Late-Round Perspectives: Dwain McFarland

JJ Zachariason (0:00)

Dwain McFarland is the lead fantasy analyst and director of analytics at Fantasy Life. He previously spent time with Pro Football Focus, and he's best known for his awesome utilization report. He's a Texan, a dad, and he's just as big of a data nerd as I am. these are his late-round perspectives.

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Dwain McFarland (1:09)

I appreciate getting to hang out with you a little bit a couple of years ago in Canton. Didn't get to go this year, but yeah, man, thanks for having me on.

JJ Zachariason (1:16)

I know, man. We missed you this past year at the expo. I needed a little bit more data nerd support hanging out there at the stadium and such. But also for today's episode, earlier today, I was getting ready and I was like, should I do my hair or should I wear a hat today? Because it's always a big question for me day-to-day, is whether I'm just going to throw the hat on and not have to worry about anything. I even got a haircut today. But I realized I remembered.

Dwain McFarland (1:44)

Come on, JJ. Let the people see your hair.

JJ Zachariason (1:46)

Look, I'm coming on a show with you, Mr. I mean, look, I've done a show with Denny Carter for like a decade now with Living the Stream. And I have to deal with him having great hair all the time. You might be the one A within the fantasy industry from a hair perspective, man. I mean, look at that thing.

Dwain McFarland (2:05)

I don't know. I appreciate it. I'll take whatever I can get. My wife's a hairstylist, so I'll just go with that.

JJ Zachariason (2:11)

So there we go. Okay.

Dwain McFarland (2:12)

Now, she has to be on brand, as she says, like my hair can't look bad. And that's not that would be bad for her business. Right. So we can't do that.

JJ Zachariason (2:20)

That's amazing that that like like I was thinking, like I went to the barbershop today, like I said earlier today. And it's a very standard barbershop kind of like situation where you're not facing the mirror. Everyone's just chatting with each other. It's an amazing spot. Right. And they've slowly learned like what I do for a living so that we talk football basically every time I'm in there and whatnot. But it would be as much as I love being there, it would be pretty convenient if my wife just knew how to cut my hair.

Dwain McFarland (2:48)

Yeah. It is funny. sometimes my wife protests though. She'll be like, no, you guys are coming to the salon. Other times she'll actually say it's fine. I'll cut it at home. But I got to kind of gauge it and see. She likes the lighting and the chair better at the salon. She's got all of her goods. The good scissors are there. JJ, the clippers are there. The stuff that she's used a while and then she brings it home. That's the stuff that's here.

Yeah, I like the convenience, but she says, you got to come up to the salon. I'm like, okay, I just do what she says.

JJ Zachariason (3:17)

I guess it's the equivalent of us podcasting with bad microphones or something like that, right?

Dwain McFarland (3:22)

Something like that. Exactly. We could get through it, but yeah, it could be better.

JJ Zachariason (3:27)

Right, right, right, exactly, exactly. So look, I wanted to talk about a lot of stuff. I sent you a show sheet. We're going to get through a lot of things, but I didn't put on there, and I want to get to it though, sort of like how you got to where you are now, because you've been around for a decent bit, but I know that it took a minute for you to kind of make the jump to be full-time in the space, and you had another career beforehand. So can you let everyone know sort of like what that path was like? I like to ask my guests on Late-Round perspectives that question.