Fantasy Football Daily - 2021 Week 12 DFS Recap Podcast

Episode Date: December 1, 2021

Scott Barrett (@ScottBarrettDFB) and Jordan Tohline (@JMToWin) of One Week Season (@oneweekseason) review their Week 12 lineups and DFS action. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fantasy-points-podcast/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's time for the Fantasy Points podcast brought to you by FantasyPoints.com. Top level fantasy football and NFL betting analysis from every perspective and angle, from numbers to the film room, with a single goal to help you score more fantasy points. On Fantasy fam, JM to win here. Welcome to the week 13 edition of the DFS recap pod. I am here as always, as almost always, with the great. Scott Barrett and FantasyPoints.com.

I say almost always because we missed last week, but we are back. I am back, Scott's back, Scott. How are you doing? I'm doing good. I'm excited to do this podcast. We missed you last week. I hope you had a relaxing,

enjoyable, profitable Thanksgiving. I didn't play the Thanksgiving slate. Did you play the Thanksgiving slate? I did. I had my worst lineup of all times. time actually finished second worst in a tournament. I've never had that happen. Yeah, I got hammered Thanksgiving.

Just like all the guys I was on got hurt. And then when it came time to pivot, Johnny was like, go all in on Deshaun Jackson, go all in on someone else. And I was like, all right, if he hits, at least the subs will hit and I'll chase this guy who didn't do anything. But it was a mess.

It was not good Thanksgiving sleep. You finished second to last out of how many entries? Is it like a large field? tournament. Oh, I think it was like a thousand, so maybe 500, but it was pretty, it was pretty bad. That's, um, that's not that awful, though, right? It's the Cubs fan all the way to the left, all the way to the right thing, unless you were just like, I mean, I guess like Swift got hurt. That was a pretty popular play. Montgomery didn't do anything. Waller got hurt. So you finished like all the way to the left and still were on relatively popular plays, which I guess is worse. Yeah, you're right. You're

Right. All in on Tony Jones. What else? It was just not good. I had, so we had eight adults and six kids under the age of four, all in one giant house plus Thanksgiving content and whatnot. And so I just, like, I knew from the start of the week that I didn't plan to play. I actually didn't plan to play the Sunday slate either because we, like, rented a big house and check out was Sunday morning. And I was like, man, this is just going to be too much. And then I really liked the slate for reasons we'll get into. I really liked the slate because it was so ugly. And I felt like I could use that to my advantage.

So I ended up putting in a roster right before I went to bed on Saturday night. And so, yeah, I ended up playing the Sunday slate, but did not play the Thanksgiving slate. It was my first time in like seven years not playing the Thanksgiving slate. I think every year I used to think I wouldn't play it. And then I would end up playing it. So I actually didn't play it this year, which was kind of nice because it was a super weird. late. This is a super weird weekend, is super weird NFL season? I feel like that's kind of the theme of things, right, is how weird everything has been. Yeah, exactly. So it is just super weird. I was

tweeting about it before. It feels like a normal season, but someone jacked up the variance meter by like 5x. And it's just so hard to get a read on things. Like who are the best teams in the NFL? No one really knows Vegas lines keep getting smaller and smaller. Vegas is like, just favorites versus underdogs. They stink this year. I'm actually hammering them, or doing way better than they are, but just a really weird year in terms of that. And you're finally seeing that with the closer lines these days. Who are the best players in the NFL? Like, who is MVP right now? I have no, no idea. And then fantasy, it just, as it goes in the NFL, so it goes in fantasy. But fantasy, it's a little bit worse with all these tricky injuries.

I'm in a bunch of I'm in the playoffs in a bunch of FFPC leagues but I have Jalen Hertz as my QB and so if he goes down I'm really screwed I'll have to start like Zach Wilson or Mac Jones this week and a few other

key tricky injuries that really stink and so I wrote like 5,000 words about how fantasy football is totally dependent upon like five players in any given season follows a power law distribution. How many players actually matter for fantasy?

It's so much fewer than people think. You're not going to win your leagues by drafting, you know, slight ADP beaters in every round of your draft. It's really just like having the right to two guys. And, you know, could that be Cordarell Patterson or Jonathan Taylor or Cooper Cup? Sure. But like this year, it's just like really tricky. and in my own leagues, I'm not seeing a lot of dominant 10 and two leagues, like in a home

league, I'm sure you will. But in like high stakes leagues, I'm playing very few dominant teams. And even like my teams, I have like teams that made the playoffs because it's based on points scored. So I finished first in point scored, but like with a massively losing record and it was like in eighth place, it's just a, and like week to week variance is so crazy. Like a guy, you know, he scores 30 and you're like, okay, I know who he is. And then he scores eight. And then he scores six and he scores 30 and you're like what the hell do I make of this so it's a tricky year and it's been a great year to go contrarian uh the winning millie maker lineup very low in terms of combined ownership easily the lowest I can ever recall and it's consistently low and so

yeah how did you do on your one lineup jam um I did I did fine I finished like top 8% in the game changeer. So it was a nice like 3X weekend. But before I get to that, I think that you said a lot of interesting things that I want to unpack real quickly. First off, what you were saying about season long, and the idea that it's like getting two right players is really the difference a lot of times in season long. And I think that it's, you can look at that two ways, right? You can look at it and be like, oh, well, it's just randomness. What can you do? The other way you can look at that is, to say, well, let me make sure that instead of trying to get, like, I used to play in a league with a bunch of my buddies. And one of my friends is really risk-averse. And he would draft like 32-year-old Frank Gore and 31-year-old

