Becoming a Best Ball Bro: Does Exposure Matter?

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Hey, JJ, when the last time you almost didn't make it to the.

00:00:04
Speaker 2: Bathroom like every day of my life.

00:00:07
Speaker 3: I mean, there's just look, I don't have the best system.

00:00:10
Speaker 2: As people know.

00:00:11
Speaker 3: I've gone gluten and dairy free and I felt great since doing that, so things have been better. It's been years since that happened, but yeah, I mean I feel that I've experienced that before.

00:00:23
Speaker 1: Yeah. So yesterday I met up with a friend in Santa Monica for lunch and my three year old tagged along with us. And on the hour long drive back, about halfway, I got a real mean case of the beg's and my son had fallen asleep. So there was only one option, JJ, and that was to get home. I am an adult. I'm not going to send my p's as an adult, but I will say as painful as that half hour was, it was still less painful than trying to draft a stackable quarterback at ADP.

00:00:55
Speaker 3: I'm JJ, and I've been playing in best ball leagues for years. But there are people out there who play out a lot more than I do, and there are people out there who have won a lot more than I have, and I want to learn from them. This season, I'll be documenting my journey of max entering Underdog's Best ball Mania contest, and I'll be doing so with guidance from some of the most successful best ball players on the planet. This is the year where things start to change. This is the year where I officially become a best ball Bro. Welcome into another episode of becoming a Best ball Bro. I think this might be episode ten of this series. So we are in the double digits. I'm JJ Zachareson, joined as always by my co host Rich Ryan Rich. I'm glad you were seemingly able to find the restroom.

00:01:48
Speaker 1: I got home, I penguin walked like Jayleen Wattle, and I made it to the restroom.

00:01:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, look, I feel you.

00:01:53
Speaker 3: I remember I was like our fifth year anniversary, my wife and I we were dating at the times.

00:01:57
Speaker 2: It was our dating.

00:01:58
Speaker 3: Anniversary, and we went out to a steakhouse in downtown Cincinnati when I was living in Cincinnati and I had we had a valet and when we left, right when I got in the car, I realized I gotta go, and since we were only about ten minutes away from home.

00:02:13
Speaker 2: I hazard flashered. Is that a verb?

00:02:18
Speaker 3: A hazard flashered? The entire way home, blew some red white red lights and I made it. I made it back, but it was it was quite the adventure.

00:02:28
Speaker 1: The red lights were honestly the hardest part because the driving. I was able to do some breathing and like just movement, But when there's that stillness and you're just battling, you're just battling with your mind at that point. The those are really the only challenges.

00:02:40
Speaker 3: I don't know how people live in like LA and stuff, because and I'm sure you've experienced plenty of of this type of traffic and whatnot, but like I get, I honestly have like some sort of sensation and feeling of complete dread and wanting to just do anything to get out of the situation. Just a lot of anxiety when I'm stuck in like construction or something and I'm just literally sitting there for like twenty minutes and not moving at all. I don't know how people deal with that on a daily basis in LA. It doesn't make any sense to me.

00:03:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's why I got invented podcasts. That's uh, that's true. True.

00:03:17
Speaker 3: Someone listening to this right now might be stuck in LA traffic and they're like they're like, yeah, I feel you.

00:03:24
Speaker 2: I totally feel you. This sucks. But yeah, like la, you go like five miles over a half an hour. I mean it's crazy.

00:03:30
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:03:30
Speaker 1: After lunch, I dropped my buddy off at Lax and it was thirty five minutes to go eight miles from Santa Monica to Lax.

00:03:37
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:03:37
Speaker 2: I can't do that. I just can't do that.

00:03:39
Speaker 3: I'm the person who you know because I live in the suburbs in Charlotte. But I'm the person even if there's some traffic and we get you know, it's like suburban traffic, a populated suburb and a fairly it's not like Charlotte's small, But like you know, I will go out of my way to go back roads to just be able to drive and not have to sit in traffic, even if it means that I'm a minute or two late.

00:04:00
Speaker 2: I just want to move the car around.

00:04:01
Speaker 3: It's like it's like like when I go to the beach, I can't just sit down on the beach all day. I gotta like get up and move around and go for walks and just do something. I can't just sit still. There's I might have a problem.

00:04:14
Speaker 4: I might.

00:04:14
Speaker 3: Anyway, let's talk best ball. No one cares about about these gripes. Uh, how has.

00:04:20
Speaker 2: Your week been going?

00:04:21
Speaker 1: And the quarterback thing is real? Like that was that was a joke for the Cold Open, but it is. I seriously made my worst selection of the entire summer post tilting. I started a wattle tyreek mostert stack and was looking to grab Tua, and someone who had just selected and unstacked I believe it was Joe Burrow took to a full round above ADP in front of me, completely unstacked, which sent me into to dizzying tilt.

00:04:53
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:04:54
Speaker 1: So later on I had this great idea that I was going to just grab a sneaky buck stack. Kateotten and Er Mayfield were right there and I was at pick three and it was on the comeback. So with my first pick, I saw that Oughton was higher in the queue, so I was like, okay, let me just grab him first. But I didn't. This is completely my fault. I didn't look at the board because the person drafting after me had both Mike Evans and Chris Godwin. So I grabbed Kate Oughton and immediately Baker Mayfield was gone and I went into dizzying, seething tilt at myself, not anybody else but myself.

00:05:27
Speaker 3: That's the thing with those with those later round stacks is that you really, you know, obviously like ADP is going to dictate that to some degree, like whoever has the higher ADP you're probably going to want to take first as like a default, right, Like I don't know who. I think Baker probably has the higher ADP between him and Aughton right now. But regardless, let's just say Baker's ahead of Aughton, you would probably buy default.

00:05:47
Speaker 2: Say I'm gonna go with Baker.

00:05:48
Speaker 3: But let's say you're in the ten spot and in the eleven and twelve spot, they already have pretty good quarterback options and they don't have good tight ends.

00:05:55
Speaker 2: Those are the scenarios where you just go with Aughton instead.

00:05:59
Speaker 3: It's sort of to it to some degree, like what I've talked about with Lamar Jackson, where you know, you just get Mark Andrews in the if you're in the front half of the draft, you get Mark Andrews first, because people are gonna have the hope of getting Mark Andrews if they select Lamar Jackson, right, But if you get Mark Andrews. You wipe out that hope of them getting that stack, then they don't go after Lamar Jackson. It's similar to this where if you're able to get like a kadot, and maybe they were even thinking about doing that with like a late stack, you know, then then you're you're forcing them to get like an unstacked Baker Mayfield. In this case a little bit different because they had Chris Godwin and Mike Evans, but you're forcing them to get an unstacked Baker Mayfield and that's not optimal, so they.

00:06:40
Speaker 2: Might not go that route.

00:06:41
Speaker 3: But yeah, man, I mean, look, one of my biggest focus, is probably my only focus this week, has been the quarterback position. And I've i asked this to our guests today, what you guys will listen to in a second, Eric bind For.

00:06:57
Speaker 2: I have noticed that.

00:06:59
Speaker 3: Teams are going after quarterbacks at in just an unreasonable rate, and the way that they're approaching the quarterback position hasn't been super rational. And I say that not as if like I have the answers. I say that objectively, they're doing people or doing things that just don't make any sense. Right Like earlier today I drafted Jayden reading Christian Watson and I'm waiting for Jordan Love. I did push it by a round, and he would have been drafted, you know, four spots past adp had I gotten them where I wanted, but two places before me, Jordan Love gets drafted to a team without any vikings, without any packers, so he doesn't have the week seventeen correlation. And with Jalen Hurts, you know, like it's those kinds of situations and I, you know, of course we've experienced the two of stuff like you talked about. I've experienced and I started off this series with a Kirk Cousins tilt. It happens happened. You know, I ended up kind of making up for it. I didn't mind my team at the end of the day. And you know, we've talked about this over and over and over again. But I think over the next month, man, we're gonna see this be a lot more.

00:08:09
Speaker 2: Prevalent.

