Rookie Pick Craze

By Nick Andrews

Updated: July 8th 2016

Most rookie drafts are now complete and owners are looking forward to the start of training camp in a month’s time. Throughout this process of drafting, I came to ask myself the question of whether rookie picks of all kinds are overvalued. With the hype-train that is the 2017 draft, I have seen many trades on both twitter and in my own leagues that would suggest that every player available is going to be the next Eric Dickerson, Randy Moss, and Tony Gonzalez. Even looking ahead to 2018, owners are reluctant to trade their picks based on the unknown of what the caliber of rookies will be in two years. While that is a fair argument, the last time I checked, the whole point of playing fantasy football was to win championships, not assemble “the best” forward- looking team. Therefore, I wanted to take a look how successful rookie picks actually are. I should give credit to RotoViz writer Jacob Rickrode who looked at a similar topic last year. I will link his article here for those of you who have access to their articles.

Rookie Success

If we look back at the last six rookie drafts starting in 2010 below is a breakdown of how successful a rookie selected was. The chart looks at the average ADP of each year’s rookies. For 2012 Trent Richardson, Andrew Luck, and Doug Martin were the average top 3 drafted in that order. The Success Rate evaluates whether a pick had a top 12 (QB, TE) or top 24 (RB,WR) season at least once since being drafted. The Percentage of Top Seasons represents how often each pick was able to reach the top 12/24. The final two columns indicate the total round’s Bust Rate, whether they had at least one top season, and Top Season Rate, the percentage of having multiple top 12/24. I chose to only do individual picks for the first two rounds for two reasons: the fluctuation in ADP after 24 varied tremendously from site to site and the data showed that players drafted after the second round were mostly irrelevant.

As you can see the first round selections have a slightly better than 50/50 chance to have at least one top 12/24 season while only a 20% chance of having more than one top seasons. From there it gets steadily worse. An interesting anomaly, the large value of success from the 2.12 is greatly inflated by Rob Gronkowski who’s five top 12 finishes are only second in that round to pick 2.02 (6). That’s one player versus six! As well, the 1.02 has seen some elite talent with names like Dez Bryant, A.J. Green, and Andrew Luck which is why it is the only pick that currently holds a perfect 100% success rate. The only individual players to have a perfect score (reaching the top 12/24 each season) having played in 2 or more seasons are Odell Beckham Jr. (2 years), Mike Evans (2), Jeremy Hill (2), Giovanni Bernard (3) and A.J. Green (5). This is the part of the article where you tip your cap to the Cincinnati Bengals scouting staff. Even if we look at the so-called “Best class in recent history” – 2014, in their first two seasons only 7 of 12 players have had a top 12/24 season thus far. Even looking ahead , with a couple more seasons under their belts, I do not see much more coming out of this round however due to names like Sankey and Manziel stinking up the average.

Move Up or Move Out

So knowing this information what can we do to come out ahead? If we look at my last article which helps layout the value of picks against one another and combine that with the stats presented here we can create a couple of trade strategies to maximize value. If you are a contending, bottom round team the likelihood of your rookie selection being a useful player is slim. Looking at the last 6 picks in the first round the success rate drops to only 40% and the multi-season success down to 10%. Consider also that if your team is contending and therefore full of top talent players, already the likelihood of incoming players being better than those players is even less likely. Therefore, you should be looking to move your picks to the top 3 where you have a robust 83% chance of picking a successful player as well as a 67% chance that they will have multiple top seasons.

Forgotten veterans are a contender’s best friend

If you are unable to move into a position to secure a top 3 selection then the second option is to move out completely. The goal is to win championships, so if your pick isn’t going to help you win during your window then you should be getting value from it. Savvy veteran players are always undervalued and while they may not offer high returns like ODB or Allen Robinson, they definitely will have higher floors than shares of David Wilson, Cordarelle Patterson, and Johnny Manziel currently holds. Players like Matt Forte, Ryan Matthews, Greg Olsen, and Drew Brees are perfect candidates to target by casting out a late first round pick. I have said this in many articles before but the beautiful of RSO is that no player is locked in forever so the landscape of teams changes more than standard dynasties. For those of you who have been on the site for several years now you probably understand what I am saying since your first rookie class is coming due for their first free agency.

Hopefully, I have been able to open some eyes to what really happens with rookie picks and help you understand what to do with everyone going 2017 crazy! As always if you have questions or want to talk strategies you can find me on twitter @naandrews19.

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2.01 Is The New Black

By Nick Andrews

Updated: June 22nd 2016

The RealitySportsOnline (RSO) platform offers a unique way of participating in fantasy football like no other dynasty system. By having contracts, salaries and a salary cap, owners in RSO have to not only be proactive with who they think will be next year’s breakout sleeper but also assign dollar figures to their commitment. Even if they are correct in picking out players and securing them on below market value contracts they still only hold their rights for a maximum of six years (two of which would be on a franchise tag designation for top dollar). It’s not like other dynasty leagues where a player that you take in your start-up draft is your player until he becomes undesirable and is either traded or released.

Knowing that an owner has an incoming rookie for a finite number of years also puts more emphasis on a rookie to perform from year one. Having a player red shirt their first season in the NFL essentially cuts their availability to a starting roster by a third or quarter (depending on your league format) where a wait and see approach can be implemented in other dynasty formats for many rookies. Just ask those who drafted Breshad Perriman and Kevin White in the first round whether they would have rather taken a gamble on a lower ranked receiver such as Stephon Diggs or Tyler Lockett. Would the Melvin Gordon owner, who likely spent a top 3 pick rather have taken one of the Johnson backs later? Of course time will tell if and how successful any of these players will be but so far the first years of their contracts are wasted dollars.

How To Value Each Round

So how does one determine value in rookie picks? More importantly how do we determine the tradability of one pick for a collection of picks and vice versa. For this we first have to look at how real NFL teams look at their collections of picks. In the early 90’s the Dallas Cowboys were winning Super Bowls thanks to a regression model that their then co-owner Mike McCoy created for Jimmy Johnson to quickly evaluate trades. When teams came calling during the draft they added all the values of the picks and if it fell in their favor then they likely accepted the trade. From the chart below you can see the updated model for a 32 team 7 round draft. If you were to extrapolate this data onto a graph it would follow an exponential curve that drops quickly and then levels out near the bottom.

This is the base for which I started looking at how the same principles could be used for a fantasy draft. To make this chart relevant for RSO though we needed to scale the number of teams and rounds down to a normal fantasy league size. For the purpose of this article let’s assume a 10 team league that has 5 rounds. Each pick holds a value between ranges of 3,000 and 1. Factoring the rookie pay scale from last year as provided on the site here we can create a chart of each value for picks 1 through 50. This is done by adding a multiplier to the linear difference between the Pick Value (blue column) and the Cap Figure (green column). The new value with the salary included is then represented in the Added Value column (red column).

This information is more easily represented via the chart below.

The first thing that should jump out is the value of the early second round picks versus the last first round picks. The numbers would suggest that the 2.01 is more valuable than the 1.04 and the 1.10 is valued at a mid-second? Right about now I can feel a collection of you clicking the exit or back button on your browser thinking that I’m crazy. Stay with me here. If you just look back to even last year’s mock drafts it was clear that there was a two headed race at the top between Amari Cooper and Todd Gurley. After them guys such as Melvin Gordon, Kevin White and Nelson Agholor were being thrown around as 3^rd and 4^th best options. Down at 10^th and 11^th we have DeVante Parker and DGB. Would anybody say that the first three names are significantly more valuable than these two after the first year? What if I was to tell you that you could have the second group of names for 75% LESS over the length of their contracts!

Depending on your own league the number of teams and rounds will change the value of these picks but for the most part the 2.01 ranged in value from the third most valuable pick to the seventh. So is the 11^th player off the board really 2.4 times less productive than the 10^th player? Likely the answer is no. Clearly the cap figure for the first pick in the second round is much smaller than that of any pick in the first. So why is this trend something that most people don’t know about or follow? The answer could simply be the same reason why real NFL GMs hold onto and new teams are willing to give former first rounders a second chance, the pedigree that a player drafted in the first round holds.

