The 5 Pillars of Auction Drafting; Guest Michael F. Florio from the NFL Network

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Auction Brief.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
There's a joy in these games or.

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Not, taking you on a journey through fantasy football, the law,
and life.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
The 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. Let's go play some football.

Speaker 3 (00:36):
Hey, everybody, welcome into the Auction Brief. As the lady said,
I'm your host, Drew Davenport, You're a fantasy football lawyer,
and thank you for joining me for another episode of
the Auction Brief. We are officially into August. Real football
was played this week. I can't believe it. We saw
some real football players running around on the field playing

(00:58):
football with their friends. That was awesome to see. I'm
so stoked to be turning the calendar to August. It's
easily my busiest month of the year, but also the
most fun month of the year for fantasy football. So
I am stoked for the month of August. Last week,
I don't know if you noticed, but it's a bit
of an evergreen episode on my part. Drake and I

(01:20):
talked about some training camp storylines. But I was actually
off last week. I pre recorded a bunch of content
for everybody because I wanted you to have stuff and
you know, a pretty important week of the year, But
I was off last week on vacation with the family.
That's where we're going to start today. I've got a
little bit of a funny story to tell that's going
to lead us into our content today.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
But what is that content today?

Speaker 3 (01:43):
Well, I'm going to talk to you about the five
pillars of auction drafting and how we should approach them
for different skill levels, because I think one of the
things that I have not been very good about on
this show is telling you when things are for beginners,
when they're for intermediate level drafters, and when things are

(02:03):
advanced and elite level talents or skill sets that you
need to be developing. I think it's so important when
we talk about, say something like nomination strategies, there's a
beginner level way to approach it, there's an intermediate level
way to approach it, and there's an advanced level way
to approach it. So not everything has to be learned immediately.

(02:26):
And I know that that's a problem sometimes because of
the questions I get so I've been really bad about that.
So we're going to talk about the five pillars of
auction drafting through different lenses this week.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
I think that's going to be cool.

Speaker 3 (02:37):
Through the beginner lens, the intermediate lens, the advanced lens.
So we're going to talk about the five pillars of
auction drafting. We're going to have Michael Florio from the
NFL Network. That's right, mister Marcus Grant's running mate there
at the NFL Network, Michael Florio.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
He's never been on the show before. Stoked to have him.

Speaker 3 (02:55):
Met Michael at the Canton the Expo last year and
super cool guy, really smart about fantasy football. So I'm
looking forward to that conversation on discussions with Drew. Yes, folks,
it is Canton week. It is the Expo week. Finally
we're gonna be in Canton, Ohio. As you listen to this,
I'll be on my way to the great city of Canton.

(03:15):
Hope to see you out there and hope to hang
out this weekend and have a beer together. You know,
I will be hanging at the Double Tree if you
need to find me before we get into the content
this week. Don't forget you can find me on Twitter
at Drew deavinport Ff, on TikTok and Patreon as the
Fantasy Football Lawyer. And as always, if you're going to
order your draft board for your home leagues, go to
fjafantasy dot com. FJA Fantasy Draft boards are the best

(03:39):
draft boards in the business. I really believe that, and
that's why I advertise for them every summer. You can
get ten percent off your draft boards with my code
Auction two zero two five. That's Auction twenty twenty five
ten percent off your draft boards. So with all of
that out of the way, I don't know if you've
all noticed, but I've been getting into the contact quicker

(04:00):
and quicker. I hope you all appreciate that because it's
something I've been working on. But I like to ramble
and tell stories and talk about stuff. But hey, we
are in the first week of August. We don't have
that many episodes left, and I want to talk about
the five pillars of auction drafting, but I want to
start with a story that leads us into the content today.

(04:20):
Like I say all the time, a lot of people,
you know my style is not for them. I understand that,
but I believe the stories have a purpose. They lead
you into how you should be thinking about the topic
for today, and I think that they're entertaining in a
way that allows you to learn something at the same
time that you're possibly hopefully enjoying yourself listening to the show.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
Hopefully.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
The five pillars of auction drafting, as I see them,
are number one preparation, Number two, nomination strategies, Number three,
bidding strategies, Number four inflection points, and number five grinding
the room. And number five is something that we have
not talked about for the last couple of summers. I

(05:06):
introduced that several years ago, and I haven't hit it
a whole lot because I feel like a lot of
the things that we talk about that's part of.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
Grinding the room.

Speaker 3 (05:14):
So I don't specifically say it, but I want to
talk about it through the lenses this week. Like I said,
we've got these five pillars, but we've got the beginner lens,
the intermediate lens, and the advanced lens. The way you
see the draft from how much experience you have. And
I think that the important thing that I alluded to
at the beginning of the show is that I get

(05:34):
a lot of questions like, hey, I need to know
how do I use this? How do I do that?
There's a lot to remember, You've You've told me a lot.
I had a good question from Chad on Patreon this week,
and Chad Bray said, Hey, you know, could you lay
out some of these dudes and don'ts that you put
in the show? Can you lay out, Hey, these are
the auction habits you need to break and just put

(05:54):
them like in a list form on the Patreon And
I said, Chad, I'm not going to do your f
and work for you. Just kidding, That's not what I said,
because it's a great point. I throw a lot at you,
and so I understand you go into the draft and
you're like your head swimming with all these things that
you're supposed to be thinking about because I've been throwing
them them at you for hours and hours this summer.

(06:17):
So I think the problem becomes, Hey, how do I
separate all these things and how do I start using
all these things? And that's what led me to today's topic,
because really, what I want you to do is, Hey,
when I'm preparing, I'm just a beginner, Like what do
I need to be doing as a beginner, right, there's
not all these things that you need to be thinking
about as a beginner. It can be very simple as
a beginner, just to help you get better than most

(06:39):
of the people out there. You can just do some
really simple things as a beginner, and you're going to
be better than anybody in that draft room. And then
once you get good at that, it goes on to
intermediate tactics and then advance tactics, and the way you
build on them is how I want to start with
the story today, because how do we get to the
intermediate in advance tactics if all this stuff floating around

(07:01):
and I don't really know when to pull the right
things out of my head? And that's really what Chad's
question alludes to, and it's a great question. How do
I pull these things out of my head when I
need them? Because you've given me so much. Here's how
it works. Do you remember a quote that I gave you.
I think it was last summer. It might have been
the summer before, but I'm just going to paraphrase the quote,

(07:22):
and basically it was this, you don't wear a path
in the ground simply by walking back and forth. A
couple times, and likewise, you don't wear pathways in the
brain by simply thinking about something one or two times.
We've talked about the Malcolm Gladwell ten thousand hours before, right,
that you have to do something for ten thousand hours

(07:42):
before you're an expert. And I'm not saying that you
have to do ten thousand hours of auction drafts to
become an expert, but the point is very clear. You
must wear those pathways in your brain in order for
them to become something that's part of you that you
can recall when you need to recall it. I go
on shows all the time, and when I go on

(08:04):
a show, people are like, Hey, I'm going to ask
you auction stuff, and it's this, this and this, and
I'm like, I don't care what it is. Like I've
been asked the questions so many times over the past
seven years that I already know first of all, what
you're going to ask, and second of all, I know
the answer I'm going to give, and sometimes that changes.
But like, I could just discuss auctions off the top
of my head because I've done it for so long,

(08:25):
so many hours, so many reps. It's just a part
of me now. Well, how do you get there? How
do you wear a path in the brain to get there?
And something happened this past week that made me think
of the show. And this is kind of funny to
me because I'm on vacation and I'm not supposed to
be thinking about content. Now I'm like dropping some content
at night before I go to sleep, just that I've

(08:45):
pre prepared. But I'm thinking about content. It just happens
naturally because things pop up that happen and I'm like, oh,
that's going in the show. And the thing that happened
this week that I just I just sort of chuckled
to myself. It's not really that funny, but it's sort
of funny but not really but sort of would kind
of but not really. But anyway, it was funny because
it just instantly popped into my head, like, all right,

(09:08):
that's what a ten year old does, Okay, because I've
got two kids. I got a ten year old and
my daughter just turned nine but ten and eight basically,
but she just turned nine. So we got my son
a trip to build the Lightsaber thing at Disney. I
don't know if you've heard about that. Like you go
to a workshop and then you build this really cool lightsaber.
We did that for him because it was kind of
like all about my daughter and her birthday, blah blah blah.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
Nobody cares.

Speaker 3 (09:31):
But point being, this is not something we ordinarily do,
and that's important for the setup to the story. We
don't spend that kind of money at stuff. Disney itself
is expensive enough when you're paying five dollars for a coke,
So we generally don't do these big extras, and we
did it this time because it was a special occasion.
My son goes to the lightsaber building workshop, builds this

(09:52):
expensive lightsaber and he's got it in a padded carrying
case and we only have like an hour left at
the Barks, but we want to go on a couple
of rides. We're waiting in line and he's got this
thing in the case. But this lightsaber is basically a
light It's essentially like a fluorescent light that goes at
the end of the lightsaber that lights up the right color.

(10:13):
So as you can guess, it's somewhat fragile. Now, I
don't think it's something where it's like it's automatically just
going to fall apart. But you know, because it's fairly expensive,
but it's like it is just a light bulb on
the end of that thing. So a ten year old
doesn't necessarily understand all that stuff. So we're in line
for a ride right after he gets the thing. He's
had the thing for an hour, and he decides he's

(10:35):
going to sit down on the ground because we're waiting
in a long line, And when the line starts to move,
he pulls the perfect ten year old maneuver. He gets
up off the ground, and in order to get up,
he uses his newly acquired lightsaber as like a walking
stick to like stand up, like to lean on and
help him like pull himself up off the ground. You

(11:00):
can imagine both her mom and I are just horrified, like,
what are you doing, son? You are using this expensive
thing you got an hour ago as a glorified piece
of wood so that you can make standing a little
bit easier. Now I know, it's the end of a
long day. He's ten years old. He doesn't think of
all that stuff. It just we first were horrified, and

(11:21):
then we just laughed, like shook our head, like what
do you do about a kid who makes a decision
like that?

Speaker 2 (11:27):
And then we tell ourselves. Look, he's ten.

Speaker 3 (11:29):
All kids make decisions like that, right, And why is
that they make decisions like that because they're not thinking
about it. The only thing they're thinking about is what's
right in front of them. Is that I have to
stand up the end.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
That's all.

Speaker 3 (11:42):
The further it goes. And you know from studies and
psychological studies, most of you will know that our logic
centers in our brain really aren't developed until about twenty
five years old. Why do you think you have to
be twenty five to run a car? Because right about
twenty five years old, your logic centers are fully developed.
And car companies know, car rental companies know they can

(12:03):
finally take a risk on you renting their car.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
Isn't that crazy? Right?

Speaker 3 (12:07):
But that's just how we are as humans. Those logic
centers take a while to develop. I mean I specifically
remember starting to develop them when I was in high school,
when I got in some higher level classes in high
school and I was like, oh, I have to think
about stuff, and you start to develop those things. Those
logic centers don't develop sometimes as quickly if you're not
being challenged or thinking about things, because you actually have

(12:31):
to train your brain. It's not just like hey, one
day I wake up and my brain's right. You have
to train your brain. You have to train your brain
in logic and how to think about things. And as
a ten year old, the first thing he's thinking about
is I just want to stand up, So it's whatever
is next to me. I can help myself stand up.
If he had thought about it a little bit further,
he would have thought, maybe I shouldn't use this expensive lightsaber.

(12:52):
But that's not what ten year olds do. And can
I submit to you that. If you're new to auction drafting,
you're like my ten year old in an auction draft room,
You're like, Hey, what's in front of me? I want
to call out this guy he's neat. I want to
bid on this guy he's good. Like sometimes that's all
the further your brain goes. And I'm not here to
like criticize you or like laugh at you. I'm laughing

(13:15):
because I was that guy once. I mean, we all
were like, you have to develop this stuff, and you
shouldn't beating yourself up because you don't. You can't recall
all the things that I've said to you all summer.
What you have to do is you have to master
the first part of it. You have to master the
beginner stuff. And once you master the beginner stuff, that
stuff just becomes second nature. And I promise you it

(13:37):
doesn't seem like it now, but becoming second nature is
what this is all about. Once you've mastered the simple
logic things of beginner approaches to these five pillars, then
that just becomes part of your ability. When you get
in the room, you won't notice it exactly. You won't
be like, I now do this well, You'll just you'll

(13:57):
have that foundation. You'll be into the intermediate stuff and
you'll realize, hey, I'm beyond the beginner stuff. Now I'm
into the intermediate stuff. I'm getting better, And it's just
reps and doing it over and over. And once you
master one, then you get to level two, then you
get to level three, and then you're getting into the art.
The advanced nature of these five pillars is the art

(14:17):
of the auction. It's the stuff that's nebulous, that's hard
to define, that's hard to tell you this is exactly
how you got to do it because a lot of
the times it's purely based on that moment in that room,
online or live. It doesn't matter. It's purely based on
that moment, what you're observing, what you've observed to that point,
and what you think is going to happen in the future.

(14:39):
That's the art of auction drafting. That's the advanced stuff.
We can get the nuts and bolts down in the
beginner and intermediate phase, and then the advanced stuff becomes
the more feel part of the game. And that takes
a lot of time. But I'm here to tell you,
if you master the beginner stuff, you're already better than
ninety eight percent of auction drafters out there.

Speaker 2 (14:59):
That's no jo.

Speaker 3 (15:00):
If you just master this beginner stuff, you're better than
ninety eight percent. Most people are not listening to the show,
right The majority of people doing auction drafts are not
listening to this show. You know how many new people
I get every year that are like, hey, I just
found your podcast. Yeah, it's only been on six years.
That's not their fault, it's just that there's not a

(15:21):
lot of people out there. Relative to the number of
people that are auction drafting. You're going to be better
than all but like two percent of them when you
master the beginner stuff, When you get into the intermediate stuff,
you're getting another one and a half percent of the
people behind you. And then when you start mastering that
advanced stuff, that's the last point five percent of auction drafters.
Guys like Joe Dolan, Jim Coventry, Scott Pianowski, Dave Richard,

(15:45):
these guys who really know how to auction draft. That's
what we're going to take you, and I'm going to
take you through this whole thing. Five pillars of auction
drafting through three lenses. Beginner, intermediate, and advanced. Let's get
into it. The first pillar of auction drafting is a
really simple one, but one of the most important. I

(16:07):
can't really think of something that's more important than preparation
in an auction draft because preparation is just on a
different level. And I've said this before, but I'm gonna
say it again just because it's so important. You have
to prepare on a different level for an auction draft
than you do a snake draft. You just it's just
a different level. We're gonna go through what that means,
but you have to spend more time. It's more of

(16:30):
a burden on you to prepare, and every bit of
preparation that you do prepares you for more scenarios when
you're inside that room. And I'm gonna tell you again that,
no matter how many auction drafts I do, if I
go into the room without a par sheet, without full
preparation on thinking about what I'm gonna do or how
I'm gonna pivot or how I'm going to handle certain scenarios,

(16:53):
when I don't do those things, I get worse results.
I've been doing this a long time. I consider myself
to be pretty darn good at it. I still get
worse results when I do don't do enough preparation. So
don't think you're above it just because you've done.

Speaker 2 (17:07):
A bunch of them.

Speaker 3 (17:07):
You're not above it, I promise you. So the three
lenses of preparation, the beginner preparation. And when I talk
about the three lenses, what I want you all to
do out there is if you hear me say something
in the beginner area that hey, I don't do that
very well or I haven't been doing that, then you
may still be at the beginner level. That's okay. And
I'm not saying that you're terrible in auction drafts. I'm

(17:29):
saying there's some things that you need to clean up
in the base of your game before you can start
building on a more solid foundation. So beginner level preparation
for an auction is two simple things. Number one your
tear sheet and number two your par sheet. All right,
as a beginner, these are just two things you have
to get down and they're the most important things that

(17:51):
you're going to do to prepare. Your tear sheet is
quite simple. It's your ranking sheet and that's one of
the only things I want you to take into your
draft room as a piece of paper. I don't want
you to have a lot of clutter. We've talked about
this before. Don't bring in a bunch of pieces of paper.
Have a couple things we're going to talk about, a
couple other sheets that I don't mind if you bring
into the room. I kind of like you have in there.

(18:12):
But your tear sheet is basically just your raw rankings.
What do you think about players? And they have to
be organized in tiers, and it's important because that's where
the price breaks are. Then you have to know when
those tiers are drying up because say it together with me,
scarcity creeps in. When the tiers start to dry up,
you have to know when those tiers, those tears are
drying up. There's nothing that affects a player's price more

(18:36):
than the scarcity at that level of player, So the
tier sheets are important for that. That's number one. Number
two is your par sheet. I don't want to go
deeply into the par sheet right now, but I have
had some questions about it from some people who said
that they've just found the show and they don't really
understand the par sheet. It's a very very simple concept.
It's complicated in its execution, but it's a simple concept.

Speaker 2 (19:00):
Par sheet is this.

Speaker 3 (19:01):
You want to shoot par in your draft room. What
does that mean? That means you want to hit exactly
two hundred dollars spent of a two hundred dollars salary
cap when you're done.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
With the draft.

Speaker 3 (19:13):
So to do that, we like to keep ourselves on
track by helping ourselves spend money. At the same time,
we don't spend it too quickly. I've talked about it
in the past. It's a tightrope You're playing a tightrope game.
You have to spend money because if you don't, you
won't have top level players and your team will lack punch.
But you can't spend it too fast, or else you

(19:34):
will have holes in your starting lineup and your team
will be bad right out of the gate. So you
can't spend it too quickly, but you do have to
spend it. The balancing on that tightrope is made possible
by the par sheet. So the actual par sheet really
is just a piece of paper with every single position
listed on your sheet for your league. For example, if

(19:58):
you have sixteen roster spots, six on your bench and
ten starters, write the ten starters out and then write
six bench spots, and you're going to have an exact
dollar amount next to every spot. QB one eight, QB
two one dollar, RB one forty six dollars, RB two
eighteen dollars, wide receiver one fifty five dollars, wide receiver

(20:23):
two thirty one dollars. These are numbers I'm pulling out
of my head, but you understand you want to have
an exact number, and then you want to go through
on and add them all up and make sure that
it equals two hundred. And don't forget that the back
of your roster you want to have a couple one
dollar players on your bench. But don't forget to add
those dollars in. Okay, so put one for the last
couple bunch bench spots, your backup, quarterback, backup, tight end,

(20:46):
whatever you want to do. But don't neglect that step
because if you're just like, oh, those couple spots, so
this will be a buck, then you'll be off by
a few dollars by the at the end and you
won't know what your max bid is. That stuff's really
important later in the game. So make sure your par
sheet adds up to two hundred, and then make a
second part sheet. Why because I want you to have
two different scenarios that you're aiming for at the beginning

(21:06):
of the draft. Now, maybe both of your part sheets
aren't perfect when you get into the room, but one
of them will be closer than the other. You scrap one,
you use the other. And the way the par sheet
keeps you on track is it allows you to see
where you should be pulling money or pushing money to
as you get deals or overpay. So you get in
the room and you're like, I want a wide receiver

(21:27):
one for forty three dollars, but you can't land one
for forty three because this room's crazy for wide receivers,
so you end up spending fifty one, all right, you
spend eight dollars over and then what you do is
you go out on the right side of your PAR
sheet and you say minus eight and if that's your
first buy your minus eight, you circle that. And then
your next player. Let's say you get a four dollars deal,

(21:49):
you write plus four. You were minus eight. Now you're
minus four because you got four dollars back, and you
write minus four and you circle that. You keep a
running tally on the right side of your part. That
tells you exactly where you are in relation to par.
Of course, you can't shoot under par because you can't
go over two hundred. But you also don't want to

(22:10):
be shy of par by not spending all your money.
So this tells you exactly what you can spend. And
a lot of people say, well, exact dollar amounts shouldn't
be what you're doing in auction drafts. And I submit
to you that having the exact dollar amounts actually helps people,
and it absolutely helps beginners. It absolutely helps beginners. I

(22:30):
think it helps everyone. I still use a PAR sheet.

Speaker 2 (22:33):
I love them.

Speaker 3 (22:34):
I think you should too, and I believe that all
beginners should walk in with a par sheet bar none.
I think it's just something you have to do because
the dollars don't go as far as you.

Speaker 2 (22:43):
Think they will.

Speaker 3 (22:45):
And when you have them written down in black and
white and you get in the room, you spend a
different dollar amount on the player that you had. You
know you spend thirty one and you had allotted twenty five.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
You know that six bucks has to come from somewhere.
So it helps you.

Speaker 3 (22:58):
I promise it helps you. So it's tear sheet, par sheet.
That's the beginner level on preparation. The intermediate level is
I want you to look into previous years more than
you do. The intermediate level of preparation just says that
now we're starting to take this a lot more seriously
than just coming up with tiers and par sheets. There's
a couple other sheets I think you can bring to

(23:19):
a draft that I think are helpful. One of them
is nominations that you want to use when you're trying
to quote unquote waste other people's cap and this is
going to be in the middle part.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
Of the draft.

Speaker 3 (23:31):
You can have a sheet of players that you just
really don't care about having, and those are players that
you can nominate when you want to waste other people's
money or you kind of effectively want to punt around
by not putting a player out there that you want,
because there's going to be a decent player pool of
players that you still want in the middle of a draft,
and you might be sitting there with like fifty one

(23:51):
dollars and like nine spots to fill, and you don't
want to call out a guy you really want that's
going to go for twenty two of your fifty one dollars.
You want to wait on that guy and he might
go for twelve later. So I have a sheet of
players where I'm going to nominate them to sort of
waste money in the middle of the draft, and then
another sheet of nominations I want to go to at
each position that's going to help my build. So let's

(24:15):
say I want to go really Jeep at quarterback. The
nominations that you want to go to sometimes early are
players that are down the sheet, like, hey, I think
the Jordan Lover Dak Prescott's going to have a bounce
back here. I want to go for those nominations early
while the big dogs are still on the board and
hopefully get a nice deal because nobody's going to want
to spend a lot of money for Dak Prescott. Somewhat

(24:37):
early in the draft. Nominations that you want to go
to at each particular position help you later in the
draft when you're scuffling for a nomination and that clock's
running down and telling you, hey, you got to nominate
somebody quickly, all right. And the other thing intermediate wise,
I want you to look at previous years of the league.
That's super important. And then also league personalities. You need

(24:59):
to start learning your league personality. I've said this before,
I'm going to say it again. It doesn't need to
be explained, but when I'm in analyst drafts, when I'm
in drafts with quote unquote really good fantasy players, they
love rookies, they hate quarterbacks. That's just how it's going
to go. Leagues have personalities. Start learning your league personalities.
That's an intermediate level way to approach preparation. The advanced

(25:24):
preparation really comes from something I talked about last summer,
and that's running scenarios in your head before they happen.
I called it gaming. Would you like to play a
game chess or Thermo Nuclear at War. Anybody out there
old enough to get that one war games Matthew Brodrick,
Come on now, Run scenarios in your head before you

(25:47):
get into the auction draft room. Pit certain players against
each other. Hey, if this player is called out first,
do I want him more than the other player? What
do I think about these two players that are next
to each other in ADP? What do I think about
AJ Brown versus Lad mconkey? What do I think about
Ashton Genti versus Christian McCaffrey. Run scenarios in your head

(26:08):
where you pit players against each other and think, who
do I want?

Speaker 2 (26:11):
Also?

Speaker 3 (26:12):
Figure out how you're gonna pivot off your targets if
you don't get them. I mean, you're gonna go into
a draft and you're gonna target players and they're gonna
go for way too much money. Every year I get
in there and I'm like, I'm going to get a
deal on this guy, and he goes for way too
much And then I'm like, oh crap, who do I
go to? Run those scenarios in your head? How are
you going to pivot off your targets? How are you
going to pivot off your approach when it's not working.
You get into a draft and you're like, all these

(26:33):
guys are going to be wide receiver crazy, and then
all of a sudden, they're paying up for running backs
because of last year. You know a lot of people
are going to be paying up for running backs because
there was so much health last year at the top
of the running back ranks. People are going to pay
up again. They're gonna forget those receivers. If that happens
and you had planned to pay some money for running backs,
you're with them now.

Speaker 2 (26:53):
So you need to pivot. How do you pivot?

Speaker 3 (26:55):
Your approach isn't working. How are you pivoting?

Speaker 2 (26:58):
What do I do.

Speaker 3 (26:59):
If X happens, if Y happens, if Z happens. Come
up with scenarios that are going to tank your draft
and figure out how to pivot off them. And I'm
not saying like, you can't sit there and just be like, well,
if I don't get this guy, then I'll find somebody
else that's not figuring it out. Figuring it out is
finding hard targets. Hey, my target is going to be

(27:20):
lad Maconkey. Oh no, he went for fifty one dollars.
He's a forty two dollars player?

Speaker 2 (27:25):
What do I do? Now?

Speaker 3 (27:27):
What player are you going after? You wanted a forty
two dollars wide receiver one, you didn't get one because
he went for fifty one?

Speaker 2 (27:34):
What are you doing? What's your player?

Speaker 1 (27:35):
Name?

Speaker 2 (27:36):
Him? Now? Recall that quickly. Now you got to know it. Now.
You can't wait.

Speaker 3 (27:41):
You can't be in an auction drafter room and be like, well,
now what do I do?

Speaker 2 (27:45):
You can't do that.

Speaker 3 (27:46):
Auction drafts aren't like that. Serpentine drafts are. Auction drafts
are not all right. So the advanced way to prepare
is to get all this stuff in your head, get
your sheets ready, and start running scenarios. How do I
pivot off of my targets? How do I pivot when
my approach isn't working? Which players do I like that
are next to each other? In adp Go through all

(28:06):
those scenarios. Game that stuff ahead of time. It will help,
I promise you it will help. All right, let's go
to pillar number two. That's nomination strategies. Well, the very
basic parts of nomination strategies are things that you can
do with almost no effort. And when we talk about
nomination strategies, I have to stress this again to everybody

(28:28):
in an overall fashion here. A lot of people don't
understand how important nominations are. And if you're a new
listener to this podcast, I have to tell you. Everyone
else is sick of hearing it, but I'm going to
say it again because it's that important. You have to
have a reason for why you nominate somebody. There is

(28:49):
so little that you can control in an auction draft.
You have to spend the time figuring out how you're
going to use those nominations to control whatever you can,
to do whatever you can to make that draft go
your way. Don't waste those moments. You're not going to
have that many nominations in a draft. Why would you

(29:10):
waste them? Why would you waste them?

Speaker 2 (29:12):
Use them?

Speaker 3 (29:13):
Figure out how you're going to use them. And the
simplest way to do that for beginners is number one.
Like I just said, have a reason. Always have a reason.
Don't be like, oh I want I like this player
Justin Jefferson. Okay, we all like Justin Jefferson. Have a
reason for why you're doing it. Say Okay, I think
he's at the bottom of the top tier, so I
want to nominate him because I think I'm gonna get

(29:34):
a little bit of a discount, and I think that
he's being a little bit underrated. Like what, it doesn't
matter what your reason is.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
Have a reason.

Speaker 3 (29:41):
Make it be a good one. We've talked about that before.
It can't just be a wild ass reason. But have
a reason for every nomination that you make. Do not
waste your nominations, all right. And the last part of
beginner nomination strategy is just super simple. Don't be predictable.
Don't be predictable, all right. So for beginners, all you
gotta do is reason and don't be predictable. Have a

(30:02):
reason for why you nominate somebody. And then when you
nominate somebody, make sure that it's not somebody you always
love or somebody that you always hate. Make sure it's
somebody that sometimes you want to land and somebody that
sometimes you don't want to land. You don't want to
be predictable with your nomination strategies. The intermediate way to
look at nomination strategies is how can I influence the draft?

(30:25):
How can I make this draft go in my direction?
And what follows along with that is relentlessly chasing your setup.
Relentlessly chasing your strategy. We talked about this earlier in
the summer, relentlessly pursuing your goals. The intermediate way to
handle nominations is to make sure that they're always in

(30:49):
pursuit of your strategy. You're always chasing what you want
from that draft and attempting to influence the draft through
your nominations. The geinner way is like, Okay, I'm not
gonna waste these I don't want to be predictable. Why
am I nominating somebody? And then the next level up
from that is how are these nominations going to influence

(31:09):
the draft? What way is the draft going to go
after I use this, and how is it helping me
to further my goals? The advanced way that we use
nomination strategies are a couple different techniques that we've talked
about before, but the advanced way, the artful part of
nomination strategies number one would be aiming a nomination at somebody.

(31:29):
I've talked about that before. I love this play. When
you have somebody in a room who has too much money,
or you know they're sitting on a certain player, if
you know they're a Bengals fan and they're sitting on
Joe Burrow, then nominate him, get that money out of there,
or sometimes you want to leave them on the board,
nominate another quarterback and you get them cheap while that
guy waits on Burrow.

Speaker 2 (31:48):
But aiming a.

Speaker 3 (31:49):
Nomination is huge, and that requires you to know the
other person, to know the situation, to know their cap,
to know your cap, to know the scarcity at the position.

Speaker 2 (31:59):
There's a lot of different.

Speaker 3 (32:00):
Things that go into aiming a nomination, but sometimes you
want to specifically aim a nomination at another manager in
the room who is going to be a thorn in
your side if you don't take care of them. Another
way that advanced nomination strategies come into play is trying
to stop runs. There are runs on positions, and sometimes
those runs are going to hurt you because a lot

(32:21):
of times you'll be sitting there and you're like, I'm
set up really well. I've got my RB one, there's
a ton of wide receivers left, I have a bunch
of my money left, I underpaid for my RB one.
Things are just sailing along and all of a sudden,
the receivers.

Speaker 2 (32:33):
Come up and it goes bang bang bang bang bang.

Speaker 3 (32:36):
And nine receivers go off the board. Now you're hurting
because you were set up good and all of a sudden,
nine receivers go off the board. You're going to stop
that run, right, It's really important for everyone to look
another direction. And a lot of times this goes back
to my online poker days when you would play heads up.
I used to play heads up one on one. When
you play heads up, a lot of time if you

(32:56):
allow the other person to get in a rhythm of
like raise fold and you quickly fold, and they raise
and you quickly fold, or you raise and then they
shove all in and you quickly fold, or they bet
and you call, bet, call, bet, call, Like you get
in a rhythm with this player and they just do
stuff and they go crazy. Sometimes it takes stopping their
momentum in order for it to come back to you.

(33:18):
And it's the same thing in an auction draft. Stop
the runs. Take a second. If you're in a live draft,
just be like, oh yeah, let me see and just
take as long as you're allowed to take. I mean,
within reason, but you get my point. If there's no
clock on you in a live draft, takes some time.
Just let things breathe and then go nominate a backup
tight end. Take the air out of the room, take

(33:38):
the momentum, take the heavy spending out of the room.
It's a run of a bunch of wide receivers. Name
a top quarterback. Remind everyone the quarterbacks are still on
the board. Remind everyone that we haven't gone on a
kicker run yet, a defense run, whatever the case may be.
Stop those runs with your nominations. That's an advanced strategy,
So aim nominations, stop the runs. Another one is late

(34:00):
game player selection. Boil boy, is this huge, and this
is I'm talking about, like, you know, less than thirty bucks,
less than twenty bucks when you need three four players left.
Late game player selection is huge, and I can't tell
you exact examples of how that works, but you have
to know what other players in the room are doing,
and what they need and what their tendencies are. And

(34:22):
you have to be able to either sit on players
or name them artfully at the right time so that
you get them for the right price, or you lock
them up, allowing you the freedom to then go get
your other players at the back of your roster. Late
game player selection is one of the most advanced nomination
strategies out there. All right, let's go on to bidding strategies.
The third pillar of auction drafting is bidding strategies. How

(34:45):
do we bid and what do we do that makes
us effective as actual players in the game, not just
somebody who's nominating somebody who wants to land a player.
How are we influencing the draft through or bidding strategies? Well,
the beginner way to do it is it's real simple.
I think I've started every one by saying that, but
it is because I don't want things to be so

(35:05):
super complicated in your heads. If you're new to this,
the beginner way to have to bid is very simple.
Only do plus one. Okay, just do plus one. You
don't ever need to be doing crazy stuff to be
effective in an auction. I think there are tools that
you can use that can help you that can increase
your profitability bit by bit, and we're going to talk

(35:28):
about those in just a second. But for beginners, just
plus one only. Just if you're online, click the plus one.
That's all you need to do. If you're live, you
don't need to be going crazy. Somebody says thirty four,
you say thirty five plus one.

Speaker 2 (35:40):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (35:41):
The other thing is going back to nomination strategies about predictability.
The same thing goes for bidding strategies. You don't always
want to be bidding when you want somebody, and you
don't always want to be bidding when you don't want somebody.
You have to switch it up. If you want a player,
sometimes stay silent until the end. If you want a player,
sometimes jump in on them early. If you don't want

(36:02):
a player, sometimes you want to bid hot and heavy
for a little bit and then just stop.

Speaker 2 (36:07):
You want to be.

Speaker 3 (36:07):
Unpredictable with your bidding. Don't go crazy where you're going
to land a player when you shouldn't. All right, don't
go crazy with that stuff, but make sure that you're unpredictable.
So for beginners, all you got to do is plus
one and mix up your bidding when you want a
player and when you don't open your mouth when you
want a player, and when you don't.

Speaker 2 (36:25):
Want a player.

Speaker 3 (36:26):
You got to be on both sides of the coin there, right.
The intermediate way to go about bidding strategies Number one
is one that's pretty important, and that's market price enforcing.
When you get into an intermediate level and you've already
mastered the early stuff and how do I bid and
being unpredictable, then you've got to start really market price
enforcing and figuring out how high should I go on

(36:48):
a player to make sure that everyone's not getting an
outsized deal. You'll find my auction values on the Patreon network,
but when you look at those, I have a market
value price on the final column of my rankings, and essentially,
like for I think Lamar Jackson and I have them
at twenty nine dollars, and I say market price enforced

(37:10):
to twenty one, because what I'm saying is you don't
want to let anybody have Lamar Jackson for twenty bucks
or less.

Speaker 2 (37:16):
That's just too cheap.

Speaker 3 (37:18):
So market price enforcing is something that doesn't mean that
you're just bidding someone up. That means that you're enforcing
a price that if you get the player, you're okay
with getting them because it's such a good deal that
you're okay with getting them and you don't want anyone
else to get that deal. So market price enforcing is
not bidding someone up. Those are two different things. Market

(37:40):
price enforcing is an intermediate move. Just make sure you're
getting it up there in the right neighborhood. And that
goes with something that I want you to focus on
as you get into intermediate intermediate bidding. That's pushing the action. Okay,
get players in the right neighborhood quickly. And what do
I mean by the right neighborhood. Well, if devon a
Chan is called out and you know that he should

(38:01):
be going for over thirty bucks or else you're fine
with taking him, then you need to yel thirty. You
just need to get the player there quickly. You're prepared,
You've done all the work. Don't let them sit there
and look stuff up or think about things while you
go seven, eight, nine, ten.

Speaker 2 (38:16):
Don't let them do that.

Speaker 3 (38:18):
Push the action, be the one pushing the action. Don't
be dangerous about it. But get them in the right
get the player in the right price neighborhood quickly by
pushing that action and market price enforcing. And then one
of the intermediate move that I like quite a bit
is that when it's you and one other person in
a one on one situation, sometimes going plus two in

(38:39):
a bidding war, when the other player looks like they're
a little bit hesitant, that's going to work sometimes and
that's something that should be in your tool belt. So
you're getting in a player that's, you know, basically mid
twenty something like that, and the other person's been kind
of hesitant to bid the last couple of times. Now
you're at twenty two, they hesitantly say twenty three instead

(39:00):
of saying twenty four, say twenty five because they were
hesitant at twenty three, and now they can't just say
twenty five now they have to say twenty six. It's
a psychological thing that matters. So sometimes every once in
a while, the plus two is going to work there
at the end of a one on one bidding war.
That's a nice little intermediate move. The advanced moves on
bidding strategies are specific moves that you can develop for

(39:25):
your game. One of those moves is something that I
put out on Patreon this past week, and that's called
the stop and go move. And this is something that,
again I pull from poker, but I love it for
auction drafting. The stop and go move in poker is
a lot of times just basically saying I have a
strong enough hand that I'm going to raise pre flop
and hope everyone folds. But if everybody doesn't fold and

(39:48):
I get a call or two behind me, then I'm
going to shove all in on the flop, counting on
the other player to not have flopped something. It's hard
to flop something in poker, So I'm going to raise
a pair of eights, and if I get a call,
I'm first to act. I'm going to shove all in
on the flop, no matter what. That's called a stopping go.
It doesn't matter what the flop is. If it's Ace
King Queen, you're shoving all in now. Of course, that's

(40:11):
not what you want the flop to be when you're
shoving there with a pair of eights, But you get
my point. It's called the stop and go. In auction drafts,
I want you to pull this move sometimes if you
want a player, get in on them early, and then
in the middle of it, I want you to stop
because I want you to see if there's other players
that are still involved or interested, because if you stop bidding,
they'll come out of the woodwork and they'll be forced

(40:33):
to bid when that player is about to go for
too little money.

