Strength of Schedule Analysis - AFC East: Fantasy Football Draft Strategy

Fantasy Football Matchup Analysis and Draft Prep: AFC East Strength of Schedules

The time around July 4^th weekend is an annual reminder to me that it’s time to start thinking about football season. The preseason, as longwinded and useless as it is for us fans and fantasy footballers, is only about a month away and by the time you know it, Week 1 in Seattle will be underway.

Welcome to the Rotoballer Strength of Schedule series! Over the course of eight beefy diesel articles, we will examine every team’s schedule with an eye toward how it will impact your fantasy football aspirations and how it should impat your 2014 fantasy football draft strategy and preparation.  After reading this series, you will have a solid outlook on which teams have favorable schedules, which players could potentially be great 2014 fantasy football sleepers, and which players can be buy-low or sell-high options based on the timing of their NFL matchups.

At this point, all we can do is look at how teams performed last year, and consider offseason adjustments, and use that as an indicator for this upcoming season.  I’m sure there will be teams that were terrible defensively last year who will be much improved this season, just as the 2012 Saints were consistently one of the best matchups for fantasy offenses as their defense was terrible, while the 2013 Saints had one of the best defenses in the league, but huge changes like that are extremely difficult to predict.

In the subsequent charts, you will see rankings for each position in relation to a team’s schedule. These rankings are based on how many average fantasy points per game a particular team gave up last season to a specific position.  You can use these charts as a reference when reading the analysis for each team. If you see a team is ranked 1^st under a position, this means that they gave up the most amount of fantasy points of any team to that position, and are a great matchup. Similarly, if you see a team is ranked 32^nd under a position, this means that they gave up the fewest amount of fantasy points of any team to that position, and they are a bad matchup. All rankings are based on fantasy points in standard Yahoo leagues from last year. Hopefully you can also use the color codes as a guide. In sum, green = “plus” matchup, orange = “average” matchup, and red = “minus” matchup.

In this first article, we take a look at the AFC East.

Buffalo Bills

Key Takeaway:  Take advantage of the Bills’ skill players this year.

Deeper Analysis: The Bills offensive players will be happy to see that their schedule is pretty soft, and so fantasy owners should take note come draft time. E.J. Manuel has a great playoff schedule, and while he obviously isn’t a viable starter yet in single QB leagues, he can provide great value in two-QB leagues, or as insurance for your starting QB.

Word on the street is that CJ Spiller will get more touches this season; that could be scary-good, as he only has three “minus” matchups all season, two against the Jets. And for those in favor of streaming TE, Scott Chandler will be an attractive play more weeks than not, as he has only one “minus” matchup and has a favorable playoff schedule, getting the Broncos and the Packers, who each gave up over 8.5 fantasy points per game to TE last year. The Bills sometimes get overlooked, but they should be better this year, especially with the addition of rookie WR Sammy Watkins into the lineup.

Miami Dolphins

Key Takeaway: Stay away from Lamar Miller.

Deeper Analysis: I beg of you. He will be torture to deal with. As a 2013 fantasy owner of Lamar Miller, just don’t do it and save yourself the sleepless nights.  I don’t care that he’s expected to carry more of a workload this season. I don’t care that it’s his third year in the league, when running backs are supposed to take giant steps forward. I don’t care that another year of Ryan Tannehill and Mike Wallace together will spread the field out and open up more running lanes.

While all of those things might be true, Joe Philbin is still the head coach of the Dolphins, and his usage of Miller last season, in conjunction with Daniel Thomas, was incredibly baffling.  In 2014, Knowshon Moreno-- a much better running back than Thomas-- is in the mix, and I’m not about to enter another year of Russian Roulette with Philbin and his nonsense. Furthermore, the back-end of Miller’s fantasy schedule (including playoffs) is pretty brutal, including four “minus” matchups from Week 10 on, so I would stay as far away from him as possible and let someone else take on the risky proposition.

New York Jets

Key Takeaway: CJ2K could be CJ2K again.

Deeper Analysis:  OK maybe not 2K, but Chris Johnson can easily have a very good first season in New York. I think the change of scenery will benefit him, and if the Jets are going to be anything approaching successful this year, they’re going to need to run the ball more, given their lack of skill players on the outside (Eric Decker notwithstanding).

CJ’s schedule sets up very nicely for him. Aside from one tough home matchup against the Lions, he faces a ton of bad and middle-of-the-road defenses leading up to the fantasy playoffs, at which point he gets “plus” matchups against Minnesota in Week 14 and a revenge matchup versus his former team in Week 15.  These teams averaged over 20 points per game to RB last year. Johnson's not a first-rounder anymore, but don’t overlook him when you’re thinking about RB2.

New England Patriots

Key Takeaway: I hope people continue the “Tom Brady is done” talk, so that I can buy low on him after Week 8.

Deeper Analysis: Yes, Tom Brady was not vintage Tom Brady last year. But I am prepared to make several excuses for him. He lost Shane Vereen, arguably New England’s most versatile and dangerous offensive weapon, in Week 1. Gronk was out for all of about 10 minutes last season. The Patriots had virtually zero running game, aside from a few surprise weeks from LeGarrette Blount. And Brady lost his go-to security blanket in Wes Welker to the Broncos-- while Julian Edelman filled in more than admirably, he was pretty much Brady’s only option.

A new season, a new schedule, and a fresh start for Brady, who will hopefully have most of his cast of characters back healthy and his young WR core another year more polished. Brady’s schedule includes some tough matchups in the first half of the year, but after that, it really opens up and he should have some huge games, especially since at that point Gronk will be fully back and recovered. A smart move would be to pounce on Brady after he faces some tough defenses during the middle of the season and maybe has a few mediocre games; buy low from the concerned owner after Week 8 when the schedule opens up.

The next post will be on the NFC East so stay tuned!