336: Prepping for Fantasy Football Playoff Contests

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ zacher RESI Jay Shake zacher reson what's up everyone. It's JJ Zacharyson, the editor in chief at fandel and at number five dot com. And this is episode three hundred and thirty six of the Late Round podcast when many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. It's been a minute, guys. I hope that you're all doing well. I hope you ended up winning all of your fantasy leagues, and I hope you're ready to continue hearing my voice throughout the off season, because remember I'm still doing two of these each week until next season starts. I'll do one show early in the week each week and then one mailbag show. This obviously is in early in the week show. The topic, as you saw in the title of the episode, is about playoff fantasy football. And this is probably when a lot of you guys want to turn the episode off because you don't play a playoff fantasy football, so why listen to this podcast? And that's fair, but you should be playing some form of fantasy football for the playoffs because it's really and there are tons and tons of game variations, and there's a lot of strategy to those variations regardless, and I think that I said this last year for this episode, But regardless, you may be able to learn something new today even if you're not planning to play, so stick with it. But like I said, there are lots of different variations to playoff fantasy football. Some formats have you draft a team and stick with that team throughout the playoffs, so if the team gets eliminated, you lose players on that team. Some formats have you pick your fantasy squad, but you can only choose one player from each team. And then the format that's usually most popular is a one and done type where you build a lineup each week by choosing any player that you want for each positional spot, but you can't use that player again once you use them, so you really want and need to pick players when they have their big games. Now, before looking at these formats in a little bit more detail, I want to let you guys know that daily Fantasy football is still happening during the playoffs over on FanDuel. In fact, Fandal's got a Saturday Million contest for the two Saturday games, where the first place prize is tw Just head tofandle dot com and check it out. With all of these formats, though, you have to think about the actual NFL, in which teams win and lose more than you typically would in a regular fantasy league. For instance, you might want to use Lamar Jackson in the divisional round of one of the one and done leagues. But is that a smart thing to do if you know that the Ravens are favorites to make it out of the AFC. So when I play these games, whatever the format, I look at the team landscape first and number fires metrics can definitely help, so can looking at straight up history. For example, we haven't seen a non one or two seed make it to the super Bowl since the twenty twelve season. The last time it happened was when Baltimore beat San Francisco the Joe Flacco year. That seems like forever ago. It's pretty hard to believe, but it also makes some sense. Good teams get higher seeds. Higher seeds play home games, and teams that are a one to two seed get a first round by so their probability of making it further in the playoffs is just a lot higher. That's why when you look at number five super Bowl probability. Right now, all the teams with first round bys have the highest odds to win the Super Bowl. Baltimore is first by a wide margin at twenty six point seven percent. Then it's San Francisco at twenty point nine percent, then Kansas City at around fifteen percent, and then Green Bay at ten point six percent. The best three seed, New Orleans is at eight percent, and that's despite the fact that New Orleans is a NERD of seven point two. It's almost three points higher than Green Bays. Now, for those of you who don't know, NERD is number fires metric of determining how many points we should expect a team to win by against an average one on a neutral field. So the Saints are better than the Packers, but their Super Bowl probability is a little bit lower because they won't have the benefit of playing a home game in round two, and they don't have a buy they have to play in the wildcard round. Even though they're the biggest favorites on this slate, they're not guaranteed to win. But I think that we can all see a path for New Orleans to make a run in the playoffs. They're a really complete team in the NERD rating that I just mentioned is a rating that includes games with Teddy Bridgewater at quarterback, so they're even better than the fifth best team. That's where number five algorithm currently has them. So the question to ask here is where does this put us? What does this mean for our one and done type format, or really any fantasy playoff format. For the most part, any sort of format is going to force you to have to understand which teams are going to move on and which teams aren't. But then on top of that, you're trying to figure out which games are gonna shoot out, and then you're sort of trying to predict where a future game might shoot out. So let's look at that for a second. In round one, you've got four games with fairly tight over unders. The AFC games, according to FANDLS Sportsbook, have over unders of forty two and forty three and a half the NFC games forty seven and forty six, So there's not necessarily one obvious game to attack on this slate, which honestly makes it more fun. But then look at the second round. In the AFC, we'd probably be more worried about using players against Baltimore than against Kansas City. That's despite the fact that Kansas City is playing a lot better on the defensive side of the ball of late. They've been a lot better during the second half of the season. Realistically, both of those matchups aren't the best now. New England won't be going to Baltimore no matter what if they win in Round one, but playing at home against the Tennessee defense this week that was worse against the quarterback position and in the secondary than Kansas City was this year. And that's from the perspective of fantasy points allowed when adjusted for strength of opponent. I think you've got to like New England's offense more in this game against Tennessee than what they might face against Kansas City. I know what happened in last year's AFC Championship game, but New England is completely different this year offensively. So given that information, Julian Edelman makes sense this week. If you're in a one and done format, I don't mind ruling Julian Edelman. If you could only choose one player from every team, Julian Edelman would probably be my New England Patriots pick, and Dereck Henry's not a bad idea in this game. Either you have to worry about a negative game script really hitting. But there's no doubt that the Titans are going to try to go with a run heavy game plan against New England since New England was first in past defense efficiency this year according to number fires Expected Points Model, and they were tenth against the run. I'm not all that enthusiastic about this game though, and I'm not all that excited about either team during the playoffs from a fantasy standpoint. For both Tennessee and New England, New England's offense has been so average, so it's pretty easy to understand why it's hard to buy in, but Tennessee's hasn't. Tennessee has some fantasy football juice, but they'd have to go to Baltimore in round two, which would be tough, and then they'd either get Kansas City, Buffalo, or Houston in the AFC Championship game. If they're able to get by Baltimore, not only is it going to be really tough to beat the Ravens, but Kansas City and Buffalo are fairly tough matchups for a passing offense. So the only plus matchup for the Titans could end up being a game against Houston in the AFC Championship. That's not a likely outcome now. Like I just said, the other game in the AFC this weekend is between Buffalo and Houston. According to Number five or Live, which you guys can hit up on live dot number fire dot com and track live win probability, the Texans have a sixty one percent chance to win this weekend. That's actually a little bit higher than the Patriots. Now, considering Buffalo may not get past this game, and considering Josh Allen's fantasy upside with his legs, I do think that he's in play as a quarterback in a one and done league this week. This game's also being played indoors, which is a plus, and Houston's allowed two point eight points above expectation this year to opposing quarterbacks, so there's some potential for Allen in this game. And if he loses, you have the option to play to Shaun Watson against Kansas City next week as long as Tennessee pulls an upset. Now, Watson to a degree is also in play this week since there's also a chance that they end up going to Baltimore next week. But I do think that Allen is okay for a one and done league, and the same goes for John Brown. But I think the most intriguing game this week from a fantasy perspective is the Seahawks and Eagles. For a lot of reasons, it's got the second highest overrunder on the slates. There's some scoring potential. I know. The last time these two teams played back in Week twelve, we didn't see that scoring potential. The Seahawks won seventeen to nine, but there was some bad weather in that game with a lot of wind, and Carson Wentz has been a lot more effective as he's gotten used to these weapons down the stretch. The overunder that's currently set makes a lot of sense. But the reason that you can feel pretty confident using players from both teams in this game, at least in a one and done format, is that the winner is likely going to San Francisco in the divisional round. The Saints are big favorites. They have seventy two percent odds to beat Minnesota. That would mean that they would go to Green Bay if they were to win this weekend, which means it's very likely that the winner of Philadelphia and Seattle will go to San Francisco. But if we look at the Saints using Saints players, especially in the passing game, that's totally fine this week Because of the matchup and the fact that they're playing at home, the likelihood that this is the only home game for New Orleans is fairly high. They're big favorites, They've got the highest implied team total this week. They're in a great spot. But you also won't be able to use those guys again in a one and done league, so you don't necessarily want to go overboard with one team with by far the best chance to win this weekend. Obviously, anything can happen, but we're playing probability here, so to me, Michael Thomas is likely might go to in that game for New Orleans. So going back to the Philadelphia Seattle game, I think that's the game that makes the most sense to attack this weekend. You don't have to game stack it because it could go south. But Philly and Seattle were both pretty average against most positions this year when a just for strength of schedule, Philly can be beat through the air, Seattle against running backs and tight ends, So rolling out and using the Eagles tight ends, especially if Urtz is out, and going with Dallas Goddard that's a good call this weekend, and then going with dk Metcalf I think is a strong choice too. I'd be surprised if we see such a low scoring game like we saw in week twelve. So to summarize, Edelman and Derrick Henry are the two big names that you would want from that Tennessee and New England game. In a one and done format, you could go with Josh Allen and John Brown in the other AFC game. You can go heavier than you'd think with the Seattle and Philly game. And then I'm intrigued by the Saints in their high game total, especially Michael Thomas. Playing Michael Thomas at home is a lock. I didn't talk that much about the Vikings, but we generally know how the Vikings distribute their volume and it's not the best matchup in the world. Now. The reason that you need to focus on round one so much of these playoff contests is because there are so many different things that can go down after this weekend's games. You have to take it round by round and game by game. But I can tell you that according to number fires algorithm, which has been pretty damn good since I started heavily using it for these playoff contests. The two teams who have better than two and a half percent odds to win the Super Bowl who are playing this weekend are unsurprisingly New Orleans and New England. Even though one of the Eagles and Seahawks are going to win this weekend, their path to getting far in the playoffs is really, really tough, and Houston's actually a below average team according to the Nerd metric that I talked about earlier. According to Nerd, Houston's the worst playoff team this year. It's just that they're playing at home and Buffalo is not a whole lot better from an analytical perspective. Like I said at the top, there are tons and tons of variations of these playoff contests, but hopefully hearing some of this today and thinking about the pads for these different teams can help you sort through your particular league format and get the w that's going to do it for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you've got subscribed to the Late Round podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere. Podcasts can be found, and don't forget to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks everyone, I'll catch you on Friday with the Weekly Mailbag Show.