Fantasy Football Daily - 2021 Week 9 DFS Recap

Episode Date: November 10, 2021

Scott Barrett (@ScottBarrettDFB) and Jordan Tohline (@JMToWin) of One Week Season (@oneweekseason) review their Week 9 lineups and DFS action. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fantasy-points-podcast/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's time for the Fantasy Points podcast brought to you by FantasyPoints.com. Top level fantasy football and NFL betting analysis from every perspective and angle, from numbers to the film room, with a single goal to help you score more fantasy points. What is going on, Fantasy Fam? Welcome to the week 10 edition of the DFS recap pod on the Fantasy Points podcast feed. I am your host, co-house. host, J.M.2 Win from one weekseason.com, here with the great Scott Barrett from FantasyPoints.com. Scott, how are you doing? I'm doing good, man. This is a weird week. This was a

very weird week. And last week on the show, I said, I'm reframing. This whole week, I'm going to be focused on the process, not going crazy over the results if they're not aligned, and really just trying to figure out what was good process, what was bad process, and trying to learn from that. And oh boy, was this a weird results week? This was a bizarre slate. Early on in the week, it was my least favorite slate of the season. I thought I was just super weird, kind of gross. Something like 10 of the top 12 XFP per game leaders were off the main slate. And then one of them was Devante Adams who had a backup quarterback in. And it took me like three hours to write up my first five guys.

It was just kind of hard to find them when typically that's something I'll breeze through. And then by Saturday, I felt amazing. I felt really good. I felt like I had a great grasp on this weird slate. But the weirdness won out in the end. And it was just, it was just super, super weird, man. I was profitable just because. everything sucked.

But, you know, some of my plays definitely did not hit. And we had an interesting phone call on Saturday that we'll talk about. That seems sort of prescient. You tried talking me out of one thing. I should have listened. I tried talking you onto another and hopefully you didn't listen. But I'm excited for this week nine recap. Yeah, it was one of the more unusual.

slates that we've ever had just from a standpoint of how low scoring DFS scores were, primarily because the production in these games came from such weird places. I think there are some places where we could have not foreseen what happened, but better foreseen what happened. So two spots for me, one of which is kind of obvious in retrospect or sounds obvious in retrospect. the other of which will sound like I'm just blowing smoke and saying that we could have seen this. But I think we actually could have seen it because I kept considering it last week.

But the first one is Nick Chubb. And Nick Chubb is a guy who you can probably guess, Scott, because of my aversion to yardage and touchdown backs. I never play. And if we look through his game logs, I think he has, I could have this wrong, but off the top of my head. I think he has, coming into this last week, had one 30-point draft king score in his last like 23 games. maybe it was zero 30 point draft king scores. And so obviously he gets close to that mark from time to time because of the yardage and touchdown upside that he has.

But if we're paying his typical price tag, which was $6,700 last week, but it's usually over $7K. If we're paying that typical price tag, we want a guy who can not just get up to 26, 27, 28, 29 points, but can actually occasionally put up the 35, 38, 40 point game, which is just not something that Chubb typically has in his range. One of the things that I missed was I spent so much time. this last week talking about how wrong the pricing was at running back and how we should account for that in our builds. But one thing I didn't think about was that this last week, a guy who could

get you 26 to 30 points could end up being the most valuable running back you could end up finding. And so Nick Chubb was a guy who started coming around to on Saturday night, but because I had kind of talked down that approach so much, I couldn't bring myself to go over to it. Basically, that would have required me thinking through it all, coming up with a way to explain it to subscriber who's going on to the site and like changing what stuff. And so it was like, you know what, let's just stick with what I've had. The other one is James Connor. And if we think about how the Cardinals were going to try to win that game, I had Christian Kirk in the flex on one of my two rosters at 5300 with the thinking that I wanted to have that flexibility to go Kirk or Chase Edmonds.

They were both 5300. And I kept looking at James Connor and thinking, well, it would make sense for them to lean on Connor if Kyler Murray is out. Obviously got helped out tremendously, Conner got helped out tremendously by the Chase Edmund's injury. But I think that that was an interesting spot as well to where I got Kirk at 1% ownership. So no complaints about sticking with that one just from a standpoint of paths to first place. You get a guy who's low-owned and could end up putting up 25 to 30 points. That's a great thing to have. But Chase Edmonds and even James Connor were really interesting in that 5300 price dream. So those were two that I kind of wish I hadn't overlooked. I had Tyrod Taylor at quarterback on, I guess I had three rosters this last week. I had Tyra Taylor at quarterback

on two of them, Teddy Bridgewater on one of them. I finished basically just out of the money with all three of my rosters, but none of them had a shot at a huge weekend because I stepped into too many landmines, which obviously is the story of the weekend for most people. Scott, I was impressed with your level of certainty on Justin Herbert. I don't know how much exposure you ended up having to him, but I know that that was one of your guys this last week. I was a little bit concerned about Philadelphia always forcing so many short passes, but obviously the charges are still going to pass the ball,

even against a team that has been a run funnel this year. So I thought that was really sharp. I'm guessing that that was part of what was able to help propel you to a profitable weekend. Am I right on that? Actually, actually, no. Like I said, I only ran out one. lineup. Really, all my, you know, almost lineups, like almost was the final, but I like the final more. I ran those at my $3.00. So like maybe I won five bucks on some of my Justin Herbert's

lineups. But yeah, let's move position by position. We'll start with game stacks as a position and then move to running backs because I want to hit on what you just said with Chubb and Chase. But yeah, so Game Stacks, it came down to two for me. One was Marquise Brown plus Lamar Jackson plus Justin Jefferson. And I was feeling really good with that Justin Jefferson play at low ownerships. Low ownership, you know, he had that big touchdown in the first quarter and then inexplicably basically did not see another target. Hollywood needed overtime to hit, but he did hit. hit and then Lamar Jackson Smash game.

And that was, I felt really good about that. But ownership was coming in hot when it looked like Josh Allen stacks were going to be the chalk earlier in the week. And so I did like the Justin Herbert stack a lot. And that was basically a slot funnel defense for the Eagles with Slay shutting down, ideally a banged up Mike Williams and scheming to stop the deep ball. So that concentrated that offense in my mind to Echler and Keenan where Mike Williams can be somewhat faded. Keenan had the big game.

Herbert had the big game. And the stack on the Eagle side was super obvious to me was Dallas Goddard, who had 70 yards and back-to-back games, like a 55% target share the week prior. And this was a top tight-end funnel matchup. And then I panicked Sunday morning or Saturday night when the Chargers ruled out both starting outside cornerbacks. And I asked myself, okay, does this mean Chris Harris Jr. Hall of Fame slot cornerback? Does he stay in the slot? Or does he shadow? Because we've seen him shadow a few few times over the past few years to great success, minus like one Antonio Brown game. But outside of that, to great success. And I think these should have shadowed,

Devanta Smith, but they did not. Goddard opened the game with like four or five targets on the opening drive, including two deep targets and then did nothing else. And Devontas Smith was the guy who smashed at like near zero ownership against backup cornerbacks. Chris Harris Jr. Did not shadow. That was a mistake.

And those were the two best game stack stacks of the week. You know, quarterback receiver plus receiver. Still not really sure why Echler flopped. But yeah, so I think that was good process. I'll pat myself in the back for that. Josh Allen just, oh, my God, I really don't have a good excuse for what happened there. But I was lucky more than anything for not landing on that. And then let's move over to the running back position.

I had a lot of Echler. I had a lot of Zeke. Zik had was dealing with injuries in that game. And then Devante Booker was a top three running. back play for me. And I think that was great process. I think that was the best process play of the slate, just a full-on bell cow, nearly 100% of the team snaps prior to injury. And then frustratingly, he was smashing. You know, so many other sites I looked at had Gaskin well above Devante Booker. Gaskin scored, but he had like 35 yards from scrimmage, whereas Booker had like 135 and was looking

awesome but frustratingly suffered an injury with 99 yards one yard shy of the three point bonus i think it was like the first play of the fourth quarter that happened so that was frustrating a lot of frustrating injuries this week and then you brought up nick chubb and chase edmund so so i had like a three-way four-way tie after my RB3. So it was like Booker, Zeke, Echler, and a tier, and then like a three- or four-way tie between Chubb, Cordarell Patterson, Joe Mixen, especially on Fandul, and maybe one other guy I'm forgetting about. But, yeah, Chubb is interesting.

I mean, he hit, but he played on 56% of the snaps. He had 16 touches. and 11 of his points came on that one massive play. And of course, Chubb does that. But, like, Levitant landed on that in cash. And it's like, I don't know if I would have the stones to play in the cash. Because, you know, minus that one play, he would have had 13 carries, 67 rushing yards, one touchdown.

And, like, really not the slate busting game. But he pulled it out in the end. And, you know, Chubb is definitely one to do that. And then you brought up James Connor. And that's definitely someone I want to talk about because, one of my buddies who's like one of the sharpest guys when it comes to X's and O's football was in my DMs victory lapping and James Connor who he had in a bunch of DFS lineups, really sharp guy.

And I'm just like embarrassed for you. I'm like super embarrassed for you. This is embarrassing to me that you're victory lapping this. Like this was not a good process play. I don't think it was a very good results play. I mean, Chase Edmonds injured on literally the first play of the game. James Connor, 45 yards from scrimmage per game this season. And then even the near end zone work isn't really dramatically more in his favor

than Chase Edmonds' favor. He's just like ridiculously efficient inside the 10, which is something that almost always regresses to the mean. You had Kyler Murray out. you had the implied point total plummet, projected negative game script. Negative game script is something that typically favors Chase Edmonds over James Connor. I think something like a 65% snap share for Edmonds when trailing. And so just everything to me lined up saying like the donkeys sort of got bailed out.

But I'll be happy to admit, you know, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe maybe that's just, you know, not wanting to admit. I didn't see a 40-point game from freaking James Connor. You can make the case that, you know, the quarterback's out, so they'll lean heavier on the run game. Hopkins out as well, but I don't know, man. I don't see it. So what are your thoughts there?

I guess I'm more with you on the Chubb one than the Connor one. Because so, okay, when you and I talked on Saturday, one of the things I said was that my running. back pool, well, two things I said. One, I was like, I don't know where to pay up, right? Because I didn't trust Tyree Kill this last week to put up the type of score you're paying up for him for all of these running backs. You know, I'd gone through the whole list this last week, but Aaron Jones, Ezekiel Elliott, Joe Mixon, all of these guys priced like 7K and up. Their historical production over the last year and a half doesn't justify those price tags,

especially when we'd never seen a running back above like, 8K until the Levi-on-Bel, David Johnson era. And then all of a sudden it was like, oh, well, now we were getting these other workhorse running backs, the Christian McCaffrey's, the periods where Alvin Camero was getting all the catches and all that. And so we kind of started seeing running backs priced up in this range. But now all of a sudden teams are using their running backs differently. And all these guys are still priced in this range, but not putting up the scores that

match the price tags. And so in my mind, it was like, well, I don't really, outside of Eckler had conference, in Echler. I was interested in Dalvin Cook and in Alvin Camara just saying who could put up like a two or three touchdown game. Who could put up 30 points? But there was just a lot of uncertainty up at the top of the price range of running back. The problem was you swing over to wide receiver and there was also all this uncertainty. Like Stefan Diggs hasn't put up more than 24 points in a game this season. Devante Adams is playing with Jordan Love as you talked about Tyree Kill. We kind of expect defense to just be playing this Covered 2 shell at the moment, which makes it tougher for him to have

his big games. And so for me, it was like trying to find the places where the points might end up emerging. So what I ended up doing was kind of going, well, two things. One, middle tier at wide receiver, right? So I had like Marquis Brown on all three rosters. I had Brandon Cooks on all three rosters. I had Emmanuel Sanders on a roster, Amari Cooper on a roster, Jerry Judy on one or two rosters, right? So all these 5K to 6K wide receivers, because I kind of felt like these guys were as likely to put up 30 points as the higher priced guys. One of the high priced wide receivers, I was interested like you was Justin Jefferson. And I want to go back to that game stack. And it was a super sharp game stack highest to second highest implied, or highest to second highest

over under of the week, depending on what point in the week you were looking kind of a few different totals were jostling for that highest over under label. But super sharp. one there. I didn't end up on Jefferson because Hilo on OWS had noted something really interesting, which was even though Jefferson's PFF grades against man coverage are tremendous. He had struggled throughout his career in press man coverage against physical corners. And so I wasn't able to bring myself to pay the 7500 price tag on him. Felt like a mistake when he hit that early touchdown and that it all kind of evened out with the limited targets from there. But yeah, it was just like, it was a weird week where I needed to be a little bit more comfortable.

well, targeting 25 plus points, basically, instead of the 30 plus points, 35 plus points I'm typically looking for. And I did that by settling on these wide receivers in the 6K price range. But the thing with James Connor is I'll say it like this, right? Like if we're trying to win a tournament, the, I think you and I talked about this last week, but the people tend to think that the way most people win tournaments is finding this 1% own guy that nobody's on and has a big game. whereas more often than not, it's finding a couple 10% own guys, 15% owned guys, whatever, that most people aren't putting on rosters together. So if everybody's paying up for one running back and paying down for another and you pay

up for two running backs, maybe they're both 10, 12% owned, but getting them on a roster together gives you lower combined ownership. If they both hit, you now have something that other people don't have. And so that's generally where I look to differentiate, right, is just roster construction. but when you can find the 1%-owned guy who can go for 30 points, that's a huge boon, especially on a week when there aren't that many guys going for 30 points. So that's kind of the thing with Connor is I felt like you could come up with the case for him to put up 30 points, even without Chase Edmunds getting hurt again.

