Welcome, everyone to the score fantasy football podcast. I'm your host, Justin Boone, the lead fantasy analyst at the score.

Thank you so much for hanging out with us today. This is the second of what I think are two really important in season episodes that we do each year. The first was last week. We had Dwayne McFarlane on. We got his thoughts and his takeaways from the utilization report. And then today, we're going to talk to Ben Gretsch and we're going to find out what he's noticing in his stealing signals column. Both are super sharp minds. I think having them on a few weeks into the season is always very interesting. I can't wait to hear what Ben has to say today. But before we get him in here, I want to take a look at my top trade targets this week as we kick things up a notch with our friends at Frank's Red Hot. Let's Frank it up. And the first name on my list heading into week four, Jalen Waddle on the Dolphins. He started the season hot with four for 78 against the Chargers and four for 86 against the Patriots, but an injury kept him out of that 70-point game in week three. Now he's back at practice and he's expected to go up against the Bill's defense that he posted two 100-yard games on last year. So this is the time to make your move before Waddle reminds everyone just how good he is. Next up, Mark Andrews on the Ravens. Normally you wouldn't even have a chance at a guy like Andrews in a trade. Most managers, they aren't willing to part with elite tight ends, but Andrews is off to an uncharacteristically slow start after missing that opener. Now he has another tough matchup. He's going against the division rival Browns, but you're not trading for Andrews for one game. You're using this current scenario to get him on your team for the rest of the season. And Odell Beckham and Rashad Bateman, they're dealing with injuries. So the target competition in Baltimore, it's not as bad as we thought it might be before the year so toss out an offer for Andrews while his value is down a bit and then the last name on my list Cooper Cup on the Rams and you're only doing this one if you have a winning record right now you're 3 and 0 you're 2 and 1 you feel good about your roster but you want to take a chance on getting that superstar talent at a discount.

That's when you reach out. You see if the cup manager is open to moving them. Because Cup's been on IR in September. His manager might be struggling without him, and he could return as early as week five, but they might not be able to wait. And even if he's not available for that game, you shouldn't worry. your goal of getting cup is to have that elite piece in the second half of the season when it matters most. And when he's healthy, Cup is a massive difference maker. He was the top scoring fantasy wide out on a per game basis each of the last two years. And getting him is the kind of trade that can win your league. So test the waters, see if his manager is willing to negotiate. And if you want to get an idea of which players you might need to give up in these types of deals, you go check out my trade value charts over at the score. And then you make some offers and you take your roster and you Frank it up, just like our friends at Franks Red Hot. All right. Let's get our guest in here. Ben Gretch, one of our annual visitors.

You already know him because you've either heard him on the show before, or maybe you're following him on Twitter or X at Yards Per Gretsch, or maybe you're subscribed to his awesome substack, stealing signals, or maybe you know him because you listen to his show, Stealing Bananas. That podcast was Sean Siegel. It's a great one that I listen to every week.

He is a very busy man.

We are lucky that he joins us every year around this time. So, Ben, welcome back to the show, buddy. How you been? How's Mr. Stealing Signals doing? I'm good. Yeah, it is always, you know, busy early in the year. The first few weeks, newsletters feel like the most important there's a lot of you know

signal and noise to try to parse and uh definitely putting a lot of time and energy into that stuff

but i mean i don't know that i'm any more busy than you or any of the other analysts out there

we're all we're all busy this time of year yeah we're talking before the show about that a little

bit and you know we can kind of share the stories of what we go through in the amount of time that we put into this stuff. So it's always fun to get to talk there. But I have a lot of questions, a lot of big news this week that I want to go over. I don't want to get into that just yet, though. And you know why? Because every time I have you on, I always like to start these shows by forcing it

to boil down all that amazing work you do and force you to pick just the the cream of

the crop which I know it's very difficult to do but every week you mentioned it stealing

signals signals and noise that you're pulling out from all the games and it's very

interesting I mean you look at the signals it's telling stats or trends that you think are likely to continue for the noise. It's things that might just be like that one week blip on the radar for whatever reason. But let's start with the signals. You don't have to go over all of them, but what's the biggest signal that you've seen so far after three weeks? Yeah, and it's funny when we talk about it, like, at a moment in time after three weeks, because every week I am going through every game and highlighting the biggest signals. The top signal, and then I rank of them at the end of part two, and the one that I had as the top signal after week one was Pooka Nakua, obviously the talk of the NFL, and I think he's still probably

the biggest that we've seen so far this year. I thought it was fascinating in week three when he

had a little bit more of a down game by the standards that he set for himself in weeks one and

two. But the broadcast, I mean, the context of that down game, the broadcast couldn't stop talking about

Bengals defensive coordinator, Lou Anirumo, who gets a ton of credit. I mean, this is, and

was in the head coaching discussion this off season, probably will be a head coach at one, at some

point. Lou Anirumo, apparently, and I like to listen to the broadcast to glean some answers because

they get to learn a lot of stuff from the production meetings that they start talking about during

the game, that the coaches are willing to tell them that they game planned and what their goals were

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