Ian Allan answers your fantasy questions. In this edition: How much was Doug Martin affected by playing most of last year with his one-two punch of star guards? What the heck is Ian trying to pull in the Fanex Auction League? Should fantasy leaguers open drafts with two running backs?
Question 1
In the Index you mention Tampa Bay's offense dropped off in the second half of the season. Don’t you think that had a lot to do with their two best linemen being hurt? The best one I believe is one of the best run-blockers in the league. I don’t expect Hall of Fame numbers, as you say, but the basement seems to be at least a repeat of last year assuming o-line health ... thoughts? Thanks dude. Keep up the good work.
Jeff Foster ()
The rule of thumb is that guard is the least important position on an offensive line – on the entire offense, really. You probably saw the Factoid I posted earlier this week. In this year’s draft, there were three guards selected with top-20 picks, which is really unusual. In the previous 20 drafts, there were only six guards taken with top-20 picks. If you take a guard with that kind of pick, it’s with the expectation he’s something special – think Steve Hutchinson or Randall McDaniel. You can plug in nobody-type guys at those spots. So maybe that’s why it wasn’t such a huge deal when the Bucs played most of last year without both members of the best guard tandem in the league. Davin Joseph got hurt in the preseason; he didn’t play at all. And they lost Carl Nicks after seven games (and they lost him for good). Not having Nicks & Joseph didn’t seem to slow down Doug Martin much. Martin ran for over 125 yards in five games last year. Four of those were games in which neither of those guards played. So I like the theory, but I don’t think it holds up. Guards (I think) aren’t that important. So I guess we all shouldn’t overreact to the Titans attempting to become the AFC’s version of the Bucs. Two of their big additions in the offseason were signing Andy Levitre and using the 10th pick of the draft on Chance Warmack.
Question 2
I see that in the Fanex Auction, you're sitting on your wallet, refusing to chase early eagerness among your colleagues. However, at what point to you risk having a bunch of cash on hand and no one worth spending it on? I followed similar advice from you the past two seasons about not over-paying early and I found myself able to buy a roster of $10 players for $3 each, but you don't win games that way. Having the most depth of above-average players doesn't help much when you have no studs in the starting lineup.
Andrew Taylor (GROSSE POINTE PARK, MI)
What kind of league are you in? In a smaller league, I think it makes more sense to go after stars. You can find other guys to plug in later. The TD-only format, I think, is also more geared towards trying to latch onto a superstar. When you get in larger leagues with more complex scoring systems (like this one), then the process of creating exact player values and sticking to auctioning models becomes more consistent. It becomes more of a math problem – the guys willing to put in the time and carefully work through the numbers tend to win. With this Fanex league, it’s one that I argue with readers about every summer. They see that I’m not drafting running backs (or in this case, buying running backs), and question whether I’m off my rocker. But look at the results. I’ve been in the 12-team Fanex Analysis Draft six times. I’ve won it three times, and 2nd once. Two lesser finishes (5th, 11th), but one of those was in the lockout year, when they made us draft guys before a quarter of the players were even on teams. I know what I’m doing. I’m a professional, and I expect I’ll have similar success in this Fanex Auction League. So far, I’ve spent only $122, but I’ve secured $184 worth of players. The rundown: Kyle Rudolph ($15) for $6, Roddy White ($37) for $22, Victor Cruz ($30) for $19, Josh Freeman ($9) for $4, Colin Kaepernick ($20) for $16. I’ve made a few errors. I bid too early on Antonio Brown, which prevented me from bidding on Dwayne Bowe. He’s a $23 who went for $15. But whatever. I’ll probably end up with close to $300 worth of players with my $200. That’s damn good in an auction, and you don’t accumulate that kind of talent and then not win games. Circling back to your point. One must be careful not to get caught holding money. I’m aware of that. And the running back market has never quite cooled off the way I thought it would. In hindsight, I should have just bought Darren Sproles for $25 early on (I think he’s worth $29 – this is a PPR format). So last night I just said the hell with it and bought Chris Johnson for $24, even though I think he’s only a $22 player. Whatever. I’ve got such a killing going at the other positions that I figured I could just overspend to lock down one of those running back positions. This team doesn’t have any superstars – no Foster, Peterson or Megatron. Some readers just aren’t comfortable with that concept. But you’ve got to do the math. My boat has more oars in the water. That team will win – I guarantee it.
