Slow Your Roll on Saquon: Why Mortgaging the Future Doesn’t Make Sense

by Tony | Apr 26, 2018 | 2018 Season, Dynasty Football, Fantasy Football

Saquon Barkley finds open space and run for a touchdown against Ohio State. Saturday, October 28, 2017. Special to the Reading Eagle: Chris Sponagle

Most logical dynasty fantasy football players have had Saquon Barkley on their radar for some time, and have had him locked in at 1.01 for 2018 rookie drafts since early in his junior season at Penn State. And if we are nothing else, we’d like to think we are logical dynasty fantasy football players–Barkley would be our first pick overall as well (if we had the 1.01 in any of our leagues…we should have, but we chose unwisely when we traded away a first last season, and ended up keeping 1.02 instead of 1.01).

However, we’ve seen some absolutely crazy proposals and deals reported on social media for the 1.01 pick, for the right to take Barkley–deals including LeVeon Bell, Todd Gurley, and sometimes more–to get a guy who won’t have his first NFL carry for the New York Giants for another 4+ months.

And if you look at his college numbers, it just doesn’t add up.

Yes, Saquon Barkley had 3,843 rushing yards in his rushing career, more than Leonard Fournette or Todd Gurley, and just behind Ezekiel Elliott, the last three big name running backs taken first overall in fantasy drafts.

But when you look deeper, there are some concerns there.

First, he got his 3,843 yards in 38 career games, and 671 total carries–3 more games than Zeke, and 6 more than Fournette, and 8 more than Gurley. He also had 671 carries in his career, meaning his yards per carry was nearly a full half yard behind the next lowest on the list (Fournette).

Second, he only managed 15 total 100+ yard rushing games in his career–and had a yards per carry of 7.72 in those 15 games, while only achieving 4.02 yards per carry in his non-100+ yard games. Of the backs we’ve looked at, only Fournette had a lower yards per carry average in his sub-100 yard rushing games (3.84), although Fournette also had 19 of his 32 career games eclipsing the 100-yard mark (and had a couple of brutal games against Alabama in there).

Finally, not an original take, but look at how Barkley did against some questionable competition, even in his junior season–10 carries for 47 yards against Georgia State, 20 for 56 against Indiana, and 14 for 35 yards against Rutgers. That’s the 4-8 Rutgers team that gave up 182 rushing yards per game. Yes, Penn State won the game 35-6, and Barkley only had 14 carries–but against a team like Rutgers, you should be seeing 14-120-3.

Some will clamor that Barkley’s receiving prowess is why he’s worth the fuss–but he also only had 4 career game with 6 or more catches.

Others will point to his combine measureables–which were definitely impressive. But your going to let the underwear olympics cause you to part with a proven running back who still has a lot of tread on the tires (and possibly additional draft capital) to take a chance on Barkley?  Especially with a questionable quarterback and offensive line in New York?

I’ll sit back and collect that draft capital all day long.

Dynasty League: Twisted Dynasty 5 – Unsportsmanlike Ejection

by Tony | Jan 7, 2017 | 2016 Season, Dynasty Football, Fantasy Football

Inspired by posts on Reddit from /u/ekthegreat, /u/GoAraJjang and /u/Killtec7, decided to put together a recap of our first season in a 2^nd year Dynasty League—partly because it’s easy content, partly because I’ve actually found reading other people’s recaps fascinating, especially when it comes to dynasty leagues. Will likely end up posting recaps on the other league’s as well, and making a regular thing of it, because why not.

In 2015, I participated in 4 leagues (1 redraft, 2 auction, 1 dynasty), which was somewhat amusing to me, given that after 2014, I was thinking of backing off the fantasy bandwagon—but some success in 2015, along with a desire to get more into the dynasty side of things, had me looking for some new leagues to join.

Stumbled across a league looking for 3 owners on Twitter, got in touch with the commissioner, found out they were doing a dispersal draft amongst the 3 teams that had been abandoned, and decided to give it a whirl.

