Round 2 is a bit of a wasteland

Which makes it a key to drafts right now

I got the chance to enter my first Underdog drafts of the year while taking my kids on a Spring Break trip this past week, and it’s been fun to quickly develop some opinions about where value is, and how to approach Underdog drafts in the final weeks before those close.

Additionally, I was literally at Disneyland when news of the Stefon Diggs trade dropped, and if you aren’t in a place in your life where you’ve been to Disneyland anytime recently, let’s just say you don’t have a whole lot of time to focus on anything else (even with a lot of waiting around in lines). There’s a whole lot of game theory and planning that goes into getting the most out of that place, and not to brag but I am an absolute master at it. It’s my wife and kids’ job to enjoy themselves; it’s my job to ruthlessly analyze and out-smart the crowd so we can both limit time spent standing around, and also eke out one more ride on their favorite roller coaster, Big Thunder Mountain. And at this, I am Mozart.

So I wasn’t able to get a quick writeup out to you guys about the Diggs trade, but I did find it incredibly interesting, both in terms of my own thoughts and the pieces of reaction I saw via social media (which, due to my other focuses, were likely an incomplete picture). This is one where my thoughts as written up in the TPRR series about a month ago are relevant to each of the three key Houston WRs in question, and I wanted to offer some thoughts breaking down what I anticipate there. That became especially necessary after I started some slow drafts on the tail end of my trip, and got a little more familiar with early ADP, with one glaring question being what to do about Diggs and Nico Collins both still carrying late Round 2 ADPs, while Tank Dell still boasts a 39.0 ADP in the early fourth.

My immediate response was the market just hasn’t corrected enough, but my secondary response was we do still very much want to be in on C.J. Stroud’s pass catchers as he enters a Year 2 where we should frankly be expecting a step forward. And so the big question became who of the trio belongs at these ADPs, and that’s something I’m going to start to discuss today but hit on more in my next post.

I had originally started writing this post as three bullet points in one writeup, because I wanted to get it all out to you soon with the draft just a couple weeks away. But in my typical style, all three bullet points became long enough to be posts of their own. Since I still carry that concern about trickling out this content when drafts are flying, I’m going to hit you with three posts today. Here’s the first.

Round 2 is the key to drafts right now, because it’s a bit of a wasteland

After Garrett Wilson, who frankly feels like a steal to me at an ADP of 11.7 (which I detailed in the TPRR series last month), this is the current draft landscape for players with ADPs ranked 13th through 24th, i.e. the second round.

I’m very comfortable with Drake London there, and took him as one of my picks from the 1.12 slot in one of my drafts,. But once he’s off the board, it’s tough. The final five WRs in this round all have significant teammate concerns, with four being teammates of each other, and then D.J. Moore seemingly not yet adjusting to a necessary value shift after Keenan Allen was dealt to the Bears.

But it’s the front half of the round that is even trickier for me — if I’m in a WR-heavy room where London goes before my pick at something like 2.03, the app shows me a list of RBs that I’m not necessarily itching to pick. Kyren Williams was incredible last year, but the Rams would seem to be good bets to add RB depth. Sean McVay has always favored a lead back, so maybe I’m overemphasizing that risk, but I’d rather let the dust of the NFL draft settle before I’m committing big resources to Williams at these prices.

I feel similarly about De’Von Achane — I feel like I’m probably undervaluing him, but he’s another where I want to be sure Miami doesn’t add depth at RB before investing too much at these prices, even if RB depth wouldn’t really impact the Achane thesis. I guess I just think it might impact market sentiment, which might mean cheaper shares later, I don’t know.

That mindset could be described as me just not wanting to commit early draft capital at the RB position in general, at this point in the offseason. That said, the name I wound up clicking the most in this range (after London) was probably Jonathan Taylor, a player whose talent is not in question for me despite a difficult 2023. Last season, a public contract dispute with the owner, his PUP status, and then Zack Moss’ impressive early play all conspired to bring him along slowly, and then by the time he was up to speed it was something of a lost season with Anthony Richardson on IR.

But Taylor did get the deal he wanted, and that deal meant Moss leaving in free agency, and Taylor is very much going to be the engine of the offense in his age-25 season. It’s been a couple of years since his breakout second season, but I expect big rushing numbers alongside Richardson and am comfortable with this pricing in half PPR.

I can’t really find myself as comfortable with Marvin Harrison’s pricing, despite really loving his profile and expecting success. In writing up Harrison’s impact on Trey McBride (due to the expectation the Cardinals will select him fourth overall), I noted that even for extreme rookie hits like Ja’Marr Chase and Justin Jefferson, the full extent of their volume-earning didn’t manifest right away, as each of those players added at least 2.0 targets per game in their Year 2 seasons over their rookie campaigns. This follows research Pat Kerrane has done on rookie production typically being more dependent on efficiency spikes than huge amounts of volume — a lot of that being based on rookies not always running huge routes numbers, and Harrison could be an exception as he’ll likely be close to a full-time routes guy by Week 1 or shortly thereafter.

