Top 10 Tips & Tricks to Win Your Fantasy League - Fantasy Football Podcast for 8/16

The time is coming swiftly. The middle rounds are no place for the unskilled. Yet here you are. Unprepared fools. This season you will find all kinds of foes. Eager to watch your draught to crumble with wasted picks. There can only be one ultimate draft kit. Only one they can bend them to its will. It does not share power. You must wield the UDK and send your opponents back to the shadow. You shall not pass. On this chance to send your readmates into the fly, you fools, to autumn draft kit.com. To the fantasy footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Ah, welcome in.

The fantasy footballers podcast Wednesday, August 16th, 22 days until kickoff. Beautiful. 22 days of fantasy football drafts, tilting, injuries. My friend, there are far more than 22 days of tilting ahead of us. We're just in it right now. Yeah, this is when we attack 100 days. This is when we don't tilt. This is like, this is where. You're undefeated. You're undefeated until kickoff. You haven't lost the game. And hopefully you're drafting late enough where you're not losing players either. Yeah. We're in one draft right now. A real slow family draft. Because if we don't start the family draft about 22 days before kickoff, it won't get done in time. No, it's very, very slow. Did you see who I picked this morning?

Yeah, yeah, I did. I believe it was the Bijon Robinson experience for Jason Moore. That's right. I'm on the clock. My son was, my son was picking directly before you. And he came up to me and he said, do you believe in Bijon Robinson? Because he was thinking about the pick. And I go, yeah, I do. And he goes, I just don't trust rookies. Oh, man. So I think you went Derek Henry over Bejohn. He did. The juxtaposition of knowing your son, like, you're just young people. Yeah. Yeah. He asked me who I work in the field professionally. I just say like a younger kid saying, I don't trust that young person out there is pretty funny to me. Have you thought about showing him the show that we do and he can know like how good rookie running backs can be? I.

He's not a fan of the show. Oh, man. Yeah, he unsubscribed long ago. Yeah. It's because of his dad. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. We have a great show for you today. Oh. Happy Wednesday, everybody. Oh, whoa, whoa. Oh, it keeps going. Yeah. It really should never stop. Yeah, that was requested on, on X. From X.com. Look, I can't do it. I just can't. It's really hard. They still have not. No, they have. The links flying out. Mike, you shared a tweet post yesterday and it was X.com. Yeah, but when you click on it, it changes to Twitter.com. Oh, okay. All right. They can't fully commit yet. It takes a long time to make a transition to a single letter of the alphabet.

I don't know if you knew that. Yeah, the Ultimate Draft Kit available now. We're giving away an Ultimate Draft Kit for life along with the Derek Henry signed jersey. T. Higgins signed mini helmet. All you have to do to enter, go to Ultimate DraftKit.com, pick up the UDK by this Friday. We will be having a live stream at 6 p.m. Eastern on Friday. And if you are one of the people that picked it up before that time, you will be eligible to win a UDK for the rest of your natural life. And science? They're making advances. I mean, this could be, you might live to be 150. You might live to be 175. Do you know how many UDKs that is? I was going to say, if you make the transition to cyborg. Oh, no. I think we will still honor. Will we honor it if what percentage of their body has to be still flesh? Ooh, you got to. Still flesh. I think you got to be 51% human.

So if it's more than 50? Yeah. If you go 51% machine, that will null and void the agreement. Is that in the contract? Yeah. The cyborg clause? It's really the only clause in the whole thing, though. Yeah. It is the contract. Must be 51% or greater. Flesh. Flesh. Thank you. Yeah. You have to say flesh. At the FF ballers over on Twitter and X and whatever else it is called. The Communities JointheFoot.com. Thank you for joining us today. This is a big episode. It's one of our fan favorites each and every year. In a lot of ways, it grows more difficult to pull off each and every year. This is the ninth season of the fantasy footballers podcast. This is the ninth episode where we've done the top 10 tips and tricks to win your league. It is a very valuable episode. We spend time thinking about new, powerful, impactful tips, tricks, information.

that can get you to the front of your league, and we're going to reveal those on today's show. Should be very exciting. The quick question today, I don't like it. I don't like it one bit. Where's the DST and kicker ranking show? Look, this one's from Holland Pack on YouTube. And I know Holland Pack, you are the one who asked this question, but you don't even want this yourself. No one wants this. Nobody. Yeah. You want shows dedicated to your two final picks? Brooks, what's the real question you have for us here? All right, guys. What's your strategy when it comes to drafting defenses and kickers? My strategy when drafting defenses and kickers, I will take the defenses part.

