What is it that makes drafting rookies so much fun? I'm told humans don't like change. Yet each season a new crop of players enter the NFL and us fantasy footballers are mesmerized by their shine. Captivated by the the unknown. Resistance to the changing of the fantasy football guard is feeble to non-existent. Maybe it's the lottery factor at play. Humans resist big life changes, but not when those changes are the result of winning the lottery. And what's a rookie if not a lottery ticket. I remember scratching off my Sony Michel ticket expecting to reveal Jamaal Charles. And that Laquon Treadwell quick-pick I hoped would result in a Randy Moss-like windfall. But now the savings are all gone and I'm eating two meals a day from dumpsters just to be able to afford my next rookie fix. Ahhh yes, just one more hit of the shiny stuff. Rondale Moore is sure to fill the cavernous spiritual void in my soul. Anyway, here's my top 10 rookies for 2021 PPR dynasty leagues:
*Note: these rankings are geared towards half PPR, 1QB dynasty leagues
In the last article we highlighted which NFC players have the most to gain if their current teams don’t draft a player at a similar position. In this article we will discuss which current AFC players have the most to gain in the upcoming NFL draft. What this means is if a team passes on a skill position player or quarterback in the first few round which players currently on those rosters today will have the most to gain.
Each section we will highlight the team, how many picks each team has overall, how many picks they have rounds 1-3 and the players who have the most to gain. This article isn’t a mock or predicting any picks. Most likely at least half of these players we talk about today will be impacted by draft picks, but just in case they aren’t here is why we think they can improve in 2021.
Baltimore Ravens
Total picks: 7
Round 1: No. 27 overall
Round 2: No. 58
Round 3: No. 104
Impacted Player: Marquise Brown
Marquise Brown turned it on in the second half of 2020 increasing his production in nearly every metric. This spike in production coincides with Mark Andrews missing time due to COVID. However, even after Andrews returned Brown was still producing at a high level. Below are his stats side by side before Andrews went out with Covid and after he returned. The 13.2 points per game (PPG) in those final 6 weeks (including playoffs) would have made Brown the wide receiver 15 in 2020. Brown’s current Best ball average draft position (ADP) is wide receiver 36.
THUMP. That was Week 10 crushing us in the face. It was unpredictable, I know, but let's begin the conversation about the running back position this past week with a look at some of the names that finished inside RB1 territory, with their overall rank listed: RB3 Nyheim Hines, RB4 Ronald Jones, RB5, D'Andre Swift, RB6 Devontae Booker, RB7 Rex Burkhead, RB8 Antonio Gibson, RB10 Wayne Gallman, RB11 Malcolm Brown and RB12 Salvon Ahmed. That's three-fourths of the past week's RB1 finishers going to running backs that were likely all drafted outside of the first five rounds in your fantasy draft and at least three, maybe four players who may not have even been rostered in your league as of Sunday night. Next, let's move over to RB2 territory: RB14 J.D. McKissic, RB15 Boston Scott, RB17 Kalen Ballage and RB23 Alex Collins. Overall, that's 12, or half, of Week 10's RB1-2 crop going to names that likely required very little draft capital to make your roster. Some of those names are less surprising, like Swift and Gibson, but for the sake of argument, both running backs finished outside the top-28 running backs drafted in 2020. It's already been a miraculous year at the position -- for some, perhaps heart-breaking is a more fitting adjective -- and the madness ensued in Week 10, to put it lightly. Fortunately, we can at least say we did not see the same absurd number of running back injuries as we've grown accustomed to.
Even so, it was a truly unpredictable week. Before you begin beating your forehead against the keyboard and your boss yells at you (or partner/child/parents/etc. for those still stuck at home) for disrupting the workplace over fantasy football for the umpteenth time since the onset of September, remember this: we're all in it together. We're all playing the same game, with the same weekly uncertainty factored in and with the same information at our fingertips. That's reason for composure. That's reason to keep fighting the good fight because, as you may have heard me say many times before, the grinders beat the whiners. I've actually never said that before, but you get the point.
It's time to get to the rankings, but before we do, let's take a quick trip around the league.
