Dynasty Rankings (2 Viewers)

[Coeur de Lion]

They're both in the same tier as players at this point -- and that tier is pretty far from the HOF level "great player" tier.

That's the big question with these two. At the moment it looks like they're close in talent. 9-10 weeks down the road, it could be a different story. My hunch is that JT is more of a ho-hum talent thriving because of the situation and that Cameron is more of a genuine talent capable of thriving under any reasonable circumstance. With that being the case, I'm going to take Cameron ahead of JT even if he's on a worse team and might score fewer points this particular season. Fringe talents ebb and flow with the whims of their QB and the quality of their situation, but a more enduring talent (even one who isn't on the Gonzo/Peterson/Calvin level) will always be useful throughout the highs and lows.

What exactly is this based on? They were both 4th round picks. Their measurables are pretty close -- Cameron has a slight edge but it's nothing that would indicate that they're in totally different tiers as players. Neither one had done much in the NFL until last week, which is pretty par for the course for raw young guys at TE. Personally I hate using the eyeball test, but FWIW both guys look pretty athletic for their size to me.

 

[ConnSKINS26]

They're both in the same tier as players at this point -- and that tier is pretty far from the HOF level "great player" tier.

That's the big question with these two. At the moment it looks like they're close in talent. 9-10 weeks down the road, it could be a different story. My hunch is that JT is more of a ho-hum talent thriving because of the situation and that Cameron is more of a genuine talent capable of thriving under any reasonable circumstance. With that being the case, I'm going to take Cameron ahead of JT even if he's on a worse team and might score fewer points this particular season. Fringe talents ebb and flow with the whims of their QB and the quality of their situation, but a more enduring talent (even one who isn't on the Gonzo/Peterson/Calvin level) will always be useful throughout the highs and lows.

What exactly is this based on? They were both 4th round picks. Their measurables are pretty close -- Cameron has a slight edge but it's nothing that would indicate that they're in totally different tiers as players. Neither one had done much in the NFL until last week, which is pretty par for the course for raw young guys at TE. Personally I hate using the eyeball test, but FWIW both guys look pretty athletic for their size to me.

They do both look athletic, but for some reason Cameron just seems smoother to me.

 

[Coeur de Lion]

I think it's reasonable to prefer Cameron to Thomas as an NFL player at this point -- what I'm not getting is putting the two in totally separate tiers as NFL players right now.

ETA: EBF is calling Thomas just a guy and Cameron a genuine talent -- a position that I can't see much basis for. I like both guys and see them as similar NFL talents -- close enough that the immediate situation edge for Thomas makes him the easy FF choice for me.

 

[thriftyrocker]

I think the situation edge is 0 though. Why is Cameron better than Housler or Bennett? Because the situation is so TE friendly. Playing with Peyton is great but having 3 great WR hurts. Playing in Cle is bad, but Weeden at least throws downfield, and the offense targets the TE downfield a lot, so it makes up for it. You're free to feel differently, but Cle TE1 isn't so bad as long as Chud is there.

 

[Coeur de Lion]

I think the situation edge is 0 though. Why is Cameron better than Housler or Bennett? Because the situation is so TE friendly. Playing with Peyton is great but having 3 great WR

hurts. Playing in Cle is bad, but Weeden at least throws downfield, and the offense targets the TE downfield a lot, so it makes up for it. You're free to feel differently, but Cle TE1 isn't so bad as long as Chud is there.

Yeah, we're just not going to agree here. Cleveland is going to score way less TDs than Denver, and based on Norv Turner's history at least half of them will be on the ground. I'll be shocked if Weeden throws for 20 the rest of the way -- I'd set Manning's over/under at close to twice that. Cameron will certainly see more bracket coverage than will Thomas in all likelihood. Cameron might be targeted more on a percentage basis of passing plays, but IMO they're going to see similar target numbers overall due to the fact that Manning will throw way more than will Weeden. And I'm pretty sure that no one wants to argue about which guy's targets will be higher quality.

 

[EBF]

They're both in the same tier as players at this point -- and that tier is pretty far from the HOF level "great player" tier.

That's the big question with these two. At the moment it looks like they're close in talent. 9-10 weeks down the road, it could be a different story. My hunch is that JT is more of a ho-hum talent thriving because of the situation and that Cameron is more of a genuine talent capable of thriving under any reasonable circumstance. With that being the case, I'm going to take Cameron ahead of JT even if he's on a worse team and might score fewer points this particular season. Fringe talents ebb and flow with the whims of their QB and the quality of their situation, but a more enduring talent (even one who isn't on the Gonzo/Peterson/Calvin level) will always be useful throughout the highs and lows.

What exactly is this based on? They were both 4th round picks. Their measurables are pretty close -- Cameron has a slight edge but it's nothing that would indicate that they're in totally different tiers as players. Neither one had done much in the NFL until last week, which is pretty par for the course for raw young guys at TE. Personally I hate using the eyeball test, but FWIW both guys look pretty athletic for their size to me.

Cameron is far more athletic. Bigger, stronger, faster, and more explosive. Look down the list and you will see that he trumps Thomas in every combine drill.

http://www.nfldraftscout.com/ratings/dsprofile.php?pyid=85413&draftyear=2011&genpos=TE

http://www.nfldraftscout.com/ratings/dsprofile.php?pyid=115213&draftyear=2011&genpos=TE

That is a significant objective difference.

Then there's the eyeball test. When I watch Cameron's highlights, I see the proverbial "WR in a TE body." Very fluid and economical in his movements. He practically looks like Ed McCaffrey when he splits out wide. You can count the number of TEs who can run outside routes that effectively on one hand.

Thomas is no slouch athletically, but he doesn't pop off the screen to me in the way that Cameron does. I don't think you're going to see him lining up out wide and shaking cornerbacks twenty yards downfield. He's mobile, but not that mobile. Watching him against Baltimore last week, my thought was more "Wow, how is he so wide open?" and less "Wow, that guy is a monster." We know he's going to get his numbers as long as Peyton is the QB there, but I don't see a lot of amazing qualities. He's tall, he can run a little bit, and Peyton Manning is his QB. That's about it.

With Cameron, I think you're looking at more of a special athlete. He more closely resembles the Gonzo/Graham archetype for me. Tall, strong, and explosive, yet reminiscent of a big WR in terms of his route running and overall movement skills. I was asleep at the wheel when he came out of college and I didn't pay any attention to him until this season, which is too bad. His highlights really stand out to me and he's a player that I'd like to have on some of my teams.

 

[jdoggydogg]

Any thoughts on Joseph Fauria?

Seems like the rookie has a shot at success given how mediocre Pettigrew and Scheffler have been in Detroit.

 

[EBF]

I did not like Fauria much at UCLA. Thought he was too tall and immobile.

Any rookie who makes a roster and plays in week one deserves a sniff, but I won't be making any moves for him personally.

 

[jdoggydogg]

I did not like Fauria much at UCLA. Thought he was too tall and immobile.

Any rookie who makes a roster and plays in week one deserves a sniff, but I won't be making any moves for him personally.

Ok. Cool.

 

[EBF]

I did not like Fauria much at UCLA. Thought he was too tall and immobile.

Any rookie who makes a roster and plays in week one deserves a sniff, but I won't be making any moves for him personally.

Ok. Cool.

The flipside of his height is that it makes him a difficult cover in jump ball situations. I like TEs who can run and cut better than Fauria, but at least he does have one exceptional trait. I kind of doubt that it will be enough to make him FF-relevant in the long run, but if you've got the roster spot and no one else to fill it...

 

[renesauz]

Kaep, Wilson, and Ryan simply don't offer that big an advantage over guys like Eli Manning, Dalton, and Flacco on a consistent basis.

Ryan vs. Eli was 5 ppg difference last year. Basically nothing. About the same as Lynch vs. Shonn Greene, and those two players are basically the same.

Inherently there are less issues with QBs. If your stance is you're not comfortable projecting these 2 as long term QB1, that's fine, but I disagree. By a lot.

Value over replacement. Any advantage that exists throughout a position should not be considered when comparing value outside of position.

There is less variability at top X QB year to year than other positions. But QB as a whole is variable. Many QB fail, just look at the 11 draft class. Mediocre QB seldom become stud QB.

If we're going to take Renesauz' advice and just grab 2 mediocre QB ("Dalton, Tannehill, Bradford, Manuel, Freeman and Smith") and hope for one of them to become a stud, you will not get what you want. You will get QBBC and trade for a starter later.

Kaepernick in the top 30 looks like a great decision at the moment.

I think you missed my point. A couple of years ago Eli was considered a top 10 QB. Now he's a QB2 by most rankings. Yet, would anyone be shocked if he comes in at QB6 or 7 on the year? I know I wouldn't be. Big Ben was a borderline QB1 not that long ago, and in a couple of years with a better line and some growth in his suddenly young WR/RB weapons, he may crack the top 10 again.

I would predict at least 3 QBs currently outside the top ten finish the year inside the top 10, and I would predict that at least 4 QB's start next year in the top 10 who are not currently there. More importantly, the scoring of QB8/9 just doesn't justify the 4 or 5 round premium advantage gained over QBs 13/14, ESPECIALLY in dynasty. One could argue an advantage in redraft, but there's just too much young talent to waste that pick on QB in dynasty. Use it on your WR2/3 instead.

There is more talent at QB in the NFL than ever before, and there will be a lot of turnover in the QB4 to 18 rankings over the next few years. And that variability might well be year to year. Take a safer option like Eli or Flacco and couple him with a young QB with unknown upside but oozing talent....a Manuel, Geno Smith, or Tannehill.

 

[valhallan]

It's not just the point advantage (whether it's just 4 points) you gain from having a sure-fire QB1 like Brady, Manning, Brees, or Rodgers, it's the opportunity cost of your roster spots spent carrying extra QBs to pair with those 2nd tier guys like Eli, Rivers, Roeth, etc. I've barely ever rostered a backup for Rodgers in the last few years, which has enabled me to be more flexible with waiver moves and have room for the high upside rookies and young players always floating around early in the season.

