Fantasy Football Daily - Your Fantasy Football Draft Is COOKED If You Make These 5 Mistakes (2026)

Episode Date: September 2, 2026

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Ladies and gentlemen, you are watching or listening to Fantasy Football Daily with Brett Whitefield and Scott Barrett, except Brett is not here today. He is on vacation. What a slacker. Instead, I am joined by the Golden Boy, the apprentice who's become a master. I'm here with Ryan Heath. Ryan, today we are talking about the biggest mistakes people make in their draft. This is a great show for newbies, but this is also a great show for veterans. Talking about the biggest mistakes people make in their draft.

Ryan, how are you doing today? I'm doing great. It's the beginning of September. The calendar just rolled over. I can feel it in my body. The season is coming. I'm excited. I'm nervous.

I just can't wait to get into week one of the NFL season. We're right there. I can feel it. Let's do this. Yeah. So on yesterday's episode, I talked about how it's, it reminds me of being like a sixth century farmer preparing for the winter and like hoarding all of your grains and being like, there's a real chance I just don't survive, you know? So I got to make sure everything's perfect here in late August. It's a little bit like that. It's a little bit like 25th hour, but like, but like a happy feel like you're excited to go to prison. But yeah, I mean, just,

It can't wait for kickoff, but always this time of the year is stressful. We're trying to launch Data Suite 2.0, which is the sickest thing in the world. But let's talk about our topic for today. The biggest mistakes people make in their draft, I put this number one, Ryan. I put this number one. It's number one is know your scoring settings and how to exploit them. That's two things. in one, you have to know the scoring settings.

Is it PPR? Is it 10 team? Is it 18? In an 8 team league, I love Josh Allen. I love drafting of Brock Bowers. In a 12-team league, I want no part of Josh Allen. If it's a six-point per passing touchdown league, I love Dak Prescott. In a 4-point, I want a quarterback who runs.

And so, like, this is really important. And you've got to be careful of these. Snake like commissioners out here. I have a story, Ryan. So maybe like five years ago. My girlfriend at the time, you know, worked for an oil and gas company. And it was like a bunch of refiner's.

And then the commissioner was an engineer like she was. And so we all go to the person's house. It's a bunch of guys drafting off of magazine. and printouts who like don't know anything clearly but the commissioner knew who I was the commissioner knew about fantasy points the commissioner is a guy who does many ffPC teams every year clearly the guy's a sharp surrounded by fish and so the first thing I do again this is number one on our list know the scoring settings know how to exploit them is like hey so this is just like a typical 10 team league right this is PPR and he's like

Well, yeah, it's PPR and some other stuff. But what's the other stuff? It's like, well, it's 0.25 fantasy points per carry. It's tight end premium. And it's super flex. And so like all these guys drafting off their magazines are just like, and like my girlfriend at the time is like, uh-oh, like, are we in trouble? You know, I printed out my rankings already, whatever.

I'm like, no, this is perfect. This is awesome. The more your unique your league is, the easier it is to exploit. It's just there's nuance here, like drafting off of my own draft guide. It gets a little bit trickier. I encourage you to DM me or DM Ryan. We'll help you through it. We'll walk you out.

It's like in a standard league for the first three rounds. Maybe don't draft off of my rankings. Just draft off of our standard running back projections and just go three running backs in a row. But anyway, yeah, in this league, I drafted, you know, obviously jacked Lamar Jackson way up my board. I think this was the year Jalen Hertz was an exodus. So we took him to. So where that extra 0.25 fantasy points per carry goes a long way. We got Derek Henry where he's boosted in that format.

We got some great tight ends. And of course, we dominated that league. And so, yeah, this was my number one. How do you feel about this, Ryan? Any comments on this? Incredibly important to know your scoring settings, as you're saying. Also, your lineup settings, your bench spaces, do you have IR spots? I'm way more into drafting certain guys like Jordan Tyson in leagues where you have an IR spot. That makes a massive difference.

