The RB and Preher Show
Just a couple of guys hanging out, talking fantasy football, and taking their keeper and dynasty leagues way too seriously. Each week, Robert Brookman and Matt Preher (yeah, like "prayer") break down the drama, trades, matchups, and waiver wire wins from their own leagues—and probably roast a league mate or two along the way. If you love fantasy, friendship, and the kind of banter only long-time league rivals can bring, you just found your new favorite podcast. Wise listeners welcome.
The RB and Preher Show
Keeper Strategy and Talking Orphan Team Takeover
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This is the RBM prayer show. Just a couple of guys hanging out and talking fantasy football. Now, here are your hosts, Robert and Matt.
SPEAKER_01All right, welcome in to the RBM prayer show. It is Thursday, August 13th. Matt here along with Robert. It is week one of 2026 preseason. Can you believe we've finally made it to actual, like, I guess not actual, but like semi-actual football? No, I mean it's it's real football.
SPEAKER_02I don't know if I would consider it actual or good football, but it is real. And I will take it right now. It's just, yeah, no, I'm I'm excited. It's it's definitely it, you know, this time it happens every year, obviously. And you always forget how long the summer really is, like from the time that the Super Bowl ends. And really, I guess really to me, it's more the time that the draft ends to when all of like training, like preseason really starts. That that it feels like the longest, just three months. It just takes forever. Um, it's so hard. But I'm I'm glad it's here. We're back, we're ready to go. We're back weekly now, which I love. So let's get going, man.
SPEAKER_01Yep. Yep. Uh so here's your quick question for today, Matt, as we jump in. Who is a player that is currently going in the top 12? So first round pick that you wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole.
SPEAKER_02Um, so I I actually have a few ways that I want to go with this. And I actually want to check. I just want one. I don't need 15. I'm gonna give you four. I'm gonna give you 12. I'm gonna give you 12 guys that are going in the top 12 that I don't want right now. Uh no, I'm gonna go. Well, I I guess it depends on what you're looking at. And so you'll have to tell me if this guy is going in the top 12. Um, is Jonathan Taylor going in the top 12, or is he a second rounder right now?
SPEAKER_01Johnny Taylor is 6.8. So yeah, he's in the top 12.
SPEAKER_02Perfect. So he he is on top of my list. Um, he is a guy that scares me to death. Um, it's more of just uh he's just due for such a massive uh regression in what he did. And if you look at his season, I had him last season. Yeah, we saw it at the end of the year. And he yeah, he was amazing for the first 10 weeks or so, and then it just tanked. Um, and it was it, I don't think it was necessarily as simple as because Daniel Jones got hurt, but it kind of happened around that time. I think it was just like everything. I think it was just the wear and tear. Um, plus, I think he had he was really touchdown heavy, if I remember correctly, last year. I'm looking him up right now. So he had yeah, last year he had 18 rushing touchdowns, and that's a lot. Could he repeat? I mean, maybe, but it's really like I think he's probably due into regression to be closer to you know that 11-12 mark. And that's a big deal. Um, and when you're trying to get your first round running back, you you really need someone that you can trust. And really, to me, it's someone that is kind of on the up and up. It's it's going up. Um, and I just I everything when I look at Jonathan Taylor just worries me. And it just I'm not I'm not picking him in that first, especially not at six. Maybe, if you want to tell me, maybe if it's at that turn, the the 12 2.1 turn, but not halfway through the first round. Who's on your list?
SPEAKER_01So there were two guys that I'm kind of between on mine that I don't want anything to do with. Um they are for very different reasons, but they're both the same position. I'm just gonna say both of them because you said you were gonna go with you can't.
SPEAKER_02I didn't give you mine. That is that's uh people watching.
SPEAKER_01Um, so the one I really don't want is I guess between these two, the one I would want less is CMC. Um I so he was on my list. Weirdly enough, I don't think I've ever owned CMC on a team before. Um I've still won plenty. And I think that's part of the reason why I shy away from him is CMC is uh 30 years old as a running back. I mean, that is that is old, old. Um you know, when he is healthy, his, you know, he's the number one running back in PPR last year. The year before, he was unhealthy and he was number 68. The year before that, he was healthy and he was number one. Before that, he was healthy and he was number two. And then he had two bad seasons where he missed time. He was 38 and 53. And before that, he was one and two again. So it's really a question of is he going to be healthy or not? Um, that being said, you know, people always say like you can't win your fantasy draft in round one, but you can certainly lose it. And I think he is a player that that uh fits that mold better than most players. Like you if if CMC is healthy and hits, it makes the rest of your draft a lot easier, uh, where you can miss on other players. If he is unhealthy at 30, and with the way that team is trending, um it's gonna be bad. And it's really you can't recover from it if he's bad. You can win your league without him, though. Uh, and it's not that hard to win without him either if you hit on some of the other spots that are out there. So CMC is just one, I just man, it's the amount of workload he's gotten over the last few years. I just I don't want anything to do with him.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. No, it it definitely worries me. That cliff is coming, and it's when it hits, it's gonna hit hard. And I actually, funny story, um, in one of the very first dynasty leagues that I ever did was back in 2020. Um, and I had the I actually got lucky. It was just like a random draw. I got the 101 and I took CMC. And that was after three straight years of being a fantasy god, he just all of a sudden 2020 was that first year he got hurt and he hit him. It's your fault. I'm pretty sure we can now blame it on you. My apologies. It's not it's not the electric substation. It was me. It was me doing that.
SPEAKER_01So I'm sorry. Matt, Matt, substation in Matt's basement. Um, all right. No, cool. I I think that is helpful to know who to stay away from there. So a couple things we're gonna do on the show tonight. Uh, one, we have the last of our main leagues together, uh, has a draft coming up. And so we've been talking about this league for well over a year now at this point. This is our keeper league. It's a 12-team PPR keeper league that starts three flexes, two wide receivers. Uh, you keep one franchise player that doesn't cost you anything, and you can keep them for as long as you want. You also keep two players at cost, uh, except each year you keep them, their draft uh cost moves up one round.
