Players We’re Ashamed to Love, #FootClan Advice

Good question. I'm curious why Andy has ranked Rashad Penny lower in the last update of the Ultimate Draft Kit. And then asks, is it the cause? Or I'm sorry, is the cause the retirement of Camp Chancellor? Oh, I thought he was asking if your lowering of him caused the Chancellor to retire, which is probably. Possibly, probably. Good question. And actually, this will let me address the overarching question of like, we adjust our rankings every week.

Sometimes there is a very blatant cause, right? A suspension or an injury. And sometimes we're massaging and distributing the carries, the targets, the receptions, and massaging that based on how we feel about the offense and the reports out of camp and all those things, right? Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes you take a look again, a second time at the same stats.

And you just disagree with what your original opinion was, and that's not a bad thing. That's how we try to get more and more and more accurate rankings closer to the season and has proven successful. In this case with Rashad Penny, I can answer. I looked at my rankings. I saw Rashad Penny was at like 16. I felt like he was a little high. I've been the most vocal on this show of saying that I don't believe that the, I don't believe that the.

Seahawks are going to give everything to Rashad Penny. And I moved Chris Carson up as a relative move. I felt like the gap between Penny in my rankings and Carson was too big. So as the resident Rashad Penny Truther, I must answer this question because he was almost my player. I was ashamed to love because the reports out of camp are...

Every beatwriter is basically saying that the person who really showed the best it came. And they're saying good things about Rashad Penny. He's improving his past blogging all those things. But they said as of today, the starter would be Chris Carson. And I went, what? This is insanity. So I am. I've been saying it. I am worried about Rashad Penny. I think his talent will win out. He is.

Yeah, but did you see his Madden rating? He was disrespected. He thinks he was disrespected in Madden. Good. Get that chip on the shoulder. No, I love Rashad Penny, but you know, you have to pay attention to those things. I'm not, you can't get overwhelmed with your own love for a player and ignore just how teams are using him. Yeah. So that was the reason. I just felt a little less confident in Penny than I had before. Instagram question, Jason. This one's from Michael J. Grimm Jr.

It sounds pretty dark. Heck of a name. Sounds pretty dark. Who do you like better in the late rounds? Risky rookies or hand cook. This is an absolutely super easy home run answer. It is 100% risky rookies. Rookies at the end of the draft.

are usually an unbelievably great value because they're either going to pop or you can drop them early. I mean, I think about how late DJ Moore is going, and he could be the number one for his team. And some of the other, you know, Caryon Johnson's going a little bit later. He's unfortunately climbing up more and more. But those guys have a chance to break out. The handcuff, you will have to hold.

assuming that your guy doesn't get injured week one. And then what happens is week one, some guys get injured. You're going to want the other guys that are on waivers. And now you're going to have to drop your handcuff who had no chance week one to be anything relevant. So I would definitely take risky rookies over handcuffs at the draft. And by risky rookies, I would lean towards those. You'll get an opportunity to evaluate within the first three or four weeks. Hopefully, you know, if you have a choice.

All right, Wayne in New Orleans. Thinking of switching my league scoring from one point per reception to half point per reception and half point per first down. Would this cause any major swings in balance and rankings? You know, I like this. I like... You like the first down reward. I do like that. It's a little bit more difficult to get the data on it. Do you know what team had the most first downs last year?

I do not know. That would be the New England Patriots with a 24.8 first downs per game, which was actually kind of much higher than the other teams. The second is Pittsburgh. But do you know who third was? This will be surprising to you. Tampa Bay. Third in the NFL. That is surprising. Chicago dead last, Cincinnati, near the bottom, Indianapolis near the bottom. It won't cause any major swings in balance or rankings.

But I do think one thing that it will do to the benefit of the league is it will even out your flex players. In full point PPR, I would definitely take a full PPR over standard. But the reason I love Halfpoint is because your flex players are much more even when it comes to wide receivers and running backs. In full point PPR, once you get past the elites,

and you get to kind of the players in the 20s and 30s and 40s in their respective positions, wide receivers just score more. And so in this one, it balances, the playing field allows more players to be able to be grabbed for your flex position. All right. From Instagram, Dan Dan Rolando has a question. He says, how likely do you think it is that Sony Michelle will be the next gilly in the fifth round, hashtag bin burned before?

I think it is less likely. I would say it was, you know, I would, I would say 20%. I would put it at 10%. Yeah, I mean, my worry with Sony Michelle, they invested heavily in him with that first round far more than they invested in Gilly. Gilly was never a super expensive contract. Far different players. Gilly was not brought in to be past catching and flexible. Yeah, I mean, they brought.

They brought Gillian from being a backup to Shady in Buffalo, and they saw something better than being a backup in him. But he wasn't a first round talent. You have a much more talented player in Sony Michelle. My only worry, and the reason I put 20% as the number of him just basically going the way of Mike Gillisly last year, which is to say riding the bench is fumbles.

Because that's a very, very important point. Sony Michelle had a major fumbling problem in college. And this is not the team, not the coaching staff that deals well with fumbles. It's funny because you ride the bench. You would think of that, you know, because that reality is 100% there. He was bad. He was, I think it was near the top five in the like per carry fumble type of situation in college. But why draft it? I know. Why draft a guy like that if that's such a big problem to you?

