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An Opinionated Fantasy Sports Podcast discussing Fantasy Football, College Fantasy Football, and a little NBA.
Welcome to the Fantasy Sports Collective podcast. This is J Dub. We're in the lull. We got some mini camps hitting up soon. We got some early June or post June cuts They'll be interesting to talk about in the next few weeks.
Speaker 1:And then we go into a real dark hole until July, and then we get into the thick of it. The heart of Fantasy Football draft auction roster construction season, which is always a great time. Today is show I'm gonna talk about draft capital. I think we get hyped up. We people just love rookies, but I also wanna ground us on what's the value of a rookie.
Speaker 1:And, look, I've been a longtime subscriber too and a big fan of football guys and bunch of other sources. I won't go through those sources today, but Jason Wood, who's a writer there, did a series, and I've actually done a little bit of this analysis in the past as well just looking at what's the likely percent of success based on where people are drafted. And we talk a lot about draft capital, especially in the nerdy, geeky areas of fantasy, but it's a real thing. It is a real thing. And so I just wanted to touch on it and go through some of Jason's work to give you some perspective.
Speaker 1:And it's not to scare you away, but it's just to really reinforce the fact that it's pretty rare outside of first day on court for quarterbacks, really aka round one or day one or two for receivers and a certain extent, why running backs as well. While the the devaluation of the position has made guys at a little bit lower level be able to perform, the statistics say very differently. So I'll walk you through that. Let's start with quarterbacks. Again, you should go read the long form at football guys and Jason Wood, I think, published recently.
Speaker 1:And then I have some analysis as well. I tried to put a link in the in my podcast notes from I think it was two seasons ago. I looked at the previous ten years. I specifically looked at quarterbacks but this applies to every position and there is by the way before I get into the position, here is why it matters when you are a first round pick and even second, third round that's very significant draft capital. Those are the players that are hyped up in the media, Those are the players everyone talks about when they do the press conference during a post draft.
Speaker 1:That's the player that the GM and the coach are sitting up next to. And so there's a level of expectation that these guys are gonna be contributors, and there's also a level of second and third chances these players get. I think that's probably the most important component of this is if you're a second round pick, a wide receiver, a running back, you're in the media guide. Again, there's an expectation. You're going to get multiple chances to succeed over a player who is undrafted and even players that were fifth, sixth, seventh rounders that are anonymous.
Speaker 1:They were not part of the press conference. They're not highlighted as crucial picks, and there's no high expectation on them. So with that all said, let me just talk about this. Jason did this analysis looking at the last ten seasons, and we'll start with quarterbacks. I'll go position by position.
Speaker 1:There's a 106 quarterbacks according to his analysis in the past ten ten years. 19 of those quarterbacks finished in the top 24, which is a threshold for relevance in super flex leagues, which is what we play in. And only 7% of those finished in as top 12 quarterbacks. Right? If you look at the top seasons overall based on fantasy point score, super flex format, Jayden Daniels actually had the best ever as a rookie, by the way.
Speaker 1:These are rookie numbers, and, obviously, he was a first round overall pick, and he finished as a fifth overall quarterback last year. Dak Prescott, by the way, this is this precludes the Cam Newton years. Cam Newton as a rookie was insane because he threw for over 4,000 yards as one of his best passing seasons. In fact, he's only rookie quarterback first rookie quarterback to break 400 yards passing and only for rookie quarterback ever in the history of the game to have 400 yards in back to back games to start his career, and he had 14 rushing touchdowns that year. So people may forget about Cam Newton, but I will never forget him mostly because he led me to a title in my home league.
Speaker 1:But this is just looking at 2015 through 02/2024. Jayden Daniels was the top rookie ever. Actually, significant number of fantasy points. He was the fifth overall ranked player that year, and this is looking I think this is yeah. It's ranked based on where they finished that quarterback in that fantasy season.
Speaker 1:So Dak Prescott was the number two overall, and he was the fourth round selection. And if you remember, he got ascended because Romo Tony Romo got hurt early, and he had this Storybrooke year. So he's up there. Bo Nix is third all time, which is great in terms of again, of the last ten years, not all time. First round.
Speaker 1:I won't go player by player, but, basically, you go down the list and you get to I think it's, let's see, three, four, five, six. You get, like, 12, and it's Gardner Minshew who was a six rounder. Every other player was a first rounder aside from Dak Prescott. And then you go further down, and the only other guy in, like, when you get down into the 20 range is Deshaun Kaiser who had that crazy year where he got ascended. The browns had lost all their quarterbacks, and he'd been a second rounder.
Speaker 1:So that gives you some perspective as a rookie. And, again, there's some guys that have been successful post rookie, but it just gives you perspective as a rookie. The likelihood of success is very low. And if you do it by round, the first round saw 48, 49% of the top 24 finishes, 33 of the one zero six, and they had 18 of the top 12%. Right?