00:08:10
Speaker 3: We're gonna see it everywhere within these drafts, and that's a little bit scary. So one of the things that I've been trying to do is get ahead of it a little bit and not be as afraid to reach at quarterback by a little bit instead of extracting some of that value, especially if it's like a later round guy like a Kirk Cousins or something. You know, like the difference between a twelfth to fourteenth round pick is not going to be super super significant. So I'm okay with reaching by about a round to get a guy to make sure that I complete the stack.

00:08:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, so of quarterbacks that are currently on teams, because for some reason, both Talia Tagavaloa and Tom Brady have been drafting at some point during this process, So of quarterbacks that are currently on teams, twenty four have at least a neutral or even a positive ADP bump week over week. Right now, twenty four quarterbacks on teams, So this definitely something that's happening. And then just some maddening things like a guy who had Jamar Chase taking Dak naked Dak instead of Burrel w and Burl It's like Burrow was like after ADP. So yeah, it's just you got one. Don't tilt, don't go into dizzy seeling tilt like I did. Try to remain calm, and then yeah, you just got to be as fluid as possible because there's gonna be way more randomness. The closer we get to the season starting, You're just gonna see way more randomness in the drafts that journey.

00:09:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, talked a lot about that in the interview, So hopefully people will get some game theory and some strategy takeaways from that discussion for sure.

00:09:40
Speaker 1: All Right, let's talk players, and again we've We've brought them up several times, and I'll say it again. This was the first reel I made in the off season, very fun back out of Denver. It's JELLEL McLoughlin. McLoughlin. I that is a name. I grew up with a kid named Lachlan. It was his last name. So this is just a name I will butcher in perpetuity. Apologies.

00:09:59
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like so naming the right pronunciations is important to me. As I've said before in the show, Like Kamani Videll is if I bookmarked a video of him saying his name in my browser, and so he says Videll like an almost like an ell instead of an al. So a lot of people are saying Vidal and stuff like that, it's actually Kamani Videll. And so McLoughlin has like that f sound with the with the GH. But yeah, look, I've talked about Julil McLoughlin since the beginning of the offseason. He was a dynasty buy for me. You know, you look at his metrics last year on a per rush basis. Now this isn't a total apples to apples comparison, but on a per rush basis, he was better than Javonte Williams' samaj p Ryan across the board, just everywhere. And then the statistic that I keep bringing up is that Sean Payton. You know, since twenty eleven his teams have owned eight of the top twenty is actually top seventeen, eight of the top seventeen team running back target share seasons, which is absolutely bonkers considering he didn't even coach every single year during that timeframe. And so you know, last year they led the NFL and running back target share. You look at their situation right now. They don't have locked in pass catchers. We don't even know who the starting tight end is right now because Greg Dolesich can't stay healthy. You know, obviously Courtland Sutton's there. But then you have a question mark with Marvin Mims, a question mark with Troy Franklin, who I liked as a prospect.

00:11:21
Speaker 2: We just don't know.

00:11:23
Speaker 3: And now there's this talk about Javonte Williams, you know, maybe getting cut between him and Samaji p Ryan. I'm of the belief that Javonte Williams is gonna be on that team. And I said on my podcast yesterday that if Javonte Williams gets the exact same workload that he sault last year, he's actually not a bad pick at ADP. Like he averaged in terms of expected points per game last year. This is PPR, but he averaged you know, in that like thirteen to fourteen range, which is like that's expected points per game. He played a little bit below that expectation, but that's like lowen, you know, that's like RB two numbers. If he were to see that kind of workload again this year, and maybe he could see more too, because there hypothetically might be you know, they might just want to give him more after that knee injury. But Julil McLoughlin I think is just safe, Like he's just a safe pick because you don't have the question marks of him getting cut. He was really really good last year. I think he's gonna be involved this year. Sean Payton's already saying positive things about him. He's a good pass catcher. He can play a pass catching role. So I think that given he's got some explosiveness, I don't think he's gonna be a bell cow, but I think in best ball, you don't necessarily need that for him to pay off. Like he can have a big play and all of a sudden, a sixty yard touchdown.

00:12:35
Speaker 2: He's usable that given week.

00:12:37
Speaker 3: So the fact that he's gonna get work again, it just goes back to I love that pocket of players. I love those rookie running backs in that pocket. I love Jaalil McLoughlin, and I've just noticed that this week. I've gotten a lot of Jalil as like a sort of safety blanket, you know, if I go more hero RB or zero RB.

00:12:53
Speaker 1: You know, with this negative news tug of war between samaj and Javonte, it's a good spot to be in where no news is going to be good news for Jaliel. They want him to be on this roster and be a part of that running back group. You've got another running back that you're focusing on out West, but in the other conference, this time it's rookie Blake Korum. You've been clicking him a lot.

00:13:12
Speaker 4: J J.

00:13:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm kind of surprised by this because when the draft happened, and when I was looking at my Dynasty rankings when I first released them, I was too low on Korum. I switched it up after thinking about the situation a little bit more. Korum is higher than he was like right after the draft, because I obviously give people rankings right after the draft is over, and I'm trying to give you the most accurate that I can possibly give. But I think about this stuff. I see reports, I look at data, and things will change. It's just naturally how things go. So I was too low on Korum after the draft. I didn't mind him as a prospect. Thought he was very, very solid as a prospect. That didn't change.

00:13:49
Speaker 2: The thing that.

00:13:50
Speaker 3: Worried me was obviously Kirien Williams being there. And I do think Sean McVeigh and company love them some. Kiraen Williams. I do think that they do. But you know, if you look at the draft guide, Kien Williams right now is a fade for me or an avoid at ADP. I do have some fear because a lot of the market trends that we don't want out of rb Ones he has, which is he has a lower prospect score, which does get signal with rb Ones. He also has a running back team MA getting drafted in the top forty eight at the position in Blake Korum, which tells you that that player. This is why this market trend matters, because that other player is probably going to get some work in that backfield, which means there's less work for Kien Williams.

00:14:31
Speaker 2: And then you look at the team's actions.

00:14:32
Speaker 3: They can say what they want, but if you look at their actions, they went on and they spent a Day two pick to get Korum, who of all the running backs in this class, matches Kien Williams the most as a prospect As a player, smaller back can do it all really solid as whether be in between the tackles or as a receiver. And so my fear with Kyrien is that he's not going to see quite the workload that some are projecting them to see. And then as a result, I'm just kind of flipping that and saying, Okay, I don't think Korum is as viable to be fair in A in a managed season long league, Like it's similar to like a Zach Charbonay. Let's say, like I don't mind going sharps. I think the difference between Korum and a Charbonet is that I actually think Sharbonay has a better chance to just be the guy that that coaching staff wants to use. Do I think that's probable? No, But I think it's more possible than Blake Korum just naturally overtaking that backfield and being more of like the sixty out of the one hundred in the sixty to forty split as opposed to forty, if that makes sense, right. So, like I do think that like a player like a Sharbona might be a little bit more attractive in a managed season long league because he can he could just do that. But to me, Korum, you know you're not gonna have to predict when those big performances might come as a backup.

00:15:49
Speaker 2: But then on top of that, he has the injury upside.

00:15:52
Speaker 3: Right, So I think Korum is being drafted sort of close to his projection, whereas Zach Sharbonay is being drafted at his projection.

00:16:00
Speaker 2: So Charbonnay, I've just gotten a lot more.

00:16:02
Speaker 3: Of But over the last couple of weeks, I've just found myself going above ADP and getting quorum in certain builds, and I wanted to call that out because you know, I'm trying to be transparent about how I'm drafting these teams.

00:16:15
Speaker 1: It's so funny that you call out this type of intrasquad competition as being a negative. And we know that because volume is so important at the running back position, Whereas I feel like the entire best ball space has been quarreling about Cooper Cup and Pukinakua at a position where and you've studied this before, two guys can eat and return value in the same offense. So people are quarreling about two guys that are probably likely to meet ADP.

00:16:41
Speaker 2: Yeah they could, yeah, right.

00:16:43
Speaker 1: And both be good players. Whereas this other position, which is super valuable running back, where we're all chasing upside at there's this like very obvious yeah thing that we can attack that people are don't.

00:16:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, And look with Kyen Williams, I get the upside, of course, I get the upside.