As does bench size, as does lineup size. The more wide receiver spots you have or the more flexes you have, the more you might need to worry about maybe not typical upside wounds championships types, but just guys that you know you can plug into a lineup. Your Michael Pittman's of the world are guys that you should think about in these deeper leagues. Yeah, it can be very different the strategy that you should enter with depending on your scoring settings. The only other thing I would say to this is every example you just gave does really matter a lot in terms of how you would approach a draft in the order you would rank or draft players in.

One thing that doesn't matter that much to me that I think people overthink like on the other side of this is PPR versus half PPR. In terms of ordering running backs within the position differently in PPR versus half PPR ordering wide receivers differently within the position for PPR versus half PPR. There are not very many players where every single year you can go back and look in hindsight, how big of a change was it in terms of was this guy the wide receiver 18 in PPR? Maybe he was like the wide receiver 17 and half BPR. It's usually one to two spots.

It's very rare that that actually matters within a position for a player's archetype. And I do see people ask about that and overthink about that quite a bit. So that was my only other kind of addendum on to that. But overall, yeah, you absolutely have to know all of your league. settings and that's the first thing that I review every time I get into a draft. I play in all sorts of different crazy types of leagues. I always double check the scoring settings before I even enter the draft room as I load up. Yeah, as I load up Sleeper or FFPC or whatever it is.

Yeah, yeah. Another one too is Keeper League. That's, you know, Casey Concepcion is a great pick in most leagues in a keeper. He's, he's probably in Exodia. IR spots, like you said, you know, that's a different way to game it. Another one, too, a sneaky slept on one, Ryan, is how many teams make the playoffs in your league, right? So if it's six out of 12 instead of four to 12, you need to lean all the more into upside.

It's really about just sweeping through your fantasy playoffs and winning those three or four matchups in a row as opposed to making the playoffs. Making the playoffs is kind of easy. Winning your league is really difficult. You mentioned leagues that go from two wide receiver to three wide receiver or one QB to Superflex. That has to do with positional scarcity. We're going to get to that later on in this episode.

And I want to move to the second one. But dude, what a dirtbag that commissioner was. He just thought he, you know, just a nice little $100 investment that's going to come back to him as 1K in January. felt so good kicking that guy's butt in the fantasy championship that year. Number two on the list is near and dear to my heart, Ryan Heath. It's not knowing upside wins championships. For those who don't know, this is my self-proclaimed magnum opus.

It's not a long article. It's not a particularly brilliant article. It was just at this time. It's more novel than it is today. it was guys, upside is literally all that matters. Like especially after round five, it's literally you need to be swinging for the fences with every single pick you make. I did a Reddit AMA yesterday, Ryan, and one of the moderators asked me to explain upside wins championship in as few words as possible. And so here's what I said.

I said the most likely outcome or median projection is, isn't as important as the bull case and the bear case almost doesn't matter at all. Or upside is more valuable than downside is detrimental. Why is this? You have the floor, the safety net of the waiver wire to fall back on. And then it's also the power law effect. Fantasy football is a game ruled by power law players. Basically, you don't win by being a little bit good everywhere.

You win by having the right one to two. amazing players. You can read this article. It's free to read. It's in the YouTube description. But one thing I noticed, Ryan, is you have an uncanny knack for taking my thoughts and saying it better than I could. So what are your thoughts on this? Number two, not knowing upside wins championships. Would you frame that any better than I did? you framed it pretty well i might frame it a little differently just from the perspective of understanding the range of outcomes of every draft pick that you make so especially when we get as you said past round five or kind of what whatever spot in the draft that you want to pick

to make this point most of the draft picks that are being made in your league past round five round six and beyond most of them will not matter much at all all. Most of them will end up as 10 to 12 point per game players that are all kind of the same as each other. This is especially true like at the wide receiver position, which is incredibly deep every single year with those types of guys, 8 to 12 points per game. Running backs are a little different, but a lot of them will just kind of get mired down into these committees where there's not all that much fantasy value on any end of it. There are just all. lot more ways for a player to fail or for a player to not matter or for a player to be mediocre over a full season

