Ian Allan answers your fantasy football questions. In this editions. Why you're probably a dummy if you buy Adrian Peterson at your auction. The pros and cons of contract years. Which draft position is the best? Second-half stats as a defensive tool.
Question 1
I put my specific info in to create accurate auction values. I want to use as a guide to my auction draft. The numbers created seem low for the "stud" players. For instance, Peterson will go for at least $60 in our draft and he is on Fantasy Index board for substantially less. Is this simply our league over-valuing some players and I should lay off those or is it something else.
BRAD WOODWARD (BRECKENRIDGE, TX)
If you do your homework properly, there’s little chance you’ll buy a guy like Peterson. He ran for 2,000 yards last year, so he’s the coveted guy that everybody is slobbering over. You don’t win championships by trying to overpay for last year’s production. The goal is to put together a team that’s worth not $100, but more like $140-160. How are you going to do that by buying Peterson for $60? The superstars – the Peterson types – tend to be bought by the fantasy owner who doesn’t want to be bothered carefully researching the players and working through the numbers. Ultimately on an auction, it comes down to deciding where to set the baselines. Some of that is determined by your league mates. With kickers, for example, I happen to think they’re a little undervalued. But ultimately, you know that you’ll be able to get Matt Bryant, Mike Nugent or Randy Bullock for a dollar. Those guys are top-5 type kickers. So the bar has been set – the first 123 points at kicker are free. It’s those last 15-20 points that you’re paying for. So that’s the “value” of Dawson or Gostkowski. Similarly at quarterback, you know you can get Josh Freeman or Sam Bradford for the $1.00 min. That’s your baseline. Do this at each position. If you’re struggling deciding where to draw that key line at each position, I’ve got a couple of guidelines. Is this a player who might get cut in mid-October when you want to make a waiver claim for a wide receiver who caught 5 passes for 70 yards and a touchdown? Then that’s a $1.00 player. In general, probably fewer than half of the teams in an auction will pay more than $1.00 for a backup quarterback. At running back, most teams will pay more than $1.00 for one backup (non-starter). Similar at wide receiver. At tight end, only a couple of teams will pay more than $1.00 for a backup. Use those kind of guidelines. After that, it’s just math. At the end, look at the team with Adrian Peterson and the other $40 worth of players and add up their statistical value. Then add up the stats of the guys whose combined price tags add up to about $140. The value-shopper team will project to be a lot better.
Question 2
Thanks for all your help over the years. I am in a 12-team league where all TDs get 6 points. We draw for "draft picking choices" and do a 20-round snake draft. Can you give me your ranked choices from 1-12 of where you would want to pick in the first round of this years draft?
Kent Curtis (LYNNWOOD, WA)
The earlier the better. If you’re drafting 1st, you get the first pick in all of the odd-numbered rounds. You pick last in the even-numbered rounds, but each of those rounds comes after an odd-numbered rounds – you’re always a round ahead. The first round, for example, is more coveted than the second (every player selected in the second, after all, was passed over by every team in the first round). I ran some numbers on this, and it looks like after eight rounds, the guy with the No. 1 pick will be about 39 points ahead of the guy picking 12th.
| Best draft positions | |
|---|---|
| 1st pick | 348 |
| 2nd pick | 345 |
| 3rd pick | 339 |
| 4th pick | 334 |
| 5th pick | 333 |
| 6th pick | 328 |
| 7th pick | 320 |
| 8th pick | 314 |
| 10th pick | 314 |
| 9th pick | 312 |
| 11th pick | 311 |
| 12th pick | 309 |
Question 3
Do you have stats that can tell us "how did NFL teams perform defensively over the last 6-8 games of last season?" I'm of the opinion that defenses gel or breakdown over time. Using the entire season of defensive statistics may be misleading. I'd rather use the end of last season as the basis for predicting what's gonna happen this year.
MATT SHEDOR (ALGONQUIN, IL)
Fine by me. That’s one of the stats we look at. But I don’t see it as the silver bullet. As you start breaking the season into halves and quarters, the sample sizes are getting smaller and smaller. I mean, the Patriots were the only team to pitch a shutout in Week 17 last year. Are you going to make them No. 1? As you look at fewer and fewer games, the impact of strength of schedule becomes more significant (a team happens to play half of its final eight games against top-5 or bottom-5 offenses). And what about the reality that some teams start experimenting in those final few games or rest most of their starters in Week 17? Not trying to throw cold water on your theory. Just saying. If you look at the final eight games for each team last year, Cincinnati had the best defense, allowing under 13 points per game. Atlanta’s defense always does better in terms of allowing points than yards.
| DEFENSES: SPLITTING SEASON IN HALF | ||
|---|---|---|
| Team | G 1-8 | G 9-16 |
| Cincinnati | 26.9 | 12.8 |
| Seattle | 16.8 | 13.9 |
| Denver | 21.9 | 14.3 |
| Pittsburgh | 20.5 | 18.8 |
| Atlanta | 17.9 | 19.5 |
| Chicago | 15.0 | 19.6 |
| New England | 21.3 | 20.1 |
| Washington | 28.4 | 20.1 |
| St. Louis | 23.3 | 20.3 |
| Green Bay | 21.3 | 20.8 |
| Baltimore | 22.0 | 21.0 |
| Miami | 18.6 | 21.0 |
| San Francisco | 12.9 | 21.3 |
| NY Jets | 25.0 | 21.9 |
| Minnesota | 20.9 | 22.6 |
| Cleveland | 23.3 | 22.8 |
| Carolina | 22.5 | 22.9 |
| NY Giants | 20.1 | 22.9 |
| Kansas City | 30.0 | 23.1 |
| Buffalo | 31.0 | 23.4 |
| San Diego | 19.6 | 24.1 |
| Houston | 17.1 | 24.3 |
| Indianapolis | 23.9 | 24.5 |
| Tampa Bay | 23.1 | 26.1 |
| Oakland | 28.6 | 26.8 |
| Tennessee | 32.1 | 26.8 |
| Arizona | 17.8 | 26.9 |
| Dallas | 22.6 | 27.4 |
| Jacksonville | 27.0 | 28.1 |
| New Orleans | 28.6 | 28.1 |
| Detroit | 23.5 | 31.1 |
| Philadelphia | 22.9 | 32.6 |
Question 4
I know you're not big on 'contract year' scenarios, but I do pay attention on big name RBs. I'm curious if McFadden refusing to sign an extension gets your attention. Typically, I would read this as a good sign that he's been told they won't lighten his load and he may not let nagging injuries keep him off the field. If I recall, though, Hillis gave a very similar style of public denouncement about contracts a couple years ago only to have a historically crappy season (granted, the two RBs and there situations couldn't be more different). Is the McFadden thing good news, bad news, or no news to you?
L DALE GANDER (SUN PRAIRIE, WI)
McFadden and the team haven’t been able to agree on his worth, so he’s in a contract year. So is DeMarco Murray in Dallas. Whether that’s good or bad news depends on the mentality of the player. One school of thought is that the player will want to play hard to increase his value – making himself more valuable on the open market. I tend to think McFadden and Murray fall into this class. But another line of reasoning is that the players have essentially already been paid for 2013, and the smart play for them is to take it easy, stay healthy, and not get beat up before having to sign new deals next spring. There was a theory bouncing around in the New York papers a few days ago, suggesting that Santonio Holmes is actually healthy and will be inclined to sit out if he’s concerned in any way about his health – that his focus is on getting paid in 2014. Milking his injury, so to speak. I argued with an professor about this topic in an Economics class at the University of Washington in the ‘80s. He said that the Holmes’ scenario was definitely the correct one, and didn’t give any credit whatsoever to the idea of players going on contract drives. But I didn’t find the professor very convincing, and I don’t think he was much of a sports guy.
Question 5
Have a question for the magazine: For next year, can you please add a cheat sheet for Auction leagues (you've already got the mock draft!)? You've got everything else right there in one place. With the growing popularity of Auction leagues, it's about time you added them to your list.
SCOTT CHAMBERS (HIGHLANDS RANCH, CO)
I love auctions, but the product has to be done properly. I don’t like shoddy products, so I fear that if I were to put up an auction-value cheat sheet, some poor soul might use it. Sticking auction values on players, that’s a pseudo-science. Everything must be perfect. If it’s a 12-team league, all of the values for the players must add up to $1,200. Unless it’s a $200-cap league, then they’ve got to add up to $2,400. If there are 20-man rosters, there must be 240 players listed. If it’s 16-man rosters, then it’s got to be only 192 players (and that money from the missing 48 guys must be re-allocated to the others). You starting two wide receivers or three? Is there a flex? You see where I’m going with this? If we printed a 200-page magazine and put an auction price list on every page, we might still not hit a scoring system that fit your league. That’s why I like to have readers extract those from the custom-scoring feature on the website. Then they’re getting the exact, meaningful prices that have the specs to fit their league. To access yours, go to “Your Stuff” and select the “Scoring System” option.
Question 6
How do you handle keepers in the custom auction values? If you have a player who you value at $40 but he is kept by another team for $10? Do you take that player off the board and then reallocate the money to the top tier guys? Or is there a more formulaic way to adjust for this?
ERIC FEINGOLD (GARDEN CITY, NY)
For the most accurate work, you would build your own auction prices. Take the stat projections in our Excel stat download and work from there. You would set aside protected players and their money – just remove them entirely. The simpler system, I think is to just make a note of the protected players. Suppose there are three: Foster, Brees and Rodgers. Each is worth $40 but being kept for only $10. So collectively, there’s another $90 at play in the auction (extra money those three teams have to spend). So at that point, go into your auction setup page and change the parameters. If you’re in a 10-team league with a total of $1,000 being spent, I’ll guess that you’ll need to add about $100 ($90 won’t be quite enough, because if when you add that money, Foster, Brees and Rodgers won’t be worth $40 anymore, they might be worth $43-$47). After you run those prices, take the new total ($1,100) and subtract the new total for the three keeper players. If that total equals $970, then you’ve got the prices dialed in perfectly.
Question 7
My (2nd favorite) fantasy magazine pointed out that Jonathan Franklin missed a lot of offseason work, because his school has final exams later. Then I remembered that Isaiah Pead had the same situation last year, which contributed to his struggles. Logically, a 2nd-year player like Pead could have a bigger jump than normal, since they can finally take part in a full offseason. And a rookie like Franklin might be more likely to struggle early, but be a good waiver-wire/trade pickup late in the year with more practice time. Have you done any research on this subject?
Todd Weigel (Milwaukee, WI)
Justin Eleff did a nice feature on this very topic for the 2012 magazine. In his article, he argued that second- and third-year running backs are a lot more valuable than they used to be. Part of this could be the school issue you cite. There’s also the pass-protection issue. You’ve got to be able to block – learn the various assignments and whatnot – or they won’t want to put you out there. I did a little chart that got plugged into Justin’s article. In it, it showed that in the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s, about 12 percent of 1,000-yard rushers were rookies. But in the last ten years, only 6 percent of 1,000-yard runners have been rookies.
Question 8
We are starting up a league this year with a unique way to draft. Instead of drafting individual players, you draft a team. Then you get all of the fantasy players of that team. So if you draft Cincinnati, you get Dalton, Bernard, Green-Ellis, Green, Gresham, etc. Since it will be an 8-team league with four rounds, every player will be drafted, thus eliminating free agency. It's a PPR league that starts 2QB, 2 RB, 4 WR, 2TE, 2K, 2DEF. My question is who would be your top 8? I am not too concerned with teams after the top 8 as those picks would largely be determined by what you got in the first round. My first go around with this would be Atlanta, New England, Green Bay, Denver, New Orleans, Dallas, Seattle, NY Giants.
Sean Albright (SEVERN, MD)
Patriots, Saints, Packers, Broncos. Those are my top four. I’ve got all four of those offenses projected to score over 48 touchdowns. Every other team I’ve got finishing under 46 touchdowns.
Question 9
Here’s a proposed trade: I give up: #1, 20, 40, 60 I get: #10, 11, 31, 51 What do you think?
Grant Markgraf (Lake Geneva, WI)
My gut tells me that it would be smart to trade down. The 10-11 package should be similar to the 1-20 combo, then you pick up 10 slots of draft position later. But when I run the numbers, it doesn’t work out the well. If everyone just drafts the guys they’re supposed to draft, you’ll actually come out behind. Using the standard 12-team player bang numbers that I have in front of me, the 1-20-40-60 package equals 115 + 64 + 41 + 27 = 247 points. The new quartet would equal 79 + 78 + 53 + 33 = 243 points. That tells me you should trade the pick only if you don’t want to hold that No. 1 pick – you’ve got a bad feeling about Peterson or whatever. I suggest you keep shopping it around. See if somebody can come up with something better.
Question 10
On my custom ranking and or auction values cheat sheet, the format is hard and confusing for me to use at the live draft because it has about 120 wrs and 100 rbs listed which is a overkill and totals seven pages which also makes it hard to organize for a old guy with a ink pen in one hand, a marker in the other, reading glasses on the end of my nose, trying to drink a beer, poor lighting and everyone talking at once. With twelve teams, we only need about 80 wrs. With seven pages and 392 all positions list, I have to hire my own private secretary. Why cant you provide my custom ranking in a format like the yardage plus td draft cheat sheet list which everything is on one page in large print -- well organized and very easy to follow?
BEN HOGEVOLL (SILETZ, OR)
Fair comment. We’re working on it. I saw a couple of emails go back and forth on this last week. It’s something the tech team is working on. I will let the guys know to hurry it along – that there are definitely guys who want a cleaner, more user-friendly product.
Question 11
How difficult would it be for you to include in the final pre-season cheat sheet an updated ranking of the O-Lines based on how they came out of training camp (e.g which team lost players due to injuries and how good are their replacements)?
MARK COLON (CALEDONIA, MI)
It’s not that hard. We’re looking at all these teams in preseason games. Andy Richardson has a file where he’s got grades on all of the projected starters on each team. When a player gets hurt, like left tackle Bryan Bulaga last week, then Andy goes in, puts in the new starter and changes the grade. He’s posting revised offensive line rankings once per week throughout the preseason. Look for them on the main page of the website.
Question 12
Thanks for 13 years of excellence. My old account was inaccessible, so I had to start a new one, and lost my old info. Using the custom cheat sheet, I'm having trouble getting the values to properly balance out. We have 6 pt. TDs for QB's, and I feel they should fall higher than what I'm seeing. We have set roster requirements (I don't agree with this, but it's the only way they keep giving me their cash) that we have to abide by throughout the season. 8 team league. We must have: 2 QB (16 total), 5 RB (40 total), 5 WR (40 total), 2 TE, 2 DST & 2 K (16 total, each). We do have the option of one floating additional position, and 7 of the 8 of us will use that on either RB or WR, with the other taking a QB or TE. I think for figuring purposes this would raise the RB/WR totals to 44. What baselines do you propose that I use for each category? Lastly, can you post a link to the expert drafts that you've participated in? I enjoy reviewing those. Thanks again.
Jeff Carter (Franklin, TN)
I’d start with 12 quarterbacks getting more than the min. About 27 running backs. Six tight ends. 24 wide receivers. 4 defenses and 2 kickers. I have played in many eight-man leagues over the years. In that format, you must factor in that there will be many good players on the waiver wire at all times. You can skip your draft, in fact, and still put together a viable team. So at the auction in an eight-team league, you should be more willing to open up the wallet and pay for the guy you know are going to be special. If you go with the depth approach in an eight-man league, there’s a very good chance a good number of those many $8-$10 players won’t be any better than the guys you’ll be grabbing off the waiver wire in September and October. I’m in three experts leagues with the Fanex group. They can all be accessed with this here link.
Question 13
I am in a 16-team league, and I happen to have the 2nd and 3rd overall pick. Each team can keep one player after the 3rd round. I am keeping David Wilson. AP will go first, who would you take out of these two RB's? Charles, Doug Martin, and Trent Richardson? It is not a standard league, 1 point per 25 yards.
Ned Weizenegger (AITKIN, MN)
Probably Martin and Charles, but let’s check out Charles’ foot first. He hurt it in practice yesterday. If he’s a question mark on draft day, then Ray Rice could be one of your guys.
Question 14
I am able to keep two players from last year’s team and I'm torn. I have RG3, A Peterson, and A Foster to choose from. I'm worried about RG3s knee, especially after seeing him go down last year, as well as the sophomore blues.
Maxwell Cameron (Windsor, ON)
Then what’s the problem? Peterson and Foster.
Question 15
12-team PPR, 1QB, 2RB, 3WR, 1TE 6 pts all TD. Everyone gets 1 Keeper and I have #1 pick. I'm deciding between TRichardson and Calvin Johnson for my keeper. Because you can only keep one player, an owner will have to give up Arian Foster or Doug Martin, and another owner will have to give up Jamal Charles or Ray Rice. So two of those 4 players will be available and I won't know which until after I declare. No other players are worth considering. Do I keep TR or Megatron?
Todd Siegel (BOCA RATON, FL)
I think it’s Megatron. It’s a PPR league, and that makes it an easier decision. You’re also starting three wide receivers. I would go Megatron, then select a running back with the first pick.
Question 16
I am in a keeper league and get to keep three guys. My league is not a PPR league. I will draft third and have a good chance at getting one of the guys I drop. I was wondering who you would keep between Aaron Rodgers, Jimmy Graham, Maurice Jones-Drew, Stevan Ridley, and Dez Bryant. I am leaning towards keeping Aaron Rodgers, Jimmy Graham and Dez Bryant. I know Running Backs are valuable but it's hard not to keep Jimmy Graham and Dez Bryant.
MIKE DENU (MADISON, WI)
Agreed. I think you’ve got the three correct guys.