Breaking Bad: Fixing Your Auction Habits; Guest J.J. Zachariason

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Auction Brief. There's a joy in these games,
not taking you on a journey through fantasy football, the law,
and life. We saw your day. It depends on how
much you want. And now you're legal analyst and auction

(00:23):
draft expert here to help you dominate your fantasy drafts.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Your host, Drew Davenport, there are full hearts.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Hey, everybody, welcome into the Auction Brief. As the lady said,
I'm your host, Drew Davenport. You're a fantasy football lawyer,
and welcome back for another episode of the Auction Brief.
As we chug along into the middle of July, folks,
training camps are right around the corner. That is crazy

(00:54):
to me that we are picking up speed towards the
beginning of the season and just a couple weeks I'll
be talking to about real life football news. That's awesome.
I can't wait for that. For now, we still got
some heavy lifting to do to get you ready for
twenty twenty five. And to that end, we have a
jam packed episode this week. I can't wait. Two things

(01:17):
happen to the legal community that we have to talk about.
So we got a legal update about Jordan Addison and
Quinn Shawn Jenkins, two really important fantasy pieces and two
pretty big updates on what's happening with those cases. All
of that has just gone crazy over the last couple
of days before I recorded. So it's great timing for
the auction brief this week because I do actually have

(01:38):
some important legal information. You know, I went to have
a little bit of a break this weekend with my
wife with no kids. The kids go to the sitters,
we go canoeing, we're out on the river, having a
couple of beers, come home pass out because I'm old,
and I wake up to all hell breaking loose. My

(01:59):
phone has four thousand, bajillion approximately messages about Quinn Chawn
Judkins getting arrested for domestic violence. And it's been nothing
but Addison and Judkins for the last three and a
half days. I think I've done like some stupid amount,
like twenty five hours of content in the last three days.
It's absurd how much is going on right now in

(02:19):
the legal community with these players. And you know, these
are pretty big players, Judkins and Adison, they're pretty big
fantasy players for the upcoming season. So we're gonna dial
that in for you a little bit today. But I'm
really excited about the topic today because I'm sure you
saw the title of this week's episode, breaking bad Fixing

(02:39):
your auction Habits. So I've got seven common auction habits
we're gonna break today. Seven common auction habits we're gonna
break because, look, if you know nothing else about the
auction brief, you know that I think one of the
most important things you can do is to look at
yourself and see what you're doing wrong. And that's what
we're gonna do today, because oftentimes we fall in to

(03:00):
bad habits that we don't realize we're falling into, and
then we sort of just backslide. We're kind of sliding
back down the hill and we don't realize it, and
then pretty soon we look up and the peak of
the hill is way up there. We got to get
you back to the peak. We got to get you
back to the top to operating in prime condition. So
we're going to break some of your bad auction habits

(03:22):
this week. But I'm sort of burying the lead here
because our guest this week for Discussions with Drew is
one of my favorite guests that we had all of
last summer, JJ Zacher Reeson is here the late round,
QB himself. Folks, We've had a killer lineup this summer.
Each guest is one of the smartest people I know
in the industry, and I keep lining up these guests

(03:43):
because I know they're not only helping me. It's fun
for me, but it's helping you to get ready for
your drafts. Regardless of whether you're doing a Serpentine or
an auction. These guests on Discussions with Drew are coming
up with killer analysis, killer information. I just booked Matt
Harmon for a couple weeks down the road from Yahoo
and reception perception, this summer is just a banger of

(04:04):
a summer. I think every summer I worry a little
bit about how good the show's going to be and
how I can continue to deliver top level content, and
I think we're doing it. I think, you know, the
retooled show feels different to me. It feels more fun
to me, it feels more engaging, it feels more approachable.
So I hope that you have that same feeling as well,

(04:25):
because frankly, this is my favorite time of the week.
Like I said, I've done like twenty five hours of
content in the last couple of days, and a lot
of that stuff is just slogging through random stuff, answering dms,
responding to people on Patreon, getting my rankings together, doing
all this stuff that feels like a little bit of
like just like, hey, it's not that I don't love
it or love it probably a strong word sometimes when

(04:48):
you're at the tail end of a of a fifteen
hour day. But I enjoy that stuff, but it's not
it doesn't pay off quite the same in my brain
with the dopamine hit of getting on the mic and
just how having a blast talking to all of you.
This is just so much fun for me. I hope
you hear the enthusiasm in my voice when it comes
to doing this show. I just have a great time,

(05:09):
and I hope you see that, and I hope you
enjoy it too. So we're gonna do a legal update
auction Habits to Break JJ Zacher recent It's gonna be
an awesome show. Don't forget. You can find me on
Twitter at Drew Davenport FF. You can find me on
TikTok and Patreon the Fantasy Football Lawyer. It's just four
bucks a month to get in the Patreon. I just
dropped my unvarnished opinion on Quinch on Judkins and what

(05:30):
I think is going to happen with that case. You
can't find that anywhere else, not here, not on Twitter,
not on TikTok. None of my unvarnished opinions are out
anywhere except on Patreon. So get in there. Just four
bucks a month, tons of other content besides the legal stuff,
all auction stuff there. We do all auction all the
time over there, except for the legal stuff. I think

(05:52):
you'll enjoy it. And don't forget that. I am offering
you a chance to get ten percent off of your
draft boards this summer FJA Fantasy Sports. I believe that
the best draft boards in the business. I make a
couple bucks if you use my code, and you make
a couple bucks because you get ten percent off your order.
It's auction two zero two five, Auction twenty twenty five.

(06:12):
I'll get ten percent off your order. There's had more
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they're completely worth it. FJA Fantasy Sports Auction twenty twenty
five for ten percent off All right, that's gonna do it.
For the preliminary stuff. Let's get into the episode because
I want to bang out these seven common auction habits

(06:33):
that we're gonna break. But first we've got to get
to a legal update.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
Now it's time for your legal update.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
One of the things I always think about when I'm
doing a legal update is how much do people out
there listening know about what I'm about to say. And
there's a lot of you that are really huge supporters
and your disciples of mine that follow everything I do,
and you're gonna find some of this stuff to be
a bit repetitive on the legal stuff. But I have
to take into account that there's a lot of people

(07:02):
listening to the show that don't know anything about me
on socials but don't follow me and don't know what
I've been saying about these legal situations. So I'm going
to try to sort of hit one right in the middle.
Because one of the things that is obvious to me
when I talk to a guy like Jim Coventry or
JJ Zacher reeson, the curse of knowledge is real. Sometimes

(07:22):
you can get into a topic that you know really
well and you can just go on and on about
it and discuss every little detail and facet and nuance.
That's not necessarily that interesting for all of you. I
realize that. And it's also there's a lack of utility.
Of course at some point digging too deep into it,
you just you know, it's the marginal utility thing, like
how much more can we actually learn? We learned ninety

(07:46):
eight percent of what we need to know in the
first couple of minutes, and then after that it's just
a lot of nuance. I'm going to try to hit
these as surface as I can. Was still giving you
what you need to know. There are two big cases
going on right now. There's been two huge developments in
both cases. Let's start off with the one of the moment,
and that is Cleveland Brown's Rockie running back Queen Shawn Judkins.

(08:06):
He was arrested on July twelfth on suspicion of domestic violence.
It's battery down in Florida. That's Broward County, Florida. We
heard that he was arrested. Initially, the reports were that
something had happened the previous night and she had called
the following morning. That turned out to be false. It
looks as though the incident happened on July seventh, five

(08:27):
days before. The allegation is that she flew into town
to see Judkins on the seventh. They got into an
argument leaving the airport right when she got there. She
alleges that he then struck her in the jaw with
a closed fist, and then after another argument ensued where
they got out of the vehicle. They get back in
the car and she gets in the back seat. He

(08:48):
continues to harass her, hits her two more times in
the leg and shoulder. These are all allegations from the
victim herself. That's also stuff that's available in the police report.
I've read report ultiple times. A lot of people have
questions about how this went down, why there's a delay,
stuff like that. Let me answer a couple of those questions.
First of all, is it normal for there to be

(09:09):
a five day delay in reporting this type of abuse.
I think the answer to that is it's not not normal. Okay.
There really is no normal when it comes to being
the victim of a violent crime. So you have to
understand that a lot of people want this to be
something that it's not. A lot of people want to
judge the truthfulness of her allegations because she waited five

(09:31):
days to report them, and people keep saying, oh, well,
she hung around and partied with them all week and
then she called the police that they you know, five
days later. That doesn't mean what she said is not true. Folks,
if you had never been the victim of a violent crime,
sit this one out. Don't make judgments like that. That's
not necessary. And a lot of times you're going to
get it wrong. You don't know how it feels to

(09:52):
be the victim in this kind of a situation. Okay,
so just keep that in mind. It is hard to
come forward. You want to know why it's hard to
come chiefly because of the people who say, why didn't
she come forward sooner? Is it really true? Is she
just trying to get money from him? You know all
the things that people say that doubt victims. That's why
they don't come forward. That's why it's hard, that's why
they wait five days. Okay, this stuff drives me nuts.

(10:15):
Don't let me get off on a tangent on this.
But don't judge the veracity of her claim because she
waited five days. There's a lot of reasons why she
might do that, and I speculated in the Patreon before
the police report came out that it was likely that
she had talked to friends and family in the intervening
period from the seventh to the twelfth, and they had
convinced her that she needed to come forward. I hate

(10:35):
to toot my own horn, but I'm going to That's
exactly what she said in the report, that she tried
to work it out with Judkins, it didn't happen, and
then friends and family said you got to come forward,
You've got to report this. She didn't want to ruin
his career. Again, another consideration that people don't think about,
you know, they bang on her for it, like, oh,
why'd you wait five days? I think that's a nice thing.
She didn't want to ruin his career. Like, come on,

(10:57):
you're counting that against her. I think that's a posy
for that. She didn't want to ruin his career. And
then she finally decided, Hey, I got to do it.
Don't worry about the five days. That has nothing to
do with the case, all right. And what's persuasive to
me is that she calls the police on the twelfth,
and when she talks to the officer he files charges,
and you want to know why, because she described the
situation and then she had photos to back it up.

(11:18):
So she says that he hit her in the jaw,
the arm, the leg. She's got photos of all this
bruising on all of those areas. And one of the
things that you learn to recognize when you're somebody who
does as many cases as I do, your bullshit detector
is really really good. Okay, you can tell when people
are making stuff up, and even sometimes you'll hear part

(11:39):
of a story and be like, that sounds right, but
the other part sounds weird because they're making something up.
There's some reason they're hiding something. The narrative in the
police report is as non bullshit as you can get,
very straightforward, told coherently, cogently, completely believable story. If this
woman is a believable as believable of a witness she

(12:00):
is in this police report, then Judkins may be in
trouble here. I'm not saying what's going to happen with
the case. There's a lot of reasons for that. And
let me just finish by saying this, there is a
no contact order in the case. That's very normal to
be issued in a domestic violence case or any violent case,
So we can't have contact with her while the case
is pending, and a lot of people are saying does

(12:21):
she want to proceed with the charges? And that's something
that I look at because a lot of what happens
in a case depends on does she want to go
forward with the prosecution of the case. Because they don't
have much of a case. It's just the two of them.
They don't have much of a case if she can't
be there to verify that she took the pictures and
what they're the pictures of and tell her story. So
she decides she doesn't want to do it now. She

(12:43):
said in the report she does want to prosecute. That's
step number one. That's good for her. Having said that,
a lot of times victims will say that at the
time of the incident and the time of the reporting,
but then later they change their minds. It's hard to
report it. It's even harder to go to court and
face the person and have to go through with the charges.

(13:03):
So we don't know exactly how that's going to go down,
but right now we're waiting on a court date. I
will keep you informed a lot of times these things
get pled down, they get dismissed. Don't freak out yet,
but the NFL Personal Conduct Policy says six plus games
for any type of allegation like this, and the exemp
list is in play as well. We know the NFL

(13:23):
is a little bit inconsistent with when they use the
exemple list, but it is still in play. They have
not said they're not going to use it yet. So
right now, you just got to be cautious with Judkins.
I'll keep you updated on that, and if you want
to check my TikTok or my Patreon you're going to
get even more context. That's it for Judkins right now.
As far as Jordan Addison is concerned. The big thing

(13:45):
with Addison happened with his jury trial date on July
the fifteenth, And it's a weird sort of development because
he was supposed to go forward with his jury trial
at eight thirty in the morning on July the fifteenth.
We heard later in the day that the case got
he set to the seventeenth for a pre trial. Now

(14:05):
I've done thousands and thousands and thousands of criminal cases.
The number of times I've gone from jury trial to
pre trial. I can count on one hand this is
not normal. So it means that something happened when they
got there for the jury trial that morning. My guess,
my educated guess, is that there was some sort of
pre trial motion made either at the last minute or

(14:27):
the morning of the trial that needs to be resolved
before the trial can go forward, and or there's some
sort of deal on the table or the judges pushing
these parties to resolve the case in light of the
motion that was made. My guess is at this point
that the case is going to be settled. I don't
know why they wouldn't just pick a new jury trial
date if they were going to go forward. So I

(14:48):
think the fact that it got moved sort of backwards
in the process to a pre trial and the fact
that it's only two days away, says that perhaps this
case is going to be resolved with some kind of
a deal, in which case that would limit Addison's exposure
to maybe one or two games, but it could still
be three. I've been saying that all along, somewhere in
the neighborhood of one to three, and we know that's

(15:08):
probably coming this year. Okay, well, let's be done, because
I want to move on to the next topic on
our docket today. We have so much to do today,
but those are the updates on Addison and Judkins. Those
are pretty big developments. Stay with me, stay with the
Fantasy Football Lawyer, and I will keep you informed about
what's going on. Let's move on now to seven common

(15:30):
auction habits to break. I want to talk to you
all about how to get better at auctions by breaking
the bad habits that you've developed along the way. Here
we go, let's do some auction talk.

