My 3 Unpopular Yet Unwavering Auction Beliefs; Guest Jim Coventry from Rotowire

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 this game, sir.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Not taking you on a journey through fantasy football, the law,
and life. The saw yours thak depends on.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
How much you want. And now you're legal analyst and
auction draft expert here to help you dominate your fantasy drafts.

Speaker 3 (00:27):
Your host, Drew Davenport, there.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Are full hearts. Hey, everybody, welcome into the Auction Brief.
As the lady said, I'm your host, Drew Davenport, You're
fantasy football lawyer, and thank you so much for tuning
in to another episode of the Auction Brief. I think
I say this every week, but we've got a great
show for you, and I really believe that every week.

(00:52):
I pour my heart and soul into coming up with
topics every week that are going to keep you entertained,
that are going to make you better at fantasy football,
that are going to make you better at auctions. And
I think this week is going to be one you're
really going to enjoy. We've got Jim Coventry from Rodal Wire.
Jim's a buddy that I met back in twenty nineteen
of The King's Classic. We've grown to be pretty good

(01:15):
friends since then, and I've watched Jim grow into one
of the best football and fantasy and analysts in the business.
Are none guys, one of the best. He's going to
drop some knowledge on us in discussions with Drew. But
I think I'm going to tease this week's show by
saying it might be one of the most consequential episodes

(01:36):
of the auction Brief that I've ever put out. And
I say consequential because I started thinking the other day
about some of the things that I say that don't
get a lot of love from people around the business,
around the industry, from casuals, from analysts. There's some things
I say and believe about auction drafts that I believe

(01:58):
are absolute max about what we do, and yet I
don't get very good reception about those beliefs sometimes. So
that is what the genesis of today's show is. It's
my three unpopular yet unwavering auction beliefs. So I'm going
to tease the show like that because these things are

(02:19):
three things that I don't think most people agree with,
but I believe are absolute pillars of becoming a better
auction drafter. And look, when you talk about auction drafting,
it's hard to get the reps in We know that.
We know that it's difficult to get a bunch of
reps under your belt doing auctions. It's easier than ever
to do MOX. That's great, but max are not the

(02:40):
same thing. People draft differently in getting actual auction experience
in a room with money on the line, with people
who are drafting to play the whole season, it's hard
to get the reps. I've been doing this twenty five years.
If I can short circuit that for you and to
help you get better quickly, that's what we're here for.
I can get rid of some of that learning for

(03:00):
you and drag you up with me, even if you've
only done five of them, or ten of them or
twelve of them in your life. And that's what we're
here for. My three unpopular yet unwavering auction beliefs, these
are non negotiable ideas. These are things that I'm uncompromising about,
and I've been thinking about them for a long time.
So we'll get to that in just a second. We

(03:21):
have a short FF legal update this week about Rashi Rice.
I want to comment on some rumors recently about a
jury trial he's got coming up in January and what
that means for his twenty twenty five NFL season. I'm
going to get to a mail bag soon. I know
those of you and my Patreon are aware of this,
but I don't think I've announced it on the auction briefield.
I'm going to start doing a little bit of a

(03:41):
mail bag portion of the show because I get a
lot of questions this time of the year about keepers
and about strategies for certain things. I don't love mail
bags because sometimes I think it excludes part of the audience.
But I'm going to try to take some of these
questions and extrapolate and sort of apply them across the industry,
and hopefully that's going to be some helpful We're going
to get to that in the next couple of weeks

(04:03):
before we get to any more content, though, don't forget.
You can find me on Twitter at Drew Davenport FF,
and I'm also the Fantasy Football Lawyer on TikTok and
in Patreon of course, you know the Patreon networks. Just
four bucks a month and get in there and get
some of my most innermost thoughts of auctions about legal
situations and about anything fantasy related. I'm always putting out

(04:24):
content over there, and it's extremely cheap, or at least
that's what I believe for the value I'm trying to
deliver there. So that's the Fantasy Football Lawyer. And of course,
the one plug I have every week are the draft
boards that I use every year for my home leagues.
That is the draft boards from fjfantasy dot Com. That's
FJA Fantasy Draft Boards. You can use my code auction

(04:46):
twenty twenty five auction two zero two five that'll get
you ten percent off your order. They're a little bit
more expensive than regular draft boards, but I believe in them.
I think they're the best in the business. Works out
to about four or five bucks a person. So you know,
if you go join the Patreon and buy an FJA
Fantasy Draft board, you're gonna spend fifteen or twenty bucks
and you're gonna get tons of fantasy content and amazing

(05:09):
fantasy draft boards. That's what we're here for. So let's
jump into a quick, very quick I want to do
this in like one or two minutes. Let's see how
that actually goes. We're gonna jump right into this short
FF legal update and let's get into some auction talk
right after that. We are ready to go. I don't
want to spend any more time delaying one of my

(05:29):
favorite topics I've ever put out there on the Auction Brief.
Let's get into the legal update.

Speaker 4 (05:34):
Now it's time for your legal update.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
The reason I want to do a legal update this
week is not that something significant has happened with Rashiet Rice,
but I want to caution everybody about something that dropped
this week concerning a jury trout date that he has
on January twentieth of next year. And the reason I
want to bring it up is because we had a
ton of people on Twitter just running with a story
and there was some high level fantasy analysts that ran

(05:59):
with it as well well, that Rice had a jury
trial on January twentieth. And I'm going to say this
to all you Auction Brief listeners, because you're loyal, you've
been listening to me for a long time, or you've
just found the show and you're listening, you know, to
the fifth episode this summer. That means that you're sticking
with me, and so I want you all to have
this information. I want to ask you something if there

(06:20):
was a criminal case against Rashiy Rice. Do you think
that the first thing that we would hear about that
criminal case is that he has a jury trial coming up? No,
that doesn't make any sense. You don't have to be
a lawyer to know that when Rashi Rice gets indicted,
it's going to be big news. Not only will Adam
Schefter have it, but every other person will have it
right away that he's indicted. On top of that, they're

(06:42):
going to try to, you know, get him on camera
doing the purp walk into the jail to post his
bond for whatever. That's what media outlets do, That's what
their job is, to get him walking into the courthouse
all that stuff. We're going to have all of this
advanced notice about what's going on with the Rice case
before it ever gets a jury trial. So every time

(07:02):
that there's a new jury trial that's scheduled in one
of his civil cases, people flip out, like, here comes
the jury trial. What does this mean? It means nothing,
means nothing, like stop man, Like we're just here flipping
out about every piece of news that comes out about

(07:22):
these civil cases that mean nothing to the NFL. Now
if he suddenly just like doesn't get indicted or something,
maybe the NFL looks at the civil cases in some
of the discovery decides to suspend him for a few
games anyway. But like, really, in general, civil cases mean nothing.
They met something with Deshaun Watson because there were so
many cases and they had to do something and the
pattern of conduct was obvious when he didn't get charged criminally,

(07:45):
they had to do something. But in general, the NFL
doesn't care about civil cases. And I've said this before
and I'm gonna say it again right here. Civil cases
are extremely pliable with all of their court dates. What
they do is they set deadline after deadline after deadline
after deadline. I think I've said this before, but my
wife was involved as an attorney in a case of
a young girl who got mauled by a dog. When

(08:06):
after the insurance company that then's like six years old. Man,
that little girl is a different person right now and
the case just settled. So like stopp flipping out about
every grand jury date that comes out in a Rashi
Rice civil case. He's got two cases against him right now.
Number one is about to be dismissed for what they

(08:26):
call want of prosecution. That's a civil legal term on
July fifteenth. That case is going to get dismissed for
want of prosecution. The other case penning against him is
the one that people are flipping out about. It does
have a jury trial on January twentieth, but it means nothing.
That date is probably gonna get kicked again. Look, they
can't depose a guy who might have criminal charges coming,

(08:47):
so they're not going to go try to depose Rashy Rice,
and then he's going to be like fifth plea, the
fifth play, the fifth thanks for the deposition, Like okay, Like,
let's use a little bit of common sense here. We
don't have to be lawyers to understand some of this stuff.
He's not going to incriminate himself. And if he goes
in for a deposition and says anything, it'll be just
to say, hey, this wasn't my fault or something, and

(09:10):
this jury trial date is going to get pushed again.
So don't worry about that. Nothing has developed in the
criminal case right now. Let's get that out of our heads.
We're going to move on and look at that. I
didn't come close to one or two minutes, did I
maybe sort of close, sort of close, but that's it
for right now. The Rice case is where it was
before when I last updated you. We're waiting on an indictment,

(09:32):
and until such time as that happens, we don't have
to worry about anything with Rice. I really don't believe
he's going to get suspended this year. We're in the
middle of July. Even if that indictment were to come
down tomorrow, this case is not ending by December, so
don't worry about Rashie Rice right now. We're still in
the clear. That's it for this week's FF. We loved
it all right. Well, I'm excited to get into the

(10:00):
topic because, like I said in the lead up, I
do believe this is a big episode for me. And
just like last week when I talked about players, specific players,
and I did a whole episode on some of my
takes about my auction approach and strategy with specific players,
this is a new one for me too. So we're
breaking round here on the auction brief and we're going

(10:23):
to do it my three unpopular yet unwavering auction beliefs
that I think everyone should take to heart and everyone
should use them to get better quickly and to simulate
the knowledge that I have, and that I've gotten over
hundreds of auction drafts that I can pass along to
you and hopefully make you better quickly. Let's do it.

(10:46):
It's time for some auction talk auction talk, So before
I start, I want to just say a quick disclaimer here.
There's a lot of people who are listening to this
show for the first time. I'm continuing to get messages
from people like, Hey, I just stumbled upon your podcast,
and that's a very real thing. We're getting new listeners.

(11:07):
So I want the people who have been here for
a while to understand that you're probably gonna hear a
couple of things that are not going to surprise you,
but I think they're really important to talk about, and
I'm hopefully going to add another layer for you and
add some context for you that maybe we haven't had before.
But this topic, like I said at the beginning of
the show and the teaser, I think it might be

(11:29):
one of the most consequential episodes of the Auction Brief
because I think that for the most part, the fantasy community,
and when I say community, it's not just players people
who like the game, it's also analysts. I think they
generally line up against me on all three of these things,
and I'm not here to say that my way is
the only way to do it, that I'm right and

(11:50):
they're wrong, except that I am. I'm just kidding. I'm
totally kidding. Auctions. The beauty of auctions is that you
can approach them many different ways and still be successful.
So I'm not telling you that my way is right,
their way is wrong. What I'm telling you is that
as a person who's done this for twenty five plus years,

(12:12):
twenty six, twenty seven, I don't remember how exactly when
I started, I think it was ninety eight, but a
person who's done this for over a quarter of a century,
these are three things that I've picked up, and I've
had to really examine my beliefs over the last six
years doing this show with you guys. I've had to
really think to myself, do I still believe that? Is

(12:32):
that true? And one of the things that frustrates me
about auction coverage out there is that people say things
that they've heard that they think sound good, but when
you go into an actual auction room, that's not how
things work. And a lot of times I get people saying, well,
if you nominate this person this far ahead of aav

(12:53):
and they come in this much below, then you have
gotten a bargain. And I think to myself, that may
be true in your brain or in some sort of
vacuum with numbers, But when you go into an auction
draft room, this is an art form, folks. I have
told you this over and over. Being good at auction

(13:13):
drafts is oftentimes about the art of it. It's about
applying everything you know, your knowledge of fantasy but also
your knowledge of the auction game, to create an outcome
that is more favorable than anyone else in your draft room.
It's not about I got value on these six players
and what even is value? And that's exactly what we're

(13:33):
going to talk about today. These three unpopular yet unwavering
auction beliefs I have are three things that, like I said,
I've thought about them so much over the past six
years and over the past five summers of doing this.
Four summers of doing this show that I believe them
more now than I ever have. And that's why I'm

(13:54):
putting them out today. Because while I may look a
little bit silly to some people who think, well, this
guy doesn't know what he's talking about. I don't care
because I'm interested in helping you guys. And if you
are listening to this and you're thinking, hey, maybe that
sounds a little bit weird, that's okay. The comfort level
comes with the reps, and I have an extremely high

(14:16):
comfort level that these three things I'm going to tell
you are correct. They're the best way to approach an auction,
and they're going to help ninety nine point five percent
of you out there, and the point five percent that
this doesn't help, you're probably good enough that you don't
need my help anymore. So maybe you like listening because
the show is entertaining, or you like getting you know,

(14:37):
your auction fixed or whatever, but you're good enough on
your own. If you're in that point five percent, I
ain't talking to you. The same for you. Man, Oh
my fat wet mouth is off and running hashtag FWN.
I haven't done a lot of screwing around this year.

