Fantasy Football Podcast 2016 - 10 Offseason Tips & Tricks

You don't need to do that if your league decides the rules, puts it on paper, and you just go, hey, look, look, look, there's the rule. There's the rule. It's not me. It's the rule. We decided earlier in the year. Yeah, that's really smart. Putting those things in the league you're in is very important. And that leads pretty much exactly to the next tip and trick, which is find the right league. If you're not in the right league,

Find it. I mean, fantasy football is only as fun as the league you're in. I've been in leagues that just stink. They're inactive. People drop out halfway through the year. Ridiculous rules. Ridiculous rules. Oh, my gosh. With the kicker only league is what it turned into. So all sorts of things where you've got to be in the right league with the right people. And now is the time where you start finding that. There's a number of ways you can do that. I'd say the best way to do it is,

With your buddies, with the people you know. Talk to the people near you who love football. You know, show them podcasts and tell them to listen. Because as much fun as it is when you think you can have that unfair advantage in your league, it actually stinks to be in a league where nobody knows what they're doing. And there's no competition. And there's none of that fun. Who likes the Yankees?

So that's one way. I know for listeners, you know, if you're a supporter of the show and you go to join the foot.com, you're one of the official foot clan members. We have our foot clan leagues that are going to be starting up as well. So there's going to be a forum there to find leagues. You can do it there, but you can do it any number of ways to find a league with good players. And I would add to that part of finding the right people is not...

boxing yourself into a league size because sometimes you've got seven really good friends that you know will be active and you so have an eight-man league yeah don't go i have to have a 12-man league so let's fill it with three people that aren't going to have any fun not going to participate not going to communicate because part of finding the right league is finding people you communicate with if you're not talking about the league outside of uh the draft day it's not going to be any fun and there are a lot of people out there that email us and say hey how do we get in leagues like the ones you talk about

Well, that's part of the way you do it. And so we're trying to facilitate that as well on the site. But find the right people and don't box yourself into a league size. Number five, you've got to get yourself connected. The writing's on the wall. I don't know. That's a little old. I apologize for that reference. It sounded good before it came a reference. So what I mean by that is get on Twitter, man.

That's your version of staying connected, right? That's the best version of staying connected. That's the best version. That's ESPN's version of staying connected. I am connected to so many different sources. This world we live in of being able to interact and one-on-one talk to people that would never ever be accessible to you before something like Twitter, it is incredible. You can follow...

beat reporters for certain teams. Get the inside information before it comes out. Your friends know about it. You can follow places like Roto World, us. I mean, like your favorite personalities in the fantasy industry, your sports industry, athletes. I mean, like I said, you can send a message out to your favorite athlete, and there's a chance they might respond to you. And like I've had a few of these moments where I've just...

There's no way this person is going to reply to me. And then they do, and you're in this conversation with someone who works for ESPN. And it was just, it's ridiculous what you can do with Twitter. So get on there, set it up, and get your follows ready now. And to add to that, you know, Mike mentioned some of the other websites, you know, getting...

your podcast set up in the offseason, staying connected to the news. It doesn't take a whole lot to do that. I agree with you. Twitter is the place to be. It's how you can stay connected to the breaking news. I mean, this is a bit of a departure. But I remember growing up. I mean, and when I wanted to know whether the Phoenix Suns had won that night, it was wake up in the morning, walk out in the front, get the paper, see? Get the paper, go to the table, open the paper up, and read about the game. It's just...

A totally different paradigm that my kids are growing up in than we did. And Twitter is adding to that because we had the ridiculous report the other day where Uncle Chaps broke some fake news on Twitter and then ESPN reported it immediately. Because that's where they're getting their news. If you want to quit this, you've got to get it to Twitter or at least different apps. We've talked about SportsMania's apps before. There's plenty of good apps, but grab a news source. And if you want to talk to me, get on Twitter.

There you go. So, all right, number six, watch the rookies, okay? Watch them. Use your eyeballs and watch them. And that's what I mean. When I say that, literally watch the rookies. There is so much that you can tell from watching the NFL rookies versus just listening to the hype or reading numbers in the combine. I remember a couple of perfect examples last year. Mike...

and Jason could not stop talking about the way David Johnson looked when he played at Northern Iowa on tape. I remember a few years ago when Chris Johnson was drafted, you could watch the tape about Chris Johnson, even though he wasn't the number one pick in the draft. You watched the tape and you said, wow, that guy is going to make an impact. And so it's more adding to the equation of when you evaluate rookies. You don't have to be.

an expert scout on you know for an NFL team to watch a player you all watch football every week you can watch some of these rookies and compare them with your eyeballs and so I think that's a really good way dynasty league owners people who are looking where do I position these guys in the draft you know there's a part of it it's where they go and what team they're on but part of it is just being able to trust your eyes a little bit yeah and an easy way to do that is you know you take

two or three of the same position, and you just watch like a highlight film back to back to back in that, because then you can literally compare, you know, it's hard to compare college to the NFL sometimes, but when you look in college and you compare one guy's film to another guy's film, you can kind of get an easy tell on some of that stuff. So that is great news for dynasty people, and that brings us to the next tip. Number seven, opportunistic trading.

