Late-Round Perspectives: Scott Connor

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Scott Connor is a content manager, a Destination Debbie and one of the hosts of Dynasty Trades in five. He's an eight time f FPC Main Event champion. He's an expert in Dynasty game theory, he loves wins above replacement, and he's a running back dead Zone believer. These are his late round perspectives. I always like starting these shows off just with a little bit of background. One of the things that I see commonly, you know, every once in a while, I'll be on like Reddit or something, or someone will point me to Reddit and they'll, you know, if someone's talking about me or what have you. And I often see this like connection between us my name and your name and that you know, I'm doing a lot of my my deep deep research for Redraft. You know, I played Dynasty obviously, and I do a lot of research for Dynasty as well, especially in the Prospect game. But you do a lot of game theory stuff within Didynasty, which is a lot rarer than doing the game theory stuff with Redraft because it's more difficult to do it with Dynasty. Let's just be honest, you know, there's just a lot more that you needed to handle you're not looking in that like singular season. But one of the things that I've noticed, at least you know, since following your work and following what you're doing, which I absolutely adore, is that you care about more than just player analysis. There's a lot of analysts out there who simply there's nothing wrong with it, who simply say, I like this guy, I don't like this guy follow my advice because of this. But I think that the reason why you and me look beyond player analysis is because we both recognize that variance is a huge part of this game, and that we're not always going to necessarily be right. But what are some of the ways that you work with variants and sort of use variance then to your advantage, specifically in Dynasty.

00:01:49
Speaker 2: But you can talk redraft too.

00:01:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think they're becoming much closer together than they were even three five years ago when it comes to Dynasty and redraft. I think the new era of Dynasty players are largely coming from a immediate gratification space. I have to give Sleeper some a shout out for that as well. I think a lot of people are migrating over to Sleeper. It's very easy to start a Dynasty league over there. At the same time, I think the new breed of player that's coming in. When I first started, you had to play Dynasty on either a site that didn't host Dynasty, so it all had to be manually done, so the barrier to play was a lot higher, and then even old sites like my Fantasy League, it was still a little bit cumbersome to run the league itself, so it was more of a niche thing. Now that it's on Sleeper, and I'm sure some of the other bigger platforms are also moving into maybe incorporating some sort of aspect of Dynasty into their platform. The game has changed in terms of how the typical player I think approaches things. Not that it shouldn't be from a long term lens, but I think you have to realize that not all Dynasty leagues are going to last for a decade. A lot of them aren't even going to last for three years, five years if you're lucky. I think taking a order term approach is the correct way to play it. And then you have the new players that are coming in, and a lot of them look at things through a very narrow lens one to two years, and then inside of that, within a season, dynasty values you've probably seen it. Dynasty values change week to week. Yeah, on a player you go, there's nothing different about their profile or any of their historical production or metrics from two games ago versus now, But the dynasty market has sure changed. So I think that that incorporates a a lot of the analysis you're talking about with variants in redraft. It kind of morphs into becoming a lot of what dynasty is evaluated at. So the only difference there is there's gonna be some variants of situations that change in the offseason. But I think it's more in the psychology of the people you're playing with, understanding the lens that they're going to view things a year down the road. It's not so much about what players are good, what players are bad, what players or hits, what players are misses. It is can I invest in things that I know other people are going to want, other people are going to like. Does it have some staying power? And we probably talk about that a little bit more when it comes to draft picks in game theory. But you could argue there's certain ranges outside of the elite tier of players or rookies coming in. Everything else kind of doesn't matter. If you're playing just a week to week game, It's about what can I do in the next week or two or to fill in over the short term. So the best investment is just kind of lean into what is everybody else going to prefer. This brings more activity, means people are willing to move off of things quicker, make more rash decisions. So I want to have something on the market that I can constantly go out there and change or fix or upgrade or swap out whenever I want. So I think that's the variance that we don't account for. Forget about the player variants. I've already just given up on the fact that there's a lot of variants in football in general. I can can't control that even the best. It's the same with gambling right now, you're gonna miss almost half the time, right So if you just kind of assume that and just surrender to that, all these other things come into play that I just don't think a lot of people talk about.

00:05:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, one of the things, and you sort of brought it up there too. One of the things that I think has been echoed imperative across the industry and the landscape over the last like five or six years.

00:05:25
Speaker 2: Is the fact that, like.

00:05:27
Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of fantasy football is just luck type type talk that's out there. And I always say, people will say that are the ones who are losing most frequently usually, But you know, at the same time, I think that we've we've gotten to a place where there is just content everywhere. Like I play, for instance, I play my home lead Redraft League. We've been playing for over twenty years. My dad's in the league. My dad's in his seventies. Right, Is he as hardcore about this stuff as I am?

00:05:51
Speaker 2: Absolutely not.

00:05:52
Speaker 1: I mean he never has been, right, But at the same time, before the draft, he can google Sleepers and what have you. He can get he can find player tape just as easily as I can or anyone else can. And that edge that we might have had in the player take world ten years ago, fifteen years ago, it just doesn't exist anymore because there was just so much out there and so much information out there, so we have to lean on something else. And you're saying, lean on the way that other people are playing the game and actually looking at these players week to week and year to year and such and sort of play the market that way. I mean, there's just the game theory component to fantasy football is still untapped, largely untapped, and people are still leaning on the player analysis takes. And look, it's not a bad thing. Like I do my prospect guide and I'm working on my prospect guide that I'm gonna do every single year. I love doing it to get to know these prospects a little bit better, to analyze them a little bit more. But it's a probability driven adventure that I'm going on.

00:06:46
Speaker 2: Right.

00:06:46
Speaker 1: This is not a I know for a fact that Braylen Allen's going to be a good running but I don't know for sure at all. I Mean, there's a lot up in the air, and so I think people just need to remember that, and as they remember that, they can then start to lean on the things that you're sort of referring to on game theory front. Now, this sort of leads me right into my next question, Uh, because you mentioned that there's just a bunch of halves, and then you're not a bunch but not many halves, and then a bunch of have nots. Basically, in the fantasy football space. Running back I think is by far the most top heavy slash halves and have nots position out there, and I think that there's a lot to speak on on the position and sort of dissect because of that. We definitely could have seen this coming in the way that the landscape sort of looks right now where you have this insanely top heavy group. Uh, you know, you have the breeze halls of the world. Maybe you want to throw Bejeon Engremier Gibbs in there. Replaceability though, is at an all time high after those guys, or maybe even some would consider those guys as part of that group, where, uh, you know, the the production that they're actually giving you is a lot more replaceable than say the production that you're gonna get from an elite quarterback.

00:07:55
Speaker 2: Or something from a super flex standpoint.

00:07:57
Speaker 1: You know, I've seen random bits and pieces of you talking about the running back potition on social media and on shows and such, But I'm curious about just your overall take on the running back landscape and sort of how you then handle that position in Dynasty, because that's a position that if you can win running back and understand sort of the churn at running back you can have a lot of success.

