Late-Round Perspectives: Thor Nystrom

JJ Zachariason (0:00)

Thor Nystrom is an NFL draft analyst at Fantasy Life who's previously worked for NBC Sports and Fantasy Pros. He's a Minnesotan, he's got an elite name, and he might have the deepest NFL draft big board of any human on the planet. These are his late-round perspectives. I realize, I think this is our first show together.

Thor Nystrom (0:32)

I think so too.

JJ Zachariason (0:34)

Like it might be, you were, so I have to ask you this too. Couple years ago, I talked about this with D-Bro when he came on Perspectives. Couple years ago, there was the infamous Kia Telluride, which is the car that I have, where I packed a bunch of fantasy analysts in the SUV to go to the bar. I was sober, other people were not. I believe you were one of the folks that were in the back of the car, right?

Thor Nystrom (1:01)

It's one of the greatest car rides that I've ever had in my life. And just to set it up for people, we were at the... What is it? The thing in KAM, what's it called? The Expo, the Fantasy Football Expo.

And it was like the day where it was the stadium party, but it was like raining. And so they have the... It's like the Hall of Fame Stadium, where they have like the Hall of Fame game or whatever. So we were in the concourse because it couldn't go on field, it's pouring whatever. And they were selling drinks there. So it's like everyone, all the fantasy analysts that y'all see on Twitter, they were all there or whatever. And then people were getting kind of toasty, you know, after the end of the couple hours. We'd all been drinking in the hotel lobby, like prior to going over there. But then we're stumbling out and we're like, oh yeah, we have to call an Uber. And then JJ, as though descended from the heavens and light around him was like, I can drive you guys, I'm sober and I have a minivan. And so it was like, how many of us, what JJ was like?

JJ Zachariason (1:58)

Oh, at least like 10 or 11

Thor Nystrom (2:00)

It was a clown car. And JJ was like, no one throw up in here.

JJ Zachariason (2:06)

That's all I cared about. And then I had Dagle in the back, just constantly just destroying me in my, and the fact that the car was messy. Meanwhile, my family had driven up to Pittsburgh, you know, a couple of days prior, because we were going to be in Pittsburgh, then for the week for my sister-in-law's wedding. And so I had two kids in the car. And of course, it's going to be different. I had no intention of having 10 smelly fantasy analysts, drunken smelly fantasy analysts in my car to drive them to the bar. I had no intention that was going to happen.

Thor Nystrom (2:39)

You know, there's a lot of podcast concepts that have been done. But if you had just had a camera in there, oh my gosh, the clicks for those 20, 25 minutes. We got to have, you know, it's not taxi cab confessionals, but we could have fantasy confessionals. And yeah, you know, some concept like that. But it was an incredible time and it's good to be with your brother.

JJ Zachariason (2:57)

Yeah, man. Yeah, you too.

I again, like I can't believe this is, I think our first show that we've done together. So I'm really, really excited to sort of dig into your process and dig into how you look at this stuff, because you've been around these prospecting streets for a while now. You know, we've randomly like come across each other on Twitter and stuff like that. And you know, DM and whatnot. But I really want to dig into this class because I think it's an interesting one. So my first question I ask everyone that comes on the show, I haven't had any repeat perspectives guests either. So I probably wouldn't ask this again to you if you were to come on again. But just let everyone know sort of how you got into the space in the first place and sort of how you found this calling of prospecting and doing this evaluation.

Thor Nystrom (3:39)

Yeah, well, I've been obsessed with the NFL draft since I was a kid. And when the Internet came out and then you could print stuff off the Internet, the thing I would do at the very end of every NFL draft was I would print out the seven rounds. I don't think I had a concept that they were stored on the Internet, the results of the draft. So in my childhood closet, I had this stack of just literally the printed off results. And then you get the draft magazines. It's like spring break was when I would always in my head, because then you'd be down at the Minneapolis Airport and go in the, what's it called? The bookstores that only, Hudson.