Becoming a Best Ball Bro: Which Value Tight End?

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Rich. Do you remember the movie Angels in the Outfield?

00:00:03
Speaker 2: You know, that's one of those movies where I vaguely remember a plot about a kid playing for the Angels, not the Bears, or receiving me the Cubs. That's Rookie of the Year. But I don't know the plot in its entirety. Why do you ask, Yeah, so he doesn't play for them.

00:00:18
Speaker 3: He sees angels, and he sees them helping the actual baseball team out right. I watched it recently with my daughter. It is as futrid as you probably think it would be. It's a terrible, terrible movie when you go back and watch it. It was fine growing up, but it's terrible right now. But I was thinking I might need, you know, Christopher Lloyd was the main angel in that movie. I might need to do the little Angel sign, flat my wings a little bit, get Christopher Lloyd down here and fix my KMANI Videl and potentially Tyrone Tracy lineups. 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, 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 into another episode of becoming a Best ball Bro. I'm jj zacharieson first episode with Glasses Rich and I'm joined. I just spoiled it. I'm joined by Rich Ryan Rich. What's going on, buddy, do good Man?

00:01:40
Speaker 2: I almost went eight eyes, you know, six eyes might not be enough, but there we go. But yeah, I'll go in no glass this year, purposefully wearing the Jets hat, just to prove that even in times of turmoil, absolute clown organization, looking like a bunch of idiots with regards to the Hasan Redick contract, the goa or lack thereof, I'm a fan through and through me. I'm here for the bad times and with the Jets mostly the bad times.

00:02:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it's really funny.

00:02:09
Speaker 3: I saw someone quote tweet the Reddick trade request and the tweet about that one of the you know, one of the B two who sent that out and quote tweeted it with the Aaron Rodgers quote of him saying that people will take like a discount to go playing Green Bay because because I'm playing here. It's just it's just such a perfect chef's kiss situation going on there.

00:02:29
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:02:30
Speaker 2: I just I don't understand a player who they knew needed a new contract. You execute a trade without a contract in place, and lo and behold, it turns out kicking the can down the road not a very good strategy.

00:02:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, as we're seeing with Brandon Ayuk right now. Who By the way, I recorded this earlier today. The interview later with with Neil Orfield, who which you guys will listen to in just a second, recorded it earlier today and we talked a little bit about Brandon Ayuk in that whole situation, and then at the time when we were recording it, we were kind of assuming that Ayuk was leaning towards the forty nine ers, and then literally right after we were done recording, we get this rap sheet tweet saying that it's kind of like it's just up in the air. We don't know is it going to be Pittsburgh Pittsburgh has a deal on the table or is it going or is he going to sign this extension with the forty nine ers. So by the time you listen to this show, a couple things might be different. Number One, you know, I mentioned Tyrone Tracy at the top. Earlier today, we got news that he had this horrific injury. He was carted off, he had an air cast, he went to the hospital, and then recently, right before we started recording, we learned that Tyrone Tracy's injury might not be that bad. So you know that cold open we did. I didn't mention Tracy, but if he's okay, then my best ball rosters and lineups will feel much much better, much.

00:03:51
Speaker 2: Better under Undertaker Dot Jeff. I mean, when the air cast comes out, it's you're just it's seasons over right, Like.

00:03:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, like what are the percent I know that they they're they're overly cautious in training camp and stuff like that, but like, what are the odds of like it being nothing major when the air cast happens, right, like, like it's got to be you're playing yeah, right right, you're playing like five percent at best probably at this point, And so you know, crossing my fingers again. A lot of this information. By the time you listen to this episode, you might know, uh, what's going down with some of these guys, whether Ayu gets traded, whether Tyrone Tracy is or is not hurt. But let's let's hope that we get some conclusions soon for the Ayuke stuff, and let's hope that Tyrone Tracy not just for our bags. That's not the most important thing, most important thing. It's just I feel like the older I get, the more devastating those injuries feel to me. With these younger like you know, a rookie who just worked his butt off to get where he is and just a devastating injury like that. It's sort of like watching like Cam Akers the last couple of years with the with the Achilles. It's like, come on, man, like get this guy or JK. Dobbins, like, just get this dude a break, like he deserves a break. He's clearly working his butt off to get back on the field. It's it's really really difficult to.

00:05:10
Speaker 2: Watch, especially running back too. Man. These guys they maxim the only time they get. These guys get to maximize their value with their second contract because and even then, we're seeing how the league has shifted into not paying players at that position. On their second contract, they'll give them the franchise tag and that's about it. So when these guys get hurt young, it's even more brutal.

00:05:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, I want to I want to talk about last week. I Greg Bryant, listener of the show, gave two guides out, two draft guides, and we were talking about how this episode will drop at six am Eastern on Wednesdays, and it did and surprisingly, you know, we talked about we're like, oh, someone on the East Coast is gonna win this. Surprisingly, the two winners happened about twenty minutes after six am, and the two winners were not in the Eastern time zone. One of them was in Wisconsin, the other one was in Iowa.

00:06:05
Speaker 1: I saw one email a someone was at the.

00:06:06
Speaker 3: Gym at like four point thirty in the morning and that's why they were able to get the guide.

00:06:11
Speaker 1: So a couple early birds got.

00:06:14
Speaker 3: The w there, which is good to see because I didn't want it to be super super East Coast biased.

00:06:19
Speaker 2: Big Ten Stand Up Defense Wins Championships, Heart of America.

00:06:22
Speaker 3: Rich's one topic that I definitely want to get to today, and that is Camani Videll.

00:06:30
Speaker 1: We had a report come out, not really report.

00:06:33
Speaker 3: It was an article projecting the fifty three of the Los Angeles Chargers. It's from Daniel Popper of The Athletic and he came out and said that he thinks the Chargers carry four running backs and those four running backs are Gus Edwards, JK. Dobbins, Isaiah Spiller, and Jarrett Patterson, not Camani Videll. And the fantasy football space has been losing their minds because there's a lot of truthers out there, and there are a lot of people who were pooping on the truthers throughout the off season who are now victory lapping based on this article. So I want to throw out a few thoughts about this because I really haven't had a platform to do so, and I don't really want to go to Twitter and have a nuanced conversation because that's just not what Twitter's for at this point. So my feeling is, I do think there's this possibility Kamani Videll got injured early on in training camp and he hasn't shown off his abilities. Whether they're there or not, we don't know.

00:07:41
Speaker 1: Fully right.

00:07:42
Speaker 3: And if you look at this story that that Popper put together, you knows it's one percent based on what he's seen and what he's experienced. And when a guy like Videll hasn't been playing, of course he wouldn't be making the final fifty three because we don't know what he looks like and how he fits in this offense.

00:08:02
Speaker 1: Right.

00:08:03
Speaker 3: I think that in this scenario he might end up being like a practice squad player right at the end of the day. And that's a problem because a lot of us, including myself, I've been drafting Kamanividell. I've talked about it on this show in the past, all that good stuff, but I don't think it's over. I think right now i'd probably give it a fifty to fifty shot. I don't think it's even leaning towards a more favorable outcome of him not making the team than making the team.

00:08:28
Speaker 1: I'll say it's fifty to fifty.

00:08:30
Speaker 3: I've stopped drafting him at the moment because I just don't want to take the zero or the potential zero, and I have enough Kimani Videl. Clearly, you know from the fourteenth round on that I've drafted throughout the offseason. But look, the argument for Videll. For me, my argument was not simply because of situation. It was also I liked the dude as a prospect. Like I thought that he was a good pass catcher. He's a great pass protector, or he at least profiled that way, And I didn't expect him to take over the early down work, but I thought that he could play a DeAndre Swift ish type role in that offense. And it's an offense that Gus Edwards never saw more than thirteen targets in a season. JK Dobbins coming off the injury always injured. He stayed healthy so far, And I think that's the one thing we have to always keep in mind while we're looking at all this preseason stuff and any preseason injuries and we might see or just preseason hype and how depth charts shakeout and that kind of stuff. Like the idea behind Videll in his situation is not going to come to fruition until the season gets going, because the idea is that a guy like JK Dobbins won't be able to hold up throughout the entire season. So if you're letting go of Kamani Videll in Dynasty, or if you think that he's absolutely not going to make the team, then you're doing that maybe because you don't like the talent, or you're believing that the team just doesn't like the talent and they see something. But you're also giving up on the idea that the situation actually is pretty favorable for another running back to step in, And so you should be really buying heavily into JK. Dobbins right like, because that's that's the biggest number one guy in the way of any of the running backs that are below him and Gus Edwards on the depth chart. So my take is, I think Commani Videll is a good was a good prospect? Like?