Speaker 2 (15:40):
Auction talk.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
Well, I alluded to this in the opening, and I
want to say it again. One of the quickest ways
to get better. One of the easiest and quickest ways
to get better is to watch yourself. Self scouting is
absolutely essential to getting better, but it's also easy. You
can't get in a room with all your other owners

(16:04):
and do auctions very often right you do it once.
You either get in an online room where you don't
learn a whole lot of anything, or you get to
do once a year with your home league where you're
in the same room doing an auction. It's hard to
learn other people's tendencies and what they're doing year to year.
For yourself. You always know what you're doing. I say
it all the time. You've heard the phrase before, control

(16:25):
what you can control. Self scouting is one of those things.
It's really easy to scout yourself and figure out what
you're doing wrong. So it's absolutely critical if you learn
nothing else on the auction brief, it's that the more
you look at yourself, the better you're going to get,
and the better you're going to get in probably the
easiest possible way, the easiest way to pump up your

(16:45):
expected value is to be critical of the things that
you're doing and to try to change them for the better.
And I understand this is difficult because it's hard to
know exactly what you're doing wrong all the time if
you don't have somebody to kind of bounce this stuff
off of or figure fure out what it is that
you're doing wrong. Because it's likely that you have some
habits that you don't even realize are wrong. And I'm

(17:07):
going to disabuse you of that notion on a couple
different fronts. Today. There's going to be a couple things
I say that you're probably not going to like, but
I think you're going to find them to be correct.
When you get into your auction room, you're going to
see other people doing these things, and it's really easy
to find yourself sliding down that hill and just getting
worse inch by inch until you find yourself halfway down

(17:27):
the hill and you got to walk back up to
the top to get to the peak to make your
performance peak performance, so that you can crush the auction room,
because if you're halfway down the hill, you're losing lots
and lots of positive expected value there. So I guarantee
that you are doing if not all seven of these,
you're doing at least five or six of them. You
want to know why, because there are things that I've

(17:49):
been doing a lot over the last twenty five years
that I realize I'm doing wrong, and I have to
fight these tendencies all the time. Keep in mind, this
is not something that you just like, oh, I stopped
doing that and now and now I'm good, because you
can still slide back into these old habits. So resist
that urge. Maybe write these seven things down like I'm
post it and put it on your computer wherever before

(18:12):
you draft, so you can just kind of go over
these seven things and say, I'm not going to do
these things today. These are critical things that I've learned.
Seven auction habits I want you to break. I'm going
to start out with number one. It's a pretty big one.

(18:33):
It's a banger, and I'm trying to draw you in
with number one because I think it's one that I
see all the time and it's one I'm guilty of
all the time, and that is going back to a
position group for a nomination when you just landed that
same position with a high priced player. So you go
back to a position group for a nomination when you

(18:54):
just landed a high priced player at that position. For example,
you just landed justin Jefferson. Now you know that you're
probably not going to be able to get Melik Neighbors,
so you call out Melik Neighbors next, because you're trying
to suck some more money out of the room at
a position that you can't compete at anymore. I understand
the logic there, but here's why it's a bad habit.

(19:15):
It's not bad logic, it just isn't how reality really works.
And you're going to notice that trend in these seven
habits I want you to break because a lot of
times things that sound logical about an auction draft room
aren't actually how things work. I think there's a lot
of bad advice out there about auctions, and when you

(19:36):
read somebody, sometimes these are high level fantasy analysts who
don't really have a great grasp on how to do
auctions because they haven't done enough of them, and they
haven't studied them enough, and they haven't thought about them enough.
And it sometimes sounds great to say, hey, if you
just landed Josh Allen for twenty eight dollars, then go
ahead and nominate Lamar Jackson. That sounds great, right, It

(19:57):
sounds great for an article that in reality is not
what you should be doing, because that's not the most
positive expected value play. And oftentimes that comes from people
who don't have the experience to realize that. Why is
it a mistake? It's a simple reason that I've talked
about before, but I need to bring back up in
context of this bad habit, that is that leaving the

(20:20):
player on the board is oftentimes more profitable for you
than it is to nominate that player. And why is
that Because once you nominate that player, you're giving clarity
to the other owners or the excuse me, the other
managers in the room. So, for example, if you go
back to my wide receiver situation, I just landed Justin Jefferson. Man,

(20:43):
I'm having trouble this week with the speaking. All of
the words aren't coming out very good. It's okay, Brad.
Just relax, Brad. They're out here to listen to you. Brah.
What's up, Duke. It's been a little while since Duke's
been here. For those of you who don't know, you know,
Duke is one of the coolest people I've ever met.

(21:05):
North shore surfer out there getting shacked at off the wall,
breaking boards, ripping waves. Duke's awesome. Anyway, Duke's back. Welcome back, Duke. Hey,
thanks for me Brada. Anyway, back to the point, why
do you want to give clarity to the other managers
in the room about what they're going to do and
how their roster is shaping up by nominating a player

(21:29):
that they can land. There's two aspects to this. Number
One is, if you landed Justin Jefferson for let's say
fifty dollars, you've taken one of the elite wide receivers
off the board. And if auction drafts do what they
normally do. Other wide receivers are going to fly off
the board, and pretty soon the top wide receivers, it's
going to get pretty thin. But if you leave players

(21:53):
like Malik neighbors on the board, what happens is the
people who don't have elite wide receivers are mentally saving
space on their cap and in their head. Now, remember
these are people who probably don't use a par sheet, right,
they don't know exactly what they're gonna spend, so they're
probably not using a par sheet. They probably don't know
a I can spend X, Y or z. Instead, they

(22:15):
have the sort of confusing jumble of numbers in their
head about what they might possibly pay for neighbors. And
the thing is they don't really know what they're gonna
have to pay for neighbors, and especially if things are
getting scarce. But there's several managers in the room who
don't have a wide receiver one. Yet, Let's say there's
four players who don't have a wide receiver one and
they say, I want molite neighbors. Well, they're thinking in

(22:37):
their head they want neighbors. That means they have to
mentally reserve that amount of cap space. What do you do.
When you nominate neighbors, one of the players in the
room is gonna get him. Let's say he gets them
for forty five bucks. He knows at that point, I've
already got my wide receiver one. I can now move
on and spend my money elsewhere, and I know exactly
what I have left to spend. You just help that

(22:57):
person with the clarity. But on top of that, think
about how that forty five dollars is multiplied by the
four people who want neighbors. So they want neighbors At
forty five dollars, that's one hundred and eighty bucks that
you're tying up in the draft room. You're not just
tying up forty five dollars. You're tying up one hundred
and eighty dollars. Because that's four times forty five. You

(23:17):
got four people worried about neighbors. You can go bang
away at the wide receiver twos. And they got to
be a little more cautious. They got to think, I
gotta save money because I got to get my wide
receiver one. Still, if you allow one of them to
get the wide receiver one, you're making it easier on them.
Why give them clarity. Uncertainty in their brains is worth
so much more. And don't forget that their uncertainty is

(23:39):
worse than your uncertainty, because your uncertainty is really you know,
how am I going to do my par sheet? Who
am I going after? I need to save this two dollars?
Like you know exactly what you're doing because you've listened
to the show. The other managers in the room, their
uncertainty is multiplied because they don't have any of that help.
They don't have a par sheet, they haven't listened to
the show. They don't know what they're doing nearly like

(24:00):
you do, so the uncertainty is magnified. Don't take that
away from them. Leave the uncertainty in their brain. Don't
go back to that position group you know you got Jefferson.
Let the other people wonder what they're gonna pay for
their wide receiver one. You go hammer away at other positions.
The one exception to this is if the money in
the room is starting to run low and some elite

(24:22):
players haven't come off the board, you need to get
those players out. Otherwise there's a possibility that those elite
players won't go for nearly as much money as they should.
I know this happened to me last year in my
home league. It's a one QB league, but a lot
of the quarterbacks had already come off the board and
Lamar Jackson was still available, and I was like, okay,

(24:43):
I might end up with Lamar Jackson. I did. I
got them way too cheap, And part of the problem
was in that. Well, it was good for me, but
the problem for the other nine people in the room
was that there wasn't enough money in the room, and
enough people had quarterbacks, and nobody really wanted to bid
and risk getting stuck with another quarterback because they needed
other positions. So that's the one exception I'll say is

(25:04):
that if the money's starting to run too low and
there's elite players out there, nominate those players because you
want that money to get spent and you don't want
the price to come in way too low. All right,
So that's the exception. But otherwise, going back to the
position group for a nomination, when you just bought an
elite player at that position, bad idea, bad idea. People

(25:25):
think it's good because you're wasting money on a position
you can't get anymore. I've just told you all the
reasons why that's wrong. All right, that's number one. Number two,
this is a simple one. It's going to go fast,
but follow me here waiting for the clock to go
down to three seconds, two seconds, one second, whatever, or
if you're in a draft room waiting for the going

(25:45):
twice before you yell out your bid. This is not
a good tactic. It's not a good habit to get into.
I do it. I'm guilty of it sometimes. And let
me just lead off by saying, if you need the
time to think, you need that clock to run down
because you're thinking, what do I do? Do I really
want to bid another dollar? That's okay, take the time.
That's not applicable here. We're not talking about those situations.

(26:06):
If you need the time, take the time, okay. The
first problem though, with this tactic right out of the gate,
is you can get caught online trying to bid, and
that online thing will just skip. Like I use Sleeper
for a lot of mock auctions, and I can't tell
you how many times I've tried to click the button
with two seconds left and not gotten the player. It's
happened a lot, and I don't mean like fifty times,

(26:29):
but It's probably happened a good six eight times in
the last two years where I've been playing around and
just like, do I bid? Is somebody else going to bid?
Kind of trying to see what's going to happen, suss
out some other bids, and then I try to click
the button and the thing just skips, and then the
player's sold, and I'm like, what the hell just happened.
So that's that's the first problem. You can you know,

(26:49):
you can have software problems, and that's just too bad.
That's a dumb game to play. But there's a more
interesting reason for this whole thing, and it comes back
to psychology. I mean, after all, what we do as
an art form, We've talked about that before, and most
of that relies on your understanding of human psychology. And
this is something that happens in a lot of home leagues.

(27:09):
I'm the auctioneer. I think I've talked about this before,
but I'm the auctioneer in all my home leagues that
are live. I know, I'm in the draft and I'm
the auctioneer. But it works, it's fine. The psychology of
it is has always been interesting to me because it
doesn't bother me. When people wait till I say going twice.
But a lot of people do that. They wait until
I say going once, going twice, and then they bid.

