It’s August, which means it’s the time of narratives in fantasy football that are designed to force us to coalesce around certain players.
Of course, most of these narratives are demonstrably false.
The big one this year, pegged to Malik Nabers mostly, though it started with Marvin Harrison Jr., is how “rookie WRs win fantasy championships.” Well let’s examine. There have been 34 top 10 NFL draft WR picks since 2000. As rookies, 10 have averaged more than 12 PPR points per game. A dozen averaged eight points or less. Four averaged 15 points or more. Median points: 10.1. The base-rate here is a fifth-to-seventh round fantasy draft pick. Certainly there has not generally been league-winning upside here. If you get one in the 10th round and they return sixth-round value, that’s a nice pick, period. But if you pay for it and you get it, it doesn’t even move the needle. I was a proponent of rookie WRs when they were picked in the triple digits overall. Not top 30, and definitely not top 15.
“Efficiency can overcome snap percentage” is the Jahmyr Gibbs narrative. Gibbs was 50.7% snaps in 2023. He was 17th in raw snaps per game at RB. He had two more snaps per game than James Cook, who is basically the same player yet goes eight RB slots later. And Cook is being drafted where he should go in light of his committee-back usage. Gibbs was a very good .406 points per snap vs. .367 for Cook. But average is .316 for a running back and we can’t expect that kind of efficiency to repeat. The snaps are more stable, meaning Gibbs is probably coming in at 40 per game again. That’s 12.3 fantasy PPR per game. And even with a 10% boost in efficiency, which is great, it’s still only 13.5 PPR/G, or RB17 last year. Giving him a 15% efficiency boost gets you to RB15. To get him to where he’s drafted, RB6, we need to boost his efficiency by about 30% vs. average. It’s also worth noting that all players with 30-to-40 snaps per game last year averaged just 8.8 PPR points/game.
“Explosive plays are the key to success” is a De’Von Achane rationalization. He had 509 yards on runs gaining at least 10 yards, or about 66% of his total yards. Average is 53%. Josh Jacobs is the example of the guy who seemingly owned big runs in 2022 only to see them dry up in 2023. In fact every top 10 RB in raw number of big runs in 2022 declined in 2023 (we’re excluding Nick Chubb). On average, the big runs from the top 10 the previous season dropped from 34 to 18. Big runs are both the reason why guys win rushing titles and also why they almost never repeat. These runs are largely random. Heck, they dried up for Achane the final nine games of 2023 — 27.5% of his runs through five weeks vs. 14.9% afterwards, including postseason.
“The higher the aDOT, the better” has been a reason we liked Gabe Davis and Mike Williams in the past. This year, it’s an argument for Tank Dell and George Pickens. But I refer you to Goldilocks. Average depth of target can be too hot (high) as well as too cold (low). We need that porridge to be just right. So 13.0+ aDOT is actually a negative stat given it means too many almost impossible to corral deep targets, i.e., prayer yards. Below 9.0 is too cold, too many short targets and also a higher risk of injury with more times tackled by multiple, bigger defenders. Between 10 and 12 yards is perfect, correlating to usage in all strata of the field. That’s alpha-WR usage. Last year: Courtland Sutton, A.J. Brown, Romeo Doubs, Terry McLaurin, Drake London, Elijah Moore, Davante Adams, DJ Moore, Nico Collins, Tyreek Hill, Tyler Lockett, Jonathan Mingo, Stefon Diggs, Jayden Reed, Garrett Wilson, Jaylen Waddle. There are exceptions, obviously, but this is generally a desirable group to draft into.
“Where you’re drafted at RB doesn’t matter” is more about Chase Brown this year. But he’s not a rookie. Let’s get the rookie data out of the way to prove that the draft round does matter. This decade, rookies drafted in Round 1 of the NFL draft average 13.5 PPR points, second rounders 10.9, third rounders 6.9, fourth rounders 5.3 and Rounds 5-7 just 4.8 points. We’re excluding all the guys cut by their real-life teams of course. Back to Brown: His model is fifth-round pick (or later) in his second year, basically the Kyren Williams of 2023. This century, eight Year 2 RBs drafted Round 5 or later have popped for 200+ points in their sophomore year. But only three were barely used as rookies like Brown last year — Williams, Jay Ajayi, Jerome Ford. There have been 113 sophomore RBs with similar real-life draft capital who have played at least 10 games in Year 2. That’s a paltry 7% hit rate. In the past week, Brown is RB29 in ADP, which seems out of whack. He’s my RB40. I’m more in the Zack Moss camp — he’s my RB19. Moss was sixth last year in yards over expected per carry and it’s hard for me to discount that stat. Regardless, I can’t see how Brown is some outlier in outperforming where he was drafted. He was just a volume guy in college like countless backs who never amounted to anything.
(Top photo of Malik Nabers: Troy Taormina-USA TODAY)
