10 Tips & Tricks to Win Your Fantasy Football League in 2022 - Fantasy Football Podcast for 8/12

Today's episode is a big one. We break down a little bit of news, but the important thing in top 10 tips and tricks for your fantasy football league, keeping it fresh, getting those new ideas, new ways to think. Make sure you subscribe to this channel. Leave us a comment on your tips and tricks for this fantasy football season. Enjoy the show. Foot Clan, the fantasy football season, it's upon us. Drafts are about to happen and hopefully. You're wise. And you have the ultimate draft kit, the number one tool to get you ready for those draft, sleepers, breakouts, bust values, all of our point projections. Lots more in the draft kit, including the UDK Plus, which has the draft analyzer. We will grade your team. We will tell you your strengths and weaknesses. We will help equip you to be strong and mighty in your leagues. And we're very excited to once again be partnering with St. Jude Children's Research Hospital this season.

as they work to help in childhood cancer and ensure families never receive a bill from St. Jude. One dollar of every UDK sold will go directly to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital to support its mission in finding cures and saving children. Check it all out at ultimate draft kit.com. The Fantasy Footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Welcome, man. Oh, my gosh. Yes. Yes. Wow. That's what it's like, Andy. I feel like I'm smoother. Oh, you are smoother. He was a little. He was a little growling. It was like a lawnmower. You're a little bit of country. I'm a lot of bit rock and roll. Is that what that way? That was the rock and roll intro. Yeah. I was not expecting that. That I can get behind. Welcome into the fantasy footballers.

Friday, August 12th. There's still a wait for the voice to return. So thank you for handling it, Mike. Yeah. APB, that's what I was going to say. There's an APB out for the voice. But I appreciate it. Mr. Wright. Top 10 tips and tricks on the show today. Jason Morris here. I'm very excited. This is always one of the big shows of the year. And it is also a very difficult show. At this point, yes. We have been doing this a long time, and we try our darnness to give you really actionable tips that are going to help you that aren't just regurgitations from every year prior. You know, there's so much stuff. You can go back and listen to these episodes every single year, and they hold up very well. We have a book. We do have a book. We have a book full of them.

That's right. I forgot that we have a book. You forgot that you're a bestselling author. That's right. We have 10 more for you today. And very excited to share them with you. The nice thing, Jason, is that while they do hold up year over year, fantasy football does evolve and things change. And so we adjust with the times. We're very hip, very, very hip. Yes. Yeah. At least two-thirds. Brooks, do you agree that we are very hip? Yeah, that's how you know you're very hip when you say it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can just hear it. Right. Established. Yeah, Al Borland in the building. How are you doing, Al? I'm great. It's up, Euclid. Oh, that's nice. Someone had coffee this morning. He's getting, you know, he's crushing a protein shake right now. Oh, is he growing down? Did you do some push-ups or something? You're getting swole? That's right. In, swole land.

And it's just a shake. It's not a protein shake. He didn't do any workout. He's just like, I want to you. It's ice cream. A morning ice cream shake for Al. Let's jump into the news. News and notes from around the league. This is number one podcast, sports podcast kind of material here at the top of the show. Oh, okay. Give me that sound effect again. My groin. Rashad Penny, groin injury, suffered in practice this week. They're calling it minor, and that's great. I mean, you want to hear that this isn't something to be concerned about. There's still a month before the season kicks off. However, this is a problem for two reasons. One is history. We have not seen Rashad Penny be able to stay healthy forever. And also, he dealt with an issue, you know,

A couple of weeks ago, he had a minor injury. Whenever you have this minor injury and you take some time off and you come back and you re-agravate something, it is very, very worrisome. And it's never more worrisome than when you draft a high-level replacement that is playing behind you. And I'm sure Ken Walker will start shooting up ADPs with this Rashad Penny groin injury if it keeps him out any length of time in the preseason. And Walker getting, you know, Pete Carroll, aka Peach Cobbler. He is one who likes to put out the hype train pieces really, you know, stand for his guys when it comes to the media. Having said that, but though, Ken Walker, he is getting a lot of praise from head coach. Carol, I think the last one was just, he was, you know, quote, surprised at how well-rounded Walker is. Just a nod to the past-catching ability of Walker of, like, that he didn't get to showcase.