00:10:23
Speaker 1: Was he a great prospect? No?

00:10:24
Speaker 3: Like, let's let's get that out of the way. He's a Day three running back. Okay, the hit rates of Day three running backs are extremely, extremely small to begin with. So when I sit here on a podcast and I say, go draft Commani Widell or he's a good pick or he's a good player, that's within the context of where he was drafted. I don't think that he's a better player than guys who were drafted on Day two, let's say. But I do think that that versus cost and his profile, he does look good. And I did think that, and I still do think that the situation is sort of ripe for a bottom tiered running back on a depth chart to to rise and become a fantasy producer in some way. So yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people were drafting Videll strictly because of the situation, and now they're saying, you.

00:11:10
Speaker 1: Know, I shouldn't have done that.

00:11:11
Speaker 3: But it's like, Okay, well, I actually liked the talent, like I liked the talent throughout, and so you know, again to recap, though, I don't think that it's a given that he's gonna get cut at all.

00:11:23
Speaker 1: I am not drafting him anymore.

00:11:25
Speaker 3: Though, I think that if you have a season long draft this weekend, you should still draft COMMANI Videll in the last round because you can make up for that. It's different in Best Ball, and I do think as I go on this Best Ball bro journey and experience, it's a really good learning for me. Of this is kind of a season long brain taking over with Videll and how I thought about Videll when you know, we do have to shift our focus a little bit to not take zero's in best ball.

00:11:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the Jared Patterson bit is is interesting because this is a guy he hasn't had any reasonable volume since twenty twenty one with the Commanders. He doesn't play a role on special teams because when he was signed to the Chargers last year, he didn't even see the field. Who's a practice squad player. He went back to the Commanders as well, also a practice squad player there, didn't see the game day roster to play on special teams, and he's got no guaranteed money. So the Chargers are still incentivized to find a way if they can to get Kamani Vaidel onto this roster. It's just that if the player isn't ready or if they're injured, they're not going to be able to do so. There is some optimism. I saw Hayden winksweeting about this where they treated him and Latin McConkey the exact same way this past weekend with regards to some injury management. They both warmed up pregame and then went to street clothes. So there is a hint of optimism there, but I think you do make a good distinction there where we still should have somewhat of an eye on him, perhaps in season managed leagues, excuse me, where we can just cut him if nothing of it, whereas best ball taking that zero can be a little bit too risky.

00:13:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, one hundred percent. And like I'm okay with being wrong about stuff.

00:13:10
Speaker 1: I don't care.

00:13:11
Speaker 3: I'm trying to give you guys exactly what I think is going on right now where I think there's still a shot that he makes the team. I don't think that an athletic beat and someone who puts together an article is the end all with that discussion, And like you said, like I've seen people say like, oh, Jared Patterson is a better prosper, was a better prospect than Kamani Videll. I don't even disagree with that. He was a freak from a production standpoint in college. The problem is we have a large, relatively large sample now of him bouncing around the NFL, and so you know, could he have gotten it together and could this coaching staff in particular just really really like him? Of course, of course, but we got to use the evidence that we have. And I still think that straight up the the the potential the upside still would favor a guy like Videll over Patterson. And the reason we're not bringing Spiller up is because he is a special teams guy and would be able to hypothetically fill that role. I do think they're going to carry for though, because they do have a lot of question marks from a health perspective, and it's going to be a pretty run heavy team too.

00:14:15
Speaker 2: So running back is a position where we see a lot of shifting opinion here in the preseason because we know how important volume is at the position to drive value. And there's two players here that you specifically want to also touch upon a bit more positively. And you started this discussion last week with regards to Kenneth Walker on perspectives, where previously you were probably below market, you've now shifted to market. And now while there's so much positive buzz coming out with regards to Walker being involved in the receiving game, the market's not budging positively. He's only up two spots since we last spoke last week. So so talk about K nine out in the Pacific Northwest.

00:14:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've oddly gone from because we're kind of just we're playing probability he is. What I always say, right whenever we're making these selections, and you know, you look at a guy like Walker, and I said this on perspectives, I'm not sure that Kenneth Walker is a great elite pass catcher.

00:15:12
Speaker 1: I don't think he is.

00:15:13
Speaker 3: If you look back at his college profile, he was never a high volume receiver. The last two years in the NFL, the two years that he's been in the NFL, he's had sub eight percent target share per game rates. Hasn't been a high volume receiver. Like, there's five years of data right there where he hasn't been a high volume receiver. With that being said, do I think that he's like a bad pass catcher out of the backfield.

00:15:33
Speaker 1: No, I don't think he's bad.

00:15:34
Speaker 3: I think that like Miles Sanders is pretty bad out of the backfield as a pass catcher. And I think that someone like Christian McCaffrey is elite as a pass catcher out of the backfield. You're gonna have these sort of anchors on either end of that spectrum, and then you're gonna have just this giant group of players who are above average to below average at being a pass catcher out of the backfield where Kenneth Walker sits is probably around average, maybe a little below average, is based on the volume that we've seen from him. And I know that people are going to look at like his yards per rout run last year. Go look at his yards perrout run as a rookie. Those aren't Those types of metrics are not stable year over year. When you're looking at those efficiency metrics, you should look at volume first and foremost. That is a great indicator of future volume as a pass catcher, just in general, right, you know you're going to see outliers and such, but generally speaking, a guy who is a good pass catcher in the NFL down throughout his entire career, was a good pass catcher to start his NFL career. We rarely see a guy who doesn't see a ten percent target share during his first two years, all of a sudden see a twelve thirteen percent target chair. So with that being said, you know, in Best Ball, I wasn't totally avoiding Kenneth Walker because I think that his home run ability, you know, fits the fits the format relatively well. And obviously, you know we always talk about continent upside of the RB twos. But there is some contingent upside too with Walker, as Zach Sharbarney would go down.

00:16:55
Speaker 1: Right.

00:16:56
Speaker 3: So I haven't really been against Walker, and I've even about this in my draft guide. I haven't been against Walker in Best Ball per se. I just have a lot more Sharbonnay, and when people see that, they just assume, oh, you don't have that much Kenneth Walker.

00:17:09
Speaker 1: I was probably at like.

00:17:10
Speaker 3: Five percent, six percent maybe Walker before all of this happened, right, So I was below market, but it wasn't like I was completely fading him. Now though, like you said, we're getting reports that they want to use him more as a pass catcher out of the backfield, and I'm like, Okay, well his ADP is gonna spike because we're seeing these reports coming out and it hasn't really I mean, to me, he belongs probably in that mixin Rashad White Teer. I think, like, I don't think it's that crazy to think that, you know, especially in a Best Ball environment where we know the big playability is there, to say that Walker should be closer to that range than he currently is and he's just not. He's still being drafted, you know, Like you said, just a couple of spots above where he was prior to all of this coach speaks, So I was, I've obviously been in on Zach Sharbonnee. I'm at like nineteen twenty percent right now, Charbonne, He's one of my highest rostered running backs, if not the highest rostered running back. You know, my exposure is relatively flat. I don't really have any guys over twenty percent, just the way that things kind of have shaken out. But yeah, I mean like, I'm absolutely pouncing on this Kenneth Walker stuff right now because his ADP just as hasn't budged.

00:18:21
Speaker 2: We talked about the injury to Tyrone Tracy to start the program. Another injury to a rookie running back, and that's out in Green Bay with Marshaun Lloyd. However, his veteran counterpart, another player you've been cool on based on the ambiguity in the backfield, Josh Jacobs. He's only up one and a half spots. So we've got these these two veterans with two very clear stories that should be driving a drumbeat of positivity. But like his counterpart, Kenth Walker, he's not budgeting.

