The mailbags are always long, but let’s start with a couple quick rankings updates before jumping in.
Najee Harris is reportedly dealing with a Lisfranc sprain, per Edwin Porras of Fantasy Points. I’d recently removed his Fade moniker because he was the one RB in Tier 3 I could see being vaguely viable, but immediately after reading this I reestablished him as a Fade and dropped him several spots in the rankings. The question with early RBs is always whether the juice is worth the squeeze, and I was already very skeptical about Harris’ upside being worth the risk, so when I see something like this I couldn’t be more out. It’s not that I want to argue about Harris’ profile; it’s the opportunity cost of the picks you can make at other positions at any point where you make the Harris pick. Give me all of those WR and TE options that might be available if there’s even a 5% greater chance Harris can’t handle the 381 touches he needed to be RB3 last year (at a 17.7 PPR point-per-game rate that was nonelite). It’s that simple.
I didn’t bump Diontae Johnson because it sounds like his shoulder sprain is minor, but I would understand if that was concerning at the price I have him listed at.
I keep shuffling the later tiers of TEs, but I’ve moved Isaiah Likely up some and more notably I’m getting really on board with Albert Okwuegbunam again. He made some athletic plays in the preseason and the narrative that came out was he was playing into the fourth quarter, but with Greg Dulcich now looking unlikely to be ready for a big role early in the season, the Broncos actually held Okwuegbunam out of the third preseason game after that full-game workload in Pre Week 2.
Albert O, then, is a great way to play TE in redraft where you get a sharp streaming option for the early part of the season and can simultaneously find out if the role has the potential to last for a player who has the per-route and athleticism upside to make that bet. And the price is palatable. As I talked about in my Pre Week 2 notes, Albert O didn’t just play into the fourth quarter, he played the whole game and had a target in all four quarters, so the team’s comments he needed some extra reps do pass the smell test. The first play of the fourth quarter in that game which got some much run in the FF community was him hauling in a 26-yard pass after being split out wide, going up and over a defender on the sideline. Him getting extra reps splitting out wide to potentially fill the void Tim Patrick’s injury created probably never should have been discussed as a bad thing, especially because, again, he didn’t just sub in with a backup unit for the fourth quarter, he played the full game. (I’m spending so much time on this because I keep hearing Albert O played into the fourth quarter in the preseason; these types of narratives take hold and become the only thing you can think about when you’re on the clock; it feels like objectively bad analysis at this point to focus on that one detail amid the entire rest of Albert O’s profile as a draft option.)
I also moved David Njoku to the top of the tier he’s in based on some commentary on his role with the first team through the preseason, but this is another one where I’m not really buying in to the degree I’ve seen people in some drafts. Possible I’m being a bit stubborn here and it really is Njoku’s time on a bad team that doesn’t have a ton of weapons, but David Bell’s target-earning potential manifesting down the stretch is part of what would concern me if I was drafting Njoku everywhere.
Alright, the first two mailbag topics I’m going to hit I’ve been asked about several times.
From everyone (it seems):
“Who is your Carolina DST this year?”
Probably my favorite way this was asked was from someone who mentioned a couple weeks back that it was the single most actionable thing I offered last year, and then quickly emphasized they didn’t mean that in a bad way; it was just that good of a call. I also recently got asked during a draft by a comanager and it was framed like, “You obviously have a DST to target, so who is it?”
The funny part of that is that Carolina piece came sort of out of nowhere, and my DST philosophy is almost always that I spend so much time dialing in every other position that I more or less just check Week 1 matchups while on the clock in my drafts. This year, that’s meant a lot of Tennessee as a cheap DST that opens at home (the home game part of this is pretty important) against Daniel Jones and a Giants’ offense I expect to pass a lot, which elevates the potential for sacks and turnovers. But the Titans visit the Bills in Week 2, so they are strictly a one-week play. The Bengals are another team that opens at home against a turnover-prone QB, as they host the Steelers. They go to the Cowboys in Week 2, but visit the Jets in Week 3 and host the Dolphins in Week 4. Again, there’s potential for a lot of pass attempts against because the Bengals’ offense could put these teams in passing situations, but also there’s not a lot of reason I’d play them at Dallas in most leagues, unless the Cowboys look lost in Week 1 for some reason.
A big part of the Carolina piece last year was I found a team with a ton of young talent that had high draft capital in every positional unit, most specifically with some edge rushing depth and at cornerback, which are very key positions. They also had some talent at linebacker and safety. I emphasized there was full-season upside there, but that the bet made the most sense because of those first three weeks. Those first three weeks did pay off, but top-10 overall pick Jaycee Horn, their rookie cornerback, ruptured his Achilles, and as the season went on they didn’t have the types of breakout performances I thought were possible. It still played very well because both elements were there, both the very soft early-season schedule and potential for a surprising unit over the full season, but what was right was the same lesson as always: Just stream your defenses based on opposing offenses.
Cleveland is maybe the closest thing to the Panthers as a multi-week play, in that they open at the Panthers, at home vs. the Jets and Steelers, and then travel to the Falcons in Week 4. The only issue with them is their offense might be terrible, and they want to run the ball, so these might be low-scoring games with limited pass volume that actually hurts the DST scoring potential in a lot of scoring systems.
The short answer to this question is I don’t have a Carolina DST play this year, and there was a lot of good fortune that it hit how it did last year. DST scoring remains highly variable, and while it might be fun to pretend I’m a savant, that was mostly luck. A big part of the thesis was just way wrong (their defense was never that good).
From several people:
“Where is the auction content? Can we get auction values?”
I really apologize about this, because I absolutely love sinking my teeth into auction stuff, and I realize anyone reading my stuff is likely to be interested in the types of in-depth discussions that are necessary in auctions. But auction values are going to be extremely format-specific. In any auction I do, I will spend some time customizing for starting lineup settings (e.g. whether there are two or three required WR starting spots), scoring (e.g. PPR? Half?), and depth of bench. My approach will shift accordingly, as well.
Thus, I don’t believe there is a universal way to get good auction values to you. First, keeping them constantly updated would be more work than I can get to alongside the rankings updates and content I’m writing (especially because I myself am doing fewer auctions these days as I shift to a higher percentage of high stakes stuff, and the big contests don’t support auctions). More importantly, I find that almost all leagues doing auctions have some type of unique settings because auction formats are themselves an indication of the types of leagues that are willing to try unique things. In the same way I ask readers playing in 0.5 PPR to understand how to adjust my PPR ranks, you can take my tiered PPR rankings and allow them to influence the auction values you’re building. That will be a much better process than if I have auction values in the sheet somewhere that I couldn’t possible stand behind at all times, as things evolve, because I’m not testing them myself enough. In short, I can’t complete this request to the level I’d want to.
Beyond values, I have done a few one-on-one consultations by request (and for an additional hourly rate) this year and a couple were focused on auctions. I could probably make time for a couple more, but that’s about the best I can offer in terms of an auction plan. As I’ve written before, I absolutely love the format, but these types of leagues don’t make up enough of the overall market I have to try to service to justify the amount of time it would take to do auction content well. I could literally write five-ish full-length posts about ways to approach auctions.
Best I can do is point you to two great podcast episodes from Stealing Bananas where we discussed general auction philosophy here and some specific player targets here. And I’ll note that one of my biggest general points of advice in auction is more novice auction players love the format for the ability to go get their guys, but often those are the hyped guys whose prices get out of a range where they are viable, and you’d honestly do better to just overdraft them in a snake to get your exposure. So the advice is to counterintuitively never approach an auction with “must-have” players, and instead treat the format as if anyone is available to whatever build you wind up on. You need to have a budgeted plan going in, but your ultimate goal is to be the team that leaves the auction with as many possible of the buys that everyone acknowledges were players going too cheap. It’s the ultimate format for my piece yesterday about how “the draft doesn’t care what your needs are,” in that sometimes the correct path is to just be super price-conscious and stockpile talent. In those situations, it’s a lot like the poker adage that you’re playing your opponents, not the cards. Auctions are more about playing your opponents (rather than the names on your list) than snakes.
But don’t get too wrapped up in efficiency. You’re not going to get every good value onto your roster; that’s an unrealistic expectation. You might have a bid you regret. Don’t let those things spiral. You’re constantly readjusting based on who has been nominated, what you’ve landed, and where the value lies in the room you’re in.
Hopefully those notes are at least somewhat helpful. I do very much understand these requests and wish I could do more here, and I frankly think I could do excellent work here, but I have to set reasonable limits for myself, at least until auction popularity grows, which I’ve been waiting for. Maybe I can spend more time on it earlier in the offseason next year, we’ll see.
From Eduardo via Substack:
Just had my auction draft last night. I let the bids play out and ended up with Pittman & Hines and London & Pitts and AJ & Gainwell. On the one hand, I’m heavily invested in three teams. On the other hand, that’s where the value went (I took an anchor RB approach with Swift). Should I try break up this heavy concentration or just run with it? I’m worried about their negative correlations.