Becoming a Best Ball Bro: Officially a Best Ball Bro?

00:00:01
Speaker 1: JJ, Mike Tomlin did it again and in the most Mike Tomlin way possible, and you predicted it. You texted Denny yesterday tell us about the prediction.

00:00:12
Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, okay, So on Living the Stream, one of my other podcast, Denny Carter my co host, and I I'll randomly bring up the Mike Tomlin game. Mike Tomlin is a is far more predictable than people realize. You know, there are games like the ones, the one against Cincinnati earlier this year when Joe Flacco beat the Steelers. There is the Colts game I mentioned that they would win, that the Steelers would beat the Colts when the Colts were flying high. And then then last night, you know, going up against Baltimore, their home dogs, against the Ravens, and in me, I just you know, no, DK Metcalf, no way they can win that game. And then of course, of course it ends up being a Mike Tomlin w because you know why, Mike Tomlin does everything he can do to maintain that job, and it's going to be that way forever. But yeah, Rich, what about your team, how's your team in knowing?

00:01:04
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, we secured the number two overall pick. So I'm eagerly awaiting the message that Dante Moore returns to Oregon and we get yet another year of awful things for the New York Jets.

00:01:18
Speaker 2: I'm JJ, and last year I tried my hardest to become a best ball bro. I drafted over five hundred teams. I talked to some of the most successful best ball players in existence, and I admittedly had mixed results. So this year, I'm going to chase that title once again. My plan is the Max Center DraftKings Millionaire Maker, and I'm going to document all of it while talking to the brightest best ball minds on the planet. Last year, I didn't quite get there, But this year this is going to be the year where I officially become a best ball bro. Welcome into another episode of becoming a Best ball I'm JJ Zach Reeson, joined as always by my Jets loving co host Rich Ryan Rich. What's going on, Buddy doing?

00:02:07
Speaker 1: Good man? This has been one of my better fantasy seasons to date. Absolutely crushed redraft. I was in a DFS league with a bunch of Jets fans. I won three of the eighteen weeks. I broke even in best Ball, which is, you know, pretty good like, nothing to complain about. And of course I get to sweat you all along these past couple of weeks in your becoming becameth of a best ball bro.

00:02:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, what is it? So? I've seen a lot of tweets. I've seen you know, Pete overs at, you know, after I had tweeted about my Millie team, he had tweeted that it became a best best ball Bro. I don't know if I'm there yet. I think that I definitely experienced some best ball bro sweats this year. Very excited to talk about the results, the things that I learned, all that kind of stuff. But first I do want to mention best ball playoffs are happening over on DraftKings. Definitely check that out if you guys haven't. I'm going to be in those best ball Playoff streets for Shore Playoff, best Ball, best Ball Playoff. You guys know what I'm trying to say. But go check out all those contests over there on DraftKings. Like I said, I will be drafting there. I had a really good time draft I mean results wise too, but just a really good time in general drafting on DraftKings this summer. And so I'm gonna be doing it. I'm gonna be carrying it over into the playoff season. It's a really wild playoff. I've been putting rankings together for Playoff best Ball, and I don't know what to do at this point because there's so many teams that are just so tight and close together that it's just really hard to put something cohesive together. But it is going to be out there for patrons this week. Hopefully soon after this show, it will be out there, or if you're listening to this, which you would be if you're hearing this right now, they will be available on the Patreon as you're listening to it, so go check that out. Hopefully there will be as good of results in the playoffs as there was in the regular season.

00:04:06
Speaker 1: For me, we were just talking pre record about how wide open it is, and I can only imagine how tilted your rankings will be to teams. Some of these teams that have the potential to play four games right like, because it's so wide open, there are a ton of teams with talents that could play all four games and rack up a ton of points.

00:04:26
Speaker 2: The nice part with the playoff contest is that at least now there's only one team on by, and so it's a little bit easier to say, Okay, I know that almost all teams are going to be playing. You know, whichever team goes to the Super Bowl, there's a decent there's some chance that they play all four games. You know, obviously just from like just for folks who haven't played playoff best ball. You essentially are drafting a team similarly as you would a regular season bestball team, and you're basically drafting players in hopes that they are their teams actually advanced. So there will be a newsletter blast going out on Wednesday with the late round Fantasy Football newcomer, new employee branding Doula, who'll be putting together sort of like a what to know about these teams from an advanced analytics perspective and that way if the team looks bad, I mean, like there's one team that we know is pretty much dead going into the playoffs. That's Carolina, right, you know, anything can happen. They beat the Rams before we get it. But you know they're like ten what ten and a half point dogs right now? Is that what it opened that you know, we don't have like very high hopes for for Carolinas. We probably aren't gonna be drafting a ton of like Rico Doubt or or Teo McMillan, because you want those players to carry on to future rounds.

00:05:28
Speaker 1: Now.

00:05:29
Speaker 2: The crazy thing is, though, is that you know now that when you look at this landscape, there's really no very super obvious team that we think is gonna win the Super Bowl this year. Usually you can get away with like the Chiefs or even the Bills. The Bills usually just have a team that you feel confident will get to the divisional round and then the yeah, they're gonna play.

00:05:50
Speaker 1: They're gonna play three games, and Josh Allen is gonna go super Saiyan and you're.

00:05:53
Speaker 2: Gonna get it right right, you know, Josh Allen will go nuts and he's gonna have two rushing touchdowns per game and it's gonna be great for fantas. But even that, you know, the Bills have their warts and have their issues. That's why they're a six seed. And you know, like, what do we think about a team like Jacksonville or even Seattle who kind of came out of nowhere, or Denver who gets the one seed and doesn't have the best advanced analytics. You know, there's just a lot of interesting storylines I think with the playoffs this year, which is why I think Playoff Bastball is going to be just insane, and it just it's gonna come down a strategy, and it's going to come down to make sure you are stacking your teams, just like if you draft ten, if you draft fifty, if you have to one hundred teams, make sure that those teams are stacked in the general like approach that I take, And like, I'm not an expert on this at all, you know, this is just me being a degenerate fantasy football player who has a podcast about season long fantasy football. But I think that the general approaches get a stack in one conference and then get a couple of stacks in the other conference. So just just kind of hit your wagonto a team. Is that the phrase hit your wagon into? Does that work? Yeah, to a to a team in one conference, Like I drafted a San Francisco stack yesterday with my first playoff Bastball team, and then in the other conference, you know, I got like a mini New England and then a mini I can't remember what the other team was, but you just sort of you know, hope for the best then that those teams end up matching up against each other in the Super Bowl, and just don't be overly confident about who you think is gonna make it, you know, because it's it's gonna be a wild playoff.

00:07:27
Speaker 1: I think hitching your wagon goes back to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Thank you, that's right, Google, jentlemen. This is actually one of the mistakes that I see a lot of people make when it comes to the Super Bowl too, when the prop sheets come out and people are like picking all these props, is that they just kind of go nuts with props instead of like thinking about what the game is going to, what the outcome of the game is, and then just align all your props and try to correlate everything that way. Of course, like you said, there's downside, right, Don't don't think that you are just gonna submit this and just win. But yeah, your opportunity for highest upside is to find some sort of correlation, just like season long fastball.

00:08:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the hardest part with the playoffs stuff is that, you know, I take San Francisco, then I have to think about who they would be playing because they receed in the NFL playoffs, you have to think about who they're going to be playing in the second round, and you don't want to necessarily match up that team against another team that you would be stacking for the second round because then half your you know, conference side of your team is going to be eliminated. So there's a lot of strategy involved. You know, there's a lot of good contest selection over on DraftKings right now. There's like a three dollars contest you can enter, and so you can get decent volume. If you want to throw thirty bucks at it or something, you get ten lineups pretty easily. So go check it all out DraftKings dot com. Okay, let's move on to what happened in the main event. The regular season rich so many people. It's so fun because again I've said this many times before. With becoming a best ball bro, this is you know, people listen to the Late Round podcast and perspectives and stuff, and you're trying to but you're listening to me for expert analysis if you will. You know, I don't love the term expert, but just you know, analysis in general. You're trying to allow me to help guide your team. But with becoming a best ball bro, I've always treated it as I am learning with you, and I'm talking to people who have had success playing best ball in the past, and how can I take these learnings and package it up in a way that you guys are able to take something away just as I am. Right, And so it's fun because there's a lot of people, like people weren't asking me about my season long you know, wins and championships and how well I did in season long, which by I too had a really good season long league, a season long season.

00:09:38
Speaker 1: But I wonder, I wonder why I did well then and then.

00:09:43
Speaker 2: In best ball. Best ball, though, is the one where people are like, you know, where are you at with things, how's it going with your advanced rate, et cetera. So let me just lay it all out there. I drafted two hundred and sixty teams on draftings this year. The two biggest ones that I did. There was a fifty nine dollars I can't remember what the contest was called because I'm just blinking right now. And then there was the MILLI right, the MILLI had the twenty dollars entry fee. I did forty one of the fifty nine dollars entries, and I actually advanced nineteen to forty one in that, or maybe seventeen out of forty one in that contest. But I want to focus on I didn't win, you know, I didn't even get a finals team in that in that contest, But the MILLI was was really fun for me. This year, MAX entered all one hundred and fifty teams. I advanced forty seven out of the one to fifty, so obviously expectations I have forty sevens a lot. The thing that was really crazy for me, I thought was and this is kind of one of the things that I've learned that I wanted to speak on, but I think there's a good time to talk about it. One of the things that I found interesting was like I didn't have crazy exposure. I mean, we went over my exposure on the last episode that we did before the season started. I don't think I had a single guy over twenty percent in my portfolio out of those one hundred and fifty teams. And to get forty seven meant one of two things. Okay, one of them was I just like hit on the general right guys. But I think the other bigger point was that this season in fantasy football, it didn't have these like insane league winners that you absolutely needed to have. You know, you sure there were playoff league winners, and you know you needed certain players at every step of the way. And I'll talk about this with with one of the lineups that I had, But you know, it seemed like there wasn't. You know, we had a Mecca Buka who was crushing the first month of the season, he fell off. You had Javonte Williams kind of fell off. Jonathan Taylor was on a historic run and he fell off after Daniel Jones went down. So like, there were really really good seasons CMC B, John Robinson, plenty of guys that were really good this year, but there was nothing that really there wasn't like four or five guys that you absolutely needed to have that would have had like absurd advanced rates. And even like the Jonathan Taylors who had really good advanced rates, I was basically at market with a player like JT maybe slightly below maybe like seven percent this year instead of you know the eight percent. But overall, I think that's really it was a good year for the flatter exposure in my opinion, And what I noticed then going into the playoffs with forty seven teams was that because I had that flat exposure, I felt pretty good about at least advancing to the Semis. About having a handful of teams getting to the Semis. So forty seven out of one to fifty, you would expect just given one out of twelve advancing in the next pod in the next round, you would expect about four teams to advance right to the Semis. I got five teams to the Semis. I didn't feel amazing about any of them, but I felt fine, like I thought they were competitive, and then I got one of them to the finals. So I am officially a MILLI finalist, folks, officially, which I can. You know, we'll check mark next to that, which is nice. You know. That's that's when I really felt the most like a best ball bro is when that happened. But then I really felt like a best ball bro because as one of those MILLI teams had Derrick Henry, Let's go that Saturday game against the Pack. Not only was it like amazing that Derrick Henry was dominating and he just happened to be on my Milli team. But it was also amazing because I've had a sort of tumultuous relationship with Derek Henry as a fantasy analyst through the years, you know, where all of that sort of just disappeared, and now we're I broke even with Derrick Henry after this, right, like we're good. You know, I didn't fade him this year. Clearly. There was a clip that went around. I was on Davis Maddock's show on his YouTube channel earlier this season, and I mentioned in this clip because shout out Sam Sherman, friend of the show, who was on the show last year before he sort of retired from creating fantasy content. He won BBM over on Underdog and he won the top prize and he crushed it and I'm really happy for him. But he had Dereck Henry as well. But there was a clip of me and Maddie talking about Henry and what the clip was basically me, this is in like July, and the clip was basically me saying like it's not like I was like, isn't it crazy that best ball bros? Are fading Derrick Henry Because we all know inherently he has a high weekly ceiling, right, but like everyone just ends up fading him. And at the very end, I said, I want to at least be heavier on Dereck Henry than the standard best ball bro and so I did do that. I think I was at like seven percent ish with with Henry this year. That was helpful obviously for this lineup. And this lineup also had i'll just read it to you guys, Brock Perdy, and so I stacked Purdy with Juwan Jennings, Ricky Piersaal and Christian McCaffrey. Trevor Lawrence, who I that was my go to you guys, remember that that was my go to Like late round dart Stack was.

00:14:45
Speaker 1: With Jilla over Baker. That will be on like the twenty five late round in Memoriam is going to be a t low greater than Baker for sure.

00:14:54
Speaker 2: Yeah that's right. Yeah, bold prediction. Teelaw over Baker. I got crushed for that. So te law I I stacked him with Diami Brown, which was a very frequent go to for me, with with Trevor Lawrence, which ended up being should have been Parker Washington. But that's fine. I think directionally it was a fine process and then I had base Shall Tuton, which obviously would have loved to have ETN. I looked back at that draft though, ETM went two rounds before Tuton, so it wasn't like I screwed that up and like took Tuton. I mean I had ETN ranked ahead of Tuton, but you know, I was probably closer between the two than I should have been. And then also I had Michael Pennix stacked with Kyle Pitts on this team. So if you're if you're listening to these players a little bit, you realize that, oh, week fifteen, JJ had Kyle Pitts in Week sixteen. Week sixteen I had the Brock Purty Christian McCaffrey game against the Colts. And then week seventeen I had here's the running backside, Derrick Henry Isaiah Pacheco, who I didn't even draft that much this year. He just happened to be on this team. Base Shall Tuton and JK. Dobbins drafted a lot of Dobbins, Jackson Smith, th Jigba. Obviously that helps out George Pickens, DJ Moore. So that was a bringback for the for the San Francisco Stack for week seventeen, Darius Slayton, Jalen Nole, who actually ended up being in my lineup in the final. He was an innings eater this year. He had some spike weeks because because those games happened earlier. It was kind of crazy because I'm like, oh my gosh, this is kind of coming together because Derek Henry went off for like forty points and then Jalen Nole scored like fifteen the Chargers, and so he found the lineup, and then Diami Brown like I mentioned, and then Devon Veley, who was actually starting to come on towards towards the end of that after they traded Rashid Shaheed, and then at tight end, I Kyle Pitts, Chicka Konkuo who also found my lineup week seventeen, and then Tyler Higbee was the last one obviously got injured, but I think process was fine with Higbe given the way that they used their tight ends in that offense.

00:16:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean Noah. Noah had a five for sixteen and four for seventy seven. I think one of the points we'll get to about this lineup is there weren't any dead people. There weren't any zeros right outside of.

00:17:08
Speaker 2: Pennsn Yeah, not a ton you had. I mean, like you had vele Val was banged up and he and he and then Dobbin Dobbin Sue. But all of those guys contributed probably aside from Diami Brown, all of those guys at one point contributed to the lineup this year, right because Pennix obviously didn't play. But yeah, so, I mean, long story short, I had Derrick Henry when it mattered. I had Kyle Pitts when it mattered. And this team, you know, I'm gonna get to this too, but this team. People talk about pod luck, and this is one of the things that I've learned. I think I talked about this last year too as sort of like a minor learning. I think the pod stuff is very important and part of this game. Like, if you were to not do pods, you would just have the same players in each round of the finals, right, Like it would just be you know, in week six and sixteen, it would just be all the Kyle Pitts teams that would that would be you know, mostly in he'd be like ninety percent rostered, and then the next round it would be all Pukinnakua, right, and then the next round. It's just I don't think that's the proper way that you should do. This is their luck involved in pods. So what I'm saying with pod luck for those of you who don't understand, after your twelve team league, after you advance, after two of the twelve teams advanced into the playoffs, you get thrown into random twelve team leagues, right, and then you have to get first place out of twelve, and then the next round you have to get first place out of twelve again, and then the final round is the finals, right, And so obviously to get first place out of twelve that's pretty low odds. But you know, instead of instead of grouping everyone together, they put them in these twelve twelve team pods. And I think a huge reason for that is because we want to make sure that that we have a lot of variation with teams and rosters as we go from one pod to the next. Is there luck involved? Yeah, of course there's gonna be luck involved. There's luck involved in fantasy football in general, you know. But I do think that it's a it's still a fairly reasonable way to do all this and it works both ways. Like the team that I got to the final rich so in the Semis, when and when pukin Akua went off, and he had like I think sixty three percent roster ship or something in the finals of of of of the MILLI. But when pukin Akua went off, my only Nikua team out of my five semi final teams had four other pukinnakua teams in the pod. Like the odds of that are astronomically horrific, right, And I somehow I hit on that, And I'm like, you gotta be kidding me, Like, if there was one other team, at least I'd have a decent shot. But the fact that there were four other teams, when Nakua goes nuts and he's like one of the guys that you need, it just means that that that team could easily die, right. It just so happens that the team that got through, which still scored well over two hundred points in the in the Semis, the team that got through out of the twelve teams zero pukinakua. I was I was fighting with zero Pukinakua teams. And that was a key reason I think that that you know again, I think it scored like two hundred and five, two hundred and six points in the semis, so it was still a really good team. It could have beaten a Nakua team. But it makes it easier whenever you have a little bit of that pod luck. So I had luck on one side and I had no luck on the other side. But fortunately I got one team through. That team was that San Francisco stack. I had Derrick Henry San Francisco goes off against Chicago, and I finished in fortieth place in the MILLI for twenty thousand dollars. Well done, Thank you, thank you, very very crazy. They're just a really fun crazy you know. It's not like the massive, massive wins that people have. But to me, it was meaningful from the standpoint of like really digging into best ball last year, having a rougher season and trying to figure this game out a little bit, and then changing my approach a little bit in twenty twenty five, and then seeing the results be what they were. I was pleased overall to be able to have a top fifty team, you know in the MILLI, and.