00:18:53
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:18:54
Speaker 3: Look, I feel stronger about a Jacob's fade than I do a Kenneth Walker fade, like even in season long. Right, Also, I felt like that all summer, I've just not really bought into Josh Jacobs based on Matt Lafleor's history. Jacobs had a really rough season last year. His explosiveness wasn't totally the same, you know, especially when you look at like ten plus yard runs he Rich Reebar and I talked about it at length on the episode of Late Round podcast from yesterday. But yeah, I mean, like with Jacobs now, it's a little bit different because Marshawn Lloyd is now entering the season with you know, this this injury that he's dealing with, and I don't know how long it's gonna linger. No one really knows how long it's gonna linger. And yet Jacobs has barely moved from an ADP perspective. When we first started talking about fading Jacobs, he was like a three to four turn pick at the beginning of becoming a best ball bro.

00:19:43
Speaker 2: Right, Like it was full round twelve point eight selections since we started podcasting.

00:19:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I feel good about that fade in the way that I've handled Jacobs. But now you know he's settled, we know where he generally is gonna go, and Marshaon Lloyd's banged up. You know, aj Dillon isn't that big of a threat in my opinion from this from a talent standpoint where they're gonna you know, even though Lafleor has these tendencies, we may still see them force Jacobs a little bit more if Marshaon Lloyd is sidelined. I have plenty of marsh On Lloyd, another guy that I drafted a good bit of. You know, maybe in that fifteen sixteen percent range. We'll eventually get to my exposures and stuff on the last episode of the show. But you know, I have a decent amount of marsh On Lloyd, not a ton of Josh Jacobs, maybe like three percent Jacob's four percent Jacobs. But yeah, I mean with his adp not following, I'm fine with pouncing on it. I think I think this is where the edges are coming this year, is that people are oddly only reactive to the players who are actually getting hurt, like like Jamior Gibbs. Right now, at the time of this recording, we don't know exactly how long he's going to be out.

00:20:41
Speaker 1: You know, Jamiir Gibbs goes from a one.

00:20:43
Speaker 3: Two turn guy to you know, I did a BBM earlier today he's a mid second round pick. Things are definitely sit and that's a lot of equity when you're talking about early rounds. But that's him himself. I haven't really seen what's going on with like David Montgomery quite yet, but it seems like the effect, you know, we have like the cause of these individual players, but the effect of that hasn't really been shifting as much as I thought it would. We saw it with Deebo Samuel with the Brandon Ayuk stuff, but not George Kittle, not Ricky Piersaal, not Juwan Jennings. So I think that having that understanding of how things sort of trickle down on a depth chart can be really really helpful this time here.

00:21:23
Speaker 2: The place where I am seeing a lot of ADP moves at running back are kind of these late later round dart throws where people feel like it's almost like a mystery box. So I put three in the show sheet here. Chase Brown is up six spots. He's up twenty spots since we started Braylan Allen is up nine spots week over week, up thirty three spots since we started potting. And then you've got Jordan Mason with this buzz about him perhaps being the number two behind Christiancaffrey, He's up thirteen spots. He was completely undrafted for the first seven weeks of this show. So I feel like people are just favoring these kind of mystery box options that are more dart throws as opposed to players who we know we're going to see the field and we kind of are learning that their volume could be more than we suspected in pretty good offenses.

00:22:10
Speaker 1: I wonder how much of it has to do with people having priors.

00:22:13
Speaker 3: You know. The Jordan Mason thing is a little bit different because, like, you know, he's looking like he could be the RB two, so naturally people are just kind of going to throw a dart in the eighteenth round and see what they get out of him. But like Braylan Allen, a lot of people my model loved Braylan Allen, and I was subjectively kind of like pushing it down him down a little bit in my rankings, which seems like it was a mistake because my mom I need to just just trust.

00:22:33
Speaker 1: My model all the time at this point.

00:22:36
Speaker 3: But yeah, he looks great, and there's a reason why he's rising, of course because of what we've seen. But a lot of people liked Braylan Allen as a prospect as a player. Chase Brown, we have this prior of like you know, these ambiguous backfields, and a lot of people just naturally favored Chase Brown a little bit. So when we get this news that he is going to be the dude or or he could be the dude, then people are going to probably over inflate. I mean, I'm still drafting Chase Brown generally where he goes, but people are can over inflate, you know, how high we should be pushing that individual player. But when we're talking about like Josh Jacobs, where there's a pretty split community on him, and the people who like Josh Jacobs probably already got a lot of Josh Jacob's bags and they're afraid of you know, drafting him. Still there are a lot of Jacobs, you know, in the first five rounds because there are a lot of people who are against that. You know, to your point, when you're looking at these like later round picks, it's like, who cares, It doesn't matter. The opportunity cost isn't very high. But then these earlier rounds, Yeah, I think that's why we probably see what we're seeing with with with Walker and Jacobs.

00:23:33
Speaker 2: In particular, I will say as the resident Jets fan here, brayln Luklick looked great. The thing that I took away the most was it feels like the line could be fixed, which I think has as much of an impact perhaps on Rogers and the pass catchers as well. All right, players who've been drafting. We already talked about K nine and Josh Jacobs, but let's head out to the Bay where once again Ayuk will he or won't he? The one player who probably at least one of the players that could have the biggest boost with his absence is George Kittle, but his ADP has not budged only one point six spots since this whole scuttle but began. And you've been grabbing some Kittle.

00:24:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've been trying to.

00:24:17
Speaker 3: I think that realistically, if we I always try to envision, like what would this look like? And I talk about this with our guests today, what would this look like if this thing did go down. If I were not on San Francisco, I think where Deebo gets drafted now is probably where he would get drafted, because I think it'd be a little difficult to probably put him over like Garrett Wilson and Pooka, But I think putting him over someone like Drake London or even Marvin Harrison makes sense, especially in a in a best ball environment. With George Kittle, I think realistically he becomes like a Dalton Kincaid value like in that same range, But I don't think he's going to even get close to getting into that like early to mid fifth round range over an underdog. So yeah, I mean I I think that he could rise, and he will rise if the Ayuk thing officially happens. If he does move, I think right now that whole thing is just fifty to fifty, Like we don't know either way what's.

00:25:09
Speaker 1: Going to go down.

00:25:10
Speaker 3: But I'm fine with buying into it because again, his ADP hasn't budge and I actually thought that Kittle has been an okay enough pick to begin with, like regardless of all of this, and so now you add this extra layer of his target chair could be more consistent and we won't have even the crazy roller coaster that we always get with George Kittle. I mean, he could really really crush this year if they lose Brandon Ayuk. But even if they don't, I think that he's still a decent pick.

00:25:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, He's always been a spike leek king man like Kittle just has these these random weeks where he crushes multiple touchdown weeks. So if we can flatten out that target Hall over the seventeen week season, it'd be really good. All right, round eighteen, some guys, you're throwing some darts on we've talked. We talked about Juwan Jennings. Still love that. But some other younger guys here, rookies, Javon Baker, we got Johnny Wilson, and the buzz out here in LA has McVeigh done and again with Jordan Whittington.

00:26:09
Speaker 3: The Jordan Whittington stuff is interesting to me. He's kind of like a hybrid, not hybrid. He started his college career as sort of like a hybrid player, like he could play in the backfield and place some running back and stuff. I remember doing his research for his profile for the Prospect Guide, and I remember looking at what my model was saying in terms of draft capital delta, which is where a guy was drafted versus what my model is saying about that player, and just kind of subtracting the percentiles of draft capital percentile minus overall what percentile he and what his score generally looks like. And he had a favorable draft capital delta, and that was driven a lot by a teammate scorer that I have in the model, because he played alongside Ady Mitchell and Xavier Worthy and so naturally you're not going to have as strong of numbers playing alongside those guys, but he is, I'm a versatile guy. Like his numbers weren't overly amazing. I don't think this is you know, I sent a tweet out that said something along lines of like, there's not going to be a this year's pookin Akua, even though every content piece says there is a this year.

