November 21, 2025 • 65 mins
Brian Drake (@DrakeFantasy) of Fantasy Points joins JJ to chat about content in the fantasy football industry, mistakes drafters made in 2025, the Patriots backfield, and so much more.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brian Drake is a podcast host and writer at Fantasy
Points who also does work at Fantasy Pros, The Huddle,
Sirius XM, and a ton of other places too. He's
a past FSWA Football Article of the Year winner, He's
a dad, he's an Eagles fan.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
And he loves Syracuse as well.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
These are his late round perspectives.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
I feel like ten minutes ago you and I were
in Canton, Ohio having some adult beverages and drafting in
The King's Classic. And now it's like pushing.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
For the playoffs.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Make sure you have handcuffs, and it just it goes
by so fast when you're in this content grind, because
Thursday night becomes the weekend, becomes Monday night recaps Waiver Wire.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
It never ends. Yeah, no, it's true.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
I mean I like feel like it was yesterday that
we were because we did The King's Classic. We do
it on Saturday. You know, you host one of the
drafts typically, right, so you did. I think you hosted
the this year, right, So you were on Serious XM
for that and then you drafted the Snake, right.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Yeah. So I have a partner in the league.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Ryan Hallum and Kevin Tompkins from Fighting Chance Fantasy. So
I let I let those guys do the auction. I
take care of of the snake, which I love the
auction listen one of my best friends and Drew Davenport.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
I got to I got to give love to the
auction guys.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
But if I have the opportunity to do radio, I'm
going to do radio because that's it's my first love.
And you don't get that opportunity very often. So I
passed up the league to get on the air and
stroke my ego for two hours.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Yeah, no, I feel you.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
And so you know, you you sit there and you
kind of analyze the draft as it's going on. You know,
I've talked about The King's Classic on here as guests.
You know, I'd Jim Coventry on a couple of weeks
ago and such and we chatted about it. But then
the next day, which is the actual expo, you know,
at at the Hall of Fame, you guys are still
doing You're still doing the serious XM thing, and you
and I I hopped on for about fifteen ten to
(01:53):
fifteen minutes with you and Bob Harris at one point
maybe it was only like five to ten. But I
remember like talking about my drafts because my snake, because
I drafted Christ McCaffrey like seventh overall or something, and
we were kind of discussing that.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
But it literally feels like that was like last week.
It's crazy, it is.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
It goes by so fast that whole expo weekend goes
by in a blink. I look forward to it all
year long, and then it's it's just up and gone,
and I'm already driving back to Syracuse from Canton, Ohio.
But that's fantasy football season. And if you don't stay
on top of it, and if you don't hustle on
the waiver wire and making trades, it can get away
from you quickly, and all of a sudden, you're staring
(02:30):
at a team that has no chance of making the playoffs,
and you're frustrated, and you stop listening to content.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Don't stop listening to this, please yeah, please, please, please
keep listening. Please.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
But we see that all year long. Is once people
kind of get out of it, they throw their hands up.
In the end, I forget about it. I'm done, it's
over with. But you can fight till the end. In
fantasy football, too many people give up way too early,
like you can win out. It happens.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Yeah, And there's teams that were really good in your
league that are now terrible, and there's teams that were
terrible in your league that are really good now. And yeah,
it can happen. It can happen super fast. There's always
things shifting and moving. By the way, I got to
throw this out there. How great is it that that
a pit guy and someone in Syracuse can have this
discussion cordially and and you know, just have a good
time on an hour long podcast.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Oh well, I mean we're definitely not talking football someone
here in Syracuse. Our season never really got started here
in Syracuse. But we're onto basketball. We're onto basketball and
uh and about halfway through that season, we'll be on
to lacrosse. Yeah, so that's that's how it goes here.
How was Pitt doing this year? I mean, are you
guys decent bad?
Speaker 2 (03:35):
We're decent. We're decent.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
We Uh we had a big game game day was
in in pit at pit last weekend and h they
just got smoked by Notre Dame, which was expected.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
I mean that'll be us this weekend. Yeah, Like I
had no I had.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
No no thought that that they were going to actually
take down Notre Dame. But it also didn't really matter
from like an acc standpoint, because they have a couple
of games coming up that they'd have to win. I
mean they I think their college football playoff probability right
now I was probably like five percent. So it's still
there's still some hope there if we can, if we
can somehow went out.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Syracuse has never hosted college football college game day for football, Yeah,
and that we're like one of four Power five.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Schools that have never hosted.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Interesting would you didn't obviously go to the to the
game day this past weekend, but how cool would that
have been if you were in college or just even
a little younger and you can go experience.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah, I don't think that it was.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
I don't think it was there when I was there,
which was weird, Like I was there when I like
I was at Pitt when Pitt basketball and honestly, when
Pitt Syracuse was really fun, you know, Big East time,
you know, like when when Pitt was like a one
seed consistently and you guys were great lost in the
Elite eight to Scotty freaking Reynolds and Nova, and it
was horrible.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
But yeah, I mean, like I would, I mean, it'd
be awesome. The one thing with.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Pitt is that, admittedly like that the football scene isn't
as strong as the basketball scene just because they play
at act Well now Acrature used to be Hindesfield and
where Pitt is at. From a campus perspective, it's in Oakland.
It's this area in Pittsburgh, and it's like a good
you know, it's not just like a mile. It's not
like a walk away to get to the stadium. I
mean you have to literally take we would take buses,
like students bus over to the stadium. So it doesn't
(05:15):
have the same kind of like college vibe as you
would ideally want. Now, when I was there, pitt played
in the Biggiest Championship and lost to Cincinnati. It was
a crazy game, like a really really crazy game. And
for that game, like it was sold out and it
was crazy, you know, like sixty thousand plus people. But
most games are still you know, it's just not the
same kind of college vibe if you.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Were to go to like Happy Valley or something like that.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
I know, and I wish I had that experience with
college and a lot of people think that I went
to Syracuse, but I actually didn't go to Syracuse.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
I was accepted to Syracuse.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
This is a story that I'm sure a lot of
you guys can attest to, is I was accepted to Syracuse.
I was going to go to the New House School
and become a broadcaster, like you know everybody you see
on TV these days. I go to orientation with my father,
who is a truck mechanic. Right, most blue collar family
grew up on the North side of Syracuse, went to
impoverished high schools. If you saw the scores for these schools,
(06:12):
you don't know how anybody everring go out of them.
But they hand a piece of paper in My father go,
mister Drake, this is what it's going to cost to
send your son to Syracuse for four years.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
And he looks at me.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
And I had this program that I you know, I
had over like a twelve hundred masats and I had
like a ninety average, So you get all this admitted
aid and all this.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
He looks at me, he goes, I wouldn't sign that.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Yeah, he looked at this six figure number that I
would be saddled with for probably still to this day,
and he goes, I wouldn't do that, so sight unseen,
I went forty five minutes up the road to Oswego
State University where Steve Lee, Vilanda Cone l Roker, those
kind of guys went. Basically, anybody who couldn't afford to
go to Syracuse just goes up the road to Oswego,
and that's where I ended up going. But my heart
(06:52):
is here in Syracuse. I've been a fan since I
was a little kid season ticket holder, and I still
am a huge Syracuse die hard to this day, as
by me being the only person fantasy to know who
ronde Gansten was before about six weeks ago.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Yeah, yeah, I mean did you always you always had
in your in your hearts to like because obviously Syracuse,
you know, they're known for like broadcast journalism and stuff.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
And is that something that.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
I mean, like even when you hopped on this, it's
just like you have such a radio voice, right like
you you are, you are so good on air and
and the voice that you like, I'm much more of
just like the casual podcaster type, right and you do,
but you have you have the radio voice like you
have it in you? Is that something that you always
wanted to do Yeah, and my best friend and I
(07:37):
were going to go to Syracuse together. He actually did go,
and I wrote an article about this and it was
posted on on the Huddle. A few weeks ago he
died in a car accident. He was a news reporter
in sports anchor here in Syracuse and just kind of
getting going.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
And he went to.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
School with the a niche Cheiroffs and and all these
Syracuse guys that you see being big time radio and
TV personalities today that it would be him. But he
was hitting killed by a drunk driver twenty what geez,
twenty years ago now. So I wrote an article at
that and I always wanted to go do that and
somewhere along the line, and I remember this before he died,
(08:13):
he told me I had a job. I was working
for a beer hole saler and I kind of just
I needed, you know, you got to get money. There's
no money in media, there's none at all. So he
told me, he goes, you're never going to get back
into this. He's like, you're gonna go and you're gonna
work it at Budweiser, and you're gonna get married to
the girl that I'm married to now with kids, and
he goes, that's where your life is going to go.
(08:34):
And he was right, because you can give up on
this dream so easily. And that's when I got back
into fantasy football, and it allowed me to get into podcasting.
It sort of was that glimmer of hope that I
could do what I always wanted to do. And when
I started my podcast back in twenty seventeen with Dwayne McFarland,
we did the Fantasy Football Hustle.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
We did that for five years.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Somehow never won an FSWA Award for Best Podcast because
some other guy on this podcast winning it all the time,
but we did get nominated. But that's what got me
back into this is fantasy football. So I have this
fun game that we love to thank for getting me
back into doing the radio, doing podcasts, buying expensive microphones
and having a little bit of fun here in my basement.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Was that sort of like your journey into the space,
Like did you get going in twenty seventeen ish timeframe
or was it before that?
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Yeah, this is a funny story of how I got started.
So I was on Twitter back when Twitter was fun.
This is twenty seventeen and I'm following who is now
my friend Ryan Hallum, who has worked for Fantasy Alarm,
and he started fighting chance fantasy dot com. He posts,
he goes, hey, I need someone to do a Fantasy
football mock draft because Steve Gardner of USA today, whatever happened,
(09:46):
he bailed. He couldn't do it. So I was just
I happened, me sitting on my couch. I responded to go,
I'll do it. He thought he was talking to other
content creators or other fantasy guys. I was just Joe
Blow sitting on my couch. So I joined this draft
with all these experts. And then after he's like, who
do you write for? I don't right for anybody. I'm
just I'm a beer salesman. And he goes, do you
(10:09):
want to write for me? And I end up doing
a mock up of the draft and from there and
Ryan has helped launch so many careers and he's the
most selfless guy in fantasy. I love him for the
opportunities that he gave myself. Dwayne Kevin Tompkins, Casey case
and Corbin Young who's won multiple FSWA awards. A lot
of guys in gals came through fighting Chance Fantasy. So
(10:31):
I started writing there and I said, I want to
do a podcast. I love radio. The podcasts are just
getting going. So I start doing the pod and he goes,
you got to find a guest. And I went out
on Twitter and I found this guy who was putting
out all these crazy stats, Dwyne McFarland. He had like
two hundred followers at the time, some dude, some dude
named Dwayne McFarlane.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Yeah right.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
So I DM him, like, hey, brother, you want to
do this pod with me? And it's the debut episode.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
He's like sure.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
I mean, he's just kind of speaking into the ethos.
Nobody knows who he is. He and I do the
first show and when it was done, I go to Ryan.
I go, okay, cool, let's find who are gonna have
on next week. He goes, no, no, no, He goes, that's
the show. Get get that guy back. So Dwayne and
I sprung up a friendship, and I talked to Dwayne
this past week.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
He called me.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
We talked for like an hour in my office, and
we did that show for five years, and I quickly
learned the secret to success in any business attach yourself
to insanely smart people and they will make you look phenomenal.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
So yeah, I got to work with Dwayne for five
years and now I'm so proud of what he's done
at Fantasy Life and all the stops along the way
from football Guys, pff ETR and it helped our show
and we got to have incredible guests, and we had
a podcast that people thought was People thought we had
this legit podcast JJ because I went and took all
(11:52):
of my contacts from guys I knew a Syracuse or
or my buddy worked at S and ys, the director
of of everything at sn HY. He made us this
insane video opening for free that would cost a normal
agency ten thousand dollars. Yeah, my buddy, John Gay, who
was a major market DJ. I went to him and
(12:13):
I said, can you create the opening and bumpers and
all of that? So our imaging sounds good. So when
we came out, people thought we were like this major
to do and we weren't. We were just literally two
schlubs in our basement. We had insane guy. The only
person in Fantasy we didn't have on that show was you.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
That's actually that I'm thinking about it. Yeah, Yeah, I
don't think I've ever done.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Now, we had Clay and Evan Silva and I mean,
you name it, they all they all came up for Dwayne.
I mean I was just there for the live stop,
but it was his great work that got our doors opened.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
And I'm forever grateful for him.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
And you know, from there, once he went on and
did his thing what he's doing now with Fantasy Life,
I decided, well and decide, I'm like, I got to
do something here.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
I want to keep doing the show. Well.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Joe Dolan, who I met through the expo, he and
I became friends and we did a pod together that
led to me joining Fantasy Points. From there, I hooked
up with my man John Hansen, who I do a
podcast with now, the Fantasy Points Podcast, and it got
me on Sirious XM. I've done shows there. I did
the morning show last year, which was a dream come true.
And I did a show with Andrew Ericson from PFF
(13:22):
for a while. And it's a blast for a kid
who never thought he would get back into radio to
say to folks, I'm going to do the morning show
on a nationwide broadcast on Sirius XM was incredible and
it only lasted a year. You know, I have a
nine to five job, so it just kind of doesn't
really work with what I'm doing right now.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
But it's amazing.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
And I have nothing but the friendships I made in
fantasy football, from going to the expo, from being a
friend on Twitter, and just kind of never saying no
to things.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Yeah, I guess that worked out. Yeah, that's awesome, man.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
It's honestly, it's an encouraging st sorry for anyone who's
like in a position where they have that nine to
five and they just want to kind of do something
that they're passionate about. And like, clearly you have that
passion for like you're one of the rare breeds though
that it's not just fantasy analysis that that passion is
coming from. It's also just the medium that you're able
(14:18):
to talk through. And that's so important because I'm telling
you when I do radio hits and when I because
you know, I've done tons of them in my lifetime,
it's just you when you're doing all because I've done TV,
I've done radio, I've done podcasts, I've done you know,
whatever the case may be.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
And like, I know what.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
I enjoy doing most, which is this kind of medium,
and you have to have a certain mindset when you
go on radio or when you're doing even when you
and I are chatting with Bob, you know, at the
expo and you have constantly people in your ear and
stuff like that, and you know, you're like, Okay, we
have thirty seconds, We've got to wrap this up, et cetera.
Like that's a skill, that's a skill that people don't understand,
(14:59):
how to go on and happen with people that are
doing things on air. And then there's also the you know,
like I'm always in awe of Field Yates right on TV,
like he just follows on TV. And I don't say
that because he's a friend and I'm trying to suck
up to him. I've said this all the time that
like his skill set. Obviously he knows ball, but he's
just so good at doing what he does and communicating
(15:22):
these ideas the way that he does. And I think
just that side of things is really important, like being
able to know how you want to talk about things
in the way in which you want to talk about
those things. You know, whether it's how I'm doing it
on the Late Round podcast or someone sitting on radio
and doing it. That's all important, and that's what this
package is all about. Whenever you're going out and doing
fantasy comps.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
And you really hit a sweet spot with My favorite
thing you do is the transaction episode. I love listening
to that because it's packaged in a way I can
listen to it on my ride to work. Make sure
that I mean, because I'm kind of doing that work
as well, but I want to make sure I'm not
missing something sure, So I love listening to it. And
you this is something we had to work with on
the Hustle is let's give people really advanced analytics, but
(16:05):
package it in a way where we're not scaring them
off so much to you know, targets per route run
or some of these advanced things out there that I've
talked to a lot of my friends who are guys
in their mid forties and hey, did you hear this?
Did you understand it? And I've found that really in fantasy,
people just want the smoking gun. People are lazy in general.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Just tell me who to pick up, tell me who
to play this week.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
I know in fantasy, we want to educate people so
they can kind of do it themselves and have the
answers to the test in front of them. But oftentimes
it's they just tell me who to pick up, bro,
you know, do you want to pick up Luther Burden
this week?
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Tell me why he's good?
Speaker 3 (16:45):
You know, Okay, his route shares increasing, the w'll past
few weeks, blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Great.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
But I think sometimes we can get too lost in
the data and analytics world in fantasy. So I appreciate
what you do of trying to keep it simple while
also telling people, well, this is why I came to
this conclusion because of the numbers behind it.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
No, No, I appreciate that, and it's true.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
I mean there's always gonna be a subset of people
that get angry at me, even where they're like I
don't need to read a two hundred page draft guide
when I just want you to give me your rankings.
It's like, all right, yeah, I mean, if you just
want my rankings, then just go to the Patreon or whatever.
Do whatever you want if you want that. But you know,
like if you really want to dig in and like
love this game on a deeper level and like find
this hobby and you know, like as corny as that sounds,
(17:28):
and as silly as that sounds to like love love
that game, on a deeper.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Level, it's a hobby.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
You know.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
It's no different than like really getting into a video game,
or like really getting into movies or something. It's a
hobby that we all love. And if you want to
dig in and like get better and there's a payoff
at the end realistically, you know, something that you don't
necessarily get in some.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Of these other hobbies and such.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
You know, there are avenues to learn too, and oh yeah,
you know, it's important to kind of have that balance
between the two.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
And I tell people all the time, and I wrote
some articles. One of them, actually, I think got to
nominated for an FSWA award, was about content creators against
engagement farmers, because you see a lot of that in
social media, you know, Twitter, especially when Twitter was kind
of a big deal. It's not really anymore. But the
folks who engage just to engage and kind of game
(18:15):
the system.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
And here's the thread brows. I told you last.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Summer, which I love making fun of that last summer,
I told you to draft this guy. But there are
folks who have figured out the algorithm and whether it's
on YouTube or Twitter or Instagram, and you might not
have any idea.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Of who they are.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Like, you are a big name in this space, right JJ,
people respect you, they know you do great work. You
could go over to YouTube and this happened to me.
I was sitting in my hot tub and I'm scrolling
through and some guy is answering start sick questions and
people are paying him these like what do they call
them super chats whatever, and they're paying him like five
ten bucks a pop. And this guy I've never heard
(18:53):
of in my life is just raking in the dough
because he's gained the algorithm.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
He had super slick graphics.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
I always told people, you can do fantasy football content,
you can be great at it, but until you get
somebody who wants to pay you for that information, like
it's just a hobby at that point, Yeah, it's not.
It's not really a job. So you know, you got
to take it for really what it's worth out there,
And uh, it's getting harder and harder with AI and
(19:20):
you know, the these conglomerates coming together and people just
they don't want to pay for good content. I see
people all the time. I've gone on job interviews for
fantasy companies. Hey, man, we want you to write twenty
articles a day. We're gonna pay a five bucks an article. Like, brother,
I got a wife, two kids, and a mortgage. Like
who are you talking to? Yeh're doing that. Not to
sound like I'm a snob or something, I'm too good
for it, But you also have to know the value
(19:41):
of your time, of course, so you know, it's it's
tough out there, and you know, kudos to you for
starting your own business, really, and that had to be
scary to say, I'm gonna go out on my own
and I'm gonna do my own thing, and now you
got mister Kitchens here helping you out, and you know
it's it's kind of it's a two man band now.
But it's right, it's scary, man. I've thought about that
(20:02):
a million times, like, hey, how can I go do
this on my own and maybe bring in a team
of content creators and kind of build something out. But
I mean that that's a hard leap to make when
you've got a couple of young kids, and I know
these bills keep coming in.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Of course.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Of course, I was in a pretty fortunate position where
you know, I had the podcast and I had an audience,
and the leap of faith wasn't as much of a
leap as it could be for for others and stuff,
and I'm really really grateful for that. But yeah, I mean,
like it's still a scary thing any any entrepreneur, any
anyone going on on their own and like doing their
own thing. It's it's obviously there's a lot of question marks,
(20:38):
but yeah, I mean it's it's It's really good to
hear your perspective on all that, though, because I think
that there's plenty of people, you know, I get emails
weekly from people that are trying to do something in
fantasy that they're really interested in doing something. And hearing
it from other people other than me or you know me,
like sitting down with you for a thirty minute phone
call or you know, emailing you back, it's good to
(20:59):
hear these different perspectives.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
This is late round perspectives after all. I love this.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
I thought about doing a show like this a while
back because I'm a big Howard Stern fan. I love
the way that Howard goes about doing his interviews with folks,
and I often thought, and there's other people who have
tried doing this, this sort of thing over the years
is yeah, it's great, do you like this guy or
that guy or give me the sleeper, Like that's great.
But I've always loved finding people's process and I find
(21:26):
that infinitely more interesting. If you sit down with you know,
a guy like a Field Yates or you know John
Hansen or whoever you know, Dwayne, and you find out
like what makes them tick?
Speaker 2 (21:37):
What do they do?
Speaker 3 (21:37):
I'd love that to hear that even with you is
when you sit down and you write that fifteen transactions.
Because really, when I, as a content creator listen to
that show, I go, all right, JJ writes an article
and then he reads it like that's that's yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
It's like it's like my notes for the for the
actual episode. Yeah, like yeah, you know a lot of
my a lot of my shows are like because people
are like, how scripted is it?
Speaker 2 (21:58):
And stuff?
Speaker 1 (21:59):
And it's like, parts of are clearly scripted because I
need to get certain data out and it needs to
be like really succinct and stuff. But the fifty transactions
one is even more so because I already have the
thing written, so obviously I'm just gonna read a lot
of that stuff.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
Yeah, that's that's The key is finding how do people
come up with what they want to talk about, and
you know, being unique. I think in today's day and age,
you know, you can really micro cast and find a niche.
There's so many folks who are or were like just
say NFL beat writers, and now they've kind of even
trimmed that down. They said, I'm going to make a
(22:31):
Patreon or whatever else is out there these days, and
it's just going to be about let's say the Eagles.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
I'm an Eagles fan, and there are so many of
these folks who are.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
They can't get paid by the Philadelphia Inquirer anymore or whoever.
But they found fans will pay for niche content if
it's very very good. And same is true for fantasy football,
and it could be true for it. You could be
into chess or hunting, who knows. If you're that, you know,
narrow casting to an audience, you can make money in it.
(23:00):
And I think that's where I've failed over the years
is trying to be kind of you can be kind
of everything to everyone is just like generic host guy.
And I've been pigeonholed as that and people go, oh,
you're great, but you're just you're just a host. And
I see there's so many talented guys like I love
my guy Paul Kelly, I love Mike Dempsey on Sirious XM.
And these guys are phenomenal hosts who I don't think
(23:23):
get enough credit for their own content or their own
takes because they're so good at setting up someone else
to get what they want out of it. You know,
it's it's not hard set guys up. You know, it's
like being a softball pitcher. You're just tee up. You
know what these guys want to do and hit it
out of the park. When Dayne and I would do
our show, sometimes people send like we are show sheet,
(23:45):
Like you sent over, Hey we can talk about X
Y and Z. Dwayne and I never once had a
show sheet.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
I would text.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
Him, you know, hey, we're gonna record at seven o'clock tonight.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Cool.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
I knew he was going to be so prepared that.
And it's the same thing with John Hans and we
do our show on Sunday night. We recap all the games.
I know they're so prepared. I can tee them like
I know where their head's going to go and what
they're good at covering and I'm not going to lead
them down a path to something that they don't want
to talk about. So it's, uh, this is my favorite stuff.
(24:15):
I could talk content and theory all day long.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Yeah, no, I love it too, obviously, you know.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Having you know, I ran Number fire and Fandel's content
business for a while, and that's a side that like
people from my perspective that people don't see what I
have come from.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Obviously.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Now I'm just mostly just doing the content stuff and
just producing it. But there was a time in my
life where there's a lot of the management stuff and
the strategic stuff and figuring out bigger media plans as
opposed to just like yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
I got this newsletter and podcast. I just got to
get this stuff out and you know, the rankings and such.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
But I think that the moral here, though, is that
there are a lot of ways in this industry to
get yourself inserted, depending on what your individual skill set is.
And like I said, you know, if you have a
medium that you feel really comfortable with, like, in my opinion,
double down on that. You know, Like I'm like I said,
I've done like TV and stuff, hate it, hate it
with a passion. I'm just it's just not for me.
(25:07):
It's just not something that I'm good at, and I
like having more casual conversation. Even radio. I don't love
doing radio, just because it's a very you know, it's
segmented the way that it is, and it's harder to
get some of the more robust takes that I might
have and talking points that I might have out whereas this,
I'm like, yeah, if we go an hour, great, if
we go an hour and five minutes, not the end
of the world either, you know, I can I can
(25:28):
at least be a little bit more flexible.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Yeah, And the more that folks can do different things
as well. If you're listening to this and you're a
want to be creator or you're just getting started, if
you can edit video, if you can edit audio, if
you can make thumbnails like that, all goal is a
long way because there's so many people that can't. I know,
when we first started doing our shows and things I
(25:50):
would have I would outsource the thumbnails and because I
wasn't good at it, and I'm like, someone's got to
help me out here, because I knew that you needed
a good thumbnail to kind of get going. And now
that's a whole gimmick is, you know, the goofy face
on a thumbnail on YouTube. But yeah, there's there's so
much content out there for folks, and there's no gatekeepers anymore.
(26:11):
You don't need someone to necessarily hire you to say, oh,
how do I work for Fantasy Points or you know,
I work for Fantasy Pros. I do some work for
them now too, And you don't have to. You have Instagram,
you got Twitter, you got YouTube. You can start a
YouTube channel tomorrow and all of a sudden you can
become the next big thing if you're just consistent and
(26:31):
good at it and don't let anybody tell you no.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
You gotta fail.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
I listened to so many David Goggins motivational speeches, and
it's just about failure. You got to keep trying and failing,
trying and failing, because the worst thing you can do
is just not try. Not get off the couch. So
to anybody out there who wants to try to become
the next Jajent or on a much much lower level,
the next Brian Drake, you know, just you gotta just
(26:56):
get off the couch. It's advice to myself, really, right,
right right, yeah, totally what I'm trying to hurt myself
up in the mirror.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
No, no, totally.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
All right, let's talk a little little fantasy, little little
like strategy and just like high level takeaways from what's
gone on this year. So obviously hindsight's in our favor.
Right now, it's week twelve. You know, we've seen a
lot of football this year. But what's something that you
look back and you think fantasy managers just did wrong
this year during draft time?
Speaker 2 (27:23):
You know, like it could just be like.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Like they went after late round quarterbacks and they shouldn't have,
or they did elite tight end they shouldn't have. Like
what's your takeaway and what do you think that people
might take into twenty twenty six as a result.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
I think partly fantasy content creators led the casual player
fan down this road. And it's because we are so
excited to do best ball and we get this best
ball brain, and that bleeds into redraft. It impacts ADP
and it pushes up players with some narratives that we
create in April May June, I think we overlooked a
(28:01):
lot of players who were healthy and in great spots.
So of course I'm referring to Christian McCaffrey, Jonathan Taylor.
These are guys who finished like at number one at
their position at some point in their career. And these
guys that during the summer, I know CMC crept up
later had like round two eightyps. So I think we
looked at a lot of situations where guys had like
garbage time touches, or maybe they weren't even that talented,
(28:24):
but the volume was there for whatever situation. Chase Brown
comes to mind, Brian Thomas Junior. We assumed that volume
would be there again this season, but we didn't take
into consideration. Maybe quarterback play was Mac Jones, you know
their creator, Brian Thomas Junior.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
You know Chase Brown.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
So I think, you know, we just looked at the
wrong things instead of looking at who's really good at
fantasy football. We got to stop looking at who needs
planetary alignment to come through. And I think maybe next
year we'll look at it and just go, hey, are
you good at fantasy football? And I say that because
I've I've got a guy in my home league shout
(29:01):
out to the alcoholic Hayes who has made like four
moves all season long, but he's in fourth place. And
fighting for the playoffs. Spot he I don't think the
guy pays attention to the league at all. Like I've
had a text him, like, bro, you need to set
a lineup this week. But what he did he drafted
Jamiir Gibbs in the first round. He's got JSN on
his team.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
He had.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
He didn't drop Trayvon Henderson. So he just drafted good players. Yeah,
and he hasn't He hasn't dropped him at all. So
I think that's what we have to overlook, is trying
to wish cast ourselves into who the next big name
is going to be.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Just draft good players. Man.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Yeah, it's really easy to get carried away with certain
narratives with especially younger players, you know, And I'm guilty
of it too. I mean, I think there's a balance,
of course, because we're gonna see, you know, rookies and
players who haven't broken out yet break out.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
It's going to happen.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
And you know, if you look at how low the
odds are veterans doing well in the double digit rounds,
then you might as well just go after rookies that.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
You know, that kind of that kind of notion.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
But there is definitely and I think that, like the
the the best ball stuff is is an interesting thing
that I think a lot of season long analysts are
going to bring up during the off season is that
you know, it's it's the slappies right there, the best
ball slappies who go out there and they start touting
the Jayden Blues and the Burschard Smiths of the world.
Because in that in that environment, it might not be
(30:23):
that bad of an idea because you might get a
few usable weeks from those players, you know, even if
they don't have full time rules. But when you're looking
at a managed season long league, how how reliable are
those guys truly going to be?
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Right?
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Like what what is the the true ceiling there? And maybe,
like I'm just using those guys as examples, maybe they're
not the best examples of the in the world, but you.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
Know, I'm guilty of it too.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Like there are there are these ebbs and flows during
draft season, and I noticed that this year, especially with
my draft guide, when I would add and and and
remove players from like my players to target and avoids
list and stuff, and it's like, how am I feeling
in that moment? You know, like like like am I
you know. I remember I added at one point Elijah
Royo to the mix, right like back in like late
(31:06):
July or something, and then I'm like, looking back, I'm like,
I didn't really need it, Like no one lost their league,
because that doesn't matter. It's a last round pick, just
not a big deal if you went that route, if
you just threw that dart.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
And even in the blurb I talked about how.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Like we would have some idea of his usage after
like week one, but you know, it's still one of
those situations where it's like we do need to realize
and think about more deeply how this game is actually
being played. And it's that in ninety nine percent of
leagues you don't even need to show your hand with
Elijah Royo. You just need to know in the back
of your head that he exists and he might be
(31:38):
a talented player that later in the season you'd be
ahead of things when things start to trend in his direction.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
If things start to trend in his direction, I'll.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
Tell you one player who I got in a fight
on Twitter with folks with, and it was Brishard Smith. Yeah,
because people were saying, like, oh, he's he's running routes
in camp, like you gotta watch He's gonna be the
next Jeric McKinnon, and I said, I'm like, no, he's not.
They've got three backs, like, they're never gonna use this kid.
He can't run the football like you're doing your readers
or listeners at disservice telling them in a redraft form,
(32:08):
now is dynasty best ball?
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Great?
Speaker 3 (32:10):
Go shoot the moon with Burchard Smith. You can't tell
folks in a redraft league to go draft Burchard Smith
because it's not gonna like you need so many things
to align, and they almost have with Checko going down
and Kareem Hunts kind of Kareem Hunt and they're looking
for some playmakers on that running game, and he still
can't be usable for fantasy. So that that's one of
(32:32):
the names that's just popping on.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
No, I think like again, like we've like as and
I'm thinking about myself because I can only speak for myself,
but when I'm thinking about players to target and like
late round dart throws to throw, I need to and
this is something I'm definitely gonna be changing in the
draft guy next year. I need to almost categorize those
players as more of like a keep an eye out
(32:54):
for slash target actually target and get in your league,
you know what I mean, Like Brishard Smith being a
keep an eye out for even a early on Jacory
Krosky era before the before the you know, the the
ADP rows, like keep an eye on him, Like that's
it's certainly not a bad idea to say, like, okay, yeah,
like his his ADP might rise. You might gain a
little equity if you draft, if you're drafting right now,
(33:16):
like keep an eye on this player versus let's go attack,
because when we say let's go attack, we're almost watering
down the other players that are also being bucketed in
that same group.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
For instance, a JK. Dobbins, right who was another?
Speaker 1 (33:30):
So so if I have you know, a JCM or
you know, pre ADP Spike and a JK. Dobbins, then
someone might see that as interchangeable. But it's not interchangeable
at all. You know, it's a and all of that's
being driven by my rankings and such, and you can
just look at those and get an idea of like
where to draft those guys. But I do think that
like having that kind of contextual stuff and that kind
of nuance is very, very important when we're discussing, you know,
(33:54):
who we should be targeting and not targeting.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
There's so many folks out there, and I consider a
lot of my friends that's the target audience for me.
I look at my friends. I'm forty five years old
and my buddies who are all you know, their middle aged,
They got wife, kids, lives happen, and they love playing
fantasy football. But it's not you know, their whole life.
They're not at like a DFS degenerate. And that's great
if you have that, but I think a lot of content,
(34:17):
at least what I do is geared towards your casual
home league player. These guys have no idea who Brishard
Smith is. Yeah, you know, they don't know who some
of these folks are. So when they hear some of
these names, that's why it's good to say, just keep
it in the back of your mind.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Right, you don't have to necessarily go target this player.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
But because they're not following college football, they're not watching
you know, the Big twelve.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Yeah, those guys are getting get drafted. Like Brishard Smith's
not getting drafted in a normal league. He's just not
like he wasn't drafted in normal he was. I mean
I drafted him in the in the King's Classic Leagues,
because the King's Classic Leagues are ub third Like they're teams,
yeah fourteen teams, really deep rosters and stuff like our
waiver wire. Like I remember a few weeks ago getting
excited that I got to von Vele for like three
(34:59):
bucks off the waiver wire. And I don't care about
the von Melee in most most instances, you know, although
he now is like the more of the clear cut
wide receiver too.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
In New Orleans, brother, I dropped forty dollars on tees
Johnson at their backflip. I spent all my fab because
I lost Mike Evans. I'm like, oh my god, I
gotta do something. Yeah, because there's a relegation factor in
the rings. People don't realize that. If so my team
slowly were coming on. We've won a couple of games
in a row. Here, you're doing well. You won it
(35:27):
last year, aren't sure like first or second place? I
won it last year and I'm in first this year. Yeah,
so we'll stay.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
I had a really tough loss last week, though, Like
I went up again this the downside of having these
deep rosters is you go up against these players that
would never be started in normal lineups and stuff. So
I went up against not only did I face Josh
Allen who put up like a forty four burger, but
I also faced both Giants running backs against the Packers,
and they both had very usable performances.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
And I lost by like two as a result. But
I'm still in first, Still still sitting in first.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
Yeah, you'll be fine, You'll be fine. I'm trying to
sneak it. I went from like, oh my god, this
team is terrible. I might come in last place to
now I look at I'm like, I'm a game out
of the playoffs. Yeah, oh yeah, it's still pretty tight. Yeah,
it's all still pretty tight. So you mentioned what you
think people might have done wrong. You know, we talked
about the slappies and stuff.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
Is there anything that you're going to take into twenty
twenty six based on what you've seen this year that
you might change versus some other seasons you've played.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
It's funny because this kind of goes with your whole gimmick.
Here is to the late round quarterback and first maybe
the last two three years I've been on the train
of and I know you've been pushing this as well. Hey,
middle rounds, round three, four five, get the that kind
of the end of the rushing quarterback.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
You know that Jayden.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
Daniels Jalen hurts because they just offered that premiere upside.
But I think you're missing out on a level of player,
maybe in that range a JSN where you could have
just waited a little bit later and gotten the Drake
May everybody knew was going to break out. You know,
(37:00):
I have leagues now, I'm starting Flacco, I'm starting Jacoby Brisett,
and you're really not losing all that much, you know,
So I think and not saying I'm going to go
back to late round quarterback, but I'm gonna not be
the first guy in my league to take a quarterback.
And also, if I can do anything else, it's to
be more patient. I'm a guy who likes to make
(37:20):
a thousand moves in my league, like my home league
here that I care more about than breathing. I drafted
Woody Marks, I drafted Bacialot, and I drafted all these
guys like people don't even know who they were. When
I'm calling out the stickers right, and now, of course
none of them are on my roster. They're starting for
other teams and I'm sitting here trying to pick up
you know, Tyrrell Shavers, Yeah, for my wide receiver three tonight.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, look, it is. It is difficult.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
And that's something that I've really tried to preach over
the last few years with because doing late round fantasy
football has really opened my eyes to the way that
the everyday player plays, because I'm super active in discord
and talking to people literally constantly throughout the day, and
I see how they react to news items, and I
see how they react to games, and it's opened my
eyes so much to the fact that, like, patience really
(38:08):
is the number one trait of a good fantasy manager,
just being able to ride it out and stick with
what you know is. And I wouldn't say that like
you do that no matter what. It's really about patience
and timing, right, It's about understanding when it is time
to give up on a player and so on, and
the type of player that you would be giving up on,
you know, like if it's a rookie, you'd be more
patient with rookies than you would a veteran player, et cetera,
(38:30):
et cetera. So I think it's a really really good
call out to to make. Let me ask you this
about about where we're at right now in the fantasy
season the NFL. You know, there's going to be teams
that are just out of the playoffs by the time
championship week happens, even semi final week happens. In fantasy football,
(38:51):
do you ever get nervous about teams shutting down players,
like truly shutting them down? Or and are there any
players this is a question I get all the time.
Are there any players that you're nervous about this year
that might get shut down as we inch into the
fantasy playoffs?
Speaker 3 (39:04):
So this goes back to a tried and truth theory
that I've said for years about fantasy football, and it's
don't hit your wagon to players on bad teams. And
it sounds very, very simple, but at the end of
the day, if you have players and you look around
and you're like, I got a lot of players on
a Commanders or I got you know, guys on I mean,
(39:25):
just just pick a bad team's Houston or whatever, you know,
teams that aren't great and then you're like, oh my god,
like what could happen here?
Speaker 2 (39:32):
But you also can't play scared. Now.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
Will Jayden Daniels return, I don't know. I wouldn't bring
him back. The same I guess could be said for
Joe Burrow. Looks like Joe Burrow potentially come back, and
I love that. But there are situations where I look
at a guy like Breece Hall, and Breece Hall is
an impending free agent, he does not want to be
in New York next year. Who's to say Breese Hall
(39:55):
does all of a sudden, He's.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
Like, ah, the calf is a little.
Speaker 3 (39:59):
Tight today the last few weeks of the season, and
you know, all of a sudden he gets shut down.
So I think that's why you need to be in
a position where if you have, you know, handcuffs or
that position of flexibility where you can load up maybe
on some running backs or receivers that can still play.
You have to be you have to be paying attention
out there. But for the most part, no, I don't
(40:20):
really pay too much attention to if somebody gets shut
down because let's say, hey, it's week sixteen or seventeen.
If you're in a good league, with a good commissioner,
you should be the only team or two still being
able to pick up players off the waiver wire. So
you should have options available to at that point, Like
if you're in a league and like the guy in
the toilet bowl can pick up players, like, that's ridiculous.
(40:43):
That rule has to get changed because you're not helping
anybody there where the guy playing for you know, twelve
place is adding the hot waiver.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
Wire running back of the week. That's nonsense.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
Yeah, no, I think that it's one of those topics
that gets overinflated because if you think back, like how
often does that really?
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Maybe it happens once a year, like maybe you know.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
My only hesitation is like when a player is on
a bad team and is already hurt. Like one player
who comes to mind is like Garrett Wilson, right, oh yeah,
you know.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
Where I'm like, is there really a benefit to Garrett what?
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Like you know, obviously the other thing too is that,
like you people have to always remember these guys are professionals,
Like this is their job and they want to play
because they're football players.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
This is what they do.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
And so like if Garrett Wilson is one hundred percent
healthy and he feels great. They're gonna play Garrett Wilson
more than likely. But if there's any any doubt, like
any doubt in your mind or their mind that something
could happen, then they're gonna They're gonna err on the
side of caution in those scenarios.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
I had a.
Speaker 3 (41:39):
Guy this is last week, a guy I'm in a
league with, and I'll give Michelle's name is Boy Green.
He does a huge Jets podcast and YouTube. He has,
you know, all sorts of guys on the show. He
is as plugged into the Jets as anybody. He sends
me a trade where I would get Garrett Wilson. He goes, hey, listen,
you can stick him on your team for the playoffs.
(42:01):
You got a secret weapon here, And I'm like, wait
a minute, if you're selling Garrett Wilson that the antenna
has gone up here.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
So yeah, that's a great point.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
But again it goes back to don't if your trade
deadline is this week, don't tie yourself to players on
really bad teams. You know, if you've got guys on
the Falcons, the Falcons aren't going anywhere with Kirk Cousins.
You know, I would be looking to sell whoever I
could to get any value from if they were on
the Atlanta Falcons.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
Right now, all right, let's play this game that I've
been doing where we do this player or this player
rest of season, and we're gonna do George Pickens. Who
is I mean, I think he just came out. I mean,
I think that was the best game of his career
what he just did on Monday night. I mean, he
just looked like a he was just a monster in
that game. But we'll play George Pickens versus ex player
(42:48):
rest of season and we'll kind of go through the
logic and stuff like that. So we'll start George Pickens
versus Lad McConkey.
Speaker 3 (42:56):
What's great is I actually traded for George Pickens this
year and he's crushing it again in my Big League
of record, here's the guy's wide receiver four currently has
he has of his last seven games, only two of
them under nine targets. So I look at Lad McConkie.
Here's the problem with Lad McConkie. Like this week he's
on by So I don't love the fact that their
(43:17):
offensive line is terrible. You want to talk about a
team polling guy what happens if Justin Herbert gets hurt,
they just gets sick.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
I'm getting beat up.
Speaker 3 (43:25):
So I would rather have George Pickens here because I
think that the Cowboys are going to be in a
situation where they want to throw the football more less
mouths to feed. I mean, McConkie still has Gadsten and
they still have QJ and you know, heaven and forbid,
they get a Mario and Hampton back and he can
run the football a little bit. So maybe they use
Hampton to take pressure off of Herbert getting his brains
(43:47):
beaten in.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
So I'm gonna take Pickens. Yeah, I'm with you. How
about ROMADONSDA versus Pickens? Oh god, I don't want anybody
on the Bears.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
It's a It's an offense that spreads the ball around
to fifty eight guys and none of them ever come through.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
No thanks, all right?
Speaker 1 (43:59):
How about how about this? Is this one's kind of interesting.
Now they're on by this week, so that could be
a tiebreaker.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
What have you? But Jalen Wattle versus George Pickens.
Speaker 3 (44:08):
You know one of my other receivers on that team
is Jalen and Wattle. Uh listen, Jalen Wattle has a great,
great schedule down the stretch where I think he can
come through. So I'm by right now, like you said,
I to be honest, I think it's a coin flip.
I would lean towards Pickens because I think he has
a better quarterback. And I mean, but you look at
(44:29):
games here down the line with Cincinnati and Tampa.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
Uh. The only thing is you know, I mean, does
Pittsburgh scary at all? I mean, he's got the Jets,
the Saints, so it's great. If you have Waddle, it's unbelievable,
and you do a great job of talking about you know,
fantasy adjusted schedule and all that that kind of good stuff.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
I think I'm still gonna go Pickens.
Speaker 1 (44:49):
Yeah, I think I I think I had I should
have had my my arrest of season rankings.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
Uphile I was doing this, but I think I had
Pickens too. All right, here here's here's now we're gonna go.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
I've been only doing position by position, not only with
you over the last three guys, but with other guests too.
But I think it's kind of interesting to get like
other positions involved, because that's usually how people are trading too.
Because you're trying to help rite multiple teams, George Pickens
versus Bucky Irving, And right now we're recording this on Thursday.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
We've gotten very little.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
News this week about Irving aside from the fact that
he's just kind of bad practice. But there's not like
a full participant kind of situation going on here.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
Yeah, and it's funny.
Speaker 3 (45:26):
I hate to keep bringing up this random team that
nobody cares about, but the Bucky Irving's on that team
as well. He came over to me in the trade
with George Pickens because I love the playoff schedule.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
Yes, screen and listen.
Speaker 3 (45:37):
If you can get this Tampa team with a Bucky
Irving at full strength, where he is the three down
back and he's catching the ball out of the backfield,
and you know, I mean, look at some of these games.
They've got Miami in Championship week, you've got Carolina Atlanta
and they're hot and cold defense. I mean, this is
a great, great opportunity and I'm gonna lean Bucky Irving
(45:58):
here just because to me, it's hard to I know,
it's harder to find an elite wide receiver on the
waiver wire, but a difference making running back to your
team can really put you over the top. And if
you can get a twenty five point out burst from
Bucky Irving over I mean, whoever you might be starting
this week at that perside, if you drafted Bucky Irving,
he's probably your RB one and he's been sitting on
(46:20):
your bench doing nothing for you. So I hope you're
still a playoff relevant at this point. But what about you?
Speaker 2 (46:25):
Who would you take in that situation. I can't.
Speaker 1 (46:28):
I think I had again, I should have had my
my my rank, and I can pull him up right now.
I'm pretty sure I had Pickens ahead. But it's it's
interesting because I, yeah, I do. I have him two
spots ahead, and I had him one spot ahead of Waddles.
So this is all in the in the same group.
Speaker 3 (46:43):
You know.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
The main reason for that is just the ambiguity. But
you know, I think that with Bucky Irving, if you're
a team that is not in the playoffs, you might
have to sell right now to just get something in
this short term because we have no idea when he's
going to come back. But if you're in the playoffs,
if you have a first round, if you're like locked in,
I had a team like that, and I traded for
Bucky Irving last week with essentially bench assets. There's nothing
(47:06):
better than having Bucky Irving sitting on your bench and
not even needing him, you know, like because again, that
schedule's amazing. His peripherals were unbelievable the first four weeks
this season. I do think when he comes back, we're
gonna see more, a little bit more of a split
probably with like Sean Tucker, you know, speak of Syracuse.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
Syracuse guy, nobody talked up Sean talker with me. I love. Oh,
I'm such a Sean Tucker stand. I'm so excited about it.
Speaker 3 (47:30):
He's going to be somebody starting running back next year.
He's a restricted free agent his third round. You know,
I don't know they're not going to tender him. I mean,
there's no point, but he should be a starting running back. Yeah,
very very real checks season. Yeah, he's a good, good player,
very good player.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
And so you know, the only downside with with Tucker
is that, like you know, they'll often just use because.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
We're Sean White.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
You know, he has his flaws, but he is a
decent pass catcher, and so they'll use him more in
that role.
Speaker 2 (47:54):
And then Tucker, Tucker, I think.
Speaker 1 (47:55):
Though this week could easily see a seventy percent running
back rush are, no one should flinch just based on
what we saw last week in the way.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
Things are trending.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
But when Bucky Irving's back, I wouldn't you know Irving
had like a seventy five percent running back rush share
earlier this year per game before he got hurt, over
like a fifteen percent target share.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
You got to just hope.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
I think that the target share kind of remains the
same because that's going to really give him that floor
and that sustainability. And then maybe the rush share drops
a little bit because they're worried about him getting banged up,
and it's a little bit it's a little less risky,
you know, him as a receiver versus him between the tackles.
But still like if you get sixty percent running back
rush share and a ten percent target here from Bucky
(48:34):
Irving with that schedule, And I'll be talking about this
on the Mailbag episode if anyone's listened to that, but
that to me is still very very valuable with that
schedule that they have. So if you want to take
a chance, I.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
Understand going with Bucky Irving. It's it's definitely roster specific
out there.
Speaker 3 (48:49):
I'm sure you get all these folks in your DMS
asking you questions like who should I trade X for?
And you're like, I don't know, I don't know. It
depends what guys in your league need. You know, you know,
who should I trade Deebo Samuel for? Like?
Speaker 2 (49:04):
I don't know? Bag of potato chips? What do you
want me to tell you? I don't know what the
other team's needs?
Speaker 1 (49:09):
Yeah, how about Ashton Genty versus George Pickens.
Speaker 3 (49:14):
You know who I traded to get Bucky Irving earlier
in the year. On that team, I'm assuming Ashton Genty.
Speaker 2 (49:20):
You got it?
Speaker 3 (49:20):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (49:21):
Did I love that? God?
Speaker 3 (49:22):
That's the best Ashton Genty. I mean this team is
so bad really in Las Vegas. I mean you're talking
about a guy last week JJ, he had six rushing attempts.
Now he's making it up a little bit with getting
eight targets. But that's that's not gonna happen every week.
I'm going to take George picken every day and twice
on Sunday over Ashton Genty. I would take him over
(49:44):
Brock Bowers. Probably this point. I don't want anything to
do with that.
Speaker 1 (49:46):
I'm scared out of my mind about Ashton Genty because
of the situation they're in in their schedule. It's because
was trim brutal. Yeah, I mean it could just really
get it. It could be really bad down the stretch. Yeah,
I would trade him. The problem is what are you
going to get for him at this point? The only
you can't you can't really do anything about it at
this point.