I like the sound of that. For dynasty leagues, for keeper leagues, any league where now is open rain to trade, this is a great time to take advantage of trades where you're a little bit. You're a little bit more in the know and you can make a trade. I'll give you a perfect example. Right now, if I'm in a dynasty league and I've got Jeremy Langford, I am probably looking to move him because his value is built in.

He is the number one running back. Matt Forte is gone, and a lot of people are saying this is a young guy who's got years ahead of him as the lead back. But we know that some of the news. They made some offers. They offered for CJ Anderson. Exactly. They are not content there to stay put. So that's a situation where I'd like to trade Jeremy Langford before the NFL draft.

Not afterwards when they draft another running back and you go, uh-oh. And here's the rule with dynasty drafting. If you can trade a guy with...

his full potential built into the value of the trade, then it doesn't even matter if it pans out, right? Like, let's say you trade Thomas Rawls because someone believes he's going to be a number one, an RB1. And he ends up one. And he ends up as an RB1. Who cares? You get the value. Trade guys who have the built-in value and go get some, you know, middle-aged vets, not the rookies, not the old guys, who are great and you know they're great.

Do those type of trades in the offseason, and you will help your dynasty teams greatly. Yeah, and I'll add to that, that a good dynasty strategy that I take into it is the idea of not overvaluing the unknown for the known. Yes. Yeah, I agree with that. Don't overvalue the unknown because the known seems boring to you. You have to have a balance in every team. You have to have some lottery tickets. You have to have some opportunities, but don't...

overvalue the unknown for the known. It just doesn't pan out. Perfect example a couple weeks ago. We had the listener write in, you know, Todd Gurley versus Ezekiel Elliott. Well, Todd Gurley has answered the unknown with, oh, we now know he's going to be great. Well, Zekeyele, we expect that he's going to be good, but it's still unknown. So much, so much unknown about Ezekiel where he lands, those type of things. Could be great, but what's great? Is it Todd Gurley? You know what's great? Number eight. Oh, listen to your league mates.

Also, I call this league scouting. Nice. Because this is what... You know what you can do in your leagues? You can go back to previous years on the history. You search that little draft report or draft results. How did your teammates draft? This is a huge strategic advantage if you know how somebody is going to draft. Do you see, you look, oh, this guy is in front of me. He loves quarterbacks early, so I know that...

that I can pull the trigger on somebody here because he's going to end up taking a quarterback on the way back. And things like that can really help you if you can see some tendencies of how players in your league are formatting or formatting their draft strategy. Yeah, and you don't always have to be super granular because some people might say, well, I don't want to dig into every single. Look at league trends.

Your league tends to draft quarterbacks at this place. Your league tends to take all of your hometown players in the first three rounds. And even less granular than that, right? Like you're on Facebook with your friends who are in the league. Just when they post something about a player that they like or hate, just remember it. Put that to memory and be like, oh, okay, this guy really, really thinks, you know, nothing of the Chargers next year. Or, oh, this guy loves.

loves the chargers, he's expecting a big year for them. Just put that in your little brain nugget, you know. You have a little brain nugget. We have brains. Fortune Castle. Some of Fortune Castle? In the brain nugget. Oh, okay. This explains so much. Yeah, I know how I won the championship. Dang it. Oh. Sometimes people get lucky. All right. Broken clock is right. Look, guys, when I say foolish things, which I try to do at least every episode.

You need to take it with this next tip, number nine. Oh, transitions. A grain of salt. Okay, take things with a grain of salt. Look, this is the off season. In the off season, there is so much ridiculous news, especially, I mean, if we're talking about out of the coach's mouth.

The coaches are ridiculous. You cannot trust them. They pretty much usually are going to say all of the best things about their players. This guy's going to be so great. I mean, remember the news about Marcus Wheaton last year from Big Ben, Rufflesberger. I mean, they're just all of these things that drum people up.

Take everything you hear with a grain of salt. And not just the positive stuff. Sometimes the negative stuff as well can be motivation for the player and it'd be like, oh, we're going to bring a guy in and, you know, they're going to have to compete. Maybe that's something they're saying. So you pay attention to this news, but you cannot take it, you know, as canon. You can't say, this coach said blank. So blank equals.

You know. That's another way of saying don't overreact necessarily. Yeah. You take it with a grain of salt. You filter it through all your other information, all the things that you've set up around you to say, okay, you know, this guy had one bad day of OTAs and the coach was down on him. He's off my draft board. Yeah. Take things with a grain of salt in the off season. All right. Number 10. Look, pride comes before the fall. And when we come out and you come out and you have an opinion about a player.

Very early in the offseason, sometimes it's hard to the best of us to not stay with that player in your mind forever and just you've planted your flag, you've posted in your league forum about how much you like this guy. Latavius. Yeah, Latavius Murray. Hey, look, last year for a while, I'll say it embarrassingly, Colin Kaepernick was somebody that I was pretty high on early in the season. That changed in my rankings over the course of the off season. I wanted.