Ian Allan answers your fantasy football questions. In this edition: Why is the Index so low on wide receiver Jeremy Maclin? Poking around some of the time-tested draft strategies -- is it a requirement to select a running back early? And much, much more (actually, two other letters also).
Question 1
I noticed in the player rankings that you're not too high on Jeremy Maclin? Can you give some insight on the kind of season you think he'll have.
Brett Wills (Morton, PA)
I doubt I’ll select Maclin in any league this summer. Is he even one of the two best wide receivers on that team? Riley Cooper played pretty well last year. In the 11 games with Nick Foles, Cooper averaged 72 yards and caught 8 TDs. And they drafted Jordan Matthews in the second round; he supposedly looks good. Maclin missed all of last season following reconstructive knee surgery, and I was never a big fan of his anyway. He doesn’t have the same kind of speed and playmaking ability as DeSean Jackson. Chip Kelly’s offense is built around driving the ball downfield. The Eagles averaged the highest yards per completion by any team in seven years last year. They’re trying to get it downfield. And I’m not sure that’s a good fit with Maclin. He’s no Jackson. Not a player the Eagles ever should have picked in the first round. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he becomes their top receiver and has a nice season. But I’m very confident that there will be guys in every league who are a lot more bullish on Maclin than I am.
Question 2
What are your thoughts on the following draft strategies in a 12-team snake draft (TD heavy scoring format, 6 points Passing TDs): The classic RB-RB strategy in the first 2 rounds, going QB in the first round, WR-WR strategy, and what do you do if TE Jimmy Graham is your 1st round pick? The RB-RB used to be seen as the safest move but after last year and the current trend in the league, it seems misguided unless the right players happen to fall to you. Does taking a QB or a TE in the first round make the rest of the draft a struggle to fill the key positions of RB and WR? What are some ways you can find value in the 4th and 5th rounds if you grab a QB or TE early and which players come to mind?
Benjamin MacLeod (Manchester, NH)
The trouble with selecting a tight end or a quarterback in the first two rounds is that it flies in the face of supply and demand. There are more good players at those positions than ever before, so you know there are going to be some really good deals on quarterbacks and tight ends in the later rounds. If you select a Manning, Brees or Graham in the first round, it makes it harder to capitalize on those potential deals later. I’m not opposed to opening with a pair of receivers, especially if it’s a PPR league, where the premium is on collecting players who’ll catch 90, 100 passes. I don’t think the RB-RB strategy works. The bust rate is simply too high, and there aren’t enough good running backs. If you open with two running backs, you’re almost guaranteed of misfiring on at least one of your first two picks. For me, the only draw of selecting a running back early is that you know most of the league will be gunning for them, so you ease the pressure of finding them later some. But there’s some balance at running back, and it’s my belief that even if you concentrate on pass catchers early, so you fill the running back position later with depth, and you can help yourself along by grabbing a lot of backup tailbacks (knowing that injuries will elevate some of those guys into starting roles for some games). I’ve done a handful of leagues so far, and I haven’t emphasized running backs in any of them, yet I feel my teams will be OK at that position. In the Mock Auction league (page 56 of the magazine) my best five players are Drew Brees and wide receivers (Randall Cobb, Andre Johnson, Roddy White, Julian Edelman). I also bought Nick Foles. Yet I’ve got decent enough depth at tailback, with Chris Johnson, the Rice-Pierce tandem in Baltimore and the Moreno-Miller pair in Miami. I’ll be fine there. In the Fanex league, I held the No. 3 pick and selected LeSean McCoy, then I went with four straight receivers (Cobb, Edelman, White, Larry Fitzgerald). But again, I think I’ll be fine at running back. In a PPR format, I’ve got Pierre Thomas, Stevan Ridley, Lamar Miller, Chris Polk and Brandon Bolden. In the 14-team FTSA experts league (also a PPR format) I started with three wide receivers and didn’t select my first running back until 53rd overall. But again, I think I’ll be fine there. Shane Vereen is my No. 1, Lamar Miller is my other starter, and I’ve got Khiry Robinson, Mark Ingram, Tre Mason and Bryce Brown for depth. Plus the waiver wire – I’ll find more running backs along the way. The running backs aren’t going to win that league for me, but they’ll hold serve while my wide receivers (Cobb, A.J. Green, White, Brandin Cooks, DeAndre Hopkins) pile up the catches and touchdowns in the three receiver spots plus the flex position. I’m a firm believer in the theory that one need not chase after running backs.
Question 3
Sorry to have to waste your time with this question, but how do I change the custom ranking starting lineup for my team? I have a league that is going to 1 RB instead of 2 and adding another flex. When I go to edit my scoring system I can't find the link to edit my league starting lineup positions. I can only edit the scoring and auction values for each position. Help please.
stephen hicks (Moorpark, CA)
It’s a good question, and one that will interest other users. You need to go to the website, clicking on “Your Stuff” and then click on the link “Your Scoring Profiles”. Inside that link, there are a handful of questions about your league. How many guys are being selected at each position and whatnot. I’m talking about the questions inside the “Auction Values” section. Even if you don’t use an auction, that’s the area to go. That’s the area where you set the baseline values for each position. Most notably, there’s a question in there where you’re asked “How many running backs will go for more than the $1.00 minimum in your auction?” If you’re in a typical 12-team league, with each team starting two running backs, the correct answer is probably about 36. You figure in an auction everyone would be willing to expend some resources to get two starting running backs and also a good reserve back. After that, probably not that much interest in the fourth and fifth running backs, where you’re getting down to guys like LeGarrette Blount and James Starks. Maybe you’d like to have Blount and Starks on your team, but not if they came at the expense of not getting a better player. You’d probably put the priority on getting better running backs for those top 3 spots, and then be willing to shift to slightly lesser guys where you were hoping to get Blount and Starks – maybe BenJarvus Green-Ellis and Jerick McKinnon. Blount, Starks, Green-Ellis and McKinnon, you can see, are just the slop guys who go for $1.00 in an auction. They’re minimum-value guys. We’re trying to follow that process at every position. This is all about where you’re setting the baseline bar at each position. Because the value of the top players is determined by how much better they are than the baseline guys. If this is all too confusing and you’re more draft oriented, think of it in terms of how deep can you go in a draft before you might be comfortable sneaking to the bathroom and maybe having a couple of other teams sneak in a pick before you get back. Maybe 10th round? If a player is getting selected in the first 10 rounds, call him worth more than $1.00. For all the guys getting selected from round 11 on, those guys are the minimum-value $1.00 players. This is important because those $1.00 baselines determine what the big-time guys are worth. If you say that only 15 receivers are going to be worth more than $1.00, you’re essentially stating that receivers like Michael Floyd and Cordarrelle Patterson can be had for essentially nothing. And that being the case, you would never select Calvin Johnson in the first round. But if you state that 60 wide receivers are worth more than $1.00, then there’s a huge difference between Calvin Johnson and the No. 61 receiver, and he might be the No. 1 player overall. Get it? Now that you’re adding in a flex, you need to do a little cross-checking between the running back, wide receiver and tight end positions. Check to make sure that the best minimum-value ($1.00 guy) player at each of those positions is about the same in production. You can do this using the projected stat numbers that we publish. When a flex position is created, it’s possible that nothing will change. Maybe all 12 of those new flex guys will be the 12 players who were formerly starting at running back. But it’s likely that some of those flex players will be wide receivers. You might want to increase the wide receivers who are worth more than the minimum, while slightly decreasing the running backs.
Question 4
Bear with me. I am in a non-traditional keeper league. You can keep up to 3 players, none of which can be drafted in the top 3 rounds the previous year. And whichever round they were drafted they go up 2 rounds each following year. So, if I drafted player A last year in round 10 I can keep him in round 8 this year. So I can keep 3 of the following: DeMarco Murray (4th), Tate (5th), Andrew Luck (6th), Michael Crabtree (10th).
shane anderson ()
I’m not sure how you’re listing the rounds. When you have DeMarco Murray flagged with the fourth, for example, I don’t know if that means it’s going to cost a fourth-rounder to keep him, or if he’s going to be a second. With Murray, I have no interest in protecting him with a second. If he costs only a fourth, then I would definitely protect him. Same with Andrew Luck. I’d protect him at the cost of a sixth. If it’s a fourth-rounder, then I’d cut him loose, figuring he’d still be there if I wanted to select him again. With “Tate”, I don’t know if you’re talking about Golden Tate or Ben Tate. If it’s Golden Tate, definitely no interest. If it’s Ben Tate, then I will pass on him in the third round. He’s a maybe with a fifth-round cost; I think he’s a top 25-30 running back. Michael Crabtree is a top-30 receiver on my board, so I will authorize him to be protected at the cost of an eighth- or 10th-round pick.