Fantasy Football - Top 10 Things to Remember + Mike’s Gripes - Podcast for 3/6

even though they're being drafted at wide receiver five or six, if you have those storylines and you start to see that validated early, that might be the only opportunity you have the entire year to put a Jamar Chase. I mean, I had a better opportunity later, but it might be your only chance. And so that's, and it's like where it's so ingrained. And look, the, the, if you look around fantasy football shows, everything is, oh, trade, trade high. And it's like. Sometimes. By high, they go higher. Sometimes, yes. Like you're like, right now it looks like I'm buying like NFL terms. Like when, when Patrick Mahomes got his contract extension, it was, oh my goodness. Look how much money Mahomes got. And now we're, you know, a handful of years later. Patrick Mahomes is severely underpaid compared to what he means compared to the market.

Yeah, and again, it gives you opportunities if you are moving multiple players away for one to go take advantage of the free edge of market early. So making early season trades is hard for people to do because you get attached to your draft capital. So if you have guys struggling, just remember things change very quickly. Something we'll see more and more throughout this top 10 list. Moving on. Number nine. And I'm calling this one, start at the top. And it was just watching last year, like, There are some coaches out there that we just, we need to trust this coach. We need to believe in that coach's offense. The thing that really spurred this for me was Kevin O'Connell in Minnesota, the doubt over Kirk Cousins leaving and getting the huge money from Atlanta. It's like, well, now what do we got? Well, we got J.J. McCarthy. We got Sam Darnold. What's going on here? Justin Jefferson, the.

The best wide receiver in NFL, fine, Jamar Chase, that's fine, the top two. But, like, he would slide in first rounds because we were so nervous about who's going to be throwing him the ball. I just don't trust it. Do you remember how negative the offseason for Minnesota was overall? Oh, my gosh, yes. Where Addison got in trouble. And it was like the team was falling apart. And the McCarthy injury. So Addison is another huge piece of it. It's not just Justin Jefferson, who I saw in some drafts go late first round. So I know there's some leagues out there. He still got drafted as the second wide receiver. Yes, but there were leagues out there where he fell real, real far compared to where Justin Jefferson would have gone. If you're like, if Kirk Cousins were back, he would have been the first or the second overall pick. And it's look what Kevin O'Connell had done with Minnesota.

You know, Cousins was in 2022, the QB7 in 2023 through the first eight weeks. He was the QB4. But then we saw Josh Dobbs be a top five quarterback in his first two games. Nick Mullins was a top 12 quarterback, fantasy-wise, in three of four starts. Like, O'Connell had proven to us that he can get it done. Now, yes, it's okay to be somewhat pessimistic and have some doubt. But for these coaches who are. Just great for the offensive side of football. Trust in what they're doing. Because Jefferson, yeah, he slid a little bit. Addison was left for dead in drafts. And Addison was a very usable player, especially over the second half there. So it's when there is a coach who has proven that they can get production and production when you feel like there is just absolutely no chance that it's going to be able to happen.

Trust in that coach. I'm saying that like the Minnesota Vikings this year, if it's J.J. McCarthy, I'm going to give Kevin O'Connell the benefit of the doubt. Who are your coaches? Yeah. So O'Connell is in there for me. Sean McVeigh is in there. Shannahan? Kyle Shanahan is in there and Matt LaFleur is in there for me for Green Bay. Andy Reid should be, but he is, Andy Reid has figured out I can, this is how I can win Super Bowls. So it's not always going to be a. high-powered offense for Andy Reid. I trust that he's going to figure out how to win a football game, but I'm speaking specifically for fantasy football. Maybe he learned a little something this year. Yeah, maybe. I wonder, I'm on the bubble. Um, you know, it wasn't the, the, uh, for Sean Payton. Sean Payton to me is, he's on the bubble of you just trust that he's been historically a great offensive producer. And this year with a rookie.

Yeah, they figured some stuff out and they had a good passing game. So their running game was trash, but he's to me like, if you want to be a little early in that and add him to the list, I think he applies. All right. Your turn, Jay. Number eight. I call this the pendulum swings. Fantasy football, we are so binary. It's like this or that. You know, it's like there's not enough nuance. And you don't always take advantage of where. you see people overreacting, swinging the pendulum too far based on what happened last year. Perfect example here. You look at quarterbacks over the last several years. It was always elite quarterback. You'd have Breeze and Brady and Rogers. They're high draft picks in the first round or whatever. And then people started to figure out like, no, no, no, it's late round quarterback. That's how you win. That's the soup. And then Mahomes and Lamar Jackson came and then.

