Thread by @AdamHarstad

Hi Late Night Twitter, also known as Regular Night Twitter to all my west coast twitter buddies.

So @RyanMc23 gave me a peak at the hot new not-even-out-of-the-oven-yet dynasty ADP for @DLFootball because I was going to do something for him, but then I didn't. Sorry, Ryan.

And also I just recently re-ran my naive dynasty value formula. (For those who aren't in the know, basically it's just a formula where I input age, position, and 2020 projections and it spits out dynasty values. It's naive because it doesn't consider anything else!)

The extra context the formula doesn't consider is v. important. I think Saquon Barkley has non-zero dynasty value, but my formula disagrees because Saquon Barkley does not have non-zero 2020 projections!

I use the naive version as a check though because it's easy and I'm lazy.

Anyway, I suddenly find myself in possession of TWO DIFFERENT THINGS THAT MEASURE PLAYER VALUE IN DYNASTY LEAGUES.

And to my utter shock, IN PLACES, THEY EVEN DISAGREE.

So let's do a thread on the sickest values in dynasty right now. (According to me. I might be wrong.)

Quarterbacks.

First, dear readers, you should know that all of these values are based on real-world replacement levels from real-world leagues. They're as non-arbitrary as possible.

But they still skew pretty QB-heavy and I've been meaning to fix this for years.

This has been a low-priority issue for me because (A) the intra-positional QB rankings are fine, it's just the cross-positional comparisons that get wonky and (B) for a long time the best QBs were old, limiting the damage the formula could do.

The best QBs are not old right now.

So like it might not shock you to learn that Kyler Murray, a 23-year-old former #1 overall pick in the middle of one of the greatest fantasy seasons in history, ranks high by my naive formula.

It might shock you to learn he actually comes out as the fifth most valuable player.

Well, the good news is Kyler Murray doesn't actually come out as the 5th-most-valuable player.

Patrick Mahomes does. Kyler Murray comes out 3rd. Six of the top 22 players are quarterbacks. Like I said, we've never seen this many players this good this young.

Should six quarterbacks be going in the first 22 picks of dynasty startups? No. My formula is too credulous of quarterbacks. Known failure mode.

But maybe two or three should be. But per ADP, zero quarterbacks are going in the first two rounds.

So I guess what I'm saying is perhaps you should think about acquiring a quarterback.

Specifically, you should think of acquiring Mahomes, Murray, Jackson, Wilson, Watson, or Allen. I'll even let Burrow in there. (Formula is based on 2020 projections and often underrates rooks.)

Missed Herbert, too. Throw in Dak if you're confident he'll re-up with Dallas. There's eight QBs who seem like they might provide a crushing advantage over the next few years and aren't being drafted accordingly.

(The value differential between #6 Watson and #9 Wentz is 3x.)

Nine QBs. Counting is hard.

Now, again, QBs deserve to be downgraded a bit. Singlet positions (positions where you only start 1) tend to be more replaceable.

But TEs are singlets, too, and TEs are the opposite of QBs right now, where the best players are all rather old. And TEs are going ahead of QBs.

Here's PPG by tight ends this year.
1: Travis Kelce - 18.77 (31yo)
2: George Kittle - 16.35 (27 and done for the year)
3: Darren Waller - 13.93 (28)
4. T.J. Hockenson - 12.75 (23)
5. Noah Fant - 11.56 (22)
...
12. Jared Cook - 10.13

So basically the guys who give you a noticeable positional advantage are either old or injured, and the guys who are super young are barely outperforming fringe starters.

This is ripe for a position where player values are low across the board, the opposite of QB.

But instead, you see Kelce-- who is great, but also 31!-- getting drafted above Mahomes-- who is also great, but only 25 and at a position with much longer careers. Or Andrews-- 25 and not even giving a relative advantage right now-- over Jackson (23).

So broad stroke recommendation would be to buy quarterbacks and fade tight ends.

In terms of specifics, Murray, Mahomes, and Herbert are the QBs whose naive value most outperforms ADP. But there's a lot of hype there, so hard to buy. I like Watson as a post-hype buy.

(Watson and Mahomes were born three days apart and Watson provided like three extra points over a waiver wire replacement over his first three seasons. Mahomes is the better dynasty quarterback, but it's closer than their relative prices would probably suggest.)

If the GMs with the Top 8/9 guys aren't selling, Derek Carr and Ryan Tannehill are probably the best budget options out there. Carr especially is wayyyyyyyyy too cheap for a quarterback as productive as he currently is. He looks good, too.

(BTW, I'm in two dynasty leagues and my QB situation in those leagues is Mahomes/Wilson and Murray/Herbert, and no, I'm not selling unless someone is ready to step up to the table with a big-time offer.)

At tight end, Hockenson is the only guy who gets an enthusiastic buy recommendation just because the position is so weird. But he's the #3 redraft TE (per FBGs' projections) *AND* he's only 23 years old. Should be a slam-dunk Top-3 dynasty TE! But somehow he's not.

(For specifics, naive value formula puts him 3rd at the position and 44th overall. ADP puts him at 7th(!) at the position (behind Dallas Goedert!) and 83rd overall. Go get you some.)

Evan Engram is a milder post-hype buy-low candidate. 71st overall vs. 107th in ADP.

Tonyan is your bargain-basement buy-low. He's going in the 15th round in the mock drafts. By age and 2020 projections alone, he'd be TE9.

There are reasons for skepticism, of course; naive formula doesn't understand context. But at those prices, does it matter? (It does not.)

