ASK THE EXPERTS appears weekly from training camp through Super Bowl with answers to a new question being posted Thursday morning. How the guest experts responded when we asked them: It seems to have been an especially injury-filled season. Has your strategy changed at all?
ALAN SATTERLEE
I've been playing fantasy football for 26 years. Every year people say how bad this year is for injuries. They happen every year, although this year does feel to be very high on the distribution. It may make me adjust marginally for handcuffs. Big picture it doesn't change my approach -- which is to draft wide receivers early. In the Fantasy Index experts mock draft I was the only one to go WR/WR, landing Julio Jones and Antonio Brown with my first two picks. In my opinion, elite wide receiver is the way to go (so easy to find running backs lately especially with injury), and these elite receivers seem to stay healthier and keep their value generally speaking.
Satterlee is a co-owner and senior writer for Dynasty Football Warehouse. DFW is comprehensive site covering dynasty, redraft, IDP and Daily formats. DFW has a large writing crew with many people from the DFW community contributing to the insights and discussion. Alan is also the Fantasy Football Insider for the Charlotte Observer and is syndicated in a few other newspapers in the southeast.
DAVID DOREY
This season has changed my approach or at least solidified what I already thought – running backs in the first round are for chumps. The position is just not used as it was in previous years and the incidence of injury or flopping is far too high compared to a WR or Gronkowski. Here are the top 10 running backs from their Average Draft Position: LeVeon Bell, Eddie Lacy, Adrian Peterson, Jamaal Charles, Marshawn Lynch, C.J. Anderson, DeMarco Murray, Matt Forte, Jeremy Hill, LeSean McCoy. How many of those are still in the top 10 now? Just two – Peterson (2nd) and McCoy (9th). Go look at wideout – almost every one a familiar name that was drafted early. The NFL is a passing league now. There is no denying it.
Dorey is the co-founder and lead NFL analyst for The Huddle and author of Fantasy Football: The Next Level. He has projected and predicted every NFL game and player performance since 1997 and has appeared in numerous magazines, newspapers, radio and television.
MICHAEL NAZAREK
It's just been a fluke season with all these injuries. It happens. I won't change my draft strategy one bit next summer. As for in-season, I always work the waiver wire for steals and deals. Nothing new there.
Nazarek is the CEO of Fantasy Football Mastermind Inc. His company offers a preseason draft guide, customizable cheat sheets, a multi-use fantasy drafting program including auction values, weekly in-season fantasy newsletters, injury reports and free NFL news (updated daily) at its web site. He has been playing fantasy football since 1988 and is a four-peat champion of the SI.com Experts Fantasy League, a nationally published writer in several fantasy magazines and a former columnist for SI.com. For more info go to www.ffmastermind.com. Nazarek can be reached via email at miken@ffmastermind.com.
SCOTT SACHS
This relates a bit to last week's question about underperforming players. If one were to just generalize, it seems like it is one third busts, one third injured, one third healthy each week. Therefore, it has been essential to be intelligently waiver wiring and manipulating weekly lineups at least as much as any year in recent memory.
With two perfect seasons to his credit, Sachs runs Perfect Season Fantasy Football, featuring LIVE Talk & Text Consulting & Advice. He was the 2011 winner of Fantasy Index's Experts Auction league, as well as the winner of the 2012 Experts Poll. In 2013, he finished 2nd in the Auction and 3rd in the Draft league; in 2014, 3rd in the Auction league.
JOSHUA SIMMONS
While I have had team or two decimated just in time for fantasy playoffs, due to core player injuries, I don't know that this season has been all that different from the usual. Seems unfortunately like a typical aspect of fantasy football. I will say that this question brings to mind a league I competed in, where you have a combined budget for auction draft as well as waiver wire spending. Folks tended to spend well over what players seemed worth in that auction draft, skimping on FAAB $$. I zigged where they zagged, I guess you could say, drafting a competitive enough team but reserving over half of that budget for waiver wire pickups. And throughout the season, it sure was nice to be able to spend freely on whatever players I had the whim to add. In a sport like football, managing your fantasy roster by patching holes created by injury becomes a must. Whatever you can do to allow yourself flexibility down the stretch becomes important. To me, the bottom line is that you don't want to put so much emphasis on your draft haul that it weakens your team, late in the season. Perhaps a point can be made contrary to the "studs & duds" strategy many of us roll into auction drafts with ... but I'll save that for somebody else to address.
Simmons has been a contributor for FantasySharks.com since 2007. His responsibilities include dynasty rankings, weekly projections-driven content and staff representation in various leagues.
SAM HENDRICKS
No, not one bit. My draft strategy is generally to avoid handcuffs. No guts, no glory is my motto. My philosophy is to use the extra roster spot (and often the mid round pick) for the long shot player who "could" be a season maker. The kind of boom or bust player who can lift a team into the playoffs or give them that critical championship win. Sometimes it pays off with a difference maker. Most times the player is a dud and is cut mid to late season. In almost every winning case though the "extra" puts my team head and shoulders above the others. It is a strategy that tries to "buy" an advantage. Drafting a handcuff is playing to lose in my opinion unless the handcuff is great. An example of a losing handcuff gamble this year was Jamaal Charles (1st rounder) and Knile Davis (12th round), who everyone thought was his clear cut handcuff. Now if 2016 is just as injury plagued then I might have to reconsider but until then I am swinging for the fences and avoiding handcuffs in most cases.
Hendricks is the author of Fantasy Football Guidebook, Fantasy Football Tips and Fantasy Football Basics, all available at ExtraPointPress.com, at all major bookstores, and at Amazon and BN.com. He is a 20-plus year fantasy football veteran who regularly participates in the National Fantasy Football Championship (NFFC) and finished 7th and 16th overall in the 2008 and 2009 Fantasy Football Players Championship (FFPC). He won the Fantasy Index Open in 2013. Follow him at his web site, www.ffguidebook.com.
ANDY RICHARDSON
I think having a deep bench, saving waiver wire budgets, and favoring players less likely to get injured early in drafts -- wide receivers, the heavily protected quarterbacks -- makes sense. I understand that these guys get hurt too (Dez Bryant, for example) but fewer of them do, while with running backs, it's nearly impossible to make it through a season unscathed. Moreover, viable running back starters seem to show up on the waiver wire every week, all through the season. The same simply isn't true of other positions.
Richardson has been a contributing writer and editor to the Fantasy Football Index magazine and www.fantasyindex.com since 2002. His responsibilities include team defense and IDP projections and various site features, and he has run the magazine's annual experts draft and auction leagues since their inception. He previews all the NFL games on Saturdays and writes a wrap-up column on Mondays during the NFL season.