Question 3
Being a big proponent of the "be ready to zig if everyone else is zagging" philosophy, here's my question: You are strongly advocating going RB-RB early this season, and for good reason. But let's assume I show up on draft day and all of my league mates are looking to follow your strategy, forcing me to "zig" (or would that be "zag"?). Am I wrong to think that if I end up with a stud QB and two upper echelon WRs (think Cam or Peyton, AJ Green, and Roddy White?), with my top 3 picks and then grab a trio of RBs the likes of LeVeon Bell, Chris Ivory, and Reggie Bush somewhere in the next few rounds that that might not be the worst situation in the world? I'd have a top tier QB, WR, WR and I think it's reasonable to think that 2 of the 3 RBs (we start 2) could conceivably get me 8-9 TDs apiece this year. What say you?
Matt Tinker (ORLEANS, VT)
Who said that I’m a RB-RB guy? I can’t remember the last time I opened a draft by selecting two running backs. I don’t know that I’ve done that in the last 10 years. I think the opposite of your premise is true. Typically I’m in leagues where the majority of other guys are trying to select running backs, and I’m trying to figure out other ways to win. I’ve done one draft so far this year. In that one (the Fanex Analysis Draft) a> I traded out of the first round, rather than selecting Ray Rice or Jamaal Charles and selected wide receivers with my first three picks. I’m not opposed to pulling the trigger earlier than others on quarterbacks and wide receivers.
Question 4
Ian years ago it was easy to build a winner by drafting a deep pool of RBs and waiting to trade them to desperate owners with busts, injuries or byes. Now guys are just not willing to trade a Rogers for an Eli and Ridley because they hope the QB can make up for their lack of punch at other positions. I saw a guy start Pierre Thomas and a running back on a bye last year in my league and guess what, Stafford went off and he won his game. Is it time to start drafting four qbs and trying to create artificial scarcity there for trades later the way RBs used to be?
joann placencia (ALHAMBRA, CA)
I don’t see it. There are 32 teams. In general, teams tend to have one good quarterback and one good tailback. But fantasy teams start two running backs and only one quarterback. So in a general sense, we’re looking at leagues needing 24 running backs each week, but only 12 quarterbacks. The gap is too large for you to fill it by simply drafting a couple of extra ones.
Question 5
I am in a 14-team keeper (3 keepers total can't keep anyone picked in the top 3 rounds) league and have the option of keeping Stevan Ridley but I'd have to keep him at the 6th pick in the 2nd round. Pickings get real slim in this league after the first couple of rounds but I'm still not sure if he justifies a 2nd rounder. What would you do? My other keepers are Stafford and Decker.
Eric Stroker (CHESTERFIELD, MI)
I wouldn’t keep any of those guys. If you were starting from scratch, Stafford, Ridley and Decker would all be selected outside the top 42 players, so I would just toss them all back in the pot. I think you’ll be better with the guys you’ll select with those choices in the first three rounds.
Question 6
One of the most useful things in your mag is the weekly scoring summary presented on each team's page. With that I can see who was consistent and who may have had a high overall total but was so up and down during the season that they were probably out of my line-up when they had a big week. Is there any way I could get those weekly stats on-line so I can you them while trying to predict consistency for next year? I think there should be some way for you to grade players by consistency. We predict that this receiver will score 10 or more points 9 out of 17 games next year. Thanks for being my favorite, and only FF mag since 1989.
Tom Mechler (ESSEX JUNCTION, VT)
Thanks for the kind words. There are a couple of sites that have pretty extensive game-by-game numbers for individual players. The NFL.com site is one. You can also check out www.pro-football-reference.com/. Look at those and see if they’re what you want. If not, I can send you the files we used on the pages of the magazine.
Question 7
In trying to set up our league’s custom scoring profile, I keep getting an error message that I don't think is correct. It asks “how many QBs will be purchased at your auction?” I answer 15. It asks “of those QBs, how many will go for more than the minimum bid?” I answer 15. In other words, I don’t think any of the 15 QBs will go for just a $1, I think all 15 selected in our auction will go for more than the minimum. I then get an error message saying “The number of QBs at more than the minimum price cannot exceed the total number of QBs selected” (or something to that effect)… But it’s not MORE THAN, it is EQUAL TO, so why am I getting this error message?
Matt Tinker (ORLEANS, VT)
That custom-rankings deal, it’s working off the concept of finding a baseline player at each position. You tell the computer what’s the best quarterback who’ll be purchased for $1, and the values of the other guys are then all created by determining how much better they are than that $1 baseline quarterback (which for you, will be somebody like Sam Bradford or Josh Freeman). Using this process at every position, that’s when we can start looking at players across positions and have it mean something. When this process is used, we can then explain with more certainty why we’ve got our No. 32 wide receiver ahead of our No. 34 running back or whatever. The error message is a flawed, and we’ll get that re-worked. In the meantime, change your settings to indicate that 16 quarterbacks will be selected, but that only 15 will go for more than $1. If that bugs you, having that extra $1 player in there, then change the overall cap money from $1,200 to $1,201.