SPEAKER_02So the first year you keep them, it stays where they drafted, what round you drafted them. And then every year after that, it moves up one round. And that includes it should be noted because we're probably gonna talk about it, but that does include trades as well.
SPEAKER_01That's right. It does. Uh so we'll talk about that league. We're we're actually gonna look at a couple of the teams, our keepers lock on Saturday. So we've got about uh about 36 hours from now that our keepers are locking on, but keepers are pretty well known at this point. So we're gonna take a look at a couple of the teams and talk about draft strategy based on who these teams are already keeping and what matter I might do from those spots in the draft. Uh, the other thing we weren't gonna talk about tonight is we're gonna talk about orphan draft strategy. So uh a lot of fantasy players haven't necessarily done orphan drafts if you're kind of new to that concept and you're like, what the heck is an orphan draft? Or what the heck is is taking over an orphan team in an existing league. We'll talk a little bit about that. Matt and I joined a league actually this summer uh that was a long-term dynasty league uh with IDP. And so we'll talk a little bit about that league, what it was like to go through joining an already in progress league, taking over existing teams, uh, doing something. Uh what was the type of draft that we did, Matt? I I always forget the term that they used for it.
SPEAKER_02Um I can't remember either.
SPEAKER_01No, as soon as I said it, I was like, I'm I'm gonna forget the name of this, but but uh basically draft something like that. It was a reshuffling of the cards. Four new teams came in. Uh so we reshuffled all those teams and did a short, small redraft over just those teams. So we'll talk a little bit about that as well. Uh and the IDP access, uh the IDP specifics of that league, too. But so as we jump in, let's talk a little bit of keeper. Uh, if people have listened to our podcast before, you know a little bit about our keeper league. As the two out of the last three years reigning champion, I feel the best equipped to speak on this league. Um actually, Matt, how many times have you won this league?
SPEAKER_02The keeper league?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um, well, before we move to sleeper, I won it like five times five times this league. None times. No, this is transferred. If I look at if I look in league history, it's gonna say none.
SPEAKER_01So um so so the league is a keeper league.
SPEAKER_02If you look in the history in flea flicker, it'll say five times.
SPEAKER_01I don't know what that is. So this is a 12-team keeper league that has one quarterback, two running backs, two wide receivers, a tight end, three flexes, and let's see, one, two, three, seven bench. Uh it's a PPR league. I don't think we have anything weird about our scoring. Uh I believe it's is it four points? I'm pretty sure it's four, but we're quarterbacks now that I'm saying it.
SPEAKER_02Actually, is it? I should pass type of stuff.
SPEAKER_01Levi likes to six.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's six for it's six for passing, and then everything else is is kind of normal. And then this year, or no, no, I'm sorry, we do have bonuses for uh like 100-yard games, 200-yard games, and like rushing, receiving, and then 300 and above for passing.
SPEAKER_01Yep. So so this is the league setup. As we mentioned, this league has been around for a while. It's a slow draft, uh, and the draft will be in about two weeks, but we're gonna take a look at a couple of teams on the board uh that have already selected their keepers that have a plan for what they're gonna go do and talk from our perspective uh about you know, if we were to take over these teams, what would this actually look like? What would we do if we were sitting in their position? Um, and and so with that, let's see. Matt, do you want to start us off? And you get to pick. I gave you a couple options. So you you tell me which one which team you want to look at first.
SPEAKER_02Um, well, so we're gonna start with um our good pal, the Frankfurt phenomenon or phenom or whatever he goes by. This is for for our old school fans of the show, um, all one of you, we've got uh Levi, who you've heard, and I'm pretty sure he has been on and has met. This is one of his brothers. Um this is the guy that we actually have a drop that was created specifically because of him. Do you have the drop? Do you have it ready?
SPEAKER_01I do around here somewhere if you can hear it.
SPEAKER_02I do not hear it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I figured it's I I'm sharing too many things at the same time. So that's all it is.
SPEAKER_02Well, we have a drop that was for him. Oh, we're gonna do it. No, you just keep talking, you yes. We have a drop that was essentially because for those who may or may not remember, there's an infamous trade that went down in our league last year. I'm an idiot! We got there. Look at that. Yeah, there we go. Fine. There you go. Uh we uh he traded away. I I want to actually where who has the guy now?
SPEAKER_01CD Lamb is on the JMarsh team. He is their keeper. Do you need me to pull up that trade? Is that what you're looking for? I am actually, yeah. Let me see if I can find it. You might have to look it up on your phone. You just keep going, I'll find this trade for you.
SPEAKER_02Sorry, no, I'm gonna just try to do it. So yeah, so he traded CD Lamb. So what he did was he traded C D Lamb and his second round pick for Brock Purdy, Isaiah Pacheco, and Quentin Johnson. Now, mind you, the only thing in his defense was Quentin Johnson. This was, I think, maybe week four or week five of the season. So he was he was balling out, he was going off. Um, he was, I think, like wide receiver four or five overall um in fantasy at that time.
SPEAKER_01Now, of course, right after this happened and C D Lamb was on the IR at that time.
SPEAKER_02Yes, that is true. He had just gotten hurt, and this was um it was it was just one of the worst trades I've ever seen in my entire life. Um thankfully, you still didn't win any money um off of it. Yeah, um, but it did set you up to have a really good draft. So, like, my my first thought here is like, well, what can I do? Because when I look at him, I don't have a second round pick, nor the way that he's set up right now. I don't know if you want to show the draft board again, but the way that he's set up right now is he's got Dave Flowers as his lone keeper, his only keeper that tells you about this team. And he had one guy worthy of keeping from this team. And what he like it and he's got him as a keeper in the third round. In the third round, like what are we doing here? He like it, you get a free keeper in round 16. I don't know why he's he's still listed in the third round. I'm I'm gonna assume and hope that this is because of some wonky setting thing, and the commissioner just hasn't updated it yet, but everyone else is updated. So I can just I just I cannot understate how bad this setup is right now. You don't mess up!
SPEAKER_03Now take your ass.
SPEAKER_02Yep, exactly. Um well now we gotta put the E on our um on our podcast when we list it. Something like that.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so um, so this team has no second round pick. They have the third overall pick, and they're keeping Zay Flowers with their third round pick. Let's let's just assume that Levi does the right thing and Zay Flowers becomes his franchise. Okay, so yeah, he doesn't have a second, he's only keeping Zay Flowers, and he is picked three overall. So you're sitting there, you can see who's available. What are you gonna do?
SPEAKER_02You pretty much have narratives with all of our uh guys left that we can pick. We have here's some of the names that are still on the board. You've got Saquon, Ashton, uh Genty, AJ Brown, Kenneth Walker, Derek Henry, Jeremiah Love, Nico Collins. I think that those are like the top like six or seven guys. This team, I mean, really, it's just anything you want to do. I mean, to me, I'd want Ashton Genty. So if he does not go in those first two picks, I'm hammering on Ashton Genty, and then I'm going hero RB style. I'm gonna have to. Um, and I'm gonna just have to pick up whoever I can in rounds three, four, probably hammer wide receivers from that point. Um, pick up just, you know, I think with this one, I think one thing that is noted, and I'm sure we might even talk about it like later with some of these other guys. With our with our the league setup, the top like five or six tight ends in the in the fantasy are all kept. Like you can't get them. So really no one would should be probably clamoring to have a top one, like a tight end in the first few rounds. Um, it's just my two cents. Uh, the only one left is Harold Fannon. If you're really interested in him, I have my worries about him personally. But um, so to me, it's uh go hero RB. Hopefully get Ashton Genty. Um, I might, since it's a first round pick, whoever you pick here, you're most likely not keeping next year. And so what I would do is I would probably target um, if I can't get Genty, I want nothing to do with Saquon, I'd probably end up going maybe a Kenneth Walker, maybe Derrick Henry. Um, and then like if I have to go wide receiver, Nico Collins is what I'm looking at. It does help that you have the third pick. Man, you're just setting yourself up for it's it's just gonna be such a bad draft for him. Because you're literally looking at walking away away with right now. I mean, yes, assuming that Zay Flowers gets moved down, you're you're just gonna have you're gonna have maybe best case scenario, like a genty Kenneth Walker. And then in round three, we're probably gonna be like who who are we looking at for round three?
SPEAKER_01You'd be looking at David Montgomery, Jamison Woods. Uh Scattaboo and Jalen Waddell, Devontae Adams, yeah, Trevion, Henderson, they all tend to sit right around that area.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. So for me, like I I would have to, I would go hero RB if I could. Um and then just hope and pray. That's that's essentially all that you can do with this team at this point.
SPEAKER_01You picked a team that you could rag on that honestly, like I did that on purpose. Yeah, having one player. I love you, Lucas, but I had to. Yeah. Put you a little bit behind the eight ball. But being said, it's not an insurmountable hole. I mean, uh keeping up to three players is not that massive of a keeper league. Losing a second round pick doesn't help you, but yeah, you can put another competitive team, even with the situation they're in.
SPEAKER_02There's even an option too. Like, we have a slow draft. He should consider, like, I would be looking. Can I trade back? Can I get off of that one three and trade back to the back half of the first round, pick up another pick? I mean, you are sitting there. You could trade up. You've got a plethora of second round picks, exactly. And you could give him tonight. I know you could give him a couple, you could give him his own second round pick back in the trade uh to move up to that first round or the one three. Um, and like you could look at that, he could kind of take your first and then his second, and that would probably be a better setup for him. But yeah, it's it's a tough spot for sure. I think he probably has the toughest spot out of everybody um just because of how the trades fell or how he traded, how he set up his draft board, and then just kind of all of his needs because he's not really keeping anybody.
