Becoming a Best Ball Bro: Can You Fade Zero RB?

00:00:01
Speaker 1: Rich. Did you hear the news that drop today? I did not.

00:00:04
Speaker 2: What's going on?

00:00:05
Speaker 1: I guess that's pretty open ended question.

00:00:08
Speaker 3: But the news that I'm referring to is that Nintendo Switch is officially bringing back Perfect Dark and they're doing it via online multiplayer. So if any of you guys are Nintendo sixty four players and you once played Perfect Dark, you will be able to play perfec Dark once again a Nintendo Switch. And I figure this is the perfect time to bring up that Perfect Dark is just a better version of Golden 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.

00:00:55
Speaker 1: This is the year where things start to change.

00:00:58
Speaker 3: This is the year where I officially become a best ball bro. Welcome into another episode of becoming a Best ball Bro.

00:01:13
Speaker 1: I'm JJ, Zacharyeson.

00:01:15
Speaker 3: I love Perfect Dark and I am joined by my co host Rich Ryan Rich.

00:01:19
Speaker 1: What's going on, buddy?

00:01:20
Speaker 2: You know it's funny. You had Josh Norris on one of your first episodes of I think it was Perspectives. It was Perspectives this summer, and he was talking about how he would sit and watch his brother play a lot of video games. And I had the exact same experience growing up because I have one sibling, my older brother, he's five years older than me, and my job, jj no joke, was to sit and read through the manual and the tips and tricks and to just tell him what to do. Like I was the offensive coordinator of him playing banjo kazoo. That was my job.

00:01:51
Speaker 1: So here's the thing.

00:01:52
Speaker 3: I have a brother who's six years older than They're seven years older than me, like six and a half years older, and I would do the same thing, but he was a PlayStation and so I would mostly do it for like tomb Raider and stuff like that. Right, But then I was the n sixty four guy. He never really got into n sixty four, so like that was my thing. And so when it comes to gaming, especially retro gaming, anything Nintendo sixty four related, I feel like I'm in like the ninety eighth percentile in terms of like being good at the system, but also knowledge of that system other systems, you know, like I have an Xbox S right now. People are so much better than me at gaming with other systems, But when it comes to Nintendo sixty four, Rich, that's my jam.

00:02:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had a sweet mate, same thing that on Mario Kart. He would just hop his way through Rainbow Road and people would like bet him beers or whatever, and he would just wreck them every single time.

00:02:44
Speaker 3: I won't throw out the take that Diddy Kong Racing is a better version than Mario Kart. Of Mario Kart, that's not Look, I had this conversation with a buddy actually like two days ago. Okay, Perfect Dark is a literal enhanced version of Golden Eye. It's like take the GoldenEye core game and just and make it better. Like like there's there's bots that you can play against in multiplayer mode, there's more maps, there's more guns.

00:03:08
Speaker 1: It's just a better version of that game.

00:03:10
Speaker 3: Whereas Diddy Kong Racing and Mario Kart sixty four, they're two very different the gameplay wise, very very different.

00:03:19
Speaker 2: Like that weird.

00:03:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, my take more so is that Diddy Kong Racing is underrated. That that's the take.

00:03:25
Speaker 3: It's not that because I think Mario Kart sixty four has has stan stood the test of time very well. Like you can still play that game and enjoy yourself. Right, try to try to play Golden Eye right now.

00:03:34
Speaker 1: It's horrible.

00:03:35
Speaker 3: GoldenEye is terrible. Right now, Mario Kart sixty four, you can still play Diddy Kong Racing. You can still play, and hopefully on the switch perfect Dark, you'll still be able to play. Anyway, did you see did you see the Puppy two dropped?

00:03:50
Speaker 2: I did? I got we the head of products, I forget her name, but you put it in Discord last night as a teaser and then yeah launched today. Uh yeah, I'm I've got a deposit ready to go, and then I'm going to fire a bunch of those I've got. I think I have like a dozen slow drafts going right now, will probably add like twelve to twenty more and then Yeah, I think I like this slow burn of working on some of the smaller drafts and just learning things that I like, some roster construction and stacks that I enjoy putting together and then I'm gonna start to ramp up some more bbms because, like you, I mean, I'm even further down in the learning process than you are. I feel like I'm an extension of the audience coming this with brand new eyes to everything. So, yeah, I saw the puppy dropped, and are you max entered yet? Are you close?

00:04:42
Speaker 3: No? I entered probably twenty whenever I first dropped, and then I'll probably maybe tonight enter ten to twenty more and then just kind of see how things do. I think, you know, like last puppy, I probably got like forty in or something like that. It's it's harder to max enter, you know, some of these contests because obviously entry fees five dollars instead of twenty five for Best ball Mania, and so it's just gonna naturally fill pretty quick because more people are going to want to enter and play, and so it's just more difficult to get you know, the full one fifty in there. And I don't really want to have three hundred slow drafts going on at once, you know, by max entering that with the draft guy that I'm trying to finish, I'll be going on vacation over the fourth of July. You know, I'm just this is not the time to, you know, have three hundred slow drafts going at once.

00:05:34
Speaker 1: But yeah, I'm gonna be involved.

00:05:35
Speaker 3: I'm already in some drafts and ended up getting the one oh one and a lot of them once again, some kind of like going back and forth with Ceedee Lamb Christian McCaffrey because I just don't want to have too too much exposure to cemc there.

00:05:48
Speaker 2: Well, it's interesting that you're going back and forth there, because one of your biggest focus that you list here as we get into specific strategy this week, is that you feel like you're going zero RB a little bit too much. So give us your experience of, you say, drafting too many wide receivers sometimes and finding yourself trying to scrounge for RBS. Tell us about it.

00:06:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, Look, I mean I think that every draft has its own sort of unique market. Now you're gonna see more unique markets in season long where you go from your home league to a neighborhood league to a league maybe with sharper people. And not to say that like those home leagues and neighborhood leagues can't be sharp but every sort of economy is going to be different with each of those leagues. Now, on Underdog, they're all a lot tighter and closer because we're all working off of the same ADP and it's the same general rules and stuff like that now. But I will say, like from contest to contest, things do differ. I mean, like I've been doing the marathon drafts. I mentioned that last week a little bit. I haven't liked them as much personally. I mean, other people love them more, and this is just a personal preference. I would still check it out if you haven't checked it out, but you know, it's a season long form. You're getting scored based on what happened throughout the entire season. And I don't I get frustrated while drafting on the in those drafts because people stray away from ADP a little bit more and I'm not used to that, and they're getting you know, quarterbacks maybe a round or two before they typically get drafted, and then I'm stuck with, you know, either a three QB build that I don't really like, or you know, a two QB build where that second quarterback isn't correlated or doesn't look very strong right, And so all of these drafts are different in one way or another, even within the same contest. Like if you get into a puppy, there's gonna be some puppy drafts that are very, very wide receiver heavy, just based on the other eleven teams that are in that draft with you, And there are gonna be somewhere the wide receivers are getting drafted later.

00:07:44
Speaker 1: Than usual, right, And the same thing happens with BBM.

00:07:47
Speaker 3: But I would say in general, BBM is probably a little bit more wide receiver heavy than some of these other drafts are.

00:07:55
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of it is people who are doing BBM.

00:07:58
Speaker 3: Probably are a little bit more into the Best Ball scene, into underdog, especially right now in June, and so because of that, they kind of understand what the meta is and going zero RB and forcing wide receiver and all that kind of stuff, Whereas you know, the Puppy might get some people who haven't really been involved with Best Ball this year and they walk into the to the draft room and they're like, why would I take Michael Pittman ahead of Derrick Henry, Like this doesn't make any sense, Like I don't not to say that I would even do that, but like, why why am I taking even Davonte Smith over Derrick Henry, you know? And then they see that and so they draft running back instead. And what that means is that me, who's doing a lot of these drafts, and it's very used to these like wide receiver heavy drafts, I end up just getting the value at wide receiver quote unquote value. And then once the sixth seventh round hits, I realized I have five wide receivers on my team already, and now I'm definitely going with a zero RB bill, which is fine, But so many of those teams just kind of look alike right, like they it's just the same roster construction over and over again, and I need to differentiate a little bit more.

00:09:07
Speaker 1: So what I'm doing is I'm trying to like what these.

00:09:10
Speaker 3: Slow drafts, especially it's kind of hard to do in a fast draft, is to take a step back and read the draft. It's not as easy to do that now in fast drafts. I talk about this with our guest today, Pete Overset, and fast drafts you might get some unique values that fall because people are.

00:09:24
Speaker 1: Panicking and they just don't know what to do.

00:09:26
Speaker 3: But and fast drafts is also harder for you yourself to sort of like take a step back bird's eye view this draft and say, hey, wide receivers are going later than they typically do or something like that. And so what I'm trying to do now is be more okay with drafting some of those round four to six guys, those four to six running backs at times at ADP, like my general role has been from Josh Jacobs to about you know, into that like Joe Mixon, Range, Kenneth Walker, Range, even I'm mostly just drafting those running backs when they fall a few spots in ADP because they will inevitably. But now because i'm seeing, especially in the non BBM drafts, I'm not doing that as frequently, or I'm trying not to do it as frequently because I just get stuck with these zero RB builds every time that I do that, right, And I think it's important to like understand the kind of environment that you're walking into whenever you're doing these drafts. So I wouldn't be that surprised if some of these puppies, like I end up going a little bit more running back heavy than I probably would in like a BBM.

00:10:30
Speaker 2: I'll tell you what, Anecdotally, I always feel the best when I walk away from a draft with some sort of hero RB build for that reason, because I just have this anchor who I believe in and I know can score a ton of points. Don't even feel like they need to be correlated as much in Week seventeen because they have such a potential for high scoring output regardless of whoever's around them, And I just I just feel better. It's just the vibes are way better when I have a hero RB build. And and you said a couple weeks ago, you have a a Jalen Wattle problem. I have a different, uh Jalen problem, and that's a Jalen Warren problem, because I always find myself in round eight staring down the barrel of Remandre Zamir De'Andre, and I'm just like Jalen Warren. I just I love the player. I love the ambiguity in the backfield. It hurts, though, because I do agree that I think the Nase hate has gone way, way, way too far, and we can see it. These these values are right next to each other, so I have been clicking some nause but I just I just love the player. I'm people know I'm a Jets fan, but when I squint and watch Jalen Warren, I see some Curtis Martin in him. Like there's nothing amazing about him. There's no speedburst that's amazing. He's just always making the right play, finding the right hole, making one guy miss every single time. And he just reminds me of Curtis so much. And I love the player. So I have a Jalen Warren problem right now.

