Fantasy Football

The goal of this column is simple. Just as the hitchhiker attempts to achieve their destination without a consistent or known vehicle, we will reach your league championship relying on a mix of temporary solutions and unexpected revelations. I will attempt to stream the highest scoring season long RB2 slot we can, relying only on a finite pool of late round picks and the waiver wire. I will explain the parameters in detail at the end of the article.

Some fantasy players love to know what they have before they draft a player. “Have to see it first drafters” are organized and rule-based. They like to draft experienced players with large NFL sample sizes. “Look how they did last year! This is what I am expecting again this year!” The problem with this drafting style is that it rarely produces the sort of build that can truly dominate your opponents. Often this style of drafting leads to chasing old scores and drafting players who have already played their best seasons as a pro. This limits the unknown upside that lies with players who are on the verge of breaking out.  

Drafting is paramount in seasonal leagues. Leagues can be lost messing up the early portion of the draft, but they are definitely won finding the players later that outperform their draft prices. Here are players that I would consider ADP Smashers in 2022 according to their Underdog ADP’s.

Last season, Cooper Kupp had one of the most productive WR seasons ever. He led the league in receptions (145), TD receptions (16), and receiving yards (1947). By simply drafting Kupp, fantasy managers gave themselves a chance at winning their league titles. But what gets lost in the shuffle is Kupp was being drafted a few spots behind his teammate in Robert Woods. Woods did not lead managers to fantasy titles, to say the least. 

In an earlier article, we set out to understand the structural differences between ADP in Underdog best ball drafts and FFWC high stakes drafts. Today, we take the next step and look at players whose ADPs differ from these trends and create opportunities for arbitrage between the two sites.

Rookie Draft Season for a lot of leagues has come and gone, but I still have several leagues of my own that have not yet drafted.  This is our first look at a superflex rookie mock draft for August 2022.  I will give my analysis for each round and hopefully you can start to see where fantasy players are valuing these rookies.

What we define as “player velocity” in this study is how much a player’s ADP changed from one season to the next. In 2021, Jonathan Taylor reached high speed. Fantasy gamers were selecting him in round three his rookie season (2020). He then shot up into the late first round in 2021 drafts. Taylor finished RB1 in half-PPR points per game (minimum twelve games played) in 2021.

However, today we want to increase our odds of that winning combination beyond leaving it to random chance. Just as we know Bob and Sandy are better apart than together, we can increase our odds by avoiding certain combinations and prioritizing others. In the final part of my best ball strategy series, we talk roster constructions. As best ball summer reaches its close, I will discuss introductory elements of construction which also apply to your managed leagues, as well as include notes on how to take advantage of your “late” draft time in best ball.

The worst part of our beloved game is the frequency of injuries. It’s an unfortunate byproduct of such a fast-paced, contact-heavy sport. It’s something that is important to remember as we approach the first full week of the preseason. Luckily for the NFL players, they have access to some of the best doctors in the world and can usually return to form at least by the next season.

Johnson reminds me a lot of Allen Robinson from a year ago. Remember when Andy Dalton and rookie Justin Fields were the best quarterbacks Robinson was going to play with? Mitchell Trubisky, ironically now teammates with Johnson, was hardly a world beater with the Bears, but he and Robinson definitely had a healthy connection.