I’m going to start out by dropping a bomb on you. No, I am not going to personally visit your home and ask to use the facilities to unleash an upper decker. Rather, I’m going to give you a heavy dose of reality right off of the top. Your first round draft pick will not win you a championship this year.
Boom. There it is.
There is way too much made over first and even second round picks in fantasy football year after year. First round picks are important, but not for the reasons you think. These selections are probably not going to lead your team in points, make it through the entire season without an injury and they may not even start for your team every week this season.
Despite this, 90 percent of the phone calls on the Fantasy Alarm Show on SiriusXM Radio want to discuss who to take in the first round at varying pick levels and formats. Inevitably what happens is that these first round picks go bust in the early part of the year which leads to many folks thinking that their season is over and stop paying attention.
Let’s take a trip in the Fantasy Alarm time machine (yeah, we got a time machine…you want to fight about it?). In June 2014, we took part in the Fantasy Sports Trade Association (FSTA) Fantasy Football League Draft which is usually the first football draft of the year and the unofficial start of the fantasy football season. I was fortunate enough to draw the first pick in the draft. After doing all of my research and going through each and every NFL team, I realized that Matt Forte of the Chicago Bears was the obvious choice for #1 overall. After all, just a few days before this draft I had decided that Forte would be our cover boy on the Fantasy Alarm Draft Guide for the same reasons that I would now be taking him with the first pick.
The FSTA Draft was held live in San Francisco in front of hundreds of industry people, broadcast live on SiriusXM Radio and filmed for television by the Fantasy Sports Network. When I went to the microphone and announced Matt Forte as the #1 overall selection, you would have thought that the ghost of Bruce Jenner’s penis fell to the earth and was attacking everyone in the room. Seriously, there were gasps from the people in the room and I pretty much got trashed by the hosts on radio and TV.
That Monday morning, our own morning show on SiriusXM Radio literally attacked my credibility on the air saying that I drafted Matt Forte as a publicity stunt. Hell, members of my own team and co-workers here at Fantasy Alarm challenged me to bets over whether Matt Forte or LeSean McCoy would score more points. I am 100 percent serious here folks. You would have thought that I had drafted Chad Ocho Cinco with the way everybody was up in arms.
I will say that I was completely stunned by this reaction. To me, it was an obvious choice with the only other consideration at the time being Jamaal Charles. In my opinion, the reaction to the pick and the reasoning I heard for guys like McCoy, Adrian Peterson and Calvin Johnson was completely nuts. I felt as though these other guys hadn’t done any research since leaving their trapper keepers at the end of the 2013 season. The argument that a player did (insert stats here) last year is an awful point to make in fantasy football. Everything changes in a year in the NFL. You cannot assume that anything that occurred the previous season means a damn thing the following year.
Obviously, the Forte picked worked out quite well for us and there are a lot of people who will be careful next time they want to call out somebody who knows the game of football as well as anyone in fantasy sports. I wasn’t taking Forte last year thinking he would have 100 catches or anything that was outside of his normal output in Marc Trestman’s offense. I took him because he was the safest, most sure thing at any position going into the 2014 season.
Was Matt Forte the highest scoring player in fantasy football last year? Nope.
Did we win the FSTA Fantasy Football League last season? Nope.
Was it in any way, shape or form Matt Forte’s fault? Absolutely not.
Think back to your own leagues last year. Which player(s) were the ones who led the way to victory for you or whoever won the league title? Let me guess: DeMarco Murray? Le’Veon Bell? Andrew Luck? Odell Beckham Jr.? I can safely assume that whoever had these players in 2014 did quite well for themselves whether they won it all or not. So let’s look at the tape.
DeMarco Murray and Le’Veon Bell were easily the top two running backs in fantasy football last year. However, neither was drafted in the first round in any draft. According to the National Fantasy Football Championship (NFFC), Murray’s average draft position (ADP) in 2014 was 18.80 and Bell’s was 18.75. Andrew Luck had an ADP of 59.37 (5th round) and was a complete afterthought for many behind Peyton Manning, Drew Brees and Aaron Rodgers. What about Odell Beckham Jr.? Well, he wasn’t even selected in most fantasy leagues last year. His ADP was 201.27 which only mattered if your league had more than 14 teams and/or more than 17 rounds.
What Beckham did last year was fantastic, but not uncommon in fantasy football. Every year there are players that are mid-to-late round selections that break out and lead our fantasy teams to championships. It is these late round picks that are the real keys to the draft and not your first and second round selections.
Am I telling you that your first round pick doesn’t matter? No, seriously…I want you to answer this question before I go on. Because if you think that is what I am saying, I would like to slap you in the head with a wet fish.
