7 Things I Think that I Think

Hetkinen! Uusia ominaisuuksia. Entistä parempi varustelu. Ja ajanpa edullisen pihintaa! Kyllä vain. Uudistuneet Skoda Elrok ja Enjek Töysähkö mallit tarjoavat nyt enemmän kaikkea. Paitsi ison pahintaa. Tule tutustumaan ja koe uudistukset itse. Skoda. -Welcome to. de auction brief. Täällä on johon. Täällä on johon. Täällä on Fappal. Täällä on johon. Täällä on johon. Täällä on johon. You have three extra wild horses. You have four horses instead of one now. One incredible luck for you. And then Chinese farmer says, "Maybe a few days later his son is trying to tame one of the wild horses and he's on the back of one of these wild horses when it bucks him off. Son falls to the ground and breaks his leg and all the villagers gather around and they say to the Chinese farmer, "What absolute terrible luck! What an awful tragedy that your son is going to be laid up and can't help you with the crops with a broken leg." And the Chinese farmer says, "Maybe a couple days later the army rides in the town." And they're looking in the village for any able-bodied male who can join the army and fight in the war. They look at the farmer's son and he's laying up with a broken leg, unable to move and able to walk. And they leave without taking his son into the army. And the villagers all gather around and they say, "What incredible luck! Your son doesn't have to go fight in a war. What incredible luck! What a great day for you and your son." And the Chinese farmer says, "Maybe and that's the end of the story. I hope that you understand the idea that's forming as I painstakingly told that story. I hope you follow the point of the story." And the reason I wanted to start this story today was there's a lot of different things that we can take from this proverb and that we can apply to how we do things in everyday life and how we do things in fantasy football. In 2026 it's never been harder for us to control ourselves and our emotions and what we see on a day-to-day basis because we have constant access to everything happening in the world at the push of a button. We're constantly holding a device in our hands that can outrage us at any moment of the day. That can tell us something we don't want to hear at any moment of the day is incredibly difficult to have balance. It's incredibly difficult to have patience and this proverb tells you that you don't have to get out over your skis every single time something bad happens to you and get out of control. Life, fantasy football, all of this stuff is cyclical and the proverb tells us that if we let things breathe, if we let things develop, if we practice self-control in patience, it's not always as bad as it seems and it's not always as good as it seems. Stay even and have balance and I love that message for life. I love that message for auction draft rooms for fantasy football. There are so many things that when we look back on them we realize that thing was actually a blessing in disguise. I ended up going through a terrible divorce with my first wife on my second marriage. At the time that it happened it seemed like one of the worst things in the world that could happen to me and it was awful in the moment but looking back on that that was a true Chinese farmer proverb moment in my life. It was a sliding doors moment because that thing actually was extremely valuable in retrospect. I talk about the King's Classic last year and I have to say this was a sliding doors moment in fantasy football. I talked about this last summer after the draft but let me just refresh your memory real quick. I was early in the first round and so my goal was to nominate a running back that I thought was far enough down the board that people wouldn't care as much that early in the draft and I might get a little bit of a sitting down bonus. So my goal was to nominate Chase Brown early. I considered nominating Kyron Williams but I nominated Chase Brown. I ended up getting Chase Brown for 36 and then a little while later Kyron Williams went for 27 and I was frustrated because I really wanted Chase Brown and the upper 20s or early low 30s but I thought that I should bid up to 36 long story. It doesn't really matter the point is I was frustrated about that $9 that was extra from Kyron to Chase Brown. That was a sliding doors moment in that season because early on in the season I was really not loving that decision and that result because of how bad Chase Brown was early in the season but the lead in the year Chase Brown was an unbelievable fantasy running back in. He was part of the reason I want a title. That stuff in retrospect can change. It can be different and that's how we're going to lead into the first topic today. The first topic is a simple one and don't everyone gasp at once the topic number one I think that I might pay $2 for a kicker this year. Whoa everybody and then we're not going crazy on number one here but I've been thinking a lot about how valuable Brandon Aubrey is as a fantasy kicker and then I went to look this stuff up and this is a true once again Chinese farmer moment because in the moment when we're watching Brandon Aubrey last year it's like this dude just a cheat code he can just throw up 20 points whenever kicking 60 yard vehicles and I don't disagree I still think that I might pay $2 for Brandon Aubrey in an auction or I might nominate him for two and see if somebody's willing to pay three but you want to know something interesting and I don't know how many of you