Fantasy Football Daily - 2022 Best Ball Strategy with Underdog Fantasy Champion Liam Murphy

Episode Date: June 27, 2022

Scott Barrett (@ScottBarrettDFB) and Nick Skrip (@P2WFantasy) welcome in Underdog Fantasy Best Ball Mania II Champion Liam Murphy (@chessliam) to talk best ball strategy. Taken from June livestream. --- 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 to the Fantasy Points podcast brought to you by Fantasy Points.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. Welcome to the Fantasy Points live stream. My name is Nick Scrip. As always, I am here with Scott Barrett. We have a great show for you guys here today. Scott, how are things going, man?

I'm doing good. I'm excited for this show. Absolutely, absolutely. We have a returning guest to the show. We have Liam Murphy. Liam, you're on the show with Joe Dolan, not super, super long ago. You guys, it was more like an interview podcast, it seemed like, and you guys went over some, obviously, best ball topics as well. I thought it would be great to have the best ball mania two winner back on the show

and maybe dive a little bit more into some best ball strategies, especially with more and more people joining these big time tournaments. So Liam, thanks for coming to the show. How are things going? Thanks for having me. Things are going great. It was just recovering from COVID last time I was on the show. So a little bit more with my thoughts here, no more COVID brain and excited for a good show.

Yeah, so the recap from last time Liam came on, they discussed his big, big time win in Best Ballmania 2 from last year. I believe you were on a bachelor trip at the time, just like sweating it out. with your boys and just took home the money there, man. That's a great story in itself. Yeah, that's the dream, man. I was on my cousin's bachelor party and watched the games with them. And it's amazing, man, with my friends from home, couldn't have written it any other way. That's awesome.

That's way better than my cousin's bachelor party. He picked Baltimore. Who picks Baltimore as their bachelor party vacate, you know, just. Interesting. Yeah. We were in Milwaukee for my brother's like a couple, Memorial Day weekend. And that was, that was all right. This is all right.

You had to, you know, stare at the Buck Stadium who eliminated my bulls this season. So that was fun. But if you guys are tuning in, we're talking about best ball today, specifically with underdog. And Fantasy Points has a partnership with Underdog. So if you sign up today, if you are not familiar with the site for best ball, they have tons and tons of options on there for multiple sports. But we're talking best ball fantasy drafts. And if you use our promo code, Fantasy Points, it's Fantasy PTS.

You get an instant deposit matchup up to $100. But also, for this month, every sign up to Underdog using our code will donate $10 to Best Friends Animal Society. It's the largest no-kill shelter in the USA. If you go to the Fantasy Points Twitter page, you'll see a bunch of pictures of dogs of dogs from the staff with some more promo codes there. But that's an awesome incentive, not just to get your deposit matchup, but also. to get that $10 donated per sign up. Let's get in the show here today, guys. So again, talking more about the best ball strategy side of things.

Liam, my first question to you is, you know, for me personally, I don't have a ton and ton of best ball history for myself. I think I started playing last year. And I did a mix of, you know, small contests, a few big contests, just a, you know, random set of contests with my buddies. You on the last show talked about how you wanted the payouts to be worth your time investment in these competitions. So for you, do you primarily focus in on the major tournaments, best ball media, mania three and the puppy, or do you have a mix of just hopping in with buddies and creating your own?

Or how does that look for you? I'm pretty strictly large field tournaments. I play high buy-in ones too, like the big dog on underdog. but yeah usually the tournaments just because I'm an optimistic guy you know we're trying to put in a little bit bit of money and run it up I would do I would do a fun best ball league with my boys you know I'm the commissioner of my fantasy league my me and my college buddies I've been running that for years so I told them I'm going to put a little bit money on top this year for the buy-in but yeah not a lot of cash games for me I know there's some serious cash game grinders out there that are just like grinding so much volume. But that's a lot of time. I'm trying to bink the big contest person.

Yeah, if I could just jump in for a second, I'm really excited for this show because I went back and I listened to like eight different podcasts Liam has been on. And so you never know when someone finishes first out of like 400,000 teams. You don't know if they just got insanely lucky or they're extremely sharp. and Liam is clearly extremely sharp. He has a deep background in competitive games. He's an accomplished chess player and just his overall thoughts on strategy and analysis. It struck me as really sharp.

And so his thoughts on some things really went into my recent article, but you can check out it's free Scott Barrett's underdog fantasy draft guide and primer. It's insanely thorough. It's the most thorough piece you're going to find in the industry. It's like 16,000 words. It has all the advanced rates on different strategies. And then, of course, always there's going to be a TLDR all the way at the bottom for just my specific strategy for tournaments. But yeah, like Liam was saying, there's a dramatic difference between just a typical 12 team bestball league and these tournaments.

So last year, I did this article for just the typical 12 teams, which you can think of as like a DFS cash game. And the best player when it comes to 12 team typical bestball leagues is, Aaron H, you know, a big fan of us. I talk with him every single year, but like no one's ever come close to his, he just never loses and he wins an insane amount. His hit rate every year is, you know, like expected is one out of 12, and his win rate is like one out of every 2.5 leagues he enters, which is just insane.

And so that's a lot easier. And again, you should consider it like a DFS cash game. I mean, it's not as fun, right? the DFS tournaments are far more fun. And as I was writing this really in-depth article, I had a lot more fun writing for the tournament. I think there is unique strategies that go into play there. And so, you know, Liam, like I said, won last year.

I don't think it's a fluke. I think he's an extremely sharp player. So just really excited to dive into this and hear his thoughts. And again, the tournament is probably going to be our focus for this show. Yeah, thanks for saying that. It's hard to say, you know, even in my shoes. Like, I do think I'm sharp. I really grind.

I put a lot of time into best ball. Last year was my second year playing. I got my start in just kind of like randomly founded on DK before that. But definitely give Scott's article a read, put a lot of good thoughts into there unless you're trying to win. You know, don't read that. You know, just kind of fire from your hip so that I can keep scooping that value. But, you know, like, even though I think I'm sharp, like, you got to run peer to bink a large contest like that. So, but yeah, excited to share my secrets with as many people as we can.

And Scott, I think that article's pinned to your profile, correct? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, you can find it there. And you start from the basic of like, what is best ball? And you go all the way down to the percentage of teams that finished or, you know, qualified for playoffs with. you know, X amount of QBs and the in-depth of it. So if you guys are not checked that out again, go to, go to Scott's profile, go to Fantasy Points.com and go check that out.

So Liam, obviously, went in the big bucks last year. Do you foresee yourself doing a ton of more tournaments this season? Is that kind of how it works? We had a bead on the show recently who won the FFPC, I think twice back, I think 19 and 20 back to back. And he kind of talked about how he changed with the amount of, of participation he was entering in that specific contest. Is that kind of the same route you're taking this year?

