There is No Consensus

Dynasty players seek consensus. That’s why our monthly ADP data is so popular. It’s also why dynasty players use Twitter’s poll feature to help make decisions on a difficult trade decision.

Although dynasty fantasy football is chock full of dynamic strategies being implemented at varying levels and degrees, at times dynasty owners evidently want the easy or obvious decision. It is from this mindset that frustration grew from last week’s NFL Draft. Why is this year any different though? Why can’t there be at least something close to a consensus draft order, at least among the top 12 players off the board? Here are a few aspects that may have caused this rookie draft chaos.

Poor Landing Spots?

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I have seen many dynasty players and writers venting, sharing their dissatisfaction with landing spots of players in this class. That opinion is what has led many to believe this class is already not living up to the hype it has received over the last year, or longer. I think part of this has to do with unrealistic expectations. Dynasty owners sometimes have a utopian viewpoint when projecting future outcomes and part of this is assuming all top rookies will be chosen by the ideal team, using a great deal of draft capital. That never happens. Players fall farther than we expect them to in the draft because there are always things NFL teams know that we don’t know, sometimes involving medical issues or a clouded past off the field. Players are also chosen by teams in which their initial role or path to playing time could be unclear. This is part of the NFL and always has been. To act like this year is unusual is to ignore the past.

Thinking specifically about the landing spots for the class of 2017, I don’t think they were poor at all. Of the projected top six players, five were chosen by teams that had been widely projected and mocked to have interest in those players, with Dalvin Cook to Minnesota being the exception.

Among the deep second tier, several running backs landed with teams that should provide them the opportunity at early playing time, including Alvin Kamara, Samaje Perine, Kareem Hunt, Jeremy McNichols, Jamaal Williams and Wayne Gallman. Wide receivers John Ross, Chris Godwin, Zay Jones, Curtis Samuel and Cooper Kupp could also see the field early on in their respective careers. Finally, tight end OJ Howard and David Njoku should be vital cogs to their offense from day one.

So, while I disagree that the majority of these players landed in poor situations, that adds to the confusion dynasty players are dealing with when making rookie draft picks.

Establishing Tiers

“It starts to get weird after 1.06.”

This is what my friend and fellow DLF writer Adam Tzikas said in a recent dynasty rookie draft discussion. Now that we know the draft capital and landing spots for all members of the class of 2017, it is safe to say the majority of dynasty players would agree with Adam.

The results of the NFL Draft has provided us with a fairly well-established top tier of six potentially elite players before mass chaos ensues at pick 1.07 in dynasty rookie drafts. My wife is a big fan of the home makeover show Fixer Uppers. If you’re not familiar with this program, each episode is structured around a married couple, contractor Chip and his designer wife Jo, who help a local family to purchase a run-down home and then transform it into their dream home. At the end of each episode, the big reveal takes place as the family walks into their new home for the first time. As I watch this, I find myself thinking about how perfect the featured rooms are, yet how cluttered the “other” rooms must be. After all, this show and other home makeover show like it tend to focus on just a couple of rooms, while the others likely look terrible in comparison.

This is kind of what rookie drafts will be like this year. In the top tier, everything is pleasant and perfect and just as expected. While you may not exactly know which direction to turn, every option will make your team better. Of course, that top tier includes Leonard Fournette, Corey Davis, Joe Mixon, Christian McCaffrey, Mike Williams and Dalvin Cook. After that, “it starts to get weird.”

Prior to the NFL Draft, I had suggested the likelihood of a spike in value for the 1.07 rookie pick, even though there had been an established top six for weeks, if not months. My reasoning behind this was fairly simple. With so many players in the second tier, the potential for one or more of them to land in the perfect spot was strong. This would either boost said player into the vaunted top six, pushing down a very talented player, or it would establish one player as the clear favorite to be the seventh player off the board. While I stand by my idea and advice, it did not play out that way in the end. 

The second tier is difficult to define. Just as I become confident in pushing a player down to the third tier, I see an argument for that same player as the seventh overall player in rookie drafts. At this time, I think these players can be grouped in the second tier, but again…there is no consensus, so I expect some to disagree.

OJ Howard, TE TB

John Ross, WR CIN

Juju Smith-Schuster, WR PIT

Alvin Kamara, RB NO

Evan Engram, TE NYG

Samaje Perine, RB WAS

Kareem Hunt, RB KC

David Njoku, TE CLE

D’Onta Foreman, RB HOU

Zay Jones, WR BUF

Chris Godwin, WR TB

Curtis Samuel, WR CAR

This group of 12 would stretch from the 1.07 through the middle of the second round of a typical rookie draft. This deep second tier gives dynasty owners a great amount of flexibility. In early drafts, I’ve been attempting to trade down from my late first round picks to the middle of the second round, adding more picks to my stockpile. If you do not have a strong preference between this group of players, this should be the optimum play.

On the other hand, if you consider one of these rookies a must draft player, don’t assume you can move down or sit back and wait for him to fall to you. Instead, be aggressive and don’t be afraid to “reach” when making your pick. In fact, there may be no such thing as a reach early in rookie drafts this year. DLF writer Jeff Miller summed it up well in a recent tweet.

The best advice you will get for your rookie drafts: Ignore consensus. Ignore experts. Ignore everybody. Take the guy *you* like.

— J3ff Miller (@FFJeffM) May 1, 2017

Draft Pick Range, Not ADP

With so many players valued similarly, rookie ADP loses some value. After all, if a player with an early second round ADP also has a range of outcomes of being drafted at 1.07, it becomes clear you can’t expect them to last long.

Instead of relying on ADP to project how your rookie draft might go, consider this data collected from fifteen drafts that have taken place since the conclusion of last week’s NFL Draft. All drafts are from PPR, one QB leagues.

This list includes players ranking 7-24 according to the 15 league sample size I used for this research. First, notice the nearly four pick gap in ADP from Samuel to Mack, supporting the tier speculation I made earlier.

It is no surprise at this point to see seven different players being drafted in the 1.07 spot, though I did not expect three players from this group to crack the top six. Nonetheless, every player on this list, with the exception of Howard, fell to the second round or later in at least one draft, while 13 of them were deemed first round worthy a minimum of one time.

Throwing out the Watson pick of tenth overall as an outlier that is not supported by other draft data, we can begin to see some separation here, with Howard, Ross, Smith-Schuster, Kamara, Engram, Perine, Hunt, Njoku, Foreman and Jones all being considered in the top ten, while the remainder of the list fell short.

Using this data can help nail down the potential tiers and leaves us with something like this.

Tier 1: Fournette, Davis, McCaffrey, Mixon

Tier 1A: Cook, Williams

Tier 2: Howard, Ross, Smith-Schuster, Kamara, Engram, Perine, Hunt, Njoku, Foreman, Jones

Tier 2A: Godwin, Samuel

Just as Cook and Williams have been widely associated with the top tier, the reality is that they are rarely being drafted ahead of Davis and the trio of running backs. While their ADP would keep them locked in with this group, I see a slight drop to a sub-tier. The same can be said for Godwin and Samuel, who hold down the back of the second tier.

Conclusion

In the end, all of this just shows that my friends Adam and Jeff are totally correct. It starts to get weird after 1.06 and ignore consensus. In fact, there is no consensus.

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Ryan McDowell

Contributor at Dynasty League Football

In addition to his senior leadership role here at DLF, Ryan is also a husband, father of three and PE teacher. Ryan is the commissioner of multiple dynasty leagues, most notably the Kitchen Sink Dynasty Leagues. Here at DLF, Ryan’s focus is on identifying, monitoring and analyzing player value.

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