Speaker 1:So the reality is that if you're in a redraft league, the only the only rookie that really matters is gonna be Cam Ward and maybe Jackson Dart. But definitely, like, I statistically, would you would say Jackson Dart is much better and has a much higher opportunity than Dylan Gabriel or Shearer Sanders and or Tyler Show. Although I think Tyler Show and Ward are probably the two guys and maybe Dylan Gabriel or Shadir Sanders. I I believe one of those two guys are both will get a significant number of starts this year. But as a rookie, that's what you're looking at.
Speaker 1:The likelihood of any of these other guys starting and contributing is very low. So let's go to running backs here. I'm just gonna I'm just gonna go position by position. Just give you some perspective. In running backs, this is even more pronounced.
Speaker 1:219 running backs have been drafted between 2015 and '24. 45 of those, 21% finished in the top 36, which is the basic threshold for a 12 team league. So if you're in a 14 or 16 team league, you'd extend this even further out. But you get the gist. 26 of those ranked in the top 24 and only 12 finishes top 12 back.
Speaker 1:So basically, RB one. If I go through the list, there's a litany of guys, and up as third round, second round, guys like cream hunt was way up here. Jonathan Taylor, second round, obviously Jonathan Taylor was top of the second round. Alvin Kamara was a third rounder. David Johnson, who was very productive for a short period of time.
Speaker 1:Third rounder. Jordan Howard was a fifth rounder. Antonio Gibson was third round. Bucky Irving last year was a fourth round. So you're getting the gist.
Speaker 1:Right? Nick Chubb was a second rounder. Miles Sanders, second round. These are all guys that that had hit this threshold. Deandre Swift was second round.
Speaker 1:Devin A. Cheyne, third, and so on. If you go down this list, Tyrone Chasey makes an appearance here around 2025. He was a fit. Elijah Mitchell as a rookie had a good year.
Speaker 1:He was a six rounder. But you go through it. It's pretty stark. And just to give you perspective, 11 of the 49 of these top of these players that hit this threshold were first round picks. That's 22%.
Speaker 1:10 were second rounders. Eight were third rounders. 10 were fourth rounders. And after you get past the fourth round, four were fifth round, one sixth rounder, one seventh rounder, and four were undrafted rookie free agents. So you're actually the odds are better that an undrafted rookie free agent would hit this threshold than a sixth or seventh rounder.
Speaker 1:About that for a second. Only two from the sixth and seventh round made it, and four were undrafted. Now granted, there's probably more undrafted. So on a on an absolute basis, you're better off in sixth and seventh round. But point taken, which is it's a crapshoot.
Speaker 1:It is a crapshoot. So let's look at the ten year hit rates of rookie running backs by round. In the first round, there's 14 guys in the during that period. 79 and rounding up. 78.6.
Speaker 1:But 79% of those guys finished in the top 36. So your likelihood of hitting on a productive fantasy player as a first rounder is very high. And by the way, that if you go to the top 24, which is a clear r b one or sorry, r b 71%. So a significant portion. And 50% of those were top 12.
Speaker 1:So, basically, you're fifty fifty. You're gonna get an r b one with the first round pick rookie. Pretty amazing. Right? Pretty high percentage.
Speaker 1:Second round, 48% in the top 36, 33% in top 24, and 5% in the top 12. And then you get down to third round. And by the way, there's 21 players in the second round who had been selected as running back in the last ten years. 30 have been selected in the third round. You have a 27% chance of top 36, a 20% chance of top 20, and a 10% chance in top top 12.
Speaker 1:Below that, by the way, during the last ten years, there's effectively been one player one player. I'll re rephrase that. One player who have finished in the top 12%. So, basically, if you're not a top top through three rounds effectively, the chance of being an r b one as a rookie are pretty slim. Not impossible.
Speaker 1:There's been one in the last ten years, but it's pretty, pretty slim. And if you wanna go even further, just look at it as a top 24. It's only a couple players total. Zero from the sixth and seventh round, by the way. So it's really a fourth and fifth round is your, like, your drop off.
Speaker 1:Once you get to the sixth or seventh round as rookies, they're just not gonna contribute at this level. So draft capital matters. Let me go to let me get talk about wide receiver real quick and give you that perspective. Wide receiver, you've got a little bit more variance, but not a ton. During this period, by the way, this is interesting.
Speaker 1:50% more wide receivers have been drafted. 326 wide receivers over those ten years, 49 of those, so 15% finished in the top 48. 30 finished in the top 36, which is 9%, and 19 finished in the top 24. Only six total, 2% of the total finishes top 12 fantasy receivers. And I think we know who those guys are.
