Fantasy Football Podcast 2017 - Mock Draft Episode! + Importance of SOS and Tiers

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We'll get a $75-sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com slash podcast. That's indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now, then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. For the second time in my life, I'm guilty of committing a crime. Being horrifically ill-prepared for my fantasy football draft.

Cause I doubt my leaguemates mind in my team finishing three and ten, herning the ridicule of not just my friends and family, but of every man, woman, and child I've ever encountered. But this season, I find I'm so excited I can barely assist still all the thought in my head. I think it's the excitement. Only a future hashtag foot clan champion can feel. A future champ at the start of a long journey.

whose conclusion is dispersing a wide range of insults upon my inmates. Things like you're one pathetic loser. Or you must be a major disappointment to your parents. Or my personal favorite, you suck. But face. You know who's going to be the toilet ball champion this year? Not me. Not me. To join me on this journey.

It's www. www. horticraftraftkit.com. I hope to see you there. To the fantasy footballers podcast. Coming to you from the fantasy jocks.com studios with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. There's a lot of dancing going on. It's not pretty, but it's dancing. Baby.

It's, man, we are almost there. Almost to the ultimate draft kit release. I am stoked. This is our last show without it. Welcome to the show. Welcome to the fantasy footballers. That was Jason Moore. Mike, the fantasy hitman Wright, is here. Bonjour, no. And I'm Andy Holloway. I'm here, too. Howdy? We are excited to be here. We're doing a mock draft live on the show today. One of the fan favorites.

A live mock draft. Today we're doing a standard mock drafting from the nine position and going to fly through here and give you a bird's eye view of the thought processes that we go through as we make draft picks and let you know a little bit about where players are going right now, according to their average draft position. I'm sure there will be some debate on who to select at various picks through the draft. No.

And we're going to have a great time. Yeah, of course there will be, because there's my opinion and then wrong opinions. And so if you go with mine, it'll be in good shape. All right. What else do we have going on today? Got a quick question. Let's jump into that. Garrett in Rockford says, hey, guys, I'm just wondering how much do I read into schedule strength for fantasy players. Do I read into schedule strength more or less in certain positions? So every year we see a strength of schedule report.

How much do you guys think about that when you are selecting players? Well, and we have a strength of schedule, of course, in the ultimate draft kit where we took a look at teams and the individual position. What did those positions score against a particular team? And then did a whole slew of things to took a look at this year's schedule, figuring out what you would consider an easy path, a hard path. And I...

I use it more to tie break or maybe when I get into those middle rounds. I don't allow a tough, a perceived tough strength of schedule scare me off of my early round picks. I'm not saying, well, you know, I don't have it in front of me. But let's say, oh, LaShawn McCoy, he's got a bad running schedule.

according to what teams give up last year. That's not going to scare me off of LaShawn McCoy. But if I get into the round six or so and guys do have a perceived at least early season schedule, I may lean to a different pick because I want these picks to hit early so I know if I have something or if I'm going to be able to trade a guy away.

Yeah, usually we tell people to not, you know, focus too much on strength of schedule. It's one of those things where year after year after year, and there's enough data to just back this up, that usually the teams you know were good against this position last year, there's just a lot of change year after year. And so when you look at using last year's data to project 2017, it's hard to actually have that be accurate. In fact, we didn't like...

a lot of those results from last year. So we changed the way that we weight them to actually be a little bit more indicative of who was really bad and who was, you know, really good and everything in between. So it's a little bit more weighted. But I am like you, Mike. I do look at the early season schedule more than the really when it's draft season. I don't look at the whole.

I'm not looking at playoffs. I don't even look at the playoff schedule, but I look at those first four weeks. And I would say the place I use it the most is when I'm drafting my defense. Because all I care about is basically week one and two. And that tight end is who's against Cleveland week one? Because maybe that's the tight end that I'll try and stream week one.

Let me give you an example of maybe a place that you would consider tie breaking, okay? First part of the season, and in the ultimate draft kit, we actually break down not just the full season strength of schedule rankings, but the early season, weeks one through four. Weeks one through four, Baltimore has the sixth easiest schedule against teams for running backs. Oh, okay. When you look at Tampa Bay, they have the 25th ranked.

I see where you're going here. Terrence West, Jaquiz Rogers. Maybe you're making an early season decision on would you rather have Terrence West for those first few weeks without Dixon or Jaquiz Rogers for the first few weeks without Doug Martin, based on strength of schedule there. Maybe you go with Terrence West. I love it. I love it. That's a perfect situation where I would maybe use that to de facto in. I love it. Sure. Yeah, we're going to get into the- You're so smart. Oh, thank you. Thank you. We're going to get into the mock draft here very shortly.

Two days left until the UDK, that's Ultimate DraftKit.com. Our Twitter handle is at the FFBallers if you want to follow us, all the latest news and information around the show. Everything we are releasing, lots of different stat nuggets and information that make the offseason a lot of fun for fantasy football players. The website is The Fantasy Footballers.com. One bit of news, I'm not going to break it up into an entire segment. But good news, guys. Matt Aziata has signed with Detroit.

That is good news. Oh, he's back. That's good news for Amir Abdullah. It's good news for Theo Riddick. And I dare say that's good news for Zag Zaner, because I think he can handle Matt Aziata. It's quite probable that the Dwayne Washington, Aziata, maybe even Zinner competition, they're not all making the roster with Riddick and Abdullah. So another camp body in Matt Aziata. And then I think that's really...

the only news that I wanted to get through, unless you guys have anything else you want to talk about? No, no, I'm ready. I'm ready for the mock draft. The fantasy footballers mock draft. As I said before, standard mock draft. Roster is composed of a quarterback, two running backs, two wide receivers, a tight end, a flex, and we're drafting from the ninth position. So I'm going to get a perspective from the back half of the first round snake draft. We're...

We're on the clock, boys. The draft has started. David Johnson, Lev Bell, Zechial Elliott, going one, two, three. The big running back, something that I expect to see a lot of this year and that I personally endorse. Antonio Brown, Julio Jones, Mike Evans, the next three off the board. I think the surprise there is that Evans went ahead of O'Dell Beckham Jr. McCoy went 107 and then O'Dell Beckham Jr. at 108 to put us on the clock. And maybe what we'd consider to be the

least exciting position thus far for all of these players off the board so far we consider the best of the best what are your thoughts of sitting here the roster is blank we need to fill a spot and you have a number of options here in the first round it's it's sad to see odal beckham junior drop you know to eight one pick before you you start to get that like oh maybe

Maybe I'll get that guy. No. That is the worst in a draft room. Never let the maybes come in. Never get your excitement up. Could he get here? You know, there's still obviously at the nine spot, the first round. There's so many great players available. You know, wide receivers. You got Jordy Nelson, AJ Green, and then running backs. You know, there's kind of that next tier. We talk about tiers a lot, a next tier of running backs there that are still available in Freeman, in.

Gordon, Gordon, Howard, DeMarco Murray. They're all kind of in that same tier. So based on that, one might be more inclined to, you know, we're at the nine spot. So it's a few picks till the next round. Do we want to take that gamble and not grab the running back, even though it's standard, and hope that one of that tier gets back to us? Well.

I'm very high in Jordy Nelson. Jordy Nelson is somebody that I'm willing to include in that upper echelon with Antonio Brown, Julio Jones, and Odae Beckham Jr. this year. I'm not willing to say he's too old or he can't. I mean, he was essentially, depending on scoring format, the number one wide receiver last year, despite a slower start coming off of the injury. So for me, I see Nelson as the last remaining super talent in the next tier, or I mean in the first tier.

I'm also very, very comfortable going running back here as I have Melvin Gordon, J. Ajai, very highly ranked. I like Freeman. So, Mike, where do you lean on this pick, knowing that we're going to pick again very shortly? So for me, I think I lean towards the running back in almost every single draft. If I'm in this back area, this is a, Jordan Nelson's my second pick, essentially, is what I'm looking to do because I'm with Andy that he's in.

my top tier of wide receivers despite the lack of respect, despite the fact that he always falls to the second round. So I would take the running back from this tier two group that I prefer. And in a standard format, for me, it's probably still Freeman, but I also really like to Marco Murray in this situation. It would be between those two guys for me, but Freeman is still.

the guy I prefer. I think Freeman is safe. He's had touch. He gets the goal line work. You know, you've got two years in a row. When the Falcons were high-powered, he was great. When they weren't high-powered, he was great. I like Devonta Freeman. He's great. I'm on board. I love Devante Freeman. I think he's going to score a ton this year. And we took him. Devante Freeman off the board in the first round at 109. Not surprising. A.J. Green goes right after. Then T. Y. Hilton. Jordan Howard. Oh, Hilton, huh?

And then Jordy Nelson at 201, Des Bryant, and then Melvin Gordon. Now, the aforementioned DeMarco Murray, still on the board for us here in the second round, as is J. Ajai and Michael Thomas. Michael Thomas is the last guy remaining in our kind of second tier of wide receivers. Where do you guys lean here? Because I have this, in a standard league especially, I'm tempted by DeMarco Murray on the table right here and the ability.