Of course your first selection and all early round picks matter. They are important, but not for the reasons most people think. You don’t have to select the player that will score the most points with your first round pick. In fact, the last time a consensus first round pick wound up being the overall scoring leader in fantasy football was 2006 when LaDanian Tomlinson, perhaps the greatest fantasy football player ever, achieved that feat. What you need to do is change your thought process for your first few selections.
The keys to winning in fantasy football are identifying breakout players late in your draft and building your team around the most consistent performers you can acquire. Overall points are wonderful, but the fact of the matter is most of us play in head-to-head formats with little to no reward for scoring a ton of overall points. What we need to do to win is post consistently good scores week after week. Over the course of the season, this will win us a lot of games, provide advantages like first round byes and tiebreakers and help pave the road to the league title.
That is why this year’s choice for the top overall pick is easily wide receiver Antonio Brown of the Pittsburgh Steelers. I can hear you now – “But Jeff, Brown was the top overall scorer last year in my scoring format.” That is very possible, and as far as I am concerned, even better. We have not seen as consistent a fantasy performer as Antonio Brown since the days of LaDanian Tomlinson.
Let’s take a look at what Antonio Brown has accomplished over the past two seasons. Remember, this is a player who was a sixth round draft pick (195th overall) in 2010. He wasn’t a starter for the Steelers until Mike Wallace left after the 2012 season.
Brown hasn’t missed a single game over the past two seasons. He missed three in 2012, but only one was his fault (injury). He is the only player in the NFL to have had six or more targets in every single game the past two seasons. In fact, you’d have to go back before targets were recorded to find another receiver who accomplished this feat. He has also recorded a minimum of five receptions in every game over the past two years. His lowest yardage totals in 2014 and 2013 were 74 yards and 50 yards, respectively. This means his worst fantasy performance over the past two years was his 5-59 game on Thanksgiving night against the Ravens in 2013. That “awful” performance still got his fantasy owners 10.9 fantasy points in PPR league formats.
Are you still not sold on Antonio Brown? Consider that since becoming a full time starter in 2013, he has averaged 10.9 targets, 7.5 receptions, 99.9 yards and 0.66 touchdowns per game. These numbers are unparalleled in the NFL and in fantasy football. This is a guy who simply brings it each and every week, no matter what.
Understand that I am actually against the selection of guys like Antonio Brown. Yeah, that’s right. In this magazine you will note that I go back over 15 years of data to help understand that the height of a wide receiver actually matters to fantasy production. At just 5’10” tall, Antonio Brown defies my study that suggests you want to target receivers who are at least 6’2” in fantasy football. Please keep in mind that this is part of what makes Brown so incredibly special and not a knock on the facts of the matter. Also, I talk about the art of chasing in fantasy football and how it ruins people year after year. While it is true that all of these unbelievable numbers promise us nothing for 2015, there are even more facts that protect his case.
When the 2015 season begins, Antonio Brown will be 27 years old. As seen in our “Age Is Important” strategy, history tells us that this is the year most wide receivers are BEGINNING their peak production years. Is there room for Brown to get even better at age 27? Honestly, I doubt it; however, I think it certainly helps the argument against any significant loss of production as well.
I also strongly believe that the offensive system plays a vital role in fantasy production. In fact, I’ve broken down every single playbook in the NFL for you just a few pages ahead. The Steelers retained offensive coordinator Todd Haley this offseason and there are absolutely no plans to change any part of their pass-first system this year. Furthermore, a quarterback change or decline can also lead to a drop in the performance of a wide receiver. Ben Roethlisberger is getting up there in age, but at 33, he is still several years in front of the projected decline for quarterbacks. I also discuss quarterback/wide receiver chemistry later on in this guide, and you will not find a better duo in the NFL right now than Big Ben and Antonio Brown. Not only did Roethlisberger stump for Brown’s surprisingly big contract extension before he had accomplished anything in 2012, but he also helped ease talks between Steelers brass and Brown this offseason. Brown had floated a potential holdout earlier this spring, but he has been a willing participant in the Steelers entire offseason workout activities as of our publish date.
You also have to think that Brown’s production will be even greater in the beginning of 2015 because the Steelers are likely to be without Le’Veon Bell for at least two, possibly three, games at the beginning of the regular season.
So there you go. Antonio Brown is our cover boy and the obvious selection for the #1 pick in PPR league formats. For those in non-PPR leagues, I still think Brown is a strong selection but could see you pivoting to a heavier touchdown option like Jamaal Charles or Julio Jones. Just remember that your fantasy team is not all about whoever you take in the first or second round. This season, more so than ever, I am convinced that the most defining picks will come from the middle and later rounds. I often compare building a fantasy team to building a house or preparing a meal. If you don’t have a proper foundation, it is not going to matter how many bedrooms or square footage you own. Similarly if you take a great main course and don’t add the right mix of ingredients all you are left with is chicken. Nobody should ever settle for plain old chicken.