(14:57):
Maybe we need to screw around more. Maybe I need
to like have a couple of drinks before I get
on the air. Who votes for drinks before I get
on the air? Next week, we have had almost no
duke mean, whereas Duke Man brah, I mean, go on, man,
I don't know Duke and Ranch guy, they're all hanging

(15:18):
out with the plane settler. I don't know. I don't know.
I don't want to force it though, I don't want
to force it. So maybe a couple drinks next week,
who knows. But what do you say we get into this?
The first two I think are going to be familiar
to some of you, but the third one I think
might surprise you a little bit. So I'm going to
pull you through with the teaser. On that third one,
it's gonna be a little bit different. But the first

(15:40):
two are things you've heard me say before. But like
I said, stick around for how I'm breaking it down,
because I really think that these two things, while unpopular,
are massively important to your game. The first one of
my three unpopular but unwavering auction beliefs is that average
auction values are almost most worthless. They are almost worthless.

(16:05):
One of the things I went off on last summer
was about how we are constantly fighting the urge to
prepare for our auction drafts like we would our regular
serpentine snake style drafts, and that the fact is we
can't apply a snake or serpentine style preparation and just

(16:27):
kind of brute force it with our options. There are
some things that we can pay attention to. And I
you know, I talked last week and I got an
interesting comment, and I want to come to it about
talking about specifica AAV and the guy who asked it,
he made a good point, and I'm going to address
that here in just a second, but let's talk about
what AAV is real quick so that everyone's on the

(16:47):
same page before I get to that. AAV is simply
this average auction values. It's the equivalent of ADP in
serpentine drafts, which is average draft position. So average draft
position is where a player is selected on average Average
auction value is price for a player in an auction.
And I want to talk about the comment I got

(17:08):
last week about how the person was asking, hey, would
you reference AAV, and he was talking about some high
stake stuff LIKEFC auctions and their AAV. The reason I
don't do that is because I think there's a very
specific set of AAV that you get from each different
type of draft. One of the criticisms I got on

(17:32):
last week's show was that, well, you were using ADP. Well,
I sort of was, And I think that I was
sloppy last week with the lexicon that I used, because
I would say, well, his ADPs AREB twenty three, and
that's interested in that I didn't really mean ADP so
much as I mean that he's the twenty third player
coming off the board. So what that is is that's

(17:53):
a relational comment. I'm relating that player's value to the
other players around him. I'm not saying that he's pick
number twenty three, Okay, because there's a huge difference. When
you say somebody's ADP is it's wide receiver twelve. That's
not really accurate. So I probably was sloppy last week

(18:14):
about calling it ADP. All I mean is that the
values that I gave you last week were a product
of hundreds of thousands of drafts that have already taken
place and compiled by football guys to give you an
idea about what people's opinions are about players. So when
we talk about ADP, if you're strictly defining it as

(18:35):
average draft position, you're saying that player's ADP is twenty two,
which means they're on average coming off the board at
the end of round two. But if I say they're
wide receiver thirteen and their ADP is twenty two, that's
more precise, and I probably should have been better about that.
Not probably, I definitely should have. What I don't care
about is, hey, this guy's a mid round three player.

(18:57):
What I do care about is he's RB nineteen, and
that tells me if I'm talking about an RB two,
there's five behind him and six ahead of him. So
I don't really like talking about AAV specifically because the
values themselves I don't believe are what helps us. In fact,
we're going to talk about that in point number three

(19:19):
here about value and sort of stripping away the biases
to get to the value itself. So AAV is just
average auction values. But what it tends to set up as, unfortunately,
is a bunch of values from drafts that are not
necessarily going to be like yours. The AAV that you
see is almost never going to be the same value

(19:40):
that you see in your draft. I'll tell you what
I did custom par sheets last summer, and folks, I
gotta be honest. I thought i'd come up with a couple,
you know, different builds I like, and I kind of
like apply them across a couple of different you know, hey,
this guy wants this, this girl wants this, and then
I would sort of apply them and make a few
tweaks here and there. That did not happen. I thought

(20:02):
I could automate the process to a certain degree and
not like saying hey, here's your robot response, but just saying, hey,
this is three wide receivers and a flex, and I
can sort of build it like this. I thought about that,
but you know what, it was impossible. And why was
that Because there's too many different settings out there. Everyone
has a different setting. It's like, oh, my home league

(20:23):
does this, but it's ten dollars extra per keeper. Okay,
well that's completely different than a regular keeper league. Oh well,
my league does this, except you can start three wide receivers,
but then you can't start one in your flex. My
league does this, but it's six point per passing touchdown
and only one point for an interception. It's four points
per passing touchdown, only you know, it's two for an interception. Folks,

(20:46):
you would not believe how many different settings there are
and the different variables in putting them together. Almost no
league is the same. So why the hell would we
want to take some generic average auction values and apply
them to our own league, because they're almost never going
to be the same. I think there is one little
slice of preparation that AAV can help with, and that's

(21:10):
a super duper beginner, somebody who doesn't do a lot
of auctions. And if that's you and you haven't done
them before, then I think you need to spend some
time with AAV. I would say that's important for you
because you need to get a general idea of what
these players are going to go for. But Folks, I've
been doing this too long. In a two hundred dollars draft,
I know what a guy should go for Jamar. I

(21:31):
don't want to pay sixty dollars for Jamar Chase. If
he's at fifty one, I'm gonna think about bidding. I know,
I don't want to pay sixty dollars for b Jon Robinson,
but if he's at forty nine, I'm sure is all
gonna say fifty. I don't want to pay twenty bucks
for Trey McBride, but if he's at thirteen, you bet
I'm saying fourteen. Why do I know that? Because I've
done a ton of them. It has nothing to do

(21:51):
with AAV. I haven't looked at AAV in years, years.
It does nothing for you. I'm not even sure that
good drafters should with it. You know, I've said before,
like you can get it, you can prep with it.
But AAV all it's doing is relating the position, just
like a list of players would. So rather than using AAV,

(22:11):
just go and look at how players are being drafted.

Speaker 2 (22:14):
Right now.

Speaker 1 (22:15):
Where's David Montgomery? He's RB twenty three right now? Do
I think that's, you know, too high or too low?
You don't need to be like he is. Fourteen dollars?
What does that do for you? Fourteen dollars? Where for? Who?
For what league? What tyl are we doing? And I
see so many people talking about get a hold of
some AAV, folks. I'm not here to bang on anybody
that's come on my show and said that. So if

(22:35):
that has happened, that is not the purpose of today's conversation.
The purpose of talking about this is to make you
where if you're a super duper beginner, you need to
go find You need to find some AAV because you
need to familiarize yourself with what you should be looking for,
but everyone else stop stop. Okay, you only should be

(22:56):
looking at it to get a general neighborhood guess when
you're starting out. But after that, just stop because the
only thing that you can do is screw yourself up
and start thinking to yourself, oh that's a value. You
know what ends up happening. Here's the major problem if
you use it and you see a value for somebody.
Let's say that you see a value on devon a

(23:17):
chan of forty one dollars and you go into a
draft room and a chan stops at thirty one, and
you're like, oh my god, I got a bid. You
say thirty two. Somebody says thirty three. You're like, well
it's still the aav was forty one. We're at thirty three.
I'm gonna say thirty four. So you say thirty four.
Everybody stops. You land a chan for thirty four bucks,

(23:37):
and you're like, hell, yeah, what a great start to
the draft. Now in a vacuum, I would consider that
a great start. I would consider that a really nice
buy for devon a chan. But what if this is
a league who just doesn't give a crap about running back?
What if this is a league that hates Dolphins players.
I'm giving extreme examples, but you understand my point. What

(23:58):
if this is a league that just doesn't pay up
for running back. What if you turn around in a
little while and Christian McCaffrey goes for thirty six, or
what if you turn around in a little while and
you get some other insane deal on a running back
and you're like, oh my god, thirty four was too
much for eight Chan. Whoops, I made a mistake in
paying thirty four for eight Chan. Now again, I'm not

(24:20):
don't fixate on the number, thirty six or thirty eight whatever.
Don't fixate on the number. Fixate on the fact that
sometimes you're gonna spend money based off of that AAV
and you're gonna think you got a good deal, and
your draft room is gonna be like, eh, sorry, crappy deal.
I've been in so many draft rooms before where that's happened. Hell,

(24:40):
I bitched about it for three years when I went
in the Fantasy Index auction draft and I thought I
got great deals. This is back when Hopkins and Digs
were elite, and I got them both for less than
thirty bucks. I was like, ahha, suckers. And then I
realized that's because all these guys had done it before,
and they knew they needed to build these super deep
rosters because it's the best ball league. Idiot. I was
the idiot in that room. I was the one in

(25:02):
there bidding, and if I was looking at AAV, they
would have told me I should have spent twelve more dollars.
AAV does nothing but steer you wrong. It's just it's
crap when you're inside of a draft, and I think
it's crap when you're preparing because it just gives you
unreasonable expectations and you go on there using those numbers
and it's just almost never applicable. Here's a couple good examples,

(25:24):
and I use my home leagues because that's something that
I'm intimately familiar with, but I think these are really
good examples. I got two examples that I think are
going to ram this point home and we can move on.
The first is I have a home keeper league. We
have twenty two man rosters. It's a best ball I've
talked about it before, but we use a superflex format
that means that you're not just starting two quarterbacks every week.

(25:47):
Well you are starting two, but you need to have
three or four active every week so that you can
get that massive quarterback advantage in the super flex spot.
So most people go into a draft and they want
to land three or four quarterbacks. But there are some
people in the league who have been doing auctions for
a while. Actually, most of the people in the league
now have been in the league a while, or I've
done them for a while. They just don't like spending

(26:09):
a lot of money sometimes. And what's interesting is I've
had a lot of success in that league, specifically because
of my quarterback situation. I've had Josh Allen and Patrick
Mahomes and like Dak Prescotten, some nice keepers and some
nice years from those quarterbacks, and I've won a lot
of titles. But for some reason, this league just doesn't

(26:30):
pay up for quarterback. Now, we can debate until we're
blowing the face why that is. The point is you
would expect the league to see quarterback is really key
in this league, and that's how people are winning, That's
how I've been winning. But I gotta be honest with you,
it's not happened. And in fact, in the last two
or three years, quarterback prices are actually down in that league.

(26:53):
That's wild right down. Why is that? I don't know.
But quarterbacks are too cheap in that league. I don't
understand it, but it's been, as it's been one of
the enduring mysteries, and I've had to really stop myself
from going after like seven quarterbacks every year because they
are too cheap. There's just always a couple guys at
the end of the draft that are way too cheap.

