The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Ten tips for crushing your fantasy league in 2024

Episode Date: July 9, 2024

Fantasy football season is almost here! Robert Mays sits down with Ben Gretch from Stealing Signals to get you ready to crush your league with ten rules to remember heading into the 2024 season.Follow Robert on Twitter: @robertmaysSubscribe to The Athletic Football Show...AppleSpotifyYouTube Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the athletic football show. Welcome to the athletic football show. I'm Robert Mays. Really fun show for you guys today. It's July, and we are in fantasy prep season. At least for me, we're starting to get there. I wanted to do a show about where we can find fantasy value and how we should think about finding fantasy value in 2024.

There is just a deluge of information out there. There's so much stuff to comb through, and there's so much good information out there that finding edges in where you get those I think is more difficult than ever. So to help us do that, I wanted to invite my buddy, Ben Gretsch, from stealing the stealing signal substack,

various other great fantasy platforms to come on and talk through what we're calling 10 commandments to help you rule your fantasy football league in 2024. We talked about some overarching rules and thoughts that can be prevalent as you're thinking about how you want to draft these teams, but also, you know, some specific situations

and some more trend-based ideas about where certain positions are going. It was a great conversation, a lot of layers to it. I'm excited for you guys to hear it. Let's get to our chat with Ben. Joining us now from the Stealing Signals, StubSack Newsletter, from the Stealing Bananas podcast and ship chasing a whole bunch of wonderful fantasy outlets and hubs of information. It's Ben Gratch.

Brent, how you doing, man? I'm good. Thanks for having me on. I'm excited to chat with you. I'm very excited to have you. I love your fantasy content. I am a reader. I am a subscriber.

You and I, when J.K. Dobbins got hurt last year, I knew that there was someone else in the world as upset as I was because of what he could have been in fantasy. And it's because I was consuming so much of your stuff in the preseason last year. But I wanted to have this conversation with you because I've always appreciated your view on the fantasy world from like a macro level. And you and I were talking about this a little bit. You've written about this a ton over the last couple of years.

Fantasy football in that. I think is fantastic right now. And there's so many really strong voices out there and the information is so strong. But I think that as the ubiquity of that information grows and so many people have access to all the same numbers, I think that it's harder and harder to figure out where your edges come in fantasy football and where, essentially how you be good at fantasy football in 2024. Like the answer to that, I think, has become harder than ever because there's so much information out there. what I wanted to do with you today is kind of take a step back and kind of lay down a set of commandments or rules for how you should approach fantasy football in 2024. And thankfully, you are someone who thinks about it from this perspective a lot in your day-to-day life as is. That's right. I mean, I do really enjoy thinking through the macro of it, thinking through the market element of it. You talked about the ubiquity of the stats and the data, and it's out there. I mean, you know, like, this is in no way trying to criticize fantasy analysis, but a lot of

it is repetitive. And then that gets built into the market. The perception of players is very well known. And so this is a game where our whole job is to try to find value, is to try to figure out whether there is some type of exploitable edge somewhere, as you mentioned. And it's, it's difficult with a lot of the stuff that's out there that is already baked into ADPs. And this is going to be different in different, you know, league types and a different, and we'll get into all of this, but I mean, it's different for the people that have been grinding best ball all offseason for months compared to the listeners that are just thinking about their home league draft that's coming up in a month. Those are very different atmospheres. So how you approach those,

where the edges are, how do you, what is exploitable in those situations is different, right? But ultimately, the rankings and a lot of that stuff is going to be looking at a lot of the same data. And it does raise that question, as you said, like, where are the edges at this point. And I think there are a lot of people out there who's work and whose success in the space. It's, you have to have respect for it. Like what Pat Corrine does and people like that. But you've acknowledged that, you know, Pat and Pete, who you also work with, they're building these massive portfolios and fantasy where they're really understanding how to diversify their assets and they're really looking at it from this macroeconomic perspective. But you look at it from a perspective where

it's a lot of like player talent and a lot of things that I think even people in their home league can appreciate if they're not grinding bestball and not approaching it from this portfolio-centric kind of view in the way that some of those other guys are. But yeah, I think that's a fair take on it. And I mean, why I still really try to focus on the player takes is, I think, certainly something worth talking about because it's, I mean, whether I'm right about those player takes or not, it gets to this question of where the edges are. one of the things we were talking about a little bit before the show is like with a lot of this data with a lot of it being out there.

One of the things I see in a lot of fantasy analysis today is looking at big data samples and figuring out, you know, what has the best R square, what has the best correlation to fantasy points and those types of things. I think in the fantasy industry, we run into this issue of misapplying the aggregate to the specific in some situations where you figure out what has the strong correlation. or strong by football standards, but most of them aren't very strong. And typically, when we think about like the R squared, the idea of that, quick statistics,

you know, diversion here, but it's, you know, it's one variable, what percent of the variance of the thing we're trying to figure out, like fantasy points is explained by the thing that,

you know, we, we are testing. Yes. Yeah, the input. So if it's an R squared of point 65 or something, then 65% of what we're trying to explain.

can be explained, but that leaves 35% that is unexplained variance. And this is the stuff that it's the reason why no football stat gets really particularly high in this way, because we can't isolate everything in an NFL play. It's different than like baseball where you have a pitcher and you have a hitter and you can get some higher R squared in some of those types of stats and like stability points and things. We can't get anything to stabilize in NFL stats because they're very short seasons, right? And then everything changes.

And things change within seasons. And a lot of the assumptions that we're trying to make going into a season can change. Aaron Rogers can blow his Achilles out on the second play of the season. And every jet's, you know, season long team projection was based on one quarterback, a former MVP playing and is now Zach Wilson playing. And it's just a very different landscape, not just for Garrett Wilson, his top receiver, but for total play volume, for point scored, for one pass ratio, for all of these things. And that was sort of when you mentioned to me this idea of, you know, the commandments, that was sort of my first commandment. It's like chaos is sort of the rule in this. So let's get into that because I think that's a really good jumping off point because this is the first thing that you wanted to mention.

And I think that it's such an interesting counterbalance to this idea that there's so much, so much information out there. There are so many stats out there. But your first one was chaos is actually the ruling factor in fantasy football. That's right. I mean, you got the Aaron Rogers example. Another great one is the Colts last year, Anthony Richardson. So you're, you know, like I'm in the middle of doing my projections right now. So I'm always reminded of this time of year.

how hard it is to actually predict this stuff. I'm really deep in the weeds. And I've back-tested my projections in the past. And it's more teams than I think people would think that the projections are just way off for. So the way that I've looked at it is just the three like high level stats. Team plays pass attempts and run attempts. And how many teams that I was massively off on, like 50 plus pass or run attempts and 100 plus plays, which is a lot to miss by. And the two times that I've looked at this heavily in the past, I was off by about half the league, by about 16 out of 32 teams. And there's reasons for that that maybe are like, maybe I'm just really bad at projecting, who knows? But some of it is the Aaron Rogers. Some of it is the Anthony Richardson, where I'm

projecting the Colts to be a very, well, lean run heavy, a rookie quarterback with mobility. And then they turn to a more pocket passing Gardner Minchew who gets the ball out quick. It's a completely, especially for pass attempts, that, like, I would have projected the Colts way different if I knew that Gardner Minchue was going to take the majority of their snaps last year. But there's also stuff like, you know, Jordan Love was a hit last year. This time last year we didn't know what to expect while, you know, a lot of the other young quarterbacks are no longer starting for those teams, Justin Fields, Kenny Pickett, Sam Howell,

Desmond Ritter, those guys were expected to be the start, you know, or they were the start going into last year and they're no longer even on those teams. And being taken in the same range as Jordan Love and drafts. I mean, those other guys, I mean, Justin Fields taken seven rounds ahead of where Jordan Love would have been taken in drafts last year. C.J. Stroud and Bryce Young, both going in similar rounds, late rounds. Bryce C.J. Stroud hits looks like the next superstar QB. Bryce Young flops in a way that is unfortunate.

You know, just not really, I think, what anyone was expecting when he went first overall last year. You have non-quarterback stuff like Kyron Williams and Pooka and Akua for the Rams, how that changes the expectations for their whole offense when those guys are hits and no one really knew they would be hits. They were 20th round picks and drafts, right? So all of that stuff changes the parameters that we think we know at this time. it's not just like you've got to be better at predicting. It's the ways that we're making these predictions.

It's a moving target throughout this season. It will be different in week one than it is in week eight than it is in week 16. And so strategically, we need to think about it differently than trying to predict things and draft the perfect roster for week one that's going to be the perfect roster for week 17. Instead, we need to think about how can we build in contingencies and how can we, from a strategic perspective, we're building this team, but we need to understand that it's going to need to evolve throughout the season. Our running back in week three might be different than our running back in

week 15. And how do we approach things so that we can maximize our success in a, you know, a notoriously difficult to predict environment that we're looking at? I've always appreciated the way that you phrased this. The uncertainty is opportunity. And I think that that's a really good way to conceive of fantasy football. Last year, I think the best possible example of that was the Miami-Dolm. Dolphins backfield where you're looking at it and it's like, all right, well, you're kind of shrugging. And God help me as somebody who drafted Jeff Wilson in every single league before the news that he got hurt. But the people who were wanted to invest in the Miami Dolphins backfield last year were correct.

The uncertainty was opportunity there. We didn't know who it would be, but it was an absolute smash hit if you ended up getting Rohrahimosa-Divon-A-chain in one of those situations. This year, I look at stuff like the Bengals backfield or the Browns backfield, where you have these teams at the Bengals, specifically, that's probably going to be a pretty good offense. And we have absolutely no idea how that workload is going to shake out. But that uncertainty presents opportunity. And I think in the past, I would have been scared off from those things because it's like, well, I don't know which one it's going to be. So I'm going to shy away from stuff like that when in actuality, not knowing which one it's going to be provides you opportunity that other people are scared off from when they shouldn't be. Exactly. It gets back to that market point. Everything in fantasy goes back to the price, right? And the Bengals backfield's a great one.

