Monday Mailbag: Attacking 16 Superflex leagues

Talking through Superflex and two-QB formats from reader submissions

I scheduled a bit of a day off yesterday, as I’ve been working a lot lately and my wife had plans with her sisters. I spent it taking my kids to a few parks in the morning, and to the store in the afternoon to look for some activities — we got a National Geographic science kit and had some fun making a bit of a mess, as well as getting and building and knocking down some dominoes, among other things. It was an awesome day, and also a reminder of how lucky I am to live in a society where basic needs can be taken for granted.

A couple of weeks ago, Ship Chasing viewer and all-around good person Bethany Peters reached out to me about potentially hosting a best ball league for her World Vision campaign, with the goal of bringing clean water to children in South Sudan. I told her I couldn’t be happier to participate, but my thought was maybe the Stealing Signals community would like to do more than one — perhaps several — of these drafts. I know I already ask for a lot of your money, so there’s no pressure here, but I want to explore how many might be interested in the opportunity to draft with me while also helping a great cause.

Bethany tells me $50 brings clean water to one person. I’m happy to play in as many of these leagues as we can fill and I can fit in over the next week or 10 days (her charity event is late next week). The best times for me are over this coming weekend. We could do different price points, and if it’s more enticing to attach a little prize — because that’s obviously what we do in fantasy football — we could have some leagues where some money goes to the charity and some is reserved for a prize pool. This could be 50/50, or another idea I had was at basically any price point we could reserve two buy-ins for the winner (so they double their money) and use the other 10 buy-ins to help (entry fee divided by five) number of kids. So even if it’s $10 at that structure, we could help two kids across a 12-person league, with $20 set aside for the winner. If it’s $30, we could help six. If it’s $50 and we do a 50/50 split, we could also help six per league. Hell, if some of you want to do more of the money toward a prize pool that felt more like a typical league payout structure, we could reserve say 25% for charity at something like a $100 buy-in, and that would also help six kids, while there would be a nice pot to pay out maybe a top three.

Whatever we can do to bring the most help is what I’m hoping for. If you’re interested, please shoot me a reply email to this with:

• Your preferred money range

• Any preferences on prize structure

• Times you’re available for a fast draft between Friday, 8/19 and Monday, 8/22 (site not yet determined)

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Alright, let’s get to the unique format mailbag stuff. I went through email, Substack, Twitter DMs, and Discord, and found 44 replies to that request. The sane thing would be to not read all of these, and maybe pick five or eight or even a dozen that look the most interesting and seem to cover the most bases. Some of them were very long or specific, and I’ve already gotten back to a few as I read those.

But I’m really stupid, so I did read through all 44, and between trying to contemplate the rules and figure out how to group them and which were similar and how it all fit, I pretty much turned into the Joker. But you guys are the best and I really do love this community so much; I can see the subscriber numbers and the view numbers and the positive notes that I always love reading, but to see this much engagement to this request in about 48 hours was just a concrete reminder of how many of you out there get a lot out of this stuff, which is incredibly humbling. I want to make sure to pay that back.

I started today with a focus on Superflex and two-QB leagues, and it took me most of the day, so that’s where I’m going to stop. I have pushed all the standard scoring, 0.5 PPR, other full PPR, and Dynasty ones into another document that might well be next week’s Mailbag Monday, because I have the final Offseason Stealing Signals and Positional Tiers and Targets pieces I really want to get to this week. There’s some stuff on standard and a lot on 0.5 PPR below, though.

I also fired off a handful of answers to interesting questions in the #freechat channel on Discord last night, and while I haven’t been as active in there as I’d like, I’ve found it to be a great place to write quick stuff where more of you can read it. I’d love to help all of you individually but it’s also pretty impossible, so if I ever miss your question, please don’t take that personally. On my end, I won’t count it pushy at all if you write me multiple times. Some have asked about paying extra to book some of my time for one-on-one consultation, and I’ve done some of that, if that’s something any of you are interested in. I’m not doing a lot of that; just mentioning for anyone who might prefer that setup.

