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

Gosh, darn it. I forgot to mark that guy. Right before your draft, the preceding three or four days, news can break. Sure. And those guys are not going to have enough time to move up in ADP. Like if this Higgins news happens one or two days before the draft, like you said, Tank Dell, or maybe it's Hutchinson, or maybe you want to raise another player up, or Dalton Schultz, you know what I mean? Like, just things to pay attention to. It's just being prepared. It's very simple.

But we're all humans and we're all, we all do dumb things all the time. So I'm just, hey, hey, just do it right now. Just start marking the players off, especially if you got the UDK, you know, that will really help to mark them. But just do it right now, man. Yeah, I mean, I do the printout, you know, but in the UDK, you can go mark out, you know, four different types of players so that they're highlighted. Yeah, I mean, if you don't have, if you don't have it, then just get a piece of paper and write down the name, just write like,

the names of those guys super low in ADP that you don't want to forget. Yeah, and it'll make you feel like your draft went much better if you steal three or four of those guys at the end. So moving on. Number seven. All right, I'll call this panic-free tight end. And this is something that's been emerging a little bit over the last month, I think, with some different names. But, you know, we've talked a lot in the offseason during our top 10 rankings episode for the tight ends, how badly we want one of those elite guys. Jason just talked about how.

If he drafts a running back, he feels a little bit of a license to draft Brock or McBride. But I'll throw Loveland, Warren, into that group. But if you don't get them, maybe you have craft, maybe you have kid. If you don't get the big time tight-in, I want to highlight what you should be looking for at the tight-in position, either late in the draft or more so on the waiver wire throughout the year, things that we need to pay attention to to actually get viable tight-ins later in the draft on the waiver wire that produce.

So we looked at the last seven years of data, and here are four things that we pay attention to. The big one, Target Share. This is an easy one for us to understand. It's a go-to-on the show all the time. But targets for, I mean, I remember doing this 10 years ago, sorting by, sorting the waiver-wire tight-ins by targets when I'm looking for a streaming tight-in. Just who's getting the ball. Targets have the highest correlation year-to-year for fantasy. It just acknowledges how involved the players in the offense.

What we're looking for, 17 plus percent target share closer to 20 percent. Receiving yards per game again, another easy one to look at. You need 45 plus receiving yards a game to be a top 10 tight end. If you want to be top six, you've got to be up over 54. Maybe. It's fine. You look at route share. When they're on the field for a pass play, are they blocking? Are they running a route? There are lots of different types of tight ends. So are they actually running routes?

What's the percentage of routes they run on their snaps? And then air yard share is something you can look at just to show downfield potential. There are certain tight ends that are just going to be close to the line of scrimmage. Not a lot of them are going to go way down the field. Air yards measure the distance of football travels through the air from the line of scrimmage to the target. That's the definition of it. And so we want downfield threats, not necessarily...

Kyle would say like Austin Hoopers, right? So you want something above 15% in that metric. And so some late round tight ends to highlight this year that meet that that aren't the top guys. Kyle Pitts, who I really like. I do. I do. I really like it. But his target share. What did he say? His target share is 21%. Rout percentage is 86%. Air yard share 21%. He checks all those boxes. Sam Leporta.

Target share, 18%. Same thing. I mean, he checks all the boxes. Dallas Goddard. And then the one that we haven't said a lot, maybe because he's always infinitely boring in our minds, but Hunter Henry, who just signed another extension, target percentage, 17% last year, route percentage, 72%, 15% air yard share, just kind of a tried and true guy. There are lots of guys at the end. I mean, I think Isaiah likely is going to be in that category this year.

predicting touchdowns is really tough. But looking at target chair, looking at air yards, that's your best chance at not panicking at tight end, not feeling forced to submarine your draft. If Jason's in the first round and he takes a wide receiver because that's the best player available to him and he doesn't go for one of those big names, there are some things that you need to pay attention to at the tight end position. So I just wanted to highlight some of those. Yeah, I mean, this is why.

Personally, I hate middle round tight ends. I just think you're wasting opportunities to get quality running backs and wire receivers because at the end of the draft, when the draft is over and every team has drafted every player imaginable, I can look on the waiver wire and see five tight ends that I'm like, those are just as good as some of these. Like maybe they're a point worse or their opportunities a little less good, but it's like not that big of a gap. You don't need to freak out about tight ends in the middle of your draft. I like that tip.

All right. We are moving on. What are we on? Six. Is that right? Six. Yep. Cool. Because the seven's on the board. Yeah. That's good. Number six. We are moving on. We are moving on from the Dusties. You can. What does that mean? That means that the dusty picks at the end of the drafts. I see. Move on from them. Do not just hold them because of promise of the future. What if they're super good? Huh?

Then they're not dusty. Then they're not dusty and you don't need to move on from them. But I want to make it, I think the best way to realize this is not making a move is in and of itself a move. That is your transaction. Every action has an equal opposite reaction. You are choosing to keep that player. That is an active movement. So just to clarify for listeners, you're talking about the last, when you take those shots at guys.

Very, very late in the draft. You're saying quickly move on from those players when they don't show you something. Don't stay on the promise that you will see something? Exactly right. And there has so much data behind this to just say that we're playing an odds probability game. And the odds are that those guys who don't do something good in week one aren't going to do something good in the first month of the season. It doesn't mean that they won't be good the second half of the season, but you can pick them up off of waivers later.

holding on to them for the six weeks it might take before they finally show up, that's not a good transaction for your team. I talked about this on a former tips and tricks episode of take dumps now, not later, with regards to week one and week two. Matt agrees. Yeah, Matt takes dumps now and later. He's dumps like a truck, you know?

