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Joe Bryant said:

Another significant change after listening to feedback - we've completely revamped what we were doing with the Game Recaps and replaced them with a new feature with Sigmund Bloom giving his concise takes on what needs to be known from each game. https://subscribers.footballguys.com/apps/article.php?article=2020-need-to-know-week-02

It's tons more actionable and brings value to the reader.

The Game Recaps were good but I didn't feel they were bringing enough value as you could get something too similar from ESPN or other sites. The value we bring is a unique look from Sig and sifting through the haystack of 2 hours of the game for the nuggets you need to know. We'll keep polishing this but I love it and the response has been great. 

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I really like the concept of the article and how well it's written, I just think some of the advice is very questionable which gives me pause about everything else.  A lot of over reactions IMO.  I don't think you can downgrade the entire Raiders passing attack when they faced a defense that was one of the worse in the league at the end of last year vs. the rush, lost Luke K, and had rookies starting everywhere.  If Waller isn't going to be a core contributor, why does Dodds has him at #4 this week and MT at #2?  Even Bloom himself has him at #9 this week which would be a TE1 and a core contributor.

Instinctive said:

Big fan. Was first thing I saw and read today on the Season Long Coverage weekly homepage.

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Thanks @Instinctive  

@Joe Bryant - good to get the Random Shots email. Made the season feel like it’s really started. I mean, after the actual games and stuff.  I enjoy that brain dump though and there have been some excellent music recommendations over the years. Thanks for doing that every week. 

Mayfield was on the downgrade list this week.  Bloom said he was only a marginal QB2.  I question this call because FBG consensus had him at QB22 preseason which is margin QB2.  Bloom had him at QB29, so technically Bloom is upgrading.  Regardless, last night numbers will place him around QB24 this week.

Chubb was on the downgrade list this week coming off a bad week.  Let's hope Bloom has the same conviction this week after Chubb scored 26pts and the yo-yo isn't back

Ross was on the upgrade list.  It was ugly on this front last night.

Beckham was on the downgrade list.  Decent game.  Potential yo-yo candidate.

Hopper was on the downgrade list.  I agree and this is looking like a good call.

@Joe Bryant Dominator's rest of the season rankings seem off. In an FPC league it has Ekeler as the 70th best player (12th RB) for the rest of the season. In classic it has him as 30th (13th RB). 30th seems low, but 70 seems like there is a bug in the code. 

BassNBrew said:

Mayfield was on the downgrade list this week.  Bloom said he was only a marginal QB2.  I question this call because FBG consensus had him at QB22 preseason which is margin QB2.  Bloom had him at QB29, so technically Bloom is upgrading.  Regardless, last night numbers will place him around QB24 this week.

Chubb was on the downgrade list this week coming off a bad week.  Let's hope Bloom has the same conviction this week after Chubb scored 26pts and the yo-yo isn't back

Ross was on the upgrade list.  It was ugly on this front last night.

Beckham was on the downgrade list.  Decent game.  Potential yo-yo candidate.

Hopper was on the downgrade list.  I agree and this is looking like a good call.

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Crazy. I always found Bloom’s Upgrade/Downgrade WW grab report to be very yo-yo-ey. Extremely over-reactive based on one week sample size each week. 

I recall him suggesting 50% FAAB for a guy one week and then downgraded him/recommended to cut him the next week. Easy to say when you’re spending someone else’s pretend money and it’s not your team  

He is very “all or none” on that. There is a better way to go about it, definitely (including some really well researched scales), however I may keep that to myself for now. 

I enjoy reading it but also consider it to be the weekly buy-high, sell-low report, and I don't mean that as an insult although I know it is being taken that way. 

If you follow it all year long, you can blow your entire waiver budget on a single player just buy buying when he recommends, dropping when he recommends, and then buying back when he recommends again, rinse-repeat a few times.  I would prefer to see something with a more strategic long-term approach. 

I also understand it has to be hard to write with how many different variations of leagues are out there, and this report is pretty much a one-size fits all approach.  Maybe instead of just upgrade/downgrade, the players could be broken into different tiers to give everyone a better sense of their overall value? 

Thanks. It's definitely a challenge on how to best approach the "is this a flash" vs "is this is start of a trend". The reality too is leagues are so different.

In an aggressive league a conservative approach for spending FAAB means you won't get many players early. It's possible you may benefit later as injuries create opportunity and the aggressive GMs are out of money. But in many cases, that's the equivalent of a coach saving his timeouts he never uses. So it's a challenge.

