Week 14 is done, the fantasy playoffs are upon us, and Draco
and I are above the expected advance rate with our FFPC
basketball teams. Prepare for an hour of gloating
and more on stat chasing. Pat Fryer, Helmo.
This is what? This is what I'm hot.
Anita, hand job fix your sight. Jamar and Alpha play Chase, you
can't handle the heat. It looks like we're finally at
this point, You're right. We did it, Draco.
We advanced well above the expected advance rate on FFPC
all season. They told us advance rate is
actually all that matters, and you guys suck because you're not
advancing more than you're expected teams.
Well, look who's laughing now. We have 3.8% above the expected
advance rate. Let's go, baby.
I mean, it was, it was dire. There there were, there were.
Some There were some down moments, there were some bleak
feelings. Yes.
Many weeks I didn't even check my teams.
I mean, how could anyone who are foreseen though that a strategy
that's predicated on anti fragility in the chaos of the
NFL season taking place would perform better after we have
time for some chaos to take place?
It's simply unprecedented. No one could have seen anything
like this kind. It it it not the way you say
that. It is actually kind of poetic
how this season kind of turned out where like more so than in
in recent years, the early running backs were just like
untouchable in the early weeks of the season.
And then towards the end, all of that fragility, all of those
kind of 0 RB candidates break out, the receiver start putting
up points. It is.
It is kind of, it's poetic in in just like how scheduled it was.
Yeah. And I mean, I I still feel like
in the range of outcomes for how good or bad a specific season
run out is for 0RB, this was still a pretty bad one for 0 RB,
right? Like you have lots of we, we
were talking about this yesterday when we're looking at
the teams that advanced for us, but so many, what would be
absurdly good teams are like, oh, this one had Brandon Iuke
and Rashi Rice and Stefan Diggs. So I guess, I guess it was just,
you know, DOA. And so you get so many of these
wide receiver injuries like every every week that I do the
charts for stat chasing. I have a line in the code that
is the list of players to exclude for season ending
injury. And I mean, the list of wide
receivers has always been like five times longer than the list
of running backs this season. And that's like in when we had
the most running backs that I was excluding, wide receivers
were still far more numerous. So it it was just a little bit
of a weird season for that. But I mean, zero RB isn't even
wholly predicated on injury, right?
It it's also that you have some of these running backs who might
not have a job to start the season or might not be in, you
know, the primary back to start the season.
But as NFL teams find out more about who this player actually
is and how they actually fit into their team through the
process of discovery over the course of an NFL season, the
talent shines through. And that's, I feel like that's
really a better framing of 0 RB that we want to bet on the
things that we think are, are most likely to be true from a
talent perspective and let the chips fall where they may.
And that's kind of, I think that's better than saying like,
oh, it's just a strategy where you, you, you know, prey on the
injuries of players and you're really, you're just rooting for
all these bad things to happen. It's like, that's really not it.
It's more, it's a much there's a much rosier framing to it where
you're rooting for these plucky underdogs who have gone
undiscovered. Hugo Hubbard is like a good
example. Yeah.
Of somebody who was just very, very good, I'm like, yes,
injuries happen to have like benefited the sum, but he was
still like the bell cow. Yeah, Chase Brown's another
really good example where like this guy had a workhorse profile
in college. We all really liked him last
year. Nothing happens, right?
This year, even to start the season, it doesn't look great
for him because they just refused to stop using Zac Moss,
right? Every time Chase Brown touches
the ball, it's like, wow, look at that guy compared to the guy
they're normally trying out here.
And in Chase Brown's situation, it did take an injury for him
to, but he was ending up as a good pick even without the
injury. Even prior to the injury, he was
gonna be one of those like 0 RB hits where it's like he can
deliver a spike week here and there.
You know, the floor might not be fantastic, but he was getting.
Touches. Yeah, but ultimately things
ended a lot better than. Bucky Irving, there's another
one. Yeah, Bucky Irving, another
great one. I mean, Tyrone, Tyrone Tracy, it
man, Tyrone Tracy is 1 where I would have had a pretty hard
time seeing it coming in the way that it did for him.
I I've got to think that Devin Singletary hit his injury stuff
that he had earlier. I have to think that's just
lingering because he's he's been one of your favorites for years
because I believe you've described it as creeping Ivy.
This guy just like takes over a whole backfield and strangles
out the other backs because coaches love him so much.
It's. So funny.
He's a great. Always been so funny.
Right, like as a from a, you know, raw athlete standpoint or
how funny is for fantasy, Like those are not the things that
Devin Singletary is. But you know what Devin
Singletary actually is fantastic football player, great real
life, doesn't make mistakes, can do all the stuff.
So in real life, football coaches love him and that
translates to him just having a stranglehold on the roll.
So I, I would have thought it was really difficult if you told
me like Devin Singletary will be healthy and active in week 14
and Tyrone Tracy is going to get the vast majority of the work,
I'd say that's pretty far fetched to me.
But here we are. And, and that's again, that kind
of like IS0RB in a nutshell. We don't really know anything.
So why don't we just bet on the people that we have evidence of
them being talented, right? Like, right, that's, that's
really all that it comes down to.
So I feel like that's enough of a preamble.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a pretty good, pretty
good preamble. So we've got our quarterback
volume efficiency and rushing and chart here.
And before we get into some of these numbers, I, I remember you
kind of harping on or harping on is like the wrong way to put it
is emphasizing and the big 5 at quarterback.
And and I know in in kind of private conversation that you've
suggested that you're thinking might change and you've probably
taught touch on this in previous podcasts on, on on other shows.
And what do you want to talk about how you're thinking may
have evolved there? Yeah, I so the the thing about
playoff basketball that you have to remember I'm actually, I had
this same conversation. So we're going to start with a
broad topic conversation about playoff basketball and then
we're going to drill down into the quarterback question.
My favorite kind of answer is a really lengthy one that requires
an explanation before I give it. So I had someone who very early
in the playoff basketball cycle, I said something to the effect
of taking Saquon one O 1 is kind of suicide.
Like you really don't want to do it.
It sets you up to fail. You get boxed out.
This is back when the big 5 quarterbacks were really, really
strong concept. I I thought was very important.
The Eagles had worse playoff odds, lower by odds.
You know, this is a few games ago.
So they they weren't looking quite as strong.
Their power rankings were lower. All of these factors making say
Kwan a worse one O 1 pick than he is right now.
And so at the time I said something to the effect of,
yeah, you don't want to take sake on one-on-one.
I think that's a mistake. You really want to wait till
like at least the third pick because then you can get some
stuff coming back to you that makes that work.
And that the person that I was talking to just mentioned that
today and said, oh, look at this now leg up has Saquon back to
101. Like, oh, oh, and I it's like,
yeah, because the whole landscape for playoff basketball
changes with every NFL game that gets played every week.
We're basically resetting the meta on playoff basketball
because all of these probabilities change and playoff
basketball is so much a probability driven and math
driven game and so much less about the actual NFL players
like the the individual players and what they will score in a
given week means the least in playoff basketball compared to
any other format. And the thing that means the
most is, is this team going to be alive in that specific round
of the playoffs? And so because you have this
dynamic of the shifting probabilities with every single
week, and really as we get closer and closer to the end of
the season, you get the shifting of the seeding, the actual
playoff seeds and who is going to face each other in round two
and round 3. That's, that's quite important
because you want to ideally keep as much of your team alive as
long as possible. So you don't want them to play
each other in round one or round two.
You'd prefer for teams from the same conference to only be able
to meet in the conference championship or at least meet
the majority of the time that they find each other in the
conference championship. So there's all of these
underlying factors that will shift the meta and shift the the
value of players mostly based on the team that they're on and
what happened to their team and their team's playoff standing in
the prior week. And so now getting into the
quarterback conversation, previously the top five
quarterbacks, and that would be Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Jalen
Hurts, Patrick Mahomes and Jared Goff made-up such a high
percentage of the Super Bowl outcomes.
The, you know, the total number of Super Bowl matchups that were
possible. Those five quarterbacks were in
such a large majority of them that it really, really made
sense to emphasize those players because without one of those
quarterbacks, you were effectively forced into playing
for a much lower probability Super Bowl.
And that's, that's really the long and short of it why the Big
5 was such a thing. Now it's actually a lot
different. We're, we're looking at a
smaller gap between the 4th and 5th quarterbacks and their
probability of going to the Super Bowl and the, you know,
6th and 7th and even 8th quarterbacks.
So for example, and I guess this would be a decent you can, you
can pull up the playoff odds chart here just 'cause I'm going
to reference some stuff in it and it'll.
Probably. Visual.
Yeah, give me one second. Yeah, we're.
We're pulling an audible here. We're we're deviating from the
quarterback chart first. So present, sure, it's green.
There's a beautiful we're, we're taking away the, the the
colorful chart and we're putting in this beautiful, beautiful
table. Yes, multiple 2 shades of blue
and a shade of grey, which will surely be on the screen shortly
here. I I clicked share but then I
didn't. I never clicked screen.
So this table is over on legendary upside.
Any tier leg up subscriber can see it.
So you don't have to be a sidekick subscriber to see it.
These probabilities are baked into the Sidekick.
It's helping to power the decision.
Pat is gonna get this video demonetized on YouTube.
Yeah, we're giving away the milk for free here.
But the thing that is really important is go ahead and sort
that conference championships, OK?
It looks like you have it sorted.
Yeah, yeah. I was looking at it myself while
you're talking so. This 4th column here from the
left, this conf champ probability, that shows the
probability in our simulations that any of these teams actually
makes it to the conference championship.
And so previously you had the top five occupying so much of
that probability. But now if you look beyond the
1st 4, where the big four are Detroit, Buffalo, KC and
Philadelphia, after that, there's kind of a log jam here
where you get Pittsburgh. Yeah, they're all, they're all
the same. Basically.
They're they're virtually identical.
Pittsburgh, Green Bay and Baltimore, it's anyone's game to
make it the conference championship out of those three
teams. So what you're actually seeing
in the meta of playoff basketball right now is a gross
mispricing of Baltimore. It's it is egregious.
If you click Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry at the 1-2 turn,
it's one of the worst things you can possibly do.
It's not very different than clicking Jordan Love and Josh
Jacobs at the 1-2 turn or Russell Wilson and Najee Harris
at the 1-2 turn now. So.
Can I just interrupt slightly? So one thing when you when you
look at our charts, we show that Lamar is, is the fantasy God
this year. He's super efficient in passing.
He's got the rushing, his volley, his passing volume.
So not only is he rushing, he also has a high expected point
from passing. And so he will have, I think the
highest projection of any quarterback week to week.
I guess the the the Josh Allen just put up the the highest
amount of any quarterback, but he's also had some pretty low
scoring games as well. But the, I, I guess I think I
know the answer to this, which is so I think people are pricing
in that high projection and probably they're probably
overrating the ELO, the team strength a little bit and then
putting a lot of weight on that high projection.
But I, and I think you touched on this last week where it
actually it doesn't matter, it almost doesn't matter how high
the projection is if he doesn't advance, maybe he's not in the
conference championship. It's it his projected points to
0. He projects for zero in the
conference championship. And yeah, to the the point about
the ELO, the relative strength of the team, the Packers are
basically neck and neck with the Ravens.
They they have the same relative strength.
They're the 4th and 5th strongest teams in the league.