I'm drafting them everywhere because I think that's I mean that's a good offense those backs matter for fantasy production we don't know who it's going to be we don't know you know Zach Moss wasn't particularly like he was somewhat efficient last year he didn't look great on film if you kind of watched him there's some elements of there's advanced metrics that aren't as exciting didn't get a huge contract chase Brown barely played got like 50 touches those are the main two guys that are being drafted and it's like what what you know what do we even have here who are you know you just wait until that August 18th Samajet P. P. You just wait for it. It's going to ruin everything for all of us. Yeah. Everyone is terrified about that. I'm getting that from even like casuals that, you know, I know in real life are texting me, well, what happens when Pryan lands there? And I'm like, I mean, it's baked in, right?

So it's all about cost at this point for that particular situation. It's all about cost. One of the big things that comes to this idea of chaos being the rule and one of the things that I'm going to write about a little later this summer, but I don't think it's emphasized enough is how short statistical peaks are at the NFL level. that it's very difficult to sustain elite production for five, 10 years. And so there's this reality that by the time you see something and you're like,

oh, this is there in the data, I trust it now. It's look at this guy, I can chalk this guy up for X. It often means that it's probably about to go away. The situation like Mike Evans having a thousand yards receive, what makes that run so incredible is that it's like impossible. Like no other receiver has ever done anything like it for good reason. It's very, very difficult to do that at the NFL level, year in and year out. There's age stuff.

There's health-related stuff. There's just situational changes around players. And so I think there's, you know, a lot of analysis that goes, this guy has only done this so far. And this guy over here has done this. And so how could you possibly rank this player over that player? Well, when you start to think about the fact that statistical peaks are very narrow, you're trying to predict what's going to happen next. And you realize that having to see it before it happens is kind of. of a silly concept.

And instead, you can say, well, I think this is going to happen. And this is, you know, this guy is trending one way. Great examples of this are Garrett Wilson. We just talked about Aaron Rogers. He's one great example where his production, his statistics don't look great for the last two years. But we know the quarterback play is a mitigating factor. And then Drake London, who's also going near him. For him, it's not, I mean, it was somewhat the quarterback play.

It's also the offense where now with a new coordinator, a new quarterback, the expectation should be like maybe a hundred more pass attempts in this passing game. So you can look at stuff like his target. like his targets per route run as opposed to as raw targets. There's a lot of people that like, this guy's never had 120 targets in a season. How are you going to project him for 150 this year? Well, that's exactly what I'm doing.

Like I think their team is going to have so many more passes that that's, so it's being willing to predict that's the part of the chaos as the rule element. It does free you up to think like, I'm okay predicting things that I haven't seen yet before because that's what happens every season in the NFL. And especially at running back, which I think is something that you wanted to point out. I mean,

it's so volatile. from year to year and the peaks are so short. And this is an easy one. This is easy pickings. But like Bijan this year, we have never seen him have a monster, monster season. If he had 2,200 total yards and was the number one running back in fantasy

by a huge margin of Christian McCaffrey misses like two or three games, would that surprise anyone? Even if you've never seen it before, no. And so that's what that one's sitting out there. That's a sitting duck. But there are subtler ones that I think you could point out as examples because that position specifically, if you're waiting for it to happen,

if you're waiting for Austin Echler to be the number one point score two years in a row and you're taking him in that range, it's going to fall off way faster than you wanted to. Right. Yeah, the running back thing, I mean, this time last year, Echler was a first round pick. He had led the NFL and TDs two years in a row, and now he's on a different team and he's a mid-round pick. And a lot of people are just like he doesn't have it anymore. And I'm actually kind of wondering if he's a little bit undervalued because he's, I mean,

maybe last year was just the one injury-plague season. Maybe he rebounds from a health perspective. And that was also a terrible situation. The Chargers running game last year, the Chargers running game in the last two years. I mean, the receiving is what sustained him two years ago, but the Chargers running game overall was absolutely abysmal in the way that it was constructed.

And even a slight uptick in situation, there's a chance that he bounces back. And the fact that he's going for next to free right now, it feels like that those are the types of, again, an uncertainty presenting opportunity. That's an example, even if it's not a fun guy to click on at this stage of his career. Yeah, I mean, so one of the big things that running back is

anytime you get, you know, beyond, this is just the unfortunate reality of the data when you look at it, but you get beyond like age 25 and you start to see efficiency fall off, it's very hard for players to reverse those trends typically. And that is an aggregate data set thing where there's not a lot of even specific examples that refute that. Having said that, you know, I think Echler could be somebody who could at least bounce back some.

And he is so cheap that, again, it's all about cost. But again, last year this time you had like Miles Sanders was going to a new team. Alexander Madison was going to start for the first time now that Dalvin Cook was gone. There was a lot of excitement around those guys. They're completely, like they're basically undrafted right now in most drafts. There's a lot of people, like, for example, that were very certain that Najee Harris was a workhorse. This is another one of those things where the past data would say that Mike Tomlin only uses workhorses. And a lot of people referenced that this time last year. And my argument was, and not to toot my own horn,

but Najee Harris had been relatively inefficient. Jalen Warren had been efficient. They had some quotes and some stuff. They're like, we want to incorporate Jalen Warren more. My argument was essentially it doesn't have to be the way that it's always been. That's, again, the rule. The chaos is the rule. And we did see that. It was more of a 50-50 split throughout the year. Now, Najee Harris had one of his better years of his career last year. It looked better in a little bit of a lesser role. But yeah, I mean, that was something that people are just looking at the past trends and saying it has to be this way because it's been that way. That's not really the way to approach fancy football, at least for me. That's not my approach.

The Miles Sanders and Alexander Madison examples, I think, are very good ones. And the uncertainty is actually opportunity because certainty can lead you astray. If you think somebody is profiled for this amount of workload, if that guy isn't very good or if the situation isn't very good, none of that matters, right? Like, we think the things we think are likely to happen are probably far less likely to happen than we're willing to admit at this stage of the calendar. I think that happens all of the time. And the Alexander Madison point, I think, brings me to the second. commandment here that you wanted to talk about, which is what? Yeah, the second and the third, I think, go together really well. So the second is that talent matters. And the third is that team

situation also matters, right? So it's like, well, I mean, one or the other. But to your point, a lot of times you get the people who are very into the projections. So I'm doing projections now. I like to do a podcast with Mike Leone over to establish The Edge, where we talk through all the different teams and our projections, but we also talk through how a lot of the parameters that we're basing these projections on are going to be a moving target like we just talked about. There's a lot of people that get really into the projections. Like again, for fantasy baseball players, you can look at fantasy baseball projections and draft your whole team off of those.

And in a lot of cases, it makes sense to do that. Fantasy football is a lot different because there's so many layers and the way that everything can impact a player that he doesn't even control. like the Aaron Rogers injury impacting the whole offense top to bottom, right? And so you described a situation like with Miles Sanders or with Alexander Madison where there's a lot of people that are projecting opportunity onto to players that maybe don't have the talent to hold that role through the chaos of an NFL season, the ups and downs and the things that will occur.

We saw, obviously, Chuba Hubbard, just take the role from Miles Sanders, Alexander Madison, pretty much held on. had Chandler started to work in a little bit more late, but he's since been let go. I mean, the team more or less tacitly admitted in the off season that we, you know, we weren't content with his production and they let him go. He's now with the Raiders. And so, you know, the cream rises to the top. And one of the big things that matters for the talent side of it is to have, like,

we are searching for outlier seasons. We're searching for players that have these league winning statistical peaks, which are like unprojectable. Like we go back to this projections conversation, you can't project what Buk and Nakua did last year. You would be insane. If you did that for any other, you know, lesser touted rookie, you would be off by a lot, right? It's like it's very difficult to foresee that type of a thing. But that's what makes him such a superstar.

And the key and such a league winner for fantasy, the key is that you need to be efficient on your touches. You need to be a talented. It's not just about projecting. opportunity. So a lot of people focus on the role and they focus on the projected opportunity. For me, where that edge exists now is in talent. And it's different for different positions. It's a little bit different for running back, for example, where opportunity does drive it more. It's more notable for wide receiver and tight end where the talent is, we can see who earns the targets, who wins in man coverage and those types of things. But team situation also matters. There's great talents that can be hampered by team situations.

Again, I go back to Garrett Wilson. I'm very high on Garrett Wilson. coming back. I totally understand that. Garrett Wilson is going to come up a lot on this show in several different categories because I was going to bring him up for another point that you wanted to make. Yeah, I mean, that's a guy where, I mean, you get, the efficiency gets hampered. Players can be hampered by team pass volume. Again, go back to Drake London, Kyle Pitts, and Arthur Smith's offenses were last

or second to last in pass rate over expected the last two years. So that's going to really make it difficult to have an outlierish ceiling. as a receiver when the team's not throwing a whole lot. And so, I mean, the big thing about the team situation element is every NFL team is pretty unique. And you do want to think about it from their roster depth, the talent of their backups to their coaching staff, their scheme, the concentration of playing time. That's a big one. The Rams, for example, are a team I've always loved because they'll play their starting running back a ton. And they did with Kyron last year once he took over, he had like four or five games with 90 plus percent snaps.

I mean, running backs typically don't, even the best in the league, don't play a lot of games, 90% at snap rates. And the receivers will run routes on 98 to 100% of dropbacks, whereas some other teams, number one, might be at 80 or 85%. And that's a meaningful gap where the concentration is something to target in a Sean McVey offense, in a Mike McDaniel offense in Miami, as you talked about with those running backs. Even though they use multiple backs, I mean, they concentrate. The ball goes to the guys that Mike McDaniel wants to get the ball to. And so there are so many elements about the team situation that also matters. Can it elevate talent and can it hold talent back? You still need talent at the core.

That's the part that I value more. I want to be drafting players that I think are good enough to do outlier things, be absolutely superstars, run for 2,000 yards, catch 150 balls, whatever it is. I mean, those are massive statistical numbers, but you don't hit on those types of players drafting a guy just because you're like, oh, I project him for X amount of touch. I don't think anyone drafting Alexander Madison last year, not to pick on him too much, but I don't think anyone was projecting him to be an outlier efficiency player. I think they thought the workload was there.

