Sources indicate Dalvin Cook didn’t say a single word during the RB Zoom meeting…

In today’s Fantasy Life Newsletter presented by the Betting Life Discord:

• Dalvin Cook is visiting the Jets this weekend
• Bad, but not terrible, news for Joe Burrow (calf)
• Stacking in Best Ball: Professor Pete is BACK
• 10 Ways to Decide Your Fantasy Draft Order
• It’s 7/28. Take it away, Ian Hartitz…

One of the biggest ongoing NFL free agency dominoes appears to be on the verge of falling: Ex-Vikings RB Dalvin Cook is visiting the Jets this weekend and reportedly could be close to signing a deal.

The Jets managed to clear up all kinds of salary cap space after Aaron Rodgers took a $35 million pay cut, giving them the sort of room to afford Cook’s reportedly pricy demands.

I disagree with the idea that Cook is too far past his prime.

Fresh off averaging the 12th-most yards after contact per carry (3.18) with the 16th-best rate of explosive rushes (11.3%) among 42 qualified RBs in 2022, there were more than a few moments that demonstrated the veteran still has plenty of big-play ability.

Yes, other stats like EPA per rush and success rate paint the picture of a much less efficient back. Also, yes, Cook (28 in August) doesn’t appear to be completely washed if some of his home runs from 2022 are any indication.

The final details of a potential contract could better help discern just how big of a role Cook might have in New York – but rising second-year RB Breece Hall certainly figures to stay heavily involved regardless.

New Jets OC Nathaniel Hackett’s RB usage with a healthy version of Javonte Williams in Denver last season might be a good sign of things to come with this group.

In three weeks of action featuring neutral game scripts:

• Williams: 56% snaps, 37 carries, 21 targets
• Melvin Gordon: 37% snaps, 34 carries, 9 targets
• Mike Boone: 11% snaps, 0 carries, 2 targets

Don’t be surprised if Hall (once fully healthy) assumes the lead back role – especially on pass downs – over Cook, but it’d make sense if Cook (like Gordon) remains a clear 1B option with near equal work on the ground.

There’s also potential for someone like Michael Carter or Zonovan Knight to siphon away a few snaps here and there.

Ultimately, these sorts of roles will likely prevent either RB from ascending to the sort of upside RB1 heights that they might be capable of achieving with legit three-down usage

Hall should join fellow lead committee back Aaron Jones in the Round 5 range so long as the news surrounding his health doesn’t go too far south. Don’t be surprised if early-season usage is somewhat limited, but the 22-year-old talent is far too explosive to hang out on the bench for too long once at full strength.

Cook better profiles as a TD-dependent borderline RB2 next to guys like Dameon Pierce and David Montgomery. There’s potential for him to soar far higher should the Jets REALLY take it easy on Hall; just realize Cook will likely have the smallest role of his career inside of this backfield.

Oh, and did you hear that? Early drafters of Devon Achane, Raheem Mostert and Jeff Wilson just took massive sighs of relief … for now.

There’s a big difference between winning a 12-person home league and taking down a large-field best ball tournament. Today, Professor Pete explains why stacking and correlation are essential to winning a top prize in Underdog Fantasy tournaments. Don’t miss last week’s piece on Roster Construction 101.

There’s an ongoing joke in the fantasy space to not worry about all of these “galaxy brain” strategies and just draft the best players.

It’s a joke, but it’s also true.

If we had a crystal ball, we wouldn’t need to worry about optimal roster constructions or the tournament tactics that we are going to discuss today. We’d simply select all of the league winners in each round and not stress about anything else.

But we don’t have a crystal ball.

And more concerning, we collectively aren’t very good at identifying the best players. Go back and look at any of your old drafts, and you’ll be amazed at how many busts and injuries litter the roster.

Luckily, though, we don’t need to go 18 for 18 on all of our picks in Underdog Fantasy tournaments like The Puppy or Best Ball Mania. In fact, there’s a simple strategy that we can employ to reduce the number of things we need to get right.

That trick is correlation or, put more simply, stacking. Let’s dive in…

📚 What is stacking?

In the literal sense, stacking means taking multiple players from the same team, preferably a QB with his pass catchers.

Stacking, and more generally speaking, correlation, reduces the number of things we have to get right to win.

If Dolphins WR Tyreek Hill has a massive year where he beats Calvin Johnson’s receiving record, it’s very likely that his QB, Tua Tagovailoa, will as well. So when we draft Hill, we should also consider targeting Tagovailoa because you only need to be right about one thing.

If you take Hill and then, say, Dak Prescott, you now need to be right about two different, uncorrelated things.

If you were to double-stack three different QBs with two of their pass catchers, that’s nine of your 18 roster spots. In this scenario, you only need to be right about three things (those offenses hitting in a big way) instead of nine different things.

🤔 Why do we need to stack?

Stacking players and teams widens our range of outcomes in both directions. It gives our teams a higher ceiling when we correctly identify the right stacks, but it also lowers our floor if the stack performs poorly.