In the first round. Coaches always think they can coach it out of guys. And they can. I mean, that's the one thing. Yeah. I mean, that is the one thing that can be coached out of players a lot of the time is fumbles. All right. Polly's Sleepers in Indiana has a question. He says bonjour from Indiana, Jason. What? You can't bonjour from Indiana? That's in the U.S. But are you sure about that? I'm, you know, geography is not my strong suit.

You guys are great, and it inspires me to do my own podcast, and I have a YouTube channel as well. How do you guys stay competitive in your personal leagues, considering you're basically playing poker with your cards face up? Yeah. I'm working on my rankings right now, and everyone I play will have access. Yep. Oh, that was... Also, I love sharks, so I love the... Megalodon. Megalodon episode.

Megalodon coming in a couple months. Yeah. Several months, really. It's a megala great. Yeah. If you look back at the original correspondence, email correspondence between Mike and Andy when they were considering putting the show together. And we looked recently. This was like a couple months ago that we dug up these old emails in their biggest worry was what you're bringing up. They're like, oh, no, people are going to know our rankings. And then, you know, look, you just have to, you have to turn the tables and say, I'm.

I'm doing this more for other people than I am for myself and care more about your ranking accuracy and, you know, your projections and your stats and all of those things than you do about winning your own league. But then you get the real feather in the cap. When you say, I've put all my, imagine if you're playing poker, cards face up, and you win.

I mean, that's like an extra... That's a very good moment. Yeah. And so, you know, we've still won some championships since we've had all of our cards face up, and it feels good. It's not generally a good principle for anybody. Let's say I knew my one opponent in my league's strategy. And then I spend all of my time obsessing about beating that one person. That's not necessarily going to be the best way forward for you. That's kind of like, you know, the...

cornerback who gets so obsessed with fighting after the play, you know, he loses the team concept and you want to draft your team. Yeah. So, all right. John in Plymouth, Minnesota, Virgil Green don't get no love, he says. Are you guys ranking Virgil Green below Adam Shaheen, Germain, Gresham, and Dallas Goddair? Explain yourselves. Well, here's the thing. Antonio Gates? Yeah, I haven't ranked that way right now. If...

Antonio Gates is not signed, which, by the way, recent news says that Antonio Gates wants to play for no one but the Chargers. And so it's probably going to happen. And if it doesn't, he'll retire. If he doesn't, then Virgil Green, if he's alone there, we'll get an adjustment. Yeah. I mean, that's exactly what it is. I still expect Antonio Gates to be. The problem is, is I don't want to rank him that way now and then have you go draft him in a bunch of bestball leagues and then he's not relevant. Right.

Right? Yep. Facebook question from Connor, what if you hate everyone in your league and you're trying to coordinate a sort of hunger game style draft and you want to watch them fight each other to the death? Any tips for that? Hmm. Well, that would be a one-man league by the end, right? I mean.

Right. I mean, you'll win. Yeah, that's hashtag for Clint's title. Yeah, you know, my biggest tip is I would definitely travel to an island. I mean, that's got to be the first start of this. You can't do this on mainland. You can't willy-nilly. This isn't the purge. I mean, you can't. Yeah, otherwise they're going to be able to escape. You've got to go to an island. In other words, it's a hassle. Yeah, it's a big deal. Here's another option.

You go to footclanleagues.com, find a new league. If you don't like your league mates and just you can just take yourself gently out of the situation. All right. From Instagram, Colin says, would you rather start off your draft with Zeke and Devante Adams or Melvin Gordon and Julio? Well, this one is very easy for me because I have Melvin Gordon ranked ahead of Zeke and I have Julio ranked ahead of Adams. Therefore, I will go Gordon and Julio.

Yeah, it's not as easy for me. I have Zika ahead of Gordon, but Julio ahead of Adams. I expect really good things from Julio this year. I, you know, Julio, I think, is actually one of the better values in that first second round. So I'm going to take the Melbourne Gordon, Julio's side as well. Oh, we're best friends. Yeah. All right. You ready for some basketball, Jason? Let's give them some tips.

Bestball Bonanza brought to you by PlayDraft. If you want to play bestball, please play at draft.com slash ballers. I'm in the middle of a best ball draft right this moment. I just drafted Martavis Bryant very, very late. I think the fear of the... The fear of the suspension is making him undrafted. But if he, you know, you can get him with your last pick, basically. And then if he is not suspended, you've got a great pick there. So, Jason, you had a live basketball draft yesterday.

You did it on YouTube. Yes. You did it quite successfully. Thank you. Well done. What was the big tip that you wanted to bring up? Yeah, I wanted to bring up a big tip lesson learned from specifically from that draft. But before I do that, we had a lot of mailbag questions. Brooks said, hey, when we start the best ball bananas, can you please give a description of what best ball is because not everybody knows?

And there's been a lot of questions of what is best ball? First of all, it's a super duper fun game. It's basically what I used to always dream of when I would put all my time into the draft and then kind of depart once the season came long ago. I say you don't win the championship at your draft, but you do in best ball because it's the only thing you do. You draft the best team, a really deep team, 18 players. You draft a huge roster.