Welcome to another great year of winning by the only website/community combining content, tools, optimizers, and coaching! We are very excited to introduce our NFL staff to you for 2018’s football season. We held auditions earlier this summer and after measuring events like the high jump, 40 yd dash, Wonderlic, box jumps, bench press, and 12 ounce curls, these are the survivors of the grueling tasks that earned the right to produce our content for the season.
As always, I asked our new staff the same question and tallied their answers for you. This year’s question was: Who is your most OVERrated player and your most UNDERrated player for the 2018 fantasy football season? And, here are their answers…
DFSUpNorth
Josh comes to us from the PGA side of things. He is a master with his ChalkDonkey concept in taking us off the chalk plays and finding quality pivots at low ownership. He will be continuing his concept right through the NFL season for our VIPs.
Overrated: Jerick McKinnon RB San Francisco 49ers
This will be an unpopular opinion as McKinnon seems to be every tout’s favorite player heading into the season but I’m not convinced that he’s worth where he is going in drafts right now. His current ADP is 19.4 meaning that in a standard twelve team league, you are seeing McKinnon going towards the end of the second round. This is same guy who started last year as the third string on the Vikings roster and was talked about as a late preseason cut.
The 49ers made McKinnon the third highest paid RB in the league and obviously will want him to be successful but remember Coach Shanahan’s time in Atlanta where they had a true Running Back by Committee with Tevin Coleman and Devonta Freeman and I think we might see that here with McKinnon and Matt Breida. Shanahan has stated that he wants to run an offense that makes defenses “defend everyone” and has shown in the past that he obviously isn’t opposed to spreading the ball around to keep defenses guessing. 49ers beat writer Grant Cohn referred to Breida as the best true running back in camp on day 3 of Training camp and Breida averaged 55.6 yards per game in the games that Jimmy Garopollo started last year so theres familiarity there.
The 49ers also have Joe Williams in the mix who they gave up a lot of draft capital to get two years ago. There are three guys here who all have legitimate shots at touches this year and to me there are too many question marks to merit McKinnon being drafted where he is. I’d rather take my chances fading him and get Breida at his 152 ADP hoping that he ends up the feature back in this offense. (edited)
Underrated: Lamar Miller RB Houston Texans
Have you been burned by Lamar Miller in the past? I have, multiple times, but I’m willing to go back because he is legitimately the only running back option in one of the most dynamic offenses in the league with the weakest strength of schedule.
I love every Texan this year. Deshaun Watson, DeAndre Hopkins, Will Fuller, heck I’ve even been drafting Stephen Anderson late in Best Ball drafts and Lamar Miller is another Texan that I love. The Texans have overhauled their line this year and added two solid free agents in Seantrel Henderson and Zach Fulton. The line was BRUTAL last year and was not only responsible for Watson’s ACL tear but also the lack of production from the Texan RB’s.
I fully understand that Lamar Miller got outsnapped by D’onta Foreman and Alfred Blue late in the year last year but with Foreman out with an achilles tear (possibly till late in the year and Blue gone, there is literally no one left to play but Miller.
Miller had some success with Watson last year, averaging 3.5 yards per carry and a 51% success rate on early down work and I think that continues this year. What I really like about Miller though is the offense around him and their schedule. Playing what I and others consider to be the easiest schedule in the league this year, Miller will likely be called into games to run the ball late in the game, sealing the deal for wins. While we might not see Miller rack up a ton of yards early while the Texans are letting Watson do his thing slinging bombs to Hopkins and Fuller, I think we see a lot of Miller late in games and yards are yards no matter when they come!
Also Read: Top 10 Tips for Winning Season Long Football by DFSUpNorth
Burns273
Burns is our “gpp in review” specialist and perhaps our sharpest mathematical mind. Talking to him for 10 seconds can leave your head smoking. He has perfectly overtaken our Shark Autopsy concept where he takes a look at a winning gpp lineup and reverse-engineers it showing our members where the leverage was gained and where the gpp was won. Shark Autopsy has been so popular inside the Army we are carrying it on through NFL as well.
Over-Rated: Derrick Henry, RB, Tennessee Titans
Henry’s current overall ADP rests at approximately 34.8, but with the addition of Dion Lewis, Henry may not pay off his ADP. Our own Geek’s Picks has Henry as his 28th best RB, whereas his current RB ADP is 11th. By season’s end, barring injury to Lewis, he may even be lower than 28th. Derrick Henry has not finished higher than 45th best RB since coming into the league in 2015. He was in a time-share with DeMarco Murray his first two seasons in the NFL, and with a conceivably more dominant RB in Lewis, Henry may not sniff any higher than the 45th best RB. Henry’s Strength of Schedule (SOS) will not pay high any dividends in his favor as he is facing the 12th toughest schedule in the league for RBs in 2018.
