is and if you want to keep pulling that other thread we were just on can But where I was going to go is like all the advanced data. Yes, right, And so first of all, I want to bring this back to we are still in an industry where everyone is trying to find their niche, everyone is trying to find their angle. Everyone is trying to get people to watch their content, people to read their content, people to pay for their subscription, like it's the nature of the game. But I think when we get into that, there is like a slippery slope that can be a bit dangerous, and it can cause people to want to overstate things. And I'm not even saying that people are intentionally doing this or even thinking of all those things I just said. I just know that people are thinking, I want to be good at this, I want people to like my work. I want to do something different than what other people do. And it's not always meant with like maul intent or oh I'm pulling the wool over PA. I think I agree, Yeah, I think it rarely is. But what I found is when I researched most of those things you brought up, coverage That's a great one because when I was at PFF, man I went so deep in the weeds on this coverage stuff because I just at the time I had access to stuff that most people didn't have access to. Period. It's much more available now, but Man, I got to spend so much time with PFF, and they've studied it so much, like how all these modifiers and coverage work. For example, most most of his own coverage isn't even really his own coverage, Like half of it's probably man coverage. The back door coverage is at least Man coverage, and like, so there's a lot of issues with the coverage data because one it's not necessarily sticky week over week. It's not even always sticky season overseas. And you have to find situations where you've got a consistent coordinator, they've got similar personnel to what they had last year, were they successful with that last year? And even then they change their game plans to based on who they're playing, And some coaches do that more than others. Just like on offense, some offensive coaches like, this is what we do. We're gonna do it every week. Other coaches are like, no, we're actually we're gonna look like not a completely different team, but we're gonna have a very different plan for the way we're gonna attack team a versus what we're gonna do with team. And so what I found in researching that data is that there were great examples JJ where you could use it, and so I did start incorporating it into my writing. And people can actually go back and look at my old articles and you'll see the point at which you'll realize that I actually completed all the back end research. I was talking about it quite a lot, and it was a cool, interesting thing, and I was studying it on the fly, and I was really interested in it. But then there comes a point where all of a sudden, you see me only talking about a few times per week. And the reason why, it's really just the outlier scenarios that matter. For the coverage. Do you have a truly man heavy team? Most teams seventy percent of the league's running zone. And again, the way you qualify zone man there is so much nuance to it, and they can be so cover three for one team, and what you're getting versus cover three and another team can be honestly complete opposite things depending on what they're running and the modifiers within their system. Like, dude, I'm telling you when I started researching this stuff and I got this booklet from PFF because guys, believe it or not, you can on PFF all you want. They talk to coaches. That's how they figure out how do we chart this play? What does this mean? They have coaches consulting them and then they train the people on how to go collect the data. Does every data collector do a perfect job? No, some are better than others, just like anything. At the point being man, there's so much nuance of this stuff. So really what you're looking for a is that is there a strong tendency from a coverage perspective? And you know what, Man, I'm seeing stuff on Twitter right now. We're four weeks into a season with a new coordinator and I'm hearing man and cause I get people responding me, Man, I'm worried about his matchup on the inside against the zone. I'm like, what are we talking about? Yeah, Like, I don't know what we're talking about. This does not matter. Yeah it might matter, but we can't predict whether it will or not not yet. Now, if you've got a strong coordinator, tendency, and then you've got a team like the forty nine ers. There's a multi year trend with the forty nine ers. When you get man coverage, they prefer going to brand and I you to get zone covers, they prefer going to Deebo Samuel. But the problem is, are you actually facing a team that week where you can even even use that information. Because there's a blob of teams that are all together, they all are kind of doing the same thing. So that means I can write about that thing with Deebo Samuel and Brandon Aiyuk like four times a year, Yeah, because the matchup actually lines up where I'm like, oh, this matters this week.

00:33:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, right right.

00:33:20
Speaker 1: I mean the same to me the way that I look at matchups each week and like how I'm adjusting for you know, because you know, there's things like fantasy points allowed and stuff that that we at a high level or just naturally looking at just to see what's happened historically. I always, you know, within the sample that we're working with, but I always am approaching matchup related things with the in the back of my head idea of this cornerback matchup or this what but that generally comes out still in the team level trends that you will be looking at anyway. Right, So, like, for instance, we know that there's gonna be a potential individual matchup between uh who whoever's facing Denver and Pats or Tan and the potential X on that team or whoever that top wide receiver is on that team, Number one, it's not a guarantee that he's gonna see every single snap against that wide receiver. Which is part of the problem that we run into at times with like cornerback wide receiver stuff, is that the fact that I think that there's this idea out there that all of these top corners are automatically shadowing right all these and they don't. Right, That's just not what That's not what happens. But regardless of that, because you have that corner, right, because you have Pats or Tan, and you look at how Denver has defended in general but also wide receivers, it's coming out in that team level data anyway. So at the end of the day, yes, it's a bad individual matchup, but it's a bad team matchup.

