Becoming a Best Ball Bro: What Running Back Dead Zone?

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Hey, JJ, do you and your wife watch any trashy television?

00:00:04
Speaker 2: Yeah?

00:00:04
Speaker 3: I mean I feel like that's that's all we watch. We have Love is Blind, of course, got to watch Love is Blind. The number one though for me, a bad television that I'm an addict of and a fan of and have been since. Like elementary school more and more so middle school. High school is the Challenge. We watched the Challenge, very big challenge fan. But how about how about you.

00:00:24
Speaker 1: Guys, Johnny bananas Og that's right challenge. So just like you like stressful day, you want to just chill and watch some trash TV. So we caught the end of Love Island, USA, and the reunion was last night, and I gotta say, as bad as it was, and it was bad, it wasn't as bad as the NFL preseason has been so far.

00:00:46
Speaker 3: I'm JJ, and I've been playing in best ball leagues for years. But there are people out there who play a lot more than I do, and there are people out there who have won a lot more than I have, and I want to learn from them. This season, I'll be documenting my journey of Max entering Underdog's Best ball Mania contest, and I'll be doing so with guidance from some of the most successful best ball players on the planet. This is the year where things start to change. This is the year where I officially become a best ball bro. Welcome into another episode of becoming a best ball bro. I'm JJ Zacharieson, joined as always by my buddy Rich Ryan Rich.

00:01:31
Speaker 2: What's going on, buddy?

00:01:32
Speaker 1: Do good Man? Got my big high school keeper draft this weekend. Most of the guys they still live out east, so they do a golf outing. So being out in California, I try to go every other year. So this is the year. I am traveling red Eye out nice Thursday night, my one golf round of the year, which will go horrendously but I'm a fast golfer. I will be moving, the ball will be moving. It might not go straight, but I'm playing eddy golf.

00:02:00
Speaker 2: Baby, that's good. That look.

00:02:02
Speaker 3: Look if you're an average or below average golfer, as I am as well, and I honestly i'd barely gotten out the last couple of years since CJ. You know, it became part of our life, and you know, having two young ones around, it's just very difficult to find the time to go play some golf.

00:02:18
Speaker 2: But hopefully, you know.

00:02:19
Speaker 3: As they get older, you know, I'll get out I'll get out there and play a lot more. But look, I'm like a nineties golfer, nothing special. I just like to go out there, have some fun. And I I have my home league draft this weekend as well, so I will. I am not playing golf because we're now scattered everywhere throughout the country. But I'm jealous that you'll be able to do all that. That's always like one of the best weekends of the year.

00:02:44
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:02:44
Speaker 1: I mean, being from New Jersey, you've got Philly and New York right there. So even when people will go to college and get jobs, a lot of them just end up staying in the Northeast anyway. So yeah, just it makes that way way easier.

00:02:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, we got you know, I went to high school in Pittsburgh. We got people still in Pittsburgh. We got New York City, we got outside of DC. We got someone at in Kentucky. We have me and North Carolina. We have someone in the league that's in Florida. We're everywhere, so it makes it a little bit more difficult to you know, to do I do have my brother lives in Raleigh. I'm in Charlotte, so he's only like two two and a half hours away. He just can't make it this weekend just for other things. But usually he's able to come and we get like a little bit of a cluster because there's some people in Charlotte that are also in it to get a little bit of a cluster, and that's where I'd be going to play golf and stuff. But We're not this weekend. So I will live vicariously through you, my friend. This should be a lot of fun. So today, you know, we have the typical interview and such, but I figured that we would go over some guys that you know I've been talking about, guys I've been targeting pretty much every episode.

00:03:48
Speaker 2: This episode fourteen. We have one more left after this one, which is kind of sad.

00:03:52
Speaker 3: It'll make some people happy who have been complaining about the podcast feed having a best ball on podcast.

00:03:58
Speaker 2: Team minute episodes.

00:03:59
Speaker 3: Damn it, Yeah, only fifteen minute episodes please.

00:04:02
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:04:03
Speaker 3: It's it's been a that's been a ride. People are like, why is there all this basketball content? Guys, You're getting the exact same amount of other content that I've done every single year.

00:04:11
Speaker 2: You're just getting more stuff. That's all this is. It's nothing, you know.

00:04:15
Speaker 3: Fortunately, all the all the positives have far far outweighed the negatives from people in the feedback, especially listening to people talk about it at the Fantasy Football Expo a couple weekends ago. But I've been talking about all these players I've been targeting and like what my exposures are, and we'll talk about those next week and our final show, which will just be me and you chopping it up. But I figured that it might be not a bad idea to quickly run through some of the players that I've seemingly, whether it be on purpose or.

00:04:42
Speaker 2: Not, right just kind of faded. And I say faded.

00:04:45
Speaker 3: I don't really have zero percent of anyone that's of significance, but I do have pretty low rates for some of the guys that are in the early to mid to into the late rounds.

00:04:56
Speaker 1: And it looks like most of these are running back. Should we get the easy one, the first one you listen out of the way, Just let's one more time, let's.

00:05:04
Speaker 2: Pour dirt on the Samir White. Yeah, I have.

00:05:06
Speaker 3: I think I've less than one percent Zamir Whiter. It's at least at one percent. I had some in the big board draft before the NFL Draft happened, but then post NFL drafts, he started getting steamed up because they didn't do anything at the running back position, and so naturally I'm like, Okay, well, if his ADP is going to be worth the like you know, in this spot, I'm just not going to be that interested. To me, it's just kind of surprising that I'll go and I'll see another analyst who's in on them, and.

00:05:33
Speaker 2: I sometimes whenever there's players that.

00:05:35
Speaker 3: I'm like way out on, like Zamir White, Like I just am not drafting Zamir White this year. I want to know what the pro argument is for that player, just to understand the other side, because it's it's not very easy for me to see.

00:05:48
Speaker 2: That with White in general.

00:05:49
Speaker 3: So I'll go and I'll look at and see what other analysts are saying, and I'll click an article or it's usually analysts that I just don't know personally, and you know, so this isn't me like throwing anyone on to the bus, and I'll read the article and it's like, yeah, Zamir White's probably not going to be a pass catcher, but I still think he's a good value at RB twenty two or wherever he goes, which is earlier. He'll go earlier in like home leagues and season long drafts, even earlier than what we see in Best Ball. And I'm like, if you're openly saying that Zamir White is not going to be much of a pass catcher, and you know that he's on a team that's led by a combination of Gardner Minshew and Aidan O'Connell, and you know this team is probably going to run pretty slow pace wise, what are you expecting from Zamir White? Can he meet ADP expectation?

00:06:37
Speaker 2: Sure? Does that really matter at the end of the day, Not really.

00:06:40
Speaker 3: When you're talking about a low end RB two, high end RB three, I want more of a ceiling.

00:06:45
Speaker 2: So I think that White.

00:06:46
Speaker 3: Honestly, I wouldn't be shocked if if Alexander Madison gets more work than we realize in this offense. Throughout the season, I was taking more shots at Madison back in like June and into July. It's just that now his ADP. It's not like his ad has risen or anything. I was just kind of seeing if maybe it would rise in like this fifteenth or sixteenth and it just didn't. But I would not be surprised at all if Alexander Madison is almost like a one be in this backfield. Now do I think that's the most likely outcome? Not necessarily, but I do think that Zamir White, who's never been a pass catcher throughout his NFL career and in college he wasn't a pass catcher. They add Dylan Lowby, I just see a lot of ways this can go south. And I think from a probabilistic standpoint, I just am not that into him as a player this year.

00:07:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is one of those where, for the longest time, I think one of the bigger arguments between the stats bros and the film bros were the value of volume. And on one side, I think there is a very stringent group that said volume is everything, and there is another stringent group that said quality of player is everything. And I think this is a really good conversion where the value of the volume matters. Now, whether that be the player is great, the situation is great, and neither of those things seem to be apparent when it comes to Samir White. So what is the point of getting a bunch of perhaps first down running volume. There's not a lot. This seems like a pretty especially in Redraft. I know this is the best ball show, but it's like, especially in Redraft, it's a very obvious fit.

00:08:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I just I don't know where the ceiling is gonna come from. And sure you can make an argument that like anyone has a weekly spiked seiling, like could have a ceiling in a weekly environment, and maybe he's the guy you need week seventeen. All right, Like I get all that, but I'm trying to play probability here and say I don't think he's gonna have nearly as many spiked weeks as what you're paying for right now with Samir White.

00:08:52
Speaker 1: Right, the first running back you joked about in one of our first ever cold opens was taking this man at ADP Tomanre Stevenson. Three percent so far.

00:09:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, it scares me a little bit. Three percent is pretty low. Obviously. It scares me a little bit though, because there's some sharp people that like Ramandre Stevenson this year. My fear though, is that number one, you have an offense that's not projected to be very good, and we want to associate our running backs with strong offenses generally speaking, right in terms of like beating ADP. Sure he can beat ADP, but how far is he gonna beat ADP. You know, I've done a lot of research on this, and with middle round running backs who have rookie quarterbacks, they've never been true breakouts, which is this is from a PPR perspective, so not half PPR, but a true breakout is a middle round running back who exceeds ADP expectation by six or more PPR points per game. It's never happened since twenty fourteen. Actually hasn't happened since twenty eleven with the old ADP that I would use for those studies. So I don't think that Stevenson in fading him is necessarily gonna burn me. It could burn me from the standpoint of like this hits at this time of year. Sure, but that's the case for any player you know that we're talking about in better I just think the offense is gonna be bad, and really, I don't know how special he's been as a pass catcher to warrant a high target chair this year when they add Antonio Gibson.