00:20:58
Speaker 1: A great I mean that. I can't believe Sam was just fading everybody in that in that that Niners Bears game, right, because I think, okay, because that game was just fireworks, right especially.

00:21:12
Speaker 2: The game was amazing, and it got to the point once Rock Purty hit my lineup, I'm like, uh, and CMC you hit my lineup. That's a cool thing. With best Ball, I was like, you're waiting for these guys to just hit your lineup and be viable pieces because someone in your line I might have seventeen points. You're waiting for CMC to score seventeen points, and then he hits it, and then every yard you're just you're just piling up the points over and over again. Uh. And that's what was going on with me with with CMC and Purty. I could have used, you know, a couple more a couple more looks to CMC, but I can't, you know, I can't get greedy.

00:21:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, and wee Week seventeen document. There were fire fireworks in that game, fireworks in that that Ravens Packers game. It's best Ball will remain this very interesting puzzle of Okay, we got to survive the regular season, right, we got to get to the playoff. But in order to get these teams that score a bunch of points, there has to also be correlation. So they's just always going to be this fine balance of pick the right guys, but also give yourself the best shot at the end of the season to score as many points as possible when it matters most.

00:22:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, So let's move on to some of the things I learned, because that's one of the things that I think is important to talk about. Okay, I saw a lot of people after their teams got eliminated from whatever contest, whatever basketball contest, the Millie BBM, whatever. I saw a lot of people that were tweeting and frustration, saying, like Week seventeen, correlation doesn't matter if you don't get there. Yeah, of course, of course it doesn't matter, right. I think where people are thinking about this incorrectly and saying that correlation and by correlation, I don't even mean individual team stacking, I mean game stacking more so of like those Week seventeen games. I think what people are kind of getting wrong here if they feel that way, is that you shouldn't be forcing the week seventeen correlations, right, Like, it's not that hard to do that when you're talking about a fourteenth round bringback, Right, Like, the difference between your feelings between a fourteenth round pick and a or an early fourteenth round pick and a late fourteenth round pick shouldn't be so significant that you're like, oh, I can't go after this guy even though he would allow this this game stack to be complete. There's just so much variation in variance, Like you don't know if that's going to be the guy or not. And you can sit back in hindsight and say, oh, I should have gotten Javonte Williams, but he didn't fit my okay, but you didn't know Javonte Williams was going to be one of the better values this year, right, Like, yes, in hindsight, you could do that, But while you're drafting, what if you drafted Javonte Williams and he was the biggest value and then that was the game that blew up in Week seventeen and everything worked out really really well for you. Right. I still think logically this is just this is my now maybe a little bit more than amateur opinion on this, but my opinion on this is that you should drafting. Of course, you should be drafting team correlation. Individual team right stacks are very important. I don't think you can get too big, honestly with a lot of these stacks, especially in a twenty round format. But with these stacks, there's two reasons for it. This is something that Mike Leoni brought up years ago that I think is just a really important because people think about stacks and they think about only the weekly upside of that stack. But there's season long upside with that stack. Right if you ended up picking like I had a ton of Drake May this year, which is probably why I had a good advance rate, because what happens if Drake May goes off, what happens at the New England offense is the offense it goes off, everyone in that offense beats ADP expectation and everyone becomes a value. And so when you're drafting those teams, you're doing it, Yes for the weekly ceiling. If I draft Kashawan Boody in the twentieth round and I had Drake May and he scores two touchdowns, then yeah, that's a huge boost to my overall team. But what's just as important is the fact that I drafted the offense that was the value offense for that year, right, whether it be both ramondre Stevenson and Trevion Henderson were find best ball picks this year, right, Like the whole offense was worthwhile to go after Hunter Henry was worthwhile. Okay, Sean Boody, Stefan Diggs, they all had their moments, they all had their their ceiling games and their usability. And so I think that that's one thing that that people should definitely recognize, is that you should be stacking teams at the very least. Now, is there an argument to be made that you shouldn't worry so much about week seventeen correlation, Sure, but I'm still going to draft week seventeen correlation because if you get to week seventeen, then you can, like, if those teams blow up, if that game blows up, you're a really really good spot. You know, I would have loved to have a bet I didn't have a bringback with Derrick Henry in that in my in my lineup, I only had Derek Henry as a standalone piece. Would have loved to have Christian Watson or you know, someone else in that in that packers. I mean, it's basically Christian Watson, but you know, I would have loved to have that kind of bring back. But even like process wise, would have loved to have Rome Adobs, a guy that I drafted a lot of, you know, and I just didn't just because of the way that draft kind of worked out. But I do think that if your goal and best ball is to simply not is to simply profit, right, is to simply have like a winning season that way, then you probably shouldn't be entering a large scale tournament where you know, the odds are pretty not in your favor to have a massive seaton like to have that massive season, right, there are a lot of other contests that you can choose from that have flatter payout structures, that have an easier time to get to the final, and you can still get a sweat. That's another thing that I wanted to bring up today is that, like in general, I do think that I want to look at game selection a little bit differently next year, Like I want to make sure that I am in some of those smaller tournaments, in smaller contests to be able to have those sweats in Week seventeen.