than there are for a player to really matter to separate themselves from the pack there as you look back on your draft if you look back at the end of the year in hindsight there are always going to be a handful of picks maybe five or six of them at most after the first few rounds where you're like yeah, that was where that guy won the league. It was a handful of these picks. And so you might as well set yourself up beforehand by thinking entirely about how high can this player get, how well can he hit what has to happen, how likely is it for him to hit an upside outcome. That's just the primary question that I'm asking myself when I'm ranking players, when I'm choosing which players to write up in my draft guide, that's the overwhelming thought behind most of my analysis is

how likely is the massive upside outcome and how impactful is it for each of these players. So for a running back that could win a larger role, for example, that could be really big. For a wide receiver that has been in the league for eight years and he's finished between the wide receiver 30 and the wide receiver 20 every single year very unlikely that that guy is going to matter my rankings will probably be wrong there are probably a lot of players that i have ranked that will not finish anywhere near where i have them ranked or they will finish behind players that i have ranked below them but that's okay as long as the guys that i've buried aren't the ones that kill you aren't the ones that have the massive upside outcome that you missed out on that's

What I'm optimizing for in my analysis in my rankings is rank the, rank the guys high that could be the handful of difference makers. It is not at all be trying to rank the guys that will finish one fantasy point per game ahead of the guy behind them. That's just not how I approach it. So yeah, really, I would just kind of relate this to look at our content. Follow our draft guide. Follow our rankings. Scott and I are thinking about this constantly. it really is all that matters in fantasy football.

So yeah, go check out all of our content at FantasyPoints.com and subscribe. Yeah, I just pulled up the stat from from Kyle's Anatomy, the league winning running back article. In 2023, McAfree was landed on a championship round roster in 60% of ESPN leagues. That's really the power law effect. It felt impossible to win without him. it felt impossible to lose with him, and he's done that many times throughout his career. Whereas, like, the low-end RB-2s are basically worthless. The low-end tight-end ones are basically worthless.

Why? Because the replacement player on waivers is, like, yeah, 1.1 fantasy points per game behind that. But P. Christian McCaffrey will average, like, seven fantasy points per game more than the RB5 in any given season. But, like, what you really just was talked to is something that I, You see all across the industry is a lot of these people I talk to and respect and like, you know, you hear them talk and it's like, it's clear that they're ranking these players based on the most likely outcome. And they just kind of don't get this argument where it was like something that just came like

from the start 10, 12 years ago intuitively to me. And I think it's like how you hear investors like contrarian investors like Seth Clarmine and Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, talk about how it's like, it's almost like a genetic trait, you know, it's just like some people cannot cannot comprehend it this way. I don't know why. But it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's, the most likely outcome doesn't always matter. Like we were talking around Ronde Gadsden like two months ago and I know this isn't the best example today, but it's like, okay, the most likely outcome is this is like a super gross three-way committee, but there's like a 15% chance, you know,

he smashes in the Jonu role. He was this great, productive borderline wide receiver in college. And so, like, that upside scenario is so valuable, even though it's only 15% odds. And this is a player I like taking that chance on. Or maybe, like, another good one is Josh Downs. He's like, I see legitimate high-end wide receiver two upside for him. And Brett Whitefield just keeps poking holes. in that and i just keep having to tell him like it doesn't matter it's it's priced in it's like you

look at the range where he goes in drafts and the expectation is this guy is not going to be on your playoff roster 97% of the time not an ffpc league but like ESPN he goes crazy late he's not going to be all these players in this round like none of them are going to be on these teams uh rosters and playoff time. And so that's the expectation. So then it's like all that matters, yeah, that's exactly right, is the upside. And the fact that he has so much more upside than these guys going around him in drafts, I think makes him, makes him a great pick. But I'm a more cogent writer than I am a speaker.

