Fantasy Football Podcast 2017 - Fantasy News + Offseason Mailbag!

All right, draft order question from Greg in Chicago. Hey guys, I'm in a 10-person standard redraft league. And every summer, we all draw a number from a hat to determine our draft order for the upcoming season. Your hat draw. Do you guys have any suggestions for picking or designating draft order? He says he loves the show and makes community work bearable when you have something awesome to listen to. We appreciate that, Greg. Now, Brooks, you had a tidbit of information here for Greg. Is that accurate?

Yes, sir. I went back to the FAFQ part one episode, our frequently asked fancy questions. And right around the 51 minute mark, we'd go over a number of different ways to determine your draft order. Very nice. I'm sure they were excellent. Oh, the best. They're huge. We always bring them up. We get asked this question a lot. People do lots of different things. They've done March Madness, which just passed Kentucky Derby. Combine drills or even joke combine like.

eating contests, sports, tournaments amongst each other. And I would say the most fun thing to do there. Do you guys see that? Make a real fair even playing field. Did you guys see the arm wrestling news? With the NFL players. Yeah, that's why I was just poking the bear. But what I would do is however you, however you do that, even if it's out of a cup, I would enjoy where when you get, when you are like, okay, I won or I'm in second or I'm in third.

Let the first place or the winner pick their spot. Yes. And then the next person pick their spot of what's left and so on and so forth. It just adds one more layer of strategy and fun to the league. All right. Captain. Captain America. Whoa. In New York. Wow. This is a big deal, guys. But it's K-A-E-P-10, Captain. So this is not Steve. It's calling Kaepernick, Captain America. All right.

Help me get a grip on the must-haves for a live fantasy draft. Is there a board I need to buy? Is there software? Stickers. Some leaguemates are out-of-towners. Can it still work if they join on FaceTime? Guys, let's outline a few live draft tips for Captain America himself. Sure. I will say this. For out-of-towners, we have done this many, many times. A Google Hangout is a great way to do that. If you got a laptop or a PC, you can turn...

towards the crew that is live drafting, throw them up on Google Hangout. They can participate pretty darn well. Put that computer up on a TV and have that person just in the room. That's excellent. Yeah. And I would say, I mean, draft board, super fun. That's not going to be optimal for you if you are having multiple people who are not actually live in the draft because then they don't have a...

very great way to know who has been drafted. We do ours with, we have a custom Google spreadsheet that everybody has access to. We're all in there at the same time during the draft and the commission is putting in their picks. Helps facilitate draft pick trades and trades during the draft. And so those are key. Another key thing, get someone to be your announcer. Oh, yeah. That's fun. That's crucial. I mean, have them dress up. You get the note cards. You walk your pickup. That's so fun. At least for the first two rounds or something.

And then, I mean, have a celebratory song to intimidates. And Mike finds this to be key. It's crucial. It's crucial to my draft strategy. What was your song a couple years ago? All night long. Oh, yeah. All night long was last year. Every pick. Every time he came to pick, he'd make his pick and we'd have to listen to all my life. Sunglasses. Very important. I believe you refer to them as hate blockers. Yes. Well, do you need to block the hate, man? Because there's a little, when I'm picking.

There's a lot of hate. A lot of hate in that room. Agreed. A lot of bad feelings. Ryan Carroll says, ballers. This is coming in off of Twitter. He says value question here. High risk. High reward. And PPR. Would you rather keep Keenan Allen or Rule 86 is your seventh round keeper? Ooh. Seventh round keeper in a PPR. It's easy. I would take Keenan. I'm taking Rule 86. I love that easy.

was thrown out there as you pick different names. Well, easy for me. I go rule 86 as well. Because I think the upside of both guys, right? Like, let's say you're taking a risky guy, but thankfully the risk is mitigated here because it's a seventh round pick. I'm always willing to be risky there. But the upside, let's say Keenan Allen is great. He is a wide receiver one. He's a top 10 guy. Well, that's great. I mean, he's going to really help my team.