00:27:12
Speaker 1: You know who's this year's pook and Akua.

00:27:13
Speaker 3: Of course, and a lot of it get those clicks, yeah, right exactly, And a lot of people are responding saying that as Jordan Whittington, look, I get the buzz, I get the hype, and we literally just saw it from this team last year, but there isn't you know, with pookin a Kua, there was at least a crazy per route run profile in terms of his production that does not necessarily exist for a guy like Whittington, and so I'm much more inclined. Of course, I'm working in hindsight, but I'm trying my best to only think of them as prospects, Naku and Whittington. Like, I do think that Whittington will play and can play the slot, which could be a little bit interesting given what they have, But I think that they'll want to use Cooper Cup there a decent bit. And you know, they they liked what they had at a DeMarcus Robinson on the stretch, and DeMarcus Robinson's a good blocker, and they love to have good blocking wide receivers in that scheme and in that system.

00:28:06
Speaker 1: So do I think.

00:28:07
Speaker 3: Whittington is the wide receiver four who could see some work in the offense scattered out throughout the season and maybe you know, a little bit of an uptick if one of these guys gets hurt. Of course, yeah, so I think that because of that, he's a decent eighteenth round dart throw at this point. But from a season long perspective, I don't think he's really draftable right now if we see something in Week one like we did with Puca last year. Like last year, I was saying, like, even in my draft gud I said Puka Akua was a late round dart throw right like. This is to me, this is not the same situation. This is similar to how people speak to me about Isaiah Pacheco to generic Prince.

00:28:41
Speaker 1: Where I liked Pacheco prospect.

00:28:44
Speaker 2: The Chiefs have rotated in another number two running back this week, Yeah Prince.

00:28:50
Speaker 3: Exactly like you've seen it in the discord for the last year since the Chiefs got Generic Prince, where people have said, hey, Jay, like, should I be picking him up on in Dynasty and stuff? I'm like, sure, throw the Darton Dynasty, keep them on your bench. I'm not like whatever, I don't really care about that. But don't expect the Isaiah Pachecko you know, outcome for him, because Pachecko was a better prospect. There were a lot of more favorable marks for a player like Pachecko than there are for generic Prince.

00:29:16
Speaker 1: He did not have the same type of production profile.

00:29:19
Speaker 3: I feel similarly with Whittington versus a guy like Pooka Nakua, where at least Nakua had some really really intriguing yards barow run numbers that you could latch onto and say, why wasn't.

00:29:30
Speaker 1: BYU using him more than they were using him?

00:29:33
Speaker 3: Right, Whereas, of course we know why Jordan Winnington wasn't getting as much run as he could have, And I think that naturally we should. And this is why I have a teammate score in the first place, Like you can't just ignore that team context. But I do think that that Nakula was just naturally a better prospect than him. And then you know the last two. Johnny Wilson's running with the three or running as the wide receiver three pretty often for Philadelphia. I think that that he could be sort of like a potential Chase Claypool type player without maybe the stuff going on between the ears, because I think that's sort of.

00:30:05
Speaker 1: What derailed Chase Claypool's career to some degree.

00:30:09
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean, he's he's a really interesting prospect. He had really good efficiency mark or fairly good efficiency marks, to the point where he was better than a lot like depending on the metric you look at, you could say that he looked better than Keon Coleman during their final season. So I think Johnny Wilson's pretty interesting and intriguing. And then Javon Baker, who I don't think would have been going nearly as late in the NFL draft had he not had some like off the field question marks, really good prospect. I thought that he was just a very very solid He had very very solid marks across the board within my model. Baker's one of my highest rostered wide receivers right now. I like throwing like I have Jalen Polk, I have to Mario Douglas. We've talked about Douglas plenty on this show, but Polk's ADP has risen quite a bit over the last couple of months.

00:30:58
Speaker 1: You know.

00:30:58
Speaker 3: Fortunately I got him pretty early on and I haven't drafted him as much of late. But I do think Javon Baker, he sometimes goes undrafted in these drafts, like I've still seen that I've gotten him at eighteen twelve before, like in the very last pick of the draft. So to me, Javon Baker, I still think has a non zero chance of being the wide receiver you want out of New England. I'd still rank it as Polk to Mario Douglas and Baker, but Baker. I think the gap is just like I think Baker should be a seventeenth round pick instead of an eighteenth round pick.

00:31:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jalen Polk twenty four picks since we first started, two full rounds of steam for the rookie in New England. Yeah for me, going back to the Rams real quick. If there's one clear thing to take away from Los Angeles this weekend, it's that they set all of their startups on offense, and that included Colby Parkinson, who continues to go in the two hundreds, up zero point seven spots since last week. This guy is the tight end one in LA.

00:31:57
Speaker 1: Yeah. I like that call a lot.

00:31:58
Speaker 3: I'm in the King Classic, which was a draft that we did in Canton that we do at the Fantasy Football Expo each year. There's two leagues. It's kind of like a relegation system, and I was in. I was drafting. You do a snake draft and then an auction draft back to back, and it was it's intense. I was drafting for like seven straight hours.

00:32:15
Speaker 1: It was.

00:32:16
Speaker 3: It was a pretty intense nerdy situation there. But I did get I got Kolbe Parkinson in one of those leagues, same same exact reason, same exact logic.

00:32:26
Speaker 1: He could have a legit role this year. Anyway, let's get to this interview. Man.

00:32:30
Speaker 3: I talked to Neil Orfield. He's a high volume basketball player. He's been very, very successful in the DFS space. He does work for sites like Fantasy Points, Rodo Grinders, four for four. He also has his own YouTube channel. He talks about that at the end of the interview. We chat about coach speak, how it impacts his drafts, how injuries are impacting his drafts.

00:32:52
Speaker 1: You know.

00:32:52
Speaker 3: Like I said, we talked about some of the stuff that we just talked about, but also like the brandan Ayuk trade and such. But how he's drafting now versus how he was draft in May and June and tons more. It was a great interview. He's a great guy. I think you guys will enjoy it. So, without further ado, here is my interview in Chat with Neil Orfield. This episode is sponsored by Underdog Fantasy. If you haven't played over at Underdog yet, now's the perfect time. There are tons of different best ball leagues that you can join and there's definitely a league out there that fits what you're looking for, and you can use all the things that I've talked about with guests.

00:33:24
Speaker 1: I'm becoming a best Ball bro to crush those drafts.

00:33:27
Speaker 3: But like I said, now's the right time to join up because if you go and you sign up and use promo code Late Round, you not only get a nice deposit offered, but you also get a free Late Round Draft guide that's a twenty five dollars guide email to your inbox after signing up for absolutely free. So head to Underdog Fantasy dot com, sign up using promo code Late Round, and make it a positive. I can confirm it's a really really fun platform to play on.

00:33:53
Speaker 1: Now, back to the show, all right, Neil.

00:33:56
Speaker 3: Even right before we hopped on here to start talking best Ball a little bit, we get word that JJ McCarthy has an injury, you know, Tyrone Tracy seemingly has a long term injury, or at least that's the scare right now, By the time folks listen to this episode, they will probably know what's going on with those players, or exactly what's going on with those players. So we're in this period right now in August, where there's a lot of injuries that are occurring across the league. And when those injuries occur from a best ball perspective, you know, are you automatically sort of taking those players off your draft list? Now, obviously, someone who's out for the year, you would take them off of your draft list. But you know, we've seen some injuries like with a DeAndre Hopkins for instance, or even a Hollywood Brown, where you know they're not out for the year by any means. You know, either guy could hypothetically play Week one, but you know they might be out week one, week two, or into the start of the season.

00:34:45
Speaker 1: You know, how do you approach that?

00:34:47
Speaker 3: Are you Are you saying, yes, I'm going to fade these guys because I don't want to deal with these injured players and that's just a sign of what's to come, or are you taking on that discount?

