Lessons from an Expert Auction; Guest Matt Harmon from Yahoo Sports

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.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Or not, taking you on a journey through fantasy football,
the law, and life.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
We saw yours. It depends on how much you want.
And now you're legal analyst and auction draft expert here
to help you dominate your fantasy drafts. Your host, Drew Davenport.
There are fullhearts. Hey, everybody, welcome into the Auction Brief.

(00:39):
As the lady said, I'm your host, Drew Davenport, and
I'm coming at you with the penultimate episode of the
Auction Brief of the summer. I can't believe we're already here.
That is crazy. And I know we missed an episode
this summer because I was sick early in the summer
when the show was kicking off. But we are going
to make up for it these last two weeks because

(00:59):
today I've got some lessons from The King's Classic this
past weekend. I think you're really gonna dig into this
because I'm trying to throw as many anecdotes as I
can into this episode because I think it's gonna be
really fun to just hear what happened in an auction
draft room with a bunch of smart fantasy guys, and
so I'm throwing some of that in there, and we're
not gonna waste any time this week screwing around, because,

(01:21):
like I said, we got a couple hours left today
and a couple hours left next week, and then we
are done for the season because next Thursday. Really, you know,
there's only two fantasy draft weekends left. It doesn't do
me a lot of good to put out content that
last week of August because most of the world will
have drafted in these next two weekends. So we're gonna
make it worth it here on the auction brief and

(01:42):
just jam every last thing we can't into these last
two episodes. So, like I said, today, we're gonna go
through some lessons from the King's classic. That's gonna be
just a rundown of some anecdotes, some overall thoughts I had,
what was my approach, How'd I end up that kind
of stuff? And then I want to walk you through
the draft a little bit and talk a little bit
about some of the inflection points that I saw. I

(02:03):
think all of that stuff is really fun to look
at after the fact, and I think it's part of
the reason that I feel like I do well in
that auction room because I spend a lot of time
digesting it every year for you guys, discussing it on
the Patreon and figuring out what I did wrong and
what could have worked better. And of course you're never
going to have one hundred percent perfect auction, but you've

(02:23):
got to break it all down or you'll never know
where you're going to be able to get better. We
do have a short legal update this week because we
got the suspension for Jordan Addison handed down. We've got
some rumors on Rashi Rice, and we've got a curious
little move from quin Shawn Judkins' legal team, so we've
got to break all that down. It's not going to
be a real long one win and Drew whoever not

(02:47):
said something that was going to be long. I know,
I know. Laugh it up, everybody, have a good time.
I'm fresh off the expo though, and I'm flying high.
I hope that you're going to love this episode because
I just got a lot of energy today. I got
a lot I gotta get it out there, gotta get
it out there. This is gonna be a fun episode,
don't forget that. You can find me on Twitter at

(03:08):
Drew Davenport ff on TikTok and on the Patreon at
the Fantasy Football Lawyer, and always remember that FJA Fantasy
Sports has the best draft boards in the business. Corrugated
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(03:30):
in the back of the thing to weigh it down
when you're putting the stickers on, and it is absolutely perfect.
Ten percent off your order. Auction two zero two five,
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your order. They cost a little bit more than other
draft boards, but they are worth it, and you get
ten percent off using my coat. Like I said, I'm
fresh off the expo HI. It was a fantastic weekend

(03:51):
hanging out with everyone and just getting to reconnect with
all these people in the industry that I really like
that I'll become friends. But you know, I learned every
time I go there too, because I have conversations with
everybody throughout the weekend about what they're doing in their
draft plans, and then I go into the King's Classic.
I learn a lot at the expo about what I
believe and where I think I'm starting to value players.

(04:14):
Like I said, it's just a lot of smart people
and they're talking about this kind of stuff and it's
bound to make you smarter. So I hope that you're
going to get smarter from this episode today, especially because
we have Matt Harmon from Yahoo here for discussions with Drew.
And you all know Matt from last summer, but this
is his second appearance on the show and he's just awesome.
He's fun to listen to, but he really knows his stuff.

(04:36):
Of course, the owner of Reception Perception and also I
believe one of the lead analysts over there at Yahoo.
So we're gonna have a fun one today. What do
you say we spin it up? Let's do it now.

Speaker 3 (04:48):
It's time for your legal update, all right.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
Like I said, I want to try to be brief
on this legal update because I don't think there's a
lot of stuff that's actually super impactful, but there are
a couple of things that you need to know. And
of course, like I said, we're going into the two
biggest draft weekends of the year, and I'm not going
to be hanging without the important details. We know now
that Jordan Addison is going to miss the first three
games of the season. As I discussed, we had a

(05:12):
pretty tight dialed in number here. The more information you get,
the easier it gets to figure it out. The NFL's
Policy and Substances of Abuse says that it's three games
automatic if you have an alcohol related violation, which he did,
so he'll miss the first three games of the season.
A lot of people say to me when they hear that,
They say, well, what about him getting it reduced to two?

(05:34):
And that's something that I've heard a lot lately in
the last couple of years. People are asking me, and
I think that's vestiges of the old punishment system, and
I don't believe that that is how it goes anymore.
I think more often than not, lawyers are in the
room when they're discussing this stuff with the NFL. Lawyers
are in the room when they're figuring out whether to
plead or what to do with the cases, and they've

(05:56):
already talked to the NFL and have a good idea
in their head like where that may be. Frankly, it'd
be malpractice if they didn't, so I think there's a
lot of settling of this stuff behind the scenes. And
I don't believe that reduction of suspensions is the norm anymore.
I don't believe that's how it goes anymore. Now there
are instances of that, but a lot of people are

(06:19):
going back to the old system of saying, oh, he
got six games, it'll be you know, it'll be reduced
to four. He got four, it'll be reduced to two.
That's not how it works anymore. I believe that Addison
is going to serve those three games. Having said that,
I believe that's a buying opportunity, especially you'll hear what
I got him for in The King's Classic this week.
I think for a receiver of his talent playing opposite

(06:40):
Justin Jefferson, it's a buying opportunity for Addison and Fantasy.
The other update is on rashiey Rice. There really isn't
anything concrete coming out, but we heard that rumor of
two to four games from a Chiefs insider. Now we're
hearing from Rotoballer that and I don't know where this
source is coming from, but we talked about it over
the weekend. I've talked about with several people. Seems to

(07:02):
be a fairly solid source that the chiefs are now
expecting four to six games instead of two to four. Again,
that's always kind of been what I thought. I never
really thought two sounded right. Two or three just didn't
seem like enough, And then as soon as Addison got three,
I know those cases are related, But in the NFL's eyes,
they are a lot of people for some reason don't
find what Addison did to be as big of a

(07:22):
dealer as Rice. Even though Rice wasn't intoxicated, Addison was.
He's on the streets so intoxicated that he passes out,
allegedly by on a roadway, and Rice's crime was driving fast. Now,
I get it, the results of your actions matter. I've
said that before. I get all that. But Rice's case
is seen as worse in most people's eyes, and so

(07:45):
the optics of it are that I don't think the
NFL was ever going to go two or three games
if they did three to Addison, So I think it's
going to be four or more. Six sounds like a lot.
I mean, four or five seems like where they should land.
But after hearing that report, I can't argue with anything
in the four to six range. I think that's somewhat reasonable,
but I still come down on the fact that I

(08:06):
think it's going to be, you know, more than Addison,
but less than six. So four to five is where
I'm dialing it in. And lastly, the Quinchhn Judkins case
had a little bit of an eyebrow raising moment this
past week when Judkins' attorney filed a time waiver in
his pending domestic violence case. A couple of things about
this that are interesting to me are, first of all,

(08:30):
the fact that he's filing a time waiver when the
case hasn't even technically been filed yet. Now that's kind
of weird, and I don't understand how this is working
down in Florida. So I'm going to plead a little
bit of ignorance here. But when you check the Brower
County website, it says that it's an open case and
it has a case number, but it says active dash unfiled.

(08:50):
So it sounds to me like they got a case
number and they got this all ready to go, and
they had not filed the charges yet. Now, Florida has
some speedy trial laws about when charges have to be filed.
That that's a little different than Ohio does it. So
they have some speedy trial laws about the filing of
charges and also the resolution of the charges. Those are
two different things, obviously, But his attorney this past week

(09:13):
filed a waiver of those speedy trial limits on the
state's ability to bring the charges. Then that's really interesting,
And why is it a lot of people are taking
the wrong thing away from this? And again I see
some prominent analysts out there throwing their weight around ask
acting like they know what this means. Folks. I'm not

(09:33):
here to be like a jerk or something, but I've
been doing this twenty four years. If I don't know
exactly what that means, that, I promise you Joe blow
big time. Analyst doesn't know what it means, okay, So
like that stuff bugs me, Like it's okay to speculate
and be like, oh, maybe this means this, But they
say it like they're so sure. And there are thousands
of people who don't follow me and follow those guys

(09:55):
and are listening to that advice, and that's just I
just think that's irresponsible. But let me get out by
soapbox here and just say this. A couple things piqued
my interest because one of the things everyone was saying
was that, oh, well, this means that it's going to
push out past the season because he's waved a speedy trial.
Now it's going to go out past the season, just
like the other cases. Well, no, that's applying other case

(10:16):
logic to this case. And the thing I always say
to my clients who come in and say, Hey, my
cousin Jimmy got a DUI and it got reduced to
a reckless so I'm going to get a reckless too, right, No,
your blood alcohol was twice the legal limit and you
ran into a fire hydrant. Like, No, the cases aren't
the same. Okay, No, two cases are the same. So
applying logic about anything in the legal community from another

(10:41):
case is extremely dangerous and oftentimes just flat out wrong.
So just because he waves a speedy trial doesn't mean
they're trying to push it out past That would be counterproductive, right,
because what do we know about Judkins right now? We
know that he hasn't signed a deal yet with Cleveland
because Cleveland wants him to clean this stuff up, right,
So he can't even sign a deal. He's not even

(11:02):
in the NFL yet, and everybody say, well, is he
going on the Commissioner exemple list. Well, he's not an
NFL employee. Now, as soon as he signs a contract,
they can put him on the examplest. But the Browns
have said, no, we're not doing that. So what do
you think Judkins team is trying to do here? If
you put all that together, I don't believe that Judkins
team is saying, hey, he's not going to play this year, right.

(11:24):
I think that would be dumb. There's no way that
their plan of attack here at the beginning of August
is to say, hey, we're going to sit out the year, right,
That doesn't make any sense. He wants to play this year.
He wants to sign that big contract and he wants
to play. So I think that's what they're working on.
And to me, what the time waiver says is two things.

(11:45):
Number One, if Judkins team thought there was nothing to
the case, they would just say, hey, do your worst,
go file the charges or you know, if you don't
file him in time, then you lose the right to
file him because the state would just go run and
file him before the speedy trial went up right, So
judkins team must know there is something to the case
and that the state's got something. And on the other

(12:07):
side of that, it sounds to me like there's a
negotiation going on behind the scenes, perhaps with the victim,
perhaps with the state about what they can do to
maybe get a diversion or get the case dismissed whatever.
I don't know what would be going on. Nobody does.
But the important thing about this is I think there's
something going on behind the scenes. And Jugkins' team said, hey,

(12:27):
let's waive our speedy trial, and the state was like, yeah,
you got to give us this waiver because we're working
on this and we haven't filed it yet, but give
us this waiver or we can just go file it.
So that's where I'm at. I believe that there's something
going on behind the scenes, and I'm not here to
say like this is definitely going to be correct. What
I'm saying is, I don't think the reason was, hey,
he's going to sit out the year. I think the

(12:48):
reason was, let's get this handled, and the best way
to do that is to take the pressure off the
state from having to run and file the charges and
see if we can avoid them being filed or avoid
a war worst outcome here. So Juggins team is being conciliatory,
they're being helpful, and they're trying to move the case

(13:08):
along behind the scenes. That's my take on it. So
if you were to ask me today, after seeing a
time waiver signed him before, what are the chances that
he signed soon. I think the chances just went up
that he signed soon. I don't think the chances went down.
I think we might get a resolution here in somewhat
short order. Okay, well, that's the best I could do.
I think I ran through that in about seven eight minutes,

(13:30):
So that's the best I can do on those three
legal cases right now. But those are the updates. Addison's
going to miss three. I'd brace for Rice to miss
up to six, but I still think it's going to
be four or five, and the Jugkins situation may resolve
itself sooner than we think. I'm willed to take a
late round shot on Juggins now. He's going pretty late,
so I'm willing to take that shot now. And that's

(13:51):
where I'm at on those three cases. So that's it.
Why don't we get onto some auction talk because I
want to break down the King's Classic for you, and
I want to give you some lessons I learn that
I think are going to help you in your upcoming
auctions auction talk. Well, I know you're tired of hearing
it by now, but the Kings Classic is a really

(14:12):
deep league, and I have to start out in the
conversation by setting it up right, because not everybody listening
to this is going to know what the Kings Classic
is or know what the settings are. If you've been
listening to me for three or four years, you know
all about it and you're rolling your eyes right now.
But just real quickly to set it up. It's a
fourteen team league. It's all experts from various sites around

(14:32):
the industry. It's a full PPR. But the challenging part
of it is not just the fourteen teams. The challenging
part of it is that you start three flex, no kicker,
no defense, and you start a normal lineup of one quarterback,
two running backs, three wide receivers, tight end, and then
three flex. So we're starting one hundred and forty position

(14:53):
players on a weekly basis, whereas typical leagues twelve team
league starting a kicker and a they're starting somewhere between.
I'd say, I think that's what ninety six players. If
you're starting eight position players plus a kicker and a
d so you're starting ninety six position players versus one forty.
That makes this extremely challenging. That's part of the fun.
But that's the setup for what we're doing today. That

(15:16):
doesn't mean you're only going to learn lessons if you're
in a deep league. I'm pulling lessons for all of
you out of this, But that's the setup on some
of the prices you're going to hear and some of
the approach that I took to this draft, because one
of the things that I get questioned about all the
time is how do you adjust when it's a deeper league?
And I always say the same thing. I think you
have to make a flatter build because the wire is

(15:39):
so bad, So I think you're going to want more
depth coming out of the draft than normal. But I
think I might have just overrated that just a touch
in the last couple of years, not a lot, but
just a touch. And I think I've gone a little
bit crazy with it in the King's Classic because I
know that if I wait around and let these guys
go crazy in a couple of for tiers of players

(16:02):
that I'm going to get some values that I really
like and I'm going to have a really deep team
with no holes. It's hard to come out of this
league with no holes. You have to make choices, and
those choices are difficult. We're going to talk about that
in a second. But so, what's the approach to this
kind of a league? And of course I know all
of you out there the people want to know because
I've had this question, believe it or not, this weekend.

