One of the unifying principles of my life is optimism. When I look out into the world, I see reasons to be optimistic. This philosophy greatly influences my fantasy strategy, but I think it also makes sense for maximizing the ceiling of your team. Perhaps the real lesson of this article is to adopt strategies that resonate with your psyche - eliminate conflict - but I have reaped the benefits of optimism throughout my life, so forgive me for evangelizing about optimism as a winning strategy in fantasy football.
Fantasy football is draft obsessed right now, so we forget that quality waiver wire moves, lineup decisions, and trades can create value for our teams during the season and give us optimism that we can fix any holes left in our lineup by aggressive drafting. Because of this, we should aim high with the way we spend our bankroll of picks or dollars in our draft. Spend your resources to secure players who can become unfair advantages because of the production level or low price you paid. Sure, you will take on more risk by swinging for the fences, but you can recoup those losses with strong work in the other three key areas of fantasy football.
You must take multiple players in each part of your draft with a chance of greatly exceeding their expected value as a function of ADP. There is room to swing for some singles and doubles early, but otherwise, your draft should be stacked with players who have a non-zero chance of performing well above expectations.
Optimism is always informing our picks. Optimism about a player’s chances of hitting his ceiling by harnessing his talents and meshing with his teammates and coaches. Or a player’s ability to return to form after injury when there are no indicators in the other direction. Or your ability to extract added value via waiver pickups and trades to patch over holes left by risks that become realized. By confidently betting on yourself and your players, you don’t limit the possible ceiling of your fantasy season.
Pessimistic Traps to Avoid In Drafts
Trap #1: Drafting for depth is pessimistic. You are planning for gaps from your core players, and you are trading valuable picks for a commodity that you should be able to easily harvest on the waiver wire as a by-product of upside drafting. Unless your league is extremely deep, you should be able to find a player you can stomach starting at quarterback or wide receiver in most leagues in any given week, and arguably at tight end, too.
Instead: Don’t be afraid of going without a backup quarterback unless everyone in your league carries two. Don’t take players with firm limitations on their weekly role because of their skillsets or the structure of the offense just because their meager to mediocre-sized role is consistent and guaranteed.
Trap #2: Taking running back handcuffs strictly because you drafted the starter is pessimistic. You are limiting the upside of your roster as a whole because at least one of the picks will come in below expected value. You are also clogging a valuable roster spot that could be used to gain value on the waiver wire. Again, in very deep leagues where the running back wire is usually bare, it might make sense, but otherwise, you should draft bench running backs for their ceiling, not as an insurance policy. If they sync up with your starters, all the better, but this is incidental to your draft board.
Instead: Target the bench running backs with the best combinations of: cheap draft cost, talent, situation, size of potential role, shakiness of backs ahead of them.
Trap #3: Thinking about bye weeks at all is pessimistic and short-sighted. You are going to have some roster turnover by the time we get to bye weeks and you don’t really know what decisions you’re going to be looking at in those weeks yet. Perhaps you should break ties in favor of players with later byes for that valuable week of rest later in the grind, but even that is low on the list of potential tiebreakers.
Instead: Bye weeks? What bye weeks?
An Optimistic Early Draft
First Round: I do not agree with the adage of “you can’t win your league in the first round, but you can lose it”. I have won many leagues in which I shanked my first and another pick in the first three rounds. This means keeping Adrian Peterson in the top four where he belongs despite age/mileage worries, keeping Calvin Johnson at WR1 and in the overall top six despite a similar fade to Peterson’s in 2013, and keeping Demarco Murray in late first consideration despite a spotty injury history.
The second and third rounds provide a lot more narratives of RBs performing at an RB1 level this year, and the fourth-sixth rounds provide a lot more narratives of WRs performing at a WR1 level. Choose one of the narratives that speaks the loudest to you. Or go with a player not on my lists, but someone that you can tell a story to yourself about how they will an elite fantasy TE or WR1/RB1. If you can’t convincingly spin that yarn, don’t bother with that player in the first six rounds.
Second Round: This is the place for Rob Gronkowski, unless you took Graham in the first (and there’s an argument for Gronk even if you took Graham). Other optimistic picks would guys like Lynch and Foster eking out one more studly season or Bernard/Ellington stepping up their game. Jordy Nelson and Alshon Jeffery as top 5 WRs makes them work if you prefer to avoid riskier RB/TE.