He got helped out tremendously by that. But I feel like you can make the case, and if he was under 1% owned, you can make the case that it would happen more often than once every 100 games. That was honest. I mean, Christian Kirk was probably a better play if we played out that slate 100 times. Christian Kirk at 1% ownership, right? He's going to hit for 25 to 30 points more than once every 100 games as well. And probably more often than Connor. But I just thought it was interesting because it was a guy I kept kind of looking at. Just because running back was so ugly that I wanted to do something different. So I said to you on Saturday that my running back, in addition to the thing about not knowing where to pay up,

my running backs were Austin Echler and Devante Booker and Miles Gaskin. Gaskin was obviously got way overblown in the industry. I spotted them early in the week and kind of my bubble building process and expected me to be one of the only people on him. And then once he got up to highest own back status, he just kind of wasn't in the mix for me anymore from there. But then it was like, man, just Echler and Booker, is that all I'm looking at? So what I ended up doing, speaking of low-owned guys who can go for big games,

is I ended up playing Christian McCaffrey on all three of my rosters. In fact, one of them I had Echler and McCaffrey. and Dalvin Cook, just trying to do different combined ownerships. Obviously, there have been the reports that come out saying that McCaffrey's going to be capped, or what Matt Rule had actually said was it's not going to be a 40 to 50 snap thing. But we've seen the Panthers in the past say that they're going to cap McCaffrey's workload, and then he comes out and gets a full workload. So getting him at whatever he was, I think he was sub 5% ownership at a lower price tag

than he normally has, I would go back and. do that a hundred times out of a hundred, just saying, and he ended up getting 18 touches, which is a pretty solid workload. Obviously, you would love for him to get one of his 24, 25 touch games. He also had a wide open touchdown that Sam Darnold threw it right in the Christian Barmore's hands at the line of scrimmage instead of getting it to McCaffrey 30 yards downfield. But yeah, so that was from a process standpoint. I was actually pretty happy with that. What threw me off the most was the Tua finger situation. because obviously we all knew that that was a risk,

but I never really, I never really accounted for the potential that he would actually not play. And one of the easiest, like it was a hard week, the Sons Street was a hard week. And one of the things that made it really easy to me was that the dolphins are built to pass. All that they have are past catching running backs. And they're playing the Texans.

You can pass against them. And DeBonte Parker is out. And Preston Williams is in the doghouse. And so the Waddle Plus Keseki pairing, which had averaged 44 points per game in two of the previous three games against soft competition. That was just such an easy starting point for me. I didn't have to worry about how many points each individual player put up. All I had to know was that combined, they had a good shot at 40 to 50 points, which would have been 4x to 4.5x their combined salary.

And so that was like every roster of mine, I just started there. Waddle and Gaseki, I put both them on and then move on from there. So once it was, percent undercenter it was like well even in a great game these guys are combined for like 32 33 34 points and that's not good enough so all of a sudden I had to scrap that pairing that had been like the foundation of my builds all week and kind of figure things out from scratch in that last hour before kickoff on Sunday morning so that was what threw me off the most I was with you on the the bills situation got fortunate there right because on a week where there was just not a lot of guys that I felt could go for 30 plus points.

Obviously, a couple of the places on Target are the high-priced quarterbacks who can go for 30-plus. And Josh Allen kind of seemed like a shoe in there. But since I was betting on Gaseki and Waddle, I ended up on Tyrod Taylor opposite them. And then the whole thing kind of fell apart when we got to Sunday morning. Let's talk about this, this Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes thing, right? Because all that the Jags really did was play two deep safeties and forced the bills to march the field, which is what teams have been doing to the chiefs the last several weeks. I think that the bills are better equipped than the chiefs to counter that because they can work in the short

areas a little bit more without losing their full offensive identity. But it's an interesting setup that we're going to have moving forward. Do you feel like these quarterbacks, these passing attacks are going to be overvalued by the field moving forward? Maybe not the chiefs because people are starting to get scared of playing them. But the bills, do you think that people are just going to expect a quick balance back from the bills and that won't necessarily happen to the level we've been accustomed to? Or do you think that this is kind of a one, one week blip that we're dealing with? Yeah, I really have no idea and I don't really have a great answer. I kind of don't want to buy into the belief that just this one coverage scheme can

immediately make the two best pass attacks and football, you know, bottom 10. If you're Kansas City, just use Tyreek more underneath. I mean, he's elite at that. Buffalo, you have Cole Beasley for a reason. And then maybe it compounds the lack of a run game for both teams, you know, lighter fronts. And you can't really run the ball because, you know, the offensive line plus, running back play isn't there. Yeah, I really don't know. I do think that's interesting. But let's go back to, I was going to say, let's just like walk position by position looking at

who hit, who didn't, what we could have seen coming. I mean, one guy I was on was Tyree Hill who, you know, I thought, I think I sent you a text. I'm like, yeah, if LAC Philly doesn't break the slate or Tyree Kill doesn't break the slate. Or Tyree Kill doesn't break the slate. I have no idea what to make of this week. And, yeah, James Connor broke the slate. Tyreeks certainly didn't. But he was top three by XFP in the week. So, you know, the volume you were hoping for was definitely there. And one of the most efficient fantasy players of all time. But here were the highest scoring wide receivers on the week. Devontas Smith, we covered that already. Keenan Allen. We covered that already Alamedi Zakias on three targets.

Hollywood Brown. We covered that already. Malik Turner, I think 70% of our listeners don't even know what team he plays for. Brandon Ayuk, which was a great play. We debated a little bit Ayuk versus Ron Dale. We both really liked Ayuk. You liked Kirk. I said Ron Dale made more sense to me coming off of a career high and route share.

DeAndre Hopkins out. And then Colt McCoy's favorite target, this pre-season. season was Ron Dale Moore, but he's certainly flopped, especially so comparatively to Brandon Ayyuk. The reasoning there was, hey, this guy was awesome. We know he was awesome. We saw what he did last year. Debo and Kittle were both hurt. And after weeks of just shitting all over him, Kyle Shanahan finally talked up, Iyuk said he had his best week of practices thus far. And it felt like he would want to reward him for that hard fought effort in practice time. Tim Patrick, which is hilarious, because on my phone call with you, I said, yeah, I'm going to have a lot of Albert O and I'm going to

have a lot of Judy. And in my write-up, I said, just so you know, Tim Patrick is smashing by Wes Huber's coverage algorithm. He's smashing by my cornerback, wide receiver versus his cornerback algorithm, and I'm not going to play him. No one ever wants to play Tim Patrick, and he has more boon games than you might think, and he might wreck all of my Judy Alberto Linoes, but I'm not going to play him. So just console me if he inevitably goes off, and he inevitably went off for 18.5 fantasy points. Hunter Renfro in a slot funnel matchup, 49 yards, but he scored a touchdown. and then Justin Jefferson

and then Kirk Waddle Diggs Higgins and a guy I landed on that I'll admit now was not great process and you tried to talk me off of it was Cadarius Tony and I mean everything just lined up for him to

to smash top three in yards per targets per route run over the past, I don't know, since week four, smashes without Sterling Shepard, gets those manufactured touches. And what happened, he played 55% of the snaps, had barely positive yardage, one total target, and yikes, just super yikes. Should have listened to you when you try to talk me off of them. So any other wide receivers, do you want to hit on here?

No, but I think it's interesting. interesting that Marquis Brown was the number three wide receiver from a fantasy points scored perspective when he scored like, what, 23 draft king's points. That just kind of shows you the state of this last week. I think that it's interesting because oftentimes we can see or we think that we can see these weeks in advance. We see the slate and it's like, man, the slate's ugly. I don't know who's going to score 30 points. And then you can kind of adjust you're thinking to say, okay, who can score 20, who can score 25. But there are also those weeks that kind of look like this last week.

And then, you know, we'll write it up and say, I don't know if you'll do this, but I'll write it up and basically talk about like, hey, this is the type of week where we're likely to see a lower first point score than normal weeks, which we certainly saw this last week. And then all of a sudden, it'll come out and be a week where eight to ten guys score 30 plus points and a decent chunk of them are relatively popular. And so, you know, the actual first place roster is still. put up 210, 220, whatever it might be. And so, yeah, it was, it's interesting to kind of have these weeks where we've had a

couple of them this year where it looked ugly and it looked like a week that was going to be lower scoring across the board and that didn't end up being the case. And then other weeks where it looked like that and it was the case like this last weekend was. And actually a couple of weeks early in the season where nobody was scoring over 200 points in these tournaments. I think that one of the things that we want to make sure that we keep in mind is the, well, A, what type of tournament you're in, right?

Like, you don't need to target Alamedes, Akeas, in a small field tournament. But if you're playing something like the Millie Maker, thinking about the guys who are cheap and can put up big scores, Donovan People's Jones, when he was 3,600 or whatever he was, a few weeks ago, and nobody was rostering him, right? He only saw, like, three targets in that game, but he scored two touchdowns, if I remember correctly.

So looking for the types of players in larger field tournaments, that you could say, hey, who's the one guy that I can mix onto my roster? Not a guy that I can break down the numbers and say why he's a great play, but sometimes we need to be willing to find the guy who's part of a game environment or whatever it might be who can end up putting up the big points. And also recognize, I mean, like, Scott, you ran through that list, right? Like, sometimes these weekends are unpredictable and embracing some level of that unpredictability in our builds is worth doing.

So if you're in smaller field tournaments, whether it's 5,000 or fewer, entries, 500 or fewer entries, like the smaller you get, the less you want to embrace plays like Tim Patrick, for example. But if you're in a contest with 10,000 entries or 20,000 entries or 50,000 entries, thinking about the guys like Tim Patrick can be worthwhile because those are the guys that people just aren't on and they're still sharp plays. You don't need eight of those guys on your roster, but putting one of those guys on a roster, especially on the lower ends of the price range where there's a lot more guesswork anyway, can be super valid. And I think that that's one of the things that we need to be thinking about is where are people taking plays that actually have more guesswork than they think and treating them as reliable plays?

So as we get into these middle of the season weeks where you've got a bunch of teams on buy, you've got good teams off of the main slate, you have players who are injured, all these different things. Well, I always say like chalk forms no matter what. And so on weeks like this last week, you get things like Miles Gaskin shock or even Hunter Renfro shock, which there was no reason to think that Hunter Renfro's role was going to materially change with Henry Ruggs out. If anything, it allows the defense to clamp down on the shorter passing a little bit more. Now, he ended up getting a touchdown, but like 49 yards, right? That's what you're basically expecting from him. He doesn't typically go over 20 points. It worked out this last week.

But finding plays that everybody's kind of embracing as. shock when they're more fragile chalk than normal. And then finding other guys who you can say, hey, this guy's got just as good of a shot at a big game or maybe their floor is lower like a Tim Patrick, but their ceiling is higher and people aren't going to be on them. I think that that's kind of an interesting angle that we can be playing around with at this point in the season is finding the guys who are not chalk that actually have a higher ceiling than the chalk in these lower price ranges because that's another place where tournaments

or one is finding this, you know, 3,500 guy, this 4K guy, whatever, who can go for 25 to 30 points when everybody else is is taking 13 points or 15 points or whatever it might be. Marquez Valdez-Cantling this next week is a guy like that, 3,500 going in Seattle, assuming that Aaron Rogers is back. The types of guys who can bust hard but can boom for big games when they hit and people just don't tend to be on those guys. So, yeah, I mean, that was one of the. the paths forward this last weekend. And I think I found another one of the paths with trying to go

Christian McCaffrey. Again, didn't work out in the box score, but from a process standpoint, that's a sharp way to play in a week like that is, hey, there's not a lot of guys that then can get to 30 points. Here's Christian McCaffrey and nobody's on him. And then, yeah, again, it didn't work out for me because I was on the wrong stacks from the beginning of the week. I was on that Tyrod Taylor and Brandon Cook's stack because I was on Waddle and Gaseki as my foundation got off of Waddle and Gaseki but still kept Tyrod and Brandon Cooks just because I had that hour to work with and didn't want to change too much on the rosters. But yeah, I wish I'd gotten a little bit more Vikings, Ravens. I have this thing where if I'm rostering, so West Huber had a great

breakdown this last week of the coverage tendencies of the Vikings and how that mesh is really well with Lamar Jackson from a passing standpoint. And so weeks like that where we're betting on a Lamar Jackson passing game, I'm likely to roster Marquis Brown, which is why I had them all three of my rosters, but not to roster Lamar Jackson, especially when he's going to be 20% owned like he was. Of course, he went out and rushed for whatever it was 120 yards. So that was a mistake on my part to not. Think a little bit more about, hey, look, if he's passing, what I kept thinking was,

