Smashville Fantasy Football
Join Andrew Banta and Will Ott as they dive deep into the Smashville Fantasy Football League's 10th anniversary season. This weekly podcast offers a unique blend of league analysis, player insights, and friendly banter. Whether you're a league member or just a fantasy football enthusiast, you'll enjoy our hosts' distinct perspectives on roster management, player performance, and league-wide trends. From draft strategies to weekly matchups, we've got you covered with armchair analysis, historical comparisons, and plenty of laughs along the way.
Smashville Fantasy Football
Pre Season Special: A Decade of Smashville
Smashville Fantasy Football Podcast: 10 Years of Fun & Strategy
In this inaugural episode of the Smashville Fantasy Football Podcast, hosts Andrew Banta and analyst Will Ott celebrate the 10-year history of the Smashville Fantasy Football league. They discuss their personal experiences and the evolution of fantasy football strategies. Tune in for entertaining banter, trade tips, bold predictions, and insights into their unique league setup. The episode also previews the upcoming draft and shares thoughts on recent NFL rule changes. Whether you're a league member or a casual fantasy football fan, this podcast offers a mix of fun, competition, and strategy.
Welcome to the Smashville Fantasy Football Podcast! I'm your trade-addict host, Andrew Banta, joined by our analyst who swears he can predict the future, Will Ott. Get ready for armchair analysis, friendly banter, and a whole lot of fantasy fun!
We are here celebrating 10 year history of our Yahoo friends Smashville Fantasy Football league. This is, I guess, actually our 11th year, technically, but we have 10 years in the books.
It seems as good a time as any to invest in it more and give people in the league a little more entertainment value. Maybe get some more engagement going with the different members and we'll have a good time doing it too.
Maybe you'll also get some smack talk in there, try to amp up the competition.
Raise the stakes a little bit. Our league has always been a casual one for fun. So we're not experts by any means. We don't bet any real money on it. I do it to give me a little more interest in the football season. Without it, I don't pay that much attention to football. It helps me be a little more invested in teams that I wouldn't watch otherwise.
What about you Will?
I have a long history of playing fantasy football. I started playing fantasy football back in 2005 when we were in high school. And then I continued until around 2013. I swore I would never play fantasy football again, because it took way too much time for me to be invested in watching fantasy football. Then once this league kicked off for two or three years, four years, I finally said, sure, I'll play. And from there, it's been reignition of the addiction of fantasy football.
Unfortunately my history does not really show that I have a lot of experience in fantasy football.
I have across all of my years of playing fantasy football, I have one win. I typically would play three or four fantasy leagues a year, and I have several second place finishes.
Is your one win in this league or in a different league?
No, no different league. It was back in, I think 2005, was ironically, I think my first year playing fantasy football. It's the only year that I actually won a fantasy football league.
That is a long drought.
It has been, it's been tough. It's been terrible. I've had plenty of second places to go with it. Just missing that first.
Not at the expense of my results, but I'm rooting for you at least a little bit to end that drought. You don't want a Lions situation for you.
It's okay if I'm a Lions situation. The big thing for me is, my competitiveness is high. We play on Yahoo and it gives you a rating depending on how often you beat players that are higher rank than you, or a lower rank than you. And I'm the highest rated player in our league. I'm just barely above the threshold between diamond and platinum.
Not that it means a whole lot, but it shows that I'm consistent against players of decent skill level. And I've just been a little bit unlucky.
What goes into the rating. I'm ranked third in our group of 12. I'm platinum level. When I win it goes up when I lose it goes down, but beyond that, I don't really know how much it weighs being in multiple leagues or beating people who are ranked higher than you, versus lower than you. What do you know about what goes into those levels? What can our league members take away from that when they look down their list and see where they are?
It is weighted. So if I play against someone that is a bronze player and I win, I'm only going to get one or two points. If I lose, I'm going to lose like 20. So my rating is going to be affected when playing negatively against lower players And more positively influenced by winning against higher rated players.
By saying I'm in that diamond echelon is that I have played against other players that have found success on Yahoo fantasy football site. and also, I tend to do well against lower tiered opponents. If I'm up against silver or gold player, more often than not, I will succeed. My rating will go up, and that is global. That is not just on our league. So because I'm also playing multiple leagues gives me opportunity to improve my rating or my score quicker.
I don't think I've sniffed diamond yet. I remember at one point I was tied for the top level tier with whoever else was at the top in our league. Maybe at the time that happened it was gold, and I was like, oh, is that the top ranking? I didn't know if anything was higher than gold even.
Yeah. I think it was Caitlin because she's performed very well. I know she's been playing longer than I have.
I'm assuming I'm the highest I've ever been now since I did win it last year. I'd imagine I got a bump of points near the end last year and probably wasn't higher before that at any point
I was basically in silver tier all the way up until 2018 when I restarted playing fantasy football again. Although I don't know if their rating system really existed back then. Once I got back into, it skyrocketed back up to diamond.
I'm definitely a fresher, more novice player than you are. This is my 10th year in this league. I missed the very first year.
Don't know why Chris didn't invite me. What's up commissioner. Chime in when you have a decent answer, but I have been playing for those ten years. That was my introduction to fantasy football. I've never done any league outside of our league. So I'm not up against super stiff competition. No offense to you or anyone else, but we have
two diamond ranks yourself and Caitlin. I'm platinum. a couple golds. and the rest are all bronzes. We're not the cream of the crop. I prefer to play against people I know. It makes it a little more fun.
Since we're on the topic of ratings, I think maybe we could switch over to look at the standings and see who has had success over the years. You mentioned that you have not yet got the championship in this league.
I got championship last year and actually in 2018. I feel pretty good about that. Even my first year, I somehow blindly stumbled into second place. That's probably incredibly lucky.
Better to be lucky than good, right.
That's why I got my Luck jersey. I don't know if you can see it, but I started with him. My team name usually changes based on a player that I liked that I draft. So it's not always consistent. I was Straight Outta Luck that first year when I got second. Andrew Luck encompasses a lot of what's exciting about fantasy football. It encapsulates what could have been, near misses, heartbreaking injuries, that's fantasy football in a nutshell.
Yep.
Last year, I won it with my QB and team name, Obi-Wan Mahomey. So I think I have a pretty good trend of naming my teams after whichever quarterback I pick up. I was Dak Dynasty before, didn't have any success with Dak Prescott at the lead. I even had Obi-Wan Jacoby, Brissett, one year where I really scraped the bottom of the barrel on quarterbacks.
It's been a mixed bag, but I never finished worse than ninth, the year after I got second. I've done well enough for my expectations, I think. Looking who else has been repeat winner, Plays Like a Gurley, Caitlin has had repeat success. Last season I was talking about how I was always most intimidated to face her. I just felt like she always beat me and then Chris pulled up the records and was like, no, actually you've won more often than not. And I just almost didn't believe it because,
It's that bias.
she really does know what she's doing and she has multiple first places, multiple second places. She's got a third place in there. Just glancing at it, she may be the most successful overall, if you count all medals.
I didn't look at it most recently, but I did look at his stats a lot last year. I think I had the best win percentage across regular season games, but when you start including the post season, that's when her team, I think, beat mine.
Not to say that I'm the top challenger, but when it comes to statistics of winning percentage and stuff, that does matter to some degree, otherwise you're not going to make playoffs.
She just crushes it. She has a team that is more often than not, in a position to at least get second or third out of playoffs.
Whereas my team? Not so much.
What people can expect when they watch this is just a close knit group. There might be some inside jokes, some references. So it's not going to be for everyone. It's certainly not for people looking for a very competitive edge. I mean, you might get some of that from Will. I don't want to speak for him, but I'm not going to bring super insightful stuff on players and the latest happenings in the NFL. I'm just going to call it as I see it happening within our league, try to make it entertaining. We'll have some, armchair analysis, average Joe stuff, friendly banner, fantasy tips to the extent I can.
I hope we can put out one of these basically every week highlighting the games coming up and the results of the previous week, how everyone's done, and make it just a little bit more fun for everyone.
We'll do a week in review.
We'll look at the overall landscape of the league, who's ranked where, who's in danger of missing the playoffs.
Will, I'll probably call on you frequently to highlight a player of the week that just balled out.
We'll look at roster moves. I'm really into trading and analyzing projections. I don't dare come up with my own projections because I'd just be pulling it out of the bag, but I do accumulate a lot of different fantasy experts projections, see where I might be able to get an edge by trading one player for another. So I view trading wheeling and dealing as my specialty, roster makeup. The portfolio management of players is what I bring to the table.
And then we can do fun segments as well. I think people can expect hot takes, bold predictions, non-existent wagers, just for pride, of total points scored. Who's gonna win this week?
We'll do our best to track some of the streaks that different managers are on in our league, and if we get any people mailing in from our league or commenting, we'll address that too.
We might even be able to pull in some guest stars, so to speak. I'm sure we'll get our commissioner Chris on here at some point and get him to talk about things from like a league-wide perspective. He has a really good, accumulation of data and a Notion spreadsheet that he set up.
One thing to note with our league is it is not a quote unquote standard league. We have a different setup when it comes to team rosters.
We have one quarterback, two running backs, four wide receiver/tight ends, one wide receiver/tight end flex, kicker, defense, seven bench, one IR. That is quite a bit different than most of the standard leagues that you enter.
We also have 12 managers in our league compared to oftentimes 10. I think 10 is more standard. You'll see eight more often than you'll see 12.
So with that number of players Required for each position, it gets really different, and I think it's also a little bit challenging. It's harder to draw on previous experience of leagues that require a tight end, that require two wide receivers, wide receiver/running backs.
It's not the same layout. So you have to dig deeper into your depth chart where, in most other leagues, your worst wide receiver that starts on an average week won't average less than 10 points.
When you all told me that 12 team leagues are not standard at all. I just thought you saw more 14 team leagues even and I would have never thought there'd be as few as eight. I thought it was like 10 or 12, but you really think you see eight more often than 12.
I think if you hop into a random fantasy league on Yahoo, it tends to be a 10 man league. I think more of the eight and the twelves tend to be a little bit more custom. I haven't entered any leagues yet this year. I tend to try to wait until after preseason injuries happen before I actually make that commitment. Otherwise I get burned because someone got injured in a preseason game that was my second wide receiver, and then I get sad. I saved myself the heartbreak of, early disappointment by giving myself the advantage of doing that and then just get disappointed late in the season instead.
Sure. Yeah, that's much better. Of course. False hope.
As far as our league and the kind of quirky things about it I really appreciated when Chris changed the tight end position to a wide receiver/tight end flex spot. Do you like that? Or do you think it's just kind of a cop out and too easy at that point.
I like it because you can just draft a tight end if you really want, but the thing that I do like about it is it spreads out your draft uniquely every single time, because everyone's going to have to draft a tight end. So your strategy might be to draft Travis Kelce instead of, insert random tight end here.
I typically don't like it though, because I hate drafting tight ends. You have to be in a really unique situation in our league, to want to go with the sixth or seventh best tight end. Also with 12 managers, requiring a tight end for every single team is absurd, because you'll also want a tight end for the week that they're on bye. When you get down to it, that's going to be 24. Let's say a couple people say, heck with it. I don't really care if I don't have a tight end on my bye because I don't want to draft a second tight end.
Then, maybe you're like 20 out of 32 tight ends. When I say 32, some teams utilize two tight end sets more often than, than others, but at the same time, a lot of those two tight end sets are not going to be passing plays.
And the only way they make points is by catching the ball. There's no pancake, if you pancake a guy or you have quality blocks. I don't think there is such a stat in fantasy.
There are, I think for pancakes, but if you really wanted to get into creating a really wonky league, I have done a really wonky league where you actually had defensive players and you had like off like two, you get two offensive linemen or something like that, two defensive linemen, and the linebacker, safety, cornerback, or something like that. It was real wonky. I loved it, but I hated it at the same time because you really have to keep track of who gets a lot of tackles on defense or who the best offensive linemen are who are going to get those pancakes or something like that and start racking up some points. Otherwise, it's a dead roster spot, which if you're really good, you'll know how to separate yourself in those spots.
Well for a casual fan such as me who's very offense oriented and entertained by that and doesn't pay much attention to defense. That sounds like torture. That sounds awful. I do not want to follow defensive stats and try to figure out who's better. I would just be plugging in whatever Yahoo tells me to at that point.
The one fun part though, is that you get someone like Jared Allen, who was, at the time, I think he was still with Kansas City. He was absolutely tearing it up. And then you have like Junior Seau, who's this monster dude, and like crushing it, and then you get Darren Sharper, Brian Hawkins and stuff in the safety position. Charles Woodson in cornerback for instance . It's kind of a real fun way to really root for those defensive players and not just hope for an offensive bloodbath.
Since this episode's a little bit of a retrospective before we start looking forward at this season, do you have any moments from your entire time in this league that stand out to you? Maybe something jumps out to you that was either heartbreaking or just insane that it happened the way it did.
So there are two things. One was the year where, two years ago, I believe, where the Bengals/Patriots game got canceled. It was Bengals/someone. That week was our championship week, and Yahoo decided to not award points for the next week for the two teams that their game basically got postponed slash canceled.
And they never did. They never retroactively applied them?
They never... It was in the first quarter, so they had like two points. Okay. It was, I think a Monday night football game.
Yeah.
Joe Burrow got like a point or two points or something like that and that was in the championship game, and so instead of, in my opinion, the proper winner, or at least should have had a actual shot of winning the championship, Mikey P. got it.
