What is FGW? Check out the full lowdown here or watch the video here.
TL;DR – FGW is the number of Head-to-Head fantasy football matchups a player has won his team, on average. dFGW is FGW adjusted for draft ADP rank.
Going into 2023, I had a slightly uncommon #1 player on my fantasy board. I don’t have a projections model, so I had basically every other projections model to go by, but with my reasoning layered on top:
- I didn’t like McCaffrey at the top spot because of his injury history and the risk of sharing the load in SF more than he ever did in Carolina
- I didn’t like Ekeler at the top spot because I thought he took a bit of a step back in 2023, and it felt odd taking a player 1st in 2023 that was a worse prospect than his 3rd overall pick 2022 version (I know I’m falling for baseline/anchoring fallacy here, but I digress)
- Between Justin Jefferson and Ja’Marr Chase, I believe Chase is the most talented WR in the NFL, and has more upside than Jefferson. So Chase was my pick.
Before we get into the pungent season that Chase has had so far, let’s dig into that “most talented” claim…
Video version of this post for those that prefer eye/ear candy:
So, how do you etablish a receiver is talented? There are a few ways:
- Draft Pick – Whena player is drafted is an indicator of perceived talent by NFL evaluators, especiallly if the player was not especially productive in college, implying raw talent/upside drove the draft slot
- Athletic Measurables – Athletic talent is fairly well quantified throught the NFL combine, etc.
- Wow-Factor – The rate at which a player pulls off “wow” plays is maybe the best proxy we have for difficult-to-measure talent. Everyone agrees that young OBJ was extremely talented, but there isn’t a drill you can run to measure his ability to pull off amazing one-handed catches in-game.
I’ll simplify this a bit. I think it mostly comes down to draft pick, with the other factors being tiebreakers. Athletic measurables and Wow-factor are too subjective and already confounding with draft pick.
Here are all the wide receivers taken with a top 20 draft pick since 2018:
Here’s my argument for Chase:
- Older receivers (Hill, Adams, Diggs) or receivers that have seen some wear and tear (Kupp) are automatically out of the discussion. Once you reach a certain point in your career, your upside is either already attained, no longer attainable, or it was never really there in the first place. So it would be difficult to argue any of them are more talented than Chase…without somehow arguing that Randy Moss is still the most talented WR alive. Which betrays the intent of the question.
- Chase had the highest draft pick used on him since Amari Cooper in 2015. Both Chase and Cooper were the 2nd non-QB off the board, but Chase maintained that draft stock after having opted out of the 2020 season. Cooper had a huge 2014 (1700 yards) and was clearly drafted in large part due to his polish as a receiver.
- This leaves Jaylen Waddle as the only real competitor with Chase in implied talent via draft capital (Justin Jefferson was a late first rounder without an issue dropping his stock, like Randy Moss had with character concerns). Waddle had injury concerns coming out of school, which were arguably even more impactful than the Chase missed season concern.
- What sets Chase apart from Waddle is the fact that Waddle’s draft stock was likely inflated by his speed and the strategic value of speed for offensive scheming. Where Waddle’s value partly largely into defenses needing to protect against deep throws, Chases’s value is more directly indicative of his ability to produce.
That’s my case for Chase as the most talented WR. As far as why he’s been the worst fantasy asset? Stay tuned for the Disappearance of Investment leaderboard.
Who Won The Week?
- Keenan Allen aficionadosbeen waiting for this game since before Kenan & Kel went off the air. I can’t help but remember 2015 when he averaged 90 yards per game until his season was cut short in Week 8, or Week 1 of 2016, when Allen had 6 catches for 63 yard before tearing his ACL in the 2nd quarter.
- Last week was the Semi-Annual Brandon Aiyuk Good Week. This week was the Semi-Annual TJ Hockenson Good Week. I look forward to the Semi-Annual George Kittle Good Week.
- Let’s see how long a “normal” ankle sprain lasts for Saquon.
- Mike Evans is almost 25% of the way to 1,000 yards again, already.
- DeVonta’s week doesn’t look quite as good after having just peeked at his college stats. My God.
- So much for sharing the load with Elijah Mitchell. McCaffrey starting to look like the proper 1st overall pick.
- Welcome back to the FGW roundup, Deebo! We missed you last year.
- Quick victory lap on seeing through the Allgeier timeshare claims.
- I’m kind of surprised that Miles Sanders was started 84% of the time in Week 2. Is RB really that thin? Granted, I did face him in two leagues this week. Needed him to score even less than 6.2 points, though.
- Hopefully this isn’t one of those bizarre trends where Joshua Kelley does worse when Ekeler isn’t there.
- Pouring one out for Nick Chubb. That one immediately goes up in the pantheon of “don’t google this” injuries with Dak, Johnny Knox, EJ Henderson, Marcus Lattimore, Alex Smith/Joe Theismann, Destry Wright, Willis McGahee, Eric Wood, and Napoleon McCallum.
- AJ Brown has a tendency to do this. Better days ahead.
- As great as Week 1 was for Ridley and Breece, it was that bad in Week 2. At least they’re actually playing this year.
- Not only did Etienne get only 5 points and T-Law only 9, but Tank Bigsby got 0. And the Jags weren’t that bad as a team.
- Moving the JV All-Starts up into the Who Won The Week section since it’s just a weekly list.
- Fun fact, I lost a game Monday night where I needed the Steelers defense to score 28 or less to preserve a win. In that league they got 29.
- Kyren Williams should have already been called up to the Varsity squad by now. Cam Akers was that bad in Week 1 and we’ve been down this road before.
- Nico! My cousin is here! Welcome to America!
- Brian Robinson only being at 33% is fairly surprising. Antonio Gibson did nothing week 1.
- D’Andre Swift at 30% started while Miles Sanders is at 84% tells you quite a bit about life as a fantasy football manager.
- Puka up to 22%, probably going north of 50% next week. Start him while you can.
- “Brandon Johnson” sounds like a guy they pulled out of the crowd to play receiver.
- …And they gave him more time on the field than Marvin Mims.
Leaderboard Updates
- The post didn’t get a ton of visibility last week, so thanks to reddit user eutectic_h8r for the comment “The Dallas Giveth and the Dallas Taketh” – I had totally missed the Goedert symmetry in Week 1. I’m off my game. Also, holy crap Dallas defense. Micah Parsons is slippery.
- Justin Jefferson with back-to-back 19-pointers. Most efficient way to score to help in fantasy.
- Kyle Pitts is here again. Yet, he could stay here all year and still be a top 5 TE draft pick in 2024.
- Maybe Jahmyr Gibbs will get the ball more with Monty hurt. Or maybe not.
- Najee just isn’t that good, is he?
- OK – one more week until we sound the Burrow alarm. When Burrow owners call for aid.
HOUSEKEEPING: For the ROI/DOI leaderboards, I tweaked the draft slot adjustment a little bit, so some score changes on Week 1.
- Can’t wait until the Kickers fall off the list. Dicker can stay.
- And here we go. Chase has been the worst fantasy asset of 2023, once you adjust for the draft pick you used on him.
To be precise: With the 3rd pick in the draft, you expect to pick a player that will get you 3.8 more point per game than the average fantasy starter. For Wide Receivers, that would be 15.8 points per game against 12.0 as an expected average.
Ja’Marr has scored 6.6 and 5.6 points in Weeks 1 and 2, respectively. If you would normally expect to be at 0.500 with 15.8 points per game, 9.2 below in Week 1 means you’d win 30% of the time, and 10.2 points off in Week 2 gives a win expectation of 28%. Which means that if you drafted Ja’Marr in a normal Snake Draft league, your expected win total so far this season is 0.58.
The Full List
With two low scoring weeks, almost everyone seems to be in the red. Hopefully that changes soon – fantasy is more fun if if’s not a competition of whom sucks the least.
Week 2 Swims With The Fishes
With two weeks in the books, hopefully you’ve eeked out a win or two. If you have the Dallas defense, you probably have.
As a reminder, supporting the blog for $1 gets you this weeks Start/Sit and rankings data!
Whether you have Ja’Marr Chase, or not, remember, we’re all going down in this Fantasy Football ship together. It’s been a privilege and an honor.
Byron Cobalt's Lazy Analysis 