Monday Mailbag: Strategy in Standard leagues, 0.5 PPR

Including important differences for Zero RB

We’re back with more of your leagues. Hopefully you guys understand that with the volume of writing I’m doing to try to hit on things a lot of different ways — and the volume of drafts I’m doing, including four Main Events in the past five days — I haven’t been able to find as much time for the specific questions as I’d like. Today will be more of those discussions, and hopefully these are applicable to more people’s leagues than just the ones I’m answering, because I didn’t get through as many as I wanted to.

Update on the charity drive: We did two drafts over the weekend, which were a ton of fun, other than my constantly getting sniped, and raised over $1,500 to help children in South Sudan get clean water. Bethany Peters, whose relay race this fundraising is attached to, has been incredibly grateful and asked me to pass along a heartfelt thanks to the whole Stealing Signals community. I got a request to share the link for others who couldn’t draft but might want to donate, and here’s that link. Bethany had said to put GRETCH in the comments for tracking purposes, but that’s obviously not necessary. I just want to add that I am also extremely grateful for this community in general, and in this case for our ability to do some good helping children in a developing nation.

Let’s get into the league discussions. I’m going to start with Standard scoring, so a few words on that generally first. I’ve written before that I more or less just don’t like Standard scoring, because so much more depends on the high-variance elements of fantasy football, which I understand for some people is the point.

First, running backs — and specifically those with huge workloads, who tend to get hurt the most — are without question more valuable when compared to PPR. It’s pretty interesting that people don’t like PPR because it rewards receptions themselves, because I’d argue receptions require the skill of target-earning and also a skill factor of completion/catch rate, whereas removing PPR makes the stupid little game we play way more dependent on which running backs will get 20 carries, because the difference between a good YPC — of, say, 4.5 — and a bad one — of, say, 3.8 — is going to pale in comparison to the cumulative effect of more work. PPR shifts more of the value away from RBs generally, but it also shifts the game away from just projecting role and workload, because earning targets is a skill, and the vast majority of receptions aren’t just handed out. While people point to the receptions that go for no yardage or even negative yardage, that’s a small subset of all passes, and I’d still argue receptions do have intrinsic value simply by forcing the defense to cover more of the field (a bigger-picture strategy element) and also in securing the ball because obviously incompletions can lead to turnovers off deflections. I digress.

Second, touchdowns carry far more value in overall scoring. In a standard league, which were far more common in the 2000-2010 era of fantasy football and I played for years (and many of the ones I hear about today are continuations of leagues that have been around for decades), there’s a real frustration that 80 yards is equivalent to 20 yards and a TD, specifically at a position like TE.

You can actually look at this type of scoring and see where some of the mistakes that people carry over into PPR originate from. At the same time, you have to play the league you’re in, so you need to take on more RB risk in Standard leagues, you want to understand team-level scoring expectations and target players on good offenses who could post 15-touchdown seasons, and you want to understand the range of outcomes for a player’s workload. We still want to be antifragile where possible — targeting upside players who have paths to big ceilings that aren’t baked into their current cost, and not stacking too much RB risk when the position has high bust rates and we see later-round options gain so much value. Even in Standard, the stability of other positions matters.

Standard Scoring

Jake via Substack:

• Starting Requirements - QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, TE, 1 Flex, 1 DST, 1 K (6 bench, 15 total)

• Scoring - no PPR

• Auction draft, 14 teams

Let’s start with an auction draft, where only two WRs can be played. If the WR position is being devalued, I don’t mind paying up a bit for very good players who have elite yardage and touchdown ceilings, because they will still provide an advantage on others at the position. At the same time, you probably want to be playing a RB in the Flex here, and it’s a relatively shallow league with only 15 total players, so you’re really for ceiling WR outcomes. You’re also targeting players with high aDOTs and potential red zone roles on good offenses, so a guy like Gabriel Davis obviously plays up in Standard. That’s literally his profile, and while there’s risk, he probably comes at a really nice price in most home leagues (in higher-stakes stuff, he’s been rising into the middle of the fourth round in my drafts over the past week).

I would allocate budget toward QB ceiling here. I might try to get in on an Anchor RB with real upside, but I’d also want to be deep at RB, allocating multiple bench spots to high-upside backups in good offenses. Guys like Rachaad White are popular, but some of the ones going under the radar like Isaiah Spiller (who has been fading but is still the best bet for a strong role if Austin Ekeler were to miss time) and Samaje Perine (who is just undervalued in all formats) could be $1 bench options.

Touchdowns are more important at TE, but it’s still a position where there are wide gaps between the yardage totals of the heavy target earners and everyone else. Last year, the TE with the 10th-most yardage in the NFL, Noah Fant (670), had fewer than half as many receiving yards as Mark Andrews (1,361), the league leader. But again, I would favor the pass catchers on offenses that will score a lot of points (due to the possibility of real high TD rates), so Kyle Pitts gets knocked for me here.

So strategically in an auction, I’m willing to pay up for a good RB or maybe two but probably not several. I want depth at that position. I want high-end upside at WR but don’t need as much depth, especially in a somewhat shallow league like this where I can use the waiver wire as my WR depth, like I wrote about in the SuperFlex mailbag.

And I’m in on a high-end QB and elite TE if possible, but it’s harder to fit everything, obviously. I would prioritize a QB from Trey Lance or higher in my rankings, because with the low scores at other positions in Standard, consistently elite QB points can have such a big impact. If I missed on an elite TE, I’d look for good athletes in good offenses with a chance to have a very efficient season even if on lower volume. Gerald Everett and Albert Okwuegbunam might be backstops in that regard.

Mystropaul via Substack:

• Starting Requirements - QB, 2 RB, 3 WR, TE (no other info avail on bench size or Flex)

• 10 teams, no PPR