Speaker 2 (40:36):
They'll be careful with this move.

Speaker 3 (40:37):
That's why it's an advanced move. If you wait too
long and don't get your bid in, you may screw yourself.
But the stopping go is great because you drop out
of the bidding for a while and two other people
usually go at it then for a little bit and.

Speaker 2 (40:49):
They think you're done.

Speaker 3 (40:50):
And then when one player thinks they're about to win,
you jump back in. That's a super frustrating move for
the other player.

Speaker 2 (40:56):
And what does it do.

Speaker 3 (40:57):
It creates uncertainty in their head. Remember that's always our
goal is to keep them off balance, keep them slightly irritated,
slightly ruffled. They don't know exactly what you're doing. And
when you pull the stop and go and you get
in late on a player that they thought they just won,
oh boy, that's frustrating for them. And sometimes that's going
to cause them to quit. It's going to cause them

(41:18):
to be upset or irritated. That's what we want. We
want them off balance. We'll have the pressure on them
and then stop and go does that. Another advanced bidding
strategy I love is something that Scott Pianowski uses and
he's talked to me about it before, but he calls
it the precision bid. The precision I'm going to call
it the precision showstopper. Okay, how do we blow people

(41:40):
away with the bid when the player is starting to
get up there in the neighborhood that the player should be.
Here's a perfect example. Let's say that people are a
little bit down on Pooka Nakua, all right because right
now Matthew Stafford's a little banged up. DeVante Adams is
in town, and everyone's saying, Pooka can't do it again,
He's just not going to catch enough passes with this

(42:02):
situation in La, Okay, great, you think differently. You want
to land Pooka. The bidding starts to slow down in
the low thirties on Pooka and Kula, and you know, hey,
I believe this guy's a forty five dollars player. It's
slowing down in the low thirties, and you think to yourself, okay,
why is this slowing down? But you don't want to
really go one dollar or two dollars. What you can

(42:24):
do is try for the precision showstopper. You can pry
for that bid that's going to just end everything right there.
And what I would submit to you is that okay,
thirty one thirty two. You know you pay forty five
for Puka, so just you should just yell out thirty
nine bucks. There's a couple things in play here. Number one,

(42:44):
you've not only just gone more than one at a time,
which they were doing before, but you've also got it
right on the cosp of forty. And that's something that
we're going to talk about as the last advanced strategy,
and that's breaking a barrier. Breaking a ten barrier, a
thirty forty fifty six barrier. There is a psychological thing
there to breaking that barrier. So you've accomplished a couple

(43:06):
things when you try that precision show stopper, when you
try that bid where I'm happy with Puka at thirty nine,
I'm just gonna say it. Number one, you've put the
pressure back on them. That's always what we want to do.
Number two, they're a little bit off balance. Again, always
what we want to do. Number three, their next bid
has to be one with a four in it instead
of a three. So instead of thirty something now they

(43:27):
have to say forty. That's a psychological barrier. And the
final part of it is when you jump it up
six seven eight dollars with one bid. Later on a
lot of times, it's just gonna be like, I'm done
this guy he wants them too much.

Speaker 2 (43:39):
I'm done now.

Speaker 3 (43:41):
You're always going to have the question in your mind
if it works, did I pay too much? And that's
why this is an advanced tactic. You can't you can't
say okay, it stopped at you know it's getting slow
at thirty two dollars for Puka, and then say forty four.
You don't want to do that because you're not sure
if he was going to get to forty four. That's
a mistake and that's something you've got to feel out.

(44:03):
That's why this is an advanced move. But the precision
showstopper bid is one that can be used effectively when
you know what you're doing and when you know your
room and when you know your opponent. All right, let's
talk about inflection points. And for anybody who is in
here thinking, what the heck's an inflection point? I have
done some Evergreen episodes on inflection points in the past.

(44:24):
Go dig those up from prior seasons. Listen to me
talking a whole episode about inflection points. Keep in mind,
inflection points aren't just static things that will happen in
every draft there are inflection points for you, and there
are inflection points for the league. Sometimes you get a
player and then things completely change for your roster approach

(44:48):
because you landed a player that you didn't think you'd have.
So sometimes like the deal was too good on a
player and you spend forty two dollars on your RB
one when you were going to spend twenty eight. You
completely changed your strategy. But you've got a great deal
on a good player, so you did it. That's an
inflection point for you. So keep in mind there are
inflection points for you and their inflection points for the draft.

(45:09):
What is an inflection point, Well, briefly, it's just where
something is changing in the draft, where there is a
noticeable shift in the draft, the direction of the draft changed,
and that inflection point is really important to your profitability
in an auction.

Speaker 2 (45:26):
This is hard.

Speaker 3 (45:27):
This is one of the most amorphous concepts that will
go through. This is hard, But the beginner way to
approach it is to go back in your draft after
it's over and see where things change during the draft.
You're not always going to see them when they happen.
Sometimes it's going to be a lag in the room
where you're like, okay, hey, this changed a while ago.

(45:47):
I didn't notice it. That's okay. I want you to
just start looking for it. You're not going to be
great at it at first, and when you go back
later in the draft when it's over, you have the
clarity of hindsight by saying, oh, look, it changed right here.
We were bidding this for running backs and then all
of a sudden, this guy went for way too little.
That's where it changed, all right, So go back after

(46:07):
the fact. The beginner move is don't worry too much
about inflection points.

Speaker 2 (46:11):
I want you to start.

Speaker 3 (46:12):
Thinking about them and paying attention to when they might
be happening. But really beginner of the beginner move is
looking back at your auction later and saying, oh boy,
this is when it changed. This is when people didn't
have money, this is when this and you'll start to
see those inflection points developing after the fact. The intermediate
move is really just to see them when they happen,

(46:32):
and the way to see them when they happen. I
submit that there's really two things that are going to
signal a shift in a draft. The first thing is
some sort of weird price, and the second thing is
some sort of weird nomination. And when I say weird,
I don't necessarily mean like they called out a player
that's that weird, but weird, I guess the better way

(46:54):
to say it is somebody way down in the rankings.
So we were coming along, just nominate in top level talent,
and all of a sudden, somebody calls out Zach Charboney
and you're like, whoa, Like, he's RB forty and we
were just bidding on RB fourteen a minute ago. That
might signal a shift in the draft. That might signal
that people are changing a little bit on what they're

(47:14):
doing because they're spending too much money or a lot
of the money's gone in the room and they're trying
to go change things. Okay, a different nomination or a
different price, Like, hey, we were just spending thirty eight
dollars on running backs and then RB sixteen came up
and he went for twenty one. What the hell just
happened here? That weird price there could signal a shift

(47:35):
in the room as well. People are cautious, people are
running out of money. A weird price or a weird
nomination is the way that you can see when those
are happening now. Sometimes you'll see something weird and then
it'll go right back to what it was. Because I've
seen those things happen before and thought, oh, hey the
shift is here, and I was wrong. It was just
sort of like what I call a dummy shift. So

(47:57):
pay attention to whether or not it continues. Is after
you see one of those weird things, does it continue
or does it go right back to where it was?
That may just be like, hey, we're not quite there yet,
but that leads us into the advanced way to think
about inflection points. The advanced way to do it is
predicting when they're shift. You know when they'll shift right.

(48:17):
I mean, that's, after all, the whole name of the game.
The beginner way is I'm going to look back after
the fact and see, oh yeah it changed here, and
it changed here, and it changed here, and why did
it change. Intermediate is you should see it when it's
happening in the room and be like, oh my god,
it just changed. I need to take advantage of it.
The advanced person can see it coming. They can see
that the running back room is getting scarce, there's about

(48:40):
to be a big drop off and price. I need
to wait on this player that I want because the
price is about to drop off. The money's leaving the room,
people's running back starter holes are being filled, and so
I know that I'm going to get a deal on
a running back here. It's about to shift. Recognizing these
things ahead of time is the way that you profit

(49:02):
off them, because you can either wait or push a
nomination through one or the other based on what's about
to happen in the room. It's an amorphos concept. It's
difficult to do, but it's something you have to absolutely
be paying attention to, and the more you think about it,
the more it will become obvious in the draft when
it's happening.

Speaker 2 (49:22):
All right.

Speaker 3 (49:22):
The fifth pillar of auction drafting is grinding that draft room.
What do I mean by grinding the draft room? What
I've always defined it as it's really just paying.

Speaker 2 (49:32):
Attention to the draft room. But it goes a lot deeper.

Speaker 3 (49:34):
Than that, because grinding the room isn't just like, hey,
I know how much money everyone has. That's part of it,
but it's about putting everything together, blending everything that you
know together and using it all at once. And of
course that's the advanced way to do it, but we
grind the room by making ourselves aware of the dozens
of different factors that go into a player's price every

(49:58):
time someone is nominating, and grinding the room means we're
putting together all of these things that we've thought about before.
What are people doing with their nominations, with their bids,
with their tails or all that stuff? Is putting all
that together. Grinding the room means you should be spent
when you come out of that room. You should come
out of that three hour auction draft online or live

(50:21):
auction draft, and you should be tired. I'll never forget
hearing TJ. Cludier talk about playing tournament poker, and he said,
you should be exhausted at the end of the day
because you're paying attention to every little thing that's happening
at the table. And that's true. When you get done
with a poker tournament, you're tired, and when you get
done with an auction draft, you should be tired. You
should be worn out.

Speaker 2 (50:43):
It takes a.

Speaker 3 (50:44):
Heavy mental tax to be locked in throughout the entirety
of the draft and grinding every single detail that happens
in the room. So what does it look like to
grind the room. As a beginner, well, the first thing
you have to do is just watch other people for
their nomination and bidding tendencies.

Speaker 2 (51:02):
That's it.

Speaker 3 (51:03):
Keep track of your money exactly, and look at what
other people are doing with their tendencies on nominations. Are
they nominating somebody they always like or always dislike? Are
they bidding on players they want or bidding on players
they don't want? Or what are they doing? Do they
constantly bid on certain types of players? Do they bid
you up when you're bidding because they think that you

(51:24):
know what you're doing. There are things that people are
going to do. They're going to show you those things
very easily. So as a beginner, just start paying attention
to what people are doing with they're bidding and they're nominating.
That's the easiest thing to do. The intermediate way to
grind the room is to start noticing patterns. Okay, notice
bid patterns, and notice people's change in behavior. And this

(51:45):
is one of the biggest things I like to talk about.
It's a psychological thing. We're going to talk about it
a little bit more in the advanced part of this
conversation here, but noticing all of these things is how
you start to get into the intermediate territory. It's not
one little thing that matters, it's the sum of all
these little things that you're putting together. As a beginner,
you're noticing their tendencies with their nomination and the bidding.

(52:06):
Then as intermediate you're noticing patterns. Do they wait till
the end of the bid clock to bid when they
really want a player? You know, they want somebody and
they're trying to fool you, and they wait till the
end of the big clock to bid. You also need
to be keeping track of everyone's money, not just your own.
That's part of getting better. But noticing all of these
things all at once is difficult, and so one of

(52:30):
the things that we go back to is Mike Caro's
stuff that I've talked about in the past, but he
has the maxim of poker but also for auction drafting,
which is figure out whether the person that you're up
against is acting and whatever they want you to believe,
make sure you disappoint them. So if they want you

(52:50):
to believe they're strong, they're actually weak. If they want
you to believe they're weak, then they're actually strong. And
if they're acting, then disappoint them, figure out what it
is they want you to do and disappoint them. That's
the intermediate level of thinking about grinding the room. You
have to put all these things together, the sum of
all of these things bidding patterns. Do they jump it

(53:11):
up when they're not interested in the player? Oh, hey,
I'm not really interested in molik neighbors because I just
got justin Jefferson. So somebody calls out neighbors and they
jump it up to forty. Well, that means they're not
really that interested if they don't bid again. But that's
something that they do when they don't want a player
notice these things. The change in behavior is one of
the easiest things you can do as a player being loud.