have looked at final kicker standings because not many people are sick in the third week of June looking up kicker rankings but did you know that Brandon Aubrey did not finish as the kicker one he didn't he wasn't the overall number one kicker nor was he number two in points per game. Kairi Fairbaren actually missed a game I believe maybe one or two games and finished third Aubrey finished second Jason Myers finished first from Seattle. Myers was first an overall points and first in points per game Aubrey was second overall but third in points per game behind Fairbaren so tell me why we should go into an auction and paid two dollars for the guy who was kicker three now I'm saying I think it's probably okay but I expected to come to the conclusion that yes I'm gonna spend two or maybe even three dollars in Aubrey he's just that much of a cheat code and I think it's still okay I'm still considering this but this is part of the journey I want you to go on with me this summer I was prepared to say let's go do it for the first time ever and then I looked at the kicker standings and he didn't even finish as the overall kicker one I just think that that reinforces the point that a dollar per kicker you can get a pretty good one and most of the time if you nominate Fairbaren nobody's gonna bid two so I'm not sure it's worth it I'm not sure it's worth it that's point number one I think that I want to pay two dollars for Brandon Aubrey but upon further reflection I'm not sure I'm going to do that stay tuned for that as we go through the summer a couple of the takes I have are gonna beat auction takes here coming up by points two three four well really a lot of the rest of them are auction takes but I want you to keep in mind that some of these takes are based off of this auction that I did the other night now this was a really valuable auction because nobody left early everybody played it out like we were going to play out the season however there are some problems with mock auctions that are just really kind of subconscious things so I want everyone to be careful and not draw too many conclusions from some of this stuff but I do think the price is even if they're wonky by a little bit or 10% or whatever I still think it's important because it shows us the trend it shows us what people are generally thinking and these folks that was doing this auction with are these are good players they know what they're doing this was a good this was a good mock okay so two things I want to mention though mocks do tend to inflate prices at the top you know they like to ditch qb's a little bit too and well I guess this is three things people don't care as much about depth all right so I understand that it's subconscious people don't necessarily say I don't care but they know they don't have to play it out so it's more fun to just look at this sparkling beautiful starting lineup and not spend as much for backups keep that stuff in mind however I still think we can draw some conclusions from some of this stuff I saw the other night somebody paid two bucks for my or somebody paid two bucks for Aubrey I don't know if that's a trend that's going to continue that's number one but number two thing that I think I think is that getting a couple of top wide receivers is going to be harder than ever and when I say top wide receivers I'm talking about really this top six seven eight wide receivers I was really surprised at the prices of the top guys because in prior seasons 40 to 52 something in that range would be the price for a wide receiver one and in this auction we had two guys that went up for over 60 and it was much top heavier than I expected now again I believe that's an effect partially of the mock but I do believe that the true wide receiver ones what rich rebar and I were talking about on Tuesday the guys that command that 30% target share the true alphas they're just aren't that many of them and everybody looks like they're recognizing it like I said it's June I get it we're going to go through the process as we go through the summer but watch out because the very top of the wide receiver position is looking like it's going to be difficult to get a couple of those guys so if you think you're coming in and grabbing those guys at the top I just talked about this it was either last week or the week before about how wide receiver points are getting harder to come by and I want to slam more money into the top I'm not sure that I'm totally sold on that any more I'm back on off that a little bit and that's why I want you to walk through this program. process with me. A couple of prices for you. Jackson Smith and Jigbo was 60. Chase was 64. Amon Ross, a Brown was 55. Justin Jefferson was 53. Pukin' Akua went for 51. That was a little bit weird. That's one of those things where I should have been on that. I should have been 52. I'm Pukin' I should have gotten him up in the mid-50s. A.J. Brown went for $44. I thought that was interesting. I went to circle back to that. Patrick London 50. CDLAM 46. George Pickens 41. Nico Collins 40. Chris Olabe 39. Now I put all those out there to say there still are some guys that I think can finish as wide receiver ones that are in the upper 30s to low 40s. That's still something we can do. It's kind of something I've been doing for a while now is trying to draft those receivers in the 7 to 12 range. Not necessarily the one through 5 because I just don't like my builds when I spend that much money. But I've never seen