Late-Round Perspectives: Paul Charchian

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Paul Charchin is the host of Fantasy Football Weekly, the longest running fantasy football radio show, and the owner of Guillotine Leagues dot com.

00:00:08
Speaker 2: He's the former FSGA president too.

00:00:10
Speaker 1: He's a Minnesotan, a gamer, and he's a big fan of instrumental music. 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. Head to Underdog Fantasy dot Com or download the app to do so. Again, that's promo code Late Round. Now back to the show. Actually, there's one more thing. This episode was recorded before the Thursday night game, and we did talk about players who played on Thursday night. I'm recording this before that game's even played, so something may have happened during that Thursday night game that would have impacted the players that we talked about, like Chase Brown or Deontay Johnson. I just wanted to throw that caveat out there before you listen to this episode. Now back to the show.

00:01:34
Speaker 3: This is this is the highlight. This is the one of the highlights of my season. Definitely the highlight of this week. An opportunity to talk to you would be on the show. Wow, so cool, Thank you.

00:01:43
Speaker 2: I appreciate it.

00:01:43
Speaker 1: I I thought, you know, I feel like we could probably open up this show and only the entire episode just talk about album leaf. Oh yeah, right, I feel like that you're You're I think you're the only other human being aside from my friend who actually introduced me to an album.

00:02:00
Speaker 2: Who who will listen to it? Freak? Are you still like daily listening to that in the background?

00:02:05
Speaker 3: They're heavy rotation for me? Yeah, because for me for working I don't know about you, JJ, but I can't work with any music that has lyrics because the lyrics demand attention. Yeah, and I can put on instrumental music in the background, and so I've got all my instrumental work bands already to go, and album Leap is so good for that.

00:02:25
Speaker 1: Yes, like Explosions in the Sky. I'm sure you're you're listening to as well. I've gotten really into a video game lo fi.

00:02:32
Speaker 2: Recently, Woo tell me More.

00:02:34
Speaker 3: I love it.

00:02:34
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:02:34
Speaker 1: So it's you know, you know, like the lo fi stuff that then folks have produced, but it's it's literally video games that I mean mostly retro. Like there's a lot of like Sonic stuff and like Super Mario stuff, but it's just it's chiller, you know, it's just like more laid back, relaxed, easy listening type stuff.

00:02:52
Speaker 2: You're a gamer too, right.

00:02:53
Speaker 3: Like I am. Yeah.

00:02:54
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:02:55
Speaker 3: I hosted a video game radio show for fourteen years on our Alloo station here on Tuesday nights, and it was it was a ton of fun and I loved talking video games and following the industry. And that industry's got about as much drama as the NFL does, and it's your round and so there's you know, there's always something new, there's always a new release, you know, there's always something going on in controversy, Like there's a huge controversy around Dragon's age right now, I wish I wish I had a microphone to talk about it. It's yeah, it's you know, I'm I'm I am a big gamer. I love the idea that you're talking about where somebody takes eight bit and sixteen bit soundtracks and then makes them into low fi, chill electronica for today. Yeah, it's cool.

00:03:39
Speaker 2: You got a really good you could there.

00:03:41
Speaker 1: It's on Spotify, like you can find the playlist out there. But yeah, what kind of what kind of games have you gravitated towards? Like what kind of genre are you into most?

00:03:49
Speaker 3: Mostly right now? And maybe it's because I'm getting older, I'm I'm doing less like twitchy shooters, more like roguelikes. The big the game, the game that has caught my the most attention for me this year is called Bolatro. Have you heard about this?

00:04:04
Speaker 2: I've heard it. I've heard about it, yes, but not in great detail.

00:04:07
Speaker 3: So the premise is you're playing poker against yourself. There's just a one person poker game.

00:04:13
Speaker 1: And yeah, so I'm only I'm always saying I have a group me of my my buddies, like high school buddies and stuff like that. Who game, and they were they were sharing screenshots of this. Yeah, yeah, keep going and keeping it's awesome.

00:04:23
Speaker 3: So you you're trying to make the best poker hand that you can. You're trying to do a lot better than a pair, trying to get up to flushes and and and but what's really really cool about this and what's so brilliant and why nobody thought about it sooner, is is insane. You every run that you have, you every every every every every every hand, you have to meet a certain point threshold. And the more sophisticated hands you create, like flushes are really good, you'll earn more points. But what's really cool is they start giving you cards that change the way the hands play. Flush are worth double, aces are worth fifty extra points, you know that kind of stuff. And then you can even then jack up and those are like overall cards that affect everything that you do, and then you can jack up the cards themselves, like my you know, my ten of clubs can suddenly be worth instead of being worth ten points because it's ten, I can drop cards on it or affect it that now it's worth forty. And that's the kind it's.

00:05:23
Speaker 2: Just it is, it is it PvP or is it.

00:05:26
Speaker 3: It's not. It's all solo. It's perfect for just you know, in this time of year, JJ, you know, you know what it's like, I have seven free minutes and I just want to get lost in something. I can just pick this up and just like play a hand, set it down, pick up where I left off.

00:05:40
Speaker 1: That's the problem where I've been at with with my gaming. Like I went on a binge for like five six years of like Overwatch, for.

00:05:47
Speaker 2: Instance, with my friends, and yeah, which is a blast.

00:05:50
Speaker 1: It was, it was great, and then it just went to you know the crapper, you know, like over the last couple of years. But yeah, I've gone to the like I have two young kids now and you know, football season here, I'm literally like, can I play a game of Rocket League? That's that's all I'm hoping for. Just just give me, just give me a little Rocket League. And I'm I'm at least scratching that itch, you know a little bit. But always great to talk to a fellow, you know, album leaf lover.

00:06:17
Speaker 3: And yeah, and obviously you even know who Explosions in the Sky is, which is great. I'm going to see Tycho in a couple of weeks. I would think Tycho would be in your wheelhouse. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's touring right now off off of a new album. How old are your kids?

00:06:32
Speaker 2: Uh?

00:06:32
Speaker 1: Six and two about to be too, so there she she just turned through. They're about four years apart. But yeah they're they're they're young.

00:06:38
Speaker 3: Is your six year older reader?

00:06:40
Speaker 2: She is? Yeah?

00:06:41
Speaker 3: You know about Elephant and Piggy.

00:06:43
Speaker 1: Yes she was, Actually she was Piggy for her Ye, she wore a costume to schools, like a Halloween type thing, and then the family itself all of us were blue characters like for actual Halloween, but it was like a character thing that they did at school.

00:06:56
Speaker 3: But yes, we know, Okay, great, I just want to make sure because Elephant and Piggy was best, and.

00:07:00
Speaker 2: Yes it is is a fun time. I like seeing her.

00:07:03
Speaker 1: You know, she actually just lost her her second front two last night, so now now she literally will be singing the song over Christmas. You know that that all she all I went for Christmas my two front teeth.

00:07:13
Speaker 3: Because she is awesome.

00:07:14
Speaker 1: There's just a massive gap that you know, just sitting right there. It's just such an such an awkward thing that happens, you know, it's just so bizarre. But yeah, it's it's a it's a it's a fun time. But look, I want to get to you, as you know, a person in this space. You know, folks listening may or may not, they probably have heard of you and know what you've done because you've been around for a while. But talk to us about sort of where you started and how you've gotten to where you are today talking to me, you know, on this on this ridiculous podcast.

00:07:49
Speaker 3: Well, because I'm old, it's kind of a long story and I'll try to keep it short. But yeah, pretty much right out of college in the mid nineties, pre internet, myself and a buddy started a in season magazine called Fantasy Football Weekly. When there was and I'm not exaggerating when I say this, JJ, there was no published content on fantasy football in season, crazy non and we're like, okay, you know, I can get a magazine that was written in May and that's it. And then the spigot was off for content. We're like, yeah, let's just go make the magazine we'd like to make. So we started Fantasy Football Weekly, the magazine that in time and that it was hard. Let me tell you, we made no money for a long time, we figured out the hard way. Like you know, here in the Twin Cities people were playing back then, but it turned out nobody was playing in Seattle and Los Angeles and Texas, and we just took our lumps big time in that. But we eventually got that to the point they were able to turn it into our dot com site, Fanball, and Fanball had a ton of content in games and when the dot com and we had Fanball Commissioner, which at the time was one of the better commissioner products out there, and I was really really proud of that. We were the first we were the first ever online auction games. We were the first ever to have blind bidding. Nobody had blind bidding, so we did a we had a bunch of first with Fanball And.

00:09:14
Speaker 2: Was that was that with the blind bidding stuff?

00:09:16
Speaker 1: Was that a creation from you guys or was it sort of a normal norm or was that something that you kind of rolled out?

00:09:22
Speaker 3: Well, we knew we felt strongly that it was the right way to play, that the only fair way to distribute players was blind bidding, and we had been we're doing that in all of our intern company leagues and we were like, it's ridiculous that no site has this. We've got to let people do blind bidding. And so then the hard part, honestly, JJ's we had to figure out how to do it, how to code it, what's the logic to distribute you know, players in blind.

00:09:46
Speaker 2: Bit, especially back then, more difficulty because.

00:09:49
Speaker 3: Nobody had done it, and I remember it. I remember this. So we had promised the feature and we but we hadn't coded it yet until two days before it had to be available, and so we were hustling to try to figure out the logic on how to distribute blind blind bidding bids, yeah, and try to get that to crazy.

00:10:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's crazy.

00:10:13
Speaker 3: So then the big thing that happened in Fanball and why we sold Fanball in two thousand and five was the all the four sports, the NFL and NBA baseball, hockey, and the players Association, banded together to claim that they owned stats from players, and we were the industry was so small, we were like, well, we're not going to win. You know, they're going to win. And the only people they told us, the only people that were going to get licenses for stats were their media partners like ESPN and CBS and they were going to shut us out. So we're like, well, I guess we got to sell. And as it turned out, the little guys did win. Stats remained in the public domain so that we can all use stats and we all have access to stats and and so at the end of the day, it was probably a bad decision to sell Fanball then, because you know, we were at the time in the you know, the mid aughts, we were one of the really big fantasy sites and you know it'd be a total juggernaut now if we just stayed on our trajectory.

00:11:19
Speaker 2: Right right right.

00:11:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, So then so fanball so you get rid of, get rid of you sell Fanball. Uh and then what happens after the stats stuff goes down in the mid two thousands.

00:11:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, so then the acquiring company just you know, as these things go oftentimes, JJ it was a bad, bad marriage and they it was. We ended up being purchased by Liberty Media, and you know, this is the company that owns like the Discovery Channel, and you know, they don't direct TV, and we were just a rounding areas. They basically said, look, if you can't grow this thing one hundred x, you know, we're we're not interested, so I left and I started league Safe, which I think you know about. League safe is the is the site where you can go to have everybody share their league entry fees into a wallet and then we make sure that the right people get paid at the end of the year and nobody runs off the money, which was was and still is a problem with people sharing money online. So yep, create a league safe and ran that for over a decade and then sold that and then a few years later started guillotine Leaks.

00:12:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's talk about guillotine leagues. So over the last handful of yours. When did you start guillotine leagues dot com?

00:12:31
Speaker 3: We started it basically the day of the pandemic started, so I had, you know, I we like, we were rolling it out right then, and so that's that's your time frame right there, So we're you're five right now of guillotine leaks. We had tried it as a as a sample just internally with our own and outside our own company. I was like, damn, this is awesome. I could see this being huge, and and the company was with then sports of them like god, we got to go do this, and couldn't get I couldn't get management and our owner at the time to do it, and so like, no, fin, fine, I'll leave. I'll just go do it myself.

00:13:08
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So look, you know that I love it. I've been playing alongside.

00:13:12
Speaker 3: I've been so good.

00:13:14
Speaker 2: Thank you, multiple leagues with you.

00:13:15
Speaker 1: Yes, can you just explain guillotine leagues because I know that there's still going to be an audience that that you know, I try to bring it up on the show every now and again.

00:13:23
Speaker 3: Thank you.

00:13:24
Speaker 1: But obviously the stuff that I'm talking about is more season the regular season long focus and dynasty focus and stuff.

00:13:29
Speaker 2: But can you just.

00:13:29
Speaker 1: Explain the format and sort of what differentiates it from other formats that most people play.

00:13:35
Speaker 3: So there's no head to head in a guillotine league. Instead, every week of the season, the lowest scoring team for that week gets chopped from the league forever and all their players go to the waiver wire, where the rest of us start bidding on these players and building superstar rosters over time, and all you have to do is just not finished last. So unlike it's the strategy in guillotine leagues. As you know, Jay, it's such a fun puzzle because we're mostly playing the same way. Even if you're in a dynasty league versus a keeper league, versus a super flax versus you know, a standard league, the most of it is pretty much the same. This really adds some different strategy when you're playing not to lose rather than trying to be that one team out of twelve that's the best team, right, And that's a very different puzzle to solve. And so I love the strategy of when do I dole out money? You know, here comes justin Jefferson on the waiver wire. How much out of my thousand dollars for the year do I put in?

00:14:38
Speaker 2: Yeah?

00:14:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, the strategy of the roster building, the superstar teams, not finishing the last Yeah. I just I love all the different ways that you get to explore fantasy football and in ways that you just wouldn't any other format.

00:14:54
Speaker 1: So how would you say that your drafts, because obviously the draft, I would say the draft matters slightly less in giets, way less, yeah than other formats. I just didn't want to be too too harsh with the you know, yeah, the the idea.

00:15:08
Speaker 2: But you know, it matters less.

00:15:10
Speaker 1: But how do you approach your drafts in a guillotine league, and how does it differ from how you're approaching a draft in just a regular season long league.

00:15:18
Speaker 3: So the the good thing is that the draft is not as punitive if you get it wrong, because if you guess wrong Zamir White, right, you guess wrong, Well, here on the waiver wire, you know, here comes Breece Hall off a bad game. Okay, I'll just go bit a lot on Breece Hall and I'll go replace Zamir White. And so the draft strategy, because you're playing to not finish last, you are looking for high floor players, players who consistently do well. And players like Khalil Shakir and Austin Eckler are freaking gold right like ten pp are points every week. Those guys don't get you chopped, you know, as opposed to let's say Marvin Harrison. Marvin Harrison is the disaster. He is just assassin in guillotine leagues where he has been wide receiver forty seven or worse five different times this year. And when he's putting up a three point game, fantasy point game, that's how you get chopped.

00:16:18
Speaker 2: Right, right exactly.

00:16:20
Speaker 1: I also think, like I think we've talked about this before, but it feels like the idea of late round quarterback is just so much more beneficial and easier in that format. And the reason mathematically I think it exists is you know, in a guillotine league, you're playing with more teams number one typically, right, because this is every week of the season that you're chopping teams, so you have more teams than the typical twelve team league. And so what that means is when you're drafting a quarterback early, the opportunity cost in doing so is pretty massive because you're not getting one of those higher end running backs or wide receivers. So you know, if you're getting a Lamar Jackson, great, you know, obviously he hit. Maybe that's a terrible example, but you know you're getting a Lamar or like a Maho Homes will be a horrible early round pick in any format, but let alone a guillotine league, but you're able to still get We know this based on decades of playing fantasy football and why you can go lay round quarterback.

00:17:11
Speaker 2: There's a baseline of.

00:17:12
Speaker 1: Quarterback, and there's a predictable baseline at quarterback. So has that been something that you typically do? And then my my follow up to that, though, is the other onesie position, if you will, is tight end? Right where you're only starting one of them in your lineup? Is tight end a position? Because look, we've played in leagues. I've noticed that Scott Fish, friend of the show, Scott Fish, will will often double up tight end in a lot of these formats.

00:17:35
Speaker 2: Trust me, Scott, I've been.

00:17:36
Speaker 1: Watching and I usually end up going in the opposite direction, although the one that we play in, one of the two that we play in together, I did get Andrews this year and it was the death of my team.

00:17:48
Speaker 2: Actually, yes, and I usually don't do that.

00:17:51
Speaker 1: I usually don't go early tight end for the same rationale as you know, going with quarterback.

00:17:57
Speaker 2: Is that something that you tend to do? Are you a so first? Quite?

00:18:00
Speaker 1: Are you a late round quarterback drafter? Second question? Is a late round tight end strategy something that you also will lean into? Or are you more okay with trying to get that advantage at tight end?

00:18:09
Speaker 3: I play those two positions entirely differently from each other one hundred percent with you on the quarterback. And you know, again, if the maximum number of teams you can play within a Gayoteen league is eighteen that you start at the beginning of the season, because there's eighteen weeks in the season and we're chopping one team every week. So there are roughly eighteen reasonably good fantasy quarterbacks out there, and all I'm trying to do is not finish last right exactly, So Gino Smith totally viable. So I almost always wait on quarterback, and I'll go to war with my Gino Smiths and my Trevor Lawrence for these first few weeks. And then why it's perpetually sustainable this process is every week there's one less team. So now you know, we go from eighteen to seventeen to sixteen to fifteen to where we are today, JJ, there's nine teams left. Yeah, way more than nine good quarterbacks in the fantasy viable quarterbacks. So every week I can just keep spinning new quarterbacks. See who's on the waiver wire, you know last week? You know it might have been I don't know, trying to think of who might have been cut last week. I don't know whoever. It doesn't really matter, but I can go find Kirk Cousins or whoever. And the threshold just keeps going up and up because they're fewer and fewer teams. So you know, to me, I almost never push in all the big money it takes to get the high end producers. But I'll say this, and you've won guillotine leaks before, JJ, Yes, I've been in them with you and I've watched you win two of them. Yeah, by the time you get to December, you need to have your whole roster is just freaking rock star players, right. And so now Gino Smith's not going to cut it in week fifteen, Week sixteen, week seventeen when you're trying to finish it off. But by then there's only three teams left and you can still go get Josh Allen on the waiver wire for ten bucks.

00:19:58
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:19:58
Speaker 1: And I think the key to that too is that, like in an individual week like we've been you know, we do rankings every week, and we've been ranking players and understand how this works where and I've written about this too, like mathematically written about this.

00:20:10
Speaker 2: How uh, the predictability at.

00:20:12
Speaker 1: The position is so much more is so much easier at quarterback than it is at running back, especially wide receiver and tight end, just because quarterbacks are touching and throwing the ball thirty plus times a game, like we we have a larger sample that we're working off of, which means that matchup, you know, when a team goes up against Jacksonville or Daniel Jones this week, going up against Carolina, we're gonna feel you know, obviously anything can happen, but we're going to feel better about that position because we know that quarterbacks are going to be able to touch the ball and dictate the game a lot more than what these wide receivers and tight ends are going to But with the tight end, so you go would would you say you go more tight end?

00:20:49
Speaker 2: I do?

00:20:50
Speaker 3: I think because there's eighteen teams and you know you're looking at the eighteenth tight end. You know who commit territory and God only knows what you're going to get, and that's a recipe for getting chopped. Now this year, with all the tight end trouble we've had outside of two weeks ago, going early tight end hasn't really worked this year. But the reliability of having a Travis Kelce has been has been really foundational for how I've built my teams. And it's just one position where I don't have to spend any money and people who are desperate to tight end, they push in a lot of chips. Yeah, a lot of fabb to go solve that problem later in the year. And I prefer not to have to do that.

00:21:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, it makes sense.

00:21:28
Speaker 1: And now I do think that when and we can talk about sort of how people are spending their budget, because I think, you know, that's obviously the number one thing with this format and trying to be good at it, is to be strategic with how you're spending. And I get questions, you know, I do a waiver wire Q and A with my patrons every single week, and I get guillotine questions multiple every week.

00:21:47
Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah.

00:21:48
Speaker 1: So so we talked a little strategy, like we talk about this a little bit, love it, and my go to every single season at the beginning of the season especially is don't don't spend early.

00:21:58
Speaker 2: Don't don't do it. There's no reason to spend early.

00:22:01
Speaker 1: If you just think of this mathematically, you know, like you said, there's eighteen teams, you have a one in eighteen chance, right, if everyone has an equal roster of getting cut week one, you have a one in seventeen. Gen I mean, these these these margins are are are largely in your favor for the most part for the first handful of weeks of the season, and then eventually you get to the point where you know, obviously you need to fix up that roster. But but I do think that you know, at the end of the day, you have to understand the basic arithmetic to this and that yes, you're gonna get unlucky one week. Like again, going back to the one league that it's the earliest I've ever gotten chopped was the one that I'm referring to that we're both in. I think it was like week five or week six or something like that, and it was it was before it was at least before Garrett Wilson finally started playing well right right right, And look, I think that you just had to accept the fact that like things can go south, like that's how fantasy football is played. But then on top of that, and I want to get your thoughts on this, I also feel like people spend up too early and don't think about the asset that they're obtaining, getting injured and not being able to perform the way that they assume they're going to perform.

00:23:08
Speaker 2: Like, yes, you could get Derrick.

00:23:09
Speaker 1: Henry week two and all of a sudden, You know, you look good right now because Derek Henry still performed very well. But what if Dereck Henry got hurt in week three, Then all of a sudden, you spend half of your FOB early on the season, and your team now sucks because you don't have that ability to spend on these other players. I want to get your thoughts on that in general. But also you know, what's what's your overall feel about, like what people might be doing wrong off the waiver wire with these guillotine leagues.

00:23:36
Speaker 3: So for two things for most people who are especially new into guillotine leagues. By the way, you can join a guillotine league today. We're drafting all the time all the way. We're draft into December, so you can still join on today if you want to. You can play for free or if you can play for prize. It's your choice. Gaetan leagues act coond. So let me just let me get that up. People who haven't played before, when Derrick Henry hits the waiver wire, they're the rains explode and they're like, oh my god, it's Derrick Henry and I can just go buy him. Okay, I'm in and so what we see is the newbies and this is this is a parallel I think you'll appreciate. There's there's a thing my friends and I always had in Call of Duty called the Gift of the Christmas Neubs and it was all the people who got their new PlayStations on Christmas Day and they got a copy of Call of Duty. And now here are these kids are like eight years old, nine years old, ten years old, They can barely hold a controller, they've never played before, and now they jump into Call of Duty and we just mow them down right. Yes, it's the Gifts of the Christmas Nebs and the Christmas Nubs version. In Gullantine leagues are these guys who drop you get one thousand dollars fab to last you the whole year. You are the people who drop eight hundred on one player in week in week number two because Dereck Henry hit the waiver wire and they're like, what, you're six hundred dollars on Derek Henry. Now what I found, what I'm starting to see over time JJ is more sophisticated leagues that have been here a long time. None of them do it. Nobody pays early and I actually think it starts to flip a little bit where everybody's so so cautious about spending early. You can you can actually get some values. But for overall, for most people in most leagues, what you said is exactly right. You're trying to save money because the pool at the beginning, mathematically jj A thousand teams times eighteen sorry A thousand dollars times eighteen teams, eighteen thousand dollars are in the pool altogether. Now, if you go to the halfway point of the season, that eighteen it's not even it's not even half that at nine thousand, because half of the money, it's nine thousand. If nobody had spent any money now, it's more like we're down to like four thousand dollars have pooled money, so every dollar has got so much more buying power later. And then the point that you brought up that's super salient and nobody talks about is when you do drop too. If you're gonna drop three hundred dollars on Saquon Barkley week two or week eight, the week two three hundred has got all the very variables built into it that you mentioned. Injuries buys you know, you know, Jalen hurts, gets hurt and now you're running back, isn't any good? You know, stuff like that that happens. All that variance gets baked into that same amount of money. If you spend the two hundred dollars at the halfway point in Saquon Barkley's past is by and he's less likely to get hurt with less games left, you know, the money is safer spent.

00:26:33
Speaker 1: I've noticed this year my self thinking because I've noticed the same thing that you have with some of these leagues, like being more conservative and smarter with their spending early. And it's the same you know, the two main leagues I've been playing in, you know, over the last handful of years or the two year and both of them two and I've noticed the exact same trend, right, And so what I've kind of started doing is lean into what I'm calling like secondary mid tier players right where the Juwan Jennings of the world where, especially early on in the season, where you know, you know, let's just pretend like a Juwan Jennings was where he's at right now, where people are kind of like they're not like super super into him, but they're not super off of him, it's just you know, he's a mid tier player. It seems like those guys become bigger values because you're only having to spend ten to fifteen bucks to get one of them versus you know, a two hundred and fifty dollars Davante Adams bid or something like that. Have you noticed that being a path for you as well as opposed to spending up on some of those higher end guys early with especially in these leagues where you know this is just not happening as frequently.