(53:32):
Are they chatting and all of a sudden they shut
up and they start bidding. Is a player sitting back
drinking beer and cracking jokes and then they get quiet
when a player comes up. The change in behavior is
one of the easiest things you can notice. They're not
paying attention to their own behavior. I promise you they're not.
And you can notice these things once you start to
look at these patterns and start weaving them together. The

(53:52):
sum of all of these things will lead to gains.
But the advanced way of thinking about this is really
blending all of the stuff together that we've talked about today.
And I don't know if you remember the concept of
the cascading decision tree that I talked about last summer,
but I love this concept because every time you get
in a room, your decision tree is sort of similar,

(54:15):
but it will change throughout the draft, although it has
the same basic framework. So what you can do is
you can you have this decision tree that basically runs
your thoughts on whether or not you should nominate or
bid for somebody, and that decision tree becomes very second
nature for you once you start to use it a lot.
And the reason I call it this cascading decision tree
is because everything flows down from those initial decisions that

(54:39):
you make, and blending it all together is how you
come up with the answers. So you're always looking at
the rosters, your roster, their roster, What do they need?

Speaker 2 (54:50):
What do you need?

Speaker 3 (54:51):
Where are their holes? Where are your holes? You're looking
at the cap, both yours and theirs. You're looking at
their need, both and their need.

Speaker 2 (55:01):
You're looking at the.

Speaker 3 (55:02):
Market scarcity at that moment, how many players are left
at that position and in that tier. What stage of
the draft are we in? Is there an inflection point
that's just happened or is happening? And what stage of
the draft are we in? We talked about stages last week.
What's the push and pull of that player's need versus
the want and juxtaposed with the price. Remember we have

(55:25):
the push and pull how much do you need a
player versus how much do you want a player? The
price determines which side of that equation you should be on.
If Jamar Chase stops at twenty one dollars, you have
to bid twenty two. But if he stops at forty six,
what is your need versus your cap situation versus other

(55:47):
people's in the room and they're bidding against you? Blending
all this together through this cascading decision. Try it sounds complicated,
like how do I keep track of roster, cap, need,
market scarcity stage of the draft?

Speaker 2 (55:59):
Pushing? Well, how do I keep track of all that? Well?

Speaker 3 (56:02):
It becomes second nature and that's what all of this
stuff does. And the thing that you have to overlay
over the top of all these things, over the top
of all five pillars of auction drafting is Mike Carrow's
law of loose wiring.

Speaker 2 (56:16):
His law of loose.

Speaker 3 (56:17):
Wiring says that sometimes people are going to act in
a way that's irrational and they're not even going to
know why they did it or have a good reason
for why they did it. So the law of loose
wiring says that people are going to do things that
are not logical. You have to roll with it. That's
their problem. And if they do something illogical or against

(56:38):
their own interest and it throws you for a loop,
I understand that, but your adjustment to that in understanding
that it will happen is all part of being an
advanced auction drafter. And when you're grinding the room and
you have a perfect picture of everything that happens, the
law of loose wiring won't throw you as much because

(56:59):
it's all based on psychological issues that you're trying to
suss out through grinding the room, through figuring out what
everybody in that room is doing. And that should exhaust
you because the law of loose wiring is going to
raise its ugly head and you're going to have to
have a perfect picture of the room in your head

(57:19):
to know how to adapt to it. So when somebody
calls out a bid that's illogical. They've already got a
sixty dollars player and they're suddenly bidding fifty five on
another player. You have to know the picture in the room.
Should I let them just go ahead and pay fifty
five or is that going to hurt me too much
to allow them to get the player for fifty five?
Do we stick them?

Speaker 2 (57:39):
Do we not? Do I want them?

Speaker 3 (57:40):
Do I not? So in that situation, you have to
have a clear picture of the room through weaving all
of these things together when you're grinding the room. In
that draft, grinding the room is the most important thing
you can do because it forces you to pay attention
to every single variable as you go through the auction,
and that's how you win the auction. Like I said

(58:02):
a couple weeks ago, you don't need to know fantasy
football to win an auction. You can win the room
by having better game theory and better game play than
everyone else in the room. The players really are secondary.
They're gonna get hurt, they're gonna have good years, they're
gonna have bad If you dominate the auction, you will
always be in contention in your fantasy football league. Okay,

(58:23):
I know this is a lot. It's five different areas
of auction drafting, the five pillars of auction drafting looking
through different lenses. Don't forget that. If you're new to this,
just take the beginner stuff and start running with that.
If you're getting better, take the intermediate stuff, start running
with that. If you're advanced, start working on these things
in the draft rooms. Start working on these nebulous concepts,

(58:46):
on getting better at reading people, at price, enforcing at
things like that that are advanced concepts that are more dangerous.
Don't ruin your draft. They're more dangerous, but you've got
to start working on them or you'll never get better.
You have to know how to use these things in
a beginner, intermediate, or advanced way in order for them
to be effective for you. So don't go into a

(59:07):
draft and be like, there's thirty seven things from today's
episode that I need to remember.

Speaker 2 (59:11):
Don't do that.

Speaker 3 (59:12):
Just break it down and until you get familiar with
each one of these and can pull them from your
head because you've used them enough, that's when you start
to get better. But you don't need to force that issue.
You just need to start working on them, and start
working on the simple things, and when they become simple,
then you move on to the next one.

Speaker 2 (59:30):
Those will become pretty soon.

Speaker 3 (59:31):
The intermediate concepts, they become simple, and then you get
into the advanced concepts and you start working on them,
and you feel better and better about recalling this stuff
when you need it. It's just about reps and time
and working on it. You have to wear the pathways
in your brain. Sometimes some of you out there are
just my ten year old using their expensive lightsaber to
stand up because they're not thinking about it. That's okay,

(59:53):
you haven't done it enough. Wear those pathways in your
brain by starting to work on all of these things,
and that's how you get better. None of these things
by themselves are going to make you awesome at auction drafting.
It's weaving them all together and learning all of them
and how to put them all together that makes you
an elite auction drafter. All right, well that's enough. I

(01:00:14):
have run my fat wet mouth. It's almost like, hey,
I'm gone a week and I got so much to say.
I just gotta keep talking, man, I just gotta keep talking.
So let's get you out of here right now because
I want to talk to Michael Florio. He is waiting
in the wings on Discussions with Drew. I've never had
him on the show before, and I'm excited for this conversation.
So let's get on to Discussions with Drew.

Speaker 4 (01:00:37):
Time for Discussions with Drew, in depth conversations with the
brightest minds in the fantasy industry.

Speaker 3 (01:00:44):
Welcome into this week's Discussions with Drew. Our guest this
week is Michael F. Florio from the NFL Network. He
is an NFL and fantasy football analyst. You can find
them in a lot of different places, most notably on
your television screens with the NFL Network, but also on
Sirius XM radio as well as Florio's football show over

(01:01:05):
there on Rotoballer. Michael, thank you so much for doing
the show. I know we've never done this before. I
am glad you could make it in.

Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
I'm glad to get this opportunity to do the show
with you, Drew. I know we got to meet in
person last summer at Canton and we were talking before
the show. I'm going to get to see you at
Canton this year. I'm very excited for that and just
happy to talk some ball with you today.

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:01:28):
I can't wait because, like you said, the first time
we had met last year, I figured that you, you know,
you and Marcus have sort of been running mates for
a little while here. Love Marcus one of my favorite
people in the industry, really one of my favorite people period.
But I figured that me and you would get along
and we did. So I'm excited that you're coming back.

(01:01:49):
I got a little information off the air You're going
to be doing some King's Classic this year.

Speaker 1 (01:01:53):
Yeah, I'm really excited because me and Marcus are going
to be splitting the drafts now. Trying to get into
it last year, but Marcus is going to be doing
the Snake one. I'm gonna be doing the Salary Cap
Auction one, and also during the Snake one, I will
be calling that draft for serious XM. So I am

(01:02:14):
really excited for Saturday at the at the XMO this year.

Speaker 2 (01:02:19):
Awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:02:19):
That sounds pretty cool. I love the King's Classic drafts.
I was joking around about last week with Brian Drake
that it's one of my favorite drafts, but also the
content push right now is insane, So I always end
up going into the King's Classics, feeling like I'm not
very prepared, which is probably not smart with thirteen other guys.

Speaker 1 (01:02:40):
Because I woke up today like I need to, Like
I've done nothing but you know, fantasy football stuff for
the last couple of months. But I'm like, I workwise
at least, but I'm like, I feel like I'm not
prepared for this. Like it it came up really quick.

Speaker 2 (01:02:55):
It does.

Speaker 3 (01:02:55):
And the fact that it's the most quote unquote prestigious
league that I'm in that I want to win. You know,
a lot of times I end up at three or
four o'clock in the morning in my hotel room trying
to put together what I'm doing for the auction, and
I don't know that that's the method to success. But hey,
here we are.

Speaker 1 (01:03:14):
Sleep Friday night. Just go find you and we could talk.

Speaker 3 (01:03:17):
Some at Yeah, yeah, we can figure it out. So well,
I'm looking forward to having you in the room. It's
the bland of Room. It's a tough room, even though
it's you know, two rooms of top level folks. I
always say the bland of Room. I put them up
against the Brown Room any day, because it is a tough,
tough league to auction.

Speaker 1 (01:03:35):
In.

Speaker 3 (01:03:35):
I'm sure you will find that out on Saturday. But so, yeah,
just five short days away. I cannot believe it's here
that quick.

Speaker 1 (01:03:42):
Are you having me on today so that you could
feel out who I might be bidding on on Saturday?

Speaker 3 (01:03:47):
That's absolutely right. We're gonna go into some auction heavy
talk today. Give me your targets late in an auction now, No,
we're not. We're not gonna do that. Although you know,
it is funny I talk with people who I'm in
the same room with and it is a little bit
awkward that way, but hey, it hasn't served me very
well in the past couple of years. I've gotten kicked
around the yard in the last couple of years. So

(01:04:07):
I'm determined to change that this year.

Speaker 1 (01:04:10):
But should I go listen to everyone's pod to see
who they're and on? Just so I know? And I
was like, I don't know if I want.

Speaker 2 (01:04:17):
To do that.

Speaker 3 (01:04:18):
Yeah, you know what, it's out there, and the problem
is I don't have the time. I don't think anybody
else does either. So that's the good thing. We're all
pushing the content. We don't have time to listen to
each other's content. Okay, So hey, before we get started
on the actual stuff people want to hear. Just remind
everyone of your socials and what do you have that

(01:04:40):
you're working on right now that you want to get
some eyes or ears on.

Speaker 1 (01:04:44):
Yeah, so at Michael f Florio on Twitter, Instagram, blue
Sky at Michael ef Florio NFL on TikTok, but Twitter,
blue Sky, Instagram are the big ones that you can
find me pushing a lot of my content right now.
I'm doing a lot of written work for the NFL,
so I had top ten running back values, top ten

(01:05:04):
tight end values, top ten league winners, and then I'm
doing my favorite breakout candidates as well. Those will all
be out by the end of this week. I'm writing
over at Rotoballer as well, doing the serious XM show
over there. But the big thing next week, Fantasy Live
returns on the NFL Network, so please check that out. Monday,

(01:05:26):
August eleventh will be the return. And then Drew this
is I haven't announced it yet. I'm actually once this
pod ends, we are announcing it, so I will announce
it here as well. I have a new Buffalo Bills
podcast that I'm going to be starting with the Sick
podcast group and the reason I'm so hyped about this one.

(01:05:47):
I don't know how I pulled it off, but I
reached out trying to get a co host, and Stevie Johnson,
Bill's legendary wide receiver is going to be co hosting
this pod with me. So I'm super excited about that.
You are a Bills fan. Please it'll be twice a week.
Please check that out.

Speaker 2 (01:06:04):
That is awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:06:05):
That's pulling a name out of the past for fantasy folks.
I certainly remember his surging onto this onto the fantasy
scene quite a few years ago. It makes me feel old, though,
because I bet you it's longer ago than I remember.

Speaker 1 (01:06:18):
Probably when would you think it.

Speaker 3 (01:06:21):
Is so Stevie Johnson, I would say two thousand and eighteen,
maybe ish seventeen.

Speaker 2 (01:06:28):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:06:30):
Oh yeah, you are, uh, you are a little bit off.
He dated Dute in the NFL in two thousand and eight.

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
Oh my god, I told you.

Speaker 3 (01:06:38):
I'm that age where everything's like, oh that was six
years ago, when it was like fourteen.

Speaker 2 (01:06:42):
So I did it again.

Speaker 1 (01:06:44):
Yeah, it wasn't until twenty ten. But okay, no, I'm
the same way. You could tell me like, oh, something
was in twenty eighteen, and I'm like, oh, that was
like three years ago.

Speaker 2 (01:06:51):
Yeah, No, that was much longer.

Speaker 3 (01:06:53):
Yeah, I'm that age now, and I it's it's wild.
Everything's like, oh, that happened three months ago. No, bro,
that was five years ago. So all right, well, hey,
congrats on that. That's super cool. So check out the pod.
Check out the return of the Fantasy I'm sorry the
name of the show Fantasy Live.

Speaker 2 (01:07:12):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (01:07:12):
Check out the return next Monday on the NFL Network. So, hey,
you're telling me all these articles are going to be
out by the end of the week. That's what I'm
gonna be doing on Friday night. I'm gonna be reading
your articles and I'll be in there. I'll be in
there on Saturday morning with the m Okay, well, let's.

Speaker 1 (01:07:30):
Get into this flight.

Speaker 3 (01:07:33):
There's plenty of pod information out there for me on
exactly who my auction targets are this year, so definitely
don't start listening to the auction brief before you get there.
All right, we gotta give the people what they want.
We have training camp underway, and there's just the tendency
for us to get involved with training camp, and we're

(01:07:56):
so excited that football is back and we're watching actual
football that we tend to get a little bit hyped
about certain players, especially rookies, and it's one of those
things where, you know, a lot of times the beat
writers they have to fill column space, They got to
put something out about what's happening at practice. And when

(01:08:16):
you're standing there and you're watching these guys, they are impressive.
And it's nothing against the beat writers. It's not that
they're telling you a lie. It's just that they have
to tell you, hey, look, this guy looks greater, this
guy looks great. That doesn't always translate to fantasy relevance
for us, because when we're talking about redraft, we're not
talking about dynasty. We're talking about strictly redraft. We kind
of have to sort out that noise a little bit

(01:08:38):
with these rookies especially, And we're going to go on
and talk about some veterans after that, but I want
to ask you about a couple guys that have really
been seeing some glowing reports recently, and the first guys
out of Chicago, and that's Luther Burden. This is a
bit of a weird one because everybody sort of left
him for dead about a month ago because he was
battling some injuries and then it seems like he's got

(01:08:59):
back on the field and everybody is really impressed with
what he's doing, which you know, we knew he was
a good player coming into the league. It's just been
that he's been nicked up a lot since he's got there,
so we haven't heard a lot about him. All of
a sudden, people are flipping out for Luthor Burden. What
is your take on him and whether he's gonna have
some relevance this year for just this year in redraft.

Speaker 1 (01:09:20):
So I will start by saying that I loved Luthor
Burden in the NFL draft process, Like when I'm before
the NFL draft, like I'm watching tape of all these
guys and stuff, and I put them in my own rankings.
So when the fantasy season rolls around, I know what
I think about all these rookies already like that. That's

(01:09:40):
what February and March or four. But I love Luther Burden.
I had him ranked as the wide receiver three pre
draft for me, behind only McMillan. Hunter's won for me
and then McMillan, So I was very bullish on him
and expected to be drafting him in a ton of leagues.
He it fell to a good spot for real life

(01:10:02):
purposes because I think Ben Johnson will get the most
out of him, put him in positions to succeed, use
him as a weapon, which is what I think he is.
I don't think he is like your prototypical wide receiver,
but I think he could thrive out of slot. I
think he could be a y I think you could
use him in a lot of different creative ways. The
only thing I don't love for fantasy is there's a

(01:10:25):
lot of target competition there. Like DJ Moore is going
to get one hundred and twenty plus targets this year.
Roma Dunz should be seeing somewhere around that number in
my opinion. Then there's Colson Lovelin and Cole Comet. We
know in a Ben Johnson system, the running backs are
gonna be heavily targeted. Swift had seventy targets alone a

(01:10:45):
couple of years ago when he played under Ben Johnson.
So I love the long term upside, Like if you're
in a dynasty right now, buy like and you could
buy low on Luther Burden or whatever, because I know
now might be hard, but like you said a couple
of weeks ago, no one will like that was the
time to buy. But wide receiver fifty seven on Underdog
right now, I don't mind that price at all. The

(01:11:08):
issue is I tend to like some of the players
at other positions a little bit more in that range,
Like I like to get my wide receivers early. But
if you go with a different build and you're looking
for an upside wide receiver in that range, burden is
you're you're not taking him to be your Week one starter.
But if something was to happen to one of those
other guys, then he brings a lot of upside.

Speaker 3 (01:11:33):
Yeah, it's really hard to argue with that price. I mean,
it's just it's not high enough that that we feel
like we're burning a ton of capital on him. So
I can get with that opinion. Another guy that has
been targeted pretty heavily by the talking heads recently has
to do a little bit with the veteran there in
Tampa Bay. And that's the news that we got about

(01:11:55):
Chris Godwin not necessarily being ready, being a little bit
concerned whether or not he's gonna be ready to start
the season, whether he's going to look like himself. So
we're talking about a mecca at Buka and he's drawing
a lot of praise for how good he looks and
how polished he looks. And of course we should understand
that we knew that coming in, that he's polished already,
that he's going to be a guy who's going to

(01:12:17):
push for some snaps. How much do you think he
has an impact? How much do you think he can
hold off the top two veterans there and also Jalen McMillan,
who really started to play well at the end of
last year. So again it seems like there's a lot
of target competition there. How excited should we be for Agbuca.

Speaker 1 (01:12:35):
I kind of feel similar to him with Luth as
I do with Luther Burden, Like I think he's a
really good player. I think he long term brings a
lot of upside and if things break right, can hit
in year one. But they need to break right right,
Like Mike Evans is going to be the unquestioned top
target there as long as he is healthy. Chris Godwin,

(01:12:55):
that is the roll of the dice with both Godwin
and Abuka, right, Like, if here's Godwin is healthy, come
Week one, he is going to be out there and
be the number two target and get a lot of
snaps from the slot and stuff. McMillan came on really
strong down the stretch last year, so I think those
two are gonna be competing for targets. And the Bucks

(01:13:18):
another system that will heavily utilize the running back in
the passing game as well, and that needs to be
accounted for, especially if you are a shorter target, catch
and run guy like he is. So the other thing
with the Bucks that I don't think is getting enough
talking point. They seem like a very strong regression team

(01:13:39):
in the past. Like Baker Mayfield seems like a huge
regression candidate to me because he threw for more than
like it was like five hundred more yards than any
other season. No, him and Lamar tied for the highest
touchdown rate in twenty twenty four compared to your career norm.
They were both two point two percent over their career norm,
and like that is something that usually regulates itself the

(01:14:01):
next year. Plus the change of OC for a third
straight year, like I know last year it got better
with Liam Cohen, but there's no guarantee when you move
from your oc that it's just going to stay the
same and stuff. So the Bucks are one of those
offenses that are really good for real life. But I
find myself a little outside of Buckey irving a little

(01:14:21):
hesitant to pay full price for their guys.

Speaker 3 (01:14:25):
Yeah, and it isn't that we don't feel comfortable with
his talent or what he can't eventually do, but you
hit on it. It's just there's so many variables. There's
so many moving parts there in Tampa with losing the
offensive coordinator, they've lost two offensive mines two years in
a row now, and then they bring in the rookie,
They've got McMillan, new Broke. It's like there's just so

(01:14:46):
many moving parts. I think I'm okay just being out
on Agbuka and thinking to myself, is he really gonna
burn me? Is he really going to be that guy
who's gonna make me regret not taking more of him?
So let's move out to Los Angeles. Because there's a
guy that I didn't expect to hear his name with
the camp hype, but it keeps coming up over and over,

(01:15:09):
and that's KeAndre Lambert Smith with the Chargers. This is
a name I didn't expect to be talking about today,
but they keep talking about him. They keep saying he's
gonna push for snaps. Now they've got a higher draft
capitol guy there and Trey Harris. But do we think
that Lambert Smith has some staying power or is this
just a case of like, hey, we didn't expect this
guy to be so good. He's pretty darn good, but

(01:15:31):
we're not going to care about him when fantasy season
rolls around. What's your thought there?

Speaker 1 (01:15:35):
I think it's somewhere in the like. I think the
Chargers are gonna care about him, and he is going
to help the Chargers, but will his usage be enough
to make him fantasy relevant? I have big questions on that,
Like if you want to throw a late round like
a fifteen sixteenth, whatever the case may be, like dart
on him. I'm okay with that, But is Keenan gonna

(01:15:56):
sign there? Because that would ruin it is I love
Lad McConkie. I think he is going to see a
ton of volume this year, but then Trey Harris could
be the ex Quinton Johnston. I don't think he's going
to fully go away. I also think I'm a little
bit higher on QJ than consensus, like I don't love
the guy, but he is not going fully away. They

(01:16:18):
used the first round. I know it's different regime and stuff,
but he had eight touchdowns last year, like he played
well enough to have a role in this offense. So
I could see KOLs I'm throwing that nickname out there
and Quinton Johnston like rotating snaps is the three or
something like that. Maybe if Harris is slow out the
gate or whatever. But to me, I feel like like

(01:16:39):
McConkie is the one and Harris is gonna be your two,
and then after that you're kind of fighting for scraps
on a team that is going to run the ball
a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:16:48):
And that's the main consideration, right, I mean, can we
really support this many targets in this offense with what
we project their volume to be in the passing game?
So this feels like a guy who's a real feel
good story who could end up coming out and catching
twenty nine basses for you know, three hundred and twenty
yards that kind of thing. So I don't know, maybe
I'm wrong, but if Keenan Allen signs there, I certainly

(01:17:10):
don't think that is going to be something I'm going
to want to want to parse through for redraft purposes.
All Right, one more rookie I want to ask you
about before we move on to some veteran situations.

Speaker 2 (01:17:21):
That's Kyle Williams.

Speaker 3 (01:17:22):
In New England, there is a lot of love for
the Patriots offense, and I understand why because they've retooled
this a lot. They've got grown ups coaching the offense. Now,
what do we think about Kyle Williams and his ability
to make an impact, because it certainly seems like there
is a vacuum there that he could fill.

Speaker 2 (01:17:42):
What do you think about Williams.

Speaker 1 (01:17:44):
I love Kyle Williams and I loved him as a
prospect before the NFL Draft, Like I I had him
as my wide receiver six, I want to say, and
most people, some people didn't even have him in their
top ten in the draft process, so he might have
been five or me. He was in that range. I
was high on him, and I loved Drake May going

(01:18:06):
back to last season, Like I I call myself the
leader of the Drake May hype train because it was
like last October November. I kept being like, if you
could get Drake May on your dynasty, rosters right now,
you should one hundred percent do it. Like the stats
are gross, but watch this kid play its early career
Josh Allen two point zero, And that is what I
feel about Drake may So. And then they added my

(01:18:29):
RB two in this class, Traveon Henderson, who I absolutely love,
one of my favorite values this year. So I am
high on this Patriots offense and I think Kyle Williams
is my favorite pass catcher on this team. I like
may and Henderson better, but Diggs is getting some love
right now. What isn't getting in the range of outcomes

(01:18:51):
I think is like, what if Diggs is just done
at this point? Like I think we were starting to
see some signs of decline his last year in Buffalo,
like he could still get opened very quickly. He's still
a good cutter, good route runner, all of that, but
the deep ball was pretty much gone from his game.
Then last year in Houston, we saw them use him
primarily as a short airyard target guy. And then from

(01:19:14):
there he tears his ACL now another year older, Like
he could be great for them, he could be What
I think is the most realistic outcome is like he's
a solid like possession move the chain leader for this team,
but I don't expect huge numbers. Kyle Williams is to
take the top off the defense. And the thing I

(01:19:34):
kept writing about him in the draft process was like,
you put the ball in his hands on a one
air yard pass or a twenty plus airyard pass, He's
just as big of a threat to score on both
of those. Like he is shifty and fast and quick.
The only thing I don't think he could do is
winning the like intermediate portion of the field consistently, and
that is what separates wide receiver twos from ones in

(01:19:57):
my opinion in the NFL. I do think he had
at this point is more of a prototypical wide receiver two,
but I expect some big games. Certainly someone you want
in best ball, and I think he could become, like
in a redraft league, like have standalone value there. But yeah,
I'm I'm bullish on this Patriots offense and I like
them all because you don't have to draft any of

(01:20:19):
them at like a premium price this season.

