Becoming a Best Ball Bro: How Important Is Roster Construction?

00:00:00
Speaker 1: You know, it's so cool seeing hundreds of thousands of people go to the draft, everybody celebrating last week with the schedule release, JJ, you've talked about how you've transitioned into being a professional and you're less of a Steelers fan. Now, when's the last time something got you amped about the Pittsburgh Steelers.

00:00:18
Speaker 2: I mean probably like twenty fifteen ish timeframe.

00:00:22
Speaker 3: It's been a while.

00:00:23
Speaker 2: It's been a while since I really got excited about something Steelers reallyated.

00:00:28
Speaker 3: What about you with the Jets?

00:00:30
Speaker 1: Oh god, I've been dead inside for a decade.

00:00:33
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.

00:00:41
Speaker 3: More than I have, and I want to learn from them.

00:00:44
Speaker 2: 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 I officially become a Best ball bro. Welcome into episode number two of Becoming a Best ball Bro. I'm jj Zacharieson as always, joined as always, as if we've done this a million times in as always, joined by my co host Rich Ryan Rich.

00:01:24
Speaker 1: What's going on, buddy, Nothing much, man, I didn't get a chance. I meant to wear my Knick hoodie last week to show some love to the New York Knickerbockers. But I am such a true fan that even though they went out in such devastating fashion, like all New York teams too, at least the ones that I root for had to rock the orange of blue here on the show.

00:01:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, what is this?

00:01:43
Speaker 2: You're you're you're rocking it after they've I mean, look, it does show you're a true fan.

00:01:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you're you're a true fan. That's fair.

00:01:50
Speaker 2: I I last week for the last like week or two, because you know, I grew up a Penguins fan, a very very big Pittsburgh Penguins fan. But I live in Charlotte and I live in the Carolinas, and you know, the Penguins have not been that great over the last couple of years, and they traded Jake Genseil. No one can like literally two percent of the Yeah, no one, no one, No one's ever heard of a Gensel before they traded Jake Gensel to the Hurricanes. The Hurricanes are the Carolina team was rooting for the Canes a little bit. Had been wearing a Hartford Whaler's hat that I have, you know, as support. It's it's always nice when you have like a team that relocated because you can wear the old stuff and not necessary like you're telling people, maybe I'm hardcore because I'm so hardcore that I'm wearing, you know, the old team's logo and such, or I don't love that team as much as you do because I'm not wearing their colors and I'm not wearing their logo, but I'll wear the old one. I always love the retro stuff. I wear as much retro stuff as I possibly can.

00:02:47
Speaker 1: I mean, nineties is back, you see it now with the kids. They shouldn't wear baggy jeans again. All the stuff that was cool when we were young is cycling back right now for sure.

00:02:56
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:02:56
Speaker 2: Well, the thing that really annoyed me, I'm not gonna lie, is my daughter plays t ball a t ball coach, and we got assigned the Giants for the second straight year, which the Giants as a team is just kind of boring, you know, like orange and black. The logo is not really that interesting. And this year, in this season, we faced the they had the Expos.

00:03:18
Speaker 3: Amazing.

00:03:18
Speaker 1: You were before you even stepped on the field, you were wrecked.

00:03:22
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, oh yeah, we got destroyed. You know.

00:03:24
Speaker 2: I mean, obviously they're not keeping scoring t ball, but we got destroyed by the Expos.

00:03:29
Speaker 3: Make no mistake.

00:03:29
Speaker 2: I mean they they annihilated us simply because they were the Expos. But I also grew up a Moyes a Salou fan.

00:03:35
Speaker 3: I know it's very random.

00:03:36
Speaker 2: That's another very random reference to an athlete, but Moyses a Lou he peed on his hands for those of you who don't know Moyses Salou, but.

00:03:44
Speaker 3: He played for the Expos for a while.

00:03:45
Speaker 2: Would have been great to, like, I like to buy a shirt or a hat or something of that team. And we already had Giants stuff because we were the Giants the previous season, and I was excited.

00:03:57
Speaker 3: If I had the Expos, I'd be rocking an Expos hat.

00:03:59
Speaker 2: Right now in the show instead of this Penguins hat that I'm wearing. You know what is coming back is here?

00:04:06
Speaker 1: Pro seg Yeah, that was.

00:04:07
Speaker 3: A really really bad segue. Let's talk about Best Ball a little bit. Have you been doing any Bestball drafts?

00:04:14
Speaker 1: You know what? The schedule coming out last week got me looking at Week sixteen, Week seventeen matchups, and I'm starting to itch a little bit. I want to let the dust set a little bit. Honestly, I want to do more shows because I want to mine your brain for more information. Most of more firing up some drafts, and I obviously can't wait to hear what Pat says and the rest of your guests. So I'm very close to firing a bunch of drafts.

00:04:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, look, you're picking my brain, and I'm gonna be picking other people's brains. You're indirectly picking those people's brains as well, because look, you guys are gonna hear an interview with Pat Krane here in a second. And it was awesome to sit back and talk to him, winner of Best Ball Mania three, and just see how he's attacking things right now. There was some overlap with how I'm doing things, which made me feel good. You know that I'm at least approaching this in a logical way, and some of the drafts that I'm doing right now, but he had some really interesting insights that I just didn't necessarily, you know, totally think about as I'm doing all of these drafts that I'm doing right now on my adventure of becoming a best ball bro.

00:05:16
Speaker 1: And you say all of your drafts. One of my main questions coming into this week was going to be your preference between fast drafts and slow drafts. And in your discord, the Late Round Discord, which you could become a member of by becoming a member, I can say I can chill you because I am a paid member and I love the discord. Patreon head over Late Round Fantasy. You told us you are in how many at that time, at least how many slow drafts JJ.

00:05:43
Speaker 3: I think at that time.

00:05:43
Speaker 2: I counted one morning because it was just it was Saturday morning, hanging out with the family, and I got like, you know, I looked and I was like, oh, there's a notification on my underdog app and I opened it and I was like, I wonder how many I'm in right now? At that point, I was in sixty six slow drafts going on. So to give you an idea, I'm only I think I've only entered, haven't finished yet. Eight best ball manias, so I'm not nearly Like I didn't know how many I was going to enter in May. I wanted it to be probably a lower number. I think, you know, like mid to late July, I'll start to really really pick things up, and then June, you know, I'll hopefully draft like thirty ish. Maybe in June thirty to forty ish sounds about right. But yeah, I mean I am in the middle of eight of them right now, or have finished a handful, and I'm doing some slows, but most of it was maxing out the Chihuahua, which was that four dollars entry twenty five max contest. So I maxed that out and then I got as many puppies in as I could. I think probably around fifty puppies. I mean that thing closed up quick man, I mean it filled fast, so I wasn't able to. I ideally would have max entered it, but it just filled so quickly that I wasn't able to.

00:06:57
Speaker 1: I need to be invited to the room where they come up with all these dog.

00:07:02
Speaker 3: Dog names for these tournaments for real.

00:07:07
Speaker 2: I mean you just take any breed and then yeah, depending on the size, that's that's what the entry feel is.

00:07:13
Speaker 1: I mean Mastiff for the high Roller Chef's kiss. Yeah, well done.

00:07:16
Speaker 3: It is very it's very creative.

00:07:18
Speaker 1: So you're doing all these drafts, we need a weekly update. What kind of stacks did? Did the schedule make you go crazy for Week seventeen matchups? What's what's the landscape been like for JJ for the last week?

00:07:29
Speaker 3: It did, I'd say that it did.

00:07:31
Speaker 2: I'm trying my best and I talked to Karine about this a little bit, which you guys will hear. I'm doing my best to get some Week seventeen game stacks. I think that ADP will formulate and sort of mold towards those game stacks a little bit more as the summer goes on, you know, where naturally people are reaching or not reaching for certain players in order to to sort of get those stacks. But yeah, I'm definitely I'm definitely going after those stacks. And you know, I think that what we talked about last week with the tilting of not getting Kirk Cousins on that one team where I had Drake London and Kyle Pitts, something that Karine talked about that I'm going to be focusing on a lot is sort of you know, understanding that, Okay, I might not have gotten Matt quarterback for that stack, but I still have these pieces that I can game stack around. So you know, obviously in that instance, I'm waiting for Kirk Cousins, Jayden Daniels, who they get Week seventeen, who Atlanta gets Week seventeen, already sort off the board, right, So I couldn't really benefit from that. But even having you know, a Washington Atlanta game stack to some degree, you know, I still have London and Pits. I think I still had like a McLaurin or a Dotson or something like that. You know, still having that is still going to be helpful from a correlation standpoint for my teams. Yeah.

00:08:51
Speaker 1: No, that's a great point where you might be in a draft and you had this strategy in mind and all of a sudden, I mean, we see this even in any draft we do redraft where you have a plan and sometimes your plan gets dashed and you have to pivot. And that's a great example of what you can do. Maybe you can't fill out the team stack that you're looking for, but you could try to pivot to a Week sixteen or Week seventeen stack. I'm presuming one of the more popular ones will be that Lions and Niners that's got the highest projected total right now forty nine and a half. Your boy Kyler and the Arizona Cardinals next traveling to Los Angeles out here at so far to take on the Rams that has a total forty eight and a half. And then you've got a bunch in the middle there the one that I brought up in the discord, and I got my eye on that Green Bay Minnesota stack game stack in that game total forty five and a half. It's gonna be playing indoors. There's some ambiguity right now when it comes to the whole Vikings offense, because is it Darnold, is it McCarthy? When do they go to McCarthy? But at that time of the season, I'm gonna trust that Koc has gotten things going and whoever's a quarterback has has so many good weapons that it'll be a good environment for scoring there. So that's one I'm gonna keep my eyes on.

00:10:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree with you. I've gotten a lot of Green Bay.

00:10:04
Speaker 2: That's one of the stacks that I've attacked over the last week or so part of it is, you know, they don't have a bad final three game schedule for the for the playoffs, but also it's just an easy team to stack, like you can realistically if you don't get Jayden Reid, which I don't think Jayden Reid is like that scream It isn't like a screaming value or anything.

00:10:23
Speaker 3: I just think that.

00:10:24
Speaker 2: Where Reid goes in drafts just kind of a dead area, like it's it's an area where there's not that much difference between what you're gonna get there early in the round and if one of the tight if all the tight ends are gone, versus sort of like what you'll get in late sixth and stuff. So I think that he's properly priced. He's not really that glaring of a value. But even if you miss Jayden Reid, you can then if you have a pretty uncorrelated team through like the first seven rounds, you can get Christian Watson Jordan Love very quickly those following two rounds, and then even if you don't get Christian Watson, you can go with a naked Love at first that sounded sexual in a way.

00:11:02
Speaker 3: You can go with.

00:11:04
Speaker 2: Jordan Love alone and then go after you know a Romeo Dobbs, Dontavian Wick's, Luke Musgrave and you get three pretty legit pieces. And then the other piece of that Marshawn Lloyd right where Josh Jacobs is going in. You know, we talked about Jacobs a little bit before, but Josh Jacob's going at that like three four turn and you know what if something happens to Jacobs, what if Marshon Lloyd who I think Marshon Lloyd's gonna play a more significant role than some are projecting. Like I've seen a lot of takes of Jacob's just being a bellcown that offense. I think that he has a chance, for sure, it's in his range of outcomes. But I think Lloyd can be a piece of that offense, especially when you're looking at the tail end of the season where he'll get a little bit more reps. They're gonna feel a little bit more, feel a little bit better about them. And Green May is a team that could be looking towards the playoffs and they might not want to just be running Josh Jacobs into the ground either towards the end of the year. So I think that there are so many pieces with Green Bay that you can get late that even if you don't get Christian Watson and Jayden Reid, you can hypothetically annoy the teams who did get Jayden Reid and Christian Watson.

00:12:11
Speaker 3: Just get Jordan Love.

00:12:12
Speaker 1: You made this point last week, and a player you brought up don Tavian Wicks. I've seen his name come up a little bit. I saw Ian Hardt's tweeting about him as well. But because I'm only a member of the Late Round multiverse, I'm gonna give you all the credit. And I was here on the show. The third biggest mover in ADP from last week is Dantavian Wicks. So, JJ, you're setting waves out there, You're speaking into the ether and the ether is responding.

00:12:39
Speaker 2: Or I'm just doing way too many slow drafts and I'm taking him, you know, fifteen picks ahead of ADP.

00:12:44
Speaker 3: That's the reason why his ADP is rising.

00:12:46
Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, Wis is someone that I think is one of the best values right now, if not the best value. I've seen other analysts talking about him too, So I think it's just this combination of a lot of people are talking melt Wicks being of value. You know, I think read, like I said, should be closer in ADP to some of these other guys. It's just that there's just this like dead area in the middle rounds where you can kind of understand why he's being drafted where he's being drafted. Speaking of that dead area, I've kind of gravitated towards Tennessee. Rich Tennessee is a team that I didn't expect to really be on. But when you're drafting these and if you get a tight end early. Let's say, let's say you get a tight end in round four or five, right, you get like a Trey McBride or something like that, you feel a little bit behind immediately, especially like I have teams where I'm getting Lamar than Mark Andrews and I'm getting that raven stack, And in those cases, you really need to pound wide receiver or else you're going to be screwed a wide receiver, you know, as the draft goes on, and so in those cases, you're looking in round six and into round seven and you see the Tennessee wide receivers, you know, Hopkins goes even later than that. But I think the gap between Ridley and Hopkins should be a little bit smaller than it is, and you're like, Okay, don't I don't mind this, especially if you get Christian Kirkin round five and you can stack that Tennessee Jacksonville game pretty easily. And the reason I like Tennessee, I mean there's a lot of reasons, like they Number one, they're not that expensive. Number Two, I don't mind their schedule, and I don't mind that game against Jacksonville at all. I mean that's just a game that I don't think anyone would be shocked if it's shot out, you know, in week seventeen. And then also you get a new head coach, a new offensive minded head coach that's going to throw the ball more, almost definitely going to throw the ball more. Will Levis is a down the field thrower. We saw that last year's He's a d GAFT type quarterback. I mean, he is someone who will be very, very aggressive. And now you've put weapons around him. They're geriatric weapons with Calvin Ridley, DeAndre Hopkins and now Tyler Boyd. But you put these weapons around him and you get these veteran wide receivers. I don't think it's like that crazy to think that Levis would be someone that ends up really out playing and outperforming as ADP this year. I think that someone who's going to be a true league winner at quarterback that late more than likely is going to need rushing upside and more mobility than what Levis is probably gonna bring. But I think Levis could be a low end QB one this year if things sort of break his way and touchdown rate looks good, and then on top of that you can get their running back pieces fairly late. I like, I still look, I wrote about this in my newsletter, and I've seen a lot of people like be brilliant on Tony Pollard this year. I still think that Taj Spears is the much much better value compared to Tony Pollard right now in drafts, and you know he goes a couple rounds later. But the main reason why just goes back to a lot of the research that I've done with season long formats, which I think is applicable here where we once and I did a podcast literally earlier, you know that dropped yesterday on you know, the prospect scores and what these prospect scores mean for running backs and redraft and one of the big glaring things that not only my previous research showed, but what this research showed is that running backs who are in their first or second year in the league are generally massive values, regardless of what that prospect score looks like. With rookie running backs, you're generally only going to see higher prospect scorers to begin with, because and you know, the top forty eight is what I looked at at the running back position, because no one's drafting like you know, day three running backs as like RB threes or RB four's in redraft. But when you're looking at year two players, they're great bets across the board. And you also want to look at guys who are pass catchers. Taj Spears had a fourteen to fifteen percent target share last year. I mean he was used in that role as a pass catcher. I know there's a new coaching staff, but we at least saw that from him. And then the other piece to this number one, it's an ambiguous backfield.

00:16:40
Speaker 3: Which we always should be targeting.

00:16:41
Speaker 1: But the other piece of this three round discount on so yeah, right, right right.

00:16:46
Speaker 2: The other piece of this, though, is that a lot of my research has shown that running backs in the middle rounds so let's just call them RB threes, RB four's, maybe even the RB two range. Those players who are past their fifth year in the NFL have pretty bad hit rates, and Tony Pollard is that player. Now, do I think Pollard would be the guy of the two who would hypothetically be the workhorse in that backfield.

00:17:09
Speaker 3: Sure, but I think.

00:17:10
Speaker 2: Spears in a stack right in a in a in a game environment where they're throwing the ball a lot where they might be trailing a little bit, or even if they're in the leade, what have you. I think Spears is just the more attractive option in a stacking environment than Pollard would because I think Pollard, you know, is just is more of the Pollard to me, is the less dynamic of the two. He's the less I think he'll be less effective of the two. And so I'm gonna go with the player who has a pretty decent year two score in my model. You know, you get the discount. Like I said, the pass catching chops are there. Spears was decent last year, and it's weird to me that at the beginning of the off season in Dynasty Circles everyone loved Taj Spears like Taj Spears was like an RB one in in dynasty rankings, like low end RB one, high end RB two. Before free agency he started, and then Tony Pollard was the thing that derailed. I thought everyone hated Tony Pollard.

00:18:04
Speaker 3: What happened to that?

