10 Tips & Tricks to Win Your Fantasy Football League in 2021 - Fantasy Football Podcast for 8/18

Tips and Tricks. Top 10 tips and tricks on today's episode. This, I believe, is our seventh time doing this episode. That's a lot of tips and a lot of tricks. We always try to bring something new to the equation. Sometimes it's things we've recently learned. Sometimes it's deep dives into stats and analytics that we've, you know, spent the summer looking at and something jumped out. But we're counting it down, 10 to 1.

And Jason's going to kick it off. Number 10. Calling this one, sophomore slump or sophomore bump, you decide. Look, there's a lot of data behind what I'm about to say. We, on this team, we have a Ph.D. in data science.

From Harvard. To be clear, that's not any of us. That is not, no, we're not nearly that smart. Shout out to Matt DeSorbo. We have the man, the myth, the legend, the Borgogan himself, compiling it all together. And tomorrow, all this data, we are going to be releasing an article at the fantasy footballers.com with all of that. But for now. Did you really just try and take, like, sneak credit that we, you're like, we have a PhD?

Well, I organized this research together and asked for what to do. So I'm definitely taking part of the credit here. And I would say when he gets the- Brooks is openly laughing. When he gets the PhD- From behind the screen right now. Are you seriously saying that I don't participate in that doctorate? Like that I don't, I can't be called doctor when he graduates? You could be called like, dough. I accept.

But wait, there's that D. Oh, no, that's the spelling is a problem. Okay, well, Dr. Doe. You're a baker and he's a doctor. Dr. Doe over here. It will be releasing an article. I really hope everyone goes and reads it. There's a ton of data. But here's the too long didn't read synopsis.

We all are trying to find the next big fantasy start. The glory isn't calling your shot before they break out. And in the past, it's always been, you know, the year three wide receiver. That's when you wait. And that's when, you know, the studs happen. But behind the scenes, the work looking at second year players and when they break out for fantasy has led us to really incredible conclusions. True shortcuts for fantasy football. A genuine edge in your drafts.

We looked at every single rookie wide receiver over the last decade, 574 of them. And then their sophomore wide receiver ADP heading into year two, the hit rate of these players is staggering. Of all the wide receivers with an ADP, rounds four through eight, and ADP matters here. This is what the entire fantasy community is thinking about, guys. What rounds? Rounds four through eight. All second. They're being drafted between the fourth and the eighth round. And their second year wide receiver.

Every single one of them beat their rookie fantasy points per game, all of them. Now, maybe that's not good enough because they could get better than their rookie season and still not be great. 13 of the 18, 72% beat their ADP, meaning if they were drafted as wide receiver 16, they were better than that. If they were drafted as wide receiver 20, they were better than that. Three of them were injured.

Ridley Cup and Martavis Bryant. So factoring in, okay, we lost due to injury. Those players were great. That's an 86% hit rate of outperforming your ADP. And the only two whiffs were Corey Davis, it was a major disappointment. And Hollywood Brown, a major disappointment to me. You know, I love the dude. But, you know, the last six weeks of last year, he was the wide receiver 11. So he's not a bum. It just didn't work out in that offense. But here are examples so that you can, well, what if I draft these guys? What could I get?

2015, you remember Alan Robinson's monster 1,400-yard season? Sure do. Yeah, he was a second-year wide receiver. Tyree Kill finishing his wide receiver four in his second year. In 2018, Juju went absolutely bananas. You had Calvin Ridley and DJ Moore two years ago. Last year, A.J. Brown, D.K. Metcalf, when these players are in those rounds in the second year, they hit. Right. So, and by the time they come to year three,

The discount, the value, it's gone. They're just up in rounds two and three. So this year, C.D. Lamb, Brandon Ayuk, T. Higgins, Chase Claypool, Jerry, Judy, Leviska, Chanel. These are players. Are they all going in rounds four through eight? I believe ADP-wise, they are in rounds four through eight. Schenol probably isn't. He is not. He might, I mean, it depends on the platform you're in, but he's just been rising more and more. He's obviously at the back end of that.

And really, truly, when we looked at the data, this goes before the fourth round and a little bit after the eighth round as well, as far as hit rate. We just wanted to make sure, obviously, if you're being drafted in the second round as the wide receiver six, you pretty much have nowhere to go but down. And if you're being drafted in the double-digit rounds, then that's just a shot in the dark. So take...

A look at second year players. This data also applies pretty significantly to running backs as well. Tight ends are still year three. Draft them with confidence. Second year rounds four through eight. Yes, sir. All right. So Iuke Higgins, Claypool, Judy. And I'm looking it up right now. In PPR on Sleeper, Viska is just sneaking in. Okay, in full PPR. I can see that. All right, Mike, you're up. Number nine. So this is a.

specifically a in-your-draft-based tip. And I'm calling this one, bowl the weeds. All right. And so number one, you got to move away from the top 200 list. You got to move into a tier-based drafting system. That's what we have always talked about on this show. That's what I had moved to before the podcast and had tremendous success. And if you're...

