Market Monday: Travis Etienne and Patrick Mahomes Get Cheaper -- Buy or Sell? (Episode 996 with Adam Levitan)

**Adam Levitan** (0:13)
Hello, and welcome to episode 996 of the official establishtherun.com podcast. My name is Adam Levitan. I am one of the co-founders here at ETR, and it is time for the show You Cannot Survive Without Market Monday.
Each Monday, I examine the biggest risers and fallers in best ball ADP, and discuss whether I'm buying or selling these players at their new prices. The idea is simple, give you an idea of how the market is thinking about players, and also how I'm thinking about them.
Reminder, if you want to use the rankings that the guys who won both the DraftKings and Underdog best ball flagships last year for $2 million each, those rankings are part of our ETR best ball product. Obviously, I'm biased, but the reason that all the sharpest people upload our rankings because they know how hard we grind every shred of information to ensure our uploadable rankings are as accurate as possible at all times, that's going to be important once there is news flying as training camp hits. Our best ball product is just $60 and renews 365 days for your purchase date. So head to establishtherun.com for details. Also for my true grinders out there, if you're putting in volume, you should check out the Solver Draft Assistant as Sam Shepard, the DK winner did last year. There's a link to that in the best ball tab on ETR. If you want to see that in action, you can check out our Thursday live streams of drafts. Also, we use it when I do the Monday drafts with Overset on his channel.
All right, let's start with the risers from the last seven days. First one, Jordan Mason, Vikings running back up 3.9 spots to 124 overall on DraftKings. Mason is also a big on Underdog this week, 5.5 spots on Underdog to 118 overall. This is due to a report, and I use the term report loosely. Actually, let me just get this off my chest.
Maybe I'm old school, maybe I'm a journalism harto, but when I hear the term report, I think actual reporting. So examples of actual reporting to me would be Jordan Mason is getting 75% of the first team running back reps at practice, or a report that says a source within the Vikings told me the plan is to feature Jordan Mason as the true workhorse this year, or a source told me Aaron Jones feels like he has dead legs and he's in Germany trying to get horse testosterone or whatever. Those are reports. That is not what happened here with Jordan Mason and Aaron Jones. The reason Jordan Mason is steaming so hard right now is because of a take, not a report, a take from Matthew Coller, who covers the Vikings for Purple Insider. He said, this is Jordan Mason's backfield, and Aaron Jones will mainly spell him and eat into the workload on passing downs. Cool. That's a fine take. I'm not even saying I disagree. My point is that this is just a take, like I might have the same take, Silva might have the same take, anyone might have the same take. All this is why fantasy football will never be solved by computers or AI fully. So much of the inputs to the model is in art. You can't algo your way into getting the Jordan Mason, Aaron Jones, clay born split right. It's like way more of an art. So anyway, Aaron Jones is infinitely a better player than Jordan Mason. Jordan Mason broke out in Kyle Shanahan's run scheme, where tons of dusty running bass can break out. Mason has 28 catches in 61 career games. Kyler Murray is a threat to steal some rushing touchdowns.
Aaron Jones, meanwhile, very good pass catcher, explosive player, he's going to turn 32 late this season. Clearly wearing down, really, really poor bet to stay healthy, I think. So yeah, I think that the quote unquote report makes sense. Mason an expanded role in base goal line. Jones getting high leverage situations, change of pace pass game. Clayborne hoping to find a path to playing time somehow. So, I consider Jordan Mason a similar bet to Jacory Kroski Merritt. Rough pass game outlook. QB is mobile, has some threats around him, needs touchdowns to hit. It's not really the kind of bet I like to make, especially in DraftKings. So, I mix Jordan Mason in a little bit when I get behind that running back.
And this year, it's very easy to get behind that running back if you don't address it early. Like, if you have two running backs or fewer heading into the 10th round, Jordan Mason, JCM., Chris Rodriguez, JK. Dobbins, they look really good if you're desperate for running back there. But, more of my teams, I'm addressing running back earlier, and I think that's right. Second riser, Ricky Pearsall, up 1.2 spots to 99 overall on Underdog.