Are you around the same as last year? What's that looking like for you? I got a lot of action down already, and we're going to put more action down. I mean, definitely going to max BBM 3, going to put a lot of big dog entries in when they come out. We'll see what the other puppies look like. I launched my own YouTube channel where I think, like, if, the next puppy comes out, I might just multitable it and like, you know, do, uh, 10 at once or something fun like that. But I play on all the sites. I'm definitely going to max all the large field

millie makers. I kind of do this barbrel approach where you do a lot early, you do a lot late, you know, you're doing it early to try to get different player contextures. And then you do it late to try to get, um, some softer action with the more casual crowd. And I think, you know, it makes a lot of sense to do both. I'm going to Vegas tomorrow where you're not allowed to do a lot of sites draft. So I went a little bit more early this year and I'm fine with that approach. Scott, same question for you.

How heavy are you getting into these tournaments? And I know some people, you know, will post their screenshots of their teams on Twitter and say like, hey, look at this. And it might be one of like three teams they actually do. But what's your, what's your investment looking like? Maybe not financially.

but the amount of teams you think you'll be submitting this year. Well, I've done one and a half teams so far. I've just been bogged down with other stuff, and I knew that article was on the way. So, like, I would have a greater depth of knowledge. And I'm doing my player values, specific targets for underdog tournaments now. So after that, I'm going to go heavy. And like, yeah, honestly, like a DFS GPP, I think the best way to do it is to max it.

I don't know if I'm going to max it, but that would be ideal. By the way, he says half an entry, because we did one together on my channel. I'm going to give him 80% credit for that team, though. You just don't want to take credit for the four guys we have who are likely retired or not playing this year. I think this is low-key part of Scott's strategy a little bit, though, because I think there's a live stream tomorrow that actually has an underdog draft, and he messaged me, I think, last week, and he's like,

hey, let's do a live draft. We'll just split it three ways if we hit it big. and I think that might just be an indirect part of Scott's strategy here. But let's talk some in-depth outlooks on how rosters are constructed, because you do a draft specifically on underdog, and you look at the teams and you see a large difference sometimes between the guys that went heavy on quarterbacks or tight ends or the difference between the running back and the wide receiver position.

And Liam, your team last year that won the big bucks, correct me if I'm wrong, but two quarterbacks, two tight ends, five running backs, and nine wide receivers. How true do you stay to maybe your kind of go-to roster construction, or do you kind of pivot just based off how the draft's falling to you? Definitely lean way more to how the draft is falling to me. And like you've got to let your previous draft selections determine what you're going to do in the rest of the draft.

I think it makes sense to have some sound roster construction principles. Like we don't want to build a five quarterback, five running back, five wide receiver, three tight end team or something like that. But I'll do some weird roster constructions too where, you know, like I had a four quarterback team in the puppy, which finished, I don't know, fifth or six or something like that. And it really determines like, you know, if I have Josh Allen on my team, I'm always going two quarters. quarterback, you know, because I'm in draft like you're right. I made the bet that Josh Allen's going to be an elite quarterback. So no need to invest overly at the capital. And then tight ends, you know, like I think it makes sense to do a lot of different

things even with elite guys. It's a high variance position where even if you take a Travis Kelsey, if he doesn't score touchdown in week 17, where all the money is won, having two other shots on goal doesn't hurt there. But, yeah, I mean, like, I think a 259 to. or a 268, 2, or a 3, 6, whatever, 7, 3, something like around those ranges, 2 to 3 quarterbacks, 4 to 7 running backs depending on when you drafted them, 6 to 10 wide receivers, depending again when you drafted them, and then 2 to 4 tight ends, almost always going to be 2 to 3,

though probably makes a lot of sense for like some parameters there. And that team that won last year, you had Josh Allen and I believe Justin Fields, who wasn't the full-time starter. So I think you said on the last podcast, too, you kind of got away with only really having one quarterback because we didn't have a full season out of Justin Fields. And you'll even see sometimes some guys go and grab that Josh Allen or Patrick Mahomes and, you know, end up rostering three or four quarterbacks. And, you know, Scott, I know you did the breakdown of positions.

And any other thoughts specifically on the quarterback position? Because I've seen that question posed on Twitter pretty often. Like, you know, how heavy should I go on the quarterback position? Is it dependent on who I'm taking? Should I weigh? What's your just general thoughts on quarterback positions for best ball? Yeah, I'm calling it right now. A fantasy point subscriber is going to win this tournament this year.

I feel it on my bones. But yeah, in the article, I broke it down. You really want at least one quarterback capable. of 25 plus fantasy points or ideally 30 plus fantasy points. And then QB2, I'm not really going to sweat. It's going to be whoever fits my team stack or week 17 game stack. I'm probably not ever drafting a QB3 unless, you know, I really punted the position. I have like Zach Wilson and, I don't know, someone, Daniel Jones and then like Deshaun

Watson or like a home run swing. But yeah, I'm really not trying to go QB3. I'm going to have a shit ton of Kyler Murray, really love him as I think the last really cheap guy with like massive 35 fantasy point upside, easy stacks there. One thing I wanted to touch on is I think this is an underrepresented strategy. And that's the one QB builds and two QB one QB builds and one tight end builds. Because if you look at the advance rate by finals advance rate, one tight end teams advanced more often than. than two tight end teams. Like obviously they made the quarterfinals at like one of the lowest rates,

but just by finals advance rate, it was really high. And that's in spite of the fact that the majority of these teams drafted Travis Kelsey, who scored zero one of the weeks of the tournament. And then with quarterback, one QB was obviously a lot less effective by finals advance rate. But it was like more likely to hit if you'd like advance the quarterfinals. It's like, that's really all you need. You just need that one QB. going ham. And so 2QB was proven to be the optimal strategy. But, you know, a lot of those

teams had a Justin Fields, Zach Wilson and Trevor Lawrence, who were basically never contributing to your team. So I really like the idea of like a Patrick Mahomes plus Travis Kelsey team and then not drafting another quarterback or tight end, opening up what, four extra roster spots. That's a massive, massive edge. Obviously, your chances of making it to the quarter finals are lower. That's a huge edge in those tournament rounds. If Kelsey and the Holmes finish as the QB1 and the tight end one during those tournament weeks, that is insane upside. And so those strategies were never utilized. It was like a fraction of a percentage point in terms of overall teams employing that. I might go like 5 to 10% on that. I really like that. I think that's this is how you need to

be attacking. You know, upside wins championships really swing for the fences, maximize upside. So I think that's interesting and something I'm going to employ. Yeah. And I think what Scott's touching on there is that we should be trying to do things that the field is not. So if one quarterback teams are represented by 1% of the field, you don't need to get crazy with it. You have 5, 10%. You're 10x the field. You're 5x the field, right?

Thinking of it logically too, I would say I'm more likely to do in one elite quarterback and eat the zero for the buy week and just say, hey, I'm counting on this quarterback to give me the points for all of the bye weeks. Tight end is interesting where you really just need those touchdowns. So I had no affant at 3% ownership for the finals. And yes, a one tight end team with Kelsey or Andrews, it can definitely work and makes a lot of sense to me too. But at the same time, when you think about how ownership condenses in those final weeks, if a one tight-end team with Kelsey makes it to the finals, he might be 40-50% owned just like Mark Andrews was last year.

So you're not getting points on the field, whereas I had a 3% own Noah Fant, and he scored a touchdown. He was the best tight-end week 17. It allowed me to really separate from the rest of the crew. So even if you're taking an elite tight-end, try to take someone that like no one else is taking as your second one, maybe. So like wait until the 18th round.

