Playoff fantasy football

it's weird to change the format up, isn't it. It's it's weird to do the show from your kitchen, Yes, but I don't mind it. We've been in the studio for a year. It's uh, it is different, but it's a little relaxing not to be breaking down sixteen games.

So you and I have been in the fantasy world for a while now, and uh, I always found out that like two weeks after like football completely done every year, I would get sick because it was just like the high end, the rush of like going and going and going in the holidays and Christmas and New Year's and all that stuff, and then the playoffs hit and at you know, at League Safe, we did all of our allocations and stuff and all the busy season there and

then just collapse. Then you just collapse for like for like three or four days, just die. So common thing. I'm trying to stay healthy right now. That's right, We're doing the show while you're healthy. I like that as well. You should. The purpose of this particular fantasy football weekly, and we'll will come to you every week during the off season is to get you ready for playoff fantasy football and we're gonna talk about different ways to play strategies.

And one of the biggest things for me, Matt, is this is the training ground for new rules, new concepts, and things you've always did that maybe your league has been debating trying, but you're not sure you wanted to try. Yeah, things that you can do like in in in season and a league, like scoring changes and rosters and that kind of thing. Yeah, those those things definitely make sense.

An auction used to be you know, for a long time when talked before everybody's auction you we're like, hey, if nothing else, just try the auction for your playoffs. That's a great idea and then you'll know how to run an auction and if you like the concept for your regular season. Now Unfortunately, there's not a lot of services out there that provide a good playoff fantasy football platform.

So on the auction side, you'd have to do those live, I think, because I don't think that there's a service out there right now do it over Zoom? I think, yeah, maybe it might be. It might be a little tricky, but uh yeah, if you had an auctioneer, if you had one person who is sort of a dedicated auctioneer to just sort of track right, and if you did it over zoom, you could use like you know, like in a real auction, people hold up the sign with

their number on it, right, they could do that. Gosh, if you have a bad connection at your house and you're buffering though, just frozen. But no, it would be a problem. How about this idea for Zoom. It's effectively a zoom blind auction. Okay, everybody, everybody shows up with a white board. Yes, I already know where you're going with that. But if the player comes up right, so and you get one bit it's Jonathan Taylor's you write down one number, and everybody shows their number at the

same time, and you pay. The high person pays there whatever they wrote down, or if you want to be easier on them one dollar more than the next niest person. That would be fun, wouldn't it. Yeah, I think we should try that. I think I will try it. Let's do that. Okay, I'll be in a league with you. Then. God, um, I've already got one of the person who wants to

be in a playoff league. So yeah, well, and it wouldn't be hard to but you don't have you don't have somebody who wants to be in a white board auction. But you have to. That's going to be the rule of the rule on this if you have to, actually don't need an auctioneer for that one. You don't need that, correct, and everybody can just throw it a different guy and you put up your I love it. I think I

think there's something to this. It'd be really fun. Yeah. Um, all right, so try new things, uh, new scoring systems, new rules, new ideas, whatever you've got. Okay, how do you, Matt create your cheat sheet or player projections? So regardless of how you're playing, you want to have the player who's going to play the most games and score the

most points. Well, I'm glad you said projection because I think that's kind of how you have to play this is you have to project what the total points for the player will be over the course of the playoffs.

If you're going to take a player from the Eagles, for instance, like Jalen Hurts, he's probably only gonna play one game, Whereas if you're taking a player from the Packers, they might get you know, a home win in there there first divisional game, so they might get too if they make it the Super Bowl, they might get three. But if you take Tom Brady for instance, he's gonna have a wild card game and they could make the

run again and he could get four. So four is the ultimate is the is the gold mine is And not every year in fact, man of years, most years no team plays four games. But when you can get a team to play four games, that is a huge advantage. Well and now with only one team getting to buy in the NFL, you're probably going to get one team

that gets four games in just about every year. So um, I was trying to look at the scoring system when I do it, and look at the scoring system and see what that player would average in that scoring system. If it's you know, fifteen point three average points in that scoring system. You can kind of bank that, and if you're really really smart, you can start looking at

