Ian Allan answers your fantasy football questions. In this edition: Scoring systems for defenses. The back-story behind super sleeper Mack Brown. Sifting through the mid-level tight ends. And Malcolm Mitchell: emerging superstar or fool's gold?
Question 1
What's your idea of the best scoring rules for defenses? Last week I had Denver who scored me negative 2 points and after I looked at our rules thought they were brutal. I know Fantasy isn't exactly real, but i watched the game and Denver beat KC up. We only get .5 for sacks which Denver had 6 for 3 points, and -5 points for giving up between 28-34 points, giving me -2. 35-45=-7, 46+=-10. Some other random rules: Fumble recovered are +1, but interceptions are +2. Another is .5 points for every 25 return yards. Maybe we need to add a total yards allowed to offset the Points allowed scoring. Broncos held KC under 300 yards total offense. It could offset the offense turning the ball over and giving short yardage to the other teams also maybe punts that are muffed. Thanks!
Jonathan Sheppard (Woodbury, NJ)
More complicated isn’t necessarily better. I don’t want to ask the other owners in my league to go research which teams are allowing the fewest kick return yards. The more compelling stat with defenses, I think, is keeping offenses out of the end zone. I would like to see that quality more heavily represented in fantasy scoring. I like, for example, the idea of getting 15 points if your NFL defense can keep the opposing team from scoring a touchdown (an offensive touchdown, that is, setting aside returns of interceptions and kicks). If your NFL defense holds an opponent to one touchdown (also very difficult), you get 9 points. If said defense allows 2 TDs (better than average), you get 3 points. If the defense allows 3 TDs, now the thing has flipped, and you’re losing 3, 9, 15, 21 points and so on. That’s one that I like. If that doesn’t float your boat, how about a score tied to the actual NFL score? NFL teams tend to average about 24 points nowadays, so I see that as a good starting point. You would get a half point for every NFL point under that total. That is, if your NFL defense allows 23 points, you would get a half point. If it allows 22 points, you get 1 point. If it allows 20 points, you get 2 points. All the way down to a shutout being worth 12 points. Fair enough? One of my pet peeves is leagues that use tiers for defenses (that is, giving the same credit for allowing 28-34 points). In most of these leagues, they use decimal scoring, giving more credit for 89 receiving yards than 88 receiving yards. Makes no sense to use a completely different philosophy for the defense position, where there’s clearly a big difference between allowing 28 and 34 points.
Question 2
Curious about your Malcolm Mitchell rankings in the TD-only version. Glowing write-up in the capsule, highlighting his TDs of late (as well as red zone targets) yet he is ranked below Gronk (injured), Edelman, Bennett, and even Chris Hogan! Oversight or is that where you see him?
BRYAN BERTSCH (Hopkins, MN)
Gronkowski is out for the rest of the regular season now, which simplifies the decision making. I don’t see a lot of difference between those guys, honestly. Bennett hasn’t been a big factor recently, but we’ve seen good production from him earlier in the year. He had the 3-TD game at Cleveland. He’s been banged up recently. If we’re looking at these five final games, I supposed he’s probably the slight favorite to lead the team in touchdown catches – they like using their tight ends in the red zone. Despite his lack of production recently, I would guess Bennett would be one of the first four tight ends selected if you, me and 10 other guys were sitting down to a re-allocation draft today. Edelman and Hogan are the starting receivers, and they’ve both pretty much met expectations. They were on the field for over 90 percent of the team’s plays last week. Mitchell was mixed in (on the field for a little less than half of the plays). Edelman has gotten a lot busier in recent weeks, when Gronk has been hurt. Edelman’s 2 TDs have both come in the last four games. I’ll give him a slight edge. Hogan has met expectations, I think. He missed a game with a back injury; otherwise has averaged 57 yards per game with Brady at quarterback – just short of 1,000-yard pace. Hogan won’t catch as many passes as Edelman but has better ability to get vertical and catch a 30-yard touchdown on a fly route down the sideline. Then you’ve got Mitchell. He hasn’t played as much of those guys but might be coming on. Turned a catch into a long touchdown against a terrible San Francisco defense late in that game in Week 11. Caught a pair of touchdowns against the Jets. Long-term, he’ll be better than Edelman and Hogan, but he’s not a starter yet. All three of these wide receivers have caught touchdowns in two games this year. In a TD-only league, I suppose it would be fair to select Mitchell first, hoping that he’s starting to come on and play a bigger role. Maybe this is the start of a roll. But I’m not confident that will happen. I think those three receivers look pretty similar.
Question 3
Why is Mack Brown so highly rated in your ReDrafter? I know he had a decent preseason but was then placed on practice squad. What are you envisioning for him to justify the high rating?
ANDREW DAMIANI (Westfield, IN)
That one is on me – completely on me. It’s embarrassing. Many readers are no doubt wondering how a 4th-string running back shows up around 20th on any list of running backs. The vast majority of readers, I’m guessing, haven’t even heard of Mack Brown, who’s never carried the ball in a regular-season game. Let me try, without getting too long-winded, to put together an explanation. Each week I audit and adjust the player projections. On these, I go team by team. You look at what just happened in the team’s last game, how each player has done over the last month, and (especially at this time of year) what opposing defenses are coming up. On these, I’m working on both team numbers and individual numbers – making sure that what’s been happening recently squares up with what I think will happen in the next month. That is, if a team has run for 120-plus yards four weeks in a row, we better not be projecting that offense to average 85 rushing yards. I have to get the team numbers correct, and also look at how that production is divided inside the roster itself. Logical enough, right? But for backup players – like Mack Brown – I use a two-tiered system. That is, on the vast majority of weeks, they’re essentially zero. Only if they become starting running backs would anybody have any fantasy value. Brown played well enough in the preseason, when he was battling Robert Kelley for the backup job, that he was a guy I was tracking. Specifically, Brown played really well in a preseason game at Tampa Bay, where he was ripping off chunks of yards, including a 60-yard touchdown. So he’s a guy where I was using the two-tiered projection model. On most weeks he’ll be a zero. But there was some chance – a 3 percent chance, perhaps – that he might start a game late in the year (and be pretty good in that role). So for Brown, in our custom rankings, his player game was his usual production (15.7 games multiplied by almost zero) plus (.3 of a game multiplied by decent production). That was his initial grade, and those number flow out to feed into the various scoring systems. As the year wears on, the projections are adjusted every week. When we get into mid-November, it’s becoming less and less likely a player like Brown will actually start a game. In that area, I start moving many of these players out of the two-tiered model. I change them instead to just playing five games and being almost zero in all of them. It cleans things up on my end. But if I don’t switch them over properly – like with Brown – then I can get a mangled end result. What you saw on Tuesday was Mack Brown playing in five games, and projected to be Washington’s starting tailback in all of them. Making him a viable fantasy option. It’s kind of like when Bugs Bunny was on Mars and got zapped by an Acme Time-Space Gun, turning him into not a harmless slave but an oversized Neanderthal Rabbit.
Question 4
I would like your opinion on tight ends in my TD-heavy keeper league. I picked up Packer Jared Cook after his volume game last week. Cook unfortunately gets hurt and drops passes. There are other options that include Austin Hooper, C.J. Fiedorowicz and Vernon Davis. Would you stick with Cook?
HOWIE FISHMAN (Hermosa Beach, CA)
For just this week, I would go with Vernon Davis. Jordan Reed will sit out with the shoulder injury, and Davis has been effective with his limited opportunities this year. When Reed missed two games earlier in the year, Davis scored in one of them and in the other was knocked out at the half-yard line after a long catch. If you’re looking for at the final five games, then I think Fiedorowicz makes more sense. Brock Osweiler seems to have a better rapport with him than with his wide receivers – he’s more comfortable on the short throws. Fiedorowicz has averaged 53 yards in his last eight games, with 3 TDs. I see plenty of favorable games on the schedule. Not so much Green Bay this week, but then Colts, Jaguars, Bengals and Titans. The other possibility is Cook. He hasn’t been playing that well, but that’s a great offense that’s putting up really big numbers. Cook went over 100 yards at Washington, with a touchdown and another play that really should have been a touchdown (Cook didn’t realize the ball was coming his way and didn’t get his head turned around). Hooper has no real value for 2016; he would only move to the top of the list if you put the priority on the 2017-2019 seasons. But you have plenty of time to figure out the tight end position before the start of the 2017 season (including, perhaps, selecting Hooper with a later-round pick next August).
Question 5
I have already secured the #2 seed in our league, so I'm looking ahead to weeks 14-16. We have a very unusual playoff format, so I'm more concerned about week 14 and 16. My RBs are currently Elliott, Ajayi, and Hill, but Martin is still available. Since this week doesn't really matter, I would normally just roll with Elliott and Ajayi during the playoffs, but my main concern is that Dallas secures home field advantage before week 16, and plays Elliott sparingly for the last two games. So my question is, should I stick with Hill or pick up Martin in case Elliott rests for much of the Week 16 game? Hill has a nice matchup next week @CLE and @HOU in Week 16, and Martin plays NO both of those weeks. And who knows? Hill or Martin may be a better option than Ajayi in one of those weeks.