00:16:58
Speaker 2: Look at his points per game last year.

00:17:00
Speaker 3: If they end up giving him the rock and letting him be the belk, how he was last year. I just don't think it's gonna happen because everything points to them trying to relieve that a little bit after he got hurt last year, like he was not if he went through last season fully healthy and everything was butterflies and rainbows, and they didn't spend you know, a pick on Blake Korm.

00:17:20
Speaker 2: Even if they did spend a pick on Blake Korm.

00:17:22
Speaker 3: I might not be you know, as bearish on Kyroen, but I am because all of their actions sort of point to them. You know, I think Kyroen can be fine, and he still comes out as like a low end RB one of my projections and such, But I just don't know if you know, he's worthy of like automatic And I said this, do you remember this, Like a month and a half ago, I said that I was drafting Derrick Henry over Kien Williams. That was one of my And like, I just don't see the reason why Kyron needs to go ahead of Derrick Henry. I don't see the reason why I've seen Kyroen go ahead of Devon h Chan in some drafts, and I just I don't see the need or reason for that. And I even think that you can make the argument that Isaiah but Checho should go ahead of Kien. Williams right, It's not like Pachecko has has less competition. We don't know for sure that Kyen's going to have a dramatically larger target share than Isaiah Pacheco. Will I think the only difference between a Kiren and a Pachecko is that there might be more scoring opportunities for Kyen, maybe only because the Chiefs are so pass heavy at the goal line, But I just I'm having a hard time understanding why the market seems to not be factoring in Blake Korum enough. They're factoring in some in some way, because if they weren't, he would be like a one to two turn guy, which he was before the NFL draft happened, right where he was the belcow.

00:18:40
Speaker 2: But with Korum there, I'm a little bit worried about what that ceiling might look.

00:18:44
Speaker 1: Like the last player. We know historically that tight ends tend to succeed when they're attached to very good quarterbacks. So j J, what if I told you that there's potentially a top five quarterback who may or may not have cosplayed as eminem here on the first day of training camp, who has a tight end that's being drafted in the two hundreds.

00:19:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm gonna preface this and say that our guest today has a slightly different take than me on this, but I think his take is not wrong because we're talking about eighteenth round picks, right, And I think that's what's key here when you're looking an eighteenth rounder. To me, you can take any news item and run with it because you're not investing that Like, what if that news item ends up being correct, like a Kien Williams being used more last year, like by what Jordan Rodrik had reported, or all of the hype that Pukunakua was getting last year. If you just ignored those things, you had zero of those players more than likely. I do think that we have to take some reporting and you know, be at least and use it to our advantage at least a little bit, or implement it, especially with these late round picks where we don't know what the talent profile might look like, we don't know what the fit in the offense might look like, So lean into the variability and lean into these items that we see because it's not like the market is necessarily reacting on a guy like Mike Kasiki, who we're calling out here right he's still an eighteenth round pick, like he's still going at the end of drafts, and there's a report out there saying that he could actually be the biggest winner of Tyler Boyd not being in the slot in that Cincinnati offense and maybe he plays a big slot role, which that's what Mikeasiki has done throughout his career. You know, I talked about this before on the show with John new Smith, where a lot of people are like, well, if Mike Kasiki couldn't be a relevant tight end with Mike McDaniel, than John new Smith can't be Well, Mikeasiki didn't play a traditional tight end role when he was in Miami because he's not a traditional tight end. He's a big slot like. That's that's what Gasiki is. He just has that tight end tag. And we can use that to our advantage a little bit, because can ask ourselves, what if they do use him in that role, in that in that slot type role, in that hybrid role, all of a sudden, he could be a big red zone threat with a team that should throw the ball a lot, should score a lot of touchdowns. You know, I don't think that the talent of Mikeasiki is like through the roof good. But I'm willing to throw an eighteenth round dart, you know, if I get an a leite tight end early or if I'm in a three tight end build, especially if I get Joe Burrow, I'm fine with going that direction. But this is a little bit teaser as a bit of a teaser as well for the guests, because he has a really good take that I don't even disagree with that relates to the same position on this same team that I think people are going to like.

00:21:21
Speaker 1: Let's get into the take. Then you got me sitting on bins and needles over here.

00:21:24
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:21:24
Speaker 3: So I talked to Eric bimfor He's a high volume best ball player who runs things over at spikeweek dot com. We talked about how his strategy is going to change, if it's going to change with some more casual players entering the picture, which again I mentioned in his interview, and I'll mention it again right now, that's not a derogatory.

00:21:44
Speaker 2: Thing if you're a casual player.

00:21:46
Speaker 3: I'm literally saying that just to sort of tell you that there's going to be more inexperienced players coming in because you guys aren't degenerates who have been drafting since May.

00:21:53
Speaker 2: That's really what it comes down to.

00:21:54
Speaker 3: I'm the sicko, you're not the sicco, but more casual players are entering the mix. We had a discussion about exposure, which I feel like we haven't talked about enough sort of on this show, despite this being episode ten of this series. Talked about late round targets, whether that's tight ends or just regular players at running back and wide receiver and more. It's a really, really great discussion. So, without further ado, here's my interview with Eric. This episode is sponsored by Underdog Fantasy. If you haven't played over an underdog yet, now's the perfect time. There are tons of different best ball leagues that you can join, and there's definitely a league out there that fits what you're looking for, and you can use all the things that I've talked about with guests on becoming a best ball bro to crush those drafts. But like I said, now's the right time to.

00:22:40
Speaker 2: Join up because if you go and.

00:22:42
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00:22:54
Speaker 3: So head to Underdog Fantasy dot com, sign up using promo code late Round and make it a positive. I can confirm it's a really really fun platform to play on. Now back to the show, All right, Eric, we're going to see a change in demographic over the next month over an Underdog where you know, I don't want to like speak down to people who are like more casual with this stuff, and I feel like, I feel like when you call people casuals it's like a bad thing.

00:23:22
Speaker 2: It's not a bad thing at all.

00:23:22
Speaker 3: Actually, they're they're much healthier than we are when it comes to best ball in drafting these teams. But we are going to see sort of a change in demographic. My question to you is what are you going to change as sort of less experienced drafters enter the fold.

00:23:39
Speaker 2: You know, is your strategy going to change at all?

00:23:42
Speaker 4: Yees? So it's funny because on one hand, we're getting, you know, from now until the season more and more like you said, casual. Well, we would consider like a little weaker competition and which is great. We want to be swimming in the waters where you know, there's more fish as opposed to more sharks. But we're also gaining more information during this exact time as well. So it's this balancing act where we want to be react like that's part of the advantage that we have, as you know, kind of players that are taking in more serious and drafting over the course of the whole summer is being able to react to the information more effectively. But our opponents may be weaker and they're getting the same information and kind of ADP is guiding them into theoretically the right decision. So it's a pretty fun balancing act where I'm not like changing a ton about what I'm doing, but I'm being very ready to pounce on situations when I think we've learned something that the market has changed, you know, some situation has changed from what our expectation was. Obviously, last year there was a couple they mostly happened to be on the rams apparently, so be long the lookout for the rams. I guess this this summer. But you know, we found out about the Kirim Williams and cam Akers situation, and we found out that Puka Nikoua was probably just pretty good. And starting from day one for the Rams, like, you know, not just yet, but pretty soon late July, August, definitely into September, we learned that. And so being ready to pounce on probably not a Kira and Williams Pooka thing this year, but we're gonna learn things about backup running backs and wide receiver threes and starting quarterbacks and some of these situations. And just being ready to kind of pounce once we get it is kind of the perk up drafting now, and I think some of our opponents coming in may not be as ready to pounce and understand what the right prices are and all those kinds of things.

00:25:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's interesting.

00:25:28
Speaker 3: And the other thing too, I think that when you have sort of like a baseline of a player's ADP journey throughout the summer, it seems like you might have an advantage right where it's like, oh, I knew that this player was. You know, let's like like this, the wide receiver was a round eight pick and he's moved to a round six and why has that happened? And I just have that information and that knowledge and that can help me you know, be reactive to sort of what's going on. But also let me let me follow up with this, actually, do you think that you have a bigger advantage as a season VET as someone who's playing a lot against these against more casual gamers because you're better at game, at roster construction and game theory or do you also or do you attribute it more to the newsy stuff that you're talking about, where you're looking at that stuff more, You're you're analyzing that stuff deeper than others might be analyzing.

00:26:22
Speaker 2: Like is there or is it just both?

00:26:25
Speaker 4: I think just like about everything there's it's not really like necessarily binary. I think you have to have best ball. Is funny in that it's not any one like you could probably say from a DFS perspective. You know, I show up and like I'm just better at the game theory element or my projections are better, which is a little tougher nowadays. You know, season long manage leagues like I just know the right kinds of players to pick, I know how to play the waivers better. You know all that kind of stuff. In basketball, I think you kind of have to have this toolkit of all these different things and we kind of call them levers, right. I want to be able to pull the rows construction lever, but I do want to be able to pull like the game theory lever. We do a lot of that work. I think that's probably where I and we in our little Spike Week community excel is in some of the game theory style stuff, and game theory from a like best ball perspective is kind of awkward and goofy, but super duper basic level things. There are things about the way people draft that are just so predictable, like eighty p you slap a list you know of one to two hundred and fifty in front of somebody, They're going to stick to that stick to that list, right, And there's there's not a lot of reason why some players get drafted together a lot more frequently than other plays quarterbacks and wider and their teammates for sure. But you'll get a guy you know who goes in a same similar like wide receiver tier, and he's drafted two percent of the time with another first round pick and twenty percent of the time with another first round pick. And so some of those little elements are are some of the biggest edges I think in terms of like you're not making a worse team. You're just saying, this guy's the same as this guy, and I'm going to take the lower owned combination of players. But then you have to be able to react to news. You know, like I said last year, if you were able to everybody started to see the Kyne and Pooka and you know, some of these guys like it was public. It's it's all public information, right, we all have access to it. But being able to weed through and parse what is the stuff that is notable and what is just Savior worthy caught a sixty yard touchdown? Yeah, you know during camp type things. It is. It is a skill and nobody's perfect at it. But if you can really, like I said, parse through those things and act, you know, act quickly, that's when like those are the most powerful. We're going to learn the most powerful things now. So being able to figure those out is definitely another big edge. So I don't know what the biggest one is, but you definitely got to be able to kind of do a lot of it. You can't just stick your head in the sand and you know, pray that your may takes. Where were the right ones because you probably were drafting Zach Evans last year in May and it was actually Kyen.

00:29:00
Speaker 2: Right, right, right, Yeah.

00:29:01
Speaker 3: The Xavier Worthy example is actually a really good one because I remember so that that touchdown happens a couple of days ago or however long ago it was, and then I hop in a draft pretty soon after that, and he went like forty and he went like forty fifth overall when his ADP sixty fifth overall. Right, and it's like you should reac or you can react not necessarily to that kind of item. But let's say there's a news item that is reactionary worthy, right, no pun intended, and you know, and you are able to then you know, draft you only have the draft a guy a little bit above ADP, Like you don't need to reach for a guy by two rounds. That's two rounds of like pretty serious equity. Like we're talking fourth round versus sixth round, which is not irrelevant. You know, it's not like you're talking fifteenth round to seventeenth round. And so I do think that that's a piece where like we got to at least watch out for seemingly I haven't been in the best ball streets at this volume, you know, this time of year. Yet you know, I've always played, you know, throughout the summer and stuff like that, but not to the degree in which I'm playing this year, which is why this podcast even exists in the first place. But what I've at least seen is that every draft seems to have, you know, a drafter that's willing to do something like that.

00:30:09
Speaker 2: But to me, like, let's just.

00:30:11
Speaker 3: Use the Xavier Worthy example really quick, Like am I wrong to think that there's no need to be that reactionary for any news item. It's just a matter of like, okay, take a guy like five spots ahead of ADP.

00:30:23
Speaker 2: If there's something that you feel like is worthy enough, you.

00:30:26
Speaker 3: Don't need to reach by two rounds of solid capital, you know, in order to get that.

00:30:31
Speaker 4: Guy one hundred percent and then that. So it's interesting because the xavier Worthy thing is clearly just mostly a fun you know, highlight that that we that we got to see. But I do I don't think it's crazy to say, oh that reminded me, you know, or oh he is playing with the ones that you know, we are getting some something like somewhat tangible hasn't really changed anything, but it can be okay to say, okay, I want to go draft seem like it is kind of fun, right, we can have fun with this too, But it's exactly what you said. So he's going in the mid sixties or something on Underdog. Okay, I got the sixtieth pick, I can take him here. There's really no big difference between those two spots, right. But the problem lies is now I get to the late third and I'm like, I really wanted to take Xavier Worthy in this one. I'm just going to take him because I don't love whoever is available here. That's when you start to run into some of those problems. You also run into that problem. The more expensive the player is, the bigger the reach at the higher the cost is a real issue. Whereas you know, again the most notable stuff that happened last year ended up being late round guys. Although don't tell the people who were drafting Calvin Ridley at the end of the second round last year because it was kind of this Xavior Worthy level hype train all summer from the Jaguars for Calvin Ridley. But if you're thinking about reaching on that Xavier Worthy style, you know, sixth round pick, fifth round pick. I would be really really cautious about how far we move we move up for that it's okay, like you said, a few picks or something, and you know, it doesn't always a lot. Your pick may not be his exact ADP. Right, it's a it's a snake draft. So that's fine. When we get later in the draft is when it does that balancing act can be a little like it it's not as tight of a needle to thread. But also it's difficult to understand when we got some of that actionable information on a guy who was going in the sixteenth round, how high is it acceptable to reach, because it's it's much, it's much, it's much less. You know, we're talking about a sixteenth round pick is something like a dollar player in an auction draft, and maybe a twelfth round pick is like a three dollars player in an auction draft. You know, moving from the sixth round to the fourth round is huge difference. Moving moving late is not a big difference. And so you know, I'm much more willing to reach later. Again, not to keep mentioning the Rams last year, but they were just the shining example. Once we got that news, those guys ADP was in the last round, but if you took him in the fifth team, you know, if you wanted both of them, you took them in the fifteenth, it's totally fine. So figuring out where that line is, I think is an important thing for everybody. But I'm more willing to reach more the later the draft gets.

00:33:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's not like the ADP is gonna flip overnight to be two rounds higher than you know. It's gonna take a little bit of time for that to happen. I do think that, like going to the Worthy example, if you believe that the market is going to shift based on what we're seeing and you need some or you want some exposure, that's another reason to sort of get them a little bit ahead of ADP and sort of be ahead of that ADP shift. But again the greater point being that like number one, later round picks, you know, you can reach a little bit more easily. But also just remember that ADP isn't going to just like change dramatically overnight. Now talking about game theory a little bit, and again going back to this demographic change where at least in August we're gonna definitely see people who have them been like grinding drafts throughout the summer. One of the positions that I think, I mean, I think quarterback is fairly efficient. The way that the markets kind of treating it right now doesn't seem like there's obvious way. He talked to Mark Arcia last week a little bit about like how he's attacking the quarterback position, how there are ways to differentiate potentially. But you know, one of the things that I've noticed, and I just want your thoughts in general, maybe on quarterback, especially with the change and type of player that's going to be drafting, But one of the things that I've noticed over the last week or so, week and a half or so is that it seems like quarterback and the stack ability of quarterbacks is just becoming a little bit more difficult because people are throwing darts at naked lineups.

00:34:35
Speaker 2: You know, they don't have Kyle Pitts and Drake London.

00:34:37
Speaker 3: They're getting Kirk Cousins ahead of adp because why not, you know, And I get that's kind of stuff is going to happen. And I've learned over the last three months to not tilt that, you know, out to oblivion when that happens to me because it's very easy to tilt those those experiences. But another example is I was in a draft the other day and I was hurting at quarterback.

00:34:58
Speaker 2: My QB one was not like Aaron or something. I wasn't feeling good.