AJ Green and like the known names that could have like a decent season. But really, you should be expecting lots of turnover on your roster throughout the season and targeting the guys who have the potential to be the difference-making players. And that can be, you know, early in the season, like the rookie years for Devante Adams and Odell Beckham and Mike Evans, Beckham and Adams, Beckham and Adams didn't get drafted in most drafts that year. And so, you know, finding those types of guys early, like high potential guys early, or I remember the year that Jamal Charles took over for Larry Johnson in like week

seven or eight. You started reading rumblings about how good Jamal Charles had looked in practice and whatnot, like in the few weeks leading up to that before Larry Johnson got benched and then booted off the team. And so I remember picking up Jamal Charles like two weeks before he ever saw any touches and looking for things like that. Like sometimes you're going to be wrong, but you're positioning yourself for like the asymmetric payoff, payoffs on these things, right? Like where you take a small risk and you get a big reward. And you might take 10 small risks before you get that one big reward, but that's kind of what it takes to win in season long.

And I think that that also moves over to DFS in a lot of really interesting ways we can get into. But you were about to jump in with something. So I want to let you speak on what you were going to say. Yeah, I was just to say, if you're not aware of this, this strategy, this article, it's called upside wins championships. And a key point there to what J.M. was saying is you always have the safe. net of the waiver wire to fall back on. So what is the upside in drafting a Mark Ingram or Melvin Gordon is a less strong example. But okay, you know, you drafted them at RB 32 and they're in

RB 22. Like what is that worth your team? Nothing because a guy you can find off waivers is going to average like 1.5 fantasy points per game fewer than that. Or ideally you find like a starter off of waivers or you cobble together, Dontrell Hilliard, Jeremy McNichols types. And so what I try and do in my drafts is really chase the upside. Go all in on upside. After about round seven, upside is the determining factor in all of my decisions. And, you know, the bull case outcome matters so much more, so much more valuable than a median projection.

And yeah, you want to be churning. over the bottom of your roster, looking for upside then off of waivers. And it's just all about upside having the best, finding those power law players and having the strongest starting lineup you can. Though this year is a very depth-driven year. It's so many injuries, depth, and so few power law players. And the ones we're saying aren't really even that valuable that depth has really got a lot, is really more valuable this year. So you said something interesting there that relates directly to DFS and that doesn't get grasped enough. And that is, and I guess what you were saying about season long doesn't get, doesn't get grasped enough by the average season long player either.

But that is this idea of the bull case being much more valuable than the median projection or the floor. And I think it's an interesting dynamic in that you and I have talked about this in the past. and I have taken time to really dive into this on inner circle on one week season. But the idea of where chalk gets formed in one of the main places chalk is going to get formed. And this was the case before established the run. But now with both these guys are together. But it was for years, it's been whatever Levittan is talking about, whatever Silva's talking about. Because when Silva had the matchups column on Rotow World, it was such a widely red column.

And again, as I've talked about in the past, a lot of the DFS content providers, You and I are kind of unique in this space in that we're just focused on football during football season. But the vast majority of DFS content providers are focused on MLB and NBA and PGA and NASCAR and NHL and like all the sports plus NFL. And so they don't have time to do all of the deep, deep research. And so for a lot of those people, it was reading Silva's matchups column was where they got kind of their foundational knowledge and information. And then Levitan is one of the sharpest cash game players. So he's going to narrow down a really sharp. cash game pool each week. But that's going to be more focused on

median projections. That's going to be more focused on floor. And then obviously what Silva's talking about is much more focused on individual player matchups and a lot of it relates to season long. And so what you end up seeing is a lot of people congregating around players based on their safety and based on their median projections as opposed to based on their ceiling. So a lot of chalk gets formed based on the perceived safety of a play as opposed to the bull case for a play. And that's one of the inefficiencies in DFS tournament play that we can look to exploit. And that's one of the most overlooked elements. And you and I have actually talked about this,

