Lineup Fantasy Football Show - 6 Discount Players to Buy for Dynasty Fantasy Football

Episode Date: April 27, 2026

Every elite fantasy football player has a budget version. Same function, fraction of the cost, and nobody's fighting you for them on draft day. Today we're breaking down the best discount-brand fantasy football targets for 2026 — and why sometimes paying a premium ADP for the name can cost you a championship 0:00 - Intro 0:52 - Omarion Hampton vs Quinshon Judkins 3:11 - Joe Burrow vs Brock Purdy 7:07 - Tee Higgins vs Courtland Sutton 10:34 - Jahmyr Gibbs vs TreVeyon Henderson 13:53 - Travis Kelce vs TJ Hockenson 17:25 - Kyren Williams vs Blake Corum Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Growing up, I was always told that the store brand was just as good as the real thing. Sometimes that's true. Sometimes it's not. But it got us thinking, who are the store brand versions of our favorite NFL superstars? Welcome into the lineup fantasy football show. I'm Mitch Anderson. I'm Justin Mello. And Mello, you know I love to live large, more than anything, buying Parker Washington

jerseys on a whim. But today we're getting frugal. And I want you to tell me your first guy that when you go to a discount store, that's who you're grabbing over everyone's favorite NFL superstar. Well, you know I'm stingy. So this is my kind of exercise here. I'm always looking. This is built for you. This is built for me. I'm always looking for those best values. I decided to go to a really exhilarating fun industry here for these first couple guys. I want to talk about the water industry. Don't get too salacious. Nothing more fun than bottled water. I'm going to be talking about Amarian Hampton, aka Fiji, and Quinnshon Judkin.

aka Dasani. And this one's great because I literally cannot tell the difference between the two, but one is way more expensive than the other one. And maybe I'm telling on myself there that I don't have like the most developed palette for water. I love water. Drink a ton of it. If you blindfolded me, put Desani in one cup, Fiji and another. I'd have no idea which is which.

Not a real waterhead. Not a real waterhead. I don't know ball when it comes to bottled water. Both are second year running backs. They went just 14 picks apart in the draft last year. And if I'm being generous to Hampton, he was the higher pick. He is on the better team. And his leg didn't recently collapse on itself like a freaking tent like we saw with

Quinn John Judkins at the end of last year. But now that we've gone out of the way, I don't really see what the significant difference is. Judkins averaged less than a yard pregame fewer than Hampton last year, despite facing eight men in the box on 45.2% of his snaps, which led the NFL by a large margin. That's stat courtesy of Sleeper on X. Going forward, though, they both profile as between the tackle grinders for their teams. They won't offer a ton of the passing game. And I can't really tell what else is very different. But everyone is so thirsty for Fiji when I think DeSani can hydrate you for half the cost and why wouldn't you? Now, I will say,

if I'm picking straight up all that sequel, sure, I'll take the bottle of Fiji. But at cost, Dasani does it completely fine for me. And right now, just to illustrate that difference in terms of dynasties, Amari and Hampton is being ranked as the RB6 and Judkins as the RB16

and then redraft it's RB9 for Hampton and RB23 for Judkins. I love this one. First of all, you're an insane person for not being able to tell the difference. Fiji is so much better, but I also never get to get it because it's way too expensive. I keep bringing up a ton of good points here with Judkins and like it's just being a different situation in Cleveland.

I like the analogy here. And I think this is a very, very solid start. I'm going to go away from water bottles and I'm going to go to clothing. We're going to talk about Joe Burrow. What could be more Joe Burrow than Allo? And we're going to talk about his counterpart, Brock Purdy shopping at Walmart. Now Joe Burrow is pricey. First overall pick, but you get what you pay for when he's out in the field.

Just like Allo, he's smooth, he's clean, he operas. rates the most expensive luxury pocket pass and quarterback in the NFL, even got that express shipping. He is in the top five shortest time in the pocket amongst quarterbacks to throw at 2.3 seconds. So if you want a pocket passer that feels good to draft in fantasy and makes you feel comfortable in his upside, it's Joe Burrow. But sometimes that's not in our budgets to grab a new fit for Allo, so you drive down to Walmart and you pick yourself up a brand new Brock Party. And look at that. He's on sale. Costs you just the last pick of the NFL. draft and probably the last pick of your fantasy draft too. And I bet you thought they only sell Super

Bowl runners up at Allo Mello, but they actually have a great version of that at Walmart too with Brock Purdy. Burrow edges out Purdy with about 32 more passing yards per game and a little bit more on the touchdowns per game, two versus Purdy's 1.7 throughout their careers. But Purdy actually has the edge and winning percentage, 66 versus Burroughs 56% and actually is the highest quarterback rating among the two in their entire careers. Back to fantasy, Burrow, about 19.3 fantasy points a game and Brock Purdy, 17.3. Kind of like you said, where it's like, yes, one's better, and I'm obviously going to take some free aloe if it's offered to me. But if I have to go out and spend my own money, it might be worth just going out and getting Brock Purdy.

And it's pretty crazy when you look at these two guys who are on exact opposites of the NFL draft. So we're a fantasy football show. Let me break this into some fancy football advice. I'm not targeting Brock Purdy in anything but Superflex leagues and Dynast. but if you are in one, the price for Burrow right now is astronomical, so why not go pay pennies on the dollar for an elite pocket passer who actually does have some sneaky wheels and is at like a fraction of that cost? Right now, he is the quarterback 13 Brock Party in Dynasty and the quarterback 12 in redraft.

Burrow is the quarterback 6 in Dynasty and quarterback 4 in redraft. I completely agree with everything you just said. I think my biggest takeaway, honestly, is that Allo is a, a brand i i'm too lame to even know what that is but i'm going to have to check it out now if it's the joe burrow of brands then it's got to be pretty good look up joe burrow alo and you'll find plenty real quick guys before we get to our next player we are doing our first ever giveaway partner with courtyard i.o we are going to be ripping three packs and giving away football cards to three random commenters we both love opening packs and courtyard i.o lets you do it online

instantly the cards are real and securely vaulted so if you like the car's you can actually have it shipped directly to you. And if you don't, you can sell it back for zero seller fees. To answer the giveaway, just comment the player you are most excited for in fantasy football for 2026, along with your courtyard IEO username. So Mello, we are going to be opening up a $25 pack, a $50 pack, and a $100 pack. This is like Christmas Day. All right, let's open this baby up.

Let's do it. Barry Sanders on the first pack. One of the greatest to ever do it. That is how you want to start. We're going to get a Dan Fouts card. We've been going all vintage on these packs so far. One of the Chargers greats? Oh, Bo Nix John Elway?

Oh my God, that is sweet. Comment down below to enter the giveaway and make sure to check out Courtyard I.O. In the description and use the code Lineup 10 to get 10% off of your first pack. Now, back to the episode. All right. That's what I'll be doing after we finish recording here. But until then, I want to hit you with another little brand,

Harrison here. I think I might have been subconsciously parched when I started planning for this episode because I'm going right back to the beverage industry. Didn't do that on purpose, I swear. But this time we're going to be talking about soda and we're going to be talking about T. Higgins, who is Sprite and Cortland Sutton, who is Stari. I have a quite, wait, where we go? Starry is the new Sierra Mist, right? It's Sierra Mist, yeah. I don't, I don't like drink enough soda now or I drink those like weird probiotic ones that are probably like enough chemicals to like kill me in two years. But I just, I always see starry. And I'm like, I feel like that thing just came out nowhere. No, I think it's, there's like a whole

story behind it, a whole lore of like they lost the domain to Sierra Mist on accident or something. And I don't know. It became a whole marketing thing. NBA players are doing commercials. Yeah. I don't know. Sorry. I've taken you off the rails of your analysis. No, it's totally fine. It's, you know what? That's actually, I'm glad you asked that question because that's kind of the perception right now between T. Higgins and Cortland Sutton is, oh, Sprite's good. What the hell is story? So it's kind of the perfect question to ask. And just to take

this a step further, let's really dive deep into this analogy just for fun here. Let's say, just for demonstrated purposes here, the Cincinnati Bengals are the Coca-Cola Company, and the Denver Broncos are PepsiCo. The Coca-Cola Company's real

crowd favorite is obviously Coke, aka Jamar Chase. PepsiCo's staple is, of course, Pepsi, who many seem to be viewing as the newly acquired Jalen Waddle. Meanwhile, the Coca-Cola company offers Sprite as a very different but very popular second beverage, in this case, T. Higgins, and the PepsiCo has their own similar beverage to Sprite, but much less popular, called Starry, again, Cortland Sutton. I'm not sure if this all makes sense, or if I'm just having a braid aneurysm, but hang with me here for a

minute. Oh, good. I'm cooking right now. T. Higgins is a physical contested catchmaster, red zone threat type of receiver, who's only relegated in fantasy rankings because of Jamar Chase, and all of that can be said about Cortland Sutton right now as well with Jalen Waddle in town. Now, would I prefer Sutton over T. No, of course not. I called T an overvalued player a few weeks ago, and I do stand by that in fantasy football, but I do want to be clear that I think he is absolutely incredible in real life, also incredible in fantasy, just maybe a little bit overvalued. And just to demonstrate that a little bit

more just i think it's worth noting corlin sudden has finished higher than t higgins in each of the last three seasons now with that said i'd still prefer to indulge in a glass of spright when i'm craving some lemon lime soda i would take that over starry no questions asked i'll take a glass of tea higgins uh we're going back to the whole no tedorola mickeful i'm not going down that path no i won't do that to our poor viewers. But yes, Sprite is better than Starry, sure. But there's nothing wrong with indulgent on a little bit of starry sometimes, especially because it is not as well respected or as necessarily as expensive as Sprite.

And in terms of their actual fantasy rankings, T. Higgins is being ranked as the wide receiver 19 in Dynasty versus Cortland Sutton at 41. And in redraft, it's wide receiver 15 for T and 27 for Cortland Sutton. This, I feel like there was levels to this analogy. I was like the Zach Alpomacus meme, just the numbers like going all around my head. Everything. Everything was clicking. All right.

I'm going to jump to my next one. We've done clothing, soda, water. Let's get into cars. And we got to go with the most elite guy out there. Let's talk about Jemir Gibbs, aka the Lamborghini. He's just like the height of luxury cars. And then you've got Trayvion Henderson, who's kind of this weird level of like somewhat luxury, but also we're like not really sure where they're going.

That's Tesla. Honorable mention for Gibbs, I almost made him a Chevy Sonic because of the whole Sonic and Knuckles thing and his Sonic tattoo. But the reason I went Lamborghini, blazing speed, smooth operator, so fun to watch when it hits full speed.

And those blue lion's jerseys just feel like they could be the perfect paint job on a Lambo. With Trayvion, I went with Tesla because he's got that zero to 60 speed still, that like home run hitting ability. And he's so impressive. But he's obviously not a Lamborghini and he's got his own slew of issues.

Tesla recently just had a nationwide airbag recall, which is perfect because both Tesla and Travion had difficulties protecting their captain when it mattered most in 2025. But here's why they're so similar. And I hate reading off a bunch of stats. I'm going to try to do this the most condensed way possible. In both of their rookie years, Henderson 2025 Gibbs 20203. Henderson had 911 rushing yards, 9.45 for Gibbs, 180 carries for Henderson, 182 for Gibbs, 5.1 a carry, 5.2 a carry.

220 receiving yards, 316, and then 10 touchdowns to 11. If you leave, and I'll put a graphic on the screen right now to make it a little bit easier to see, but they had like eerily similar rookie years for two guys that I think the perception of them leaving those rookie years was very different. It's absolutely bizarre to me that Treveon had a higher yards per carry than Gibbs. I feel like you wouldn't think that, and I think a lot of that bias comes from the postseason with New England. So, fancy football advice time. do not trade Jemir Gibbs for Trayvion Henderson. I would rather get hit by a Tesla.

But the real advice is if there's a manager who's holding on to Gibbs, you're probably not going to be able to get him without giving up a King's ransom. So hit up the Travion manager who might be kind of like, eh about everything that happened in the postseason and, you know, honestly, the entire New England circus and the things that have gone on with Trayon this offseason, I think you can get a very, very good deal on him right now. And just for some prices on that, RB2 in Dynasty for Gibbs,

RB2 in redraft, and then Trevion is the RB10 in Dynasty, but here's where it's really cheap for like real fantasy football season. He's the RB 20 right now. Wow. As a biased, delusional Patriots fan,

the only thing I heard while you were talking is Travian is the next Jamir Gibbs. I don't care what you said. That's my only takeaway. Before I go to my next one too, I have to ask, where does Maserati Marr fit into all of this? Maserati Marv is a Mazda.

He's Mazda Marv. And it's the one that like the sleaziest salesman at the used car lot is trying to give you. I couldn't have concocted a better answer to myself. And don't worry. It's only a 72% APY if you sign up right now for a 99 month commitment. I could not resist the urge to ask. As soon as you brought up cars, I'm like, I need to hear Mitch just absolutely trash on. Mitsubishi Marr.

On Mar. Mitch Uvich-Mar. All right, I'm going to get away from beverages. I'm going on to basketball shoes now with this next one. I'm going to be talking about Travis Kelsey as Adidas and T.J. Hawkinson as Puma. Yeah, I get a little icky here. Yeah, this is getting close to the end of the episode. Lower in the rankings here.

I don't know if you've ever seen the movie air with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. I think it's a Netflix original. It's about Michael Jordan and his original shoe deal. It's a good movie. airbud and I was like with Matt Damon hunting ex airbud? No they did a yeah they did a new airbud movie. Matt Damon is the dog

yes I think it's called air I don't even know. Solid movie though that's actually what inspired this one for me if you go back 40 years or so Adidas dominated the basketball shoe industry with Puma toward the top

of the market as well. Luckily we only have to go back a couple years for when Travis Kelsey reigns supreme at the tight end position with T.J. Hawkinson not very far behind. But Adidas and Puma eventually lost their elite status to the Nikes of the world like Trey McBride and Brock Bowers. But neither company is just yet, is done just yet. The difference is Adidas is still being acknowledged, but nobody wants to talk about Puma. I have heard nothing about Puma, aka T.J. Hawkinson, this whole off season. The irony is you can find a ton of Puma at T.J. Max right now.