You know, they were late round picks. So now everyone goes and does the late. Now it's a game of chicken at your drafts. You're like, who's going to go last? I'm not even going to draft quarterback. That's so late. I'll waiver wire him. And so looking at the last couple years at the first two rounds, there's been kind of this battle between, is it better to have, you know, first round wide receivers or better to have first round running backs? So you go back to 2020. That's the year, Chris McCaffrey. you know, broke fantasy and wide receivers sucked. The following year was like 10 running backs in the first round, one wide receiver. And a couple years ago, or two seasons ago, there were a lot of running back injuries. And wide receivers were very, very good. This last season in PPR leagues, there were only three running backs that were drafted in the first round. You had CMC. That didn't work out. Bejan Robinson.

Great. And Breece, and that was it. And the rest was chalk full of wide receivers. And so what happened this last year was that the value, because the pendulum kind of swings too far, the value was now in the running backs that were pushed down, the really elite running backs that weren't there. So when I look at teams that won championships, Sequan Barkley, Jamir Gibbs, Kyron Williams, Derek Henry, these were. Monsters values because they didn't cost you that top five pick. Because of the pendulum. Because the pendulum. They weren't bad picks. They were great running backs, but everyone wanted to get in on the wide receivers. I think it's going to happen in reverse. I think this year, because of the success of those running backs and some of the failure of some of the wide receivers, you know, you've got the Marvin Harrison busts at the, you know, you're going to have a little bit more fear. Yeah, Tyreek. So now I expect this year, it's a little too early to know.

But I do think that this year, one of the lessons I want to learn is look for the value, the really good players who positionally are getting pushed down into the second round. I think you were going to find real value on stud-wide receivers being pushed in the second based on last year. So this is like a thing to remember over a couple years. Okay. Makes sense. Number seven. Number seven. See? It's number seven. You called that. The second guy was better. I got these buttons and I said it anyways. Here's what I want you to remember that the schedule. It's a lie. What? The schedule is a bit of a lie because it just isn't the cake is a lie. Nice. It's just not that predictable year to year to look at matchups defensively.

and forecast too far in the future. There's too much turnover on defense year over year. Just take a look at this from 2023 to 2024. If you went into last year, you thought that you had tough matchups for quarterbacks, if you played the Panthers, or if you played the Ravens, or if you played the Chiefs, or you played the Cowboys, Panthers were number one against quarterbacks last year, 31st. That was the swing from 1 to 31. Ravens, number three against quarterbacks, they swung to 22. Cowboys, eighth best against quarterbacks, dead last against quarterbacks last year. This is true for all the positions. You have massive changes. Personnel, you know, we just went through a coaching changes episode, right? And coordinators on both sides of the ball changed tremendously year to year.

It's just a mixed bag. And so if you are starting to look at your early season schedule and think you have guaranteed production from certain players or as you're manufacturing trades in the beginning part of the year and you're saying, well, this guy's got a tough playoff schedule, it's just probably a lie. And we've only had one fantasy defense going all the way back 24 years that has repeated as the number one defense in back-to-back years. and only six times in that entire stretch, have they even finished in the top five? Like, it's just very difficult. Injuries, right? There's just so many changes that happen. You do not get a lay of the land, and we don't even put our strength of schedule tool up and update it with the new stats until a few weeks into the year. But until you're into week six, week seven, you really don't know what the playoff matchups are going to look like. You talk about adjustments, right? Remember the...

Remember the Denver Broncos defense? And it gave up 70 points to Miami, which, by the way, destroyed their metrics for the entire year. And then they became a shutdown defense over the back half of the year. Defensive coordinators make adjustments. Injuries happen. And so one of the things I think is valuable to remember is just that the schedule is a lie in the sense that you can't repeat what you got last year positionally very often. All right. We'll take a quick break and we'll come back with the top six. All right. It's back to you, Mike. Number six. All right. With this one, I'm going to highlight, and for today's show, I'm calling them drift players. And with the type of drift I'm talking about, I'm talking about in racing. Now, not Tokyo drift, though. Not like the wheels are going crazy in the back. I'm talking about the actual, you are in NASCAR and you're drifting. And if you're not familiar with that term, that means that.