this season, in that that's one of the tougher things for you and me to do, right? Because we're so deep into the numbers that we know who the safer plays are. We know who the better median projection plays are. So swinging away from that to the less safe plays can be difficult to do. Do you have any thoughts on that before I get to my roster from this last weekend, which was a perfect example of kind of what we're talking about here? Yeah, I wanted to pivot to my roster and use an example. Is that okay? Then we'll get back to you. Yeah, absolutely. So I think a good example of median versus bull versus Bear is Elijah Mitchell. And so how did I do this week? I got rocked on DK. I cashed in every single lineup on Fandul, and I cashed in every single lineup on Yahoo. It was a rare week where I

played all three platforms. And that's because I thought it had a great grasp of the slate. I was like, I don't know about my TLDR, which just kind of compiles the top plays. But I know my analysis was awesome. And my overall grasp on the slate was, awesome. And it was another one of those weeks where if you, if you read the article and you, you know, picked out what you thought were the strongest arguments, you could have had the literal optimal. And what happened to me? I did not. I did not have the optimal. But I basically wrote up the optimal. And so I'll talk about that in a second. But this has been a common trend for me this season. And it's really frustrating where, okay, I loved Leonard Fernette. I went all in on

Yahoo, but that was where he was the chalkiest. So it didn't really make much, much sense. I loved Joe Mixen stack with Cincinnati's defense. I went all in on on Fandle, but I missed some of the other guys. And my, my, my D.K. main lineup, I basically played one lineup. And it was the chalk. And it was, it was Tom Brady plus Mike Evans, plus Rob Grunkowski. And when Fernette broke the slate at super low, stupid low, I thought he was going to be like 12% owned. He was like 3% owned. And it was just so tilting. And so like what I want to do on this podcast is I really want to just, I'm hoping you can help me redefine my process for the remainder of the season. And I'm just going to stick to that.

And what does that mean? I think it, I think it has to mean. I just automatically exclude the top seven players by projected ownership. And then I look for the top three. highest-owned guys in the top-highest-owned stack and the top-highest-owned game and find a way to leverage off of it, where last week, of course, Leonard Fernett was the perfect example. And so I want to talk about some of these plays, just at least to pat myself on the back after, you know, a depressing outcome where I should have known better.

And every single week, we talk about how weird this season is, how optimal a contrarian approach has been. And yet, once again, I did not listen to my own advice. I did not take my own advice. I chased the chalk like a donkey. So Leonard Fernette, I said, if Tom Brady Stacks are looking chalky, and I think they are, Fernette makes all the sense in the world. It's amazing leverage play. He averages 19.8 fantasy points per game in Tampa Bay's last five wins that would rank fourth best. He's RB11, RB8 on the slate. Cordarell Patterson warrants very serious consideration on If he plays since week two, he averages 20.7 fantasy points per game at the low of 14.9, blah, blah, blah, blah. Vegas is expecting Atlanta to score 24 points despite averaging just 17.8 points per game.

So that makes me think we should be boosting Patterson by a similar margin. That's 35% because he's one of the teams, only two players who are fantasy viable and the other one gets double coverage every week. Joe Nixon, he was our number one projected running back by our projections and our optimizer only site that had him top seven. We had a number one on both sites. He had a top five finish in four of his last five games. I talked about how game script dependent he's been, really smashing and wins since 2018, 22.4, only 13.9 in losses. I argued the Bengals should win this game. They rank fourth worst and yards per carry allowed. but no one notices that. Jalen Waddle, I talked about he was the cover boy for XFP,

just how amazing his volume and usage has been. But I just remember the guy that made me want to talk about what we were saying before, Bull Case versus Medium. And that's Elijah Mitchell. So sorry for that tangent to get there. But I said if Elijah Mitchell plays, he is a very strong play in a vacuum. But he needs. needs to be viewed as essentially this. There's a 50% chance he gets 90 rushing yards and nothing else, 9.0 fantasy points or a 50% chance he scores twice or once with the 100 yard bonus and scores 20. So at his price, amazing value.

He averages 14.2 DK fantasy points per game that was heading into last week. But it's better expressed this way. He averaged 20.6 in his three best games, 8.2 in his three worst games, and 12.9 in his one other game. So all you see is median projection 14 draft Kings points. But he is like the perfect tournament play in the sense that, yeah, but 50% of time, he's dropping 20. So that was a segue there.

But yeah, once again, you know, I had all the right plays. You could have built the optimal from the article. But I did not land on them. And I chased chalk like a donkey. And so from now on, I need a new process. And I'm hoping you can help you. Yeah, but like, past, what happened in the past isn't indicative of what's going to happen in the future.

So it's just as likely, it's like if we flip a coin 15 times and it lands on tails 15 times in a row. And it's like, oh man, this thing keeps landing on tails. But that the next flip of the coin is still a 50-50 flip. And so it's just as likely that in the small sample size of week 13, all of the chalkiest plays end up hitting this week. So that's fine if it's a coin flip, but like we've been saying, just the edge from taking that approach is so much more valuable. And then so it's really tipped,

if you factor that in, tipped into the favor of going contrarian. And this season, it does not feel like a coin flip to me. But we're still dealing with small sample size. We're still dealing with 12 weeks of an NFL season. And I talked a couple weeks ago about, and ultimately I agree with you. I'm not a circle back around to that.

But I talked a couple weeks ago about like if you play a daily sport like MLB or NBA, it's not unusual to go. I had lots of streaks in MLB going over three weeks without cashing in a tournament, which is over 20 slates. And Bales has talked about the time. He had a huge opening day. I think it was 2016, 2017. He had a huge opening day and then didn't cash in a tournament,

didn't have a profitable slate for like over two months. So you think about that in terms of NFL, right? Like that's 60 slate. That's like three, four seasons of unprofitable play. And so like a 12 game sample size is still really small. It just feels big because we have to wait a week for each one. And I think that like the bigger thing is this type of approach is always more profitable to like not just play the chalkiest lineup.

But I don't think it's because like chalk always fit. Like this year it's been highlighted because it's been highlighted because it's happened more frequently. In other years, maybe chalk hits a lot more frequently. Mike Johnson, who writes for the site, he and I were talking the other day about that time a few years ago, a couple years, two, three years ago, when like all the chalk had hit for like four weeks straight. And then Will Fuller was chalk against the Falcons at like 4,500 or whatever. It's like, Will Fuller never hits, especially never when everybody expects him to hit. And then he was like 25% own and had like a 50 point game, right? Like there's streets like that as well where everyone's like,

oh, I should just play the chalk, you know? And so these things flip around, but it's just that over time, it's more profitable to bet on different things than other people are betting on. But the key is it's more profitable to bet on different really good plays than everybody else is betting on. Like the Bucks passing stack was still a really good play. But so was Mixin. So was Elijah Mitchell.

So was like you kissed your lips. like, I don't know if the buck's passing stack. No, so what I was going to say was the number two run defense DVOA and Darius Leonard roaming the middle of the field, like they shut down running backs and they've been awful against the past this year. Like it was objectively a good play. But so was Elijah Mitchell, so was Joe Mixon, so were these other ones that you're talking about, Jalen Waddle, where it's harder to highlight those and stick with them because

nobody's on them. And so you don't get that echo chamber of like it doesn't feel good to play those guys is because you're like, maybe I'm wrong in this. Like, nobody else likes this guy, right? Whereas if everybody likes the bucks, you're like, oh, yeah, well, this is a good play. So it's more about just like trusting those plays that you see that nobody else sees. Right. So last year, what worked so great for me was really just zoning in on my process, ignoring

everything else, which I typically do. And just playing what I thought were the best plays. and so often last season, it was like no one was ever on Brandon Ayuk, no one was ever on Deontay Johnson and all these guys that I liked. And so they hit and I hit and I felt like I was just playing optimal and having an edge, like a contrarian edge and that other people didn't see it the same way I did. I thought that's what I was doing this past week with Mike Evans over Chris Godwin. Godwin was the big chalky piece from Tampa, but that made no sense to me because he talked all week about how they were so scared of Darius Leonard.

They were scheming to, to avoid him. Godwin does all of his work in the middle of the field. Indianapolis really good against slot wide receivers, really bad against outside wide. So I thought that was my edge. One thing I will say, too, is I was watching a, on YouTube, I think it was an awesom, you know, slate breakdown, just put it on the background while I'm doing my data collection.

And this guy was like, yeah, basically 90% of my process is expected fantasy points and schedule adjusted fantasy points per game allowed, which are two stats I basically invented and had the monopoly on for four years where, you know, DFS felt so much easier. And, you know, instead of getting mad that this guy, you know, basically, you know, I lost the patent on that. And now every site, you know, hones in on those two stats. I just followed the guy. I'm like, all right, cool. This guy has good process because, like, that's been my process for so long. But because those two stats, like especially those two stats, there's some other ones I still have that other people haven't landed on to the same degree.

One of which is slot versus outside fantasy points per game allowed to wide receivers. I don't know why no one else looks at that, but it's so important. I was just like, all right, hat tip to this guy. but yeah because that because of that and so many other sites are incorporating that into their analysis I do think I tend to this year land on chalkier plays or I just I just land on plays that end up become chalky because other sites have a similar approach to me which I think should lend more credence to to the contrarian approach what were your running backs this last week like I know you built a bunch of rosters like generally speaking what

was your? Oh, I went Uber Chalk, Miles Sanders, James Robinson. On Fandall, I had 100% mix in on Yahoo, I had 100% for net, but on Draft Kings. I think I went wide receiver in the flex and Robinson and and Miles Sanders. So my roster this last week, my thought was, it was a 10-game slate. And it was a 10-game slate. And it was pretty ugly and shock always forms no matter what. So my entire strategy was just do something different than the field, basically. And so obviously I like the Bucks passing stack, but I decided to bet on that Vikings 49ers game and hope that it could shoot out. Because that was a game that was near equal to like the chances of the Bucks scoring 30 plus

and the chances of 49ers and Vikings, both scoring 30 plus, was about near equal, but everybody wasn't going to treat it that way. Plus, Vikings 49ers, you get the back and forth so you can pull in extra pieces by doing that. Right. And that was so much lower owned than Tampa Bay that there was only like two points between them and implied total. And then the gap between them and the next closest team was massive. Yeah.

