Stealing Signals 2022 plans

What to expect between now and January

I recently got asked to give readers a bit of a look into what to expect over the next few months — with a specific focus on preseason content — something I listed out around this time last year. It’s a fair ask because this is sort of a nontraditional content vehicle where I mostly just write what I want to write about — more specifically, what research I’m doing to prepare for drafts, or the things I think matter and move the needle, etc.

It’s been interesting here in 2022. I’ll be completely honest, I’m still trying to get a grasp on the landscape. One thing I’ve noticed early in camp is opinions are shifting heavily, and I think that was to be expected after an offseason that saw so much shuffling. I did just finish my full 2022 projections, which took quite a bit longer than usual because there were frankly way, way fewer teams than usual where I felt pretty confident in my projection for them. Whenever you’re forced to make more assumptions, you’re going to be doing additional research and trying to get a grasp on what makes the most sense. I’ve had a great time talking through that process over on Establish the Edge with Michael Leone, and I’ll be writing up the remaining Offseason Stealing Signals posts very soon to get the rest of my takes on each offense out to you.

One thing I didn’t want to do this August was basically rewrite things I’ve written before. I unlocked my big draft strategy post from last year so that it is accessible even to free subscribers, and if I were to write a similar piece this year, it would frankly look very similar. I added additional posts on antifragility and one titled “More thoughts on structural drafting” which expanded on the ideas. In some ways, as we enter the third year of this newsletter, I feel caught between a rock and a hard place, because I want to spend ample time on those concepts for anyone who is new around here, but I also recognize that for long-time readers, the value I bring is in continuing to build out new ideas. It’s been a bit of a struggle for me to identify where my time is best spent.

But I had a really good discussion with Shawn Siegele on this week’s episode of Stealing Bananas where he talked about how he’s learned to focus his content more on his own process and what he’s doing, because it more or less makes his advice better when it’s his strategies and his plans for how to attack fantasy football. That’s very similar to how I’ve treated this in the past, and I don’t want to get away from that.

Here’s what I have definitely planned to release before, say, the middle of August:

• The remaining Offseason Stealing Signals posts — Deep dives into every offense, the key notes I found doing projections, and what I think is most actionable about where we sit.

• Projections and rankings — Having finished projections this week, I’ll release both of these by Friday. Scout’s honor. The projections won’t update through August — those have been updated through this morning to include reactions to injuries like Tim Patrick and James Washington, as well as adjusting Cleveland for Deshaun Watson’s current suspension games missed. But I’m not someone who is constantly tweaking projections through the busy camp news; they are for me more of an offseason project, and they will be a snapshot in time when I release them. My tiered rankings on the other hand will be updated frequently. Last year, I made a point to update these nearly every morning through August.

• Tiers and targets — I always use tiered rankings, and with a very interesting draft landscape this year, I want to go through each position and discuss the tiers in my rankings, and highlight both the targets I have a tier above maybe their consensus ADP, as well as discuss the players I’m fading and why.

• Draft reviews — Something I enjoyed last year was posting some of my actual drafts and walking through my decision points and how I wound up where I did.

• Mailbag Mondays — Starting this Monday, each week I’ll sink my teeth into a few of the best questions I’ve received, because interacting with you guys is one of my favorite parts of this, and I find there’s often overlap in some of the clarifying questions that arise.

• Some one-off features — Beyond these staples, I want to keep myself free to hit on what I think is most relevant. I’ll definitely do something regarding draft strategy in the 2022 landscape at some point, but I’m not yet sure how that will look. I have several other loose ideas that may or may not become formulated thoughts in the coming weeks, but I also find some of my best stuff is reactionary, like the antifragility piece last year which arose from the Travis Etienne injury and concerns over Ja’Marr Chase’s drops. This is very much a year where I think the most actionable stuff I can give you is to explain where and how I’m playing things differently than the market, during the busiest time of the year. The alternative to that is fantasy advice that is far too certain in its accuracy, which is endemic around the industry and should be a clear tell for you this year that someone wants to appear to be an expert — and is relying on their audience not being super engaged — more than they actually are an expert. Put simply: This is a year where people should be a lot less certain about everything. We know that’s not how everyone is going to approach it.

As I’ve said, my focus right now is to have the Offseason Stealing Signals posts, my projections, and my rankings all out as soon as possible. If I can get all of those done by the end of next week, we’ll have four weeks until kickoff that represent the busiest draft season of the year. You’ll be hearing from me a lot.

A couple final notes:

• Prices aren’t rising this year, mostly because I bumped them last year and just didn’t want to keep jacking them up.

• Here is a Discord link that shouldn’t expire, for those of you who have asked. The Stealing Signals community is great, although I’ve tried to keep expectations low on my time spent in there. It’s mostly a space for you guys to interact. I did have a paywalled area there for premium Q&A and team help each week during the season last year, and for those of you who did that, I’m not sure yet what that might look like this year.

• I’ll have more notes on my in-season content later, but you’ll get the Stealing Signals posts, of course. Because Signals is a review column, I’ve talked about adding a late-week application of the things I discussed, and I’m still hoping to make that a reality. I don’t want to make any promises here in early August, but in a perfect world it will be some type of look at where I think weekly projections may be missing something in a key spot that could be applicable to start/sits or DFS.

If you haven’t signed up for a premium subscription yet, now’s the time. For those that have, expect a lot more from me soon.