The Show: Thursday Night Football Reactions, Week 1 Bold Predictions, and More

JJ Zachariason (0:00)

You're about to listen to The Late-Round Fantasy Football Show, which originally aired yesterday on YouTube. If you'd like to catch it live, you can find it on The Late-Round Fantasy Football YouTube channel at 1 p.m. Eastern every Friday during this 2025 season. That's on youtube.com/atlateroundff. So without further ado, here's this week's episode.

David Kitchen (0:36)

All right, welcome in. David Kitchen, AKA JJ's number one, alongside JJ, how's it going, sir?

JJ Zachariason (0:44)

I'm tired, very tired. We're recording this on Friday. Fortunately, not in the morning, but 1 p.m. Eastern over on YouTube. And we are, we had an extra hour of lost sleep last night because of that lightning delay with that opening game. And honestly, after that lightning delay, things got kind of boring with that game. It went from being a really fun back and forth game to just completely dead.

David Kitchen (1:13)

Yeah, you should, people should have just like gone to sleep. They would have gotten more sleep, more energized, and they didn't miss anything except for like tilting CD Lambs catches.

JJ Zachariason (1:24)

Yes, the CD Lambs stuff was not great. I think like most people were just kind of rooting for like some kind of crazy ending. And, you know, Lam had two really, really big opportunities on that final drive. You know, the one went directly through his hands. Now, I know it was the middle of the field like Dak. Look, Dak was awesome last night.

David Kitchen (1:45)

He was.

JJ Zachariason (1:46)

I don't want to take anything away from that at all, but he also is not afraid to throw in some hospital balls. You know, he's very aggressive, very aggressive down the middle of the field. You know, he did that with Jake Ferguson.

David Kitchen (1:56)

The Ferguson almost got lit up.

JJ Zachariason (1:59)

Yeah, I mean, that happened with Ferguson and then CD Lamb, you know, on that play. You know, look, he's one of the best wide receivers in the game. He's got to make that play. Like he's got and I know that he would probably say the same thing. And then at the end where they have that fourth down and they see that one on one coverage on the outside and they say we're going to take a chance, which is like the Ben Roethlisberger special. Like back in the day, Roethlisberger would always do that on third and fourth and short, and it would drive Steelers fans nuts. But you've got to do that. You got to take those shots when you have those advantageous matchups. You're using, I mean, it's Dak Prescott to CD Lamb. That's one of the best connections in football. And so you can't blame Dallas for taking that shot. And it was there for him. I mean, like they had it. It just went through his outstretched arms. It would have been a hard catch to make. But again, he's one of the best wide outs in the game. He could have made that catch.

David Kitchen (2:43)

For sure. That first half, though, was great. And it just reminded us why fantasy football is the greatest. Unless you have AJ Brown, we'll talk about that in a second. A few housekeeping notes.

Number one, shout out to our sponsor, DraftKings. We appreciate you. We have a special, if you scan that QR code in the corner, use promo code LATEROUND. Deposit at least $5, you'll get a DFS ticket. And again, a shout out to DraftKings for being with us in the best ball season, and they're going to be with us for a little bit during this NFL season. The next thing, JJ, you want to announce it?

JJ Zachariason (3:23)

Sure. I'll announce it. I mean, you did a ton of work on this. We have officially partnered with iHeart Media and the NFL, and we will be officially a part of, well, we will be part of the official NFL podcast network this season, which we're very, very excited about. I think that, you know, this is good. A lot of people are saying, what's going to change with the podcast? And what's going to, you know, there's not much that's going to change from like a content perspective. That's all going to be there. You know, we are going to try to create revenue with the podcast and do a little bit more on that front, you know, to continue to grow the business. But it's also just going to help a lot from an exposure standpoint for us to get out there more and to have a platform and a connection with the shield, right? Like with the NFL. And I'm really proud of the work that we did and I'm proud that, you know, we've been able to do this and I'm excited, you know, to be able to work with, you know, the NFL at heart. You know, so far it's been great and they've been awesome.