Week 12 had an absolutely had to have it player in Jahmyr Gibbs who came one yard short of 50 UD points in his game against the Giants. However, a lot of the teams atop the leaderboard followed a similar structure which highlighted again a topic we've covered in this article. Jalen Hurts posted an extremely strong 30-point effort which made him a fixture at the top. Nevertheless, he was not the week's highest scoring QB as that honor went to Jameis Winston. He was barely drafted, and when he was he was likely taken in round five or six. The other key to the top of the board though was some combination of Emanuel Wilson, Hunter Henry and A.J. Brown. All three of those players had ADPs in the last two rounds. Since most people are not willing to take four players with 25+ ADPs, taking Hurts early freed you up to get on the correct late gems. Despite scoring nearly as much as Wilson and Ashton Jeanty, two low rostered late RBs, Derrick Henry was not found high on the leaderboard. He was likely not taken enough with Hurts, or if he was, he moved you off the more important scorers with similar ADPs like Rashee Rice. This article tries to help us to better understand why these rosters win and what they look like.
This week's improvements include slightly improved rules around ADP allowing for more "faller" teams to exist and
Week 12 had an absolutely had to have it player in Jahmyr Gibbs who came one yard short of 50 UD points in his game against the Giants. However, a lot of the teams atop the leaderboard followed a similar structure which highlighted again a topic we've covered in this article. Jalen Hurts posted an extremely strong 30-point effort which made him a fixture at the top. Nevertheless, he was not the week's highest scoring QB as that honor went to Jameis Winston. He was barely drafted, and when he was he was likely taken in round five or six. The other key to the top of the board though was some combination of Emanuel Wilson, Hunter Henry and A.J. Brown. All three of those players had ADPs in the last two rounds. Since most people are not willing to take four players with 25+ ADPs, taking Hurts early freed you up to get on the correct late gems. Despite scoring nearly as much as Wilson and Ashton Jeanty, two low rostered late RBs, Derrick Henry was not found high on the leaderboard. He was likely not taken enough with Hurts, or if he was, he moved you off the more important scorers with similar ADPs like Rashee Rice. This article tries to help us to better understand why these rosters win and what they look like.
This week's improvements include slightly improved rules around ADP allowing for more "faller" teams to exist and creating newer structures. We have also improved the sim process which should add more correlation between the positions within teams. Let's dive into the data for this week's sims and see if there is anything we can learn.
For all of these data points, the sims and ADP is run as of Friday morning.
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Roster Structure
RBs | WRs | TEs | Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
2 | 2 | 1 | 76.53% |
1 | 3 | 1 | 17.55% |
1 | 2 | 2 | 5.92% |
Right away we see that these numbers differ greatly from the previous weeks. After coming in around 90 percent each of the first two weeks, two RB teams are only optimal 76 percent of the time this week. Additionally, two TE teams account for a whopping five percent after coming in sub-one percent in the first two weeks we ran this article. Interestingly, on the surface RB looks as deep or deeper than it has in previous weeks and WR feels shallow. This could be the sims actually beleiving in these thin WR weeks having more may be better. In weeks where many players at WR can go for 15-20 having the third may not matter but if three guys can meaningfully seperate on a thin slate, maybe that can overpower a roster. Additionally, while RB feels deep, maybe the reality is that the deep options lack ceiling which makes it easier for a WR to overcome. Let's see if anything else strange shows up with this new structure.
What ADPs to Draft
I made a small adjustment to the rules around this, this week allowing for up to THREE players to be drafted in Bucket Three but only FOUR combined players between Buckets One, Two and Three. This is to slightly better simulate how drafting actually takes place. We are trying to better account for the possibility of fallers.
Just a reminder here are the buckets and the rules on how they can be "drafted".
- ADP <= 6
- ADP > 6 and <= 10
- ADP > 10 and < 28
- ADP >= 28
By no means are these buckets at all perfect but we need some rules to allow the sim to build "reasonable" teams. Per the rules you are allowed at most ONE player in Bucket One, TWO players in Bucket Two, THREE players in Bucket Three, and FOUR Players in Bucket Four. Additionally you may only take TWO players across Bucket One and Two and THREE players total across Bucket Two and Three. Again, this is not perfect but it does the job for what we are trying to accomplish. Let's take a look at how the sim actually built teams.
Bucket One | Bucket Two | Bucket Three | Bucket Four | Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 14.79% |
1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 14.55% |
1 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 14.54% |
1 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 12.25% |
1 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 8.48% |
1 | 0 | 3 | 2 | 8.26% |
0 | 0 | 2 | 4 | 5.16% |
0 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 4.42% |
0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4.09% |
0 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 3.65% |
0 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 3.41% |
0 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2.68% |
0 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 2.32% |
0 | 2 | 0 | 4 | 1.40% |
This also looks fundamentally different than anything we have seen before. Next, we are going to stick to these new rules in order to better compare across the sims to see if it is something we changed causing this or if this is truly a unique week. The data is suggesting that there is no one dominant structure in terms of where to be drafting from. Looking at the specific players, I do believe that there is a deep top end this week with a strong 10 players who do not have huge projection differences. This could be leading to the rather unique set up we are seeing in the data.