Speaker 3 (50:03):
No. Yeah, it's like folks out there trying to trade
AJ Brown. What are you going to get out of
a J.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
Brown? Like, who's dealing anything of value for him? Yeah?
How about Justin Jefferson versus George Pickens? Talk about another guy?
Speaker 3 (50:15):
Justin Jefferson at least has the name where if you
want to try to trade him in your fantasy league.
I don't trust JJ McCarthy at all out there throwing
fastballs at guys from five yards away. I'll take George Pickens.
Speaker 1 (50:26):
Yeah, I think that one's That one, to me is
probably the closest one so far, just because they're like, again,
their schedule is so good that if JJ McCarthy does
figure it out and it does click, which we sometimes
see happen. I'm not super optimistic, I said, I said
a tweet out. I've officially passed JJ McCarthy and the
official JJ Power rankings after last week. I think I'm
(50:47):
ranked like eighty four hundred and seventieth or something now.
But yeah, he's struggling, So I can understand someone not
wanting Jefferson. How about a mecha Buka versus George Pickens.
Speaker 3 (50:57):
Puka by the way, still like PPR wide receiver number eight.
And you know you had a down week a week ago.
You look at what they have going forward. They're going
to get back Bucky Irvings. So maybe that could, you know,
spread the offense out, add a little consistency to the offense,
allow them to create more on first down, sustain more drives.
Speaker 2 (51:18):
I I still think I'm gonna go.
Speaker 3 (51:21):
Pickens here, though, JJ, that one's tight. This one's really
tight for me. But you can see maybe it was
Baker being injured or whatever it is. George Pickens isn't
giving you a wide receiver seventy one weeks like we
got a few weeks ago.
Speaker 1 (51:34):
Yeah, there's such a floor with that Dallas offense. They're
just there is you gotta feel good about it. How
about Derek Henry versus George Pickens.
Speaker 3 (51:42):
Again, another guy who could get game scripted out of
any game going and give you six points because all
you did was run for sixty yards. Again, I love
the schedule going forward. Yeah, it would depend on do
I need a running back and this time of year,
with that schedule coming up for Derek Country, if I
needed a running back badly because I just lost whoever
and I'm still kind of in the mix, I could
(52:03):
make that trade.
Speaker 1 (52:03):
Yeah, and here's the last one. Your Eagles Saquon Barkley
or George.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
Dickens boys on that same team too.
Speaker 3 (52:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (52:11):
Yeah, everyone's gonna know this.
Speaker 3 (52:12):
They're gonna love and ride and die with my alcoholic
Hase fantasy team. Listen, it's been tough. The offensive lines
beat up in Philadelphia. The O c's a dope, and
you know it's crazy. I mean, you've got like three
top twelve weeks on the season out of Saquon Barkley.
But the schedule is so so good going forward. You
(52:35):
know what they'll I think the Eagles somehow figure it out.
Give me Saquon bark Let's just talk about the Eagles
really quick. Like, do you think they figure it out
rest of the season.
Speaker 1 (52:43):
Do you think that because there have been random sort
of stretches, like like around that time where they face
Minnesota and around there where they were more pass heavy,
and then it seems like post by they've gotten back
to their run heavy ways and their obnoxious ways. You know,
if you look at year over year numbers, they're obviously
they're fewer plays because they don't have Kellen Moore anymore,
and Kellen Moore loves to keep up pace a little bit.
Speaker 2 (53:04):
It's all by just a little bit, but it's enough
to all add up.
Speaker 1 (53:07):
But there's less play action, there's fewer RPOs, you know,
there's there's all of these things, you know, less motion
at the line, there's all these things that that are
are a slight dip year over year, but it's adding up.
And then you kind of look at the passing charts
that like next Gen Stats offers though, and you see
there's just nothing going on. Like in the middle of
(53:27):
the field. You know, Aj Brown is very much stapled
to the perimeter and we're not seeing we're just not
seeing much going on, much creativity at all. Do you
have hope as someone who obviously is very in tune
with what's going on with the Eagles.
Speaker 2 (53:40):
Do you have any hope that they do get better?
Speaker 1 (53:42):
Do you think it? Is it a Petullo thing or yeah?
Or is it a talent thing going on there? No,
it's not a talent thing at all.
Speaker 3 (53:50):
Could you imagine if Sean McVay was calling an offense
with Saquon Barkley, Skinny Batman and aj Brown with Jayleen
I mean, the Eagles score sixty points.
Speaker 1 (54:01):
And then they were like, right now, they're bottom ten
in the league in percentage of drives that end up
in scores, both field goals and touchdowns.
Speaker 3 (54:08):
I mean, they lead the league in three and out percentage.
I mean, it's it's a joke. You can just call
the plays out. And I was just listening to Greg
Cosell talk about the Eagles offense and he said, he goes,
this looks like a ninth grade offense. Yeah, and he said,
it's one hundred percent on scheme. When you look at
the route concepts that these guys are running, it's just broken.
And this is the Nick Sirianni offense that when Sirianni
(54:32):
first was hired, against Sirianni not a play caller when
he was hired by the Eagles. Came in, tried to
call plays. That didn't work, so they handed it off
to Shane Steichen. Then they try Shane Stiken goes gets hired.
Let's bring in Brian Brian Johnson. That was an abject
failure because he was placed with Hey, run the Sirianni offense.
This Nick Sirianni offense does not work. They get rid
(54:53):
of Brian Johnson. Hey, let's bring in kell Moore. Kellen Moore,
thank you. Kellen Moore is a name either way. This
has happened to me for three years. Anytime I try
to think of Kellen Moore's name, I somehow blank out.
There is this blind spot in my brain. At one
point I had to write it down when I was
doing the Serious XM Show because I would always forget
his name.
Speaker 2 (55:12):
Like I see it, See what is this guy's name?
My brain?
Speaker 1 (55:15):
My brain goes to Hayden Winks because they look the
exact same. It's one hundred percent is doppelgamer.
Speaker 3 (55:22):
I'd let Hayden Winks call plays over over Kevin Patulo
at this point. But Yeah, here's the thing with the Eagles.
They have a top ten rest of season schedule. This
is I was looking at Fantasy Pros because I did
a video for Fantasy Pros you'll see sometime tonight or
tomorrow about the buying the Eagles rest of season. They
have a rest of season schedule that's top ten at
(55:44):
every position. It's it's number one for tight end and
it's number two for wide receiver, and you get two
matchups with the Commanders going forward. So can this offense
support two wide receivers and a tight end though?
Speaker 2 (55:56):
I don't think so.
Speaker 3 (55:58):
But I think Philadelphia can win because they have, in
my mind, the best defense in the league, and they
have the best GM.
Speaker 2 (56:03):
In the league.
Speaker 3 (56:04):
So they have the best talent in the league and
they just out talent you and make just enough plays
on offense to beat you. But once you get into
the playoffs, they need home field advantage because I don't
want to go to Detroit.
Speaker 2 (56:16):
I don't want to go to so far.
Speaker 3 (56:18):
Bring those teams out to Philly, though, and I think
the Eagles have a great chance to check.
Speaker 1 (56:21):
Yeah, Okay, I think one of the biggest storylines, if
not the biggest storyline right now in fantasy is the
New England backfield. So I want to rapid fire go
through some some players with Trayvon Henderson and do the
same thing Travion or these guys rest of season, Travion
or Zay Flowers rest of season.
Speaker 3 (56:41):
Nobody crabs On Flowers in Fantasy more than I do,
and probably for no reason. He's he's fine, he's fine,
He's not great. Give me gimme Henderson though, all day.
Speaker 2 (56:49):
How about Quinnchon Judkins or Traveon Henderson.
Speaker 3 (56:52):
I would drop Judkins if it meant I could have
Travon Henderson.
Speaker 1 (56:56):
How about Tedoro McMillan. This is an interesting one after
after last week versus Trevion Henderson. Yeah, that one's a
little tougher.
Speaker 3 (57:03):
But again, do I want to be tied to Bryce Young,
who's not gonna drop back and throw forty times?
Speaker 1 (57:07):
I'm still taking Henderson. Yeah, I have Henderson. I have
Henderson ahead. Also, I do think with the Henderson stuff,
it's one of those situations where you have to look
at range of outcomes and say to yourself, Okay, the
median outcome might be this, but there is a high
end outcome where they're just like, no, we're gonna give
them seventy percent of the team's running back rushes and
a twelve percent target share.
Speaker 2 (57:26):
And if we see that, it's it's just rockets.
Speaker 1 (57:28):
I mean speaking of great schedules, I mean the Patriots
running backs have an awesome schedule rest of season as well.
Speaker 2 (57:33):
Okay, Travion or Breece Hall.
Speaker 3 (57:36):
I don't think Breesehall finishes the season like I said,
he's gonna fake some kind of injury.
Speaker 2 (57:40):
Henderson, how about Travion or DeAndre Swift?
Speaker 3 (57:44):
I do like people buying Swift rest of season even
though their schedule is not the greatest, but his role
is outstanding that set. I'm gonna take Henderson in every
guy here just because the upside is so great for
a thirty point performance.
Speaker 1 (57:57):
There's gonna be there's there might be one that's gonna
be pretty interesting. So George Kittle or Travion Henderson, it's tough
to take a toight. Hey, I love Kittle. I think
Kittle's great.
Speaker 2 (58:06):
Yeh yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (58:09):
Brock Bauers, you just mentioned that you're not super like
You're you're just low on Vegas.
Speaker 2 (58:13):
Would you would you go Travion over brock Bowers. Yeah,
because there's the guy we're going to talk about.
Speaker 3 (58:17):
Later who I think I could pick up off the
waiver wire and stream for the rest of the season.
Speaker 1 (58:21):
How about Okay, this is the one that I think
is that we we won't talk Ashton gent because I
know how you feel about Ashon Genty. Now, yeah, Chase
Brown or Travion Henderson.
Speaker 2 (58:31):
What could really help Chase Brown?
Speaker 3 (58:33):
If samaj p ryand was I knew Samaj p Ryan's
out for the rest of the season, I think I'm
gonna lean Chase Brown there because again, schedule is great,
We're getting Burrow back, and now we've got three straight
weeks where he was a top twelve running back in
Fantasy he being Chase Brown. So I think in that
scenario you can lean Chase Brown and feel okay about it.
Speaker 1 (58:53):
Yeah, all right, give me two players right now who
are flying under the radar as possible Fantasy Football playoff winners.
Speaker 3 (59:03):
So the first one I just mentioned tight end, and
I think there's a lot of good tight ends who
can be league winners going forward. Obviously, you know Tyler
Warren's got a great schedule going forward. I think Darren
Waller coming back could help a lot of people at
being a big red zone threat. But the guy I'm
mentioning is Juwan Johnson.
Speaker 2 (59:21):
The schedule's not great, but I don't think that matters.
Speaker 3 (59:24):
He's got a fifteen percent target share playing with Tyler Shuck.
He's running seventy five percent of the routes. He's their
only red zone weapon when you think about it, scored
I believe in two straight games, so they don't have
anything else. It's Chris Olave and it's Juwan Johnson. He's
like tight end seven, I believe on the season. So
he's available in forty percent of Yahoo leagus currently. He's
(59:45):
number one on somebody I would go out and make
sure you could pick up and you can start him
going forward.
Speaker 2 (59:50):
No question. I realized.
Speaker 1 (59:52):
So I published my sleeper show, and I realized. Immediately
after A published, I was like, oh my gosh, I can.
I had Jawan Johnson on my list for this week
just because what you talked about with his usage and stuff,
and I just completely forgot to talk about him. So
I'm throwing Juwan Johnson out there also for those of
you who want to. You know, I track my sleepers
and stuff. We'll throw them out there as another play,
(01:00:12):
all right, So Juwan Johnson is there. Anyone else that
you're looking at.
Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
This one may get me kicked off the show.
Speaker 3 (01:00:18):
I'm going kicker, oh boy, kicker baby, and let me
tell you why. Kayimi Fairbaron, all right, he's only fifty
two percent rostered on Yahoo. He has a schedule with
just one game outside of a dome for the rest
of the season. Monster leg offense that can easily stall out.
This guy's always a top five kicker, and he's got
(01:00:40):
four weeks already. He was always heard a little bit.
He's had four weeks already JJ where he scored at
least fourteen Fantasy points. If you're in the league that
still plays at a kicker, and I know I got
several of them, go look on your waiver wire because listen,
all the points matter. I read a streaming defenses article.
Streaming defenses matter for the playoffs, and so does your kicker.
(01:01:00):
Was trying to rack my brain, like who can be different?
Unique and listen, Kymie Fairburn could give you an edge
in the playoffs. If he goes out and drops eighteen
on somebody in Week sixteen, that's gonna propel you to
the next round.
Speaker 2 (01:01:11):
You can't overcome that. When your kicker drops fifteen plus points.
Speaker 1 (01:01:14):
Look, my subscribers, like the people in the Late Round
Fantasy Football Discord are going to be overjoyed that you
brought up a kicker because I don't do kicker rankings,
and I told them over the summer I was going
to build a kicker model, and I did not build
that kicker model.
Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
And so yeah, I mean, I'm glad that someone on
the show is giving kicker advice. That's good.
Speaker 3 (01:01:33):
I so the defensive streamer article I do at Fantasy Points,
another gentleman, if it's Tom Simons, does a kicker a
streaming kicker thing, and they just kind of like tack
that onto it. But people think, because it's it's mostly
my article that like I do kickers, I get a
zillion kicker questions. Now I'm like, I don't know anything
about this. Yeah, I just know Fairbarn's really good and
he's available and he's going to play indoors for the rest.
Speaker 2 (01:01:55):
Of the season.
Speaker 1 (01:01:55):
Yeah, that's very funny. All right, before I let you go,
give me one bold prediction for week twelve. All right,
let's set social media on fire. Bold prediction for Week twelve.
Shador Sanders throws for less than one hundred and fifty yards.
But the Browns win the game anyways, because the Raiders
(01:02:15):
offense is JV level bad. And then all you're gonna
hear about is Sanders getting the W. But his stat
line JJ is going to be like eleven for thirty
for one to twenty five a touchdown in two picks.
But Sanders wins in his debut and does nothing. They're
gonna like return a punt for a touchdown and they're
gonna kick six field goals.
Speaker 2 (01:02:35):
Yeah, something insane, something ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
I mean, look his his I said this on the
show earlier this week. His completion rate over expected last
week on you know what fourteen or however many attempts
he had twenty or like sixteen attempts was the second
lowest of any quarterback this year. The lowest came after
Shador played, and that was Jared Goff against your Eagles.
That was the lowest completion percentage over expected this season.
Speaker 2 (01:02:59):
Yeah, I mean I get it.
Speaker 3 (01:03:02):
Listen, I made a lot of money off Elon Musk
with a sir Door Sanders tweet that got like four
million views. But the guy's a lightning rod for whatever reason.
And listen, he's not ready to play. Neither's JJ McCarthy.
They both need reps. So we got to give the
kids some grace because it's just, you know, he was
forced into things at Colorado. He's not that great. I
(01:03:24):
said that when I was breaking down Travis Hunter coming out.
I said, listen, he was catching jump balls from a
terrible quarterback. But he's going to be in there and
we'll see what he can do. I just don't think
the Raiders defense is good enough to get after him
because he does have a competent play caller and head coach.
So I think they'll find ways to scheme around sor
(01:03:47):
Sanders and hey, could be a big Quinn shown Judkins' week.
Speaker 2 (01:03:50):
Let's see what happens.
Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
We'll see, we'll see. Well, this is awesome, man. Let
everyone know where they can find you, what you're working on,
all that good stuff.
Speaker 3 (01:03:57):
You can find me on Twitter at Drake fanas. See
I'm on TikTok. I do a Sunday TikTok for fantasy pros. Yeah,
I'm the old guy on there doing that. That's at
Drake Fantasy Instagram Drake Fantasy Football. You can find me there.
I do the Fantasy Points podcast. With John Hanson every Monday.
I do an article for The Huddle. I do articles
(01:04:17):
for Sports KEDA, I do stuff for Fantasy pros, some
fun videos there. So I'm all over the place. Who
I am pouring myself out. If you've got a dollar
and you need a guy to give you some bad
fantasy content, come see your boy, because that's what I'm
here for.
Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
Love it, love it. You can find all my stuff
over on lateround dot com. Make sure you subscribe to
the podcast to the YouTube channel YouTube dot com slash
at late round FF.