And so basically that was kind of the thought was like, well, even if like Evans and Godwin blow up or gronk. I guess you and you I think that's super sharp on the Evans thing like that didn't make sense to me either that Godwin was expected to be so much higher own than Evans obviously midweek it was like oh is Evans going to play he's got the back thing right and people just don't they don't feel comfortable shifting their thoughts midweek and I think it's a fear of of Sunday ending and then being like oh god I was on Godwin on Wednesday and then he had this huge game and so they just don't shift off of that so Evans comes in lower owned and is obviously like at

worst a 50-50 play next to Godwin, but probably better than a better play than Godwin and was going to be lower own. So I think that's a super sharp way to play that. But my thinking is always, we talked about this a few weeks ago, but not who I'm fading so much as who I'm playing. And so for me, it was like, well, Evans and Gronk can hit. Godwin and Gronk can hit, but let me also bet on other plays that can hit. So like if those ones hit, hopefully I'm keeping pace of them. If those ones miss, I don't have moving past them. And so the Vikings and 49ers game was kind of like the starting point. Unfortunately at Running Back,

this is what I had at Running Back. And so keep in mind, I had like a 3x weekend, right? I had Ty Johnson, Saquan Barkley, and then I'll get to the third guy here in a moment, who was kind of part of just a build.

But so totally bombed there at running back. But I differentiated at defense. I had the Dolphins defense, which ended up being big. The three defenses I liked were Patriots, Texans, and Dolphins. The Dolphins was, the most uncomfortable defense to actually use because nobody was talking about them,

nobody was on them. So again, and then if the Dolphins defense- They were chalk on Fandual, but yeah, not on draft games. If the Dolphins defense is having a good game, they're also taking away points from popular players in Christian McCaffrey and Cam Newton. So basically saying like, hey, if the dolphins end having like a shutdown game where like basically the game that they had, it's funny because the narrative, and this is where I talk about like chalk forming, there's no reason for the narrative around Cam Newton to have been like, oh, he's going to come back and look awesome, right?

Like, he looked genuinely horrible all season last year. And then people are like, oh, yeah, well, pre-COVID, he was playing well. He had, like, two games pre-cove. He had, like, one good game in Seattle last year. And so everybody's, like, oh, well, now Cam Newton's back to Cam Newton. And maybe he was going to be, right? But we don't know that. And so if everybody's treating that as certainty, and what I mean by that is, like, if

the narrative industry wide had been Cam Newton sucks and this Panthers offense is going to be trash, then it becomes plus Evita be looking at Cam Newton, be looking at Christian McCaffrey, because we just don't know as much as everybody wants to act like they know. So that was one spot for me was Dolphins defense. And then the, this is where things got really interesting for me, the Vikings 49ers game. So there's only really three players. I use Debo instead of Elijah Mitchell. I could have gone either way there. But There's basically two ways to play the Vikings, I mean, three ways to play the Vikings office. You play with Jefferson, you play with Thielen, you play with Cook.

And so my thought was, given the way that the 49ers play defense, trying to limit downfield passing, they're not super talented on the back end. So they're having to rely on scheme to take away downfield passing. So I went with Thielen instead of Jefferson. I went cousins plus Thielen plus Debo. That was a super uncomfortable, like, roster block to lock in to actually roll out there with Thielen where you know that his chance of getting 100 plus yards are relatively slim and you know that he needs multiple touchdowns in order to

get there. But the thinking was, well, this is a game nobody's on. And if this game plays out the way we wanted to play out, it's likely to be through Thielen. The other one was I thought that Devante Adams and Cooper Cup chalk were and Cooper Cup I think ended up not being super chalk. But I thought that those were way too high of ownership for their price tags. Like the chances of those guys getting 35 to 45 points was way lower than the field was going to give the credit for, but I still liked that game. And so I wanted leverage off those guys. My original thought was Marquez Valdez Scantling and Daryl Henderson.

Henderson, obviously, you're saying the Rams have a good game, but the touchdowns come on the ground, just like the Leonard Ford net thing, right? It's not like, it's not saying, hey, this is this matchup and this elusive rating and this, that, and the other thing. It's more just like, look, this offense is going to score points, and maybe the points come through this guy instead of the guy everyone thinks. On the Packer's side, I basically took the same thinking as I did with the feeling thing, which was Jalen Ramsey is going to be assigned to Devante Adams most of the game.