And that's one of the biggest mistakes I see from all levels of fantasy, from home leagues up to high stakes. It's more about talent, but the situation does still very much matter. Yeah, it's interesting. Like a guy like Brandon I, you last year going into last year, I think is a really good example where this guy is clearly talented and you're just sitting there being like, I don't know, how many balls could he possibly catch when you look at the amount of miles to feed, how little they throw the ball?

And from what I remember, you weren't deterred by that. You're like, I don't really care about that. Like, that guy's just really good at football. If that guy's better than everybody else, there is a pathway for players who are that good to overcome whatever situational anvils might be tied around their ankles. And if you drafted Brandon IUC last year, you were very, very happy. Even if going into it situationally, there were a lot of cases. against his upside as a fantasy football player last year.

And his early career is one of those weird ones where he, I mean, again, it gets to where like context is necessary with everything. He had that year where he was kind of in Kyle Shanahan's doghouse, didn't play a lot. And so his numbers didn't actually really speak to what he was capable of doing last year. You're right.

I was really in on him. He was the guy that I talked about a lot where he was the biggest drumbeat player for me last year, where everything out of San Francisco camp was like, this guy's ready to absolutely hit his ceiling. And the reason I was willing to bet on him was a concept I talk about sometimes I call a Longview where, yeah, some of the statistics in his recent NFL weren't perfect. He didn't have a 2.0 yards per out run season yet.

He had some good ones, but not great. That's like when you break into like a really strong number. And then he went out and had a three plus yards per out run season, one of the best in the entire NFL last year. You don't jump that much unless you have other stuff in your profile. There's stuff from his collegiate profile. So that's when I, you know, I talk about the long view. We always kind of liked this guy in the analytics community for what he could become.

And then you start hearing Debo and Camp say, you can't guard this guy in a phone booth. You start hearing the coaches talk about this guy's never, he's put his head down. He's never been in a better situation than he is right now. He's ready to absolutely explode. You hear the other teammates talk about him in that way. You're like, I mean, at some point, you throw out the data and you just say, like, well, not throw out all the data because it's that longer view data that does mean I like this player for a reason. And I have a reason to believe he could hit a ceiling in his career in a long view sense. And then you listen to what they're saying out of camp,

but this is actually the year that that's going to happen for Brandon and I, you. I don't do a lot of the drumbeat stuff because there's a lot of camp hype pieces. But Brandon I, you last year was the one that you wanted to be in on just from what people were saying in San Francisco. I'm very curious who that guy's going to be this year. Because obviously, like the Pukunakua's of the world, who fucking knows? Like those, you're just throwing darts for the most part.

You can be slightly smart about it like you talked about. and snap shares and just overall health of the offense, I think is a tiebreaker, obviously, if you're looking at situations where you think that offense is going to be elite, trying to grab players from those just because there are pathways to production there are smart.

But with somebody like Ayuk, it's like, he was going as wide receiver, what, like 25 to 30 last year? So who are those guys this year? Where there's going to be somebody that, all right, we're a little low on him for this and this reason. And I'm talking myself into like, Zayflowers being one of those guys where it's like,

oh, well, Mark Andrews is there and yada, yada, yada. But you watch them, it's like, that guy's just good. All the other outside circumstances, I understand being a little bit down on it for this reason and that. But that guy's just good. And I think over time, if that, even if it's a very simplistic way of thinking about it, is one of the things that is driving your mindset fantasy football-wise. It's probably going to lead you to more success stories than failures. That's right. And I mean, and that's really the point.

The other thing that I think people miss and you're getting on, we're going to, people who have listened to be on podcast before know I love to get off on. tangents, but this is, you're driving me to a great point here where people assume that every pick has to be like some type of a win, right? Like a small win. And so they, they make more conservative picks than they should throughout a draft. The reality that you, especially if you're in a home league, it's a little different for basketball because he can't make changes to your roster. But in a home league and those types of things, the reality is your roster is going to change a lot from draft day to the end of the season. You're going to cut a lot of players. Players are going to get hurt and players are going to bust. We don't predict this stuff particularly well, and especially

across different positions particularly well. The bus rates are higher at running back and at tight end as well, which I like to take, you know, early tight ends. Wide receiver, a little bit more stability. I'm a big proponent of earlier wide receivers for that stability because the best receivers we typically know. But the reality is I think drafters are afraid to miss. And you're just talking about that type of a bet where I'm not afraid to miss when I draft.

And it's really one of the edges. Because you're trying to win. You're trying to win. You're not trying to get third place. your league and consistently put up like moderately good scores each week. And the whole idea, the whole premise of trying to stack a bunch of little

small wins at each pick and then build a roster that across it is going to have enough value to win gets you third place. When you swing it for the fences a bunch, you know, maybe your roster will break down. Some of my teams do. That's why I played a lot of different leagues because I take this really extreme upside approach.

But a lot of the time when you're attacking that type of play, player, you do wind up, and you really only need a few hits. That's kind of the reality. If you hit on a Brandon I, Yuk, or a couple more key players in the later rounds hit on a Rihim Moster, like you were just talking about the Miami running game, you're going to be in great position, even if you have a lot of misses in your early round stuff, you're going to have paths to succeed.

You can still finish third with just those two guys almost, you know? And then you have the potential to finish first and really dominate your league. So that's a really key one as well, just seeking upside and understanding. that you're not going to be right on a lot of stuff. It's, again, freeing. Understand, like, I can't predict this, but I want to look for these tail outcomes, these top upper 95th percentile outcomes of it.

We talk about range of outcomes. And I like to use a phrase probabilistic ranges. I focus a lot in the probabilistic range on those upside cases. If everything goes right for this player, what does it mean? How good can he really be? Is he efficient enough? Is he talented enough to break the NFL?

Bijon Robinson is, right? That's a guy like you said can do something that's just so incredible this year with a new coaching staff, new quarterback. Maybe everything rises in Atlanta. They're projected in the betting markets to win the division.

They have a weak schedule. There's a lot of reasons that come over from the Rams. The coaching staff comes over from the Rams where they're very concentrated in their snap shares. I was just talking about that. Bejohn plays 90% of the snaps in some of these games.

Yeah, he's going to have a monster season, I think. He's a guy I'm really excited about. So, yeah, I mean, seeking that type of upside is really a key to fantasy. Are there talent, quote unquote, metrics that you look at for certain positions? Obviously, you can't use numbers for all of that stuff. But as we're trying to bring a little bit of structure to how you make talent-based bets,

are there a couple things at each position that you consistently look at? For sure. At receiver and tight end, I look at the per route run metrics a lot. I like targets per route and run because it's simple. We were talking about the, um, the, um, the, um, the, are squared and those types of things. It's not as predictive of fantasy points for various reasons, but it tells me what I want it to know.

And then I can apply the context to the unexplained variance of targets per out run. But targets are important, right? That's the one thing we do know. Targets matter a ton for receiving production. And targets are mostly earned. Good receivers have high target shares. They get open consistently. So the targets per route run guys that are really good at it tend to be able to produce

set a really high level. Yards per route run is also cited a lot and is very important. That just adds in basically yards per target. So your targets per out run, you have yards per target that equates to yards per out run. Yards per target is an efficiency stat that's going to tell you how good the player is after earning the target, his catch rate and, you know, yak and all of those things. And I definitely want to pay attention to those things.

There are players that have really good targets per out run, like Deonti Johnson that are maybe not as good on the after the target efficiency. see, I still love his target ceiling as he goes over to Carolina. Like, he can just rack up so much volume that the production can be there. The yards per target can be explained by situation also, though, right? Like, that's one of those situations where if you're a player who has a ton of targets per round, you're consistently earning them. I think we can safely say that's probably based on your talent and ability.

And if there is a gap between that and your efficiency production and you look at terrible quarterback situations, it's easy to tell yourself a story that that number can see an uptick if the situation that player is in even modestly improves. Right. And Deonti Johnson, that's backed up by, like, ESPN's open score and Matt Harmon's reception, everyone agrees. Deonti Johnson gets open at will, right? There's no.

And so if you just think about how could he have a monster season, well, if the yards per target is just good one year instead of being, it's been pretty bad at times. If he scores five touchdowns at a given year. Right, that he's a star, right? Because the targets are going to be there. He reminds me so much of Jarvis Landry, who people never. wanted to draft, but would just rack up targets for his whole career because he's unexciting. And we were talking about talent.

The key for that is whether or not you say that his after the target efficiency relates to talent, the ability to earn targets at that level is talent and at the receiver position. So in terms of the advanced stats, advanced in quotes, because, you know, there's more advanced stats out there. But I really care about can you earn volume at a high, high level at receiver, at tight end, At tight end, you do also want to look at route share pass block rate because a lot of the tight ends just won't get out in routes enough. It's a key difference between the tight end and receiver position. Like Noah Fant, for example, has a chance this year to finally run a lot of routes.

Basically, every time, every season of his career from Denver and Seattle, he's split routes with other tight ends. Maybe that's a Noah Fant issue. But I think maybe it's some of the offenses that he's been on. And now that Colby Parkinson and Will Dissley signed in free agency elsewhere, I think there's some potential that he actually sets a career to and routes run this year and is an intriguing very late tight end option. So somebody that I like late, but the routes run element is very key for 10. You can't put up a lot of stats if you're not actually going out for a pass. But you need to also, again, earn targets, targets per route run, and then the efficiency stuff in addition to that, the yak, et cetera.

So I mentioned Deonté Johnson. The kind of player that I love is like an AJ Brown, right? You get that the high A.D. As well as another number that is important. Air yards are important. you get a vertical profile, an ability to earn targets, and an ability to gain yards after the catch and do a lot with the ball in your hand. That's a superstar wide receiver. Those are the three things that I'm trying to identify. But players can be very successful without that.