(27:14):
I know Baker Mayfield went a couple of years ago
for like single digits. That guy's love and life right
now happens to me and my brother in law. But
I don't know what we're doing if we're in a
draft where it's a super flex and quarterbacks are too cheap.
But this is one of those situations where if you
were looking at superflex, AAV with a three hundred dollars
cap and the bidding stopped at twenty eight bucks on

(27:38):
Dak Prescott, you'd be like, hell, yeah, I'm bidding on that.
In fact, you'd probably bid up to like fifty bucks
of a three hundred dollars cap or sixty bucks to
get a guy like Dak Prescott. That doesn't happen in
this league. So what the hell is your AAV doing
for this league. It's doing nothing. It's confusing you, it's
screwing you up because you're going in there and paying like,

(27:58):
oh yeah, I'm gonna snap up these quarterbacks. And if
you were new to the league, you'd walk in there
with the AAV and you'd be like, I'm crushing it
on these quarterbacks and then you'd have four of them
on your roster, and then an hour later you'd realize
you overpaid on all four of them. This league has
an identity. I preach about it all the time, but
that's a concrete example of something that you have to

(28:18):
know that you have to be all over. AAV just
screws that up. Another example is my other home league.
We're going for our twenty fifth anniversary draft this year.
It's a league with a lot of conservative players, but
guys who have done auctions for a long time, so
they're not going to go out there and get crazy.
And we have what's called a full flex. Now we're

(28:40):
not super flex. We're one QB, but you only need
to start one of every position, and then you can
start four of anything else, not quarterback. So if you
only have to start one running back And what does
that do to the draft? Everyone answer out loud. It
tanks the running back market. Right, You're going to have
a couple guys that are gonna be worth a ton

(29:01):
of money, and then nobody's going to care about anything
else because once you get past those first eight, ten,
twelve guys, nobody cares because you don't have to start them.
They're just depth. At that point, are you really that
excited to be like, go out there and draft Joe
Mixon in that format? No, because you don't have to.
You don't have to force the running back position like

(29:22):
you do in other leagues. And same thing with wide receiver.
You don't have to force it because you don't have
to start three of them. You only have to start
one of them. That drastically changes the values. And once again,
how are we adjusting AAV for that? You're not. You're not.
You can't go out there and click full flex give
me the AAV. That's not a thing. So what you

(29:42):
have to do is you have to go in your room,
you have to breathe, and you have to watch what's unfolding.
And this is something that I'm going to talk about
on the Patreon this week. Really watching your draft at
the beginning and letting it breathe is the way to
handle this issue of figuring out value in your room,
because oftentimes I see people say, hey, great deal on

(30:03):
that guy. Was it though? Was it a great deal?
Do we know that we're not in the room. We
don't know the settings, starting lineups, bench spots, flexes. Everything
revolves around your settings, and that is what drives value.
And we can't sit there and say, yeah, great value

(30:25):
based on this price I saw of this. No, no,
that's not what we're doing. Just turn that part of
your brain off. AAV is almost worthless. Put away the
average auction values, and let's move on point number two.
You need to have exact prices for what you want
to pay for every position on your roster. This is
something that I simply have not been able to move

(30:48):
the ball an inch in the last five years about this.
I will tell you one thing. Though analysts they don't
believe in it. But regular players play that come to
me for help, that are following me for fantasy advice,
they love this idea. And that should tell you something.
I just had a conversation last week with Dave Richard.

(31:10):
So I'm sure you heard me talk to Dave Richard
last week and he talked about Heath Cummings. And when
he talked to Heath, Heath said, I don't have any
thoughts or intentions about any particular position when I go
into an auction draft. I think that's awesome, that's admirable,
that's great. Having said that, let me tear into that

(31:31):
idea a little bit. Not that I think that Heath's
idea by itself is bad. I think it gives everyone
perhaps a poor perspective, because I love the idea that
Heath doesn't have an intention on a particular position or whatever.
But how many of us out there are Heath Cummings.
How many of us are as good as him? How

(31:52):
many of us have as much experience analyzing fantasy football
for his, by the way, full time job. Former football
Guy started at Football Guys, moved on to CBS. He's
been doing hundreds of auction drafts, just like I have
over the last quarter century, maybe more. The guy talks
about it, it's his daily job. How many of us

(32:13):
have that level of knowledge, experience, reps in an auction
draft room, and confidence to pull it off. How many.
How many do you think listening to the show, the
fifteen hundred to two thousand people every week that listen,
how many of you think one, two, five, I don't know.
There's some of you out there, but not many, all right.
And if you are that confident, then hey, you don't

(32:35):
have to listen to all this. Maybe you can listen
to it for fun. But I think most of us
are not Heath Cummings, right, So when he says, hey,
I don't have any particular intention, that's great for Heath,
but I think that does everyone else a disservice. And
I'm going to actually have Heath on either on the
show or in the Patreon because I want to talk
to him about that particular comment, not because again that

(32:56):
I think he's wrong, but I think it does a
disservice to people who don't have as much experience or
knowledge or ability. So I believe you should have exact
prices on your sheet. And that brings me to the
par sheet. I don't want to go into it because
if you've been here, you've heard about them ad nauseam.
But for those who don't know what a par sheet is,

(33:17):
very quickly, if your draft has a two hundred dollars
cap and sixteen roster spots. That those are pretty standard numbers.
I want you to write down a dollar amount that
you're going to spend on every single position and have
it add up to two hundred dollars. Write an exact
dollar amount. Okay, follow me through this because I know

(33:38):
the first thing everyone thinks is well, that means you're
too rigid. Nope, it means the opposite. It helps you
be more flexible. So the par sheet is simply this,
you're trying to shoot par. Well, what does that mean? Well,
in golf, being under par is a great thing. In
auction drafting not so much. You can't be over because
you're not allowed to bid over two hundred. But you

(33:58):
don't want to be under because that means you didn't
spend money where you could have spent money to get
a better player. So your goal is to hit two
hundred dollars exactly or whatever your cap is exactly, and
that's what putting exact dollar amounts on your paper helps
you do. There's a lot of times where I there's
the two different things I hear all the time that
I think are not good for people who aren't in

(34:23):
that top one percent of auction drafters. I hear one
thing that I hear all the time is you want
to allocate forty to fifty percent of your cap for
your running backs. I hate this, folks. I hate it.
And the reason I hate it is because that sounds
great when you're preparing and when you're ahead of time
or when your heath comings And I'm not saying that

(34:44):
he says that, Okay, So don't don't. Don't send him
a message like you're just trashing you. I love Heath.
I think Heath is a great mind in the auction community,
and I have him to thank for pushing this whole
auction format forward. Okay, So don't think that what I'm
saying is if you say, hey, I'm going to put
forty percent, first of all, put a number on that, okay,

(35:05):
Because you can't get in a draft and be like, oh, well,
I'm spending eleven percent. Unless you're really gifted at math,
you're not going to be able to figure that out
on the fly, and oftentimes you don't have time for that,
especially if you're in a online draft where it's ten
seconds and it's nine eight seven and the thing's beeping
at you and you're trying to convert like, well, am
I spending twelve or fourteen percent? No, that's just making

(35:30):
it harder on you, okay, And oftentimes what you're going
to do is then you're going to end up overspending.
You're going to be like, well, I only spent twenty
two on this guy, and then I turned around and
got a deal for thirty one on this guy. And
it's like, well, two problems there. Number one is that
if you spent thirty one and twenty two, you probably
didn't get a top talent. And then what if you
spent thirty one and twenty two and then that was

(35:51):
most of your budget. Well, I only spent thirty five
percent and I had forty five percent allocated. Okay, Well
what does that mean in dollar amount? Because how much
can you spend after you've spent that money already? I
think you're going to realize that the amount that you've
spent is more than you wanted to spend. And that's
why having the exact dollar amounts matters, because in the

(36:13):
heat of the moment, we want to take away the
most variables we possibly can to avoid making silly mistakes
based on just a math thing in the moment, and
the percentages I think, I just think that that's asking
for trouble. The other thing I hear a lot of
is well, I want a top five wide receiver. Okay,
that's great, and that's your approach, and that's what you're

(36:34):
going to use to make your par sheet. But you
can't just say I want a top five wide receiver.
You have to envision how that looks and how much
it'll cost, and don't say it's going to cost me
this percent of my cap. Say okay, well, as my
wide receiver won a top five wide receiver is going
to cost me an excess of forty five dollars and
I won't spend more than fifty eight something like that.

(36:56):
But then you want to come up with an exact
amount after you go through your whole roster and think
about what you want to spend on each one of
those positions, and everyone says, well that, why would you
do an exact dollar amount? Then you have to stick
to that. Well, no, why do you have to stick
to that? You don't have to stick to that. Flexibility
is absolutely the name of the game. But this makes
you more flexible because it tells you exactly what you

(37:19):
can spend, and if you overspend to grab a guy,
that's totally cool, but you know exactly how much you overspent.
You're not in there going I overspent by this percent.
You're saying to yourself, I overspent by six bucks on
that guy. I need to pull six dollars from somewhere else.
It's so much easier that way. It's like training wheels,

(37:41):
but you never have to take them off. You don't
ever have to take the training wheels off because you
can always use a par sheet. I think getting together
two or three par sheets before you walk in your draft.
I don't think you need any more than that is
exactly what you want to be doing. It always keeps
you on track. You're never out of control, you're never overspending,

(38:02):
and if you do overspend a little bit, you know
how to pull it back. That's the nature of flexibility
while also not ruining your draft. A perfect example of
this that I always use is something that people do
all the time when they're trying to play the game
of well, I'm going to spend this percentage of my
cap on wide receivers, so they go out and they

(38:23):
get a wide receiver one and they say, hey, I
got I'm on Ross Brown and I got a nice deal.
I got him for forty two bucks. That's a nice price.
I'm happy about it. Little did they know that wide
receiver market was going to be depressed in that room.
And then AJ Brown comes up and he stops in
the low thirties, and you're like, holy cow, this is
a great deal. So you bid thirty one. They say

(38:46):
thirty two and you're like, it's still really cheap, and
say a J. Brown, So you say thirty three. Eventually
you end up landing him for thirty seven bucks. Good deal, right,
But look at what you already did. You already spent
the forty one dollars and I'm on Ross A. Brown.
And even if AJ Brown is a deal, you've now
spent a large percentage of your cap, almost eighty dollars

(39:07):
on two receivers. Now, if you had a par sheet
in front of you, you would know. Let's say I
was going to spend fifty one for my top receiver. Well,
I save ten dollars on one where I say Brown.
But on my second wide receiver, I was only going
to spend twenty two. And then I end up spending
thirty seven because I got so excited about the AJ
Brown deal. That's okay, you can do that. But if

(39:29):
you do that in a normal draft, and you keep going, oh,
here's the deal, here's a deal, pretty soon you're out
of money because of all your sweet deals, and you're
done and the draft's over for you. You got four guys.
The way the par sheet helps is the twenty two
bucks that you thought you were going to spend. You
overspent by fifteen, but you underspent on Brown. I say
Brown for ten. You're still five dollars behind, but at

(39:50):
least you know I got to pull five dollars from somewhere.
You can't do that without exact prices. If you don't
have the exact prices in front of you, you will
struggle more than you need to. I'm not saying you
can't do it, and I'm not saying you can't have
a good team. Here's the final say on this point
before I move on to the last one and I
get you out of here. The reason I know this works,

(40:11):
and the reason I have the conviction of this being
a hill I'll die on when it comes to auction drafting,
is that the times I've tried other methods, my results
have always been worse. They've always been worse. The times
I show up to a mock and I don't have
a par sheet, I do worse. The times that I

(40:33):
show up to a draft and I start thinking, ooh,
that's a good value, and that's a good value before
I let everything breathe, and before I looked at my
par sheet and said, what am I doing? Where am
I going? How am I breaking down this draft? What's
my path to success in this draft? The times I
don't prepare with those exact numbers, I get worse results.

(40:54):
I did a mock draft the other night, and my
whole goal in this mock draft was to say, I
think there's going to be a little bit of a
value pocket at RB two. I've talked about this before.
I want to go a little bit heavier on running
back in this draft because that's not what I do.
So I wanted to do it different, and I wanted
to be comfortable going into a draft and taking receivers
who weren't as highly ranked as I normally would take

(41:15):
receivers because that's what I do. You guys know that
I love hammer and receivers with my cap dollars. So
I said, I'm going to go into this mock and
I'm going to go out the running backs a little
bit harder and see what happens. Well, you know what happened.
The receivers were cheaper than they should have been. And
here I am and one of the only drafts I've
been in with a group of auction drafters who are

(41:36):
fairly skilled. This is a pretty skilled group. They know
what they're doing because they listen to the show and
they follow me, and they love auctions, so they do
them a lot and they're good at them. So in
a room like that, I typically will see that the
wide receiver prices are too high. Well this particular night,
they weren't that high. And here I am trying to
shoehorn a running back heavy strategy into a room that

(41:59):
wasn't pay very much for wide receivers. Well, why did
that happen? I didn't have a par sheet in front
of me. I could have flipped things and said, okay,
I need to be spending on this wide receiver. But
I really just tried to force this strategy, and it
really came down to I wasn't flexible enough. I didn't
have exact prices in front of me, and I didn't
let the room breathe and think about it. The draft

(42:20):
didn't go as well as it could have. My team's fine.
I like my team. It's not that big a deal,
but it could have been way better. And I should
have been paying attention to that. And I didn't have
a par shoot in front of me, and I didn't
have those exact numbers to guide me along the way.
All right, let's get on to number three because number
three is one of my favorite things that's ever popped
into my head about auction drafting period, and that is

(42:41):
that beating your auction draft room has nothing to do
with fantasy football. Let me say that again, beating your
auction draft room has nothing to do with fantasy football.
Whoa whoa, whoa whoa? Why is that? Well, there's a
lot of different reasons, but it really boils down to
one thing. We all have a lot of ego about