(27:31):
They're almost never gonna bid before I say going twice,
right before I say sold. That's just how they do it.
And I just come back to the fact that what
is the psychology of this, because on its face, that
seems to be counterproductive. I mean, I think what people
are thinking is this that if I wait and I
run the clockway down, or I wait till the person
says going twice, then they're gonna think that they think

(27:55):
that they're frustrating their opponent, that their opponent at some
point is just going to throw up their hands and
say and he keeps bidding, and there's a lot of
tension there, and like you're going to frustrate and wear
down your opponent by that bid at the end of
the clock or at the after the going twice. So
I have to believe that's what the idea behind it is.
But just like in number one, I don't believe that's

(28:17):
actually the effect of what you're doing. So I'm not
sure this is a very effective thing. And there's a
couple of reasons why I believe that Number one, If
I was trying to put a read on this in
some other situation, not an auction draft, but in some
other situation, and somebody was really hesitant to make a bid,
wouldn't the most logical explanation for that be that they

(28:38):
weren't sure they wanted to bid again? In my mind,
if you wait and you act like you're not sure,
I think that gives your opponent more of a reason
to continue to bid, because they think, Hey, my opponent's
just about to stop. They don't really want to bid,
They just keep kind of I'll throw out another dollar.
I'll throw it. I can wear them down, they're about
to stop. So that's what I would first think. So

(28:58):
I think that's number one reason on its face. But
the other reason is there's a psychological factor with bidding
extra dollars at the end of the bidding process, where
people get nervous when the numbers get really high for
a player that maybe they didn't think they were going
to pay that much money for. So if you wait

(29:19):
and you allow them some time, first of all, you're
giving them time to think while you're letting that clock
run down. And second of all, you're giving them an
ability to just feel more comfortable about bidding another dollar,
so that bidding gets up to forty five, forty six,
forty seven. That's a large percentage of your cap. And
when you say forty seven at the end of the

(29:39):
clock and they bid forty eight, now you give them
ten seconds or whatever amount of time before you bid
forty nine. They get more comfortable with that extra plus one,
that bidding, that little plus one click yelling out that
extra bid. They get more comfortable. They just do and
it's easier to go one dollar out of time. If
somebody was like, hey, you're going to overspend by twelve bucks,

(30:00):
when on a thirty eight dollars player you're gonna pay
fifty bucks, you'd be like, no way. But when you
get in the middle of a bidding war and they
say forty four and you're like, I can do forty five,
they say forty sixty, go I can do forty seven.
You get more comfortable with it. You know it, you
feel it. That's how it is for you. Why wouldn't
it be that way forever other people? So don't let
the clock run down. If you know you're gonna bid,

(30:21):
just bid Okay, just bid, and I promise you you're
gonna get more people to drop out of the bidding
earlier if you bid quickly and if you bid with confidence,
and then when it hits your limit you just stop.
People will stay away from you because they don't want
to test you and know when you're gonna stop. But
also you look confident and you look like you're gonna

(30:41):
continue to bid, they may just say, hey, this person's
not giving up. You may save a couple bucks that
way as well. Don't wait. I think that is one
of the silliest things that we can do, is waiting
for the clock to go down or waiting for the
going twice. I just don't think it's productive. Just bid
if you know you're gonna bid. The bid all right,
that's an easy one. My third auction habit that I
want you to break is sort of tangentially related to

(31:04):
number one, and that's the people who want to waste
money at the beginning of an auction by calling out
high priced players that they don't want the biggest reason
why this isn't a very effective strategy is what I
said earlier about letting those players stay on the board
and rent people's space in their heads. So if you

(31:24):
don't call out the bigger players and you leave them
on the board, people around the room are gonna be like,
I can get this guy. I'm a be able to
give this guy for forty seven bucks. You're tying up
money in their brains. We already talked about that. But
the other thing is, I have two pretty big objections
to the quote unquote wasting money at the beginning of
a draft. My first objection to it is I don't

(31:45):
really think it has the effect that you think it does.
If you're in a typical twelve team league, there's twenty
four hundred auction dollars in the room, and somebody calls out,
say kuon Barkley, and fifty five dollars leaves the room.
You say, yes, somebody spend fifty five dollars. Who cares.
There's still twenty three hundred and forty five dollars left
in the room. The effect of quote unquote wasting someone's

(32:07):
money is not actually there. You're not actually getting any
effect from that, Okay, so wipe that out of your brain.
You're not getting the effect you think you're getting there.
Number one, and number two, you didn't waste any money.
They got Saquon Barkley. What the hell I mean, that's
not a waste of money. Now, maybe you say it's
a waste because you don't want him. I get that,
But what if Barkley's fine, and what if he has

(32:29):
another monster season and you just thought, hey, he's going
to get hurt and he had five hundred touches last year,
he's about to go down. Predicting injuries is not what
we want to be doing. The point is, you don't
know that Barkley is going to have a good or
bad season. They just got their RB one for fifty
five bucks, and you think you accomplish something by wasting
the money at the beginning of the draft. I don't
think you accomplished what you think you did there. So

(32:51):
that's my first objection is that I don't think it
has any practical effect here. My second objection to it
is when you call out a player that you don't
want because you're trying to quote unquote waste money, then
you're also wasting the opportunity to send your auction off
in the direction that you want it to go. We've
talked about this over and over. I'm not going to
even get into this because you know, we've talked about

(33:14):
it earlier episodes this summer, We've talked about it ad
nauseum last summer. The first couple auctions, two, three, four
rounds should be you defining where you want your auction
to go by nominating players that are going to be
lynchpin players to your strategy. If I think that I
want to see how much Christian McCaffrey is going to
go for. Maybe I'm in a conservative league that doesn't

(33:34):
want to draft a player who's hurt all the time
like McCaffrey is. Maybe you want to call him out early.
Maybe that's not your target, but you want to see, hey,
if I can get McCaffrey, that's going to send my
auction off this way, or that you want to check
that price. You call him out first and you figure
out whether or not you're going to get him. That's
the important stuff here. So quote unquote wasting a nomination
to get money out of the room, it just doesn't

(33:56):
have any practical effect, and you waste the opportunity to
get your auction goal in the right direction. Nominate players
that are key to your part sheet, that are key
to your strategy. Get those players out early, and then
you can worry about wasting money as you get into
the middle. The middle meet the thirty to forty percent
of the draft where you're trying to wait around, let

(34:17):
the auction come to you, that kind of stuff. There's
time to waste money later when it has bigger effect
at the beginning. That ain't it. That ain't it? And
that's a habit I see, And honestly, I see that
in I see that in a lot of analysts articles
that I read about auction drafting. I just don't think
it's a good piece of advice. I think it's a
habit we need to break. All right, that's number three.

(34:39):
Let's move on to number four. This is specifically an
end game comment here, and when I say endgame, I'm
talking about the last twenty percent of the draft, twenty
to thirty percent of the draft. I want you to
stop waiting to nominate a player that you really want
near the end of the draft. Oftentimes, this is going
to result in you losing the opportunity to draft other

(35:02):
players that may be good values as well. If you
wait because you want to land a certain player and
you're holding onto your money to land that player. Just
go ahead and nominate them, get them out there and
see what it's going to cost you. Here's a perfect example.
Let's say you're getting near the end of the draft
and Jacoby Myers is still out there as one of
the top options at wide receiver. This is pretty late

(35:24):
in the draft. You only have thirteen dollars left, okay,
but you've got six other teams with pretty similar CAF
cap amounts left, so they've got some of them have
a little bit more, some of them have a little
bit less. But the key is you still need some
depth at running back, and there's a lot of running
backs left who may not be you know, top level talents.

(35:44):
But you know, of course we're getting near the end
of the draft, but you know that Jalen Warren and
Isaiah Pacheco are still on the board. Now. Neither one
of these guys is commanding a large price in auction drafts.
Pacheck O and Warren people are just kind of shrugging,
like who cares. Sometimes they're going, you know, maybe for
ten bucks. Sometimes they're going for four or five bucks.
It depends on when they get nominated. But both of
them are left you have thirteen bucks and you want

(36:07):
Jacoby Myers. I'm here to tell you there's a world
where you can land all three of them, and there's
also a world where you can land two of them,
but only landing one of them is tragic. Okay. You
lose auction drafts when you can't take advantage of these situations.
When you can't properly play these endgame situations, you lose

(36:28):
expected value. So if youve got thirteen bucks left and
you want Jacoby Myers, or maybe you want Pajeco or Warren,
it doesn't matter, pick one of them and nominate them.
You have to know what you're gonna spend on that player.
I can't tell you how many times I get to
the end of an auction and I'm like, I'm gonna
get this guy, and then I wait, and I wait
because all the money is being sucked out of the
room while I'm waiting. Great, right, But then you're probably

(36:50):
gonna get a deal of like four bucks later for
Jacoby Myers when he should be an eleven dollars player.
But you didn't know that because you just waited. Now,
maybe you waited in got a better price because you waited,
But you also missed the opportunity to get all these
other players, And you don't know whether or not you're
gonna get that four dollar price. You just got to
get them out there. And if you end up paying seven, okay,

(37:11):
then you know you got six bucks and you can
land Warren or Procheco. You can get one of them. Now,
maybe you go and you nominate Myers and nobody cares
because they're in get your guy mode. We've talked about
this in past summers. We haven't hit on it yet,
but you get to the end of a draft and
people are and get your guy mode. They don't have
very much money left. There's players they want. They're sitting
there like, hey, I want Trey Harris, Hey I want

(37:31):
Jayden Higgins, Hey I want will Shipley. They're waiting on
their guys. They probably aren't gonna fight you for Jacoby Myers,
So get them out there. See what you're gonna pay.
At least you have some clarity. If you don't get them,
then you're gonna go get Warren and Pacheco, okay, because
you know at that point how much you're gonna spend.
So waiting to nominate a player too long in the

(37:53):
endgame will hurt you. It will hurt you. Break that habit.
Don't continue to sit on that player round after round.
Get him out there, find out whether you're going to
get him number one and what you're going to pay
number two, and that will allow you to take advantage
of other opportunities that come along as the draft gets
towards the very end. All right, that's habit number four.

(38:14):
Habit number five I want you to break is forcing
a plan or a player on your team. Forcing things
never works in an auction. The times I've had the
worst results are the auctions where I go in there
and I say, I really want to get this guy
or I really want to get that guy. Let's be honest.
I'm in quite a few home auction leagues and sometimes

(38:35):
i get to the end of a draft season and
I'm like, I don't have any of this player, and
I go force it. You know what I did that?
Who I did that with last year? Garrett Wilson. I
barely had any Garrett Wilson, And I'm like, I think
you could easily have a nice year with Rogers. I
want to have him somewhere. I go into my last auction,
I pay too much for Garrett Wilson. It hurt my team.
It hurt my team. Forcing the situation is not a

(38:58):
positive ev play. A lot of times, what ends up
happening is you either end up waiting on that player
and then by the time you land them, there's no
pivots left that you really care about, or you overpay
for the player, or both. You might wait and overpay,
And let me ask you this, what if you're wrong
about that player? What if you're wrong? We force these

(39:19):
things all the time and we're wrong. I wish I
could go back and tell past Drew about Martevis Bryant,
because I spent a lot of time drafting Martavis Bryant
that summer before he absolutely bombed out of the league.
We're going to be wrong all the time. You should
expect to get guys on your team that you didn't
expect to have, and that's all part and parcel to

(39:43):
not forcing the issue. In an auction. There are players
that you should want. That's part of the fun of
the auction. But don't go into the draft and be like,
I have to have this player. And if you do,
nominate him early so you know whether you're getting them
or not. But don't force it. Hey, I want to
have rock Bowers and you end up with Bowers for
forty six bucks. I don't think that's helping you. Forcing
a plan or forcing a player, it never works. You

(40:07):
can't force I think about it like this all the time.
When you sit down at a poker table with a
bunch of bad players, you got to get some cards
because they're just gonna call everything. You can't force it.
You can't sit there on bluff and play masterful poker.
They don't know what the hell masterful poker is. They're
looking down at their hand to see whether or not
they have a straight. They're not, you know, three levels
deep in a chess match across the table from me

(40:29):
on the poker table. Okay, So forcing things just doesn't work.
And one of the stories that always pops into my
head this time of year is I was in a
home auction league and everybody was talking about Rob Gronkowski
after his big rookie year. I think he had like
maybe ten touchdowns his rookie year, whatever the case may be,
it was like forty seven catches and ten touchdowns. I'm

(40:51):
pulling this off the top of my head. I don't
even know, but I know that he had like double
digit touchdowns and everybody's freaking out, like what if this
guy's awesome? And my gut was like, ah, I mean
he had ten touchdowns like that, that's unsustainable. He scored
a touchdown like twenty percent of his catches, Like that's
not happening, And that kind of blew off the whole idea.
But I also know that sometimes I tend to blow

(41:12):
these things off and I'm completely totally off base, as
I was with Gronkowski. So I'm in a home league
draft and somebody nominates Gronkowski for a buck. It's at
the end of the draft. I have a few bucks left,
and I'm like, all right, I'm going to take a
shot on this guy because I'm the only one with money.
So I say two, nobody bids and I got Gronkowski
for two. You know the end of that story. He

(41:33):
went absolutely nuts, took me to the championship, whereupon I
promptly lost to an Aaron Hernandez team because Gronk had
been catching the touchdowns and doing the damage all year.
In the championship, Hernanda has caught two touchdowns in Gronk
haad zero but that's fantasy football. The point is you
just got to get some players in your team that
you're not gonna like. And how does that relate to

(41:55):
forcing a plan or forcing a player under your team.
If you're not forcing it, you're opening your mind to
the idea that A I might be wrong and B
I might end up with some players I didn't really
expect to because the value was just too good. In
that situation where I landed Gronk, I ignored my brain
and I said two dollars to take a chance on
a guy who caught ten touchdowns and said, rookie, I'm
going to do that, and it worked out. Sometimes these

(42:18):
things work out when you take those chances. Don't force it.
It's not good in auction drafts. Forcing things makes things worse,
all right. The sixth auction habit I want you to
break is something that is probably one of the more
insidious habits that we have because it really creeps up
on us. As we get better at auctions. We go

(42:39):
into a room and we're very familiar with values and
what we want to do, how we're playing the room.
We're confident, and so what we end up doing is
we end up playing the enforcer a lot. So the
habit I want you to break is I want you
to resist the urge to always be the enforcer. The
enforcer is somebody who's going in there and bidding to

(42:59):
make sure that market price is always enforced, that players
go for enough money. There's a couple problems with always
being the enforcer. Number one, and it's the most obvious
problem with being an enforcer, and that's that you're always
playing with fire. For three hours of this auction draft,
you are going to be in there trying to enforce

(43:19):
market price. At some point, you're going to make a mistake.
You're going to misread the situation. You're gonna bid when
you shouldn't have. At some point, you're going to make
a mistake. It reminds me of endgame poker tournament play
when you're on a short stack and you're short enough
that you have to shove all in when you get
a good hand. At some point, you're going to shove