How To Stay Atop The Mountain

So if you are sitting at the back quarter of your draft, congrats, as you likely won your league or were a week or two away from winning it all. This likely means that you have a pretty solid core of players that will be back next year for another title run. But no team escapes the offseason totally intact so you likely have one or two holes that you would need to fill. As an example let’s say that you would be looking to replace or upgrade your TE for next season.

Finding value in under appreciated talent is a smart way to use back end draft picks

Based on the information about back end drafting I just showcased why not bundle your first and second round pick for a higher second and a veteran player such as a Greg Olsen? If he’s on a reasonably priced contract would he not be better than rolling the dice on a Gary Barnidge or Delaine Walker who you would likely be bidding for in your free agent auction? You’re also saving yourself cap space from your rookie pool that could be used to win a different prized free agent.

Another strategy that can be used if you have multiple first round picks is trading for future picks if you are not sold on selecting incoming rookies. Much like your investment portfolio, it’s good to put your money into different areas to ensure that you yield the best return. Having two or three firsts in a single draft puts a lot of your stock into the success of one class. This also forces you to choose only one of your rookies to tag down the road should any emerge as great dynasty assets. By staggering your picks over years and rounds it allows for you to have a little of each class (or save up for one super class) while not losing a large core of your players at the end of any one season.

Cost efficient rookies turn championship teams into dynasties

The benefits of having a successful offseason are what makes for a successful regular season. Nothing is more rewarding than having a player you got for cheap or the rookie you drafted in the 3^rd round be the final piece to a championship season. For me, this past season was a prime example of this philosophy. Having veteran players such as Doug Baldwin and Marvin Jones signed for $3M deals along with Tyler Lockett, who I drafted in the 3^rd round, was key to my unexpected championship run. Of course not all of the free agents that are brought in will work out; I’m looking at you C.J. Spiller! The hope is that while others in your league are getting caught up in rookie fever, you are able to save more of your cap room for veterans that you can secure for the same or less value that will for sure be on the field in the coming season.

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Dollars and Sense: Rookie QB Value

By Bob Cowper

Updated: April 18th 2016

I believe that rookie QBs are an undervalued commodity on Reality Sports Online. However, I am a man on an island because most of my colleagues disagree. In Dave Sanders’ piece titled “Maximizing Quarterback Value”, he suggests skipping rookie quarterbacks completely. In Bernard Faller’s piece titled “Value Town: QBs”, he suggests that since the difference between QB2 and QB16 was just 4 ppg that owners could plug-n-play at the position which could lead to you avoid drafting the top rookie QBs. I disagree with my colleagues on this, in fact I have been a big proponent in my first two articles of reaching for a quarterback in the early second round of your RSO rookie draft. Ultimately, our differences of opinion come down to one thing: position scarcity.

The first thing we need to keep in mind about RSO is it’s unique contract driven dynasty format. Since there are salary cap ramifications for every add/drop, it’s not quite as simple as other formats to rely on the waiver wire to fill your quarterback position. Furthermore, because of the rookie draft that kicks off each season, younger quarterbacks are more highly owned than in other formats which further complicates the plug-n-play strategy. Lastly, because RSO owners are more likely to hoard their quarterbacks, it’s important to keep this in mind when looking at metrics such as VBD and others that compare the “replacement level” of a position.

In Bernard’s piece he presents Tyrod Taylor as a good value, which I agree with, but the problem is that in most RSO leagues Taylor was not available once he was a viable fantasy starter and you needed him. Sure, you could have grabbed him after the Bills’ announcement since he was only owned in about 20% of leagues originally, but if you doubted him and waited to grab Taylor mid-season as a bye week or injury fill-in he was likely already gone. Ultimately, Taylor finished as QB17 based on the average number of points scored across all RSO leagues and was 81% owned. For comparison, Taylor was only 56% owned on Yahoo and 35% on NFL.com at the end of the season. On those sites/formats, relying on Taylor to give you some good plug-n-play value at quarterback was a viable strategy, even late into the season, but I don’t believe it could have been on RSO.