00:18:05
Speaker 1: Well, especially after last year. I was drafted so high and it's crazy that to think that thirteen hundred yards is a disappointment, but with so much capital being invested in him and his lack of touchdown production, obviously, Yeah, he was a massive disappointment last year.

00:18:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Tennessee is a team that I've been going after, and then I like Jacksonville too. Jacksonville's kind of got that Green Bay to them. It's like a discounted Green Bay in a way where a lot of their players are you know, I shouldn't say discount. I'm thinking more from like a Trevor Lawrence perspective, being cheaper than Jordan Love. But you know, you can get in in that five to seven range round range you can very easily get you know, you get a Christian Kirk and then you can get Brian Thomas, you can get Evan Ingram, you can get Gabe Davis late maybe you spent a fourth in Travis Etn fell to a good spot ADP wise, and then you get Trevor Lawrence there too, and you can easily run it back then with some of these Titans players, like a like a Hopkins or one of those running backs.

00:19:01
Speaker 3: So I don't mind Jacksonville either.

00:19:02
Speaker 2: And then the last team that I'll shout out as a team that I'm stacking right now is Carolina. And everyone probably either wrecked their car or are profusely vomiting right now, So I like. I like Carolina. Again, there's they're cheap players that if you miss out on a stack, it's very easy. You know, obviously Deontay Johnson goes where he goes, So if you didn't get Deontay, that's still fine. So you can get Xavier Lagette. Adam Thielen goes late. I'm not like super into getting theling, but you can get Laget and then and then you know, obviously Bryce Young going like you could even throw a doord on Jatavian Sanders if you want to. They're they're rookie tight end who's not that that bad of a prospect, And this is really a bet on number one. I think the matchup against Tampa Bay is kind of interesting, you know, week seventeen, so you can stack that. But number two, you're you're betting on Dave Canalis. Their their new head coach, who we saw him do work with Gino Smith and Seattle. We saw him do work with Baker Mayfield and Tampa Bay last year. And now you know, Bryce Young gets more weapons, he gets a hopeful quarterback whisperer and Canalis and then on top of that with Carolina, I got to shout it out. The the top player that I've been drafting this week is Jonathan Brooks.

00:20:12
Speaker 3: Period. He is.

00:20:14
Speaker 2: After the research that I did on the running back stuff and that that episode that dropped, it is very clear that Brooks number one is like, Brooks is one of those players who could easily rise in ADP from now until through through July, right like late July. If he looks seemingly healthy, he's going to be a top twenty running back pretty easily, probably, Like I think he should be able to jump in Aaron Jones right, like why wouldn't he be able to get into that range? And so if he's healthy, we'll see that number one. But number two, when you get a prospect like him and with UH. With Brooks, he had a score of about ninety four in the ZAP model, which is close to UH. You know that that number of ninety five that I was close to. Yeah, And look, I don't want to have these arbitrary cutoffs or anything like that, but like regardless, players in that ninety to ninety five range, when there are RB two's as rookies, they hit at an obscene rate. And not only that, but someone like Brooks once again could really do a lot better towards the second half of the season, towards the tail end of the season, during the part of the season that we need these guys to blow up than the earlier parts of the season where they kind of ease him in. So to me, Jonathan Brooks is a screaming value right now. I've been trying to adjust my rankings on the Patreon and my Best Ball rankings to reflect that. It's you know, I have like a formula that I'm using to take my Redraft rankings and sort of convert them into Best Ball rankings. But he's someone who's definitely gonna rise week over a week, just more thought put into it a little bit more research being done with those running backs.

00:21:46
Speaker 1: He's got a super vet behind him as well, Miles Sanders, super dusty going in the eighteenth round right now. And what's interesting to me about all these stacks. I mean, Tennessee, you could literally stack quarterback, tight end receiver with your last three picks. Yeah, that's draft and just kind of like sneak out with one extra stack.

00:22:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, chick.

00:22:05
Speaker 2: A Conquo is another one that I didn't even bring up, where it's just a very sure like, like you, if we see some injuries to one of these wide receivers, he could end up being the number two pass catching option. Like I still think that Tyler Boyd should be projected to probably see more of a target share than a Conquo this year, but I think that's could be close.

00:22:25
Speaker 3: And then on top of.

00:22:26
Speaker 2: That, if you get an injury to a DeAndre Hopkins or Calvin Ridley, then late in the season, you can have a con Quo as the number two target getter in that Titans offense. All hypothetical, of course, but yeah, I mean, like in an environment where let's say you go with a Jacksonville stack and you need a third tight end or something because you went with a late round tight end approach, or I've even paired a con Quo on a Kelsey team and just had those two and just rode with those two tight ends within that game stack environment.

00:22:53
Speaker 3: I think that makes sense.

00:22:55
Speaker 1: I see a plus one and a half next to Jonathan Brooks right now, he's already starting to trend up. I'm assuming JJ, just because of this episode and just because of what you've said, we're gonna see like a plus ten next week. I'm just I'm just kidding.

00:23:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll see, we'll see. We'll see about that one. Yeah.

00:23:08
Speaker 2: So you know, Jonathan Brooks tadj Spears I mentioned I'm drafting a lot. The last guy I want to shout out. This is tough because I've been going back and forth with him sort of all off season. Rich Where at the beginning of the year I called him a dynasty cell, and I think that the process was okay in saying that because his year two score is not very strong. I think from a redraft standpoint, the investment is just different where if you miss on him, it's not that big of a deal.

00:23:32
Speaker 3: It's Chase Brown where interesting.

00:23:33
Speaker 1: So this is the other back that you brought up on your podcast episode today about the second year in the RB three range RB four range.

00:23:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and look like it's not unlike what we're seeing with uh with Tennessee, where you have this more veteran established running back as the RB one. From an ADP perspective and from honestly probably a projection standpoint, you know, I think Zach Moss is probably still going to see you know, at least a sixty forty split in his face. But to me, Chase Brown, at least at the very least, like I do think he was a little bit overrated as a rookie. As a player, like his ground game work was not nearly as efficient as people think. It's just that he you know, from like a success rate perspective, it's just that he can create big plays and he did that pretty consistently.

00:24:16
Speaker 3: And he's a good pass catcher too.

00:24:17
Speaker 2: And so you know, now you're looking at a Cincinnati team where you're probably gonna have a rookie in Jermaine Burton playing a little slot for them in year one. Maybe there's a decent target chair that could go towards these runs. I mean, Joe Mixon's gone. I think, look Joe Mixon is Joe Mixon not the most efficient back in the world, not a sexy back by any means from a fantasy perspective, or someone that you're like really you know, excited to draft or get exposure to. But Mixing can gobble up looks in his backfield and he's gone, right, he's not, He's no longer there. So I think Chase Brown can at least, you know, I don't think Zach Moss is just gonna take Joe Mixon's role.

00:24:55
Speaker 3: Is what I'm saying.

00:24:56
Speaker 2: And so if that's the case, Brown could step in, creates some big plays, and then you get that contingent upside of what if Rich in week fifteen, sixteen and seventeen, Zack Moss breaks his pinky finger and he can't play.

00:25:12
Speaker 1: You're so kind he gave him the least consequential injury that would give you the most upside.

00:25:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, well exactly.

00:25:20
Speaker 2: I don't want I don't want Zack Moss to get I don't want anyone to get dramatically hurt. I'm just saying, you know, like football is a violent game. Sometimes your pinky gets broken. And so if Zach Moss is out, if he's sidelined, Chase Brown steps in in a small sample, in a one week, two week sample, Chase Brown can be a Bell Kyle, Like we could see that happen, and so you know, I think that where he's being priced right now. Yeah, he's he's an easy get for me at this point. Yeah.

00:25:45
Speaker 1: The Chase Brown roller coaster for Dynasty owners in the off season was definitely one. Unfortunately I don't own any shares of him across my Dynasty portfolio, but people were super excited when when Joe Mixon was bounced and then super disappointed Twins one Zach Moussel, which to your point, I mean, it's not like Zach Moss is the next coming. Is not like Gail Sayers is now running for the Cincinnati Bengals, Like he's still a little bit it's weird.

00:26:11
Speaker 3: It's weird, right, and it's not.

00:26:12
Speaker 2: It's really similar, very very similar to what's going on in Tennessee, where again, like Zach Moss had a good start to a season, he was not nearly as good towards the tail end, but he had a really really good start when Jonathan Taylor was out. I think people have a little bit of an anchoring bias going on there where they're like, oh, yeah, Zach Moss is really good. Look, I think that Moss is fine. Like I've been drafting Moss too. I think that attacking ambiguous backfields is the right thing to do. I'm just saying that Chase Brown is probably gonna be the pass catcher, just like Tajy Spear is probably more of the pass catcher. And they're both very dynamic backs.