 

[renesauz]

It's not just the point advantage (whether it's just 4 points) you gain from having a sure-fire QB1 like Brady, Manning, Brees, or Rodgers, it's the opportunity cost of your roster spots spent carrying extra QBs to pair with those 2nd tier guys like Eli, Rivers, Roeth, etc. I've barely ever rostered a backup for Rodgers in the last few years, which has enabled me to be more flexible with waiver moves and have room for the high upside rookies and young players always floating around early in the season.

Opportunity cost? Most of my dynasty rosters are 22 or more, many with IR slots and some with devy's. I'm in 7 dynasty leagues currently, and the only starting QB available on waivers in any league is Gabbert/Henne. EVERYBODY rosters at least 2 QB's, and not one rookie at any offensive position drafted before the 5th round is available via waivers.

There is no opportunity cost for an upside backup QB who is an actual NFL starter in any but the very shallowest of leagues, and in those leagues, the overwhelming majority of this thread is N/A anyway.

 

[valhallan]

It's not just the point advantage (whether it's just 4 points) you gain from having a sure-fire QB1 like Brady, Manning, Brees, or Rodgers, it's the opportunity cost of your roster spots spent carrying extra QBs to pair with those 2nd tier guys like Eli, Rivers, Roeth, etc. I've barely ever rostered a backup for Rodgers in the last few years, which has enabled me to be more flexible with waiver moves and have room for the high upside rookies and young players always floating around early in the season.

Opportunity cost? Most of my dynasty rosters are 22 or more, many with IR slots and some with devy's. I'm in 7 dynasty leagues currently, and the only starting QB available on waivers in any league is Gabbert/Henne. EVERYBODY rosters at least 2 QB's, and not one rookie at any offensive position drafted before the 5th round is available via waivers.

There is no opportunity cost for an upside backup QB who is an actual NFL starter in any but the very shallowest of leagues, and in those leagues, the overwhelming majority of this thread is N/A anyway.

There are also undrafted guys like Alfred Morris, Bryce Brown and Marlon Brown or 2nd/3rd year players like Julius Thomas that may have been dropped (yes, it happens, don't get insulted) every preseason that have some sort of relevance that I would have not had room to pick up if I had been carrying a backup to Rodgers.

If you're going to argue roster spots don't have value, I'm not sure you'll find many people that agree. Just because you don't see anything of value on the wire to you, doesn't mean others don't value having the option to kick the tires on what's out there or have more flexibility in trades.

 

[renesauz]

It's not just the point advantage (whether it's just 4 points) you gain from having a sure-fire QB1 like Brady, Manning, Brees, or Rodgers, it's the opportunity cost of your roster spots spent carrying extra QBs to pair with those 2nd tier guys like Eli, Rivers, Roeth, etc. I've barely ever rostered a backup for Rodgers in the last few years, which has enabled me to be more flexible with waiver moves and have room for the high upside rookies and young players always floating around early in the season.

Opportunity cost? Most of my dynasty rosters are 22 or more, many with IR slots and some with devy's. I'm in 7 dynasty leagues currently, and the only starting QB available on waivers in any league is Gabbert/Henne. EVERYBODY rosters at least 2 QB's, and not one rookie at any offensive position drafted before the 5th round is available via waivers.

There is no opportunity cost for an upside backup QB who is an actual NFL starter in any but the very shallowest of leagues, and in those leagues, the overwhelming majority of this thread is N/A anyway.

There are also undrafted guys like Alfred Morris, Bryce Brown and Marlon Brown or 2nd/3rd year players like Julius Thomas that may have been dropped (yes, it happens, don't get insulted) every preseason that have some sort of relevance that I would have not had room to pick up if I had been carrying a backup to Rodgers.

If you're going to argue roster spots don't have value, I'm not sure you'll find many people that agree. Just because you don't see anything of value on the wire to you, doesn't mean others don't value having the option to kick the tires on what's out there or have more flexibility in trades.

I don't know man...the best FAs currently available in most of my leagues are guys like Brandon Gibson and Garrett Graham. Players like Bryce Brown, Marlon Brown or Thomas are long gone. Rookies like Ace Sanders are already rostered. And I don't think these leagues are all that unusual. Compared to WR5/6 values like Gibson, is there really an opportunity cost to rostering a backup QB or two? You'd be hard pressed to convince me or anyone else of that.

Only in a very shallow league is there an opportunity cost to rostering a second QB, and in most leagues there's plenty of space on a roster for a developmental type like Barkley, Glennon....last year that would have been Pryor.

The concept of opportunity cost really doesn't apply to your backup QB.

 

[Adam Harstad]

I just updated my rankings,

Just curious - do guys like Marlon Brown, Kenny Stills, and Quinton Patton really not belong in your top 90 WRs or did you not spend any time on the bottom half of the rankings?

Honestly, I feel like WR sort of hits an event horizon around WR75 or so, and at that point there are about 30 guys who all have functionally identical value. The differences when you're that deep in the rankings are pretty much negligible, and they're completely overwhelmed by even the slightest cognitive bias. How do I rank an unknown buried on the depth chart like Stills against another unknown buried on the depth chart like Marvin Jones, or Quinton Patton, or Terrance Williams? Honestly, at that point, a lot of it becomes vague impressions and half-remembered details. I remember one of Marvin Jones's catches last year looking reasonably impressive, but I also sort of have a feeling I read something positive about Joe Morgan, and didn't Quinton Patton show up early to training camps?

I rank a top 90 because that's the format FBGs asks me to rank in. When I was producing rankings for myself, I basically produced a top 60 and then a long list of 40-50 names of worthwhile prospects who should be rostered. I just don't have enough information to pretend I'm able to parse those paper-thin differences with any meaningful confidence. I feel like producing a top 90 gives the impression that I'm much more certain in my opinions than I really am. That's why I like the idea of a "players you should be aware of" tier.

I'm reminded of an experiment. Several people were given five jars of jam and asked to rank them from best to worst, and the rankings were compared to the rankings of industry experts. The ordinary tasters did a fairly good job at sorting the jams- they were a little bit out of order, but by and large, the worst jams appeared near the bottom and the best jams appeared near the top. The experimenters then got a different group of people, asked them to taste the 5 jars of jam, and then asked them to score those 5 jars in a series of categories (freshness, mouthfeel, aftertaste, etc). After scoring all of the jams, the experimenters asked the ordinary people to rate the jams from best to worst. Suddenly, the ordinary people produced rankings that were totally random. Sometimes the worst jams appeared at the bottom, sometimes at the top. There was no real rhyme or reason. The simple act of trying to parse and quantify tiny differences that were barely perceptible ruined the ordinary peoples' ability to notice the broad differences.

In an ideal world, I'd be able to rate prospects like the first group of people, not the second. I'd be able to just create a broad bucket of "good jams" like Stills, Patton, and Brown who are all solid prospects with longshot upside, and separate them from the "bad jams" like Robert Meachem, Eddie Royal, and Lestar Jean. I feel that by trying to sort them on a finer scale than that, I sometimes lose sight of the broader differences. Still, like I said, FBGs asks for a certain format (top receivers ranked from 1-90), and that's what the software is set up to accommodate, so that's what I give to the best of my ability.

Also, just from a time management standpoint, the amount of time I spend on my rankings is inversely proportional to how far down the rankings I am. I feel like that's just smart business. I could spend an hour trying to perfectly nail a bunch of guys who have maybe a 1% shot at fantasy relevance and who are unlikely to be useful as trade bait, but my rankings would probably benefit more from me spending that hour further parsing some of the differences at the top.

Now, with all of that said, I do have to admit that Marlon Brown was an oversight on my part, and I think he's a cut above the other guys mentioned just because of the urgency factor. Whether he's a bust or a star-in-the-making, his short-term opportunity is huge, which means we're going to be getting a lot of new information on him in a hurry. I've updated the back half of my rankings a bit to fix that and a couple other oversights.

 

[thriftyrocker]

I think you missed my point. A couple of years ago Eli was considered a top 10 QB. Now he's a QB2 by most rankings. Yet, would anyone be shocked if he comes in at QB6 or 7 on the year? I know I wouldn't be. Big Ben was a borderline QB1 not that long ago, and in a couple of years with a better line and some growth in his suddenly young WR/RB weapons, he may crack the top 10 again.

You can definitely win at QB short term by being smarter than the room. Long term not so much. You will get caught holding Pets.com when everyone else has Microsoft.

For example, you could have turned double digit picks into Vick/Foles/Manuel which gives you a lot of short term upside. Eli is similar. Sure he could have a good year this year given the running game troubles. But his history is not consistent mid QB1 and at this point I don't expect it. Granted you're using him as the "safe" QB but really you're committing to losing ppg unless your bobo upside player hits, which is unlikely.

If your upside player fails, with how dynasty is now, you're committing yourself to spending high value picks or trade capital on more QB later.

Yeah, there is turnover at QB. Guys like Eli have a great year once in a while. Guys from Vick to Volek have been useful. Acquiring the right one every year or two is hard; can't guess right that many times in a row.

No one would be shocked if Eli is a top 10 QB this year. No one would be shocked if any of 60 RBs is a top 20 RB this year.

I actually think QBBC and zero QB works better in redraft than dynasty, contrary to your claim. In dynasty you are gaining career stability compared to other positions. In redraft you can put enough late picks into enough smart bets that you have this one year covered. Easier to bet on Vick putting up points this year than Manuel or Tannehill becoming elite.

 

[thriftyrocker]

urgency factor. Whether he's a bust or a star-in-the-making, his short-term opportunity is huge, which means we're going to be getting a lot of new information on him in a hurry.

See the same thing in Stills though.

 

[valhallan]

It's not just the point advantage (whether it's just 4 points) you gain from having a sure-fire QB1 like Brady, Manning, Brees, or Rodgers, it's the opportunity cost of your roster spots spent carrying extra QBs to pair with those 2nd tier guys like Eli, Rivers, Roeth, etc. I've barely ever rostered a backup for Rodgers in the last few years, which has enabled me to be more flexible with waiver moves and have room for the high upside rookies and young players always floating around early in the season.

Opportunity cost? Most of my dynasty rosters are 22 or more, many with IR slots and some with devy's. I'm in 7 dynasty leagues currently, and the only starting QB available on waivers in any league is Gabbert/Henne. EVERYBODY rosters at least 2 QB's, and not one rookie at any offensive position drafted before the 5th round is available via waivers.