And you're still kind of going one tight end where you're counting Andrews or Kelsey or Kittle is your guy. And then you're taking someone that is probably not being drafted on most teams as the plan. And maybe that's the guy that scores some touchdowns week 17 and allows you to make up points on the field. We almost employed that in our draft, the one we co-drafted with Kyle Pitts. And I think that's like the great way to go about it where the range of outcomes on Kyle Pitts, It's a pretty disparate where like, okay, this is a generational talent. He's probably overvalued by ADPs, the tight end three, finished tight end 13 last year. But if he is just this generational prospect, he has this immense potential to just single-handedly take over the NFL at some point.

We know it's a matter of when and not if. And so you can really lean into that by only drafting Kyle Pitts. we ended up taking like David and Joku in almost the final round, which is almost the same thing. But for players like that who have such a wide range of outcomes, I really like, but like immense upside, I really like just working off of the assumption that this is correct because like you're going to need that to hit in order to be successful. You know, Kyle Pitts is just, you know, needs ADP. You're probably not going to win at all, even if you draft another tight end.

But if we're going to stay on tight end and then we can work back to running back. wide receiver. My strategy is really try my best to land the top tight end of the position and then not really sweat my tight end too. But I'm also going to experiment with trying to draft two alpha tight ends. That could be, you know, Kelsey plus Andrews, Kelsey plus Pitts, something along those lines because the success rate to get a top 0.01% team or 0.5% team, is the hit rate on that is like really, really great. And it's, again, another unique underutilized strategy. So I'll experiment with that.

And then I'll also experiment with full on punting the position with just two high upside tight ends late, really not ever drafting a tight end three because I, I just really like going all in on one strategy and hoping that that strategy hits. And like you look at the hit rates, really you needed Mark Andrews, really you needed Travis Kelsey over the past three years, let's say. Or the only thing coming close to that is like last year drafting Gromp plus Dalton Schultz or Dalton Schultz plus Dawson Knox, something like that. So just really leaning into that punt and hoping your two guys hits big.

But Liam, what's your tight end strategy? I do a lot of different things at tight end because, again, it's a naturally high variance position where if your titan doesn't score touchdown in half point PPR, they're not that useful. They score less points usually. So, you know, thinking about that, like I had some four tight-end teams last year. It worked out last year because those four tight-end teams had, like, gronk on them and Dawson Knox, who were smashes and not really going drafted.

Do those tight-ends exist this year in this landscape? Maybe, maybe not. But tight-end is a position where I try to get a lot of teams with the elite guys. So I want Kelsey, I want Andrews, I want Walt. You know, I'm not trying to fade any of the elite tight ends. I'm usually a little bit more over the field on them. But I want exposure to a lot of different guys too and a lot of different roster constructions with the tight end position as well.

With the tight end position specifically, Scott, you just mentioned to sometimes grabbing two of the elites. I've seen that brought up a bunch of times where it's almost, like blocking the room sort of thing is for you guys is that is that is that a smart strategy in the sense of like I'm blocking the rest of the room from getting one of these three or four maybe elites or is it more so um just how they're going to score on a weekly basis because I I've personally been in drafts too where you know I see I don't know waller and kiddle go back to back or something like that and you're like why is this guy taking two two tight ends is that a is that a smart

strategy for that specific position or what's your guys' thoughts there? I don't think the reasoning of blocking the room is a smart strategy because one, you know, one of the biggest mistakes in best ball I think people are making is they're trying to advance their team, which is basically saying, I'm trying to mincast my team. You know, you're going to advance by mathematical two out of 12 teams. So just advancing your team does not make you any money, right? you go from a $25 buy-in to maybe like $40, $35, or whatever. We're trying to win the tournament.

And so the reason why bully tight-end or drafting two of these high tight ends makes sense to me is you're having more shots on goal of having a tight-end that has 25, 30-point upside, week 17. And if a tight-end does have 25 points, 30 points, 40 points, week 17, aka the championship week, and you don't have that tight end, you are not winning the contest, period. because they're just separating so much from the rest of the field. Yeah, so that's exactly right.

I'm not going to worry about my 11 other league mates. I'm going to worry about the finals, things of that nature. I haven't heard anyone talk about this. I like the name for it, Liam, Bully, tight-end strategy. The best article I could find was from 2016, which is the dawn of basketball analysis. But by my own data, it really proved to be an immensely successful, really high upside strategy.

I think looking at it from an a priority perspective, like Liam says it increases your odds of landing at least one power law tight end, which is one of the most powerful advantages you can have in these basketball tournaments. Also later round wide receivers tend to be better values of more upside. You don't have to spend additional capital on a third tight end. Your second tight end crucially can contribute in the flex in half PPR, you know, typically you want wide receivers contributing in the flex. You have a higher weekly upside.

You score more points. But I mean, there's certainly the case where you can have multiple tight ends, ending the season averaging wide receiver one levels of fantasy production. We saw that in 2021 with Kelsey and Andrews, both ranking as wide receiver ones. We saw that in 2020 with Travis Kelsey and Darren Waller, ranking as high-end wide receiver or mid-range to high-end wide receiver ones.

And so, yeah, this is just me sort of found. the data. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to have heavy exposure to this, but this is just something I'll play around with here or there. And just, just last on that point, with, with, having certain strategies that you want to, you know, do 10% of your leagues in this way. Do you, do you guys, do you guys mix up a ton? Because some people might only do five best ball leagues overall this year. Some people might do 100. How often are you kind of switching up your strategy for building your roster just across the board because again you mentioned maybe taking the two elite tight ends maybe only drafting one quarterback so how how of you know much of a variance are your teams

for the year i'll say two things on that one is um i just kind of let things holistically happen i'm not usually coming in like oh my i only have x percent in my portfolio so i need to start doing this i'm just drafting with the vibes ripping teams trying to make sound teams. If you're drafting five teams out there, here's what I'd recommend. Get your guys. If you like a player,

get them on your team. If you're a Bears fan, get a bear on that team, right? You're going to be looking at this team all year round. I did that with my best ball teams. You know, like, you have a bad week in DFS. I'm sweating some best ball today. You know, let's go look at that team.

So get the guys you like, get some roster construction. You think is best if you're doing like five to ten teams. you know, try to get your favorite quarterback, whatever, make it fun for you and, you know, listen to some of the strategies we're employing today. And it should help you a lot. That's a good point. Because I feel like the general, like, thought is that everybody does like 500, you know, underdog drafts. And we're all like degenerates in that sense when in reality might just be a couple, might be somebody's first year.

So that's a good point in itself. Filling out, oh, go ahead, Scott. Yeah. So if I could just chime it. So like I just went over like quarterback and tight end. For wide receiver, it's like pretty straightforward to me. It's like quality plus quantity. I want nine wide receivers in total with four drafted before round eight.

But for the running back position, I can't really contextualize it other than by percentage. That's like the only way I can think. So if you're drafting five teams like YOLO, have fun. But to me, it's easier if you're drafting like 50 and then you can break it down. So to me, 50% of my leagues, I want to go modified zero RB. That really proved to be the most successful strategy based on my data, which looks at underdog. It also looks at basketball tens, the top 150 teams each season.

It looks at basically everything. But that's one running back in the first two rounds, then try to wait until like round nine for the RB2 unless there's a massive ADP faller. So 50% modified zero RB. strategy two and three they're both going to be like 25% at zero rb so avoid running backs for the first five rounds and then two running backs in the first two rounds is the other 25% strategy where I'll go rbrb and I'll wait until like round nine unless there's a crazy ADP faller Liam I and I experimented with a hyper fragile approach which is a strategy coined by Mike Beers that

The data doesn't bear that out to be a really, you know, great strategy. But, you know, it could work. It makes some sense where you draft three running backs. And there's massive injury risk, but let's say all three stay healthy and finishes RB1s. That's a huge advantage where you have your RB1 unlock, your RB2 unlock, and, you know, a flex contributor. I'm not really going to go out of my way to do that unless there's crazy value.

but to that point, like the best strategy is really grabbing value wherever you can find it. And I think we should keep in mind, I'd say this quite a bit, but any historical data, it's good to look at these things. It's good to have a foundation in them. But we should keep in mind that, like, just because something didn't happen last year does not mean it can't happen this year. The NFL is extremely chaotic. People get injured, right? Where players, where different positions go each year is wildly different.

So you can't just be like, oh, quarterback, it was good to get an elite quarterback. If they were all 10th round costs last year and now they're a fifth round cost, how do we adjust to that? So thinking through those, if you have a strong foundation historical data makes sense to me. And so, yeah, like, just because hyperfragile didn't work last year, okay, well, also 90% in the field was doing it because the winner of Bestball Mania 1 and played a hyperfragile strategy. And so everyone was being like, oh, that worked. I'm going to do that. And, you know, like newsflash, we want to be different than what the other people are doing. So don't be afraid to get weird.

If you're firing like five, 10 teams, do a weird team. Do like a four quarterback team, do a four tight end team. Get weird out there. You're trying to be the best out of 455,000 people. We can't even like conceptualize what that number means to us. And in the puppies too, like the puppies are really great at underdog. They're $5 rather than $25. And you can test these strategies.

and the time period on them is usually shorter where the contest opens and closes pretty quick. So you don't have to worry about shifting ADPs over time and what we do with that. And that point, you made the same point on the last podcast. And I want to touch on it maybe towards the end of the show, just about each year kind of being unique for fantasy in the way that you approach these drafts in general too. So that's a point I do want to touch back on in a little bit here. But last question for me with Bill. building the roster. I think another mindset that maybe a lot of people have, maybe a lot of people

are starting to shy away from is the anchor or hero position, you know, having that one stud for a quarterback, a running back, wide receiver, and tight end. You want to make sure I got a guy that can finish top 12 in the running back position and the wide receiver position. Maybe, maybe that's more of a redraft fantasy mindset that carries over to some people's underdog strategy. What, which, your thoughts about that, Liam? How important is that? Is it not important? I know a lot of what we've said already is kind of like just going with how the draft falls to you because you might be in a draft that is completely different than the one that I do an hour later. But yeah, what's your, what's your thoughts on like the hero position or the anchor positioning of guys to fill out your

team? Yeah, I think what Scott was mentioning is hero running back. And that's the most commonly used hero term and it makes a lot of sense why it does work, right? You hit one of the running backs that has these legendary upsides. If one exists, you're going to need them. And then usually you want like just find like wide receivers later in the draft. It's really hard to find a 300 point wide receiver later in the draft where if a running back gets hurt and you have the handcuffed to that running back, you can find a running back that's going to give you 20 point, 25 point week.

So I do some hero teams at every position. you know, like I'll draft a hero wide receiver team. But just with us on Underdog having to start three wide receivers, usually want to try to get, like Scott mentioned, you want to have four before round eight. Yeah, research like that, like it makes a lot of sense to me, why you want to be hammering wide receivers usually in what's historical, this running back dead zone where the running backs just get buried by the wide receivers.

But even that is changing this year and the quality of running back you can find in that dead zone is different. So we have to think through how to adjust. And I try to do a lot of different things, especially for these small buy-in, high buy-out type leagues. Scott, any last thoughts on that with, you know, solidifying one stud per position or, you know, that problem? Yeah, I mean, like, I haven't given this too much.

It doesn't strike me as, like, necessary or anything like that. You can take a quantity over quality approach. You can take a quality over quantity approach. I will just say, like, four. the quarterback position, like you do want that guy with 25 plus 30 plus fantasy point upside for this tournament weeks. But in my article, I kind of talk about why some positions are worth more or less in the basketball format. So like for running back, everyone knows on Belkow or bust. I really want those Belkow running backs. Luckily, in start sit leagues this year, I think there's some really

undervalued Belkows. I think like Zeke Elliott, you know, people are overlooking the fact that Dak missed 75% the season. He played through a torn PCL for 75% of last season. David Montgomery, I like a lot. But in bestball, outside of the highest-end running backs, we're really talking about first-round running backs. The running-back position becomes massively devalued. I think the best example of this was Nyheim Hines and J.D. McKissick in 2020.

They were both, like, basically last round picks. And they only finished as high-end R-B-3s. But if you take in a bestball format, you take their highest, score each week. You view them as one player, so you exclude the flex. They combined to outscore all but three running backs. They would have finished as the overall RB4. They were worthless and start sit leagues because you never correctly predicted their spike weeks. And when that spike week didn't happen, they didn't give you anything. But yeah, so that's just like a way you have to like rework your brain moving from basketball to start sit or vice versa. I will say like, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,

drafted like 160 basketball teams in like 2017. And I crushed bestball that year, but my start sit league sucked. So it's like be wary of basketball brain where you're going to have like a lot of not in tournaments, but like in a typical 12 team, a lot of really safe ADP beaters. That's not going to win a start sit league. You want those, you know, league winners, you know, the power law players. And, you know, bell cows matter more in start sit where you can get by with more of a quantity over quality approach in bestball. Yeah, I won best ball mania two and I lost my home league. I was laugh. Like, how does this add up at all? That's interesting too because like a, I saw somebody talk about like Mike Williams the other day, how there was like a huge disparity between his,

his current ADP for fantasy football and then his his current underdog ADP. And, you know, having having that underdog or best ball mindset going into your home league might not always be the most beneficial. But I do, I do want to talk about exposure. So if you go, if you're on the underdog app, you can go and click on your exposure. And it just shows you the percentage of players, the percentage of leagues that you have players in, specific players. And some people go, you know, super heavy on guys and have a very high exposure. Some people spread out their, their leagues when it comes to that.

You know, you might go into these drafts and have some my guys that you try to get everywhere. You know, if I look at mine, I think mine might be like DeAndre Swift, but maybe like Liams or Scott is like somebody like a Kendrick Bourne or something like way down the list, but that's their highest exposure. So Liam, when it comes to 2022, do you find yourself having heavy exposures, limited exposure so far or somewhere in the middle for you? I think I'll first start with 2021. I had 60% Gabriel Davis, right, which if you think about it mathematically, one out of 12 should be like, you know, matching the field. so that's that's around 8.3% or whatever and I was way over that so I'm totally cool having a heavy exposure to players I think with having a high exposure we should be more willing to

stomach it at a cheaper ADP cost so having you know 90% um whoever you know Dalvin cook is not the same thing as having 90% uh Alexander Madison the other thing I would say is if if you're getting some volume down on the site, you should be thinking through how the ADPs change. So, for example, I had a lot of Russell Gage and a lot of Nahim Himes early when they were cheaper. Now, both those players have jumped several rounds and costs. So I need to think through, do I still want to chase the rising value of these players? Can I still build the same super team that I was building before? because if a player rises, it means someone else is falling too.

So you talked about DeAndre Swift last year. I was not taking DeAndre Swift when he was going around the one-two turn. But then he became a three-four turn guy and I was loading up. You know, so I'm not so take-locked. And the other thing is I think wide receiver is a more natural talent position where talent really shines through. It's not opportunity. So it's also a position where I'm more willing to be high experience. exposure. And again, like tight end, it's kind, you need the touchdowns. It's a high variance

position. So we should be spreading that out. Quarterback, I had like 25% Josh Allen last year. I'm not doing the same thing this year. He's more expensive. But I am, you know, I have my, I got a lot of the elite guys on underdog because underdog is a half point PPR site. So if you compare it to a full point PPR site, the quarterback position accounts for a higher total percentage of your points on a week to week basis. Um, so yeah, I'm not. I'm not. afraid to take stands and going way over exposure or even like last year I had zero percent Jerry Judy and zero percent Leviska-Schnoll because I didn't believe the offense could support the wide receivers at their cost. Sometimes it's bad process where I got lucky. Sometimes it's good

process that you know plays out. So I do a let yeah I have no problem fading exposures and getting my guys. I do want to comment quick on that but I thought it I thought it was a great point with the changing of the ADP and how important that is because I remember like a month ago or so, including myself, just looking at some of the underdog ADP, you know, there's a bunch of people talking about Travis Etienne. And I feel like he might have been on the list of changing ADP is a guy that has shifted the most. And not to say now we got to fade him, but there's a huge difference just as time goes on and we

get closer and closer to the season, how different guys are going to start getting, you know, hyped up or someone gets hurt and then somebody else is in the mix or, you know, someone's cut and there's just a domino effect. So adjusting to the ADPs and not sticking to those initial takes, I think is a great point. But Scott, what's your thoughts with the exposures? Yeah, I talked about in the article. It's not like super interesting to me. But I will just say, like, in the first few rounds, you really don't want to be too over or under exposed to any particular player. A great example. This is in 2020. So teams that drafted Travis Kelsey won 24% of the time, which is the most of any player. But if you drafted Saquan Barclay, you won 0.3% of the time. So that

means Kelsey improved your odds by a magnitude of 3x, but Barclay hurt them by a magnitude of 28x. So, yeah, you really don't want to be way too crazy over or under anyone in those first few rounds. The best basketball players have ever talked to, like Aaron H, say ownership really doesn't matter the last three rounds. Like Odell Beckham Jr.'s rookie season, he was overdrafting him by like two full rounds and had like 90% exposure. And like obviously that paid off in a massive way. So just that's the way I think about it. Also, you really want to like Liam was alluding to grab the ADB fallers as much as you can for one that creates a more unique team. Not many teams are going to have like around seven cam acres, things like that.

But it also brings down the average cost of your portfolio. So that's just like a really optimal strategy to increase upside. And I'm on the, I'm pretty sure on the last show and correct me if I'm wrong, Liam. You, I think you mentioned maybe Patterson and Cup, unless there was two other guys that obviously did very well and where people took them was, was beneficial. But I thought you said you didn't have either one of them much or one of them too much.

And that might be a point to bring up just because I think some people's, you know, mindset sometimes is like, fine. You know, I got to find that that diamond in the rough. I got to find that 2020 James Robinson or the 2021 Patterson or one of those players. Can you comment on that? Are you talking about my last year teams? Yeah, your last year teams. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, regarding last year, it's like, yeah, like, I think I was talking about that Patterson was a smash, but he was barely drafted, right?

And so not having him didn't really hurt me. but if you were, it alludes the idea with these later round picks, we should be taking some players that are just flat out, not drafted, because if we hit, none of the field has them. And then B with the cup, it was, I think I was like 6% or something on Underdog. I was taking more on the PPR sites, kind of like a bad process played by me, probably. But that being said, like, I didn't have a ton of the league winners, and I had almost none of them on my winning team other than,

Jamar Chase, I would say. And you don't need the league winners to win a playoff tournament thing, like Underdog. If you're trying to win the regular season prize for Bestball Mania 3, which is a million dollars to one single team, yes, you need the league winners. You need from last year, Leonard Fernette, James Connor, Cooper Cup. You need these guys on your team, Mark Andrews, whatever. But for, you know, if Leonard Fernett has a bad game in the playoffs, you know, whatever, they're going to be, You know, they're not going to either going to advance or like even Cooper Cup and Mark Andrews. They had great playoff.

They had great regular seasons. But guess what? They were like 50% owned in week 17 finals. So even if you hit on those guys, you're just, you're, you're not separating from the field. Right. So it's, you know, like, yes, you want the league winners. But when everyone else has them too in the finals, it's hard. It's real hard to separate from the pack.

Yeah. So I kind of just just disagree. of that. I think you need the league winners and then you also need the week winners like Jamar Chase scoring 50 fantasy points in week 17. How do you only scored 30? What would the top 30 teams have looked like? Would it have been a bunch of Andrews and or Taylor and or cup teams? I think it probably would. But you raise an interesting point, which I was just thinking about the other day, which is drafting these players, no one is rostering like zero, like only a handful of leagues even have this guy on a roster.

I came up with staff for Deonté Hardy, formerly Deonté Harris. He led the Saints in receiving yards per game last year. He ranked fourth and all-purpose yards per game. He ranked fifth among 198 wide receivers in yards per route run. He's only on like a handful of teams. And it's like the upside there is massive. Like obviously he's probably the odd man out if you look at their depth chart. but even more like exciting guys like Amari Rogers,

Terrace Marshall and Tonyo Brown, they're going undrafted in the majority of league. So really like swinging for the fences on players like that who aren't really on people's radar. And with an 18th round versus 20th round, you don't have to get too crazy with it, right? Like Antonio Brown, I'm not going to go that route because I do think he's like done after that antic.

But like Scott, a great example, Amari Rogers. He's probably on, I don't know, sub 5% of teams right now. Best shape of his life. Yeah, best shape of his life. Yeah, whatever. But like, if you're getting a guy on a site that has 20 rounds, take a 20th round, take a 19th round guy in an only 18 round contest. Yeah, on my team last year was Jeff Wilson. He was an example where Jeff Wilson got hurt. And I knew that. And I was still drafting him because I just knew he was going to be low owned. And I knew the upside was massive in the offense.

He's at a position with a running back where, you know, there was questions about who was going to be the starter there. And he did give me one usable week in the playoffs. He was not Elijah Mitchell ended up returning, but Elijah Mitchell is a kind of an example too last year where he was not being drafted a lot. People assumed he was the running back three or four with the Niners. And then all of a sudden he smashes. So thinking through these ambiguous situations, trying to get some undrafted guys,

make sense. Maybe it makes a little bit more sense closer to the season where we have more info, but I'm doing it now too. So just on that point on Antonio Brown and players like that, I think it could be the case where the odds Deshaun Watson is suspended for the full season or more is at 80% or the chances of Antonio Brown playing even four games is like 3%. It doesn't strike me as obvious that they're bad picks. at ADP, that you shouldn't have, you know, even 5% exposure to or more. Because no one within that range has their upside where Deshaun Watson's finished top five every season.

Antonio Brown was top 10 last year, top five in yards per route run. I'm not saying you should draft them. I'm just saying, given the structure of this format, it doesn't strike me as even if that's the case, you should be avoiding it. because you want that upside. And another great example is Alexander Madison. Like what are the odds Dalvin Cook suffers a season-ending injury before week one? What are the odds he suffers in week one?

What are the odds he suffers in week one? And you could do the math and whatever. Like Alexander Madison's median projection is like 60 fantasy points with like 30% of that coming in just two games. But if Dalvin Cook misses week 17, that's massive. The Dalvin Cook misses six games or more, that's massive. So, you know, again, given the format, like medium projection, throw that out. You really want to be swinging for the fences for massive week 17 boom games. You're kind of combining a couple thoughts there with handcuffs and undrafted guys.

But I agree a lot with what Scott said where basically zero's on your team. So swinging, like striking out at Antonio Brown, it doesn't hurt you as much as let's say you take, Will Fuller and Antonio Brown. And one of them gives you a 300-point season. The other one's a zero. Great. You just smash it. You have a smash right there, right? So taking a couple high-upside guys,

you know, Antonio Brown is just a very unique, like what he did. I just don't see him returning, but would it really shocked me for whatever. Someone gets hurt in the season and he gets signed, I guess not. But still the point stands. You want to be taking some guys

that are just flat out not drafted. And Antonio Brown fits the model and has the upside. So this is what I spent a lot of time talking about in upside wins championships where a player's upside matters exponentially more than their downside risk or their median projection. And really, like, if you look back and it's like how many players actually matter in fantasy in a typical 12-team ESPN league, it's like honestly only like 11 players actually matter. And the ones at the top matter more than like sometimes any two players combined or outside of that top 12, any four players combined. It's like really massive.

And it's different given this, this format. But if you look at like an FFPC league in Christian McCabry's massive season, there was only one team in like the top 30 that didn't have it. And it was my team, unfortunately, as much as I loved him that year. But yeah, so that really matters. and we've touched on different ways to increase your upside. I talked about different roster constructions, maybe a one tight end team or a one QB team or one QB and one tight end team. And we talked about ADP and like players on, sorry, on that point, the players, like,

you can win the millie maker. Usually you win it by a perfectly correlated team, getting the right game stacks. But you could also win it. And like a lot of DFS experts and pros have wanted this way, which is just grabbing those swing for the fences players and hoping for a top 15% range of outcome performance. And then they get that. Like one week one, two years ago, Deshawn, Jackson lost his mind,

Tyler Lockett, all those boomer bus players. But obviously the easiest way to increase your upside is by stacking, which is team stacking, but also week 17 games. stacking. And so Liam, I think you're the expert there. You want to also looking at week 17 matchups. How how important is week 17 to you? It's everything. I mean, it's it's for the underdog best ball mania three. It's where all the money is one, right? You can you can go in there. You can look at the rules. You can see how much a mincash is. You can see how much a semi-final exit is worth. And all of the money is one for in the finals. And all of the money is at top.

Right. Like you finished 10th. You think you did great. It's not that it's like, you know, I forget what it is at the top of my head, but I want to say. 10,000. Yeah, it's 10,000 versus two million. Do the math. 10K versus 2 million. But you need to optimize for that week 17. Yeah. And you do that by looking at who plays who that week. You do that by trying to get some game stacks, as Scott said. Like, for example, a lot of people looked at my team that won last year and they're like, oh, well, you didn't really stack that much. I disagree there. I did a lot of stacks. My only quarterback to wide receiver stack was Josh Allen, Nicole Beasley. Obviously, Josh Allen did it on the ground. But then I had some game correlations where I had Amari Cooper versus Christian Kirk.

So I had the Cardinals versus Cowboys guy. The one that really helped me win was Rashad Penny of the Seahawks versus Amon Rae St. Brown of the Lions, super low-owned. it gave me like 60 points or so right there. I had Tyler Boyd and Jamar Chase. That's correlation right there. I had Aaron Jones and MBS. That's correlation right there. So I had a lot of team correlations, a lot of week,

and a lot of game stack correlations. With the schedule, so we talked about week 17. And, you know, Scott, I know you come out with a full series for each position and how their strength of schedule looks like. So Liam, are you diving deep in? that for the full, you know, season for the NFL for each position when you're drafting, or is it not something that you stress an emphasis for? Because I've gone into fantasy, you know, drafts before, you know, knowing that, I don't know, Derek Henry's got a soft schedule

the first X amount of weeks, so now I'm going to target him. But some people say that means nothing to me because, for example, I think it was last year, the year before, Derek Henry played the Jaguars who were one of the worst teams against the run. He had a shit game. So, I mean, how much does that impact? you're drafting the strength of schedules. Yeah, I think strength of schedule is a little too noisy, just not only from like a, it's not that predictable year over year where, you know,

things change quick in the NFL. A quarterback gets good, that team is good, right? Trevor Lawrence makes that jump. Zach Wilson makes that jump. They're no longer bad teams, right? And then also it's just, it's a lot to like think about where I try to keep the process pretty simple. Two years ago, my first year in best ball,

I was looking at the playoff schedule. for the whole playoffs and trying to choose the players that had the best matchups 15, 16. Like I straight out baited Dalvin Cook because I thought he played some bad run or some really strong run defenses in the playoffs. Like I was getting real in the weeds there. It, Dalvin Cook had a smash season. He did kind of have a bad playoff. So it was like kind of right.

But last year I, you know, that was probably lucky. But last year I solely thought about week 17. It helps to have a singular focus to where all the money is. is just hope you get a team to the finals and then, you know, you have a good team to win it if you do is my opinion what we should be doing. Yeah, so I disagree with that just a little bit. Like with every fantasy metric on average, it's going to be insanely noisy, but the polar extremes are really sticky and meaningful and impactful. And so I looked at this recently and I was pleasantly surprised to see a lot of the players I'm already on have like amazing week 17 matchups.

So Kyler Murray, he's up against the Falcons who ranked bottom three and scheduled adjusted fantasy points per game allowed to quarterbacks each of the past three seasons. David Montgomery against the Lions, bottom three in each of the last three seasons. Another good one is the Green Bay Packer wide receivers who are all extremely undervalued despite the absence of Devante Adams. They're against the Vikings like PFF, Mike Clay, everyone is saying they have a bottom five cornerback core, Cambron Danzler, slow as hell. Patrick Peterson's, you know, 47 years old.

