Becoming a Best Ball Bro: What Have We Learned?

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Rich Man, it's the last Becoming a Best ball Bro episode?

00:00:04
Speaker 2: How you feeling?

00:00:05
Speaker 3: No, I can't believe we've made it. I both think it's been a very long summer. But you blink and it's all over. The last drafts are popping off, and then just before you know it, the ball will be in the air and the NFL will be underway.

00:00:20
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:00:20
Speaker 1: Look, I gotta say, it's been a pleasure doing the show with you, you know, chopping it up every week, one of the highlights of my week each week. With that being said, the end of becoming a Best ball Bro means that it's the end of Best ball season and drafting season. And one thing I won't miss rich is drafting Drake London and Kyle Pitts and having some moron draft Kirk Cousins in the eighth round for absolutely no freaking reason.

00:00:46
Speaker 2: I'm JJ and I've been playing.

00:00:47
Speaker 1: In best ball leagues for years, but there are people out there who play a lot more than I do, and there are people out there who have won a lot more than I have, and I want to learn from them. This season, I'll be documenting my journey of Max entering Underdog's Best Ball Mania contest, and I'll be doing so with guidance from some of the most successful best ball players on the Plannet. 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'm jj Zacharieson joined as always for one final time, hopefully just this summer.

00:01:32
Speaker 2: Maybe we'll run it.

00:01:33
Speaker 1: Back next year, but one final time. Rich, Ryan, Rich, what's going on?

00:01:38
Speaker 2: Brother?

00:01:39
Speaker 3: If I'm so lucky, It's been a blast potting with you, I'm gonna savor the next forty minutes or an hour. I had a great draft weekend, back east, back West to finish up these drafts, get the season ready, and yeah, I can't wait.

00:01:52
Speaker 2: That's right. You had, you had your draft.

00:01:54
Speaker 1: I had my home Lely draft as well over the weekend, and everything go well, go well for you.

00:01:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean everyone went a little too hard. We forgot that we're all in our mid to late thirties and we're all dads.

00:02:04
Speaker 4: Now.

00:02:05
Speaker 3: I think we counted. I think combined we all have sixteen kids now. I mean it's a fourteen team league, but just kids everywhere. And yeah, everyone thought was a little they were a little younger than they were on Night one.

00:02:16
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's all. It's always how it goes, always how it goes. I had my homely draft two walked away. I had nice cheap keepers in Tank Dell and Devon h Chan, you know, two guys that I was pretty into last year, and so you know, it was nice starting the draft with you know, above average keepers. It was a nice little auction draft and it was just you know, we're all over the country, like I said, so we were all, you know, on like a video call, just talking you know what, to each other throughout the entire draft as it goes.

00:02:45
Speaker 3: I was sweating the drafts order randomization for us because I kept Breese in the first round, so obviously I want as late a pick as possible. So I actually ended up getting picked twelve, and on the return I got Drake London, which like twenty players were kept, and for me to get London at sixteen was pretty an amazing start, better than I could have asked for.

00:03:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, you should feel good about that for sure.

00:03:08
Speaker 1: So look, becoming a best ball bro This is I think episode fifteen that we've done this summer started in May ending here at the end of August. We've had amazing guests throughout the summer. We've had former BBM winners. We've had complete nerds and stat nerds that dig into the stuff shout out Mike Leoni. We've had you know, folks who you know, have had more of a vibes based approach. We just had really really smart people on this show. I feel very lucky that I've been able to talk to them and we've been able to dissect some of that stuff. But I think the thing that we need to do is just talk about some of the stuff that we've learned throughout this journey, because you know, I know that this journey is a JJ Zacharesen branded journey, but it's a journey for you too, and a journey for everyone who's been.

00:03:59
Speaker 2: Listening to this show.

00:04:00
Speaker 1: You know, over the last few months, when I was at the Fantasy Football Expo, so many people were coming up to me talking about how much they appreciated this show and how much they were learning from it.

00:04:10
Speaker 2: And it was awesome.

00:04:11
Speaker 1: It was It was one of the highlights of my weekend just hearing those stories and hearing how other people are indeed going on this journey as well, and so Rich and I have come prepared with a few things that we just want to talk about at a high level of the stuff that we did learn and take away from chatting with these incredibly smart guests. So, Rich, I'll start off and kick it off to you and say, what's one of the key things that you learned throughout doing this series.

00:04:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say one of the top things is when to diverge from ADP on the platform, and mainly the difference between a timebox competition where drafts are going to be over in a couple weeks and BBM, where the drafts are open for months. And I believe it was Leoni who was the first person to touch upon this, And there are just spots in BBM where you feel like getting cute. But we know, and we've seen it over the summer how much ADP naturally shifts, whether it be an understanding of volume or somebody looks great in camp, where there are going to be combinations that you naturally get in May or June that you're not going to get later on. So you don't have to force it in some spots because ADP is going to shift for you whereas in timeboxed competition there are spots where you can get cute because you're trying to create combinations that your opponents might not have, So diverging from ADP is a little more irrelevant. And then in the final rounds, John Warner talked about keep on scrolling round seventeen and eighteen, don't just look at ADP who's being drafted there like it's okay to click some darts that may not be going that the platform is telling you. You should draft in the two hundreds here because you want to have a shot, you want to have a will shipley, you want to have somebody that's going to be lower exposed that might have some upside. So that was definitely one of the first things I took away from all them.