in college seemed like he had the ability at the combine doing the drills. So, I mean, this is, I'm getting into Walker, man. Walker's a good pass catcher. And we shared this a little bit in the pre-NFL draft time. He does not have any college production of receiving. That wasn't how he was used. He's good at it. You go watch his high school film. He was absolutely electric. He didn't forget how to catch the ball. You're, you're. Digging into the archives of his high school film. When it's off season. Film grinder. Jason Moore. When it's off season, you have a lot more time on your hands. And that's the physical, like the film real. Oh, absolutely. You got to put them in the projector. Yeah. I mean, I got a couple on VHS. But most of them, you're right. We're the real. Eight millimeter. Yeah. Did you get a laser disc in there? Too fancy, Mike. Too fancy for his film work. Yeah. I mean, right now, Ken Walker is being drafted.

ahead of a shot Penny. Yeah. For the promise and the hopes and the dreams. And there was a time this offseason, I thought Penny was a great value. Yes, we all did. But now I'm shaking in my boots. All right, here we go. The Lions believe wholeheartedly in a one-two running back approach with DeAndre Swift and Jamal Williams. This is a quote from an ESPN article by Jeremy Fowler. And he also said this is not what fantasy managers want to hear. I think we just did the running back rankings episode. DeAndre Swift was not as high as he is for some people in our rankings because of concerns here. It's been a million years since the Detroit Lions running back has been, dare I say, trustworthy in fantasy, right? I mentioned Theoretic with Matthew Stafford. I think he hit the 80 reception mark one year or a couple of years, and that was fine. But it's hard to trust a Lions running back to him.

to be consistent and be a player that moves into that upper echelon week over week. But when is the last time the Lions had a head coach that could rep 225? Oh, good question, Mike. Never. Yeah, probably never. And it's ironic because Amir Abdullah making some news today as the third downback in Las Vegas. I knew it. Oh, gosh. It's your time to shine, Mike. Carryon Johnson is going to be signed any minute to one of these teams. Hey, at least my guy's on a team. But I mean, look, I'm not saying, like, DeAndre Swift has his entire future ahead of him to prove what he is and isn't. This is not a buried DeAndre Swift. He's going to be amazing. He's one of the best pass catchers in football. This is just saying, like, the equal amount of excitement for Amir Abdullah and Kerry on Johnson were there.

There was the equal amount of excitement for both players. I would say that's true, but the profile of D'Andre Swift to catch the ball. And, I mean, he's an injury risk for sure. What running back isn't. That being said, I don't worry about this Jamal Williams news. I never had D'Andre Swift getting 75% of the carries. Like, that's not the type of player that he is. And if you look at his splits with and without Jamal Williams, it's 0.2 points different. Yeah. When he was the running back 11 last year at the beginning of the year, through the first, or he was the running back 9 through the first 11 weeks, the vast majority of those games Jamal Williams played in. And this was the same coaching staff. This is a report that is saying what we already knew, but because it's said right now, we're like, what, Jamal Williams is going to be used? Like, yes, and that's fine. It's already baked into our projection. Yeah, absolutely. I think DeAndre Swift is an excellent draft pick in the second round.

which is also where Amir Abdullah and Karian Johnson were drafted. Second round running backs for Detroit. Swift actually has already done something, though. Absolutely. The Browns will consider acquiring Jimmy Garapola if Deshaun Watson's six game suspension is significantly increased. Which seems likely. Well, it seems like that is a strong possibility. And I'm curious, we're recording this Friday morning. We haven't heard anything. But the. The Browns did announce yesterday or the day before that Watson's going to start preseason game one. I don't know if this is a ploy by the Cleveland Browns to say NFL, let's go. Like we need to know what's going on with our team. We need to know who to prepare for week one so that hopefully we can get that suspension news. It's Friday, too. This is the NFL's favorite time of the week to do a dump when it comes to bad news. Well, as you say,

NFL should give two farts about whether or not they're fast enough for Cleveland. But I'm saying like if you put Watson on the field, it's in like on a televised game, like that's a little bit more shocking when you have all the things floating around him than just him at practice. All right. We did have some preseason football last night. Trailerks played into the fourth quarter. Robert Woods and Nick Westbrook Aquina rested with the starters. Fourth wide receiver to enter the game, one target. I have seen everything on Traylen Berks this off season. I've seen the extremes by way of pessimism. And then I have seen the defenders come mighty with swords and shields to say Traylen Berks is fine. And I got a text yesterday saying, oh, he's playing with the ones. And then it goes out there, obviously, and got rookie treatment last night.