Oh man, shots fired. Chris A. got second. He got robbed huh?
I think he got robbed. I think that those circumstances should have allowed for the players that did not receive points due to the game being canceled, to be able to score points the next week.
Yeah.
Otherwise, it's basically a bye for them. There was no option to say hey, this other guy that plays on Monday night is available. I'm going to swap out that bench real quick because that game was canceled.
There was no opportunity to make up points. I think Chris had two players that were playing that night, that would have easily made up the difference to win that championship game. So that was my first one. That was a really weird incident. I hope that it never happens again, because I don't want to see anyone like that to get injured, anything like that. But at the same time, I also would love to see there be guidelines for fantasy websites like Yahoo, ESPN, or whatever, to compensate in some way for having a unscheduled bye. Because it's not an injury, it's not anything like that, that is normal, or just happens, and then they miss, but the rest of the games played.
I think that was a big thing in our league and it stood out a lot, for me, especially cause I think I'd been doing quite well. I think I might have been the lead in the standings going into the playoffs, and I played Mike and everything went bad. He had, players that I think would normally score like seven or eight points, and they ended up scoring 40 or something like that.
And I was like, okay, well that's just fantasy football. And then after that, it's like, okay, that's not just fantasy football. That is garbage. I do not agree. I think that's silly. No, it doesn't exist in my book.
I think I probably rely on projections too much. I'll see who I'm up against, and I'm like, oh I'm projected to do 125 points this week and they're only projected at 85 and then they win and I'm pissed about it.
You can't tell the future. So I do rely on that a lot.
I'm like, I should go undefeated this year. And of course that doesn't happen.
So this leads to my second thing from being in our league, was last year. I did a great job of drafting. I drafted, I think Tua, in like the seventh or eighth round cause everyone had picked Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen really early. And I kind of just sat on it, knowing that Tyreek Hill is now in Miami.
So I'm like, okay, I picked up Tyreek Hill in the first round because, he's a baller, you know?
Okay, great, I've got this, like, duo, and then I picked up Raheem Mostert kind of late because he performed well in San Francisco, and he's scheduled to be RB1. It was between him, I think, and Jeff Wilson Jr. and Jeff Wilson Jr. got hurt, and Raheem Mostert was coming off of an injury, and outlasted him and then just started, hey, I'm good to go guys. I had Josh Jacobs. I drafted Jonathan Taylor around the same time as I drafted Tua maybe just after Tua and he was out for the first four games or something like that, knowing that, okay, I've got enough with Josh Jacobs to where I can make it possibly with Raheem Mostert. And then I can take out Raheem Mostert if he's not performing well and put in Jonathan Taylor and go from there.
And then I ended up balling out real, real hard with my team. I scored the most points in our league. And it got me seventh.
Wow, that's a tough break.
I also had, I think, the most points scored against me. 1579. No. Second most points against me. Mike had the most at 1645. For a good chunk of the season, though, I had the most points scored against me as well as also having the most points. I went into the postseason. Of our 12 teams, eight go to playoffs. I was nine and five. So I was, I think, good for sixth in being seeded. And it just went downhill cause Josh Jacobs got hurt, Jonathan Taylor, I think got reinjured, something like that, Tyreek Hill missed like a game around playoff time or left the game early. I think that was the case. With all that, all of the sudden, my week 17 roster. Started Tua, I had Jonathan Taylor, Khalil Herbert, Tyreek Hill, who got only seven points, cause I think he left the game early. Calvin Ridley, he did nothing. Terry McLaurin, who did actually decent. Tee Higgins. The only reason why he's there is because
I have no one else to go with.
I ended up making a trade for him
midway through the season. Dallas Goedert, tight end. Hey! I rarely have one.
Raheem Mostert was out, Courtland Sutton was out, Josh Jacobs was out, Chase Brown was out, Zay Jones was out.
I think the
other big player that I was going to have was, uh, I dropped him cause he was out for the season. What are you going to do?
Nine and five with the most points.
Seventh
place in the playoffs.
1st place.
I did fare much better than you on the points against, which is of course entirely against our control.
Um, but, you know, people only scored 1,468 points against me, and I scored 1,610. So that, that differential kind of explains why I happen to
be champion.
Week, week five, for instance. Uh, I played against Chris, our commissioner. I scored 128.32 points That's quite respectable. Take a guess. How many points he scored?
There's been some razor thin margins.
Okay, 128.35.
No, 180.37. I believe that's the most amount of
points he's ever. No,
no,
were just saying bad breaks. Uh, cause there have been some there, and I remembered one of them involved, Chris. Uh, where it was, I don't know, it was like .01
or
oh yeah, it was kind of crazy. Yeah.
.03, somewhere around there. So it wasn't that one, it was just
insane,
he's just like, how do I get, I got blown out and I scored almost 130 points. How does that happen? How does like, that's, that's, that's insane to me. And
large enough sample size, it's gonna happen.
just, it's going to happen, but I
of it.
It still mystifies me. That stuff like really mystifies me. Zach Moss and DJ Moore, I think, combined for a total of, uh, 78 points plus Jalen Hurts, which is basically another 30.
And then I had Rohit Moster who scored 13. 8, but his backup, uh, Ashain, uh, scored 23. 5 like, okay. All right.
I
makes me.
Yeah, when that
Fancy, that's just fantasy football.
Yeah. I, I get
I, I just get mad,
but it's just fancy football.
Like really this guy scored 40 points when, you know, I had you dead to rights, it's Monday night and this whatever guy goes off for 40, I'm just like, What the heck, the fantasy gods are spitting on me right now.
I believe that was also the first time that our commissioner has beaten me in fancy football. Since I, since I joined,
Oh yeah?
I think I had like a perfect, like eight no record or something, something like that. Cause I believe, cause he made like a kind of a type up basically, uh, he started trying to do a type up of the week's matchups and
things to note from the stats and
I believe it was that time I was like, hey, well, well, I finally beat Will like, yep, yeah, it was not, not close. And then he ended up beating me again, so I went from having a perfect record to going Oh two in the season. That was pretty cool. real feels bad
ya fast. Life comes
hits your heart, bro. Reality hits your heart, bro.
Well, despite the end result, I mean, you had a solid team. What are you looking to recreate from last year? This year, what are you looking to change as far
as draft strategy, season management, what
nothing.
work?
I, I, I, I think everything worked except for injuries. Uh, and a lot of that was like Josh Jacobs. Yeah, he gets injured some, like he's gotten injured a few times, but like when it's happened or the likelihood of it happening is like, okay, well, it's worth the risk. Hey, it's worth, it's worth taking them for the risk. Cause it's like, Hey, what if he gets injured? Week 17 of the regular season. Well, our, our season's over by then,
you know, so I, you kind of just got to go for it and hope for the best. I did a good job of
picking up Jonathan Taylor later. And so I had like a like a quality starter who, who you know, wasn't a premier pick because he was out for the first four weeks.
