10 Things to Remember from 2019 + Buy or Sell

was the only guy in the top 10 who actually provided a positive return on what you paid for him. But not really. I mean, that's from consistency. That's a whole different discussion. But the point is, people get really excited about these early round quarterbacks and things happen. Like, we get things wrong. You get things wrong. Everyone in the draft. How dare you? And just saying in the draft.

People get things wrong. And when you are spending that third or fourth round pick, because Jason, I hear you talking like, yeah, if Lamar Jackson's there in the fourth. So I'm reminding you, early round quarterback, they're not safe just because they're a quarterback. And when you are wrong on a quarterback, it's far more devastating to take one in the third round and be wrong. You're going to be wrong about wide receivers or running backs in the third round, but they're so much more valuable when they hit. Late round quarterback was again a great year.

for this strategy with Dak and Lamar. And it's going on every year running. Yes. And it will continue to go. Now, Lamar Jackson, of course, could be the number one guy again next year. But what is the, like, what is really the benefit when you can get a guy later? And if, and if you are wrong, like when you were wrong on Patrick Mahomes, that, that really, really hurt your draft.

Well, and I think you hit on the argument that is made is at least, well, if I choose to spend on one, at least I know it's safe. Exactly. That's the illusion. It's not safe. Right. I like that. Number four. All right. No country for old running backs. Oh, mamas, don't let your.

Boys grow up to be running backs. No position ages quite like the running back position. And we can call this our maybe the one with a little bit more of a dynasty focus, a keeper focus, a keeper spin. We've talked about it before. I thought it'd be interesting to look back at the top 30 overall picks in 2018. And look at the wide receivers in that group out of that top 30. Look at the running backs.

2018 was not long ago. Wide receivers drafted in the top 30, A.B., Hopkins, Beckham, Julio, Michael Thomas, Keenan Allen, Devante Adams, A.J. Green, Mike Evans, Stefan Diggs, Tyreek, and Hilton. One of those guys might have aged out, right? That might have been, if I want to concede A.J. Green's career as in any, who knows? But I can give A.J. Green.

If you look at the running backs in that stretch, Gurley, Bell, DJ, Zeke, Camara, Barkley, Gordon, Fournette, Hunt, McCaffrey, Cook, Howard, Freeman, Mixin McKinnon, McCoy. Oh, McKinnon. Now, depending on how you want to read their decline, I count seven or eight running backs in that top 30 stretch that might have aged out of the position. What do you mean? LaShawn McCoy is a Super Bowl champion this year. You make a strong point. Got the ring. It's funny because I walked into one of our bathrooms here, and there was a.

shady painting up on that and it's in the bathroom for a reason now but the reality this is not saying now don't don't hear me wrong running back's the most important position i'm always going to in a redraft league i'm going to be hitting those running backs i'm going to hit them hard i'm going to that's who i prefer to draft at the top of the draft but you have to be mindful of this in dynasty league you don't put running backs on autopilot

And in redraft, you do need to be mindful of the fact that, you know, look at this past year, right? Devanta Freeman, Lev Bell, Todd Gurley, David Johnson. Those are four upper echelon picks that hit a wall in some way, shape, or form. Whether it was workload impacted because of the wall, whether it was performance on the field, it's still the most important position, but you cannot autopilot running backs, especially in dynasty keeper situations where you think you've got a guy forever.

That doesn't mean there aren't running backs that have long, sustainable careers. But they do not prove that all of them will. For every Frank Gore, Adrian Peterson, there are players with very limited shelf lives. Well, if you just look at, you know, the statistical peak of running backs, it's younger than you think. The statistical peak of running backs is 24 years old. It's not like, you know, that's like from that point on,

they start going down. And so it's like, if we talk about this wide receiver who's 25,

That's a young buck. He has not hit his prime yet. He has not started. It's like a 38, 39-year-old podcaster. I mean, just right in the peak. So, yeah, I mean, running backs, young guys come in. They do it quicker and they fall off much, much younger. We've always talked about the 30-year-old age cliff, and that's, you know, a little bit of a misnomer. But when you talk about just declining value, it's well before then. And the truth is you'd love to have the...

the autopilot running back you'd love to have the guy that you know you can put in there because they're hard to find they're such an anchor for your team in a dynasty or a keeper league but it's just very difficult to find them wait for it yeah the button doesn't work oh no i think number three is that's four no three all right i got you number three so a lot of people will say like who does our voiceover and now you know yeah it's you now you know it's me hold on let me hit it again okay

Number three. There we go. Number three. Oh, I did. You hit it twice. All right. All right. So mine, this, my last thing to remember here is really, it's for myself. I want to take more risks with rookies. And the reason that this is like something I want to remember is because I went back, you know, we always, we look at what we get right. We look at what we get wrong. We look at how close we were right.

how far off we were when we were wrong. And so when I'm getting ready for the ultimate draft kit 2020, and I'm putting in everybody's statistics from 2019 so that, you know, the software that we've developed that we use to stat people out when we put a player's name in, it shows what they did last year and breaks down a bunch of stuff. So, you know, I was putting in this last year, and it gave us this small period of time where we could check.

how we projected everybody with where their actual finishes were statistically, every single stat. And I was very, very impressed with one, Andrew Holloway's rookie statistics. And I noticed across the board it wasn't a scouting thing where I was wrong on players that I liked. But when I liked a guy and Andy liked a guy, rookie specifically coming in,

Andy would stat them out much more aggressively than I allowed myself to do in the pre-draft rankings, and he hit some of these guys so stinking close.