And then I like running that back with Adam Thielen. I listened to a podcast recently where he was like, sort of unprompted. He was like, I love playing Green Bay. And nothing gets me more erect than playing Green Bay. And so if you look back at his last 10 games against the Packers, he averages 19.7 fantasy points for game with 31.1 fantasy points per game in the top 50% of his games against Green Bay. So, yeah, just looking at different things like that.

You can also look at game script sensitivity. So Derek Henry is far and away the most game script sensitive player in fantasy. He averages 11 more fantasy points per game and wins than losses over the last three seasons. So he's either basically far and away the RB1 or he's just like the RB19. And so you look and see who he's playing. I forget who he's playing, but like let's say he's up against the bills. and I'm sure Liam knows. He's up against the bills and they're six-point dogs.

That's a reason to fade Derek Henry. Who is Derek Henry playing, Liam? In week 17? Yeah. The Cowboys. Okay. All right. Thank you.

They're probably, the line's probably close. So it's, are you afraid of Michael Parsons? Yeah, maybe a little. I love Quentin's comment here. He says he has well over two pages of notes from these videos. Love it. That is awesome.

I want to finish. the podcast, but a couple questions about processes. And we kind of went into that a little bit with the scheduling portion of things. And it's funny for your home, like just talking fantasy football. It's funny for your home, you know, redraftly, where you might have a guy that comes in with tons of notes and loses to the guy that came in and auto drafted three rounds. But for best ball for these tournaments, again, the whole show is about strategy for a reason. So there's a ton of strategy and things to think about when you're drafting and preparing and all of that. So if I had to ask you, like, what is, what do you feel like is a common mistake that people have going into these major tournament drafts that stands out to you? And obviously, you're not monitoring what everybody's doing in their drafts. But what kind of stands out to you is something that seems kind of common that might be a mistake? I touched on this earlier, but I think it's trying to advance rather than trying to win or playing not to lose rather than playing to win. And I put a tweet out on this, but you can look at the math and like, you know, I put a, I put out a tweet basically saying like, let's say you advance 150 teams.

Let's say you advance 75 teams. So you're advancing all your teams. You're advancing half your teams. You're crushing it. You're still not a favorite to get a team to the finals. You're like mathematically like if you advance 150 teams, I think it was like you have a 60% chance to get one team to the finals with just how the advance rate work within the playoffs where your facing all these super teams. So I would say, don't be afraid to swing for the fences.

Don't play not to lose. Play to win. Yeah. So I think that's really interesting. I think that's a great point. I think he's absolutely right. In particular, I saw you talk about Chris Godwin. So I'd like you to expand on that.

You and I both said Russell Gage is the most misprice player in underdog drafts right now. That was when he was at ADP wide receiver 60 and he since jumped like three rounds. And so I was just like, yeah, Godwin's a terrible pick because, like, I think there's a really good chance he misses, like, the entirety of the first half. But his ADP's falling. And, like, who knows? Like, should we really only care about his 22 fantasy point per game potential in the tournament rounds? Yeah, if we talk about Godwin, like, if you ask me right now, if I could have 100% Godwin on my team and I advanced half my expectations. because of that.

I looked at Michael Thomas's advance rate last year because he played in zero games last year and his ADP was kind in the Chris Godwin range. He had about I think an 8% expectation to advance, which is 50% of what you would expect since 2 out of 12 advance. So

half your team's advancing. If you could tell me I advance half my teams, but I have Chris Godwin on 100% of them, I would take that every day of the week because I only care about the playoffs and week 17. And And if you don't mind sharing, I want to dive a little bit into some specific players. We don't have to do a major analysis of a ton of guys.

I want to start off with Jamar Chase because Jamar Chase was a big reason why your team won it all last year. He had a good season. You talked about him on the last podcast. You said he was a generational talent and you weren't afraid to go heavy in on a rookie. And, you know, I don't know if we can go and say the same sort of, tags for this specific rookie class. But we'll talk about guys you might own a little bit more after this question. But who's a rookie that stands out to you that you might be comfortable,

kind of like Chase last year, going a little bit heavier in? With the rookies, I try to get exposure to a lot of guys. There's a lot of research out there that the rookies, since they hit later in the season, when the money weeks are, you want to have a lot of them on your team. They might be a little bit lower of advance rate, a little higher, you know, expectation later in the season. So I don't really know who my top exposed rookie is.

There's a lot of interesting rookie spots. Some guys are cheap. Some guys are expensive. Let's just talk about Traylen Berks because we know he is drawing live to be the wide receiver one there. Does not have the profile of a Jamar Chase. But this like reports of asthma, et cetera, like this does not scare me at all. I'm going to take him. Yes, I'll have some Robert Woods too,

so I won't be take locked on it. But, I mean, to me, he's like, this guy's like killing boars in his free time with his hands. He's a monster of a person. I want the grown-ass men on my team. I'm going to have some Traylenbergs. I got no problem if he starts slow or if he set some training camp practices or whatever.

Yeah, this class is interesting because there seems to be, like, tons of asterisk next to so many names. Like Drake London, I don't know about the quarterback situation. Gary Wilson, I don't know about Elijah Moore, you know, Breece Hall, Michael Carter's there, and then you just start going down a list, and everybody seems to have a little asterisk. And Scott, you know, I know you and I last year loved Elijah Moore. I'm sure you had other guys you might have been heavier on in these best ball drafts. But same question, if somebody kind of stand out to you like, hey, I want to have a decent amount of exposure to this rookie.

Yeah, Jaham Dotson really stands out as the most undervalued rookie at the moment. And then like Liam was saying, you know, you really care about the latter half of the season. So like Breeze Hall, you're saying, oh, it's a committee, right? Like, let's say by season long average, it's a 60-40 committee, right? That seems gross. But if it's 40-60 the first four weeks, and it's 80, 20 the last four weeks, like he could be a massive league winner. I'll just say I absolutely hate Traylon Burks. I think he's at ADP at least.

I think he's a little Biscuit Chanel 2.0. I don't think he's like anything close to NFL ready. If you want to book a bet on Berks. I'm not a college tape grinder either. Like I don't watch college football pretty much. It's just really just like the availability. And I don't know. Like people were talking about him.

Like he might go in the top half until some of those combine numbers. With the rookies though, again, I try to get all of them. A cheaper guy, I'll tell you is Tyrion Davis Price, the running back for the 49ers. Quite a bit of him. I think he's drawing live to either be the 1B to Elijah Mitchell's 1A or even become the 1A eventually. you know Mitchell had a lot of injury issues last year. So I got quite a bit of him as well. Yeah, I'll just say my go-to film expert, Brett Whitefield.

I asked him for a pre-draft comp on Trelon Burks, and he said Jono Smith, unironically. That's what you're, especially year one, year two. That's going to be rough. But just, yeah, on the rookies too, like the best time to draft is either in August when all the fish come out to swim and like they're drafting all the quarterbacks in the first six picks and like easy money or as early as possible. Like for instance last year when I wrote my article, I said, Amon Ross St. Brown, West Huber says is must draft.