When you put up the most points in the fantasy league, you just say, okay, I'm going to, I would love to redo the exact same thing and just run it back. But, uh, the problem is that's going to be really hard because Tua is now,
I think, on everyone's radar.
So now it's now it's like, okay, well, how do I, with my drafting strategy where I kind of draft QBs typically round eight or nine,
or maybe even later, depending on who's available, if literally everyone's taken their primary quarterback, and a lot of them, their secondary quarterback, why do I want to pick a quarterback?
the quality, the quality doesn't change much between me picking one and round 10 versus round 13. So, I, I
if you don't get those first five or so
I'm I'm content in waiting at least and this is
coming from someone who last year
picked up Patrick Mahomes first round, which
I would normally get quarterbacks You quote unquote too early.
as far as like.
Good advice would go, but I'd never been that early, you know At least I got who was, like,
considered a premier quarterback. He had more of a pedestrian year for him But I did win the championship at times It was in spite of his performance being just average and I wish I could have his pick back I'm not looking to recreate that and get the top guy in less he goes later than I expect. Certainly not in the first
yeah, and I think the big thing too is they had a weird team that something wasn't quite right with that team, the Kansas City team. I don't necessarily anticipate him having the bad start that he had last year. Would I take him the first round? No. Would I expect someone in our league to take him the first round this year? Yes.
Why will I be
surprised to that?
multiple quarterbacks gone in our
Yeah. I, I think Josh Allen, I think is probably going to be
I don't know if it's Sean McDermott or if it's, it's Josh Allen or missing Stefan Diggs.
Like
what is going on with, with, The Buffalo Bills offense. I'm kind of
not expecting Patrick Mahomes to make it close to round seven,
which would probably be the early side really want, like to take a quarterback. Now I might take one earlier, but.
It's not my initial goal. Uh, and then
try to stay away from Josh Allen,
Which
That's interesting. Um,
I don't, I don't see, I don't think their chemistry is working anymore. I don't, I don't see it. I want Josh Allen to succeed. I'm a Josh Allen fan. But I don't see him making it. Not expect Patrick Mahomes to make it to where I would want to take him for value.
And Josh Allen's going to be gone because he's taken above value. I don't feel like he's got the chemistry.
think your Josh Allen prediction definitely qualifies as a hot take because
the consensus experts on him have just been like ranking him one
across the board, ADP and
experts voting.
I'm not saying you're wrong at
all. I mean,
I think you do have to put yourself out there and make different predictions.
If you only follow what the rankings say, you're going to limit yourself. You're going to cap your performance to be okay. You'll make the playoffs, but you're not going to probably win a championship because you're playing how everyone else plays. If you just play the rankings
yeah,
you kind of,
yourself somehow.
and kind of anticipate injuries or, or style changes for a team. And that's kind of, I think one of the harder things to do. But, it worked, it was really easy for me last year, just because Tyree Kill is such a dynamic threat to where, Hey, yeah, okay.
I'm picking Tyree kill. And, uh, if the opportunity presents itself, I'm 100 percent drafting Tua.
yeah, for what's worth. I took Josh Allen in
the beginning of the third round in a mock draft.
um, but you know, that was the absolute earliest I would take any quarterback.
uh, and it wasn't my plan going in.
I'm
hoping that, uh, I wait, you know, I'm going to try to wait into the later rounds to do it because there's So, many wide receivers and running backs that I want to get first in general. And you telling me kind of your thoughts on, on Josh Allen, I'm going to take that into consideration as well and think, okay, don't get tempted on him too early.
I mean, I don't, I don't, I think he's going to be gone too quickly anyway, so,
Yeah, probably. It'll
probably be early first round in our league.
Joe Burrow is one that's like, yeah, I would love to take him, but the history of the Bengals is to have a bad offensive line.
So if he can't stay protected, he either can't stay healthy or he doesn't have enough time to make throws. I think he's a great player. I just don't feel like he's, he's set up for the success that you want to have from a fantasy football perspective.
📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 I'm going to have a horrible quarterback and I'll just have to make do because
our Managers in our league are already skewing early on their quarterback picks And I don't want to try to outdo them on that strategy because that's a game I can't win So I'm just gonna sit back and wait and and make the best of it.
Yeah. Cause you can
it work Even if it's a bad QB
you, you can, you can always get a, Positional player like a wide receiver or running back who is going to be as much of a game changer as Patrick Mahomes on a good year.
For instance, Tyree kill was I think number one in fancy points for a good chunk of the year.
Everyone's drafting quarterbacks. And I'm okay with, I'm okay with drafting Tyree kill because he's going to be a monster and he ends up putting up crazy points. But what's something that you're trying to recreate from last year? Cause you kind of said that you're not really interested in running it back, but at the same time, there's, I think things that you liked about your roster, right?
Yeah, I mean, definitely. I think I drafted,
Uh, pretty well on the running backs. In fact, if anything, I made a mistake
being a little too, too trade happy early and I, I traded some good guys away. I don't think many of my trades really worked out in my favor last year. And despite that going against me, you know,
I, I, still won, but, um, you know, I had, uh, Travis, ETN, uh, James Conner, Breeze Hall,
Alvin Kamara,
um, I really like all those guys, and I felt really happy with my draft, but then I'm like, oh, man, I want to actually
play all those guys, so I end up trading
one of them pretty early.
Um, I know I traded James Connor, and he Ended up getting injured week four. So that worked out okay. I can't remember who I got for him, but. Even then, that's just a random luck of the draw. I can't really say it was a good trade because he got injured.
It didn't make it a smart trade. That's just, that's just random
got lucky. That's
when it's like, that's fantasy football. That's fancy football.
Who I actually got in my trades.
wasn't anything
to write home about it. didn't work out that well for me. So, um, I think I'd recreate the drafting, you know,
uh, Really strong at wide receiver and running back and
Just accentuate that by not reaching on a quarterback really
Um, I want to stay active in trading, even though I didn't
love the end results of the trades.
last year, um,
I like the spirit of the trades. Um And I want to be patient on guys. I, I was patient on certain guys, Brees Hall.
I waited so long for him to finally break out. And he was a big reason that I ended up winning like that first half of the season, maybe even more, it was getting to the point where I couldn't
even start him. but then I waited and waited and waited. And finally. He started consistently
showing the ability to put points on the board so
I could ease him back into my starting lineup after losing faith in him but not getting rid of him.
And, uh, yeah, he put up some big points. also being active on the waiver wire.
Um, that has always worked out for me really well. Um.
If I compare,
you know, waiver wire moves,
I'm usually near the top. I had.
21 moves. uh, Only surpassed by, uh, Wu Tang Financial,
um, with 28 moves. Oh, sorry, under the radar, I had 24 too.
