Fantasy Football Daily - 2023 Fantasy Key Takeaways - Scott Barrett and Ryan Heath

Episode Date: February 19, 2024

Scott Barrett brings in Ryan Heath to go over one of Ryan's most recent articles—2023 Fantasy Football Key Takeaways. Covering the micro to macro. This podcast is a must-listen for your fantasy football off-season. They go over every position, Hits, misses, processes, things to identify, and so much more. For Ryan's articles, check the link in the description. https://www.fantasypoints.com/nfl/series/2024/statistically-significant#/ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fantasy-points-podcast/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's time for the Fantasy Points podcast brought to you by FantasyPoint.com. Top level fantasy football and NFL betting analysis from every perspective and angle, from numbers to the film room with a single goal to help you score more fantasy points. Ladies and gentlemen, you are listening to the Fantasy Points podcast. I'm your host today, Scott Barrett, joined by my protege, Ryan Heath, who's just been absolutely crushing it. Probably my favorite writer in the space today, joined us last year and has just been doing an incredible job. And so we're joining you today after the Super Bowl and something I do every year right around the Super Bowl is I open up a notebook I have. I keep a notebook.

During like peak draft season around June, July, August, I start recording my thoughts, my observations, my takes, my reasoning behind those takes, the takes I struggled with, the reasoning behind why I struggle with those takes. And then it's week one. And I forget about the notebook until around the Super Bowl, I pull it back out and I go back and I look at everything I'd written down, my thought processes, and most importantly, my takes, the rankings I had. And I look back and I self-flagulgulate. I see what I got wrong. And I sort of beat myself up over it. But it's all with a good purpose to try and get better, to try and learn from this. So that my rankings the next year, are going to be a little bit better.

And so a lot of this I do, I look at it on the micro level. It's like, well, I had this player above this one. I got that wrong. Was that good process, bad results? Was that just bad process, bad results? Was an injury? Did I just get unlucky? And so I have all those micro takeaways.

And then I'll look for overarching macro takeaways. And I'll turn that into an article, at least I typically do. Except this time, I handed the reins over to Ryan Heath. I helped a little bit, but really only a little bit. article was a masterpiece. It was flawless, absolutely perfect. Loved it. Check it out. It's on FantasyPoint.com. 2023 fantasy football key takeaways. So we're going to talk about that today. Also, Ryan, very productive, prolific. Put out another article today, statistically significant, fantasy points per dropback. Those of you who remember me from the PFF days back when I used to do

metrics that matter. Ryan picked up the torch with that. He's doing something very similar. We're calling it statistically significant where we're looking at all of the best stats in the fantasy points data suite. Who are the league leaders in fantasy points per drop back last year? Why should we care about this stat? You say it's predictive. Prove it. Are there any ADP values based on looking at this stat, et cetera?

Again, another flawless, awesome article. Highly recommend you check that out. But today we're talking about the big key takeaways from the 2023 season and learning, hopefully some key lessons here, what some things maybe we got wrong, some trends that we're seeing that will be very applicable for your 2020. 24 drafts, which if you are a bestball fan, you know, bestball drafts are going on right now. Anyway, that was a lengthy

introduction. Ryan Heath, how are you doing? I'm doing great. I'm feeling great after getting all those compliments, all that gas from you, Scott. Yeah, I don't, I don't take compliments well, but it's all very appreciated to... Well, it was well, deserved, yeah. Yeah, thank you.

You've become like one of my favorite people on the planet, just because I hate editing articles, but I get yours and it's such a joy because it's so close to perfect. And then after a short back and forth, it just becomes one of my favorite articles I've ever read. Man, yeah, I remember when you would first start editing my articles. I'd be like, oh, man, like there's so much here.

Like, this is going to take me hours just to dig through all of these nitpicks that this freaking guy is making me fix. But, yeah, I mean, I've also really come to enjoy the. process because I know you're going to pick up on anything that I didn't or anything that can be better. So it just makes it a better read, a better experience makes me feel better about putting it out. And yeah, like I have you to think for that. So yeah, seriously. Yeah, well, I appreciate you being so receptive to it. I feel like most people aren't going to be excited to go back into this article and spend another two hours with it. And then second round of

feedback another two hours with it. But this has been such a pleasure for me where like, you know, I'm not very critical of anything you're writing. It really just becomes like, hey, let's start a conversation. This is interesting. Do we want to explore this further? Have you considered this? What do you think about that? And that's really kind of what we did in this article talking about your key takeaways. And we got to walk it down the way you had lined out in this piece. He started off with running backs, which, you know, I think is an important position to start with. As I always wrote in an anatomy of a league winner, the running back position historically far and away, the most important, the most valuable position due to scarcity,

high-end production, among other things. But in anatomy, I did say that we saw a trend. I was calling it the death of the bell cow. I was seeing, you know, historically you want to be drafting running backs in those first two rounds. That's where the league winners reside. But I hated early round running back ADP heading into this season. I was really on board with the zero-rb approach. That I guess was one of the macro things I got right with my rankings this past season. So yeah, let's talk about what historically was the most important position.

Maybe it wasn't this past year. And what you found to be the key takeaways from diving into the run. running back position. Yeah. So as you kind of hinted at, historically, it has always been the case that most of like the best high-end fantasy running backs that are available that are going to win you leagues were being drafted in the early rounds. That has kind of always been the rule of thumb. Going back even as long as I've been playing fantasy, that was always like the base level of get your running backs early. But in the last two, Two years and especially last year, we've seen that change a lot.

If you went with like a running back heavy strategy through the first three rounds of your draft this past year, you probably lost unless you took exactly Christian McCaffrey and your draft position was exactly in like the top three or four where you could get him. Basically, every other league winning player outside of Christian McCaffrey in the early rounds was either at QB or. or at wide receiver. That's been a really big change. As you said, the reason for that is there are just so few all-purpose bell cow RBs nowadays. I think we try to force it a little bit with it just looking at ADP. There's a lot of guys we wish could do that, but it is working out less and less in practice. Yeah. Do you have any theories on why that might be the case? I would say there's a couple things going on here.

One is that league-wide teams are just targeting running backs less. And this has been a trend for the last several years. Like running back target shares peaked around like 2017, 2018, and have kind of only been going downhill since. Whether you want to say that this is because of defenses shifting their coverages, maybe teams just figuring out that it's going to give you better results to throw to a wide receiver or a tight end that is more often actually trained to catch a football than it is a running back. Or I think the biggest reason is we kind of have a talent problem at the running back position

right now. In 2017, we had that historic rookie running back class that was like all of Christian McCaffrey, Joe Mixon, Dalvin Cook, Aaron Jones, Austin Ecclinson. Alvin Camara, James Connor, Kareem Hunt, even Leonard Fournett, Chris Carson was relevant for a few years out of that. So much of like the fantasy running back talent over the last several seasons came in that class. And as they've kind of gotten older and aged out of their peak seasons, so that's what year eight now for those guys, I think kind of with them becoming older and less of them

being successful, less of them having high snap shares. That has just naturally dragged down the amount of running backs that are these all-purpose bell cows. And we aren't really getting those types of guys in the draft nowadays to come in and replace them. Scott, you will know better than me. I know you've been working in all your rookie prospecting stuff lately. This running back class coming up is really bad. There's nobody expected to go on day one. Maybe a couple on day two, I think last I checked, but yeah, you might have more in-depth opinions on that. But really, there just aren't that many exciting young running backs entering the league anymore. And it's the total opposite at wide receiver.

We see all of these guys, not only more star wide receivers succeeding now, but succeeding even younger, succeeding immediately when they come into the league. Not that long ago, and by that, I mean, like eight or ten years ago, we would always talk about, oh, it's the year three wide receiver breakout. Now, if you say like, oh, this guy will have a year three breakout, you're kind of looked at as like, oh, okay, like we get it. You're coping about this player. You still think he can break out in year three. But I think that goes to show how the running back in wide receiver positions,

talent-wise, have completely diverged. And we're seeing that in the high-end fantasy results now as well. Yeah, so I think that's exactly right. And I think both points play into. to each other. So obviously we know we want to target past catching running backs and fantasy. And that's so important, you know, weighted opportunity targets are worth 2.5 times as much as carries in PPR leagues. And we're really seeing a drop off in that. And I think that's entirely due to talent. You know, Uber talented running backs like Christian McCaffrey demand a 95% snap share. They are

targeted often because they're so good at that. They're hyper-talented runners. And you get high volume. So we're seeing a decline there. But we saw this dramatic rise, like you said, in 2017, a historic draft class. And there were some other good classes of running backs clustered around that. But it wasn't just that. And like you said, we've seen a major drop-off. But it wasn't just that, you know, a surge of running back talent at the right time. It was also a drop-off in wide receiver talent. I have to double-check this stat, but I'm pretty sure. From 2015 to 2020, only two of 23 round one wide receivers went on to make the Pro Bowl. So there were a bunch of really bad wide receiver classes.

And we have seen a dramatic shift. Like you said, last year's running back class wasn't great. Minus, of course, Bijan, Jemir Gibbs. Not very deep, one of the least deep running back classes I thought in some time. But these wide receiver, and actually this year's upcoming class by my mom, it looks like it's going to be really bad. And part of this, too, like, this has been going on for a while. I thought, I think I said I viewed Travis Etienne and Najee Harris as like historically

good prospects. But I actually noticed an issue with my model that said a PFF at some point changed their threshold for what's deemed a mistackle. And they were just like so much more lenient in charting that. This occurred sometime randomly in like 2021. And that screwed up my model to make more recent running backs look better than the otherwise were. And I went ahead and I adjusted that on my model. Yeah.

And you just see like these last few running back classes really haven't been all that great. But these wide receiver classes have been awesome. You know, my model really liked them. Didn't actually love last year's class. But then you look at year one production, year two production models, likes them even more. And so I do see that happening. and like that's what every season is its own unique snowflake. And like that's something that should be driving your decisions.

If you see this massive influx of talent at the wide receiver position relative to running back, that should influence your drafting decisions. And especially when it comes to running backs, which have their peak years earliest in their careers throughout that rookie contract. And what meanwhile, you know, like you said, the 2017 class is aging out beyond the age cliff. And so, yeah, I think that's the most important thing. And I think that explains a lot of what we're noticing. And unfortunately, for I guess robust RB drafters, I don't see it changing anytime soon.

Yeah. I mean, for it to change, the talent profiles would have to change. And kind of just taking a step back and looking at the sport of football in general right now, much more so than 10 or 15 years ago, it's all about the passing game. The passing game is what's sexy. The participants in the passing game are the players that get the biggest contracts in the NFL. And guys that are in college and in high school and even younger, they see that. So 25 years ago, the most athletic kid on like your Pee-Wee football team was going to play running back.

But that's not the case anymore. Now he's going to be a dual-threat quarterback or he's going to learn to play wide receiver. Just that decision that is happening at the lower levels of football has trickled up to the NFL. It took it five, 10, 15 years for us to really see it. But it's not like that's really changing. I mean, NFL teams have been a little more run heavy over the past few seasons than compared to like five years ago. But it's still very much like a passing game. So, yeah, Robust RB drafters, I would concur with Scott there.

It's probably, this is probably the time to step back and reevaluate. I think you're right. I think that's a great observation as to why that might be happening. So you said Christian McCaffrey, far and away top league winning running back in the early rounds, just how dominant was he? Just how important was he to winning your championship? Was he the single most important player? And then who were some of the other league winning running backs in 2023?

Sure. So yeah, Christian McCaffrey was the single most important player. So yes, the RB position did still have that one single most important player. In fact, since 2017, I have McCaffrey as the fourth like biggest league winner in ESPN leagues just by playoff rate. So in 73% of ESPN leagues, basically Christian McCaffrey made the Christian McAfee team made the playoffs last year. And that was the most of any player. Running backs aside from that were not nearly as high generally. So you did have Kyron Williams going undrafted.

He was obviously a really big help. In the later rounds, you had Rahim Mostert. And then kind of in the middle rounds, Travis Etyn and Alvin Camara were both on over 55% of playoff rosters. But really with those guys, ETIN especially, like really faded down the stretch. It's really hard for me to look at any of those players aside from really McCaffrey and Kairn Williams and be like, oh, yeah, like he was great for you the entire year, essentially, and carried you to a championship.

Yeah, so digging into those names, and maybe we could touch on some microanalysis, Kairn Williams, Rahim Moster, Travis Etienne, who was the other one, Alvin Kamaro? Yeah, and so remember we're looking at playoff win rate, and there's a reason we do that. It's explained in anatomy of a league winner. I think you kind of explained it in your article, but in anatomy, I'll also look at championship win rate, which is super important. But yeah, so in this, Kyron was probably hurt a little bit just because he missed those games in the middle bulk of the season and then was dominant in the playoffs. Moster, Travis Etienne, were helped a little bit just because both of those players faded down the stretch or Moester in his case was dealing with injury.

Actually, Kamara too. And so just talking about, you know, my takeaways from a micro perspective, I am beating myself up over not having more Kyron Williams than anything else. I had him on a bunch of bestball teams, but in start sit, I did mention me. him in the draft guide as like one of those high upside handcuffed tier backs to target. But basically two years ago, I had Darrell Henderson as like a must draft pick because I didn't trust the Cam Acres with his injury. I didn't really trust Sean McVey, a well-known liar. And so I was all in on Darrell Henderson, who looked like a great value, not a league winner

prior to his injury. Part of this too was the upside of a Sean McVeigh belcow, like we saw with Todd Gurley and we saw with Henderson at times. And just for whatever reason, I did not, was not anywhere near as high on Kairn as I was on Henderson, when it was basically the exact same thesis. I think the only thing that scared me off was that stupid Sean McVeigh quote where he just, I put it on on Twitter and it got like 5,000 retweets, but it was a fusive praise for Kamakers. It was, you know, 50 sentences on why the offense runs through him.

He's their, their belkow. They love him. He a full belief in him. And then, lo and behold, Kairn Williams, that was one of the best upside wins championships picks he could have made. In my mind, like, clearly one of the top league winners of the season, one of the top ADP values of the season. Rahim Moster, to me, you know, great bet. Devon A-chain as well, like two of the best picks he could have made, clear upside there. I know we were worried about a committee. It was looking like a three-way committee until Jeff Wilson, a few days before the

season started, was randomly put on IR. But the argument there is just Mike McDaniel, like a genius, especially with the run game. We've seen before hyper-efficient, hyper-productive running backs from that backfield, despite it being a committee. And we talk about power law offenses. That's a power law offense you want to be invested in. And then, Kamara, I whiffed on. I was just like, I just see massive range of outcomes here.

I did like the rookie a lot, but, you know, he also had injuries that that plagued him the entire year. Maybe I'm sure Kamar benefited from that or he missed most of training camp with that injury, so maybe we should have seen that coming. Danny Hafeit to the ringer also sent me this article and I usually don't buy into this stuff too much. It was just so persuasive. He was really working with a whole new team of trainers that were digging into, you know, his advanced numbers like HRV and heart rate oxygen saturation, a bunch of stuff like that. But basically they figured out some things were going on and the totally fixed it and all his numbers exploded.

One of which was like one leg was like 40% more muscular than the other. I don't know. But when I read that, I did regret not bumping Kamara up in my rankings, but I didn't find that out until like two weeks into his suspension. He also did, though, kind of fade down the stretch. But those were kind of my micro takeaways from looking at the league winning running backs from last season. Yeah, I'm kind of there with you on kicking myself for Kamara because obviously he's done

it before. I used to always say, like, the most, one of the most predictive things you can look at for who will be a league winning running back. who has done it before. I remember even back to a conversation we had over the summer of you were basically asking, why are there so many running backs that will repeat as league winners as opposed to wide receivers? And we were kind of talking about how, okay, they can repeat because high-end running back seasons are bigger than high and wide receiver seasons. So even if they're drafted in the first round, they have an easier time being a league

winner. Camara had a six round ADP. Obviously, there was the suspension. There were the age concerns. But I really feel like, especially in hindsight, a lot of the risk was kind of, you were off the hook if you take Alvin Camara in round six. And he is kind of like a plotting RB2 or kind of fades. Like, there's no issue with that.

Like, that should have been an upside bet that I got on to that I absolutely didn't. And with Kyron Williams, kind of similar to, I just, I always have these flashbacks to conversations or thoughts I was having during the summer ranking players. Scott, we talked a lot about how, like, should we have cammakers as like one of our bigger upside bets? We kind of went back and forth a little bit. We landed on no, but we really didn't take that next step to, okay, well, if we don't trust this whole Kamakers thing, what is like the very obvious low risk that you can make to take advantage of that? To parlay, I think Kamakers is going to fail, essentially.

So we really just did not take that next step at all, and we absolutely should have. And yeah, on the Rahimoster thing, I don't hold myself super accountable there. I think I tweeted out my best ball exposure for Dolphins running backs. I had a lot of Jeff Wilson. I don't know what else to say there. Like, you got to remember at the time, Jeff Wilson was the Dolphins running back that was the most productive. Once he joined the team in 2022, he was the, the,

cheapest of the trio and it in my mind at the time was the obvious bet to make in the backfield so i think we identified the backfield but i i think just the very late reported injury there just kind of injected a lot of randomness into the situation so i have a hard time like holding myself accountable for that take in particular and i mean i i could honestly say that about a lot of different players like we found out about Cooper Cup very late into the offseason. There were a lot of ones just kind of like that. Yeah, I talked to some DFS pros every now and then. And they say like one thing that gives them an advantage over me is they're so

unafraid of looking dumb. Whereas like me, you know, have these subscribers and give out this analysis, you don't want to seem dumb, but leads them to being more fearless and it gives them better results. And I think maybe in both instances, this kind of could have at least subconsciously held us back with with kamara you know neither of us cared at all about the suspension which is like the right way to think about how to win fantasy and league winners it's the first three games which matters exponentially less than the final three games of the season but like what stuck stuck out to me was just he had great volume last year

uh they just drafted a running back early which and signed jamal williams which makes you think there's going to be less volume and then he was just dreadfully inefficient to the point where it was, is he just fully cooked? Yeah, probably. And then with Kyron, too, it's, let's not forget, he did nothing as a rookie, uh, despite Kim Akers stinking, Darrell Henderson stinking. And he's also literally one of the least athletic running backs of all time. I know I'm kind of always like, well, athleticism is overrated, but, uh, just all that together, at least, uh, is a justification for, you know, why we, we didn't see it coming, but I don't think anyone really saw it coming. And just because we're going to beat ourselves up a little

bit in other sections. I do want to say, you know, Rashad White was must draft for me. James Connor was must draft for me. Love the ADP value on Joe Mixon, James Cook. Those are some pretty good plays calls. Breeze Hall, I know he didn't wind up a league winner, but like one of my biggest takeaways was just like, damn, like imagine if Aaron Rogers stayed healthy. He would have broken leagues this year. So just luckily, you know, that happened. So if you didn't have him, he didn't kill you, but make sure you draft a lot of him next year. I think that's what I'm going to do. You're almost like validated by, oh, look,

Brice Hall has a round one ADP in early underdog drafts right now. It's like, okay, well, clearly the process was correct there. But yeah, I mostly concur with all of those good calls at running back. I was, I came around on Rashad White. Luckily, felt a little better about that early in the season. I was kind of fixated on like the efficiency stuff. And I mean with Camara with Kairn Williams, I think it's fun and it's sexy to talk about like the running back efficiency stats.

But and maybe I'll dive into some more of those for statistically significant. But like looking at a one year sample of a running back's efficiency probably doesn't have a lot of signal for is this a good value or a good draft pick in fantasy. And I think that's something that gets a lot of airtime, especially in the off season, when we're more removed from like the week to week of, okay, how many touches is he getting? Which is probably what we should be thinking more so. So that's just something for me to keep in mind. And then just on the first thing you said about DFS pros being unafraid to look dumb, I think we should be thinking of seasonal fantasy football almost like a DFS tournament. we shouldn't be afraid to look dumb because just like in DFS, if you aren't finishing in the basically the top 10% of your fantasy league, then guess what?

It doesn't matter if you look dumb, you lose anyway. So to my defense, I wasn't afraid to look dumb touting Cadarius Tony and Justin Ross. And then lo and behold, I did look dumb. But speaking of which, yeah, let's move on to wide receivers. Obviously, with running back as a whole, having a down year, wide receivers must have stepped up in a big way. Where did that happen? Was that all the way at the top? Was that just the entire position?

What were you saying when you looked into the data? So it's a little easier to express all of these finer numbers and everything in the article. I've got all the charts there laid out that you can stare at and absorb into your mind. But yes, it was mostly up at the top of the wide receiver position where we saw the biggest difference. Just in the first three rounds, we had five league winners. And that is like a, that's really a historic number. So five league winners in the first three rounds at the wide receiver position in

2023, in the five previous seasons, no, sorry, the six previous seasons, we had a total of seven. in that area of the draft. So this was like the best season basically ever to draft a wide receiver early. If you were drafting a lot of wide receivers early, you probably had a really good fantasy season. And I've got in the article, there's a chart that shows you value over replacement.

So the points per game that a wide receiver scored above and beyond like the wide receiver 20, like a replacement level player at the position, and it's really clear that this was the best year for high-end wide receivers literally since 2014, which was funny enough, like the last wide receiver class that people like fondly remember and say that that was like the best wide receiver rookie class ever, blah, blah, blah. So it is has, the pendulum has very much swung in favor of wide receivers. And it was even a little bit difficult.

to find wide receivers later. I know it felt that way when I was drafting, and that was also the case in the results. Outside of those first three rounds, there were only two league-winning wide receivers. One of them was Puka Nakua, who went undrafted, and the other was Keenan Allen, who, I mean, in my mind, he was more of like an early round wide receiver pick,

but on a lot of sites he was going like round four, round five, which we did correctly identify was absolutely ridiculous, and he at least was a big hit for us. Yeah, that's right. He was a must draft for me. Pooka Nakuwa, I didn't hit, partly because when that article was written, or when my draft guide came out, Cooper Cup was still fully healthy. And then all the beat writers, like, didn't think Nakuwa would get much playing time at all. But then again, Brett Whitefield loved him, comped him to just him. in Jefferson, which is crazy for a player with that draft capital. We've seen before Sean McVeigh's offense supporting multiple wide receivers where it's not just, you know,

Cooper Cup and Robert Woods both finishing top 15 and fantasy points per game. I think another year maybe Brandon Cooks was there. Three wide receivers finished top 20. And so that's probably going to be one of my observations from anatomy. Is it just like it pays to invest in offenses that have done it before and are cheap? And like that was the case with the Rams. You know, just invest in a cheap Puka Nakuwa, invest in a cheap, um, Kairn Williams. Um, obviously I, I, I think, uh, you know, the Cooper Cup never really fully returning to

full health, uh, definitely played a role, but still this, you know, Kyron Williams, I'm happy to draft him mid round one, Puka Nakuwa. I don't know, uh, early round two. Um, so I'm, in 20, 24 drafts, I'm going to be betting as if this is real. I think it is. But Ryan, you had an interesting observation about specifically wide receivers on good offenses versus wide receivers and bad offenses. Yeah. So I basically what I did was I looked at every league winning wide receiver since 2017. And I said, okay, was this player on a top 10 offense by EPA per play or were they not? And I just sorted them into those two buckets, put them by a year, and looked at the percentages.

And what I found was basically in 2017, none of the league winning wide receivers were on good offenses. All of them were on bad offenses. And again, you'll see this more clearly if you open up the article and just visually look at this. But there's a pretty clear trend where more and more every year, the league-winning wide receivers have increasingly been on the good offenses. So, I mean, you used to have like your D'Andre Hopkins and your Allen Robinson's like just soaking up a ridiculous amount of targets on like awful Texans and Jaguars teams. But now all of the top wide receivers are like Tyreek Hill on the doll. offense breaking yards per outrun as a concept this year. Or like it's really clear that a top end wide receiver for fantasy,

whichever way you want to say the causation is, if it's the really good wide receiver dragging their offense to being really good, or if it's the offense allowing the wide receiver to be really good for fantasy, it didn't used to be like that. it is now. Again, I think it goes back to just the evolution of the passing game in the NFL. I think these coaches, I think these play callers are a lot smarter. And you can even see it in the way that teams make roster moves. Wasn't that long ago that it was almost unheard of for like a star wide receiver to get traded. And now it happens like all the time. Like if a team has like a promising young

quarterback. It's like, okay, well, which wide receiver star on their second contractor they're going to trade for to try to help him take an even bigger leap. I mentioned DeAndre Hopkins. He was kind of the start of that. But I mean, we've seen it with Stefan Diggs. We've seen it with AJ Brown, Tyree Kill. All of this elite wide receiver talent is now much more efficiently sorted into these offenses that want to take advantage of them. So I think, that's really something to pay attention to where if we don't have much, I don't want to say confidence because I mean, you're always making like percentage bets basically in fantasy football, betting on uncertain and even unlikely outcomes. But if you don't see a way that this offense is going

to be really, really good, they're probably not going to have a high-end fantasy wide receiver or a league-winning fantasy-wide receiver. So, yeah, it's something that I think is a lot more important now than it was maybe five or six years ago. That is something I've always tried to be cognizant of. You know, trying to invest in power law offenses, like I was just saying with the Rams. And, yeah, it's interesting to note that that appears to be ever more important most recently.

I know we also talked about how the Twitter 24 running back class is really weak. I just pulled it up. Dane Bruegler put out his top 100. He's 11 wide receivers in his top 50. He is another, he is 20 in his top 100. So going to be another great wide receiver class. Ryan, who are some other league winning wide receivers worth touching on?

We should talk about C.D. Lamb, I think, because that's a player I think. I think both of us weren't super into this past off season. My, I think kind of everybody's justification for that was, and it's so funny, like, saying this in hindsight, because now we view these play callers completely differently, but it was like, okay, Mike McCarthy kicked Kellyn Moore out, this, like the young genius OC kicks out Kellyn Moore because Mike McCarthy wants to run the ball. And the Cowboys are going to commit to the run and be a Stone Age offense. And why would I draft CD-Lam?

But there were a couple of problems with this. Number one is that entire narrative was kind of crafted off of one quote that McCarthy said in March at the Combine, I think. He would go on, I think in that same interview, but also many times later in the offseason. Just to clarify how strong this quote was, McCarthy was asked why he fired Callan Moore. He said it was quote unquote, he wanted to light the scoreboard up when I just wanted to run the damn ball so I could rest my defense. Yeah. Yeah. So hearing that, I maybe understandably, I and a lot of people were poisoned against Mike McCarthy and the Cowboys from.

Also, for years, I just kind of thought the guy was a donkey. And then apparently he's like an immensely better offensive coordinator than Kellan Moore. Yeah, it's crazy how these perceptions flip so quickly. But I mean, really the way that I feel like I should have thought my way out of this thought spiral was just looking at Mike McCarthy's history as a play caller, especially in Green Bay. They were never really like run heavy teams when he had the reins. And yes, obviously he had Aaron Rogers, but they were throwing the ball. a lot. Like, I feel like a coach's history is always going to be, we should always care more about that than like what they're saying in an interview in March, probably. I don't know. But

either way, I think, yeah, just the overfixating on one quote where there is contrary evidence is just a thought pattern I want to break myself. This was just bad process, bad results on on multiple levels. It didn't even really make sense to, like, because last year Dallas's running backs led the league in carries. And so it's like even if they wanted to run them ball more, there wasn't like that much room for them to do so. But then it's, well,

Ezekiel Elliott's gone. What if Pollard struggles or doesn't stay healthy? What if the defense regresses? Oh, and by the way, Dalton Schultz left. Doc Prescott another value. He's another one of those players. He's just been so consistently good for some.

long top 13 in fantasy points per game and seven of eight career seasons so that was a big whiff by me i was so excited about tony pollard and i slept on prescott and lamb and took a big out i will say though uh before the teams by they were one of the top five most run heavy offenses in football and then after that by they became one of the top three most pass heavy so it could be one of those things where like i have to keep thinking about this a lot where with coach speak in particular all too often it's the case where you know like you're right oh, yeah, we nailed it. And then they come to their senses because, like, it's undeniable. And maybe a takeaway there is talent rises to the top. And like even donkey coaches,

like possibly McCarthy will eventually come to their senses. But no, that was a good one. Any other wide receivers you want to touch on individually? Not so much individually, but I think just another point we should make about the wide receiver position in general is that so many of the successful fantasy wide receivers came from like a handful of offenses. And it so happens that most of them were a had a play caller from the Shanahan slash Sean McVeigh coaching tree, which is really the Mike Shanahan coaching tree. Um, or at least that's, yeah, that's, that's how I, that's how I justify matching those ideas together in my brain. Heck yeah. I get a quote for you from the article. Yeah, let's hear it.

Across four teams, 49ers, Texans, dolphins, Rams. They produced the wide receiver 2, 6, 7, 13, 16, 19, 22, and 24 by fantasy points per game. That's a third of the league's top 24 wide receivers. Also, interestingly enough, four of the top five running backs by fantasy points per game. And this is something I'm thinking about a lot, is the importance of offensive play calling. And whenever other writers, Nick, but he's on Twitter at Football Insights, does great work. stat savant, chart savant. We've been talking about this, and he thinks he's found through the data what appears

to be an exploitive edge where they just attack horizontally and it's just like an efficiency cheat code that other offenses aren't utilizing, but they should. I don't know. I should let him explain it, but it was really compelling. And yeah, I think that's important. I've also talked to Danny Kelly of the ringer about this, where more and more that's becoming from an NFL perspective. It's like you could draft a head coach quarterback any position. You start from scratch. Do overdraft. Okay, Mahomes goes 101. But like at what point do you start seeing

Andy Reid, Kyle Shanahan going? And that might be like top five. Like just how important that is and like definitely so from a fantasy perspective. And so maybe we should have seen that coming with Bobby Slowick and the Texans. We worked together at PFF back in the day. I never talked to him. But a lot of my PFF buddies were like, no, the guy's an absolute genius. he's going to be a superstar, he's going to crush. And that entire offense was dirt cheap. I know none of us were super high on, or we didn't think too much of their receiving talent, their offensive line talent.

But wow, yeah, Nico Collins by yards per route run, any metric you want to look at was an easy top five wide receiver. Tank Dell was right there on the verge of a massive breakout prior to injury. So yeah, I like this takeaway a lot. You also mention the Packers and Matt LaFleur a little bit overachieving, despite a really young skill position with not a ton of draft capital there. And I thought that was super interesting because when I asked Brett Whitefield, director of data charting, head of charting, but really just like the smartest film guy,

I know, who his top five play callers were. He said, Andy Reed, Kyle Shanahan, Mike McDaniel, Sean McVeigh, Matt LaFleur. And I was like, oh. Yeah, very, very interesting. And I mean, that kind of brings up another point that. I went on to make in the article where I think too often we kind of like associate a team with an offense more or our perception of the team's offense rather than continually reevaluating when there's especially a new quarterback, like a rookie quarterback or whatever, but also a new

play caller. So I mean, that was kind of the, if you want to say that the industry made a mistake with the Texans last year, it's okay, yes, there's a new quarterback and a new play caller there. We don't know really anything about what it's going to look like, but they were priced as if it was certain that it was going to be a disaster once again. It has the Texans stink sort of on them, despite like none of the same important offensive pieces. really being there. So I think that is going to be something to think about with all of these teams that are at the top of the draft this year.

I think that Patriots wide receivers could be a good discount this year, depending what happens. Same deal with the commanders. Not that I'm excited for the Cliff Kingsbury offense, but they're just having new pieces, new moving parts. if in fantasy, they're priced as if it's certain that they're going to be bad, those are shots that you probably should be taking. So yeah, I don't know if I'm going to be touting like DeMario Douglas a couple months from now

incessantly or what, but that's a direction I want to orient my thinking in. Yeah, that's what we're saying with these recent bad running back classes versus wide receiver classes. is, you know, the talent pool, it determines everything and the decisions you should be making as a fantasy player. And that's more obviously true in this instance. You know, the Texans just got this massive injection of talent, including at the play caller position. But let's move on to the tight end position. I think we can cover this pretty quickly. I just know what I was saying at the time was you kind of want to go boom or bust where either you'd

draft Travis Kelsey, which by the way was a mistake, or you just full on punt the position. And I gave a bunch of names, players I saw as high upside, low cost, where part of that is like, well, you know, you would know very quickly if Greg Dulcich is a miss or Chigoconkwo is a miss, in which case, you know, just pick someone off of waivers. You know, Zach Ertz or Trey McBride is interesting. Sam Leport is interesting. So those weren't the players I recommended. Those were the players to draft.

but at least I think that that thesis kind of held true or I don't know do you want to argue against it because because Kelsey really fell off but what was your your key takeaway here Ryan? I think my key I'll say process wise I think we were fine on tight ends that like yeah Kelsey didn't have a good year I don't know that they were really that many indications aside from again an early season injury that we found out about after most people had drafted, if I remember that correctly. Yeah. Oh, yeah. By the way, I bury the lead. No, no, no, no. I love Darren Waller this year, which was like one of my worst picks. And he was another surprise injury guy, just like Christian Watson, like, who you and I were both so excited about.

This is something, you know, I always want to avoid. I don't ever want to, Scott Pianowski of Yahoo, like talks about this incessantly. And he's just so right. Is people look at injury discounts the wrong way. You don't ever want to draft a player heading into the season with an injury. The problem was there are all these guys who just randomly three days before the season. It's like, oh, Jeff Wilson's on IR. Cooper Cup is hurt. Darren Waller has a hamstring. Christian Watson has a hamstring. Really the worst injuries you could have, Markey's Brown has maybe a hamstring. I don't remember, but yeah, injuries which tend to linger infuriating. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, I had like redraft rosters where before week one, I loaded them up. I'm like, oh, my, my entire

lineup is questionable with a hamstring injury. This is great. No games have been played yet. And that, yeah, it did happen to be a lot of the guys that we were into. But yeah, other than that happening with Kelsey, if you knew that when you drafted, I don't think there were a lot of like big red flags to avoid him necessarily this year. So I would say process wise, we were fine and tight end. I think more interesting is going forward. word. We historically, you have talked a lot about oligarch tight ends where you either draft one of the oligarchs, which usually Kelsey, but Kittal Waller have made their way in there at times,

or you wait and you pump the position. I'm just looking at last year's results with, with like it being the lowest value year since 2016 for the top few tight ends. I'm wondering if the oligarch tight end even exists in a post-Travice Kelsey world. Like, yeah, we can think Sam Leporta's good and all that, but is he Travis Kelsey? I'm not really that sure. I don't know that I want to be making a Travis Kelsey type of bet on Sam Leporta in drafts this year. I think I think I'm going to just be punting the position going forward.

And until we actually have good evidence that there's another Travis Kelsey as if that is like a reachable bar. Jake Ferguson was a great pick in fantasy. Isaiah likely had a really productive run at the end of the season. But this year, I think I'm even more in on it because we, yeah, as we've talked about talent, should guide you in your decision making first and foremost. The last year's tight end rookie class was being talked about as the most talented tight end rookie class in years, right? And I mean, it kind of played out.

Yeah, it certainly had more fantasy relevant rookies in a class than we've ever seen. Why would that not carry over to year two? So yeah, give me the Packers tight ends. give me Michael Mayer, why not? Like, they're, they're going to be cheap. Michael Mayer especially had a fairly good college profile. I know you liked him a decent amount, Scott. Like, give me all of those year two tight end bets because that, yeah, the most talented

tight end class hitting their breakout apex, yeah, we should be all in on this, especially for the guys where it's not priced in. I'm with you. Yeah. Yeah, spoil alert. I think I think I'm going to be back in on Kyle Pitts. Please don't cancel your fantasy point subscription, but I've been thinking about that all day. Maybe Brock Bowers, too.

He's a really exciting prospect, and it's encouraging. We did see a lot of rookie tight ends be so productive. But you wrote the age curves article last year, which was one of the best articles I read all year, where we talked about the cheat code of sophomore tight ends, which has just been so true for so long. And that was Trey McBride. Who knows, maybe there will be another surprise sophomore tight end this year, maybe Luke Musgrave or Tucker Kraft or... Love it. What about the quarterback position? I thought this one was particularly interesting just because I was so on the fence where, you know, JJ's J.J.'saccharisan, the quote-unquote,

late-round QB guy, has been kind of walking that back saying, well, The quarterback position is more top-heavy than ever because of these Konami code quarterbacks. Maybe there's also less parity among quarterbacks or quarterback play is deteriorating minus those top quarterbacks. It's also just, they're so consistent where in the past that wasn't really the case outside of, you know, Drew Breeze, Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, who weren't runners. And so I saw all that. And I was like, okay, yeah, I think, you know, Josh Allen is worth a round two pick. but I'm just not going to do that because the late round quarterback approach has worked so well for me historically, which is true. You know, like that's a great place to find, you know, drafting late round running backs tends not to work out.

Late round wide receivers tends not to work out. But the hit rate of finding a league winning quarterback late has been great. And I personally have been so good at it. Not this past year. My must draft late round quarterbacks were Daniel Jones, which. yikes, you know, that didn't look good. Yeah, I was hoping he would take a step, another step forward with Brian Dable, but it looked like he regressed and, you know, ran bad with injury luck.

And also Darren Waller wasn't healthy. And for the eighth year in a row, his offensive line couldn't stay healthy and his receiving court couldn't stay healthy. But the other one was Anthony Richardson, which, you know, I think is good process, bad results or like he looked like he was going to break leagues and just ran bad with injury luck. But that's kind of my thoughts. but you kind of dug into this more thoroughly.

So when you elucidate the listeners. Yeah. So I think this year, regardless of which side of like the early round or late round quarterback debate you're on, this was kind of a Rorschatch test where if you look hard enough, you can find a way to support your position based on 2023. So in like the early quarterback camp, this was the first year over. the past seven years, probably a lot longer, that we had multiple quarterbacks with round three ADPs who were league winners.

Both Josh Allen and Jalen Hertz, round three ADPs in ESPN leagues this year, were on over 60% of playoff rosters, which is like unprecedented, really. So you say, oh, okay, yeah, this was where the league winners are. So I guess early quarterbacks. but if you, and again, reading the article will be so much better for you to understand this point and see it visually. But just based on value over replacement, you weren't actually getting that much out of having Alan or Hertz compared to a lot of like the high end QB1 and QB2 seasons we've seen over the past few years. Even compared to last year, the top end quarterbacks in 2023 were nowhere near as good. or as productive as really all of their ADPs suggested.

And there were guys drafted later who were relatively successful. You got on fine if you had Brock Purdy or Jordan Love or Dak Prescott at times to a Tung of Vailoa early in the season. Like I don't, yes, yes, hopefully you were streaming Joe Flacco. Yeah, I don't think it was at all a requirement to have drafted. drafted one of these earlier Konami Code quarterbacks to win in fantasy this year. And I just kind of looking ahead at early ADP, I talked a little bit about this in my fantasy points for dropback article.

But they're kind of unlike last year, there are Konami Code quarterbacks, at least right now, on underdog that you don't have to like draft one of the first five QBs off the board to get. like Kyler Murray is probably going to go relatively later next year. Jaden Daniels, assumedly going to have top three draft capital, very productive runner in college. There are going to be like Konami code options available later in drafts. So I think really either,

I don't think you can really go wrong either way with the position in 2024. So yeah, it's kind of disappointing to not have like a hard take of this is when you have to draft a quarterback like you kind of could in previous years. But I think that's what the data is telling us. Yeah, I think that's a good call. I really like the name specifically you shout it out. I think I'm going to go back to the well on Anthony Richardson. I think Justin Fields in Pittsburgh is interesting. So like you said, yeah, that's been the cheat code for so long is give me cheap Konami code quarterbacks.

and luckily it seems like there's still a lot of those. And part of the reason why we have, we lean more towards that approach is just because it's just not as valuable a position, like a typical one QB league, 12 teams, that means there's 20 starting quarterbacks who are going to be available on waivers. So like worst case scenario, maybe you'll find a Joe Flacco. You could stream. So the safety net at that position is a lot higher than it's going to be at the running back position where you're starting at least 24 your league is. But there's at most 32 starting running

backs, then a lot of those aren't valuable because it's such a committee, et cetera. So yeah, I like that shout out. I like that call. We went through running backs, wide receivers, tight ends, quarterbacks. What about any other macro trends you noticed that you want to speak on? Not so much on the macro, but I did just want to on the micro pick up something you just said there. Yeah, Anthony Richardson, Scott, we got so unlucky. Oh my God. I know you just called it good process, bad results, but we could have looked so smart with Anthony Richardson. I don't even want to look at my best fall exposure to him last year.

But yeah, yeah, just brutal. I had so many killer teams with like all the late round league winners, you know, multiple Miami running backs, Karen Williams. And then the starting quarterbacks were every single time Daniel Jones and Anthony Richardson and Aaron Rogers and they were just so dead. Yeah. But the goodish news is, and again, I covered this in my fantasy points for dropback article, Anthony Richardson going into year two is, is also a very exciting bet. At least in the sharper underdog leagues, you're not going to get him outside the top six because the people that draft on that platform

are insane people like we are. But I think in like your regular work leagues or home leagues, you're going to be able to get Anthony Richardson kind of later. And it's the same exact bet. He broke Fantasy Point. points per dropback, had the best season in it since I think Lamar Jackson's 2017 was the year that he like broke all the records in what his first MVP season. So yeah, there is a lot to be excited about specifically with Anthony Richardson that I just wanted to hammer home again.

I love it. All right. Well, I think we've been, we've made this long enough. If you want anything more, definitely check out this article. Check out the chart. check out Ryan's Fantasy Points per Dropback article. Check out the Fantasy Points Data Suite. Check out all the great rookie analysis and podcast. Brett Whitefield is putting out. Thanks for listening, guys. For Ryan, I'm Scott.

I love you. Thanks for listening. Thanks for tuning in to this edition of the Fantasy Points podcast. Remember to subscribe, rate, and review on your favorite platform. And come join the roster at FantasyPoint.com. Thank you.