(43:39):
with a hand that's inferior to a hand behind you,
and you're gonna lose and you're gonna be out. Have
you ever heard the phrase shoving all in works every time,
but the last time it's a phrase for a reason,
because it's going to work for a while. People are
going to be nervous about what you're doing, they're not
going to want to make a call, and at some point,
somebody's just going to wake up with a pair of
kings and you're going to roll over your sevens and
you're going to be out of the tournament. That's the

(44:01):
same thing in an auction draft. If you're always the enforcer,
you're always going to be playing with fire, and at
some point you're gonna bid when you shouldn't. Then somebody's
gonna stop and you're gonna get stuck and it's going
to ruin your draft. So resist the ear is to
always be the enforcer, just to not play with fire.
But the second thing I want to say is when
you've established the reputation of being the enforcer a lot

(44:22):
of times in your draft room, you're going to be
the most veteran or the most skilled or whatever, and
people in the draft room are gonna know that. They're
gonna know that, and they're gonna see you doing that
enforcing and they're gonna be like, all right, we got
the sheriff's in town. So they're watching you and they
know that you're gonna enforce. They just wait for you
to do it. So not only does that force your

(44:43):
hand to be the enforcer. That's stressful where you might
make a mistake, but then you know, it's interesting you.
I could tell you there are so many times where
I've been in a draft room and somebody will say,
why didn't you bid on that player? Why didn't you
bid on that? You've got money, And the persons saying
it to me they have money too. It's wild to me,

(45:04):
but I see it all the time. People get frustrated
that other people won't bid and they have money. Why
don't you do it? That's what I'm thinking. Why don't
you bid? Won't you help enforce? You know why? Because
they're relying on you to do it because they think
that you're the person that's going to do it all
the time, because you set yourself up as the enforcer.
That's a bad habit. I preach on the show all

(45:26):
the time to go in there like animal, like rah
rah rah rah, just bid, bid, bid and go crazy.
But I've also said that you have to do it
for a reason. You can't just get in there just bid, bid, bid,
bid bid, because sometimes that's counterproductive. You have to mix
things up. That's the other thing I would say, mix
it up so you don't want to go in there
and just be bidding all the time and be the enforcer.

(45:46):
People will let you do it, and then you have
that pressure on you and sometimes you're not going to
do it and the bidding will stop and a player
goes way too cheap and everybody looks at you, like,
what are you doing? Bro? I thought you were the enforcer.
Let other people do it, Let other people get in there.
You got to back, you got to be unpredictable. Let
other people be the enforcer sometimes. And then a lot
of times you want to wait and you want to
see if other people are going to jump in, and

(46:07):
sometimes you have to do it. That's a feel thing
in the moment, but let other people take that role sometimes. Okay.
My last auction habit I want you to break is
one that is a good one to end on because
it's one of those things that I think sounds logical
and sounds good when you say it out loud, but

(46:27):
in reality, when you're in the draft room, it doesn't
work very well. So the last auction habit I want
you to break is being vague about your plans. Having
done this now for six years and getting tons of questions,
dozens hundreds of questions over the past six years about
how to approach the auction, I can tell you that
I get a lot of people who come to me

(46:49):
and say, hey, I want to get a top wide receiver. Okay, cool,
I think I'm going to go value at quarterback. Okay cool.
Here's what I want to say. I don't want to
be overcritical of that thought because I love the idea.
Because let me just say this, I love that you're
even thinking this way, because it's an important step towards
doing the things that you need to be doing to

(47:11):
be prepared to have the right mindset. And the fact
that you even took that first step is more than
ninety five percent of the players out there. Lots of
people never do it. They never go in that draft
room with a coherent plan. They just like players, and
they're going to go in there and try to land
some players or land some values. That's all they're thinking about.
They never have a plan. So if you say I

(47:32):
want a top wide receiver, I want value at quarterback.
First of all, let me commend you by saying that's
the first step. That's the first thing you need to
do to start to plan out your approach. So I'm
not trying to sit here and crush you for saying
that stuff. But what I want you to do is
take it further. I think that it's a bad habit
we get into that. We kind of lead things vague
because we say, hey, it's an auction we got to

(47:53):
adjust on the fly. Yeah, sorta sorta you know from
last week. I want you to have specific dollar amounts
about how you're going to execute your plan and what
that looks like. So first step should be I want
a top wide receiver. Step two needs to be how
do I accomplish that? And then you go through what

(48:13):
it takes to accomplish that. The facets of accomplishing that
are how much money do I want to pay for
a top wide receiver? How much is this room going
to pay for a top wide receiver? Does this room
love wide receivers? Do they love running backs? What positions
are their favorite in the past, what are they paid for?
What are these running backs or what are these wide
receivers going for? Which wide receiver am I going after? Specifically,

(48:37):
or is there a group that I'm happy with? What's
the timing of the nomination to get that player out
there where I think I can get the best value.
These are all questions you want to answer. When you
say I want a top wide receiver. Do you see
how that's incredibly vague compared to all the questions I
just ask you about how to accomplish it. So I
love the start, and this one really just is about

(48:58):
take it all the way, take it across the finish line.
By asking all those questions, you want to go value
at quarterback? Okay, well, what does value mean less than
eight dollars, less than six dollars, less than three dollars?
What does it mean to have value? Do you want
to go for QB eight? Do you want to go
for QB fifteen? What are your targets at quarterback that
say value to you, that have enough upside to help

(49:21):
you compete. What's the timing of when you're going to
get that valuable quarterback? Because a lot of times those
cheap quarterbacks are going to come at the very end
of the draft. You have to know all of these
answers in order to approach the draft the way that
you should without being overly vegue, start out vague, and
then dial it in bit by bit, ask yourself these

(49:43):
questions and finally drill down to one final answer that
tells you I need to approach it in these ways,
with this timing, with this money, at these targets in
my draft room. All right, well, that is the end
of the auction talk for this week. Those are my
seven common auction habits I want you to break. We
are breaking bad this week, fixing your auction habits that

(50:07):
you've developed over the time that you've been doing auctions
that maybe you didn't realize these were habits that you
needed to break. Maybe you thought these were things that
were optimal ways to do auctions, but I'm here to
tell you they're not. A lot of times we hear
things that are logical that just don't play out in
reality like you think they will. So take my word
for it. Just because it sounds logical doesn't mean it's

(50:30):
actually going to work. All right, I hope you enjoyed
my seven common auction habits to break. What do you
say to get on to the late round? QB himself,
JJ Zachareson and this week's discussions with Drew.

Speaker 2 (50:44):
Time for Discussions with Drew, in depth conversations with the
brightest minds in the fantasy industry.

Speaker 1 (50:51):
Welcome into this week's Discussions with Drew. Our guest for
this week is jjzach Reeson from Lateround dot com. You
can find all his stuff over at lateround dot com,
but also find him on the podcast Late Round podcast
as well as Living the Stream podcast, and of course
you'll want to check out his Rookie Prospect Guide and
his Late Round Draft Guy, which we're going to talk

(51:12):
about a little bit today. Thank you so much for
joining us, JJ.

Speaker 3 (51:15):
Thanks for having me man. Always a pleasure to chop
it up with you.

Speaker 1 (51:18):
This is fun and it's a it's a repeat appearance
here in the auction brief. I got so much good
feedback last year that I said we got to run
it back, and once again JJ's generous with his time
to do that for a second summer in a row.
Are you headed back to Canton?

Speaker 3 (51:33):
Yes, I will be.

Speaker 1 (51:34):
I will.

Speaker 3 (51:35):
I won the Jim Brown Snake Draft League last year,
so I got I gotta defend that title. You know,
I gotta gotta go back and and and hopefully repeat.

Speaker 1 (51:44):
Heck yeah, heck, yeah, that's fun. So you how are
you already have it a King's Classic title in what
your second year?

Speaker 3 (51:50):
Second year? There? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (51:51):
Yeah, wow, that is impressive stuff. That that is. You know,
I aspire to be up there in the gim Brown division. Unfortunately,
when I won my title, we weren't doing the promotion
and so I got to earn another one and another
way to get up in there with you. But well,
that's great. I'm looking forward to catching up with you
and Canton and the King's Classic. What do you have

(52:11):
going on right now? Let everyone know what your socials
are and also what you want eyes on at this
time of year.

Speaker 3 (52:17):
Yeah, look, I'm I'm on Twitter and on socials, I'm
Blue Sky and all that. At Late Round QB, I
published the Late Round Draft Guide, as you alluded to,
you know at the top, I've got weekly updates coming
with that, so I update the players to target players
to avoid late round dart throws, my rankings and all
that stuff. But a good like eighty percent of that
guide is set in stone because it's all like game

(52:38):
theory and research driven. So you know, it's two hundred
and thirty pages of sincere nerdiness. I mean, it's a
pretty nerdy thing to lay your eyes on. But that's
all done and I can breathe a little bit. That's
where my June really goes to. The month of June
is just just working on that. But now the podcast
is in full swing. You know, it's this is draft season, like,

(53:01):
we're here. We made it, and I'm trying to crank
out as much you know, draft related content as I
possibly can.

Speaker 1 (53:08):
Now. Yeah, somebody said the other day, how was it
the middle of July. I couldn't agree more. I don't
know how I got here. Yeah, I made the joke
on my show the other day. I'm not sure what
I did for the first six months of the year,
but here we are, and we got to do it.
The Draft Guide. Let's start there for today. Because I
have a copy of the Draft Guide, two pages I

(53:30):
believe of fantasy goodness, and there I sit it next
to me at night when I'm watching a show doing
my own content. When I need a break, I talk
about nerdy. When I need a break, I go and
I read the Draft Guide. But yeah, I'm doing my
fantasy content. So I want to read some fantasy content
when I want to break. Makes a ton of sense,

(53:53):
but no, I like doing that in small bites because
you reference the fact. There's a lot of stats in there,
very stat driven analysis. And one of the things I
harp on on my show all the time is how
I don't think there's enough game theory out there about
fantasy football, and you're one of the people that always
pushes the game theory. I love that, and so you're

(54:13):
going to find a lot of that in the draft guide.
And I like to just read it slow. It's not
because I'm not interested and I can't read more than
five pages at once. I just want to digest it.
There's a lot to digest. Yeah, so get a copy
if you want to get smarter, not just about the
game about who to pick. It's not pick this guy
and pick this guy. It's here are things that you

(54:36):
need to know that can point you towards certain players
for this year. So check that out. I highly highly
recommend it. I'm not even done yet. I'm only about
one hundred and one hundred and twenty pages in. But
one of the things that hit me at the beginning
was something that I struggle with, and I want you
to talk a little bit about this. For the audience
because they listen to me all the time, and I'm like,

(54:58):
king nit, Like, I'm just the guy who just likes
to play things ABC, I like safety. I like you
know this, this concept is not my friend. So I've
really had to push myself and push my own natural tendencies.
You call it embracing the variance, and I love the idea,
and again I've been pushing myself to do it more.

(55:20):
Talk to me about how you came to this conclusion
of embracing the variants and what all that means and
what it entails.

Speaker 3 (55:27):
Yeah, I would say that if there's a This is
the fourth draft guide that I've put together, and I
try to change it up a good bit every year
because obviously the game theory stuff can stay pretty consistent
from one year to the next. But I try to,
you know, study different trends and new things and different
stuff to put in it. But I would say the
one sort of like constant that's been throughout all of

(55:47):
these guides, It's been in every guide is that league
winning players and league winning decisions in fantasy football generally
stem from uncertainty and ambiguity. And so you know, I
years and years ago started talking about what has I've
dubbed I dubbed ambiguous backfields, and people use the term
a good bit now, And it was basically this idea

(56:11):
that when you're in the middle rounds of your draft,
you know, don't just look for players who seem to
have this pathway to you know, a great workload, because
as we know, in a football season, a lot changes
and if a player isn't good enough, you know, a
good example is like a Zamir White last year. Let's say,
you know, his his talent profile was iffy, like, we
didn't know for sure if he was good or not right,

(56:33):
and there was evidence that he wasn't. Maybe there was
some evidence that he was, we didn't know for sure.
Compared to someone that was going in the top twelve
or whatever, who we feel a lot better about their
talent profile and getting that workload and sustaining that workload.
Usually the guys like the Samir Whites of the world,
there is more variation and fluctuation with their overall projection.

(56:54):
So I'd say, like my approach to fantasy football is
that I think people are way too strict with the
way they look at projections. Projections at the end of
the day are median outcomes for a player, right, So,
Zamir White last year entering the season, and obviously this
is easy to say in hindsight because you know, everything
went down the way that it did was Zamir White,

(57:15):
But there's plenty of other players I could throw out.
There is just the example. But like Zamir White last year,
you know, enters the season as someone who had the
backfield to himself, right, and projected fairly well as a
result of that. But that projection, again is a median outcome,
and it's not necessarily thinking about what is Zamir White?
Isn't good? What is Zamir White? Because because a lot

(57:36):
a lot of folks are just like, well, look a
look at who's behind him, which is understandable, Like I
get why that's the way the majority of people are
thinking and so but by at the same time, as
the season goes on, you know, you realize that injuries happen.
You know, offenses are worse or better than we think
they are, et cetera, et cetera. And in the case
of him, it was just that they're like, he just

(57:57):
wasn't that strong, wasn't that obvious of a player to
throw in there, and there were other players in that
backfield who are just as replaceable as he was. I
also see embracing variants from the perspective of I think
this might hit more for people. But with ambiguous backfields,
Let's say that you have a situation like you know,
even this year, Caleb Johnson and Jalen Mooren. That's a
very ambiguous backfield where they're both middle round running back selections.