Speaker 2 (01:04:43):
Otherwise, everyone as usual, Thanks for tuning in
Speaker 3 (01:05:00):
Fi
Brian Drake is a podcast host and writer at Fantasy
Points who also does work at Fantasy Pros, The Huddle,
Sirius XM, and a ton of other places too. He's
a past FSWA Football Article of the Year winner, He's
a dad, he's an Eagles fan.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
And he loves Syracuse as well.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
These are his late round perspectives.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
I feel like ten minutes ago you and I were
in Canton, Ohio having some adult beverages and drafting in
The King's Classic. And now it's like pushing.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
For the playoffs.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Make sure you have handcuffs, and it just it goes
by so fast when you're in this content grind, because
Thursday night becomes the weekend, becomes Monday night recaps Waiver Wire.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
It never ends. Yeah, no, it's true.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
I mean I like feel like it was yesterday that
we were because we did The King's Classic. We do
it on Saturday. You know, you host one of the
drafts typically, right, so you did. I think you hosted
the this year, right, So you were on Serious XM
for that and then you drafted the Snake, right.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Yeah. So I have a partner in the league.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Ryan Hallum and Kevin Tompkins from Fighting Chance Fantasy. So
I let I let those guys do the auction. I
take care of of the snake, which I love the
auction listen one of my best friends and Drew Davenport.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
I got to I got to give love to the
auction guys.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
But if I have the opportunity to do radio, I'm
going to do radio because that's it's my first love.
And you don't get that opportunity very often. So I
passed up the league to get on the air and
stroke my ego for two hours.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Yeah, no, I feel you.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
And so you know, you you sit there and you
kind of analyze the draft as it's going on. You know,
I've talked about The King's Classic on here as guests.
You know, I'd Jim Coventry on a couple of weeks
ago and such and we chatted about it. But then
the next day, which is the actual expo, you know,
at at the Hall of Fame, you guys are still
doing You're still doing the serious XM thing, and you
and I I hopped on for about fifteen ten to
(01:53):
fifteen minutes with you and Bob Harris at one point
maybe it was only like five to ten. But I
remember like talking about my drafts because my snake, because
I drafted Christ McCaffrey like seventh overall or something, and
we were kind of discussing that.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
But it literally feels like that was like last week.
It's crazy, it is.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
It goes by so fast that whole expo weekend goes
by in a blink. I look forward to it all
year long, and then it's it's just up and gone,
and I'm already driving back to Syracuse from Canton, Ohio.
But that's fantasy football season. And if you don't stay
on top of it, and if you don't hustle on
the waiver wire and making trades, it can get away
from you quickly, and all of a sudden, you're staring
(02:30):
at a team that has no chance of making the playoffs,
and you're frustrated, and you stop listening to content.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Don't stop listening to this, please yeah, please, please, please
keep listening. Please.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
But we see that all year long. Is once people
kind of get out of it, they throw their hands up.
In the end, I forget about it. I'm done, it's
over with. But you can fight till the end. In
fantasy football, too many people give up way too early,
like you can win out. It happens.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Yeah, And there's teams that were really good in your
league that are now terrible, and there's teams that were
terrible in your league that are really good now. And yeah,
it can happen. It can happen super fast. There's always
things shifting and moving. By the way, I got to
throw this out there. How great is it that that
a pit guy and someone in Syracuse can have this
discussion cordially and and you know, just have a good
time on an hour long podcast.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Oh well, I mean we're definitely not talking football someone
here in Syracuse. Our season never really got started here
in Syracuse. But we're onto basketball. We're onto basketball and
uh and about halfway through that season, we'll be on
to lacrosse. Yeah, so that's that's how it goes here.
How was Pitt doing this year? I mean, are you
guys decent bad?
Speaker 2 (03:35):
We're decent. We're decent.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
We Uh we had a big game game day was
in in pit at pit last weekend and h they
just got smoked by Notre Dame, which was expected.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
I mean that'll be us this weekend. Yeah, Like I
had no I had.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
No no thought that that they were going to actually
take down Notre Dame. But it also didn't really matter
from like an acc standpoint, because they have a couple
of games coming up that they'd have to win. I
mean they I think their college football playoff probability right
now I was probably like five percent. So it's still
there's still some hope there if we can, if we
can somehow went out.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Syracuse has never hosted college football college game day for football, Yeah,
and that we're like one of four Power five.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Schools that have never hosted.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Interesting would you didn't obviously go to the to the
game day this past weekend, but how cool would that
have been if you were in college or just even
a little younger and you can go experience.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah, I don't think that it was.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
I don't think it was there when I was there,
which was weird, Like I was there when I like
I was at Pitt when Pitt basketball and honestly, when
Pitt Syracuse was really fun, you know, Big East time,
you know, like when when Pitt was like a one
seed consistently and you guys were great lost in the
Elite eight to Scotty freaking Reynolds and Nova, and it
was horrible.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
But yeah, I mean, like I would, I mean, it'd
be awesome. The one thing with.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Pitt is that, admittedly like that the football scene isn't
as strong as the basketball scene just because they play
at act Well now Acrature used to be Hindesfield and
where Pitt is at. From a campus perspective, it's in Oakland.
It's this area in Pittsburgh, and it's like a good
you know, it's not just like a mile. It's not
like a walk away to get to the stadium. I
mean you have to literally take we would take buses,
like students bus over to the stadium. So it doesn't
(05:15):
have the same kind of like college vibe as you
would ideally want. Now, when I was there, pitt played
in the Biggiest Championship and lost to Cincinnati. It was
a crazy game, like a really really crazy game. And
for that game, like it was sold out and it
was crazy, you know, like sixty thousand plus people. But
most games are still you know, it's just not the
same kind of college vibe if you.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Were to go to like Happy Valley or something like that.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
I know, and I wish I had that experience with
college and a lot of people think that I went
to Syracuse, but I actually didn't go to Syracuse.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
I was accepted to Syracuse.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
This is a story that I'm sure a lot of
you guys can attest to, is I was accepted to Syracuse.
I was going to go to the New House School
and become a broadcaster, like you know everybody you see
on TV these days. I go to orientation with my father,
who is a truck mechanic. Right, most blue collar family
grew up on the North side of Syracuse, went to
impoverished high schools. If you saw the scores for these schools,
(06:12):
you don't know how anybody everring go out of them.
But they hand a piece of paper in My father go,
mister Drake, this is what it's going to cost to
send your son to Syracuse for four years.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
And he looks at me.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
And I had this program that I you know, I
had over like a twelve hundred masats and I had
like a ninety average, So you get all this admitted
aid and all this.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
He looks at me, he goes, I wouldn't sign that.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Yeah, he looked at this six figure number that I
would be saddled with for probably still to this day,
and he goes, I wouldn't do that, so sight unseen,
I went forty five minutes up the road to Oswego
State University where Steve Lee, Vilanda Cone l Roker, those
kind of guys went. Basically, anybody who couldn't afford to
go to Syracuse just goes up the road to Oswego,
and that's where I ended up going. But my heart
(06:52):
is here in Syracuse. I've been a fan since I
was a little kid season ticket holder, and I still
am a huge Syracuse die hard to this day, as
by me being the only person fantasy to know who
ronde Gansten was before about six weeks ago.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Yeah, yeah, I mean did you always you always had
in your in your hearts to like because obviously Syracuse,
you know, they're known for like broadcast journalism and stuff.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
And is that something that.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
I mean, like even when you hopped on this, it's
just like you have such a radio voice, right like
you you are, you are so good on air and
and the voice that you like, I'm much more of
just like the casual podcaster type, right and you do,
but you have you have the radio voice like you
have it in you? Is that something that you always
wanted to do Yeah, and my best friend and I
(07:37):
were going to go to Syracuse together. He actually did go,
and I wrote an article about this and it was
posted on on the Huddle. A few weeks ago he
died in a car accident. He was a news reporter
in sports anchor here in Syracuse and just kind of
getting going.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
And he went to.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
School with the a niche Cheiroffs and and all these
Syracuse guys that you see being big time radio and
TV personalities today that it would be him. But he
was hitting killed by a drunk driver twenty what geez,
twenty years ago now. So I wrote an article at
that and I always wanted to go do that and
somewhere along the line, and I remember this before he died,
(08:13):
he told me I had a job. I was working
for a beer hole saler and I kind of just
I needed, you know, you got to get money. There's
no money in media, there's none at all. So he
told me, he goes, you're never going to get back
into this. He's like, you're gonna go and you're gonna
work it at Budweiser, and you're gonna get married to
the girl that I'm married to now with kids, and
he goes, that's where your life is going to go.
(08:34):
And he was right, because you can give up on
this dream so easily. And that's when I got back
into fantasy football, and it allowed me to get into podcasting.
It sort of was that glimmer of hope that I
could do what I always wanted to do. And when
I started my podcast back in twenty seventeen with Dwayne McFarland,
we did the Fantasy Football Hustle.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
We did that for five years.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Somehow never won an FSWA Award for Best Podcast because
some other guy on this podcast winning it all the time,
but we did get nominated. But that's what got me
back into this is fantasy football. So I have this
fun game that we love to thank for getting me
back into doing the radio, doing podcasts, buying expensive microphones
and having a little bit of fun here in my basement.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Was that sort of like your journey into the space,
Like did you get going in twenty seventeen ish timeframe
or was it before that?
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Yeah, this is a funny story of how I got started.
So I was on Twitter back when Twitter was fun.
This is twenty seventeen and I'm following who is now
my friend Ryan Hallum, who has worked for Fantasy Alarm,
and he started fighting chance fantasy dot com. He posts,
he goes, hey, I need someone to do a Fantasy
football mock draft because Steve Gardner of USA today, whatever happened,
(09:46):
he bailed. He couldn't do it. So I was just
I happened, me sitting on my couch. I responded to go,
I'll do it. He thought he was talking to other
content creators or other fantasy guys. I was just Joe
Blow sitting on my couch. So I joined this draft
with all these experts. And then after he's like, who
do you write for? I don't right for anybody. I'm
just I'm a beer salesman. And he goes, do you
(10:09):
want to write for me? And I end up doing
a mock up of the draft and from there and
Ryan has helped launch so many careers and he's the
most selfless guy in fantasy. I love him for the
opportunities that he gave myself. Dwayne Kevin Tompkins, Casey case
and Corbin Young who's won multiple FSWA awards. A lot
of guys in gals came through fighting Chance Fantasy. So
(10:31):
I started writing there and I said, I want to
do a podcast. I love radio. The podcasts are just
getting going. So I start doing the pod and he goes,
you got to find a guest. And I went out
on Twitter and I found this guy who was putting
out all these crazy stats, Dwyne McFarland. He had like
two hundred followers at the time, some dude, some dude
named Dwayne McFarlane.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Yeah right.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
So I DM him, like, hey, brother, you want to
do this pod with me? And it's the debut episode.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
He's like sure.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
I mean, he's just kind of speaking into the ethos.
Nobody knows who he is. He and I do the
first show and when it was done, I go to Ryan.
I go, okay, cool, let's find who are gonna have
on next week. He goes, no, no, no, He goes, that's
the show. Get get that guy back. So Dwayne and
I sprung up a friendship, and I talked to Dwayne
this past week.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
He called me.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
We talked for like an hour in my office, and
we did that show for five years, and I quickly
learned the secret to success in any business attach yourself
to insanely smart people and they will make you look phenomenal.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
So yeah, I got to work with Dwayne for five
years and now I'm so proud of what he's done
at Fantasy Life and all the stops along the way
from football Guys, pff ETR and it helped our show
and we got to have incredible guests, and we had
a podcast that people thought was People thought we had
this legit podcast JJ because I went and took all
(11:52):
of my contacts from guys I knew a Syracuse or
or my buddy worked at S and ys, the director
of of everything at sn HY. He made us this
insane video opening for free that would cost a normal
agency ten thousand dollars. Yeah, my buddy, John Gay, who
was a major market DJ. I went to him and
(12:13):
I said, can you create the opening and bumpers and
all of that? So our imaging sounds good. So when
we came out, people thought we were like this major
to do and we weren't. We were just literally two
schlubs in our basement. We had insane guy. The only
person in Fantasy we didn't have on that show was you.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
That's actually that I'm thinking about it. Yeah, Yeah, I
don't think I've ever done.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Now, we had Clay and Evan Silva and I mean,
you name it, they all they all came up for Dwayne.
I mean I was just there for the live stop,
but it was his great work that got our doors opened.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
And I'm forever grateful for him.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
And you know, from there, once he went on and
did his thing what he's doing now with Fantasy Life,
I decided, well and decide, I'm like, I got to
do something here.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
I want to keep doing the show. Well.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Joe Dolan, who I met through the expo, he and
I became friends and we did a pod together that
led to me joining Fantasy Points. From there, I hooked
up with my man John Hansen, who I do a
podcast with now, the Fantasy Points Podcast, and it got
me on Sirious XM. I've done shows there. I did
the morning show last year, which was a dream come true.
And I did a show with Andrew Ericson from PFF
(13:22):
for a while. And it's a blast for a kid
who never thought he would get back into radio to
say to folks, I'm going to do the morning show
on a nationwide broadcast on Sirius XM was incredible and
it only lasted a year. You know, I have a
nine to five job, so it just kind of doesn't
really work with what I'm doing right now.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
But it's amazing.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
And I have nothing but the friendships I made in
fantasy football, from going to the expo, from being a
friend on Twitter, and just kind of never saying no
to things.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Yeah, I guess that worked out. Yeah, that's awesome, man.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
It's honestly, it's an encouraging st sorry for anyone who's
like in a position where they have that nine to
five and they just want to kind of do something
that they're passionate about. And like, clearly you have that
passion for like you're one of the rare breeds though
that it's not just fantasy analysis that that passion is
coming from. It's also just the medium that you're able
(14:18):
to talk through. And that's so important because I'm telling
you when I do radio hits and when I because
you know, I've done tons of them in my lifetime,
it's just you when you're doing all because I've done TV,
I've done radio, I've done podcasts, I've done you know,
whatever the case may be.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
And like, I know what.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
I enjoy doing most, which is this kind of medium,
and you have to have a certain mindset when you
go on radio or when you're doing even when you
and I are chatting with Bob, you know, at the
expo and you have constantly people in your ear and
stuff like that, and you know, you're like, Okay, we
have thirty seconds, We've got to wrap this up, et cetera.
Like that's a skill, that's a skill that people don't understand,
(14:59):
how to go on and happen with people that are
doing things on air. And then there's also the you know,
like I'm always in awe of Field Yates right on TV,
like he just follows on TV. And I don't say
that because he's a friend and I'm trying to suck
up to him. I've said this all the time that
like his skill set. Obviously he knows ball, but he's
just so good at doing what he does and communicating
(15:22):
these ideas the way that he does. And I think
just that side of things is really important, like being
able to know how you want to talk about things
in the way in which you want to talk about
those things. You know, whether it's how I'm doing it
on the Late Round podcast or someone sitting on radio
and doing it. That's all important, and that's what this
package is all about. Whenever you're going out and doing
fantasy comps.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
And you really hit a sweet spot with My favorite
thing you do is the transaction episode. I love listening
to that because it's packaged in a way I can
listen to it on my ride to work. Make sure
that I mean, because I'm kind of doing that work
as well, but I want to make sure I'm not
missing something sure, So I love listening to it. And
you this is something we had to work with on
the Hustle is let's give people really advanced analytics, but
(16:05):
package it in a way where we're not scaring them
off so much to you know, targets per route run
or some of these advanced things out there that I've
talked to a lot of my friends who are guys
in their mid forties and hey, did you hear this?
Did you understand it? And I've found that really in fantasy,
people just want the smoking gun. People are lazy in general.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Just tell me who to pick up, tell me who
to play this week.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
I know in fantasy, we want to educate people so
they can kind of do it themselves and have the
answers to the test in front of them. But oftentimes
it's they just tell me who to pick up, bro,
you know, do you want to pick up Luther Burden
this week?
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Tell me why he's good?
Speaker 3 (16:45):
You know, Okay, his route shares increasing, the w'll past
few weeks, blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Great.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
But I think sometimes we can get too lost in
the data and analytics world in fantasy. So I appreciate
what you do of trying to keep it simple while
also telling people, well, this is why I came to
this conclusion because of the numbers behind it.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
No, No, I appreciate that, and it's true.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
I mean there's always gonna be a subset of people
that get angry at me, even where they're like I
don't need to read a two hundred page draft guide
when I just want you to give me your rankings.
