Fantasy Football Podcast 2016 - 10 Tips and Tricks to Win Your Fantasy Football League

That gives you a good starting place of the people who are giving you good enough. That's a great tip for anybody not currently on Twitter. Because you get on Twitter and you go, okay, no, I don't know who to follow to get that info. If you look at our profiles almost, I know for me, I don't really use it as a personal resource. I use this as a fantasy football resource. So if you go look at the people that I follow, you can pretty much just click every single one of them and you'll have pretty much what my feed is on all the people that I follow are exclusively fantasy football.

I would also add that, you know, now that we're in the pre-draft stage, there are tools and resources out there that help equip you for your draft. We talk about the ultimate draft gifts. You've also got fancy draftwizard.com. If you want to mock draft instantly against different average draft position lists against experts, there are tools and resources on the information superhighway that you can utilize to be better in your league. And you know what?

It's like anything, right? Like elite athletes. Yeah, because that's what fantasy football players are. It's identical to an elite. I know where you're going. I've been watching the Olympics a lot. But it's one or two small things you do. You don't have to be us, eight to ten hours a day in fantasy football. If you do one or two things to improve your information flow, you will beat most of your league.

Because you will get there first. You will have the opportunity. You will be like me many years ago when I quickly signed Kurt Warner moments before Jason could sign him. Oh, that was the worst. In the off season. So number five, stay connected is really the message there. Number four. All right. Namaste. Deep breaths. Take deep breaths. Number four is, ah, all right.

Now that you've overloaded your brain with all the information in the world and you've drafted your team, the season has begun. Here's my message to you. Take a deep breath and don't freak out. Don't panic. Don't tilt when your paper team doesn't look as good during week one. And what this comes down to is a lot of constructive advice. Don't sell a player that you drafted at 25% of his value on week one.

Don't buy a player who looks really good on week one at 175% of his value. Talking to you, Kevin Ogletree. Yeah, Kevin Ogletree from a couple of years ago. Or look, even Carlos Hyde last year. Carlos Hyde had an incredible week one. Eddie Lacey had a really bad beginning of the year. Different players.

On week one, they blow up and they kind of, you know, I think because of the mental investment of the month before, all the preseason, all the hype, all the things that go into looking at your team, I'm going to be great. I'm going to be amazing. When you don't get that performance, it's deflating. Now, Jason, you're a great example of this. Yeah, this last year was absurd.

Just so everybody knows again and again and again. All right. I won the championship this last year in our League of Record. However, week one going into the year, let me tell you some of the guys who were, I mean, at the end of week one, oh man, they sucked. And everybody thought if I drafted this guy, I made a huge mistake. Alan Robinson sucked. Bad week one. Lamar Miller sucked.

Sammy Watkins got a nice zero for you. I mean, my whole team, even Gus Kowski, and I think he scored four points. My team scored nothing in week one, and it was like, oh, great, all of the guys I drafted stink. You want to know what I didn't do?

I didn't trade those guys. I ended keep... You had those guys at the end of the year. I had those guys at the end of the year. They helped me win the championship. I took a breath and I said, you know, I didn't draft them for week one. I drafted them for the season. This will be a tip I get to later, but you do not win the championship on drafting. So that's all saying. And I guess the black hat side effect sub-tip of deep breaths is take advantage of the people who do. Oh, yes. If they're freaking out...

And you can buy it 25% of the value on week one. Just do it. There is definitely people in leagues that I play in where I know, I know for sure. If a player on that guy's team has a bad week, I am going to trade for that guy right then. Because you know the personality of that player, that owner. Oh, they're just like they hate their guys now. And if they had a good week, do you have no chance of getting them? Forget about it. Yeah, yeah. So take deep breath. Don't panic. Forget about it. You know, stay.

Stay calm. You'll be okay. Number three. Number three, we're talking about going deep. Going deep. And this is my favorite because when someone asked me, hey, what is your number one piece of advice for a new player? And I said, girl beard. Well, okay, so this is my number two piece of advice for fantasy football players. You can wait on.

quarterback. Let me give you some, some names here. We'll see if you can. Hold on, hold on a public opinion. I want to give you some names. And we'll see if we can figure out what is the common thread with these players. Kellyn Moore, Brandon Weeden, Johnny Football, Matt Castle, Gino Smith, and E.J. Manuel. Do you know, do you know what all those players did? Yeah, they all work at Walmart. They all stink. They all put up a top 12 quarterback week. Come on. Because you can get quarterback production.

Nearly anywhere. You can get it out of the dumpster. You can get it out of the attic because it is a passing league and all the ships have risen on this water. They're all throwing a ton with high volume because that's what the league has turned into. 40 players, 40 quarterbacks last season put up a quarterback one week, at least one. Two years ago, I believe the number was 44. This is not...

a fluke. This is a trend because that's the way that the league is going. You can take your quarterback extremely late because the replacement value of the points is there. If you're paying up a fourth round pick for Aaron Rogers, he better give you a season for the ages. And look, outliers certainly happen, like the Cam Newton and the Peyton Manning. Those things happen. But generally speaking, all the quarterbacks you get late.

will help you win because the rest of your team will be so stacked. You play one quarterback a week. Yeah, Cam Newton was on my roster last year when I won the championship. He helped me. You want to know where I got Cam Newton on the waiver wire? Exactly. He was not the guy that you had to spend huge capital on. Neither was Carson Palmer, Andy Dalton, Derek Carr, these were all late round or undrafted. And now if you want Cam.