But, you know, I'm definitely always in the top couple
of, of moves, uh, being really active in, you know, hopping on guys when they get a chance that they didn't have before. I got Kyron Williams, and he was a league winner for me too, um, and he did not get drafted.
And now he's gonna go in, you know, what's his ADP?
Being projected in the, in the second round. Mm
hmm.
ADP is kind of a stat that I don't really look at as much because I want to be better than the average player. So I can take it into consideration, but that's not my, my big,
my big stat to go with. I think every single time I've done a fantasy football draft on Yahoo, it gives you those like summaries of how did your draft go, and I don't think I really ever get above like a B straight Be like, I don't think I get any B pluses or anything like that. But
often, more often than not, I mean, I'm in the playoffs
and a 10 man league where there's only four that go to the playoffs.
I don't care about what my, my rating is for the draft. It's fun to look at. Don't get me wrong. I love to look at it and be like, oh, man. But at the same time, we'll see how this rating actually matters in the end.
Yeah, I, I think not too much.
My ratings have been over the place. I think last year was actually one of my best rated ones. I,
I, think you're
saw earlier. Yeah, it gave me a high rating. Definitely an a something.
I think it was funny. Cause Chris, I think got number one.
yes. Chris, I was going to
bring that up too. We, we, we've joked before about how Chris is like almost always the, the highest ranked draft.
You won the draft, you get a little Yahoo! medal, um, award for that. But it doesn't mean too much. And you know why I think he wins the draft?
Because he just looks at average draft position
Took this guy that's, picked 34 and he picked the guy that's 38. I'm going to be like, all right, I'm going to pick the guy that's 33 because he left it open.
I mean the same system that's recommending guys to you during the draft is the system that awards.
You for doing well on the draft. So
of course that's going to be weighted for following that advice. So I don't
follow that advice too much at all unless I just don't know who to pick. Um, since we did start mentioning ADP, do you, do you have any, uh, ADP rankings you can pull up?
Any guys that you think are ridiculously over ranked, um, or under ranked at where they're being drafted?
I'm I'm concerned that Breeze Hall is over, overranked, or
Bijon Robinson. I I like Bijon. Like, I had him in the Northern League, and I liked him, but at the same time, I'm skeptical
So, I'm skeptical of those two
RB3.
uh, you know, they've been swapping depending on the day, I think. But they're
RB2 and RB3. And I mean, yeah, Breece
Hall showed he's capable in the last half of the season. Last, maybe fourth of the season. But I don't know if that's enough. Do you think,
that's reflective of
just, you know, Misjudging them, or is it showing we have a weaker running back class this year?
For
uh, well, part of the problem, too, is, uh, across, I believe, I was reading
some experts,
McCaffrey and
Talk about fantasy football across the board and long. It seems to be long, like old story of you want to draft a strong running back first round. Uh, that was the big thing when I started playing fancy football.
Uh, and I think even up to like the last, like three years, uh, even like outside of our league is, Hey,
you know, you should be drafting a
a good running back first round, you know, if you're, if you're pick nine or 10 of your draft, then yeah, you might, skirt around that and go double wide receiver when a snake's back around, but
you don't really,
I don't know. let me see if I can pull up the
draft results
uh, for our round.
Yeah. Our league.
So we had Justin Jefferson, Christian McCaffrey, Jamar Chase, Patrick Graham Holmes, Josh Allen, Austin Eckler, Tyreek Hill, Nick Chubb, Stefan Diggs, Cooper Cupps, Saquon Barkley, Travis Kelsey.
So I would say.
at least eight or nine of those picks are reasonable to be in the first round
Christian McCaffrey, yeah, cool, but, I mean,
everyone else?
Until something else proves you different. Yeah. Pretty much most of the last season,
the two, two leaders of, of the, uh, famous football points were Tyreek Hill and, uh, Christian McCaffrey. Typically the top three or four point scores in fantasy football are running backs.
In
I'd agree with that. and ADP has often reflected that too.
And I'm looking at this year, and I'm seeing
A lot of the wide receivers leapfrog. Into above those 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th running backs, like McCaffrey's still up there,
but, you know, Breeshall and Bijan Robinson are 5 and 6 at what I'm looking at right now. So,
I think normally you'd see the 2nd and 3rd running backs a little bit higher. Uh, and I think there's, must be less confidence in
the running backs this year.
I think super
confident,
confident about guys like Saquon Barkley and
and Travis
injury prone.
Yeah.
Travis
feel confident about them. I'd be more confident, confident Travis. But
at all.
I might, I'd feel okay about Travis late second round, but he's being drafted 16th. I feel a little nervous about that. I've had him on my team several years, I think.
yeah, yeah, I think so.
And it's been mixed for me.
I think the big thing, too, is stylistically the league is kind of. geared more towards having more in their running backs.
So you're not going to have like one workhorse and then a third down or like every other, you know,
you'll see more swapping in on second down uh, or certain, certain, situations, the game, the game tends to be more passing.
So, um,
you're going to see them touch the ball less, or you're going to see wider. third down back score more points.
uh, because on passing downs, they're like, okay, we're third in 13.
We're going to run a screen to our
third down back who
we don't want him to get injured, but at the same time, he's not, he's not
Christian McCaffrey getting injured.
You know what I mean? Yeah.
if something like that were to happen,
I think we're seeing something like that happen more often.
Yeah.
so it's less likely that. The primary back is going to be receiving points unless your, your system is kind of geared towards more grindy, run the ball offense.
Also, when you're seeing quarterbacks running the ball, I mean,
Lamar Jackson, Jalen hurts, obviously are the probably, you know, the two biggest ones.
And then you're going to see Patrick Mahomes,
he's not the same as Jalen hurts or Lamar Jackson.
But
he can, he can move the ball. Josh Allen can move the ball.
Yeah. He's not Peyton Manning.
You're right.
He's more
Peyton Manning run touchdowns.
And it was, Oh my gosh. I remember. I remember,
And I was just like, Oh my gosh,
I'm
the one time, or,
Yeah. Yeah. He did the naked boot. He did like a naked bootleg like, and ran it 40 yards for a touchdown. And I'm just like, man, is this guy ever going to make it to the end zone? Is someone going to die? Like trying to watch this happen?
It was quite disgusting.
Um, but like, you know, I would, I
slash disgusting.
Yeah. It depends on who you are.
If you're a fan of football, that was disgusting. If you're a fan of the Colts, it was amazing. So
I get it. You know, I get it.
You know, having Purdue roots. I always want to compare to Drew Brees, but I would put them more mobile than Drew Brees and Drew Brees could, could, he wouldn't,
you know. he wouldn't run the ball.
But at the same time, if the position, the time called for it, he would, do the best with his legs and he would be hit and he'd be flipped around upside down, you know, it
happens.
There's good and vulture touchdowns from the running backs, you know, more than historically. So that, that makes it a little tougher for the running backs, too.
