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OFF-SEASON REPORT #1
Published, February 3, 2015
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IN THIS ISSUE:
Off-Season Report #1: 2014's Lessons Learned - 2/2
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- Off-Season Report #2: 2015 Coaching Changes (Mid-February)
- Off-Season Report #3: 2015 Free Agency Preview (Late February)
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2014's Lessons Learned
Published, 2/2/15
Starting right around the time when an undrafted and uncelebrated player named Kurt Warner literally came out of nowhere and posted 41 TDs in 1999, the NFL has been a very unpredictable league. Before Warner, nameless players rarely just stepped up and dominated, but in 2015 the NFL is an environment where an unrecognizable former Foot Locker employee with 0 career pass targets can appear almost out of thin air and drop down 100+ yards and a TD in the Super Bowl.
Fantasy football is obviously not a life-and-death matter in the grand scheme of things, but it’s of vital importance to me because my life is consumed with trying to figure this National Football League out. So as I’ve slowly over the years come to the realization that the league will never be as stable as it was when I started my little newsletter in 1995, I’ve kind of gone through my own version of the five stages of grief. There’s been some denial, and some anger, even a touch of depression. But at this point, after probably the most chaotic season I’ve ever covered, I’ve finally reached acceptance. I’m officially resigned to the fact that the NFL will be very tough to figure out for the rest of my career, both year-to-year but even more so week-to-week.
But that certainly doesn’t mean I’m going to give up trying to figure it out. Someone still has to win a traditional fantasy league, and if you’re reading this now, I still want that someone to be you. It took some time to decompress and for my head to stop spinning after such a bizarre season (even by contemporary standards), but I’ve polled the staff and my Twitter followers and have myself thought a lot about the lessons learned in 2014. My findings are below, and they will help me start to form my 2015 draft plan.
Be more skeptical than ever with the RBs, but don’t go “Zero RB.”
While the Zero RB approach that was very popular this summer made sense in that the high-end WRs are safer than the high-end RBs due in large part to better availability, that didn’t mean it was prudent to avoid the RBs in the first few rounds of a fantasy draft. If you did, you missed out on strong seasons logged by runners such as Le’Veon Bell, DeMarco Murray, Eddie Lacy, Arian Foster, Jamaal Charles, Matt Forte, and Marshawn Lynch, all of whom commanded a least a top-30 pick and most of them a top-20 pick overall. Those seven backs also happened to finish as the seven most productive fantasy backs in the league in 2014 (PPR), so if you passed on the RBs you didn’t have a true stud at the position for the majority of the season unless you traded for one of them.
In fact, according to our final ADP numbers from early September, the top RBs were actually almost as safe as the WRs. There were only 13 RBs with an ADP of 30 or lower a week before the season kicked off, and by my count seven were excellent-to-very-good (Bell, Murray, Lynch, Lacy, Foster, Forte, Charles), one was very solid (Andre Ellington), one seriously underachieved but was hardly worthless (LeSean McCoy), one disappointed, in part due to injury, but was still a top-15 guy in PPR points per game (Gio Bernard, 13 games), two were catastrophes (Montee Ball and Doug Martin), and one was Adrian Peterson, who really can’t be counted as being a bust because it was an extremely unusual situation.
So basically, if you took a RB in one of the first three rounds of a fantasy draft this year, there was a 65% chance it worked out well and only a 15% chance it was a total bust (not including Peterson).
Granted, based on the WRs who were also drafted in the top 30 - Calvin Johnson, Demaryius Thomas, Dez Bryant, A.J. Green, Julio Jones, Brandon Marshall, Antonio Brown, Alshon Jeffery, Jordy Nelson, Randall Cobb, and Keenan Allen – going wideout was the safer play. But I also think that fantasy players are more informed and savvier than ever and that the skepticism for the RBs is at an all-time high. So if a RB is going in the top-25 or 30 overall, it means that he’s probably an extremely appealing option, and there’s a good chance he’s been properly “vetted” by the masses. For many years now, my mantra for 1st-round RBs has been that in order to merit such a high pick, a back needs to be young, durable, and versatile. It’s a good rule, but it didn’t exactly work out well for those who drafted McCoy. Then again, if you took Calvin 5th overall you probably weren’t thrilled to see him finish only 11th in fantasy points per game (PPR), so going WR in the first round wasn’t foolproof
It was a tough year for RBs, so I’m sure many will be backing the Zero RB approach in 2015. I didn’t back it in 2014, so I certainly won’t this coming season. And yes, RB production can be found on the waiver wire. But as we look back at 2014, how many backs who were available 50+ picks into a draft or even on the WW who were consistently productive for most of the year? Mark Ingram missed time but was very good in 10 games, which was nice but not earth-shattering. C.J. Anderson was incredible, but for only half the year. Ahmad Bradshaw was terrific for nine games, but he succumbed to injury yet again. Jonathan Stewart was surprisingly good, but he was actually at double-digit points (PPR) in just six games. Lamar Miller was really consistent at 10+ points in 12 games, and of course Justin Forsett was the WW pickup of the year at RB. The backs mentioned in this paragraph and a few others were obviously valuable assets, but most of them weren’t as such for the majority of the season, so an argument can be made that, if you didn’t used an earlier pick on a RB, there was a pretty good chance that you weren’t particularly strong at the position. Guys like Miller and Ingram were great late picks, and Anderson was a monster off the WW. But unless you snagged Forsett, if you ignored the position early in the drafts, you likely never had a true RB1, and I usually like having an RB1.
It’s still about spreading out the talent on a roster and focusing on the best players.