00:08:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a great question because it is one of those things that I was probably talking about this five years ago, three years ago, but now that there's so much information and you just brought this up a couple minutes ago. You're always looking for in the fantasy landscape, whether you want to call it fantasy or dynasty, the edge is almost never going to be information out there. It's there. Now are your league mates finding it? Are they using it? That's a different story. There can be an edge on Okay, I know it's out there, it's easy to find, but are they using it? Do they know how to use it when it's in front of them? And I think that's very similar with running backs. I also think it's this perfect blend of things that have happened over the last five years or so. I'll start with you had that twenty seventeen running class, which you're gonna go back in history and you're gonna say that is an outlier class that produced running backs that I mean, you may have four or five Hall of Fame level running backs out of that class. Now, are they gonna make the NFL Hall of Fame? That's a different debate, But you're gonna go back and look at the Fantasy Hall of Fame and you're gonna say, Wow, Alvin Kamara, Christian McCaffrey, and then you have guys in short windows that were lead winning running backs for years at a time as well. So you have that class which everyone after that's almost gonna be compared to that. If you remember twenty eighteen twenty nineteen. The twenty eighteen running back class is a great example. That was the Ronald Jones, Rashad Penny, Sony, Michelle Royce, Freeman, Nick Chubb, sa Kwon Barkley were there. But we basically just go, oh my gosh, twenty seventeen. Every running back class just has to follow this, and the draft capital followed it. Hey, a lot of these guys got first and second round draft capital. Okay, it has to be as good as twenty seventeen, and then it's not. So we've seen us fail on that end. We've also seen us kind of see the position in the NFL be devalued. That's a whole other argument. Should they be paid and where should you draft him in the NFL draft? But then I also think you're seeing the fallout of that concept to the prospects coming in are a lot different than what they were before. I mean, you see a lot of these colleges. Ray's talked about this a lot, where these colleges are breeding new running backs that are they're never expected to be Leonard Fournette, Nick Chubb, like those guys just aren't being made at lower levels of football, and for good reason, right that if you're an athlete, that is probably not the path. Go back and look at Dereck Henry's high school and college career and look at how many times he touched the ball, and that's like the freakiest of freaks, right, But that's probably not the way I want to go. If I'm that level of an athlete, I probably don't want to have that workload. I don't need to be two hundred and twenty five pounds in the strongest guy out there, because is that really going to be the best for my future career. So I think the guys are coming into the NFL with more of the expectation of I'm a committee back, I'm a specialist. There's certain things that i can do, but I'm also not expected to do everything. So you have all of that, and then you have people like us that are just hammering home running Back dead zone. Don't bet on that profile. You can go back and look at historic production wins above replacement, whatever you want to call it, and we'll talk about war later in the episode. The distribution of running Back production. You can go back ten years. It looks the same every year. Yes, there's a dip and then it's flat, and then it dips off because they're outside of your starting lineup. And then you also know that part of outside your starting lineup can be replaced because it's a week to week game. So you may have a guy that only has two good weeks on the year, but as long as you were starting them those two weeks, when you could reasonably identify that they're a good replacement, it's just very flat and replaceable. So I guess my pushback to people would be, think of the next thing when everybody else starts to do this, And that's one of the bets you have to make. We know this works. We know the RB dead zone and zero RB and going hero RB because you mentioned it, if you can predict, and this is where the dynasty answer comes in. I know it's a long winded way of getting to this point. But there are a few running backs where you can look at different metrics, whatever they are for you me. There's other people out there that all they do is look at running backs. Look there, which guys can have a season where they just win your league? They put up twenty three plus points per game? And how do you get there? It's very easy to go back and study the fifteen running backs that have done that and said, what does it look like? Snapshare, usage, target rate, all of that stuff. You can probably narrow it down and say, these are the seven players currently capable of that, and if you're able to guess which one, two, three it could be in a given season, the advantage there is greater than any advantage because not only is the advantage higher relative to the position, but everybody else is going, I'm not making that bet. I'm just gonna punt. So right there, you're looking at, Damn, I got twenty three points per game from Kyron Williams at a dirt cheap price. You punted running back, you didn't hit on him, and you ended up with just replaceable value. The gap there is huge. So for Dynasty, I'm really focused on who has those traits, and I would say there's probably six players in the whole league right now that have that, and a couple of them are the ones you would think, Guys like Gibbs, Bijon, Breist Hall. I think Devon a Chain is in there. If you really squint and say, you know, give him fifteen opportunities a game, he's probably there. And then Alvin Kamara, Christian McCaffrey, maybe Kyrin Williams. Outside of that, though, which one of those guys have Dynasty value. It's the ones where jj I can afford an injury, a down season, and I can still reroll for a similar value. So right there, it's essentially Bresee, Bijon, Gibbs, Yeah, and that's it to me. Everybody else is either a year to year proposition and gimme McCaffrey, give me Kamara in Dynasty. If it's at a price where okay, relative to what other people are paying for the Derrick Henry's, the James Connors and whatever. If it's relative to those prices and it's not that much higher than sure, but assigning actual value to any other running backs below that range, it just seems like it's it's a waste of at least what I'm trying to analyze. I'll let other people determine, you know, is Ken Walker more valuable than James Cook or whatnot. To me, they're all in the range of their innings eaters. They're not gonna win me my league. They're just there as a mechanism to do something else. Either bet on them, roster construct around them, or trade them away.

00:15:07
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:15:07
Speaker 1: It's almost like if you luck into them in some way where they were cheap to acquire, Sure you have them in your starting lineup. You're not gonna like hate that you have James Cook or Kenneth Walker and your starting lineup. But there is this it just goes back to the dead zone talk, really and there's this RB two grouping that's massive, and it's really interesting because I have this year two model that I that I deal with with running back and wide receiver, where I look at a player's prospect score and then I add on top things that they did during their rookie season, just different numbers and stuff that are predictive, and then it spits out this year two score and that predicts how well they're going to do a year two a year three of their NFL career. It's based on their max season in either year two or year three. And I have these probability charts where if a guy has a score, it's a score of zero to one hundred, and if a guy has a score of ninety five to one hundred, here's his hit rates by different points per game thresholds. Right, so you know fifty percent of these top wide receivers will score eighteen or more PPR points in one of these two seasons, and then you know the next tier and the next year and next year. So when you look at the running back probability chart, the guys who are ranked ninety fifth or above in this year two score these This is like where you know you're gonna get a Breeze Hall or Jonathan Taylor and these like stud guys, they have unbelievable hit rates. Right, Like if you find a guy who's in and that's where Bijon and Jamier Gibbs are right now, right if you find a guy in their unreal hit rate, you know that you're likely going to get an elite season from them, at least one elite season over.

00:16:33
Speaker 2: The next two years.

00:16:34
Speaker 1: And then you get to the ninety to ninety five range, and you get like the Devon a Cham like you're saying, like he's in that, he's in, like he's at like ninety four, so he's like run on the fringe. But even like a Tajay Spears right now is like eighty nine to ninety, like he's like, get like we don't know for sure, like what that's looking like. And the interesting thing is when you look at seventy to ninety that range and score, the hit rates are almost identical throughout throughout that entire range of player that they're almost identical.

00:17:00
Speaker 2: And it just speaks to this. It speaks this idea that.

00:17:03
Speaker 1: Keaton freaking Mitchell to Roe, Sean Johnson to you know, some of these other Kendra Miller, all of these guys. It's gonna come down to how these teams end up wanting to divvy up that workload in that backfield. We can say, hey, I love Keaton Mitchell as a player. I loved what he did year one. He's explosive, he's so much fun. I want him on my Dynasty roster. But at the end of the day, and we can look at trends and say, okay, smaller running backs to x y Z. We know that he might not see even a Devon Chan type level workload, But at the end of the day, it's going to come down to how that team is going to actually utilize that player. And the elite there's only a handful of guys right now in fantasy football where you don't even have to necessarily question that because you just kind of generally everyone just generally agrees that the team is going to give them that workload.

