Input Volatility, Week 12
Plus, reviewing my own teams and results to date
I hope I say this enough, but you guys really are the best audience a guy could ask for. The number of meaningful messages I’ve received recently has been pretty overwhelming. It’s really cool to know so many of you still find my work so uniquely valuable, and it helps me get out of my own head about it, which I’ll definitely do for the near term.
It’s been a tough fall personally, and I don’t think I’ve been honest enough with myself about how difficult it is to make content through that. Part of making good content is enjoying it, and putting positive energy into it, which is difficult if you’re just not feeling very positive, and while compartmentalizing is a necessary thing for us all, that element of suppressing things and not dealing with emotions can bubble to the surface, sometimes in related but not even necessarily direct ways. It’s just part of being human, obviously.
But I’m really lucky because I have people who randomly tell me stuff like I’m their favorite part of football season, and whatever I do to not stop making content, and that kind of a thing feels good to be told, and there are a lot of people who go through a lot of shit that don’t get to have something like that. So thank you, sincerely.
As an aside, I was listening to the latest episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out today, in part because he had television creator and writer Mike Schur on, and I love Mike Schur. And the conversation was in part about modern content, and Schur at one point opines that in today’s internet, bad is the same as good, and rage is the same as joy, and anger is the same as happiness. And at that point Jessica Smetana chimed in to add “and celebrity is the same as credibility,” which Schur wholeheartedly agreed with and rephrased as “notoriety is better than quality.”
And I just thought that was very interesting in relation to things I say and think sometimes, and in fantasy football how some massive accounts are the ones just scheming the algorithms but where the actual content is so thin on understanding, but really I felt it was worth sharing in this intro not as it relates to anyone else but to say that the implication quality should be what matters is how I do think, and what I aspire for, so when I hear the specific points about the quality of my work, that’s always very uplifting for me. I really struggle with this idea that notoriety is better than quality, but I also know that my work is respected, and at the end of the day that does bring me joy and fulfillment. I don’t even want all the stuff that comes with notoriety (but I do paradoxically want my work celebrated, because of pride).
I figured today I’d talk a little about my own results, because we’re entering the final week of the FFPC regular season, which is where my high stakes portfolio lives, and because it’s a frequent question I get, and some of you have pointed out over the years that me sharing my results — while not necessary in that I don’t need to prove anything to you — does help the learning process in a variety of ways.
The way the Main Event at FFPC works, the regular season ends this week, and the top two seeds get an auto-berth into the three-week Championship Round in Weeks 15-17. That’s the sprint where the top prize is $1 million, and the way that’s determined is you bring in a starting value that is your average score across the regular season, and then you add your scores for each of Weeks 15, 16, and 17 to that number. You can change your lineup each week, but you can’t make adds or drops, and injuries and those things are just issues you have to deal with. So there are these four elements that add up to determine a winner, but because the first element is an average, by its nature those initial values are all pretty bunched up, and then it’s easier to differentiate if you can rattle off a couple 200-point weeks in the Week 15-17 sprint. That’s where you make your hay.
There are also league prizes, and you get a little money for finishing in first or second, or for winning your league championship. The league playoffs are Weeks 13 and 14, and are just four teams. The No. 1 seed goes to the top W-L record (with points as the tiebreaker), then the No. 2 seed goes to the team with the most points scored (which is among the remaining teams, so if the No. 1 seed has both, then the No. 2 goes to the team with the most points of the other 11). The No. 3 seed then goes to the next best W-L record, and the No. 4 to the next best points scored total.
The No. 1 and 2 seeds get the auto-berths to the sprint, but the No. 3 and No. 4 seeds can also qualify if they win their league title. That’s their only path, and it’s obviously thin — when you’re in the No. 3 or No. 4 seed, you need to win in both Weeks 13 and 14 against two of the best teams in your league. You will play either the No. 1 or No. 2 seed first, and then likely the other of the No. 1 or No. 2 seed second, unless there’s an upset in the other semifinal obviously. You might be considered underdogs in both, but even if they are both 50/50 contests, that means you have a 25% expected qualification percentage through that path.
But there are payouts for first, second, and even a small one for third in the division playoffs that are all determined in Week 14, so those matter, too. Locking up a No. 1 seed and then winning your league playoffs can be a nice profit even before considering any winnings in the Championship Round, which is important because the payouts in the Championship Round are quite top heavy. Yes, you can play for $1 million to first, but there were nearly 1,000 teams in the Championship Round last year, and it drops off quick enough that if you finish outside the top 30, you make $1,500 or a free entry into next year’s Main Event (which is valued at $2,200).