On the running back side, a lot of it really is situational, but mistackles forced and yards after contact. I usually look at mistackles force per attempt, yards after contact, or excuse me, mistackles force per touch, which includes the passing game, yards after contact. attack per attempt just for the rushing game because it's a little bit different. But those are two stats that tend to be the best at showing us who can, and if you think about, it makes sense. What do you want from your running back? You want them to be able to force mistackles when he gets into space against one defender or break a tackle and get yards after contact.

And what areas does he transcend his surroundings? That would be the answer. Those are the numbers that we can ascribe to that sort of idea. I'm really interested in this idea of fading projections. and fading rankings, fading preseason rankings, because I think so many people can adhere way too strongly to that sort of stuff. So as you've looked at best ball drafts, rankings at this stage, who are two or three guys that you feel like the projections and the numbers

and maybe projected workload would make them high picks and you're just not seeing it right now? That's a good question. I mean, Seekwon Barkley is going in the early second round already because he's moving to the best offense he's ever been in. The other key stat that I look at for running backs is I call it high value touches. It's for me, I'm looking at the percent of touches that are receptions and then carries inside the 10-yard line. So receptions are a lot more valuable for fantasy scoring than rush attempts.

One of the other commandments I had here is knowing your league type and the scoring stuff matter. So in a PPR league especially, you're getting a point for each of those receptions. It's a little less important and a half PPR. It's less important in standard as well. But you're still talking about in the passing game when they catch passes, higher yards per exception than an average yards per carry. So you're still gaining more yards. It's important to have that receiving stuff for the yardage efficiency.

The Eagles backs have not caught a lot of passes the last few years. DeAndre Swift used to earn a ton of volume with the Lions. That was a big part of his profile. He didn't get it last year. It's because of the mobility of Jalen Hertz, design rushes. And then also, you know, when he's looking downfield, he's basically getting to one or two reads and then taking off running a lot of the time. Not specifically hurts necessarily, but that is the trend across all

mobile quarterbacks. I'm not trying to disparage his ability to get through his progression specifically, but if you look at the data, check down as scramble is a very real thing that has come up over the last several years when you're looking at these guys. So that's an important understanding is you're not going to get as many high value touches when you have a mobile quarterback. We talked about Austin Eckler a little bit ago. That's one of my concerns. You have Jane Daniels there. Probably young quarterback's going to look vertical or like, you know, look at the vertical routes and then scramble as opposed to dump off to the running back. Especially because that's what Jay Daniels was in college.

They're not out of imagination necessary to see him be, to see him being that type of player. So that's a, you know, a complicated element to Echler's profile where he could rebound, but also not get the necessary work because of situation, which is important. The immobile quarterbacks tend to then check down at a really high rate. That's a lot more valuable. So Sequin's a guy that I don't know will get enough receiving. He would have to rush at a really efficient rate. to make his ADP makes sense and then have to get a lot of rushing touchdowns.

A lot of people are predicting without Jason Kelsey in there that the push might not be as successful. We might get more running back rushing TDs. And D'And D'Andre Swift did get a lot of carries in close last year. He just didn't convert a lot of them. It's one of those stats that's pretty fluky, frankly. And he got tackled at the one yard line a bunch of times. And then Jalen Hertz ran it in from the one.

Maybe some of that will translate over to Seguan Barkley rushing TDs. but he's going to need a lot of Rushing TDs essentially to make up for it. So he's one guy that's a concern for me. I have a question on that because I think the Kellynne Moore introduction is interesting in that. It's almost a complicating factor because I assume they're going to want more answers against pressure than they've had in years past and just a more diversified kind of traditional dropback game. And I wonder if the Sequin signing and bringing him in is almost a byproduct of them needing a player with that sort of profile in a Kellynne Moore offense. as you're looking at these sort of circumstantial situational factors, does player traits, how much do player traits trump a certain coordinator or play caller's history?

Like, do you think that there's more inertia to who Jalen Hertz is or more inertia to who the play caller is? It's such a good question. Because it definitely does in some cases. The player traits definitely do trump the situation. I think that's a mistake people make is focusing too much on the way things have been within an offense. This is a case with Hertz where I think the trends are pretty strong. Like DeAndre Swift's fall off from, and they were talking about trying to get him involved as a

pass catcher last year. I remember. In camp, there was a lot of hype around that. And we, so we just saw this on another guy who was a good pass catching back. They wanted to do that. They wanted to have a short passing game to him. And they did at times, you know, if you watch the games, kind of force feed him targets. The problem is there wasn't enough of those like non-scripted targets where you're just getting the check down because. again, it's how Hertz is reading out the play and then what he's doing at the next, you know, the next step of his progression, he's often looking to run. And so I think it's more in this, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a,

it's a pure analysis thing. But I think in this case, it's more about Hertz than it would be about, you know, even if Kalimore wants to implement that, I don't think it'll win out in this case. It's so interesting to pushing the pull of that and like how much you've value one versus the other. It's really difficult. I mean, it's a really tough thing to kind of drill down on every single offseason when you're looking at which things have changed for any given team. It absolutely is. I mean, as we're kind of going through these commandments, the fourth one I had was the know-your-league type thing.

It's very important to understand your scoring system, all of those types of things. There's a big difference in approach we talked about between home leagues, high-stakes stuff, best ball. The fifth one was understand how offenses attack and how defense is game plan for them, which is we're kind of getting into now. And I think this is really important for a variety of levels. But one team that I just came across an old. take on was San Francisco as I was going through

their projection where like late in the season I can't even remember where I got this take whether it was just my own may have gotten it from you but San Francisco late it felt like it was this fun paradox of Brock Purdy's MVP candidacy that it felt like defenses were actually saying

because most defenses we know from the great play callers podcast series that you guys had last year right now are trying to stop explosives but defenses against the Niners because they want to force teams to matriculate the ball down the field. They want to force them into third downs. And then enough third downs are not going to actually get the first downs.

The difference with the 49ers is that they were so efficient when you force them to matriculate the ball down the field was CMC and Debo and all the misdirection and everything they can do. It's not four yards, four yards. We got you on third and two. It's six yards, six yards. You didn't even get us into a third down. It seemed late in the year defenses were saying we have to take away McCaffrey and Debo and we have to let Brandon I, you can this high a dot roll, get one-on-one down field a lot of the time and make Brock Purdy beat us. None of these are good answers.

It's not to say that they thought Brock Pardy was bad, defenses, but they were like, look, this is our best opportunity for something crazy to happen. I think that taking away the explosives is thought of that way, too. It's the best opportunity to get a stop. If you just get them on third down, maybe there's one incomplete pass, and then look, you've got the, you forced them to punt. You don't want to give up a long touchdown. You want to try to make them move the ball down the field.

Against the 49ers, defenses are playing it differently. I think that helps explain Brandon I, Yuk's efficiency, for example, that he was in a different situation than other high-end receivers. His efficiency, when I referenced that, was absolutely through the roof. And rightfully so. But he's another example of a player that I think is maybe a little overpriced. He only got 105 targets last year. He's going in the second round right next to like a Devante Adams, who got 175.

Now, we just got done talking about efficiency and player talent mattering. And Brandon Neve's one of the best examples of player talent that I want to be in on. But now that he's going in the second round and he got 70 targets fewer than Devante Adams and he has a very similar situation this year, it's difficult for me because really you have to keep all of that efficiency that he had and add volume now because he's got to be able to earn more targets and where is that coming from? Because they got other players that are not getting enough touches. They have so much talent and so many weapons there.

It's tricky. I do still ascribe to the idea that you should probably just be drafting every player from the 49ers because their offense is so efficient and so good. But his price is one that is a little tricky for me in relation to some of these guys that stack up 170 plus target seasons like that. But thinking through each individual offense, what they're trying to accomplish, how it works, and then how defense is game plan for them, I don't think that comes up enough in fancy football analysis, the real football analysis,

listening to shows like your show to understand how the teams are actually trying to approach things is going to help you understand which players are going to benefit. Typically, I want to be attacking the players that the team want to. to feature for one reason or another as running their offense through. And Brandon Ayuk, for example, fits that. But I think I would argue that the 49ers offense is sort of like

CMC and Debo are the meat and potato stuff. And then Iyuk is the playoff of that in some regards, rather than the focal point. I think the 105 targets speaks to that. So that is a really key element across all of fantasy football over the years. But again, I referenced that play callers.

series that you guys did is one of my favorite absolute favorite things I've ever seen done in football content. I've referenced it a ton in my writing as you know. But it talked through how defensive approach is evolving. And you guys had all the coaches on. You know Robert Sala talking through it. Like we don't want teams to score in two or three plays. That's the idea. And Shaqvigvay is saying, we like when defenses follow the rules when they play cover two and do what they're supposed to do because we know how to attack that. But right now we have defenses doing the, as Jordan Roderick talked about the this and that mentality covering space, trying to, trying to do a lot of different things. And so on, like, right now in 2024,

the way that we analyze fantasy football is affected by what's happening in real football, right? The NFL always kind of goes through eras and things change. And you have to understand that like where we're headed is a little bit different than where we've been in terms of what's going to win in fantasy football. I love that. And I also think that, think about the Niners specifically and why they're able to attack teams in manners that most offenses can't. I think that personnel manipulation is going to be a huge driving force for just offensive success. We've already seen it, right? If you look at the teams that I think are outliers in terms of personnel usage, the Niners use 21 personnel at the second highest clip in the NFL or the first highest clip in the NFL, it's up there.

You look at what the Dolphins do with how much 21 personnel that they use. to look at the Rams and the fact that they use 11 personnel with the clip that they do. It's all about being able to dictate and manipulate defense. So with the Niners specifically, they're living in this world where it's all this 21 personnel with this extremely efficient running game and the highest profile running back in the NFL, they face a ton of heavy boxes and they face a ton of single high safeties, which is counterintuitive considering how efficient the passing game is, but it makes sense considering the way they deploy their players and who their players are.