00:26:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, at the end of the day, of course, getting their matters, but the difference between one and twenty first place in first place is still one million, nine hundred and ninety nine thousand dollars right.

00:27:12
Speaker 2: Right, right, And and even if you want to make the argument of like you know, me getting fortieth and getting twenty k and you know you not making the final, I mean, the funny part about it is that is the argument that if you don't make the final, that you should be stacking week fifteen and Week sixteen games, or you just shouldn't stack at all. Because inherently we know that game stacking works because we see it in DFS every single week. Right, the best DFS players in the world wouldn't be game stacking if it wasn't a proper strategy. We know that it is a proper and smart strategy. So is the idea that you're just trying to get into the finals and just you know, let thing, let variants take the wheel. I mean, sure you can do that, Like Mike Leoni even brought that up multiple times on the show over the last couple of years, that you can still you know, try to game stack in week fifteen and sixteen. That's fine. I just say I would say I wouldn't dismiss game stacking just because there is variance involved in this game. I think that you know, go look at the winning like, go look at Sam's team that won. I mean he had he had like nine different game stacks in his in his lineup, right, because you want that back and forth nature to these games.

00:28:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that the point you brought up at the beginning is is the correct one in that Yes, maybe we shouldn't completely go out of our way to assemble these game stacks, but when ADP value is fair, then it seems like the best course of action if you want to maximize the value of your entry, that you should be looking for that tiebreaker to be at games for sure.

00:28:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, one hundred percent. Another thing I wanted to bring up. I think a huge part of the success this year is that last year I drafted maybe out of one hundred and fifty teams, maybe like less than ten three quarterback teams. Like it was very two quarterback team heavy. This year. Now DraftKings has twenty rounds, so it's a little bit easier to do it on DK, But I think I probably had ten two quarterback teams this year. You know, like the majority of the vast majority of them were three quarterback builds. And I think that's a huge reason for some of the success that I had this year with advance rate and then obviously getting a team in the final. But you know, to me, if you think about this, just like if I take some of my season long analysis and kind of attribute it to best ball quarterback, the elite quarterbacks, you're going after them more so for the predictability of them as opposed to the weekly ceiling of them. Like, yes, Josh Allen has the highest weekly ceiling of any quarterback in fantasy football, but there are other quarterbacks. Trevor Lawrence, you know, Brock Purty. They both showed that that can still have pretty big ceilings, you know when they throw for five touchdowns, because it's possible they can throw for five touchdowns, And you're getting those guys in the double digit rounds pretty consistently. So the predictability of the quarterback position in a tournament environment is a lot less important than it would be in your twelve team league where you are kind of playing more for like, you could make the argument that there is more of a floor play than a ceiling play in that environment, but then on top of that, you're actually having to set your lineup and you're actually having to say, I'm gonna play Josh Allen over Trevor Lawrence. But Trevor Lawrence can easily outscore Josh Allen. And in a fantasy draft, we know this is where the late round quarterback strategy spawned from. We know we're getting usable quarterbacks late in the draft, and so you probably should more often than not, even regardless of the results this year. I mean I didn't draft many elite quarterback teams. You probably should wait on your quarterback more frequently as long as you're getting those three quarterback builds, and those three quarterback builds are enabling you to hit that weekly ceiling with that additional piece more frequently. But then also you're getting a higher chance of just finding the guy finding the Drake May this year, finding the Matthew Stafford this year, whoever that player is. It's giving you a better chance to do that as opposed to taking on that opportunity cost of a Josh Allen in the third round.

00:31:04
Speaker 1: You're talking to the guy whose top drafted player last year was JJ McCarthy and this year was Daniel Jones. So I know what quarterback pain is when you don't have enough options within your lineup, And to your point about season long, the difference is there. In season long, again, you're trying to beat one dude or one dude dead. In these you have to beat your entire pod or if you get to the final, you got to beat a thousand other people. So having that floor and having that security is nowhere near as valuable as it is in a head to head matchup. So yeah, as someone who two years in a row was burned by some quarterback selections, I think I will be going what actually is the safe route in getting a third quarterback right by Patty and Roster. I think I will definitely be pivoting to that a little bit more next year.

00:31:53
Speaker 2: We look, we talked about it so much over the summer about if you guys go back, and I mean I wouldn't advise you go back and listen because that would be weird behavior. But we talked about so much during the summer about three quarterback builds and how it became more difficult to do so towards the end because the back end of that quarterback group was just getting closer and closer to those those middle round guys. But then it made so much sense to get the Dak Prescott's of the world, the Drake Mays of the world, because they're where they were being drafted wasn't tremendously different than where like cam Ward was being drafted, right, and so why wouldn't you just get the guys that we knew had like that, that true elite ceiling. Yeah, I mean, like, I think going three quarterback is the metaph for a reason at this point, Like I you know, this is anecdotal for sure. I'm not really coming at it with strong data. It's a little bit more difficult to analyze best ball stuff just because things have been flow and you know, it's just there's different drafting behaviors and stuff, and there's a lot of data in general. But I do think, like logically, a three quarterback build makes more sense. I think the three tight end build makes a lot of sense too. You get that on DraftKings. I think it makes it a lot easier. It's full PPR, so a flexo could be filled, you know, with the tight end. And then also it's it's you know, we were getting legit usable tight ends in the last round of drafts. Harold Fannon was a twentieth round pick throughout the summer. You know, the the RAMS guys were all usable at some point, it had some usability, and they were all drafted later because it's a onesie position, it's a low in demand position, and so therefore those guys get pushed back because the supply is plentiful, but the demand is lower. Right, So we're all drafting wide receivers and running backs earlier, which pushes quarterbacks and tight ends later, which is which is fantasy football one oh one. You know, And what I had talked about the late round quarterback in that ebook back in twenty twelve. And so I think though that you can make the argument that you could even do this with elite tight ends with Trey McBride and then just get two guys in the eighteenth and nineteenth round. I tried to do that frequently over the summer.

00:33:50
Speaker 1: You know.

00:33:50
Speaker 2: Obviously, Trey McBride hit brock Bauers. I'd say didn't George Kittle probably would have been fine had he not gotten hurt. But yeah, like I think we're gonna see a reaction, pretty strong reaction to some of those elite tight end, like to a brock Boers next year. It might make them more appetizing. But I you know, Trey McBride was my highest roster tight end this year. Remember we talked about that with the Exposure show, and a lot of that just had to do a simple adp in the fact that, like I didn't think he was gonna do this right, it was. It was the fact that he entered that early third round so frequently when there was that clear drop in overall, like after that, like t Higgins, jsn Range, it got into like Marvin Harrison Junior, who I wasn't high on, and like it got really iffy, and I'm like, yeah, sure, I'll take Trey McBride. That makes sense now. And plus maybe I drafted Jamar Chase or something like that for a week seventeen bring back. But I do think that we might see later tight ends this year. But I do worry that we're gonna see a similar situation happen to tight end this year than we did, like we did quarterback, where once you get into round you know fourteen, you're gonna really really dry up because people are gonna force them up a little bit. You know.

00:35:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, that merge actually kind of does seem inevitable, which we saw at quarterback last year where it's gonna go a couple guys early and then no one is going to be available late and everything's just gonna get smushed in that like nine to ten round range.

00:35:14
Speaker 2: Yeah. One thing that was so evident this year was the tight end dead zone. Did that episode on the tight end dead zone over the summer. The only guy that I would have drafted out of there was was Tucker Craft, and he was looking good until he got hurt, obviously. You know, it was basically like if you're going to draft a tight end from the tight end dead zone, which is generally like that after tight end five range, you know, after like the first four rounds or so of drafts, if you're going to draft a player from there, he'd better be a year one or year two guy, essentially. And that's what we saw, right. We saw Tyler Warren have a good year from an ADP expectation standpoint. He didn't have the as good of a ceiling as people, I think think that he did and perceive that he did, but he obviously was a good value pick. Colson Lovelin came on towards the end of the year a little bit obviously, he had a Week eighteen game that didn't really matter that much, and then Tucker Craft was also a huge, huge value there. And then once again in the late rounds, it's anyone's game, right, like, do whatever, draft Kyle Pitts, do whatever you want once you get to those rounds. But I really I would imagine more and more people are gonna are gonna understand and see that the Travis Kelceys, Travis Kelsey was actually okay, Like that was probably you know, I faded him for the most part. That was probably a semi mistake. But like Mark Andrews wasn't massively high on, you know, or Evan Ingram, I pulled back from after like June, in that time frame, after I did a little bit more research, those guys in the middle rounds were just we're not gonna want to have anything to do with those guys, and just just generally where ADP settles. Now, if that gap does exist, like you're suggesting and saying, where it's like, all right, we're gonna get two or three guys early and then there's gonna be a serious gap until round ten, similar to what we see with quarterback. Then you know, then there's a discussion that we had. But if we see what we saw last year. Sam Laporta was another one where I didn't draft him that much. I know he got hurt, but he wasn't pacing to be anything special this year. It just falls into that category of the tight end dead zone.

00:37:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we're just gonna the old, tried and true, get the young guys, and get the guys attached to good offenses somewhere late in the draft, and then I think I'm very curious as to what the temperature will be for Bowers because this is kind of the year from hell from him. Right, his knee explodes, he tries to play through it. Geno at quarterback Pete Carroll just smacking on some common sidelines.

00:37:30
Speaker 2: So yeah, no more exactly.

00:37:34
Speaker 1: So we'll see new quarterback, new coach if because realistically the gap between Bowers and McBride should remain fairly tight. I don't think your average drafter is going to see those two players similarly because of how bad Bowers this season.

00:37:48
Speaker 2: The other thing too, that we have to recognize, like I can sit here and be like I got Trey McBride right, I drafted him on eighteen percent of my teams and he balled out. Guys, I got lucky that Kyler Murray got hurt. You know, Like those are the things that can happen for that outcome to look the way that it did, right, And so I think like a favorable maybe eighty fifth to ninetieth percentile outcome hit for Trey McBride, and like a thirtieth percentile of twentieth percentile outcome probably hit for brock Bauers this year, right, And so you just think about next year moving forward, If it's more fifty to fifty as we should project from just a median outcome standpoint, then that's gonna They're gonna mean in the middle a little bit more like it's not gonna be as dramatic as the result showed, you know here in twenty twenty five. Not only that, but there's gonna be change in Arizona. We already got news that that Gannon is gone and that coaching staff is gonna be revamped, and who knows what happens with Kyler, But the bottom line is like there's always going to be these like things that happen with all these players. This is why I do episodes on things I got right and things I got wrong every year, which will come out in a couple of weeks. Where I first start with the things I got wrong is because I asked myself, did I get this wrong? Did I get this right? Or were there certain things that just kind of went a certain way and it wasn't predictable in the process was still sound Now I already know a couple of players off the top of my head that I just missed on and was had bad process with. But there were some things that I got wrong this year that I'm not that mad about that I got wrong, and things that I got right where I got lucky, you know that just it was it was a fortunate thing to get right, and that's the way that it goes sometimes within this game. I have a couple more things that I want to bring up with what I learned this year. One of the key things that I'm going to take away is being overly concerned about injuries. Now, being concerned about injuries is important, Okay, I'm talking about taking it to the next level and not allowing the market to just adjust it on my behalf. Right. Good example of that is obviously Matthew Stafford. This is of course, hindsight's in our favor here, okay. But I was I'm so frustrating talking about this.