00:35:01
Speaker 3: So I was going to get two quarterbacks late, and I'm like, okay, I could get like a Bryce Young Bo Knicks type situation late because I had pieces to both of those. I was setting it up for that, right and lo and behold in the seventeenth round, both of those guys go one of them to a Mahomes party lineup right, and it's like they don't They clearly don't need bo Nicks on this team, but they went out and got bo Nicks. Is that something that we should be thinking about, you know, as August hits with with you know, different demographic of players. Is there anything else that you want to throw out there about quarterback and how you're attacking it this year?

00:35:33
Speaker 4: Yeah? So, first, you're you're no longer becoming a best ball bro. You are a best ball bro. If you're setting up you were thinking ahead to the setting up your Bryce Young and bow Knicks stacks. That's how you know you've already come full circle, but it's definitely quarterback is the one spot where, like I think about it again, as as casuals start to come in, it's not even just the skill sets of the players or the you know, the ideology of these new players that are coming in. It's also we're gathering information about the total collective player pool. And who does that hurt in terms of like weeding out options. It's the running backs and the wide receivers. Because we start to learn depth charts. We start to learn like, oh, no, Jalen Hyatt is running with the fours, you know, with the last year for the Giants, and it's like, oh, you know, he should go in the last round, not in the thirteenth round or whatever. And quarterbacks we don't get that. We know who all the quarterbacks are sayings a couple of situations, and they're pretty much priced where they're going to be priced regardless. So if we're weeding out running backs and wide receivers, it pulls up quarterbacks. It also makes our opponents, who are maybe some of these slightly more you know, casual players, less comfortable with the running backs and wide receivers, and probably even tight ends that go later in the draft. So what does that mean, Well, there's one position of comfort. I can draft a guy who I know is going to play football this year, you know, and he's going to score fantasy points, even if it's not actually helping my lineup. Those people are thinking about it that way, like I don't want to have this, you know, I don't want to draft the Rashad Penny or whatever of last year that where pipe dreaming is going to be a thing and is a zero all season.

00:37:09
Speaker 2: So what you did is what I do.

00:37:12
Speaker 4: A ton. I will say I take a ton of the like Air quotes elite quarterbacks. We can pick and choose how we define that. Like, I still think the Dak Prescottish tier is kind of a lead. And then we also have the new rookie class, particularly Jade and Daniels and Caleb Williams. I'm into Trevor Lawrence. There's kind of I would almost call like Trevor Lawrence like a little bit of a mini like break for me because Purty and those rookies and stuff are off the board, and then we get into the pocket. You're right here. You mentioned Aaron Rodgers cousins to those guys Stafford, and so once I reach that point, I will be in the uh oh, you know, if I don't have a guy by Trevor Lawrence, you really got to start thinking about what you like. You said, it's going to be Derek Carr time and Bo nixt time, and that's okay. But I'm taking a ton of those elite guys. But I'm also constantly doing what you're doing when I'm on the board. You know, when I'm on the clock, I don't have a quarterback yet, and I'm deciding between two wide receivers or two tight ends, taking the one that it has a quarterback that's still available to me, to me later exactly like you did. You know, so take Deontay Johnson instead of instead of Xavier Worthy at that price because Patrick Mahomes is gone, it still gives you those outs. And thinking about we like to call it back to front drafting, like thinking about what's available to me later in the draft helps me with my earlier decisions and helps you feel less of that pain when you took Tyrek and Waddle and some you know a hole took to around ahead of ahead of ADP. You feel okay because you took Deontay Johnson or you took you know, Courtland Sutton or something like that to set these back door stacks up.

00:38:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's been one of the most glaring things for me drafting this summer is that it's thinking in that way, right, like like an example of this too sort of goes into so like I love Jacksonville, like the Trevor Lawrence example that you that you shared.

00:39:03
Speaker 2: He's one of my highest roster quarterbacks.

00:39:05
Speaker 3: I think that's one of the reasons why is because I feel most comfortable and he's at the bottom of that tier, right, so he'd be the last one that you would be taking, and I feel most comfortable about him as like, Okay, this could be pretty legit this year, and so I have a lot of Jacksonville.

00:39:17
Speaker 2: They're easy to stack too, you know.

00:39:18
Speaker 3: It's like if you're in that front half of the draft, like you know that you can get a lot of Jags and feel good about it and get.

00:39:23
Speaker 4: A bunch of options too, right between all the different wide receivers Evan Ingram, it's really flexible. It kind of it's scaring me because it's coming together way too nicely. With the jack Sex there's there's no way that Trevor Lawrence gets better. There, there's no he got paid and they're giving us all these guys for free. There's no way that it.

00:39:39
Speaker 2: Goes Yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:39:41
Speaker 3: But one of the things that I've noticed, and maybe maybe this is something that that you don't feel is true, but like, for instance, I was doing a live stream about a week or two ago, and I had I drafted Christian Kirk, Evan Ingram, and Brian Thomas right, so it was it was a heavy, heavy jag stack, and I reached for Trevor Lawrence instead of not reaching for him, because to me, when you're invested.

00:40:04
Speaker 2: That heavily early on in a team like that.

00:40:07
Speaker 3: It doesn't give you the flexibility if you end up missing on that quarterback, right. And so when I got into round ten, I'm freaking. I took Trevor Lawrence like over around ahead of ADP because I knew how screwed I would be if I didn't get Trevor Lawrence. And in that scenario, it's similar to if you get let's say you're in the five at the five six turn or something like that, or in the fifth round into the sixth round and you get like Hollywood Brown and Rashi Rice or Hollywood Brown in Xavier Worthy, and you don't have Patrick Mahomes. I do think it's really important to your point to keep in mind that you're not gonna have as much flexibility later in your draft to find a proper stack. Is that Is that the right way to be thinking about this stuff?

00:40:45
Speaker 4: Absolutely? What I would what I would say is the most difficult part about this is you have kind of two conflicting things. On one hand, you take your Jags example, you have all the Jags, right, so no one else is INCENTIVI.

00:41:00
Speaker 3: Yes to draatically INCENTIVI right, maybe with you know, it's it's a late night draft and they got a couple of cocktails in them.

00:41:08
Speaker 4: They're feeling pretty incentivized to take here Trevor Lawrence. But they're theoretically not incentiviz because it doesn't help their team. They don't have any Jaguars, you know, so this doesn't this doesn't make sense. So sometimes you actually can use that to your advantage. But it's kind of that awkward thing of trying to read your room on the fly, which is not that easy to do if you're in a fast draft. So it's that balancing act. Like it's it's more helpful when you're somewhere positioned around the turn because it makes that decision a whole lot easier when you're smack dab in the middle of the round and you got to decide do I take them here or do I you know, and risk or do I take him here or do I wait? Because these other guys, you know, maybe they don't even need quarterbacks, but you run into that that risk of potentially, you know, throwing that twenty five dollars in the trash because somebody else did something that they shouldn't have done. I do tend to still be a little maybe I just am trying to feel something while drafting a thousand best ball teams, but I like to push it more often, I think than other people do. I think, like you'll find you know, you're already doing this right. They're building in as much flexibility as you can. It's like, this is not how I wanted this team to go. I took three Daguarres, I wanted Trevor Lawrence. But I still am able to to, you know, be light on my feet if you will during the draft and figure something out with a like I mean, I've I've had the old Hunter Henry Jacoby Brissett, even like you know that somebody took Drake May from you and you're like, yeah, we got to move on to the next. It's a delicate balance, I think, so long as there's no one like between your selection and that guy's you know, ADP or your next pick that like you know, you're not like that's my flag plant player that's in between here. You know, there's not some some you know, I don't have a running back yet or something, and I like really need Chase Brown or something. It's balancing all of that kind of stuff. I think it's totally fine to reach, but it's also kind of totally fine to try and push it. And so you kind of got to figure that out in draft for each person what they're most comfortable doing.

00:43:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, makes a ton of sense. How much does strength of schedule? I haven't asked this actually to any of the of the bros that have come on the show to talk about this, but how much the strength of schedule play into your decision making? Like do you And this is mostly I think more towards the playoffs. In week fifteen to seventeen, in the way that people think about that. But like the Dolphins, for instance, like them playing in cold weather or them playing Cleveland in week seventeen. But then obviously we have the example of last year where one of the best games was the Jets against.

