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Hey guys and gals, welcome to This Week in Dynasty. This is a new feature this year where we're going to discuss relevant developments from around the league with a dynasty slant. Everything is fair game, from high-level strategy to nitty-gritty player evals. If you have an suggestions for topics you'd like to see covered in this space, or if you'd just like to join the conversation, feel free to let me know on Twitter at @AdamHarstad.
The Big Takeaway
Every so often, fantasy football owners like to debate about the relative role of skill and luck in their favorite hobby. My rule of thumb on the subject is when I'm losing, fantasy is 90% luck, and when I'm winning, it is 90% skill. A simple look at skill vs. luck, however, misses one other key factor that plays a larger role in determining the outcome of most fantasy leagues than skill and luck combined. In my experience, one trait has predicted success more than any other. You can call that trait "effort", or "passion", or "investment", or "involvement". In the end, it all boils down to "time". Whenever there is an unbalanced time commitment, the guy who spends more wins more.
This makes a lot of sense. An owner who spends more time on the hobby will be more familiar with more players. He will see more of them in action on a weekly basis. He will always know more about everyone's most recent injury updates. An owner who has time to pursue 100 different potential trades is going to find much better deals than an owner who only has time to pursue 2 or 3. An owner who has the time to familiarize himself with the options on the waiver wire is going to find more steals. Eventually, spending more time suffers from diminishing returns; if you already know all the latest breaking information, spending an extra 2 hours reading Adam Schefter's Twitter timeline won't do you much good. Until that point is reached, though, each hour of time spent on fantasy football amounts to an additional hour's worth of advantage over the other owners in your league.
The biggest problem with this realization is that time is a finite, non-renewable resource. We can spend what we can afford, but frankly, sometimes what we can afford is so little that we're still left at a disadvantage. Sometimes life schedules conflicts without first how they might impact our fantasy football team. Sometimes wives, husbands, jobs, classes, children, parents, health, finances, or even other hobbies (*GASP*) stand between us and Total Fantasy Domination(™). What then, when there aren't enough hours in the day?
We now reach the nut graf, we now bring this winding train of thought into the station. While we can't control how much time we have available to us, we can control how wisely or how foolishly we allocate the time we do have. Spending time wisely is as good as creating more time. If we can do twice the work in half the time, we can keep up with and even surpass owners who more often find themselves with time to kill. To that end, here are some of the tools that I have come to rely on in my quest to work quicker, smarter, and more efficiently. Most are free, although some services require a subscription. Where a subscription is required, I'll attempt to point out free alternatives; while these services are all worth the cost, in my opinion, I have played plenty of seasons without paying a single dime (other than my Footballguys subscription, which I could never go without), and the free alternatives served my needs just fine.
RANKINGS
Generating your own rankings from scratch is a time-consuming process. Using existing rankings and adjusting from there is much quicker. The key is simply finding trustworthy, quality analysis. Also, remember to always check what date the rankings were last updated; even the best rankings in the world will lead you astray if they're a month old.
Footballguys: If you're reading this, you're already a Footballguys subscriber, which means there's no hard sales pitch necessary. I won't pretend Footballguys has a monopoly on every smart dynasty mind on the internet (not even close), but I think they do a great job at bringing together an extremely diverse set of viewpoints and philosophies, and the rankings are all fully sortable.
Dynasty League Football: Dynasty League Football has a large and experienced staff that does nothing but dynasty. Their dynasty mocks set the standard in the format for startup ADP values. Best of all, all of their rankings are accessible even without a subscription.
Pro Football Focus Fantasy: Pro Football Focus' fantasy arm is another that does consistently top-notch work with regular updates. Their dynasty team is smaller, and accessing their rankings requires a subscription, but the quality of their content is excellent.
FantasyPros: Perhaps best known for their expert accuracy rankings, FantasyPros also compiles a consensus of expert rankings from across the web in a variety of formats, including dynasty. The killer feature of FantasyPros is just raw diversity, as they get rankings from everywhere, including sources which are normally locked behind a paywall. FantasyPros also offers the ability to create an account and link your league, in which case they can highlight your players on their cheatsheets and give you a visual representation of how you're doing. Just make sure to click the "Edit Sources" button and verify that all of the rankings you're using in the consensus are current enough to not skew the average.
