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There are plenty of strategies that get thrown around in fantasy football war rooms, with terms like “zero-RB” or “late-round QB” becoming household phrases over the past few seasons.
What do those mean though? And what should they mean to you entering the 2016 season? Let's find out.
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Late-Round Quarterback
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: “you’re a fool if you take a quarterback early!”
Okay, well I’m not actually going to stop, but the point remains. Waiting on quarterback has become the thing to do, and with good reason. Taking a QB early means you’re passing up on a top RB/WR, which can end up burning you down the road more-so than a late QB can do. While Cam Newton did have a stellar season, scoring nearly 50 points more than QB2 Tom Brady according to FantasyPros Leaders, there were only 60 points between Brady and the 12th-best QB in Philip Rivers. So waiting on a QB is sound then yes? Sure, but that doesn't invalidate other approaches, nor does it make it the best approach.
Let's dig into some ADPs and compare 2015 to 2016. Andrew Luck was the first QB taken in 2015, with his standard-league ADP had him at 11.4 overall according to FFToday’s data from last season. This season, the first quarterback is Newton with an average ADP of 20 according to RotoBaller as of Aug. 24. That’s pretty dramatic.
People will push that streaming quarterbacks is viable due to targeting bottom-half defenses, but the landscape has changed a bit here due to the overreaction to early-QB under-performance last season. Andrew Luck’s injury burned many. People hitting on late picks of Blake Bortles, Kirk Cousins and Ryan Fitzpatrick types have encouraged waiting as reactionary trends are made clear.
So what to do? Waiting on QBs is certainly still strong with the state of the NFL right now. Passing is up across the board, with guys like Derek Carr, Andy Dalton and Tyrod Taylor being available outside of the top-12 QBs. Ask many owners and they’d be just fine with starting them. But now let’s wrap our heads around something.
Remember Luck’s 11.4 average ADP from 2015? It’s way down to 42.9 this season. He’s healthy, so what changed? He isn’t old, he has a young Donte Moncrief trending up and losing Coby Fleener definitely doesn’t result in a 30-pick drop. This makes for a great profit margin.
In the end, the obvious caveat that hangs over everything is “know your league”. If you have an aggressive bunch with QB then there’s great value in waiting on a guy like Eli Manning and Philip Rivers. If everyone waits, then taking Andrew Luck in the fourth round could prove to be a league winner.
Zero Running Back
Talk about reactionary waves. The “Zero-RB” strategy is one that preaches waiting on taking a running back until the middle rounds, loading up on WRs alongside a potential top QB or TE before selecting an RB.
One just has to glance at how running backs and wide receivers taken early from last season fared to see why favoring WRs early is popular. Last season the first four picks were RBs. Le’Veon Bell, Eddie Lacy, Marshawn Lynch, Jamaal Charles, C.J. Anderson, Jeremy Hill and DeMarco Murray were all selected within the top-14 picks in standard formats last season. Whether it was through injury or ineffectiveness, they all failed to score as RB1s in 12-team formats (Hill fared best, checking in at RB14).
That’s going to leave a mark. So after RBs made up nine of last season’s first 14 picks (including the first four), they are now outside of the top three entirely and you won’t find the ninth RB until pick 20. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s a large change this early in drafts. Say you are picking at the back-end of a 12-team standard league. You now have a great chance at selecting Lamar Miller in the first round, an Allen Robinson or Brandon Marshall type of WR in the second round, and then a LeSean McCoy or C.J Anderson in the third before anyone else even has a running back.
You now have a stud RB1 that can anchor your team, except you didn't need to pick within the top three just to lock him up. You also have a great WR1 and an RB2 that is leaps and bounds ahead of the pack, allowing you to snag some insurance or a legit RB later as a FLEX play when others are scrambling to slot in Matt Jones as a reliable week-in, week-out starter. That sounds pretty good.
Conclusion
Austin Powers said it best: “Whoopty doo. What does it all mean, Basil?”
Going zero-RB or late-round QB can certainly work, but it would appear that these buzzy strategies have become so deeply ingrained now that there’s ample margin for profit to be had for the savvy owner. This is not meant to sell you on being contrarian, just to keep an open mind with some context for your 2016 fantasy football draft.
Drafting with a rigid plan tends to be a bad idea. You may have tested your respective strategy in multiple mock drafts, your league-mates may have told you who they’re “dead set” on picking, but anything can happen. It’s one thing to put a certain player on your “do not draft” list, it’s another thing entirely to blacklist a position. Keep an open mind, and you may just find some gold in the shadows as everyone runs to the spotlight.
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