Becoming a Best Ball Bro: A Weekly Winners Strategy?

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Hey, JJ, did you hear about an American cyclist Kristin Faulkner.

00:00:04
Speaker 2: I saw like clips. I saw the clip of her like passing everybody. I don't know the full full backstory aside from the fact that like she shouldn't have been there or something. I did see it though.

00:00:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, So she was just in Finance five years ago and then in the morning she was like, I'm just gonna take up cycling as a thing to do. And fast forward five years she's in Paris. She is a substitute for the Americans, so she wasn't supposed to be in the race, and then she just wins gold. So it got me to thinking, were there if there's any obscure events that I can just start getting ready for here in la in twenty twenty eight and I went through the list, but unfortunately the IOC does not have being overweight on Tyrun Tracy.

00:00:47
Speaker 2: I'm JJ, and I've been playing in best ball leagues for years. But there are people out there who play a lot more than I do, and there are people out there who have won a lot more than I have, and I want to learn from them. This season, I'll be documenting my journey of Max entering Underdog's Best ball Mania contest, and I'll be doing so with guidance from some of the most successful best ball players on the planet. This is the year where things start to change. This is the year where I officially become a best ball bro. Welcome into another episode of becoming a best ball bro. Only a handful of these things left. I'm JJ Zach Reeson, joined as always by Rich Ryan Rich. What's going on, Buddy doing?

00:01:35
Speaker 3: Good?

00:01:35
Speaker 1: Man? All these camp reports keep coming hot and heavy. We're obviously going to get into the IYUK news, but man, every day I check these beat reporters and I'm just crossing my fingers that we don't get any major injuries as we enter into the first week of preseason here. But yeah, it's been feels like I feel like we'll say this every year, but it feels like the news has been more hot and heavy this year than it ever has been.

00:02:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I will be honest, I feel like the news hasn't favored my takes as much as I want it to favor.

00:02:06
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you know it hasn't been like out for DeAndre. Yeah, Likedell's career is over.

00:02:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, right, I get more irritated. Honestly, when I see so like the news items happen whatever, I get more irritated by not how I internalize that stuff, because I usually just kind of can brush it off and not really let it impact my rankings and stuff like a dramatic amount. I just get really annoyed when other people start piling on and then making fun of you for liking a certain player because of what happened by from a Beat reporter, what a Beat reporter saying in late July early August, Like I saw many many tweets, so Kammani Videll got injured, and you know he was playing behind Jared Patterson the one day. And you know, I've been someone who liked Videll, but I'm not like, I don't like Kamani Videll because he's simply in that backfield, which I think is like the default for some people or some of the adversaries who say you only like him because of that. I thought he was a good prospect. Go back and listen to late Round perspectives with Matt Waldman. Both of us were really into Fidel, Like we were talking about him, and you know, we both had these like DeAndre Swift type comps for him, and so I liked him as a player, and then he landed in a good spot. So that combination, I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna like this dude. But what annoys me most is when people go to Twitter and they say things like imagine liking a Kamani vite like after the Factor, like after a beat report. It's like, like, why are you doing this? All you're doing is is alienating fifty percent of your audience right now and making them annoyed at you. That's the thing that annoys me with that stuff.

00:03:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, people people love.

00:03:39
Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, it's Twitter is just such a it's such a cynical place that anytime or any news comes out, people are gonna go for the joke in that in that aspect, So so yeah, and and and it was it was pretty clear, uh with with Fidel, Yeah, why we why we liked the player? It wasn't it wasn't just that three headed backfield. But sure, yeah, you guys were in love with the player. And what it was is opportunity was the accelerant for liking the player.

00:04:06
Speaker 3: It wasn't the basis of it.

00:04:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, And I think with a lot of Day three And this isn't even me saying like I'm pivoting off of Idel. I'm still okay with him. But the thing with like any of those players is that you can go out and say draft him, draft him, draft him. I really like him, I really like him. I really like him. But everyone who listens that kind of advice, and this goes for any advice that I give, ground yourself with what that really means. It means that at cost, we like this player. And if you look at Day three running back hit rates, they're not very strong. We shouldn't expect the world from the dude. Chances are Camani Idel will not do much at all in fantasy football in twenty twenty four from an odds perspective, But we're also layering on cost and ADP and that's when a player becomes a little bit more attractive. So yeah, I mean the news stuff this time of year, to me is more I get more annoyed by how people interpret it rather than what the news item itself is. Like what the Beat reporters are saying, They're just doing their job and injecting their own opinion. It's how that opinion is then taken as fact that just annoys me to no end.

00:05:10
Speaker 3: The other thing is consistency.

00:05:12
Speaker 1: And I'll bring this up and we'll get into some player stuff here in a second. And you brought this up on the mail bag, and I thought it was a terrific point where people are excited about Tyler Aljeer and somebody asks, how does that affect v Jon Robinson. Well, the same excitement is going on in Jets camp right now with Braylan Allen, but it's having no effect on Briteze Hall, right, So we kind of have to apply these things across the board and not one by one or else it's just gonna really color our analysis in a negative way and kind of create some biases that shouldn't exist.

00:05:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mentioned this in the interview today and I'll just bring it up as the example again right now. But I think a really good example of like when you look at coach speak or you listen to what they're saying in the media. There's a lot of positive buzz right now around Kenneth Walker as an example. Okay, the thing is, no one should be questioning whether or not Kenneth Walker can run the ball well or if he's explosive, or if he has burst, like we know that exists for Walker. The question mark for Walker is whether or not he can be a pass catcher. He hasn't hit an eight percent target share in any season yet that he's playing in the NFL, and he had a lot of question marks as a pass catcher in college, Like he he hasn't been a high volume receiver. Maybe he wasn't even in high school. I have no idea, right like, I've never seen him be a high volume receiver at the college war professional level. And so when they come out and they say, Yo, he's crushing camp, well, yeah, he's the kind of running back that probably would crush camp because he has a lot of that burst and explosiveness. But also I want to know how they're deploying him as a receiver. That's what's most important. If we got word not the stuff like he's a three down back or we think he can be a three down back, that's just kind of like a generic term that coaches and people use all the time for players without really thinking what that really means. I want to know what he's doing specifically as a receiver for me to say, oh, he does have top five running back up side right with Zach Sharpenay in that backfield. So it's it's that kind of dissection that I think a lot of people need to be doing. You know, with this stuff, you can definitely take away some items and change your rankings and change the way you play player or your rank players and draft players based on what beats are saying based on what you know these news items look like. But to me, it's a lot easier to do that with late round picks, where you know, it doesn't matter if you're wrong, whereas if you're in.

00:07:31
Speaker 1: A volume is so important with those players where we're talking about guys that like they're either on the it's it's kind of binary with some of those late round players, like they're either going to see the field or they're not going to see the field exactly.