00:17:50
Speaker 3: And it makes for what you just said. Everyone go back and listen to that, and then think of from a dynasty perspective, if you've already kind of surrendered to the fact that a lot of those names and that grouping, and I think we probably look at a lot of similar things, even though our models might be a little bit different. I'm just drilling it down to I've already assumed everyone, aside from those really high end ones, are all the same. That's the first assumption. So you have ninety five percent of the running back pool out there, which is hell when you include rookies coming in which are unpredictable. There's one hundred names probably on that list. Some are at the way bottom. You go I don't even want that guy. He's not gonna be on a team. But just throw everybody into a bucket. And then you also assume that largely these names are gonna roll over from year to year. So there's gonna be names in here that had a bad year but might pop back up on the radar, names that you're expecting something from, but then they fade away. But guess what, it's running back. We've seen players come from they got cut, weren't playing, and then they're back on a team and they're getting work, and you're going, Okay, I have to now take this guy seriously. So I literally just say everyone's a one year bet, and I'll just go back and look at very basic stuff, and it comes down to just trying to predict efficiency. What I want is efficiency in short spurts. And then from a dynasty perspective, I'm looking at it, what is the cost to get these players? So I mean, we can go on a different tangent on some of the names, but you look at a guy. I'll give an example just for everybody to kind of visualize, Michael Carter. Michael Carter's just a guy and dynasty He's useless. People probably have him on their roster and they go, what do I do with them? But for me, he kind of pops in a couple intriguing ways, like he's a fishing on a per touch basis. He has a really good chance to be in at least a role on a depth chart, but the community soured on him. Why because well, a team gave up on him on his rookie deal and replaced him with a player like Dalvin Cook or is he a Bana Kanda? But that's probably why he's not in the same boat as some of these other players that we still go, oh, year three, that player could be good. You're four, that player could be good. He's one of those ones where if you assume everything's the same, why can't you pivot from somebody like insert name to Michael Carter Kenneth Gainwell to Michael Carter. Kenneth Gainwell could be the paper starter for the Eagles here in a month or so when they don't have anybody else Michael Carter, nobody likes him. Could you get a two for one? Could you get an extra third round pick on top of Michael Carter for Kenneth Gainwell? And basically what we're saying is their outcomes are random. They're probably fairly similar players, but what is gonna be the tiebreaker luck who has the right week or two where hey, they might get some work which could be entirely outside of their control, but also the team, the team this week just decides, hey, we're gonna give Michael Carter enough work that you could play him in your starting lineup. You know, like, did you ever expect Darryl Henderson to come back and give you four startable games?

00:20:54
Speaker 2: Let me ask you this.

00:20:55
Speaker 1: I think the biggest question mark for me then would be someone like Kiaran Williams, right, because Kyen Williams comes off last season and look, I questioned the validity to what was going on with Kien Williams last year all season long, Like I think any person looking at what was going on in that backfield and with Williams himself as a player, smaller back really came out, you know, it came out of college more looking like a scat back, and then all of a sudden, you know, he's a full time bell cow. If you're looking at one year windows though last year objectively, a lot of his numbers looked amazing, like he was pretty good last year, and so if you're looking at this one year window, is that are you saying, okay, I believe in Kyrien Williams this year. Here in twenty twenty four, let's just assume that things go pretty flawlessly with competition added and all that kind of stuff. Are you then buying into Kien Williams or are you saying, okay, his price point is now pretty significant Dynasty where it's like, you know, RB seven whatever, and so therefore I'm not going to buy into that per se. But if you have Kien Williams on your roster, are you then just holding and not selling?

00:21:59
Speaker 3: Well if you're looking at Dynasty. So here's here's a couple of things I would definitively say about Kyri Williams. Is it's not a fluke. He led the NFL in opportunities per game. That's not a fluke. It's not a fluke that he had the most opportunities per game. Now, that doesn't say that number couldn't decrease. In fact, I think we probably expected to decrease. He doesn't have the profile of somebody that's going to lead the league. But was he efficient enough on that to where even if it does decrease, it could decrease by twenty percent, but he still stays above the range. Like what I do is I look at players that carried a workload, even if they were inefficient with the workload. You have to respect the fact that guys like Najie Harris, Javante Williams, they're going out there, they're getting Najie Harris has gotten twenty one plus opportunities a game for his entire career, So you have to expect that there is something there that's not being captured in the data that he's earning that workload to a degree. You know, it's kind of like you are targets. At some point the inefficiency is going to cause your volume or your opportunity to go down. But when it's so high to begin with, you have to say, Kyram Williams is kind of above the threshold of being completely nuked. So then it becomes a dynasty analysis question. If he was a guy that was at fourteen opportunities a game and I'm going wolf, it goes up. His efficiency is so good it could smash. That's Jalen Warren, that's Taj Spears. If their workload went up twenty percent and they even maintain some of the efficiency. You're going those could be potential league winners, but you're also having to make the bet that it does. His is the opposite, So there's still dynasty value there. The question now is JJ are you selling him if he's priced at RB seven when really what this data is saying he's good enough to probably maintain RB twelve to twenty range, But that becomes a clear dynasty cell. Now the question is can you find somebody that's willing to pay the RB seven or are they looking at him like, well, he's probably just another Rashad White or Isaiah Pacheco and that's probably the range that he ends up falling into. So it just comes down to the market there. But you do have somebody that doesn't matter if they bring in competition. In fact, I kind of hope they bring in some level of competition because he may be a player I would buy into if he was cheaper, But right now it's just a dynasty conversation. Can I sell him for more what the expectation is? And there's obviously some regression to be expected, but not like he's just gonna get new. They're not going to replace him. I'm confident enough to say that he's got a year to tail off before I would say the markers say that's going to happen.

00:24:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would agree.

00:24:39
Speaker 1: I was actually shocked because I do a lot of my like obviously deep digging and deep dives after the season's over, and I was pretty shocked by even like some of the deeper metrics with him, like he was good last year, like period, point blank, Like this isn't like like I think it's very easy to just have this like snap judgment and just be like, no, no, you got to get rid of Kyraen Williams no matter what because we hated him as a prospector he wasn't that great as a prospect and he did that. No, you have to look at the information that we have at hand, and what we have at hand is that he was good this year, and you can't be anchored to that original take. You're gonna lose that way. Let's talk about the quarterback position. You're entering a super flex startup. Let's say you get the typical roster construction. Let's just say it's PPR League two running back, three wide receiver, one tight end, one flex super flex format.

00:25:26
Speaker 2: How are you handling the quarterback position?

00:25:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this is an interesting one because I've done a lot of roster construction strategy. I've put out series of shows talking about optimal roster construction. But I think one thing, and I can speak on this because I get a lot of follow up questions people will send me. I'm sure you get the same thing. They'll send me a cop picture of their roster and say like, what should I do here? And obviously don't have time to go into everybody's team and do like a full analysis. But one of the questions I always kind of get is, hey, I listened to your roster construction series, which it's based on a twelve team start eleven. The example you gave in the question is a twelve team start nine. But whatever the format is, there is an optimal construction that I've gone through and looked at historic wins above replacement and historic production distribution and say, Okay, we know this is probably what it's going to look like for a full season. But then one thing, I think we a lot of times forget I mean the dynasty lens when people present data a lot of times, what do we presented in points per game, we presented in overall rankings, but we don't realize that how many of us play in leagues where you're looking at a whole season at one time. We play in a week to week game. So a lot of the questions on roster construction is, well, what is optimal? But then also do I need to be an optimal in February? And the answer is I like to strive for optimal. If I'm doing a brand new startup, I'm looking at what's going to be optimal. In this case, it's probably as heavy at receiver to where it's just set and forget. I call it the threshold. I have a calculation for any format, any scoring, but there's a cutoff below that. I really don't want to roster receivers at all. So if you're giving me a three receiver one flex, I probably want six core receivers within that cutoff that I just always am playing in the flex and I'm hoping that one or two a week spike above top five numbers for that week. That's kind of just gonna be what's going to drive the innings eating on my team. But the key there is I don't want to waste a bunch of extra spots on other receivers unless I can squint and say, all right, I can sell that receiver Jonathan Bingo. Don't like him. He's below almost any threshold you would probably say in a start nine, start ten, even start eleven league. But is there something I can point to between now and the start of week one where I could sell him for more than what I pay? So he becomes almost outside of my roster construction. That's just a mechanism to gain some value that I can use later. But for purposes of construction, slim it receiver. Get the guys that I need done. And guess what, JJ If two of those six receivers suffer season ending injuries, I'm probably in trouble. I have to bail myself out by trading the injured guy for a player of a similar tier or something like that. But I'm not strained. I'm not carrying three Kendrick Bourns on my bench because I might need them because of an injury. So to your point, I'm probably looking at a bunch of extra running backs, a bunch of extra backup quarterbacks, because what else do you roster people are gonna go, well, what else do I carry? I have thirty roster spots and you're telling me only harry six receivers. Yeah, what else do I roster? Well, A, you don't have to have a perfect roster right now, but you should be going into the season a week to week approach. It should look as optimal as possible. And that's where what do you want during the season? Even in redraft all your bench spots, what are you usually stashing? Probably backup running backs, right, dynasty, superflex, deep, superflex. I'm probably rostering guys like Jacoby Brissett, Taylor Heineke. They have more of a path to a help me, but be also turn into some sort of value. If something breaks the eightieth receiver in the league, A, it's not a great bet to try to fill that player in when there's an injury, but B there's so many of them it's gonna be very hard to move them. So you're thinking through that lens of how do I roster construct And it's basically slim at receiver my tight ends. I'll either platoon tight ends or I'll get a high end tight end and maybe one backup. But I think tight ends are also a very high waste of roster space, especially if it's a non tight end premium. Great, you're stashing three rookie tight ends, even if they become decent. Is anybody gonna want them? Probably not? So basically right process of elimination JJ two tight ends, six receivers. Those are dialed in, set and forget. I'm placing my bets. Hopefully it works out. Every other roster spot is probably a backup running back or a backup quarterback, and that means you're casting as wide of a net as possible. You're carrying sixteen running backs. People going ah or shot penny, he's awful. He may never make a team. That's fine. If he doesn't, I'll get rid of him for somebody else. But like that, that's the optimal that you're striving for. But there's obviously room in there for the Jonathan Mingos and the players that could get a job or could have a spike and then you sell for a draft pick or whatever. But unless that's the mechanism, there's a lot of just wasted space. So hopefully that answers your question. But people don't like that type of rigidity. They want permission to draft or take four shots on the next tank Dell or Pooka Nakup and I'm like, that's okay, but understand that you have to have the discipline that if it's not working, then what Because a year later, when you're still holding Kaishan Boutet and Charlie Jones, you're going, man, what do I do with these guys you have that you should have never had them to begin with unless you go to move them?

00:31:05
Speaker 2: Yeah?

00:31:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, So in that case, are you from a quarterback perspective, like in a startup?

00:31:12
Speaker 2: Are you pounding? Why?

00:31:13
Speaker 1: Because right now, if you look at what startups have been doing the past I don't know, five years or so, it's in super flex leads. It's it's just a quarterback heavy draft. I mean, you're gonna see quarterbacks get drafted first seven ish picks eight ish picks of startups right now, and then you get guys every year that seem to get at least one guy maybe maybe once every two years get thrown in there like a CJ. Stroud. Now being sort of part of that conversation, you know, is is the quarterback landscape? Is that something that you lean into when you're doing these startups that you're you're just part of that run. Are you going with like a hero quarterback strategy and sort of punting that that QB two and going with what you're talking about, where you know, you just have this this bench filled with running backs and quarterbacks, like you said, and hopefully you can hit on a Baker Mayfield or what have you. Or are you sort of waiting to the third round to get your wide receivers pound wide receiver for the next six rounds or what have you, and then get those two elite quarterbacks. How are you sort of generally speaking, I know that this is obviously really really high level. It's gonna change and fluctuate from draft to draft, but is that you know, are you going with one quarterback or two quarterbacks?

00:32:18
Speaker 3: Early? So if you look back the last couple of years, we've seen it go both ways, right, We've seen the runs of Man, if you have two of the top eight quarterbacks, it smashes everybody Versus this past year, not only did a lot of the high end quarterbacks get injured, but the quarterback quote unquote dead zone kind of raised a little bit but also flattened, so teams could have gotten by with an elite QB and then just two kind of fill in options, or they could have gotten by with two like low end QB ones and still matched most of the QB rooms above them, just because there were so many injuries. I mean, there was probably one or two teams that might have had, you know, Josh Allen and Jordan Love or something like that, and they probably were the top tier quarterback rooms. But for the most part, I think it's more of a construction argument. I tend to think we're probably going to have something that looks like twenty twenty one in twenty twenty two versus twenty twenty three. There's going to be a blend of that, But I think the key is understanding and destination. DEBI we have one of these tools that can literally give you the roadmap to where this is. But there's a quarterback dead zone too. You've talked about this. There's a quarterback dead zone that doesn't Gilly get referred to in that way. But again, if you're thinking about quarterback from a week to week basis, what I don't want to do in Dynasty is be paying for quarterbacks because of job security. Ah Man, let me get that QB twenty five because technically, on paper, he's a starter, when what I also know is that as soon as Jake Browning starts, he's better than the guy that you probably are valuing at QB twenty five because he's gonna start all year. It's the Kenny Pickett corollary. Kenny Pickett's a starter, but I'm sure you notice during the season, I would post every time a backup QB scored more points this week than Kenny Pickett ever has, And that just speaks to the fact that even if Kenny Pickett is the starter, anytime a backup is in there, there's a very good chance on a week to week basis, you'd rather start that backup over Kenny Pickett. So right there, if I'm paying anything for him in Dynasty, it is paying for this fake job security where I just don't have to manage my team week to week. Meanwhile, there's somebody out there that might have two starters, they don't have a third starter, so during a bye week they're scrambling, but you know what they do have back to our roster construction strategy, ten backups. So that's why I'm into rostering the backups. It actually allows me to avoid the dead zone. But unlike running back, it allows me to take advantage of somebody else in my league that just has to have Kenny Pickett because he's a starter. They have to get Russell Wilson because well, he's gonna start. But I don't really want to assign any value to the fact that he is a permanent starter versus I can replace him by roster constructing myself out of that. So to answer your question, I'm probably not drafting more than two starting quarterbacks, and I would like those to be above that replaceability threshold. So typical leagues, it's QB fifteen to eighteen, but I don't need QB one and QB three. I could get by with QB eight and QB fourteen. If I'm roster constructed right, I can probably kind of platoon that second QB just with fill in backups and play matchups. I'm not gonna have the best QB room in the league, but I'm also not investing my first two round startup price you invested last year. You went Joe Burrow Anthony Richardson with your first two picks, might as well prepare to be picking one on one this year because you had no chance right, those are your top two picks. You probably didn't want to trade those guys when they got injured unless you could pivot to another highly valued QB. And that's also hard to do. It's a scarceasset, so you can go both ways. I think roster construction at QB is becoming more key though.