So maybe check out that article for a more persuasive argument. next one on their list, Ryan, is, I couldn't figure out the best way to say this, but it's drafting quarterbacks too early. That's like the biggest rookie mistake is, you know, people draft a quarterback in round two in their league. And the experts and pros really say, no, no, no, no, you want to be waiting at the position. You really want to be pushing that. You want to be one of the last teams to take a quarterback, taking tight ends too early.

or feeling pressured to fill out your starting lineup. Be, we don't do that. Ryan Heath and I don't do that. We draft bench running backs and wide receivers before we ever take a quarterback. And like this is also tied into the fact that power law players, league winners, are generally running backs and wide receivers.

This also ties into the notion of positional scarcity. How would you frame this, Ryan? How would you, would immediately spring to mind when hearing this topic? It really is as simple to me as the vast majority of players that are league winners, however you want to measure that, whether you do what I did in my article, Anatomy of a league winner, just looking at players that got on to playoff rosters in over 55% of leagues, if you want to measure it that way, if you want to measure it by a championship rate, any of these outcome-based

metrics for how much did these players really matter in fantasy football this year. They are all pretty much just going to show you that the vast majority of guys that matter that are making all these playoff and championship teams are running backs and wide receivers. The minority of them pretty clearly are quarterbacks and tight ends. And if you beyond that, just the raw number of running backs and wide receivers that matter being higher. If you zoom in on the early rounds versus on the late rounds, the overall trend is it's easier to find the quarter, or just as easy to find the quarterbacks and tight ends that matter late in your draft than it is to find them earlier. As in, you can pretty much only find

really good running backs and wide receivers early. It is much harder to find them late. quarterbacks and tight ends, you can find league winners at any point in your draft. So just optimal resource allocation there. If you only have a certain number of draft picks in your draft, is to use the most valuable ones on the scarcest assets on the things that you can only get with those premium picks, which most often are just those league winning running backs and wide receivers. So I agree with everything you just said. in your typical fantasy league, your one quarterback league with two running backs, two wide receivers,

one tight end and a flex, half PPR, a full PPR. You are massively incentivized to punt off the quarterback position and really the tight end position until you either have a value so amazing that you can't resist it and that it's not going, it's at a point in the draft where it's not hurting you at running back or wide receiver. or literally just wait as long as possible is also a totally viable way to go. The difference between the quarterback 7 and the quarterback 12 is often not that high in fantasy football. So you are always just incentivized to go for that upside outcome at running back, even if it's the second running back on your bench.

if it's a guy that you think could kind of break through in a committee. An RJ Harvey is like an example of this for me this year where I totally understand the median outcome of an RJ Harvey is he just kind of plays passing downs. Maybe he's a low end to kind of okayish flex. But the outcome where a year two running back takes over more of the work from a J.K. Dobbins, an aging, very injury prone player. His only other competition is a daytime. rookie Jonah Coleman, I can paint like an upside picture there to where I would always just rather

take that shot, even if most of the time it's not going to pan out. I'd rather take that shot than getting one quarterback that I have ranked one or two spots ahead of a different quarterback, if that's the decision that I'm making in, say, round seven of drafts. So that's how I really think about it. I think at the running back in wide receiver position, the cliffs are just much sharper in that there comes a point in drafts where you can suddenly no longer talk yourself into really any upside scenario for any of them once you get like into these team RB2s the clear contingent handcuff guys or the wide receivers that just don't have all that much talent are buried on bad offenses etc etc there comes a cliff at both of those positions

and there really is no cliff at the quarterback in tight end positions in your typical 10 to 12 team league with those settings I just outlined because yeah right up until the last round of your draft there are viable upside candidates and you can add viable upside candidates on the waiver wire in most of these kind of shallower leagues as well yeah so what you're saying here is there there's a lot of parity at the quarterback position it's really deep and that's that's exactly the case if you look at it like qb6 through cubi 14 most years is like basically the same guy. There's like almost nothing separating them. So it's a high parity position.

