Becoming a Best Ball Bro: What Are We Doing?

00:00:01
Speaker 1: So rich you realize you're the first co host to ever hit the Late Round podcast feed with me.

00:00:07
Speaker 2: Not only am I the first co host, I'm just a random too. Like you have all these legends Debro last week Smith, all these guys that win heaps of money playing fantasy football, and here I am a random in front of a white screen. I look like I'm a hostage of some sorts. You've put this burden on me. I don't know if I can carry it.

00:00:26
Speaker 1: At the very least, You're going to be better than Denny Carter. I'm JJ, and I've been playing in best ball leagues for years. But there are people out there who play a lot more than I do, and there are people out there who have won a lot more than I have, and I want to learn from them. This season, I'll be documenting my journey of max entering Underdog's Best ball Mania contest, and I'll be doing so with guidance from some of the most successful best ball players on the planet. This is the year where things start to change. This is the year where I officially become a best ball bro. Welcome in to the first episode of Becoming a Best ball Bro. I'm JJ, zachareson. You can find me on Twitter at Late Round QB, and as I said in the intro, joined by my co host Rich Ryan Rich, let everyone know who you are where they can find you. All that good stuff, because you and I have been working together now for about eight months or so. You're the brains behind a lot of the video work that I'm able to do over on YouTube and such, and you've helped me out on the audio end too, although I'm probably still not quite to your standards in the way that I'm editing some of the audio. But let everyone know who you are and where they can find you and such.

00:01:44
Speaker 2: You're so much better on the audio end. It's music to my ears. Yeah, I'm Rich Ryan Rich t Ryan across all platforms. I've worked in poker my entire professional career, literally since the day I turned twenty one. I applied to a position cover the World Series of Poker that summer. I covered it for several summers, and then I got a job in operations for a poker company, and now my main job day to day is acquisition for a free to play poker company, but I do some video editing in the meantime and I'm in the Late Round Discord great Patreon community. I'm a bit of a lurker there because I'm in a Jets discord and some other discords. And I've got to be honest. You have a great community of very smart people, so I don't like dipping my toe into the water when I might feel uninformed. So I just lurk and get all the great content. And you put out and at everyone looking for some help video editing. Last year, I reached out and for some strange reason you allowed some complete nobody that you've never heard with interactive with before to take on all video editing for all your properties and very happy to be here.

00:02:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, and the rest is history. It's been a fun time, you know, since the start of that. And when I you know, let's talk about the show a little bit, because today's episode, I'm I'm not going to have a guest hop on, no pro if you will to hop on and talk about best Ball, because I want to intro the show a little bit. You can throw some questions my way as well. But I really wanted this extra voice on the show in you, because I think it's really important for people to to sort of understand that I'm not the quote unquote expert in this series in my opinion, in this Best Ball series and becoming a Best ball Bro, I really want to get to know and ask questions to a lot of these pros and such. And every episode we're going to be opening up and talking about sort of like what we've seen within the Best Ball space over the last week or so, because this will be weekly, what we've seen in the in the Best Ball space, the things that that I've been or the players that I've been targeting, the players that I've been drafting, all that kind of stuff, and just kind of introducing you know, the the the then the guests that will be hopping on. But I do want to say, really quick, why is this show happening? I think that's a question that some folks probably have, you know about this feed and the podcast feed. I went from the Late Round podcast being the solo show to then Late Round Perspectives hitting last last year, and that's obviously, you know, sort of created its own audience in a way over the last year or so. So why is becoming a Best Ball Bro happening in the first place? And I just want to say that I think there's three reasons. I think Number one, people have asked for best ball content for years from me at this point. You know, obviously there is a marriage between season long redraft and best Ball. It's like, I mean, it's not like you're playing a totally different game, and so there's been a lot of questions about that through the years. You know, I've obviously started out doing being more of a season long redraft analyst, and then I sort of turned into a dynasty analyst over the off seasons, and now I think the next obvious iteration is to do a little bit more best ball content. Number Two, though, I want to be better at best ball myself and and this is a way for me to do that. And it's freaking awesome, rich because this is like the first time on this show, in this feed where I can kind of sit back and relax and not feel like I have to have all the answers, you know what I mean. Like it's nice to not have to produce the show in a way where I'm giving everyone else the advice. I'm literally like everyone else right now when it comes to best Ball, or at least a lot of people where I want to learn more from these smart, smart people who have been grinding Best Ball drafts for years now and do a lot better than I do. But then the third thing, Look, guys, I have a partnership with Underdog Fantasy, and you're gonna sit there and be like, oh, this sounds like you're a sellout or something like that. Not really. Underdog quite literally now allows me to talk best Ball, whereas before, you know, I was with FanDuel for a while. As a lot of you guys know, that's not necessarily the best marriage in the world between you know, if I were to sit here and talk about Underdog product while being a FANDO employee for a while, and then you know, having the partnership that I had with FanDuel, I'm not even saying anything bad about fandulized as I'm saying this, I'm merely saying that Underdog you're just number one.

00:06:13
Speaker 2: You can't go out and tout another product here, right, umbrella.

00:06:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly exactly, Like I have to obviously adhere to the rules of what a contract might say. But then you know, also like I objectively, like I went out when I when my my deal with fandel was done, I'm gonna be totally transparent here.

00:06:33
Speaker 2: Wow, I went out on the couch. I didn't have to ask any questions. You just at all.

00:06:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel I feel like you're my therapist and you don't even know it. Uh I. I really went out this past offseason and I wanted to work with Underdog. And I think the main reason for that is this marriage of I keep bringing the word up, the word marriage up. This is the third time on this show that I've said the word marriage.

00:06:58
Speaker 2: I think it's getting me concerned a little bit.