00:39:51
Speaker 1: I was still with the old guy with the back, like, who can blame us?

00:39:55
Speaker 2: Who can blame us? I was so high on Pooka, Davante Adams. I actually still drafted a ton of I drive. Look. I ended up with I think thirteen percent Pooka and like sixteen fifteen, sixteen percent DeVante, and maybe like eight or nine percent, maybe nine percent Stafford. So I was still above market and above consensus with each of those guys. But I gotta tell you, guys like that was weighted a lot by pre mid July drafts, Like I was drafting Stafford everywhere before that as my third quarterback, and then all the news comes out about his back, and I slowed down. And I remember in my rankings, even because I had Puoka uh in that like after Justin Jefferson and Cedee Lamb Tire, I had Puka next, and I moved Nico Collins ahead of Pooka in my rankings because of the Stafford stuff. And it's just frustrating because it was the right, you know, it's the right process. It was oh it's just so frustrating, and so I don't want to be overly concerned about the injury stuff, even though like, yes, it's it's meaningful. But I at times, because I was overweight on Pooka early, even when his ADP slid, I was drafting him, but not as much as I should have probably been drafting him. You know, still got him enough, still obviously had a good season. But another example of that is is Devon a Chan, right super high on a Chan, and especially after the the John Newsmith trade over the summer, and then a Chan has what like a calf injury or something like that, like really close to the season, and I just basically stopped drafting him and I drafted you know, I was like, Okay, I got I got my a Chan. But it's like, how, how what is the real likelihood of that lingering for the next two weeks plus, you know, like what are the real chances of that going down? And then on the flip side, I think we have to be a little bit more open mind into the late late dart throw round picks. The Christian Watsons of the world, who you know, you can write I mean I wrote him off completely. I didn't draft a single team with Christian Watson this year, And I think in hindsight, you know, you can get burned by this because I like Brandon Ayuk, right, he didn't do anything this year, he didn't play this year. But but when you're talking about a twentieth round pick, I think that you should be okay with taking a chance on a player like that, right on a player like especially a big play wide receiver like Christian Watson.

00:42:14
Speaker 1: It's really hard to discern when to make those gambles too, because you would think Niners legit playoff team, double digit win team, good offense, like that's the type of team that you kind of want to roll the dice on a guy coming back later in the season and having an impact, and then he just doesn't. So yeah, I think we just have to be okay with the massive downside risks sometimes in taking an Ayuk or Watson, especially in double digit, late double digit rounds. But it's so unpredictable that I don't know, I don't know if there's any like any certainty whatsoever. Like sometimes I.

00:42:50
Speaker 2: Agree, I don't want people to walk away from this and be like, oh, he only was looking at this in hindsight, because it's very easy to watch, like I understand what I just said, Guy, I get it, and you could be like, how would we ever know that? I think though, that the difference is number one not being I don't ever want to be like massively overweight. But when we are talking about a literal last round pick, where the hit rates for these guys and giving you usability is so so slim to begin with, I think we have to be a little bit more open minded. Like Brandon Nyuk at some points the season I think was even a single digit round pick when when when like news was favorable for him, and then it got yeah, I got into like the thirteenth and stuff like that. But even then, like there's some opportunity costs, right, Christian Watson, there was none. There was nothing, you know, Like I don't know why I didn't. I just kind of wrote it off because but we knew that there was there was a decent chance he would play this year at least something and get something, you know. So my stance on the injury stuff, if it is a minor injury, that doesn't seem like a huge deal. Devon a chan right, Matthew Stafford's could have been major. Right. The thing with Stafford is less about me not drafting Stafford. I should have still been okay drafting the other guys because I'm a believer that the system is good, the players are good. Jimmy Garoppolo could have still allowed those guys to be semi relevant in fantasy football. You know. Obviously the outcome was Matthew Stafford's the MVP of the league, and I don't think I was prepared for that. But still I want I want to be more open minded about like my my real instead of being dismissive about that kind of thing, because it's really easy to be dismissive about that kind of thing. And with the late round guys like a Christian Watson, I definitely want to at least have like three percent exposure as opposed to none, you know, with a player like that. And the last thing to bring up, mix and match draft strategies and approaches. Right, last year, very very heavy hero RB and zero RB. This year mixed it up across the board, heavily had some RB. The team that got that that won twenty thousand dollars was an RB RB team, which, by the way, guys, you can go back on YouTube and I oh, I tweeted it. You can go back in my Twitter account to find the link. I drafted that team live on YouTube, that one that got fortieth place in the Millie. So you can hear my logic around all of it. When I drafted Derek Henry, I said, let's get weird, and I got weird, and I drafted Derrick Henry. And then I when I drafted JSN, I was like, yeah, JSN seems like the best value. It wasn't like I was like, yeah, I got JSN. At this point, I was like, no, this is like the best value on the board. I'm gonna draft ASN. And then I drafted DJ Moore, who I didn't draft a ton of this year as to bring back for CMC. You can hear the logic going through all of it, which might be interesting to some of you. But I definitely think that mixing draft strategy and approaches is just unbelievably important in these in these games, if you're doing a high volume in a lot of drafts.