Latavius Murray's out, they're going to be passing the ball. This is a great spot for Marquis Brown. I didn't think everything's on Lamar's shoulders. The chances of him taking off and running more are heightened as well. So that was one of the spots where I could have picked up some extra points and kind of push things over the edge. But yeah, ultimately this last week was kind of like a war of attrition. It's like hope that you miss as many landmines as possible and you're in great shape. So yeah. And sometimes knowing who to not play, is as important as knowing who to play, especially among the higher-priced guys, or the more popular guys, for that matter. Also, one last note before I throw back over to you, I didn't actually,

like, I wasn't against Cadarius, Tony. I just didn't, he was actually in my player grid as a bonus piece. I just didn't feel he was a lock. And I felt like this Raiders past defense doesn't get the credit it deserves. But I was as surprised as you were at Tony seeing, you know, basically scaled back snaps and one target. And that's just, I guess, a reminder that a lot of times we overrate our certainty in places, right? We're talking about a rookie on a bad team with a mediocre coaching staff. It's hard to see a guy like that going from being the focal point of the offense to basically not being involved at all. We talked about this a couple weeks ago, right? Like they were literally designing plays specifically to get the ball into his hands. It's hard to see a team

shifting from that and that working really well to all of a sudden they're like, eh, this guy's not part of the game plan. So, yeah, I mean, that was a weird one to me. He wasn't on my builds, but I certainly liked him enough for him to be in consideration for me. And yeah, it's just a reminder that part of what DFS is isn't predicting what's going to happen, but finding the places where the field is overconfident in their predictions of what's going to happen.

And playing off of that by embracing a little bit more uncertainty. unfortunately it didn't work out for me this last week. But I did feel like I was on a good track in so far as the things I was choosing not to embrace that the field was overconfident in is just that the places that I went weren't quite able to make up for that. And no surprise, it was a wonky week, right? Falcons beat the Saints and Jaguars beat the bills and, you know, dolphins and Texans only put up 26 combined points.

Broncos beat the Cowboys. Bengals only scored 16 against the Browns. So weird weeks in the NFL happen, and that's kind of one of the places where we can look to gain an edge is just embracing the fact that weird weeks are going to happen. Yeah, in week eight,

only one of eight teams that were favored by four or more points covered the spread. Favored teams post a losing record overall, week nine, one of seven teams favored by five and a half points, covered the spread. favorite teams again posted a losing record overall. Yeah, which is very, what are favorite teams against the spread this year?

Do you have that information? I don't. But I'd say they're up overall, maybe down comparatively to last year. But I mean, the past few weeks were super, all these backup quarterbacks in week eight, pulling out surprise victories, week nine. I mean, Dallas, Buffalo, crazy.

Just crazy. And you don't really have a good counter or anything to explain it, really, except for it's just the NFL and these things happen. It's just the NFL and these things happen. And I think that's kind of the point that people should be thinking about is on Friday, Saturday, it feels so good to feel like overconfident in what we're predicting is going to happen in a game. but Broncos beating the Cowboys in Dallas, 30 to 16, in a pretty dominating fashion,

would appear to be a very low probability outcome. The Browns destroying the Bengals after the Bengals lost to the Jets, right? Like these are back-to-back weeks of low probability outcomes after the Bengals smashed the Ravens. Either that or the Bengals smashed the Ravens was a low probability outcome. The Falcons beating the Saints who were coming off a win against the Bucks, that's a low probability outcome. the Jaguars beating the bills who are expected to be Super Bowl contenders. The Jags are in contention for the number one overall pick.

And they didn't win in like fluky turnover, return for a touchdown fashion. They won by like shutting down the bills. And that also goes back to something I think you and I talked about this last week. I definitely talked about it on OWS last week. But remembering that teams get better throughout the season, people latch on to their perception of a team from what the offseason narrative was and what weeks one and two looked like. So, for example, the Giants defense was above average last year.

They were a defense that you were always chastising people for attacking them with number one wideouts. They were a defense that basically performed not like tremendously well, but well above expectations and well above DFS player perception or even fantasy player perception. And then the Giants started out bad at the start of this year. But everybody has kind of just decided like, oh, well, the Giants are bad. But the Giants have played, again, not awesome defense, but solid defense the last several weeks. The Dolphins, another team.

They were a great defense last year. And everybody's kind of been like, oh, well, the dolphins are bad. Well, the dolphins got healthy. They're not great, right? But they held the bills to 26 points. And then Tyrod Taylor had obviously looked much better than Davis Mills. And they held the Texans to only nine points. And so recognizing as well that teams do.

develop throughout the season. They do get better and they get better at certain things throughout the season. Understanding that can help us as well in terms of not overrating our certainty in certain places. It's funny, we have a whole week to prepare, and yet most people still just latch onto the things that they were thinking from week one or two, and in their whole week of preparation, they never find an opportunity to readjust their view of different teams and different situations and so on and so forth. If you're kind of a fan of one team and you just watch that team, you get to see them develop and grow and get better at certain things throughout the season.

But if you're a fantasy player and you're paying attention to all the teams and watching the Red Zone channel and all that, you kind of miss some of that. And you don't realize that that happens with a lot of these teams. And in fact, some of these teams get better at a faster pace than other teams, which is kind of the difference throughout the season. So I think that's something that's important to think about as well. You have any thoughts on that? No, I think that's all smart, important.

Only thing I'll add is, yeah, we also forgot the Rans, just absolutely trucked by the Titans without Derek. Man, Matthew Stafford, two picks, one touchdown. I wonder if the RAND cover two there, too. I don't know. And Titans' defense, yeah, Titans' defense has been, I mean, they gave up 31 points to the Colts, but they held the Chiefs to three points,

and obviously they're not the only team that has figured out a way to slow down the Chiefs, but nobody would have guessed Titans holding the chiefs to three points and holding the Rams to what was at 16 points in two out of three weeks. And so, yeah, just paying attention to these things is important and sort of readjusting our view. I think that one of the best things for me in DFS was 2014, my first year playing seriously and playing MLB first. and I'd been a Red Sox fan for decades and had watched, you know, upwards of 100 Red Sox games a year, but no, no games of any other teams.

So I knew the AL East decently well. I knew a few other AL teams okay. But generally speaking, I didn't know other teams and I didn't have preconceived notions about other teams. And so I had to start from research and pay attention to the numbers as opposed to the narratives. And that helped me a lot because I would just naturally be on lower owned pieces than the field and would be fading popular pieces because I was just looking at the numbers and not thinking about the narratives that everybody else had in mind. It's hard to do that with NFL, especially most listeners have been playing fantasy

for a decade or more. And so they know all the players. They know what they think about all the players. But the less you overrate your NFL knowledge and the more willing you are to embrace the uncertainty. It's like going back to baseball, right? Like the Piccota preseason like projections for a player across 600 at bats or across 200 plus innings pitched or whatever. Those are going to be very accurate. But in the small sample size of one game out of 162 games, that's not going to tell you what's going to happen. Same thing in the NFL, if you play season long,

you need to know who's going to perform well over the course of the season. But in DFS, you need to know who's need to know who's going to perform well in that individual game. And a lot of times, that's less predictable than we pretend that it is, that we as DFS players want to pretend that it is. And so again, it's something that I've mentioned a lot on this podcast this year, but just that willingness to let go of your uncertainty a little bit, of your certainty a little bit, and embrace some of the plays that feel more uncertain and kind of think like, okay, if I were coming at this blindly and just looking at the numbers without the narratives, how would I be looking at these players? What what would I be seeing differently?

And that can kind of help as well. Like if you showed up in the NFL this year, you would be wondering why everybody talks about Kyler Murray as a rushing quarterback because he's running like five times a game and picking up what, like under 20 rushing yards a game. Right. So understanding those things are valuable because you can get a sense of what the narrative is versus what the reality is.

And I think that's something that for you and me, right, in a sense that's easier because we're deep into the numbers. But in another sense, that's harder because we've been deep into the numbers for so long that we feel like we know these players. We know these teams. We know what they're going to do and what's going to happen. Right. And we have to, by nature, write up the best plays. And, you know, you could make a compelling argument for a guy at 1% where it's like, listen, no one's going to play him. The upsides there. You know, very boom or bust. But, you know, if he booms, like, it could be a

week winning score. But like, it just feels so gross to write up this play. And like, that's how you win in DFS. Like you can't be afraid to play an embarrassing play. And it's, and it's, like James Connor this past week. Again, I still, I still think of Chase Edmonds didn't get hurt on the first play. He would have busted. But like, that's a great example. I'd be embarrassed to, to not only write up James Connor. I mean, that's, that's an overstatement. I'm being a little silly. But, to like even like post a week winning score with James Connor on it. But like that's wrong.

Like our buddy Cubs fan tells us the same thing. He's like, I think my biggest edge over you and J.M. It's only that I'm not afraid to make lineups that look foolish or where I'm just fully embracing the unpredictable nature of the NFL and I'm playing the percentages, the ownership percentages. whereas, you know, here are all the best plays. But, yeah, a James Connor type play can fully break the slate. Alamedi Zakias, you know, there are so many got Tim Patrick.

Oh, Mike, we just talked about all those plays. You brought up your Red Sox fandom. And I'm just curious, what was the first fantasy article you ever wrote? Was that baseball or was it football? So in 2013, a buddy and I, were doing our own site called Fantasy Football Forsight. And we would watch film on Monday and Tuesday and break down all the games. And we had like 80 people subscribed to the newsletter that was free.

And so that was technically my first DFS article. But yeah, no, then I was in the forums throughout on Rotogrenters that 2014, but didn't write any content for baseball that year. and then ran into cam at the live final in the Bahamas that year. And he and I were chatting. And then he was like, hey, you should write some baseball content for us next year. And I said, you know, I could write football content as well. So, yeah, football was the first content I wrote in this actual space.

And then before that, I had been doing it on my own, which is kind of a fun, a fun starting point. And I think a starting point that a lot of people have, like your starting point is similar, right? And that you were just kind of hustling and getting stuff going. and then eventually you start finding an opportunity for more eyes to see what you're doing. Yeah, but you were pretty big in the DFS baseball space for a while, right? Yeah, I was known as a player in the DFS baseball space before I started writing. Because I had, what did I pick up, three or four live final appearances that first year in MLB. And so that kind of helped me get known in the DFS space.

And then I was, again, involved in the forums at Rotobri. just like asking questions and trying to learn more about DFS and bouncing ideas off of sharp players and hounding people in their in their PMs on roto grinders and, you know, just trying to learn the game as much as I could, which is something I would encourage anyone to do. But, but yeah, and then, so by the time I was writing NFL, I was already kind of known in the MLB space. And then in 2015, I would write up two or three MLB edge articles per week as well. Yeah. So I started as a baseball writer, baseball was my first love. My first ever fantasy article was like on a wordpress just for me and like my one friend, which was, uh, R.A. Dickey was going to win the Sai Young and then he won the Sai

young. Like it was a half joking article. And it just like I, you know, started off in the right footing and I just kept going from there. Then I, I wrote a Masahiro Tanaka article for number fire, kept doing baseball. And eventually I pivoted to football. One, that's where the demand was. It's where the money was, but secondly, it's just like the stats guys in baseball are so, so good. And in football is pretty weak, especially at that time. So it was an easy transition. And it made me look a lot better in comparison. But yeah, it's helped me a lot in my football analysis and just that, you know, very good with data when for a long time, you know, the data was really weak in football. My other question is, is do you have a online poker background?

Because a lot of the best DFS players came from that poker world. And if it's not that, is there another, you know, some sort of competitive gaming world you come from? I played poker. I played online a bit, but I played more heavily in, so I was in Oklahoma for like 15 years. and before the casinos started having poker in the casinos, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas, this kind of tri-state area was the biggest area of the country for like high stakes underground poker games. And so I played in a lot of those for several years. But yeah, anything that in my mind, anything that, you know, I use the example of beep I'm a jeep, who's at basically all the live finals and rarely plays DFS these years. outside of playing qualifiers. He didn't even know what a cornerback was after his like

eighth live final, right? Something like that. Exactly. And he can't pronounce any of the players names. He doesn't know anything about the sports, but he's a national board game champion. And that's kind of, that's an important thing to keep in mind, right? Is like, or I'll say it like this, Osamo knows less about the NFL than probably you, the individual listener who's hearing me say this. And I think that's an important thing. to keep in mind is that there is a different skill set for winning in DFS than there is for winning in season long fantasy. And that's why there's a blend of the two, which is why we kind of talk about everything, but that's why there's so many great DFS players who came from an online

poker background or a poker background is because of the strategy and game theory elements inherent in DFS. And I used this example a couple of weeks ago in inner circle. But my first article for, you'll think this is funny, Scott, my first article for rotor grinders was week one in 2014. And it was, the whole article was about how little we know. And it was all about like people overrate their knowledge. And it's week one, right? Like here's all the things we don't know what people are going to act like they know. And they talked to me before it was published.

And they were like, hey, we need to change some stuff on this because we're fighting this battle saying that DFS is a skill game. And if we publish this whole article that's saying, hey, here's all stuff we don't know, then it kind of hurts our argument. What's funny is that that is the argument. The argument is that there are all these things we don't know. And the people who do well in DFS do a better job understanding that, playing off of that and embracing that than the people who think that DFS is about what you do know. And so I think there's an interesting blend that taking the things that we do know,

like the Deontay Johnson thing, right? Like last year where it was like, hey, this guy's materially underpriced. We know that with a high degree of certainty. Even Cadarius Tony, the week when he hit for 32 points at 4K or the Michael Carter week at 4,900, like there are things like that that we know with a higher degree of certainty than the field is going to give it credit for. But also when we can find the places where the field is overrating their knowledge,

that's a big part of the skill game of DFS, is finding that, identifying that, playing off of that correctly, which is why, like, I'm a good DFS player, but Cubs fan is a better DFS player, because Cubs fan knows less about the NFL than me and is therefore more willing to kind of embrace some of these other elements. But, yeah, it was, it was interesting in that, that was seven years ago, right? So, like, DFS has evolved and what we can talk about since then, but seven years ago, it was like, oh, well, we can't literally can't publish this article saying, here's all the stuff we don't

know because that hurts our argument. This is a skill game. when in reality that is specifically what the skill game revolves around is not knowing the NFL better. It's knowing where other people have blind spots and think they know the NFL better than they do and playing off of that. So yeah, I don't know, a little DFS lesson as far as what the game of DFS really is. Because once you understand what the game of DFS really is, not only will you be more profitable, but it's also a lot more fun because there's less pressure to like predict everything correctly. and more it's like, hey, where are the places where people are predicting things correctly and where are the places where they're probably incorrect or where they're overrating their

certainty? And how do I play off of that? But yeah, I mean, and that's why, you know, obviously at OWS, you focus so heavily on, like, the training side of DFS. But to me, that's where the fun is is in finding that, like the areas where you're out maneuvering the field instead of just trying to out predict the field. Yeah, and poker specifically is all about, you know, reading your opponent trying to identify where you have an edge and placing bets on that, calculating odds quickly in your head.

I don't have an online poker background at all. I never played. I was just like naturally good at it in terms of, you know, beating my friends and home games. But I never read any books or anything on it. I wish I did. Just the overlap between, you know, John Proctor is a former online poker guy. and he picked up DFS so quickly. And so many of the best DFS players have that background. I don't. The best example I can come up with is I'm not a big gamer, like playing video games and things like that. I was always love board games, would play with my mom constantly and it was really good. When I have a video game, like I'll just play it for three years and then I'll move on to something else.

So I'm a beast at Call of Duty. I'm filthy. But typically, like, one of the best, every single, you know, game I play first in Kill to Death or whatever. But, like, I'm still playing one from four years ago. I just never moved past it. But the best game I was ever at, this is sort of embarrassing, but I feel safe sharing it with you, J.M., just because I feel like you're a very warm soul and very...

Nobody's listening. It's just you and me. Non-judgmental. Yeah, it's just you and me. Is Pokemon. When I was like 16 or 18, I played online. You could build whatever legal teams you could very easily and then just play competitively. And so for an entire summer, I would just put on TV and I'd pull out my laptop and I'd

play three games at once. Like you would play three online poker games at once. And I was nasty at it. I was the number one ranked player in my tier for a little while. And I just quit. I got where I wanted to be. And so that whole game, the competitive component to it is it's all about prediction. You kind of know what everything is running out.

Like the chalk last week was Lamar Jackson at 20% ownership, right? You could kind of say the same thing with the post. Pokemon teams you would see in your competitive tier, which is, you know, blissy at 70. This is so embarrassing. 70% star me at 60%. And so the edge I gave myself, like the best players were the ones who were like great at predicting, but like so much overlap between the most common Pokemon people would run out. And so the edge I gave myself, how I differentiated and how I came to dominate the field,

It was like me versus 100,000 people and first place by the end of the summer was I would leverage their prediction. So Starme was one of the most popular Pokemon. And mine, I taught to learn HP fire, like a fire move that it doesn't typically learn. And no one else had that. And it was just because the third most common was Sizer. and then easily counters Starme, but then you teach it that move. It loses another really good move,

but it easily knocks out that one, which is super popular. I would teach something that's typically physical, powered, special moves, and I would run out a bunch of Pokemon that, like, no one had ever seen before, but that were, like, decent. Like, they're nowhere near as good as the most common ones.

But because no one's familiar with them, it gives you a big egg. It's like, wait, what the hell is this thing and what is it going to do to me? And then you set something up and then you dominate. And so that's what I did. And it was super embarrassing. And to tell that, to share that story. But it's making me think now of, you know, what you were just talking about,

embracing unpredictability. I still struggle to find to, you know, to do that to the same degree. I had success in that video game when I was 16 or 18. And, yeah, maybe it's just, you know, I write up the best plays, but, you know, to go contrarian, you really have to pivot off the best plays and really have to look for weak spots. Like, how would this fail? And then if it fails, how do I take advantage of it? I mean, this past week, I don't think is a great example just because, you know,

no one really broke the slate and the guys who did break the slate, it was super fluky, in my opinion. And some good calls, some guys like Tyreek and Brandon Cook's top three in XFP just didn't hit in decent matchups. But yeah, most weeks, you know, this is another good week to go contrarian as it's been all year. And what's really shaped up to be what feels like one of the most unpredictable DFS seasons in recent memory. Yeah. And two things that I really liked that you were saying there was one, the idea of doing things that are just different from what everybody else is doing. So I think about, I think about, like what you were talking about there with the Pokemon,

you were essentially building in such a way that you were able to beat the other people, like the popular pieces, right? And I think about like the bills have built their team to beat the chiefs, the Patriots and Colts, to build their teams to beat one another. And so they're not necessarily kind of- The Titans feel like a team from 10 years ago that just, you know, ground and pound. The weather gets cold. They're at an advantage.

Yeah. And then like you've got to, you now have to be prepared to play them and do something different based on what they're doing. Right. Like your team is built to stop the past heavy juggernauts. And so that gives the Titans an advantage because they're not that. They're the opposite of them. Right.

And so now other teams that are built, like everybody's trying to build to beat the chiefs. And then you're the Titans and you have like a totally different approach. And other teams have to adjust to be able to beat you. And I think that that's, you know, we see that play out with NFL teams. And then you also talked about the basically like the direct leverage to where it's not just in DFS, not just finding the places where the field is overrating their certainty, but optimally being able to what I call like pull a lever, right? Like if this lever goes down, it pushes this lever up.

If Tim Patrick has a big game and Albert Okwebunan and Jerry Judy are both popular, well, Tim Patrick is directly hurting both of those guys, right? So you not only get the Tim Patrick points, but you hurt the rosters of these popular players. And so, yeah, I think that finding those kind of next level aspects of DFS, that's what most people are missing. And they feel like it's easy to look at your roster in retrospect and be like, oh, if I just got these extra two or three spots right, I could have had a first place finish without acknowledging,

recognizing, or even understanding how much more difficult it is to get seven spots on a roster right compared to eight spots on a roster right, compared to nine spots on a roster right. like it gets exponentially more difficult to get that next additional spot right, which is also why we talk about things like finding a game where you can get four pieces right at once with one single correct bet, like two weeks ago, it didn't work out for me, but when I had McLaurin plus Bridgewater plus Sutton, and I think that was the extent of the stack, maybe I had Judy on it as well.

But basically, like, if McLaurin had a big game against the Bronco secondary, the Broncos had shown a willingness to pass, and they had a soft matchup against Washington. And so basically one thing goes right. McLaurin breaks through that Denver secondary, and you end up getting three or four roster spots right. Finding things like that, well, now you get three or four spots right at once,

and you only have to get four additional spots or five additional spots on your roster correct. And so that makes a big difference as well. So, yeah, finding those places where you can limit the number of things you need to get right and finding those places where you can actually gain direct leverage off of people being wrong. to where you take basically what you would think is the lesser play on an offense. But if it hits,

it directly hurts this popular play that everybody else is on. The best places obviously are when the lesser play isn't that much lesser. And you kind of recognize, like, well, this guy's going to hit 10% of the time. This guy's going to hit 20% of the time. But everybody's on this 20% guy. Nobody's on this 10% guy. That's obviously the best opportunity to do that.

But yeah, just finding, and you don't need your entire roster to be crazy. You just need like one or two, things like that that are different. And then you can just play chalk or play what you like the most the rest of the way. But yeah, it's those little things. And that's what makes such a big difference. And that's, I mean, that's why I like this podcast is because we get to talk about the football stuff and the individual players and teams and all that, but then also kind of tie it into how we can see things from a bigger picture and a strategy perspective to improve our play moving forward. So, yeah, to me, that's kind of the most fun aspect because then you can look at things after

the fact through the lens of did I play the strategy right, not did everything work out in my favor in the small sample size of one week? Because if you're playing the strategy right, over time, it's going to pay off in your favor. And I think of this last week, you know, for a strategy perspective, we were both on point. It's just like you said, it's just a weird week. And there are weird weeks. And sometimes you get really fortunate in those weird weeks end up working in your favor. You have a huge weekend. And sometimes they don't work in your favor. But, you know, You also have to recognize, well, it's a weird week. Turn the page and move on to the next one.

Yeah, and I'd just like to remind everyone, this is typically just like a DFS GPP podcast. It was also a super weird and brutal week for cash. One of our subs, DM me, hey, was this just bad results or bad process? And he sent me his cash lineup. And it was Tyrod, Echler, Devante Booker, Cooks, Hollywood Brown, Cooper. Albert O, Tyreek Hill, 49ers defense. You know, 49ers versus Chiefs defense was a huge swing. That was, you know, felt fairly coin-flipish.

Tyree Kill, Brandon Cook's top three in XFP just didn't hit. Hollywood did hit. Cooper, yeah, I don't know. Super good value, but, you could say it wasn't quite healthy. Albert O got hurt. I think he still played like 75% of the snaps and just didn't really. really do anything, but I really thought he was the best on one of the best on paper plays of the slate. Eckler still don't know why he flopped. Booker did solid. Maybe Tyrod plus cooks without

Tua stacking that in cash wasn't great. But otherwise, like, I thought that was a great cash lineup and scored 91 points. And so, yeah, I mean, that's almost a perfect cash lineup for this last weekend. And then, you know, that's where you kind of, you play that as you say, here's the perfect cash lineup. and then what are the fragile point to this, right? Like everybody, everybody's talking about Amari, but he has a bunch of games this year with six or fewer targets. So then you can say, okay, well, maybe he fails in tournaments. Tyreek, right?

Like maybe he's not worth the price tag in tournaments. But yeah, I mean, you play those guys in cash and you just say, what's the sharpest build? And then you try to find how to move on. And that's honestly, that's a good way to think about DFS tournaments, too, is say, let me identify just the sharpest cash game build because all those guys are going to be popular in tournaments. and then figure out what are the fragile points of this roster

and how can I do things differently in tournaments? But yeah, if you have that, if you have a roster anywhere close to that and it fails in cash games, chalk it up is just a randomly weird week and move on because the NFL's like that. You know, and we'll keep harping on that because it keeps happening, the unpredictability of these games to where, I remember when I used to do season long, and I'd be in a big game in like week 10 or 11

and like be looking at my players versus the person I'm playing and be like, man, there's literally no way I can lose this game. And then you end up losing by like 30 or 40 points, right? Like that's kind of like that's going to happen. And so in DFS, remember that on Friday or Saturday. When you're looking at things, you're like, well, this is a pretty bulletproof roster. There's no way it can fail. Well, then think about what everybody else is thinking and are you just on chalk across the board. And then if so, what are the fragile points that? How could it fail? And how can you do things differently. But yeah, taking advantage of the fact that it's a weird season, it's a weird week to week. Well, that's a good thing for us for playing tournaments because we can kind of play off

of places where the field is overreating their uncertainty. Yeah, and hopefully get back on track this week in week. I know you had a profitable week this last week, not a huge week. I had, again, close to profitable, but all three teams finished just outside the money. So we'll get back to this next week and hopefully have a big week. Do you have any final thoughts before we get out of here? No, I'll just add. Yeah. that's a good way to lower your week to week or raise your week to week floor is, you know, go cash, go chalk and cash, and then try and play off of it for tournaments. And then you get exposure to everyone, you know, the best plays and then the more off-the-wall

plays that have high ceilings. Yeah, man, really weird, weird season. I don't know if you have any additional thoughts there. You want to talk briefly about week nine or you want to just wrap it up. but yeah i'm gonna i'll go ahead and wrap it up we're at an hour almost an hour 10 but yeah i'm excited about about week 10 i'm sure you and i'll have a call on saturday but um it's a i was kind of working through the slate this morning and last night and it's an interesting slate and some things that i feel we'll be able to target with a decently

high degree of certainty and some things as usual that the field will overrate their certainty on a week and kind of play off of so it should be a fun week but we will see you back here. Thank you so much for listening. As always, we'll see you back here. Next week, we will see you on FantasyPoint.com this week. We will see you on one-weeksseason.com this week, and we will see you at the top of the leaderboards on this side. 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 FantasyPoints.com.