One of the factors in determining Pickens’s future role will be determining how sustainable his style of play will be. Will Pickens be a solid fantasy contributor in 2023? Or will he take a step back as the Steelers look to re-tool their receiving corps?
This is Back to the Future: Looking Back at Past RB1s! How can the past tell us what might happen in the future? What qualities should fantasy gamers be on the lookout for as we try to identify the RB1 in fantasy football for 2023?
Elite wide receiver tandems in the NFL boast multiple Alpha receivers, facilitated by the team’s investment in the position. Which tandems will prove the most valuable for fantasy football? What members of each duo should we be drafting in 2023?
This will be the last week I take a league-wide view of NFL backfields in this column. With the playoffs approaching and trade deadlines largely passed, the utility of analyzing players not already on your team, and not available on the waiver wire reduces significantly. That’s why, instead of focusing on usage shifts in backfields generally, I want to instead focus on the best opportunities for playoff running back stashes.
If not for Elliott’s contract, and Jerry Jones’s unwillingness to admit a mistake, Pollard would be Dallas’s lead back. To Elliott’s dismay, he sat out Week 8 against the run sieve known as the Chicago Bears while Pollard exploded for 131 rushing yards and three scores on just 14 carries. That’s 9.4 Yards per Carry, folks. Elliott has never put up 9.4 Yards per Carry in 99 career regular-season or playoff starts. In the 19 career games, when Pollard has been given 10 or more carries, he averages 5.9 Yards per Carry. Only two backs this year, Khalil Herbert and Travis Etienne, are averaging more. Only Rashaad Penny did better last year.
Drafting is paramount in seasonal leagues. Leagues can be lost messing up the early portion of the draft, but they are definitely won finding the players later that outperform their draft prices. Here are players that I would consider ADP Smashers in 2022 according to their Underdog ADP’s.
In an earlier article, we set out to understand the structural differences between ADP in Underdog best ball drafts and FFWC high stakes drafts. Today, we take the next step and look at players whose ADPs differ from these trends and create opportunities for arbitrage between the two sites.
What we define as “player velocity” in this study is how much a player’s ADP changed from one season to the next. In 2021, Jonathan Taylor reached high speed. Fantasy gamers were selecting him in round three his rookie season (2020). He then shot up into the late first round in 2021 drafts. Taylor finished RB1 in half-PPR points per game (minimum twelve games played) in 2021.
However, today we want to increase our odds of that winning combination beyond leaving it to random chance. Just as we know Bob and Sandy are better apart than together, we can increase our odds by avoiding certain combinations and prioritizing others. In the final part of my best ball strategy series, we talk roster constructions. As best ball summer reaches its close, I will discuss introductory elements of construction which also apply to your managed leagues, as well as include notes on how to take advantage of your “late” draft time in best ball.
Let’s talk about some regression candidates for 2022 from each position in fantasy football. Not all regression is negative. Analytical metrics can call for positive regression aka the regression fantasy managers want to see from their players. Okay, I have mentioned the word ‘regression’ enough (just did it again). Let’s check out some candidates that could be affected for the 2022 season.
