As I mentioned last week, I’m going to restructure things a bit this week. The first section will look like a stripped down version of the typical format, with a whole bunch of the data analysis pulled out and moved to its own sections. I’ve been thinking about something like this for years, and written about it before, and it’s happening now because I’m excited about having an idea that I think makes sense, based on various feedback I’ve gotten and my own thoughts on it. The time finally seemed right, for lack of a better explanation.
As I also mentioned, I’d love feedback once you’ve read it. Hoping to get a lot of notes and will do my best to get through all of them. Even if it’s just a quick “I liked the new format” or “I missed the old one,” that’s helpful.
My big thought this week is about how it’s time to retire the entire line of thinking of “drafting like you’re right.” It comes up every draft season, where the idea is if you make certain picks, it pigeon-holes you into needing those picks to hit. This season has undoubtedly been more high-variance than others, but it’s definitely not been the case that being wrong in some spots has doomed rosters.
More than ever, my best rosters are based on the number of really good pieces they have, and whether that’s two or three or five. Also more than ever, I find myself wishing I had more redundancy in many key spots.
Looking back to your draft and thinking through what would have been your best course of action in each round is an incredibly helpful exercise. I haven’t gotten a ton of feedback about how Zero RB or Anchor RB structures didn’t work for people this year, but assuming they haven’t worked for me across the board, I know you guys are out there. What I’m finding when I look back, though, is I wouldn’t have done stuff much differently.
I already draft with an approach and mindset that recognizes the value of redundancy — it’s the whole idea behind loading up on early WRs, as well as loading up with a ton of Zero RB types late. When I look at these drafts, on some rosters I see the way things have broke for some of my early WRs and wish I’d been even heavier with that element of my build, and on others I’m fine there but I look at how my Zero RB types haven’t come together and wish I’d been in on even more of those. There’s this immediate feeling if I’d just hit on the right ones — Kenneth Walker, Rhamondre Stevenson, Cordarrelle Patterson, Devin Singletary, Raheem Mostert, Jeff Wilson, Jamaal Williams, even some of the ones like Michael Carter, Khalil Herbert, and Tyler Allgeier who haven’t smashed, or if I was on Miles Sanders or Josh Jacobs who have — that I would have a fantastic team.
It’s definitely silly to sit there and say, “Well if I’d just made all the right picks, my team would be awesome,” but there’s also clear utility in it. What would have worked? I look at that pocket of RBs that went off the board in the Round 8 to Round 15 range of most drafts, where I take a ton of RBs across all my teams, and it’s clear to me the hit rate in that area of drafts was at that position. There are some fun WRs like Garrett Wilson who went in those areas, too, but the production from that position has been a lot thinner into those areas of drafts than even I expected. That’s largely driven by the rookies, who we identified as the WRs to target there, having pretty poor luck overall in terms of translating their roles and abilities into fantasy points, either due to the offense they are in or health. That’s not a defense of someone like Skyy Moore, to be clear. There are going to be misses, too, where the role doesn’t materialize.
But when I look at draft boards and consider what would have been the best-case scenarios for a lot of these teams, it is in my mind to have been completely out on early RBs — even as many of the vets have stayed healthy and performed well. I would have liked any of a few early QBs, because the gap the top QBs have provided has continued to be a major story, and if I took any other non-WR picks, I would have liked either Travis Kelce or Mark Andrews, even with his injury. But in the tougher, higher-stakes stuff, I also would have liked to have taken a lot of early WRs, so I could navigate some of the stuff with ones who have scored well but not been available all season, like Amon-Ra St. Brown, Marquise Brown, or DeAndre Hopkins, and so I was loading up on even more RBs late than I already did. I look at some of my builds where I maybe only took three or four RBs in the Round 8 to Round 15 range, compared to as many as six in other builds, and it’s clear I had some misses in that range and I wish I’d been even heavier on my RB building in that segment of drafts to get a ton of redundancy.
The alternative explanation is tougher to make into an actionable strategy. It more or less suggests you’d just take all the best scorers with perfect hindsight, and certainly the optimal builds probably reflect that, which is to say that if you knew the exact later WRs to draft, you probably would have also liked some earlier RBs on those rosters. Nothing is clean and easy, and what’s happened in 2022 is just one result that we have to be flexible about, so I’m just relaying my interpretations here.
