Zero RB quietly posted a 14% win rate in 2018. Meanwhile, RBs drafted in Rounds 3 and 4 won at absurdly low rates and the position accounted for the seven worst individual-player win rates of anyone drafted in the first four rounds. The simple solution is to just avoid drafting RBs in that area. But what if you don’t want the simple solution? If we…...

Most fantasy analysis is devoted to sorting the order of players likely to have an immediate impact, but every year there are a handful of overlooked deep sleepers who emerge to fill a starting role in redraft. Last year, it was guys like Phillip Lindsay and James Conner at running back. Deep sleepers at WR are a little harder to find, but we did tell you to watch out for Curtis Samuel,…...

Last season, Nick Chubb’s ADP fell consistently throughout draft season as it became clear that Carlos Hyde was going to begin the season as the starter. Chubb wasn’t even the second Cleveland running back selected, as drafters assumed the Browns would continue to deploy their ace receiving back, Duke Johnson. Chubb appeared to get lucky. Cleveland eventually traded Hyde, and Chubb performed well enough to…...

Last year I found that while it may be difficult to project touchdowns year-over-year, touchdowns usually regress to the mean based on a wide receiver’s targets and receiving yards. Most analysts just use receiving yards to regress touchdowns, so finding that there is signal with adding targets was novel.((And it was interesting to see that targets are actually negatively correlated with touchdowns, given the same…...

In part 1 of this series, we concluded that rookies drafted outside of Round 3 of the NFL draft have very low odds of being “usable” in redraft leagues. In the overwhelming majority of cases, they should be avoided on draft day. As a reminder, a usable player is one who scored 160 or more PPR points over the course of their rookie season. Even…...

From 2001 to 2018, 34 wide receivers hit 200 points for the first time. If you think a rate of almost two a year is impressive, consider this: Since 2010, 22 WRs have broken out during their second years, more than any other breakout class has managed during the entire 18-year window. While fantasy owners used to believe in the third-year WR breakout, savvy owners…...

Raise your hand if your fantasy teams have been victimized by Derrick Henry. Now, take a quick glance around the Twitter-verse. Most hands are up. In 2018 in particular, your shares of Henry hit you hard. You probably drafted him with your third-round pick only to fall victim to inconsistent usage that all but killed your fantasy football team. I’m here to state my last…...

Ronald Jones’ rookie season was not good. It’s hard to express just how bad it wa … Oops, no I’ve got it. His rookie season was worse than the final season of Game of Thrones. It was worse than the series finale of Dexter. It was worse than those final 30 minutes of Battlestar Galactica. It was worse than that last scene in Lost …....