It is to look at the early season schedule and combine that with teams that I believe in their defenses. So I generally won't end up with one of the top two or three defenses drafted. But then I will hone in on that early season matchup. And then I'm going to stream defenses the rest of the season. If I was so lucky to have stumbled into an every week defense, then. More power to me, but that's my strategy with the defense. Yeah, and usually you're going to go in. We obviously have the rankings for you on the website. We've got them in the ultimate draft kit as well that you, you know, you're going to go in targeting a handful of defenses. You look at those early, you know. Strength of schedule. Yeah, the strength of schedule. Look at the first, for me, I look at the first two weeks. I mean, if it goes longer than that, huzzah, great. But really, I'm streaming the position. So I just want to get off.

to a good first two weeks. It just so happens that some of the defenses that you want to target in general, like if you took strength of schedule out, also this season have a really nice opening schedule. I'm talking about the 49ers and the Eagles. The Eagles start with the Patriots and the Vikings. I think that you're going to have a lot of good fantasy points in those matchups. And then the Niners, they start with the Steelers. and then the Rams and then the Giants and then the Cardinals, I think that's like a really nice stretch run. So maybe you pull the trigger, you know, around earlier on the 49ers if you want the chance to have a plug and play season long. Is the start against the Cardinals a hot tip already? I think it's going to be a good one. The Clayton Tune experience may be how we're starting the season. If not, it'll be Colt McCoy. And so that would be a potential home run.

Yeah, it could be. I'll jump in here for kickers. There's just a couple handful of tips. Number one, you want to target a high scoring offense that seems that like you should realize that. But like follow, you want teams that are in the dome. Jason and I are legendary for complaining about when a new studio is, or a new stadium is not a dome. So stupid. It's ridiculous. It's dumb. You're actually going to hear more about that later on. Are we? When there are tips and tricks. And you'll go, oh, maybe, maybe those two guys are smarter than I thought. Wait, you're talking about you two? Yeah. Yeah, that big, big dome. And what's crazy is that person you were just emulating, I already thought we were really smart. That's true. Yeah. Einstein levels after this one. So you want teams that score a lot of points. They have a really strong passing attack because.

More points for an offense is more opportunity for a kicker. And not just talking about extra points. We're saying if they move the ball, then they get on the other side of the field and they kick field goals. Yeah, if you're not punting, that's a pretty good sign for a kicker. So some tips there. And of course, you know, be ready for the boom, boom kicker. You know, Jason's most highly researched subject when you talk about. Locked and loaded. When you talk about smarts. News and notes from around the league. Presented by USAA Insurance. I mean, one piece of news right at the top is that the Megalus show is 10 days away. Oh, 10 days away from the fantasy footballers live in Los Angeles. Go to ballerslive.com if you want to come see us. That show is going to be insane. Yeah. Jason, get some sleep. We're going to need you at full force. I'm planning on sleeping after this show.

until then. Full hibernation. So I will not be on the shows in between. All right. That makes sense. Yeah. Honestly, great choice. I'm going to blitz the news real quick before we get into our tips and tricks. Aaron Rogers. Calf injury. What's going on with these calf muscles? Quarterbacks are ignoring them these days in training. You got to start with your calves on leg day. That's how you get them big and juicy. Thanks, Mike. So this was the same calf he heard at OTAs. Is that true? I don't know. I don't know if it's the same one or not, but he did injure his right calf during OTAs. Yeah, so we'll monitor that. Javante Williams will play in the Saturday preseason game against 49ers. Unbelievable. So that's exciting. The fact that Javante is back out there, impressive. Lions wide receivers getting beat up.