00:45:37
Speaker 1: I think, at the end of the day, and it sounds so obvious that not string too far from ADP generally is the way. This is these best ball tournaments are the sharpest draft rooms, yeah, on planet Earth. So as long as you're putting together coherent rosters with team stacks, game stacks, and not absolutely straying miles apart from ADP, Like you can build good teams in this thing, right, and you don't have to Like you said, you don't have to be married to only one. I'm only doing zero RB, I'm only doing early tight end. I'm only doing early quarterback because that's when you're going to find yourself taking those half round risks, right, or trying to force these things as opposed to just kind of letting ADP play things out because other people are going to make mistakes too as well in these drafts.

00:46:35
Speaker 2: Look, man, you go back to the draft guide every year that I write with season long, and one of the consistent themes is always to be reactive to what's going on in your draft. And I know that it's like such a simple concept and something that everyone always talks about, but like it's not just like being like, oh, this guy got drafted here, and I am recognizing that this guy's being drafted here. It's no, it's being able to completely shift your approach in your strategy on the fly because you've done so many and you've listened to so many podcasts, you've done so much analysis, and you understand which player does what and what he's projected to do, and being able to just react to what the board is doing, what the board is giving you. Right, those are the best players in the world. Those are That's what they do. They don't just say I'm getting Trayvon Henderson no matter what at the beginning of the third round, when you know that an outcome can go the way that it did with Trayvon Henderson, you know. And so I think that's what this speaks to is that ADP value still is huge, right, is still one of the biggest edges that you can you can find in this game and stack your teams, right, Like, feel free to stack week seventeen, but most definitely find as many as many team stacks as you possibly can.

00:47:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's uh man, the I don't know why, but you're talking about draft strategy. There's just a quick draft story. My dad has been in an auction league since like nineteen ninety six. It's a goofy league. The first eight rounds are auction and then the rest of the draft as a linear snake draft. It's a very goofy league, and I have my own team now, and this year the auction was it was tough, Like I wanted to go there's no flex, it's the goofiest league. So I wanted to go premium tight end because with so few starting roster spots, I thought there was some value to going Boers or McBride. So I ended up getting McBride. And I just got in this tough spot where I just had no money to spend and the only two receivers left when I had money were JSN and DeVante. And it's just like sometimes it just things just you don't get anything, and things just fall into place for you.

00:48:39
Speaker 2: Right. That's why fantasy football is just as much about the players that you don't draft as the players that you do draft. Right, It's about understanding opportunity costs and understanding that your fades are arguably more important than the guys that you're actually targeting. And you know, no one expected this JSN season, No one expected DeVante Adams to necessarily be their goal line back the way that he was right, and and it just it works out that way. This is why I talk about variants as much as I do, and this is why I say to embrace that variance, because as you're embracing it, you're actually getting an edge on the rest of your of your league mates in the rest of the league, because they're very strict with how they're drafting. They're very strict with the way that.

00:49:20
Speaker 1: This outcome can't happen. This outcome is going to happen, right, Everything is a range.

00:49:26
Speaker 2: It's it's the gray area. Fantasy football goes circles back to that stupid episode that everyone hates. Actually, you know that they give me crap about when I traded Roman Dunsay for Mecca Buca in a in A in a back in May. And it's because of the gray area thinking of fantasy football that you're able to do that, and now you gain value on that, Like there's val I know that a Buka finished the season rough, but there's value in the dynasty market with having a Buka instead of a Donday. It's been a great season, man, it was. It was a great year overall. Like I said, I've got a lot of shows to to start up on and to do here in mid It'll start around mid January into late January with the things I got wrong, things I got right, and then getting into prospect season, which I'm very excited about. And like I said, Brandon Gadoula actually started today with Late Round Fantasy Football, so the newsletter you can subscribe for free lateround dot com. He will be helping out with that, writing some sweet content and doing some awesome research and Kitchen and I are doing the Late Round fantas Football show every week still and we will be doing that Wednesdays, I think at noon we'll call it noon Eastern on Wednesdays every week that will be on YouTube YouTube dot com slash at Late ROUNDFF and then it'll find its way over to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast feed. But rich of course, I appreciate your time and you doing the show with me throughout the summer. And then now let everyone know what you're doing and where they can find you.

00:50:55
Speaker 1: I'm at Richie Ryan across Socials at Gridin Gaeble will be looking at all the playoff betting lines and then make sure instead of doom scrolling bad things on your reels or your TikTok and all this madness into your brain, follow the Light Round ff because that's where we'll be seeing me clipping up all the things that that JJ is doing to you. Maybe you listen to the pod and you just need a refresher. These clips can can get at you and point you in the right direction.

00:51:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, and look all this like summarizing of the season stuff. You know, I talked about it a little bit today about like the tight end, dead zone or whatever the case may be. There's gonna be episodes on this. There's gonna be a lot of chatter on this. This is just the start of me starting to dig into this data and whatnot. I just need a little bit of time to get, you know, everything in order, because there's a lot of stuff that just happened. It's like I was in a tornado and got spit out, and now I'm just trying to like feel around and see where I'm at. So appreciate all of you guys for following along the becoming a Best ball Bro journey. Really hope we get to do it again next year or this year. I guess it would be in a few months, only like five months until this starts up again. But I appreciate all of you guys. It's been an awesome year. I hope it was fun for you as well. As always, thanks for turning in