00:26:43
Speaker 3: Good.

00:26:44
Speaker 2: You know that that can make that can create big plays and create splash plays. So I'm gonna lean that way a little bit more when you get the discount in that ambiguous backfield. I think it's a really really similar situation. Kind of overall, I think that we should maybe listen to Pat Krane instead of us.

00:26:57
Speaker 3: Do you think that's a good idea.

00:26:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, Let's see what a millionaire has to say about playing best ball.

00:27:02
Speaker 2: Pat Karine is the winner of bestball Mania three, So he is a millionaire thanks to winning bestball Mania three. He's the owner of legendary upside dot com. He co hosts the Ship Chasing Podcast, a really great show with Pete Overzet and Ben Gretch. I really enjoyed my interview with him. I mean, he's just a wonderful human being. So it's really easy to chat with Pat and you know, kind of go back and forth with these ideas and just kind of pick his brain. But we talked about roster construction week seventeen, correlation which we alluded to team stacking, and how he's approaching both quarterback and tight end. It was a really really great interview. I think you guys will enjoy it. So without further ado, mister Pat Kurane, this episode is sponsored by Underdog Fantasy. There's no better place to play best ball than at Underdock. 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.

00:28:00
Speaker 3: There's a wide variety of.

00:28:01
Speaker 2: Contests to choose from. You can even check on Underdog's other games as well, like pick.

00:28:05
Speaker 3: Them right now.

00:28:07
Speaker 2: 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 depositive. Just head 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, mister corrane, I got a question for you. I know the answer is probably both to this question, but what do you think is more important in best ball? Simply choosing the right players, which is sort of a mantra that some fantasy analysts go to, or having proper roster construction.

00:28:55
Speaker 4: I mean, if you were gonna, like, let me have all the league winners or a portfoli of perfectly constructed rosters, I'd take the league winners. I think it's more important to get to have those guys. But the thing is, like, where do we actually have control? And we have some control on picking the right players. I spend a lot of time on player analysis and stuff, but I think as a best ball player, especially if you're newer to best ball and you're trying to kind of level up, focusing on roster construction is really the low hanging fruit, because that's where you actually have a lot of control and you can make like huge improvements. And then the other thing I would say with roster construction is when you think about the type of tournament that you're playing, Like if you're an Underdog's Best ball Mania, that's not a tournament that rewards the big prize to whoever scored the most points week one through seventeen. It's not that kind of tournament. In that kind of tournament, like you probably need all the best players in that season because it's just who scored the most points. This is a tournament that has four different like basically qualifying, It has three qualifying entries and a final week in week seventeen. It leads to the situation where like maybe the very best group of players doesn't even take it down. It's really a team that was structured to peak at the end of the season and win a single week in week seventeen.

00:30:15
Speaker 2: Would you say then that your roster construction is sort of dictating your exposure to players in a way and going that direction, or are you out there seeking these individual players obviously to some degree, and then sort of letting roster construction fall into place after that.

00:30:32
Speaker 3: If that makes.

00:30:33
Speaker 4: Sense, Yeah, to me, The whole question is is what can I get later and what can I not get later? And this is like this. You know, my site's called legendary Upside because I think in the early rounds you want to be looking for running backs to have legitimately legendary upside who can shift the season to be about them, and you can't get.

00:30:52
Speaker 3: That later usually.

00:30:53
Speaker 4: I'd like last year, I thought Brice Hall gave us an opportunity to get that, but that was because of very specific circumstance is where he's coming off this acl tear. Most of the time you have to pay a first or second round pick to get that kind of upside at running back, and I think it's worth it to pay for it, But you want to be shooting for that. You want to be examining where in the landscape you think there's significantly mispriced players and then attack those spots. But understand that essentially you have a budget your draft picks. You could kind of equate them to auction dollars or you know, you've got basically a budget of picks that you're going to be spending, and you don't want to be, you know, coming out of the draft way overspent at like running back compared to wide receiver. I would say the fundamental thing is, don't come out of a draft really light at wide receiver, especially on underdog right now, that's pretty easy to do. And the historical data on basically every Best ball menia that they've had shows that the wide receiver teams with sufficient firepower at wide receiver through the early rounds, like the first seven rounds. Hayden Winks has done a lot of research on this has those are the consistently high scoring teams. So above all, I would say, make sure you have sufficient wide receiver firepower through the first seven to ten rounds.

00:32:11
Speaker 2: Let's talk about roster construction more a little bit. So what's your standard build look like? What what has your standard build looked like? You can even talk about your Best ball Mania three winning team and what that looked like on paper in that roster construction it was Best ball Mania three. Yeah, those twentia three yeaheah yeah, your big w and so like, what did that look like? And do you see that changing and your approach changing in twenty twenty four. We obviously don't want to overstate, you know, small sample sizes or like what happened last year and just take that data and you know, apply it to the twenty twenty four season. But what's your roster construction generally look like? And is that changing here in twenty twenty four.

00:32:51
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I won with a running back running back start. But my general approach, which I actually think is consistent with that team, is to be wide receiver heavy. The thing with that team is I didn't take my third running back until round ten, hit on Romandre Stevenson there, and then I took two more running backs in the entire draft in round sixteen and seventeen. Hit on Raheem Moster in the sixteenth. So I had four good running backs sake one Barkley, Austin Eckler, Romandra Stevenson, Raheen Moster had four good running backs.

00:33:20
Speaker 3: The other one was so named Schell, so I didn't it was a waste.

00:33:23
Speaker 4: So I had four good running backs on the team all season, which was more than enough. And you know, I had enough wide receiver firepower to be able to take down Week seventeen where I had Tom Brady go off with Chris Godwin stack Dj Moore bringback was a really important element of that. Austin Eckler carried that team that week and for much of the season, and like I was, like I was saying, I mean, I think if you hit on an early round running back, it really can be game changing. The trick is, if you're gonna spend, like, if you're gonna go running back running back, you are way behind at wide receiver. Now that's okay. It doesn't mean you can't go running back running back. It just means you have to play it like your way behind from that point forward. If you get you know, an awesome value on Josh Jacobs in the fifth like, I'm sorry, man, Like, that's that's not for you that someone else is getting that.

00:34:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's rough. That's that's that's a tough thing to do.

00:34:17
Speaker 2: So you're saying, you're advocating in those situations, and a lot of people are gonna be stuck in those situations while they're drafting right where they like Like earlier today, I'm looking at one of my drafts. I didn't get any Houston Texans wide receiver early on in my draft right, And a lot of times you'll see this happen where uh, you know, the teams that get let's say they get a Nico and a Stephan Digs or something like that in two three. And then later in the draft they decide to skip on CJ. Stroud in the fifth and then Stroud because no other team really cares about stacking him. Stroud just falls and he has this fall. Stroud got to the early seventh in this draft that I was in, but I had already gotten Lamar and Mark Andrews, and I had to skip on it right like like it's it's so painful, But you're advocating, you're saying that's probably the right thing to do in that instance.

00:35:01
Speaker 4: That's the right thing to do in that instance. Your team, if it wins, all the money is going to show up in week seventeen against a bunch of other teams. If you show up with a Lamar Andrews stack and your seventh round pick is c J.

00:35:13
Speaker 3: Stroud, you're gonna be like, what.

00:35:15
Speaker 4: The heck am I doing? Give me any other seventh round pick than c J. Stroud right now, right, But your path to the money is very clearly. Lamar goes nuts and his touchdowns go through Andrews, and then you're very live. But you want you want a seventh round pick who's going to hit your lineup and Stroud cannot if Lamar is hitting your line up, So you can talk yourself into all this team's more likely to advance or but you're really just you just want that value. You just want that sweet CJ. Stroud value. But it's yeah, you box yourself out of it and you just have to play it like that.

00:35:46
Speaker 2: So how how is your approach, if at all, then changing in twenty twenty four? It seems like anecdotally, I haven't looked at year over your ADP like in super super strong detail, but it seems like anecdotally that we're we've pushed wide receivers up even further than what we've seen even in twenty twenty three, twenty twenty two. It seems like every year wide receivers are just getting drafted earlier and earlier in these underdog drafts. Are you changing your approach at all? Are you zigging while others are zagging?

00:36:12
Speaker 4: Like?

00:36:12
Speaker 2: Do you find that you know the Saquon Barkley and Jonathan Taylor values where you can get them in the mid to sometimes even late second, Like is that attracted to you? How are things sort of changing for you this year?