Third Round: A return to 2012 form for Alfred Morris, Doug Martin or CJ Spiller fits here. Julius Thomas taking it to the next level as he’s still early in his career arc and spent time with Tony Gonzalez fits here. Randall Cobb making the next step with his versatile game and elite QB works if you shy away from the backs.
Fourth Round: Victor Cruz, Andre Johnson, Larry Fitzgerald, or Roddy White still being great. Cordarrelle Patterson making NFL defenders look silly on a more frequent basis.
Fifth Round: DeSean Jackson looking as good as he did last year. Michael Crabtree picking up where he left off on his path to dominance. Percy Harvin and Shane Vereen staying healthy. Michael Floyd continuing to grow in his third year. Jordan Cameron being able to shoulder the responsibility of being the Browns passing game. Ray Rice’s terrible 2013 really being about his hip and the terrible OL play, and not him hitting the wall.
Sixth Round: Ascendant talents Torrey Smith and TY Hilton emerging as #1s in their pass offense. Emmanuel Sanders riffing with Peyton Manning as well as Eric Decker did. Julian Edelman and Tom Brady resuming their mindmeld. Marques Colston and Reggie Wayne defying age and 2013 injuries and remaining key targets for their talented QBs.
A note about Optimism and QB drafting
I get taking Peyton Manning in the first by buying into the idea that he will at least be 85-90% of 2013 Peyton. I get taking Brees or Rodgers in the third because they can deliver titles. I get Luck in the 4th-5th because he’s the next up and this could be the year. I get taking Foles in the 6th-7th because of Chip Kelly. I just also get the optimism about Wilson, Kaepernick, Cutler, Brady, Ryan, Romo, Roethlisberger, and Rivers too. Maybe even Newton as his ADP has fallen. I have nothing against Stafford, I just think Cutler is the same guy much later in your draft. Ok, maybe I am having a little trouble summoning up some optimism about Robert Griffin III - at least in the short term. The strange truth is that there are compelling optimistic paths to top 6-8 QB production for almost all of the top 16 QBs. We saw this last year as the QB pecking order was basically Peyton-Brees-Rodgers/Foles then a big mess of QBs who didn’t really separate from each other when looking at the entire season. Even Brees had a rough fantasy playoffs, so really only Peyton Manning mattered greatly if you took a quarterback in the top 6-8 last year. I think optimism can still pay off here on earlier picks, but I prefer to wait.
Optimism in the mid-late rounds
We pay a disproportionate amount of attention to the early round candidates and strategy. It makes sense because they represent the biggest part of our bankroll in terms of capital, and we often remember the players taken early as the players that helped us win our leagues in recent years. A closer examination of most winning teams will usually reveal a player or two who produced unexpected value from a mid or late-round draft pick.
Last year, players like Julius Thomas, Josh Gordon, Alshon Jeffery, Knowshon Moreno were on a lot of winning teams. We can use these examples to identity potential indicators to look for in candidates to be the 2014 version of the mid/late-round pick that helps you win your league. Gordon and Jeffery were young receivers oozing with the kind of traits and talents that can create fantasy victories. Moreno was the boring reliable vet in a potent offense that valued boring reliability over younger legs. Thomas was an unknown in a potent offense with a vacancy for someone with his skillset.
Not all of these will hit, but I feel comfortable saying that the majority of hits this year will come from this list:
Mid-Rounds
Kelvin Benjamin, WR, CAR
Brandin Cooks, WR, NO
Sammy Watkins, WR, BUF
Darren Sproles, RB, PHI
Fred Jackson, RB, BUF
Steven Jackson, RB, ATL
Justin Hunter, WR, TEN
Carlos Hyde, RB, SF
Late Rounds
Cody Latimer, WR, DEN
Johnny Manziel, QB, CLE
Blake Bortles, QB, JAX
Carson Palmer, QB, ARI
Lance Dunbar, RB, DAL
Dexter McCluster, RB, TEN
Knile Davis, RB, KC
Benny Cunningham, RB, STL
CJ Anderson, RB, DEN
Bryce Brown, RB, BUF
KaDeem Carey, RB, CHI
Jonathan Grimes, RB, HOU
Markus Wheaton, WR, PIT
Greg Jennings, WR, MIN
Jarrett Boykin, WR, GB
Andrew Hawkins, WR, CLE
Rod Streater, WR, OAK
Allen Hurns, WR, JAX
Malcom Floyd, WR, SD
John Brown, WR, ARI
Frankie Hammond, WR, KC
A note on Optimism and tight ends
Optimism abounds at tight end this year. After the top four, you have a limited upside tier of guys like Jason Witten, Greg Olsen, and Dennis Pitta, and a massive tier of younger upside plays, which is where two of this year’s top 4 - Julius Thomas and Jordan Cameron - came from last year. The list of tight ends with the combination of growing ability and opportunity is long. Even if you have a top 4 tight end, having one or two of these guys on your bench as trade bait (or someone who can give you the ability to trade your stud TE for a stud elsewhere) can come in very handy.