They're going to try to slow Devonts as much as possible. And they know that if they slow down Devonty Adams, so one thing that can really hurt them is huge plays from MVS. So that's going to be their next layer of defense is paying attention to making sure we don't get beat deep by Mark is Valde at Scantley. What does that open up? That opens up underneath looks for Randall Cobb, who also just so happened in the NFL in targets inside the 10-yard line

heading into last week. So my roster was Cousins plus Thielen plus Debo, and then a Henderson plus Cobb pairing from that Rams and Packers game. Basically saying if the Packers are going to put up 30 plus points or keep pace in this game, it's actually likely to come from Randall Cobb being more heavily used than people will expect. So I ended up getting three of the 10 highest scoring wide receivers on the sleeve, and two of them felt genuinely uncomfortable to stick with. You know, Randall Cobb was 0.6% owned in the game changer at 3,700. He got four catches for 95 yards

and a touchdown at halftime before missing the second half. And so that's kind of the, the, the way that I was approaching this last week. And for me, as you know, every week is different. But this last week, it was like, this slate is so ugly and people are still going to bet on it as if there's certainty. And so my whole strategy was just like, let me go in a different direction than the field. And again, it wasn't that I was betting that the buck's passing attack would fail. I was just saying, let me bet on something else that can hit at like an equal level if everything works out the way we needed to work out. And hopefully that one fails and I just move past.

everything. So then I got the leverage with like Cobb and Henderson over the popular players in that game. I got the leverage with Thielen and cousins in a game where people were betting on Debo, but not betting on anything else from that game. And that was basically, I mean, that was it. You know, that was the slate right there for me. What a legendary play. Yeah, I was not on Thielen at all. And Cobb is just like vintage peak J.M where you are so good at landing on these zero percent owned wide receivers who 5x value incredible play i am i'm just in awe but i think that that's part of it right it's like wide receiver is so has so much variance in it especially this year if you come up with like oh let me just take this random let me play dandre carter and hope that

kentrick boring than mcloin i actually liked kendrick board i wrote him up this last week but um if you're just like he rings 15th in fantasy points since week three yeah yeah yeah And like, no one knows that. Yeah. But yeah, it's like you can just take like DeAndre Carter and say, oh, hopefully he has a bigger game than McLaurin, right? Like that's one way to do it. But the way that I prefer to do it is where you can actually come up with a clear scenario of like, oh, well, this is how this team's going to play defense. And that's going to force this team to attack in this way.

And so it's uncomfortable to stick with, but that's kind of necessary sometimes. And I think that that's, you know, but even like I wasn't on mixing. at all because I'm always thinking about, oh, this guy has to have a past catching role if I'm paying $7,600 for him. And so it's the same thing. Like, right? Like the similar things like that might prevent you from playing Randall Cobb or Thielen is the same thing that's going to prevent me from playing like Mixin or somebody else that you can make a strong case for them being a super sharp player. Two weeks ago, Jonathan Taylor, right? I didn't play that slate.

But you told me that you were like, oh, you should have been all over Jonathan Taylor. It was partly because of our conversation that I was on Jonathan Taylor. And for me, it's like, oh, well, I'm looking at like, oh, this guy doesn't catch enough passes and he's facing the bills and, you know, the game flow would have to work out this. And so like I get too boxed into thinking at running back. And so I try to swing like broader and more risk embracing at wide receiver because I know that I can't do that as well at running back. And so it's like you got to just find the place where you're capable. It's like the thing with you is you're identifying running backs that everybody else is looking at as risky. And you're looking at that. I'm like, no, this is a good play. And then you just have to stick with that, like, play Mixon and Mitchell this last week and your golden or four net and mixing and Mitchell. You know, that's like first place right there. We should start building lineups together.

That's what I think. I'll take running backs. You take wide receivers. Take running backs. And I'll argue your running backs up until lock because I won't feel comfortable with them and you'll do the same thing with my wide receivers. We'll go out and win all the. money. Yeah. I mean, and honestly, that's like, it's, if you don't have a roster where you feel

uncomfortable with some plays, you're probably not going to get first place. And it's not because uncomfortable plays are better plays. It's just because uncomfortable plays are, like, by the nature of those plays, everybody feels the same way. Anybody who tried to put Randall Cobb on a roster felt the same way I felt, which is like, oh, God, I'm going to feel like an idiot if this fails. And then that's like the type of play that you know is going to be low owned. I remember when, remember in 2015 all the stuff with like, they thought that the Fandall employee, I forget his name now, like had access to ownership before the, yeah, Ethan. And he'd had like an Andy Dalton stack that won tournaments that day. And it was like, oh, he knew Andy

Dalton was going to be low-owned. And it was like, you don't need to see ownership to know that Andy Dalton's going to be low-owned. You can put him on a roster and know how uncomfortable it feels to leave him there. And you know that he's going to be low-owned. And so it's just like, it's what we were talking about. If everyone were talking about Mixen last week, then it wouldn't feel uncomfortable because you get that echo chamber. You're like, oh, well, everybody's saying this is a sharp play. And so it's like it's finding the sharp plays that other people aren't talking about. And it's like this. If there's 10 games on the slate, there's more sharp plays than like the 12 guys that everyone's talking about. There's 10 games out there. Right. Like there's going to be some games. They're

just going overlooked. And then because no one's talking about them and even if you're not, even if you build in the bubble like I do and like you mostly do, you still have a sense when you put this guy in the roster like nobody's, nobody else is seeing this guy the way I'm seeing him. and that makes you uncomfortable to stick with it. But that's kind of, again, that's what's necessary to get first place in a tournament. All right. So I just self-flagellated before for about five minutes. So let's do my lineup review on draftings.