00:10:09
Speaker 2: And you can say what you want about Gibson.

00:10:11
Speaker 3: But he is a pretty good pass catcher, and he's seen at least a nine and a half percent target chair per game every single year of his NFL career, because that's the part of his game that's actually not that bad.

00:10:21
Speaker 2: Is he a decisive runner? Is he a great runner?

00:10:24
Speaker 3: No?

00:10:24
Speaker 2: I still think Stevenson is going to be the early down guy.

00:10:27
Speaker 3: But I have some worry about how many you know, what that reception upside is for Stevenson, and when that hasn't been there for Stevenson, he hasn't been nearly the same kind of fantasy asset, you know, like any other running back, right like you need that kind of work unless you're David Montgomery or Raheem Mostert and you're gonna score thirteen plus touchdowns. I don't think that's going to be the case with Rondre Stevenson because he's on a New England team that projects to be pretty bad. And if they do go with Drake May later in the season, which I think they probably will end up doing, that's not necessarily a good thing for him either. From like a goal line rep, I mean, we are we saw it in the preseason. Drake May has taken it at the goal line, scored rushing a rushing touchdown like that, that can get in his way too. So I just don't know where the upside really is for Andre Stevenson amongst a group of running backs that really are good. Like I love the Pittsburgh running backs. I really like taking the Cincinnati running backs. I really like taking the Tennessee running backs. I would just rather go in that direction, even though it's a wide receiver like death pit in that area of the draft, like there's really no one that you let really yeah, Like every.

00:11:30
Speaker 1: Time the seventh round comes up as just my underdog is Blue's exactly.

00:11:38
Speaker 2: Exactly.

00:11:38
Speaker 3: Like if you don't take JSN or something, then all of a sudden you're like, Okay, now I have to reach for Courtland Sutton, and he's not a high ceiling player, you know. It's a little bit different in best Ball with Sutton, I think, but like Managed season Long is definitely not a high ceiling player.

00:11:52
Speaker 2: You know. But there's a ton of running backs.

00:11:54
Speaker 3: There's also pretty good quarterbacks there too, because sometimes a guy like Kyler will slip to the end of the seventh round, you know, Joe Burrow's there, then Dak is there, Jordan Love is there. There's just a lot of other alternatives. I just like more, and that's playing a role in the Stevenson fade. The fade is not as dramatic as it is though a Zmir White. I think Zamir White, like I said, less than one percent. I think I've drafted him in one maybe one BBM all season. I'm through one hundred and thirty one at this point. But with Ramandre Stevenson, at times I'm drafting him. At times I have three percent Remandre, but I have pretty flat exposure across the boards. That's pretty low for me in general.

00:12:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was gonna wrap a bow on these two players because they're quite literally back to back in ADP and you just talked about it. One of the biggest reasons is we just like the other guys around them at running back specifically, it's the three going ahead of them are James Connor, Aaron Jones, and Nase and the three going after them are Jalen Warren, get will soon my guy DeAndre Swift, who we don't love as much, but Rahim Mostter, who is tied again. The value of volume, the value of all in Miami is light years better than what's available in New England.

00:13:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, the thing when you think about like outcomes and like higher end outcomes, and I'm not even like overexposed to Raheem Moster. I think that he's a fine He's a better pick to me than ramondre Stevenson. But the thing with like Mostert is how much more volume is Ramondre Stevenson in a in a seventy fifth percent out percentile outcome? How much more volume is Ramondre Stevenson going to see on the ground than Raheem Moster. You might say maybe fifty more carries in like a solid outcome, and it's like, okay, maybe that's even high.

00:13:33
Speaker 2: Let's say twenty to thirty, Like, and that's in.

00:13:36
Speaker 3: A New England offense where he might average more than a yard to yard and a half carry less while not seeing nearly the same amount of goal line work. Like why not go after the players who are just attached to these better Offens's even like you know a Chase Brown who I'm really high on and have a lot of exposure to, or even a Zach Moss, Like, is Zach Moss really that much different than Andre Stevenson? If you if you want to, Like I know people are yelling at at this podcast right now and saying, like, yes, of course he's different because he has Chase Brown is more competition than Antonio Gibson. It's like, okay, but it can still go south for Chase Brown too, Like it's not it's not a lock that Chase Brown is gonna be awesome. I just hope that he's awesome based on the bets that I'm placing.

00:14:19
Speaker 1: But yeah, the contingent upside for Demandre is more carries in a bad offense. The contingent upside for Zach Mows is more carries in an electric offense.

00:14:27
Speaker 3: Exactly exactly. I just don't know where the upside is coming from some of these running backs.

00:14:31
Speaker 1: Absolutely all right, let's get to two higher end running backs that you have lower exposure on four percent on both Ky and Williams and Josh Jacobs. Josh Jacobs has obviously been become more interesting with the Marshawn Lloyd injury, and I guess that's one of the reasons why some nerves are creeping in as we creep towards for season.

00:14:50
Speaker 3: Like if Marshaon Lloyd were totally healthy, and I didn't have any question marks about his health. You know, I've been I texted doctor Edwin poor Ross about this a little bit, and he's concerned about Marshaon Lloyd. So I haven't really been drafting any Marshawn Lloyd over the last couple of weeks. And I mentioned last week that I'm trying to get a little bit more Josh Jacobs. I wish I was at like six percent with him, I think, which might not seem that dramatic, but it's, you know, it's something like to just get a little bit more Jacobs. The problem is is that his ADP has risen, and like it's difficult when you know, you're trying to get exposure to like a Xavier Worthy and some of these like really intriguing wide receivers and so you're kind of playing that balancing act a little bit.

00:15:27
Speaker 2: So I'm trying to get a little bit more Jacobs.

00:15:29
Speaker 3: The Kien Williams stuff, I understand could ghost Like I understand both of these players could burn me.

00:15:36
Speaker 2: Right.

00:15:36
Speaker 3: The Kien Williams stuff, I've just been lower on him versus the market throughout the offseason. You know, within my positional rankings, it's not that dramatic. I think I still have him at like RB nine or something like that. But I mentioned it on the show, you know, two months ago, where I said, at that moment, I'd rather have Derrick Henry than Kien Williams. I'd say it's probably more fifty to fifty right now with those two. I don't really have that much Dereck Henry either, because I'm mostly going and opting for wide receivers where they go now because they're going in the early or the early third more frequently than when they were going in the late third, where it's a little bit easier.

00:16:10
Speaker 2: To get them.

00:16:11
Speaker 3: But yeah, man, like I know that it can go south for Kiren because Sean McVay loves him, and it could be a very simple answer of Kyrien's our guy.

00:16:19
Speaker 2: We're going to give him a belcow workload.

00:16:21
Speaker 3: But I'm looking at past ADP just history and trends, and what I found is RB one's top twelve running backs who have bad prospect scores or you know, not elite prospect scores, they generally underperform versus the alternative. And then also when a running back in the top twelve as a running back that's getting drafted relatively high on the same backfield Blake Korum. That also limits the upside of what that running back might do. And so that's my fear is that they use Korum. You know, they go out, they get a guy who's kind of exactly like Kien Williams or the guy who matches closest to Williams in the NFL draft this year, they spend a Day two pick on them. There's some fear that Quorum ends up playing a bigger role. I actually have a decent bit of Quorum too in Best Ballmania. Oddly, I don't have him that much elsewhere. It's like all of my Quorum exposure just has gone to Best Balmania. But I have a decent amount of Blake Korum in Best Ballmania. I wish the exposure delta was a little bit shrunk between the two for sure. So like, I wish both of these guys were closer to like five or six percent. Maybe I can get it up a little bit over the next nineteen drafts. But yeah, I mean That's where I'm at with both of these backs right now.

00:17:30
Speaker 1: Started the summer, Karen Williams is going nearly in the first round. But again, you nailed it. Now just two picks separate Derrick Henry and Kien Williams. And even Kien Williams himself has talked about it's going to be important to keep himself fresh this season. Like that is straight from the horse's mouth.

00:17:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah, scary.

00:17:50
Speaker 1: If yeah, If that's not changing your perspective, I'm not sure what will. All right, keeping it out in la my pants flew off this week weekend when God Camanie Videll rose from the dead with two explosive runs. I'll tell you the second one is like exactly what they drafted him for. So they ran off the left end and they left the right tackle pulled, so they let the left defender sprint in untouched and you need the back to hit the edge and get there, and he just absolutely dusted the guy. So it's exactly what we were looking for. However, you are a bit nervous that you only have four percent exposure to JK. Dobbins.

00:18:34
Speaker 3: I am nervous because I think Dobbins is going to open up the season as a starter and get the most work in that backfield and get you know, and when I say most work, I mean just overall work. He'll get more work as a receiver than Gus Edwards will. And so I have some like I wish that I had drafted a lot more JK. Dobbins in June because I think now it's just really really hard to get exposure to Dobbins based on where he's going. And part of the thesis though with Dobbins is the front half production might be there, but you've got to be worried about what he might be able to do across seventeen games right coming off this Achilles.

00:19:08
Speaker 2: He's been injured throughout his entire career.