So you're going to get a lot of one-on-one opportunities on the outside, for somebody like Brandon I.U. consistently. And this isn't just a case of how good a running game is either. Think back to the way that the Brown's defense played the Texans in the playoffs. It made absolutely no sense to play all of this single high safety against CJ Stroud. But because the Texans are using all this heavy personnel, you're going to get a lot of cover three against the Texan's offense. Well, what does that do for somebody like Tank Dell?

It allows him to eat on the outside. And that's somebody that you think about talent, you're phasedons. numbers from last year. I think he's going to get under drafted because of the other players on that offense, but we're one Steph Diggs injury away from Tank Dell potentially being a league winning player because of those personnel-driven circumstances that we're talking about and the pathways to production and just what his ceiling could be because of how talented of a player he is. So I think considering those things is hugely important.

The Rams running game is like that. The Rams running game, how often the Rams ran into six-man boxes last year, I think they had the third most rushing attempts into six-man boxes in the entire league because of what the passing game looks like. Well, if your running game is efficient, which their running game was last year, you're going to get tons of great opportunities for those guys because of the way the defenses are playing them. And so there's layers to this and you're really digging in.

You really have to study this to find advantages. But I do think that there are a ton of them to find if you're thinking about it from that perspective. This, I mean, and loved that. That's very, the Rams have been doing that since Todd Gurley. I remember looking at his numbers against light boxes back in the day. This gets right back to that whole idea of unexplained variance. All those little nuances in the different offenses that you just talked about are why the aggregate data can't get to an R squared of, you know, for any stat can't get to this massive R squared that people want because there's nuances that influence the data, right?

There's 11 players on the field and the way that the different teams scheme and line up and their personnel and what they're trying to accomplish is why we don't have the same thing as in baseball as we are using. using earlier where a hitter comes up to the plate and bats against the pitcher and that can be isolated. We can't isolate all the factors, all the variables that influence one snap in football because of everything that you just said. And that becomes where the edges are. That's what's important to understand in fantasy. It's not just looking at what data says or what league-wide aggregate trends are and then trying to then apply that back to an individual position. Like I use that concept of misapplying the egg or get to the specific.

I certainly don't want to call anyone out, but like a very small thing that I saw recently in relation to the per route run stats that I was talking about early yards per out run, targets per outrun. There's been a lot of great work done to show that there is, there's some biases there and there's some, you know, key caveats that need to be considered. One major one being, the fewer wide receivers are in the formation,

two wide receiver sets are going to tend to lead to higher targets per outrun yards per out run rates than three wide receiver sets. Those are those Corey Davis numbers from like 2020. Right. Yeah.

Hayden Wings did great work on this. Shout out to him. And it's important stuff. But I also hesitate to misapply that to certain individual situations. And when I said that, I saw that applied to Drake London last year. And I was like,

man, the reason he was in so many two wide receiver sets is the reason that Kyle Pitts went in the top five. because he's not a tight end. He is a matchup nightmare. Yes, the data is going to show you

that they're in a two tight end set, but the reason that Drake London's in more two wide receiver sets than another receiver is because the Falcons are playing that tight end at receiver more than other tight ends are being played at receiver, right?

So it doesn't actually, like, what's the spirit of the aggregate data and how do we make sure that we're applying it correctly? That's a great example of one where I would be like, the context of the Falcons offense is important.

The fact that Kyle Pitts is a tight end in classification doesn't change the fact that Drake London's still running routes against Kyle Pitts who's lining up at receiver essentially. We're not contextualizing that data correctly, in my opinion. And so that's the type of example of something that, you know, that's, again, it gets to why the unexplained variance is there and those types of things. And I think there's a lot of, you know, I don't want to be too critical of other fantasy analysts, but I do think we are a little bit stale with some of our analysis where it's like we're going to look at all of this aggregate data. and then say, here's the player that sticks out like a sore thumb, and I want to apply this aggregate number to the specific situation. The reason that player sticks out like a sore thumb is the context that I just, like Drake London sticks out in that rate because Kyle Pitts is playing receiver, right?

So we've got to think through why the player is sticking out like a sore thumb and not take data that doesn't apply to his situation and then try to apply it to him to, you know, to bring down his, you know, projection, if you will. So anyway, there's a lot of nuance to all of that. Man, when you're talking through the different offices, the way they play and that kind of stuff, that to me is so, so key. And I don't believe it's applied enough in fantasy rankings and enough in the market and an ADP. And again, it's all about price and what can we exploit in those types of things. Those are the situations that I want to think through.

I want to think through what the team wants to do. As the season evolves, as there's chaos throughout the season, who is the players that are going to succeed and the coaches are going to say in the film room through the week, I want to get this guy the ball more. You just talked about Tank Dell. This is what we're trying to do schematically, how he fits in. We want to get him the ball more. And the example you use were like if one tank, Stefan Diggs injury away, one of my favorite points when you have this unprojectable situation where there's too much talent and not enough targets to go around. Like this is one of the reasons I hate projections.

You have three really good receivers there and you can only project so many targets. I can't project them all for 150 targets. There wouldn't be enough targets in the offense. It doesn't add up. But those typically are opportunities. relative to the market. Now, all three of the Texans receivers are pretty pricey so far in draft. So maybe it's not a great opportunity this year for this example. But the point is there's a little bit of a contingent element here where if somebody gets injured, the other two are really good players in a really good spot who now suddenly,

if that's the way that the chaos strikes this offense, they suddenly project for way more. If we just change the parameter to remove Stefan Diggs, as you said, maybe he misses a little time. Tank Dell's projection rises how much because he's good enough to go earn that available opportunity now. So he's what I would call a small miss, big hit type of player. Those are the types of bets you should be trying to make in fantasy. His projection might not look exactly the same as his cost. It might look a little worse. But that's just because there's not so much opportunity there. But that's a high floor play. He's a good option. And then if things break a certain way, he's a big hit player. He can be a massive win for you. Those are bets to make for sure.

Let's get to number six here. Your sixth is commandment that you wanted to talk about. Yeah. So as we start to move down this list. It's more specific to where. A lot of the ones I was talking about before are, I think, universal across years. These are more specific to 2024. So a couple of different notes from each of the different positions for running back, I think right now, and it's a key thing that people who are coming back from the summer and starting to look at ADP and planning for their home drafts are going to notice is that

running backs are not going as high as they used to. And they haven't been for a couple of seasons. But a big part of that is not just that drafters are really into wide receiver and zero RB and all of that stuff. It's also when you think about the NFL over multiple years, there's a little bit of a lull in running back talent at the prime ages right now. Just because of some injuries and some draft classes that maybe didn't hit the way that we wanted them to, running backs do tend to age a little quicker.

And so the running backs have sort of be in their prime years right now, age 23 to 26, have not those, there's like, so if we look at the round one and two running backs from 2019 to 2022, I'll just read them off real quick. 2019 was Josh Jacobs and Miles Sanders. Miles Sanders especially has not panned out, at least to this point of his career. Josh Jacobs maybe has a second wind in him with the Packers. 2020, Clyde Edwards-A-Layer, we can pretty safely call a bust. We have D'Andre Swift, who's been banged up, moved around a couple of teams.

Could be interesting with the Bears this year. Jonathan Taylor, who I think is one of the bigger hits in this group of running backs. Camakers, a bunch of injuries and other stuff. J.K. Dobbins, a bunch of injuries. AJ Dillon, probably just not good enough. that's first and second round running backs in that class that I loved. That was a fun class.

If Acres and Dobbins, maybe stay healthier. Yeah. 2021, Naji, E.T.N. and Javante. Even E.N. who's maybe the biggest hit there, missed his whole rookie season to injury. Javante had a very serious multi-ligament knee injury. It's so telling that Travis E.N.

is the biggest hit of all of those. When you think about what his rookie year looked like, the fact that we're getting, we're this far into it, a couple of years removed, and you can definitively say, Travis E.E.N. is the biggest fantasy hit of all of those guys. guys tells you everything you need to know about the point that you're trying to make here.

Right. Yeah, exactly. So, Javante's still coming back from this multi-legged knee injury. Najee, probably a little bit of a bus as a first round running back. And then 2022, you have Breece Hall, the other big, big hit, but also had a big knee injury at one point. And that plays into the expectation, although he's going in the first round. Kenneth Walker, James Cook, those are some intriguing guys, but they're going a little

later. They have, you know, teammate competition. They haven't been monster, monster hits. There's nobody really in there that's been just healthy and productive from Dave. one, like an Ezekiel Elliott was early in his career. Christian McAfree had his injuries, but we don't have a Christian McAfrey in this group necessarily. Maybe Jonathan Taylor-Breece Hall or the two that I would, you know, I would point to and say these guys could be absolute stars, and they're going high, but part of the reason right now

running backs are going a little lower is we're just in this, and there's ups and downs of the different positions, but we're in this era right now where running back talent is a little down. Some of the best running backs we have are the aging ones. Christian McAfree is going as the RB one overall. it's been a lot of years since an older back like him as being the highest drafted one, well, I guess, other than him because he was last year as well. He's been the outlier for several straight seasons. And I think in terms of usage, situation, all of those things,

so many things line up in his favor that it's not surprising for him to be treated differently than any back has over the last five or six years. Right. And you think back to even like the Adrian Peterson era, right? He was the number one overall running back for multiple years in fantasy. David Johnson only really had the one great year, but you had Levy on Bell, you had Todd Gurley,

you had the Christian McCaffrey period. You had Dalvin Cook and Alvin Camara multiple years of first round picks. These guys were all really, really good year after year after year. I just haven't had as many from that 2019 to 2020 running back class that have really hit in those ways. And so that does change things.

It changes the way that we evaluate running back. It's an important consideration, the whole idea around the zero running back strategy is that, you know, running backs do tend to bust a little bit higher or at a little bit of a higher rate. The high-end running backs are typically the ones, the ones that go in the first and second round that have these really elite ceilings, these legendary ceilings that we were just talking about Bijon Robinson might have. And he's going in the first round for good reason. But if you don't take a running back really early, there's this running back dead zone, which is a concept that that I

coined when I was writing over at CBS, that in the third, fourth, fifth round tends to be these aging veterans that we're just projecting volume for. Now, that is an area of drafts that is kind of shifting because of all these other trends, we actually have some pretty intriguing kind of more upside running backs that are falling down into those ranges.

