Early Busts & Values + Raisin' the Bar, Best Ball Mistakes - Fantasy Football Podcast for 6/16

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This is Patrick Mahomes, quarterback to the Kansas City Chief, and you're listening to the Fantasy Footballers podcast. To the Fantasy Footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Welcome in. Thursday, June 16th. Big show, big, big, big show. Pretty, pretty big. It's big.

Annie Mike and Jason, the fantasy footballers, excited to be with you, early busting value picks on today's episode, and probably a lot more than that. Yeah, we've got some best ball tips for best ball mania on today's show as well. Yeah. Do we have news on today's show? Who needs that? A little bit news. You know, here's the news. Hunter Renfro sign and extension. There's your news. Yep. Congratulations, Hunter.

Yeah, I mean, he, 21 million guaranteed. There you go. They extended Renfro. They traded for Devante Adams and they extended Derek Carr. And according to Devante Adams, Derek Carr and Aaron Rogers are more similar than all of us think. There's some interesting stuff going on there where Derek Carr is like Aaron Rogers and Brian Edwards is like Devante Adams. There's a lot of weird stuff. Yeah, it's from Devante, though, you know.

Oh, I know. But I'm just saying, like, they all have. This wasn't from you. Weren't you reporting the Devante Adams thing with Brian Edwards? Isn't that a Mike exclusive? No, that's, that was Derek Carr. These two just love each other and they want to talk, you know, kindly about, you know, teammates. Yeah, they just, it's, it's kind of a ridiculous situation where you're trying to comp someone else to Hall of Famers. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't think Derek Carr is quite Aaron Rogers, but it was fun to, I mean, this is off-season. This is the time of year when we are so desperate for news that the smallest fluff piece, a reporter, reports that a reporter said something. So a couple reminders for you before we jump into the quick question today.

UltimateDraftKit.com. If you want to check that out, we have the UDK and the UDK Plus. The draft analyzer tool will be releasing on July 1st, and that will let you import your team, your draft, see what grades you receive from the three of us and some analysis on your team, how to improve it for the upcoming year, strengths, weaknesses.

a lot of other metrics that will be illuminating, dare I say. And some new upgrades. Yes, yes. And then Footclan giveaway.com giving away some signed jerseys right now. If you want to check that out, it's free to enter. Quick question today comes from Twitter. Do you prefer divisions in redraft leagues? So you talk about league formation, putting teams into divisions, and then also the same question about dynasty leagues. I like divisions personally. I especially...

in dynasty format, you know, redraft, whatever. I don't care that much. The whole point of a division to me is building rivalries amongst players within the league and, you know, that mimics what the NFL does, which is you have teams that are kind of your arch rivals. If you want to go crazy with it, like, I mean, we have divisions and we play those division mates twice during the course of the year to build that rivalry. You play everybody else once.

That's how we do it in our Keeper League. I don't mind if you do resets of those divisions after a certain amount of years just to keep things fresh, but I like them. How do you go about doing the reset? Do you just draw names out of a hat? Grab it in a hat, man. I think you have to, but I know why you ask that because you're basically saying, look, you finally get to the point where you reset your divisions in a league.

You pull names out of a hat. It's just chance. Maybe two of the same teams end up in the same division. It's not what you actually wanted to have happen. I mean, I don't know. I guess you could do it differently, but we have never really reset them, though. No, we've had our divisions for a long, long time, and I hate them.

which is actually a feather in the cap for divisions. I don't hate them because I think it's bad for fantasy football. I hate them because, for instance, you're in my division, Andy, and I hate that. It's a good reason to hate it. It is the rivalry. It is the passion. It is the thing that is so upsetting. Like, I don't care about half of the league mates. I care about my division mates. And it drives me bonkers, which is why we play fantasy football.

to be driven bonkers. So I like divisions. I'm a fan of them, but they are infuriating. You have a thought, Mike? I just, I'm very for them. I remember when I finally got in your league here, we, you know, we shuffled up the divisions. And then I had a particular manager in, in my division where, like, I kept beating them. And then, like, I,

even went to the point of where if I didn't make the playoffs, I went back and I like would look. Oh, did I actually beat them? And I racked up this like 10 and O record. And it was this huge deal. And I made a shirt where I was inferring. I drink this person's tears. And it's just it. I forgot about the shirt. And now like we care. Like that I mean, that guy cares when we are playing because I talked so much crap for such a long time. It makes a lot of. It makes it better.

Yeah, the head-to-head aspect of those weeks, divisional weeks. The way we do it is we start the season. First three weeks of the year, you play your three division mates. Last three weeks of the year, when it's crunch time trying to make the playoffs you play your division mates.

That is very fun. Yeah, it only works, though, in leagues that you're going to have the same managers for a long period of time. If it's, you know, your work league and they, you know, have a bunch of turnover and, you know, there's four new managers every year, then then just do away with the divisions. Because the whole point is...

rivalry and tradition. So if a keeper league, a dynasty league, it makes a lot more sense. Now, Kyle brought up the idea of rivalry trophies like in college football, right? I mean, the state schools face each other and they get their territorial cups and, you know, more things to brag about slash shame people for. Kyle's. Trophies are very fun. Yeah. Any other things that we need to talk about?

Any breaking news there, gentlemen? No? No, nothing. Okay. Any other Hall of Famers that have been built out of offseason news reports? No. They don't give away. MVS, if you ask, Mike. Oh, just NBS. They don't give away the gold jackets during the off season. They have to wait. You have to finish the career for that. Let's talk bus. Bus. See? We're talking.

We're talking busts. That's what that drop just said. Early bust picks. We've each picked one of them. And we'll be doing value picks as well. So, I mean, I'll go first. That's fine. Go ahead. It's probably, you know, I took a peek at your guys' picks. I know that we share similar opinions on this one. This is not...

maybe a full bust, I would say this is a soft bust. Is that a thing? Well, is that? These are, all three of us have players being drafted at the top of drafts. And we are just, we're saying these guys are being overdrafted. And like, calling someone a bust pick doesn't mean that that player sucks. It doesn't mean that that player won't be valuable for a fantasy team. It means playing the market of the average draft position, which is,

everything when it comes to fantasy football in the draft, it means they are being overdrafted of where we believe they will finish, which then means they have not lived up to their hype and they have busted. And this is a player a lot of people are very passionate about, so I understand that. Yeah, I love this man, but I agree with the pick. Yeah, and it's Najee Harris running back for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Last year he finished as the running back four. He's being drafted as the running back five.

Look, it was a massive workload as a rookie. 307 carries, 74 receptions. The argument for this, for him not paying off on draft value to me is an argument of odds. It's can he repeat what he did?

that level of volume translating into top five finish. Look, repeating as a top five running back in fantasy football is extremely difficult to do. And I'll give you the numbers behind that. Over the last five years, only seven of 25 top five running backs repeated that the following year. So that's low odds in a neutral playing field. But you also end up in a situation here where there are some fair storylines where

Look, he wasn't an efficient runner on the ground. Big plays are not necessarily, at least big runs, I should say, are not necessarily Naji Harris's forte, so he doesn't erase the concern of inefficiency to me. And you look at, you know, six rookie running backs historically averaged fewer than four yards per carry with 250 plus touches since 2010. Now, two of them were elite the next season. Lev Bell.

And then what was it, David Montgomery? Montgomery. Yeah. The other four were pure bust, Trent Richardson, Zach Stacey, Leonard Fournett in his rookie year. And then is there one other one? Yeah, you've got Naji now. So we'll see what happens with Naji. But that's a question mark is can the efficiency improve? Can the touchdown numbers go up if he doesn't receive that massive 74?

receiving yards or 74 receptions and 400 plus receiving yards. And that's the question. Now, we all have him ranked as a very solid RB1. So this is not, you know, Barry Najee Harris. This is the three of us won't have them on our teams because of where he's going in drafts. We have him ranked at RB9. So you're talking about, you know, an RB1, a back end RB1, a ton of volume. But even the team has come out and said,

They look at this situation with Najee Harris, and they don't necessarily view it as sustainable, giving him that level of volume. So the coaching staff came out, said they want to manage the workload. They want to manage the health. He said his words, there are going to be downs. He's not out there. And Mike, you made a good point the other day. They may just take him off the field, and that may not reduce his total touches. And so, yeah, maybe things are okay. But you have variables at quarterback. You have variables with efficiency.

And so to us, I think he is just a tier too high in those rankings. And, you know, I know you guys echo that sentiment. Yeah, and it's not even a matter of, oh, he's not going to finish as high as you draft him. It's what are you not drafting when you draft Najee? What is Najee's ceiling versus Austin Eckler going right next to him or, you know, the other players that are on the board when Najee's going.