00:19:10
Speaker 3: So I think that we're in this phase and I talk about this a lot with our guests today, but I think we're in this weird phase where we're so hyper fixated on what's going on in week one and week two and early on in the season when that really doesn't matter that much at the end of the day. And so I have a lot of Videll I talked about that last week bastball Mania, not as much as like my overall portfolio, but still in the double digit percentages. And you know, I feel good about how things were broken down last week with Videll on this show where you know, it was sure there's this risk that he doesn't make the team. There's still a risk that he doesn't make the team. But at the same time, you know, I think that it was a little bit overblown. As I talked about last week, and then I still thought that there was at least at least a fifty to fifty chance that he would he would make the team, even though it was being reported that he wouldn't make the team. And then now after this past weekend, we should feel pretty confident. So like taking a break on the way that I did for like a week or so and not drafting him that much, I think is okay, Because now I got into BBMS on Sunday night, after the weekend was over. Two BBMS I drafted videl on both of them in the sixteenth round or seventeenth round. Like his ADP hasn't reacted, it hasn't shifted back up to where it probably should be. But the Dobbins stuff, it does scare me a little bit because there's always the chance that he does stay healthy and he's gonna get the first crack, and that's always a little bit scary. If you're not you know, heavily exposed enough, but I'm at four percent. I'll probably still I might end up being lower than that, just because I don't really feel that comfortable drafting Dobbins, you know, in like the thirteenth round where he's going now, even though I saw him in like the twelfth and the eleventh or maybe twelfth in a recent BBM. It's just really really difficult knowing that this is a back heavy to tournament where you know that week fifteen in sixteen seventeen matter just as much as weeks one to fourteen. And think about JK Dobbins lasting the full season, like, props to him if he's able to do that, not rooting against the dude that would be screwed up.

00:21:04
Speaker 2: But I just I don't have that much faith that he's gonna be able to do that.

00:21:07
Speaker 1: And you said last week, if if you were one of those people that read that Athletic article and you thought it was jover for Camani Videll, the pivot was JK. Dobbins. So it makes sense that you're a bit nervous here if he's able to remain healthy and play into those valuable playoffs. All right, From the Chargers to a former Charger and a current New York Jet, a man who has come off the pupp list faster than Breace Hall did last year. It's Mike Williams.

00:21:36
Speaker 2: Are you ready?

00:21:37
Speaker 4: Oh?

00:21:37
Speaker 3: Look, I do have some fear that Mike Williams ends up having like a better than expected season this year because when he plays, when he plays, he's really not that bad. But the problem is he just doesn't really necessarily play all that much. He only played three last year, He missed games the year before that. He wasn't even like that fantastic. He really hasn't given us like like elite, like really strong production since twenty one. And that's the fear. He's an older wide receiver at this point. He can't stay healthy. You know, the Jets should be a lot better offensively. I still worry about like the pace of that offense, just a number of plays that they'll run. We know that Aaron Rodgers is very methodical with the way that he runs his offenses, and so I'm just a little bit concerned. I have three percent Mike Williams. That's on the lower side. He kind of stood out.

00:22:23
Speaker 2: When I was looking at exposures today. One to shout him out.

00:22:26
Speaker 3: I'm just worried about his age, his health, all the stuff that everyone else is worried about.

00:22:30
Speaker 1: And then one last one at the tight end position. They're on hard knocks that've got all the buzz. Caleb Williams can make all the throws. It's Cole Commet.

00:22:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, less than one percent, Cole commit I think I only have one share, and it was in a Caleb Williams lineup. But look, I just don't really understand the allure of the at best number four pass catching option in this offense with a rookie quarterback on a team that's also going to be using Gerald Everett a good bit. I mean, there's been talk that Gerald Everett could just see better per production than Cole Comet this year, so him going in a range, he was going in a range for a lot of the offseason, as like friar Mouth and TJ. Hockinson, And I would much rather take a guy like Hockinson and get potential second half production, you know, from him, and just get some cheap targets and such from him coming off that injury, as opposed to just going with Cole Kmet and hoping for injuries to happen across the board in Chicago. So he's someone that I just have not invested in really whatsoever?

00:23:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, sandwich between TJ. Hockinson and Luke Musgrave, two guys that we absolutely love as players in better offenses. I know everyone's hyped about the Bears offense, but wow, I guess with with Darnold, we'll wait to see. But I still believe in KOs.

00:23:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, same here.

00:23:45
Speaker 3: I honestly i've seen, you know, justin Jefferson fall below like aman Ros Saint Brown, I'm not I think it's a pretty neutral move going from what we might have thought with JJ McCarthy.

00:23:55
Speaker 1: It wasn't his value. Wasn't JJ's value like set based on kind of the ambiguity at quarterback already? Like yeah, I thought that that's what I thought, if we thought the quarterback was going to be good like JJ would be more like pushing towards three.

00:24:07
Speaker 2: Four, right, right, right, I was.

00:24:10
Speaker 3: I was a little bit surprised that we've seen a slight, slight shift. I mean, it's only one pick, but it is that's not insignificant when you're talking about a top five pick in the draft. Yeah, I mean, like, I don't really see a massive difference between what we would have expected to see from Sam Donald in this offense versus what we would expect to see. This is purely from a fantasy perspective, right, Like, purely from a volume perspective and from a like passing numbers perspective, all of that kind of stuff. I mean, I would hesitate to look at like Nick Mullen's numbers down the stretch last year and just kind of layer that on top and say Sam Donald can do this because the matchups were there.

00:24:45
Speaker 2: He did that against Detroit too. Detroit was very, very beatable.

00:24:48
Speaker 1: He played some awful secondary Yeah.

00:24:50
Speaker 2: Right, righttly right.

00:24:51
Speaker 3: But at the same time, we know that this offense is one that can throw for a lot of yards, and there's not much competition there for justin Jefferson at all, especially Jordan Aison being banged up a little bit, and also maybe maybe I don't think that's going to happen, but a possible suspension coming his way. So yeah, I'm a little bit surprised by that. I don't think that much to change. I think Sam Darnold is actually really undervalued right now, especially as a player who you know early on in the Best Ball season probably wasn't drafted a whole lot, so you can get a little bit of an edge from that perspective. From an ownership perspective as well, And I mean, I think that you should be drafted where like Baker Mayfield and Gino Smith go where with Donald because I don't think that they're gonna add another player to be starter in that offense. I think it's just gonna be Donald this year. And obviously the environment could be worse. It's not like ideal, but it could definitely be worse. Anyway, we have an interview today. This is the last interview of the Becoming a Best Ball bro series. This is episode fourteen, so it's the I guess it's the thirteenth interview because the first one we did was just.

00:25:52
Speaker 2: Me and you chatting it up, and we'll do that again next week.

00:25:54
Speaker 3: But I talked to Jacob Sanderson, who I think is one of the sharpest people in the face fantasy space. He doesn't only do Best Ball, he'll do Dynasty and some season long stuff as well. But he's a really, really great thinker with this stuff. Loves game theory. He has a sub stack thinking about thinking that you guys should definitely check out.

00:26:12
Speaker 2: But our conversation was great.

00:26:14
Speaker 3: Like I said, we chatted a lot of game theory in this one, how to use coach speak, how we approach news items like the Commandie videll stuff from last week. We had a deep conversation about the running back dead zone, which I think that if you're playing season long, you'll even get some takeaways from that discussion, and ended up being more of like a back and forth conversation as opposed to me just kind of giving questions, which is what I like more whenever I can chime in a little bit and we can go back and forth and just discuss the items. So hopefully you guys enjoy the conversation as much as I did. Without further ado, here is my talk with Jacob Sanderson. This episode is sponsored by Underdog Fantasy. If you haven't played over an 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. I'm becoming a best Ball bro to crush those drafts. 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.

00:27:21
Speaker 2: For absolutely free.

00:27:23
Speaker 3: 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.

00:27:33
Speaker 2: Now back to the show.

00:27:36
Speaker 3: So Jacob, we get beat reporters and reports this time of year where they project their fifty three man rosters. Last week we had that crazy situation with Kamani Vadel. Daniel Popper had that article come out where Videll did not make the fifty three man roster. Talked about it a little bit on becoming a best ball bro last week, where you know, I was a little bit iffy on what that really meant and you know whether or not he really would make that roster.

00:28:01
Speaker 2: You know, I was more on the optimistic side than others.

00:28:04
Speaker 3: But when something like that happens, are you then sort of auto fading that player? Does it?

00:28:09
Speaker 2: Depend?

00:28:10
Speaker 3: Obviously depends on the situation and sort of where you're drafting that guy. But do you lean into uncertainty more so in those situations in best Ball, or do you say, hey, look there's some legit ness to this report and I don't necessarily want to draft this guy anymore.

00:28:25
Speaker 4: I think it's case specific every time, you know, I think you do want to lean into uncertainty in some spots. This was a spot where I thought it was justifiable to get scared off, at least on a temporary basis. Like, realistically, in the grand scheme of this tournament, what does it cost to you if Kamani Vidal ends up on the roster and you just took a week off from drafting him in like the fourteenth or the sixteenth or the seventeenth or whatever, and then okay, so then he looks more secure, you have to go back to drafting him in the fourteenth instead of getting him in the sixteenth. It's like, that's not a very large cost to me. And in a redraft setting, it's just not a very large cost to have your fifteenth round pick get cut. But in a Best Paul setting, it really is. When you have that massive goose egg on your roster, Like I remember having Ronald Jones on the Chiefs on some teams like a while ago, and it's just like that's just that's just like a completely dead spot, right, So I do think you want to try and stay ahead of the game to some degree if if the risk looks that dire and in this spot, like I don't know, I liked the dolls of prospect, and I know that you did as well. I thought he was undervalued by the NFL relative to being a sixth round pick. But by that I mean like I think you should have been like a fourth round, like like I was, like, this guy's superstar and he's the second coming, and I have a ton of conviction about this guy, right, So I think it's a little harder when it's already kind of a thinner bet. And if we're just not getting any sort of reporting about a certain guy, like do I want to be there saying like no, like I know better struggle with that. But if people did, I think they probably went out. I would say he looks far more favored to be on the roster at this point.