It's like, all right, yeah, I mean, if you just
want my rankings, then just go to the Patreon or whatever.
Do whatever you want if you want that. But you know,
like if you really want to dig in and like
love this game on a deeper level and like find
this hobby and you know, like as corny as that sounds,
(17:28):
and as silly as that sounds to like love love
that game, on a deeper.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Level, it's a hobby.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
You know.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
It's no different than like really getting into a video game,
or like really getting into movies or something. It's a
hobby that we all love. And if you want to
dig in and like get better and there's a payoff
at the end realistically, you know, something that you don't
necessarily get in some.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Of these other hobbies and such.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
You know, there are avenues to learn too, and oh yeah,
you know, it's important to kind of have that balance
between the two.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
And I tell people all the time, and I wrote
some articles. One of them, actually, I think got to
nominated for an FSWA award, was about content creators against
engagement farmers, because you see a lot of that in
social media, you know, Twitter, especially when Twitter was kind
of a big deal. It's not really anymore. But the
folks who engage just to engage and kind of game
(18:15):
the system.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
And here's the thread brows. I told you last.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Summer, which I love making fun of that last summer,
I told you to draft this guy. But there are
folks who have figured out the algorithm and whether it's
on YouTube or Twitter or Instagram, and you might not
have any idea.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Of who they are.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Like, you are a big name in this space, right JJ,
people respect you, they know you do great work. You
could go over to YouTube and this happened to me.
I was sitting in my hot tub and I'm scrolling
through and some guy is answering start sick questions and
people are paying him these like what do they call
them super chats whatever, and they're paying him like five
ten bucks a pop. And this guy I've never heard
(18:53):
of in my life is just raking in the dough
because he's gained the algorithm.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
He had super slick graphics.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
I always told people, you can do fantasy football content,
you can be great at it, but until you get
somebody who wants to pay you for that information, like
it's just a hobby at that point, Yeah, it's not.
It's not really a job. So you know, you got
to take it for really what it's worth out there,
And uh, it's getting harder and harder with AI and
(19:20):
you know, the these conglomerates coming together and people just
they don't want to pay for good content. I see
people all the time. I've gone on job interviews for
fantasy companies. Hey, man, we want you to write twenty
articles a day. We're gonna pay a five bucks an article. Like, brother,
I got a wife, two kids, and a mortgage. Like
who are you talking to? Yeh're doing that. Not to
sound like I'm a snob or something, I'm too good
for it, But you also have to know the value
(19:41):
of your time, of course, so you know, it's it's
tough out there, and you know, kudos to you for
starting your own business, really, and that had to be
scary to say, I'm gonna go out on my own
and I'm gonna do my own thing, and now you
got mister Kitchens here helping you out, and you know
it's it's kind of it's a two man band now.
But it's right, it's scary, man. I've thought about that
(20:02):
a million times, like, hey, how can I go do
this on my own and maybe bring in a team
of content creators and kind of build something out. But
I mean that that's a hard leap to make when
you've got a couple of young kids, and I know
these bills keep coming in.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Of course.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Of course, I was in a pretty fortunate position where
you know, I had the podcast and I had an audience,
and the leap of faith wasn't as much of a
leap as it could be for for others and stuff,
and I'm really really grateful for that. But yeah, I mean,
like it's still a scary thing any any entrepreneur, any
anyone going on on their own and like doing their
own thing. It's it's obviously there's a lot of question marks,
(20:38):
but yeah, I mean it's it's It's really good to
hear your perspective on all that, though, because I think
that there's plenty of people, you know, I get emails
weekly from people that are trying to do something in
fantasy that they're really interested in doing something. And hearing
it from other people other than me or you know me,
like sitting down with you for a thirty minute phone
call or you know, emailing you back, it's good to
(20:59):
hear these different perspectives.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
This is late round perspectives after all. I love this.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
I thought about doing a show like this a while
back because I'm a big Howard Stern fan. I love
the way that Howard goes about doing his interviews with folks,
and I often thought, and there's other people who have
tried doing this, this sort of thing over the years
is yeah, it's great, do you like this guy or
that guy or give me the sleeper, Like that's great.
But I've always loved finding people's process and I find
(21:26):
that infinitely more interesting. If you sit down with you know,
a guy like a Field Yates or you know John
Hansen or whoever you know, Dwayne, and you find out
like what makes them tick?
Speaker 2 (21:37):
What do they do?
Speaker 3 (21:37):
I'd love that to hear that even with you is
when you sit down and you write that fifteen transactions.
Because really, when I, as a content creator listen to
that show, I go, all right, JJ writes an article
and then he reads it like that's that's yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
It's like it's like my notes for the for the
actual episode. Yeah, like yeah, you know a lot of
my a lot of my shows are like because people
are like, how scripted is it?
Speaker 2 (21:58):
And stuff?
Speaker 1 (21:59):
And it's like, parts of are clearly scripted because I
need to get certain data out and it needs to
be like really succinct and stuff. But the fifty transactions
one is even more so because I already have the
thing written, so obviously I'm just gonna read a lot
of that stuff.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
Yeah, that's that's The key is finding how do people
come up with what they want to talk about, and
you know, being unique. I think in today's day and age,
you know, you can really micro cast and find a niche.
There's so many folks who are or were like just
say NFL beat writers, and now they've kind of even
trimmed that down. They said, I'm going to make a
(22:31):
Patreon or whatever else is out there these days, and
it's just going to be about let's say the Eagles.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
I'm an Eagles fan, and there are so many of
these folks who are.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
They can't get paid by the Philadelphia Inquirer anymore or whoever.
But they found fans will pay for niche content if
it's very very good. And same is true for fantasy football,
and it could be true for it. You could be
into chess or hunting, who knows. If you're that, you know,
narrow casting to an audience, you can make money in it.
(23:00):
And I think that's where I've failed over the years
is trying to be kind of you can be kind
of everything to everyone is just like generic host guy.
And I've been pigeonholed as that and people go, oh,
you're great, but you're just you're just a host. And
I see there's so many talented guys like I love
my guy Paul Kelly, I love Mike Dempsey on Sirious XM.
And these guys are phenomenal hosts who I don't think
(23:23):
get enough credit for their own content or their own
takes because they're so good at setting up someone else
to get what they want out of it. You know,
it's it's not hard set guys up. You know, it's
like being a softball pitcher. You're just tee up. You
know what these guys want to do and hit it
out of the park. When Dayne and I would do
our show, sometimes people send like we are show sheet,
(23:45):
Like you sent over, Hey we can talk about X
Y and Z. Dwayne and I never once had a
show sheet.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
I would text.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
Him, you know, hey, we're gonna record at seven o'clock tonight.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Cool.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
I knew he was going to be so prepared that.
And it's the same thing with John Hans and we
do our show on Sunday night. We recap all the games.
I know they're so prepared. I can tee them like
I know where their head's going to go and what
they're good at covering and I'm not going to lead
them down a path to something that they don't want
to talk about. So it's, uh, this is my favorite stuff.
(24:15):
I could talk content and theory all day long.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Yeah, no, I love it too, obviously, you know.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Having you know, I ran Number fire and Fandel's content
business for a while, and that's a side that like
people from my perspective that people don't see what I
have come from.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Obviously.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Now I'm just mostly just doing the content stuff and
just producing it. But there was a time in my
life where there's a lot of the management stuff and
the strategic stuff and figuring out bigger media plans as
opposed to just like yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
I got this newsletter and podcast. I just got to
get this stuff out and you know, the rankings and such.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
But I think that the moral here, though, is that
there are a lot of ways in this industry to
get yourself inserted, depending on what your individual skill set is.
And like I said, you know, if you have a
medium that you feel really comfortable with, like, in my opinion,
double down on that. You know, Like I'm like I said,
I've done like TV and stuff, hate it, hate it
with a passion. I'm just it's just not for me.
(25:07):
It's just not something that I'm good at, and I
like having more casual conversation. Even radio. I don't love
doing radio, just because it's a very you know, it's
segmented the way that it is, and it's harder to
get some of the more robust takes that I might
have and talking points that I might have out whereas this,
I'm like, yeah, if we go an hour, great, if
we go an hour and five minutes, not the end
of the world either, you know, I can I can
(25:28):
at least be a little bit more flexible.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Yeah, And the more that folks can do different things
as well. If you're listening to this and you're a
want to be creator or you're just getting started, if
you can edit video, if you can edit audio, if
you can make thumbnails like that, all goal is a
long way because there's so many people that can't. I know,
when we first started doing our shows and things I
(25:50):
would have I would outsource the thumbnails and because I
wasn't good at it, and I'm like, someone's got to
help me out here, because I knew that you needed
a good thumbnail to kind of get going. And now
that's a whole gimmick is, you know, the goofy face
on a thumbnail on YouTube. But yeah, there's there's so
much content out there for folks, and there's no gatekeepers anymore.
(26:11):
You don't need someone to necessarily hire you to say, oh,
how do I work for Fantasy Points or you know,
I work for Fantasy Pros. I do some work for
them now too, And you don't have to. You have Instagram,
you got Twitter, you got YouTube. You can start a
YouTube channel tomorrow and all of a sudden you can
become the next big thing if you're just consistent and
(26:31):
good at it and don't let anybody tell you no.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
You gotta fail.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
I listened to so many David Goggins motivational speeches, and
it's just about failure. You got to keep trying and failing,
trying and failing, because the worst thing you can do
is just not try. Not get off the couch. So
to anybody out there who wants to try to become
the next Jajent or on a much much lower level,
the next Brian Drake, you know, just you gotta just
(26:56):
get off the couch. It's advice to myself, really, right,
right right, yeah, totally what I'm trying to hurt myself
up in the mirror.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
No, no, totally.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
All right, let's talk a little little fantasy, little little
like strategy and just like high level takeaways from what's
gone on this year. So obviously hindsight's in our favor.
Right now, it's week twelve. You know, we've seen a
lot of football this year. But what's something that you
look back and you think fantasy managers just did wrong
this year during draft time?
Speaker 2 (27:23):
You know, like it could just be like.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Like they went after late round quarterbacks and they shouldn't have,
or they did elite tight end they shouldn't have. Like
what's your takeaway and what do you think that people
might take into twenty twenty six as a result.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
I think partly fantasy content creators led the casual player
fan down this road. And it's because we are so
excited to do best ball and we get this best
ball brain, and that bleeds into redraft. It impacts ADP
and it pushes up players with some narratives that we
create in April May June, I think we overlooked a
(28:01):
lot of players who were healthy and in great spots.
So of course I'm referring to Christian McCaffrey, Jonathan Taylor.
These are guys who finished like at number one at
their position at some point in their career. And these
guys that during the summer, I know CMC crept up
later had like round two eightyps. So I think we
looked at a lot of situations where guys had like
garbage time touches, or maybe they weren't even that talented,
(28:24):
but the volume was there for whatever situation. Chase Brown
comes to mind, Brian Thomas Junior. We assumed that volume
would be there again this season, but we didn't take
into consideration. Maybe quarterback play was Mac Jones, you know
their creator, Brian Thomas Junior.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
You know Chase Brown.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
So I think, you know, we just looked at the
wrong things instead of looking at who's really good at
fantasy football. We got to stop looking at who needs
planetary alignment to come through. And I think maybe next
year we'll look at it and just go, hey, are
you good at fantasy football? And I say that because
I've I've got a guy in my home league shout
(29:01):
out to the alcoholic Hayes who has made like four
moves all season long, but he's in fourth place. And
fighting for the playoffs. Spot he I don't think the
guy pays attention to the league at all. Like I've
had a text him, like, bro, you need to set
a lineup this week. But what he did he drafted
Jamiir Gibbs in the first round. He's got JSN on
his team.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
He had.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
He didn't drop Trayvon Henderson. So he just drafted good players. Yeah,
and he hasn't He hasn't dropped him at all. So
I think that's what we have to overlook, is trying
to wish cast ourselves into who the next big name
is going to be.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Just draft good players. Man.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Yeah, it's really easy to get carried away with certain
narratives with especially younger players, you know, And I'm guilty
of it too. I mean, I think there's a balance,
of course, because we're gonna see, you know, rookies and
players who haven't broken out yet break out.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
It's going to happen.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
And you know, if you look at how low the
odds are veterans doing well in the double digit rounds,
then you might as well just go after rookies that.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
You know, that kind of that kind of notion.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
But there is definitely and I think that, like the
the the best ball stuff is is an interesting thing
that I think a lot of season long analysts are
going to bring up during the off season is that
you know, it's it's the slappies right there, the best
ball slappies who go out there and they start touting
the Jayden Blues and the Burschard Smiths of the world.
Because in that in that environment, it might not be
(30:23):
that bad of an idea because you might get a
few usable weeks from those players, you know, even if
they don't have full time rules. But when you're looking
at a managed season long league, how how reliable are
those guys truly going to be?
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Right?
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Like what what is the the true ceiling there? And maybe,
like I'm just using those guys as examples, maybe they're
not the best examples of the in the world, but you.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
Know, I'm guilty of it too.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Like there are there are these ebbs and flows during
draft season, and I noticed that this year, especially with
my draft guide, when I would add and and and
remove players from like my players to target and avoids
list and stuff, and it's like, how am I feeling
in that moment? You know, like like like am I
you know. I remember I added at one point Elijah
Royo to the mix, right like back in like late
(31:06):
July or something, and then I'm like, looking back, I'm like,
I didn't really need it, Like no one lost their league,
because that doesn't matter. It's a last round pick, just
not a big deal if you went that route, if
you just threw that dart.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
And even in the blurb I talked about how.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Like we would have some idea of his usage after
like week one, but you know, it's still one of
those situations where it's like we do need to realize
and think about more deeply how this game is actually
being played. And it's that in ninety nine percent of
leagues you don't even need to show your hand with
Elijah Royo. You just need to know in the back
of your head that he exists and he might be
(31:38):
a talented player that later in the season you'd be
ahead of things when things start to trend in his direction.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
If things start to trend in his direction, I'll.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
Tell you one player who I got in a fight
on Twitter with folks with, and it was Brishard Smith. Yeah,
because people were saying, like, oh, he's he's running routes
in camp, like you gotta watch He's gonna be the
next Jeric McKinnon, and I said, I'm like, no, he's not.
They've got three backs, like, they're never gonna use this kid.
He can't run the football like you're doing your readers
or listeners at disservice telling them in a redraft form,
(32:08):
now is dynasty best ball?
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Great?
Speaker 3 (32:10):
Go shoot the moon with Burchard Smith. You can't tell
folks in a redraft league to go draft Burchard Smith
because it's not gonna like you need so many things
to align, and they almost have with Checko going down
and Kareem Hunts kind of Kareem Hunt and they're looking
for some playmakers on that running game, and he still
can't be usable for fantasy. So that that's one of
(32:32):
the names that's just popping on.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
No, I think like again, like we've like as and
I'm thinking about myself because I can only speak for myself,
but when I'm thinking about players to target and like
late round dart throws to throw, I need to and
this is something I'm definitely gonna be changing in the
draft guy next year. I need to almost categorize those
players as more of like a keep an eye out
(32:54):
for slash target actually target and get in your league,
you know what I mean, Like Brishard Smith being a
keep an eye out for even a early on Jacory
Krosky era before the before the you know, the the
ADP rows, like keep an eye on him, Like that's
it's certainly not a bad idea to say, like, okay, yeah,
like his his ADP might rise. You might gain a
little equity if you draft, if you're drafting right now,
(33:16):
like keep an eye on this player versus let's go attack,
because when we say let's go attack, we're almost watering
down the other players that are also being bucketed in
that same group.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
For instance, a JK. Dobbins, right who was another?
Speaker 1 (33:30):
So so if I have you know, a JCM or
you know, pre ADP Spike and a JK. Dobbins, then
someone might see that as interchangeable. But it's not interchangeable
at all. You know, it's a and all of that's
being driven by my rankings and such, and you can
just look at those and get an idea of like
where to draft those guys. But I do think that
like having that kind of contextual stuff and that kind
of nuance is very, very important when we're discussing, you know,
(33:54):
who we should be targeting and not targeting.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
There's so many folks out there, and I consider a
lot of my friends that's the target audience for me.
I look at my friends. I'm forty five years old
and my buddies who are all you know, their middle aged,
They got wife, kids, lives happen, and they love playing
fantasy football. But it's not you know, their whole life.