(16:24):
The people want to know, did I stay up until
three or four in the morning and the night before
and do my par sheets? And yes, yes, folks, the
answer is yes. Once again, I did not have a
moment to spare to do my par sheets before Friday
at three in the morning, well Saturday at three in
the morning when we were drafting at ten am. But hey,

(16:45):
I did them. I loved them. I think I executed.
It's one of those funny things like I got there
early on Thursday, and the whole point of me getting
there early on Thursday was to check into my room,
do my par sheets, take a leisurely nap, and see
some friends for dinner. Nope. On the way there, the
jugkin stuff blows up and I have to do a
thread when I get there. It took me two hours,
eight up my whole night. So there I am three

(17:07):
am Saturday, seven hours ahead of the King's Classic, coming
up with my approach. But you know, I didn't do
anything drastically different than this year. And what I always
say is find your league personality, right, you know that
I've said that all summer long. So what's my approach
going to be? Well, generally, I'm going to want to
spend a few bucks at quarterback in this type of

(17:27):
league because people don't like quarterback. But this year I
approached it just a little bit different. There's so many
values out there at quarterback that I thought to myself,
I know that I'm going to get a value on
a top quarterback that I'm going to like, and I'm
going to want to take it. So I did make
a par sheet spending eighteen bucks on QB one. Now,

(17:47):
last year I think I spent twenty one, but I
was fine if I spent twenty one or whatever. But
I was aiming for that eighteen bucks on one of
my par sheets. But this year, I kind of didn't
care as much about the quarterback thing. The reason why
is I do think that having a crazy deep team
in this league is it's fun, and I've done that
the last couple of years. I felt great about my depth,

(18:10):
and actually I don't feel bad about this year either.
But one of the things that I learned in this
league was that all of your guys that you pick
for your depth, they really have to be firing if
you want to avoid those those big down weeks that
are possible with players who just aren't elite players. So
I felt like I wanted to push a little bit
more money towards the top of my roster and get

(18:32):
a couple difference makers that I felt like had the
ability to go high so that when you know, Wandale
Robinson has three for twenty eight, my week doesn't fall apart.
So it's taught me the last couple of years that
I really don't love the team. I like the team,
but I really don't love the team when I had
that much depth. So I really tried hard to say, Okay,

(18:54):
we're gonna spend one dollar on at least two positions,
maybe three at the back of my roster. That's scary
for me as a knit because there's six bench spots,
and so I told myself, I'm going to spend two
of my six bench spots for a dollar, maybe three.
That's hard for me to do. Ultimately, I didn't end
up doing three. I ended up doing two. But I
was proud of myself for that. Like I said, you

(19:15):
always got to scout yourself. And I'm not here to
say like I'm awesome because I did it. I'm here
to say that's hard for me, and I do a
lot of things. Well, that's not one of the things
I do well, and I'm constantly working on it. So
I felt good about that part of it. And you're
going to hear why here in just a second. My
main approach wasn't really to spend on the quarterback this

(19:36):
year because I knew that in order to pull some
money from somewhere, quarterback was the only spot that I
didn't really need to spend the money. I wanted to
spend the money. There's it's nice having Josh Allen and
Jalen Hurts like I did last year, but I felt
like I wanted to put more money at the top
of the roster. So that's what I did. I'm going
to tell you my exact values that I had written

(19:57):
down here because I think people always ask me for
concrete exams. That's what they want to hear. So the
approach that I like, my my par sheet that I
wanted to execute more than any was four dollars for
QB one, twenty eight dollars for RB one, seventeen dollars
for RB two, forty one dollars for wide receiver one,

(20:18):
twenty nine dollars for wide receiver two, nineteen dollars for
wide receiver three, six dollars for tight end one, seventeen
dollars for Flex one, twelve dollars for Flex two, and
eight dollars for Flex three. That's the starting lineup. So
four twenty seventeen, forty one, twenty nine, nineteen, six, seventeen, twelve, eight,

(20:42):
and then on my bench seven dollars, five dollars, four dollars,
and then three at one dollar. So as you can see,
I'm only putting nineteen of my two hundred dollars on
my bench. That's hard for me to do. That's a
tough build for me. Now, Ultimately I ended up spending
a little bit more than that on the bench. But
I like having that goal to be like, I'm going

(21:02):
to spend more recklessly, not recklessly, but more aggressively to
land some of that top talent. And you know, a
couple of the people ask me, you know, when I
won those back to back titles, what really worked well?
And I have to say, there are some things I
did really well that were my doing, and of course

(21:24):
part of the reason that I won, but some of
it was just that my best players didn't get hurt. Right,
I've told you guys that before. Some of my best
players didn't get hurt. And I feel like in the
last couple of years in the auction, I've been drafting
a little bit too cautiously and just saying, Okay, I'm
going to have all this depth and it's going to
be it's going to insulate me. But there's no insulation.
And I just wanted to make sure that I was

(21:45):
more aggressive. And I hope you guys can take that
little lesson away hear from this intro that that's what
we want to do. So I've got three overall thoughts
about what happened, and they're really interesting because they don't
seem like things that would happen in an expert draft.
But that leads me into overall thought number one, which
is this experts are really good at fantasy football. They

(22:09):
don't always know auctions, all right, they don't always know auctions.
I was having a conversation with Matt. Shout out to Matt,
auctioneer Matt. I was having a conversation with him before
the draft, and I told him I was going to
try to start out with a nomination early on. I'd
be running back that's at the bottom of rb ie territory,

(22:29):
and hope that the room was cold, because the room
was cold last year. And I jumped in early last year,
and I said, you know, the thing about this room
is there are some very good auction players in this room,
and there are some guys in the room who are
very good at fantasy football but not at auctions. Intelligence
translates well to auctions. So none of these guys are
going to walk in the room and be a bumbling

(22:50):
idiot and just suck. Okay, that's not going to happen.
It's too tough of a room for that. But there
are degrees of experience, and there are things that people
do when they're inexperience that I talk about all the time.
And I wish that you guys could watch this auction
because there's so many things that happened in there that
I talk about all the time. There were several players

(23:11):
in the room, one guy in particular that I was
paying attention to, who only bid when he wanted a player,
only bid when he wanted a player. What I mean,
you know, like, how hard is that to figure out?
I tell you all the time, watch figure out which
people want players and when they want them, when they don't,
who they're nominating, whether they want the player or not.
And everybody says, oh, well that's simple. Of course, that's simple.
But you got to watch for it. It's hard to

(23:32):
watch for it. It's hard to make yourself pay attention,
go around the table every time you go through around,
focus on a new player and figure out what they're doing.
There were several guys in the room who only bid
when they want a player. Guys, and when I say several,
like out of fourteen, there might have been six eight
guys that only bid when they want somebody. So don't
always assume that people are going to crush an auction

(23:55):
just because they're good at fancy football. And on top
of that, remember, like I say, all the time, you
think people are being super sneaky. Bad players think everyone's
being super sneaky. Good players realize that people give off
tells and tell you what they're doing through their body
language and through their actions because they don't care about
hiding stuff. And I'm not over here saying that I'm

(24:17):
great at it, because a lot of times I know
that I don't hide what I'm doing very well, and
I try hard to watch that. But it's probably pretty
obvious when I want a player sometimes with the way
I bid, or I always sit, or what I'm doing,
I'm sure that's somewhat obvious if people pay attention. So
don't always assume people are trying to fool you. Just
watch what they're doing, and most of the time they're
going to tell you what they're doing. So watch out

(24:39):
for the experienced level in your rooms. It's not always
going to mean that just because somebody knows football that
they're going to be good at auctions. My second overall
thought that hit me real hard was in auction rooms
where you feel like it's a really strong room or
a really deep league. The values are going to be
rock solid. I hate to tell you that. To be

(25:00):
rock solid, sometimes you're going to be in a room
where there just isn't a lot of value. I know
that sounds weird, but there will be players that you
believe are valuable. You don't know if you're right. I
got Tyrone Tracy for twelve bucks. I like that value.
I think he's going to touch the ball a ton
for twelve dollars compared to what everyone else is going for.
I like the value. That doesn't mean it's a good value.

(25:21):
He could end up sucking. That could end up being
a wasted twelve dollars. Who knows. My point is, your
valuation doesn't mean a damn thing. The values are going
to be rock solid in general. I didn't get Tyrone
Tracy for four dollars, right. I got Dj Moore for
twenty two. I like the price. I didn't get him
for eleven, right. So there's sometimes you're going to be

(25:43):
in rooms where the values are just rock solid and
there's nothing you can do about it. And the only
thing you can do at that point is try to
pick off any excess value in the room that you see.
It might only be a couple bucks here and there,
but pick off some of that value and then know
your guys ahead of time. We talk about this all
the time that going into a draft, you have to
know which guys you think are going to be part

(26:05):
of that magnification that we talk about all the time
in auctions, the magnification of bad feelings for certain players.
It's a very real thing. I mean, right now, I
can tell you right now, Naji Harris is one of
those players I'm paying attention to. I don't care about
Naji Harris. He's boring as hell to have. I don't
think he's exciting as far as breaking long runs or

(26:25):
doing anything spectacular. But he's a pros pro and they
brought him in for a reason, and everybody's flipping out
and making eye jokes. He's got one eye pirate Naji Harris. Like, Okay,
make your jokes. But what if the dude starts week one?
What if he comes back and he's good by week
two or three or four? Do you really care if
you don't have Naji Harris for a.