The running back landscape is definitely shifting and changing and getting cheaper and different to play. But as it gets cheaper, I still like to play it later because you can get some pretty intriguing players, like a Javante Williams in round 8, 9, 10. And so now, that's in best ball.

That depends on the home league. You probably won't get that price because running backs are probably going to go a little higher in home leagues. But it's an important point in general, I would just say that the lull in running back talent due to this run of weak recent draft classes is a reason to be a little bit more wary of stocking up on a lot of running backs early in drafts this year. I think you're going to get more unsettled backfields. We saw some late round running backs really hit because the starters aren't as strong. strong around the league necessarily. So then that can lead to some flipping in the backfields. Mostert was a later round pick last year.

Kairn Williams obviously takes over for Cam Acres right away. And those guys were absolutely smashes in the late rounds. So I do like, generally speaking in fantasy this year, being on that zero running back axis of things and waiting at running back and getting your early exposure to the wide receiver position. One of the big reasons for that is the next one, that the big trend last year at wide receiver was an increase in wide receiver one production. So there's a, I absolutely love this one on so many different levels.

There's a few big reasons for it. So I wrote about RPO usage last year, but a big reason why RPO usage is leading to more number one wide receiver numbers is the linemen have to run block, right? And so the play either becomes a handoff, a run. So it's not an actual, it's not an actual pass attempt. Or the quarterback has to pull it and he has to go to his first read. He can't go through a progression or he gets an eligible man downfield. as Lyman who are blocking downfield.

We always see the smart offensive line analysts when these offensive, these ineligible downfield plays, flags get flagged. I see like Mitchell Schwartz or somebody will comment on Twitter. This is on the quarterback. You didn't get the ball out quick enough. You can't extend on an RPO. You've got to throw the ball to the first read. So it's either not a pass attempt or it's a pass attempt to the number one receiver,

which consolidates the target share for statistical purposes on the number one receiver. That's one main reason. But there's also elements to the defense, which I'm hoping maybe you can give me some insight into. But I think the ways that defenses have been playing, and these shifts that we've been talking about a little bit on the show, have led to the receivers that can really win quick, the alphas, the stud-wide receivers getting quick targets.

The data as it is, I looked at fantasy scoring for each team's top wide receiver or tight-end. So, you know, Travis Kelsey for the chiefs, what percent of their team's wide receiver and tight end fantasy points? So non-running back, you know, downfield option fantasy points. What percent the top downfield passing weapon accounted for for the last decade? I looked at it for all teams. Then I looked at it for just the top 20 ratios each year because you could have some teams where a guy is the top guy and then he ends up getting hurt, misses some games, and it kind of messes with the data. Then I just looked at it for the top 10 ratios.

And based on each of those little windows, So to give an example of what I'm trying to say here, like the number one team last year was Miami, which means that or the reason for that is Tyreek Hill accounted for 44.8% of their total wide receiver and tight end fantasy scoring. It was very concentrated in Miami, right? The next team was Chicago with DJ Moore,

was Dallas with C.D. Lamb. It was the Jets with Garrett Wilson. Even though they scored a lot fewer total points, he still accounted for a really high percentage of that, right? So that's what we're looking at. If you look at it from the full league over the last 10 years, You look at the top 20 teams, top 10 teams. Each of those shows that we had the highest rate last year since 2015.

You go way back to 2015. Offenses were a lot different back then. This number had been falling over the years since. It's a stark uptick in 2023 relative to like 2020, 2021, 2021, 2022, because we've been having more spread offenses, right? We've been getting more less concentration to the number one, more passes to the ancillary, second, third receivers. And so this is, I think, a really interesting one, especially when you think about that, the context that was providing at running back,

where the wide receiver ones in most of these offense are going early in drafts, and we know who they are and they're studs. You probably want to be trying to get those guys as much as you can in the early round. It's a great question. And I'm trying to figure out what the schematic drivers of it might be. The first thing I think about is just deployment.

I mean, the idea that a guy like Justin Jefferson, if he was the number one receiver in an offense 10 years ago, would have been a 95% lineup as an X outside the numbers player. That no longer happens. I think offenses are just better at finding opportunities for their best players by moving them all around the formation and creating matchups. So I think that's driving a decent amount of it. I also think that this is just a product of,

I would love to see if this was actually true. But I think if you look back at the way that Peyton Manning played, the way that Tom Brady played, the way that Drew Brees played, there isn't a necessity to drive targets to one player because you're consistently making the right decisions based on what defenses are doing to you. It feels now with so many younger quarterbacks in the league,

the offense is catered to them in a way that it wasn't with those guys. So with Peyton Manning, where you're looking at it, it's like, all right, well, it doesn't matter if I have Demarius Thomas, Eric Decker, West Walker, I'm going to find the best option on this play. A guy like two or a guy like J.1 Hertz at this stage of his career probably isn't able to see the game that way. So the way that the offense is fed to him is this is your best player. Let's throw him the ball 30% of the time. I don't know if that's necessarily true.

But if you think about where these guys have ended up, some of these number one options, and the stage of these quarterback's careers when they've landed there, that's often been the case. Think about when Stefan Diggs got to Buffalo, when A.J. Brown got to Philly, when Tyreek Hill got to Miami. It was as these guys were in year two, year three, where you're having to kind of streamline the offense to them and give them a consistent option. So again, I don't know if that Jamar Chase in Cincinnati being a similar sort of situation. I don't know if that's true, but anecdotally,

that's what I would probably land on. I mean, that makes sense. There's definitely, there's a significant enough shift in the data that there's definitely reasons. I think those are as good of reasons as anything I can come up with. I like those anecdotal ideas. for me, this is a trend. We talked about the NFL going through eras and evolving.

And it's one of those things. I mean, you can go back to, you know, the 80s. Passing games used to be really high A-DOT, throw-down field, high interception rates. And then suddenly you had Bill Walsh in the 90s, and you had the West Coast passing offense. You had shorter passes. A-dot falls as a result, higher completion percentages. We end up in the 2000s, more, you know, heavier passing rates. But even like at that time, you're still seeing a lot of, like, full-backer.

and passing games, we finally evolved to where there's these pass catching backs, Darren Sproles and Theo Riddick and those guys for an era. And then those guys kind of go away because teams want to keep the same running back on the field for every snap. Tight end has become a lot more important in the last decade than it was 20 or 30 years ago league-wide as far as how much volume goes to the tight-end and how fantasy scoring looks at the tight-end position. And so the sport just is always evolving is the point that I'm saying. I was that we would talk about the punch and counter punch between what offenses are doing schematically, what defenses are doing. The last few years, we've seen the A-DOTs continue to drop with quarterbacks and passing and shorter passing. And that's one of the big things that I'm concerned about with what the current trends is the more vertical passers with defense is taking away the explosives. You have some of the, excuse me, vertical receivers.

You have some like specific receivers. Like Gabe Davis is a great example where his, he's still been efficient after earning the target, but his target. progress per out run have just fallen every year because he runs these vertical routes and defenses, especially in Buffalo, we'll see what happens in Jacksonville. We're basically like, that's what we're taking away. We want you to have to matriculate the ball down the field. That's how defense has approached Buffalo. Marcus Valde Scantling last year got a career low, I believe, in targets per route run,

got basically nothing down the field because no one's letting Patrick Mahomes have options down the field. And that's where he's running his routes. And so all of those types of trends are important to understand. these macro trends over time. But a lot of that type of thing, the fact that these deep threats aren't getting as many targets, for example, it does seem to be back to the wide receiver one, back to the, you know, and we're seeing so much of it right now.

I think my answer, along with the quarterbacks, because I do think that's part of it, but I think explaining why this would be the case for veteran quarterbacks who don't necessarily need the offense catered to them, I do think this is about usage and deployment. Because I think that where we saw a real shift in this, 2020. is the season I would probably point to because that's the year where the target numbers for Cooper Cup and Devante Adams were just absolutely insane.

And I remember talking to Aaron Rogers the year after Devante Adams left because we were talking about how the passing game would be structured. And he told me that Devante Adams was the number one option on 80% of their concepts. 8-0 is what he said to me.

And then think about what Cooper Cup was within that Rams offense the first year that Matthew Stafford was there. And this again, I think goes back to deployment, where you have Devante Adams. I think Devante's targets per route run in the slot in 2021. I can't remember exactly what the number is. It's insane.

I mean, it's like over 50% or like in that range. And then Cooper Cup is very similar, right? And I think that the Rams are such a good example where we have this guy who is the focal point of our passing game. We are going to create as many opportunities as possible for him to be matched up on a linebacker based on the way that we deploy our other receivers. So those are those moments where you saw Tyler Higbee lined up as the number one outside where you're burning him against a corner and then you have a guy who's going to get 190

targets for you working against a linebacker consistently. I think in both the case of Adams and Cup, that thought process would not have been the driving force behind how passing games were constructed in 2012. I just don't think they would have been. So I think as we see these types of offensive coordinators and these guys that, A lot of them are off the same tree, but that's kind of neither here nor there. I think it's more about being young, the ingenuity, and just not fighting against the tide when it comes to building your passing game and how you want to get these guys the ball.

I just think that that's the direction that things are heading. And that's probably the year I would point to is sort of a shift in how we were thinking about this. And just to give everyone a little bit of evidence of why you're the best, I have the date in front of me. You don't have it. The Rams and the Packers were the two most concentrated passing games in 2021 in this way. And 2021 was the second highest season since 2015. So I just mentioned that 2023 was the real jump fort.

