Drafting with Early Schedule Strength in Mind

Antonio Losada looks at 2021 NFL strength of schedules for fantasy football to determine which teams and players are poised to have strong starts, making them great draft picks or early waiver wire pickups.

It's been around two months since the NFL released the full 18-week schedules for the 2021 season. The strength of schedule will always make a huge impact on how successful your fantasy team performs in your league. In DFS football, there are no worries about planning for season-long runs in contrast to redraft leagues. Each weekend, you pick your brand new team, trying to exploit the best matchups and running with it. It's not so easy in leagues where you have to draft your squad prior to the start of the season.

Even if that's the case, early soft SOS should absolutely be taken into consideration when you draft your team, or at least when it comes to making late-round picks or snatching some free agents from the waiver wire to start the year. Although often overlooked, picking players expected to put on huge performances from Week 1 and during the first few matches can be key to locking up a playoff spot. The longer you hesitate on putting a player in your starting lineup, the worse. You need to be ahead of the competition as soon as you can.

That's what I'm doing here today. I'm highlighting the two teams with the easiest schedules from Weeks 1 to 5 (and it's not even close, believe me) and the players that can benefit the most from that early stretch of games so you can go ahead and erase any doubt you have about drafting them, or in the case of those with "less" value, go ahead and pick them for free before any other fantasy GM does so. Let's get to it!

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Houston Texans

The Texans will kick the 2021 NFL season off facing the easiest five-week span of games among all franchises, and only the Browns come close to them. Houston will have a top-three matchup in Week 1 followed by its toughest outing in Week 2 (still a top-20 one) and will then face three top-10 matchups to close the five-game span in Weeks 3-5, both included. Obviously, because the football gods hate us, they had to hand the easiest early schedule to one of the weirdest and most question-packed teams out there. Ugh...

It makes sense to start by addressing the elephant in the room: QB Deshaun Watson. I'm not going to get into heavy details here because most of you know what happened and what's going on with him. Boiling it down to the most basic information: Watson could very well miss the 2021 season entirely because he will most probably face an NFL suspension. Watson could get traded too, as things have not been smooth in Houston for a while now, and Denver (which feels like it's been interested in every living QB out there) seems to have an interest. What I mean is: forget about drafting or playing Watson with sights in the Week 1-Week 5 span. He's 1) not going to be available in that stretch and 2) probably out of Houston at some point--actually, the minute he becomes available to play.

Veteran Tyrod Taylor will be the QB1 for the Texans and he has some upside, which is also boosted by an early easy schedule. He's got the safe-passing traits and can carry the ball himself, so he might be a good super-late-round pick or WW addition if only to stream him for a bunch of weeks if you ultra-punt on drafting a set-it-and-forget-it QB in the first half of your draft.

Moving on to the tight end position, there is a clear winner in Houston in Jordan Akins after Darren Fells' departure this offseason. Akins is getting off draft boards with an ADP of TE42, clearly a fade for most fantasy GMs. Akins, though, could prove quite useful to start the year. Akins sandwiched his 2020 mid-season bad outings with four games playing to TE2 levels to start the year and two more (of the last three) at a similar level of play. Given the SOS in 2021 throughout the first five weeks, Akins looks very promising to put up a few 12+ PPR-point games.

The receiving corps of the Texans saw a couple of additions in rookie Nico Collins and Chris Conley, but that's it. Brandin Cooks is good enough to put up numbers no matter his QB but other than him, there are no sure things at the position. Cooks is WR2 material and that's why he's currently getting drafted around the eighth round in 12-team leagues. Can't go wrong with him.

More interestingly, Randall Cobb might be a good player to roster for the first five weeks of the year. Cobb is flying absolutely under the radar these days and you should be able to find him available in your WW in most leagues. Consider him a must-add for this initial stretch of games. He missed the last six games of 2020, but from Weeks 2 to Week 7, he had three games with 10+ PPR points and two more above 17 PPR points.

No other WR seems to be in a position to succeed even on this soft schedule, much less with Taylor throwing the ball.

For some reason, the Texans made their boldest moves at the running back position by adding both Phillip Lindsay and Mark Ingram II to a backfield already featuring David Johnson. This is more than an RBBC; it's a headache.

David Johnson should retain his RB1 role, but Lindsay and Ingram will both come applying serious pressure to him and trying to eat their part of the cake. Johnson seemed to be clearly past his prime not long ago, but he still put up five games in 2020 playing as an RB1 (all of them with 18.4+ PPR points, including a 28.9 explosion) and he finished as RB2 in two more matches. The fact that he closed the season on a three-game run of scoring 24.3, 28.9, and 21 FP bodes well for him with such a soft schedule ahead.

Lindsay and Ingram were limited in 2020 and only combined for six RB2+ performances between their 21 player games from last season. That's rather bad if we're honest, and only Lindsay could finish as an RB1 (once) in those six games with a borderline such performance that saw him hit 15.6 PPR points in Week 8. Nothing remotely close to league-winning players, but good FLEX options at least to start the season, and who knows if more--if David Johnson gets injured, that is.

Cleveland Browns

The Browns will have the easiest start to the year other than that on Houston's schedule. Cleveland will have one of the toughest stretches following their first five games with three bottom-10 matchups from Weeks 6 to Week 8, but it's nothing that concerns us here as we're focusing on the games you can count with a single hand. The easiest games of them all will be those in Week 2 (second-best matchup) and Week 5 (top-seven).

As ridiculous as it sounds, it's been three years of Baker Mayfield in town already as he's about to enter his fourth and decisive season before Cleveland has to execute--or not--his 5th-year option. In those three years, Mayfield has been good-not-great for the Browns, finishing QB16, QB19, and QB17 while averaging 15.8 FPPG and 15.8 in his most recent 2020 season. No quarterback is threatening his starting role in Cleveland, but he's not a must-draft QB nor calls for an early pick to be wasted on him.

That being said, his ADP of 136+ overall and QB21 could very well turn him into a massive value if he fulfills the PFF projection of a QB13 finish with 308 FP on the year. Even if you don't trust Baker for a season-long play, you can always exploit his early soft SOS and then move him at the peak of his game via trade to get a better player ROS.

There is a clear go-to player expected to take on TE1 duties for another year. Austin Hooper joined Cleveland for the 2020 campaign and although he disappointed a bit (he came off back-to-back TE6 seasons in Atlanta and could only finish TE21 with the Browns), he still played nicely in his 13 games. Hooper was heavily targeted by Mayfield (nine games with four+ targets, three with seven+). Hooper also finished eight games into the top-24 at the position and was a TE1 in six of those eight.

PFF projects Hooper to a bullish TE14 finish, yet fantasy GMs don't seem to be so convinced of his upside as he's getting off draft boards with an ADP of TE24 around the 150th overall pick. That sounds like a good price to pay for Hooper as a season-long tight end for your team if you punt on drafting any of the top three or four players at the position early.

TE2 Harrison Bryant is WW fodder, but if Hooper misses time (he did last season, remember), he might turn into a good play. Don't spend a draft pick on him, obviously, but keep an eye on Bryant throughout the first few weeks of the season just in case.

The good thing about taking advantage of the early part of the schedule is that it is the only time of the year we have a clear idea of who is and who is not available. Every player gets to Week 1 healthy or clearly out of the lineup. That benefits oft-injured players such as those forming the Browns' receiving corps.

Odell Beckham Jr. missed every game from Week 7 on in 2020, and it's not that prior to that he had been magnificent. OBJ could only score more than 11 PPR points twice last season, but the volatility was wild even in those two with a 17.4 PPR performance and a silly 38.4 game in the other such game. We know Beckham, he will get drafted super early, and he has the talent to thrive. Not a lot to comment on here.

Jarvis Landry has been a steady performer, has rock-solid health, and seems to always be scaping fantasy GMs' radars a bit. His career APDs are high but nothing mind-blowing, with an ADP of WR32 on average since his rookie season. Other than in that freshman year and the last campaign, Landry has always finished as a top-18 WR or better. He projects to finish 2021 as the WR24 (borderline WR2) while his ADP is by far the cheapest he's ever had at an overall 113th pick and WR45. Talk about a bargain. You better target Landry way earlier than that if you don't want to miss on him. It's rather stupid to find him available so late in your average draft these days.

Of the remaining receivers, free-agent signee Rashard Higgins should take on the WR3 role at least to start the season. Donovan Peoples-Jones and Anthony Schwartz are just not viable fantasy players at this point. All three of them have ADPs above 300, so don't spend a draft pick on any of them but track Higgins/OBJ closely just in case an injury pops up and Rashard Higgins suddenly finds himself in a prime position to rack up points early while facing a super-soft schedule from Weeks 1 to Week 5.

Split backfield here with both Nick Chubb and Kareem Hunt being absolute beasts at the position. You won't find any of them later in drafts, as both project to 172+ PPR points over the 2021 season. Chubb is getting drafted around the 14th pick (RB10) and projects to finish as the RB12 of the season, while Hunt has an overall ADP of 57 and RB25 with a projection to finish as the RB27.

Nick Chubb missed every game from Week 5 to Week 9 (both included) in 2020. Could that repeat itself this season, a bit early for our benefit/purposes? I don't know if it really matters that much because, again, we can't consider Hunt any sort of backup-plan-player to cover for a potential Chubb injury. Hunt is in and of himself a surefire rusher with high-end RB2 upside in every fantasy league.

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