To address Multiple Score's original post here. I'll just say, fair enough. I understand your point and by all means you are fully entitled to express it. No worries on my side.The opening of the article pretty much covers my point of view on how I approach this article from week to week:
This weekly article looks at a variety of players at each position that have an opportunity to outperform their normal production, or at least expectations. Each position is analyzed by looking at the schedule, matchups, injuries and other factors such as coaching decisions or game conditions.Be forewarned. Not all of the players covered in this article are traditional sleepers. Some may be starters in your league who have a tricky matchup, while others might be deep sleepers in smaller leagues. Realizing that leagues and roster sizes vary wildly; your mileage may vary as well. Simply put, we do our best to identify a broad range of players that we hope will benefit all owners and league variances.Ultimately, we hope the analysis provided here will help you make those difficult lineup decisions just a little bit easier. Good luck and please know that your comments are always welcome.Email me at henry@footballguys.com or follow me on Twitter @bobhenry.
To further address your point, player evaluations and opinions vary greatly in the opening weeks of each season. Some players drafted in the first round aren't even ranked among the top 30 or 40 at their position. If I wrote about Frank Gore, for example, I'm sure that would not qualify as a sleeper, yet he hasn't done diddly squat this year. He's ranked 30th YTD. Blount is 23rd. Similarly, Mike Williams is WR59. Austin Collie WR75. A month ago, these two were widely viewed as strong WR2 options, but now owners may have dumped Collie, benched him until he has proven reliable or dealt him before his value has sunk to where it is. Every week we have more games, more data to work with and a bigger sample size. In the early weeks of the season, there is a huge variance in the opinion of some players, particularly those who were drafted high, but have under performed, as well as those who were not drafted high, but have exceeded expectations. Realize this, I try to write about a healthy number of players at each position each week. Filtering out both groups identified in the previous sentence would give us a small set of players to discuss, and quite frankly, it would narrow the focus of the article and help a lot fewer of our subscribers. Not everyone's league is 12 teams, standard scoring, 2 RB requirements. There are 10 team leagues that may only have to start 1 RB/2WR/1TE with 2 flex. The point is that Blount was not drafted so high as to make him untouchable or to revere him as an unquestionable starter every single week. Add in the variance in league sizes, lineup requirements and scoring and if I owned Blount I can guarantee that I'd much rather pick my spots with him than trot him out there blindly each week just because I took him in the 2nd or 3rd round. As I state in the opening of the article, your mileage may (and likely will) vary. I love to hear your opinions and welcome your emails. Perhaps the best way to address the Multiple Score's point is for me to consider changing the title of the article from Sleepers to something else. Maybe we can even have some fun with that. Heck, lets have some fun with it. If you have a good suggestion (most of your are more creative than I am), then shoot me an email, start a thread or pile on as you wish. Honestly, it's all good from my perspective. I'm glad you read the article. I hope it provides you with some value and perhaps gives you some data points you didn't otherwise have at your disposal. Carry on.