The potential for Traylenberg's is still there is just a question for fantasy players. What draft pick do you spend on him? And then when do you think you can count on it? Yeah, I mean, you don't want to overreact to these news. You said the rookie treatment. He's a rookie. He's getting more reps. They're worried about his conditioning. Like play him through the game. That makes sense. He's not doing well. The news has been negative throughout the majority of news has been negative throughout, you know, from rookie mini camp through till last night. But you don't want to overreact to this. I mean, there's, Justin Jefferson wasn't a starter in the beginning. Remember, he was running behind. And then, and then it wasn't, you know, he wasn't even a starter week one and week two. I'm not calling him Justin Jefferson here. I'm saying that you don't, you don't want to overreact to this news. Here's what we know. We know he was the 18th pick in the NFL draft. We know they traded AJ Brown and that they desperately need him.

whether or not he could step to the plate or not, I'm trying to not overreact in either direction. I don't want to say, I don't want to ignore the negative news, but I think that when we take some of this and just take him off our boards and say, well, Berks is done. He's never going to be a thing. Like, he hasn't played a real snap of NFL football yet. I'm going to go with the historical data of these first round wide receivers thrust into a position where he's probably going to be starting very soon. As far as where I draft him,

He's going in like the top of the eighth right now. Yeah, that's that feels a little high for me in a redraft league because I don't think he gets off to a really strong start. So if I can get him in the double digit rounds and hold him for a while, that's that's more of the plan. All right. Any other news, Brooks, that, uh, you have your eyes on? Nope. All right. Let's get to it. Tips and tricks. All right. We are. kicking off our top 10 tips and tricks to help you in your league right now. Number 10. We call this map it out. Oh, map it out, huh? Make a map, okay? You are the map for your draft. Map on the map. Oh, yeah. Oh, don't you dare bring Dora the Explorer into this. For those of you that didn't have children. Oh, that's the worst. But that does drive the point. Map out.

That does drive the point home that you are the map. And I don't want you to forget this at your fantasy football drafts. So we did bring in a friend from Door of the Explorer. It's me. Oh no. Yes. We ruined the joke. Wow. You guys helped the joke. Do you realize how long that goes? If you didn't have children and were subjected to having to watch that stupid awful show, That is the worst character next to Cayu of all time. Why does he say just the same three words over that long? It's a map, Jason. Like how articulate do you expect a piece of paper to be? Okay, that's fair. That's a good counter. I just wanted it one time. I'm the map. We get it. Anyways. Dora yells everything already, right? Yeah, it's me, Dora. Let's come do things. Everyone screams on that show. So anyways. We would never do that. No, no, goodness. I was more of a Franklin guy.

So let's talk about this map. Here's what mapping it out means. This is something I personally do. This is something that every fantasy manager should do. You want to be resilient. You want to be able to know when things go certain directions. So you're at the top of the draft. You're at the back of the draft. And a player falls to you. What happens if you take a running back versus a wide receiver versus a tight end? What do you like later in the draft? So what I recommend doing, and I'm going to give you... My personal example of what I have done on, I've been drafting a lot on Underdog, so this is where that ADP is from. You need to do this for your platform. If you're playing on Sleeper, look at their ADP. If you're playing on ESPN, use their ADP. If Yahoo use theirs. But you just go round by round, pull up their ADP. This will take you maybe five, ten minutes at the most. Write the rounds down and then just round by round, write out per position, how many guys you like or love.

or hate or whatever. So here's mine. I don't really worry about the first two rounds. The first two rounds, I like all the wide receivers and running backs. There's some I like more than others. I'm not taking a quarterback or a tight end. In round three on Underdog, there are three running backs I like, seven wide receivers I like. In round four, there are three running backs. I like five wide receivers I like. So those are fairly even, but I know that I prefer the wide receivers currently at their ADP. in rounds three and four to the running backs by a slight margin. But then this was really, this revealed a lot to me after doing this exercise. After mapping it out, I found that in round five, there was zero running backs that I liked at ADP and four wide receivers I liked. In round six, only one running back I liked at ADP in round six, three wide receivers I liked. And in round seven, there were zero running backs I liked at ADP and four wide receivers.