Speaker 2 (26:45):
Couple of weeks.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
No, because he's he's like two dollars. You can get
him for like three bucks or four bucks. I mean,
I think he went for four dollars in a fourteen
team expert league. That's a dumb number. Right, he's going
to touch the ball. Now, Let's say like something wacky
happens and he misses the whole season because something bad
happens to his eye the first time he gets hit. Well,

(27:07):
so what you didn't spend fourteen bucks on him, You
didn't spend a seventh round round him. Guys, I spent
a tenth rounder and a fourteen teamer on Nase. That's
nothing like I don't understand the magnification thing, but it's
a real thing. Okay. So sometimes in the room, you're
gonna have really rock solid values, but there are gonna

(27:29):
be certain players that people just refuse to pay for,
and you need to be on the lookout for those players.
And that's overall thought. Number three is that there are
four guys that keep coming back to me over and
over and over in auctions, mox Real, auctions, whatever I'm doing.
There are four guys that keep coming back to me
as guys that I think you should be building your

(27:49):
teams around this year. And those four guys are Courtland Sutton,
David Montgomery, Kyron Williams and James Connor. We're in the
league where the money really tight, the player values are
really strong, and everybody knows what they're doing. Yet Courtland
Sutton went for twenty five bucks. You can easily have
him as your wide receiver two for that price, or

(28:11):
a midleague wide receiver one if you spend up elsewhere.
David Montgomery went for twenty bucks. I'm even surprised he
went that high, but there's a guy in the room
who really likes him, and I thought I was gonna
end up with Montgomery for like seventeen eighteen bucks. He
ended up going for twenty to someone else. But David Montgomery,
Kyrien Williams went for twenty seven dollars. That's an absurd
price for a guy who scored like four hundred and

(28:33):
seven touchdowns the last two years. And then James Connor
went for nineteen bucks. Let me just say right here,
this is a room of really sharp people, and I
understand those aren't the greatest players, But do you know
why the prices are the way they are because nobody
else likes those players either nobody else considers those players
to be super interesting. Now this room is going to
let you have them for too cheap. But I submit

(28:56):
to you in your home leagues, these prices twenty five
twenty five Montgomery, twenty seven for Kyron, nineteen for Connor.
I think those prices are going to fall off a
cliff in your own league. So let's just say, for instance,
if you paid those prices Sutton twenty five, Monti twenty
that's forty five plus nineteen for Connor, that's doing this

(29:16):
in my head sixty four, and then Kyron at twenty
seven is eighty four is ninety one dollars. Okay, So
you spent ninety one bucks out of your two hundred,
and you have your RB one, RB two, RB three,
and wide Receiver two. You can still go spend fifty
bucks on a great receiver. Go spend fifty dollars on

(29:39):
a great receiver. You still have almost sixty dollars to
play with to finish out the rest of your roster.
I mean, you got the core of your roster for
ninety bucks, then you went and bought a top level
player for another fifty and you still have sixty bucks
to play with. I'm not saying that all these guys
are league winners. What I'm saying is the magnification process
is real. And sometimes if you refer back to overall

(30:01):
thought number two about sometimes you're just gonna have rock
solid values in the room. These are the kind of
guys that you have to pay attention to ahead of time,
and you have to think about what's my league gonna
do with these guys. And I'm telling you, if you
start your rosters with these four guys and then build
out some other elite talent around them, man oh man,
I just think that is easy money this year. And

(30:22):
maybe I'm crazy about that, but I think that's easy
money for those four guys. All right, Well, let's get
into the draft a little bit and how my approach went.
I have some anecdotes that I just kind of want
to drop here, not in any particular order, but just
some things explaining some concepts to you that I talk
about all the time and seeing them in real life

(30:42):
acted out in front of me. You know, sometimes I
have the tendency to sit here and I talk all
summer long, and I don't do any actual, like real
auctions until I get into August. Now, do plenty of mocks,
but I don't do any actual auctions. So sometimes I
think to myself, am I actually right about all that?
But you know, the doubt creeps in. But I know

(31:04):
that with my experience that I generally am right about
this stuff. But when it happens in front of you,
it happens in person. I just kind of like nod
my head, like, all right, got that one right. Because
I've been doing this so long, there are some things
that are going to happen, and they're going to happen
no matter what. And a couple of these things happen
in this draft room, and I thought it was really
fun to see these things play out, just because, like

(31:28):
I said, I talk about them all the time and
then they happen in real life. One of the things
was I left five bucks on the board. I have
a tendency to do this. I spend one hundred andninety
five bucks, and part of the reason was I thought
that I was gonna have to pay more for a
few of the guys I got at the end of
the draft, so I left five bucks on the board.
I'm a little bit irritated about that. I'll go into
that a little bit more later. But another interesting thing

(31:50):
that happened was when I got near the end, I
had an eleven dollars max bid, and there were two
other guys that had some money, but they had like
a lot of money, and then Scott Pianowski was sitting
over there with eleven dollars as well as his maxmen.
Now I thought that I was gonna get Wando Robinson
as my wide receiver five, I believe. I just thought

(32:12):
that that was gonna happen because I had the most
money coming down the stretch. For the most part. There's
a couple other guys that had money, but they were
competing for another level of player than me. I wasn't
worried about them, So I wanted to get Robinson out there,
and somebody called him out before I wanted him to
get out there. To be out there, that's one of
those things that you just kind of got a shrug
and there's nothing you can do about it. So somebody

(32:34):
got him out there before I was ready for him
to be out there. I wanted Pianowski to spend a
little bit of his money first, but I thought, okay, well,
my eleven dollars in my max bid, this guy may
only go for six or seven, maybe eight or nine
if worst case scenario. But I'm going to land Robinson,
and then I'm gonna do whatever I can to land
one more good player. Somebody ows up Robinson, somebody says one,

(32:55):
somebody says two, and Pianowski says eleven. Oh, Scott, you
son of a gun. You know Pianowski hasn't been in
my room for two years. I don't think I think
he's been in the other room. And then he was
gone last year. Scott, it busts me up NonStop. All

(33:15):
that guy does is bust me up. Every time I
think I'm getting a deal, he takes the deal from me.
And it only takes one. We've talked about that in
past summers. It only takes one to bust you up
and ruin your plans. And he ruined my plans here
and Wandale Robinson eleven dollars, he said, Scott will be
the first one to tell you, but he was the
best player left on the board other than a couple

(33:37):
guys we didn't have the money for later in the draft,
and Scott just said, hey, I know Drew's going to
bid for him, So rather than let him, letting him
have him, I'm just going to say eleven that's my max,
and I get my last guy that I really care about.
So I got got there. You know, I ended up
thinking overthinking it and saying it's gonna be seven eight bucks.

(33:57):
And I really should have paid attention to the fact
that Scott was the only other one that I was
competing with, and I should have yelled eleven. But you know,
Scott pulled the move on me, and I lost out
on the player. Another interesting thing happened with Scott. Scott
and I did a lot of battling on Saturday, and
one of the players that we went to battle over
was Jalen Hurts. He was the last guy of the

(34:19):
elite quote unquote elite four rushing quarterbacks. I know Burrow
is put in that top tier with those four guys,
but we've got Lamar, Josh Allen, Jalen Hurts, and Jayden Daniels.
Of those four guys, Hurts was the last one to go. Now,
I thought he was going to be a little bit
more expensive. But the interesting thing was Hurts got called

(34:42):
out first last year, but this year he was still
lingering on the board, really deep into the draft. He
got called out at the end of the sixth rounds
so seventy some picks or almost seventy picks in Hurts
got called out after the other three big rushing quarterbacks,
and most people already had their quarterback. There was a

(35:02):
lot of people who had drafted a quarterback or too already.
I didn't have my quarterback yet, and Hurts comes up.
I'm like, I think I'm gonna get it Hurts for
a really nice deal. Now it's possible that he's going
to go for too much because he's the last, you
know guy, But people just didn't have any money at
this point. At the end of the sixth round, believe
it or not, there was so much money gone out

(35:23):
of the room and there were so many quarterbacks already gone.
I really had this fantasy in my head that I
was getting jail it Hurts for like ten or twelve bucks,
and you know what, it almost happened. The weird thing is,
I don't know how this would have played out if
we had a different auctioneer. And so I'm gonna give
Matt a shout out again. Matt's auctioneer team comes in
and does the auctions for us, and they do a

(35:44):
great job. It was a bit of an adjustment for
me last year to have an actual auctioneer. Hey, but no, no, no,
you know that whole thing. They do that, and I've
never had that for an auction before, and they did
it last year. I got used to it last year.
It was totally cool, and once I got used to it,
love it. I absolutely love it. The one thing is,
and Matt and I have talked about this, the one
thing is their job as auctioneers is they run an

(36:08):
auction house, and what they're trying to do is get
the best price for whatever thing it is that they're
auctioning off. Okay, they've got this car and they want
to get the best price for the person who gave
it to the induction off, right, But that's not the
goal of an auctioneer in a fantasy auction, the goal

(36:28):
is to move it along at a consistent pace. And
one of the things that I would say about our
auctioneer was that sometimes he got a little bit caught
up in trying to get a better price, and that
I think that's just years and years of training. I
don't think he's doing that on purpose, and he certainly
isn't trying to screw any one person or anything like that.
At all. The guy is awesome. He did a fabulous job,

(36:51):
but I think sometimes his training kicks in. He's just
trying to get a better price. And I think that
happened with Hurtz, and I actually asked Scott Pianowski about it.
He agreed with me that when the Hurts bidding was happening,
it slowed down in the upper single digits. And I'm like,
oh my god, Jalen Hurts like, I don't have the
money for this, but I'm bidding. So I bid up

(37:13):
to ten and as we're at ten, everything slowed down
or everything stopped. Nobody was doing anything, and the auctioneer
went on for a while trying to get people to bid. Now,
I know that it seems longer when you're waiting on
a player to be sold, but that's why I ask
Scott later. I was like, was that long? He's like, yeah,
it was, but he just went on and on, thinking

(37:34):
that Hurts should be more than ten dollars and thinking
that somebody was going to bid, when in reality he
should have just sold the player. Now, having said that,
had dinner with Scott and I said, Hey, where you
going to bid again? He's like, yeah, I don't think
I would have let that go. Who knows, if he's
under the pressure and under the gun, maybe he lets
it go, and maybe I should have got the guy.
But whatever, that's neither here nor there. One of the
things that it impressed in me was there are sometimes

(37:56):
these factors and these variables that happened in a draft room.
What about technological glitches. What about like you press bid
when there's two seconds left on the clock on sleeper
and it skips and sells the player. There are just
things that are going to happen in a draft room,
and your job is to do your best to adjust
to them. I was a little bit fired up, and
I didn't get him at ten bucks. Then Scott said eleven,

(38:18):
and I said twelve, and then or yeah, I said ten,
Scott said twelve, I said thirteen. He said fourteen, and
I'm like, you know what, I'm just done, Like, I
can't pay this. I was already behind in my par sheet.
I can't spend this money on Jalen Hurtz. I let
him go for fourteen bucks. It was too cheap. But
the bottom line was I didn't want to let my
anger get in the way, like my frustration getting the way.

(38:39):
Anger isn't the right word, just frustrated. I didn't want
to let that get in the way of my plan,
which was that I wasn't going to spend fifteen bucks
on Jalen Hurts, and I might not even have got
him for fifteen. Don't don't forget that sometimes that when
you say, hey, oh he went for fourteen, I got
had him for fifteen. Well that doesn't mean Scott's not
going to say sixteen. So anytime you think that in

(39:00):
your head, just remember you don't always get the guy
just because you would have bid one more, just because
you would have gone plus one. All right. Another anecdote
I wanted to tell was that Xavier Worthy was called
out with a precision showstopper bid this year. Rich Reebar
called out Xavierworthy. And this is an interesting situation because

(39:22):
I don't even really know what to think of it,
because most of the receivers of Worthy's caliber were going
in the twenty dollars range, and they were going even
like twenty to twenty six dollars. And when rich called
him out, he called him out for seventeen dollars as
an opening bid. And I noticed this is a tactic
of riches that he likes to call out a player

(39:44):
and put an opening bid out there that is just
a little bit too low, and then the bidding starts
from there. I like the tactic, it's a fun tactic.
But in this situation, what happened was it won the bid.
It was the weirdest thing I've ever seen. Receivers should
have been more than that. At this point in the draft,
he calls out Worthy seventeen bucks and it goes to

(40:06):
him for seventeen. Now, I don't think he really wanted Worthy. However,
that was a pretty good deal based on what was
happening in the room at that time. I don't know
what the goal of the nomination was, and I can't
even decide if it ended up being good or not.
I mean, I think it was a better. Like I said,
I think it's a deal. But if he called him
out for seventeen and nobody bid, what if he called

(40:27):
him out for fourteen? What if he called him out
for nine? Was he going to get him for fourteen?
Was he going to get him for twelve? I mean,
I don't know, probably not, but man, that was an
interesting moment. I haven't seen that very often, and it
was a whole room of experts there staring at each
other like should we be bidding on this? And then
he just got him for seventeen bucks. That was an
interesting moment. Another interesting anecdote, and then I'm going to

(40:51):
run through the draft real quick before I get done
here and gets you over to discussions Withdrew. But another
interesting anecdote was there was a that I talked to
after the draft and he admitted that he struggled with
the upkeep and with the how quickly things were moving.
And this is something I've heard from a lot of you.

(41:11):
I understand this if you struggle with the upkeep of
all of the cap numbers and all that stuff. First
of all, I'll tell you again the Draft Dominator from
Football Guys is awesome. I've been using it for twenty years.
But on top of that, just get yourself a computer program.
But beyond that, if it's still too much, then just
keep track of your own cap. Okay, just keep track
of your own because you cannot afford to get behind.

