Fantasy Football Daily - 2Barz: Interview with New DFS Pro Darren Manser

Episode Date: September 6, 2022

Graham Barfield (@GrahamBarfield) and Scott Barrett (@ScottBarrettDFB) bring on Darren Manser (@BooBooJoJo) to talk about the upcoming DFS season. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fantasy-points-podcast/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One foot of money, two bars on the show. Let's go. Ladies and gentlemen, you are listening to the Fantasy Points podcast, very special edition of the Two Bars podcast, myself, Brand Barfield. We're bringing on a guest today that is Darren, aka Darren from Discord, aka Boo Jojojo, maybe the worst Twitter handle since John Proctor's Super Dupor Man back in the days or my own dude fantasy bro. And I'm just really excited to get Darren on.

Listen, you know, 96 stats dropped. That was, you know, nearly a week ago. So it's officially DFS season. And we have some killers in the Discord chat. We have some big time DFS superstars. You guys all know Neil who a couple years ago won something like $250,000. And Darren's been on a similarly unreal heater. Seemingly, every week he's finishing top 10 in a major tournament with a high number of first place finishes,

which I need to remind you is the goal. You know, 110th place finishes in the Millie Maker is worth one first place. place finish. And so he's just been on an insane heater, which includes the preseason. Typically preseason DFS is just dominated by Johnny. You just look at the top 10 scores and you'll see Johnny's name like five times. But this year, Darren was the guy who owned preseason DFS. And so he did some content for us. I think on the day of his first ever fantasy points article, he finished first place in the biggest preseason tournament. And he's going to be doing a lot of stuff. He's going to be helping me with my DFS top plays. He's going to be helping us with making sure our ownership

projections are super on point. He's going to do a weekly video breaking down how he uses our DFS optimizer to crank out these massive number of lineups that tend to do really, really well. And so without further ado, Darren, how are you doing? Welcome to the show. Doing good. I got a bone to pick with you right away. making fun of my Twitter name. There's reasons for it, and it's opposite on both sides, okay? So my daughter's nickname is Boo Boo. Okay?

It's always been Boo Boo, Bubba, it's always been boo-boo. My wife's name's Joanne. She goes by Joja. So Boo-boo Jojo. And then the other way around, so they're not like, you know, they'll fight over, you know, preferences. All right. What was it one more time? What's your Twitter name?

my Twitter name's Boo Boo Jojo, but my DK handle is Jojo Boo Boo. Oh, right. So they're both taken care of so one's not jealous of, oh, my name not first. So I just want to clarify that. I mean, that was a worthy bone to pick because that sounds so adorable now. It is now, yeah, make you feel bad. Thank you. Graham, how are you doing?

I'm good, man. Yeah, just excited to talk actual football. There's no more, like, I don't know, thinking. about this in the ether or like hypothesizing it's uh it's finally here so i'm pumped man finally pumped to talk to fs looking forward to fridays as always and excited to talk to you darren um you're gonna be doing some really cool cool shit on the site that scott was alluding to and mostly excited to see what you do with ownership projections this year because i feel like that was one one point we were kind of weak last year so getting getting you involved and getting your brain involved with uh with dFS is

going to dfs is going to be great especially when it comes to the you know ownership and and and optimizer and all that stuff. So you've already been super instrumental in that in that regard, man. Like Scott and I are not optobros by any means. So having having your help with everything on the back end has been, has been huge. So why don't we start there? Like, why don't we start with your, with your fantasy, you know, kind of playing career and how you got started and, you know, we'll go from there. Yeah, I know the answers to these questions. So I'm excited to hear it again, though, because Darren has a really interesting and unique story. I think the goal for this podcast is really just to introduce, you know, our listeners to a recent hire,

but it's also just like, you know, sometimes you see someone with a number of hits. You're not sure if they just got lucky or they're really good, but like I am so convinced. Darren is just really, really good. And he just keeps winning on top of that. So like zero doubt in my mind. But it's also a great opportunity for listeners to understand what the grind was like to, to, to go from someone with no DFS experience to someone who now is getting a lot of buzz in DFS circles, like who the hell is this Jojo Boo Boo? And why is he dominating every single tournament

I'm entering? Yeah, so Darren, let's start off there. When did you first get into fantasy? What's the story there? All right. So I always love football. I just always loved the game. You know, sports not enjoyed watching it. And I grew up, that's like a surfer boy type. of thing. So, you know, I surfed all day, then worked in a restaurant, bus tables and stuff like that. And there was these guys who would always come around on Sundays watching the football. And they were like, oh, I need this, I need that. I was like kind of confused what was going on. And one of the guys said, yeah, this is fantasy. Should join us. So I'm pretty sure they were like mafia guys. It was like an Italian restaurant. And so they're definitely intimidating. I was like, you know, it was young

young back then so I'm like all right what the hell I'll do it was an auction league and back and the entry fee was 250 bucks I mean for me that was a crap load of money back then I'm like man but I really loved it and it was like a competitive thing I'll do it so I did the draft with them the auction draft $100 I left $37 on the table but absolutely wiped out they did like weekly if you lost by X amount of points so every Tuesday they come to the restaurant like mafia people do. They came and basically collected their, you know, the money that I owed. Hey, you owe this. So I'll get me, you have to give them 30 bucks, 40 bucks, 50 bucks a week. I'm like, this sucks. So the next year, let's put it this way, I think I spent more in magazines that I did the entry fee to get to actually get into the contest. I didn't realize it was actually magazines. I saw some guys at the draft of magazines. I think I had probably nine, nine to ten magazines I read. I read every single.

every single word, every single letter. And I played with them for the next three or four years. They kicked me out. I was doing pretty well every year. They ended up kicking me out. So that's where my fantasy, you know, kind of started. Well, you, what about DFS? From what I understand, you were a long time John Hanson listener

and routine caller into the show. Yeah. So we, I was in, we, I ran my own league after I got out of the mafia one. And then I was in another league with, with, with, with guys that was in that for years. I actually just got out of that a few years ago. Great bunch of guys. Auction league, season long. But then I was doing DFS. I'm like, man, I can do this. It just, it came almost like a grind every week, but I can play fancy like every single, you know, three times a week, Monday, Thursday, Sunday, Sunday night, well, four times. I'm like, man. Then I started getting. And then I started getting. pretty good at it. And I had a little bit of wins here, a little bit of wins there. So I just

wanted to focus my attention on that. My daughter was just getting out of school out of high school and she went off to college, go Gators. And so I had more time to dedicate to it. And then when I, see when I join I joined a couple different you know fantasy providers but then when I saw John went there and then you went there Scott to fancy points and I told a couple buddies of mine I said I'm just all in fancy points nothing else and what happens is a lot of people that outside noise come in so it was basically a hundred percent fancy points no outside noise I just basically blocked everything else out and I read every single letter that Graham, Scott, Wes, John, the whole crew that they wrote. And every letter, I mean, every single letter.

I just had the time to do it. And that's kind of where I'm at now as far as the DFS goes. I'm glad someone got some benefit from every letter because that DFS slay breakdown just like ruins my life every single week. and I know there's only like six guys who read the entire thing and don't just look for names. I think this year I'm going to calm down a little bit. Because like just writing so many words, it kind of impacts the analysis a little bit. I don't have as much time to spend then on just nailing the right plays. I also have to convince you why it's the best plays.

And I just got a ton of feedback that was like, bro, I've been following you for six years. I just trust you. Like you don't have to write so much. You don't have to sell me on it. I just, so this year I think I'm going to spend more time on really trying to hammer down the best place. Consulting with you, Wes, Graham, and just nailing those and spending, you know, shrinking word count massively. But yeah, so let's, let's, I think before we dive into what it took to get you where you are from a DFS perspective, you brought up your surfing background. I know you have a poker background too.

You want to just talk a little bit about what that point in your life is like? Yes, the surfy's always been a big part of my life and just love the ocean. I've always been in the water. I was actually competitive for about 20 years. It wasn't good enough to be a professional. But it was a good amateur one of East Coast title and things like that. Damn. You were sponsored too, right?

Yeah, I had some sponsors, some clothing sponsors, wetsuit sponsors. Well, now you're sponsor because I see that Fantasy Points logo all over D.F, a Draft King's Contest. we'll have to ship you out some more hats and sweatshirts. That's the rule, guys. If you post a screenshot of a big takedown, you get some free swag coming your way. So Darren at this point, I think he has like 10 shirts and we own like 20 more. That's really cool. What about poker?

Yeah. Is that something you were good at the start? Yeah, so basically, yeah. So my buddies took me to basically the local. It was a dog track. You know, they did dog racing. They also had poker. And the only poker that they had was one to limit poker.

One to limit. I mean, so you bet two, can raise two, raise two. You know, it was a stupid game. But I didn't know crap about it. I'm like, I knew a little bit. And I lost 50 bucks. Long story short, two years later, I ended up with 87 poker books. I fell in love with the game immediately.

