Ian Allan answers your fantasy football questions. In this edition. Is Cleveland's attempt to incorporate Moneyball into its front office against colossal blunder for a cursed franchise? Debating the merits of stars versus scrubs in an auction format? And will Doug Martin or Allen Hurns put up better numbers in 2016?
Question 1
Ian, your product is based on analytics, so I'm wondering what you think of the Browns hiring Paul DePodesta? Can he really apply the data in football and make it useful to the extent it seems it works in baseball? I personally I'm kind of split on the baseball side.
JOHN RUPPE (Fort Myers, FL)
I think the hiring of DePodesta makes a lot of sense. He doesn’t have a football background, but I don’t think that’s necessary. With all of these NFL teams, you’re talking about a staff of dozens of scouts and coaches looking at hundreds of college and free agent prospects. All of their player evaluators have different strengths and weaknesses. Some might be really good at looking at defensive backs, for example, but have little value in scouting offensive linemen. Some might know very little about anything that occurs on the field but have some value in scouting personalities – digging up info that reveals potential problems with off-field behavior or work ethic. And now they’ve putting tracking chips in the shoulder pads of players, so every player’s position can be tracked on every play. The key, I think, is having the right guy overseeing this army of men and information. So it seems to me that every NFL team should be looking into bringing in a guy or two with DePodesta’s kind of background. He’s seen how this kind of information has been successfully utilized in baseball organizations. Don’t think of him as a guy who’s going to pop in game tapes and pick which cornerback the team is going to select in the third round. And don’t think of him as an Al Davis type who’s going to start using every first-round pick on guys who run 4.3. He’s another resource, and he gives the Browns some expertise in a large new arena. Seems like a really smart hire to me.
Question 2
I rely heavily on your projections each year to prepare for my auction draft, and more often than not end up with a team of solid players but few superstars as their prices usually exceed our projections. It worked out well this year as I landed Cam Newton, Mark Ingram, AJ Green and added Antonio Brown in a timely mid-season trade to lead my team to victory. However, I was wondering if overly conservative projections are part of the reason for me not getting any of the top projected players at each position. For example, you were extremely bullish on Julio Jones but projected him for only 19.2 PPG (in PPR scoring), and he ended up at 23.1, along with four other receivers above 20. The leaders at every other position (even RB) also exceeded your projection for the top player at the position, even if you didn't project the correct player. Do you think conservative projections are depressing the projected auction prices of top tier talent, or was this year just an outlier with the top WRs vastly exceeding expectations?
Ed Weiss (PARSIPPANY, NJ)
I don’t think you ever want to forecast that a wide receiver will catch 130 passes, a running back will run for 1,800-plus yards or a quarterback will throw 45-plus touchdown passes. You have to recognize that things can go wrong. Guys can get injured, or key teammates can get hurt. With Antonio Brown, for example, he turned pretty ordinary for a month when Ben Roethlisberger got hurt. I thought Dez Bryant would be top-5 receiver, but his entire season was ruined by injuries. I thought Andrew Luck and Aaron Rodgers were the clear top 2 quarterbacks, and it didn’t happen. Jamaal Charles, Eddie Lacy, LeVeon Bell, DeMarco Murray, C.J. Anderson, Marshawn Lynch. Your team-building model must include the reality that a bunch of stuff isn’t going to go right. So whenever I’m creating values for an auction, I try to work that into my model. I tend to forecast all of those superstar players a little below what I think they’ll actually do. And there’s also an injury dimension. Particularly with the running backs, instead of forecasting them to play 16 games, I tend to project them to play about 14 games (or even fewer games for older or injury prone back). Ultimately, however, I think there’s some value in remembering at your auction that you’re working with only a rough draft. When you consider all the waiver moves that will be made during the 16-week season, let’s not get too caught up with a dollar here or there. Half of your roster is going to be traded out anyway. If you’ve got a gut feel about a certain player, go ahead an buy him. In my oldest league, we’ve been doing an auction for about 20 years. It’s at the point now where everybody has kind of figured out what everyone’s going for. There are no steals anymore. It’s no longer a viable strategy to try to hang back and wait for others to burn through their money. You will get two or three coveted players. So I have stopped worrying too much about the quality of that deal (whether I’m getting the guy for 76 or 93 percent of his “actual value”). I have instead focused more on making sure that I’m getting guys with those picks who will hold their value – guys who won’t be busts. This strategy worked great in 2014. Eddie Lacy, Antonio Brown and Randall Cobb all did what they were supposed to do, I got Mike Evans and Jeremy Hill in the later rounds and led the league in scoring (lost in the championship game to the Donner Pass Carnivores). So I decided to try the same this year. Went with Antonio Brown and Julio Jones as my first two big guys – paid about market value for both of them – then added Brandin Cooks when he went a little under where I thought he should go. (We can start three wide receivers.) I had to scratch and claw at running back, but guys come along – DeAngelo Williams became a starter, Ryan Mathews and Jonathan Stewart were better than expected. And the team won the thing. That’s a TD-only league, which is a slightly different animal, but it’s something to keep in mind. You’re spending a bunch of money and every pick is important, but you want to make sure those three main arrows hit the target.
Question 3
I have to choose by the end of February. One player to keep, for next year only. Doug Martin or Allen Hurns. We are a full PPR league, so the two were pretty comparable this year, though in per game totals, Hurns edged out Martin. Martin: uncertainty due to new coach (and maybe new team). Hurns: stability with much of the passing game personnel – and coaching staff – returning. I lean Hurns. What say you?
ADAM HOLTZ (Rochester, MN)
I expect Martin will be selected before Hurns in drafts in August, so he’s the guy I would keep. Running backs are hard to find. There’s just not that many. The Bucs also have Charles Sims, and he’s coming along (if you keep Martin, adding Sims in your draft would be required), Martin is definitely their No. 1, and I expect he’ll be ranked among everyone’s top 15 running backs in August. Hurns is fine, but that’s a deeper overall position. There are a lot of good receivers out there, so I don’t believe Hurns will be in most people’s top 20 at his position next August. Will he even be a top-30 next year? We’ll see. At times they’ve used him as more of a deep threat (not catching as many balls) which doesn’t fit the PPR format. The Jaguars also have Allen Robinson and Julius Thomas, and Thomas in particularly should be more productive than he was in 2015. They’ve got Rashad Greene and Marqise Lee, and one or two of those guys could come on.