00:27:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is well. I mean, basically, I'm now giving out all of my strategy tips that I use because you're hitting on all of them in the first half of the season. My bidding is I always been on the expensive guys, but I never get him because I don't bidly enough money. But the guys I land are in the fifteen to twenty dollars range. It's the to mention again names because they're at the reason off the top my head. Khalil Shakir, Austin Eckler. Those guys will keep me alive until November and then once we get into closer to Thanksgiving, I've still got money left to start putting together my end game roster. Khalil Shakir and Austin Eckler are not part of my end game roster. Ten PPR point thein't going to get it done. So but I've got enough fab stashed that now I can start spending and start building players. And when we get to this time of year, I'm focusing. I do not bid on Austin Eckler and Khalil Secure unless they're you know, at like the one dollar level. I am looking for end game players to build my roster. I need to have top ten guys at every position if I'm gonna if I'm gonna win this night.

00:28:47
Speaker 1: As you know, what's really yeah, right, and what's really important to remember. Number one, Obviously, the waiver wire pole is just way greater and fruit more fruitful because there's only three or four teams left for however many teams towards the end of the season, and so obviously there's more players that are available. But also as each week goes on, the teams that are losing have better rosters, so you know right that it's gonna be even infinitely better than it was, you know, the week prior and I feel like that that, for whatever reason, get gets lost a little bit too.

00:29:15
Speaker 3: That's I mean, it's a great point. And the teams that get cut even now at this time of year, they're they're shockingly good, whereas the teams that were getting cut in week one were you know, they were bad teams because there was eighteen there were eighteen teams.

00:29:30
Speaker 2: Out right, you know.

00:29:31
Speaker 3: I'll just throw out an example. In one of my leagues, the team that got cut in week one had this roster, uh, let's see here, Caleb Williams, Aaron Jones, Miles Sanders, Kean Coleman, Rashid Shaheed, Dalton Kinkaid, Gabe Davis, Isaiah likely mostly bad players. The team in that same league that got cut last week had Josh Allen, Joe Mixon, Jonathan Taylor, Marvin Harrison. We talked about him as an assass in this format, which he is, right, Jordan Addison, Travis Kelcey, Sam laporta coolk met. So this guy had gone three tight ends trying to you know, hold tight ends, you know, trying to play tight end bully a little bit.

00:30:13
Speaker 1: I mean, as a strong roster like that's that's unfortunately, it's an unfortunate chop. If we're being honest this time of year, it is a.

00:30:19
Speaker 3: Good roster and those guys are all available in the waiver wire now, Yeah, Joe Mixon and Jonathan Taylor on my waiver wire in that league right now.

00:30:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, it's crazy.

00:30:29
Speaker 1: The other thing that I do think goes a little bit unnoticed in terms of like thinking about how you need to spend. You know, you made the point of like still bidding on players that you more than likely won't get, but we see people slip through the waiver wire every.

00:30:43
Speaker 2: Single week in these things.

00:30:44
Speaker 1: I mean, like I remember in one Nico Collins when he was first on IR went for like fifteen bucks or something like. It was just like people just didn't want to take that on, but it was probably the right thing to do at the end of the day. But regardless, like I do think that there's not enough thought that gets placed on how your team looks just in that given week. You know, you have projections on the site that are that are really helpful as like an eyeball, you know, thing just to just to see like where your team stacks up with the rest of the league. And look, if you were projected like if we you know, let's say you have eight teams left and you're projected to score the third or fourth most points pre waiver wire in that particular league, chances are you don't have to go that heavy spending that week. Whereas if you know that your last and all of your guys are on by, and you know that guys got hurt, then yeah, that that might be the turning point for you to start spending your your budget.

00:31:35
Speaker 2: Right, I think that doesn't People seem.

00:31:38
Speaker 1: To not just based on like the conversations I've had, they seem to not think about this enough as a weekly game. You could argue that people still do this in season long. They don't think about it enough as a weekly game. But at least in season long, you know, it's a little bit different that you can you can look ahead a little bit more. But in Guilletine, I feel like you can just say this is the week. I only care about this week right now because I know that I can make up for this week the following week. Is that is that the way that you think about this too?

00:32:05
Speaker 3: My purview is three weeks. Yeah, a Gaeoteen league, that's it. I just got to make it. I'm just trying to stay alive for three weeks. Anything more than that, I don't care. And that includes like your Nico Collins thing, which he's a tricky example because he's so good. Holding Nico Collins for four weeks hurts we you know, we very specifically have built only five bench spots into this product exactly for it, which which is our recommendation, exactly for this reason, so that you have to make hard decisions on using a roster spot for four weeks on Nico Collins. Now again, Collins worth it, but a lot is T Higgins, you know, T Higgins hits I are? Yeah, four weeks, you know, I mean four weeks.

00:32:48
Speaker 1: Well, especially this time of year when there's easier players to replace that guy with, Like if this is a if this is a week two thing, and Nico Collins hits I are and he's out for four weeks and you can get him for fifteen dollars. Let's obviously it's going to be more competitive than that. But if you could get them, then yeah, you would probably do it, you know, or you would you would want to do it more because that roster spot matters less. But yeah, I mean this time of year, those roster spots are starting to matter a whole lot more than they did week one, Week.

00:33:15
Speaker 3: Two, Yeah, exactly, exactly, So yeah, the just my focus is only on the next few weeks and just stay alive. And yeah, that's it's it's part of the again, part of the nuance of the Guillotine League. It's just so different all the stuff we're talking about. You, I can only imagine what's going through the mind of somebody who's only hearing about this for the first time. Now, They've got to be like, what the.

00:33:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's very very true.

00:33:40
Speaker 1: Do you have a preference this is the last last question I want to ask about guillotine leagues. Do you have a preference with how playoffs go down in these? Because I played in both. I played in where you get the three week playoff, I think it is and then it's just cumulative points and there's no I think at the time there were there weren't roster moves too or or the everyone just keeps getting chopped as the season goes on, all.

00:34:00
Speaker 3: Right, So the two formats is we just keep chopping every week all the way to the end. But if you want to be if you want to try to introduce more fairness into your playoffs and really try to evaluate who the best teams are. When we get to the final four teams which then last the playoff last three weeks, with those teams, we just do cumulative total. There's no chopping anymore. Those four are going to stay alive for the whole you know, for the final three weeks, and then whoever's got the most points wins. And you know, in some ways that's more a more fair way to determine who had the best roster, but it takes them the drama out. I mean, you know, the drama the guillotine league is the fear of getting chopped, and when there's only four teams left, you've got a one in four chance, which you know your sweating the whole time.

00:34:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I remember the one year where I where I won the two leagues. One of the teams we had both formats in the playoff formats there was there was the one where everyone was getting chopped and then the other one where it was cumulative points. And you know, to your what about fairness, I do think it was fairer, if you will, because there's less variance involved whenever you're doing a three week thing as opposed to a one week one. But there was zero drama in the final week of the season because I think I had like a seventy five or eighty point lead right the rest of the league, it's just like, all right, well, I guess right, yeah, yeah, so.

00:35:17
Speaker 2: I do see, you know, the the pros and cons to each A.

00:35:22
Speaker 3: Six touchdown year was I think I think it was.

00:35:24
Speaker 1: Might and I think it was Cooper Cup really good that year two, And like, I think I just had the like I had a ton of budget left versus everyone else, and I just played bully for the final four or five weeks of the season. And it was again, it was to your point, you know what, would you call it the Christmas Christmas nubs?

00:35:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, Christmas?

00:35:42
Speaker 1: It was. It was a this is that's what we That's what we say in Rocket League too, on like a Friday night when everyone's drunk and they got on a Rocket League late and we're able to just just get some wins, stack some wins against them, right, But yeah, it was.

