Fantasy Football Daily - 2021 Week 2 DFS Recap Podcast

Episode Date: September 21, 2021

Scott Barrett (@ScottBarrettDFB) and Jordan Tohline (@JMTowin) of One Week Season (@oneweekseason) review the Week 2 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

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to help you score more fantasy points. What is going on, FantasyFam? J.M. to win here from One Weekseason.com hanging out with my good buddy, the great Scott Barrett from FantasyPoints.com. Scott, how are you doing? How's that abscess? It's good. Went to the doctor and I was just like, this is nothing, right?

I could just put Neosporin on it and it and it'd be fine. She's like, no, you should definitely be on. antibiotics. So good news is it's it's completely all gone. Hate taking antibiotics, but on that for the next five days or so. I don't think I've ever finished a round of antibiotics. I always say that's bad, right? Like if you don't finish it. Yeah. I remember hanging out with a friend who is like, oh, I never finish it and I never, and I always drink alcohol on it. And like, that's the worst. I don't know anything. So like I could just be talking. out of my ass, but I'm pretty sure, like, that's how, like, Mercer exists is from, like,

people not finishing their antibiotics. And so, like, it doesn't completely destroy the bacteria. It just makes them, like, stronger and resistant to antibiotics. And then, like, so alcohol is the same thing, but also some antibiotics. You can get, like, boils and stuff from mixing it with alcohol. So, yeah, don't be that guy. Welcome to fantasy discussions with Scott and J.M. This is all bro science. Like I don't know anything. So if someone's smart out there, you know, clue us in.

At us on Twitter. I remember we like talked about Carl Young for seven minutes and then some guy tweeted us and was like, oh, I'm doing my dissertation on Young. And we had a lovely conversation. So the people out there who actually know things. Are you getting things right on that? Because I remember that conversation last year. Yeah, I think so.

I mean, I read some. You were reading a book at the time. So that helps a little bit. spoiler alert for listeners i actually i actually knew the resolution of scott's abscess story before we came on air behind the scenes behind the scenes uh what i don't know is how scott's dfs weekend went uh you wanted to keep it as a secret for both of us so scott keep it secret keep it safe uh how was your dfs weekend yeah so i i told j m i was really excited to do this podcast just because like i'm hoping he can do what he did last week, which is where, like, you know, he, he, he caresses me ever so gently and

says it's not your fault. It's like the scene from Goodwill Hunting, where the process was good, but the results weren't great, and definitely the results weren't great. What about for you? We should see how many movie references we can fit into one podcast. We've hit a couple already. We hit Lord of the Rings for anybody who missed it. What was that? I said, keep it secret. Keep it safe. Oh, okay, okay, nice. And Goodwell Hunting. We'll see what else we get to.

We'll throw some Harry Potter in there and mess around with some stuff. So mine was, I mean, it was fine. It was, I mean, I didn't make money. I didn't lose a lot of money. I cashed three out of eight rosters in tournaments. So through two weeks, I've cashed six out of 15 rosters, which is 40%. So technically that's good. That means I'm ahead of pace.

That's kind of how I judge process. But also, I think I don't have over 10% of my rosters in the top 10% or over, you know, 5% of my rosters in the top 5% so far. So technically, if I'm just cashing, that makes me question if I'm not taking enough risks. I will say this last weekend, yeah, I'm excited to talk about this last weekend. So we went, I'm West Coast, so games kick off at 10 a.m. and about 930, my small family and I embarked on a 30-minute walk since we have a two-and-a-half-year-old and a six-month-old. It was like an hour and 15-minute walk. But when we were starting the walk, it was 20 minutes, 30 minutes before kickoff.

And I was telling my wife, I said, I don't love this week because I couldn't figure out what to do outside of the most obvious thing. and basically it was like doing the most obvious thing is rarely going to make you the most money in DFS. And I said, I can never get comfortable with, she wasn't really listening for anybody who's like, man, J.M's wife, so cool. She is cool, but she was not, she wasn't really listening. But yeah, I said, like the most obvious thing was so obvious

that I couldn't move away from it. I couldn't find the path around that most obvious thing to say, this other thing is going to make me more money over time. And the sharpest way to play this last weekend would have been to just say, everybody's on Cowboys and Chargers. And yes, it's the least likely game to fail. But if everybody's on it, and we also have a shootout potential in Minnesota and Arizona, shootout potential in Atlanta and Tampa, shoot out potential in, help me out here,

bills and dolphins, which didn't shoot out, shoot out potential in, there was one other late game. Cardinals Vikings. Yeah, Tennessee and Seattle. And so the sharpest thing would have been to say, okay, I will build around one of these other four games or all four of these other four games. I built eight rosters. I could have done two, two, two and two. And generally leave that Cowboys and Chargers game alone.

What really hung me up was volume. And it was hard to see Keenan Allen not getting 13 plus targets. It was hard to see one of CD Lamb or Amari not getting 13 plus targets. It was hard to see those two not combining for 20 targets just because of the nature of the way those teams are run. So taking that and then saying, well, it's hard to see D.K. Metcalf and Tyler Lockett getting double-digit targets. It's hard to see Justin Jefferson and Adam Thielen getting double-digit targets. It made it that much more difficult because the sharpest thing, again, is if you look at the Vegas totals and they're pretty close across the board, Titans, same thing. like Titans don't have huge pass volume.

So if the Vegas totals are close across the board, but everybody's on one game, it's a pretty easy and obvious way from a strategy angle to be like, okay, let me just say, yeah, the Cowboys Chargers game is going to hit most often out of these games, but let me just bet that it fails or bet the only one guy from this game hits, and then I'll build around these other spots. But I also was saying, well, in addition to total point scored, touchdown scored,

there's also this volume factor in PPR scoring where if Metcalf gets 110 yards and two touchdowns and C.D. Lamb gets 110 yards and one touchdown. CD Lamb still probably puts up a better DFS score more often than not because he's going to get that much more volume. And so that was kind of what hung me up. And so, yeah, I went into Sunday recognizing that I wasn't playing my sharpest play because what I know was just, just so obvious for that spot. And obviously that's what everybody else knew as well. But Mike Johnson made a good, one of the writers on our site, Mike, made a good point earlier in the week. And that was that last year, there were those Cowboys games where we were getting those games at much lower ownership than we would have gotten them if DAC had stayed healthy all year.

Because early in the season, everyone's like, oh, well, this is the most obvious spot. Let me go elsewhere. And so the case Mike made was basically, this is still going to go underowned. You know, if we're getting 20% ownership on these guys, that's still going underowned compared to what it should be because this game can shoot out at a level that other games can't. So, yeah, I built one, eight rosters. I built one around Brady. I built one around Matt Ryan. So that helped me a little bit, especially the Brady roster.

I had Mike Evans on, I think, five out of eight rosters. And, yeah, and then I had some, you know, some things that just didn't break my way. Damien Harris, you know, had the hot start, but didn't get really carries in the second half. I had Darrell Henderson because the Rams pass catchers were going to be so popular that I figured if the touchdowns came from Henderson on the ground. I'm getting those points and hurting the Rams pass catcher rosters. And he got hurt and, you know, kind of cut his score in half because Sony Michelle came in and soaked up some extra points. So, yeah, I mean, some things just didn't break my way.

But generally speaking, I was happy with the way I played outside of my inability. to build more rosters away from Cowboys Chargers. I probably should have gone four out of eight on that game and four out of eight away from that game. But realistically also, and I think this is important for listeners to be able to identify, it was never going to be, I was never going to get first place this week because I'm never going to play Cooper Cup when he's super popular, you know, just because he's super popular and cheap.

He had a big game last week. Like I like to ask, what would be the case if Cup had disappointed? last week. He'd be disappointing than week one. People wouldn't have been jumping on him. Nothing would have changed with his role with the offense, but people wouldn't have been jumping on him. And so Cooper Cup was one of those guys that was like, well, you know, he's not a possession receiver. We know that he can do everything, but his primary role is possession receiver. So I was going to leave him alone and hope that he was a guy who failed. That's just kind of the way I play. So I was never going to get first place, but I certainly

could have done better and I could have played a little bit better. So that's my weekend from like a macro view as far as how I handle it. What about you? I mean, I'm sure you were heavy on Cowboys and Chargers. Is that accurate? And how did you handle that spot? Yeah, so that is accurate. I just want to say, like, that was the most obvious game. And Vegas, you know, gave that game the highest over under by a landslide with a close total. But if Vegas is going to be wrong, or when Vegas is usually wrong, it's early in the season. And, you know, that's the same case for me. Like I'm much better week five and beyond than I am weeks one through four when I have more new fresh data to analyze and sift through. And so in these early weeks, I think it does make a

lot of sense to really go contrarian on those high total games. And obviously post hindsight, that's what everyone should have done. What did I do? I had probably 65% exposure to DAC or Herbert heavily stacking that game with the past catchers. But I thought I had a chance at a, you know, top one finish given how I attacked the rest of the field in those lineups. And I thought this was smart. And I thought this was good process. And last week, you congratulated me on my C-E-H play, which looks even worse after, you know, what he did last night. But I digress. So heavy, heavy, so like I said, 65% DAC or Herbert, but the rest of those lineups were Brady Stacks, Kyler Stacks, which did well.

But yeah, so on those DAC and Herbert stacks, which again, was the far majority of my money, my running backs I played, I thought this was super sharp, was Nick Chubb, Chris Carson, Zique, depending on, like, if I didn't have Herbert and Dack, and Leonard Furnett. Frenet was my C-E-H play of the week, 3% own. And so why that made sense was I have the highest over-under game by a landslide with shootout potential, the close spread, and I got all the pass catchers. But the Buccaneers, highest implied point total, favored by 13.5, should be a run-heavy affair. Cleveland Brown's second highest implied point total favored by 13.5 should be a run-heavy affair.

Seahawks, third highest implied point total, 6.5 point favorites should be a run-heavy affair. So look at that. I have the highest over-under pass-heavy game script game, and then I have the running backs in the other three highest implied point-toil games that should be on paper run-heavy. And not a lot of people were going that route. And I thought Fournette was just amazing. You know, Rojo coming off the fumble, was benched after that, didn't see the field. Fernette has been a bell cow in, you know, five of his last five games, the entire postseason and then last week. And Tom Brady scored five touchdowns, but how often does that play out where the running back gets at least two?

And so he was my must-play contrarian guy. of course Johnny wasn't on it you know Johnny's been fired to start this year he was like the running backs only get carries when Tom Brady wants a breather like he's he's out there he's like they all think I stink they think I'm too old and last year was a fluke and like Furnett's just like bro no one thinks that everyone thinks you're the goat he's like no I have to break Peyton manning's record to show everyone wrong and like yeah you know five touchdowns nothing for the running backs. You know, okay, it makes a lot of sense in hindsight.

Also, shout out to Johnny, who keeps like victory lapping me because he had Cooper Cup as the number one play of the slate. I had Lamb number one and cup number two. But anyway, yeah, so I thought there was a way to go unique. What are your thoughts on that on, you know, getting those three of the four running backs, again, Zeke on the non-Herbert lineups and Fernette as a sense. super contrarian play. Yeah, I think it's fantastic. So the Carson thing, I'll leave that one off just because I think he was what about 20% owned. So not, I mean, obviously in a great spot, but not

sneaking by anyone, but the, uh, chub for, obviously for the reasons you laid out, right? And he's five yards away from the bonus and easily could have gotten another touchdown in there. So hit like 11 carries. That was crazy. Yeah, exactly. And, and full back vulgar, RB3, Vulture, I think Baker Vulture. Yep, Baker Vulture. And so the, I basically that idea of if you're building around this

chalk game, where are you differentiating? And I think that that was one of the things, you know, you either had to do it if you're going to build around the Cowboys Chargers game. What you have to think about is, like you said, 65% of your rosters probably were

on that game. And for me, it was 75% 6 out of 8. And I still had pieces from it on my Brady and Matt Ryan roster. And so, yeah, not, not everybody's on that game, but you've got to think that, like, a good 80% of rosters have some exposure to that game. And a decent chunk, you know, one of my things was, okay, if you're going to go there overstack or take the overlooked guys, you know, like take Guyton, take Cedric Wilson, take one of the Cowboys' Tight Ends, take Zique, take one of the guys that people aren't thinking about, or overstack the game. Use five guys, six guys from the game, so that if it hits,

you know, you're getting all the points and you're not holding back, right? You're hoping it goes for 70 to 80 combined points and then you're taking off because other people are taking three or four players. And, you know, the best path to first place is just saying, well, if those 80% of rosters that are concentrated on this game crumble, now I'm just competing against 20% of the field. But the, and actually, I don't know, like I didn't check first place in tournaments, but I'm guessing most first place rosters didn't have any Cowboys Chargers pieces, you know, and that's kind of, they were able to cut out 80% of the field when that game disappointed. But if you're going to play that game, then you have to say,

what am I doing differently so that when this game hits, now I'm competing in 80% of the field that has exposure to this game. And so how am I now maneuvering around them? And so something like, I think a lot of times people try to, you know, they'll take this 10% owned running back or whatever because they're like, oh, well, people aren't really on him. But something like for Nets, where it's 3% owned. Or like I went with Jalen Waddle on, I think, five rosters and Gaseki on another one. You know, like trying to find things where people just aren't on it. Or I went, you know, five of my eight rosters had Kyle Pitts when everybody else was paying in that 4K range at tight end.

And so something like Fournet and even Chubb who can put up 30 plus points and was under 10% owned, I'm guessing. right he was maybe like seven, eight percent owned this last week. Yeah, I'm not sure. I'd have to check. But yeah, so like finding guys like that or Zieg where you can say, okay, you took four net. You're betting not only on workload but also touchdowns coming on the ground. Okay, things went wrong. Brady got five through the air.

Same thing could have happened in Cowboys Chargers, right? Like the Cowboys could have scored 35 points and DAC could have had one touchdown because all the touchdowns came on the ground and Zeke gets three and Pollard gets one. and you're getting all those points, right? Like, sure, Amari and C.D. Lamb get to 18, 20 points in that scenario because they're getting catches and moving the field. But they're not winning anybody a tournament and Zeeks the one winning people a tournament. So that's kind of the, yeah, I mean, so it's all about, and I think that this is what has been fun about this podcast, is just being able to discuss strategy from, you know, coming from two different sides of things.

I think it's funny. I was thinking about this last week. you've said to me before that you kind of initially learned DFS from my stuff. But you know who else has said that to me is Blender. And Blender and you come from such opposite ends and kind of butt heads in what DFS is. And I think that there is this, as I've talked about, this blend between like understanding the strategy of DFS, then also understanding the places where you can leverage football knowledge. And a lot of times leveraging football knowledge is more, to me, it's more.

more about knowing who not to play than who to play. You know, like when everybody is so convinced that so-and-so's role is this way or when everybody's like, oh, well, this game has the third highest implied total. And so this player is way more valuable than people realize, but you're like, yeah, but I actually understand this player's usage and how this coach uses him and what they'll do if they have a lead and so on and so forth. And it's like, this player isn't actually as good of a play and so I'll fade him. Or people stack these two or three guys on a team because that might work on another team taking the you know these types of players but you're like well on this team it wouldn't make sense uh but yeah so being able to have these discussions where it's like

finding everybody's brain works differently so it's like finding the dFS strategies that make sense for the way each person's brain works and i think for the majority of our listeners their brains work more like yours and mine where it's like oh i know the NFL really well and that's why i got into DFS and I know Scott because I followed Scott for years because he knows the NFL better than anybody and I follow his Twitter feed and read his articles and I've learned a ton about the NFL from him. And so it's like people who have had success in season long from their knowledge of NFL is primarily who's coming into DFS. And so helping those people to understand like here's how you take that knowledge, but then actually use it to outstratage the field is a big part of what DFS is really all about.

the main thing is not overrating the knowledge and understanding how chaotic one NFL game can be and how many things can go wrong in there. But yeah, like that idea of if I'm going to bet on, it's always thinking about how many people you're competing against for first place now because first place is all that matters. And so if you can say, well, I'm going to stack Cowboys and Chargers, that's totally fine. You just then have to understand, okay, now I'm competing against a lot more people for first place. like them hitting doesn't get me first place. So now what's on this roster, they might be able to get me first place.

And so yeah, and for me, so here's what I saw this last week. This is my thought. Cowboys and Chargers was likely to hit, right? And if you move away from Cowboys and Chargers, you are now on one of these other four games that's likely to hit. Or that's not as likely as that game, but could hit. We saw three of them hit those three late games. If you move away from that group of five games and you're like trying to stack up,

you know, some random game, you're decreasing your likelihood of that game hitting. And there's so many games that could hit this last week. And there were five games that could be shootouts that even if you guess right on this sixth or seventh or eighth game that you're like, oh, I'm going to go to this game. Nobody else is on. Even if you guess right, one of these other five games is going to hit. We saw three of these other games hit. So now you're decreasing your chances of getting things right.

And if you get things right, you're just keeping pace with whoever stacked Vikings, Cardinals, or keeping pace with whoever stacked Tennessee and Seattle. So there was no reason to go past those five games for like core builds. So that was one thing that I was looking at. So then it was like the biggest weakness in the chalk approach, even though I loved Chris Carson and Najee Harris this last week. But the biggest weakness in the chalk approach wasn't trying to pick like a different game to shoot out because one of these five games that everyone was on was going to shoot out.

We saw three of them shoot out. So now you're saying, well, if I pick the second game or third game or fourth game, I'm still probably competing against another couple games that hit. And then if I have the chalk running backs, I have the same thing as everybody else. So what I did was basically, I had four Naji teams. I forced myself to not play Chris Carson, even though I really liked Carson. And I went with Damien Harris and Daryl Henderson and Javante Williams and one other back. I can't recall who it was. Oh, Austin Echler.

Same thing with your Zieg thing, right? Like, what if the touchdowns come through Echler instead of through the past catchers? And so that was kind of how I played it was, let me build around Cowboys Chargers for the most part. Let me take pieces from these other games that could blow up. So, like, Kyler and Jefferson just barely didn't make my list. A.J. Brown barely didn't make my list.

Thank goodness. and he kind of made my like final close build list over Julio. And then so what I ended up focusing on was Atlanta and Tampa. So like my Cowboys Chargers rosters had Atlanta and Tampa pieces with Kyle Pitts with Mike Evans. I even had one or two Ridley rosters and I think one Russell Gage roster. Maybe I talked myself out of it at the end there. And then yeah, then I went a different direction at running back. And so I say all of that to say taking each slate individually and being like,

what's the best path to first place on this slate? You know, like once you recognize all five games could shoot out. So you have to have exposure to one of those. And that's not even going to be your edge because your game shoots out. Well, so does somebody else's game. And so then you have to say, where else can I gain my edge? So yeah, and it was a weird week. We don't have a ton of weeks like that.

And I like what you said about overrating knowledge early. in the season. And I think that another thing that people will overrate moving over the next few weeks is roles, right? And that's one place where I would recommend people pay close attention to everything Scott's saying, because Scott's going to have a sharper sense of what different people's roles are on different people's teams than most other people will. There's a lot, there's so much fantasy noise. And I think that, Scott, you've seen this being in the industry and knowing as many people in the industry as you do. Like a lot of the big, bigger names in the fantasy industry, they're not actually grinding out research throughout the

week. A lot of what they're doing is getting ready for their TV shows or they're this, that, and the other thing and sharpening up, you know, their personality angles that they're playing to have their big audience. And they don't necessarily have a deep sense of how these different teams are being run and different players are being deployed. And so there's also an edge in that, right? Like everybody had their assumptions heading into the season from all their season-long drafts and best ball drafts. And once you start seeing things not playing out, or even like I've said for the last couple of years, one of the biggest edges we've had is just not paying up for D'Andre Hopkins because if he hits, he's hitting for 30 points, which is the bare minimum you need at his price,

whereas in that same price range are guys like Ridley and Diggs who can go for 40, Devante Adams, who can go for 45. And so like DeAndre Hopkins, I actually think is the best. wide receiver in football. Like I would take DeAndre Hopkins if I were starting a team over those other guys I just named, but I wouldn't take him in DFS because the way this Cardinals' offense is run just doesn't give him the high upside routes that you want, nearly as consistently as you want them, and doesn't give him those like 15, 18 target games on a consistent basis that you can get from some of these other guys.

And so like this last week, he had four targets. That just doesn't happen to, I guess Devante Adams had around that in week one, but like that's going to be once every. two seasons for Devante Adams. And DeAndre Hopkins, he's going to have a ton of six, seven, eight target games because the way this offense has run. And so understanding player usage and where the field is overrating a player's role, paying attention to things like how much Naheem Hines played in week one, and then the Colts mixing

in Marlon Mack in week two, which is, you know, painful for Jonathan Taylor Truthers, like yourself. But the, like, how talented a guy is only matters as far as how much the, you know, how much the coach deploys him in that way. And so basically, like, finding these places over the next couple of weeks where the field still has their preseason thoughts, and they're holding onto those. But we can say, yes, but that's not actually the reality anymore.

And kind of start gaining an edge on where to value players based on that. Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, just with regard to, you know, being open to adjusting to new usage. Mike Williams ranked 41st in Fandul Salary, and Keenan Allen ranked seventh, and everyone wanted to play Keenan Allen. But during the offseason, offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi said he's our Michael Thomas in this offense.

And then what did we see week one? You know, if you were about even in targets, Williams, typically just a deep threat, like 13.6, Addoch guy that went down to nine point something. And then, you know, he went off last week. And he does seem to be in that sort of Michael Thomas-esque role. But I want to reel it back a little bit. I thought you put it perfectly when you said, you know, we have a tendency to underrate the inherently chaotic nature of the NFL.

And just with regard to this last week, the difference in philosophy between like the blender type philosophy and going optimal, you know, gaining leverage versus just playing optimal play. I really did think I approached it optimally, even in hindsight, even looking at ownership projections, just because I only needed Vegas to be right. If Vegas was right on every single thing in terms of the spread and the over unders, the implied point totals, like, I really think what I put out would have smashed eight out of ten times. Of course, you know, I don't know. It lost my train of thought, but yeah, I also wanted to bring up that it's been a weird first two weeks. Brett Devine had a tweet. He said, week two saw the third lowest total ownership among top 10 lineups in the Millie Maker.

Third lowest over the past three seasons. And then week one was the lowest total ownership over the past three years. And that's pretty crazy. That just shows, you know, week one and week two, what's been happening has not been easy to predict at all or, you know, makes much sense logically. And then also I said Leonard Frenette was my favorite contrarian play. But in hindsight, of course, you know, easy now in hindsight, Derek Henry was definitely that optimal play. and I tweeted out a few days before Sunday.

So the Titans are 6.5 point underdogs in a game with a 53.5 over under. Over Derek Henry's last 13 games and over under of 50 points or more, he averages 30.7 fantasy points per game and wins. That's like 33 draft king's fantasy points and wins. And 9.1 fantasy points per game and losses. So what did I do? What did everyone do say, oh, well, they're probably going to lose and he's probably not going to hit. What I should have done is, okay, there's 6.5 point dogs. That means Vegas is implying that their odds of winning are 30%, which means his odds of scoring 30 plus fantasy points is 30%.

And what was he? He was 5% owned in the Millie Maker. So he is your post-h hindsight, glaringly obvious. where, again, it's, you know, people are underrating the inherent chaotic nature that is the NFL. They're overrating predictability. And they're looking at, you know, median outcome versus, you know, top 5% outcomes. Yeah. And it makes, I'll say this too.

It makes DFS more fun, too. Aaron and I, Rhodo Maven and I, who kind of helps me run one week's season. He and I were talking about this the other day that he was saying he's, He's been working with OWS since the start of last year. And from kind of the time talking to team members all the time, he said he's starting to really pick up this stuff. And we were talking about this. And we were basically saying it's a lot more fun to play DFS this way anyway

because it takes off that pressure of getting everything right on each individual player and recognizing that it's basically impossible to get everything right. And that that's not where the edge is. The edge is in knowing how these teams work so you know how to build. your rosters, but also knowing what the field is going to do and what it's going to take to get to first place. And so you know how to build your rosters. And I said this on, on, so I, you know this, Scott, but maybe some listeners don't, but I played primarily single entry for a long time. And so I've been playing DFS since 2014, but I was counting it up the other night. And I estimated that

from 2014 to now, and I stopped playing MLB after 2017, but MLB and NFL, I probably put a about 2,000 rosters into play. And I've taken down like 12 to 15 first place finishes, which even that is an unsustainably high rate. That's like one out of every 150 rosters has gotten a first place finish. That's not going to happen over a long, long timeframe. And yet even that like 12 to 15 first place roster out of 2,000 rosters put into play, you're not going to get first place all the time. And optimally, a lot of times, you know, Cubs fan talks about the barbell approach. Like he wants rosters that are finishing all the way to the right or all the way to the left

that are either finishing near the top or near the bottom. Because if you're finishing near the bottom, you're probably doing something different from everybody else. If you're finishing in the middle, you're probably doing the same thing as everybody else. So a lot of times when people are consistently missing the cash line or just barely inside the cash line, they think that there's maybe just a couple things they're missing to get to first place, but really they're missing a ton because they're in that middle chunk of rosters that's barely cashing or barely not cashing, and they're not doing enough different

to get those first place finishes. And it's psychologically difficult at first to say, you know, one of the articles we have late in the week from Larejo 1, 2, 3 is called Willing to Lose. and every podcast I do with Scott, he stands up at some point in the podcast and leaves and we're on video and it really throws me off in my train of thought. So I'm now speaking to a blank wall and to all of you listening. I don't know if Scott can hear any of that. But Larejo's article willing to lose, Larejo plays a limited number of entries in large field tournaments. So tournaments where other people are entering 150 lineups. And he does an excellent job of finding the types of plays that typically.

somebody who's putting in three lineups or five lineups or six lineups isn't capable of pulling the trigger on because they're going with who are the optimal plays. And so Larejo's article is called willing to lose because that's literally the mindset is like who is the player, you know, in week one he highlighted D'Andre Swift. And it wasn't anything about the matchup against the 49ers. It wasn't anything about the role in the backfield, but it was just based around like here are some reasons why D'Andre Swift could hit for a huge game and nobody's going to. to be on him. Chase Claypool's first monster game last year, Larejo wrote up Claypool, and it was like everybody's going to be on Deonté because everybody's caught on to this now, but technically we're betting

on this offense having a big game, and Claypool's on the field for all these snaps. He's got this downfield role, and he's typically seeing three to five targets, but if those targets spike, he can have a huge game. And so it's looking for things like that where you're early to the party, and sometimes you show up, you're the only one there and there is no party. And you have to be willing to do that. And I think that's the hardest thing. And it's actually the next thing I wanted to talk about, too, was I had a couple plays this last week. And I'm going to dive, I'll dive deeper into this for any OWS members. I'm going to dive deeper into this on Tuesday night in Inner Circle. But I had a couple plays I really wanted to pull the trigger on and couldn't. One of them was Cortland Sutton,

and one of them was Rob Grunkowski. And the Grunkowski one, it's like, this guy, I mean, we've seen he's not grok from five years ago. That much is obvious to anybody. And so you feel like such a fish playing him after a 29-point game. The thing is, we've gotten to a point in DFS where kind of everybody feels that way. So it's not like his ownership is going to spike. Everybody's not flocking to gronk after one big game. They're all going to call it a fluke and not go to him.

And I was betting on that game. I've had one Antonio Brown roster, like I said, I think five Mike Evans rosters. I had a Brady Godwin Evans roster. And, you know, I'm betting on that game, but I couldn't bring myself to put Gronk in. And then Cortland Sutton, you know, I was on Fant. Obviously, a great match against the Jaguars. I was on Fantt Williams. I had one Fant roster, which I just, you know, I liked him more than that,

but because everybody was paying in that same price range for Tide End, it primarily paid up for Pits, paid up a little bit for Pits to do something different. but really liked Fant, really liked Hamler, didn't end up using him. And for anybody who's been with me since Cortland Sutton's rookie year, I'm a huge Cortland Sutton truther. And I just, he's really good. He's really good. And then he had two targets week one.

And we keep talking about not overrating early season knowledge, but I just kept being like, like, I'm going to feel so dumb if I put money on this guy who had two targets in week one in his first game back from an ACL injury and he gets a three target game, right? And so there has to be that willingness to be like, I will, like, if I keep coming back to a play, and granted, like I kept coming back to Darnel Mooney and he had, I think it was six catches for 60-something yards. Like, that's not winning you a tournament. There was, I think one other player I kept coming back to and he didn't have a good game. But, you know, it's interesting to look retrospectively and see who were the players that you kept coming back to and kept coming up with the reasons why you can't play them. And I think that's the biggest thing to overcome when you have a lot of NFL knowledge, right? Is like, well, I can't play this guy because of these reasons. Typically, I find that when I'm convinced, like when I'm convincing myself, I have to play a guy. There's something wrong in my thought process when I'm like, oh, but I have to play this guy, right?

And then if I'm, if a guy keeps popping up and I keep being like, yeah, but I can't play him because and I keep coming up with the reasons not to do it, that's the type of guy that you have to be willing to embrace that uncertainty. get a little bit uncomfortable with some of these guys you're playing. So, yeah, I'm curious if you had any plays like that that you can highlight from this last weekend and any thoughts on that in general when you come across those types of plays. And then any thoughts on those specific players, Sutton and Grancowski? Yeah, so I actually made a meme for our Discord on Sunday after Gronk had two touchdowns. It's the Midwit meme, which I love. I don't know if you've seen it, but it's like a,

a graph of IQ plotted where, you know, the density is all bucked in the middle. And so all the way the left is like the low IQ guy and all the way to the right is the high IQ guy and then everyone else is in the middle. And so the middle guy I wrote was saying he's 30, Gronk is 32 years old and there's three other elite receivers on the team. And then the absolute idiot and the genius were both saying the same thing, which was he's the greatest tight end of all time. He's the most elite end zone weapon of all time, and that's Brady's BFF. And like, yes, Kronkowski was an amazing play. You know who was also a great plate? No offense, who I wrote up. I had zero exposure to either of those guys because take lock. I fell in love with my write-up on Tyler Higby. My write-up

was freaking phenomenal, I should say. He was targeted on 24% of Stafford's throws that ranked third best among tight ends on the week. He ranked third best in route share. And so throughout his 79 game career, there was only eight instances of him running a route on two thirds of the team's dropbacks. Keep in mind, he was at like 95% in week one. And so in those eight games, those were like eight of his top 10 highest scoring games of his career. He averaged 9.1 targets, seven catches, 85 receiving yards, 18.5 fantasy points per game. All those numbers. were better than Darren Waller's 2020 season. And what happened, he absolutely flopped for fantasy. And I've said this before on this exact show where you can never really be 100% on any tight end,

just because of how volatile that position is. And so I really regretted that. And I had a ton of Cooper Cup, too. But because I had so much Higbee, there were lineups where I was like, well, I don't want two Rams. and it was just a poor play by me. And I did also want to add, I did leave, but I heard everything because I have my little headphone in. I went to go get my notes. I wrote a bunch of notes as I was rereading a book. And I thought I left it by my bed, but it was actually like right here on the computer.

So I'd like to talk to that. It's always something. You're always going to leave every episode. You're going to keep you on your toes. At some point. And then I'm like, everything shifts in front of me. And it's funny because you and I both, like when we're talking. You have the abandonment issues.