There is no opportunity cost for an upside backup QB who is an actual NFL starter in any but the very shallowest of leagues, and in those leagues, the overwhelming majority of this thread is N/A anyway.

There are also undrafted guys like Alfred Morris, Bryce Brown and Marlon Brown or 2nd/3rd year players like Julius Thomas that may have been dropped (yes, it happens, don't get insulted) every preseason that have some sort of relevance that I would have not had room to pick up if I had been carrying a backup to Rodgers.

If you're going to argue roster spots don't have value, I'm not sure you'll find many people that agree. Just because you don't see anything of value on the wire to you, doesn't mean others don't value having the option to kick the tires on what's out there or have more flexibility in trades.

I don't know man...the best FAs currently available in most of my leagues are guys like Brandon Gibson and Garrett Graham. Players like Bryce Brown, Marlon Brown or Thomas are long gone. Rookies like Ace Sanders are already rostered. And I don't think these leagues are all that unusual. Compared to WR5/6 values like Gibson, is there really an opportunity cost to rostering a backup QB or two? You'd be hard pressed to convince me or anyone else of that.

Only in a very shallow league is there an opportunity cost to rostering a second QB, and in most leagues there's plenty of space on a roster for a developmental type like Barkley, Glennon....last year that would have been Pryor.

The concept of opportunity cost really doesn't apply to your backup QB.

Sure, maybe right now there isn't much to pick up. By week 2 or 3 we see almost no worthwhile waiver wire guys in any dynasty. I'm just talking about the flexibility I have carrying Rodgers only through the summer/preseason while others are platooning the likes of Eli/Dalton/Schaub.

Backup QBs are damn near worthless in trade and if you have a Rodgers/Brees/Brady, you start them once a year. I'd rather leave that spot open and roll the dice when their bye comes up.

 

[Adam Harstad]

urgency factor. Whether he's a bust or a star-in-the-making, his short-term opportunity is huge, which means we're going to be getting a lot of new information on him in a hurry.

See the same thing in Stills though.

I see less urgency in Stills, with Colston/Moore/Graham all in town hoovering up all the quality targets in the short term and Morgan waiting to return next year in the long term. Maybe I'm reading the situation wrong, but that's what I see.

 

[EBF]

Also, just from a time management standpoint, the amount of time I spend on my rankings is inversely proportional to how far down the rankings I am. I feel like that's just smart business. I could spend an hour trying to perfectly nail a bunch of guys who have maybe a 1% shot at fantasy relevance and who are unlikely to be useful as trade bait, but my rankings would probably benefit more from me spending that hour further parsing some of the differences at the top.

I think it's important to get your first couple picks in a startup right, but in general I think the first couple rounds of a startup draft require less thought than the middle and late rounds. You're mostly dealing with known quantities in the first round or two. Players like Julio Jones, LeSean McCoy, Jimmy Graham, and Aaron Rodgers who have played long enough to give you a pretty good idea of what you're getting. That doesn't mean the decisions are easy or that you don't have to put some thought into making your selections, but you're not usually dealing with a lot of complete unknowns so early in the draft. Most of the realistic options will have some kind of a track record and that's why people feel comfortable picking them that high.

It's hard to gain extra value when you're dealing with known quantities. Julio Jones isn't going to fall to the 5th round of your startup. Teams will make mistakes gauging player values and some veterans will be over/undervalued as a result of that, but usually not to a criminal extent. When you go back and look at old dynasty drafts, most of the real steals involve players with a high degree of uncertainty. That typically means rookies or untested prospects. Last year it was Demaryius Thomas, Doug Martin, Colin Kaepernick, CJ Spiller, Alfred Morris, and Cecil Shorts who took the leap. If you got one of those guys at their June 2012 startup ADP, you reaped a huge windfall. Assuming that you have a decent roster in place, finding 1-2 of those guys can be the difference between missing the playoffs and winning the league.

That's why I think it actually makes sense to invest most of your time and energy towards parsing the uncertainty of high potential unknowns. There are no secrets with veterans. Their long term value is (relatively) known by any competent owner. Not the case with players like EJ Manuel, Christine Michael, Gio Bernard, Bryce Brown, David Wilson, Josh Gordon, Michael Floyd, TY Hilton, Chris Givens, Justin Blackmon, Justin Hunter, Jordan Cameron, Tyler Eifert, Travis Kelce, and Julius Thomas. You're looking at a much more polarized range of potential outcomes with that group of players. It's likely that a few of them will become perennial stars. Players like Kaepernick, Roddy, and Witten that you can plug into a winning lineup for years. However, it's also likely that many of them will go the way of Julius Jones, Koren Robinson, and Vince Young. If you can somehow parse the uncertainty to separate the winners from the losers before it's common knowledge, you can score massive value gains.

Quinton Patton is actually a good example. Maybe he's the next Steve Johnson. Maybe he's the next Steve Urkel. Either way, he warrants a lot of scrutiny because the uncertainty around his future creates favorable buying or selling opportunities depending on what becomes of him. If you buy now and he becomes a good player, you've gained value. If you sell now and he becomes a total flop, you've gained value. I don't think it's easy to make those calls, but I think that should be one of the main goals for a dynasty owner. Not splitting hairs between AJ Green and Julio Jones, but rather trying to find players who are about to take the leap or fall off a cliff. Uncertainty is where the biggest profits are.

 

[Adam Harstad]

Also, just from a time management standpoint, the amount of time I spend on my rankings is inversely proportional to how far down the rankings I am. I feel like that's just smart business. I could spend an hour trying to perfectly nail a bunch of guys who have maybe a 1% shot at fantasy relevance and who are unlikely to be useful as trade bait, but my rankings would probably benefit more from me spending that hour further parsing some of the differences at the top.

I think it's important to get your first couple picks in a startup right, but in general I think the first couple rounds of a startup draft require less thought than the middle and late rounds. You're mostly dealing with known quantities in the first round or two. Players like Julio Jones, LeSean McCoy, Jimmy Graham, and Aaron Rodgers who have played long enough to give you a pretty good idea of what you're getting. That doesn't mean the decisions are easy or that you don't have to put some thought into making your selections, but you're not usually dealing with a lot of complete unknowns so early in the draft. Most of the realistic options will have some kind of a track record and that's why people feel comfortable picking them that high.

It's hard to gain extra value when you're dealing with known quantities. Julio Jones isn't going to fall to the 5th round of your startup. Teams will make mistakes gauging player values and some veterans will be over/undervalued as a result of that, but usually not to a criminal extent. When you go back and look at old dynasty drafts, most of the real steals involve players with a high degree of uncertainty. That typically means rookies or untested prospects. Last year it was Demaryius Thomas, Doug Martin, Colin Kaepernick, CJ Spiller, Alfred Morris, and Cecil Shorts who took the leap. If you got one of those guys at their June 2012 startup ADP, you reaped a huge windfall. Assuming that you have a decent roster in place, finding 1-2 of those guys can be the difference between missing the playoffs and winning the league.

That's why I think it actually makes sense to invest most of your time and energy towards parsing the uncertainty of high potential unknowns. There are no secrets with veterans. Their long term value is (relatively) known by any competent owner. Not the case with players like EJ Manuel, Christine Michael, Gio Bernard, Bryce Brown, David Wilson, Josh Gordon, Michael Floyd, TY Hilton, Chris Givens, Justin Blackmon, Justin Hunter, Jordan Cameron, Tyler Eifert, Travis Kelce, and Julius Thomas. You're looking at a much more polarized range of potential outcomes with that group of players. It's likely that a few of them will become perennial stars. Players like Kaepernick, Roddy, and Witten that you can plug into a winning lineup for years. However, it's also likely that many of them will go the way of Julius Jones, Koren Robinson, and Vince Young. If you can somehow parse the uncertainty to separate the winners from the losers before it's common knowledge, you can score massive value gains.

Quinton Patton is actually a good example. Maybe he's the next Steve Johnson. Maybe he's the next Steve Urkel. Either way, he warrants a lot of scrutiny because the uncertainty around his future creates favorable buying or selling opportunities depending on what becomes of him. If you buy now and he becomes a good player, you've gained value. If you sell now and he becomes a total flop, you've gained value. I don't think it's easy to make those calls, but I think that should be one of the main goals for a dynasty owner. Not splitting hairs between AJ Green and Julio Jones, but rather trying to find players who are about to take the leap or fall off a cliff. Uncertainty is where the biggest profits are.

Decisions at the top have huge impacts, though. Ask the guy who drafted Matt Stafford in the first two rounds of a startup last year whether he wishes he'd spent a bit more time studying the top QBs. Ask the guy who got Peterson in the 2nd whether he thought he might have been better off focusing on guys in the 15th round, instead. And "at the top" doesn't just mean "WR#2 vs. WR#3", it also means looking seriously at the break between the 1st tier guys and the 2nd tier guys. Which side do you put Percy Harvin on? Randall Cobb? Hakeem Nicks? Victor Cruz? Larry Fitzgerald? How high are you willing to go on old man Peterson? Old man Brees? How worried are you about The Gronk's injuries? These decisions are potentially far more impactful than a decision on whether you should draft Kenny Stills or Nick Toon in the 16th, or a decision on whether it's worth it to reach on Quinton Patton in the 14th.

 

[valhallan]

Startups aren't happening right now though. It's time for in-season rankings that adjust based on new information. I can read the Marlon Brown thread to see what the community thinks, but as a subscriber I want to know what the guys I trust think. It's extremely odd to me that the end of the rankings (those who are going to be waiver gems or trade targets) are so disjointed and basically offer no research value. Why even bother posting them?

 

[EBF]

Decisions at the top have huge impacts, though. Ask the guy who drafted Matt Stafford in the first two rounds of a startup last year whether he wishes he'd spent a bit more time studying the top QBs. Ask the guy who got Peterson in the 2nd whether he thought he might have been better off focusing on guys in the 15th round, instead. And "at the top" doesn't just mean "WR#2 vs. WR#3", it also means looking seriously at the break between the 1st tier guys and the 2nd tier guys. Which side do you put Percy Harvin on? Randall Cobb? Hakeem Nicks? Victor Cruz? Larry Fitzgerald? How high are you willing to go on old man Peterson? Old man Brees? How worried are you about The Gronk's injuries? These decisions are potentially far more impactful than a decision on whether you should draft Kenny Stills or Nick Toon in the 16th, or a decision on whether it's worth it to reach on Quinton Patton in the 14th.

