What is up everybody? I hope you’re ready to see some undrafted free agents and backups this weekend. Me, I don’t really get excited about that stuff. I’m not exactly a Campus to Canton guy. But you? Maybe you dig that first week of preseason football vibes. Just like pre-season baseball, it’s hard to take anything you see in pre-season football terribly seriously — we’re not seeing proper game script, we’re not seeing the first team on the field all the time, and more often than not, we’re just watching to see if teams want to keep their young players on the field or bring in a veteran to eat up some yardage. That said, I also know most “home leagues” are starting up, and you’re looking for the best players to take such that you can embarrass your friends and relatives and win their undying respect. So! Let’s take a look at some end-game players that could really change your season outcomes before the pre-season gets underway. 

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A late Target is a term describing a retail store open after 10 PM. A deep sleeper is a term you and your cousin Melinda use to describe your fat old uncle Bart. Neither are relevant in the realm of fantasy football, unless you and Melina decide to invite uncle Bart to the home decor section one night but end up staying past close because Bart got lost walking from the bedposts to the nightstands. That’s why any term can have an alternate meaning, such as a player to go after late in a fantasy football draft, or a player literally no one is in on except for a select few enlightened souls. For the most part, we all have preconceived notions regarding the players at the top of fantasy football drafts. Donkey Teeth will continue to target sexy upside with reckless abandon. I’ll continue to have nothing to do with Joe Mixon and receive thundering boos from the Reddit militia. And you, dear readers, will be no different. It’s when we get late into drafts that we start to lose our way and look for high-upside fliers, and far too often I see my peers wasting draft capital as the rounds creep deeper into the double digits. This week, I’ll break down one late target and deep sleeper at running back, wide receiver and tight end — and leave it up to you who to go after and include in your 2021 late-round draft strategy.

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B_Don and Donkey Teeth are joined by Darik Buchar of Sports Hub Technologies (they bring you the NFBC, NFFC, BB10s, Fanball, League Safe, etc. etc. etc.) to discuss B_Don and Darik’s RazzBowl draft along with some of the offerings that the NFFC has to offer this fantasy football season.

We’ll recap Darik’s draft and how the room drafted differently than the normal on NFFC. We also announce the Beat B_Don (Cutline) and Beat Donkey Teeth (Draft Champions) leagues. Need some incentive? Well, the winner of each league gets a spot in next year’s RazzBowl! BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE… Darik has given us a code for Cutline and Draft Champions to get $25 off your entry fee using promo code: razz25.

Review Cutline rules and prizes here. ($150 entry using $25 discount code above)

Review Draft Champions rules here. ($125 entry using $25 discount code above)

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I’ve now ranked the top 30 quarterbacks, top 25 running backs, top 25 wide receivers and top 10 tight ends. You should now be good to go for your fantasy drafts. Go get ’em, tiger! What, you want more? Is it because of my very subtle and mature penis jokes masterfully woven throughout the rankings like a Dan Brown novel? I could just write a long list of penis jokes, if you prefer. More rankings you say? Alright, I get it, not everyone is playing in an 8-team league where they own 7 of the teams like my home league with Cousin Cletus. We will rank on. Longer. And harder. And with more thrusting. Anyway, here’s my top 40 running backs for 2021 fantasy football:

Click here to see all 2021 Fantasy Football Rankings.

*Note: These rankings are geared toward half PPR leagues. Projections provided in this season’s rankings are NOT my own, they come from Rudy Gamble’s World-Renowned 2021 Fantasy Football Projections. These preseason projections are available free of charge, while Rudy’s in season weekly projection subscription is currently available until August 31st at an early bird discounted price of only $17.99 for the entire season! These are the same weekly projections that have won Rudy Gamble the FantasyPros designation of “Best Bold Ranker” for the years 2017-2019 (and likely 2020!). 

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Everyone has their secret shames. My wife is a high school biology teacher who has a master’s degree in Biochemistry from the University of Central Florida. However, every Friday night she cracks open a couple cans of her preferred adult seltzer and binge watches those Housewives shows. She is nothing like the larger-than-life personalities featured on Bravo! but it helps her zone out I guess. My secret shame is much like the Housewives in the scale of drama and infighting: professional wrestling. If you have ever found yourself glued to your favorite cable television station on a Monday or Wednesday night in the last thirty years, you know sometimes the best action occurs before the wrestlers ever enter the ring. I am talking about the elaborate entrances wrestlers make into the arena before the matches even begin. Stone Cold Steve Austin’s glass shattering, CM Punk’s needle scratch leading into Living Colour’s ‘Cult of Personality,’ and my personal favorite, Atsushi Onita’s often imitated Tokyo Dome “Wild Thing” entrance. All shining examples of starting off a match on the right foot to get into your opponent’s head even before the bell rings. Your entrance into the 2021 fantasy season needs to be just as grand!

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Sleep now, if only for a minute. Dream of wavy grass, pinkish-purple clouds in the sky, and a nearby pine forest that’s yours to explore, if only the deer allow you. You’re moving past the first realms of waking life, where your consciousness is inundated with optimized modernity at every turn. Your black coffee, priced to perfection so Starbucks can open another shop in the busy streets of Somewhere. Your car, the engine valves greased with perfect viscosity so they can land a “green” rating in their miles per gallon despite the rare earth metals scattered throughout. You leave the optimum world, falling into the discontinuous, where you dwell soundly and peacefully. This is *your* place, where *you* live, when you’re within yourself. You look around, and there’s your family — biological or constructed or both — and your childhood pet (still alive and at their prime of health). This is your deepest self. You smile, watching the wavy grass and pinkish-purple clouds in the sky. As you approach the pine forest for a quiet reflective walk, you hear not the clack of antlers or the rustle of grass, but thumping noises. The earth shakes around you. You’re unsettled. The vision of your childhood pet accelerates temporally, and you’re at the vet on their last day. The earth moves, and you’re no longer with your family. It’s that bully from Junior High in your mind, the one that gave you swirlies on the daily. Then, emerging from the forest, a stampeding elephant charges to you. The dust is unsettled, the trees swaying as if in a hurricane. The trumpet of a mammalian orchestra, right in your face.