00:34:46
Speaker 2: Like you can still.

00:34:47
Speaker 1: That's why a lot of the stuff that I'm looking at is just like the throwaway number one. You should always lead. This is how I approach it. I'm always leading with the offense and the player himself, right the role that he plays, the volume that he sees, that usage is what's going to be most important because offenses are going to be dictating games and their individual game plan. Generally speaking, if there is a situation where we know in general a defense isn't performing well against the slot, I'm not saying just like this individual matchup man versus what have you. I'm saying literally, just like this team has been attacked the middle of the field historically so far to start the season, or you know, last year, what have you. And that's that's a general look at how that defense might be defending these wide receivers, just as Denver is the toughest matchup right now and fantasy points allowed to just a fantasy points allow, however, you look at.

00:35:38
Speaker 2: It against wide receivers.

00:35:39
Speaker 1: So whatever wide receiver they're facing, it's not just a Pats or Tan thing.

00:35:43
Speaker 2: It's this is a number one.

00:35:45
Speaker 1: You don't know factually how many snaps he's gonna play opposite of, you know, Jacobi Myers or whoever. It is, but number two in general, this is going to be a tough unit to probably pass on at this point, right, And I think that's where people can get into trouble because they start to overthink things a little bit. And I'm I mean, I'm guilty of it. I think you and I'm too, like it's very easy, and I it's it's it's that it's the meme of like the the the the.

00:36:13
Speaker 2: Yeah right right, like yeah, yeah exactly.

00:36:16
Speaker 1: You go from the point of like some very surface level take, and then there's the take, and then then you start researching and you start to overthink it, and then at the end, after you research you realize, oh, it really was just that surface level take.

00:36:29
Speaker 2: That was right.

00:36:30
Speaker 1: And I do think there is plenty of paralysis of by over analysis within this space and within what I'm doing or you're doing. It's very easy to fall into that trap. And I think that that needs to be said. More is that when you see something online or you see something in a tweet, like if you look.

00:36:46
Speaker 2: At someone's yah.

00:36:48
Speaker 1: This happened earlier this week where there's a comparison of someone's yards per oute run one wide receiver to the other. Someone in the discord in the late round Fantasy Football. Discord posted it while I was doing a live stream for patron members, and I started to rant against it because there wasn't context around what the yards per route run actually meant, like like, for instance, like I love Drake London, and I liked him as a prospect and all of that, but we also know inherently that when there's gonna be less competition on a team, like if you had a team that had Tyreek Kill and Justin Jefferson on the same team and you're you're looking a wide receiver three on that team, that that wide receiver three could be Jaden Reid and his yards per route run is not going to look very good because competing with Tyreek Kill and Justin Jefferson, you can't just look at the raw numbers and say, definitively, definitively, this guy's better than this guy. I think that's where and it goes back to your original point of like being way too concrete with the stances and the takes that we have and not thinking enough about just the contextual stuff and like the range of outcomes with this stuff.

00:37:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think you know, the matchup stuff just lend themselves to it naturally. And I want to be really clear, there are people doing fabulous work, yes, these fronts.

00:37:56
Speaker 2: Yes.

00:37:56
Speaker 3: I love the fact that we're getting all this new data. Love the fact that we're pushing the bounds, and that like we continue to improve and improve and improve, and I think at some point, like we probably are going to have some realizations that you know, are kind of aha moments for us where we find an improvement in what we're doing. But where I do think there is a lot of danger is with the matchup stuff. And I really only care about the extremes, like basically, are you playing the Commanders or not? You're playing the Commanders. They sucked last year, they sucked this year. I can look across. Yeah, they don't have a good cornerback, no offense, saint just I know you're out there doing your best. They try to shadow you some. You're doing what you can man, you know, which is better than what I can do. I'm not on the NFL field trying to cover anyone because I would be terrible at that. That would be a yards per route run of two thousand. So I mean there again, it's it's a larger sample I can tie to the Commanders and it's an extreme. And we're now at four weeks, so we have some other teams that are starting to work their way in there, like the Rams, and there are somewhere I'm like, okay, like this is worth a little bit of bump. But again, if you're looking at odds makers and what's happening in Vegas, and then once that line gets beat up and those you know, team totals get beat up, they're also really already telling you all that. They're already telling you the offenses they think think you're gonna stink for the week. When they're sitting there with you know, a team total of eighteen and you're normally you're used to seeing them at a twenty four.

00:39:17
Speaker 2: Right, it's probably because the defense.

00:39:18
Speaker 3: They're playing is good. So that would be the other thing I would say is don't double count, Right, I'll start double counting all those things and moving players down your ranks, are up your ranks. Like multiple times.

