Fantasy Football - 10 Tips & Tricks to Win Your League + MEGALABOWL! - Podcast for 8/19

and you're probably going to cough up 12 to 15 stars due to injury. So not surprisingly, you need depth. That is the answer to the question. So maybe we don't always realize it and you try to thread the needle. Maybe you can get really lucky. Some of the best NFL teams are the healthiest teams at the end of the year. That's nice. But what strategy do you apply per position and how should you think about that? So briefly, I just want to talk about running back position when it comes to depth.

injuries transfer value for that team very predictably in the sense that the backup for the team or the committee back generally steps into that role. So you know, I mean, we've named a bunch of guys this offseason Blake Corum, Tank Bigsby, you know that there are top tier backups and committee situations that are valuable to target. Menongai is one of them. Kenny Gainwell is one of them. These are draft day targets that you can add knowing that they're going to have a direct

predictable value if the starter goes down. On the other hand, top tier wide receivers, if they go down, the targets on that team tend to scatter around. Not very many teams are the Pickens, C.D. Lam situation. So what that means for wide receivers or what this tip kind of alludes to is that it's much tougher to predict or pre-draft the players that are going to benefit from injury, even though you know injuries are going to happen at the wide receiver position. So the way I like to think about it is you can get predictable.

value transfer with depth running back selections. But the waiver wire is really going to be the place that you win when it comes to finding a valuable wide receiver. And this is why I like to take swings later on high upside guys at the beginning that may be beneficial to your team. And you can see right away, depth is not fully solved at the draft. That's the point is you can draft a bunch of really good players, but you're going to deal with these injuries. You're going to deal with wide receivers.

And those are going to get solved on the waiver wire more than they'll get solved by drafting the next man up type of thing at wide receivers. So the math is tough. The math I don't like. I don't like, I mean, we don't like it right now in preseason, the amount of injuries and things that the unpredictable is going to happen. It is inevitable. Yeah, it sucks. I do like the idea, just the mathematical reality that stashing more running backs at the end of your bench.

is probably wiser than the wide receivers. Because wide receivers, I mean, we've talked about this before. We'll talk about it again. The rookies get better as time goes on, not first rounders, but the later drafted rookies. There's also guys that come out of note. Juan Jennings last year. Breaking news. Oh, no. Don't be bad. Don't be bad. Don't be bad. Is it bad? It's bad. Jaden Higgins is a torn ACL.

Oh, man. So Houston Texans. He was one of the big publicity guys like the Pat Bryant's and Cyrus Allen. Jaden Higgins talk was, that's Texans wide receiver. He was. That's a big ball. That is a major injury for them because. Was yesterday the sleeper episode? I don't know. Yesterday, this week we had the sleeper episode. I went Jordan Mason, but it was close between Jordan Mason and Jaden Higgins, but then he had the injury.

That stinks. Obviously, Tank Dell now has a shot. It's, yeah, I mean, their depth chart is, so Tank Dell, which that's a complete wild card of, number one, will he ever really be back after that type of injury? You know, there's Hutchinson and other players involved. Yeah, and their third rounder from last year, Jalen Knoll, I don't know that he's a player that can take over for Jaden Higgins. It's probably Hutchinson and.

The doctor. Andy, the slowest man alive. Dr. Schultz is freaking dares. He is so there. Bro, if you're in a tight end premium where you get boosted reception totals, Don Schultz is probably going to have 80 plus patches. I didn't want to start the 10 tips and tricks. That's kind of breaking news. But yeah, the TLDR there. Build your draft around starters, spin the back end on running back backups. You know we're going to have a shot and receiver lottery tickets and then realize that you're going to need to.

You build the team in August, but it's finished up in November, right? You keep the waiver wire going, play the whole season, recognize that you can keep adding. Like, I think maybe another thought that just hit my mind, too, is that like, don't be, don't wait so long to take a shot on guys that you know are going to have chances at the waiver wire to start the year. Just add more and more depth. Never think that you're done on adding down. I very much agree with that.

All right, we are going to take a quick break, and then we'll move it on to one of Jason's picks. What's up, Foot Clan? You are confident and disciplined and focused on details, just like everyone here at the fancy footballers, right? Those are words you used to describe us. In other words, you were made to drive the 2026. Sierra 1500, Denali, a full-size pickup combining capability with elevated design and advanced technology. You can seek out the exceptional with the Denali.

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is fundamental to fantasy football success. I'm in the midst of multiple leagues right now where I am responding to trade offers. We are massaging the trade offer. We want to make sure that I'm the one that gets the player, not another player manager in our league. So trade offers, when you're on the go, all the news that's breaking, so you don't make a mistake. And my favorite thing, maybe I'll mention it. Look, you're sitting and you have a quiet moment somewhere out and about.

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are exceptionally important. I know our mock draft episodes, people love watching, but you need to be doing mock drafts and you need to know how you should be doing mock drafts. This is one of the most important tools available to have success in fantasy football. This is why we just built a mock draft tool in the ultimate draft kit. We have it now. And our, you know, we've had over a, probably at this point, over 200,000 mock drafts done.

On our mock draft tool, we've had a lot of feedback. People are loving the fact that you can actually put it to the platform you're playing on, and you can use it to where you're seeing what you're going to see. I want to give you a couple examples of why that's important. Kyron right now is a round cheaper on ESPN than he is on sleeper, like just better values. T. Higgins right now is round three on Yahoo.

and a fifth rounder on ESPN, whereas Garrett Wilson is the exact opposite. You got David Montgomery, a guy that I, in the offseason, I was like, I like, I like, he's a fifth rounder. But then I was like, I was like, he's a seventh rounder on ESPN. That's like, okay. Even I can get with that. All right. Trevo, you know, Trevo's a seventh rounder on ESPN, a fourth rounder on sleeper. I mean, those are wildly different. So what you do is you use, you, you, you, you,

Put in the platform that you're playing on so that you can see what the ADP is. ADP affects drafts. ADP, it affects even our, like, we make these rankings. It affects the psychology of every player in your draft when they see the board, and they feel like they're passing on somebody perceived to be better because the system tells them that is. Yes. And so then once you are doing mock drafts with your platform ADP in there so that you can get an idea, you, the way that you do, we say this all the time, right? Stay water.

not stone, like be willing to pivot. That does not mean have no plan. Don't just know players and have no idea where you're going when this happens. You know, genuinely, a draft is if this, then that. I go into every league of record draft knowing if this happens, then I will do that. You know, look at if you don't know where you're drafting from, you should be draft, you should be doing mock drafts from the second pick, the seventh pick, and the 12th pick.

Because at that point, you get to know who is available around the 2-3 turn or the 3-4 turn. Or if I'm in the middle of the draft, you get to know what player types are there. And your first four rounds of your draft should really, maybe even the first three rounds, should really dictate where you go. And it's different for everybody. Because what you think of certain players...

You might be out on Tyler Warren, Colson Loveland. You might be totally in on them. And that makes a big difference. A perfect example here of knowing what your game plan is, is if you do mock drafts, first of all, you should not be just, every time you do a mock draft, it's like, I'm going to grab the, I'm just drafting the players I like the most every time. And then you end up with the same type of team over and over. You need to explore other options. And I have found.

personally that when I choose to draft Brock Bowers or Trey McBride, if I pull the trigger on them, which I'm happy to do, I hate my team if my first round pick was a wide receiver. Because then in the third round, I'm drafting my first running back. It gets kind of like I just don't love where it goes personally. So if in the first round, I just learned from mocking like, oh, if I ended up with a really good stud running back, then I can grab.

Brock in the second or McBride and then license to Brock license to Brock and so you can't get that experience without trying like take an early quarterback punt quarterback just explore and I'm telling you your drafts will be a hundred times better if you spend and you can do this in one day you just do four or five mocks from the spot where you are or if you don't know do beginning middle and end mocks and just have a plan saying if if I start this way

the end is good or the end is bad, and you'll have far more success in fantasy football. Yeah, and less likely to have those panic picks in the middle of a draft, I'd say, as well. All right, Mike. Number eight. All right, these tips and tricks, you know, sometimes we like to get, you know, in the weeds, like Andy's digging through a bunch of data, a bunch of numbers and analytics and things. My tip is real easy because this is just, this is a reminder.

uh we're calling this tip mark my words and it's literally that mark your players like at the at the bottom of the draft in the bottom of the adp and i say this because you're like oh of course i do it's so obvious it's real easy to forget man like do it right now i you know we've had several times in our league of record drafts where you're you're going through the draft we're in like round eight or round night and then a name gets called out and i go

because I literally forgot to mark that player. It was just, I'm telling myself in my head over and over, I'm going to do this so I don't forget this player. I never get to marking that guy. So do it right now. Like players who are lower in ADP that you're interested in, you know, like Stefan Diggs, he's going to be way down at ADP because he's not getting enough time to climb up the actual board. But people are going to know.

Keen and out. These types of players that you know you do want to get value on that player, but everyone else does as well. And just they can get lost in the shuffle. They really, really can. And there's different ways you can mock. Sure. Mark them. If you've got the UDK, we have, you can literally highlight them. If you're printing a cheat sheet, circle them, go to the bottom and circle them.

You have to do that. Otherwise, you forget the Tank Bigsby is out there. I wanted to leave the draft with him. Exactly. And then like, right, Tank Dell. I'm seeing a 16th rounder. You're not going to see him. You're not going to naturally see him. Yes, you won't just casually because you won't scroll down far enough to see him. No, because you're in the middle of it. And other teams, other fantasy managers are going to be targeting those players as well. And you're going to hear their name or see it pop across the screen and you're going to go.