00:36:23
Speaker 4: I do think there's some running back values early on. I'm taking some tailor. I'm not taking much Barkley actually like eight chan a lot going because now that he's fallen into the early third. But yeah, things have changed significantly since last year. Where last year wide receivers were kind of at an all time high. I felt like we needed to basically swim with the current there and get our wide receivers. It's very difficult to swim again. To be honest, I think these extreme wide receiver prices are efficient because it's so hard not to go with the current. One exactly before, with zero could go zeer running back and sometimes you'd have dead teams because you just wouldn't get like any running backs, and you know that that was a bummer. But a lot of times you'd end up with really strong wide receivers and then when you hit on the running backs, you have these super teams and you could swim against this current. That was like basically saying running backs are scarce, we have to take them all. Early that there was a counter strategy that was really powerful. It is very difficult to find a counter strategy to this because if you don't have enough wide receivers early. It's really difficult to get them later. And can I get if I pass on a Saquon, I can get like I got Naji Harris at like one oh one the other day. I mean, like Naji like your case. Now you're gonna be like Drake London, Naji Harris or like Saquon Barkley and Curtis Samuel or something, right, you know, Mike Williams. It's like, it's does it? The two V twos just don't. They're just not appealing when you take the early running back side a lot of the time. Now, if you if you're strategic, if you grab a running back and then you get enough wide receivers around that running back to where you're not even making the TV two you're spending instead of drafting like a wide receiver, you're not super psyched about in round ten or eleven, you're getting a quarterback there, or you're getting another running back there. That's where I think you can kind of take advantage of these running back prices, and I think there are some opportunities to be had, but it's about kind of like you want to go in. Don't get overly tempted by all the beautiful running back values. Pick out your favorite, grab that one, and then build a team around it.

00:38:35
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:38:35
Speaker 2: One of the things that a lot of people have come to me about since starting this series and such and them just being more interested in Best Ball and whatnot, and how it's how it differs from redraft and they're season long leagues are managed leagues, right, And to me, I think one of the big differences, the key differences that you're going to see when it comes to the wide receiver position is number one, Like you said, you can't fall behind, but you also are sort of forced, as you're saying, to get these wide receivers because you will undoubtedly fall behind at some point. And the difference between best ball and season long is that people eventually stop drafting wide receivers in your season long league, right, like like they might only roster five or six wide receivers at the end of the day, whereas you're getting, you know, teams that have eight or nine wide receivers at times, you know, throughout your your best ball draft, and that means that there's just fewer of them that are going to be readily available, and so it just makes it more difficult. And I've done research in season long. Also where wide receivers are a little bit more difficult to grab off the waiver wire. I say a little bit more, but it's it's not it's not as dramatic as some people will will make it seem. But they're a little bit more difficult to grab off the waiver wire than running backs are. And if all of those quote waiver wire players are a lot of them, you know, are part of the drafting pool, then that means that a lot of those guys are drafted right and so you know, you're not You're you're basically capturing you know, a lot of that sample essentially within your act stual draft. So it's just harder in general to get these wide receivers. Let's move on to another topic that's that's maybe controversial, a little bit controversial. Maybe still maybe people agree. I don't know, you can tell me, but that's correlation game stacks, and correlation within those game stacks.

00:40:18
Speaker 3: So as we know the structure of.

00:40:20
Speaker 2: These tournaments are you know, as you said, there's this four week playoff and you get to the last or you know, you get to the last week, and you want to have a team that's heavily correlated because if that game hypothetically blows up, you know, if you have a Jacksonville, Tennessee stack and that game goes nuts and nuclear in Week seventeen, then that's good for your squad to get a good payout. My question to you is number one, how important is game stacking week seventeen? How much should you force it? Which I know is one of those questions that I hate getting as an analyst is how much because it's just really hard to like give you know, a percentage or like a direct answer to something like that, but just generally speaking, like how frequently are you sort of forcing the game stack?

00:41:02
Speaker 3: And then my follow up to that is do you think, because of the.

00:41:05
Speaker 2: Flatter payout structure this year, especially with Best Ball Mania, that people should or might want to focus a little bit more on Week sixteen just to get in the dance and just to get their Week seventeen and be able to compete because they know that, Okay, even if I get twentieth, that's still a decent payout.

00:41:23
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:41:23
Speaker 4: The Week sixteen discussion has been interesting because some of the math shows that you're if you could basically like pull a lever. That was like, do better. You would want to pull that lever in week sixteen because it occurs first, and so you know you're getting into week seventeen. So if you just have like a do better lever, I think you would pull week sixteen. The problem is we don't really have that lever. We have a lever in game stacking. It's kind of like at a little risk, but score maybe like a gajillion points, And I think that lever is better pulled in week seventeen when you have to beat five hundred plus people instead of fifteen. You're kind of like if you're trying to find this unicorn game that goes nuts and scores like all the points. Give that to me in the five hundred plus field. I think that seems pretty clear to me. But I do understand that, like we want to be doing stuff that improves our chances of Week sixteen, and Week sixteen is more important than it was last year. To me, that can be like things like same team stacking, which helps you in week sixteen Week fifteen, which is also a single week tournament. Week seventeen. Same team stacking also helps your advance rate, so that I think with Week sixteen, I'm mostly trying to either get it for free, where I'm getting a player who plays a team in Week sixteen and Week seventeen like that, or I'm trying to focus on, you know, adding in like same team elements, or just kind of the overall archetype of late season production, rookies, guys who might be coming on down the stretch, contingent value running backs, that type of thing. But yeah, this is this is tournament where we do really need to be focusing on the fact that it is a single week tournament. Whoever scores the most points in Week seventeen is going to win all the money. So I think game stacking is pretty important, and I don't think you want to force it, like there's a wrong there's a wrong way to do this, right. We don't want to add like a frat Like I'm very kind of like if if I see a running back who's got a lot of projected touches but I don't think he's very good, that's like usually a guy I'm going to avoid because I'm like, that's a very fragile bet to be making for a guy who I need to be scoring a lot of points in Week seventeen. That's that's like, that's literally in December. You know, it's a long time away. I need I need, I need this to go a long time. I need to make a prediction that's going to survive for a long time. I see people now like they're making a prediction that the forty nine ers in the Lions are going to score a ton of points in December, and they're taking like Sam Laporta to pair with CMC, like eight picks ahead of where it used to be going. That to me, is not the way to do this, because like we don't know anything. We don't know anything about with these games. There's gonna be defenses that are riddled with injuries that we're attacking the clear spots to play in DFS, there's going to be breakout offenses that are super underpriced in retrospect. What you're trying to do with the Week seventeen and the stacking in general is to find one of those spots where you're collecting a bunch of wins with one bet. So you bet on one offense, you've been on one game and lo and behold, it's like it's the nuts, it's what you need. There's no way we can know that now, And that's the point. So the cheaper that you can make these bets like a lot of like I'm betting a lot on the Patriots, on the Broncos some of these like late offenses where I can scoop up a bunch of pieces. The other thing is if you're kind of building it in, you're not committing the whole draft. So for example, let's say you take lad mcconki. If you don't get Justin Herbert, it's not a big deal. What I will try to do. I will try to get Justin Herbert. I will kind of keep building chargers. But if I don't get Justin Herbert, I have also set myself up for a week seventeen game stack with the Patriots, and I can add those Patriots pieces later, and I can add Drake may as a as a quarterback two or quarterback three if I want to do that. So you're kind of like, if you just kind of keep it in the back of your mind, you can use it to add flexibility to your draft so that you're like never boxed out of stuff, or it's much harder to box you out of things if you overly focus on it. I think you can make mistakes.

00:45:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, there seems to be like a lot of situations like what you're referring to, where if you do miss out on that quarterback to complete a stack. You know you mentioned Justin Herbert. I mean, I think there's you know, Trevor Lawrence. Let's say you miss out on Jacksonville. You can still get will leveslate if you're getting one of those Tennessee pieces. Or I think a really easy one is like Green Bay with Minnesota, right, Like if you started your draft out with Justin Jefferson or you know, you got a Jordan Addison or something like that, and then you started to pile on top of that and you get Christian Watson and then someone snipes you and you no longer have you know, Jordan Love. You can still hypothetically get a Dantavian Wix who's a great value right now, and then still get JJ McCarthy late and still have some sort of stack there. There's actually a lot of those situations across when you look at the week seventeen landscape, Like Carolina is another one. Carolina is really really easy to stack, you know, if you if you get like an Evans or a Godwin or something, or a ra shod white if you if you went running back there and then you know you can you can at least bring it back that way.

00:46:28
Speaker 3: So I like that.

00:46:29
Speaker 4: And yet like yet, sitting there, you can open up that stack that way.

00:46:33
Speaker 3: So right, Yeah, a lot, there's a lot.

00:46:35
Speaker 2: There's a lot, and it's nice that there's a lot. Then then you know there's teams like like, let me ask you this. I like the way that I've approached it so far, and you can tell me how wrong this is because I'm trying to learn here.