00:39:28
Speaker 1: I was about to say that, you know, like the Rams, for instance, I talked about this on my Sleeper show. The Rams have been very bad against perimeter receivers to start the year, Right, does that mean that all of a sudden, you're gonna rank Romeo Dobbs and d'antavian Wis ahead of Jayden Reid this week because they're poorer against No, you're still gonna have Jayden Reid ahead of those guys more than likely because of all this stuff that we talked about earlier with Reid himself.

00:39:53
Speaker 2: But it's more so like we can.

00:39:55
Speaker 1: Look at a good slot matchup, Well, if the offense doesn't have a very reliable slot receiver, you're not just going to force the issue.

00:40:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, it doesn't matter enough.

00:40:05
Speaker 1: So like we can we can call out the fact that, Like, to me, it's it's more so like like you know, the Steelers, for instance, they've been really bad against slot I call them out all the time because they've been horrible against slot wideouts for like a decade.

00:40:16
Speaker 2: Like it's it's a.

00:40:17
Speaker 1: Very common Mike Tomlin driven thing that has has gone on for a long time.

00:40:22
Speaker 3: Right, it could also be like inducing the run. It's like we want you to throw it to yourself. Well, right, exactly, we want to take away these other things, and we think we'll take our chances with you doing this.

00:40:31
Speaker 1: Right, right, and then so so Week one happens, right, So to me, sometimes that kind of data is just as impactful when you look at it in hindsight as when you're looking at it to forecast. Now, what I mean by that is you look at week one Ray Ray McCloud had a decent game against Pittsburgh back in Week one, you know, as Atlantis slock guy, and then everyone's freaking out about Drake London because his numbers weren't very strong.

00:40:53
Speaker 2: But you can look in hindsight and.

00:40:54
Speaker 1: Say, okay, there's at least a piece of this narrative for Drake London.

00:40:59
Speaker 2: Not not the only not not the only reason.

00:41:01
Speaker 1: That's happened, but at least a piece as to why it happened of Drake London not performing as well, maybe because it was matchup driven. Joey Porter Junior is a really good cornerback, and the Steelers have been historically pretty bad against the slot, so they're attacking the slot, and Kirk Cousins right now maybe doesn't have all of his arm strength back. Like there's you can you can just start to piece these things together to then say this could be why, as opposed to just saying this is why, you know, I think that's the big difference with with how folks are are kind of looking at this stuff.

00:41:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, and especially like early man early in the year, guys, like especially Week one, like the Isaiah Likely craze, like was insane. And I remember putting out my adjusted projections the next day for the Ravens and just getting lit up on social which I knew was gonna happen. So it's part of course, like whatever, don't care, okay, like go ahead, like and sometimes I get think, I get questions on like, you know, I didn't think about that. Maybe I should rethink my stance. But so many people came to me and they're like, dude, whatever it was, he got like nine receptions on the year, there's no way he's finishing with under you know, sixty, because I think I had him at like low fifties. I'm like, guys, you do realize what just happened? Right As far as we know Isaiah Likely, we go back, we look at his career. He's had multiple opportunities without Mark Andrews on the field when the Ravens still needed a number two passing option. We've seen some games kind of close to what we saw in Week one, and then we've seen other games be complete duds. So as far as I know right now, he just had a spike game in week one. But he's a young player who has done some things. He plays at a position where sometimes it takes a few years to string together consistent, you know, outcomes. So I am gonna bump him up a little bit and I'm gonna say, let's call him a borderline tight end one. Now we're still going to keep Mark Andrews ahead of him. But at the same time, I know that there's a chance he could be getting better. But there's also this chance that is really just another game like we've seen from Isaiah likely in the past. No, people can't stand that. It's like, no, man, you're an idiot. You didn't watch the game. He's the time. In fact, you should be a top five tight end if we drafted today again. Guys, that's with the hyper super polar takes that we don't have to take. That doesn't help you. It doesn't help you to think in those terms. In my opinion, it helps you to know what the polar ends are of what could happen, and it could be him as a tight end five. But really you got to step back and think what are the probabilities of it? Like what does the data tell us? And that's what I really try to do, honestly, And my content is like paint that picture as easily as I can. And what's funny, dude about matchups? My matchup articles have gotten more and more simple over the years. I have taken stuff out of my matchup columns versus adding more things in. And it's based on the off season research. Did you guys, you hit it perfectly. You said, the player and their role is the number one driver if you go look at correlation to future fantasy success. Just looking at week after week after week after week after week over the last three years of data, the number one correlated thing to a receiver getting yards, a quarterback getting yards, a running back getting yards, it's the yards they've already been getting coming into that game. By far. Its too, it's over two x as important as their defensive matchup. Now there are outliers. There really are outlier defenses good and bad where it will cause me to adjust that take more, but eighty to ninety percent, I don't even mess with it. They're just falling in the middle. Somewhere so, and I tested it against team totals. I tested against defense. I did defensive yards allowed EPA. I mean everything you can imagine defensive success rate. Like sometimes I read these articles and they're really great and it's good context, but I'm like, what is even the point? Like I got seventy four stats in front of me, but what does it all mean? And to your point, usually the really good defense, all I had to do is look at man, they're giving up sixty yards per game rushing.