00:07:42
Speaker 2: And so like, you know, you can give like a slight bump, like I'm probably going to remove spoiler alert, remove Kenneth Walker as a player to avoid this week in the draft guide because there is some positive buzz, but I'm not going to then all of a sudden make him a target, you know, because that's going in a very extreme direction. Whereas it was only like two or three running back spots away from market with Kenneth Walker. Anyway, it wasn't like, you know, I might move them up one or two spots, but it's not anything like dramatic. I just think you've got to try to be levelheaded about it, ground yourself with it, and just don't be stupid with the information that's out there. That's really what it comes down to. One thing I want to get to before we talk about some of the news items, and some guys I'm drafting right now, Greg Bryant, longtime listener, Greg of this show and of Living the Stream. He wants to donate two draft guides. Okay, So the people who are listening to this episode early, yes, you're at an advantage because I'm going to give you a promo code right now that you can go to late round dot com go purchase the draft guide. When you do that, there's a little discount code at the bottom. Promo code at the bottom. You can insert it and apply it and then you'll get the draft guide. Price will go down to zero dollars. The promo code is Thanks Greg, twenty twenty four all under case. Okay, Thanks Greg, twenty twenty four. The first two people to do that. And now I'm assuming this show goes out at six am Eastern whenever we publish this thing every Wednesday, West Coast. So yeah, so I'm sorry to the West Coasters. It'll probably be kind of rough for you to get this promotion.

00:09:25
Speaker 1: Somebody out there, somebody out there's a runner that they're up or there shift is ending, they're getting home.

00:09:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, come on, West Coast, come strong.

00:09:33
Speaker 2: I want whoever gets this guide or one of these two guys. There's two of them, so the first two people to do it, we'll get it. Whoever gets it, I want you to hit me up on Twitter or email me and you can use podcasts lateround dot com and tell me where you're from, because I'm curious, like I would assume both winners are gonna come from the East Coast, is my guess. That's my guest. But we'll see Europe.

00:09:56
Speaker 3: Forgot about Europe, get in their Europe.

00:09:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Europeans. Yeah, they'll be they'll be eating lunch. But three days later whenever they whenever they hear this. But yeah, the promo code is thanks Greg twenty twenty four. It's not for the Prospect Guide. It's for the Draft Guide. It's a twenty five dollars value. Greg wanted to donate these two to support, you know, me, give back to the community. He's a great dude, and I greatly greatly appreciate it. Okay, there's two big items that we need to talk about here, Rich, the first one being Brandon Ayuk. Right, we don't know if he's been traded by the time you listen to this, but at this moment, he has not been traded in the three teams that I mean, maybe even two. Maybe the Steelers aren't really part of it. There's a lot of conflicting reports, but I know that you you seem to think that the Steelers are firmly in it because pretty Ricky, you are a pretty ricky truther. Rich Ryan is the King, the King, pretty Ricky, get it right, And obviously this is in a total, totally real take, but maybe it is. My stance is it's very still it's very strange that San Francisco is willing to do this, right, Like, am I wrong in thinking that the forty nine ers are forcing this a little bit and they could be screwed in the process. The only way I see this working out for them in the short term because they're in win now mode. Is if there is a deal in place that they get Amari Cooper and they're able to do something with their cap and make things like I'm not a cap expert, and then you know, IU goes to Cleveland, they at least you know San Francisco is still getting an alpha in return. But if you're trading with New England, there's been rumors that Kendrick Bourne is involved, Like that's a huge downgrade coming off an ACL too. And then if you trade with Pittsburgh, they have no one that they could offer you to fill that role. So yeah, I'm I'm in a weird place right now with this whole IUK thing. I didn't think it was going to get this far, to be honest, So that's already an l for my perspective. I just I didn't think that they were going to let him go. I didn't think that he had like amazing leverage. But I do think he's an important piece of the offense real quick.

00:12:09
Speaker 1: Right as we started recording, Schefter reported that the Steelers and Niners re engaged in conversations midday. Pretty Ricky the absolute king. On a serious note, the reason why I've been following Ricky with some of the stuff is that with some of the news that he broke during free agency, it seems very clear that he either works with or is adjacent to some sort of agency, or knows somebody that works with or adjacent to an agency, because a lot of the news that he breaks seems to be on the player side. So if I'm reading this situation completely, it seems as if Brandon Aiyuk extending is as important to the process as the trade, so he needs to with the trade partner agree on some sort of extensions before anything. So it would therefore makes sense, based on the history of Ricky, that maybe he knows something about Auk's agency and the type of deal that they're looking for, and maybe that the Steelers might have something in place. But again, the news itself will come out in terms of the deal, and to me, this's just reeks of.

00:13:16
Speaker 3: Like humanity in football, where there.

00:13:19
Speaker 1: Are certain things that we really can't analyze, where if there was just a burn bridge between Brandon Aiyuk and the Niners front office, it really doesn't matter what capital or what return or what deal like it's over like these humans do not see eye to eye and there's just nothing that's going to come of it. It reminds me of the Jets in Elijah Moore last year, where you have this great young player. He's an amazing fit in the offense. He's done a ton with garbage play around him. It makes so much sense to keep him around with where Aaron Rodgers coming in, But there was just a burnt bridge there and there was just no coming back from it, so they shipped them off to Cleveland. So I think that's ultimately what's happening here with the Niners.

00:13:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think from a fantasy perspective, wherever Iyu goes is probably a downgrade. I think Cleveland could be okay if they do ship Amari Cooper the other direction, because I'm bullish on that offense. I think Cleveland's gonna throw the ball a lot. I've been drafting Cooper a good bit, and I think, you know, from like a fantasy perspective, I don't think Cooper going to San Francisco would be a massive downgrade either, So it'd be a nice, like neutral kind of flip. The thing that would suck is all the correlation and team stacking and game stacking that we've done with those players, all of a sudden, you know, gets blown up. But you know, if Ayuka is gone and they don't bring on a significant piece, Deebo Samuel becomes the top piece that you want at the top of the second round, you know, like the been We've been trying to find the player that is obvious at that turn, and there's just a giant teer. We've been drafting Drake London and Marvin Harrison Junior and sometimes Jalen Waddle and Chris Alave. But I think that Deebo probably just breaks the tie because he could see a really high target share without Brandon I Yuke in the picture, and we know that he's a pretty good best ball bet too. You know, if there is sort of like a rotation going around and don't say by George Kittle, like George Kittle all of a sudden becomes a solid fifth round pick. You know, if i Uke is gone and no one steps in, Like, what's the difference between George Kittle and Dalton Kinkaid? Right? Like I would I would probably rank Kittle. I mean, this is off the dome. I haven't really looked at like projections or anything. But Kittle might be better, a better asset. He'd definitely jumped Kyle Pitts, but he might be a better asset than Kincaid too. So right now, I've been trying to in the in the drafts I've been doing, I'm mean trying to force it a little bit with those guys. Other teams have done that a little bit too. But like I got debo at like two o four two five yesterday, you know, I I looked at my exposure and the last episode of the show, I plan on us you and I just talking. There won't be a guest, but what you and I will do is kind of just walk through where things are at from an exposure standpoint, the things that we learned, all that kind of stuff. But exposure, I've I didn't realize it, but I haven't been that that high on San Francisco. Like I've wanted more George Kittle throughout the entire summer. I just never the teams that I need him. He gets sniped right before me, and then the teams that I don't need him. When I went tight end early, you know, I he falls, but I don't need to get him because I already have a tight end. But my exposure has been about ten percent debo so far. I say so far, like we have like three months left. We only have like a couple of weeksough debos at about ten percent, and I UK is about six percent. So I'm not that upset about that. But I do think it's gonna end up blowing up a lot of these stacks if there is a move that happens.

00:16:41
Speaker 1: I think my favorite take of yours was from two weeks ago. We should start throwing some late round dart throws on Juwan Jennings. You just did in a BBM. I mean, this is a guy in the playoffs, six targets against the Packers, two targets against the Lions, five targets in the Super Bowl. Yeah, guys go to touchdown.