00:06:00
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I'm gonna piggyback off of that as one of my items that I want to bring up. And again this is this is definitely just along the lines of what you just said. But you know, especially everyone that came on basically agreed that Round two was really flat this year, and I still think to this day, Round two is really flat. It honestly starts around that one to eleven into one twelve area, right, And so if we naturally know that, then why are we going with the same players and the same kind of turn one to turn as what everyone else is doing now? To be fair, I fell into that trap plenty through the first few months, a couple months, maybe month and a half, two months, maybe even in July of doing that right where I was just getting like Marvin Harrison Drake London over and over and over again, or I was getting pokin Akua and you know, at that time you could get Pokinakua and Marvin Harrison, which was a nice little week seventeen game stack. But what I realized, as you know, I was going moving forward with this is if we all recognize that it's flat in the sad round and if you do have one of those back end round one picks where it's just death, it sucks. You know, the one twelve is horrible because there's tear drops seemingly everywhere throughout the early parts of your draft. But if you know that that's coming and that's happening, why not just differentiate more with your first and second round pick and take two second round guys instead of getting a standard one two turn player of Drake London, Marvin Harrison, uh or Jamier Gibbs go after a Jonathan Taylor and Jalen Waddle start or something like that. Now, to be fair, I didn't do that frequently enough. I wish I would have done it more, especially in hindsight. Part of my logic was like, maybe things are really gonna emerge and change and we're gonna have a clear picture. Nope, literally the opposite happened, right Like, literally we just saw fewer and fewer players really really start to get there. I mean at one point it was like, oh, we finally got one in debo because of all the Ayuke stuff, and then that didn't I mean, it still hasn't really come to a conclusion yet, and so I think that's a good learning though, is like, you know, to piggyback, specifically in that second round if you are at a turn, to just reach just a little bit, because oftentimes that small, small reach can really differentiate your lineup. And you know, sometimes too, like I remember I was drafting, you know, I was drafting DeVante Smith a lot in the late third, but then even earlier on before Smith's adp Rose, I was okay with getting him. You know with ceedee Lamb in the third round and now that's just where he goes. So you might even see it as a bad call at the time, but it's actually not a bad call. And again, do that in the non BBM environments more frequently, like you said, because in those environments you know that you know, there's sort of this like truncated timeframe as to when we're actually able to draft and able to take advantage of that. So yeah, I think that's a really good good place to start here.

00:08:53
Speaker 3: Just on a debone note, we were just begging all summer for some receiver to please shepherd into yourself to the top of the second round.

00:09:00
Speaker 1: We're diba win one ten a lot or one eleven like a lot like during that period where it was like definite that that Ayuk was going to Pittsburgh. But yeah, I do think though that that's a big learning is that when you have those timebox contests where you know it's only going to be a week or two long until that thing is filled and done, you know, those are the contests where you can really differentiate more. Bbm's just a little little bit different. All right, let's go to your next item.

00:09:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, So this one is descriptive information versus predictive information. I sold that line from Leam Murphy, and the first thing I want to do is is, just like he and you said on that show, we don't want to besmirche any of the work that someone like Hayden Winks has done looking at past contests and what worked and what the people that reached the final did to create their roster, because that is valuable information. But we just don't know how translatable it's going to be moving into the future. Looking just at last year with late end, late late tight end, I don't know how that's going to help us this year when we don't have that crop of young athletic rookie tight end. So we want to use that information the best that we can to try and draft. But as Mark Garcia brought up, we don't know what's optimal yet. It could be three running back builds, it could be something funky that people just haven't had the courage to try to roll out yet. So I think my main takeaway from this is don't be married to one strategy just because it's worked. This is kind of like when you're in the draft, let the draft fall to you, and there just might be natural pockets where if you somehow go running back running back early, that's going to be the dictator where okay, maybe this is a four running back built or if you wait on running back, that's when you're going to go with five running backs. So don't be married to a specific number in each position. Just kind of let the draft come to you and don't let past results always drive how you're drafting.

00:10:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that plays into what Hayden Winks talked about two when he was on talking about like the you know, the he digs through history of BBM better than anyone, or just as good as anyone in the space. You know, Leoni does that a lot too, just as well as anyone. And one of the things that Winks brought up that I think a lot of people generally follow is the idea of getting four wide receivers through the first seven rounds because historically, over multiple years, the teams who didn't do that were so dead, the hit rates were so so bad. And so what he's doing is saying, these are the kinds of learnings, we don't have to go so extreme and say you got to get six wide receivers through seven rounds. It's more so the idea of here's the baseline of what you should really think about through those seven rounds to ensure that you know you're not doing anything wildly stupid while you're drafting. And that's been something I mean, while I'm drafting, I'm always thinking about that. Like when I accidentally only get three through seven, I'm like, all right, well, I probably need a nine or ten wide receiver build right now. Like that's that's the general, the general gist of it. So I think those like super high level zoomed out approaches and looks to best ball can be really really helpful. Another thing, you know, this is this is a pretty basic one, but I do think that the stressor of the importance of game stacks has just been really important on here based on the data that's been shared. And you know, you know, Leoni talked about two about not ignoring week fifteen and sixteen as well, and you know, I think what I've learned through doing the drafts is if you can lean into week seventeen and lean into that correlation, you can sometimes just naturally come up with week fifteen and week sixteen game stacks without even realizing it, but it's the idea of really understanding why we're doing what we're doing with those Week seventeen game stacks, where you need that variance. You're gonna be playing the biggest pod that you'll be hypothetically facing throughout, you know, the whole BBM tournament, and so obviously in those scenarios, you want the high upside, you want the high variance, and you want those game sacks.