You're spending way too much draft capital for him, and that's assuming he's going to replicate what he did last year, or any quarterback for that matter, who is an upper echelon guy. When you sink that kind of first, second, third round pick into them, you are taking away a stud at a position that you need multiple guys at. You only need to find one quarterback a week. Now, this advice does not...

is not always the same in a two-quarterback league. It's not at all. Yeah. But in a one quarterback league, Mike, I think this is the most important advice to take, you know, a player from fun, average, casual, new, to, oh, I've got one tip that if I do this and draft a valuable quarterback late, you know, you still get someone good like a Philip Rivers, Carson Palmer. Eli Manning. Eli Manning, those guys, you know, in the eighth, ninth, tenth round.

your team will be better statistically. You're going to put up more points. And I think because we're focused on explaining this, which we talk about it a lot on the show, the disclaimer is important, which is just because you wait on a quarterback does not mean you will be streaming a quarterback. Good point. In the sense that you will be starting a different one every week. It simply means you are trying to find a great value at quarterback because you only play one.

And there's only 10 to 12 teams in your league. And so that means a third of the quarterbacks that play every single week in football are starting for your teams in your fantasy league. So you have the ability to pick and choose a ton of value late in the draft. And to piggyback on that, you have the safety net that is streaming. Sure. Look, every week, we are going to give you three guys that are on your waiver wire in a high percentage, or high percentage available.

in leagues around there. And, you know, a bonus for you, if you're in a casual league and you've never done this, once the league figures out what you're doing, they're going to freak out. And they're going to be like, make fun of you. You got to get a quarterback, man. And it's, it's a very fun process to watch as you remain completely calm knowing that you could, you're like, I'm just going to draft James Winston in the 13th round and watch these hooligans over here. They might draft two. Burn their quarterbacks before you draft. And you know what? Even if that happens?

Don't freak out because you're still fine. Yes, you are. All right. So that is number three. That is going deep. We're moving on. Number two. Number two is, of course, the grind of the champion. It's like the mind of the champion. The grind of the champion. So, of course, I will go ahead and share this tip. Here's, I've said this so many times in my life. I couldn't count it if I had a nickel.

Oh, is the next line I'm a first time champion in our league of record? The next line is you don't win your championship at the draft. You set your...

Foundation. Yes, you do. The draft is very, very important. I think, you know, if you go back seven, eight years, you did win the championship at the draft, right? Because there weren't that many transactions going on. The waiver wire wasn't used as much. Trades weren't, you know, you had. Rosters were smaller. Yeah. And so now, now you've got more people with more resources. You know, the information super highway tip is out there. But that's going to be big. Internet. Here's the most important part of, on the fantasy footballers, we want.

hashtag foot clan titles we want to entertain you we want to have fun through the season we want to do those things but we want you guys to win championships and if we want that we know that you can't just you know put in a little bit of work right before your draft get the get the ultimate draft kit get whatever sign up for twitter look at the information and then you you do all this work and then you draft and maybe you ended up with a baller team you you did a great job sit back in your chair and you just

Yeah, and then you say, my job is done. My job is done. Yeah, I'm done. You can't do that. You have to. You're going to win a championship more on the waiver wire than in the draft, I think. More on your starting and sitting decisions than in your drafting decisions. Because when you draft the guy, maybe you didn't draft the perfect guy here, but you got someone else, right? I mean, you've got value there.

It's who you pick up and who you start. And so my advice to everyone listening, if you are the type of person as I used to be where you put in all that work, you're listening to this podcast right now because you're preparing for your draft. Which is what you have to do. That's great. Congratulations on finding such a great podcast. Come on. I know. Sorry. That's my role here.

But you need to keep doing whatever you do. If it's Twitter, if it's this podcast, if it's, you know, if you got a product, get an in-season product, get something that's going to help you week after week, make good decisions, and be up to date on the news, pick up good guys, start the right guys, all of those type of things. You need to do that from week one through 16, not just in preseason. Yeah, and you know what?

The grind of the champion ends with a trophy. Yeah. And a ring and a belt. All right. And banners. And braggards. Yeah. All right. We're going to move on. Here we go. Number one. All right. Number one. Look, we talk about streaming quarterbacks. We talk about all these strategic tips. Number one is this. More than a game. More than a title.

Fantasy football is also about the traditions that you build in your league. That's what addicts us to fantasy football. It is not just Excel spreadsheets. In fact, I would argue it's not that at all. It is how engaging the game is when you have players in the NFL and you're competing with your league mates in ridiculous ways. That's what we do on the show all the time. In fact, this past week...