I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the NFL is almost impossible to predict. NFL experts predict a wide-variety of different things before and throughout the season but football is unlike anything else, the numbers can lie. In baseball it is safe to assume that a lifetime .275 hitter is going to rebound after hitting .240 during the previous season. Correction to the mean during the season also seems to be much easier in baseball since there are 162 games compared to only 16 in football. The football stat most closely related to baseball may be red-zone targets/carries converted to TDs; you can expect regression to the mean if a player scores 12 TDs with only 14 rushes/catches in the redzone or progression if a receiver is tackled within the 5 yard line 10 times in the previous season. My theory behind football’s unpredictability is due to it being a game of 11 on 11. There are essentially 11, 1 on 1 battles in football taking place on every play, a lot can go wrong. In baseball the fielders have little impact on the hitter at the plate (yes you can argue that they have some but it isn’t all that much), it’s mano a mano between the pitcher and the hitter when it boils down to it. Where I am going with this is that every year I seem to realize more and more, which changes how I view the NFL and fantasy football; I like to write my thoughts down before the next season begins so they don’t get warped in my mind during the offseason. For example, last season it finally got through my thick skull that you simply can’t let the draft dictate who you pick, YOU need to dictate how the draft goes with YOUR pick. So, with that in mind, here are 10 things I learned this season that will somehow affect my evaluative process of the NFL over the next few years.
1. Don’t undervalue stud running backs.
Going into this season, many fantasy football players adapted a newer draft strategy, zero-RB. Even though blindly following this specific strategy was foolish, there was some logic in it. For those of you who don’t know what zero-RB, it is essentially that RBs are more likely to get hurt than WRs and that stud WRs essentially put up the same production as stud RBs, why take the risk of your 1st or 2nd round pick getting hurt? While that may be true, you’ll have to look below at #6: “The ONLY reliable numbers to predict in football are TOTs.” TOTs are Total Offensive Touches, essentially carries and catches for RBs, WRs, and TEs. Without giving away all of #6 right here, stud RBs are likely to see the ball 25+ times a game vs. maybe 10 for stud WRs; that is a lot more touches over a season for a stud RB than a stud WR. Because of this, if I drafted in the top 5 of my fantasy draft I immediately wrote off taking a RB, I wanted Brown, OBJ, Julio, Green, or Hopkins in that order. In one league I picked 5th and got Hopkins, I could have taken David Johnson or Ezekiel Elliot and gotten many more points from them over the course of the season but my ignorance got the best of me. Yes, RBs are still more likely to break down than WRs but that shouldn’t be a reason NOT to take a guy early, unless he has a lengthy injury history (aka Arian Foster/Keenan Allen).
2. You want as many #1 RBs/WRs on your team as possible.
What I don’t mean is that you want as many of the t10 players at each position on your roster, that’s too obvious; what I mean is I want the best player on every team, their true #1. My reasoning is this, the most reliable options in fantasy football are the players whose HC or OC is going to create individual plays for them. In one of my leagues I was able to draft AJ Green, Marvin Jones, Jarvis Landry, Doug Baldwin, and Jordan Matthews at WR; every single one of those guys is the best at that position on their team. Marvin Jones was more of a 1a/1b along with Golden Tate instead of a true #1. Midway through the season Tate started to take over the #1 spot and Jones found his way to the waiver wire. With Baldwin and Matthews, however, even though the offenses they are on aren’t really known as elite passing offenses, I knew my receivers were getting the ball in crunch time. These types of players can be relied upon much more than streaky WR2s on the depth chart who are much more boom-or-bust type of players. This doesn’t mean avoid anyone who isn’t a #1, a #2 on the Patriots is much more productive than a #1 from the Browns for obvious reasons. Just keep it in mind during draft day when you are deciding between a few players.
3. Don’t be afraid to draft a player you love a round early.
DeMarco Murry was someone I loved as a bounce-back candidate this year, but instead of going with my gut and pulling him in the 3rd or 4th rounds, he got taken ahead of me in the 5th in just about every single draft (his ADP was mid 5th in 12 team leagues). He is another player who would have made a huge difference for my team. You may be thinking to yourself that there is no way I knew he would do this well this year, and there isn’t, but typically when I have a gut feeling about something like this it tends to work out for me. If you are mock drafting before the season and there is someone you feel you are targeting as a buy-low option in the later rounds, do yourself a favor, don’t pray to the football gods that nobody takes them before your next pick and draft someone who could do well this season, take them now and have no regrets.
4. Make trades while understanding the true value of your players.
If you play fantasy football as passionately as I do then you really do seem to grow attached to your players, especially your studs. Here is a perfect example of me botching a trade because I overvalued my own players: as I mentioned above, I loved Murray heading into 2016. In the 2nd week of the season I all but had a trade accepted where I would send Frank Gore and either Michael Floyd or Donte Moncreif for DeMarco Murray and Will Fuller. I had plenty of WRs on my team where I was only starting 1 of those WRs listed above but needed help at RB. I had the trade verbally accepted by the Murray owner but I decided to wait 1 more week to see how my players did. DeMarco Murray then ran wild for the rest of the season while I dropped Floyd a few weeks later and Moncreif got hurt and missed over a month. I didn’t go through with the trade because I was worried that the players I was about to trade would go crazy and I would look like a fool for making it. When you are working on a trade and you really think that you are making your team better by doing it, hit the accept button, don’t over think it. Once you start overthinking about how the players you are getting rid of might come back to do amazing things, it’s over.
5. Don’t be afraid to use your waiver picks.
This is something that has haunted me in the past but no longer. I also mean this point in 2 different ways, 1: if you use the waiver system, especially on ESPN, where your picks reset based on who made previous moves, don’t be afraid to use them. Many people fall prey to the belief that you should save your waiver pick in case a good player gets hurt and now his backup will be an every-week starter. If a starter gets hurt and his replacement can be expected to produce well in his absence, he should already be owned. Let me say that again so it sinks in, if a starter gets hurt and his replacement can be expected to produce well in his absence, HE SHOULD ALREADY BE OWNED. Any fantasy league with owners who have any idea of what they are doing should understand that their bench should be full of players who can play if their starter gets hurt. LeVeon Bell’s backup DeAngelo Williams was likely drafted in every league because he was expected to do well during Bell’s 3 week suspension. He did. He was then dropped in the majority of ESPN leagues after week 3. Why the hell is that? If he was that successful without Bell don’t you think he will likely be that successful again if Bell were to get hurt? You won’t win a championship loading your bench full of WR3s on bad teams; instead, have a few options that can hold you over during byes, or in the event of injury, and fill up the rest of your bench with potential difference makers that could step into the starting role and give you good productivity as well.
2: if making waiver claims costs additional money don’t be afraid to spend a few extra dollars to help you win a championship. Case and point, I am in a fantasy league that coasts $8 per transaction and the year-end payout is based on total points. I picked up a new defense every week starting week 12 and picked up a couple other players in week 16. I ended up winning the league by 12 points. Twelve. My defensive substitutions alone probably got me 20+ points over that time and I won a lot more money because of it. Don’t be cheap, throw caution into the wind and give yourself the best chance at winning that coveted trophy as you can. If you can’t afford to make transactions then maybe consider a different hobby.
6. The easiest numbers to predict in football are TOTs.
I mentioned this one a little bit above, but I will go into more detail about it. Again, TOTs stand for Total Offensive Touches, basically anytime a player runs with the ball or catches the ball. In 2015 Melvin Gordon seemed like a solid option at RB because he was drafted high by the Chargers after they traded up in the draft to get him. His YPC (yard per carry) average in 2015 and 2016 were not all that different, but in 2015 he scored 0 TDs, in 2016 he scored 11 in the first 10 weeks. That is a 66 point difference simply due to TDs; that’s the difference between RB5 and RB 27 in fantasy this year. We knew that there would be some progression toward the mean in the TD department for Gordon because of the amount of touches he was receiving, especially by the goal line. Some players seem to have a knack for the endzone, but simply getting the ball as often as the Chargers’ were willing to give him meant that he was a prime candidate for a bounce-back season. Another great example is Mike Evans. He scored 12 TDs his rookie season only to score 3 the following season while having played the same amount of games (15). Obviously after seeing that he was thrown to more than just about any receiver in the NFL in 2015 and only scoring 3 TDs I expected some regression to the mean in that instance. He caught again 12 in 2016. Projecting TOTs is really the biggest thing I take into account when submitting my weekly lineup, as well as when I am drafting.
7. In the PPR world, TDs are still king.
I am in a number of different fantasy leagues, but none really hold as near and dear to my heart as my home league does. I have a league with 11 of my buddies that has held the same core of 10 owners since its inception 5 years ago. We finally made the switch to 0.5 PPR (point per reception) this year after never having a PPR system in the past. Now, this obviously adds some value to WRs that are target hogs over RBs that never really catch the ball, but that’s really it. A TD is still equivalent to 12 catches in this scoring system, 6 catches in full 1 PPR leagues. Now as I said above, the only thing you can predict with mild accuracy is the number of TOTs a player is likely to get during the season and that TDs are near impossible to predict. Now, answer this for me: who is more likely to score a TD, a 6’6” WR who is the #1 option for a team or a 5’10” WR who is used to primarily move the chains? That’s right; I’m going to choose the Mike Evans type over the Jarvis Landry type when TOTs are projected to be similar because TDs are still the highest scoring play in fantasy the last time I checked.
8. Don’t draft an uneven team; an equal # of RBs and WRs is most desirable.
This one came back to bite me in 2 leagues this year. I tried to draft with a system similar to no-RB in that I would go WR heavy earlier and then target RBs in the later rounds who had huge upside in the event of injury to another player or if they had the potential to take over the offense themselves. As I already mentioned, I passed on the likes of David Johnson, Ezekiel Elliot, DeMarco Murray, and Melvin Gordon doing this. I am not saying that you need to go WR RB WR RB in every draft but don’t just assume you’ll be fine with 3 good WRs and 9 RBs. This is where my strategy really hurt me, my stud WRs were exactly that, studs; miraculously my RBs actually did come through for me as well. I took Frank Gore and Spencer Ware in every league that I could and they really supported my faith in them. How this strategy really messed me up is that I now had 3 great WRs, 2 good RBs, and about 5 droppable RB3s/RB4s that took the place of WRs that could have helped me during byes or provided trade value. Instead of taking fliers at RB and WR I decided my strategy would work best if I tried to take fliers at the RB position only, hurting me at the WR position in the long run because of byes and injuries. Had I simply gone 50/50 in my RB/WR selections I would have had a well-rounded team.
9. Always take a 2nd QB unless your bench doesn’t allow you to.
I really knew this before the season but it further solidified this in my mind by the time the season had ended. Even if you get a certifiable stud in the first few rounds of the draft (which I typically don’t like to do) make sure you give yourself chances later in the draft to cover up anything you didn’t foresee. My experience this year was taking Eli Manning around the 8th round and expecting him to finish top 10 because he had the best core of weapons he likely has ever had in his career. I backed him up by taking Derek Carr in the 11th because I liked what I saw from him in the beginning of 2015 and thought he has the potential to do that all year and I like having options. I ended up trading away Eli by week 6 for a bag of peanuts (a joke, but for pennies on the dollar) and I rode Derek Carr on his MVP-caliber season. There are only 32 starting QBs in the NFL, in a 12 team league owning 2 each gives you only the choice of 8 to pick from if you had to pick up another. Do yourself a favor; take a quality backup that doesn’t have the same bye as your starter instead of New England Patriot WR #4 on the depth chart in the 14th round.
10. Team Defenses are a joke.
This is another thing that I had previously known, but I have now officially made up my mind about: team defenses are a joke in fantasy. I owned the Denver Broncos in the 2015 season and they scored me a ton of points, one of the main reasons why I was able to make it to the championship in my fantasy league. Here’s the thing, I drafted them as the 10th defense in the draft, the 10th! The Minnesota Vikings were the #1 defense over the first 2 months of the season in 2016 and it wasn’t even close. They were drafted outside of the top 6 in all of my drafts, even dropped by an owner at one point in one of my leagues. Basically, don’t waste one of your better draft picks because you think you are smart by taking “the top defense in the league” 3 rounds before anyone else takes a another defense, because you’re not, that actually makes you look pretty stupid. Take your later round picks and try to take players who can change your season for the better and settle for a defense toward the middle of the pack. The best way I have found in deciding which defenses to take is to make a list of the best defenses in the NFL the season before, take note of who boosted their defenses though free agency (the NFL draft doesn’t impact defenses as much as it does offenses the following season) and select one who’s offense will be able to move the ball enough to keep the defense off the field for long periods of time. Those are the defenses that are going to force the opposing QBs to make mistakes and will score you points.
