All roads lead to Sean Tucker
Uncertainty, upside, ranking handcuffs, and so much more
I’ve been a little overwhelmed by the number of great questions I’ve gotten recently, and one of the things I was dealing with earlier in the year is we added quite a few subs around here this offseason, and there were a lot of questions that were hitting on topics we’ve laid the groundwork on in past years, and obviously people are going to be at different stages and I want to be open to that stuff, but I’ve also written before it gets tough to simultaneously reach people at the earlier levels while trying to build on concepts that are a few layers deep.
To be clear, that’s what we try to do here — reach everyone where they are at. The thing with fantasy football is it’s a hobby, and everyone’s going to be at different stages with it like any hobby, and it’s not some commentary on you as a sports fan or reflection of your intelligence. Your fellow subs here are doctors and (lots of) lawyers and accountants and MBAs and Silicon Valley investors — it’s really pretty cool — but their accomplishments and obvious intelligence doesn’t necessarily translate to their skill in fantasy football (just their ability to understand certain concepts, which is why they are here, because I do believe this is a thinking person’s fantasy advice). But experience matters. I used to go fishing sometimes and I sucked at it. I suck at most hobbies that aren’t this.
Anyway, while I do try to reach everyone, what I really like to do is peel off those layers of the onion and be three or four layers deep, because that’s what invigorates me as an analyst, and that’s how I do my best work. But lately, it feels like the new folks that have been engaged and enjoying it — and I love that there are always people out there who join and I get these messages that new subs this year feel like they’ve found their people — are also starting to ask those questions that are three and four layers deep.
And that’s when I have a lot of fun, because I freakin’ love that stuff. I’m not amazing with the conviction and the application of the research and the analysis — I’m more of a theorist — and so it’s super fun when the questions come from a well-considered and like-minded place and are sort of giving me feedback on applications of my own takes. You guys are sharp as hell, and an army of sharp people who think about the hobby like me but apply those thoughts in ways I’m missing is a really fuckin’ cool advantage to have as counter-influences.
But like I said, I’ve been feeling a little overwhelmed this week. And it manifested in a weird way yesterday, with me hitting on a ton of questions on Twitter, and really digging into Sean Tucker (which is what this post is going to be about, so stay tuned).
Hours later, I got this Twitter reply :
Have you ever considered adding stuff like this in your newsletter? It’s amazing information but I always feel like I’m missing a level of clarity on the actionable advice. Like through these tweets you posted some drop lists and essentially a waiver priority list.
I think that would be really cool. Or like a trade target thing. Like I loved the bowers excerpt because you essentially ranked him and allowed me to know how to value him going forward and how I should trade for him. Just wondering your thoughts on that.
My reply to Ronny was this:
Yeah I do try to do that when I have the clarity to do that. And I almost always save it for the newsletter, and today I was already thinking that I might write up a surprise post and reference all this stuff in the tweets to make sure it gets back there. Prob should.
The only reasons I don't do it as much as you and other subs might like are 1) time, because I write a ton already, and 2) I don't have this level of clarity on stuff as often as one might think. I've seen questions about which handcuffs to hold for weeks, been chewing on them.
That last point is so funny, because I’ve been meaning to get back to you guys in the comments asking to hold this guy or that guy, and those things. But a lot of the time, I’m sort of stumped.
The truth is that it’s not an easy answer, and if I did try to give you a straight ranking today, I would change that ranking maybe even before Sunday. I started seeing these last week, and I honestly didn’t have an answer. I’d love to say that I was all in on Kimani Vidal as the very best stash last week, and I was close to that and did write him up first in a list in last week’s Input Volatility, but I also noted, “People always love to ask for me to rank them, and I’ll say it’s hard with Vidal and Kendre (Miller), but Kendre needs to be activated by 4 pm ET Saturday, so it’s possible that will clear up by Sunday if he’s not activated.”
