Jack Brickman
Hall-of-Famer
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2012
- Messages
- 38,456
- Reaction score
- 61,544
- Points
- 148
After tonight's epic battle between the hapless Steelers and the seemingly even more hapless Bengals to determine who sucks slightly less, week four will officially in the books. We'll be one-fourth of the way through the NFL season and almost a third of the way through the fantasy regular season. This is the time when we all need to start taking an honest look at our teams to determine our chances of making the playoffs.
Let's start by assuming your team is bad, limping into week five at 0-4 or 1-3. This is the time when you need to ask yourself whether your team sucks or has just been unlucky. Luck plays a huge factor in fantasy, far more than most would probably like to admit. I missed the playoffs in a league last year where I had the second highest points for in the league. Unfortunately, I also had the highest points against, meaning damn near every week I was going up against either the top scorer that week or close enough. To quote the great philosopher Aristotle, "Shit happens."
Look at your team's point totals for the year. Are you contending with the top teams in points for and have simply been unlucky? If that's the case, typically the best strategy is to stay the course. While it's not always the case (see my sad tale above), fantasy has a tendency to balance out. If your team is consistently good, chances are you'll start picking up some wins sooner rather than later.
Alternatively, is your team bottom of the barrel in points for? If that's the case, is it a matter of you just starting the wrong guys every week, or is it that you just botched the draft? If you're starting the wrong guys every week, that at least is correctable. If your team is terrible, though, you may need to start thinking about selling any good players you have for depth. I know we all hate to sell off our studs, but what's the point of having Christian McCaffrey if you're not going to make the playoffs? He's not winning you money if your season ends after week thirteen anyway, after all.
I'm not here to advise you on what trades to make or not to make, at least not in this column itself. I will try to follow up with any questions in the comments, but as you've seen from my start/sit article, I too am fallible. This again comes back to the randomness that is fantasy football. Quite often we make the right decisions but end up with the wrong outcomes. If you confidently started Keenan Allen and DeAndre Hopkins last week, you, like me, know that all too well. Even these fantasy gods have bad games. They just have less of them than the mere mortals that make up the bulk of our fantasy rosters.
But while we're on the subject of gods, let's start with the one who probably won a lot of us our match-ups this week. I am, of course, speaking of the one true Godwin, a guy you were drafting in the fourth or fifth round who looks to be ascending to fantasy heaven, kind of like Jesus but cooler. Godwin is not only matching Mike Evans target for target, but is outproducing him as well. He has become the slot guy and safety net for Jameis Winston, and in a pass-happy offense like the one that Bruce Arians runs, you want that guy. Evans is still going to get his, sometimes at the cost of Godwin like last week, but there seems to be little doubt that they want to feed Godwin. Keep an eye on Tampa's match-ups and the quality of the opposing corners. If they have a guy who can check Evans, it's wheels up for Chris Godwin.
And this brings me to an important factor in fantasy success, and that is figuring out which guys are going to the be the ones to break out next season. Godwin was an obvious candidate, so much so that his ADP rose to around fifty. He went from a coach/coordinator who wanted to throw the ball to another coach/coordinator that wanted to throw the ball, so nothing significant changed there. However, the team let Adam Humphries and DeSean Jackson walk, opening up something like 180 targets from last year. More importantly, the Bucs didn't bother replacing either guy. This left the slot role open for Godwin and, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, you want the slot guy in pass-first offenses. Now, it's perhaps unrealistic to expect Godwin to get all 180 of those targets. Some will go to Perriman, or Justin Watson, or OJ Howard, or Cameron Brate, or my alma mater's own Scott Miller. But a lot of those targets are going to go to Godwin, and some will go to Evans as well in that X role.
When spotting potential breakout receivers, you need to look at situation, talent, and opportunity. You want to find guys who produced their rookie year and whose teams are looking to give them an expanded role heading into year two. Sure, some guys will just pop out of of nowhere after doing nothing in year one like DJ Chark, but the bulk of guys show you enough flashes in year one to make you see something potentially special. This year's notable breakout receiver candidates heading into the season were, in my opinion, Christian Kirk, Dante Pettis, Courtland Sutton, DJ Moore, Michael Gallup, and Marquez Valdes-Scantling. All of those guys went for around 500 yards or more their rookie year and seemed in line for increased work heading into year two, and the bulk of them are looking pretty good so far in 2019. Let's examine a couple of these guys in a bit more depth so you can see what I'm talking about.
