The later rounds of rookie drafts are hard places to find top-level contributors. After all, there’s a reason the guys available in the third round haven’t been selected. But every year there’s always a couple that end up being solid or even elite players. Getting one of those guys can dramatically change your dynasty team’s future. The problem is that it’s the most difficult thing to do in fantasy football.
I keep three things in mind when selecting late-round picks: • Always take talent over situation • Look for abnormal metrics • Be patient
Talent over situation is the most cliche expression you’ll find in dynasty but there’s good reason for that – ask anyone who took Clyde Edwards-Helaire over Jonathan Taylor in 2020. But it’s especially true for late-round picks. Often the best value you’ll find is someone with the talent to be a mid-round pick, but their ADP slips down because they went to a perceived bad situation.
Using metrics to select players in the later rounds can be difficult. Nobody is going to be close to perfect and most every metric that isn’t terrible will be average. Finding a player with just one or two metrics that stand out is the goal. You’re just looking for any indicator of elite upside.
My poster child for late picks with this method is Tony Pollard. Pollards’ ADP in rookie drafts was mid-third round, the RB14 of 2019. This year Pollard is projected to go in the late second round of redraft leagues as the RB9 overall – quite the return on investment for a third-round rookie pick. Pollard fits my mold perfectly. He was drafted by the Cowboys, who already had Ezekiel Elliott. Elliott at that time was 23 years old and had put up 2,001 combined yards the previous season. Opportunities for Pollard seemed limited. This is where the patience comes in. It took three years for Pollard to start succeeding (moving up from 28th to 9th in PPR scoring among running backs last year).
Pollard’s prospect profile is mostly unremarkable, but his Target Share number jumps off the screen; 15.5% is an incredible percentage for a running back. Only five other running backs have been drafted since 2015 with a target share that high – Christian McCaffrey, Eno Benjamin, Demetric Felton, Donnel Pumphrey and John Kelly. Not the most impressive list but a 20 percent hit rate is very good for a third-round pick.
| Tony Pollard Draft Profile | |
|---|---|
| BMI | 28.5 |
| 40 Yd | 4.52 |
| Speed Score | 100.6 |
| Draft Slot | 128th |
| Early Declare | No |
| Dominator | 13.2 |
| Yds / Att | 7.1 |
| Target Share | • 15.5% |
Which brings us to this year. The player I’ve been drafting most often in the later rounds of rookie drafts is Israel Abanikanda. After running for 1,431 yards and 20 touchdowns last year at Pitt, he was picking up some traction in the dynasty community before the NFL draft. This was immediately deflated when he was selected in the fifth round by the Jets, who already have dynasty darling Breece Hall (sound familiar?).
Consider Abanikanda’s profile:
| Israel Abanikanda Draft Profile | |
|---|---|
| BMI | 31 |
| 40 Yd | 4.44 |
| Speed Score | 111.2 |
| Draft Slot | 143rd |
| Early Declare | Yes |
| Dominator | • 46.5 |
| Yds / Att | 6.0 |
| Target Share | 6.2 |
Immediately you can see why the more analytically minded of the dynasty community like this back. He has a solid profile, hitting on almost every metric. But where he stands out is his Dominator score of 46.5. (Dominator is a metric that measures a player’s share in total offensive production; it does this with yards, rushes, targets, and touchdowns. A higher Dominator means that a player touched the ball a lot and did more with it than his teammates).
Since 2015, only five other running backs have been drafted with a Dominator that high – Christian McCaffrey, Rashaad Penny, Melvin Gordon, Aaron Jones, and Donnel Pumphrey. (Pumphrey, remarkably, showing up twice in the same article – he was a 180-pound back who ran for 2,133 yards in his final season at San Diego State, starting ahead of Penny, but never got much traction in the pros).
The numbers here suggest there’s some chance Abanikanda will be a success despite not being drafted until the fifth round. His fantasy value is being suppressed by his situation (with him being stuck behind an elite back), and he has an elite metric indicative of success. The last part is to be patient. Hall is the lead back in New York, and that won’t necessarily change any time soon. But the rookie potentially could get an opportunity early this season, with Hall coming off an ACL tear. Abanikanda probably won’t take over the backfield this year, but there could be some flashes of elite ability, and it’s a position where injuries are common.
—Billy Olsson
Olsson holds a degree in Computer Sciences. He currently plays in 20 money dynasty leagues, as well as drafting best-ball teams. As a proponent of the statistical aspect of fantasy football, he uses machine learning and AI techniques to build models that predict the performance of incoming rookies. A native of Dallas, he is a Cowboys fan.