My Auction Targets, Fades, and Budget Wasters; Guest Dave Richard from CBS Sports

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Auction Brief. There's a join in this
game or not, taking you on a journey through fantasy football,
the law, and life, the.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Saw your day. It depends on how much you want.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
And now you're legal analyst and auction draft expert here
to help you dominate your fantasy drafts. Your host, Drew Davenport,
there are full hearts.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Hey, everybody, welcome into the Auction Brief. As the lady said,
I'm your host, Drew Davenport. You're a fantasy football lawyer.
Thank you so much for joining me for another episode
of the Auction Brief. We are rolling along here and
as you get this show, it's the day before our

(00:53):
nation's holiday. I can't freaking believe it is July already.
I don't even know what the hell I have done
with the first six months of the year.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Folks.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
Oh, existential dread is hilarious. Thank you so much for
joining me this week. I have a banger of an episode.
This week. We've got Dave Richard from CBS on discussions
with Drew. We're gonna hit auction talk. We're gonna hit
some of the some difficult situations of who am I
picking Derrick Henry or Christian McCaffrey. We're gonna get into

(01:27):
situations like that. We're also gonna spend some time talking
auction stuff. I think you're gonna enjoy that whole conversation.
But this week I'm delivering on my promise about how
I've retooled the show a little bit this year, and
how I was gonna talk a little bit more about
players specifically this summer, not so much content about just

(01:48):
drilling down into every single little detail of auctions. Although
we're gonna do some of that stuff. This is gonna
be a change for me. It's gonna be a little different. Okay,
it's just gonna be a little different. I just want
to tell you all about the fantasy players that I
really like, the players I want to show up and draft.

(02:10):
That's my fantasy draft. I sound a little bit like
Moira Rose, don't I. You know, I realized this summer
we haven't had a lot of duke. Actually, we haven't
had any duke. We haven't any ranch guy, the plane
Settler hasn't shown up. You know. I'm sorry to disappoint
all of you. My fat wet mouth is running a

(02:30):
mile a minute, and sometimes I forget sometimes I forget.
But let's bring a little levity back into the show.
Let's have a great time this week. My episode this
week is going to focus on players only, so it's
going to relate to auctions, but it's going to be
what players am I looking at as my players that
I feel are going to be values, my targets. Guys

(02:51):
I'm staying away from guys I'm nominating to waste money.
We're going to do all player specific stuff. This is
not one well that's not true. There's just a little
bit of theory woven in and out of the show.
But we're gonna talk all about my players at every
single position. We're gonna go through quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers,
tight ends. We're even gonna hit kickers and d's and

(03:14):
how I handle those nominations who I'm nominating. This is
gonna be different for me. It's totally different for me.
So I hope it's not a boring show where I'm
just like telling you who I like. I like this
guy and I like this guy. No, I think it's
gonna be fun. I think it's gonna be really interesting
for you to hear my thought process because one of

(03:35):
the things that I've been harping on all summer is
that this show in July may look different. In August,
it may be different. Last year, I was talking about
Christian Kirk for six weeks because I thought he was
going to be a good But you know, then I
get into a draft and he's going for seventeen bucks.
I'm like, what's Christian Kirk? Come on, folks, He's an
eight dollars player. That's why I liked him, because he

(03:55):
was cheap and he was a good producer. Every player
has a reason, and every player has a value. I'm
hoping to explain some of that today. I think that's
gonna be fun. Before we get to that, though, don't forget.
You can find me on Twitter at Drew Davenport FF.
You can find me on TikTok and Patreon at the
Fantasy Football Lawyer. Check that stuff out. You're gonna get

(04:17):
my most detailed analysis and my intermost thoughts over on Patreon.
So hit that up for just four bucks a month.
What can you get for four bucks a month these days?
Nothing right except all of my intermost thoughts on auctions,
legal situations. All that stuff goes up on the Patreon first,
and of course I'm working with FJA Fantasy Draft Boards

(04:39):
this summer. Once again. FJA Fantasy Draft Boards, I believe
are the best boards in the business. I don't say
that because I'm chilling for him, Folks. I only get
into partnerships with products I agree with. I've had, Believe me,
I've had people come to me about betting apps about
stuff like that. I don't endorse that stuff because I
don't use it and I don't care about it. I'm

(05:00):
not here just to make you an extra thirty eight bucks, okay,
I'm here to give you the best fantasy advice. One
of those pieces of advice I have is FJA Fantasy
Draft Boards are awesome. So go to their site. Use
my promo code Auction two zero two five Auction twenty
twenty five will get you ten percent off your order.
That's enough of that stuff. We do not have a

(05:20):
legal update this week. There's nothing moving on the Rashie
Rice case. And this is just your reminder that the
closer we get to the season, the further chance it
gets from being a suspension for Rice. I've been saying
that for you know, two months now, but every day
makes it less likely he gets suspended. And for Jordan Adison,

(05:40):
we're just waiting on that July fifteenth court date, although
I do think some things could shake loose here in
the next ten days before the court date. We shall see.
Stay tuned to the auction brief and stay tuned to
the Patreon Network. All right, what do you say we
do a detailed analysis of all the players. I'm looking
at it every position. Holy cow, this is a big,
big episode for me. Never done this before. I really

(06:02):
hope you enjoy it. Let's do some auction talk.

Speaker 3 (06:05):
Auction talk.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
Before I go into the specific players that I'm going
to be talking about at every position, I want to
have a little bit of a conversation about the general
idea that you're supposed to be following when you're trying
to pick out a nomination, because that's a lot of
what this is about. I'm going to talk about the
players that I like and don't like and whatever I'm chasing,
blah blah blah, but a lot of it is about
the art of the nomination. And don't forget, if you're

(06:31):
going sixteen rounds, you only get sixteen nominations. You can't
sit there and nominate nine quarterbacks. That's not helping you.
You have to shift your nominations as the draft goes on.
So not only do you change the nomination strategy as
it goes You may have a guy in your mind,
like I'm going to nominate this guy when it's my turn,
and then three players go before your turn that make

(06:53):
you completely change your nomination. You should always stay engaged
in that and never stay locked into what you're doing.
That's going to help you not be predictable to other players,
but also it's just going to help you maximize the
value for your nominations. Remember, folks say, with me, control
what you can control. Nominations are one of those things.

(07:13):
You have to have a goal for all of your nominations.
What is the reason you're nominating somebody? This is really
really important that you're locked into this stuff when you're
doing an online auction, because when you're online, you don't
have a lot of time, and sometimes that clock's going
to be ten to fifteen seconds and you have to
pick out a nomination scroll and find the right player.

(07:35):
This is something that you have to pay attention to,
but in live auctions it's just as important. You just
may have a little bit more time and leeway, but
always remember you need to have a reason for what
you're doing, have a goal in mind for why you're
doing that, And I think there's a It really falls
into a couple different buckets. When you're in the middle

(07:55):
of an auction, sometimes you want to nominate somebody purely
to waste around. You want to punt around. More often
than not, this happens in I don't know, maybe sixty
to seventy five percent of the way through the draft,
when you have money, but you don't have enough money
to be controlling the room, and there just aren't enough
players on the board where you want to nominate and

(08:17):
burn one of them because there could be like fifteen
players left that you really like or that you consider,
let's be honest, I really like. At that point is
unlikely there could be fifteen players on the board that
you're okay with having on your roster. There really aren't
enough players out there that you can waste a nomination,
so you're trying to just waste a little bit of time,

(08:40):
punt that nomination, and wait for the draft to come
back to you to find the right value on one
of those fifteen players. That's when you want to waste
that nam who do you want to be wasting it?
On a lot of times, I've found that the most
that the easiest way to do that is kickers and defenses,
and one of two things can happen here. We're going
to go over kickers and defense is to start because

(09:01):
I want you to hear that. It's quick and also
I think it sets up the rest of the conversation.
But one of the things I love to do with
kicker and d is I love to pick out the
quote unquote top kickers and d's. And when I want
to punt or waste a nomination or waste around because
I want the draft to come back to me. Don't
get me wrong. When I say have a goal, have

(09:22):
a reason, I'm still accomplishing something by punting or wasting.
When I say wasting, that's maybe that's a poor turn
or phrase. When I'm punting around, there's a very specific
goal there, and that is I'm saving my money. I'm
not burning a player that I want with a nomination
who might go for too much money, and I'm letting
the draft come back to me. So that's a very

(09:44):
specific goal. So wasting quote, wasting a nomination is probably
bad connotation for what I'm trying to say. I'm trying
to say, you just want to punt that round. Kickers
and d's are perfect for that because I'll nominate the
top kicker on the board. And if somebody spend two dollars, cool,
enjoy that two dollars you spend on a kicker. And
if nobody wants to step up and go at it

(10:06):
with me, then I just got my top choice for
a buck. It's a win win for me. Either somebody
is going to spend two or three bucks on a
player that I wouldn't spend that for, or I'm going
to end up with that player. That's you know, wasting
or punting around the other nomination typically that you're going
to make. And this is really these two things are

(10:27):
really ninety eight percent of the nominations you're going to make.
The other two percent maybe like you know, aimed nomination,
aiming it at somebody, or nominating from a position group
where you just depleted your money on that position group.
There's a lot of nuance to that. So we're going
to talk about that a little bit more because I
think sometimes you're better off leaving those big players on
the board, you can go spend money elsewhere. But then

(10:48):
sometimes you can spend money elsewhere because the other players
in the room are waiting on one of those big players,
so they're not going to be in competition for you
for a guy that's lower in the ranks. But sometimes
it's better to just hammer away at those lower ranks
because they don't know what they're going to spend on
that top players, so they're saving their money. Anyway. That's
a long, dis nuanced discussion, point being that's not very

(11:13):
much of the time that you're going to be doing that.
Two to five percent of the time, maybe the other
ninety five whatever percent of the time is going to
be either wasting around or punting a nomination, or the
most common is just nominating a player that you're not
really you don't really have a strong belief on. And
I think that's most of the game here. There's a

(11:35):
whole group of players in the draft pool, and it
should be a large part of the draft pool. You
should be agnostic on them. You should just be completely
without much of an opinion on that. And I don't
mean like you shouldn't know what you think about them.
I mean, you shouldn't have a strong like I gotta
get this guy. I hate this guy. Most of the
player pool should be players you're agnostic on. So a

(11:57):
lot of the time you're going to be nominating players
that you don't care one way or the other about.
But I think it's important to still craft your nomination
there because I think a lot of the times you're
gonna say, well, I like this player, but I'm never
going to get them. Well, okay, it's still okay to
nominate them and see if they go for too cheap.
If you think to yourself, well I really like lad McConkey,

(12:19):
but I already have my top two wide receivers. I
know I'm not gonna get them. Well what if he
goes too cheap. Well, you know it's okay to sometimes
nominate somebody and he goes too expensive, and that's all right.
You can try that, okay. So a lot of the
times you're going to be making what's called an aspirational nomination,
meaning you aspire to own this player, but you don't
know whether or not it's going to work. Excuse me,

(12:41):
roster this player. You don't know whether it's gonna work.
You think it's probably not, but you're going to try it. Hey,
I really wouldn't mind having Joe Burrow. I think it's
going to be too expensive, but I'm going to nominate
him and see what it goes for. That's fine. Aspirational
nominations are totally fine. Take the temperature of the room.
Maybe you get a deal. Who knows. Years ago, I
I did a mock auction and people were just focused elsewhere.

(13:04):
A couple people already had their quarterbacks. I got Joe
Burrow for like six bucks, and that that should never happen.
But that's the point. Weird things happen in auctions. They
don't happen in serpentine drafts. Weird things can happen in auctions,
and you got to try sometimes. So aspirational nominations one
of them. Another one is really just the nomination for
need at an agnostic player pool. So I did an

(13:26):
RB two. There's nine of them. I'm just gonna nominate
one of them, see if I get them. So a
lot of times it's just hey, I'm going to nominate
and see if I get them, to see how much
they go for whatever. Those two things wasting or punting
around or nominating agnostic players. That's going to be a
large part of your nominations strategy. Of course, you all
know from listening to me, the first couple nominations need

(13:49):
to be setting the tone for your draft and pushing
your draft in the right direction. But after that, most
of them are going to be one of those two things,
and one of the concepts that I want to talk
to you about before I get into the players, and
that is the last thing I'm going to say before
I started getting into specific players, and that's the concept
that I've been talking about for a couple of years

(14:10):
called the value gap. I've coined this phrase the value
gap because in auctions we have to deal with the
magnification corollary. Okay, I've talked about this before, and I
want to re explain it just briefly. The magnification corollary
in auction drafting says that the general opinion of other

(14:32):
league mates, of people in the fantasy industry is such
that oftentimes things are double or triple counted, so that
when you get in an auction draft room, a player's
price will go way lower or higher than it should.
And the reason for that is because in a Serpentine draft.
Let's make an example out of Jonathan Taylor. He's supposed

(14:56):
to be the end of the second round. He's an
end of the second round player. If Jonathan Taylor wasn't
drafted at the end of the second round, and he
wasn't drafted at the beginning of the third round, you
can pretty much bet and bank on him draft getting
drafted in the middle of the third and certainly at
the end of the third. Take that example and talk
about a player from the seventh round. Let's say we're

(15:17):
talking about I don't know, let's say eighth round. We're
talking about Jacoby Myers. He goes in the eighth round.
Normally he hasn't been picked by the ninth round, yet
somebody's gonna notice, and he's gonna go in the ninth
or he's going to go in the tenth. There is
a limit to how far players will slide in a
snake draft. There just is because the player pool is
there and it's quite obvious that that player is the

(15:38):
best player still on the board. So somebody's gonna take
that player and say I have to take him. This
is too good of a value. That doesn't happen in
auctions because of the nature of nominations being out of order,
so oftentimes there will be a player that gets nominated
that everyone dislikes. Now, if that player was nominated near
the end of the draft, everyone would be like, ooh, hey, yeah,

(16:01):
I really like that player. I'm gonna pay more for
him because that's the only player left. That's what a
snake is. You get in the tenth round and you
pick the player who's clearly heading shoulders above everyone else
because that's all it's left. Because it's linear, it goes
in order. But in an auction draft that's not how
it goes. So a player like that could get nominated
in early people don't really like them. There is a

(16:21):
whole player pool left. So the magnification corollary says a
player that should be sixteen dollars can often go for
five or six or four in an auction draft, which
would represent a six round deficit later in a draft.
That'll never happen in a serpentine. So it creates something
called a value gap. And that value gap is where

(16:44):
people in an auction will often shrug and say, I
don't really care about bidding, and the value the raw
dollar amount, the value in the draft falls off much
quicker than the production falls off. So the fantasy production
falls off just slightly, but the value of the raw

(17:04):
dollars in the room falls off much quicker. It creates
a little bit of gap there. It creates a six
dollars player that maybe should be properly valued at thirteen,
but people don't care enough if they're saving money for
something else or came up at the wrong time. Those
value gaps are the things that we need to isolate
at every position. I've talked about it with respect to quarterbacks,