Last year, Christian Kirk went for 590 yards and three scores in one of the worst offenses I've ever seen. This is an offense that thought running David Johnson up the middle fifteen times a game was a good idea. Kirk had 68 targets in a low-volume, inefficient offense. Over the offseason, the coach was fired and replaced by Cliff Kingsbury, a guy who said he wanted to pass more than any other team in the league. The team also drafted Kyler Murray, a potentially significant upgrade over the corpse of Josh Rosen, who I could be the first first-round QB in NFL history to be replaced by a number one overall pick QB two years in a row. There was an obvious path to volume and relevance here, and thus far Kirk has been solid, with 37 targets through four weeks. He may miss a few games with an injury suffered this week, but he has the potential to be a PPR monster going forward, especially if he assumes the slot role from Larry Fitzgerald if and when he ever retires.
Dante Pettis racked up 467 yards last year on 45 targets for a team that was without their starting QB for the bulk of the year. Most assumed that he would take on the number one role in San Francisco this year, although as we all know that hasn't happened. In this case, though, there were some obvious red flags heading into the season that many of us recognized and led us to avoid him in drafts. As a general rule, you can't trust a lot of what comes out of a coach's mouth during camp and the preseason, as most coaches are going to gas up their own guys. However, I think it's very important to listen to negative feedback on players. If a coach is willing to publicly shit on one of his own players, that's a big red flag, and we heard a lot of bad things about Pettis heading into the year, and the team invested two high picks on additional wide receivers. If you want to succeed in fantasy, you need to monitor the news coming out of camp. Take it with a grain of salt, but remember what you read. This is why I had DJ Chark on my radar during week one. I'm not saying that I expected him to break out the way he did the first three weeks, but there was a lot of positive info on him leading up to the season, and so as soon as he tore it up in week one, I knew it was probably more than just one lucky week. In contrast, Pettis was a guy I was interested in back in May during dynasty rookie draft season, but I was fading him by the time my redraft leagues were drafting. The guys in the RCF non-dynasty league probably remember me referring to Deebo as the true WR1 in San Francisco when I drafted him a month ago.
To sum this all up, you need to be looking at a wealth of information when trying to determine these breakouts. Coaching changes, scheme changes, opportunity or lack thereof, QB changes, who the team drafted and if those players are competition, news from camp, and on and on it goes. The best fantasy players tend to be the ones who are most informed. Knowledge is power. If you want to win your leagues, or to at least consistently put yourself in a position where you can win them, you need to know as much or more as your competition.
And remember, the ultimate goal is not to always make the right decision. That's not going to happen. We all fuck up. The goal is to make more good decisions than bad ones, and the best way to do that is to utilize as much information at your disposal as possible when you make your choices. You'll win some and lose some, but if you can get to a point where you're making more good moves than bad ones, you'll see your teams improve. This is especially true in dynasty, where your good decisions can snowball over multiple seasons to build a juggernaut, or where your bad decisions can doom your team to years of ineptitude. Be the former, not the league Taco.
I'll be back tomorrow with potential trade and waiver wire targets.
Let's start by assuming your team is bad, limping into week five at 0-4 or 1-3. This is the time when you need to ask yourself whether your team sucks or has just been unlucky. Luck plays a huge factor in fantasy, far more than most would probably like to admit. I missed the playoffs in a league last year where I had the second highest points for in the league. Unfortunately, I also had the highest points against, meaning damn near every week I was going up against either the top scorer that week or close enough. To quote the great philosopher Aristotle, "Shit happens."
Look at your team's point totals for the year. Are you contending with the top teams in points for and have simply been unlucky? If that's the case, typically the best strategy is to stay the course. While it's not always the case (see my sad tale above), fantasy has a tendency to balance out. If your team is consistently good, chances are you'll start picking up some wins sooner rather than later.
Alternatively, is your team bottom of the barrel in points for? If that's the case, is it a matter of you just starting the wrong guys every week, or is it that you just botched the draft? If you're starting the wrong guys every week, that at least is correctable. If your team is terrible, though, you may need to start thinking about selling any good players you have for depth. I know we all hate to sell off our studs, but what's the point of having Christian McCaffrey if you're not going to make the playoffs? He's not winning you money if your season ends after week thirteen anyway, after all.
I'm not here to advise you on what trades to make or not to make, at least not in this column itself. I will try to follow up with any questions in the comments, but as you've seen from my start/sit article, I too am fallible. This again comes back to the randomness that is fantasy football. Quite often we make the right decisions but end up with the wrong outcomes. If you confidently started Keenan Allen and DeAndre Hopkins last week, you, like me, know that all too well. Even these fantasy gods have bad games. They just have less of them than the mere mortals that make up the bulk of our fantasy rosters.
But while we're on the subject of gods, let's start with the one who probably won a lot of us our match-ups this week. I am, of course, speaking of the one true Godwin, a guy you were drafting in the fourth or fifth round who looks to be ascending to fantasy heaven, kind of like Jesus but cooler. Godwin is not only matching Mike Evans target for target, but is outproducing him as well. He has become the slot guy and safety net for Jameis Winston, and in a pass-happy offense like the one that Bruce Arians runs, you want that guy. Evans is still going to get his, sometimes at the cost of Godwin like last week, but there seems to be little doubt that they want to feed Godwin. Keep an eye on Tampa's match-ups and the quality of the opposing corners. If they have a guy who can check Evans, it's wheels up for Chris Godwin.
And this brings me to an important factor in fantasy success, and that is figuring out which guys are going to the be the ones to break out next season. Godwin was an obvious candidate, so much so that his ADP rose to around fifty. He went from a coach/coordinator who wanted to throw the ball to another coach/coordinator that wanted to throw the ball, so nothing significant changed there. However, the team let Adam Humphries and DeSean Jackson walk, opening up something like 180 targets from last year. More importantly, the Bucs didn't bother replacing either guy. This left the slot role open for Godwin and, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, you want the slot guy in pass-first offenses. Now, it's perhaps unrealistic to expect Godwin to get all 180 of those targets. Some will go to Perriman, or Justin Watson, or OJ Howard, or Cameron Brate, or my alma mater's own Scott Miller. But a lot of those targets are going to go to Godwin, and some will go to Evans as well in that X role.
When spotting potential breakout receivers, you need to look at situation, talent, and opportunity. You want to find guys who produced their rookie year and whose teams are looking to give them an expanded role heading into year two. Sure, some guys will just pop out of of nowhere after doing nothing in year one like DJ Chark, but the bulk of guys show you enough flashes in year one to make you see something potentially special. This year's notable breakout receiver candidates heading into the season were, in my opinion, Christian Kirk, Dante Pettis, Courtland Sutton, DJ Moore, Michael Gallup, and Marquez Valdes-Scantling. All of those guys went for around 500 yards or more their rookie year and seemed in line for increased work heading into year two, and the bulk of them are looking pretty good so far in 2019. Let's examine a couple of these guys in a bit more depth so you can see what I'm talking about.
Last year, Christian Kirk went for 590 yards and three scores in one of the worst offenses I've ever seen. This is an offense that thought running David Johnson up the middle fifteen times a game was a good idea. Kirk had 68 targets in a low-volume, inefficient offense. Over the offseason, the coach was fired and replaced by Cliff Kingsbury, a guy who said he wanted to pass more than any other team in the league. The team also drafted Kyler Murray, a potentially significant upgrade over the corpse of Josh Rosen, who I could be the first first-round QB in NFL history to be replaced by a number one overall pick QB two years in a row. There was an obvious path to volume and relevance here, and thus far Kirk has been solid, with 37 targets through four weeks. He may miss a few games with an injury suffered this week, but he has the potential to be a PPR monster going forward, especially if he assumes the slot role from Larry Fitzgerald if and when he ever retires.
Dante Pettis racked up 467 yards last year on 45 targets for a team that was without their starting QB for the bulk of the year. Most assumed that he would take on the number one role in San Francisco this year, although as we all know that hasn't happened. In this case, though, there were some obvious red flags heading into the season that many of us recognized and led us to avoid him in drafts. As a general rule, you can't trust a lot of what comes out of a coach's mouth during camp and the preseason, as most coaches are going to gas up their own guys. However, I think it's very important to listen to negative feedback on players. If a coach is willing to publicly shit on one of his own players, that's a big red flag, and we heard a lot of bad things about Pettis heading into the year, and the team invested two high picks on additional wide receivers. If you want to succeed in fantasy, you need to monitor the news coming out of camp. Take it with a grain of salt, but remember what you read. This is why I had DJ Chark on my radar during week one. I'm not saying that I expected him to break out the way he did the first three weeks, but there was a lot of positive info on him leading up to the season, and so as soon as he tore it up in week one, I knew it was probably more than just one lucky week. In contrast, Pettis was a guy I was interested in back in May during dynasty rookie draft season, but I was fading him by the time my redraft leagues were drafting. The guys in the RCF non-dynasty league probably remember me referring to Deebo as the true WR1 in San Francisco when I drafted him a month ago.
To sum this all up, you need to be looking at a wealth of information when trying to determine these breakouts. Coaching changes, scheme changes, opportunity or lack thereof, QB changes, who the team drafted and if those players are competition, news from camp, and on and on it goes. The best fantasy players tend to be the ones who are most informed. Knowledge is power. If you want to win your leagues, or to at least consistently put yourself in a position where you can win them, you need to know as much or more as your competition.
And remember, the ultimate goal is not to always make the right decision. That's not going to happen. We all fuck up. The goal is to make more good decisions than bad ones, and the best way to do that is to utilize as much information at your disposal as possible when you make your choices. You'll win some and lose some, but if you can get to a point where you're making more good moves than bad ones, you'll see your teams improve. This is especially true in dynasty, where your good decisions can snowball over multiple seasons to build a juggernaut, or where your bad decisions can doom your team to years of ineptitude. Be the former, not the league Taco.
I'll be back tomorrow with potential trade and waiver wire targets.