More than that, it's also ADP is really bad. It's every single year I have an Exodia quarterback in the double digit rounds. And every year, that quarterback outscores every other quarterback except for Josh Allen. It's like I'm not, I'm not a genius. I can't predict the future. It's just like legitimately trust me, ADP is really bad. The quarterback position, I don't know how they don't understand. in the Konami code. We're in 2026, but we've done it again. I feel really good about my Exodia

quarterback this year. But here's like the crazy thing is like you're honestly going to be fine, even if you don't draft a quarterback. If you leave your draft without a quarterback, you'll be fine. J.J. Zacharisen has shown this. He does the Living the Stream podcast is like over the last 10 years, he's cobbled together on average QB7. QB8 levels of production streaming the position. What does that mean? It just means he just plays matchups and he adds and drops a different quarterback every single week.

That also, by the way, doesn't even factor in, like he doesn't allow himself to hold quarterback. So like last year, he could have just picked up Matthew Stafford in week three and then held him all year and got the QB3, the year before that Baker Mayfield, Joe Flacko, filling in for an injury. And so like, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, yeah, this is, this is why I say, you know, punt quarterback, don't be afraid to punt quarterback. It's not that important.

And so, like, all of this is tied into positional scarcity, as we were saying before, where the math really changes if you move from a one quarterback to super flex league. And you could do the back of the napkin math with me right now. So in a one QB league, there's 12 starting quarterbacks, and then half the teams have a backup, while there's 32 starting quarterbacks in the NFL. So that means only 56%, 18 of 32 quarterbacks are rostered. But in a super flex league, you have 32 starting quarterbacks in the NFL, 24 starters in fantasy ideally.

You want that super flex spot going to a quarterback as these score more fantasy points than the other position. which is why people make that rookie mistake, by the way, they just see them more fantasy points. They don't see it relative to their impositional peers. So 24 starting quarterbacks in their fantasy league. Then 10 teams have a third quarterback. And then two teams have a fourth quarterback. So if you're one of those teams with only two quarterbacks, your quarterback goes down. Like, you could really get bullied.

They could really price correct you. And so it's, yeah, that's really what it comes down to, Same thing with wide receivers in a two wide receiver league, which by the way, still today, Ryan, is like 70% of all leagues. I would draft CMC over Puka and Jamar Chase. That's admittedly a hot take. Not a lot of people, including at fantasy points, agree with me on that. But yeah, in a three wide receiver league, yeah, of course I want Puka and Jamar Chase at the 103, 104. but generally most valuable position in fantasy is running back is again it ties into that

positional scarcity thing there are 32 starters but like 10 of those are in worthless you know 50 50 committees at least uh and then there's 24 I mean with a flex there's really like 32 you want to be starting every single week in your league so um yeah I think we I think we nailed this one Ryan And next one on my list is not doing drafts before you draft. And I think this is the best way I could frame this, Ryan, is asking you a question, is how do you prep for your leagues? Let's say you're in your home league tonight. You're in an FFPC main event tonight.

How are you preparing for that? What are you doing? So first, as I mentioned, I'm always reviewing the scoring settings as the first thing I always do. Second, I find out my draft position, assuming hopefully I know it at least like an hour before at worst the draft starts. I figure out my draft position and from there I pull out my rankings and I start mapping out roughly what I think my first few picks. could be if I'm drafting at the back end of round one my rankings right now are probably going to push you toward a running back running back start a lot of the time from that position if I'm toward the front end of the first round if I have the 101 cool I can get Jemir Gibbs and I'm kind of expecting to go wide receiver wide receiver or wide receiver plus Brock Bowers at the two three turn and from there that's step one now I know okay in round four and round 5 because of where I've already spent draft picks at these positions. Maybe I'm looking at this group of players at this position because now this is more a position of need. Of course, in the actual

