📝 News & Notes

• Najee Harris likely to begin training camp on the NFI (non-football injury/illness) list and has been receiving additional treatment from doctors at Stanford. [Daniel Popper]

  My take: This adds more skepticism to the reports of Harris’ agent and should give us hesitation in drafting him while boosting Omarion Hampton. I’ll be letting Harris fall and continuing to buy Hampton.

• Tyreek Hill was filmed at a local camp, both catching balls with a hand brace on and doing cartwheels and flips without it

  My take: If I had to guess, he’s instructed to wear the brace while catching passes which isn’t great last year’s injury hasn’t fully healed. As for the cartwheels and flips, since he wasn’t catching balls, likely felt it wasn’t necessary which likely means he’s confident in his wrist. Something to keep an eye on when camp opens next week.

🗒️ Strategy Session

The recent poll asked you to choose between two QB performances of different points and I think some of you thought I was crazy.

It’s a topic I’ve been thinking about a good amount this summer. The minor difference in drafting high-upside players vs high-upside teams.

In this example, the notable difference is the additional 145 passing yards and 2 passing TDs that Goff threw. It is likely my team has Goff stack partners that also had big days, elevating the overall score of my entire lineup. Compare that to Fields and it’s unlikely any (and definitely not multiple) players also had great performances.

While I’m giving up 3.4 points at the QB position, I likely make up for that with my correlated pass catchers while increasing the likelihood of high-end team outcomes.

If we accept this to be true, it should then also change how we rank and draft players in best ball. We value rushing QBs in fantasy because of the floor/upside combos we get with them. But for best ball, shouldn’t we also be valuing QB situations like Detroit where when our QB hits, it’s more likely multiple players from our team hits? Just something to think about when you’re drafting…

📊 Poll of the Day

We have clear favorites for the 6 spot and the end of the draft. These all make sense to me and I’m personally aligned with the 6 spot. Picks 2-6 in the first round are rather flat so you still get a pick in that tier. And then you can usually still get that early 2nd round tier of players that includes the London/McConkey/Brown WRs. And taking it one round further, you can still get some of those strong 2/3 turn picks to fall to you such as Chase Brown.