One crazy thing about this league, though—it’s not just one dynasty league, it’s actually a pyramid dynasty league, with six completely separate leagues that are essentially banded together. I’m not going to get into all the details of how it works (mainly because I’m not 100% sure I understand myself yet), but after 2015 the league’s remained static, after this season there has been a complete re-alignment of leagues, and after next year there will be relegation and promotion throughout the pyramid, ala Premier League soccer. Making things even more interesting—in the top tier leagues, we can actually have an unlimited number of the same player within the league (so there could be 3-4 David Johnson’s in a league), in the middle tier there can only be 2-3 copies of a player, and in the lowest tier on the pyramid, they actually do a complete redraft each season. We happened to join the 5^th league in the pyramid (hence, Twisted Dynasty 5).

First up was the dispersal draft, which was started on Thursday, March 24^th, using the message board functionality on MyFantasyLeague. In late March, I would estimate that 8 of the 12 teams in this league sat pretty much glued to the message board, and 11 of the 12 followed along to some degree. The last pick was submitted on Sunday, March 27^th—just three days for a 23 round dispersal draft. Sign of things to come.

Here is how the dispersal draft looked—it was a serpentine draft, and as the first new team to sign up, we were given the choice of where to pick, and chose to go second overall. There were trades going on throughout, including one we made in the opening minutes of the draft.

Left undrafted: Peyton Manning, Brandon Boldin, Steve Smith, and the Eales and Rams defenses. Big miss for all three of us on Steve Smith—especially at the end of the season (see the recap…I just realized this in typing this up).

Trade #1:

Gave up: 2^nd Round Dispersal Pick (Jordan Matthews)

Got: RB David Johnson

One of the extremely active owners had reached out to us before any of the details of the dispersal started, inquiring about our 1^st, offering Johnson—we told him we couldn’t move the 1^st, but would move the 2^nd, if the guy he wanted was there. He wanted Matthews (who we honestly probably wouldn’t have even considered), and the deal was done.

Post Dispersal Draft Depth Chart:

QB: Brees, Bortles, Palmer, Osweiler, Petty
RB: Bell, DJ, Forte, Bernard, Morris, Vereen
WR: Hurns, Wright, Garcon, Britt, Johnson
TE: Eifert
K: Catanzaro, Nugent
Def: Carolina, Arizona

We were disappointed we didn’t get any of the 1^st round picks available—but very happy with our RB, I was happy with Hurns (whoops), and figured we could move some QB and RB depth to either pick up picks and/or WR help.

Trade #2:

Gave up: RB Matt Forte, 2016 2.05

Got: WR Keenan Allen, 2016 3.08

There was a lot of activity in the first few weeks, a lot of it exploratory—the rest of the league seeing if we were rookies, and us trying to find a WR1 without giving up Hurns, if possible. Allen fell in our laps—the other guy apparently had a thing against having two WR from the same team, and had Travis Benjamin on his roster—when we told him we didn’t have much interest in Benjamin, he offered the deal above (after rejecting Forte for Decker straight up). And some of the other guys weren’t thrilled that he did.

Trade #3:

Gave up: QB Carson Palmer

Got: 2016 2.08

We’d made some offers on Davante Parker in a deal that would have shipped off Drew Brees, but he countered with a 2^nd for Palmer—since no one else had expressed interest in him, we figured we better take it, since he was never going to play for us.

Trade #4:

Gave up: 2016 3.10

Got: TE Charles Clay

We still didn’t have a backup to Eifert, and the champion from last year had a couple that he wanted to try and get something for before the draft, so we grabbed Clay as an insurance policy.

Trade #5:

Gave up: RB Gio Bernard

Got: RB Rashad Jennings, 2016 1.11

We liked Gio Bernard a lot, and he was the most frequently asked about guy on our roster, but felt this deal was a no brainer—we finally got a first round pick (even though it was late), and we got a guy that was presumably the clear starter, in exchange for a guy that was in a split backfield.

Trade #6:

Gave up: 2016 2.10

Got: RB DeAngelo Williams, 2016 3.10

With Bell on the roster, DeAngelo’s owner had offered him to us earlier, but we hadn’t been that interested. With Jennings and a first in the fold, we decided a 2^nd round pick was worth it.

Waiver Moves: Dropped Mike Nugent, Bryce Petty, Calvin Johnson – Hadn’t expected to keep any of them, had only taken them in case nothing happened with Fitzpatrick (Petty), and hoping to include Nugent/Megatron in a trade (or to have a WR1 if he changed his mind on retirement).