Buy High - Sell Low is terrible advice and we do all we can to avoid that. If folks have time, I'd highly recommend listening to the Waiver Wire podcast each week that accompanies the article http://podcast.footballguys.com/2020/Footballguys-Audible-2020-Vol141a.mp3

They're able to offer lots more detail and thinking on it with the expanded platform. Enjoy.

Another big thing is knowing when to admit you were wrong. I was not high on Cam Newton in the preseason. I was not totally sold after Miami. After Seattle, I'm all in. One might call that a yo yo. I call it not being so rigid you can't change an opinion.

Is it preferable to make the right call the first time and not have to change? Absolutely. It helps me avoid all the "You're just chasing stats" feedback. When the reality is it's not chasing stats but seeing new information with live action in a real game.  It's how it works. It's been my experience the only thing worse than missing an early prediction is failing to recognize new information that requires an updated prediction. 

Joe Bryant said:

Another big thing is knowing when to admit you were wrong. I was not high on Cam Newton in the preseason. I was not totally sold after Miami. After Seattle, I'm all in. One might call that a yo yo. I call it not being so rigid you can't change an opinion.

Is it preferable to make the right call the first time and not have to change? Absolutely. It helps me avoid all the "You're just chasing stats" feedback. When the reality is it's not chasing stats but seeing new information with live action in a real game.  It's how it works. It's been my experience the only thing worse than missing an early prediction is failing to recognize new information that requires an updated prediction. 

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Hi Joe- I think your take here is just fine, but I think what’s being talked about, using your example, is if next week this time you’re saying you’re back to not being sold on Cam Newton.

Its one thing to have an amendable opinion and to not be stuck in take lock, but it’s another thing to flip flop completely almost every week with the change in the wind

Joe Bryant said:

Thanks. It's definitely a challenge on how to best approach the "is this a flash" vs "is this is start of a trend". The reality too is leagues are so different.

In an aggressive league a conservative approach for spending FAAB means you won't get many players early. It's possible you may benefit later as injuries create opportunity and the aggressive GMs are out of money. But in many cases, that's the equivalent of a coach saving his timeouts he never uses. So it's a challenge.

Buy High - Sell Low is terrible advice and we do all we can to avoid that. If folks have time, I'd highly recommend listening to the Waiver Wire podcast each week that accompanies the article http://podcast.footballguys.com/2020/Footballguys-Audible-2020-Vol141a.mp3

They're able to offer lots more detail and thinking on it with the expanded platform. Enjoy.

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I do think it really matters the kind of league you are in. With FFPC leagues with large rosters and attentive owners, I think generally the values are conservative and will lead you to miss on most players early. 

As to it 1 week of evidence, that is all you get in many leagues. 

Drunken Cowboy said:

I do think it really matters the kind of league you are in. With FFPC leagues with large rosters and attentive owners, I think generally the values are conservative and will lead you to miss on most players early. 

As to it 1 week of evidence, that is all you get in many leagues. 

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Absolutely. It makes it nearly impossible it seems to broadly give good advice on how aggressively to go after players. I'm totally open to other ideas if people have suggestions on how to give more useful advice there. 

Joe Bryant said:

Absolutely. It makes it nearly impossible it seems to broadly give good advice on how aggressively to go after players. I'm totally open to other ideas if people have suggestions on how to give more useful advice there. 

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I could imagine some scaling that considers roster size and amount of bud dollars spent. 

Joe Bryant said:

Another big thing is knowing when to admit you were wrong. I was not high on Cam Newton in the preseason. I was not totally sold after Miami. After Seattle, I'm all in. One might call that a yo yo. I call it not being so rigid you can't change an opinion.

Is it preferable to make the right call the first time and not have to change? Absolutely. It helps me avoid all the "You're just chasing stats" feedback. When the reality is it's not chasing stats but seeing new information with live action in a real game.  It's how it works. It's been my experience the only thing worse than missing an early prediction is failing to recognize new information that requires an updated prediction. 

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https://twitter.com/OnePantherPlace/status/1309625755828211717?s=19

I couldn't find this thread for some reason so I resurrected an older one, apologies.

Not a fan of paring down the weekly passing/rushing matchups to just top and bottom 5. Seems like a takeaway. 

This was fairly valuable insight to help inform decisions, especially at flex. There's the chart, but the analysis -- which often included injury, who was streaking and falling, CB vs WR/TE analysis, etc. -- was the real gold.

Now I'm just missing 70% of the content that there usually was.

I also imagine this is going to be prone to repetitiveness in that as pass and rush Ds solidify as best and worst in the league, those are the teams we're going to see most of every week through the season.