Speaker 3 (01:20:22):
Well that's the great thing about the Paths. Even though
there's a lot of analysts out there really pushing and saying, hey,
this offense could be a lot better. I don't see
their price tags rising that much. And that's great because
it's so easy to go get Henderson now a bottom
of RB two territory, you know, and Kyle Williams isn't
costing you anything, and Drake may still hanging out outside

(01:20:42):
the top twelve and he's not being drafted as a
starter at quarterback. It's just it's very easy to click
on the Patriots right now and hope that Josh McDaniels
and the new pieces are going to give us some fireworks.

Speaker 1 (01:20:53):
So only concern is Mike Rabel gonna let him err Now,
that's my only concern when.

Speaker 3 (01:20:58):
It comes to and it's a legitimate concern, but hey,
you know, with the what they've put together there, I'm
excited to see what happens. So let's move off the
rookies here and talk about some veteran situations. We don't
always I mean, we can have the discussion between you
and I and for the benefit of the audience, but

(01:21:19):
we're not going to know on some of these things.
Of course, that's our job to try to speculate. And
the first one's a tough one, James Cook, you know,
it just came out yesterday that he was hanging out
at practice and somebody said, why aren't you practicing? And
he said, business. We know he wants a new deal,
that's no secret. But he's now holding in the new
phrase that everyone's using, hanging out there so he doesn't

(01:21:41):
get the fines and doesn't you know, show up as
not reporting. But he's not practicing on purpose, and it's
because he wants a new deal. How concerned should we
be about this?

Speaker 2 (01:21:52):
Do we think this.

Speaker 3 (01:21:53):
Lingers into the season enough? And I don't mean like
the contract, because I think that these things rarely go
into the season. But what I mean is, do we
think that we should be concerned about Cook from the
standpoint that maybe they're gonna hand Ray Davis some more
touches to assimilate into the offense in anticipation of perhaps losing.

Speaker 2 (01:22:14):
Cook after this year.

Speaker 3 (01:22:15):
Or are we overreacting at this point and Cook's gonna
be fine. He is what he is what he is
right now.

Speaker 1 (01:22:23):
I look, I might be a little biased to see
all the bill stuff I have behind me. I think
James Cook is a fantastic value right now because you're
getting him at an RB two price, and to me,
that has the concerns baked in because yeah, he's not
gonna score eighteen touchdowns again, but he could have more

(01:22:45):
targets and carries than he did last season, because he
had more in twenty twenty three. And I know the
Bills still have the same three headed attack, and perhaps
Drew they go from it the way that you were concerned, like,
this is it. This might be the last last year
with James Cook. I also do think a deal might
get done here. I know the Bills regime has never
really liked to pay running back, but James Cook is

(01:23:08):
different than anyone they've ever had before, and it seems
to me every time you hear an update, it's like
they're getting closer and closer in numbers. So the hope
is that they get it done. But even if they don't,
I think in the range of possibilities is they're like, yeah,
we know James isn't going to be back next year.
Let's just get the most out of him this year
and give him the ball as much as we possibly can.

(01:23:31):
And the thing is, the Bills are going to be
one of the best offenses in football, and they've become
a lot more run heavy under Joe Brady the last
year and a half. So I think James Cook brings
similar upside as he did last year, which he was
flirting with top five at the running back position. But
you're getting him and I feel like he's going later

(01:23:52):
and later the further we the closer we get to
this season, which to me just makes him more of
a buying opportunity.

Speaker 3 (01:23:58):
Well, you know, he made the about the eighteen touchdowns.
I get that, but I feel like all the analysts
out there who don't like Cook are sort of like
double counting the regression aspect of this whole thing. They're
just kind of like, you're not gonna score all that.
And it's like, he doesn't have to score eighteen for
him to return value on where he's being drafted right now.
And I'm a big James Cook guy, so you know

(01:24:22):
you're not You're talking to a guy who completely agrees
with everything you're saying. If he gets a couple more touches,
a couple more catches and he scores eight or ten touchdowns, Look,
they love running the ball in the red zone. That's
that's what they do. So saying, oh, well, he can't
score eighteen, well, of course, maybe He's not gonna score eighteen,
but ten is not unrealistic at all, and that still

(01:24:44):
makes him a nice value where he's being drafted. I'm
in the camp that if I'm drafting in the next
couple weeks before a new deal or whatever, I'm absolutely
still drafting Cook because I think something will get done.
But let's move to Jacksonville and talk about an running back.
Tank Bigsby has been getting a lot of run in

(01:25:04):
the last couple of days because they're saying that he's
been going with the ones, he's been the first guy
to touch the ball, and there is a, you know,
a strong groundswell for Tank Bigsby being the guy who's
going to carry the ball in early downs and goal
line and he's going to be the sort of Bucky
Irving role in the Liam Cohen offense. How do you

(01:25:26):
feel about Bigsby? Is this some some hype that we
should be paying attention to or should we be trying
to block this out.

Speaker 1 (01:25:32):
I've definitely paid attention to it and have adjusted my rankings.
But I'll tell you I've been all over the map
with these these Jags running backs this summer. Like after
the NFL Draft, I ranked two in highest because I
was like new regime, they went out, they drafted their guy.
I think he could be the one that takes over.
Then it started to sound more and more like it

(01:25:55):
was still gonna be Travis Etn, so I ended up
putting him highest at the bunch. I have since moved
Bigsby the highest of this trio, but I still only
have him as an RB three. I get the upside
of being with Liam Cohen and being this Bucky Irving,
But last year when it was Bigsby Etn never fully

(01:26:16):
went away, and more than anything, he was getting those
valuable passing downs. So if Etn is getting the passing
down and Bigsby is getting more of the groundwork, he's
still big play or touchdown reliant like he was last year.
Now their offense could be a lot better, but I'm
still not fully sold that we don't see this backfield
just become a headache in season where it's like exactly

(01:26:38):
how it was last year, Right Like there was a
period where it was like, Okay, Bigsby's the guy, and
then it started like later in the year looked like
Atn was kind of creeping back in, and I had
them both on one team because I drafted ETN and
I handcuffed Bigsby, and come the end of the year,
it was a absolute headache week to week, like we
me and my co manager had to be like, let's
pick one and that two. We're starting, like we're not

(01:27:01):
considering the other guy. And I don't want to be
in that position if I don't have to, so I'm
not very bullish on this backfield.

Speaker 3 (01:27:09):
That is exactly what happened to me in The King's Classic.
I took Etn because nobody cares why, but in the
middle of the second round that's where he was going
last year, coming off his RB three finish, and then
I went and backed him up with Bigsby, and I thought, oh,
I'm so smart, this is gonna be great. It was
a nightmare, just like you said, like trying to figure
out which guy to start was brutal, and you always

(01:27:32):
picked the wrong guy because Bigsby's sometimes is going to
fall into the end zone or Etn's going to get
those five catches and you don't know what week it's
going to happen. I think it's a little underrated or
under reported that ETN certainly dealt with his fair share
of problems injury wise last year, and that sapped some
of his explosiveness that we know that he has. So

(01:27:54):
I wonder if we don't see some of that. And
you know what worries me about Jacksonville. Their offensive line
just it's not nearly as good as Tampa's offensive line.
So even if Bigsby has the quote unquote Bucky Irving role,
I don't know how much I care, So I tend
to agree with you. It's just a situation that I
don't really if you're in your typical home ten to

(01:28:16):
twelve team leagues, I just think this is a backfield
you stay away from all together. It's replacement level value there.
If you're in your deep leagues, they're going to have
starter value. But in other type of leagues, I'm not
sure that I care too much. Let's move out to
air go ahead of us.

Speaker 1 (01:28:32):
Won't be bidding on these guys, No.

Speaker 2 (01:28:34):
We will not.

Speaker 3 (01:28:34):
We will not unless it's three bucks, so which could happen?

Speaker 2 (01:28:39):
Could happen? You never know. That's pretty funny, Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:28:45):
Trey Benson out in Arizona has gotten a little bit
of run on a lot really in the last twenty
four hours and it's coming off of comments from James Connor.
So I always tell everybody the first thing that you
want to not pay attention to is what players say,
because they just don't. They don't give us an accurate representation.
They're pumping their guys up and they love everybody and everything.

(01:29:06):
So I don't want to give Connor's comments too much credence.
But Benson did play better last year, and I don't
think that we can count on Connor continuing to just
touch the ball as much as he has as he
gets into the latter portion of his career. Do we
think this is a legitimate thing coming that Arizona's gonna
split up more work this year.

Speaker 1 (01:29:28):
I personally don't like you said the players one I've
never heard outside of Tyreek Hill last week throwing digs
at Devon h And I've never heard a player and
be like this, my teammate is awful and he should
not touch the ball. You know, like that's just not
what they're going to say. But I go back to
quotes from Drew petson the oc or when training camp

(01:29:51):
first started and stuff, and he was like, yeah, Benson
looks great. Everything James Connor's are back like like, if
he's healthy, we're going to keep feeding him the ball.
And Connor the last two years, as they gave him
more of a higher share of the workload, has returned
his best seasons in the NFL. Like, I get it,
the age, cliff, the injury concern. I think Benson is

(01:30:14):
a really good handcuff if you draft James Connor. But
I think James Connor is one of the best values
at running back because everyone every year is waiting for
that faull. They're gonna give Benson more work. He's gonna
get hurt, He's not gonna duplicate at the age of
all these different reasons, and all he does is return
RB one value when he's on the field. So I'm
gonna get an RB one at a low end RB

(01:30:36):
two price. Yeah, I'm all about taking James Connor.

Speaker 3 (01:30:40):
Okay, that's very fair. Let me ask you. I'm gonna
throw you another Buffalo Bill's question. Since you're such a
big fan. I think this is a tough wide receiver
cord to figure out.

Speaker 2 (01:30:50):
We've heard it.

Speaker 3 (01:30:50):
Various times at Kean Coleman. He had a terrible day
in practice and then the next day he was absolutely
lighting it up. And then we get the complicating factor
of Khalil shit with a high ankle. So we're about
shoot five weeks less than five weeks out from the opener.
That becomes as significant concern for a guy like Shakira

(01:31:12):
who relies on a short area of quickness to come
back from a high ankle. I can't imagine him missing
any time. But should this impact how we feel about
this wide receiver corps? The other problem is we've got
Josh Palmer also missing time, and that's what he does,
he misses time. So how do we feel about how
this thing is going to shake out in Buffalo? Should

(01:31:34):
we just be paying attention to nobody and just drafting
Josh Allen or how do we feel like the Shakir
injury is going to impact this wide receiver corp? And
who are you targeting in that wide receiver corps?

Speaker 1 (01:31:45):
I don't think you should just be taking Josh Allen.
I think there's too much upside here at a reduced cost.
Like if these Bills receivers were going rounds earlier than
they are, I'd be out. But Khalil Shakiir is going
as a four and that was pre injury. I was
listening to serious XML in the car today and people
were saying he felt like two, three, sometimes four rounds

(01:32:07):
and drafts further than he normally was going over this weekend.
I think that's a buying opportunity then, because even if
the Bills preach caution, he's gonna be out what a
game or two, and then he's back and he brings
such a safe floor. He is the go to guy
for Josh Allen in real life, like third and whatever,
you could expect the ball to go to to Shakir's way.

