Fantasy Football Daily - 2021 Week 8 DFS Recap Podcast

Episode Date: November 3, 2021

Scott Barrett (@ScottBarrettDFB) and Jordan Tohline (@JMToWin) of One Week Season (@oneweekseason) look back on last week's DFS lineups, plays, and results. --- 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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responsibly. 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. What is going on, Fantasy Fam? One week season, fam, Fantasy Points, fam. Jam to win here from one week's season. dot com. That's one week's season.com hanging out with my good friend, Scott Barrett from

FantasyPoints.com. That's FantasyPoints.com here on the FantasyPoints podcast feed. What an intro. Scott, how are you doing? I'm doing good, Jam. How are you? I'm good. I just learned from you right before we got on air that you just woke up. So it sounds like it's been a pleasant day so far. it's been a great few 45 minutes to my day yes you know what i used to do overnight all the time and i'd wake up at noon or one i would go into like a Starbucks or whatever and they always ask you how your day's been and i would always be like oh my day just started and that they thought that was the most bizarre thing they probably hated your guts because they've been there since 4 a.m. this is 4 a.m yeah i have actually so we're on the east coast this week at my parents and

And my son switched over time zones, like immediately. So he's been waking up at 7.30 here, but that's 4.30 for my internal clock. So I've been up since 4.30, my internal clock, and you just woke up. So yeah, I've had a very tired week. I've gotten like my normal amount of sleep, but been waking up way earlier than I'm used to. So that's my life right now. Yeah, I've been doing, I've been like catching up on sleep too much where it's like, you know. You get tired, right?

Some days I can only sleep like five hours because I have so much to do. But then I'll make up for it like the next day, sleeping, I don't know, 12 hours. But then you feel like shit because over sleeping is bad too. But that's my life these days. Yeah. If I, if I like August, July, August, when we're getting everything up and running for the season, September when we're still wrapping everything, I'll, it's typically like four and a half to occasionally five and a half, maybe five hours and 45 minutes.

But because I wake up and there's immediately stuff to do, I don't really notice it. And then I kind of crash a little bit in early October. But then once you get into that oversleeping state, you get even more tired than when you're just go, go, go. Such is the life of you and me in this strange, bizarre career that we are in at this season of our lives. That's right. All right. So we are going to talk about, we were talking before the show and Scott said, what should we talk about? And I said we should talk about football, fantasy football, and DFS. So we thought that was a pretty good idea. So let's start with DFS week eight. How were things on your end? I'm actually very interested in this question too, because last week you said you were going to move away from chalk. This last week, chalk was, I don't think, particularly sharp. And I just say that because I built everything in a bubble and then came out on like Friday or Saturday to see who the chalky plays were. And none of them, almost none of them

were guys on my radar. And so I didn't try to be different. I just built my own way and was different, which is typically the best way for me to build. So I'm curious where obviously you're more plugged into the industry than I am and you get a little bit more of the noise filtered in that kind of can sway thoughts and whatnot. How were you this last weekend in terms of like chalkiness, moving away from the chalk, and how was your weekend overall? Moving away from the chalk, it was tough Sunday morning just because, you know, Jamal Williams is out.

I lock buttoned DeAndre Swift, as did a lot of people. And that didn't work. Some guys sent me their DFS lineup. and he had Joe Mixin and they were asking me about Dandre Swift. I was like, yeah, I would play DeAndi Swift. I think he's a better play for cash. Joe Mixon, there's some concerns there. Obviously, the matchup's great.

Mixon's really good. But we saw the week prior. You only played 55% of the snaps. Samajip Ryan ran more routes. I did tell him to change whatever tight end he had to Dan Arnold. He was like, well, good good. call on Arnold, but clearly I should have played Mixon. It's like, yeah, but like even post hindsight, like I still really think that was the way

to go, but did have a lot of Swift in my lineups, a lot of Henderson too, which was, which was good chalk, a lot of Cordarell Patterson, a lot of, yeah, after the Calvin Ridley news, I switched off of a lot of Tennessee Colts stats. which were my favorite to start the week. And I wrote it up as my favorite game stack. And then Calvin Ridley was out. And I was like, you know what? I actually like this more.

Sam Darnold obviously needs to be competent. But I think he should be because what's his biggest problem? His biggest problem is he sees ghosts more often than the kid from six cents. But the Falcons have the worst pass rush in the NFL. So I think he can keep it close. I'll play DJ Moore. and then I'll do the Michael Pittman. So I'll play DJ Moore and I'll do Cordarell Patterson and Kyle Pitts and that's what I'll do.

But I pivoted off from a ton of Tennessee, Indianapolis game stacks and Pittman, A.J. Brown, mini stacks, which I loved. I did play some Jonathan Taylor, who I loved, really thought people. people are underestimating him. He played 80% of the snaps through the first three quarters. His last two games were, you know, top five snap share games of his career. Had a lot of James Robinson, too, who got hurt. Jamal Agnew was on a ton of my lineups, maybe every single one. So he did really well at 3% ownership and super cheap, six catches, 38 yards, and a score.

Jerry Judy, I locked, which was always risky, but it was just like, hey, if this guy plays 80% of the routes and a top one matchup, and this is, you know, one of my guys who I've just always loved and anticipating a big breakout, had some, a lot of Deonté Johnson, as we talked about in the podcast, he had 98 receiving yards and double-digit targets as he's a lot. for double-digit targets. He didn't do great. Some other bad play. Michael Carter was a guy who I thought long and hard about, you know,

Mike White clearly locked into him and he played like 65% of the snaps after the bive. He really made a concerted effort to feature him more. But at the same time, like if you looked two weeks ago, in terms of usage, in terms of XFP, it was really a 50-50 split between him and Ty Johnson. And so that was just the wart with him. You know, I really considered it, made a lot of sense. But, you know, that one war, well, it was only a 50-50.