11 year subscriber here. I found great value in the paid content for season long content for my redraft leagues and it's paid off multiple years winning leagues/money. When DFS exploded on the scene, I added that to my season long leagues and quickly migrated to spending more time and energy on DFS games for various reasons which is outside the scope of this thread. I stopped doing my season long games and just focused on DFS only last year and again this year due to time constraints with family, kids, and life outside of NFL. I read every post on this thread so far and was a bit surprised to see very little talk on DFS content so I figured I would chime in on that with some thoughts of my own. I've spent a stupid amount of time and energy into creating a fully interactive Lineup Manager using Microsoft Excel with a crap ton of VB scripting baked in. Over the years, I've collected a ton of data points that matter (to me at least) to help me craft up my own lineups. FBG content in both the season long sections and the DFS sections were used for many data points. With that said, I'll move onto my thoughts and opinions for this 2020 season based on DFS content.

Right off the bat this year I noticed some key missing pieces that use to be in the DFS section compared to last year and beyond.

1) As mentioned over in the DFS specific forum, @David Dodds Value Chart is simply missing this year! I know he handed off the Cracking Fanduel Article off to @Devin Knotts last year but we still at least had the Value Chart from Dodds. This was a major piece of data that I had included in my own personal Lineup Manager App and placed a high value to that data within my own custom algorithm I used to come up with my own "Value" figure for every player that given week. This is a huge downgrade in DFS content this year.

2) The other key piece I'm not seeing this year is the "Wisdom of The Staff". This was another treasure trove of information for DFS content and more importantly, it weighed in on multiple staff members thoughts/voted on the various different criteria of information that was in that article each week. I used several of those topics that were in there as key pieces of information in my own program which also weighed heavy into my algorithms to come up with my own "Value" on each player each week. Take a look at all of this information that we're not getting this year from this one specific DFS article alone! 

QB - Which quarterback $7900 or over are you most willing to pay up for?
QB - Which quarterback $7000 or under is the safest cash-game play?
QB - Which quarterback from $7100 to $7800 will be the best value?
QB - Which quarterback has most the potential to throw for 3-plus touchdowns?
RB - Which running back $7800 or over are you most willing to pay up for?
RB - Which running back $5600 or under has the most upside for use in tournaments?
RB - Which running back from $5700 to $7700 will be the best value?
RB - Which running back will have the highest cash game ownership percentage this week?
RB - Which running back with the lowest salary has the potential for 15-plus touches and/or one or more touchdowns?
WR - Which wide receiver $7600 or over are you most willing to pay up for?
WR - Which wide receiver $5600 or under has the most upside for use in tournaments?
WR - Which wide receiver from $5700 to $7500 will be the best value?
WR - Which wide receiver will have the highest cash game ownership percentage this week?
WR - Which wide receiver with the lowest salary has the potential for 10-plus targets?
TE - Which tight end $6000 or over are you most willing to pay up for?
TE - Which tight end $5000 or under has the most upside for use in tournaments?
TE - Which tight end from $5100 to $5900 will be the best value?
TE - Which tight end will have the highest cash game ownership percentage this week?
TE - Which is the cheapest tight end you think will score a touchdown?
TD - Which defense has the best chance to score a D/ST touchdown?
TD - Which team will score 31-plus points? (Not a defensive question.)
REC - Which wide receiver or tight end is in your favorite QB-REC stack?
RB - What running back stacks best with a defense this week?
Which player do you think will have an ownership percentage lower than 5% who will hit 3x value for tournament play?
Who is your cash game must-play?
Who is your biggest fade of the week?

3) Another item scaled back this year which has been mentioned in here (or somewhere else I forget) is the write ups on every game in the Passing/Rushing Matchup content in favor of doing it just for the top 5 and bottom 5. I'm glad they still rate all matchups (and improved the layout this year to put it in chart/column form) but this too was a very valuable tool used when making lineups. When it came time to comparing 2 similar priced players to fit on a lineup at the same position and similarly projected points, I would go to that games rushing/passing matchup writeup on the teams involved for the players. Many times this key writeup ended up being a major factor in choosing one player over the other based on this information. This is another major downgrade of information I personally used for DFS purposes.

4) Sigmund Bloom's Weekly Sleepers write up is only included in the season Long package and not available to the DFS package. This has never been an issue for me because I've been  an all pro subscriber for the last 6 years when the "3 Year Offers" were presented and I jumped on it both times I saw it available. That ran out/no longer offered (unless I just missed it this year?) and I had to subscribe again this year. Now that I'm only doing DFS and moved on from season long leagues, I just went for the DFS package and just discovering Blooms Sleeper article isn't available for DFS?! This is just odd to me that a weekly article geared specifically for that given week in the season that highlights a staff members take on who he sees as sleepers for that week is ONLY available for season long package? What's the reasoning for this one not being available to the DFS only package? It directly lines up with what DFS is all about and highlights that given weeks sleeper picks. that's exactly what DFS and more importantly, GPP games are all about... finding those deep sleeper cheap guys who can blow up and give you 3x or more production compared to their price tags in DFS. This is another huge downgrade in content for me when I moved to the DFS package and just discovered this.