00:35:54
Speaker 3: It was.

00:35:54
Speaker 1: It was a Christmas nube thing where literally no one had more than five dollars and I think I had like two hundred, and I was just able to do whatever I wanted, to pick.

00:36:01
Speaker 3: All the best players. Yeah. Yeah, it's and it's crazy, you know, you're doing things. You're You're like, Okay, should I bench Justin Jefferson in this game? But you know, I m he's got a tough matchup. I might bench Justin Jefferson. Yeah, because because I've got other better players with better matchups. Yeah, it is.

00:36:21
Speaker 1: It is kind of nice with Guillotine that you and I had this discussion on one of my live streams where, uh, you know, with what I'm doing in particular, like I'm not a DFS analyst because it's a completely different economy. I just don't have enough time in the day to to really like be a great DFS analyst. So I'm not going to pretend to be one. But when it comes to like season long and even Dynasty, our focus really like like ninety five percent of our energy is on middle tier players. Right, It's on am I starting Khalil Shakir or Michael Pittman, Like, it's on It's on that type of player because those are the decisions that we have to make. We're never benching Justin Jefferson. We're never benching Cooper Cup, Pookinakua whenever they're healthy. And so I think that's the the element of this too, where you go from the bottom of the barrel players in week one that you're considering starting, all the way towards the end of the year, you're all of a sudden discussing Cooper Cupp or Justin Jefferson, you know, like that. It's it's unique from that perspective where in DFS you are having to analyze the high end matchups a lot more than you are in season long. That's just the nature of the game. But then you start to have to do that in this format too.

00:37:27
Speaker 3: That's right, that's right. And you go from week one you're like Tyler Algier, just get me fifty yards. That's all I need, baby, and then then by the end of the season you're like a J. Brown, Yeah, yeah, I don't I don't think.

00:37:41
Speaker 1: So you're literally pumped for like a three catch performance from your running back.

00:37:45
Speaker 3: That's all you need.

00:37:45
Speaker 2: Doesn't matter what they do on the ground, you're just you're You're good to go, all right.

00:37:49
Speaker 1: So Guilleteine leagues dot com people can check that out play all that good stuff. It's a really really fun format. But let's now pivot and talk little player analysis. Because we had the trade deadline come and go. Uh some movement, probably a little bit more movement than we've seen, you know, in the past. Although I did see a tweet. It was the first time I believe at the trade deadline that a future first was.

00:38:09
Speaker 2: Not moved, which was interesting.

00:38:10
Speaker 3: Interesting.

00:38:11
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, someone can fact check me on that though. But let's talk about a little player analysis. We get you know, it sounds like Zach Moss.

00:38:18
Speaker 2: As a pretty brutal injury. We don't know.

00:38:21
Speaker 1: I think he's just out indefinitely at this point, but usually that means a long period of time. And then obviously you see the action that they take. They go and they get Khalil Herbert. My question to you is, what are your thoughts in this backfield now? I mean Chase Brown last week saw every single running back rush. He was looking like a bell cow. How does this Khalil Herbert move impact him?

00:38:40
Speaker 3: Well, I think it's the impact is going to be minimal, in part because we know how Zach Taylor works. He has been a belcow guy. Joe Mixon two of the last three years, was inside the top five in rushing attempts over the last three years nineteen carries per game. I mean it's just that's you know, I think we know what Zach Taylor wants to do if he's got the right guy, and Chase probably looks good. You know, I have a little bit of worry just because you know, we haven't seen him be a Bell coyw before, so you know, maybe maybe Taylor feels differently here. And this isn't a slight on Khalil Herbert, who I think is a is a pretty good jack of all trades, you know, utility guy, do a little everything. And but I just I think Taylor's going to go back to doing what what he what we saw him do with with mixing, and by the way, Mixon wasn't even good at it for the last two years. Yeah, it was like, you know, four yards of carry and three point nine yards of carry. I mean, Mixon was really struggling. We're getting way more dynamic and better play out of Brown. So my inclination is to think that Brown's going to retain the majority majority of the work, not one hundred percent like last week. Obviously, yeah, but you know, I could see this thing going seventy five to twenty five? What do you think?

00:39:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm with you.

00:39:53
Speaker 1: And the other thing that I found interesting about this move is that Chase Brown with Zach Moss, was not seeing the field in circumstances you know, pass protection, long down and distance stuff like that.

00:40:04
Speaker 2: So like Zach Moss was really the.

00:40:05
Speaker 1: You know, the the the negative game script back, if you will, for that Cincinnati team. And and you know, Chase Brown is rookie year, barely played on third down. I think he only had like one catch on.

00:40:16
Speaker 3: Third down or something like that, and no goal line use.

00:40:18
Speaker 2: Yeah right.

00:40:18
Speaker 1: And so what's interesting though, is that you can make the same uh, you could have the same issues, if you will, with Khalil Herbert. Like he's He's played a very similar role throughout his career. People have questioned his past pro u you know, there's he hasn't been much of a receiver and so it does seem like more of a redundant piece to Chase Brown, which tells me to what you're saying. I think this could be if someone in your league is sitting there saying, oh, they're gonna go back to a fifty to fifty split or maybe you know, obviously we started started seeing things trend Chase Brown's way before this Zach Moss injury. Yeah, but if someone's sitting there and they're saying, oh, I'm afraid because Khalil Herbert was really efficient in Chicago, which he was, a lot of that efficiency was just ground game efficiency that uh, Chase Brown can also be and do like, that's what Chase Brown's bread and butter kind of is. And he's the incumbent if you He's the one who was already there in that backfield. So I almost feel like this is a by moment for Chase Brown as a result of this. If if if the sentiment is changing with Brown, I'm just not sure if it is or not.

00:41:18
Speaker 3: Boy, you know, I've got Chase Brown a lot of leagues. My sentiment did not change, yes, you know, but others might be feeling differently about it. And if you've got an owner is a little bit rattled right now, this might be your opportunity to go make a pitch on Chase Brown. So let me ask you this, Chase Brown from today forward finishes as RB.

00:41:37
Speaker 1: What I'll say, uh RB, I think he's probably, like in the low end one, high end two area, like probably probably. I mean when when if I were to look at a list of running backs, because every week I do rankings, I'm like, man, I can't believe how running, how deep running back is.

00:41:54
Speaker 3: It is weirdly deep this year, right because.

00:41:56
Speaker 1: There hasn't been a major injury to to the to the high end guys, right, So, like, you know, are we sitting here saying Chase Brown or James Cook? And I think that's kind of the area that we could, you know, if we're and look, I'm gonna chase ceiling more than floor in a season long format, the opposite of you know, the opposite of be a teen as we were talking about. And so like, I do think his ceiling is that high, Like I think that he could be second half of the season. Why can't he be a Kyen Williams type asset, you know, Like, I think that's at least in his range of outcomes here. I don't think it'll go that far because Kyen Williams is basically playing every single snap in that back.

00:42:35
Speaker 3: That's an example.

00:42:36
Speaker 2: But yes, yes, yes, right exactly exactly.

00:42:39
Speaker 1: So I don't think it'll go that far, but I think, like from like a target share perspective and like a running back rush share perspective, I do think that's in his range of outcomes. I would just lower it obviously because it's not locked in. But yeah, I mean, would you say higher than a high end two?

00:42:52
Speaker 2: Do you think he's in?

00:42:53
Speaker 3: I think he's in. I think he's in the top ten overall. Chase Brownell finished in the top ten overall. And part of it is because I like the usage has evolved so much. He's now getting routes run he's got Last week he ran twenty six routes. Week before sixteen, two weeks before that, nineteen routes run. Now he's getting inside the five carries that had been Moss's territory, now that's his. And by the way, he's converting those to touchdowns. I believe three of four carries from inside the five he's converted into touchdowns long down in distance, he's on the field for those plays. You were one hundred percent correct that he was not at all on the field before. Now he's been on the field multiple plays in six straight for Chase brown in long down and distance situation. So it's all the usages there there. The usage is down there.

00:43:40
Speaker 1: Yes, it really comes down to how much this team is going to end up trusting Khalil Herbert to play a relatively significant role on early downs. I think, like I think that we've gotten to the point where Brown is more than likely going to see, at least from where he was with Zach Moss, going to see more of that catching work where you know, the down to long down and distance stuff like that's and that's unbelievably important.

00:44:05
Speaker 2: That was literally the thing that we needed to unlock his upside.

00:44:08
Speaker 1: And I will gladly take that with a slight decline versus last week and running back rushhair and backfield share, because we know that receiving is just so much more valuable for in fantasy than than what we're gonna get out of the rushing stuff.

00:44:20
Speaker 3: Let's talk about the other name that you brought up in this conversation that I think, in the minds of most sounds more valuable. James Cook. If I had to go to war with the rest of the season for one, I'm on Chase Brown, who I take in much less of a threat to lose valuable carries, whether it's at the goal line to your quarterback or whether it's de Ray Davis or Ty Johnson. I think Chase Brown, he just I just feel like the workload is going to be so high. To use those two as an example, if somebody offered me that trade, I want to be on the Chase Brown side.

00:44:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's valid.

00:44:51
Speaker 1: And look, James Cook has not played, has not had a high snapshare basically all season. Like it's not his his production, He's played a little bit out of his he's he's run pretty pure with touchdowns, and Ray Davis looks very very good, and so I do, like, I think it's like I at least think it's a very very very strong discussion to have, you know, like that, and the fact that we're having that discussion shows us and others that things could go very very well for Chase Brown during the second half of the season and into the fantasy playoffs, which is music to my ears as well.

00:45:24
Speaker 2: I desperately needed something like that to happen me.

00:45:27
Speaker 3: Too, in several leagues. I'm with you on that. Yeah, Chase Brown's a little bit of found money right now, and it's it feels good.

00:45:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's move on to DeAndre Hopkins. He has this big Monday Night. Would you say that you're more bullish or bearish on him versus what you think the market might kind of feel about Hopkins rest of season. You know, we see this monster game, decent enough target share.

00:45:49
Speaker 2: I think it was like.

00:45:49
Speaker 1: Twenty one, twenty two percent something along those lines. What do you see out of Hopkins? Like, do you think that he's a locked in top twenty guy, a wide receiver now rest of season or are you more still in like the wide receiver three round.

00:45:59
Speaker 3: I'm more caught just than that. I mean, last week was the perfect storm. Perfect storm. You're playing a bad defense missing Jamel Dean, so they're thrown out, you know, third and fourth string cornerbacks Thunderburk who made a get o yeah and so. And then also of course Jujus somems Schuster was out. And I think this is really important because Hopkins ran about half his routes from the slot. You know, this is not a guy who runs from the slot a ton, And because Juju was out, they moved him in the slot. I think when Juju comes back that Juju is going to take a lot more of that slot work away from Hopkins. And it'll be more traditionally outside, which which is not necessarily a problem, but usually your your best opposing cornerbacks, like Patrick Sirtan's coming up, right, isn't it Patrick Sirtan this week?

00:46:42
Speaker 1: Yeah?

00:46:42
Speaker 3: Patrick Huttan's coming up, And if Juju's back in, Juju plays the slot. Hopkins is outside now he's got Cirtan, and so I you know, I I think that I as much as I wanted to work and it's like, hey, you know, you could be the number one receiver for Patrick Mahomes and unlock this offense in a way that nobody has since Rashi Rice. I don't know, I'm I am more I feel more cautious on Hopkins than I think most people do. And maybe you have a different opinion on this.

00:47:08
Speaker 2: I think I'm I'm a little bit more, a little bit more bullish.

00:47:11
Speaker 1: Not that I think that he's like a top not that I think that he's like a wide receiver one after last week. My thing is, though I do think that you're feeling about Hopkins, you or anyone listening will probably depend to some degree on how you felt about him entering the season. If he's dust or not, Like, is he is he DeAndre Hopkins of old to some degree, A lot of my analysis pointed to him actually being a really decent draft target this year, which I'm usually not in on the olds and the twelve year Yeah, this is not the type. But when you had middle round wide receivers who are past like like year nine in the league, like I'm talking like legit, legit veterans, there, there's almost a survival bias that's going on with those players because they're in the middle round. So there's still getting drafted in the middle rounds.

00:48:01
Speaker 2: But they're still but they're.

00:48:03
Speaker 1: Old, right, So you have to ask yourself why, Well, it's probably because they're pretty good at football, you know, like having a guy who's over thirty years old, a wide receiver getting drafted in the middle rounds. And then the other piece to that was his peripherals. His yards perau run last year actually quite strong, like they were, they were good and even in Tennessee this year, which was what kind of made me, I mean, this is this is what got me a little bit excited about him moving to Kansas City. If you look at what he was doing in Tennessee on like a yards perau run basis on a target perau run basis, especially because he was only running like a rout on like fifty percent of their dropbacks because of the.

00:48:40
Speaker 2: Injury and stuff.

00:48:41
Speaker 1: But he his his yard per out run was like more than half a yard better than anyone else on that team. And now I understand, we're talking about an age Tyler Boyd and a Calvin player in Calvin Ridley, who just seems like he's just not it. But at the same time, that's a very very stark difference in that efficiency and in that product.

00:49:00
Speaker 2: So my thing was, I think DeAndre Hopkins is not totally totally washed. You know.

00:49:06
Speaker 1: The point about the slot is very very valid. I wonder how much they'll shift things and move them inside out a little bit, and yeah, you know, like maybe staple, you know, like like there are ways that that can shift and stuff. I think he's a round wide receiver twenty ish.

00:49:22
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean, like obviously something like.

00:49:24
Speaker 1: This could go south because we're talking about a thirty two year old wide receiver at this point, right right, Yeah, there's a lot of fear involved in I'm.

00:49:31
Speaker 3: Flex level guy that I think will be in lineups for most of us, most weeks, and I just think there's going to be inconsistent results with him and maybe a fairly high degree of touchdown dependency for DeAndre Hopkins.

00:49:44
Speaker 1: So the next guy I want to get your your opinion on is someone that I liked entering the season. I've already openly to my audience because they like when analysts take take l's.

00:49:56
Speaker 2: I'm like, can we just wait? Like I will go.

00:49:58
Speaker 1: I do an episode every year and the things that I got wrong and the things that I got right, just because I want to go through the process of it.

00:50:02
Speaker 2: All, Like, just wait till the end of the year. I will go through all of this.

00:50:05
Speaker 1: Guys, I'm open and honest about But you know, in season short, I'll take the l if that if it means that much to you.

00:50:11
Speaker 2: But with Jalen Waddle, so I've taken the yl on Waddle.

00:50:14
Speaker 1: And then this week on my fifteen transaction show that I do every week where I'm giving buys and sells and ads and drops, I had Jalen Waddle as a buye. And the logic here is simply sentis that's it right? Like I don't I'm not sitting here saying that he's gonna live up to his Round two expectation. But I had people hitting me up after this past week saying, should I drop Jayleen Wattle for yeah, for you know some some like very low end wide receiver that you like, Jalen Cocher or something like that, where you know, is the upside really there for a player like that in that environment? So my question to you is am I crazy for calling Jalen Wattle a bye? Based on that that reasoning? And I can get into it a little bit more too, But am I crazy for calling him abye? And where are you just generally at with Wattle? Are you on the side of his season's toast or are you on the side of it hasn't been that big of a sample size yet with Tua.

00:51:11
Speaker 3: It hasn't been big enough sample size last And how about the sequence at the end of the Dolphins game last week? So here we are rolling to the end of the game and Wattle has no catches. Then he gets this leg whip thing and it looks bad. He's down on the ground and he's riding for the right. I'm like, well that's gonna be that's gonna end it. Then scores a late, late touchdown, comes back, scores a late touchdown, but then he's part of the Stanford band move at the end of the game and he loses twenty yards and he has a necative four yards. What a sequence for Jalen Wattle. I don't have the heart to cut him. And part of its speak just because the investment has been too high. But the real reason is what you said, just I don't have a big enough sample size with Tua yet. Obviously it's been a disaster and a guillotine leagues. He's just people. You can't start him there. But in standard I believe I haven't I know my rankings in front of me for this week, I'm estimating he's like wide receiver forty five. Yeah, I think that's a roughlyat you know, somebling in that ballpark. So it's going to be a flexible guy depending on who you've got. But obviously, you know the downside you know he can give you is he can give you an l by himself unfortunately, which is which makes it tough. So I think he's gonna be matchup dependent going forward for me.

00:52:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, the thing with the sample size, and I brought this up on the show too, it's like they.

00:52:34
Speaker 2: Played four games. They played four games of two.

00:52:36
Speaker 1: It's really three and a half games, right, and two of those four games were Aganst. Buffalo, and then the other two games that he played, he had you know, relatively okay enough outing like forty some yards. And in Week one they played Jacksonville where you know, now we know every every team beats up on Jackson, right, but he had he had over one hundred yards receiving. Now, I'm not saying like his target chair numbers have not really been there. I mean they've been in like the mid teens for a lot of these games, but it's just been weird the way, Like, I don't know how sustainable the way this Dolphins offense is operated. I don't know how sustainable it is. Where they're giving their running backs basically a plus ten percent. You know, we're coming right off the election, and I'm talking about, right, these percent margins. Right, these running backs are getting plus ten percent target shares versus last season, and the story that no one's really talking about is that the tight ends.

00:53:26
Speaker 2: Are also seeing that.

00:53:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, great point, Like John new Smith's target share has been decent, like not great, but enough to say, oh, well, you know, Mike McDaniel, Like in the past, these offenses have seen tight end target shairs of like ten percent, like the lowest in the league.

00:53:41
Speaker 3: This is this is double or more than double looking John who right here, his his target share the last month hasn't been lower than twenty one percent.

00:53:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're right, right.

00:53:51
Speaker 1: And so like so like I'm sitting here and I'm like, is this the optimal way to run this offense?

00:53:57
Speaker 2: And they're losing, right, that's the other part. Two.

00:53:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, they haven't really gotten it going to a strong degree offensively, and I start to wonder what if they do make a more concentrated effort to start because.

00:54:08
Speaker 2: Tyreek Hill hasn't been Tyreek Hill now, you know.

00:54:10
Speaker 1: Like that's the other piece of this is that I always try to look at like the team environment to see what other guys are doing in that in that on that team and in that offense. And if Tyreek Hill we were just destroying and all this was going down, I would probably feel a little bit differently. But the fact that he's been down a little bit too versus expectation, that also kind of makes me feel a little bit more optimistic about Waddle. Maybe that's copium to some degree, you know, after spending second round picks on them and and best Ball and stuff and seeing those teams just flame out. But I just think, when you're talking about a talented player, we have so much evidence that he's a talented player.

00:54:47
Speaker 2: I don't want to give up on that too soon.

00:54:49
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, it's and it feels like it's a it's a hair too soon, but it's it's fair to just look at the totality of this season as well and say, can Mike McDaniel hasn't been able to manufacture the ball into Tyreek Kills hands or Jalen Waddles hands, you know, their Keith Keith Key figures this offense. And no matter how bad your quarterback is, it shouldn't have been as bad as it was.

00:55:14
Speaker 2: Agreed, Agreed.

00:55:14
Speaker 1: That's that's That's the one piece where I'm like, this could just be a last season very easily.

00:55:18
Speaker 3: It doesn't that way.

00:55:19
Speaker 1: We don't see that that talented of widers, that caliber of wide receiver, even when a backup comes in, we don't see uh that poor production from wide receivers typically.

00:55:30
Speaker 3: I'll give you an example, that big of a drop here in Minnesota last year, Kirk Cousins goes down, Nick Mullins comes in, it still bombs away to Justin Jefferson, right right, Nick Mallins. Isn't good. But you know, they found they manufactured ways to get the ball to Justin Jefferson, and that McDaniel didn't to me was was and remains a worrisome note.

00:55:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I I don't want to, I don't want to use the word overrated right now, but it's it's trending that direction with McDaniel a little bit. Like we have to at some point have the discussion of what if this is not the answer at the end of the day, you know, because I do think that the offense is really just just perform way below expectation.

00:56:09
Speaker 2: All right.

00:56:09
Speaker 1: Another trade that went down was Deontay Johnson going to Baltimore, And I'll be honest with you, I think this is the player that I have the least amount of just I don't know what's going on, Like, I don't know how they might want to deploy him. They obviously only gave him like fifteen or so routes or something last week like not or snaps like it wasn't it wasn't a very significant playtime situation. But let me just ask you this, are you more or less bullish and excited about Deontay Johnson in Baltimore versus we could say Deontay Johnson in Carolina with Andy Dalton.

00:56:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll say.

00:56:41
Speaker 3: That, unfortunately less just because Derek Henry's always going to get fed. Zay Flowers is great. You know, he goes from being arguably well inarguably the best, most reliable receiver on his team and arguably the best offensive weapon on his team Deontay Johnson in Carolina to being, you know, the fourth best on his offense, and they're gonna be just down games for him, even say Flowers has down games and day Flowers is much better than Deontay Johnson. And so I think we're gonna see. I think we're just gonna see some epic duds. And you know, and you look at what you know, look what everybody else, every other secondary receiver has given us for the last two or three years, and it's disaster grade level stuff, you know, Bateman and Aguilar. I just I think I've dropped Deontay Johnson in all of my guillotine leagues, standard leagues. He's hard to drop. But man, he's gonna be really tough to start. And I got to have a very specific reason. I got to got a matchup. I love a cornerback who I you know, cornerback who I think he's gonna he's gonna hook up with that I don't like. Dantey Johnson to me, is going to be a really tough start. And I'm again, I know my rankings in front of me. At the moment, I'm guessing he's like, why receiver fifty this year this week, and I think he's gonna be in the forties a lot of weeks.

00:57:56
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:57:56
Speaker 1: The problem too is that you just, you know, you have to to look at coach speak to some degree just to see how they might want to deploy him, Like you just want to get that understanding. And it wasn't the strongest endorsement of Deontay Johnson when they talked about him when he went to Baltimore where they Harbaugh was talking about how they think that they have two top twenty guys and Rasha Bateman and Zay Flowers. Now a lot of people like like I think Josina Anderson reported this and she was talking about how you know, they're their top twenty in yards, which obviously is not it's not telling as to the talent level, right, But then you know they're they're talking about him using him on special teams and using him for depth and stuff like that. We all know that he's a talented player. It's just a matter of, you know, if the deployment's not gonna be there on a team, Like you said, it's not even so much like to me that they're gonna be they're gonna lean, run heavy and stuff like. That's definitely I mean, I shouldn't say not so much. I mean that that is a core piece of this. But it's to your point about gamescript where we've seen this year games where they just they win early and it's game over and they're not like you get low totals from even Jae Flowers. Now, it's been great for Zay recently, but like that's always part of the equation. So the problem with Deontay to me, might be a predictability thing where we just don't know better and best ball if you will, you know, where we just don't know when these big plays might happen, because they probably will happen because he's got Lamar Jackson and the offense is conducive to it.

00:59:19
Speaker 2: But yeah, I do think that that we could be in for a struggle.

00:59:22
Speaker 1: I'm trying to have him in a league that I need some running back help, and I'm like, give me any running back at this point for like, any any like pass catching running back I will take for Deontay Johnson, just to have, you know, a body in my RB two spot, because I think that's just where we're at right now. It's really just unfortunate.

00:59:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, a great I agree and all that, And it's just that not all the trades end up being helpful from a fantasy standpoint on this is this is this one is not.

00:59:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, I got one more question for you.

00:59:47
Speaker 1: When you look at the fantasy football landscape right now, who's one player or more whatever, who you think is the ultimate.

00:59:54
Speaker 3: By low, I'm gonna give you three. Let's do all running backs?

00:59:58
Speaker 2: Cool?

00:59:59
Speaker 3: Number one? Jordan Mason.

01:00:03
Speaker 2: Oh I like that.

01:00:04
Speaker 3: Okay, So let's you know right now, his value is like, you know, pennies on the dollar from where it was with Christian McCaffrey. Broadly, the Sinkle work got a lot of ways, but broadly Cork got three ways. One, McCaffrey goes right back to being the old Christan McCaffrey and he gets all the time share and you know, all the receptions everything else, and then okay, Jordan Mason's done. Or alternately, uh, it could be a split backfield. You know, it could be Mason's aren't great at times, and it could be something where they feel like, well, you know, we want McCaffrey for the playoffs, or we want to make sure we don't bring him back too fast. You know. Now, granted, Shanahan does not normally do split backfields, but this situation could be unique enough where he does that. And then the third thing is McCaffrey is just not healthy enough, and you know, the effectiveness isn't there. He gets reinjured, you know, something goes wrong. Nobody wants Mason right now. But I think there's two out of three opportunity that where you know, where Mason still has fantasy value. What do you think?

01:01:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, for what it's worth.

01:01:05
Speaker 1: I had Jeff Mueller, doctor Jeff Mueller on Perspectives last week and we talked about CMC and he thinks it's gonna be an easy in thing. Yeah, that it's not gonna be christ McCaffrey workload right away. I mean, from like a rankings perspective, it's hard to not have him in like the top twelve, top fifteen because of Christian McCaffrey.

01:01:21
Speaker 2: But but like, yeah, I mean I think it's very valid. That's a really good call out.

01:01:25
Speaker 1: Like when you think about these and it's a perfect exercise and range of outcomes, and you saying that two of the three actually favored Jordan Mason, it's a perfect example as to why you would then buy him.

01:01:34
Speaker 2: So who are who are the other two?

01:01:35
Speaker 3: The all right? You talked about how uh you know, people love to have you eat your l's last year, I ate the biggest possible l on Tank Bigsby you could ever eat, because I loved the guy, you know, and I did go him through his college stuff, and then his preseason was awesome, and I'm like, ah, man, I you know, I think this thing's gonna be a timeshare. Go get Tank Bigsby. It took this huge l He is awesome. He's fantastic. He's great, you know, by many, many metrics for compared to any running back at his level of usage. You know, the avoided tackles, broken tackles. You know, success rate, yards over expectation, just dominating, and it's not close with Travis etn. And there's a chance at some point Doug Peterson's just like survival instinct, right, you know, like survival of the fittest Darwinism. You know, at some point, if you'd like to be the coach next year, you have to start playing your best players and more. And that could start sooner than later for Tank Bigsby. So maybe he's maybe he is a he could be a league winner if Peterson decides that he's going to focus his offense at least a running game around Tank Bigsby. What do you think of that option?

01:02:46
Speaker 1: You know what's really funny, I just I'm having a photographic memory moment right now where I remember sending you the prospect Guide last year that I did, and you were like, Hey, I'm gonna do you mind if I take a screenshot of this and just send it out like telp, you know, tell people or whatever. Of course, and you decided the one player that you chose.

01:03:03
Speaker 2: I didn't was Tank Bigsby.

01:03:07
Speaker 1: So there's a there's a write up of from my prospect Guide of Tank Bigsby and all these metrics that really favored him, and like I'm like, yeah, he's a bigger body guy. He actually had a relatively okay receiving profile and this and that he had really good production and like this is why the model uh does seem to like him a little bit. And it makes sense now because it seems like you liked him, so you probably were.

01:03:28
Speaker 2: Like, oh yeah, here's a confirmation.

01:03:30
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, right right right, But it's hilarious that's come full circle where where of course that's the one who busted like none other last year as a rookie. And then you know, fortunately, now this is why we don't. This is why we don't take early l's at the end of the day, this is why.

01:03:44
Speaker 3: Okay, but they want us to and you know that they want us, they want us, they want us to take early ls.

01:03:48
Speaker 1: That's what people wanted me to take the early L on Chase Brown earlier this season. Oh yeah, yeah, I feel that's that's that's making me. Me.

01:03:56
Speaker 2: Uh. Look, I'll get plenty of wrong, plenty of stuff wrong, but that was not one of those things.

01:04:00
Speaker 3: That is not one of those things. And then another it was just I'm just gonna stay with running backs, another running back that I just think is the best back in his backfield, and sooner or later they might just decide that Bucky Irvning Irving needs to be our primary back. He's so slippery, he runs so hard. It's so hard to get squared up on tackles on that guy. I just I'm I adore watching him run, and I'm you know, just sometimes you just feel like, ah, the talent level is so good that teams are gonna, you know, teams have to figure this thing out right now among players at least seventy I'm just pulling this up live with at least seventy touches. Bucky Irving's got eighty three rushes, His avoided tackle rate is thirty three percent. He's averaging five yards per carry. He's the best back Tampa's got by a lot.

01:04:53
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, he's he's been. He's been very very good. What do you here? Here's a question when there's when there's coaching changes.

01:05:00
Speaker 1: And such like we're seeing in Vegas right now, Like I was off of Zamir White this year, and and so I'm not saying that I think that his talent is like through the roof, but are you like in deep formats. One of my recommendations this week was just stash Zamir White, I see, just see, just see what happens, because when when because at the end of the day, just to your point about like Tank Bigsby and even I mean, I guess all of these is some degree like you're saying, this is a coaching decision at the end of the day with these runnings, Yes, right, that's all this is.

01:05:27
Speaker 2: And I'm not saying that.

01:05:28
Speaker 1: I think like Zamir White is dead last in the league right now in success right like he's been, he's been, He's.

01:05:33
Speaker 2: Been horrific as bad bad.

01:05:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's literally he's I mean he's literally twenty twenty four Alexander Madison ironically in the same back to Alexander Madison or you know, he's been as bad as what Tank Bigsby was last year. But I also think, you know, running back, Uh, to the point of Tank Bigsby, we often overstate how good or bad or running Back is when most of them are just clustered in the middle, like very rarely do you have guys who are just like just you know, Kristen Michael types that are just horrifically bad to the Saquans and the CMCs and stuff.

01:06:04
Speaker 2: A lot of them were just replacement level guys.

01:06:06
Speaker 1: And so my point is, if a new coaching staff steps in and they have a really good playoff schedule, which is another reason for it, but like if a coaching staff steps steps in and they say, hey, we want to give the mere White a little bit more work. This is a like a fourteen team or you know, deeper bench type format. That's kind of the direction that I like to go in this time of year two, where like, if there is stuff that's just being shifted around within an offensive organization, I'm kind of intrigued to do the opposite of what everyone's assuming is going to happen. But you know, again, this is Samir White that we're talking about, and I right, I'm not calling him a bye by any means.

01:06:39
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, for what he costs you, it's a value buy, right, he got you nothing spot. All the opportunity costs is that you know that seventh wide receiver on your team, and you know, you talked about guys who were at the bottom of of of metrics through three weeks DeAndre Swift was dead in almost anything. You want, any metric that you'd want success, right, you know everything that he's two yards per carry, and you know, so sometimes if you broaden out, if you're broaden out the number of carries and we get a bigger distribution in a in a semi competent offense in that case Chicago and this one il in Vegas. You know, maybe there's an opportunity to change the narrative.

01:07:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's always hard to like give advice to folks because we know that they're playing in league like this is not a ten team league or even most twelve team league type move, you know, but you want to cater to deeper formats as well. But anyway, this was awesome. I greatly appreciate you hopping with so much fucking talking Guillotine league tucking album. Leave talking video games a little bit. Yeah, let everyone know what you're up to and where they can find you.

01:07:44
Speaker 3: Well, guillotine leagues dot com is the best thing. And just go play if you haven't played, just just if nothing else, just go into a free league and just see what the format is like, so that next year you've got half a season of experience and you can go house all the Nubes playing next year and then their first ever Guillotine League because you've got half a season of experience and it's uh, it's a ton of fun and I I really I think you'll love it. I have UH. And also if you go to fantasylife dot com, they uh that's the people that have purchased Gullotine Leagues from me, and I still work there because they love Guillotine leagues and I love Guillotine leagues. I do. I do. We have we have a lot of Guillotine League content, so if you ever want to just you know, learn more and just see how it's played and what's happening, fantasylife dot com would be the other place.

01:08:26
Speaker 2: To go awesome.

01:08:27
Speaker 1: Make sure you check out late round dot com, follow me on Twitter at late Round QB. As always, everyone, thanks for tuning in.