two receivers go for more than $60. In the rooms I'm in and having one two three four five six guys go for over 50. That's significant. And I was a little bit interested in the A.J. Brown price and $44 seems about right. But I do think that we need to pay attention to two guys. Nico Collins at 40 bucks. We all think that Nico Collins is awesome. And of course we're getting some information that CJ Stroud is not what we thought he was. But in a quote unquote down year, Nico Collins had $1100 and six touch sounds. Now for PPR leads 71 catches you'd like to see more. Obviously, $1100 and six touchdowns in a down year. And he was 40 bucks the other night. That's a guy I'm paying attention to. I'm also paying attention to pickings at 41 to Lava at 39. These guys, those are nice prices. A.J. Brown at $44 is just super interesting because I originally was going to be out on Brown. I just thought that what I saw last year was a guy sort of falling off a cliff. Those kind of big bodied huge receivers that have that high athleticism. It the end tends to come a little bit quicker. The end just comes quicker for a guy like A.J. Brown. So I was a little bit worried about him last year. And I thought I'm just totally out on him going forward. But then he gets the trade to New England. And I think it's one of the situations where I'm just going to have to turn off my brain and go for A.J. Brown. Because at $44 he does have wide receiver one upside. And that don't mean top 12. I mean overall wide receiver one upside, right? Because Drake may throw into him and may is a much better passer than Jalen Hertz already. They run an offense that's more conducive to throwing the football. It's just a much better environment. And it reminds me of when Sequan Barkley moved from the giants to the Eagles. And we were like, oh, he's switching teams. I'm not sure what to do. And then Barkley just wouldn't berserk because he'd been playing on the New York Giants. What does A.J. Brown done in his career except play for a low pass volume offense in Tennessee where he had like 50 catches for 15 billion yards. And then he gets traded to Philadelphia who's got a low volume pass offense. In a limited offense, a limited quarterback. Now he goes to a pretty good offense with surrounding pieces. A good run game, a strong coach, and a really dynamic young quarterback. Why would I be like, I know, you know, any J. Brown? No, this is the profile. This is the guy. I don't care if I miss on A.J. Brown. I think we need to be in on A.J. Brown at $44 especially. So before I leave number two in the rear view, I think that getting two top wide receivers is going to be harder than ever, but I do see some value there in the low 40s. And I also think that it's reasonable to take a bet on a bunch of guys that are in the mid tier who can finish as wide receiver once. And originally I said, maybe we need to lay off these $15, $18 receivers. And I don't disagree with that. But I want to push that up a little bit. And I want to say that I think it's reasonable to take like five bets for maybe $110, $120 of your salary and put it on guys like this. Terry McClaren, Lad McConkey, Luther Burton, Jameson Williams, Devonte Smith, Christian Watson. Yeah, you heard me. I'm Mekka Eggbuka. And I'm going to talk about some of these receivers in the next one. But I want to tell you the cost for some of these guys is completely reasonable for the upside they represent. Terry McClaren had a really good year with Jayden Daniels when he stayed healthy. Now maybe Daniels won't stay healthy. I get it, but he was $25. Lad McConkey was 24. Luther Burton was 24. Jameson Williams was I think 16. Devonte Smith was 33. If you add all those up, it was 122 bucks to get those five receivers. McClaren McConkey, Burton, Jameson Williams, Devonte Smith, 122 bucks. I love that. I'm not worried at all about not having a receiver that goes for more than Devonte Smith at 33 bucks. I think those are five dynamic wide receivers for $122 and Bing-Bing-Bing Boom, you're done. You get a couple $1 or $2 guys for your wide receiver six and seven and you're done. I absolutely love that idea. So I'm considering that. I'm considering these guys in the low 40s, upper 30s. I'm totally cool going out and getting a pickens and an Olave for 80 bucks. I like that. Then you can throw in a Jameson Williams or Christian Watson for $16, $18 bucks. So I'm not so sure that throwing all our money at the top half of receivers is the play. And if we're going to do it, we've got to watch out for the inflated price at the top. All right, number three. Number three thing I think I think is that I think I'm getting more radically into upside than I ever have in my drafts. And I'm not sure because I've really been examining my feelings on this. But I'm not sure if this is just living in the fantasy bubble for the last eight years. I can't believe I'm doing this eight years. But living in the fantasy bubble for this long has made me one of these analysts who just screams about upside all the time. That's not me because I still really believe in guys like Chikobi Myers. And guys like Christian Kirk. I don't mean for this year, but guys like that who are unimpressive 80 catch guys who can help you along in PPR leagues. I still believe those guys very much have their place. So don't get me wrong here. But I don't want to be spending significant money on guys who like to turn up 11 points a game. I'm more radical than ever before. I just boom