My personal path with the types of subscriptions I've had over the last 6 years:
- $64.95 for a 3 Year All Pro Package (2014-2016) breaks down to $21.65 per year 
- $72.95 for a 3 Year All Pro Package (2016-2019) breaks down to $24.31 per year
- $49.95 for a 1 year subscription to just the DFS package (2020)

I understand I was very fortunate to snag those extremely discounted 3 year packages for the all Pro and that sometimes all good things do come to an end like this where it's no longer an option from comments I read by @Joe Bryant. But now that I just paid $50 for the DFS only package, and adding all items up above that I'm now missing, I'm sitting here going into week 3 scratching my head wondering if I made the wrong move with sticking with FBG for the DFS only content. It seems crazy to me that I'm even thinking like this because I've been dropping "FBG" name left and right to close friends and family about how good the content has been in the past years. I'm now paying MORE money on a yearly basis this year than my past 6 years and getting less content (that matters the most to me). To top it all off, I've been so busy in life these last 3 weeks, that I haven't even submitted a single lineup in DFS this season yet. Now I look at the pricing on the site for the packages and see them discounted at $44.95 for DFS package ($5 off) and $54.95 for All Pro ($15 off). The all pro price at this point is only $5 more than what I paid for the non discounted $50 DFS package. In my mind I was like sweet, maybe for $5 more I can upgrade now to be an All Pro (my $50 DFS + $5 = the new discounted price of the all pro at $55. But the "Upgrade to all Pro" button for me states $10 to go up? If I already paid $50, why not $5 to go up to get where the current discount is now at $55? That's odd to me. Regardless, I'm not upgrading to All Pro for $5 or $10 just to get access to Blooms weekly Sleepers article but I wanted to at least point out that pricing thing I just noticed.

Conclusion: DFS content in my opinion took a huge hit this year with FBG for the above highlighted reasons. Add in the phasing out of the volume discounted multi year offers for your long time die hard subscribers has me currently reviewing the "Money Back Guaranteed" disclaimer right now. All of this time spent writing this up today is in hopes it makes it up the chain as valuable feedback from a decade+ long subscriber like myself and not simply as "complaining" or looking for a back and forth fight. Honest opinions here.

Stompin' Tom Connors said:

Not a fan of paring down the weekly passing/rushing matchups to just top and bottom 5. Seems like a takeaway. 

This was fairly valuable insight to help inform decisions, especially at flex. There's the chart, but the analysis -- which often included injury, who was streaking and falling, CB vs WR/TE analysis, etc. -- was the real gold.

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I agree. This was some of the most valuable information on the site and one of the features I made sure to read every week. The analysis was very helpful, especially when I was torn between two players at certain positions. 

Hi @krazyka85 thanks for the thoughtful feedback.

We can't change much of what you're asking for. Especially the multi year discount. I understand folks want to pay as little as possible the but hard reality for us is we just couldn't operate our business selling at those prices. I fully understand your point and the desire. I hope you can see our side and understand there is a floor for us.

For the features, thanks for the feedback on those as well. Obviously, we'll never be able to do every feature every reader would like. Sometimes that means changing what is offered exactly like a TV network will make changes with the shows they have. Every show that is canceled every year was someone's favorite show. i get that and i like them too. We'll continue to do what we can to bring the best value. This year we've added major things like the DFS Single Lineup Builder that was a huge project for us. And new features from Sigmund Bloom and Matt Waldman and Chris Allen and others. We'll continue to do our best there.

I do like the idea of adding Sigmund's Sleeper article to the DFS content. I hadn't really thought of that but I can see how the content he covers would be useful to the DFS players. Thanks and we'll make that change for next week.

Thanks for being a part of Footballguys and we'll keep doing our best here. 

@Joe Bryant Joe - FYI on the topic of quality early work. The current rankings have Jarret Stidham ahead of Mahomes and Corey Davis ahead of Deandre Hopkins. Are these goofs or intentional?

Genester said:

@Joe Bryant Joe - FYI on the topic of quality early work. The current rankings have Jarret Stidham ahead of Mahomes and Corey Davis ahead of Deandre Hopkins. Are these goofs or intentional?

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Not sure. Can you please let them know at footballguys.com/help by entering a ticket and letting them know the page url you're seeing that on?