00:07:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know what's going on there. I promise things are fine in the household. And so you know, the way that this partnership is set up is, you know, I do my season long content, I do my Dynasty content. Quite obviously a lot of that stuff will seep into Best Ball. Like I said, an Underdog to me is a brand that really listens to their audience really really well. They have so much that they can offer and that they do offer, and it's a brand that I care about the associations I have with brands, and it was a brand that I really wanted to work with, and so talk to them for a while. We got something done. Now we're partners, and it's been great and I love it and I'm very excited for it. And one of the things that I really wanted to do was talk more best ball on the podcast. And instead of you know, obviously i'll talk about on mailbag episodes and randomly throughout you know, even the the Building Projection or Insights from Building Projections episode that I dropped on Tuesday, you know, I'll still be talking best ball. But this is a place where I can be detic hated to best Ball with becoming a best ball bro That's why this show really started in the first place. That's sort of from start to finish, why we're here sitting talking to each other right now.

00:08:12
Speaker 2: We're also here to try to win you one point five MILLI. That's point number four.

00:08:16
Speaker 1: That's true. That's true. That's true. Underdog has some really really good contests. I think that a lot of people probably know about Best ball Mania, and this is best ball Mania five. This is a fifth iteration of Best ball Mania. But look, they have other contests too. Like bestball Mania is a twenty five dollars entry, not everyone is going to be able to play in a twenty five dollars entry tournament. I understand that a Max enter a twenty five dollars entry tournament. I'm gonna be Max entering that tournament for the first time ever this year, which is part of what this becoming a best Ball bro podcast is about. But at the same time, you have the Puppy that's going on right now, which is a five dollar entry. You have the Chihuahuah which is a four dollar entry. You have pick'em contests that you can play. There's a ton of other stuff going on over at Underdog. It's just that with Best ball Mania, it's the I mean, it's huge. There's fifteen million dollars in prizes. The way it works is so we're all on the same page. Think about any twelve team league that you enter right like we all play in our leagues. That's why you're listening to this podcast. In the first place, you go in you draft a team. It's best ball. So you draft, you sit, and forget you're you're not managing it. There's no waivers, none of that. And that's why best ball is different because you're only drafting that team and then you're done and you can sort of build like a portfolio. If you're drafting a lot of different teams, but there are over fifty six twelve team leagues and Best ball Mania five, and then there are four rounds. You can think of it that way, where from weeks one to fourteen, you're trying to get first or second place in your twelve team league, and then if you do, you move on to the first round of the playoffs, a round two if you will. Round two, that's where those top two teams go in. You compete in thirteen person groups and then the top team from those groups go to Round three, and then after round three, if you advance once you go into which is week sixteen, you go to round four, which is the final round in week seventeen. So you start off in this twelve team league and then you try to win it, and there's essentially playoffs for your best ball teams in weeks fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen, which is why you probably see on Twitter every December people going nuts to see if they advanced into the finals and suid. But this year, Man, there's a fifteen million dollar prize pool with Best ball Mania. You get one and a half million for first place, seven hundred and fifty k for second, five hundred k for third, and so on. You can check out that structure anytime you sign up for a Best ball contest. But you know, look, like I said, best ball Mania is their big contest, but there are so many other contests that you guys should join. And the stuff I'm going to be talking about on this podcast with guests and with Rich stuff that's applicable to those other games as well.

00:10:49
Speaker 2: And I want to commend Underdog. You'd set up the top that they listened to their customers. One thing they did this year with Best Ballmenia, which is really just a brilliant move, is they flattened the payouts at the top looked last year. Three million for first is super exciting. Congrats, I think it was. I want to get the name right. I don't want to do my guy dirty. Yeah for Reid Shaheed won and I was going to bring up him later in a week seventeen question, but yeah, three million up top, it's amazing. But what they did by flattening the payouts is the people that finish top twenty, it's so much better this year. And by distributing the prize pool, you make way more happy customers. You allow people to reinvest and play more and play perhaps in bigger states. Like for example, if you got twentieth last year, you won fifteen thousand. This year, you win one hundred thousand dollars for getting twenty, so distributing that one and a half million elsewhere. Again, I know it's a lot sexier to have that three million dollars top prize. But this is something that poker went through as well with I believe it was the OS five Wsop main event where Jamie Gold wins twelve million dollars. Again insane prize pool. But what it does is it takes money away from all the other people that cash in the tournament. By flattening payouts, we distribute money more, we make more people happy, and we get people to be able to play again in the future, as opposed to you know, if they brick out and lose a bunch, they have a bad taste in their mouth and then they can't say can't come back next year.

00:12:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, And look, there's gonna be people who disagree with it, or who like we really really agree with it, you know, like like I think you and I are more in the camp of agreeing with the way with the change that underdog made this year. But there are plenty of people who complained that's just how it goes when you're an operator and you're trying to please as many people as possible. I think it's the right move though, and I think, you know, we'll talk about this a little bit later, but I think that it's gonna cause us as players to perhaps draft a little bit differently than we otherwise would, and we can talk about that.

00:12:45
Speaker 2: It promotes a little less fragility, right because you first place being so I mean literally double last year. Like obviously your number one goal. The whole goal of this is to score the most points in week seventeen, right. Obviously you got to get there, that's that's part of the journey. But the objective in this, like in a poker tournament, the top prize is worth so much that that is the objective. So scoring the most points in week seventeen is the top line, silver bull thing that you want to do. But there's a lot softer landing this year when you don't have that team that's course the most Week seventeen.

00:13:16
Speaker 1: Look for me, someone who is I know that the way I give fantasy analysis, you might some might say that I play semi aggressive with some of my player takes, not that my takes are I mean, there are other analysts out there who are much much more aggressive with their overall takes and stances on players, and I'm certainly not that, But I just mean in terms of like shooting for upside and stuff like that. You know, I still like a more conservative pay structure, So I am excited about the change overall. But like I said, with this show, with becoming a Best Ball bro this is episode one. It's going to happen from now through August, Rich and I are gonna be talking each week. I'll be bringing on guests who are some of the best in the business. I'll just already spoil. Next week I'm having uh having Pat krane On a couple of years ago famously famously won the two million.

00:14:10
Speaker 2: Dollar prize winner.

00:14:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, be talking talking to a millionaire next week. One of my good friends within the fantasy space. Hopefully his his brain is in mush because he became a dad over the last month and so he's like in that he's like in that phase of just blackout from not sleeping, you know what I mean, Like the the uh I remember when when my daughter was born. And this this is talk about aside, but I remember when my daughter was born. I literally like had a FaceTime conversation with one of my best friends. Don't even remember it, like in the hospital, Like I don't remember it at all because I was so sleep deprived. So yeah, hopefully, Crane. Look I shouldn't say hopefully. I know he'll still bring the heat despite the fact that he is on dad time right now, hardcore dad Time. But as we know, it's usually like a three month thing and then once you can get over that hump, you're usually pretty good to go. But we will be doing this once a week. We'll kick off each show just chit chat and talking about where things are at within the Best Ball space, get to the interview and that's that. And my goal here is to learn myself throughout this process of becoming a best Ball bro. I want to get better as a player. I want to understand the game a lot more, and I want you guys again to go on this journey with me and also get a deeper understanding of what best ball is all about, because there's a lot of small, small changes when you go from season long over to best ball.

00:15:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, and I get to put your feet to the fire. That's what I'm most excited about to girl you on your most recent drafts, what your exposure is, what your thinking process is. So yeah, I'm excited. I get to learn from you while learning, which is I'm an extension of the audience essentially. Yeah.

00:15:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the thing. That's another reason why I wanted you on is to make sure that you're also looking at this and asking the questions that you think the audience might be asking. And if anyone out there ever has questions about the show, obviously email you know, you can email podcasts at lateround dot com, hit us up on Twitter, all that good stuff. We can bring it up. And I can obviously bring it up to these special guests that I'll be having on for them to answer, because you know, I'm I'm not trying to do a ton of research right now. I'm trying to just listen to the best. It's a lot easier on my end to do that.

00:16:22
Speaker 2: You have been blasting, by the way, JJ, and you started pre draft, so obviously BBM didn't open until the draft, but you have been doing some drafts. You alluded to them in the Debreu interview that you mentioned on perspectives, where are you at right now? How many drafts have you done so far? I'm probably going to be disgusted by the answer.

00:16:44
Speaker 1: No, no, you won't be that disgusted. So okay, So here's the thing. I think that people when they see that I'm starting this podcast becoming a best Ball bro they assume because I've seen like some responses to my tweets and stuff where they're like, oh, it's so nice to see you in these streets and like I'm so excited that you're able to play or that you're starting to play and stuff like that. So, guys, I've been playing best ball for a very very long time. Like back in the day, there were MFL tens where you'd you know, it was the over on my Fantasy league. You pay ten bucks and you you know, you hopefully win one hundred off of those twelve team leagues. Underdog's been the brand that's really been able to lift the best ball environment and make things a lot more competitive and oh, my gosh, so much better. The UI to Underdog just everything about what they do is just so much better. And I'm not just saying that, I promise you. I'm not just saying that because I'm a partner. I'm saying that because it's the freaking truth. It is by far the best platform to play this kind of game. But look, I've always played best ball. The difference is best ball has sort of taken on this new form over the last five or so years where people are like playing playing best ball right, like like hardcore going into this stuff and doing research for this stuff. Whereas I only have so many hours in a day. I'm trying to research stuff in season long and really focus on that and doing stuff in Dynasty and whatnot. And so I still play, though like last year, I probably did two hundred and fifty ish drafts throughout the summer and stuff. It wasn't like the volume that you'll see from you know, A Krane, who we'll talk to next week, but it was, you know, it's it's still something I'm still you know, getting my feet wet a little bit and able to draft these and draft these teams and sort of like get a feel for how people view players and hopefully make a little money all while doing it. So, like I said, I've always played, I just think underdog you know is the best place to play, and so I'm excited to have a lot more volume than just two hundred and fifty drafts. I know that two hundred and fifty seems like a lot to a lot of people. But there's yeah, yeah.

00:18:50
Speaker 2: There's again the audience here, the audience here.

00:18:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I get that. I get that. This show is really intended for anyone who's doing any sort of volume, and there's there's content like even like the Chihuahua right now, it's a twenty five dollars or twenty five entry max four dollars contest. There is another one that's just a single entry, right, so you just draft one team and it's a I think it was ten dollars, So like you can like you don't have to play super super high volume. I'm just playing high volume because that's the entire point to what I'm doing here, right, I want to see what it's like to be a best ball bro. How many have I done so far? The Big Board Draft, which was their their pre draft pre NFL draft contest that they were running, I think I did fifty five ish teams during that one, which I will say is probably more than I thought I would end up doing just because it's pre draft. You know, you're not as into it. ADP is all over the place. It's still kind of all over the place, and you don't even know where these guys are like being drafted, Like you don't know where these rookies were gonna go at that time. Right. I did it though, because from my perspective, I really thought that I would be able to potentially find value in those rookies just given the work that I was doing with the Prospect Guide and stuff. Right like definitely burned me. One of my highest rostered guys was Isaiah Davis, who went to your Jets and is now checking RB three on the Jets. But my highest rostered player in the big board is Kamani Videll. So I got him, Yeah, I got him in the eighteenth or the twentieth round, I should say, because they were twenty round drafts. I got him in the twentieth round literally, I mean, I think my exposure to him is like twenty five to thirty percent or something like that. So I got him in a good number of spots. Ray Davis was another one that I got a decent bit of Who's who's up? There with Videll and so I'm excited about that. But that's one of the main reasons why I was doing a lot of the big board drafts is because I was doing the research anyway, I might as well try to take advantage of it.

00:20:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is such a fascinating time of the season for Best Ball drafts because, like you said, ADPs are not going to be cemented until further along in the process. And generally, one of my thoughts, and this is something I bring up on my betting show, is that, especially with futures, is that value is created when there's uncertainty in the market. Now, there's obviously downside risk to that, right, because like you said, you can select something with a projection that doesn't meet it. But when there's that ambiguity, there's built in variants that in a game like this, let's be honest, where we need a ton of variants to have any kind of success, that kind of ability to reach something that isn't currently cemented is quite valuable if you do indeed hit. But the downside is, and this is something that we discussed a little pre record, is that you're probably drafting against some sharper players. So What I'm interested in throughout this process or at the start here is how you plan to distribute your drafts, because right now you're probably more likely to be drafting against sharper players. But if you do the work and you can assess some value within a very unstructured ADP environment, you can have a ton of success.

00:22:09
Speaker 1: I think this sort of extends to in season long you see, you know, most drafts and season long drafts, home league stuff like that, they happen towards the end of August into say labor.

00:22:19
Speaker 2: We don't want injuries in the preseason. We want all the information.

00:22:22
Speaker 1: Exactly, we want all the info we don't we don't need injuries as if injuries don't happen during the regular season. Right And so if I tell someone, hey, I'm drafting it because a lot of more casual players, and there's nothing wrong with those casual players. Anyone listening to this right now, you're not a casual player period.

00:22:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, you've already taken several steps towards towards not just being the guy that just fires it up on a whim, like you're putting thought into the process by just listening to the show exactly exactly.

00:22:49
Speaker 1: And so like once July August hits more and more people start to get into fantasy football because they're like, oh, yeah, my draft is coming up, football season is about to start. I don't really think about football season and during the off aside from free agency in the draft, and then my brain kind of shuts off. Nothing wrong with that, And I know that's factual because my podcast downloads go up tremendously, you know, in July, August and September.

00:23:09
Speaker 2: Look up Google trends and put in fantasy football that draft is gonna go ham in August.

00:23:13
Speaker 1: Right, right. And so when they find out that people have been drafting since February, since basically the Super Bowl ended, their response is always, that's one of the dumbest things that I've ever heard in my life, Like why would you be drafting players where you don't even know what team they're on, where injuries can occur during camp, et cetera, et cetera. The obvious response to me. And again, going to season long, people say that about like early August drafts or like late July drafts, and I'm sure you and I both have played in plenty of season long you know, managed leagues where we've had drafts sometimes just because of scheduling conflicts for the draft where our drafts are in early August instead of late August. My response to that is, if you're ahead of the game, if you understand what's going on within these teams and within camps and stuff like that, you're gonna get amazing value. Was in a lot of these with a lot of these players, Like take Puka Akua for instance last year, where uh, look I'm not I got plenty of stuff wrong in the draft guide. Please don't think that I'm trying to pat myself in the back here, because I'm certainly not.

00:24:11
Speaker 2: Please don't denigrate yourself. Please take the victory lap on. I'm begging you.

00:24:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, look I wasn't. I said it on on The Debro Perspective's episode last week where Deebro was the one who was like really really ahead on the on the Puka train, So props to him more than me. But look last year, if you were reading between the lines and looking at what beat writers were saying out of out of rams camp, you know Jordan Rodrie, who does also.

00:24:35
Speaker 2: Was pretty much daily giving.

00:24:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, she she crushed it for Fantasy managers last year, and people need to give her more love for it because she was She was very much She didn't say Kyen was gonna be the bell cow, but she very much said Kiren's gonna be involved, and that means obviously cam Akers would not be involved in that put That allowed me to be like, all right, perfect, I'm gonna put cam Akers as a player to avoid right, it's just a you know, I was already kind of on the fence. It was like, yeah, if Jordan's saying that, I'm definitely gonna go for it. With Pookinakua, it was this combination of there's not a lot going on with the Rams wide receivers. You had Cooper Cup and really not much else. He had a pretty interesting analytical profile coming out, but then again, the hype out of camp was just out of control with Pookinakua. Where if you realized all that and you put that together and brought that together, very easy to see Nakua as a decent late round dart throw, see what happens kind of go from there, and if you were drafting in July, in August or early August, you were able to get in Nikua as a last round pick. Now in a lot of leagues, you were still able to do that even towards the end of August, but people caught on a little bit more and more with the Nikua as you know that the month went on, and then he just didn't become as big of a value, right, And that's going to happen throughout the summer months. Here with best ball is that ADP in August is going to be more accurate than ADP in May, right, Yeah.

00:26:00
Speaker 2: Way sharper. It's like betting. It's like betting the NFL in Week ten versus betting the NFL in week one, week one, Right, everyone thinks they know. Everyone has all these preconceived notions that they're trying to jam into projections, and this is what it's going to be when we have absolutely no clue what's gonna happen. That's why dogs do so well, especially Week one in the NFL. But once we gain more information, then lines become sharper and they become harder to beat. So, yeah, you're gonna have way more ADPA wins right now than you are later in the process, that's for sure.

00:26:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, And like my analysis during the season, later in the season is going to be more accurate than my analysis early on in the season because I have data that I can work off of and say, hey, this cornerback sucks, or this secondary has been terrible, this rush defense has been bad. Here's how you can attack it. Week one, we don't totally know. We actually don't know much at all about how these teams are really truly going to look, and so you you have to to you know, more information leads to sharper lines or sharper adp in this case with best Ball. So drafting right now in May might seem daunting, it might seem silly, it might seem idiotic, But to me, there's plenty of reason to draft right now because in a month, some of these guys could be drafted three rounds earlier than they're being drafted right now at the end of the day. This episode is sponsored by Underdog Fantasy. Take a swing at pick them on Underdog during the next golf major. Underdog has the biggest offerings in the game, including full round projections and single whole stats. Get your entries in before the action starts, or wait to see how your favorite golfers are doing with in game pick them. It's all your choice. Download the Underdog Fantasy app today and sign up using code Late Round. New customers will receive a player special plus a deposit offer upon signing up. Another thing you'll receive with promo code Late Round is a free Late Round Draft Guide. This is year three of the award winning guide and in it you get game theory, players to target players, to avoid late round dartfros, and more. You can use it for both your redraft and your Best Ball leagues. It's an updated weekly through August, so you're always getting up to date information for your drafts. Just head to Underdog Fantasy dot Com or download the Underdog app. When you do, use promo code Late Round and make a deposit, you'll get a deposit offer along with a free Late Round Draft Guide that'll hit your email in box when it launches on July first. Again. That's Underdog Fantasy dot Com and promo code Late Round. Now back to the show.

00:28:32
Speaker 2: Another thing I wanted to ask you, since you've done Best Ball previously and you're obviously coming into this process wanting to learn if there's any specific leaks that you've identified from your previous play. And I'll give an example of mine as a low volume bestball player. I feel like every year i've done best Ball, I've walked away from my drafts absolutely despising my tight ends because I don't want to go tight end premium. But then I find myself in an absolute hell hole in the double digit rounds trying to fill my tight end room, and I just have the absolute worst players, like begging for tight end twos that are young and athletic and are just gonna have some upside, which have high bust potential, and unfortunately for me, have often times busted. So that's a leak that I've had that I'm looking forward to hopefully correcting this year. But I'm wondering if there are any leaks specifically that you've had that you've self identified that you want to fix here in twenty twenty four.

00:29:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the tight end thing is really really interesting this year in particular, Like, if you want to talk about what's going on in the landscape specifically this year, you get you look at round four to six right now in these drafts, and you start to get a lot of elite tight ends. Usually we would see, you know, last few years, we've seen like Travis Kelcey being drafted in a round one. You know, Mark Andrews would be a round two guy. We're not seeing that really this year. Sam Laporta is the tight end one from an ADP perspective, which to me is actually shouldn't be the case. I actually don't think that Laporta should be the tight end one, or at least be it's so sort of secluded from the rest of the tight end group. I think that you can make the argument for a lot of guys is basically my point. But regardless, Sam Laporta usually late round three into round four, and then you get guys like Travis Kelcey, Trey McBride, Mark Andrews. I think Mark Andrews is a phenomenal pick right now. But the thing is, there's a lot of research that's been done by again smarter people that do specifically best ball research. You know, Hayden Winks is one, for instance, who works at Underdog, where he's looked at it and he suggests that a late round tight end approach is the right approach. Now, I've obviously talked about a late round tight end approach from a season long perspective for years, right like I have living the stream, like we talked about streamers, and there is typically a good number of tight ends that you can draft late that end up breaking out to some degree and then tight end at a you know, if you take a step back and you look at it from a larger scale, the tight end position just doesn't score that many points in general, and so it's a lot easier for that replaceability to hit for like a lower tier tight end to score a touchdown and get thirty yards and all of a sudden be the tight end four in that given week, right. And so my thing though, is you are getting kind of a discount this year with those earlier tight ends because they are being drafted in a round four through six. But then you have this research that suggests, oh, you should wait get three tight ends, maybe even four in some cases, as opposed to getting two with one of those being you know, one of these study tight ends. That's one of the biggest questions that I want to ask people this year in this summer is what their tight end approach is, because it can really dictate the way that you approach the rest of your draft. Because if you're taking a tight end round four or five, that means you're gonna fall behind a little bit of wide receiver, which is a very difficult thing to do over an underdog because a wide receiver heavy environment. And then also you know you're probably gonna have to go zero RB to some degree. But what if you took a Jonathan Taylor in the second round or something like that, and then you saw this great tight end value and then you're really behind a wide receiver. So there's a lot of reasons that I can understand from an opportunity cost standpoints why you wouldn't necessarily go that route with tight ends. But I found it to just be really comfortable this year to kind of go that route. Now to your question about sort of leaks that I that I've seen in my own game that I want to fix and be better with. I am not the best stacker in the world, and what I mean by that is I try to force it. I try to do it, but I'm such a value hog that I have a hard time sometimes reaching when I know that I need to reach, and then someone obviously you know, goes out and scoops the guy that I was just waiting one round for. I need to get over the idea of like waiting that one round, and it's I think it's actually harder to do that when you're playing a large number of, like a high volume of drafts, because you're trying to just find value throughout every draft that you do. If you're gonna do a ton of them, that means that every player at some point in one of these drafts is going to fall to you where he shouldn't fall to you, right, And so you're trying to take advantage of that to some degree. And because of that, I don't want to reach. I feel this urge to not reach. But it's a really really big problem for me. And I also I just want to talk to folks about sort of that how they attack stacking, you know, how how big their stacks need to be. And then obviously you know what that what stacking means, game stacking means for the playoffs, in particular with Underdog, where you know week sixteen, week seventeen, we want that correlation, you know, within the game. The other thing I want to say, last thing the running backs this year. It's, like I said, the Underdog platform is very very wide receiver heavy. Because there's been a lot of data evidence et cetera. That suggests that going more zero RB is typically a better build and has better output than you know, going with like a start three running backs start or something like that. You're gonna fall behind a wide receiver if you do that, that's for sure. I mean, that's it's just a wild, wild wide receiver environment. But I said this on the projections episode, there's still that pocket of that Rashad White, Isaiah Pacheco. You can maybe throw Joe Mixon in there where I don't quite understand. Maybe they're at the correct ADP and maybe the guys ahead of them, like Hiaran Williams and Josh Jacobs, maybe those guys are just being drafted too high based on their volume projections and such. But that's another question that I just generally have is why are these running backs falling to where they're falling, Because at the end of the day, they project so well, they look really good on paper, they look like they're going to be Bell cows. And then you know the thing is, though, whenever you're drafting, I'm sure people have experienced this. You draft a Rashad White, he falls to the mid fifth or something, and maybe even late fifth. You grab Rashad White, and then you're in like round nine and Nase Harris is sitting there, you know where it's like like like these running backs get pushed back so so far that after the fact you're like, man, I should have just just bit it and just taken an inferior wide receiver there, even if he doesn't project nearly as well as a guy like Rashad White.

