Five Takeaways From The 2024 FF Expo
Every summer, thousands of football fans converge in Canton, Ohio to celebrate the most recent crop of best the NFL has to offer as former players and coaches are enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
The action for Canton doesn’t stop there though, because one week later, the city hosts the Fantasy Football Expo. Hundreds of fantasy players and analysts join together for drafts, parties, more drafts, more parties, and tons of great conversations. I’ve had the opportunity to attend every Expo, which began in 2019.
Fellow DLFer Eric Dickens and I have been able to represent our site and the dynasty community in an event called the King’s Classic. Each year, we meet in Canton to begin a pair of leagues, one draft and one auction. While these are redraft leagues, I always leave with some dynasty-relevant tidbits. Here are a few things that stood out from the drafts along with our conversations this past weekend.
Wide Receivers have never been more valuable
This has been a steady trend in the dynasty world for several years now, but it has fully transitioned to the seasonal leagues now, as well. The early rounds of our King’s Classic draft were dominated by wide receivers, including multiple teams taking four straight wideouts to begin their draft.
Eric and I had a plan to go with Bijan Robinson in the first round before hammering out several wide receivers. We pivoted when Travis Kelce was available in the second round and later paired him with quarterback Patrick Mahomes. While this stack is exciting, it limited our options at receiver and left us chasing mid-range WR3s to fill out our starting lineup.
Wideouts were simply flying off the board and our league-mates ignored ADP and passed on other options to chase the upside of the pass catchers. We’ve also seen the redraft ADP for receivers get out of control on sites like Underdog.
As I said though, we are somewhat used to this in the dynasty community but the past two years have shown a spike in receiver value. Here’s what the first-round breakdown shows us, based on a historical look back at our July dynasty ADP.
Number of Players Drafted in Round One (July DLF Dynasty ADP)
| Year | QB | RB | WR | TE |
| 2024 | 0 | 3 | 9 | 0 |
| 2023 | 0 | 4 | 8 | 0 |
| 2022 | 0 | 6 | 5 | 1 |
| 2021 | 0 | 8 | 4 | 0 |
| 2020 | 0 | 8 | 4 | 0 |
| 2019 | 0 | 6 | 6 | 0 |
| 2018 | 0 | 7 | 5 | 0 |
| 2017 | 0 | 3 | 9 | 0 |
| 2016 | 0 | 3 | 9 | 0 |
| 2015 | 1 | 1 | 9 | 1 |
| 2014 | 0 | 4 | 7 | 1 |
Elite rookies are being counted on early
It’s nothing new for a dynasty manager to have super high, and sometimes unfair, expectations for a top rookie. It happens every single year with multiple players. It is surprising to see those rookies, especially at positions other than running back, being valued and drafted as high-end fantasy starters in a redraft league though.
Our King’s Classic draft featured a pair of rookie receivers, Marvin Harrison Jr, and Malik Nabers, coming off the board as first-round picks. Both selections drew some comments from around the room, but that doesn’t make them bad picks by any means. Each of these players enter the league as one of the top prospects at the receiver position in the last half-decade and they are both favored to be the top pass-catcher on their respective teams.
It wasn’t just the receivers though. Quarterback Jayden Daniels scored his first career NFL touchdown while the draft was taking place and folks around the room became giddy with excitement about the upside of the Commanders’ new star. He was drafted as a top-twelve quarterback and I overheard comments later in the weekend that suggested his ADP will shoot up in drafts happening in the final weeks before the regular season begins.
By the way, Harrison and Nabers are also first-round picks based on our July dynasty ADP, joining Bijan Robinson, Breece Hall, Saquon Barkley, and Ezekiel Elliott as the only rookies to earn a top-12 overall ADP before they take a regular season NFL snap.
New kick return rules have us baffled
I’m not sure I had a football conversation in Canton that didn’t include some discussions or comments about the NFL’s new kickoff return rules. While everyone had their opinions, the consensus seemed to be that we just don’t know. Ideas varied wildly on topics like how NFL teams would handle the play from a strategy standpoint, how the rule change will impact fantasy football, and how dynasty leagues might need to adjust, given the new rules.
I know some leagues, including some run by DLF’s Matt Price, along with the Scott Fish Bowl, have adjusted to include kick return yardage as part of their league’s scoring rules. We’ve seen players like Saints receiver Rashid Shaheed gain quite a bit of value this off-season, partially due to this new rule.
I think dynasty league adjustments are the right move given the NFL’s determination to make the kick return a viable part of the game, but there are more questions than answers right now. For most teams, there is no clarity as to which players will be back to return kicks, though it has been the norm to see two players sent back. It is logical that kicking teams could simply try to avoid players who prove they are successful in the return game, greatly damaging their fantasy upside. Also, if a player like Shaheed becomes a focal point of the offense, he could “lose” his return role. I am eager to see how this all plays out this season.
No worries for CMC or CeeDee
The top two players, based on most redraft rankings, are 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey and Cowboys receiver CeeDee Lamb. Both are dealing with their own issues in recent days that could impact their fantasy value. It was announced that McCaffrey is dealing with a calf strain and will miss the entire pre-season. Normally, this would be a relatively minor issue, but with his age and injury history, red flags go up.
Meanwhile, Lamb is a holdout from Cowboys camp as he awaits a new contract. A holdout into the regular season is a rarity, but can’t be ruled out. These issues could be enough to scare a fantasy manager away from using a top pick on either player, but that wasn’t the case in our draft and auction. Lamb and McCaffrey were the top two selections in the draft. No one I spoke to this weekend expressed concern about either player with the season now less than a month away.
Early injuries greatly impact value
We’ve been lucky this off-season when it comes to injuries but the past couple of weeks of training camp and pre-season action have been a reminder of how much impact injuries can have on a player’s value. Receivers DeAndre Hopkins and Puka Nacua are dealing with multiple-week leg injuries and both were clearly discounted in our draft and auction.
In the games following the Saturday draft, Marquise Brown and MarShawn Lloyd suffered injuries that had the Canton crowd concerned and on Sunday morning, word of a possible Nabers foot injury caused some Expo goers to panic.
There’s. no easy answer here. Injuries are always going to be an impactful part of the game. All we can do as dynasty managers is be prepared by building depth and maintaining perspective, remembering that an injury is much more impactful for the player and his employer than it is for us.
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