Today, Alman Ross, St. Brown heard his lower right leg on the first play of seven on sevens, working with the trainers last we heard, and then Jameson Williams pulled up, grabbing the old hamstring. Big come a blowout. Yeah, six weeks to heal up, though, don't he? Yeah, he does, but this, I mean, if Jameson Williams misses the rest of training camp and then goes into a six-week lockdown where you can't be with the team, that's just... Just bad vibes. Justin Ross left practice early, Chiefs Wide Receiver. This one didn't look serious. Russell Gage is very hurt. Non-contact knee injury. It looks like a severe injury that will end his season. And Russell Gage will be removed from that wide receiver room in Tampa Bay. It's a huge bummer. He's had some injury issues. And you hate to see that. Cordero Patterson out a few weeks for the Falcons.

I saw another report this morning, expectations from the athletic beat riders covering the Atlanta Falcons had projected 300 total touches for Bijon Robinson over the course of the year and 175 touches for Tyler Algier over the course of the year. That sounds about right to me. I think he'll be north of 300 total touches, but Tyler Algier will certainly, certainly be involved. Bill's running back Damian Harris, finally returning to practice or at least back in uniform for practice today. And what else do we have? Malik Willis likely to win the backup roll over Banana Ramah. Will Leves. Oh, yes. I live for this. What? Yeah, Banana Ramah has not been very good so far through camp and preseason. So we'll see. Because Malik Willis also bad.

He was terrible last year. He looks a lot better this year. He was a rookie last year. We can leave some margin that Malik Willis was able to improve and be ready for the actual NFL. But if the Malik Willis of this year is the one that was on the field last year and Will Levis can't feed him? I mean, is there a more wasted pick in the NFL than shooting for the quarterback position in the late first second round? Well, Malik Willis was not a first or second. He was third, but Levis was an early pick. Levis was an early second rounder. I don't know. I just feel like the odds of you really hitting a home run in those rounds at quarterback versus like literally setting the pick on fire. I mean, I guess everybody needs a backup quarterback, but I wouldn't spend a second or third rounder on it. I mean, Jalen Hertz was a second rounder, right?

Uh, yeah. I'm pretty sure he was. All right. I mean, sure. Jalen hurts. Derek Carr was a second rounder, I believe. So it does happen. Andy Dalton was Dalton the second round? Yeah, I think he was a second. I guess in my head, I'm thinking E.J. Manuel into the first round. Well, I'm thinking Gino Smith, which, look, it's fine now, but it wasn't fine for the Jets. To be fair, you can. Baker, you can burn. I meant Johnny Mansell. Yeah, but, but he was the first round. Baker and Donald. Oh, I know. I said late first. I mean, you could burn the pick when it's early in the first. Yeah, you can trade away like multiple first round picks for Tray Lance. And for Tray Lance and then just, uh, what was the hall? It turned the, what they traded away turned into Jalen Waddle, Tyreek Hill, and Bradley Chubb for Tray Lance. I think that's called a whooping. Just a whoop. Get a bend over.

Get the paddle. Yeah. That's a whoop. That's a paddling. Also, Miles Sanders won't suit up Friday. Getting better with the groin injury. That's good. That was today's news and notes presented by USAA Insurance. Learn more at USAA.com slash insurance. Let's do it. Tips and Tricks. All right. The top 10 tips and tricks to win your league for 2023. I mean, we've had a pile of these. We have a book. We have a book full of tips and tricks. But very excited about this episode, going to share some very helpful things that we think will weigh into decision making throughout the season. Received a funny video from the Borgogan today from a friend of his in his league who has listened to two episodes ever of this show.

Not a really experienced fantasy player. He listened to the tips and tricks episode from last year and the year before. He has won two consecutive titles. Whooping the Borgogan. I'm not sure if that's as toot as you think it is. That could be that this is the only episode. This is the only good advice that we give all year. It's just the best advice. It's just the easiest to digest because it's just 10 tips and tricks. Let's begin. Number 10. Upside wins championships. And I know that this seems obvious and easy and normal, but then you look at ADP and you're going to just see everywhere throughout the draft from the beginning to the end, guys that are floor plays and guys that are ceiling plays all over the place. And the truth is that...

If you want to win a championship, you need the huge breakout players. You need these sensational superstars. You know, I won last year in our League of Record. I don't remember that. I think primarily I will make sure you remember it all the time with Jalen Hertz. Jalen Hertz was, you know, the big breakout player that, you know, he didn't go in the draft where you thought, you know, where he should have been going in the draft. And just massive. upside. We did some research, Matt DeSorbo on the website. He found that a player's ebbs and flows of their point distribution is 33 to 50% more important than the raw points that they scored. So it's like, how does this player score? Can they really win a week for you? Do they make an impact on your roster? And, you know, when we're looking, I want to give, I want to give a couple examples from this year's draft of players that are going next to each other.

that when you're in that situation, I want you to be thinking of like, which player could be a breakout? Because go back and look at your, look at whoever won your championship in your league. They have two or three breakout players. Always happens. You have to have them if you want to win. But before I talk about this year, I think it's easier to understand looking at last year because it sounds stupid now, but when you look at last year right in the same round, You had Ramandre Stevenson, and you had 29-year-old Melvin Gordon. They were going next to each other in the draft. Melvin Gordon didn't have upside to break out into anything new and special. Ramandre did, and one of those was a great pick, and one of those was not. Or how about later in the draft at the quarterback position, you had Derek Carr, who was good.

He wasn't a bad pick. He was a floor play. He finished as quarterback, what, you know. He finished like he always does. Yeah, like he always does. High end QB2. Quarterback 13 or something. It's not like he was a bus. It's just he doesn't have the upside and right next to him. Actually, a round behind him was Justin Fields. And Justin Fields helped get a lot of people to championships. You know, you had in the fifth round, Jalen Waddle and Alan Robinson, where it's like you want the guy who can just. Break out. Did you hear that? They went together? Yeah. Yeah, they were near each other. So let's look at this year. I'll give you a couple examples of players that are right next to each other in ADP. You're going to be staring at these players. And you just kind of think, like, who could do it? Who could break out? You want Kirk Cousins? Or do you want Anthony Richardson? Mobile, super athletic, rookie quarterback that could just go ham.

You know, he could end up a top five quarterback this year. And Kurt Cousins. He will do what he always does. He's just like Derek Carr. Kirk Cousins will be fine. He'll have some weeks here, there, but he will finish as quarterback 10, 11. Yeah. How about this? I think Brandon Cooks is going to be good. As do I. His camp reports have been really positive. But right next to Brandon Cooks is John Dotson. One of these two players has the true breakout potential on their offense to become an alpha fantasy asset. And it ain't Brandon Cooks. You know, so a couple others. You've got Christian Kirk going next to Giovante Williams right now. Christian Kirk is going to be fine. These aren't bad players. They're safe players. They're known commodities. But you're not winning a championship with Christian Kirk and Brandon Cooks or I was looking at another one at the running back position. David Montgomery.

Going right next to James Cook. Like, David Montgomery is going to be fine. He's going to get touchdowns. I've talked about how I like David Montgomery. But if you want to win a championship. Well, he's the Melvin Gordon in the example compared to the Ramandre Stevenson in the example that you gave earlier. Exactly. And you're going to have swings and misses, right? You're going to take Cadarius Tony because of the glorious upside swing for the fences. And sometimes it's just a strikeout. But that's fine. You've got to hit on some breakouts. So that's, when you're drafting this year, focus on getting a player who legit could break out. I was going to say, for a baseball metaphor, to my knowledge, to my knowledge, no one has ever hit a home run while bunting. Has that ever happened? Not, not to my knowledge. I've, like, I've not dove into the research. Not even an inside-the-part home run on a bunt.

Yeah. The phrase that Kyle uses often is injecting volatility into your lineup. And if you look at it through the lens of what you're saying of like, okay, maybe you swing and miss sometimes, well, let's say you have, let's just throw it out there as a flat 10 draft picks. If you hit home runs on five and you fail on five, well, guess what you get to do? You get to tune into the show, use your brain, and pick up five new players, and then you add those guys. to the other five that you found in the middle of nowhere that have the volatility and upside. So there have been only a handful of bunt home runs in baseball history. Okay, so it has happened. It is happened. So you can draft Derek Carr and win a championship. That's what you're saying. It's just rare. It's rare. All right. Quick break and back with the rest of the countdown.