I thought Vidal and Kendre were close on Friday, and then Kendre didn’t even play last week, and when he did play last night he looked OK but didn’t play much until garbage time. I still feel good about Kendre, to be clear, but the point is I thought those two were close and then after the week I wrote Vidal was more valuable than Courtland Sutton, so I no longer did think it was close and instead thought Vidal’s situation dramatically improved.
The point is just to say that there’s nuance, and there are overlapping ranges of outcomes, and I don’t always have the clarity to write confident takes about everything in a week. There are way too many fantasy analysts trying to be everything, and give advice on everything, including areas they clearly don’t actually have an edge. It’s why I stopped doing DFS advice, and why I tend to shy away from dynasty, and even why I’ve slow-played the best ball stuff (though that’s closest to what I do well), because your very typical seasonal redraft fantasy football is my sweet spot.
To that point, there are often questions I receive that fit this idea of not being something I think my opinion moves the needle on, so I tend to just move past it. Years ago, I used to give my best answer, but my answers are typically fairly involved, and so when I say “move past it” what I mean is I can’t let my brain engage with each of those questions I see every day or I won’t get anything else done. It’s not like trying to be rude and ignore a good question, just a product of the weekly nature of my work, where there are six days between Sundays and I spend more or less all of Monday and Tuesday writing the main newsletter so in a given week I really have to maximize the other four days, and that includes everything I do in my personal life as a dad and husband and anything social outside the fantasy space.
All of this is preamble to explain some really fun thoughts on Twitter yesterday, and what this post is about. I’m typically recording with Shawn for Stealing Bananas Thursday morning, but we did it Wednesday since we skipped the Sunday show and that was the earliest I otherwise could, and so Thursday was kind of free, and I got going on social from a discussion that popped up organically. That discussion includes a lot of very specific stuff about Tucker, and I started the discussion with the below observations:
Always some surprises on waivers in home leagues vs. high stakes stuff, but I’m surprised I added Sean Tucker uncontested in both my fairly active home leagues this week, which suggests maybe he wasn’t an emphasis in industry waiver advice.
High stakes folks did pay up.
I tweet this mostly to say if he didn’t get claimed in your league, add him. No guarantees and I’m a big Bucky guy, but a 200-yard day from a 22-year-old RB (23 soon) in a backfield with an inefficient lead seems like what you save your FAAB for?
That led to conversations about specific handcuffs to hold over Tucker, where I shared a lot of thoughts on those players, largely because I had been chewing on them from your questions, and felt like I had strong conviction about it when asked directly yesterday (i.e. it’s not like I was prioritizing Twitter users, which if you scroll through my Twitter timeline, you’ll see I never do what I did yesterday).
Now, what I should do is get back to all those messages from subscribers, but I gotta get to Input Volatility today as well, and have other obligations, so it’s really tricky.
But Ronny’s suggestion was good. Two years ago, I wrote a piece called “All roads lead to A.J. Brown” that was ostensibly about Brown, but really was about evaluating WRs, and cost, and fantasy football at large, and so much more than A.J. Brown.
Yesterday, in addition to questions about specific handcuffs, I wound up talking a lot about theory. And to Ronny’s point, you guys subscribe to my newsletter for that stuff. I get it. I should be sharing that here, rather than to Twitter users who aren’t the self-selecting pool of Ben Gretch readers.
But it was a lot, and I don’t really want to edit and rewrite it all in a neat way. I’ve tried to organize it a little bit where the first section is about analyzing Tucker as a play (which includes a lot of evergreen stuff), and then there’s a short section on Bucky, and then finally a section about a whole bunch of other players and whether I’d take them over Tucker, but that includes lists and I’m sort of picking out the least valuable of lists and all that. Hopefully there should be utility there.
Everything with the blue indentation is a Tweet from someone other than me, everything in italics is my tweets verbatim from Twitter, and then everything in normal font is me writing, today, some additional context.
We start in response to my first tweets about home leagues not adding Tucker.
That's just a roster depth issue. High stakes usually have 18-20 position players where home leagues are usually 14 (+ k & dst)
Thing is even in shallow leagues you should be adding 200-yard players for at least this week to see if something continues to materialize. Don’t be certain it can’t.