defensive matchups that they might get on the horizon. Tennessee is gonna play the lowest seed in the a f C in all likelihood, since they'll probably get the one seed. So you could see, well, Derrick Henry is going to go up against maybe the Raiders terrible run defense, or the or the Chargers terrible run defensive. Either of those teams win a wild card game. So that makes you know,

a running back like that even more interesting. Well, you're you're touching on the main thing that I do is I actually map out they the full playoff brackets and who I think is going to win, and I do it two different times. So I will I'll I'll map it all out, and I will do a very chalky one that's mostly the favorites winning, although it's you know, sometimes the seeds don't necessarily equate to the favorites. That's true because the wild card team could be better, a

better visional team. And then I'll do one that's like what I my opinion on who I think is gonna win, which is never the chalk. And you know that you know it's not always the same. So then I just then I blend those two together, the chalk version and the charge version, and I estimate how many games everybody's going to play, so that I can say, Okay, I think Jonathan Taylor is going to play two or three games or two and a half games, and that really

drives my player projections for the playoffs. Yeah, and remember, home field advantage is never meant less in the National Football League than it has the last two years. It's almost a five record for home teams and away teams. So these are all good playoff teams, right, Good teams are traveling into these home stadiums. It's not necessarily the one seed, the two seed, the three seed are going to automatically move. Well, some listeners right now we're saying, okay,

that's fine last year with no fans in the stands. Yeah, it's almost the same record this year. Well, not in the playoffs, you just mean NFL season. It's just about home and away teams. Interesting, Okay, I did not know that. Okay, So now let's talk about some of the formats and styles from playoff fantasy football. Um, how many of them involved white boards? Tragically, not. But you know, if you

give me enough time, I'll come up with this. Well, we're probably gonna come your standard league that we're going to talk about here. We could do that with a whiteboard. Well we could do the whiteboard auction style that. Yeah, absolutely, But first we need to take a break, so we'll be back in just a moment. Here, we'll put in We'll get a quick break, and then let's talk about four different ways you can play playoff fantasy football. Welcome

back Fantasy Football Weekly. Paul Charchi and Matt Harrison with you. You can follow Matt at Explosive Output on Twitter Shock Fantasy. Do you we have a Shock Fantasy playoff cheat sheet? Yeah? I will put those up early next week once the playoff field is sinalized and standing, and I'll be going through a couple of different formations, just like like you said I was. I was wearing my air Bear T T shirt a couple of days ago at that I got you got yours on black, I got mine on blue.

I think that I think the blue is the way I got a few different colors. All right, let's talk about formats for the playoffs, and I want to start here I'm gonna go first because I have the I have like the standard way to play on my side of the ledger, what I think is the stand way to play. So there's four teen NFL teams in the playoffs, so I like playing with exactly seven teams in the league. And that means because that gives everybody two team quarterbacks,

two team kickers, and two team defenses. And I do, I do think you should play with kicker and defense in the playoffs. You know, the pool is so much smaller right that here I I whereas I don't generally like to play with kicker and defense, I'll I don't mind it, but I don't know some people hate it anyway. So everybody gets two team quarterbacks, two team kickers, to team defense. I play with four running backs, four wide receivers, two tight ends, and those are rigid you have to have.

It's not it's not no I'm gonna go for six running backs and three wide receivers. Nope, exactly that number. And it ends up making the scarcer positions like running back a little more valuable because somebody's got a roster for and the next you know, before long, somebody's rostering you know Khalil Herbert. Well, it's a bad example of Kali ground Yeah, the ground bear. He's not he's talking

about it in the playoffs unfortunately. Bad example. Yeah. But but like Miles Sanders and Boston Scott and all those backup Eagles running back they'll be in. They'll be in. Now. There's no moves, there's no bench, there's no trades. Everybody's a starter, and you're just playing it out and use score points for as long as your guys are live, that's it. And when and when your guys are eliminated, they score zero, they score zero obviously. That's it. I mean,

