Bonus Episode! 10 Things to Remember for 2024 - Fantasy Football Podcast for 8/10

And that's why I'm in. I'm like, I'll draft James and Williams on the ninth. If I'm wrong, I don't really lose anything. Jamar Chase as a rookie in 2021. It's laughable at this point. The risk was baked in. He was being drafted in the seventh as the wide receiver 30. And that seems that seems so ridiculous that that couldn't have, that couldn't have been possible. That we were all so dumb. We let him go into the seventh. He had a lot of drops in preseason. He did. And he couldn't catch the ball. And yet he.

Just like James and Wayne. He was 81 for nearly 1,500 yards and 13 touchdown. Gino Smith takes over as the quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks. Russell Wilson's out. There's panic in the streets. D.K. Metcalfe, who was just the wide receiver 12, was being drafted in the back of the fourth. Tyler Lockett, who was the wide receiver 13 previously, plummets to the wide receiver 40 because it's impossible. These guys can't, there's no way to do it with Gino Smith.

They're both fantastic. Mike Evans this past year. The risk is, if it's baked into the ADP, you have very little to lose and you have so much to gain. It's a lot like the way the stock market moves when you're talking about the risk or the situation being baked in because in those situations exactly, people had played the season out already in their minds. Yeah. And then.

come up with the worst possible outcome for all of those players, and then that's exactly where you're drafting them. That's, you know, it looks nice now, but that's why Mike Evans was the strongest I've ever been convicted about a my guy ever, which I told you guys that in the studio. It was like, you said that on the show. And it was because he was so undervalued.

And everyone had anticipated a guarantee that this is how the season will play out with Baker Mayfield. There was just not a lot of risk to me in, you know, turning to a player like that. And those examples you brought up are great ones. And identifying those in draft season, you know, more of a challenge, you know, trying to find those players that. Because they're scary. Yeah, they already, they should be scared. And it feels.

When you're there and you're at their ADP, you're like, am I going to be the guy to draft this player that's fallen so far from where they were? Like, doesn't that mean they're old busted and I've got to be wiser? But you're right. Like, if the risk of them failing means they finish where you're drafting them. Right. Great. There's only upside. Number five. Number five. Draft.

Enigmatic backs. Say that again. Draft enigmatic backs. Is that one word? That's one word. It is now. Enigmatic backs. You want to draft enigmatic backs and what I mean by that. Trademark. Yeah. Pat. Go to that domain. Inigmatic backs. Indigmatic backfields are scary. The ones where you just don't know who's the guy. I don't know the situation there.

Yeah, so I just, I don't want to go in. Yeah, like I'll let someone else figure it out. Exactly. Someone else will figure out this. We're not even sure who the running back is. So I don't want to take the shot and then just burn the pick. But the thing is, is most of those backfields don't cost you a heavy pick. And there are always emerging assets from that type of backfield where you're not sure who it is. If you look at this last year, you had the Miami Dolphins. You had.

a new undersized rookie and Devon A. Chan coming in. And you had a super old veteran and Rahim Mostert. It's a good offense, but like I don't know, I don't know who the guy is. I don't, I'm just going to let someone else draft him. That's why they were drafted as the running back 42 and the running back 45. Turns out they were, they was okay because they finished as the running back 24 and the running back two. Even if they hadn't, like even if Rahim Moster had not finished as a running back two.

Of course, hindsight is so easy. But looking back, we all had kind of projected Miami would be a high-powered offense. And it's someone, a running back is going to score. It will not be the running back 40 something. Yeah, but you didn't know who it's going to be. So how would you draft them? Just take your shot. And maybe you're wrong. Like this next backfield.

I was wrong on this backfield, but I don't have any problem admitting that because I saw the shot for one of these enigmatic backfields. The Rams, Cam Acres and Kyron Williams. You had Dan Graziano on August 4th, write this quote. They look at Cam Acres and Kyron Williams as their top two backs, likely in that order. The Rams believe both.

can pass protect, but they like Williams a little more as a pass protector than they do Acres. So while Acres is likely the nominal starter, Williams could carve out a roll and be the guy they lean on in the run game if something were to happen to Acres. Something happens. Something happened. I liked Acres. He was the running back 21. That didn't work out. But Kyron, if you took him, which some people drafted him very late or most people picked him up off of waivers.

obviously we know what happened there. He was a sensational superstar. You've got these situations, and it's not always like the Kairn Williams and Rahim Moster number one back coming out, but the commanders last year, is it going to be Gibson? Is it going to be Brian Robinson? You know, they were drafted, Brian Robinson was drafted as the running back 36 because of that. It's like, you know, it's a muddy backfield. And you pretty much, because of the value of the workhorse,

the Christian McCaffreys and the Saquan Barclays, you're only looking for like that. And I think that's sometimes a mistake because there's only a few of them. But there's a lot of running backs you need. So it's okay to take part of a committee where you're not sure who's going to be the lead guy because it's probably a value in the draft and they will rise out of that. Brian Roberts have finished as a top 24 running back. Well, I think especially in the cases of Miami and Los Angeles, the extra layer there is that you have.

teams that you had tremendous confidence in the running game. You didn't know which running back it would be, but you knew that the Rams could run the football. You didn't know which running back it would be in Miami, but you knew that they were going to have an offense that could run the football. And so I think if you wanted to add an extra qualifier there, you could say like enigmatic backfields, you know, on teams that have a history of being successful or coaches that would be successful there. All right, we'll move on. Number four. Is this, it is my turn, right? It is.

