Welcome to Our Forums. Once you've registered and logged in, you're primed to talk football, among other topics, with the sharpest and most experienced fantasy players on the internet.
Agree to disagree I guess. I think he looks like he improved more from year 1 to year 2 than any RB I can ever remember.
Yeah, he looked really good last night. Very different than last year. Night and day. Impressive.
I'm likely the first person to ever select LeSean McCoy 1st overall in a startup. You claimed that Dion Lewis could do the same in his shoes, at the time (Feb, 2011).EBF said:
Stacy for me. If you like what you saw from Pierce--I'd ask for another piece with him, for Stacy.
If it doesn't qualify as going out on a limb, then how come I'm the only person way out here? I've got Austin a dozen spots higher than consensus in my WR rankings, and two full arounds ahead of his ADP. I'm literally the only person I've been able to find on the entire internet with Harvin in his top 6 WRs or top 10 players overall. This certainly FEELS like a limb, but maybe I'm mistaken. I thought "going out on a limb" was "ranking a player dramatically outside of where everyone else has him". But obviously you have a different definition of "going out on a limb", where ranking Christine Michael exactly where everyone else has him qualifies but ranking Harvin or Austin miles ahead of consensus doesn't, because that would be devastating to the narrative.
I disagree. He looks faster and more explosive (shedding that weight helped, because he never played like a big back), but otherwise he's doing exactly the same things this year that he was doing last year. I was praising his vision and anticipation up and down last year, but nobody would hear anything of it because "YPC". I had him as my #3 dynasty RB before the season started, partly because he's so young and partly because Le'Veon Bell really did look good last year. Not quite this good, but I would say this qualifies as normal year 1 to year 2 improvement and not being a different RB entirely. I wrote in his player spotlight how high-workload, low-efficiency RBs have historically turned into major studs a surprisingly high percentage of the time (Emmitt Smith, LaDainian Tomlinson, Ricky Williams, Walter Payton, etc).
I'd make a move as long as I could get fair-market value (something like Turbin for Starks, or Anderson for Davis), but if the only option was overpaying or eating a zero, I'd eat a zero.
He's noticeably slimmer and quicker, but he was a very good back last year as well. People forget he was a 21 year old RB (youngest in the league) that missed all of preseason and the first three regular season games with injury. He looked much better as the season went on. He showed great vision and quick feet last season - but the Pitts line was god awful. Now, with less weight to carry his whole body is matching his quick feet and he's able to get outside and by defenders quicker for bigger gains.
Like I said, a little quicker, but that's all IMO. His vision is superb. Last year he was one of those guys who's ability was masked by numbers. He reminded me of a young Ronnie Brown, a guy who was always getting 0 yards when he should have lost 2, getting 2 yards when he should have gotten 0, and getting 5 yards when he should have gotten 2. Unfortunately Ronnie Brown had a devastating injury right as the line was starting to shore up enough for that latter category to be more abundant than the first two.
I had him at RB3 before the season. I'll be doing a rankings update for next week, and there's not really all that much room for him to rise in the positional rankings. I'm leaning towards bumping him ahead of Jamaal Charles. I don't think there's any realistic chance he unseats McCoy at #1.
I was shocked by how quick he looked on his long screen pass in week one. This is a guy who has a poor record of making explosive plays, both in the NFL and in college. In 2012 he had 382 carries at Michigan State (1st in the nation), but just thirteen 20+ yard runs (tied for 14th in the nation). That's good for a "long run %" of just 3.4%, which is pretty bad for an elite college prospect. Last year in the NFL he had 244 carries (12th in the league), but just four 20+ yard runs (tied for 24th with guys like Lamar Miller, Gerhart, McFadden, and D Brown). That's an anemic 1.6% long run percentage.
I can resepct that call, but I think I'm ready to make the leap, personally.
You're comparing yourself to FBG staffers, whose dynasty rankings tend to be a little quaint and behind the times for the most part. If you look at DLF, which is dedicated exclusively to dynasty, you'll see that virtually everyone has Sammy Watkins right around 17th overall. The Bills traded a top 10 pick and another first round pick (which could end up being another top 10 pick) for Sammy Watkins. There's a pretty good argument that, based on the price of acquisition, Sammy Watkins is one of the most highly-touted WR prospects of all-time. With that in mind, trying to trumpet the fact that you rank him 17th overall before he played a snap like it's some kind of bold call is pretty silly. Your ranking is appropriate (or maybe even a little cautious) relative to the hype and expectations associated with a player who was treated as a super elite asset by the NFL draft process. Likewise, Tavon Austin was a top 10 pick. Ranking him where you do is based solely on how the NFL valued him. It's not a bold call. It's merely an appropriate ranking based on one particular surface trait.
It's telling that you would cite Barlow. Michael critics tend to fall back on lazy comparisons that serve their pre-held opinion. For example, if you want a "hyped up backup RB with a decent NCAA/draft background who flopped miserably after being touted as the next big star" then you can pull out the Kevan Barlow card. Are they really that similar though? Barlow ran a 4.56 40 with a 1.61 10 yard split and a 32" vertical leap. Michael ran a 4.43 40 with a 1.49 split (fastest at the combine) and a 43" vertical (highest of any RB prospect I can remember). Was Barlow an elite workout freak at RB? No. Then why are you comparing him to Michael when elite athleticism is one of Michael's hallmark traits? It's a lazy and bad comparison.
The conversation has moved from Michael to questioning the personal risk tolerance of others. We should all likely drop that part of the convo.
I think you're putting more stock in combine numbers than I am willing to. That's going to be a disconnect in the conversation. Especially at RB--I think so much of what makes a player successful is not measurable in track and field drills. He's a great athlete, but great athletes don't always become great NFL players. I don't think we need to cherry pick past examples, on either side of the argument, to acknowledge that.
Look, you and I obviously have a different definition of "going out on a limb" or what constitutes a "bold call". Personally, I think that if I have a player ranked higher than any other public ranker on a major fantasy site on the entire internet, that qualifies as a "bold call". So if you think that my process leads to me avoiding any "bold calls", I think you're demonstrably wrong. You know that "merely appropriate" Tavon Austin ranking you're dismissing? Fantasypros has 33 sets of dynasty rankings right now, and not one of them has Austin higher than I do. Only one other guy has him ranked as a dynasty WR2. That "merely appropriate" call seems relatively bold to me.
I was unaware that players had to be identical in order to be similar. Here I thought "similar" meant something wholly different from "identical". Christine Michael and Kevan Barlow share some similarities. They have some differences, too, because they're not in fact the same person. There are lots of other guys that Christine Michael has been similar to in one aspect or another. If I sat here and said "Christine Michael is Kevan Barlow", that would be lazy and irresponsible of me. But I'm not. I'm saying that Christine Michael shares a lot of similarities with a lot of previous backs, Kevan Barlow among them, and as a broad class that group of similar backs has produced a very wide range of outcomes, so I would estimate Christine Michael's range of outcomes to likely fall somewhere in there, (although I cannot entirely rule out the very small possibility that Michael will fall outside of that range, either on the high end or the low end).
It's not baffling at all. I just don't agree with it.
I don't think it's mispricing because I disagree with it. I think it's mispricing because, as I understand it, you are ranking him exclusively based off of the single most likely outcome (in your mind) while completely ignoring all other possibilities, and that strategy results in mispriced players. Every player should be priced based on the entire range of possible outcomes. Or, as you're fond of saying, "you shouldn't buy players at their ceiling because it leaves little room for profit".
Everyone is making a EV calculation whether its implicit or explicit. Michael's ADP brothers this year are Foster and Lynch (and others). If both of those established guys have 1.5 expected RB1 seasons left, what is the acceptable bust rate for Michael, given he is 5 years younger? It's pretty high. If you did 20% RB1, 60% bust and 20% inbetween, which I think is much lower than anyone supporting Michael would believe, it's still a worthy gamble. If powerball odds dropped to 1 in a million, you are likely still throwing money away buying tickets, but it's money well destroyed. I don't think Michael supporters in this thread are being irrational. Everyone has the same information in front of them. They just have applied the odds differently based on their own interpretation.
I don't think they're being irrational, either. I totally get why they have him where they do, even if I disagree. I don't question their methods or their motives. I was merely responding directly to this quote from EBF (in response to me saying it seemed like he was ranking based on a singular expectation instead of an EV range):
If I take that quote at face value, I think he's mispricing Christine Michael. Even if the outcome winds up being right (and it very well might), I think the process is flawed.
This. I sold him in the off-season and regretted it immensely by halftime. Was like watching a completely different player. Last year he looked like a career backup, this year he looks like a complete stud.
He does look muck leaner. Like he lost 10-15 lbs. I guess all that body mass wasn't a good thing.
I believe in using all of the information available when making decisions. I use historical comparisons all the time.