So those three rounds, after I did this process, I looked, not only that, there's six quarterbacks I love in rounds five, six, and seven. So I know going into my draft that when I get to rounds five, six and seven, there is one running back I like, A.J. Dillon, six great quarterbacks and tons of wide receivers, 11 wide receivers. So if I end up wide receiver heavy in my first three rounds and I feel like I need to take running backs in this range later, I'm kind of screwing myself. Now, you might literally love the running backs in that round. You go and you look, you make the map, you're the map, and you might like them. You are the map. You are the map. You are the map. You're the map. And then it actually flipped for me, eight, nine, and ten, I actually had 11 running backs that I like at ADP in those rounds. I like some of these late round guys and not as many wide receivers. It changes from platform to platform.

Look at your ADP, just write this down before you go in the draft so that you know where to go at the end of your draft when you're at the beginning of your draft. It will make a massive change for you. I know it has for me and everybody that does this ends up with the roster they like much better at the end of their draft. You should consider tweeting your map. Sure. I will tweet. Just to show how you put it together. And it seems like this is in some ways a tilt protective map because... If things go a little different than you expect, you still have a plan, right? And this plan is pliable. It can move, but you know what's happening round by round. Fair enough. I love it. And we're done with the map thing, right? I will only hit that drop one more time this episode. Great. Number nine. All right, this one, I'm going to call Master of Trades life of a salesman. Okay. And it's going to be some general principles to apply to your trading life in your league.

One of the things that we have mentioned in the past that I want to reiterate here is that you want the best player coming back in a trade. One of my most successful trade techniques, I mean, it's not rocket science, but it's the two for one, three for one, overwhelm your trade partner with volume. I want the quality coming back. And part of the reason of that is that it is. not really a two for one or three for one trade for your team. You are trading for the opportunity to use your skills to acquire waiver wire pickups on the back half of that trade. So if you send three away and you get the best player coming back, congratulations. You now get to go to market. You get to go find players on the waiver wire that, you know, hopefully through just your ability and

Listening to the show. Listening to the show and doing the things that you know you're supposed to do as a good fantasy player, you may be able to find comparable players on the waiver wire. So step one is I love overwhelming my opponent, two for one, three for one deals. You get to put your skills to use. The other thing that we want to remind you about is you can trade for players or trade players away when their production is unsustainable. Players go out, they overperform. You know what the mean is, right? We talk about quarterback and their touchdown percentage. If somebody starts the year and they're, you know, they're on a Hall of Fame record-breaking pace for two or three weeks, that's an opportunity for you to cash in. And the reality is, is you aren't going to miss out if you do this correctly. If you get value coming back to you, the worst thing that can happen is it's a break-even. And if that player's unsustainable production softens.

you win that deal. When it comes to the salesman part of being a good trader, you know, you hear about meeting your opponent's needs. Sometimes you got to write the story for them. That's the salesman part. Sometimes you have to make the case to your opponent on why and what their story for their team is. And you have to be compelling and you have to be persistent and you have to be a salesman. One of the techniques that I take a lot of the time is helping to shape my opponent's opinions of my players. And I sometimes make an excuse for why I don't need them on my team anymore. That, you know, one of the ways I'll go, one of the different things I'll go to the well with is, you know what, I'd love to keep this guy. I've got too many of them on my team. Man, I'd love to keep this guy. I just got too many running backs.

You know, look, I'm kind of desperate right here. I don't want to do this trade, but I've got to fix this problem on my team. Maybe it fixes both our problems. Those are some of the kind of techniques that I would take in being a liar. Persuasive. I feel so hurt now, remembering back all these trades we've made. Hook, line, and sinker. Yeah, I mean, look, I have no choice to do this deal. It helps both of us. If it helps both of us, whatever, man. This is a big league. I'm backed into it. So there are ways to be persuasive. And, you know, that's the goal. Like, none of us are out there. I know you guys will say, maybe not the same thing that I'll say. I am not there to primarily meet the needs of my trade opponent. I'm there to meet my needs. We can pretend that the goal is to meet their needs too. It's not. I want to win the trade. That's what everybody out there wants to do. I love the moment when Jason is seething because he sees the trade come through and he's like, what?