(43:01):
how good we are at fantasy football. I knew this
guy was gonna break out or that guy was gonna
break out. And what this point requires is people to
swallow their ego. And that's particularly hard to do for analysts.
Out there who are good at their job and they
know what they're doing. And I'm not saying they should
walk around being like I am humble, I humbly except

(43:22):
that I don't know as much as I think I do. Okay,
I don't require that I get cocky about stuff all
the time. But my point is this whole thing requires
you to swallow your ego a little bit, to the
extent that you're gonna be wrong about players a lot.
I was big on James Cook last year. I got

(43:43):
a lot of touchdowns from James Cook. That's fortunate, right.
I didn't think he was gonna score sixteen touchdowns or
eighteen or whatever that he scored. You have to get
used to the idea that you're gonna miss all the time,
and that you're gonna miss wildly on players that you
haven't even thought twice about having. I mean, I didn't
really think twice about having Elik Neighbors really at all

(44:03):
last summer, just because I can't stand Daniel Jones. It's
probably why I have know Michael Pittman right now, but
I just I couldn't get over it. And the thing is,
that's a huge mistake. And just like I bitched about
Stefan Diggs for a couple of years after he moved
to Buffalo, and he had such a big year. I
should have been open to the idea that it should
take some value and take some shots along the way,

(44:25):
because I don't know it all. And that's what this
point is all about, swallowing your ego. But it's not
really totally like, hey, just swallow your ego. The point
is this that if you took the names off of
all the players that you were bidding on and just
had to blindly bid on players named after their position

(44:45):
in the draft order, you could still beat the room.
So somebody nominates a player and instead of his name
being David Montgomery when he nominates him, it's RB twenty three.
RB twenty three is up for bid. Now you paid
attention all along, and you know that the RB twenty
five went for twenty six bucks and David Montgomery gets up,

(45:07):
so excuse me, not, David Montgomery. RB twenty three gets
up to thirty one dollars. You know that RB twenty
five already went for twenty six Like, you don't want
to bid on the thirty one, plus you don't want
to take RB twenty three as you as your second
running back on your team and pay thirty one bucks
form right, because you have your exact numbers in front
of you. Refer to point number two. You've got exact

(45:28):
numbers in front of it. You can't pay thirty one
for an RB two, so you're just not bidding on
this player. But if the players at seventeen dollars, you
should strongly consider bidding eighteen because that's quite a deal
from the twenty six dollars that was paid for the
RB twenty five. You don't need David Montgomery's name on
that jersey for you to bid. Seeing a nice deal.

(45:48):
And I think what often happens is we have implicit
biases that we don't realize are there, and they will
screw up our draft. And if we're doing things the
right way, we should be taking the bargains on players
that pop up out of nowhere, even if we don't
like that player. A great example of this is last
year in my home league, Chris Godwin went for way

(46:11):
too few dollars. I mean, he was like six or
eight bucks. It was super cheap to get Chris Cobbin
last year. And the only reason that happened is he
went near the end of the draft. Everybody was focused
on their guys that they wanted to get, and there
wasn't a lot of cap dollars left in the room.
He went way too cheap. But if we had seen
a big sign that said WR twenty seven this amount,

(46:34):
and you didn't know his name and you weren't focusing
on other names that you're trying to get, you would
have just bid because that's the last best player up there,
and you're saying, hey, I want I want wide receiver
twenty seven. The next best guy is wide receiver forty five.
That's left. But we focus so much on names we
passed stuff up like that, And being player agnostic is
something I talked about last week. Most of your nominations

(46:57):
are going to be on players that you don't care
one way or no, because you're just checking their price
tag and if they're good prices, you'll take them. But
this requires you to understand that we're wrong a lot,
and our biases cause us to make poor choices when
it comes to value in an auction draft. So how
do we beat the room when we don't know who
the players are? Well, I have a couple concrete examples

(47:21):
of how this works. But the one thing that you
have to lean into are all the edges that we've
talked about over past summers. I can't get into all
that stuff right now, but if you want to go
back and listen, the episodes aren't hard to find. You know,
nomination strategies, bidding strategies, inflection points, how to prepare for
your auction. All that stuff gives you an edge. But
we're chiefly talking about nomination strategies, bidding strategies, and picking

(47:45):
up tells on other people in your draft room. Some
of that stuff is way easier than you think it is.
This guy nominates somebody and he always goes after them.
This guy nominates somebody and never bids. This guy bids
only when he wants a player. This guy bids only
on chiefs like there's Sometimes it's not difficult, it can

(48:06):
be easy. You're picking up these things. That's part of
your edge, and part of the way that you beat
the room is pushing those edges and being player agnostic
because you're accepting that all of your opinions aren't one
hundred percent ironcloud guaranteed to be correct in a phrase
that I want to repeat over and over from now
until my last episode of the summer is that you

(48:30):
must always understand the value in the room you're in.
And that sounds simple, but it's something that people gloss over.
They come out of a draft and they say, I
got ex Player for X dollar. What a great deal, right,
And everyone says, yes, oh, great deal by ill Ow price.

(48:50):
What if that's not a great deal. What if you
paid thirty five dollars for Drake London And everybody says
great deal, rap ba. But Justin Jefferson went for twenty eight. Okay,
I realize he's not realistic. Don't get hung up on
the numbers. But Jefferson went for seven less dollars than
Drake London. Now maybe you think, hey, Drake London can
finish higher, blah blah blah. It doesn't matter. It's seven bucks

(49:13):
for Justin Jefferson less than Drake London. Did you get
a good deal? Well, yeah, you got a good raw
dollar deal. And we talk about that before the raw
dollar fallacy that just saying a number out loud means
you got a good deal. No, it doesn't. It has
to relate to the other prices. That were paid in
the room, and if it doesn't relate, well, then it's

(49:35):
not a deal. It's only a deal if you understand
the value in your room. I liken it too someone
who says that they could see their whole life and
then they got hit in their middle ages or late
in their life with blindness, and then they say that
their other senses developed when they lost their sight or

(49:56):
they lost their hearing, and their other senses developed. I
liken it to that, because when you lose the player names,
the game actually gets a little bit easier. And I'm
not telling you that you're going to lose the player
names when you go in there. I want to leave
you with this example, and I think it's the perfect
way to leave our discussion today. When I used to

(50:16):
play golf a lot, I used to be a fairly
decent golfer back in high school and early in college.
I you know, shoot mid to low eighties pretty regularly,
and one of the things I wanted to get better
at was putting. And I always knew that Jack Nicholas
was one of the best putters maybe to ever play
the game. Just an incredible, incredible putter, and he had

(50:37):
a warm up tactic that I freaking loved, and when
he said it, I thought, well, that sounds weird, but
I'm going to try it, and old man did it work.
His warm up tactic was to go onto the green
and he would place five balls, you know, a couple feet, two, three,
four feet from the hole, and then he would get
down in his regular putting stands with both hands on
the club, and then he would pull one hand away

(50:59):
from the club and then he would force his other
hand to make the five balls in a row from
three feet, let's say. And then once he did that,
he would get the balls back out, put him in
the same spot, put both hands on the club like
he was about to swing with both hands, and then
he would pull the other hand away, and then he
would force his other hand to make the putts on

(51:21):
their own. He didn't move his hands around or adjust
so that he could make the putts. He left him
in the same spot. He just pulled the other hand
away and then made the putts.

Speaker 2 (51:31):
Well.

Speaker 1 (51:31):
Then he would pull the balls out and do it
at five feet, and then do it at eight feet,
and then do it at ten feet, and then once
he got done, he would go each individual spot in
one hand, then the other hand, and then he got
the balls out and started back at three feet and
he put both hands on the club, both hands on
the putter, and then he used both hands to finish
out his warm up. And I thought, well, that sounds interesting.

(51:53):
I'm going to try it. And I tried it, and
oh my gosh, it was incredible because you don't realize
that your hands are fighting each other. One hand wants
to do one thing, the other hand wants to do another.
They're not in sync, and it causes you to push
or pull the ball or hit at the incorrect distance.
You don't realize your hands are fighting each other. When
you force one hand to do the whole job and

(52:14):
the other hand to do the whole job, and then
you put them back together, they're in concert. They do
what they're supposed to do together. And this, ladies and gentlemen,
is what I'm going to submit to you, is the
best thing you can learn about auction drafting. Beating an
auction draft has nothing to do with fantasy football and
has everything to do with combining your knowledge and your

(52:37):
instincts with your edges at auction drafting. And the reason
I tell the putting story is because when you're able
to blend those things and you stop those two things
from fighting in your head, that's when you become an
elite auction drafter. When you do your job at isolating
missed priced players, players that are wild off of the value,

(53:01):
players that you never thought that you would bid on,
that you end up having on your team because of
the value and because of the price, and because of
the way it worked for your build. Things begin to
blend together. When you're pushing all of your edges, your
auctionabilities with your fantasy knowledge, You're putting them together like
you put two hands together on a putter and you're

(53:21):
sinking all your putts. Because the combination of those two
things is how you crush the room. I still think
you can beat an auction drafter room with knowing nothing
about fantasy football, knowing only about market inequities. But once
you layer the two together, oh baby, you're an elite
auction drafter. All right, Well that's going to do it.

(53:44):
This deserve the treatment today. These are my three unpopular
yet unwavering auction beliefs. Number one, that AAV is essentially worthless.
Number two that you should go into a draft with
exact prices on your piece of paper about what you
want to pay for each player, and then adjust as
you go. And number three, beating an auction draft room

(54:07):
has nothing to do with fantasy football. And the ultimate
point of this discussion that we've had about number three
is not that you shouldn't use your fantasy knowledge, but
that you should strip it all away and figure out
how you're going to beat your room as you're in
the room, and then layer your fantasy knowledge over the
top of it. And that's how things explode, and that's

(54:29):
how you become a champion. So that's it for auction
talk today. I want you to hear from Jim Coventry.
He's got a lot of great things to say, situations
to break down. So let's get you out of here.
I hope you enjoyed my three unpopular yet unwavering auction beliefs.
Let's get on to discussions with Drew and Jim Coventry
from Road to Wire.

Speaker 4 (54:49):
Time for Discussions with Drew in depth conversations with the
brightest minds in the fantasy industry.

Speaker 1 (54:57):
Welcome into this week's Discussions with Drew. Our guest for
this this week is mister Jim Coventry from Rotal Wire.
Jim happens to be one of the best analysts in
the business. Also has turned into a good friend of mine.
We were just reminiscing off the air about twenty nineteen
King's Classic, and that's when we first chatted about our
auction results and became buddies that day six years ago.

(55:20):
So a lot of time since then. But hey, I
am happy to see you every year in Canton, and
I'm even happier to have you on the show because,
like I said, you're one of the best analysts in
the business. Thank you for being here.

Speaker 2 (55:32):
I appreciate being here. Thank you, due you.

Speaker 1 (55:34):
Bet I left some stuff off the introduction though, that's
pretty important. Twenty twenty two Fantasy Sports Writers Association Football
Writer of the Year finalist, as well as a twenty
twenty one Kings Classic champ. That is not an easy
lead to win? And which which one was it? Auction
or snake?

Speaker 3 (55:52):
That shit I always do better at Yes, I must
have learned from Drew Davenport somewhere along the line.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
I don't know about all that, but yes, you we both.
You know. What's funny is some we've gone a couple
of times and compared notes about our strategies after and
they were very similar, even though we didn't talk beforehand.
So I think we're on the right path. I like
that confirmation bias. So you'll be back this.

Speaker 3 (56:14):
Year one hundred percent. Cannot wait for last year. I
made the championship game in the auction. Oh man, I
hit a freight train with Patrick Doherty's team, you know,
a little bucky irving, little Jonathan Taylor. Yeah, I thought
I had a really good shot at pulling another title
out of that, but hey, Patrick deserved it.

Speaker 1 (56:31):
That's that's tough to hit the Jonathan Taylor that week?
What did he do that week? Forty points or I
don't even remember.

Speaker 2 (56:37):
I'm sure you know what.

Speaker 3 (56:38):
I'm still a shell shock, can't quite remember, don't remember.