Trade #7:

Gave up: 2016 3.08 & 3.10

Got: Delanie Walker

This happened during the draft—our roster was full and we were pretty happy with it, so we offered up our picks. We were on the golf course, getting ready to accept an offer for Khiry Robinson for them, but were having signal issues—when we got signal, we found out we had the offer for Walker. Done deal.

Draft:

1.11 – WR Tyler Boyd
2.08 – RB Paul Perkins
3.05 – RB Tyler Ervin

Waiver Moves: As part of a rules change, the rosters actually expanded after the draft. We picked up Chris Johnson ($7), JJ Nelson ($10), and Tyrell Willams ($3). We also dropped Alfred Morris somewhere around here—I think during the draft, to free up a spot for Ervin.

Then shortly before kickoff, we picked up Rob Kelley for $10, dropping Kendall Wright.

Season Opening Roster

QB: Brees, Bortles, Osweiler,
RB: Bell, DJ, Jennings, Williams, Vereen, CJ2k, Kelley,
WR: Allen, Hurns, Garcon, Britt, Boyd, Nelson, Williams
TE: Eifert, Walker, Clay
K: Catanzaro
Def: Carolina, Arizona
Taxi: Perkins, Ervin

In Season:

IR: Keenan Allen
Acquire: Quincy Enunwa for $22

When Allen went down, we figured we were screwed. We started trying to get a WR1—or even a WR2 who could masquerade as a WR1—but no such luck. We were fortunate to have already grabbed Williams, and Enunwa helped as well.

IR: Shane Vereen
Acquire: Jimmy Garoppolo for $16

There wasn’t much on the wire that would help us, and we figured he might make a trade chip at some point, if we held him. We didn’t.

Drop: Chris Johnson
Acquire: James Starks for $40

This…was one of our worst mistakes—we forgot to retract the bid on Starks after we found out he wasn’t even going to be able to play after Lacy got hurt. Whoops. Actually, before the week started, we dropped Starks for Cordarrelle Patterson.

Drop: Jimmy Garoppolo
Acquire: Alfred Blue for $0

Not sure what we were thinking here.

Drop: Alfred Blue
Acquire: Dan Bailey for $2

Drop: Chandler Catanzaro
Acquire: DuJuan Harris for $0

We ended up sticking with Bailey for the remainder of the season.

Trade #8:

Gave up: WR Keenan Allen, 2017 3^rd round pick

Got: WR Kelvin Benjamin

As the trade deadline approached, the same team that gave us David Johnson made this offer to us. While we really like Keenan Allen, he hasn’t been able to stay healthy, and we needed WR help to make a final push. Our record was pretty strong at this point, but we still didn’t have a WR1. Of course, as it turns out, even after this trade, we really didn’t.

Drop: Shane Vereen, Arizona Defense, Carolina Defense
Acquire: Green Bay Defense ($7), New York Giants Defense ($7)

We had to make a move with Vereen once he was activated, but didn’t have anyone else we wanted to cut. The moves with the defenses were purely speculation for the playoffs.

Drop: Green Bay Defense
Acquire: Darius Jackson

Season Results:

We finished the season 9-4 and won our division, and had high points scored by almost 100 points over the next team. Unfortunately, we choked in Week 13, and that next highest scoring team finished 10-3, to claim the top seed, while we were #2.

We walked through Week 15, to face the top seed in the finals—and while we had mostly late Saturday & Sunday games, he built up a big lead with Matt Ryan, Odell Beckham and Jay Ajayi—and then to rub it in, he added to his lead Sunday with 22.90 points from Steve Smith, who we passed on in the dispersal draft, and Dan Bailey kicked extra points instead of FG against the Lions, sealing a 151.67-145.56 loss.

Roster as of 1/6/2017:

QB: Brees, Bortles, Osweiler,
RB: Bell, DJ, Jennings, Williams, Kelley, Perkins, Ervin, Jackson
WR: Benjamin, Hurns, Garcon, Britt, Boyd, Nelson, Williams
TE: Eifert, Walker, Clay
K: Bailey
Def: New York Giants

We’ve already found out that we will be staying in Twisted Dynasty 5, although only one other team from this season is remaining with us. The 12 owners are actually discussing starting our own league, due to how active our league was—there were a total of 47 trades made in our league, and at one point, I believe our league had about 5x the number of trades as the other five Twisted Dynasty leagues combined.

If you’re interested in following along with updates on this league (and likely our other Dynasty adventures), you can follow us on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter…