Fantasy Football Podcast 2017 - 10 Things to Remember from 2016

And we always think, always, always, always. We think, well, I'm going to have this information from this year, and next year I'll remember all of it. And we never do. Every single year, I look back and I go, oh, man, that's right. I should have learned my lesson before. So here is my first thing that I want to remember going into next draft season. And it's super obvious. Quarterbacks matter to wide receivers. Like, duh, right? That's super obvious.

If you look at the top 10 wide receivers, right, your best fantasy options this year, six of them were drafted in the first two rounds. So that makes sense. It's like, okay, well, I got the best wide receivers. They were really good. But the four guys who were not drafted in those first two rounds, they were T.Y. Hilton, Devante Adams, Brandon Cooks, and Michael Thomas. What do they all have in common? They all have a Hall of Fame.

caliber. We're not talking a good quarterback. We're talking about Andrew Luck, Aaron Rogers. Wow, you're putting luck in the Hall of Fame? That's a little early for luck, but I get what you're saying. Luck will be a Hall of Fame. An elite quarterback. And Drew Breeze. And if you look at the guys who, if you look at the guys who, you know, were drafted high, higher than, you know, many of these guys who didn't pan out, Brandon Marshall and Demarius Thomas and DeAndre Hopkins, what do they have in common?

They had bad quarterback players. Yeah, you can also throw Alan Robinson in there. Exactly. So for me, when I'm going into next season, look, in the first two rounds, if, you know, Mike Evans, you can argue whether James Winston is good or not. He's great. He's top, top. But once I'm like round three and later, and if I'm looking at wide receivers, I'm going to be focusing on the quarterbacks. That's something I want to remember from this year. Absolutely.

Absolutely. And that's important because when you look at running backs, that correlation isn't as strong. You like winning teams. I know that strategy is one that I've taken in the past. Winning teams, good quarterbacks, good offenses. But you did have some running backs that performed on bad teams. You didn't really have that with wide receivers because you need a quarterback. They throw the ball to the wide receiver. Go figure. All right. Number two. Number two on the 10 things to remember. This one is a tough one for me. And it is remember.

that prototypical isn't always best even though it always feels best and i want to tell you what i mean by that tyreek hill tevin coleman okay michael thomas the rookie marius mariotta not prototypical richard matthews not prototypical there are a number of players that finish in the very top of their position near the top of their position and what do i mean by prototypical i mean

kind of how you would sketch out a perfect wide receiver one, a perfect wide receiver two, a perfect running back one, and a perfect running back two. For a running back, a lot of that times, a lot of the times that means I'm a bell cow. I'm the RB1 in the backfield. I get this many touches. For a wide receiver, it's okay, I'm the first target on my offense. I'm an every down player. But what I want to remember is that prototypical is not always best and that I can, when I see the signs,

on the field, in the stats, I can buy into some of these guys that are not prototypical. Tyreek Hill, finished 13th at the position. He wasn't even a normal starter. He got the end rounds. He was more of the, who am I thinking of up from St. Louis? Tavon? Yeah, he's more of the, you know, he played that Tavon type of role, yet had a massive impact on your fantasy team. Tavon Coleman.

I mean, he's the RB2, but he was on a prolific offense. I could have bought into Kevin Coleman and had a bunch of good weeks out of that. So basically, I'm not saying you draw up your fantasy roster with all of these guys, but allow for some out-of-the-box commitments to some of these players that are in that other category of non-prototypical. So I want to remember that for next year because we saw guys step out and do that. If I had bought into Michael Thomas earlier, that would have been a big benefit to my team, even though he's a rookie. So look for those opportunities.

Yeah, and we know that the rookies are kind of few and far between. We talk about a lot how our view of rookies has been skewed by that couple of years ago when several of them went off and they were in the top 24. But that doesn't mean there won't be one to two guys who break out their rookie year, especially in this new NFL. The thing that I want to remember and kind of... Number three. Number three point out here is the...

This year it's a no-duh kind of a situation. It's the impact that the super stud running back has on your team. If you had David Johnson, you had Elliott, your Levi-on-Bel, you know it, you felt it because these guys could win the week by themselves. There is a massive separation of the top running backs from the rest of the RB-1s. And I just want to emphasize this is the norm.

This is the normal thing. This is why I like to take running backs in the first round. So I broke down some numbers on the running backs and the wide receivers for the last four years and looking at the average, the mean, right, of what were running back ones putting up. And here's the last four years. 254 points. Last year, catastrophe, 207 points. But the two years before that, 247, 248.

So this year was right in line with those other three years. And the point that I want to emphasize on that is the standard deviation, right? I know we're getting a little mathematical on you, but I just want to point out that this is what the top end guys do for your team. The standard deviation for the top 12 running backs last year was almost 50 points. Two years ago when it was a crap fest was 30. Two years before that, though, 50 and 45.

that the top in running backs that you can only get in the first round, the first round, maybe the second round sometimes, like a Shady McCoy, he drops. I just want to reemphasize the impact that these guys, this is not, this is the trend. This is the norm. It led the two years ago. That was the fluke. Kind of like I'll talk about, or we will be talking about eventually, but how wide receivers this year was just, it was down. And I don't want you to overreact.

And I love me getting a running back one in the first and second round. Yeah, I can get behind that. I mean, it's just a matter of points. You want more points than your opponent. And if you look at the best running backs and the best wide receivers, the running backs score more points. Yeah, I just want to emphasize that this is the normal thing. Right. Last year was the abomination.

Yeah, the, yes. So, uh, for, for my next point, the thing that I want to remember this year, and this, this one is like a two year. Number four. Number four. This is like a number four year, uh, memory for me because it's taken a while to see this over, over a longer period of time where guys that I liked.

and I saw reason for liking them. You know, I look at a player and I go, I expect something big for him. Kyle Shanahan's coming. I think, you know, Matt Ryan's going to be big. And it doesn't happen. And I get it wrong, right? Last year I was, Matt Ryan was my number three ranked quarterback.

going into 2015 and people are like, well, that's crazy. And it was crazy because he didn't do well. Same with Travis Kelsey, who, you know, we loved the previous year. And Melvin Gordon, some of these guys that we looked, I looked, my analysis said there are reasons that I really like these guys. Well, what happened in 2015 with the Melvin Gordon's and Travis Kelsey's and Matt Ryan's is it didn't pan out. And so he's swung the pendulum too far to where these guys were buried.

and Melvin Gordon is, you know, not going to be able to do it. Matt Ryan is just Matt Ryan and these things. So for this coming season, I want to remember some of the guys that I liked, that I saw reason and rationale for them to step forward into a big role and not kill them, right? I'm still going to take into account it didn't happen for them. So, you know, a list of guys that, for me, John Brown.

Right. You know, he had injury concerns this year that came up. Eric Ebron didn't really step forward the way I wanted. You're saying these are all players that you were high on before the season. That I was high on before this season. Tyler Boyd. With reason. Alan Robinson. And I'm going to go ahead and duck behind the counter here and even throw out Kobe Fleener. Okay, these are guys that I liked coming into this year who did not pan out. And what I want to remember this year is I want to remember those guys and think I'm not going to, I'm not, you know, where I was last year. But I'm not throwing them out.

I still see reason that some of those guys can mounts back, and we might just be one year early on it because, you know, that happens every year. You could also call this kind of, you know, that visiting the fantasy doctor, so to speak, because these guys, they burn you. They wound, they puncture you in your soul. And then you want to throw them out because you just don't want to deal with the potential of them disappointing you again. You're garbage. You were garbage once, but as you, if you've watched the NFL for more than.

One year, you understand that sometimes guys have down seasons. They bounce back. So you got to get. And a lot of the times they represent value. Yes. Bandage up, man. Put some salve on the wounds. Some salve. All right. Before we grab number five on this list, I have number five for you. Before we do that, I do want to thank today's sponsor of the show helping us keep the lights on. It's blue apron. We've been talking all about them lately.

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I don't know how tempted people will be, but I just want to emphasize a couple points about these so-called throwaway positions. Don't be tempted to grab a kicker early. Okay, I know you might have had a dream about Justin Tucker the other night. And I understand. I dream about Justin Tucker. How'd Goskowski work out for everybody? He's an incredible kicker. But here's the deal. Six of the top 12 kickers in 2016 went undrafted. That's the exact same amount as 2015. What does that mean?

It means that you can be just fine without worrying about drafting a kicker or being tempted to draft a kicker. You know, what do you want to look for in a kicker? You want to look for high-powered offenses. That's what we saw from Matt Bryant. Matt Bryant had the best season as a kicker since Gaskowski did in 2011. That was because the offense was powerful. Look for high-powered offenses or out-of-this-world legs like Justin Tucker. Look, that's all you need to worry about. You're going to be just fine. Resist the temptation.

to move ahead and waste a flyer pick where you might have drafted a Michael Thomas last year to go grab a Stephen Goscowski because what's the point? Yeah. I grabbed Matt Bryant's in the middle of the year off of waivers. Yeah, and that's always going to happen. Unless it's like one or two special kickers of that year, they're all going to get dropped in their biweek anyway. So unless somebody rosters two of them. So that number. In which case, don't worry about that team anyways. Yeah. Oh, well. I mean, yep.

Yeah, I guess. I would have, I would have rostered Matt Bryan over the buyer's week. I did that with Justin Tucker, but there was a couple of guys. But I completely, yeah, completely agree. I mean, you just. And for what it's worth, defenses, like if you had to pick between one that you wanted to take a plunge on, defenses are slightly more predictable than a kicker will be. In fact, the past two years, three of the top five defenses were the same.