00:16:58
Speaker 2: That's that's the call though, all right, Jawan Jennings, Juwan Jennings is the pick right now, the eighteenth round dart throw with Ricky piersall. You know, we don't know what he's going to be about. He's a rookie. Obviously he's gonna get a lot of love. But they like Juwan Jennings and he's a solid enough player that he could give you some some spiked weeks.

00:17:19
Speaker 1: And speaking of Pittsburgh, we've had a little bit of a quarterback controversy over the last week or so, some glowing reports coming out about Justin Fields. He's moved up eighteen spots in underdog drafts, Russell Wilson has dropped a hair down three and a half spots, and perhaps the introduction of Brandon Aiyuk makes things a little bit spicier for whomever is under center for your stillers. So what are your thoughts here? Who have you been drafting? Have you been drafting either?

00:17:46
Speaker 3: What you got here?

00:17:47
Speaker 4: Jaj?

00:17:47
Speaker 2: I am feeling a little bad that I don't have that much Justin Fields. I'm not gonna lie, you know. I wish I had more. I wish I had listened to some of the people who are pretty vocal about it. I didn't, though, because of two things. Number One, I thought it was gonna be Russell Wilson's job and it still might be. Number Two, the quarterback position, from everything that I've talked about to the guests on the show and such, the quarterback position is the one where you're not gonna see that big of differentiation even if the quarterback hits and has a good season, right, Like, yes, you'll see spiked weeks, but you can get spiked weeks from a lot of different quarterbacks in a lot of different weeks and a lot of different variety, right, So I didn't feel the need to like force the issue. I think I only have a few shares of him through BBM, you know, so maybe like a three percent or something two percent with Justin Fields. But I'm to the point now where I'm okay with getting him in round fifteen. Plus I saw him my live stream yesterday that I did he went in the thirteenth. So that's too high for Justin Fields in my opinion, because we're still in a scenario where we don't know if he's gonna start. And speaking of like the Kenneth Walker could look better in practices, Justin Fields is like the definition of that.

00:19:00
Speaker 3: Who's gonna look better in shorts, like.

00:19:02
Speaker 2: Justin Fields, a guy who I know that Russell Wilson has struggled against pressure as well, but Justin Fields struggles against pressure. You know, he's this athletic freak. I'm not surprised that he's gonna look better like like look good in practice, like that hasn't really been his issue as a pro, you know, but yeah, this is this Russell Wilson injury open things up period. Bottom line, if he weren't, if he hadn't gotten hurt, I don't think any of this would be happening right now. But he did, and I think that it also opens us up to the the realization of what would happen if Russell Wilson got hurt in season, and then it's making people realize that they should have more justin fields. So this was a good learning for me from a best ball standpoint, because like, this is one of those situations where from a redraft season long perspective, you do not need to draft justin fields in most cases, right you just wait, Okay, if he starts, you just you know, or if you get positive news, you add him off the waiver, you compete with others with him off the waiver wire, and you kind of go from there. But in bestball, you don't have that ability, and that's something that I wish I would have jumped on earlier than now. So it's a mistake for sure in hindsight, but you know, it might end up being where you know, Fields doesn't play, doesn't start, or what if he's the starter for the first twelve games of the season and then they pull it the plug with him because he's not performing that well or something, and then Russ finishes the season. So that's another kind of galbrain way of thinking about this too. But yeah, I mean, I think overall, just given anytime you see a player rise or fall in ADP, you know, and you're higher or lower on that player, and it goes in the opposite direction of where you were, it's an l right, Like that's a loss. And so I've lost a little bit with Justin Fields because I'm not as overweight as I wanted to be.

00:20:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I'll always be somewhat of a closet. Russell Wilson Truther. I mean, he tied C. J. Stroud in composite score last year EPA and CPOE. And what's interesting to me with Wilson is that historically he's always been a guy whose EPA is higher than his success rate because he's so good on the deep ball, right he throws those moon balls and has these splash plays where it's the in between that there's some struggles, but in a best ball scenario where we are looking for Spike Weeks, even if they're a little less frequent at the quarterback position. That's the type of player. Like, we're enamored by the Justin Fields upside with his running, his athletic ability, but Russ still has the ability to go out there and just throw multiple fifty yard touchdowns, just absolute moon balls to George Pickens and score some points.

00:21:34
Speaker 2: I've said from the start, I think Russell Wilson fits this Arthur Smith offense very very very well. Like I think that he makes a lot of sense as that player. But look, if Fields ends up performing well and they want to start him, we got to play that game and we got to understand that. And obviously Justin Fields is a starting quarterback in the NFL. Is a top ten fantasy asset because of what he can do with his legs.

00:21:56
Speaker 1: My two players who've been drafting a lot this week, this first one super surprising. So we have the DeAndre Hopkins injury. I believe the terminology is out sixty eight weeks knee sprain. That puts it into the beginning of the regular season. Obviously an older player rip too, are DeAndre Hopkins bags. But for some reason, this has not changed the way people are drafting Galvin Ridley.

00:22:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really strange to me. So before the injury, I was at eighteen percent Hopkins, I want to say, so he's one of my higher wide receivers, and then I was at eleven percent. I think Calvin Ridley because I'm high on the Tennessee offense, like I think that it's an undervalued offense that could that could score more points and throw more touchdowns and what's being projected. I'm surprised though, when DeAndre Hopkins goes down and this injury happens and they're saying he's questionable basically for week one. Calvin Ridley's ADP has not changed. He's still a five to six turns two spots, yeah, two spots, two spots.

00:22:53
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:22:53
Speaker 2: So he's still like a late fifth round pick, Whereas I'm okay with taking him where Terry McLaurin goes like in that in that four five turnarrea. So I've been getting him in the middle of the fifth round pretty frequently, and you know, I feel like, you know, yes, it's an early season injury for DeAndre Hopkins, but the dude is old, and I think there were a lot of reasons to believe that he was really undervalued because his peripherals were actually pretty good last year. But he's old, Like this is like, let's just be realistic. This is another is an injury related one. But this is another l for my portfolio because now he's dropped to you know, the late seventh, this is the early seventh, and that's somewhat of a problem. I did talk about this with our guest today, you know a little bit, and I think there's a really interesting take that he throws out there, so I won't get into that. But in turn, I have been drafting more Calvin Ridley because his ADP hasn't really changed.

00:23:47
Speaker 1: We'll talk about a Camp All star here to close it up. He's playing in the same Cincinnati offense we talked about with Mike Kiseki previously, and that's Andre Josevash. I always want to go Yoshi, Yeah, Mario fan in me, but no Yo talk about him.

00:24:02
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, look, I thought that he was an okay prospect, but coming from Princeton, you can never really have super super high hopes for someone like that. But you know, with Cincinnati. It's an offense that I've been investing in. I have a ton of Chase Brown, I have a decent amount of Zach Moss. I've drafted a lot of Jermaine Burton. And then obviously you know T Higgins and Jamar Chaser are very good players. But and then MIKEASICKI as the one that you've been you know, who you just threw out and who we talked about a couple of weeks ago. So with with Yosavash Yo si Vash, there is a situation where he might end up manning the slot and playing like that Tyler Boyd role. I do think that we should ground ourselves and knowing and realizing that second year players who didn't do a lot in year one usually do not pan out and become like league winning types. I do not think he's gonna be a league winning type because not only you know, is he probably not as talented as other wide receivers. But Jermaine Burton's there who I think is really really talented and my force himself onto the field eventually, and they have to deal with that. But with that being said, this is one of those instances where Camp News and Camp pipe is totally fine to let sway your opinion, right because it's a good offense. There is an opening, and he's a last round pick or like you know, he'll maybe go in the sixteenth or seventeenth round. That's fine. There's not a big difference between those kinds of picks anyway. So I've been taking them, especially in my Cincinnati stacks, but I've been taking him even without Cincinnati players, just to piss off whoever drafted Joe Burrow.