Most home leaguers in shallow formats are rostering multiple replacement-level roster cloggers w/o that upside.
when would you ever feel comfortable playing him outside of desperation? You’re basically holding him as a handcuff for White/Irving, and otherwise will probably get 2-3 points a game from him otherwise.
We try way too hard to predict outcomes in FF. Everything, every year, tells you to think about how to benefit from uncertainty. This year has been crazy, but still people overwhelmingly want to predict.
Add good players who gain lots of yards and score TDs.
In response to a question referring to him as “the RB3 on TB”:
The two Bowles press conferences this week have said 1) it’ll be a three headed monster, 2) we’ll go hot hand. Assuming there’s any truth to that, it could flip things. You have to assume that’s just not true to believe he’s still No. 3.
I think what it means is that he will get opportunities, but he will be the third in line to get them. If White's healthy he starts, then Bucky takes over and does better, Tucker gets some work when Bucky needs a breather or mop-up duty. I don't see an instant flipping of duties.
(My response here is a little out of order, but this is all from one thread that went on throughout the day.)
Most of what I've said today could be summed up to me believing what you just wrote is bias to the status quo, and we're too quick to anchor to that, esp in situations where if we're wrong, the payoff could be huge.
I agree it's possible, but what if you're not right on that?
I assume using him as just a spot starter potentially while White is out, which is how long?
Didn’t majority of Tuckers production come in the 4th quarter after the game was in hand?
This was a very common line of commentary that Tucker’s work should be discounted due to garbage time. Obviously I already hit on this in Stealing Signals, but I went into further context for my read on it, which as always you’re invited to disagree with.
Talked about this second point on Stealing Bananas but this idea Tucker’s production came in garbage time is wrong. I’m a Bucky guy who had him in a ton of leagues and it’s actually more true for Bucky (but Bucky was great too).
They were a tandem all day.
Interesting because I read that Bucky was at 70% snaps until the third quarter
Had not seen this, and I’m not coming at anyone, but I have been sent it multiple times now and I respectfully think it’s misleading. Tucker was playing some, and was efficient, and earned more. Had hardly played prior to last week. We’re tasked with thinking about what’s next.
Looking at early-game snap shares to devalue a 200-yard, 2-TD game from a player who had previously not played — that wouldn’t be my process. There is garbage time production and then there is Tucker pushing a good day to great one drive after Bucky’s best drive.
But they were not a “tandem” the first 3 quarters is where I would disagree. Bucky was the clear lead back the first 3 quarters (75% snaps) and then Tucker took over in the 4th when the game was out of hand.
That’s just not an accurate interpretation. First, they played together some snaps. Second, the touches tell a different story than the snaps. Bucky is literally my highest rostered player and I also watch every snap. I was frustrated all game despite him being in.
Anyone saying Tucker only played in garbage time did not have Bucky playing anywhere (cuz they clearly didn’t tilt watch that game)
This is why we watch the games. Bucky’s my highest rostered player across everything. Tucker’s usage terrified me as a super biased Bucky guy and I’m being told it wasn’t a tandem and Bucky was the clear lead by people who have uncontextualized data and prob didn’t watch.
Then in response to this great image from Hayden Winks showing when the touches came:
Looks to me like there’s just not a lot of early touches. And then it’s relevant that Tucker scored a 36-yard TD on that lone Q2 touch. Maybe he woulda got more work on that drive but he just ended it!
They both had 2 first quarter touches, then Bucky got more in Q2 but Tucker housed his only touch, then he basically got more touches the whole second half. And I’m hearing Bucky was the guy all day and Tucker played in garbage time.
I was also sent commentary cutting the fourth quarter before the final drive, from two really good analysts I highly respect. The first time I wrote:
I think that’s a selective end point personally, because Bucky had a lot of production on the drive immediately preceding that (which as a Bucky guy was awesome). Even though I do agree this is when true garbage time kicked in.
Ben- I heard Bucky had 75% of the snaps thru 3 quarters and a lot/most of Tuckers production came in the 4th quarter? Is that not true?
Don’t have snap share splits but Tucker scored early on a receiving TD, and was playing more and looking better than I wanted.
All of Bucky’s three biggest plays (long run, 3rd and 16 receiving conversion, TD) came in the 4th. Tucker also had Q4 production to push him to 200-2.
In a wide-ranging back-and-forth with Rotoworld’s Kyle Dvorchak (which started when he responded to this note with those Q1-Q3 splits I mentioned not having, and I’m going to note he is one of my absolute favorites in the industry), I added these notes:
Tucker has basically not played all year, Bucky has been a key part of the offense. None of that (note: first three quarter splits) was surprising, and in fact it read as bullish for Tucker watching the game.
I don’t think it’s like better than 50% he’s a league winner or anything, but my point all morning is the Tucker play is to find out this week, because what he did in that game was that bullish.
My point is dudes don’t put up 200 yds. Conditional on trying to find league winners, gotta pursue that.
It looks like they ran 22 plays (in the fourth) vs. 50ish in first three Qs. Some of that was due to Tucker’s long TD ending a drive. Obv Bucky started, got early work, was lead. I think the Q3 cutoff as more predictive is v arbitrary in this case.
(Then in response to the idea that cutting the final drive, during which Tucker had six carries for 64 yards and TD and Bucky didn’t touch the ball, would improve our understanding of the Bucs backfield going forward)
See I fundamentally disagree with this. It’s not black and white; I don’t believe cutting is even necessary. I’m very aware of the sequence of plays. There were two other full Q4 drives. Most of Bucky’s good work came then, including the drive right before this.
Tucker didn’t come in for mop up duty; he was mixing in a lot throughout and Bucky had the drive before and it was his turn. I do agree this was when “garbage time” time hit definitionally, disagree we should just cut this out like it was irrelevant.
Kyle added:
the way i'd put it, if you had these three data sets to predict the backfield usage in W7, which would you use?
A. entire game
B. first 3 Q
C. Every drive but the lastI'd rank them C, B, A.
I would rank them A >>>> either of the other two. Don’t know why the other two need to exist. Splits are tricky. I do know why we look at garbage time stuff, but watching it, think the effect was mild if at all here. I need a good reason to cut samples.
There’s more, and I’d in no way want to be portraying Kyle in any way, and we ultimately came to the conclusion we’re just evaluating this differently, in terms of what we’re putting predictive weight on. But I shared it because I do think those notes about split samples and those things were interesting.
From a different person commenting:
I don't think this lands how you are describing it. We want the easiest path to league winning upside right? The easiest path is with the handcuff (Charbs, Braelon, Vidal) that is why we draft these types year in year out. Making bets on one thing to get right than a parlay
Talk about this all the time at the newsletter.
Two sides to EV equation: probability to hit, payoff if right. Fantasy managers disproportionately value probability to hit, thinking they can control the chaos (they can’t).
Fantasy leagues are decided by the payoff.
So, no, we don’t want the easiest path to league winning upside. League winning upside isn’t just sitting under 95 stones around the league. It’s rare. That’s why it’s league winning.
We want to find it, not quantify its path to hitting, which we can’t even do.
From that same individual:
this just seems to be an argument about preference, than actual facts. good either way
Disagree with that too, there’s a right way and a wrong way and the people who have been around and who play at the highest levels know it.
yes you are going to disagree, but its an argument of preference with roster construction.
It’s not. Because when you understand seasonal fantasy is a game purely about upside and league-winning pieces, you understand that *has* to be the focus.
(I was getting a little candid by this point, if that’s not clear.)
Simply because he needs more things to happen before he breaks, there are lots of players with easier paths to breaking. FF is not about chasing points.
FF is more about chasing points than most people realize, and long-term and high-stakes players actually understand this a lot better than most casual analysis. (Coming from someone who writes 10k words on usage every week.)
