Shawn Siegele looks at four potentially undervalued foundation backs and judges whether human or machine is right.
One of my favorite things about the RotoViz tools is the way they allow you to ask different questions and come at player value from different angles. When we use the Projection Machine, we can use the data on team tendencies, player histories, and teammate competition to craft accurate projections. When we use the Win the Flex tool, we get a feel for the number of points implied by ADP, which gives us a chance to exploit positional advantages in specific areas of the draft. By using the Range of Outcomes tool, we can calibrate our expectations for how players with a certain profile have performed in subsequent years.
As Ben Gretch and I have discussed in detail on Stealing Bananas, approaching your drafts from a single perspective will leave you overconfident in individual scenarios and building teams that chase a narrow path to victory.
In the Draft Tactics series, we’ve used the combination of the ROO and WTF to build a dominant roster from poor draft slots. In the Discount Player Series, we’ve used Expected Points from the RotoViz Screener and Weekly Stat Explorer to find far cheaper options for Austin Ekeler and Robert Woods.
Today we’ll be asking the question: Are the four foundation backs recommended by the ROO good targets for our 2021 drafts? We’ll break down the insights from history and compare them to team-level concerns that might cause drafters to shy away. Getting even a small discount on your RB1 can be the difference between winning and losing in fantasy.