draft, I want to remain flexible. I want to be very open to value falling down the board. I'm always happy to pivot if I'm presented the opportunity. But going into a draft, I want to know kind of the base expectation of where I'm drafting each position because that knowledge, just knowing further down the board, there's going to be this pocket of running backs that I like two rounds from now. That's valuable information when I'm on the clock making a decision between a running back and a wide receiver or however else you want to set that example up. So, yeah, review my settings, figure out my draft position and kind of just run through either with my rankings or in literal mock drafts, which I think you should be doing.

If you're in only one league and it drafts tomorrow, you should be in mock drafts today, drafting from that spot, just getting reps in, getting practice in, and kind of understanding what your possible decision points could be at each point in your draft. Yeah. Yeah. So what do I do is, you know, I do have an FFPC draft today. And what I'll do is I'll, you know, export to CSV my own personal. rankings. I'll export to CSV FFPC ADP or just really copy and paste from the draft room. And then I'll have my draft spot. Let's say I'm drafting from the 112 Ryan. So that means I have pick 12, 13, 36, 37, et cetera, et cetera. So I list that out. In my spreadsheet, I just mark off

you know, here's the 12, here's the 13. This is where I'm likely drafting from my rankings, from ADP. I'll probably do a V-lookup and merge them, actually. But, and then, like, I'll plot out my perfect draft. Oh, and by the way, I'll, like, in red font, I'll make sure I highlight in some way the Exotias, the must-draft players, the players you want to build your draft around. And so I'll look at, yeah, again,

the 112, the 201, the 312, the 4101, who's most likely available there? Do I want to reach on this one Exodia here? And so I'll plot out my perfect draft, typically starting from the middle, with the clear extreme values more than anything. And then, yeah, and then I just kind of look at who's likely to be around. It doesn't make the most sense for me to start RBRB. I think this year, Ryan, we both agree. It's really optimal to start RBRB.

But yeah, I'll do this. I'll do a bunch of mock drafts. I'll go crazy because, you know, I really want to get the best edge possible. But you don't have to do that, Ryan, because this leads us to number five on our list. And I mean this with no hint of like, I'm not being a chill here. It's number five. Not subscribing to fantasy points. This is really a tremendous major edge.

I have helped so many people over the years who do not know, who've never watched a game of football, including the Super Bowl, who do not know what a cornerback is, don't know what a wide receiver is even, not just win their leagues, but absolutely annihilate, absolutely dominate their leagues. And really all they need are three things.

One, my rankings and or my draft guide. And by the way, you don't even need that anymore. Ryan, I don't know if you saw we released a new feature with our Ball Knowledge AI. All subscribers have access to this or Ball Knowledge AI. You could just screenshot your draft room as you're drafting and click Scott mode. And it tells you exactly who I would draft. Like it's not going to be perfect, but it's like pretty damn close to having me over your shoulder while you're drafting. But this is what I all you really need is my rankings or my draft guide or ball knowledge, one.

And then two, in season is read our award winning waiver, wire column every week to know who to add, drop. And then three, make your start sit decisions based off of our projections. We had the most accurate projections in the industry last year. And yeah, so that should give you confidence. when making these start sit decision is really that simple. And so Bruce Jacobson asked, he'd love to hear a story or an anecdote about how I helped a non-football fan crush their league

using fantasy points. And yeah, so shout out to my friend Cece, who, you know, daughter of Chinese immigrants, never watched a game of football before, never cared about football. She is like a working New York City as a VP of something, surrounded by genius geniuses who like love and are obsessed with football. They go watch Thursday night football together as a company every single week.