It's never easy, but I think picks actually become harder the further you get into the draft. And that makes intuitive sense. At the top of the draft, you have the entire player pool to choose from. That means you can exclude every player who has even a shred of risk. When you are picking from a list of Doug Martin, Trent Richardson, LeSean McCoy, Jimmy Graham, AJ Green, Julio Jones, Dez Bryant, Demaryius Thomas, Andrew Luck, and Aaron Rodgers, you should be able to get a good player. If you're gun-shy about the rookies, you can restrict your options to the even smaller population of Graham, Green, Julio, McCoy, and Rodgers. All top level players who have done it for multiple seasons.

The risk with a player like this is minimal. Yea, you might take Julio over Calvin and you might surrender some VBD there when all is said and done, but you've still got Julio and if he performs at the level he has the past couple years with a modest improvement for experience and opportunity then you've likely got a top 5-10 dynasty asset that's helping you win games while also maintaining peak trade value for a period of several years. That's a relatively pleasant doomsday scenario. You might not always make the perfect pick in the first round of a startup draft. However, you should be able to make a good pick. There's very little reason (apart from random bad injury luck) why you shouldn't be able to find a solid foundational player from the available options anywhere in the top 10-12 of a startup draft.

If you calculated the average career VBD for a first round startup pick, it would be pretty high. I just went back and looked at the first round of a 14 team draft that I did in 2008. It's five years later, and I'd say 9-10 of the 14 first round picks still have reasonable FF value (Peterson, Lynch, Gore, Reggie, McFadden, Andre, Fitzgerald, Wayne, MJD, SJax). On the flipside, the teen rounds are a barren wasteland. Every now and then a good pick pops up from the sea of crap (Jamaal Charles in the 10th, Aaron Rodgers in the 11th, Jordy Nelson in the 12th, Cedric Benson in the 15th, Pierre Garcon in the 18th). But we're talking about maybe one guy per round, if that. Mostly, your expectation with a pick in the teen rounds is to get a nice steaming turd. What this means is that in those rare cases where you actually do find someone of value, you've secured a huge spike over expectations.

Finding a good player in the top 15 picks is not special. Most of your leaguemates will manage that feat. Doing the same won't distinguish you from the average team. It's the expectation. However, most of the teams in your league are not going to fare very well in the mid-late rounds. That means that if you can get those picks right, you will have secured a big advantage over your peers. That's why I spend more energy looking at rookies and bench scrubs versus trying to decide whether Julio, Green, or Demaryius is the most valuable. I think that's like debating Fitz, Andre, or VJax. Useful to a point, but in the end the advantage to be gained by getting that problem absolutely right is a lot thinner than the advantage of getting Marques Colston or Victor Cruz off the waiver wire, or making the right pick when you're choosing between Anquan Boldin and Taylor Jacobs in the 14th round of your startup.

 

[Biabreakable]

As an aside, missing out on JT in a new dynasty startup is by far my most gut-wrenching mistake in years.

Mine is pikcing Housler over Cameron. Well, this year anyway (well, so far anyway).

Oh, I've been wrong about players before. I'm pretty used to that, by now- it's an unavoidable part of the hobby. During week one of the 2011 season, I was on Twitter saying Jimmy Graham didn't look fluid or creative to me, and that his upside was Owen Daniels. Obviously it sucks, but what can you do?

What kills me so much about Thomas isn't that I was wrong about him. What kills me is that I was *RIGHT* about him. I've been riding that bandwagon for a while now. I was drafting him as a last-round flyer in redraft leagues all the way back in June. This totally should have been one of those situations where I got to spike the football and do my end zone dance because I was so far out ahead of everyone else, but instead I pulled a Danny Trevathan, started celebrating early, and fumbled it at the one yard line. Seriously, I missed out on Thomas because I was in a rush to save $10 in blind bidding out of a $1000 budget. Ugh.

Yeah these hurt more than the ones where you just totally missed the boat.

Despite all the research and time put into evaluating a player and situation, to not put oneself in position to take advantage of it. I kick myself for this perhaps more than anything else. I think I would rather follow my gut on these situations and be wrong than to not follow my gut and be right, but not benefit from being right.

 

[Max Power]

I like to look at rankings, just to see how other stack up against how I feel. However, this is not a science... it's an art. I don't need someone to spend countless hours on the art if they have valid upfront reasons for their rankings.

Dynasty rankings are supposed to be the future going forward and yet people scream for updates every couple of weeks. I'm just not on board with that mentality. I totally agree with SSOG that the last tiers aren't worth the time and effort. WAY too many variable play into those guys. Playing time, injuries, playcalling, their desire, talent. Its too much for such a small payoff.

I appreciate all the work you guys put into your rankings, but this is really just educated guessing. No one knows who is going to get popped for drugs, traded, have their QB go down, offensive line desimated, or just stop caring about the game. I'd almost wager that after X amount of hours, X+1 or X+10 wouldn't produce any statical relevance to the rankings.

 

[valhallan]

It's not about statistical relevance or any semblance of being 'right'. It's about giving subscribers a tool to use in their own analysis. I really don't think taking the time to rank a guy that has been picked up in every dynasty league over the last few weeks is difficult. Look at the last 20 guys on your list and slot him in somewhere. That's takes all of 10 seconds. No further pedantry required.

 

[Biabreakable]

Staying on upside TEs, Jordan Reed looks like a very fluid athlete with good hands. I see Top 10 dynasty potential there

And I was just about to get on that train too. I think we're borderline entering a long, LONG line of TE production where there's not a whole lot of distinction between the top and bottom in terms of talents. Look at the redraft space for this year - the play was either pay up for Gronk or Graham, or sit tight a throw a couple guys at the wall.

I think we're reaching that point in dynasty as well where you can begin to find TE production that gets you top 8-10 weekly output by throwing darts. Guys like Ladarius Green, Ausberry perhaps, hell even Kyle Rudolph could hit pretty big in the next few years as situations evolve (Gates retires / sunsets, Ausberry gets & stays healthy, Rudolph gets a real QB).

Then there's the youth movement -- from this year's class alone there's Eifert, Ertz, Kelce, Reed, etc. Next year it's ASJ added to the mix. Heck even Fauria looked halfway decent in DET and was involved on some pretty important plays right out of the chute -- that wasn't garbage time production.

I'm just not that worried about TE on my dynasty rosters. Dig enough, and you can find the next guy.

ETA - perhaps this makes situation all the more relevant for TEs from the dynasty perspective. If the talent level reaches parity, then the situations are what separates. Housler vs. Cameron for example, or either guy vs. Thomas. Last spring they were cheap or potentially even free depending on roster sizes. Situations change rapidly...

Agreed.

This is kind of what I was trying to say in regards to Eiferts value relative to all TE in dynasty in comparison to players from other positions.

The TE position has become the greatest benefactor of the enforcement of contact beyond 5 yards rule. Because of their size and the mis-matches they present.

Although the TE position is scoring more than they have prior to this (2002) many more TE are also scoring more. So while this does make the TE position more valuable overall compared to say WR, they are not really becoming more valuable compared to other TE.

So the conclusions I have drawn is more willingness to value TE similar to WR except that I do not expect TE to have quite as much separation in value in the top 12 at their position as I do WR. That is with exception of the very best TE which seems to be more limited to 2-5 TE players a season. A TE such as Graham who can maintain that top position for multiple seasons is extremely valuable. When looking over the past there are only a handful of players who have been able to do that.

As a rookie prospect many people seemed to be valuing Eifert as if he will have a career like Jason Witten, or one of those few players who can stay on top in TE rankings year after year. While I think that is possible, it is still a very tall order. It is more likely that he ends up being in this ever growing large group of TE who will have good seasons, but not difference making seasons, such as Graham has. If Eifert does have a top 5 season at some point (such as player like Miller have done once, usually with high TD numbers being the main impetus for this) will he be able to repeat that? I have my doubts about any rookie TE achieving this status. I recall KW2 and Vernon Davis having even more hype than Eifert as rookie prospects, and they certainly had the potential to become one of these elite players but fell short. It just is not easy to become a player so rare for as long as Tony Gonzalez has.

Part of it is not just talent either. The QB and surrounding offense have a lot to do with it. Drew Brees in particular has been very good for TE players. You need to have that talent meet the rare situation (which sometimes involves not having as good of WR alternatives for the QB and other factors) to land that difference maker TE.

I am not sure the Bengals and Dalton are the ideal situation to produce elite level TE. It is possible.

The other factor I had in regards to the value of Eifert as a rookie prospect was that there were so many other quality TE prospects from the 2013 draft class who could also possibly achieve this value. That is a TE who is scoring well enough to land in this TE 5-22 type level of performance, and possibly become a top 5 for a season at some point if things break right. So while I think Eifert may be the most likely rookie TE to achieve this, there are better values to be had later, by drafting one of the others such as Kelce, Ertz, McDonald, Reed.

All of these players are actually in situations that I might guess as more favorable for achieving that high upside TE performance.

For example Kelce combined with Alex Smith and Andy Reed on a team without high quality WR besides Bowe. That could add up to a situation favorable for high end TE performance more so than the Bengals situation. Or perhaps Ertz (who I do not like that much from a talent stand point btw) in Chip Kelly offense (high tempo) coupled with not much at WR to compete with him as the Bengals. Reed can benifit from strong running game and mobile QB (mobile QB seem to be able to buy time for TE more often, the TE offer a larger target for QB on the move).

 

[Biabreakable]

I think the situation edge is 0 though. Why is Cameron better than Housler or Bennett? Because the situation is so TE friendly. Playing with Peyton is great but having 3 great WR

hurts. Playing in Cle is bad, but Weeden at least throws downfield, and the offense targets the TE downfield a lot, so it makes up for it. You're free to feel differently, but Cle TE1 isn't so bad as long as Chud is there.

Yeah, we're just not going to agree here. Cleveland is going to score way less TDs than Denver, and based on Norv Turner's history at least half of them will be on the ground. I'll be shocked if Weeden throws for 20 the rest of the way -- I'd set Manning's over/under at close to twice that. Cameron will certainly see more bracket coverage than will Thomas in all likelihood. Cameron might be targeted more on a percentage basis of passing plays, but IMO they're going to see similar target numbers overall due to the fact that Manning will throw way more than will Weeden. And I'm pretty sure that no one wants to argue about which guy's targets will be higher quality.

Will Peyton Manning be playing for the Bronco's longer than Norv Turner is the OC of the Browns?

I am not sure.

 

[Biabreakable]

Also, just from a time management standpoint, the amount of time I spend on my rankings is inversely proportional to how far down the rankings I am. I feel like that's just smart business. I could spend an hour trying to perfectly nail a bunch of guys who have maybe a 1% shot at fantasy relevance and who are unlikely to be useful as trade bait, but my rankings would probably benefit more from me spending that hour further parsing some of the differences at the top.

I think it's important to get your first couple picks in a startup right, but in general I think the first couple rounds of a startup draft require less thought than the middle and late rounds. You're mostly dealing with known quantities in the first round or two. Players like Julio Jones, LeSean McCoy, Jimmy Graham, and Aaron Rodgers who have played long enough to give you a pretty good idea of what you're getting. That doesn't mean the decisions are easy or that you don't have to put some thought into making your selections, but you're not usually dealing with a lot of complete unknowns so early in the draft. Most of the realistic options will have some kind of a track record and that's why people feel comfortable picking them that high.

It's hard to gain extra value when you're dealing with known quantities. Julio Jones isn't going to fall to the 5th round of your startup. Teams will make mistakes gauging player values and some veterans will be over/undervalued as a result of that, but usually not to a criminal extent. When you go back and look at old dynasty drafts, most of the real steals involve players with a high degree of uncertainty. That typically means rookies or untested prospects. Last year it was Demaryius Thomas, Doug Martin, Colin Kaepernick, CJ Spiller, Alfred Morris, and Cecil Shorts who took the leap. If you got one of those guys at their June 2012 startup ADP, you reaped a huge windfall. Assuming that you have a decent roster in place, finding 1-2 of those guys can be the difference between missing the playoffs and winning the league.

That's why I think it actually makes sense to invest most of your time and energy towards parsing the uncertainty of high potential unknowns. There are no secrets with veterans. Their long term value is (relatively) known by any competent owner. Not the case with players like EJ Manuel, Christine Michael, Gio Bernard, Bryce Brown, David Wilson, Josh Gordon, Michael Floyd, TY Hilton, Chris Givens, Justin Blackmon, Justin Hunter, Jordan Cameron, Tyler Eifert, Travis Kelce, and Julius Thomas. You're looking at a much more polarized range of potential outcomes with that group of players. It's likely that a few of them will become perennial stars. Players like Kaepernick, Roddy, and Witten that you can plug into a winning lineup for years. However, it's also likely that many of them will go the way of Julius Jones, Koren Robinson, and Vince Young. If you can somehow parse the uncertainty to separate the winners from the losers before it's common knowledge, you can score massive value gains.

Quinton Patton is actually a good example. Maybe he's the next Steve Johnson. Maybe he's the next Steve Urkel. Either way, he warrants a lot of scrutiny because the uncertainty around his future creates favorable buying or selling opportunities depending on what becomes of him. If you buy now and he becomes a good player, you've gained value. If you sell now and he becomes a total flop, you've gained value. I don't think it's easy to make those calls, but I think that should be one of the main goals for a dynasty owner. Not splitting hairs between AJ Green and Julio Jones, but rather trying to find players who are about to take the leap or fall off a cliff. Uncertainty is where the biggest profits are.

Agreed.

This is why I spend most of my time on these type of unknown situations.

 

[Bob Magaw]

Even a handful of 900+ 8+ seasons are worth a ton more than an endless string of borderline TE1 mediocrity, which is probably the most realistic projection for Cameron given Weeden, Chudzinski, etc and the mess called the Cleveland Browns.

Cleveland/Chud is a great situation for Cameron and the main thing that

gives him relevance. Swap teams for Hous/Cam or Celek/Cam or BUnicorn/Cam and you swap value too. Weeden is a bad NFL QB but he'll be a decent stat accumulator.

Disagree strongly. I think week one is going to be totally atypical for Cleveland in terms of run/pass ratio and target distribution (once Gordon is back). In terms of dynasty outlook I'm not counting on Weeden / Chud to be around more than a year or two, nor am I counting on anything decent in their place moving forward.

by moving forward, you mean you are expecting sub-par HC & QB for perpetuity?

 

[Coeur de Lion]

Even a handful of 900+ 8+ seasons are worth a ton more than an endless string of borderline TE1 mediocrity, which is probably the most realistic projection for Cameron given Weeden, Chudzinski, etc and the mess called the Cleveland Browns.

Cleveland/Chud is a great situation for Cameron and the main thing that

gives him relevance. Swap teams for Hous/Cam or Celek/Cam or BUnicorn/Cam and you swap value too. Weeden is a bad NFL QB but he'll be a decent stat accumulator.

Disagree strongly. I think week one is going to be totally atypical for Cleveland in terms of run/pass ratio and target distribution (once Gordon is back). In terms of dynasty outlook I'm not counting on Weeden / Chud to be around more than a year or two, nor am I counting on anything decent in their place moving forward.

by moving forward, you mean you are expecting sub-par HC & QB for perpetuity?

I think it's more likely than not that they continue to struggle across the board throughout the useful window for reasonable dynasty projections (roughly 3 - 5 years), as they have since they returned to Cleveland. If Ozzie Newsome comes aboard, I'll reassess. Projecting teams like the Browns and Raiders to continue to be incompetent for much of the useful lifespan of a 25 year old player doesn't feel like a big stretch to me.

 

[Coeur de Lion]

I think the situation edge is 0 though. Why is Cameron better than Housler or Bennett? Because the situation is so TE friendly. Playing with Peyton is great but having 3 great WR

hurts. Playing in Cle is bad, but Weeden at least throws downfield, and the offense targets the TE downfield a lot, so it makes up for it. You're free to feel differently, but Cle TE1 isn't so bad as long as Chud is there.

Yeah, we're just not going to agree here. Cleveland is going to score way less TDs than Denver, and based on Norv Turner's history at least half of them will be on the ground. I'll be shocked if Weeden throws for 20 the rest of the way -- I'd set Manning's over/under at close to twice that. Cameron will certainly see more bracket coverage than will Thomas in all likelihood. Cameron might be targeted more on a percentage basis of passing plays, but IMO they're going to see similar target numbers overall due to the fact that Manning will throw way more than will Weeden. And I'm pretty sure that no one wants to argue about which guy's targets will be higher quality.

Will Peyton Manning be playing for the Bronco's longer than Norv Turner is the OC of the Browns?

I am not sure.

As mentioned upthread, I think Manning likely plays at least through 2015 when he'll break Favre's records. How many losing seasons will the current Browns' regime survive? Fairly close to a push IMO.

The main point is that even if things do change for the better, a new QB and system takes time to install / develop, even if the team does manage to get it right across board this time. Of course, Chudzinski and Weeden could both turn things around and establish themselves as cornerstones for a resurgence of the franchise, but I'm not at all impressed with either one thus far (as a multi-Panther dyno owner -- OOPS -- I watched plenty of Chud in 2011 - 12).

 

[Coeur de Lion]

They're both in the same tier as players at this point -- and that tier is pretty far from the HOF level "great player" tier.

That's the big question with these two. At the moment it looks like they're close in talent. 9-10 weeks down the road, it could be a different story. My hunch is that JT is more of a ho-hum talent thriving because of the situation and that Cameron is more of a genuine talent capable of thriving under any reasonable circumstance. With that being the case, I'm going to take Cameron ahead of JT even if he's on a worse team and might score fewer points this particular season. Fringe talents ebb and flow with the whims of their QB and the quality of their situation, but a more enduring talent (even one who isn't on the Gonzo/Peterson/Calvin level) will always be useful throughout the highs and lows.

What exactly is this based on? They were both 4th round picks. Their measurables are pretty close -- Cameron has a slight edge but it's nothing that would indicate that they're in totally different tiers as players. Neither one had done much in the NFL until last week, which is pretty par for the course for raw young guys at TE. Personally I hate using the eyeball test, but FWIW both guys look pretty athletic for their size to me.

Cameron is far more athletic. Bigger, stronger, faster, and more explosive. Look down the list and you will see that he trumps Thomas in every combine drill.

http://www.nfldraftscout.com/ratings/dsprofile.php?pyid=85413&draftyear=2011&genpos=TE

http://www.nfldraftscout.com/ratings/dsprofile.php?pyid=115213&draftyear=2011&genpos=TE

That is a significant objective difference.

Then there's the eyeball test. When I watch Cameron's highlights, I see the proverbial "WR in a TE body." Very fluid and economical in his movements. He practically looks like Ed McCaffrey when he splits out wide. You can count the number of TEs who can run outside routes that effectively on one hand.

Thomas is no slouch athletically, but he doesn't pop off the screen to me in the way that Cameron does. I don't think you're going to see him lining up out wide and shaking cornerbacks twenty yards downfield. He's mobile, but not that mobile. Watching him against Baltimore last week, my thought was more "Wow, how is he so wide open?" and less "Wow, that guy is a monster." We know he's going to get his numbers as long as Peyton is the QB there, but I don't see a lot of amazing qualities. He's tall, he can run a little bit, and Peyton Manning is his QB. That's about it.

With Cameron, I think you're looking at more of a special athlete. He more closely resembles the Gonzo/Graham archetype for me. Tall, strong, and explosive, yet reminiscent of a big WR in terms of his route running and overall movement skills. I was asleep at the wheel when he came out of college and I didn't pay any attention to him until this season, which is too bad. His highlights really stand out to me and he's a player that I'd like to have on some of my teams.

Yeah. we'll agree to disagree on this. I put close to zero weight on my own eyeball test, so I'm not even going to comment on yours. I see the differences in the combine numbers (.09 in the 40, 2" in the vertical, etc) as fairly insignificant. Cameron might be a slightly more highly ranked athlete within the same tier, IMO, but those aren't glaring differences that indicate that the two guys are in entirely different classes as athletes. They were both 4th round picks, so the NFL saw them as pretty similar also.

 

[renesauz]

I think you missed my point. A couple of years ago Eli was considered a top 10 QB. Now he's a QB2 by most rankings. Yet, would anyone be shocked if he comes in at QB6 or 7 on the year? I know I wouldn't be. Big Ben was a borderline QB1 not that long ago, and in a couple of years with a better line and some growth in his suddenly young WR/RB weapons, he may crack the top 10 again.

You can definitely win at QB short term by being smarter than the room. Long term not so much. You will get caught holding Pets.com when everyone else has Microsoft.

For example, you could have turned double digit picks into Vick/Foles/Manuel which gives you a lot of short term upside. Eli is similar. Sure he could have a good year this year given the running game troubles. But his history is not consistent mid QB1 and at this point I don't expect it. Granted you're using him as the "safe" QB but really you're committing to losing ppg unless your bobo upside player hits, which is unlikely.

If your upside player fails, with how dynasty is now, you're committing yourself to spending high value picks or trade capital on more QB later.

Yeah, there is turnover at QB. Guys like Eli have a great year once in a while. Guys from Vick to Volek have been useful. Acquiring the right one every year or two is hard; can't guess right that many times in a row.

No one would be shocked if Eli is a top 10 QB this year. No one would be shocked if any of 60 RBs is a top 20 RB this year.

I actually think QBBC and zero QB works better in redraft than dynasty, contrary to your claim. In dynasty you are gaining career stability compared to other positions. In redraft you can put enough late picks into enough smart bets that you have this one year covered. Easier to bet on Vick putting up points this year than Manuel or Tannehill becoming elite.

I certainly understand where you're coming from....I simply reject the idea that QBs 5-12 are stable values in dynasty. The advantage gained in year 1 or 2 is really no different from the advantage gained by a WR taken in a premier round (speaking 3 to 5 generally), and the long term stability many people THINK they are getting is simply not true. Sure....these QBs are likely to play 5+ years, but the likelihood of QB1 numbers for 5+ years is actually quite small.

Another thing to note is the relative ease of acquiring a QB. It was EASY to trade for an ELi Manning this off-season. It's easy to trade for a safe option you think might have a great year while also rostering a young gun with longer term high upside. It doesn't take top 5 rookie picks. If you make a mistake, it isn't hard to aquire a couple QBs to play QBBC with without spending a lot of capital. It isn't so easy to trade for quality WR2/RB2 options when the bullets are flying. Why? Because borderline QB1 QBs are always on someone's bench, but WR/RB2guys are ALWAYS in someone's lineup.

I guess what I'm saying is that QB is deep right now, and it doesn't make a lot of sense to me to spend a premium pick at a deep position when I only start ONE. It's fairly easy logic to recognize that if I can trade for a startable player at a position, it might not be such a good idea to spend a premium pick on the position unless the player I'm getting provides not only an advantage this year, BUT EVERY YEAR for the next 4 or 5. And I'm sorry, but outside of the Brees' and Rodgers' types, there are no QBs giving that future advantage. Certainly not the QBs in the 5-10 range people are spending 4th round picks on. No thanks....I'd rather roster Cecil Shorts or Desean Jackson and plan on QBBC in year one.

 

[renesauz]

Also, just from a time management standpoint, the amount of time I spend on my rankings is inversely proportional to how far down the rankings I am. I feel like that's just smart business. I could spend an hour trying to perfectly nail a bunch of guys who have maybe a 1% shot at fantasy relevance and who are unlikely to be useful as trade bait, but my rankings would probably benefit more from me spending that hour further parsing some of the differences at the top.

I think it's important to get your first couple picks in a startup right, but in general I think the first couple rounds of a startup draft require less thought than the middle and late rounds. You're mostly dealing with known quantities in the first round or two. Players like Julio Jones, LeSean McCoy, Jimmy Graham, and Aaron Rodgers who have played long enough to give you a pretty good idea of what you're getting. That doesn't mean the decisions are easy or that you don't have to put some thought into making your selections, but you're not usually dealing with a lot of complete unknowns so early in the draft. Most of the realistic options will have some kind of a track record and that's why people feel comfortable picking them that high.

It's hard to gain extra value when you're dealing with known quantities. Julio Jones isn't going to fall to the 5th round of your startup. Teams will make mistakes gauging player values and some veterans will be over/undervalued as a result of that, but usually not to a criminal extent. When you go back and look at old dynasty drafts, most of the real steals involve players with a high degree of uncertainty. That typically means rookies or untested prospects. Last year it was Demaryius Thomas, Doug Martin, Colin Kaepernick, CJ Spiller, Alfred Morris, and Cecil Shorts who took the leap. If you got one of those guys at their June 2012 startup ADP, you reaped a huge windfall. Assuming that you have a decent roster in place, finding 1-2 of those guys can be the difference between missing the playoffs and winning the league.

That's why I think it actually makes sense to invest most of your time and energy towards parsing the uncertainty of high potential unknowns. There are no secrets with veterans. Their long term value is (relatively) known by any competent owner. Not the case with players like EJ Manuel, Christine Michael, Gio Bernard, Bryce Brown, David Wilson, Josh Gordon, Michael Floyd, TY Hilton, Chris Givens, Justin Blackmon, Justin Hunter, Jordan Cameron, Tyler Eifert, Travis Kelce, and Julius Thomas. You're looking at a much more polarized range of potential outcomes with that group of players. It's likely that a few of them will become perennial stars. Players like Kaepernick, Roddy, and Witten that you can plug into a winning lineup for years. However, it's also likely that many of them will go the way of Julius Jones, Koren Robinson, and Vince Young. If you can somehow parse the uncertainty to separate the winners from the losers before it's common knowledge, you can score massive value gains.

Quinton Patton is actually a good example. Maybe he's the next Steve Johnson. Maybe he's the next Steve Urkel. Either way, he warrants a lot of scrutiny because the uncertainty around his future creates favorable buying or selling opportunities depending on what becomes of him. If you buy now and he becomes a good player, you've gained value. If you sell now and he becomes a total flop, you've gained value. I don't think it's easy to make those calls, but I think that should be one of the main goals for a dynasty owner. Not splitting hairs between AJ Green and Julio Jones, but rather trying to find players who are about to take the leap or fall off a cliff. Uncertainty is where the biggest profits are.

 

[Adam Harstad]

Decisions at the top have huge impacts, though. Ask the guy who drafted Matt Stafford in the first two rounds of a startup last year whether he wishes he'd spent a bit more time studying the top QBs. Ask the guy who got Peterson in the 2nd whether he thought he might have been better off focusing on guys in the 15th round, instead. And "at the top" doesn't just mean "WR#2 vs. WR#3", it also means looking seriously at the break between the 1st tier guys and the 2nd tier guys. Which side do you put Percy Harvin on? Randall Cobb? Hakeem Nicks? Victor Cruz? Larry Fitzgerald? How high are you willing to go on old man Peterson? Old man Brees? How worried are you about The Gronk's injuries? These decisions are potentially far more impactful than a decision on whether you should draft Kenny Stills or Nick Toon in the 16th, or a decision on whether it's worth it to reach on Quinton Patton in the 14th.

It's never easy, but I think picks actually become harder the further you get into the draft. And that makes intuitive sense. At the top of the draft, you have the entire player pool to choose from. That means you can exclude every player who has even a shred of risk. When you are picking from a list of Doug Martin, Trent Richardson, LeSean McCoy, Jimmy Graham, AJ Green, Julio Jones, Dez Bryant, Demaryius Thomas, Andrew Luck, and Aaron Rodgers, you should be able to get a good player. If you're gun-shy about the rookies, you can restrict your options to the even smaller population of Graham, Green, Julio, McCoy, and Rodgers. All top level players who have done it for multiple seasons.

The risk with a player like this is minimal. Yea, you might take Julio over Calvin and you might surrender some VBD there when all is said and done, but you've still got Julio and if he performs at the level he has the past couple years with a modest improvement for experience and opportunity then you've likely got a top 5-10 dynasty asset that's helping you win games while also maintaining peak trade value for a period of several years. That's a relatively pleasant doomsday scenario. You might not always make the perfect pick in the first round of a startup draft. However, you should be able to make a good pick. There's very little reason (apart from random bad injury luck) why you shouldn't be able to find a solid foundational player from the available options anywhere in the top 10-12 of a startup draft.

If you calculated the average career VBD for a first round startup pick, it would be pretty high. I just went back and looked at the first round of a 14 team draft that I did in 2008. It's five years later, and I'd say 9-10 of the 14 first round picks still have reasonable FF value (Peterson, Lynch, Gore, Reggie, McFadden, Andre, Fitzgerald, Wayne, MJD, SJax). On the flipside, the teen rounds are a barren wasteland. Every now and then a good pick pops up from the sea of crap (Jamaal Charles in the 10th, Aaron Rodgers in the 11th, Jordy Nelson in the 12th, Cedric Benson in the 15th, Pierre Garcon in the 18th). But we're talking about maybe one guy per round, if that. Mostly, your expectation with a pick in the teen rounds is to get a nice steaming turd. What this means is that in those rare cases where you actually do find someone of value, you've secured a huge spike over expectations.

Finding a good player in the top 15 picks is not special. Most of your leaguemates will manage that feat. Doing the same won't distinguish you from the average team. It's the expectation. However, most of the teams in your league are not going to fare very well in the mid-late rounds. That means that if you can get those picks right, you will have secured a big advantage over your peers. That's why I spend more energy looking at rookies and bench scrubs versus trying to decide whether Julio, Green, or Demaryius is the most valuable. I think that's like debating Fitz, Andre, or VJax. Useful to a point, but in the end the advantage to be gained by getting that problem absolutely right is a lot thinner than the advantage of getting Marques Colston or Victor Cruz off the waiver wire, or making the right pick when you're choosing between Anquan Boldin and Taylor Jacobs in the 14th round of your startup.

Again, you keep focusing on the top 15. I already mentioned that I was talking about second-tier guys like Cobb and Nicks and Fitzgerald, guys who are drafted in the 2nd-4th round in dynasty leagues. That area is much more of a minefield, and I'm much more convinced that it's possible to predict which guys are more likely to blow up in your face. It makes sense to focus most of the effort there, then, since the rewards are higher and the downside of failure is much greater.