My biggest misses have come fading production because I’m making assumptions based off perceived talent level or future workload.
Listening to your analysis over the years has taught me a lot about valuing past production while still factoring in context beyond the numbers.
Same lessons I had to learn the hard way, very well put
I like Tucker a lot but it seems like he’s the clear RB2b. There’s no value there unless White or Irving misses time.
You’re making an absolutist statement about a situation I’ve described as being about the sub-5% outcomes, and yes most of the time you will be correct, but my argument would be the rare times you are incorrect are very costly.
Put differently, this guy just went 200-2 and you’re definitively saying there’s no value there based on your read of the backfield being the same as it was before he did that. I just wouldn’t be that confident.
Jonas Gray
Yes, sometimes guys flame out. The whole thing I’m talking about with Tucker is he has a slightly higher chance to be a key guy this year bc of last week but I’m implicitly talking about tail outcomes. It’s like a sub-5% thing, but you should still chase it.
i feel as tho the defending of an initial point is getting you over your skis a bit.
Tucker's been on the roster (incl offseason) for 2 years now, so it's not like the coaches don't know what they have (yet decided to draft Bucky this offseason too).
Jason Snelling vibes
I disagree with this. He didn’t look like this last year and sometimes you don’t know what you have til you see it in a game.
Well put. Yeah, he just flat didn’t look like this last year. He looked incredible this week. I said it elsewhere but I defy anyone to watch the game and tell me he didn’t look better than Bucky. He just did, and I’m a massive Bucky stan.
I appreciate the transparency with how Tucker looked despite being heavily invested in Bucky. Have to be proactive with these things rather than clinging to our prior takes. It may not work out, but worth seeing through.
On a separate thread on that over the skis thing, I added:
Their immediate response postgame was “this will be a three-headed monster now.” Tells you something.
Tucker also got plenty of August buzz.
He maybe just got better from Y1 to Y2 and they didn’t necessarily anticipate it.
Bowles just said all three r gonna play and gonna ride the hot hand
What you say when you realize you can't just push the 200-yard youngster back into a No. 3 role.
This kind of a comment is bad for status quo, and should be read as more negative for the incumbent (White) and positive for the uncertain guy (Tucker) than even what is apparent.
And I'll caveat yet again by saying I'm less confident than I appear. I'm just confident this is being overlooked relative to the probabilities it matters.
What exactly does this look like on game day?
That’s what’s uncertain, but situations tend to move favorably toward talented players
A couple thoughts on Bucky specifically:
So is it best to sell Bucky high since a three headed monster is coming?
Idk what you’re going to get for him but I definitely think Bucky lost value in a week where he got a spot start and went for 100 and a tuddy, which is annoying for my bags
So now what, do we just hold and be sad? Because I’m already doing the “be sad” part based on this info
I want to be clear that Bucky also looked good. It’s just that Tucker looked even better. No other way to put it.
I literally believe Rachaad White should be the No. 3 going forward. We have a large sample on him; miss me with calling that an overreaction. He’s also much older.
Some questions about specific handcuffs and roster management.
If you already have Irving, would you rather have Tucker over Vidal or Chandler? Been leaning toward just keeping the latter guys.
Def would hold Vidal. Chandler’s tough bc Jones might be hurt. But having both Irving and Tucker seems kind of rad and I did that in a league. Those are tough cuts tho to be clear.
Tucker or Ray Davis - both available I’m home league ppr
I’d be Davis here, to be clear
Note: I wrote that before it became clear James Cook was likely playing this week and Ray Davis is less likely. I’m still probably Davis, but if it’s a particularly shallow league where Davis probably passes through to next week, you want to go Tucker because you get more information this week from Tucker. That’s a big part of this.
What about the rankings of stashes amongst Tucker, Benson, Corum, Vidal, Wright. I currently have Bucky, Benson, and Vidal. Not sure what best practice of the stashes would be
Benson is one I would cut in shallow leagues at this stage for Tucker. Still hope for Benson but was clearly at fault for rough fumbled exchange late last week, also ceding all pass reps to Demercado. (Conner’s banged up caveat.)
Is it good practice to have that same backfield though already with Bucky on my roster? I try not to limit my upside but I see your point with Tucker
I’m doing it in a couple leagues. I kinda like it in this case bc it’s a bet against White that I think we should want to make given the track record there.
Should I drop Corum for him then? I can only roster so many RB’s who have big upside but questionable utility as a weekly starter or flex fill in. Vidal, Davis, Corum, Bucky, Braelon Allen all feel like at least as good of bets and dropping Javonte or Dowdle seems unwise
This is the range where it’s tricky. I want to see Corum this week after he displaced Ronnie Rivers Week 5 before the bye. Not sure I’d cut any of these guys, but maybe I’d be trying to make a 2-for-1 trade today to get Tucker added.
This trade idea is a solution I was considering in these leagues where you have too many good stashes and not enough space. I also acknowledged elsewhere that in some of those situations, it’s probably the case that he should be rostered by a leaguemate, and you’re just in a league where you can’t make it work because you only have so many roster spots. Each of you, individually, obviously can’t roster every single intriguing player. That’s a real issue, and I get it, and I try to articulate the best bets where possible, and the preferences and those things (which I’m doing here).
Home leagues aren’t usually 18+ roster spots like high stakes leagues where you can afford to hold guys like this and wait to see what happens. I’m not cutting guys like Rome Odunze or Waddle for what looks to be the 3rd man in a 3 man backfield
This is fair. I cut AD Mitchell, Wicks, and Darnold in home leagues this week tho. Cuts are never easy but you recalibrate each week. Tucker may be likely to return to the No. 3 role but you make the bet this week where you can.
Cut Darnold??? Why???
Because you don’t need two QBs in most home leagues, I have Purdy stacked with Kittle, and I wanted Tucker.
Cutting someone doesn’t mean you think they suck or can’t be good; it’s about how best to allocate roster spots to win.
What about dropping someone like Mostert? I dropped Mostert for Vidal in one league. Also have Mostert and Tucker available in another league where I would prob drop Kmet (have McBride).
Yeah I mean Mostert could still get there out of the bye but it hasn’t been a good start for him or his team so I could see cutting bait. He’s a guy I want to get a look at this week too, where possible, but you gotta constantly recalibrate.
Got it, but who are we dropping?
Braelon Allen
Blake Corum
Kimani Vidal
Zach Charbonnet
Very fair, and I’m hitting on similar in a bunch of other messages, but prob not dropping those dudes to make it happen. Someone else in your league should have prob added him tho.
I’d maybe look to move Charbs in a 2-for-1 since we’ve seen his utility, then add Tucker.
Note my comment on having seen his utility refers to how Charbs would, in my estimation, have the most trade value, but these players’ actual value is all roughly in the same tier.
Where do you rank those 4 (and benson) for rest of season dart throws? In other words, who has most value if all 5 starters are out
I mentioned in another message Benson is one falling out of favor for me. Don’t see that panning out at this stage, both bc of Demercado and his own play in limited samples. Hasn’t seemed ready.
He went unclaimed in my league. Was thinking about a small Sunday bid, mainly based on you and Shawn's pod. Main issue is whether to drop Odunze (would rather drop him than Lloyd, although that would be widely panned).
I’d cut Lloyd for Tucker this week no question, knowing there’s some chance I can get Lloyd back.
Would you drop CEH for Tucker?
Yes. I hope for the best for CEH as a human but he still has some hurdles both on and off the field.
Would you pick him up and drop Vidal, Ray Davis or Guerendo in a 12 team .5ppr?
Not Vidal or Davis, probably Guerendo
Tucker Benson or Leggette?
Tucker for this week then reassess
Hey Ben, are you rostering both Bucky and Tucker if possible? Would you do that or one of those two plus someone like Guerendo or Corum? I’m pretty desperate at RB2. It’s between those guys and a spot-start like Goodson, but want to think long-term as well.