Elijah Moore, I'm saying is undrafted. Both of them are going undrafted in at least 90% of leagues. So like if you drafted those two guys in the last two rounds, like you were printing money. So just just be mindful of something like that. And it seems like a lot of these rookies are guys. People want to throw a dart on at the running back position, specifically at the end of their drafts, Damian Pierce. If he wins the job, Tyler, Alger, kind of gives me flashbacks out of last year when, you know, tons of people were drafting Hawkins thinking that he was going to take over that backfield. And then they, they whiffed on that. So you have that kind of push pull there too with some of the back.

Yeah, I'll just say the Houston beat writer says he expects Damien Pierce. to take over the backfield at some point in the latter half of the season. So that's a fine upside pick. But with both running backs in particular during the post draft press conference, the coach and our GM, just was like, yeah, you know, we needed special teams help. That's not what you want to hear, but you know, you never know. It's hard with some of this beat writer stuff too, because like I don't know how sharp all of them are.

I don't know all of them by name. Like, not many of them are fantasy players. Like some of them are literally talking heads of the team looking at you. you the Pittsburgh Steeler guys. Like they're just telling like the owner is like very firm, you know, iron fist there. So some of the beat like I'm not been in the Twitter game enough to know who's trustworthy on the beat.

But it's hard, you know, like, but we want to be paying attention to the news. And, you know, we're about to get a lot of news. ADPs are going to be wildly shipping. Like you'll get you'll get one bit of news and a player will jump four rounds or drop four rounds and so be ready to be ready to react to that so with uh we we talked about exposure before but now that we're you know talking a little bit more about specific players uh you mentioned russell gauge before how things have changed a little bit for you but do you mind sharing some of uh your other guys that you have some decent exposure to right now i don't want you to show your

entire hand to everybody so if you want to only name like one or two guys or maybe none at all and just drop some hints i i'd love to you you choose a position and i'll tell you of my top five guys that it. I don't exactly want to give all my exposures because I'm going to fire quite a bit of high stake leagues. And I'll let Scott ask that question. What position? Wide receiver. Don't say roll forward. And we'll go, we'll give you my fourth highest exposed wide receiver in Best Ball Mania 3 right now is Cadarious Tony. Oh, that's a great one. bet on soup like what we saw he did last year is just not you know like talking hashtag tape grinder right now didn't you don't see a lot of players in the league that can do that yes the upside is i mean the downside

is big but the upside is massive huge upgrade in coaching staff which you hope would upgrade the quarterback as well um and it's just a bet that he's the wide receiver one in the offense and gal day He doesn't really fit Daniel Jones. And, you know, Sequin's going to get his too. Yeah, I have a really in-depth mathematical model to project fantasy point future fantasy production. And one thing I found that is really sticky and predictive is the more insane and annoying a wide receiver is off the better they are at football. No, I'll just say, yeah, Cadarius Tony. I mean, he had 189 receiving guards in one game.

And like, there's only 10 other rookie wide receivers who have ever done that. And like basically every single one made the Pro Bowl at some point in their career. Just massive upside. I do like Wondale a lot too. I do like Saquan Barkley, especially in Start Sitleagues. And I love Daniel Jones. And, like, anyone you want to stack them with, Daniel Bellinger is running with the ones. They're all extremely cheap.

They have one of the most favorable fantasy schedules this year, massive upgrade in play caller. Everyone's healthy finally. So, you know, Kenny Gallaudet was someone everyone loved. So, yeah. There's no much last year. Dude, I had him in way too many spots as well. I fucking killed me. Scott, Liam showed his hand for one guy that does one guy stand out to you? I don't know if you have your exposure available or you just have it at the back of your head. You're like, yeah. Perennial Brown, baby. We know Scott. We know Scott. You're talking about your giants over here. If there was ever going to hill, I don't want to die on.

It's the guy who stripped naked in his final game. Yeah, Watson and Brown. Questionable brand alignments right there. Yeah, so yeah, just read my article. It'll probably come out sometime next week. I'm steering at the top guy. I'm like in no particular order, but this is just like the first one I wrote up was Tyler Lockett.

He's just like the, no one fits the better and best ball archetype more than Lockett. So over the past three seasons, in his three best games each year, he averages 36.5 fantasy points per game. Across his other 39 games, 81% of games, he averages just 11.4 fantasy points per game. So either he's twice as good as Devante Adams or he's the wide receiver 46. And so just like one of those massive spike weeks occurs in week 17, like it might be impossible to win the tournament without him. I sure there's the quarterback downgrade that either Gino Smith, Baker, Mayfield, or True Locke. Honestly, like the one thing Drew Locke does well is like what Lockett does well, and that's the deep ball. But still, like insane value over the past four seasons.

He's finished 16th, 8th, 13th, 16th, and fantasy points. But he's wide receiver 46 by ADP. That's 23 spots lower than DK Metcalf. So just like added all up. And like that's a guy Liam and I drafted together and like someone I feel really good about. My last question, and then if Scott has anything else he wants to touch on, we can go to that afterwards. But Liam, you mentioned it on the first podcast you're on. You mentioned it earlier as well how, you know, the fantasy world, maybe the best ball world seems to change and be unique year to year.

Does anything stand out to you in your mind saying, hey, you know, this might have happened in 2021 or 2020 or been a thing. And in 2022, it's different because of this or anything you. want to touch about on that topic. I think that's a very interesting point because, again, we all like to dive into data and I think we should continue to do that, but years do change a ton. So what's your, what's something that stands out? I would tell the people to take a lookout for the article I'm going to have debuting on fantasy points as soon as I have the time to edit. I'm the sole reason article's not been pushed out already. But I mentioned a little bit about this, but it's, There's a lot.

So I'll just give you one of the things I'm noticing is the market's reacting on underdog to the quarterbacks being undervalued last year. And, you know, like where Tom Brady, Burrow, Hertz, Stafford, Rogers. A lot of these guys were 10th round picks last year. And now most of them you're seeing as like the sixth, seventh round, Hertz, Brady, Burrow. So they're just getting more expensive this year. It doesn't mean we don't want them, but it's just, it's interesting to note. One other thing I would say is the rookies. People are hip that you want the rookies, and rookies are more expensive than ever.

And maybe we'd even reach a point where maybe we want to pump the brakes on some rookies. I'm not sure. Scott, anything stand out to you? Same question you think is a little bit more unique about this coming season. Obviously, we had a bunch of off-the-wall stuff happened last year with play. your finishes and how guys perform. But yeah. Yeah, I don't know.

I'll just say definitely read Liam's article when it comes out. I've looked at it. It's really great. It's really strong. And yeah, I don't know. Read my article too. There's a ton of the edges that have yet to be exploited. So read that article and then win it all and then give me a shout out.

You guys can have second place to me. There you go. There you go. He's got anything else for Liam before we let him go? No, I don't think so. I think that was perfect. Awesome, awesome. So great show.

Liam, really appreciate your time, man. If you guys tuned in the show, appreciate that as well. We had some awesome comments. So you'd love to see everybody in the comments for the duration of the show. So shout out to you guys. Going to have a bunch of guys who tuned in make a lot of money. So thank you guys for tuning in and have a good night. Thanks for tuning in to this edition of the Fantasy Points podcast.

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