And then the Steelers are right on their tail.
The Steelers are right behind the Raven.
So it's it's congruous. This logjam of these
probabilities isn't just because of their records and kind of how
their lot has fallen based on the way the seasons played out
and where their seating is going to be.
It's also because these teams are similar in their strength.
And yes, Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry are both the two
premium scorers at their position compared to the the
other players in this same tier of conference championship
probability. But that's all that it should
be. It should be a tiebreaker within
the tier. And so of the Steelers, Packers
and Ravens, yes, Lamar Jackson should be the first quarterback.
Derrick Henry should be the first quarterback.
But you know what teams are better than those?
The Eagles, the Bills and the Lions.
And I don't care that James Cook scores fewer fantasy points than
Derrick Henry, you know, in a in a median projection.
I don't. I don't care that, you know,
David Montgomery scores fewer fantasy points than Derrick
Henry in a median projection. Those guys make the Super Bowl
and make the conference championship so much more often.
And you might look at it and say, oh, well, 30% to 46%,
that's not that big a difference.
I mean it's, it's an enormous difference.
Like when you're thinking of it in a relative sense, like the
jump from 30% to 45% is a 50% increase, like it's enormous.
And so that and. In terms of expected value, it's
a. It's a big.
It's a big difference. Correct.
And that's why I'm using the relative increase there because
that's more along the lines of like how you would be getting at
an expected value calculation is like relative change in the
conference championship probabilities.
And so to put a bow on it and go all the way back to your initial
question of has my opinion on the Big 5 quarterbacks changed?
The answer is yes. And so there's two ways.
I, I think that you could have two very strong debates for how
to play this now. And it's that there's a big four
and it's that it's Detroit, Buffalo, KC and Philly.
And those BIG4 quarterbacks are super important or it's that
there are 7 viable quarterbacks, right?
I mean, even I, I think Minnesota you even could say.
I was actually about to bring them up, they look insane.
Yeah, they do. Did you see the stat that of the
NFC North teams the the top three, not including the Bears,
they've only lost to each other. That's or it might it.
Might be they've only sorry they've I think they've only
lost three games, not to each other.
But, but let's put, let's put it another way.
So based on based on ELO, based on, on a projection of, of team
strength, the Ravens are 29% to go to the conference
championship and you have to take their quarterback and, and
running back in the 1-2 turn. The Vikings are 23%.
So like what's that 90% of their of their probability, something
like that 80%. So like much, much, very, very
close. And then and Sam Darnold,
obviously he has his bad games, but he just put up 40 points.
Yeah. And so the projection for Sam
Darnold is actually very, very good.
And you can you can get, you can very, very easily get the entire
team stack with probably I haven't known many of these
drafts or any of these drafts. So I'm just a pundit, I guess,
but I imagine that you can take, you can basically take a full on
Vikings sack uncontested and then if the if the Vikings make
the Super Bowl, you win. Yes, and it would be and people.
This is the other thing that I think is really, really
fascinating because I, you know, being the guy who is like made
his whole thing playoff basketball.
Lots of people talk to me about playoff basketball every day.
So I'm getting to hear from other people and hear their
opinions on this and hear where they think that we might be
wrong and our, you know, our projections for these
probabilities of these certain events or which teams they like
and all of this stuff. And one thing that's common
among almost everyone that I talk to and, and a lot of these
people are people that I think are extremely sharp.
You know, they might be really good basketball players.
They might be really, really good DFS players.
Like people absolutely crushing DFS, like guys that I would say
are much smarter than myself. But everyone that I talk to has
the same glitch in their brain. And it's a bug that that I have
talked about before, but it's that the human brain has this
weird way of seeing a low probability outcome and saying,
oh, that actually happened 0% of the time.
Yeah, Seattle making the conference championship.
Yeah, I see that you guys have that happening 17% of the time.
It actually happened 0% of the time.
And you're not even. It's not like you're sitting
there and thinking through this and maniacally plotting about
how like it's wrong. It's just a natural thing that
your. Brand is assuming.
This to to skip over it's I. I trust, I trust the projections
here. I have the same reaction of like
that looks like a bug, but I mean the map is the map.
Yeah, and I've, I promise I've stepped through each of these
Sims to make sure that hey, we've got, let me make sure that
all the seedings correct, let me make sure all the tiebreaker
logic is correct, all all of this stuff.
So who? Who are the?
Who are Seattle likely? Are they?
What seed are they projected
for? They would they would be the
four seed because they get there from winning their division.
OK, so they're the four seed and who's who do you think?
Who's the likely five seed? The likely five seed would
probably be Minnesota then. I guess that's the other way.
We can we can look at these we, we.
So who has who's the most likely to play Seattle in the oh, oh,
that's in the conference championship, so never mind.
Yeah, never mind. We we don't have that just
because the way that all of these odds work is everything
flows through to the conference championship.
So rather than giving if we included more, I mean this table
is already a lot, you know. So if we included more info on
it like and here's the one seed probability, here's the two seed
probability. And all this the the only thing
I'm who so but we take their their likely opponent is the
Vikings because yeah. That's that's one of the.
Packers will win their. It could also be the Packers.
It's the Packers or the Vikings, So those are the two likely
opponents. Yeah.
And like, why can't they beat? Why can't they beat either of
those teams? Yeah, no, they they certainly
can 11. That's a really interesting one
that made Pat be like, I need you to double check The Sims.
Like this seems really wrong. Is the Commanders.
Their probability of facing the Lions when the Commanders make
the conference championship is quite high.
I wanna say that they're the 13 percent or 17%.
Scroll up to the top. So I can, so that's Green Bay.
Is 29 the first one? Okay, so they're 20 percent,
20%. So that means when Washington
makes the conference championship, 20% of the time
they face Detroit, which you might be thinking in your head,
how does that work out? Detroit's the one seed,
Washington's very likely the seven seed.
How do they, how do they see them 20% of the time in the
conference championship? They meet way before that.
And the way that it happens is Detroit is the one seed 73% of
the time, not 100% of the time, right and Washington is the
seventh seed less than 100% of the time, right?
And also you have upsets that happen, right?
Like upsets can happen. And so when Washington makes it
as the six seed, say, or I don't even know if they can make it as
the five seed, there's probably some very low probability
outcome. They can make it as the five
seed, but you get Washington as the six seed or something.
Now all of a sudden you get a seven seed upset.
Detroit faces the seven seed. Washington goes on to the next
round. They win in round two.
And all of a sudden, Detroit and Washington, you're playing each
other there, right? Or Detroit doesn't get the one
seed Washington. Washington does get the seven.
Washington upsets twice and meets Detroit in the conference
championship. So you get these low probability
events that there are multiple different paths for this thing
to happen and they all sum up to this number.
That seems way too large for our puny human brains.
But that is why we use simulations, because we can
account for lots and lots and lots of different futures and we
can sum up all of those outcomes and then get the actual
probability as long as we have good inputs here, so.
And I guess the, the other thing about this is so these are Sims
of, of, of using the current data.
And I have to imagine if and when and the commanders get
locked in as a seventh seed, the lions get locked in as a one
seed, this goes to 0. So like this is true right now
in this window in time. And, and I, I mean, who knows if
they become the sixth seed, then then that probability goes up.
And whatever how, how it goes. But it is important to know that
it's to note that it's very dynamic that like just because
we're saying that that this week on this particular podcast
doesn't mean that somebody's listening on on on Wednesday
should still be doing this, this time next week.
Yeah, absolutely. By this time next week,
everything's gonna have changed. And that's one of the things I
like the best about playoff basketball.
The meta changes on an instant and it's another reason why I
think philosophically you really should spread out your entries
for playoff basketball because you just, you really have no way
of being able to identify what you think is a unique combo and
won't be attainable later or what you think is the huge edge
that you have to draft all 150 of your teams right now before
that edge goes away. So much can change and it's so
chaotic that I really, really think that you want to spread
out your entries. And really I would say the best
argument for spreading out your entries is that there are
outcomes where the guys that are the, you know, round one advance
rate monsters are coming from the Bucks or they're coming from
the Seahawks, or they come from the Rams or, Oh my gosh, the
Bengals with their 1.3% playoff probability somehow made it and
it comes from the Bengals, right?
So you get these very these things that are very hard to
predict on teams that are very unlikely to go far in the
playoffs. But later in the draft cycle,
when you know what the seating is and you know which teams are
locked into the playoffs, you can tell yourself I can see a
chance where the Rams upset whoever it is they play in round
one. So I'll throw.
Puka and Kyron in, as you know, round one advance rate pieces
and if they can steal a game then great.
I've got a really strong team heading into Round 2.
And so just delaying some of your entries for as we get more
information about the brackets and the seating I think is
really sharp. Otherwise, you're just not going
to draft any of these really fringe teams that could be the
skeleton key to help you advancing some of these really
powerful bye week teams. And, and that's something that I
think is a pretty important concept that a lot of people
overlook. Yeah, makes sense for sure.
And, and and bringing it back to.
I'm going to bring it back to. Yeah, let's go back to
quarterbacks. Here and our charts and that
takes a couple of of clicks here while I do that.
But I mean the two, the two things that send out to me at
the most are so #2 entry in our in our what you call it adjusted
yards per attempt. And if you're only looking at
the high probability playoff at quarterbacks is Russell Wilson
and Sam Darnold and those guys are pretty much free for
quarterbacks. They have reasonable conference
championship odds. They have really high
efficiency. I I feel better best and Arnold
for sure. And because just because he, he,
he, he's an over larger sample, my, my lizard brain makes it
easier for me, easier for me to believe that he can do that with
Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison and Hawkinson and and and Aaron
Jones. And but that's kind of what when
I look at my tables here of our chart, that's what stands at me
strongly. Yeah, I mean, Darnold is in a
really favorable place on the chart too, right?
He's got high expected fancy points from passing, doing it
efficiently. He's got a little bit of rushing
in him. He's he's very like statuesque
in the pocket. Like he stands in there for a
long time, has a long time to throw, but that's what's helping
him drive the ball down field too.
And so you get these big spike weeks from him and these big
explosion plays. And so, yeah, Darnold is one
that I think is really, really interesting.
I I think that if you're wanting to play particularly
aggressively in playoff basketball, you certainly could
be willing to fade the quote UN quote Big 5 quarterbacks and not
like intentionally fade them, but just say, Hey, I'm willing
to try and push these quarterbacks and take some
really high value skill position players in the hopes that one of
the big quarterbacks falls to me.
And if they don't, I feel pretty good about then just slamming
Vikings for the rest of the, you know, first two rounds.
I just grabbed two of the best skill position players with
really high Super Bowl probability.
And if I don't get a quarterback that pairs nicely with them,
then I pivot. And in the third round, I take
Justin Jefferson. Fourth round, I take Aaron
Jones. And like, that's early.
Like you don't have to take Justin Jefferson and the 3rd and
Aaron Jones and the fourth. You can usually get those guys
in the 4th and 5th, sometimes even the 5th and 6th.
And so you can just kind of stake your claim on the Vikings
early and just be like, all right, I'm going to take 6
Vikings and I got 2 incredible picks in the 1st 2 rounds.
I take 6 Vikings. I close it out with two, you
know, random dart throws, maybe a couple bills dart throws or
something or chiefs dart throws because those are high Super
Bowl probability teams and, and call it a day.
