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| Tuesday, August 27, 2024 |
| Patrick Mahomes, 1.01. Based. It's a good pick. You might be opinionated about that. Maybe you believe that another quarterback should go ahead of Mahomes. That's good. I'm glad that there are so many opinions about Patrick Mahomes. I'm especially grateful for the players who voted and decided that Mahomes was the fourth-best player in the NFL. Behind Lamar Jackson, that is where the NFL players decided to rank Mahomes. They also chose Mahomes' former teammate Tyreek Hill as the. best player in the NFL. |
| Mahomes is about to set the league on fire. Petty Patty is about to go scored earth. |
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| Look at how wide open the intermediate area is! |
| It's just one play. But the speed that Xavier Worthy possesses puts immense pressure on opposing defensive secondaries, clearly. A healthy Marquise "Hollywood" Brown could add to that pressure. Things will look much different for Kansas City's offense in 2024. |
| I am currently co-managing with my brother in a league formed by Edwin Porras, DPT, and Mahomes was the number one overall pick. Personally, Josh Allen is who I am selecting first among the 2024 Fantasy quarterbacks. I really don't think that anyone is going to regret drafting Mahomes, though. The buy-in for this season-long Superflex league was $100, and I recognize several analysts as long-time sharp members of the Fantasy football community. |
| The first five picks all went by relatively efficiently. Mahomes, Jalen Hurts, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Christian McCaffrey -- in that order, in just over one hour. Then came my turn, and I sat on the clock for three full hours waiting for a text response from lil bro. |
| He's in school. High school. He can't get to the text because he's in a weights class or something. It's a funny reminder that while we take this Fantasy football game very seriously, it's still a just a silly and unpredictable game about a game that is enjoyed by all sorts of different people. |
| According to google, as of December 2022, 29.2 million people in the United States were playing Fantasy football. Also according to google, the most-downloaded Fantasy podcast in existence had less than 300,000 subscribers (as of September 2021). Even if that 300,000 number was 1 million, it would still only be 3.4% of the 29.2 million people playing the game who were subscribing to the most popular Fantasy podcast in the world. Subscribing to a podcast is free. |
| There are so many people playing Fantasy football who might have wildly different perspectives than you or me. |
| I made the below tweet yesterday with an aim to reach a more mainstream audience. I was curious how they would interact with the "upside wins championships" idea presented by Scott Barrett. |
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| Over a 24-hour span, nearly half a million people saw a gif from Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby that I tweeted as I sat for a 10-hour car ride home to Kanas City after visiting my sister in Dallas. The response was mixed. Some agreed wholeheartedly and were so proud to show me their rosters or tell me how many of the ten players that I named were on the team that they just drafted. That was cool. The excitement was palpable. We're so close! |
| Many people simply said "no." This is wrong. Fair enough. You're entitled to an opinion. A few people mocked the idea that Jaylen Waddle might be available in Round 4. A few more felt were compelled to inform me that DeVonta Smith would never be available in Round 5. Never! They apparently knew this with certainty. |
| Smith's ADP is 47th overall on ESPN (the most-popular platform for playing Fantasy football) and 49th overall on Yahoo (second-most popular). Maybe he goes earlier where you draft. There is a lot that happens in the world that you have absolutely zero awareness of, though. You really never know what life might give you. There are all sorts of different types of Fantasy football experiences that take place each year. In this draft that I'm doing with my brother and a bunch of Fantasy analysts, we thought that we were in a prime position to potentially land Jayden Daniels in Round 2. We ended up grabbing Anthony Richardson with the 1.06 pick, but we nearly passed on him with the hope of landing Daniels in Round 2. Daniels was drafted 12th overall. |
| I give out tons of information. You may notice that I actually don't give out a ton of advice. I don't assume to know what is right for you and your personal Fantasy football experience. I think that "upside wins championships" is decent advice in most situations, but maybe not for someone who isn't interested in committing substantial time to managing a team and grinding out small edges on the waiver wire throughout the regular season. We as a Fantasy football community have really only barely tapped into the massive amount of interest in the game. Not everyone has heard the good news of the FFT Newsletter. If I had just one piece of advice to give, it would be to draft the players you believe in. |
| I want to get the players who I believe in. Especially at this stage in the game -- we're in late August, and for me at least, draft season is wrapping up with two of three remaining drafts being long-standing "home leagues" with friends that involve zero buy-in -- there is absolutely no telling how these drafts might go. These late August drafts are so often complete chaos, and I love it. |
| We're so close. Less than two weeks remain before Patrick Mahomes begins his scorched earth campaign, starting with a matchup against the QB who his peers deemed better at his craft than the reigning back-to-back Super Bowl champ. We will answers to so many of our questions in a couple of weeks. |
| I'll give one more piece of advice. Consider that you can't possibly know everything, and in many cases we actually know nothing about what is to come -- don't let yourself stress anymore about being prepared for the 2024 season. It's here. Let it wash over you. We're so close. |
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| If you have been preparing for Fantasy football draft season, you've probably heard a lot of stats. You might even be so plugged in that you're aware of analysis done by people like Ben Gretch or me, among others. There are dozens of us. You might be well-versed in topics such as the findings of age-curve historical analysis relating to career longevity at the WR position. You might be well-informed on exactly which players and teams are the most likely to regress in one way or another according to one model or another. |
| Many moons have passed since we last saw regular-season football. A lot of us are inundated with stats at this point. I love it. I love stats. I like to think through things repeatedly, from different angles, even if it may at times be to my detriment. I love the grind. I'm ready for football to be here, but I've enjoyed this learning phase where we get to dig into data and film all summer. And if you are following me on Twitter, you of course know that I love the preseason. |
| I remember fondly watching Austin Ekeler during the preseason as an undrafted free agent and feeling convinced that he was going to be a stud. I remember watching Round 6 pick Darren Waller ball out as a preseason wide receiver in Baltimore before he converted to tight end. Last year's preseason convinced me that Tank Dell was the absolute stud pro that his collegiate data suggested that he might be. |
| Feel free to have whatever opinion you want about the preseason. Surely, some of the preseason analysis that is done is pointless. I have no attachment to deriving meaning from every single moment. I don't know if the work that I've done this preseason will prove to matter. It might! And I really do enjoy it, so I am going to keep watching these players and trying to learn more about them. |
| If you want to watch the players with me, you can on Twitter! I created a thread to streamline that process for anyone who wants to engage with that type of content. I play a ton of Dynasty Fantasy football, so I'm legitimately curious about players like Audric Estime and Jaheim Bell. I created a rookie roundup to recap my impressions of the rookies and connected all the rookie film cut-ups that I've been tweeting out: |
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| Brenden Rice, son of NFL legend Jerry Rice, ran 69 preseason routes and caught 1 of 12 targets. Theo Johnson finished his preseason with one catch for four yards on 19 routes. Jared Wiley ran 37 routes and finished with 14 receiving yards. The players in this tier were ones who I hoped to see something from this preseason. I did not see much, unfortunately. That doesn't necessarily mean anything about the long-term outlook, but it'd be a shock if any of the players in this tier produced as rookies. |
| If you wanna watch some rookie reps, check out the thread below: |
| Preseason rookie film thread |
| On this note, I wanna remind you that if you have any questions about specific players, you can search my Twitter name and the player's name with the 'latest' designation and you'll find plenty of content. Just like this: |
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| We are so close |
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| Y'all, I am so excited, gratified, and ready to bury the lede. |
| Matthew freaking Berry is joining me and Dan Schneier on Beyond the Boxscore this week. We're recording the podcast today. It's the initial episode of a brand new Tuesday BTB weekly episode that Dan and I are rolling out for FFT listeners in 2024. |
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| Of course, Ben Gretch will be joining us (he has not confirmed, but I also have not officially asked haha I have been busy!), too. Josh Norris and Hayden Winks are my favorite Fantasy football podcasting duo, and I'm going to be pestering Josh periodically throughout the season to try to find a soft spot in his schedule. My buddy Matt Harmon of Yahoo Fantasy will hopefully be joining us after a month or so to download us on all that he's learned about the receivers who are filling new roles. Dan says he thinks that he can get Sigmund Bloom on, I have always wanted to chop it up with him. JJ Zachariason said that he wants to come talk ball next offseason. This show is going to be awesome. I'm getting way ahead of myself, I probably should be more focused on getting my current work done on time, but I'm just too freaking excited for this. |
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| Thank you! This is going to be a very fun season, I can feel it. |