It was a slight tick back in 2022. But yeah, both of those were stronger than 2020, then 2020. And then 2019, 2018, 2018. That's when we really saw the numbers at their lowest, where they weren't, you know, a lot more spread. these offenses. So anyway, you did identify the other really strong recent year. It's not a surprise to me at all. The other position, we've talked about running back and receiver, but that I think is

really key for 2024 is tight end, that we're just sort of in a tight end golden age. The way that I've been saying it and some of my shows and some of my writing over at my newsletter is I don't think we've ever had in fantasy football. And I've been playing since the late 90s seven profiles as strong as the top seven tight ends this year. And that would be Kelsey and Kittle and Andrews are all a part of that group. Those are the guys that have been there for the long time. They're the old guard. Typically speaking, the elite tight ends are good for multiple years. Those guys are all there. But you had Leporta and McBride who were just true breakouts last year. Leporta has one of the

best rookie seasons that you've ever seen at the position Tray McBride takes until year two. It's kind of a week, year one, but year two is just massive. He was actually better than Leporta in targets per outrun, in yards per target, in yards per outrun. run. You scared off by that at all with the Marvin Harrison Jr. stuff or no? I actually think it's... You think it's good. I think it's going to drive the price down. Oh, you'd actually think that the efficiency numbers can potentially go up and just the offensive situation is going to be better. Exactly. So one of the fun facts about Harrison and about rookies, even for the rookie receivers that have been smashes recently, both Jamar Chase and

Justin Jefferson, they, both of them individually averaged at least two targets per game more in their second season than their massive breakout rookie seasons, which is to say that you don't walk in the door day one as a rookie receiver, even if you get drafted high, and even if you're a superstar, and earn the target share

that you're ultimately going to earn, it's going to take Harris. He's going to be good, but I actually think it's hard for him to be a dominant number one wide receiver immediately from day one. And maybe he will be. And if he is,

I actually just think it's like, okay, now you have Tyree Kill and Travis Kelsey in the prime of the chiefs years, because I think Big Brad's that, good. I mean, he was so, so good last year, two plus yards per outrun. But I do think actually, this is a great setup where Harrison's going to draw some coverage. It's going, like you said, it's going to help McBride's efficiency in some ways. There's some other interesting players in that passing game as well. I don't want to just completely ignore, but I really do think it's

going to be these two guys and that McBride can be, I'm going to probably rank him as my tight end one. He's going tight in three right now in drafts, but I'm really excited for McBride. And then I'm still leaving a candle on for Cal Pitts for some of the reasons we talked about the potential for a lot more passing volume, a lot more. I'm there with you. We talked about it a couple weeks ago on this show. We did our NFC North or NFC South lingering questions from last year. And I was my, the one I wanted to dig into was how good are these trio of young

skill guys? Like are we, are the candles a little too bright in the way that we're projecting them moving forward? With the first two guys with Bijan and Drake London, it was like immediately after watching one game. I was like, I know we're set. Like those guys are just good. With Pitts, it was like, you can just see the change in usage.

and the change in what type of profile he has as a player helping him. And I think that's also from a football perspective, but from a fantasy perspective, I'm curious about this because I honestly think the best way to get the most out of him as a football player is for him to be more of a traditional tight end in the sense that not as an inline player, but more as a slot player than an outside player. And that's going to make his A dot go down,

but I also just think that's what he's best at. I don't think he's a good outside the numbers vertical player. And that's probably a dirty thing, to say for his fantasy value potentially, but I think overall, having him be a little bit more of a middle of the field underneath YAC's sort of option is actually the best way to get the most out of him. This offense will do that, and that's why I think that your lighting of that candle was justified, because I think there are a lot of things that potentially line up to get the best version

we've seen of him so far. One of the big reasons I'm still so excited about him is what does a hit look like statistically because he does have this really high A-DOT. I love this take because it would be great if we could get some more of the easier, the higher catch rate, lower A dot, easier to complete plays. But the reality is even if they move that direction you're talking about, he still has the athleticism and the profile to have some vertical targets, which not all tight ends do.

And that's the part of it where it's like, what do you get when you're right? We started talking about outliers in those things. Like maybe Pitts isn't very good. And a lot of people have been burned by him and they don't want to do it again. For me, the way I look at it is like, if you're wrong, you're going to lose because he's going to be, statistically speaking, he's going to put up numbers that rival what receivers can do.

Like, the yards perception can be so high. He had the 1,000-yard season as a rookie, and he did it on, it was not that many catches. I don't have the number. I'm going to pull it up really quick, but I think it was like 68.

I personally wouldn't be swayed by the rookie year numbers. Because I think a lot of the rookie year production was in the realm that we're talking about, where he was an outside-the-numbered vertical player. would think of Kyle Pitts and what he can be in this offense. I would look at Cooper Cup and Pooka Nakuwa usage over the last couple years. You don't need vertical production from those

two guys necessarily to have them put up monster numbers. This is a lot of in-breaking stuff over the middle of the field. And I actually think that's where he's best and that's where he wasn't used enough. I would I would implore you, go look at the yards per outrun numbers and the EPA per target numbers with him line up in the slot last year versus him lined up out wide. It's night and day. His yards per round run as an outside player were bad, like actively bad, even among tight ends. But if you put him in the slot, I think he's in the top five among all tight ends, and that's with a really negative set of circumstances with the quarterback, with the offense, all that kind of stuff. And his catchable target rate was just

atrocious. So that's where like I'm still putting a little bit of like maybe his outside numbers are so bad because they couldn't just get him the ball out there, you know, down the field out there. He's just not that type of player to me. I really don't think he is. I think it's so tempting to look at him and see him with the vertical speed that he has and just say like, oh, he can play like a receiver so we should use him that

way. But it's one of those things like Jurassic Park. Just because you could doesn't mean you should. Like that's just not the way to think about this. And I watch some of the things he did on benders and inbreakers and even corner routes from the slot. That's what I'd be most excited about from a vertical perspective.

If you think about Cooper Cup's vertical production in like 2021, it's all corner routes from condensed splits. So there's some vertical production and some vertical opportunities, but it's not outside the numbers go balls. Like that's not what I want to see because I don't think that's the best way to use him. I love this. And I mean, you're still describing a higher a dot type of player than most tight ends because a lot of them are like five a dot. And you're talking, I mean, you're not talking about a deep threat, but you're talking about, we can still get the type of, so ADOT tends to correlate with yards per target. We still get the type of yardage efficiency that could lead to, you know, but I love what you're talking about here. You get me more excited about it because the target numbers, the reception numbers could go up with more of those types of plays like you're saying.

I mean, you're comparing him to some high volume receivers. So, that's fun. If we're talking about that is concentration, right? And if his role can be a blend of receiver in tight end, but not in the way. that it was over the last couple years in a way that actually leads to higher efficiency. If the targets are concentrated to him and Drake London, but it's in a much higher volume, higher efficiency offense, we can get the best of both worlds. You can get what you got over the last couple years in terms of workload on a per snap basis,

but the efficiency can line up in ways that it didn't before and the usage can actually line up with his strengths more than it did before. So I think there's absolutely a world where all of that stuff comes together in a way that it hasn't even when he was a rookie. And if people aren't following why we're comparing him to the Rams so much, just because Zach Robinson comes over from the rant, he was a passing game coordinator for the Rams last year. He's a new offensive coordinator.

So it's really fun to think through Drake London and Kyle Pitts as the new Pooka and Cooper Cup, right? I mean, I think that makes a lot of sense. It's the type of offense you'd expect them to run. It's not just pulled out of nowhere. We went off on a tangent here, but so why are you thinking about the way that those top six, seven tight ends and the quality of that position,

which is a severe left turn from where it had been over the last couple years. How does that kind of change your thinking for when you want to draft these guys and how you want to approach the position? So just a few years ago, I was really into Pitts going into year two after he had a thousand-yard season as a rookie,

a young rookie. And that's another exciting thing about Pitts. He's still very young. He's 23 years old right now. But he was going very high in the top three. And I argued that year that the top three tight ends had a chance because the, rest of the position was fairly weak, had a chance to really gap the field in a way that

gives you such a positional advantage in fantasy that you wanted to be seeking that. That did happen. Both Andrews and Pitts, for a variety of reasons, didn't do great. Travis Kelsey was the one, who was the tight end one, who everyone knew was a titan one. He scored about 100 fantasy points more than every other tide had in that season. He was the, like the linchpin for good fantasy builds, taking one of these elite tight ends. It's a little different when there's seven, right? because multiple guys could have great seasons.

You have these young guys that are breaking out. You have the veterans who are very strong. George Kittles going at Tite N7 out of this group. That guy's a star, right? But he's going there for some of the reasons we talked about with like Tengel, where it's like you can't project, talked about it with Iyuk. You can't project him for enough volume,

but we know he's an efficiency superstar. You go look at his efficiency every year and all the different alignment. I mean, he's just an absolute monster. We just know that about him. He is getting up there in age, and people I think are a little bit concerned about the injury history, some of those things. but he's going tight end seven.

When George Kittle's going tight end seven, I think that tells you about all you need to know because he had a very good season last year. He had one of the better seasons of his career. He wasn't falling off or anything. My approach is that you're probably not going to be able to replicate whichever of these guys hits. They're not all going to hit because tight ends do have a higher bust rate.

There's always more intriguing tight ends on draft day than actually pan out. And that's an important thing to remember. It's tricky, but it's an important thing to recognize. You might miss. But if you think through how the position's going to play out, if you take a late round tight end, even if that hits to some degree,

he's probably not going to have a ceiling that can match what these top seven can do and whichever of them hits. And the odds that all seven of them don't hit is pretty tricky. That's a hard bet to make. It's a parlay that's a lot longer of a shot. You need all of these dudes to bust for different reasons.