(58:20):
Middle round I've always defined is like RB nineteen to
RB forty two. It's a pretty big range, but they're
both middle round running backs. You might have a favorite
between the two. It's an ambiguous backfield because we don't
know which player of the two is really going to emerge,
and we're assuming in projections that there's a split backfield. Well,
let's just say hypothetically that one of those two, Let's

(58:42):
say that it's Caleb Johnson. Let's say that Caleb Johnson
has an RB twenty five projection, right, and let's say
that he's being drafted at RB twenty five. In that case,
you should be targeting Caleb Johnson very very very consistently
in your drafts, even if that median outcome says RB

(59:02):
twenty five, he's being drafted RB twenty five. You might say, oh,
that's not that big, Like you don't need to be
aggressive and going after him. Where if you look at
Zamir White last year, Let's say that his projection said
he would be RB twenty two when he was being
drafted RB twenty three, or just say that he was
being drafted at RB twenty two. In one in one
scenario Caleb Johnson scenario, there's a he's being projected at

(59:25):
RB twenty five, assuming that Jalen Warren is part of
that backfield. Well, what happens if Jalen Warren gets hurt?
What happens If Caleb Johnson is just undeniably better than
Jalen Warren, Then all of a sudden he easily outpaces
that RB twenty five price tag. Right, even though his
projection says RB twenty five. With the guy like Zamir White,

(59:45):
he doesn't have those kind of outs, right because Zamir
White is already being projected to be that Bell Kalen
his team, and he's being drafted as that Bell Kalen
his team. So the idea of embracing variants is thinking
through range of outcomes. It's thinking through all the many
scenarios that can go down, and of course you can
get like really really really detailed with it, and and

(01:00:06):
and think about crazy things going on. You know what
if this guy breaks his leg and this certain week
and then this happens. It's not even about that, really,
It's just it's just a generalization of what can go down, right,
Like it's a generalization of Caleb Johnson, you know, becomes
the bell cow in Pittsburgh. Jalen Warren doesn't become the
bell cow. What does that do to Caleb Johnson's outcomes?
And then and then what are the ways that this

(01:00:27):
player could really outpace his ADP. That's the idea of
embracing variants at the end of the day.

Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
And so if I remember right, correct me if I'm wrong.
You referenced Courtland Sutton and Travis Hunter in the draft
guide talking a little bit about this. Correct me if
I misstate the point here. But we don't know. So
when we have a projection for Travis Hunter, that medium
projection that could turn out, it could turn out that

(01:00:54):
Travis Hunter just goes absolutely ballistic. I mean he was
drafted in a spot where the team obviously had faith
that he can do that. So when you pit him
against Courtland Sutton, we know already what we have with
Courton Sutton, right, and what he's supposedly supposed to be
the wide receiver one who's going to get eight to
ten touchdowns? Am I stating that correctly between the two

(01:01:15):
of them?

Speaker 3 (01:01:16):
Yeah? I think with an individual projection, for sure. You know,
like again, with projections, you get a median outcome, and
a median outcome might say, you know, maybe not as
much anymore, because even since I wrote the Draft guy,
Travis Hunter has been falling a little bit in the
way that people are viewing him and all that. But
let's just assume that projections say that Courtland Sutton and
Travis Hunter are going to score the exact same number
of Fantasy points this year, right, Like, that's what a

(01:01:36):
projection says. We're gonna feel a lot better about our
ability to project Courtland Sutton than we are Travis Hunter
because we have years and years of data of what
Courtland Sutton can be and what he is, right, we
know the kind of We don't know if Travis Hunter
is actually generational. We don't know if Hunter is a bust, right,
So there's a wider range of outcomes there, and I

(01:01:58):
don't that's not me saying that definitively you should be
taking Travis Hunter over Courtland Sutton. I do think that
people should be leaning more, especially after the first like
three rounds of your draft, where opportunity cost really shifts.
And what I mean by that is, you know, when
you when you draft a player in the first three rounds,
you should care about floor to some degree of a

(01:02:19):
player's range of outcomes, because you know, if you miss
on that player, there's a larger cost involved in missing
on that player. Like it's a very difficult thing to overcome.
I think that the fantasy mass is still to this
day in a normal twelve team league, you know, not
one that's got super deep starting lineups like the King's
Classic or something like that, just a typical league. I
think people still overstate what a fifth round pick actually

(01:02:43):
is and the hit rate of a fifth round pick
in fantasy football, and the true benefit of a fifth
round pick or a sixth round pick in fantasy And
so I would argue that you should be going after
the higher upside players, you know, I think that like
Sutton verse hunter, I don't really have like that strong
of a stance just think that those are. That's just
a really easy go to example of like thinking about

(01:03:04):
projections and thinking about you know, range of outcomes within
that projection, and a guy who has a good backbone
and a guy who doesn't, you know, embrace the uncertainty
at times, because there will be times where your roster
calls for that, where your roster needs more of that
upside and needs more of that variance. But I would
argue that we need more of that, or that the
average fantasy managers and doesn't think that we do, but
we do need more that more of that than how

(01:03:26):
people actually draft.

Speaker 1 (01:03:28):
That's interesting because I, as you know, I'm not a
snake guy. I'm not good at it, so I just
don't do a lot of it. Yeah, and I like
hearing that kind of idea that maybe we do overstate
picks earlier than we think, you know, the fifth round.
That's that's a surprising thing for me to hear that
maybe we are overstating how important those are. But it

(01:03:49):
all makes sense to me. That's why you got to
get into the guy. This is what hooked me. And
there was another thing that I wanted to ask you
about that. I thought was interesting. You did a look
into the running back dead zone and you found an
interesting conclusion from that. What did you find?

Speaker 3 (01:04:08):
Yeah? Look, so I'm a believer in the running back
dead zone as the wh when talked about and framed
properly right like the dead zone itself. That the way
that I've always defined it and the way that I've
always researched it, because I've had chapters in this in
this guide in previous years where I've talked about the
running back dead zone and not reframing it the way
that I'm reframing it now. I've done episodes on the

(01:04:29):
running back dead zone. The running back dead zone to
me is that when you look at the running back position,
there is and let's say you group them up by
ADP in groups of six, so RB one to RB six,
RB seven to RB twelve, RB thirteen to eighteen, and
so on and so forth. When you get to like
RB eighteen or so mid range RB two's, the hit
rate starts to drop off pretty dramatically. So when you

(01:04:52):
go from like let's say the RB thirteen in a
draft to the RB nineteen in a draft, there's a
pretty significant difference in hit rate between those two positions
historically versus what you would see for comparable wide receivers,
let's say, because that's obviously the one to one uh
sort of matchup that we would make in our in
our drafts is worth they're drafting running backs and wide receivers,
and so that's what the running back dead zone hypothetically is,

(01:05:15):
is that there's this giant gap and hit rate within
the position, but we're still drafting running backs in a
more linear fashion, even though we should be drafting them
in with a with a bigger gap between those two positions.
So while we're drafting, you know, top twelve running backs,
then you get into the the RB two range, and
then that that drop off slowly, slowly hits, and then

(01:05:36):
it hits a lot of times. Gamers are still drafting
running backs like right away in the fourth round and
into the fifth round because they feel forced. This is
my theory behind it, is that they feel forced because
we know the supply and demand equation in fantasy football
favors drafting more running backs and wide receivers because you're
starting more of them in your league. People freak out

(01:05:57):
because they no longer have the bellcals that that are
because every year we get probably what like twelve thirteen
bell cows at most that we feel projectable bell coals
right going into a season. And so after those guys
are off the board, people start to panic and they're like, oh, man,
I didn't get my running back. I need to get
a running back. So I'm going to reach for an
inferior talent who projects well but isn't talented enough to

(01:06:18):
sustain that kind of workload, that huge, you know, belcow workload.
Some of them will. It's just a general trend, right.
Zamere White another example of a guy who just kind
of fell in the dead zone. Good projectable output was
easy to kind of draft because there was that that
beat because he was projectable, But at the same time,
there was a pretty big drop off and talent from

(01:06:39):
where most of these RB ones went to where the
RB twos went. So historically, like the running back dead
zone has been a thing, and I think there's actually
a more of like a psychological cognitive reason for that
to happen, right, because drafters are kind of forcing the
issue when the supply runs out of these really really
good running backs. Now the problem with that is, over
the last handful of years, I've also been trying to

(01:06:59):
beat the zone, and I've said to myself, all right,
who are the running like clearly not all running backs
and running back dead zone are going to die and
not do anything and not not give us any sort
of production. Who are the types of running backs? What
are the types of running backs that do end up
emerging that I can still draft out of that zone?

Speaker 1 (01:07:16):
Well?

Speaker 3 (01:07:16):
There, you know you want pass catchers. Obviously, that's that's
a trend throughout the entire running back position. People still
undervalue the pass catching component at running back. But the
one thing that's just very obvious is age is that
when you're in that RB two to RB three range,
and it's more so just like the very very firm
like low end RB twos, maybe high end RB three's
is like the traditional dead zone area. And for the record,

(01:07:40):
part of the dead zone two is the fact that
where you would draft those guys. Historically, there was a
pretty big opportunity cost involved in doing that because a
lot of good wide receivers were falling off the board
in that range as well. But now the market has
pushed those running backs down a little bit, so that
opportunity cost equation has shifted a bit. But if you
look historically at running backs in that zone and you

(01:08:03):
you adjust for age and you sort of remove running
backs who are past year two of their NFL career,
all of a sudden, if you're only looking at year
one and year two, running backs who are in RB two,
like low end RB two range, they hit at a
great rate, you know. Like, that's what it comes down to.
So I'm stopping the running back dead zone framing because
I think it. I think it's too it's too dumb down,

(01:08:27):
it's too like. I think that when people hear that,
because my job is to communicate fantasy football ideas and
do it in a way where people can take it,
translate it, and use it in their draft. And if
I say the running back dead zone exists here, they're
gonna say, oh, I can't draft a running back that's
between RB seventeen and RB thirty. It's just a terrible
thing to do. But that's not true. It's really an

(01:08:48):
archetype zone. At the end of the day, you want
you want to target pass catchers, and you want to
target younger players, and you want to avoid the older
backs because the older backs in that range, at the
end of the day, they finished these these low end
RB twos, they've historically finished with comparable hit rates as
high end RB fours. The older backs out of the

(01:09:09):
dead zone, and so you don't want to draft those
guys out of there. It's it's usually a pretty poor bet.
But the guys who are younger, you know, they do emerge.
A lot of that has to go back goes back
to what I said before with like ambiguity and uncertainty.
You know, rookies and younger players often have lower costs
and fantasy drafts because people are like, I don't know
what to do with this guy, because I don't know
if he's good or not. A mari And Hampton right now,

(01:09:31):
or you know, Traveon Henderson whomever. People are like, I
don't know what to do with these guys because I've
never seen them play in the NFL. Well, chances are
they're probably pretty good because they were drafted high, they
were good prospects. It's not like this is the first
time the NFL Draft ever happened, and we've never seen
a rookie player in the NFL before. We know historically
that if you're good at football, you can still play

(01:09:51):
well as a rookie, right, And so a lot of
times those younger guys get pushed down in cost, and
they're actually the players that we want to target because
those are the players that end up being league winners
at the end of the day.

Speaker 1 (01:10:04):
Well, this is why you should pick up the Draft Guide.
I don't want him to give any more of the
secret sauce away because I want you to go by it.
This is what he discusses in the guide. Like I said,
it's two hundred and ten pages of all of this
stuff that's going to make you better at fantasy football
and help you in twenty twenty five and beyond. Really, because,
like he says, a lot of this stuff's game theory,

(01:10:25):
and if you're an auction brief listener, you know that's
what I love. So let's move on from the Draft Guide.
Hopefully everybody will go over there and pick it up.
And I put on the show sheet this week because
I wanted to talk to you about some rookies. You
also have the Prospect Guide that is on your site
as well, so I figured it would be good to
pick your brain about some of these rookies, and the

(01:10:47):
one guy that I want to talk about that we
haven't talked about on my show much this summer is
I want to make sure I'm saying this right. Ted
I Roa McMillan is Ted a Rowa. Is that how
you're here out? Yep? Yeah, I thought, you know, it's
one of those things that it's just hard for me
to He's Hawaiian. I love it, and his mom was
very clear he is not tet folks, he is tet A. Anyway,

(01:11:11):
what do you think about the Panthers offense being able
to sustain McMillan in his rookie year. You know, he's
got the draft capital where we want to believe in him,
but he's certainly not going in the range of some
of the receivers that have gone in recent years with
his draft capital. So Bryce Young took some steps last year.
We liked the encouraging signs we saw at the end

(01:11:33):
of the year. How do you feel about McMillan this year,
and I'm talking about strictly for redraft purposes one and done,
how do you feel about him this year?