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| What will you do with your remaining time? |
| I fully believe that this is going to be an immensely fun season, and part of that comes as a result of disillusionment with success as an endpoint. I hope that I get everything right, but I don't expect to. I hope that my work this summer was not a waste of time. It might have been! Cutting up Cam Akers preseason footage feels likely to have been a waste of time. I hope that fun players are healthy and get to put their talent on full display! I hope to win all my leagues and make all the money playing DFS and help you do the same. But I do not expect any of that. |
| To quote the great Bill S. Preston and Ted Theodore Logan quoting Socrates, "True wisdom comes in knowing that you know nothing. That's us, dude!" |
| That's me. And so, I'll be here to roll with the inevitable chaos that the NFL season brings on. I invite you to consider a more stoic approach with me. We know that the storm is coming. No matter what happens, we can adapt and push onward. And I do believe that we can have fun, even if things go south for us. I love this game. I get to connect with my brother through co-managing dynasty teams. That is literally all that I wanted as a kid. I love this game! I hold no attachments to what might happen in it, I am just here to enjoy the ride. |
| What will you do with your remaining time? This is the calm before the storm. You could watch seemingly endless preseason cut-ups that I put on Twitter. You could log off for a while! I decided to agree to last-second travel plans to celebrate my sister's birthday this past weekend, and while it ultimately was the reason that this newsletter was delayed by one day, I am happy that I went. It was a great recharge for me to hug and relax with some of my favorite people and get a break (you know I was still grinding preseason footage) from the usual day-to-day, and I'm about to be locked into a strenuous work schedule for the remainder of 2024. Maybe family/friends isn't where you find your recharge. Maybe it's enjoying nature, maybe it's hitting the gym or going for a run, or maybe it's binging a movie or video game or book series. Whatever you need, this is a time to prepare and enjoy the calm. The storm is coming. |
| Tiered Rankings Update |
| Below, you can find my up-to-date tiered rankings. I'm going to just be attaching this updated rankings set to the bottom of every newsletter for the remainder of draft season. |
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Tier 1 -- Cheat Codes
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| (These tiered rankings are representative of how I'm drafting in half-PPR formats. My updated non-PPR and full-PPR rankings will be live on SportsLine on Wednesday.) |
| Players in bold are ones that I have ranked significantly ahead of ADP. I highly recommend being sensitive to the site that is hosting your draft. Each draft is different. You might be able to get a player who I rank in my top-20 in Round 3 or 4 on some sites. The more aware of where discrepancies in my rankings and ADP exist, the more value you will be likely to scoop up throughout your draft. |
1. Christian McCaffrey
2. CeeDee Lamb
3. Tyreek Hill |
| Tier 2 -- Potential Cheat Codes |
4. Breece Hall
5. Bijan Robinson |
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| Scott Barrett is a smart dude! He believes that the potential top-end outcome for the few remaining bellcow running backs is so high that those three should be the first players selected in Fantasy. That thinking makes some sense to me, which is why I place Breece Hall and Bijan Robinson in a tier of their own above Ja'Marr Chase and a bunch of other elite receivers. In my opinion, Tyreek Hill and CeeDee Lamb are cheat codes in their own right -- they don't project for quite the gargantuan point total that CMC put up last year, but they do both project for more points than I've ever projected a WR for. |
| Tier 3 -- Dawgs |
| You can't go wrong in this tier. A lot of people complain about picking from the back of the round, which I get from the perspective of missing out on the cheat codes at the top of the draft. That's always the case, though. Picking in the back half sucks. Your league really should have instituted a third-round reversal by this point to at least attempt to mitigate the disadvantage. |
| Anyway, enough complaining! The players in this tier are absolute dawgs. Any one of them could finish as the top scoring Fantasy WR in 2024. |
6. Amon-Ra St. Brown
7. A.J. Brown
8. Ja'Marr Chase
9. Justin Jefferson
10. Garrett Wilson
11. Jahmyr Gibbs
12. Puka Nacua |
| Tier 4 -- Scared money don't make money |
| You've gotta make a pick. I know that these don't feel like Round 2 picks. What are you gonna do? Draft Saquon Barkley or Derrick Henry or Jonathan Taylor because that feels "safer?" Henry is a 30-year old running back, and the DraftSharks Injury Predictor has him as the "safest" pick of those three. |
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| None of the picks in this range are going to feel good. That's the nature of the beast. There's a lot of ambiguity in 2024 as young players step into larger roles. That presents us with a lot of upside! Let's focus on the potential for how cool it could be if these players thrive in 2024 rather than suffering in advance anticipating these Round 2 picks coming back to bite us. |