For sell-highs, my formula has Kelce at TE2, but worries a lot about 31-year-old TEs and thinks he should be going a round or two later based on age risk. Maybe he hangs on to his late 30s. But the end often comes quickly.

On to running back.

I've been saying for months, and yet it remains true: Josh Jacobs is a 22-year-old former 1st round pick who has played well and yet somehow ranks higher in redraft projections than dynasty. Which... I don't really get?

Formula has him RB4. ADP has him RB9.

James Conner is a big "yeah, but context" guy, but still, 25, history of production, ranks 9th in rest-of-year projections, ranks 22nd in dynasty ADP.

Margins that large give you a lot of room to be wrong and still make a profit.

Formula thinks Antonio Gibson should rank higher among running backs, but his overall rank is about right. (Per ADP, dynasty GMs are going too RB-crazy in the early rounds. Quite the swing from five years ago!)

If you are a fan of win-now trades (I'm not), formula thinks you should bypass guys like Chris Carson and instead go for guys like Myles Gaskin or Jamaal Williams. They're projected similarly for 2020, but their ADP cost basically assumes they'll give you nothing beyond that.

They... might not give you nothing beyond that. They might give you something beyond that, instead!

Or maybe they give you nothing beyond that, but if you're going to take out a short-term rental, at least make it a super cheap one with plausible long-term upside.

At WR, the big headline is DK Metcalf and AJ Brown give us a new Top 2 dynasty receivers.

The naive formula agrees. But thinks they could even go higher overall. It would take them 4th and 6th instead of 8th and 9th.

Formula doesn't know Saquon is a thing that exists, though.

But it would prefer Metcalf and Brown to Edwards-Helaire and Jonathan Taylor, and I don't think it's wrong about that. They're 23 years old and already Top 8 redraft receivers. (Per FBGs' rest-of-year projections.)

It also thinks Justin Jefferson and (no surprise) Terry McLaurin are underrated.

Actually, McLaurin's *positional* ranking is about right. ADP has him 11th among WRs, formula has him 10th. (I have him 8th in my personal rankings.)

The problem is his overall; 31st vs. 18th.

Formula also really likes Tyler Lockett. Sees a guy who is the same age as DeAndre Hopkins and projected for similar production as DeAndre Hopkins. It thinks the dynasty consensus is right about Hopkins, but wonders why it's so low on Lockett, then.

He's WR8 by the raw numbers.

Formula also loves Stefon Diggs for basically the same reason. Sure, he's 27. Based on historical aging patterns, 27 ain't that old, especially if you're time-discounting future seasons. (You are definitely time-discounting future seasons.)

Projected Top 5 WR rest-of-year. Shh.

But by far the two biggest buy-low WRs right now are Keenan Allen and Tee Higgins.

Not the names I expected! But both came out solidly in the Top 10 per the naive value formula, but outside the Top 20 per ADP.

I don't like using the formula quite as much for sell-highs, because there's usually a good explanation for why a guy is ranked so much higher than age and projections would predict. (Like, for Saquon Barkley, it's that he's not going to score literally zero points forever.)

Buttttttttttttt if I did use it for sell-highs, it'd wonder what the heck everyone saw in Miles Sanders, Ezekiel Elliott, Nick Chubb, and Kareem Hunt, in that order. Thinks they should be a lot more productive in the short term to justify where they're going per ADP.

At wide receiver, it'd be raising the caution flag on Calvin Ridley, Julio Jones, and Mike Evans, while entering a full-on panic about Amari Cooper and Diontae Johnson.

Ridley's a funny one. When I first ran the formula in Week 2, dynasty ADP had Ridley at 39 and the formula had him at 16.

When I re-ran it this week, the formula had him at 37 while ADP had him at 19. Spider-man meme!

Also, I totally missed Will Fuller, but he's also a good buy-low.

Like, I know that he can't stay healthy for more than six consecutive quarters and the formula doesn't know this.

But ADP has him at WR40 and the formula has him at WR16. Like... what if he *does* stay healthy?

If you're looking to bargain shop, Brandin Cooks is a guy whose age and projections would predict a much higher draft position than he's currently seeing. (61st overall vs. 101 overall.)

Again, the thing I can't stress enough about the naive value formula is it's a naive value formula. It doesn't understand any context at all!

But also it's really usefully clarifying to look at guys and ask "If a guy this young produces this well why isn't he drafted higher?"

And most importantly, I think it tends to be a leading indicator. In other words, the market eventually asks the same question, but it generally asks it two months down the line, which means you can identify price-jump guys before the price jumps. (See: Calvin Ridley.)

FAQ

Q: "You said ________ was ranked __th in redraft projections? That's crazy, you're crazy, these are dumb, why should I listen?"
A: The last time a guy asked me about this it was because FBGs' forward projections had Robby Anderson among the Top 30 WRs circa ~Week 2, so...

Like, I don't think FBGs' redraft projections are perfect by any stretch. A lot of things that will prove to be wrong and dumb!

But I do think they anticipate the market better than anything else out there right now. They're probably the most solid part of the formula TBH.

Like, to whatever extent the naive formula is anticipating market trends by a month or two, it's because FBGs' redraft projections are reflecting the new reality on the field a month or two before most fantasy players catch on.

Regardless, I've been using this approach for about half a decade now and I can show y'all my dynasty team sometime if you wonder whether it works.

(Results not typical.)

And this concludes my thread on good dynasty Buys and Sells.

Y'all should follow @RyanMc23 and @DLFootball and consider subscribing to support them and all the ways they support our niche community.

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