00:13:03
Speaker 2: No different than what we do in DFS.

00:13:05
Speaker 1: I shouldn't say we anymore, because I barely played DFS these days, but you know what folks do in DFS and team stacking and game stacking is you if that game goes off, you know that you're in a really, really good spot. So you know, last year, I was obviously in the more limited action I was getting. I was obviously still looking at Week seventeen and trying to do that. Now this year, you know, we had the clip of me, you know, memorat talking about memorizing the Week seventeen matchups pretty early on, which still is unfortunately in my noggin, and we'll probably be up there for the entirety of the season and will probably then screw me up next year while I'm drafting these teams, but I have leaned in Like every BBM draft that I do, which I do now live. I haven't done a slow BBM since early June, but of the BBM drafts that I do, I always have that playoff sheet in front of me because I am interested in what's going on in week fifteen and sixteen as well, because you know, you do have to get through those rounds, even if the pods are a little bit smaller.

00:14:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then right off that, talking about game stacking and what fits your roster is my last point, and it was all the way back first guests Pat Krane. Just because there's a falling value doesn't mean it's going to be a fit on your team. It's going to be nice to get someone like let's say CJ. Shroud many picks after ADP, But when you go to that gunfight in week seventeen and you need all the amo you've got, can you really survive with a naked CJ. Stroud, a naked passing pocket passer, You probably can't. So sometimes there's just going to be guys staring in your face past value. But if he's not a fit on your team, you just have to click on somebody else, as painful as that is.

00:14:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, His example I remember and it stuck with me, was that Joe Burrow one when because Burrow would fall and he still does at times in drafts. We're not as much because people are drafting quarterbacks earlier, but he'll fall at times in drafts and you're like, oh my god, I'm going to get a twenty pick discount on Joe Burrow. But if you don't have Jamar Chasen t Higgins and you already drafted a quarterback early, you might not want to go that direction because that doesn't fit your individual team. That was one that really really stuck with me from Karan, So I'm glad that you brought that up. The last one that I want to talk about is again, this is sort of like a DFS thing where we always look at, you know, percent rostered on DFS to see, you know, if a guy is rostered on eighty percent of lineup seventy percent of lineup, because obviously that's how you get your edge, is if you have a low roster player who then goes off. That's how you do well in daily fantasy. It's no different in Best Ball specifically Best Ball Mania. I found this to be interesting because I don't think my brain necessarily went this direction immediately. I'm always thinking about my own team, my own exposure, and you know, whether I'm over under exposed to a certain player, heavier light on a player, where as I do think that it's important, and this is what a lot of folks have, and John was one who definitely brought this up a lot where you have to pay attention to think about was this player you know, this is for BBM specific where you're drafting in May through August. Was this player rostered a lot and drafted a lot in May and June and early July versus right now. A good example of that is Sam Darnald. Like I have almost given Sam Donald an extra bump in value because there were a lot of drafts that happened earlier this offseason where Arnald didn't get drafted at all. And so if I have Darnald on my team and he does well during the playoffs or just you know, throughout the entire season, then my team's getting an edge. It's why, you know, when you get an emergence like at Jordan Whittington let's say and look, Whittington might not do anything this year, like he might not be relevant whatsoever. But when you get an emergence where he wasn't being drafted at all in June and in May and all that, but he emerges now, it's like, Okay, sure he's gonna be there ide receiver four at best probably to start the year, but maybe an injury happens and things can go a certain way.

00:17:04
Speaker 2: And we already saw that he looked pretty good.

00:17:06
Speaker 1: If you're rostering him, then that's an edge because the earlier rosters did not draft him, and so it is important to look at this the the overall exposure of the tournament and thinking about players who might be This is actually another conversation I had at the Fantasy Football Expo. I was talking to Scott Connor about this, who was on late round perspectives earlier this offseason. He's more of a you know, we've talked a lot of dynasty and such together over the last couple of years. But one of the things that he brought up was with Clyde Edwards Hilaire, where there are now drafts and maybe that's going to change now because then Prince.

00:17:42
Speaker 2: Officially got yeah, got released.

00:17:45
Speaker 1: But it was interesting. It was an interesting perspective. It made me feel a little bit better because I was drafting not a ton of Cech, but a decent amount of Cech early on because he felt like one of the safer handcuffs. But then he made the point that, Okay, now you're seeing this emergence of Prince and Carson Steel and all of a sudden, Clyde Edwards, a layer, isn't being drafted in as many bbms, and so your earlier bbms with Cech, it's actually not a bad thing because now these newer teams will not be exposed. And what if Cech really is the number one handcuff and the top and you know Isaiah Pacheco knock on Wood goes down at the wrong time for Pacheco managers, and then Cech is the guy you need, you know. So it's having that holistic mindset that I've admittedly not been as good at from a game theory perspective, because I've been so focused on being an analyst in season long, which is a twelve to sixteen team kind of endeavor. Ten to sixteen team endeavor, and it's just different, right, because you don't have to worry about that kind of thing. It's just it's on this big tournament where you're worried about duplicate players. It's one player pool, right, And it's a really interesting dynamic to layer on top and to think about because it's it's really really important.

00:18:57
Speaker 4: Well.

00:18:57
Speaker 3: And the crazy thing about that is that we can never can control the when those things happen. We can't control generic Prince getting all this camp buzz and getting preseason carries to then devalue Cech's value. Same thing with a Burton versus Yoshivas, right, we can't control when camp narrative the drum beat just gets so loud that you can't ignore it. Yoshavas is all of a sudden getting drafted, so we have to just be so reactionary to understand when to pounce and not ignore it. And these windows there can be really short too, where this information all of a sudden heats up, this person becomes draftable, and then you go from there.

00:19:41
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00:20:24
Speaker 2: Now back to the show.

00:20:28
Speaker 1: Now we're gonna get into something that folks have asked me about for the last three months, seemingly.

00:20:33
Speaker 2: And look, I've talked about this a little.

00:20:35
Speaker 1: Bit, you know, throughout the show and when when bringing up guys that I've been drafting and all of that. But at this moment, Rich I am one hundred and forty four Best Ball Mania's deep. I am hoping to do the last BBM live stream of the season on Thursday, I want to I want people to be there with me to It's sort of like my the the ending of me actually becoming a best ball broo is how I see it, right, And so I want to get the final six done over the next forty eight hours basically, so by the time you guys are listening to this, hopefully I'm a couple more deep than where I'm at right now. But I do have my exposures. I do have my numbers to share now. I do not have very high exposure numbers. I don't know if it's because of my mindset, the way I drafted.

00:21:27
Speaker 2: I don't know what why these numbers are what they are.

00:21:31
Speaker 1: Because I see some people in the thirties with some of the thirty percent exposure.

00:21:34
Speaker 2: With some of these.

00:21:35
Speaker 1: Guys my highest exposed player, I think some people are probably shouting Zach Charboney right now after you know the first first half of the summer is Jaliel McLoughlin.

00:21:46
Speaker 2: Rich.

00:21:46
Speaker 1: I ended up with twenty two percent of my BBM rosters having Jalil McLoughlin. He's my only player over twenty percent, though, do you think that's a mistake at the end of the day, Like genuinely, like, do you think that this is a bad thing from a game theory perspective to only have the one dude above twenty percent?

00:22:05
Speaker 2: I don't know.

00:22:07
Speaker 3: So this is the area of the draft where I definitely think naturally you should have your player takes right, because we know that early on in the draft we naturally have to have flatter exposures because the cost of those picks is so dramatically high that if you are to brick or if the guy shreds his knee, then you're just completely screwed. So this is definitely the area of the draft where you should be having higher player takes. And I don't know. It's it depends to me if there are certain game stacks, perhaps that yeah, So we've talked about it all summer, the Jacksonville and Tennessee stack, So I feel like it would be appropriate if all of those players clustered you had high exposure on because it's just it was a very easy game to stack, and it's later in the draft where you're getting all these values that you can then attach to higher value players that you're taking in the first couple of rounds. So I think that would be more defensible, But I don't know. I don't think there's a problem with having flatter exposure. Again, this goes back to we don't know what optimal is just yet. But I were to say, if there are players that people own in the thirties, even the forties, for goodness sake, they should be coming later in the draft because you're not putting yourself as much at risk.

00:23:26
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:23:26
Speaker 1: The other thing, too, is when we talk exposure and we say it's flat, like, yes, it's flat because I only have one guy over twenty percent, right, actually only one guy over eighteen percent, and it's Julia McLoughlin at twenty two percent. I have a lot of players, though, like over fourteen and fifteen percent, you know, so that's still basically doubling up the market in terms of exposure, sometimes even more, just because some of these guys might not even be have been drafted, you know, in every single draft. I don't really remember what was going on with like a Tyrone Tracy early on and stuff. But you know, regardless, a lot of the the I have plenty of players that I clearly took a stand.

00:24:03
Speaker 3: I will say, just looking at this, there's one player that clearly stands out to me.

00:24:08
Speaker 2: You just get here.

00:24:09
Speaker 3: You discussed him briefly on your stream today. It's Antonio Gibson.

00:24:13
Speaker 2: Can you believe this?

00:24:14
Speaker 3: We've been on the negative Romonte train. But I didn't know he went full leverage on Antonio Gibson.

00:24:20
Speaker 2: I didn't neither.

00:24:21
Speaker 1: I didn't either until all of a sudden, I'm looking at my exposure. I'm like, I think it was like two weeks ago, and I'm like, man, I got a lot of Antonio Gibson right now, I really do. So I'll read this list so that people are on the same page and we can dig into to Gibson a little bit more. But mclofflin at twenty two percent and then at eighteen percent.

00:24:42
Speaker 2: I'm mixing in.