00:46:45
Speaker 3: It's a whole point of this show.

00:46:47
Speaker 4: Uh.

00:46:48
Speaker 2: You know, if I'm looking at let's say New Orleans, for instance, they get Vegas Week seventeen, that game on paper looks like kind of trashy generally speaking, But at the same time, we know that there's a lot of variants. We know there's a lot of unpredictability. And so for me, if I'm getting a Chris a Lave or something in round two and then i get at Juwan Johns and I start to like just kind of you know, I get like a brock Bowers or something, and I'm just like casually stacking that game. I'm still so far, I've been okay with doing that because I'm sort of letting variants take the wheel. Are you are there any games that you just are like, no, I don't want to stack this. I'm not saying you got to do it, you know, be overweight on it. I just mean in general, are there games that you would just completely not be into stacking and just fading for the week seventeen matchup?

00:47:36
Speaker 3: No? I don't think so.

00:47:38
Speaker 4: I mean I think you want if you've made a bet on a player, he's going off in week seventeen. Okay, so you know that. Now, So now what what else is that.

00:47:46
Speaker 3: Likely to create? You know?

00:47:49
Speaker 4: And it's might drive scoring on the other side, Like, I don't unless you're unless there's like a whole offense that you're just that you're fading because you just don't ever take them.

00:48:00
Speaker 3: Ever.

00:48:00
Speaker 4: Yea, that would be the only way that I'm fading a week seventeen game stack, because if I have the other side of something, I'm gonna want to mix players into me. It's also a way of naturally diversifying f I'm like, I don't take this guy a lot, but he's fallen to me, and he correlates with a piece that I took. So I'm going to break a tie to him, and I'm not just going to do the same thing in every draft, which is such a bias that I you don't have to fight where I just I just want to take my favorite. I know I don't want to, I don't have to do any but but it's a nice way of going, Okay, you know what, this is a smart thing to do. I can go ahead and take the guy on the other side of this. So I think you want to be open minded about what games are going to go off. And like the stack that won it for me and was Tom Brady in his bad years. It was bad Tom Brady.

00:48:43
Speaker 2: It was he retired, Hal he needed to do that for you before he went off and rode off in the sunset.

00:48:50
Speaker 3: He finally gave that.

00:48:51
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, we I mean, you know, like I seriously though, like it was that game was trash, Like you know, if you wouldn't have wanted to now it ended up being I think the Panthers offense was so bad and the Buccaneers offense was so bad, but that people attacked it in DFS that week. But these bad games can sometimes end up putting up a bunch of points, like if the Saints, like if the Raiders are a dumpster fire and the Saints you know, are kind of like search of Branchers and they're you know, they're they're clearly not going anywhere.

00:49:24
Speaker 3: It could still go over the total can still get right, right, That's the thing.

00:49:28
Speaker 2: That's the thing that I think that like, like, it's not like Derek Carr has never I mean, maybe he's not even starting a quarterback week seventeen, but right.

00:49:34
Speaker 3: Well, that's that's a little bit of concern.

00:49:36
Speaker 2: Obviously, the quarterback situations in both of those instances might be a little bit unstable, but regardless, like, it's not like we've never seen Derek Carr put up a big game or like have a decent game or you know, a three hundred and fifty plus yard game, like it's happened before. And so I'm I, you know, I think that the open mindedness is important when you're doing at least a good number of drafts. Speaking of quarterbacks, how are you attacking that position this year? I mean, I think, like we've seen, you know, over the last handful of years, elite quarterbacks be a lot more stable than they used to be, you know, in like the twenty fifteen twenty sixteen timeframe, when you're looking at season long leagues, I mean from the data that I've seen other people like research and look at, seems like elite quarterbacks are still not bad like horrible bets and best ball where you know, again, like when when I was doing MFL tens a decade ago, it was you shouldn't even think like sniff the quarterback position until like round ten just didn't matter at all. So this year, when you're looking at the landscape, how are you generally attacking it?

00:50:32
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think like there's at the other positions, there's some spots where I'm like, man, this is really mispriced. But quarterback I don't find that a lot. I think like most of the quarterbacks are like pretty well priced. And so I'm just I'm trying to get exposure to a lot of different guys. I'm kind of letting my my stacks drive it a little bit. The big thing I would say is like getting tonight's really really hurts. It's it's no fun. It's a lot less painful if you have something else kind of already started to be built in where you're kind of you can easily move to something else, like you've got you know, if you have Lad McConkie, you also have a Christian Kirk and Evan Ingram double stack. You get sniped on Lawrence, you take justin Herbert, that's not really the end of the world. And I think the the thing, you know, you talk about the Saints that the Saints stack maybe you maybe you have Derek Carr there, maybe you don't. If you have the Saints and the Raiders stacked up without the quarterbacks, that's pretty cool. That game could go off. You're getting a bunch of pieces that are all hitting your lineup simultaneously, which is hard to do. I think you have to get a lineup that not only like hits a couple amazing like holy crap kind of scores. But then you're around those scores, you're gonna need like a bunch of really good scores too. So finding a game that goes nuts even if you don't have the quarterback is huge, Like you kind of you kind of need it almost so you're or at least it's one of the easiest ways to find what we need. So you know, when you think about like, oh, man, this dude, grab this quarterback unstacked six spots ahead of ADP.

00:52:13
Speaker 3: I'm going to.

00:52:14
Speaker 2: Lead some of my drafts, some of my draft six rounds ahead of ADP pet like this is this is this is the way I'm fully fully experiencing. I was telling you before we started recording, like the tilt of being sniped with a stack. You know when I was doing when I was Yeah, when I was playing best ball like last you know, the last handful of years and whatnot, I'd get over it because I wasn't being very public with my best ball drafting and such. Now that I'm creating content around it, and I'm gonna be talking about exposure and I'm gonna be sharing some lineups all that kind of stuff. It's just it's just beyond tilting when that kind of stuff happens, because there's just more on the line for me, you know, in terms of like what these drafts mean. I mean, it's when you have Jalen Waddle and Tyreek Hill and someone drafts to UH in round six, you just want to punch a hole through the wall to.

00:53:00
Speaker 3: Most of round six. Double up. Let's go exactly.

00:53:04
Speaker 4: No, it's a super frustrating, but like one thing I would say, the elite quarterbacks are one way to if you're if you've just been dealing with some of that pain, getting an elite quarterback and then you can do stuff like that, like that that particular stack to a Wattle's a little expensive to pay with an elite quarterback, I think, but you know, if you have like some of the Jacksonville stuff, you know, you can pair that kind of stack with like a Josh Allen, you know, with Lamar Jackson, and it's like like show me, Trevor Lawrence, show me you can outscore Lamar Jackson or Josh Allen when he's having an awesome week seventeen, Like, I, you're not hitting my lineup, I don't need you. I'm going I'm essentially taking you without taking you, because I'm gonna bet on your pass catchers. And then instead of grabbing Lawrence, you're gonna grab you know, a running back in that range or whatever. And then you take a quarterback to later on who basically helps you through Allen spy week or you know, contributes to a score here or there. May maybe you get a spike week in Week fifteen or something. So yeah, I think, like just I guess the lead quarterbacks can be a way of preventing that tilt where you can get sniped a bunch on some of those secondary state you'd really just need one other stack and maybe you build three. Maybe you build three additional stacks beyond your early quarterback stack, and you just let the market decide who you end up with at the end of the draft.

00:54:31
Speaker 2: I feel like the position that might make or break and again, please disagree if you think that this is just a completely wrong take. The position that might make or break drafts this year is tight end. And I say that because you know, previous years we kind of had like kind of more obvious pockets in terms of, you know, you get Kelsey in round one. You know, maybe you get Andrews in round two, and then you're just waiting a little while and then you know, maybe there's like a godd or do you throw in there for a stack or something like that. But it was just this very clear cut, defined way of you're gonna get tight end or your Whereas now you know you see Laporta as you mentioned in the third late third, sometimes I'll follow the fourth. Travis Kelsey has been rising a little bit, you know, early fourth what have you. And then you get into the McBride, Mark Andrews, you know, Dalton Kincaid, Kyle Pitts range. It just seems like you can go in so many different directions and then me all the All the while, you've had folks like Hayden Winks come out with really great research talking about how going with a late round tight end approach is. And this is something that I've obviously done a lot of work in from a managed season, long league perspective with with like living the stream and streaming tight end. But you know, he comes out with research talking about how getting three tight ends late is just as helpful, if not better than going after those elite guys.

00:55:44
Speaker 3: But obviously those elite guys.