And, you know, I mean, it's Mike White. Do we really trust this guy and the offensive environment? And he turned out to be the top score of the week. And number two, number three was that A.J. Brown, Michael Pittman. mini stack number four was josh allen i mean that was obvious chris godwin was number five he was chalk i ate uh he smashed uh but this was like overall i thought a really weird weird week and uh yeah i didn't do great my so my confidence this season has taken a hit a hit like just like a lot of things i regret for instance uh you know i said my prediction was

Jamar Chase is going to break the single season receiving yardage record. Love Jamar Chase. Hyped him up. But I really, really, really hyped up Elijah Moore, who, you know, is not, is not doing anything like I hoped or anticipated. I think he only played like 40% of the snaps last week even. So he keeps seeing a declining role. And it's like, why didn't I just just go all in on the Jamar Chase guy? Instead, I had a, you know, this, this, you know, round 12 flyer. I, you know, staked my reputation on regret. And even in DFS these past few weeks, it's, it's been rough. And so just need to remind myself on process.

Remind yourself that you're Scott Barrett. You know what I mean? It's funny you say that because I say, I often say that fear is at the root of most bad rosters and the best way to overcome fear is with confidence. but confidence can be tough to regain when you lose it. You need that sports psychologist that Brady worked with when he was at Michigan. And I think he worked with them actually his first year or two with the Patriots as well. How many rosters did you build this last week?

Did you build more? That sounds like a lot of rosters. Was it more than normal? Yeah, maybe that was part of the problem too. But yeah, I'm super into the sports psychology stuff. I spent a lot of time reading about that. for myself and just I find it interesting. And so if you ask Russell Wilson or Tom Brady,

what it is that sets them apart from all the other quarterbacks in the NFL. It's not arm strength. It's not accuracy. It's not even football IQ. Russell Wilson has a TED talk on this. And Tom Brady talks about it all the time. The same thing, it's I have a near perfect mindset where I, work on it on a daily basis to block out negative thoughts, make sure my mind is working for me

rather than against me, believing I can do anything and beliefs shaping our reality, which there's a lot of truth to that too. You can look at legitimate scientific studies talking about the power of positive affirmations, the power of self-hypnosis, the power of belief, you know, optimistic people live like seven years longer on average. People who believe there, like the placebo effect to me, I talk about this in the introduction to 96 stats. The placebo effect to me is, and the nocebo effect is like one of the closest things to magic that exists in the world.

This is going to be like a little hippie, dipy tangent. So I'm sure you're going to love it. But like pharmaceutical companies have a really hard time getting drugs passed because it's just so hard to beat the placebo effect because the placebo effect is so absolutely effective where you tell someone, oh, this is like a miracle cancer drug, but it's really just sugar pills. They get, they get better. And then they find out it as a placebo and then the cancer immediately returns. Or so many cases like that with drugs where it's just like, oh, wow, you know, 18% cured from our drug.

That's great. Oh, wait. The placebo effect was 24. percent effect? Like, what? Like, that's, that's crazy. There's a famous case study from Japan where a bunch of, I guess, scientists or whatever took a bunch of students on a hike. And all these students were hypersensitive to this tree that was basically Japan's equivalent to poison sumac. And so the underwent hypnosis and he put a blindfold on them and he took one arm. And on that one arm, they said, all right, we're rubbing poison sumac on you, but really it was just like inert

harmless leaves. And then every single one of those students had a reaction to that. It wasn't just like a mild reaction. It was hives. It was itching, like oozing pus. It's like just from these harmless leaves because they believe that. And then on the other arm, they said, okay, these are just harmless leaves, but it was really poison sumac. And only one had a negative reaction from it. And there's, you know, a lot of examples with the nocebo effect as well, you know, someone told their, you know, it's a voodoo curse and like they actually die from it just because your mind believes it and you're, you've worked up into a state of fear. Positive visualization. There's a lot of case studies talking about how, you know, if you just imagine you're doing

like various strength exercises, like you just imagine you're doing deadlips that you're You just like look at you just lay in bed and meditate and imagine you're doing deadlifts. Those athletes see a significant improvement in strength. There's like finger exercises too where the, they made the same exact strength gains as the group that actually underwent those, the physical exercises. Just imagining they were doing the. So anyway, things like this, but like the power belief,

I believe in that and you know, like confidence, trying to get into a flow state, like every quarterback is just like, you know, when it goes well, it feels like you're just riding a wave and you're playing on easy mode. And there's been stretches of that throughout my DFS career as well, which is like, oh, I can't, I can't do wrong. And I just, like, feel good. I'm confident and going, I'm going to crush this slate. I crush the slate. And, you know, having the right mindset, you know, not not getting too high in yourself when you're you're doing well, not getting too low on yourself and you're not trying to stay even keeled and steady.

And anyway, yeah, so I had a good conversation with Danny Kelly, who is just like one of the sweetest human beings in the world. And he just like really was like, no, man, like you're so hard. Like you're being too hard on yourself. Yeah, you just got to stay focused on process over results. And like it's become such a hackneyed, you know, like meme at this point. But I really do think that's real. And, you know, if you look at the TLDR and my write-up, like, the process was, was strong this week.

So, and it's been a weird freaking year. It's been an absolutely strange year. I mean, QB-1s in week eight, Jimmy Garapolo, Mike White, Justin Fields, Gino Smith, Davis Mills, Cooper Rush. What? Like, that's so crazy. Like, all these backup quarterbacks coming in and, like, pulling out victories in, in games. you were heavily heavy underdogs. Vegas got smashed this way. I feel like it's been a weird, more variance-driven, more chaotic year than normal. And I don't know.

I just want to know weird monologue. What are your thoughts and how did you do? Yeah. So before I get to my DFS weekend, it's funny, it was a few weeks ago that you, we finished the pod and you were like, I really loved the pod this year, but one thing that I think we can do better is shorter time for each most talking and more back and forth.