Blake Bortles was also a good value but I think the reality of the ownership percentage paints a bleak picture for those who use Dave’s strategy of skipping quarterbacks in RSO rookie drafts. Before the start of the 2015 season, Bortles was approximately 17% owned on RSO, presumably most of those being owners who drafted Bortles in their 2014 rookie draft. Compare that to the data compiled by NFL.com leagues in which Bortles was just 2.8% owned in Week 1 of 2015. By the Jags Week 8 bye, Bortles was up to 40% on NFL.com and by the end of the season he was up to 71.6%; comparatively he skyrocketed to 90.74% in RSO leagues by the end of the season (mid-season ownership percentages are tough to pinpoint on RSO but I would estimate that by Week 8 it would be at least 70%). To quote Ron Burgundy, “that escalated quickly.” The owners who had the foresight to draft Bortles in 2014 are paying him rookie money for QB1 production and that’s worth the gamble of drafting a rookie QB rather than battling on the waiver wire once they “pop.”

The next veteran QB we’ll look at to illustrate my rookie QB feelings is the guy everybody loves to hate: Andy Dalton. Coincidentally, Dalton finished 2015 as QB16 in both average points and ownership on RSO. In “Value Town: QBs,” Bernard points out that the difference between QB16 and QB2 was just 4 points per game to illustrate his replacement-level strategy. Based on my research, I think RSO owners need to dig deeper to find the true replacement level at QB. For most redraft and keeper leagues, I agree with Bernard that QB16 would be the right place to look but for RSO, I would posit you need to go down to at least QB20, if not further, to realistically expect a player to be available. Before the 2015 season, Andy Dalton was available in just 25% of RSO leagues (17th most owned QB) and that fell to just 8% by the end of the season. In order to find somebody who was available in at least 40% of leagues at the start of the season, you would have to look to Sam Bradford, Colin Kaepernick or Teddy Bridgewater (the 20th-22nd most owned respectively). If you were banking on picking up QB16 as a bye week fill-in during your RSO season you were probably out of luck.

As a counterpoint I looked at Ryan Fitzpatrick, the true embodiment of replacement level QBs. He was just 19% owned before the season began and ultimately finished as QB11 in average scoring so I would admit that he was the rare case of a viable fantasy starter being widely available on RSO. The interesting thing though lies in Fitzpatrick’s RSO contracts. A measly 1% of RSO owners have Fitzpatrick locked up for another year. So while you can find somebody like Fitzpatrick to help you through a few games this season, you can bet that somebody in your league will overpay for him in the subsequent free agent auction. Instead, you could be content to have a young, potential stud like Jameis Winston or Marcus Mariota under contract for rookie money for another 2-3 years.

In summary, I believe these numbers perfectly illustrate the different dynamic of an RSO league and why you need to value young QBs more highly. You may think that that a value quarterback will be available for you mid-season but chances are they’re already owned by the time you get to the waiver wire. The best way for you to ensure that you own that QB before they “pop” is to grab them in your rookie draft. If you get lucky, and I do admit that this is a crapshoot, you could find yourself paying little salary for much production. After all, the beauty of RSO is it’s similarity to the real NFL, so why would the value of rookie QBs be any different? Remember what happened when Russell Wilson’s cap-friendly rookie contract allowed the Seahawks to spend their money elsewhere? Championship.

Robert F. Cowper is a freelance writer who lives in New Jersey. Robert works as a recreation professional, specializing in youth sports, when he isn’t acting as commissioner for his many fantasy sports leagues.

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Best Value Rookie Mock Draft

By Bob Cowper

Updated: April 5th 2016

Last week in this space I presented some analysis on rookie value on the RSO platform. As we learned after taking a deeper dive into the numbers, the rookie wage scale on RSO, as in the NFL, forces owners to draft for value more so than other formats. In my round-by-round analysis, I identified three trends that we will use today to create an early mock draft. Since rookie drafts can vary widely I decided to include picks both at the 3rd and 8th pick of each round so the insight could be useful for a wider range of readers.

