Getting the email from The Fantasy Footballers saying I had made it into this year’s Listener League was amazing. I had wanted to get in since I started listening to The Fantasy Footballers four years ago, and given the 1,000+ entries they receive each year, many of you are with me. With only about 1% of submissions making it in, I thought I would give a peek behind the curtain and share a few observations from my experience in the league so far. Please let me know if you enjoy this, and, if so, if there’s anything else you’d like to hear about the league. In no particular order, here are my top observations about The Fantasy Footballers Listener League so far:
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It is very competitive. No big surprise when combining 11 dedicated listeners and 3 industry experts, but the competition level is very high. Players didn’t fall much in the draft, and no one was wasting early picks on less valuable positions. While not everyone follows The Ballers rankings and advice to the letter – for example, there is one member who is insistent about keeping two tight ends on his roster – the teams are all well-constructed and the moves tend to be well thought out.
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Draft handcuffs. In a competitive, 14-person league, one of the biggest adjustments to make in the draft is that taking handcuffs becomes way more important. Not just your handcuffs, and not just HAAANDCUFFFSSS, but any decent handcuff. RBs come at a premium, so nearly every decent handcuff was drafted. That includes guys like Matt Breida and Jordan Wilkins, who both could end up being week-winning plays week 1.
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The league is extremely active. Within two days of the draft there had been two blockbuster trades, and six significant trades total in the first several days. Even now trade offers are exchanged almost every day. You can chalk this partly up to The Ballers themselves leading the way (Jason brokered the first post-draft trade), but everyone in the league is engaged and willing to propose, counter-propose, and counter-counter-propose trades to try and make their teams better.
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FAAB is the absolute best. I’ve heard the guys say this for years just like you, but I could never get my other leagues to try it, and, if I’m being honest, I didn’t try that hard. Having experienced it now first-hand, even just for the preseason, I endorse it fully. It’s not just the bidding, which is great, but it also eliminates the free-for-all period each week where the person who gets the Sleeper app update about an injury first runs and grabs the handcuff. Waivers run every day, and it adds a level of strategy and intensity that isn’t there with a standard Waiver priority system. We were all glued to our screens waiting for that waiver report to post the day after the McKinnon injury. When it posted, the Slack channel blew up as we saw the bids for Alfred Morris that ranged from $1 to the winning bid of $33 (out of $100)!
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The Slack channel is amazing. The Ballers use the Slack IM client and set up a private channel every year for the members of the Listener League. I’ve been playing fantasy for a long time, often with coworkers I see in person daily, yet this is one of the most active leagues I’ve ever been in. Having a tool like Slack where everyone can have group discussions throughout the day is fantastic and really drives up the interaction. Cannot recommend having something like this enough, and there are plenty of free options like private Facebook groups and Google Hangouts. That brings me to….
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Jason is, by far, the biggest trash talker. Sure, it’s easier to talk trash when you are the back-to-back defending champion (and honestly, this is ridiculous), but I do not think it would matter much for Jason. Mike and Andy can mix it up too, but Jason brings the heat every day, praising his own moves, bashing yours, and in general stirring the pot with expert agitation skills. It’s all done in a fun and civil way, but it does keep it interesting, and it really makes me look forward to beating Jason in week 12.
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The Ballers take this league very seriously. They regularly talk about their Listener League teams on the podcast, but in case you were wondering if that was just for show, it’s not. It’s clear that this league is extremely important to them. Despite draft season being the absolutely busiest time of the year for them, they are there commenting on Slack, making moves, reacting to news and proposing trades multiple times every day.
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The Ballers practice what they preach. The guys follow their rankings and draft strategies pretty much to the letter. Individual cases might come up where team or league composition cause them to zig when their rankings or normal strategy would say to zag, but overall they definitely walk the talk.
That’s it for now. Hope you enjoyed it, let me know what you think.