00:36:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, a couple things too on top of that. You know you mentioned you know, the example I gave you was a start nine league. But the deep this is one thing that people just don't think about enough and it drives me nuts. But the deeper your starting lineup is, the deeper you're the guys. You're like, if it's a start fifteen player league, what have you? And it's a super flex league, those quarterbacks are becoming less valuable, right, because you're starting more of these other positions, and people ignore that far too often. So, like, if you're in a league where you're starting two quarterbacks, two running backs, one wide receiver, and one tight end, pound quarterbacks because you know that they're going to score the most points of that of the positions and they're going to take up the highest percentage of your total team score. But as you add more positions and more flex spots and what have you. The running back wide receiver wide receiver in particular in Dynasty becomes so much more valuable than what it was prior to what a standard league shows. With that, now, other point about the quarterback dead zone, I think needs to be driven home as well, because I think that you could even make the argument these days. And this is me just sort of speaking off the top of my dome here. It's just kind of been in my brain for the last like six or seven months or so. I think the dead zone could hypothetically be starting even earlier, even in Dynasty. And what I mean by that is, I think, like a Tua is an example of someone who we probably feel pretty good about from a job security standpoint. I say pretty good because there's obviously going to always be something there with him because of the way people just generally view him. But tuas interesting because you know, he started off really hot, obviously, and he was one of the best fantasy assets for the first handful of weeks of the season, but he really did not have that great of a fantasy year overall. And I look at a player like Tua and you you know, before the season you could have even thrown like a dack in there to some degree. It's just that people hate Dak Prescott, so's it's not as much of a one to one and he's not as young.

00:37:57
Speaker 2: Obviously, but someone like Tua.

00:37:59
Speaker 1: And then I think about these situations that seem to arise every year where a young quarterback gets a chance in a different location or has has a one year We have a one year outlook for a certain player. This year that guy ended up being Baker Mayfield, right, And the gap between a Tua and a Baker was gigantic from a value perspective throughout twenty twenty three and throughout the season, but from an actual production standpoint, really not that significantly different at all between two and I. Baker might about score him on a points per game basis, honestly. Yeah, right right, So I'm starting to like, you know, we could separate this, And I talked to Rich Reebar about this a couple of weeks ago on perspectives, but we could We could definitely divide this by guys who are mobile and guys who are not. Right, we could divide it by like you know, Josh Allen, Jalen Hurts, and Patrick Mahomes. You know, Mahomes is a unicord in his own in his own right. But you know, we could separate those guys in Lamar, the guys we know who have the weekly ceiling because of their rushing and the floor I mean, rushing really is more of a floor thing than a ceiling thing. But we could separate those guys that way, and I think that's probably the easiest way to do it.

00:39:06
Speaker 2: But you start to.

00:39:07
Speaker 1: Get into like the you know, like like we can look at a Joe Burrow and feel pretty good about having Burrow because we've seen the high end outcome for him from on a points per game basis and such. But then you get into like Trevor Lawrence man, you know, like, like it is, is Trevor Lawrence overvalued because of what we think he can become, And what we think he can become is maybe like a Joe Burrow type, but we've seen it with Burrow already, you know, and realistically, from like a production standpoint, Baker Mayfield types are getting there just as frequently as as Trevor Lawrence types are. And so my, I mean maybe my I mean you feel free to comment, but like I almost feel like the dead zone with quarterback, because yes, you're right. I mean the guys in like the QB fifteen to eighteen ranger like totally replaceable for the most part, But is it.

00:39:56
Speaker 2: Gonna is it earlier?

00:39:57
Speaker 1: You know, like is it getting the point where it is the tu uhs in the Trevor Lawrences of the world.

00:40:03
Speaker 3: So here's a very good example that highlights what you just said, because I agree with you from a if you're talking dynasty here, And you have to be a little intuitive with this too, because this is again a psychological exercise of how the community's gonna view something, and then that's your propensity to invest in it earlier in a startup. So go back and just look at how Drew Brees was viewed throughout his career. Look back at his fantasy career. He lived on good efficiency, some extreme volume, but he had a lot of longevity. Right. You could have looked back and said, man, if I would have gotten Drew Brees, I would have gotten twelve years of great production from him, right Right, That's kind of how I viewed somebody like Joe Burrow justin Herbert, like, I actually would never bet on those guys cracking the top three in a given season, because even if they have year to year stability, even if they can give me QB five to ten number, there's always gonna be a Justin Fields and Anthony Richardson somebody where you go in a one year window, I would actually bet on those guys finishing higher. Right. But when you invest in Joe Burrow in your startup QB five, QB six, you're going, ah, man, and I hear this all the time. I don't think he has the ceiling, but that's not part of what you're paying for. What you're paying for with Joe Burrow is if it goes bad, guess what, JJ He's QB six again. And then the next year if he's QB ten next year in Fantasy points, he's QB seven next year. So you have this escape hatch that doesn't exist with somebody like Brock Purdy or Tua. It goes bad for Brock Perdy, it's oh my god, he's getting replaced. It goes bad for Tua he's not getting a second contract. That is the difference between the two. But if you looked at it and you go, do I really want to trade my future? First up to draft Joe Burrow and then do the same thing. My next year's first to draft Justin Herbert and that team down there is getting Brock Purty Intua. There's a chance in a one to two year window they're just better than you. Like, that's in the range of outcomes, but what you're paying for is largely the escape patch on some of these guys like Burrow Herbert. I hate to say it, but I think CJ. Stroud's going down this range. He shouldn't be QB three if he's QB six, seven eight over the next couple of years, unless he just becomes the greatest of all time where he can maintain essentially like Justin Herbert's volume with Justin Herbert's rookie year efficiency. Probably not a great bet for CJ. Stroud being QB three, but he probably's already in the Herbert Burrow range of I feel safe with the asset, and I know you said, Trevor Lawrence, but as soon as he gets paid, he's in that range. So there's a that yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but that's the dead zone. The dead zone is below the job security guys, where you go if it goes wrong. For rock Perty or Tua or insert whatever name's in there. You're in trouble. Yeah, and when it goes wrong, it probably means the production is bad, But what's also gonna sink the dynasty demand. And the reason I brought up Drew Brees is because you knew who was exactly like these guys but never valued like Drew Brees before his injured Kirk Cousins. Yeah, eight straight years of like wow, he outperformed his value in production, but no one saw it coming until you look back and you go, man, Kirk Cousins, he was a QB one for ten straight seasons, but he was never higher than QB fifteen in dynasty value. So that was just a miss. Now, do you want to project to the next Kirk Cousins is gonna be? We've seen that tag slapped on dozens of quarterbacks and right, it never works out. But you get the point. The difference between Breeze and Cousins. Yet you're gonna look back at their peak like ten year windows and go wasn't crazy different from a fantasy production perspective.

00:43:58
Speaker 2: Right, right?

00:44:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean this goes back to just you know, looking at dynasty and sort of two pillars one being production and then the other being value. Right, you just need to be able to continue to hold value in your dynasty roster year and in year out.

00:44:10
Speaker 2: And yeah, those guys.