Sean, rip Sean Alexander, priest home, priest homes. Uh, rest in peace guys. Your, your, your time of having running backs like those are long gone.
Yeah. At least I still do like getting the workhorse running backs to the extent that they exist.
Because there are no questions, at least on your roster.
Yeah. that they are
the guy and if they get injured there's usually a clear new guy
and and you don't have
very often a total committee approach where you're like, I'm flipping a coin at which guy I start here because they're gonna split the workload 60 40 one way or the other and you don't know which
way it's gonna be any week.
Um, you know, I very much like getting McCaffrey and then
he's, he's got the target on his, on his chest, on his back, on his feet. He's got like his, he's puts on his new, uh, his shoelaces and they're different colors and they've got a target on there. But like you want to find these cleats,
and then
I'll get Mitchell
for if and when he gets injured and.
as far as I know, there's not a question who's coming in if he gets injured. Debo, Debo, just put Debo in the backfield.
I have enough things that I have to, you know, gamble with each week on who do I start that I like to have some certainties on my roster.
Absolutely.
Have you followed kind of the.
um, The track of Justin Jefferson and Cooper Cupp on the ADP. I've been a little fascinated on them and how their rankings have been changing. Justin Jefferson was starting
pretty low, and I was like, what is going on? Um,
Uh, JJ
all the way up to fourth, like, and I'm Like, what is the Now I think he's Hover ranked, and before
I thought he
was underranked.
I thought he was up there previously and then he's moved down. But again, I, I don't really keep my mind
on it.
I can't remember, maybe it was
just,
uh, well, JJ
But I thought he was pretty, I thought he had fallen down the draft boards. Um, and I thought there were a couple of mock drafts where he was going later.
I can't draft Justin Jefferson unless he's like round three,
which kind of stinks.
Uh, I've been a big fan of Austin Echler in the past and he's on the commanders now. And I'm like, no, get me out. I cannot be on the Austin Echler hype train.
and then Cooper Cup, I've loved having in the past, but he
Oh yeah. You've been a big fan of him.
Yes. I've been a huge fan of him. Even as, I, didn't have him last year, but even as recently as last year,
Um, now he's. overall 38th?
Sounds about right.
You think that sounds about right? Um, what's his situation this year? Why, why would he be lower than,
I,
I just.
One of the top wide receivers that he has been in the past.
What's going on with
that
I think it's more the other players that are younger and coming into the league are expected to perform better or be more of a focal point of the offense. Um, I think that's what it comes down to. You'll, you'll see a lot of players. I mean, even from last year, like Stefan Diggs, I don't think Stefan Diggs is going to go in the first round and he went
uh, round, uh, first round pick
too.
Um, I don't think Austin Eckler is going to go up there
Right there. Yeah. Diggs is around that same spot now. 39
overall.
Yeah. Uh, AJ Brown. I don't know where he's at.
I'm looking at last year's stuff. So he went early second round.
He's going 9th.
So he's
oh really?
Yeah, he's very early. What do you, what do you think of
uh, Marvin Harrison Jr.?
I was surprised that the, like, average draft position and Yahoo had him rated as high as they did. I was like, oh, they'll probably have him in the eighth or ninth round and I'll pick him in like the seventh round because I think he's actually going to be good.
way,
not even close.
I, was like, wow, all right, well, apparently everyone else is on the same train as I am. And so I will probably never see the lights of Marvin Harrison Jr.
on my team.
Uh,
you could, the way he's being drafted, you could target him in the second round and not get him.
He's been going very early second round in almost everything I've seen.
I, don't think he's Jamar chase level of, uh,
talent. Okay. I shouldn't say that. I shouldn't say that. I like to be skeptical of a lot of rookie players. So,
but I would be, more sure that Jamar chase would be successful year one, than I feel like Barwin Harrison Jr.
will be successful year one. I am not a big fan of Kyler Murray. With reports about him, like not studying and having a clause for a lot of different things.
And
the, the coaching staff situation has been terrible and Arizona. And
I I'm just, I don't see it. I, I, don't think he's going to be as successful as what his average draft position will,
will
correlate with,
I don't follow college football really at all. So I have no personal opinions on Marvin Harrison.
It's just the fact that he's a rookie and I can't believe he's
breaking top 12. Like. I've seen him go first round in mock drafts. Now, I think his ADP is more mid second round.
17th overall, but you just don't know with a rookie. He hasn't faced NFL teams before.
Also, I don't know what his, his, uh, like his height, what, how tall is
he? Like how tall is he?
How fast? What was his 40 time?
Uh, he's 6'4 Oh, okay. Okay, I get it. Uh, what was this one? Yeah, I thought he? was shorter because I think Jamar Chase is like 6'1 or 6'2. He had a 4'4, 6 Uh, oh, Jamar Chase is 6'0. So, I, I know in the, for a while, uh, wide receivers were not really typically above 6'0 or 6'1,
so having a taller wide receiver is kind of
a luxury.
That you aren't really used to seeing much in the past. because a lot of the corners end up being like 5'10 5'11
So if you have a guy that's 5'11 and you're going against a guy that's 6'4, like, I'm sorry, but like, you know, playing basketball, like
me playing against someone that's 6'4, no, that's not going to go well.
Well, look at, you know, other guys. You got Calvin Johnson, 6'5
Yeah. He's a different, he's just a different unit.
Like he was, he
was
a long time ago now. So that's like,
yeah, his everything about him was
an outlier at the time.
Yeah. If he didn't retire early, he might be considered one of the most,
Insane wide receiver in terms of being an athlete over his like over like duration over a career. Because he retired so early, I think it might be a little bit hard to, to kind of make that case because he didn't make it that far.
I, I remember seeing him and, you know, being a green Bay Packers fan and playing against the Detroit lions twice a year, you know, I was going to say at least twice a year.
I'm like, no, it was twice a year Cause they're not going to the playoffs.
You're right.
Uh, or at least we're not both going to the playoffs, but you know, that's, that's neither here or there. Um,
like he just, the size of his hands were insane. His ability to just like make one handed grabs, uh, just be able to go up for the ball with the vertical leap and he had the speed to go with it.
Like he's just a freak of nature. Like there's a reason why he was called Megatron.
Yeah. Yeah. a little bit of
a tangent, but did you see, um, Some interview he did, you know, well, after retirement, he showed the state of his hands,
um, from the
years in the league and the toll it's taking on him.
His fingers are all just like crooked.
Like they go at crazy angles.
uh, because of catching the football.
I'm not sure if they're specific injuries or what, but he was just talking about like, yeah, he can't,
it really just did a number on his hands.
I don't know if that's just from catching
or from colliding with guys or what, but it looks like every finger is broken at a ridiculous angle and maybe they were at one point and that's why it's like it. But yeah, um, it's, it's pretty insane.