(41:35):
And what this guy said was alarming. He said, you know,
I didn't even know who was nominated. Sometimes, he didn't
know who we were bidding on. Sometimes because he's trying
to keep up in the draft. I felt bad for him, Like,
I'm not saying that he's terrible, because he actually did
a pretty good job. But that's not something that you
want to hear from somebody I didn't know who was
being nominated. You don't want to be that person, right,

(41:56):
I'm not saying that he did a bad job. Again,
this is a talented fantasy guy, so he knew what
he was doing in general and still churned out a
pretty nice team. But what do we think about his
expected value over the lifetime of his auction drafting? If
he's missing nominations, it's lower than it could be, right,
I mean, I don't know what it is. One percent,
half of percent, eight percent, Like, I don't know what

(42:16):
it is, but it's Eve suffered, right. It wasn't better
because of that. So that's one of those things that
we just have to keep in mind. Even the best
have these problems. But you've got to figure that stuff out.
And when you figure that stuff out, that's how you
just get better and better. And that's, you know, one
of those concrete examples that I love for you guys
to hear because I feel like all summer long. All

(42:38):
I do is talk about like, oh, there's all these
things that happen, and you don't really get the chance
to see them. All you're like, oh, yeah, right, people
don't know who's being nominated. Well, this is an expert
right here, who's in the middle of an auction, doesn't
know what's happening. Again, not banging on this guy and
saying he was horrible, But it's a reality, So don't
roll your eyes sometimes when I say, hey, hey, keep

(42:58):
track of everyone's cap Oh, of course Drew do that. Well, okay,
but some people it's hard. Okay, it's hard, and you've
got to do it and you have to do it
as much as possible and try to be as good
as you can, and then you get better and better
and faster and faster at it. I mean I struggled.
I mean I was between the comedy duo of Ian
hard It's and Rich Reebar and they were just lobbing

(43:18):
jokes back and forth, and it hurt my I think
it'll hurt my my draft because I was screwing around,
messing around. It's hard, it's hard, and you've got to
stay focused. And sometimes we're not the best at that
sometimes I'm not the best at that. So I really
quickly want to walk through the various stages of the
draft and what I ended up with. I'm going to
tell you my team here real fast because I want

(43:40):
you to hear who I ended up with considering my approach.
So my approach was I was going to pay four
bucks at quarterback. I ended up spending five on Patrick Malmes.
I felt pretty good about that, though. By bucks for
my homes so I spent over one dollar. My Harby
one was twenty. I spent thirty six on Chase Brown,
James Up twenty one, Tyrone Trace d twelve, Jordan Mason eleven,

(44:04):
just As Hill two bucks, and Miles Sanders the dollar,
Lukunakula for thirty nine, DJ Moore for twenty two, Jordan
Addison for twelve, Adam Thielend for five, Christian Kirk for eight,
and Hollywood Brown for eight, and then at tight end
Colston Loveland for seven, Jake Ferguson for five, and Pat

(44:24):
Firemouth for one. Now I'm sure you're girl thinking that's
a pretty weird build, three tight ends and whatnot. But
tight ends are not yeableness lead because there's so many flexes.
You will be flexing and tight end at some point
during the season. So I got three of them. I
think Pat fire Mooth, may you not get the volume
we wanted them to have before they got jumped by
new Smith. But according to people who know things, fire

(44:47):
Mouth is the better pass Jordan, a better likely red
zone opportunity for Aaron Rodgers over Smith. So I like
Firemuth as my third tight end, and I got eleveland
and Ferguson. I'm hoping both of those guys are gonna
do something for me that I can flex one of them.
But I know it's a bit of a weird built
Why Justice Hill, Well, Justice Hill was a really good

(45:09):
player in this format. You just took him in your
line up. Some weeks he's gonna have four in some
weeks he's gonna have fourteen. He's just it's a nice
little floor guy. But I love my depth that running back,
and I love how I executed the plan. Now, the
plan wasn't to go out there and spend five, eight, ten, eleven, twelve.
I was gonna spend a little bit more, and you
saw that in my party from the beginning. So I

(45:30):
did things a little bit odd and it all started
from my initialitial nomination and my initial nomination and was
very clear I was going to go after a low
end RB one who I thought was going to be
a little bit deeper. Now, what I decided to do
was it was between three guys. It was between Chase
Brown and Kyro Williams or John Jacobs who I was

(45:51):
going to nominate, and I just decided that I'm going
to go for Chase Brown because I like him the
best out of those three players. I thought that would
get it discount on him. It turns out I did,
but also later in the draft there was a bigger
discount on Kier Williams and Josh Jacobs, which was frustrating
but not something I could have known at the time.

(46:11):
So when it comes up to me with the fifth nomination,
I nominated Chase Brown. I'd give him for thirty six bucks.
I feel pretty good and I did it. I was
not going to say thirty eight. The person said thirty seven.
I wasn't saying thirty eight, but I said thirty six,
and I regretted it a little bit when I said it,
because I would have rather had him at thirty four.

(46:32):
And when somebody said thirty five. I thought, Okay, I'm
gonna be mad at myself if in a few minutes
Jacobs and Kyrone come up and they go for more
than thirty thirty five. And I just sat there and
didn't open my mouth for Chase Brown, who I like more.
I'm just gonna be so mad about it. So I
just got to say thirty six. And then that's all
the further I'm gone. So I say thirty six. I
ended up getting him. And then when you know it auctions,

(46:54):
this is high insight, it's stuff. There's no way I
can know this. But Iraon William goes for twenty seven
dollars and then later in the draft, Jacobs goes for
thirty one. Oh man, was I frustrated? Now again, I
like Chase Brown better than those two players, but for
nine dollars or five dollars, No, I don't like them better.

(47:14):
For the ouption price, I would absolutely rep I'd rather
add those two guys. So when the draft started, I
don't know that there was much of a cold spell
there at the beginning of the draft. You know, we
talked about the sitting down bonus. I do think Brown
for thirty six was a deal because in the other
room he went for forty three, So I do think
that's a nice deal, but I'm not sure there was

(47:36):
much of a cold room this time. We started out
pretty hot and heavy, and it went fast, and the
prices were high. The wide receivers, especially were still high.
We had an inflection point almost right away when a
couple guys went for cheap Chase Brown for thirty six,
Gent for thirty seven, and then all of a sudden
it snapped and things went off. Ricky Piersall went for

(47:59):
twenty really early in the draft. That's a twelve dollars player,
that's a ten dollars player, you know, for twenty bucks
because people had money Powers for thirty two, McBride for thirty,
Lamb for fifty one, London for forty nine, Nico for
forty six, Maconky for forty four. I'm feeling like I'm
getting an absolute steal with Puka at thirty nine. Now

(48:19):
I know he's dropping like a rock. I get wide.
I don't need to go into that, but all of
these prices were pretty darn high, and I felt great
about getting Puoka for thirty nine and Chase Brown for
thirty six. The prices were pretty good, but the inflection
point happens almost immediately because there's a couple of deals.
The people snapped out of it and just started raging.
And the prices when you called out a player that

(48:41):
people were just bidding. If you called out Neighbors for
twenty it was twenty five, thirty, thirty five, forty forty one,
forty two, forty three, forty four, like they could not
wait to bid their money. Inflection point number two happens
right around the middle of the fourth prices start to
drop a little bit, and I know at that point
when they're dropping that I'm looking for that RB two deal.

(49:01):
And I got it with James Cook at twenty one. Again,
whatever you may think about Cook, he's a fabulous RB
two and for twenty one bucks. All the rest of
the running backs were going from mid twenties around that point,
upper twenties. People were just nervous about him. I understand why,
but I was very happy with that price. And something
interesting happens in the middle here is that we've got

(49:24):
an Ian Harditz effect in the room. Now Ian's in
the room, and Ian's a super smart guy. He knows
how to auction, but he's just buying players for pretty
good deals left and right, and people don't realize that
while he's starting to run low on money, he's got
most of his core of his players. So now he's
down to like thirteen bucks at one point, and there's

(49:44):
still all these good players out there, And when somebody
would call out a good player, he would yell out thirteen,
he would yell at his max bit, and the price
would get up there really quick. And for some of
those players, you may not want to pay much more
than thirteen bucks, but you really don't want it to
go to thirteen because you want to see if player
or of other managers in the room are willing to
pay that money. So there's a bit of an Ian

(50:05):
Harditz effect, and that's going to happen in these drafts, folks.
I mean, that's an important lesson to take away from
this thing, is that all it takes is one person
acting kind of wild in the room to change things.
And Ian's fun and he's having a good time and
he's yelling out bids and he's not doing a damn
thing wrong. He's doing it his way and he's allowed
to do that, and you have to adjust that's on

(50:25):
you to adjust. And my rule for that is, let
him bid his max bid one point and just don't
bid take him out. And there's not enough people in
the room with enough experience that they wanted to take
him out. I want to take him out. And then
after he got a player and his max bid went
down to like eight, he did it again for a
while until his max bid went down to four, and
he did that again for a while. But again, if

(50:47):
you're following it throughout the draft, at the point where
he's yelling at eight, we're talking about ten and twelve
dollars players. I don't want him yelling at eight. I
don't want Tom yelling out four when I could get
a guy for two or three, when he's yelling four
and then I have to pay five. So Ian smartly
knew that people weren't going to want to let him
get that player, and the players were too good to
go for that price, so you could just keep yelling

(51:09):
out the max bit. At some point you just got
to stick him and let him have a good player,
and then he's done. The draft's over for him. At
some point. We should have just let him when he's
at thirteen or fourteen or whatever. Just stopped and just
let him have that player, doesn't matter who it is.
You know, we're not gonna let him have Jefferson for thirteen.
We're too far into the draft. You let him have
a good player, but then you took him out. He's over.

(51:29):
You've effectively neutralized that. I don't know why people don't
like to do that. More So, then prices are dropping
further and further. And then I noticed that all of
a sudden, we're getting these weird single digit players. Drake
May three bucks, Dak four bucks. That's another inflection point.
So we're getting into the fifth and sixth, and I

(51:50):
noticed prices are still dropping further. And then the Xavier
Worthy thing happens, And I said, uh oh, Now, when
I talk about things that happen in a room, a
light bulb should go off in your head. When you
hear Zavier Worthy nominated for seventeen bucks in a room
where players are going for twenty two to twenty eight
and nobody bids ding ding ding, something should be on.

(52:10):
An alarm should be going off in your head that
things are changing. People are nervous about what they're spending
at that point, and that's what happened to me. I said, Okay,
I gotta move quick here because I still needed a
wide receiver too, and I was not that interested in
Xavier Worthy. I ended up getting DJ Moore for twenty
two bucks, and I felt great about that as my
wide receiver too. I wanted to spend twenty nine, but

(52:32):
I was behind it on my par sheet, so I
had to dip down a little bit further than I
wanted to for more. But I get him for twenty
two and then I know the deals are coming. I
know they're coming, So then I end up getting Tyrone
Tracy for twelve bucks. I'm loving that. And then we
hit another inflection point around end of eighth early ninth round,

(52:53):
and I knew this was my time to drop the
hammer because at that point I had spent some money,
but I still had quite a bit of money left.
There were four guys in the room who had money.
Pianowski was one of them, but he was kind of
out of the running because he had most of his
players and he was only going to really get one
more guy that turned out to be the Wondale Robinson.
But then there's a couple guys in the room that

(53:13):
had way too much money. So I was kind of
on an island, and I loved it because I knew
I wasn't gonna have to compete with Scott much longer.
These other two guys that were going to be going
for a couple of the players left that I didn't
care about because I already had the core of my
team and I knew I wasn't going to get them.
So this is a really important moment here that you
guys need to remember is that even when there's more
money in the room, there's a couple things to remember

(53:35):
out this. Number One is just because people don't have
a lot of like total dollars left, doesn't mean they're
going to act rationally with it. Remember Mike Carroll's law
of loose wiring. Just because they're down to twenty one
dollars and they have a thirteen dollars max bid doesn't
mean they're not going to go blow at all on
one player. You may be thinking, oh, they still need

(53:56):
five players. They shouldn't be spending all that in one position.
So what that's what they're going to do? Sometimes loose wiring,
they're just going to act irrationally. Okay, So they may
blow it all on one person. That doesn't mean you
can count on Oh, I'm going to get this player
on this player because they don't want to spend all
this money. Maybe they're planning to spend that money. And
that's actually what happened with Kayleb Williams. All the quarterbacks

(54:16):
were going for one or two dollars, and I thought,
I'm going to get Caleb Williams trying to get some upside.
I already had Dj Moore and Colston Lovelin, so I said,
let me get Caleb Williams, spend a couple bucks on him,
and what if he blows up, and then I've got
an alternative to Patrick Mahomes. So that was my plan.
All along. Quarterbacks are one or two bucks. Somebody calls
on Kayleb Williams and he went for five and I

(54:37):
was like, okay, well screwed that one up. But I
started picking up players Jordan Aison for twelve, Kristen Kirk
for eight bucks, Hollywood Brown for eight bucks, and I
know these other two guys aren't really that interested in
these players, and this was perfect for me, and I
love this part. This is about ninety percent of the way.
Maybe eighty percent of the way through the draft, and

(54:59):
you can really be in a great position here. I
love not having the most money at that point in
the draft. Why because there's gonna be a couple of
players left on the board that you should go after
if you have more money. But if you can forget
about those players, then you're gonna scoop up the deals
while the other two people or the other players in
the room with all the money are thinking they're about

(55:20):
to get the best players. A couple of those guys
were Brian Robinson, a Mecca Agbuka. Both of those guys
went for seventeen and fourteen bucks. Way too much money
for those two guys for that point in the draft, especially,
but in general, that's just too expensive. They should have
been less money. But they were the best players left
on the board, and that people with money could afford
to pay it. I couldn't afford to pay it. It freed

(55:43):
me up to do more to freelance out there and
get Kirk for eight bucks and Thieland for five bucks.
And those aren't exciting players, but in this league their gold.
So they actually had a little bit too much money.
And what ends up happening in this spot is like
I said, people are either going to act irrationally with
their money, blow it all on one person, or they're