Speaker 1 (56:42):
Yeah, let's put that in the past. Hey, finals is
still pretty good because since my last title four years ago,
I have been getting kicked all over the yard. I
have a renewed vigor to come back and do something
this year. But uh yeah, looking forward to that. We're
about a month away. But you know, let me get
your socials out there so people know where to find you.
Like I said, every time I turn around, Jim's on

(57:04):
a show somewhere. That's because he's in demand because he
knows what he's talking about. I watched you with JJ
Winner and Doug Orth breaking down some changes in offenses.
That was an awesome show. But like I said, you're
out there on shows all the time because you really
bring it. And what I always say is you bring
a great hybrid of actual football analysis with the fantasy analysis,

(57:26):
and that's what we all love. So what are your socials?
What are you working on right now? You want to
get some eyes on.

Speaker 2 (57:31):
At Jim Coventry NFL.

Speaker 3 (57:33):
Everything I do gets on there at some point in time,
whether it's my videos, whether it's articles that are behind
a paywall, which they don't want to I never guide
you to those, but yeah, threads of the day, stats
of the day pretty much have something for you every
day I'm writing, Drew, There's probably the best article I've
ever written is coming out next week on Rhode Oh.
I run fortunes behind a paywall, but I have a

(57:54):
theory on the defensive injury, I mean the running back injuries.
I sure the day it was not a one year anomaly.
It's going to be a long term tracked players still
get hurt, and I'll give you a ten second. Basically,
linebackers are lighter than ever. Only two of them are
usually on the field used to be three and four,
and so A they can all get blocked, and B
they're much smaller players hitting their running backs.

Speaker 2 (58:15):
So last year's injuries not an anomaly?

Speaker 1 (58:18):
Interesting? Yeah, because I just had that conversation with Scott
Pianowski a couple of weeks ago that one of the
things that happened with the running backs. And we're seeing
a little bit of a shift in drafts. There was
a lot of health last year for the running backs.
I hope it's not an anomaly. Well, we're going to
get into all that, So check out Jim at Jim
Coventry NFL and check out all of his work. Like

(58:40):
I said, anytime you see Jim on a show, you
want to stop and listen. He's always got something good
to say. I'm excited about the show sheet that we
have lined up for you today. We're going to start
off with something I like to call coach worship. I
do believe that the NFL is a coach's league, but
sometimes I think we get a little bit ahead of ourselves.
With some of the worship. Sometimes it's warranted, and that's

(59:02):
why we have Jim here. He's gonna tell us which
is which. So I've got five situations. I sprung one
on him right before we came on the air, so
we'll see how good he is. But let's start with
that one because down in New Orleans it looks like
it could be a rough season for that offense. We
don't really know what's going to shake out with the

(59:22):
quarterback situation. We think we know, but they hired Kellen Moore,
And my question to you off the air was, I'm
gonna put it right here because it's super important. Did
they hire him to run the offense? Is he going
to be the play caller? Whatever you want, name you
want to put on it. And then the secondary question
is do we care about you know, Rashid Shiheed had

(59:44):
a nice season last year lining up before he got hurt.
And then of course we've got Alvin Kamara kind of
hanging out there. Half the people saying he's a value,
half the people saying nat this is a trap. What
do you think about New Orleans this year? Kellen Moore
and all the pieces surrounding that.

Speaker 3 (59:59):
Offense, Yeah, So Kellen Moore gets hired, and there's only
one reason you hire Kellen Moore. You want him to
work on your offense. Whether he calls the plays, it
doesn't matter.

Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
It's his offense. He'll craft it.

Speaker 3 (01:00:09):
If he has somebody else calling plays, he will talk
about it during the week, So it's his offense.

Speaker 2 (01:00:14):
But here's the.

Speaker 3 (01:00:15):
Thing, Kellen Moore is hamstrung by his roster if he
wants to go three receivers. Okay, let's assume Olave can
take concussion free, and let's say Shaheed reports are true
and he's one hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (01:00:27):
Who's your three?

Speaker 3 (01:00:28):
Brandon Cooks thirty two, the shallow Brandon Cooks Bob means
Kevin Austin. You don't have a number three receiver. You
do not have one. And at tight end they did
sign Juwan Johnson disappointingly in my mind, to a three
year deal. We should have gone somewhere, but he didn't.
He went there and then Taysom Hill towards ACL late
last season, so he's probably not a factor. He's thirty
five years old. Did you know that old old player? Yeah,

(01:00:50):
like thirty five, right, Where did that come from? Their
second tit ends Foster Moro so morol block and basically
have three receivers with no depth. There's no depth, So
basically Tyler Shuck's gonna be the quarterback here and they're
gonna have to run two tight end sets, which is
good for him because they're gonna give him little extrac protection,
possibly an extra more ole block that'll help because the
line's not great. Kamara volumes King and Fantasy football. His

(01:01:13):
efficiency has been horrible the last two years. But if
he's on the field, he's going to get the ball
and he's going to catch screen passes because Tyler Shuck,
the game's going to be moving really fast for him
and Rashi chahit is.

Speaker 2 (01:01:25):
He really gonna have time to get.

Speaker 3 (01:01:27):
Downfield when Shuck's trying to figure out how to read
defenses navigate a rough line. So look, Chris o'labe, as
long as he can stay healthy, he is going to
get fed. When he gets six targets a game over
his career, eighty yards almost every time health related, you
gotta worry about that.

Speaker 2 (01:01:43):
But he's great.

Speaker 3 (01:01:44):
Other than that, played a volume for Kamara, but that's it.
It's gonna be rough.

Speaker 1 (01:01:48):
Yeah, the Olave thing Hopefully the rookie doesn't throw him
into concussions like Derek Carr did so, but we still
are fairly confident that Kamara is going to be heavily
involved in the receiving game.

Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
Under more, he has to be.

Speaker 3 (01:02:02):
They don't have an option because they're gonna need an
escape patch because shah Shaheed proved as a rookie. You
remember he like signed like like October of that rookie season,
and they used him in a hybrid role.

Speaker 2 (01:02:12):
He wasn't just a deep threat guy.

Speaker 3 (01:02:13):
But I don't think that's a steady diet thing that
you want to make him a regular guy taking hits
in the middle of the field.

Speaker 2 (01:02:19):
So I think that's kind of out.

Speaker 3 (01:02:20):
And you can only throw so many times to a
lot of that defense is gonna be bad this year.
Dennis Allen's gone, They've been losing hemorrhaging talent for years.

Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
They're gonna have to score points.

Speaker 3 (01:02:29):
But ye means teams are gonna pin their ears back
because there's not gonna be game script to run the ball. So,
like you said, the hot reads gonna be Kamara. So
Kamara's gonna catch sixty five passes.

Speaker 1 (01:02:41):
Yeah, it sure seems like he's a value where he's
been going. Right now, would you agree at his current
price tag?

Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
Yes? I tell you what.

Speaker 3 (01:02:48):
Now, he's missed some time in each of the last
few years. One of those years that could have been
a suspension. I can't remember if he missed a game
or two with that, but he's he's missed some time,
and he's getting older and last year miss time. At
the end of the season, nobody's talking about him. Cam Acres.
Everybody's drecting Devin Neil in basketball leagues. People are even

(01:03:09):
thinking Kendre Miller. Nobody's touching cam Akers. Cam Akers is
back from two achilles injuries. He was good for the
Vikings last year, not just borderline ninetieth percentile broken tackle rate,
eighty something percentile yards after contact. It wasn't a heavy workload.
He was good and Sean McVay did him dirty. I
still say that back to this time, he could play there.

(01:03:31):
So if you have a super deep league and you
want to take a late shot in case Kamara miss's
time and you could stash him, cam Akers is a stash.

Speaker 1 (01:03:39):
All right, interesting stuff there, and hey, like I said,
this wasn't on the show sheet. I threw it at him,
and look how he look, how he does. This is
why you're here. I appreciate that. Let's move on to
another situation that I think is really interesting. I believe
that a lot of us are already chalking up the
JJ mccon arthy situation as knowing what we're going to

(01:04:03):
see with him. I think there's a lot of assumptions
being made about exactly how good he's going to be.
I think that's a dangerous assumption. But at the same time,
I'm also a Kevin O'Connell disciple. I'm a big fan.
Ever since I watched him on the Netflix show. I
started really getting into just how he talks to people
and how he coaches. I love that stuff. But then

(01:04:23):
when you watch his quarterbacks play, they just produce. So
how do we feel about JJ McCarthy. He's stepping onto
a fourteen win team, and this offense has some big
fantasy pieces. You know, obviously we've got Justin Jefferson at
wide receiver two. We've got TJ. Hockinson tight end five.
Right now, that feels a little rich, but that's a
different story. Jordan Aison wide receiver thirty seven. I think

(01:04:46):
that's building in a little bit of suspension time. Somebody
told me that he might get suspended, and then.

Speaker 2 (01:04:53):
That talks about him. I can't remember really good though.

Speaker 1 (01:04:56):
He says, yeah, yeah, so h Then you know you've
got Aaron Jones hanging around the bottom RB two territory.
But we're all assuming this offense is going to be
just as good. Can we assume that? Do we have
that much faith in Kevin O'Connell or have we jumped
the shark a little bit with the support of what
we think he can do.

Speaker 3 (01:05:15):
You're very correct and speaking the praises of the great
coach Kevin O'Connell. Schemes, receivers opened very quickly, understands how
to sequence the stack plays up. But here's the thing.
Their off season in Minnesota tells us a lot. They've
continued to shore up the defense and that defense. Brian
Flores coaches that defense, and he's done a lot with

(01:05:35):
little They're getting more and more talent.

Speaker 2 (01:05:37):
This defense could be good. And then you go to
the other side. What did they do.

Speaker 3 (01:05:40):
Well last year? The interior offensive line was a major problem.
So they bring in both Ryan Kelly will Fries from
the Indianapolis a free agency. They spent a first round
draft pick on another guard, and then they bring in
Jordan Mason for the running game, and they spend like
twenty million on Josh Oliver the tight end. So Drew Davenport.
I'm not really good at math, but I'm thinking to myself,

(01:06:02):
they're investing in a running game here.

Speaker 2 (01:06:04):
This team wants to bolster the line.

Speaker 3 (01:06:05):
They want another powerful running back, they want another tight
end because you're paying them good money and you want
to play defense. To me, that's their recipe. McCarthy, I
trust Greg Cosl. Greg Cosell said last year McCarthy is
a project. He is going to develop amount of time.
He didn't develop last year. He had an ACL injury,
didn't develop. So if Greg co Sell is right and

(01:06:27):
he's wrong at times, we're gonna need some development time.

Speaker 2 (01:06:30):
Will he have good games?

Speaker 3 (01:06:31):
Sure, there'll be games where it works out and they
have to throw buying into fantasy. I'm worried about Addison
and Hockinson because when they throw, look, Justin Jeffers is
not losing his targets.

Speaker 2 (01:06:42):
That's not happening.

Speaker 3 (01:06:42):
He is getting the ball because that's best for the quarterback,
that's best for the team. And it's gonna be Hockinson
and Addison fighting for scraps. That's my mind. Now, if
they're getting a shootout on occasion those like you said,
you have those spike games. But that's my call on that.
Michael is gonna be a run and play defense even
until they don't.

Speaker 2 (01:06:59):
Have to be.

Speaker 1 (01:07:00):
That's a great point. You know, you've got to put
all those pieces together about what they've been doing this offseason.
You're absolutely right. Jim Harbaugh is doing the same thing
in Los Angeles, signaling that that's what they want to do.
And again just reinforces what a smart coach Kevin O'Connell is.
He knows it's going to take some time here, and
I just think it's dangerous to assume that he's going

(01:07:23):
to come out of the gates running. He's a rookie,
you know, he's he has the benefit of sitting in
the quarterback room all year. That's great, but boy, he's
still a rookie. And it makes me a little nervous,
especially with Justin Jefferson wide receiver too. But you know
we were nervous about Justin Jefferson last year. With Sam Darnold.
I think he's going to produce. He's going to be
just fine. I guess your point is the perfect one.

(01:07:45):
The ancillary pieces are the ones that tend to take
the hit there, not necessarily you know your top guy.
But all right, excellent breakdown in the Minnesota situation. My
love for Kevin O'Connell knows no bounds. I hope I
see some JJ mccarr the progress this year. All right,
let me talk about Liam Cohen because we've got two
sides of the coin with Liam Cohen here, and maybe

(01:08:07):
it won't be two sides of the coin, but we've
got two different offenses that are impacted. Number One, of course,
Baker Mayfield had a fantastic year last year. We know
what he did, forty one touchdown passes. Now Baker loses
two big offensive minds in a row, with Canalis and
Cohen leaving back to back seasons. That's the first question

(01:08:28):
up here. How much does Liam Cohen leaving affect Baker
or do we just simply say, hey, that's seven point
two percent. That gaudy touchdown rate is going to come
down regardless of who he loses. How concerned are you
about Baker Mayfield? And then on the other side of
the coin. Do we feel that optimistic about Trevor Lawrence
because he gains an offensive mind like Liam Cohen? Is

(01:08:50):
this what Lawrence has been missing? Or is he just
what he is now at this point in his career.
How do you feel about those two situations with him
without Cohen?