So I I do like I. Mean they have a 6% and
probability of winning the Super Bowl.
So I'm I'm going to extrapolate that of 12% and, and it works.
It might works out with 24% of conference championship, but
like that feels really, really high to be able to easily get
the entire team and they just play every round and it's a
really fun offense. IT projects really high.
They'll be one of the highest total games in the playoffs
every week. That that, that's screams
inefficiency. Yeah, it definitely is.
The Vikings are definitely one of the teams I really like to
attack. I want to talk about we we
talked about some well, you know, teams that were priced
very favorably last time. I want to talk about how as we
get closer and closer to the end of the season, we begin to get
clarity on some of these really, really gross teams where the
Vikings were talking about they could actually win the Super or
not win the Super Bowl. Get to the Super Bowl, right?
Right. No, they could 6%.
They could win the Super. Bowl 6% is like one in 20.
I mean, think back to the year where it was when it was Rams.
I would. Kill for those BBT odds.
Yeah, I win the BBT. It's insane.
Yeah, I'll take it. Yeah, but I mean, think back to
the year that was Rams and Bengals, right?
No one would have seen that coming.
Those teams make the Super Bowl, Rams end up winning it.
So yes, I'm I'm with you on the Vikings.
The ones I want to kind of pivot to here are I want to talk about
the grocer guys that we think are like, oh boy, sure, maybe
technically they could make the Super Bowl, but like more
theoretical sense, you know, so like the ones that I think are
pretty interesting now are Baker Mayfield and Bo Nicks.
And so Baker similar area of the chart as Sam Darnold.
You can see him here. They're you know, they're both
right about 16 expected fantasy points from passing.
Baker is a little bit more dink and dunk than Sam Darnold in
that a a big reason for that is his time to throw is very, very
quick. Baker's getting the ball out
fast and Darnold is not he's he's kind of the polar opposite
where he's standing in and just trying to Chuck it down field.
So that's to explain part of the suggested yards per attempt,
right? But Baker has been nothing short
of great this season. Like I, I, I don't think it's a
stretch to say Baker Mayfield is one of the 10 best quarterbacks
in the NFL right now. Like, if you don't like it, you
probably just weren't watching enough Baker Mayfield this year.
Like, 'cause the guy looks great when you watch him and all of
his advanced metrics are pretty great this season.
So I, he's, he's one that I really like.
And the Bucks are now high enough probability of getting
into the, the playoffs that I think that they're on the menu
for me. I'd begun drafting them.
They're they're about 78% to make the playoffs.
To me, that's kind of the line. 70% is like anything lower than
that, I'm not really willing to mess with it.
So Seattle is still just barely out for me.
They're at 68%. And I'm fine to wait a little
bit on that because the Rams game Thursday night will
actually enlighten us a lot about Seattle's probability
since it's a interdivisional game with Rams 49ers.
But yeah, Baker is a really interesting one.
The other one that is pretty interesting.
Let me ask, I guess the the thing with Baker is that his his
efficiency is fine. It's lower than these other
guys. It's but it's fine.
His projection is actually pretty good.
It's similar to the Sam Darnold in terms of like, sorry, his
volume is expected points from volume.
His rushing is similar. So like you're talking about
very similar projection, yeah, projected volume with just
slightly less efficiency, just slightly.
And but then the the question that comes to me is, so I know
what we kind of mentioned like I think and Baker Mayfield is
probably projects to somebody that even, and even when it
they're 100%, they become 100% to make the playoffs.
And we know, we know who they're playing and all that kind of
stuff at the end, they're not getting any more expensive.
Correct, correct. And so I, I guess the, the,
that, that, that does lead me to believe that maybe like you said
on the menu, but a low frequency option.
This. Yeah, this.
One is sort of sickos. So what's happening now is you
you end up in circumstances where this is especially true if
you're drafting a lot of by heavy teams.
If you're drafting a lot of chiefs, drafting a lot of Lions,
you'll run into a situation near the end of drafts where you just
simply do not have enough firepower to advance the team
out around one for with by using teams that have high
probabilities of making the conference championship.
And so you're forced into these grosser teams where you're
playing for, hey, I need the Bucks to make the playoffs.
And when they do, it advances this team that has, you know,
five players live for Lions chief Super Bowl, which is a
pretty good Super Bowl to have a piece of right?
And so that's when you typically are going to use teams like the
Bucks. The other one I was going to
mention is the Broncos. They're both similar probability
Broncos 73%, Bucks 78% to make the playoffs.
Now, the nice thing about the Bucks is there's actually a good
number of viable fantasy pieces there.
You certainly are happy to take Baker as AQB to bridge the gap
from Week 1. If you got to buy quarterback,
you're happy to take both running backs, to be perfectly
honest, like Bucky. If Bucky were fully healthy, it
would be so, so clearly Bucky to me.
But we'll get into Bucky and Rashad White later when we talk
about running backs. But I think they're both viable.
Obviously Mike Evans is viable. I don't think you're doing
anyone outside of those three skill position players though on
the box like I'm, I'm just not going to do AK dot and I'm not
going to do a Jalen McMillan. It just gets to be too thin and
this there's not really a reason to do that.
The the one knock on Denver is they really only have one skill
position player and that's Cortland Sutton.
Like, you know, we'll we'll get into their skill position
players a little later when we talk about wide receiver.
But that's the one the one caveat with Denver.
So anyway, and then you kind of run into that with the Chargers
as well. The Chargers, it's just Lad
Mcconkey and Justin Herbert. Like, do you really want to
draft JK Dobbins, who's maybe a week off the IR?
And I think we talked about this last week.
So we don't need to rehash it. But anyway, those are kind of
the vomit quarterbacks that I'm into near the end of drafts.
I did have one more quarterback question for you, Draco, before
we move on. OK.
And that's if you look at where Patrick Mahomes is on the chart.
Oh God. He's he's passing more that
expected fantasy points from passing is kind of ticked up
throughout the season and he's he's kind of in the spot on the
chart where we talk about guys potentially being positive
regression candidates. So I mean, the story feels a
little bit So what we're. Saying is he's got volume, he's
got volume there, but it's not efficient.
And would it surprise you if the Chiefs on their way to their
third consecutive Super Bowl run somehow?
Started playing good. Have Patrick Mahomes start to
click and this guy suddenly I'm not even.
He doesn't have to do a lot. What if he's as efficient as
Baker Mayfield? What if he's as efficient as
Tuba? You know, like that's all I'm
saying. Yeah.
I mean, if we, if we, I'm not going to pull it back up, but if
we look at your at your E loading, they're 46% to make the
conference championship and just if you make it like there's only
three other quarterbacks that are even in playing.
So like, you're a top four quarterback, yeah.
Seems very good. And then, yeah, so you've got
the volume there and you just, you just need something to
click. You need them to fucking figure
out and bring like bring back robotic a robotic knee for Rashi
Rice or like something you need you need somebody to emerge but
before so certainly, yeah, certainly possible.
Yeah. All right, let's move on to
running backs. We spent a lot of time here
between these first few charts, but we'll we'll get to cruising
here, start talking about some running backs.
Right, Yeah. We, we kind of we kind of talk
to team stuff and the quarterbacks in, in one Yeah.
And now we now we kind of have the the table set on the team
stuff. So we've got running back snaps
and usage. I almost, I hope you're OK with,
I almost don't want to talk about the, the, the, the
expected and the finest points over expected stuff.
I almost think that we just wanna talk about who's playing
for the good teams and we can mention efficiency and stuff
like that. Yeah, yeah.
I had just a couple notes here. I mean, this one is pretty
quick. We probably should talk about it
though, is Chuba Hubbard this you want to you want like 99th
percentile season outcomes for a player.
This is what it looks like for Chuba Hubbard.
Like not only does the guy play fantastic, which full credit to
him for playing so well for the whole season right, but he also
gets the second round rookie running back who you know by all
accounts was a fantastic prospect Guy looked great in
college. You know, the only only you
know, staying on his resume is the fact that he tore his ACL
late last year. So he's going to be, you know,
slowly worked back. And Chuba not only plays
incredible, but then has his his biggest competition get such a
slow start to the season to where he's not even taking snaps
really until like week 13. And then the guy goes down with
non contact ACL injury to the same knee in week 14.
I mean, and Miles Sanders is an IOR, yeah.
And Bryce Young is playing well. Like that's the big thing of
like, people were really, really worried about that offense in
general, and now it's very functional.
Yeah. I've got 2 tuba teams in the
fantasy playoffs and super super pumped about those.
Yeah, yeah, the tuba is one that you have to be really happy to
see on your teams right now. Don't think we need to do any
more detailed analysis on it. He's going to be the workhorse
he's been the whole season. Like, congratulations, you're
super happy if you see him. The other ones that I wanted to
talk about with respect to this chart, just because it's helpful
to be able to see their workload.
It's the revenge of the slappy Draco.
We talked about how we had this late season surge to make our
best fall advance rates actually be above expectation on FFPC.
But the all the slappy 0RB running backs got there and
they've gotten there. Bigley, Chase Brown.
I mean, you want to talk bell cow like is there a bigger bell
cow in the NFL than Chase Brown right now?
Like I I actually don't think there is.
Well, our chart shows that there is.
I mean, a lot of those guys are not getting useful touches
though, right, compared to like a lot of it is run block or pass
block over Chase Brown. But but yes, like well, so.
They if you he's probably his targets prior to run is probably
a lot higher than those guys. Right.
Yeah. Is is what you're saying.
And so let me let me look up expected points per game.
I'm just going to do no, that's not that one.
Yeah, I mean it. Also, if you just want to jump
ahead to the expected points per game chart, we should be able to
see it over the last four weeks for Chase Brown.
Well, that doesn't happen. So Chase Brown over the last
five weeks, he he actually does top the league in in expected
points. Yeah.
So he's got a 22.2 expected points a game, 11 from rushing,
11 from receiving. Oh my God.
That that's that's the double, double legendary season.
That's a legendary Yeah. Chase Brown is literally he
might finish the season as with a legendary running back
profile. Obviously didn't do it for the
entire season. But like his end of year stretch
might fit that. Man, I mean that's there like if
you if you asked me if I would rather have Chase Brown or
Saquon Barkley on my fantasy teams in the fantasy playoffs
because Saquon Barkley is like 50% owned, I think the answer is
Chase Brown. If they were equal ownership, I
do think the answer is Saquon Barkley.
I'm not that big of a Saquon denier but I mean like 11.
Expect the double. Double on expected fantasy
points is elite, just for reference.
What's? For a mid round running back.
Yeah, what's Saquon Barkley's expected fantasy points per Game
Over? We can see.
The last five, so we've got a. Similar.
Give me, yeah, give me one second while I pull it back up.
So, so I'm doing expected points per game.
I'm sorting it by expected points per game.
I gotta take out for some reason.
It, it, it, it brings the error terms to the front when I sort
it. And so Saquon is at 16 1/2.
So, yeah, I, I mean, I don't think it's crazy to say that you
would prefer to see a Chase Brown team in your portfolio
than a Saquon Barclay team. The difference is that Saquon
has 7.7 expected points at over expected per game.
Yeah, wow. Chase Brown is like -.4.
Yeah. All that means is that Trace
Brown is actually like a positive regression candidate
and Saquan is a negative regression candidate.