Everything we just said about Pitz has to not happen, but also Kittle and Kelsey have to break down due to age and Andrews and the new offense needs to not be good and McBride and Leportez's breakouts need to not translate and Kincaid's the other one that we haven't mentioned the offense looks like it's he's the one from a talent perspective I'm maybe the most concerned about because we haven't really fully seen it from the talent

like the per route run numbers and that but their offense is shifting is shifting in a way that he could just really rack up volume and that's so key at tight end I mean he's going to basically be another guy who kind of plays receiver more like slot receiver, a big slot, but he's going to run a lot of routes and they need somebody to catch a lot of passes. They lost their top, their first and third target earner, Stefan Deggs and Gabe Davis, and replaced them with, you know, lesser talents, we'll say. Curtis Samuel, Keon Coleman,

has some question marks in his prospect profile, some interesting names for sure, deep into the wide receiver room there. It could be very split, but it seems like Kincaid's like the one guy who could really rack up some volume there for them. So there's a lot of things you would have to have go wrong for you to not be chasing a lot of points at tight end. And for that reason, I like making the bet on an early tight end, especially because, again, we talked about this with the running backs earlier, but you have to think about opportunity costs when you draft, and we've kind of chalked through like a draft plan a little bit.

I don't love taking a lot of running backs early because the opportunity cost is these really good wide receivers and some of these elite tight ends as well. But it's also because you can replicate the score. Where does running back scoring come from? you can actually hit on late round running backs. It's not easy, but they can score a ton. Reggie Moster, Kairn Williams, were the examples I gave a little bit ago. And there are players like that, the running back position that can rise in a major way,

their value from draft day into what they actually are during the season. What I'm trying to argue here is it's tougher for a tight end to do that. And so I would like to use some of my higher draft capital on an elite tight end in most leagues and in most drafts and take a swing, even though there's some bust risk, on one of them, those seven guys being special, along with those, you know, with some depth at receiver, and then try to hit on running backs later that could also be big hits, like this year's Moster or this year's Kyrin. So I think those things are symbiotic.

They play, those strategies play well together. I'm a big fan of the elite tight-end strategy this year. All right, two more. Commandment 9. What do you got for me? So we did a couple position things. Commandment 9, I'm going to say that lighter players can thrive. And so this is going to be a fun one.

We talked about the different eras in the NFL. but I love talking about this kind of stuff with you. We had the rules emphasis in 2014 about increasing defensive holding and illegal contact. And so over time, we've had some changes. We've had lighter receivers have been drafted at a higher rate. I think Ty White Hilton was one of the lighter receivers to lead the NFL in receiving yards one of those years

right after that rule change. And over time, we've also then gotten to where defense has gotten to be more about space. We were just talking about this. You guys covered this on that podcast series last summer. That was so incredible. Defenders are getting lighter. linebackers are getting lighter. The focus is on stopping explosives

and running backs being able to cover more more space and more room, but it has also made it so that lighter players are more viable. Even at running back, they don't have to break tackles from huge defensive linemen and linebackers. And the key for me to this with the shift

is once you start covering up the lighter players flaws, which back in the day was like they couldn't get off hand fighting at the line of scrimmage with dbs and some of those things, it suddenly makes them optimal because the value they do provide, speed and agility in those things, they now play up relative

to the value that heavier players provided, which was fighting through the hand tackles, the hand fighting, breaking tackles from the bigger defenders, you know, running backs, bigger running backs. It's easier now for,

for lighter running backs to still be able to break tackles because they have, you know, against some smaller defenders. Right. So I think it tips the scale towards the lighter players.

And so the big reason this matters, again, we talked about this earlier, but the players that win in fantasy is efficiency and where you get outlier performance are the guys that have the ridiculous efficiency. Devon A. Chan's the best example last year. He only ends up running for 100 carries,

but he averaged something like eight yards per carry, right? Like, you're not getting that from a bigger back. I mean, ultimately, there are some guys that can do that, and they're special. Like a Jonathan Taylor had some efficiency seasons like that early in his career. Not like that, though. I mean, you're not getting what he did. You're probably not going to get it from him next year either.

It's pretty ridiculous what he did. But that type of speed explosiveness is sort of a requirement. for high efficiency seasons. And so the lighter players that can thrive are very interesting to me. I do worry a little bit about wearing Taryn Health. Three of the biggest lighter hits last year were Tankdale, Devon A. Chan, Kyron Williams, they all missed significant time. I also think it's worth noting that as defenses get lighter,

the legit-sized speed guys, like a Jonathan Taylor, they can be that much more lethal because they can also run through a 225-pound lineback. Derek Henry has been the best example of that over the last like 10 years. As things were shrinking, I mean, I remember writing about this in like 20, 16 when the Cardinals were walking down and Bucannon down to be a linebacker and the Titans were just like, eh, we're going to use 12 personnel and it to fall back on every single play and run the ball 40 times a game. And you just see what Derek Henry looks like compared to those sorts of defenders.

And it really does make for a market advantage. And I don't think one guys have really thought about from that perspective. For sure. So that's, I mean, it's a little bit of a, you know, a looser commandment or point. but it's one of those things that I think is happening in 2024. It's worth thinking through the bigger, more lumbering players are, and this translates to like wide receiver, for example. Again, I hate to pick on individual players,

but I go back to like Kelvin Benjamin, had a really good rookie season. That archetype or receiver just can't succeed in the set of up. And you look at the other side of it, where it's, I think guys like Garrett Wilson and Chris Olavé, when they were coming in, those are small receivers. When you look at the history of the position, Those are smaller undersized receivers.

And I remember even in the moment looking at them as prospects and being like, I don't know, you look at the history of these guys. Like, there aren't that many who've succeeded. You know, Emmanuel Sanders was somebody who was a little bit undersized and was a really good player. But you don't have that many examples.

And now, every year, we have an example. There's a Garrett Wilson and Kraselave in the same draft class, Devante Smith, obviously. That's why guys like Zay Flowers. It's like, yeah, there's been in a world where a 5-880-pound guy, I would have been worried about his ability to hold up as a true number one in the NFL. I no longer worry about that.

So I think it applies to running backs, but I also think it applies to the types of receivers we've come along and seen been really successful over the last five or six years. Right. And the key is, as you just talked about, if you look in the data, I mean, when I was coming up as a fantasy writer in 2015, the data told you weight correlated to fantasy points at receiver. You needed to be big. And then this stuff changed, right? And now every year we're just rewriting that rule.

Like how small can a receiver actually get and how productive can they be? But like you said, I mean, the history wasn't there for a long, long time. The last commitment, 17 game seasons, it's eventually going to be 18 game seasons. It seems like the focus on player health. I think this is really important for fantasy as well, especially for the home leagues, any type of season long league as compared to best ball where you can't really do a ton about it. But in a season long league, in a format where, where you can make your start-set decisions every single week.

I think it's really important to think about, this is anecdotal. I haven't actually done a lot of research on it, but I feel like we're getting more short-term missed time situations, almost like rest. Like you have load management in the NBA, almost like not to that degree, obviously, because we don't have as many games.

But when guys get hurt, they're more like, I think teams are more likely to say, we need you for the long haul. We're going to set you down this week. And so I think you need to have more contingency plans built into your fantasy football rosters. And this is one of the things that gets back to,

I was talking a little bit about the zero RB strategy, but if you do take a lot of receivers early, you can start to draft backup receivers before you've even dropped that you're starting running backs because you are building in this contingency plan so that if somebody gets hurt, somebody busts, or somebody's just down for a couple of weeks

for a minor thing, you have good players to plug in and start. And then you can take a lot of later running backs, take a higher number of them onto your bench. I wrote in our notes here, ideally your league uses enough bench spots because a lot of the home leagues don't have enough bench spots which makes this really tricky.

It's getting trickier and trickier. You should talk to your commissioner about it if they don't use enough bench spots because there's a lot of times where I think people during the bye weeks you got some guys on buy, you got another guy who's out for that week and you're like, how do I find somebody to plug in?

I got to cut a good player just to get somebody into my starting lineup. That's tough. But I think the biggest mistake that fantasy managers make that when we think about this contingency planning thing is trying to build a perfect starting lineup on paper and trying to be like, this is my quarterback, this is my running back one, this is my running back two. When they're drafting, they're like, I got to draft each of the starters before I can draft

any of my backups. And really, you can't predict, I said this earlier, but you can't predict your starting running back two for the fantasy championship in week three. It's just not going to happen. That's not the way the NFL works. We go back to Commandment 1, right? It's all chaos. It's all evolving throughout the season.

You need to think about your lineup spots as having different starters throughout, being sort of living, breathing things that you need to make, there's maintenance involved throughout the year because chaos sort of is the rule. One of the things you can do to protect yourself and not have to be constantly trying to pick up players to fill holes is again, try to build in those contingency plans like I was talking about, having depth at key spots.

If you want to go with a lot of early running receivers like I was saying, draft more than you need. And then you can have those contingency plans on your roster. But yeah, as we go to these longer seasons and then the way the NFL is moving, I think we're getting more and more emphasis on that. We heard it from Andy Reid this offseason that Travis Kelsey ran the fewest routes he had in like five years last year,

and that was intentional. They're thinking about the playoffs. These good teams are not going to overwork players in the regular season like they might have in the 90s or the early 2000s. There's a lot more focus on, hey, we need these guys to be healthy for the 20th game in the season,

not for the eighth. Ten Commandments with plenty of nice hallways of conversation that I think I very much enjoyed. I think hopefully those examples and then some of those larger macro things we're talking about, you know, will help you guys shape your fantasy strategy the way that you're thinking about all this stuff. I know that as the calendar turns to July,

and especially as I get ready to get on the road for my training camp tour here very soon, I will be knee-deep in fantasy prep and fantasy content, and few people do it better than Ben and what he's doing over there at Stealing Signal. So I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to do this with us, sir. I mean, I appreciate you. I love talking about this with you, like I said.

A huge part of my approach is the actual, football stuff. You got to listen to these types of pods, your pods, to get the fantasy information as well, or at least think through how you can apply it. So I appreciate having the time to chat with you. Of course, man. Thank you for doing this. And appreciate all of you guys for listening. We're back on our regular schedule here. We'll have pods on Thursday and Friday this week. Still figuring that out because we're recording this a little bit early. So what those pods are going to be. But be on the lookout. We're back to our three day a week schedule. So happy to be back. Appreciate you guys listening. We will talk to you.

very soon.