Week 3 has seen some quarterbacks get their season on track (Josh Allen, Justin Herbert), some in-game injuries sink some weeks (Christian McCaffrey, AJ Brown), but most notably by FGW measurement…
Cooper Kupp is easily the MVP of Fantasy Football through week 3.
Before getting to that, a look at the Week 3 helped-you-winners and helped-you-losers.
Who won the week?
For a refresher on FGW, check out my initial post on the topic.
- Josh Allen comes storming back. This is what you drafted him for. Ditto for Justin Herbert.
- Get-right games for Davante Adams and Ezekiel Elliott, though I’m a tad nervous about Zeke.
- Isn’t it kinda dumb that no websites offer 6-point field goals as a default? In fact, they should offer decimal points for all yards after 30, too. That was easily a 6.6 point FG by Justin Tucker.
- Quick story – I have a team where I tried a Waller/Kittle strategy this year. I had benched Kittle for Mike Williams in my flex for week 3, only to reverse my decision after finding how much Green Bay has given up to tight ends this year. As is the traditional hard work for going the extra mile, I lost by 0.5.
- 53% of Damien Harris owners might not have owned a Belichick RB before.
- It’s almost poetic how promptly TJ Hockenson and Tyler Lockett have reversed their early season success. No average weeks – just boom or bust.
- AJ Brown and Christian McCaffrey demonstrating why the in-game injuries are so much worse than being a pregame inactive. Dalvin Cook still had a 34% started number in Yahoo! this week, giving him an FGW of -0.09 for the week. But that’s much better than a bad week against a 90%+ start rate.
The MVP According to FGW
- Holy sh*t, Cooper Kupp. He’s the MVP so far and it’s not even close. If you drafted Coop, he’s single-handedly won you almost an entire game, and it’s only week 3. His lead on 2nd place is fairly substantial for this early in the season, even more so considering his best game is under 33 points in 0.5 PPR formats.
- Travis Kelce remains good.
- I’m starting to wonder when Justin Tucker will fall off a bit. Nobody’s benching him, so it’ll have to come with a genuine down week. Same with Tyler Bass.
- Kyler Murray narrowly holding off Patrick Mahomes for the #2 top QB spot. (I literally just wrote “top QB spot” as I’ve learned to pretend Tom Brady doesn’t exist.)
- Kyle Pitts and Robert Tonyan paying a heavy price for not being Travis Kelce.
- Titans WRs turned out to be the Iraqi Dinal of the 2021 investment cycle.
- Aaron Rodgers with an average week, still a ways to go before he’s above par. Interesting that his % started went down after week 2.
- Allen Robinson would probably have the best odds for ending the season as the lowers FGW player right now. I could see him continuing to get a lot of starts in the midst of what appears to be an emerging dumpster fire in the Chicago QB room.
Looking Back at the Draft
Given that FGW isn’t measured against the cost it took to acquire the player, a worthwhile way to look at FGW is to see how players drafted around the same spot are performing relative to each other.
Here’s the top 4 rounds by Yahoo! ADP, with JK Dobbins and Cam Akers removed:
- Travis Kelce, 1st overall pick? That’s what the cool kids were saying.
- A lot of people saw the Saquon Barkley risk on draft day. Less so for Jonathan Taylor.
- Rough year draft slots in the 10-12 range. Anyone that ended up with a combination of Barkley/Taylor/Stefon Diggs is having a rough year.
- Unless, of course, they fell into Chris Godwin and Kupp/Murray in round 4.
- So far, it looks like Round 4 was the important round this year, with a huge spread for players in that round.
- The worst conceivable draft you could have had to start looks like Taylor/Calvin Ridley/Allen Robinson/Miles Sanders if you had a pick around the 7-9 slot.
If you’d like a copy of the data, a flat excel file is below.
Until next week!
Byron Cobalt's Lazy Analysis 