True, true. I mean, yeah, normally.
That's obviously joking. Like a little bit of a joke.
But I do think, like when you watch them both play up, you
understand why Saquon is so high over expectation.
It's because the guy is absurdly efficient.
He's breaking long plays. He's scoring touchdowns from
far. Out when he gets a gap, he's
make, he's like straight to it. He's just he's very decisive and
he's been very good in the open field.
He's getting the most of it. But Chase Brown also is pretty
explosive, like making a lot of his opportunities.
I mean, if you saw, like if you watched the game last night,
that little screen pass down the sideline, like he was just gone,
you know, like he chased Brown. And very fast.
Yeah, he is. He's electric, so it wouldn't
shock me at all if he's able to put up some fantasy points over
expectation here in the playoffs when we need them the most.
The other guys I had here in the revenge of the Slappy column,
Rico Dowdle, finally, the Cowboys have for the most part
stopped messing around with wasting snaps on Ezekiel
Elliott. They did.
Do you know the stupidest thing of all time?
Throw Zeke in to give him a, a carry like inside the the 10
yard line, which went absolutely nowhere.
And then they pulled him. But it was like, it just, it
felt like a pity touch, like you're still, you're still in
the NFL. But it was, it was such a make a
wish touch. You know what it actually was?
It was a Salvation Army bucket touch.
They were like, what if Zeke could get in the Salvation Army
bucket one last time? Like that's truly what it was.
And it was. It was a it was a, what's his
name, Rudy Touch. Yeah, it was some Rudy touch for
sure. Oh man, And it's.
And so Rico Dowdle. He has about 15 expected points
per game over the last three games.
I'm I'm I'm using that because that's when they started using
him more. Yeah, yeah, he, he has not been
as efficient. He, I mean, against the Bengals
he looked decent, but he. I mean, the Bengals made this
guy look great. Yeah.
So over the last tree, he's actually 1.4 expected points
over over expected. So like, I, I mean, I, I kind of
think Rico Duddle is like at expectation efficiency wise all
season for a terrible team. So he might actually be good, I
don't know. Yeah, I I think he's probably a
replacement level back, but. I think he might be just a
little, just one notch above replacement level.
You said he's giving he's playing like replacement.
He's giving replacement level quality play for a garbage team.
Yeah. Which that may it does make me
wonder what we what you'd get if you actually this is academic,
but what you'd get if he played for a good team.
Matt Yeah, imagine if the Cowboys are actually good this
year. Rico Dowdle would have been such
a smash. I just, I wish I had a time
machine to go back and make this version of Draco talk to the
version of Draco that was just absolutely stopping me from
taking Rico. Down.
I didn't stop you. We took like, we took like
fucking 30% Rico dowel. We did.
We did take a lot of Rico Dowdle in your defense.
We just would have had like 60% pump the brakes on me.
But you know what? Pumping the brakes on that Rico
Dowdle probably got us a lot more Chase Brown got us a lot
more Zach Charboning and Zach right, is the last of the
triumvirate of the revenge of the slappy running backs.
I mean, the the Kenneth Walker injury I we don't have very much
news right now it it's a Tuesday.
So we don't have anything really further than what we knew last
week. But what if this is a multi week
Kenneth Walker injury here? That's what it actually sounded
like. That's what it, I mean, that's
kind of how I'm reading the tea leaves as well.
They're it it to me. What I've seen is they're,
they're really just trying to like, find out what's wrong
still, you know. So, so he said it was originally
an ankle injury and now it's a yeah, now it's a calf strain as
well, which is like. I've seen they said the ankle is
now no longer the concern and that it's transitioned to the
calf. That's the concern.
But right, that's always a little scary.
The calf stuff is pretty scary. It's not as bad.
That's the slow. That's the slow recovering
muscle. Yeah.
Like I I'm not a medical person so I shouldn't say this, but
I've always had been more frustrated with my calf
injuries. Yeah, and and I mean, I do know
that the calf injuries can cause additional concern for Achilles
stuff. So they they sometimes are like
extra careful on stuff like that.
Anyway, Yeah, if if Charbonnay is the bell cow back, which is
what makes his contingent upside so strong.
It is his profile is that he's a do everything.
He is a three down, very capable workhorse.
He lacks some of the, you know, Jenna Saqua that Kenneth Walker
brings, but he can do some stuff better than Kenneth Walker.
And you know, he's he's certainly a very competent 3
down back and he just, he had. 29 expected points in Week 14.
Yeah, I mean, it was. Like he had he had efficiency,
but 29 expected points? Like that's insane.
Yeah. Before I did my diversification
stuff for my DFS portfolio this weekend, I think I had something
like 87 percent or Zach. Sharpening.
I know she kept it. I diversified it down to like a
little below 60%, but that's like I put a pretty high premium
on mitigating risk in my DFS portfolio and it still was like,
yeah, dude slam the fuck out of Zach Sharpening.
Yeah, he's a great player. So yeah, those slappy running
backs I think are definitely live to potentially be defining
pieces in the playoffs. Pretty exciting.
I, I think we can, we can move on or, or you said you'd really
don't want to spend a ton of time on RB efficiency.
I I just have a couple notes on that just.
Just to mention it when when it comes up, I want to talk about,
because the reason I, I want to focus on this chart and is
because I kind of want to talk about guys who, who are useful
for the playoff stuff like who, who are the volume guys that
that are cheap in in the playoff basketball.
And I think you brought up Naji as an example.
Like, yeah, I mean, look, I know it's Derek Henry.
I know Derek Henry is like generational and that like
comparing their snap rate with Naji is like stupid.
It's very, very stupid. But at the same time there is
like there's like an entire draft between Derek Henry and
Naji Harris in ADP And these guys are very similar snap rate,
very similar playoff probability.
And it does. It does kind of, I think
accentuate that point about don't take Derek Henry at the
win two turn. Yeah, the the one thing just to
like, help people properly frame it in their heads is that when
you're ranking players for playoff basketball, the tier is
based on their playoff probability.
It has nothing to do with the players skill or ability to
score fantasy. So they're the same tier.
Yeah. And then inside the tier, you're
going to break ties towards the the players who score more
fantasy points. So Naji Harris and Derrick Henry
for playoff basketball purposes are the same tier, but like you
said, Derrick Henry goes much, much earlier.
The the one thing that's a little like I'm I'm I've gotten
a lot of Naji been hammering Steelers lately just because the
market refuses to correct their price.
The one thing that I am wanting to keep my eye on here is if
Jalen Warren starts to creep in a little bit more like he he
hasn't been like edging Naji out, but he has been on the
field and like this last week, I don't know if you got to watch
the the Steelers game, but they took Naji off the field in a
couple situations where it wasn't like, oh, now it's long
down and distance. So let's get Warren out here.
It was like third and short inside the 10.
That's like, this is Jalen Warren time.
And so it's not what you would if you just ask someone who's
not like in the weeds on it. They're like, hey, the Steelers
are on the field. It's third and short inside the
10. Who's the running back?
The your average person is just gonna say, oh, Naji, the
Steelers don't think that. The Steelers think that it's
Warren, right? Right.
I I think you're looking at a 6040 and split between Naji and
and Joan Warren, which means that Joan Warren is kind of in
the same tier as Derrick Henry as well.
Yeah, if if you're being, if you're being fully, yeah, maybe
just a tier below, but. Yeah, I'd say maybe slightly
below, but yeah, they're, they're much closer than people
would, would believe. And then it also kind of speaks
to Justice Hill. Being just as a great pick.
We give given he has a pretty like I'm I'm gonna go to the
next chart. Where is he?
Yeah, right. He's a pretty carrendo.
He's a pretty good and snap rate as well.
Yeah, right, right. With Jalen Warren too.
So yeah, the Justice Hill's been a fantastic pick.
He'll he'll probably just stay up pretty fantastic pick for
most of the tournament unless enough slappies get on to him.
But the other thing that's kind of beautiful about Justice Hill
is in your run outs when the Ravens don't make it.
So like, if you're using the Ravens as your secondary stack,
like you don't have Lamar, Justice Hill is an even better
pick in my opinion because you can be playing it as a Raven's
loss. And when the Ravens are playing
from behind like it is Justice Hill's backfield, it ain't
Derrick Henry's backfield. Right, right.
Derrick Henry is not playing. Derrick Henry rides the pine and
he breathes heavily with the anticipation of the Ravens
getting a lead that he can salt away in the fourth quarter.
Right? Like, that's, that's what the
first couple quarters of the game look like when the Ravens
get behind. So Justice Hill is is a pretty
strong pick there. I know I already talked about
the Vikings, but Aaron Jones looks like phenomenal.
Yeah, no, he he's great. The other one that I think is
worth talking about is Josh Jacobs, who has higher
conference championship probability than Aaron Jones
does. The Packers are a little bit
stronger there. I don't.
I think that in my opinion, my IKB.
You're talking about 29% versus 23%.
So to me that's like the same tier.
Yeah, my, my IKB is that they're the same.
That's what I was was going to say that the yeah, Packers are
kind of the same bet, even though our math says that the
Packers are better. The way I kind of want to IK be
it is that they're they're the same thing.
And so the one thing I'm kind of interested in, and I want your
opinion on this for Josh Jacobs is he's been really efficient
lately and very touchdown heavy. The other thing that he's doing
is he's breaking tackles and forcing missed tackles like
there's no tomorrow. Like if Josh, I mean, he's
playing. Really, really well.
Well, he he is, he's definitely playing well.
The thing that's a little frustrating as someone who's
like who's had some Josh Jacobs recently and been like, Oh yeah,
slamming Josh Jacobs in this spot is when he breaks the
tackles or forces to miss tackles.
It's very David Montgomery ask in that not a ton happens
afterwards. It's like, dude, this guy just
broke 3 tackles on this play and it's like, and he got him one
more yard. It's like shit, so he's not been
and don't take this is like I'm saying that Josh Jacobs has been
bad. He's been very good.
I'm just a little concerned that it's really coming heavily on
the back of touchdowns. Like if you look at his
touchdowns over the last few weeks, he's been he's been sun
running the touchdowns. And so I'm just a little
concerned there. But what are your thoughts on
him, you know, specifically in playoff best while I'm thinking
through like in a Packers loss, how, how bad could Josh Jacobs
be? Like what does the floor look
like there? Yeah, the floor works bad where
they got dominated the front. They don't establish the run.
They have to pass a lot. And he gets some targets, but he
doesn't get going. And I mean, I, I to me, the
framing is that he's the same tier.
He's very similar playoff probability to Aaron Jones in in
the Vikings. Aaron Jones where we where we
his, his snap rate is like a little bit less.
But then let me let me pull up the and let me let me pull up
the expected points as well. So Aaron Jones his his is his
useful snap rate is only 4.4. His expected points per game
over the last I just just last week, I should say.
So let me change that to let me change that to the last four so
that I can. So his his expected points per
game is 14.8 versus Josh Jacobs is at 20.8.
So that kind of, so we're saying, we're saying that
they're in the same tier, but Josh Jacobs clearly ahead of
them in the tier and then he he's priced like around and a
bit ahead of them. And I, I, I guess putting all
that together when you, when you compare the projections, when
you compare the Super Bowl odds and Josh Jacobs should be going,
but that seems about right actually.
Yeah, I know. He he's, he's not terribly
mispriced. I, I think he's going in a
pretty I think. He's like, yeah, I think that
that seems right when I look at like, who he's next to and that
that seems like right. Yeah.
And Echo going ahead of Jack Jacobs doesn't make a lot of
sense to me. Oh really?
I mean, the Chiefs have much better.
Oh, you're right. You're right.
You're right.
Yeah, Derrick Henry going that far ahead of Josh Jacobs, so it
doesn't make sense. Should probably go Pacheco,
Henry Jacobs but. My my brain went back to the
projected points thing but. Here here's I got a fun trivia
question for you. How many touchdowns is Josh
Jacobs averaging per game over the last four weeks?
And last four weeks averaging per game and I'm just gonna
throw out two. Yeah, he's averaging 2
touchdowns a game over he's had three or he's had 2-3 touchdown
games in the last four weeks. So he's running pretty hot on
touchdowns again. He's getting getting a lot of
work. You know, he's got 18 carries,
26 carries, 19 carries. So he he's averaging, he's, he's
averaging 1 1/2 expected touchdowns a game.
So his his role is incredible. Yes, and the role is good.
He is running a little bit good and so I'm just I'm a little
concerned that when it comes to the playoffs, the.
Floor game is bad. And they're yeah.
And they play better teams. Like I'm a little worried about
that. So I almost, I'm like, I'm into
Jacobs as a way to get me through some stuff in the first
round. Bye.
But the thing that I'm actually really into using Jacobs for is
I want to play Jacobs more when I'm playing the Packers to go
all the way. Like when I'm playing it with
Love, then I like it a lot better because I'm like, yeah,
Jacobs is going to smash because the Packers are winning.
He's going to score 2 touchdowns a week.
Like, but if I'm just doing a little Jacobs, like one off for
a Jacobs plus a receiver skinny stack, they don't have love.
You don't like that usage? Yeah, I I like it less.
The other way that I like playing it is if I'm doing like
a Chiefs or a Bills thing and then I just kind of go down the
board and I'm hammering Packers and Vikings or something like
two of the cheaper NFC teams that are still good and covering
a lot of conference championship outcomes.
So let me ask you a kind of a practical question here.
Josh Jacobs goes a good bit ahead of Jordan Love.
If you take Josh Jacobs, then you you, you have to have Jordan
Love almost. It depends if you're.
I mean it, it depends on the quarterback you've already
gotten. Yeah, I I'm usually pretty
aggressive in pushing my quarterbacks in playoff
basketball like my my second. One, you just said you can't
really do that. Well, people don't really no
one's really going to take your Jordan love, you know, like you
take Josh Jacobs like people, it depends on your room.
You got to you got to see if people in there know what's
happening or if they're clueless.
And, and the other thing is like if I'm playing a, if I'm playing
a team where I don't need a second quarterback, like the
Bills, for example, if I'm playing the Bills and I take
Josh Jacobs, my, my proxy for, oh, I'm, I'm saying like this is
a, a scenario where the Packers make a deep run.
And that's why Jacobs is good because the Packers are winning
games. My proxy for instead of taking
Jordan Love here because I don't need him because I have Josh
Allen, I'm just going to take more Packers receivers.
And so that way I'm compounding my bet with Jacobs so that when
the Packers win and when Josh Jacobs scores lots of points,
hopefully one of these receivers is also having a good game as
well. And that means in the next
round, I've advanced more total players on my team.
My team has more live roster spots and it's going to be doing
better. And so basically I what I'm
saying is a one off Josh Jacobs with no receivers is probably
pretty bad, right? Right, that makes sense.
Yeah, that's kind of the way to frame it.
Right. You wanna play it as a Packers
deep run, But Jordan Love isn't the only way to play that.
Yeah, very, very well put. OK, yeah, I, I, I think it's
time to move on to at receivers here.
Yeah, let's we, we can do a quick tight end pit stop here
'cause. There are.
Oh, oh, sorry. Yeah, I forgot.
We, I forgot. We do tight ends first.
These are, these are gonna be fast though.
I can, I can literally like rapid fire through them and get
your, get your insights here. We talked about Grant Calcotera
last week. Dallas Goddard's officially on
IR now. Calcotera is out there for all
the snaps. He's a fantastic last round
playoff basketball pick for anything where the Eagles are
going to the Super Bowl. Don't like him as much if you
don't have Eagles Super Bowl on that team.
But even if it's like a an AFC team quarterback, like you have
Josh Allen, you have Pat Mahomes and you got Eagles stuff as a
secondary, I still don't mind that Grant Calcaterra scoring a
touchdown to the Super Bowl. That's basically what you're
betting on. So he's a he's an awesome last
round pick. So is is Dallas Goddard just
done then? I don't know.
He's on IR so he's he's gone for four weeks minimum.
Haven't seen for sure what's going to happen there.
There are some teams or I'm still we're still we have Dallas
Goddard ranked still. We just we just don't know.
And so you could kind of even treat Dallas Goddard just like a
bye week player, right? Like he's not gonna help you in
round one, but he could be. I mean, you know, you get Dallas
Goddard back in the Super Bowl and he scores a touchdown like
that's pretty awesome. So he he's one where we've moved
him down in our rankings due to the uncertainty, But we're,
we're just gonna need to watch that injury situation and get an
updated timeline before we know. Right.
Really how to handle that right? But for now.
Because that's that what strikes me is, OK, you're playing Kafka,
Terra to the because the Eagles are under the Super Bowl.
That's like, what, end of January, early February?
Should we? There has to be a decent
probability that Dallas Goddard is backed by Dan.
There there definitely is. So it's it's not to say that
like you draft only Calcatera, no Goddard anymore.
Like we still have Goddard ahead of Calcatera in our in our
rankings. So, but it's just that there's
now a, you know, if prior to Dallas Goddard going on IR, the
probability that Calcatera was a good pick that was going to hit
your line up in the Super Bowl was maybe like 5%, you know, and
now it is much higher, right? Like you've got all and.
He's rarely drafted right. He's.
The slappies drafted now like people are aware he was one of
Davis has Calcatera is one of his favorite players.
Davis is big into Calcatera now. That's a bad sign.
Rightfully so, it's a good pick, but but yes, there's there's a
horde of slappies that are descending on Grant Calcatera.
Imagine taking grind called Katera over Brock Bowers.
I'm joking, obviously. Oh man, OK, this is.
Price JSN is 59.1. Yeah, I use this Seahawks.
You shouldn't draft Seahawks yet.
It's like by Thursday you'll probably know if you can draft
Seahawks. You get a Rams loss, you get a
Rams loss, and you better believe you're buppy, that I'm
going to have a lot of JSN, you know, Thursday night after the
game's over. So the other one I had a
question on was Zach Ertz what do you think?
If I'm doing the Jayden Daniels thing right, lots of times
people will do this. This little commanders 3 piece,
you go Jaden Daniels, Terry Mclaurin, Brian Robinson to help
advance a bye week team through right.
They're they're pretty commanders are low probability
to make conference championship, but you get 3 pretty high value
fantasy pieces for where they're priced at and you can get them
all together. It's a nice correlated bet.
What do you think about Zach Ertz?
Because after you run out of Brian Robinson and and Terry
Mclaurin, you're kind of like out of Commanders pieces.
Do you think Zach Ertz is at all viable to tack on there?
So here's my talk. And what we're saying here is
that you take the. The consideration is do you take
Zach Ertz and for his round one points and it strikes me that
Zach Ertz is still going to have a low projection in half PPO and
if round one points are like the most plentiful available, then
that he doesn't seem to quite fit the profile for me to be
attractive as a round one. Get your points guy.
Yeah, I, the more I think through it, because what you,
what you run into is you're, you're stuck where there's no
more good players that you can take and remain in structure and
not draft more than 4 total NFL teams and then inherently
guarantee a dead roster spot by the conference championship,
right. And, and very likely earlier.
But if we're talking about like a team like the Commanders who
are very likely dead by the conference championship anyway,
if instead of taking Zach Ertz, who might project a lot worse,
like what if I do just pivot and do like A and JSN is my random
one off player? He's my team.
And yes, I guarantee that I can't have 10 players in the
conference championship, but he'll project a lot better than
Zach Ertz and like, there's also no guarantee ertz is going to
the conference championship anyway.
I think on those teams with really heavy bye weeks, this is
the only time I'm doing it. And, and I did write about this
in my article that's published on legendary upside, the playoff
basketball sacrilegious approach to playoff basketball.
I do, I do think that those are the circumstances where you've
got 5 bye week players. So Round 1 is really thin for
you where you can kind of break structure and and it's it's
really like you can kind of use Zach Ertz as like your Canary in
the coal mine where you're like, all right, I took Jane Daniels,
I took Terry Mclaurin, I took Brian Robinson.
I got, you know, maybe I, I took like a one off Aaron Jones or
not one off Aaron Jones because that'd be your other NFC team.
Or sure, let's just say I have a one off Aaron Jones from earlier
and I'm playing an AFC team to the Super Bowl.
I've got like a bunch of chiefs or whatever.
I got a chiefs mega stack. If you're sitting there and
you're like, oh gosh, do I really take Zach Ertz here to
stay in structure or do I take this juicy JSN or this juicy
Mike Evans here instead? That's the Canary in the coal
mine. Like when you're like, should I
take Zach Ertz or should I take Mike Evans?
Like that's how you know it's OK.
It's OK. This is when you break
structure. So I try really hard not to
break structure as much as possible, even on those five BI
week player teams, because when when the stuff does break right
for you, when you do get Washington upsetting whoever
they play in round one, say they upset the Eagles and they go to
round two and all of a sudden you just got a four stack A4
player stack through to round two and you're getting all those
potential points again. Like it's such an enormous
advantage on the field. And the historical data bears
that out too, that I just I want to lean into it because crazy
shit happens, you know, like, it's so who who would have said
that last season? The outcome that you needed was
you really needed to play Jake Ferguson.
You needed the one off Jake Ferguson really bad in round
one. But you shouldn't really draft
any other Cowboys. You know, you just wanted Jake
Ferguson to get you through. And like, yeah, Jack Zackers and
Jake Ferguson are different players, but it's like, dude,
you can definitely, there's, there's an outcome where the
Commanders get the upset ertz catches a touchdown and gets
like 40-50 yards in round one. And that, you know, 1011 points
is really all that you need to sneak A-Team through.
He's Ertz isn't the one that's carrying you ertz is just the
one that's like plugging the hole to make sure that, hey, all
the rest of these guys, they went off enough to get me
through. And Ertz is just here to advance
a team that otherwise wouldn't have advanced without just this
little floor performance. So that was that was me kind of
making both sides of the argument, but I do.
Think I'm just looking so at the fantasy pros like projections
and I think this is this is that no, this is yeah, this is
standard. And so if I'm if I if I change
it to half PP or that that might might make more sense to to
reference. And so is is projection is 7.9
for this week. I don't know.
I guess that that's not like, terrible.
Right. And that's that's really what
I'm saying, like the the argument for Zach Ertz is like,
you don't need a lot and it it can be OK.
And if you're already making the correlated team bet like, you
might as well lean. Into it, but also but if it's
also bad if if the the commanders don't get true.
Having the Zach Ertz thing seems bad it.
Seems pretty bad, right? So yeah, that's there.