We typically look away when we're talking, right? Because we're kind of in our own head. But as soon as you leave, I just stare at this blank wall. And, yeah, it throws me off so much. Now if you guys are, if you guys are ever like, man, J.M's off his game for these 30 seconds. Well, you stood up before and I lost my train of thought. That messed me up for some of it. I'm always standing.

Oh, are you? Okay. You were like dancing that. Yeah, I stand up and I stretch sometimes. Sometimes I get down and do some pushups, you know, disappear, I guess, myself as well. Were the notes relevant to this show or were you just a note? Oh, absolutely. I was excited to talk to you about this.

It's not really fresh in my memory anymore in my handwriting is bad, so I'm trying to look at it. But, yeah, in this book I was reading, they were talking about, you know, like an old old Taoist saying or something. We're like, I'm going to butcher this, but the teacher says to his student, what do you see as he holds up a seed, right? And the student goes, it's a seed, you idiot. And the teacher goes, no, you short-sighted myopic dolt. It's a tree. And it's also a forest because he was only looking at it from the perspective of like right now, what is this? But that seed grows into a tree. The tree has seeds. Those fall. More trees sprout. And it turns into a forest. So it's like looking at what's unseen, looking at, you know, the potential of

something as what it actually is. And there was a bunch of different lessons in this. And this was all about his investment philosophy. Mark Spitznagle, Dow of Capital, if anyone's interested. I think we've talked about it before on this show. But his whole investment philosophy is like basically he sees all these people addicted to immediate games where like he views the market as this game where every single day you get a dollar. That's great. But on the thousandth day, you lose $8,000, let's say.

So in the long run, like it's minus EV, but it's so hard to move away from just the constant ping of, I made a dollar today. I made another dollar today. I made another dollar today. I haven't lost in 900 days. And he goes the exact opposite route, which is where he loses a dollar every single day. But on the thousandth day, he makes $8,000. Like that's his entire investment philosophy.

And so you could view GPP style DFS strategy the same way where, you know, the guy playing the opto lineup every week is going to small loss, small win, small loss, small win, small loss, small win, small loss, small win. And then the contrarian guy is lost, loss, loss, loss, massive win. Like way up ahead. Like the plus EV approach. And so yeah, don't, don't value what's most immediate, you know, if it's going to pay off more in the long run. It's seeing that that forest in the seed, like there's the saying don't lose the forest for the trees or whatever, but don't lose the forest and the seed. And that's the best I can. Yeah. No, and it's so true because it's, you know, and what happens with the people who small wins, small loss, small wins, small loss is that those wins convince them that they're doing

everything right. And so they finish, you know, like in the top 20%, they finish in the top 12%, they finish in the top 15%. Right. Like the feedback mechanism is screwed. up where they think they're doing a good thing. And so then it's like, oh, man, if I just get these couple things. And the contrarian guy, meanwhile, is like, well, I lost three weeks in a row. This is stupid. Yeah. Yeah. And so you have to, you have to be willing to take those losses, understanding that you're doing. And I mean, there's so much that goes into it as far as how to intelligently outmaneuver the field. And like I said, like I said earlier, like every, every slate's different, right? So one of the things about this last week's slate, if it had been Cowboys and Chargers

and two other games that were projected to be shootouts, I would have been less likely to go so heavy on Cowboys and Chargers. Because then, like, the chances of if the Cowboys and Chargers misses, and you're on one of these other two games, you have less guesswork. You know, there's just two other games with high totals, two other games with good shootout potential. And so you're probably getting one of these other spots right if everybody else is getting Cowboys and Chargers wrong. and optimally only one of these three games shoots out and you get all those points. Since there were five games, the way I saw it was probably two or three of these five games hit. And so, like even just getting the right game isn't your edge.

Like whoever won probably didn't win any given tournament because they stacked Arizona and Minnesota or because they stacked Tennessee and Seattle or because they stacked the bucks. because that just kept them on pace with these other two spots that also hit the shootout. They still needed that differentiator. So my thought was if there's probably going to be two or three shootouts and we're all just keeping pace with each other by getting that, I'll take the one likeliest to hit being Cowboys and Chargers. So in other words, it was less necessary for me to be contrarian because being contrarian was still going to keep me with the field, like a smaller chunk of the field, but still going to keep me with the field because multiple games were going to hit.

And so I started looking for my edge in other spots. And so every slate's a little bit different. And the longer you play DFS and the more you think this way and the more you plug into communities that are talking about these types of things throughout the week, the clearer your edge is going to be going back to kind of more like player specific stuff. I did want to hit on the Higbee thing because in addition to what you were saying about the targets and the snap share and all that, he also in week one had. in the first half had three screenplays designed for him.

And so what I always keep in mind of the screenplay is that player is the only read on that play. If the, if the defense doesn't react to the screen call away the offense wants, the quarterback's throwing the ball in the dirt. There's nobody else designed for that ball to go to. And so that means that there was three plays in the first half of one game, a week one game, for that matter, where you had weeks to prepare, where Sean McVeigh was like, yeah, our best bet on this play is to get Higby in open space with blockers in front of him. And, you know, so Higby failed week two with one target.

We had Darren Waller, like, Darren Waller breakout season took a while. Logan Thomas' breakout season took a while. So, like, Higby could still have a monster season, and now people are going to be scared off him because he had. this one target game, right? So that's another thing to keep in mind, too, is like, you can get things right and still be wrong in that small sample size of one game. And so there's two ways to play that. One way is to say, okay, like, where might the field be wrong this week?

That, yeah, if we played out this slate 100 times, this would still happen, you know, more often than things in other games, but it's still going to, something's still going to miss 80 times out of 100, even if it's super likely to hit. And so, or what I always try to think of is like, what's a tournament winning score from this player? What I call a had-to-habit score? So like a guy who's 8K and puts up 27 to 30 points, you'd be thrilled to have 27 to 30 points on your roster. You're not complaining about that. But if you don't have that guy, that's not the reason you're not winning a tournament that week.

If a guy's 5K and he puts up 21, 22 points, that's not the reason you're losing a tournament that week. So I'm only concerned about missing out on had-to-habit. scores. That means that players like DeAndre Hopkins, who at his price in his role on this offense, I think he's had one had to have it score since he joined the Cardinals. So I'm not concerned about like, oh, well, what if he hits and I'm not on him? I'm concerned about what if Devante Adams hits and I'm not on him. I'm concerned about what if Derek Henry hits and I'm not on. These guys who can post the types of scores that you needed to have in order to win a tournament. And so, you know, where are the places that the field is overrating things and you can move away from it?

but also where is the field now moving away from things because of what just happened? And you can be like, yeah, but that's going to happen sometimes. Like, Waller disappoints sometimes. Higbee could still be $6,500 in a month and a half because his usage could go right back up. And so, yeah, just kind of like always taking a big picture, nuanced view. And that's part of the, you know, like that example that you just used, Scott, is a perfect example, too, because it forces you to say what is going to make the most money over time. What's the macro view? And that also forces you to take that macro view on player situations, team situations, to say, yeah, this

failed this one time, but that doesn't mean it's going to fail every time. And a lot of casual DFS players, you know, there's these guys who are like, oh, I'm never rostering that guy again. I rostered him this week and he sucked, you know, and to break out of that thinking, and be like, that's the natural reaction for everybody to have. So if everybody else, else is moving away from this guy because he sucked that week. Well, now you think, well, is he going to suck every week? Is Kyle Pitt going to suck again in week two? You know, like, then if not, then go up to him.

You know, is he going to suck again this next week? If not, then go back to the well on that type of play. Yeah, and it's just, it's, like I said earlier, it's a lot more fun to take these elements into consideration because you get to start playing a different game than most of the field is playing. What's most interesting about it is the people playing this game that we're talking about, that's who you're competing against for first place. But most of the players in a given tournament are not playing this way. So you gain an immediate edge over them.

And now it's almost like when we said, well, if the Cowboys failed and you faded them completely, now you're only competing against 20% of the field. Because only 20% or maybe even 10% had no Cowboys Chargers players on their rosters. Well, it's the same thing if you start playing DFS the right way. you're now competing against, you know, five, 10% of players. And a lot of them are putting in a lot of rosters, but you're still only competing against 30, 40, 50% of entries on a given week, which already beats the rake and you've increased your chances of getting first place finishes significantly.

So, yeah, I mean, it's fun to dive into this stuff. And I think that this week we kind of focused less on some of the other things that is really valuable for us to focus on as well, which is team situations, player situations. But I like mixing in this type of stuff as well because it's so valuable for listeners to grasp what DFS really is, what the game of DFS is,

because then you can start playing that game the right way. And it's a different game than most people are playing. It makes you a lot more money over time. So, Scott, you have anything else that you want to add? Because I'm pretty much, I've covered everything I wanted to cover this week. No, I don't know if you've looked at ahead at week three yet, but it looks to be a very chalky week. Chargers, Chiefs, Buccaneers, Rams, and then Cardinals. I don't remember who they're up against, but everyone's going to want to play those five teams. You have any thoughts on that as we move into week three? So typically I would have watched two or three games last night and watched another couple of day and been starting my thoughts on the slate. But early in the season, last night I still had a

bunch of site work to do. And then today I was helping my brother-in-law move during the first half of the day. So I have not yet turned the page and I will tonight. So, but yeah, hit me up throughout the week and we'll chat because sounds like it'll be another interesting week as far as strategy and out maneuvering. What people are going to over, where people are going to overrate their certainty where we can kind of say, yeah, that's likely as to happen, but it's not, that's likely to happen and it's going to be 30% owned. And here's this thing that's slightly less likely and it's going to be 5% owned. And, you know, we can take good plays and outmaneuver the field. That's the other thing. So many people, they try to be contrarian and they just start taking bad

plays because they're low owned. So, you know, once we can start grasping what this is really all about and recognize good plays or good plays for a reason, it's just that they're not going to hit as often as everybody thinks they're going to hit. And so it's like finding those good plays that are slightly less good than the chalk plays, but that are way lower owned. And so, yeah, man, it'll be a fun week to dive into everything. And hopefully you and I can grab a call this next weekend and chat some slate stuff before Sunday gets around.

That sounds good. That's all I got. All right. Well, thanks for hanging out with us. switch back to my very official podcast voice. Thanks for hanging out with us once again. As always, I waited until the end to talk up our sites. But check out fantasypoints.com.

Check out one-weekseason.com. You are listening to this on the Fantasy Points podcast feed. Check out the one-week season podcast feed for the great and wonderful and glorious Scott Barrett. I am J.M. to win. We will see you next. next week, and we will see you at the top of the leaderboards this weekend. Thanks for tuning in to this edition of the Fantasy Points Podcast. Remember to subscribe, rate, and review on your favorite platform,

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