Stealing Signals August plans

A list of what's coming your way

In May, I wrote way too many words about the 2023 pricing change for Stealing Signals, and in it I talked about bringing back the “Founding Member” tier, which is now called “Signals Gold.” I didn’t offer a ton of information on this gold tier, so I want to hit on that in this post, as well as do something I’ve done each of the past couple years, which is talk through the list of pieces I intend to write.

So first of all, for the Gold tier. The last two years, I’ve had a Gold tier in the Stealing Signals Discord, which was focused on a once-a-week Office Hours where I answered questions related to that week’s Stealing Signals on Wednesdays. (By the way, you can join the Stealing Signals Discord here if you haven’t and want to; the deal with Discord is I don’t spend much time in the free channels there, and it’s more about being a place for Signals subs to interact with each other, created by request of subs who wanted a place for that purpose).

That Gold tier in the Discord the past couple years has been a blast, but I frankly want to pivot to doing those Q&As via livestream, where I can talk through my answers to questions rather than committing to more writing (as you can probably guess, my written Q&A answers were frequently very thorough). Doing those as a video allows me to communicate through a different avenue, and I think get to more overall discussion, with a better back and forth and that kind of thing. One concern I heard was there are people who liked to read back through those Q&As, and it was easy to see the questions and skim through it in writing. Since I’ll be using Streamyard for these private livestreams, which is the same system you might see on Ship Chasing or other livestreams, I’ll be able to put the question I’m answering on the screen. Hopefully, for those of you who aren’t able to be there live, you’ll be able to flip through the video after the fact and skip past any topics that weren’t interesting by using that feature, because I’m not sure I’ll have the time to do time stamps on every video like you see on the more polished YouTube videos.

Additionally, I want to use this same system in draft season. Last year, I put out a call for unique scoring settings in fantasy leagues so I could break down how I’d adjust my strategy for those settings. I was overwhelmed with the response, and I wound up tackling more than 20 different users’ leagues in two mailbag posts that almost killed me (and I wrote directly to several more of you answering questions outside the newsletter). But I recognized the value to each of you individually with that, and it’s the kind of thing that is waaaaaay better suited to me being on a stream where I can just riff a little bit, so that’s going to be how I tackle that subset of content this August. I’m not yet sure when I’ll set those streams up — I’m thinking Tuesday nights might be a general time for these streams in-season, after I get Signals fired off, so I might use Tuesday nights here in August as well — but all of that stuff will be available specifically for Signals Gold members. (As an aside, I’ve done some one-on-one consulting on request with some of you before, i.e. an hourly call where we chat through your draft, and I’m open to some of those situations again this year at a higher price point.)

But just to wrap up the Signals Gold tier information, there won’t be much if any additional written content there, and it will instead be these private, unlisted livestreams that won’t otherwise be found on YouTube as the additional perk of that subscription tier. I likely won’t be able to do them weekly in August, but I’m thinking like two mega-streams where I hit on all questions that are offered and maybe go for a couple hours if necessary, as far as how that will look in August. Maybe I’ll find time for a third in early September during the final drafting days. Information on those will be sent out in a private email that only goes to Signals Gold subscribers; if you aren’t a Gold subscriber but want to be, email me and we can get you upgraded. If you were part of the Signals Gold or Premium Signals chats last year in Discord and are interested in these things again, also please email me (I can’t easily link your Discord name with the email associated with your Substack account, so I’ll need you to initiate that, but I want to get you guys squared away as well).

Alright, one more housekeeping thing before I list out what I have on my content schedule for August and we get out of here. This year, the Ship Chasing crew is going to be doing more high-stakes drafting on NFC, along with the content we do on FFPC. If you want to draft against us, our first draft will be a Silver Bullet on August 16th, which we’ll broadcast live. This link takes you right to that league, and whether you sign up to draft against us or do other NFC drafting this year, I’d love if you go to the site through this link anyway as it will help out the channel.

The Silver Bullet is a single-entry format where everyone can only draft one team, compared to some other high stakes formats where you can draft multiple teams in various leagues. That means the best fantasy grinders won’t have 100 different teams in the contest that you’ll be going up against for the top prize; your one team will be up against everyone else’s one team.

It also comes in a little below most high stakes tournaments at a $1,200 price point, so if you’ve been wanting to get into the high stakes realm, this is one of the better tournaments to dip your toes in. The overall contest is smaller given the single-entry format, and it maxes out at 300 total entries at the most, so the grand prize isn’t some gaudy number like the biggest contests. But it’s still a nice payday at $50,000, and each 12-team league will pay out $5,000 to its winner, $2,400 to second, and $600 to third. You can find the full rules here, but remember to use the earlier link to sign up and draft against us on the 16th!

Alright, here’s my content plan between now and the start of the regular season, with almost certainly more stuff to be added:

• Final two Offseason Stealing Signals posts — Eight total, one for each division, diving deep into each team and hitting on all the Signal and Noise from my offseason research to lay the foundation for everything else to come

• Full tiered rankings — Coming in the next week; projections already released (rankings will update through to Week 1 kickoff, projections don’t update after initial release due to time constraints with constantly shuffling rosters and what I believe to be limited actionability of that work)

• Targets and Fades articles — Breaking down my tiered rankings, discussing targets I have a tier ahead of and fades I have a tier below consensus ADP, and why (four articles, one for each major position)

• Team HVT article — My preferred way to think through one of my favorite stats for identifying RB upside, projecting it on the team level

• Draft reviews — I have a couple best ball reviews planned soon, plus breakdowns of high-stakes drafts coming later, all describing my process and execution in my own drafts

• One-off features — Similar to pieces like “Drafters aren’t adequately learning from 2022” and “How RPOs are changing the projection math,” I have a couple topics bookmarked to be written up, including one that will ultimately be called something like “the biggest edge in 2023” because I continue to believe the drafting market is not properly analyzing where we are in the NFL’s life cycle

• Additional posts — Who knows what I’ll add, but every year I’ve listed my August plans, I’ve looked at it like it was way too long of a list, and then by Week 1 I’ve written all of it plus like five or so additional pieces that just hit me and I wanted to cover that day

I don’t anticipate being able to tackle last year’s short-lived “Mailbag Mondays” this year, and will instead push reader questions toward the streams in the Gold subscription I detailed above. I’m not sure how I’ll tackle 2023 draft strategy yet — it’s a changing landscape, and it’s an important question that needs to be written about, but much like last year I’d like to build on old principles to do it most efficiently, and it can be challenging to do that while also being accessible to new readers. So that’s something I’ll work through after I get the initial player takes out.

Looking forward to a great August and an even better 2023 season! If you haven’t subscribed to the paid version of the newsletter, well, I’m not sure what you’re waiting for. The retention rates have been ridiculous, and it’s been such cool validation from you guys that what I do here works, even when I’m constantly second-guessing myself and writing 5,000 words on some esoteric topic I should be able to boil down to 500. You guys rule, and your support continues to be an incredible blessing.

The Hall of Fame game is tonight! Let’s crush the 2023 season!