They're not at like a DFS degenerate. And that's great
if you have that, but I think a lot of content,
(34:17):
at least what I do is geared towards your casual
home league player. These guys have no idea who Brishard
Smith is. Yeah, you know, they don't know who some
of these folks are. So when they hear some of
these names, that's why it's good to say, just keep
it in the back of your mind.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Right, you don't have to necessarily go target this player.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
But because they're not following college football, they're not watching
you know, the Big twelve.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Yeah, those guys are getting get drafted. Like Brishard Smith's
not getting drafted in a normal league. He's just not
like he wasn't drafted in normal he was. I mean
I drafted him in the in the King's Classic Leagues,
because the King's Classic Leagues are ub third Like they're teams,
yeah fourteen teams, really deep rosters and stuff like our
waiver wire. Like I remember a few weeks ago getting
excited that I got to von Vele for like three
(34:59):
bucks off the waiver wire. And I don't care about
the von Melee in most most instances, you know, although
he now is like the more of the clear cut
wide receiver too.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
In New Orleans, brother, I dropped forty dollars on tees
Johnson at their backflip. I spent all my fab because
I lost Mike Evans. I'm like, oh my god, I
gotta do something. Yeah, because there's a relegation factor in
the rings. People don't realize that. If so my team
slowly were coming on. We've won a couple of games
in a row. Here, you're doing well. You won it
(35:27):
last year, aren't sure like first or second place? I
won it last year and I'm in first this year. Yeah,
so we'll stay.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
I had a really tough loss last week, though, Like
I went up again this the downside of having these
deep rosters is you go up against these players that
would never be started in normal lineups and stuff. So
I went up against not only did I face Josh
Allen who put up like a forty four burger, but
I also faced both Giants running backs against the Packers,
and they both had very usable performances.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
And I lost by like two as a result. But
I'm still in first, Still still sitting in first.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
Yeah, you'll be fine, You'll be fine. I'm trying to
sneak it. I went from like, oh my god, this
team is terrible. I might come in last place to
now I look at I'm like, I'm a game out
of the playoffs. Yeah, oh yeah, it's still pretty tight. Yeah,
it's all still pretty tight. So you mentioned what you
think people might have done wrong. You know, we talked
about the slappies and stuff.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
Is there anything that you're going to take into twenty
twenty six based on what you've seen this year that
you might change versus some other seasons you've played.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
It's funny because this kind of goes with your whole gimmick.
Here is to the late round quarterback and first maybe
the last two three years I've been on the train
of and I know you've been pushing this as well. Hey,
middle rounds, round three, four five, get the that kind
of the end of the rushing quarterback.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
You know that Jayden.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
Daniels Jalen hurts because they just offered that premiere upside.
But I think you're missing out on a level of player,
maybe in that range a JSN where you could have
just waited a little bit later and gotten the Drake
May everybody knew was going to break out. You know,
(37:00):
I have leagues now, I'm starting Flacco, I'm starting Jacoby Brisett,
and you're really not losing all that much, you know,
So I think and not saying I'm going to go
back to late round quarterback, but I'm gonna not be
the first guy in my league to take a quarterback.
And also, if I can do anything else, it's to
be more patient. I'm a guy who likes to make
(37:20):
a thousand moves in my league, like my home league
here that I care more about than breathing. I drafted
Woody Marks, I drafted Bacialot, and I drafted all these
guys like people don't even know who they were. When
I'm calling out the stickers right, and now, of course
none of them are on my roster. They're starting for
other teams and I'm sitting here trying to pick up
you know, Tyrrell Shavers, Yeah, for my wide receiver three tonight.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, look, it is. It is difficult.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
And that's something that I've really tried to preach over
the last few years with because doing late round fantasy
football has really opened my eyes to the way that
the everyday player plays, because I'm super active in discord
and talking to people literally constantly throughout the day, and
I see how they react to news items, and I
see how they react to games, and it's opened my
eyes so much to the fact that, like, patience really
(38:08):
is the number one trait of a good fantasy manager,
just being able to ride it out and stick with
what you know is. And I wouldn't say that like
you do that no matter what. It's really about patience
and timing, right, It's about understanding when it is time
to give up on a player and so on, and
the type of player that you would be giving up on,
you know, like if it's a rookie, you'd be more
patient with rookies than you would a veteran player, et cetera,
(38:30):
et cetera. So I think it's a really really good
call out to to make. Let me ask you this
about about where we're at right now in the fantasy
season the NFL. You know, there's going to be teams
that are just out of the playoffs by the time
championship week happens, even semi final week happens. In fantasy football,
(38:51):
do you ever get nervous about teams shutting down players,
like truly shutting them down? Or and are there any
players this is a question I get all the time.
Are there any players that you're nervous about this year
that might get shut down as we inch into the
fantasy playoffs?
Speaker 3 (39:04):
So this goes back to a tried and truth theory
that I've said for years about fantasy football, and it's
don't hit your wagon to players on bad teams. And
it sounds very, very simple, but at the end of
the day, if you have players and you look around
and you're like, I got a lot of players on
a Commanders or I got you know, guys on I mean,
(39:25):
just just pick a bad team's Houston or whatever, you know,
teams that aren't great and then you're like, oh my god,
like what could happen here?
Speaker 2 (39:32):
But you also can't play scared. Now.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
Will Jayden Daniels return, I don't know. I wouldn't bring
him back. The same I guess could be said for
Joe Burrow. Looks like Joe Burrow potentially come back, and
I love that. But there are situations where I look
at a guy like Breece Hall, and Breece Hall is
an impending free agent, he does not want to be
in New York next year. Who's to say Breese Hall
(39:55):
does all of a sudden, He's.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
Like, ah, the calf is a little.
Speaker 3 (39:59):
Tight today the last few weeks of the season, and
you know, all of a sudden he gets shut down.
So I think that's why you need to be in
a position where if you have, you know, handcuffs or
that position of flexibility where you can load up maybe
on some running backs or receivers that can still play.
You have to be you have to be paying attention
out there. But for the most part, no, I don't
(40:20):
really pay too much attention to if somebody gets shut
down because let's say, hey, it's week sixteen or seventeen.
If you're in a good league, with a good commissioner,
you should be the only team or two still being
able to pick up players off the waiver wire. So
you should have options available to at that point, Like
if you're in a league and like the guy in
the toilet bowl can pick up players, like, that's ridiculous.
(40:43):
That rule has to get changed because you're not helping
anybody there where the guy playing for you know, twelve
place is adding the hot waiver.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
Wire running back of the week. That's nonsense.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
Yeah, no, I think that it's one of those topics
that gets overinflated because if you think back, like how
often does that really?
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Maybe it happens once a year, like maybe you know.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
My only hesitation is like when a player is on
a bad team and is already hurt. Like one player
who comes to mind is like Garrett Wilson, right, oh yeah,
you know.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
Where I'm like, is there really a benefit to Garrett what?
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Like you know, obviously the other thing too is that,
like you people have to always remember these guys are professionals,
Like this is their job and they want to play
because they're football players.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
This is what they do.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
And so like if Garrett Wilson is one hundred percent
healthy and he feels great. They're gonna play Garrett Wilson
more than likely. But if there's any any doubt, like
any doubt in your mind or their mind that something
could happen, then they're gonna They're gonna err on the
side of caution in those scenarios.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
I had a.
Speaker 3 (41:39):
Guy this is last week, a guy I'm in a
league with, and I'll give Michelle's name is Boy Green.
He does a huge Jets podcast and YouTube. He has,
you know, all sorts of guys on the show. He
is as plugged into the Jets as anybody. He sends
me a trade where I would get Garrett Wilson. He goes, hey, listen,
you can stick him on your team for the playoffs.
(42:01):
You got a secret weapon here, And I'm like, wait
a minute, if you're selling Garrett Wilson that the antenna
has gone up here.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
So yeah, that's a great point.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
But again it goes back to don't if your trade
deadline is this week, don't tie yourself to players on
really bad teams. You know, if you've got guys on
the Falcons, the Falcons aren't going anywhere with Kirk Cousins.
You know, I would be looking to sell whoever I
could to get any value from if they were on
the Atlanta Falcons.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
Right now, all right, let's play this game that I've
been doing where we do this player or this player
rest of season, and we're gonna do George Pickens. Who
is I mean, I think he just came out. I mean,
I think that was the best game of his career
what he just did on Monday night. I mean, he
just looked like a he was just a monster in
that game. But we'll play George Pickens versus ex player
(42:48):
rest of season and we'll kind of go through the
logic and stuff like that. So we'll start George Pickens
versus Lad McConkey.
Speaker 3 (42:56):
What's great is I actually traded for George Pickens this
year and he's crushing it again in my Big League
of record, here's the guy's wide receiver four currently has
he has of his last seven games, only two of
them under nine targets. So I look at Lad McConkie.
Here's the problem with Lad McConkie. Like this week he's
on by So I don't love the fact that their
(43:17):
offensive line is terrible. You want to talk about a
team polling guy what happens if Justin Herbert gets hurt,
they just gets sick.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
I'm getting beat up.
Speaker 3 (43:25):
So I would rather have George Pickens here because I
think that the Cowboys are going to be in a
situation where they want to throw the football more less
mouths to feed. I mean, McConkie still has Gadsten and
they still have QJ and you know, heaven and forbid,
they get a Mario and Hampton back and he can
run the football a little bit. So maybe they use
Hampton to take pressure off of Herbert getting his brains
(43:47):
beaten in.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
So I'm gonna take Pickens. Yeah, I'm with you. How
about ROMADONSDA versus Pickens? Oh god, I don't want anybody
on the Bears.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
It's a It's an offense that spreads the ball around
to fifty eight guys and none of them ever come through.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
No thanks, all right?
Speaker 1 (43:59):
How about how about this? Is this one's kind of interesting.
Now they're on by this week, so that could be
a tiebreaker.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
What have you? But Jalen Wattle versus George Pickens.
Speaker 3 (44:08):
You know one of my other receivers on that team
is Jalen and Wattle. Uh listen, Jalen Wattle has a great,
great schedule down the stretch where I think he can
come through. So I'm by right now, like you said,
I to be honest, I think it's a coin flip.
I would lean towards Pickens because I think he has
a better quarterback. And I mean, but you look at
(44:29):
games here down the line with Cincinnati and Tampa.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
Uh. The only thing is you know, I mean, does
Pittsburgh scary at all? I mean, he's got the Jets,
the Saints, so it's great. If you have Waddle, it's unbelievable,
and you do a great job of talking about you know,
fantasy adjusted schedule and all that that kind of good stuff.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
I think I'm still gonna go Pickens.
Speaker 1 (44:49):
Yeah, I think I I think I had I should
have had my my arrest of season rankings.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
Uphile I was doing this, but I think I had
Pickens too. All right, here here's here's now we're gonna go.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
I've been only doing position by position, not only with
you over the last three guys, but with other guests too.
But I think it's kind of interesting to get like
other positions involved, because that's usually how people are trading too.
Because you're trying to help rite multiple teams, George Pickens
versus Bucky Irving, And right now we're recording this on Thursday.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
We've gotten very little.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
News this week about Irving aside from the fact that
he's just kind of bad practice. But there's not like
a full participant kind of situation going on here.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
Yeah, and it's funny.
Speaker 3 (45:26):
I hate to keep bringing up this random team that
nobody cares about, but the Bucky Irving's on that team
as well. He came over to me in the trade
with George Pickens because I love the playoff schedule.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
Yes, screen and listen.
Speaker 3 (45:37):
If you can get this Tampa team with a Bucky
Irving at full strength, where he is the three down
back and he's catching the ball out of the backfield,
and you know, I mean, look at some of these games.
They've got Miami in Championship week, you've got Carolina Atlanta
and they're hot and cold defense. I mean, this is
a great, great opportunity and I'm gonna lean Bucky Irving
(45:58):
here just because to me, it's hard to I know,
it's harder to find an elite wide receiver on the
waiver wire, but a difference making running back to your
team can really put you over the top. And if
you can get a twenty five point out burst from
Bucky Irving over I mean, whoever you might be starting
this week at that perside, if you drafted Bucky Irving,
he's probably your RB one and he's been sitting on
(46:20):
your bench doing nothing for you. So I hope you're
still a playoff relevant at this point. But what about you?
Speaker 2 (46:25):
Who would you take in that situation. I can't.
Speaker 1 (46:28):
I think I had again, I should have had my
my my rank, and I can pull him up right now.
I'm pretty sure I had Pickens ahead. But it's it's
interesting because I, yeah, I do. I have him two
spots ahead, and I had him one spot ahead of Waddles.
So this is all in the in the same group.
Speaker 3 (46:43):
You know.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
The main reason for that is just the ambiguity. But
you know, I think that with Bucky Irving, if you're
a team that is not in the playoffs, you might
have to sell right now to just get something in
this short term because we have no idea when he's
going to come back. But if you're in the playoffs,
if you have a first round, if you're like locked in,
I had a team like that, and I traded for
Bucky Irving last week with essentially bench assets. There's nothing
(47:06):
better than having Bucky Irving sitting on your bench and
not even needing him, you know, like because again, that
schedule's amazing. His peripherals were unbelievable the first four weeks
this season. I do think when he comes back, we're
gonna see more, a little bit more of a split
probably with like Sean Tucker, you know, speak of Syracuse.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
Syracuse guy, nobody talked up Sean talker with me. I love. Oh,
I'm such a Sean Tucker stand. I'm so excited about it.
Speaker 3 (47:30):
He's going to be somebody starting running back next year.
He's a restricted free agent his third round. You know,
I don't know they're not going to tender him. I mean,
there's no point, but he should be a starting running back. Yeah,
very very real checks season. Yeah, he's a good, good player,
very good player.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
And so you know, the only downside with with Tucker
is that, like you know, they'll often just use because.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
We're Sean White.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
You know, he has his flaws, but he is a
decent pass catcher, and so they'll use him more in
that role.
Speaker 2 (47:54):
And then Tucker, Tucker, I think.
Speaker 1 (47:55):
Though this week could easily see a seventy percent running
back rush are, no one should flinch just based on
what we saw last week in the way.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
Things are trending.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
But when Bucky Irving's back, I wouldn't you know Irving
had like a seventy five percent running back rush share
earlier this year per game before he got hurt, over
like a fifteen percent target share.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
You got to just hope.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
I think that the target share kind of remains the
same because that's going to really give him that floor
and that sustainability. And then maybe the rush share drops
a little bit because they're worried about him getting banged up,
and it's a little bit it's a little less risky,
you know, him as a receiver versus him between the tackles.
But still like if you get sixty percent running back
rush share and a ten percent target here from Bucky
(48:34):
Irving with that schedule, And I'll be talking about this
on the Mailbag episode if anyone's listened to that, but
that to me is still very very valuable with that
schedule that they have. So if you want to take
a chance, I.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
Understand going with Bucky Irving. It's it's definitely roster specific
out there.
Speaker 3 (48:49):
I'm sure you get all these folks in your DMS
asking you questions like who should I trade X for?
And you're like, I don't know, I don't know. It
depends what guys in your league need. You know, you know,
who should I trade Deebo Samuel for? Like?
Speaker 2 (49:04):
I don't know? Bag of potato chips? What do you
want me to tell you? I don't know what the
other team's needs?
Speaker 1 (49:09):
Yeah, how about Ashton Genty versus George Pickens.
Speaker 3 (49:14):
You know who I traded to get Bucky Irving earlier
in the year. On that team, I'm assuming Ashton Genty.
Speaker 2 (49:20):
You got it?
Speaker 3 (49:20):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (49:21):
Did I love that? God?
Speaker 3 (49:22):
That's the best Ashton Genty. I mean this team is
so bad really in Las Vegas. I mean you're talking
about a guy last week JJ, he had six rushing attempts.
Now he's making it up a little bit with getting
eight targets. But that's that's not gonna happen every week.
I'm going to take George picken every day and twice
on Sunday over Ashton Genty. I would take him over
(49:44):
Brock Bowers. Probably this point. I don't want anything to
do with that.
Speaker 1 (49:46):
I'm scared out of my mind about Ashton Genty because
of the situation they're in in their schedule. It's because
was trim brutal. Yeah, I mean it could just really
get it. It could be really bad down the stretch. Yeah,
I would trade him. The problem is what are you
going to get for him at this point? The only
you can't you can't really do anything about it at
this point.
Speaker 3 (50:03):
No. Yeah, it's like folks out there trying to trade
AJ Brown. What are you going to get out of
a J.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
Brown? Like, who's dealing anything of value for him? Yeah?
