Ian Allan answers your fantasy football questions. Special Pre-Training Camp edition. Weighing the values of keeper options. Triple Crown winners. Are the Patriots the most overhyped team? Missing depth charts and more.

Question 1

10-man keeper league. Keep one guy lose that round pick. Leaning towards Chuba Hubbard in 10th. But also intrigued by Rashee Rice in 5th or Joe Burrow in 9th. Hubbard is the best value play here, correct? Or am I off base?

Pete Kelly (Evergreen Park, IL)

You have better information on the league than I do. I don’t have the draft results from previous years; nor do I even have the scoring system. But I can take a stab at it. I would guess that the first nine rounds would including 13 quarterbacks, 31 running backs, 35 wide receivers and 11 tight ends. Using those players as a guide, we can make a reasonable guess of what might be going in each round. If you don’t protect Chuba Hubbard, choosing to instead select a running back in the 10th round, I think it will be somebody along the lines of Javonte Williams, Najee Harris or Tyrone Tracy. Maye one of the rookies – TreVeyon Henderson or Quinshon Judkins. In PPR leagues, Hubbard projects to be about 30-40 points better than those guys. File that away. If we follow the same approach with Joe Burrow in the ninth round, you would likely instead be getting someone along the lines of Trevor Lawrence, Jared Goff, Baker Mayfield, J.J. McCarthy or Drake Maye. My projections suggest Burrow (the top QB on my board) will be 85-95 points more valuable than those guys. So I would be keeping Burrow rather than Hubbard. Rashee Rice in the fifth round also mentioned. With his current uncertainty (possibly being suspended), I don’t think anyone will be selecting him in the first five rounds. So a projection on him would involve you being confident he was going to play in all 17 games. If that’s the case, then Rice becomes a top-10 WR possibility. But you’d have the option in the fifth round to pick somebody along the lines of Davante Adams, Xavier Worthy, Marvin Harrison, DK Metcalf, Courtland Sutton, Garrett Wilson or Mike Evans. A 17-game Rice would project to be 30-35 points better than those guys, which is well short of Burrow. I’m keeping Burrow.

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Question 2

Vegas has my Patriots favored to win 11 games, yet there’s nothing fantasy wise to justify that number. I don’t gamble but am I missing something?

James Costello (Portland, ME)

I think Bet MGM and DraftKings have the Patriots with an over-under win total of 8.5 – right down the middle as a .500 team. Yet the Patriots are favored in 11 of their 17 games. On the surface, that doesn’t seem to add up. But the numbers are more in line when examined more closely. The Patriots are 8.5-point dogs at Buffalo and Baltimore; tough to see them winning either of those. And they’re 4.5-point underdogs in their other game against Buffalo, along with games at Cincinnati and Tampa Bay. In all but two of the 11 games that they’re favored, on the other hand, the point spread is 3.5 points or less – 3 or less in seven games. In the 11 games New England is favored, it’s by a total of 34 points. In the six games the Patriots are underdogs, it’s by a total of 33 points. So the numbers seem to be in order. I’m of the school of thought that Mike Vrabel is a pro; he proved that in Tennessee. So I see the Patriots as more likely to finish over 8.5 wins rather than under.

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Question 3

Forgive me if I missed it in the magazine or if you posted it somewhere on the site, but do you ever do a write up on coaching schemes? For example, what coaches/OCs emphasize the run, the degree they use their tailbacks in the passing game, who utilizes TEs significantly, etc. I feel like it’s noted throughout with different commentary when looking at the teams or players, but not explicitly discussed anywhere.

Kyle Kintner (San Marcos, CA)

Agreed. Coaches and schemes are hugely impactful. When I’m writing up players and offenses, a big step in the process is looking at how the coaching staff has performed in recent seasons. We eventually settle in on a team projection for each offense – passing yards, passing touchdowns, rushing yards, rushing touchdowns. The individual players then feed from those stats. When there’s a notable coaching observation – Sean Payton using backs in the passing game or Doug Pederson liking to use tight ends – it often shows up in both the team writeup and in the individual player capsule. It can also potentially show up in the rookies story or in the sleepers section. So while it’s a solid enough concept, it would involve tilling a lot of the same soil, with the most meaningful takeaways having already appeared elsewhere.

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Question 4

I’m missing the NFL team depth charts in this year’s magazine. Are they in there?

Craig Leedy (Sacramento, CA)

No. But they’ll be included in all of the preseason newsletters, starting with the free supplement on July 21. We removed the depth charts from the on-paper magazine a year ago. We chose to instead list each team’s players (in descending order) with projected stats on each of the 32 team spreads. We figured that was a better place for that info – allowing readers to reference the ordering of the players while reading about the players. But readers didn’t seem to like that. (I got a lot of complaints, and I don’t recall more than couple of readers saying they liked that format.) The vast majority of readers seem to prefer seeing last year’s stats in that area. For this year’s magazine, we went back to the old format on the team pages, but without using two pages elsewhere to print depth charts. But I’m aware that readers like yourself like them. They will be included in all of the newsletter products, starting in less than a fortnight.

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Question 5

Thank you for all of your hard work. I know that you’re high on RJ Harvey in the dynasty section of the magazine. Does the Dobbins signing alter your RB dynasty rankings?

John Evans (Jacksonville, FL)

I think so. On the one hand, you’ve got Harvey. On the other, you’ve got Harvey, but with Dobbins also on the roster. I expect Dobbins will be logging some carries, making it reasonable to wonder if Harvey won’t see the ball as much. And I don’t think anybody will be too surprised if Dobbins winds up finishing with better numbers. But I like Harvey more. Their merits as runners can fairly be debated; Dobbins weighs 10 more pounds and has more NFL experience. But Harvey appears to be a lot better as a pass catcher – better than Dobbins, and also better than Jaleel McLaughlin and Audric Estime. He averaged almost 12 yards per catch at Central Florida. Considering how much Sean Payton likes to use the running backs in the passing game, I think Harvey’s abilities in that area make him the heavy favorite to finish with the best overall numbers among Denver’s backs. Since Payton arrived in Denver, the Broncos have completed 17 more passes to running backs than any other team.

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Question 6

Here's one for you. In Super Bowl years, how many times has a guy won the receiving triple crown, catches, yards and TDs, and how did he do the next year?

Matt Morse (Glenallen, Ark.)

It doesn’t happen often. Since the merger in 1970, only five guys have done it. Nobody has done it twice (even Jerry Rice managed only one Triple Crown). All five receivers who’ve achieved this have been in the fourth, fifth or sixth year.

Those guys have tended to be productive again in their following season. (Cooper Kupp missed half of the 2022 season, but he was productive when he was playing.)

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Question 7

This one’s for the readers. I’m looking to join a stable dynasty league but none of my friends are interested. I know if any of you are in one looking for a replacement owner, it’s probably not going to be the best franchise; but I’ll take it to be in a stable league. I live in LA but could do a draft online. Hopefully one of you knows of a friendly situtation. Happy Fourth and cheers.

Tavis Medrano (Arcadia, CA)

Good luck to you.

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