00:30:06
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:30:07
Speaker 3: The other thing, too, is that I have found more anecdotally that with a player like Videll, for instance, because I agree with you, that's the exact approach that I took. I talked about it last week where I'm like, I'm going to not draft him right now because that would be insane to continue to just like draft him in the fourteenth plus rounds after getting an article and report like this, because what is the true equity gained at the end of the day, right. But I do think that what's interesting is that when we do get sort of the contradiction to a report like that, which in this case, I think the contradiction is number one. Popper came out then yesterday and said, hey, he's on my fifty three man now, right, But also we saw Videll in action finally, because yeah, and you look good, he's.

00:30:51
Speaker 2: No longer hurt.

00:30:52
Speaker 3: All of that, And immediately I did two BBMS on Sunday night, and I got Videll on both BBMS because his ADP didn't necessarily reflect what we saw over the weekend. And so I think that if you're in that state of like fading the player for that brief period of time, you can still if you react quick enough, you can still get them at that decreased cost. Because I got him in like the seventeenth round in both drafts, right where I think he probably should be in that like fourteenth fifteenth round range.

00:31:19
Speaker 2: So I'm getting, you know, a couple of rounds of equity. It's not very significant.

00:31:22
Speaker 3: I've always said, like, I haven't really found a difference between like a fifteenth rounder and an eighteenth rounder. But you know, at the end of the day, like you are still gaining some of that, and so I do think there might be.

00:31:32
Speaker 2: A little bit slow of a market correction, if you will.

00:31:35
Speaker 3: Whenever we see a guy tank, you know, it's not just going to be an immediate like you know, unless something crazy and obvious happens, it won't be as like of an immediate spike back up. But you mentioned something specific here about taking a zero. You took a zero with Ronald Jones a couple years ago when you know he was on the Chiefs. Are you a believer because like to me, in redraft, as you noted a guy like Kamani Videl even when all this was going on, I was still telling people to draft him and redraft because it did not matter and a manage season long league, right, But in best ball, it's a little bit different because you don't have the waiver wire.

00:32:07
Speaker 2: You're not, you know, making up for those zeros on your roster.

00:32:11
Speaker 3: So are you a believer that one of the sort of core goals of Best Ball is to avoid zeros at all costs.

00:32:19
Speaker 2: Yes and no.

00:32:20
Speaker 4: But I do think in these in these teams you're I think every player sorts a different purpose, right, And I think you have to be a little bit more careful in terms of how you're constructing the texture of your roster versus redraft, where like you mentioned redraft, for me, after a certain point, it's just like what's the highest upside player remaining and just full throttle pedal down every single time, basically over the last half of the draft. Right. One guy that would be an example of someone that I'm pretty interested in taking in redraft that I've been a more skittish about in Best Ball is JK. Dobbins, Vidals teammate, where Like in redraft, to me, watching the first couple of weeks, he's probably gonna play and then just see like does this guy look any good or does he look totally cooked? And if he looks cooked, then you cut him. And it's really not a big issue. You probably spent thirteenth round pick on him, and you'll bring someone up off the waivers. But if he's totally cooked in best ball and he's just not a factor down the stretch, like that has some legitimate harm. Because Mike Leoni's done a ton of great work on this, you're really benefited by how many different permutations of the eight players that don't ultimately end up on your roster you can make with your eighteen players and you get to the playoff rounds, in part just because it makes it easier to score, in part because when you look at the teams come week seventeen, and like, you know, Leoni's done this thing where he'll run the simulator and sort of he'll show the equity of each team going into Week seventeen, and what you'll usually notice is the teams that made it with more zeros probably had to rely on the most conventional big hits in the previous weeks, which means they're very highly owned going into the finals. And if you only have fourteen active players and like six of them are twenty five percent plus owned, it just leaves you with very little margin of error for how you're going to pull away from the field because everyone that you can benefit from, everybody else benefits from that, they have more levers that they can pull. So I do think that it matters. But my caveat to that is I don't think that means we want to be drafting fearfully. Yeah, I don't think that means we want to be drafting with we can't take any rookies, we can't take anybody that might have an intro like that. Stuff, to me is going too far when you look at who's had the biggest spike weeks. And I did an article earlier on thinking about thinking called what if He's not the guy you need, which was I looked at all the people that had done twenty five plus points in the Best Ball playoffs, and what I found was primarily these were players that had also been hit season long, or those that hadn't had had a history of being big hits in previous seasons. So like someone like DeVante Adams last year, for instance, not a great click over the course of last season, but nobody really went into Week seventeen doubting that DeVante Adams was capable of a mass of performance in a given week, And so I don't think you want to be deferring legitimate breakout bets, which are usually rookies, second year players contingent upside running backs in late rounds to just draft like an entire team full of route eating wide receivers who probably don't have that type of upside. But at the same time, you probably want to mix in some of those guys, right, I draft a ton of rookies in the mid rounds. It's just always been sort of how I build my teams. On certain teams like that, I don't think it's bad to mix in one, you know, like a Greg Dortsch type. Who's right, guys something, Yeah, exactly? Is this the guy that I'm probably going to be putting my chips on week seventeen to bring me the money? Probably not, But could it help my team if he mixes in a couple of ten point twelve point weeks along the way when Keon Coleman is ramping up on this roster, or you know what, if she Rice ends up actually getting suspended at some point, stuff like that. I would rather spend those of safety valve picks when the chances of hitting on those rookies is very, very low. Compared to you know, doing it thinking with that mindset from round one onward and really cutting off my upside.

00:36:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I also think with the zero talk, there's a lot of overconfidence in the market if we're being honest, right, like especially when we're talking like round fifteen onward, where we look at a depth charge and we're like, well, there's no way this guy doesn't get some production. I think a really good example of that is like the Denver wide receivers right now, where Courtland, Sutton, Shore whatever, He's gonna you know, run routes and be out there and get production. But beyond that, we really don't have a general idea of what's gonna go on there. But you look at you know, percentage, like the amount that these guys have been drafted, and a guy like Marvin Mims, even Troy Franklin, who they're saying that this could just be a red shirt year for Troy Franklin at the end of the day. And then you have some of these veteran pieces like a Tim Patrick or Josh Reynolds who might end up getting a lot more run than those guys. So I also think that like there's that component to it too, where you know, we have these archetypes of like these rookies and these veterans, and these rookies may end up, you know, being zero, just because there's a lot of volatility to that profile. Sure, and yeah, we're talking about younger guys versus more veterans in the Bronco with the Broncos wide receivers, and anything can go in any direction at this point. It's just the fact that, like there is such a strong lean towards the Marvin Mims and Troy Franklin in that wide receiver room versus the other guys where it's like, okay, like let's take a step back and realize that this might not go down the way we think it's going to go down.

00:37:35
Speaker 4: Well, we just get locked into the ADP so early, I think, where the ADP settles in kind of an arbitrary way at the beginning, and then everybody just kind of lives with it, and you know, you get into these spots where all of a sudden, like some of the the doll stuff or other similar like Kendre Miller, where it's like you get some sort of disruptive report or something, and sometimes it just causes you to look and be like, you know, why am I so much more certain except one of these bets that I'm taking one guy every time in the fourteenth round versus never clicking a guy who's never even clicked right, Like why why is Will Shipley like now he gets drafted, but like a while ago he was just like never even getting drafted right, And he was also day three running back, pretty plausible path to being RB two. And it's like other guys that are kind of similar end up going right, And I mean, we see it's funny. I do think with these zeros sometimes people you mentioned people getting too certain that people get in their own way, Like two guys that spring to mind as guys that everybody was really pitching as hey, look, got to draft these guys, they won't be a zero. Were Elijah Mitchell and Clyde Edwards Hilaire. Yeah, and it kind of looks like they might be zeros. I mean maybe, maybe not. We'll see how the season shakes out that. Like you were probably and this is Captain hindsight, but like you're probably better off drafting like Will Shipley all along over those guys, even though it seemed like they were entrenched in the two, And I think that there is an anti fragile element to some of this that you want to think through, where at least if you're betting on the rookie and he doesn't get the chance right away, you can at least see a vision where Okay, he wasn't ready for week one and he's probably not going to be like a smash pick, but at least over the course of the season, maybe they want to see what they have and a certain guy and things start to break in their direction. Another example this would be like Darius Slayton versus Jalen Hyatt. It's I think more important for Slayton to win the week one role than it is Hyatt. Right, Like, if Slayton just is not in the plans from week one, it's like, I don't really know how he gets in the plans versus you could see Slayton starting out that way and then over the course of the season, maybe the Giants done out a very good year and they go, well, let's see what's up with the third round player that we drafted last year. Maybe give him more opportunities.

00:39:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the same thing with quarterbacks, right when you have a young quarterback that's uncertain.

00:39:51
Speaker 2: We don't know what his future is going to look like.

00:39:54
Speaker 3: I mean I felt that way with like Darnold versus JJ McCarthy, right, I was drafting more McCarthy than Darnold because, like bottom line was, if Minnesota went south, then they were gonna use JJ McCarthy at the end of the year, and that's when we want that production, right, And it's very similar. I think the obvious example is the Raiders room, where it's like, yeah, okay, if Gardner Minshew did not start the season off as starter, why would they make the switch halfway through the year if they're hypothetically bad, like they probably want to just know what they would have and Aidan O'Connell and so now, you know, going with a veteran versus that, I do think that there's obviously a massive, massive risk that Gardner Minshew gets benched sooner rather than later, and then and then they get yeah, yeah, right, right right, and then and then AOC steps in and then all of a sudden, you know, not that he's going to have like a crazy high ceiling more than likely, but you know, the younger guy usually is going to get that run towards the end of the year. Now this is all sort of in the same discussion as like coach speak, because we're using a lot of uh, the information that's out there from beat reporters, uh and during camp, et cetera, et cetera, and we're trying to make action items from what we're reading. And my question to you is, what do you think drafters sort of get wrong most with coach speak and as sort of a majority, do you think that people take it too far or do they not take it far enough?