00:44:11
Speaker 1: That's why I went to Trevor Lawrence because I do think that it's sort of kind of an inflection point, like like when you're looking at rankings or quarterbacks in the league, it's like, you know, there is no The potential for Trevor Lawrence to go south is not nearly as great as Brock Purty going south. The chance that Brock Party outscores Trevor Lawrence in twenty twenty four, I'd probably say he's he's likely to out like more likely than not to outscore Trevor Lawrence. But from a value perspective, we're gonna lean in on Lawrence a little more. That's why he's ranked a little bit higher. But I do think that he's interesting because he hasn't shown it quite yet. But I don't know if from like a real football standpoint, we're gonna see the Jags not you know, just like let them free and just move on. Very unlikely for that to happen. Let me ask you this, what do you think dynasty may get wrong the most.

00:45:03
Speaker 3: Honestly, I think a lot of what we just talked about is one of the things that a lot of dynasty managersers make. The mistake under we're playing largely now again, I am not playing dynasty. I'm not doing this kind of stuff for the sheer profit and money, right, Because when you start calculating, all right, I'm in this many leagues and blah blah blah, like the ROI, this isn't the business for like, I want to make the most money possible. It's nice to win, it's nice to have bragging rights and stuff like that. But I mean, I enjoy the game theory aspect of this. But there's a lot of people out there that don't make content. Nobody's buying anything from them. They're not being followed. They're here just hey, I'm in ten leagues. I'm trying to win, you know, I'm putting this much money up. I'm trying to win. And when it comes to dynasty, I think one of the mistakes people make is they do a lot of what we were just talking about. They'll draft the Joe Burrow and the Trevor Lawrence because they're safer, But what's the plan with doing that. If you don't invoke that safety at some point, did you really get any value out of it? Meaning like we're shooting if your goal is to win, you're shooting for the top ten percent range of outcomes. But kind of drafting Trevor Lawrence over brock Purty because he's safer, or in theory, paying a little more for Trevor Lawrence over brock Purty when that's your analysis, and I think you're accurate, they're almost fifty to fifty to be production wise, one and the same. But Lawrence is going to go half around higher in a startup because well, he's got the contract to call me, and he's got the draft capital, whatever it might be. Why why are we leaning into that security when I may never even need to invoke the security because things just are the status quo. They're both good quarterbacks, they're not great, but I never need to go, oh, man, I need that escape patch on Trevor Lawrence. Yet we're also playing a game where dude, you got to finish like first or second place to even win. You know, why are we putting any equity to like safety? You know, it's like, man, if this goes wrong, I'll be able to bail myself out. And that's assuming a lot of things. That's assuming the situation doesn't change to where other people don't value that security on Trevor Lawrence anymore. But even that behavior is kind of like I'm already pricing in and paying for if it goes wrong. Yet I'm playing a game. We're only one out of twelve or two out of twelve people even make any money. So it's weird. I think we put too much value in liquidity, too much value in if it goes wrong, I'll be able to fix it. Sometimes if it just goes wrong, you just start over, and that's easier and it actually leads to a higher rate of return. If you do that, you don't pay for quote unquote security. So I think that's a big mistake. People pay for job security, floor things like that, and it totally contradicts the payout structure in a lot of the leagues we play in.

00:47:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you're really just invite purgatory and to be in purgatory with your with your roster.

00:48:03
Speaker 2: By playing that way, you're you're.

00:48:06
Speaker 1: You're you're doing what the Steelers do from a team building perspective, and you're just you're just coasting it at eight and eight or eight nine, every you're nine and eight. Uh and so I think that makes a lot of sense and hopefully, you know, folks can take something away from that.

00:48:18
Speaker 2: Uh, let's shift gears a little bit.

00:48:20
Speaker 1: You were at the Senior Bowl earlier this month or maybe it was last Was it technically January?

00:48:24
Speaker 2: Was it in February?

00:48:25
Speaker 3: Month of February?

00:48:26
Speaker 2: Yep?

00:48:26
Speaker 3: Into January early February? Yep?

00:48:28
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:48:29
Speaker 1: What's your process like for evaluating prospects?

00:48:33
Speaker 2: Are you?

00:48:34
Speaker 1: You know, we have these annoying debates all the time in the fantasy space. If you're a film guy, if you're a data driven guy. I don't care about that so much necessarily. Uh in terms of like if you're on one of the sides, I care about how you evaluate. I'm curious about that. How do you evaluate?

00:48:52
Speaker 3: So for me, this was the first time going to the Senior Bowl. I was there with kind of just complete openness take in the experience. I am a data person. I am somebody that came from this as like I watch football because I like it, But I'm not somebody where you're like, all right, tell me what you saw with these players? Who stood out to you like I almost purposely avoid answering like that because I'm an untrained eye when it comes to that. So I would say I lean more on being purely analytical. But I think my role in this space is because there's people like you're better at prospecting than me. You spend more time on it than me, You put out a draft guide, you talk about it on a weekly basis. I don't. There's people out there that they watch all the players, they watch all the games. They have a totally different analysis than you, but they're also coming at it from like they're putting in the work that I could never duplicate.

00:49:46
Speaker 2: So I think my role.

00:49:47
Speaker 3: Is point people the resources of people that are doing the work intensively on both sides, data analytics, film, And then I think where I come in is I I'm able to help people guide how do they fit into a dynasty roster roster construction wise, I think I'm very much. Maybe I'm a little too rigid when it comes to draft capital. That's something else I have to study because there's certain positions where I've like running back, for instance, I've almost started to look at running draft capital doesn't really matter if we're playing it the way we talked about it earlier this show, why does it matter if a guy's a third round pick versus a fifth round pick. They're gonna get lumped into that ninety five percent bucket anyway, right most likely until they're not. So why do I care about draft capital? There? Quarterbacks? We've seen quarterbacks come from round two to round six to brock Purty in round seven. Generally, if you're a second round picker below, historically you're a dead zone. QB go through the starters in the NFL right now, there's probably three or four that were not first round picks, so it doesn't even almost matter outside of that, but it still does matter for the short term. So where I can come in is I think I can kind of help guide the pulse. I listened to a ton of Dynasty content. That's part of what I try to do is stay up to date what's going on in the space, and then where do these players fit in. One of the examples I'll give is I've come up with trying to project war for the first two years of a player's career based on draft pick value. So literally forget about the players just based on the value of your draft pick. And it's a sobering reality when you start to realize that after a certain range, let's call it two oh four in a twelve team superflex rookie draft, the pick is negative value. That doesn't mean every player below that is negative value, but the probability is that it's negative value. So someone says, Okay, what should I do with my third round rookie pick? And my first answer would be, from all this information out there, whether it's JJ or it's Ray Garvin or whoever's being talked about, maybe the best bet you can make with those picks is just draft yourself into something that'll give you some flexibility going forward. A player people like Braylan Allen is a pila or a lot of people like I don't really like Braylan Allen. You may or may not like Braylan Allen, but you know what, there's probably a chance somebody out there does. So if I'm picking between him and Dylan Lobb, Dylan Lobb's probile may say I like him more at cost, But which one may I be able to move for something else? Probably Braylen Allen. And it's just because of the bias of the community. Dude, it's Braylen Allen. He's the next Derrick Henry. It's simply that it's like the popularity score of the player, and that kind of craps on everybody's models in film grades when all I'm saying is pick what people like, Pick what there's gonna be a sucker that in six months will buy from you, and that maybe that's where I come in and it fits into roster construction. How do I want to use those bench spots? Right? Can I sell what I'm investing in? And if I can't, what is the purpose as to why I'm picking it. If it's a receiver and I can't sell it, probably a bad bet.