Speaker 3 (01:11:41):
I love him. I think that he's a target right now.
He's someone who you know, during the draft process, a
lot of people commed him to Drake London my stuff,
so all you know, the prospect guy that you're referencing
and such. It's all analytics based, so it's all model driven.
So I have this thing called the ZAP model, the
Zacharyeson Adjusted Prospect Model. It's really creatively named. But the

(01:12:05):
ZAT model looks at all these different inputs, these production inputs,
and it spits out a score for each player. And
one of those inputs is Draft Capital, of course, because
that's an important piece to this equation. But McMillan ended
up scoring a ninety six point one, which to someone
who's never you know, looked at the ZAP model or
read the prospect guy, that makes no sense to you.
But essentially that's in the like elite producer category. Is

(01:12:27):
he is, you know, in the same category as as
any other elite player that came out. With that being said,
you know, a player like Molik Neighbors or Marvin Harrison
Junior who came out last year, they both had better score.
They were up in the ninety nine range. Molik Neighbors
was ninety nine point five, Marvin Harrison was around ninety nine,
so both of them were better than where I'm looking
at Ted Aroo McMillan. McMillan is more so in line

(01:12:50):
with like a Roma Dunza from a prospect score standpoint.
We obviously now have a year of a Dounza not
having produced as a rookie, but I think that there's
at least some reason for why, you know, a Dunes
they didn't necessarily produce. When I look at McMillan in
his situation, he's a really big body guy. He's not
necessarily someone who's gonna like blow by you per se,

(01:13:11):
but he similar to like a Drake London. One of
his analytical comps for me was Courtland Sutton, who I
think is a little bit closer to what we get
with Tet but there's obviously the upside still. This goes
back to thinking about variants and embracing variants. It's this
idea that you know, yes, that median outcome might be
a Courtland Sutton, maybe a little bit better than that
being like a T. Higgins or something like that, and

(01:13:32):
even better than that like a Drake London, depending on
how you view those players, but you know he still
has an opportunity to be very very good, like that's
in his range of outcomes, and he's someone that plays
all over the field. And if you look at Carolina
right now their wide receiver situations, Xavier Leguett wasn't really
a prospect that I was overly interested in coming out
last year. I thought he was overdrafted and the model
thought he was overdrafted. He didn't show us anything as

(01:13:55):
a rookie. Jalen Coker I thought, showed more as a
rookie for them, and Xavier Laget did last year. But
usually these day three guys aren't aren't as sustainable because
the team doesn't believe that they're as sustainable. And so
I don't know if Coker is gonna just lock in
the slot job, especially because Adam Thielen is healthy and
so Adam Thielen would probab play there. So I think

(01:14:15):
they're eleven personnel. Three wide set is going to be Leaget,
Ted mc sorry Ted Roa sorry Tet's mom uh uh.
And then and then Adam Thielen in the slot. I
think is the eleven personnel grouping. But McMillan played a
lot in the slot and was actually really good in
the slot. And I think I think that's what they
saw in him, is this this chess piece that they

(01:14:36):
can move around, because if you look at their wide
receivers that they had, they didn't really have that that
versatility on offense. So I think immediately he's gonna be
their one and be their ex and be able to
to really thrive in the offense. And Bryce Young came
on over the final ten games last year. He escaped
the pocket a lot more, which is really important I think,

(01:14:56):
uh for them to sort of uh you know, extend
plays and extend So I'm big on McMillan. You know
you're getting him. This goes back to what I said
earlier about opportunity cost, Like you know you're going to
get him in that wide receiver two range. It's more
on the lower side of wide receiver two range, and
to me, the upside is certainly there. And if you
look his to worically, rookie wide receivers and redraft have

(01:15:17):
been really really great bets. And so I'm going to
especially guys with this kind of profile. So I'm going
to lean into that and I'm going to be in
on McMillan.

Speaker 1 (01:15:24):
I'm looking at football guys ADP right now, and they
do an average of I don't know, looks like eight
or ten different sites where they're pulling that from to
get an industry wide average of what's going on right now.
They've got him as wide receiver twenty eight coming off
the board. That seems pretty low for a guy with
his draft capital and with how I felt like people

(01:15:46):
were fairly excited about him before the draft, and then
Matthew Golden was fast and suddenly everybody thought that McMillan
wasn't a thing anymore. So I'm pretty excited about him,
particularly for the price. I hope that doesn't go up
a whole lot. I think you can still get him.
You're probably if you want to lock him down on
the fifth, you're gonna have to grab him in the fifth.
But there are some drafts worth sixth, seventh round. He's

(01:16:07):
a table in those rounds. That feels like a slam
dunk to me.

Speaker 3 (01:16:10):
Yeah, I think I I you know, honestly, like right
now is a lot of best ball driven stuff, and
you know people who are drafting bestball teams with you know,
they're they're they're hard earned money. In June and July
are probably looking at this stuff in more detail than
a more casual player, you know in August, you know,
in your home league or whatever. And so I would
imagine in your home leagues there's going to be people

(01:16:31):
who are like, oh, I don't I don't want to
get McMillan because I'm not going to buy into that again, uncertainty,
the ambiguity, But those are the kind of guys that
you want to buy into, Like, we don't know what
the upside is, but we know that he's a really
talented player. That's exactly the kind of guy because you know,
his cost is lowered because we don't know. That's exact
kind of profile you want to you wanna bet on.

Speaker 1 (01:16:51):
Yeah, when I checked his his ADP, I was a
little bit surprised because I think in my football guys,
we did a mock and he went around the end
of the fourth and I just wasn't prepared for him
to go that high. Then I see that he really
isn't in a lot of places. So all right, let's
move on to another rookie that I'm seeing a lot
of people take both sides of the coin on this one,

(01:17:13):
and for me, it comes down to how bullish we
are on the Patriots offense in general this year. We
liked what we saw generally with Drake May at the
end of the season last year. Now they add some
pieces and they've got the rookie running back to Braybon
Henderson in the backfield now to compete with Ramondre Stevenson,
who they just handed a big contract to just I

(01:17:35):
believe last year. So how do we feel about Henderson?
And I think we have to juxtapose it with how
do we feel about the Patriots offense? Is it good
enough to sustain a guy who many are projecting to
step into more of a pass catching role and maybe
Remondre's the guy who's gonna take the pounding between the
tackles for two hundred carries. I don't know if that's

(01:17:57):
accurate to say that's automatically the role we're going to see.
But how do you see Trevon Henderson and his value
this year in PPR leagues?

Speaker 3 (01:18:04):
I think New England's a big candidate for a big
improvement offensively this year. Drake May last year was playing
behind You know, it's funny like we're all bullish for
good reason about Chicago right now? Right, I mean It's
an intriguing situation. Ben Johnson's there. The weapons are great,
you know, the offensive lines improved. Caleb Williams didn't show

(01:18:24):
us much in year one, but you know, with a
better environment, the hope is that he'll show us a
lot more in year two. The interesting thing is that
you could easily, easily easily argue that last year Drake
May was under worse circumstances than Caleb Williams was and
he put together a much more efficient season, or he
was better efficiency wise across almost every metric versus Caleb Williams.

(01:18:47):
And people aren't nearly as bullish on May, or they
should seemingly aren't on May versus Williams right now. Now,
Obviously May didn't get the same kind of upgrades that
Williams got this offseason, namely the coaching change. You know,
you get Mike ray Bowl and then you get Josh
McDaniels as OC. But if you look at Josh McDaniel's history,

(01:19:08):
you know, obviously when you when you do like offensive
coordinator stuff, and this is something that I've like tried
to really touch on and talk through the context whenever
I talked through offensive coordinator data. But you obviously have
to layer on personnel. You know, Josh McDaniels is playing
with you know, his Tom Brady as his quarterback throughout
most of his time as OC. You know, if you
look at how they targeted running backs for instance, it's

(01:19:31):
been really, really favorable. But you also have to layer
on the fact that you know what those offenses looked
like and what kind of personnel they had. But if
you look at New England right now, they have Stefan
Diggs coming off this ACL okay, he seems he seems
like he's he's recovering and rehabbing.

Speaker 1 (01:19:46):
Well.

Speaker 3 (01:19:47):
Kyle Williams evidently has not shown them enough yet. As
as their day two rookie wide receiver, who I didn't
mind as a prospect, but he definitely wasn't someone that
was like I must have per se analytically at least
I like him enough though. But if you look at
their wide receiver room, it's not you know, Tamario Douglas
is a fine enough slock guy. It's not something that

(01:20:08):
you're like jumping for joy over. You know, the offensive
line should be a little bit better, should be fine enough.
And Drake May obviously showing what he did last year.
We do generally see a good bump from some of
these year two quarterbacks, and then it comes down to
this backfield of Ramondre Stevenson or Traveon Henderson. Trayvon Henderson
was is arguably the best pass blocking running back that's

(01:20:30):
come out for at least a decade. I mean, he's
he's one of the best pass pro running backs from
a prospecting standpoint that I've ever seen. And so you
have that, But then also as a I have a
metric in my running back model called breakout score, which
relates to receiving yards per team pass attempt. It's a

(01:20:51):
college metric and it's it's as intuitive as it sounds.
Just receiving yards divided by the number of pass attempts
the team had, and that's then adjusted for program strength
and age. Trayvon Henderson's breakout score was very, very high
because as a freshman at Ohio State, he put together
a good receiving profile alongside literally four first round wide receivers.

(01:21:12):
Literally like he was still getting work in that offense
as a receiver amongst stud after stud after stud wide receiver.
So I think he has the pass catching chops. He's
good in pass pro. And then there was a trend
that I found this offseason. I actually did an episode
on it on the Late Round podcast, looking at middle
round running backs, and really you could look at all
running backs with this, but middle round running backs in particular,

(01:21:35):
when they had low previous season yards per out run rates,
they almost always have poor target shares the following season,
which then leads to underperformance in fantasy points per game
because target share is so important, especially in PPR leagues,
it's so important for running backs to thrive in fantasy.
Ramandre Stevenson's yards pro out run rate was in the
the alert bucket. You know, there's the red flag bucket

(01:21:59):
for middle round running back this year, going last year,
going into this year. So I think it all plays
into this idea that you know, the weapons are questionable.
Ramandre Stevenson has never been like a special running back.
He's always receiving running back. He's always just been a
default guy that's there when they're in these negative game scripts,
just picking up some garbage time stuff. You put that

(01:22:21):
all together and you're like tree Van Henderson could see
a fifteen sixteen percent target share in this offense. I
don't think anyone would blink because he's that good and
he's got this big playability. I'm very into to Henderson.
He had a ZAPP score of ninety four point one,
which is a borderline elite score for a running back.
In my ADP database, which goes back to twenty fourteen,

(01:22:42):
we've had twelve first year middle round running backs that's
between RB nineteen and forty two who had a ZAP
score above ninety two and a target share per game
rate above five percent. So five percent is just kind
of like, let's just weed out anyone who didn't play, basically,
so Henderson's essentially a lock for five percent target share.
Of the those twelve running backs, three of them outperformed

(01:23:03):
ADP expectation, which is just looking at how many points
we expect a player to score at a particular ADP
by four more PPR points per game. Eight of them
just simply exceeded expectations. So eight of the twelve, and
on average, they've exceeded expectation by one point one points
per game, which is a pretty decent rate for that
kind of archetype. So I think you put all that together,

(01:23:23):
good pass catcher. I'm targeting pass catchers at running back.
He's a rookie, so he's being brought down and costs
a little bit. And I'm just not a believer in
Romandre Stevenson. At the end of the day, he did
get that contract. But I think it's also important that
this is a new coaching staff, you know, and I
know that it's the same you know, regime or same
owner if you will, but it's it's a new time
in New England. I don't think that they're necessarily going

(01:23:43):
to be as tied to Stevenson.

Speaker 1 (01:23:45):
Whatever you want to say about Josh McDaniels as a
head coach, right, he knows how to coach an offense,
that's right. So I have to feel like he's going
to recognize what he has in Henderson and use him enough.
And again, you know, I made a comment about this
a couple of weeks ago go that we really got
a bad runout on some of these running backs. I
really liked on where they ended up. But if we

(01:24:07):
have faith enough in them, I think other people are
feeling the same way and so their prices are somewhat palatable. Again,
we're seeing Henderson Football guys has them as RB twenty
three coming off the board that feels completely reasonable, and
which I don't say that a lot on some of
these hyped up rookies. But some of these guys are

(01:24:27):
just not getting the same run because people are a
little bit nervous, and we alluded to that here, so
we got you know, we need to keep moving. So
I'm going to skip to another running back that I
want to talk about. Who is in what we call
probably what we would mark as an ambiguous backfield out
in Los Angeles. We've got Najie Harris and Omari and Hampton.

(01:24:50):
I don't think that Naji Harris is going away, you know,
if he puts the fireworks away, I don't think that
the guy is going to go away completely. Having said that,
I'm not sure that I want to be holding Najie
Harris in weeks ten to seventeen when Hampton could be
taking over this role. I don't know if I believe

(01:25:10):
that or not completely. But the price here is significantly
different than Henderson. He's got an RB sixteen price tag,
so he's going to the mid RB two territory. That
seems a little bit more like we have to consider
whether or not that price is worth it. Do you
think that price is appropriate, and what do you see
as the role shaping up there in charging Land.