PLAYER EVALUATION
Pro Football Reference: Sometimes the best way to predict the future is to better understand the stats. The granddaddy of all football statistic websites, PFR was built by fantasy junkie (and Footballguys staff member) Doug Drinen. I'd imagine most of you are familiar with the site already, but some of you might not know that PFR hides a few secrets for fantasy owners who know where too look. If you scroll to the bottom of any player page, you'll see a box that shows how many fantasy points a player scored using standard (non-PPR) scoring, and how many points of VBD that score represented. Obviously the best VBD scores will be based on your individual league's roster settings and scoring system, but as a rough approximation, there is no quicker or easier way to judge past player values than Pro Football Reference. Want to know how valuable Rob Gronkowski was in 2011? Google "Rob Gronkowski PFR", click the first link, and scroll to the bottom of the page. Within 10 seconds, you can see that only 6 other players had more fantasy value that year. Click a link and you can even see who they are, as PFR contains yearly lists of all players sorted by VBD.
The Data Dominator and Historical Data Dominator: Before I was on staff at Footballguys, I was a subscriber for a decade, and every year I said the Data Dominator and Historical Data Dominator were worth the price of the subscription all by themselves. Also built by Doug Drinen, the DD and HDD provide quick and easy ways to look up pretty much anything you want to know. Do you want to know where Percy Harvin ranks in terms of fantasy points through age 24? Go to the Historical Data Dominator, change "individual seasons" to "totals" (because you want all points over multiple seasons), change positions to "WRs", change age to "from 19 to 24", set Statistic #1 to "Fantasy points", sort by "Statistic #1", and display "receiving stats". Then hit dominate. Within fractions of a second, you can see that Percy Harvin ranks 4th in fantasy points through age 24. The applications here are limited only by your imagination. The primary difference between the two tools is that the Data Dominator covers a limited timeframe (only back to 2002), but can sort stats based on week, down, distance, and field position, making it ideal for finding player splits (for instance, did you know that Tom Brady has run 40 quarterback sneaks on 3rd or 4th down with one yard to go since 2002, and has converted 39 of them?) The Historical Data Dominator cannot sort by down, distance, or field position, but it covers a longer timeframe (all the way back to 1960), and it can sort by the ratio between two stats (for instance, did you know that current 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh averaged the fewest touchdowns per pass attempt of any QB with at least 3,000 attempts since 1960?) The examples I'm choosing might make these tools seem like frivolous time-wasters, but they are anything but. Want to know what receivers excel on third down? Want to know which running backs average the most receptions per game? Want to know which quarterbacks throw the highest percentage of touchdowns in the red zone? There's no faster way to find the answer. Both tools can make it immeasurably easier to spot a player who is primed for a breakout.
SCOUTING
Pro Football Focus: Statistics are great, but they're an imperfect tool on their own. There's no way to tell just from a stat line whether a back that averages 4.0 yards per carry is a terrible back behind a good offensive line or a great back behind a bad offensive line. If a quarterback's completion percentage is low, you can't tell if it's because he's inaccurate or if his receivers are just terrible. Obviously, there's no substitute for actually watching the games yourself and forming your own opinions based on what you see. Just as obviously, not many people are going to have time for that. Enter Pro Football Focus. They grade every single player based on every single snap every week, condensing it all down into a single score or grade based solely on what that player does. Even they're not perfect. Sometimes it's impossible to assign a grade without knowing what play was called (and therefore knowing what the player was assigned to do). Still, as an actual measure of how a player is actually playing, PFF is fantastic. Full access to their statistics requires a subscription, but they post free weekly recaps of every game every week that will often give you a great idea of how well or how poorly the player you are interested in has been playing.
NFL Game Rewind: In terms of using time wisely to benefit your dynasty team, I'm of the opinion that no time is better spent than time spent actually watching football. By that measure, NFL Game Rewind is perhaps the most essential tool available for dynasty league owners, because nothing allows you to watch more football per unit of time. Available through the NFL's official site, you can purchase a $40 subscription that will run through the end of the regular season, or you can get a $70 subscription that will last until July 31st, 2014. Game Rewind lets you watch replays of every single NFL game since 2009. In addition to the standard broadcast replay, they offer condensed versions that show every snap of the game in under 30 minutes, and they even provide coaches' film (additional camera angles that show an end-zone and all-22 view of every play) so anyone can play amateur scout. Every game comes complete with a play-by-play log so that you can immediately jump around and see only the plays you're interested in, saving even more time. Finally, Game Rewind even features a tablet app so that you can watch it on the go. If your doctor's office has wifi, for instance, I can think of few more productive uses of a waiting room than scouting my potential waiver wire pickups.
DirecTV Short Cuts: Short Cuts on DirecTV is the less feature-rich little brother of Game Rewind. It gives you the condensed version of every game except for the national broadcasts (Thursday Night Football, Sunday Night Football, and Monday Night Football), but it lacks the additional camera angles, the play-by-play, or the mobile access. On the bright side, if you're already a subscriber to DirecTV's Sunday Ticket MAX package, Short Cuts is already available to you for free. If you can live without the bells and whistles of Game Rewind, Short Cuts are still an unbelievably valuable resource. As an added benefit, if you have a DVR, you can record games and save them indefinitely for future viewing.
LEAGUE MANAGEMENT
MyFBGs: MyFBGs is a tool that I'd never really paid much mind to in the past, but this year they've added features that, in my opinion, make it one of the true "killer apps" in fantasy football. If you're new to the tool, read Jeff Haseley's excellent guide to get started. Basically, MyFBGs allows you to link your fantasy leagues into FBGs' database. Once linked, MyFBG will automatically pull all of the roster and scoring information. At that point, all of FBGs' data becomes specifically tailored to your actual league. Instead of reading a waiver wire article and scanning each name to see if they're available in your league, you can simply pull up a custom "Top 200 forward" list that is specifically tailored to your exact scoring system and lineup requirements, and that list will automatically highlight which players are free agents. You can look at your lineup and not only get start and sit recommendations, you can get easily alerted if there's a player on the street that is projected to score more points than one of your starters, with three different sets of projections to choose from. In dynasty leagues, there are two different tasks to balance- long-term talent building and short-term score maximizing. Linking your leagues to MyFBGs allows you to practically automate the latter, freeing up massive amounts of time to spend working on trade offers, or scouting players, or developing a long-term strategy. As far as I know, there is no limit to the number of leagues you can link, allowing you to manage five leagues in less time than it used to take just to manage one. I'm not just shilling for the home team, here- I truly and honestly believe that this is the "killer app" that will free up all the time you need to do whatever other tasks are required while still leaving you enough time to see your family and friends on occasion.
My Playbook: FantasyPros offers a free feature called "My Playbook" that is similar in functionality to MyFBGs. It allows you to import fantasy leagues, and then it helps you manage those leagues based on expert rankings. The advantage of My Playbook is that it gives you access to a huge range of expert rankings from around the web, and it provides you with team analysis that quickly compares your team to the rest of your league to highlight your strengths and weaknesses. The disadvantage of My Playbook is that, since it's based on rankings rather than projections, the advice is not tailored to your specific scoring system. Still, both MyFBGs and My Playbook have features the other lacks and give you access to a different set of rankings and projections, and since as a FBGs subscriber you already have access to both services for free, there's no real reason to view them as competitors instead of complements.
It seems ironic to mention Twitter in an article about saving time, because if you're not careful Twitter can turn into a truly frightening time sink. With a little judicious thought, though, Twitter is an incredibly powerful tool to save time. Following Adam Schefter's twitter account (@AdamSchefter), for instance, is the quickest way to gain access to all breaking news in the league. Apps exist that allow you to receive alerts on your phone whenever a specific person tweets (I use Boxcar for this). Set up an alert and suddenly whenever Adam Schefter tweets breaking news, it appears instantly on your phone.