And I don't know, Mike, where you were, because this was a day. Oh, right on the nose. Right on the nose. But yes, perfect. Don't check it. So, well, I don't know. Just trust me. You weren't there that day when we were going back and forth through all of these different rookies. And so I just noticed that for myself, I was too timid to believe. And while I do think it's important to remember.

rookie wide receivers, even the great ones, they break out more of the second half than the first half. That was one of the things to remember last year. Look at AJ Brown. Awesome. But that was a... Debo broke out the second half. But those were second half. But in general, across the board, I want to be more aggressive with statting of rookies. And if you combine that with the fact that this is known to be a very, very good rookie draft class, I want to take more risks. I want to be... I think that 2020 is going to be a year to be...

a little bit risky when it comes to grabbing a rookie, starting them early. You know, how long did you wait before you believed in Terry McLaurin? You know, how long before, you know, Marquis Brown were you willing to put them in your lineup? And so I want to, like looking back at my process, my starts, my sits, my stats, I think I want to take more risks with the 2020 rookies. So are you changing how you draft them?

I am going to change how I draft them a little bit, yeah, because I'm going to adjust their season rankings accordingly. I think it'll be more accurate. That'll be a little bit more bullish. And the thing is, is maybe, you know, Debo.

You couldn't really use him in the beginning of the season. Correct. So there's a swing and a miss. But if you do the same thing with Terry McClure, and you're going to hit on some of these guys. And running backs, we all know this. Rookie running backs are phenomenal. Draft rookie running backs, draft them left, right and center. And so I think it will affect all of the positions. I mean, look at Kyler Murray. He came out this year. He finished as the quarterback eight despite having a lousy second, you know, or I would say last.

quarter of the year. So I want to be more bullish and more risky, less afraid with rookies. I'm going to take a risk and I'm going to try to push this button again. Number two. Yay. We're back, baby. Sounded just like Jason. That was me. Incredible. This one is entitled, just like my weight. Titties fluctuate. And look. With touchdowns. Touchdowns. Yeah.

Those also fluctuates, yes. I'm not just talking about players because we already know that touchdowns are not a sticky stat from year to year. But I want to talk about when you're trying to break down the trend of like what's going on with the wide receivers. I think it's a difficult thing to look at the top 10 wide receivers. What advantage were they giving you? Because last year we had 797 passing touchdowns.

And that was down from 847 the previous year. So look at the top 10 wide receivers. What happened? The top 10 wide receivers last year had 85 total touchdowns compared to 98 the year before. I mean, and you can look at like Antonio Brown was gone. He's a touchdown monster. Those are variables that I'm not factoring in right now. But I'm saying that passing touchdowns, they go all over the place from 797 to 847.

741, 786. And then back in 2015, you had 842. It's not a situation where I feel confident enough looking at the trend of what is happening with the top 10 wide receivers and saying they're losing value. So that's what the overarching point of this is, that the touchdowns will fluctuate. I'm not looking at the wide receivers in the second round and saying, nope.

I'm going to pass on these higher end wide receivers because they're not giving me the advantage that they did. I'm going to take another risk on a second round running back, even though he's tier three or whatever in my rankings. So that's a process that I will be looking at where are wide receivers ranking in ADP and not being afraid that.

the decline of the high-end wide receiver is actually happening. And within the position, one of the nice things you can do or look at is take away touchdown production from all wide receivers, just as like an exercise, and running backs as well. Say, okay, if you got no points for touchdowns, and you could do this in the ultimate draft kit, just for a second, zero out, say touchdowns or worth zero points. And then just look at, okay, so who's the volume plays? Who are the players that we expect to be doing the most on the field?

Because touchdowns, while, you know, you could say, okay, well, you know, Devante Adams has a history of it, or obviously Derek Henry looks like a real touchdown machine. They really, really are not sticky. So you can look at the volume apart from touchdowns and maybe help, you know, have that help inform. Yes, that was the word. Yeah, there's no worries. Let's get to number one. Number one. All right. It's familiar, but it's important. And that is, of course, tell.

50 friends about the fantasy footballers podcast. If you stop at 40, I'm ashamed of you. This year's challenge is to beat foot clan members. And we recommend 50. And do you want to do the bare minimum? No, maybe you. All right. That's not the real number one tip, although it obviously is the best one. I liked it better. If you want to do that as well, it's fine. Number one.