Is that a little number or a figurative number? No, I had 87. I think I've probably got about 63 now. I gave some away. But no, I'm a numbers guy. So I just fell in love with the game itself, and I got pretty good at it. I was always like a numbers guy,

and I was always good at people reading and things of that sort. So it wasn't really a, I played online. I had like a small sponsorship by a lesser-known company for a little while. They did my binds, we kind of split the winning. so that was that was nice for a little while um but i yeah i was i got pretty good at it and and i stopped playing um right before covid and then i took this just basically dFS just took 100% control of of everything now and now and beyond all then so but yeah so when i i don't like losing i'm super competitive and for me i know a lot of guys who do dFS and stuff they don't even like

football, which to me is insane. I don't understand it. I mean, I love what I do. I mean, during preseason, I was doing easy, 70 hours, 80 hours, just nonstop every single day. Research, research, research. We'll get into the film stuff in a little bit. But yeah, that's kind of my mindset.

I don't like losing. I work my ass off, basically. And you only do football, right? You also dabble in college football, but it's just only football, right? No, I've done golf. I've done, you know, if I had a couple of takedowns, one like 22 grand a couple years ago in golf, and then I took an earlier one, like 4 grand in the mini-max, which I'm mad about because it would have won the 5, but it just wasn't in the right line.

That would have been for 50K. But I've done pretty well in golf. I've made money in golf, but it's been, this year's been pretty tilting to say the least. Yeah, you said, you said, you said it's weird that there's some DFS players who are really good at NFL DFS but like don't really love the game. And that makes me think of like a legendary story I heard. I don't know how true it is, but beep on the Jeep like an all-time legendary human being.

A phenomenal competitive board game player. I think he like goes to this competitive board game tournament where you play like eight different board games and whoever is the most points at the end wins and he's won it a few times. And so in the early day, days of DFS, this guy supposedly didn't even know what a cornerback was, like never watched a game of football. And he dominated. He won, I don't know, like five millimakers, three live tournaments,

and that might be understating it. And what he did was he was just a pro when it came to game theory. He just understood how to play the game and he took projections from all the different sites and He aggregated it. Remember, competition was a lot softer back in the day. And I had a conversation with him at one point early on where he kind of outlined his strategy, which was he was extremely contrarian. He said that's where all the upside was for your lineup. Don't think about what is a good case scenario.

Think about the best case scenario, really lean into dubstacks. hardcore fade the chalk whenever it presents itself, but not only fade it, but like intentionally run counter to that. So if the chalk is an early down workhorse, expensive running back, play the opposite teams running back or wide receiver, assuming that the other team puts up a lot of points,

they play from behind, and they don't get enough carries and red zone carries to really hit value. So it's interesting to me that you have a pokerback, I feel like typically for a lot of these DFS superstars, you come from a poker background. And I don't really have that. I mean, like, I always cleaned up at, like, my friends tournament league that or poker league that ran like every other week.

But I just never, like, read a book. I never fell in love with it. I never went any farther. The one thing I had, as embarrassing as this is to admit, was one summer in high school. I grinded an online Pokemon game and I finished like first out of like I held the number one seat

out of like 600,000 people for a couple weeks and then I got a girlfriend and I never looked at it again because you know granted and if not that then it's just like I've just always loved fantasy football always anything fantasy really my cousin you can turn anything

into fantasy. I don't know if you guys knew that. My cousin and my former roommate used to play fantasy math class where at the start of each semester, they drafted a different kid from the class in like a snake style draft. And it was three, him and two other people. And you get points every time the teacher calls on you or you raise your hand and you get a question right. And now me and my girlfriend are playing a fantasy master chef junior where we draft all the kids so anyway yeah yeah different different backgrounds i think is is really interesting but um i guess what the people really want to know is so like where did this dFS journey start how easy was it for you to to get where you are i know you said you read every single word but did you pick up uh did the game theory asked for you

take a while to come to you? Like, I know you're an MME guy. Like, how long did it take you to learn how to play MME? Well, actually, Johnny takes credit for that for sure. I mean, he just does. I mean, he, just the way he thinks about things and things he shared on the stream. You know, I wrote stuff down. You know, that's it.

