Rookiegeddon 2025 (14 Viewers)

[electric Ape]

In managed league fantasy football rookies are an odd commodity.

From a pure numbers standpoint a rookie’s output projections tend to peak late in the season when the games matter more so there is a technical case that the rookie production arc is undervalued.

From an emotional standpoint it’s more fun to draft the shiny new toy and no rookie has ever burned an owner with past injuries or underperformance so there is an emotional crutch that overvalues rookies.

In the end since these forces are in direct opposition and since most markets tend to become efficient rookies are often drafted about right where they should be

 

[pinkstapler]

For regular home leagues, paying a huge premium for guys like Jeanty, Hampton, Henderson, Harvey, Kaleb has been rough. They were being drafted in positions ahead of really good (sometimes elite) fantasy players that are established. i feel like a lottery ticket rookie can help you win a league if you draft him in the mid/latter rounds to where the solid return on investment occurs when you already have an established core of solid fantasy players.

This is why I will never have the Jeanty's or MHJ's. They just go way too high and are being drafted at best case scenario value where they really have no upside. Not a good way to win a typical league. Just way too much downside in a round that hurts bad when they don't live up to the cost.

This is just not true, at least when it comes to guys like Jeanty.

This was covered in the Jeanty thread, but if you consider RBs drafted in the top 10 of the NFL draft in the modern NFL, there is statistically no safer pick in all of fantasy football.

You can pick any subset you like virtually. Last year's vet RB1. Last year's vet top 3 RBs. This year's vet top 3 RBs. Whatever it is. The rookies drafted in the top 10 of the NFL draft have a lower bust rate and a higher hit rate. They more often finish in the top 10, more often finish in the top 5, and less often finish outside the top 12 or top 20 or top 30.

Jeanty may buck the trend, but that doesn't really change the numbers. Going back almost 20 years, 12 of the last 13 RBs picked in the top 10 of the NFL draft finished as a top 10 fantasy RB as a rookie.

The lone exception was CJ Spiller, 15 years ago.

My point is that you are drafting him at a spot that he has to be a top 10 RB. You are drafting at ceiling on a player that hasn't had a down in the NFL. There is no room for missing that. I am also passing on WR's in the draft at the point that Jeanty was taken that I would rather have than a rookie RB.

I understand what you are saying but that doesn't take away my point that you are drafting a rookie at his ceiling value and he has to hit that ceiling or it damages your team.

Based on your stats this only applies to NFL top 10 drafted RB's. There aren't many of those so maybe in those few instances I could be talked into looking at them a little more closely but most rookies don't fall into that category yet still are drafted at their ceiling. From an overall drafting a rookie strategy they are generally not good value (with a couple exceptions per your stats).

I don't care to look up all the exact numbers so feel free to dismiss; but I think if you look into this yourself, or even look up fantasy football analysts who've trended this stuff (I know JJ Zacharison has a couple times over the past few years) rookies are almost always outperforming ADP expectations in redraft. Obviously there will be a few outliers, but they always tended to be the most expensive rookies FWIR a la MHJ his rookie year. So if your point about rookies never providing a value was only about the very rare instances where they are taken in the top 25 picks or so in redraft ADP, sure. But averaged out across all rookies regardless of ADP and position, JJZ and others have shown they have an incredibly high hit rate of giving you more than you paid for them.

My point was for the first few rookies taken. The MHJ's of the world. (if you look at my first post referenced him and Jeanty as the two most recent examples of ADP getting out of hand). Basically if you take the first couple rookies whose ADP's went too high (call it the Icarus Theory) they have to hit their ceiling to make the pick worth it.

I get that. And semi agree; at least from the perspective I wasn't in on either MHJ or Jeanty at ADP. But I also just don't love the reasoning of "this rookie 2nd round pick needs to perform at their ceiling in order to make the pick worth it" because I can remove the word rookie from the sentence and it still holds true. So IOW, it doesn't really have the meaning you are trying to attribute to it. Pretty much anyone picked in the first two rounds of a redraft league is priced at their ceiling. This is why there's a debate every year about avoiding volatile and risky players; rookies would certainly be in that group, but so are constantly injured players like a CMC, so are poor value propositions (like a non-rushing QB, or a TE past the top 3 who are realistically the WR2 on their teams, etc.).

But with rookies you have never seen them do it. Nobody really knows anything about rookies. With guys that have done it before there is history which shows they can do it.

The JJ piece you referenced about rookies being good value is because for the later round guys there is a ceiling that is unkown so the value is built it taking them later. That unkowns upside makes it worthwhile to take them later because the risk of not hitting that isn't that big of deal.

However with early round rookies that risk (which is generally more likely with a rookie to happen) doesn't make the high pick worth it IMO. I mean all of this is just guesses and probabilities. You can cherry pick any player to prove your point. When speaking in generalities if a rookie is being picked at their ceiling then it isn't worth the risk to me to take the rookie when there are other more proven players also available with less risk of just missing because they have done it before. That is essentially my entire argument.

I'll exit the convo on this one bc I said from jump I don't care to put a bunch of time and effort into looking up actual data in order to prove you/others making this claim wrong; but... you are also speaking in complete generalities and suppositions with nothing to back it up except two cherry picked examples in MHJ and Jeanty, one of whom is only two games into their rookie season so we don't really know if he's going to pay off his ADP or not lol. And while someone bystander could step in and say well we are both wrong then; Hitchens Razor would say whoever is making the primary assertion would need to present it with evidence in order to be worthy of eliciting an evidenced response.

Ultimately there are very few early round rookies to look at as a sample group to even prove out what you are trying to say, the research people have put forth that does look into rookies has concluded they outperform ADP, and when those early round rookies are RBs who were drafted in the top of the first round of the real draft they also outperform ADP. So really it feels to me some people are just shouting into the wind here. Mostly because two rookie RBs taken highly this year in Hampton and Jeanty aren't lighting it up through two weeks. The rest were fourth round or later based on consensus ADP (Hendo/Harvey/KJ who I think was like 6-7th round ADP). I don't think there are very many "really good to elite vets" they were being taken ahead of at that point to get that up in arms about tbh.

 

[FarFromHome]

It's a two week snap shot that can change very very quickly, but man were we wrong so far on this rookie rb class. A month ago I felt this was gonna be an epic class. So far, not so much.

 

[BlackCrowes]

patience