00:11:57
Speaker 1: JA. Yeah.

00:11:58
Speaker 3: Look, I've been drafting both those guys a good bit. Nause to me is safer in my opinion, between the two, and I've gone that way. I think maybe a little bit more frequently whenever I'm going zero RB. I don't know what my exposure numbers look like for both of those players. I'm drafting them a lot. It's an ambiguous backfield, it's a run heavy offense. It's one that probably will be better than it was last year. I you know, I but we know where the volume is going, and then we know that there's that contingent upside with both of those players. And so the thing with the hero RB build, though, like if you are able to get even an a hand, let's say as your as your anchor, even a Derrick Henry. I think Dereck Henry is not that bad of a pick right now, which is not something that I've said historically about Derrick Henry. And he's burned me over and over and over again. You know, last year not as much, but he's definitely burned me throughout my fantasy football career because he is someone who breaks math consistently. Right this year, I think he's in a unique position, despite being an older running back, where the weekly upside is very evident for Henry, and so I'm fine with going with Henry and using him as an.

00:13:04
Speaker 1: Anchor for instance.

00:13:05
Speaker 3: I think by at the end of that This is a take that I haven't really thrown out there, but I think at the end of the offseason and when we get into August, I would not be shocked if I have Derek.

00:13:15
Speaker 1: Henry ranked ahead of Kieren Williams in my general rankings.

00:13:18
Speaker 3: I don't know if that's a hot take or not, but there's a lot of stuff that I've been researching for the draft GUYE that points to Kyen being kind of a fade. Now I'm getting some exposure just because you know, I want some exposure. I'm gonna be underweight with Kyroen though versus the market this year, there's no doubt. But Derek Henry, I think, is just a little bit more intriguing given the offense and what we know he can do. But regardless of all that, whenever you don't get that anchor running back, and let's even throw like some of the fourth round like an au Pachecko or an etn in there as an example, right, like, if I don't get that player. The one thing that is a little bit frustrating is if I, uh don't get him and then I'm looking in like the ninth, tenth, eleventh round for my running back. If I don't like pound the running back position in those rounds, I'm talking like over and over and over again. Then you go late and you're in like round fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and you have to force the issue absolutely and your builds end up being seven running back builds, like you need at least six if you're gonna go zero RB like that, and that's you know, there is some advantage to not having to do that, Like I'm fine with at times just having a five running back build with Bijon or you know, some RB one and then getting like a mid range one or two of those mid range guys like a Naji Harris, Jiavonte Williams or something like that, and then kind of throw in some darts of those rookies, you know, in that round fourteen range and just settling at five and hoping that that RB one, then I drafted early as the anchor. The hero could really just be the week in, week out play in that RB one spot, right, and then you're just kind of rotating the RB two hypothetically. The problem though, is that with zero RB again, if you don't like really weentlessly go after the position when you're in that like round nine to twelve range, you really can find yourself in a rough position at the running back spot where your RB five is Deontay Foreman, and that's not a really fun place to be.

00:15:12
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then what hurts right now too is that two of the bigger red flags I think are in the mid to late rounds at running back with Jonathan Brooks. Now it sounds like he's gonna miss the start of training camp, which we already knew coming off the knee injury that it might take some time. But bad news is bad news, and we're starting to see him slip in ADP and then Nick Chubb as well. News hasn't been great on Nick Chubb. He slipped about seven picks over the last couple of weeks. So these mid round guys that we want to bank on, you know, rookie running back with that was great in the zap model Nick Chubb, We've seen him do it before in an offense that has a ton of upside. It's hard to plant our flags in them when they have red flags showing players who've been drafting. Let's get into it. Speaking of some ravens here. We were talking about Derrek n The other time I feel great JJ is when I walk away with a Kelsey Mahomes stack or a Lamar Mark Andrews stack. Those though, I love those two and I just can forget about those positions and just pound a receiver and running back. And you've been drafting a lot of Mark Andrews I have.

00:16:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, I talked to Overzet about this as well when we talk about some of the tight ends. But Andrews has just been an easy click for me. I mean, you can get him often in the fifth round and something that I actually did, so I live streamed a I guess it was a mini Schnauzer draft last week whenever I was going to do a Best Ball Mania, but I live streamed it over on the YouTube channel YouTube dot com slash at late round FF and I live streamed that draft and in that draft. So Lamar's ADP is higher than Mark Andrews ADP. Right, whenever you're looking at the app, like, Lamar is listed ahead of Mark Andrews, but I'm drafting Mark Andrews ahead of Lamar every single time because the two positions that usually don't fall in drafts at the top of drafts are wide receiver and tight endositions that do fall our quarterback and running back. And so what happens is, you know, I think Lamar's ADP is higher than Andrews because of the Zay Flowers effect, where at the end of the third and you know, let's say at the end of the third a team gets Zay and they want to stack them, so they get Lamar, right, So Lamar is getting drafted well above Mark Andrews in those scenarios because Mark Andrews is usually like a four or five turned guy but if if that Jay Flowers team does not get Lamar Jackson, then no other team is really like hype to get Lamar in that fourth round range. And so what happens is, uh, you know, you can get Mark Andrews in the fourth, Like let's say you have a front half pick. You can get them at like, uh, you know, the if you're like in the four, if you're in like the one zero four spot, you can get Mark Andrews in the fourth and oftentimes Lamar Jackson's gonna then be there in the fifth for you. And so that stack is really gettable right now in my opinion, whenever you play it that way instead of playing it by ADP because a lot of teams that don't have Lamar Jackson will still get Mark Andrews. Because I'm one of those teams, Like I do that all the time, right, Like, you don't need Lamar Jackson to get Mark Andrews. But if you're gonna get Lamar Jackson and not have za a lock to get Zay Flowers or Mark Andrews, then you're stacking him with Rashad Bateman, and you don't feel as good about what that that Baltimore stack is really bringing you. So I've been getting a lot of Mark Andrews for that reason. You know, I like the game theory and the stacking behind that. But I'm also getting Andrews because I do think and I'm doing research about this in the Draft Guide. Talk about it a little bit in my interview with Overzett, But I do think the elite tight ends are just a very sorry I say elite, the.

00:18:41
Speaker 1: High end tight ends. What does that mean? Yeah? Right, the high end.

00:18:46
Speaker 3: Tight ends are very much uh an advantage right now, and I would not be surprised if in late July, early August a lot of these tight ends are going earlier than they're currently going because people are realizing that they they're just cheaper. I think that it really comes down to Travis Kelcey kind of having a down year last year. He was still the tight end one in PPR points per game, but you know he had a down year last year. And now there's a lot of ambiguity at the top, like you have these you know, these aging pieces in Kelsey. Maybe you wouldn't put Andrews in that, but then you have, you know, these younger guys who haven't really proven it over an entire season, like a Kincaid, like a McBride, like a Laporta. And I think that that uncertainty is causing the tight ends to go later than they typically gone.

00:19:34
Speaker 1: And look, this isn't just the best ball thing.

00:19:36
Speaker 3: If you look at Fantasy pros rankings right now and you look at tight ends, every tight end slot one to six is going later than their average ADP from twenty fourteen to twenty twenty three.

00:19:48
Speaker 1: All of these tight ends are going later than they typically go.

00:19:51
Speaker 3: And I think a lot of that is not necessarily about their ceiling, but it's about the ambiguity and their floor, right, It's about what they might do to your team if they end up busting, which some of them will bust.

00:20:02
Speaker 1: But that's not the way that we should be playing fantasy football. In my opinion. It's definitely not the way that we should be playing best ball in fantasy.

00:20:08
Speaker 2: Football, and late round tight end seems less appealing last year. Against a topic that's been discussed on the show, there isn't that crop of rookies. There isn't that group of young athletic dudes where we're just betting on athleticism and hoping they get opportunity.

00:20:23
Speaker 3: And someone's gonna emerge, probably because that's what we see every single year. Like, there are more I always compared tight end to quarterback because they're both onesie positions.

00:20:31
Speaker 1: It's a lot easier to kind of wrap your head around it.

00:20:33
Speaker 3: There are more free agents slash very late round tight ends who emerge and become like top six options than there are a quarterback because we just have a better idea of what quarterbacks are gonna be playing all season long, right, Like Jake Ferguson, you know, by the way, I mean, Ferguson was in the late round draft.

00:20:51
Speaker 1: Got is a late round Darthrow last year, just for the record.

00:20:54
Speaker 3: But I got like Jake Ferguson comes out of nowhere, right, like from a like the masses standpoint, from con standpoint, comes out of nowhere. That that kind of thing happens pretty frequently a tight end, and I think it will happen again this year for like maybe maybe two, maybe maybe three of these tight ends.

00:21:11
Speaker 1: But who's that going to be.

00:21:12
Speaker 3: There's a lot of them that are going late, and a lot of them sort of fit a profile that's kind of a track. So your odds still aren't that good, you know, trying to pinpoint that player because there's a lot of them that are being drafted late that you can make an argument for, whereas with the early guys, you know that they're generally going to produce for you.

00:21:29
Speaker 2: We got another pass catcher here, another Jag. We talked about Brian Thomas Junior last week. This week, you want to talk about the new Jag down from Buffalo, Gabe Davis.

00:21:40
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:21:40
Speaker 3: I think that Davis is just underpriced by about a round right now, which is crazy to say because Gabe Davis is not has not really proven to be like this like significant you know, one.

00:21:51
Speaker 1: Hundred plus target type wide receiver. But he does do what we want wide receivers to do in this format, which is, you know, be a deep threat, big players receiver, be able to give you those spiked weeks.

00:22:02
Speaker 4: You know.

00:22:02
Speaker 3: He's kind of like an arbitrage off of Rashid Shaheed, who I like a lot like. I think I think Shaheed is a value himself. He had a lot of spiked weeks last year and that's just the game that he plays. And then now you know there's even less competition you could argue in that New Orleans offense. But you know with Davis, it's sort of I'm investing in Jacksonville's offense. I think there's a lot to like there. You know, Trevor Lawrence last year, you know there was we've all seen the videos at this point of the unfortunate touchdown luck that he had last season, and you know, all the drop passes that he had to endure. But also like his yards per attempt was the best of his career last year, Like he's technically getting better from an efficiency standpoint. We know that the talent profile has been there for Lawrence, and you know, you look at the offense, it's just a fairly easily stackable offense, right, Like you could get their their number one running back and the fourth or fifth round, you can then get Christian Kirk if you wanted to as well. And then you know, I like Brian Thomas a lot in the in the sixth and seven. Then he's slipping at times too, like you can get him in the mid seventh sometimes, and then you know Gabe Davis late, and so it's really just a play on the fact that he's a big play receiver and also just investing in this Jacksonville offense seems to make sense because we know that there is some decent talent there, we just haven't seen it all come to fruition yet. And also cost is it's being reflected in costs, so I'll buy into that.

00:23:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Tremor Lawrence ciscourse is a bit nuts right now. First of all, every quarterback that comes up for a contract and is not horrible just gets that deal, right, They just get the next highest deal. That's how this works. And we can just throw the Urban Meyer year out.

00:23:37
Speaker 1: Guys.

00:23:38
Speaker 2: Okay, there was a head coach in the NFL that didn't know who ninety nine on the RAMS was. Okay, we can just punt that season and look at recently what happens when he's with a guy with a brain in Doug Peterson, and Lawrence is good.

00:23:53
Speaker 1: Lawrence is a good player.

00:23:54
Speaker 3: He's at least had he's at least had his moments and he had Look, there were there were definitely times last year where you're like, this is this guy is not right, like he's he's been inconsistent. But I do know it's it's not like we're pricing Trevor Lawrence by by name. You know, in the top eight quarterbacks or anything like that. To me, you know, going back to the episode I did on the pocket Passer trap on the Late Round podcast, Like, to me, he's one of those high end QB twos who I don't think, and this is going to sound crazy, but we see it all the time where if you get two of those high end QB twos, right, you could get a Trevor Lawrence in a TUA and you pair them together, the odds of them giving you a high end QB one season because of touchdown variants and touchdown ranches going in their favor is better than getting that season from a CJ. Stroud, you know, a pocket passer that's going in the earlier rounds in the round five range for Stroud. So I think he's part of that group where you can, like I would even extend that to like a Matthew Stafford maybe that far like into that like QB EIGHTE and QB nineteen range, where those players, you know, just kne a little touchdown luck in order to really catapult themselves and be you know, usable pieces week in and week out. I don't see why Trevor Lawrence can't be that player this year, do I think it's going to happen. No, because odd statistically it happens like twenty percent of the time with those players, right, Like, it's not that even less arguably, and so you know, I don't think it's like a likely thing. But if you pair him with another quarterback late, you're able to, you know, at least match that production that you think you're getting out of a pocket passer in the early rounds.

00:25:29
Speaker 2: And unlike redraft, we don't have to pull the levers here in best Ball to capture that touchdown variance. We have it built in because we get the week if he hits it. Last one running back out west for the Denver Bronco. It's one of the first reels I made for you in the offseason. Was a lot of love for Jalil McLaughlin, but you're drafting his running back mate as well, Javonte Williams.

00:25:51
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:25:51
Speaker 3: I want to just call this out. It's not that I'm like super super overweight. I've just found myself drafting him more recently, and a lot of it just has to do with the fact that I think this offense. You know, typically you want to associate running backs with better offenses, and you know, you want more scoring opportunities, all that good stuff, but in Denver it's a little bit different because Sean Payton's system has favored running backs so much. I've used the statistic plenty on the show where of the top twenty running back target team running back target share seasons over the last decade plus, so since twenty eleven, the top twenty of them, eight of them have come from Sean Payton run teams, which is absolutely wild. The Broncos are coming off a season where they led the NFL and running back target share, and then you look at this team. They add bo Nix, who will throw a lot of those intermediate and short passes. They don't have Jerry Judy anymore, which you know, say what you want about Judy, but he's at least more of a high floor talent that we know what we're getting, more than a Troy Franklin. Marvin mimm Is now, Courtland Sutton's still there. They have question marks at tight end right now because Greg Dolsage can't stay healthy, and so I do think we're going to see another season where these running backs are used at a really, really high rate through the air. Jalil mclofflin, I still think is a really good value. Like I still think McLoughlin is a good pick in any format. The difference is, I don't think McLoughlin is ever going to be a true bell cow back, Like I don't think that's really in his range of outcomes. And realistically, I don't think Denver is gonna see a bell cow back this year, Like, I don't think that that's a probable outcome. But if there is a guy who's gonna be that and do that of the guys in their backfield, it's got to be Javonte Williams. Right Like he was the great prospect. He's shown it in the past that he can at least carry that workload. Now, you could argue that his efficiency was futured last year. In particular, I think a lot of that has to do with the injury that he was coming off. Now he's two years removed from that injury. That's good news. But he can catch passes out of the backfield, he can be the goal line back, and then they can ease in you know, this is last year in his contract too, but they can then ease in Rodric Estimae, who's more of an early down bruiser used Jalil mclafflin as a pass catcher, and then maybe McLoughlin steals a little bit of early down work too. But if we're only looking at seal and that's how we should probably be looking at these situations in best Ball, I think Javonte Williams has that ceiling. Of any of those guys back there, you can get him past pick one hundred, like it's you're not investing that much for a guy who has the talent profile has the situation, even though it's kind of like a you know, non obvious situation, but does have the situation is in an ambiguous backfield. He does make some sense to me. And so I'm trying to be not like massively overweight, but I wouldn't mind being in like the ten eleven percent exposure. I think with Javonte Williams this year.

00:28:36
Speaker 2: One O eight point six right now, I mean, this is the back to back that you're looking at when you reach the end of round nine, round ten, Javante or Devin Singletary right on right. One guy is a great talent in an ambiguous backfield. The other guy is a middle of the road jag also an ambiguous backfield. But like that, that doesn't even seem like a choice to me. It seems way obvious.

00:28:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, like I've been, I've been going Javonte over Singletary. And look, there's nothing wrong with Singletary. I just think Singletary is probably better suited for a season long format. Zero RB build season long format. Now, look, I play season long, still shooting for upside, but I'm only saying that from the perspective that you might want to play it a little safer, get some floor at the start of the season, Whereas Javonte could realistically at the start of the year not see that big of a share of his backfield, like it it's a possibility.

00:29:25
Speaker 1: Whereas Devin Singletary, you.

00:29:26
Speaker 3: Know, he's got to he's got to fight off Eric Gray and Tyrone Tracy and like I like Tyrone Tracy as a dart throw. But let's be real here, that's not tough competition. So if you want that floor, that stability, that's fine, go a Singletary. It's just really hard to see where the ceiling is gonna come from with a guy like Devin Singletary.

00:29:42
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:29:42
Speaker 1: Absolutely, Anyway, let's.

00:29:45
Speaker 3: Stop talking, and let's get to our guest today mentioned it earlier. That's Pete Overzet, one of the nicest, funniest guys in the fantasy football space.

00:29:54
Speaker 1: Love that guy.

00:29:55
Speaker 3: He does ship chasing the swol cast. He's done that for years. He does stuff for Fanantasy Life. He's on Twitter at Peter Roverzet. We talked about what's different in Best Ball drafts this year versus previous years. We talked about something that we that I haven't discussed on the show with other guests, which is managing exposure and talking about, you know, whether where to be overweight, is it important to be over underweight on certain players? And then we do talk about elite tight ends some more because I feel like I want to really drive this point home that I think tight end is going to be the one spot this year that can make or break a lot of teams. So, without further ado, here's my interview with the one and only Pete Overzet. This episode is sponsored by Underdog Fantasy. There's no better place to play Best Ball than an underdog. There are leagues starting all the time, and you can choose whether you want to do a slow draft or a fast one when entering one of those leagues. And you don't just have to play best ball Mania. To play best ball at Underdog, there's a wide variety of contests to choose from. You can even check out Underdog's other games as well, like pick.

00:30:59
Speaker 1: Them right now.

00:31:01
Speaker 3: You can get in on the action with a deposit offer and free copy of the Late Round Draft Guide just by signing up and depositing just had to Underdog Fantasy dot Com or download the Underdog app. When you sign up, use promo code late Round and make a deposit for a deposit offer and a free copy of the Late Round Draft Guide. That guide will then be emailed to you when it launches on July first. Again, that's promo code late Round. Now back to the show. What's up man, Good to see you, Good to see that smiling face of yours.

00:31:33
Speaker 1: Now on my this is my ship that we're on.

00:31:36
Speaker 3: Now we're not we're not we're not on ship chasing, we're not doing any of your shows. We're on becoming a best ball bro this time around. I'm very excited for this.

00:31:44
Speaker 4: I mean I've been very excited that you've been dipping your toes in the Underdog streets. I know you've been playing for a while, but going full best ball bro. I caught I've been listening to every episode. I had to retweet the comment you made about rattling off the weeks of it he matchups. I believe you said it was your brother. I was like, he he made it, he has a rived. It's not becoming a best ball bro. You are a best ball bro now, JJ, thank.

00:32:09
Speaker 1: You, thank you. Well, we'll see, we'll see how the results go this year after you know, doing so many drafts.

00:32:15
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean, like my I said that to my brother last week when I was with him, and he's still I sent him the clip that you had retweeted, and I, you know, I texted to him and he's like, I still think that this is and like he's a semi to generate himself.

00:32:28
Speaker 1: Like he's very into sports betting and.