00:24:42
Speaker 1: Running back and wide receiver here, but it's mostly running back. I have Chase Brown. That shouldn't be a surprise. Antonio Gibson. That's a surprise. We can talk about that a second. Blake Korm I think is kind of a surprise too, because it's not like I've gone out and said draft Blake Korm in your season long leagues. The Blake cor stuff for me has been game stacked related, right, because I really like Arizona, and so he's a very easy like bring back in that kind of environment. But then also I think that there's gonna be some standalone value with him that might be unpredictable and you don't have to worry about that in best ball. And then he has the contingent upside if Kyron Williams goes down. Blake Korum is low end RB one, high end RB two in fantasy, so I like that continent upside. Zach Sharbonay, I've cooled off a lot on based on coach speaks stuff, what we've heard about Kenneth Walker, and I've gotten Walker up to market value, thank goodness, Like I was able to get that up to the eight percent that I wanted to get it up to, but sharbonam at eighteen percent, which again I don't think that that pick even in HINZ Like, like, knowing what we know now and being more bullish on Walker than I was a month month and a half ago, I'm not that upset because obviously the upside is still there with Zach Sharbonay, Like he's still a top three handcuff in fantasy football, So I'm not that upset about having as much Sharbona as I did Naji Harris, I think is somewhat of a surprise for people. He's also at eighteen percent. I think my Jalen Warren exposures at like eleven or twelve. I don't really know exactly why this happened. I think it's more so I had nase straight up over Jalen Warren and where they go in the draft. You know, in that like eighth early eighth round range where they get drafted is where remandre Zamir White. You know, I started polling off on Jonathan Brooks the last like month or so month and a half, like where those guys generally get drafted, and I'm not getting them, and I'm instead opting for a Steelers running back, and that Steelers running back. I just liked Harris a little bit more because I think he's one of those players that coaches like more than fantasy analysts might like. Right, and then there's obvious contision upset as well. So Harris I'm at eighteen percent my number one wide receiver, which is probably one of my best just general bets based on what's gone on in the preseason and where you know, his ADP kind of dipped a little bit at one point, but then got back up and maybe rose a little bit higher than where I was drafting him. Brian Thomas, he's at eighteen percent as well. I think he's a smash pick in season long two. This goes back to the Tennessee Jacksonville stuff that we were talking about, Like we're really into that Week seventeen game. Tajy Spears sixteen percent. No one should be shocked about that. DeAndre Hopkins sixteen percent. No one should be shocked about that. Unfortunately, you know this was pre Hopkins injury, but I have been drafting him still a little bit after injury too, because he should be back in week one and you're getting a discount with him. And then I have a bunch of dudes at fifteen percent. I have Ray Davis, Tyrone, Tracy Chris A.

00:27:43
Speaker 2: Lave.

00:27:43
Speaker 1: Might be a little surprising for people to hear Deontay Johnson, Jalen Wattle, and Tony Pollard. So I'm very invested in Tennessee overall, and I'm invested in a lot of those like you know, like post dead zone type, you know, early double day, your round running backs.

00:28:01
Speaker 3: So I'm gonna circle back to what you asked me about having higher exposure. And the more I think about this, this Antonio Gibson, I think this is actually the spot where if you believe in a player, or you believe that people are too strong on the other side, I think this is the spot to have leverage and be over leveraged and gamble. It might even be spots where we have two backs, like Tase and Pollard. And if someone came up to be and told me that they just pushed they just pushed the button on one of them this summer as a bet, you're leveraging against everybody else. That was kind of picking one of the other. And I mean you are gambling at the end of the day, but you are making a choice and you're leveraging yourself against the rest of the field, which goes back to what you're saying earlier in terms of ownership, right, like, if you have an ownership advantage when you get to the final week, it doesn't matter if last year not everybody obviously, but so many.

00:28:58
Speaker 2: People had Kyen Williams.

00:29:00
Speaker 3: He's like, well, what's the point everybody has, Karen Williams, what's your edge going to be? So this is a spot where if you're just if you're knowingly leveraging yourself against the rest of the field. If people do go out and draft Ramandre Stevenson, then this is the spot to put your foot down and leverage yourself on a player.

00:29:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, look the Stevens and stuff. I just I've said it before. I think he's one of those players that can match ADP expectation. But I have a hard time seeing him as a league winning player because I don't think Antonio Gibson is going to be a zero each week like he Gibson every year of his NFL career has seen at least a nine and a half percent target share per game rate. He can be a change of pace back, like don't forget he entered the league as like this massively explosive running back who had good size and who played this hybrid role in college. You can you can catch passes out of the backfield. He's shown that he can catch passes out of the backfield, and Ramandre Stevenson, while he's done that throughout his career, I don't think that anyone would view him as anything more than a He's been the body to do that. He's not like a special player As a receiver, he's just a bigger running back. You can play all three downs, and yeah, he's fine as a receiver, but it's not like we're talking about someone who can like change the game as a receiving threatut of the backfield. Not say Antonio Gibson can't, but I think that they will still use him to some degree in that role. And if that happens, then Stevenson is overdrafted and Gibson is underdrafted. And then there's the contingent upside of Okay, what if Ramandre Stevenson gets hurt, And of course what if Antonio Gibson gets hurt. That's also on the flip side. But there's a cost a component to this, Like we're not straight up, yes, I like Ramandre Stevenson more than Antonio Gibson, but there's still an opportunity cost side to this, where again I've been not clearly opting for like a Najie Harris or a Tony Pollard or a Tajy Spears in that ranger Chase Brown as opposed to you know, going that New England direction.

00:30:48
Speaker 3: And with the negative jump beat with this offensive line, running back targets could be way over expectation if they're so scared that they won't even put Drake Maye.