You slide your car in just behind whoever's in front of you, and it's physics. That car in front of you has a much higher wind resistance, and the car in the back is using less fuel, less power to go, and then you're able to pass because you're able to generate a little bit more speed, and you're letting the person in front of you do more work than you. And it's maybe, I'm bringing it up to like, have a little bit more faith in these types of players. I mean, it hit like a son of a gun last year. So Derek Henry, Barkley, Jacobs, and even Stefan Diggs. They all change teams. And changing teams at that point in your career is it's not always great. And I mean, these guys have that crew of four. Well, Jacobs isn't really that old, but.

Like, age was a question for them. And that was the reason for the doubt. And now in hindsight, we're like, oh, of course, Sequin Barkley on the Eagles. But I'm bringing this up of who are they replacing? And the player that they are replacing, was that guy the engine? Or was this already a super high-powered offense? The Baltimore Ravens, you know, we had Gus Edwards score a bazillion touchdowns two years ago. Gus Edwards was not the foundational engine of the Baltimore Ravens. He was just a part of it. Same with DeAndre. He was drifting. Yeah, DeAndre Swift two years ago with the Eagles. We all, you know, we're shocked of this resurgence of why is Swift doing so good? Then you see, oh, well, look at the size of the gap. The offensive line has opened up for him. So of, of course, Sequin Barclay is going to work. I was a huge doubter of Stefan Diggs. I thought, no, there's a reason Buffalo got rid of him.

And he's washed. While he wasn't a superstar before the ACL tear, he was still very usable and was a great draft pick up to that point. So I'm going to, I don't have the list of players yet because their free agency hasn't happened. The draft hasn't happened. But it's putting just never overdo anything in fantasy, but putting a little bit more stock in to if a player who has been historically great goes to a team and replaces a mediocre. mid-level starter, you should be even more excited about it. In hindsight, I get it. These all sound real super obvious, but Derek Henry and Saquan and Barclay were not, they weren't top three running backs being drafted. I think Barclay was like RB8, RB8 right around there. You know what's kind of valuable in the context of that argument, Mike, is that there are 32 teams.

But a lot of them are genuinely actually dumb. And sometimes we give too much credit when they let go. Like when Derek Henry gets to leave town and Saquan leaves town in New York and these players leave these rosters, sometimes we can be like, well, they must know something we don't know. The truth is they're stupid. They're dumb. We watched the Giants Hard Knocks. Yeah, they actually are. It didn't go well. They ruined Hard Knocks off season for everyone else. It was such a good idea. It was cool to see those things, but then they were so bad at those things that no team allowed them to be recorded during the off season this year. And there's probably a bit of a truth here, Mike. You're talking about these players joining offensive systems that are very good. Yes, the offense is already cooking. But also, like if a player leaves an overtly bad system and just goes to a neutral system.

But they produced in the bad system, that's probably indicative of some success as well. Well, this kind of all rolls into my next point, which is number five. There you go. See, I set you up. I know you did and I missed. I missed the number. All right. Number five, I call this, remember Mike's advice. Remember Mike's advice. What? So it was a good one. It was a good one. And it actually was something I was paying attention to all season. What advice is that? It was from a tips and tricks episode where Mike was talking about how to target late round running backs. And it really worked out well. It makes sense. It goes completely with kind of more of what you're talking about. Good offices, good teams, avoiding bad teams. But it's a really important.

You know, those guys that you draft late, they've all got giant question marks. They've got warts on them. There's not a reason they wouldn't be drafted late if there was not clear and obvious problems. So what do you pick? Do you pick the talented player? Maybe. But I think the right strategy is pick the talented team. Pick the good quarterback. Pick the team that could score points because here's basically how it works. Every year, some. Running backs are drafted outside the top 24, but they finish within it. Over the last five years, eight and a half teams, actual teams, don't have a top 24 drafted running back on their roster. However, five players from those teams, on average, exceed the expectations of finish of the top 24. So how do you decide? And if you focus on the better teams versus focusing on the player's talent,

I think you have a much higher hit rate of that happening. And you look at last season. You know, it was like, now you might have gotten it wrong if you went Zach Moss, but Zach Moss Chase Brown. This is all in the framework of late round. Late round running backs. I just want to lay that out there when you said, remember Mike's advice. This whole conversation is around identifying running backs and later ran. Yes. In the late round, when you're looking at running backs, target the good teams. Because Chase Brown became a league winner. It was one of the best fantasy assets for where you got him.