And she doesn't know anything. She's like, hey, can you help me out with this? I'm like, yeah, you really just do three things. You read my draft guide, draft off of the rankings and ADP. So you get the best value you can. Should have said that in the last one. And then two, read the words. waiver wire column honestly just skim through it it's pretty simple it's we have a t lDR section for you

and then three uh you know make your start sit decisions based in our projections she destroyed them ryan these this is not a soft lead these were like elite ball knowers but she she destroyed that she didn't lose a single game she had a perfect undefeated season she and they were like oh my god you are like the best fantasy football player you should be the next matthew berry cc uh She really got into it like in the halfway point and and kind of fell in love with football and fantasy football Shout out CC and so yeah that's one of my favorite stories But really like in most leagues like most home leagues I really do think it's it's that simple What do you what do you think about this one Ryan? Do you disagree? Do you think people shouldn't

subscribe to fantasy points you think they should subscribe to to football guys? Is that what you're saying? No Scott people should absolutely subscribe to fantasy points. I want to like one up, probably not one up, but I want to match your anecdote here with another anecdote that I find very funny. So I have a close friend who had never played fantasy football before, didn't really know much about football, had been to maybe one tailgate ever in his life. But for whatever reason, he was invited to this league. And he said, you know what? I have a friend, Ryan Heath, that works at fantasy points that I'm sure would be able to help me out or would know what to do. So I'm going to join. And I set him up with

basically exactly what you just said. Yeah, read the draft guide, use the rankings against ADP, follow our projections, follow the content. This is what you've got to do. He absolutely destroyed the league, came in first place, was dropping like 200 points every single week in the playoffs. It was the Brock Purdy plus Chase Brown fantasy playoffs experience that this guy got to have from last year. And this year, I just heard from him recently. He said he got kicked out of this league because he told them he had never played fantasy football before, came in, dominated with the fantasy points recommendations. And now he's like, you need to get me into other leagues. What can I do here? I want to keep playing. This was so much.

fun, but these guys kicked me out of their $50 league because they thought that I was a fish or whatever, that I was going to be easy competition. So that is not just an amazing recommendation of fantasy points and everything that we can do here. I don't know what is. Yeah, I just really believe in this product, in this company, and everything that we put out in terms of just making it as easy as possible for you to dominate your fantasy football league every single person here is so bought into that mission cares so much about it it's so fun and energizing to work and to be in that environment but it really shines through and it does show up in the results of the people that subscribe the people that can follow our content so yeah i i can't recommend

subscribing to fantasy points uh more than that i don't think Yeah, I want to be transparent here. Like it's no sure thing. I can't promise you a guaranteed championship. But like in these softer work leagues or home leagues, like I'll say I personally, outside of my league where all my friends draft off on my rankings, outside of that one, I probably win these 50% of the time. I win the championship 50% time, which like on average, it's what?

It's supposed to be, what, 12%, 8%. So certainly like well above your expected rate. although like it's not the case that like I lose the championship 50% of time some of the time like these are these are teams that don't make the playoffs that's kind of like intentionally our strategy tying back to upside wins championships is like like if you look at my teams in october it's i i'm usually not the best team i'm like i have more one in four teams probably than four and no teams even or one in three instead of four and no uh like that very well could be that's just like an intense tensionality with how i draft or how i've historically

draft i've tried to adjust that a little bit this year but um but yeah still like yeah win the championship like 50% of time or better um and that's really the goal like it's it's it's not to make the playoffs that's easy it's to win the championship and building a team capable of sweeping through the playoffs winning all those games in a row that's that's really hard but yeah certainly fantasy football is a a blend of luck and skill. And so you do need to be a little bit lucky. I'm sure CC got lucky that year. I'll get the plug in now and then we can kind of wrap up, Ryan. But I just genuinely want to know your answer to this question is what do you think it is that makes fantasy points great? What makes us special? What makes us the best? What is it?

I kind of just hinted at it in what I was saying earlier. I think it really is that every single person here, whether it's people that are in content, people that are behind the scenes, producer Trey, everybody just with in every job and every role that exists in this company just cares so much and just really wants to put out a worthwhile and valuable product of whatever it is. that they're working on. And all of it is ultimately in service of we want to be right. We want to help people win their fantasy football leagues.

