A Look Back at the Preseason Average Cheat Sheet

 

By MV November 7th 2015

This has to be one of the most confusing years in recent memory. At the midway point it is time to take a look back at the draft and the rest of the way. Injuries are not new to the game of football and this isn’t a study on injuries. Brady Quinn came out and claimed that there is a link between injuries and PED usage, OK, or it is football and these men are giants running 4.4 forties running into each other. So for the sake of this research we will just say that injuries happen and they probably won’t go away, nor will the star players’ injuries ever be minimized.

So let’s look at the mass of players’ ineffectiveness as compared to where they were drafted. The amount of dubbed “ineffective” players is startling. We have been in business for 18 seasons and I can’t remember ever seeing this many “busts” in the first 4-5 rounds of a draft. There has always been a revolving door of first rounders and our rule of thumb is that you can count on half the first rounders this year will be eliminated from the first round of next year’s draft.

Below is a snapshot of the top 50 picks per our preseason Average Cheat Sheet for PPR leagues.

Let’s look at the first round: Bell and Charles are both done for the year while Dez Bryant and Marshawn Lynch have missed significant playing time.

Let’s focus on the yellow Antonio Brown was slapped with the ineffective tab the minute Ben Roethlisberger went down with injury. Ant will likely be fine, but it may be too late in week 9 for a team to recover from missing out on his expected activity.

Eddie Lacy has been an embarrassment so far, he looks like a truck out there and not an F350 mowing over heads but like a Ford Ranger with a shaky transmission. It’s almost like he is not in full football shape yet, and as it gets colder and as the season goes on we expect him to play much better, again, probably too little too late. The biggest piece seems to be the offense not looking like it has in recent years. The loss of Jordy was huge. Cobb and Davante Adams injuries have also negatively impacted this team’s offensive performance. Jordy stretches the field and opens things up for this team to get early leads and lean on Lacy like the chip leader does in a Hold ‘Em tournament.

Demaryius Thomas only has 1 TD through the first half of the season, but he is still doing his thing in PPR leagues.

CJ Anderson doing his best Montee Ball impersonation might be the biggest “bust” of the year. FSC did not fall for it. We didn’t like CJ going into the season and avoided him even in the 2nd round of our Championship league.

Wow. This may have been the worst 2nd round in history. It’s not like Forsett, Green, and Ingram have been lighting the year up either. The 3rd round wasn’t much better if you did not get DeAndre Hopkins.

What is the point that I am trying to make? Well here it goes: you can recover from a couple of bad early picks. This explains how we are in 2nd place in our Fantasy Football Players Championship team despite drafting DaVante Adams, DeMarco Murray and Jamal Charles with 3 of our first 5 picks. It is apparent that the need for “value picks” later in the draft has become more and more prevalent. If you followed our advice you drafted DeVonta Freeman. In season management is extremely important to your chances of winning season long fantasy leagues. There have been so many impact pick-ups every week and if you are not on the wire and making moves then you’re dead. Let FSC help you.

Meanwhile the daily game gets more and more popular every year. Daily will never eliminate the season-long league because everyone loves the draft, but after seeing the results of this top 50 it’s no surprise the popularity is through the roof. Our daily projections page is helping us and a ton of other daily players make some great money this year. How are you doing?

Projections 2015 A look back

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