Obviously, it took Zach Moss going down, but what it also took was a Joe Burrow-led offense that scored nonstop, that opened up the running game. Other targets, you know, last year, you had Dak Prescott on the roster and a projected good offense, and then Rico had a good season. You had J.K. Dobbins coming back. Okay, he's injured. He's coming back from hardship, but he's got Harbaugh and Herbert together. Like, that's a team that clearly... could be good. So I was looking a quick run through of this year's ADP just to see a good example because all the guys going late, you've got Tank Bigsby running back 38. What do you think about the Jags? I mean, I'm not, I don't personally view Trevor Lawrence as a, as a superstar. You're just saying, do they profile as a winning team? Probably not. Yeah, Tajay Spears right around. Probably not. Running back 40. Doesn't appear that way. Charbonnet is the running back 32. To me, the Seattle Seahawks, maybe without Locket, maybe.

I don't look at them as like, yeah, that's an offense I really have to have a part of. Brian Robinson, the running back 35 right now. Yep. He's got Jane Daniels. This is an offense that looks like on fire. That's good. Maybe I'll lean towards the guy that could be part of a special offense. There are those players going in the late rounds. I'm going to remember that advice from last year and target high quality team running backs. high quality teams when I'm targeting running back. I like that. And I like the example from this year already seeing where players are being drafted because, you know, people get fatigued with certain names or like, I don't think anybody is out here saying, okay, Brian Robinson is a, is the physical talent of some of those other players that you mentioned necessarily. But the team situation is so much more promising. So that's good advice. Number four. All right. I'm going to call this one, uh, plant the seeds and work the room.

Okay. I got a little bit of... Quite the name. I got a little bit of... Oh, this was the one you... You coward. I also had it subtitled. People are dumb. Yeah, that's the real tip. But I... Remember that. I'm calling it, plant the seeds and work the room because I... Look, I've been doing this a really, really long time. And I don't know if there's anything that gives me more joy. That doesn't... You know, that warms the cockles of my heart. like the disgust of my friends when I accomplish a trade that they find to be improbable, unlikely, stupid. If I can pull off a trade that makes them want to leave the league out of their frustration, which I feel like I've done to you many times. Yeah, you have. It brings me great joy. And people are like, how does this happen? And I made the point this year on one of my trades, look, I just hit accept. But you see, the truth is, is that the key.

to successful trading what i want people to remember is that you need to become a lobbyist of sorts why do lobbyists get what they want is because there's a time investment involved it's not volume like there was a time in my trading past in which i might have accomplished some trades by just being more active i don't send out as many offers as i do i'm too old for that you mean as you used to as i used to yes because you do send out as many offers as you do As I do. Right. Like I just exactly the same number. You need to, you need to plant the seeds and work the room from the beginning of the year. Everybody has these problems. How do you get trades done? How do you accomplish trades? Send offers out. Do the due diligence of what people actually need on their roster. Plant the seeds of the type of talent you might be willing to give up. Figure out who they're fans of. Who's their type? What's their tempo?

You know, plant the seeds early and keep conversations warm and pounce when the time is right. It takes a long time in fantasy football to build relationships. And you need to actively seek the benefit of both sides. You need to have conversations about trades that don't end in trade offers every single time. But in, hey, you know what? A couple weeks from now, let's come back to this conversation in case your team is doing poorly or better than and I'm doing poorly. Hey, this might meet both of our needs because in two weeks from now, you might be selling for next year. And what I benefited from this year, be active in association with the NFL news that is transpiring. Things happen when news breaks, when Amari Cooper gets traded to the bills and Josh Allen.