SPEAKER_01Yep. All right. Uh as we continue forward, I'm gonna look at the team I picked next to talk about, and that's our team on the rise, who uh has the first overall pick. Um so their keeper situation is one I really like. Uh, this team is keeping, as they're franchised, they're keeping Bichon. So he's free. Uh, and then his other keeper is Drake May, which you may think keeping a quarterback in a PPR league with that many wide receivers and flexes that's not super flex is weird. But Drake May's a 14th round pick, and he's gonna remain a double-digit round pick for the foreseeable future of his career. So it's just a really good one to hang on to, especially at cost. Uh, and then he's not keeping a third player, which is interesting. Um, I'm not gonna get into conjecture about should they keep a third one or anything like that, but just kind of looking at the top of their the draft, this is a team that's got Bijan that's got a quarterback already, so they don't really need to fill that. And they're sitting on the on the turn uh, you know, in every single round. What I'd be doing, so Matt, you rattled off a handful of the players that are available right at the top of the draft board. This team gets their pick of everybody. And I think what I would be doing is I would be immediately stacking. So the the best available wide receiver, the highest ADP wide receiver that's on the board is AJ Brown. AJ Brown's in New England now. You've got Drake May and AJ Brown together, and you've got your whether you want to consider it hero RB or they take a running back in the second round, doesn't really matter. You've got your your top wide receiver, then you've got his quarterback, who is one of the top five, depending on who you're talking to. And then you've got probably the number one and number two best running back in all of football. So that's what I'd be doing right off the bat. Uh coming back around, you know, 24 or so picks later, uh, things get a little bit more interesting. Obviously, teams can do all kinds of crazy stuff, and you never quite know. But the good thing about this team is that uh The the top three rounds in this league, uh, a lot of picks have changed hands in a keeper league, which is not it's becoming more and more common, especially in this league. So this is a team that owns 212. They also own 301, and then they own 311. Uh, so they get a break kind of in between their normal picks that are out there. So at 212, um, looking at where they're going to be sitting, that's kind of the Lad McConkie, Meka Gbuka, Travis A. Chan, Cam Scattabu, Jalen Waddle range that we talked about before. Um, you know, I think that's to me, those those names, if the wide receivers at the top are there, then I'm probably going that direction and just playing it as a hero RB. Um you mentioned tight ends. There's not a whole lot. This is a team that's not keeping one. So I'm probably just going back and forth, back and forth wide receiver running back for the foreseeable future. Um, you know, how you feel about tight ends is kind of going to depend on whether this is a team that decides to use their third or fourth round pick on Harold Fannon or whatever. But there's a lot of options there. They're probably not in on Kyle Pitts after having Bichon on this roster. So maybe this is a team that takes a chance on uh Laporta or Dalton Kincaid or George Kittle uh with his rehab and how that's going right now. So this is probably a team, in my estimation, that I would be looking at uh more of a hero RB build. I think that's generally more typical in this league, anyway, with it being a PPR and everything else we have going for us. That being said, you know, if if some of these running back names fall, Cam Scadabo would be an interesting pick to pair with Bijan uh and to get some other, you know, AJ Brown. Say this team has AJ Brown, uh Lad McConkey, and Cam Scadaboo to go along with Bijan and Drake May at the end of the 3-0 on the book. That that's 3-0. And if they have that type of team, it's a really good uh start to this team. It's very balanced, and I think it can continue to be balanced. Uh, and they can take some shots on some some other interesting names there. So I like the spot, I like the keepers. I'm really interested in how this team gets built out through the draft. So yeah. Who do you want to go to next, Matt?
SPEAKER_02Um so the next one is I will call out um T Park, um, the champion champion. Yep, the reigning champ. Um, so obviously he had a really strong team last year. I do think he got helped by some guys that just really turned it on because I think he entered the playoffs as like the fourth, maybe the fifth seed. Yeah, if you remember one of the top two seeds.
SPEAKER_01He had CMC, Chase Brown, and Ash Gen Genchi were his three running backs. And Chase Brown had a really bad beginning to the year and turned it on and went nuts in the playoffs. And that's what's when when Burrow came back. Yeah, which is really what drove this team to his championship, but I digress.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so I think I think he's got I mean, he's got a pretty good core there. Um, I don't personally like keeping CMC. I know we talked about that earlier. We both like already voiced our opinion. Look, if it works, it's gonna be great. If it doesn't, like I it's I I'd forgotten that he had Genty, so I would have said keep Ashton Genty, but I don't remember what round he would have had to be kept in. Um but well, you could have kept Genty as your franchise as your franchise, yeah. So um I really like the George Pickens uh pick there in the third round. Um I think that's lower than where he would go in this draft. Um and I think he has potential to be a top 10 receiver in the league this year. Um and then with Chase Brown, I think that's really good value. Of course, as you just mentioned, it's it's tied to Burrow and Burrow's health. Um so to me, to me, there's really kind of two ways. And it really depends on how you feel about CMC and his health. If you are perfectly fine with CMC and you have no issues or bombs and you don't think anything's gonna happen and you're good with it, then you the other thing to note here is that he's got the 112, but he doesn't have a second round pick, and then pickens is his third round, so he doesn't get to pick again until the very beginning of the fourth. Now he's got the two, he's got the first and second pick in the fourth round, which helps, but that's a pretty massive gap in between your picks. And so I but so what I would say is like to me, if you're at the 112, you got to go with um whoever the best available player is. So that could be Malik Neighbors, that could be, I mean, maybe Nico Falls, maybe. Um, you know, that could be, or you might look at like, you know, probably don't want a Rasheed Rice. Um, maybe he wants a T Higgins, and maybe he's gonna try and pick up. I don't think Burrow's kept anywhere. So maybe he's gonna maybe try to pick up Joe Burrow later, and then you can stack Brown, Higgins, and Burrow, um, or Tet and then even Devontae Smith right there. I think that like kind of when that 112 goes, my strategy is I can't try to like a lot of times you're trying to game it as to, oh, I really like this guy, but I think he's gonna be around when I'll pick again in the next round, like all of that. You can't do that here. There's you you have to go for who does he believe is gonna be the next great wide receiver um in this season that's available and go with that. Um, the other option, the other route to kind of go with this is which is probably where I would go personally with this, is um if I'm keeping CMC, which is I wouldn't have done that in the first place, but if I'm keeping CMC, I'm gonna go running back in that 112. Um, you know, I want to see who's available, but right now, like Saquon's probably gone, Genty's gone, like a lot of the guys that I'd mentioned earlier are probably gone. But you were just showing Josh Jacobs. I mean, I'm looking at Josh Jacobs, Kyron Williams, and Bucky Irving as kind of some of these guys that are, you know, should most likely be available there at the back end of that round one. And if you have those are if you can have one of those guys plus Chase Brown plus CMC. And if you believe like CMC, if he stays healthy, that's a really solid core at running back. That's a big if. But we all know, you know, what running backs do is that if you have top running backs, they really elevate your floor as a team week to week. And so it's it's gonna help keep him kind of at that top level, producing, you know, probably top two or three points in the league every single week. And so to me, I mean, to me, I wouldn't have kept CMC at all. But if I'm looking at that's the decision that was made and we're going uh from here, then what I would say is um I would probably you know lean towards running back, and then in the foot at that four fourth round turn there, you're hammering wide receiver. Um, or I don't like reaching for a Burrow, but if you take T Higgins with that 112, um you've got to take or the sorry the 4-1 or something, you have to take Burrow with that 4-2, in my opinion, just so you can guarantee that sack. Um but yeah, I mean, got a lot of options, did well last year, but I do think that CMC keeper really kind of it it puts you in a bit of a butt.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Uh personally, I'm not a fan of the keepers here, uh other than Chase Brown. Um, I I don't mind Chase Brown in the sixth at all. Uh I'm not as big a George Pickens fan as you, but I'm also not a Cowboys fan, so there's that. Um so yeah, and the CMC we talked about. We talked about that. We talked about CMC. I know, I know. He's a good player. I just he's not the type of player that I I tend to to like or to draft all that much. He's in one of those groups of players that I tend to go running back when there's there's those rice receivers pop up on the board. So all right. Um, the last team for me, I'm gonna call I'm gonna call an audible. Uh I'm gonna do your team actually. Um gosh. I just I was like, oh, you know what? It'd be fun. Uh let's look at Matt Matt's team, Matthew for short. So, Matt, you've you're keeping with your franchise Jamar Chase. That's easy. Of course. Um you are also keeping JSN with your sixth round pick, which again, two of the top three dynasty wide receivers in football with nothing, you know, late round picks makes a ton of sense. I, you know, Caleb Williams, I'm not going to question your keepers all that much. It's an interesting one, I think, depending on what people think of him. You know, will he throw for 4,000 yards? I'm not convinced yet, but I think he is an up-and-coming quarterback. So, and I know you're feeling on some of the bears' pieces there. So keeping Caleb Williams with a 14th round pick, okay, cool. Like, let's roll with it. I I do like the idea generally of keeping one of your onesie positions. Not saying I did this, but I like that idea because it just means that that's one less onesie you have to worry about during the draft. And if I can just go running back wide receiver as back and forth as much as I possibly can and not have to worry about the onesies, that's awesome. Um, so I like keeping at least one of the onesies if I can do that. You also have made some moves. So you have the 110, because you came in third, uh, which means you also have two three, but then you have also picked up two eight. I don't remember how you acquired that, by the way. You'd made a trade, obviously, at some point. I just don't know how to you gave up 310 when I traded.
SPEAKER_02No, so the the 310 trade I traded in the middle of the season last year to make a push. Um, and then the uh the two I got in a trade when I traded away McBride. I had Trey McBride.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's right. I forgot about that. Yes, yeah. So the McBride trade, that's right, that's what it was. Um yeah, so you have two seconds, you don't have your third, it's gone, not a major, major issue. Basically, traded 310 up to 2-8 and got rid of Trey McBride, and then the rest of your picks are yours. Um, yeah, so looking at your team, obviously you've got your two wide receivers and you've got a quarterback, uh, which means you're likely going running back heavy early, if I had to guess, especially knowing you don't have a third. Um my guess is if I remember right, I don't think you're as big of a Josh Jacobs fan as I am, but could be wrong there. No, you're kind of you're kind of in the range for Josh Jacobs and Kyron. Um my guess is you're probably going one of those two directions, or you're going to reach, but you're going to reach for a player that I know you like who is Javante Williams, uh, and not try to play the game of will he come back to me or will he not? Um crazier things have happened. I mean, could he come back to you based on ADP? Certainly he'd be in that range, but what do you want to do there? Uh so my guess is you take Kyron first uh to get one of them for sure, because I think you I know you like Javante. There's some other options there that I'm pretty confident you also like. But then even in round two, if Javante falls, great. And if not, I don't think you're you would take T. Higgins, but I know you love Tetro McMillan. Uh, so he would certainly be in contention for you there at 2-3. Uh, and knowing that you have a later second, that's probably where you're gonna end up going is to stay balanced. So two 110, if I'm in your shoes, I'm probably taking Kyron. That offense just looked poised to do some crazy massive stuff this year. So I think Kyron's gonna be a big winner uh for a lot of teams. Then turning around in 2-3, if he's available, probably taking somebody like Tedero McMillan or uh Devontae Smith, although having 2-8 means you can pivot if you need to to a Bucky or Javante if they fall. So let's just say Javante falls. I'm thinking you take Kyron in one, Javante in round two at the 2-3, and then you've got another pick sandwiched in between all of my second rounds and at 208. Uh and at 208, I'm pretty confident that Ladd McConkey will be sitting there for you. And I know your feelings on him. So you've got your two running backs, you've got JSN, Jamar Chase, and Ladd McConkey is your third, uh basically your first flex, your third wide receiver at that point, with Kaleo Caleb at your quarterback, and you're gonna sit pretty until you come back in round four at that point. You're a balanced team, you've got the PPR guys, you've got players that you like. That's the direction I'm going in there. Now tell me, in all the mocks, how close am I to actually getting your picks correct? Uh I feel like I feel like I feel like I got your picks.
SPEAKER_02Percentage chains of my my picks are less than 10%. Oh, whatever. I'm not even kidding. I I don't like any of the running backs. So I I have not been leaning running back in the fact. I actually hate the 110 pick because of who's on the board at that point. I'm personally I'm probably gonna try and look to trade back. Now, this league is not known for doing a lot of draft day trades. Well, so it's two items per pick, so there's not a total time to do that. Well, not draft day, but just like during the draft trades. So I don't know how like lucky I'll be to get that. And I've also like I've still got some trades out there with guys that are on my roster that I'm not keeping. Um, like I've got Tech McMillan, I'm not keeping him. I'm still trying to see if anybody wants to trade for him. Um, and the guys that are out there, they just they're not logging in. So if you're listening, please log in and check your trades. Uh and just reject them. It's fine. Yeah. I mean, reply. At least let me know that you're alive and that you're paying attention. But yeah. So, but no, actually, you're pretty off.
SPEAKER_01Oh, whatever. I mean, it's just I could show you my box. Hey, well, that's fine. That's fine. All right. So, with our remaining time, we want to talk about orphan drafts. Matt, let's talk about what the heck is an orphan league? What the heck is an orphan draft? What the heck is an orphan team?
