Dragon Slayers, Hype Train, Fantasy Q&A

trophy. No, we've tried. I've tried to etch your name off of there for months. But you just don't want to go overboard. You can't, you don't want to sell the farm where you're crippled in the future because there's still, you know, the odds are that you're not going to win the championship, just statistically speaking, and you have to be okay with that. But I would definitely, if you're a competing team halfway through the season, make a move, send a prospect, bolster your lineup, and go after the championship.

All right, this question comes in from Instagram. Nick Pretzel. He sounds delicious. Nick Pretzel writing in. Not sure if he's probably, that's probably a nickname, you know. Two quarterback draft strategy questions says, bonjourno. Oh, bonjourno. I'll be participating in my first two quarterback league this year. I know you all normally speak on waiting for a quarterback, but does this strategic approach change during your draft?

in this kind of of a league? If so, how much does it vary? It definitely changes. Yeah, it changes a lot. Now, the strategy to me doesn't really change much. You're still, I mean, if you're a tier-based drafting advocate, meaning you are taking guys not so much like what round you're taking them, but based on the other players in those positions and what tier, what caliber of players are left.

I'm still taking the guys in the later tier of quarterbacks. I'm still looking at the value that guys like Dak Prescott represent relative to where he goes within the quarterback groups, then I am looking to the value that Pat Mahomes can buy you because it's a two-quarterback league. I don't, I mostly agree with you. It does depend on your league size. Like we're in these fantasy carriers eliminator leagues right now where we're drafting, you know, 17 people.

17 teams. 17 teams. Two quarterback league, you have to place a premium amount on getting a quarterback. I mean, one. You have to get one quarterback in the somewhat, you know, first three or four picks at the latest because there's just not going to be enough left. I mean, you're not talking about a one-off position anymore. This is not the tight-in quarterback argument. Sir, certainly. I mean, sir. Sir, how dare you?

Sir, you have offended me. No, I mean, obviously, if everybody in the league drafts two quarterbacks, and that's a two-quarterback league. Well, yeah, Pat McHolmes went three in that league. Andrew Luck went five. Aaron Rogers went eight. So you had three quarterbacks in the first ten picks and a two-quarterback-17 team league. It's a two-quarterback-17 team league. So by my incredible math.

That's 34 quarterbacks. That is, you doubled it. I see what you did. And there are 32 teams in the NFL. So obviously that would change strategy. But for Mr. Pretzel, I believe that looking at, you know, quarterbacks, look, I've been in these leagues where I over there. So would you be okay with Dak Pretzel as your number one quarterback? Yes, 100%. You would. 100%. If I could have, it depends more on. 200%. It depends more on who my second quarterback is.

I mean, I would be fine if I had Dak Prescott, Kyler Murray, Philip Rivers, Kirk Cousins, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, any two of those guys. And when I grab those guys who, they're all valuable quarterbacks. They're going to play well. And personally, I want three quarterbacks in a two-quarterback league. That means my running backs and wide receivers are much better. So that's my strategy in a two-quarterback league. I will certainly.

the point you're making, it's not like running backs become less scarce. Right. Just because you have two quarterbacks starting. But they fall further in the draft because more people are taking early quarterbacks, so you can actually get better running backs than in most leagues. All right. Twitter question from Yakov Friedman. So should there be a minimum of $1 for fab bids? There should absolutely 100% never, ever, ever be a minimum of $1 for fab bids. No, that's disgusting.

here's tell us what you really think here's why i'm so passionate about that we talk about you know oftentimes people write in and say oh my league we have these roster um caps like oh yeah transaction transaction caps i can only so many trades i can only trade five times in the year i can only make five waiver pickups and it's like what

Why are you limiting... You're going to have fun four times this year. Right. It's like this is... Pick them wisely. We're playing a game and you're saying, but you only get to play a little. Okay? Monopoly. We're going to change rules where you can only buy one house an hour. Yes. So it's just dumb. And the thing is, is that's effectively what you're doing when you make a minimum of $1 for bidding. If you run out of your money, you're out of transactions. Zero dollar fab bidding is an important part to a...

fun, active, constantly, you know, a live league. Yes. That doesn't just run stale at the end of the year. I agree with you. Instagram question from Rigo says, what can I expect from your live show? First time going. Is it like a spitballers episode where you guys just talk about random things or more of a Q&A? Great question. That's a great question. I didn't see the end of that coming.

Yeah, it is a live podcast episode. So that would be the first thing to mention, right? It's a real show. It will go live in our feed as a podcast episode. Like Chicago's show is Brooks. Is that Tuesday show? Yes, sir. It'll be out on Tuesday. You'll listen. If you're not in Chicago, you're going to hear. We only give Brooks four days to edit it. You're going to hear the Chicago show on Tuesday. It's going to be a breakouts and bust episode. We're really excited about.

If you are in the Chicago area, your incredibly loud laughter will be on the podcast. Included. And your questions will be. That's one of the unique things about the live shows. We do a live mailbag at the show. And it's a rock concert. We'll have the smoke and the light show and we'll have everything going. And then afterwards we get to do a meet and greet. You know, we get to shake hands. We do one before and after. Yes. Yeah. So it's a lot of fun. You should come out.

We got five shows this year, Chicago, New York, L.A., Phoenix, San Francisco, BallersLive.com for tickets. Come enjoy the show. It is, uh, look, we like to have fun. Every, here's the thing, is it like a Spitballers episode? All of these episodes are, I mean, all of our shows are kind of the, they're all like each other. They're like each other. We, we talk to each other the same way on all the shows. Right. We, we actually don't change the cast. No.

at our live shows. A little bit. Right, we might have Mike. So it'll be very different than what they're used to right now. All right. Let's jump into another question here. David and Minneapolis has a question for us, Jason. How do you guys factor in potential injuries into your rankings? So two different ways he wants that question answered. Injury prone players like Fournet or Eiffert.

Or random injuries to random players like ACL tears and freak injuries. How do you think about injuries in general? There's two ways that we factor them in, or at least I'll speak for myself here, two ways that I factor them in. And I'll throw out the freak ACL tear out the window. I mean, you know, unless someone's got seven. Cooper Cup, for example. Yeah. So, oh, well, that's different. That's coming off of one. Oh, I thought that's what he meant. No, like I think he's saying, how do you?

you know, project random injuries that happen. And you just can't. But if they're coming off of an ACL, you're going to look at the timeline, you're going to look at the recovery, the history of other players at that position. What do they usually do when they're back? How long does it take until they're on 100 percent? Those type of things. Regarding the first type of player, the four net, like this is the four net rule. How do you stat four net? Because if four net plays 16 games, he's probably going to be a lock for a top 15 running back based on volume.

Hell will have frozen over, however. Right. So what do you do? And for my process, a lot of times what I'll do is I will go in and I will stat, I start by statting out every player for 16 games. I look at a 16 game calendar that way. Every number that I'm attributing each player versus another one makes sense. And then for some of those players, I'll go in and I'll do something like I'll take a game away. I'll basically.

take 15th of the stats I gave them and attribute that so that they are a little bit lower. And then the other thing is for the ultimate draft kit purposes, we build those into our risk rating. So you'll see players out there like Four Nett when you're drafting and he's in a certain tier. But his risk might be higher than those right around him and you could factor that in at your draft. Yeah. So from a roster construction perspective, if you're looking at risk ratings in the ultimate draft kit,

Maybe you're not stacking four or five guys on your team that have high risk ratings if you're wanting to build a roster that has a little bit more predictability when it comes to injury. You know, it's always interesting because even in the four net example, let's say that Leonard Fernett misses two games, all right? Let's just say we know that. Okay. Well, you know, that changes his year-in stats in total.

But it doesn't change his game-to-game stats. Right. So if you believe he's going to be a very productive player, when he's active, then it's worth it. Then it's probably not going to be a huge factor for you. Like it's like anything. You know, we talked last week on over-emphasizing keeper choices. If you're in a league that only has two or three keepers, people can over-emphasize, oh, my gosh, I just got a draft youth for those three-keeper spots, and it's not really worth it. You can over-emphasize injury risk.

You know, there are players that, you know, Dante Pettis was injured two times last year. Is he coming back healthy? How does he look? You know, can you throw it out the window? Here's where I think you don't overreact. And I know Brooks will agree with this. Players that are currently dealing with injuries. Like if a player currently has a hamstring issue, when you're drafting.

I'm going to go ahead and take that into massive consideration. I'm not going to take just like I would view that worse than an injury history. So for Nets, you know, 100% in camp, 100% in preseason, 100%. And I come to my draft and he's there or, you know, someone who maybe doesn't have quite the same injury risk is dealing with a hamstring issue. That one to me looks more applicable than the injury history, the quote unquote, injury prone label. Yeah, yeah.

That's fair enough, fair enough. Good question. Cool. Let's do one more. All right. You good for one more? But it better be the best question. This one's so good. It's from Zach on Facebook. I hear a lot of Ezekiel Elliott and Saquan Barkley love at the number one pick. But not much about Camara at all. Is he just falling off the hype train or is this a purposeful thing that I am witnessing?

No, I mean, look, it's neither of those. It's not a purposeful slight against Alvin Kameran. I don't think he's falling off the hype train. If you go back and you remember last year when Mark Ingram was gone, those first four weeks, he was the number one running back. And it wasn't close. It wasn't like he was really good, but so were five other players. I believe three out of the first four weeks, he was the number one running back. He was unbelievable. So there's a case to be made that he

could be the number one guy this year. Now that Mark Ingram is gone, Latavius Murray will fill that role, but maybe he fills that role to 90%, and an extra 10% goes over to Camara. Camara's great. However, the reason he's not in that conversation with Zeke and Sequin is because Camara's efficiency numbers are outstanding, awesome, he's so good.

But he doesn't get the volume. Volume is much easier to bank on than efficiency. You can, you know, for the amount of carries that Camara has and you look at how many touchdowns come from that level of carries, it's just hard to say that's going to always happen because it's just very rare. And you're talking about deciding between great options. Yeah, option one or.

two or three in the draft. You're not talking about a big gap. So it's not to disparage Camara. It's just it's easier to bank on the huge quantity of carries. You know exactly what the offense is going to do from a total touch perspective. Look, if you told me Camero was going to get that with the efficiency numbers, you're fine. But he, you know, he's not built exactly the same as those other two guys either. He's had a concussion history. So I think those are the small things that change it.

Yeah, I would rather have 350 touches than 250 touches. Ah. Yes, pretty simple. Pretty interesting. Pristine deal a day. All right. Today's pristine deal of the day. A T.Y. Hilton signed Indianapolis Colts, Jersey. JSA witnessed autograph $38.61. Brooks put four exclamation points after it because the price was so insane. That's true. I had not seen that.