Speaker 3 (01:08:59):
It is a question that will make and break fantasy
football seasons for people. The forty one touchdowns, that's likely
not happening again no matter what, because think about how
many forty touchdown seasons are there.

Speaker 2 (01:09:10):
They are very uncommon.

Speaker 3 (01:09:11):
So let's get that out. I want to point this out.
Drew the fantasy community and even the NFL community. They
have misjudged Baker Mayfield as a rookie. He was very good.
The second year, Freddie Kitchens was completely overmatched, run out
of town, the offense fell apart. Baker Mayfield the year after,
another very good season, but they were a run based team.

Speaker 2 (01:09:30):
He didn't throw a ton, but he was very good.

Speaker 3 (01:09:32):
Then the fourth year he tears both shoulders and plays
through it all season, and of course he's stunk because
he didn't have a shoulder.

Speaker 2 (01:09:39):
Then he has that year between the Rams and the Panthers.

Speaker 3 (01:09:42):
That was just you know, get a couple of reps
as soon as he went to Tampa Bay clear of
the injury.

Speaker 2 (01:09:47):
First time he played really since clear of that injury.

Speaker 3 (01:09:49):
Twenty six touchdowns that year, last year, runs for three
hundred plus yards. Baker Mayfield is a good quarterback.

Speaker 2 (01:09:55):
He's not a star.

Speaker 3 (01:09:56):
He's a top fifteen NFL quarterback. And he has a
very good offensive line. Two tackles that will protect him
all day long. Interior lines getting better. He has a
Hall of Famer on one side, Mike Evans. He has
Chris Godwin, who is an insane talent as a BUCA,
as Jalen McMillan. They have a running game. I think
Baker Mayfield again not repeating last year. Cohen called all

(01:10:18):
the right place, all the right motions. Mayfield's gonna be fine.
Not last year, but he is gonna be fine. That
answers that question. So Trevor Lawrence, Yes, So Liam Cohen
comes over and the fantasy community is thinking, Oh, he
fixed Mayfield, Now he's gonna fix Lawrence. It's not the
same thing. My whole setup for Baker Mayfield is important

(01:10:38):
because Mayfield has been good. Trevor Lawrence had a half
a good season, it was a few years ago, half
a good season. He makes horrible decisions. Brian Thomas Junior,
When did he go off?

Speaker 2 (01:10:48):
Last year?

Speaker 3 (01:10:48):
Every game that mac Jones played, Mac Jones got Brian
Thomas ten more PPR points per game than Trevor Lawrence.
Thirteen point two points per game between Lawrence and Brian
Thomas twenty three with mac Jones.

Speaker 1 (01:11:02):
Why.

Speaker 3 (01:11:02):
Because Trevor Lawrence sees a play he doesn't like and
he's not going to throw the ball to that receiver.
Reason to check down somewhere else, or throw an interception,
or throw the ball into the stands.

Speaker 2 (01:11:09):
That's what he's gonna do.

Speaker 3 (01:11:11):
Liam Cohen might be able to fix a lot of things,
but Trevor Lawrence doesn't have the offensive line that Baker
Mayfield had. They also don't have the running game that
developed in Tampa Bay. All the ingredients they're not there.
It is not the same thing. Trevor Lawrence has a
lot to fix, and I think he's a million miles
from being a good quarterback. We love the name, we
love the draft pedigree. Outside of that, they'll have some flashes.

(01:11:34):
I don't trust Lawrence at all.

Speaker 1 (01:11:36):
That's that's good for me to hear because I've been
running a little bit downhill on Lawrence this offseason, just
trying to think about you know, now they draft Hunter,
now they get an offensive mine. I've been feeling pretty
good about him, So I'm glad to hear that. As
far as Baker Mayfield goes, you know, you mentioned Greg
Cosell earlier in the show. I think it was him
recently who said that he is really widely respected around

(01:11:58):
the league, that they're yeah, yeah, a lot of NFL
coaches and gms now are watching him and saying, boy,
this is a really good quarterback, where maybe that wasn't
the case three four years ago. But yeah, that's that's
interesting because I did a little bit of looking into
that seven point two percent. I took it down to
his career average, which was high four as low fives,

(01:12:21):
like four point nine to five percent. He still would
throw about thirty touchdowns if he was at five percent.
I don't think that defense is going to be very good.
You know, maybe maybe he still can throw for thirty
run for three hundred yards and two touchdowns and that's
still a nice fantasy season. He doesn't have to that
forty one and still be a producer. Okay, well that's
Liam Cohen. Let me talk about another guy that gets

(01:12:42):
the hero treatment, and that is Ben Johnson, and of
course that's even more pronounced with Ben Johnson. I'm on
record as saying that I'm a little bit concerned about
the Lions pass offense this year as far as some
of their pieces go, because of where they're being drafted.
We've got I'm on Rosse Brown at wide receiver six.
Who've got Jamison Williams adp of wide receiver twenty four

(01:13:04):
right now? You know Sam Laporte. I believe this wide
receiver or excuse me, tight end four maybe if not,
he's you know, four to six somewhere in that range.
And of course we've got Jamira gibsonting there at RB three.
This is an offense that everyone is drafting heavily for
good reason, because they are talented and they've got a
good thing going. But boy, they had so many injuries

(01:13:25):
on defense last year, and Goff really had a monster
season that he's never had before. Again, a high touchdown
rate that's probably gonna regress. I'm a little bit concerned
about the Lions offense pulling back because of the loss
of Ben Johnson and the shuffling of the deck chairs
here with the retirement of their center and all that stuff.
It makes me a little bit nervous. I'm not saying

(01:13:47):
I'm out on the Lions offense. I just feel like
they're gonna pull back a little bit. What do you
think about them? Sans Ben Johnson?

Speaker 2 (01:13:53):
And you should be nervous now.

Speaker 3 (01:13:54):
They had defense is playing at a top six level,
and preseason last year year I was all over it saying,
don't tuch Sam Laporta, don't touch Jamison Williams. They're not
going to get the ball because they're not going to pass.
And through week seven that was true. Sam Laporta averaged
two point eight targets. Through week seven he averaged seven
point seven PPR parts. He was a bust through week seven,
and Jamison Williams week three through seven he averaged two targets. Now,

(01:14:16):
fortunately had two big plays in there to get him
a few fantasy points, but he didn't do anything. And
then all of a sudden, the defense fell apart. Goff
was throwing twenty five times a game. Now all of
a sudden, it's thirty five to forty. Goff averaged nineteen
point nine PPR are not fantasy points through week nine.
The rest of the way when they had to air
it out, it was great because the defense was banged up.
So you're you're on this. That's the same formula this year.

(01:14:38):
They're gonna play defense. They're to try to run the ball. Now,
the interior offensive line is gonna be a problem because
their sixth round, second year guy Mahogany playing one guard
a second round guard. And then Ragnow is getting replaced
at center by Graham Glasgow, who's really long in the
twoth and not nearly the player Ragnell was. And here's
the problem. Ben Johnson played golf like a fiddle, made

(01:14:59):
everything work. Well, golf's gonna be under interior pressure now
because that interior line is a massive hit. And now
people like Jamison Williams, well, how can he get deep
when golf is under pressured. He's throwing the ball in
the dirt. That's not going to work. So Saint Brown's fine,
he's going to have a high floor. You're gonna have
that ceilings not two years ago. We're not getting that
fifteen hundred yard season. That's not happening again. That's twelve

(01:15:20):
hundred yard season is fine running backs. Look, Gibbs is
probably a little better off to Montgomery because the tackles
are fine and Gibbs is probably better getting outside Montgomer's
gonna get works well. He's a hurt and soul of
the team. So Montgomery's not going away. And that's the
problem for fantasy. If I think that Gibbs was kinmonly
getting like fifteen Fantasy points in game, he averaged eighteen

(01:15:42):
eighteen PPR points when Montgomery played thirteen games. If you're
taking the running back three, are you good at eighteen
PPR points a game?

Speaker 2 (01:15:49):
My answer is probably not.

Speaker 3 (01:15:50):
You probably win in the twenties, right if you could
get it, and you're probably not going to get that now.
Can he steals some work back from Montgomery? Maybe, So
that's the bet you're making. Montgomery's gonna score his touchdowns
because that's what he does. So, but you're right, you're
right to be very nervous. Golf completely out on him.

Speaker 1 (01:16:08):
Yeah, gof's price. I thought we would see the community
be a little bit more nervous about golf considering what
he did last year, realizing what he did last year,
But it hasn't really happened. He's still QB ten right now,
and I'm just totally out at a QB ten price.
But you know, again proving that we've got some of
the smartest analysts in the business on this show. We

(01:16:29):
had Rich reebar On a couple weeks ago, and Rich
said the exact same thing about Gibbs. You really have
to for where you're taking him. You really have to
be prepared for the fact that if you don't get
some missed time from Montgomery, he's not going to hit
that ceiling of where you're drafting him. You have to
hope for the injury. Otherwise they're going to continue to

(01:16:51):
do their thing. And that's really a Dan Campbell thing,
don't we I mean, doesn't Dan Campbell want to run
the ball, but he wants to have these two guys right.

Speaker 3 (01:16:59):
And paid Montgomery last year. Is like they paid him,
you know what, Knuckles and Sonic, that's their thing. I mean,
they bought into that philosophy. I remember a few years ago,
before Monty was there, it was Jamal Williams. Scoring is
like eighteen touchdowns or whatever. It's a thing there.

Speaker 1 (01:17:14):
Yeah, yeah, it's not a mirage. It's also why I
don't understand Montgomery low end RB two, high end RB
three right now, because when he was scoring touchdowns, I mean,
the guy was top eight. So I'm not saying he's
gonna do that again, but I'm just saying it feels
like an overcorrection there for Montgomery. But okay, well, let's
talk about the other Ben Johnson piece here, which is

(01:17:34):
the Chicago Bears. How important is it? Because I hear
you talking about the play sequencing and things like that,
and that was something that you talked about with JJ
and Doug, And I want to know how important do
you think that is for Caleb Williams this year because
he gets this smart offensive mind. They do have some

(01:17:55):
pieces around him, and I also want to talk a
little bit about DeAndre Swift. But I guess tell me
your overall impression of how you feel like Johnson's gonna
be able to help the Bears and kayleb Williams well.

Speaker 3 (01:18:07):
The Bears offseason's moves tell us a lot. They trade
for Joe Toney, the left guards who playing an elite level.
They signed Drew Dollman, the center who does zone blocking,
which is what we have Ben Johnson once out of
his lineman, so he came from Atlanta, but he does that.
And then they signed right guard Jonah Jackson, who had
played under Ben Johnson. A little injury history there, but

(01:18:27):
that was the first thing he did, is they shored
up the line. They knew it wouldn't be the Lions line,
but this would be at least a line that would
be competitive, and that's a big starting block. And then
of course you bring Colston Lovelan and ten pick in
the draft Luther Burden, so you could tell what this
offense is about. But it's gonna be different than Detroit
because the Bears are not designed to run the ball.
Deandres it's gonna be a volume guy, and you asked

(01:18:48):
about him, volume is king, and fantasy football, you take
him at ADP because he has a floor every week.
Roshan Johnson less than fifth percentile broken tackle in the yards.
If you contact, he's terrible. It's a special teamer. It's
all he should probably ever be. You take Swift as
a volume as king guy. But Caleb Williams had never
had no chance last year. The offensive line was not
coaches to pick up like simulated pressures when you know

(01:19:10):
the player is coming from a snap of the ball.
Defense is knew they were getting in the backfield. That
means they crept all their defensive backs up. It was terrible.
Williams never had a chance. Bubble screens of DJ Moore
was the only answer they had. So Caleb Williams, I
give him a complete pass on last year, even the
players where people say on film, oh look at he
passed this up.

Speaker 2 (01:19:28):
Yeah, because he figured he wasn't get creamed.