There are. You could certainly make the
argument to me, and I wouldn't say that it was bad to do a one
off in in the instance. But it's only because players in
in in your given structure that you're playing for some
probability that the that the commanders do make the
conference championship, which yeah, is apparently 14% right
now. And you can kind of think of
this as like by taking a one off player in round one, like a
fifth team, which inherently guarantees that you cannot have
10 live players in round in the conference championship round,
which would be the the nut outcome.
By doing that and taking that one off player, you're lowering
your ceiling outcome of 10 live players in the conference
championship, but you're raising your floor outcome.
And it's really what you're trading is you're trading the,
you know, your additional player in round 3 and you're saying,
hey, it's OK that I'm doing this because as soon as Round 2
happens, I get 5 guaranteed. I have 5 players that are 100%
to advance to round two because I have 5 bye week players,
right? I find who will be scoring
points in Round 2. And so that's kind of the way to
frame it. But I I thought it was an
interesting spot just because I've I've been in situations
where Zach Ertz kind of looks like an OK pick, but I I'm and
debating. All right, OK, I got I got one
for you. OK, Pretend you're drafting a
Detroit and Kansas City Super Bowl team right now.
I won't offer any more clarity than that, but you have pieces
from Detroit, you have pieces from Kansas City, you have.
And you're trying to figure out how you filled out your your
Week 1 lineup? Well, no, no, no.
I I want to know which tight end do you prefer because they go
basically back-to-back. Let's say you're on the clock,
you can only take one Sam Laporta or Travis Kelsey.
It's Kelsey. Yeah, I, I agree.
If you're playing for the KC outcome, then like KC isn't
right, right. Then it's just.
Kelsey KC don't. They don't get to the Super Bowl
unless they get Travis Kelsey going.
Like Detroit get to the Super Bowl so easily without getting
Laporta going. Yeah, what what do you think
about? Like if I have Goff as my
quarterback, so I'm not guaranteeing I, I agree with
you. Like if I have Mahomes, it's
Travis Kelce, you know, But if I have Goff, I think there's an
argument to be made for Laporta because you still could play the
Super Bowl as Lions, Bills and have it be a very similar
probability as Chiefs, right. And and then say like it's OK
that I didn't. Take, but you're already you're,
you're already heavy invested into the Chiefs.
By by the point at which you're deciding this, you're not so
heavy invested. You're you're Jared Goff is your
second round pick. Most likely your first round
pick is probably Alin Rah, one of the running.
Backs. So you haven't even decided to
do KC yet? Yeah.
And then your third pick is going to be like KC is Kelsey or
Laporta. Maybe you did.
Yeah, maybe it's the fourth round pick.
You just made it through the turn and that's that's really
where this decision would probably come into play is you
get something like, you know, David Montgomery, Jared Goff,
and then your third round pick is, you know, maybe you get a
Jameson Williams and now you're staring down Kelsey or Laporta.
So that's. You've already you've got,
you've got your your Detroit stack.
I think you just build on it with with Laporta.
Yeah, so it sounds. Like it and this and and give
given that context, which is the most likely context for people
drafting. I think that we both are in
agreement though, that we like the Kelsey fantasy points more
than we like the Laporta fantasy points.
And if you're in a situation where both are are equal,
pretend your only Super Bowl outcome you're playing for is
Detroit KC, then we would both say that it's Kelsey, right?
Right, right. But but that that's going to be
a rare scenario, it sounds so like.
No, there's definitely, I mean, 'cause there's spots where you
might be your your secondary AFC team, say you've got Lions and
you do Chiefs as your primary AFC team with the Lions, with
Jared Goff. Your secondary AFC team could
easily be something like the Steelers where you're like.
Sure, they've got Super Bowl odds, but I, I don't believe
that they're making the Super Bowl and I don't really want to
play for like a Steelers Lion Super Bowl.
So I'm just using it as advance rate pieces.
So anyway, I, I, I, OK, I keep coming into that spot and I
thought it was interesting and wanted to get your opinion on
it, but I think we're, we're lock.
Step on how we view it, though. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so I don't think there's any point talking about the backups
here. Yeah, let's let's hit wide
receiver. So wide receiver and I I
remember you had some notes and about.
Yeah, to to pivot away from playoff basketball for a second.
I think we just need to talk about Jamar Chase because this
season is not the Saquon Barkley season.
This is the Jamar Chase season, everybody.
I mean, if you look at how, like this guy absolutely smoked every
other receiver in fantasy points per game, just absolutely
crushed him. And he had a higher advance rate
than Saquon Barkley too. And that might some people might
say, oh, well, it was only a little bit like they're
basically the same. Jamar Chase did it from the
first round where Saquon Barkley did it from the 2-3 turn.
Like those are not the same thing.
You know, having that high of an advance rate from the first
round is absolutely absurd. And one of the things that I'm
realizing when you look through a lot of these high advance rate
guys, number one, there is a lot of the correlation of players
that are drafted together. Players that got more drafted
commonly with these high advance rate players get their advance
rates pulled up. Which is actually the topic of
my dateable project that I did last year where I came up with a
metric called roster agnostic advance rate that use the
nearest neighbor algorithm to extricate the advance rates from
each other. And basically, look at, hey, if
these players were just on, you know, any old roster, you know,
not just the rosters they were drafted on, but if you replaced
players on every roster and said they were equally likely to be
drafted on any given roster, what would their advance rate
look like? I'm fairly confident that a lot
of these highest advance rate players this year are being
pulled up because of the people that they were paired with.
But also there is one thing in common with them too, and it's
that they were some of the largest spike week having
players like Jamar Chase had some of the largest spike weeks
all season and he he also performed very well.
So it makes sense. But some of the ones I'm
thinking of that later like Jerry Judy is one of the highest
advance rate players this season and he did nothing for you for
the majority of the season. And then he had a couple couple
good weeks and then he had an incredible week.
But that incredible week means every single team that had Jerry
Judy that week used him and they got a big boost from him, right?
And so it's really that. Also, I do think that if you
were AI would be pretty confident that teams that
drafted Jerry Judy were much more likely to have heavy
running backs early because you're forced into these later
wide receivers that are kind of outside of the typical wide
receiver window. So I do think you have a lot of
that going on where Jerry Judy's roster agnostic advance rate
probably I would say falls a decent bit just because of the
correlation of being drafted with Saquon Barkley.
And also the place on the board where Jerry Judy went for much
of the summer was the same side of the board as Saquon Barkley
as Jamar Chase. So you get a lot of that
anchoring effect there. Anyway, long and short way to
say that Jamar Chase I think is probably the one who would have
the roster agnostic advance rate closest to his actual advance
rate because he was just an absolute freak.
The Saquon Barkley will likely have a higher roster agnostic
advance rate than his actual advance rate because there are a
lot of really poorly constructed Saquon teams that somehow
miraculously did not advance even after you know what's
likely going to be the single season rushing record being
posted, right? All right, I think we can move
on from Chase. I just needed to give him his
flowers here. Yeah, yeah.
No, makes sense. Makes sense for sure.
We we put him on the the Kerber page I think.
And I've got a question for you here.
George Pickens has a grade 2 hamstring strain.
I think his status is in doubt for this next week.
Are we gonna see George Pickens in the fantasy playoffs?
Not not playoff basketball, but fantasy playoffs.
No. Wow.
I don't think so. I mean, anything's possible.
Anything's possible, but you remember how many games that
Nico Collins missed? Yeah.
And it's true, a, a, a grade 2 hamstring strain is like is no
joke. And and they just found it out.
Like, why wouldn't they put up that?
Maybe they won't put them on IR because it's too close to the
end of the year. And but like, that's a, that's a
pretty, pretty lengthy recovery time.
By lengthy I mean a month. Yeah.
But follow up question then. Are you concerned about him for
playoff basketball then? You have to be a little bit
concerned and I mean, I think so it's we just had week 14.
He missed. They just realized that it's
it's a grade 2 because it just happened on Thursday.
So this this Thursday will be a week, week will be one week from
the injury. And so, and week 15161718 I, I
mean, so 4 weeks takes us through week 18 and or, or to,
to the end of week 18. So he could play technical play
that Sunday and week five week 5 and on would be, would be the
wild card round. I mean, it's not 100%.
Probably it is his playing probability in in the wild card
is probably like 80%, probably a little bit higher.
Yeah, I would assume it's higher just because if they do hold him
out that long. Right, you can't hold him out
from the playoffs. Right.
The steel hits. He's not gonna let him.
He's just gonna get on the field.
But it's the playoffs, you gotta play.
You gotta play cuz what? What are you leaving something
in the tank for? Right.
AM, But like it may be at lower effectiveness, it may be at
greater re injury risk, all that kind of stuff.
Yeah, no, that's a, that's a good point.
I do think he's still pretty good playoff basketball picks
because he's pretty cheap. But I I am, I'm trying to find a
way. I mean, really what the answer
to my question is, because what I'm thinking through is like I'm
just going to have a lot of Steelers if I keep, you know, if
I'm drafting right now, the Steelers are really well priced.
They really helped me get by. We teams through like they have
high conference championship probability.
They're pretty easy team to know who to draft.
Like it's George Pickens and Naji are really the ones that
I'm drafting. You know, I'm not doing much
else. Sometimes I'll do Warren, but I,
I think the, the thing that I want to insulate myself from is
I really don't want my whole portfolio to live and die by the
Steelers, even if they are great values.
And the way that you do that is simply by waiting, wait to draft
a little bit because instead of having to pay for the Steelers
in round five, maybe you make some stronger Super Bowl type
bets, stronger bets, building out your primary teams.
And then in the late rounds, you then get to do like a Seahawks
thing or you get to do, you know, whoever, or you get to do
I. Mean the Viking.
The Vikings are the same price, almost.
Right. Yeah.
People, they're a little bit lower.
It's yeah, sometimes it just doesn't mesh.
They they do go a little bit before them typically like just.
Right. Yeah, it's a little bit and and
then maybe you've already built out two AFC teams by that or no
NFC teams by that point. It exactly.
They're not a, they're not a true compliment, not compliment
and opposite. Yeah, the other the other
annoying thing about the Vikings is Jordan Addison gets drafted
aggressively now and he was free, you know, prior to this
last week. I could.
I would leave Jordan Addison until my 10th round pick and
have you know Aaron Jones, Justin Jefferson, Sam Darnold
and my 10th pick Jordan Madison. No worries, he's gonna he's
gonna flatline this week and then he'll be free again.
And then he'll be free again. Yeah.
But this is not the week for Chief Jordan Addison.
Let me tell you. He's there's people just one off
Jordan Addison in the sixth round and stuff now.
So anyway. That isn't fun.
OK, I got one for you. Another is kind of keeping the
theme with George Pickens, but Lad Mcconkey, he's very clear he
is the Chargers wide receiver. Like he's not even the Chargers
wide receiver. He's the Chargers offense at
this point. Like they're down bad in the
running game with no JK Dobbins, Quinton Johnston, like his hands
have turned back into stone. He had a very brief period where
he was actually catching things. It looks so bad for the Chargers
without Ladd Mcconkey. The whole plane is Lad Mcconkey
and I'm here to tell you to buy the fucking dip on Lad Mcconkey
in playoff basketball. His injury has kept people off
of him. I think I got a tenth round Lad
Mcconkey share today and previously he was going like 7th
sometimes even sixth round. And it's just like such a clean
little one off such a clean skinny stack.
