Transcript of 10 Tips & Tricks to Win Your League + MEGALABOWL! - Fantasy Football Podcast for 8/19

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to crush, humiliate, and totally destroy your competition in your fantasy football draft. It's incredibly simple, so let me just break it down for you. Ultimate Draft Kit. The Ultimate Draft Kit from The Fantasy Footballers is hands down the best fantasy tool in existence. Hehehe.

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Welcome to the Fantasy Footballers Podcast with your hosts Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright.

Welcome in.

The Fantasy Footballers Podcast, Wednesday, August 19th. Mike Wright, Jason Moore, Andy Holloway in the building.

In the house.

Oh, the growls are percolating. The Deucers are deucing as they do every day. But yeah, we got a— I mean, we could just— we can get straight to it. I mean, we got a big—

what?

Got a big announcement today. I don't want to hear the like subtle straight to what? People have been asking for a while. It's time. Go ahead, Jay. Go ahead. What's your announcement?

Megaloball! Oh, baby! It's terrifying this year.

It is terrifying.

That's right. The Megaloball for 2026.

It's time, baby.

That graphic is awesome.

Yeah, we have an aquarium in the back.

Point out some scale issues. Those footballs.

They're some—

they're the size of a boat.

Those are large footballs. If you don't know what the Megalobowl is, it is the largest fantasy football league. It is the most prestigious of fantasy football leagues. More than 21,000 of you played it last year. It is megalobowl.com.

It's go time.

If you're a Foot Clan supporter, you get an entry into the Megalobowl. Drafts will be held Friday, September 4th, all the way through Tuesday, September 8th. Kickoff is Wednesday this year. And you can right this moment go to megaloball.com and you can claim your draft slot today.

Yeah, it's, it's a fun league. We, we try to make all of the rules, all the settings exactly similar to how we play our league of record other than it's not a keeper format. You know, you're going to play against 12 people randomly assigned other Foot Clan members that— Oh, they love this game.

Giant balls are back.

I think he— I think I broke something for him, but it disappeared too soon. I wanted it back for the second time when Jason was talking.

Yeah. So, but the leagues are really, really fun. You're going to be playing with other Foot Clan members in the end. The last 3 weeks, if you make the playoffs, which the top half of each league does, it's tournament style. Highest points goes forward each week until the championship. And at that final week, the winner of the Megalobowl is guaranteed a spot with us in the next year's Listener League. So if you've been—

that's not all. And an ultimate subscription.

But wait, for life. There's more.

For life.

Yeah, the ultimate Foot Clan membership. You will be a part of this forever. So a lot of cool reasons to play in the Megaloball. Everybody loves it. Sign up. Make sure you do it now. There's plenty of draft slots to go around.

We're going to play.

Yeah, I'm in it. I've already got my draft slot picked out.

I'm sure the doosers will be in there and it'll be a great time. So you can do it now. Megaloball.com.

Watching this, we need to make that screen like an aquarium more often.

Oh yeah.

That's feeling good.

Yeah, that was nice. I should add this too. Like if you bought the Ultimate Draft Kit and you want to be in the Megalobowl and you're not a Foot Clan member, we will credit your full amount of the UDK towards an Ultimate membership. So it's dollar for dollar all the way up till kickoff. It's just what we do every year because sometimes people buy the UDK and they're like, well, I want to be in the Megalobowl.

Don't wait until kickoff though because then you'll have missed the draft.

Yeah. Don't do that.

Just do it right now.

And as far as how you do that, it's really easy. You just If you're logged in and you have the UDK, then it'll automatically, when you go to the Foot Clan membership page, it just automatically will show you the discount.

Yep. So there you go. Megalable.com.

News and notes from around the league.

By the way, we finally have our top 10 tips and tricks.

Dang it.

It's not tricks. It's tips and, oh, it is tips and tricks.

Tricks and tips.

I've been doing this every day now.

Oh man.

What is dementia?

What else could it be?

What is dementia? You know what I mean? What is that? How do you spell dementia, Jay?

A-N-D-Y.

We would tell you, but you won't remember.

Okay. Yeah, that's today. We will have tips and tricks. You may not believe in any of mine after this intro. Alvin Kamara, here's some news. We'll miss at least one month due to a sprained MCL.

Rumble-ia.

And somehow Kendray Miller is back in practice.

Oh, stop.

I don't believe you.

But Travis Achan Jr., big deal.

Yes, Kendray Miller, Devin Neal back at practice, but they are not the type of backs like I do worry about Travis Achan Jr. with Kamara involved. He is, you know, obviously a big part of this franchise and he will take some of the receiving work with him gone. Kendray Miller and Devin Neal are not going to eat into Travis Achan Jr. We'll talk more about him upcoming, but this is good news for for Travis Achan Jr. Sorry, Kamara.

Quentin Johnston left Tuesday's joint practice against the 49ers with an undisclosed lower body injury, but is quote, totally fine. Well, that, you know, okay.

Actually, what's ironic about this is that the news was about Quentin Johnston's injury. And then you see that and you go, oh dude, my guy, Trey Harris. But then it turns out the truth is that Trey Harris was actually missing He was gone for injury undisclosed and Quentin Johnson's fine. So really the news is not that Quentin Johnson's injured. It's that Trey Harris is.

Why don't you share the other news?

Yeah, the other one's the—

No, I will not share it. Yeah, the all-world center that the Chargers picked up, Tyler Biadiszcz, he's going to miss a significant amount of time.

Sounds like a lot.

Yeah, he injured several ligaments, damage to his ACL and additional injuries to his left knee.

Gross.

Is seeking second opinions on how to deal with it. So we don't know for sure. I mean, as of right now, I think we just assume he's gone for the season. TBD, it could change, but it's terrible, awful, very bad, very bad news. And Slater, their left tackle, also currently injured. His is much better.

He's, you know, he's going to miss a little bit of time, but I mean, yes, it is better than potentially missing the whole season, but didn't they say it was a flare-up? I thought I had read that, so maybe I'm speaking out of turn here.

I'm unaware if it was a flare-up or not.

Yeah, that is, that's not great. Kyle Shanahan said after Tuesday's practice, Mike Evans experienced tightness. This is quadriceps.

Mike Evans did the Grandpa Simpson gif.

He got back out there and goes, well, see you later. Also, I heard a foot injury on top of this. Mike Evans is falling apart. He should never have gone near that substation.

They're running out of wide receivers not named Strip Club right now.

Yeah. It is confirmed that Slater is a flare-up, but the timeline is supposed to be about 2 weeks.

And I say flare-up as in because he's coming off a torn patella. So it's that.

Yeah.

That's not good.

That's not good.

That's not what you want to hear.

It's like having a quadriceps injury after having a quadriceps injury.

For Mike Evans.

Yeah.

Yeah. Carnell Tate, undisclosed absence from practice.

It was, he took a very big hit and they weren't saying whether or not he had a concussion, but he didn't participate in the next day's practice. So dealing with something, but it was, it seemed like it was head related.

Did you know Jerome Ford was a member of the Commanders?

I did.

Yeah.

And he is now on injured reserve.

I said, so is he, so then he's toast. He's out for the year.

I just see injured reserve.

I don't think injured reserve guarantees loss for the year right now.

Kyle, is it, is it the whole year?

Man, Jerome Ford was not a part of it.

No, but Rashad White is not practicing. I mean, right now it's, it's Bill.

Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill. So draft him. And then Jaylen McMillan back at practice for the Buccaneers, which That is news that that team needed.

Yeah, I mean, there was more news on Emeka Igboke. He was wearing one of those like hard-soled shoes to protect the toe, which from what they were saying, you know, things came back clean. It's just not a great sign for the grade of whatever turf toe, if it's turf toe he's dealing with, which it's turf toe.

But what about me, Jay?

Yeah.

Give me something to break.

Ted Hurst. Yeah. Really, what about Chris Godwin?

Who cares?

Yeah.

And Tez.

No, Chris Godwin looking like a mighty nice value right now.

All right. I don't think we have other news unless anything's been happening. I mean, we either have like injury news that's real or injury news where they're like, that player just left and went to the tent and then went right back out on the field and then you're like, oh, we get those a lot.

I freak out many times a day.

Olave pump fake yesterday.

Oh yeah.

Unnecessary.

Olave's taking it.

Oh, head injury, right? Wasn't it a concern about head?

Oh man, I didn't see that. If it was that, I would have probably peed my pants. Yeah. I think I really would have peed my pants. If it was a head injury. That's what your reaction is. I would have done it on purpose. I would have done it in protest. Yeah.

So not like a scared pee.

No, no, no.

I would have sat there until it was time. This is for you, Olave.

This is for you.

Golly. Golly. Well, we have our 10 tips and tricks we want to share with you. It's a big show. So we're going to kick it off right now.

Tips and tricks.

All right, it is time to jump in. Each of us contributing 3 different ideas for 2026 in terms of things to pay attention to, things that we're learning. We always try to bring you something new in this episode each and every year. So let's get it going.

Number 10.

All right, number 10, loosely titled Out of Your Depths. I wanted to take a look and see how much you depth you actually need to win at fantasy. I've said it for years. Mike is, Mike's championship last year, I mean, and his dynasty team have been built on a lot of depth and the unwillingness to trade away some of that depth midseason and held on to it and it paid off.

You got to know when to consolidate.

And I've always said I adore putting together that perfect best starting lineup. But how much depth do you actually need? So Let me give you some uncomfortable math to start off. 27%. That is the chance.

That is uncomfortable.

That is very uncomfortable.

Yeah, I hate that number.

That is the chance of Jason peeing his pants on a daily— no, the chance of a running back playing a full season. 27%. That is, you know, any running back, 7 out of 10 missed games. Last year, here's some more math. Only 6 of the top 24 wideouts that were drafted played a full season. 2 of the top 12 drafted receivers played every game. So some, some level setting there for the amount of injury and things that you're going to deal with. Here's uncomfortable math part 2. Since 2010, only about 36% of running back 1 picks actually beat their draft slot.

Gross.

So you have injury risk, you have missing games, and then you have performance risk. So basically the math is saying that roughly half of your first 9 picks will either underperform their cost or get injured. And you're probably going to cough up 12 to 15 starts due to injury. So not surprisingly, you need depth. That is the answer to the question. So it— maybe we don't always realize it and you try to thread the needle. Maybe you can get really lucky. Some of the best NFL teams are the healthiest teams at the end of the year. That's nice. But what strategy do you apply per position and how should you think about that? So briefly, I just want to talk about running back position when it comes to depth. Injuries transfer value for that team very predictably in the sense that the backup for the team or the committee back generally steps into that role. So, you know, I mean, we've named a bunch of guys this offseason, Blake Corum, Tank Bigsby. You know that there are top-tier backups and committee situations that are valuable to target. Manungai is one of them. Kenny Gainwell is one of them.

These are draft day targets that you can add knowing that they're going to have a direct predictable value if the starter goes down. On the other hand, top-tier wide receivers, if they go down, the targets on that team tend to scatter around. Not very many teams are the Pickens, CeeDee Lamb situation. So what that means for wide receivers, or what this tip kind of alludes to, is that it's much tougher to predict or pre-draft the players that are going to benefit from injury, even though, you know, injuries are going to happen at the wide receiver position. So the way I like to think about it is you can get predictable value transfer with depth running back selections, but the waiver wire is really going to be the place that you win when it comes to finding you know, a valuable wide receiver. And this is why I like to take swings later on high upside guys at the beginning that may be beneficial to your team. And you can see right away depth is not fully solved at the draft. That's the point is you can draft a bunch of really good players, but you're going to deal with these injuries.

You're going to deal with wide receivers and those are going to get solved on the waiver wire more than they'll get solved by drafting the next man up type of thing at wide receiver. The math is tough. The math I don't like. I don't like— I mean, we don't like it right now in preseason, the amount of injuries and things that don't— the unpredictable is going to happen.

It is inevitable.

Yeah, it sucks. I do like the idea, just the mathematical reality that stashing more running backs at the end of your bench is probably wiser than the wide receivers because wide receivers, I mean, we've talked about this before. We'll talk about it again. The rookies get better as time goes on, not first rounders, but the later drafted rookies. There's also guys that come out of— no, Jawan Jennings last year.

Sorry, dude. Breaking news.

Oh no, don't be bad. Don't be bad. Don't be bad. Is it bad?

It's bad.

Jaden Higgins is a torn ACL.

Oh man.

Houston Texans.

He was one of the big publicity guys like the Pat Bryants and Cyrus Allens. Jaden Higgins talk was, that's Texans wide receiver.

That's a, he was, that's a big bummer.

That is a major injury for them because was yesterday the sleeper episode?

I don't know. Yesterday, this week we had the sleeper episode. I went Jordan Mason, but it was, it was close between Jordan Mason and Jaden Higgins, but then he had the injury. That stinks. Obviously Tank Dell now has a shot.

It's, yeah, I mean, their depth chart is so Tank Dell, which that's a complete wild card of number one, will he ever really be back?

Yeah.

After that type of an injury, you know, there's Hutchinson and other players involved. Yeah. And then, and their third rounder from last year, Jalen Noll, I don't know that he's a player that can like take over for Jaden Higgins. It's probably Hutchinson and The Doc. Andy, the slowest man alive.

Dr. Schultz.

Dr. Schultz.

Freaking there. He is so there.

Bro, if you're in a tight end premium where you get boosted reception totals, Dalton Schultz is probably going to have 80-plus catches.

I didn't want to start the 10 tips and tricks without kind of breaking news. But yeah, the TL;DR there. Build your draft around starters. Spend the back end on running back backups you know are going to have a shot. And receiver lottery tickets and then realize that you're going to need to— you build the team in August, but it's finished up in November, right? You keep the waiver wire going, play the whole season, recognize that you can keep adding. Like, I think maybe another thought that just hit my mind too is that like, don't be— don't wait so long to take a shot on guys that you know are going to have chances at the waiver wire to start the year. Just add more and more depth. Never think that you're done. Yes, on adding depth.

I very much agree with that.

All right, we are going to take a quick break and then we'll move it on to one of Jason's picks. All right, we're into our 10 tips and tricks and we're on to number 9.

Mock it like a ding dong, baby. Mock it like it's hot. All right, mock drafts. Are exceptionally important. I know our mock draft episodes people love watching, but you need to be doing mock drafts and you need to know how you should be doing mock drafts. This is one of the most important tools available to have success in fantasy football. This is why we just built a mock draft tool in the Ultimate Draft Kit. We have it now and our, you know, we've had over a, probably at this point over 200,000 mock drafts done. On our mock draft tool. We've had a lot of feedback. People are loving the fact that you can, you can actually put it to the platform you're playing on and you can, you can use it to where you're seeing what you're going to see. I want to give you a couple examples of why that's important. Kyren right now is around cheaper on ESPN than he is on Sleeper, like just, just better values. Tee Higgins right now is round 3 on Yahoo. And a 5th rounder on ESPN, whereas Garrett Wilson is the exact opposite. You got David Montgomery, a guy that I, in the offseason, I was like, I like David Montgomery.

Now it's like, he's a 5th rounder. But then I was looking, I was like, he's a 7th rounder on ESPN.

That's like, okay, even I can get with that.

All right, Trevo, you know, Trevo's a 7th rounder on ESPN, a 4th rounder on Sleeper. I mean, those are wildly different. So what you do is you use, you, you put in the platform that you're playing on so that you can see what the ADP is. ADP affects drafts. ADP, it affects even our, like we, we make these rankings.

It affects the psychology of every player in your draft when they see the board and they feel like they're passing on somebody perceived to be better because the system tells them it is.

Yes. And, and so then once you are doing mock drafts with your platform ADP in there so that you can get an idea, you, you, the way that you do that, we say this all the time, right? Stay water. Not stone. Like, be willing to pivot. That does not mean have no plan. Don't just know players and have no idea where you're going when, when this happens. You know, genuinely, a draft is if this, then that. I go into every League of Record draft knowing if this happens, then I will do that. You know, look at, if you don't know where you're drafting from, you should be draft, you should be doing mock drafts from the second pick, the seventh pick, and the 12th pick. Because at that point you get to know who is available around the, the 2-3 turn or the 3-4 turn. Or if I'm in the middle of the draft, you get to know what player types are there. And your first 4 rounds of your draft should really, maybe even the first 3 rounds should really dictate where you go. And it's different for everybody because what you think of certain players, you know, you might be out on Tyler Warren, Colson Loveland.

You might be totally in on them. And that, That makes a big difference. If, you know, a perfect example here of knowing what your game plan is, is if you do mock drafts, first of all, you should not be just— every time you do a mock draft, it's like, I'm going to grab the— I'm just drafting the players I like the most every time. And then you end up with the same type of team over and over. You need to explore other options. And I have found personally that when I choose to draft Brock Bowers or Trey McBride, If I pull the trigger on them, which I'm happy to do, I hate my team if my first round pick was a wide receiver because then in the third round I'm drafting my first running back. It gets kind of like I just don't love where it goes personally. So if in the first round I, I just learned from mocking like, oh, if I ended up with a really good stud running back, then I can grab Brock in the second or McBride. And then license to Brock, license to Brock. And so you can't get that experience without trying, like take an early quarterback, punt quarterback, just explore.

And I'm telling you, your drafts will be 100 times better if you spend, and you can do this in one day, you just do 4 or 5 mocks from the spot where you are, or if you don't know, do beginning, middle, and end mocks and just have a plan saying if if I start this way, the end is good or the end is bad, and you'll have far more success in fantasy football.

Yeah, and you know, less likely to have those panic picks in the middle of a draft, I'd say as well. All right, Mike. Number 8. All right.

These tips and tricks, you know, sometimes we like to get, you know, in the weeds like Andy's digging through a bunch of data, a bunch of numbers and analytics and things. My tip is real easy because this is just, this is a reminder. We're calling this tip Mark My Words and it's literally that. Mark your players like at the bottom of the draft in the bottom of the ADP. And I say this because you're like, oh, of course I do. It's so obvious. It's real easy to forget, man. Like do it right now. I, you know, we've had several times in our league of record drafts where you're going through the draft. We're in like round 8 or round 9 and then a name gets called out and I go, oh, because I literally forgot to mark that player. Like it was just, I'm telling myself in my head over and over, I'm going to do this so I don't forget this player. I never get to marking that guy. So do it right now. Like players who are lower in ADP that you're interested in, you know, like Stefon Diggs, he's going to be way down at ADP because he just, he's not going to get enough time to climb up the actual board.

But people are going to know. Keenan Allen. Exactly. These types of players that you know, you do want to get value on that player, but everyone else does as well. And just, they can get lost in the shuffle. They really, really can.

And there's different ways you can mock, like mark them. If you've got the UDK, we have, you can, you can literally highlight them. If you're printing a cheat sheet, circle them, go to the bottom and circle them. You have to do that. Otherwise you forget that Tank Bigsby is out there and you're like, ah, I wanted to leave the draft with him. And exactly. And then like, right, Tank Dell.

I'm seeing a 16th rounder.

You're not going to see him. He's not going to naturally see him.

He's not. Yes. You won't just catch them because you won't scroll down far enough to see him. No, because you're in the middle of it. Yeah. Teams, other fantasy managers are going to be targeting those players as well. And you're going to hear their name or see it pop across the screen and you're going to go, gosh darn it, I forgot to mark that guy.

Right before your draft, the preceding 3 or 4 days, news can break. Sure. And that those guys are not going to have enough time to move up in ADP. Like if, if this Higgins news happens 1 or 2 days before the draft, like you said, Tank Dell or maybe It's Hutchinson, or maybe you want to raise another player up, or Dalton Schultz, you know what I mean? Like, just things to pay attention to. It's just being prepared.

It's very simple, but it's— we're all humans and we're all— we all do dumb things all the time. So I'm just— hey, hey, just do it right now. Just start marking the players off, especially if you got the UDK. You know, that will really help to mark them, but just do it right now, man.

Yeah, I mean, I do the printout. You know, but in the UDK, you can go mark out, you know, 4 different types of players so that they're highlighted.

I mean, if you don't, if you don't have, if you don't have it, then just get a piece of paper and write down the name. Just write like the names of those guys super low in ADP that you don't want to forget.

Yeah. And it'll make you feel like your draft went much better if you steal 3 or 4 of those guys at the end.

So moving on. Number 7. All right.

I'll call this panic-free tight end. And this is something that's been emerging a little bit over the last month, I think, with some different names. You know, we've talked a lot in the offseason during our top 10 rankings episode for the tight ends, how badly we want one of those elite guys. Jason just talked about how if he drafts a running back, he feels a little bit of a license to draft Brock McBride. But I'll throw Loveland, Warren into that group. But if you don't get them, maybe you have Kraft, maybe you have Kittle. If you don't get the big time tight end, I want to highlight what you should be looking for at the tight end position either late in the draft or more so on the waiver wire throughout the year, things that we need to pay attention to, to actually get viable tight ends later in the draft on the waiver wire that produce. So we looked at the last 7 years of data and here are 4 things that we pay attention to. The big one, target share. This is an easy one for us to understand. It's a go-to on the show all the time, but targets for— I mean, I remember doing this 10 years ago, sorting by sorting the waiver wire tight ends by targets when I'm looking for a streaming tight end, just who's getting the ball.

Targets have the highest correlation year to year for fantasy. I just, it just acknowledges how involved the player is in the offense. What we're looking for, 17% plus target share, closer to 20%. Receiving yards per game. Again, another easy one to look at. You need 45% plus receiving yards a game to be a top 10 tight end. If you want to be top 6, you got to be up over 54, maybe. Thank you. You look at route share when they're on the field for a pass play. Are they blocking? Are they running around? There are lots of different types of tight ends. So are they actually running routes? What's the percentage of routes they run on their snaps? And then air yard share is something you can look at just to show downfield potential. There are certain tight ends that are just going to be close to the line of scrimmage. Not a lot of them are going to go way down the field. Air yards measure the distance a football travels through the air from the line of scrimmage to the target. That's the definition of it. And so we want downfield threats, not necessarily, uh, I, Kyle would say like Austin Hoopers, right?

So you want something above 15% in that metric. And so some late round tight ends to highlight this year that meet that, that aren't the top guys. Kyle Pitts, who I really like. I do. I do. I really like it. But his target share. What did he say? His target share is 21%. Route percentage is 86%. Air yard share, 21%. He checks all those boxes. Sam Laporta, target share, 18%. Same thing. I mean, he checks all the boxes. Dallas Goedert. And then the one that we haven't said a lot, maybe because he's always infinitely boring in our minds, but Hunter Henry. Who just signed another extension. Target percentage, 17% last year. Route percentage, 72%. 15% air yard share. Just kind of a tried and true guy. There are lots of guys at the end. I mean, I think Isaiah Likely is going to be in that category this year. But predicting touchdowns is really tough. But looking at target share, looking at air yards, that's your best chance at not panicking at tight end. Not feeling forced to submarine your draft. If you're— if Jason's in the first round and he takes a wide receiver because that's the best player available to him and he doesn't go for one of those big names, there are some things that you need to pay attention to at the tight end position.

So I just wanted to highlight some of those.

Yeah, I mean, this is why personally I hate middle round tight ends. I just think you're wasting opportunities to get quality running backs and wide receivers because at the end of the draft, when the draft is over and every team has drafted every player imaginable, I can look on the waiver wire and see 5 tight ends that I'm like, those are just as good as some of these. Like maybe they're a point worse or their opportunity is a little less good, but it's like not that big of a gap. You don't need to freak out about tight ends in the, in the middle of your draft. I like that tip. All right.

We are moving on. What are we on? 6? Is that right? 6. Yep. Cool. That because the 7's on the board.

Yeah. That's good. Number 6.

We are moving on. We are moving on from the Dusties. You can't— what does that mean? That means that the Dusty picks at the end of the draft. I see. Move on from them. Do not just hold them because of promise of the future. What if they're super good? Well, then they're not Dusty. Then they're not Dusty. You don't need to move on from them. But I want to make it— I think that the best way to realize this is not making a move is in and of itself a move. That is your transaction.

Every action has an equal opposite reaction.

You are choosing to keep that player. That is an active movement.

So just to clarify for listeners, you're talking about the last— when you take those shots at guys very, very late in the draft, you're saying quickly move on from those players when they don't show you something. Don't stay on the promise that you will see something. Exactly right.

And there is so much data behind this to just say that, you know, we're playing an odds probability game. And the odds are that those guys who don't do something good in Week 1 aren't going to do something good in the first month of the season. It doesn't mean that they won't be good the second half of the season, but you can pick them up off of waivers later. You holding on to them for the 6 weeks it might take before they finally show up, that's not a good transaction for your team. I talked about this on a former Tips and Tricks episode of Take Dumps Now, Not Later with regards to Week 1 and Week 2. Matt agrees. Yeah, Matt takes dumps now and later. He's, he's dumps like a truck, you know. Here's the thing, those Week 1 and Week 2 waiver wire pickups They are statistically— yeah, there it is. Oh, shout out Leonard Fournette. They're just statistically so much more valuable, not only because you get more weeks, but just because they perform better. The guys who show up in week 1 tend to do better. Here's a perfect example from last year.

Rounds 11 through 15. Okay, no kickers or defense. So that's 60 picks other than, you know, taking out kickers and defense. There were 4 players of all of them that made an impact in the first month of the season. It's just like, take, take 4, 4 of those rounds, 11 through 15. Yeah. It's just most of them quarterbacks.

So it's like, it makes sense of there. They touch the ball every, every game. You're going to know. Be willing to move on quick.

Just don't hold on. Draft them. You got to draft someone in the 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th round. That's a rule. You have to. But if they don't hit in week 1, be fine moving on. Now, the only exception to that I would say is kind of going with Andy's tip of depth. Those, those insurance running backs, you know, you're Blake Corum is going to be rostered everywhere. Yeah. You're not expecting to see something that one you're holding on to so that you don't have to bid 100% of your fab when and if they have the chance to become a superstar. Outside of that, and I would say especially lower NFL drafted wide receivers, those guys, Cyrus Allen, you talked about him as sleeper. If he's not on the field week 1 in like, you know, getting 75% plus of snaps, punt him off a bridge. Baxter this thing.

Okay. All right. It's Mike's turn.

Number 5.

Speaking of quarterbacks, the elite quarterback prices are cheaper than ever. And you need to understand what's going on with the market because fantasy football, especially in the draft season, everything is the market. The, you know, the early years of this show, we were completely late round quarterback. That was the theory, the game theory that we subscribed to, to tremendous success because of I mean, a lot of it was just fantasy football players weren't quite fully educated on the value of that you could extract from the end of mobile quarterbacks. I was going to say it was a little bit of the emergence of the mobile power. Yeah. And like 10 years ago, you know, everyone, well, I got to get Tom Brady. He's the best quarterback in the league. He's going to be the best fantasy football quarterback, of course. It was, well, actually, if you, your opportunity cost of giving up that first often back then and or a high second round pick is you're missing out on high probability running backs and wide receivers. The market has kind of flipped that this year, not kind of like it has severely right now. So Josh Allen is, he's the certified QB1.

I think he should be. Right now he is going 5 picks later. So that's not a, that's not a ton, but he was about the middle of the second round last year. Yeah. Compared to last year and this year, he's going into about the end of the second. And here's where stuff gets wild. The QB2 in ADP right now is Lamar Jackson compared to 2025's QB2. It's a full round and a half later. So your opportunity cost is not a second round pick for the QB2. It's, it's an early fourth rounder. In fact, this year you have the guys who I think can be up, you know, the most likely to be the elite game-changing quarterbacks. The end of that tier is Jayden Daniels and Jalen Hurts who are going right now in the sixth round. The QB5 and QB6 ADP-wise are going in the sixth. So, you know, I still, prefer to go into my draft with the idea of, okay, I'm not going to burn an early pick on a quarterback and really hope that it's the difference maker when I need to be building up my depth like Andy was pointing out.

This year though, there's a lot of guys who are presenting value at the position. Joe Burrow, a player I love this year. I love the Bengals. I think that Burrow can push to be the QB1 this year. He's going in the 5th. And then I said, Daniels and Hurts are going in the 6th. So it's while you, you can go into, if you're a late round quarterback drafter, you can go in with that strategy of, you know, I'm, I'm still going to wait. I'm going to get value. And I'm not saying there's fun guys who are going late. Of course, someone will emerge from that crop because they do every single year. But when you're building your team, the highest probability is these early quarterbacks, but they're not early round quarterbacks anymore. They're now mid round. It changes the equation. So it's all about the market. It's all about the opportunity cost. So just be cognizant of the fact that you're like, I'm not looking for a quarterback in the fourth round. I normally get them later. Just peek. Peek at that quarterback tab and you might be like, holy crap, Lamar Jackson is still there at the turn of the fourth round.

What I sometimes just take the value.

What I've seen a lot in our mock drafts in my experience, this year is that Josh will go, Allen will go, and then people will kind of wait. And then when the next shoe drops on quarterbacks, they all go real quick because it like Lamar, Burrow, May, Daniels, Hurts, those guys, you can see the like the game of chicken happening a little bit, which, you know, again, you, you, whether you want to get in on that or not, The value is so much different is what Mike's saying.

Yeah. And look, this is ADP. You got to know your league. Perhaps you're in a league where quarterbacks just, they fly off early. Then you just chill out because there's, like we said, there are guys who are going later that are fun and they, you can see what the ceiling case is. You can easily make the ceiling case for a lot of these later round guys. So just, I guess it really, you know, it's just an evolution of the stay water. Don't have a rock-solid firm plan that you will— that's rigid and you can't deviate from it.

And don't feel guilty at this point. Correct. Taking the quarterback. Like we've been in a lot of mocks. We had so many years of late-round quarterback. We get into a mock. I'm like, I like this guy at this spot, but I almost feel guilty taking a quarterback.

You feel like, oh, that's not the—

that's a one. This isn't the way. Yeah.

Yeah. So all right. We'll take a break and continue the countdown. All right. Our top 10 tips and tricks continue. Number 4. All right. This one I'm calling the battle days. The battle days.

This one was not B-A-T-T-L-E. You going to battle?

No. Bad. Bad space. Old days. Space. It was O-L apostrophe. Because there's a phrase people say, the good old days. Right. Yeah. So this one's like the—

These are the battle days. These are the battle days.

The battle days. I hate you guys. All right. This was my, this is my favorite one because it was a journey to discover these numbers on my own. Like I was very curious. So I took a look at the last 10 years at the 10 oldest players drafted each year in fantasy. Okay. So that's a lot of, a lot of players. And I wanted to look which ones were, which ones were drafted what I'd consider a win that would be exceeding their ADP, a loss much worse than their ADP, or a push kind of met their ADP. So 10 years worth of data, the 10 oldest players each year. Here's the, here's the numbers. 30 wins, 50 losses, 20 pushes. So a true hit like winning on that pick has a 30% hit rate. But I was like, let's, let's look at it by position because maybe age has a correlation more with a position. And it did. The worst bet you can make, and it's ironic timing with what, with the Evans news this morning, is on older fantasy wide receivers. In that 10-year span, they went 7, 19, and 8. So that's 7 wins above ADP.

So 7, 21% of the time above ADP. 19 losses below ADP and 8 pushes. So the receiving age cliff seems to be very steep. Like when it goes, it goes. We've been there with the Julios and AJ Greens. We've been there with, you know.

So who is that this year? That's Davante Adams. That's Michael Adams. Yeah, I'll give you them all.

I'll give you all those. So old tight ends in that span did the best, but you kind of—

Yeah, that's Kelsey. You kind of know why. That's just Travis Kelsey. That's not fair. I mean, he wasn't old.

He wasn't in the sample for, you know, 10-year-ago sample, but they were 6-2-1. But if you weren't Kelsey, if you weren't a Hall of Famer, they were horrific. So if you were a non-elite, you were 0-5. You never outkicked your ADP. Also, one of the things I think that was interesting looking at it is that over the years we've had Hall of Famers that were older that performed super well. And it kind of made us think that old these guys perform better than they do. If you look at Brady, Breeze, Rivers, Big Ben, Fitz, Gore, like those were these older elder statesmen that always performed.

But that's what scares me about like Kelsey. No, no, no. Like 2 years from now, Dak, because I love Dak. I love him forever. But it's like we look at these guys who are playing at 40, Brady and Stafford and go, well, Dak's going to freaking crush when he's only 37. But it's like, is he, is he that level? Is he a Hall of Fame level quarterback? Because they, because most people don't.

Well, look, I'm going to try to tell you what to pay attention to, to try to figure out who will perform if you're an older player. One thing to know, half of the losses were availability, not decline. So in other words, injuries were prominent for older players.

Yeah, I can, I can attest.

One thing you can pay attention to, and we've seen it with some of the older guys recently, or one of them especially, the encore effect is actually real. If a player was old and already performed old, they're more likely to do it again. So Derrick Henry, Travis Kelce, those guys, if you did it once, if you broke the mold, if you outkicked the 30%, you're more likely to do it again. That's something to pay attention to if you don't want to take Derrick Henry off the board, which I won't. Yes, exactly. So I will give you— here are the oldest players. I'll give you the oldest players being drafted this year. But the TL;DR is basically that over the last decade, drafting one of the 10 oldest players in the first 9 rounds lost you money half the time. So it's just something to keep in mind. And profitability, doing well with the pick, old quarterbacks did well. Travis Kelce did well. But this year it's Matthew Stafford. He's 38 years old. It's Travis Kelce, 37, about to be. It's Davante Adams and Mike Evans. Travis Kelce's 37.