You admit that 95+% of late-round picks are going to turn into heaping turdburgers. You think that spending the bulk of your time in that area increases your chances of getting a gem. I'm not convinced- I think there's a lot more randomness to who succeeds and who fails there, and I'm not entirely convinced that predicting which late-round player will explode is a repeatable skill. Even if it is, if most 18th rounders have a 2% chance of hitting and you're so good at scouting that you can double that, you're still left with just a 4% chance of hitting, meaning you increased your odds of getting a quality player by just 2%. Meanwhile, if fifth rounders have a 35% chance of hitting and you can double THAT, you're increasing your odds of landing a quality fantasy player by a whopping 35%.

I stand by my original position. In terms of return on investment, the best place to spend the majority of your effort is on the guys in the 2nd-8th round range of startups, or the starter or top backup quality players in established leagues.

 

[Adam Harstad]

It's not about statistical relevance or any semblance of being 'right'. It's about giving subscribers a tool to use in their own analysis. I really don't think taking the time to rank a guy that has been picked up in every dynasty league over the last few weeks is difficult. Look at the last 20 guys on your list and slot him in somewhere. That's takes all of 10 seconds. No further pedantry required.

It's not like I intentionally tried to leave Marlon Brown off of my rankings. The behind-the-scenes ranking interface is a bit clunky, and sometimes things happen. That's why I appreciate people asking, like you did, because sometimes something slips through the cracks and that gives me a chance to correct it. Other times, such as with Stills (who wasn't showing up not because I'd forgotten about him, but because he'd been slotted in past the 90-WR cutoff), it gives me a chance to explain. And it gives me a chance to get outside of my personal head space and reflect on the rankings a bit. I've since dropped Toon and Morgan some and moved Stills up to account for the situation as it currently stands.

Edit: I thought I'd since updated, but it turns out my update never went through yesterday (probably owing to operator error). I went back and re-stacked again, and everything should be right now.

 

[Adam Harstad]

As a rookie prospect many people seemed to be valuing Eifert as if he will have a career like Jason Witten, or one of those few players who can stay on top in TE rankings year after year. While I think that is possible, it is still a very tall order. It is more likely that he ends up being in this ever growing large group of TE who will have good seasons, but not difference making seasons, such as Graham has. If Eifert does have a top 5 season at some point (such as player like Miller have done once, usually with high TD numbers being the main impetus for this) will he be able to repeat that? I have my doubts about any rookie TE achieving this status. I recall KW2 and Vernon Davis having even more hype than Eifert as rookie prospects, and they certainly had the potential to become one of these elite players but fell short. It just is not easy to become a player so rare for as long as Tony Gonzalez has.

Not sure Winslow and Davis are the comparisons you want to be making.

Kellen Winslow suffered serious injuries early in his career and was never again 100%, but he's still cobbled together a 10-year career, most of it spent as a PPR beast. KWII averages 4.7 receptions and 52.4 yards per game for his career. Jason Witten averages 5.1 and 56.4. Winslow's Cleveland numbers actually are nearly identical to Witten's career numbers, at 5.0 receptions and 55.9 yards. Since Winslow entered the league, only Gates, Gonzo, Gronk, Graham, and Hernandez average more points per game in non-PPR or PPR. I'd be thrilled if Eifert gave me a career like Kellen Winslow's. That career is well worth a top-5 dynasty ranking right now. And that's with a never-fully-healthy Winslow, to boot.

Vernon Davis is right behind Winslow in PPG average, and still carries huge trade value despite disappointing for years. If you told me Tyler Eifert was going to post two dominant seasons and otherwise underachieve for the better part of a decade, but that at the end of it he'd still be considered a consensus top-5 dynasty TE, I'd sign up for that in a heartbeat.

Tyler Eifert doesn't have to be the next Tony Gonzalez to justify a top-3 or top-5 ranking. Simply being the next Kellen Winslow or Vernon Davis will suffice just fine. As long as he's not the next Brandon Pettigrew or Dustin Keller, I am content.

 

[EBF]

Yeah. we'll agree to disagree on this. I put close to zero weight on my own eyeball test, so I'm not even going to comment on yours. I see the differences in the combine numbers (.09 in the 40, 2" in the vertical, etc) as fairly insignificant. Cameron might be a slightly more highly ranked athlete within the same tier, IMO, but those aren't glaring differences that indicate that the two guys are in entirely different classes as athletes. They were both 4th round picks, so the NFL saw them as pretty similar also.

I think the difference in athletic ability is a little more significant than what you're suggesting. Cameron is more than a full tenth of a second faster in the 40. Perhaps more significantly, he's a full tenth of a second faster over the first 10 yards. His shuttle time is a lot faster. His three cone time is slightly faster. His vertical is 2" better. Not a huge difference, but still a difference. Thomas has a very pedestrian 9'3" broad jump. Cameron has a much more impressive 9'11".

I spend a lot of time staring at numbers like these, so I might be a little bit more qualified to assess what they mean than people who aren't as interested in this stuff. Cameron's overall athletic ability is exceptional. The combination of a 4.54 40, 37.5" vertical, 9'11" broad jump, and 6.82 three cone time is Jimmy Graham-like. Cameron is a hair shorter and just a touch less explosive, but he is very close. He's so athletic that his numbers would be fairly acceptable even if he were a WR. Not the case with Thomas. He's no slouch, but he's also not a "freak" in any sense of the word. Most of his numbers are merely good.

That's a pretty big objective factor in Cameron's favor if you don't buy the subjective eyeball test stuff.

 

[thriftyrocker]

Because borderline QB1 QBs are always on someone's bench, but WR/RB2guys are ALWAYS in someone's lineup.

Long term QBBC is a legitimate strategy if you want to put in the work. To continue the discussion though, in some sense all positions are the same. WR2/RB2 guys are always in someone's lineup. That makes them hard to acquire in redraft, but not necessarily in dynasty. Teams are willing to gamble short term for long term. Even when in contention. There are RB2 quality players like DeAngelo, Gore, Ivory, and Mendenhall (or whichever of those are still relevant in 3 weeks) that you can get cheaply; you can fill a hole at RB or WR just as easy as QB if you're willing to hold the bag when the player's career is done, or assume the risk for players viewed as risky. Regardless of position you can find marginal fantasy starters. QB is not special in that way.

If you want to find elite fantasy starters, which position is easiest? RB and WR have a steep age discount that makes it easier to acquire elite players if you're willing to take on the risk. You can point to Brady and Peyton as similar targets at QB. The evidence is probably shaky at best, but I think it's harder to find elite production at QB.

In some sense I think we're spoiled by Luck, RG3, Kaepernick, Wilson, Newton by thinking Manuel, Tannehill, Smith, Bridgewater, Boyd, Manziel are just as likely to become great NFL QB. My feel is at most 1 of those does.

 

[EBF]

I stand by my original position. In terms of return on investment, the best place to spend the majority of your effort is on the guys in the 2nd-8th round range of startups, or the starter or top backup quality players in established leagues.

The reality is that it's all important. My goal in a startup is to make a good pick in every round. I just happen to think that it's easier in the first 2-3 rounds. In that range you should be able to find 2-3 strong candidates per round who are highly unlikely to implode barring some unforeseeable catastrophe. If you restrict your selections to only those players, you should come away with a few decent pieces to build around. Most of the other owners in your league are going to manage that feat as well though, so hitting on your first 3-4 picks probably won't put you in a strong position to become a title contender. It will keep you out of the cellar, but it won't make you a powerhouse. In order to take that next step, I think you need more value. Hitting big on a couple picks in rounds 5+ is a good way to get that advantage.

The known stars will almost all be gone by then, which means your best chances of finding a top player in that range rests with rookies and prospects whose true value remains something of a mystery. Players like Christine Michael, Bernard Pierce, Bryce Brown, Cordarrelle Patterson, Justin Hunter, and Michael Floyd who have a realistic chance to take the jump at some point in the next 2-3 years from being mere unknowns to being nucleus players that everyone covets. Those are really the key players in dynasty FF right now. Not the known quantities like AJ Green and Jimmy Graham. You get one or two of the unknowns right and it's like adding an extra top 20 pick to your team's value. That's the kind of thing that can push a team over the top, which is why I think it's important to try to develop a strong take on those players.

When I look at the really stacked teams in my league, many of them got that way by making the right preemptive moves with players like Jamaal Charles, CJ Spiller, Doug Martin, Demaryius Thomas, Percy Harvin, and Randall Cobb who were once just a part of a big "maybe" group like the one I posted above. I wouldn't say it's easy to look at a group of prospects and consistently make good decisions, but it's something to strive for. Even a thin advantage over your peers will stack up over time. If you pair that with reasonable competence in the early rounds, you're going to have a playoff team.

 

[Concept Coop]

If you want to find elite fantasy starters, which position is easiest? RB and WR have a steep age discount that makes it easier to acquire elite players if you're willing to take on the risk. You can point to Brady and Peyton as similar targets at QB. The evidence is probably shaky at best, but I think it's harder to find elite production at QB.

In some sense I think we're spoiled by Luck, RG3, Kaepernick, Wilson, Newton by thinking Manuel, Tannehill, Smith, Bridgewater, Boyd, Manziel are just as likely to become great NFL QB. My feel is at most 1 of those does.

I'd suggest it much easier to get Peyton/Brady than Andre Johnson/Darren Sproles/Vincent Jackson. The same teams selling off AJ and Sproles at the deadline will be looking to move Brady/Peyton, too. The difference being that every playoff team will be in the market for the RB/WR, while only a couple (at best) will be looking for Brady/Peyton.

I agree that we're spoiled - but that's the market right now. We don't need more than one of those guys to be top 5-7, to maintain a deep production pool.