I'll have to see. Yeah.
Yeah. Wow. That is, that is
pretty,
you see it
there. Ugh.
Yeah. It's like a good, good, like 30 degree
it in a while.
And
it's, it makes sense from
wiggle a pinky completely, like, it looks like double joint, but I don't necessarily think he's double jointed. I think that's
just the injuries.
Yeah. It could be like injury, but also I could see him because like when you're going to practice and stuff like,
no, it doesn't make sense.
don't know. It seems like an unnatural angle. I don't know.
Yeah. I'm just trying to think of like, how did he, I could understand like the index finger.
Cause when you're catching the ball, like you're like this, you know? but then like, he's got like
the
pinky
and the, the ring finger and I'm like wait, like how does how do you get that from? Yeah. I don't know. That'll be something I'll have to check out later.
Yeah, I don't know. I it'll be fun to kind of see where the the season goes. We'll still have 12 player 12 managers in our league From what I have seen, um, we have our draft next week, so we'll do a podcast with that,
which will be a little bit longer.
Yep. I don't think we have any rule changes within our league that we'd have to think about or worry about. We still, like, have those. What is it? Four wide receiver tight end flex spots, is that right? Yeah, that's the, that's the kind of unique thing about it. It's standard, not half or full PPR. What do most leagues do as far as
PPR? Points per reception for
I don't remember. I don't, I don't remember. I've, I've never put too much stock in PPR. I probably
it talked about enough that I'm like, oh, maybe we're kind of unique in not doing it. Like, so many of the rankings that I see consider that. They're like, oh, choose this guy, he's
great in PPR, or if it's at least half, and I'm like,
well,
we don't do that, so I don't know if I should really listen to that advice or not.
yeah, it's it's difficult to because every given Sunday is a little bit different depends on what the team's game plan is What the team's defense's game plan is? So if they have like a really great corner, then, you know,
it's They still might get a bunch of yards, but it might only be off one or two receptions or something like that.
I I don't know. I've never put too much stock in PPR.
I've been more focused on, Hey, who's going to
get consistent yardage? Cause if they average
a hundred yards per game, that's what, isn't that like 10 points or something like that early?
yeah, I think it is in our league.
10 points from a wide receiver, just off of yardage is pretty good.
And then, Hey, off chance to get a touchdown. Hey, now you've got 16 points. You're beating me out like the typical, guesstimate that Yahoo tends to give you for, trying to
kind of leverage your, matchup.
Yeah. little off topic, but just crossed my mind. Do you
like or avoid pairing Quarterback
wide receiver combos on your team.
I don't really care one way or the other.
you You don't care one way or another, you
Like, it's a feast or
famine sort of thing. Like, if they're connecting, then you're like, Have a chance to break records with, uh,
your point totals But then if they have a bad day, you're losing that week.
So
Yeah. I mean, I had three, three Dolphins, three Dolphins players
But I
was
three Dolphins players last year. And, it just happened to kind of work out that way. I drafted
two in round nine, Raheem mustard and round 10 Tyree kill round one, all these players and stuff were available for the whole draft.
Okay, well, it's time for me to take a quarterback. Who's who's some of the what's what's, kind of like the best available. I guess it's Tua and
we'll go with it. And I'm happy with that.
I'm not going to complain about it. And then,
uh, Rahimoster, I was not anticipating him to be as good as he was last year. And so I picked him round 10
as kind of a, Hey, he's going to just fill the third, like that wide receiver, tight end flex spot if necessary,
until Jonathan Taylor gets back and then he ends up lighting up. I'm like, okay, cool. He's going to be part of my start. Like, okay, we're got Raheem Moster. We've got Josh Jacobs and we have Jonathan Taylor is my big three. Then you have Tyreek Hill on top of that. I mean, who's gonna complain? Uh, after seeing that dude. I don't know who screwed up this league. Don't mind if I do,
Yeah, yeah, I'm the same way I don't care if I'm
heavy on guys from the same team, you know, they all, if they all have the same bi week, I think there's too many moving parts by the time I get to bi weeks to try to forecast if that's going to even be an issue.
I don't even
the guys will be injured and if it is, yeah, it's one week.
Get it out of
Yeah,
rip the band
aid off.
Yeah, I almost prefer having like most of my guys on one bye week because I don't have to try to transition like, okay, I have to manipulate what position I need to cut someone in order to make room for this other person who's going to fill the void of this person who's on bye.
Uh, It makes things simpler in my brain and also
The goal is not to.
Not to go undefeated, it's to first of all, make playoffs.
And so if I say, Hey, I have a guaranteed
in theory, if everyone never,
no, no one got injured, I have the same team
all but one week.
I mean, that's kind of what you want, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
Cause then you're putting your best, your
opportunity to win all but one game.
Equally
course. Yeah.
Whereas if you
spread it off over a course of
multiple weeks, then you're, you're, you're only
sending 90 percent of your team in across
rather be your best 90 percent of the time rather than be 90 percent of your best all the time.
Yeah. exactly.
Cause honestly, We have so many
playoff spots and stuff available to where it doesn't really affect me that much, or I don't think it's affects me that much in a four person league. You can't really,
affect you.
In a four person playoff and a 10 person league
that
can screw you up real big.
You can be like, okay, well, I've got everyone on
by, I'm literally now one game behind.
Everyone
else And
my team is not quite functioning the way I was hoping it would. So
I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm kind of screwed, but I, I mean, with my team last year, I,
it's, it's just,
I'm sorry. It hurts. It hurts a lot
because you
the playoffs though, right?
I made the playoffs.
Yeah. But I finished the seventh
Seventh. Yeah. Okay. That's what I was thinking.
makes me just, it makes me question question, fancy football. But you know, again, that's fancy football.
Do you have any topics you wanted to bring up that you've been raring to talk about? Any bold predictions for this season?
Are you gonna, you know, drop the gauntlet and say, you're going to win this
No, I was gonna go make a bold prediction in saying I'm not going to win.
Oh, Okay,
That's my bold prediction. Yes, it is. It's very bold
I'll make that same bold prediction that I'm not going to win. I mean, I don't think I'm going to go back to back. I think I'm going to be distracted by doing this podcast. I'm gonna I have other stuff on my, mind, and I'm not going to have the same success I had last year, but that's okay.
My real bold prediction would be my first round, pick is, is going to not. Be even close to average draft position. It's, it's, it's not.
I,
First
I, I don't think my
that far off in the, like, what I
see is normally it diverges. It starts off real clustered
with a couple exceptions, but at least
if, if you're a person that follows you know, players in the league pretty well, I would have expected that you'd have similar opinions to ADP in the first couple rounds, and then that would definitely diverge by the middle rounds.
I guess, I guess, I don't know because I don't know what position I'm drafting. So if I'm drafting one, I'm drafting Christian McCaffrey. So I guess I'd be on pretty close to average draft position. But if I'm
because no one can take him from you if you're drafting first
yeah,
can give that away.
