adam trautman

Fantasy Stock Up, Stock Down: New Orleans Saints

It takes tight ends a while to adjust to the NFL game. Most excel as run-blockers before they see substantial growth in production as pass-catchers. For instance, Dalton Schultz didn’t surpass 600 receiving yards in a season until his third year in the league (2020), and he countered that with a TE3 finish last season (fourth year) in PPR formats. Dawson Knox is another prime example here. During his first two seasons in the league, he never topped 400 receiving yards, 30 receptions, or three receiving touchdowns. His best finish was as the TE32 before last season’s TE11 finish. Those are just a few examples, but the point is that you shouldn’t give up on Trautman just yet. He’s entering his third season as a pro with a better supporting cast surrounding him and a quarterback he’s somewhat familiar with. 

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Redraft: Week 2 Buy/Sell

Hello, fellow fantasy managers. I am Chris Miles, The Draft Director, and in this series of articles, I will be helping you determine what players value you should be taking advantage of each week in your Redraft league. If someone’s value is too high I might tell you to sell or if I think their value will decrease soon he could also be a sell. I will give my reasoning for why each player falls in a certain category. I will attempt to have the format consistently be a buy and sell for each position but that may increase or decrease depending on the week.

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Paul’s Picks: Week 1

Week 1 has finally arrived. You’ve waited months for this moment, and now it’s time to set your lineup and get the fantasy season started with a 1 in the win column. Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered with “Paul’s Picks.” Each and every week, I’ll be bringing you names at every position that I believe will exceed expectations or fall flat. So, without further ado, let’s get into my picks for Week 1.

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Kickoff Countdown: 4 Tight Ends Who Should Exceed Expectations

With just four days to go until kickoff, I’ll be discussing the top four under-the-radar tight end breakout candidates. This list is comprised of the tight ends who you can get almost for free in your draft who should exceed expectations. I’ve also included one additional name for the dynasty future!

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2021 Dynasty Profile: Harrison Bryant

Harrison Bryant was a diamond in the rough among one of the most underwhelming tight end draft classes in some time. Although Bryant was ranked outside the top five prospects in the class for many, he was by far the most productive receiving tight end in his final season of college football compared to the likes of Cole Kmet and Adam Trautman. He finishes his senior year at FAU with 65 receptions for 1,004 yards and seven touchdowns, good for a 19.9% team target share. He was a focal point of FAU’s offense considering his 26.2 (81st percentile) college dominator rating but we can look to the yards per team pass attempt (YTMPA) metric to further highlight his importance to the team. He finished 2019 at the top of the class with 2.0 YTMPA, a historically difficult threshold to reach.

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Kickoff Countdown Day 9: 9 Hardest Players to Project

Welcome to the fourth entry in our Kickoff Countdown series, counting down the days until we can once again sit and watch some real football! As you already know, each article has a numeric theme, which also counts down as each day is ticked off the calendar. In this piece, I’ll be discussing the nine (see the theme?) players that I had the toughest time projecting and what I ultimately expect out of them this season. Not only is it a lot of fun to look at some realistic outcomes for these players, but looking at these projections can also help you to confidently select one player over another when you are on the clock, even if those two players appear almost indistinguishable at first glance. So, without further ado, I give you my nine hardest players to project for the 2021 season.

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DFF Redraft League: Drafting from the Six Spot

Last weekend DFF organized a 14 team redraft league comprised solely of DFF writers/editors as owners. In this piece, I will talk about how I prepared for the draft, got my strategy together, and actually navigated the live draft. Hopefully, this will give you some insight on not only the players I took but also the methods I used to prepare.

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Michael Thomas: Making Sense of His Injury Timeline

As @DFF_Joemem mentioned in his rapid reaction article, we got the news that Michael Thomas underwent a second ankle surgery in June and likely won’t be ready to go to start the NFL season for the New Orleans Saints. This would be his second ankle surgery of the off-season as he already had surgery in January following the NFL season after sustaining a high-ankle sprain in Week 1 of the 2020 season. The above is what we know for certain. What we don’t know is what exactly transpired this off-season, what exact surgeries Thomas had, and why he waited so long to have his surgery, putting his 2021 season in serious doubt. But, we can begin to put together a rough outline given his injury timeline that can help fantasy owners decide what to do with Thomas for both redraft and dynasty. 

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Rapid Reaction: Michael Thomas’ Ankle

Thomas injured his ankle twice during the regular season last year and was expected to undergo surgery on it as early as January of 2021. Unfortunately for his team, it looks like now he won’t be looking 100% until we hit the ⅓ mark of the season. The Saints schedule has a bye Week 6 before they head into a Monday Night Football matchup against the division-rival Seahawks in Week 7. Given the expected timeline, it’s hard for me to imagine the Saints rushing him back there for the week 5 game against WFT at about the 3 to 3.5-month mark given the uncertainty of when the surgery actually occurred in June. Expecting a push for a Week 7 return makes the most sense when projecting this early on.

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Fantasy Stock Up, Stock Down: NFC South

Tampa Bay made it apparent that they wanted to retain Brady’s pass-catchers by re-signing both Antonio Brown and Chris Godwin. Add them to the mix of Mike Evans, Scotty Miller, Rob Gronkowski, and Cameron Brate, and this group may be the deepest receiving crew in the league. To add more fire to the mix, O.J. Howard will come into the 2021 season fully healthy again. Brady finished as the QB8 last season, but most of his damage came in the second half of the season. From Weeks 7 and 17, he served as the QB6, but what’s more impressive is that he finished as the QB2 during the last three weeks of the season. Why is that the more impressive part? Maybe it’s because those last three weeks are typically the FANTASY PLAYOFFS!

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Offseason Preparation: Hidden Gems

Only a few contenders are left in leagues vying for the championship, but regardless of the position your dynasty team is in, the constant drive to improve your team should never end even if the season is coming to a close. Each year, in each league some players stop paying attention as soon as they miss the playoffs, and they wonder why they lose year after year. The NFL doesn’t stop just because you didn’t make it to your fantasy football playoffs.

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Week 14 Storylines

I love writing these storyline pieces. I will go through some of the games and discuss one dynasty-relevant storyline per team that I’m excited to see. I won’t cover every game, as I don’t feel like there’s necessarily an exciting storyline to discuss for every team. However, I’ll bring you my best insights from the games I select each week.

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Devin Asiasi

Is Devin Asiasi a TE1?

The Patriots took Devin Asiasi in the 3rd round of this year’s draft. He was the second tight end taken, coming off the board in front of the likes of Adam Trautman and Harrison Bryant, both of whom had higher draft grades, according to NFL.com. However, it is not surprising to see the Patriots deviate from the status quo, and Asiasi brings some nice traits as a rookie tight end (even if they aren’t immediately apparent).

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Redraft Team Focus: New Orleans Saints

I’ll split up the fantasy assets into three categories: high-end assets, usable contributors, and dart throws. I’ll reference my PPR redraft rankings at the time of writing, which are here. If you want to read my previous work in this series, the full list with links is at the bottom of the article. Let’s jump into the Saints.

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