Speaker 1:Guys like Jamar Chase, Brian Thomas, Justin Jefferson, Puka Nakua is actually gonna be one of the outliers on this. Anyhow, when you go through, you can see the list is I'll just give you the top 20 guys that weren't first round picks as rookies. Pukanukua is number three, and that happened in '23. He was a fifth rounder. Michael Thomas was an early second rounder in 02/2016.
Speaker 1:Juju Smith Schuster, who's obviously career has not gone the way we'd all wanted to be. He was a second rounder. So, again, high draft capital. Rashee Rice, the second rounder. Ahman Saint Brown was a fourth rounder, so great score there.
Speaker 1:Chase Claypool, second rounder. He's obviously fallen off. His best year was a rookie. AJ Brown was a second rounder. Cooper Kupp was a third rounder.
Speaker 1:Tee Higgins, second rounder. Terry McLaurin, third round. DK Metcalf was second round. Jaden Reed was second round. Sterling Shepard, second round.
Speaker 1:Darius Slate in fifth round. So you're getting the gist. Point is some of these guys, they're but they're generally almost all early round picks. If I look at it on a percentage basis, because this is this sort of gives you in Harkins home what matters here. If you're a first round pick wide receiver, there's a greater than 50% chance.
Speaker 1:51% you'll be top 48, and 36% you'll be top 36. 24% that you have fought finished in the top 24 position as a rookie, and 9% you finished at the top 12. When you get down to second round, still decent hit rate here, 29% as top 48, 18% top 36, 10% top 24, 2% top 12. After that, it falls off a cliff. There's only one player after the second round who's finished in the top 12, and that was Puka Nakua, who I already called out.
Speaker 1:If you wanna go top 24, you've got a sub you have a 4%. Actually, rounding up 4.8%. So 5% chance of finishing in top twenty twenty four. And if you just wanna go even further out, it actually gets pretty crazy. You have a 5% chance in top 48 and a 9% chance in the fifth round.
Speaker 1:So 14% chance in the fourth and fifth round, 0% chance in the sixth or seventh round. In fact, in the last ten years, no rookie in the sixth and seventh round has performed even in the top 48%. So think about that. You are basically if you're in a deep dynasty and you can hold guys, sure. You can take a flyer in a sixth or seventh rounder, but the odds of them being productive as a rookie in quite frankly long term is not great.
Speaker 1:So I will do tight end just to reiterate this point. I think you're hearing the core though here, and Jason Wood did a great job driving this home. We've had some amazing recent rookie success at tight end, but it's the same basic thing. So let me go through this. There's been a 145 tight ends were drafted from 2015 to 02/2024, which is interesting, by the way.
Speaker 1:That's obviously significantly more than quarterback, but about ish percent, 65% of running back and a little bit less than 40% of receiver. During that time, only 15 of those finished in the top 24, but now we've seen a lot of that happen in the recent history, so we can talk about that. And only five finished in the top 12, but we have seen the new rep all time records being set the last year. So Sam Laporta in '23, and then Brock Bauer's in '24. And if you go back in recent history, even Dalton McCabe was in the top six in '23.
Speaker 1:So Kyle Pitts was 21, although, you know, I don't love bringing him up since he's taken a a dump. It's just gotten back to where we expected him to be. But if I go through this list, there's only a few guys that weren't especially in the recent history, they're all first rounders. Every one of them, Bowers, Pitts, Evan Ingram, Dalton Kincaid, even though a makes a appearance here. So it's not great, especially recent history.
Speaker 1:I think that maybe people are doing a better job of drafting and utilizing these guys. But if you go through it, if you want a top 12, so basically a fantasy starting tight end caliber player, 0% in so 55% of the first rounders made it, but only 33% overall. So you just don't wanna you don't wanna draft a rookie tight end and expect them to be a starter. You want them to be your backup. You're doing it for dynasty purposes.
Speaker 1:That that's the gist, by the way, of what I would leave you with. If you want somebody to finish in the top 24, again, it's 10% overall of rookies, and 78% of those were first rounders and 24% were second rounds. Basically, for tight end, you want a first round or possibly a second rounder, and you don't want them to be you don't wanna expect them to start. That's just not a good way to kick off your team. You're setting yourself up for failure, whatnot.
Speaker 1:So, anyhow, that's the recap. Just wanted to call out Jason Wood's great work at Football Guys, but just reiterate this point, which I think is really critical that as we think about rookies, we get way caught up so much caught up in how they're performing or what we think they can perform at max level. We're expecting them not to have to take time to develop, and that's just not realistic. So on that note, hope everyone has a great Memorial Day week, and I'll be back shortly with some NBA playoff talk. And then as we get into June, we'll do the post June cuts and news from the league.
Speaker 1:So on that note, hope everybody has a great week. Take care. Bye bye.