But in terms of this idea of “drafting like you are right,” my best rosters are the ones that more or less drafted like they’d be wrong, and didn’t have too high of expectations for any one pick. They hit on players, but they also had contingencies built in throughout the roster, or they got fortunate adds on the waiver wire to fill obvious holes where my drafting like I was right, and then being wrong, would have been better served as a strategy where I drafted incompletely, without an answer that could be right or wrong. In other words, a super late-round QB strategy would have been preferred for the teams where I wound up adding Tua Tagovailoa off waivers, because completely ignoring that position would have allowed for more redundancy at the other positions, and redundancy is what I wish I had everywhere. I look back to the FFPC Main Event winners last year, the awesome dudes that go by “Go Bills,” and how they added Joe Burrow in-season to complete a Burrow-Ja’Marr Chase stack that proved deadly in the fantasy playoffs.
This gets back to the premise of Zero RB type builds. In a perfect world, if you knew you could add a D’Onta Foreman or a Jeff Wilson midseason, you might use even less capital on RBs. But I recognize this is my interpretation based on my priors, and so the bigger lesson for me is simply about “drafting like you’re right.” At basically no point in a draft should you pass on players you think are potential difference-makers just because you have something else in your build that addresses that. This is not just about busts; Cooper Kupp has been a massive piece all year, but now looks likely to miss time, much like Ja’Marr Chase has been. The goal in fantasy isn’t to make some perfect team you could take a picture of and frame on the wall because every player was a must start all season; the goal is to score points.
My $10k buy-in team with Michael Leone, Peter Overzet, and Pat Kerrane took a really big hit a few weeks ago when Breece Hall went down, just after we’d started to bounce back from a 1-4 start driven by Trey Lance and Kyle Pitts underperformances, largely due to Hall pairing with Austin Ekeler to give us a sweet RB duo for a stretch. A funny thing has happened since Hall went down and left our thin RB room starting Samaje Perine and Jerick McKinnon at times over the past couple weeks — it started scoring even better, and continued its push, and now sits in playoff position. Much like last year’s Go Bills team, we’d been fortunate to add Tagovailoa there to stack with Jaylen Waddle, one of our clear hits on draft day, and then Ekeler and A.J. Brown and some contributions from guys like Rondale Moore have all carried us to multiple big weeks despite almost no RB2 points.
There’s been a lot of good fortune there, but it’s just an example of the patchwork ways things can come together, and how fantasy success is driven by the hits more than the misses. And the ideas of the perfect roster you can frame and put on your wall and also a roster that can score a lot of fantasy points aren’t mutually exclusive. But as I continue to ponder more and more about 2022 draft season, and what lessons can be learned from this high-variance season, the biggest thing I keep coming back to is to not view draft day in a way that is anything more than a vague map for an unknown course your roster will sail. You can try to build some tentpoles in, but there’s a ton of uncertainty regardless, and you often don’t even know what your tentpoles are until halfway through. The goal, then, is just loading up on potential tentpoles and then making it work.
I have one more little thought before we get to Week 10 and this new format. And it’s just harping on an idea I’ve already laid out. Because the start of the 2022 season was so wild, and we’ve seen some really unique trends, the takes right now are much stronger than I think they should be. There’s a lot of, “It’s November, you have to admit that thing, and if you don’t, you’re just stubborn,” but from where I sit, it does no one any good to “admit” a trend is a trend if you’re still not sure it is one. The goal is honest analysis, always. But the really though thing here is very frequently when I’m arguing against something that seems obvious, I’m basically saying, “The market thinks this is 90% likely to be true, and I’m only like 70% sure,” which is to say that it’s a thing I think is probably more likely to be true than not, but I’m just way less confident than the results would suggest I should be.
That’s a really annoying spot to be in as an analyst, so I guess I’m just saying cut me some slack. I’m never trying to be a flat-earther. A good recent example is Amari Cooper, who I went to lengths last week to continue arguing probably isn’t as great of a fantasy asset as he’s looked. His Week 10 line doesn’t suddenly prove me right — he’ll obviously have more good games, because he’s been playing well — but there’s also obvious utility in me continuing to make that point, if I actually believe it, in that it basically says, “Since I don’t think he’s a real difference-maker, if you can trade him for an elevated price that values him like he kind of is — since he’s been scoring that way — that’s a move to make.” Or, “sell high,” I guess.