I do have to pass up more questions than I want to. One place to throw those questions where I’ll maybe see them or someone else in the community might be able to help or at least to link you to something I’ve written about it, is through this Discord invite link.

About halfway through the below, I decided to add this quote feature to passages I thought were most universally useful. I tried to go back through and apply it to the earlier stuff I wrote, as well, so if you’re just skimming, those might be the best spots to read.

As a general rule, since I write about the viability of Zero RB and WR-heavy drafts quite a bit, it seems these questions are often, “How much might I want to walk back the Zero RB concepts given the constraints of my league?” which makes sense given what this Substack is. As I said, I’ll get into 0 PPR and 0.5 PPR in another edition, but those questions might apply most specifically to those formats.

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Nick in email:

• Starting Requirements - QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, TE, 3 Flex, 1 Superflex (6 bench, 16 total)

• Scoring

  • 0.5 PPR, full point rush/rec first down, 0.25 pass first down

  • 1.5-point bonus for 75 rush/rec yards, 0.5 points for every 25 yards after that; 2 points for 300 pass yards, 0.5 for every 50 yards after

  • -1 for first turnover, -2 for second, -3 for third

• Auction redraft, no keepers, $200 budget 

Let’s get it started with a banger. Love this league. The bonuses are maybe a touch aggressive (at 75 and 300 yards), but I love incorporating points per first down, and the heavy Flex emphasis is fantastic.

The full-point rush first down with 1.5-point bonus for 75 rush yards in a Superflex format immediately piques my interest for the rushing QBs.

In a scoring system like this, I definitely look at last year’s outcomes with this scoring, and I compare it to the outcomes in a more traditional format, because so much of what your less-informed leaguemates are going to read is going to be based around last year’s traditional scoring outcomes. You want to know not necessarily what players did better in this format, but what statistical profiles. So for rushing QBs, I would look at how much better they were, and I would pay attention to the actual rushing output for those QBs and adjust for the ones I think have interesting rushing potential for 2022. It’s not just, “Jalen Hurts was better in this format so he’s a target,” because someone else in your league is doing that. It’s “Hurts’ profile was better, so he and Trey Lance are targets.”

I’d probably not pay much attention to the escalating turnover stuff outside staying away from a few turnover-prone QBs like Jameis Winston.

My recollection on the first down stuff is it tends to favor volume RBs a bit, on a per-game basis (most data on this splits by rush and receiving, so keep in mind RBs can receive some, too), and with it being full point coupled with 0.5 PPR it does make RBs more interesting than usual.

With three Flex spots plus somewhat shallow benches (once accounting for the possibility of a bench QB especially), I would be willing to get some depth at RB over my typical goal of WR depth through the Flexes. In other words, there would be more RB/WR balance for me here, depending on what values emerge. I imagine I’d leave this draft with pretty strong QBs, potentially an elite TE (without a backup), possibly 4-5 strong WRs, and potentially 5-6 RBs (accounting for bust rate with some robustness) that I liked, with a couple easily cuttable flyers thrown in at the back. What I’m saying is I wouldn’t feel the need to play WRs in all Flex spots every week, based on scoring. I’d still do the RB build cheaply; my RB exposure might range from undervalued pre-Dead Zone options to high-end Zero RB candidates and later.

I would use the waiver wire as WR depth in this shallower league as there are guys like KJ Hamler and several intriguing rookies who might be free for periods of time in a 16-roster spot Superflex.

In other words, part of that commentary on WR depth relates to the idea I probably wouldn’t roster any speculative WRs because I’d expect to be able to add them at any given time throughout the season. Speculative RBs have a better shot at gaining a ton of value, obviously, so I’d start heavier there, then my roster would probably lean toward more WRs as we moved through the season.

