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By Derrick Ernst October 25, 2026 Winners Is it just me or is this season racing by? A look back on our Draft Guide is warranted and I figure if I don’t do it now, it may never happen. I’ve gathered over the years that nobody learns anything, including myself, from just touching on the things that went right. In fact, highlighting the other side of the spectrum, the things that went wrong, is a better use of space to hash out. Before getting to that, let’s chest puff a bit. A

By Derrick Ernst October 18, 2026 Ditka There has never been another to make the sweater vest look as cool as Mike Ditka did. Not many look cooler smoking a cigar either. Let’s just say it as it is, Mike Ditka was as cool as they come. I never saw Ditka play. I never saw him coach. I only know him from YouTube highlights, movie appearances, commercials, and his ESPN broadcasting career. To say he did it all is an understatement. Speaking of doing it all, he was the first TE e

By Derrick Ernst October 11, 2026 Reminder Officially a quarter of the way through most of our fantasy seasons. As cliche as it sounds, breaking your season into chunks is an effective way to not have it feel like a drag. We wait eight months to play a game for four months and yet by week five people are already ready to give up on it. The season itself evolves (bye weeks, in-season trades, coaching firings, injuries…) and as a result it makes the final 3/4’s of it look a lot

By Derrick Ernst October 04, 2026 QB1 Last week’s issue couldn’t have come at a better time. I used to pre-plan issues topics weeks and months in advance. I’ve gotten away from that and now just fly by the seat of my pants. Over the past few weeks, I’ve felt like injuries have been the headliners on every platform as if they were a new concept. We’re not entirely in the clear yet either. Just the other day this was on ESPN’s homepage: I’ve been doing this for several years no

By Derrick Ernst September 28, 2026 Gratitude I’m writing you from a balcony in Zermatt, Switzerland that faces the famous Matterhorn mountain. My wife and I have been traveling through Europe this week with our first stop being in Germany (for Oktoberfest). We’ll conclude our stay in Italy in the coming days. I don’t write this to brag. I write it as a way of expressing that there is more to life than being worked up about fantasy performances that you can’t control. This ma

By Derrick Ernst September 19, 2026 What a Game! If you weren’t around last week to see, my wife and I were in Austin, TX for the Ohio State vs. Texas football game. What a game it was! You didn’t get that impression with how the first half went, but once Texas scored their first TD in the 4th quarter, you sensed momentum on their side was going to keep things interesting. Once Ohio State missed a field goal to put the game away with a few minutes left, you knew it was destin

By Derrick Ernst September 13, 2026 Austin, TX Never been. That’ll change this weekend when my wife and I travel there for, you guessed it, the Ohio State vs. Texas showdown. This has been a long time coming too. We pretty much booked the entire trip back in January, long before the announcement that College Gameday would be broadcasting on campus too. All the stars aligned. There’s something about booking trips far out in advance — you get to envision what your time will be

By Derrick Ernst September 06, 2026 What to Do About GB Last issue before we have football games that actually matter! Last issue of TDF’s third season too! For those who are newer to the newsletter, TDF’s unofficial season break is Labor Day. It’s a bit later this year which allowed an extra issue to sneak into season three. Let’s get right into the details. Here are the ADPs for GB’s RB room: Josh Jacobs: 68 (R6) MarShawn Lloyd: 100 (R9) Kaleb Johnson: 233 (R15+) I saw a po

By Derrick Ernst August 30, 2026 Impact Man does it pay to have your fantasy draft(s) at the latest possible time. The number of injuries has been staggering. Perhaps “injury scares” would be better suited, but I’m struggling to remember the last time an offseason had this level of injury news. Injuries, as a topic, is anything but new to TDF. It’s part of the game, but I think people forget how impactful an injury can be, not only with the player itself (obviously), but to t

By Derrick Ernst August 23, 2026 Non-Stop News The news was non-stop this week. Just when you thought nothing could top what broke yesterday, bam, something heavier breaks. It’s weeks like this where I struggle to decide where to begin. This week was also a reminder to steer clear from making any major predictions early in the offseason. Why? You can look like a fool when the action actually begins. I try not to do this often, but sometimes a scenario presents itself that loo

By Derrick Ernst August 16, 2026 Across the League First issue exclusively posted to the website! First week of preseason games! First opportunity for everyone to overreact! At least that’s what my X feed is full of. If I didn’t know any better, F. Mendoza is a future HOF based on his performance Thursday night. Fun fact, ARI squares off against LV on Jan 3. I’ll bet you by then C. Beck will be starting for ARI — a national championship rematch! You heard it here first. Coupl

By Derrick Ernst August 13, 2026 State of TDF I had thought the more I did this the more I’d be desensitized by the milestones. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Doing something 300 times over is special, I don’t care what anyone says. I’ve said this before, it’s not so much the writing, rather showing up and coming back day-in and day-out. I bet you wouldn’t be surprised to hear that there have been many days I didn’t feel like writing, where the words weren’t flowing

By Derrick Ernst August 09, 2026 Change Is Good There’s a lot of truth to that list. Let me know if MN isn’t the only state with their unique farewells. Well, as promised, with #300 on the horizon, there’s some news I wanted to share about the newsletter. No, I’m not ceasing operations but I am changing the way it’s distributed. No more PDFs, no more emails. I don’t know how often you guys click on the website link in the emails, but for the past month or so I’ve completely r

By Derrick Ernst August 06, 2026 QB Most of you probably remember that for the last few offseason’s I dragged on our Fab Five series to multiple issues. Not this year. I figured I can be brief and still get the points I needed across. Plus, most of your are here to see the names — any explanation for my decisions is bonus. Last year, for each position, I implemented a format of one stud, one flyer, and three that fit in-between. Lets do the same this go around too. Josh Allen

By Derrick Ernst August 02, 2026 Dolphins August. Geez the weez. We have football this month. Let’s go! I don’t know who at ESPN has it out for D. Achane, but here we go again: AGAIN! It’s not just Moody. And the way this headline reads is as if they know it’s ridiculous saying what there are, but they’re going to do it anyways and put a caveat on it in case it goes against them. This almost makes me want to draft Achane even more. RB24, RB7, and RB6. These are his fantasy fi

By Derrick Ernst July 30, 2026 Quick Decisions I used to never miss an episode of Jim Cramer’s Mad Money. Now I don’t remember the last time I’ve seen it. For those unfamiliar, one segment of the show would be dedicated to call-ins where Jim would riff his quick thoughts on the caller’s question, usually regarding a stock. This was called the Lightning Round. A couple minutes would yield ten or so names you probably never heard of but made you feel equipped enough to throw so

By Derrick Ernst July 26, 2026 Scouting Out the Competition I purchased my first fantasy football magazine in several years the other day. Keep friends close, but your enemies closer! I could spend all day online seeing what the competition is up to, but there’s something about holding a physical copy of something that makes it feel real. That’s partly the reason why I chose to have TDF delivered in PDF form. Yes, it’s digital, but the PDF gives it some sense of physicalness

By Derrick Ernst July 23, 2026 Late-Rounds RBs I mentioned on Sunday that I had Claude run the value analysis on RBs too, but instead of targets, on rushing attempts. While our Draft Guide does favor RBs at the moment, there were some interesting names that resulted. I figured we were doing ourselves a disservice by not considering them too. Let’s go through them, but first, let’s level set everyone on the criteria again: ADP needed to be 97 or higher (R9+) Attempts needed to

By Derrick Ernst July 19, 2026 Late-Round WRs I said it on Thursday, our Draft Guide is in need of some late-round WRs. Before giving you some that catch my eye, I wanted to point out something that you’re likely to run into. I do my best to litter our Draft Guide with talent that mirrors a bell curve distribution where RB/WR have a higher concentration (the middle) and all other positions fade to the sides. Said another way, our Draft Guide will always have more RBs and WRs

By Derrick Ernst July 16, 2026 Man’s Best Friend AI vs. your dog. I’ll take the latter every second of everyday, but the former and I had a pretty fun evening the other day. Most of today’s newsletter will be written by AI (I’ll let you know when that kicks in), not because I’m getting lazy, rather due to how much it has picked up on my teachings and it’s my way of proving it. There are too many AI platforms to count, but the one I’m leaning into most is Claude. Not sure if i