But I feel like that was, in a way, listening to you talk to that, I feel like it was therapeutic for you. And because a lot of times, I don't know, I spend a lot of time, I spend a lot of time having conversations when I have the opportunity to have some space and just sit and think, which is less often now with kids, but I still actually carve out that time in my week because it's so important for my processes to just. have silence and let my mind kind of wander, but one of the things that I'll often wander through is conversation. So whether it's like prepping for a pod or conversations in my own head about how I would explain something and just sort of working through thoughts can actually be so beneficial in terms of reorienting your mind. And I feel like that was kind of what you did there a little bit was talk through some things that you know and that it's easier for you to know and to share with others than to put into practice yourself right now, right?

And so hopefully talking through some of that, like helped you get back to that mindset of that confidence and, like, recognize, oh, hey, maybe this is the only little thing that I'm missing. What were you about to say? Yeah. So the other thing I was going to bring up with that is I'm really good friends with a DFS pro who is really good, one of the most profitable cash players in the game. And we talk every week. And he is on one of the most unreal bad runs. I have ever seen in my entire life. I have the receipts every single week,

and he sends me his cash lineup, and then he'll ask me my thoughts on a 2v2, and whatever 2v2 he ends up on, and it's always great. It's like, hey, you know, I can make a compelling case for either one, is the difference between him winning, like, every single head-to-head

or him winning only 60%? And so, like, he's lost legitimately 200,000 in profits. Like, he's still profitable this year, but he could be, you know, 200K more. And it's every single week this past week, he sent me his cash lineup for Fandle. And I was like, all right, that's awesome. He's like, yeah, but I'm not playing, you know. And that cash lineup, which he would have entered into the qualifier, would have won the qualifier, would have finished first in a number of tournaments.

And he is so just like, I'm currently. I don't know what it is this year. Like I am really thinking about retiring just because this has gone on for every single week of the NFL season. And it goes back to the NBA season and the MLB season where I am just cursed. And I, you know, but I, you know, I try and tell them. But like, you know, you're so close clearly because it's just a 2v2 at the end. And you flip a coin and it goes the wrong way. And yeah.

So you could get stuck in that, that mental, you know, Russell Wilson, Tom Brady, you're elite with the self-confidence, bordering on like a weirdly sociopathic level where Russell Wilson thinks water can cure him of concussions. But just like perfect mindset. And this guy, I feel like is stuck in a negative mindset where I said to him,

I'm like legitimately, if you like wake up in the morning, say in front of a mirror, I'm a winner, I'm in a win. And like I feel like that could, you know, help be a catalyst in terms of actually changing his results. Because every single week, he does go into it saying, oh, I can't wait to see how I get screwed over this week. And, you know, and then that happens. It's like, you know, manifesting your reality. But yeah, again, it's just a really weird year. And yeah, you know, confidence is a thing.

And so if you're having, if you're struggling this year, if it's a, I mean, A lot of DFS pros are struggling this year. Just, you know, try and try and stay optimistic, stay positive, stay confident, and remind yourself, you know, process over results. You're, you know, week to week, it's going to fluctuate, but, you know, at least six times at a 10, you know, it's going to work out for you. You play the, this, you run the simulation of like the real football games over and over. again, you're going to be right more often and you're wrong. But, you know, two weeks in a row

of weirdness going on, you know, you can get really hard on yourself. Yeah, the idea of, once you get in that mindset of I can't wait to see how things don't break my way this week. It does create a cycle that repeats itself. On the, I feel like we started this week's pod on a sort of slow footing, like the first three or four minutes. But I think that the, this is actually one of the more interesting pods that we've had in your kind of 15 minutes of monologing because it is really, it's really interesting and important stuff. And we are taught so much logic that the illogical aspect of these things is difficult for some people to grasp and get on board with. If anyone is interested in learning more about how much more

powerful our minds and bodies are than we give them credit for, I would recommend reading things by Tim Ferriss, reading things by James Nestor. This year I read both Breath and Deep by James Nestor, both extremely interesting books. Listening to stuff from David Blaine, who a lot of his feats of wonder have been, not illusions, but actual mind over matter, train the body types of things. And going back to the Russell Wilson and Tom Brady thing, I was listening. Winhoff is interesting too. Yeah. Wimhoff. And it's somebody who James Nestor has written about as well. And I keep to leave. I was listening to his podcast this last week, which is extremely entertaining. But he was talking about winning being a skill. And it's in the analytics world

of that's laughed at because it's not quantifiable, but there are players who win wherever they go. What makes Tom Brady a better, such a better quarterback when he has an above average arm, but that's about it. He has far above average football intelligence and the better he continues to take care of his body, he continues to have an above average arm and his football intelligence grows and grows and grows, which is why he's 44 and still able to do what he's being able to do. But also there is a certain mindset that he brings to a locker room and that he kind of spreads throughout that locker room. And there are players who win literally wherever they go.

And it is because winning is a skill. And so players who don't have that. I think a self-fulfilling prophecy where it's just like, this guy's a winner. This guy's a winner. You hear that enough, you know, you believe it. And then it's, you know. But I think a lot of times you get to hear it internally first. I think about my, I've talked about this before.

I think I talked about this on Inner Circle a few weeks ago just in passing. But last Thanksgiving, we swap off holidays with my wife's family and my family. So last year it was Thanksgiving with my wife's family. And the internet at their house was not working with my computer. So it was already big travel week with bringing, you know, flying with the kid and my wife was, I guess, seven months pregnant at the time. And then you've got the holidays and stuff that you're supposed to be around for for that, and plus your entire NFL week. And then the internet wasn't working. So I had to get a hotel room like 20 minutes away at a Hampton Inn and was just kind

of shuttling back and forth. And I already knew. And then obviously Thanksgiving week is a big week for DFS. And so it's a big week for content providers. And so it was, it was, I already went on that trip knowing this is going to be a difficult week to conquer. And then the internet thing happened. I had to get this hotel room was constantly shuttling back and forth. And my thought was basically, it's kind of like when we flew to this trip to New England, we had to get up at five in the morning with two kids. And what I just kept telling the kids at the start of the day was, hey, this is going to be a great day. We're going to have a really good day today. Everything's going to go well. We're all going to have a good attitude. Because when you hear that, you can

click over that mindset. And then when you hit bumps and obstacles, you kind of move through it in that mindset instead of the mindset of how difficult things are and how nothing's breaking your way. And so that Thanksgiving week, I just remember driving back and forth to the hotel and just saying over and over again, I'm elite. I have no problems with a week like this. I conquer this week without any issues. I come out on the other side of this week with victory. I'm elite. I'm elite.

