First, congratulations if you won your fantasy title yesterday. You've invested at least the past four months to reach this point. So if you want to celebrate, give a shout and feel free to share the player(s) who put you over the top. And if your season comes down to what happens tonight, it'd be great to hear what specifically you need to happen.
Second, a reminder that this blog and the podcast will wrap up for the season next Monday.
Third, I'm going to try something different this year for the final week. Instead of "year in review" kind of stuff, we'll look to next season. Specifically, I'm going to walk through projected preseason ADPs for about 80 players. Fantasy market values follow a pretty consistent pattern:
(1) Start with how a player finished this season in points per game. For example, last year Jayden Daniels was the QB6.
(2) Move up or down if there are significant offseason personnel changes (for offensive playmakers) that might impact that specific player's outlook.
(3) Move up or down based on age. Pre-prime players generally are ascending, while post-prime players generally are declining. For example, Daniels was perceived to be ascending.
(4) Incorporate higher-than-normal injury risks.
In the Daniels scenario, his preseason ADP entering Week 1 was QB3. When we consider those four factors, it makes sense.
I find it's useful to form opinions about players' next-season values *before* the first ADPs are released in late spring. Otherwise, we might be influenced by what the market tells us, rather than what our research tells us.
Jaxon Smith-Njigba is a good example. He was the WR20 last season in points per game. As subscribers know, he was a bargain in my rankings compared to his WR14 ADP. What did the market miss? For starters, that he was much better than his 2024 WR20 performance. Because the market doesn't usually factor in in-season shifts.
During my summer research, I saw that JSN averaged 11.1 points thru Week 8. Beginning in Week 9 thru the end of the season, it grew to 18.2. The market saw his 14.9 average and figured it would tick upward to around 16-17. I saw 18.2 points in the second half of the season and figured that was a little closer to his ceiling. In fact, over the summer I released a podcast episode explaining why he could realistically finish #1 overall.
I always want the market to disagree with my assessments. The bigger the disagreement, the bigger the bust/bargain gap. And those huge gaps are actionable. Dak Prescott's ADP was QB11. I had him at QB5 and pushed him on several podcast episodes. The gap was large enough for subscribers to get a huge win by drafting him around his market value.
Similarly, the top three QB busts on my draft board were Daniels (QB3 ADP), Bo Nix (QB8), and Kyler Murray (QB9). I walked through why the market (per the factors above) settled on those rankings, and why they didn't tell the whole story. Had I waited until the ADPs were released before doing my initial rankings, I might have thought, "Sure, Murray at QB9 seems about right." But by assigning him a QB16 based on my research, his market value was a "win" for me and other managers, because we could fade him with confidence.
So tomorrow I'll discuss what I think some QBs' ADPs will be when they're first released around May. That'll give us 4-5 months to solidify our own early thinking. (Or leave all that research to me, and you'll see the results next summer.)
In the meantime, good luck tonight if you need something to happen.
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