(56:06):
really going to affect your end game and it's going
to cause a problem for you. So you got to
figure all this stuff out. And I'm going to tell
you the biggest regret I have was how I finished
with my last six to eight dollars because right near
the end of the ninth round was the final inflection
point when a couple players went for nine ten bucks
and then only two players went for double digits the

(56:27):
rest of the draft. From the tenth round through the
sixteenth round, that's a lot of players and none of
them went for over ten bucks. I'm sorry. Two of
them went for over ten bucks the rest of the draft.
So that's a pretty big deal. And I really thought
at the end of the draft, I was going to
get Kayleb Williams and Taj Brooks on the end of
my bench. I was going to round out that bear stack,

(56:50):
and then I was going to take Brooks because I
have Chase Brown. I got neither of them, folks, neither
of them, and that's because I was trying to scoop
up receivers, and I was really in my zone scooping
up pass catchers, and I was loving that because I,
like I said, I love these floor guys in this
fourteen team league. I feel like I built my roster
better with top end guys like Pooka and Chase Brown,

(57:12):
and I still have you know, DJ Moore and guys
like that Jordanaison with big upside. But then I picked
out some really nice floor guys that I love, Kristin Kirk,
Adam Thielen, Hollywood Brown. Those guys are going to have
a nice floor So I was happy about what I
was doing. But I did not work out the end
of this thing very well. And part of it was

(57:32):
bad luck, and part of it was I sucked because
the bad luck was that people called them out in
spots that I didn't want them to be called out,
So that is just unlucky. But when it comes to
TODs Brooks and Kayleb Williams, they ended up going for
a combined ten dollars. I was at near the end
of the draft where I could have got one of them,
but not both, and unfortunately I got a little bit

(57:54):
greedy trying to get both, and I got neither. I
gave you an example like this a couple of weeks ago,
when I said, you know, you can have your cake
and eat it too sometimes if you play it right.
Guess what I didn't do. I did not play it right.
I ended up with Pat Friarmouth and Miles Sanders and
Justice Hill, and I'm fine with those players as far
as floor plays go. And I might be cutting Miles

(58:16):
Sanders in a couple of weeks. Who knows, I might
be cutting Pat Firemuth in a couple of weeks. I
don't really care, because those guys were supposed to be
one dollar players. But boy would have loved to have
Kavian Williams and TODJ. Brooks instead. Right, those are much
better upside plays at the end of the draft than
it is to take these, you know, guys who may
limp along the seven hundred yards. I'm mad at myself
about how I ended the draft, but overall, I felt

(58:39):
like I spotted the inflection points pretty well, and I
felt like I played the game very well. I have
some serious regrets about Kyrin Williams and James Connor and
a couple of these guys going too cheap and I
wish that I'd played it a little bit differently. Having
said that this is a really tough room. The values
were rock solid. The players are in the room are

(59:00):
just they just know what they're doing, and it's a really,
really tough room, and it's tough to have a team
that you come out of the draft without any holes.
And I felt like I came out of the draft
and I have no holes in my starting lineup. If
Colston Loveland turns out to be something that was part
of what I did at the end of the draft
that really hurt me with Brooks and Williams. I decided
near the end of the draft that Colston Loveland was

(59:22):
one of the top players left that had any upside
on the board, and I said, if I'm going to
overpay a little bit for Loveland, that's okay. I would
never spend seven dollars on Colston Loveland in the first
half of the draft, but when we're seventy five percent
of the way through and he's the best player left
on the board, seven bucks was totally fine. I didn't
love the price, just like I didn't love the price

(59:42):
on Jordan Mason for eleven bucks. But when they're the
better players on the board, and I know people are
waiting for Egg Buca or Brian Robinson, and these are
one of the better players on the board. I'm happy
with that. So I'm happy with pushing myself a little bit.
I went out of my comfort zone a little bit,
and I think my approach largely worked, and I feel
like in a fourteen team league, I have some insane

(01:00:04):
depth with pass catchers and with running backs that I'm
going to be able to stick in my lineup in
those three flexes and really have a nice flour If
Chase Brown and Pooka can stay healthy, I'm Matthew Stafford,
then hey, this is a banger of a team. I
love it. So I really hope that it works out.
And I hope that you enjoyed the conversation. You know,
I could talk about this draft for like three hours,

(01:00:26):
and I'm gonna have Scott Pianowski on the Patreon to
break it down a little bit, So look out for
that later this week if you want to hear more
about the draft. But I hope you got some lessons
out of this today. This is a lot of fun
for me to break this down. But also I think
that when you hear these things that are actually happening
in the room. It helps you to put that stuff
together in your brain about all the theoretical stuff we've

(01:00:47):
been saying all summer. Because folks, this stuff does happen.
The stuff I tell you about it does happen. You're
gonna see these things happen and you're gonna go, oh,
the light bulb is going to go off in your head. Hey,
Drew might have known what he was talking about. So
I hope that you enjoyed this discussion. What do you
say we get onto Matt Harmon with Yahoo because he's

(01:01:08):
gonna have a lot of things to say in my
discussion with him, and that's also going to help you,
not just in your auctions, but in your fantasy drafts
in general, because we're going to break down some players
that I know that you want to hear about. So
let's get off the auction talk for now. Let's get
over to discussions with Drew and Matt Harmon.

Speaker 3 (01:01:27):
Time for Discussions with Drew, in depth conversations with the
brightest minds in the fantasy industry.

Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
Welcome into this week Discussions with Drew. Our guest this
week is Matt harmon analyst for Yahoo Sports as well
as Reception Perception dot com. Matt came on last summer,
but we are excited to run it back again this
summer and we have him back post expo to talk
a little bit about what happened in campon this weekend,
but also to help you prepare for your fantasy drafts.

(01:01:56):
Thanks for coming on to Matt Drew.

Speaker 2 (01:01:58):
Always good to be with you. We were just together
in person for a little bit at the Fantasy Football Expo,
so yeah, it was great to see. It was great
to see everybody. I had a blast and I am
happy to be chopping it up with you here.

Speaker 1 (01:02:09):
Yeah, it's crazy how much I look forward to that,
and it's just over in the blink of an eye,
but it just really does the body good. At this
time of year, we've been grinding so hard. We still
got three four weeks to grind before the season even starts,
So it does you know, it does me good to
see everybody, and certainly you are one of those people.
How do you feel like you did in the King's Classic?

(01:02:31):
How'd I go for you?

Speaker 2 (01:02:32):
Well, first, I'm going to tell a story that I
haven't told you yet because I was saving it because
I knew it was coming on your show. We were
staying on the same floor, on the second floor. You
remember when I was you were you were't going back
to your room. I was going to the gym to
work out. I don't I can't remember what you said
something to me. Now I can't remember what it was,

(01:02:53):
but I'm like, an, I'm an idiot. And I'd left
my key in my room. And there was a woman
who worked at the hotel right behind you and said,
I said, hey, can you you have a key to
the room cause I need like some help getting back in.
I'm moron. I left the key in there, and you
said something funny to me, and and I and she goes,
she goes, what do you She goes, I was like,
I don't even know that guy, Like so, I don't
know why. I don't know. I don't even know that guy.

(01:03:15):
And she goes, yeah, well, I don't know why you're
so intimidated by him. He's wearing bluey shorts. Why are
intimidated by the guy wearing bluey shorts? And I was like,
I was like, well, whoa who said it was intimidated?
I mean, Drew isn't is an intimidating figure. You're you're, You're,
You're a big dude. You are, You're an intimidating guy.
You're a wealth of knowledge, both from a legal perspective
and and uh in the fantasy football space, the the

(01:03:38):
auction space. So I am intimidated by you. But I
didn't want to want her to say I was intimidated.
So that was a funny story I had to I
had to save and tell you all that podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:03:48):
That is really funny. You know. I bet it's the
same woman. I saw her in the elevator and she
said something about my shorts. And it's funny because like
for everybody doesn't know, Like I found these blue shorts
at Target. I was with my daughter on like daddy
daughter date day and we got a Target. She's like,
buy these shorts. I'm like, okay, they're cool. We love
blue in our house, so I buy them. I end

(01:04:10):
up wearing them at the expo and the woman in
the elevator she works with the hotel. I think it's
the same woman. She was kind of like making fun
of me to my face, and it's.

Speaker 2 (01:04:18):
Making fun of you to me too. Yeah, And like
I said, I find it listen. If you can be
just wearing bluey shorts out in the wild, that means
you're comfortable with yourself and you're you're a real man.
So you know what. I again, I was intimidated, and
I didn't want her to say that I was intimidated.
And yet here we are.

Speaker 1 (01:04:37):
I don't know about the intimidated part. I half believe that,
but no, that's got to be the same woman. Because
I thought to myself, like, you're on the clock, working
in this hotel and you're giving me the business and
the elevator about my shorts that I'm wearing. I just
thought that was really really kind of, you know, like
off the reservation there for somebody to be making fun
of my clothes. Who works with the hotel? But right though,

(01:05:00):
I am comfortable with who I am. I love Blue.
I don't care if people know that The Blues Blue
is a great show. When I'm creating content at night,
I watch Blue. I turn it on and and I
watch it while I'm while I'm writing. So hey, I
love it. Yeah, there we go.

Speaker 2 (01:05:15):
In terms of my draft though, yeah yeah. In the
Kings Classic, I felt actually felt pretty good about both
this year came away with Nico Collins in both the
Snake and the Auction UH. In the auction specifically because
I know this is more up your alley. I listen,
anytime I go into one of these, especially fourteen teams,
you got to start three wide receivers, three flexes. You're

(01:05:37):
gonna You're gonna have some goofy players. There's no question
about that. You're gonna have some cartoon more cartoonish than
bluey type players. You have some cartoonish players on your
on your roster, that's for sure. I just want to
come away with a team that you cannot build in
a redraft setting, and it's in a snake setting. So
I wanted to make a prior. I did this last year.
I had a pretty successful season, made the playoffs in

(01:05:58):
last year's UH and the salary cap draft last year.
Came away with Bijon Robinson, Nico Collins, and Brian Thomas Junior,
and it's like, I'll just figure out the rest later.
Brock Purty starting quarterback. Tight end is definitely the weakest
spot on the roster. I went ultra cheap at tight end.
Theo Johnson I'm hoping has a breakout here this year,
which is not a place you really want to be at.

(01:06:19):
But nevertheless, Yeah, so I felt really good about that start,
and again Jalen Waddle, Josh Down, some other guys came
away with a decent receiving core. I feel all right
about it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:29):
I gotta be honest. I've never heard anybody say it
that way before, but I love that approach. I want
to do something that I can't do in a regular
Snake draft, and I think that's cool. I think that's
a fun way to look at it. I kind of
did the same thing from a not from the perspective
of you having those three top guys, but I went
a little bit top more top heavy, and then I

(01:06:52):
really just wanted to like just grab as many like
pass catchers and Rando like running backs that I could
stick in those flecks. I ended up getting my six
or seven guys between five and twelve bucks, which is
just not It's like I had a bunch of eighth
round picks like it was. It was just and that's
just not something you can do and redraft and I

(01:07:12):
I or excuse me, and Snake and so I like
the way you put that. That's cool. So well, I
would love to talk about King's Classic. But before you
came on, I boarded my listeners for an hour talking
about the King's Classic auction and my experience with it.
So we'll move on from that so they don't have
to hear about that anymore. But before we get into

(01:07:32):
the meat of the show, why don't you remind everybody
where they can find you, your socials and you know,
what do you have working on right now that you
want to get some eyes on.

Speaker 2 (01:07:40):
Yeah, Matt Harmon underscore, BIB on Twitter and Instagram, and
right now I'm working on everything, buddy.

Speaker 1 (01:07:47):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:07:48):
So we're five days a week on the Yahoo Fantasy Forecast.
We're live from Sunday to Thursday every day at five
pm Eastern. Had some great shows recently, just did the
wide Receiver position preview with raygar Arvin, who has his
own process for evaluating position with his Trinity model. Obviously
I do reception perception, so we sort of blended our

(01:08:08):
approaches there to take a whole big picture of you.
So yeah, if people would check that out, I would
absolutely love And of course still charting for reception perception
even as the clock needs you know, almost the doomsday
clock on the season starting it gets closer and closer. Actually,
now it's funny, you know, because do you need to
see reception perception on Jamar Chase or Justin Jefferson to
know to draft them? Not necessarily, so I usually actually

(01:08:31):
save those guys for August and some sleeper players. So
I'm working on a very interesting mix of guys there
right now. But it's all it's always fun to check
in on the superstar players and see exactly where they slot.
So those are the kind of main things I'm working
through right now.