We want to embrace this kind of variance in tournaments like Best Ball Mania IV where we’ll need to best 677,376 other teams to win $3,000,000.

We’re not playing for the friendliest loss.

These are massive tournaments with top-heavy prizes–so we should be willing to take on the downside risk associated with stacking because of the upside.

🥇 How to get first place in a tournament

To understand why stacking and correlation are so important, it helps to review the way these tournaments are structured. Let’s use Best Ball Mania IV as an example since it is the biggest season-long contest to date with a massive $15,000,000 prize pool.

To win $3,000,000, you’ll need to traverse this gauntlet of four different stages:

• Finish top-two in your 12-person league in the regular season (Weeks 1-14)
• Finish first in your 16-person pod in Week 15
• Finish first in your 16-person pod in Week 16
• Finish first in the 441-person finals in Week 17

That might not seem too daunting on the surface, but remember that as you advance to each subsequent round, you will be squaring off against the best of the best teams.

The beauty of stacking is that it can help us both over the course of the regular season (Weeks 1-14) and in the individual playoff weeks (Weeks 15, 16, and 17).

Read on for more benefits of stacking

Looking to deploy stacking strategies? Sign up for Underdog Fantasy to get a 100% deposit match of up to $100 and start drafting TODAY!

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🙏 Star Bengals QB Joe Burrow suffered a calf strain at practice. Thankfully not anything worse.

😔 Stud Dolphins CB Jalen Ramsey goes down with a meniscus injury. It might be a while until he’s back.

😬 Jonathan Taylor’s agent and Colts owner Jim Irsay are feuding. This doesn’t exactly help!

✨ More good news surrounding Javonte Williams’ (knee) recovery. Great day to be great!

🐆 A Breakout QB and a returning WR have camp buzzing. Is the ceiling the roof?

✍️ Saquon Barkley is back at training camp AND helping the locals. Your move, ex-girlfriend.

👀 Broncos head coach Sean Payton had a lot to get off his chest. Some of these quotes are WILD.

😕 More cryptic tweets from this unhappy RB. I’m a little confused by his tactics. 

Your home league fantasy draft is arguably the single best event on the calendar. Ian is here with 10 fun suggestions on how to set your order this year.

There are three key offseason events during any fantasy football offseason:

1. Watching your loser friend complete their last-place punishment
2. Deciding draft order for the upcoming season
3. The draft

The Fantasy Life staff is hard at work in the laboratory to create a cool tool regarding No. 1, while our content team continues to grind day and night to help with No. 3.

🎯 Today’s goal: What is the best way to decide your league’s draft order?

Part of this discussion comes down to the league’s preference towards just how much skill should go into the event. I tend to believe pure randomness is the way to go in order to not overly favor one particular manager, although events that make the “skill” more about “how bad do they want it” are intriguing.

Without further adieu: 10 fun ways to decide your 2023 fantasy football draft order listed in no particular order.

🎲 1. May the best gambler win

There are several variations of this method depending on your state’s casino and sports gambling laws. Either way: Each league member gets a relatively small amount of money ($20? $100?) to bet for a predetermined length of time, and the order is derived by the best return on investment!

Sports gambling allows this to be done over a multi-day stretch, while a 60-to-120-minute time limit at the casino would make the most sense there.

Not completely random obviously, but undoubtedly a fun time? Absolutely.

🎤 2. Have a celebrity on cameo randomly assign your draft order

The possibilities here are endless.

• Hue Jackson for $70?
• LaVar Ball for $133?
• Hank from Breaking Bad for $150?

It’s been brought to my attention that former all-world Browns returner Josh Cribbs in particular, has done a great job with this in the past. While this one isn’t free, it’ll undoubtedly create some great memories and one helluva reveal for everyone.

✍️ 3. Everyone takes the NFL Wonderlic test (h/t Shawn Foss)

There are online equivalents that measure your ability on the 50-question test in 12 minutes or less. While leaguemates could feasibly spend extra time practicing and studying for the test, the reality that this is a real-life pre-draft evaluation tool makes it awfully funny to apply to a fantasy football league.

Ultimately, this is a quick way to accomplish the goal at hand while also providing the opportunity to make fun of your friends who inevitably perform poorly on the test.

Sounds like a win-win to me.

🤼 4. WWE-themed event

There are two realistic (ha!) ways to go about this:

Buy the WWE video game and create a match with as many wrestlers as you have league members. Because some wrestlers will have higher ratings than others, consider adding your fantasy football managers into the game with the same skills to create a level-playing field.

Watch an old Royal Rumble match (again, easy enough to find on YouTube) and assign each league member a set of numbers that will reflect their contestants. Traditionally, a Royal Rumble match has 30 wrestlers, so each fantasy manager will get two or three randomly assigned contestants.

So much random madness happens in these events that at least one of your friends is destined to get their hopes up before hilariously crashing back to reality. After all, entertainment at your friend’s expense is what fantasy football is ultimately all about.

Read on for six additional ways to decide your draft order

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