Another week, another loss for Simon. Even worse, the KC defense played a great game on Thursday night to give me hope, only for Matt Ryan to throw it all away on Sunday. It also didn't help that 5 of my guys were out on Sunday.
Anyways, I wanted to take a look back at this fantasy season because it's been one like no other. The first round picks haven't been living up to their hype and the number of undrafted players making huge impacts are ridiculous. One defense is a top 15 fantasy player (INCLUDING QBs!!) and the TE position has been the most unpredictable since before the Tony Gonzalez/Antonio Gates/Jimmy Graham/Rob Gronkowski days. The only position that has been playing out as expected is kicker. Go figure.
Anyways, let's just cherry pick some crazy stats so far this season:
- New England is averaging 21.71 points per game. That's a 2 TDs and 97 rushing yards per game added to Cho's team every week! That's better than having Dalvin Cook, Nick Chubb, or Zeke. No WR can even match those numbers on a week to week basis. Even for a QB, that would be a 2 TD, 1 INT, 300 yard passing game EVERY WEEK. New England has been the 12th best player in the league, regardless of position. But the biggest kicker is the difference between them and the next best defense in the league. The gap between them and second place SF is 7.54 points. That is bigger than the difference between second place SF and 19th place Seattle. No other position has that big of a gap between first and second place in terms of startability.
QB: Russell Wilson => Lamar Jackson = .28 ~ Lamar Jackson => 3rd place DeShaun Watson
WR: Chris Godwin => Michael Thomas = 3.56 ~ Michael Thomas => 25th place John Brown (Remember that while this gap is bigger than the defense, we play 3 WRs. So John Brown is still a WR2/3)
RB: CMC => Dalvin Cook = 4.31 ~ Dalvin Cook => 6th place Aaron Jones
TE: (Not counting 2 game Henry) Hooper => Waller = 1.03 ~ Waller => 3rd place Mark Andrews
For a 13th round pick, you could do worse than the NE defense. The crazier thing is that they were the 10th defense taken off the board so 9 other teams are ruing the fact that they let this opportunity go.
- TE has been an infinite crapshoot this year. Let's see how the drafted TEs are doing based on the spot they were drafted:
1. Kelce - Drafted 1.11 - 4th - 60.1 total points
2. Kittle - 2.7 - 8th - 45.4
3. Ertz - 3.3 - 7th - 46.4
4. Engram - 6.1 - 6th - 50.4
5. O.J. Howard - 6.6 - 40th - 15.6
6. Henry - 6.8 - 13th - 37.7 (in 3 games!)
7. Cook - 7.2 - 19th - 28.8
8. McDonald - 8.4 - 23rd - 24.7
9. Njoku - 8.5 - 48th - 9.7
10. Ebron - 8.9 - 12th - 38.6
11. Hooper - 9.1 - 1st - 78.6
12. Andrews - 11.6 - 3rd - 60.9
13. Walker - 11.10 - 17th - 28.8
I think you get the point. If you look at these rankings, it looks like there's not rhyme or reason as to how the TEs were ranked before the season. And this chart doesn't even show the true volatility as we only start one TE. Only half of the first 13 TEs that were taken are even startable in our league. The #2 (Waller), 5 (Dissly), 9 (Everett), 10 (Olsen), 11 (Graham), 14 (Fells), and 15 (Witten) TEs weren't even taken in the draft. TE is usually the safest position to draft early because the cream at the top has usually stayed pretty consistent. This year has destroyed any notion of consistency for the position. We'll see what it means going forward.
- Has there ever been a season where this many startable WRs weren't even drafted? Let's see all the undrafted WRs that are in the top 50 based on total points scored this season:
#4, DJ Chark
#13, Terry McLaurin
#32, Phillip Dorsett
#36, DeMarcus Robinson
#38, John Ross
#44, A.J. Brown
#48, Zach Pascal
#49, Nelson Agholor
#50, Chris Conley
Somebody could have waited for the last 5 rounds of the drafted and still snagged 5 of the top 40 WRs, as well as having 1 in each WR tier as well. That's gotta be unheard of. A few trends obviously emerge. 1, Minshew-mania is alive and well with both Chark and Conley becoming real weapons. 2, the rookie WRs have really adapted well to the NFL. McLaurin, and AJ Brown on this list are all rookies. Other rookies like Marquise Brown, DK Metcalf, and Mecole Hardman have all been in the top 50 as well. Other rookie WRs (Harry, Deebo Samuel, Diontae Johnson, Myers, Slayton, Preston Williams) have shown flashes and may still have the ability to improve on the rest of the season.
Good luck to all!
Simon Kim
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