I’d prob still go Bucky + Corum here, but I’m doing the tandem Dan mentions in some leagues.
But I want to keep saying the Tucker play is a bet on uncertainty. I just think people are devaluing the potential payoff way too much rn.
I’m also going to throw in a tweet from earlier in the week that I happened to see, which I guess fits in with all this.
In Signals this week you wrote that Vidal is “one of the three or four handcuffs with the best EV equation in the entire league.” who do you think are the others?
The guys who came to mind were Corum, Charbs, Braelon, but your mileage may vary on what even constitutes a handcuff in some cases. I didn’t really mean to specifically rank it, just make a point that Vidal’s in that group. Allgeier fits, GB/NO/MIN all possibilities.
Lastly, some really good thoughts from a subscriber who offered something that made me think quite a bit. This was in relation to the EV equation notes.
I read your article discussing this, one thing I wanted to get your take on is the idea that people are not as good at identifying upside as we think. Examples that come to mind are cooper kupp and deebo, I think coming out they were seen as lower upside, higher floor guys
I think we aren’t perfect at identifying upside but I reject any notions that we should more or less not try just because sometimes it’s hard to see. (Incidentally, I talked about both those WRs’ upside that year.) Like all things, inexact, but do our best.
My approach has been to maximize probability to hit and through that you will happen to hit on ceiling/upside more through natural variance
That’s an interesting angle and there’s room for it at the table because you’re still framing the goal as maximizing ceiling upside.
This is loosely something I’d argue my buddy Michael Leone has advocated for before (he may describe it differently obviously), and I’ve shifted my thinking in his direction on it over the years, especially in best ball. My take is reasonable people can disagree on how to apply all this.
I added some more:
Sean Tucker convos have continued in the mentions, and I have a good two-tweet summary of my whole position:
I keep hearing he's No. 3. But last week was a shock to the system. Bowles has said "three-headed monster" and "hot hand," so he's acknowledged it.
We are biased to the status quo. Even when there's a shock as big as a 200-yard game. Even when the coach says otherwise. We're innately sure he's exaggerating. We anchor to the past trends as predictive.
And we're sure, even when if we're wrong, the payoff could be huge.
And then today, Underdog tweeted this, which people seemed to really not like, because on its face we’re talking about a huge committee:
This is now the third time this week the coaches have spoken this way. My comment on Twitter this morning was this:
Everyone’s unhappy about this but as I was talking about yesterday it’s saying “the plan isn’t the status quo.”
That’s a huge departure from all the supportive stuff for Rachaad over the past couple years!
Just to sum all this up, if they are going to truly go to a hot hand approach, then you want the most-talented player. And based on what we’ve seen, I’d rate that as Tucker actually first, then Bucky, but I’d have them close, because the sample on Tucker is very small, and Bucky’s looked good all year. So when I say that, I also believe Bucky’s talent floor is higher, but I think Tucker has more skill-based upside, because I was already a little concerned about how high Bucky could take that part of it, and the explosiveness Tucker showed is backed up by a really strong athletic profile and collegiate profile. He was only a UDFA because of medical stuff, and for those that remember, we were in on him last year as a rookie for a reason. This isn’t some random nobody of a prospect.
This is why I say that Bucky lost value, because part of the bet was he didn’t have another talented back in his backfield, and now he very much does. And just to finish how I would rank a true hot hand situation, it would be Tucker ever-so-slightly as my preferred over Bucky, and then a Grand Canyon-sized gap to White. I mean that’s a slight exaggeration because we do know he’s a capable receiving back, but people keep saying that as if Irving and Tucker haven’t also shown reason to believe they can be really good, too, because of that status quo bias again, where the way we think is to try to find reason to justify White first. My response would be to find 30 minutes to go watch the condensed version of the Bucs game last week, and then to reiterate what I wrote in Stealing Signals that this backfield has never looked as good as it did Sunday for White’s entire career. I wrote:
It creates a massive problem for the Bucs, who aren’t the type of team to just bench a guy like White, but where this backfield was so much more dynamic — both of them — than anything White’s done in over two years now. This is the first game he’s missed in his career, after 42 straight games with the playoffs included, and as soon as he was out of the mix the backfield looked incredible.
