I was doing a little "light reading" (looking back 2 years and seeing what the discussions in this thread looked like), and I noticed two main things.
#1- It's really depressing just how futile all of this time and effort we spend really is. I mean, we talked about Adrian Peterson and Calvin Johnson and LaDainian Tomlinson and Ben Roethlisberger, but do you know who we spent most of our time talking about two years ago? Reggie Williams. Reggie Bush. Reggie Brown. Jason Campbell. Marcades Lewis. Chris Perry. Joseph Addai. It gives a healthy dose of perspective when you realize that 90% of the guys we're discussing so passionately today are going to be completely irrelevant two years from now.
#2- I found a great post by F&L that needs to see the light of day again. I'm quoting it in its entirety:
Please forgive this aside because it's certainly not meant to be a venomous screed against anybody in particular.
Has anybody else noticed that nothing emboldens an owner quite like a hot streak by one of "his guys"? SSOG can speak to this statement better than I can because he's more conversant with metrics, but there's a reason why analysts don't take a player's evaluation seriously when he's coming off his best game of the season. The player is not going to stay at that superlative level every week, so the stats are skewed after an unusually big game. Without trying to single out any specific posters, let's just take a sampling of some recent debates:
I had Jason Campbell as low as 7 value points -- down with Chad Pennington and J.P. Losman -- a few weeks ago while he wasn't looking so hot. Did we hear from anybody who had faith in him at the time? Nope. Was anybody so sold on Campbell's ability that they were willing to stick up for him while he was on a cold streak? Did anybody show anticipation and challenge the ranking before he reeled off a few good games?
Greg Jennings is 20 catches and 200 yards behind Donald Driver, but he has a huge edge in TDs at this stage of the season. I don't remember too many guys pimping him two months ago when he was coming off an injury and about 40 points lower in the rankings -- down in Ronald Curry territory. Where were the Jennings believers when he was injury-prone and struggling to get his job back from James Jones?
Where was the Westbrook over Tomlinson love back when Westbrook was watching from sidelines for the Eagles' Week Four game? Where was the Marques Colston stud talk when the Saints started the season at the bottom of the league in scoring?
The lowest I've ranked Joseph Addai was the week he shared carries with Kenton Keith. I lowered him to 75 points and dropped him to ~10th amongst RBs that week, and I didn't hear a peep from the Addai camp until reeled off a couple good games thereafter.
Where are the "Eli is a Top 10 Franchise QB" backers this week? Where was the love for Philip Rivers a couple of weeks ago? Why did nobody scold me for dropping Frank Gore a couple of weeks ago? Ditto on Larry Fitzgerald when I dropped him for a week or two coming off a disappointing start. Where were the Ronnie Brown faithful back in Week 2? Why won't anybody volunteer that Vince Young is too low right now? Laurence Maroney? Lee Evans? Stick to your guns. Have faith in your evaluations.
I realize, in a way, it's only human nature. We wonder who is going to take us seriously if we argue that a guy in the crapper is worth more than a guy playing over his ahead. You're running the risk of putting yourself out there to be mocked by the rest of the board. I understand that. And yet -- this may seem counterintuitive -- I have a lot more respect for someone who anticipates a return to full value while "his guys" are slumping. Better yet, it's the one anticipating a player jumping to the next level in-season who is showing off some real fantasy football enlightenment. I appreciate a guy like EBF for throwing in a Mark Clayton or Reggie Williams while they're down. Is he going to be right most of the time? Maybe, maybe not. But he's better than most at evaluating fantasy football talent, and he's at least trying to stay ahead of the curve rather than chasing points. That's where the real acumen lies.
/offsoapbox
I'm as guilty of it as anyone. I'm sure F&L will say exactly the same thing. It's human nature. We'll post noncommittal endorsements of "our guys" that run ever so slightly against conventional thought, and then when our guy gets hot we'll remind everyone how we totally knew it was coming. Case in point... if you blinked this offseason, you might have missed it when I
called Ronnie Brown a better dynasty RB than Michael Turner... but there's no way you could have missed my relentless reminders of it once Brown started partying like it was 2007. What can I say- I'm a fantasy owner, and I think a huge requirement for that has to be a fear of looking silly and a conviction that you're the greatest thing since bread (sliced or otherwise).So, with those two points in mind, here is my attempt to make some statements that will be bold, against the grain, unsupported by recent performance, and (if I'm lucky) still relevant two years from now. I'll focus on RBs in this post, and maybe in the next few days I'll throw up some posts about WRs and QBs.
#1- I made this one already, but I'm reiterating it for emphasis. Michael Turner is not a top-10 dynasty RB. He impressed me far more as a backup to LT than he did as a workhorse for Atlanta. He's a solid back, but he's not as special as I thought he was. So far this year, he's really been struggling- his ypc had dropped from 4.5 to 3.7 coming into this week, and it'll be even lower now. His performance so far this year has actually been propped up thanks to all those TDs (he was the #3 RB in points per game in standard FBGs scoring coming into this week), so others might not have caught on yet. I think it's a great time to see what you can get for him and move on without him. Especially because, not only is he not as good as I thought he was, he's also a lot older than you might think. Of F&L's top 20 RBs, only six are even within TWO YEARS of Turner (Jacobs, Ronnie, DeAngelo, Gore, Barber, and SJax), and Turner is older than all of them except for Brown. He's still 3 years away from the dreaded 3-0, but his perceived value is going to start falling QUICKLY (in two years, no one will want him because he's just a year away from 30). I have no trouble holding an RB while his value drops if he's getting me Ronnie-like production, but I don't think Turner is going to do that anymore going forward.
#2- Trade for Darren McFadden. Now. Yes, the Raiders are a mess, and he's been a huge disappointment so far this year. I don't care. McFadden was solid running the ball as a rookie, he was the #4 overall draft pick, and he's 22 years old. Not to pick on F&L, but he's got McFadden ranked behind Marshawn Lynch, Kevin Smith, Rashard Mendenhall, and Pierre Thomas- two guys who can't outperform their own backups, a guy who was considered a colossal bust just 3 weeks ago (but who reminded us how important pedigree is, and whose pedigree is far worse than McFadden's), and a guy whose own owners freely admit is not a special talent. McFadden's looked bad so far this year, but every single Oakland Raider RB has looked significantly worse this year than they did last year (Bush's ypc dropped by .7, and Fargas's dropped by 1.7). His value is unnaturally repressed by the sheer monument to suck that is the 2009 Oakland Raiders (as well as his current injury), and he will likely never be this cheap again.
#3- When can we finally call Felix Jones a CoP back? His talent is undeniable, but all that means is that he's going to be the most talented role player in the NFL. Would I really take Felix Jones over, say, a Shonn Greene? Right now, I'm leaning towards "no", and it's not because I think Felix will be dinged for his entire NFL career (although that's a distinct possibility at this point). It's because I seriously can't ever see Felix averaging more than 10 carries a game. And I definitely can't see him averaging 10 yards per carry, either. People say that if Dallas really believed Barber was a featured back, they wouldn't have spent a 1st rounder on Felix. I agree to some extent, but at the same time... if Dallas really believed Felix was a featured back, they wouldn't have spent a 4th rounder on Tashard Choice in the same draft.
#4- Fun game. Everyone, guess how old Laurence Maroney is. Now raise your hand if you guessed higher than 24 and a half. I expect there are a lot of hands in the air right now (or, at least, there would be if you all didn't feel so silly about browsing a message board with your hand in the air
). Cedric Benson, Rashard Mendenhall, DeAngelo Williams, Thomas Jones... we've had a lot of reminders recently about the importance of pedigree, but we haven't seemed to take them to heart in Maroney's case. I'm not saying that he's going to someday be good just because he has great pedigree... but I do think he deserves a lot more of the benefit of the doubt than he gets.
#5- Dear Leon Washington and Darren Sproles owners: make friends with the Jerious Norwood and Mewelde Moore owners, because they're going to be the only sympathetic ears in your fantasy leagues when you start whining about how your team refuses to utilize such a clear talent.
#6- Should we perhaps be questioning this repeated assertion that we all sort of accept as fact that Jonathan Stewart is secretly one of the five most talented RBs in the entire NFL?
... nah.