If you need quarterback help for round one, just do Lad Mcconkey.
Justin Herbert. I mean, do you think I'm crazy,
Draco, or is Lad Mcconkey a generational wealth opportunity
for playoff basketball? And I think he's good.
So I'm looking at the week to week numbers here.
I do notice some like it's one of those charts.
And so you have the weeks where he is the offense and then you
have the weeks where they'll hardly throw in the ball, he's
the offense again. And his his last game, which was
in week 13. So last last week he had a 48%
target sprout run. And the week before that it was
14%. The week that before that it was
27%, then it was 9%. And so I think you, you average
it it all out and I'm, I'm gonna be good and include the 48% in,
in the four week average, you get 25%, which is, is really
good. And even if you do six weeks,
you're still get to 23%. So he's like, he's like a
heavily targeted key cog in their offense.
I, I think that's indisputable. And what I I did look at his
price, but I don't quite remember.
And what's his where does he go last 22?
He. He.
He slides a bunch. So he goes around Keon Coleman,
Terry Mclaurin, Rashad Bateman, Tim Patrick, and so very, very
cheap. Very, very cheap he.
Yeah, some sometimes undrafted right now, you know.
So he'll slide that's his ADP. But but somebody some some
aggressive you, you're the one single handles the keeping it up
at 42 1/2. I'm I'm joking.
And then you have a 15% conference championship
probability. So, I mean, let me put let let,
let me let me I, I know you're talking about AFC, I'm talking
about AFC versus NFC AM. But Seahawks even even with only
a 68% chance to make the playoffs, they have a 17%
conference championship. They are a higher, they are a
higher conference championship probability than the Chargers
according to this. And then JSN is like multiple
rounds cheaper than Dan and Ladd Mcconkey.
Yeah, I, I mean, I'm with you here that the, the Seahawks are
going to be a really, really good pick.
It's for me, it's basically just wait until Thursday night.
Like they right, right. They won't get that much more
expensive. Like just just wait till
Thursday because if the Rams lose the Seahawks playoff odds
shoot up, right? Like that's that's the biggest
threat to them right now is the Rams.
And so you get that information and you can hammer it.
One thing I will say is the Seahawks power ranking is pretty
strong right now. Like they're they're coming in
hot. If if you were gonna ask.
I figured that's why they had the the Strong Conference
championship. If you were gonna ask me which
input into The Sims I'm the least confident in, it's the
Seahawks relative power ranking to other teams.
So let me let me just give you kind of like I'm gonna ask you a
couple teams and this is purely like a real life football.
Which team is more likely to win the game on a neutral field,
Steelers or Seahawks? And I mean, my gut, says
Steelers. And and how close?
How close would you say it is? Based on results, I'd say
pretty, pretty close. I mean, when you look at the
numbers, when you look at like, who they played, who they've
beaten, and like, didn't they just fucking wipe the floor with
the Cardinals? Yeah, like they obliterated
them. And that Cardinals, yeah, that's
what's really doing it is their strength of victory was
tremendous. Like, I mean, it was a shit
kicking, right? It's not pretty, you know, And
so that's that's what did a lot of the heavy lifting here to
really rock at the. Seahawks.
The 49ers. So.
So here's Here's another one. Seahawks.
Vikings. And that feels, I mean, that
feels close. So we have the Seahawks ahead of
the Vikings by about as much as we have the Seahawks behind the
Eagles. Does that kind of jive or?
So so say that again. We have the Seahawks as stronger
than the Vikings by about the same amount that we have the
Eagles stronger than the Seahawks.
Yeah, that it doesn't. It doesn't feel right.
If the Seahawks should feel like a touch hot to me right now.
So that's, that's my, you know, and and again, like, I think
our, our outputs for this are pretty much bang on in line with
a lot of the market. So like if you looked at ESP NS
playoff probabilities, if you looked at anywhere that's doing
playoff probabilities, we're not, we're not off on on most of
these things and we're, we're using different inputs than
them. So that always feels good when
you can have a slightly different process and get to
similar results as as places that you think are are probably
doing a pretty good job. So I I feel mostly good about
it, But the one that I think is the most fragile is the
Seahawks, how strong we have them as a.
Team Yeah, yeah, I'm looking, I'm just looking at alternative
elos and and they have the Seahawks as good and but just
below the Packers, just below the Texans.
Oh yeah, the Texans are not in the same universe in in our
stuff. The Texans are like worse than
the Bengals in our stuff. Oh, really?
Yeah, worse than the Broncos. Well, they have the Texans as
they have the actually. No, they have them.
This isn't sorted properly, God damn it.
And I was like, wow, that's a, that's a big deviation.
Or they have them right next to the Chargers, Chargers and
Broncos. Yeah, Chargers and Broncos and
Texans are all all basically the same.
Chargers, Bengals, Broncos, Texans all.
Yeah, Yeah, they have. They have them in that in that
tier with the Tex just just ahead of the Texans, just ahead
of the Bucks, just behind the Chargers, just behind the the
the Broncos. Yeah, Steelers and Seahawks
feels. That feels more right.
Steelers and Seahawks are like a little mini tier for us and you
could say that the Chiefs are kind of like the bottom of that
tier too. The Chiefs are lower than the
Seahawks though, which like based on what we've seen from
the Chiefs, kind of feels not that unreasonable.
And the Vikings and Chiefs are are pretty close as well, so.
I, I think, I think you're right that the Seahawks are coming out
too hot. There's a little like a like a
touch. I don't think it's by a lot.
So it's not like in my opinion it's not screwing up the the
output by a ton, but if you. They probably go from they
probably what what do you, what do we have them or you have them
17. They should probably be at a 14%
conference championship. Yeah, I'd say 1415 probably.
And then that jumps to like 20 ish with a Rams law.
Yeah, they're, yeah, I think 15 is probably about right.
So we're we're just a touch like a shade hot on the Seahawks.
But that is something that I I try to keep an eye on to see.
If we have, but I still like that that still makes me believe
that they're the same. They're they're basically the
same tiers, the Chargers, unless you're under you're you're
you're low on the chargers. The, the only reason that I am
saying that I'm holding off on Seahawks as opposed to Chargers
right now is Chargers are 89% to make the playoffs.
And Seahawks, there's a very binary thing about to happen on
Thursday night. The Rams win.
The Rams lose Rams. Win and the price won't
efficiently and. Price won't Price won't move
right. So the Rams win and all of a
sudden the Seahawks playoff odds go down, Rams lose and all of a
sudden the Seahawks playoff odds skyrocket.
And so that's the thing that I'm really waiting on.
And and when they, if the Rams do lose, then all of a sudden
Seattle's probably my favorite click.
I, I just like hammer it until right.
The the scary thing though, is like, do you take Kenneth
Walker? Do you take Zach Charbonnet?
Like the thing that I really dislike is when there's a team
where I can't get both, both skill positions that I can't get
running back and wide receiver for them.
Because you do really want to consolidate your bets onto just
a couple teams and playoff basketball.
So having a team where it's like, oh, this team is only for
if you need wide receiver help or only if if you need running
back help does feel a little bad.
But that is. Right, Worth thinking through,
right? Yeah.
I mean, yeah, you're, so you're already, you're already right
now you're already taking additional risks that they don't
make the playoffs, right, which may Vanquish on Thursday, but
you can't compound it with with running back playing risk.
Yeah, that's pretty, pretty spooky to me.
All right, let's. Let's move on to the next chart.
Yeah, I was just looking if there were any more notes that I
had. Yeah, let's next chart here.
So man, I mean, we talked a little bit about the Bucks, but
Mike Evans seems like a super strong playoff basketball pick
to me right now. The Bucks are kind of through
that threshold where they feel safe enough that I'm willing to
draft them here, I don't really think.
They're the only the note that that screams to me.
So Nico obviously insane, insane pick.
Really excited to get them. True in the in the basketball
playoffs, but awful, awful pick in in in playoff basketball.
He's just too expensive. He.
He's 22.3 When you're talking you're talking and you're
comparing them like you you you just said they're ELO is
similar. Like actually you said it's it's
less than the Bengals. Yeah, they're, they are, I
believe. Yeah, one or five, five ELO
points lower than the Bengals here.
And. So yeah, when you believe the.
16% conference championship versus 14 for the Commanders.
Yeah, I mean the MM Evans, like if you're telling me that I can
get Mike Evans for free in the last round or I have to pay a
premium, my my opportunity cost for taking Nico Collins is I
miss out on like a premium piece from a Super Bowl team that I'm
building. I'm missing out on Travis Kelsey
to take. You're missing out.
Yeah. Or Justin Jefferson.
Justin Jefferson, Who like Justin Jefferson, his team, you
know, has a 23% conference championship probability,
Houston's down at 16%. But we just said like we hey, we
think Minnesota or IKB would be that Minnesota might even be
closer to that log jam of that 30% cluster, right?
And and you know the the one thing I will say about Houston.
And the Vikings have a 4%, it's low, but a 4% one seat
probability, right? That would be insane.
Yeah, the the one thing I'll say about Houston is I am interested
to see how they look coming out of the buy.
I do think that teams like Houston and Baltimore with this
buy might come out in a a really good situation for the playoffs
where they got rest at the right time.
They were able to self scout and evaluate what they're doing and
get right for the playoffs, you know, at at the right time.
And I could certainly see Houston leaning more into like a
pass first approach. We've seen them be doing that
now that Nico's back, they've been less run heavy, they've
been running less on 1st down, which is a big relief for anyone
who's rooting for Houston to do well.
And so anyway, I'm, I just, I want to keep all these things
at, because when you're doing modeling stuff like this, like
you've got all of your inputs, but there's, there's just some
things that are really hard to capture in the inputs.
And so by remaining plugged in and like having understanding
the context of these teams, like, hey, Baltimore and Houston
just had the buy. Like Baltimore's got some guys
that are coming back from injury and they could be getting
healthy. Houston has kind of like shifted
their identity a little bit since Nico has come back and
been healthy. And like, so you get all these
factors that are really hard to capture in a model where I do
just want to kind of hold them to my head and understand like
where the fragility is on each of these things.
And, and so I think Houston could surprise us to the
positive. I think Baltimore could surprise
us to the positive. I think the Vikings could
surprise us to the positive. We're probably a little hot on
Seattle, you know, So those are those are the things that I'm
just trying to like keep in my head and keep in mind.
And so I think that having context like that is pretty
important as you're thinking through this stuff and like
trying to understand the range of outcomes and how things can
break for you. So it's a it is an interesting
spot, but I mean, certainly, certainly the Ravens and the
Texans are overpriced in playoff best all right now, which does
make it very hard to want to IKB that type of stuff, right And
and say like, well, I I. Think the market is IK being in?
It's IK being it too hard, right?
It's like there's there's meat on the bone.
There's some upside to to have here.
That's hard to, but I think it's it's one thing to IKB and it's
contrarian and but then IKB and it's consensus, it's like a
double whammy. Yeah, I KB.
I KB contrarian you get paid off if you're right, whereas IKB
consensus just means you, you've just met the baseline for your,
for your, for your, your your extra price.
It it would be like this last week if instead of Zach
Charbonnet being the largest chalk running back, it was
Braylon Allen is the biggest chalk running back.