it's it's very very straightforward. It feels like regular fantasy football, except there's no start bench. Um, you hold a draft much like you do or an auction much like you do uh in a regular league. And that's it. So that's my that's my standard fantasy league. I've been running this playoff league for twenty years. That's that's your standard. And I have a standard fantasy league that I've been

running for about eight or nine years now. Um And and if anybody wants to play, follow Shock Fantasy on Twitter and I'll probably put out the link and open it up to some invitations for people to play. But this is more of a contest game. It doesn't limit it to seven teams, and it's more of a DFS style game where you have a salary cap on each player. I set the salary cap for each player. Uh, you pick your team for the whole playoffs. It is rigid

roster construction, just like your league. But every team in the league has a shot at every player. Every team could roster Cooper Cup, every team could roster Tom Brady if they wanted to. So um, But just like yours, no moves. When you lose your players, they get a zero for the rest of the playoffs. And in my league, I believe we allow you to enter up to three times, so you can you can take three shots. Do you think that Kansas City and Green Bay meeting the Super Bowl?

You might want to stack a whole bunch of Chiefs and Packers and put those together. Do you think it's a Tampa Buffalo Super Bowl? Oh, you could get a lot of points out of that by getting four games out of each of those teams if that works. So, how many people can play in this unlimited number? Right? Or unlimited? I think I set my maximum on I run it through my NCY league, and I set my maximum.

I believe at either one or two hundred teams. The last couple of years, we've gotten teams for the most part, So if you're when you're competing, it's that many players. Let's talk strategy for just a menia. Sure, I have founded my small league with seven teams. The team's almost always that do best are the ones who diversify across a lot of different the players across a lot of different NFL teams. Um, so you don't get shut out fast.

And all you need is you know, you get three or four guys so the Super Bowl and you've got a chance. From what we've seen out of the winners in the past few years, it's been dual team stacks. It's been in a stack in the NFC and and and that kind of works. But how you diversify is you take the weird guy that maybe is a little higher price than the other or you you you you

diversify the same way you're doing a DFS game. Find a guy that's going to have a low ownership percentage and you try to attack that player and put that one your roster alright, And in that format I can pick, it's still salary captive, it's some way, so I'm still going to have to do some some juggling. Yep. So you can't just pick, you know, the best player from every team across the board. It just won't allow you. So understood, alright. My second of two formats for the

playoffs is a four man roster. You're big into the number four teams, that's why. And you get exactly one player from each team, and you have to fill out another rigid roster of two quarterbacks, three running backs, three receivers, two tight ends, too, defenses, two kickers, and you get one player from each team anybody want, anybody you want? Simple, simple, right, kind of like my game, but no salary, just a limit on which team you're getting. You get one guy

from each team. That's it, so you can't stack. And then the process becomes a little more interesting because everybody's so many people are gonna have Davante Adams. Are you gonna pivot to Marcus Velda Scantley is going to be your packer, right, just to give you some diversification, and looking at like the tight end position, how many people are gonna have Travis Kelsey in there a lot and a lot, and if George Kittle makes the playoffs with the Niners, a lot of George Kittles. So it'll be

interesting to see how people diversify there. Do you want to take Mahomes instead? Do you want to take Tyreek Hill instead? Do you want to get wacky and take Darryl Williams who could be in line for an absolutely awesome playoff run here? It is possible, actually yes, I mean, if you know, we don't know what we think. Clyde Edwards Alaire maybe available, but honestly, he he never really got back the big top workload that I thought he would get back after he came back from this previous injury.

I remember last year at this time, we were all trying to decide Ronald Jones or Leonard four Net for the playoffs, and I was on the wrong side. Fournet got no runing, nothing all regular season, nothing, and then went berserk. Yeah, alright, So that's my second one fourteen fourteen man roster. Because there's fourteen teams, pick one guy and from each team and fill out two quarterbacks, through running backs to receivers, two tight ends, two kickers to defense,

your fourth and your second of two playoff formats. Matt, Well, mine's kind of similar to yours, um, and this is a playoff hold him game. And actually the nff c UH National Fantasy Football Championship they run a really cool one. Uh here's how there's works, and you can set up your own similar to this if you want to on

my fantasy league right now. And I'm not affiliated with my fantasy league anyway, but they have free playoff uh fantasy football available for we like the guys behind and we do like we do like Mike and Tony and yeah, so the NFC, their format is a hold him game, and so it's a little bit different. You have two quarter backs, three running backs for wide receivers or tight ends, so four receivers, one flex, a kicker, and a defense.