00:55:46
Speaker 2: Things are changing from a market perspective, right because now instead of Kelsey going round one, he's in round four. And you know, if you do hit on that ceiling with one of those tight ends, it seems like it'd be hugely advantageous. So my question to you is, how are you attacking tight end this year and do you agree that this could really be what differentiates one team from the next. As you get into week fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen.

00:56:08
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's very likely that tight end is the key to this season. We're seeing really reduced prices on the elite tight ends, and unlike last year, we have a very weak tight end class coming in. Maybe not very weak because you you have Bowers in it, but the late rounds, unlike last year, are not just filled with these really exciting rookie tight ends. You know, we got the McBride breakout last year as well, which was huge. It's tough for me when I look at the late it's like I'm looking at kind of like Noah Fense, kind of interesting, like, oh, what if he runs a bunch of routes, but he's still the fourth option on Seattle exactly. There's just not a lot of guys that jump out. You're mostly touchdown hunting, you're mostly going for stacks. In general, I think elite tight end is a really strong strategy. It's had really good success in these tournaments over the years because and I wrote an article about this last year. I think what it allows us to do is basically capture a lot of the tight ends spike weeks that are available because we're kind of good at We know who these guys are because they play a different position, right, Travis Kelcey and Mark Andrews, Like, they don't play the same position as Tyler Conklin, Right, they don't. These guys do different things and it doesn't take like a ton of like you know, brain power to be able to be like Travis Kelcey different than these other tight ends. So we're all as a market, we're pricing these guys correctly basically, and we see that in the data. We're a lot of big share, bigger than at wide receiver and at running back a big ship and at quarterback too. We're seeing a big share of the available spike weeks at the position they collect at these elite tight ends, and so when you grab one, you're giving yourself a chance to have one of those spike weeks, which can be very impactful. Now, Hayden Wins has showed that the tight ends separate a little bit less than the other positions. The thing that I look at is like you're talking about like teams that are putting up a bunch of points, and it's what we've seen is that it's extremely helpful if you can get one of these Spike weeks to hit your line up at tight end because it's a difficult point, difficult position to have really any points at. So if you get that Spike week, you're like, you're like way ahead of the field already. And Madison Parker has had a really good article on Elite tight End noting that like even last year's results in last year was a pretty weak year for a week tight end or for Elite tight end. He noted that Sam Laporte is twenty six point one half point PPR points was such a driving force that he had He ended up on the winning Best ball Mania lineup even though his score didn't count in Week sixteen or seventeen, he was on four of the top five BBM finishing team. He scored eleven point nine points in Week seventeen, which is not great, but that counted on three of those five teams to get in the top five of the Week seventeen final. That Week fifteen Spike week was so impactful that you almost like didn't need him to do anything else and he was still on all the winning teams. That's like where I think, now, how do we find that last year we had a chance to find that in the late rounds. This year, I think it's a little bit more difficult to find that kind of impact week and you're getting basically paid to look earlier in the draft because you're getting a discount. You're getting a discount on Mark Andrews, You're getting a discount on these elite tight ends relative to where they've typically gone. So I'm hammering the league tight end right now. Obviously I need these specific players to come through in the specific season, in very specific weeks, but I think it's a big edge.

00:59:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, look, the opportunity cost isn't that dramatic, Like it's just not that when you get into round four, round five, is I like some of the players, don't get me wrong, but it's just not nearly as significant as when you're taking Kelsey in round one, or if you're taking you know, Andrews in round two, as pitiful as round two seems to be this year, you know, versus previous years, Like there's still a massive opportunity cost if you're you know, taking that on, whereas if you're getting some of these guys who project to have really really strong target shairs in round four to to round six, where these guys go the constant doing that isn't that dramatic at the end of the day. I mean, you can get more than likely, you know, some of those wide receivers are gonna hit right like we're gonna maybe save your Worthy hits, maybe you know, Christian Kirk hits, what have you. But at the same time, from a projection standpoint, the delta from my perspective between you know, like a Kirk and Worthy to maybe someone that you can get towards the end of round you know, into like round seven or something, is just not that dramatic. Like it's like, not that that massive when you think about, oh, I can have Trey McBride or I'm starting out, I mean, you might as well just wait forever. As opposed, unless you're stacking like a a Philly stack or a Cowboys stack or something like that, you might as well just wait a pretty long time because there's not going to be that big of a difference.

01:01:10
Speaker 3: I mean middle round tight ends.

01:01:11
Speaker 2: Historically, I say middle rounds in like the tight end six to twelve And this is all season long research based, but those guys have been some of the most replaceable players in the history of fantasy football, and so now we have that. It's a little bit deeper than i'd say it's up to, like you know, up to like tight end seven or so, but beyond that, it's like, Okay, you're just getting guys that you hypothetically, if a late round tight end hits, he's going to give you that kind of production. And we see that kind of player hit pretty pretty regularly year in and year out.

01:01:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, we want the spike weeks.

01:01:39
Speaker 4: So if you're like going for like, hey, I know this guy's gonna be out there running routes and I'm gonna pay like a tenth round pick for that, that's generally not great. We want we want the guys who can can change a week, you know who, like the winning DFS lineups have like that that type of player winning DFS lineups have with like a decent salary.

01:01:57
Speaker 3: Like that type of player is who you want. I think.

01:02:01
Speaker 2: Let me ask you this, if there's one piece of advice that you could give anyone about best ball winning best ball tournaments, what would that piece of advice be.

01:02:10
Speaker 4: The thing with best ball is I've I've been kind of putting this thought together this offseason, Like the best ball is really about managing floor and ceiling. That's that's the way this game separates itself from like the other games that you know, we kind of all came in through, right, like Dynasty Redraft. Dynasty to me is about floor. You're trying to prevent the bottom from falling out on your various assets. You're trying to stay liquid in the trade market. Redraft is about ceiling. Just give me the highest upside guys. I know I'm gonna wiff on some doesn't matter. I got the waiver wire. I'm gonna fall back. It just it just wants ceiling. I want as many you know like this. That's why I think, you know, the streaming thing works so well. It's like you're you're like, give me the high upside picks and the high upside rounds and I can go. I'll go replace stuff later. You can't replace stuff in Bestball. There's no there's no waiver wire. Everyone is on your roster. Everything's locked. You're gonna want these final roster spots to be scoring points for you at the end of the season. We've seen that. We've seen you know these A rookie wide receiver, late round rookie wide receiver has been on all four of the winning Best ball Mania rosters. We had kJ Hamler score a meaningful Week four justin Herzig. I'm in Rossaint Brown was on Liam's team. I had Taekwon Thornton score a touchdown as an I eighteenth round pick and hit my lineup. Okay, I mean it doesn't the guy doesn't even need to be good. But you gotta get you gotta get points out of these picks. Jayden Reid last year was really big for for Reid's team. So the ability to pair together really really high ceiling hits with a roster that also has a lot of floor in the idea that like all the roster spots are are scoring points pretty regularly. You're not taking zeros. You didn't sacrifice a bunch of roster spots to find this hit. You have to be able to find the hit and then pair it with a bunch of other productive roster spots. To me, the way to do that is you play for the end of the season. You play for the very end of the season. Who gives you ceiling and floor at the end of the season. Rookies, rookie wide receivers, especially rookie wide receiver who's likely a team to be taking a look at in week seventeen, even if they're bad. A rookie wide receiver if you can find cheap rookie wide reside in jail and Polk for example, is a really strong pick. Right now, people don't want to take the Patriots. He's a second round pick in an extremely ambiguous wide receiver room. He's going to be playing at the end of the season. He just is, you know, and you can get him in like round fourteen or fifteen or whatever, Like, yes, that is a good pick. Like these are the ways to kind of pair together. Ceiling and floor. Ceiling is massive. You don't want to get too conservative in the early rounds. You want to be taking the guys who can actually change the game, change we weeks. But at the same time, you can't sacrifice roster spots.

01:05:04
Speaker 2: At the same time, you always love when things align too with like a lot of season long research because I've been talking about, you know, the rookie wide receiver stuff. Even from a managed league perspective, it's one of those things where number one, you should basically be targeting them in every format, like no matter where they're getting drafted. You know, Marvin Harrison is an outliers at this point just because we haven't seen a guy get drafted that early. But regardless, rookie wide receivers, rookie running backs, you want to go after those guys. Not only do they exceed ADP expectation at a really strong rate, but as you've alluded to, you know some of the research I've done too, they just perform so much better during the second half of the season, especially when you're looking at like the Day two into Day three guys. Because Day one players, Day one rookies are going to find the field pretty much right away for the most part, right so like they're going to be producing from start to finish, started the season to the end. But it's the guys that are you know, the Aman Ross Saint Browns, where you know, they don't necessarily have this massive opportunity to start, but they play into it, whether due to injury or not, and then they blow up down the stretch and we see that even Jayden Reid last year you could say is similar, right, yeah, And so those are the guys it makes sense that those would be the guys that you absolutely want, you know, with your lines, and you you alluded to it earlier too with the continued upside running backs, where you know in those those big, big weeks towards the end of the season, you know the the the injuries are piling up in these backfields.