bust guys because that's totally fine. I remember I drafted Matthew Goen last year. And I'm like, he's going to be on the field and they're going to use him. Let's go. And then after two games, he was doing what I thought they were going to do when I dropped him. I know everybody's thick, that's wild that I dropped him after two games. But turn that to be correct. What I'm saying about upside is I'm fine with the bust. I'm totally fine. And I was never really very okay with that. I was I've always struggled with that because the knit in me. I've talked about it for five summers now. The natural inclination of my moves is just to play it safe. And I just the more I get into this, the more I realize that these arbitrage plays is what I want to make. And I talked about it last summer. We're going to continue that this summer. In fact, I'm getting more radical about. Arbitrage plays are very simple. It's drafting a player who's extremely cheap or cheaper than they should be. And that cheaper price represents essentially what their fantasy floor is. And then everything from there is gravy. And if that person explodes, it's a completely home run type weekly winner and season winner type player. So I think I'm getting more radically about upside than ever before. And a couple of those guys that I saw in the draft this this past time, Devante Smith went for 33 bucks. I think that's a perfect arbitrage play. I mean, this guy's going to go nuclear. Who do they have behind him? McKinley. Lemon. Is that what we're doing here? We think that McKinley. Lemon is going to big brother. Devante Smith Smith is going to get a 30% target share. He's going to eat 33 bucks. It's amazing. Get him as your wife or say, we're one Christian Watson and 18 folks. You won't find many people that hate Christian Watson as much as me. There aren't many people. Okay. But even I recognize he went for 18 bucks the other night. That's perfect. You got to make that bet. He has that sleep breaking ability. If he stays healthy, it looked like he was going to do that last year, right? If he stays healthy, he stays on the field. Christian Watson for 18 bucks. Beautiful arbitrage play. Gendarian price for eight bucks the other night. I think that's great too. I know Seattle could turn into sort of a weird thing with Hulani and I mean, Wilson. Maybe Gendarian price doesn't touch the ball very much. But for eight bucks, does it matter? No, it's just a super simple play to make. Gendarian price is a kind of guy who's explosive. He's young. The sea ox have a great defense. They need a guy like that. That's a perfect arbitrage play. Eight bucks is that's exactly where I want to be in on Gendarian price. And then I also want to talk about the Tampa receivers. And Mecca and Buka went for 26 bucks the other night and Godwin went for nine. I still believe we're going to see a jump from Godwin second year post broken leg, I believe. And Buka is just the kind of player that we saw what he could do when he was healthy, when Mayfield was healthy. Now Mike Evans leaves a complete target hog leaves. And we're leaving at Buka out there for 26 bucks. Again, another arbitrage play. If you want What are you going to say about? McLaren in the example that I used earlier. You can have Egg Buka, Nekonky, Birdon, Jameson and Devante Smith for $123. We just got to go for that upside. Egg Buka has that upside, price has that upside, Watson, Devante Smith. They're all arbitrage plays and we need to be leaning into the upside more than ever. Number four thing that I think I think chasing the Chicago wide receivers and the Jacksonville wide receivers is going to be a profit will play this summer. That sounds weird because I believe that none of us really know what's about to happen. And I will say that the conversations I've had so far with these smart guys and I'm going to keep asking them, Rich Rebar, Jim Coventry, these guys, they really know what they're doing and they're not 1,000 percent sold on exactly what we're going to see from these offices and the market share splits between these guys. So if Rich Rebar and Jim Coventry can't quite figure it out, I think that we can safely say that we're not exactly going to know, right? We're not exactly going to know, but we have an idea and the great thing is nobody in the market really knows either. So they're kind of sloughing off. They're kind of just saying, I'm not sure, therefore, none of them are very expensive. The other night, burden only went for 24 bucks. Odunse went to me for 12. I thought that was a fabulous deal. The Jacksonville wide receivers, Brian Thomas was 11, Takobi Myers was 9 and Parker Washington was 4. Folks, you could have all 5 of those guys for 60 bucks. That's crazy to me. That's absolutely crazy to me. I don't understand why they're all so cheap. I understand that like they maybe should be split up and all of their prices would be depressed a little bit, but 12 for Odunse, a 4 for Washington, like somebody's going to blow up here. So take chances. And I believe that chasing these wide receiver rooms is what I'm going to be doing. And on top of that, think about this. This is something again, friend of the show, JJ Zacharyson, who I just confirmed he'll be on I think middle of July. He's always said that chasing ambiguous backfields was the way to success in fantasy. And I think it's the same thing here. It's the same concept. You don't chase ambiguous backfields like the Jets. Well, although we might, but you chase, we know Chicago and Jacksonville, those are good situations right really good. So I believe that right now I'm going to be chasing both of those wide receiver course. They're excellent offensive environments and the pieces are just too cheap. The number 5 thing that I think is that the top running max are going to be expensive once again, but there is a bit of a cliff. And there's a massive cliff to some guys who are going to get a lot of touches and I don't understand why there is such a cliff. So the thing I think, I think is that I'm going to be overweight on a lot of these guys who may be in committees, but who I believe are going to be productive players for fantasy teams this fall. Let me give you some examples. I ended up doing a weird kind of thing. I'm not a Jeremiah love guy, but I got him for 34 bucks and I was cool with that because then I paired him with Eric Henry for 36. I think those two guys were 70 bucks is a home run. I love it. And then I just went and decided I'm going to go get as much of these guys who are going to touch the ball as possible for my bench and not really worry about the price. I ended up getting RJ Harvey for 10 bucks as my RB three. I love that. And I think we're doing the thing again this summer with Harvey. I'm going to say it. I like JK Dobbins and he's on my list here. But RJ Harvey for 10 bucks with the way he finished last season. It's really funny to me that the takeaway when a guy does stuff like that like, oh, he scored a lot of receiving touchdowns. I get it. He was hyper efficient. He take away some touchdowns. He wasn't that great. But he was reasonably good and he was a rookie learning Sean Payton's offense. Did you notice how much little Jordan Humphrey played last year? Sean Payton's not exactly a guy who trusts people very quickly. Humphrey's there because he trusts him and Humphrey knows exactly what's going on in the offense. RJ Harvey had to come in and learn that stuff and Sean Payton's not an easy guy to learn that stuff with. And he did it anyway and he had a pretty good season. It's kind of funny. It's like a booga. It's like, so we watch these guys be pretty good and then also we're like, you know, a Coleman. Did you know that, Jon and Coleman, you're crazy. If you think Jonah Coleman is coming in and get a big brother, RJ Harvey. Maybe he does that to Dobbins. He's not going to do that to Harvey. Anyway, 10 bucks for Harvey. Let me read some other prices because I think some of these are a little bit crazy. Remundrae Stevenson was nine bucks. Travy on Henderson was eight bucks. Jalen Warren six Dobbins seven, Pollard five Brooks three, Chuba Hubbard 11. Now I'm not going to sit here and tell you that any of those guys are super exciting. And those prices may be depressed by a few bucks because it's a mock and because people spent their money early and they didn't really care too much about saving it for Jalen Warren. It's not exciting to do a mock and be like, I walked out with Jalen Warren. Did you guys see that? To everybody see it. Did you see it? It was it was six bucks. Jalen Warren. Everybody see that? Anyway, I get it. I get it. But even if these guys are a few bucks more, so I had to pay $11 for Remundrae Stevenson. He's not going anywhere, by the way, in this Patriots backfield. But Jalen Warren six bucks. I know Rico Dattles there. And he's going to eat away at some early down carries and maybe the goal line. But Jalen Warren is going to be very involved in this offense. He six bucks. It's so it's going to be so easy to get some of these guys. Pollard, Jonathan Brooks and even more so with the running backs that aren't falling off the cliff like the Warrens and the Brooks and the Pollards. What about Kyron Williams? He went for $21 the other night. Bucky Irving went for 19. Javante Williams went for 23. Breeze Hall went for 22. I'm going to submit to you that some of these guys are really good players that we know are going to play a lot. And we have to stop freaking out about what they may or may not lose or get. I know Aaron Glenn said this week. I want a three headed committee. Okay, they're all going to say that number one. And number two, they just handed Breeze Hall 14 million a year. They're going to use them. They're going to use them until his legs fall off. But I'm not even here to say that Breeze Hall is getting a bell cow or a three a roll or 350 carries. I'm not here to say that at all. What I'm here to say is there is no shot that Breeze Hall is getting less than 250 touches if he stays healthy, right? Maybe it's a three headed monster, but he's getting 250 touches, right? There's no way he's not. So for 22 bucks, that's crazy. I mean, what about Kyron Williams? Everybody freaked out about Blake Kornmash here. I'm like, oh, he's going to start doing this and this Sean McVey loves Kyron Williams. They paid him to. They're going to use him or they're going to cut him next year. But they're in a Super Bowl window now. Kyron Williams and Blake Kornm are both going to play. And if you look at Kyron Williams numbers at the end of last year, they were pretty good. They were pretty good. If you listen to the fantasy community, you'd think that Kyron Williams was scoring eight points of game at the end of the season. He was at 15 points of game over the second half of the year, even with Blake Kornm coming in and getting a bunch of touches. Williams was still the goal line back a lot of the time. He was catching a few passes here and