What logical reason was there for this trade to happen? Well, that is a product of being persuasive in an argument or in a trade discussion and framing the narrative. And that's what you have to do to win on these deals and not just be neutral. So master of trades, life of a salesman. Number eight. I'd like to kick off my number eight tip here with a lyric from a great poet who once said, Because what you see you might not get. And we can bet. So don't you get souped yet. You're scheming on a thing. It's a mirage. I'm trying to tell you now. It's arbitrage. I may have changed the lyric in there. Oh, my goodness. That was quite the setup, Mike. Wow. Because I want to talk about arbitrage. It is a very hot buzzword in fantasy football right now. And for a good reason. In fantasy football, we look at it.

A little bit different than in the world of finance. But as we all know, financials, stocks, there are some parallels, quite a few parallels when it comes to fantasy football. And you can use some of those techniques. But what we are looking at in fantasy footballs, we're trying to capitalize on different prices in the market. Because in fantasy football drafts, there are players with similar production profiles and opportunities, but the ADP is just so vastly different. So, like, let's take a look at the wide receiver position, position, A.J. Brown, D.K. Metcalf, I mean, their story goes back all the way to college, same team, same draft, closely drafted together. They both got paid, but here's the thing. A.J. Brown is going in the early third, while, meanwhile, D.K. Metcalf, 21 picks later. Both players should be the number ones. They should see a similar target share.

Do they get similar touchdowns? I mean, these are exercises that you need to go through. And part of this tip for me, what I'm thinking about this is if I'm in multiple leagues and I'm so sure that A.J. Brown, like this is the year. A.J. Brown's going to have a great year. I think A.J. Brown will be fantastic. But what if things just go slightly wrong for A.J. Brown. Meanwhile, D.K. Metcalf, who we're all so sure. is going to have this season where he busts because of Gino Smith or Drew Locke. What if that goes just slightly better than I'm actually planning on? I need to be willing to shape my portfolio to keep the financial talk going. I need to be willing to shape it in a way where these guys are similar and there's a chance that. They go the way like the other direction? Yeah, like my projection for these players could go a different way. Looking at the tight end position, T.J. Hawkinson going in the middle of the sixth.

Cole Comet from the Chicago Bears is going in the 11th. These are very similar situations. Bad teams. Tight ends that profile to see a huge target share in their offense because there's not really established superstars on that team. Like you got Ammon Rae St. Brown for the Lions. You got Darnell Mooney for the Chicago Bears. Like really similar. And look at just what they did this past year. Joe Burrow versus Kirk Cousins, 67 picks apart. Pocket passers, outlier touchdown rates, superstar wide receivers. I know that the youth is on Joe Burroughs side, so that's what we're betting on those things. But it's fantasy football, man. Things...

Don't always go according to the plan. So be willing to get in that mentality of the arbitrage. So that's taking advantage of gaps between similar players. And viewing them not as player takes, but as player types. Yes. You say, I want to pass catching running back on a good offense. You know, so I want a big bodied red zone threat wide receiver and you look for the gaps there. Okay, makes sense. Let's take a quick break and we'll be back with the rest of the list. What a quick break it was. Back with number seven. Back already. Number seven. All right, this tip goes out to all of the fantasy football managers who are very good at fantasy football and have not gotten over the hump. Good, not great. They've never won that championship. If you ain't first, you're last. If you ain't first, you're last.

You know, what I'm talking about? That phrase is a trademark, not to use you outside permission to Ricky Bobby. Don't worry. I got Ricky Bobby's permission. Look, this was a big problem for me for a long time. A long time ago, I never, I was too safe. I never wanted to take the risky pick because I didn't want to end up out of the playoffs and, you know, dead last in my league. Shameful. Shameful. The reality was. I was always very, very good in these leagues, but never great. I wasn't one of those one or two juggernaut teams that no one wanted to go up against in the playoffs, who usually one of those teams ends up winning the championship. This changed, and I think it's one of the most important things that people need to realize is you need to be comfortable taking risk and volatility, aiming for high volatility and breakout players, not...