Speaker 3 (01:19:30):
So of course he was because he you know, it's like,
well the old Eric Dickerson line, you're playing Russian Roulette
with five bullets in the chamber. Well, all right, the
bullet wasn't in the chamber in his time, but I
thought I was going to catch the bullet. So yeah, No,
Caleb Williams, whatever you thought of him last year projected
to him this year because he has a real like
grown up coach.

Speaker 1 (01:19:49):
Now, yeah, and those besides the line which should I
guess I shouldn't say, besides the line that's bearing the lead,
that's a huge deal. But besides that fact, having a
coach who knows how to ha that kind of stuff,
it's just so underrated. And somebody who can step in
and say Okay, we're gonna run X, Y and Z.
We're gonna run from the same look so the defense
can't figure it out exactly what we're doing. And one

(01:20:11):
of the guys I talked to, I'm tangentially I know
Sean McVay. Threw a guy a friend of mine around here,
and he said that Sean told him one time the
best thing that he did when he got into the
NFL was making all of his plays look similar and
running him out of the same formation. And then I
really started to pay attention that that's what he loved

(01:20:32):
about Cooper Cup was how many different things he could
do with Cup from the same spot on the field.
And of course that's what he's doing with Pukinakua now.
So yeah, so that's so huge. And I think I
don't want to be over involved with the Bears just
because I have like some fantasy PTSD as a fifty
year old fantasy player, never seeing a good passing game

(01:20:56):
in Chicago, but gosh, I really want to be in
on them with what they've got going on there. So hey,
we're ahead of time. I love it. We're doing great.
We got we're twenty seven minutes in. I've got three
important situations that I feel like are being a little
bit under sold. I know that we talk about the
New York Jets a lot with respect to Garrett Wilson,

(01:21:16):
but I don't know that anybody's really talking about justin
fields as much as they should be. So that's one
of the ones I want to hit. But all three
of these situations, it's a new day for quarterbacks in
these offenses, and I think that rightfully so fantasy managers
don't know what to do with some of these offenses.
The first one is Tennessee. You know, they get the

(01:21:37):
number one pick in there, and I feel like it's
the quietest number one pick fanfare that we've had in
a long time. Nobody's talking about the Tennessee offense. In fact,
people seem to be more scared now than they were
last year when they didn't have a whole lot going on.
Tony Pollard's RB twenty nine coming off the board, Ridley's

(01:21:57):
wide receiver thirty one coming off the board. I mean,
I don't expect a lot out of this guy his
first year, but gosh, those seemed like really low prices
for a number one pick who could feasibly make this
offense quite a bit better than it was last year.
What's your impression of the Titans and those prices on
those players.

Speaker 3 (01:22:14):
So when you look at the Titans, the offense, the
wide receiver room besides Calvin really is terrible, Tyler Locket
is washed, Trerylon Burk's good luck seeing him on the field.
Van Jefferson please, you know. And then he got the
rookies they drafted, and they drafted him late fourth round,
so you know what, good luck with that working out.
I honestly think the number two receiver could be Chigakonquoa,
the tight end, and he's been like he's never had

(01:22:35):
a chance. He's had like five hundred yard seasons, but
they've never been able to have a quarterback or a
situation to use him. That could be your steal of
your late drafted you get a second tight end. But
Ward's in a decent spot because Dan Moore, the left tackle,
may not have been great from Pittsburgh, but he's serviceable.

Speaker 2 (01:22:50):
He does a decent job.

Speaker 3 (01:22:51):
Last year they brought in center Lloyd Cushenberry. He underperformed,
but he you know, he should easily bounce back. And
then they have the young guys Peter Skronski, JC Latham.
They drafted, they have a chance to emerge and step up,
and then they pick up Kevin Zeitler to garden free agency.

Speaker 2 (01:23:04):
This could be a good line.

Speaker 3 (01:23:05):
It might not a great line, but if cam Morden
is an average line, Tony Pollard ran behind a garbage
line and he was great last year.

Speaker 2 (01:23:12):
And I know they're talking.

Speaker 3 (01:23:13):
You know, they wanted a time share between Spears and Pollard,
but Spears got hurt multiple times. So fine, but Pollard's
still going to lead this backfield, although they say not.
He's gonna be a value pick. And Ridley two straight
thousand yard seasons. I want to say he was. He
was getting about seven sixty yards a game after the
week eight.

Speaker 2 (01:23:31):
You know, at the week eight he was fine. And
now they're a grown up quarterback.

Speaker 3 (01:23:36):
Maybe it's a little bit better than this revolving door
of Mason Rudolph and Will Levis. So yeah, I think
Calvin really is a steal. I think Tony Pollard's a steal.
And then again, late Ta could take a dart throw
on a conquo. It is a second tight night. It
doesn't pay up by week three, dump them, but it
should be all.

Speaker 1 (01:23:51):
Right, I think so, I think that I'm not sitting
here trying to sell anybody on the Titans being a powerhouse.
But gosh, I shure think it's weird that Pollard's going
so that really's going so low. These guys really have
volume written all over them. And if it's just competent
quarterback play, like you said, the Rudolph Levis combination, even
saying it now just makes me laugh. It's just terrible.

(01:24:13):
And we've got a number one pick back there now,
and somehow people are less interested. I'm not that's not
computing for me. But okay, well, how about the Cleveland Browns.
I mean, this is another mess of a quarterback situation.
We have no clue who's coming out of there, although
I have my suspicions, and I hope they're wrong, but
I hope Kenny Pickett's not the day one starter. But

(01:24:36):
you won't, okay A good So, yeah, I keep hearing
that and I'm like, please, no, please no, But you know,
it's a it's weird because nobody's expecting a whole lot
from that quarterback room in general. But we still got
Judkins up at RB twenty six. We got a Joku
at tight end ten. You know Jerry Judy wide receiver
thirty four. Those aren't crazy prices, but boy, people just

(01:24:59):
do not have any confidence in this offense either. What's
your confidence level in that quarterback room and that offense
in these fantasy pieces.

Speaker 3 (01:25:07):
Look, I expect Joe Flacco to be the quarterback. And
Joe Flacco's played sixteen games over the last three seasons
between the Jets, Cleveland and Indianapolis. One point six touchdowns.
That's good. One point six touchdouns a game is good.
He throws picks, I get it. His yardage has been good.
Joe Flacco commonly puts him at least fifteen fantasy points,
but in the majority of his games, no sixteen games,

(01:25:28):
it's been over twenty. He has been a good fantasy producer.
Not a good NFL quarterback, but a good fantasy producer.
And Flacco at least knows what to do with the football. Yeah,
besides hero to the other team on occasion. But all
that said, here's the deal in Cleveland, and everybody needs
to get their mind around us. When Deshaun Watson went there,
Kevin O'Connell had to scrap the offense that he was

(01:25:49):
a mastermind at He had to go because Deshaun Watson
wasn't comfortable under center, so they had to move in
a shotgun and they had to go from two tight
ends to their base offense to three receivers.

Speaker 2 (01:25:58):
It was a spread off.

Speaker 3 (01:26:00):
Well, the offensive linemen have been hurt a lot the
last few years, but they've also had to go to
a run blocking system they weren't picked for. They struggled
in that spread offense. So Beotonio, Poe, Sik Wyatt, Tyler,
Jack Cocklin. They've all been there through this time. They're
getting older, but they go back. Now, Troy Harrison, the
full back, they put him on the team. They're gonna
use him. They drafted another tight end, Harold Fannin. This

(01:26:23):
team is going back to their roots. They're going two
tight ends or full back. They are going to run
the football because that's what Kevin Stefanski wants to do.
That's what he's coached to do. He has the offensive line.
You know, though they're older, they have the ability to
do this. They're going to pass off of that play
action smart passes. This offense will be surprisingly good. Quinn,
Shawn Judkins and I know they drafted Sampson in the

(01:26:45):
fourth round. Judkins has a three down skill set, two
hundred and twenty pounds. He is going to be very
productive in this offense right away. And Joku, if flat
goes to start, remember that last five weeks they've played
together in twenty twenty three and Joko is the overall
tight end one average about ninety three yards a game,
incredible target share.

Speaker 2 (01:27:03):
Jerry Judy, Look, he.

Speaker 3 (01:27:05):
May have drop issues, he was getting ten point three
targets a game from like week ten on last year.
He proved he could produce. This offense can be fun.
They're not gonna be lk Ough scoreboards for NFL, but
for fantasy. Yeah, they're gonna be scoring points.

Speaker 1 (01:27:19):
That's really interesting to hear you say that because Jerry
Judy has been a guy that I've not been really
interested in, and the price reflects the fact that I'm
not alone there. A lot of people are all feeling that.
But if it's Joe Flacco, I'm interested in Jerry Judy,
but I'm worried that I get the rug pulled out
from under me in week nine or something like that.

(01:27:40):
When they want to start Gabriel or Sanders, do you
have any fear about that.

Speaker 3 (01:27:44):
So I'm going to try to look up this game
log real quick, because I remember the one bad game
that Judy had was when Dorian Thompson Robinson was in
and I believe it was Week sixteen. It was two
for twenty and I'm three targets, and I knew going
into that game that Judy was in trouble. Then the
next week, I believe, against Miami with Thompson Robinson, that
two for twenty became a twelve for ninety four and

(01:28:06):
eighteen targets. So it was one bad week. Other than that,
you were double digit fantasy points pretty much every week
without without any like high end double digit points. The
worst game was twelve. Aside from that one game, he
did it with horrible quarterback play. They had terrible quarterback
play last year, revolving doors of nobody's. So what's the
worst case scenario. It's last year. But Jerry Judy was

(01:28:29):
really the second half of a season. He was he
was a wide receiver fifteen ish. I'm not I'm not
saying he was exactly that. He may have been a
little better than that, but he was in like a
wide receiver fifteen range. Now I know you that nine
for two to thirty five game in there, but regardless,
you had ninety four yards one hundred yards eighty five
one two two thirty five. That's he did it. And
you can't take that away from him. And he's not
a great NFL receiver, but he doesn't have to be ecentric.

(01:28:53):
Tillman's a real nice compliment to him, but they do
different things. Judy's gonna be more of the possession guy.

Speaker 1 (01:28:59):
I like Tilman too. If they've got competent quarterback play,
I'm all over Tillman as my last wide receiver in
every draft this year.

Speaker 3 (01:29:06):
He is going as high as a ninth round in
high stakes drafts. I was in a I was in
the NFFC draft last week last Wednesday, and he went
in the ninth I was live streaming the draft, and
then one of the guys that's a high stakes player
told me, well, he went in the tenth the night before.
So if you're in a sharp group of people, he
ain't getting Tudrick Tilman in the end of your draft anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:29:25):
He was doing his wide receiver sixty five.

Speaker 3 (01:29:27):
If you're in a casual league, you can still get
him a wide receiver sixty two. If you're in any
type of competitive league, go get him if you want to.
Stilman average seven catches, eighty five yards in a touchdown
in the three games once he took over when Amari
Cooper was traded. Then he had a like a forty
yard game, then the concussion. At the end of the season,
he was on a very good track.

Speaker 1 (01:29:48):
I watched him in those couple of games. I had
picked him up in a couple different leagues and thought,
what where have they been hiding this guy? And then yeah,
the concussion just ended what we thought looked like a breakout.
And then everyone seems to just be forgetting about him.
But you're telling me everyone isn't. The casuals are forgetting
about it, but the share players are on Cedric Tillman.

(01:30:09):
So that tells me I need to adjust my expectations
for the King's Classic. He's not going to be an
auction bargain there. But okay, well, hey, this is really
good for me because I've been pretty much off Jerry
Judy and this has given me a lot to think about.
I want to end the Cleveland conversation because I want
to get to justin Fields and I teased this earlier,

(01:30:32):
but I feel like, even though it's the New York
Jets and everybody kind of wants to laugh at the
New York Jets, and I understand that, but we've got
some important fantasy pieces here, one of whom is Justin
Fields that's being drafted as the twelfth quarterback off the board.
It sort of feels like the community's fence sitting there
taking him at the bottom of QB one territory. I

(01:30:53):
feel like the Jets brought in a player that they
know who he is, and they want to try to
make it work lean into what he does. That's my
opinion about the goal they had in mind. Does that
mean he gets a bit of a longer leash, like
they're not gonna yank him so quick or should we
be worried about that? And then what does that do
to the whole Jets offense for fantasy.

Speaker 3 (01:31:15):
Look, I think that they had a real intent offseason.
It was the point of bringing Fields and sign him
a two year deal. Their goal is to make this
work this year. Now, Fields has big turnover issues. He
throws interceptions, he fumbles the ball routinely. Now they all
get recovered by the other team, but he has fumble
issues too. But that said, you go to Chicago twenty

(01:31:36):
twenty two eleven hundred and forty three rushing yards. I
think that was the most by a quarterback bumber correctly.
And then the next year he played thirteen games and
it was his pace was like eight to sixty.

Speaker 2 (01:31:44):
So he is an elite runner.

Speaker 3 (01:31:46):
Like realistically, it's right there with Lamar, with Jayden Daniels,
he's right there for running. Now, as a passer, we
get all concerned, but at twenty twenty three with the Bears,
it was not a horrific passing season. Remember Dj Moore
at thirteen hundred sixty yards and any touchdowns. Cole committed
a career here seven hundred and ten ish yards and
six touchdowns. So he was able to operate in the

(01:32:07):
middle of field of a tight end and operate with
an alpha receiver. Well, justin fields he's going to be
unleashed a run here. So you're right, people are hedging
in rightfully, so because we're worried he loses his job.
But what are they gonna do with Tyrod Taylor in
I mean, he can play, he's okay, but they really
don't want to go that direction.

Speaker 1 (01:32:25):
No, there's not some hotshot rookie sitting on the bench
that's waiting to take the spot, So it makes me
feel better about taking him. But hey, what I've been
saying all along is it doesn't hurt you to take
Fields where he's being drafted that much, and then you
can just back him up really late. There's so many
quarterbacks late you can just back them up. Especially in
an auction. You can get a one dollar Matt Stafford,

(01:32:47):
a two dollars Dak Prescott, something like that. I think
that's the way to go. I just don't understand why
we wouldn't be going after Fields at this point. And
let's say let's say they do yank him after week eight,
So what we had fun for him eight weeks and
those eight weeks matter, just like the end of the
season matters. You'll find that guy if the waiver wire,
the bow knicks, the whatever that that will come on

(01:33:08):
this year anyway. So okay, Well, let's let's leave the
people with their favorite part of every discussions with Drew,
and that's asking my analysts that I have on here,
who are your favorite players that you're drafting, And so
it becomes kind of a thing where you know, just
like when you're doing your drafts, who are you clicking on?
Who are you unable to click on? So give me

(01:33:31):
a couple from each side. Who are you fading? Who
are you targeting right now? Who are the Jim Coventry specials?

Speaker 3 (01:33:38):
In the first second round turn area? I have Drake
London and Headed Nakua head of Mom and ros Saint
Brown head of Brian Thomas. It was thirteen targets a
game with Pennix, it was eleven targets game in the
last sixty average ninety four yards With Pennix, it was
one hundred and seventeen. Drake London's gonna see a hundred
sixty targets and he's better than all those guys. He's
like a legit first round draft pick. So love him.

(01:33:58):
DJ Moore two years yars Ago wide receiver six. Last
year was a train wreck wide receiver fourteen. He's getting
drafted as wide receiver twenty. What am I missing? Everything's
better in Chicago?

Speaker 2 (01:34:08):
I dumb. I do not get that.

Speaker 3 (01:34:10):
Jake Ferguson Now he's no longer the number two option
because George Pickens there.

Speaker 2 (01:34:14):
But this team can't run the ball. What are you
gonna do?

Speaker 3 (01:34:17):
Javonte Williams jade On Blue, good luck with that. Was
talking to the Cowboys beat reporter around XM. He's saying
the same thing. They're not gonna a real to run
the ball here. And their defense, they have a lot
of players coming back from serious injuries. They're not for
these players might have him back on the field. Dallas
have to throw, throw, throw, So with Ferguson, I also
wanted Dak Prescott. Ferguson, remember he did nothing last year.

(01:34:38):
He missed three games. He had a bunch of Cooper rush.
In the seven games of Prescott, Ferguson had three seventy
yard games out of seven. A tight end three seventy
yard games. And Pickens is only gonna help. Pickens is
gonna open up the field underneath. And Prescott's always loved
this tight end. And with Prescott, remember this injuries. Sure,
he had a thumb, he had a hamstring, he had
a broken ankle, disocated ankle. That's not an injury prone guy.

(01:35:00):
These are three weird injuries, very weirder. So in his
three full seasons, quarterback two, quarterback, three, quarterback seven and
you're getting the quarterback twelve all day long.

Speaker 1 (01:35:12):
I love the quarter of the calls and the Cowboys.
I was in a mock the other night where I
got Brock Purdy for two bucks Dak Prescott for a dollar.
It was perfect. Loved it. Those two guys for three
bucks all day long. Sign me up. And then the
Jake Ferguson thing is funny to me because we know
what he was the previous year with a lot of Dak,

(01:35:33):
and then last year he has Cooper Rush and everybody says,
e who cares anymore? I don't get that either. Prescott
loves the middle of the field, loves his tight ends
they throw to him near the goal line. I just
don't get the Jake Ferguson thing. Maybe that climbs as
we get into August and people realize, but hey, if not,
right now, I'm snapping up a lot of Jake Ferguson.

(01:35:53):
All right, what about the other side? Who are some
guys you're fading?

Speaker 2 (01:35:55):
Three? For sure?

Speaker 3 (01:35:57):
Bonix great second half of the season, right, twenty five.

Speaker 2 (01:36:00):
Points in three of his last seven games.

Speaker 3 (01:36:02):
Well, last year, Bonnicks had to carry the team because
again back to that Javonte Williams of Dallas thing. Well,
he couldn't run in Denver. Julia McLaughlin's terrible audreck estimate
didn't do his job. So basically Denver had no choice
but to put the team on Nick's shoulder. Well, their
offensive line is great, and they bring in Dobbins, they
bring in Harvey. Running game's gonna be fine. The defense

(01:36:23):
was really good last year. Well, first round pick corners
Jade barn they get Dre Greenlaw telling Ou Hufanga from
San Francisco. This defense could be elite. Oh wait a minute,
let me think this through Sean Payton. He might have
an elite defense. He might have a really high end
running him with a great offensive line. How much is
bo Nick's passing? And the other thing is this boon
Nicks ran because he had to run last year for

(01:36:44):
four hundred plus yards. But if he's got these running backs,
does he really need to run that much?

Speaker 2 (01:36:48):
Probably not. So.

Speaker 3 (01:36:49):
All those great things not Nick's fault doesn't put a
knock on him.

Speaker 2 (01:36:52):
His role is gonna be way different this year.

Speaker 1 (01:36:54):
T Higgins is next Nicks right out of the gate.
I love it all right, Higgins, Oh no, don't do it.

Speaker 3 (01:37:01):
He's going as the tight end twelve. I mean, I'm
saying the wide receiver twelve. Yeah, he does not have
an eleven hundred yard season. He does not have one
hundred and ten targets in a season. He's played five
years in the league. He missed five games in each
of the last two years. He's had injury issues before that.
Last year I faded him because I said I can't
trust him to be on the field, and he missed
five more games. He has never been anything close to

(01:37:22):
the wide receiver twelve. So we're extrap ladings out saying,
all of a sudden, he's been a borrow five years,
but now all of a sudden year six because he
got paid. Oh, now he's going to be the wide
receiver twelve. If he was wide receiver fifteen or sixteen, great, well,
even then I'm probably the injury. I would probably fade
him a little bit there, but it'd be more palatable.
But wide receiver twelve in five years, he hasn't come
close to that.

Speaker 2 (01:37:43):
That's a tough sell. Drew. Last one is Tyreek Hill.
Tyreek Hill.

Speaker 3 (01:37:47):
We could blame the risk injury last year, right, but
you can't blame a risk injury on thirty eight percent
of yards after to catch. This guy's been in the
nineties his whole career. His quarterback is limited, and defenses
know it. They know you can just compress the field
because he can't throw it down field. He can't really
push the ball the primer to a can't. Tyreek Kill
has said three times this offseason that I know of,
he's unhappy there.

Speaker 2 (01:38:07):
This is all a recipe for disaster.

Speaker 3 (01:38:09):
I think he lost a nano second off the speed,
and that's huge. He lost at one. I think last
year he lost the gear that made him faster than
every other person on the planet. And I think, now
he's this really fast guy, but he's not that tyreek
Hill supernova. So at a wide receiver fifteen can't do it.

Speaker 1 (01:38:27):
I'm with you on Tyreek Hill. I'm worried enough about
the Dolphins situation in general that I just think it
could completely implode and we could have just just a
complete mess. The only thing keeping me away from devon
a Chan at this point is the risk of implosion
there in Miami. But yeah, you know, I am not

(01:38:50):
surprised at your t Higgins call because when I looked
at his price. This is funny because I just got
done having a conversation with somebody the other day and
I tweeted this out. T Higgins actually ended up being
wide receiver three in Fantasy points per game in the
games that he played. That's insane. But you pointed out
that he missed five games. He missed five last year.

(01:39:10):
That is a concern. And I'll tell you what you
think to yourself. Okay, well, twelve games of T Higgins
is still pretty good. But you know, as a T
Higgins manager last year, I didn't make the playoffs in
a couple of leagues because of him and because I
didn't have anybody there when I needed him. He did
win me a league with that forty points in one

(01:39:30):
of the weeks at the end of the year. But
you know, that's what it comes down to, is how
much tolerance do you have for that? Because when he's
on the field, he can be a monster. The boy.
I'm just I'm shocked at the wide receiver price, the
wide receivers twelve price.

Speaker 2 (01:39:44):
That's weird, right, It's assuming no risk. Why it is
like this is a risk free player. Yeah, that's not
the case.

Speaker 1 (01:39:51):
I know, and when I was I've complained about this
multiple times so everybody get ready to hear it again.
But I said this about Chris Jim McAffrey a couple
of years ago when he was still going at the
top of drafts, when he had missed a bunch of time,
and I thought, where's my discount? And this I've said
the same thing about Patrick Mahomes this summer. He's still
going as QB six and I think the guy hasn't

(01:40:14):
been good for fantasy now for a year and a half.
What the hell are we doing with him at QB six.
I thought this year was finally the year I could
snap up some Mahomes at the bottom of QB one territory.
It ain't happening. And same thing with T Higgins. Why
is he pushed up into wide receiver one territory after
the season he had just because of the big games?
I mean, maybe that's.

Speaker 2 (01:40:36):
That's what we remember Week seventeen, which.

Speaker 1 (01:40:40):
Is why they don't like Jake Ferguson. So all right,
well that's why you're getting smarter here on the auction
Brief with with Jim Coventry. So Jim, thank you again
for coming on. Don't forget to follow him on Twitter
at Jim Coventry, NFL, and folks, you can't miss him
over these draft pre months because he's everywhere and he's

(01:41:02):
doing fantastic work. Check out his threads too. I enjoy
his threads that he does about specific players or situations,
so look at those. But you can find a ton
of Jim's content out there. He's always pushing content and
that's why he's such a value to us here on
the Auction Brief. Thank you again for coming by.

Speaker 2 (01:41:20):
Thank you, Drew, keep crushing it.

Speaker 1 (01:41:22):
Thanks buddy, appreciate you. All Right, Well that is it
for this week and another week of discussions Withdrew. All Right, Jim,
nice job boy. I love hearing his analysis. He just
has so much to say about every situation because let's

(01:41:44):
face it, he's been breaking it down all summer long already,
and the guy is just all over it. So I
hope you enjoyed this week's discussions with Drew. I thought
he really brought it and I thought we learned a
lot today. So thank you again for joining me for
another episode of the Auction Brief. It's been another banger
of an episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Don't forget

(01:42:05):
to use my code Auction twenty twenty five at fjafantasysports
dot com to get your draft boards when you're ready
to order them. You get ten percent off your order.
You can find me on Twitter at Drew Davenport FF.
I'm also the Fantasy Football Lawyer on TikTok and Patreon.
Just four bucks a month. Get in there and let's
talk auction the rest of the summer. We're gonna be
doing all kinds of things from now until the end

(01:42:28):
of August that you are gonna love. All right, folks, Well,
thank you so much for joining me. It's been another
fun episode. I love getting on the mic every week
and I can't wait till next week. The Auction Brief
is adjourned and I am out.

Speaker 4 (01:42:42):
The Auction Brief is adjourn that'll do it for this
week's episode. See you next time on the Auction Brief.

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