there. Kyron Williams, 21 bucks, Breast Hall, 22. You could go into a draft and take Kyron and Breast for 43 bucks, get five of these receivers that I was talking about earlier. Egg Book and Maconkey, Bird and James and Devont A Smith, then you've spent $160 and you have your two-starting running backs and five strong wide receivers. You can screw around and get a nice quarterback in a nice tight end and you're almost done. I think that there's a real nice path here. I think we're going to try to follow that path this summer. Number five is I think that I don't understand this running back cliff and maybe that's going to change as the summer goes on, but we're going to pay attention to it. We only got two more to go and we're about out of here. 46 and a half minutes is looking pretty strong. Number six, thing I think that I think is that QB Middle-Lays may be real this year. People may be a little bit out on quarterback. I said it earlier in the summer that late-round quarterback is back, but I'm wondering if the pendulum is going to swing too far and that there's some quarterbacks that can be had cheaper than they should be. I'm going to reiterate, we did this mock the other night, the quarterbacks were way too cheap. I don't think it would actually play out like this in a regular league. Number one, we got a bunch of really smart guys who know they can get cheap quarterback and number two, when you get casuals in the room, they get more excited about quarterbacks. We're going to follow this, but the early trend is that people realize how many good quarterbacks there are. They know that they can have a pretty good quarterback fairly cheap and so they're not really willing to overspend. The only guys that got any money spent on them were Josh Allen and Drake May, believe it or not. Just about everybody else, even the Mar Jackson only went for 10 bucks. I was going to bid 11, I tried to bid, it wouldn't let me bid, whatever it doesn't matter. He was only going to go for 12 or 13. I might have bid one more time, he might have gone for 14, but point is I think people are realizing in the malaise that I saw on this mock draft, it may Maybe real and I'm going to continue to follow it, but listen to some of these weird prices. Jalen Hertz went for three bucks. Trevor Lawrence five, Kayla Williams, five bucks, Joe Burrow five bucks to me. Herbert three bucks, Marjacks and ten bucks. I think the lesson for us and what I think that I think right now is that I want to nominate quarterbacks early in my dress. Because if you nominate them early, there may be some guys that slip through that you don't think you're going to get. And if they go for too much money, then great. Then that's leaving a deck press cop for you later, a Brock Purty later. Maybe you're going to get Trevor Lawrence for three bucks later, Justin Herbert. I think I'm going to nominate some of these guys. I'm thinking I'm going to nominate Joe Burrow, Kayla Williams, Drake May. I think I'm going to nominate them early. And I think we might find that one of these guys slips through because Joe Burrow for five bucks or Kayla Williams for five bucks, sign me up. All right, number seven, the number seven thing I think that I think is that there is no substitute for being in the room and getting reps in an auction room. There just is no substitute. And if you weren't in the mock the other night, you need to get in there when I put it out on Twitter, when I put it on a Patreon, that is the benefit of by the way, being a Patreon member, fantasy football lawyer just four bucks a month. That's the benefit of being in the Patreon because you get first dibs on any mocks that I'm going to run before I come to Twitter. Now, look, I'm not saying that you got to do 50 mocks, but everyone you do makes you better able to handle situations. And there's two situations that I want to talk about before I let you go for the day. And these two situations occurred the other night in the draft. And I love these because illustrations are sometimes hard to come by on the show because it's not easy to just pull these things out of thin air and make a realistic auction situation. That's what I love about mocks that I can get these situations and they are realistic and I can pull a little something for you and have an illustration that sort of imprints that in your brain a little bit better. So we're not going to get out in 45 minutes today. I'm sorry about that, but I love these two situations that I came upon in the mock the other night. And I'll try to get to them as succinctly as possible. But I think they're too important to just sort of truncate or blow off because I'm trying to do this 45 minute thing. We're still going to get you out under an hour. But let me tell you about these two situations. Number one was I had gotten to tie them fairly early because I ended up with Tucker Crat for seven bucks. And I love that price. I was cool with it. I wasn't going to if somebody said eight, I wasn't going to nine, but seven was perfect. So I took Tucker Crat fairly early. And I could see how things were shaping up in the room with people spending on the top guys so heavily that there was going to be a lot of value at the back half of some of these position groups. And one of the things I was worried about was the tight end group because things were going a little bit too cheap. I was happy that some guys went, you know, got a little bit of momentum and you know, close to the level and I think went