And in the first round of the playoffs, just like yours, you can only have one player from each team, but only in the first round. In the first round, it's a twelve man roster and you can only have one player from each team, so you'll leave well, well, there's two teams that are they are on by in the first round. You could leave those on by, but have my only chance to get a packer. But wait, there's more.

If you hold a player from your wild card round on your roster and keep them on your roster, their multiplier goes up from one to two, goes from one to two. So so if you get Aaron Rodgers and just let him sit in week one for now, I get double points and get double points, triple points, a week three, tuple points. So in the divisional round, the second round, you can have up to two players from each team on your roster. How do I add somebody later? You get to you get to go in and manually

change your roster every week on the site. But I have to, Okay, can I Can I make any roster I want? You can make any roster you want, Okay, all right, even in week even in the second round. So I can make any roster, you can change it. But if you change anything, that guy's restarting at one x yep. So, for instance, let's say you had I'm trying to think of a guy who's going to play in the first round for sure, Uh, Dallas, Dallas Collas Cowboys, Dallas,

Dallas Cowboys or Dallas. Let's see if Dallas Goddard in the first round, they win, they move on to the second round. If you keep Dallas Goddard in that spot in the divisional round, he gets two times the point,

which I would want. If Dallas Goddard gets hurt and Philly moves on, you'd probably want to replace him, so you'd get a new tight end and that guy would be at only one X. So when you get to the third round, the conference championship round, some of those players can be up to three X and you can now have three players from each team on your roster to fill out the twelve man roster. And then when you get to the Super Bowl, you can have four players from each team, so your roster is paired down

to eight. So your your roster requirements aren't as rigid in Super Bowl week, but but you can have you know, the four X multiplier on on a couple of different players. I like the The reason I like this format is you get the feeling you could have a thrilling come

from behind. You know, you're in the middle of the pack going into the super Bowl, and then here comes your three and four X guys that have big games in the Super Bowl, and you come back to the Yeah, so I think the key in that one is too forecast who might be the best player on a team that can play four games, who's the best fantasy player on a team that could play four and then you want to get them in your lineups. Week one will help you project which players will do well in the

first round of the playoffs next week when some matchups. Yeah, we'll know the matchups, will break them down. Sim start, We're gonna break them down. F FW. Stuff we're gonna do. We're going to brief versions. We're not doing full versions. It's too long, it's too much. But we'll do is I know, I know, we'll do the fast versions of those games. Um and and it'll be fun. Yeah, looking

forward to the playoffs. The great thing about working in our business in the in the real football playoffs is for the most part, we're not working those games, and I just enjoy them. It'll be great. I I absolutely adore the divisional round of the playoffs. Like, that's my favorite week of the year. You get the two on Saturday,

you get the two on Sunday. If you don't have anything going on, you can just PLoP yourself down on the couch order of pizza and have a six pack next to you and just watch these awesome games between awesome teams every time. The wild card round doesn't often give you the best matchups, but the divisional round it's usually the cream of the crop in that round and you get four great games. Yeah that's um, those are those games are a ton of fun. The have a

strong bend towards going too. Not that we can bet here in Minnesota, but if I were to, we can drive to we can drive to Iowa. Bet the the wild The teams that win in that wild card round but beat bad teams flop the next week. So like I think, the Eagles are an easy out. So you know, whoever gets the Eagles in round one is going to easily advance to round two and then I go against that team. That makes sense. Yeah, we'll see. Uh. Thank

you for listening. Yeah, thanks Matt, Yeah, thank you for listening. She showed up and you listened and you talked. Thank you for everybody else who has listened. We'll be back next week to break down playoff games fantasy style and help give some guidance for those that are playing in a variety of different formats. We'll talk to you then, everybody, Bye bye. Fantasy Football Weekly is a production of I

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