00:25:32
Speaker 1: We got to tilt them back. They tilt us every single time. We might as well get some tilted drafted.

00:25:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, anyway, I have tease this a little bit. There is an interview today with mister John Warner. It was a really fun interview. He's a Badge brow at the Badge Bros On Twitter, plays a whole lot of best ball, a lot of different formats and different sports as well. He's got a lot of knowledge to share. But we talked about training camp news, how he uses that news when he's drafting. He gave his take on the quarterback landscape. We talked a little bit of weekly winners, which is something that we haven't really gotten to that much on this show. I thought that he had some really interesting strategies there. It was just a really enjoyable episode. He brought and dropped a lot of knowledge and he gave a perspective that we really haven't heard on this series so far this summer. So without further ado, here is my chat with John Warner. This episode is sponsored by Underdog Fantasy. If you haven't played over an Underdog yet, now's the perfect time. There are tons of different best Ball leagues that you can join, and there's definitely a league out there that fits what you're looking for, and you can use all the things that I've talked about with guests on becoming a best ball bro to crush those drafts. But like I said, now's the right time to join up because if you go and you sign up and use promo code Late Round, you not only get a nice deposit offered, but you also get a free late Round draft guy. That's a twenty five dollars guide email to your inbox after signing up for absolutely free. So head to Underdog Fantasy, sign up using promo code Late Round, and make it a positive. I can confirm it's a really really fun platform to play on. Now back to the show. All right, John, So training camp is happening right now, lots of news flying around. You know, we don't have to talk about the speculation, you know with Brandon Ayuk and that trade stuff that's happening, because by the time this podcast goes out, he might have been traded. We have no idea. But you know, with training camp news, I like to ask his questions to CAUs at least recently because training camp started. You know, what is important to you and what's important enough to you to sort of like shift your draft strategy and these best ball drafts, Like what is it that you're looking for?

00:27:44
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, admittedly I'm somewhat cautious, like pretty apprehensive when it comes to training camp news. I guess the ones you're one will always be like injuries. That's kind of like the the the easy answer running with the ones in quotations is always one that, like, you know, piques my interest. Some coach speaks stuff as long as it comes like directly from staff and stuff like that. But I kind of fade the fut around like the clickbaity videos the intern made depth charts. You know, who's having a good camp in parentheses from you know, some sideline beat reporter. I kind of sift through all that stuff and take it all with a grain of salt, because I think it's really easy to overreact, like especially now given the fact that like we have we have the most immediate time loop cycle that we've ever had. Right, Like, he'll go in a room and you know, we could use Deonta Foreman from the other day as an example, and it's like he gets carted off and now all of a sudden, like throwing forward goes twenty five picks above ADP like instantly fifteen minutes later, because we're more tapped in than we've ever been and the feedback loop is so much faster than it's ever been. So, I mean, it's kind of a boring answer. I'm a big like wait for the preseason guy, but I'm also like just a big like cautionary tail guy because you don't have to go that far. Like we could go back to last year and be like Sean Tucker was getting buzzed right now, Like yeah, yeah, Rashan White had one of like the best ADP relative to running back seasons out there. Same with the Tank Biggs b in estimate, Like it's just it's so easy to get caught up.

00:29:29
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think another thing, you know, I've been seeing reports. I think this is this is just an example, right of something that I look at with with the news items and stuff, is that like, like, we have data on a lot of players, so we kind of know, you know, not not like rookies and even second year guys per se, but third year and beyond, we kind of know who these players are, right generally speaking. One of the guys that I think is most intriguing this year from like a storyline perspective that's kind of been shoved under, like just not being talked about that much, is with Kenneth Walker, where there's a ton of hype within like the running back coach talking about talking him up and the coaching staff talking him up that you know, this could be a monster year. He's been the best player in practice and stuff like that. The one piece of caution that I threw out there, and this is someone that has a lot of Zach Sharbonay bags, So you know I'm saying this, you know, take this with a grain of salt. You know, I don't think I don't think Walker is like a horrible pick or anything like that. I just really like where Sharpene goes. But regardless of all of that, the one thing that Kenneth Walker is always needed to become a true like take the next step as a fantasy football asset has been pass catching, right, Like, he's been under the eight percent target chair per game mark both seasons of his career. You go back to college and he wasn't much of a pass catcher in college. Like, that's the piece to his profile that we want the most, and none of the items that we're hearing from the coaching staff specifically says that if they were to come out and say he's absolutely going to see more receiving work, I'm not even saying like, oh, he's a three down back because that's just kind of like a term that people loosely throw around. I'm talking specifics about him catching passes out of the backfield because if that happens, yeah, he can be an RB one and fantasy football pretty easily. Right. But instead we're hearing, you know, he's a real we know that he's a really good running back, Like we know that he's really good on the on the ground. What we need to care about is what he does through the air, you know, as a receiver. So I think, you know, taking everything with that grain of salt and not really taking everything to heart is really really important. I think it is interesting, you know, like you said, how we get like these immediate reactions to this news, you know, Jerome Ford being a great example, and then a lot of times the news items aren't even relevant, like they don't even matter at the end of the day. You know, I don't know what's going to go on with Deontay Foreman because it's just obviously that's like a scarier kind of uh, you know, injury that you know, we just like we don't know what it might do to his like mental psyche or something like that. But yeah, I mean, like, like it is interesting that we get that immediate reaction. Now, as a follow up to all of that, another sort of like immediate reaction you could have is these rookies second year players really stepping up and performing well in camp. I think two examples of that right now would be Johnny Wilson out of Philadelphia, who is, like I thought he was a pretty interesting prospect because he's just like Chase Claypool type player. And then there's Jordan Whittington, who's getting a lot of love out of RAMS camp. And then you know, we know what happened last year when the rookie wide receiver got a lot of love out of RAMS camp, we get a pookin Akua season. My question to you, though, is in these instances, you can get these guys in the eighteenth round of an underdog draft, like you can get them at the tail end as afterthoughts. Are you leaning into that because the costs are so low, or are you saying that's still a roster spot and I want that roster spot to be used on someone who can most definitely produce.

00:32:49
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:32:49
Speaker 4: I mean this might contradict my cautionary tale from the previous notion, but I'm extremely fluid with back end eighty piece. Like once we get beyond like the fifteenth round or something like that, I will be scrolling and matching and moving all over based as I see fit. I think they're two really good examples because of like, you know, we've lacked a third wide receiver set for like Philadelphia for like a long time, Like we've wanted Ques Watkins to be a guy, and you know we can. I think the biggest takeaway with this is like we can debate till we're blue in the face based on like profiles, draft capitals spent and all this stuff on whether Jaylen McMillan and Luke McCaffrey and these types should be you know, drafted at one hundred percent frequency, whereas you know Whittington and you know Johnny Wilson should be drafted at a fifteen percent. Like, there's no way the mean outcome or median outcome between those two endeavors reflects the ownership right now. So why not just start scrolling to, you know, using the Whittington one as an example, Like what does he have in front of him? Even if we you know, imagine him fifth on the depth chart, which he very well could not be. It's like he has an undersized slot wide receiver who couldn't keep Justin or couldn't I was gonna say Justin Jefferson. Yeah, he definitely couldn't keep Justin Jefferson off the field, but he could keep Van Jefferson off the field. There. You know, he's got a thirty year old breakout into Marcus Robinson in front of him, who's on a one year deal. Sure, he got handed like a decent chunk of change, something like five six million or whatever it was. But like, what's to say that this kid from Texas, who, yeah, he probably couldn't get on the field with Worthy and eighty Mitchell, But like, these guys were first round caliber prospects. Like we've seen this narrative before. They play the most three wide receiver sets in football. Why not just tack them onto my stafford stacks in the eighteenth round because I think it's really important to remember that, Like there's a lot of good research that's been done, like that zeros on your roster are bad, Like yeah, duh, right, But like once you get to like week seventeen, it's like the importance of having no zeros well in the middle of you know, Une July, early August, Like we have no idea where those zeros are going to come from, right, It don't like we love to manufacture the narrative that those zeros are gonna come from you know, rounds fifteen through eighteen, But that's not the truth of the matter at all. Right, So you know, we we we think we're replacing a tangible asset in the fifteenth round by taking a swing on someone like this in the eighteenth round, where like the inverse could be true.

00:35:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, the argument about not taking zero's has always been this summer, as I've been talking to people about it and like you know, drafting you know, in more volume, it's been one that I've struggled with because I feel like, you, uh, make assumptions based on what the market is saying, and you're making an assumption that a fourteenth round pick or a fifteenth round pick is not a zero, whereas anything after that is a zero. But realistically, if you look at any like historical ADP versus points per game chart, once you get into the double even the double digit rounds, but let's just say like round twelve, round thirteen, your hit rates of getting genuine production start to really really crumble and fall right. But then on top of that, like, I feel like, if you end up and maybe I'm wrong in thinking about this this way, but I feel like if you end up with the don't take a zero mindset, you also may not be drafting players that have enough variance and volatility to their profile. Like that is that a wrong way of thinking about it?

00:36:25
Speaker 4: I mean, if it's wrong, I'm wrong too, So that's good that's like the way in which I think about it too, is like lean into the pendulum of variance, right, like we're gonna make the finals in BBM specifically like once in every seven years. Like I'm gonna take an ownership discount at a player that's part of a three wide receiver set on a potentially top five scoring offense in both their cases right over maybe shooting the moon at someone who's one hundred percent owned a little bit lower.

00:36:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I also think there's like a way to balance your own roster. You know, this is like like, for instance, there are there are more obvious examples, you know, than like a rookie that's going in the eighteenth or something like an obvious one is like Nick Chubb. Let's say where we know there's an injury, we know there's like objectively, there's volatility to what could go on with Nick Chubb and so on teams where maybe you go with a couple running backs early and you feel really stable there, then it might be a little bit easier for you to take that chance on a Chubb as opposed to if you go more zero RB and you do need more of a floor potentially and maybe again This could be the wrong way of thinking about it too, because this is much more of like a season long way of thinking. But like, you know, maybe if you do go more zero RB, you lean towards a Jerome Ford a little bit more because you know that he'll play the full seventeen games hypothetically as long as he doesn't get hurt in the season. Is that sort of the way that you think about things.

00:37:48
Speaker 4: Too, Yeah, And I lean into it, like even further. I like that you brought up the Chubb example. I've been using t J. Hawkinson, Yeah, right, kind to build like two elite tight end builds where I take like an early elite tight end and then just tack on TJ. Hawkinson and nobody else, and I don't, you know, add that third one for the safety net and I just shoot the moon on being like he's ahead of timeline. What if I just have two top five round picks on this team at the tight end position.

00:38:19
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, especially if it's a tight end with like a late buy, right or like they hypothetically could just play eleven or twelve weeks straight and get you production, and you know that tight end's not gonna That makes a lot of sense. I wish I would have been doing that. I wish I would have talked to you earlier about that one in particular, so I would have been drafting more Hawkinson, you know, in June, in July.

00:38:37
Speaker 4: I don't know. Some people have called it fake sharp, but I'm leaning into it a little bit with with Hawkinson and with Isaiah Likely in the same narrative, just in terms of, like, if things break right, and most likely that comes by an injury, for likely, but if things break right, you end up with like two week over week top ten tight ends on your roster.

00:38:57
Speaker 2: Yeah right, yeah, yeah, the likely stuff has made sense to me, And I've also kind of hedged a little bit because I love Andrews and I like where he goes and such, so it's easier for me on non Andrews teams to just get sprinkled in some lightly likely just to get some exposure there. But yeah, I mean that makes a lot of sense, especially in a position where you know that the range of scores are not very great, so it's not a big big deal if that one tight end that you do have as sort of your anchor with the Hockinson, you know, if they have a dud week. It's not the end of the world.

00:39:30
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, Like I imagine we're talk about I'm jumping the shark here, We're gonna talk about weekly winners in a minute or something there. But like you only needed ten points from your tight end to make your roster eighty nine percent of the time.

00:39:43
Speaker 2: That's crazy points. Yeah, that's crazy all right. So, speaking of all this camp stuff, has there been a player that you've moved most let's say, whether up or down it could be an either direction since camp started.

00:39:55
Speaker 4: I'll give you. I'll give you one per each position. I uh. The first one is justin fields, you know, just the calf injury with Russ, opening the potential door that he could start sooner than like we've been giving him the Trey Lance treatment, you know where it's like we've just buried him and he's back up now and nobody cares. Kind of thing, like we've kind of lost sight of the fact that the amount of slates he broke last year, I think it was three on our site, maybe it's two. Maybe I'm misrememori to that he broke. But like, in terms of Fantasy points per game over the last two years, like he's a top five player. Is there any cleaner path, Like, if we think of last year, it could have been one of the greatest outliers ever for back end picks with like Tyrone Laporta, Pooka, you know, Trey McBride, right, Tank Dell. Is there any cleaner path at the back end to an isolated week being broken by a player than justin fields simply starting Yeah? Right, Yeah, So I've been doing a lot more three quarterback builds than I had done in the past, and just tacking on fields in the eighteenth and now he's getting a little steam and getting pushed up the board. So I guess I kind of took him from by moving him up. I've taken him from like not being drafted to being drafted, and now I'm kind of comfortable chasing him. I guess to like that sixteen seventeen ish and taking him over like the Daniel Jones potentially if I don't have like a neighbors or a one Dell or a backstack that I'm trying to set up. But yeah, that's that's one at the quarterback position for sure.

00:41:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense. I mean the field stuff has been really interesting. I saw him in a best Ball I was doing a live stream yesterday. He went in the thirteenth, which is to me, the opportunity cost there is actually like not insignificant. But yeah, once you get to the final three rounds, I think that's that's when it makes sense to throw that dart.