How about Justin Jefferson versus George Pickens? Talk about another guy?
Speaker 3 (50:15):
Justin Jefferson at least has the name where if you
want to try to trade him in your fantasy league.
I don't trust JJ McCarthy at all out there throwing
fastballs at guys from five yards away. I'll take George Pickens.
Speaker 1 (50:26):
Yeah, I think that one's That one, to me is
probably the closest one so far, just because they're like, again,
their schedule is so good that if JJ McCarthy does
figure it out and it does click, which we sometimes
see happen. I'm not super optimistic, I said, I said
a tweet out. I've officially passed JJ McCarthy and the
official JJ Power rankings after last week. I think I'm
(50:47):
ranked like eighty four hundred and seventieth or something now.
But yeah, he's struggling, So I can understand someone not
wanting Jefferson. How about a mecha Buka versus George Pickens.
Speaker 3 (50:57):
Puka by the way, still like PPR wide receiver number eight.
And you know you had a down week a week ago.
You look at what they have going forward. They're going
to get back Bucky Irvings. So maybe that could, you know,
spread the offense out, add a little consistency to the offense,
allow them to create more on first down, sustain more drives.
Speaker 2 (51:18):
I I still think I'm gonna go.
Speaker 3 (51:21):
Pickens here, though, JJ, that one's tight. This one's really
tight for me. But you can see maybe it was
Baker being injured or whatever it is. George Pickens isn't
giving you a wide receiver seventy one weeks like we
got a few weeks ago.
Speaker 1 (51:34):
Yeah, there's such a floor with that Dallas offense. They're
just there is you gotta feel good about it. How
about Derek Henry versus George Pickens.
Speaker 3 (51:42):
Again, another guy who could get game scripted out of
any game going and give you six points because all
you did was run for sixty yards. Again, I love
the schedule going forward. Yeah, it would depend on do
I need a running back and this time of year,
with that schedule coming up for Derek Country, if I
needed a running back badly because I just lost whoever
and I'm still kind of in the mix, I could
(52:03):
make that trade.
Speaker 1 (52:03):
Yeah, and here's the last one. Your Eagles Saquon Barkley
or George.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
Dickens boys on that same team too.
Speaker 3 (52:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (52:11):
Yeah, everyone's gonna know this.
Speaker 3 (52:12):
They're gonna love and ride and die with my alcoholic
Hase fantasy team. Listen, it's been tough. The offensive lines
beat up in Philadelphia. The O c's a dope, and
you know it's crazy. I mean, you've got like three
top twelve weeks on the season out of Saquon Barkley.
But the schedule is so so good going forward. You
(52:35):
know what they'll I think the Eagles somehow figure it out.
Give me Saquon bark Let's just talk about the Eagles
really quick. Like, do you think they figure it out
rest of the season.
Speaker 1 (52:43):
Do you think that because there have been random sort
of stretches, like like around that time where they face
Minnesota and around there where they were more pass heavy,
and then it seems like post by they've gotten back
to their run heavy ways and their obnoxious ways. You know,
if you look at year over year numbers, they're obviously
they're fewer plays because they don't have Kellen Moore anymore,
and Kellen Moore loves to keep up pace a little bit.
Speaker 2 (53:04):
It's all by just a little bit, but it's enough
to all add up.
Speaker 1 (53:07):
But there's less play action, there's fewer RPOs, you know,
there's there's all of these things, you know, less motion
at the line, there's all these things that that are
are a slight dip year over year, but it's adding up.
And then you kind of look at the passing charts
that like next Gen Stats offers though, and you see
there's just nothing going on. Like in the middle of
(53:27):
the field. You know, Aj Brown is very much stapled
to the perimeter and we're not seeing we're just not
seeing much going on, much creativity at all. Do you
have hope as someone who obviously is very in tune
with what's going on with the Eagles.
Speaker 2 (53:40):
Do you have any hope that they do get better?
Speaker 1 (53:42):
Do you think it? Is it a Petullo thing or yeah?
Or is it a talent thing going on there? No,
it's not a talent thing at all.
Speaker 3 (53:50):
Could you imagine if Sean McVay was calling an offense
with Saquon Barkley, Skinny Batman and aj Brown with Jayleen
I mean, the Eagles score sixty points.
Speaker 1 (54:01):
And then they were like, right now, they're bottom ten
in the league in percentage of drives that end up
in scores, both field goals and touchdowns.
Speaker 3 (54:08):
I mean, they lead the league in three and out percentage.
I mean, it's it's a joke. You can just call
the plays out. And I was just listening to Greg
Cosell talk about the Eagles offense and he said, he goes,
this looks like a ninth grade offense. Yeah, and he said,
it's one hundred percent on scheme. When you look at
the route concepts that these guys are running, it's just broken.
And this is the Nick Sirianni offense that when Sirianni
(54:32):
first was hired, against Sirianni not a play caller when
he was hired by the Eagles. Came in, tried to
call plays. That didn't work, so they handed it off
to Shane Steichen. Then they try Shane Stiken goes gets hired.
Let's bring in Brian Brian Johnson. That was an abject
failure because he was placed with Hey, run the Sirianni offense.
This Nick Sirianni offense does not work. They get rid
(54:53):
of Brian Johnson. Hey, let's bring in kell Moore. Kellen Moore,
thank you. Kellen Moore is a name either way. This
has happened to me for three years. Anytime I try
to think of Kellen Moore's name, I somehow blank out.
There is this blind spot in my brain. At one
point I had to write it down when I was
doing the Serious XM Show because I would always forget
his name.
Speaker 2 (55:12):
Like I see it, See what is this guy's name?
My brain?
Speaker 1 (55:15):
My brain goes to Hayden Winks because they look the
exact same. It's one hundred percent is doppelgamer.
Speaker 3 (55:22):
I'd let Hayden Winks call plays over over Kevin Patulo
at this point. But Yeah, here's the thing with the Eagles.
They have a top ten rest of season schedule. This
is I was looking at Fantasy Pros because I did
a video for Fantasy Pros you'll see sometime tonight or
tomorrow about the buying the Eagles rest of season. They
have a rest of season schedule that's top ten at
(55:44):
every position. It's it's number one for tight end and
it's number two for wide receiver, and you get two
matchups with the Commanders going forward. So can this offense
support two wide receivers and a tight end though?
Speaker 2 (55:56):
I don't think so.
Speaker 3 (55:58):
But I think Philadelphia can win because they have, in
my mind, the best defense in the league, and they
have the best GM.
Speaker 2 (56:03):
In the league.
Speaker 3 (56:04):
So they have the best talent in the league and
they just out talent you and make just enough plays
on offense to beat you. But once you get into
the playoffs, they need home field advantage because I don't
want to go to Detroit.
Speaker 2 (56:16):
I don't want to go to so far.
Speaker 3 (56:18):
Bring those teams out to Philly, though, and I think
the Eagles have a great chance to check.
Speaker 1 (56:21):
Yeah, Okay, I think one of the biggest storylines, if
not the biggest storyline right now in fantasy is the
New England backfield. So I want to rapid fire go
through some some players with Trayvon Henderson and do the
same thing Travion or these guys rest of season, Travion
or Zay Flowers rest of season.
Speaker 3 (56:41):
Nobody crabs On Flowers in Fantasy more than I do,
and probably for no reason. He's he's fine, he's fine,
He's not great. Give me gimme Henderson though, all day.
Speaker 2 (56:49):
How about Quinnchon Judkins or Traveon Henderson.
Speaker 3 (56:52):
I would drop Judkins if it meant I could have
Travon Henderson.
Speaker 1 (56:56):
How about Tedoro McMillan. This is an interesting one after
after last week versus Trevion Henderson. Yeah, that one's a
little tougher.
Speaker 3 (57:03):
But again, do I want to be tied to Bryce Young,
who's not gonna drop back and throw forty times?
Speaker 1 (57:07):
I'm still taking Henderson. Yeah, I have Henderson. I have
Henderson ahead. Also, I do think with the Henderson stuff,
it's one of those situations where you have to look
at range of outcomes and say to yourself, Okay, the
median outcome might be this, but there is a high
end outcome where they're just like, no, we're gonna give
them seventy percent of the team's running back rushes and
a twelve percent target share.
Speaker 2 (57:26):
And if we see that, it's it's just rockets.
Speaker 1 (57:28):
I mean speaking of great schedules, I mean the Patriots
running backs have an awesome schedule rest of season as well.
Speaker 2 (57:33):
Okay, Travion or Breece Hall.
Speaker 3 (57:36):
I don't think Breesehall finishes the season like I said,
he's gonna fake some kind of injury.
Speaker 2 (57:40):
Henderson, how about Travion or DeAndre Swift?
Speaker 3 (57:44):
I do like people buying Swift rest of season even
though their schedule is not the greatest, but his role
is outstanding that set. I'm gonna take Henderson in every
guy here just because the upside is so great for
a thirty point performance.
Speaker 1 (57:57):
There's gonna be there's there might be one that's gonna
be pretty interesting. So George Kittle or Travion Henderson, it's tough
to take a toight. Hey, I love Kittle. I think
Kittle's great.
Speaker 2 (58:06):
Yeh yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (58:09):
Brock Bauers, you just mentioned that you're not super like
You're you're just low on Vegas.
Speaker 2 (58:13):
Would you would you go Travion over brock Bowers. Yeah,
because there's the guy we're going to talk about.
Speaker 3 (58:17):
Later who I think I could pick up off the
waiver wire and stream for the rest of the season.
Speaker 1 (58:21):
How about Okay, this is the one that I think
is that we we won't talk Ashton gent because I
know how you feel about Ashon Genty. Now, yeah, Chase
Brown or Travion Henderson.
Speaker 2 (58:31):
What could really help Chase Brown?
Speaker 3 (58:33):
If samaj p ryand was I knew Samaj p Ryan's
out for the rest of the season, I think I'm
gonna lean Chase Brown there because again, schedule is great,
We're getting Burrow back, and now we've got three straight
weeks where he was a top twelve running back in
Fantasy he being Chase Brown. So I think in that
scenario you can lean Chase Brown and feel okay about it.
Speaker 1 (58:53):
Yeah, all right, give me two players right now who
are flying under the radar as possible Fantasy Football playoff winners.
Speaker 3 (59:03):
So the first one I just mentioned tight end, and
I think there's a lot of good tight ends who
can be league winners going forward. Obviously, you know Tyler
Warren's got a great schedule going forward. I think Darren
Waller coming back could help a lot of people at
being a big red zone threat. But the guy I'm
mentioning is Juwan Johnson.
Speaker 2 (59:21):
The schedule's not great, but I don't think that matters.
Speaker 3 (59:24):
He's got a fifteen percent target share playing with Tyler Shuck.
He's running seventy five percent of the routes. He's their
only red zone weapon when you think about it, scored
I believe in two straight games, so they don't have
anything else. It's Chris Olave and it's Juwan Johnson. He's
like tight end seven, I believe on the season. So
he's available in forty percent of Yahoo leagus currently. He's
(59:45):
number one on somebody I would go out and make
sure you could pick up and you can start him
going forward.
Speaker 2 (59:50):
No question. I realized.
Speaker 1 (59:52):
So I published my sleeper show, and I realized. Immediately
after A published, I was like, oh my gosh, I can.
I had Jawan Johnson on my list for this week
just because what you talked about with his usage and stuff,
and I just completely forgot to talk about him. So
I'm throwing Juwan Johnson out there also for those of
you who want to. You know, I track my sleepers
and stuff. We'll throw them out there as another play,
(01:00:12):
all right, So Juwan Johnson is there. Anyone else that
you're looking at.
Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
This one may get me kicked off the show.
Speaker 3 (01:00:18):
I'm going kicker, oh boy, kicker baby, and let me
tell you why. Kayimi Fairbaron, all right, he's only fifty
two percent rostered on Yahoo. He has a schedule with
just one game outside of a dome for the rest
of the season. Monster leg offense that can easily stall out.
This guy's always a top five kicker, and he's got
(01:00:40):
four weeks already. He was always heard a little bit.
He's had four weeks already JJ where he scored at
least fourteen Fantasy points. If you're in the league that
still plays at a kicker, and I know I got
several of them, go look on your waiver wire because listen,
all the points matter. I read a streaming defenses article.
Streaming defenses matter for the playoffs, and so does your kicker.
(01:01:00):
Was trying to rack my brain, like who can be different?
Unique and listen, Kymie Fairburn could give you an edge
in the playoffs. If he goes out and drops eighteen
on somebody in Week sixteen, that's gonna propel you to
the next round.
Speaker 2 (01:01:11):
You can't overcome that. When your kicker drops fifteen plus points.
Speaker 1 (01:01:14):
Look, my subscribers, like the people in the Late Round
Fantasy Football Discord are going to be overjoyed that you
brought up a kicker because I don't do kicker rankings,
and I told them over the summer I was going
to build a kicker model, and I did not build
that kicker model.
Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
And so yeah, I mean, I'm glad that someone on
the show is giving kicker advice. That's good.
Speaker 3 (01:01:33):
I so the defensive streamer article I do at Fantasy Points,
another gentleman, if it's Tom Simons, does a kicker a
streaming kicker thing, and they just kind of like tack
that onto it. But people think, because it's it's mostly
my article that like I do kickers, I get a
zillion kicker questions. Now I'm like, I don't know anything
about this. Yeah, I just know Fairbarn's really good and
he's available and he's going to play indoors for the rest.
Speaker 2 (01:01:55):
Of the season.
Speaker 1 (01:01:55):
Yeah, that's very funny. All right, before I let you go,
give me one bold prediction for week twelve. All right,
let's set social media on fire. Bold prediction for Week twelve.
Shador Sanders throws for less than one hundred and fifty yards.
But the Browns win the game anyways, because the Raiders
(01:02:15):
offense is JV level bad. And then all you're gonna
hear about is Sanders getting the W. But his stat
line JJ is going to be like eleven for thirty
for one to twenty five a touchdown in two picks.
But Sanders wins in his debut and does nothing. They're
gonna like return a punt for a touchdown and they're
gonna kick six field goals.
Speaker 2 (01:02:35):
Yeah, something insane, something ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
I mean, look his his I said this on the
show earlier this week. His completion rate over expected last
week on you know what fourteen or however many attempts
he had twenty or like sixteen attempts was the second
lowest of any quarterback this year. The lowest came after
Shador played, and that was Jared Goff against your Eagles.
That was the lowest completion percentage over expected this season.
Speaker 2 (01:02:59):
Yeah, I mean I get it.
Speaker 3 (01:03:02):
Listen, I made a lot of money off Elon Musk
with a sir Door Sanders tweet that got like four
million views. But the guy's a lightning rod for whatever reason.
And listen, he's not ready to play. Neither's JJ McCarthy.
They both need reps. So we got to give the
kids some grace because it's just, you know, he was
forced into things at Colorado. He's not that great. I
(01:03:24):
said that when I was breaking down Travis Hunter coming out.
I said, listen, he was catching jump balls from a
terrible quarterback. But he's going to be in there and
we'll see what he can do. I just don't think
the Raiders defense is good enough to get after him
because he does have a competent play caller and head coach.
So I think they'll find ways to scheme around sor
(01:03:47):
Sanders and hey, could be a big Quinn shown Judkins' week.
Speaker 2 (01:03:50):
Let's see what happens.
Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
We'll see, we'll see. Well, this is awesome, man. Let
everyone know where they can find you, what you're working on,
all that good stuff.
Speaker 3 (01:03:57):
You can find me on Twitter at Drake fanas. See
I'm on TikTok. I do a Sunday TikTok for fantasy pros. Yeah,
I'm the old guy on there doing that. That's at
Drake Fantasy Instagram Drake Fantasy Football. You can find me there.
I do the Fantasy Points podcast. With John Hanson every Monday.
I do an article for The Huddle. I do articles
(01:04:17):
for Sports KEDA, I do stuff for Fantasy pros, some
fun videos there. So I'm all over the place. Who
I am pouring myself out. If you've got a dollar
and you need a guy to give you some bad
fantasy content, come see your boy, because that's what I'm
here for.
Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
Love it, love it. You can find all my stuff
over on lateround dot com. Make sure you subscribe to
the podcast to the YouTube channel YouTube dot com slash
at late round FF.
Speaker 2 (01:04:43):
Otherwise, everyone as usual, Thanks for tuning in
Speaker 3 (01:05:00):
Fi
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