00:53:07
Speaker 1: Look, I don't think you're crapping on prospect analysis with that take for the record, because me and the way that I'm approaching this stuff all probability driven, all of it. That I look at the scores that I'm doing, I'm just trying to see what is the likelihood of a player like this given all these factors to give me this kind of season, this kind of season, this kind of season. Right, And you mentioned the draft capital thing. At first, I didn't know exactly where you were going with it. But then I then realized what you were saying, because I thought you were saying just draft capital in general is horrible. But obviously a first rounder running back in the first round, let's say, is far more important than a running back in the fourth round, right, just generally speaking. But what you're saying is it plays into the exact same stuff we were talking about, the running back dead zone, where there is a threshold and a point in time where the difference in draft capital from one player to the next in the third round of the fifth round is not very significant whatsoever. People make it significant. And I haven't really talked about this that much on my show. I don't know if I've ever talked about it. But the way my model is structured with running backs and wide receivers is draft capital gets more weight in the model for guys who are picked earlier. Right, So a guy like let's just say, Christian Watson when he came out, didn't really have a great age adjusted profile, came from a smaller school, like there's a lot of things that were sort of like negative towards his you know, he's athletic and stuff. But my model doesn't care about athleticism much at wide receiver, and so it graded him as X, right, but that X had that early second round draft capital embedded in it, and so he was rising a little bit more than someone in the fourth round would based on his draft capital.

00:54:44
Speaker 2: And so I have this metric.

00:54:46
Speaker 1: This is gonna get incredibly nerdy here, but I think some people will be interested in it. I have this metric called draft capital delta. And what draft capital delta does is it looks at a prospect score and then it looks at a player's draft capital percentile essentially right like where they were drafted. You know, if they're in the fifth round, they might have a percentile of like the fiftieth percentile. Because I'm looking at undrafted players as well. Anyway, draft capitol delta looks at the difference between the two and if there's a positive draft capital delta, that tells me that the player was underdrafted, like the model liked him a little bit more than what the NFL draft did, and then vice versa. Well, draft capital delta's become much much larger later in the draft because draft capital matters less, right, draft capital matters a lot in the early rounds. Jamir Gibbs last year, people got mad at me because pre draft I thought he was going to go in the late first, early second round, and I had X grade on him or score for him in the prospect Guide. He goes twelfth overall, and all of a sudden, his comps are closer to Christian McCaffrey than they are you know, Giovanni Bernard, And there's a difference. There's a meaningful difference in that draft capital that that is important. But you're right, like, once you get past a certain point, that draft capital score that's part of a player's model score becomes less and less important. And I do think, you know, I haven't studied it. I hope that you dig into it a lot, because I think it'd be really really interesting, is how the market really views that aspect of things. You know, if they're really gonna value an early fourth rounder so so much higher than a sixth rounder, or or a third rounder to a sixth rounder or something like that, because it could be a way to really exploit the market.

00:56:25
Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting that you bring that up, because I think with running backs it's a little easier because there's the haves and the have nots. But if we talk about receivers, someone posted this the other day about you know, the hit you see it all the time, the hit rates of receivers based on draft capital, based on whatever model it is, and I kind of pushed back on it, and I think this is where the psychology comes into it a little bit, because I looked at this list and it was just you know, from like twenty nineteen to present, and it was just hit hit miss miss hit it. And usually that's based on some threshold, right top, twenty four year whatever, that's that's usually the standard. But then you go back and you dive a little bit deeper. Peter Howard's talked about this, but I think he hasn't even updated to the degree we could. Now you have sites like keep Trade Cut that's been around for a couple of years, go back and look at I'll give an example Rashad Bateman. People would classify him as a miss right first round picks never hit the threshold, but he wasn't a miss if you look at after his first year. Now, part of this was he had an injury excuse, but I think part of it was also he was a first round pick, which bought him some Grace. He was also a very liked player, unlike other first round receivers. That's where all first round receivers are not created equal. You could have sold Rashad Bateman for eighty five percent of what you paid if you drafted him at the one twelve, two to oh one in your rookie draft. You could have sold him for a mid second after a year of failure. Slash only played seven games. Slash wasn't great in the seven games. You could have got out for eighty five. Now, if you're still holding him on your team and you're going I can't even sell him for a third, that's a miss. But that's a user. That's a manager miss there. That is not a prospect miss. Now, Quentin Johnston prospect miss because he still cost you about the same as what Rashad Bateman did, but he lost everything overnight. And what was the difference between the two wasn't really their prospect profile. I mean, Bateman had a little bit of a better profile, but a lot.

00:58:28
Speaker 2: Of it wasn't.

00:58:29
Speaker 3: The gap shouldn't have been so great. The one difference between the two was people didn't like Quentin Johnston period. They if you had like a Ray and I talk about this all the time. We haven't figured out a way to quantify it. That the likability score JJ. If you could slap that on players, Quentin Johnston's likability score would have been zero. The pie of what made up his value was ninety five percent first round chargers. Take those two things away and nobody would have wanted him. So then when it goes badly with first round and chargers, he has nothing to fall back on. Whereas there's a Jamison Williams, people still will pay a second for Jamison Williams. Yet all the signals are he's no better than Quinton Johnston. But there's such a difference in the values, and I think we don't have that in any sort of model, and I don't even know how to quantify it. But I know there's a way. We have data out there. I'm sure we could build something that literally just searched all social media at all times and just basically said who's being mentioned in a positive light the most of the class, who is being hated on the most, and who just isn't even getting mentioned, and then assign some sort of likability score. It's out there. I don't have it, but I think of it in those lenses before you click draft on a player that is in a suspect range or even in a higher end range, like there's gonna be a lot of first second round receivers this year. It makes sense to put a little value in the ones where people go, I like that guy, and a little less on the ones where people go, Man, that guy came out of nowhere. Keon Coleman this year. I don't know, Man, I don't really know. He kind of came out of nowhere. He didn't produce early, He's raw all those things where people are already putting him in a bucket. He's more risky than drafting, say Xavier Worthy, who if people have liked for years in the DEVI circles, there's a difference. Even if they're draft capital, landing spot, all of that is the same. The potential fallout is a little bit different. If those guys aren't studs, if they just become average players, one is going to be more flexible than the other. And you wouldn't have seen that from a model or draft capital or anything like that.

01:00:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's kind it's honestly kind of counterintuitive to think that way, right because because what you're saying is lean into what the masses are thinking favorably. When we really from from strictly a probability standpoint, without thinking about market value. Strictly probability of a guy hitting. From a fantasy points per game standpoint, we should be going against the grain for the most part, right, But you bring up a really really good point in that that match like Cadarius Tony, when he no one like Cadarius Tony, or like there were at least like a large group of data folk like myself who were not very high on Canarius Tony. And so even if he had an incredible yards per route run year one, sure some people were able to sell him for a decent a decent cost. But at the same time, regardless of what he was going to do, there are still gonna be haters out there and people who questioned it, And so you have to think about that. You know, as you're moving from year one to year two. I have my year two model that can at least like help a little bit and say, hey, here's how we should factually be viewing this.

01:01:42
Speaker 2: But again, it's not looking at the.

01:01:44
Speaker 1: Likability score if you will, of these guys which I think could really really go a very very long way. Look, man, I don't want to take up too too much of your time. I got I got two more questions I want to ask you, though, I don't know how much you've gotten into the high end parts of the wide receiver class.

01:01:59
Speaker 2: So you have Marvin Harrison Junior.

