Throughout the boards I see folks posting constantly with things like this. Such and such can post WR2 numbers, or player "X" has RB2 upside. What does that mean exactly? And you see folks say that because a guy finished WR30 last season that he is a WR3 for most rosters. I want to write/talk about that as I brought it up and highlighted in the RB thread a few weeks ago and Jason Wood and I keyed in on it a couple weeks ago in another thread but it really deserves it's own discussion.
If that's the case, their problem isn't in draft strategy, it's in assuming last year's numbers predict a 1:1 result in this year's numbers. Basic logic error and all but the most noob fantasy players should understand.
In PPR leagues where you must start 3 WR or have flex options beyond that; you need to be looking at ways to maximize the points from these very important slots. In my opinion the 3 most important slots on your roster are your RB2, WR2, and WR3 starters.
More important? Or more difficult to capitalize on? You think you can muff your RB1 and WR1 and save yourself with your RB2, WR2 and WR3 picks? I say "no" to that. At least no more than you can muff your RB2 and WR3 picks and save yourself with your RB1, WR1 and WR3 picks. Each and every pick for a relied-upon starter is equally important.
In the regular NFL and I'll use the Miami Dolphins as an example, you have Brandon Marshall at WR1, Bess at WR2, and Hartline at WR3…and the typical NFL fan thinks in those terms because FF is supposed to model itself after the real NFL. So guys go into drafts and they think that if they grab a guy with top10 potential, then get a guy who they have projected at WR20 as their WR2, then get a guy in the low 30s for WR3 that they will be fine. I'm going to walk thru why this doesn't work all the time and how mentally you might want to view your roster and starting line-up differently.
You don't have to walk anyone through it because if you don't realize that having the #20 finishing WR as your WR2 means you are behind the curve, you aren't going to understand anything more complicated than that.
The red part just doesn't make sense to me. The two have nothing to do with each other. Why? Because everyone who's been in a start 2 RB league recognizes that having two backs in your backfield who rush for 1300 yards is something that will be incredibly rare in the real NFL but is a good and very much more likely thing to have happen in fantasy leagues. Only an idiot would fail to recognize that you can do things with a fantasy lineup that could never (almost never) happen in a real NFL game. We all know (or should) that dividing 32 teams worth of talent across 10-14 fantasy teams means your fantasy team is putting up stats that are completely cartoonish in comparison to what an actual team does.
You want to think in terms of guys that will give you a huge advantage. Owners that go WR/WR on the 1-2 turn are not trying to get a WR1 with top10 potential and another guy in the middle teens, they are trying to secure 2 top5 WRs to give them some explosiveness to fire back at the lucky ones who took Chris Johnson and ADP in the 1-2 slots up top. You likely are behind the 8 ball at RB so you might as well find a couple players that when they go off make up a lot of ground quickly. But to the larger point you want guys that are difference makers.
OK, so this is something you think most Shark Pool denizens don't already know?
Now let's look at the turn and pick from one of the later picks…
1.12-Randy Moss
2.01-Reggie Wayne
3.12-J.Addai
4.01-C.Benson
5.12-Brent Celek
6.01 Hines Ward
7.12/8.01-Some combo of Matt Ryan/Eli/Carson Palmer
Again pretty strong team and I would lay it out as QB-RB1a-RB1b-WR1a-WR1b-WR2-TE
I say that because Addai has been a top10 back a couple times in his career. And it's an example not a golden rule. Benson gets 300+ carries on the ground, you won't find that in a lot of RBs and he doesn't split much time. Moss and Wayne are potential top5 WRs, and Ward has been a top20 WR in PPR so many times over the past 8 or 9 years I've lost track. You can mix and match players to your tastes.
You think you have a RB1a and a RB1b because you have both these RB's ranked higher than others do. That's a valuation difference, that's all. Your supporting your argument by cherry picking RB's ranked outside the top 10 who you think could have top 10 season.
This is your manifesto: Grab top 10 studs early and then grab guys ranked outside the top 10 that you think will be top 10?
I'm not seeing the innovation, sorry. I'm seeing something that everyone already tries to do...some just do it more successfully than others.
When you look at most league winners they don't just have one guy tearing it up at RB or WR, they have several that are tearing it up. In fact they tend to have more points on their bench than some guys have on their starting roster several weeks. To me, 3 of the most important slots on your team are the RB2, WR2, and WR3, because you have an advantage over others and can work the draft to spin the deck in your favor. I see guys that draft WR/WR in the 1st and 2nd then not address their third WR slot until the 8th or 9th round…I understand some of the reasons but why not make TO for example your WR3 and have 3 top20 guys that you are attacking with vs the guy that has Mohammed Massaquoi as his WR3…you can make up a lot of ground for missing out on a top tier RB or QB many weeks with that type of match up from the other starting slots. Owners that platoon several guys at their RB2 and WR3 slots many times have a lot of nothing or keep picking the wrong guys. Use that to your advantage.
Again, this is a valuation issue. The guys that end up with multiple studs "tearing it up" are the guys that did a better job of predicting which players would be studs. They got seperation because they did a better job predicting which guys would explode and avoided players that other's thought would be studs but ended up duds. Again, that's not a draft strategy...unless your strategy is called "correctly target studs".
Another angle I wanted to mention was some very astute posters who I was debating with, in the Laurent Robinson thread. And they were posting that they felt he was possibly a WR3 and even a WR2. I balked and I shouldn't have because they had an excellent point and I want to use it for this. BTW: I'm not a big Laurent Robinson supporter but that doesn't matter for what I am going to discuss next. After you gobble up all the points in the 1st 7-8 rounds for your starting roster, your aim next should be guys that potentially can crack the top20 or higher as your back ups.
Dude, exactly who are you writing this for? I don't know anyone who drafts their 6th WR hoping he ends the season in 50's. You either draft the guy you think has the most upside or you're drafting a guy as either insurance for one of your starters (as in Edelman after Welker) or to capitalize off a situation where you think someone else's starter is vulnerable. I haven't played fantasy footall with anyone who drafts like you are describing. It sounds to me like you are assuming they think this way because they are taking guys who you think don't have upside. So do they think this guy doesn't have upside or do they just have a different take on him than you do?
I am going to give you an example from a friend who I think took a blowtorch to his league for racking up WRs. This is a must start 3 WR league with a heavy emphasis on TDs (12 points) non-PPR and also the option to run 4 wide and go only 1 back if need be. Fixed rosters so you must draft 6 WRs and only 6.
2.07-Calvin Johnson
3.06-Greg Jennings
6.07-Pierre Garcon
7.06-Jeremy Maclin
11.06-Johnny Knox
16.07- Louis Murphy
And just in case anyone asks, he has Turner, Foster and Wells as his 3 top RBs.
A lot of owners would have felt good after the 2nd and 3rd round and perhaps only taken 1 of the WRs that he grabbed in the 6th or 7th
but he kept attacking and scooping up guys that IMO all have potential to start at different weeks/times.
So again, he scooped up guys that you think can outperform their draft slot.
Sorry to name drop again but Jeff Tefertiller has a wise golden rule that I have tried hard to adopt over the years and he says that you should never draft a player that you wouldn't want to start if you get between a rock and a hard place. In other words you can look at the drafts from year to year and they are filled with junk picks. Guys that you say to yourself "I would never want to roster that player."
If you're looking at your own roster and you say you would never want to roster that player, I'd ask why you rostered him then.
And if you're looking at someone else's roster and say you would never roster that player, it's probably because they think he has upside that you don't.
Again, it keeps coming back to differences in valuation. It seems to me that you look at other people's roster and assume they think about players the same way you do. And since they din't pick the way you did, they must have a faulty strategy.
Some of you are going to say "Yeah MOP, but maybe those other teams are laoded at RB, QB , etc…" and I get that but you can overcome that by getting guys rounds later that are perhaps just a few points difference or less than the top QBs on those rosters. Just going back to the Laurent Robinson debate, if you really believe he can operate at a high level and by grabbing him later you are stock piling several RB1 types in the early rounds then this plan will work for you. Many owners just follow the herd in these drafts. They take the 10th QB off the board in round 5 without even looking behind them and realizing that all 5 teams already have a QB and they should have waited at least another round.
Sure, and those other guys that are loaded at RB and QB might be doing a better job of ferreting out the Sidney Rice's and Miles Austin's of this year's draft class. While you're scouring the late rounds for RB's with upside, they're scouring the later rounds for WR's with upside. Your strategy isn't any better than theirs. If they do a better job at finding late round WR gems than you do in finding late round RB gems, they're going to come out ahead.
Again, the guy who does a better job predicting what players are going to do is going to have a significant advantage over someone who can't do that near as well.
Every off season we look back and we take players and their stats in a vacuum and we say things like Fred Jackson was a top12 RB so he was an RB1…if you had Fred Jackson as your RB1 and not much else for whatever reason you likely were getting smashed in the RB column most weeks. If you had Ray Rice however who many got as their 2nd RB in last year's draft to pair with guys like Chris Johnson or Adrian Peterson, you had 2 top5 RBs for most of the year and probably dominated in the stat column most weeks. You've got to look at all your starting slots as guys with the number1 after them…RB1 and another RB1, WR1 and another WR1. Miles Austin was not your WR1 last year. He was many folks 5th or 6th WR drafted or possible waiver wire pick up and he filled in as a WR1b alongside guys like Andre Johnson as your WR1a.
Again, the error these straw men are making is that they are not accurate in predicting what a player will do.
Do you not understand that the people who passed on Miles Austin and Ray Rice last year simply misjudged their potential? They thought someone else had the upside and that Miles and Ray didn't. Just because you believed in Austin and not Hester doesn't mean they had a bad strategy, it means they missed on their picks and you didn't. There's no draft strategy that fixes that.
Same with Fred Jackson. People who take him as a #2 do so because they think he's the best RB available and they think he'll do more for their team than the best available WR, QB or TE is. I think they're crazy for thinking that, but no draft strategy in the world will correct that valuation error for them.
Sorry to come off so critical. I enjoy reading your stuff, even when I disagree, and I appreciate that you spend the time and put it out here for jerks like me to pick apart. This one just seems to miss the mark for me. It sounds like you think you have stumbled onto a strategy or philosophy and your proof for such is based upon players you just so happened to be right about. But it seems to me that your strategy is completely dependant upon your own predictions on how a player will do and thus is useless for anyone else to follow unless they have the exact same projections you do.
So what about the guy that passed on Jennings last year and drafted Rice instead? Didn't he do well by avoiding a stud WR and grabbing a RB that so many had undervalued? See how that works? It's completely dependant upon which players you hit upon and which players you don't.
Your draft strategy can't be as simple as saying "hit on undervalued guys and don't take over-valued guys" can it? But that's what I'm getting from this.