00:34:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's gonna be some ambiguous backfield player. There's gonna be some somebody that we're gonna be able to grab value with later. I for sure believe that. Man, it's crazy looking at Kien Williams' second round value after if if you just teleport yourself back three hundred and sixty five days and telling yourself Kyan Williams will be a consensus second round thick a year from that. Wow.

00:35:21
Speaker 1: The crazy thing is is that before the Blake Koran pick, he was a one two turn guy, you know, like like like pre draft I was actually scooping him up, not not over not overly overweight with him, but like I was scooping him up a decent bit at the one two turn. I thought he was a better pick than Saquon Barkley at that time. You know, I should have thought, because I even said about I even talked about this on the podcast that dropped on Tuesday, it really shouldn't have been that big of a surprise that the Rams did what they did at running back in the draft where they really had question marks behind Kyen. I thought they were gonna get one. I just didn't know for sure they would go out and get a Day two one, let alone a very solid back in Blake Korum. You know, like, I don't think Korum is someone who's ever gonna be a bellcow without injury in the NFL. But I think he's a very solid prospect, and so I should have read into that a little bit better and then just taken advantage of a Kyen drop if I wanted to get some exposure now where he goes. I'll tell you what, man, the second round of these Best Ball drafts just suck. Like, like everyone in the second round is terrible. I don't want to draft any of them. I don't see that big of a difference between a lot of like late third early fourth round players compared to guys being drafted in like the late second to the point where now I'm just gobbling up like a Chris Lave because of the safety and you know, he's just a solid player. I trust the talent all that kind of stuff, But there are red flags to literally everyone in the second round. I think that's a huge, huge reason that Kyen's ADP didn't fall as much as it could have fallen. Like, realistically, I think Kien Williams is probably like if you look at history and you sort of just look at where he this kind of player would have gone historically, probably more of like a late third maybe three four turn guy. But it just sucks like the available players are so not worthy, you know, in that second round into the third round. That that's the reason why I can understand getting Kyraen and Williams right now.

00:37:17
Speaker 2: No, that totally makes sense. And since we're talking players, you dropped it on perspective, so your most owned player is right now Kyler Murray. I want to dig into more as to why and going back to stacks. I know you said historically you've had some trouble stacking. Are there any players that you're stacking him with where you're able to grab some some marv pre drafts Assuming that the Cardinals are going to take him for what you what's your Kyler situation like? And what's your Stack situation like? With Kyler?

00:37:44
Speaker 1: The hard thing that I have and this is I guess this is another thing that I need to like work on and figure out and talk to these pros about is And I'm sure people have run into this as well. You take a Marvin Harrison Junior in round two because that's where he's going. I know that people who haven't played best ball, you're gonna be shocked when you when you hear that Marvin Harrison Junior is a round two pick if you.

00:38:03
Speaker 2: Get not just round to thirteen point four.

00:38:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he's early round two. This is not like yeah, this isn't like two three turned stuff.

00:38:11
Speaker 2: This is like if just your socks came off, your pants are off now hearing that.

00:38:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So Marvin Harrison Jr. If you get Harrison, uh, then obviously you can go out and get Kyler Murray and you can force it a little bit. The problem is with a guy like Murray. Let's say that you miss out on Marvin Harrison early, and then let's say that you miss out on Trey McBride. Those are the two guys that are getting drafted early within that stack that matter most by far within that stack, right, and then you all of a sudden see Kyler Murray fall to I mean most of the time, Kyler Murray to me is a value, right, So I see him falling off into a place where I would love to snag him, and I do snag him sometimes even if I don't have a McBride or Marvin Harrison. And in those cases, I'm just getting those secondary pieces I'm getting like the Michael Wilson. Now Jay Jones is there, maybe he'll be a little bit more involved, and then if I can tag along, maybe like a Trey Benson or something, or or James Connor with Murray to get somewhat of a stack. The nice part, though, is that he is mobile. We know that he can sort of score on his own without the use of some of his weapons, and so that I think is the nice part with him and his upside. But there's there are other stacks though, that are just easier to compile. Like I think Murray is not the easiest stack to put together because he himself as a player, Like I said on the shows, and I talked about this, on the Projections episode, I shared that stat where he has He's had basically five plus rushing points per game every year of his career, and the players who have done that since twenty eleven, every single one of them have scored seventeen point three points per game or more that season, and most of them have scored over eighteen points per game, which is a low end QB one season, which basically says Kyler Murray is being drafted fairly close to his floor. I mean, like realistically, and I don't think his ADP is gonna move that much. I talked to Dee Brow about this. I don't think it's gonna move that much because where's it gonna go. Is he gonna really jump Joe Burrow at the end of the day, you know? But again with like a Burrow, Let's say, it's easy to say I'm gonna get Burrow if I have Jamar Chaser T Higgins right like that that those are the teams where I'm just gonna get Joe Burrow. I'm not gonna get Burrow if I don't have one of those guys. But I think Murray can create on his own enough where if I do miss out on one of those two at times, not all the time, but at times I'm probably still gonna go after Kyler Murray.