00:41:48
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, the other ones Chase Brown at the running back position. You know, just when a receiver coach starts talking about never seeing improvements of this magnitude from a player, it stands out to me. And that was a backfield that I was trying to ape into early. And I was on the Zach Moss side of the equation for a long time. And now I'm kind of like counterbalancing my bags. And I think I'm kind of like fifteen percent one side thirteen percent the other because I just know I want those expected fantasy points and touches inside the ten yard line that Joe Mixon used to get. I don't really care who they come from. I don't. I rarely pair them together, but I do kind of like treat it as some other people are treating like Chiefs wide receiver right now, where it's like, oh, I just want one on every roster to in case that ceiling outcome. I'm kind of treating that backfield as such now and pushed up Jase Brown a little bit. The other one was JSN JSN For me, I'm like Mike McDonald can't go to the podium without talking about JSN and his route tree and how Dominie is. I think he got a raw deal last year both in just like I don't want to say archaic Shane Waldron offense, but I want to say like not as forward thinking as like vertically stretching is like Ryan Grubb was that you do. So I'm I like that notion for Jason And then I I just like the fact that he's gonna be there for a full camp this year, Like he missed all preseason, he had the risk thing, he came back maybe earlier than expected. Like let's just nape into the fact that this guy is as talented as his draft capital indicated from the previous year.

00:43:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Tyler Lockett's another year older and he took a little bit of a step backwards last year, Like it makes sense that this would be the JSN takeover. You know, is he gonna outscore dk Metcalf? I don't know. About that, but I don't. I'm not like there's some people that are like, very very very into Metcalf, which I understand because I'm bullish on the Ryan Grub offense for sure. I mean, there's gonna be a lot more verticality to it. I think they're gonna run at a better pace. And the nice part with Seattle is a huge reason that they didn't do that much offensively, or do as much as we thought that they would offensively last year. It's because the defense was horrible. They could not get off the field, and so they didn't run that any plays. And so I think with a defensive minded coach and some changes there, they could be better defensively, which could also in turn help the offense just run more plays just in general.

00:44:05
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a really good shot. I hadn't even thought of that's yeah.

00:44:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right. So this time of year we also get injuries. One of the injuries for instance that we I mean, we've heard Poukinakua recently with that knee. There's also DeAndre Hopkins with that knee, and now Hopkins, you know, his week one status is kind of up in the air. I think that they you know, I'd say, let's just say it's fifty to fifty that he plays Week one. But when we hear these things happen and we see these things happen, how do you sort of shift your mentality? You know, with a guy like Hopkins, for instance, do you do you full out fade? Because one of the very interesting things that's happened that I'm surprised at is, ever since the DeAndre Hopkins news, Calvin Ridley's ADP really hasn't changed. And I mean I shifted them up a little bit because I think that there's at least a little bit more ambiguity going on with Hopkins and there could be a higher target share all that I was. I was pretty high on Hopkins too before all of this happened. But you know, Calvin Ridley's ADP hasn't shifted. So is that something that you would then attack because it hasn't shifted, or are you going after DeAndre Hopkins because you're saying, look, yeah, he's not gonna play weeks one through one or two. Let's say, but we're gonna need him in weeks fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen most and he could easily play those weeks and we know this is DeAndre Hopkins and he's still a good football player.

00:45:21
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a loaded question because I'll answer it two ways. I'll answer it from like in a vacuum portfolio management style, and then I'll I'll answer directly what I'm doing with Hopkins. The first one for me, like from a portfolio management standpoint is like the chalk answer is gonna be like if I was buying before, I'm gonna be buying the dip now right. If I wasn't before, I'm gonna be fading. And this is what creates a news nugget like this. An injury like this creates the CLV or lack thereof in a given thing. Right for me personally, on the Hopkins one, I was buying before, and I was treating him. You know, I had him ranked adjacent to Ridley. I don't have very much Ridley. I had a lot of lot more Hopkins than I did have Ridley. I get them similar there. Now I'm trying to build out I'm not trying to buy fully, I'm trying to build out combinations that I didn't previously have with him on the other side of the board. So in my own rankings. I've moved him nine spots. I should probably move him like fifteen or something, but I want him to be up there in the range in which my combinations don't have him on the other side of the board.

00:46:30
Speaker 2: Yew.

00:46:31
Speaker 4: That's like a BBM specific mindset and conversation. If we were doing like a time box contest or something like that right now, I would just try to catch him as fall as he could possibly fall, as far as he could possibly fall. Well yeah, yeah, I mean I'm a little worried and just because of the age associated with him, But I mean we had our question marks about that offense in general, so I'm not really trying to be like time to ape Calvin Ridley. Now, I'm kind of like confirming my priors that okay, like just tape your expectations and maybe I'll mix in a little Ridley here. But I think in a vacuum, it's like it's a risk tolerance exercise, as is like exploitative versus balanced exposures. Is you know, there's no right or wrong answer here, it's just the Pensulm invariance in which you want to lot capital toward right.

00:47:18
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense like I was still getting some Ridley, and so I'm okay with still And I'm saying this out loud because again, this whole entire podcast series is me becoming a best ball bro and trying to make sure that my process is right. And maybe others would have, you know, the same thought, but with Ridley, Like let's say I was overweight on Ridley. I think I was at like ten or eleven percent with Ridley before all this happened, but I was at like nineteen percent with DeAndre Hopkins, you know, before this happened. I really like the point though, because I think that the mindset automatically goes to, oh, I have enough Hopkins. You know, he's gonna fall around in ADP. I don't need to like aggressively attack it. But I do think that it does make sense from just a game theory perspective to say, okay, but other people are now benefiting from the falling Hopkins that you're then not gonna benefit from even though you got a lot of him. And then I also like the the nice party. Maybe this is just because the market is doing what you're saying and that they want to get these different combinations. But the nice part with Hopkins in particular is that he was a tail end of a round pick, right, because he was a six to seven turn guy. Now he's more of like a seven to eight turn guy. So your team composition is almost entirely different from one to the other, so you can get really unique combinations. So I think that's another reason why what you're saying makes makes a ton of sense. But is that like, like, should I be leaning into Hopkins then even more you think just from a game theory perspective, From a game.

00:48:39
Speaker 4: Theory perspective, yes, from a risk tolerance perspective, that's up to you. Yeah, right, So me personally, yeah, I'm gonna lean in on the other side of the board associated with it, like I was at fourteen percent before, because like, there's this weird thing about like CLV. Right, it's both like a fictitious anomally that might not matter at all when you finally play out the slate, But then there's also this other avenue to it where if you don't absorb it when you thought something was good beforehand, you've put yourself at a great disadvantage, right because now a second, essentially all your Hopkins pairings are in quotations worse, right.

00:49:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah, So along those lines though, like like let me ask you about like Rashi Rice. Right, so Rice was like an eighth rounder or seventh throat whatever, and now he goes in the fifth round pretty consistently, but you could argue that you know, a non suspended Rice. You know, before the NFL Draft he was a second round pick. I think maybe because they drafted worthy, he'd be like a third rounder. But a lot of the second round is just so up in the air that you could easily see if if they came out and said, Rashi Rice will not be suspended this year, Like I could see a scenario where his ADP's in the second round. Right in those scenarios, like, let's say that you didn't get a ton of Rice. I was kind of at market, so this doesn't really apply to me. But let's say that you didn't get a ton of Rice when he was like an eighth round pick. Now he's a fifth round pick. Does that mean that you would still be fading Rice because you faded him when the price was lower and other people were taking advantage of that.

00:50:08
Speaker 4: Not always, it's a case by case basis. If I still think the player is undervalued out of fifth round value. Now that we have like definitive information, then I'll I'll go in on it right like, because I do tend to agree with you that we would be having like the Rice versus DK Metcalf debate if we knew the suspension was off the table, yes, right now, right, So at that with that mindset, I think he's still undervalued, and I would do stuff like pair. You know, maybe I wouldn't catch the eighth round value of him, but I would do it in like some other combination of like just doing like him plus Mahomes at like four or five like on or sorry at three four on the other side of the board or something like that, where it's like it's a little galbrain and it might be cutting like value in quotations, but like, at least my version of that team is going to be like better or not better, it's gonna be different.