SPEAKER_02So, orphans are people that don't have children or don't have parents, unfortunately. And so they get together and create a fantasy league and then they play.
SPEAKER_01They play together.
SPEAKER_02And it's usually like involves swords and lots of blood. It's just it's something that they used to do back in medieval times. That the, you know, they would make the peasant. Are we not talking about what we're talking about?
SPEAKER_01I don't know where you're going. You had me for like five seconds, and then uh you lost me entirely. So orphan drafts, not what Matt's talking about at all. These would be long-term leagues where some league members have chosen to leave, some have been kicked out. Uh, typically these are dynasty leagues that have, you know, teams that are well established, that have rosters, that have picks, that typically are taking over before rookie drafts and before different things like that. In our instance, so Matt and I joined a league that you found online that was a long-term and I'll say large scale in terms of the amount of players on these rosters that were taking over. Um, a large-scale keeper league that's out, uh, excuse me, a dynasty league that's out there. Uh, it's a really interesting league. Um, it's been around for a very long time, apparently. So, as two of the new four teams that came in, you and I came in, and I kind of alluded to it up front, what this league does is rather than just give you whatever team uh the league member that left had, and you just get their players and tough luck. If they stunk or if they didn't pay attention or if they traded away all their stuff before they left, you're just kind of out of luck, right? Uh but instead of doing that, what this league did was to do a compensatory draft or whatever the word is for it. Um it's a dispersal draft. Dispersal draft. There you go. That's a much better word for it. I like that. Dispersal draft. So all of the players from the four new league managers were thrown into a small-scale draft queue, and you could only draft from them. You couldn't pull in free agents from the rest of the league. Uh, so you had to draft them. This was done prior to their rookie draft. And so even though the team I took over, for example, was very old, the manager had traded away a lot of pieces, but then also didn't get great draft picks back. That was the other thing I meant to mention. The other thing that you drafted in the dispersal draft was not just players, but you actually also drafted back your 2026 draft picks. So if you wanted to select multiple first rounders from the 2026 class, you can go after those, but other people might take Amin Ra or Ken Walker or Justin Jefferson instead. And so that's exactly what happened. Is that we had four teams go in, make those picks. Uh, a couple of teams came away looking like they were rebuilders, a couple came away looking like contenders. Then from there, we went into the rookie draft with the rest of the league and built out the rest of our teams. And now, as we sit here, you know, coming into a new league as taking over an orphan team, it the thing I like about this structure was that it made our teams as the new owners, we could make them more or less competitive depending on what we wanted to do. And I don't mean less competitive as the team sucks. I mean less competitive right now.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I I want to note that most of the time, like you'll see stuff out there to jump in and take over an orphan all the time in dynasty leagues, um, especially if you get into like kind of just like national ones. It's not like your local friends and stuff. Um, most of the time when you're taking over that orphan, you are taking it over the what as is. Like you get the picks that they have, or the usually the lack of picks, you get the the players that they have, which are usually aging and or on the IR already. Um, you're getting it as is. Um, but it's kind of it, I think it's kind of becoming this new thing over the last few years that yes, they're doing the dispersal. And I, you know, I did want to say, like, if we had four teams, um, one of the teams um in our in the dispersal draft, he did kind of target the draft picks. He did seem to, he targeted like I think we all took players in the first round of our pick. Um, and these are quick rounds because it's only four picks in a round, but I'm pretty sure in either the second round, maybe the third, he actually took um he took the the 2027 first round pick that was on the board. Uh we don't even know where it's gonna be, um, but he took that pick. And so like it was his choice. He took, I think, of the four first rounders that were available, or five first rounders that were that were available, I think he took did he take three of them, including the one for next year.
SPEAKER_01Uh oh, that's a great question. I don't think he took three of them, but uh, he did take a lot. Um yeah, you're right. One guy took multi took a handful of the early 2026s as well as uh one of the early 2027s.
SPEAKER_02So sorry to get you off your flow, but but I did want to call that out before we got too far into it. No, you're fine. So so I did want to note for the the list, how many over under, or I won't do that, but how many uh roster spots do you believe that we have in this league? Not including IR. I don't want to include IR because you may not use them, but if you just count starting lineup, which includes offense and IDP, and it's a large IDP roster, yeah, and then you throw in bench and taxi squad. I I went and counted it up.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and here's a frame of reference. There are 22 starters for each team, yes, and it's 11 and 11. So take your best guess. Um, good luck with that, because you're I you're gonna be wrong. It's more than you think. Matt, what what is the number? The number with everything included again, not IR, is 65. 65. Taxi squad plus bench plus starters. Yeah, yeah, it's ridiculous. It's nutty. Um but it is really interesting, and and I will say I like I like this league setup. One of the reasons I really like the setup is because I I think in fantasy and especially in dynasty, we have a tendency with even with four or five round rookie drafts, that the back rounds don't matter. Like they really don't matter. I mean, if you think about our dynasty league where it's just offensive players, you know, first two rounds, first round for sure, matters a lot. Second round, depending on the draft class, can matter, but sometimes it's start throws. Third, fourth, and fifth rounds, like they just If I don't even remember we have a fifth round, we might just have four. But like those last couple of rounds, just they couldn't matter less, right? Um with a large league in this way and a you know, uh so we had a five-round rookie draft, but uh drafting every position outside of offensive line and kickers and punters, um the more picks that you stack up, and even if there's a lot of back end picks, you can make some really good choices in the fourth and fifth rounds. That's one thing that I I walked away from this draft really feeling strongly about as a team that you know during our um dispersal draft, I didn't get a first. Um, but uh I don't think you got I didn't get a first. You didn't get a first or a second, did you? I did I did get a first and I got two seconds, and then I had two thirds, a fourth, and two fifths. So I ended up with one, two, three. But not from our dispersal draft. Um you got most of those from trace, right? No, I