00:40:30
Speaker 2: Yeah you I was gonna make this point if you didn't. And when it comes to taking a quarterback and playing them naked, they just have to be mobile, right, and Kyler absolutely satisfies that. And maybe it's just an opportunity where if you do find yourself into draft and it's going to end up being a naked Kyler Murray, maybe this is one of those game stack opportunities where you look at week sixteen, Week seventeen, who are the Cardinals playing. Let's see if we can get the weapons on the opposing team. Obviously playing in the Dome, they have juicy ma like Niners, Lions. They play on the road against the Dolphins. So if we can bank one of those, maybe Week sixteen, Week seventeen, that's a way to attack a stack that's not Cardinals centric, but can get Kyler in there with some supporting cast that's indirectly potentially propping up their points if there's a lot of points scored in the game. What other players we got other than Kyler Murray? Who else are we highly rostered at this moment.

00:41:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, so look I'll do this. I'll go through with the big board. These are the top my top ten percent rostered, and look, I'm not proud of all of these. Okay, this is pre NFL draft. And then I'll get into to two guys that I specifically think that people should be targeting a lot more heavily right now. But like I said, Kamani Videl was number one, Ray Davis Jalen Wright, I was drafting a lot of I think that his I mean, he did see an increase in ADP after landing in Miami, and I think there's a lot of contingent upside with him. Obviously, if one of a chan or moster gets hurt, which a CHAN has not had the best time staying healthy. It is one hundred and forty five years old, so you know, something could happen to one of those running backs wouldn't be shocking, right.

00:42:06
Speaker 2: Also, real quick, JJ's listing all these guys and some of you might be listening, like, none of these are blue chippers that he has high exposure to. But it's very common to have your dart throws to be high exposure because in the very high opportunity costs rounds. If you're exposed to the same player over and over and over again and that player bricks, so that player gets hurt, well that's going to be devastating across your entire portfolio. So that's why you're hearing some of these maybe non blue chip players be such high usage players.

00:42:33
Speaker 1: For JJ, Yeah, ta. Mario Douglas was another one that I was drafting a lot of. I don't think that, you know, even post draft, with them getting Javon Baker and Jalen Polk, I'm not that upset about having that much exposure to Douglas. Is he a high ceiling player. Absolutely not. It's just one of those let's see if he can at least give my team a little bit of a floor. I think he's one of those players who has a decent projection that you can get late that you can feel okay, It's like Wandell Robinson where he can probably still crack your lineup every once in a while, you know, during by weeks or if you have a down week. So I was going after Tomorrow Douglas decent BI because he was really really cheap. Kyler Murray, as I mentioned, he's next on the list. He was my top ranked quarterback, Dantavian Wicks. This is actually one of the players that I wanted to bring up. I think Dontavian Wicks is an absurd value right now. And I say that because Number one, this is best ball where you're not gonna have to be concerned about managing the rotation of the Packers wide receiving group. Right they have a lot of good what they crushed last year's draft. Do you have Tucker Craft, Luke Musgrave a tight end, both very capable tight ends obviously Jaden Reed and Christian Watson. But then you know Romeo Dobbs had a really good playoff last year. And then Dontavian Wicks. Wicks, though I talked about this on the show, you know he had that two point zero yards per route run rate. If you look at history, players who did that as rookies with that many routes run had very very good success, not only in their second season but just during their careers. Now, a lot of those guys had a better backbone as prospects like Dantavian Wicks was not looked at as some phenomenal little prospect coming out with my process with most processes, right. Uh, he wasn't a very sexy or a popular sleeper choice out of last year's class, but what he did last year and now he's being drafted by far as the fourth wide receiver on Green Bay. You have contingent upside if one of them gets hurt, but you also have upside of what if Dantavian Wicks is freaking good? Like, what what if this two point zero yards perrout run rate actually a signal that he's a very good player. So I'm gonna bet on that, and uh, you know, draft him a lot. I'm still drafting him a lot. And you can annoy the person who gets Jordan Love in your draft and take don Tavian Wicks without the Jordan Love stack and without the Green Bay stack, because I think he has a good standalone value. So he's next on that list. And then I had Isaiah Davis next, which I'm not not very happy about. He's gonna be completely worthless probably.

00:44:49
Speaker 2: This year next Jersey, I'm gonna have to send you jets.

00:44:53
Speaker 1: Apparently apparently I was so and by the way I sent that tweet out whenever they drafted Isaiah Davis, it was like sarcastic like, oh yeah, the Jets really needed Isaiah Davis this year, and so many Jets fans were mad at me after as if I was like talking junk about the player. I'm not. They take Braylen Allen, they take Isaiah Davis, they already have Breisee Hall. It's just a mess for those backups. So Davis was next. I had Darius Slayton for some reason, I was drafting just like a cheap projection kind of player, and obviously he's made some big plays in the past. And then the last two i'll do the top ten. The last two were both Patriots will now Patriots Hunter Henry because again just a very like cheap tight end dart whatever. I think that you could put like a Jawan Johnson in that group as well as just like a you know, whatever kind of tight end that'll give you some points. And then I was drafting a lot of Javon Baker too, who fell into a decent spot in New England where he could see a media production. But then the last guy I do want to talk about right now, I wasn't drafting him enough pre draft, but I am drafting him so much post draft, and that's Tyrone Tracy. So I find it baffling rich that Tracy's ADP is, you know, round fifteen rounds. I mean, you can get him very very late in these drafts when at the very least people typically are going to draft based on depth chart, right, they're gonna draft based on who's ahead of these guys. How easy is it for this guy to see some opportunity. Look at Tyrone Tracy right now. His biggest competition is Devin Singletary and Eric Gray. Eric Gray, second year guy, had actually a pretty interesting production profile coming out. But neither Singletary nor Gray are explosive backs. Both of them actually had sub ninety speed scores based on their forty time coming out. Look Singletary is a fine player, and I actually don't think that he's that bad of a selection either right now, but because Brian Dable loves himself some Devin Singletary. But but Tyrone Tracy easily the most explosive back in that backfield. He had one hundred and four speed score. You know, he played wide receiver in college. He's a converted wide out to running back, so obviously he has some pass catching chops. I think that the very least, and by the way, his top comp in my model was Tony Pollard, so I think at the very least he can kind of play a Tony Pollard role to start, and then he doesn't have a superstar running back like Tony Pollard did whenever he was getting off and starting off in the NFL. He doesn't have Ezekiel Elliott. Sitting in front of him is an undersized Devin Singletary and Eric freaking Gray. So I think right now, Tyrone Tracy is a very very good value.

00:47:27
Speaker 2: And you have a sharp play caller. That's the two things that stand out the most from the two players that you just mentioned in Wicks and Tracy, they have sharp play callers. Like yeah, it's good to have players with upside in good offenses because we know they have somebody that can potentially put them in into positions to succeed. I know we're at the fifty minute mark and before we get to any rap, we've even generally happy. But I have to bring up this suite that you sent out today to tilt you a little bit saying that you're definitely not mad at the guy who picked Kirk Cousins as his QB. Three thirty spots. I've a head of ADP. When I drafted Drake London and Kyle Pitts. This is safe space, JJ, you can get it all out here.

00:48:09
Speaker 1: I find it so tilting, so beyond tilting when you have the core players in a stack at pass catcher and someone and I know, look, I know this has been a thing in best ball for years and years and everyone tilts this. I get it. This is not unique. It's just in particular this one. I got Drake London at ADP and then Kyle Pitts fell, and so I got a little bit of a discount on Pits, and I'm like, man, this is really coming together perfectly. I already had an eagle stack that I was feeling good about. Like I said, got Pits at a good value. I can just wait on cousins. And here's the other thing is that a lot of times you'll find that when you have stacks. And I want to ask these pros about this to some degree too, but when you have the pieces to the stack, you can sometimes get better value at the quarterback in that stack because the rest of the room is understanding that they don't need to force it with that player because they don't have that stack right.

00:49:02
Speaker 2: Why would you take naked Kirk Cousins when the guy can't.

00:49:05
Speaker 1: Move right right? And so this guy in the draft not only took so first off, I didn't even realize this because I was tilting so hard. I put a screenshot in the discord and someone else noticed that he took Jared Goff fifty picks above ADP first, so he already he already had I think I think he had CJ. Stroud, probably naked Stroud. And then he goes and he gets Jared GoF fifty picks ahead ADP. And then he gets Kirk Cousins after I had already drafted Kyle Pitts and Drake London. I kind of salvaged it because I got Trevor Lawrence with Christian Kirk. But Jacksonville is one of those teams where there's not that many like secondary tertiary players late that you feel great about that you can throw in there. And it was past the point where I didn't realize I was gonna have to go that direction, and I couldn't get like a Gabe Davis or anything like that. So I kind of salvaged it. The team is actually still okay. You can check out the late round Fantasy Football discord for that team if you want to see it. But yeah, man, and it's a very tilting experience whenever you have a plan that you feel so good about and it just collapses at the last second.

00:50:06
Speaker 2: I was gonna just check on ADP Now I was wondering, did did you give any consideration, a greater than zero percent consideration to punting on Michael Penix with your last pick?

00:50:16
Speaker 1: Yeah. So that's the thing is that a lot of people said that on Twitter. And the reason I didn't go that route is because I already invested a good bit in Jalen Hurts because obviously, you know, was a three four round, you know, three three to four turn guy. And I'm you know, if you're gonna go with Michael Pennix, then you're going to have to carry three quarterbacks most likely. Maybe that's a question that I ask But I didn't want to have a three quarterback build with Jalen Hurts. That just felt suboptimal. So I didn't go that route. It did cross my mind, but I think it was it was a pretty fleeting thought, you know, it was. It was probably like a three second in my mind kind of kind of discussion.

00:50:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I've seen some super fragile builds last year. I saw some. I saw some naked Lamar builds last year. Not naked in that there were no Ravens as catchers, but people were constructing lineups where he was just the only quarterback on the roster, which is obviously extremely high variance. You know, even if he misses a couple of games in the season, that's the sort of thing they can tank your whole season. But I get it. If you're multi entering and you want to have just this one massively fragile lineup that has a ton of upside, Like, I get it.

00:51:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll probably try some single quarterback teams this year, non bestball Mania, but I might try it just to kind of see get some anecdotes on how you know, things sort of work out.

00:51:34
Speaker 2: You're probably gonna love all your non quarterbacks.

00:51:36
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, anyway, Rich, that's gonna do it for the first episode of becoming a Best ball bro Like I said, future episodes, it'll be me and you chatting and then a guest will come on. We'll be able to ask questions and such and get questions from listeners to ask, but let everyone know where they can find you. And I'm excited for this, man.

00:51:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, Man, me too at rich t Ryan across all platforms. I cannot wait to bring up a rage tilting moment from a draft that you're going to have this week.

00:52:03
Speaker 1: Oh, it's bound, bound to happen, bound to happen.

00:52:06
Speaker 2: And I've got to be a segment. I think. I think a segment has already has already construction. I think is draft tilt moment of the way.

00:52:12
Speaker 1: I think so too. I definitely think so too. People only hear me in that robotic voice so frequently with the Late Round podcast that they probably don't even realize that I'm a tilt machine and I can just generate tilts just just right off the cuff. I'm on Twitter at Late Round QB. Check out everything over on lateround dot com. Draft Guide available for pre order right now, and make sure that you use promo code Late Round over at Underdog you get a free draft guid. There's a cool little promo going on there. Otherwise, everyone, as always, thanks for tuning in.