Yeah, I, I can't, I
I'm not gonna get it out of you if you're drafting fifth who you're picking, of course,
I'm so used to drafting in the like 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th positions, uh, to where basically my first round pick is probably going to be closer to like average draft position 14 or 15,
Okay.
I don't have the same
viewpoints and I'm like maybe it's because I'm getting older. I'm getting more stubborn. and I'm like, no, this doesn't work this way.
In our league. It is. It is very different. Um,
in terms of who's drafting what position, uh,
seeing a lot of quarterbacks go in Round one. Round one is just like, okay. All right. Well, maybe, maybe, maybe I will be in line closer to the actual average draft position just because of that.
But in terms of what most other draft drafts and stuff would be like now, I probably, I don't, I don't know if I can do that.
I'm just rooting for some defenses to start going.
Round six.
Thanks, Chris.
Yes, thank you Everyone who wants to do that. Um,
you know,
and if you watch this, you'll know I'm laughing at you if you do that
In all seriousness. But I want to load up on wide receivers and running backs. I'll tell everyone that much. So
Anyone else who goes off the board early, helps me in that goal.
One more thing I want to just touch upon.
We talked about, um, the fact that our league has some unique rules. None are changing this year, so it's pretty consistent.
What about the NFL?
What,
Oh
there's one big rule that's
The kickoff.
the kickoff.
Is that going to affect anything,
I don't see an immediate impact, but like,
are we gonna have kickers get more chances?
Could, could
kickers that can
really boot it from distance? Has slightly more value. I don't think it's going to transform fantasy football, but do you foresee any, any, uh, shifts that could happen because of that
I think you're going to see late game offenses. The ball back. So teams that were good, but not great are going to have more opportunities to put up points, fancy
Okay.
That'd be my, my guess, but
I mean
with a first year role,
Yeah.
but it's a shot in the dark.
Yeah. Do you like the change?
I Do I think,
pretty cool to
me.
it's, it's entertaining on a different perspective.
Uh, cause I think onside kicks, there's a couple of reasons why those were bad. One is player safety, which Yeah, I think anyone can get behind or anyone should be able to get behind. um, two, the, the action of an onsite kick is
very sudden, very quick. It's it's bang, bang. That's it. It's over.
You don't really get to see like the intricacies of it.
There's a lot of people basically like, Oh, it's our ball. And you know, like, they're like trying to fight for the ball when the possessions already, In like, in my head the play's ended. So the possession should be staying with this person, but it's really hard to identify possession
when there's 20 people sitting on the ball, um, which I think just eats up a lot of time as a, as a viewer, it's not really interesting or exciting, I think having
The new, new kickoff rule with onside, onside kicks be
more engaging, more interesting, and more
native to.
How a normal kickoff would be where you're kicking it and it goes like way down the field. Um, so I think it would be more intuitive for people that don't normally watch.
I will be a little sad that
you missed that just kind of random chaos that was kind of entertaining on
the
onside kick, but overall I think it's a positive change for sure.
like one of the more, more interesting onsite kicks was coming out a halftime at the Superbowl between New Orleans and Indianapolis. That was like, wow, that was really cool. And like spontaneous. Um, and then I know there's been at least, uh, uh, Pat McCaffey had a onsite kick where, right, where he,
Right. He just like kicked it straight forward and basically recovered his own onside kick. I believe that was Pat.
Elena Falcons kicker. uh,
First, I don't remember his first name, but Ku, um,
he even like developed like his own
way of, Yeah.
Young Hoku, like he, he, he developed like this, maybe, maybe he didn't specifically develop it, but he was like one of the first ones to actually implement this.
Into his onsite kicks in a game
of kicking the ball instead of like end over end, like kind of kicking it sideways to where it bounces really kind of different and weird. And I was excited to see that. Sad, that, that mastery or the element of like, Hey, let's develop something new
kind of dies.
So there, with the new setup There'd really be no way to disguise an
They have, I believe they have to declare it.
Yeah, Yeah,
and it has to, I think it has to be in the fourth
it's coming.
I mean, you'll still see it because sometimes teams have no choice. It's
their last chance, but, but Yeah. um,
But like that that's where it's like, Hey, you know, it's coming. Like, uh, we're going to really watch this happen. But I think it's like 93 percent is recovered by the team that is receiving, receiving the ball.
yeah,
So instead, I think we're going to see that number be closer to like, you know,
20 percent goes to the team that was trying to, like, recover the onside kick, you know, or get the ball back.
As much as I hate
giving the team that's behind a chance like more of a chance than they deserve
because the team that is, has the advantage worked for that advantage.
I also think it's More interesting from the game. And it's still a low percentage like dealio. And I also think it's going to really kind of make, uh,
make a lot of kickers money, they'll now be like, Hey, I have a special skill. Now this matters a
lot
it went the opposite direction. Like you thought maybe kickers were going to be obsolete
in a way. Um,
the way. things were trending with the kickoff rule changes in recent years, but now it's kind of reinvigorated that position.
There are kickers and punters or kickers are, don't always do kickoffs and punter, like sometimes punters do them, and sometimes kickers just kick field goals and so on and so forth because of different things. And I think you're gonna see a kind of a shift in that too. So you might see more,
more kickers doing it, um, because they're, they're trying to get the right angle rather than just kick it through the back of the end zone. Um, for those kinds of kicks.
Well, if that's all you've got,
um, I guess we can wrap it up. I'm really excited with this season. We have a
guest popping in right now. This will be our first official guest
Hi, persimmon.
She's our social cat.
we'll also try to get some league members in here
in coming weeks. We'll get commissioner in.
Um, I'm excited and hopefully, um, people in our league will be
watching a couple of these as well.
Uh, if anyone who is watching wants to send in some questions or say that you want to appear on the podcast, feel free to do so. uh, email me at smashvillefantasyfootball@gmail.com.
I would love to hear your thoughts, what you want to, uh, hear talked about with our league,
and maybe we will get
some people on, see how many people we can invite on over the course of the season.
We'll try to one of these a week, you know, this is a spare time thing for us, so we may miss some weeks,
We may
double up some weeks,
We've got a couple mock drafts in the bag that I'm gonna pull out over this next week.
Uh, and then we have the live draft coming up next Wednesday, August 28th, I think. Is that
right?
hmm.
Yep. so we'll be doing the live draft. Um, and that'll kind of kick off the season. I'm fired up, Will. Are you fired up?
Absolutely not.
Sounds good.
That's it for this episode of the Smashville Fantasy Football Podcast! As always, we have aspirations of adequacy, so come back and we'll try to do a bit better next time. Who knows? We may even reveal that one sneaky trick guaranteed to win your fantasy league. But until then, keep those trades rolling and get your lineups set before kickoff.
See you next week!
