When you hear "Player X was the stand out in practice/camp" Ho (1 Viewer)

[msudaisy26]

We have heard this about a lot of players this off season, Josh Gordon, David Wilson, Leveon Bell, and Rueben Randle Tyler Eifert quite a bit, we have even heard it about guys like Ryan Broyles, Eddie Lacy to a lesser extent.

So, I am just curious does it translate over to the real games?

 

[Adam Harstad]

People who love a player are going to read positive reports as proof that they were right about him. People who hate a player will read positive reports and shrug them off as random TC chatter. In reality, it depends on the reports. If you hear "undrafted rookie X looks fantastic", it means he's more likely to make the roster, but he remains extremely unlikely to be fantasy relevant. When "highly drafted rookie Y looks fantastic", it doesn't mean much at all- most highly drafted rookies receiving glowing praise in their first camp, and the bigger concern should be if you're hearing negative reports about them (although even that isn't a huge deal in dynasty leagues, because some players just take a couple of years to put it all together).

In my mind, the biggest value of early camp reports is in getting a read on players returning from injuries. When Peyton Manning and Adrian Peterson were blowing people away in camp last year, that was signal. When Ronnie Hillman and Greg Little (i.e. young, highly-drafted players) were looking fantastic in camp last year, that was just noise. For the young guys, the best indicator is going to be the depth chart (if the player is moving up, then start listening to the camp chatter, but if he's holding steady, feel free to ignore it) and their preseason performance (Russell Wilson and Robert Griffin lighting up camps = meh. Russell Wilson and Robert Griffin lighting up preseason = veeeeeeery interesting).

The big exception this year is Tyler Eifert. I loved him coming in, so obviously all of the glowing camp reports is 100% proof that I was right about him all along.