It starts to rekindle some of the conversations that happened earlier in the year. And the truth is, we know this from 15, 20 years of playing this game. Value is subjective. Everybody makes a determination when a trade goes through. You won, you lost, and they're wrong all the time. Trading is a dance. And you need to be in a position where you have built relationships with people and you have understood their teams. And it's. Sometimes too much of an investment for people to make. And that's why some people get trades done and some people don't. And also when a good trade comes along, smash the accept button. Don't freaking, don't freaking sit there and go back and forth on minor parts of the deal. Yeah. I never do that. You click that accept button. Now, to be fair, if you get a deal like that, everyone's going to click accept because they're going to see the nonsense that it was. But.

Afterwards. I know people listening are like, what are you talking about? I traded Najoku, Amari Cooper in a second round pick for Jamar Chase when the Cooper trade happened because I had been talking with a manager in our league for many weeks about whether they'd ever trade Jamar Chase. They said no. And then the Cooper trade happened and they got excited about Cooper. Cooper goes to Buffalo to Josh Allen. They sent a very, what do you call that? Not impromptu, but impulsive. They sent a quick impulsive offer and I wasn't going to mess around with fine tune in the offer. Oh, it's funny because you click accept and then afterwards afterwards. You're like, ugh, I wish I had like should I have changed my tight in? The answer is no. No. No, you just needed to make sure that that deal gets done. But Bill, start having conversations around players that you might like and just wait for them to come to fruition. Yeah, another way you could say that. Just if you're taking it from your example is.

Trade bad, worthless players for Jamar Chase. Just do that. Remember to do that thing. Number three. I'm still pissed about it. I didn't win. I lost in the title game to Al Borland over there. Yeah, you did. Number three, we're going rookie wide receivers. There's still a good bet and bargain shopped them. So look, the rookie wide receivers. Yeah, rookie wide receivers. And we're talking about in your, in your draft. Yes, Marvin Harrison. did not work out. Malik Neighbors certainly did. And then guys who went later, guys who were not the headline rookie wide receivers last year, you know, the sensation that is Brian Thomas Jr. Ladd McConkey had a great year. Oh, my little. Like later, later rookies that were going, you had Ladd, Keon Coleman, Brian Thomas Jr. and Adnigh Mitchell. Yes, two of those guys were.

catastrophic busts for fantasy football. Not every single one is going to hit, but this is a game of probability and increasing your odds of success and knowing where and when to take your chances in the draft. And it's rookie wide receivers, man, they just continue to get it done and they still go. It's even better when they're going later in the draft because your investment. Oh, the voice of public opinion. But Mike, I thought this year's draft class. of wide receivers is no good. That is true. That definitely is true. And you know what? I bet we see that in ADP. When we're all looking at where rookie wide receivers being drafted, people are like, they all stink. You want to know one of the reasons why they're still going to be NFL players. It's going to happen forever. It's going to happen forever because they go to the worst teams. Jaylon Waddle. Jaylon Waddle went in the top 10 in the NFL draft.

Everyone was disgusted by Miami's office. They were like, oh, there's no chance. Brian Thomas Jr. goes to Jacksonville. Oh, you know, he's a good player, but it's Jacksonville. It's going to happen forever. Yeah, just last year, you know, Thomas McConkey, before that, Rash, Puka, Garrett Wilson's rookie year. And like, do remember, Garrett Wilson, when he was a rookie, people didn't want him. Nope. And he's still, and while he wasn't. He wasn't Brian Thomas Jr. finishing top five. He still finished as a top 20 fantasy wide receiver. Amman Raw, the year before that. Jalen Waddle, the year before that. It just keeps happening. And they are good bets. And more often than not, they are lower ADP. So the investment, the risk when you're drafting is not high. But your reward is so great, especially over. And remember, when you draft a rookie.

Look for signs, but over the second half of the season, that's generally when they really start to shine. Yeah, absolutely. Makes sense. Number two. Number two is the second year system leap. This is a lot gets made about the second year wide receivers taking that leap. But not enough is thought about with the systems that people play in, the continuity that matters. And if you look back at this last year, first of all, You don't realize how insanely year to year these offenses are really changing. 21 of the current offensive coordinators have been with their respective teams fewer than two years. That's two-thirds of the league. The longest tenured offensive coordinators in the league at Green Bay, Miami, Minnesota, and the Giants are in their position for just three years. So it's just like...