00:43:40
Speaker 2: Cleveland, you know, during the Fantasy playoffs.

00:43:42
Speaker 3: So my question though is just straight up you know, how much do you factor in something like strength of schedule.

00:43:48
Speaker 4: Well, it's funny. Last year, it was around this time, I think my wife and I went to a happy hour at a local little restaurant pub and they on the previous year's Jets Browns game on the TV at like four o'clock in July in Saint Louis. I don't know why this game was on, but I was like, okay, I have a premonition now that this is going to be the game that you need. I didn't know that it was going to be Joe Flacco against Zach Wilson. But it's just funny because I'll always think about that because it was laughable, like at the time to think that even with Aaron Rodgers, that that game with those two defenses outdoors, you know, on Christmas, that it could possibly you know, break the slate in Week seventeen. But that's kind of the point. We see this every single year. We're just not that good at predicting who the toughest defenses are going to be. Like Week one, it's certainly not that good at predicting them at you know, almost in twenty twenty five, like these games, these games are around Christmas and New Year's We're just not that good at predicting it. And even when we are. The Jets weren't awesome defense last year. The Browns were an awesome defense last year. Fantasy points can still just come in these in these matchups. A couple of years ago, Panthers Panthers Bucks, This is when the Bucks were not very good with Tom Brady. You know, they were a five hundred team. That was the game you needed. Mike Evans went crazy and Dj Moore went crazy and Tom Brady and so those were actually decent defenses and not very good offenses. And so I really don't worry about it the strength of schedule stuff. I do worry about the correlations. And then I just kind of let I just kind of let the variants play out, and some of them were going to look back and say, well, Yeah, we knew that game wasn't going to shoot out, and some of them you'll get Jets Browns from this year, and so I just try to focus in on the things that I can control, and that's only who's playing each other. It's not the weather, and it's not the quality of the defense.

00:45:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's good to hear, because I think that people want fewer things to worry about while they're drafting, and that would be, you know, one of those those things.

00:45:50
Speaker 2: Let's talk about correlation a little bit. Since you brought it up.

00:45:52
Speaker 3: Have you been mostly focused on Week seventeen in those game stacks, because obviously that's the week where championship week and that's where you can win a lot of money. Or are you shifting whether it's because of the flat payout structure or just because you think it's smarter because you want to advance to even get to week seventeen in.

00:46:11
Speaker 2: The first place.

00:46:12
Speaker 3: Have you shifted your focus at all to look at more week fifteen and week sixteen game stacking or is this scenario where you are just focused on Week seventeen and you just notice that naturally the week fifteen and week sixteen game sacks just kind of happen within your lineup.

00:46:27
Speaker 4: It's definitely a lot of the last part. I think I understand why someone might say, with the flatter structure and just get me to week seventeen, I'm going to focus more on weeks fifteen and sixteen. I'm still like, I'm trying to win the whole thing, and so I'm optimizing for that big week. It's also the week where you get paid off for that correlation being right. And I don't just mean because the payouts happen in that week. It's the week where there you're competing against five hundred other people and even you know, it's not easy to get through week fifteen. In week sixteen, if it were like we probably wouldn't have the show. We'd just print all the money with all of our teams. But you you really only got to beat, you know, depending upon the tournament best ball menia, right, you know, fifteen sixteen people in those weeks. That's tough, but it's not crazy, and so you're less incentivized to, you know, really shoot for that. And that's what the correlation stuff is. It's shooting for this crazy outlier outcome that happens where because chaos is happening in this game because there's big plays happening in this game, or because you know, the weather whatever something HAPs Ce d Lamb, you know, catches a ninety yard touchdown because the blitzing backer doesn't tackle Dak Prescott. You know, like whatever speed up the game Tyreek Hill long touchdown than Lamar Jackson long touchdown, and the next thing, you know, you're getting way more fantasy points from this game. That's like great in week fifteen, in Week sixteen, but it's like you probably still didn't need it in those weeks. You better have it in week seventeen. You know, Jamar Chase goes for fifty, Mike Evans goes for fifty, and you know, on the other side, Dj Moore now is gonna you know, he's they projected to throw twenty five times. Now they're throwing forty five times. Those are the outcomes that you want and need in a bigger final like Week seventeen. And so I'm really just focusing on it there. But you do get some of the you know, week fifteen and sixteen stuff naturally, And like we built what Spike we called our draft hacker that like overlays, it'll overlay the playoff schedules on there for you, and it'll highlight the correlations that exist in in those weeks so you can see it, you know, you get on the clock. We talked about like tie breakers to flexibility. You can also tie break to well, this guy does play against my you know, quarterback in week sixteen, and you can still use it as like a tie breaker or you know, down the totem pole, but it's just not my priority when when Week seventeen is so important.

00:48:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's that's key, the tiebreaker thing. I've been doing that a lot of If anyone watches my live streams and stuff, you know, I have a sheet sitting here. I'm just looking at matchups and stuff. And when there's when you start to build out your stacks, your team stacks, you start to know like which teams you're focused on most right, Like if you're getting a Kansas City stack, then you know you got to focus on Kansas City and what their schedule looks like. Well, then all of a sudden you can start to like, okay, you know they're getting Pittsburgh in week seventeen, and then you can very quickly look at some shared opponents right, Like you can just see if there are any right and start to build out that way. And again, I've been using it mostly as a tiebreaker. It's a little bit more difficult to you know, build out like full, full blown team stacks for like week sixteen. You know, it's just it's kind of hard because I do think too, and correct me if I'm wrong, But ADP seems to formulate at least a little bit to what game stacks are and what these weeks like, Like, you're gonna see pretty consistent players going in pretty consistent spots, not just because of their talent level, but because of how they work within team stacks and how they work within games too.

00:50:01
Speaker 4: One hundred percent. And I think the best example of this this playing out is actually sort of in the inverse. But you see quarterbacks, certain particular quarterbacks who are so tied to their pass catchers have crazy wide range of outcomes on their their ADP. Because you'll get the situation where I took Tyreek Hill and Jalen Waddle and Devon a Chan I need to on this team, so the guy reaches, you know, two rounds to take to it because they've got to have them but then you'll also get Dak Prescott when I don't have Cede Lamb and maybe I don't have Jake Ferguson. I'm like, why the heck would I ever take that exact like sorry, Brandon Cooks and Jalen Tolbert, Like this doesn't sound like how do I win one point five million dollars showing up to this gunfight with a you know, a water gun of Jalen Tolbert against the Cede Lamb teams like you see this. But that's exactly the point the things start to align, not only by ADP, but also in that game been draft right again to the you know, people being incentivized or not incentivized. You'll get the people who will just take the following Dak Prescott or like I said, for whatever reason, take to ahead of ADP when they don't have any of those guys. But generally speaking, the market kind of aligns to the correlation principles. It's much less so on the you know, like bring back to week seventeen stuff, but there's still a little bit, you know, there's still a little bit of it. You'll see a handful of them. I think the market generally like kind of cherry picks their favorite Week seventeen correlations and that's when you start to see it aligne. I'll never forget it was either two or three years ago the LA teams played each other, the Chargers and the Rams in Week seventeen. It was a disastrous season for both teams. Like by Week seventeen it was Baker Mayfield and cam Akers against you know whoever and for the for the Chargers. But ADP was with totally Cooper Cup, Keenan Allen, Mike Williams, Austin Eckle, these guys would align at the turns and so you'll get some specifics situations like that where not only the teams start to align by ADP, but maybe the opponent in Week seventeen does. And so, just being cognizant of everything that you just said, but the correlation definitely drives a decent chunk of the market.

00:52:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, I missed the days, you know, in early May when you could get Pukaakua than Marvin Harrison Junior and then Cooper Cup in the third when Cup was going in the late third, those were.

00:52:24
Speaker 2: The chef Kiss Chef Kiss d is.