00:30:56
Speaker 4: Drake may wins the quarterback battle allegedly, but then they won't play because they don't want him to die. Yeah, that means there could be a lot of dumpoffs in this offense, which means, yeah, running back target expectations should be way higher than we think.

00:31:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, so at quarterback, I'm even flatter.

00:31:12
Speaker 1: I'll just say my top players, which I don't think any of these are gonna be surprising. I've Will Levis, Trevor Lawrence, these are guys above eleven percent. They're technically all the guys I have above ten percent. Will Levis, Trevor Lawrence, Deshaun Watson, which has been a little scary with this injury stuff. I think a healthy Watson is a smash play at ADP. Kyler Murray, who I think is probably the best value on the although his value has been increasing, but I think, you know, over the summer and such, has been arguably the best value on the board. And then Gino Smith, who I like in this Ryan Grub offense and what they might be able to do with the weapons there. So I don't think like, do you see any surprises on there? Based on what I've been talking about throughout on the show throughout the offseason.

00:31:52
Speaker 3: I would flip it to you, And because you speak to more people, are there quarterbacks out there that people are over exposing themselves too? Because to me, the way I draft, except for Lamar and Patrick, who I make a decision on sometimes even even Josh sometimes in that high area, my quarterbacks are basically who have I drafted earlier, what value has fallen to me, and what stacks are kind of creating themselves, and then I just have to insert the quarterback later, Like I don't go into a draft ever thinking about drafting a specific quarterback. So are there quarterbacks out there that people are stumping for and specifically overexposing themselves to?

00:32:32
Speaker 1: So my fear with this and this is gonna be this is this is probably one of the players that I'm scared of most burning me this year. And I don't think I even listed him because we're gonna get into that in a second. But I only have four percent Anthony Richardson right now. And yes that's some you know, I'm not I'm not getting zero. But I can't even remember the last time I drafted Anthony Richardson in BBM, like this is this is a much earlier in the season kind of kind of thing that I was doing with Richardson. Part of that is because I've got I got to the point in maybe mid July early July where I just didn't see a significant enough difference between Kyler Murray and Anthony Richardson in terms of range of outcomes, and so I'm going to get the cheaper guy.

00:33:18
Speaker 2: I also, I highly doubt I have a ton of Michael Pittman. That's a big Pittman guy. Yeah.

00:33:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, So like naturally, I'm not gonna get a ton of of Richardson. Didn't even draft like a ton of Jonathan Taylor, which that could burn me. I'm I still have some like I'm still at like maybe six percent. But my fear with Richardson is we know that mobility at the quarterback position is very, very important, like yes, one hundred percent, the mobility aspect. This is something that Mark and I talked about on when he came on the show. Mark Garcia, the mobility aspect is more important in a managed season long league than it is in a best ball environment. And I say that because in a season long league where you're managing your team, you're having a when to use these players, and mobility is the predicting force. It is the thing that we know is sticky week over week, year over year. We know who the mobile guys are, but when you're in an environment where we have two or three quarterbacks that are rotating, not even just based on like a matchup that you have to predict, Oh, this guy has a better matchup, you're seeing the actual result of these players and then you're able to plug them into your lineup. And so while Richardson will have some very good weeks, there's no doubt about it. We also know that rushing is more of a floor thing than a ceiling thing. And I think that in general, and this is something that I really try to focus on during the second half of the year, whenever I really kind of dug into the idea a little bit more. But I think in general, pocket passers are a little bit undervalued versus mobile quarterbacks and best ball, because pocket passers can still get you a good ceiling and when you're not having to predict that ceiling, because it's going to be a roller coaster for them, because there's a lot of unpredictability in a guy throwing four touchdowns one week in one touchdown the next with the same number of yards. It's just how things end up happening and going down from a touchdown perspective. With Anthony Richardson, I think there's still plenty of question marks about him as a passer. And what we saw in our small sample last year was insane. Yes, but he also was a part of one hundred percent of their offensive touchdowns in the two games that he was completely healthy for, and that's not going to maintain. He's not going to keep that up. Just literally impossible for him to keep that up. And so I've been a little bit worried about Richardson being slightly overvalued. And I look, I mean, like the fifth round and even into the sixth round, there's some really good players there. Like I started, like I said, drafting more Kenneth Walker. You know, I tried to up my George Kittle exposure at times this summer. You know, Terry McLaurin is one that I'm drafting a lot more now just because of the Johan Dotson and stuff. I think that he could end up just seeing a lot of looks in that offense, so like, there's just reasons to opt for other guys in that range than Richardson in my opinion, especially given all that I talked about with the pocket passers versus the mobile guys, and then Kyler Murray himself going, i mean throughout the summer around to two rounds after Anthony Richardson, Like, I'll take Kyler Murray there all day long.

00:36:13
Speaker 3: And my initial thought after that is like, oh, then maybe we should just be taking Richardson naked more right, and just hoping he goes out and rushes for a bunch he gets a bunch of points. But again, when we get to week seventeen, we want guys who when they score a bunch, the cluster of other players that we drafted also are scoring a bunch. So that doesn't really work for naked Richardson unless you have a bunch of giants. Of course, you can gamestack him, So it's one of those where maybe we go three quarterback builds with one guy who's just a naked quarterback, and that's a way to fit him in there. But yeah, you're absolutely right. This is one of the biggest misconceptions even in season long right now, where rushing is floor and the passing is the high end. It sucks in season long because when we have a quarterback with a ton of variants in the pocket, it's hard for us to control for that. But in best ball, we kind of have to lean into that variance, right because we're looking to blast as high ceiling as.