Jordan Reed, WAS
Zach Ertz, PHI
Kyle Rudolph, MIN
Dwayne Allen, IND
Travis Kelce, KC
Tyler Eifert, CIN
Ladarius Green, SD
Heath Miller could also flirt with top five production as he has in the past if his knee is all the way back and Roethlisberger keys on him in the no huddle offense.
Waiver Wire Speed Dial
Be optimistic about what will be available on the waiver wire in the first few weeks of the season. We’ll have brand new data and lots of gaps between our expectations and reality exposed. We have spent months drawing a picture of the NFL based on how it looked last year, offseason/preseason developments, and good old educated guesses. The NFL that is going to be revealed in Week 1 (and all year) is going to differ greatly from that picture. Being able to accept and act on new considerations that include acknowledging how wrong we were right away is going to be crucial. Remember also that the earlier you add value to your roster via the waiver wire, the more weeks you’ll get to benefit from that value during the season.
By looking for situations with uncertainty and upside, we can isolate a few players to be ready to pounce on if things click. The late round target list above is assumed to be part of this list, especially for guys like Hurns and Hammond if you’ve already drafted. If they hit Week 1, don’t dither over whether they are the real deal or not. You can cut them without remorse if Week 2 is a dud. The unheralded rise up the depth chart and big Week 1 is exactly how the “waiver wire pickup who saved my season” story starts.
Here are some names for deeper leagues to keep on “waiver wire speed dial” if they give us reasons for optimism on early touches/roles/performances:
Geno Smith, QB, NYJ
Jake Locker, QB, TEN
Theo Riddick, RB, DET
Roy Helu, RB, WAS
Dion Lewis, RB, CLE
Alfred Blue, RB, HOU
Brandon Bolden, RB, NE
Antone Smith, RB, ATL
Davante Adams, WR, GB
Andre Caldwell, WR, DEN
Mohamed Sanu, WR, CIN
Miles Austin, WR, CLE
Jerricho Cotchery, WR, CAR
Corey Washington, WR, NYG
Mychal Rivera, TE, OAK
Austin Seferian-Jenkins, TE, TB
Optimism about Week 2 Trade Prospects
The first week of the season will be an overload of new information for most owners. By anticipating some of the potential week 1 storylines, you can be poised to pounce on buy low and sell high opportunities. Keep the following games in mind when you load your quiver with Week 2 trade offers:
- Green Bay could struggle mightily in the hostile environs of Seattle, temporarily depressing the value of Aaron Rodgers and Jordy Nelson.
- Washington’s trip to Houston could be a Week 1 spanking that fits too neatly into a “RG3/Jay Gruden/Washington offense/Alfred Morris/Desean Jackson is a dud” narrative.
- The Patriots could eat the Dolphins completely revamped offensive line for lunch and make an already unexciting set of Dolphins skill players become available for a song.
- Colin Kaepernick could have another massive Week 1 and Frank Gore should be an immediate sell high after opening in Dallas.
- Rashad Jennings is unlikely to get much going against the Lions vaunted run defense on Monday night, and Ryan Mathews could also struggle on the road on a national stage at Arizona, creating buy low opportunities for this pair of mid-round running backs.
In Closing
Optimism dictates seeing every draft pick, waiver wire, trade talk, and lineup choice as a place where you can create excess value for your fantasy team. Playing it safe may have its time and place, but allowing yourself to see the best possible outcome and going for it will produce greater gains over time, and it's more likely to produce a chain of events that leads to a championship, the most lasting achievement in fantasy football.
Besides, you’ll believe that you’re going to win the title right up until the moment that your team is eliminated, and that’s worth something, too. Actually, it’s worth a lot.