Beyond its capability as a time-saver, Twitter is also a very powerful tool for connecting people together. Pretty much every team's beat writer and every internet fantasy expert worth knowing about has an active and accessible Twitter profile, and in my experience, the vast majority of them are quick and friendly when responding to interactions. The reason I feature it so prominently in my weekly columns is that nothing else manages to create such a fertile community of experienced football minds engaging in an active give-and-take about the hobby. If you're not on Twitter yet, I would invite you to join the discussion. I'd just caution you to start slowly, because if left unchecked, you could easily see all that time you saved with the earlier tools getting eaten up by Twitter, instead.
Heard Around the Water Cooler
If Zach Sudfeld plays a snap, I will let you know.
-Patrick Daugherty (@RotoPat)
(Final tally- 20 snaps, 9 routes run, 1 target which was dropped and intercepted. Not good.)
Marvin Jones and eventually Andy Hawkins will have trouble finding the field this year. Gresham and Eifert are busy men.
-Mike Clay (@MikeClayNFL)
Have not recorded Stevan Ridley on the field since his fumble. Coaching staff giving him plenty of time to think about it.
-Mike Reiss (@MikeReiss)
(Fortunately for Ridley, he'll get another 8 weeks to cement his place. Talk about a deus ex machina.)
Kaepernick: “If intimidation is your game plan, I hope you have a better one.”
-Gregg Rosenthal (@greggrosenthal)
(There's a tattoo joke in here, somewhere, but I'll leave it for David Whitley.)
Reminder for Week 1 conclusion jumpers: In Week 1 2012, Mark Sanchez threw 3 TDs & #Jets scored 48 points. Was not a sign of things to come.
-Evan Silva (@evansilva)
The Bills' top three wide receivers combined to NOT play four snaps. That's near unheard of. Base 11 offense = understatement. Only 37% of Bills targets went to wide receivers yesterday. That's crazy low.
-Mike Clay (@MikeClayNFL)
I feel like I owe Terrelle Pryor an apology for calling him a terrible real life QB. He's moved himself into "likely just bad" territory.
-Fantasy Douche (@FantasyDouche)
Vernon Davis' 9 targets were more than he had in any game last season.
-Chet (@Chet_G)
I'll repeat something I said months ago and got killed for: Are we REALLY sure that Denard isn't the best QB on the Jags roster? I'm not.
Joe Bussell (@NFLosophy)
People talking about the tempo, and for good reason, but there's a lot more to Kelly than quick snaps on offense. His entire approach to coaching is tested and data-driven, from how he structures practices to 4th down strategy. The scientific method got us to the freaking moon. I'm pretty sure conquering the NFL is a walk in the park, by comparison.
-Adam Harstad (@AdamHarstad)
iPhone 5C made out of the same material as Danny Amendola.
-Play 60 Kid (@NatePlay60)
Final Thoughts
What an exciting weekend! I'm sure we're all suffering a bit from fantasy overload as we just witnessed the NFL's quarterbacks combine for the most passing yards (8143) and passing TDs (63) in a single week in NFL history. Across the league, quarterback scoring was up 16% vs. week 1 last season (thanks, Data Dominator!) Running backs (-3%) and wide receivers (+3%) both held roughly constant from last year, although it certainly doesn't feel that way given the lack of top-end RB performances. The biggest winner from week 1 of 2012 to week 1 of 2013, though, was the tight end position, with a whopping 19% increase in fantasy production.
Is that jump in tight end production a fluke, or a sign of things to come? Consider that tight end production as a whole has risen astronomically over the last decade (from 2500 points in 2003 to 3900 points in 2012, a massive 56% increase). It seems clear that the league is moving towards featuring the tight end like never before. It remains to be seen how individuals like Jordan Cameron and Julius Thomas will fare over the season, but the position as a whole is trending up in a big way.
Sticking with tight ends, I've had plenty of people ask me if I thought Jared Cook, Julius Thomas, and Jordan Cameron are for real in dynasty. My answer to them? Definitely, almost certainly, and jury's still out, respectively. If you're one of the few owners who missed out on the week 1 TE explosion, another dynasty tight end I'm very excited about who is flying a little bit under the radar right now is Jordan Reed, who quietly had a very solid rookie debut and who has the potential to surpass Fred Davis sooner rather than later. In a lot of leagues, he's even available on waivers right now. If it were me, I'd be quick to correct that.
When considering week 1 performances, it's important not to overreact. Player production varies wildly from game to game, and it only makes sense that some players' big games just happen to fall on the first week of the season. With no other data to go on, it's easy to forget this and assume that huge production is the new normal. Regarding Julius Thomas, for instance, I've seen some suggest that 100/2 isn't happening again, but there's no reason why he can't average 60/0.5 the rest of the way. The problem is, 60/0.5 is basically what Jimmy Graham, last year's #1 tight end, averaged. Compared to a 100/2 game, 60/0.5 seems like a huge drop, but the reality is that even if Thomas is a top-5 TE the rest of the way, he's still in line for a much larger drop than that. And that's okay. That's normal. Just remember that if you're trying to trade for him, or for anyone else who had a big week 1 game, for that matter.
Speaking of trading, I actually have a personal rule that I never try to trade for anyone coming off of a big game. No matter how tempting it is, I just don't do it. Even if I'm guarding against it, it's almost impossible to avoid overreacting to a single game. And even if I avoid it, the odds are virtually zero that the player's owner is avoiding it. And even if we both avoid it, a single big game can skew our perspective on a player for weeks afterward. If Julius Thomas or Jared Cook perform at a TE15 level the rest of the way, it'll take weeks before their every-week average manages to dilute the single big game sufficiently to drop them out of the top 6 TEs. The bigger their big game and the earlier it is in the season, the more impact it will have on their averages. I'll write about this more in the coming weeks, but I just wanted to mention it now to hopefully prevent anyone from doing anything rash.
After all that cautioning against overreacting to one week, I do have to say that I'm buying into Anquan Boldin in a big way this year. His 2013 opener was, to me, shades of Reggie Wayne's 2012 opener. Typically we should ignore a big game in favor of the much larger body of evidence that precedes it, but in this case, the larger body of evidence also suggests Boldin is great. Anquan Boldin has been one of the most productive receivers in NFL history. A few down years in Baltimore had us believing that maybe he was past his sell-by date and could no longer be effective enough to get huge fantasy stats. Week 1 announced in a big way just how wrong we were about that. I love him as a high-end WR2 or even low-end WR1 the rest of the way this year, which means he's a great player to target if your team is in the middle of a championship window and needs a top WR to put you over the hump.
While I don't like buying a player after a big game, I love buying a player after a bad game. Now is the time to buy Stevan Ridley and David Wilson. All backs fumble sometimes, but young and talented backs don't get run out of the league entirely for fumbling. They get coached harder, they improve, and they put it behind them. Look at Tiki Barber, Ricky Williams, or Adrian Peterson, three backs who had a fumbling problem… until they didn't anymore. Neither of those players are being downgraded because they didn't look talented on the field, they're being downgraded over concerns about playing time. Playing time follows talent, so if you believe in them, go get them.
Similarly, I love buying injured players. If you come back and read this column again in future weeks, you'll notice it quickly become a theme. When a player gets injured, that's the time to send an offer. Even veteran dynasty owners overrate immediate production and long-term risk, and that's a market inefficiency that can be exploited. I find that it's rare to see a seriously injured player who doesn't get discounted too heavily. With that in mind, now's the time to get offers out for Shane Vereen. He looked absolutely fantastic in week 1, and he will play a huge role in this offense for years to come, but right now he's probably available for a fraction of his true worth simply because he's going to miss 8 weeks. If you liked Le'Veon Bell, the negative news coming out about his foot sprain also creates a good opportunity to buy now for much less than he would have cost two months ago.
Best of luck to everyone in their week 2 games. I'll see you back here next week with plenty of NFL action to break down and plenty of dynasty implications to discuss!