Roy Sherman (Columbia, TN)
I’ve seen Doug Martin make a couple of runs recently where I’ve thought that he’s back – looking like the back who was so good last year. But I don’t see how you fit him onto your roster. I can’t remember the last time a team started resting players in Week 16, so barring an injury, Ezekiel Elliott will be starting. Jeremy Hill has been a disappointment for most of the year, but that Week 14 game at Cleveland is awfully compelling. He blew up against them in the earlier meeting, averaging over 18 yards per carry. And with Giovani Bernard, there’s a better chance of Hill picking up 10-20 yards as a pass catcher (he had a season-high 61 receiving yards last week). Houston game looks only average to me. That defense has struggled against the run (but assuming the Texans are still in the thick of things in Week 16, it would be surprising to see that defense underperform at home against a lesser opponent). Ajayi has dipped recently, but if they get that offensive line healthy, he could re-emerge as one of the top half-dozen backs. No way are you getting rid of Ajayi. Martin has the two games against the Saints, who had the league’s worst defense last year and in September this year. They were remarkably bad in a Monday night loss against Atlanta. But since that time, nobody has lined up and run the ball down their throats. In their last eight games, in fact, the Saints have allowed an average of 80 rushing yards, which is a top-10 number. I don’t see that as a Little Sisters of the Poor defense that can be just effortlessly pushed around. They’ve allowed only 2 rushing touchdowns in their last six games. So I don’t expect Martin will rip them up. So I would say you should just go with what you have, leaving Martin on the waiver wire.
Question 6
I have Taylor Gabriel and Tevin Coleman. Which Falcon is a better play at home against KC for my flex position in a standard league? Or would Kelvin Benjamin be the right player to start out of the three?
Danny Weisberg (Thousand Oaks, CA)
I graded these guys out on Wednesday. I came to the conclusion that Coleman is slightly better than Gabriel. Kansas City has a good defense but hasn’t been great against the run – only three teams have allowed more rushing yards. Coleman hasn’t been getting as many looks in the passing game as he was at the start of the year, so I have Gabriel sneaking just ahead of Coleman in a PPR format. I think Gabriel’s for real; he’s fast and he’s making plays (with a touchdown in four straight games). With Carolina’s offensive line problems and playing against a really strong opponent, I don’t think Benjamin is quite up with those guys.
Question 7
I know you hate line up questions Ian, but I have some very close rankings and figured I'd throw them out there. Standard yardage league I need to pick 2 RBs from Miller, Hill and Ware. Need to pick one WR between Mitchell, Hogan, Steve Smith and Boyd.
JOHN RUPPE (Fort Myers, FL)
With the running backs, how do you feel about Jeremy Hill catching passes? With Giovani Bernard out, he caught 6 passes for 61 yards last week. He averaged only 6 receiving yards in his other 10 games. I don’t Hill can be counted on to be a productive part of the passing game (I think Rex Burkhead will be more of their Bernard guy) so for me, Hill isn’t really in the discussion. It’s Miller or Ware. My projections indicate Miller is the best option. With Ware, I worry that Kansas City might fall behind and have to pass more than usual. Atlanta’s defense has been a lot better against the run. Miller suffered an ankle injury late in his game last week. If that looks like an issue – if he misses practice time – then I would go with Ware. Otherwise it’s Miller. With the wide receivers, I don’t see a lot of difference between those guys. Whichever you pick, I would say there’s a 70-plus percent chance that one of the other three will outperform him. That’s just kind of the way those situations play out, and you can’t beat yourself up for those kind of decisions. Rob Gronkowski has been ruled out, so both Mitchell and Hogan will be ranked a little higher when the rankings supplement comes out later today. Mitchell has scored two weeks in a row, and probably best to try to just roll with the hot hand. With Smith, I worry that Mike Wallace might have a bee in his bonnet playing against his former team, so I have Smith a little lower than I would normally rank him. Boyd hasn’t down quite enough post-Green to merit starting over those three guys.
Question 8
Thanks for all your advice this year. Problem has been Stafford at quarterback and this is where my dilemma is. I picked up Kaepernick last week and finally got a win, but now stuck on who to play this week in a must-win. Seems both have good matchups but with 1 point every 10 yards rushing I am leaning Kap. Need to win these next two so appreciate any help.
jim bo ()
I have no problem with Stafford. I’m using him myself in a league this week. That game in New Orleans could be a shootout. Jared Goff threw 3 TDs against that defense last week. But Kaepernick is playing well and keeps running for 40-plus yards (huge in a lot of formats). So when I work the numbers, he grades out about a point better. Check the weather, I guess, but right now I would be planning to go with Kaepernick.
Question 9
With Ingram now playing I have a decision to either play Blount with Dion Lewis or replace Lewis with Ingram?
Greg Abrams (Northern Cambria, PA)
In general, Ingram will grade out a lot higher than Lewis. If Blount gets hurt, then you can start think about Lewis possibly outperforming Ingram.