Is this the Best Time to Draft Chase Brown?

Show Me The Best Ball Data - Saturday 8/3

Aug 03, 2024

WE HAVE FOOTBALL GAMES! Ok well it was technically only 75% of one game, but it sure felt good seeing dudes hitting other dudes wearing football pads on the TV again. Of course Underdog Fantasy is all over Best Ball summer, with 13 different NFL contests open in the lobby as we speak.

Each ~~Friday~~ (sometimes Saturdays) I send out a newsletter recapping the different tools I use to define how the Best Ball landscape is evolving. Let’s dive into the week in review.

A Rottweiler and a Dachsund walk into a bar…

Underdog released The Rottweiler and The Dachsund, two more contests that nuke out the min cash and make you get to Round 3 before tasting any of the winnings. The Rottweiler is a $25 contest with a 4 entry max that is a 2/12 → 2/10 → 2/10 advancement. The Dachsund is an $8 contest with a 4 entry max that is a 2/12 → 1/5 → 1/6 advancement. These are the 3rd and 4th best graded smaller entry contests on Underdog this season, and it seems like they are really centering in on the sweet spot for this new structure style. These are fun ones to hop into if you are trying to save your BBM bullets for later.

“Scroll the Eff Down” Friday

I introduced this concept about a month ago, so if you missed that article please feel free to read it here. Generally speaking, we are trying to identify the low-owned players who will help provide us leverage on the field. We can combine Establish the Run’s BBM ownership projections with Hayden Winks Percent Drafted optimization curves to help us solve for this.

Welcome to the bright lights of the STFD club Tank Bigsby! In this case Tank is entering the Sweet Spot from the negative direction, being more highlight drafted earlier in the summer, but now the market is cooling after seemingly lack of news out of training camp. I highlighted Tank today, because I think it’s important to distinguish the slight differences in players who make this list.

We can take a look at some of the ADPs listed for the WR group and make some assumptions for how long guys are going to be stating on this list. DJ Chark has caught some steam after being the reported WR3 in Chargers camp, so he’s quickly not even going to be showing up on this list anymore. Greg Dortch is another example of a guy who is going to be moving up into and then straight through the “overdrafted” territory. The guy I want to spend my time focusing on this week is Andrei Iosivas from the Bengals. You can see right now he’s only a 7% drafted player in BBM, but his ADP rise is going to lead him to being in the sweet spot for the better part of the next two weeks. I want a lot of him.

No huge updates to the TE group. I’d still rather be done with the position by here, however there continues to be positive news out of early camp reports on Michael Mayer, Dawson Knox, and Greg Dulcich.

ADP Velocity - We’ve got Movement!

Since training camp started, I have been utilizing this tool on a daily basis. I honestly cannot emphasize enough how useful it has been. As I introduced in mid-June, I think there’s a lot of nuance to be had in deciphering the ADP Risers and Fallers, and this provides the important context that we need.

You can see that the lists are getting longer, which is what we would expect at this point of summer.

When looking at the Topped Out category, I am generally trying to convince myself whether I am in or out on these players at their new cost. Here’s my current breakdown:

IN: Chase Brown - I think this represents a good time to try and get overweight on the Bengals seeming RB1 if you have previously been underweight. The highlights and reports out of camp continue to be super positive but he’s stalled out in ADP. I would be willing to bet that Brown’s ADP flips Zack Moss by the time summer is over, so use this as a good signal to start loading up.

OUT: Everyone else - I am largely underweight on every other player on this list and don’t envision myself starting to draft them more now that they are all more expensive. JK Dobbins gives me the most FOMO on this list, but not really.

The Still Rising and Still Falling categories are fun because it’s all about trying to be dynamic in your drafts. I’ll try and identify angles on how I’m playing these situations each week.

Tyler Allgeier & Deneric Prince - The price delta between these two is pretty steep, however both share the similarity of seemingly great standalone value as RB2s in explosive offenses. Of course they both have pretty big contingent upside. I am focusing mostly on Prince since I don’t have much, but I will keep adding to my Allgeier bags at these new prices.

Jermaine Burton and Andrei Iosivas - I would be targeting both of these players, but approaching them differently. Reaching for Yoshi in R17 is perfectly fine, while pushing Burton as much as possible past his ADP is a great opportunity as well. At the end of the day, Burton is still an untapped rookie in a good offense so we want to take shots on him in our lineups.

DeAndre Hopkins - I’m a little bit biased here because I love Hopkins and have a lot of Titans, however I would expect that he’s going to fall farther than he should due to this knee sprain. His ADP being shaken up for what could end up being only 2 weeks of drafting time could be really beneficial to gather some unique combos of him. I still think he belongs at the end of the “good” WR tier (Jamo, Samuel, Addison, Coleman, JSN) and he has already been falling past that.

Nick Chubb - Funny how the PUP listing overrode the squatting videos in the markets. The reality is that nothing about Chubb’s situation has changed, so if he’s starting to fall again now is a good time to start drafting again.

When looking at the Bottomed Out category, I want to look for players who I have been previously underweight on and see if their new cost makes sense.

I still believe that Kendre Miller is undraftable. If the market is giving him a 2.5 round discount and calling it good enough, I think we just let our competitors keep hopping on that grenade.

Mike Williams is probably too cheap right now. The de facto WR2 in an Aaron Rodgers offense and a guy who might end up being fully ramped up by Weeks 4 thru 6? Sign me up. (I’ve already been signed up since ADP of 99).

Luke McCaffey and Devontez Walker seem like two more rookies we should be buying regardless of what offense they are currently practicing with in Week 1 of training camp. Long summer ahead to prove themselves as rookies, and the exact kind of bets that we want to make.

Adjust The Ranks!

Every night, I cruise through the Coachspeak Index Twitter account and the 32BeatWriters.com Daily Article. I am looking for information that makes me want to adjust my ranks vs. information that is noise/double counting etc. Here’s a sample of the actionable items I picked up on this week:

That’s all!

Peace, Love, and Best Ball