00:52:26
Speaker 3: But now Cooper Cup more so going at the two three turn one topic that I haven't discussed that much about and with guests throughout this podcast series. I did a little bit last week with Mark. He kind of brought it up more organically. But it's exposure and how we should be managing exposure. I think it might be my downfall this year. We'll see, but I'm flatter than I think a lot of people are. I then see someone like Davis Maddock, you know, friend of the show, who likes to take stands, and we'll have thirty five to forty percent exposed players, which I don't know if it's that my brain doesn't work that way and I just can't get over the hump and if that is or isn't optimal. But like, for instance, right now, my highest ex posted player is like Zach Sharbonnet and he's like at twenty two percent, Like it's not it's not very high. And then a lot of my quarterbacks are pretty flat. And then you know, like I have a lot of guys above fifteen percent, you know, or sixteen percent, you know, Like I'm doubling up where the market is at, but it's hard for me to really get it, like to twenty five to thirty percent. Do you think that's a mistake? And how do you sort of handle your exposure?

00:53:34
Speaker 4: So I wouldn't call it a mistake. I would say, we talk about you. When you build an entire company around best Ball, naturally, exposures is probably going to be a conversation that everybody wants to wants to court to talk about, and you build tools around it. So what I try to always tell everybody is the individual player exposure is like almost entirely risk tolerance. And like, also what you think that your skill set is, like is your edge? There are some people who you know come in and they're straight game theory bros. Right, it's I don't know it. I don't even know who these players are. I go eat, I go to brunch on Sundays. I don't. I don't. I don't watch football. So your skills are going to be different than maybe you and I's skills in this game. And then even if you believe that there are player take edges, you can say, like from a I don't want my whole season to go down the drain because I have fifty percent of this guy. And I can tell you when you draft like forty five percent. JK. Dobbins any tears his achilles in the first half of Week one. It's not a great it's not an awesome feeling. So that clearly was me last year. But what I do, what I do think is where I focus the most and how I handle it for me personally is I do think just about everybody who's playing has some form of like there's something that you think is an edge in the playerpool, Like even these people who like say that they don't have player takes, there's something that you're like, this is mispriced or just the like, maybe it's not mispriced, the upside far out weighs, you know. Maybe I think that Dave Canalis is going to bring the Panthers back to you know, back to being a good offense, and the market has said that is clearly not going to happen at these prices, you think that that's a potential edge. I like to kind of call those like core assets. I try to define a few things that I feel passionately myself are mispriced. These are the edges, and it could be individual players, but it also could be like an offense last year. Last year it was the Ravens was one of them for me. JK. Dobbins and Markin Andrews didn't go super well, but the rest of it was fine.

00:55:35
Speaker 2: And it was actually for sure yeah yeah.

00:55:37
Speaker 4: And then Sam Howell actually last year, which went great until the you know, the final month when he decided to get benched every other game. But like I honed in on a couple of things. Those are my core pieces. This is probably going to define my season. And then I'm trying to diversify around that. So my actual portfolio is not that diverse, but it is the diver I want. I want my There's no reason for me not to have Jaguar stacks with Sam Hall if I'm drafting a ton of Sam Hall, right, So then going into my portfolio and like massaging all of that stuff is really what I spend most of my summer doing. I'm in a draft and like Tyler Algier is my highest stone running back, and so like when I get to the I'm gonna take Tyler Algier again. But let's look at, you know, what my exposure is with Tyler Algier and the other players that are on my roster, and that kind of combinatorial element is really what I do. A ton of so defining that, you know, like I said, most people probably have it, but if you do defining it and understanding like I'm taking this bet on the Falcons or I'm taking this bet on the Ravens, and that's my stand. Now, let's make sure that I'm not, you know, bringing in a second bet that that was totally unintended. You know, I'm drafting the Ravens, and all of my Ravens have cowboys, and there's no reason for that to be the case. So that that's really what I spend my summer doing.

00:56:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's a really really good point and one that I haven't focus enough on, Like I think about it, but haven't focused enough on is looking at you know, if you're drafting a guy a lot to see what those pieces around him look like that you're you're switching. And it's similar to like DFS building, right, Like where you have your core and then you're kind of switching. And I haven't I've been much of a DFS player over the last handful of years, but where you have your core and you're sort of just changing and manipulating things outside of that course that you get the right combinations and stuff. So that that makes a lot of sense. Let's talk about tight end. Tight end to me, could be a make or break position this year, because it feels like you're, you know, like that because we have the elite tight ends that are going for cheaper prices this year, you know, you have some intriguing enough middle roundish you know, middle range or low end tight end ones. Let's say, I just think the difference this year is that people are struggling with late round tight ends and not necessarily knowing which direction to go in. Are there any late round tight ends that you're focused on or are you attacking the Trey mcbrides, the Mark Andrews, the Travis Kel's a lot more? But really, I mean, are are there any late round tight ends that you feel great about? Or is that a place where you're just getting sprinkles of exposure to and not really having like massive exposure to one guy.

00:58:11
Speaker 4: I'm definitely on the sicko side of finding some of these disgusting late tight ends that I can, like, for whatever reason, really start to believe in. It was partially because I was so into the Commanders last year, but I talked myself very heavily into Logan Thomas and Cole Turner. Even for a while famously, I was the only person drafting Cole Turner in vest Balmania. Last year. He was on my I made the finals last year and Cole Turner was my tight was my tight end two on the team. So I don't know how that happened, But I do think on one hand, I much prefer the elite tight ends this year. I think that the market is definitely very different. Last year, the rookie tight end class, as you know, was just so superior to this year's rookie tight end class, which obviously gave us a couple of additional options. Particularly Sam Laport was the one who really really hit Trey McBride in his second year, you know, as a as a former MACKI winner, like second round pick, you know, getting getting the veteran out of the way with not that much target competition, Jake Ferguson, you know, in a Dallas Cowboys offense with no real competition at the tight end spot, there were just so many more like legit high upside options this year. It's like, is Noah Fan going to break out in your six or seven or whatever it is, you know, is John un gonna become something with the Dolphins. It's a much different market. I think I struggle with this one because I'm really big on like trying not to be overconfident in some of these types of really high variant situations, And what history would tell us is, no matter what we think about the late tight ends, someone's probably gonna pop up ahead.

00:59:51
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:59:51
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like nobody saw Jordan Reid coming to the Commanders back in the day. Like we just don't see it coming as much as we think that we do. So I'm trying to lean into that a little bit while still like being really heavy on the elite tight end side, because I think that you mentioned they're cheaper this year. And part of the reason why the late tight end could be so successful is, you know, Travis Kelcey used to be a first round pick in these Best Ball drafts. Now the tight end one goes at the three to four turn, and George Kittle goes in the seventies, and you know, brock Bauers goes past pick one hundred. There's so many more elite options at cheaper prices. I do prefer that, but I'm digging into John wu Is, one of my favorite guys back there just the Dolphin. I mean, I think John who's pretty good and he fits the offense certainly a little better than Durham Smith. I think, just a slightly better fit in the in the offense. I'm taking some chig a con quo mostly on like Levis, Titans and Jags stuff, but I think a potentially good player in this new this new offense is exciting at a cheap price. And then my my mega deep flyer is Eric Al. I promise it's not just because of his name because he spells it wrong. He spells it silly. But yeah, but people are gonna say, aren't you worried he got hurt last year? Yeah, yeah, I'm extremely worried that, you know, he's not going to be healthy. But I think he was a really exciting prospect, you know, from a like yards per hour run perspective, which is a lot of the base level stats I used to to just like quickly define a player like he was as good as like he was right next to bruck Bauers. I know it's a small sample last year, but his offense was terrible too, So it's kind of impressive to be that good even on a small sample in that offense, and I just think he's a good player in a Bengals situation that we're we've been craving a tight end, you know, we irv Smith and now Mike is SICKI and all, we keep drafting these guys and we know that there's something else available to us in the Bengals offense. Tyler Boyd has done it, you know, Tanner Hudson did it for a stretch. Guy's produced in this offense. If he's good, and they they seem to think that he's he's pretty good. There's rumors that they were considering taking him as high as pick eighty. Overall, I think he's a really fun bet. And he's not even drafted in every single draft, so as a last round pick, you don't need you know, we can wait for the knee to get better and hopefully he can pop over the second half of the season.

01:02:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really good deep sleeper.