But if Jordan Reed hits his ceiling and is a top guy, he is a positional difference maker, and he will be number one or number two at the position. And I can guarantee that I will be outscoring my opponent in that position unless they have an also ceiling gronk. So that's why if I'm going upside here, I'm going. They're both scoring zero points. They'll be heard all you. Right.

No, I'm with Rule 86. I mean, I understand the logic behind both. I mean, you look at Keenan Allen, maybe you're thinking you've got a keeper for a bunch of years if he pops and, yeah. Alex Smith has a question. Oh, no, he doesn't. His name is Johnny and his questions about Alex Smith. It's like, Alex Smith. Very strong. Wait, wait. Yeah. I just want to go back to that question a second ago. Sure. Because I do want to throw this in. Since this is a legitimate thing that they're looking at, it.

I would rather have them if it's a hypothetical in a vacuum. I can only have one of those guys. However, you also need to take into account. You're saying you'd rather have Rule 86. Yes, I would rather have Rule 86 for a seventh, but you also need to take into account your actual draft capabilities. For instance, Keenan Allen will be drafted higher. So there is the potential here that you could keep Keen and then just draft Jordan Reed, you know, in the third round of your- I don't think Keenan Allen is going to be drafted higher, guaranteed. Then Jordan Reed? No.

Oh, I do. I do. I think it depends a lot on the medical situation heading into the season. Yes. He could drop quite a bit and then you could have them similar. If horrific news comes out, but on the current track that we're on, Keenan is currently in the third round and Jordan Reed is currently at the back of the fourth, almost fifth round. Yeah, that's what makes sense. Makes sense. All right. Here's a question for you. That's good. Johnny in Wisconsin.

Why is Alex Smith so low on your rankings? Because he's Alex Smith. Next question. Alex Smith throws 20 touchdowns and he doesn't throw a lot of interceptions and he doesn't do anything special. Alex Smith. His risk rating to me is almost zero because I project him to do everything he's always done always all the time, which is 20 touchdowns. Alex Smith had one superpower. I guess two if you consider he just doesn't make a ton of mistakes.

His superpower was he would run the ball for 400 plus yards. And he would pad his stats with those delightful, delightful quarterback rushing yards. And he took them away from us last year. Went from 400 plus yards on the ground to about 150 last year. Now, didn't he get a bunch of rushing touchdowns? I mean, he kind of over corrected it. But still, if that's Alex Smith, we're going to get it. Alex is the best QB2 in a two quarterback league late value. Like I love.

20 points from Alex Smith in the last round. He's a great streamer. Yes, we like Alex. It's ironic that the question comes in. Why do we hate Alex Smith? We've always been big Alex Smith supporters when it comes to streaming because of his rushing production. Alex Smith is when you are running out the door, you're like, oh, crap. I didn't do my laundry. I have nothing to wear. I'll just grab this Alex Smith because I know it's good enough. Right.

You won't embarrass yourself. What's that, Brooks? You've compared it to a saltine cracker. Yeah. Yeah. You know what's funny is I thought what you were going to say is Alex Smith is when you have, you know, forgotten to do your laundry and you're running out the door and then it dawns on you, oh, I didn't change my lineup or pick up a quarterback. Just go grab Alex Smith. He's available. Oh, yeah. He's after you've had the stomach flu for a few days and you need to ease back into eating something.

First thing you do is taking Alex Smith because you're not going to upset your stomach, the saltine cracker. All right. Do any other metaphors to explain? I want this to continue. Just a nonstop Alex Smith analogies. Alex Smith is super dependable if you need somebody to pick up your kids after school. He'll get the job done. He'll get the job done.

He won't leave them there. He's got, on Angie's list. Like Cam Newton would forget your kids. His ratings list or his ratings on Angie's list are just four and a half stars. Four and a half. Yeah. Yeah. Dependable, reliable. Does the front and the backyard. It's never great, never terrible. I've never had a green pool once since he has taken over. Yeah. No, no, no. My people are on duties. And.

You know, you know, he's upstanding, so you don't have to worry about the wife with the pool man. I mean, Alex Smith. No, no, no, no. He's legit. He's, I mean, like, I ran out of gas once. I knew I could depend on Alex Smith. Oh, yeah, give him a call. Give him a call. I'll pick you up. Did you hear the news, by the way, on Alex Smith? He's, quote, bummed about the way the Kansas City Chief season ended. All right. That's a good ending point for the Alex Smith. There is no more Alex Smith comment than that. Joe...

Joe in Texas. You lost in the playoffs. How was it? I'm a little upset. Alex Smith, you're in the playoffs. I almost forgot. I wrote an article about Alex Smith. He chose vanilla ice cream at Baskin Robbins at the 31 flavors. All right, Joe in Texas, Mark Ingram or Amari Cooper as my third keeper. AJ Green and Shady McCoy are already my top two keeper, so now I need to pick Mark Ingham or Amari Cooper. I can't even focus right now. Standard scoring league.

Who would you take? I would take one of the two, that's for sure. I'm going to need those names again. They're Mark Ingram and Amari Cooper. Both of these guys, to me, are low-end ones at their position. And I think I would go with the running back here in Mark Ingram. They were both highly inconsistent last year. They had games that just crushed you and games that helped you. They both ended at the very back of their...

positional one. And so for me, I'm taking the running back. Yeah, I don't blame me for that. Honestly, this is another one of those ones. You need to look at your league and say, is there like a majority of one position being kept? So availability in the early part of the draft is better for running back or wide receiver? Because it's so close where I'm not going to fault you at taking Amari Cooper to me. I love Amari Cooper. But in a vacuum, I probably take the running back. I agree. I probably take Mark Ingram, but.

To me, if in realms of possibilities in the beginning of April here, Mark Ingram as a top five running back, it's possible. It's certainly possible. Now that, now that the Big Bad Wolf, we know that they throw the ball to the running back. And Ingram did have a, he's gotten far more involved in the receiving game. But Amari Cooper, year three, possibility of him being top five.

I would put that slightly ahead of chances of Mark Ingram being top five. All right, I want to remind our listeners that you can get the ultimate draft kit at the absolute best possible price right now. This thing was a monster hit last year. We need an Alex Smith section. Of the ultimate draft kit? Sure. Yeah, you work on that. In the meantime, Jason and I are working on this jam-pack draft kit.

100 plus player profile videos. We've got reception with Matt Harmon that we're adding to the draft kit exclusively this year. We took everything that was great last year. By the way, we put a survey out to everybody that bought it. It was over 90% said they'd re-buy it again because of how valuable it was for the league. Now we've taken that and we've put reception perception inside of it. We're adding more to the draft kit. This is what we do all...

year long as we work hard on preparing you for your draft so you can set a strong foundation. So check it out at ultimate draft kit.com. Like I said, early bird pricing right now. You can get in on it. It's going to release on her before June 1st. So this is an exciting product. We're really pumped about what we're doing this year. And appreciate all the feedback from everybody last year. We're going to make it better. So that wraps it up for today's show. Like I said, tight-end early ranking episode on Tuesday as well, or on Thursday as well as some more news. You guys have any parting words?

Just a farewell. It's just a farewell. I will see you on Thursday, as Alex Smith would say, have a good day. Goodbye. Have an okay day. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Fantasy Footballers podcast. Join our fantasy football community on join thefoot.com. And follow us on Twitter at the FF Ballers. The Perpetual Pen Tapper.

The arbitrary fridge reorganizer. The holiday party planner that starts in May. Principal knows your star employees have their work quirks. Principal also knows how much these employees mean to your business. You need them. They need benefits. Work with principals so they can help you help your team with a retirement and benefits plan that's right for them. Principal Life Insurance Company, Des Moines, Iowa.