00:32:30
Speaker 3: Stuff like that, and so like he should be someone who understands, you know, the having the knowledge of week seventeen matchups. But he still thinks that I'm just a massive nerd for being able to just just go game by game like that, you know, not only doing that in you know, August September or something when football season is like like, really, you know, we're really excited for it, but in fricking June, you know, like this is this is not a time of year where we should be memorizing Week seventeen.

00:33:00
Speaker 4: What's so funny, too, is I've noticed a lot of people myself, including like our brains are so broken that we're remembering matchups from last year. Like I saw some of someone posted like a Wattle and Lamar Andrews team and they're like, hey, a Week seventeen last year, chef's kiss, man, Like, we still can't even get those matchups out of our head.

00:33:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's hilarious.

00:33:21
Speaker 3: But you are doing a lot of drafts, man, what in your mind has been sort of the most difficult thing, sort of the most difficult hurdle this season that may not have popped up as much in the past.

00:33:33
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've been thinking about this a lot lately. With my drafts. I'm like fifty plus BBM drafts deep, so I feel like I have a pretty good lay of the land about how these are shaking out. And I was thinking about it compared to last year, where I thought strategically it kind of was a simple setup where it was a really good year for late round tight end. It was a really good year for late round quarterback. You had the Strouds, the Loves, and this isn't just revisionist history. People love this rookie tight end class. People loved all of those late options. And then on top of that, we had the market continuing to push up wide receivers and that created all of the favorable prices for the dead zone running backs. And so to me, last year, it was like you get wide receivers, Oh, grab a Breese Hall. Here, get some receivers. Grab a James Cook or a Travis Etn And it was pretty straightforward. This year, I feel like there's so many values at each position in the early rounds where it's really hard to know is this the draft I do the Josh Allen Kincaid or the andrews Lamar. Is this the draft where I grab both Pachecko and Etn because I think they're good values, and I think in any one draft I feel comfortable. But from a portfolio standpoint, it's been tricky to be like, what is the biggest edge I want to push this year? And I've kind of defaulted to elite tight end. But then I see how little Isaiah Pachecko or Joe Mixon and I have and I'm like, these guys could be absolute smashes. So it's just weighing, like there's lots of values, which one am I going to prioritize the most?

00:34:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think it's, you know, really being nimble to right and being reactive to what's going on in those early rounds, because you like, what I've noticed is like the way that things sort of set up in rounds one through three especially, you can start to build stacks even that early right, Like if you want to go heavy Miami, if you're in the front half of the draft, you can go heavy Miami if you want to, or if you want, like you know that that that Rams Cardinals stack going. You could get that hypothetically with like a McBride in round four or something like that, and maybe reaching for him slightly and start to get that that correlation going. But then all of a sudden, you're like, oh, I can get Lamar and Andrews Okay, that that plan that I had Forget that plan. I'm getting this this Raven stack and kind of going going from there. And so I do I do feel that as well. You know, it sort of plays into what you're saying, where like there's just a lot of different directions that you can go in where you know, seemingly, you know, I wasn't doing as much volume last year, but seemingly last year it it did appear as though there was more of this like blueprint to sort of follow and go through.

00:35:55
Speaker 1: Now it's just there. It seems like you can go in a lot of different directions.

00:35:58
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I always try to approach it from like a humility based standpoint, like going back to the elite tight end thing. It's like, I think elite tight end is a pretty big edge. But then I start to think through some two V twos, like an example, looking at the Pacheco blind spot, and I'm also really into brock Bowers, and so I'm like, do I want every team to be a Mark Andrews and let's say a Jalen Warren Or do I want some teams to be an Isaiah Pachecko with Brock Bowers. And it's like, you don't want to be so overconfident on one side, even if you like it maybe fifty five sixty percent more, just knowing that's still forty forty five percent of the time that other side of the strategy can get there.

00:36:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, and really what you're talking about here is exposure and managing that exposure. Are you aiming for certain exposure numbers for your early round guys versus your middle round players versus your late round players? Do you really care what your exposure numbers just generally look like, you know, across the board. This is actually something you know, I've talked to a handful of Best Ball bros. So far in the show haven't really dug into the exposure conversation that much.

00:37:04
Speaker 1: So how are you handling that?

00:37:06
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's funny because you know, last year I streamed all one hundred and fifty of my drafts, and almost two thirds of them were with with guests of some sort. And when I draft with guests, I like to defer to the people i'm drafting with. You know, sometimes I'll break a tire, we don't get it in time. But what happened because of that is I had naturally diversified portfolio. Because one, you know, I draft with Pat, you wants to take James Cook in every draft. I draft with Sean and he wants to do something else, and so I had smoothed out exposures, and you know, some people thought that was weird. You know, people want to go and get their your stands. But the way I've kind of decided to approach drafts is like, I want to make the best possible team for that specific room, and sometimes that is going to involve a player take. You know, I mentioned Brock Bauers earlier. He's a guy I like a lot, but a lot of times I'm going to have an elite tight end before him, and I'm not going to get to Brock back and so I think I'm pretty fluid with it. I will say this year, I was trying to be more heavy on my player takes early on and being like, hey, a guy like Jayde Daniels, he's at one twenty. When the contest opened, I had like thirty five percent Jayde and Daniels off the rip.

00:38:15
Speaker 1: Now I've kind of cooled off.

00:38:16
Speaker 4: I still mix him in, but I'm down to like sixteen or seventeen percent, because I was like, I'm going to hammer these player takes early and then let drafts come to me later. So I'm trying to balance that of you know, having more player takes while also still being like, I think I can build really good teams with different types of players.

00:38:34
Speaker 3: When you're trying to, you know, get that the proper exposure for these players. Are you okay with being overweight on certain guys that you have a good feeling, will then you know, rise in price later in the offseason, especially with best bal Mania, where the contest itself isn't this short duration you know where uh, you know, I was talking to Herzig last week about some of these contests where we know it's gonna fill in a week, and so differentiating say in round one, in round two, and maybe getting and reaching for a Round two player to just have a slightly different lineup than everyone else, because you know, the contest is going to close very quickly, as opposed to Best ball Mania going on all summer. We're gonna see ADP spikes and drops and guys getting hurt and all these other things that we're not gonna have with the Mini Schnauzer, right like in these in these and the and these other contests, right and so from that perspective, you know, let's say, you know, I'm drafting Wattle right now, and lots and lots of Wattle. Should I stop drafting Wattle because I'm trying to limit my exposure and be smart with my exposure, or am I making this bet on Wattle and saying, hey, I think that he might be like an early second round pick by the time August rolls around.

00:39:50
Speaker 1: For sure.

00:39:50
Speaker 4: And I do think that is It's really nice to have those timebox contests versus the BBM because you can approach things strategically. I've been thinking about that exact xample you laid out as it pertains to Jonathan Brooks, Like, I really like Jonathan Brooks. I have twenty percent of him in Best Ball Mania, but I've recently started to take my foot off the gas. Not because I'm not still bullish on him, but I'm like, I'm telling you, when he opens up on the pup list for camp, the market's gonna overreact and drop him around. And so I'm like, if I keep hammering him now and then I keep hammering him when he gets cheaper, I'm gonna have like forty forty five fifty percent. And I'm like, I don't I like him, but not that much more than the other backs going in his range. So I was like, you know what, I'll take my foot off the gas now and I'll get my cheaper Jonathan Brooks when that happens. But on the flip side, say the puppy drops today, which I actually think it is, and that contest closes soon, It's like, all right, if Jonathan Brooks is one of my guys this year, go get him like where he is. Price moves in two weeks. Isn't gonna matter if that contest closes in a week, right right exactly.

00:40:51
Speaker 3: And look, hey, hey, I'm a Jonathan Brooks truther as well. We're we're we're gonna say that that ADP is gonna rise because that man is gonna be healthy and he gonna play and we're gonna love it.

00:41:01
Speaker 1: But now, I mean like it's it's a.

00:41:03
Speaker 4: Very very real, real feeling overall to you. And that's the thing too, in where you can get yourself in trouble. I don't know for a fact that he's going to open up on the camp pop or it's you know, it could be like you said, they could say, holy cow, he's back here at training camp and looking incredible, and he could slingshot the other direction, and then you regret, oh man, I wish I would have been taking more, But it is kind of trying to understand where the market is going. And I do feel confident in general that the market loves to kind of double count news things like say Rashie Rice's ADP right now. I would just this is me just doing like back of the Napkin bro math. I would say the market is like baking in like a seven to eight game suspension right now. I think if Rashie Rice got hit with a six game suspension tomorrow, his ADP would drop a little bit.

00:41:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the news happened. Yeah, No, it's true. It's true.

00:41:51
Speaker 3: And you're really weighing, like you're really just weighing a range of outcomes from an ADP perspective as opposed to just like a projection standpoint right Like you're you're saying, like I think that this player can't get any worse from an ADP stample. It's sort of like the way that I look at you know, like RB two's or backup running backs in a backfield, where like Zach Sharboney right now to me is being drafted basically at his projection right like his projection might say Hey, he's RB forty two.

00:42:17
Speaker 1: Forty three, and that's generally where he gets drafted.

00:42:19
Speaker 3: But there's obvious upside there where if Kenneth Walker gets hurt, then Sharbona is probably the like like if if there were no Kenneth Walker, you know, in Seattle's backfield, Sharbonnae would probably be like a top fifteen ish back right in fantasy football. And so the way that I sort of approached that then is, well, then Sharbonay is probably somewhat of a value because I don't think that things are going to get any worse for him in this environment, right, And you could probably and you should probably approach it similarly when it comes to ADP and thinking about it the same way, like Jalen Wattle, what are the ways that Waddle's ADP falls right, probably if he gets hurt and that could happen to anyone, right, Whereas there's a little bit more especially a running like running back, there's just a lot of variation and stuff because we're gonna hear reports about, you know, teams wanting to use running backs in different ways. Then all of a sudden, you know, Kamani Videl goes from a round fourteen guy to a round eighteen guy or vice versa, just because you know, we hear something about like Gus Edwards and the way they want to deploy him, right, And.