He's likely not to be a consistent player this year. And even if AP is as cooked as Rice, a lot can change by 2015. His situation is pretty similar to Crowell's. So it should be hard to get anything that rhymes with first. Really the biggest positive is that Patterson should provide consistent FP.
I'm waiting to see how things play out, but I'm skeptical that things are going to go as south for Adrian Peterson as they did for Ray Rice. Not meaning to get political and offering absolutely no value judgments about this one way or the other, but I think there's a good possibility that conservative Christian groups will rally to Peterson and the right to discipline their children as they see fit. I think he could become a flashpoint in a much larger culture war. I don't think he's going to engender the universal loathing that Rice drew, and I don't think the NFL is basically going to banish him as a result.
Didn't know you were a fan of Lynch during the Buffalo swoon. I could've sworn you made a habit of calling him an average player at one point, but maybe I'm mistaken. Unlike some of the stalkers on here, I don't keep a running file on who everybody liked or didn't like for future reference, so it's all kind of hazy for me apart from a few memorable calls. My recollection is that you've generally been a "flow with the current" type of guy, but maybe that's also mistaken. I really don't invest a lot of energy consciously tracking how other people operate. Especially if I don't play against them anywhere.
Crowell was undrafted but McKinnon was actually a fairly early pick by rb standards these days so I think he'll be given a change at some point. And Asiata is totally JAG and not likely to last more than a few games as the starter. He may not do a ton this year but with a year of experience and another offseason, next year could be interesting for him.
I agree he'll get a chance to contribute eventually, even if AP is back after a short suspension. One of the reasons I think a first is too much is that Asiata is JAG. If we go down the path where AP is cut sometime between now and free agency, they have to upgrade from Asiata.
This is a pretty good distillation of the issue I take with so many of your positions. You make huge bold calls on players as "can't miss" and then go on to value them accordingly. Literally no player's success is inevitable. If you believe that Michael (or Richardson, or insert any other dude here) has a chance to be great, then fantastic. That's totally reasonable. It's saying "Michael has zero chance to be anything other than great" that is completely off the charts foolish.We can reasonably disagree on Michael as an individual prospect -- but pricing this or any player without factoring in any bust risk is a definite mistake.EBF said:
I have been saying the same thing about EBF for years. Good to see some other people have noticed that he keeps making these over-the-top predictions of 100% success or failure, which would be fine if could predict the future, but he has proven on numerous occasions that he can't.
That and of course if you don't agree it's because you haven't carefully considered the data like he has.
No one can reasonably project more than a pretty wide range of possible outcomes for relatively unknown players. And I do mean no one. Ozzie Newsome drafts players that bust. So does John Schneider. Unanimously elite prospects bust every single year -- in fact roughly half of even the players taken in the first round by NFL teams every spring end up disapppinting. The only way to appropriately value players is to try to average the range of potential outcomes and establish a baseline value from there.
This is a timely post given some of the recent comments. I have Christine Michael at RB11 in my latest dynasty rankings. His August ADP is 48th overall. If I felt like he was a total lock for an elite career then I'd have him ranked higher. Likewise, the 48th overall pick IMO isn't one that's going to completely cripple your draft if you miss. The Michael skeptics might not be satisfied with the amount of risk reflected in his current market value, but to act like people aren't factoring in any bust risk isn't very accurate. Given that he's a 23 year old RB with 5-6 years of his athletic prime left, people would be rating him a lot higher if they knew he was going to become the starter, succeed, and stay healthy. You need only look at the ADP of guys like Lacy, Bernard, and Bell to see that.
He didn't say Michael's success is inevitable though, he said he "thinks" it is. Kind of an important distinction when you're implying someone is trying to be Nostradamus.
A distinction without a difference in my mind. If someone says they think that something has a 100% likelihood of happening, I see it also as a future prediction. For instance if I said that I think it is inevitable that the world will end tomorrow, yes it is couched as my opinion but it also a prediction (100% likelihood does leave much wiggle room).
I'd like to see your math on Michael if you don't mind. You've stated time and again that he's worth more than a Matt Forte or a Jamaal Charles. I'd like to see the projection of value over baseline attached to percentages that make that so. Because without him becoming a 2000 YFS monster, it's not happening -- unless of course, you're attaching a near 100% likelihood of Michael putting up a 5+ year string of low end RB1 production.
Oh, you are not mistaken. I called him average a bunch of times. I thought he was a decent, NFL-caliber starting tailback, but nothing special. I still had him higher than most other rankers I knew of, because even unspecial workhorses are still quality fantasy assets.
I agree that what I hear vs what we see doesn't gel.