And all of us just live and eat and breathe it. And it's just so much fun to every single person. So I think that really just, I don't know, maybe that's like a corny answer. But I think it really is that. Having worked in other industries, doing other jobs in my life, I've never been in a workplace that's anything like that where everybody really wants to be there and really cares and is really invested in everybody's success. That just is like a very rare thing in my experience. And that's exactly what we have at fantasy points. And I think it really shines through in terms of the

results that we get for our subscribers. Yeah. So that's that's our culture. And I'm really proud of it is like we we're genuinely feel like we're chasing greatness. We're pursuing excellence. We have an extremely high bar. And that high bars are moat where like if someone gets hired by fantasy points or someone writes an article for fantasy points, like, whoa, that's so impressive. That's really hard to do. It's like, you know, any Joe Schmo could just drop an article, but to get published on fantasy points. And that was like kind of the case with you and me, Ryan, where like, I was so hard on you. And like I described it as like something out of an anime where it's like, okay, there's a 50% chance he dies, but if he doesn't die, he's going to be a super saying.

That's exactly what happened to you. And so, like, yeah, that's really important. Where it's like, why are we doing these things? It's not so we can make more money and gouge our customers, which is what all these other companies are doing. It's like, they're all beholden to venture capital. I think like football guys, by the way, I wasn't taking a shot at them. I hung out with Sig Blume last week.

I was on the phone with Joe Bryant. I love football guys. They're the best. They're not beholden to venture capital, private equity money, but like all these other companies around the industry are. So like they're very short-term profits-oriented. Whereas with us, where, you know, who owns fantasy points? It's all fantasy football legends.

It's myself. It's John Hansen, Graham Barfield, Brett Whitefield, Joe Dolan, Tom Broly, or developer Brock and that's it. And so like we we're not beholden to outside. We could we could just build sick products and not have to worry about money and paying off investors. And so that like like the data suite 2.0. Everyone I've showed it to is like this is literally what the NFL teams pay six figures for, if not better, except you're charging one 1,000 the price. You're an idiot CEO. Like you're stupid. This should have been a B to be product and you should have charged $50,000 a year for it. And it's like, why do we do that? It's not so like, oh, we could destroy the competition.

It's not so we can make a ton of money. It was literally just like you, me and Chris, just like, hey, how could I build like the sickest tool that could make doing my job easier can make like, you know, finding good bets easier, breaking down a game easier. And like, as, quickly as possible. And that's how it came into existence. And then it's just like, the money is secondary. It's like, hey, let's just, let's give this to people and build cool shit. Like, when you're writing articles, you're like, oh, Scott's going to love this one. Scott's going to think this is really cool. When Kyle writes an article, it's like, oh, I think I'm going to really impress Ryan with this, this round of edits. And so like, I legitimately think that's our mode is like,

we just care more. And it's also just downstream from the incentive structure. I say this on every podcast. is show me the incentive. I'll show you the outcome. If you leave sugar on the ground, you know what's gonna happen. Ants are gonna come. And so it's like, we're just building cool shit and love and are obsessed with fantasy football.

And then like, I think everything comes, comes after the fact once you have, we just like wanna just wanna build the sickest football site that's ever existed. That's a mic drop. If that sounds interesting to you, cool to you. I encourage you to join the Fantasy Points team. Use promo code Exodia for 15% off, EXO-D-I-A.

Basic subscription is $60 before that 15% off. You get access to my draft guide, Ryan's draft guide, our conjoined draft guide. And then in season, we got the best projections. We got our waiver wire column. Ryan's Everything Report. and you know if that's not for you if you just want to be a free rider and check out the YouTube we'll take a subscribe we'll take some comments and some likes and whatnot so just thanks to

everyone who tuned in for this and we'll see you guys next time