00:43:16
Speaker 1: So I do think that that's a good mindset to.

00:43:19
Speaker 3: Have, is like, you know, how are these players gonna switch in ADP and think about range of outcomes in ADYP as opposed to the projection process?

00:43:28
Speaker 1: For sure?

00:43:29
Speaker 4: And I mean, to me, that's the entire name of the game. Like a lot of the stuff that I've harped on, like with my videos and my live streams over the past few years, is all tilted toward the week seventeen stuff. And I had the video of the Week seventeen as all that matters. And yes, that does mean in the literal sense with stacking up the week seventeen games, but it also means seventy five percent of this tournament is in the Fantasy Playoffs weeks fifteen through seventeen. The weeks one through fourteen represents twenty five percent round one of four rounds in the tournament. And so to me, that lenses through a bunch of things. What are the type of players who see their production increase as the season goes along who are maybe guys who have cheaper prices because they don't project as well from a median standpoint, Like you said, the handcuff running back, maybe an injured guy who isn't going to have a great full season projection. And to me, I think one of the last remaining edges on underdog and they are evaporating as the market gets so much sharper. Is people still wanting to view this game through a seventeen week lens and not understanding contingent upside asymmetric bets. And I always think, like, through a very simple exercise, what would your teams look like if I told you you were only drafting weeks fifteen through seventeen, literally nothing else mattered. I bet your board would start to change. And it's not to say we can't. We still need to get there, we do, but so much of the importance is in those three weeks that I think that's what we really want to be leaning into.

00:44:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a really really good outlook.

00:44:53
Speaker 3: So, speaking of the environment in these best Ball drafts, as you said, people are getting sharper this year, We're seeing wide receivers go earlier than ever. Do you think as a result of that that this is now a situation, an environment, a market where you could zig while others are zagging, or zag when others are zigging. However, you I don't know, is there is there like a way that like, are you on one of those sides if you're doing one of these things. But regardless, should you be going RB RB to start drafts because obviously people are going wide receiver heavy, you know, there's plenty of you know, I've done plenty of research about like RB twos in fantasy football. That's sort of like the dead zone that exists in every single draft. It's just that your opportunity cost shifts, right, So like you go from you know, a home league where RB twos are going to fall off the board in like round three to RB two is now going you know, in Bestball drafts in round eight, And it's like, okay, well if my if the guy that I'm missing out on is Courtland Sutton, Okay, that's not that big of a deal. Even if I'm drafting, you know, an RB two that's a typical like dead zone type back. But regardless, do you think that because of the way people are drafting these wide receivers is this now an environment where going RBRB could be a winning strategy.

00:46:05
Speaker 4: Yeah, and this is kind of the name of the game this year. I've even seen more tweets recently of people kind of logging in for their first drafts and they're like, wait, what's going on? This wide receiver mania is crazy? Like from a macro standpoint, I'm a big believer that you can make kind of any start work because ultimately it's about spending draft capital at positions and understanding this dynamic of quantity or quality, not both. Do I think it's optimal to start your draft with three running backs this year?

00:46:32
Speaker 1: No?

00:46:33
Speaker 4: But do I think you could make a team that was smart in that way, yes, where you take maybe four total, you take ten wide receivers, and you're trying to get all of this upside to try to make up for your lack of quality at the high end. I think that's how I approach stuff, even when people are quibbling about the elite tight end stuff. If you think Evan Ingram or Jake Ferguson is an elite tight end, I don't. But if you do more power too, you build structures around him like they're an elite tight end. Take Jake Ferguson in only one late because you are saying he's elite, he is going to be a top five tight end. So that's kind of how I view all of this stuff. But I think it's really really tricky because if you think about when zero RB used to, you know, be more rare and used to be really dominant. Like Sean Siegel used to talk about being able to get four of the top fifteen wide receivers in the league, and because everyone would start running back running back, you could get top five wide receivers in round three round four. Now it's the opposite. Those guys all go in round one, and lesser quality wide receivers are pushed up to rounds three and four. So if you think about those two V twos, if you're like, I'm starting Jamiir Gibbs, Jonathan Taylor, and then when I come back around, you're looking at you know, guys like DK Metcalf or Tank Dell. Not that those guys are bad picks, but when you flip those two V twos and you're like, well, I'm starting with Jamar Chase and Jalen Waddle and then I'm grabbing Derrick Henry In Travis etn. Which, which of those two v twos do you want to go to battle with? I mean, the wide receivers separate in such a big way, so I think you can play that game, but you got to be really, really careful that you're not just getting an awful side of a two v two.

00:48:07
Speaker 3: The other thing too, And I've talked about this a lot on the show as well, and I'm sure you've heard some of the discussion. But like people are like, although the round two sucks, round two, there's a lot of variation. We don't really know, like some of those wide receivers are gonna naturally hit, but there are just a lot of those wide receivers and we have a tough time generally ranking them, Like it wouldn't It's not crazy to draft Nico Collins at the one two turn if you really wanted to, or you know, the guys that are going at the one two turn, like Marvin Harrison Junior or Drake Lunnon.

00:48:38
Speaker 1: Like, all of that makes plenty of sense.

00:48:40
Speaker 3: And so people are like, well, because round two is so bad, let's just go after running backs in round two instead. And I'm like, well, there's a lot of question marks at running back in round two. Also, like, I think that the difference with RBRB starts would be in them being a little bit more appetizing, would be if there were Breis Hall and Bijon Robinson type talents and situations going in round two, where you know, we get Saquon and.

00:49:05
Speaker 1: We get Jonathan Taylor.

00:49:07
Speaker 3: But it's like, all right, well, we know that their pass catching up side might be a little bit capped, we know that their touchdown equity might be a little bit capped, and that's kind of frightening for a second round running back when you can like get that kind of player later. To your point, is there really that massive of a difference between Derek Henry and Jonathan Taylor?

00:49:24
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know.

00:49:26
Speaker 3: I think that Taylor should be ranked ahead of him and such, But I think that's another reason why it's a little bit more difficult to go RBRB.

00:49:34
Speaker 1: Like it's theoretically, sure, let's zig w ale.

00:49:37
Speaker 3: Other people's people are zagging, but I don't know how applicable that would be this season.

00:49:41
Speaker 1: Would you agree with that one hundred percent?

00:49:43
Speaker 4: And it's also because the whole thing is like the market has now kind of shifted to being a zero RB friendly landscape. I mean, I remember when Pat Crane and I used to go out and do the high stakes drafts. This would have been like twenty sixteen, seventeen, and we're trying to pull off zero R you know, because we were idealistic and all of this stuff. Yeah, and we're taking Darwin Thompson in like the sixth or seventh round because all the running backs are gone, and we're like, uh, yeah, we got our five wide receivers. But they continue to take running backs. They could did you to take it, and it was actually hard to pull off from that standpoint. Now it's the opposite. It's like we used to bag on Nause Harris because he went in round three and round four, round one exactly. Now you can get him in round eight. It's like, I'm not bagging on Nause is an awesome pick. I get to start five wide receivers grabbing a leaked tight end and still get nause. And so the market lends itself to approaching drafts that way. I think it's like the dominant strategy, and so if you're gonna swim against that current, you have to do it in a really thoughtful way.

00:50:42
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:50:42
Speaker 3: Look, that's something that Sean's preached through the years with zero RB where people are like, well what, because I remember, like when I did late round quarterback and that was this big strategy that people were talking about. Everyone was like, well what if everyone in your league goes late round quarterback? And I'm like, well, you adjust, because this is really just a value game. It's not just about a game of chicken and drafting quarterbacks late, right, and so, but with with zero RB, and Shawn's talked about this plenty, yes there could be following running back values. But if those like high end running backs which we see in drafts right now, like even you know Devon h Chan who we know has a very very high weekly ceiling, and you know Taylor and Barkley and even Derrick Henry to some degree, like those guys are still getting drafted well above that next tier of running backs you know, from like a just from a cost standpoint. And the thing that Shawn's always preaches that if everyone goes zero RB, that's fine because you're still able to get those falling running backs. Then as a result, because everyone is not drafting those running backs and your team and your build you know, still looks optimal on paper.

00:51:39
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean I think that people.

00:51:42
Speaker 3: Are you know, learning more and more and leaning into zero RB more and more. And it's funny because it's taken like ten years for you know, people to realize the validity of the strategy and it's taken best ball for them to really see it.

00:51:56
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:51:56
Speaker 4: And the thing too about it if you think about like I was thinking about this the other day about zero RB, where because the season is just so chaotic and I realize this is kind of like a fundamental tenet of zero RB. But if I think if you think about it through a very literal lens, it helps. It's like there's so much chaos, Like if you got to pick for which two running backs, like say everything was equal and you were like one was gonna get they were each going to get eight games, which one would you want? You would want the one that was going to go second, because like the chaos of the season, the injuries, them getting wear and tear on the tires, like they're going to use up all of their juice early on, and you're gonna want that late season guy, the fresh legs, and that typically is rookies, but it's typically the handcuff running back, and so you're getting like a double whammy. You're not investing in the guy who's getting all the wear and tear early in the season when it doesn't matter as much it's easier to sneak teams into the playoffs. Then you're getting the much cheaper guy with fresh legs, who's generally younger, coming on when it actually lines up with how these tournament structures work. So it is such a dominant strategy for just the way these tournaments are constructed.

00:53:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, makes plenty of sense. I asked herzig this last week. But because you're going zero RB in a lot of these drafts, you know, obviously I'm going zero RB in a lot of these drafts. We have this giant cluster of running backs that sort of go in that RB twenty to RB forty range where you could make a case for a lot of them. And so I'll ask you who are some of your go tos in that range when you get to like, you know, round eight ish area in these Best Ball drafts.

00:53:32
Speaker 4: Yeah, I have a few different pockets of the draft where I'm certainly targeting running backs. It's obviously that range you're talking about. My most drafted in that sort of range is Chase Brown, which I know is controversial. I've read some newsletters that don't have a super nice thing, some models that don't love a Hey.

00:53:51
Speaker 3: Now, I've come around on Chase Brown and Redraft. I am here for Chase Brown now, But earlier in the offseason it was just a little caution.

00:53:58
Speaker 1: You know, there was a little scariness to his year two profile.

00:54:02
Speaker 4: Well, it's so funny you say that too, And we've we kind of had this conversation before on ship chasing about and I have Chase Brown in Dynasty, and I am terrified about him in Dynasty. I'm actually trying to shop him around. But that's the beauty of best Ball, where it's like Dynasty is a floor game. I think Karin has said that, where you're trying to mitigate the risk, whereas best Ball is an upside game. Exactly, take the swing on Chase Brown. If it doesn't work out, guess what, you have a bunch of other entries and if it hits, well, I think it could hit in a way. I'm started to float this takeout JJ. My take is that Zach Moss and Chase Brown could be this year's Raheem Moster and Devon a Chan.

00:54:38
Speaker 1: Oh like that you went there.

00:54:39
Speaker 3: I thought you thought you're gonna go like a like a Gibbs Montgomery kind of situation, but you went to Mostard and a Chan there.

00:54:46
Speaker 4: So I guess the reason I wouldn't do the Gibbs is because Gibbs in Montgomery was still relatively expensive.

00:54:51
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, cost hme last year.

00:54:53
Speaker 4: But just basically being like, we know this offense is going to support a ton of running back production. Like Joe Mixon hasn't even been good as a rusher, and he has produced tons of fantasy points. I think Zach Moss probably a better interior rusher than Joe Mixon. I think Chase Brown far more explosive. And if this backfield just condenses around these two guys, I think it could just be a fantasy explosion. And I've been taking way more Chase Brown, but I'm really trying to get as much Zach Moss as possible.

00:55:19
Speaker 1: And I put them.

00:55:19
Speaker 4: Both on the same team the other day in a slow draft, and I didn't even hate how that turned out.

00:55:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what's funny.

00:55:25
Speaker 3: So I've done so much work on like ambiguous backfields and stuff throughout the years. And I'm putting my draft guide together right now, and in that guide, I'm looking at middle round running backs, which are defined as running backs being drafted after RB two. So it's RB twenty five to RB forty two is basically what I'm defining as middle round running backs. And if you look at their career year and then the hit rates of those players, the best years are it seems odd, but I do think there's some logic to it. The best years are year two, so that's you know, Chase Brown types but all and we've known that for a really long time that if you can get year two running backs year two players, they're usually pretty good bets to like exceed average draft position expectation. The other one is year five, oddly, and I'm like, I'm like, why is this happening? Why would year five be a thing. At first, I'm like, Okay, rookie contracts are up. Maybe they're switching teams, and that's why you know, they get this like jolt and they're getting more work on these new teams. And if they're switching teams or going to a new environment and they're still being drafted in the middle rounds. Then that means that people might be a little bit cautious just because they don't know what they're going to look like on those teams, but they're going to see enough work and that's why they're you know, being drafted still in the middle rounds and not the late rounds. But I think the bigger point, because there's not that many guys that did switch teams that are sort of part of that cohort, I think the bigger point is Ajpex, right, is the fact that like when you're in year five, like we've seen so many studies that when you're around that year age twenty seven season, that's when guys really do well and blow up. And so I was going through that and I'm like, Okay, well, this is really help for like, you know, the Tennessee backfield for instance, where I've preferred Taj Spears to Tony Pollard just as like not straight up necessarily, but from a cost perspective, although that's been shrinking over the last few weeks. But I'm kind I'm like, well, I guess this isn't gonna help us with Cincinnati because Zach Moss is in year five and Chase Brown is in year two. But I'm with you, man, like that backfield just seems like we're gonna see a lot of production, and if that production is gonna sort of be funneled to those two guys. And why can't Chase Brown in like you said earlier, in that environment where you're trying to win individual weeks, why can't Zack Moss get hurt for one week. It's not like Cincinnati is gonna go out and sign someone and give him the bulk of the work. I mean Chase Brown in that one singular. They might not want Chase Brown to be the belcow for seventeen games because he's not necessarily that guy, But why can't they do it for a game or two? Or why can't they do it, you know, in these like individual pockets, if Zach Moss were to be sidelined.

00:57:58
Speaker 1: So I'm with you. I've been buying into Chase Brown a lot more. Do you let me ask you this.

00:58:02
Speaker 3: This isn't on the show sheet or anything, but I talked about it last week a little bit. When you're like building these stacks and then you're looking for these running backs in this in this range do you ever like, let's say that you get you know, Jacksonville's one that the Jacksonville Tennessee game is one that I always go to with this because I do prefer Taj Spears more at cost than Tony Pollard. It's not by like this tremendous amount. I think they're both just kind of interchangeable and Spears is just cheaper.

00:58:26
Speaker 2: Uh.

00:58:26
Speaker 3: But Tony Pollard is always sitting there at that ADP where I'm getting like, you know, maybe a Kirk or like a you know, someone in the Jacksonville offense, and so Brian Thomas for some reason, I was blanking, and so I'm sitting there and I'm like, do I force the issue with Tony Pollard in risk not getting because I would risk not getting one of those running backs, one of those bringbacks. And so as a result, have you found yourself like being naturally more exposed to the RB ones on those teams because of the stacking issue.

00:59:02
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a tough one too. It was funny because I was reviewing my portfolio. I wrote a piece up on Fantasy Life because they have a Best Ball Hub, a free tool where you can kind of upload your CSV and you can look at your week seventeen stacks, and I was looking at my ones for Caleb Williams, and I was seeing which Seahawks I had coming back, and I kind of actually liked how smooth out it was. I had some nice mix and match, and then I was like, wait, I have no Tyler Lockett. He was the one I had, And I was like, Tyler Lockett goes in the exact same spot of the draft as Caleb Williams. It's hard to colick Caleb Williams and Tyler Lockett together. And so you do realize some of those blind spots, and to your point, you're like, yeah, I'm gonna want Tony Pollard as a bringback on some of these, or I'm gonna want Taj Spears or maybe one of those earlier wide receivers. So I do think that's something that is helpful about reviewing your exposures and your teams is making sure you're not falling into the same version of a team. And this goes back to kind of the diversifying too, where some people are like, well just take a player stah blah, bah blah, and it's like the whole point of like a brain back as you're playing that game to shoot out, none of us have confidence that it's gonna be Tajy Spears and it's not Pollard or Calvin Ridley. It's like, no, you once you've made that bet, you just want that game to go bonkers. And at that point, I'm like, yeah, I want to mix and match my bringbacks here.

01:00:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

01:00:15
Speaker 3: I mean, would you in that environment, in that situation if you had like this is this is a selfish question, because I need to know what the heck to do to not have the like, I want the proper exposures to these guys that I want in my being as to who I think is the better value, right, Yeah, And so would you in that situation, ever, say, like, if you had Pollard and Spears as interchangeable, I have no idea what your takes on on those individual guys, but let's just say that they're just interchangeable. Would you then be open to just reaching for Taj Spears and drafting him over a Tony Pollard or are you gonna wait and just do your volume of drafts and do a lot of them and say eventually I'm gonna get enough Taj Spears in these Jacksonville environments where I feel okay about it.

01:00:56
Speaker 4: Yes, I think probably more to the latter, but I would want to, you know, if you like Spears more than Pollard in a vacuum, I think I'm there with you. And it's getting even a little harder because now Pollard's falling in Spears is odds where it's like Howard's availa about like one oh five and Spears's ADP is up to like what one twelve, So it's like you are essentially just picking your favorite I think, and this is obviously just getting so in the weeds about like frequencies and stuff, but I do think it's like if you prefer Taj Spears, like at a seven to three clip to Pollard, then like, yeah, go after that, like be there. And then what I like to kind of do is use the ADP values to kind of balance me out where it's like sometimes you're on the side of the board in Pollard falls another round or whatever, you're like, all right, this is my time to get my Pollard share. But I think if you because the way I think about correlation, it is a tiebreaker for me. It's like you have these two players very similar and now I'm going to boost up the correlation. But if you're saying I have spears significantly higher than Pollard or a meaningful amount and I'm getting the correlation, then it's like, don't take the lesser player in that situation.

01:02:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it makes total sense.

01:02:03
Speaker 3: Are there any other running backs in that range you wanted to bring up and talk about or is it just Chase Brown and log out?

01:02:09
Speaker 1: No, Brooks is the other big guy.

01:02:11
Speaker 4: We talked about him, and then that that pocket's obviously really nice. I select a lot of you know, Jalen Warren, Nausey and that range too. And then there's that next pocket that's kind of the sweet spot for that next tier of rookie running backs. So like Marshaun Lloyd, Ray Davis, Jalen Wright, you can toss Kamani Vidal in there. I love that pocket of the board too, And one of my actual most drafted is the cheapest of that pocket in Bucky Irving.

01:02:38
Speaker 1: Another one.

01:02:39
Speaker 4: Maybe we can we get talked through because I know you're a big Rashad White Bowl, but I just love that pocket for coming back and grabbing one to two more running backs.

01:02:48
Speaker 1: Well, I'll be honest, I have.

01:02:49
Speaker 3: You know, I did not like Bucky Irving that much as a prospect, and I think that Rashad that I've said it before on the show. I think this year's Rashad White could end up being Rashad White.

01:02:58
Speaker 4: Ye.

01:02:59
Speaker 3: But but I've drafted a decent amount of Bucky Irving to hedge a little bit. I The other thing too, is, you know in those like earlier rounds, maybe it's not early, but like that round four to six range where you see a lot of those running backs go, I'm I'm not really forcing the issue with any running back because you don't have to. Like it's more so that you know, you know that running backs will fall in some drafts, whereas wide receivers will not fall, and so I'm just letting whatever running back falls.

01:03:25
Speaker 1: That's the one that I get.

01:03:26
Speaker 3: So, you know, I do think on paper, from a projection standpoint, a guy like White, a guy like mix in like that tier, that group, they all look pretty good on paper, like like Rashad White in my projections, looks like the RB eight or so in fantasy football. But understand that that's you know, I don't really draft off projections. I preach to not draft off of projections, and so I am hedging a little bit with a guy like Irving because you never know how teams want to deploy.