We wound up ranking five WRs in our top-12 overall this summer, which I believe was the most we’ve ever had, so we certainly adjusted to the fact that the RBs are riskier and the wideouts are safer than ever. But again: To almost completely (or totally) remove the RBs from the equation in the first 3-4 rounds is a bit much. In my view, as usual, a successful draft is all about acquiring as many impact players as possible, regardless of position. And as usual, I like spreading the talent throughout my roster, as opposed to loading up on 1-2 positions and/or avoiding a particular position like RB early in drafts. When you spread out the talent and hopefully acquire at least one stud at the key positions, it gives you greater flexibility as the draft moves along. If you ignore the RB position with your first 4-5 picks, for example, you’ll probably be locked into going RB-heavy with 2-3 of your next few picks, and I never like being forced to proceed in a certain direction during a draft. If you use your first three picks on a stud RB, WR, and QB, for example, you have a better chance to continue to go BPA and take the best talents on the board to build your team.
And yes, fantasy owners need to be more skeptical about the running backs, so it’s not like I’m saying we should load up on RBs. All I’m saying is that I always like to have at least one stud at each position to hang my hat on, and nothing about the 2014 season changed my opinion on that.
If a RB shows signs of trouble one year, be careful the next year.
It’s fair to say that fantasy owners are more incredulous than ever when it comes to the running back position, and I do think the devaluation of the position is both fair and prudent – to an extent. I’ve given my thoughts on the “Zero RB” approach above, but this specific lesson is all about Trent Richardson and Doug Martin.
At least with Richardson, our position all off-season was that he had to pass the eyeball test in the preseason. He didn’t, so we quickly bailed and listed him as a player to avoid. Martin, on the other hand, wound up being our worst preseason call in 2014. On the heels of a disappointing 2013 season, we weren’t exactly loving Martin all off-season, and he wasn’t on our earlier lists of players to target, especially after Lovie Smith told me at the combine that he wanted to liberally work in another back and after they used a 3rd-round pick on Charles Sims. But as you know, Sims had ankle surgery in mid-August and was set to miss 12-14 weeks, or roughly 9-11 weeks of the regular season (he wound up making his rookie debut in Week Ten). Right around the time of the Sims injury, the Bucs went out and traded for veteran OG Logan Mankins, which was another positive for Martin. The capper for us as far as Martin was concerned were the glowing reports we received throughout August in terms of how good Martin looked in training camp. His injury in 2013 was a torn labrum, which had very little to do with his running, so this past August Martin was a 25-year old who had one incredible season and one disappointing season in the books, and that disappointing season had more to do with his injury (above the waist) than anything else. He was young and relatively proven three-down back poised to handle a large workload and completely healthy. He had a strong showing in training camp, so it made some sense to back him.
But as we know, his 2014 season was nightmarish, and he was a monumental bust. As much as I try to avoid recommending these fantasy-squad killers, there are times when there are no warning signs with a future bust, so predicting a downfall or a bad season can be impossible.
However, in retrospect, there should have been more trepidation with Martin. Perhaps not as much as with Richardson, since Trent looked so terrible in 2013, but there were warning signs with Martin. First and foremost, his 2013 season. While he played only six games in ’13, his yard-per-carry average was down a full yard from his impressive rookie season, and he looked significantly worse. If you look a little deeper, you’ll also find that he’s had some YPC average issues dating back to his rookie 2012 season. Despite averaging 4.6 YPC that year, he had seven games in which he was under 4.0 YPC, and if you averaged those seven games, his yards-per-carry average was a very poor 2.9. That’s fewer than 3.0 YPC in almost half of his games, and that was in a great season. It was hard to focus on that low YPC number heading into 2013, since Martin was so productive in 2012. But that fact, coupled with his poor showing in 2013, was a clear warning sign for 2014, which wound up being a miserable season for Martin.
As for Trent, a poor YPC average has been prevalent his entire three-year career, and if you’re looking for one indicator of his problems, that’s it. Even in his solid rookie 2012 season, he was at only 3.6 YPC. He was down to a pathetic 3.0 in 2013, and his improvement in 2014 was negligible (3.2).
We can see signs of trouble simply by watching players and following the league, but when all else fails looking at a player’s YPC average is usually a good indicator. There are always exceptions – Le’Veon Bell averaged only 3.5 YPC in 2013 – so we need to subject these backs to the eyeball test as well. With Bell the eyeball test was better than his YPC average would indicate, so as the sample size increased, that low YPC average vanished and was replaced with a healthy 4.7 yards a pop in his second season in 2014.
Richardson and Martin showed warning signs in more than one single season, and with them we learned that, if you have concerns about a back that are supported by a poor YPC, your concerns are probably warranted.
If you’re making excuses for a player, you’re probably going to get burned.
One of the main challenges covering the NFL is that there’s rarely a single reason why something happens, so when it comes to a struggling player, it can be easy to pass the place the blame on elements not related to the player himself. Trent Richardson is a great example of this. Heading into 2014, one could have argued that he was thrust into a tough situation having to pick up a new offense and blocking scheme on the fly after a midseason trade to Indy in 2013. Unfortunately for Richardson and the Colts, you would have officially lost that argument shortly after the 2014 season kicked off. Despite having a full off-season to acclimate himself to the offense and his environs, Richardson was still a guy who looked okay on every fourth or fifth carry, which is obviously not good enough. Trent may have been dealing with some personal matters late in the season and into the playoffs, but that’s just another excuse (and his “personal matter” may have simply been that he stinks). The bottom line is the guy hasn’t performed as a Colt, and all of his football problems stem from that.
We’re all looking for an edge, and at times it’s easy to rationalize why a player struggled or fell short of expectations in the hopes that a player will wind up being a value because the issues weren’t on him. I’m certainly guilty of it myself at times. But while a weak supporting cast, a tough schedule, or poor coaching can certainly hurt a player’s production, ultimately, if your positive angle on a player is littered with excuses for why he didn’t do better the year before, you’re probably reaching.
Said another way, if you’re making excuses for a player, there’s a good chance you’re trying to compensate for a certain or overall talent deficiency.
Counting on volume for a shaky RB talent can kill you.
We’ve been using the word “volume” as a key buzz word in our fantasy analysis for over a decade, and it’s definitely an element you’d like to see and a word you’d like to use to describe one of your fantasy properties. However, as we saw numerous times in 2014, hanging your hat on just volume alone is dangerous.
There’s no better example from 2014 than Toby Gerhart. As regular readers likely know, we’ve never been particularly impressed with Gerhart’s talent, and we’ve described him as a “pedestrian one-speed runner,” and someone who needs volume to produce. Still, while we really didn’t push him hard this preseason, we did endorse him as a 5th-round pick or so if one held off on adding two quality backs in the first 3-4 rounds, and that was completely because of the expected volume. Knowing a back is poised to handle the brunt of his team’s rushing load plus significant work in the passing game is certainly very appealing – but the difference between a guy like Le’Veon Bell and Gerhart is talent. Granted, Gerhart’s OL was terrible and he was rarely healthy, but the main reason Gerhart didn’t reclaim his lead role over Denard Robinson once he was healthy was because he just wasn’t any good. Due to the state of the Jag line, their back had to create plays and gain yardage on his own, but the only thing Gerhart created was frustration. I don’t actually think much of Robinson as a future prospect, but at least he was able to run away from people in 2014 and rack up good yardage more often than not when he was getting the ball (he also averaged more than a yard per carry more than Toby).
But Gerhart was just one of many 2014 examples of why relying on volume over talent can come back to bite you in the rear. In St. Louis, Zac Stacy was coming off a strong showing as a rookie in 2013. Stacy was a top-10 back in points-per-game from Week Eight on, but that was mainly due to his high touch total (24.4 per game those final nine games in 2013). Prorated over a full season, that’s just under 400 touches for Stacy. I’m fairly certain that even I could produce serviceable numbers with that kind of workload. Stacy probably would have been more than fine this past season with 20 touches a game at least (he even had some 4-6 target games in the first half of the season), so he could have easily been a top-20 guy in a PPR. But there was one problem: 3rd-round pick Tre Mason was a lot more talented than Stacy.
One guy littered throughout this article is Trent Richardson, and his example works for this lesson, too. Richardson was actually a decent producer when he was splitting time with Ahmad Bradshaw, so it was fair to assume his value would rise when Bradshaw was lost for the season. As we know, it didn’t because it’s tough to justify giving him volume when there’s a better option for touches on the roster, and there was with Dan Herron. In retrospect, we overrated Montee Ball in Denver. Ball’s season was a complete nightmare, and it’s fair to give him an incomplete for the year because he played in only five games. But he wasn’t particularly good when he played, and it’s fair to say his touches would have suffered eventually in 2014 because Ronnie Hillman and C.J. Anderson (4.7 and 4.1 yards-per-carry, respectively) were better than Ball (3.1 YPC). The great situation that prompted everyone to rank Ball so high did factor into the equation – but for Anderson and Hillman, not Ball. And the bottom line with Ball, who was still unproven entering 2014, is that we were relying on volume and it didn’t work out.
Now there will always be players who are strong producers due mainly to volume, and there were in 2014. It was only when Jonathan Stewart (who is pretty darn talented at his best) started getting consistent volume that he finally broke out, for example. So the more-focused lesson here isn’t to be generally dubious when it comes to volume backs; it’s to be skeptical when a volume back is competing for touches with someone who might be more talented. That wasn’t the case with Stewart and Mark Ingram, but it was with Gerhart, Stacy, Richardson, and some others.
Running backs need to contribute in the passing game.
I’ve said this before, many times, yet it’s still hard to bury a quality runner like Alfred Morris in a preseason projection knowing he’s a lock to be their lead back and featured runners. I still firmly believe that Morris is a quality back, and perhaps one of the most underrated natural runners in the NFL. But that’s two years in a row now that he’s underachieved and has failed to meet fairly high expectations. His team was certainly dealing with some challenges with a bad QB and a new offense in 2014, but in PPR leagues, even though Morris got nearly 300 touches, he was very hit-or-miss, as evidenced by one four-game stretch in which he scored 20, 7, 18, and 4 points in a point-per-reception league. That kind of up-and-down production can drive you crazy because it’s hard to sit a guy who puts up 18-20 points, yet Morris was not only capable of that kind of production any given weeks – he was also capable of coming up very small any given week.
I firmly believe that Morris is a better runner than volume types like Fred Jackson, Rashad Jennings, and Matt Asiata, yet in a PPR league each scored more points per game. They were each way more affordable than Morris, too. Jackson’s ADP was around 115 overall in this past summer, which was a steal (and why we pushed him) while Jennings’ was 60, which was also very appealing (and why we pushed him). Even in a non-PPR, while Morris stacked up better against those three, he wasn’t much more productive. Morris averaged 10.7 points per game in non-PPR with Jennings (10), Jackson (8.6), and Asiata (9.9) pretty close behind.
Even in a non-PPR league, Morris is more reliant on volume rushes and TDs, since he gets very few points from his receiving production. But you just can’t have one of your best RBs coming off the field in fantasy-friendly situations, and that’s been happening to Morris his entire career.
Be aggressive with rookies, especially wide receivers.
This is not the same NFL as it was back in 1995, when I started in his business. While the WR position is still a tough one to learn for a first-year player, massive production is obviously very doable these days for many of the league’s first-year players. That flies in the face of the conventional wisdom in place 10 years ago regarding the rookie wideouts, and it’s that conventional wisdom that prompted us 15+ years ago to put out a yearly article on second and third-year receivers. We still put out the article each spring because young players with at least one year’s experience are intriguing for obvious reasons, but in today’s NFL, experience isn’t necessarily a prerequisite for success, even for wide receivers.
For example, in 2014, there was only one rookie RB who finished in the top-20 in points-per-game (Jeremy Hill). As it turned out, there were three at the WR position (Odell Beckham, Mike Evans, and Kelvin Benjamin).