00:44:56
Speaker 2: Yeah right, yeah, they're here, we are.

00:44:59
Speaker 3: I think the biggest edge is injuries, understanding injuries and defense. If you've got a decimated defensive line and you've got an offense that's built to take advantage of that matchup, meaning they don't have a ton of injuries on their offensive line, maybe had a healthy offensive line with some good players on it, Like that can be a thing. Like that that can really be a thing. You've got a team like the Cowboys have no pass rush. That definitely matters for Justin Fills's weekend, No Michael Parsons, no DeMarcus Lawrence, like that matters. I think some of the bigger stuff we should be talking about are really injuries, especially whenever you're the starter that was in before was actually good. Yes, now if it's an injury to a starter that wasn't any good and now it's a backup, might need better, might.

00:45:43
Speaker 2: Need better exactly.

00:45:44
Speaker 1: You know the other point that you were making though about you know, look, there's a lot of good analysis, like you've been saying that that's looking at really interesting data points and as being concise and clear and what you're what they're saying, and this isn't us like saying that we know more than than others when it comes to the analysis. Is actually quite the opposite, in my opinion. It's more so us saying that we don't know enough right now, and so let's approach this in a way where we know we don't know a lot right like, where we're open to a lot of different outcomes in this case. And I also think though that it's very easy. You know, I've fallen into this trap plenty as an analyst. It's very easy to have confirmation bias based on results of whatever you were analyzing and looking at and then thinking that, oh, because this happened, I can just repeat this process over and over again and get the same results when that's really not what happens often. I found this to be the case a lot with and I know that you do. I love that we're not even remotely getting to any of the stuff on the show sheet. This is a this is exactly what I want for this kind of show. But I know that you do a lot of prospecting work, right, Like you have a model that you look at and whatnot, and I do too. And one of the things that it doesn't irritate me it's too strong of a word. It's more so of a of a of a critique that I get year in and year out is that my ratings for these prospects align too closely to draft capital and that there's not enough of a range, you know, like if I really liked a guy, he should be way way higher than what I'm actually saying, because I'm anchored to draft capital too much, right, And then I've seen other models out there who I look at the results post draft and I just cannot fathom how the results are what they look like because draft you know, they have a fourth round wide receiver, fifth round wide receiver ranked as the wide receiver three in the class, and I'm like, this is just not a logical thing to do based on the stuff that I've researched and being anchored to draft capital in some way. And a lot of it is overfitting, right. A lot of it is when you're testing these models, you're you're looking at them and you're saying, oh, this correlates really really strongly, and I'm just going to keep throwing more and more data into this model in order for it to get a stronger correlation, and all of a sudden you have what you think, yeah, right, what you think is a really good model. But in reality, all you're doing is making it just just stronger based on what you've seen historically, and you're not testing the proper metrics if I were to dumb that down. And so I do think that that's part of this too, is that when you look at the results, if you're building a model tomorrow prospect model, and you view the results and you're like, man, this looks good. I even tested it. The R squares looking pretty good. If it's a you know, linear regression type model, you're like, you're like, man, this is good. I can move forward with this. Just make sure that you're testing properly, because there's a lot of things that you can test for to make sure you know, these the individual metrics that you're throwing into that model, you can test to see if those are correlated and if they are, and then you're you're double counting, like you said, and that happens so so frequently, and my fear is that it's also going to trickle in to some of this weekly matchup stuff that we're looking at. It is, yeah, we're just double counting things over and over again.

00:49:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's really I think that what you just brought up is the key. What you do is you start testing these variables, you know, not just to like your endpoint of whatever it is. You know, projected fantasy points are expected, you know what you think they're going to score in fantasy points the next week's the next rolling for whatever the case may be, and whatever you're testing for, like, you want to make sure that your variables, you're testing their dependency on one another, you know, and when you get things that are very closely aligned and you think logically about it too, like it'll make sense to you most of the time that I could see how these two these two things being very closely correlated probably is double counting when I think through it. There are some times you can get a strong correlation between two things that aren't really double counting, and you kind of have to use your own logic and what you know about football or whatever it is, any doesn't matter, whatever topic it is, like whatever thing we're researching in life, like, you've got to use your brain for it. But what I would say, you know, is the simplicity it like this, the more simple I can keep it like, the better in my opinion. Plus that also helps me continue to go back and test it and understand where it went wrong, where it did well. It needs to be as complex as it needs to be, you know. I mean, I'm not saying you can't have a complex model that can't be really good, But I think it's just me personally. I found the more complex I've made it, the harder it makes for me to go back and retest it over time and really figure out how do I improve it. So, I mean that's one of the other advantages in my opinion, to try and to do a little bit less but more. The other thing is there are just trade offs. Like I've talked about this in the utilization score that just came out, Like I could have made the correlation to future fantasy points and the utilization score even stronger, but that wasn't my number one goal. I wanted to have something stronger than Fantasy Points, but I wanted something that had stability. I wanted something that wasn't just a bunch of double counting. There were things that I actually like because we go back and forth, we talk about it, we have other people that are better than math at me, and like we have these conversations the scenes, and I was pretty adamant about certain things coming out, and it actually took down the predictive nature, but it made it more stable because it's early, it's in its infancy. It's based on four years of data based on our partnership with PFF, and I just wanted to leave room to allow it to breathe. It accomplished its goal, right, it's doing things that are different than expected Fantasy Points. It's complimentary to fantasy Points themselves, like it can be a really good tool. But at the same time, I didn't just want to come in and I mean I could have just built it to where it was like you know, it came in like above fantasy points by like you know ten, you know, it's like an R square for fantasy points. I'm trying to remember now it was like a point five to five or something. It was like a point six to two something like that. But I could have made it like a point seven. But when I started like looking at all these things, I was like, man, we just this doesn't make sense, and I wanted to make it something stable as well. So I think, like and the same thing with the models for the for the rookie stuff. And it can be such an easy trap to fall into. And I did this early in my career, just trying to chase that higher and higher and higher. And I do think that it's it's an evolution that happens with you because sometimes you don't know what you don't know, and you start learning things and you start getting better and getting perspectives that you didn't have before.

00:52:15
Speaker 1: Yes, I was I was actually gonna say that exact same thing. I think the one thing that forces you to go with a more simple, you know, simpler approach with data is experience, and is the fact that you went out on a limb on a player that you should have never gotten out on a limb with and you got roasted for it, and you it forces you to go back and say why was I stupid with this?

00:52:39
Speaker 2: Like like what went wrong?

00:52:40
Speaker 1: And you're like, oh, well, I probably overinflated this one singular metric when I probably shouldn't have done that, or I did this, or I did this. So I do think that, you know, as people get reps, whether you're an analyst or a player yourself, like I get I get emails probably once a week from people saying how do I start when I'm building a model, Like where where do I go?

00:52:58
Speaker 2: Like what do I and?

00:52:59
Speaker 1: And to me, a lot of it is just start messing around, like just start gathering data and start.

00:53:04
Speaker 3: Get a question you want to answer? Yeah, right, question you want to answer. It's like a scientific you know, it's just like going back to school. Guys. It's like, Okay, what's the problem, Like what's the thing, what's my hypothesis? Right? Okay, great, what are the variables? Now I'm gonna go test all those things and I'm gonna compare it to like what my hypothesis was. Like it's just literally the scientific you know, methodology. You just work through that. Yes, you have a question you start.

00:53:28
Speaker 2: With so so another.

00:53:30
Speaker 1: Since we're talking like kind of high level and just kind of game theory stuff and data stuff and whatnot, I do want to ask you what your rule of thumb has been throughout your playing career with free agent budget. And I asked that because I get questions every week during my live streams for Patreon of what percent fobs should I spend to get X player? And I'm not gonna lie. It kind of drives me nuts, Like it's because because we go around and content out there gives you a fob recommendation, right, but a recommendation for how much you should be bidding on a player should It's not a It can't be a blanketed thing. It has to be so catered to your league, to your structure, to your needs, like so many different things. I can give you a general rain, sure, but I just don't know how helpful it is, Like am I wrong in thinking about this and being tilted about the way that that people?

00:54:26
Speaker 3: I don't think you're tilted, And I have a I have a pretty refined process for it, like I'll walk through it, but it's still it's still because there are variables that we're going to talk about. But yeah, so my process is just like what you talked about for projecting a player for the week or the rest of the season. We're starting with the player. Okay, so we're looking at the player. How talented do we think they are. We don't have to go into what all those variables are, but if you listen to JJ, you know what they are for the different positions. Like, we're very aligned and a lot of the research that we've done so you know what talent looks like, you know whether or not the player's shown it in the past. But so when we're talking about grading the player, we use one to five stars at Fantasy. So here are the components talent, what's the opportunity that the player has, what's the quality of the team environment, what you just talked about earlier with the Packers and with Jaden Reid that matters. And then what's the last part. It's time horizon. Okay, so how long do we expect to have this player for? Is this a very talented player on a really good team that's now locked into a role for the rest of the season. That's a five star player. That player can enter almost any Fantasy lineup and be a starter from day one. Maybe not an eight team league. There are always exceptions, but for the most part, a five star player can step into someone's at least their flex position. But in most leagues like right into a wide receiver two running back two spot. Depending on if you're hurting, they might be your running back one immediately. James Connor goes down tomorrow. Trey Benson fits this. Yes, right, I mean that's what it is. It's a good enough offense, and we like the player. If it's something where it's like, okay, the player is gonna get a chance here for two to four weeks. Let's take Dontavian Wicks. Dantavian Wis is a great player to work through this process. The talent I don't have a future a super huge sample, but I liked him as a didn't love him, liked him as a prospect, really liked the small sample last year, liked the small sample we got this year. I put it all together. I have to look at him and say he's probably talented. Yeah, I could end up being wrong because it is a small sample, but I'm gonna go ahead and go with this is probably a talented player. But time horizon is the tricky part for him. Yeah, Christian Watson high ankle sprain looked pretty terrible to me, But I'm no doctor. Christian Watson probably out at least one week, maybe two, but it could be four or five or six. But then I look at the next two games and I look at the matchups for the Packers, I'm like, Okay, Dontavian Wicks, very talented player. He has an opportunity right now to take the job. Right, So that's a four star player for me. And it's it's it can be tough. Some people might call that more of a three. And I tell our other people that do these, we talk through all this. I was like, here's how I've always done it. You guys give your feedback. Let's talk about how we because we all three go in and put in our fab recommendations, we give our star rankings. Me, myself, Kendall and Chris Allen. We all do this every week and then it goes into one tool. There's beauty and diversity though, right that doesn't force us to agree. Kendall could say someone's three, I say they're four. That's okay, Yeah, but we all are basically following these guidelines. So for me, Dontavian Wicks was a four star, for Kendall was a three. Yeah, but I looked at it as I think he could take the job. I think there's also a chance that the Packers are just I know it wasn't his fault. That could have any receiver that took the hit that Christian Watson took is getting hurt has nothing to do with his injury history. It's getting hurt. But in the Packers' mind, yeah, he's been hurt a lot, so I know that that door is also open. So he ended up being a four star player for me, and then you just work your way on down to three star, two star, one star, one star. Really being a stop gap platt player, you're just trying to get through a bye week. They don't have a time horizon, and they're not super talented. You know, you're not keeping them long long term. So it's it's it's that's the first part. And based on those things, a five star player is going to be fifty percent plus of your fab Okay, a four star player is it's a range, it's twenty five to forty nine percent. Yeah, because there's some great area in there. I put a forty percent recommendation on Wis. I think Ken Will put twenty. I think Chris Allen put thirty. So we all saw it a little bit differently, but once you average it together, it's a player that we still felt strongly about that's going to have an opportunity and if it goes well for him, he could win. He could help you in your league. He could be a difference maker. Dontavian Wicks could be. So that's the first part. It's the player, and you're grading those components again their talent, the opportunity they have, and then you're talking about the quality of their team, and then what's the time horizon. But then there are other two components. That does make this maddening because you're that scale we say twenty five to fifty percent. You've got to basically apply this to your league. Number one self assessment. Look in the mirror, what is your team? Are you zero and four? And Rashid Rice is on your team? And Pooka Nakua is on your team. I say that in a complete place of freaking pain. People, I have those two together. I can't tell you how many times I'm gonna be even more aggressive on Dantevian wicks. I'm one in three. There's no time to wait around. I gotta do something. I gotta do something. And if I'm in a twelve team league with twenty roster spots, even though I said forty percent in that thing, I'm going fifty percent and above. You can bet your bottom dollar like I'm going for it. I am going for it. I'm four and oh I'm loaded. I'm just trying to prevent the other person forgetting them for cheap, right, I'm gonna go to the bottom end of that range. So self reflection, how good is your team, how bad is your team? Be honest with yourself. People be honest. I know sometimes that's hard, it can be painful, but you gotta be honest with yourself. And then the last part I kind of mention it, it's your league size and roster sizes. Yes, because their city is totally different. In an eighteen league that roster's fourteen players versus a fourteen team league where everyone rosters twenty and you start three wide receivers and two flex those there can't be Those are two separate games, exactly. We're not even playing the same we're not even playing the same game anymore.

01:00:14
Speaker 1: Exactly, and we we we run into that a lot with quarterback stuff right where where where people are like, oh, should I you know, uh, should I drop you know, Trevor Lawrence or whoever?

01:00:24
Speaker 2: Trevor.

01:00:24
Speaker 1: Trevor Lawrence probably a good eample because he has a good matchup this week and you know maybe uh you know, in a in a in an f FPC environment, he's probably still rostered and such.

01:00:33
Speaker 2: Uh.

01:00:33
Speaker 1: But in a regular ten team home league, Trevor Lawrence is probably droppable in a lot of instances, right, and so so like like it's it's one of those like you have to provide that context if you want the most accurate uh you know, answer to it and look.

01:00:49
Speaker 3: I es waiver wire. If you look Trevor Lawrence versus what else is there on your waiver war your QB two. That's the quickest way. And you're like, oh my god, I'd have to pick up Gardner minshew, you don't drop him?