01:03:49
Speaker 1: These guys at the end of the day.

01:03:51
Speaker 3: And uh, you know, as much as I think that Rashad White gets a lot of crap for uh, you know, being an inefficient runner, and you know, I have like thoughts on in general, I'm still open minded to the fact and the idea that you know, this coaching staff could say, no, we want to use Bucky Irving and more of a two headed backfield.

01:04:08
Speaker 4: And the funny thing is, too, I think within fantasy football culture, everything has to be so black and white. You have to either in on this guy and then that means you're out on that guy. The beauty of drafting a bunch of basketball teams and thinking of it through a portfolio mindset is I actually think it's smart to be in on both of those guys, because if you have the take that I think this backfield is undervalued, either Rashad White is massively undervalued as like an RB one who should be going in the second round, which if he does what he did last year that is the case, or you say, holy cal Bucky Herbig's like a sixteenth round pick. If Rashad White's a really fragile pick, it means Bucky's going to smash his ADP. So I want my portfolio to benefit from either of those scenarios. I just find it harder to do with the more expensive one in general. And I'm the same way with Ray Davis versus James Cook. I like James Cook more than Ray Davis. But it's also if I have a little uncertainty and there's a ten round ADP gap, it makes it hard.

01:05:02
Speaker 1: Yeah.

01:05:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean straight up, I have way more Ray Davis right now than James Cook. You know, like because of that, it's just a lot easier to just buy into sort of the unknown, and that's why you know the prices where it's at as opposed to getting more of the known entity. I just I also, specifically with James Cook, I don't know how like high the ceiling really necessarily would be, just because you know, Josh Allen being there and stuff. But yeah, I love that pocket too. I'm glad that you called that out. So we talked a little bit about tight ends. We have this, you know, these these higher end tight ends.

01:05:31
Speaker 1: I don't know, can we not.

01:05:32
Speaker 3: I saw Hayden Wings tweeting about how we need to stop calling some of these guys elite tight ends, and I will, you know, listen to Hayden and talking about them here. But we have higher end tight ends who are being drafted and sort of these like round three to round six pocket.

01:05:49
Speaker 1: You know, I say round three, that's usually like.

01:05:51
Speaker 3: Just Laporta and most of the other guys will go in round four and then into round five and then you know, Pitt's kittle they going round six.

01:05:58
Speaker 1: Who are your favorites of that group?

01:06:00
Speaker 3: Because my my stance has sort of been not all these guys are gonna hit, right, because that's just how fantasy football works.

01:06:06
Speaker 1: But I do think that some of them are gonna hit.

01:06:08
Speaker 3: And I would imagine that that, you know, one or two of them could give us like that elite tight end season that you know, they would be priced at a round one two turn type price tag, right, like a guy like what we see with like Kelsey historically. So are there any favorites for you in that group or are you just trying to spread things out and get sort of equal exposure to them?

01:06:29
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's funny you say that because I am trying to spread things out, I have not done a great job of that.

01:06:35
Speaker 1: I have way more Mark.

01:06:37
Speaker 4: Andrews than any of those guys, which partly I feel good about because he is my highest confidence bet. Like to me, you know you can talk about Okay, Laporte is priced up way higher than these other guys. Does he deserve to be Travis Kelcey the age cliff concerns. We know guys like Kyle Pitts and George Kittle can have such a wide range of outcomes.

01:06:56
Speaker 1: Don'ton k Kate.

01:06:57
Speaker 4: We don't even really know if he's good yet, Like you can go down the line with all of these, Mark Andrews is the one guy where it's like, I feel like what I'm buying. I know what I'm getting. We've seen what it looks like when he's a target hog. We see what it looks like how many touchdowns he can score when this offense is humming.

01:07:12
Speaker 1: You get the.

01:07:13
Speaker 4: Correlation with Lamar and with Lamar Jackson, and so to me, he's just the comfiest of the clicks. It's like I don't have to worry about him being good. I don't have to worry about the offense, Like, what's the most I have to worry about him staying healthy? We have to worry about that with all these guys. So I gravitate to Andrews a ton in the fifth.

01:07:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love the Andrews thought. I've gotten a ton of him as well. I think the one thing too with Andrews that if you're if you want to play a little scared or if it's not the right word to use, because I'm not trying to accuse anyone to play and scared, but you know, if you're worried in some way that something's going to happen to Andrews, He's like the only tight end where you're like, oh, his backup is really freaking good, and I could just throw the darted Isaiah, likely not in the same lineup, but just elsewhere to build that exposure up a little bit in case something were to happen with Andrews, you know, to at least have some safety net there. But I'm with you, I think Andrews is is pretty massively undervalued. I'm actually writing the tight end section right now for the Draft Guide and digging into data a little bit more. And it's really crazy because if you look at Travis Kelsey's output and I'm looking at full PPR, I'm looking at more redraft related stuff, but it's still you know, coincides to this. I feel like the tight end price tags are the way they are simply because Travis Kelcey didn't really meet expectation last year, like like only because of Travis Kelcey.

01:08:33
Speaker 1: Because Kelsey's numbers, you know, he was still in PPR.

01:08:36
Speaker 3: He was actually the tight end one in points per game last season, but he's still you know, because this game is stupid. He still is looked at as a disappointment last year because he's being drafted so high. But what's interesting is where he gets drafted now or where he's being ranked right now by like you know, fantasy pros experts and stuff like that. If he were to score the identical number of points last year on a points per game basis this year.

01:09:00
Speaker 1: He'd actually exceed ADP expectation.

01:09:02
Speaker 3: And so I think I think people are you know, when I'm looking at this again, this is from a season long lens, but I do think it's transferable because if you look at what's going on in these best Ball drafts, all these tight ends are going in places where the opportunity cost really isn't that significant, like fourth, fifth round guys. Yeah, of course we want, but there's also, like, to me, a pretty clear drop off at wide receive, like a tear drop at wide receiver. I should say, after you get out of those like you know, younger upside players and like a tank or like a Za or something like that, if you're into them, and then you get into like some of the more questionable veterans like a McLaurin, and you know, you get into you know, Hollywood Brown or maybe you're into Zave You're Worthy or Jayden Reid, what have you.

01:09:45
Speaker 1: It's just an easy pocket to just get those tight ends right.

01:09:48
Speaker 3: Like, I've had a very hard time, especially when I'm in the front half of Drafts, not getting a McBride and Andrews a Kelsey when he falls. It's just really difficult to like not go that route because of the alternatives that are sitting there.

01:10:03
Speaker 1: Are you Are you in the same boat.

01:10:04
Speaker 4: I'm in the same boat, and that's why I've gotten it kind of what we open the show with of I feel like I have some scary fades because I'm always taking a tight end in either late round four or early round five. So my biggest portfolio holes are guys who go there, Like I don't have a ton of George Pickens because I'm always grabbing Trey McBride. I don't have a ton of Isaiah Pacheco because I'm always grabbing Dalton good Kaid. I don't you know, I'm scarily under exposed to CJ. Stroud because for a while he was going in that range and I was always grabbing it. And so that's where I've really had to think through, Like, man, I love the elite tight end, but what's so nice about this year and having the different costs laport round three, those guys four or five and then Kittle and Pits in round six is like, all right, let's pump the brakes on some round four five guys, mix and match some Pochecko's and then come back, get a Pits, come back and get a Kittle. And I have been trying to push it a little more. On the sulcast the other day, I was like, I got a really sick value on ETN and the and I was like, you know what, this will be a non elite tight end draft for me. Then Kittle falls to the seventh and I was like, just getting I'm grabbing drafts, I'm grabbing George Kittle. So I do kind of like that if you're a little patient and basically force the room to give you that value.

01:11:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the other thing that I've noticed a lot too, just doing a lot of drafts. This is kind of related, but kind of up. But it's like, you know, you you find it. You know, you get Andrews maybe a little bit like a pick or two pass ADP. You feel good about it because you feel comfortable with Andrews as your tight end what have you? And then freaking Kyle Pitts falls like like twelve or thirteen picks past ADP, and then you feel uncomfortable, like you don't want to really take the double tight end because you know, you know, like you'd rather not take on that opportunity cost and you'd rather just have the one elite tight end, and then you're you're losing out on that value. It's just one of those things where like when you're drafting these players earlier in your draft, there's a there's this domino effect that you should always be aware of of. Okay, just recognize if you draft Mark Andrews and you do get a value on a kittle or a pits, you know in the in the following rounds, you might it's not necessarily optimal to then just take that falling value. That's something that Karine really harped on in the first interview that I did for the show, where I asked them where like, you know, you get a quarterback early and you have a let's say you get Lamar Jackson early and you have this Cincinnati you know, you got like Jamar Chase and t Higgins on your team or something like that, because Lamar fell to the fifth round and you just grabbed Lamar.

01:12:23
Speaker 1: But then Joe Burrow falls.

01:12:24
Speaker 3: To you know, round nine or like you know, two rounds past ADP and it's like, do you draft Joe Burrow? And Karine's answer to that was basically like you gotta just you got to just ignore it. You know, you have to do what's optimal for your individual roster. But sometimes it's so freaking hard to do that. Man, It's so hard.

01:12:42
Speaker 4: Sometimes it's so hard, and it's so hard in both directions. Because I've been kind of preaching that even when you have the two early guys. Let's say Chasin Higgins, let's say Tua and or sorry, Reek and Waddle. Every bone in your body is screaming, lock up that staff, reach ahead, grab it at ADP. And Yet on those condensed offenses where the quarterbacks don't have any mobility, no one else in the room wants them unstacked, right, no one wants them.

01:13:11
Speaker 1: And so even though it.

01:13:12
Speaker 4: Says like this team sucks if I don't get to a I love pushing it. I mean I got Tua on a Reek and Wattle team at like one forty six in a draft the other day, like two and a half rounds past EIGHTYP. I was like, I will dare you guys to take him unstacked?

