In this week's P.O. Box:

I’m 50 drafts deep into Best Ball Mania V, so I spent this week reviewing my portfolio on Fantasy Life and sharing my Top 10 takeaways in a new video on the Deposit Kingdom channel.

Here are ten interesting nuggets about my player exposures so far…

This one terrifies me because it’s entirely fueled by randomness. I've only gotten two 1.02 slots through 50 drafts (h/t Michael Dubner’s best ball tracker for that info), which means I’ve had very few opportunities to get Lamb. This should hopefully even out over the next 100.

I’m a big proponent of just taking the best player available by ADP in Round 1, but I have been overruling ADP by taking Garrett Wilson over A.J. Brown. That said, even though I think Wilson is a superstar who could be a Top 5 pick next year (provided his QB ever returns from his walkabout or whatever), I think this % disparity is probably too overconfident. I’m gonna get back to taking AJB at ADP.

I don’t think there’s a big difference between pick 13 and pick 26 in drafts this year, which coincidentally is the range of players bookended by two rookies—Marvin Harrison Jr. and Malik Nabers. I think you can pretty easily make the case that Nabers has a similar range of outcomes as MHJ, which makes him a slam dunk arbitrage selection in the middle of Round 3. I’m currently sitting at 24%, roughly 3x the field.

That said, now that he’s been inching up boards, I’ll prolly start getting the three WRs going directly after him a bit more:

By the way, you can check out your exposures, player combos, and Week 17 stack exposures for free with the Fantasy Life Best Ball Hub.

I’m all-in on Elite TE this year, but a weird thing has played out where I have 27% Mark Andrews compared to 6% Dalton Kincaid. I obviously prefer Andrews to Kincaid, but my confidence interval there is not 4x, as the exposures would seem to indicate. It’s time for me to capitulate to BIG LIAM and grab some more Kincaid at the 4/5 turn.

Because I’m hammering Elite TE, I have a lot of scary fades in this Round 4/5 range. We discussed those on this week’s Ship Chasing.

I just could not bring myself to click rookies with shaky prospect profiles like Ladd McConkey and Keon Coleman over Addison. Addison is a second-year WR who flashed in Year 1 and won’t have to contend with T.J. Hockenson for targets for most of the season.

Similarly, I’m taking Addison over vets like Calvin Ridley and Chris Godwin, so I’ve ended up with a grip of him (20%). This is a stand I’m perfectly content with and don’t plan on adjusting anytime soon.

I have 22% Brooks and 20% Bowers.

Brooks is a pretty easy sell where he’s going. He’s the best rookie back in this class and will quickly take over the Panthers backfield when he’s healthy. The when there is why we are getting a discount, but in these tournaments where the backweighted production is king, he’s such a smash.

With Bowers, we are getting a massive landing spot discount on one of the best TE prospects ever. He’s a way better player than a multiple rookie WRs going ahead of him, so this is an obvious “bet on talent” spot. He’s my one big exception to prioritizing the Top 7 TEs in drafts because he has the ability to join that cohort down the stretch.

There probably won’t be, but if there is, it’s Zack Moss and Chase Brown. Brown (31%) is my second most drafted player. I think Moss is a great pick too, but I’m always going to go harder on the cheaper of the pair in an ambiguous backfield.

So many of the criticisms of Brown this offseason—He’s just a speed merchant! If you take away the big plays he sucks! He can’t carry the load!—are eerily reminiscent of why drafters didn’t want to click Achane in 2023.

We know this backfield is going to generate a ton of RB points. Both of these guys can pay off ADP as is and the contingent upside is through the roof. I feel similarly about the Titans RBs, it’s just not as exciting of an offense.

I’m dubbing this Round 12-14 pocket of the draft board the rookie/sophomore goldilocks zone:

Loading up on Year 1 and Year 2 players is a cheat code in these tournaments, and the prices here are very favorable.

I’m almost always grabbing three straight rookies or sophomores through this range of the board. I would not be shocked to see a couple of these RBs produce similarly to the Round 8-10 RBs or a couple of these WRs outproduce the Round 6-7 rookie WRs.

DeVontez Walker is my favorite last round pick and I’m at 20%. Shawn Siegele got me hyped on him before the NFL Draft and then he landed in a sneaky good spot with the Ravens.

I’m very willing to bet against Rashod Bateman breaking out in Year 4, which makes Walker all the more intriguing. The Ravens also get one of the best Week 17 games (dome vs. Houston).

With selections like these, you don’t need a full breakout. You just need one or two well-timed spikes late in the year.