And everyone knew that the projection was favoring
Charbonnet. It's like, yeah, Charbonnet
projects for two more points than Braylon Allen or three more
points than Braylon Allen. And Braylon Allen's coming in
with 50% own and Charbonnet's coming in 10% own.
And you're like, I'm slamming Braylon Allen, baby, like.
Right, I think these projections are wrong.
Yeah. And it's like, yeah, you can and
you should like where you have, where you can identify fragility
and and have like a either you've got alternate inputs that
you're using or you have, you know, a, a, a reasonable logical
argument for why something might be different than what a model
output is telling you. Like it's OK to lean into that
as long as you're confident in either your inputs to what
you're doing or, or you have, you know, a logical reason
behind that. It's OK to lean into that.
When it really becomes less OK is like you said, the market's
already doing that for you and they're they're doing it too
aggressively so. Right you, you, you can, you can
not. IKB and be a contrarian is even
better. Yeah, yeah.
OK. Let's move on to a couple other
quick notes here. Yeah, touch on the 49ers guys.
So you get the Debo squeaky wheel stuff happening on
Twitter. Debo says he's not struggling,
he's just not getting the ball. Met with a community note on
Twitter that said he's leading the team in drops.
He is actually struggling. George Kittle came out.
NFL player getting community note is all timer.
It was it was rough. George Kittle did come out in
defense of his boy and said he expected a big game from Debo
this Thursday. I mean, it does seem like an all
time squeaky wheel spot. The other one I'm interested in
is Joan Jennings, who looks more and more like the best wide
receiver on the 49ers right now. So I'm interested in your
thoughts on these 49ers receivers.
How is it going to play out for the rest of the season and also
what do you? Expect can I just, can I just
talk my bags and and say it's just George Gitto?
Am I allowed to do that? Yeah.
And no, that that is purely purely bag talking.
That's that's what I want. And so if we're looking at Debo
and he had he, he had a rough game of only two targets and
he's had a couple of rough games and but he's had some solid
games too. And so he had let me see where
where do I get yards? You had a hundred 100 yard game
in week 671 yard game in week 862 yard game week 10110 yard
game Week 2. It clear you down here, but
still there is still some upside there.
It kind of, it kind of is frustrating that that they
can't, that he hasn't been able to get going just because the
talent has been so, so strong. I guess my question is how much
credence do we put on like the the overweighting feels like an
explanation of a downtrend. Like are there actual signs
other than like first stats is, is there signs that he's
overweight? Like has that been an NFL Media
speculation thing or is that just us saying, oh, he's playing
bad, he must be fat? I don't think there's anything
to that. I, I don't know man.
I, I tend to just kind of block that out, you know, sweaty,
sweaty basement dwelling virgins calling elite .001% athlete fat.
Just I tend to block that out as a noise.
I mean, Debo is like like you just said, like obviously elite
because he plays in the NFL, He's one of the best NFL
players, but he's also like has been an elite NFL player, right?
And it he he like if you're talking about single week stuff,
does feel pretty strong. Yeah, I'm, I'm interested in
him. I, I don't know for like
showdown this week how much ownership he'll be garnering, if
people will really buy into the squeaky wheel stuff or if
they'll just be slaves to the game log and not really want to
play him. I mean, I think a lot of it can
probably be explained by the guy was hurt early and he also had a
really bad case of pneumonia that landed him in the hospital.
Like, I mean, that that seems like enough to, you know, have
you ever, have you ever had pneumonia so bad that you were
in the hospital? Like never.
Your lung function's not great for a little bit afterwards.
Yeah. A lot of a lot of damage to your
lungs, like. Right.
And you do actually use the you know, I know that might be a
foreign concept to many of the, the people that are out there
calling Debo Samuel fat. But to those of you that haven't
experienced cardio in the last, you know, couple decades, like
you do use your lungs when you're running around on a
football field like those are. Those are, yeah, those are
important. Able to oxygenate your blood
matters. When you're in the cold.
Yeah, yeah, you know, just in athletics, you you do actually
need to oxygenate your blood. So shocking news, I know to a
lot of couch locked people out there calling Dito Samuel fat.
I yeah, I have no, no patience for anyone calling an NFL player
fat unless it is Eddie Lacy. And he's literally posting
pictures of him like shithousing, you know, 5 LB bags
of gummy bears and, you know, showing pictures of him crushing
like a Chinese take out for a family of four.
Like when, when there is verifiable proof and the player
themself is telling you like, Oh yeah, like I gained a lot of
weight this year. In fact, the coach told me I
needed to lose like 30 lbs coming in.
Then you're allowed to call the guy when the guy himself has
told you he's fat. Then it's OK when you're just
like, Debo Samuel didn't score enough fantasy points for my
team. Like I don't think that you can
call the guy fat. Right.
I'm saying he I don't think anybody who said he's fat,
people have said he's like too overweight for an NFL athlete.
And but it does, it does strike me as like a post fact after the
event explanation rather than we have some evidence of this.
And therefore like it's not an evidence based thing and like
we've seen people are just explaining something after the
fact. Yeah, yeah, I I agree.
All right, let me let's see if there were any other notes I had
on this wide receiver chart. Oh, we got a Tyree Hill game.
He did Tyree Hill stuff. What do you know?
He wasn't dead. I mean, I I certainly think that
the wrist injury probably was hampering him and probably is
still hampering him. But I mean he's still Tyree
kill. He still went out there and
crushed. So nice to see.
Probably not a you know, I guess there there could be a little
little actionable info take away from this.
Like if you're in, you know, FFPC Sprint and you've got Tyree
kill, like he's definitely he's definitely on the menu to play
if you were in a circumstance where you could have him on your
bench, but I would assume that most people just were in a spot
where they had to be starting him anyway.
Right. And I think, yeah, I think you
have Tyree kill, you're playing him.
So you're right. I guess the only other
consideration would be single week.
I still I still have the sense that and he might have aged just
a little bit where he's gone from fastest player in the NFL.
Nobody can cover this guy. So just really good and but you
probably don't want to play into really good the week after you
had the really good game. Yeah.
And but good to see the sign of life.
Yeah, definitely. All right.
Last one on this chart, Khalil Shakur.
I mean, I, I've dude, all last season, I mean all it's been
multiple seasons that I've been pounding the table for Khalil
Shakur as one of the better receivers for the Bills.
I mean, way back when, when they had, you know, Steph Diggs and
Gabe Davis still, I, I was pretty firmly of the opinion
that Khalil Shakur was their second best receiver behind
Diggs. He's all he's looked very good.
He's flashed in the past, but now that, you know, they've had
Kincaid injured, Keon Coleman's out.
Amari Cooper still is just like very slowly being worked in.
He's not running a full complement of routes yet.
He's, you know. So the last four weeks his
underlying metrics have been like fantastic.
So and I'm including, I'm including the most recent week
14, he's had an average ret run of 84%.
I'm now excluding the week 14, so just week 10 through 13, he
had an average target for a run of 33%.
He had 41% in week 13. So I'm feeling actually a little
and I guess we didn't, we didn't really cover and single week
stuff. We were just talking about
playoff basketball. And so I guess even more we
should have covered them. And what I'm saying is that the
underlying metrics before this breakout were there and this the
the blow up game has has has legs.
There's sustainability here. Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm
buying into it. I put in the notes like, is
Khalil Shakur the very clear #1 pass catcher on Buffalo?
I think the answer is yes. The Bills think so.
Yeah, the Bills think so too. Are shallows women playing like
it? Yeah.
So I'm, I'm pretty into Khalil Shakur.
I think he's a pretty important piece for Buffalo playoff
basketball teams. You know he he would be my money
for the pass catcher to lead the team in points at the Super
Bowl. So yeah, yeah, agree there.
And and and where is he going, Yam?
Shakur, he goes like the the Bills pass catchers can
sometimes just go undrafted. Like literally all of them can
just make it to the last round. It's really for whatever reason,
people don't take them without Josh Allen in some rooms there.
There are other rooms that are much more sane where they'll
they'll take them. But Khalil Shakur is like a
fourth rounder, sometimes 5th, sometimes 6th.
And and you can even get him in the 7th if you're in a room
where people just are allergic to the Bills.
So he it's a yeah, he's got a, he's got a pretty wide standard
deviation. Most players do.
Right, right, right. So if the guy with Josh Allen
wants them, he takes them early, he goes, but if they don't want
them then he can be pretty cheap.
Yeah, yeah. If you have Josh Allen then you
should push Shakur and then lock in his.
Yeah, I typically, I'll push the key if there's ever like a a
good option on a different team that I really like is like
either they're a strong player without a buy and decent
conference championship odds or one of the buy teams that's a,
you know, a strong player for them.
I'll probably prioritize that over Shakur.
But if there's nothing better, then Shakur's a pretty solid
player to take when you have a Josh Allen team.
Yeah, agree. Should we move on to this next
Let's. Do it.
Let's bring it home. I think we can do it in under 2
hours. Draco, we got 2 minutes left.
You want to try and rapid fire it.
OK, yeah, sounds good. I mean, these are last round
playoff basketball guys so. Yeah, I got, I got now. 22
questions for you. OK, We got less than a minute on
each. How big a difference is there
between Jayden Reed, Christian Watson, Romeo Dobbs and
Dantavion Wicks for purposes of playoff basketball?
You almost have to treat them interchangeably.
The only one I would say is different is Dante Beyond Wicks.
Yeah, Yeah, you're right. You're right.
He's about. Those first 3 and I, I for me, I
think it's Jaden Reed is like one tick above Christian Watts
and Romeo Dobbs. I know that he's had this last
game a lot of I know a goose egg hurts and people like what the
hell? He's not even on the field.
They ran so much to tight end stuff and they like they really,
really were valuing the additional pass protection,
additional blockers for the run game.
So Jaden Reed was just not on there a ton.
They also didn't have a ton of offensive plays.
So it was this, you had this, you know, these two factors that
contributed to making it really difficult and stifling Jayden
Reid's production. And it was, hey, they didn't
have him on the field a bunch because that just wasn't the
game plan here. They were.
They were going a different way. They wanted the heavyset in.
And then also they didn't run a ton of plays.
So as you, you had those two things kind of marrying and it
created this perfect storm for him to goose egg.
All right, 30 seconds. Can you draft any other Broncos
receivers other than Cortland Sutton?
Are you taking Devon Bailey? Oh, I need let me let me look at
the Tata please. Yeah.
So ballet I'm showing as 8 1/2 points a game and Troy Franklin
5.6. So we're talking, we're talking
about playoff basketball here. Yeah.
And yeah, I, I don't, I don't think you can.
Like, that's just seems like such a specific bet to make
where you're, you're betting Broncos beat playoff Rod.
And so when the field tins out like Devon Valet, his 8 1/2
points is bringing home the bacon.
I, I, I, I don't think that's right.
I think it is just certain. I I agree it's just sudden.
I've taken Marvin Mims once, but after I did it, I was like, I
think that's the only time I need to do that.
So, right, all right, I think that'll do it for tonight.
Thank you, everyone for tuning in.
I hope that you advanced more teams than you expected earlier
in the season. You know, it certainly,
certainly got a little better as things went on, but now the real
fun begins as we sweat through the playoffs.
So we will look forward to seeing you back here next week
as we either celebrate or bemoan our fortunes from the first week
of the fantasy playoffs. See you next week, everyone.