(17:25):
and I think quarterbacks and tight ends it's the most impactful,
but it still happens at other positions. That's why tiers
are so important. That's why putting your rankings in tiers
is more important than putting them in an exact order.
I'd rather just it doesn't matter. If I have five
players in a tier, I kind of don't care where

(17:46):
they are on the tier. They're all similar. You should
be pretty player agnostic in general doing an auction. But
that's why we have tiers, because it creates that situation
where we see, Okay, there's a break there, Ah, there's
a value gap. The value gap is where you want
to aim. So that's how I'm gonna leave you as
we go into specific players from each specific position. Now,

(18:15):
one caveat about my player analysis here is I don't
have time to go into every player and say I
don't like them because the offensive line got worse, the
defense got better, the play caller likes this, they run
this much eleven personnel, and they saw this many two
high shells, and they play in this division. I can't
do that. You understand that, right. I have a limited
amount of time to get all of this out. So

(18:37):
I'm gonna give you quick, just super quick snapshots of
why I like or don't like certain players. I'm gonna
spit a lot at you, but a lot of times
I'm just gonna kind of be listing off some players.
And if you have some specific questions about that, that
is certainly absolutely encouraged. That's what the Patreon is there for.
Go in there, say hey, on the show this week,

(18:58):
you said you didn't like this guy. You like them
because I do, and I'm happy to answer those questions,
but I cannot. Look, We've got about may thirty minutes
left and I got to go through like one hundred
and fifty players. So you can tell I can't do
in depth player analysis, but I'd rather have you hear
the names in my rationale for why I've broken it
down this way than to go into average separation score. Okay,

(19:22):
so let's start with kicker and defense because I think
those are the easiest to dispatch with and I think
they're also the most impactful when it comes to mid
round nominations, because like I said, I'd like to nominate
the ones at the top and let people either overpay
or land them. And sometimes I want to keep my
kicker and denominations for late. Don't forget that as well.
That can be a good way to just not have

(19:44):
to nominate a player later in the draft to lock
up a kicker a D. So you know, I'll let
you feel that way. Feel that one out. Don't trot
those kicker and D nominations out until the player pools
getting pretty thin. Okay, So first of all, at kicker,
the obvious ones at the top are going to be
branded alle Jake Bates, and Kaye Fairbairn. All right, So Aubrey,
Bates and Fairburn those are the three guys I really

(20:06):
want to throw out whenever I decide that it's appropriate
to nominated kicker. Those are the three guys that are
going to nominate first, because if nobody says two bucks, great,
I got a good kicker. All three of these guys
are allowed to go for over fifty yards from their teams,
so it's real obvious why they're the three top guys.
But again, don't forget that kicker turnover year to year
in the top five, five or eight. You know, at

(20:28):
the position, it's it's huge, so we don't care about
it that much and that's why we use it to waste.
But it's also okay if you land one of those
top guys too, that's also positive. Ev Just remember at kicker,
you're picking guys on good offenses with decent defenses you
don't love. Why did Evan McPherson not produce a lot
last year because he was on the Bengals who had

(20:50):
to score touchdowns every day. They weren't all about field goals.
So decent defenses, good offenses, and or teams that play indoors.
It's a trifecta for Jake Bates. They have a good defense,
not a great one, they have a good offense, they
play indoors. Same thing with Brandon Aubrey. He plays a
lot of warm weather games indoors. All right, that's it

(21:11):
for kicker. That's pretty simple. At defense. At defense, this
is also difficult because the turnover is big. But the
name I keep hearing on the Denver Broncos for obvious reasons,
they draft drafted a shut down corner. They already have
a shutdown corner, one of the best in the business.
This defense is going to be just absolutely awesome. They
get Tennessee in Indianapolis early in the season. It might

(21:35):
be one of the only first and only times I'm
going to say, if you want to pay two bucks
for Denver, that's cool. If you're in a league where
you get a few more points for defenses, then spend
two or three bucks, that's totally fine. But Denver will
get you started off right with Tennessee and Indied early
in the season. But the top defenses are going to
be Denver, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh for some reason. I know that

(21:56):
they're pretty fantasy relevant a lot of the times, but
not all the time. But people really get stuck on
Pittsburgh and Baltimore as teams they want to draft every year.
So those are four good early nominations to waste some
money or to lock one of them up. I will
say that the Pittsburgh has the Jets, Seattle, and the
Patriots early on in the season. That could be helpful.

(22:17):
The Ravens, this could go either way. I think that
they're going to be a lot better, but I also
they have a pretty tough schedule. They got a pretty
tough schedule, so I'm looking early in the season at
the schedules. That's mainly what I'm doing. So when you're
trying to waste nominations, get Denver, Philly, Pittsburgh, get Baltimore
out there. The teams I'm chasing right now, I mean
the forty nine ers look really good to start out

(22:39):
with Seattle, New Orleans, They've got Arizona. None of those
teams are scared anybody. I do like the Lions to
jump back up near the top. They played pretty good
defense early in the season until they lost their three
hundred and fifty eighth starter. The Bills are supposed to
be better. The Texans, you know, they're always going to
be good when they got Stingley on their team. And
I think the Giants. The Giants are one of my

(23:01):
teams that I'm going to look to nominate in every
draft late in the draft and hope that I get
them for a buck. I don't think anybody's going to
care about them. Their schedule, they play a lot of
bad teams because they were bad last year. I think
the Giants defense is going to take a step forward
one week plays. I like Arizona to start out at
New Orleans week one. The Bills start out the season Baltimore,

(23:23):
the Jets, the Dolphins, and the Saints. I think that
could be pretty good for the Bills to start out.
You don't want to play in Week one against Baltimore, obviously,
maybe you take Arizona and you pair them with the
Bills if you can do that. But the Bills, you know,
maybe you can suffer through Week one with the Ravens.
But then they have the Jets, the Dolphins, and the Saints.
I like that. And the Rams, you know, they have

(23:44):
Tennessee week two and Indie week four. The Rams were
an ascending defense last year. They've really hit on some
draft picks, so we're looking at the Rams as well.
All right, let's move on because kicker and D's boring.
Let's get to the meat of the show. That's quarterback,
running back, wide receiver, tight end, And I'm going to
give you a little just general thought about each position
and how I'm approaching it, and then we're going to

(24:04):
talk about how I classify different players in each different bucket.
So generally, at the quarterback position, you all know we
have the top five. We've got Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson,
Jayden Daniels, Joe Burrow, Jalen Hurts. Those are the top five.
And one of the things that I'm going to talk
a little bit about Dave Richard with is that in
the past couple of years at quarterback, I've been experimenting

(24:26):
in my Sharper rooms going after a top quarterback because
people don't like to spend at the position, and I'm
okay spending twenty dollars or less on a quarterback if
I think they're going to be a top producer. I
did that with Jalen Hurts and The King's Classic last year,
and it certainly wasn't Jalen Hurt's fault that I didn't
have a very good year because I had injuries elsewhere.

(24:48):
Hurts was a fantastic producer for a fourteen plus team league.
I don't mind going after the top five. If you're
in a sharp room that hates quarterbacks, in a room
that hates quarterbacks, you've got to go with the flow.
That's what auctions are all about. But you got your
top five, and I want you to get used to
the idea that you're probably not chasing those top five quarterbacks.

(25:08):
Likewise at all the other positions. I've said this over
and over again. I don't generally want to have the
top at each position. I'm not chasing the top of
the position groups. I don't like my builds when I
have to spend that amount of money. I do believe
in more top heavy drafting in home leagues, in ten

(25:28):
team leagues, in twelve team leagues. But that doesn't mean
that I'm going out and getting Lamar Jackson, Jamar Chase
and Brought Bowers. It means that I'm gonna draft top heavy,
but I'm gonna draft more towards the middle or end
of the of the number one positions. I'd rather have
a Drake London than I would to pay it for
the Justin Jefferson. That's just how I've seen that my

(25:51):
builds work better. I'm not telling you you can't do it.
You can have success anyway, but I think you gotta
get used to the idea you're not gonna have a
top five quarterback, and then there's a big break after that,
and there's some quarterbacks in there that I just really
don't care about. And in fact, what I've realized is
at the quarterback position, just like the tight end position,

(26:11):
is that after the top five, there's a pretty significant
group of quarterbacks there that are not only similar, but
that have an elevated price that I don't care to pay.
We're talking about Patrick Mahomes, We're talking about bow Knicks,
Kyler Murray, guys like that, Jared Goff, those are all

(26:32):
fine players. But I don't think they're that much different
than say quarterback fifteen or whatever. You know, Jordan Loves,
somebody like that. They're not that different. So if you're
going to go into an auction and you're gonna pay
one dollar for Jordan Love or you're gonna pay eleven
dollars for bow Knicks, which one are you going to do?
I don't think it's close. I don't think it's close
whatsoever that you pay the one dollar for Jordan Love,

(26:56):
and you just throw the ten dollars at your RB
one or wide receiver one. So for me, quarterback boils
down to this, if you're gonna spend up, it's Lamar Jackson,
her bust. For reasons I've said before, I'm not going
to go into it again here because we don't have
enough time. But Josh Allen far too inconsistent last year
to be QB one, Jaden Daniels, Joe Burrow, Jalen Hurts,

(27:19):
They're all fine, except I think Lamar Jackson has an
upside that gives you an edge that's just different than
the other four in the top five. So for me,
it's Lamar Jackson her bust. If I'm going to spend
the money, If I'm going to spend a little bit
of money, I think that's where the value gap is
this year. There's a couple guys that I think are
in the value gap. I think Baker Mayfield and Justin

(27:41):
Fields are in the value gap. I know that Baker
Mayfield's a little bit controversial, and I can see myself
changing on this. I'm concerned about him losing two top
offensive minds in two years. I'm concerned about that but
if I impune a five percent touchdown rate on the
number of throws he had to make last year, it's
still thirty touchdowns. He adds rushing on the ground, he's

(28:04):
going to add a score or two. I think Baker
Mayfield's going to be in a lot of high scoring
games with a bad defense. He's in my value gap
this year. Baker Mayfield and Justin Fields is the other one.
I don't know if Justin Fields is going to get
benched in week nine because they suck. I think they're
going to give him a longer lease than most other
places would give him because they signed him to be

(28:24):
the starter. They're trying to make it work. So I
think Fields is going to have at least half the season.
That'll give you some time to pick somebody up off
the wire, or you can get another cheaper quarterback at
the end of the draft to ensure your Fields pick.
I think the value gap at quarterback is Baker Mayfield
and Justin Fields this year. If I'm going to try
to waste people's money or punt a nomination the guys,

(28:45):
I'm going after Josh Allen. That's my number one. I'm
gonna get Josh Allen out there when I want people
to spend some money on quarterback. Kyler Murray's another one
that's obvious. You knew that. And Jared Goff. Jared Goff,
you know he had a season for the Ages. But
I think the Lions defense is going to be better.
I think the passing game in Detroit's going to step back.
They're going to pound the ball. And I think Jared

(29:07):
Goff is going to come back to earth my value picks.
This is my favorite part about quarterback though. If I
can get Justin Fields, I want to get him for
six seven bucks. And then I want to turn around
and I want to get one of these guys for
a dollar. Rock Perdy, Caleb Williams, Dak Prescott, Drake May,
Trevor Lawrence, Matthew Stafford, JJ McCarthy, or Bray Show. You

(29:28):
see how many names I name there. I'll take any
of them. I'm fine with any of them. Am I
confident in any of them?

Speaker 1 (29:34):
No?

Speaker 2 (29:35):
But will I take any of them for a dollar?
Heck yeah. And if I can't get Baker or Fields
for the price I want, I'm not paying over nine
bucks for either one of those guys. In fact, for Baker.
I want to spend six or seven for fields, I'll
pay eight or nine, but I'm not doing more than that.
That's not what I'm interested in this year. So instead,
I'd rather pay less than four bucks and just go

(29:57):
try to get Dak Prescott and Bryce Young, Rock Purty,
Dak Prescott, Drake May, Caleb Williams, Matthew Stafford, Bryce Young. Look,
I think that Bryce Young is going to be on
a lot of my teams this year. He had a
wonderful second half of the season. In fact, he averaged
twenty six rushing yards per game, and he had five

(30:19):
touchdowns over the last eight games. Rushing five touchdowns rushing
over the last eight games. Young had a heck of
a second half last year. I don't think we're paying
enough attention to the fact that he surged after he
learned that offense. Don't forget it was Bruce Arians who
said he gives any quarterback eight games before he expects

(30:39):
them to be fully integrated into the offense. What happened
with Bryce Young last year? He struggled at first, he
got benched, he came back, he started to play better,
and then he surged over his final eight games. Oh well,
what do you know that lines up perfectly, doesn't it?
Bruce Arians is a smart offensive NFL mind. And if
he said it half a season to learn an offense

(31:01):
that I'm giving Bryce Young a pass for the first
half of last year. And I think that Bryce Young
could be a smash at ADP this year. All Right,
that's quarterback. That's fairly straightforward, okay, Whereas if we're spending up,
it's Lamar Jackson. If we're trying to hit the value gap,
I think that value gap is Baker Mayfield and Justin
Fields this year, and then the pure value quarterbacks perty

(31:23):
Caleb dak May, Treford Stafford McCarthy and Bryce Young. And
then when I want to waste some people's money, Josh Allen,
Kyler Murray and Jared Goff. Be careful with Jared Goff. Okay,
if you nominate him and he goes for four bucks,
you're going to be mad, and you should be mad
bet on all that offensive talent in Detroit if it's

(31:43):
too cheap. So just be careful with Jared Goff. But
I do think that he's just going to go for
too much eight ten bucks. I don't want to spend that.
I don't want to spend that for Jared Goff. Okay,
let's move on to running back. The general idea at
running back has been the same for the last couple
of years, and I think that at the top of
my roster that's not going to change. But as we

(32:03):
go down the roster, I think I'm going to be
spending a little bit more money on running back this year,
because before I was going to go with I would
go with an anchor running back and then just spend
as little as possible on my RB two. But this year,
I think I'm going to go with anchor running back again,
but I'm a little more open to spending on that

(32:24):
RB two spot. I believe that the trend in fantasy
football about spending up on wide receivers is a little
bit out of control. I think we're nearing the point.
You know, the fawns is about to hop on the wakeboard,
he's about to hop on the fawns is strapping on
the water skis, and he's about to jump over the shark.

(32:45):
If you don't recognize the reference, the point just being
when things get out of control, like they did on
Happy Days when the fawns jumped over a shark in
a lake. I think it was that's when you know
things are weird, okay, And I think the wide receiver
sirge has gone over the top. And so I believe
that we are now looking at a bit of a shift,

(33:06):
an inflection point, if you will, in how we should
be treating running backs and wide receivers. Don't forget too
that we're in a two or three year long now
in passing. I think it was that Dwayne McFarlane said
we're in a two or three year crater in passing
because teams started running these two high shelves keeping everything underneath,
and teams are running the ball. The NFL always reacts

(33:29):
it's a cyclical league. We're getting back to running the
ball more throwing the ball underneath. You heard Rich Reebar
talk about it last week, justin Jefferson, C. D. Lamb.
I'm on Ross, Saint Brown, Jamar and Chase. All these
guys who can work the middle of the field, work
out the slot, work underneath. Those are the guys who
are valuable now. And I think that we're a little

(33:51):
bit slow as a community to adjust. It took a
long time for people to come around to the wide
receiver thing, and I think I want to be ahead
of this trend as well, because I was on the
wide receiver thing a couple of years ago, and now
that I think it's out of control, I think I'm
more open to the running back value presenting itself. This year.
It's opened up an RB two value gap. I believe

(34:13):
the value gap is at RB two this year. That's
weird because I don't think I've ever said that. In fact,
I'm a little nervous that it's coming out of my mouth.
And maybe I change. Maybe I'm going to you know,
I'm doing a mock here in a little while. Maybe
I'm gonna feel differently after I do a few more options,
after I get into my home leagues, and things really

(34:34):
haven't changed that much. I don't know. Here's where I'm
at right now. I'm probably not going to have any
of Sakwon Barkley, Bejehonn Robinson, Jamior and Gibbs or askting genty.
Those four guys. I'm probably out on the guys I'm
targeting that I believe can be my anchor running back
are probably going to come down to Jonathan Taylor or

(34:54):
Kyron Williams. But I'm gonna do aspirational nominations on Derek Henry,
Christian McCaffrey, and Devon A. Chan. I love the aspirational
nominations on those guys. In fact, for probably the first
time ever again, I'm not sure. Am I feeling well?
Am I coming down with something? Give me the thermometer,
man check my temperature, have a fever. I don't know

(35:21):
what's going on. But I think my early nomination, like
my first nomination, might just be like Derrick Henry, Christian McCaffrey.
I just want to see how much they are. It's
an aspirational nom Maybe I get him for you know,
fifty one bucks and I feel great about it. Maybe
I get him for forty seven. Maybe you know, people,
this is the magnification corollary. In effect, if you nominate

(35:42):
a guy early, number one, you're getting the sitting down bonus,
and number two, you're getting the magnification of the bad
feelings about Christian McCaffrey. Let's say people are nervous about
the dolphins too, Nominate McCaffrey, Nominate a Chan, You nominate McCaffrey,
and everybody's thinking, oh, there's still four really nice running
backs on the board. Why do I have to go

(36:03):
for a guy that's got such a big question mark McCaffrey.
Maybe you get him too cheap. I'm going to aspirational
nomination early in the draft. One of my first couple
is probably going to be Henry McCaffrey or Chan, and
then I'm likely going to end up with one of
either Taylor or Kyron Williams. I believe Taylor and k
kyrone Williams represent the best anchor targets. And then the

(36:27):
value gap that I'm hoping to exploit this year is
going to be at the high RB two. Really, I
think that all RB twos may represent a value gap
this year, but high RB twos. I'll call this my dream,
my dream spot. I open up a nomination for Christian
McCaffrey with my first one, and I end up getting

(36:49):
him for forty nine bucks because people are a little
nervous it's early in the draft. Get a nice deal.
Then my RB two dream would be picking up Josh
Jacobs or James Cook as my RB two and getting
a nice little deal on them. And then all of
a sudden, I've locked up two strong runners for seventy

(37:10):
five bucks. I'm hoping. Now. That may be crazy, it
may not happen, but that's what we're here for. That's
what we're here to talk about and think about. So
my RB two dreams would be Jacobs, Breest Hall or
James Cook. More likely, though, I'm going to end up
with Alvin Kamara, Chuba Hubbard, James Connor, David Montgomery. I

(37:31):
love the value gap here with Kamara, Cuba, Connor, and Montgomery.
Kamara's RB sixteen, so he may be a little more
than I want. But Chuba Hubbard at RB eighteen. I
said this on Twitter the other day, But Chuba Hubbard
just went out and finished RB twelve last year, and
then the Panthers said, we're not going to draft anybody exciting.

(37:51):
We're not going to bring in anybody exciting, but we
need some depth. So here's Rico Dowdell and now he's
being drafted as RB eighteen. So let's do a little
equation there. Cuba Hubbard plus RB twelve finish plus contract
extension from the team plus Rico Dudele equals falling six

(38:12):
spots in ADP. I don't get that. I don't get
that at all. I think Tuba is going to be
on a lot of my teams. Same thing with Connor
and Montgomery. These guys just go out year after year
and produce and we just don't care. I mean, I
know everybody's like, Ah, Montgomery touchdowns, dude, that's what they do, man,
They hand the ball to their running backs in the
red zone. Come on, like, this doesn't have to be

(38:32):
freaking difficult. Montgomery's going as a low end RB two.
The guy most of the time was in the top
six or eight every time he scored a touchdown. What
are we trying to do here? So the RB two
value gap seems really strong this year between Kamara, Cuba, Connor,
and Montgomery for actual value, where I think some guys

(38:53):
are falling too far. I think Aaron Jones is falling
too far. Isaiah Pacheco's too far. He was hurt last year.
Tony Pollard's too far. God, the guy had a good year, man,
and he was like, I think, eighth in the league
in routes run. The guy produced last year in a
bad situation. Hopefully it's gonna be a little bit better.
But even so, he's being drafted far below where he

(39:14):
finished last year and then late late targets some of
my favorite guys. Travis Etn is one of them. I
know that's weird, and I know that people want to
bury Travis Etn, But for my money, he is a
really good running back who may be discarded by this
coaching group maybe but maybe not. Maybe they figure out
how to use him. Maybe they know how to use him.

(39:37):
Are you guys wanting to bet against Liam Cohen? I mean,
you know, ET's just dirt cheap man. So Brian Robinson,
same thing. They didn't bring anybody in in Washington. Eckeler
is another year older Brian Robinson. He's a fine play.
Najee Harris is gonna get you know, he's gonna be
on my team a lot, and Jordan Mason's going to
be on my teams a lot too. Some buzzy nominations

(39:58):
I want to get out there, some wasteful nomineations, guys
that I think are going to go for more money
than they should that if I want to punt or
waste around or I want to waste some money.

Speaker 1 (40:07):
RJ.

Speaker 2 (40:07):
Harvey's one of them. I like RJ have Harvey. I
want to try to have him on my teams, But
more often than not, I think that he's going to
be somebody that I'm going to nominate, guys like cam Scatabo,
Omari and Hampton. I want to get these guys out
there kind of early, when people still have money and
they're feeling like I'm going to win a league because
I have Amari and Hampton. That's when the overspending happens.

(40:31):
And then Joe Mixon is another guy that I'm gonna
put out there because I just don't believe in Mixon.
They went out and signed Nick Chubb. Mixon had another
horribly inefficient year. That's what he does. He relies on volume,
and if that volume takes a hit because of Nick Chubby,
there may be problems in Houston for Joe Mixon. Also,
he's already got a foot injury that he may not

(40:52):
even be healthy for training camp. The guy's battled lower
leg injuries now for the last couple of years. I
just I don't want any part of Joe mix and
let somebody else spend their money. Okay, let's move on
to wide receivers. We got two positions left to cover,
and we got about We're doing all right. We got
about ten or fifteen minutes left. So my general thought
on wide receivers is that And I'm going to talk

(41:13):
to Dave Richard about this a little bit. But at
the top, boy, it is really hard to find many
guys at the top that you really think you can
count on that a really solid high target alpha receivers
that are going to be your wide receiver one. This
is hard. There's maybe seven, eight, nine of them. There
just aren't that many. I want one of them, but

(41:36):
if that doesn't happen, I believe there's a drop off
after wide receiver twenty five. Now when I'm talking about
the rankings here, I'm not talking about like specific rankings
like my rankings. I'm talking about adp Okay talking about
where their average draft position is. So right after about
wide receiver twenty five, Davante Smith is wide receiver twenty five,

(41:58):
there's a big drop off. I think that it's much
harder to find the value gap here at wide receiver
because there's so many guys. So I'm not even going
to put the value gap on this position. There are
so many guys that are the same. So what I
want to do is I want to differentiate my roster
by trying to get three of the top twenty five,

(42:19):
and oftentimes that means that you're only going to get
three of you know, eight to twenty. You know, you
probably you may not get one of those top seven.
But I want to get three of those because if
I can get three of those, then I've differentiated my
roster enough that I can just then take shots on
the rest of the guys that look very similar to me.

(42:41):
There's a lot of guys that look similar, and this
has been the same for a while now. And what
we're doing is we're throwing all this money in pass catchers.
And I still want to do that. Don't get me wrong,
I still want to have a bunch of pass catchers
on my team. However, I want to make more of
an effort to differentiate by getting three at the top
and then dropping down a little bit and finding more

(43:03):
value and just taking more shots, because oftentimes you can
get quite a few of those guys cheap. When spending
a few more dollars in chasing a guy fifteen spots
ahead doesn't necessarily get you that much more production. It's
so flat there that I think you can shave off
the money as long as you've secured three of your

(43:27):
top guys or four of your top guys, you can
shave off the money and take a chance on three
guys lower than one or two guys lower, and you
can increase your hit rate, if that makes sense. So
I can get three guys ranked thirty eight to fifty
as opposed to one guy who's ranked thirty second. So
here is what I'm thinking. After that general idea about

(43:49):
wide receivers, I'm probably off of these couple wide receivers.
I'm probably off Mike Evans this year. I think the
ship has sailed on Mike Evans. He's getting older, and
I understand that he can still produce by being high
touchdown production. But I want you to hear something a
little bit crazy. From Week eight on, Mike Evans was

(44:10):
the wide receiver three in points per game. That sounds awesome, right,
But from weeks one to seven he was the wide
receiver twenty one. What's the big difference. The big difference
is Chris Godwin got hurt and then Evans became the
target hawk after Godwin went down. Evans was a top

(44:30):
three fantasy producer. Before Godwin went down. He was a
low end wide receiver.

Speaker 1 (44:35):
Two.

Speaker 2 (44:36):
He's going off the board as the wide receiver twenty
right now. That sounds appropriate. The point is, I don't
really want to pay for the ceiling now. Maybe he's
okay at the beginning of the year when Godwin's working
himself into shape. But it's not like there's a less
competition this year. Because they brought in a Mecca at
BUKA and they've got Jayleen McMillan, who broke out at

(44:56):
the end of last year. There's more competition of anything
there in Tampa. I'm probably off Mike Evans this year.
I'm probably off Terry McLaurin. I love Jayden Daniels, I
love what they did last year, and I do think
that McLaurin has the ability to get downfield that's been
missing with his previous quarterback play. So I'm not going
to say that all the touchdowns last year from McLaurin
are necessarily just gonna poof disappear. But if you look

(45:20):
at his numbers, they weren't any different except he scored more.
Now that could be the case because they have a
dynamic passer now, but I still think that number is
right for regression, and he's wide receiver fourteen right now.
I just think that's way too Rich for McLaurin Tyreek
Hills wide receiver sixteen, I think I'm off of him
as well. I'm worried about the Dolphins just imploding, and
I'm worried about what I saw last year being scheme dependent,

(45:43):
not the fact that Tyreek Kill necessarily did anything wrong,
just that this is what the scheme was. And somebody
pointed out on Twitter that his first red target share
plummeted last year and that is a huge problem. Marvin
Harrison Junior at eighteen and dk Metcalf at twenty. So
I've given you there's five guys in the top twenty
five that I'm kind of off of. So I'm really

(46:06):
narrowing it down to trying to get three or four
of the top twenty five minus those five guys. So
I've got a player pool of twenty receivers I'm trying
to grab three of. You really need to be intentional here,
if that's how you see it. My low wide receiver
one targets. I think Nico and London are my guys.
I understand Nico Collins Wartz. I understand he can't stay healthy.

(46:28):
I get that the Texans offensive line might not be
the greatest but he looked awesome last year. I'm going
to bet on that talent, and I'm gonna bet on CJ.
Stroud having learned a lot last year. He's actually made
some comments about that about how how much last year
was important to him to becoming an NFL quarterback. So
Nico and London look like my guys. But I'm gonna
make some aspirational nominations on Puka Akua and Malik Neighbors

(46:51):
as well. So I'm going to probably try to throw
Poka Neighbors out there first, you know. I want, like
my brain says, put London out there first and just
lock him up for forty two and just be done.
But I just think that I'm going to try to
go for PoCA Neighbors. If that happens, that's great. That
sets me up really well for my next couple of

(47:13):
guys that I'm looking at. I love Devonte Adams and
Rashie Rice. And it's something that I said on the Patreon,
and if you're not on the Patreon, get in there
because this is stuff I'm talking about. I want guys
that I believe can go off in these spots. I
don't want some boring wide receiver two. I don't want
some I'm sorry, wide receiver four, wide receiver three, whatever

(47:35):
the case may be. I'd love to have DeVante Adams
or Rashie Rice as my wide receiver three because I
really want there to be some explosive ability there. I
think Jackson Smith and Jigua, DJ Moore, Courtland Sutton, all
those guys have potential to go off, to take a leap,
to have that big year. I call it the Michael

(47:55):
Jackson Thriller season. We want them to have the thriller season,
and we want to be in on them when they
have it. And if those guys Adams, Rice, JSN, Moore, Sutton,
if those guys are ranked a little bit lower and
we can get them a little bit cheaper, it's okay
to just go grab two of those guys and say
those are these two are my wide receiver one. That's

(48:16):
okay too, because they have the potential for that. We
want guys who are like that. Okay, Now, from twenty
six to thirty six. I like Jordan Adison at thirty six.
I like Zay Flowers a little bit at twenty eight.
Tet McMillan, I know that he says that's not his
name's actually his mom said, stop calling him Ted. That's
not what I named him. But Tet McMillan, Calvin Ridley's

(48:38):
thirty two, Godwin thirty one. These are guys that again
they can go off. We can find path where these
guys are going to go crazy and finish in the
top twenty. So those are the kind of guys I'm
going after. And then, you know, I want to make
sure that I get a couple guys from this group
as well. Juwan Jennings, Ricky Pearsall, Jacoby Myers, Khalish Kir,

(49:00):
Darnell Mooney, Rashid Shahed Hollywood Brown, Rashod Bateman. Those are
guys that I really just gotta have one or two
of these guys. Somebody in that group's gonna go off.
I love Jacoby Myers and Juwan Jennings, Khalis Shakir, Darnell Mooney.
I'm less interested in Shaheed Hollywood or Bateman. But those
are guys that I really expect to spend very little

(49:23):
capital on, okay, very little capital on those guys, and
then really late I want I want to zero win
on Cedric Tillman. I don't know why We're all forgetting
about him. He was awesome before that concussion. I think
Cedric Tilman's gonna play a role this year. Adam Thielen.
Guess who was a wide receiver one from week twelve
on when Bryces Young was slinging it. Adam freaking thling

(49:44):
wide receiver twelve from week on, he was a wide
receiver one, folks, So we're forgetting about him. Christian Kirk
should be super cheap. Jayden Reid should be cheap after
what he did last year. Some guys, I want to
waste some money on at wide receiver and then we're
gonna hit tight end and we're gonna get out of here.
Some guys, I'll waste money on at wide receiver right now.
I'm on Ross Saint Brown is my chief guy that

(50:08):
I'm just a little nervous about. I think the passing
offense is going to pull back. I've said that already.
But also, you know he only had four games over
one hundred yards last year. Four games. Guy played seventeen
games in the regular season last year, just four of
them over one hundred yards. That's crazy. He got by
on TD efficiency, and I think that this offense can be.

(50:29):
You know, that can be a strength for him. But
at the same time, if they do pull back and
he drops by three or four touchdowns, his efficiency, you know,
if that falls, turns into a very mediocre wide receiver one,
maybe even a upper wide receiver two instead. So I'm
gonna waste some people's money with am On Ross Saint Brown.

(50:49):
If I want to punt a nomination, Xavier Worthy goes
in that bucket. For me. I think he's going to
have a lot of two or three catch games. If
Rashie Rice is hitting and Hollywood Brown stays healthy, that
is going to be divided up, and Worthy's going to
have some two or three catch games and I think
there's going to be a lot of them. Unfortunately, Travis Hunter,
I'm staying far away from that situation. Jerry Judy, same thing.

(51:11):
You know, what's the outlier the way that he tore
it up in the last part of the season with
Jamis Winston or the rest of his career. Okay, one
of them's the outlier. I think it's the eight games
at the end of last year, not the previous thirteen
and a half he's been in the league. Deebo Samuel
is one of those, he's got too much name value,

(51:31):
too low of a floor. And Matthew Golden, I'm not
spending any time, you know, in an auction chase in
Matthew Golden in the typical Reid raft league. So that's
how i see it. At wide receiver, That's where I'm
looking right now. Again, this could change, but let's hit
it at the tight end position and then I'm going
to get you out of here. Dave Richard and discussions Withdrew.

(51:52):
But tight end is something that I alluded to when
I talked about quarterback earlier, and it's something that again
I talked about on the Patreon network just this week.
You've got your top three. You got brock Bowers, Trainment, Bride,
and George Kittle, and then you got everyone else. Kelsey
fell off the mountain. He's now one of the guys.
You either have to right off the top three or
if you're going to go for it, make sure that

(52:13):
you make a par sheet where you know what you're
gonna spend and how you're gonna go for it. That's okay,
get one of the top three, or I think you
just got to not care about it. I'm not interested
in Sam Laporta, TJ Hockinson, Travis Kelcey at their prices,
not whatsoever. Laporta made a little bit of a bounce
back in the end of last year, but Laporta was

(52:35):
not usable. He was waiver wire fodder for large parts
of the year last year. I'm not talking about not startable,
not rosterable. At some points. TJ. Hockinson came back, he
got better and better, but you know, I think the
Minnesota offense isn't running through TJ. Hockinson. That's just not
happening anymore. He is an afterthought. And Travis Kelsey, you know,

(52:56):
he's kind of taken the Gronk route into retirement, which is,
you know, the Patriots got him out of the garage
when they wanted to drive him on a nice day,
but otherwise he stayed in the garage with the with
the tarbah. And I think that's where Kelsey is. They
used it more when they had to because they kept
having injuries. But I think that Laporta, Hawkinson and Kelsey
not interesting to me at their prices. I do think

(53:18):
there is a bit of a value gap at tight end.
So if you want to play that game, I'm cool
with it. And I think that value gap is Mark Andrews,
Evan Ingram and David and Joku. I don't generally believe
that going after mid round tight ends is the way
to go, So I'm here to tell you that I
think that that may not be the right play. But

(53:39):
if you can land one of these guys Andrews, Ingram,
and Joku for the six to eight dollars range, then
go for it. Let's do that. I think that's worth
That's a gamble worth taking. But otherwise, I just don't
think that it's great to chase those type of players.
I think there's some really easy buttons this year. Tucker
Kraft is my chief easy click, Dallas guy and Jake Ferguson.

(54:02):
I don't know what we're doing with these guys. Gottard
was really productive when he played last year. I know
he gets hurt all the time, so pay them with
somebody else. Ferguson had the concussion, He had a weird year.
He didn't have his quarterback. Dak Prescott loves throwing down
the middle of the field, and he loves Jake Ferguson.
Why aren't we caring about Jake Ferguson. You should get

(54:22):
Tucker Kraft for two bucks or three bucks, and get
Jake Ferguson for a dollar and then just walk away.
Too easy. Buzzy players I'm probably going to nominate quite
often Mason Taylor, Colston Loveland, John news Smith, Kyle Pitts,
Dalton Kinkaid, Tyler Warren. None of these guys are that

(54:42):
interesting to me for this year. And some guys that
I'm picking really late. If I'm in deep leagues. Theo
Johnson has to be on your list. He was starting
to come on last year for the Giants before he
got hurt. His raft scores really high. Very athletic player.
Brenton Strange is going to get the chance to start
in Jacksonville. I don't know that Liam Cohen's offense is

(55:03):
particularly conducive to Strange breaking out. However, he's a good player.
He's going to be the starter. I don't know why
people don't care about him more. And then one other guy,
zach Ertz Folks. Zach Ertz finished tight end seven last year. Now,
I'm not here to tell you to spend a bunch
of money on zach Ertz because tight End seven was
ten point two points per game, all right, it's not exciting.
But he was tight end seven last year. He's going

(55:26):
as like tight end twenty one right now. I don't
I know he's getting older. But they didn't add anybody
did Ben Sinnott come out of nowhere, And nobody told
me because they use zach Ertz and they want to
use zach Ertz. So I think those are easy buttons
late if you're in a deep league, Theo Johnson, Brenton
Strange zach Ertz. But I think the easiest way to

(55:48):
do is go in there and spend four bucks total
on Craft and Ferguson and forget about it, or maybe
Lucky too, David and Joku for six bucks. But I
don't think the tight end in quarterback position are that hard.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
This year.

Speaker 2 (55:58):
We're going to spend our time at the running back
and wide receiver position trying to get that right. All right, folks,
Well that is going to do it. I know that's
a little bit of a different show. It was different
for me. But I like talking about this because I
promised you a bit of a different scenario this summer
and how we're going to do things for my drafts
coming up in August and September, it's going to be interesting.
Things are going to change between now and then. Don't

(56:20):
pull this out in the middle of October and be
like you said on July the third, some of these
things might change. I'm going to tell you when they change,
or if they change. However, for right now, this is
how I'm feeling, and I hope you enjoyed it. So
let's be done with the player breakdowns and the auction
talk for now. Let's get over to discussions with Drew

(56:43):
because we have one of the titans of the industry,
Dave Richard from CBS and this week's Discussions with Drew.

Speaker 3 (56:52):
Time for Discussions with Drew, in depth conversations with the
brightest minds in the fantasy industry.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
Welcome into this week's Discussions with Drew. Our guest for
this week is Dave Richard from CBS Sports. I'm really
happy to have Dave here. He's one of the giants
of the industry, and we're gonna get to do some
auction talk this week, which I know has been a
little bit lacking on the show so far this summer,
so I'm really excited to have Dave here. Welcome Dave.
How you doing man?

Speaker 1 (57:20):
First of all, I've lost twenty pounds, so I'm not
as big of a giant as Nick. Thank me out
to be. Thank you very much. And second of all,
I am shocked, Drew that you haven't talked to auctions,
like that's what I know you for. I trusting you.

Speaker 2 (57:36):
We did a little bit last week, a little bit.

Speaker 1 (57:38):
Okay, well let's do a lot bit this week because
I have also not talked about auctions lately and I
need to. So this is perfect. I'm really excited to
be here.

Speaker 2 (57:48):
Excellent. Well, we're excited to have you. We're going to
talk a few players specific things first, but then we're
going to dive into auctions for I don't know sixty
seventy percent of the conversation, hopefully, so I found out
off the air. I'm quite chagrined to learn no King's
Classic for you in twenty twenty five sad tears. What's

(58:08):
going on with that? Man?

Speaker 1 (58:10):
Come on, I've got a scheduling conflict that is going
to keep me out of Canton, Ohio for the first
time in the history of the King's Classic. It sucks.
I hate it. I love competing there, I love seeing everybody,
I love seeing you there. Yeah, I'm not gonna be
able to make it this year, and hopefully next year
I'll be back.

Speaker 2 (58:29):
Yeah, yeah, hopefully we can see in twenty twenty six.
We always have our little huddled conversation strategy session before
we go into the auction room because I just always
like hearing what you're thinking about, you hear what I'm
thinking about. We can kind of use that because we're
in separate rooms, but we will put that on the
calendar for twenty twenty six instead. What what do you

(58:51):
have going on right now?

Speaker 1 (58:52):
Hold on a second. You know what would make an
interesting show, Drew, would be to have our Converse station
on video. Okay, why this is the perfect year to
do it, and you can release it after you draft
your King's Classic teams. We can record it before and

(59:13):
then you release it after, and then everybody can kind
of see what it is that you're talking about, what
it is that we do, and I'll tell you something else.
I always think it's a good idea for people to
talk to their friends who aren't in their fantasy leagues.
I've got a cousin he plays fantasy football. He knows
better than to play fantasy football against me, and so

(59:35):
We have a talk every year and it's mostly me
helping him, but he'll share ideas too, And it's that
whole concept of sharing ideas and thoughts and getting different perspectives.
You know, we need more of that in the world,
but we certainly need it to help us win in
fantasy football. And if everybody had a friend like that,
they'd be smarter going into their drafts because they'd have

(59:55):
some perspectives and maybe you know, ah, I didn't think
about that before, and you tickle. We tickle somebody else's
brain a little bit with some ideas for fantasy draft.
So we could give people an example of that. We'll
record it, like I said, I'm in More King's Classic,
and then you can let it free.

Speaker 2 (01:00:12):
After I'm in. That sounds wonderful. I think that people
would really enjoy that because I'll tell you what, anytime
I have somebody on from the industry that knows auctions
and then I'm able to really get into it with them,
I always get a ton of great feedback that this
is exactly what they're looking for. So hey, that's a
heck of an idea. I will put a pin in

(01:00:32):
that one for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:00:33):
Thank you. Let's do it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:35):
Yeah, So, well, what do you have before we get
into everything. Tell everybody where they can find you, and
anything you're working on that you want to get some
eyes on.

Speaker 1 (01:00:42):
You can usually find me at the Corner Bar in
Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Okay, no, cbsports dot com. You guys
know about podcasts and all that, and we've got a
big podcast called Fantasy Football today. We're on YouTube with
it as well. I just finished I literally five minutes
before we started, wrapped up the production, the final production

(01:01:06):
of my research for my defensive fantasy strength of Schedule.
So what I do every offseason, Drew, is study every defense,
defensive tendencies, schemes, what a new play caller will bring
to a defense, and how they might impact skill position players.
And it helps me create a strength of schedule for

(01:01:27):
fantasy managers to know, Okay, here are the players at
each specific position that are going to have easy schedules,
and here are the ones that are going to have
tough schedules. And the results are always fascinating, and you know,
sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. That's fantasy football.
But I'd always prefer to use that type of stuff
as a tiebreaker. If I'm debating between Trey McBride and

(01:01:51):
Brock Bauers, I've got another reason to take Trey McBride
this year. If I'm debating between Jamar Chase and Bjon
Robinson and I really can't decide, well, there's a tiebreaker
that might help you settle on Bijon for the number
one pick instead of Jamar Chase. This is it's different stuff.
People don't usually do this. Some people don't even think
about looking at the schedule when they go into their draft. Man,

(01:02:14):
how the hell wouldn't you want to know if you're
about to take a running back in round six that
might start for you. Wouldn't you want to know if
that guy is a tough schedule to begin the year.
I wouldn't want to know that, especially if there's another
running back that's got an easier schedule that I can
get in round six or round seven. So it's tough
to help people with their fantasy drafts, of course, and

(01:02:35):
to be a step ahead of everybody else in their league.
You can find that the Fantasy Strength of Schedule series,
say that five times fast. You can find it on
cbsports dot com. All right, so you just wrap that up,
and it's going to be dropping. Like what some of
it's already out. Oh okay, it's already out, but all
of it it's been completed. Now it'll all be out

(01:02:56):
probably by like certainly by July fourth, but almost certainly
by July second.

Speaker 2 (01:03:02):
Okay, Well, hey, if I was a better host, I
would have checked that out already. But thank you for
letting everyone know that. Everybody go check out Dave's work.
Of course, I'm sure all of you know of Dave
before coming to the auction brief, but you know, hey,
this is good stuff. This is why we have you here.
And when I started thinking about the show sheet today,

(01:03:22):
I was really thinking about all the difficult calls I've had.
I've been doing some best ball. I'm actually running a
little mock auction tonight for some of my Patreons subscribers,
and I was thinking about some of the players that
we routinely butt up against and have to decide which
guy are we taking. And sometimes it's not even that
they're close in ADP, it's that we're trying to make

(01:03:44):
the call of two players, say on one team. So
I've put a couple different types of those situations together,
and I've got I think five situations that I want
to ask you about specifically. And I picked these five
situations because there's something similar about each of these players
that makes us say, man, what do I do here?

(01:04:05):
And despite the losing the twenty pounds, you're still a
giant of the industry, and we want to know what
you think.

Speaker 1 (01:04:14):
Hey, look at me.

Speaker 2 (01:04:15):
I mean nobody can see this, but hey, look at me.
So does mine? So is mine. That's all right, I'm
working on it. I'm working on it. The beef and cheddar,
I just ate. Notwithstanding I'm working on.

Speaker 1 (01:04:29):
I've got it. Pray, post lunch, pre dinner, snack, little
something for the ride home.

Speaker 2 (01:04:36):
I shouldn't have said that. Man, you're you're doing good.
Stay on the path. I'm not doing so good. Okay, back, Oh,
fantasy football. Yeah, that's what we're doing today. Okay. One
of these situations is a first round, you know, and
the first round, top of second decision between two veteran
running backs and veterans another way to say, they're kind

(01:04:58):
of old, but boy, these guys have immense potential and ceiling.
That's Derrick Henry going off the board as running back
five and Christian McCaffrey going off the board is running
back six. They have elite potential. We know what the
warts are. Break that down. Who do you want this year,
McCaffrey or Henry.

Speaker 1 (01:05:19):
It's tough and I don't think there's necessarily a wrong answer,
and I do think format matters, and I think if
we're talking full PPR McCaffrey is the way I'd lean
the fact that he's healthy, like participating in the offseason
program and in mini camp, Drew, that's a great sign.

(01:05:40):
That tells me that the forty nine ers are not
only holding not trying to hold him back. They want
to see him out there. They want to start getting
him repped up for the season. He also looks like
he put on a little bit of weight. That's not great,
but it's muscles that we're talking about. His pythons are
really strong. I'm gonna lean his direction A because of

(01:06:01):
the catches, B because we know to that he's got
a huge ceiling. He's got a chance to deliver in
the neighborhood of twenty five plus PPR points per game.
He's averaged that before and sometimes higher than that. You
go back to his Carolina days, My goodness. He had
some great years, and of course the age is a concern,
but really the bigger concern when it comes to McCaffrey

(01:06:24):
is that he got hurt last year. He came back
from the injury I'm talking about, like hurting training camp,
came back from the injury, he's practicing before the season starts,
hurts himself again, never really recovers from it. People didn't
realize just how bad the injury was. The beat reporters
in San Francisco didn't even realize. I would argue that
probably a lot of the coaches in San Francisco didn't

(01:06:46):
realize how bad it was until after that fateful practice
right before Week one, and it really capsized his whole season.
But when he's right, he's among the best, and so
I'm going to take the chance on that over Derrick Henry,
who when he's right, he's pretty damn good too, but
it's not quite to the same level as Christian McCaffrey.