The longest week of the longest year in human history is finally behind us. I was in charge of running the electoral map screen thingy here at Razzball, so I've only slept six hours this week. There was major controversy when I projected Florida for Joe Exotic late Tuesday night, but I'm standing by that call. Now we're all ready to move past the circus and on to the electoral main event: Sexiest Man on Earth voting. Since February I've been campaigning long and hard and sweaty for Kyler Murray, who delivered against the Dolphins to the tune of 21/26 for 283 yards, 11 carries for 106 yards, 3 passing touchdowns and 1 rushing touchdown—he now has 16 passing touchdowns and 8 rushing touchdowns on the season. I'm not the only one in love with Kyler, our Pigskinonator projections robot has been all over him too. In fact, the Pig-bot projected the young speedster as it's #1 fantasy QB for week 9, three spots ahead of the expert consensus. The bot is dialed in with bacon grease and humming at midseason form. Which makes sense since it's midseason. If you haven't yet, sign up for the free trial of all our tools and test out Pigskinonator for yourself. Anyway, here's what else I saw yesterday for fantasy football:
What. A. Mess. Have mercy on us, 2020. To anyone who owns or has ever owned a pet, or is a parent, you may have experienced a scenario much like the one I am about to lay out. You turn your back for a few minutes, heck, maybe even just a few seconds. Perhaps you had to take the garbage out, or quickly snuck away to take a shower, and left your furry friends unsupervised for a brief moment. Upon your return, you are shocked to find the stuffing of a destroyed pillow strewn about the room, or a box of tissues shredded throughout your home -- maybe, for the most unfortunate of souls, even some poopy footprints scattered across the floor. That feeling is what Week 7 felt like, at least to me. We let our guard down for just a second, reclined on the couch to relax and enjoy a pleasant Sunday afternoon of football -- and we returned to reality to find an array of crap flung all across our roster and, more importantly of course, the top 60 rest of season running back rankings. Sure, we didn't see the high-caliber superstars do gown that we saw earlier in the season, but that's more so because, well, there are only a few healthy ones left unscathed at the position as is.
Let's run through it. Chris Carson. Kenyan Drake. Devonta Freeman. Phillip Lindsay. Thankfully, one previously injured back, Raheem Mostert, was replaced via a breakout from Jeff Wilson, who finished as Week 7's RB1 with 31 half-PPR points. Oh, yeah. Right. INJURED. Out several weeks. Then we have the lingering injuries from Week 6 that are accompanied by just as much, if not more, uncertainty than the aforementioned names. Miles Sanders. Joe Mixon. Let's go a degree deeper. Nick Chubb. Austin Ekeler. All of this, crumpled together one layer after another, has created arguably one of the most clouded RB groups in recent memory. Even the top 24 is incredibly weak, relatively speaking, at the tail end. It's ugly -- and it's tough to project considering many of these injuries come with timetables of "several weeks." Or "for a while." I especially get a kick out of "some time" and wouldn't be surprised to hear a head coach give a *shrug* followed by "beats me, man, you heard anything?"
In this week's column, I'll do my best to make sense of it all. The rest of my colleagues here at Razzball are doing an incredible job attempting to do the same at their own respective positional assignments, so be sure to check out all of our rest of season positional fantasy football rankings. Before I get to mine, let's take a quick trip around the league.
Borat 2, the presidential debate and Thursday Night Football. What do they all have in common? Young girls. We have Rudy G trying to bang a very young woman (allegedly) in Borat 2. We have two 70 year old men bickering like school girls during the presidential debates—no offense to our two school girl readers. And then we have two quarterbacks throwing footballs like little ladies on TNF, or so we expected. But Carson Wentz wasn't feeling much like a sissy man against the Giants defense, going 25/43 for 359 yards, 7 carries for 14 yards, 2 passing touchdowns, 1 rushing touchdown and 1 interception—he now has 10 passing touchdowns and 5 rushing touchdowns on the season. Pigskinonator saw this huge game coming when nobody else did, ranking Wentz as its #7 QB compared to the FantasyPros expert consensus ranking of #16. The pig-bot is really starting to heat up now that it has more data and extra slop to chew on. Sign up now for a 3-day free trial! Anyway, here's what else I saw yesterday for fantasy football:
As we rapidly approach the start of the NFL season, we are being inundated with reports out of camp. Leonard Fournette released. Fred Warner with Covid. Derwin James with a knee injury. Yannick Ngakoue traded to the Vikings. My typing skills are trying to keep up. This is the last of the rankings updates, top 50 defensive backs for 2020 IDP leagues, with just a week or so before opening day.