Granted, 2014 was an all-time great rookie class at WR, but the tables have kind of been turned for RBs and WRs from just a decade (or less) ago. It used to be that a RB selected in the first few rounds of the NFL draft had a legit chance to play a lot, and they usually did. That’s generally still the case, but with so many teams implementing a dual backfield or full-blown committee, the margin for error for a young back is smaller than ever. The position has also been devalued overall, and fewer and fewer teams are using a high draft pick on a back with plug-and-play in mind. In 2014, we saw higher picks like Bishop Sankey, Devonta Freeman, and Carlos Hyde fail to gain the full confidence and trust of their coaches, and their fantasy contributions were negligible. On the other hand, if a team uses a high pick on a wideout these days, that wideout is usually expected to play a lot right away. And for whatever reason – perhaps because the pro game mirrors the college game more than ever – rookie wideouts are having more success than they did 10 years ago. In addition to Beckham, Evans, and Benjamin, 2014 saw wideouts like Sammy Watkins, Brandin Cooks, Jordan Matthews, Jarvis Landry, John Brown, Allen Robinson, Martavis Bryant, and Donte Moncrief make meaningful contributions. Again, it was an incredible class of rookie wideouts in 2014, but the fact that at least 10 first-year wideouts made a considerable fantasy impact is clear proof that either it’s easier than ever for these novice recruits to produce, they’re being asked to contribute sooner than ever, or both.
I like drafting rookies in general in fantasy because, while there’s some more risk involved due to a limited body of work, fantasy players usually build their inexperience into their average draft position, meaning it’s easier to get value for a breakout rookie than it might be for a more-proven player.
Going all-in on potential over production can be risky.
There’s a fine line between being aggressive with a young player you’re already sold on and tempering expectations for a still unproven commodity, and it’s a line I’m still trying to effectively negotiate.
There were a few players this past summer whom we pushed hard as options we were completely sold on, and a healthy percentage of them came through (like Jordy Nelson) or at least clearly exhibited why we were so sold on them (like Julius Thomas).
But that was not the case with Keenan Allen, who we aggressively ranked 17th overall this summer. If we see clear signs of brilliance with a player like Allen, we’re usually going to try to be a little more aggressive with his projection and ranking because we’re trying to give readers an edge, but that didn’t work out for Allen. He was still the #1 WR in a very good offense and with a high-end QB, so there was a lot to like. But ultimately, I blame Allen’s smaller body of work in the NFL was being responsible for why we pushed him too hard. They did get Malcom Floyd back and that didn’t help Allen, but Keenan was still top-25 in terms of WR targets, despite missing two games. Defenses adjusted a little, and it turned out that Allen, while a really nice receiver, wasn’t quite as good as we thought he was and had some issues being a marked man as the #1 wideout in San Diego.
Another good example was in the Bronco backfield. Let’s be frank: If you used a top-20 pick on Montee Ball this year, you were doing it based on potential more than anything else. Honestly, one of the main reasons we liked Ball as much or more than anyone else is that we closely studied his tape and stats in the second half of the season, and they were both very good in both the run and pass game. Health and injuries destroyed Ball’s season, but that also speaks to this point: It’s nice to use early picks on players who have not only proven to be very productive, but also durable. Ball was incredibly durable in college, an element we clung to when projecting him, but the sample size in the pros was small and obviously not indicative of things to come.
Perhaps the best example of all was Cordarrelle Patterson in Minnesota. He’s a guy I waffled on in the preseason, and while I don’t think we pushed him particularly hard, and he wasn’t a guy who was on our list of players to target, initially published in June and updated frequently until mid-August. But for most of the off-season, I was skeptical and tweeted that he was not Josh Gordon and that it was questionable that he could thrive in Norv Turner’s system. But ultimately, since we were more about targeting exciting ascending players than ever, and since Patterson did make some promising plays in the preseason, it was hard not to get behind him as a play-to-win pick.
This is a tough one because fantasy players usually have to take a leap of faith with unproven players, and failing to take chances can result in fantasy mediocrity, but related to this lesson I’ll also submit the following that I’ve added to my mental notebook: If I’m waffling on a guy, that’s not a good sign, and making just a few promising plays in the preseason isn’t enough to offset a lack of polish, experience, etc.
It can be risky to invest heavily in a new offense.
This only makes sense, but there are some exceptions that I’ll get to below. Sometimes, a key player is just a bad fit, and since it’s a new system, we don’t really know for sure if he will be until the games are played. But it didn’t take long to figure out in Washington that Robert Griffin III was going to have some issues trying to be a pocket QB in Jay Gruden’s system. Sometimes, the fit looks great on paper but time is needed to adjust, as I think was the case in Detroit with Matthew Stafford navigating in Joe Lombardi’s offense for the first time. And it’s fair to say that the Jeff Tedford experience in Tampa Bay was doomed from the start even before Tedford’s health issue and subsequent release. Even defensively, we got a little too excited about Gregg Williams in St. Louis. The Ram D was dominant for a stretch, at least illustrating why we ranked them #1 in the preseason (hey, they did better than Seattle in most scoring systems), but there were clear growing pains with a very young secondary being asked to do more than they were ready to do, and even the stacked Ram D-line struggled to make an impact in the first half of the season. Not that we were expecting much in Tennessee, but Ken Whisenhunt and offensive Coordinator Jason Michael did little to impress in their debut 2014 season with the Titans.
There were exceptions, though, and most of them had common themes in that they were either very proven coaches, like Gary Kubiak in Baltimore, or schemes, like Ben McAdoo in New York, or there was strong continuity with Frank Reich taking over for Whisenhunt in San Diego after previously being with the club, and Hue Jackson being elevated from RBs coach to OC in Cincinnati. The other exception was Bill Lazor in Miami, and his success was likely a function of a fantasy-friendly offense that most opposing AFC defenses were relatively unfamiliar with.
In most of the cases where there was success, it was also a function of the teams having strong personnel, many of which were also very good fits for the schemes.
Unfortunately, 2015 looks like one of the worst fantasy years in recent memory for coaching and coordinator changes, with a whopping 12 new offensive coordinators, and a slew of new defensive-minded head coaches to boot. We’ll next break down the ramifications of all these moves and we’ll cover that all off-season, but it’s not a good sign that the turnover is higher than usual this coming season.
Assume regression after a career year.
All summer long, on my SiriusXM radio show, I stated that the only thing worse than missing out on Peyton Manning’s dream season in 2013 was to pay a steep price for him in 2014 – and get burned again but in a different way with Peyton failing to meet exceedingly high expectations. Not that I was down on Manning, and for a while there using a #1 pick on him looked like a good move, but investing such a high pick on a guy coming off a dream season – even an all-time great like Manning – eventually came back to bite those who did it.
Way back in April, we did an analysis on QBs and the year after they hit certain TD thresholds, and the conclusion on Peyton was that we’d likely see “a decreased touchdown total in the upper 30s or low 40s” and he was at 39. In fact, 7 of the 8 QBs covered in that article as likely seeing a drop in TDs did, in fact, see a drop (and a few huge drops). The only guy who didn’t drop was Mr. Consistency, Tony Romo, who went from 31 to 34 TD passes. Interestingly, guys who were not included were Andrew Luck, Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady, Ben Roethlisberger, Eli Manning, and Matt Ryan, who were all in the top-10 in 2014 in TD passes. We did make it a point in 2014 to try to stay ahead of the trends statistically, and we did have success with that and endorsed most of six guys ’14 performers.
So in addition to refusing to pay for a guy coming off a career year, fantasy owners also learned that you don’t get points for last season’s accomplishments, and when a player’s stats are exceptionally high, there’s only one way to go from there, and that’s down. And as an aside, we also learned that it can be wise to not only avoid overpaying for guys coming off a career year (Peyton) but to also target a star player coming off a so-so year (Aaron Rodgers). We’ll have plenty of off-season statistical analysis this year, but sticking with the QBs, the guy to worry about in terms of a drop-off is Andrew Luck, and the guy who stands out for 2015 on the positive side is Matthew Stafford, who disappointingly posted only 22 TD passes this past season (try not to hold a grudge if he killed you this year). Other candidates include Cam Newton and Nick Foles.
Waiting on QBs is your best bet.
It was easy to second-guess not drafting Peyton Manning early in 2013, but what people forget is that Manning’s ADP that season was around 40. That year we actually isolated Manning as the value among the Big Three (Manning, Aaron Rodgers, and Drew Brees), and he was. But he could have been had in the 4th round (or at the earliest the 3rd). When it comes to the stud QBs, the 4th round is late enough to consider it “holding off” on drafting a QB. In 2013, Peyton paid huge dividends as a 3rd-or 4th-round pick; in 2014, he hurt people who used a 1st or 2nd round pick. So in actuality, Manning’s been the poster boy for holding off on drafting a QB at least the first two rounds the last two seasons for different reasons. When it was possible to get value for him he was, in fact, a great value. But when it was impossible to get value for him, like it was in 2014, he wound up hurting people.
In 2014, we actually isolated Aaron Rodgers as the value among the Big Three, and once again, he wound up being just that, but his ADP was around 20 overall, so he wasn’t a great value. Most likely, fantasy owners burned by taking RBs early in the draft while seeing Peyton put up historic numbers prompted more players than usual to take the safe route and go stud QB very early. Yet once again, the best move was to hold off and do what I wrote in my draft plan to do in the 4th or 5th round if you were “stuck,” and that’s to take Andrew Luck.
Now admittedly, it wasn’t an unbelievable season for cheap and consistently reliable and productive QBs, but we did see Ben Roethlisberger and Tony Romo present excellent value yet again, and Tom Brady averaged an extremely healthy 25.7 points-per-game for 11 weeks starting in Week Five through Week Sixteen.
If you want to pass on the RBs early in your drafts because you don’t trust them for a variety of reasons, fine. But the bottom line each year is that your best chance to form the best possible team is hold off at least a little on drafting your QB, so I’d probably still prefer to take a back I’m totally sold on in the 1st or 2nd round than take a QB. As I wrote a lot last year, I do like the best of both worlds in that I like to hold off at least a little on drafting my QB, but I do still want a top-5 guy. That’s why I listed “Just draft Andrew Luck” as a bullet-pointed desirable option in my 2014 draft plan.
And yes, I can’t forget that we really did push Jay Cutler a lot, perhaps even more than Luck because he was so much more affordable. A former Cutler apologist from his days in Denver, I was off of him for 3-4 years, but the vibes were so damn good this summer and the value so appealing because he was a 7th or 8th round pick in a typical 12-team league. Granted, he would have been going higher than he was if he wasn’t, you know, Jay Cutler, but consider this: Cutler and the Bears suffered through a mushroom cloud implosion in 2014, and the guy still accounted for 30 TDs in 15 games. Can you imagine what would have happened if things went relatively well? And as ugly as it was, Cutler was still pretty damn good most weeks.
Read-option QBs kind of stink.
Last season’s Super Bowl Champion Russell Wilson is the exception here, since he has some amazing leadership and competitive qualities, but as great as he is in NFL terms, he’s also prone to throwing up more stinkers than you’d like to see from a starting fantasy QB. Wilson passed for 215 yards or fewer in 10 of his 16 games, which is a very high percentage in this day and age. Wilson has been dealing with a weak receiving corps, for sure. But I’m not exactly convinced he’d have a lot more success passing the ball even if he had better weapons (and it’s a run-heavy team that’s keyed by its defense).
I believe the quality of the NFL has suffered lately, and I blame the NFL’s decision to kowtow to the college game for some of it. I said it a lot last year during the pre-draft process that Johnny Manziel would have likely been a 4th-round pick had he come out a decade earlier, and I’m probably right (although if anyone knew his rookie year would go the way it did, Manziel might have gone undrafted).
One of the main problems with these running QBs is that the run element is too big a part of their overall game. Fifteen years ago, when Donovan McNabb came out, his running augmented his fantasy production very well, but McNabb was still predominantly a pocket QB, and running was a last resort more often than not. But that’s not really the case with Wilson, Cam Newton, Colin Kaepernick, and Robert Griffin III. Most of these guys haven’t really progressed as passers because they’re not as reliant on passing. Their running helps them, for sure, but if also hurts them because they’re probably not focusing enough on trying to “win from the pocket.” And with defenses focusing more and more on stopping their running, we’ve seen some of that rushing production dry up for Newton, Kaepernick, and RGIII over the last two seasons. Wilson, again, is an exception because his running was more productive than ever in 2014. But Wilson’s an exception in so many other ways and is just a unique player.
Newton has shown some improvement as a passer, but he’s still erratic and will likely always be erratic. Kaepernick is better mechanically than Newton, and he has just as strong an arm (and he’s also way faster). But at this point, this is what Kaepernick is, and it’s not very good. As I wrote here last year, if these read-option guys aren’t racking up rushing production, they kind of stink, and they’re not really racking up the rushing production that they did 2-3 years ago. I honestly don’t know if Kaepernick is spending the extra time learning defenses and coverages, but I’m pretty sure that his ability to run is curbing his development as a pocket passer.
Hey, we all love to get rushing production from our QBs, but it’s now clear that fantasy owners should generally opt for pocket QBs over runners. Of course, as usual, I’d like to have the best of both worlds and get a pocket QB who can run, which is why Luck, Rodgers, and now maybe Ryan Tannehill are particularly appealing.
“Start your studs” is dying.
Fantasy owners need to continue to reassess their personal depth charts because the general instability we’re seeing in the league means that what we think in November could be completely different than what we thought in September. In September, Odell Beckham was off the grid and probably wasn’t even owned in 50% of fantasy leagues in existence. By November, he was a guy who you could have legitimately started over Calvin Johnson.
Now, if we’re defining “stud” as a player putting up big numbers most weeks, then the start-your-studs axiom still applies: We’re always inclined to roll with our most productive players. So the lesson is more focused on how it’s important to continue to re-evaluate your roster and players as the season progresses. Maybe you used the #1 overall pick on LeSean McCoy, and he was one of your top “studs.” But in 2014, you could have legitimately benched him in favor of a guy who was off the radar for months during 2014 in C.J. Anderson, and you probably would have been right to do it. Maybe you drafted Vincent Jackson in the 4th round as a stud WR and Mike Evans in the 9th as a great depth guy, but those roles should have been reversed.
Basically, this point is about how we can no longer be overly enamored with brand-name recognition and almost anyone can be sat down on a fantasy bench. In today’s NFL, fantasy players should consider, for example, the second half of the season as a new season. Based on his body of work in the second half of the season/new season, Peyton Manning could have been benched, and especially for the fantasy playoff run, he should have been benched. Yes, in most cases, Manning owners probably had to suck it up and use him, but it was very fair to seriously consider benching him, if not sitting him indefinitely, which is unfathomable.
If things continue on their current path, and there’s no reason to think they won’t, then fantasy players need to be less loyal than ever, and they need to go with the production, even if it’s coming from a guy who was dead a month earlier.
Top TEs are at a premium.
That said about studs, there are very few of them at the TE position, so those guys you should probably just use no matter what. If you recall, we absolutely loved Julius Thomas in the preseason, and for the first five weeks of the season, he was one of the five best non-QBs in the league. We preferred him over Jimmy Graham due to price and over Rob Gronkowski due to health concerns, but all three of them had something in common: They were major difference-makers and owning them was a distinct advantage. Sure, Thomas’ season fell apart and Graham crushed people in the playoffs, but all three proved to be truly elite options. Greg Olsen was also great, and Antonio Gates was a big surprise (although still a little hit-or-miss). But that was about it in terms of reliable, week-in and week-out producers.
Looking at the landscape of the position, I don’t really see things changing all that much, so I’ll be adjusting my thinking a little on the position. For one, I’ll be more inclined to use a very early pick on a top TE than ever. I’ll also take a chance on an injury risk like Gronkowski, who did look terrible for about a month yet still put up numbers, because the payoff is absolutely massive. And finally, I’ll be honing in more than ever on ascending youngsters with the ability to emerge as major producers, like Travis Kelce.
Choose your handcuffs carefully.
With more and more players getting snaps, targets, and touches for most teams, there’s more useful depth than ever, so it’s harder than ever to justify a roster spot for a handcuff. Not only that, but there are fewer and fewer backfields that actually have a single beneficiary if a lead back is knocked out of action.
It’s never a bad idea to stash a back-up RB from a good team if you have room, but fantasy owners need to be more judicious when handcuffing their stud backs. The situation either has to be ideal, like it was for Joseph Randle in Dallas behind that amazing OL, or the player needs to be a high-end talent, like 2014 2nd round pick Carlos Hyde in San Francisco. If you have questions about your potential handcuff’s role should he be pressed into duty, or his talent, then there’s a good chance he’s not worth holding as insurance and protection for your starter.
Committees can change on a weekly basis.
As mentioned above, the top guys at the RB position weren’t bad at all, but overall, it was still a nightmare dealing with RB position in 2014. By my count, there were 17 backfield situations out of 32 that changed considerably over the course of the season, so fantasy owners need to keep constant vigilance over RB committees, especially those on good teams. If it takes hiring a personal assistant to keep up with all the fluid and ever-changing backfield situations, it might be worth it. In Denver, there were three different guys leading the way at some point this year, and it might have been easy to miss out on C.J. Anderson because you thought Ronnie Hillman or even Montee Ball would return. If you were paying attention, you likely noticed that Jonathan Stewart actually had a chance to truly lead the Panther backfield around Week Thirteen, and he actually did. The Brown backfield situation didn’t just change on a weekly basis; it changed mid-game.
I’m not really trying to give you all the answers with this lesson because there are myriad factors involved, but the lesson is fantasy owners need to pay close attention to these situations throughout the week because a strong WW pickup can emerge at any given time in this day and age. It’s even possible now for a guy to emerge as a strong pickup even after waivers run in a given week, so fantasy players need to be more attentive than ever.
Don’t let a quiet preseason affect an entire off-season of analysis.
The preseason is very important, and I’d guess that for every preseason star who busted I could come up with an August riser who flashed in the preseason and wound up having a good year. I probably place a little too much emphasis on the preseason myself because I’m bunkered down for the month of August focused on trying to formulate the best advice possible, but I need to do a better job of not getting too caught up in the hype.
I don’t think 2014 wasn’t a bad year for me in terms of buying into the hype, but I did wind up supporting Cordarrelle Patterson, who I was skeptical of all off-season, after he made only a few promising plays.
However, this specific lesson has to do with Golden Tate and no preseason hype. When Tate signed with the Lions in March, we all loved the move at the FantasyGuru.com office. We naturally added him right away to our list of players to target, and we spun him very positively in our player profile, which came out in June. What we didn’t do is talk much about him in the preseason because he didn’t do all that much. Sure, we didn’t really downgrade him, but he wasn’t a “sexy” August pick because he wasn’t enticing us with a stellar preseason. I don’t think we moved him down in our rankings, but we probably moved a few guys over him, and we didn’t push him aggressively because we didn’t see immediate returns in August. For example, I would have used him more for my Draft Plan sample teams if he had been creating more excitement in the preseason.
As it turned out, we didn’t need to see much in the preseason, so I’m going to be especially cognizant of sticking with players we really like all off-season, even if they don’t do much in August. Emmanuel Sanders was another good example, but we pushed him way up when Wes Welker had his issues.
Don’t be afraid to draft the same guy everywhere if you’re sold.
I was in two NFFC’s Cutline Championship high-stakes leagues again this past year, both times drafting and competing against FantasyGuru.com subscribers. The cutline is a unique league in that there are only three rounds of waivers all season, spread strategically throughout the regular season. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I never actually looked into when these waivers were run, and more important, I didn’t have time to even consider making WW moves. Honestly, since there are deep rosters (26), I didn’t actually have to make moves to field a decent team.
So I didn’t make a single waiver move all year, yet I not only fielded two decent teams, I was still in the running to win the $100,000 grand prize in December because I drafted Andrew Luck in both leagues. Sure, I had some other really good players, but it was mainly Luck.
Going all-in on one player and drafting him in multiple leagues can be dangerous and devastating, but it’s also glorious when the guy delivers. If you’re completely sold on the guy, as I was with Luck, then stacking all your chips on one guy can work.
We’re more in the dark than ever when it comes to personnel.
Fantasy football has never been more popular and participants have never been more informed and knowledgeable, and the NFL has never been as scrutinized and dissected as much as it is now.
But we’re also in the dark more than ever.
One big takeaway for me in 2014 was that the overall quality of the NFL has suffered lately, and as is always the case with an NFL dynamic or situation, there are many reasons why. One of the reasons is the lack of off-season and in-season time the coaches have to truly analyze their personnel. Look at C.J. Anderson in Denver. Fantasy’s #2 RB the final eight weeks of the season was absolutely buried on the depth chart for two months (at one point, he was a healthy inactive behind even Juwan Thompson). You’d like to think the team knew what they had in Anderson because they’re with him every day. But if they really did, he wouldn’t have had only 21 touches the first nine weeks of the season. And it doesn’t help that there continues to be heavy turnover in terms of head coaches, coordinators, etc., which unfortunately is going to be very prevalent in 2015, with 12 offensive coordinator changes. That’s 12 more guys for 2015 who won’t likely know their personnel as well as we’d like them to.
I felt that more coaches were groping more frequently than usual in 2014 when it came to utilizing their personnel, which resulted in my answering more fantasy questions than ever with “I don’t know.” For example, I was asked on Twitter in September “which Brown RB is the guy to have?” It’s tough for me to answer that when the head coach probably doesn’t even know. Heck, did Mike Pettine even figure it out over the course of the whole season?
At this point, since more coaches are using more players than ever, fantasy owners need to not only be familiar with each team’s depth chart, but they also need to monitor freaking practice squads. Look no further for an example than the Super Bowl, which featured an unknown player who last year was working at Foot Locker and was signed on only December 6th and entered the big game with 0 catches on 0 targets. So, of course, Chris Matthews leads the Seahawks in the biggest game of the year with 4/109/1.
I’d like to say fantasy players should focus on continuity and on teams with solidified rosters and depth charts, and that is true; I just think that we’re going to have to get used to roster and depth chart chaos.
The 5-catch, 50-yard type of receivers are for larger leagues.
We liked Andrew Hawkins all off-season in 2014 and pushed him in the summer as a really nice late, late value. He actually was, and we amazingly got his 2014 projected total exactly right (159 points in a PPR). We also liked Greg Jennings as a cheap option late in drafts, and once again we were very close with his season projection (13 points off).
In a larger or deeper league, the Hawkinses and Jenningses of the world have plenty of value. But in a typical 12-team league, guys like Hawkins are typically always available on the WW – so you were way better off using that 13th-round pick on a guy like Odell Beckham than you were on Hawkins. I’ve been writing about focusing on upside late in drafts for literally two decades, and unless you’re in a 14-team league or larger, it really is the way to go. These guys like Hawkins are great to have in a pinch, and Jennings was actually very useable down the stretch. So if you’re in a large league, fine, keep on targeting these extremely affordable options. But if you’re in a league in which there’s typically solid talent available on the WW, it’s usually best to play-to-win. No one cares that we got Hawkins exactly right, but they sure do care that we didn’t completely bail from Beckham and still listed him in the preseason as a player to target late, despite his disastrous and injury-plagued summer.
And if it turns out you need a WR in a pinch in Week Nine or so, there’s always going to be someone like Hawkins, Jennings, or Doug Baldwin staring at you from the Waiver Wire.
Chasing TDs, especially from a secondary player, is futile.
Even if you knew Calvin Johnson would miss three games, would you have guessed that he would have had the same number of TD receptions as Terrance Williams? Of course you wouldn’t have, but that’s exactly what happened. Williams was an interesting fantasy prospect entering the season, and he was likely owned in most leagues. He scored in five of his first seven games of the season, so he commanded attention and consideration from those owners. But if you ignored the fact that he was only 59th in WR targets his first eight games, you may have started a guy a few times who wound up racking up an amazingly low 25 pass targets in his final eight games (93rd-best) and was pretty much worthless in seven of his last eight games.
We’ve always said that TDs can be very fluky, and we’re always on guard for that. In May, we did an article about RBs who enjoy considerable spikes in TDs in a given season and history was not good for those backs coming off years in which their TD outputs were up more than a few. We isolated four backs as likely to see a drop, and three of them did (DeMarco Murray was the exception).
It is easy to get excited about players scoring TDs in bunches, but the lesson learned is that we need to be aware of performances and production that are anchored by abnormally high touchdown counts. Fantasy football owners can’t just look at the past happenings to predict future results; they should also place a premium on trends and closely analyze roles.
Trading should be bigger than ever.
And if it’s not, unless there’s some funny business going on with the trading in your league, try to get out of that league. The expert leagues I’m in can be frustrating because trades are rare. It’s like everyone is so afraid of getting hosed. Because of that, when I actually make an offer, I find that I give up too much just to help a trade happen.
I realized several years ago that our “Player to Trade and Trade for” article was really popular, so I began spending more and more time on it. In 2014, it came out later on Tuesday’s than ever, specifically because I was investing more time on it. More time was needed, too, since it was such a chaotic season. But I think it was another strong year of recommendations because I really took the extra time to think every recommendation through extensively.
The fact is, there’s more talent and depth than ever before, and with more useful players than ever before, most teams have better depth than ever before. I know this because I just spent four months fielding questions from people who needed to, for example, start two of five wide receivers in our top-20 for a given week. But is that quality depth at all positions? And if it’s not, can you find that quality on the WW? The wire was more active than ever in 2014, but it was actually a little light when it came to true impact players, at least over the course of 10+ games. That’s when trading comes in, and it’s a great way to help your team, if not the best way.
You can't even trust a receiving specialist at RB in NE.
Obviously, trying to chase points in the New England backfield is a sick joke, since the Patriots change their offensive gameplan weekly and have no loyalty to anyone. As we know, they buried a guy right after he ran for 200 yards and 4 TDs and replaced him with a guy signed off the street after being released midseason. They basically featured that first guy (Jonas Gray) once, and he had the biggest single-game performance of the season, and they buried him right after that and made him inactive in the Super Bowl.
That tells you all you need to know, but I did believe their lack of continuity, loyalty, etc. applied only to their interior runners and goal-line backs and that receiving specialist Shane Vereen was a safe and reliable. I was incorrect.
Vereen did finish fifth in RB receptions in 2014, but he hauled in only 53 balls in 16 games. Our preseason rushing projection for him was pretty close, but we had him with 73 catches, and that was a conservative number that has 1-2 missed games built into it. Vereen played every game, and he still fell well short of that projection because, apparently, even a receiving specialist at RB can’t be trusted to have a large and clear role in New England.
Actually, it was a bad year for all PPR RB specialists, as Vereen, Pierre Thomas, Danny Woodhead, Darren Sproles, and Reggie Bush all had bad seasons. While injuries were a factor for sure, the underlying lesson is that no backfield role is safe in the NFL right now unless you’re talking about a quality lead back entrenched as the main guy.
If you need a law degree to handicap your players, that’s bad.
I’ve been complaining over and over again, and yet again, about the instability in the NFL, and the fact that 2014 seemed to be worse than ever in that regard probably had a lot to do with all the surreal legal situations surrounding some star players. I really got frustrated by it, and quite frankly I tried to avoid it as much as possible. In the preseason, I got so fed up by the Josh Gordon situation, and people trying to gain an edge by drafting him that I proclaimed on the radio that I was going to try to win without Gordon and focus my attention on finding the next Gordon (it was Odell Beckham). I didn’t take him once, even when it was hip to try to be slick and draft him. When it all got settled, we still called him overvalued, and he was.
Some people were critical because we didn’t alert readers when reports surfaced midseason that Adrian Peterson might return. First of all, it was one of biggest stories in the history of the league, so you didn’t need us to fill you in. It was also a story that involved a lot of legalities, and that’s not our strength (perhaps we’ll hire our own council in the future to help). More important, my sources seriously doubted Peterson would be back, so I was hesitant to alert readers and suggest picking him up. Of course, as it was, he didn’t even sniff the field, and a lot of people wasted time and resources on acquiring him. As for Ray Rice, we were down on him even when he was expected to miss only two games.
This isn’t really a great lesson other than to say that, while we have seen suspended guys present good value in fantasy drafts (Gordon in 2013), I’d be hesitant going forward to try to be slick and select a guy whose value is down due to legal issues. 2014 was a PR nightmare for the league, so I’d venture to say the NFL will be a little stricter in the future.
That’s all I got! Come the summer, I’ll be revisiting this article and will produce more 2015-specific examples to hopefully help you this coming season.
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