36.9. Yeah. Just saying that the fact that he is still out there.

So like Matthew Stafford is by— so these are drafted in the first 12 rounds this year. Stafford, Kelce, Adams, Evans, Kittle. Yeah. We kind of were like excited about him, but we forget there's an age component on top of the injury. So availability for Kittle is going to be a question. Stefon Diggs. Okay. Derrick Henry and Aaron Jones. So to Jason's point yesterday when his sleeper was Jordan Mason, Aaron Jones at running back, that's a tough one because I would not say the encore effect is in place for Aaron Jones.

No, he hasn't been special. Henry it is. An old age. Henry it is. Stafford it is.

I wouldn't have said that Kittle probably fit. Kittle's just breaking into the older group. So that was one where we're going to see. But Evans and Adams, I think, are the biggest decisions for fantasy players. There was a part of this offseason pre-substation, Jason, where I feel like your Evans has gone. Yes. I was just so high.

When he signed with San Francisco, I was like, holy crap.

Yeah.

I love this. He's perfect for their system, perfect for their quarterback. I loved everything about it. And then it's just like, man, he's so old and broken and he's playing next to a substation. Yeah.

Oh, the graphic with no sound.

That's the second time we've gotten the graphic. But Jason, do it again. What is the sound that a substation makes?

Thank you.

Yeah. Well, that's disappointing. I thought Terry McLaurin might crack this list. That's why I was really curious if he was. So he's not one of the 10 oldest. He's, he's 26. 30.9. He'll turn 31.

He's not one of the— he doesn't technically fit the age.

He's a little scared. Doesn't mean he's fine.

It just means he doesn't fit the stats. So there you go. Do with that what you will. We're moving on.

Number 3. The Hangman is back. We are revisiting the dead zone. This is the dead zone for running back.

We just got a question on that recently.

Yeah. And I knew this was coming. If you've been playing fantasy football long enough, you know about the running back dead zone. For years, it was like the rounds 4 through 8, they were, they were, you know, not great hit rates to draft running backs because usually what happens in those rounds is people who, they've got a lot of red flags, they just get pushed up. It's the desperation.

Yeah. It's the, oh no, I'd have to get a running back here. And so you burn a pick on a running back. Who is only there because the other— because supply is running out. You're like, well, he's a starter, so I got to take him in the 4th. And you're like, you're missing out on high-level wide receivers or tight ends.

Yeah, you were. And then the last couple of years came and it didn't really work out that way. Those rounds weren't just a dead zone and weren't terrible. But I think we're back this year looking at ADP. I think we are back. See what's happened. Now is you've got a lot of running backs being drafted. I mean, more than half of the first two rounds are running backs. The studs are being drafted very high, but what is happening is that is pushing up the lesser good backs into a range that they haven't been the last couple of years. I'll give you a couple examples here. The running back 24 in 2024 was in the 7th round. The running back 24 right now is a mid-5th round pick. They are significantly higher. An 8th round pick was the running back 36 in 2024. So that's like a fringe flex play. 8th round, that's okay. Or I'm sorry, he was 10th, 10th rounder and now he's up in the 8th round this year. Those, those players being pushed up really means, I mean, part of that, part of this is the correlation to your quarterbacks going a little bit later.

Running backs are being drafted. Yeah. Mediocre middling running backs are being drafted higher than they should go. And we have it. We have a tool on the website, the Value Scout tool. It's in the UDK. It's a really cool thing we came out with last year where It takes our projections, looks at basically what the true value would be according to like historical precedent for what you would expect them to be drafted at ADP-wise. And then it compares to where their ADP currently is. And so there's a handful of guys right now that if you look at the Value Scout tool, you just see they're being significantly overdrafted what the expectation of their ADP should have been. Travis Achan Jr. Right now is being picked 10 spots ahead of ADP. Now obviously maybe this changes with Alvin Kamara being out for a month. David Montgomery right now, you know, we've got him priced basically 15 picks behind where he's being drafted in ADP. Jaylen Warren looks like an 8th rounder according to our consensus projections, but he's being pulled up to the 6th round on Sleeper. And Tony Pollard, another one where he's going, you know, 11 spots ahead of where we project his ADP should be.

You can, you could check out more of these players in the Value Scout tool. But this is basically, it's not to say, don't hear what I'm not saying. It's not to say that there won't be any good pick in the rounds 4 through 8 for running back. But what, what matters that you need to know is that when you are drafting the running back 24 through 36, you are paying a lot more right now than you have in recent years. And if you are, it mathematically means that other players at other positions are being pushed down and they are discount— better value than in years past. So you just got to play the market. The pendulum swings back and forth. The health of running backs the last 2 years has just pushed running backs way too high in those middle rounds.

Do you want to know something cool? Yeah, I do. Heck yeah. If you take 2 awesome running backs at the top of your draft, You don't have to worry about that. You don't have to worry about no RB strategy. Just do, just draft great running back.

I pretty much require 2 of my first 4 rounds to be running backs and potentially 3 because I love to just, you know, high tee shotgun those wide receivers for a while afterwards.

Yeah. Number 2. We're calling this one hot or not.

Number 2 makes me think of Matt.

I remember that. Oh, a hot number 2 is. That's not a place you want to be. Oh, goodness.

But let's not focus on that. This is a PG show, remember? So— Rim. What did he say?

So we actually, we just fielded a question about this where people were saying, you know, what is the kind of the emphasis on early season schedule? And because we're talking about hot starts and it does factor in the first month of the season, it carries a lot of weight for fantasy, for emotion. And when also a part of that is like, because when you are, when you go 0-2 or 0-3, it's really difficult to not panic because you feel like you feel under the knife. You're like, I got to make, I got to make moves here. And you can end up making trades that are just, they're bad decisions. You get on tilt. Yes, you tilt. And we don't want to do that. So we want to have, you know, hotter starts. So for a strength of schedule, a different way to look at that. Last year, we looked at, we took the data. We had 8 teams that were projected as underdogs. This is overall the NFL team. They were projected as underdogs in 3, at least 3 of their first 4 games before the season even started. Of those 8 teams, only one of them won more than a single game, and it was the Jacksonville Jaguars.

And that was like, oh, this is the team that people were pretty wrong about. Like the Liam Cohen effect on, on the Jags really took them to a different place over those first 4 games. They won 3. They had a positive point differential.

It was a great year.

6 of those 8 though, bottom 10 in points per game scoring. 6 of the 8 scored less than 1 rushing touchdown per game. So it's like, look, the sportsbooks, they're not trying to lose money. They're trying to put lines where they think they can win it. But these people know what they're talking about. It was Jacksonville, Carolina, the Titans, Cleveland, the Jets, Raiders, Giants, and Saints who they were. It wasn't good. And so I bring that up for, you know, maybe it's going to help you make some tiebreaker decisions. And the running backs from those teams, guess who ended up being a value? Travis Achan Jr. Because he's on a winning football team. It's like, Gente, there was a great start. There was a great game in there. But overall, for that pick that you made, it was a big bummer. Chuba, couple good games, and then it was And then it was rough. Breece Hall, it was not a strong start. Kamara, the same. If you're talking, looking at those 4 games and Tony Pollard is, these were not truly like, these weren't running backs that you could plug and play and feel good about.

So let's look at 2026. Who are the teams projected to that they're underdogs in at least 3 of their first 4 games?

Okay. Get the numbers for this year.

It's tough because it's Arizona. Yeah. Cleveland. Yeah, Cleveland. The Colts.

Yeah, that's, that's interesting because Johnny Taylor splits and wins and losses are pretty, pretty wide.

See if you can spot what's going on.

Keenan didn't throw their, they didn't become favorites instantly.

See if you can see what's going on with you. Okay, Colts, Raiders. Yeah. Dolphins. Yeah. Dogs. They are dogs in at least 3 of their first 4 games and those are first and second round Running backs, Taylor and Jets, Breece. Surprisingly, the Broncos are in there too because their, their opening schedule is tough. But it's, it's, this is not to say that all of those guys, all those running backs are going to be bad or bust picks. It's just uphill battle. It is, it is definitely an uphill battle for guys who are going very early in your fantasy football draft. So, you know, it's when you're deciding Maybe it's a, maybe it becomes a tiebreaker for you.

Yeah, that's interesting and kind of sad. Yeah. Because of the players we love this year. All right, we're there. Number 1. All right, our tip, it's always been something a little bit like this every year. Number 1 is just wipe the slate clean. We all suffer the fantasy. Wipe it. Burns the bad memories and thoughts. Well, Mike didn't have any bad memories last year. No, no. He wants to keep his slate dirty.

But we are recommending Speaking to you, Mike, wipe that slate clean. Yeah, let's remember nothing.

Get back to—

hey, that's what I'm doing. But you got to, you got to move. I won last year. I will remind you that I won last year, but we're on to—

I don't really remember that. But I was— it's funny.

I was— I wiped the slate clean.

Yeah, I followed the rule. I was on— I did a guest spot for Tony Reale's show and we were talking about like bad beats and I brought up the— How I had Lamar Jackson week 1. He takes me up by 1.8 points. They end up going into overtime and he fumbles and I lose. And it's like, this is a horrifically bad beat. It turns into one of the worst, not what it turns into the worst fantasy football season where I'm just getting bad beat. And he's like, well, did you ever go back to Lamar Jackson? I'm like, of course. Yeah. Of course I went back. Like you can't, when, when a player of that caliber It's like Christian McCaffrey. There are many people last year who are like, I will never ever draft Christian McCaffrey again because of what he did to me.

The phrase, the phrase, whoops-a-doodles. The phrase that people probably used was like, well, I'm just willing to let him be great and I won't deal with the risk. But they might not think that anymore. Yes. They might think, I wish I had drafted him.

And I'm not saying sometimes a player burns you and like then they burn you again. It's just, it's, it's a new year. The new you. When, yes, a new, thank you, Jason. A brand new you. If, if a player destroyed you with injury last year, just, just wipe the pain, man. It's tough, but you have to do it. Yeah.

I feel like Jason's hat is so perfectly blending with these back wall graphics.

It's like you're all the dudes.

The doosers are just like nodding their heads.

You don't even have a top of a head.

Oh, I mean, now do you need to make a little PSA for people that the other day you had gotten a haircut? Oh yeah.

And people, a lot of people was like, oh, so welcome to the bald club. I got, I got, I'm not fully bald.

We got bad news for you.

We got bad news this day.

Not bald yet.

Got bad news for you baldies.

Look at these luscious. He's not one of you. Not yet. All right.

His slate is not wiped clean up top.

Am I right? Team bald down bad. Yeah. Sorry, baldies.

Losers. I mean, oh yes.

I love Josh.

I love the idea of you just turning horribly against for sure. If you're balding, you just need to know what a loser. Oh my God. I mean, man, what are those cold effects?

Oh, I would never get real. Oh my gosh.

There you go. Hey, one final reminder here, the Megala— Megalable. It is available. Entries right now. Grab a draft spot. Come play with us. We'll be playing 20,000+ players, a chance to win the ultimate Foot Clan for life and a spot in the Listener League.

Let's set the new record. Every year we've had a new record. Let's do it again. Foot Clan, you are undefeated. Megalable.com.

Yeah, that'll be so awesome. And then tomorrow we're going to get into bust and value picks. And on Friday, it's Mock Draft Mayhem. So you do not want to miss an episode. It is go time. If you're drafting tonight, tomorrow soon, good luck. Hopefully some of these tips and tricks helped you out. We will be back tomorrow with another episode. Take care. Goodbye.

Thank you for listening to another episode of the Fantasy Footballers Podcast. Join our fantasy football community on jointhefoot.com and follow us on Twitter @TheFFBallers.