for 21. So I was happy about some of that. But I kept seeing Tyler Warren on the board there at the tight end spot. And I'm thinking to myself, man, Warren is too good of a tight end to still be sitting there. And as the draft went on, nobody nominated him. And this is one of those things that I think is really important that we get right in auctions. And when I talk all the time about leaking value or seeing a couple percentage points of difference with your roster, this is one of those things that you have to pay attention to and you have to start nailing this stuff. It doesn't mean when you miss it, it's catastrophic. It just means that you're missing out on some positive EV. You're missing out on some profitability because you're not seeing the situation correctly. So what I was thinking about when I saw Warren there was I don't want to nominate him yet because I think somebody's probably wanting to get Warren and so that money sort of mentally tied up in their head. And that's one of those things that I preach all the time. Most of the time it's better to leave the player on the board and tie up that money in some person's head like I'm going to go get a top tight end and Warren is the only one left. You kind of have this 15 bucks tied up in their brain. But in this particular spot, this is why there's no substitute for being in the room, forgetting the reps. Because in this particular spot, this turned out not to be true. And I caught on to it before it was too late because what happened in the room was the money came out of the room astonishingly fast. And the first couple of rounds and then even from rounds three to five, it really was heavy spending. That money was getting pretty tight. And then I saw past mocks flash through my brain and past auction drafts flashing through my brain telling me that it was likely going to be an incredible deal for Tyler Warren for somebody if I didn't get him out there quickly, leaving him on the board was no longer the correct play. And why? Because the money was too tight in the room. I simply could not wait another minute to get Warren out there because then he's going to end up going for six bucks because nobody has any money. Literally, there was a bunch of people at 29, 20, 15, 18, 31. Nobody was going to break the bank for Tyler Warren. If he had been called out earlier in the draft, he might have gone for 12 or 15. Instead, he ends up going for 11. But I was actually happy that he even went for 11 with how tight the money was in the room. So I missed it by a little bit. I should have nominated Warren around before or two rounds before. It's one of those things that if you miss it, you're cost of yourself a little bit of EV because what if somebody pays 16 instead of 11 for Warren? And that five bucks ends up being a big deal. You compound that over two, three, five mistakes and nominations over the course of a draft. You could be talking about 15, 18, 25 bucks that's still left in the room to compete with you at the end of the draft. So in that spot, leaving the player on the board was the wrong move, getting him out there quicker before the money got any tighter to demand some more premium money for that tight end position, which I already had filled that turned out to be the correct play. The last one that I want to talk about is when it comes to a mecca booth. And the only reason I'm talking about a book is because he happened to be one of those guys that's left on the board near the end of a draft. And everyone's staring at that player. You all know that feeling and options. And if you haven't done one before, it's a very palpable feeling. There's three or four teams that have some money left and there's one really outstanding player left on the board. The rest of them are guys like Kaleo Shakir. Instead you're looking at Ed Buchen, you're thinking to yourself, boy, I really want to land him. That's really going to take my team over the top. When I looked at the situation, I suddenly realized I was not getting a book. I think I had like 38, 35 bucks. I can't remember exactly what I had left. But there was two or three other teams with 40 to $60 left. I'm right where I want to be because I don't want to have the most money, like 75% of the way through the draft I've talked about that before. I want to have landed most of my guys. But I could see that at Buchen was going to be the prize for somebody. And at this point in the draft, I didn't know that I could afford to pay that much money for what it was going to take to land him. And if I had done that, I would empty the clip pretty much and then had to get a bunch of one to two dollar players for like my last six spots. Now sometimes that's okay. And I'm okay with that every once in a while. But in this particular draft, there was so much depth left. I decided I'm not doing that. And I looked at the different manager, sums left and I realized there's no way I'm getting a book up. It's just not happening. He ends up going for 26 bucks, fairly late in the draft. And when it's late in the draft, there's teams sitting there with 28 bucks or 18 bucks and a guy goes for 26. That's a huge number later in the draft. That was a big number. And I was correct in seeing that I'm not getting this guy. And that's one of those things that you really have to tell yourself when you're in the room. If I don't have enough money to just dominate everyone else, the thing you got to do is pull yourself back and say, I'm not getting that