Speaker 1 (01:08:44):
Okay, well, I was a former subscriber reception perception. I
think I let my subscription lapse because I tried to
look at something the other day and it wasn't there.
But I love your site because not only you know,
people are familiar with the charts of the red and
yellow and green, but you know, Matt also writes up
a really nice, meaty look at each receiver that he charts,

(01:09:09):
so it's not just the charts. Get over there and
check that stuff out at reception perception. But of course
Yahoo as well, because we're burying the lead there. He's
doing a lot of work for them as well. Okay, well,
I don't think this was on purpose, but our show
sheet has a lot of receivers on it. I honestly
didn't try to pigeonhole you there. But the thing I

(01:09:30):
wanted to look at today, when we're going into this
time of year, is that the ADP tends to start
moving quite I don't know what the way to say
it is, but it moves quite erratically because people see
something in camp. They see somebody catching a long touchdown,
they see an injury that scares them, they see a

(01:09:52):
depth chart comes out that makes them think differently about
a player. These are all things we kind of tend
to want to ignore for the most part, but the
movement does matter for us because we're going to be
walking into these rooms trying to figure out what the
values are, especially in auction drafts, but in general, we
want to know if these moves are things that we

(01:10:13):
should be behind. And one of those guys that I
noticed this weekend, particularly in the King's Classic Drafts, was
Calvin Ridley. He's more expensive than I expected him to
be this time of year because he has not really
been moving up that much. And I just kept saying,
I don't know why we have such a depressed ADP.

(01:10:33):
Because it's just been a very quiet offseason for cam Ward.
For a number one pick, it's been pretty quiet. But
then lately I've seen the buzz on Ridley really building,
and especially with a nice little start to the preseason
game the other night, I think he had three for
fifty maybe the other night. So what are your thoughts
about Calvin Ridley climbing up draft boards? And I saw

(01:10:53):
as I was moving across your timeline a little bit,
you talked about him being a strong downfield receiver. How
do you feel like Ward and Ridley are going to
get along this year? And do you feel like Ridley's
move up the ADP ranks is appropriate right now?

Speaker 2 (01:11:08):
I think that, yeah, the ADP is just catching up
here to where it probably should have been all along,
because you know, throughout like most of Best Ball Summer
and look a lot of Best Ball drafters, they want
to take rookies. They want to take upside swings, and
typically we associate upside with youth and the new things,
and when we're like these younger players. That being said,

(01:11:29):
I think that Ridley when going as like wide receiver
thirty five or something in some of those early Best
Ball drafts there's a lot of upward mobility from there.
So I think we're just seeing the correction getting it
closer to where it should Because even before I charted
Ridley for reception perception, his profile came out in like
in July. Was kind of when I got that done.
You just look at Ridley last year. Yeah, thousand yards

(01:11:50):
was top ten in yards per route run against man
coverage in an awful offense. And I actually think the
Brian Callians offense is well designed as well put together.
We know they added offsive line upgrades, but it just
they didn't have the quarterback play. And I'm so glad
you point out cam Ward and the sort of the
quiet kind of discussion around Hi as a number one
overall pick. You know, I just did the I Do
Football three on one for Yahoo Sports as well, which

(01:12:12):
is not a fantasy shows football show. Nate and I
were Nate Tyson and I were just talking about how just
like disrespected the Titans are in the national conversation, Like
if I was a Titans fan to be so annoyed
that their preseason game is completely buried, it's not a
prime you know, like this, this is the number one
overall pick. In the draft. And he's a really good
quarterback too. Like he's not just some elevated in a
bad class. He's the type of guy that could come

(01:12:33):
in here and immediately make a guy that was productive
last year as a downfield receiver more of a well
rounded threat. And when you look at Calvi Ridley from
a reception perception standpoint, he definitely wasn't at his peak
form in Jacksonville the year prior, but they were also
using him as just like an on the line of
scrimmage X receiver never really in motion. He played more
flanker last year for the Tennessee Titans, just took fifty

(01:12:55):
point five percent of his snaps off the line of
scrimmage and he actually had one.

Speaker 1 (01:13:00):
For one second. Though, when you say you played more
flanker as opposed to what like, fill our people in
like what they're visualizing here with that comment.

Speaker 2 (01:13:07):
Sure, So when I say he's like playing X receiver
for the Jacksonville Jaguars, he's on once he's just like
tethered to the outside the farthest boundary receiver and he's
on the line of scrimmage. So you're watching these like
modern NFL offenses, right, now all these guys you know,
are moving around pre snap motion. You have to be
off the line of scrimmage prior to the snap to
be eligible to do that. You can't be on the

(01:13:28):
line and then move move off of it. Like to
have a functional formation, you need to have two guys
on the line of scrimmage. So again, it just it
allows for more efficient targets. So the flanker is an
outside receiver who's off the line like that, so there
can be some of that movement. You can kick into
the slot, you know, think about it, and teams are
doing this now with these like switch release motions where

(01:13:49):
the guy lines up in the slot off the line
of scrimmage and then kicks quickly to the outside before
the ball is snapped. So it just allows you more versatility,
of more fluidity within your role as the wide receiver.
So definitely some of the best receivers, none of the
best receivers in the league basically at this point, Drew
except Nico Collins are like true like just X receivers
only anymore, almost everybody moves their number one around a

(01:14:12):
lot ridley. You saw the benefits of that last year,
and even in isolation, one of his better seasons against
press coverage. His man coverage score goes up from the
last year in Jacksonville. So I think in isolation had
a really nice year last year. Now he gets a
quarterback who I think will hit him on some more
like routine throws as opposed to just the downfield heaves
that we saw last year.

Speaker 1 (01:14:31):
I'm glad to hear you say that about cam Ward
because I've just been like taking like I'm over here
taking crazy pills. I'm i the only one who's like,
why is nobody talking about the number one pick and
how much better the Titans offense could be even if
he's just average as a rookie, right, it's got to
be better than Will Levis and Mason Rudolph. It just
has to be. I don't know, but maybe I'm maybe

(01:14:52):
I'm maybe I am the crazy one. But I'm glad
to hear you say that. So all right, I want
to talk about a little bit about Los Angeles. How
can cocerned? Are you with the Rams right now? In
the situation with Matthew Stafford. I keep bringing this up
on the show, but it's something that I continue to
get questions about. Where are you moving pokin A Coua
and DeVante Adams around because one of the things I've

(01:15:13):
said is, and I saw Dwayne McFarlane talking about this
actually last night on Twitter, that it's one of the
better quarterback situations in the league as far as having
to go to your backup, it may be the best
backup in the league. I don't know. Jimmy Garoppolo isn't
the guy that we love certainly, but he's a pro
who can get the ball out. So how concerned are
you about pokin Acua and Devanta Adams right now? Should

(01:15:36):
they be dropping like they are because they're dropping pretty quick.

Speaker 2 (01:15:39):
Yeah. I think the Garoppolo is a guy that well.
Number One, they love Garoppolo in Los Angeles. They were
definitely when they were in that kind of not contentious
but the quarterback negotiation with Matthew Stafford there the contract stuff.
They were kind of getting it out in their media like, oh,
you if we have to start Jimmy Garoppolo, we're fine
with that, which is probably not probably not what they
wanted obviously, but nevertheless, I do think there is a

(01:16:01):
lot of love for Jimmy and that in that building
and in this offensive family like the tree Anyways, I mean,
he had some incredibly efficient seasons with the forty nine ers.
I think he's declined physically just because he's had a
lot of injuries and things of that nature. But I
think he's a guy who can get the ball out
quickly to his first read, which for a guy like
pukin Akua, I've definitely dropped him from maybe like a
top five wide receiver to around that like seven to

(01:16:23):
eight range. And look like in my tiers, which on
reception perception, I always put up my tears cheat sheet,
like if you want to op for somebody like aman
Ros Saint Brown over pookuin Akua, because you just you
know who's thrown to the ball. He's a really good
player's own, right, I think that's okay, But I still
kind of have him in that like seven to eight range,
and because again he's gonna get a lot of those

(01:16:43):
like layup first read targets. Adams is the one that
is a little more difficult because he's going to rely
on touchdowns more so as the number two receiver most
likely there, he's going to rely on more of the
deeper targets, and we've seen the Jimmy Garoppolo Devonte Adams
connection not be so fruit full for DeVante Adams. I
mean he got him, he got him benched in Los Angeles.
We don't need to like rewrite history there. So I

(01:17:06):
think he's definitely somebody that I still have kind of
hanging around the top twenty wide receivers. But I think
there will be more volatility than if Stafford was there.
And look like we just don't know what's going to
happen with Stafford. He's in something called an ammortal chamber.
I mean, I know, Drew, you're you're a big time
baller over there, but I can't afford the a mortal chamber.
I don't know what that is. A hundred It goes
for one hundred and fifty nine thousand dollars. So we'll

(01:17:28):
see what that means for Stafford. Is he going to
be available all season? If he's even if he is
available for week one, I think you got to adjust
to the ADPs right now for these guys.

Speaker 1 (01:17:40):
Okay, that's fair, And to be honest, on my public
defender's salary, I can afford two a mortal chambers. Not
just nice. I've I've got two parked out front.

Speaker 2 (01:17:49):
So I hope to be more like you someday when
I grow up.

Speaker 1 (01:17:52):
Drew Right, I mean, you know, when you get into law,
you know the money is at the public Defender's office.
That's what that's what you do. So okay, how about
DK Metcalf, because this is an interesting spot for him.
Early in the offseason, I remember having a conversation with
Jason Wood football guys about the fact that that Metcalf

(01:18:15):
was going to just be a target hog for Aaron Rodgers.
I'm a little bit concerned about the fact that not
only do they have Art Smith there, and I feel
like that CAP's a wide receiver one's target potential, But
just in general about the offense, I don't know what
we're going to see with an aging Rogers. I still
think he could throw the ball reasonably well last year,

(01:18:36):
and he certainly lit up Garrett Wilson with a lot
of targets. But we know the situation here is not
great behind Metcalf, so maybe he is a target hog.
I don't know what to think. He's going off the
board right now as wide receiver twenty one. That seems
pretty reasonable, but I just am not ending up with
Metcalf on a lot of teams. What are your thoughts

(01:18:57):
about DK this season?

Speaker 2 (01:18:59):
I am also not ending up with DK Metcalf on
a lot of teams. And I think this is something
we got to talk about in fantasy when we say, hey,
you know, this guy's going to be a target hog.
Drake London in his rookie season with under Arthur Smith,
was a target hog. He had a whopping twenty nine
point three percent of the team targets that year. That
equaled one hundred and seventeen targets because they were so

(01:19:22):
run heavy, so that it's just like, I think that
it's tough to say, like where they're going to be
offensively right, because I think Rogers is styling and what
he wants and what we saw in New York the
last few years where it's very spread out, you're running
the wide receiver one is running a lot of slants, outs,
go routes, and he's doing some of these like free

(01:19:44):
access throws, like, oh, I identify the mismatch the line
of scrimmage and that's where I'm going. Arthur Smith's offense
is very different from that. And I actually think that
Arthur Smith's offense first of all again, like who's meeting
in the middle here between two Let's just call him
big personalities with Aaron Rodgers Arthur Smith. But I actually
think that Arthur Smith's route tree from an X receiver
perspective fits DK Metcalf really well. If you look at

(01:20:07):
Drake Lennon's rookie season, AJ Brown's two seasons under Arthur
Smith and George Pickens last year, like the number one
X receiver in that offense, he's running diggs post slants
on forty four percent of all four of those guys
forty four percent of their routes that year, which I
think DK running those inbreaking routes fits him well. But
Rogers does not like to throw a lot of those

(01:20:27):
like digs in posts. He wants to work underneath and
then launch go routes, which at Metcalf at this point,
I think he's gonna get peppered with some slants. But
there's just like a big, chunky area where Metcalf's going
to be running his routes that Rodgers has just had
a real aversion to throwing over the deep middle and
intermediate middle of the last few years, So I think

(01:20:48):
he's gonna be very I think he's got big weeks. Bet.
I think he's going to be a very, very volatile
player this year.

Speaker 1 (01:20:53):
Yeah, and it seems like maybe we're baking in some
of that risk because wide receiver twenty one. I mean,
we know that he has the ability to to get
into the top twelve. I just don't see it in
this offense. So I think I'm with you there, and
you know you called him big personalities. I love the
quote that Aaron Rodgers is a complicated fella, and I

(01:21:14):
remember hearing that, and that's all I can think about
when I think about these two guys butting heads. Because
one of the things I heard, and I have no
way of knowing this, but one of the things I
heard was that Rogers did a lot of checking out
of plays last year, and I just don't know that
Art Smith is gonna love that. I don't think that
he's gonna love Rogers going to running his own offense
at the line all the time. So I don't know

(01:21:35):
how that's gonna turn out. But good insight there on
the Pittsburgh situation. Speaking of Pittsburgh, we've got George Pickens
now in Dallas, and we have seen in the past
with Dak Prescott that he can support to wide receivers,
and we saw that Michael Gallup had a really nice

(01:21:55):
year with Prescott when he was healthy. Now we're hoping
of that Prescott is healthy heading into the year. But
how concerned are we about the offensive environment here and
what they want to do in Dallas? Can they support
another receiver? Because it sure seems like there's some helium
in George Pickens ADP right now. So I'm a little

(01:22:17):
bit concerned about I liked him earlier in the offseason
when he was a little bit lower. Now it feels
like he's getting into that territory where he's really got
to be a wide receiver two for you and he's
got to produce right away. Does he have the upside
that people think that he does.

