The fantasy football season concluded last week, and it was the first year that
I gave a non-trivial effort. I ended up 6-8 — not a particularly good record, considering
how many unlikely wins I got — and wanted to write a quick thoughts to revisit come next
season.
(As useful context: I'm in a ten-team league, half PPR, with 1 QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, 1 TE, 1 FLEX.)
Draft
First, I had what felt a particularly terrible draft. My six picks were:
- Najee Harris (8)
- Saquon (17)
- DJ Moore (32)
- Kyle Pitts (41)
- Brandin Cooks (56)
- Chase Edmonds (65)
Minus Saquon — a steal! — things didn't go well. Najee ended up RB14 for the season; Pitts and Edmonds were undrafted-tier value; Cooks and Moore were servicable but not great.
Trades
I'm not a particularly active trader, with four trades altogether:
- Najee for Mike Williams (Week 4). This was a solid upside trade in the short term whose utility
was capped by Mike Williams' injury.
- Mike Boone and Kareem Hunt for Clyde Edwards-Helaire and Latavius Murray (Week 7). Boone and CEH
both washed out into irrelevance; Kareem never brought serious value after the trade, and Latavius
was a solid RB2 for the rest of the season.
- Mike Williams for Cordarelle Patterson (Week 10). This was a trade of necessity; I needed some sort
of short-term upside with Williams on IR, and Cordarelle provided that. He was a weak-but-startable RB3;
in exchange for that, I gave up Mike Williams' solid post-season production.
- DJ Moore for Antonio Gibson (Week 10). Same story here; I needed some short-term upside, and I had a glut of WR3s.
Gibson provided a few weeks' worth of juice, but faltered until his seaason-ending injury (and of course, DJ Moore ended up playing like a WR1.)
I don't think any of my trades were absymal. I clearly lost one, won one, and the other two were a wash.
Transactions
I did a decent job on the ol' wire! I grabbed a number of players who ended up being useful:
- Zay Jones
- Njoku ($37)
- George Pickens ($27)
- Jerick McKinnon
Nothing game-changing, but I was able to play the wire enough to produce value and salvage some of the draft.
Next year
I don't think any of these insights are particularly novel, but writing them out makes sense:
- The gulf between a top-five QB and the rest of the field is huge. I'm not sure I'll ever draft a QB
outside the top five again; I thought my dual-tech of Dak and Cousins would be enough, but the future is
with the run and it's hard not to make an argument for grabbing Josh Allen in the second round.
- Streaming tight end is a fool's errand. It's going to be hard to justify skipping out on Kelce.
- WRs felt like the biggest boom-or-bust crapshoot. Most of the blue-chip RBs who had more than one year
of strong performance performed well; it was WR that felt volatile.