00:51:03
Speaker 2: Right right now that that makes that makes a ton of sense. You talked about the weekly Winners format briefly. That's one that I really haven't touched on on this show. So my question to you is, you know, how are you approaching that format? What's the most important thing or things that people should think about, you know, as they're drafting within that format.

00:51:24
Speaker 4: Okay, from a you know, bird's eye view, like just rattling off some points. I think there's definitely a premium at the at the onesiast positions. I think there's a premium on upper echelon quarterback. I think you can play ones at the onesiast positions. I think I'm not sure it's optimal, but I think one at the quarterback position is a very viable strategy, especially if it's one tether two rushing floor like you've you've talked about rushing a lot on your show. That pays huge dividends in like just maintaining weekly score for some of the premium quarterbacks that you can still compete even if you don't hit the nuts like you can. You can still have a winning week with a given lineup if you have that you know, baseline score and you don't have to spend like three pieces of capital at the position. I think there was I think the pendulum swung a little too far last year, and maybe I was part of it, and maybe I was wrong in some of my stuff. I was doing some like overstacking and like doing like, you know, three three pieces tethered, so as long as like Baltimore's offense went off, I encapsulated that or something. I think that was probably wrong. I think some of the other things that we may or may not have gotten wrong but make us feel smart are like stacking all the bye weeks together so that we have like live rosters for all the other weeks. I think you might just be aping into bad ownership at that point, and it's maybe not as big a deal. I think stacking like divisional opponents so that your like correlation patterns always have like a bringback or something. I don't think that matters as much as it once did or we thought it did. I think pushing up running back because I think you should always want to aim to separate at quarterback with premium scoring and and win the flex via running back. So I think I think you know something of the more robust variety. But for me personally this year, I've really gone to back dating my drafts, getting them all in at the latest window, and then targeting the earliest weeks when we have the most known information.

00:53:26
Speaker 2: Socha.

00:53:27
Speaker 4: Yeah, So like taking like less immediate zeros and then being hyper focused as like a week one bro, or like a week one through three bro, when we know like.

00:53:36
Speaker 2: The most Yeah, so in that scenario, then are you like fading Jonathan Brooks in those formats and then you're just attacking getting like Chuba Hubbard or something like that, And and that just so that you get those that early early season production.

00:53:49
Speaker 4: One hundred, especially if I like the game environment, or I like the implied team total, or or if I like you know, the the Yeah, there's like a couple like front end teams that all kind of like pair well together that all have like high implied team totals as well, like targeting like Miami and Detroit and stuff like this in the front end just makes like so much sense.

00:54:14
Speaker 2: And you're and you're doing that because you have the most information for that period of time and you know there's payouts weekly that's what weekly winter is all about. But you're doing that because you have the most information as possible without injuries happening right in your in your lineups not just blowing up. Because if you're already one in week three or week four or something, then you're good to go. Like what who cares about week thirteen?

00:54:36
Speaker 4: Exactly?

00:54:38
Speaker 2: That makes a lot of sense. I think that's a definite piece of advice that that folks probably haven't really thought about that much.

00:54:45
Speaker 4: There's one other contrarian one that that I really like that you kind of alluded to with like the tube Hubbard notion and that sort of thing. I like doing like a full zero r B build where I go premium quarterback, maybe one or two premium tight end at the at the onesies, and then I do like a five wide receiver start and then I just go full zero RB, so kind of like counter indicative to the reverse or to the robust RB one I talked about earlier. But I try and pinpoint like front of week game environments and like contingent upside because I think of like where does good chop come from on like redacted site, Like it comes from four k running backs?

00:55:26
Speaker 2: Right?

00:55:26
Speaker 4: Where is the most insane volatility? Well, I think of like you know Week seventeen Week eighteen slates that we played last year where it's like we're debating Ronnie Rivers in Jordan Mason as top ten top twelve options. Right, if I can find something like that at the front end with like a Miles Sanders as like RB seventy five or something like that. I want to eight isolated scenarios like that, in specifically zero RB builds.

00:55:54
Speaker 2: Would you be more inclined to maybe take a chance on a running back in those scenarios or are you still just kind of getting like the front end, you know, like a Miles Sanders or a troopahabber, Like the front end boring veterans.

00:56:07
Speaker 4: Probably lean like sixty forty boring vets, seventy thirty boring vets, you know, target the foreman, target the Sanders, like that sort of thing. Yeah, there's definitely a place for like contingent, shoot the moon upside. But I think those that those pair better with like three robusts at the start of draft and then contingent at the backside of that.

00:56:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, makes it makes a ton of sense. The quarterback landscape seems pretty efficient this year. I like asking this question to people because I look at ADP and I'm like, oh, yeah, this makes sense. Oh yeah, this makes sense. But how have you been attacking quarterback this season?

00:56:47
Speaker 4: I've been a premium quarterback bro thus far. I've been doing a lot of like it's kind of boring. I've been doing a lot of three wide receiver starts then doing like tight end with the you know, doing andrews Lamar or McBride and then catching Kyler on the way back, or you know, doing a Mahomes plus insert wide receiver or Kelsey there. That's kind of been my like standard build. That being said, I've done a lot more three quarterback builds than I've ever done before because I've kind of thought through the value of you know, winning week sixteen and some of the stuff Leoni talks about of like if we aim to optimize for a week win week sixteen, and then what gets us through there is matching basically what got everybody else through there. So what how do we differentiate Now, Well, the easiest way to do it is with a third quarterback skinny stack. So that's just something that I've been thinking through. With the inevitable if we ever get there, maybe at least we have another out with a stack. So that's something I've been doing. Maybe it's reactionary to how many injuries they were at the quarterback position last year and how many guys got like meaningful snaps last year, but yeah, that's kind of been my macro is is premium quarterback with a with a skinny stack at the front end, and then you know, packing on a third quarterback late. I'm entirely fine with.

00:58:10
Speaker 2: So are you getting a third quarterback with an elite quarterback or is it mostly a three quarterback with like a Trevor Lawrence or even like a Jordan Love let's say as your QB one.

00:58:20
Speaker 4: I mean with Jordan Love in particular, I'll take three quarterbacks. Yeah, with you know, I've done like a handful of like mahomes early and then like Bonix fields to c Yeah yeah, or like you know, something like that I'll do. I'm trying to stay clear of like pairing QB four with QB ten with QB twenty five.

00:58:42
Speaker 2: Ryeah, Like it just that's just too much at a lot of capital, a lot of capital at quarterback. Yeah. What's something that you feel that best ball drafters get wrong in the way that they think about this stuff?

