Win in Fantasy Football with evidence-based analysis I 18 players who ACTUALLY matter.

Jacob Gibbs (0:11)

What's up? Welcome to Beyond the Box Score. I'm Jacob Gibbs. I've got my buddy, Ryan Heath, on with me, as I do every Thursday, Friday. And we are sorting out our league winners. We do this every week. It's based off Ryan's article, Anatomy of a League Winner, where he looked at the 2025 results, where we're going to see the league winners. And we're going to see the league winners in the league, the 2025 results, where we had 18 players who were on at least 55% of ESPN playoff rosters.

And so this year, using all the research from this article that is dated back several years, you've got, you've done in the past two years, we have the research dated back, I think, to 2017, looking at the ESPN rosters and who's made the playoffs, what types of players have helped fantasy managers get there. Ryan put together a list of players that he thinks are going to be this year's version. If you're watching on YouTube, you see Ash and Gentie and Christian Watson on the screen. Those are the Coverboys. I think they've held up pretty well. They've been on our list. People push back on Gentie. We'll obviously get into that one as we have to every single week, Ryan.

We together have put together a list of 18 players that we've adapted as the season has gone on. And so this has been fun. There are real stakes here where Ryan and I, if we decide to remove a player, they're gone for good from our list, which is stressful, has caused us to probably hold on to Mr. McConkey for too long because of the FOMO that we have after losing Drake London. Brutal. So we removed London after week one or two. That was my fault. I was a little bit nervous about the early signs with the usage there and with the different coaching staff, but obviously he looks freaking fantastic. So Ryan and I are going to do our best today. We have some new candidates we're excited to talk about through four weeks of football.

We're going to do our best to make some good sound decisions here that we don't think that we'll regret.

Give people the best idea of who we think are going to be the most important players for fantasy this year. Ryan, how are you doing through four weeks? How are you feeling about this list? Anything clearly stand out? Are we completely done with the Lad McConkie Cope?

Ryan Heath (2:24)

How's it going?

Yeah, I'm done with the Lad McConkie Cope in terms of him being a league winner. I'll still sit here and cope and say, I think he'll be a semi-productive player whenever he gets back on the field healthy, because I just kind of can't imagine what else this Chargers offense is going to do. But yeah, it's pretty hopeless. Both Tackle's injured.

Justin Herbert has played, we'll call it, up and down.

It's, yeah, it's fairly bad. It seems like Lad just continually injures himself, re-injures himself, practices, plays, re-injures himself. Like, what are we doing? Yeah, I'm kind of ready to have him off the list, get him out of my mental headspace right now.

Jacob Gibbs (3:13)

For sure, absolutely brutal, man. I'm looking at my rest of season rankings here at Wide Receiver. I do update these for y'all on YouTube every Wednesday, so check those episodes out. We got a playlist called Rest of Season Rankings. I've got Drake London at Wide Receiver 8 I've got Malik Neighbors, another receiver who we removed from our list, that Wide Receiver 11 after a bounce back in Week 4 So that is annoying to me because I was very high in both of those guys in drafts. I've got them on teams and everything. Obviously, it feels good that they're playing better, but I do not want to mess this up, this League Winner practice that we're doing here. McConkie, McConkie, where are you, buddy? McConkie, looking for a lab. McConkie, here he is.

How's this feel, Ryan?

I would call this insulting.

Ryan Heath (3:59)

Yeah, I would call this insulting. I think you're overcompensating.

Yeah, this is a little much for me. I would probably have him in the Wide Receiver 24, or the 28 range rest of season. 43 is a little wild to me. Really, you'd rather have Brian Thomas Jr. than Lad McConkie?

Jacob Gibbs (4:20)

Got a Brian Thomas Jr. bounce back in terms of usage, not in terms of production. He had like 17 yards or something, but some potentially encouraging signals from BTJ. The schedule was really nice for BTJ, and he doesn't play in the absolute most embarrassing offense in the whole entire NFL. In fact, he's on the opposite end of that. He plays in a very good offense. So yeah, I think so. Does he, I mean, has Lad McConkie score more points than him? I know it's been a bad year for BTJ. Where's McConkie? Here he is. Why does he were 46 in Fantasy Points?