00:41:14
Speaker 4: I get so tilted by not not like specifically the coach Speak index guy, who I think is performing Yeoman's work, but by like reactions to code speak that I could do like a whole episode on this stuff, but it tilts me every year. It's like, we all do all this research in you know, from February onward, and it's a combination of we do, like especially the stuff that you do, where it's very like systemic, sort of wide ranging research about certain archetypes of players that we want to target or fade, and then you get into you know, the late spring and the early summer, and all these people are doing all this research on specific players and why they're priorities or not priorities, especially with rookies. Right everybody's doing these big deep dives into all these specific rookies and what we think of them. And we all also know from the more zoomed out research that like all these rookies come through a different timelines, and we know in our minds that Devanie Chan was a healthy scratch Week one last year ended up being one of the best picks you could have made, Tyler Algier was a healthy scratch two years ago. Week one ends up being a really important piece down the stretch. And then as soon as we get any sort of news that that rookie that if you'd asked us in May, are you drafting him because of his Week one role or because of what he's going to do late in the season, you say, oh, man, late in the season, you got to play for late in the season, And then they're like, he might not have a big Week one role, and it's like, oh my god, yes, and I just it's it's really odd to me. Trey Benson is one that sticks out in my mind where, Okay, when he was drafted immediately, was there a chance that the summer could have gone in a way where our expectation is that he plays like thirty five to forty percent of the snaps week one and Connor plays the other sixty. Yeah, that's that was like path and that path is probably closed, and so that's that's worthy of some degree of a move down the rankings from where we had him early. But like, do I think it's appropriate to just like fundamentally change whatever your evaluation was on Trey Benson as a college prospect because he like had seven bad carries in his first preseason game and he's not particularly high on the depth chart as a third round rookie. Like, I just think that's silly, and I think people need to stop acting like things are entrenched and just like I want people to be serious for one second, right, Like if James Connor goes down with a serious injury and the Cardinal's backfield is Benson, Michael Carter and Amaro de Mercado, like zoom out, don't focus too much on, like, okay, who is going to have the long down and distance snaps and this can like just who's going to get the shot to play? And it's like it's pretty obviously to me way more likely that the six foot two hundred and fifteen pound, four to three nine running third round rookie is going to get a bunch of touches then, like these two kind of satellite backs on the fringe of the league, Like it's just that's just how it works. And maybe he's not going to take the shot and run with it, but that's still what's going to happen. And if you're thinking about how does Trey Benson end up on the winning Best ball Mania team, it doesn't really matter if he's playing thirty percent of snaps next to healthy James Connor. Like the way he ends up on that Best balm Mania winning team is probably James Connor either gets hurt or you know, the Grim Reaper shows up on his door and he's washed all of a sudden, and it's Benson that's taking over down the stretch. And I think people lose track of that when they zoom out that like these beat reports and these things, First of all, they just might not even be necessarily accurate, because a lot of times it's a person's opinion. But also even if they're perfectly accurate, like they're just a snapshot in time, right, people talk about this with like election polling, It's like it's just a snapshot in time. It doesn't predict how things are going to flow in the future. So just because somebody is in the depth chart now or fourth in the depth chart now, doesn't mean that's going to be how they are later. I think you take this coach speaks stuff seriously when it comes up, especially with more veteran players, especially when it's more negative towards those players, where usually you get more deference to them. But for rookies, I really think if a rookie starts to dip and it seems kind of arbitrary, I would want to be the one buying into that as much as I can late in the season on guys like a Benson.

00:45:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more.

00:45:29
Speaker 3: I think the rookie stuff is just so ungodly important to drill down into and to talk about. Because I even saw, you know, a report I think Pat Thorman had tweeted it. He didn't have an opinion with it, he was just tweeting it about Taekwon Thornton potentially playing the X and starting for the Patriots this year, right, And I saw some responses about, oh, this is horrible for Javon Baker, he must be really really bad if Taekwon Thornton is gonna get run over him to start the season. And you know, I kind of just like relay it back to anything that you do in your regular life. Like let's say that you're going to train for a half marathon, right, I trained for a half marathon earlier in the year. And when you first go out and you start running, you know, if you're not used to longer distances, you're not going to be very good at it, right. But as you just get more reps and you do it more and more, eventually you're like, oh, I can run thirteen miles. This isn't really as bad as I thought it was going to be. And that's exactly what happens with younger players in the NFL. Some of them can step in and immediately adapt. They can immediately go out for that run and run ten miles and feel fine just because they have the mentality and they had the body of work and we just didn't realize they had the body of work. But there's gonna be some guys that just need some time to ramp themselves up, and you hope in this instance where we're talking you know, best Ball and such and really in dynasty too, because we want them to hit immediately, you know, just from an asset evaluation standpoint. You know, you hope that they can do well during year one, but it's not always going to be at the beginning of the season. And there are also coaching biases where coaches just don't want those I mean, justin Jefferson wasn't a starter to start his NFL career, right, Like, it took them two and a half weeks, three weeks to get him in the starting lineup, and then he breaks records after he gets in the starting lineup. We have to take it a step back and take a step back and realize that there are a lot of factors as to why this player or this player, this player, this rookie is not getting run, you know, to start the season.

00:47:22
Speaker 2: I think that Devon ah Chan example is just brilliant, right.

00:47:25
Speaker 3: It's like the dude was a healthy scratch, everyone was dropping him in their fantasy leagues, and then he becomes a league winner at the end of the day.

00:47:32
Speaker 4: Yeah, It's just every coach is going to handle these types of situations in their own way, right, And it's going to depend on the backfield. It's going to be found the player. It's going to depend on if they miss the time. But I think you just need to give it a little bit of patience. And the other thing that people can get trapped in is especially when there's like players that we know aren't good and the coach speak is very positive on them having a role. It's like how many times is it that we see these plays get in these roles and then people are like, wait, do we have to draft this guy? And it's like usually probably don't have to draft this right, Like, like like we know type onon Thornton is at this point, I'm pretty confident he's not He's not a draftable player to me, Like we've seen it and it's not very very good. Same thing with some of the Denver receivers right, Like, to me, if you think if you think that like they're going to be running Tim Patrick and Josh Reynolds on every route, right, the answer to me isn't fill out my Tim Patrick and Josh Reynolds bags. It's like I'm kind of taking out of a look at Courtland Sutton and going like maybe maybe he's earning more targets than I thought, right, if he's playing all year next to these guys or like man, I thought they were gonna throw eighty percent of their passes to running backs and it's gonna be eighty five percent. So it's it's stuff like that too. And also I think people should just kind of pay attention to how good players look too, Like that's kind of what's more important. I think that sometimes people forget that the coaches are probably also caring about that and not just stuck on whatever their depth chart was in the second week of the preseason. Like h M was an example of this last year where people were knocking him in the preseason for playing, you know, behind Jeff Wilson or whatever. But like I think people were forgetting or sell an Offman, people were forgetting like he actually just looked really good in preseason, Like he had a few big runs. He was used on these angle routes out of the backfield. To me, it was like, okay, yeah, he came in in the second half and that probably says something about his Week one role. But they're using him in unique ways. He looks really good at football. Like to me, I think you want to buy into that stuff. So like Jermaine Burden would be another example of that too, where he was plummeting after Week one of the preseason, and I get it to some degree, but I kind of got more excited about drafting him. Like all we had heard from camp was that he was behind Yoshi Vas, So it wasn't really all that odd to me that he then looked like he was behind Yoshi Vas in the first preseason game. But what was encouraging was, you know, if we had just seen him get stonewalled on every route, I'd be like, well, that's why he's behind Yoshavas.

00:50:03
Speaker 2: He sucks.

00:50:04
Speaker 4: But like him going out and bawling is like, oh, like, he looks quite good. I think he's probably gonna get a chance to play at some point if your a third round tick and you look that talented so and sure enough, you know, he starts to get up higher in the rotation very next practice. So I started drafting him more after that preseason.

00:50:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, obviously you you hate whenever because like I was drafting Jermaine Burton throughout the off season, throughout the summer, and then you see his ADP dip and you're like Okay, I lost on that bet already, like just just from the standpoint of Costa entry. But you know, I even said this on a recent episode, the one that published yesterday, you know, of the Late Round podcast, where I'm like, Okay, look at this situation, they can absolutely have a one to one Tyler Boyd replacement with Andrea Yostavash if that's if that's the direction they want to hypothetically go in, right, Like, yes, that's that can absolutely happen. But we're also like, take a step back and look at the prospect. Okay, he does very little as a rookie. He's coming from a small prog and Princeton. You're talking Ivy League football right now, like like, who's the best wide out of Justin Watson that's come from from these programs? Right and so so you know, we know that he was you know, you might have liked him as a prospect enough, but he's still not some like Studley prospect. Not to say that Jermaine Burton automatically is, but we're talking about a pretty solid prospect on paper coming from a huge program, who also had good marks throughout and who probably fell in the draft because of some off the field stuff as opposed to who he is actually as a player. And so at the end of the day, sure, I'm gonna throw some darts at at Yoshibas and have him on some teams because I don't want to miss out if he does just play the Tyler Boyd role the entire season.

00:51:42
Speaker 2: But at the same.

00:51:43
Speaker 3: Time, don't lose sight of the actual talent evaluation just because of what's going on in late July and early August.

00:51:48
Speaker 2: You know, like like.

00:51:49
Speaker 3: Jermaine Burton still has a much much higher ceiling in my opinion, than a guy like andre Josabash does, even if the latter player might have that more immediate role.

00:52:00
Speaker 4: I totally agree. It's a long season, right yeah, and best Ball is this is I think what people constantly forget is I still think people mostly think of best Ball as like a regular season with a little playoffs at the end. But really what it is is it's a four round tournament and the first round just happens to take a long time. But it still doesn't mean that it's more important than the other ones that happened to just be one week each. In fact, it's actually less important, like in terms of how much of the monetary equity is divvied up in each round, and I think people let people are anchored to a lifetime of playing Redraft fantasy football, and then they see the fourteen weeks and it's like really hard, I think, to overcome their inclination to just tie a lot of what this format is to what they're more comfortable doing. And that ends up been looking at this a very season long game, but it's really a four round tournament, and seventy five percent of those rounds are like four months from now. There's just a lot that can happen before then, and that's kind of what we want to be optimizing for. And like you think about that situation, Right, let's just say that the first week of the season, it's yoshi Vas playing eighty percent of the routes and Burton's barely getting on the field. Like, Okay, that's still fourteen weeks for there to be a potential injury to Chase or to Higgins, or for Yoshi Vas to just not look very impressive and Burton to have some good practices. And right, maybe it's not even directly from Yoshevas. Maybe Higgins has one of his annual seventeen mid game hamstring strains, so he leaves and then Yoshi Vas comes in or Burton comes in. They say, okay, well, now we have an injury to our act receiver. So yosh Burton gets a chance to play and he looks great, and then Higgins comes back from injury. They're gonna go Obviously we're putting T Higgins back in the lineup, but Burton's just been out producing Yoshi Vas for these last two weeks. Clearly, with Higgins out, maybe it's time for us to rethink how we are in our offense. And so now Chase is gonna kick into the slot. We're gonna play Higgins and we're gonna play Burton and Yoshi bas isn't going to be as much a part of the plan moving forward. Like that kind of stuff happens all the time, and it has a lot of time for that to happen. I understand you have to get there, But like your odds of even if you max enter Best ball Mania, I always say this, it's like your odds max entering Best Balmania if you have if you're just an average drafter, right, if you don't know what exactly what your edge is Visa VI. The field are like one in ten, right, even if you're twice as good of a drafter as the average drafter, which would take I think a lot of confidence to feel as though you're that that's a one in five shot. Like it's it's virtually impossible to feel like you're favored to get a team into the Best Balmania Finals even if you max enter, and so it just doesn't actually affect your win equity that much. These like marginal gains that help you advance teams. Every single thing is a part of it, but still the most important part is if you're so lucky to have survived all the slings and arrows to actually get to the place you want to be, do you have the dudes that you are frantically running to your underdog app for in late December being like, oh my god, I really hope I have this guy on one of my remaining teams. Yeah, and like, Jermaine Burton is a guy that it's just not that hard to see how you could be really excited to be scrolling through checking where are my Jermaine Burton teams? So I have any surviving Jermaine Burton teams and The answer to how do you get some of those players through is probably you just have to give yourself more shots to get them through, right, You just have to draft through it. You have to draft a lot of these types of players and hope that one of them is able to get survived by the rest of your team gets through to that spot. Now you're excited. It's like Christmas morning. You have this player that you know maybe wasn't advanced super highly because he had a really slow start to the season, but now he's projecting as a top thirty receiver. You have him into the Bestball Mini Finals and you feel like, all of a sudden, you have a differentiating piece that's giving you a chance to win one million, million a half dollars. That's to me, what what you want to be trying to think through If you're getting skittish with a spot like a Jermaine Burton, I think he's a clear target.

00:56:13
Speaker 3: Right yeah, Yeah, that's a really really good mindset and way of thinking of it for sure is to think about what I want this guy in a hypothetical situation, you know, towards the end of the year and in the in the Best Ball playoffs.

00:56:25
Speaker 2: Let's get into some more player takey stuff.

00:56:28
Speaker 3: You know, right now, we have this middle round area which we've always referred to, you know, where RB twos go, and you know, high end RB threes, which we've always referred to.

00:56:37
Speaker 2: As the running back dead zone. And you know, to me, I know that the.

00:56:41
Speaker 3: Argument has been made and will be made that the dead zone doesn't really exist on underdog because of the opportunity cost side of things and these guys going later than where they will in your home league. Like, I get all that, but we also have plenty of data that shows that there are mid range to low end RB twos and high end RB threes that just bust at a much higher rate versus what you can just get later, right, Like the hit rates aren't that dramatically better than guys.

00:57:07
Speaker 2: Who are in RB four range, let's say.

00:57:09
Speaker 3: And so my question to you is, as you get into those middle rounds where it's very easy on underdog to fall into this like rhythm of I'm going zero RB, my RB one is gonna be drafted in round eight and then I'm just gonna get five running backs in the next six rounds and then I'm gonna be fine at running back and I'm gonna feel fine enough at running back, But are there any middle round dead zone running backs you just have avoided this year?

00:57:31
Speaker 4: So I wrote a piece earlier this offseason called what if We've Jumped the Shark? In that piece, I looked at clearly there is some point in which we were just drafting wide receivers way too high. I don't know exactly where it is, Like I used the hypothetical example of like in theory, if someone told you we're drafting Curtis Samuel ahead of Bejon Robinson, it would be like, that's obviously ridiculous, right, And so somewhere between what happened last year and that hypothetical is a point in which which the well, you need to fill your wide receiver depth before and so even if wide receivers are being drafted where they're projected to score a fewer points, you still need to start three of them, all that type of scarcity stuff that I believe, for what it's worth, there's a certain point where that argument just doesn't hold weight anymore. And I don't know exactly where that point is. We might have hit it, I'm not sure if we did. So I kind of wrote this piece under the pretense of, like, if we have already hit that point, what would a winning team kind of look like in that environment? And to me, the biggest thing that I actually do believe we haven't factored in quite enough is we're still kind of using the arguments when it comes to wide receiver depth that made a lot more sense when wide receivers and running backs were equally likely to fill your flex position. Right, Historically, in half PPR, the way we've drafted running backs and wide receivers is that they score about the same points where they're being drafted, such that it's about a fifty to fifty shot who's filling your flex And so your average roster is basically two and a half running backs to three and a half wide receivers each week. Right at this point, that's just not the case. Like I graft out sort of the expected half TPR points per game finishes for running backs versus wide receivers based on where they're being drafted, and it's it's just true, like I have to give this one to the running back bros. Like the running back you're staring at is projected to score more points than the wide receiver you're staring at at most rounds. That's not the end all be all, but it is just true, and so I think it's probably more likely that running back in the flex ends up being a more optable way to do weekly lineups most this year. All that being said, I also think, you know, we have these we have the starting point where wide receiver running back are projected score both the same, and it just gets wider and wider and wider kind of until that round seven to ten running back to your drives up and then you're basically back to like regular drafts. Right. Always kind of rearranged it this year is we've pushed up all of the breakout archetypes at wide receiver where they kind of end at round seven, and then we go, okay, now it's time to draft all of our running backs. And then once that sort of Brian Robinson to Devin Singletary to Zach Moss, like, once all those guys are done, then we're kind of back to normal. I still think that's a room, a part of the room you want to attack, because there's a lot of upside bets there at running back that historically are good bets. Right ambiguous backfields players where They're not just being drafted solely because of volume, but are actually being drafted for something in their talent profile, some element of contingent value, the types of things you want to look for at running back, and it helps. They also just kind of outproject the wide receivers, So I don't think it necessarily behooves us to go and just draft a bunch of these early round two running backs where the wide receivers actually aren't projected to score that many fewer points. If you think of this from a comparative advantage economics lens, right, you want a draft where the gap is the largest in projection to the extent you care about projection. And if I'm trying to think through how do I add running backs in my flex, it's what if I just sort of start a little bit earlier than the standard zero RB roster that you laid out. So that does mean being open to the possibility of mid round running backs. And the running back dead zone is an interesting discussion to have these days because it's so different where I think the dead zone now is and probably always was, less about don't draft running backs from this round to this round and a little bit more like what are the types of running backslad bets and what are the types of running backs that are better bets? And it just so happened that historically those bad bets kind of collected in the same area of the draft at a really high rate that I wrote in this piece about Goodheart's law, which is like when you start to target the measure, the measure ceases to become a target, which is is where you know, if you have what are we actually trying to do, and then what's something that usually informs whether that's good? And if you just start targeting the proxy variable, right in this case, it's like, what do we want to do. We want to win at fantasy football. Well, one of the ways historically to not win at fantasy football is drafting a bunch of round three to six running backs. But it's not like when a running back enters round six, like a curse is placed upon their house the four points anymore. It's just like that's historically was telling us something about these types of running backs, and now those running backs are being spread around and so instead of like you know, just going into that mindset of like we can't draft running backs as range, we should, you know, be trying to lift up their socks and see, Okay, who's got the curse and who doesn't. Let's telling us about these running backs. And so to me, the guys that are kind of historically underpriced is guys like you know, James Cook strikes out to me as one where he's coming off very efficient season, younger back, positive offensive environment, and one where I think that some of the concerns about what's keeping him in his draft price are more related to role. It's like, what is Ray Davis's role going to be? Is he can have goal line work? Those are ones where I could see a possibility where he just starts answering questions immediately and we started to view him very differently. A guy on the other hand, that I'm not as interested in drafting would be like Rashad White, where he kind of strikes me a little bit way way way better pass catching profile. So it's not a perfect comparison, but he strikes me a little bit as the Miles Sanders from last year, where we have this guy who's kind of somehow been unaffected by everybody else disliking these mid round running backs, and he still kind of goes where he used to go. And with White, it's a trickier case because the pass catching upside is very real. But you know, Sam Sherman had a chart that showed like the career rush yards overexpected of all of these other top six round running backs and everybody else above the sixtieth percent doll and he's like below the twentieth And you know there's some offensive line stuff to that, but I do think he's one where volume is not being priced at a premium in drafts this year. You can you can get that later with other guys, and if he starts to lose any of that volume, he sort of immediately starts to lose his appeal where you start to go from eighty percent snapshare with Shod White down to like sixty percent snapshare with Shod White, and then he's just kind of in distinguishable from Devin Singletary almost immediately if you come out from week one and you start to see that happen. So he's probably been the one that I've I've had the full fad on, But generally speaking, I'm trying to target like the younger running backs, the more explosive running backs, the ones that I think blend a little bit of a workload with that talent upside ken Walker has been another one that I've really been hammering. And you know, now we're getting sort of some coach speak, which obviously I had pay more attention to, and it hits my priors directly.