 

[thriftyrocker]

Looking at my 2011 startup, it's kind of striking how few players played to their draft position. If I break it down by good picks (at or exceeded), ok picks (below but still good), and bad picks (well below) it's something like

Good picks, Ok picks, Bad picks

Rd 1: 10, 1, 3

Rd 2: 4, 1, 9 (Phil Rivers, Jahvid Best, Mark Ingram, LeGarrette Blount)

Rd 3: 3, 2, 9

Rd 4: 2, 1, 11 (Daniel Thomas)

Rd 5: 4, 2, 8 (Mario Manningham)

Rd 6: 6, 0, 8 (Mike Thomas)

Rd 7: 2, 2, 10

Rd 8: 2, 4, 8

Rd 9: 4, 2, 8

Once you got to double digit rounds, the great picks were further and farther between, 1 in Rd 10, 1, in Rd 12, 2 in Rd 13, 2 in Rd 16, 1 each in Rd 17, 18, 20. Granted if you get one it's a big plus, but if there's only 10 out of 210 that are good, it's hard to stake your claim on those picks.

If I do the same thing with a 2012 startup the hit rate is a lot better early on but then falls off a cliff (maybe it's too early to tell, esp with double digit rounds).

Rd 1: 10, 1, 1

Rd 2: 6, 4, 2

Rd 3: 8, 1, 3

Rd 4: 6, 4, 2

Rd 5: 2, 6, 4

Rd 6: 3, 1, 8

Rd 7: 1, 0, 11

Rd 8: 1, 0, 11

Rd 9: 1, 1, 10

Rd 10: 2, 2, 8

 

[Adam Harstad]

I stand by my original position. In terms of return on investment, the best place to spend the majority of your effort is on the guys in the 2nd-8th round range of startups, or the starter or top backup quality players in established leagues.

The reality is that it's all important. My goal in a startup is to make a good pick in every round. I just happen to think that it's easier in the first 2-3 rounds. In that range you should be able to find 2-3 strong candidates per round who are highly unlikely to implode barring some unforeseeable catastrophe. If you restrict your selections to only those players, you should come away with a few decent pieces to build around. Most of the other owners in your league are going to manage that feat as well though, so hitting on your first 3-4 picks probably won't put you in a strong position to become a title contender. It will keep you out of the cellar, but it won't make you a powerhouse. In order to take that next step, I think you need more value. Hitting big on a couple picks in rounds 5+ is a good way to get that advantage.

The known stars will almost all be gone by then, which means your best chances of finding a top player in that range rests with rookies and prospects whose true value remains something of a mystery. Players like Christine Michael, Bernard Pierce, Bryce Brown, Cordarrelle Patterson, Justin Hunter, and Michael Floyd who have a realistic chance to take the jump at some point in the next 2-3 years from being mere unknowns to being nucleus players that everyone covets. Those are really the key players in dynasty FF right now. Not the known quantities like AJ Green and Jimmy Graham. You get one or two of the unknowns right and it's like adding an extra top 20 pick to your team's value. That's the kind of thing that can push a team over the top, which is why I think it's important to try to develop a strong take on those players.

When I look at the really stacked teams in my league, many of them got that way by making the right preemptive moves with players like Jamaal Charles, CJ Spiller, Doug Martin, Demaryius Thomas, Percy Harvin, and Randall Cobb who were once just a part of a big "maybe" group like the one I posted above. I wouldn't say it's easy to look at a group of prospects and consistently make good decisions, but it's something to strive for. Even a thin advantage over your peers will stack up over time. If you pair that with reasonable competence in the early rounds, you're going to have a playoff team.

I disagree that you need to hit on late-round steals to be a powerhouse. Traditionally speaking, in an average season in standard scoring systems, there's about 4,000 points of VBD floating around out there. An "average team", therefore, should be good for around 333 VBD, while contenders have about 400 VBD and the truly dominant franchises might hit 500 points of VBD. It doesn't matter whether you get that VBD from your first four picks or your last four picks, all that matters is that you get it. 400 VBD = contender, 500 VBD = prohibitive favorite. Personally, I think it's a heck of a lot easier to get close to that goal by nailing the early part of the draft than by nailing the late part of the draft. If you spend an 18th round pick on the next Lance Moore, that was a phenomenal pick, but it's only getting you 10-20 VBD a year. Meanwhile, the difference between getting Calvin Johnson and Vincent Jackson at the top of your draft is 30 VBD a year even in non-PPR. Vincent Jackson still is a great consolation prize, but nailing that pick is still more valuable than nailing a late-rounder. If you opened your 2007 startup draft with Jones-Drew, Peterson, and Calvin, those three picks alone probably made you a contender for half a decade.

Like I said, in a 12-team non-PPR league, the target is 400 VBD. Get there and you're a contender. It doesn't matter how you get there, just get there.

 

[thriftyrocker]

The same teams selling off AJ and Sproles at the deadline will be looking to move Brady/Peyton, too. The difference being that every playoff team will be in the market for the RB/WR, while only a couple (at best) will be looking for Brady/Peyton.

What is their incentive to sell if the offer price is low. These players are not retiring and will offer similar stretch value the year they do retire. You cannot assure yourself of the same future sell price on any RB or WR, even someone like AJ. I saw more teams bailing on Steven Jackson (or Sproles or AJ) for yuck value than Brady. I think we have ingrained in our minds to sell RB WR before it's too late and that doesn't apply to QB.

 

[Dinsy Ejotuz]

The same teams selling off AJ and Sproles at the deadline will be looking to move Brady/Peyton, too. The difference being that every playoff team will be in the market for the RB/WR, while only a couple (at best) will be looking for Brady/Peyton.

What is their incentive to sell if the offer price is low. These players are not retiring and will offer similar stretch value the year they do retire. You cannot assure yourself of the same future sell price on any RB or WR, even someone like AJ. I saw more teams bailing on Steven Jackson (or Sproles or AJ) for yuck value than Brady. I think we have ingrained in our minds to sell RB WR before it's too late and that doesn't apply to QB.

On the other hand... if you've got two good QBs and a 3rd that's a QB2 you're hurting your team's overall production or future by not moving one of them. Especially in the new NFL where more and more QBs are playing 16 games.

 

[Concept Coop]

The same teams selling off AJ and Sproles at the deadline will be looking to move Brady/Peyton, too. The difference being that every playoff team will be in the market for the RB/WR, while only a couple (at best) will be looking for Brady/Peyton.

What is their incentive to sell if the offer price is low. These players are not retiring and will offer similar stretch value the year they do retire. You cannot assure yourself of the same future sell price on any RB or WR, even someone like AJ. I saw more teams bailing on Steven Jackson (or Sproles or AJ) for yuck value than Brady. I think we have ingrained in our minds to sell RB WR before it's too late and that doesn't apply to QB.

I can't say you're wrong - as we play in different leagues - but this doesn't seem right to me, based on mine. Owners do try to get younger, including at the QB spot, and are willing to sell low on Brady/Peyton. Farve/Warner a few years ago.

If the Peyton/Brady ower is out of the hunt, I feel pretty good about being able to get them for Dalton(Tanny) + 1st. The market will dictate more for AJ; something like Brown (Shorts, Decker, etc)+1st, at least. And these are bad deals - but they're deals teams make every year in my leagues, and they apply to all positions.

Now, Gore/Mendy/S.Smith are another story - but I think AJ/Jackson/Sproles are a better comparison to Brady/Manning.

 

[Concept Coop]

In other words:

I own Brady and Steven Jackson in one league. If I put them both on the block and let the league know I am looking for picks/prospects, I'll get a lot more bites for Jackson. In this first year dynasty - not one team wouldn't be improved by adding Jackson. I can't say the same about Brady. S&D will dictate a higher return for the RB, despite the fact that Brady's career is likely to last 2-3 years longer.

 

[EBF]

I disagree that you need to hit on late-round steals to be a powerhouse. Traditionally speaking, in an average season in standard scoring systems, there's about 4,000 points of VBD floating around out there. An "average team", therefore, should be good for around 333 VBD, while contenders have about 400 VBD and the truly dominant franchises might hit 500 points of VBD. It doesn't matter whether you get that VBD from your first four picks or your last four picks, all that matters is that you get it. 400 VBD = contender, 500 VBD = prohibitive favorite. Personally, I think it's a heck of a lot easier to get close to that goal by nailing the early part of the draft than by nailing the late part of the draft. If you spend an 18th round pick on the next Lance Moore, that was a phenomenal pick, but it's only getting you 10-20 VBD a year. Meanwhile, the difference between getting Calvin Johnson and Vincent Jackson at the top of your draft is 30 VBD a year even in non-PPR.

Did anyone ever take Vincent Jackson over Calvin though? Most of the top players are recognized right away and drafted accordingly. Hence why Rodgers, Peterson, Calvin, and Graham have hovered near the very top of their position in startup drafts since their first breakout season. Those picks largely make themselves. You still might have to sit down and crunch the ppg numbers, the remaining peak years, and the positional scarcity in your league in order to calculate who's the best long term choice, but that's not something that should require a huge amount of time or energy. You pretty much know what you're getting with someone like McCoy, Julio, or Graham. Maybe their numbers will fluctuate a little bit over the years, but you don't have to try to figure out who the players is because he has already revealed that.

With someone like Bernard Pierce or Cordarrelle Patterson, the problem has an added layer of complexity. Not only do you have to weigh the positional value, the ppg potential, and the remaining peak years, but you also have to try to decide who the player is. With LeSean McCoy, you know that he's going to produce RB1 numbers as long as he's healthy and in his prime. With Bernard Pierce, there is a wider range of potential outcomes. Maybe he's a future starter who will become a top 10 back in his own right eventually. Maybe he's just a career backup who will never have more functional value than he does now. There is uncertainty there. That's what makes these players difficult to peg, but that's also what creates the potential for huge profits. You are not going to get a Graham, Julio, or Rodgers at a massive discount at this point from a competent owner. However, if you determine that Bernard Pierce is a likely top 10 RB down the road and you buy him at his current RB20-RB30 price, you have just added a lot of value to your roster.

I think it's harder to make those massive gains with known quantities. The community is going to do a pretty good job of assessing the value of those players. So while you might look back at a 2006 startup and see that Fitzgerald was a relative steal in the #10 spot, the key word there is relative. Steal or not, he still cost a top 10 pick. On the other hand, you can go back and see Rodgers and Jones-Drew still on the board in that same draft after 100 picks have come and gone. A good first round pick is important and it can give you a modest edge over the other teams, but it doesn't compare to finding a first round value outside the top 50.