If you finish, say, ninth out of 1,000 people, you’ll make $10,000. And obviously that would be awesome! But that’s also 1% of $1 million, and back in the day when I was playing more DFS, the rule of thumb for GPPs was to look for payout structures where 10th place netted you 10% of first place as an indication of a flatter payout structure, so that’s my context there. Anyway, success in FFPC for me is often defined by the regular season and then league championships, which is typically going to be the real indication of whether it was a profitable year, and how much so. And then beyond that, obviously it’s a goal to have as many teams in the sprint as I can get so we can scratch off some lottery tickets and see what happens.
So we’ll start with FFPC, because overall this year I have 14 Main Event teams there, including 11 with my Stealing Bananas cohost Shawn. Of those 11, four are currently in either first or second place, so if they maintain this final week, they’ll get those regular season payouts and the auto-berth into the sprint. So that’s a good ratio. For three of those four, we’re notably sitting in the No. 2 seed, which is the points for route, with teams that are no better than 6-5. I was wondering if that was because of guys like TreVeyon Henderson, where the consistency was tough in normal W-L formats but the points came in bunches later, but he’s not on any of those teams. Two of them have Brock Bowers — who would maybe fit that mold as someone some of you might feel was a better fit for FFPC success than in your own leagues — but both of those Bowers teams also had Jonathan Taylor, and we were definitely fortunate to get him a couple times despite not necessarily going way out of our way for him (in one, we took Bowers at 1.03 in this TE Premium format, Bucky Irving at 2.10, and then Taylor at 3.03; in the other, it was Taylor at 2.09 as the RB10, and then Jaxon Smith-Njigba at 3.04, so that’s a really fun team).
Our third team advancing on points was out of the 10 hole with Trey McBride and De’Von Achane in the first two rounds (its WR1 was George Pickens at 5.10, which has been a huge leverage point obviously), and then our team advancing on record, which has locked up the No. 1 seed with a two-game advantage and only one game to play, was our other McBride team out of the 1.08, where we aggressively took him over Justin Jefferson. That’s one where we fortunately got Puka Nacua at 2.05, and despite Jayden Daniels in Round 3, it has had a great year. The really tough thing for this Zero RB squad is the first two RBs it took were both clear hits and are now both done, in J.K. Dobbins and Cam Skattebo. We did take Kyle Monangai late in this one, and will start him and Devin Singletary this week, with Jaleel McLaughlin, Brashard Smith, and Dylan Sampson on the bench in this deep format where it’s not easy to find answers on the wire by any means.
In addition to those four teams, Shawn and I somewhat oddly have no teams in a No. 3 or No. 4 spot, but have two teams that are currently in fifth. One of those teams has a path to sneak into the No. 3 seed on record, but it needs three specific W-L outcomes (us to win and two others to lose). The other is effectively in a tie for the No. 3 seed with a team it trails by 4 points for the points for tiebreaker, so it needs to win and also outscore that team, essentially. That team already has 50 points from TNF interestingly enough, but had four players going, so that includes some good scores (James Cook and Khalil Shakir) but also some tough ones (Nico Collins and Dalton Schultz). So I guess I’m hopeful we could add, but we could just as easily have the other seven teams that are currently not qualifying all fail to get in this weekend, and also lose one of our two more tenuous top seeds among our four current best teams.
Regardless, even if we just qualified four of 11 teams into top-four seeds, that would be slightly more than the expected rate of one-third of teams for an average player. So the possibility we could have four up in the auto-berth range and/or the possibilities of getting a fifth or sixth team into their divisional playoffs are all exciting.
Beyond those teams, we do have one in sixth and one in seventh, and then a few that are down at the bottom, including a Malik Nabers Zero RB team with Jayden Daniels in Round 3 that didn’t hit on any meaningful late RBs, another Zero RB team that started Jefferson-Drake London and had Lamar Jackson and Tyreek Hill in Rounds 3 and 4 (this one had Dobbins and Trey Benson, plus some other interesting names after Round 8 like Michael Pittman, Luther Burden, and Harold Fannin, and frankly could have been pretty fun in an alternate timeline), and then our other rough finish was our only 1.01 team where we went Ja’Marr Chase and then pulled Henderson up to the Round 2/3 turn with Jackson, plus took RJ Harvey at the Round 4/5 turn with Jameson Williams, and getting both Henderson and Harvey and expecting one of them to at least be a pretty consistent scorer was a tough way to build this year, no doubt.
Another player a lot of the struggling teams have is Jerry Jeudy in the Round 7 range. He’s a guy we really liked as multiple rounds undervalued, and maybe there’s something to be learned there, but I’m not sure what it is. The thesis that he was only good in 2024 because of a routes spike doesn’t actually hold water, as I’d written about, and mostly it seems like people just felt like Jeudy wasn’t very good, and was overhyped, and that they were probably correct in that assessment, but it’s that exact type of overconfidence relative to actual results (as I’ve said a million times, Jeudy was sixth in the NFL in receiving yards last year, and no one else in the top 10 was going outside the top two rounds or so, and it wasn’t just Jameis Winston because he also dealt with seven games of horrendous QB play that included three straight games with just one catch, so if you’re going to discount him for having that run with Winston you certainly need to adjust for the run with Deshaun Watson cratering him early last year, too, and that maybe doesn’t quite balance but it certainly doesn’t explain his price tag, nor did the routes spike when you understand what he was per-route prior to the routes spike and try to control for other past stuff, but it really doesn’t matter because apparently he does just suck).
Aside from that Jeudy tangent, probably another point I’d make is even the good teams do have misses (for example, Jeudy is on three of the four teams we have in No. 1 and No. 2 seeds, as well, including the two that feel like they have locked up one of those auto-berths). Looking through these rosters reminds of that point I always always always say that drafting your team is not about avoiding misses but stockpiling hits, those Quarter 1 or Quarter 2 producers.
In addition to my teams with Shawn, I am in three more Main Events that are each trios where I have two other comanagers. The first, my Ship Chasing team with Peter Overzet and Pat Kerrane, locked up the No. 1 seed with a two-game lead. That team is only fourth in points and has gotten some good scheduling luck, but it’s yet another Bowers-Taylor team from the 1.02 that also has Tetairoa McMillan and Davante Adams, as well as Drake Maye and Bhayshul Tuten as the later pieces I’m probably most excited about.
My team with Evan Silva and Mike Leone has had some misfortune, including Travis Hunter and then Jackson being a tough early-QB outcome again, and it’s a Saquon Barkley-Achane team that also has lost Marvin Harrison here lately. We’re cobbling it together, and currently in fourth in a near dead heat with the fifth-place team, with a 1-point edge entering the week. The next team is about 60 points back and we’re playing for this No. 4 seed that is points for in what is essentially a head-to-head with that other manager this week. We’re unfortunately projected underdogs in that at the moment, so that’ll be close.
Finally, my team with Jakob Sanderson and Lawrence Bailey is in the No. 3 seed, and is in a win-and-in situation, but where the top two seeds in that league are pretty well locked up and it probably can’t get into an auto-berth. So it’s similar to the Silva/Leone team where we need a good Week 12 outcome then also would need to win in Weeks 13 and 14 to make the sprint. It’s another team that was good but has hit some injury luck; at one point I thought this was my very best team, because of how deep it was, but it isn’t getting great performances from the top WR group of A.J. Brown, Ladd McConkey, Garrett Wilson, and Harrison, on a Jahmyr Gibbs team, plus it’s lost Skattebo and this is also a Rhamondre Stevenson and Quinshon Judkins team, so the RB position felt four-deep for a bit but that depth shrunk right when the WRs started collapsing. This team also has Rashee Rice, which added to the optimism, and we have Patrick Mahomes as well as both Fannin and Juwan Johnson in what’s become a late-round TE build, so anyway, there are a lot of intriguing players, but the question will be the high-end scoring potential.
Beyond those Main Event teams, over at FFPC I have the $5k team with Pat, Pete, and Leone, which is in a standalone 12-team league. The playoffs don’t start in that league for three weeks, like most leagues, but it’s currently in the No. 4 seed. We’ve had something like 7 Victory Points decided by 5 points or fewer, so it’s been a tilting one where we could be in bye position right now. That’s another Skattebo and Hunter team, but it’s Christian McCaffrey-Nacua at the top, which is great. We also just lost Sam LaPorta, though. We do have Fannin, Tuten, and Burden, and made an aggressive bid on Alec Pierce a few weeks back that’s panned out nicely, so hopefully there’s enough there to support a CMC-Nacua start that feels pretty awesome for obvious reasons.
Shawn and I have a dynasty team on FFPC that’s in playoff position right now, but maybe should be thinking about 2026, while we also did four Big Gorilla teams on FFPC on a livestream marathon that lasted several hours, and none of those are in great shape, so I should note my good fortune there, that the better teams are in the higher-leverage contest. But as far as the MEs and the $5k, out of those 15 teams, 8 are in the top four and in playoff position right now, which is exciting as I work through this.
In terms of home league stuff, I’m 5-6 in my longest-running league (27th year I believe), but I’m fourth in points. With Bijan Robinson and Gibbs off the board, and knowing my league skews RB-heavy, I went McCaffrey 1.05 over CeeDee Lamb and Barkley, and that’s panned out nicely with McBride in Round 2, though I went Jackson, Xavier Worthy, Harvey, and Jeudy in Rounds 3-6, so we’re in wait-and-see mode.
My college league that’s been around for 15 years or so is a three-person keeper where Nabers, Garrett Wilson, and A.J. Brown are my keepers, plus I spent up on Lamb at auction in a format where you can start five WRs, so that’s gone swimmingly. I’m 5-6 there, too, but ninth in points and the standings are structured in a way where it’s tough to imagine I’ll find my way into the playoffs without winning out and getting to 8-6, but my team’s also not very good and after facing Cook on TNF, I’m a significant dog this week.
In the STACKED league, it’s felt like nothing’s gone right, but I’m in sixth right now, so we’ll see. I don’t think I have the upside necessary, honestly. That was a Gibbs-Bowers-Jackson build with Worthy, Jeudy, and Skattebo.
In Mike Braude’s Apex Experts League, which I’m in for the first time this year, I’m in the six seed, as well, and that’s also where Shawn and I sit in Mike Clay’s Going Deep league. In the Scott Fish Bowl, I made the playoffs, after finishing about sixth through last week’s regular season finale.
I got bounced from the Ship Chasing guillotine league a couple weeks ago, but am still in my college one, where I spent over half my FAAB pretty early to grab Nabers and make a huge bet on him carrying me through the early weeks and also being a guy that would differentiate late, even when lineups get strong, and he promptly tore his ACL right after that. I spent another huge sum to get Gibbs a few weeks later, but I don’t have the juice to win that without some missteps by others, I don’t think.
I have a couple other home leagues where I’m in good shape, and I’m not clearly eliminated in anything other than some of the FFPC leagues, but it’s definitely been one of those years where it’s a lot of bubble teams and hoping there’s playoff upside. That’s definitely not the goal, but we do build teams to have more late-season upside with the rookies and other ascending archetypes, so if that’s the outcome in a year where things didn’t go smoothly and there have been some big injuries to major targets, I’m pretty OK with it.
Alright, that’s a long enough intro. It was useful for me to get a grasp on where I’m at, and I was just writing it out as a mechanism for that, but it probably wasn’t as helpful as it could have been. Let me know if there’s a specific way you want me to dig into my 30+ managed teams in the future.
Let’s get to the games. As always, I offer these considerations solely because you guys have asked, and because I might have a thought about a different part of a range of outcomes in some cases than what is being caught in projections, or you’re seeing elsewhere. I don’t offer these thoughts because I think they will be explicitly great predictions, and it’s basically just me going game-by-game and throwing out what hits me.
And as we’re through double-digit weeks, with more data, the projections and the range of outcomes for the different players becomes more known, meaning less volatility. As such, I’m going to work quick.
I don’t have any weather considerations listed below not because I forgot again, but because Kevin Roth has that as the deal for Week 12 — we’re all clear on the weather front. Here are the things I’m thinking about as I’m setting lineups for Week 12.
Jets at Ravens
The Ravens have been really good defensively of late, but Tyrod Taylor probably elevates the pass-catching situation for the WRs and TEs of the Jets enough for it to at least be notable. Adonai Mitchell looks like the No. 1, to the degree there is one, and he does need polish, but he gets open and in really deep leagues you could do worse.
The Ravens are huge favorites, and while they haven’t looked right lately, I’m probably expecting a better offensive performance here. They nearly lost a game they couldn’t afford to drop last week and I’d expect the general ebb and flow of seasons to swing back, and them to come out sharp. That’s never a guarantee, just my two cents on it.
Steelers at Bears
It’s not clear who will start at QB for Pittsburgh, but Mason Rudolph is a better-than-average backup at this stage of his career, and the other Steelers aren’t all that fantasy viable anyway, so I’m not sure how much it matters. I’m comfortable playing the RBs, including Kenneth Gainwell, who caught 5 of his 7 passes from Rudolph last week, including two for 20+ yards and one of his two TDs. Jaylen Warren got in a full practice Friday and has no injury designation.
Luther Burden’s role expanded enough that I’d probably think of him in a similar tier to D.J. Moore, but where Burden has a wider range with a lower floor but also probably higher ceiling, given Moore hasn’t shown much of one recently.
Colston Loveland is probably more of a desperation play given his routes bounced back some in Week 11 but were still in a suboptimal range, and there are a lot of viable TE plays. But to be clear, he’s a desperation play that does still have clear ability to hit for efficiency upside even on limited opportunity.