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.
This week, I’ll be getting into plenty of coach quotes and coach speak because, well, it’s that time of year where we are trying to gather more information. And shoutout to the Coach Speak Index on Twitter. Must follow for Best Ballers.
But let’s just get on into it, shall we?
5 Things in Best Ball This Week
1: Derek Carr had the most 300 yard passing games in the NFL in 2023, tied with CJ Stroud (6)
We recently posted our new weekly survey as part of the NFL Best Ball Almanac, and this week was a DraftKings specific edition. On DraftKings, the key difference in their scoring system is yardage bonuses, including a 3 point bonus for QBs who throw for 300 yards. Considering touchdowns are worth 4 points, it’s a fairly meaningful scoring difference.
Look, I’m not saying to draft Derek Carr, but I thought it was pretty eye opening to actually look at the list of QBs with the most 300 yard games in 2023 and actually think about this in relation to their DraftKings ADP.
Shoutout Sam Howell (and Joe Flacco).
2: Jameson Williams is the most improved player on the Lions, per Dan Campbell
I have long been a Jamo stan, even so far as to purchase a Jamo Lions jersey (albeit not so soberly) on the Ship Chasing NFL draft stream a couple years ago. I believed in him as a prospect and player, and the landing spot with the Lions was super exciting. However, he hasn’t lived up to that hype thus far. But maybe that’s changing…
#Lions HC Dan Campbell on Jameson Williams:
“If you said, ‘give me one player that is the most improved [this offseason],’ Jamo would be that guy right now. He is a man on a mission, and I’m just gonna leave it at that.”
Campbell has a 90% reliability rating on depth chart and… pic.twitter.com/5R0EYPtfvM
— The Coachspeak Index (@CoachspeakIndex) May 23, 2024
I have made it know how much I love the RB range around where Jamo goes in drafts, and I’m not trying to overreact here, but I think it was a strong reminder that he makes for a very strong target at his price in a high powered offense, and I will be making sure not to overlook that just because of my structural preferences.
3: We are probably too low on Kendre Miller
Kendre was an exciting prospect out of TCU, but ended up having largely a redshirt year as a rookie thanks to injury. He came back and had a really solid Week 18 for the Saints, and they did not add anything in the backfield in terms of competition. They did, however, rebuild their offensive coaching staff and system via the Shanahan/Kubiak tree to a substantial degree, as Nick Underhill wrote.
Kamara and Jamaal Williams have been absent from OTAs, with Kendre running with the 1s during that time. Head Coach Dennis Allen mentioned last year that they probably would like to even out backfield snaps to spell Kamara more:
#Saints coach Dennis Allen on Alvin Kamara’s recent dip in snaps, and the backfield rotation:
“I think in a perfect world scenario, those snaps are getting evened out a little bit. And, yeah, it is a 17-game season and you want to keep guys healthy throughout the year, and we… pic.twitter.com/yHmBK4Lpv6
— The Coachspeak Index (@CoachspeakIndex) November 7, 2023
4: George Kittle had the most games as the TE1 overall in fantasy (half PPR) in 2023
I have recently been thinking a ton about how unique the Best Ball format is from a scoring perspective. We constantly cite season long point totals, counting stats, points per game and all those traditional metrics to make a case for players. And of course, that makes sense. But the more you think about it, the more you realize this game has so much less to do with that than we probably even realize.
Sure, you want your players to perform well, but we really just want to somehow get in the playoffs and find our way through the playoff gauntlet to Week 17 with the highest upside (and ideally lowest owned) team as possible. We don’t get extra money for having guys who perform well all season (on Underdog and DraftKings that is). So I’ve just been looking at some past results scoring wise to try to open my eyes to different ways to think about players, structures, etc., and I found George Kittle to be such a fascinating case study for Best Ball.
He was ‘only’ 5th overall in points per game in half PPR in 2023, and he had 6 games of less than 5 fantasy points. Some may perceive that as a huge negative, which is probably why his price continues to get cheaper.
But, he was the overall TE1 in fantasy on 3 separate occasions last year, which was the most amongst all TEs. More than LaPorta and Kelce who finished at 2. Using our ‘nuclear weeks’ metric here at Spike Week, he was tied with Kelce and LaPorta for tops in the league at 4. He had 6 games of at least 15 half PPR points, with 4 of 19 ore more (rounding up from 18.9 in Week 11). He didn’t happen to have his truly big games in the Best Ball playoffs, so when we combine that with the floor, it feels like the market has gotten exhausted with Kittle, but that feels like a huge opportunity for us given his cost compared to LaPorta and Kelce’s.
5: CJ Stroud Thinks Tank Dell is a Star, but Best Ballers Aren’t Buying It
Recently on an episode of CJ Stroud and Micah Parsons’ podcast, they had a little experiment that no one is talking about in our space. CJ had to select his best possible offense using active NFL players, and Parsons would do the same for defense, and they would see who would win.
We don’t need to get into all the details about their selections, but there was one particular thing that I cannot get out of my head from Stroud’s selections. But first, if we look at ADP of the Texans WRs after the Diggs trade, we see that the market prefers Nico Collins (UD ADP 21.9), followed by Diggs (26.8) and then Tank Dell ( 39.8). The market has pretty clearly decided how they value these 3 WRs in a very ambiguous situation. However, Stroud may be telling us were are wrong…
When Stroud selected his offense, he chose 3 WRs:
Davante Adams at X.
Ja’Marr Chase at Z.
Tank Dell at F (slot).
So the franchise QB of the Houston Texans, and teammate of all 3 of those WRs, was allowed to pick any WRs in the NFL today to create the best possible offense he could. He did not choose Nico Collins or Stefon Diggs.
He chose Tank Dell.
And yet, Tank goes at least a round later than those other two?
Interesting…
