I have this really simple approach to dynasty leagues.

1) only draft players with a track record of success in college

2) only keep those that impress as rookies.

No Exceptions.

(thread)

I am looking for players that stack success on top of success. The minute we have conflicting data I am out on that player.

Lets arbitrarily go back to 2017 because these players have played long enough that we know what they are for the most part.

A massive over simplification of what I am looking for is a long track record of college production at the WR position.

RB is a little different as overall production isnt as important as efficiency and pass catching.

This thread is going to focus on the WR's

The obvious fades in this class were Mike Williams and John Ross.

Neither guy was consistently dominant in college.

Long story short, I faded them.

If you go back two tweets you will notice that they both lost ADP after their first year. Big surprise

What was perhaps less surprising was that OJ Howard also lost value.

OJH wasnt an incredible producer in his time at Alabama but he was a solid one

But dynasty enthusiasts were not impressed after his rookie year. Earlier when I said, "only keep those rookies that impress as rookies" this is what I meant

OJH should have been a hard fade for all of us after his rookie year when the wisdom of the crowd said, "nuh uh"

This is an article from last summer in which I went through every rookie TE to lose value over the past decade or so.

The outlook for OJH was bleak. https://www.playerprofiler.com/article/mike-gesicki-tight-end-advanced-stats-metrics-analytics-profile/

So in his case we have conflicting reports.

Good prospect profile

Bad rookie year

This creates uncertainty. We should have sold OJH.

Always sell uncertainty.

In the case of Williams and Ross we had bad prospect profiles with a bad rookie years. There was no uncertainty here.

We should have been fading them from the beginning and continued on with that through until they proved otherwise.

If you look to the next column to the right, the "after year 2 column" you will notice that Williams and OJH bounced back. This is actually pretty rare and it gave us a reason to believe.

However they disappointed AGAIN in their third year.

Always sell uncertainty

But what about in the other direction? What happens when a poor prospect succeeds in their first year? Should we buy that "good" uncertainty?

Lets go back to 2015 for some good examples.

2015 provided us with some pretty unproductive college WR's with terrific draft capital and impressive rookie years.

Kevin White
DeVante Parker
Dorial Green-Beckham (DGB)
Breshad Perriman

*White was included because holding ADP at his draft range is HARD to do especially on IR

Perriman was the closest that we had to a producer of the 4.

So now we have conflicting data. We have bad profiles combined with impressive rookie years...

What to do?

Sell the uncertainty.

5 years later and we have one usable fantasy season from the 4 and it came in the 5th year.

We should be looking for consistent excellence. Not draft capital and an impressive rookie year.

FWIW Agholor and Strong actually had impressive college production. But they face planted in their rookie years.

SELL UNCERTAINTY.

Neither guy amounted to much, Agholor had one decent season though.

This is probably going to come as a, "no duh" statement but guess what?

Amari Cooper was the guy providing consistent excellence

He dominated at Alabama and then walked on to an NFL field and kept impressing. In fact, he somehow increased his dynsty ADP despite its lofty perch

If you go back through the past decade of ADP trends we see this exact same thing happen over and over again.

So to reiterate what we are looking for is consistent excellence.

Step 1: produce in college

Step 2: Impress as a rookie

Here are all of the WR's from the first round of dynasty rookie drafts that face planted as rookies according to ADP trends

Sell the uncertainty on N'Keal Harry

Parris and Butler are stacking poor performances at this point and are virtually assured of long term NFL failure

Here is how they produced in college.

They are not buy lows. They will probably lose even more value next year.

On the other side of the coin we have the buy high side. Again, we are looking for players that are stacking excellence.

Sell the uncertainty.

These are our 3 booms at the WR position from year 1 in 2019.

Deebo and Terry did not pass Step 1: be productive in college. #selltheuncertainty

AJ Brown, on the other hand, looks like a future star.

This isn't the end all be all. I actually have AJ Brown marked as a sell, but that's because I think the dynasty community is overestimating his near term potential and thus has him ranked too high.

For comparison, DJ Moore's year 2 adp was 38. AJ Brown's is 27. That is only one round earlier but at that point in the draft one round is a huge difference.

In the ADP 27 range we can still draft prime aged or younger veterans that have established themselves in the NFL.

Then when you look at AJ Brown's situation his Quarterback is not stacking excellence. haha

Ryan Tannehill has been in the NFL for seven years and last season was Tannehill's second as a productive Quarterback

This super simple strategy of "only investing in good players" works pretty well and is a major component of my dynasty rankings on patreon.

This is why my rankings look so different than consensus.