had I had seven, I had seven picks in the rookie draft that I got from our dispersal draft. Um, and then two of them I added via trade after the fact, uh, and I traded up it back into the first round a couple of times to get defensive players. I went very heavy on defense, and for me, getting as many picks as I did was really, really helpful. And I think for future years, that's just really helpful to know, too, that hey, you can turn your team around or turn your team's fortunes around really strongly if you end up if if you have a lot of those rookie picks or you can acquire a lot of those rookie picks uh in the future. So yeah, that was really interesting in this league. Um the league also does a really good job of not inflating scoring one way or another. And that's one thing I've noticed about IDP leagues. I know you've done a lot of research about IDP scoring since we set up a new dynasty IDP league, not this one that we're joining, but but a separate one with uh folks that we know. So we have IDP scoring in our league, and one of the things that's really clear as soon as you start looking at projections for week one is man, linebackers score like quarterbacks and they are juiced. Uh, and they are juiced way more than any other defensive players that are out there. Um, you still have your stars on the defensive side of the ball, you know, Aiden Hutchinson, Max Crosby, and um, you know, those types of guys, uh Miles Garrett, they still matter, but compared to even mid-tier linebackers that are just going to accumulate, you know, tackle after tackle after tackle after tackle after tackle, they just don't score anything like it. Whereas a league like this one, the first thing I noticed as I was looking through the scoring was and the the defensive players are not nearly as heavily weighted towards linebackers as you tend to see in most IDP leagues. I'd love, can you talk a little bit about I know you did a lot of research on your scoring, talk a little bit about the different types of IDP scoring that are out there and then why you you went with what you did versus the league that that we joined here?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. So there are there are three, okay. So well, I will say that like with fantasy, with offensive fantasy, you can score IDP kind of however you want to do it. So however your league sets it up, however, you guys want to do it, go for it, set it up however you want. But overall, in in my research, there are what I found was that there are really three main scoring systems that are in that are split that are the IDP scoring systems. And so they're called IDP 123, the big three scoring. And then the last one is simply it's just referred to as fantasy pros, uh, because it was kind of a a rebrand of the others, kind of like an in-between type of thing, um, that with that the fantasy pros uh created. And so it just kind of became big and became the fantasy pros thing. Um when it comes to the scoring, it really just depends how you as a league want to um want to run your like how how you want the defense to affect your scoring. So we chose um mostly IDP 1, 2, 3. Um, I can't remember if we had a little bit of a nuance, but I think I I pretty much set it up to where we had IDP 1, 2, 3, which is it's kind of the default scoring, I think, for most when it comes to starting IDP. The reason for that is because it's a really good way, the way it's presented is that it's really good at kind of the combo to offense and defense. So essentially it makes your defensive players just as strong or as powerful as your offensive players. And I really like that personally. And that's why, I mean, I I gave it to a league vote, but and that's what the league wanted. And that that was my that was my vote. That's what I wanted, was because you mentioned it with our league, we've got linebackers that are going to be scoring lots of points similar, they could get up similar to top wide receivers and even quarterbacks. And the reason is because like if you the way that you do that is the way that I like it is because if I have a team and I don't have great running backs, but if I have really good linebackers, I can still win the league. I can still do really well. Like when you have IDP, it makes to some extent, it kind of takes the pressure off of each individual position. And so in your draft, you have so many more options, a multitude of options on how you want to structure it. Because if you don't want to go, like if you miss out on the first few running backs and you're really good at wide receiver and you're gonna be starting some kind of meh running backs, well, if you just hammer the defensive players and you're doing well and you have this type of scoring system, it's gonna work out. It's gonna help you out. Um, that's what we did in our league of boom. Um, and I think what we're doing is kind of pretty normal and pretty natural um to a lot of IDP leagues. But um that's what IDP is. I think um one of the sites that I used, fantasy6pack.net, want to give them all the credit. Um, they really helped me with a lot of my research on just kind of how scoring systems work with IDP as we're trying to set all this up. And one of the things that I I really like it is that they really kind of describe it as um it is it's more about representing the three levels of gameplay. So like you get one point for minor plays, like just like a QB hit, assisted tackles, things like that, two points for kind of medium level plays, so solo tackles, and then you get a lot of points for bigger things that are like, you know, forcing fumbles, um, pass deflections, things that have a bigger impact on the game itself, the real game. Um, and it also because of some of those, it can actually make players like a defensive back more relevant. Maybe it's the DBs are still the least relevant, in my opinion, in terms of IDP, unless you score it like crazy for them. But in most kind of standard IDP stuff, they're the least relevant of the three main type of positions for IDP players. Um, but they're that's that's kind of the structure. So you could do it as like one, two, three for that type of stuff, two, four, six, like whatever, but that's kind of the structure of how they do it. Uh, the big three is it's really kind of more hammered on like your big play. So, like your sack, you you you give a lot of points for doing things that are really big for like, you know, like sacks, QB hits, tackle for loss, like, you know, sack plus sack yards, like things like that. Um, this is becoming really big in um your best ball formats because it's it's essentially rewarding big play stuff. So like you think about how best balls, you might get more bonuses for really big plays. They, you know, a lot of times they're gonna have um bonuses for um return yardage, things like that in a best ball league. Like this is kind of that type of thing. And then the fantasy pros, just to kind of wrap it up, this is it's becoming a really popular one. Um, and it's it's because of the fantasy pros. And I think they use it in one of their big contests that they sponsor. Um, but they it's kind of, I like to think it's it's kind of an in-between kind of thing. Um, and but the big thing here is that again, IDP scoring, I I sort of referenced it, but players are broken out into you have defensive linemen, linebackers, and then defensive backs. Some leagues will break it out even more than that. So you have like defensive end versus defensive tackle, um, you have safety versus cornerback. They'll do go really crazy. Um, but know your league scoring because the different types of IDP scoring, it just like with fantasy, like it changes how you draft guys. So, for example, in ours, like you mentioned, linebackers are a lot more, like they score a lot more points and they're a lot more valuable. So most guys, if they're smart, they're going to try and have linebackers as all of their IDP flex butts because that just gives you the higher percentage chance of having of hitting really big points for that week. Um, but on some of the other ones, like again, if you've got ones that really stress interceptions, test deflections, um, things like that, like, or maybe there's bonuses for not giving up yardage um in a game, you know, and you can get a top cornerback, like you might be more cornerback heavy, um, safety heavy and stuff like that, rather than um, and they, you know, then being focused on defensive line. So you just kind of have to know the scoring. Um, and you know, it really, you know, I I think even more so than the offensive side, it really affects how you draft and like where you should target those defensive players.