And then went and actually took down the game changer on Thanksgiving Day. Not because I was saying that, right, but that helps enormously because instead of putting yourself in a mindset where you're like, oh, my God, this week is killing me. you're putting yourself in a mindset where you're like, oh, nice, I'm killing this week and let me see how I can kill this slate. Like, let me keep carrying this forward. And those little things can make a big difference and they can help in every area of life. It helps when you can surround yourself with people who also support that and cut out that negativity that can be around you. But, you know, even if you're in a position where you don't have that support, you can kind of start building that yourself and start. proving that to the person who's around you or the people who are around you and start gaining that

support. I'm fortunate in that my wife is extremely supportive in those areas and kind of allowing me freedom to attack things and take big risks and conquer things. And sometimes I don't. Sometimes I do, but I think that's extremely important. Do you have anything else to add on that or should we move back over to week eight DFS? Yeah. How did you do this week, Jan? So I actually, it was my in my opinion, I actually lost a little bit of money, but in my opinion, it was my best week in years, which is funny to say, because I had that Game Changer win last year. I had that 200K Wildcat win two years ago. But this week, I actually went back to single entry. I ended up playing two rosters, and that was why I ended up down money instead of up money, because I played two rosters in the $400

juke and one roster in the single entry game changer, which is $1,500 entry. And the original one roster I built ended up finishing, you know, a few points inside the money. And the second roster I built, which I ended up switching into the game changer, ended up finishing about one point out of the money. But as I always say, we don't play DFS to cash. We play for first place. So the difference between, it was like a, I think about a $2,500 or $3,300 difference, something like that from, you know, having those rosters flipped around. But the main thing for me was I did a great job putting myself in position for first place. So both of my rosters had Michael Carter on them. You and I actually didn't have our call on Saturday. We should have because I probably would have

been able to talk you onto that play. But both my rosters had Michael Carter. And the main spot that I was wanting to build around was that Colts Titans game. But I also really liked the, from a standpoint of what could go, not go off, but what could put up a lot more points than people are expecting in with relatively concentrated offenses was that Washington Denver game. So I had Sutton on one roster, Judy on one roster, but what I really wanted to do was get a Bridgewater and Bridgewater McLaurin and Broncos wide receiver stack. And my original thought was I was going to have Carson Wince, Jonathan Taylor, Michael Pittman, overstack plus A.J. Brown, which we actually had one of our users. I'm going to break down his roster in tonight's inner circle.

he's going to hop on for a little bit, but he picked up first and second in the power sweep using that stack this week. So he picked up a quarter of a million in winnings off of 450 bucks in entries, which is pretty awesome. So I was going to have one roster with that stack and then one roster with the Bridgewater McLaurin and Sutton plus Judy. And then I found on Friday night that I can actually do Bridgewater, Sutton, McLaurin, A.J. Brown, Michael Pittman, an all-on-one roster, which was a thing of beauty because it was kind of both my stacks put together. I thought you mentioned earlier, you were talking about your rosters and you were talking about D'Andre Swift and you talked about Daryl Henderson and you said Daryl Henderson ended up being

good chalk. But I would argue strongly that D'Andre Swift was good chalk as well. It was just, it just didn't work out this week as far as if you're doing enough different in other spots on your roster, right? Like for me, I had a bridgewater lead stack. Well, already I know that I'm doing enough different on my roster that I could have Godwin if I wanted. I could have Swift if I wanted.

Like, it doesn't matter. And even though Pittman was relatively popular and AJ Brown was relatively popular, and probably that combo was decently popular is one of the things that Zandemar and Hilo talked about on their Saturday inner circle segment pretty regularly is that people think that the way Zanamir said it this last week is people think that the way you win tournaments is getting that 1% owned guy that nobody's on, but really, more often than not, it's getting player combinations that most people aren't on. And so something like Jonathan Taylor plus D'Andre Swift was something that most people with D'Andre Swift weren't going to be on. And so you set your roster apart,

like now you have lower combinatorial ownership. So for me, that lower combinatorial ownership was going to be Wynce plus Taylor plus Pittman. Most people aren't going to have that over stack. And so already I'm doing enough different on my roster that I can kind of do whatever I want. I ended up on disappointingly, so all week, actually I talked about this all throughout the week. I said I'll probably have one Bridgewater stack and one Colts overstack. And then when I was able to pair those, that Colts Titans one with the Bridgewater one, I ended up going on that second stack, I ended up going Jalen Hertz plus Dallas Goddard. And I thought that Hertz would be popular or not as popular as he ended up being.

but I didn't think many people would have that stack. And then that was also a way to kind of offset that DeAndre Swift ownership. And that actually, that roster had Debo Samuel, who put up also, you know, close to 30 points and had Deonté Johnson, our boy. And the other roster had Dan Arnold. So I was able to go, Dan Arnold on one, Agnew on the other. So you and I were both on that sort of Jaguars, the cheap Jaguars passing pieces, plays. So the Hertzled one ended up finishing, you know, again, like one point out of the money with a bunch of things that just came just short, right?

Like Michael Carter was five yards shy of the bonus. Deonté was two yards shy of the bonus. Debo was a couple inches short of a touchdown. But that was kind of the difference between minimum cashing and not cashing. So it would have been nice to have that little bit of extra money. But the bigger thing for me was, you know, in the past, when you kind of started talking to me, like, when you had like 200 Twitter followers and I had 20,000, and now you have like 70,000, I have 20,000, when during that season of my play, I had very few content responsibilities.

And so I was not plugged into the industry at all. And so I would do everything in a bubble and be shocked at ownership come Sunday. And then I got in the podcast with Levitant and Hefe and I would be shocked come Friday night by some of the guys they would bring up that were going to be chalky. I'd be like, oh, I didn't think of that guy. And not that those guys were bad plays, but just that wasn't the way I was building in order to try to get to 200 plus points. And so as I started writing the NFL Edge, and then especially as the NFL Edge got like more

involved by 2017, and then as I launched OWS and I was providing most of the content, I became less and less of a bubble player. And I actually talked about this last week in Inner Circle, but I became, it became like important to me because I was providing most of the content on. OWS and so subs were paying and then getting mostly my content. So I had I kind of went more middle of the road to make sure that I wasn't overlooking like the chalky pieces that everyone was talking about. But now that we have, you know, 20 different people contributing content on in written form and podcasts and other people writing the NFL Edge and all this stuff, it's been really cool

because I've been able to shift over to what I'm best at, which is seeing how I see the sleep and then kind of not knowing until close to the end of the week what everybody else is doing. So it was really fun for me because this was the first week in a few years that I felt comfortable playing just one or two rosters. And it was because I didn't have any of the outside noise. So I just had the way I was seeing things. And if I'm wrong, I'm wrong, which is fine. But then if I'm right, I'm right in ways that other people aren't right in. And so it's kind of like we've talked before,

about how chalk is formed. Like, there are certain voices in the industry that they talk them up, particularly Levitan and Silva, because so many DFS content providers who also play NBA and MLB, right, and those overlap with their NFL stuff. So they're not doing a bunch of research each week. They're kind of tuning into Levitan and Silva to see, oh, who are the sharp plays. But Silva's very focused on, like, the research and the big picture season-long fantasy plays. Levitan's very focused on cash games. And so they're finding the sharpest plays, but sometimes that third or fourth wide receiver that Levitan might be focused on, and it becomes like a 15% own player, because Levitans focused on it. So then all these guys at this site start talking about them, all these guys at

this site start talking about them. Well, you know, that guy could easily have been a 3% own play, right? Like if the right people have started talking about Michael Carter last week, then everybody else would have started echoing that. And then next thing you know, Michael Carter puts up, you know, the same score at 20% ownership instead of at 5% ownership. And so, yeah, it was great for me to kind of just build everything in a bubble and then come out of it and see, oh, wow, there's a bunch of plays that I'm on that other people aren't on. And that's most beneficial for me. So, yeah, it was a fun week for me and didn't quite shake out the way I wanted it to. But what was great was those early games, the Bridgewater roster, the early games, I had Swift, who kind of bombed for everybody.

and then I had Pitman, A.J. Brown, and Michael Carter. And that was my roster. And like you said, those were the top three highest scoring DFS plays. So it's pretty stunning that that roster barely cashed. But then I went into the afternoon knowing, okay, I have three of the top plays on the weekend already. And now I have this stack that nobody's on in Bridgewater, McLaurin Sutton. And so it was like, if this stack that nobody's on hits, I'm golden. Right. Like nobody can catch me if these guys can buy. for like a reasonable would be about 50 points from Sutton and Bridgewater combined plus 30 points from McLaurin if everything goes right. And that game really required McLaurin hitting in order for Bridgewater and Sutton to hit. So it didn't work out. But if McLaurin had been able to break through that secondary, which I broke down some numbers last week about how is like that Denver defense has mostly played teams that don't throw to wide outs or don't throw the ball a lot or aren't good at throwing the ball. But Hollywood Brown, Henry Ruggs, rest in peace to Henry Rugg's career and to the person who he rear-ended last night.

The Henry Ruggs and Hollywood Brown and somebody else had all had big games against the Denver defense on low volume. Chase Claypool was the other one. Like five or six or fewer targets and all of them had 90 plus yards and a touchdown. And so McLaurin was the type of player who could hit in that matchup. And it just didn't happen. But if he had, then that stack, basically, like, nobody was on that one. Now I add 80 points to the top three plays on the slate, plus Dan Arnold, plus whatever else.

You know, it allowed me to go up to the Bills or Bingles defense on that roster. So, yeah, it was close to being kind of a smash weekend for me. My game-focused build did not work out. But, but, yeah, that was, also I hit on the Henry Ruggs thing, and, like, I kind of said rest in peace, which sounds almost. humorous. But that is a terrible tragedy. And also, a quick note here, if you're like a young person, take Uber's. If you're, if you're going to drink, take Uber's. Also, if you're an NFL player, your teams have car services. It's ridiculous for these guys to drive drunk. But please take

Uber's if you are drinking because it's a super easy thing to do. And then nobody gets hurt. But yeah, that was my weekend. And we should have had our Saturday call. It was a busy day for me since I'm at my parents' house in New England. But, and what Saturday was? Oh, Saturday was a day before Halloween. So we could have done that. But, but yeah, interesting week on my end and has me looking forward to week nine. Yeah.

So we did miss that call. You said you would have talked me on to Michael Carter. You want to try now? I'd like to hear what had you so confident. Yeah. So we go back, let's go back to 2014, 2015, and one of the easy. edges in DFS back then was that we're talking draft kings. It's PPR scoring. And on average, a target is worth 2.7 more points than a carry as far as statistically.

You're citing my own stat back to me, which I actually heard Ian Hartitz say that exact stat on Akeem-Taleeb's pod. I doubt he stole it from you, but because I'm sure he's and himself as well. But yeah, I would I would not be surprised that you know that because you guys do these like deep researches. I've been kind of citing that this year and just saying like roughly 2x. I didn't realize it was as high as 2.7x. Yeah. So it's it's 2.64 times as much as a carry. And then outside of the red zone, it's 3.13 times as much. And then my stat weighted opportunity just, you know, applies that multiplier to both carries and targets to figure out which running backs have the best volume. But I mostly just used during the season, XFP, because it's a more accurate

version that also accounts for down and distance and depth of target and things of that nature. But yeah, weighted opportunity. Yeah. So if we go back 2014, 2015, one of the easiest ways to make money in DFS was you'd get 20% ownership on Adrian Peterson at over 8K in salary. And he would occasionally put up like a 28 point game, but because he caught so few passes, he was rarely like breaking this. He wasn't putting up Derek Henry or Christian McCaffrey type scores at that high price tag. And you could typically get a like low 5K, high 4K running back who was going to get five or six targets. And and so it was like you could pay down for these guys who were going to get five or six or more targets. And then it's PPR scoring pay up at wide.

receiver. Obviously, we know that you can always find, there's always going to be, almost always going to be one of these cheaper wide receivers, whether it's like a 5K wide receiver or a 4K or even somebody in the 3Ks, who will go for 25 to 30 points. But it's, there's a huge pool of wide receivers there, right? And so you have to nail that play. Whereas the high price wide receivers, if you understand what's going on with these different teams, the targets are often very bankable. And so you could pay down at running back and get these 18 to 22 point scores because of the targets, then pay up for the wide receivers who were guaranteed targets. Now, once the NFL shifted and teams started using running backs differently,

starting with Levi-on-Bell, which the Cardinals then developed David Johnson in that way, and then the Saints drafted Alvin Camer in that way, and the Panthers drafted Christian McCaffrey to fill that role, and the Cowboys tried to use Zeke that way for a little while, and all these teams started developing these past catching backs, oftentimes with three down rolls, workhorse rolls, then it became different, right? Like you had to pay up for these running backs because that was where you could get these 35 to 40 point games. But what's happened is the NFL has shifted again. And so like Jonathan

Taylor, look at his carries, right? 15, 17, 18, 16. And it looks like, man, this guy's just not getting enough work. Then look at the leaders in the NFL in carries. Jonathan Taylor has, going into last week, had the fourth most carries in the NFL. In the NFL, because that's how teams are using running backs now. There's all these split backfields, and then we've got the 17-game season. Teams are kind of overreacting to that. And so people are still in the mindset

of paying up for these high-priced running backs because that's what we did two years ago, three years ago, because you kind of had to do that. But now it's less consistent that you're going to see those big scores up there. It's less consistent that missing out on one of those high-priced running backs is going to just bury you, right?

like Austin Neckler put up a great score, but it was like 24 points, right? Mixon put up a great score, but it was like 26 points. And you kind of go down, and Swift has put up all these really strong games, but it's like 2018 to 22 to 24 to 28 points. And so basically for me, it was recognizing that Michael Carter was likely to get 12-ish touches. And given the fact that the Bengals had forced the most or second-most targets to running backs in the NFL, that the jets are likely to be behind or likely to be passed. asking and that Mike White had already shown that he's probably not going to attack downfield.

It was like, oh, well, Michael Carter, you just pinch the limit as this guy with the targets plus the carries. And then you look at that opportunity or weighted opportunity, as you were saying. And it's basically like worth one of these six and a half K, seven K running. So I didn't worry about the game environment too much or the touchdown upside too much. And I wasn't targeting 30 plus points so much that I was just saying, hey, look, this guy, the opportunity is there for a bad game is still probably going to. be like 15, 17 points. And you look at 4,900 wide receivers. Who can you say that, hey, a bad

game from them is going to be 15, 17 points. Plus, we saw what Carter could do in a ceiling game. So just to save that salary there, and not to knock $4,900 wide receivers, because like you, I was on Judy this last week, who was exactly 4,900. But the, it just, and I'll say this, too, I highlighted Michael Carter in my initial, like, passed through the slate on Monday night. on Tuesday's inner circle segment, I talked through my bubble building process to kind of give listeners a sense of how I do that. And I actually skipped over Michael Carter's name

because I didn't have the confidence to like say that he was on my list. And then in the player grid, I literally was like, walked through my whole process with Michael Carter and was like basically my process of why I didn't feel comfortable playing him, but why he was such a sharp play. And so yeah, it was, it just made a lot of sense from a standpoint of,

we've gotten used to thinking 30 points for running backs and thinking that we have to target that. So then when you get to somebody like Michael Carter, you're like, yeah, but he can't get me 30 points, which more often than not, he wasn't going to. But you didn't need 30 points because most of these higher priced running backs are going for 22, 25, 28 points because that's just kind of the way that the workloads are split up this year. You know, Jonathan Taylor is a great play almost every week, but he's getting under 20 carries and only, you know, two, three targets. And so when you can get one of these cheap guys with targets plus some carries, it feels pretty good.

Yeah, I think that's a really sharp macro take. Yeah, the most valuable commodity in fantasy football is the Uber Belkow, you know, who's seeing 85 plus percent of the team snaps and is used as both a runner and a receiver, game script proof. not very weak to week volatile. These players have the highest ceiling floor and median projection. And when you think of that, you typically think of Christian McCaffrey or Saquan Barclay in their prime. But guess what? They're not healthy.

They're not playing. Derek Henry. He's potentially out for the year. So we're now seeing a lack of the highest end of the spectrum. running backs, like if we would have no Konami code quarterbacks, like if all of Kyler, Hertz, Lamar, Allen were dealing with ankle injuries. So you have to adjust. You have to think about it differently in such a scenario. It makes more sense to do what we were doing back in 2016, 2017, where you played Blake Bordels and cash every single week.

And he, you know, it was disgusting for the first half. And then he'd get over his hangover and he'd find a way to drop 25 points and 4x value every single week. And so you have to think of it similarly with running backs where, yeah, there's a major rise in committee backfields now. It would be great if, you know, no career. dream hunt, uh,

he just, Nick Chubb would just get 90% of the work and all those targets that went to hunt. Um, and things like that. But we're just not, or Jonathan Taylor, you know,

just this guy is elite. Just, just feature him. Just, just make him the guy. But that's not happening. So, so I think you're right.

Yeah. What, when you know, especially too, like that's time to pivot. Yeah. Especially too, like you mentioned Sequins hurt. Christian McCaffrey's hurt.

Like, this is part of the reason. and why. Because the NFL does. It always adjusts, and I've talked about this a lot. The way that teams, we won't spend the last 15 minutes, 10, 15 minutes of this podcast, walking through what NFL teams

did in 2015 and 16 and 17 and 18 and 19 and 20. But I talk about it frequently of like the way NFL teams have shifted their macro philosophies over that time frame and how we need to shift the way we attack DFS roster construction

as far as salary allocation. as a result of that. And part of the thing is, like, teams saw these running backs, getting these huge workloads and being electric and being engines of the offense. And that looked really good, right? So other teams are like, man, we want that. And now because these running, like, Sequin Barclay basically hasn't played for two years.

Christian McCaffrey hasn't played for two years. Zique has missed chunks of games over the last couple years, and now he's getting like a 60, 60, what, like a 60% snap share. And so basically all these teams are starting to recognize, or not even necessarily starting to recognize, because it's anecdotal in a way they're taking what happened to another running back and applying it to their situation. But all these teams are kind of overreacting to this and saying,

oh, yeah, we don't want to tax our running backs. Now we've got a 17-game season, and we're thinking about the playoffs and this guy kind of getting run down. And so, yeah, there are very few guys who are playing more than 70% of the snaps. And, you know, those guys who are still having their workload managed, right? Like Swift has been playing 70% of the snaps the last month or so, but he's still kind of getting his workload managed. You look down at like the carry numbers and he and Jamal Williams have basically the same

number of carries every week. They're rightly, they're both getting 12, 13 carries. And then Swift gets the extra pass game work. But they're trying to kind of limit the wear and tear on these guys because they see that these all-in running backs keep getting hurt and teams putting all their eggs in that basket it ends up hurting them and then you you know you end up having to draft a running back to back up that all-in running back who can take take over if that all-in running back gets hurt but then you're like well why would we not then just split the work a little bit anyway which kind of what the cowboys

realized with with pollard which speaking of pollard he was like and speaking of football IQ he was so low on football IQ early in his career I remember Like all the all the stat heads and and combine people were like, oh, why is this guy not getting touches? And then you'd watch games. And he would just make mistake after mistake on the field. And you're like, well, this is why because coaches need a win game. But he has improved from like a football standpoint.

And he's still electric as an athlete. And so, you know, the Cowboys kind of realize, well, why use Pollard as an insurance policy when we can kind of bring him? And the Brown same thing with Hunt and Chub. Like why use this second guy as an insurance policy when we can just be dynamic? at all times and keep both guys fresh. And that's going to be the norm for the rest of this year and probably next year. And then we'll see what shifts from there.

But yeah, and the sooner we, it's actually absolutely incredible that you and I are having this conversation for like on a free podcast stream right now. But the sooner that you as a DFS player, you, the listener as a DFS player, adjust to the way NFL teams are playing things, the sooner you're going to be allocating salary more sharply than your competition, which just goes a long, long way over time. So, yeah, hopefully the kind of our slow-footed start to this week's pod chased some people off because we've gotten into some really good stuff this week. Yeah, the only other thing I wanted to bring up from week eight was another play you were on,

which was Debo Samuel. You know, everyone's talking about Cooper Cup, who has the most fantasy points. by any wide receiver through eight games all time. Is he 2020 Devante Adams Plus? Should we be viewing him as Cooper Capitron? All these things. And like obviously, you know, great play, wrote him up as a top five play. And the argument I made for Debo Samuel was basically, well, why aren't we viewing him

similarly? Why aren't we viewing him as 95%? 90 to 95% Cooper Cup when he's priced at, you know, 82% Cooper Cup because right now he has the seventh most receiving yards through the first seven games of the season since the 1970 NFL merger. And he's another guy who's smashed and continues to smash. I wrote it up exactly like that. And then I don't think I had maybe had one share if that. And so, So yeah. It's so hard when you're writing up like a lot of content because it kind of

when your focuses on the, like I don't know. I obviously, I mean you, you're part owner of fantasy points. So I guess like over time you can kind of develop what makes the most sense for your play and your content. And I think that subscribers understand that over time, right? Because then you can provide technically the best stuff for them. But you guys also have like a large season long crowd that you have to be thinking about. But for me, yeah, it was like adjusting my.

content to where it's built off of what I'm best at. Because sometimes finding those plays like Debo, like I was on him from Monday night and it just made a lot of sense. And then you see ownership late in the week. Well, I was already, I already had them on my roster. And then I looked at ownership. It was like, oh my God, like under 5% owned. Really? That's crazy because he's such a sharp play. But when you're kind of having to write up so much content, it can be more difficult to reorient your mindset back to like, what do I actually think is sharpest, not not sharpest, to also have to hit on everything, but what do I think is sharpest? And so, yeah, I'm certainly with you on that.

Like, because last year or two years ago, I wouldn't have been able to pull the trigger on Debo, whereas this last week I didn't even think about it, but that's more because I've kind of been able to adjust my content over the last few years, that it's more focused on building off of what I do best. But yeah, super sharp on that write-up of Debo, because the 49ers, I mean, I have got seven targets this last week, and that's encouraging from a forward-looking standpoint. He had another game this year with six, and then I think everything else has been four or fewer. But the 49ers, they're not, you know, they don't have kiddle right now, and they're not really

involving other pass catchers. And it's like, Debo is their offense. So understanding that, that in a competitive game, where they're going to have to pass some or in a game where they might not be able to run as much as they want, he's going to see those double-digit targets, and he has so much after-catch upside that, um, Yeah, and also side note on my Patriots and their draft pick of Nikiel Harry, Debo Samuel and AJ Brown are the two guys they passed up to get Nikiel Harry. So shout out to the Patriots on that because Debo and AJ Brown are clearly superior wide receivers. And everybody saw that coming into the draft except the Patriots.

So shout out to the Patriots there. Anything else you wanted to hit on? Yeah, I do want to mention the game. Cooper Cup thing. So I'm such a game environment person that I have a hard time pulling the trigger on a 9K wide receiver going against the Texans. But I did have this thought going into the weekend and it was reinforced after this last week. I would have, I would have to imagine that at this point, Cup and Stafford think it would be fun for Cup to set the record for most touchdown receptions in the season. That must be on their minds by this point. And I thought of that this last week. It was like,

oh, you know what? They're probably going to try to get him one or two touchdowns in this soft spot. Like, why not do it? And for me, like the salary didn't work out to get all the way up there and to take those guaranteed points. But I do think that he's pretty guaranteed points in terms of not only is he their best receiver and their best means of scoring points, but even in games where the Rams should win relatively easily, it makes sense for them to just keep feeding him touchdowns because, you know, for these guys, especially for Stafford, after all those years with the Lions and the narrative of his career, you know, having an opportunity to be reshaped right now, it makes sense that he would try to get that touchdown record for Cup this season.

Something keeping the back of the mind, in my opinion, as we move into the second half of the season. Yeah, something else I was thinking of randomly was, because, Grancowski was high on my radar. He was maybe the tight end seven by salary this past week. And he left the game early with back spasms. I think he was on a limited snap count before that anyway, though. But just as like a boomer bus play for tournaments. And we talk about this a lot is you play the old oft injured guys earliest in the season in DFS. Like in redraft, you can just straight up fade those guys. But then, you know, make sure you get your Rob Grancowski shares early in the season in DFS. And, you know, he started off the season with multiple touchdowns with seeing like elite tight end one usage in terms of route share and targets. But then the other side of that coin is you start playing rookie wide receivers young guys in the second half of the season. because historically speaking, rookie wide receivers see a 50% jump in targets, yards, and fantasy points scored

in the second half of the season in contrast to the first half of the season. And what that means is it doesn't mean we should adding another 50% fantasy points per game to Jamar Chase's average. But a lot of the other guys who aren't seeing any usage, whatsoever should be expected to see a much larger role. And that could be a, you know, Josh Palmer or maybe Rodel Moore finally seeing a full-time workload. But yeah, just look. So that's something to keep in mind. Like if just randomly out of nowhere, a Josh Palmer sees, you know, seven targets, right? That's something to keep in mind. And then if he sees, you know,

another seven targets the next week, you could feel really good about him heading into the next game. But yeah, so that's just another macro trend that we've always seen in DFS is, you know, play old guys early in the season, play young guys in the second half of the season. We saw that last year with Brandon Iuk, Justin Jefferson really turn it on. Yeah, I feel like you and I could probably go on for another hour on stuff like this, but I'll toss in one quick one before we get out of here. And that's also to recognize that teams improve throughout the season. Most teams improve week to week. I was thinking about that last night with that chiefs and, well, two nights ago for you guys listening, but with that Chiefs and Giants game,

is that most people are going to look at that through the lens of how bad the Chiefs look right now. But also keep in mind that the Giants had a pretty solid overall defense last year. Not a great defense, but a pretty solid overall defense and a pretty solid pass defense and people are conditioned to think about teams the way they thought about them after week one or week two. And if you're a fan of a team and you follow that team closely, you understand the teams improve throughout the year, especially if you're a fan of a good team. Like I've watched basically every Patriots game for the last 20 years. And so I'm very aware that teams get better week to week. But then when I get into this kind of all 32 teams focus for

work, I sometimes forget that. and it's easy to forget that as a DFS player or a fantasy player, that teams improved throughout the season. So you should be updating, not to say that one game, you sort of shift the way you see things, but continue to update the way you're seeing things throughout the season. I think back to 2018, and, like, I made an enormous amount of money

just stacking Josh Allen and his past catchers every week because the narrative at that point was, oh, my gosh, Josh Allen's a bust. He's awful. And then they came back, you know, he was injured for a little while. he came back and things were just totally different. You watched the games, things were different. And so pay attention to places like that where you can see, oh, this player who everybody thinks is bad has gotten better. This defense that everybody thinks is bad has gotten better. This

matchup is not the same that everybody thought it was. Maybe we'll be able to focus on that in like a future pod where we can kind of talk through some of the spots we're seeing. But that's another thing to keep in mind. Scott, do you have anything else to add before we get out of here? Yeah, that's something Sigmund Bloom talks about a lot where there's like a appears there's seasons within a season where you could just, it's, it's 17 games and you just break it up into thirds and it looks completely different. Where there's, it seems like a guy is on a crazy hot streak and then boom, he just sees like a completely different lesser workload inexplicably or a defense that looks, lights out,

loses, you know, one key piece and now they're bottom five. And it's, you know, a lot of that is just variants driven by small sample sizes, which unfortunately is all we have to work with in the NFL. But yeah, you can see that too. So it's better to adapt quickly to changes like that than it is to not, I guess. But yeah, so that's another thing to just Yeah. Yeah. I know that the Patriots from like internally they look at the season as kind of four parts, you know, the first four games, the next four games, the next four, the next four, you know, the bucks didn't look like even like a playoff team, kind of a borderline playoff team until really the second half of the season and didn't look like a potential

Super Bowl winner last year until the last four or five games. And so, yeah, being willing to update and adjust the way you're seeing things is extremely important, especially because most of our competition will not be doing that. With that, thank you so much for hanging out this this week. Scott, as always, it's a pleasure to do this pod with you, one of my favorite parts of the week. Listeners, hopefully you feel the same way. Check out fantasy points.com. You are listening to this on the Fantasy Points podcast feed, so you've probably already done that. Check out one week's season.com. You've probably listened to us enough times that you've probably done that as well, but I have to say that each week for Scott and myself. And for Scott and myself, thanks for hanging out.

We will see you back here 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. And come join the roster at FantasyPoint.com.