They're listening. I love this into different things. You told me he watched every single caching points live stream. Didn't miss one. No, I didn't miss one. No, I didn't miss one. know why would i why would you miss that that doesn't make any sense why would why would you miss that that's so silly i mean that anyway anyway so johnny really got me let me going and then like the first few weeks

it was and i was doing the right thing and i know i wasn't doing things that other people are doing then i had the big hit you know the one the the the minibax thing for 15k and then i just went on and then what happened is it was so much data and you guys had so much data after that week five it was just like everything to started clicking because we didn't didn't have that much data the first few weeks. But then when we had that data in there, it's just, to me, it was just like so much easier to build, you know, to go after that. So I don't want you to let me tell your story for you, but I just know that you were so

intent. You, like, had the perfect mindset. And I wrote this up in the intro of 96 stats last year, like how mindset is literally unironically everything. Russell Wilson has a professional mindset coach. you ask Tom Brady why he's the goat. He doesn't say it's because he has the strongest arm. He doesn't. Or he's the smartest. Peyton Manning probably is. He says his mindset. And so I know your story, just because I lived it alongside of you, you were so intent. Like, I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this extremely well. And it took some time to, you know, iron out the kings, but you worked so insanely hard. And then you got that first thing. What was that first thing? What was that first? first bank play. It was more like, it's, I don't know, it, it was more like, and this, money's great.

Yes, of course. Of course, it's, you know, this is about winning. It was just like putting in that hard work paid off. You know, so like when I, just going back, like, I just knew I was going to win that East Coast title, you know, back in the early 2000s. You know, I knew I was going to win it. You know, it's just like something that I was just so determining and work my, work my ass off.

And the same with the DFS, just the amount of hours. that I put in, the work that I put in, you know, I'm not clicking buttons, guys. You know, a lot of people think, oh, you're going to go into a few lines up to you're clicking buttons and anybody can do it. Oh, bullshit. No, it doesn't work like that. I work my ass off correlations in which I'm using a lot more this year. And just having, just looking at game theory, reading you guys stuff and then, you know,

just making, you know, making everything come together and having, you know, having lineups have upside. and just get rid of, you know, the players that don't have upside. I mean, it comes down to that. You want upside players. Yeah. So I have two follow-ups, one on the upside, but the first one is something you said about, you know, week five last year, kind of started clicking because we have all this data and we're starting to understand the teams better. For this year, weeks one through four, you know, what's kind of like your process going to look like for them? because, you know, we've got a lot of player movement.

Even in the Rams-Bills game, and we've got, you know, between Alan Robinson and Gabe Davis coming in a new role, Isaiah McKenzie coming in a new role, what's kind of like your week one through four process look like for a lot of these situations where we don't have data for, like, how are you adjusting for that? So preseason, I beyond beyond beyond, beyond credit. So I've already got a pretty good take of, you know, with following. And I'll share this real quick. I actually made a second Twitter account. No need trying to follow me or anything. I made a second Twitter account where I only followed B-Riders and teams. I think it ended up being 328.

So I'd just go through every single one. And so I had a pretty good sense of what's what. And then, Graham, you help me out. You know, he said the best one around was like R-Lads to see the depth charts. So I've been looking at depth charts already. But as far as this year, one thing I know I'll be doing that the field won't be doing as much as paying up for quarterbacks. okay i'm playing i'm paying up for quarterbacks i'm not screwing around with trade lance early and i don't mind fields just for an example for week one i don't mind fields running running quarterback

um derrick car also not not too expensive for another one not no no issues with car and high total things of that sort but i'll be paying i'll be paying up for that i'm going to be using more wide receivers in the flex position this year because the bell cows there's not many and pass-catching league, throwing more, more pass-catching backs and things of that sort. So using more Y-receivers and the flex, paying up a quarterbacks, that's going to be a lot more different this year. We won't be using running backs as much. Now it'll be Slate-dependent. Obviously, you know, when one of the major guys goes down and we got two basically min-price 4K running backs,

obviously that's going to change things. But as of right now, I'm looking for that upside. You know, Y-receivers have higher upside than the running back. generally. So that's my mindset right now. Yeah. No, I think that makes a lot of sense, especially given the way week one set up, right? I mean, you know, salaries came out three weeks ago. There's going to be a lot of quarterback plays to your point that are, you know, fields is like QB 15 by price. Lance is QB10, QB11. Those guys are going to be chalk. So I think that makes a ton of sense to kind of just do the complete opposite in terms of just structural build. But on the upside

bit, like Scott's written a bunch about this. You know, I've talked about this a bunch, especially when it comes to best ball is just like just stop playing for floor and only shoot for upside. I know that's like the easiest thing to say in the world, but it's much, much harder to do in practice. So let me ask, what do you do to put that kind of like forget floor only play for upside mentality? How do you put that into play when you're making your DFS lineups? I'll go look at like people look at how many routes they ran.

I'll go look at seeing how many paths they were in. I'll look at both. People just, oh, he ran 45 routes. Okay, but how many was he in in passing downs? That little bit of edge is something, you know, something as simple as that. Look at pass. You know, you can find that data out there. Looking forward to the data we're going to be getting soon.

But yeah, so that would be, you know, something a little bit different as far as that goes. Don't just look at routes run and just slot run. And, you know, like preseason was massive, like looking for tight ends, which ones were. coming in just for blockers and which ones are running pass routes. So that helped a lot too. Yeah. And you also watched what, 20 hours of film on like practice squad caliber players? Yeah, you want to get into that?

Yeah, why not? So I'll let you tell a story. So I basically, I'll tell, I'll just, so base, so. So I'm looking at these depth charts. I'm learning about these backup players, right? So I decided to start watching be a, uh, a film guy. So I went to YouTube. I searched a player name, and I wouldn't just look at highlights,

because highlights are just highlights. It's going to show those just your best place. Go to the game and see how they did play by play. And how they do, you know, just on a general game script, apart from just the highlight, you know, long runs and things of that sort. So, and I really enjoy, I actually really enjoyed it. And Noah is a player that I sent to Scott, and it was week one, and I got third.

I missed 50K by two points. I got one, 10,000. No, I think I won like 11,000. But, you know, I missed it by two points. But I sent Scott, I said, watch out for this guy, week one. And go ahead, Scott, and tell the rest of the story. Yeah. So according to Darren, he watched like, I don't know, 15 hours of film on all the practice squad.

Stupid enough. And he was like, this guy Gary Brightwell really pops off on the tape. I remember listening to Greg Cassell on John's show like eight years ago. saying when you watch running backs, watch them from the waist down. That really tells you everything you need to know about who they are as a runner. And so he was on Gary Brightwell. And then lo and behold, Gary Brightwell was the highest rated running back in week one of the preseason, according to PFF.

Just thought that was a great story. Darren, what are, what's some good advice you might have for new players or historically unprofitable players? What are, what are some of the key lessons that you've specifically learned, or you credit your success to? To help out the new players, which I've always been a helper. So looking forward to help guys in the, in the subs. Anybody ask me a question in chat. I'll answer it. I don't really enjoy that. So don't get cute. What else are going to be doing this year is, yeah, if you're a fantasy points DFS subscriber, make sure you're in Discord. Darren lives in Discord. He will answer any question.

that you might have. He's so happy, happy to help and he gives out great advice. Keep it simple. Just use the kiss method. You know, read the articles, go to the value report. Don't get cute. That's why I would say. Don't get cute. You know, don't try and get, it's okay to be contrarian, but don't put four, three percent, you know, you'll have the ownership. We're going to, I'm forecast when I have some really good ownership this year. Look at the ownership. don't put four, two percent guys in the lineup. Just don't do it. I mean, that's just, unless you're, you know, playing the middle of year,

you just try and play a little bit more safe cash type games and smaller entries when you first start out. You know, even if it's just 20, you know, a 20-20 team league, you know, just don't, there's no reason to get cute. Build up your bank all over the first few weeks. Hans and Sky. grams, West Huber's, just read everything. And then it's nice when you look at the projections,

you can actually sort them by value. And that was huge last year to see who's mispriced. So that doesn't mean that you, and I've made this mistake in the past, that doesn't mean you put the six mispriced players all in one lineup. Doesn't mean that. You know, put two, three, or four in there. And then just kind of mix with that. And then after weeks five or six,

I mean, these guys are the data guys, you know, Graham and Scott and West and everybody else, John, they'll put that together and that's where the edge is going to come. So don't blow your bank roll and get down on yourself the first few weeks. Slowly build yourself up, get a little bit of confidence, make a couple bucks. Doesn't, you know, even if you're spending 20 bucks, you know, try and double it up, do some double ups. You don't make it 40, get to 80. Then maybe by the mid-year, you can get up to 3 or 400. then you can maybe spend, you know, $60, $70, then maybe you can get into the mini-max, $150, you know.

So just work yourself up. That's my best advice. Yeah. I mean, I think what you just touched on there is not talked about enough nearly in the DFS space, and that's contest selection, especially for new players. And you're absolutely right. I mean, when Draft Kings comes on my TV screen and I'm watching ESPN at night

and they've got an ad where you can turn $20 million into $2 million and whatever for week one, like your odds of that are like 0.001%, especially as a new player. I mean, you just have such a lot. So I think you're absolutely right. I mean, if you're a new player this year, step into the DFS streets, like make your life easy. Like play some single entry stuff first, play double ups like Darren was mentioning.

And then, you know, maybe try your hand later, you know, later in the year. And listen to the guys and, you know, listen to people in there. There's so many people to help. Ask questions. There's no stupid questions. Even if, you know, that's new, we've been there. So don't be afraid to ask some, you know, certain questions. And once you know it, you kind of know it.

So, Darren, what would, what's your weekly process going to look like this season? And you can include in that all of your content demands. Holy moly. Man, it's been, well, I've been building. I just finished. I think I'm done with Thursday. Finally, I finished it this morning. I can't wait.

But so Monday is wait for the pricing to come out. And Vegas, look at Vegas, see what Vegas, you know, sometimes Vegas takes a day, injuries, things of that sort. Look at the high totals. And then I'll start looking at the totals and then I'll be looking at the quarterbacks who I'm going to be, you know, stacking. And I'll eliminate 15 quarterbacks immediately at this will. Just based on Vegas, based on the team, yada, yada.

So that kind of gets it out of the way. Look at injuries. Eliminate those guys immediately. Guys are questionable. Things of that. I'll kind of keep on the back burner. Then I'll start building, you know, like a dummy, so to speak, all my rules because I use a lot of those.

I use, I do a lot of things with rules and things of that sort. And then listen to the show on Tuesday, read articles on Wednesday, listen to the shows on Thursday, watch, you know, football on Thursday night, obviously. then look at the ownerships and I'll be messing with the ownership. I think our ownership is going to be coming out on Thursdays. So I'll go in there. They'll come out, then I'll go in there and start adjusting them.

And then I'll probably adjust them Friday afternoon, depending on they come out on Thursday. And then after injury reports on Friday, usually not much having Saturday. Then, you know, after injury report on Sunday, I'll update them again. And Friday, obviously, cashing points. I don't miss cashing points. If I do miss it, I'll watch it later that night.

I'm not around. But that's basically my weekly process and read every single thing that's out there. And I've said this earlier, be careful with outside noise. I mean, you guys who are, you know, subbing the fancy points, man, I told, I was talking that I was having a little thing with John Hanson talking to John. It's just crazy to me because I used to call into John Hansen's show when I was younger, asking them questions to surreal and working with you guys. I just said, man, I've joined the Beatles.

You know, be careful you let so much noise in. There's other sites and things of that sort. Stick to the guys and stick. Don't let too much noise, outside noise come in. I've just done that in the past and then you get fluttered. Well, so-and-so said this and did it-da-da-da-da. No, don't do it. Stick to a good process and, you know, let the cards fall with me.

That is, you're speaking to the question. wire here because I mean at the end of the day Twitter is like 90% noise these days and I think you're doing it absolutely right where it's like okay I'm just going to take a look at like maybe five or six of the analysts that I like and trust plus like all of you writers and just formulate my own opinions I mean I think that's that's the way to leverage Twitter these days but I want to ask you something a little more specific about your process so you and I kind of have a similar approach it sounds like where it's like very top down where you start with like okay these are the 15 teams based on totals based on matchup based on whatever that I feel really good about this particular week, and I'm just going to cut out another 15. For the 15 quarterbacks you say you cut out or 15 teams, however you want to look at it, what does that process look like of the teams that you're trying to cut down?

Like, what exactly are you trying to avoid with those teams that you're cutting down from a player pool? Running teams, slow teams, no pace, Belichick teams, basically. That means that's that simple, really. I don't mind the judges this year. a little bit of a little bit more firepower. And plus, another thing I look at, I mean, I just love looking at teams.

And I think this is underrated and it's not probably not much talked about. When you're looking at quarterback's A, B, and C, and you're like, you're like, oh, man, I don't know which one. Who's got the worst defense? They're going to throw more. Period. It's that simple. It's not rocket science, guys. It's not.

I mean, if, and I talked to Scott, one of my, and he didn't know because I didn't read his, thing yet before it went out. I love DAC this year. I really like DAC this year. Their defense is terrible. He's, you know, year off the injury. I think he's going to run a little bit more. And they're going to be going to have to be thrown in my opinion. So if I was like looking at him between Dak and Murray's over him, I'm just trying to give him. I can't give a good example right now. Him or Carr, let's say him or Derek Carr. Now, Raiders defense isn't good either. But, you know, sometimes I'll take a little bit more rushing upside with DAC, even though Carr's got better weapons. So it's close.

Yeah. Now, that makes sense. How do you square away with a team like the Packers that play extremely slow, but obviously, you know, Rogers is, you know, back-to-back MVP? Like with teams like that, I mean, I guess more just moreover just kind of tricky teams, is it just one of those things where it's like, okay, based on this spot, they might have to play a little faster? approach certain teams like that? Well, I'm not, I won't be using Rogers as much at all this year, but I will be using a hell of of it, Aaron Jones. He stacks really well, week one with my boy, J. Jeff.

But, you know, so I'm looking at the change in philosophy and then looking at, you know, how they're approaching it, what the coaching tendencies have been also, as far as that goes. I don't think, I think Rogers is going to struggle with his receivers. I think you're going to see him super frustrated this year with some of the younger guys. I've got such a young group or receivers around him. I don't know how well he's going to do for fantasy this year. I really don't. They do have a good defense.

So I think they're going to try and run it a little bit more with Dylan and Jones and Jones casting passes. So Blizzard is basically the only person I would touch him and Aaron Jones on that team. Yeah, I like the Aaron Jones. Jones call. I released an article last week. I forget what it was titled, like DFS cheat sheet or something. I'll tweet it out again in an hour or so. And that's mandatory reading. If you're going to be playing tournaments, make sure you read this article. But I talk about these power law players. You know, I'm the upside wins championships guy for redraft. But that's also true for DFS. Like if you played Jamar Chase in week 17 last year, it was impossible not to catch. It was just like, he had that insane ceiling, he should never be below, I don't know, 7.5% owned, and you can make the same exact case for Aaron Jones. Over the last three seasons, he's exceeded 40 fantasy points in 8.9% of his games. That was far and away most of any player above CMC, above Adams,

above Jamar Chase. So you really want to be looking at guys like that, and especially on weeks they're under-owned. That's one article you should read. I asked you what your content demands are going to look like this season, Darren. Some other things to be on the lookout for my DFS recap show with JM to win. That's now going to be a live stream on Tuesday afternoon. There's the Friday Caching Point show. Darren has never missed an episode.

Don't miss an episode. You're going to be doing a Saturday show. I'm going to be joining you at least some of those. weeks where you're going to be breaking down the optimizer, how to use it, how to use it optimally, some things you're thinking of for any given weeks, stacks you like, and how to pair up those stacks within our optimizer, because by the way, I hate when we're not the best at anything. And we spent a lot of money and a lot of time this offseason trying to make this optimizer amazing. Maybe it's not the best, but it's really damn close and it's far and away the best.

bang for your buck optimizer. It is going to be awesome. So cool, so powerful. So make sure you're checking that out. Graham and I are going to do the Sunday morning update, as we always do. But John Proctor is going to have his own Sunday morning show. And he's going to be around in Discord Sunday mornings. We might lose him at some point for the caching point stream.

If that's the case, we're going to replace him with either Elliot Christ or Darren. Jake Tribby is going to be doing his values article, looking at my DFS supermodel plus our projections, what he just thinks, and I'm going to help a lot with that as I've done, are the best value plays for the given week. He's also going to be doing a research article in the middle of the week, looking at things like Vegas lines. But also, we're rolling out a data package

that may or may not be free, but it is one of the coolest things you'll ever see. Like, listen, you know my background. You know I came from PFF. And again, I don't want to do something unless we're the best of it. I think there's a legitimate chance. We can be the best at it. It might be a week four rollout. I don't know.

But we're going to have access to some of the sickest, dankest, most predictive stats in the game. And that's going to go into that. It's going to go into a lot of my content. Darren. And of course, Wes's content, is there anything there that you're going to say is don't miss alongside the caching point stream? Yeah, one thing. So a lot of people get scared when I hear the word optimizer. Now, I've used several, okay?

This one I wish was around when I first started playing. It is so user-friendly. it's almost like a five-year-old could do it. I mean, some of these optimizers, you know, can be very, very intimidating. This is so simple and it, you know, it's not too complicated. You know, you just, you can make just these general rules. You know, we've got Hansen's and, you know,

you guys input with the projections who, you know, they're just going to be the best around here. They just are. Hansen's proven record with his projections are second to none. but the optimizer itself is so user-friendly, you know, you want to make 20 lines. You want to start out doing some of the smaller ones. Listen, the dollar 20 max, I think first place is 25,000. You know, I still get to beat a lot of players, but I'm just saying, you know, spend 20 bucks.

And the optimizer, you know, as far as the price goes, is going to beat pretty much everybody out there by a ton as far as the cost goes. So I would definitely check that part out. Anything you want to say about the DFS cheat sheet article I was talking about? Yeah, so the cheat sheet is nice. You know, you don't have that much time to look at things of that sort. You know, it's just kind of quick, easy, you know, let's say, you know, you had a thing with the wife and the in-laws and you couldn't really see it. You know, use the cheat sheet.

Go in there and it's easy. Just go in there and look. And you can build a team pretty, you know, pretty straightforward and pretty quick. as far as that goes if you want a little bit of action for the game. So I know you already looked at that and you came up with a few week one takeaways. Do you want to give the listeners some, I don't know, any players you're particularly excited to play in week one? Okay. So I don't mind.

