Fantasy football strategy, rankings, and podcasts

We're a quarter of the way through the season and on the eve of Week 4, we're coming up on a Thursday night matchup that looks like it can be competitive (for a change). This week also features the return of London football. While I'm not a huge fan of making teams break up their routine with the shock of a trip across five time zones, I do like the fourth game slot on Sundays. So this week, don't forget that the Eagles and Packers are on bye (ouch!) and to check your lineup on Thursday night and early Sunday morning. For more advice for this week, check out this week's podcast, airing live every Tuesday night!

Listen to the Fantasy Football Podcast, 9/27/16: Week 4 Trends & Truths

Welcome to Statistically (in)Significant, the place to find great stats that probably only matter at the water cooler (or bar). Each week I'll dig through the stats of the week gone by and deliver you some choice conversation starters.

157 Yards

Thursday night, David Johnson set the season high for rushing yards with a 157 yard, 2 TD performance - adding 3 catches for 28 yards. Johnson was the focus of the offense with Carson Palmer out, running the ball 27 times. The Cardinals were able to roll over the 49ers and start to right the ship. They'll get 11 days to recover before playing next Monday night, so look for Palmer to be back and the team to continue to improve.

3 Punt Return TDs

I complained after two weeks that we weren't getting enough returns. Things have started to average out, but the totals are still below where they should be. This week, Red Zone watchers were treated to three punt return TDs in the first half of the noon games. The Dolphins, Redskins and Vikings all rewarded their fantasy owners (probably just Vikings owners out there) with a return TD. This brings us to 7 of the most exciting plays in football we've seen this year.

406 Yards

The Tom Brady Middle Finger Tour 2016 kicked off with a bang in Cleveland. Brady lead the week in passing yardage, getting his 8th career game over 400 yards. This game also featured the proper 2016 return of Rob Gronkowski, going over 100 yards, though Gronk owners squirmed while Martellus Bennett got 3 TD's. The Bengals are the next victim on Brady's list, as he gets some good home cookin' against a team that just can't catch a break.

81 Years

The two top kickers this week have a total of 81 years between them, and they are outperforming all of their younger counterparts. Adam Vinatieri was the first kicker to pass the 20 point mark, going 5/5 with 2-50+ yarders and tacking on an extra point as well. Meanwhile, Sebastian Janikowski went 4/5 after having only 4 attempts through the first 4 weeks. Congrats gentlemen, you're the best fantasy kickers this week.

5-0

The Minnesota Vikings are the last undefeated team in the 2016 season. This is a team that has replaced it's starting QB before the season started, lost its hall of fame running back, yet they're just rolling over everyone in the NFC. Minnesota is on bye for week 6 and has a big matchup against the Eagles coming off the bye. The Bears and Lions in the following weeks means that at least a 7-1 start is all but wrapped up for the Vikings.

This week at drinkfive we take a look at expectations versus reality. Specifically, we will take a look at the top 10 ADP players for each position and where they sit after 12 weeks of the NFL season. We’ll also check out the guys who made it into the top 10 and weren’t drafted there. We like to check in with this every year so that you can get an idea of which way positions are trending over a larger time scale. We also like to know how volatile a position is, which can certainly influence whether or not you decide to spend a high draft pick on someone.

Quarterbacks

Starting at the top of the QB chart, we see right away that Cam Newton is only the 15^th best QB this season. He’s not so bad that you have benched him, which may be worse, considering there’s guys who sit in the top 10 that are generally free agents. Here’s our list of the guys in question:

The QB position, as a whole, is not nearly as consistent as you would assume. Only 4 of the top 10 ADP players are actually in the top 10. They don’t fall off, however, like other positions. We do see that the lowest current rank is 22, Carson Palmer, who had an ADP of 7 – not someone you were betting the house on. Cam Newton or Russell Wilson are the losers of the draft at the QB position this season, and they’re still playing and have just been mild disappointments.

As usual, going with some of the more tried and true names like Rodgers, Brees and Brady has worked out. Tom Brady may have the 22^nd most points overall, but since he missed 4 games, he is averaging the 3^rd most points on average for QB’s, which is perfectly acceptable.

The best value at the position is found in the group of players that were drafted from 12-21. In this group, 6 of them are in the top 10. Overall ADP starts at 100 for Carr, through 152 for Prescott. This means that late in the draft you had plenty of chances to grab a guy, or even take a flier, on someone who would wind up in the top 10. Even with Brady’s average numbers taken into account, it’s still almost never worth drafting a QB early – something we spout all the time. The numbers agree!

Running Backs

The RB position is going to be more risky, just by the nature of the position. Players are more likely to be injured when compared to almost any position, and they’re also more likely to be replaced for ineffective play. Running backs also have a short period of time where they are at their peak (Frank Gore not included), so carrying a performance over year to year can be sketchy. Here’s the way the RBs shake out:

As you can see, unlike the QB position, we have guys who are just gone for the season. This can be both good and bad – good because you replace them and move on with another player (possibly a handcuff), but bad because it’s a wasted early round pick. It is reassuring to see that of the players that did stay healthy, you’re only really burned by taking Todd Gurley. This year, RBs at the top have been very consistent – 5 of the 7 top drafted RBs that are still playing are in the top 10, with Lamar Miller just outside at 13.

It’s a little more difficult to nail down a sweet spot to be drafting RBs. Having a top guy is probably more important than it has been in past years, if only because they’re doing so well this season. With only a 40% failure rate (face it, Todd Gurley is a failure as a #1 pick), taking a risk on a top 10 RB was worth it this season. Only picking up guys in later rounds would not be advisable, since only 2 RBs outside of the top 20 ADP are now top 10 players.

Wide Receivers

Wide Receivers are the players that Dave and I are always going on and on about in preseason podcasts. We frequently recommend taking several at the top of the draft, if only because they tend to be less prone to injury than the other fantasy positions, and because they generally have a better chance to be consistent. Let’s see how we did this year:

While perhaps not the absolute model of consistency, 6 of the 10 WRs that were drafted in the top 10 are still in the top 10 of points. Dez Bryant was injured for many games and is currently 12^th in points per game. Really, Deandre Hopkins is the only player drafted in the top 10 that didn’t deserve to start on your team this season. This is why we stress drafting WR’s early.

If you had drafted 2 or 3 WRs to start your draft, you likely wound up with at least two guys in the top 10, and chances are they are still in the top 10. Again, we see that no players have been lost to season ending injury, though A.J. Green may be. Rounding out our top 10 point scorers are two guys that basically came out of nowhere – Adams and Pryor were so low that they went undrafted in most leagues. Michael Thomas was a semi-popular rookie flier, but he still wasn’t picked until the end of most drafts.

With these results, we will be confidently recommending drafting a bunch of WR’s high again next year. Obviously, they won’t all hit, but the chances of you having your high draft picks making a difference on your team late in the year is far higher if you load up on early round wide receivers.

Tight Ends

This is perhaps the position with the most volatility and is the hardest to predict, solely because there are only about 5 reliable tight ends in the league at any given time. There’s only a couple of guys who you wouldn’t consider replacing for a streaming option every week – Gronk, Walker, Olson, Reed, Graham and Kelce. Let’s see where they fall in our chart:

What we see is that about half of the players drafted in the top 10 actually landed there. The other half, aside from Coby Fleener, are barely worth rostering on a weekly basis (streaming options only). This is middle of the road when compared to other positions, not too great, but not bad either. All of the top 6 players drafted are in the top 11 of scoring. Gronk’s spot looks worse than it is – he got all of his points in only 5 games, so hopefully you had someone else in the other times.

Similar to other positions, TEs are not as injury prone as a RB, so taking the top of the draft class isn’t a huge risk. Overall, this has been a down year for TEs, with the high scorer topping out at only 102. We’re unlikely to have anyone reach the 180+ territory to end the season. I would wager that the average total score for the top 10 finishers this season will be far below the results of the past two years.

What can we learn from this? Well, again, the sweet spot for drafting TEs seems to only lie at the very top of their list. If you are not getting good value on someone during the draft, you will likely need to take a later round flier (again, those are all over) and pay attention to streaming options on a weekly basis.

Welcome to Statistically (in)Significant, the place to find great stats that probably only matter at the water cooler (or bar). Each week I'll dig through the stats of the week gone by and deliver you some choice conversation starters.

30.24 Points

Through Sunday, Joe Flacco leads all players with 30.24 points in Week 13, after a monster 381 yard, 4 TD performance against the Dolphins. It's only the third time he's gone over 300 yards, and only the second time he's thrown for more than 2 TDs all season, so you probably didn't have him in your lineup. Owned in 23% of leagues, he's been a regular face on our waiver wire article, but I don't think anyone saw this game coming from him. This is the type of performance that he was signed for - 'member when Flacco was the highest paid player in the league? I 'member. I suppose he's not paid for big numbers - he's paid to keep his team in first place, which they are.

175 Yards from Scrimmage

David Johnson has gone over 100 yards from scrimmage in each of his 12 games this season and is making a strong MVP argument. This remarkable streak seems to really just be the norm for him - last season 4 of his last 5 games were over 100 yards from scrimmage as well. This season, he's the 4th highest scoring player in fantasy, and it's hard for anyone other than QBs to top that list. Last year, the top 16 players were QBs, then came Antonio Brown. Johnson is even pulling away from Ezekiel Elliott to dominate the RB position all by himself. So far, he has 1709 yards from scrimmage and 15 touchdowns and you still have 3 more games with him in the fantasy playoffs. Johnson can easily eclipse the 300 point mark this season.

4 Passing Yards

Well, we don't get all of them right. On Sunday, Colin Kaepernick had just 4 passing yards and was benched in the second half after being just absolutely awful. I didn't see this coming, and I'm sure some around these parts would like to attribute it to "Bear Weather", but really, the 49ers are just that bad, Kaepernick included. Players that always rely on garbage time to score their points aren't always going to be given that opportunity, and I suppose that's something worth remembering when going hunting for replacement QBs.

2 Point Return

Eric Berry found a new way to win a game in Atlanta on Sunday - the Pick-Two. I suppose we'll have to work on that name, it doesn't roll off the tongue like a pick-six, which he also had earlier in the game. This is the second time that I've seen a lead change in the 4th quarter of a game as the result of a return for two points. DEN-NO had this happen when the Broncos blocked an extra point attempt and returned it for two to win the game 25-23. The Chiefs are now 9-3 and have only lost to the Steelers, Texans and Buccaneers, all quality teams this season. Suddenly I need to stop complaining about Thursday Night Football, since we got the Cowboys-Vikings last week and the Raiders-Chiefs this week. I'll take it!

60 Straight Home Games

Sunday marked the end of Drew Brees's streak of 60 straight home games where he threw a passing touchdown. In an era where Brady and Manning will be remembered as bigger names, Rodgers as the better "pure QB", it's still possible that Brees winds up as a more prolific passer than all of them. He is, yet again, leading the league in completion percentage, passing yards, touchdowns and passing attempts. He's also the active career leader in all of those categories. You're freaking awesome, Drew. I just wish you had better teams, like those other three guys. On a side note, the Saints somehow became the first team this season NOT to lead the Detroit Lions in the 4th quarter.