My pet peeve this time of year is people using season-long ADP or the ADP in the queue where leagues are hosted to talk about perfect drafts or guys to pick in each round.
“I like Malik Nabers in the fifth round!” Well, he wasn’t even going there in July and he sure as damn hell isn’t going there now. Since Friday at NFFC, Nabers is the 29th overall pick on average (80 drafts as of Tuesday). That’s a 50.3% increase in draft cost vs. where he was going on average from after the NFL draft through July 31 (307 drafts). For the record, Nabers is my WR25, about six WR slots below where he’s being drafted.
Who are the players who are moving so radically of late compared with where they were through July? Remember, the default for the queues where we draft is the entire draft season. I want to know where guys are going right now.
I have a list here. Negative is an earlier pick. Positive is a later one.
Let’s look at this by position.
QUARTERBACK
All the QBs are going later now. Jayden Daniels is barely up. Josh Allen is the biggest loser relative to early in the draft season, as he’s all the way down to a borderline fourth rounder. There’s no real reason here other than everyone realizing that drafting an early QB is a solution looking for a problem.
RUNNING BACK
Forget about Isiah Pacheco at his listed ADP. He’s a late second-round pick now, up from an early fourth-rounder. This is buying into the belief that Kansas City will have a more reasonable share of rushing TDs near the goal line. I agree.
Rico Dowdle is up to the 10th/11th round, about an 18% bump. Ezekiel Elliott is basically unchanged and I think he’s still the better pick. They didn’t bring in Elliott to have him sit behind Dowdle. Why can’t Elliott score 13 TDs? (NOTE: Wednesday’s news that Dalvin Cook has been signed by Dallas hurts Dowdle but has little impact on my Elliott forecast.)
Chase Brown has a 14% bump to the ninth round. Zack Moss is down 9% to the ninth round. It’s basically dealer’s choice with them both. As best as I can understand it, the current thinking of the Brown stans is, “We know Moss is the ‘starter.’ But Brown is better because… (?????) Moss will quickly struggle even though our entire conceit is this is a top RB offense. Brown then crushes it in limited snaps to seize the RB1 in short order! Easy. Peasy.” Not buying that.
RBs dropping….
Rachaad White is down about 19% to where we used to get Pacheco in the fourth round. Bucky Irving is up to being a 13th-round pick. The theory of the case here is that White was very inefficient and Irving has impressed in camp and is better than his real-life draft capital. I agree with the former, of course. Who knows about the latter. At cost, I’d rather have just Irving.
Kyren Williams is down about 14%. This is before news broke that Sean McVay wants him to return punts to get him more touches. Implicit in that was that maybe he wasn’t going to get as many touches as we expected for most of the summer. Williams was my RB5. I was way over market on him. This is something still that may not happen but, if it does, returning punts seems likely to cut into his workload. But note this from ESPN’s Mike Clay: “Kyren Williams handled 100% of the Rams’ punt returns during Weeks 1-3 last season. He played 86% of the offensive snaps and had 39 carries and 19 targets during the span.” Bottom line, Williams is likely to be even cheaper now. I’m in.
WIDE RECEIVER
No one thinks Rashee Rice (fourth round) is going to be suspended now. So his ADP has been almost cut in half. An NFL suspension is not a legal issue. We know he’s going to be suspended. And that suspension is likely to be massive (eight games-plus). We are guessing when. If the state drops the case next week, the hammer probably comes down instantly (see Zay Jones). So his protection now is that his misconduct rose to a felony level?
Cooper Kupp is now a late-second/early-third pick. I’ve never understood why he was so low to begin with given his dominance in scoring for us his last five regular-season games. Maybe Puka Nacua’s knee injury is a factor, but Nacua is down just seven picks to the top of the second round.
Two veterans are up near 20% for non-injury, non-holdout reasons. Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Khalil Shakir are now seventh and ninth rounders, respectively. I’m more interested in JSN at this price than Shakir. The theory with Shakir is that he’s the only receiver who’s caught a pass from Allen. But it’s not like these two are Jim Kelly and Andre Reed. Color me skeptical.
Stefon Diggs is down over a round to the fourth round. You’re really fading the Texans if you buy this drop because you think Diggs is done. They are paying him $22.5 million this year. He’s the 17th-highest paid receiver, according to Over The Cap. He’s obviously not going to stand for being a third option in the passing game given this is a contract year. He’s still a third-round pick to me, my WR17, though obviously the later the better.
Michael Pittman Jr. has fallen from a second-rounder to a third-round pick. Pass. Courtland Sutton easily could outscore Pittman, and while Sutton has risen, he’s only an eighth-round pick. I took him as the 34th WR last weekend in a big league. Sutton is WR31 in my rankings.
TIGHT END
On the upswing, Taysom Hill is now a 14th-round pick if you’re interested. So you have to prioritize him slightly instead of just making him a pocket pick. (that’s when you can take a player out of your pocket whenever you feel like it.)
The TE who has risen the most is George Kittle, who is up about a round to an early seventh-rounder, maybe as high as late sixth. I’d love to think I had something to do with this as I’m not aware of many Kittle fans in fantasy. Maybe this is speculating that Brandon Aiyuk will be gone since Deebo Samuel is also up similarly.
At the other extreme is Sam Laporta, who has dropped from a late-second/early-third pick to late third/early fourth. Travis Kelce is nipping him so slightly as the TE1 now. I get it. Kelce was great when we last saw him in the postseason. But will he be conserved for January again? This feels likely.
LaPorta probably has no shot at the kind of explosive, 1,000-yard-plus TE season we crave. But what’s really happening with LaPorta is that the market likes Jameson Williams a lot more of late — about a round early, all the way up to overall pick 95. It’s rational to calculate that more production from Williams will come at LaPorta’s expense.
(Top photo of Rashee Rice: Jamie Squire/Getty Images)