(01:07:07):
It's a higher ceiling for McCaffrey. As long as he's healthy,
I'll take my chances on him, especially in full PPR.

Speaker 2 (01:07:13):
I think the full PPR sways it for me too,
just because Henry. He can disappear in games when he's
not getting those goal line touches. Now we know in
the Ravens offense those goal line touches come very often,
So it's not I don't want to make that a
crutch argument that, oh, hey, he disappears but he doesn't score,
because he never really happen right exactly, He's gonna score

(01:07:34):
a lot. But I still like the PPR aspect for McCaffrey.
And I got to say, I feel like this may
be the last year I want to be in on
him at that price. Now, maybe he hangs around a
little while longer as a part time player or something.
I just feel like the guy's gonna break down at
some point. Maybe this is the last hurrah for him.
So I'm gonna try to grab some McCaffrey this year, Drew.

Speaker 1 (01:07:58):
When I start talking that way out a player, and
this is just the way that I was brought up
in the football world, when I started thinking, well, this
might be the last year I want to stay away.
I want to be out a year too early rather
than a year too late. Okay, if you're see this
is this is an example of us having that conversation

(01:08:19):
that we talked about if I'm going to be out
on if I'm nervous that this is the last best year,
this is a player I don't want to draft. Okay,
And I think I have McCaffrey ranked accordingly because if
I'm gonna, if I'm gonna just have total amnesia over
last season, why wouldn't Christian McCaffrey be the number one

(01:08:40):
player on my board? And instead he's like the number
ten player on my board, which is low for him
considering the upside in his history and all that other
good stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:08:53):
Well, take my feelings for his last year with a
bit of a grain of salt, because I faded Derrick
Henry think two years ago for that reason, terrible reason,
And you know, I just thought, like, this guy's a bruiser.
When bruisers, big backs like Henry fall off, they fall
off quickly. I was nervous about that a couple of

(01:09:14):
years ago. But really just an efficiency thing in Tennessee
that's completely faded in a really good offense in Baltimore.
So you know, take that for a little bit of
a great assault, but excellent points there. That's what I
will That's the conversation I want to yeah, I give.

Speaker 1 (01:09:29):
You one last tidbit that you might appreciate. Okay, the
forty nine ers, according to my fantasy strength of schedule,
have the second easiest running back slately ooh, whereas Baltimore
is at fifth worst. And a lot of that. A
lot of this has to do with the divisional play
and how I raided the defenses in the division. And

(01:09:50):
my goodness, the AFC North is loaded there. NFC West,
they've got some tough defenses, but they also played the
NFC South. I think they played the a A South
as well. These are good matchups for the film. I'm
gonna have a lot of forty nine ers on my
team this year, Drew, because I think their schedule, they
are really going to benefit from finishing in the last

(01:10:11):
place in their division.

Speaker 2 (01:10:13):
Well, auction brief listeners are going to harken back to
last week when Rich Reebar was on the show and
said that he thinks the forty nine ers are going
to be undervalued and he's going to have a lot
of forty nine ers as well. So two smart analysts
here lining up on the forty nine ers. All right,
let's move on to a couple of young wide receivers.
I put these guys together not only because their ADP

(01:10:35):
is close. It's lad Mconkeye at wide receiver eleven and
Garrett Wilson at wide receiver thirteen. But the reason I
put them together is they're two young, talented wide receivers.
But I think they both have volume concerns. We're going
to get Justin Fields in New York, where he's just

(01:10:57):
never thrown for a lot of passing yards. He's going
to run the balls. I'm sure the coaching staff is
aware of what his strengths are what they're going to
do with them. And then on the other hand, lad Mconkey,
I know that he had a nice second half of
the year last year. Part of that was Los Angeles
really struggled to run the ball, and they put out
signals that they are going to get back to trying

(01:11:17):
to run the ball. By drafting Amari and Hampton, by
signing Naji Harris, by signing Mackay Beckton, they are putting
out signals they want to run now. I will say
the caveat with Garrett Wilson is that Justin Fields did
spend a lot of time throwing to his top receiver
the last time he played a full season. I believe
with Dj Moore, so I understand that. But there are

(01:11:37):
volume concerns here. Who do you like between the two
and do those volume concerns strike a nerve with you?

Speaker 1 (01:11:44):
And that they strike a nerve to a degree. I
don't think either of these guys are going to be
candidates for nine targets per game. I just don't see
that happening. I think the Jets are going to try
and be run centric and when they do throw, I mean,
this is where Garrett Wilson clearly wins, is that he's
going to see a huge target chair because I mean,

(01:12:06):
who do you think the number two target getter is
going to be for the Jets. They've got Josh Reynolds,
They've got brise Hall Reynolds, Yeah, they've got Mason Taylor. Like,
if there's a team that desperately needs a wide receiver,
it's the New York Jets. They they need somebody to
take coverage away from Garrett Wilson, because I'm telling you

(01:12:27):
right now, every defense that plays the Jets at this point,
they're gonna be dialed in on the RPO and stopping
Brise Hall and making sure justin fields, doesn't crush them
with his legs, not with his arm, and that'll probably
mean a lot of single high and there might be
a lot of opportunities for Garrett Wilson, but that's what
defenses are gonna do, and in turn the Jets can say,

(01:12:47):
all right, well, when we do throw, Garrett Wilson should
have some favorable chances to bring down the ball and
make plays. I Again, last year, he averaged nine point
one targets per game. I wouldn't be surprised if that
went down to like seven point six. And that's probably
where mccakie's going to live as well. So if they're
both going to be in that same sort of range

(01:13:09):
as far as targets per game go, I'll take the
receiver who has played well. And we saw a big
sampling of that last year with Ladd McConkie. We haven't
really seen it over a consistent basis with Garrett Wilson
in three years. The better quarterback is definitely in LA
and McConkie can line up anywhere they can use him.
In the red zone, he's he's definitely an outstanding route runner.

(01:13:31):
These are two wide receivers that I'm interested in drafting,
I just don't want to take them. I say this
all the time on our show, Drew. I don't want
to draft a player too close to his ceiling. And
so if I take Ladd McConkie with like the twentieth
pick overall, I feel like that's that's too high, it's
too rich. And same thing with Garrett Wilson if I'm
taking him like at the two three turn. These are

(01:13:54):
two receivers I'm looking for, but I'm going to look
for them to try and get at least like a
scintilla of value you along the way. If I can
get labmcca, I can look at my rankings and see
where exactly I've got them ranked overall. Okay, McConkie, he's
got that two three turn for me, whereas Garrett Wilson,
I like it the three four turn. If we're talking
about those spaces for them, I'm happy with it. We

(01:14:16):
should also probably talk about what type of auction values
I've got on them. Out of a one hundred dollars budget.
I've got lab mcconakie at twenty and I've got Garrett
Wilson at thirteen, and the twenty for mcconakie might be
too steep.

Speaker 2 (01:14:29):
That seems a little bit high to me, But then again,
people are really excited about him. And you know you
read my mind because I was going to ask you
what your what kind of valuation you're putting on them
as far as with respect to their ADP. Do you
feel they're fit? The prices are fair? And I've come
to the same conclusion you have that I think the
prices are too high right now for both guys for

(01:14:50):
different reasons. I mean, I really do think the Chargers
want to run the ball. But and Wilson, he is
maddening to own sometimes in fantasy because you can see
him make plays and he's so good and then he
just disappears. And I don't think that's his fault. Maybe
the coaching staff will work on that, and maybe Fields

(01:15:11):
will be a little more hyper fixated on him. Although
you know, gosh, Garrett Wilson's getting one hundred fifty targets
in his first three years, so I don't know how
much more you could be fixated on him. One hundred
and eighty hundred nine, I don't know, but.

Speaker 1 (01:15:24):
Yeah, I'd be surprised if it got that.

Speaker 2 (01:15:26):
High, right exactly consistent.

Speaker 1 (01:15:30):
Tell me if this hit you at all, Drew, there
were eight games last year where the Chargers had twenty
or more running back runs, so twenty plus carries to
the running backs. It's not one guy getting twenty carries,
it's collectively the running backs, so they're running a decent amount.
In those eight games, McConkey averaged six and a half
targets per game. That's terrible, But he also averaged sixteen

(01:15:52):
PPR points per game with six touchdowns. That's pretty good.
So I when I drave McConkie, that's the number. I'm
kind of looking at. His sixteen PPR points per game,
which is higher than what he averaged over the course
of his rookie season. But his rookie season, as you know,
is cutting to you know, two parts. His final seven games,
he averaged almost nineteen PPR points per game, right right, Yeah,

(01:16:13):
I think he comes down from that, but I think
right around sixteen PPR points, I think that's fair for him,
especially since now there's a bit of a track record.
It's not it's a small sample size, but he did
well when running backs were getting work in LA.

Speaker 2 (01:16:27):
Yeah, I think there's a much better chance that we
get a price on him that we like at an
auction than a snake, because I'm not seeing him get
past the middle of the second in a snake, and
you know, auction, I think you can find a room,
find a situation where you get a couple dollars discount
on lad hopefully, but okay, well, good discussion there.

Speaker 1 (01:16:48):
To like fifteen sixteen let's call it fifteen or sixteen
percent of your budget.

Speaker 2 (01:16:55):
Yeah, so yeah, yeah, so that's better because I don't
want to be in on him for forty six bucks,
like that's not I'm sorry, I'm two hundred dollars cap. Sorry,
I don't want to be in on him for a
twenty year or twenty two like in a one hundred
dollars cap. I want to feel as though, you know,
thirty five thirty eight bucks. I want to feel that,

(01:17:16):
to feel like I'm feeling getting a little bit of
a discount, you know, in a one hundred dollars cap
sixteen something like that. Seventeen, I gotcha. That's what feels
right for me.

Speaker 1 (01:17:27):
But chances are someone will spend more than that for it.

Speaker 2 (01:17:30):
I think so, yeah, I think so. I think it's
a better chance in an auction, But yeah, I think
I think you're right. Okay, all right, well let's move
on to Let's move on to a couple of teammates.
And I see there's a mistake on my show sheet here,
but the point is the same. I put the ADP
of these two guys as the same when they're not.
But we've got to forty nine er teammates. We were

(01:17:51):
just talking about San Francisco, and these two guys are
really an interesting litmus test for analysts because we've got
Ricky Piersall at wide receiver forty three in ADP, and
we've got Juwan Jennings at wide receiver thirty eight. So
you essentially have to take them right around the same
spot if you want to grab one of them, if

(01:18:13):
you want to make sure that you get one. And
I see a lot of people really excited about Pearsol,
but then I also see people who are in on Jennings.
I'm personally a Jennings guy, but I'm trying not to
ignore Piersol. But who do we think is going to
benefit from a slow start from Brandon Ayuk. It seems
like he's either going to be pop or he's going
to be struggling out of the gate. And then, you know,

(01:18:35):
if I guess it's a two part question, because who
do we think benefits at the beginning, But then if
Aya comes on and is you know, most of himself
seventy five percent of himself for the rest of the year,
who do we think has the staying power to stick
around between these two guys and be fantasy relevant.

Speaker 1 (01:18:53):
So let's start by making the assumption that Ayuk is
going to begin the year on the pup list. I
think that's what the Niners planning on. And if that's
the case, then we do have a four week runway
where either or both of these wide receivers can kind
of show what they can do to their coaching staffs
and have the opportunity to break out. If they're both

(01:19:16):
going to play a lot, and if a Yuk's going
to be slow to come back, maybe he doesn't come
back after the first four games. Maybe it's a little
bit longer than that, and maybe they ease him in,
Drew because remember they they made a financial commitment to him.
Maybe they don't want to rush him back so soon.
I want to lean toward pearsall this. I think he
is so talented. I love the way that he ran routes.

(01:19:38):
Last year, they had him running double moves all over
the field. His last three games he ran more than
twenty five routes per game. Then he averaged eighteen point
four PPR points per game. He had seven point three
targets per game. Somehow, I'm more mesmerized by the targets
than i am the fantasy production. But that just tells
me that in a very small period of time, the

(01:20:00):
forty nine ers really tried to get him going and
he went bonkers. I'm I'm definitely more excited about Pearsall's
talent compared to jennings talent, and I think there's there's
there's a case to be made that if Pearsall starts
the year strong while Ayuk is out, he can keep
his role while when Iuke comes back and Iyuk might

(01:20:24):
eat into what Jennings does as a perimeter receiver. I
think you're always going to see Jennings lined up wide
and that means that he's he's got his role. He'll
be ill the stationary. He can win jump ball passes.
He's a very physical receiver. He's not even close to
the burner. He's not a fast guy. He also was
extremely inconsistent last year. He had four monster games and

(01:20:45):
everything else was just kind of eh. And and that
that would frustrate me as a fantasy manager. All Right,
he'd helped me win four weeks, but then the other weeks,
I'm serting him and I'm getting twelve PPR points out
of him. I'm getting ten PPR points out of them.
That's not what I want. I want somebody that can
be a little bit more consistent. I'm not saying that

(01:21:05):
Piersow is going to be more consistent, but he might
have the best chance to be the most consistent forty
nine ers wide receiver. Keep in mind that forty nine
ers receivers they spread the ball around so much and
they don't throw the ball it's on anyway, man. These
guys don't get a ton of target volume to begin with.
It's rare when multiple forty nine ers receivers average seven
targets per game each. And this the one last cherry

(01:21:28):
on top is Niners have a pretty easy schedule for
their wide receivers as well. The way I grade their schedules.
It's different for running backs because running backs face different
defenders than wide receivers do, but they're still got one
of the three easiest schedules for them to compete with.
They don't see a lot of shutdown corners. I would
imagine that this will also help both Jennings.

Speaker 2 (01:21:49):
And piersaw All. Right, excellent breakdown there. I've been warming
up to piersol a little bit more over the last
I don't know, week to ten days, because I realized
that I come in to the summer sometimes with some
real blind spots on some guys that I have to
really drill down and re examine why I feel a
certain way about a player, and Pearsall is one of

(01:22:11):
those guys that I've really had to take myself to
task and say, why don't you like him more? Because
obviously some smart people out there do, so I've been
warming up to him, so even more even more reason
for me to keep looking into him.

Speaker 1 (01:22:27):
Do you want to have a good time, Drew, here's
my idea of a good time. Fire up NFL Pro
watch Ricky Pearsall's targets from the last three games of
the season.

Speaker 2 (01:22:38):
Okay, sounds like a fun Friday night. I think that's
what I'm going to do instead of seeing fireworks Friday.

Speaker 1 (01:22:45):
You will see plenty of fireworks.

Speaker 2 (01:22:47):
Oh hey, I set you up on That was good.
It's almost like I know what I'm doing. All right,
let's go on to We've got two more here I
want to talk about. Then we want to dive into
auction stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:22:58):
So oh, by the way, yeah, seven percent max budget
on either of those receivers.