Speaker 2 (01:22:31):
I think so. You know. I write a piece on
Yahoo every year called my like Draft Day Blueprint and
the play that one of the sections is who's the
guy you want in every single draft At the time,
like early August, because George Pickens was still ranked around
like wide receiver thirty in consensus rankings, I would like,
that's the guy I wanted every single draft because I
think he's so he's maybe the most mispriced player in fantasy.

(01:22:53):
If he's going to be around wide receiver thirty, I
have him ranked more closer to like wide receiver twenty
because which yes, he does need to be a wide
receiver two for you in that scenario, I think he
can be. I to look at this situation and I think,
why can't George Pickens be, you know, the T Higgins
to Ceedee Lambs Jamar Chase Because I think this team
they're not going to be as bad on defense as
the Bengals were last year because Michael Parsons will be there,

(01:23:15):
and if Michael Parson is on the field, their defense
isn't going to be twenty twenty four Bengals bad. But
they have holes in the secondary. They could be in
a lot of negative game scripts. They don't have a
great running back room right now. I think they could
push to lead the NFL in pass attempts and Pickens
is a guy who could approach double digit touchdowns because
he's a factor around the end zone. And I think
the most important part of this is that last year

(01:23:36):
Pickens really took a big step forward as an individual player.
He's somebody that hasn't always been super consistent, is still
not super consistent, but goes to you know, seventy two
point eight percent success rate versus man seventy seven point
six percent against press in RP. Like he can fit that.
He can fit that like number, like that X receiver
role which was vacated on this team since Michael Gallup.

(01:23:58):
It kind of started to fall apart after the injury.
So I think it's a very past heavy team. A
guy who can be like a needle moving number two
for them. I'm comfortable having him ranked very ahead of
most other consensus rankers.

Speaker 1 (01:24:11):
Yeah, and ADP tends to lag a little bit, so
I'm seeing him as wide receiver twenty eight with football
guys ADP. But that, like you said, he was thirty
just like a week ago. He's moving up and there's certainly,
certainly in the King's Classic rooms we were not getting
him aywhere near wide receiver. Oh yeah, No, So I
think that's going to be the case. I think people
know the name, they're excited about him. I just don't

(01:24:34):
see him coming off the board as a low and
wide receiver three. I just don't think that's happening. So
you just got to make that choice. If you think
that's going to be something that he can do. It
sounds like you do, and I'm buying into it more
than I wanted to. I just make it a habit
of trying not to draft guys that I think have
they have the potential to blow up mentally, and I

(01:24:56):
think that's one of Pickens' issues, And I'm trying to
talk myself down from that, because if he's successful and
they're playing well and he's getting some targets, he's gonna
be great.

Speaker 2 (01:25:04):
But playing for contract too, you know. I mean, that's
another thing that's if he's if he's if he's not
locked in now, and look, I'm with you, buddy. It
does not make me feel great to say this is
the player I want in every single draft, because this
is a guy that has not been a consistent not
just on the field, but off the field. Not a
guy you can set your watch to, you know. But
I just think he's got every reason to be locked

(01:25:27):
in with the best quarterback and best offensive environment. You know,
since the Pittsburgh Seals are thirty second in the league.
Since George Pickens entered the NFL in touchdown passes, thirty
second breaking news there's only thirty two teams in the NFL,
so this is a pretty big departure in terms of
passing ecosystem that he's going to here.

Speaker 1 (01:25:46):
Great point, great point. The Steelers are just atrocious and
number of total offensive touchdowns too has been pretty low.
I remember looking at that last offseason. So yeah, okay,
all right, Well let's talk about the San Francisco forty
nine Ers. I can't stop talking about these guys either,
because I just want to get everybody's take on the
Juwan Jennings Ricky Piarsoll debate. And I know that a

(01:26:07):
lot of people think that it's pearsol and certainly Jennings
is facing something that has to color our attitude here,
but that's what we're here for. Because Jennings reportedly has
a calf strain that was bothering him earlier in the
off season and he re injures it. I never like
to hear the re injury, especially with a calf. And
there's also rumors that maybe he's kind of like milking

(01:26:28):
in a little bit because he wants the contract. But
we now know from a forty nine Ers GM John Lynch,
that we think that Ayak is probably going to be
a week six guy something like that. So we've got
six weeks of runway here for these two gentlemen to
ramp up in Iyac's absence. And of course it's going
to be even longer than that because Iake's not going

(01:26:49):
to come step into one hundred percent snapshare and dominating everything.
So what do we think about Jennings versus pearsol? Who
do you want? And let's just assume that Jennings gets
to week one, he's feeling all right, he's got over
the contract stuff. Who do you like between these two guys?

Speaker 2 (01:27:07):
Yeah, I think the answer is to definitely take your
shots on both. You know, if you see one golf
the board like, that's when you want to start looking
at the next one. Uh, provided you know the board
is just falling that way for you. Because I agree
with you about Ayuk where he's it's sometimes it's the
year after the year. When it's when it's an injury
like this, you know, multi ligament knee tear. He's going
to miss games into the season. And I'm the like

(01:27:30):
Ayuk's biggest fan. I think the guy is like a
fringe top ten real life NFL receiver. When he's when
he's right, He's a top ten NFL receiver, not fringe.
So like, that's how good he is. But it might
not be till twenty twenty six, if ever, that we
see that guy again because of the injury is coming
off of So I would like, yeah, in your scenario
where we ignore the calf injury, I still think that
I'm prioritizing Ricky Piersoll because I think Jennings showed himself

(01:27:54):
to be a good competent, you know, fine starting NFL
receiver last year. I know the per route Zell. Love
what Juwan Jennings did last year. I think he again
kind of an average separator, but great ball skills, really
good contested catchability, and he makes like the first defender
miss quite often. He's a physical player who rugged reliable

(01:28:14):
breaks tackles. So I like Juwan Jennings. I don't really
have anything bad to say about Juwan Jennings. I think
a Ricky Piersoll was awesome in the final four games
last year. Forget the stats where obviously he smashed against Detroit.
He was obliterating man covers towards the end of that year,
and he's somebody that they want to be a multi
positional player. You could even see this after he came
back in week seven from getting shot in the chest,

(01:28:37):
which is just insane. Shot in the chest, Drew. You
could see his play wasn't up to snuff yet. But
the role that they had him in where he's running
a lot of these like whip routes, return routes, option routes,
that's not like, oh, he's Deebo Samuel's replacement. No, that's
its own like individual role. So I think he's a
priority player for them, especially as they're transitioning to a

(01:28:59):
different style of offense in San Francisco where they're more
drop back heavy, putting more on brock Perty's plate. I
just think the Piersol is an a sending player that
still goes way late in drafts. Again, I'm comfortable with Jennings,
but right now my slight lean, especially because Jennings has
not been healthy, iSER is to Ricky Piersoll.

Speaker 1 (01:29:18):
I don't think you're alone there, certainly everyone lately. Right
after the calf injury, I knew that pier Saw was
going to go crazy. He went I think somebody nominated
him fourth or fifth. No, I was fifth, So I
think fourth in the auction on Saturday, and he went
for twenty bucks right out of the gate, and twenty

(01:29:38):
bucks for that kind of a player. If he's nominated
three quarters of the way through the draft, he's going
for ten or twelve. But when everyone has their money,
they're excited about Ricky Piarsol. I'm a little bit concerned
about my ability to land him. But then again, maybe
in home leagues there's just not as much people paying
attention and being tuned into what he can do.

Speaker 2 (01:29:59):
Yeah, would be less helium there, but still, like I've
been consistent on him throughout the course of the offseason,
this is this is a guy I loved as a prospect.
I really want to bet on him. And yeah, just
last point on this too, I do I do see
people say, Hey, the calf injury, that's just because he
wants the contract. You don't know that, Okay, we don't.
We don't mean you're making a huge assumption there, So
don't just like any anyone who's listening to this, and

(01:30:22):
you hear your favorite analysts say that, like approach that
with some skepticism. You can't just YadA YadA that you're
not in the.

Speaker 1 (01:30:28):
Building totally agree. And and the thing that I said
at the beginning that concerns me the most is if
it's a reinjury, those things just they take you, you know,
even longer then they're they're going to want to be
certain that they don't lose him the whole year, or
that it turns into an achilles issue. So if it
is a reinjury and it is serious, you know, he
may not be ready for Week one. And I'm concerned

(01:30:49):
enough about drafting healthy players that are going to get
hurt that it makes me shy on Jennings at this point.
So all right, this next question I have for you
is purely a product of our buddy Rich Reebar because
I sat next to him for six hours this past
weekend and oh, I'm sorry, Yeah, I know, well, you
know it. It was the Rich and Ian comedy show.

(01:31:12):
They were kind of close to each other. It was
a little hard to stay focused with those two. I
had a lot of fun. I'm not sure it helped
my draft results. But Rich said, you know, there's guys
every year that the fancy community likes to bury, and
they bury him a little bit early. He believes that
Cooper Cup is not done that we're burying him a
little bit early, that he's going to have a significant

(01:31:34):
role there in Seattle. But some people that I trust,
that I listened to, that have looked at what he
did last year, they think he's done. They think he's washed,
he couldn't separate last year, and that he's just really
not a fantasy asset we want to be investing in
this year. What's your take on Cooper Cup right now?

Speaker 2 (01:31:51):
Yeah. I think, first of all, whenever I talk about
wide receivers, I will say that the which is often
I will say that the thing I have learned to
be the least confident in forecasting with like certainty is
how declines work at this position, because now I can
tell you when a player is in decline and the
decline phase has begun. And I think for Cooper Cup,

(01:32:14):
the decline phase has begun. If you look at the
last three years, so twenty twenty two to twenty twenty four,
his success rate versus man coverage goes seventy point six percent,
sixty five point two percent down to fifty point five percent.
Last year. Success rate versone follows the same model, and
he's always been a better zone beater than a man
Beater is that interior, big power slot receiver. His twenty

(01:32:35):
twenty one season is actually still the second best success
rate versone I've ever charted, But and he would almost
double that up in twenty two. When he's at an
eighty seven point three percent, goes down to eighty three
point three percent in twenty three, seventy six percent in
twenty twenty four. So there's a definitely like we're we're
we're declining here. The thing is with wide receivers, sometimes
the decline goes like this, it's a little it's a decline,

(01:32:58):
and then it's right off the cliff. Other times and
like I can you know, Dez Bryant with the Cowboys
was like that, Alan Robinson, you know, one of my
favorite players at his peak. He was like that right
where there was a small dip his last year in Chicago,
and then you saw him in year one with the
Rams and oh man, like that guy's it's over. Then
there's other players. Keenan Allen is like this where he's

(01:33:18):
been on that decline, but it's been a steady sort
of decline. I think he's still like a useful player
in an NFL offense, And I think Cooper Cup could
be like archetype wise, that player who has like the
He's kind of in that like steady decline phase right now.
I just don't know what the next year looks like
for him, and because I have enough questions about the

(01:33:39):
ecosystem overall, like how pass heavy they're going to be.
I think he is strictly like a slot only guy
right now, where Jackson Smith and Jig but is somebody
that has played in the slot, but I think has
the man coverage ability to play on the outside. He's
somebody that I want to I want to bet on
the young ascending player. Like again, I think Cooper Cup
could still be useful for an NFL team and maybe

(01:34:00):
even have some useful weeks as like buried in the
wide receiver rankings. I'm just skeptical that there's a lot
of upside to get there.

Speaker 1 (01:34:10):
That's where I've been at, and I've largely been ignoring
him until I sat next to Rich for six hours
and you know, here I am questioning what I believe.
But you mentioned his teammate Jackson Smith and Jig. But,
so let's pivot there. I originally in the off season
was just sort of out on the whole situation because
they switch coordinators, they switch quarterbacks, they get rid of

(01:34:33):
Metcalf and Lockett. Now, I know it looks like a
pretty clear path for him to just absolutely have a
stranglehold on the target market share there. But what do
you think about his ability to step into the alpha
role to be the guy? Do you think he loses
some slot snaps or do you think that's not something

(01:34:55):
I should be concerned about. How do you feel about
JSN this year?

Speaker 2 (01:34:58):
I do think again, Jackson with the Jigs, a guy
that's always been a very underrated man coverage beating wide
receiver last year right around seventy five percent, which is
what he was as a prospect too. Definitely a guy
that I think can separate on the outside. And I
think with this coaching tree in particular, you know, Clint
Kubiak coming from New Orleans, comes from the San Francisco
forty nine ers. His last name is literally Kubiak. His

(01:35:20):
father is one of like the og guys in this
family tree. This team right now, and this is true
of the Rams too. They're so condensed. And what I
mean by that is you've got your offensive line here,
you know, and the receivers are tighter to the offensive
line than they are in your typical sense. When these
guys are way spread out, it kind of blurs the

(01:35:41):
lines between outside receiver like the flanker and the slot receiver.
You're gonna be able to get so many free releases
that it kind of again, it kind of blurs. And
I think the fantasy community is sharp on a lot
of things, but I think the way we view outside
versus inside receivers can be a little archaic at times
because these modern NFL offenses are blue the lines for
us with these condensed formations. So I don't really have

(01:36:03):
too many concerns about him as a player, but I
number one, he just goes in an area of drafts
where I haven't really been targeting wide receivers, like my
third tier of wide receivers. It's not that I dislike
these players. I just think that there's not a big
difference between some of the ceiling and floor projections for
wide receivers in Tier three that go in like rounds

(01:36:24):
three to four and the guys that go in rounds
five to eight. You know, some of the names there
are like Calvin Ridley, who we discussed like what's other
than age, right, And I think Garret Wilson's a better player,
But like projections wise, Garrett Wilson goes in the third round,
Calvin Ridley goes way later than that. I really don't
think there's that big of a difference fantasy wise between
the way you're projecting those players. So I think if

(01:36:45):
somebody's gonna hit out of that third to fourth round
wide receiver range, it's gonna be one of the young
guys like a JSN, like a Marvin Harrison junior or
something like that. But I just haven't really been drafting
wide receivers there very much.

Speaker 1 (01:36:57):
Yeah, Jsn's ADP is a little bit weird for me
because near the end of the second, you know, we're
talking about two three turn, that's where you really got
to grab him, and there's players I'm more excited about
in that area. And then when I really feel like, okay,
now I want to draft ASM in the middle of
the third, he's not there. So it's just I don't
have a lot of him because it's just a circumstance thing,

(01:37:18):
and I'm not going to go into an auction and
just be like I'm setting my sights on Jackson Smith
and Jigwa. That's not where I've been. Having said that,
I'm not I don't object to the player, and I
do think that perhaps with the right volume here, he
could just have another awesome season. And I'm fully prepared

(01:37:38):
to just be a little bit irritated with myself in
week three or four when I see him gobbling up,
you know, another nine for one hundred game. But okay,
I want to ask you one more We got to
get you out of here in just a minute, but
I want to ask you about one more situation. Then
I'm going to have you leave our audience with a
few targets and fades that you're thinking about for the season.
The last situation I want to ask you about is

(01:37:59):
withon Coleman in Buffalo. I feel like we started to
see a little bit of an emergence of his ability
to take over games and what we thought he might
be when he was drafted. I feel like we started
to see that a little bit right before he got hurt,
and I talked about this on the last week's show.
But he gets the wrist injury. He struggled down the stretch.

(01:38:23):
Of course, he has some flashes here and there, do
we think that Keon Coleman can take the next step
as a fantasy producer and NFL wide receiver, because I
just don't know what to think of him. Like I said,
I think there were some flashes that he was starting
to emerge. He gets hurt, so I don't really know
where that leaves us with Coleman. What are your thoughts? Uh?

Speaker 2 (01:38:42):
Yeah, I think Coleman's a guy that can succeed in
the right role. I thought coming into the league he
was one of these guys that was sub thirty fifth
percentile success rate versus man and press in reception perception
as a prospect. Historically, if you're going to be a consistent,
high volume hit out of that range, you've got to
kick into the slot. Cooper Cup, who we talked about,

(01:39:03):
is one of those guys. A'mon Ross Saint Brown is
one of those guys. Was a perimeter receiver at USC.
He kicks into the slot and he's one of the
best receivers in football. You know, Cooper Cup obviously had
a record breaking year jujusmth Schuster, Rashi Rice, There's a
lot of examples here, and then in year one with
the Bills, he basically only lines up as an outside
X receiver. He never kicks into the slot because they

(01:39:24):
have a lot of slot options there. Now, is that
going to change this year after they sign Josh Palmer,
who's probably more like a flanker guy there as well.
I don't know, but I don't think that that doesn't
mean just because I don't think his ceiling will be
maximized as an outside receiver, that he'll be useless, because
I actually think like he's a the thing that he
needs to become if he's going to be a good

(01:39:45):
player on the outside, he has to be like an
a tier ball winner. And to your point about the
wrist injury, that's what I think we saw decline over
the course of the year, is that he was he
really struggled in contested situations. Not only he was perfect,
but for the wrist injury. Because I think he's a
bit of a mistake prone player. And you even see
the reports out of training camp that the highs are

(01:40:06):
high and the lows are low. I kind of think
that's just gonna be the key on Coleman experience. That
being said, I mean, what he's you go like wide
receiver fifty five or something right now, he's outside the
top fifty receivers, especially in best ball formats. You can
take the swing on that.

Speaker 1 (01:40:20):
Yeah, and that's that's ultimately where I land. He's just
so cheap it doesn't matter. And hey, if we're trying
to find the wide receiver one or wide receiver one
A for Josh Allen and it ends up being Coleman,
we're gonna feel a little dumb if we didn't take
some more shots laid on him. So yeah, the Keon
Coleman experience. I see a fantasy team name in my future.

Speaker 2 (01:40:41):
It's kind of like the Calvin I used to call
it the Kelvin Coaster when Kelvin Benjamin was the wide
receiver one for Cam Newton. Again, another guy that didn't
really separate consistently, ironically come out of Florida State too.
Like those guys can be high volume players. Is going
to be a rocky road if they are.

Speaker 1 (01:40:57):
Yeah, well, and if you have measure wide receiver four
or five or a flex or whatever, then hey, you're
all right with that? So okay, well, look I want
to get you out of here. We both have some
appointments to keep this afternoon. But my favorite thing to
do at the end. And what my audience loves is
to hear a couple of your favorite targets, a couple
of players you're fading. Just name a couple of two, three,

(01:41:21):
however many you got loaded up there. Who are you
clicking a lot of and who are you unable to
click when it comes to your turn in drafts?

Speaker 2 (01:41:29):
Yeah, so two guys I think everybody should just be
relentlessly targeting right now is a Mecha Buca and Matthew Golden.
These are two first round rookie receivers who were second
in third and success rate versuszone coverage last year. Two
guys that were worth first round grades that they got,
and look, they go super cheap because of ambiguous target
tote like target trees, but due to injuries in both situations,

(01:41:54):
like the target trees actually might not be super ambiguous.
Chris Goddroin and Tampa Bay Jaden Reed and Green Bay
didn't even realize that the Bays. But yeah, so, like
I think these guys fit the offense and fit the
quarterbacks really well. So like they're not just these like
offseason helium balloons. You just don't get a lot of
chances like in Yahoo adp Right now, those guys both
go outside the top one hundred and twenty picks. You

(01:42:16):
don't get that or top one hundred and fifteen, you
don't get that opportunity. A lot first round rookies on
efficient offenses, Like everybody expects the Bucks and the billsby
top ten offenses this year to Bucks and Packers, go
ahead and take those guys, the guys I haven't been drafting,
And this actually gives me two other, like two targets
in a way, I just haven't been taking Tyreek Hill
because I mean, have you paid attention into the last

(01:42:38):
five months of Tyreek Hill. He's another guy that I
think is officially in the decline phase of his career.
His reception perception results took a big step back last year,
which again that's isolated from outside variables. Haven't taken a
lot of him, So I have taken then a lot
of Jalen Waddle, who I think could be, you know,
maybe a little bit more prioritized in that offense and
goes in a range at wide receiver twenty nine and

(01:42:59):
can census rankings that I'm willing to take the shot
on him earlier. And same thing with Dj Moore. I
actually think DJ Moore could have a nice year for
the Bears this year, but I think the gap between
him and Roma Dunsa doesn't make any sense to me.
I saw and I'm a huge Roma doonsa guy. So
just because I haven't been taking a lot of Dj
Moore and I want Romadunza and I think he can
take a step forward in year two, I have him

(01:43:22):
ranked like they're in the same neighborhood for me, which
is not how it is an ADP.

Speaker 1 (01:43:27):
No, it's not even close. And I ended up with
more in the auction as my wide receiver two and
I was a little bit surprised that there was such
a gap there. But that's the way people are playing
it right now. And I tell you what your Matthew
Bowden pick is interesting. I just tweeted this out last
night because somebody pointed out the injuries in that Green
Bay wide receiver room are insane right now. I think

(01:43:49):
Wis is hurt. I think savvy On Williams got hurt yesterday.
Maybe Jayden Reed likely, Yeah, Watson's pop Reid's walked around
with the boot on his foot like they had forty
seven receivers they're down to one, so it's a that's
a great call. So all right, well, thank you again, Matt.

(01:44:11):
Remind everybody where they can find you.

Speaker 2 (01:44:14):
Yeah, can find me on social media at Matt Harmon
Underscore byb Yahoo. Fantasy Forecast is live five pm Eastern
Sunday to Thursday, so definitely check us out. Their reception
Perception dot com is where you can get all my
wide receiver evaluations. If you liked what you heard today,
trust me, that is just that is just the beginning,
so check it out on the site.

Speaker 1 (01:44:31):
Well, and that's what got me to subscribe last year
because our conversation was so good last year. I loved
reading the profiles of all the receivers and I dove
into that last year and had a great time. So
check all that stuff out. Thank you so much for
being here. It was great seeing you this past weekend again.

Speaker 2 (01:44:46):
No question, buddy, looking forward to it next year.

Speaker 1 (01:44:48):
Yes, I hope you'll be back in twenty six. But
that's going to do it for another successful week on
discussions Withdrew. All Right, folks, before I let you go anywhere,
what about that listener league. Yes, I did sneak this

(01:45:10):
in at the end of the show on purpose because
I want to know who's listening all the way through
the show. First of all, thank you so much to
Matt Harmon from Yahoo in a reception perception. He always
does an awesome job. Wish I could talk longer with him,
but it's busy. It's that time of year, and he
gave us a lot of time and a lot of
wonderful stuff to take into our drafts and our auctions.

(01:45:32):
But what about that listener League, folks. I'm going to
make it easy on you this year. I don't have
a lot of time to go checking around to see
if you're leaving me a review or leaving me five
stars or anything like that. It's going to be real simple.
If you're listening at the end of this episode, I
assume that you're a pretty big supporter of the show.
So all I need you to do is hop on
Twitter DM me the code. If you don't have this code,

(01:45:56):
you will not be eligible to be in the Listener League.
But the code is aa V sucks. That couldn't help it.
Your code is AAV sucks. Send that to me in
a DM and hey, I can't require this because I'm
just not gonna check. But the other thing I like

(01:46:17):
you to do as a supporter of the auction brief,
Let's go give me five stars on whatever platform you
listen on. Just go. It takes two seconds. Go give
me five stars. Every rating helps. If you want to
leave a little review, that'd be awesome too. One of
those two things would really make my day for all
the time and effort in hours that I put into
the show over the summer. Would love to have five
stars and or every review if you can do it.

(01:46:38):
But please, if you're interested in the Listener League, dm
me aav sucks, I'll put you on the list. The
first Let's see, I'm going to take eight people. I'm
going to take a couple from the Patreon and I'm
going to have a couple of celebrities in there for us.
So I'm going to take eight people from the listener
pool to get into the Listener League this year. So

(01:47:00):
we're running a back Listener League year four. I will
announce all the details on the draft date on next
week's show. DM me the code to get on the list,
and then we will have a random drawing of eight
people that are on the list, and I will reveal
that on next week's show and on Twitter. All right, folks,

(01:47:20):
that's going to do it for this week. Thank you
so much for joining me for another episode of the
Auction Brief. I know this is a bit of a
hefty one, but I appreciate you sticking around. This is
all good stuff that you guys are going to take
into your auctions, take into your drafts, and crush the competition. Folks,
most of the people out there are not doing all
the work you're doing. They're just not, So you should
feel proud of the grind that you're on this summer,

(01:47:43):
all the work you've put in. Go into the draft
room and let them have it. Go into the draft
room and be a killer. I can't wait for next
week's auction manifesto everything you need to know to go
into your auction rooms. Next week's show is the last
one of the summer, the last one of the drafts.
We will be doing shows through the season this year,
unlike the last couple of years, we will have a

(01:48:05):
regular season show. But for now, one more draft prep episode.
Get your listener league entries in, go order your draft
boards at FJA Fantasy Sports. Use my code auction two
zero two five. Follow me on Twitter at Drew davenpord FF,
finow me on TikTok or the Patreon network at the
Fantasy Football Lawyer. Thank you so much for joining me. Everybody,
it's a blast to know you. It's a blast to

(01:48:26):
be here. Shout out to all my people from the expo.
Shout out also to my buddy JJ Winner, who's been
a supporter of the show and who I connected with
this weekend. We had an absolute blast and expo at
the Expo getting to know each other better. And you know,
JJ is one of the best dudes out there, and
I would be remiss if I didn't shout him out

(01:48:48):
and just tell him how much I appreciate him and
his support of all of my work. Thanks everybody that's
going to do it for this week. The Auction Brief
is adjourned and I am out.

Speaker 3 (01:48:59):
The Auction Brief is a journ that'll do it for
this week's episode. See you next time on the Auction Brief.

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