13. Nico Collins
14. De'Von Achane
15. Marvin Harrison Jr.
16. Deebo Samuel
17. Jaylen Waddle
18. Drake London |
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| Check out this historical analysis done by the great Ryan Heath. Don't be afraid to bet on De'Von Achane. If it does not pay off, everything will be alright. We will get through this together. |
| While we have the Dolphins on the brain, you can check out this Twitter thread if you'd like to know why I have Jaylen Waddle so high. |
| Tier 5 -- I feel solid about all of these picks |
| Once you hit Round 3, it's time to consider grabbing an elite tight end. "What are the trends that are gonna define 2024 that we don't know yet?" My former CBS colleague Ben Gretch (subscribe to his substack and learn to make smarter Fantasy football decisions! ) posed that question in relation to the tight end position. He believes that the 2024 Fantasy TE group is stronger and deeper at the top than ever before, and I agree. The profiles of Trey McBride, Sam LaPorta, Travis Kelce, Mark Andrews, Kyle Pitts, Dalton Kincaid, and George Kittle are all extremely strong. I try to always land one of that bunch. That is not always realistic, as sometimes I find elite players like Nico Collins or Jaylen Waddle somehow available in Round 3. That's a good problem to have, though! |
| Here's how I'd sort out the elite tight ends and the rest of Tier 5: |
19. Kyren Williams
20. Jonathan Taylor
21. Derrick Henry
22. Isiah Pacheco
23. Brandon Aiyuk
24. Chris Olave
25. Malik Nabers
26. Trey McBride
27. Sam LaPorta
28. Davante Adams
29. DeVonta Smith
30. DJ Moore
31. Travis Kelce
32. Mark Andrews |
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| Tier 6 -- Quarterbacks are on the menu! |
33. Josh Jacobs
34. DK Metcalf
35. Cooper Kupp
36. Josh Allen
37. Mike Evans
38. Lamar Jackson
39. Jalen Hurts
40. Patrick Mahomes
41. Kyle Pitts
42. Saquon Barkley
43. Travis Etienne
44. Anthony Richardson
45. George Kittle
46. Dalton Kincaid
47. Rashee Rice
48. Rachaad White |
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| Rachaad White is poised to handle a massive workload and was the Fantasy RB4 in PPR formats in 2023, but I can't help but fall in love with Tampa Bay's Round 4 rookie RB Bucky Irving. |
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| Tier 7 |
49. Kenneth Walker
50. Diontae Johnson
51. Tee Higgins
52. Tank Dell
53. Michael Pittman
54. Christian Kirk
55. Amari Cooper
56. Stefon Diggs |
| Tier 8 |
57. James Cook
58. Jonathan Brooks
59. Calvin Ridley
60. C.J. Stroud
61. Zay Flowers
62. James Conner
63. Najee Harris
64. David Montgomery
65. Chris Godwin
66. Xavier Worthy
67. Jaxon Smith-Njigba
68. Christian Watson
69. Brian Thomas Jr.
70. George Pickens
71. Rome Odunze |
| If Pickens does not end up as Brandon Aiyuk's teammate, then he could put up a monster season in Year 3. I'm pretty worried about Pittsburgh's offense, though. All of the Steelers (other than Najee Harris. This is feeling like another miserable Arthur Smith season . Please feel better soon, Jaylen Warren!) have been moving down my rankings. Pittsburgh played Russell Wilson and Justin Fields for the entire second preseason game and only put three points on the board! |
| If Aiyuk is traded to Pittsburgh, Pickens would project as a barely-usable Fantasy option. If I knew that Aiyuk was going to be a Steeler, I'd rank Pickens as a borderline top-100 pick. He'd be in the same range as DeAndre Hopkins and Ladd McConkey. |
| I recently moved two players into Tier 8 that had previously sat in the same range as McConkey. Brian Thomas Jr. has been the most impressive receiver that I have watched this preseason. Odunze's ascent feels inevitable and Caleb Williams looks locked and loaded to deliver a huge statistical season. Patience will likely be required with both of these rookie receivers, and neither may ever reach the top to their range of outcomes. Of course there is risk involved with betting on rookie receivers. The top to their range of outcomes is so exciting, though! |
| Hitting on these types of bets give you a real chance to put together a team that can win a Fantasy championship. And hey, if you're a believer in McConkey maybe you throw him in this tier. The same logic could apply. If you're a Chase Brown believer, this is the range to make sure that you get a chance to make that upside bet. There are a bunch of players that get drafted in the fifth and sixth rounds of Fantasy drafts that I have little interest in, so I often end up looking at a draft board where my top-ranked player (usually Jonathan Brooks) is way down the actual draft board. The aggressiveness that I choose to approach this part of the draft with usually depends on how I feel about the draft room. If it feels like a room where I can afford to let a player slip another round to try to gain the most possible value with each pick, and if the slipping player does not solve an immediate problem for my roster, then I let them slip. If I already have drafted Achane, I'm probably letting Brooks slip here. |