1st Round Trend: Wasted Value

1.3 – WR Josh Doctson, TCU (2.90 ADP)

The heading of this section is “Wasted Value” and I fear I’ve already blown my mock draft by taking Doctson here. Doctson has the height (6’4″), stats (79-1,327-14 despite missing nearly four full games to a wrist injury, including six consecutive multi-TD games) and story (former walk-on turned first team all-American) to be a great selection but the injury and TCU’s air raid offense give me pause. 1.2 through 1.4 will likely see three consecutive receivers this year (also in the mix are Laquan Treadwell from Ole Miss and Corey Coleman from Baylor) it’s just a matter of grabbing the right one. Right now Treadwell has the highest ADP of the three so that left me with Doctson or Coleman with this pick and I decided to go with the bigger Doctson.

1.8 – WR Leonte Carroo, Rutgers (8.4 ADP)

Call this a homer pick since I am a Rutgers season ticket holder but there’s just something about Carroo. Despite seeing bracket coverage and occasional triple teams, Carroo remained uncoverable for large portions of the last two seasons. Carroo had a bizarre 39-809-10 stat line in 2015 which saw him play just eight games due to injury and suspension. In 2014 Carroo also scored 10 TDs (55-1,086) and in 2013 he scored 9 TDs (28-478). So, over his three year career at Rutgers he played in 31 games and scored 29 TDs – that’s an incredible rate. Carroo isn’t very big (6’1″) or fast (4.5 40-yard dash) and the missed games would scare me but he could prove to be a great rookie value if he lands with the right team.

2nd Round Trend: Long Term Value at QB

2.3 or 2.8 – QB Carson Wentz, North Dakota St (30.10 ADP)

Yes, I’m crazy. Yes, I’m breaking all the “rules” with this pick. But I just can’t unsee how valuable both Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota were in 2015 for RSO owners as mid-2nd round picks. Wentz’s March ADP put him at the 30th rookie off the board, so far in April he’s already moved up about five spaces. We’ll see him continue to rise up the ranks but regardless it’s probably safe to say you can get him in the 2nd if you’re willing to deal with the inevitable “reach” shouts from your friends. Take your pick of combine recaps, most agree that Wentz was the best QB on the field – he may not beat out Jared Goff as the first QB off the board but I prefer the unknown upside of Wentz. Ask a Winston or Mariota owner if they’re happy in their investment – I’m sure they answer will be yes. Hitting on this pick let’s you free up valuable cap space to put towards free agency the following season (see: real life Russell Wilson) so take the gamble.

3rd Round Trend: Take a Safe WR

3.3 – WR Rashard Higgins (23.20 ADP)

If you reached for Wentz in the 2nd, you need more of a sure thing here in the 3rd round. Higgins was a target monster at CSU, securing 68, 96 and 75 receptions over his three seasons. His stellar sophomore campaign in 2014 saw him earn 1,750 yards and a whopping 17 TDs on those 96 receptions. Impressively, some of his biggest games over the last two seasons came against the hardest teams on their schedule: Utah State, Boise State and Colorado. I was surprised when I saw Higgins eye-popping cumulative stats so I was sure they were all earned against the weakest of opponents but that wasn’t the case. Higgins definitely isn’t a sexy pick but he could feature right away in the NFL.

3.8 – WR De’Runnya Wilson, Mississippi State (25.10 ADP)

It’s a shame that Wilson didn’t “runnya” faster at the combine otherwise he’d be higher on the draft board. Wilson is a big target at 6’5″ and 215 lb, the biggest by my research out of the top 20 WRs, so it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that he only ran a 4.85, but I was still hoping for faster. Wilson put together a solid junior season (60-918-10) but has never really imposed himself on opposing defenses (only nine 5+ reception games and only three 100+ yard games over three seasons). Ultimately, I think Wilson can come in and contribute early as a rookie in the red zone which will guarantee him a fair share of snaps.

ADP data from DynastyLeagueFootball.com, combine data from sbnation.com and college stats from cfbstats.com

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