You awake. What a night! You grab your phone, and wouldn’t you know — you’re on the clock in draft after draft after draft. You load up Sleeper or Underdog or Draft Kings or NFC — it doesn’t really matter, does it? — and make your move to draft. ADP says you should draft yet another share of Courtland Sutton. Is that right? Is it optimal? What about that article you read about Devonta Smith — isn’t he a good option? But wait, Jalen Hurts might not be favored at QB. Maybe you’ll play it safe with Emmanuel Sanders — but what if he doesn’t get targets in the emergence of Gabriel Davis? 

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Around 10 years ago, there were a series of corny commercials…..

Corny or not, I’m writing about it 10 years later so mission accomplished. Well done, Jared The Galleria of Jewelry. Well done. If you’d like to be a sponsor of my work, have your people get in touch with my people (me) and we can be of the same people. Going to Jared The Galleria of Jewelry allowed one to buy the bling and denounce the life of fling after fling. A happy wife is a happy life after all. For fantasy football, there’s also a Jared who could bring many smiles and happiness, and his name is Jared Cook of the Los Angeles Chargers. Let’s break down why he could be a pleasant surprise for the 2021-22 NFL season.

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The innovation machine never stops here at Razzball. Except for that one time when I tried to use it to heat up some leftover pizza. What a disaster that was! In the modern world of pandemics, riots and keto diets, we know it can be hard to find time to listen to 30-60 minute fantasy football shows. Oh, there’s a squirrel! Sorry, what was I talking about? Right, we’ve created a short-form video series for those of us with the attention span of a puppy. On Donkey’s Advocate, I’ll be bringing on many of the top fantasy football industry experts to sell me on one of their favorite 2021 fantasy football draft targets while I play devil’s donkey’s advocate. All of this will take place in a two minute rapid fire segment. In this week’s batch I was joined by Andy Behrens, Pat Fitzmaurice and Sigmund Bloom to discuss Devonta Smith, Jerry Jeudy & Kyle Pitts:

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Good afternoon and salutations to you, delicious devourers of pigskin prognostications! I have been providing what some describe as a public service, and others may describe as a self-flagellating farcical fete. I read a lot of blurbs for fantasy sports, whether it’s Rotowire, Rotoworld (NBC Sports Edge, to noobs), FantasyPros. They all have the daunting task of sourcing and re-reporting beat writer Tweets, playing time updates, and whether or not a player is “in game shape.” As a male adult who writes words, my current game shape is polygonal, especially when sitting down to write. This polygonal writer will weekly look for examples of biased or factually/rhetorically incorrect to help you avoid getting blurbstomped. You shouldn’t read a blurb and immediately pick up a bro because a fantasy site told you to.

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Hello again to all the IDP degenerates out there! Like it or not, you have stumbled onto the third and final set of position rankings for the 2021 season: Defensive Backs. If you missed the first two articles, make sure to check out the rankings for Linebackers and Defensive Line/EDGE. 

These DB rankings will include both safeties and cornerbacks, but you’ll notice the list is overwhelmingly safety-heavy. Corners provide a rare instance in which being a great real-life player does not translate to fantasy production. If the defense boasts a shut-down corner, offenses are less likely to throw his way, meaning fewer opportunities for tackles, pass break-ups, or interceptions, aka fantasy points. Even those corners who are targeted are often inconsistent fantasy producers on a week to week basis, since much of their production depends on where the opposing quarterback chooses to throw the ball. Safeties, however, generally provide much more consistency on the stat sheet, and are therefore more reliable assets for your IDP lineups. Like linebackers, look for safeties who are 3-down players, and preferably those who spend a lot of time in the box assisting in run support. More time in the box means the player is closer to the action, and therefore more likely to achieve tackle numbers that a deep safety will not. 

As always, it is important to know your league’s lineup requirements and scoring settings before you draft. Some leagues split defensive backs into cornerbacks and safeties, requiring the you start one or more of each. Other leagues may lump them together, but give cornerback stats an added boost to bring their value closer to safeties. These leagues are far from the most common, but still worth mentioning before getting into the rankings. Now that we’re all up to speed, let’s dig in!

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PPRA Regression Candidates

PPRA Regression Candidates

Before you go any further if you haven’t read the article on the Point Per Rush Attempt Analysis, we recommend you read that first. You can find that article here: PPRA Regression Candidates. In this article, we break down, the PPRA outliers from 2020 to help you identify players to potentially buy or fade in 2021 fantasy drafts.

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First, let me congratulate you on taking the first step towards winning your 2021 fantasy football league. If you are here reading this article, that means you came to Razzball to get some information on how to be better prepared for your season. Now that you have started preparing for your upcoming draft, its time to think about what the next steps are. Other than reading some articles to learn about sleeper players, impact rookies and draft strategies, what else can you do to get an edge on draft day? Let’s take a look at a few things you need to do to make sure you’re ready when you are on the clock. Remember, you cant start driving until you start the car!

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