Discussion 2020 NFL RDT Dream Team Discussion

https://www.rotoworld.com/article/team-previews/steelers-fantasy-preview
https://www.rotoworld.com/article/team-previews/raiders-fantasy-preview

Pittsburgh Steelers:
Big Ben appeared in just two games before blowing out his elbow and missing the remainder of the 2019 season. Roethlisberger posted a video of himself throwing passes to teammates in mid-May and declared himself ready to roll off the elbow injury. He’ll be full go for Week 1. JuJu Smith-Schuster is entering a contract year and coming off an injury-riddled lackluster season with borderline-NFLers Mason Rudolph and Devlin Hodges throwing him the ball. The Steelers drafted monstrous WR Chase Claypool in the second round and signed Eric Ebron in free agency to help with the red-zone offense. Big Ben has to be the odds-on favorite for Comeback Player of the Year honors. The offensive line remains one of the league’s better ones, and JuJu, Diontae Johnson, James Washington and Claypool are dripping with upside out wide while Ebron has already shown he can be a force in the scoring area. Roethlisberger still has gas left in the tank at 38 years old; his elbow just needs to hold up. If so, he could rebound in a big way.

Universally valued as a top-five fantasy receiver ahead of his first season without Antonio Brown, Smith-Schuster’s third-year breakout never came to fruition due largely in part to Roethlisberger’s season-ending injury in Week 2. JuJu then battled multiple injuries of his own across 12 appearances, totaling career-lows in targets (70), catches (42), yards (552), and touchdowns (3) from the failed combination of Hodges and Rudolph. Barring a catastrophic event between training camp and Pittsburgh’s season opener, arguably nothing will have changed regarding Smith-Schuster’s role on offense from Week 1 of last year to this season. Pittsburgh added Claypool in the second round back in April, but his committee role on the boundary is no threat to JuJu’s from the slot. Smith-Schuster remains one of just 10 wideouts since 1920 to record 2,300 receiving yards in his first two years in the league, ensuring he’s more than just a flash in the pan who proceeded to fall flat in 2019 without his quarterback. Assuming Roethlisberger returns to full health this year, fantasy players could conceivably steal Smith-Schuster as a WR2 on their roster even though he’s only one year removed from being drafted just inside the first round and doesn’t turn 24 until November. Smith-Schuster is also in a contract year and playing for millions of dollars in 2021.

With Roethlisberger lost for the season in Week 2, James Conner could have emerged as the engine of the Steelers’ offense. Instead, he highlighted his own durability concerns, dealing with an early knee injury before a shoulder ailment lingered for months, essentially blowing up the second half of his season. Conner reached 60 yards rushing just once in 10 games, posting 145 against the Dolphins’ historically bad run defense. Conner made similarly little impact as a pass catcher, exceeding four catches twice. Playing for a new contract headed into his age-25 campaign, Conner remains the Steelers’ unquestioned No. 1 back, though boom-or-bust prospect Anthony McFarland was added in the fourth round. Benny Snell and H-back Jaylen Samuels also remain on the roster. If Conner can stay healthy, a 70-80% playing time clip is reachable, but he’s just missed too much time to injuries at times as an NFLer. Still, Conner offers plenty of upside as an RB2 in an offense that should rebound in a huge way.

Oakland Raiders:
The Raiders unsurprisingly prioritized speed in the draft, making 21-year-old Henry Ruggs (5'11/188) the No. 12 overall pick and first receiver to have his name called on day one. Whereas opposing defenses didn’t have to respect any of Las Vegas’ receivers underneath last year, Ruggs’ rare burst (1.43-second 10-yard split), 99th-percentile Adjusted SPARQ score, and 4.27 jets after the catch will demand attention immediately, particularly when schemed on slants and shallow crossers. His volume is concerning (as is the unknown seriousness of his thigh injury), but I have him slotted as my WR50 for Best-Ball leagues and the third-highest rookie wideout for dynasty behind CeeDee Lamb (WR38) and Jalen Reagor (WR46).

Raved about in every summer interview ahead of the regular season, Darren Waller exploded for top-five marks in yards per route run (2.42) and fantasy points per game (13.8) at his position due in part to a team-high 22.4% target share in his first year as Gruden’s every-down starter. Unlike last season, however, Waller is no longer coming off draft boards in the 11th-round, being nabbed at a premium (TE5, 5.1 FFPC ADP) despite Las Vegas’ addition of 38-year-old Jason Witten, who most recently logged 75% of Dallas’ snaps off the streets, and the continued presence of second-year goal line threat Foster Moreau. Witten continues to find his way onto rosters for his above-average blocking and reliable hands on money downs and that won’t change under Gruden. Waller, who already out-performed expectations with three touchdowns on four targets inside the 10-yard line, is thus being overvalued for last year’s production. Note that his weekly opportunity plunged from 8.3 targets per game in the Raiders’ first seven contests to 6.0 per game over their last seven with Hunter Renfrow thrust into the starting lineup from Week 9 on.

Connoisseur · 30 Jul 2020

Connoisseur said:

https://www.rotoworld.com/article/team-previews/49ers-fantasy-preview
https://www.rotoworld.com/article/team-previews/seahawks-fantasy-preview

San Fransisco 49Ers:
On paper, Jimmy Garoppolo’s production doesn’t scream fantasy target based on last season’s numbers. The 49ers were 29th in pass attempts as Garoppolo finished as the QB19 in fantasy points per game. But dig a bit deeper and you see a potential fantasy football darling for the first five games of the season, as the 49ers open vs. ARZ, at NYJ, at NYG, vs. PHI, and vs. MIA - five secondaries potentially worth targeting. In an uncomfortable o***eason, continuity among play-callers and quarterbacks could prove to be vital. In this case, the two are entering their fourth season together. Finally, considering multiple OL starters missed significant game action last season - C Weston Richburg played 78% of snaps, RT Mike McGlinchey played 73% and Joe Staley 40% - the ceiling could be even higher for this offense if Richburg, McGlinchey and Trent Williams play 85% or more in 2020. The position is loaded, but if you play in a format that requires two QBs, you could do worse than drafting Garoppolo at his current QB21 tag.

This is one of the few team previews that features a tight end ahead of the wide receivers, but we make exceptions when George Kittle is involved. This might sound overly optimistic, but last year’s TE2 in fantasy points per game has even more room to grow from a production standpoint. Kittle dealt with a multitude of injuries last season - knee, ankle and groin ailments, namely - that likely sucked some of the explosiveness and speed out of one of the freakiest athletes in the NFL. Kittle has never been on the positive end of touchdown luck, posting touchdown totals of two, six and six in his three seasons as a professional. Just 53% of 49ers’ drives inside the red zone ended in touchdowns last season, 21st in the league. If the team leaps into the top 10 in that category, Kittle certainly would benefit. It is possible he ends the season as the overall TE1.

Three backs played a pivotal part in the 49ers’ 2019 campaign: Tevin Coleman, Matt Breida and Raheem Mostert. Breida was sent to Miami for a fifth-round selection, leaving (mainly) Coleman and Mostert to share the opportunity in one of the most productive backfields in the league. In an o***eason that has featured very few significant ADP changes compared to previous years, Mostert shifted his own draft status thanks to a midsummer holdout that has now been settled, dropping from RB2 territory to a high end RB3. Arguments to invest or avoid can be easily constructed on either side of the Mostert dilemma. Positives: Mostert averages over 6.0 yards per carry for his career, dominated the NFC Championship with 29 carries for 220 yards and four touchdowns and averaged 13 touches for the final five regular season games of 2019, a figure that could grow with Matt Breida’s 150 touches left on the table. Negatives: Mostert totaled just 22 targets in 2019 and only recorded two games with a snap percentage of 60%-plus last season.

Seattle Seahawks:
Although he’s headed into his age-32 campaign, Wilson remains one of the most dangerous players in football. Growing ever more efficient and explosive, Wilson has 66 touchdowns to just 12 picks over the past two years. That clip expands to 100:23 if you include 2017, with Wilson boasting a 6.7 touchdown percentage over his past 48 starts. Amongst quarterbacks to make at least 33 appearances in that timespan — i.e. players who have been starting since 2017 — no one else is even above 6.0. Wilson’s combination of savvy and big-play ability is the platonic ideal of what coaches want in a quarterback. It simply does not make sense that Carroll refuses to open it up. The only argument is that Wilson would no longer be Wilson with increased volume, but that has never been borne out by the numbers. It’s just who Carroll wants to be at this point. It costs both himself and fantasy players points.

When Wilson does throw in 2020, it will be to one of the league’s better supporting casts. Leading the way is sensational sop****re DK Metcalf, who fell to No. 64 in last year’s draft due to concerns about his lateral agility. He quickly quieted them with 217 yards over his first three games, ultimately finishing with a 58/900/7 line as he went toe-to-toe with an inconsistent Tyler Lockett in the second half of the season. Metcalf saved his best for last, exploding for 7/160/1 against the Eagles in the Wild Card Round. Metcalf did have a case of the dropsies, muffing the fifth most passes in the NFL (eight). A 6-foot-4, 229-pound physical freak, Metcalf played up to his pre-draft measurables, and meshes perfectly with Wilson’s down-field skill-set. Floors can leave something to be desired in Seattle, but Metcalf’s ceiling is higher than your average WR2.

It’s a bit hard to decipher what happened to Lockett. Metcalf’s emergence didn’t help, but not even Lockett’s mid-season illness/shin issue can fully explain his 8/107/0 disappearance between Weeks 10 and 14. For the year, Lockett posted four 100-yard days but six sub-50s. Lockett still finished as the Seahawks’ most targeted and productive wideout. It was hard not to shake the feeling that Metcalf had surpassed him by Week 17, but including the playo***, Lockett posted a healthy 381 yards over his final five contests. Who is the Seahawks’ true No. 1? Fantasy players still think it is Lockett, drafting him as the WR19 by ADP compared to WR22 for Metcalf.

The No. 3 option in the passing game should be Greg Olsen, who signed a surprisingly lucrative $7 million deal in February. Although he looked like Jason Witten going side to side, Olsen remained surprisingly spry with a head of steam up the seam. He will supply chunk gains while offering a 6-foot-5 frame inside the 20 for a team obsessed with targeting tight ends in the end zone. Jacob Hollister and Will Dissly drew 16 combined red zone looks last season. 11 of those belonged to Hollister, who has a clear leg up on Dissly for No. 2 tight end status as Dissly returns from a torn Achilles’ tendon. Neither will be fantasy relevant as long as Olsen stays standing, which admittedly might not be for long. Olsen missed 16 games with foot issues between 2017-18 before last year’s 14-game campaign. Hollister would slot into the TE16-20 range were Olsen to go down.

Connoisseur · 30 Jul 2020

Connoisseur said:

https://www.rotoworld.com/article/team-previews/titans-fantasy-preview
https://www.rotoworld.com/article/team-previews/buccaneers-fantasy-preview

Tennessee Titans:
Evaluating A.J. Brown’s 2020 fantasy outlook is a bit of a push and pull. On one hand, Brown has the makings of a top-10 talent at the position. He’s simply too physical, too creative, and too crisp of a route runner to not be a total stud moving forward. Brown didn’t average a league-leading 12.5 yards per target by accident (min. 50 targets). Unfortunately, Brown’s receiving rates are completely unsustainable. That starts with his position-leading +215 yards after the catch over expected and continues with his +4.7 receiving touchdowns over expected. To compensate for the negative regression, Brown will need more volume to live up to his WR15 average draft position. Remember, Brown only averaged 5.4 targets in the 13 games with Tannehill. I project him for around 6.5-8.0 targets per game, making his current price tag slightly too rich for me.

Apparently the new wave among fantasy analysts is to wait for tight ends, and Jonnu Smith is one of those late-round targets that other analysts are circling. Smith does check a few key breakout boxes. He’s a 93rd percentile SPARQ athlete (4.62 forty) entering the prime of his career as a 25-year-old and already holds a quality 8.2 career yards per target average (10.0 YPT last year), but there are still serious volume concerns. In the 13 games with a red-hot Tannehill last season, Smith only averaged 3.6 targets and 30.8 receiving yards, and for the entirety of the 2019 regular season, Smith finished as the TE31 overall per game. He most likely will end up as a touchdown-dependent TE2 in fantasy, making him a risky pick at his TE17 average draft position.

Derrick Henry cashed out this o***eason after posting career highs in rushing yards (1,540), rushing touchdowns (16), and yards per carry (5.1) in 2019. There are simply few people on the Earth that share his size and speed, making him a no-brainer top-five pure runner right now. Henry should be projected for the most carries in the league after handling 303 last season, but we shouldn’t expect to see quite as high rushing production because of natural regression. For example, Henry scored 6.2 more rushing touchdowns than expected based on his adjusted-usage last season. With that said, Henry could find himself on more third downs this season, and thus could smash last year’s receiving line of 18-206-2. The Titans lost Dion Lewis this o***eason and are looking for more weapons in the passing game.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers:
Only the third player in the last century to start under center at the ripe age of 43, Tom Brady approaches unknown territory as the first to attempt 200 passes since Vinny Testaverde (172 attempts) did so in 2007. In what should be a welcome change of scenery for both Brady and fantasy players alike, the former Patriots lifer travels south to kick off his shoes in Arians’ “no risk it, no biscuit” attack, which averaged an NFL-high 10.2 air yards per attempt last year; New England’s offense averaged 7.7 (21st) and 7.4 (23rd) air yards per attempt the past two seasons. Flush with talent that recorded an airtight three drops on the fourth-highest rate (15.8%) of pass attempts 20-plus yards downfield, Brady is primed to increase his counting stats across the board by default.

Mike Evans enters his age-27 season with the seventh-most receiving yards (7,260) of any player through their first six years in the league. Although he’s bucked replacement-level play (Josh McCown, Mike Glennon, Winston) to average 2.18 Yards Per Route Run to date, Evans’ seasonal finishes as the overall WR13 < WR26 < WR3 < WR17 < WR9 < WR15 have netted him a questionable FFPC ADP of WR9 in his first year with Brady. The 20-year veteran’s poor 45% completion rate on tosses 15-plus yards downfield last year is a concern for Evans, who has scorched opposing secondaries via a career 14.7 average depth of target, but the former Aggie product did average the fourth-most fantasy points per game (17.9) among wideouts despite tracing the second-lowest deep ball rate (21.9%) of his career in '19.

That quote isn’t entirely true as the Bucs utilized three-wide sets (58%) at a far higher rate than 12 personnel (28%) in neutral game scripts last year, but it’s all the same for Godwin, who averaged 2.22 YPRR from the slot versus 2.27 from the boundary. No matter which package Tampa Bay leans on in a given week, the 24-year-old either ascends on a team-high rate of routes from the middle of the field (a la Hines Ward in ‘08-’09, Reggie Wayne in 2012, and Larry Fitzgerald from 2013-17 under Arians) or excels against ancillary corners across from Evans. Given Brady’s comfort in peppering his slot receiver with a 24.9% target share last year, it’s Godwin who has the higher floor between the two as a unanimous top-seven wideout for the first time in his four-year career.