01:02:16
Speaker 3: And it's a nice pivot off of Kaseki, like I've I've taken plenty of Gaseki too, But I do think that that's a good like just nice game theory pivot and exposure pivot versus what the Field is doing because I can't even I mean, I try to pay attention to what other teams are doing in the eighteenth round. By the time you're in the eighteenth you're like whatever, I'm just getting my guy. I don't really care who people are drafting, but I don't remember many people getting Eric All, so you're you're gonna get a pretty good number on him versus you know, the rest of the competition. And then, as we know, rookies do a lot better during the second half of the season, you know, towards the end of the season, and then there's the injury upside.

01:02:48
Speaker 2: It makes a lot of sense. I like that call out a lot.

01:02:50
Speaker 3: Is there a team, you know, you mentioned Baltimore last year as a team that you were attacking in Washington a little bit with Sam.

01:02:56
Speaker 2: How is there a team this year that you think is just undervalued?

01:03:00
Speaker 1: Uh?

01:03:01
Speaker 4: The Jags that we talked about before. I definitely believe that one. Ironically, I do think Washington again is pretty under undervalued. Maybe I'm just a sucker for this this team, but they keep plopping these high upside running quarterbacks in there, you know, I mean, a Heisman Trophy winner, top five pick and Jayden Daniels with say whatever we want about Cliff Kingsbury, and we can probably say a lot about Cliff Kingsbury. I do trust there to be fantasy points in the in the offense, and they're they're gonna sling it around. The running game is probably gonna be fairly efficient. I like Brian Robinson as a player. His price is really nice. I'm Austin Eckler is not my style of pick. I'm a little bit of an agist, but he's still Austin Eckler, and there's you know, it's possible he was just hurt last year. And then you know the most expensive players Terry McLaurin, and then there's like nobody on the offense that gets drafted. Luke McCaffrey has like some of the cleanest runway I've ever seen a rookie wide receiver, and the Marcus just like not, you know, not not interested. I guess I can't really figure out why. So those two would probably be be my favorites. And then mixing and matching a lot of cheap, cheap ones. So just you mentioned the Broncos and the Titans. I do take more Titans to set up Levitt, Like, I don't really like Calvin Ridley and Hopkins line, but I'll take those guys to set up will Will Levis later. So I'm becoming a little overweight on the Titans as well.

01:04:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Titans are my team this year apparently just based on my exposure. I don't and I can't tell though, if it's like I like the Titans or I just like the Jags and there and it's like this this this combo of like, you know, again, getting Will Levis lay just because I get a Hopkins or something like that, or if it's like the combination of that and me drafting so many Jags and just having that that week seventeen correlation. So I'm glad to see that you're you're most on the same page. There one last question before I let you go. You're in the eighteenth round. You know, obviously correl and team stacking is going to play a role in who you pick. But who are some of your favorite eighteenth round picks over an underdog this year?

01:05:07
Speaker 4: Oh? This is a good one. And so what I will say just quickly to your your first point, correlation is definitely part of it. I'm correlating a little less with those last picks, maybe than I have historically, because not that it's wrong, It's definitely not wrong to correlate those guys, but I found it to be a little bit of a slippery slope in terms of the players. I would forgive myself for taking in the last round because I could just I could explain it away through correlation. You know, the amount of Braxton Barrios teams I had to look at during the middle of last year, all because that was you know, I'm taking it to under Ravens. I was taking a lot of Dolphins and You're like, I need a last wide receiver. Yeah. He's like, like I said, these guys when I'm drafting with our tools, it's like popping off the screen right, He's highlighting in yellow. It's like take me. And I'm like, I don't want to be taking the Braxton Barrioses and making myself feel better because they correlate. Like every time you take that, you don't get Pukuakua, you don't get Tank Dell. And so I am being a little choosier with those guys. I mentioned Eric All, another Bengal. This is another one of my like pet gay pet Pet guys, but Andre Yoshivas or Yoshi second year player out of the Old IVY League, a fun, fun, weird, weird weird profile that he has, but I kind of think he's talented. He's getting a little bit of buzz already, and the market has said Jermaine Burton is for sure the wide receiver three in Cincinnati. And this isn't a situation where the incumbent there isn't really an incumbent. But it's not Van Jefferson where you could say, like, Okay, if Pooka is any good, he's gonna take Van Jefferson's job. It's more like, do we really know that Jermaine Burton is better than Yoshi Vas because it's a second year player versus a versus a rookie. I would bet Burton being the guy, but I'm willing to bet on an undrafted eighteenth rounder eosh it you know, ends up just being better than that guy. And another wide receiver that I really like on a team that I probably should have mentioned. I like the Packers a ton. I think they're really cheap, and I like all the wide receivers. They have an eighteenth round wide receiver who really took on a big role down the stretch. And I think is a pretty good, fun young player in Bo Melton, who again undrafted in these drafts and was playing a ton of snaps like put up a monster week in the first round of the playoffs or last week of the regular season, something like that, and is already again like they're telling us he's gonna play man, he's gonna be on the field. So that's a nice little stable floor on a fun offense. And if Christian Watson's handstrings don't work again, then you know, maybe you get even even more routes last just a couple of running back flyers. Evan Hol's one of my guys. I know, Trey Sermon is the the you know RB two there behind Jonathan Taylor, but I think it's like one of those faux RB twos where if JT goes down, Tray Sermon definitely gonna play, but it's gonna be like the low value touch. You know, you get the carries between the twenties, you're not gonna play on passing downs. And I like to bet on the more diverse skill set and probably more talented player in the Evan Holes of the world. And then Rasheen Ali is my other guy just again kind of Justice Hill is like very Tray Surmon in terms of a backup running back, Like he's gonna be there. He's fine, but he's never gonna be like a superstar. If Ali is just good and something were to happen to Derrick Henry, I think that there's a ton of upside.

01:08:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, Ali, That's the exact logic that I use for Ali being a great late round, dark thrown rookie drafts this year is that, like his profile actually wasn't that bad in my model, Like he didn't look bad at all, had really strong production.

01:08:43
Speaker 2: I think he's gonna do it all back too.

01:08:45
Speaker 3: But like, look at the competition, man, I mean, you're talking about a thirty year old Derrick Henry who might not be the I'm not saying don't draft, I'm just saying there's the chance that he's not the same guy. There's at least that that chance, and he also might get hurt. And then Justice Hill and then obviously Keathon Mitchell's starting the season injured, so there is an opportunity for him to at least step out, and if he shows up and shows out, then we could see some fantasy production from him in a good offense. Eric, It was awesome, man, It was great to finally chat with you. This is the first show that we were ever able to do together.

01:09:19
Speaker 1: You know.

01:09:19
Speaker 2: It's a lot of fun.

01:09:21
Speaker 3: Let everyone know where they can find you and what you guys are doing over at Spike Week.

01:09:24
Speaker 4: Yeah, on Twitter at Eric Binfore and of course everything over at Spike Week. JJ and I are talking briefly before the show. We built some of the like first of its kind best ball tools to In particular, I just wanted to point out that drive a lot of the stuff we talked about here today that helped me implement a lot of this stuff is what we call our draft Tacker, which overlays customizable information you can see during your draft whatever you want to see on your screen, the week seventeen stuff, playoff schedules, your exposures, I all the combinatorial exposure stuff I was talking about. I manage it because we built a tool to help me manage it. While I'm drafting, I can see all of that stuff, and then after the fact kind of a portfolio analyzer tool in what we call draft iq, where you can go in and see I mean anything that you want to see about all of your teams that you've drafted. We focus really, really heavily on making tools that help people kind of implement what their strategy is and their their opinions. And you know, you don't have to like the same players that I like, but we're going to help you draft more effectively given the things that you think our edges in these drafts. And so check that all out at spikeweek dot com.

01:10:34
Speaker 3: Awesome stuff, and make sure you guys are checking out the Laterounddraft Guide over on lateround dot com. You can take advantage of the underdog promo. Just use promo code late Round when you sign up an underdog, make a deposit and you'll get that draft guide. It's a twenty five dollars guide. You'll get it for absolutely free in your email inbox. Check it all out lateround dot com. Otherwise, everyone, thank you for tuning in