Again, that was the site I got hammered, did well everywhere else. But I did think I made some smart decisions in terms of roster construction. And so I went Brady Dubstack. I thought Gromk was easily the best. end play at a slate thought evans was a top three wide receiver play he scored 4.6 fantasy points wait wait i got i got i got i got to interrupt you you want to know who i played at tight end i played kyle pitts i got like four points for 6100 or whatever uh on kyle pitts that was a bummer because obviously gron kronken friarm youth were the tight ends i liked and then i was like

well like pits can actually go for 30 if the jags don't don't dedicate the right type of attention to him so let me go there. I thought that was funny because it was like clearly saving 1700 on or 1800 on prior me, 1700 on Gronk was a sharper way to go. But I went balls to the wall with my roster this last week. I love it. I love it. I'm doing that this week and every week moving forward. That's that's the plan. So yeah, super chalky Brady Gronk Evans ran it back with Michael Pittman, who I thought was going to be like decent leverage off of Jonathan Taylor where it's like This offense is almost so highly concentrated as the Steelers, where it just runs through these two players. But Naji catches way more passes.

So there's more of a negative correlation. There's been a massive negative correlation this season. I also didn't mind the matchup. He did nothing and was popping in my model as one of the top values. And then running backs, I went, James Robinson. I've been writing up every single week. I cannot wait until James Robinson is helpful. healthy because everything's pointing towards he's going to get a bell cow workload when he's healthy.

And the matchup against the Falcons look great. And I stacked it with Jaguar's defense. And I was like, okay, Cordarell Patterson is a legitimate game time decision. Kyle Pitts is the only other fantasy viable weapon in this offense. And you just double him every single game. So Robinson stack with Jaguar's defense. And I'm like, who could hurt me here? Who could hurt me here?

Only Cordill Patterson and, you know, Jaguars massively trailing. But this is the closest spread Robinson's going to have for the rest of the season. Sanders, he got hurt, but really loved him against a bad Giants run defense. You know, Boston Scott plus Jordan Howard had been Derek Henry over the past few weeks. And then I just topped it off with an Elijah Moore, Brandon Cook's game stack, our mini stack. Love Nisom, Elijah. Obviously, Zach Wilson really made me nervous. But, you know, easy correlation there.

And then I look back at the lineup and I'm like, okay, who can hurt me here? Really just Leonard Fernette and Corderole Patterson. And so maybe my process approach moving forward should just be build a chalky, what I think is optimal lineup. and then look at the players that could destroy it and then delete that lineup and build a lineup around those players. I mean, that's honestly not bad process because ultimately you want to be playing like good plays.

But if you can look at things objectively and be like, hey, this is a super sharp build but you also know it's chalky. And then you're like, who can hurt this build? Well, you're basically saying who can hurt the chalk, right? And so then you just end up taking the play that can, I mean, that's just another way to find leverage, like a different process for finding leverage. But yeah, and that's the biggest thing, too, is not just looking at this season.

Like, I think a lot of people have looked at this season and been like, oh, man, obvious plays keep failing. So then it's like, oh, well, I'll avoid the obvious plays instead of saying, how can I attack the obvious plays? How can I say, I don't think that this obvious play is going to succeed, or I can see a path where this obvious play fails, so let me attack it. Let me get direct leverage off of it. And that's kind of the DFS 101 element that a lot of people are missing still in their play. If you just like attack the popular plays and those popular plays fail, you're probably getting the piece that is causing those popular plays to fail, thus boosting your roster

while hurting other people's rosters. Well, that's going to be my strategy moving forward. Every single week we're going to do a contrarian review or a lineup review and my line-up review and my line-ins going to be super contrarian. That's the plan at least. Take my own advice for us. For the rest of the season, we will come on here and celebrate your huge victory. And we'll do it. We'll actually record the video next week. So you can do like an actual victory lap around the space behind your chair and the wall. I'm visualizing it. And as we stated, positive visualization, scientific studies back at, you know, correlate with success. I can't get over how bad Russell Wilson has been since you and I have had that conversation. What conversation?