00:37:07
Speaker 1: Possible, right exactly exactly so, and this is why, Like I have CJ. Stroud in best ball, like I didn't fade c J. Stroud, Like I think I might have more Stroud. Actually I'll look right now, I might have more Stroud than Yeah, I have seven percent CJ.

00:37:22
Speaker 2: Stroud, So I have more CJ.

00:37:24
Speaker 1: Stroud than I do Anthony Richardson, which I wouldn't do that in season long in a managed season long league, but I'm doing that because he's easily stackable. If you get one of those three guys early on, there's sometimes two, maybe even sometimes three. If you get those guys early on, easily stackable, and you know that in a given week, things can still blow up. Just because he's not running the ball doesn't mean that it can't blow up in a singular week. So you know, maybe this will bite me at the end of the day. Maybe someone's listening to this and they're saying, man, JJ's a moron because he's under exposed to Anthony Richardson, And look, I might This is all a learning thing for me. I'm trying to be as logical as possible, and I'm trying to consume as much of the information that I've consumed, you know, as possible from talking to these guests. But yeah, man, at the end of the day, I am under exposed to Anthony Richardson, and that does scare me a little bit. I'll move to tight end really quick.

00:38:13
Speaker 2: You know. It's not a flashy position. It's not as fun.

00:38:16
Speaker 1: Pat Fryarmouth is my top rostered and drafted tight end, and I hate it a lot, Like I don't feel good about it at all.

00:38:23
Speaker 2: Based on some of the preseason usage.

00:38:26
Speaker 1: I don't think it's gonna burn me, like like burn me, burn me because he's such a late round pick.

00:38:30
Speaker 2: But it's one that I probably.

00:38:33
Speaker 1: Overstated the floor a little bit because that's kind of how I viewed friar Mouth, is that there was gonna be some production coming from him, and I think I just overstated that and I'm I'm just a little bit overexposed, so that's a mistake. I think at the end of the day, John news Smith, I still don't think is a mistake. I think they're gonna use the tight end a little bit more and I love the scheme fit David and Joku is someone that I've drafted a lot more than I expected I would, but you know, he had that stretch last year during the second half of the year where he was basically the tight.

00:39:02
Speaker 2: End one in fantasy.

00:39:03
Speaker 1: I think that Cleveland is a team, you know, clearly based only on the Deshaun Watson exposure that I have. Cleveland's a team that's gonna throw more, spread it out. I'm excited about them, and Joku is a good talent, so I'm cool with that. Mark Andrews, I've talked him up throughout the offseason. I think that he's been undervalued. And then the last one who's above ten percent is TJ. Hockinson, which it's been a little strange for me because I was really out on him to start and then I just thought to myself, why am I not okay with getting a guy like Hockinson who has a pretty decent ceiling when active, who could play and start in the middle of the season, and that's when we need him to play. So I've been a lot of my Hawkinson teams are either elite tight end Hockinson or three tight end Beilts.

00:39:48
Speaker 2: Got it really I liked.

00:39:49
Speaker 3: I loved the elite tight end to Hockinson. That was one of my favorite clakes for sure.

00:39:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's fun. It's fun.

00:39:53
Speaker 1: If you can get like a McBride or a Kelsey and then pair them with Hockinson, then you can be good or you know, I feel I'd probably say when I get too like a Jake Ferguson or even maybe an Ingram and Kittle, that's when I'm thinking three tight end build with Hockinson, but more so Ferguson into in Djoku and brock Bauers is the three tight end build with Hockinson.

00:40:13
Speaker 2: But yeah, that's that's the direction I ended up going at tight.

00:40:17
Speaker 3: End Odell opening up on Pop seems like it might be good for Johnno, although we obviously want the value later in the season, and then in Joko makes sense because of how much you liked Wattle and when you're taking Wattle early, then you're trying to look for that Cleveland connection, and so that leads into Watson and in Joko as well.

00:40:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really good point.

00:40:34
Speaker 1: I think that's another reason why my Cleveland Cleveland exposure is the way that it is. I'll just really quickly before we end this, I'll go through two things I think that or maybe just the one thing I'll go because I already talked about Anthony Richardson. I think that he's one of the potential killers of my BBM rosters this year, even though I still have that blanket of you know, of having him in four percent of my BBMS. But I'm really low on in terms of exposure, not in terms of like necessarily season long takes or anything like that on the Round three, Round four running backs this year, and that includes Kien Williams, Isaiah Pacheco, Derrick, Henry Travis, etn. Even in that Jacob's Rashad White teer. I sent a tweet out last week. My Rashad White exposure is at like four percent in BBM. My Bucky Irving is at seven percent. I have I have more. I didn't even like Bucky Irving as a prospect. I have more Bucky Irving than Rashad White, clearly just because of costs. But it really just comes down to, like, I don't mind taking the anchor running backs early. Now I'm not overexposed to Tailor even a Chan I'm not overexposed to or Saquon, but I have taken them, probably more frequently than the kyn Henry tier and Pacheco then started rising so much in ADP that it made it difficult to continue drafting him. And then there's pretty good wide receivers and there's this drop off at wide receiver that just always scared me, right, So I was only getting those running backs when they would fall enough to be after that drop off at wide receiver. And they've been rising so much in ADP that they're in that cluster and it's made it more difficult for me to go that direction. So really, like if Kyron basically based on my h Blake Korum exposure, if Kyron is just like the true belcyal this year, then that's gonna be bad for my bags at the end of the day. Like, I don't think it's gonna necessarily sink me because it's only one backfield, you know, one pairing whatever, But It's not like every draft I didn't I took Korum, or every draft I didn't take Kyroen. But yeah, I mean, like those situations were just difficult for me to get overexposed to. And there's reasons why, Like I don't I have reasons to fade Kyroen in season long, like I have reasons to fade him this year. I think that it can obviously go the opposite direction. But you know, I've talked about those reasons a little bit. I think Pacheco is the one, though, of this group that I wish I had more of. I even wrote him up as a player as a running back to target at the beginning of May. I just didn't do it enough because of sort of this fomo at wide receivers, So those that giant group of like low end RB one's, high end RB two's, I wish I had a little bit more, But that's just the name of the game. You know, if you have five six percent of them, or you know, five percent exposure with them, and then you have ten to eleven percent exposure to some of the wide receivers that go there, that's just a choice based on team structure and what you wanted to do there.