Speaker 2 (01:23:05):
Yeah, I don't. I don't want to spend a ton.
I mean being down there in the in the low
wide receiver four territory. I really I'm hoping to make
those guys the way I build my rosters, I'm hoping
to make one of those guys a wide receiver five
for me. That's what I'm my budget is to get
them with a five.

Speaker 1 (01:23:23):
Well, hold on a second, what's their ADP? You're putting
them in wide receiver four territory?

Speaker 2 (01:23:28):
Did I say that? I'm wrong? Wide receiver three, low
wide receiver three? Sorry, I agree with that.

Speaker 1 (01:23:34):
Pearce All is a top thirty five receiver. Jawan Jenks
just outside of there.

Speaker 2 (01:23:39):
Okay, yeah, all right, okay, Well let's see, uh Josh
the next one. I want to talk about Josh Jacobs
and Bucky Irving because these are guys who are close
together in ADP. But I picked these guys out because
we've got some interesting, you know, moving parts here. I

(01:23:59):
don't think there's a lot different in Green Bay. But
he I call this a moving part, maybe it's better
to call it a variable. He scored sixteen touchdowns last year,
and we all know how fickle touchdowns are. I do
think the Packers have an offense that likes to run
the ball there in the you know, in the red

(01:24:19):
area and in the important parts of the field. So
I'm not taking away the fact that he could do
that again, but we know touchdowns are fickle. And then
Bucky Irving, on the other hand, you know, he comes
into this year losing another offensive mind. Now we've got
Tampa Bay two straight years losing an offensive mind from

(01:24:40):
their brain trust. At some point it has to matter,
I would think, unless the guys coming up have learned
from those guys and you know, are just as talented.
We're talking about that with the Lions this year. What
happens in Tampa Bay with the loss of Cohen and
Canalis back to back here, kN Bucky Irving have another
big gear. Can Josh Jacobs score sixteen touchdowns. Which one

(01:25:03):
of these guys, you know, pick your fighter here, Jacobs
or Irving.

Speaker 1 (01:25:06):
Yeah, I'll click on Jacobs for a number of reasons
that you kind of highlighted. We can start with the
play caller factor. It's gonna be Matt Lafleur. Lafleur has
been very friendly to his lead running back ever since
he got to Green Bay and started calling plays. An
example of that is last year with Josh Jacobs, when
he averaged over seventeen PPR points per game. He was

(01:25:28):
actually a monster from week five on. He started a
little slow, nineteen point two PPR points per game from
week five on and twenty point four from week eleven
on post By. That's eight games. That's pretty great. There
could be some touchdown regression, but this is also a
Packers offense that is going through some transformative times with

(01:25:49):
its receiving core. And they wouldn't surprise me if they
struggled a little bit to throw the ball through the air,
but they made up for it on the ground. And
Jacobs is just absolute dynamite back there. I think he's
I think any injury concerns that we had they're still there,
but they're low Marshaun Lloyd is entering his second year.
He'll be the backup. He could end up taking some

(01:26:09):
snaps away whatever Jacob's lost snaps to Wilson last year
Emmanuel Wilson, and it didn't seem to slow him down
one bit. So I'm still viewing him as a guy
who can give us fifteen plus such is per game,
still gonna work at the goal line, still can work
in the passing game, and I'll take that over Bucky,
who was amazing over the second half of the season.

(01:26:32):
And I actually think there's room for Bucky to grow.
But questions about the play caller. It's Josh Gizzard. We
don't know just how good he's going to be, certainly
compared to Liam Cohen. When you're done watching the Pierce
All fireworks, you can watch some Bucky Irving film and
you'll see what Liam Cohen did in terms of misdirection
and unique ways to scheme up his players that made

(01:26:57):
the Bucks really really formidable last year offensively. And I
don't think that Grizz is going to see that and
just go, well, let's let's go back to having everybody
stationary and no misdirection, and let's let's make it easy
on defenses.

Speaker 2 (01:27:10):
I don't think hope.

Speaker 1 (01:27:11):
I think I think they'll I think they'll keep doing
what they're doing. But you do have to wonder just
how much they'll evolve, because you can bet your butt that,
especially teams in the NFC South, they're going to be
coming after them based on what they did last year,
so they're gonna have to change it up. As far
as the schedule goes, I'm definitely gonna give the nod
to Tampa. They're playing in a much easier division. But

(01:27:34):
it's not like either one of these teams have have
a favorable schedule at all. Green Bay does to begin
the year, but the NFC North, that's got a bunch
of really good defenses in there. Maybe not the toughest,
but their schedules collectively in the NFC North are going
to be tough. And then to put the auction spin
on it as well, I think you might get a

(01:27:56):
couple of percentage points less on Bucky than you do
for Jacobs, But I think it's going to be close
Eye Ballpark. It is like they're both going to be
over twenty percent for sure, but maybe like twenty three
percent for Jacobs, not quite twenty five percent, whereas it'll
be closer to like twenty one twenty two percent for Bucky,

(01:28:17):
so very close. I think this is a good debate.
I can't wait to hear what you've got on them.
But I'll take Jacobs.

Speaker 2 (01:28:24):
I will also just slightly take Jacobs. I think, if
it's possible, he had a quiet sixteen touchdowns. I don't
know if that's possible, but I mean, I don't feel
like we sat there every week and talked about how
amazing Josh Jacobs was. I just think that a lot
of times I heard people even discounting, oh, well he
got on that eighty yards rushing, but he got three

(01:28:46):
carries inside the five. Well, you know that's what green
Bay does. Yeah, And I think one of the football
dude right right. And I think one of the things too,
to talk about with green Bay that maybe we're not
paying enough attention to is that this offense could get
better if Jordan Love can stay healthy. He had trouble
last year. He hurt his knee immediately right out of
the gate, then he hurts his growing. I think that

(01:29:08):
the offense itself could get better. That could help save
us from the TD regression and I think Jacobs is
one of those guys. And I may just be basing
this off of some of my home leagues, but he's
that kind of guy that I feel like is not
super exciting to people. And I talked about this in
my open before I'm Coming on with You, when I

(01:29:30):
was just rambling by myself. But I was off Jacobs
last year just because I was scared about the efficiency
drop I saw after that huge touch year in twenty
twenty three or twenty twenty two, and then twenty three
his efficiency dropped off a cliff and I thought, I
hope that's not the end for him, and then he
looked much better last year. So that's my mistake. I

(01:29:53):
was off him last year. I'm not making that mistake again.
And I really think that there is a little bit
of just kind of like people don't care that much
about Jacobs, and that's why I say it was a
quiet sixteen touchdowns. Those who know no, but those who
don't aren't really paying attention. I'm hoping to get a
few bucks off of Jacobs. I don't know, we'll see
that may be a pipe dream. I think these things

(01:30:14):
in July, and I come obvious I'm like, how did
Jacobs go for fifty eight bucks? So all right, let
me ask you about one more because I want to
get into auction talk here. So's let's hit this last one.
This is a quarterback question. We've got Patrick Mahomes and
Baker Mayfield being drafted right next to each other. Quarterback
six and quarterback seven. For Baker Mayfield, it was a

(01:30:36):
bit of a weird outliersh kind of year for both
of them. One good, one bad. Baker Mayfield had I believe,
a seven point two percent touchdown rate last year. He's
really just been a guy who's been up in upper fours,
low fives range for his career. So when you throw
forty one touchdowns, obviously you're going to have a bit
of a high TD rate. That's a you know, an

(01:30:58):
outlier for Mayfield. On the other side, Mahomes was low.
He's five and a half to six percent for his career.
He was at four and a half percent last year.
But we all know the struggles they had with the
injuries and the wide receiver corps. Now we've got three
what I believe to be the deepest wide receiver situation
that Mahomes has had since tyreek Hill left. Even though

(01:31:22):
Kelsey's on the decline, We've got Worthy, We've got Rice,
and we've got Hollywood. That looks like a recipe for
a bounce back from that four and a half percent
for Mahomes. So pick your fighter here, which weird TD
rate is going to regress and which guy can we
expect to benefit here.

Speaker 1 (01:31:39):
There's a part in Billy Madison where he's outside a
recess and the kids are playing dodgeball and someone tries
to take him out and he catches the ball and
he turns to all the kids and he goes, now,
you're all in big, big trouble. And I can't help
it feel like that's what's going to happen with Mahomes.

(01:32:02):
Because he's got a healthy receiving corps. We can talk
about Kelsey declining. The dude lost over twenty pounds himself.
He might actually survive this and still be a key
part of the Chiefs offense. But not only is received,
is Mahomes receiving core healthy. They've retooled the offensive line.
I think it'll be okay. I'm not ready to say

(01:32:22):
that it's going to be a strength. We'll see how
their rookie does at left tackle. But their run game,
Drew Dude, who knows what that's going to look like
with Pacheck oh and Kareem Hunt and Elijah Mitchell that
they don't have they might have. I all amended to
say they might have a good run game if Pachecko

(01:32:44):
can rebound from his injury. But if he can't, Mahomes
is going to carry this thing all year, and he's
got the horses to throw to to make defenses pay.
I also think that they're going to spend the whole
year anticipating that opponents are going to play a ton
of Cover two against them. That's what they did last year.
Worthy did beat Cover two on a number of occasions.

(01:33:04):
But if he's got Rashid Rice and Travis Kelce for
seventeen games, and then he can also work in Worthy
and Brown, and I'm not trying to minimize their roles.
Worthy I actually think could have a pretty big role,
Marquise Brown not so much. It's going to lead to
great numbers for Mahomes, and so I'm taking Mahomes over
Baker Mayfield. They're back to back in my rankings, but

(01:33:25):
I would draft them about twenty spots apart Drew because
I'm worried about massive repression, massive regression for Baker Mayfield.
And we don't know how healthy Chris Godwin is. We
don't know how healthy Mike Evans will stay. Mechabuca nothing
but rave reports from what I hear and see from

(01:33:45):
Tampa during off season practices. We'll see how much he'll
be able to step up and help this team. And
Jayle mac mill listen, he's good too, but Tampa's got
the better running game. We can go right back to
the play caller. Is there a better play caller than
Andy Reid? We can debate Sean McVay, but we can't

(01:34:06):
debate Josh Grizzard compared to Andy Reid. I just think
that there are so many factors favoring Patrick Mahomes that
that makes him the easy slam dunk. And so I
almost want to take your question and rephrase it, And
That's what I'm gonna do asking you this, It's not
about choosing your fighter, it's choosing your fighter at his ADP.

(01:34:28):
Would you rather have Patrick Mahomes in round five or
round six.

Speaker 2 (01:34:33):
Or would you rather have Baker Mayfield in round eight? Well,
for me that's Baker in round eight because I'm not so.
I did a little bit of looking into the TD
rate and all that stuff I put in. I believe
a four point nine percent TD rate for Baker next
year with the same amount of attempts came in right

(01:34:53):
around thirty TD passes, So that's still a reasonable number.
But I'm i'm I am concerned about the play caller
situation in Tampa, so I don't really know how that's
going to shake out. But I still I like Mahomes better,
but I think ADP wise, i'd rather a Baker.

Speaker 1 (01:35:14):
So we're going to discount Baker's passing touchdowns from forty
one to thirty.

Speaker 2 (01:35:20):
Yeah, that's easy.

Speaker 1 (01:35:21):
So now we're going to take sixty six points off
of his total score in six point leagues. So now
I gotta pretend I'm a math genius. That's going to
be three hundred and eighty two fantasy points. What's three
eighty two divided by seventeen. I'm not that good. I'm
going to need a calculator for that. Yeah, if you

(01:35:41):
beat me to it, you would already know that three
eighty two divided by seventeen is twenty two point four
fantasy points per game. That's better than what Mahomes has
been over each of the last two years. But if
we're taking them at about the same time, I feel
like that's a disappointing result. Yeah, and so unless you

(01:36:02):
think Mahomes is just done and you don't buy into
what I'm saying, that Mahomes isn't going to benefit from
the receivers being healthy, or maybe we get to a
point in August Drew where one of his receivers isn't healthy,
maybe somebody gets suspended, although I think you'd tell me
that you would doubt that in the case of Rice,
then I think we would bet on Mahomes to do

(01:36:24):
better than twenty two point four, even though he hasn't
over his last two seasons. Well, if you think that
he is going to stink again, then Baker Mayfield is
the easy slam dunk. And for what it's worth, the
schedule favors him quite a bit. Playing in the NFC South,
those are a lot of favorable matchups.

Speaker 2 (01:36:42):
Yeah. Well, and the one thing you just said about
Mahomes that that frustrates me a little bit is and
this is the same thing that happened a couple of
years ago, after McCaffrey got hurt missed most of the year,
and I was coming into the season like, oh, we're
going to give this McCaffrey discount, and we didn't get
a discount. I know that he's awesome, I get why
we're drafting him, Like, where's my discount? And I kept

(01:37:04):
whinding about it. This was two years ago, I think.
But it's the same thing with Mahomes. I want to
be like, you know, I've got a homekeeper league, and
he's been a keeper of mind for a couple of
years now, and I've watched him be mediocre, and if
his name wasn't Patrick Mahomes, he wouldn't be out there
for fantasy teams. And so I'm a little frustrated, Not
that I agree with you that he can come back

(01:37:26):
and do it this year because of the situation, but
I'm a little frustrated that for two years now he's
been fairly mediocre as a fantasy player and nobody seems
to care. QB six. He's still going QB six. I mean,
there's the top five, the easy top five, and then
he's just right there QB six. So that's a little
frustrating to me. I hope that that doesn't translate in auctions.
I hope there's a big cliff there after the fifth

(01:37:49):
quarterback down to the sixth that allows me to have
some shots at Mahomes. But who knows, I.

Speaker 1 (01:37:55):
Think there will be I wonder if that cliff won't
be quite is steep In an auction, you know, you
might see Jalen Hurts go for like eight to ten
percent of a budget. You know, quarterbacks always go for
less than they should. Mahomes might go for seven to
nine percent. Yeah, and I think there's going be like

(01:38:15):
you'll see Mahomes go, you know, a good solid round
after Hurts.

Speaker 2 (01:38:20):
Yeah, And I just feel like there should be a
bigger gap there. But well, that's that's a perfect segue
here into some auction talk here, because we are going
kind of long and I want to get some auction
stuff in here. Please. The first thing that we always
talk about, and I just need to say this because
there are some people listening who haven't done an auction,
and I always say I like to hear from other people,

(01:38:43):
what's your favorite part about options are? Why should people
try them? And I just want to continue to try
to grow this part of the fantasy community. It's hard.
I feel like we're swimming upstream every year when we
talk about it. But what's your favorite part about Why
should people do it?

Speaker 1 (01:38:57):
I can go into the auction and know that I
can get anybody I want on my fantasy team. Let's
say that I just got done hearing us talk about
Josh Jacobs and I'm sold. I'm ready to go with
Josh Jacobs.

Speaker 2 (01:39:13):
On my fantasy team.

Speaker 1 (01:39:15):
Well, I could take them in round one in a
redraft league. But if I'm picking late, if I'm picking
early in round one or late in round two, I
don't think I'm getting Josh Jacobs. I'm not going to
reach for him at number one. Overall. That's Jamar Chase
or b Jehan Robinson, and I'm not gonna be able
to get him in round two. In an auction, you
can get anybody you want. In fact, in an auction

(01:39:38):
can you can build a team that you can't possibly
put together in a draft if I wanted, If I
wanted Jamar Chase and b Jean Robinson, I could get them.
I would spend in the neighborhood of like sixty five
percent of my budget on two players. It's not really
the sharpest idea. But maybe I spent in a few

(01:40:00):
days before my draft making a whole huge list of
all the players that I'll take at one and two
percent that I think will outperform that type of value
while still having Jamar Chase and and b Jon Robinson,
or maybe I want to get Ceedee Lamb and uh
Ashton Gent. You're not gonna be able to get those
guys in a draft, but you can in an auction.

(01:40:22):
You'll be able to do it for a little bit
less than what you would be able to do for
chasing Vjon. So you get to you get to choose
your own build. If you're a zero RB drafter, you're
a zero RB buyer. And and if you're an robust
RB drafter, you're a robust RB buyer, And you can
do it potentially easier in an auction than you can.

(01:40:44):
And also auctions are just it's fun to bid up
players to get them on your team, to take a
guy away from your buddy by spending the extra dollar.
And it takes a little bit longer, but you're gonna
be able to build a team that you'll love, and
it'll be something that you just can't possibly build.

Speaker 2 (01:41:04):
Sea and I find that criticism to be weird that
it takes too long. It's like, draft day's supposed to
be fun. The draft's supposed to be one of the
most fun things that we do. Why do you care
if it takes an extra hour? I mean we're not
talking like eight hours. I mean my home league, we
used to just everybody would put their own stickers on
the board after they want a player, and it would
take forever to do. We don't do that anymore, but

(01:41:26):
we would take six or seven hours and nobody cared.
We weren't in a hurry, Like what do we do?
This is one of my favorite days of the year.
Why we want to be in a hurry? Why do
you want to be over.

Speaker 1 (01:41:34):
Quicker and move along?

Speaker 2 (01:41:37):
Yeah my way. Yeah, I don't get it, Ricky pier Film,
I just don't get it. I think your comment, though,
is for me, the single biggest reason to do it,
and that's just that it opens up the entire playerpool
and let you do what you want, because that's why
we play the game, is to say, hey, I believe

(01:41:57):
in these certain players and that's my edge over or
my teammate or my league mates. And if I can't
get to those players because I'm in a snake. I
think that's frustrating and I think that blunts our edge.
But let me ask you about one of the things
that we have talked about in the past couple of
years is that you've been a self proclaimed sort of

(01:42:19):
robust running back drafter, that you're still a guy that
likes to take running backs early and often. Is that,
first of all, is that still the case now here
in twenty twenty five.

Speaker 1 (01:42:29):
It's not necessarily okay, but it's not because of you know,
macro draft philosophy. I've got to see what the rankings
look like and what the board looks like and the
players that are available, and I need to adjust based
on that. I think running back is very deep this year.

(01:42:49):
I think we're we're kind of lucky that we've got
so many veterans coming off of a good year and
so many rookies coming into the league that have interesting
upside and even good like even good running backs like
in the middle rounds, even the middle of late rounds
that you can make a case for. You can make
a case for Jordan Mason, You might be able to

(01:43:12):
make a case for tay j.

Speaker 2 (01:43:13):
Spears.

Speaker 1 (01:43:14):
These these are names that further the depth of the
running back talent pool. And I look at wide receiver
and Drew, I see at most nine receivers that I go, okay,
surefire stud, no questions asked, would love to have them
on my fantasy team. And then I see, you know,

(01:43:34):
like the second tier, third tier receivers, they're okay. This
is the lad Maconkee, Garrett Wilson type groups. There's laws
with these guys, and I'm I am short on breakout
candidates from the middle rounds, like Piercell is one of
those guys. But I don't know if I've got so
many other ones that I'm I'm really targeting. So this

(01:43:55):
could be a year where I'm gonna want to try
and lock up at least one of those times nine
wide receivers, knowing that I can find some good running
backs after those guys. And then I don't know how
many bench receivers all draft because they all look the
same to me, you know, Christian Kirk versus Xavier League
versus Jaden Reid versus who knows who else. I mean,

(01:44:18):
we can make cases for any and all of them,
but I bet there'll be at least ten wide receivers
within the first month of the season that shine off
the waiver wire that are just as good as those
guys that you draft in the late rounds. I'm going
to keep drafting running backs later. I might take two
tight ends too, because that's just the nature of that
position being a little bit deeper than it's been before.

(01:44:39):
But the supply and demand of stud wide receivers there's
not a lot of it. I want to try and
take advantage of that.

Speaker 2 (01:44:46):
This is great because I talk about inflection points on
my podcast a lot about points where things begin to
change inside your auction. But I think this might be
an inflection point in how we should be approaching the
auction in general over the last couple of years, because

(01:45:07):
my auction strategy for a long time had been to
just hammer away at pass catchers, and in the last
couple of years, I've noticed the exact same thing that
you just pointed out is that there's a very limited
group of guys that I think are going to command
alpha level targets, and that are going to be the
guys that I can just plug in there and don't
care about. There are so many guys out there that

(01:45:29):
look the same at wide receiver. I just don't care.
And I'm just sitting there thinking to myself, do I
want to spend twenty nine on this guy when I
can spend eleven on another guy who I think is
almost as good. And I pointed this out on the
show the other day. There's a lot of guys that
you can pick out like wide receiver twenty four versus

(01:45:50):
wide receiver forty, and tell me flip a coin on
which one's going to finish higher in fantasy. The spread
is just not big enough for me to care with
my auction dollars. So I think the play might be
flipping from pass catchers to more of a depth at
running back, And certainly in bigger leagues where people are
chasing the wide receivers and blowing all their money on

(01:46:13):
the top wide receivers, you can really go deep four
or five wide or excuse me, running back steep might
be a King's Classic fourteen team plus kind of strategy
that should be the one we're chasing now.

Speaker 1 (01:46:26):
It could be what I worry about specifically for those
types of leagues, and maybe even like sharp twelve team leagues,
just sharp leagues in general. A lot of people are
gonna feel that way. How many people are going to
walk into a draft this year and say, this is
the year I need to take three running backs with
my first three picks. Got to do it. We're passing
Jamar Chase Like no one says those words unless they

(01:46:46):
want to wear the Dunce cap. So I wonder if
that's going to drive up the prices of those top
nine wide receivers. And if it does, then I'll try
and get the last one of those nine at the
lowest possible rate. So let's just you know, we can
lay a scenario where Jamar Chase goes for thirty two

(01:47:09):
percent of the budget and Jefferson's at thirty two percent,
Ceedee Lamb goes for thirty percent, and so on and
so on. Well, maybe the last receiver that goes off
the board is aj Brown. Maybe you get them for
like five to ten percentage points less. That sounds like
a deal to me. I'm still getting one of my
top nine wide receivers. And you might think that there's

(01:47:29):
more than nine wide receivers out there that are considered
elite tier. And if you do, that's cool, it's fine.
Maybe you think Drake London and t Higgins belong in
that group. I do not, But if you do, that
just makes that tier deeper for you, and you might
be able to get them in even more of a
slight discount compared to the Chases and Jefferson's of the
fantasy world. But you should also probably bank on well,

(01:47:53):
if all these other sharp drafters are doing this, what's
the counter move? And that's when I would I really
want to be sure about the receivers I like that
are outside that first tier. Okay, I'm still in on
DeVante Adams Drew too. I know that a lot of
people will not be because he's old and he's changing teams,
and his quarterbacks old, and he's got a Taco Bell

(01:48:16):
drive through in his house, and you know those are
good for people like us, but not necessarily him. I'm
making that, but is value he could go below twenty
percent of the budget because he's not as popular. Well,
if that's a guy I had to put in my
fantasy lineup as my number one wide receiver, I'd be
a little reluctant, but I would do it, especially if
that means me having the assets in my auction to

(01:48:40):
go and get other players at good values later on,
because so many of my opponents overspent for some of
those elite tier wide receiver So.

Speaker 2 (01:48:48):
Let me ask you about that specifically, because I just
made a comment this week to my Patreon subscribers that
players like Adams Rashie Rice. I believe Adam's ADP is
wide receiver seventeen. Rice's is wide receiver nineteen. The hype
on Rice seems to be getting out of control. I'm
getting a little bit frustrated with that. But yeah, let's

(01:49:09):
just let's put a pin in that, because that's a
different discussion. But guys like Adams and Rice that we
know can break this late, they can break into the
top five where they can finish as wide receiver ones.
Those are the kind of guys I really want to
be chasing because I know the competition for those top
nine is going to be so crazy that I think
I'm okay, really slipping out of that top nine. I

(01:49:33):
don't want to, Don't get me wrong, I don't want to,
but I've spent the past couple of years trying to
grab two of those top nine guys, and that's not
been a bill that I like. So I guess this
is a general like approach question for you. Sure we
haven't talked a lot about I know that you said
that you haven't done a lot of auction prep yet,
but are there some general ideas that are forming, like, Hey,

(01:49:55):
this approach this year might be my way or have
you done any big picture of thinking about how you're
going to approach auctions this year?

Speaker 1 (01:50:03):
No, because usually what I what I do is I've
got my auction value set. They are what I go by.
That's my bible. They're available on cbsports dot com. They're
right there on our rankings page. It's based on a
one hundred dollars budget and I go to battle with
that and I just I will not overspend. I can't

(01:50:24):
say that there have been times where I've overspent, but
it's been out of sheer desperation in the in the
second half of auctions, when I do too much, when
I'm too thrifty, That's what I should say. I'm too
thrifty and I let other people bid up players and
now I'm stuck overpaying for you know, Jacoby Myers to

(01:50:46):
be my wide receiver too, and I hate my life.
I try to avoid that, but I usually end up
getting one or two of players at a value that
I think is fair. I'm not trying to rip off
the rest of the league. I just don't want to overpay.
I don't want to pay thirty six percent of my
budget or forty percent of my budget for anybody that

(01:51:07):
you would consider going one on one. I want my
opponents to do that, but I won't do that. And
usually I'm very good my draft strategy. You know. He
Cummings is one of my buddies at CBS and he
used to work at football and he never has an
intentional positional strategy when it comes to drafting. He will,

(01:51:29):
he will. He knows all the strategies, and fantasy managers
should know all the strategies and all the different ways
you can go about building a team. But you just
let the draft unfold, and you can let the auction
unfold the exact same way, and you go, Okay, I
see how this thing's going to go. And a bunch
of my rivals are bidding up players and they're going
through their budgets really fast. I'm going to be able

(01:51:50):
to get some great steals, you know, maybe as soon
as like the twenty fifth nomination, And that's what I
go for and uh, I it works.

Speaker 2 (01:52:00):
Out for me that way. Well, let me ask you
about what he's saying.

Speaker 1 (01:52:03):
Flexible is what helps?

Speaker 2 (01:52:05):
Yeah? Well absolutely, So let me ask you about what
he's saying there. Because when you're preparing, do you like
to put dollar amounts on what you're going to spend
on players? Or do you like to have a budget
like a, oh, I'm going to spend thirty two percent
or do you like to say, no, I want to
spend twenty nine on this position? Like, how do you

(01:52:25):
approach it?

Speaker 1 (01:52:26):
Well? I don't necessarily try in a lot a certain
percentage by position because now I do have an intentional
positional strategy if I do that. But I think Jamar
Chase is going to be worth about a thirty yr
budget this year. Do you want to spend the extra
buck to do that? I think that's fine. You want
to spend an extra two or three bucks, Well, now

(01:52:48):
you're jumping it up by about ten percent. I don't
want to do that. So I kind of set my
limit and that's it.

Speaker 2 (01:52:55):
But you got that stuff in your head though, what's that?
You got that stuff in your head? Though you know
it well enough that you have that in your head sure.

Speaker 1 (01:53:03):
Well, listen, I go into an auction and I'm totally unprepared.
I'm going to lose.

Speaker 2 (01:53:08):
Okay, So well, but what do you tell a guy
who doesn't know that knowing what you're getting yourself into, right, yeah,
But what do you tell like a young like somebody
who hasn't done a lot of auctions, who's not me
or you, and they don't have that number in their
head like this is what he should go for? I mean,
what is the best way to prepare for them to
say hey, so that they don't overspend?

Speaker 1 (01:53:29):
Right, So there's two things to do there. Number one,
it would probably help you to do a little bit
of research and to find a couple of sources such
as Dave Richard from CBS Sports and Drew Dravingport from
Football Guys, to get their opinions on how much a
player should go for. I assume that you've got auction
values for every player, and people who are going into

(01:53:50):
an auction for the first time should have that information
AVAILABLEY should probably look it over a couple of times
before they go into their auction. But here's the bigger
thing I do, and this means this is something that
I really insist that people do, and that means that
they can't spend their auction drinking beers and watching the
game and bsing with friends. You gotta pay attention to

(01:54:13):
who's going and what they're going for. And if you
if you group players together like I've been talking now
this whole show about the top nine wide receivers. Okay,
that's a group of wide receivers that I think have
the same type of expectation, give or take a couple
of fantasy points per game. If I see that Jamar
Chase is gone for thirty four percent of the budget

(01:54:37):
and Justin Jefferson goes for thirty three percent of the budget,
I'm pretty sure that Ceedee Lamb's going to go close
to that, and then Laigue Neighbors is going to go
right behind Ceedee Lamb, Pukinakua is gonna go right in
line with Milage Neighbors and so on. If you, if
you don't necessarily like go crazy with your budget at
the beginning, you'll see that especially if you tier your

(01:55:02):
players and group them together like I'm talking about, you'll
be able to get an idea of what the marketplace
is for your specific auction. As the real time results
come in, and then you'll go, Okay, now I know
that I'm going to spend Let's say you want to
get a Monross Saint Brown. All right, I saw Malie
Neighbors go for twenty eight percent, Pukinakua go for twenty
eight percent. I'd be shocked if a mon Ross Saint

(01:55:22):
Brown went for twenty eight or twenty nine percent. I'm
going to try and get them for twenty seven percent,
and you probably will, and you'll be happy about that.
That'll feel like a fair purchase for a stud wide
receiver on your fantasy team. You just have to pay
attention to the results as they come in, one by
one so that you know what you spend on a
player who's nominated. You'll say, okay, this player went for

(01:55:46):
X amount. Now I know what to expect to pay
for a player who's similar to them.

Speaker 2 (01:55:50):
I like hearing this because I spend so much time
shouting into the void, you know, on doing my own
thing when I'm not interviewing people, and I say these things,
and then every once in a while I get you
get that little nagging dout like am I right here?
But this is perfect because what I've always said is
You can't be so passive at the beginning of the

(01:56:11):
beginning of a draft that you miss on a big
deal because somebody's everyone in the rooms a little timid.
You don't want to miss that. But otherwise you want
to let the room breathe, because you're absolutely right. You're
going to be able to tell how this thing's going
to go by how it starts out. And if you
just let it breathe for a little while, you'll start

(01:56:33):
to dial in. Just by watching and banging attention and
being engaged, you'll start to figure out what's happening in
the room and where your edge is going to be.

