Mind of Miller – 2QB and Tight End Premium Rookie Drafts
A good dynasty owner can recognize their weaknesses and lean on the work of others to make up for them. As a guy who doesn’t follow college football or look at a lick of incoming rookie tape until after the Super Bowl, I rely heavily on those who excel at draft and prospect analysis. Fortunately, we are spoiled for resources, including the fantastic work put in by our Dynasty Scouts team and the in-depth studying our writing team does for the rookie profiles we just started posting.
None of this is to say I don’t form my own opinions based on the attributes I prefer in a player. To that end, I’ve had a longstanding policy where I refuse to draft a player without watching at least some film on him. But if I am being brutally honest, rookie eval is an overrated pursuit for most of us. The guys who do it for DLF, and other sites, get it so right so often it would foolish to think I could do better given the time and expertise I don’t have. So instead of trying to figure out if you prefer Wayne Gallman or James Connor, spend your energy elsewhere, leaving the hard stuff to the experts.
If you’ve read my musings for long here at DLF, you know I’m perpetually probing for edges in places others may not be. Rookie drafts are no exception. I’ve spent several years working on this aspect of my dynasty game, turning up a few things worth sharing along the way. This is especially true in two quarterback, super flex, and tight end premium leagues, which is what we will focus on today.
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This is going to sound obvious, but when you have quarterbacks and tight ends going two or more rounds earlier than in a more standard league format, it creates value at the other positions. Here is the thing: as obvious as this is, you’d be amazed how little attention your league-mates pay even once the draft is underway, much less in October. Don’t just take my word for it, I come bearing a very recent example.
As this is being written, I am in the third round of my first rookie draft of the year. The league, Seven Rounds in April, or 7RIA, has 14 teams with both a super flex and tight end premium scoring (1.5 PPR vs 1 PPR for RB/WR). That the larger league size puts an increased premium at both of those positions, as there simply aren’t enough good players to go around, creates even more opportunity for the savvy owner.
How much a premium are we talking here? Through the first 30 picks, quarterbacks are going an average of more than 24 spots ahead of our April rookie ADP data.* Tight end looks much the same, but with a less dramatic difference, as they have gone an average of six slots earlier than in our mocks. The smaller in comparison jump falls to O.J. Howard, David Njoku, and Evan Engram already having top-11 ADPs in a standard PPR format. Essentially, there isn’t much room to move upward.
On the other side of the spectrum, wide receivers have dropped 1.5 slots and running backs 3.6. Alvin Kamara (five spot slide), D’Onta Foreman (eight), Samaje Perine (seven), Kareem Hunt (seven), Jeremy McNichols (nine), JuJu Smith-Schuster (nine), Carlos Henderson (six), Taywan Taylor (five), and Curtis Samuel (11) were the big droppers. Imagine being at pick 17 and seeing JuJu fall into your lap. You may disagree with his current ADP (eight), but you can’t deny that is amazing value. That it happened over and over throughout the draft has to make you want to consider investing in second round picks, right?
To show this isn’t just a one-time thing, I worked up the numbers for the 2015 and 2016 7RIA drafts as well. The chart below shows how far above or below their ADP in DLF PPR one quarterback mocks players rose or fell on average. The average column itself is a composite of all three years.
In 2015 we had only two tight ends taken the entire draft (Maxx Williams and Clive Walford). As you may recall, that was a very weak tight end class, and, perhaps since this was a new league, owners hadn’t yet put a big emphasis on the premium part of the tight end scoring. Whatever the reason, while the trend held true, it did make the numbers for the 2015 draft much less extreme.
Aside from giving more value to late first, second, and early third round picks, there are other things to be taken from this information. For example, if you keep up just enough with the quarterback class a year out, you should be able to determine with some certainty if a passer or two will slide into the top of your next rookie draft. That can inform how you value mid-firsts, as you could get lucky and have a top-three talent slide to 1.05 when quarterback needy owners take their shot on a signal caller. If the QB class is deep enough, or, like this year, there are a bunch of similar guys, you should be able to count on mid-second round picks being a treasure trove.
The inverse of the above is true as well. In a year like 2016 where there were shallow quarterback and tight end groups, the first 15 or so picks were relatively unaffected. Instead, we saw a run of more mediocre players at those positions in the second and third, creating value in the latter portions of those rounds.
I have long loved accumulating second round picks a year in advance, especially in these leagues. While first round picks, specifically those projected to be early, can be overpriced considering the inherent risk, I find later picks to be priced much more appropriately. Add in the wrinkle of quarterbacks and/or tight ends flying off the board early, and you can make some real hay by stockpiling cheap picks in-season when other owners are harboring dreams of title contention.
*I assigned a draft slot of 44, which is one spot after the final player listed in rookie our ADP, to any players drafted in my league that were not drafted in our ADP mocks.
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