Lucky charms come in all shapes and sizes, but bugs bringing you good luck is just plain weird. Yes, I am talking about ladybugs. Do you realize there is no discernable history behind the ladybug’s lucky nature? Despite the lack of facts, many believe being a landing pad for these flying critters will serve you well as long as you don’t brush it off! Let her fly away and reap the reward.
The ladybug legend doesn’t stop at luck. It’s told that these feminine flyers can predict your future too! Well, now you have got my attention bugs. Tradition says if you count their spots, it will signal how many kids you’ll have (yikes) or possibly the number of lucky months ahead of you. We have got four months of betting ahead of us. Wherever that four-spotted ladybug lands, I hope it’s on my shoulder.
One of the keys to IDP leagues is knowing your scoring system. They are sort of like dates, whether it be a guy or girl, they all have the same two chromosomes, but they can all be vastly different. If you're just starting out playing in an IDP league this is the most important thing to know before you draft. Your rankings will be highly dependent on the scoring system so do not go into it blindly with some list of rankings.
The scoring for IDP generally breaks down into three categories, similar to standard and PPR scoring for offense, and they are based on the ratio of points given to tackles and “big plays”. Balanced scoring systems will have a ratio of big play to solo tackle points of 3:1 to 4:1. If it’s above 4:1, the scoring is considered ‘big play heavy” and if it’s less than 3:1, it’s “tackle heavy”.
I’ve played in an IDP league for about 15 years and it’s big play heavy. So what I’ve done is look at two other scoring systems and compared the players who finished 1-25 in my league with how they would finish in the other scoring systems. It’s obviously not the complete picture, but it gives you an idea of the types of players that are favored in each format. I used the scoring from Fantasy Pros to use as our “tackle heavy” format as their big play to tackle ration is a little less than 3:1. For the balanced approach I used the IDP 123 system from Expand the Boxscore’s Jordan Rains. The scoring categories included are Solo Tackles, Assisted Tackles, Sacks, Forced Fumbles, Recovered Fumbles, Interceptions, Passes Defensed, and TDs. Each player’s stats are from MyFantasyLeague. The scoring systems points are in the chart below.
Whenever you see an overall ranking for IDP leagues, linebackers will dominate the list. Some will have the top 10-20 players be linebackers and that would be true if you only based the rankings on projected points, but draft strategy has to come into play. As in your offensive player part of the draft, position scarcity and tiers come into play. There is a large core of players in each of the three positions that don’t vary much, but the start of each of these cores varies greatly between positions.
Kerryon? Yo Kerryon, is that you?
Nope, it's just cold hand of death here to take away all my Kerryon Johnson hopes and dreams. When the Lions spent pick 35 of the 2020 NFL Draft on D'Andre Swift, it got ugly in House Donkey. My imaginary girlfriend—I call her Kerryon— had me on suicide watch for the entire weekend. With all the sharp objects hidden, I took to Reddit for my punishment. There's still days when I think about tossing the toaster in the bathtub. Unfortunately, we don't have a bathtub. We don't have a toaster either. I live in more of a barn than a house. Anyway, here's my updated top 20 dynasty running backs for 2020 PPR fantasy football:
I'm taking a break from my 2020 dynasty rankings to bring you an article about large sweaty men pounding on other equally sweaty men. If you found this page by Googling, "pounding sweaty men," then welcome, you're in the right place!
Running back is the fantasy position which takes the greatest wear on the body. But is the total number of carries a running back receives in any given season predictive of their production in the following season?
This is the question I set out to answer, specifically in regards to The Predator, Derrick Henry. In 2019 the big man rumbled for 1,540 yards and 16 touchdowns on 303 rushing attempts plus 18 catches for 206 yards and 2 touchdowns—posting the 2nd most running back fantasy points in standard scoring and 5th most fantasy points in PPR scoring. Henry also tacked on 83 playoff carries for 446 yards and 2 more touchdowns. This adds up to 386 carries on the season, the 3rd most of any running back in the past 10 seasons. Let's take a look at the follow-up performances of all other high-volume backs over the past 10 years:
