Draft Strategy

Some fantasy players love to know what they have before they draft a player. “Have to see it first drafters” are organized and rule-based. They like to draft experienced players with large NFL sample sizes. “Look how they did last year! This is what I am expecting again this year!” The problem with this drafting style is that it rarely produces the sort of build that can truly dominate your opponents. Often this style of drafting leads to chasing old scores and drafting players who have already played their best seasons as a pro. This limits the unknown upside that lies with players who are on the verge of breaking out.  

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.

Last season, Cooper Kupp had one of the most productive WR seasons ever. He led the league in receptions (145), TD receptions (16), and receiving yards (1947). By simply drafting Kupp, fantasy managers gave themselves a chance at winning their league titles. But what gets lost in the shuffle is Kupp was being drafted a few spots behind his teammate in Robert Woods. Woods did not lead managers to fantasy titles, to say the least. 

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.

Rookie Draft Season for a lot of leagues has come and gone, but I still have several leagues of my own that have not yet drafted.  This is our first look at a superflex rookie mock draft for August 2022.  I will give my analysis for each round and hopefully you can start to see where fantasy players are valuing these rookies.

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.

Johnson reminds me a lot of Allen Robinson from a year ago. Remember when Andy Dalton and rookie Justin Fields were the best quarterbacks Robinson was going to play with? Mitchell Trubisky, ironically now teammates with Johnson, was hardly a world beater with the Bears, but he and Robinson definitely had a healthy connection.

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.

We now have over one month of data from FFWC $350 Player Profiler Championship drafts. Here are some of the ADP Risers, or players that have moved up the most.  (July 3rd to August 3rd)

This article will attempt to identify the WR targets fantasy gamers would need to excel after an RB heavy start. In a format like the FFWC, starting with three straight RBs and a TE or four straight running backs is possible…..as long as we select the right players.