(01:32:29):
But I think ke On Coleman is the upside play
here because Shakiir's gonna be on the slot primarily. He's
going to probably lead this team in targets, but he's
not the field stretcher. He's not the red zone guy,
and I think key young Coleman could become that. You're
seeing a lot of, like you said, mixed reports at
a camp, but when he's thriving, it's downfield and in

(01:32:52):
the red zone often, so those are the valuable targets
that you want. Now. I understand could be a headache
week to week, maybe better and best ball, but he's
cheap he's going outside the top fifty wide receivers. I
don't think there's very few people that I think bring
the same type of upside at that cost, like Hollywood
Brown is one. To me, I think you could put
Josh Palmer in that group when he's healthy as well,

(01:33:14):
because if it's not Coleman, it's gonna be Palmer as
the deep threat on the Bills. So to me, I'm
throwing later round darts on those two receivers. I was
all over Khleil Shakir last year, but I do feel
like now the if the injury leads to a discount,
I'll be back in. But I did feel like he
was going appropriately valued now and that led to me

(01:33:35):
not having as many shares of him, but the other
guys I have on a lot of teams because there
Coleman could become Josh Allen's top target and he's going
outside the top fifty wide receivers, like it's crazy. Also,
I think Dalton Kinkaid is a big value as well.
Like Okay, there was a number of games early in
the season last year where Kincaid was their top target,

(01:33:56):
seeing eight, nine, ten targets. Then he got hurt. He
was never this. The Bill's coaches even came out and
were like, he needs to add muscle and stuff like that.
I know he's banged up to start camp. That's not ideal,
but this is a guy that last year was being
drafted as a tight end five. Now you're getting him
at like thirteen fourteen. I think it's just at the
thinnest position. You're getting exposure to one of the best

(01:34:18):
offenses and best quarterbacks in football. And I don't like
taking him as my only tight end, but I'll pair
him with someone else. I have no problem with that.

Speaker 3 (01:34:26):
Well, and hey, don't listen to this next comment, but
it's a great auction move. Just take Kincaid and pair
him with another guy, and you get him for like
four bucks for two guys that can have that upside.
And this is a theme to the show today that
there are so many pieces in some of these offenses
that could become explosive or upside plays that are just

(01:34:50):
so cheap. And I don't know why Keon Colman's so cheap.
I think it has to do with everyone being so
disappointed in his development last year that they're just like, yeah,
he's not gonna do anything, but boyle boy, when you're
tied to Josh Allen, I think that's the game we're playing.
I mean, if we're not playing the game of trying
to pick Josh Allen's number one downfield, then what are

(01:35:12):
we doing here? So like, let's at least take some
shots on it.

Speaker 1 (01:35:15):
So and look, I know it's small sample size and stuff,
but up until he got hurt last year, like he
had a five catch seventy yard game with a touchdown
and the week before that four for one hundred and
twenty five. Like, like I was going on Fantasy Live
being like and joking, being like, how did the league
let the Bills get Kean Coleman suffers that wrist injury,

(01:35:35):
the Bills get Amari Cooper. He was never the same
after that, but like there were signs of life before
he got hurt.

Speaker 3 (01:35:42):
Yeah, yep, absolutely, So I am also making the same play.
You are trying to take some shots on these guys
at the end of the draft because it's just so cheap,
it's so easy, and there are just there are players
that you can get in the same area that have
like that floor kind of thing going on that people love.
And I understand the need for some for but I'd

(01:36:03):
rather take a swing on a Keyon Coleman than I
would like a Christian Kirk or something like that.

Speaker 1 (01:36:07):
So actually, and that range like upside, what wins you championships?

Speaker 2 (01:36:11):
Yep, yep, agree.

Speaker 3 (01:36:13):
Well, let me ask you about one more guy and
then I want to get you out of here with
some targets in the fades before I let you go.
One more guy that I'm concerned about and that everyone
is concerned about, is Matthew Stafford out there and with
the Rams. They've got him on this managed program. They're
being really coy about it, and I understand it's preseason.
They don't want to play other cards. But we have

(01:36:34):
two receivers here that are going in the in the
first three rounds. We got two really talented pass catchers,
Pukanakua and DeVante Adams, and they are dependent on Matthew Stafford. Now,
I would say that, even though we none of us
love Jimmy Garoppolo, that's one of the better backup situations
in the league.

Speaker 2 (01:36:52):
I would say.

Speaker 3 (01:36:53):
Having said that, how concerned should we be about the
Rams pass catchers? Because I don't see many people talking
about the fact that maybe these guys should be sliding
a little bit because of Stafford's uncertainty. Right now, how
are you treating that situation.

Speaker 1 (01:37:09):
I'm trying to be patient and be like, it's only
August fourth, and I know that the Rams are saying
all the right things, but like a friend of yours
as well, like Lawan Jones, huge Rams fan on our
pod all the time, it's like they're saying this isn't serious,
like and I'm like, yeah, tell me when they're gonna
come out and be like, our franchise quarterback is not playing,

(01:37:29):
Like no team is ever gonna do that, you know.
So I am worried, But I find myself more worried
about Devonte than Puka, because Stafford is the kingmaker at
wide receiver, and I think he is needed to keep
to afloat and look, I don't want to take a
first round wide receiver who doesn't have a quarterback. But

(01:37:52):
I think the passing attack would be very funnel through
those two guys if Stafford was to miss, and especially Puka,
because he could win after the cat and do a
lot of stuff that DeVante no longer can do at
his age. So a little bit more worried about the
veteran DeVante there. But yeah, no, it is the longer
this goes on, Like if this is still an issue

(01:38:12):
a week from now and Stafford hasn't practiced and it's
not we're not really sure when he's going to I
think that is when you have to start to be like, okay,
maybe like a couple of wide receivers jump Puka now,
Like I have Puka's wide receiver five, I have neighbors
ahead of him, but I have aj Brown right behind him.
Like I'd be okay making that swap if in a

(01:38:33):
week from now, Matthew Stafford we still have no updates.

Speaker 3 (01:38:36):
Yeah, it's a curious situation because I could see it
go either way. I could see us, you know, ten
days from now he's throwing he's fine and being.

Speaker 2 (01:38:44):
Like what were we worried about?

Speaker 3 (01:38:45):
I could also see us ten days from now saying
why didn't we care more? And why was I still
clicking on Pookah? That the one two term?

Speaker 2 (01:38:53):
So you know, I don't know. This is wild.

Speaker 3 (01:38:56):
It's a wild thing to have to try to parse.
And we've got all these injury docs now that are
super helpful, but they don't know either because it's such
a vague situation. Well, all right, I want to get
you out of here. But one of the favorite parts
of having any guest on discussions with Drew I get
the feedback from people. They want to hear who you're drafting.

(01:39:17):
They want to hear who you're fading. So when you're
on the clock and it's your time to click the button,
who are some guys that you find yourself clicking a
lot of that you're targeting in your drafts, And who
are some guys on the other side that you find
that you can't quite bring yourself to draft.

Speaker 1 (01:39:34):
In the early rounds, Like Malik Neighbors is one that
I am really going heavy after. I think aj Brown
in the middle of round two is an absolute steal.
I love lad McConkie in that range as well. I
think at running back there is a sweet spot in
the sixth and seventh rounds, like I think DeAndre Swift
is a screaming value. I think Traveon Henderson is one

(01:39:56):
of the He's starting to get more hype, but I
think he is one of the best values. We already
spoke about James Connor. He goes in that range. I
think Isaiah Pacheco was getting overlooked because he tried to
play through a very severe injury last year instead of
getting healthy, and for some reason that's being held against him.
There's DeAndre Swift, Caleb Johnson, R J. Harvey, Like that
is where I'm getting my running backs. And then at

(01:40:19):
tight end, it's a three tiered system for me. If
I get Trey McBride in round three, I like that.
If I could get t J. Hockinson in the middle rounds,
I like that. And if all those fails, Tyler Warren
like those are the only three tight ends I really
have interest in having as one of my starters. And
then for fades, I'm a little like everyone has the

(01:40:40):
right costs for me, but at where they are going,
I don't find myself taking Saquon Barkley. Christian McCaffrey is
a little too volatile for me now going in like
the middle of the first round. Then I don't find
myself in on like JSN is as high as everyone
else is. Really like the Bears wide receivers for me,

(01:41:03):
tight ends too, Like I I know, I said there's
three I want, but like I've been burned so many
times by like the middle round tight ends that I
I'd find myself hesitating. Even though I like Mark Andrews
and Evan Ingram and stuff like that, I still am
always like I could wait another couple of rounds and
get Tyler Warren and that tends to be the direction

(01:41:23):
I go. But uh yeah, older players, I also tend
to fade more. I'm always a believer in going younger
in football.

Speaker 3 (01:41:32):
All right, well, we appreciate those insights into what you're doing.
I love the DeAndre Swift call. Of course, I can't
go talk about every guy that you mentioned, but the
thing I keep saying with Ben Johnson is he knows
DeAndre Swift. He knew what he was getting in DeAndre
Swift and then did nothing. You know, didn't sign anybody,
didn't draft him. But like he doesn't. There's not a

(01:41:53):
lot there that I think is going to challenge DeAndre Swift.
And I don't see his adp rising a whole lot,
so he's gonna be there. But all right, well, hey man,
thank you so much for coming in. I'm sorry that
we couldn't.

Speaker 2 (01:42:04):
Go a little bit longer.

Speaker 3 (01:42:05):
We both got appointments to get to this afternoon, and
of course we're in that crunch before the expo this weekend.
So I look forward to seeing you out in Canton.
Remind everybody where they can find you and where they
can find your stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:42:18):
Yeah at Michael F. Florio on Socials, NFL dot Com,
NFL Network, Rotoballer dot Com, and the newly launching Bill's
Banter Podcast for the Sick Podcast, shann I'm very excited
about that. So yeah, lots of places to get my
fantasy content. And Drew, I cannot wait to hang out
with you in person again at the expo this weekend.

Speaker 3 (01:42:39):
So we're gonna do it. We're gonna do it up right.
It's gonna be an awesome weekend. I cannot wait. I
will be there in Canton on Thursday afternoon, so we'll
see you when you get in on Friday morning.

Speaker 2 (01:42:50):
Thanks again for coming on the show.

Speaker 1 (01:42:52):
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (01:42:53):
You bet all right.

Speaker 3 (01:42:55):
That's another fun week with Michael Florio here on the
auction brief and discussions. Drew, all right, thank you so much,
Michael Florio from the NFL Network. Great job. That was
a fun conversation. I hope everyone enjoyed today's discussions Withdrew,

(01:43:16):
and I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Auction Brief.
We're in August. Training camps are open, Real football is happening,
good and bad. You know that injury specter raises its
head every August when we get players who are banged
up in camp. The majority of those camp problems don't
turn into actual regular season problems, so keep that in mind.

(01:43:37):
But hey, I hopefully I'm here with all of my
guests to sort of figure out which ones we should
be worried about and what our pivots should be. So
stay tuned to the Auction Brief. We got a couple
more episodes coming. We got Matt Harmon from Yahou next week,
and then after that, folks, we've got the Auction Manifesto.
It's going to be a little bit different this year
than other years, just like everything this summer. But I'm

(01:43:58):
looking forward to the re tooled Auction Manifesto where I
go through building my perfect roster for your auction drafts.

Speaker 2 (01:44:06):
So thank you so much for joining me for another
episode of the Auction Brief. Don't forget.

Speaker 3 (01:44:10):
You can find me on Twitter at Drew Davenport FF,
on TikTok, and the Patreon network. For just four bucks
a month, the Fantasy Football Lawyer. Get in there and
get the best auction focused content.

Speaker 2 (01:44:20):
I've opened up.

Speaker 3 (01:44:22):
The par sheet orders. Get your par sheet order in
so that you can have a customized par sheet for
your draft. And don't forget FJA Fantasy Draft Boards. Auction
twenty twenty five Auction two zero two five to get
ten percent off your order. Folks, thank you so much
for being here. I appreciate the support of the Auction Brief.
I'm getting a lot of feedback about how good this
the episodes have.

Speaker 2 (01:44:42):
Been this summer.

Speaker 3 (01:44:43):
I appreciate that so much, and I love the new
Auction Brief. The new look Auction Brief has been a
unqualified success. The numbers keep growing. Thank you everybody out
there in Auction brief Land. I appreciate the support.

Speaker 2 (01:44:57):
I really do.

Speaker 3 (01:44:58):
This is one of my favorite hours of the week
on the mic and talking to all of you, so
thanks so much for joining me for another episode. The
Auction Brief is adjourned and I am out.

Speaker 4 (01:45:08):
The Auction Brief is a journ That'll do it for
this week's episode. See you next time on the Auction Brief.

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