Speaker 3 (01:25:33):
Yeah, look, I think that the fireworks incident should at
least make us feel better about an RB sixteen price
tag for Marion Hampton. You know, like I think that
the the you know, all we've really heard about the
fireworks incident is that Najie Harris had an eye injury.
He's going to be good by the start of the
season or whatever, based on what his agent's saying. But

(01:25:53):
that's also you know, like that's that's the extent of it,
Like we can't just take his word for it and
be like, Okay, this is gonna be fine. And the
fear that I have is if Naji Harris is not
ready for even mid August, you know, for a preseason
game or or or something along those lines, even just
for camp and practicing, my fear is that Amrian Hampton

(01:26:15):
is just gonna be the one A, the very clear
one A in that backfield to start the season. And
we know how that goes from a you know, from
a talent perspective, like a Marion Hampton was a really
really good prospect, at least in my opinion, like a
very very strong. Uh, clearly in his own tier, you know,
behind Ashton genty of course in this draft class. I

(01:26:36):
think maybe you could argue that Traveon Henderson should be
close to him just because the pass catching upside. But
Hampton had pretty decent pass catching numbers. Uh, He's not
a plus like Traveon Henderson is as a pass catcher,
but he had that. Uh. He's obviously a bulldozer and
he fits the Greg Roman offense really well. With that
being said, I do think that presenting two sides to
the Amarion Hampton situation in LA in particular with Greg

(01:27:00):
Roman is necessary because the upside is he's an elite
prospect I think is a good real life fit. I
think that, you know, he has better pass catching chops
than some give him credit for. The downside, I think
everyone just assumes that Greg Roman is a great offensive
coordinator for running backs, and he's been an offensive coordinator
where he's finished the season ten times in the NFL,

(01:27:22):
So ten seasons of Greg Roman as an OC. His
backfield's in total, so all of the running back points
that are scored have never finished in the top ten
in PPR leagues ever. And he's had you know, of
course you can make the argument he hasn't had the
best running backs all the time, but he's had like
Frank Gore and Lashawn McCoy. Like, it's not like he's
had nobody, you know, in the past. And a lot

(01:27:44):
of that stems from that he is his teams, and yes,
this is personnel driven to a decent degree, but his
teams have ranked on average and running back target share
twenty six point three, so it's twenty sixth to twenty
seventh and running back target share, so his offenses just
don't target the running back that much. In a situation

(01:28:05):
like a Mario and Hampton, I actually would prefer a
guy like Hampton to go to an offense like say
Denver right where where we had maybe some people had
questions about the true ceiling of his pass catching as
a prospect. But if he went to Denver, then all
of a sudden we knew that he would see a
decent amount of looks through the air. Whereas now in La. Yes,

(01:28:28):
it's a great real life fit, and I think it's
it's a fine spot for the Chargers as a franchise
and as a team. But from a fantasy perspective, I
don't want to overstate what this spot is for Mario
and Hampton. I think at RB sixteen price tag is fine.
I don't want to get too much a whole lot
higher than that because you're in Breisee Hall territory at

(01:28:49):
that point, and even in you're getting into like Chase Brown,
who obviously situationally has I mean, there's a low floor
but a high ceiling, So I think he's about right
if you can say the Naji Harris firework situation. But yeah,
I mean, like I do think there's more downside to
what's going on in LA and with Greg Roman than
what people probably lean on with.

Speaker 1 (01:29:11):
Well, my concern is that at RB sixteen in the
middle of July, once we get into August, that's going
to continue to climb. Yeah, because it's generally what happens
with these running backs, they just inch up the board.
That makes me nervous. I don't know that I want
to invest in that. But you make a great point
that if this gets the middle of August and Harris
isn't practicing or he's not on the field for the

(01:29:33):
first preseason game in Hampton goes out there and just
looks like a super nova there could be trouble there,
but then again, the corresponding move in ADP is not
going to be fun either. So okay, well, I want
to ask you about a couple of situations before I'm
going to get a couple of the JJ targets and
fades before we let you go. That's one of my

(01:29:53):
audience's favorite things to hear. But I want to talk
about a couple of situations that are just really uncertain
that quarter and I'm going to know how you feel
about the general offensive identity and the pieces around these quarterbacks,
because there's a decent chance that all three of these
situations lead to a switching quarterback at some point during

(01:30:15):
the year. So I guess I'd like to hear a
little bit about your philosophy on how you approach that
when you're drafting, and how concerned you are about these situations.
In particular. The first one is going to be Cleveland.

Speaker 3 (01:30:26):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:30:26):
I talked to Jim Coventry last week. He's he's pretty
sure that Joe Flacco is going to come out of
a camp with the job. I don't know about all that,
but I know that at some point they've got two
rookies there whether or not they both make their roster,
I don't know. But how do we feel about this
offense with a possible, non zero chance that we've got
a rookie like Dylan Gabriel or should Her Sanders starting

(01:30:48):
in the second half of the season.

Speaker 3 (01:30:49):
Yeah, that's the thing is that when it comes to
these quarterbacks and these quarterback situations, when you have a
rookie on a team that's likely not going to be
that competitive, you have to almost assume that at the
end the at the end of the year, when the
stakes are highest in fantasy football, that the backup or
the rookie is gonna be playing.

Speaker 1 (01:31:07):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:31:07):
How often do we see the opposite thing happening? Not
very often at all. I mean, you know, even the
Panthers went back to Bryce Young, and you know we
see this thing happened frequently. So with Cleveland, I would
agree with Jim that Flacco probably starts the season. I
don't think that's a lock, but I think that's that's
probably the most likely outcome at this point. But I
don't think Flaco is gonna end the seasons as starter,

(01:31:30):
and that's my biggest fear for sure. I also think
that so so if you look at like the skill players,
the pass catchers mostly right, because obviously there's a lot
going on with the running backs, it's probably not not
something that we need to dig into. You'll dig into
that enough yourself, right, But the pass catchers, I'm a
little afraid of all of them to a degree. I

(01:31:52):
can go one by one. So like David and Joku,
if you look at middle round tight ends historically, there's
been twenty four of them since twenty fourteen who were
in who played eight or more games in their analyzed season,
who were in offenses that scored less than two touchdowns
per game, so they were in bad offenses. Only one
of those twenty four tight ends exceeded ADP expectation by

(01:32:13):
four more points per game, which is a you know,
it's a lofty goal, but it's it's a rate where
it was dramatically better when their offenses were better, right
when they were in an offense that had over two
touchdowns per game, you know, over two and a half
touchdowns per game and so on. The only one that
did that was brock Bauers, and brock Bowers is an
elite talent in one of the most special tight ends

(01:32:34):
that we've seen over the last you know, two decades
or what have you. So with David and Joku, I'm
a little bit afraid of that. What if Cleveland's offense
is terrible? Right Like, that's a big problem at a
position where touchdowns are driving fantasy production to a pretty
high degree. So that's that's one problem for Ndjoku. I'm
out on Judy right now, Jerry Judy right now, and
I feel like I'm kind of on an island with it.

(01:32:54):
But last season, his number, like there's a lot of
ways like slice his numbers up where you know, with
them without Jamis, with them without Cedric Tillman, and when
he didn't have Jamis, and when he did have Cedric Tillman,
or when he didn't have Jamis and he didn't have whatever,
he was way worse, like Jamis was. The was the

(01:33:15):
reason that Jerry Judy was as relevant as he was
down the stretch last year, and so much of that
was because Cleveland was one of the most pass heavy
teams in all football. Last year. Jerry Judy ran like
one hundred and fifty two hundred more routes than he
typically runs in a season. And if you look at
his per route run numbers, they weren't any different. His
efficiency was. It's not like Jerry Judy became a better

(01:33:36):
wide receiver last year, even though his fantasy production did spike.
It was just that they threw the ball a lot.
And my fear is at number one, I don't know
that we can just assume that Joe Flacco could even
sustain the way that Jameis Winston did from a fantasy perspective,
of course. And then when they do switch and they
do go to a different quarterback, number one, they could
be a lot more run heavy, and number two is

(01:33:58):
that quarterback even gonna be good? And so I'm fearful
that Judy is not is not superior and elite enough
to be able to just overcome all of that. And
then on top of that, his target share did dip
without Cedric Tillman or with and without Cedric Tillman in
the lineup. So when Cedric Tillman was healthy and they
started playing more, Judy's target share was only like nineteen

(01:34:20):
to twenty one percent, Like it wasn't that amazing and
that incredible. So that just leads me to Cedric Tillman.
I think he's fine to throw a dart At because
his cost is the lowest, right, So I'm fine with
going with Tilmen because we saw some ceiling come through
last year a little bit. I thought he was a
fine enough prospect coming out. Obviously, usually when wide receivers
show what he did as rookies, they don't end up

(01:34:42):
performing very well through the rest of their career. But
I'm you know, it's I'm not going to fault anyone
for throwing like a wide receiver sixty five priced at
you know, dart at Cedric Tillman. I think where I'm
not going to be in this in this team, it
would be Judy, and then and Joku I'll draft a
little bit of, and then Tilman I'll draft more than
both of them.

Speaker 1 (01:34:59):
I don't think you're on an island with Judy because
I have had the similar concerns about some of the splits,
and like you said, you can chop it up different ways,
but what it really came down to for me was
something quite simple. I looked at the entirety of his
career and the targets he earned over his career, and
then you look at what he did to finish the season.
It's like, well, which one is the smaller sample, which

(01:35:20):
one looks like the outlier. Here, it certainly looks like
what he did at the end of last year was
an outlier. And again, I'd be more willing to bet
on him if I knew that a pro like Joe
Flacca who can get the ball out was going to
be there the whole year, and I have zero faith
in that. And that's a similar scenario here in New
York with the Giants. I don't think that Russell Wilson's

(01:35:41):
an All Star by any means, but he certainly is
better than what they had last year. And I realized
that Jamis Winston may be the backup and name right now.
But you make the point that if we get late
in the season, I don't expect the Giants to be
contenders with what they've got. So there's a fairly strong
chance Jackson dart at the end of the year. How

(01:36:01):
do you feel about Molik Neighbors with that non zero chance.

Speaker 3 (01:36:05):
Yeah, look, I think that there's so first off, like,
I love Neighbors coming out last year. Like I said,
he had a ninety nine point five score in the
Zap Model last year, which was better than Marvin Harrison
junior straight up. And so like the model loved them,
the analytics loved them, I love them. And so this
is definitely not an anti neighbor stance. But if if
you look at the first round and into the second

(01:36:27):
round of drafts, it's just loaded with talented wide receivers
like Nico Collins could could finish as the wide receiver
one this year. I don't think anyone would be like, oh,
that's weird, or Puka Nakua or even aj Brown is
undervalued right now. Right there's there's a lot of really
good wide receiver talent, and look, I think that Molikue
Neighbors is the next best thing, and he's gonna be an,
if not already, one of the elite playmakers in the league.

(01:36:49):
So I don't want to fade that, right, just the
talent profile in general, I don't want to just avoid
that at all costs. But it would be silly for
me to sit here and say that I'm not afraid
of Like he was so good last year in fantasy
of course, but he was also seeing he saw one
of the highest target shairs of the last decade as
a rookie, and I think a lot of people's brains.
They're like, well, it can only get better because he

(01:37:10):
was a rookie and he played with a bad quarterback.
It can get worse because this is a volume driven
game of fantasy football, right, Like, if he sees a
twenty eight or twenty nine percent target share, that's still
a very elite target share, but it's still lower than
what he saw last year from a volume standpoint, And
you throw in Jackson Dart and there's more ambiguity there.
So I've actually been a couple wide receiver spots, even

(01:37:31):
though they're all kind of jumbled up in the same
tier lower on neighbors for this very fact is that
we just don't know what we're necessarily going to get
down there. Maybe it'll be good, you know, maybe it'll
work out for neighbors. Maybe Jackson Dart, who I didn't
mind either, will be will be special and great and
be able to give him the league neighbors. He's like
high end wide receiver one. This like wide receiver one production.

(01:37:53):
But to me, the opportunity cost there is pretty significant
because you're getting locked in stud wider s, locked in
Nicocollins and Pooka and all these guys who have like
in their situation right now that is likely unchanging. You know,
have the same kind of upside that Neighbors does. So
I think the rotation a quarterback is something that we

(01:38:15):
should consider. I wouldn't be fading neighbors, like I said,
but I do think that we, in the back of
our head should have that in mind.

Speaker 1 (01:38:22):
Yeah, it's something that I made the mistake of. I
just dislike Daniel Jones so much. I could not bring
myself to draft much Neighbors last year. Yeah, and uh,
that's who I want to talk about now. In Indianapolis.
It sounds gross to say it. Do we want Daniel
Jones to win this job? I mean, I love Michael
Pittman the player, but how much do we care about

(01:38:44):
any pass catcher in Indianapolis? Do we want Daniel Jones
to win the job? And if he doesn't like? How
scared are we of drafting any of these pass catchers
in India?

Speaker 3 (01:38:53):
If Anthony Richardson is starter, it's it's a disaster for
fantasy football outside of Anthony Richardson because they'll probably be
okay from A and Jonathan Taylor will probably okay enough
to though even Jonathan Taylor his splits with Anthony Richardson
last year, he averaged like a five percent target shair
per game, and then without Richardson that more than double.
So even JT, it'll affect him if Anthony Richardson a starter.

(01:39:15):
You know, it was funny. I did a show last
week and I was doing a show, the Late Round
Fantasy Football show that I do on YouTube is just
live stream once a week, and the premise of the
show was looking at players who had really good peripherals
last season, right, and I just threw up Anthony Richardson
just as kind of a joke, but also was hilarious
that his A dot was as high as it was
because he was just throwing a deep so frequently. And

(01:39:37):
then I also looked at this completion percentage over expected
and there were thirty six qualified quarterbacks within completion percentage
over expected, and Richardson was dead last, and he was
dead last by over five percentage points, Like it was
just like an over expect It was like minus eleven
points something, and the next closest was like minus five
or minus six percent. Anthony Richardson was so so bad,

(01:39:59):
Like let's hope to God that he got better and
he's feeling better and he can be a true franchise guy.
But I think given the information we have right now,
we have to be rooting for Daniel Jones to start.
And look, I agree there's definitely fear of Jones being
a competent starter, but we've at least seen him help
sustain some of these pass catchers in the past. My

(01:40:22):
biggest fear is that they have a lot of them
and a lot of able pass catchers in that offense
right now. Like even Ady Mitchell last year had a
really good like open score and stuff. He was he
was solid, He just wasn't getting the ball and he
was getting a lot of you know, prairie yards and
stuff as opposed to getting you know, targets or on
target stuff. Alec Pierce broke out last year as a
down the field guy. You know, Michael Pittman had that

(01:40:43):
back injury, but he's capable of being Michael Pittman's consistently
seen a twenty five percent target share in this Colts
offense year over year, and Josh Downs could legitimately be
special like as a talent, Josh Downs and so and
then they add Tyler Warren to the mix. So I
think this is one of those situations where I'm going
to be more okay drafting them in Best Ball because
I don't have to pick and choose which Colts wide

(01:41:05):
receiver might have a decent day. I'll probably be okay
enough with drafting Josh Downs if he falls, because the
talent profiles there, and even Michael Pittman because the talent
profiles there. But yeah, I mean, like the quarterback situation
and the likely run heaviness of the offense is definitely
a turnoff for the pass catchers.

Speaker 1 (01:41:23):
Michael Pittman checking in at wide receiver fifty one isn't
exactly expensive, so if we want to take some shots
on him, that's, you know, not the end of the world.
But well, all of these situations just a little bit scary,
especially for King Nit over here. And I am glad
to hear your perspective on that. I got to get
chatted here. You've been generous with your time before you go.

(01:41:45):
My favorite question to ask all of my guests when
you're on the clock. We do all kinds of talking
all summer long our shows, guesting on other people's shows,
and we talk about every player out there practically, But
when you on the clock, are there some guys that
you find yourself consistently drafting and some guys you find
yourself consistently fading when it's your turn to click that button.

Speaker 3 (01:42:10):
Yeah, you know a lot of a lot of late
round dart throws that I'll draft a lot, but I'll
give sort of an earlier round pick that I think
could could emerge this year. It's Kenneth Walker. You know,
I've been I've been going after him a good bit
and I haven't even been a Walker guy historically, but
you know no more. Ryan Grubb is offensive coordinator. The
Seahawks were really pass heavy last year. They're probably gonna

(01:42:31):
be pretty run heavy this year with Clint Kubiak. I
think that zone scheme fits Kenneth Walker very very well.
And there's also a trend to that players who had
you know, strong receiving points per game at running back
the previous season tend to do well the next season
within the Fantasy points score department. And Kenneth Walker actually
was there last year like he was seeing really good

(01:42:52):
looks through the air as a pass catcher. Now, I
think part of that was grub related in the way
that that offense operated, but I think that will care
over a little bit at least and get him over
that like ten maybe into that eleven percent target share mark.
So I think the Seahawks are gonna be run heavier.
They're gonna likely lean on Walker. I think the reason
why he's being drafted where he's being drafted is more

(01:43:13):
injury related than anything else, which is valid. But if
he's healthy, you know he's healthy. And I'm more of
the type of player slash analysts that I look at
points per game. I focus on points per game more
than season long totals because I'm not taking zeros when
these guys are hurt, you know. And so if I
can get a good twelve thirteen games out of Kenneth Walker,
that could still easily pay off for me at the

(01:43:34):
end of the day, especially if it's later in the season,
you know, when whenever things matter most. So Walker's probably
my one of my go to running backs at this moment.
I'll give you one more two at quarterback. I just
think Justin Fields is undervalued in general. It just goes
back to the mobility stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:43:51):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:43:51):
Fields has played four seasons in the NFL. Now he's
played forty one regular season games where he's accounted for
ninety percent of his team's pass attempts, and he's averaged
eighteen points per game in those contests. But if you
remove his rookie season where he was dreadful, his points
per gamering is nineteen and a half. I mean, that's
that's with just horrific wide receiver play at times, and

(01:44:12):
obviously he's been questionable as a passer, but essentially that's
like QB seven last year, and that's his that's his
median outcome essentially since his rookie season. So I'm in
on fields, you know, even though I don't think that
he's necessarily like the answer for them, you know, long
term a quarterback.

Speaker 1 (01:44:30):
And can I say on fields too, that his price
is a little surprising to me as well, because he's
just kind of languishing down there around QB twelve thirteen area,
and that seems really cheap for a guy that we
know what he can do. We know when you talk
about super nova, that guy has it. Yeah, I'm surprised
at the price right now. Again, maybe that inches up

(01:44:50):
in August, but I love the Fields call. And one
of the points that somebody made to me in the
past that I've really hung my hat on is they've
invested in making this work with Fields. There really isn't
a guy sitting behind him that we need to be
worried about. Right, It's Tyrod Taylor. There's not some rookie
sitting there. There's not a Dylan Gabriel, there's not a
Jackson Dart. There's not much behind him. I think they're

(01:45:12):
gonna stick with him mill He seems like he'll maybe
have a longer lease than he would maybe in another
situation with a guy sitting on the bench. Okay, what
else you got?

Speaker 3 (01:45:21):
Those would be the I'd say, Maine, do you want
me to go target or avoid?

Speaker 1 (01:45:26):
You can go flip to the other side. What else
you got on the other side of avoid?

Speaker 3 (01:45:30):
We'll go avoid? Because I think this one confuses people
because they just assume that when a player is in
a good situation, in good circumstance, that his statistics and
his numbers can only improve and get better. But in
the case of Baker Mayfield, I don't think it's gonna happen.
It has nothing to do it. Like I've been a
Baker stand throughout his career, Like I like Baker, But

(01:45:52):
I think if you look at what he did in
twenty twenty four, it was just an outlier season. He
scored twenty one and a half standard Fantasy points per game.
He's never reached seven teen point two in a single
season across his career. Before last year, he had three
point three rushing points per game, which he's typically half
of that in a given season. He was QB four.
His previous best finish was QB seventeen. But you know,

(01:46:13):
this really comes down to the fact that he had
an unsustainable touchdown rate. Touchdown rate is just touchdowns divided
by attempts. It was seven point two percent last year.
Since twenty eleven, we've had fifteen quarterbacks who have next
season data, so they had enough volume in one year
and then also the next year who had a touchdown
rate between six point seven percent and seven point seven percent,

(01:46:34):
so plus or minus zero point five percent from where
Baker was last year. Of those fifteen quarterbacks, in the
year that they had the high touchdown rate, their average
points per game was twenty one point four. In the
next season, every single one of them saw a decrease
in points per game, and the average points per game
was seventeen point two, So there's a very very real

(01:46:56):
chance that even though Baker Mayfield, you know, got a
met Buka, you have great weapons there. The offensive line
is really strong, even without Tristan Wurfs. There's a very
real chance that you know, they lose Liam Cohen, which
could be a big deal. But there's a very real chance,
regardless of all of that, that Baker could be just
as impactful as an NFL player. But just see worse statistics,

(01:47:17):
worst numbers. I mean, the Buccaneers last year saw a
high proportion of their touchdowns come through the air versus
on the ground, which is why Baker Mayfield ended up,
you know, having the touchdown rate that he did. That's
a number that generally regresses. So maybe that helps a
Bucky Irving or a Shad Whiter whomever. But also, the
Buccaneers just scored a lot of touchdowns. They were third
in the NFL and touchdowns, and we can't just assume

(01:47:40):
that that's going to maintain and sustain. It's really really
hard to do that, and it's hard for people to
wrap their heads around that. But it's just a it's
a difficult thing for players and teams to do. So
I'm betting on the regression hitting for Baker Mayfield this year.

Speaker 1 (01:47:56):
I don't disagree that this is funny that you should
say this. You said six point seven percent. I actually
just looked at this the other day. I took the
last five years guys who had a six percent or
better touchdown rate over the last five years. I think
there were twenty seven instances, and six of them may
have happened I think this last year. But I found
that of the twenty that qualified, the average regression was

(01:48:19):
minus one point eight percent in touchdown rate the following year.
That's a huge almost two percent drop and touchdown rate
the next year. That that's that's big, especially for Baker
at seven point two. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:48:30):
And look, that's something that I really really dig into
in the in the draft guide, where it's actually when
you when you compare to ADP expectation, the better values
in your fantasy draft are are at quarterback are from
players who had worse touchdown rates the previous season, not
better touchdown rates. And the reason for that is because
when a player has a good touchdown rate, he gets

(01:48:52):
boosted by the market and ADP and so his expectation
is higher. Right, But the players who have low touchdown rates,
they get drafted later and they become the better values
because touch on rate regresses at the end of the day.
So you actually want to target the Dak Prescott's, the c. J. Strouds,
the Matthew Staffords of the world versus the pocket passers
like Jared Goff and Baker Mayfield at their costs.

Speaker 1 (01:49:14):
Yeah, well, what I read in the guide was you're
all in on Trevor Lawrence. I do, like, I'm just kidding,
I'm just joking, but he did come up in there,
and I've been riding Trevor Lawrence train and trying to
calm myself down a little bit because I don't know
if he just is what he is by now. But
all right, that's a different discussion for a different day,
maybe over a beer in Canton. But thank you so
much for being here. JJ zach Reeson. Please check out

(01:49:35):
his work at lateround dot com. Go over there and
grab his draft guide. Folks. The amount of work that
went into this thing, I don't even I can't even
comprehend because I'm pushing content every day and I don't
know what it would take to get something like this out.
It's fantastic stuff. It's a great read. I'm not even
just a little over halfway through it, and I'm loving it.
So go over there and pick up a Late Round

(01:49:56):
Draft Guide and check out the podcast Late Round Podcast
as well as living the stream. So thank you again
for being here, JJ.

Speaker 3 (01:50:03):
Thanks for having man, thanks for the kind words. Really
appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:50:06):
You bet We'll see you in Canton and that will
do it for another week of discussions with Drew. Thanks
once again to jjzach Reason from Lateround dot com. Go
over and support him by giving his website a few
clicks download that draft guide. It's not very expensive. I

(01:50:29):
think it's only like thirty bucks. There are a lot
of ways you can piss away thirty dollars in your
life that aren't nearly as helpful as downloading the Late
Round Draft Guide. So go over there and check that out.
It is awesome. It's a treasure trove of information. Thanks
again to JJ zachar reeson looking forward to see him
in a couple weeks in Canton. I hope all of
you are thinking about Canton, and if you've never been,

(01:50:52):
just come on out, come on out. I'll share a
Naturday with you. I'll buy you a shot. We'll have
a blast. Come out to Canton, get to know me,
Meet Jay, meet Marcus, meet Jim, meet all these people
that are fun, cool, awesome people to hang out with.
Can't have so much fun. That's coming up in a
couple of weeks, But the auction brief is rolling on.
We still got four or five episodes left before my

(01:51:12):
ultimate episode, my Auction Draft Guide, all in one episode
at the end of August. I think I have a
little bit of something happening in the middle of August.
I thank you all. They are going to love. I'm
efforting right now to get some names involved and something
that I think all of you auction folks aren't going
to dig into, So a little bit of a teaser there.

(01:51:35):
Hopefully I can break that in the next couple of
weeks what I'm going to be doing. But in the meantime,
stay tuned to my socials at Drew Davenport ff, Patreon
and TikTok Fantasy Football Lawyer, so I can keep you
up to date on the Quinn, Shawn Judkins, and Jordan
Addison cases. And don't forget to order your draft boards
from FJA Fantasy use my code Auction twenty twenty five

(01:51:57):
Auction two zero two five to get ten percent off
your order. That's it, folks, It's been an awesome episode.
One of my favorites of the summer. Say that every week,
don't I thank you so much for joining me, thank
you for tuning in. Like I said, this is one
of my favorite pieces of content that I get to
do every single week. Love getting on the mic and
talking to all of you. I hope you learned a

(01:52:18):
lot today. I hope you learned a lot today. This
was a fun one. So from the North Shore, Duke,
my favorite, Brada and Drew Davenport. We're signing off now.
The Auction Brief is adjourned and I am out.

Speaker 2 (01:52:31):
The Auction Brief is adjourn that'll do it for this
week's episode. See you next time on the Auction Brief.

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