01:06:28
Speaker 3: Those are the players that.

01:06:29
Speaker 2: You want on your on your best ball rosters because they can step in and and then be starters for their team.

01:06:35
Speaker 3: Yeah.

01:06:35
Speaker 4: I think that's partly why the it's it's that's another reason why it's so difficult to really truly swim against these wide receiver prices is that if you end up, if you have a team that's loaded up with running backs in like rounds ten eleven, that's where we tend to price these really interesting contingent value guys or sort of like secondary guys in a committee, or really uncertain backfields. Like if you're right on those those guys, you're going to be right more towards the back of the season. What you're probably sacrificing is like week one through four production. But if you scraight by, get you finished second your pot you end up. Then you show up in week fifteen, all that's wiped away. No one cares how many points you scored in week three. Now you just need to score a bunch of points in week fifteen, and you're set up to do that if you have running backs that are you know, have taken jobs by the end of the season.

01:07:24
Speaker 2: Before I let you go, give me, give me two or three guys that you've been you've been targeting a lot, you know during drafts that you know, aside from stacking, just just players that you seem to gravitate towards and think are very good values.

01:07:37
Speaker 3: Right now.

01:07:37
Speaker 4: Yeah, So, I mean there's like a bunch of Brookie wide receivers we could talk about. I think that's like an archetype, right we want to be attacking the lead tight ends. I love Mark Andrews. I'm taking a ton of him, but I've talked, I've talked down about kind of the running back position here. So let me give you two running backs that I really like. The first is Devon a Cham. This is a guy going in the early rounds that I want on my teams. Again, what am I fundamentally trying to do. I'm trying to win a single week tournament in week seventeen. Who can help me do that? Devon a Chan last year in the finals. I'm flipping over teams, going I really hope a chance on this one. I would really like to see a Chan on this team. He didn't go off in the final, but like, we know this guy can go off. He's hyper efficient. I was reading you're right up in the second in year model talking about seven point eight yards per carry.

01:08:29
Speaker 2: Oh my god, it's insane, Like it's insane, Like he's insane.

01:08:32
Speaker 3: I listen.

01:08:33
Speaker 4: I know he's not going to get the full workload, and I know he's not going to be the goal line back and everything, but like what.

01:08:40
Speaker 3: If he does for a week, right?

01:08:43
Speaker 2: Or what if he just has two forty yard touchdowns? Like it's not out of the question. That was actually I'm sorry for interrupting, but I got a question about a Chan. I don't know if it was about a Chan or if it was just about projections in general. On a mailbag episode recently, and I talked about a Chan and his projection does not look amazing because it's it's there's there's regression baked in like all that kind of stuff, and it's tough to project that kind of player. But inherently he's one of the you don't want to use it as an excuse, but he's one of the better and best ball kind of players where yeah, I think he's he's gonna be. I mean, like he's fine from a season long perspective. I even said on the show, I'm like, I'm never gonna tell someone to not draft Avon Agen right like that, that that can't be a thing for me, because I know that the ceiling is out of control. But I do think that in best ball it's just a little bit easier to handle. I also think from like a backfield, from like a team management standpoint. To me, the Jalen Wright pick, yeah, it's another speedster, another you know, guy who can thrive in this system. But hypothetic, I mean we would we would all assume that he could dig in more into a Raheem a thirty two year old Raheem Mostert who's often injured as opposed to the second year guy who's coming off quite literally the most efficient rookie for most efficient running back season that we've ever seen in the history of the NFL. So yeah, I'm with you. I've been drafting him a little bit more and more. At first, I was like, why is he going here? And then I took a step back, try to put on my best ball cap and I and I am thinking cap, and I realized that, Okay, this is the reason why. And you can get him in the early third now.

01:10:19
Speaker 3: Too, Yeah, no, you can.

01:10:21
Speaker 4: I've been pushing him a little bit because I was taking a bunge in this second, and I now, if I'm on the turn, I'll try to get different combos and push him around. You get him in the third. But yeah, I mean, he's better in best ball in terms of the Spike week. He's also better in tournament best ball. And since that, again, we're trying to make bets that survive to December to late December. And one of the ways, you know I talked about one ways is rookies, but another is just talent, just talent, right, Like freest Hall has his quarterback Terry's achilles in the first game last year. He's playing with Zach Wilson on the floundering Jets, and he's one of the guys that you want at the end of last season because he's he's awesome. That's it. He's awesome. Pick guys who are awesome. It's not like it's you got your second and third round pick. Pick a guy who's awesome at football. That's that's a way to have a bet survive to the end of the season. It's a floor and ceiling when you take the talented guys.

01:11:14
Speaker 3: Devon A.

01:11:15
Speaker 4: Chan is an awesome running back. I feel very confident about that. I don't know how things are going to play out for him exactly this season or an eddy given week, but I think, yeah, he can have those spikes weeks for me. But like you know, even if things kind of go a little bit off the rails this year for the Dolphins offense, I have confidence that Devon h Chan is still going to be someone I'm interested in.

01:11:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. Are there any any other running backs that you like? One more? Give me one more? Running back?

01:11:43
Speaker 4: Jalen Warren. Jalen Warren has been my guy for a couple years. Last year he was my second highest drafted player behind Bruce Hall. This year, he's probably gonna be my highest drafted player. Naja Harris had a pretty decent year last year and is well priced this year. I don't think Najie Harris is a bad pick. I think he's actually a good pick. But I think Jaalen Warren is an even better pick because I think he's the most talented player in that backfield. He's he's been awesome for a couple of years. He's got enough size to where he can be used on early downs, but he's a really good receiver. His rushing efficiency is fantastic. Last year in fl X gams rushyerds ever expected, he finished behind only Christian McCaffrey, Demon eight Chan, and James Connor. This dude is consistent, and he's explosive, and he's a good receiver, and he's going to be on a team that runs the ball a ton. He scored a very usable score in Week seventeen last year with Najie Harris handling twenty seven carries. So there's been plenty of volume in this backfield. Now that Arthur Smith's there, I think we could see that kind of stuff. Then you also just get the contingent value for free. Like this guy, he's going to be putting up points for you. You know in the he goes in the nineties, so like what he gives you in the nineties is like more than enough just in his normal role. If Najee Harris misses a couple games at the end of last season, or if they get sick of it, like they didn't pick up this guy's fifth year option. If they just decide to hand it off to Warren and let's see what he can do with a full workload at the end of the season, you might need him. You might need Jalen Warren if he has that backfield to himself, because he's really, really good and there will be a lot of volume there.

01:13:21
Speaker 3: Yeah.

01:13:21
Speaker 2: One of the things I talked about, you know, obviously, ambiguous backfields is something that I've been talking about for years on the show. But one of the easy ways to sort of spot of value in an ambiguous backfield is to say, oh, this guy's being drafted at his projection right now. This is sort of how I felt about Tony Pollard a couple of years ago, where he had his big season. He's being drafted at his projection. But then there's this contingent upside if something were to happen to his backfield teammate, then all of a sudden, he's you know, it's rocket ship emojis. So I really like the Jalen Warren call. Crane man. It was great, great to chat and to ask you questions, pick your brain a little bit about this best ball landscape. Let everyone know where they can find you.

01:13:59
Speaker 4: Yeah, gendarypside dot com is the place to check out my rankings. I've got underdog and DraftKings rankings. They are going to be launching f FPC rankings probably by the time you're listening to this. Those will be out working on drafters rankings in the next couple of weeks. Got a bunch of analysis up there. Got an article about it's a free article from last year about dealing with getting snipes, So my.

01:14:23
Speaker 3: Listeners I need to read that.

01:14:25
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've got an article, another free article up there talking about kind of it's about a Central American tree that they found in nineteen sixty five, but it's a metaphor for kind of if you're making big bets on a player, kind of how to build a portfolio of teams around big player stands. Because I want to take big player stands, but I want to do it in a thoughtful way, and so it's an article about that. But yeah, we've got some research based stuff on bastball rolling out some dynasty stuff over there as well. If you go to legendaryipside dot com slash perks. You can and see how to get a fifty dollars underdogar credit with a yearly subscription.

01:15:04
Speaker 2: Awesome, awesome man, Really appreciate your time. As usual, everyone, you can check out my stuff over on lateround dot com. I'm on Twitter at late round QB. Thanks for listening everyone, and as always, thanks for tuning in