But I’ve also come to think of that in terms of first-read targets. While I’ve noted that some of the first-read data isn’t perfect because it’s difficult to chart, the idea is an obviously interesting one that explains why analysts are interested in getting this data parsed in the first place. And what’s clear is some of these veterans do get deference in play-calling and scheming; guys like Davante Adams and DeAndre Hopkins had inefficient seasons last year but were still very strong in TPRR, for example. But I think even for elite rookie WRs, you just don’t see that kind of focal-point-of-the-passing-game scheming from the coaching staff, at least in their first career games. I’d argue this is a major part — along with increased playing time — we see such a spike in late-season production for rookie pass-catchers; the logic follows that coaches might get more comfortable calling plays with them in mind as first reads over time, as trust is established. (For obvious counters like Puka Nacua last year, there’s a little bit of context that the Rams’ passing game was extremely thin in Week 1, and they more or less needed a Cooper Kupp replacement to be functional, and certainly necessity can speed up timelines in any arena.)

So my case would not be that I don’t have high confidence in Harrison to be good, but that at this price point we’re already bypassing any risk of rookie struggles and assuming an elite floor (probably a fair analysis of his profile), and then also we’re not likely to get the full extent of whatever his true statistical ceiling is until Year 2 or beyond. I’m not saying that’s not possible, and in best ball Harrison can still be a very good play in the first half of the year who also spikes late and then is a smash here. I don’t even think he should go way later than this — more like the Round 2/3 turn, probably — but it’s just difficult to pull the trigger at an ADP of 16.1 that I think bakes in a ton of his upside and blows past any risk (including us not even knowing his NFL team, and how that could turn out worse than expected in some scenarios).

Anyway, I’m obviously struggling with my position to be light on Harrison in the early going, but I don’t anticipate him getting any more expensive, so I can get shares in the summer if he sticks here. I would guess his ADP does fall off a bit before August.

So not loving his price, or the price of the RBs in his area, leaves me with some difficult decisions in the first half of Round 2. And I don’t think I’m alone in that regard, as I think the market sees a dropoff around there, too — usually when I feel like this around the turn, I can still get in specific drafts where I am able to pair two of the first-round guys I like from a draft slot like 1.11, because one swings around to 2.02. I have a small sample of drafts under my belt, but it didn’t feel like there were really ways to play it at 1.10 or 1.11 where I could push, say, Wilson back around past the drafter at 1.12; he felt like a lock to go there. (That is reflected by the ADPs, where Wilson’s ADP as the 12th-highest player is a bit lower than 12 at 11.7, and then Kyren’s is 13.4 as the 13th-ranked player, and Saquon Barkley at 14.9 and Taylor at 15.9 both reflect nearly a full slot drop in actual ADP versus being ranked 14th- and 15th-highest drafted; in other words, Wilson doesn’t actually fall past 12 a ton, and Barkley and Taylor are more likely to fall past 14 and 15 than to rise up into the first round.)

So the early part of the second round does feel like a tier drop after those first 12 players are gone, and it’s the same difficult names every time. This helps explain how quickly Drake London was able to rise up to the early part of Round 2, and I think there are other names we could see take a similar jump, including Chris Olave.

But for right now, the back half of Round 2 is also a bit problematic for the reasons I mentioned above about teammate issues, which explains a big reason a guy like Harrison hasn’t gone anywhere even if some of the points I argued are valid: There aren’t clear profiles to push ahead of these names. I believe if there were some players with ADPs in late Round 2 that felt obvious to take in the early part of Round 2, things would have shifted here by now. I mention Olave in part because it’s harder to see guys like him, with an ADP still in Round 3, going early in Round 2, because that requires a huge reach from drafters that are in a ton of drafts and know they can get their Olave exposure from early draft slots.

So in my opinion it’s that dynamic of not having players to take over them that has kept some of these early Round 2 guys there, not necessarily a huge vote of confidence in the actual profiles. The best example is Barkley, who Pete Overzet recently hit on in a video breaking down some of the most controversial players in early drafts. In it, he talked about how there’s agreement in three major rankings sources about Barkley being overdrafted, and that’s a sentiment I’ve consistently heard this offseason which has only gotten louder over time. And while this latest video might finally be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for Barkley, I think he’s held steady through prior attacks on his pricing because it’s simply not easy for him to drop a full round right now. Even when he starts to slip, if drafters at each slot along the way in Round 2 don’t have super compelling alternatives, eventually the anchoring effect of Barkley’s current ADP wins out and someone just selects him.