QB Analysis
Let's take a look at where the best teams are getting their QBs from. This week seems to be unique compared to previous weeks with only Josh Allen in Bucket Two and two QBs in Bucket Three. This set up is leading to a massive departure from previous weeks. Almost 70 percent of the time the optimal QB comes from Bucket Four.
Outside of Allen, projections are so flat that it really does not see a meaningful difference between the players. This means that unless Allen has a nuclear game, we likely do not see the Hurts situation form last week where you can take a slightly lower scoring QB because it allows you to have roster spots later. On this slate, since the projections and sims seemingly do not see massive differences in players, you may have to be more comfortable skipping whole ADP sections to make sure you get to more unique combos.
TE Analysis
In previous weeks, Trey McBride was dominating sims with an over 30 percent optimal rate but this week, that number has dropped significantly. McBride is only optimal 17 percent of the time, followed not too far behind by Brock Bowers at 14 percent. This, in my opinion, is not due to the McBride outlook or projection at all. Nor do I think it is really anything TE specific. There are several great TE options, but I think the McBride "fall" is due to the other Bucket Two players more than anything. The ceiling of players like Bijan Robinson and Puka Nacua is too much to consistently pass on in order to jam in McBride. Their chances of separating are greater than the players who typically go in this spot. So feel free to continue to draft McBride, just do not view him quite as strongly as you may have the last few weeks.
One guy the projections and sim truly love: Harold Fannin.
RB Analysis
This week three of the four players in Bucket One are RBs. Christian McCaffrey and Jonathan Taylor have amazing workloads in less than ideal matchups, and De'Von Achane has fantastic workload with a better on paper matchup. However, this week we also have a strong Bucket Two RB play in Robinson, and one the projections don't love but who has a massive ceiling in James Cook. Despite the intrigue of those players, the sims do not see a large percentage of winners containing those players. This probably will be highlighted by the WR numbers shortly. Interestingly, this is also the lowest rate of Bucket Four RBs we have seen so far, likely due to the interest in Three WR teams. Even with the lowest rate, over 60 percent of winning rosters contain at least one Bucket Four RB.
Bucket | Number | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
ONE | 1 | 57.72% |
TWO | 1 | 9.50% |
THREE | 1 | 31.32% |
THREE | 2 | 1.93% |
FOUR | 1 | 54.63% |
FOUR | 2 | 9.75% |
While I began this claiming there was depth at RB, a lot of that has clumped into Bucket Three. The top players according to the sims in Bucket Four are Rico Dowdle, Jaylen Warren, Woody Marks and Bucky Irving. Irving is a fascinating case coming off injury but the sims may not be able to fully account for his downside risk and low floor. I will likely find myself jumping in on Dowdle at these low prices. He had previously been going as a top-ten pick in these drafts in similar spots. Beyond that I will be more heavily targeting that Bucket Three ADP range for my RBs when I do not get one of the big three.
WR Analysis
WR this week is extremely interesting to me. Bucket One and Two have one guy each at WR, Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Nacua, but both guys also rank sixth and first in terms of their optimal frequency across all players on the slate. These two are fantastic plays and lend credence to my love for the top of these draft boards. However, relative to other weeks, the Bucket Three WRs look fantastic. They are a huge part of the deviation from two RB teams this slate seems to offer. Of the eight Bucket Three WRs, four of them appear in over 10 percent of winning sims, and Ladd McConkey finishes just below this threshold at 9.37 percent. Despite his teammate also having a high ADP, Davante Adams leads this pack and his high TD equity makes him a great play again.
Bucket | Number | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
ONE | 1 | 15.15% |
TWO | 1 | 18.88% |
THREE | 1 | 50.65% |
THREE | 2 | 12.43% |
THREE | 3 | 0.28% |
FOUR | 1 | 53.92% |
FOUR | 2 | 25.05% |
FOUR | 3 | 1.05% |
Once again, we see that the keys to these slates comes down to the scroll down late ADP options. Nearly 75 percent of rosters contain at least one Bucket Four WR. As always, the projections and sims love Tetairoa McMillan but the potential return of Marvin Harrison is interesting as well. Not many of the late WRs really stand out from the bunch but it is easy to make a case for a lot of these guys like Brian Thomas who should return from injury this week.
Overall, looking at the ADPs and board, I do not see many places early where I want to stray from ADP. All of the players up top look to be going in a nearly correct order and they all have valid cases to be the guy you need. From CMC up top to Bowers at ADP 12.6 (11th overall), I can't make a strong argument that anyone does not deserve to be there. My bet is the winner comes from an elite RB + Puka pairing for anyone who is lucky enough to grab one of those.
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