00:43:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, and costs if you look at comparing them to the receivers that were going there, and then fast forward to round six through eight. We've talked about those running backs all summer. You look at the cost between those running backs and those receivers available, it's like, what is it the Tyler Lockett cliff? Right, Like, once Lockett goes, it's like it is a barren desert of wide receivers. So if you're not comfortable at the position by then you're kind of screwed. And then there's all these running backs there that are there for the taking. So it's just the drafts and the adp have just kind of naturally created this situation.

00:44:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, one hundred percent.

00:44:08
Speaker 1: And it also like if you think about Kiren and Derrick Henry in particular, and where they were going for the majority of the summer, it was usually mid third into that late third, and then now you'll see them pretty frequently in the early third. But when you're in that part of the draft, and if you go and you stray away from wide receiver and you get one of those running backs, okay, fine, But there are many many drafts where you then get into round seven, and that's the first wide receiver wall where Brian Thomas is gone. Maybe you're high on Lad mccon I'm not very like massively exposed to lat mconkie, but maybe you're really high on Lad McConkie. You know, Keon Coleman's kind of gone in that range throughout the summer. But you're you're staring at someone like Jamison Williams who has a ton of question marks. You're staring at you know, Cortland Sutton, who doesn't have a massively high s and then you're staring at these like running backs and these ambiguous backfields who clearly have tons of upside if things break their way. And that I think has played a massive role in why I ended up being a little bit under exposed to those Round three to five running backs this year. But I wouldn't be shocked if I get screwed or you know, if it really does come back to bite me. Then I wasn't exposed heavily enough to those guys.

00:45:23
Speaker 3: You just need since you have so much Rams Cardinals exposure, you just need them to You just need to get your teams into Week seventeen and then Karen, you know, is blessed with the birth of his first baby perhaps, and this is the game and all those.

00:45:36
Speaker 2: Things is good.

00:45:37
Speaker 1: That's what we root for. We don't root for injury on here, that's right, that would be ridiculous. We root for babies to be born, yeah right. We root for these healthy, eight and a half pound, deliciously cube babies.

00:45:50
Speaker 2: Triplets.

00:45:50
Speaker 1: We want every every NFL player to have triplets that were under exposed to in Week seventeen.

00:45:56
Speaker 2: That's all we're asking for. I don't think that's too much to ask.

00:46:00
Speaker 1: Oh Man, rich Man, it was such a pleasure doing this series with you throughout the summer. I know for a fact that a lot of people who hadn't listened to you in the past are.

00:46:10
Speaker 2: Now Rich Ryan fans.

00:46:11
Speaker 1: And I haven't really asked you this because I'm always saying and without further ado, here's the interview with XYZ.

00:46:18
Speaker 2: Where can everyone find you?

00:46:19
Speaker 3: Rich You can find me on Twitter at rich t Ryan. It is football season, which means it is also Gridiron Gamble season. Yes, we do a podcast. We are in circa sports millions. It's a handicapping contest where each week you pick five games against the spread. There's four of us. So each of us pick one game and then we rank every game. An aggregate in the fifth game is the most confident that the four of us are in. We submit it is a thousand dollars contest. I believe first is more than a million dollars. We're also in their winner take all one thousand dollars survivor contest, where the winner last year I believe split six million dollars with a couple of people. So you can catch us over there. Hopefully we can sunrun and win us some money.

00:47:04
Speaker 2: Heck cam Man, I'm on Twitter at Late Round QB.

00:47:07
Speaker 1: As you guys know, make sure you are signing up on Underdog with promo code late Round. You can still get the Late Round Draft guide for absolutely free when you do that, and you can also get some bonus cash up to one thousand dollars with Underdog right now, so check that all out lateround dot com. And I gotta say everyone, thank you so so much for listening to the series throughout the off season.

00:47:32
Speaker 2: It's been a blast. It's been awesome chopping up with Rich.

00:47:35
Speaker 1: Like I said, it's been awesome interviewing everyone, and it's been awesome hearing the feedback and watching all of you and seeing all of you become best ball bros and sisses along with me.

00:47:46
Speaker 2: So without further ado, Rich we out.