00:58:55
Speaker 4: This one, for me stems from the Daily Streets because we we play two hundred and fifty slates a year, maybe something like that. On our show, we play every single sport. We see everything start to finish, and we see basically an isolated BBM slate take place every single day, right in terms of like the arc of things take place. So I feel like that's a long winded way of saying like chasing historical data is just like in a vacuum bad because you know we're only on the fifth slate ever of BBM, right, so once you once you see like how a given day plays out, Like if we just use uh, we could use a football week for example, in terms of like our contest, right, the contest drops on underdog, there's this early adp CLV window, everyone tweets out all these amazing combinations that won't be available later in the week, what we call the GMGM, and then all of a sudden, in the middle of the week, you get a big news dump, a shift guy missus practice now as someone as a queue tag, it shifts the value use of the combinations which can be obtained. Then there's a lead inactive or a scratch, and you know there's a huge value shift of maybe a running back now is going to get twenty touches or now, all of a sudden, someone who was projected as wide receiver thirty should be it should have been drafted every single time all week. And then we watch four to eight hours of football and we see it play out, and then we see that a whole bunch of one offs with no correlation and no bringback and no nothing win the slate. Yeah, and it's like, well, I'm not going to build like that next week, so hat tip, let's move on, doesn't matter. There's definitely some principles associated with BBM that I feel that way with right now, where it's just kind of like we've been a little spoiled. Not that like the people that have won aren't deserving of winning. The phenomenal players and they're really tapped in in the industry, but we're a little spoiled that those people have won because now we just think we have all the answers, right, It's like that makes sense. Yeah, guy from ETR wins, you know, guy from leg Up wins. It all makes sense. All the answers are this is the playbook, right, and it's like, well, let's pump the brakes. We're still only on the fifth iteration. They figured it out before everybody else did. Maybe they were correct, and everybody has been correct up until this point, but maybe we haven't reached like optimal yet. Maybe Yeah, you know, maybe as field size grows, as payout structure changes, maybe the optimal for BBM in the future is one for twelve three. I don't even know if that adds up, Like you know what I mean, Like, we just don't know yet. So I think maybe, like a reliancy, I think we can learn a lot, and there's been some fantastic research and work done, and I will never dis credit any of that. I agree with a lot of it. I just think maybe treating it as like one fact right now because it worked in the past is a little premature. I think we need to we need to see these things play out a couple times over.

01:01:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, just don't be as robotic, like, don't be you know, automatically follow this set of rules when we know that not only do we not have a ton of information just based on the amount of slates we've had with with Best Ball Mania, but also year to year things change within the fantasy landscape in terms of like how well certain positions perform, and then we we I talk about this all the time from a season long perspective, we always see this boomerang happen where you know, last year tight ends, we were pretty rough at top, at the top when they were really good late and then what happens this year tight ends are being drafted a little bit later at the top, and then that that creates more of to me, like that you're buying opportunity, Like it's more about that and jumping on those those advantageous trends as opposed to only looking at like, oh, this has worked over the last handful of years, so therefore it's going to work. I think it's just consuming all that information and like anything else, don't consume it too much and take it too far.

01:02:48
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, we talk about how it's a tool in our tool our tool will I'm gonna say basket, tool basket.

01:02:54
Speaker 2: Now I'm a tool basket.

01:02:57
Speaker 4: I'm clearly not a blue collar bro. But like you know, like in our tool kit, Like it's just it's just a piece of the pubblic puzzle. And none of this is absolute yet, right, Like each of these slates is so dynamic and has somebody moving unquantifiable pieces and variants late and stuff, because like a lot can happen in a five six seven month window between draft and games being played and whatnot.

01:03:21
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I got one more question for you, how tied are you to average draft position while you're drafting.

01:03:28
Speaker 4: I means, as the mug suggests, you know, we're out here. We are out here scrolling. We are we are scrolling the f down all the time. I think, I like to I like to sum up ADP. It gets more efficient and the closest to accurate the later we are in the draft window. Right, and that means earlier in the draft window, I want to be less tethered to it, and later in the draft window I want to be or tethered to it. That being said, when piecing together the ownership puzzle at the back end of draft boards, I want to be less tethered to it late. So I think, I think the things that we can all agree on with ADP is it matters most at the front end of draft boards, and it matters the least at the at the back end. And I think it matters the most the closer we are to the end of draft window, and it matters the least at the front end of draft window. So I am I think about it through the lens of when I'm drafting and what I'm trying to accomplish by drafting. I don't just scroll for the sake of scrolling. And I don't think like some of the uniqueness combinations that we have at the front end of conversations we have about the front end of board uniqueness combos are like Loki overstated. But yes, I I think that's kind of like in a vacuum how I think about ADP and I am. I love to scroll. I love to scroll at the back end and find that little like unique piece that that differentiates.

01:05:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've noticed too, And I've talked about this on becoming a Best Ball bro like in the intros and stuff, how I've kind of shied away from doing slows at least with Best ball Mania, and I do fast because my brain is just so committed to that draft as I'm you know, doing it quicker, which is kind of counterintuitive to some people, but to me, it's like if you if you have a list like I've maxed puppies and it's just hell right, Like You're I'm waking up in the morning, I got my kids jumping on me, ready to eat breakfast, and I'm like trying to get through forty five drafts that I'm on the clocket, right and so, and when you do that you just become a little bit more suboptimal and you're not really looking enough beyond a few spots of where your ADP is. Whereas I feel like when you're doing fast drafts, you know, and you get around seventeen eighteen, you have a good feel for where your team is at and you know where you need to get those ownership shifts and different like differences, Like like in yesterday's live stream, I felt, really there are some drafts you do where you're like through seventeen rounds and you're like, I could literally pick anyone and it doesn't like I feel so good about where the build is that I don't need a force correlation. I could go either running back or wide receiver here, you know, there's not really an obvious direction to go in, and I'm just like I just picked Royce Freeman as an eighteenth round pick just to say, like, all right, let's see what happens in Dallas. We've seen crazier things go on than Royce Freeman have a good week sixteen or week seventeen, right, And so like that's been my biggest shift. I do think that like going from more slows to more fast has been really really helpful with that.

01:06:41
Speaker 4: Yeah. Another one that and another point to the slow verse fast dynamic is you pay win more attention to what people are doing in your room in the fast ones.

01:06:49
Speaker 2: Yeah.

01:06:49
Speaker 4: So if I fire up a slow and I look at a lobby like, I'm never gonna go back into the lobby. I'm concentrated on my team, my isolated pick. I don't look back and see like, wow, the one holes all over the place and doing crazy stuff and the two hole is auto drafting or whatever. Whereas if I'm in that room, I will know these factors, and I will take some gambles and pushing a guy around the corner because I know someone won't snap him at ADP because he's getting creative, or I'll pay attention to the builds going on in my room. So I do feel very similar with you in terms of like I do like my teams out of fast drafts more so than the ones out of my slow drafts. Also because when I have the rankings in for the slow drafts, I do just tend to, oh, I did the work already, exact me click up here right. Yeah, So yeah, I think it's very stute point there.

01:07:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's good. That's good that I'm thinking more and more like a best ball bro John. This was awesome. People are gonna really dig it. Let everyone know what you're doing, where they can find you and all that good stuff.

01:07:47
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean you can follow me on the X there at roto Underscore Run and then the Badge Bros. The Badge Bros Is we do Underdog Daily Show. So we're directly affiliated with Underdog and we put out a show every single day. Some of them are behind a paywall only five bucks a month. That would like to remind everybody that it's only less than one Battle Royale entry to join up there. But yeah, we stream every single day on YouTube Monday to Friday two pm Eastern and right now we're obviously doing a ton of basketball stuff, but we do full breakdowns of the MLB slates. We do some hoop stuff. We got some Double Dribble up there. We got some best Puck stuff. I mean, we dabble into anything. If it's on the platform Underdog, we'll be dabbling.

01:08:29
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, you guys are crushing it. You can find me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Make sure you're taking advantage of the Underdog promo for the free late round draft guide. You can find that over on lateround dot com, but otherwise everyone, As always, thanks for tuning in.