Here's the thing, those week one and week two waiver wire pickups, they are statistically, yeah, there it is. Oh, shout out Leonard Fournett. They're just statistically so much more valuable, not only because you get more weeks, but just because they perform better. The guys who show up in week one tend to do better. Here's a perfect example from last year, rounds 11 through 15.

Okay, no kickers or defense. So that's 60 picks other than, you know, taking out kickers and defense. There were four players of all of them that made an impact in the first month of the season. It's just like, take, take, how many? Four, four of those rounds, 11 through 15. Yeah, it's just most of them. And two are quarterbacks. That's like it makes sense of, you.

They touch the ball every game. You're going to know. Be willing to move on quick. Just don't hold on. Like draft them. You got to draft someone in the 11th, 12, 13, 14, 15th round. That's a rule. You have to. But if they don't hit in week one, be fine moving on. Now, the only exception to that, I would say, is kind of going with Andy's tip of depth, those insurance running backs. You know, you're...

Blake Horm's going to be roster everywhere. Yeah, you're not expecting to see something. That one you're holding on to so that you don't have to bid 100% of your fab when and if they have the chance to become a superstar. Outside of that, and I would say especially lower NFL drafted wide receivers, those guys, Cyrus Allen, you talked about him as sleeper. If he's not on the field week one in like, you know, getting 75 plus percent of snaps, pun him off a bridge. Baxter this thing. Okay.

All right, it's Mike's turn. Number five. Speaking of quarterbacks, the elite quarterback prices are cheaper than ever. And you need to understand what's going on with the market because it's fantasy football, especially in the draft season, everything is the market. The, you know, the early years of this show, we were completely late round quarterback. That was the theory, the game theory that we subscribed to.

to tremendous success because of, I mean, a lot of it was just fantasy football players weren't quite fully educated on the value of that you could extract from the end of mobile quarterbacks. I was a little bit of the emergence of the mobile power. Yeah, and like 10 years ago, you know, everyone, well, I got to get Tom Brady. He's the best quarterback in the league. He's going to be the best fantasy football quarterback, of course.

It was, well, actually, your opportunity cost of giving up that first often back then or a high second round pick is you're missing out on high probability running backs and wide receivers. The market has kind of flipped that this year, not kind of like it has severely. Right now, so Josh Allen is, he's the certified QB1, I think he should be. Right now, he is going five picks later.

So that's not a ton, but he was about the middle of the second round. Didn't last year? Yeah, compared to last year. And this year, he's going into about the end of the second. And here's where stuff gets wild. The QB2 in ADP right now is Lamar Jackson. Compared to 2025's QB2, it's a full round and a half later. So your opportunity cost is not a second round pick for the QB2. It's an early fourth rounder. In fact, this year, you have...

The guys who I think can be up, you know, the most likely to be the elite game-changing quarterbacks, the end of that tier is Jane Daniels and Jalen Hertz, who are going right now in the sixth round. The QB5 and QB6 ADPYs are going in the sixth. So, you know, I still prefer to go into my draft with the idea of, okay, I'm not going to burn an early pick.

on a quarterback and really hope that it's the difference maker when I need to be building up my depth like Andy was pointing out. This year, though, there's a lot of guys who are presenting value at the position. Joe Burrow, a player I love this year. I love the Bengals. I think that Burrow can push to be the QB1 this year. He's going in the fifth. And then I said Daniels and Hertz are going in the sixth. So it's while you can go into, if you're a late round quarterback drafter, you can go in with that strategy of

You know, I'm still going to wait. I'm going to get value. And I'm not saying, there's fun guys who are going late. Of course. Someone will emerge from that crop because they do every single year. But when you're building your team, the highest probability is these early quarterbacks. But they're not early round quarterbacks anymore. They're now mid-round. It changes the eclipse. So it's all about the market. It's all about the opportunity costs. So just be cognizant of the fact that.

You're like, I'm not looking for a quarterback in the fourth round. I normally get them later. Just peek at that quarterback tab, and you might be like, holy crap. Lamar Jackson is still there at the turn of the fourth round. Sometimes just take the value. What I've seen a lot in our mock drafts in my experience this year is that Josh will go, Alan will go, and then people will kind of wait. And then when the next shoe drops on quarterbacks,

They all go real quick. Because, like, Lamar, Burrow, May, Daniels, Hertz, those guys, you can see the, like, the game of chicken happening a little bit. Sure. Which, you know, again, whether you want to get in on that or not, the value is so much different is what Mike's saying. Yeah, and look, this is ADP. You got to know your league. Perhaps you're in a league where quarterbacks just, they fly off early. Then you just chill out. Like we said, there are guys who are going later that are.

that are fun and you can see what the ceiling cases. You can easily make the ceiling case for a lot of these later round guys. So just I guess it really, you know, it's just an evolution of the stay water. Don't have a rock solid firm plan that's rigid and you can't deviate from it. And don't feel guilty at this point. Correct. Taking the quarterback. Like we've been in a lot of mocks. We had so many years a late round quarterback. We get into a mock. I'm like, I like this guy at this spot, but I almost feel guilty taking a quarterback.

You feel like, oh, that's not the... This isn't the way. Yeah. Yeah. So, all right, we'll take a break and continue the countdown. No matter what triumphs are in store this season, legendary game days start with a Miller Light. Miller Light is a true American Pilsner and the original light beer brewed since 1975, made with simple ingredients including malted barley for rich...