Like when we talked about like positive mindset and positive visualization. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And we talked about like Tom Brady and Russell Wilson as like your specific examples. And Russ has a mindset coach. he has TED Talks talking about it and he is broken. He's so broken right now. That whole offense is so broken right now. Do you think that this is kind of our topic,

but you think we see Russell Wilson going somewhere else next year? Yeah, I mean, it wouldn't surprise me at all. Twitter seems to have like, I follow a ton of Seahawk fans. It's so weird. Like the average Seahawk fan is smarter than the average Miami beat writer. like Seattle fans are awesome. And I'm a Giants fan, so I don't have a dog in the fight. But, and they're all dummies.

But yeah, they've sort of resigned themselves to the Pete Carroll, Russell Wilson, marriage is officially over. And I'm reminded of a rumor. I think like a legitimate guy tweeted this out, but maybe I'm wrong. But there's a legitimate rumor that the Seahawks offered the Browns, Russell Wilson straight up for the first overall pick being Baker Mayfield and the Browns declined it. And there was that thing this offseason too where Russ was like, I wouldn't mind being traded to these five teams. But this isn't a demand.

Yeah. Yeah. I would love to see just selfishly as an NFL fan. I'd love to see Russ playing for another team just because some of what he does is so incredible. and it's so underused on that on that Seattle team. But also, you know, that's kind of an interesting thing too because I was thinking about that Seattle team like this next week. I forget who they're playing this next week,

but I think it's a relatively soft matchup. And I'm sure you're looking it up right now. But the, who is it? You know? I wasn't looking it up. Oh, okay. Too much faith in me. The 49ers, week 13.

Okay. Not a good matchup. Texans week 14. Yeah, there you go. Like I feel like there's there's like the balance of being like this, this player, this offense is too good to stay this bad, right? And so you want to be early. But then you also have to recognize that sometimes teams are just going through something where they're going to remain bad for a little while. And so you don't want to like, you don't throw money away, just wait. It's like Robbie Anderson, right? Like you can throw so much money

away waiting for the party to happen that by the time the party does happen, you're just like recovering part of your losses from it. So yeah, it's like the Seahawks have looked genuinely bad and broken. And I don't know they can fix that on a short week. But it's interesting to think about spots like that as well. And spots that could end up, what I would say is you really can't bet on a spot that's like that risky unless you think it can be a had-to-habit spot. So you'd have to tell a story where like that game shoots out.

And especially with Debo expects it to miss, it would have to be like Ayak and Kittal or something like that or iak and elijah michel plus russ and dk or plus russ and locket or something like that but yeah it's always interesting especially at this point in the season when people have their their thoughts ingrained already as far as like oh this team plays this way or this team looks like this or this team's bad or i've used that example i think on here before 2018 when nobody nobody rostered josh allen and his past catchers weeks 12 through 17 when he just went nuts almost every week uh because he looked so bad the first two third to that season and the whole narrative around him was like, oh, he doesn't have accuracy and

he can't cut it in the NFL. And so you find those places like that late in the season every once in a while. But then also you can't force it. Like you can't just say, hey, Trevor Lawrence is going to go on a hot streak down the stretch because he's probably not, you know, or Zach Wilson's going to go on a hot streak down the stretch because he's probably not. Man, Elijah Moore is really missing out on Flacco and Mike White with Wilson back under center. that's what I wrote it up as is like listen all Zach Wilson has to be is just Josh Johnson Mike White Joe Flacco levels of bad but if he's Zach Wilson levels of bad we're in trouble and he was Zach Wilson levels of bad I um my best ball rosters are littered with guys like

Ty Johnson, Russell Gage, Alexander Madison, like guys who randomly have bigger roles at this point in the season than they did eight weeks ago. So I'm hopeful that some of this, like these players actually not being good

will like at least come around to help me by the fact they have bigger roles at this point in the season. We got like, what, two weeks left until the playoff rounds in best ball. So I'm sitting on like, basically on underdog two two out of 12 teams make it to the playoff rounds like one out of every six and like one out of every six of my rosters is in position for that so I'm hoping I can I can kind of

beat those odds a little bit over these last couple weeks yeah I love basketball I know a lot of fantasy analysts just like don't do uh start sit leagues anymore it's just like annoying and it's so much maintenance it's very volatile you know you know you know like I said, a ton of teams high in point scored, not going to make the playoffs. That's horrible. Setting waivers, you know, frustrating starts sit decisions. So all they do, like Run for Johnny does this is they do like 100 bestball teams and they play DFS and that's it, which just like feels so, you know, so nice to me.

But I do love start sit and always. Yeah, you got to do trades throughout the season and season long. You got to like talk to people about. I mean, I don't. I'm too busy. trades. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I stopped, I stopped season long four years ago, five years ago, and I missed it for like a season. But yeah, it definitely has its place. It's just, I think once you get into the content side of things, especially start playing best ball, it's, it's harder to go

back to it. You got anything else before we get out of here? We might get out of here a little bit early. I think that we've kind of covered everything from this last, last week, unless you have anything else. nah no i think that's it well i appreciate you hanging out today i am excited for next week when