Love having Jayden Daniels as my top guy, especially because most of that was before his ADP moved, but the Drake Maye exposure is a little scary considering the rhetoric out of Foxboro.

I’d like to continue hammering the Patriots cheap rookie pieces, but diversify the Maye clicks onto some other cheap backdoor stack QBs. As a lot of us learned last year when we selected Bryce Young at a much higher frequency then C.J. Stroud, we collectively aren’t good at rookie QB forecasting.

🎯 My favorite stacks & rookies (10 insights after 50 drafts). With 50 Best Ball Mania V drafts under my belt, I share my top 10 takeaways for drafts, including how to approach the early rounds, how many WRs to select before Round 7, the two best backdoor stacks, and my ten favorite rookies to target in the late rounds. Check it out on the Deposit Kingdom channel.

📊 Exposure takeaways from my Best Ball Mania portfolio. Used the Fantasy Life Best Ball Hub to go through my exposures.

🎡 Randomizer Draft w/ Jakob Sanderson. The most aggressively Canadian guy I know, battled the Randomizer wheel for the first time last night. Watch him sing, doxx, improvise, and defend his clients over the course of 18 rounds.

☕ Best Ball Breakfast: Don’t Fall Behind At WR. Four more drafts on BBB this week, including ones with Shawn Siegele, Pat Kerrane, and Ron Stewart. Topics discussed: navigating the WR avalanche with early detours, Zero RB with Elite TE, RB2 battles in New York, and finally clicking Keon Coleman. Also: PREVIOUSLY ON BEST BALL BREAKFAST.

🏆 Fantasy Life roundup. This week I wrote about three players going full hardo this offseason and Aaron Rodgers’ disappearing act.

☣ Should Underdog Add Salary Cap DFS? Bric and I tackle some best ball and sports betting topics.

🚢 Our Top 5 Scariest Fades In Underdog Drafts. We review our exposures through early drafts and highlight the guys we are most scared to be underweight on right now.

🍾 Best Ball Hot Takes with Jack Settleman. He’s got some good ones.

💪 The Swolecast Drafts A BBMV Team. The one where we didn’t let our guest Liam talk because we had to bust on Davis the whole time.

⏰ BBM Game Theory & Dalmatian Draft. This week on Off & On The Clock, Jon and I discuss game theory surrounding Best Ball Mania V strategy before hopping in a Dalmation draft.

📈 Targets & Fades w/ Jakob Sanderson (ADP Chasing). Kerrane, Davis, Sam, and Jakob break down the latest ADP risers and fallers, discuss Drake Maye and the New England Patriots receivers, and Jakob's biggest targets and fades throughout the draft board. Related: stay cozy in your 4% exposure blankets.

🛋 On The Couch with Sigmund Bloom. On The Couch was one of the first fantasy football podcasts I listened to religiously, so it was super fun to hop on with Sig this week.

🛶 Book #10 for June (60%): River of Doubt by Candice Millard

Man, this book is giving me anxiety. The way Millard outlines all of the environmental threats in the Amazon—from insects to snakes to piranhas to literal penis-eating fish—makes your skin crawl. And this is before the expedition starts hitting the rapids/waterfalls, loses critical dugouts and supplies, and stumbles upon an Indian tribe who has never encountered other humans.

I truly do not know how anyone survived this journey.

At least Roosevelt kept things lively:

🕵 Book #11 for June (Haven’t Started): The Hunter by Tana French

✅ Book #9 for May (COMPLETE): The Art Thief by Michael Finkel
✅ Book #8 for May (COMPLETE): Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
✅ Book #7 for April (COMPLETE): Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson
✅ Book #6 for April (COMPLETE): The Trading Game by Gary Stevenson
✅ Book #5 for March (COMPLETE): Recursion by Blake Crouch
✅ Book #4 for March (COMPLETE): The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
✅ Book #3 for Feb. (COMPLETE): Gambler: Secrets from a Life at Risk by Billy Walters
✅ Book #2 for Feb. (COMPLETE): Chain Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
✅ Book #1 in Jan. (COMPLETE): Clear Thinking by Shane Parris

We got one show on tap this weekend…

Going to celebrate my bday this weekend by having a few drinks and shooting the shit with Denny tonight. Become a YT member to watch live (top 2 tiers).

🙏 My dude Davis Mattek is looking for a fantasy gig. Go subscribe to his Patreon and newsletter in the mean time:

🧵 Very funny thread for those of you who consume a ton of best ball content.

Need more newslettering? Check out the Fantasy Life newsletter I write regularly: