Dynasty Analysis
The league-altering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have now significantly hurt the IDP world of fantasy football, as a consensus LB2 in C.J. Mosley just became the biggest name on the defensive side of the football to take the NFL’s opt-out alternative to the 2020 season. Mosley joins Patriots’ linebacker Dont’a Hightower and safety Patrick Chung as the only rosterable IDPs to have opted out before the season, outside of deeper leagues. This is a monumental blow to the New York Jets’ defense as well.
The Chiefs selected Mahomes with the 10th overall pick in the 2017 NFL Draft as the long-term successor to incumbent starter Alex Smith. In 2017, Mahomes sat on the bench for almost the entire season, only playing Week 17 while Smith rested for the playoffs. After the 2017 season, the Chiefs decided to trade Smith to the Redskins, opening the door for Mahomes as the definite 2018 starting quarterback.
So let’s get this breakdown started with a little context. While I am plugging Matt Breida in at #3, here, I am prefacing it with the spoiler that his fellow backfield running-mate is grabbing that coveted #1 spot. Nonetheless, by investing pennies on the dollar for Breida, you could very well be stealing this year’s Austin Ekeler. Yes, I just said that. Do I have your attention, now? Okay, maybe Old Tom got a little bit carried away. However, I’m still going to hold to the belief that Breida offers you some real potential value.
In dynasty leagues, there’s always a delicate balance that owners must forge between dynasty value and winning championships. In the end, the goal is to win the most championships possible, as quickly as possible. However, sometimes, dynasty owners need to rebuild and trade away their veterans to return to contending status.
There’s nothing wrong with that approach, as I detailed in an article guiding dynasty owners in determining whether they’re contenders or not. Taking a mild step backward to take a big step forward is a healthy decision and often tough to make. With that said, I want to move away from individual dynasty teams and look more closely at how two specific groups of players have performed over time. It’s time for an in-depth breakdown of what rookies and older veterans do for your roster.
In this edition of Contender Clearance Rack, let’s talk about some running backs that could be the key to your title run in 2020. If you’d like to see the articles on quarterbacks and wide receivers, just click here.
For Old Tom, there are not many things more enjoyable than writing about athletes with fun nicknames. Enter, John “Smokey” Brown. Coming off the WR20 (PPR) finish, in his first go-around with the Buffalo Bills, Mr. Brown is poised to continue this level of production, at the very least, in 2020. When I look at the addition of Stefon Diggs, to this ball club, I continue to find myself liking Brown all the more. In my mind, Mr. Diggs is as talented as they come, and the clear-cut WR1 on this roster. For John Brown and his fantasy outlook, this is the best news he could have received. Think of it like this – for all of 2019, John Brown wore a nice set of Fragraim adjustable ankle weights.
Now, I want to jump into Sterling Shepard. I wrote a redraft breakdown about Shepard and the rest of the Giants in May as my first piece in that 32-part series. Outside of star running back Saquon Barkley, the Giants have four secondary offensive options in Darius Slayton, Evan Engram, Golden Tate, and Shepard. Back then, I recommended fading Shepard and saw Golden Tate as the best sleeper in the Giants offense. However, at this point, I’ve come around to Shepard as the best overall option at cost. Let’s get into why.
I recently took part in a 1QB, PPR redraft mock with eleven other members of the DFF crew. I was very happy with the results, so I’d like to break down my team and my decision-making process throughout the draft. I entered the draft planning to select RBs in the first three rounds before addressing any other positions. This strategy, which I broke down in great detail here, is one I’ve been implementing whenever possible this offseason. I expected to target WR in the middle rounds while waiting to get my QB and TE late, which worked out perfectly.
The 2020 rookie class was a loaded group that had dynasty owners’ attention for years. I’ve written about the class three separate times: before the NFL Draft, live during the NFL Draft, and about a month ago. I’ve included all the links to those previous series at the bottom of the page. However, in those articles, I focused on the rookies from a redraft perspective and how they will impact redraft rosters in 2020.
David Montgomery is a polarizing player for fantasy owners. By all accounts, from a production standpoint, Montgomery had a relatively successful inaugural season. His 1,074 yards from scrimmage and 7 TDs were similar to Le’Veon Bell’s rookie season in which he accounted for 1259 scrimmage yards and 8 TDs. The primary difference was that Bell caught 20 more passes as a rookie. But Monty (71.4%) had a higher catch percentage than Bell (68.2%). Montgomery gathered 889 rushing yards on 242 carries for a 3.7-yard average, while Bell in his rookie season mustered 860 rushing yards on 244 carries for a 3.5-yard average.
Jamal Adams has been traded to the Seattle Seahawks by the New York Jets! Wow, very exciting news that I’m sure everyone has heard about but I still felt the need to shout it out, so to speak, for all to hear. Which means I was definitely wrong when I wrote just a few days that I didn’t foresee a deal happening before the season. It did and it was a big one that included safety Bradley McDougald, a first-round pick in 2021 and 2022, and a third-round pick in 2021. The Seahawks got Jamal Adams and a fourth-round pick in 2022 in return. That’s established, we know the trade details, let’s get to the real reason we’re here, to try to see the future
Michael Gallup’s dynasty profile is an interesting story. He was drafted out of Colorado State in the 3rd round of the 2018 NFL Draft. A JUCO transfer from Butler Community college, Gallup played his junior and senior seasons at the FBS Division I level. Here he featured as a key piece of his team’s offense, earning a 97th percentile target share and 74th percentile dominator rating.
Gallup had a fairly underwhelming NFL rookie season, but in his second year of professional football, Gallup broke out for 1,100 yards and six scores for 66 receptions from 113 targets.
Recently, the @DFF_Redraft crew joined up for a redraft mock draft. The format was: start 1 QB, 2 RB, 3 WR, 1 TE, 2 Flex, 6 bench spots, and PPR scoring. It was the first time this offseason that we did a mock with three starting wide receivers, so I was curious to see how that small change affected my strategy and the other drafters’ strategy.
I wrote about Penny back in February, but a lot has changed since then. The Seahawks selected Penny out of San Diego State with the 27th overall pick in the 2018 NFL Draft. Coming into the NFL, Seattle expected Penny to fill their starting running back position. Dynasty drafters flocked to Penny, and some spent the 1.02 rookie pick on Penny, behind Saquon Barkley at the 1.01.
Every few weeks, the Dynasty Football Factory team gathers its sharpest minds to put together a no time limit mock draft. Throughout the year the type of mock changes quite a bit. At the beginning of the year, it’s a lot of dynasty startups and rookie drafts. Now that it’s summer, the focus switches to redraft.
In this article, it’s time to look at the dynasty dynamite canisters. These are the guys that can explode in value or blow up and become nothing. I expect each of these players to do exactly that by the end of 2020. There’s no in-between, as I don’t foresee a mediocre outcome. Most of these players are on their “last chance” for dynasty owners. But, each has the upside to be a top asset.
The likely Kansas City Chiefs starting running back, Damien Williams, has opted out for the 2020 NFL seasons due to COVID-19 concerns. He will sit the season out but who can blame him? The NFL players are just like you and me. They need to think of their families and themselves before anything else if that’s what they think is best. From a fantasy/dynasty football perspective, this feels like the first “opt-out” seriously impacting our little world and deserves some attention.
Entering the second year of his rookie contract with one of the top offensive play-callers as his head coach has left me drooling at the idea of what Sanders’ ceiling could be. I see his value continuing to trend in a positive direction over the coming years as he establishes himself as a top 10 asset in all of fantasy football. I have him as the RB6 in my dynasty rankings, which is slightly ahead of his current RB7 ADP.
Now, it’s time to take a different slant on the 2020 rookie class. I want to look at the class from a dynasty perspective, specifically looking at the busts. When we look back in a few years, what players will we regret having selected in our rookie drafts? It’s not too late to move away from these players, so perhaps you might want to consider selling them before their value drops. I’m not necessarily saying that any of these players will completely bust, but I am saying that they won’t live up to their draft cost.
Mock drafts are a place to let your wildest ideas play out in hopes of developing a new strategy for how to attack your 2020 drafts. In this 12-team redraft mock, I selected out of the 10th spot. I chose this spot because I typically don’t like to draft from the end. So, to be as prepared as possible, I wanted to see what kind of team I could come up with selecting at the end of this snake draft. Going into the draft I did not have a set plan on what I wanted to do other than to choose who I felt was the best available player on the board regardless of position. This process turned into a zero-RB approach, which I have never endorsed or tried previously. So join me as I venture into the always polarizing strategy of the zero-RB.
The defensive scheme change in Dallas could be quite shocking to Cowboys’ fans. Mike Nolan’s body of work combined with recent experience in the Saints’ hybrid system as a linebackers coach should yield a more varied and complex defense than fans have known. Not only will we miss preseason action to see a preview of this defense, but also beat writers are prohibited from reporting players’ alignments during training camp. 2020 will provide more surprises than ever for IDP aficionados and this in a time when defenses are ever more multiple. September 13, 2020, will be the most astonishing day of football in a long time!
After writing my redraft team breakdown series, I decided to start a new series as we approach the 2020 fantasy season. Every week, or probably more often than that, I’m going to bring you one fantasy sleeper representing a massive value in 2020 redraft leagues. In my first article, I wrote about Hayden Hurst and how he represents a value. Additionally, I detailed my methodology behind this series, so go back and read that piece if you haven’t yet! Let’s jump into my second player, Sony Michel. I’ve come a long way on Michel since I buried him in my “Dead to Me” series. Well, that isn’t entirely true, but let’s get into exactly how I feel about Michel since it’s a complicated story.
Everyone wants the hot new thing. As kids, we all wanted the brand new toy for Christmas and turned our noses up at the pairs of socks we sometimes got instead. Now that we are adults we want the cool new sports car instead of the pre-owned Honda. It’s the same in fantasy football. Everybody wants to be the guy who drafts the young running back who vaults himself into the first round next year. We all target those third-year wide receivers looking for that elusive breakout. But you know what? Those socks are a good present. They get the job done and you use them all the time. That pre-owned Honda is reliable and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to maintain. You can find similar values every year in fantasy football. No one in your draft room will let out a sigh of relief when you take one of these guys, but they’ll get the job done for you. These are the used cars and Christmas socks of the 2020 fantasy season. I present to you 2020 All-Uglies.
Warring fits the specifications of a fantasy football “sleeper” candidate like a glove. He has the willingness and competitiveness to handle run-blocking duties, and the talent to line up in the slot. Versatility is valuable in the NFL. If Warring wins the primary TE job for the Texans, he should be capable of staying on the field for the majority of the snaps. Having just turned 23 this offseason, any role Kahale carves out this coming season should be maintained, with the potential for growth into more opportunities, provided he stays healthy. He can be acquired late in drafts or for very minimal assets via trade in most dynasty leagues, and may even be available on waivers in a few.
It never ceases to amaze me that the majority of people will continue to buy “brand names” items, regardless of the price. This holds true in nearly all facets of society and even extends to fantasy football. Jamison Crowder is not a brand name item. Crowder played in all 16 games last season, starting 12. He led the Jets in targets (122), catches (78), receiving yards (833), and receiving touchdowns (6). Crowder was also quarterback Sam Darnold’s favorite receiver and served as his reliable safety net time and time again.