01:00:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, right exactly. That's what I always tell people. I was like, I'm always like, go look at what's out there. If Gino Smith is out there, you know, if those kinds of players who were in Darnold and these later round quarterbacks are sitting on your waiver wire right now who have performed well to start the season, and you feel better about then yeah, you can let him go and you can stream or whatever. Right, But again, if Gardner Minshew is the alternative, then you probably don't want to get rid of Trevor.

01:01:23
Speaker 2: Lawrence in that instance.

01:01:24
Speaker 1: It's really like I've tried, like my I am, I am very very interested slash passionate about getting people to like fantasy football on the level that we like it and interact with it, right, because it's just so important to having that like next level thinking and having success at the game, right instead of just listening to some idiot like myself or you sitting on a podcast and recommending things. You can do that at a baseline. But I get more joy out of people who are listening to like Living the Stream or something, and they know who the streamers are going to be ahead of time because they they've done the research. They're looking at this stuff and they understand the process or when people are about to listen to the sleeper show that I do, and they have a general idea of a couple guys that I might be talking about that week.

01:02:14
Speaker 2: Good. That's exactly what I want. I want to do less of the straight up answering and more of this kind of dialogue, more of like the where things going?

01:02:25
Speaker 1: Where can we be better? Where are processes right or wrong? What kind of data matters?

01:02:30
Speaker 3: Like?

01:02:30
Speaker 1: That's the deeper stuff in my opinion, that doesn't get enough run, doesn't get talked about enough, but is way.

01:02:36
Speaker 3: Way more important. You're really good at that.

01:02:39
Speaker 2: Thank you.

01:02:40
Speaker 3: You do a very good job of self reflection. You do a very good job of analyzing your process. You know, I can tell that you have a process to go to work through your process. I can tell. I can tell that like you're off season whenever you get into it and you start thinking about the mistakes you made and you're genuinely doing that work that we have to be doing. And so I mean, I think that's like a major hat to you know, to you, But yeah, I would say, you know, with the fab stuff like it, we could call this episode of your show of late round perspectives. It depends like there's just this range. And I know people don't always like that answer, but it really does, you know, matter And again Like that's what I try to tell people. With that process, I just walk through like it's still your baseline, you still and sometimes like guys, you just understand your league. You know you've got four other players in your league that as soon as you drop Trevor Lawrence, they'll pick him up just to spite you. Yeah, we can never know that, Like we can never know that my son's really gotten into fantasy football. He just graduated college. He's just got offered a job today. JJ. My son is like he just got Yeah, he's in finance, so he got offered a job. He's he's super excited. Went to Texas Tech, so he's getting it, super into fantasy football, and like he's really into it. And he comes every day and he's talking to me about these trades, talking to me about his league mates, and we get to have these more in depth conversations of like how his league works, yes, which is really cool. And because we end up certain things that I may have started as giving him a recommendation, once he shares those other facts with me and we talked through it, I'll change my mind. Yes, So the blanket thing I may have actually written in the utilization report that's going to apply to most leagues. Once he shares everything with me in all the context about what's going on in this trade proposal or this waiver wire bid, I will change my stance some Yeah.

01:04:22
Speaker 1: And that's honestly, man, the way that I feel about like snake drafts, auction drafts, auction drafts, especially like I've done. I've done podcasts and episodes strictly on like auction strategy and stuff like that. I'm not saying that there's no strategy to it. I'm saying that there's not enough attention being paid to the actual league that you're drafting in and understanding you know, the dollar values and the economy that's created as the draft is going on. You know, you and I play in you know, the King's Classic and such and we did you know last year we do the auction draft and whatnot, and like, going in you can have a general idea, but as things are going down, you I have to adjust based on how your league mates are are playing and how they're they're bidding on these guys.

01:05:05
Speaker 2: It's no different from a free agent standpoint.

01:05:07
Speaker 1: If you know that your league isn't active or is active, or that your league likes to overinflate the running back position.

01:05:15
Speaker 2: Look at that stuff.

01:05:16
Speaker 1: Look at your history, because it's going to help you immensely save dollars down the line.

01:05:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I do that. And I mean, I'm playing in over twenty managed leagues right now, across multiple sites and like Real Time Sports FFPC, and you can bet that early in the season, I'm I'm basically learning the room.

01:05:35
Speaker 2: Yes exactly, I'm.

01:05:36
Speaker 3: Paying attention to it. These tools that they have now for you guys, right when you go in to place your bids in most of these places at the very top, I used to have to go. I used to go look this up before I did my bids. For every team, I wrote down the other teams. I wrote how much money they had spent, depending on how much I cared about this team. Yeah, it was one of my really good teams, et cetera, et cetera. I might even go back and look at some of those players' bids or a position. Yeah, so you can take it as far as you want now when you manage twenty, I can't do that for every single team. And that's why I'm kind of honestly sometimes I'm like, why do I do this to myself, why don't I just do three? I really really care about that. I could take this thing all the way. Well I know why, because like I want exposure to these Yes, so anyway, But the point being is, like you can take it as far as you want to. But a lot of these tools now are built in a way where you can easily see. So when I look at the bottom two teams in FAB and they're already down to like two fifty each, and I go look at their rosters and they both need a running back, and I know I want a running back. Yeah, normally I might have said, guys, this is twenty five percent bid, I'm probably gonna go enough to beat both of those guys for sure, exactly, And then I'm figuring out how much do I have to go over that looking at these other teams. Yes, so there's just so much context, man. Yeah.

01:06:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean a really really quick example of that is Tucker Craft this past week, where we finally have a tight end that you know, it's I'm not saying these gonna be like a high end tight end one, but it's at least a usable piece in that offense. No, Chrisia Watson whatever, Luke Musgrave is also banged up. But you know, you go out to the waiver wire and you know, if you actually look across, you know, the tight end landscape has been pretty rough as we know, but if you look across teams there are still like ten tight ends out there that if you have one of those tight ends, you're probably like, Okay, I don't necessarily need in a normal like home league or whatever, You're like, okay, I don't necessarily have to go out and get a backup tight end or another tight end. I can probably just ride out. You know, David and Joku's coming back, Evan Ingram's coming back, like I can. I can ride this out. I'll be okay, Which means your competition really isn't the eleven other teams in your league. It's the one or two other teams that desperately need that tight end that might go after a guy like Tucker Craft you know by weeks aside all that kind of stuff. And so as a result of that, even though your analysis might say, Okay, in a normal situation, this might be a fifteen percent to twenty percent bid in this league, you might even be able to bring that down a little bit based on the fact that there isn't that much competition, So like that's the kind of kind of growth thing that you can be looking at to help with these with these bids each week.

01:08:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, it's it's all about looking at all the all the little things and then making those adjustments because again, it all really comes down to scarcity and really stylistically how your league is played, you know, how your league managers are. That's such a huge part that that we can never answer, like I almost never answer like start sid or trade questions with just an answer. Occasionally I will, like on social media, I will I'll just say yes or no. Yeah, but really, like my first instinct is always just say well, what does your bench look like?

01:08:33
Speaker 2: Exactly?

01:08:33
Speaker 3: What does this? What is this? And sometimes we don't always have time to do that because if I get that for like five hundred replies like I would have, I would have less of a life than the one I already have. So yeah, but yeah, no, all really good points.

01:08:45
Speaker 2: Man, This was this was awesome.

01:08:47
Speaker 1: I'm glad that, Like, like I said, so every week, just so people know, I send show sheets to the guest and you know, questions are about like you know, this week got through too. We were gonna, yeah, we were gonna talk about like Breise Hall or Kareem Hunt, whatever. But I love when the discussions go this way because I think that it's it's just a more transpl like this is a conversation that you and I could have in Canton, you know, just going back and forth top like we would have this conversation, you know irl, as opposed to being more buttoned up on like a podcast or something talking about player takes and stuff. I think a lot more people are going to take something away from a discussion like this. So Dwayne, thank you. Let everyone know where they can find you and all the great stuff that you're working on now.

01:09:27
Speaker 3: Really appreciate you number one. J J. Thank you so much for having me on. You do great work. But yeah, folks can find me over at fantasylife dot com. You guys can check out our YouTube channel. You can fix up, you can check out the website right now. Utilization, you can come out and check out the utilization report. I've got the utilization score in there. And so if you want a twenty percent discount, you have to get the Tier two package to have access to the utilization score, folks, those are just the rules. Elliott Chris makes the rules. Okay, so it's you are just the letter you the letter are score and you get twenty percent. Perfect. Brought that with me just for you to.

01:10:03
Speaker 1: That's that's perfect. That's perfect. I look at the data suite that you guys have. It's awesome. It's a really really nice quick reference. And you also when you log in there, you get to see your beautiful face sitting right there staring back at you.

01:10:16
Speaker 2: It's great.

01:10:17
Speaker 3: I don't get some of those choices. I mean, but I'm like, yeah, I get my kids laugh because they like, come in and I use the utilization tools for all my stuff, you know, and I've got it up, and they're like that, well, it's like you're like just looking at yourself. I'm actually no, I'm not, I'm I'm just the table I'm looking at happens to be below like my stupid face.

01:10:35
Speaker 1: It's so good, so good. Yeah, check all that out fantasylife dot com. You guys are doing awesome, awesome work. You guys can check out all my stuff as usual over on late round dot com and you will be greeted with my ugly mug.

01:10:46
Speaker 2: Whenever you go do that. Check that out.

01:10:48
Speaker 1: Make sure you're taking advantage of the underdog offer that's promo code Late Round.

01:10:52
Speaker 2: You will get free rest of season rankings if you do that.

01:10:54
Speaker 1: If you sign up over an underdog, but otherwise everyone, thank you for tuning in.

01:11:02
Speaker 3: Dombertaple to the BA