We know we're getting some of the casual players in here. So we'll just quickly go over a tier-based system. That is when you have players ranked, kind of think of like a bucket. And that's because they are projected very similar. Similarly. There we go. Similar. It's pronouncing words. We got it in there. Almost like these players are a bit replaceable with each other. They're going to, you know, score right around the same range.

And that helps you not freak out and just look at it. Oh, well, this player is ranked 25. And this player is ranked 63 in reality for their position. They might actually be very, very close. And this helps you know when I need to draft a wide receiver because the bucket is almost empty. And I know that the running back tier over here, this tier four, it's still full of guys. So I can just leave that alone.

But before doing the podcast, how I would organize my players in tiers, I would find my trusted source. I hope for you, that is the fantasy footballers. You picked up your ultimate draft kit. We already have tiers available for you. But part of the UDK is you can download, grab a CSV of our tiers, and then go in there and make your own adjustments. Like this is your team. Don't let us try and finger wag and boss you around.

I would go in and I would legit, just delete players. I would look at someone else's tears and I'd go, I know for sure I'm not going to draft that player. And I would weed out these guys who weren't even targets of mine. And it helped me to not be overwhelmed when I'm inside of the draft. I'm not all the sudden, when you're on the clock, feeling that tug of that string of, well,

They said this. They said they've got this guy ranked so high, so I got, no, weed them out. Have your tiers ready to go. And players that you're not interested in drafting, your process, your decision making has said, no, I disagree with the analysis and the ranking of this player. Just get them out of there. Not my guy, not my problem. Don't even worry about it. It will help, I'm telling you, your draft plan and your prep, you will feel so much more prepared.

If you go in and have those guys out of there and just ready to go. And we always talk about, yes, everyone has, everyone is valuable at the right ADP. But I'm telling you when I just don't even, when I've not worried about that, I've not been overwhelmed by the amount, sheer amount of players I can draft. And I just have the players that I'm targeting in my tiers. I dominate my drafts. That's good advice. Pull the weeds. Yes. Moving on.

Number eight. All right. My tip right here, we're calling it age is but a number, something I'm telling myself as the birthdays continue to rise. This is really advice specific to dynasty and keeper leagues related to the overemphasis of age. Because I believe that if you over-emphasize age,

You have the potential to submarine championship seasons. We've been parts of dynasty leagues for 10 plus years. We have seen the types of rosters constructed in the preseason that look like they should be printed and framed and hung on a wall, chiseled into Hall of Fame plaques, and then they fall apart due to sometimes the potential of a roster overloaded with young players.

not being reached. Juggernaut-looking teams becoming have-nots when players don't mature. So here's the headline, and then I'll give you some numbers behind it. Oftentimes, I believe it is more likely that an established player that can provide you additional years of proven value is better than the unproven potential of a player.

when you construct your team. And let me show you a little bit of what I'm talking about. We have a really good article up on the site. Marvin wrote it. It's the Dynasty Life Cycle series. And he looked at production of players over time. And I told him, I said, let's look at this data and let's see how players perform past the perceived peak age. Everybody constructing a Dynasty League, they want to build that.

super team that's somehow going to stand the test of time and run six, seven, eight years and look, it just doesn't work that way. The NFL is a difficult game to maintain value in and maintain peak production. If you look at the peak age, which we show this actually in the draft analyzer, we show the peak age, we give you a breakdown of your team.

So let's look at the quarterback position. And there's some debate on what peak age at quarterback is. 28, 29 years old. This is probably the least important position to bring this point up. But if it's 28, 81% of top 12 quarterback seasons came from players past that peak age. If it's the running back position, 64% of top 24 running back seasons were past the peak age of 24. 42% of top 24 wide receiver seasons.

were past the peak age of 27. And the wide receiver position is one that we pay close attention to because we know that drop-off is coming. You still get almost half the top 24 seasons coming after the peak age. Same with the tight-in position. 40% of tight-in one seasons were past the age of 27. If you think about the life cycle of your Dynasty League, last year I made a trade, a trade for a player that nobody...

You did. Nobody would ever consider trading foreign and dynasty league. Tom Brady at 43 years old. I got value for Tom Brady, won the championship. And now you have seven more years of Tom Brady. Yeah. But even that might be true. How much of that percentage is just Tom Brady? Well, given I haven't traded for a 43 year old before. But the point is, I'm going to get one more year out of Tom Brady. If I get a year and a half out of Tom Brady, you think about how long you've been playing in your dynasty league.

Is it six years? That's a third of the time that I've had a team where I'm getting actual value from a player over 40. Now, I'm not saying you load up on age. That's not the advice. The advice is you will win championships by taking players that are almost always on a discount because of the perceived decline. And you can win leagues that way. So age is just a number. Balance is the key. I think we've all said that before in Dynasty leagues.

And I think you can construct a championship roster by considering that fact. Is that why you love Age A. Green so much? Yeah. Every year, that name means even more. Do I have no, I have no negative drops over here. We can go here. Thank you. We can go here. Yeah. We can go here. Number two. Let's just ask the audience, though.