Speaker 1 (01:56:42):
I like that a lot. I was going to say,
like you obviously, let's say that you agree with me
that Jamar Chase is a thirty four percent of budget guy,
and one of our viewers or listeners goes into their
auction and the high bid is at thirty percent of
budget and the timer's ticking down. You should jump on

(01:57:03):
that for thirty one percent. You've got you've got sources
telling you, okay, he should go for thirty four percent.
You're gonna get him at thirty one percent. It's a
about a ten percent discount. Seems like a smart buy,
even if it's at the beginning of the auction, So
don't be hesitant, but don't be an idiot either, and
just spend, spend. You know, you can't take your your

(01:57:25):
fake auction dollars home with you and buy a pizza later,
but you shouldn't hold and hoard it all auction long,
just so you can, you know, sit there at the
end with an extra ten bucks because you didn't spend.

Speaker 2 (01:57:37):
It earlier on well, and you're going to spend it
on somebody that's got a really low hit rate at
that point, so you're gonna spend it on some flyer
that shouldn't have been that much and the hit rate's
you know, eight percent anyway, So yeah, okay, good stuff. Here,
a couple more quick hits here on auctions, and then
I want to get you out of here because this
is going long. I say that every week, but this

(01:57:59):
is on. That's that's why we go along. How are
you approaching quarterback and tight end this year in auctions,
because it seems like it's really flat after the top
couple guys, I mean tight end. We've got three guys,
We've got Hours and McBride and Kittle, and then it
seems like it drops off. And then at quarterback it
seems like we've got a top five and then it

(01:58:20):
drops off. Are you going to try to grab one
of those top three or top five or are you
just going to say, hey, it's so flat that I'm
cool spending a couple bucks and I'm going to blow
it off. What are your opinions on the onesie positions
this year?

Speaker 1 (01:58:35):
It's it's a Plan A and Plan B, and it's
I'm not going to force either one of them. Obviously,
My plan is to try and get a stud tight
end or a stud quarterback. That's the order I would
put them in, as far as you want.

Speaker 2 (01:58:49):
To do that if it's there, is what you're saying.

Speaker 1 (01:58:50):
Of course, if I'm able to get Trade McBride, I've
got McBride at sixteen percent, so if i can get him,
oh okay, fifteen sixteen percent of my PPR budget, yeah,
I'm I'm gonna be cool with that. And then if
I get McBride or brought Bowers, maybe I'll get a
different tight end for you know, a buck at the
end of the auction. Same thing with quarterback. If I'm

(01:59:12):
able to get My values are very low on quarterbacks.
It's meant to be that way in one QB leagues.
Obviously their values multiply quite a bit in a two
quarterback or super flex format. But I'm spending less than
what I would spend on McBride or Bauers, on Josh
Allen or Lamar Jackson, and I would expect those guys

(01:59:32):
to go for more in most auctions that they'll go
for north of fifteen percent. I probably won't do that.
That probably means that I'll go to my plan B,
and it's the same thing by position. My Plan A
is try and get one of the top guys at
a fair value. I'm not trying to rip off the league.
I certainly don't want to overspend. But the plan B
is get two guys from the same position and spend

(01:59:56):
four or five percent of my budget on both guys combined.
If I can pull that off in a one QP league,
I think I can, and I'll feel pretty good about it.
If I walk out of my draft with Jared Goff
and Brock Purdy, yeah, these guys aren't. That's not Lamar Jackson,
that's not Josh Allen. I'm going to be behind at
the quarterback position. But is it going to be so
bad starting one of those two each week that I'm

(02:00:19):
going to cost my team big. It shouldn't, because I've
spent four percent of my budget on those guys and
more of my budget on other players at other positions,
and those other players should be able to help me
make up the difference.

Speaker 2 (02:00:35):
Yeah, And I've spent a couple of years now with
a little bit of an experiment. I think you'd call
it that quarterback because I know that when I go
into the Kings classing in particular, people just hate quarterbacks
so much that I knew that I could get, you know,
the number one quarterback for twenty bucks, and I said,
I'm in a two hundred dollars budget, I'm taking that.

(02:00:55):
And so I've done that for a couple of years.
I do think it helps some other weird things happen,
and so I don't want to be results oriented there.
I do think it helped in that kind of a league,
but I'm sort of off of that this year unless
the opportunity presents itself. Obviously, I'll always be value hunting there,
but I really think that at tight ending quarterback, I'm
just going to be content to just hang out and

(02:01:17):
get two guys for five bucks. You know, like I
just don't care if I have Jordan Love and Dak
Prescott versus spending a bunch of money on bo Nicks.
I don't know that that's going to be my play
this year. It's either top, I'm going to get a
value at the top, or I'm just not going to care.

Speaker 1 (02:01:35):
So right, I would amend it to say a fair value.

Speaker 2 (02:01:38):
But yeah, yeah, right, right right, your values look different
at the top.

Speaker 1 (02:01:42):
Yeah. And if you're in an auction where quarterbacks are,
you know, being nominated early and they're flying off the board,
let it go. Don't worry about it. You know you're
going to be able to find a quarterback or two
later that will be pretty good and you'll have much
more to spend on other positions.

Speaker 2 (02:02:00):
Yep, let me ask you real quick before I let
you go. A lot of people ask me about Superflex.
It's getting so much bigger, and my Superflex auction strategy
has kind of been all over the map because I
do get into some rooms where everybody goes absolutely berserk
for the running or for the quarterbacks, and I'm not
into that. But then I've found that I've I've really

(02:02:23):
had some issues with my sort of quarterback by committee strategy,
so I think it would have to amend how I
do that a little bit this year, and I'm going
to work on that a little bit more as the
summer goes on. How do you approach superflex quarterback situations?

Speaker 1 (02:02:39):
So unless you're really good at quarterback by committee as
you put it, and making those weekly decisions, I would
try and stay away from that with both of your
quarterback spots and super flex less be real like, unless
the scoring totally nerfs quarterbacks, you're starting two quarterbacks in
a super flex, try and get one of the top
nine to ten quarters. And you know, again, spend what's fair,

(02:03:04):
not what's too much. I get it, there's only one
Josh Allen in every league. There's only one Lamar Jackson
in every league. But the people that overspend on those guys,
they're not gonna have enough left over to get other
good players later on, including the second quarterback spot. And obviously,
the more that I spend on one quarterback, the more

(02:03:24):
likely I'm gonna spend the minimum or near the minimum
on the second quarterback. But I think a lot of
people are gonna spend you know, let's call it eight
percent or less on at least one of their two
quarterbacks in the league. And that's I don't even know
if that's right. It might even be more like like
fifteen percent true, not eight percent. But if you've got

(02:03:45):
quarterbacks and the positions deep this year, and there's guys
that you like that are gonna be able to go cheap, yeah,
get one or two of those guys and you can
have them battle it out each week to be your
second quarterback. Just don't get don't get four quarterbacks for
like a grand total of twenty five percent of your budget,
because then you're playing whack a mole each week trying to.

Speaker 2 (02:04:05):
Figure out you'll never start the right combination.

Speaker 1 (02:04:07):
Yeah right, you don't want to do that. If you
want to get one guy that can be an anchor,
and if you can get two guys to be your anchor,
that's cool too. You should obviously shoot for that. But
if you've got if you've got to choose each week
between this might sound a little gross, but Matthew Stafford
and JJ McCarthy, okay, that's fine for your second quarterback spot.
I don't think anybody would would be upset about something

(02:04:29):
like that.

Speaker 2 (02:04:30):
Yeah, I agree. I think that's where I'm settling. That
you've got to have that anchor. You can slide him
in every week, and then after that it doesn't matter.
I think that after that you can play a little
bit of the whack a mole. But if you've got
like you're absolutely right, you'll never start the right combination
if that's your entire roster. So okay, well, you know
I say this every week. I could do this for hours.

(02:04:52):
I really enjoy talking about this stuff with you. Let's
leave the people a little bit of the Dave Richard
maybe call it personal feelings. I don't know how you
want to call it, but I like hearing a little
bit more of what you think about guys that you're
really clicking on this summer, Guys that you want, that
you're targeting, maybe you're taking them a little head of ADP,

(02:05:15):
and guys on the other side of the coin that
you're fading a little bit. And this is meant to
just be like, hey, what are you doing in your draft?
So what are the guys that you've been you know,
loving and not loving?

Speaker 1 (02:05:26):
Sure, well, Pierce all Is definitely going to be one
of those guys, but he might be about it At
wide receiver. I have Christian Kirk on a list, but
I don't know if I necessarily love that. That's more
of like a like a safe play as a bench
wide receiver. I'm digging a lot of tight ends. I
think Evan Ingram is a great value. His ADP, I

(02:05:48):
think is going to go up as we get closer
to start the season. One of the things I always
look for from a tight end is can you finish
first or second on his team in targets? And I
think Ingram can do that in Denver and I like
way that he'll be utilized there. He's obviously much more
of a receiver than a blocker. Let him work as
a receiver in Sean Payton's offense. We've seen tight ends

(02:06:08):
do pretty good in that role before. I'm hoping he
can do it again. I'm a big, big fan of
Tyler Warren in Indianapolis. I think he might lead the
Colts in targets this year. I think he's just a
fantastic player. Great reports out of training camp on him.
Two other tight ends, Najoku Tucker Craft. I think those
guys are gonna be good values on draft day. I

(02:06:30):
think Dak Prescott's going to be a good value on
draft day too, too. So I think he's somebody that, Okay,
I didn't get a quarterback at a fair value early
on in my draft or my auction. Dak Prescott's kind
of a fallback guy. Situation's good, good offensive line, good
receiving corps, bad run game. I think the Cowboys defense
isn't going to be that good. Dak's gonna have to

(02:06:52):
throw a lot this year. Maybe he's like a low
rent version of Joe Burrow. Running backs like Tank Bigsby,
Jordan mace In. Isaac Garndo. Dude, I don't know. You
can draft Christian McCaffrey, but if you don't draft Garndo
with McCaffrey, you might be making it really really hard
on yourself this year in fantasy. Don't do that, especially
with the Niners schedule being what it is. And then

(02:07:14):
a guy that I'm taking at the end of every
single draft is Will Shipley of the Philadelphia backup running back. Well,
if I'm taking the backup running back in Philadelphia in
every draft, what does that tell you? As far as
my fades go for the starting running back in Philadelphia,
and it's Saquon Barkley's. There's too big of a track

(02:07:36):
record of running backs that have four hundred or more
carries in a season falling off the following year. It's
rare when they outperform what they did the year before.
And there's already two years on Saquon's career where he's
had at least three hundred and fifty touches. That's a
lower number, and he's been worse the year after. So
I'm not out and out fading Saquon, but there are

(02:07:57):
people that are willing to take him at number one overall. Well,
I wouldn't even take him with a top five pick
overall in a fantasy draft. Ashton Genty and Brock Bauers
in Las Vegas. I think there's a lot of hype
around both of those guys. Bowers averaged over eight targets
per game last year. I don't think he gets anywhere
near that number this year. And Ashton Genty great player,

(02:08:18):
great talent. I just have a bad feeling that the
Raiders not They're not gonna like ruin him, but he
won't have the same type of opportunity to have a
monster year, like like like Saquan had as a rookie
or Ezekiel Elliott had as a rookie. I think the
game's a little bit different now. I don't think he'll
be as bad as Bijon as a rookie either, But

(02:08:39):
I don't see Ashton Genty as a top ten pick.
Terry McLaurin, I'm worried about DeVante Smith. I'm worried about
I know that in Baltimore they're saying they need to
give Zay Flowers the ball more. I call bs on
that I wouldn't take him. I'm fading him. I'm fading
DeAndre Swift, fading TJ. Hockinson, just to throw a tight
end in there, to show you that there is a

(02:09:01):
tight end that I don't like in Minnesota. I feel
like the reasons why we're drafting him is based on
something that happened two years ago. I think the whole
situation in Minnesota has changed since then, and I think
he's going to be more of a complimentary part of
that offense rather than a high volume earner.

Speaker 2 (02:09:18):
He certainly seemed like complimentary last year, not anything they
were running the offense through and certainly wasn't getting those
high target games. Might have had one or two of them.
But all right, well a I gotta get you out
of here. This has been a fantastic discussion. But we
are an hour and almost fifteen minutes, and so that
is a crazy long time. I know, I know it does.

(02:09:41):
My wife just texts me she's leaving work. She's like,
are you done yet? And I'm like, no, sorry, not
quite the Yeah, so we went long. We went long,
but look, I love the discussion. We're gonna have to
get back together for more auction talk, just only that.
We'll just do. We'll just do twenty or third minutes
on only auction stuff later in the summer.

Speaker 1 (02:10:02):
Love it, and.

Speaker 2 (02:10:04):
Look for Dave of course on CBS Sports and on
Twitter at Dave Richard. That's R I C H A
R D. And he's got a lot of irons in
the fire, so you can find him in a lot
of different places. Thank you so much, Dave. I really
appreciate you coming on.

Speaker 1 (02:10:21):
I always love talking to you. Drew.

Speaker 2 (02:10:23):
Yeah, good times, good times. I will miss you in Canton,
but I'll be looking forward to next year and we'll
get together again for another collaboration soon. So thanks again
to Dave Richard from CBS Sports. And that's another week
of discussions with Drew. Thank you again to Dave Richard

(02:10:45):
from CBS. He does an awesome job. We went a
little bit long, but hey, that's the name of the
game on the Auction Brief. He's so fun to talk to,
and when I get into these auction discussions, I could
just go and go and go, and it's hard for
me to pull back and keep things moving. So apologies
for that being a little bit long, but I hope
you enjoyed it, and I hope you done a lot
out of it, folks. I think the last you know,

(02:11:07):
these four episodes of the Auction Brief that we've started
the summer with have been dynamic and I'm hearing a
lot of good feedback. The numbers continue to grow. Thank
you so much for being here and supporting the show.
I really appreciate it. Don't forget you can find me
on Twitter at Drew Davenport FF. You can find me
on TikTok and the Patreon network the Fantasy Football Lawyer

(02:11:27):
that's just four bucks a month. And also don't forget
FJA Fantasy Draft boards. Ten percent off your order by
using the code Auction two zero two five. Auction twenty
twenty five will get you ten percent off the best
draft boards in the business, folks. That's going to do
it for another week. I'm excited about this summer. It's
shaping up really good. I can't believe we're in July.

(02:11:49):
Happy fourth of July. Hope you have a great holiday
week and being off from work and spending time with
your families. Be careful with those fireworks. Come back safe
next week, and we'll have another banger of an episode
next week as we get close to training camp and
the jury trial of Jordan Addison. Stay tuned, folks. We're
doing it all here on the Auction Brief. And now

(02:12:11):
the Auction Brief is adjourned and I am.

Speaker 3 (02:12:14):
Out the Auction Brief is adjourned. That'll do it for
this week's episode. See you next time on the Auction Brief.

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