I'm sharing this. Basically what I did was, I went overboard. What I did was I took some of the wide receiver cornerback matchups. I took Barrett's DFS article based on GPPs and how many you know what's like based on the totals and things of that sort

I looked at those and you know who correlated and then read Wes Huber's article based on the coverages and I see basically who popped in all three and Pittman and Chase this week they'll be probably be my two highest guys And yes, they're going to be popular, but they just popped off the screen. You can't not play Pittman in week one.

I know that. I know. You can not win a week one. Well, I'm super curious. So I'm wondering if people are going to play Pittman and Taylor in the same line. I don't think that's good. So I'm just kind of curious if people want to play Taylor, but they want to play Pitman too. In Cash, I can see it, I guess.

But in GPPs, I won't be playing those two in the same line. But those two just as far as that goes. And, yeah, that's the two. And I'll share one more. I mean, I'm looking, I've been going back and forth. I've been on this guy all summer. It's 2-2-at-well Thursday night is my sleeper call. Oh, boy.

Oh, that's why you're hitting up about the Rams' third receiver situation. I think you're right. I think he will be their third or four. I have been on this dude freaking last last year coming out of the draft, second round pick. And they didn't use them at all. They didn't not one snap. and everybody's going to be playing Lance McCutcheen because he was a shiny tooth toy, but why did the coach play him all four quarters, three games in a row?

I mean, he doesn't give the shit, you know what I mean? He doesn't even care. It's that they saved Tutu. They didn't use him. They're worried about Van, in my opinion. And, you know, 155, a little speedback, little slot guy. Hey, this is my call for Thursday, and I'll be way over the field for show now. That's a fact.

But we'll see. We'll see. He might not get a target now. But anyway. No, it makes sense. I mean, McVeigh's always won. I think in the preseason, he's very consistent. Like, he always protects his guys.

And you're right, you protect the Tutu. So hopefully we'll get some two-two stacks for him Thursday, mine, man. We should get the season start. All right, Graham, anything else? No, man, this is great. Darren, are you in Florida? Are you a Florida guy? I am.

What part? Daytona Beach area. Okay. Yeah. Did you, when you were talking about Greyhound racing, were you going up to the old Best Betts there in Jacksonville? No, I've been there. I've actually played in the live stream there. They have a cash game that they do. Yeah. And funny off, right before the season, I went actually, I went up to go, about two months ago. I was booked to go on the show to go through the Best Bed Live. I got COVID. So I didn't go. So obviously. But no, Jacksonville is about hour and 40 minutes north of me.

And they actually just opened up a brand new one. I haven't been to it because DFS is my life until. after the Super Bowl. They open one up in St. Augustine. Yeah. St. Augustine's a gorgeous area. So you guys got girlfriend, wives, and things that sort. You know, you want to, you know, hey, honey, just go to St. Augustine and then, you know, go play poker why she shops.

Yeah, no, no, definitely. I grew up in Jacksonville. It's been a lot of time in, like the Pontevado, St. Augustine, Jackson Beach area. So you said that. I was like, damn, I wonder if he was up in Jacks. But, yeah, my buddy was actually down at the new place you were talking about St. August. A couple months ago.

send me some pictures it's real nice so yeah hopefully fingers crossed me in florida gets legal gambling in the next uh two years we'll see we'll see i tried to get it done last year but it fell through but we'll see um daren this was awesome then thank you for your time no this was great like i said i told john i told you guys i've joined the beatles it's an honor to work with side by side but you know with you guys and you know i hope i help you know help help help the users out people are in the subs and things of that or any questions. Yeah, I won't answer any questions on Twitter, only in the Discord. So, you know, if you want to get into the Discord chat, you can use my name, Darren, D-A-R-R-E-N-22,

discount code to get a little bit off fancy points. Well, if we're the Beatles, I'm McCartney. Scott, I'm going to go with your linen because you're the goat. And Darren, you're George Harrison, the, the, uh, you're George Harrison. the underrated, unsung hero of the band who has some of the best guitar licks and some of the best solo songs of all time after leaving the Beatles. We won't let you leave the Beatles, but, well, man, thank you for the time. Welcome to Fantasy Points Radio. We bring to you Barfield.

All of these, all of these parents, they hell of and bears. Like, why did they air it with all of these errors and Bobfit and Barrett, you cannot compare with the kings of this ever. There should be a tariff on. Now that I fall out regardless and straight to the point like a crow. Popping in commoners losing my oxygen takes that they got made me go. Whoa. So what's the swamp rat got to do? I'm chasing all of this cheese even if my competition grew.

Looses to the mean your boy is never regressing. Offseason through the season, three six five, two four seven and there's one for the money, two bars on the show. Show the boys stay ready. Swamp rats.