| Tier 9 |
72. Joe Mixon (here's an eight-minute discussion from the Beyond the Boxscore crew on Mixon. Draft him earlier than this if you want. He's probably going to be a fine weekly Fantasy option. I don't wanna draft him. I don't want him on my teams. I don't want to root for Joe Mixon. That -- among many other reasons discussed in the linked video -- is why Mixon is a Tier 9 player for me)
73. Alvin Kamara
74. Raheem Mostert
75. Jayden Daniels
76. Javonte Williams
77. Terry McLaurin
78. Keenan Allen
79. Dak Prescott
80. Joe Burrow
81. Caleb Williams
82. Jake Ferguson
83. Rhamondre Stevenson
84. Tyjae Spears
85. Tony Pollard
86. Jayden Reed
87. Jordan Love
88. Kyler Murray
89. Jaylen Warren
90. Aaron Jones
91. Devin Singletary
92. D'Andre Swift
93. Joshua Palmer |
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| Last Wednesday's newsletter focused on sleepers. One of the categories that I placed players into was sleepers with "injury-contingent upside." You'll find some of those players sprinkled throughout the upcoming tiers. |
| The top tier that I created for injury-contingent sleepers was labeled the "Amethyst Tier." I like making tiers. |
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| Tier 10 |
94. Zamir White
95. Courtland Sutton
96. Ladd McConkey
97. Blake Corum
98. DeAndre Hopkins
99. Evan Engram
100. Brock Bowers
101. Zack Moss
102. Chase Brown
103. Brian Robinson
104. Ray Davis
105. Gus Edwards
106. J.K. Dobbins
107. Trey Benson
108. Jaylen Wright
109. David Njoku |
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| Tier 11 |
110. Keon Coleman (wow this is higher than consensus? If you believe in Coleman's talent, you absolutely should be drafting him. I am skeptical, and I still have him above consensus because the preseason role has been so promising.)
111. Rashid Shaheed
112. Curtis Samuel (sad)
113. Hollywood Brown
114. Pat Freiermuth
115. Tyler Lockett
116. Darnell Mooney
117. Josh Downs
118. Ezekiel Elliott
119. Chuba Hubbard
120. Zach Charbonnet
121. Bucky Irving
122. Kimani Vidal
123. Tyrone Tracy
124. Jalen McMillan
125. Austin Ekeler
126. Carson Steele
127. Braelon Allen
128. Tyler Allgeier
129. Antonio Gibson
130. Brock Purdy
131. Jameson Williams
132. Jordan Addison
133. Brandin Cooks
134. Dontayvion Wicks
135. Khalil Shakir |
| Lots of bold names here, huh? This tier mostly reflects a difference in philosophy between how I'm drafting and how the public seems to. I want to get my hands on these premium handcuff lottery tickets. I'm never drafting the quarterbacks and tight ends in this range. Cole Kmet? Yuck! (He's actually looked really good this preseason, but the Bears seem to be set on giving Gerald Everett a large role and there's only one football to be spread among all of the Chicago pass-catching options.) |
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| Tier 12 |
136. Romeo Doubs
137. Jerry Jeudy
138. DeMario Douglas
139. Dallas Goedert
140. Luke Musgrave
141. Ben Sinnott
142. Adonai Mitchell
143. Sione Vaki
144. Xavier Legette
145. Demarcus Robinson (I'm wondering if Robinson is even worth drafting lately. I wonder if Jordan Whittington might cut into his snap share.)
146. Greg Dortch
147. Ja'Lynn Polk
148. Luke McCaffrey
149. Noah Fant
150. Colby Parkinson |
| I'll be in your inbox every weekday and every Sunday morning during the regular season! Until then, we'll be rocking three days a week. Use your newfound free toilet time wisely. Maybe learn a new language over the next few Tuesdays and Thursdays. You learned how to make sense of my ramblings and made-up stats this summer! You are capable of so much! What might you do with this newfound freedom? The world is yours! I will be sleeping. And I hope to occasionally use my free time on Tuesdays and Thursdays to go outside, maybe get some grass and sun on my skin. Take some deep breaths before we lock in for another fun and chaotic ride. NFL is so back, baby! I am so grateful and excited to be able to deliver this newsletter to you as we navigate the 2024 season together. This is going to be fun! |
| If you have any feedback on the newsletter, feel free to send them my way. Thank you for reading! |
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