I’m a huge basketball fan (& nerd). I listen to and read a ton of real basketball content not related to fantasy sports, and some particular content that’s always in my rotation is from Zach Lowe of ESPN. I highly recommend The Lowe Post podcast to any other hoop heads, but he also writes a weekly article on ESPN called “10 Things”. In 10 Things, he discusses various different relevant topics across the NBA for that time period or different things that he’s been thinking about or researching.
Funny enough, I’ve sort of been searching for that kind of mechanism to document my thoughts in this Best Ball space. As you might expect, my silly brain is constantly thinking about tons of random ideas revolving around Best Ball. The problem is that most don’t really need some lengthy article or podcast. Often times they’re just one simple thought or idea or new strategy I haven’t fully fleshed out, even some statistic I saw or uncovered that I found interesting.
I don’t really believe in re-creating the wheel, and frankly I don’t know what took me so long, but I’ve decided to steal the ’10 Things’ concept here at Spike Week. Starting today, I’ll be posting 5 things from Best Ball each weekend that I think are particularly interesting. I think 10 might be a little big over the top for every single week, so we are going to stick to five. But who knows, we can always adjust later when training camp picks up if need be.
Last week we touched on some shocking 300 yard passing stats, Jameson Williams & Kendre Miller hype, George Kittle’s best ball profile and how much CJ Stroud loves Tank Dell.
Let’s get into this week.
5 Things in Best Ball This Week
1: Who do you want to see on your teams that make the Best Ball Finals?
Sometimes you sort of know certain concepts and *sort of* act on them subconsciously in your drafts. They’re not necessarily a flaw in your game. But it can take a certain conversation, question or framing to make them really pop. This past Friday I recorded a couple videos, one with Spike Weeker Bernie Kirt (coming soon on YT) and one on the latest Legendary Sickos with Pat Kerrane, that really hammered home an idea about player takes in Best Ball.
We nitpick so many players over the course of the entire draft cycle. We all have our favorites, and we all have rankings we use in drafts. Naturally, those don’t perfectly coincide with ADP. But even though I am definitely a proponent of taking stands on players we believe are mispriced, something that has been a flaw in my game that I am trying to work on this year is taking unintentional stands. But without the proper framing, it’s a lot easier said than done.
And on both of those videos, we ended up discussing this subject pretty in depth, and it has really helped me hone in on this potential flaw.
There are going to be some individual players we just truly disagree on their price. Those will be the players we player we draft the most in our portfolio and the players we draft the least or even full fade. But for the rest, which is most of the player pool, we usually don’t really disagree with the market that much. We disagree with the average order that these players go in, but we don’t disagree with the general range or tier they’re grouped in. And yet because they’re not in the order we think they should be, it can lead us to portfolio decisions that maybe don’t make much sense when compared to our actual confidence levels in that order or our thoughts on said player.
The example that jumped out to me in my personal drafts this year is the Houston Texans WRs. I think Nico Collins and Tank Dell are far better picks than Stefon Diggs. You have two young, emerging potential superstars who have been with the Texans vs. an aging former star who has taken pretty substantial steps backwards recently and just got traded to this team (remember when we used to really knock WRs in their first year traded to a new team in fantasy?).
But even though I disagree with that order, and where Diggs is slotted amongst those round 3ish WRs, that doesn’t mean I have to just flat out avoid him. If I just take a step back and ask myself a couple questions, I found it helped me think about some of these inter-tier player takes or stands.
“Does he have the ability to put up a monster game, league winning game in a given week similar to those around him at cost?”
“Would you be happy if you flipped over the cards in Week 17 and you had this player at low ownership on your finals team?”
If the answer is yes to both of those, then we probably don’t want to get to Week 1 having never taken this player. We also probably want to have less of him than Nico, Tank or whoever else we prefer in that range, but that doesn’t mean we don’t want them.
2: Darren Waller Retired
I wrote pretty in depth about Waller last week after he dropped his music video (still hard to believe that’s a real statement I just typed), so I won’t belabor the point too much here. Waller’s counting stats and efficiency were clearly not good last year with the Giants. He was just not an effective NFL tight end anymore, which, other than his blossoming R&B career, is probably why he retired.
But his role was incredibly valuable from a fantasy point of view. As I mentioned last week in this piece, in Weeks 1 through 7, prior to his injury, he was certainly still a useful fantasy TE role wise. In that span, he was 2nd amongst TEs in target share, behind only Travis Kelce. He was also 2nd in air yards share, 5th in receptions and had a 29% red zone target share. The final counting stats weren’t great, but he had the role of an elite TE.
The Giants have added Malik Nabers, and no one is confusing Daniel Bellinger or Theo Johnson for a superstar tight end, but this retirement is being written off as absolutely nothing in Best Ball drafts. No one wants Bellinger (neither do I), but no one wants Theo Johnson either. Given the fact that the late TE landscape is lacking much of the youthful upside that we saw last year with the likes of LaPorta, McBride, Kincaid, Mayer, Ferguson, etc. I am planning to move Theo into the rankings as a back end TE who is draftable. He is certainly not a priority for me, but if I am in a pinch and need a HR swing on late tight end, maybe I have Nabers and also need a late QB, I think he actually makes some sense. We know rookies can produce for fantasy down the stretch, and Theo also has been undrafted in all of these tournaments up until this point.
“Theo Johnson’s testing numbers match what I have seen in terms of his athleticism on the field during OTAs.” – https://t.co/UByWTuTLFP (John Schmeelk) pic.twitter.com/EqaJ9xaYOc
— Gridiron Media (@Gridiron_Media_) June 10, 2024
3: Generational Wealth Opportunities or Rug Pulls?
As the draft cycle has picked up, it has become more and more apparent that there are 3 situations that we have basically never seen before in the Best Ball lifecycle. And for all 3, it’s so easy to see how we look back and laugh, not being able to believe how we just let these be so cheap for the entirety of the summer.
The upside of all 3 clearly just so far exceeds the price at which they are being drafted. The problem, however, is that they could easily be the greatest rug pulls we’ve seen since Trey Lance was being drafted his rookie year.
- No Cowboys Running Back goes in the top 40 of RBs or the top 125 of overall ADP.
- Justin Fields is a last round pick
- Rashee Rice is the WR47 by ADP
There might be 3 generational wealth opportunities in this NFL Best Ball SZN that we look back on & can’t believe were so cheap
And they also could all be total zeros 😂
1. The Dallas Cowboys RBs outside top 40 RBs
2. Justin Fields in the 18th round
3. Rashee Rice at WR47— Erik Beimfohr 🙌 (@erikbeimfohr) June 10, 2024
Just like most sane humans, I am not a fan of this late stage version of Ezekiel Elliot or a 5th year RB like Rico Dowdle who has, checks notes, done absolutely nothing even dating back to his days at South Carolina. But this is the Cowboys offense. It’s nearly impossible to envision the running backs in this offense not being useful at all for fantasy. Even as bad as Tony Pollard was last year, he would have been a home run at these prices. I’m personally just plugging my nose, taking an Alka Seltzer and drafting these guys a reasonable amount of the time. The problem, of course, is that there is risk that they add a back to the mix when other teams make cuts or feel more compelled to make a trade near the season. So maybe we should also be drafting those cut candidates like Khalil Herbert, Samaje Perine and others.
Justin Fields is not a great real life NFL QB, we all get it. But he scores fantasy points, and we aren’t playing NFL Head Coach on our Playstation 2 in 2006, we are playing Best Ball. The Steelers will assuredly give Russell Wilson the first opportunity at the job, but Russ has clearly taken a big step back in his play since his prime, and the Steelers owe him absolutely nothing. If he isn’t performing, he’s as big of a bench risk as there is in the NFL. Frankly, they also probably owe it to themselves just to see what they have in Fields. He’s very unlikely to be the answer as their franchise QB, but it’s at least in the realm of possibility that the former top pick was just ruined by the Bears and can bounce back in a better and more stable environment. He could just take the job from Russ, the Steelers could just want to see what they have in him, or Russ could get hurt. You could even drag him to the fantasy championship where he somehow starts a meaningless Week 17 game. Who knows! But we know that Fields is a top 10 fantasy QB when he plays, even in poor situations. And if he does somehow get on the field, we could be laughing at ourselves for not taking advantage of that in the last round of drafts.
Rashee Rice has done some dumb stuff, and clearly no one condones that. But last year as a rookie, he proved to be the best WR the Chiefs have had since the days of Tyreek Hill. Travis Kelce is another year older, Hollywood Brown has not been a major factor in the NFL in a few seasons and Xavier Worthy is a small rookie speedster who could frankly help open things up for Rice underneath. Of course there is suspension risk, but the NFL has a lengthy track record of not laying down the hammer on situations like this. Even if he gets suspended, his price is so cheap we can weather the storm while he is out, and we could conceivably have the 2nd year stud WR1 in an elite Patrick Mahomes offense being drafted as the WR47 in fantasy.
4: Eric Gray is the most boring RB2, but he does appear to be the Giants RB2
You’re not going to catch me touting Eric Gray as some stud talent. He is almost certainly just a guy amongst NFL RBs. But the only other backs in this backfield are veteran journeyman Devin Singletary and soon to be 25 year old rookie Tyrone Tracy, who played WR in college until being a backup to a former walk-on at Purdue in his final season.
Eric Gray getting more and more early buzz.
Gray vs Tyrone Tracy feels a lot like old Samaje Perine vs Chris Evans summer debates from years back. (And a little like Zac Evans vs Kyren Williams)
The fantasy community is very hyped about Tracy, but Gray may be the handcuff plus pic.twitter.com/Y90jgABP1h
— TheOGfantasyfootball (@TheOGfantasy) June 9, 2024
For whatever it’s worth, Gray was insanely efficient for years at Tennessee prior to transferring to Oklahoma to be the lead back, where he was also very productive. Unfortunately, the athleticism did not match the production, and he fell to the 6th round of the NFL draft.
I don’t like it anymore than you, but I think Gray is draftable in the last round. We can be wrong all the time about how talented these guys are, or even how talented they have to be to score fantasy points. The Giants made the playoffs just two years ago, and Singletary (although probably very underrated in our circles) is the type of starter that can be vulnerable to losing work down the stretch, and Tracy is not the type of profile that warrants major concerns either.
5: CMC is next up on the Madden Cover Curse
I’m just sayin…
CMC GRACES THE COVER‼️
Christian McCaffrey is officially the Madden NFL 25 cover athlete 🔥
(via @EAMaddenNFL) pic.twitter.com/arPdRKLAeN
— ESPN (@espn) June 11, 2024
Obviously not being serious. What kind of crazy person believes in superstitions or curses? I definitely did not make sure to have the same routine before every single football game i played in college. Only crazy, tinfoil hat wearing psychopaths believe in these kinds of things, right?