guy. Forget about that guy because there are going to be deals that you need to be taking when other people are waiting on that guy. So people in the room are sitting there going, I'm going to get a book. No, you're not. Only one person is going to get them. There's four teams with money. Only one of them is going to get them. So instead of overpaying for a book, what you should be doing is snapping up the deals while those other teams are waiting for a book and hoarding their money near the end of the draft. My thought was, let's just go ahead and just try to get some guys and let's see if some deals come up. That's when Harvey popped up and then Odundsay popped up a little bit later for 12 bucks. I ended up spending 22 bucks on those two guys. I'm not a huge fan of those guys for fantasy football this year, but for 22 bucks, I absolutely love it. And the lesson here is fairly simple. While you're waiting for that guy that everybody wants still left in the room, you're passing up those deals. You're passing up the eight, 10, $12 players that could make the back of your roster much stronger than going and throwing it all in a book. Now I'm not saying not to do that because we've had the conversation before about when you should just empty the clip and just go and get that final guy and not worry about the rest. And that's the play there. That's totally a play you can make. But when I was looking at the room the other night, I thought there's just so many guys I can still get. Then I ended up, I think getting Jonathan Brooks for like three bucks, Josh Downs for three bucks, Chikoby Myers for nine bucks. And players like that that I was really happy to get all those players. Now maybe you would trade that maybe you would, but if I'm thinking about I'm going to play it out and much rather have five bullets to try to nail a couple guys who are going to be top 24 guys than one bullet. to go for Egg Buchen at that point in the draft. I'm not saying it's never the play, but this is why you have to be in the room. These are the situations that you have to play through in your brain. And when you leave the draft, you have to play through these situations again and say, "Did I make the right call?" Was that actually the correct play looking back at how my roster turned out? This all sounds super complicated with just these two situations, but this is why I say that auction drafting has a different level of preparation and has a different way that we need to be attacking how we talk about them. Because it's not just about that, it's a good price, that's not a good price. That is not what auction drafting is about. In the moment, 26 bucks for Egg Buchen was a massive number. And $11 for Warren was a pretty big number when he came up. But if we get those nominations right, and if we get those players out at the right time, it may not have created a value opportunity for somebody. And maybe we played it wrong. Maybe I played it wrong. Maybe the guys in the room played it correctly and I played it wrong. I don't know exactly how that's going to turn out, because we're not going to play it out. But these are the situations we have to think about. And I like giving you those situations. So you can play them through in your head and say, "No, I think you made a mistake here." Or this is how I'd play it. But that act right there of thinking about it and figuring out what I have done in that spot, that's how you get better at auction drafting. And being in the room when you have to make those decisions and take those reps over and over and over, there's just no substitute for it. So number seven, the thing I think is that there's just no substitute for being in the room and getting your auction draft reps. (upbeat music) Okay, well that's going to do it. For this week's episode of The Auction Brief, thank you so much for joining me. We did go a little bit over 45 minutes today, but I don't care because the goal this summer was to be out under an hour. I'm aiming for 45 minutes and hey, we went a little bit long today, but I enjoyed today's episode a little bit more player evaluation stuff, which is what I steered into last summer. So we're done looking back, we're talking a little bit about what we're going to be doing this summer and what storylines we can follow and what narratives are developing on fantasy football land. All right, thank you so much for joining me. Don't forget you can find me on Twitter, @drewdavinportf, on Patreon, @fanasyfootball lawyer. Just four bucks a month, get over there. The best auction content you can find in the fantasy football business is on the fantasy football lawyer Patreon network. Remember, I've got a Josh Jacobs take over there that I think you're going to want to see the Rishi rice take. In the last seven days, I put out both new opinions on that stuff over the Patreon, that is what it's there for. And I hope I'm delivering value to all of you who've been loyal subscribers. Thank you so much for being here. Look out for the CyberCap Summit stuff coming up, and we'll see you on Tuesday with Marcus Grant from the NFL Network on another episode of Discussions with Drew. Have a great weekend. Stay balanced. Embrace the ups and downs of life. I can't wait to talk to you on Tuesday. Thanks for being here for another episode of the auction brief. We're now adjourned and I am out. The auction brief is adjourned. That'll do it for this week's episode. See you next time on The Auction Brief. [MUSIC PLAYING]