I’m never saying anything’s certain, and most of my argument today has been that we shouldn’t be trying to predict the outcome as much as people want to, because apparently you can just add Sean Tucker for free in some leagues and if you have that chance, you have to do it. So that’s a key point — the analysis here, the length of this post, is about not predicting and taking the right type of bets, and especially when they are cheap, which this one surprisingly seems to be free in some leagues still.
But what I’m also doing now is predicting the outcome, just for kicks. And from that speculative sense, as a football analyst, I just do not know how White has a role here. The thing about Sunday is Irving and Tucker worked off each other so well. I was calling it a tandem not because of snap shares but because of styles. It was amazing, and as I also noted in Signals, these dudes are both 22 right now (Tucker 23 soon), while White is 25-turning-26-soon. There was someone on Twitter who suggested to me this morning they might trade White, and they probably need the depth honestly, but I thought it was pretty intriguing because it’s hard otherwise to really move off the “starter” without some locker room issues.
But more importantly, it’s hard not to play the best players that your whole team can see are better than the guy you’ve been playing. That’s another locker room issue; veterans know who the hell needs to be playing when it’s this clear. This is why I advocated in that Signals writeup for selling White for 75 cents on the dollar if you could, because he is at real risk of seeing his value go to zero, and in the scenarios where it doesn’t, he’s still not even a league-winning asset. He’s always been a “small hit, big miss” player whose “big miss” outcome is way larger than you want to be holding this week, from what I can see, and the hit doesn’t even justify that risk.
Alright, that was a lot. And I know I caveated it a ton, but I want to say once more that the points in this article should not be tied to whether Sean Tucker winds up being a league-winner this year. That’s still a very low-probability outcome.
As someone astutely noted to me after last night’s game, the Broncos — especially our guy Javonte Williams — running all over the Saints is probably an indication to temper our Tucker enthusiasm a bit. That’s a rushing attack that hasn’t looked good but the Saints’ run defense made it so. Maybe that’s all we saw with the Bucs running all over New Orleans last week.
But I will stand by my initial point that Tucker was being overlooked by too many this week, and should have been a bigger priority in waiver columns and those things. And I think the response I got validates that point, i.e. the size of the response suggests the assumption I was making was accurate, because it’s a lot of people that weren’t necessarily playing Tucker and are defending that or are asking how they should rectify that.
But we covered so much ground across that conversation, and I took the time to address so, so many counterpoints, because that’s what I think you need to do, is address those counterpoints, and have a well-rounded argument. And in doing so, I hit on a whole bunch of theory about how to play that some of you who are newer around here — I hope you enjoyed reading it. And those of you who have been here for a while, I hope it wasn’t too repetitive. (Every time I say that three or four of you tell me you enjoy when I cover a topic again, and it’s good to reinforce that stuff.)
Clearly, I had fun on social yesterday. I was, as the kids say, cookin’. It won’t happen often — this piece today also serves as a little bit of a taste of what it’s like to engage on social media when you have a decent-sized account, and it’s not like enjoyable or anything. The only people who actually win on social are the people writing the stupid, thoughtless, one-line engagement-baiting tweets. If you try to do anything intellectually stimulating, you will be miserable.
But I did want to push it here as well, and the title hopefully reminds of that A.J. Brown piece two years ago that wasn’t really even about A.J. Brown, or he was just a small part of it. The point isn’t that Sean Tucker will save us all, or that Bucky Irving sucks now, or any of that. It’s that there are still clear edges on how best to play fantasy football. And I hope I argued why I believe that’s the case well today.
See you soon for Input Volatility!
Can’t say it enough, Gretch is the best writer is this space and this article encapsulates why.
Made the newsletter with my Mostert tweet. 2nd Stealing Signals appearance. Hang the banner.