So why aren’t the guys in the back half more compelling? It’s largely because of the teammate concerns I mentioned. As for who I took there, in my first pass I was more comfortable with the 49ers’ WRs than the Texans’ duo, largely because Diggs’ and Collins’ ADPs didn’t really shift enough for me after the trade — I was anchoring to their past setups and wanted a bigger discount on both now that they are teammates.

But after talking through that with Shawn Siegele on Stealing Bananas, I realized I wasn’t being consistent with past opinions to actively target these types of crowded WR rooms in offenses we feel confident will be good. In the past, I’ve wanted to be in on WR rooms with three high ADPs, arguing for efficiency and contingency upside. I’m not sure we’ve ever had three as high as what we’re seeing right now with the Texans, and I do still think they’ll come down in the aggregate between now and August. I’ll discuss those guys more in my next post, but suffice to say I’m open to taking them at their current ADPs in late Round 2, while still finding it difficult to push them up past pick 20.

I also took some D.J. Moore from these slots because I am just so excited to get back on that train this year, but he’s the guy that objectively just doesn’t belong here. I mentioned Olave above, and he’s one who has earned so much volume through two years that I have to be willing to bet on an efficiency spike season under a new offensive coordinator; for me, he should probably be going ahead of most of the late Round 2 WRs. Olave, Malik Nabers, and Jaylen Waddle are all guys with early Round 3 ADPs that I do get quite a bit more excited about taking right as the next round kicks off, and I pushed them into late Round 2 a decent amount as a result.

And that gets to an interesting dynamic, where from Round 3 forward, I do really like the prices on WRs for the next several rounds. As a result, I’m pretty out on last year’s Dead Zone RB strategy right now; I can’t eat that risk when the opportunity cost is WR picks I want to be making, as well as prime TE targets that I’m going to talk more about in my third post today. A big part of the Dead Zone RB discussion last year was the alternatives at WR dried up in Round 4 and Round 5 in 2023 drafts, but that’s just not the case this year, and especially not when you add in the TEs.

But while the WR picks get a lot easier starting in Round 3, even with some late Round 2 names I do like, that 2.07-2.12 range does feel more like eating your vegetables, and it’s hard to justify those guys getting up into the top half of the round. One guy I haven’t mentioned yet is Davante Adams, and he’s not one I want to be heavily on, but because of some of these concerns about the other Round 2 names, I’ve been clicking his name a decent amount in a bet on his efficiency to rebound after he still showed elite volume-earning peripherals in 2023.

At the end of the day, I see this as a really key range of drafts right now, and I expect a lot of shuffling between now and August. For me, London, Taylor, Adams, and then in the latter part of the round the SF and Houston guys are the biggest targets.

Whatever you do obviously sets up your strategy the rest of the way; at first, I wasn’t in love with the idea of grabbing RBs here, but when I’ve started WR-WR, I’ve found myself with some builds where I wind up going WR in each of the first six rounds, and others where my first six or seven rounds feature only WRs and TEs. I’m obviously comfortable with this kind of Zero RB build, but I wouldn’t call it a priority in best ball because of how it forces your hand a little bit in the coming rounds, because you have to be careful when ignoring multiple position groups (you can’t go Zero Everything).

It’s definitely easier to go extreme Zero RB in managed leagues, because you can stream QBs and also play the waiver wire at RB. But in best ball, while you don’t have to necessarily take an early RB for any reason, it does help to grab an anchor at either TE or QB if you’re going Zero RB, rather than this idea of six straight WRs I probably did in three of my 20 drafts. At the same time, I strongly prefer that to a couple drafts I did where I only got three WRs through about Round 7; I know I had one where I started RB-RB with Breece Hall and Taylor, and then also maybe grabbed an early-ish QB and TE, and was something like 1-2-3-1 with my build through Round 7. Those are the disaster builds, because it becomes immediately obvious how thin WR gets by Round 8.

So anyway, I’ve found myself pretty comfortable with the Taylor decisions I’ve made in Round 2, and I don’t think positionally speaking you can’t be on the other guys if you’re really into Kyren or Achane for example. But as I’ll discuss in my third post today, I really want to be able to hit the TE position in the early rounds, and the early WR cliff means those early RB selections need to be thoughtful, because too many detours is a real risk right now.

That means my draft thought is again a focus on a lot of WRs through about Round 7, but with an eye on trying to find an anchor at another position because it can help significantly with the rest of the build in the later rounds. And that anchor should probably come at TE more frequently than RB, for reasons we’ll discuss.

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