If it's not, it is now. Well, look, I'll be quick. I've titled this one, The Little Things Kill. It's my favorite bush song. That is from a Bush song. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That is your favorite. It's just little things. Yeah. All right. And look, this is the 10 things to remember. This is something that I literally did halfway through this season. And the reason I'm bringing it up in part is we are going into season 10.

next year at the fantasy footballers and um you know i think that there's probably a few people that are a little bit like me in our league of record where ugly ugly smelly smelly what else you got guys what else too tall bad clothes very much too tall um smelly we're no you already said that one uh but really smelly

You started off real hot. Look, I had a couple of championships early in the League of Record, and if you were listening to the show for a long time, maybe. Maybe you started to take your league over like I thought I was. And about halfway through this year, look, I've been in the midst, I was in the midst of a pretty decent drought of winning championships in League of Record. I had had so much success. Me and Mike played each other in championship games, three straight years a long time ago. Things just felt easy for a while.

And then they didn't. You want to know why? Because we started giving them our information. Well, yeah, we started a podcast and told them all of our information. But the truth is that many of you, maybe you had success early on listening. But the competition does get better in your leagues. And I wasn't, honestly, I wasn't willing to accept that. I believe that if I just kept going on the exact same way, it would just all work out like it always had.

I had grown a little bit complacent, and I had to have a meeting about four or five games this year with myself. And it was literally... Did you schedule it? I did schedule it. It's in my Google calendar. Was there a mirror? A mirror? Incredible. So there was Zoom in a mirror. Right. Yeah. So look, I had the one-on-one meeting with myself, and I said, like, I can't keep doing the same thing I've always been doing. I have to pay attention.

to the little things if I want to get back over the hump. For me, that meant a little extra free agent prep every week, which look, on this show we try to help you with, a little bit more persistence on the trade offers or finding those players I think can be league winners. Sometimes it's not just about trading a bunch. Sometimes it's about doing the work to figure out who you need to trade for. Not activity that doesn't lead anywhere doesn't help you. Sometimes it's paying a little bit more attention to some of the dirty work that's not very fun.

Playoff schedules for players and future schedules for players. Some stuff is more fun in fantasy than others, but it all helps. Those little things help lead to victories, and they add up over time. And so I think a lot of us here, maybe we've had success in the past. Maybe you're like, man, I won a title, but it's been four, five, six years. What am I doing wrong? For me, it was the little things. It was a willingness to reevaluate a few small areas.

And it led to success this year. It's obviously very difficult to win in fantasy. So I think those things do add up the little things kill. Went back to the fundamentals. Yeah, really. Doing his push-ups grinding. That's right. It was the meeting, though. It was the 101. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So basically things to remember. Schedule something. Self meetings. Self meetings, yeah. Number three. Let's talk a little dynasty fantasy football here. We're going to call this one, know the thresholds. Hmm.

As in Dynasty, one of the harder things to make a decision on is young wide receivers who aren't immediately superstars. When do I know? When do I know that this, I drafted a lemon and I need to move on? When do I know I got to give somebody some patience here? Like Jameson Williams, do we need to give him patience to grow into the player that the Lions hoped for when they drafted him? Okay.

And so we talk about targets a lot on this show as it's an earned statistic. Because if a player is getting open, is building that trust with their quarterback, they're going to get a target. A route gives context to just the opportunity that the team is giving them. But players can be out there, MVS style, running routes on every single play. Cardio Kings. Getting like three targets a game. And...

You now see where MVS is. He is looking for a new job as they're saying, sir, you have not earned enough targets. We need to look elsewhere. And so we looked back over the last decade. These are at wide receivers drafted in the first three rounds because still draft capital is the king of signal to will a player actually be good or not. So here are the metrics. This is a little heavy in statistics, but bear with me. Through two years, on average.

A first round wide receiver averages about a 20% target per route run and a 1.68 yards per route run. Second round, wide receivers, their yards per route run at about 1.55 on average. And the third round wide receivers at 1.4. Now, these are simply benchmarks to help guide your decisions. It is not saying if a player is under it, they are 100% toast, but it's you may want to think about this because...

Honestly, through the last decade, the only player who has really resurrected himself from the grave was Devante Adams. That dude sucked. Devante Adams through two years. Remember how hard I was on him? Oh, we were. And I was like he'd never had a thousand yards season because he was at 997. Yeah. I mean, it was just, it wasn't even just that. It was through his first two years, it looked terrible for him. I believe it was year two that Jordie.

tore his ACL, like right at the beginning of the year. And it was, thank goodness they have Devante Adams. It's your time. And he did not come through. So it was, now this is never going to work out. And now Devante Adams over the last, however long has been one of the best wide receivers in the league. So we're going to take a look back of what we've seen now. This is two years ago because you're collecting the data. At the top of the class, Drake London, Oliva, Garrett Wilson. They're at the benchmarks. We're not worried about it.

Both Christian Watson and George Pickens are sitting above the threshold. They're volatile definitely. I don't know if we're going to see them turn into studs, but we're okay. Watson and Pickens. Yes, on Christian Watson. Here's now where it gets a little sketch here. We're calling this one, keep the light on because there could be some hope. So maybe if they're on your roster, you're just in a hold position. Jameson Williams.