01:02:00
Speaker 1: This might even be part of what you're talking about to a degree, because right now you have Marvin Harrison Junior. And I'll just say, Malik Neighbors to me in my prospect model right now. Again, haven't really talked about this because I haven't done a lot of prospecting shows yet. Malik Neighbors looks basically just as good as Marvin Harrison does in my model right now, right, but the sentiment around those guys is a little bit different. I mean, people are going to naturally like and I'm gonna rank Marvin Harrison first in the class, but people are naturally gonna like Marvin Harrison more than Malik Neighbors. How do you view that situation? Do you think that Neighbors is close to Harrison? And then layer on top what we were just talking about, like, are you gonna, you know, let's say that you have Marvin Harrison and Malik neighbors close to one another. From like a projection standpoint, are you then going to feel okay with trading back, let's say a couple spots and getting neighbors and plus, you know, in order to get away from Marvin Harrison. Or are you drafting Harrison because you just feel better about the sentiment around him depending on what happens to one of these guys in year one.

01:03:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think there's layers to this, and I'll break it down this way. I think Harrison is everything we talked about. He has the prospect profile, but he also has the name that's just it's unflappable, it's unbreakable. So clearly there's a reason that he's already a top four or five Dynasty receiver. In fact, you could almost argue you can't really go anywhere except for where he is right now. And we've never seen that with the prospect that is literally other than Bjeon Robinson, we haven't really seen that from a skill player prospect where they enter the league Barkley, Bjon and Marvin Harrison. They enter the league in the tier where you're like, if this guy's really good he's in the tier where he's at right now. For me, Neighbors, I think I've been higher on Neighbors than everybody else. I probably would put him in the top seven or eight receivers in Dynasty already. He's right there with Garrett Wilson, Chris Alave like, probably right below the AJ Brown Aman Ross Saint Brown range. But that's pretty high. That would be higher than any receiver prospect we've ever had coming into the league. And he's the wide receiver two in the class. And part of that is he has the profile. But I think there's a little bit of that likability developing with Melik Neighbors. I've seen people going, yeah, where did LSU get another Jamar Chase five years later? Like I've seen people throwing that around. People see that, the masses see when people make those comps. He's got the LSU jersey, he was on a great LSU offense. I'm not comparing him to Chase, but the person in your league might be going, Okay, this guy's a dude, Like he's not Marvin Harrison. But if I can trade back and get a first rounder on top of mylik Neighbors for Marvin Harrison, I'll take that bet. I think the real analysis here, JJ is are you willing to go out of the Malik Neighbors range and gamble on somebody else? If I told you you don't get your pick of the next receiver, but after that, I'll give you three of the top ten receivers, but you don't get a Donesday Neighbors or mar would you do that? Would you be willing to bet on those three? You can pick the three, assuming they all get decent draft capital. Are you willing to go down in that range? Because I think that's where the consensus is gonna go. Oh man, I'll give you the one, ten, one eleven, and two oh one for Elik Neighbors all day. Are you willing to go the other way? That's the litmus test? And I'm not sure where I'm at on that. That's probably more of a what can I do with those picks once I get them? But on paper, I would say give me three shots versus banking that the league Neighbors is going to be, you know, the wide receiver seven to eight overall like that, he almost doesn't really have anywhere to go. So that's how I would analyze it. But yes, to answer your question, Neighbors is very close to Marv, but there's just a tie break because his name's Marvin Harrison.

01:05:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm with you, and I'm again I'm probably gonna have Harrison as my wide receiver one in this class.

01:05:50
Speaker 2: But look, you mentioned the Jamar Chase thing.

01:05:53
Speaker 1: Malik Neighbors in my prospect model right now has just as good of a score that Jamar Chase had. I mean, he is that good as age justin productions out of control before I let you go, I talked about sell candidates on my show earlier this week. Give me one player in Dynasty that you think is a cell candidate right now.

01:06:10
Speaker 3: So I'll give two examples in there of different layers. I mentioned CJ. Stroud earlier. I like c J. Stroud, but if you look at his NFL passing efficiency this year, it wasn't like off the chart so good where you're just projecting him to be the next Patrick Mahomes or the next team it's hard to even say he's going to be as good as somebody like Joe Burrow or Justin Herbert. I think he's comparable. I think what he did as a rookie as a guy that wasn't in a great situation at least what we think it's fair to project him in that range. But I've seen him going QB two in a startup draft, the second overall pick in the league without even exploring, Hey, can I trade back five spots? Okay? I had to settle for Joe Burrow. I settled for Justin Herbert. To me, that's a guy I'm willing to take the bet against where he is right now. You're paying for a lot of artificial value there because he's a second year guy.

01:07:03
Speaker 2: JJ.

01:07:03
Speaker 3: He just has to get twenty percent better, right, he just has to. And then if he just has the same year as he just did, you're gonna go all right, he's in that tier, but why pay for that tier? So I think he's an automatic easy QB sell if you can tier off of them. For some of those other guys that we mentioned and then the other ones, I would say it's probably going through and just seeing can you get rid of some of the receivers that are maybe seen as being above that threshold, but they're right on the precipice of having no value. So guys like Johan Dotson, Jamison Williams. They're still living on the fact that they had a profile, but all the signals say they're very easily they're just gonna fall back into the range where they're roster cloggers. So I wouldn't give specifics, but those are two examples of players where if you have them, the difference between them and the replaceable receiver that's gonna pop up, or the fourth round rookie like a Dontavian Wicks ord Mario Douglas, they're all the same. To have names to or unknowns. Give me the unknowns and the plus value. So finding receivers that are basically just flat tier kind of roster cloggers but have some value, those are the ones I want to get off of.

01:08:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great, great call. The Johan Dotson thing. Whenever I was doing my bi candidate's episode, which I did the week prior, I thought to myself, I wonder, you know, obviously I followed along and looked at like Dotson's numbers throughout the season and stuff like that, and I'm like, I wonder what his advanced metrics really looked like compared to the rest of the team, And like let's let's try to create a narrative. That's how I analyze this stuff is then I look at a player and I try to create the pros and con narrative, right and so I'm trying to create the pro narrative for Johan Dotson. It's tough, man, It's it's really tough. Like the pro narrative for Johan Dotson right now is he looked pretty good as a prospect. He was okay as in my year two model. He was kind of in that range where it could have gone either way, and it kind of went the wrong way in year two. And so I think it's a really really good call out to make. But Scott, yeah, man, it's been a pleasure to talk shop with you a little bit. Why don't you let everyone know where they can find you.

01:09:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, appreciate you having me on always good to chop it up with you. You can find me at Charles Chill FFB on X. All of our content is on Destination dev. So the YouTube feed destinationdev dot com is our website podcast feed. You can check that out Destination DEVI Radio on all podcast platforms. That's where all my content is. And then aside from that. We also have a YouTube channel myself, Shane, Manila, Clay Moseley. We are the three hosts of Dynasty Trades in five that streams every Tuesday night, eight thirty to ten pm Eastern Time. And then Shane and I do a show once a week called Mannequin Show where it's just him and I kind of rapping about a specific topic. So those are usually shorter, more directed. So you can find all my content on those two YouTube channels and podcast feeds.

01:09:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't recommend your stuff enough. Man, you're crushing it. I love Dynasty Trades in five. You guys are crushing it with that as well. You can find my stuff on Lateround dot com. Prospect Guide is available for pre order right now for eleven ninety nine. March eleventh is when it publishes. It'll go up to fourteen ninety nine, so you can save a few bucks if you pre order now. Otherwise, everyone, thank you for tuning in.