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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

By Derrick Ernst July 12, 2026 Under Center My wife and I are in the process of planning another trip overseas (Germany/Switzerland) and the term, glockenspiel, keeps popping up everywhere. Apparently they’re linked to some historical landmarks. If you’ve ever been or have travel tips for us, let me know! Switching gears, I came across this on X and it got me thinking — where do QB’s of teams who call plays out of shotgun the most tend to finish in fantasy ranks? By the way,

By Derrick Ernst July 09, 2026 By Definition If you’re not convinced that time is flying by, I thought I had written about what statistical measures make for a good D/ST this year, but in going through previous issues, I discovered that I wrote on the topic in June ’25! Before getting into any details, I landed on four D/ST’s in that issue that had my interest heading into last season. Here’s what I said: “In the meantime, to start the season, BUF, DEN, TB, and ARI caught my

By Derrick Ernst July 05, 2026 300 I figured no one needs a book on the Sunday of a holiday weekend so we’re keeping things to two pages today and avoiding making any heavy Draft Guide decisions. First things first, issue 300 is right around the corner. If I don’t miss any issues (and I don’t plan on it), we’re looking at mid-August being when the big milestone arrives. This is an announcement of the announcement but #300 will mark a big change for TDF. For those of you not b

By Derrick Ernst July 02, 2026 DEN Revisited I want to get the DEN backfield correct so bad that I don’t know if you noticed I recently removed RJ Harvey from the Draft Guide. This out-of-nowhere news didn’t help the cause either: He’s currently on track to be ready for Training Camp and according to Google there’s up to a 25% chance of re-injury. That’s not high, but for a RB who absorbs most tackles with his shoulders, I’d imagine this has the potential of being higher? Any

By Derrick Ernst June 28, 2026 No Love Here’s something you don’t want to hear from your fantasy team’s potential RB1: So you’re telling me you want to split carries…It’s one thing if there was a plethora of carries to go around, but when it comes to ARI, there hasn’t been a ton recently: 2025: 21.5 (32nd in league) 2024: 27.2 (11th in league) 2023: 27.7 (12th in league) 2022: 25.5 (20th in league) Notice the decline last season relative to the years before. My guess is this

By Derrick Ernst June 25, 2026 Mr. Brown Let’s revisit a section I wrote a few weeks ago about NE when we were going through our divisional series: “For one, 102 passes to S. Diggs last season will need to go to someone else. Could this someone else be AJ Brown? If it is, my views on Maye would change dramatically.” I then went on to mention Maye’s relationship with TE, H. Henry and how he’s continually an undervalued fantasy asset. Let’s break down NE’s receiving situation a