I mean, ultimately having Mike and Jason accurate on a baseball metaphor was an impossibility. I said to do my knowledge. Right. You did qualify with your limited knowledge of baseball. All right. Let's move on. Number nine. All right. We're going to call this one. This ain't your mama's play calling. And what we're talking about is this tendency and fantasy. And look, it's just human nature. When you've seen something happen in the past, it's hard not to project it to be identical in the future. because it's all we have to lean on so often. But when looking at past team trends, it's so easy to settle down into this is what they have done. For example, we can spend an off season talking about, well, this team is 30th and past attempts last year. The quarterback is a meh quarterback. I don't have confidence. So I'm going to downgrade all their wide receivers. Their pace, it's bad. Every year, though, and we've learned this, especially doing this podcast as long as we have,

and the way that the NFL has trended when it comes to hiring, offensive coordinators, head coaches, every single season we have new out-of-the-box play callers that join a team and literally that change shifts the entire outcome of the offense for the upcoming year. And as fantasy players, we want to be ahead of that curve because you're not going to have time to react three, four, five weeks later into the season. You're just going to be sitting there going, man. Why didn't I believe in that fundamental change in the coaching staff, the play calling? The best example of this that I can think of is the way we approach the Miami offense heading into last season. Mike McDaniel, brand new head coach, offensive mind, Tua, Tunga Vailoa, lack of confidence in the fact that he could change. By week two and six touchdowns in a Baltimore game, you knew something was fundamentally different with this team. And if you had invested in any.

of the Miami offensive pieces in fantasy, you had found a gold mine relative to value. You just talked about a fifth round, what, wide receiver seven and Jalen Waddle? And so I want to point out a couple of offenses going into this upcoming year that you should keep your eye on and that the perspective you have now may be so different two, three weeks into the year. We'll start with the Washington commander's offense. Eric B. Enemy taking over as the offensive coordinator coming out of Kansas City. Last year, dead last in first half pass rate. It's not going to be that way this year. I don't even care if they switch quarterbacks halfway through the year. That is going to change. They were really bad in passing efficiency, but you should see a spike and a change with this offense. Terry McLaurin and Jehan Dodson are stars. They lacked the ability.

for this offense to creatively involve them. So Washington's a team to pay attention to. Been talked about a lot this offseason. Todd Monkin, Baltimore. The new offensive coordinator, things are going to change so much in Baltimore. Whether it works, we'll find out. But the blueprint is going to be completely different. Last year, they ran three wide receivers on 12% of plays. Disgusting. So far in preseason week one, it's preseason. 81% of the time they're running three wide receiver sets, which is, look, the NFL average was 61%. They were at 12%. So Todd Monkin is known for a more creative, pass-heavy offense with fast pace. And that gives room. If three wide receivers are out there 60 to 80% of the time, there's a pretty good chance that all three of them, maybe you don't have to get it exactly right. Maybe all three of them out.

produce their draft costs because it's very low for those three guys. Beckham, Flowers, Bateman. Two other offenses, I'll throw out there real quick. Indianapolis with Shane Steichen, the officer coordinator from the Super Bowl Philadelphia Eagles. Super Bowl attending. Yeah, Super Bowl attending. Sorry, Philly. I felt like I covered it, but you really wanted to turn the knife. Last year, Indianapolis offense, it was terrible, dead last and turnovers per drive, red zone efficiency. I wonder why. They're going to slow things down a little bit because that's the recipe. I mean, they've beat Kansas City a couple times doing that. That offense could be better than you think. And guess what? Michael Pittman's a super discount right now in drafts because high expectations are not there. Jason, you're grimacing. Well, we'll get to another tip here in a second that says.

You're going to need this to change. I mean, this, Shane Stuyken better change. Well, look, Cam Newton joined the Carolina Panthers with the exact same fantasy expectations for Steve Smith. We were surprised over 4,000 yards passing. You just talked about injecting volatility into your lineup with Anthony Richardson. There are opportunities to be surprised. And I think a player like Michael Pittman has a pretty decent floor regardless of whether that upside hits. And then Sean Peyton and Denver. You know, can he transform an offense that was literally, you know, it was unwatchable. Yeah. It was, I would have rather have been violently ill than consume another Denver game. It was the worst offense in the league. Offensive scoring, like they were the worst. Not like the Texans were better. Every team was better. When they were on offense, I would go out back and pull weeds because it was more enjoyable. But.