01:04:55
Speaker 2: I mean to be fair, to be fair though.

01:04:57
Speaker 3: To be fair though with the coach speaks stuff, I would assume that you pay attention to coach speak more with running backs than wide receivers, because at the end of the day, like and I've talked about Walker now basically every episode that I've done over the last three weeks, I feel like right where I was sort of not Fadings. I don't think that's the archetype that you fade in Best Ball in general, you know, the big playability and all that.

01:05:18
Speaker 2: But I was much more into Zach Sharboney.

01:05:20
Speaker 3: I was drafting a ton of Sharbona in early in mid July, and he was at one point my highest roster player in all of Best Ball, and it was a bad read other situations. I think that there's a very real chance that Sharbonay kind of just like to me, Sharbonay has ended up being like the Trey Benson where it's like, Okay, you drafted them thinking that they might have that like immediate role right away in some sort of a split backfield, but they've turned into just really good handcuffs, which I still think is not a terrible thing to have in best ball, don't get me wrong, Like it just it makes those guys less attractive in like a season long environment right where you have to actually manage and you care about your bench spots all that kind of thing. But yeah, like the coach speaks stuff with Kenneth Walker is really valid because if a coach wants to throw a dude on a football field and use him as there RB one, if they say we want to split this backfield or we don't want to split this backfield, that matters, and everything out of Seahawks camp right now is that they want Kenneth Walker to be a three down back.

01:06:14
Speaker 2: We got new information than you adjust your priors a little bit.

01:06:17
Speaker 4: And the fun thing with Walker is like his he's better than DeAndre Swift, I think, but they have some similarities where all of his strengths are very fantasy friendly and his deficiencies are the kind of things that NFL coaches usually care about more than we do.

01:06:32
Speaker 2: Eat.

01:06:33
Speaker 4: If an NFL coach is coming out to us and saying like, I don't actually care that much about this, I'm like, works for me, man, you actually would rather play the explosive player who's occasionally going to have more five yard losses than we would like, then I'm not going to really sit here and argue with you. Now, It's also possible that they look in camp and Ken Walker looks way more explosive than Zach Sharboney because he's way more explosive than Zach Sharbi.

01:06:56
Speaker 2: Like Hemp, he's a camp guy, right right, And then.

01:06:59
Speaker 4: They get him on the field and then they're like, hey, Ken, like that could have been a second and eight, but at second and sixteen, like maybe maybe have a seat here, pal, Like, that's that's totally possible, right. DeAndre Swift has been, you know, his entire career is coaches having I can fix some energy and then like immediately realize that they cannot fix him and don't want to try. So I'm gonna I'm not gonna race to the victory lap already on Keed Walker. We've got seventeen games here. But I do think it's an example of there's at least like the main question I would try to ask on some of these mid round running backs is like, either a, is the price on this volume just like unnaturally inefficient like almost all running back volume, this price where the projection is under price is here so compared to other running backs? Do I think this running backs projection is particularly underpriced? Or is there some element of question that could be answered where we look at this running back we get that affirmative and storm immediately we know they're two rounds under price, right like something like what if Ken Walker plays on pass downs? What if James Cook plays the goal line? You know, those are the kinds of things where it's like, oh, had I known this, I would have drafted this guy in round three and not in round five. That's that's kind of the spots where I'd be a little bit more inclined to take stabs and get started on that running back room a little bit earlier.

01:08:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, I like what you said at the start of this about, you know, the running back dead zone being this like this group of players that we just kind of see as it's like a homogeneous group of players, right Like everyone just kind of views them the exact same from one back to the next. When you know, I've done research on it, and I did a podcast on this years ago, and I wrote about it even in more in depth in this year's draft guide. But for instance, in the dead zone, in the traditional dead zone of what we've always described as the dead zone, which is like it really hits at mid RB two and it goes into like mid RB three, and there's not a big difference between a low end RB three and a high end RB four versus a low end RB two, And in terms of rounds taken, that's like a in some drafts will be like a four round difference, so there's no reason to reach for that player. But if you look at rookies in that low end RB two range, uh, they perform like late second round picks at the end of the day, right like, like there are or just general pass catchers, right like, It's just that there are these arc types that then stem and get forced to this area of the draft, and maybe eventually we'll get to a point where you know, those arc types just are scattered and placed where they should be placed, which is what I think the underdog market has done a really good job of this year in particular, Like there's still some guys like for me, I haven't drafted like Zamir White anywhere. Right, It's just I don't know a guy I've been draft, right, I just I don't really see the upside case. He's not a pass catcher. We all the things that we want to check these boxes for. You know, he's not in an ambiguous back to He's in this like standalone backfield, which tells you that offense. Yeah, the situation is probably not very good. It's like there's players like that, and there's like fringe guys. I think that sort of along that those lines, but I can understand the argument otherwise is like a Ramandre Stevenson, where it's like I get why people might be on him, but I also can easily make the argument that he fits more in the smere White mold than he would in like a Steeler's back or even a Cincinnati back or even a Tennessee backfold right, yeah, right, right, And so we're going after these ambiguous backfields for a reason, and like there are very clear players in that range that to me, based on history, based on ADP trends, says you've got to attack those backfields at the very least, right, you got to go after Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Tennessee and just do it relentlessly, because sure, there's the most likely outcome is that no running back emerges from those backfields, But there is a very good chance still versus what you would beginning elsewhere, that someone from those backfields are going to emerge. Now, I don't know if we're at the point of like of being perfectly efficient. I don't think we're ever going to necessarily be at that point, but we are, to your point to star all of this, we are in a place where, you know, it's not so obvious like we're not getting the Mike Davises and Miles Gaskins anymore. Really that are getting lifted to that degree. And maybe it'll change a little bit in home leagues and in season long leagues and managed leagues, but I do think the dead zone does look different at least on like an underdog, and even in the general market, even in those home leagues and stuff. And maybe maybe it just comes down to the fact that we don't see as many projectable workhorse backs and we just inherently know there's a lot of split backfields so we're like, no, why would we ever project this random running back to be like what we did with Mike Davis in twenty twenty one or whatever year that was, right, So maybe that's playing a role too. But I think it's a really interesting discussion because it is a little bit different this year. Written about how it's a little bit different this year, but there are such clear arc types still that you just generally don't want to go after, you know, in that like low end RB two type range totally.

01:11:55
Speaker 4: And the one thing I'd add is, not only are we not drafting Mike Davis' and Miles Gaskins high anymore, but we're also not drafting like Allan Lazard's and Russell Gage's in that range anymore. And we are drafting the Worthies and a Doomsdays and Thomas's way higher. And it's like, I wish that, you know, we could go back and draft those guys in round twelve and draft you know, running backs earlier or whatever. But if this is how the market's going to present it to us, there there are still a finite number of players that really project to be breakout, high impact fantasy options in this tournament. Right It's we play a power log game, and the projectibly elite scorers get priced up at the very start of drafts, and after that the way to increase access to meaningful ceilings is to take on meaningful downside and to take on wide band archetypes that have some sort of concerns about things that we don't know about them, which usually means rookies, which usually means running backs and split back fields, all the stuff. And it's like, I wish the market would give us Round thirteen savior worthy, but if they're not going to, that doesn't mean that I just want to build teams that don't have access to those high percentile outcomes, Like it just means I have to draft them when they come, which means probably looking at running back later when the opportunity cost ends up being a lot lower. And the last point I'll make on this is like I don't really love being a person that has to go and defend projectable volume at the running back position. But there is a little bit of a difference between bestball and redraft. I think where I've always had them attitude and redraft its like I don't care about a twelve point RB two because my twelve point RB two is going to be like insert future name here, right.

01:13:46
Speaker 3: Yeah.

01:13:47
Speaker 4: I wrote a column for two years called the Hitchhiker's Got to Running Back, where like the goal was on a weekly basis, I would just pick RB twos to stream based on waiver availability, and like pretty consistently we could stream a low end RB two just by like and I had like like similar to what you'd done with quarterback and tight end with Denny. It's like I'm putting on like unnecessary restrictions on myself where it's like like like I can't just pick an RB two and then to start them every single week like after they RB two's So it's like quite quite painful. And that's not even you have to play fantasy, but like in Bestball, you can't really have insert RB two here, right, You actually have to pick the players that are going to become that RB two. So that's not an argument for drafting Brian Robinson in the fourth round like we might have had to do years ago. Like if the cost of Brian Robinson is the tenth round and you're like, oh, I can just get a guy who's probably gonna get you know, this sort of RB two volume, and all I have to forego is around ten pick when the breakout wide receivers are being priced higher, so they're not really here quite as frequently anymore. And you know, it's like, Okay, that's that's that's something I might be able to do. And you know, when those things are available later makes it harder drafted earlier. You kind of flip the build a little bit.

