I stumbled into a standard league, and I am trying to figure out how much I need to adjust my rankings.
When I feed the parameters in the draft software out there, they bump RBs up pretty massively. But is that correct?
I'm picking 9th (out of 10), and I'm probably going to have my pick of any of those bigtime WRs not named Chase or Lamb...and probably Jefferson.
Are RBs actually that much more impactful in this format? Do I try to wrangle a Jeanty - Chase Brown type start, or do I try to pair a guy like Nabers with Brown or Taylor in the 2nd? I don't want to "reach" for a RB and gift WR studs to teams who got Bijan, Gibbs, and Barkley in the 1st.
My longtime home league is still standard. We all just kind of like the idea of keeping things how they were when we started 23 years ago. We play 2 RBs, 3 WRs and no flex. The WR position is helped a bit by having the extra roster spot which creates more scarcity and need for depth but the way the league is now, that 3rd WR spot is almost like another TE spot. There's 2 dozen WR3/4 types who average 7 or 8 PPG. Usually it's a bit of luck just catching them on the game they score a TD.
The key to the league is absolutely the RBs and they should be bumped way up in value. Last year Chase won the triple crown and had an amazing year, he was outscored by 5 RBs in a per game basis. In this format, James Conner was RB14 in ppg. Chase was the only WR to play at least 4 games to average more points per game. Looking at the reverse, Amon Ra had a good year, WR9 in PPG. He was outscored by 20 RBs in PPG.
Here is what's interesting though, most rankings provided, podcast discussions, ESPN websites and shows are addressing PPR. So despite RBs being more valuable, in my league, people draft following the same general rankings one would use for PPR. Ja'marr Chase was the 1.01. Lamb went 4th. Jefferson, Nico, Nabers, London, Puka etc. all went in the top 2 rounds as you would expect. So it makes it pretty easy to walk out with 2 really good RBs by the end of round 3.
With the loss of PPR points, it also makes QBs extra valuable (especially if you have 6 point passing) so whatever strategy you use at QB, just make sure you are working hard to be strong there because QBs are going to outscore the other positions by more than they do in a typical league PPR league. Though all the QBs get the scoring bump so I wouldn't reach at the position either.
My strategy is typically get the best 2 RBs I possibly can out of the first 3 rounds. Round 1 that almost always means a RB. Round 2 sometimes a RB, sometimes a WR depends on who makes it to me. I really like to look at round 4 this year to see if a Hurts or Burrow slipped. Then I just take a shotgun approach to my WRs, just draft a bunch of them and hope I hit on 1 or 2 who become every week starters. TE is kind of useless. It scores worse than WR and you only need 1. Plus after tier 1, it's a very unpredictable position.