Under-Rated: Jerrick McKinnon, RB, San Francisco 49ers
Carlos Hyde is gone from the Bay Area signing with the Browns and McKinnon signed with the 49ers in the offseason. This is a great get for the 49ers to pair with Jimmy Garappolo, Pierre Garcon, Marquise Goodwin, and George Kittle. When Dalvin Cook went down with injury last season, McKinnon took over. He is a PPR machine and if your league is a ½ or full point PPR, you need RBs that can move the PPR meter. This 49ers offense is going to be a high-flying offense that is sure to win people season-long leagues this season! McKinnon’s current ADP is 21.1 which places him as approximately the 15th RB off the board. This is a massive opportunity for you to get on board a league winning RB at discounted price. Geek’s Picks has McKinnon as 10th best RB, but by season’s end, McKinnon could be a top 5 RB this season.
Editor’s Note – Already conflict? One writer says: “I’m not convinced with where he is going (in drafts)…”, and the very next writer says: “This is a massive opportunity for you to get on board…” It’s only preseason and I’m already confused!
ScottiB aka “The Dong Detector”
Scotti is a preseason specialist, and you might not see a ton of him once the regular season swings in full. But, until then, we are leaning on him to give us the edge in the wild 4 week mini-season. If you do just a little extra work, you can really find that edge in the preseason. Scotti also is famous out on Twitter for his Dong Detector articles and has a knack for finding that player set to have a huge game.
Overrated: Danny Amendola
(never had more than 500 yards and 3 TDs) always hurt.
Underrated: John Brown (Bal)
more of sleeper but he’s taking over the deep ball throw guy.
How to Play the Preseason – DFS NFL Preseason Research Strategy
Winning is just what we do. Here you see five winners in different sports only from the month of July. Two $100,000 winners in Nascar and PGA (August also has a $100,000 winner in MLB), and three wins in MLB of $50,000, $20,000, and $10,000. It’s great to promote these huge wins of sometimes life-changing money. But, we also have wins of all levels thanks to many previously losing players crediting us with complete turnarounds in their games after investing in themselves and becoming VIPs. Try us for FREE and see for yourself!!
ThunderDan
Dan is crossing over with us from our MLB staff. He has absolutely proven to be a “jack of all trades” writer capable of shortening your research time with Covering ALL the Bases or by diving deep with Dr. StrangeChalk. Dan’s NFL concept had us excited when he showed us how using our correlation metrics can provide significant edges based on the specific players rather than the generic positions alone (we have an incredible tool set to debut using this concept this year, too). He sealed the deal in his audition with a double twisting layout in the back yard after a few too many beers….
Here is a sample…
Correlation chart
Next level evaluation
Overdrafted – Leonard Fournette.
For me, seeing the big LSU back come off the board in the first round is a mistake. His rookie season breakout relied heavily on touchdowns and a massive volume of carries. He had a few big games inflate his rushing total, but he was held under 70 yards in 7 of his team’s games and is a non-threat in the passing game. I expect Jacksonville to lean him on him again, but will his health hold up to the type of volume he received last year and do we even know if Jacksonville will be any good offensively? I also expect to see some negative touchdown regression from Fournette to put a little icing on the overvalued cake.
Underdrafted – Cooper Kupp
Kupp is not a sexy name this preseason, but is the a guy I’d love to have on my team. He’s currently going around pick 110 in yahoo drafts, but I love Kupp as a candidate for major breakout in his sophomore season. He was targeted 95 times last year by his buddy Jared Goff and was fourth in the NFL with 23 Red Zone targets. He only scored 5 TD’s last season, but I would expect that number to go up as Kupp should be leaned on as a reliable target running intermediate and underneath routes in a high-powered Rams offense. In terms of touchdown regression, it’s fair to mention I expect to see a little more from Cooper Kupp in 2018.
DFSnDonuts
Donuts has been a coach for NFL, NBA, and MLB in the past 12 calendar months. It’s hard to find a more well-rounded contributor to the army team. He is also credited with creating a user-friendly, mass-multi entry (MME) system for our members that has taught many of them the power of leveraging multiple lineups and controlling player exposures. See his MME Playbook in our MLB tab. Donuts plans several contributions weekly for NFL 2018!!
Overrated : Kansas City Chiefs Offense
Tyreek Hill has a very high bust potential for the 2018 season. A player who was incredibly efficient and somewhat lucky, albeit very fast and adept at breaking big plays, is bound to have a little bit of regression to the mean for his position. That’s not to say he won’t be explosive and make splash plays here and there, but for him to do it so routinely and for owners to depend on that is setting yourself up for disappointment.
In 2017, Albert Wilson was the #2 wide receiver on the team based on his 62 targets. This season, Hill has to contend with Sammy Watkins on the other side if the field stealing a handful of targets. Also, no matter how exciting the cannon armed Patrick Mahomes is, there is a considerable chance that he falls short of expectations. In addition to a possible quarterback downgrade and target thief splitting out wide, Spencer Ware will be returning to the backfield which not only takes a bit away from Kareem Hunt but I believe could force the offense to pound the ball a bit more this season.
Underrated: Jerick McKinnon (SF49ers)
In 2017, McKinnon had 15+ touches in just 5 games. He finished as RB3, RB3, RB4, RB31 and RB41 in those games. He had 2.9% drop rate last season and a 75.0% catch rate. Increased volume running the ball and pass catching opportunities equals abundant top 5 finishes. If you’re worried about sharing carries with Matt Breida, that’s okay. McKinnon will make up the loss in possible carries with receptions. I look back at what happened with the Vikings and how hey brought in L. Murray. He was an elite pass blocking back they needed due to their 32nd and 24th ranked offensive line (2016, 2017 – playerprofiler). The 49ers are a much better offensive line and his skills are perfect for the concept Shanahan will try to deploy with his current bevy of weapons. You have to reach for him in the early second round but I’m okay with doing just that because I firmly believe his upside is a top-5 back.
Save the link – While not ready just yet, our NFL Research Station is set to debut in time for the regular season.
Choppodong
Much like Donuts and ThunderDan, Choppodong is a bit of a jack of all trades. He specializes in eating chalk and giving you time-saving slate overviews designed to cut your research time down significantly. ChinMusic is likely the most read of his pieces from MLB season. His coaching channels and YouTube videos are always buzzing with activity. Chop enters his 4th NFL season with the DFS Army and has perhaps the most decorated pedigree of all staffers……………..he started here because he read Ffootballgeek’s blog. That’s it. Call him the true Cinderella story, or call him the loudest man in the room. He isn’t easily offended, and you are right on both counts.
Overrated – Alvin Kamara.
I never like buying players that are the “hype” or “last year’s shiny toy.” Everyone I see early on is touting Kamara as the next greatest feature back. He’s still in a committee with Mark Ingram for most of the year, and a ton of his plays last year were dictated by snapping off huge plays. That kind of production is never sustainable. Those factors, alone, make me take pause on a first round pick. But, add in he is likely the 4th RB off the board and I’ll pass. It’s not that he isn’t great. It’s that people are reaching for him……..and I’ll let them.
Underrated – Larry Fitzgerald.
All I’m going to say is when you typically look to go double RB in your first couple rounds, you wind up looking at TE or WR in the 3rd round of your draft. Last year, Travis Kelce was a pretty easy grab in that spot being we didn’t know of Zach Ertz (at least not well) and a couple other names surfacing this year. I can wait a little while on TE and pick from the lower 2nd tier. I can’t wait on WR. Larry Fitzgerald is projected as going about 20th and people hate his age. But, for the first 10 weeks of a season, he always seems to be there. I don’t mind taking a ppr kind of guy without an established #2 that gets red zone looks with a shorter passing QB throwing to him and an offensive coordinator looking to keep things moving while DJ eases back in. If you have two huge RBs, Larry makes one solid WR1 on your team. You can also just pound this area for depth while your draftmates scramble for scraps at RB with names like Jordan Howard, Christian McCafferey and/or Joe Mixon. I trust Larry’s production a lot more than those names…..hence, why he is still underrated as the potential father of Ricky Henderson….he’s that old.
For more on Chop’s goofy side, see his Top 7 Creative Ways to Select your Fantasy Football League’s Draft Order
Introducing Our Newest Fantasy Football NFL Staffer — DabbingPuggle
Editor’s Note 2 – I was blown away when I asked for a simple submission for this question and this was Puggle’s response. Not only was he the first one in, he was exponentially the most thorough. You guys have no idea the depths to which this guy drives. He will be VIP-only 99% of the time….so you had better become a member if you want the dollars that will be falling from his brain this season.
Over/Under with Dabbingpuggle
As the NFL season quickly approaches everyone playing season long usually has their draft sometime in the month of August. Sure, there are some early best-balls and those who just can’t wait and are drafting for the 2018-19 season in the middle of May (cough, guilty). However, this is what I like to refer to as the prep-season. Preseason is a tease, a poor microcosm of the true NFL product we’ve allowed to consume our Sundays come September. But prep-season, this is arguably the most important time of the year for fantasy sports, one wrong pick may not totally ruin your season long team we can always adjust; one right pick though can certainly put you atop of the leader board. With that, I’d like to go over a couple of overvalued and undervalued players for this year.
Overvalued: Christian McCaffrey RB Carolina Panthers.
He gets a bump in PPR leagues and was not terrible in his rookie season. 435 yards rushing, 80 catches for 651 yards and 7 total TD’s ranking him 12th in fantasy RB points last year. So, by all accounts, he should be better with a whole year of professional pigskin under his belt. His current ADP on most sites is in the mid 20’s which seems fair, but let’s go through a few reasons why I don’t see him paying off in that spot. 2018-19 it appears that most people are gravitating back to the RB first strategy which would make McCaffrey your RB2 with upside potential. The issue is Mr. Anderson: a new addition to a Panthers squad who at is expected to fill a power back role for Ron Rivera. We’ve seen systems like this before, Duke-Crowell in Cleveland, Cohen-Howard in Chicago, and take it back a few years to Bradshaw-Jacobs for the New York Football Giants. A lightning-thunder combination that makes sense for teams, but not necessarily for fantasy. I don’t like split back systems regardless of the versatility that makes McCaffrey a potentially very special player. They cap upside and potential of an individual players performance. Perhaps the main reason I’m wary to select CMac in this range is that when healthy, Anderson has proved to be not only serviceable but extremely capable of quality production. Coming off a 1000-yard season, I find it hard to believe his presence there won’t drastically inhibit McCaffrey to take the next step into the elite tier of featured backs this season, because McCaffrey is not that player. He is an extremely talented hybrid player, but I just haven’t seen enough to choose him over A.J. Green, Rob Gronkowski, Mike Evans, Keenan Allen, Davante Adams all with an ADP within 5 spots of where McCaffrey is currently going.
Undervalued: Jared Goff QB LA Rams
I’m almost irate about his 120th ADP, 15th average QB taken. Last year I hated Goff, but for good reason. Rookie Quarterbacks typically do two things. They generate a ton of hype, and they turn the ball over.
Goff wasn’t your typical rookie, he had almost half a season under his belt and now after seeing a 3,800 passing yard season with a 28-7 TD to interception rate I’m all in. Here is a short list of how Goff stacked up to the league amongst qualified quarterbacks.
Passing Yards: 3,804 10th
Passing YPA: 7.98 3rd
Passing TD: 28 5th
Passer Rating: 100.5 5th
Interceptions: 7 2nd
So please tell me how the in the world people are drafting, Andrew Luck, Jimmy Garoppolo, and Pat Mahomes ahead of this guy. Yes, Pat Mahomes. I’m not saying Goff is as good as Rodgers, Brady, or…. Hmm he just may be as good as anyone else. It’s an outrage people, we’re here to win and so are the Rams. They brought in a guy by the name of Cooks in case you’ve been under the bleachers all season. So now what we are looking at coming into this season is a more experienced quarterback with a top 10 offensive line and an improved receiving core. I really can’t sell this any harder, draft Goff.
Undervalued Sleeper: The New England Patriots DST
This seems odd to throw a DST out there as a sleeper. I have been a longtime proponent of never even drafting a DST if your league allows it and playing the matchup game all season, there is a small disparity between fantasy points of the #1 DST and the number #15 DST at the end of each season. But every draft has that guy who is taking the Jaguars in the 10th or 11th and starting a run. Don’t be that guy. Quickly, name all the top position players in the AFC East…… times up, outside of the Patriots you got LeSean McCoy and ummm Kenyan Drake? Almost 40% of New England’s games this year will be played against an offense that rivals that of your local community college. Sign me up.
NFL Season Long Fantasy Football Extra Point
I really hope you guys see the potential we have to add to our already decorated Wall of Wins this year. From research time-savers to deep diving data-driven content, we have you covered if you are busy or living in mom’s basement with time to spare. Our tools are all being revamped, and our optimizer is second-to-none in terms of customizability, projections, and ownership spotting. Add in the coaching value provided by experts like these, and you are in for your best NFL season yet. I can safely say the DFS Army is fully locked and loaded…..ready to explode into the year. Don’t be left behind!!