Chris Long (1 Viewer)

[ADP]

I noticed in the Dynasty rankings that there is a pretty big difference between Jene's ranking versus Anthony's ranking. Curious as to what both are thinking here.

 

[Anthony Borbely]

It's pretty simple for me. I think Long is going to be a stud DE, and this was even before the Rams hired Spagnuolo. I'm not concerned about last year's low numbers. He is in the middle of a decent sized tier too. Basically, he is a low end DL1/high end DL2 long-term. He will probably be a bit lower in redrafts, maybe in the upper middle of the DL2 group or so. But it's still early.

 

[Toads]

I noticed in the Dynasty rankings that there is a pretty big difference between Jene's ranking versus Anthony's ranking. Curious as to what both are thinking here.

I'm not speaking for either of these two guys but they get this question about a zillion times a year....and here's the distilled version of what they'd say. You need to recognize that both guys are probably turning hand springs just to get something up on the boards, the clamor from the masses and the demands for "Rankings" being what it is.1) "The decrepancy is nothing more than you'd expect from any two guys anywhere that are siting down and comparing their notes and opinions."

One thing I did with the (finally some) rankings was to sort for the last 14 days, make some notes and then re-sort to the original 300 day deal....and compare the similarities. For instance, they both designated an (*) for the GBP-DE converted to a GBP-LB.....Aaron Kampman. I noticed, too, that they threw up some rankings from early to mid-'08 just to make it look like they had some revelant content, again to appease the masses and started with the 300 day sort criteria to provide a contrast in the analysis. This is a good tool to begin to see what forces are beginning to change and what forces are coming to bear in early '09.

Neither one of them included Kampman in their recent '09 LB rankings....similarities there, too, to begin the season.

Another "for instance": just check out players you have an intest in vs. the scoring system in the League you have an interest in. Again a "for instance": Chad Greenway finished as the 18th ranked LB in a League that I just had to engineer a trade in....I ended up trading for him. These two rank him somewhere in the late twenties and he finished '08 about ten spots higher than where they ranked him. How did I rank him? I ranked him relative to what information I could collect at the time I traded away a player and acquired him....I ranked him based on the information I could round up at the time.

These guys are just another opinion in that information stream.

A more revelant tool is the League scoring system. If a new league with a fairly standard scoring system, just find a similar League, or a sister League that played last year, and check out the '08 and/or '07 scoring results:

2) "Get a feel for the rewards system in a like League."

That's far more revelant than what two guys at some "what ever" source think in February....and these two guys would probably both agree with those last statement.

As to Chris Long, PFW says thart he's got a long road ahead of him, that he needs to learn how to get rid of the tackles that impead his progress as a "sackum artist." In short, he's ranked higher by these guys than what the reality of the player development curve yields. He is on the field a lot, however.

 

[Jene Bramel]

It's probably just a difference in how we approach the rankings. I'd bet that generally speaking, Tony's window is a little longer than mine (generally 1.5 years for me). I'll put a young player who hasn't declared himself up in the dynasty rankings (Lofton, Phillips, etc), but I have to really like him.

In fact, I think having Long, who's yet to show that his technical pass rushing game will translate to the NFL, firmly in the mid DL2 range is reasonably high. I like Harvey a little better in the same tier. Looking at these rankings again today, however, I must've made an error with Shaun Rogers -- there's no way I'd take him as the 13th DL in a dynasty league. It's again worth noting that the DL2 tier is awfully deep right now. I think 5-8 of these guys will declare themselves as better bets in the 8-20 range this summer, but it's difficult to distinguish between guys like Derrick Burgess, Tamba Hali and Chris Long right now. In a dynasty league, there's certainly an argument for erring on the side of age with potential rather than a guy with a positive turned questionable track record with similar potential.

 

[Jene Bramel]

Oh, and Kampman's (rightly so I believe) off the DL rankings based on strong indications that he'll be a LB in most league systems by opening weekend. We generally don't make database decisions until the site fully opens for the following season (usually around late April). The database will have to be changed before Kampman shows up as a LB.

Very tentatively, I think Kampman would project somewhere in the 55-65 solos, 6-10 sack range, which would put him anywhere from the mid-teens to the 40s depending on which side of those numbers you think he'll land.