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. It's a good call out. Um, yeah, the defensive players, and and overall, it kind of goes back to one single point that is whether you're playing IDP or or any type of league that's out there, is know your league scoring. And not just know your league scoring as in having looked at it, but know your league scoring as in run some projections on weekly what this would look like. Pulp, the my my favorite thing to do to figure out, because I can look at a league scoring and get a sense of what this is gonna weight towards one way or another. But once this once week one shit rolls around and I can actually like watch the matchups, see live football, and then see how it's translating, uh, that's when it makes more sense to me, was when it becomes real and when you start scoring. And at that point, it's a little too late with your drafts. So, what I tend to do is I will go back to multiple weeks of games last year and literally pull the stats from players from games I remember of years past and say, okay, well, how did uh how did Aaron Donald fare in this game that the last time he played for the Rams if I apply the league scoring settings the way they're written right now? Oh man, he he I you know he was the he was the uh defensive player of the year this year. What do you mean he only scored 10 points, right? Okay, well, defensive linemen are I'm gonna push that way down. I don't really care. I'll let somebody else go after Aiden Hutchinson or Max Crosby or those guys. Oh, I I'm gonna pull Roquan and see how did he fare last year when he was playing uh against in week 16. Oh man, okay, he scored 40 points. Like, all right, that's what I need to be going after right here. And how are these tight ends and a tight end premium gonna play? Well, okay, again, I'm gonna look at Tyler Warren and see how he played in certain games and how did his year go. So I think applying your scoring settings and using year past data to not just apply the scoring, but then to see how the scoring breaks down and what you can expect from relative positions to each other, you know, uh is super helpful to be able to go and do and like put skin on the skeleton, right? Like understand what the league is actually going to end up doing once stats start coming in uh in week one, rather than just waiting for that or trying to abstract it all out based on you know what you can see in your league scoring that's out there.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and the nice thing too is that you know, we we do all of our leagues in sleeper, uh the sleeper app. Uh really, really like it. When you're in your league, once the league settings are in there, even if they don't have projections for player jet, because I noticed this, they they do now, but when we actually drafted, they didn't have projections, especially not for the defensive side of the ball. But you could go into those players and then you could see previous seasons like you're talking about and actually see what they scored every single week with your league settings. And so you could see some guy, like they were defensive players, some of the top linebackers, they've scored 70 points in a week. Like that's insane, you know, and they'll score a ton of points. But, you know, uh often what you'll find is in IDP, and I was actually shocked that we didn't have more guys doing defensive players first, but a lot of times in IDP, like you can have like you, you, it's it makes sense to start taking IDP players in the first and second round of your dynasty draft, like of the startup draft. Because when you look at it, the top 100, 150 players might all be defensive when it comes to total fantasy points scored throughout the season. Um, they just and that's over quarterbacks, that's over the top running backs that score a lot. Like they it's it's just it's crazy the point disparity, especially if you can get the right guys. Um, but just yeah, know your scoring system, and then that'll tell you how you should focus on the defensive players. Yep.
SPEAKER_01All right, Matt. Well, with that, we are at the end of yet another fun hour-long episode here. Um next week, we're gonna be back talking and giving out some league superlatives. It's one of our favorite episodes. Annual favorite is my favorite episode for sure. Second, second annual uh league superlatives. We'll be giving superlatives to our our league, our our league mates from uh our dynasty league as well as actually both of our dynasty leagues. Um so we'll be giving some look-ahead league superlatives to our co-managers in those leagues. Uh, after that, the the next week we'll be doing a mock keeper draft. So we talked a little bit about Star Aft Strategy tonight. We'll be using that same league to mock the first couple of rounds in and alternating picks, which I'm excited about that one. Uh, since that's our our kind of final hurrah of drafts for the the leagues that weren't together. Uh the week after that, we'll be doing a uh season preview, do some um preseason awards for uh for some of our league members and some fantasy players out there, and then like it's week one. And we start, we get going. We're we're in, we're in the year. Um, ready for the the championship number three over here. I'm ready for it. I got my spot on the trophy case over here, ready to go. Yep, that's right. With all those draft picks, Matt, you told me the other day, like you I can't lose, right? That if I lose, it's more of an embarrassment.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. If you don't, if you don't get that championship trophy this year, like it's you did something wrong, in my opinion. And I'm gonna push that all year.
SPEAKER_01I either did something wrong or everybody gets the pressure on.
SPEAKER_02Nope, nope, you drafted the wrong guys. If they get hurt, you drafted the wrong guys. Oh, it's fine. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Like that's CMC year for you over right.
SPEAKER_02It was back-to-back years. Oh gosh. All right. So, oh, now that we're on YouTube, don't we have to say like hit that like button, subscribe? Like, subscribe, and notifications. Yeah, all that kind of stuff. You uh, yeah, whatever.
SPEAKER_01Awesome. All right, well, for Matt, I'm Robert. We're signing off, and uh appreciate y'all listening. We'll look forward to talking to you again next week. Peace out.
SPEAKER_03Don't go again, it's all brand new.