01:13:27
Speaker 1: And I looked at the.

01:13:28
Speaker 4: Ahn team he already had a quarterback early, and I was like, all right, is someone setting up a back door John umlik Washington If they wanted, go for it. But then you can build these super teams if you're patient. So it's counterintuitive in both directions. You're like, huge ADP fall on this guy, and it's like does that really help your team?

01:13:44
Speaker 1: And then you're like I want.

01:13:45
Speaker 4: This guy so bad, and it's like, no, no, No, you could sneak in another pick or two if you're patient.

01:13:50
Speaker 3: Well, it's it's understanding the condensed target trees, right and the target distributions, you know, like with Miami, like you said, you know it's going to two guys. Those are the only two guys that people really care about aside from HM, but as receivers. So you know that you'll be able to get a falling to a a guy like Jordan Love. It's a lot more difficult to get a falling Jordan Love because even if someone doesn't have Jaden Reed or Christian Watson in round nine or round ten, someone can still get Jordan Love and get Romeo Dobbs and Dontavian Wix and Luke Musgrave. Right, Like, the same exact thing happened to me where I drafted Keenan Allen and Roma Dunze yesterday, and I was like, Okay, Kayla Williams is at least on my radar because I just got these two Chicago wide receivers. The team that drafted Dj Moore had drafted Dak Prescott and Jordan Love, and I knew there was no chance that that team was going to go after Kayleb Williams after getting those two quarterbacks. So I got Kayleb Williams like two and a half rounds after ADP in that draft, because you know, you can squeeze out that value a little bit more.

01:14:47
Speaker 4: So.

01:14:47
Speaker 3: I think it's a really good call out. I know that we've sort of gone on a tangent here, but like it's a good call out you know, to look at the individual teams and those target trees and the target distribution to know whether or not people are to end up, you know, going with like a naked quarterback situation. Yeah, at times they're gonna snipe you for absolutely no reason. Uh, And I've I've done my best too. I'm gonna start meditating a little bit more to uh, to not tilt off the planet whenever that kind of thing happens.

01:15:15
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's something you know.

01:15:17
Speaker 1: One it's it's reps. Right.

01:15:18
Speaker 4: It's really hard if you're just doing a couple of drafts because we all kind of know what a perfect draft looks like, and then when someone blows it up, it's like, are you serious? But when you do a ton of these, it's like anything in life, It's like that when you have so many reps at something, it's like, that's not a big deal. There's another one in the way I think about it, And I think you talked about this a little bit with Karan, and I know he thinks similarly about this, is like, in my perfect world, I would love to have like four double stacks on my underdog teams, a couple of wide receivers, a tight end, wide receiver, running back to whatever. I'm only going to draft two to three quarterbacks. That means there is going to be one of those stacks, probably two that don't have the quarterback. And so when I get sniped, it's like, okay, yeah, but that's gonna be one of those stacks I have where I don't get it. And because people have the mental hang up of not wanting to have two players, two pass catchers without the quarterback. I actually think it's one of the biggest edges in drafts is getting as many stacks as possible, irregardless of the quarterback.

01:16:13
Speaker 3: That's a really, really great, helpful, positive way of looking at those situations instead of you know, you drafting Drake London and Kyle Pitt's not getting Kirk Cousins and just wanting to throw your phone against the wall, because you know, someone gets someone gets cousins and just stacks.

01:16:28
Speaker 1: And with like Darnell Mooney or something like that.

01:16:30
Speaker 4: You can't you can't still throw your phone against the wall. If like when why I throw my phone against the wall. It's just like all right, here we go. We're doing either another Drake may or bon Nix double stack. Like that's where I'm like, all right, yeah, I can make it work. But I'm like, I only have so many ways to make this work.

01:16:45
Speaker 3: It's always it's always a New England stack. It's always or or a Bronco stack, like it's just that like or sometimes sometimes a Carolina But it's always just one of those teams where if you if you do get screwed and you know that you're gonna make maybe maybe a giant stack every once in a while, you know, like a dimes and just hoping that like he can he can do what he did a couple of years ago. But yeah, it's it's it's rough whenever that happens like late in your draft and you're not set up for it. Yep, all right, I got one more question for you. Yeah, you're doing so many live stream drafts number one. I think it's absolutely insane what you did last year with live streaming all those one to fifty drafts and doing it with a guest. And I've seen you like when I watch your live streams, I panic myself when when the clock's getting down to one and you're trying to click the star right in time to get him in the queue.

01:17:36
Speaker 1: And then you know, most of the time you're able to.

01:17:38
Speaker 3: You know, you've become a pro at getting that out there in time and putting the guy in the queue.

01:17:44
Speaker 1: But props to you for doing all that.

01:17:46
Speaker 3: But I have to ask you, is doing a live stream while doing a fast draft more difficult or easier than doing a live stream. I guess it's not a live stream, but a live draft with a toddler running around.

01:18:00
Speaker 4: Yeah, I will say on the on the toddler front. I really I've tried to, like before having a kid, you know, I would be the one, like I heard you say when you were like had to run to the grocery store or whatever, you know, like I outrun an errands, like do it a draft whatever, multitasking Now having the kid, just knowing how much it like sucks me in I don't really do fast drafts unless I'm at my computer kind of either for content or later at night. Not really doing any fast drafts on my phone other than like Cardio Club. So I sidestepped that it's funny because I've done so many livestream drafts. That's not the element that makes it hard, Like I feel like I'm comfortable having done a ton of drafts interacting.

01:18:39
Speaker 1: With the chat.

01:18:40
Speaker 4: What makes it hard is people want to get into my draft rooms, and people who get into my draft rooms like to draft like me. They're even this seems hard to believe for people who are logging in and are like, look at this ADP. Come check out like one of my draft rooms, like Sean and I had to draft like Jalen McMillan in the thirteenth round yesterday because I'm dead serious, We're like, let's grab these running back values. Next thing you know, everyone's taking wide receiver. So I sometimes have to be careful because I have a warped sense of some of these draft rooms where I'm like, no, it's even more wide receiver crazy than you think. And that makes it hard because it's like, man, every single player I like is not available to me here and then I end up having to grab grab guys that I wouldn't otherwise have to take. So, so, has dad life forced you to do more, way more slow drafts than you've done in the past, and has that this is actually a real I'm actually very curious about this because I found myself gravitating towards slow drafts because it's just easier for my everyday life, right than doing the fast drafts, because it's just harder to sit down and do things while you got a toddler and a five year old running around and so. But but I feel like, like, do you think that there's like a disadvantage to doing slower drafts from like a you know, falling value standpoint?

01:19:50
Speaker 3: And cause I feel like, you know, like in live drafts and fast drafts, people are panicking more. Yeah, naturally, right, and so you might get values that way. But on the flip side, slow drafts you're able to kind of take a step back really look at the landscape more than you would in one of those fast drafts.

01:20:05
Speaker 1: So I guess it's sort of like a two parter.

01:20:07
Speaker 3: Are you doing more slow drafts and do you think that there's an advantage or a disadvantage in doing that.

01:20:12
Speaker 4: I think so one nice thing too, because we all have like our biases or like our anecdotal stuff. Both Mike Leoni, who I know, you know, and Michael Dubner have done some studies on how teams performed in BBM four, BBM three slow draft first fast drafts, and it's almost negligible the difference that is in like the aggregate I do, like I have seen and people have told me, like the super late night drafts, like come late summer when casuals and people are coming home from the weekend having a few drinks, like there are some wild things that.

01:20:42
Speaker 1: Happen in those drafts.

01:20:43
Speaker 4: I will absolutely believe people who say I can cherry pick the right times to draft and get really soft rooms. I will absolutely believe that. And you're not going to get that dynamic in a slow draft. I think the number one benefit of a slow draft is the volume. You can get down. So much more volume doing a slow draft, And so if you only if you want to do a ton, I would say, yeah, you're gonna sacrifice not getting to do a few late at night at midnight with the drunkards coming home. But you're gonna be able to get a lot down, whereas if you are just cherry picking, if you were just hunting for the absolute most ev Yeah, up late at night here in the late July and August for some of these rooms.

01:21:21
Speaker 3: Dude, I feel the same way whenever I'm gaming with my buddies and like you know, we're sober on a Saturday night or something, we're playing Rocket League, and then you just get the worst players on the planet that you're matching up with, because they're clearly like coming home from the bar, they've been, you know, drinking at a neighbor's place or something. You know, it is anecdotal, but I think that there's a lot of validity to what you just said. So that's it's very very good to note. But Pete Man, it was great to chat with you. That was a lot of fun. Let everyone know where they can find you. You're everywhere all over YouTube. But where are you at.

01:21:52
Speaker 4: Yeah, we'll have to get together. I want to have you on Bestball Breakfast on Mondays. I do kind of a mega live stream I draft with Pat Krane who's been on the show, Sean Siegel, who I know you've talked to on the Late Round podcast feed before and then I've been kind of rotating a special guest coming through, so i'd love to have you on there. And then a lot of my strategy videos I've been doing on the Deposit Kingdom YouTube channel, those are more produced, have an editor, not just off the cuff stuff. Did make a video about the Elite tight Ends recently, and I also did a video on my ten Takeaways after fifty drafts, a lot of the topics we discussed here today, so those would be the two spots. And then I do a lot of writing over at Fantasy Life. Did a piece on my exposures, and like I said, I'll give a plug for that free best ball tool in the same way you can just ask for your CSV from Underdog. You can go upload that to the site and look at some of your week seventeen bringbacks and see do I have too much Taja Spears and not enough Tony Pollard? But I don't even know if that's sentence I'm allowed to say, because there's never too much Tajy Spears in my world.

01:22:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's never too much Tajre Spears.

01:22:51
Speaker 3: Yeah. Like I said, I appreciate you hopping on anyone who has not pre ordered the Late Round Draft Guy check it out lateround dot com. You can also sign up on Underdog and get that free guide. Make a deposit Underdog, use promo code late Round and you will get that guide to your email inbox on July first, but on.

01:23:08
Speaker 1: Behalf of Pete and myself. Thank you for tuning