Any uptick in heavy personnel, not to mention the arrival of former WWE 24/7 Champion Rob Gronkowski, would inarguably lead to the Bucs’ surplus of tight ends overthrowing third-year specimen Justin Watson, ‘smokey’ prototype Scotty Miller, and fifth-round rookie Tyler Johnson (6’1/206) for opportunity. Gronk averaged an eight-year low in fantasy points per game (10.1) the last time he was available but did close the Patriots’ 2018 Super Bowl run with 13/191 receiving and 10 yards per target across three postseason starts. Embarking on his 10th campaign from Brady, the duo’s immediate rapport holds value in a shortened year. Gronkowski’s touchdown equity alone plants him firmly inside the top-12 at his position. Any rumored slot usage coming to fruition would only boost the 31-year-old’s value. Only one season removed from averaging 2.24 YPRR as a speculative All-Pro down the road,

Connoisseur · 30 Jul 2020

2020 Running Backs already sorted

C McCaffrey, S Barkley, A Kamara, C Edwards-Helaire, C Akers and ?

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1288576863896571909

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1288577600508567555

Connoisseur · 1 Aug 2020

Connoisseur said:

https://www.rotoworld.com/article/team-previews/washington-football-team-fantasy-preview

Washington, even with disastrous prospects in the passing game, has a pass catcher going in the fifth round of 12-team drafts. Terry McLaurin found a way to produce in 2019 despite everything working against him, and now finds himself coming off the draft board as the WR23, alongside a handful of receivers with a not-insignificant track record of fantasy production. McLaurin, who played with Haskins at Ohio State for the narrative truthers out there, was consistently targeted throughout his rookie year, seeing fewer than seven targets just five times. He took in 20 percent of the team’s targets as a rookie -- not exactly common in the NFL. Of course, 20 percent of the targets in an offense that ranked 27th in pass attempts isn’t the same as a 20 percent target share on a pass happy team. Probably that’s why McLaurin is going in the fifth round, not the third. While McLaurin’s 12.1 percent touchdown rate is certainly on the high side, a decrease might be countered by the truckload of vacated targets for Washington. A mere three teams have more unaccounted for targets headed into 2020, with 38.4 percent of last year’s Football Team targets out the door. This should easily catapult McLaurin over the 100-target mark, perhaps by a lot. And if Turner can develop Haskins -- or Smith takes the starting job at some point -- McLaurin could prove a solid value at his current ADP. If his touchdown rate takes a nosedive, he’s likely being drafted near his fantasy ceiling as the 23rd wideout off the board.

Finally healthy and ready to seize the Football Team’s lead back role, Guice is being drafted in a veritable no man’s land for running backs. He’s available in the seventh round, along with other backs with a bevy of questions circling their 2020 prospects (Jordan Howard, Cam Akers, Tevin Coleman, among others). Guice wasn’t exactly force fed the ball in his five 2019 contests, maxing out at 10 carries, which he did thrice. Game script was an issue in some of those games, to be sure, but it was abundantly clear Washington was easing their franchise running back into the fold. We might not see such caution to start the 2020 campaign after Guice was cleared for full activity. Rivera’s lengthy history of run-addicted teams could mean lots of opportunity for Guice, or whoever locks down the early-down role in Washington.

Don’t forget Guice’s pedigree: he piled up 2,638 rushing yards and 26 touchdowns in his final two years at LSU. And he was a second round selection. Similar to Haskins, the Football Team will probably do anything and everything it can for Guice to succeed in 2020 (and beyond).

Connoisseur · 1 Aug 2020

https://www.rotoworld.com/article/numbers/2020-available-targets-air-yards

Connoisseur · 1 Aug 2020

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1289268621718556672

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1289269654762876928

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1289273727201325057

KLo30 · 1 Aug 2020

Man, I can't see how they are going to get a season in.

The MLB have already had games postponed, with 20% of today's scheduled games not being played. Players aren't following the protocols as strictly as they should at the ballpark and there are multiple reports of worrying behaviour outside the ballpark.

There are more NFL personal and the players aren't known for being shrinking violets.

Connoisseur · 4 Aug 2020

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1290359056297852928

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1290455693372399623

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1290286801005895680

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1290276347458097153

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1289659387678613506

Tails · 5 Aug 2020

Done zero research thus far but will no doubt be sifting through all of this thread and respective posts shortly once the NBA ends !!

Connoisseur · 5 Aug 2020

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1290983893789585410

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1290785587285250049

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1290744696298524673

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1290722816313131019

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