00:34:55
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it really depends on the player and how bullish I was on them prior to the injury, how serious I think the injury is. So the example, you know JJ McCarthy, he was an eighteenth round pick anyway, So I'm not going to be buying JJ McCarthy now when I don't need you when there's uncertainty with that injury. Kendry Miller was another guy that was like a little bit earlier than JJ McCarthy, so like you can buy the dip a little bit. He was what a end of twelfth round kind of players as it was. I stopped buying into Kendry Miller at that point for a little while, where I'm like, it sounds like there's real cut risk potentially here with with the coach be kind of being like, if you can't even you know, get on the field, you're not going to make the team. So that's a situation where I kind of did. I wouldn'tay I removed him from my board entirely, but kind of moved him down into that seventeenth eighteenth round range. So there's like there's kind of levels to it where if you were already kind of on the cusp of I'm willing to draft you, yeah, I'm just removing you from my board if you're in that kind of mid range level like a Kendry Miller. I mean, Josh Down's another he's a little better than Kendry Miller. I would don't think I would remove Josh Downs from my board entirely right now as things stands, but I'm moving them down my list. But then, like the top of the board, we have Jamiir Gibbs yesterday. You know, we can get news he has a hamstring injury. We don't know the severity of it. I'm not going to remove Jamiir Gibbs from my board. Also easier for me because I have a whole portfolio of lineups. I'm going to have hundreds and hundreds of lineups, so it's easier for me to kind of take on some of that risk. But now with the Jamir Gibbs injury, if he does move to say the third round, from the one two turn to the third round and best Ball, now I'm going to have combos of Jamir Gibbs that people have not been able to get to this point and we've got you know, best ball Mania is sixty five percent full. Sixty five percent of people will not have the opportunity to have drafted Jamiir Gibbs in the third round. So that scenario where yeah, I'm not removing from my board. If you are just doing one best Ball draft, I could understand wanting to move some remove somebody like to mirror Gibbs from your board because like you don't want to. That's no fun if you if you draft a player in the first round or third round even and then they're hurt, that that just kind of kills your entire lineup. But for me, as somebody with a whole portfolio of lineups, I'm willing to take on that risk when there is uncertainty with the player, like like Jimior Gibbs of his level, where I can get combos that other people are not going to have, could have a potentially killer team if if the hamstring injury doesn't turn into something that's going to keep him out for very long. So there really is a lot of nuance to it. The level of the player, the severity of the injury, A lot of that comes into play. You mentioned DeAndre Hopkins. I've kind of been i haven't really been buying the dip, but I'm, you know, kind of want to see where he would settle. He hasn't fallen enough where I'm like I need, you know, he's not not falling a pick on hundred and twenty where I'm like I need, I'm definitely taking this risk all the time. He's dipped a little bit. I still think, yeah, it's worth buying the dip often on injured players that are kind of in the top one hundred picks.

00:37:57
Speaker 3: Is there is there any difference an approach for you from like a portfolio man Njemin' standpoint, if you like, let's say with Jamiir Gibbs, you had twenty percent Gibbs because you were really really into him, which I don't know if there's anyone on the planet that has that much Jamier Gibbs. But you know, let's let's say that you have like twenty or thirty percent Jamiir Gibbs and then he falls, you know, past where you've been drafting him because of this injury.

00:38:20
Speaker 1: Does that make you lean into him even more? Or are you now afraid.

00:38:24
Speaker 3: Because you know, now obviously other people are getting this massive discount on Gibbs and you're, you know, you're you're just trying to make sure that you're not over committing yourself to a pretty volatile asset now that he is injured.

00:38:37
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would say more the latter. For me, I'm more inclined to take my foot off the gas pedal. Kendry Miller was actually the perfect example. He was the guy that I was super in on, was really buying a lot of Kendry Miller around pick one, and then then we started hearing like he's not looking great at camp. So that's even before the injury, Like he's not looking that great at camp. I'm like, I have, you know, twenty percent Kendry Miller. I don't want to keep loading that bags on a player who really could be a zero. Then you add on you know, no injuries and stuff, then yeah, I'm taking my foot off the gas typically Jamiir Gibbs, Yeah, I think if I had had twenty percent, if he was somebody that I had moved up to like the Bejon range, where there probably are people who do have a ton of Yeah, Jimmier Gibs. For that reason, I think for me, I would be taking my foot off the gas pedal. Again, it is nuance. It gets to a certain point. Then if he is the end of the third round and I was super bullish on him and we don't really know the severity of the injury, then sure I'm buying him all day at the end of the third round, but I'm probably not taking him up. Like if the dip is to pick sixteen or seventeen, like still like early mid second round. I'm probably taking my foot off the gas. I'm gonna let let things settle, you know, add some other players into my portfolio a little bit more.

00:39:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I like your thought if anyone's playing bastball mania. I like your thought of the different combos that you know folks are gonna be getting, you know, if he does, because like there's been been drafts where I've gotten him at like eighteenth overall anyway, and so you know that he's fallen to that point even before this injury happens. So if that's where his ADP settles, it's like, Okay, we've seen the combination of even like a Bijon Gibbs start or something like that, or even a Justin Jefferson Gibbs start, like it's it's definitely happened, But a CMC Gibbs start, you know, like that that kind of combination really hasn't happened as much. And then I mean also a CMC and Gibbs, you get the week seventeen correlation exactly.

00:40:16
Speaker 4: There are now remembering last year and it ended up being a pretty big mistake. But Cooper Cup was that guy for me where it was like we kind of got a late injury where it was like we don't really know what severity is going to be, and I was like, I can get Justin Jefferson with Cooper Cup, like I'm jamming that, And of course didn't work out. But yeah, once you can get those kind of unique combos that people have not been able to get up to this point, and it's happening later in the season, so like not that many people are going to be able to take advantage of it, then yeah, I'm pretty interested in getting those unique combos.

00:40:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, love that from a game theory perspective. So now we're we are drafting later in the season, like you mentioned, you know, BBM, you know, I mean by the time those people listen to this little it could be closer to seventy percent filled. You know, people are playing more and more while you're drafting later versus how you drafted in May versus June. What what do you think some of the biggest changes that you've made have been.

00:41:02
Speaker 4: This is a really fun time to draft for me because there's just so much more information all the time about like team's rotations, who are going to be the lead receivers on this team. Who is a cut risk? Sometimes there are players that we think are like a lock to make the lineup, and suddenly you hear and I mean Kender Miller. There's an example of like, is he really a cut risk? I did not consider that he would be, But then other players moving up the board. Jordan Mason, you and I talked about him a little bit yesterday, is a player who I'm kind of interested in that when I'm hearing that Jordan Mason may be the RB two, like he's in contention to be the RB two, and I you know, that's a great situation. If if you can be the RB two on the Niners, that is awesome. So I'm at this point in the season, I'm really just in the drafting season. I'm really just reacting to camp news a lot of the time because things can change pretty quickly. Last year was Rico Daubtle. For me, was kind of the same situation where it was like never heard about, nobody talked about him up until like August. It was not somebody that many people we're drafting. Suddenly they're saying Ricodoudle looking like the Cowboys RB two, I'm like the RB two on an awesome offense. Yeah, that's a that's a player that I want to add into my portfolio. So I started just hammering. I was drafting so much of Rico Daudle last year in the eighteenth round. And I also think, you know, we already mentioned like things that were not not not going to be super owned, so so you can you can take advantage of like players dipping, like jumiir Gibbs get dipped different combinations, but like Jordan Mason this year, Ricodouda last year, those are examples of players that like they haven't really been drafted to this point all that much in Best Ballmania. So now you're you're also going to get a low owned player by reacting to that camp new So I think the biggest difference for me now versus earlier in this season is I am just a newshound. I'm just you know, paying attention constantly. I have alerts on for for several different accounts that are going to be telling me the news as it breaks, and I can react to that news in real time, and honestly, I probably overreact more more than I should to some of the news but I think paying attention to the news can be a huge advantage. Actually, I was not as in on this, and one of my bigger regrets. Lester Hiram Williams was an example of, like all of the reports in August were really good, Like the coaches love him, he's a great blocking running back. Some people took advantage of that and really benefited from it. So there are scenarios where you can benefit just from listening to the news in August.

00:43:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, look, we're talking about like seventeenth eighteenth round picks. You know, we even talked about it yesterday a little bit. It's like when we were doing a live stream on your channel, which everyone should check out. But if you're in like the way I've kind of looked at it is like round. The difference between round sixteen, seventeen and eighteen from an opportunity cost standpoint and the kind of players that you're getting, it's marginal. There's not enough of a difference, and not only that, but the players that you're drafting in that range.

00:43:44
Speaker 1: It takes.

00:43:45
Speaker 3: It can be just a camp news item for us to be like sure, I'll throw the dart at that guy, as opposed to throwing a dart at some other guy who doesn't necessarily have that item, because again, the margins are just so so small from one player to the next, where things can change, you know, very very quickly, and we should latch onto all of the news that we can possibly latch onto with those kinds of players, because at the end of the day, they're being drafted late because they're not the best players in the world. I mean, obviously they are because they're in the NFL, but compared to you know, some of the early round guys, they're not to that caliber. So latching on to some of that the news item, news items out there and coach speak to some degree seems like a smart idea. Speaking of coach speak, sounds like you are leaning into it a little bit, you know, maybe more than most, as you said, But how do you how much do you care about coach speak And has there been sort of a coach speak item or two throughout the last month or two that that you've really latched onto and said, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna go in on this player based on what this coach is saying.

00:44:43
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I do pay attention to coach peak As I said, I probably overreact sometimes to some of this news, but I do think you can get you know, if you listen to what the coaches are actually saying, you can learn things from the coaches. I think, you know, Matt Lafleur yesterday came out and said he wants to when people talk about wide receiver ones, which you know, doesn't seem like that much of a like, what is your takeaway from that? My takeaway from that is it kind of makes me like Dntavian Wicks a little bit better, and it kind of makes me like Jayden Reid a little bit worse if they are going to run, which has kind of been our inclination all summer has been like the Packers are going to have a wide receiver rotation. I you know, made a tweet about Dantavian Wicks, a bullish Dantavian Wixs tweet last week, and somebody who responded was like, I'm a Packers fan. He's a wide receiver four on the Packers. Why would you want to have Dontavian Wis on your team? And that's you know, a valid concern if you think, like, well, the only reason he played last year is because Christian Watson got hurt and then Jayden Reid got hurt, so we had those opportunities. But I think, you know, listening to what Matt Laflora is saying, we don't have a wide receiver one. We have several wide receiver ones. We have several guys who can do lots of different things, does make me think like it is more likely that what we have been sort of assuming all along that Dontavian Wicks is just going to be part of a rotation as opposed to just having continued value. If somebody goes down, seems more likely to me that he maybe is going to be just part of that rotation. The way Matt Lafleur has been talking about his wide receivers, like now we don't have a wide receiver one, we have a lot of different wide receivers who can do a lot of different things. That makes me, you know, more bullish on the guys who are being drafted later who were kind of concerned about them being part of that rotation, and a little bit more bearish on the guys who maybe we were thinking maybe he could be maybe Jayden Reid does get up to you know, ninety five percent snapshare or rep participation whatever. This year makes me think it's probably less likely that you know that Jayden Reed does have ninety plus percent raw participation, if Matt Laflor does really think he has a wide receiver rotation going on. So there's there's an example of coach speak that yeah, I'm listening to it a little bit. You know, you don't want to overreact to things. I'm thinking back to to DFS last year that there was a slate where the Seahawks were on an island in a nine game. So I was doing a showdown breakdown and like, right before I went live on a stream, somebody tweeted at me and said, Haniel an audience member front from the show, and Haniel, check this out. I think that this could be Kenny McIntosh week, McIntyre, mcinti, yahn mcintize, Kenny McIntosh week. Look at look at what Pete Carroll said. And it was like a Pete Carroll quote that a reporter beat reporter responded had been like looks like Kenny McIntosh could get some run on Monday night football. And then this, you know, this guy tweets at me and says Hanil we need to be jamming Kenny McIntosh and I saw this right before I went I. I was like, oh, that's kind of exciting this news item. And then I read the actual quote like I was pulled it up out you know, on the stream. It's okay, let me read what the coach said, what Pete Carroll said, and it was basically like, yeah, he looks great in practice. We'd love to get him involved at some point. And it was like, oh, when you strip away all of the like narration from the Beat reporter, all he said is what Pete Carroll says about every single one of his players, like he looks great, we'd love to get him involved, Like this is actually nothing Burger, So like, yeah, I went from oh, this is really exciting, you know, need to need to pay attention to this coach peak to like, I actually, if you just break it down to what the coach is actually saying, he didn't actually say anything all of that bullish. So I do think it is important to, yeah, listen to what the coach is saying, but maybe sometimes weed out the narration from beat reporters.

00:48:05
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:48:06
Speaker 3: I had Greg Brainos on last week in Late Round Perspectives to talk about you know, he runs the Coach Speak Index, and I do you know that's something that we talked about a lot.

00:48:13
Speaker 1: Is just like like there's a fine line of sort of overrating and overstating what's been said by these coaches, and obviously that's what coach Speak Index is trying to help us solve and help us do and understand. And he does a great job doing that. But you know, I always lean in on like just asking the question does this make sense? Right? Like is this is this logical?

00:48:33
Speaker 3: And you look at like the Green Bay situation, does it make sense for them to have a rotation? Yeah, because each of those guys do different things at wide receiver and can do different things at wide receiver. So yeah, that should be the expectation.

00:48:44
Speaker 2: Now.

00:48:44
Speaker 1: Obviously from like.

00:48:44
Speaker 3: A contingent upside standpoint and all that kind of stuff with like injuries and whatnot, you know, you can go down that path, but strictly from a if they're all healthy standpoint, I think the expectation should be that there's going to be some sort of rotation based on and it's similar like like Matt Lafleur has also talked about a rotation out of the backfield like he he has openly talked about it. You know, if it's coming from the coach's mouth like that, I think that that it does matter to some degree. And then you have the evidence, right, you have the backing of how green Bays use their backfield, you know historically under the floor, how he uses backfield when he had Dean Lewis and Derrick Henry. You know, there is at least evidence there. And when there is that evidence, that's when I'll lean in on that coach speak a little bit more, which is seemingly what you know you're saying here as well. So I think that's a really good way to sort of sift through all of that information. So, speaking of all of this, given everything that we just talked about, have there been some players that you're drafting more frequently this month now than you've been drafting let's say, in May, June, and July.

00:49:42
Speaker 4: Yeah, So, unfortunately, you just gave me kind of one example of a player that I'm drafting more Josh Jacobs. I was super in on Marshawn Lloyd. Yeah, because you know, like you said, there are a lot of evidence. We have a lot of history of Green Bay using a split backfield. Marsha On Lloyd is kind of this exciting new player. The coaches were also, you know, glowing speaking about him glowingly, like this guy could be a big, big hit for us this season. Now he's got kind of an injury and that that's kind of making me a little bit more afraid of Marshall Lloyd. And then I think, Okay, yeah, sure they might want to use a rotation, but we have a long sample of aj Dillon maybe not being the best RB two, So I do think like it's more likely that Josh Jacobs takes on a bigger workload now if Marshaon Lloyd is going to miss time, not going to be NFL ready this year, So I'm buying in on Josh Jacobs just kind of responding again to the news that is coming out of Green Bay. Jordan Mason another one of those examples that I gave earlier, just you know, buying into you know, maybe he's the RB two they've talked about him glowingly in the past, would be a super valuable role if he does land that rby two role. Plus Christian McCaffrey a little bit banged up, so you know, you kind of you kind of get worried a little bit already with sort of aging backs. This makes me a little bit even more worried about Christian McCaffrey that the fact that he has an injury right now, which then, of course in turn makes me more bullish on a guy like Jordan Mason. So yeah, just there are a lot of players that I am drafting more now than I had been, and it is just for me, generally, a response to the news that is coming out.

00:51:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. The Josh Jacobs stuff.