Can you? You a Maxenista? Yeah, I sure am. They know. Those are the same people drafted T.J. Hawkinson this year. And I know he feels so past any fantasy relevance. Like, it has not been a good couple of years. But let's not forget, he tore two ligaments in his knee in 2023, only to fall victim to the nine experience in Minnesota. I would have rather torn two more ligaments in my knee. He would have been better off, honestly. He got dealt the worst possible hand imaginable for a tight end. But just as Puma recently brought in lamello ball and Tyrese Halliburton to re-spark their relevance, the Vikings brought in Kyler Murray to fix this passing game. And we talked about Kyler Murray last episode. We talked about him a lot. We're bullish on this offense as a whole. T.J. Hawkinson finished top four among all tight ends and fantasy points per game in three out of the four seasons between 2020 and 2020. And now he's finally back with a chance to succeed.

So if you're dumpster diving for an old pair of basketball shoes, why not take a chance on T. J Hawkinson, see if it pays off. You can get them so cheap in a Dynasty trade, you can get them with your last pick and a redraft league. I think it's 100% fair that there's a higher cost associated with Travis Kelsey. So I'm not saying we should be ranking Hawkinson with Kelsey in redraft. In Dynasty, I actually prefer Hawkinson, though, just because you have the same short-term upside with potential longevity as well, with Kelsey only being basically a one-year rental at this point. And in redraft right now, Hawkinson is going as the tight end 21, Kelsey as the tight end 13, and Dynasty Hawkinson is actually going a couple

spots higher as the tight end 23 versus 25 for Kelsey. I think there's a chance Hawkinson is never relevant again, similar to how it kind of feels with Puma right now. But there is a chance. There's certainly upside there. I love that pick. It's interesting to me too. He's being ranked as like literally a top two Dynasty tight end the year we tore his ACL. It's just we haven't gotten back since. I believe I had him in fantasy, and I think about it a lot. All right, I'm starving, so let's jump into our final one. We are going to talk food, a couple grocery stores.

We're going to talk about Kiron Williams, who is Whole Foods, and Blake Corum, who's Trader Joe's. Teammates. I want to talk about the extremely underrated, undersized running back out of L.A., the better running back, who ranked fifth in the NFL in yards per carry, second and first down percentage, second in explosive run rate, number one in EPA success rate among running backs, and I'm going to compare him to Kyron Williams. That is, of course, Blake Coram, aka Trader Joe's. And I know what everybody's thinking. If Blake Coram's so much more efficient,

then why do we only ever hear about Kairn Williams? The difference? He's getting a whole lot more volume in traffic, much like Whole Foods compared to Trader Joe's. There's a whole lot more opportunities going to Kyron Williams. This one was the toughest for me because I wanted it to be closer than some of the other comparisons, and so I felt like Whole Foods and Trader Joe's made sense. and obviously both are fantastic options. Kairn Williams is also efficient. He has great pizza at the hot bar, but it's possible that Blake Corum is maybe just a little underrated and underpriced,

kind of like those cookie sticks that are half dipped in chocolate at Trader Joe's. I have a good amount of experience of both. My whole argument here is that Whole Foods is great, but it's a little bit expensive and you don't always get the access to some of those exclusives like the orange chicken or Blake Corum's explosive run rate. So my fancy advice here is, if you got a whole lot of money to spend in high picks, go after a guy like Kyron Williams, I guess. But if you want someone who's a much better value and can give you some access to some points

that you wouldn't be getting elsewhere, I would go with Blake Corum. The difference is where it really becomes an issue here. In Dynasty, the difference is the RB15 and the RB 32 and redraft RB17 and RB 33. They are both 25 years old for reference. So there's no age discrepancy there and why you're drafting a guy higher than the other. This one's so interesting to me because they are the same age

and they're both actually so good. Part of me just wants Kyron to be bad so Coram can take over but Kyron isn't bad. So it's such an interesting situation but I think it's certainly possible Corum gets more involved which is why you could be a good value

and also screw you for making me extraordinarily hungry now. I'm like starving after talking about that. Yeah, I'm ready to eat everything in my kitchen as soon as we finish recording. That is it. If we miss any guys, if you have any other perfect discount brand comparisons, make sure to leave them down below and let us know if you want us to do a part two of this video.

Mello, we miss anything? I'm good. All right, we will catch you guys next episode.