Mega Mailbag: Holdouts, stacking offenses, Dalvin and Samaje
Going through the comments of recent posts
I’m going to just start hitting a bunch of questions from recent posts. Apologies if I’ve missed your posts elsewhere, but if you want me to see your question, the comment section on Substack is the best place to go. If you’ve emailed me directly and I didn’t reply that day, it gets lost in threads of replies amid massive amounts of emails.
For those of you who have sent longer questions about your specific leagues, it’s nothing personal, but I just don’t have the time to read through the longer questions right now. You’ll always have a better chance of me responding to your question if you can simplify it to the major points.
Let’s jump right in, and I’m just going to work back.
Noah Brown picked up by the Commanders. Any fantasy relevance?
I’m not really buying that as super notable. He’d need to learn the offense quick, and remember, his 2023 season was a career high by leaps and bounds as his best per-route season. There’s not much in his profile that suggests he can do that outside C.J. Stroud, but maybe Jayden Daniels is able to also help him hit some big plays.
I drafted on Sunday night in a 12 team PPR league and followed your strategy of WR-heavy with detours for McBride and Stroud, then a bunch of stabs at rookie RB like Irving, Vidal and Corum. It’s a keeper league so I had Achane already and took Javonte Williams as my RB2. Given the Samaje Perine news, I’m wondering how much I should bid on him. My likely drop would be Khalil Herbert. I’m usually pretty aggressive in this league on waivers. In the past I’ve generally taken zero RB approaches and won’t hesitate to spend 90-100% of my FAAB on a RB in week 1 or 2 if they look like a league winner. I’m not going to do that for Perine, but just curious where you’d prioritize him?
I wouldn’t go that hard for him if the drop is Herbert. Someone in his range or better is a very viable RB that’s not super different from the Perine bet anyway. I do think Perine belongs higher, but spending FAAB to make minor improvements on thin bets is usually not the way to go. For people in all sorts of shallow, home leagues, I wouldn’t want you to overvalue Perine. He’s relevant, but not insanely so.
I’m pretty surprised Dallas adding Dalvin Cook makes you move Rico Dowdle that much. Has the chance of the upside case hitting really changed? If he’s good enough to displace/take a primary role over Dustball A (which I recognize is a question), isn’t he also taking down Dustball B?
The issue is there’s not really anything in Dowdle’s profile we can lean on, either. A big part of the play, as I understood it potentially working out, was he would get a long leash to show he could do things capably enough, and that would work out. Also, that long leash was the team telling us they saw something in him. Now that leash is shorter. Also, the team might not be as sold on Dowdle as they otherwise would have appeared if they didn’t bring someone in. It’s not that I think Dowdle can’t beat out both Cook and Ezekiel Elliott, because he’d be my bet to look the best this year, but it definitely got more complicated, and I do think people are moving the goalposts a little bit. Previously, the Dowdle bet was a 26-year-old, who has done nothing, was the best bet because no one else was there. They’ve now brought in a guy who had 1,500 yards two seasons ago. We hardly saw him last year, and I’m less confident he’s washed than I am with Zeke. So Dowdle’s moat to volume got narrower, because another reasonable option for volume is there. He has someone else in his backfield who could just look better, since he’s not a great profile. And he can’t exactly just sleepwalk into 200+ touches; now it’s more of a talent bet on him showing us something, rather than just not doing poorly. The name value here matters in that regard, and it could just get gross. I mean, it was absurd to worry about Breece Hall when Dalvin dropped on his lap with the Jets. But Rico is about as far from Breece as any draftable fantasy RB could be.
You’ve mentioned before your reticence to drafting heavily into guys with August injuries, I’m curious if you’re getting at all spooked by whatever is going on with Jaylen Waddle?
Literally was so far off my radar I brought it up on Ship Chasing tonight to get other opinions. Feedback I got was Twitter docs don’t seem worried yet. It’s a possible leak though and I’ve noticed I’m higher than most on him so I moved him down.
How do you see the pending Samaje Perine release impacting Denver RB room in general, and Audric Estime in particular?
I’d been mostly expecting the Perine release, so it didn’t impact my ranks much. I’d also gotten a little too high on Estime, so he’s actually moved down in recent updates, while Jaleel McLaughlin is skyrocketing up the ranks and is a clear target.
Not so much TE-related, but I was thinking about ADP in relation to my main league (14 team, half PPR home league) that will be drafting Labor Day weekend. That league is on Yahoo, and it is definitely a "get your guy" type of league. In that context, is it best to use ADP of the particular platform of the league (Yahoo ADP) as the guide for when players might go, or something like an Underdog, FFPC, or consolidated ADP (across all major platforms)?
I usually tell people to use high stakes ADP as a barometer of the most competitive leagues. A lot of people look at high stakes ADP and think there are major flaws, but it’s a “get your guy” type of format, and what you won’t see is exciting names falling with regularity. The upside plays go. I’ve always thought NFC does a good job with their ADP page, and RotoViz’s FFPC Redraft Dashboard is another great tool. Underdog is a bit of a different game, with it being best ball, but it’s the most competitive site out there and the ADP is definitely sharp, so I’d absolutely consult that as well. I’d still pay attention to the particular platform, too.
Now that CeeDee Lamb has signed, would you take him at 1.03 in a half ppr 4 receiver (3 te/wr positions and 1 flex) over Breece Hall and/or Bijan Robinson? Feels like that uncertainty was a bit of a tiebreaker before.
For better or worse, I was not docking Lamb in any meaningful way before he signed, and my opinion remains unchanged.
How much are the continued hold-ins going to affect the way you think about Lamb, Ja’Marr Chase, and Brandon Aiyuk as we get closer to the season? My biggest draft is two days before kick off, so still have time to see how things settle but not sure how much to weigh the more narrative-based impacts of this missed practice time.