01:15:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, one last point I want to make about all this because I get this question all the time.

01:15:05
Speaker 2: Of how do you how do you flip the switch and.

01:15:09
Speaker 3: Look at your season long management and how you're drafting in season long after doing so many Best Ball drafts. And you know, obviously you know as an analyst, you just have to do that because you want to be good as an analyst. But I do think that there's so much you can learn from the underdog market for your season long drafts. And what you talked about with like the Xavier Worthies and Brian Thomas's of the World is the perfect example of that. Because even still, if you were to compare where these guys go in a Best Ball draft versus where they go and where they're even ranked by Fantasy pros rankers, right now there is such a big gap between those kinds of players, in particular, like those rookies, that rookies are still undervalued in a managed season long league by a pretty dramatic amount.

01:15:51
Speaker 2: And you can spot that.

01:15:52
Speaker 3: Yes, I'm gonna sit here and spew that every single week on my on my podcast, and you guys are gonna get annoyed by it. But you can also just go and look at underdog ADP and how underdog drafts are going down and find that yourself and realize, WHOA, it's really weird that Roma Dunsa and Xavier Worthy and Brian Thomas are going around some of these like pretty you know, like a Chris Godwin type or like a you know, some of the running backs that we were just talking about, or like a George Kittle and and people are going to be kind of shocked by that. But when you look at history and when you look at how these guys hit, we're not saying that all of these players are going to necessarily hit, but there is a pretty good chance that we're going to see one or two of them have a really underrated, you know, right now, undervalued season. And so that's why you can actually take a lot of these best ball principles and translate them to more of a managed, season long environment. So I think it's a really really good shout to make because that question gets brought up. We've got a couple more questions, but I just want to get to one more because you know, I think that that folks always want to hear stuff like this. Who have been some of your favorite last round clicks recently? Because there has been such a changing environment with with training camp in the preseason happening and beat reporters saying what they're saying and coach speak being what it is. Who have been some of your favorite last round picks in these drafts?

01:17:05
Speaker 2: For sure?

01:17:06
Speaker 4: So the first thing I would say to anybody is if you're looking at good options to click in the late rounds right now? Kind of going all the way back to what we said at the beginning of the show about how we sort of get locked into these arbitrary ADPs. We don't know that much about any of the last round picks in terms of who's going to hit, but one thing that we can control is what their roster ship rate's going to be. Right, the one piece of valuable information that we have now is through the seventy to seventy five percent of BBM drafts that have already happened, we know who are the guys that have been drafted all season long and who are the guys that weren't or only started getting drafted recently. And that makes a big impact because if you just assume that your eighteenth round pick is going to hit in a big way and that you're really excited about them on your roster going into a final, I would rather take a shot, all things being equal, between the bets, and most of these bets are kind of equal because they're all kind of wrap shoots. Like, am I going to draft a guy who has a chance to be thirty percent owned or a guy who performs at the same level as someone who's thirty percent owned but is actually going to be six percent owned because he was only taken in twenty percent of drafts. So I do think you really want to prioritize guys with low draft rates at this portion. So favorite running back pick, Will Shipley, he was a guy. If anybody followed my Dynasty content, they know that I was constantly podcasting and writing about Will Shipley all spring. I was really bummed out when he went to the Eagles, a team that doesn't really throw the running backs, which is to be the biggest strength of his game. But all of the camp stuff has been really exciting. You know, this is another one where Week one opens up. Would not surprise me if Kenny Gainwell is the one taking the fifteen percent of snap he doesn't get. But I don't really care about those snaps. It's sake one Barkley is to go down and Kenny Gainwell and Will Shipley start to play in some form of split. I just know the horse that I'm betting on between those two in terms of who has more upside to start to take over spots in that backfield. I think he is just frankly a good player in my view, and a really well rounded running back who could grow his role. And everything we've heard of a camp on him has been really really positive. A wide receiver that Go'd be looking at is Jalen Naylor. He's kind of a dude that will show up on a lot of PFF yards per route run searches from two years ago if you don't set the target threshold high enough because he was so efficient, I'll like I don't know four routes something like that, a player that I thought was a reasonable sleeper coming out of college, kind of like the Yoshi Vas example, where kind of an unheralded prospect that has an interesting production and then steps into a spot now where it's a pretty barren depth chart. He looks like the wide receiver three for the Vikings, and Addison has both injury risk and suspension risk, so it's kind of possible he could even be the wide receiver two. And at least until TJ. Hawkinson comes back, they have no meaningful target earner at tight end, so I think there's a pretty decent vacuum for someone to step up next to Justin Jefferson and whatever games we get. Jordan Addison. He's another one that is super super low drafted and if you happen to get if you have him, to get Donald stocked with Jefferson and then you add Naylor like Donald and Naylor's cumulative draft rate is really really small. Yeah, you can take advantage of that with both of those guys. So those would be two I'm looking at. The last one I'll give a tight end too is THEO. Johnson is another one who wasn't getting drafted super highly. He's already playing the plurality snaps for the Giants. Athletic dude, really, you have no idea if he can play football, but big target vacuum on the Giants, behind the league neighbors, and I think he's an interesting guy to mix in.

01:20:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, those are some really good calls.

01:20:40
Speaker 3: I don't think that anyone's talked about Jalen Naylor on the UH on the feed this offseasons.

01:20:45
Speaker 2: That's that's definitely a good one.

01:20:46
Speaker 3: Especially look, I mean if you're if you're looking for because like Sam Darnold's ADP, I don't think it's still as high as it should be, or like you know, where he's generally been drafted, Like I still I think you should be where like Baker is, or going around where Akers going, and he'll often go around or even two rounds after in certain environments. So that's a that's a fun little like like a desperation stack if you wanted to just throw something out there, if you you know, if you have like a packer or something from earlier in the draft and you want that week seventeen correlation, that's an interesting one for sure.

01:21:17
Speaker 2: And then there's.

01:21:18
Speaker 4: Desperation stacks now because people are like, yes, under underdog is turned into draft Kings in the last week, where people no longer have a conscience. They don't they don't care about your quarterback stacks at all. They're gonna do what they want to do, and they're gonna do it with reckless abandon Like I, it's been jarring. I used to be able to so reliably like look through the other teams and I'm seeing like nine other badges in there, and I'm like, all right, you know you have this wide receiver, so you're gonna take that quarterback and you're gonna leave me my quarterback. And I was consistently like pushing my quarterback stacks, getting in two rounds after ADP. No longer man, people people don't give a crap. They've got Trey McBride and no Texans. They're taken c J. Stroud. If you have two yeah, yeah, doing it and you're gonna like it like it's yeah, exactly. Despiration levers.

01:22:01
Speaker 3: Well, not only that, but like I I maxed the many the newest mini Schnauzer just to kind of I like to max those to get like different exposures and just try things out too and like see what I like. And I went aj Brown DeVante Smith in the first and second round, and then someone took Jalen Hurst at the two three turn, and I'm like, what is going on right now?

01:22:20
Speaker 2: Right like that?

01:22:21
Speaker 3: Like I probably, I mean, I would have definitely pushed the fourth round and then I'm seeing him going with the two three turn.

01:22:26
Speaker 2: It's like, my goodness.

01:22:26
Speaker 3: But yeah, that kind of thing is happening more and more frequently, which is something that I think was pretty predictable. We talked about it on this show quite a bit, was that these quarterbacks were gonna go a lot higher, you know, they than they were going when people were a little bit nicer, you know, recognizing that the stack game going on in these drafts.

01:22:43
Speaker 2: But Jacob Man, it was so great to chat with you. U.

01:22:46
Speaker 3: This was one of those conversations where, you know, I was, you know, it's just fun to like have an open convo about the game theory stuff, the philosophical side of things, and uh, you know, transparently to the listeners. Like we had other questions on the show sheet, but we just went and these other directions and that's what makes good content in my opinions.

01:23:03
Speaker 2: So it's great to chat with you.

01:23:04
Speaker 3: Man.

01:23:04
Speaker 2: Let everyone know where they can find you.

01:23:06
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can find me on Twitter, of course, just my name at Jacob Sanderson's KA. You can find my substack my name dot substack dot com called thinking about Thinking. I have tons of best ball pieces on there. I also have like best ball ranks, redraft ranks, and some thoughts on high stakes redraft stuff. I'll be in those streets basically the rest of August, so if you're interested in playing anything on NFC f FPC, I will have draft reviews up there, and I'm gonna have a ton of pieces about those formats and dynasty stuff too. So thanks a ton for having me on. I really appreciated it truly, you know, as a twenty seven year old kid basically who grew up playing Fantasy listening to the Late Round podcast, like really living the dream so to speak, to actually be on the Late Round podcast. So I save the fan boying for a minute fifty six, but truly can't articulate how cool this has been, so thank you.

01:24:02
Speaker 3: I've also never felt older in my life than than this exact moment, so thank you for that too.

01:24:06
Speaker 2: Wow.

01:24:09
Speaker 4: Unintentional U back in my day, back in my day, growing up, listen to your podcast.

01:24:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Brother.

01:24:18
Speaker 3: You can find all my stuff over on lateround dot com. Make sure you're taking advantage of that underdog promo. You get a free late Round Draft guide. You can save money doing it. Just make a ten dollars deposit. You'll get the draft guide the draft gud's twenty five dollars. You're saving money by doing that, but otherwise everyone, thank you as always for tuning