00:51:15
Speaker 3: What's really interesting too is that oftentimes, and maybe maybe you've seen differently, but it doesn't seem like his ADP has shifted that much since marsh On. Yeah, right, So like an instance is like that, Like yeah, like for me, Jacobs was more or less I say, fade I was probably at like four percent or something like that, which four or five percent or so, and and you know I was heavy on Marshawn Lloyd, let's say like a thirteen fourteen to fifteen percent or something. But you know, when news like this happens, I do I have found it as I'm going on this journey of becoming a best ball bro and doing.

00:51:48
Speaker 1: More and more drafts.

00:51:49
Speaker 3: I have found that the reaction, you know, as it happened, sure like if you're in a singular draft, like like yesterday after the Jamiir Gibbs news hit, I did do a BBM and he did go in the mid SEC round.

00:52:00
Speaker 1: It wasn't you know, he wasn't a one two turn guy.

00:52:03
Speaker 3: But there are still some players where like it's not as glaring and obvious and the draft capital isn't as high, like a Josh Jacobs, where it seems like there's there's a slower reaction, you know, to that injury occurring. And you can make the same argument for someone like Kenneth Walker where it's not even related to injury or anything. But we've gotten some favorable reports, We've we've heard them talking about him strictly as a pass catcher. And I'm thinking to myself, like, I got a lot of sharbonnay because of the continent upside and such and so. But then you know, I was at like five percent Kenneth Walker. Now I'm just getting his ADP is barely shifted, and I'm thinking to myself, Okay, I can now kind of hedge this pretty easily because nothing's really changing with Kenneth Walker due to what the coach speak is and what's out there right now. So that's been kind of shocking to me. Have you Have you found that happening as well?

00:52:51
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean that that happens all the time. It's not h you know, I think like Underdog, it's it's a pretty sharp community in general. So I think most of the time like that, the reactions are are kind of appropriate. But you still I'm surprised every year. Last year it was Alexander Madison when Dalvin Cook got caught, it was like we already knew this was gonna happen. But still, when when Alexander Madison became the running back, he jumped like three rounds in ADP. So there are still in efficiencies like that where you see the market you know, I thought this was baked in, and it wasn't baked in as much as I thought, and then you know, you give. Yeah, that is the perfect example with with Kenneth Walker, where it's like everything is so bullish, yet the market isn't really budging there in general. Michael Pittman, I would throw out there as well. Josh Downs has a high ankle spraying we don't know how much time he's gonna miss. I was pretty out on Michael Pittman. This just makes him a little bit more viable at ADP than he was previously. So yeah, there's situations where it's like the ADP is not really budging. I feel like it should be budging. Maybe now is the time to buy in on that player.

00:53:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, and get and get some exposure.

00:53:50
Speaker 3: And now I'm not gonna feel crappy if and when Kenneth Walker has a monster season this year because I'm getting my.

00:53:57
Speaker 1: Exposure to him. You know, it's nice.

00:53:58
Speaker 3: So by the time this publish, we've had this crazy drama going on with Brandon Ayuk, So who knows what's gonna happen with that Ayuk situation. But at a high level, when there is that uncertainty in the market, do you find yourself buying into that uncertainty or just kind of letting another team deal with it, Like, for instance, with this Ayuk stuff, have you been drafting Deebo higher?

00:54:20
Speaker 1: You know, obviously, if Ayuke.

00:54:21
Speaker 3: Leaves, then Deebo will be a one two turn guy consistently, right, And then at the same time, maybe you're avoiding George Pickens, because Pickens probably loses it. I mean at least around maybe two rounds of ADP and value. You know, if Ayuk were to go to Pittsburgh. Have you reacted to that at all or are you kind of just saying, you know, I've drafted a certain way over the last three months. I don't need to necessarily lean into that situation, you know, because of the way my portfolio currently looks.

00:54:49
Speaker 4: Yeah, I definitely react pretty pretty quickly to these things. That example, I was and I felt really sharp for a little while, not looking as sharp now, but I was doing a ton of Brenda you could traded team. So I was drafting, you know, Deebo mid second, then take Kittle, you know, maybe slightly ahead of ADP uh ad Riocky Pearsol onto that team, and just doing these these niner stacks that just like you make the assumption that Brandon and you gets traded, well, suddenly all of these guys look like awesome values. So so I did plenty of those types of builds when it was looking more like you would get traded. They weren't really Debo Debo Budge in ADP, like Debo was going a little bit earlier, we didn't really see that much budge from from Kittle or pearsall, so it was still really easy to get them. Yeah, I was taking advantage of that, Like, these guys could be absolutely smash picks at ADP if a you gets traded, and for a little while I was looking more likely than not that he would be traded. So so I was very much buying in a ton of Kittle and Piersol and to some extent, Debo. But as I said, Debo did move up, so it wasn't, you know, as much of a value there. But yeah, I was very much buying in on the I stuff, And at the same time, you could have played it the other way. I didn't do as much of the buying the dip on Ayuk and Pickens act, but both Ayuk and Pickens were kind of dipping for a little while. I kind of wish that I had played it that way more. I was leaning pretty heavily into the Ayuk does get traded. I wish that I had leaned a little bit more into in some lineups in different lineups. You obviously you don't want to do it within the same lineup, but in some lineups, making the bet that a YUK doesn't get traded, and you know, take advantage of the dip on both Brandon and George Pickens because you know they're they're dipping from where they were and the situation potentially has not changed. So I do like responding reacting to the news, and I'm not afraid to play it both ways, to play it like a you gets traded, to play it like I doesn't get traded. You can kind of try and build unique super teams. And at the end of the day, like my teams that I built where I made the assumption that I uke, would you get traded, It's not like they're dead like as I said, I was getting piersoll and Kittle at ADP anyway or close to ADP.

00:56:52
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:56:52
Speaker 3: I think that's the key, is like when you don't have to manipulate ADP and like reach for these guys by crazy amount, why not just do that and lean in to the you know, whether it be fifty to fifty chance at the time or whether it be even a five percent chance, Because like at the end of the day, we all have been talking about this all year, about how the second round of these Best Ball drafts are just so flat, right, And how like a wide receiver you get at the end of the second round is not that much different than a wide receiver you're getting at the front of the second round. So if you're taking debo there, it's like, Okay, that's not that big of a deal because Deebo was close enough to that kind of tier of player anyway, if not in that tier to begin with. And then on top of that, like you said, you know, it was shocking. This is just another example, like why wasn't George Kittle's ADP shifting that dramatically? Like he realistically without Brandon Ayuk. I mean, Kittle would be drafted where Dalton Kinkaid goes more than likely, right, Like, that's that's what we're looking at. But he was still in the sixth round. He was still going typically after Kyle Pitts. When this is at the peak of the Ayuke stuff. Obviously, you know, now things that have shifted a little bit, and you know, we can we can sit here and say, oh, those people were right who weren't going after the George Kittle stuff. It's like, now we're playing probability here late at the end of the day, and I do think that you know, getting a guy like Pickens during that uncertainty and that weird period or sorry, Kittle made a lot of sense, right right, So yeah, that's a really good call though, to like build these lineups independently based on these different events kind of going down.

00:58:16
Speaker 1: I like that a lot.

00:58:16
Speaker 3: One question that I've asked a lot on this show is about tight end, right. It seems deeper at the top this year, where we feel pretty comfortable with the top five or six and maybe seven, eight, maybe even up to ten. Right, Like you're looking at guys like David and Joku, who you know are very very solid picks, you know, closer to that double digit round range. But there don't seem to be a ton of late round gems like we had last year, where it was very glaring and obvious as to who to pick late at the tight end position. With all that, I mean, it was a fantastic rookie class and then obviously some other guys emerged to like a Jake Ferguson or Trey McBride. Are there any late round tight ends that you like love versus consensus this year or is it more of a I'm just building that based off of what my stacks kind of look like.

00:59:02
Speaker 4: I don't know that i'd say love relative to consensus, but yeah, there have been late round tight ends that I target. Michael Mayer is a guy that I have been drafting pretty frequently as a last round pick. You can get him in the last round on any site you want to. Basically he's almost always there. I think that he has more standalone value than people are assuming. I think that he is going to be used even with Brock Bowers there, and then obviously major contingent upside if something happens to Boers. So so I kind of feel like he's a you know, kind of a floor slash, has more ceiling than maybe he's given credit for. Tyler Conklin, a guy that I have drafted a lot of. I just seen you look at his stats from last year. He had sixty one receptions zero touchdowns, as the most receptions in the NFL to not score a touchdown. I think that there is pretty clear that and that's without Aaron Rodgers. So I think you had Aaron Rodgers into the mix a little bit of touchdown regression. I think that the ceiling is there. It was I was asked on a show yesterday. If I'm worried at all about Jeremy Rucker, which made me I should be maybe a factor that I have not been considered enough. But I have not been super worried about Jerry Record. I think that Tyler Conklin should have a big role there. Noah Fan another guy that I think is just in an offense that should be throwing more. Has some upside there, So I wouldn't say there's any like I love this guy in the final round this year there. I think in past years I have had more conviction on late round titans, and a lot of them have not really worked out for me. So maybe I'm a little bit gun shy now because I've been so wrong on late round titans. I was totally out on Trey McBride last year, for example, So so I'm not trying to make that guess as much this year. You know, THEO Johnson's sort of interesting. John new Smith another guy that I think the range of outcomes I think is pretty pretty wide for John new Smith could be just another like ancillary passing option in the Dolphins offense that just does absolutely nothing. But then you hear Mike McDaniel talk about it, like what happened last year is not guaranteed to happen this year. And I'm thinking, well, John hu could be a guy that they tried to get a little bit. So, Yeah, I think that there are some interesting late round tight ends. I don't think that I feel particularly great about any of them, like like they're slam dunk like guaranteed, you know, floor. I think there's there's ceiling picks, but I don't think there's a ton of floor late at tight end this year.

01:01:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, It's been really hard for me to have like over twelve percent exposure to some of those late round tight ends because I'm just kind of throwing darts evenly, you know, because there's just a lot of guys, like you said, you just mentioned a handful of them, even like the Colby Parkinson's of the world. It's like sure, you know, like he was my quarterback, Yeah, right, right right. I think that's probably the move.

01:01:33
Speaker 3: Then you got to hope that the guy that you're a little bit more overweight on just kind of ends up being the tight end that his cause, look, chances are there's going to be one or two of these guys in the late rounds that that end up being, because we see it every year, that end up being like fringe top ten guys.

01:01:45
Speaker 1: So yeah, I'm with you overall. Are you four or against?

01:01:49
Speaker 3: I don't even know if I've talked about this on this series so far, but are you four or against a double elite tight end build? I know a lot of people have talked about this and have implemented it as well, you know, sort of the theory being that not only are you getting you know, awesome production at the tight end position, but you're also hurting the rest of your room to some degree because they're now seeing a lesser tight end on their roster because you're gobbling up two of them. But flip side opportunity costs is high. In doing that, you know you're weaker at the other positions. Are you doing that at all or often?

01:02:22
Speaker 1: Yeah?

01:02:22
Speaker 4: I would say I'm doing it like not, not super frequently. It also depends kind of how you define elite tight end, Like if you're defining it as you know, the the top seven tight ends, where like the ADP is sixty five or higher, I would say I'm generally opposed to it, like I would prefer not to do it. I still do it occasionally, and normally when I do it, it will be if I have two great tight ends that both correlate with other players on my team, or you know, I look at the other available options there and it's like, Okay, Kelvin Ridley or George Kittle, and there are other wide receivers that I prefer later over Kelvin Ridley, So like I can take George Kittle now be on at at tight end, and then I like those those later. You know, I'm trying to who would be a later wide receiver option, Lad McConkie or you know, somebody in that elk where it's like I don't feel that much better about Calvin Ridley anyway. So you know, depending on what's available, I am willing to do double elite tight end. But then I'm if you expand elite tight end to Dave Nijoku Brockbauer's Dallas Goddard, then I'm pretty into it, in part because I really don't feel that great about any tight ends after like Dallas godd or like it gets pretty thin in a hurry for me at tight end. So due to like kind of my lack of confidence in the later tight ends. If I can just end with two tight ends in the like Dallas Goddard or better range. I do it, honestly pretty frequently, and maybe maybe it's just because I'm too nervous about those later tight ends, but just being able to finish with two tight ends feel like I'm pretty solid there. Yeah, I'm I'm pretty into taking two tight ends in that range. So it's yeah, top seven probably not all that often. I don't. I'd prefer not to take two tight ends of the top seven group, willing to do it in recent areas, but if you expand the elite tight end to include guys like Dallas Goddard, then I'm pretty into it.

01:04:12
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I've done that too.

01:04:14
Speaker 3: I've done that a lot with Rock Bauers, especially just because we know there's a lot of volatility of that profile and if he ends up hitting, then that's great, and you're not giving your league mates either that chance to have that crazy upside that he has. But we know there's that volatility, and you can still get by if that volatility doesn't hit, if you do have one of those earlier tight ends. So I'm definitely with you with some of those builds all right now, Before I let you go, give us a couple of your favorite targets, just just anywhere in the draft, guys that you're heavily exposed to this year.

01:04:42
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm pretty into the Arizona offense in general, so in the passing game more so, I'm trying to get more in on James Connor. Unfortunately, I'm trying to get more in on James Connor while the entire field is trying to get more in on James Connor. So that's been tougher. But I've been buying into Marvin Harrison junior. Like I know a lot of people are worried about him being a rookie coming in. Maybe he's not going to be great his rookie year. I'm willing to make the bet that he is going to be a rookie, just just bet on the talent and the situation. He moves into a situation where should be the wide receiver one immediately. So I'm into Marvin Harrison. Trey McBride I think is still a pretty great pick. And then of course I love Kyler. You and I actually talked about this yesterday a little bit that I don't usually take Kyler unless I have one of or both of Trey McBride and Marvin Harrison Junior. But if I have either of them and Kyler Murray comes to me anywhere near ADP, I'm slamming. I love betting on that offense. I love betting on that game seventeen Week seventeen game environment with the Rams. If I can do a full game sack there of the Cardinals and Rams, I love to do that. So I would say the Cardinals definitely an offense that I'm really into this year. The Green Bay passing game to some extent, I do have a lot of Dontavian Wicks. It's becoming a worse bet, I think now as he's kind of getting steamed up. So if he gets into that top one hundred picks, then I'm you know, I'm starting to take my foot off the gas a little bit. But I have been pretty into buying, buying into the the latter part of that Green Bay passing offense. Uh Seahawks Bears. I think there that's another that that's a Week seventeen game, both both the Seahawks and the Bears. Kind of into both of those offenses. I kind of think Caleb might start to get steamed up now, but he hasn't really moved all as much as I expected him to after the great preseason showing. So I think buying into that game environment in general is one that I like quite a bit.

01:06:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, those are all good calls, and I definitely agree that the Seattle one, like I've I've Gino Smith is one of my highest rostered quarterbacks right now, just because I don't really see a difference. I've talked about this a lot with like pocket passing quarterbacks. You know, when you get into the pocket passers, if you don't you know, obviously you're not gonna draft a naked Tua if you you know, if you don't have Jalen Moadel or hopefully you're not drafting a naked Tua. I just don't see a big difference between like Gino Smith to Tua. Like at the end of the day, like is is there really the way they score points and what they might be to do this season? So I'd rather just take the value. And then obviously there's many outs to get a Seahawks wide receiver or Seahawks piece to be able to pair them with Genos Smith. So I love those calls. Neil was great to chat with you man. Let everyone know where they can find you and your work.

01:07:16
Speaker 4: Yeah, so my work is all over the place. You can find me on Twitter at Player q dfs. I'll be doing work for Fantasy Points this year Rodeo Grinders four for four, and then of course I have my own YouTube channel called the flannel Verse, where I will be doing showdown breakdowns this nfl DFS season. But yeah, primarily on Twitter at Player qdfs.

01:07:33
Speaker 1: Awesome. I'm on Twitter at Late Round QB.

01:07:35
Speaker 3: Make sure you check out the Late Round Draft guide over on lateround dot com. Take advantage of that underdog promo. You can get that guide for absolutely free with promo code late Round, but otherwise everyone, As always, thanks for tuning in.