Cole via Substack:

• Starting Requirements - QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, TE, 2 Flex, 1 Superflex, 1 DST (6 bench, 1 IR spot, 16-17 total)

• Scoring

  • 0.5 PPR, 0.5 rush/rec first down

  • All TDs are 6 points

• Drafting from 6 spot, leaning Hero QB/Zero RB, but if CMC is there that’s going to be hard to pass, then maybe a Hurts in Round 2. I want to be really strong at WR because I can start four. Should I draft a DST or load up at skill positions and just drop someone?

Similar to the above, but with less emphasis on the first down scoring, no bonuses, and it’s a snake. The advantage to an auction in the above is you can target specific areas at RB where the value proposition makes more sense, including the best second- and third-round RBs as well as the best Zero RB candidates that frequently go in Rounds 7-9 (non-Superflex round values), without the same opportunity cost (you’re not boxed out of also targeting WRs or TEs or QBs that go in those ranges).

In a snake, you have to be more diligent. I’m interested in the Hero RB approach with Christian McCaffrey, but…

The issue with Superflex that specifically applies to a snake is that at basically any point after the top names go off, the scarcity of the position demands an opportunity cost that is just a pretty bad proposition. For example, in my recent draft review I took Mac Jones over some legit Year 2 breakout WRs like Amon-Ra St. Brown. That’s not efficient draft-building in terms of trying to capture the most total value in the roster, and it’s a reality of basically any QB pick after the first 10 or so throughout a Superflex draft, until maybe you get a really great late value on a Marcus Mariota or something (wouldn’t even consider where I took him in the aforementioned draft to be a great value) once you’ve hit the flat areas at WR or RB.

But then the question is how much can a Mariota get you? He’s a fun bet, but there’s fragility there. The flip side is in the first 18 or so picks, the non-QBs you have to pass up are legit options, but also the QBs are very strong and that balance is a lot tighter. The opportunity cost is still high — it’s higher — but…

Within the context of needing to get QBs at some point, the dropoff from your non-QB to the type of QB you’re adding is quite a bit lower in the earliest rounds.

All of which is to say I like to get my CMC exposure in single-QB leagues and in this format, at the 1.06, would probably prefer to just lock up two elite ones early (assuming you do get a shot at Hurts in the second). That said, CMC is a unique proposition and in leagues where your leaguemates maybe aren’t as heavy on QB as they should be, even given it’s Superflex, a CMC-Hurts-Tom Brady type of start would be the nuts, and might be worth gambling for.

Going with an Anchor QB as you discuss and not getting two early is also very viable, but when I do that, I basically treat the middle rounds like a QB Dead Zone and get as strong everywhere else as possible, opting to get by with something like a Mariota-and-stream approach to QB2.

One thing not everyone realizes is roughly 50 QBs tend to start a game every NFL season; there are undrafted options that come available in a league of this depth. The biggest mistake, to me, would be taking a QB you like but who is steamed just because of the format — say a Trevor Lawrence in like Round 4 — over a potential monster at another position (maybe Kyle Pitts is there to hit elite TE). At that point, I’m looking at the gap in their single-QB ADP — or perhaps more accurately said as their positional rankings i.e. QB20 vs. TE3 or whatever it is — and I’m adding the TE3 to my roster.

I like the idea to be strong at WR more than in the last league I discussed, but I would be open to detours in this format. As I said, tougher in snake, but the scoring dictates it some. It’s dependent on the way the draft is going — if RBs are coming off higher than or similar to the speed at which WRs are, then I’m probably hammering WR and going pretty Zero RB.

The “Do I draft a DST?” question is all about what you’re gaining. If you’re drafting early enough and have an alternative you think you’ll get good information on before Week 1 — and maybe have an alternative player you’ve already selected that could be your pre-Week 1 drop in the case the additional RB or whatever you took does hit and you get the value gain in the preseason — then go for it.

If you’re just sort of doing it without a plan and even if the value gain occurs, you don’t really have a drop candidate, I tend to just take a DST to not have to deal with it. It’s a small potential edge, and I’d call it a personal preference to a degree.