There are five major events that transition a team’s roster from the end of one season to the beginning of another. The first is pre-draft free agency. The second is the draft. The third is post-draft free agency. The fourth is training camp. The fifth is preseason and the final cuts that follow.
Pre-draft free agency is mostly complete. It would be tired to detail all of the moves and what they mean for each team, but it’s nice to summarize the fantasy impact in digestible chunks. The question is whether to organize it by team or position or maybe even overall fantasy value. I’m going to attempt a “team identity” type thing, since draft picks will be influenced more by that than by who is already on the team (except dumb teams; a dumb team will absolutely look at what they have and start thinking about what they don’t; just think of them as the main character of a rom-com at the beginning, while smart teams are that same character at the end, forever more enlightened. I had originally gone player-by-player, got as far as Josh Jacobs (won’t tell you how many players that is), typed out the phrase “alone in this backfield heading into the draft” and thought, you know what, a lot can change for some players. So let’s go team-by-team, and again, who they draft affects their status relative to the rest of the league, but we can more or less figure out who’s going to flat-out suck, who’s got some potential, and who’s ready to run.
(Disclaimer: you’re walking into a 21,000-word note. Get out while you can.)
They believe they are ready to compete. With a dual-threat QB, two all-purpose RBs, four complete WRs, and an athletic TE, the Cards’ offense has freedom from the positionality that constrains the modern offense from becoming the postmodern offense. This is exactly the Sean-McVay-type of offense the Cards intended to get by hiring Kingsbury. Hopkins and Fitz have extensive experience lining up all over the formation, and Christian Kirk has limited experience but tons of potential. If it’s difficult to conceptualize what’s possible, just take the 2019 Rams’ offense and replace Goff and Gurley with Murray and Drake. The name-value might stifle the point, but the sheer dynamism of the latter pair should intrigue you.
The best thing about this setup is that it gives them a control variable should they have questions about Kingsbury’s leadership or long-term viability. Kyler Murray is cheap, and everyone on the offense who isn’t has just a one-year deal, except Hopkins, but that’s a technicality since they’ll have to restructure his deal. We know he wants a big raise on the $12 million per he’s set to make the next three years. The smart thing to do would be to restructure his deal so that he gets a huge payday this season but then voids the remaining years on his deal. Basically give him the guarantees right now and incentivize him to grind for a potential free agent megadeal, which the Cards can afford because their QB is cost-controlled through 2023. It’s what the Texans would have done if they had a GM. But my original point was that by reducing Hopkins’ deal to one year, you give yourself the option to blow everything up if Kingsbury doesn’t get the job done with this seemingly foolproof ensemble.
On defense, the Cards GM has long been trying to turn NFL defense into NBA defense, getting a bunch of multi-position defenders and hiring coaches that want to use that versatility. I give credit to Todd Bowles for inspiring the move by inventing the “moneybacker” position about six years ago. New school defenders like Byron Murphy and Budda Baker can play anywhere in the secondary, and they can tackle. In a pinch, Baker could play even linebacker. It’s unnecessary, of course, because the Cards have fast, versatile LBs in Jordan Hicks, Hasson Reddick, and now DeVondre Campbell. Just toss in sack-master Chandler Jones and shutdown corner Patrick Peterson (who might be washed, but probably isn’t quite washed). The Cardinals spent their money this offseason adding not only speedy Campbell but also run-stuffing depth on the DL (Jordan Phillips), pass-rush depth opposite Jones (Devon Kennard). They can play a modified nickel package (2-4-5 or 3-3-5) every snap to line up exactly with McVay’s offense. They’ve also given themselves the wiggle room to matchup with the 49ers and Seahawks’ running game, not necessarily being able to stop it but definitely having enough to slow it down. Again, the plan is to run up the score on offense, so defending the run isn’t the priority.
The hole in the plan is what it always is: the defense lacks proven depth. Given that they sold out for offense in the 2019 Draft, it would stand to reason that they go all-in on defense this season. Technically they already spent their second pick on Hopkins, so “all-in” really just means spending their first, third, and at least one of their two fourths on defense. If they hit on those picks, they have enough pieces to repeat the success the Seahawks had during Russell Wilson’s rookie deal. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true. Fantasy-wise, the players currently on the roster are the ones set to make the most impact. Even though I said the defense would help them compete in their division, let me be clear: you want no part of team-defenses in this division as long as they are playing each other. Games in this division end anywhere from 6-6 to 34-31, and the McVay infusion has tilted most of them toward the latter.
Pre-Draft Fantasy Options
QB Kyler
RB Drake, Edmonds
WR Nuk, Kirk, Fitz
TE Maxx
OL Average
IDP Chandler, Hicks, Budda, Murphy
There’s a tweet going around with a horse drawing cut into multiple parts, with the first two parts the tail and rear, exquisite in depth and shading, but the drawing gets progressively worse, with the final two parts just being a single line for the body and I think literally a smiley face for the head. The text says “name the show,” with obvious responses like [i]How I Met Your Mother[/i] and [i]Game of Thrones[/i]. If the Dan Quinn era were a show, it would fit well in this group.
In 2015, the Falcons fired Mike Smith and Dirk Koetter and replaced them with Dan Quinn and Kyle Shanahan. They hired Matt LaFleur as QBs coach and Raheem Morris as assistant head coach. If I knew more about writing rooms and television history, I could make a really good analogy here, but basically it’s like how Vince Gilligan used to write for [i]The X-Files[/i] and then created [i]Breaking Bad[/i] and brought some really good writers along to get started, only it’s not like that because Vince Gilligan is a genius and Dan Quinn is not. But the 2013 Seahawks are kind of like [i]The X-Files[/i] in that they were huge when they were on, but syndication never took off, and even a literal reboot couldn’t possibly replicate its success because it was just a time and place. The Super Bowl MVP Malcolm Smith went splat, and all of their DCs turned HCs have mustered little defensive excellence. Actually, it’s mostly been putrid. An important part of a big thing branched out into a totally new thing and hired really creative people to help it become an even better thing than the original thing that got the important part to be relevant in the first place.
Don’t get it? Neither do the Atlanta Falcons. They made a choice in 2016, when the offense took them to the Promised Land but then didn’t run the ball when they should’ve (note: not what actually happened), and so the team decided to retain Dan Quinn as head coach and let Kyle Shanahan leave. Now, okay, I have no way of knowing whether Shanahan would have stayed if they offered him the helm, but GM Thomas Dimitroff has proven repeatedly that he’s an awesome drafter who can replenish talent on defense without any difficulty. You think Kyle Shanahan chose a blank slate over Matt Ryan and Julio Jones? I mean, Matt Ryan sucks, but I don’t think Kyle Shanahan cares since he turned him into the MVP within two seasons of working together.
Anyway, what I’m getting at here is that things have fallen apart since 2016. They replaced Shanahan with Sarkisian and replaced Sarkisian with Koetter, which is basically like [i]Community[/i] losing Donald Glover and replacing him with Paget Brewster (this happened for real), then saying, you know, that didn’t really work so can we just go back to that whole Jeff and Annie and Britta triangle that worked in Season 1? We are heading into the sixth season of a show that has technically already been cancelled. Dan Quinn’s seat got so got that gave like 33% of control of offense and defense to Raheem Morris but somehow fell short of realizing that they could just give all control to Raheem Morris and probably achieve more sustained success—actually, I can explain that line of thinking:
I believe the Falcons will tank. I mean, technically the Falcons traded for Hayden Hurst and signed Todd Gurley so they could give it one last go before giving up, but I believe these are moves that can drive the perception of winning while actually accelerating the tank. Hurst is a fine candidate to be your starting TE in a rebuild, but he’s a letter-grade and a half below Austin Hooper. The play is to keep stakeholders happy by playing the name game. In addition to Hurst and Gurley, they brought in fellow-first-rounder Laquon Treadwell to compete for the third WR job (even though he only plays one spot, and it’s Julio’s spot). Ryan’s deal has a potential out after the 2021 season, meaning he spends one year grooming the new guy (maybe Justin Fields?) before getting kicked to the curb at age 37. Fantasy-wise, the Falcons won’t do anything between now and the regular season to affect your draft strategy. Julio is a top-15 draft pick (and if they trade him, it’ll be next offseason). Calvin Ridley is a star, possibly a third-round pick in our draft, and Todd Gurley will be taken in the third round. Hayden Hurst has some juice but will be slept on mightily, to the point that I probably get him with one of my 15th-rounders. I imagine they’ll spend their first-rounder on a CB to replace Desmond Trufant.
If I can say anything positive about this defense, it’s that Keanu Neal has missed two seasons. They were better in all phases when he was in there. The center-line stack of Grady Jarrett, Deion Jones, and Keanu Neal is supposed be the stabilizing force that makes everything else in their gamplan make sense.
Pre-Draft Fantasy Options
QB Ryan
RB Gurley
WR Julio, Ridley
TE Hurst
OL Above-average
IDP Fowler, Deion, Keanu
You’re not drafting Lamar, so what does it matter? Basically, the Ravens are presumed to be a more refined version of what they were last year. What’s frustrating about the Ravens is that they thought they would catch the Titans off-guard in the playoffs with a pass-heavy gameplan. They will likely try to revert to their regular-season activity, running the ball, bleeding the clock on offense, and forcing turnovers on defense. Lamar will lead the league in rushing. It’s a foregone conclusion. Heading into the draft, Baltimore has one pick in the first round, two in the second, two in the third, and two in the fourth. They have options. They can trade up for more immediate impact, making two-for-one trades and trying to get multiple guys who can be heavy in the rotation in 2020. They can play it as it lies and add seven dudes whose floor is rotation piece. They can trade picks for veteran players. They can even trade into the future, which is their tendency. If I’ve learned anything from playing deep into a Madden franchise every now and then, it’s that you want to have a handful of cornerstone players for huge money then take on as many mid-round rookie deals as possible. Here’s what I think: I think the Ravens are a top-5 (probably top-3) team in terms of operation. They know how to budget, trade, and develop. They are never caught sleeping. They’ve had like one bad season since Harbaugh was hired.
(Something I want to talk about generally is the effect of team history on current success, and I think about it from a couple lenses.
The first has to do with Trelawny, a small region in Jamaica where basically the best runners in the world are born. It is the home of Veronica Campbell-Brown, the second-most medaled woman in track-and-field history. It is also the home of Usain Bolt, whose trac-record speaks for itself [i]ba-dum-chhh[/i]. Ahem. The condensed history of Trelawny is that the founders are escaped slaves who fought the British Empire and won. The region is consistent in producing track-and-field legends, and there aren’t enough genetic factors to suggest anything special about the bodies of these athletes, compared to other Jamaicans—Jamaicans dominate track-and-field, anecdotally and statistically. The ruling theory is that people raised with such powerful cultural history are simply capable of more than people who are not. Obviously they’re not all crushing, but the ones who crush crush extreme. This is my general theory of the success of teams like the Pittsburgh Steelers. They have been good for so long that even when they are not good, it is considered the exception that proves the rule. The Ravens’ defense is like this. The Packers’ offense is like this. The Bears’ defense is like this. The Belichick-era Patriots are like this. The Browns and Lions and Bengals are the opposite. Their cultural history is so damning that even when they have success, it’s just a precursor to their ultimate failure.
The second lens is whether a team can alter its identity. The Patriots did it. The Seahawks did this, I think. I’m not sure I knew anything about them before Pete Carroll, other than the names Steve Largent and Walter Jones. Oh, Shaun Alexander that one year. That time Matt Hasselback said, “We want the ball. We’re gonna score!” after the overtime coin-flip and proceeded to throw the game-ending pick-six. Otherwise, nada. The Saints were historic trash (literally the Aints!) before Sean Payton and Drew Brees teamed up. But how does it happen? It almost seems like a conspiracy. The Seahawks got good right as Amazon was becoming a giant. Katrina hit in August 2005, then in January 2006 the Saints hired Sean Payton and in March signed Drew Brees. They went to the NFC Championship in their first season and have since been perennial contenders since. In 2012 they paid their players to injure opposing players, and even though it was a big deal at the time, it seems like people still care more about Tom Brady deflating balls or Belichick spying on the Jets. It’s weird. Anyway, I’m wondering here whether anything short of a miracle can change a team’s stripes. I live on the west coast, and there are people here, sports fans, who are unaware that the Bucs have won a Super Bowl. A guy I was hanging out with had to look it up. He didn’t even call them the Bucs. He called them the Buccaneers like it was the first time he’d ever said the word out loud. Okay, fine, digression over.
So the Ravens can’t really be bad. They can suffer some disappointment and retool in the offseason, but they can’t suddenly be a bad team. My guess is it would take firing Harbaugh and then the new coach having back-to-back losing seasons and getting fired and then having a second coach come in and fail somehow before it would be a headline that the team had lost its identity. I just don’t know why it would ever get there. Not to digress too much again, but this is exactly what happened to the Bucs, which is where the blueprint comes from.)
What I’m saying, basically, is that if we could predict what the Ravens will do in the draft or the regular season, they wouldn’t be nearly as good as they are. I imagine they will find a way to draft an offensive lineman with the potential to fill Marshal Yanda’s shoes, possibly two of them (linemen, not shoes, but also definitely shoes). Otherwise, they will “restock the cupboard” with young, hungry depth on offense and defense. I’m curious to see how they address WR and TE. Right now, their starters are Hollywood Brown and Miles Boykin, with Willie Snead in the slot. They are comfortable with this, and I don’t blame them. I’d prefer to see a more polished receiver opposite Brown, but I just don’t know how you get one. The only reason superstars get traded is because of toxicity. The recent major names to move have been Antonio Brown, Jalen Ramsey, and Stefon Diggs. But hmm. DeAndre Hopkins. That seems to be a unicorn case of what we’re talking about. I don’t think there are any other disgruntled WR-head coach pairs like Zimmer-Diggs or B.O.B.-Nuk. I just don’t. But let’s consider it anyway.
Arizona – just got Hopkins.
Atlanta – a Julio move is more realistic next year
Buffalo – just got Diggs
Carolina – Robby too new, others too cheap to lose
Chicago – They need Robinson too bad
Cincy – can’t trade AJ in division
Cleveland – again, in division
Dallas – Cooper’s deal too new; Gallup’s too cheap to lose
Denver – No
Detroit – Marvin Jones is realistic (maybe Golladay if you can convince him to mouth off to Patricia, ask for money, or bring some baby-mamas around)
Green Bay – Rodgers would quit if they traded away a receiver
Houston – too late LOL
Indy – T.Y. too redundant to Hollywood, especially for the money
Jacksonville – All too cheap to lose, and necessary for air-raid
KC – no move makes sense from Chiefs’ perspective
Las Vegas – Tyrell, especially after they draft a 1st-rd WR
LAC – no move makes sense from Chargers’ perspective
LAR – Cooks is like T.Y., redundant and expensive
Miami – Parker too recently signed; Preston too cheap to lose
Minnesota – too late
New England – Edelman & Harry redundant to Snead & Boykin
N’Orleans – no move makes sense from Saints’ perspective
NYG – Shepard or Tate?
NYJ – Crowder redundant to Snead
Philly – Jeffery, maybe? Not sure if the Eagles take a financial hit moving him.
Pittsburgh – in division
San Fran – maybe Pettis, but Ravens won’t want him
Seattle – no move makes sense from Seahawks’ perspective
Tampa Bay – no move makes sense from Bucs’ perspective
Tennessee – Corey Davis?
Washington – no move makes sense from Skins’ perspective
So by my math, they can try for Julio, AJ, Marvin, Tyrell, Cooks, Shepard, Golden, Alshon, or Corey Davis. There are some decent options in there, but a move like that would necessitate a shift to more passing. What they like about Boykin is that he can block and that he doesn’t expect targets. They can save time and money by drafting Boykin’s college teammate Chase Claypool in the third or fourth round, option him at WR and TE and kill two birds. The large catch-radius and blocking prowess make me pretty set on this Claypool thing happening now. It’s just too easy. Fantasy-wise, Claypool’s not a thing, but it would be surprising to see Baltimore draft anybody who was. They are more likely to build on blocking on offense and tackling on defense (i.e., OL, TE, LB).
Their defense will be a very sexy single-digit-round option in the fall. They brought in Calais Campbell and Derek Wolfe to bookend Brandon Williams, they re-signed Marcus Peters and Jimmy Smith, and they found out last year that they can treat the LB position like most teams treat RBs. Basically there are a million of them who are like 75% of what they need to be, and you can coach them up to 85% and be just peachy.
I’m curious to see if they draft a potential Mark Ingram replacement. Ingram is 30 now, on his last guaranteed year in his deal. Backup Gus Edwards hasn’t shown the versatility to replace Ingram one-for-one, and third-string Justice Hill lacks the size to do the best thing a Ravens RB can do in the current system, which is blow up smaller defenders. I don’t think the Ravens knew what they had on offense when they drafted Hill, and though I think they will find ways to use him, he won’t ever be the starter.
Pre-Draft Fantasy Options
QB Lamar
RB Ingram, Edwards
WR Hollywood
TE Andrews
OL Above-average
IDP Campbell, Judon
In Josh Allen’s first start, his top three receivers were Zay Jones, Fat Kelvin Benjamin, and Andre Holmes. A year later, none of them were on the roster. His top three today are Stefon Diggs, John Brown, and Cole Beasley. It’s an ideal combination of receiving talent: Diggs can do it all, Brown stretches the field vertically, and Cole Beasley forces the defense to mind the middle. If the plays are drawn somewhat competently, someone is always open. This isn’t a make-or-break season for Allen, but it hurts his odds of surviving in the league if he can’t make this work. Buffalo has kept its playoff roster (minus Kevin Johnson and Frank Gore) in tact while adding either star-power (Diggs, Mario Addison, Josh Norman) or reinforcements (Daryl Williams, Vernon Butler, AJ Klein) and re-signing critical depth. Every one of those players has playoff experience. The Bills enter the draft with a fully loaded roster. They spent their first pick (22nd overall) on Diggs, but they have all their others, meaning they at least get two decent shots at rotational players who can make the team even better.
For what it’s worth, rumors connected them to Melvin Gordon before he signed with Denver. In fact, they were so closely tied to Melvin Gordon that they are presumably the team that offered more money than Denver. For this reason, I can see them spending one of their Day 2 picks on RB. Devin Singletary has earned starting duties, but this is a smart team. They’re not going to give one back bell-cow duties and be totally effed when he gets hurt. No. Fantasy-wise, that’s the only way they can alter the big picture. If they spend that second or third pick on RB, it will lower Singletary’s price, which is perfect for me and that 36th overall pick in our draft. Even if he splits work with some rookie, Singletary has the juice to rip off twenty-yard runs and the receiving and pass-blocking chops to hog all the third-down work. Don’t draft him, though! He’s risky, really!
Pre-Draft Fantasy Options
QB Allen
RB Singletary
WR Diggs, Brown, maybe Beasley
TE No
OL Good
IDP Tremaine, Milano, Poyer
I already talked Panthers this offseason, but here it is again. It makes sense to tank in your first year, so long as you can prove there is potential for more. The Panthers have needs aplenty. They need offensive linemen, a tight end, a possession receiver (could also be the tight end), defensive linemen, and defensive backs. They have some big-time talent, but if they only have like 66% of a starting lineup going into the draft, you can expect them to enter the season with enough depth to make a playoff run.
The offense will have some cool schemes and get the jump on some teams early. They have great pass-rushing talent and can hold a lead late in the game. But as the season wears them down, as the offense comes up short on some key downs, the defense is going to get exposed, and this team is going to lose to every good team it plays after the first month. It’s maybe a six-win team, and given significant innovation from Matt Rhule and Joe Brady. Teddy Bridgewater can minimize risk and reduce turnovers, but he’s more likely to be a product of his offense than the other way around. It’s easy to take care of the ball behind the Saints’ offensive line and their three All-Pros. The Panthers’ line wasn’t even that good when they were good. I will be surprised if the Panthers’ line grades out in the top-20 this year. Honestly, it might be downright bad in pass-protection. I remember Kyle Allen being under a lot of pressure last season, and the line is worse now than it was then.
In terms of identity, we’ll see. The coaches have tape that shows aggressive offenses that push the ball downfield but also utilize the RB in the passing game. Teddy doesn’t have a huge arm, but he can place the ball. The difference between the college game and the pro game, as it will affect the Panthers’ offense, is this: veteran defensive backs don’t get fooled easily. To leverage having a weak offensive line, the offense needs to get the ball out quickly. If the Panthers expect to win on athleticism, cool, but it takes time to get open. If they want to use screens and rubs and flies all year, they can pull out a few wins, but they can’t build a winning season without deploying full route trees.
For fantasy, they are locked in to their WR corps. They might add a TE. Rookie TEs rarely make waves, but it’s possible. The worry rippling in the fantasy community pool is that the Panthers will draft a RB to take on some of McCaffrey’s workload. McCafe would still be worth a top-5 pick, maybe even #1 (nah, Barkley’s #1); he just wouldn’t finish 100 points up on the next best RB like he did last year.
Pre-Draft Fantasy Options
QB Teddy
RB McCafe
WR Moore, Samuel, Robby
TE Thomas
OL Average
IDP Thompson, Burns, Boston
Last year it was the kicking competition. This year it’s quarterbacks. I’m sorry; do good teams bother with either? When is the last time a decent team entered the year with controversy at the quarterback position? Really, I want to know. I guess the 2018 Ravens? But they never had a competition. They started Flacco until they were on the verge of missing the playoffs, and then they made the switch. Last year’s Titans started Mariota without any hint they’d switch to Tannehill. It was only once they were 2-3 and getting their asses reamed by the Broncos that they inserted Tannehill with four minutes left in the third quarter. Obviously they’d had their eye on Tannehill in practice, but this was Mariota’s team until it wasn’t. The 2016 Eagles won a Super Bowl with Nick Foles, were forced by injury to start him the next year, and they went back to Wentz as soon as possible. It’s how good teams run shit. There’s no point in publicizing a coach’s indecision, and the longer you do it, the worse the look.
Here are some recent teams that embraced QB controversy: last year’s Skins (Keenum v. Haskins), Hue Jackson’s Hard Knocks Browns (Tyrod v. Baker), the 2018 Bills (Allen v. Peterman), the 2017 Texans (Savage v. Watson), the 2017 Bears—no shit, just three years ago this team had basically the obverse competition when they signed Mike Glennon to a three-year deal in March, only to trade up to draft Mitch Trubisky in April. So how do they fix a mistake three years later? They run out and trade a fourth-round pick for $20 million worth of Nick Foles, aka the OG Mike Glennon, a too-tall backup QB highly touted as a secret starter. Holy. Shit. The Bears can’t be dumber on offense than reversing the QB controversy they had when Trubisky’s career began. Is there a better fitting to the end of the Matt Nagy era? Remember when Vic Fangio was the DC and the Bears were able to choose between Nagy and Fangio to be head coach, and they let Fangio walk assuming the offense would suffer if they let Nagy walk? Wow. I bet they would gladly take the top-5 defense now, regardless of what the offense put out, instead of being mediocre on both sides. WOW.
So the Bears are this year’s secret tankers. It’s absolutely nuts they wouldn’t just let Trubisky tank away his final season, especially with the defense in decline and plenty of time left on Khalil Mack’s massive contract. What’s one year? Everything about the Bears buying Nick Foles’ trash contract says they’re playing to win, but all the repercussions just lead straighter to Tanktown. The Jags admittedly paid Nick Foles like a starter so that the locker room would respect him. The locker room responded like, You gave Opie money so we’d kiss his ring, while most of our success was from dudes working their asses off on rookie deals? Fuck you, I’m out.
AND THE BEARS BOUGHT THAT CONTRACT.
Luckily their best players are all already paid or else there’d be serious trouble. Imagine if Nick Foles loses the competition. Just imagine what happens. He gets $20 million this season no matter what. No matter what. So the Bears hope he’ll start, right? Meaning, what, they’ll either bench Trubisky, or get this: they will trade Mitch Trubisky, supply the chip on his shoulder, and probably send him to a competent team that will unfuck his head and allow him to thrive. I’m thinking the Chargers figure out how to make it happen. I think they’re waiting to see if Tua falls to 6th in the draft. If Tua goes before that, they’ll make the move. The Bears have notoriously underutilized Trubisky’s athleticism, while the Chargers spent last offseason signing one dual threat QB and drafting another. They carried three QBs on the roster last season, probably respectfully waiting for Rivers to blow an ACL or throw too many picks so that they could put together some Raven-type packages.
But this is about the Bears. For fantasy, there are major stones left unturned. In two years, the Bears have gone from being one kick away from the Super Bowl to being in third place in their division, and it’s only that good because the Lions aren’t trying.
They could draft a QB, but they don’t have a first-round pick. The Raiders have the Bears’ first pick, and the Bears have the Raiders’ second. Jacob Eason is available in the second if they want him. Maybe they trade back into the late first and take Jalen Hurts (someone has to). They need depth at every position except TE (they have ten). If Mortydome drafted tomorrow, I’d go in with Allen Robinson as my top Bear, with Montgomery lightly in the mix. The knock on Montgomery is that I don’t see the Bears giving him those 20 carries per game, which is their loss. They have to make better use of their Swiss Army knives, Cohen and Patterson, and after the release of Taylor Gabriel, my guess is that they will finally put Cohen in the Tyreek Hill role he deserves. If not, someone needs to trade them a draft pick and rescue this man.
Pre-Draft Fantasy Options
QB No
RB Montgomery, Cohen
WR Robinson, Miller, Patterson
TE Graham, Burton
OL Average
IDP Mack, Roquan, Quinn, Fuller
Joe Burrow will not lead this team out of the basement. My scorching hot take on Burrow is that his ceiling is the same as Andy Dalton’s, which isn’t to say the Bengals should keep Dalton, just that in ten years Burrow won’t have accomplished significantly more than Dalton, which is less a diss to Burrow and more a credit to Dalton, who was a top-5 QB in 2015 before breaking his thumb. His OC that season was peak Hue Jackson, specifically the Hue Jackson who got the Browns’ HC job the following offseason. Dalton remained great in 2016 despite AJ Green missing six games, but his TD numbers suffered. In 2017, Green played all 16 games and Dalton’s TD numbers went back up, but his efficiency went straight in the toilet. Last year, he completely bottomed out behind the worst line in the league, with no AJ Green, but he made John Ross and Auden Tate look really good.
The hardest thing to do in the NFL is separate QB from scheme without the QB and scheme both being exposed to others. Hue Jackson’s offense worked in Oakland and Cincinnati. It even seemed to be working in Cleveland. It’s easy to joke about Hue Jackson because he’s such a disaster as a head coach, but he’s an excellent offensive coordinator. We’ve also seen Dalton outside of Hue’s scheme, in Jay Gruden’s, where Dalton was young and threw a ton of picks but also a ton of touchdowns. Hue’s offense came after Gruden’s for Dalton, and I believe that Gruden has some responsibility Dalton developing into a seriously amazing QB in Hue’s system, specifically when it came to reducing those turnovers. And when Jay Gruden had a legitimate QB in Washington, that QB played well enough to get a fully guaranteed deal in free agency. That same QB has since lost respect despite having a better offensive cast around him, probably because his offensive coaching has declined. We’re off the point, though, which is that Andy Dalton is a legitimate QB whose gotten his reputation destroyed the past few years despite having no help from his OCs. Should a good QB be able to thrive despite bad OCs? Sure. Sure, because that’s what special QBs do. I’m not arguing that Dalton is special. Andy Dalton is not special. I’m arguing that Joe Burrow is not special, either.
The Bengals could and should trade AJ Green for a pick and spend it on defense, too, along with spending #1 on Chase Young, just stack a sick defense and give Joe Mixon thirty carries per game, then draft Trevor and a rookie receiver next year and room them together until they breathe in unison even when they’re across the field from each other. Profit. Remember that the Bengals head coach’s most important credential is that he worked with Sean McVay for literally one season. They could fire him tomorrow, and no one would give a shit. The defensive coordinator could have been fired yesterday, and you wouldn’t know it unless ESPN specifically put “Bengals’ DC” in the headline because you don’t know the dude’s name and neither would anyone if we didn’t look it up to feel informed. It doesn’t matter anyway because the whole coaching staff is getting fired and Burrow’s career will be derailed unless the Bengals do the most brilliant and crazy thing they could do, which is to reunite Marvin Lewis and Hue Jackson. My favorite storyline of the offseason so far is that Marvin Lewis told NFL teams he would only coach them if they let him bring Hue in as offensive coordinator. It’s the kind of solidarity we need much, much more of in a world where Zac Taylor ran Andy Dalton out of town three years after Hue Jackson made him an MVP candidate. Good grief.
The polished turd that is the 2020 Bengals spent about $60 million on defensive free agents, which, okay, the Packers did last season, but the Packers brought in All-Pros at pass-rush and safety, while the Bengals are bringing in a mixed bag: highly respected run-stuffing DT DJ Reader, emerging star safety Vonn Bell, meh CB Trae Waynes, respected nickelback Mackensie Alexander, and viable MLB Josh Bynes (who is exactly the kind of MLB the Ravens spend the veteran minimum on because they are a dime a dozen). Okay, so what’s weird and interesting about this defense is that they have a glut on the line and in the secondary, yet their entire linebacking corps is dudes who would be considered depth on an average team. I… I’m actually kind of into it, but only if they can somehow guarantee they are going to be leading in games.
Basically the Bengals are building a defense to stop the Ravens, which is very intriguing, and they are able to do this because even “normal” offenses like the Browns and Steelers are better defended by sub-package defenses.
When Lamar Jackson made his first playoff game, the Chargers spent much of the game using a versatile DB (Adrian Phillips, signed by the Pats this offseason) as an every-down QB spy. It worked really well, but the rest of the NFL didn’t do it in 2019, and the reason is probably because the Ravens signed Mark Ingram and used a bunch of heavy formations that would exhaust or injure this relatively little guy if you tried to play him every down. By lining up heavy, the Ravens forced teams to line up in base packages when teams were starting to shift to sub packages. The brilliance of this is akin to Billy Beane telling the A’s to start seeing more pitches. NFL offenses can eat into the defense’s “bullpen” by wearing out the starters, all the easier if the starters have to be heavier guys who can be expected to have less stamina in the first place. Not only are the Ravens wearing teams down physically, all the extra motion and multi-option playcalling is exhausting these guys mentally, too. Many defenders admit they don’t know what they’re seeing most of the time they play the Ravens. The Bengals are getting panned for spending money on non-starting caliber, but there’s a chance the Bengals are getting better by building their bullpen.
This is something that speaks to the Ravens’ success as a franchise: they force the league to get better. Truly elite franchises do this. While your Warriors and Rams make the league worse by encouraging other teams to chase gimmicks, your (I don’t want to say it, but) Celtics (blegh) and Ravens encourage you to look at the fundamentals of winning. It sounds stupid after all that build up, but if you can win Super Bowls with defense and special teams in 2000 and 2012 and maybe 2020, wouldn’t you choose that over just a handful of high-octane seasons, likely followed by another decade-plus of mediocrity? Are the Bulls fans happy with the 90s? Obviously. But does the Bulls franchise have respect, or do people mostly credit those specific coaches and players that got it done for a few years? That’s what I’m talking about with the culture thing I mentioned earlier. The Bulls might have won in the past, but they don’t technically have a history of winning because they don’t have a culture of winning. They Bulls are basically just the Cavs, only Jordan stayed and LeBron left.
Anyway.
I don’t think I did a good job getting down to what makes the Bengals’ defensive signings interesting, but I’m satisfied with the attempt. Hopefully you understand why the Bengals used their free agent budget signing a fifth defensive lineman, a fifth and sixth sub-package-“starting”-caliber DB, and a sub-package LB. The Bengals will totally suck against most of the NFL, but their management is brilliantly assuming that if they can beat the Ravens even once, the glory could be the seed of change.
Pre-Draft Fantasy Options
QB Sean Simpson
RB Mixon
WR Green, Boyd, Tate, Ross
TE No
OL Average
IDP Bell, Bates, Williams
Baker Mayfield is on his third head coach in three years. All of them are offensive coaches who also call the plays. Current coach Kevin Stefanski is the most respected, but the bar is low. Freddie Kitchens wasn’t even a head coach. He was such a bag of trash that he couldn’t even score an OC job after the Browns fired him. He had to settle for TEs coach of the Giants, THE GIANTS.
The thing about the Cleveland Browns is that the players run the team, and it’s unclear who leads the players. My money is on OBJ and Jarvis Landry. Techincally speaking, that’s where Cleveland’s money is, too, as they are the only Browns making in excess of $15 million per year. It’s not crazy to think that the richest players run shit. It’s literally how everything else works. But, how exactly is a team supposed to function if the diva WRs have the power? How would a country run if a self-indulgent celebrity were in charge? I can’t put my finger on why, but I have a strong sense that it would be a fucking nightmare.
So here we go again. The Browns have an excellent roster. Their offensive line is above-average, and if they spend their top pick on a tackle, their line will be elite by midseason. On paper. In reality, we should all buckle up for another complete clusterfuck.
I’m going to talk about Myles Garrett, but I’m also going to talk about nature vs. nurture. What I knew about Myles Garrett before last season was that he was the LeBron James of defensive linemen. He is physically capable of anything, and he is motivated to achieve anything. He is smart enough to remember all of his coaching. The difference between LeBron and Myles is sensitivity. LeBron is sensitive, but because he was worldwide at such a young age, he established boundaries for what gets in his head. I don’t think Myles did that. For one thing, I don’t think LeBron James would have shared his poetry notebook on Hard Knocks. Just doesn’t seem like the move. I think poetry is cool, but I think it’s uncool to reveal yourself to a production company that doesn’t have your best interest at heart. HBO didn’t screw over Myles Garrett in anyway. That’s not my point. My point is that Myles Garrett doesn’t have the personal boundaries necessary to thrive like a LeBron James Although he has all the physical and mental prerequisites, emotionally he is susceptible to toxicity to which LeBron James has never succumbed. One hundred times out of one hundred, I will blame Freddie Kitchens for what happened between Myles Garrett and Mason Rudolph. Kitchens fostered a dangerous environment for a football mind. He prioritized aggression over accountability, and Myles Garrett paid the price. It’s my contention that Freddie Kitchens should be suspended from football for at least as long as Garrett was, that his conduct was the most detrimental conduct, that he endangered lives by failing as a leader. Myles Garrett is his own person, sure, but people can be driven to behave uncharacteristically in unsuitable environments. We’ve all seen it happen on smaller scales. Do I believe Mason Rudolph called Garrett the N-word? I don’t know. I believe Mason Rudolph is capable of it. I also believe his defense against Garrett’s allegation is in the “doth protest too much” category. The language he uses to deny using the N-word is strongly aligned with the language that confirmed bigots use to deny claims of bigotry against them. That’s what I think. Myles Garrett shouldn’t have swung a helmet, SURE, but he didn’t create the environment in which he felt the compulsion to swing it. He just lived in it.
So the Browns 2020 will be infinitely better than that situation, but they are the third best team in their division. Even if their roster is superior to Pittsburgh’s the culture in Pittsburgh is too good. Cleveland will almost definitely go 8-8, losing all four games they have against Baltimore and Pittsburgh, but they could sneak into the expanded playoffs.
I’m intrigued by the expanded playoffs. It makes me wonder if there is a setting that allows exactly seven teams to make our playoffs, with only the top team getting the bye. I’ll look into it.
The Browns are elite on paper. They took a stacked offense and added Austin Hooper and Jack Conklin while losing nothing. They will probably add a stud LT in the draft. For fantasy, I want Nick Chubb bad. Bad bad. Otherwise, I see it being ups and downs for everyone else. Smart people like Baker a lot. I don’t, but I can’t back it up with anything other than I think he looks and talks like a punk. I also think his footwork sucks, but I have no expertise to support that take. The last thing I’ll say is that he’s more tool-sy than skilled, and that tends to catch up with quarterbacks more than other positions. The best QBs in history aren’t the often the purely physically gifted ones. They’re more often the ones obsessed with process and routine. Baker just doesn’t give me that vibe at all. You know who gives me that vibe? Case Keenum. I honestly believe if the Browns lose nine games before the season ends that Keenum will get to start.
Pre-Draft Fantasy Options
QB Baker
RB Chubb, Hunt
WR OBJ, Landry
TE Hooper, Njoku
OL Good
IDP Garrett, Wilson
The Cowboys are expected to make Dak the highest paid QB in the league heading into the 2020 season. By paying their QB and RB and WR, they are breaking the game. I got into this in the Lev Bell paragraph in the last note. The Rams have already shown this to be bad business as recently as last season, after the Falcons already proved it by paying Ryan, Freeman, and Julio a ton at once. If I had more passion for the cap (or a free subscription to Spotrac Premium) I would be able to nimbly convert past player salaries to percentages to better illustrate the comparisons. The Falcons and Rams trios were never quite paid like this Cowboys trio will be, though, if only because they didn’t get their contracts all within ten months of each other. That’s the unprecedented aspect of this. Every team pays some collection of players crazy money. Most teams avoid having all the bills come at once. The signing bonuses alone let you know the Cowboys’ cash reserves are fucking loco, though.
Meanwhile, the offensive line that sustained them for this long is crumbling. I don’t see how this ends well for Mike McCarthy. If the Cowboys succeed, it will be credited to the roster and the money. If they lose, it will be, How did McCarthy blow it with all this talent? I’ll tell you: it will be because the roster is 60% packing peanuts.
On defense, the Cowboys headed into free agency with basically just one pass-rusher, two linebackers (three if you count the gallon left in Sean Lee’s tank), two corners, and one safety on the roster. They signed Gerald McCoy, Dontari Poe, and Haha Clinton-Dix, all three of whom are way cheaper than the names would suggest because all three had bad seasons in 2019. They can resurrect their careers in Dallas. They better because there isn’t a shred of depth behind them. Oh, the ‘Boys also signed Greg Zuerlein, which was only possible because the Rams are flat broke from paying out the nose for their offense. (Also, The Leg is 32 now and played like crap last year, but that didn’t suit my point.)
It’s interesting. It’s an interesting team. I bet it’s a great Madden team when you turn injuries and fatigue off. They will have to load-manage everyone they can. Even most of the young guys on this roster already have significant injury history. It’s ugly. Really, really ugly. But they have the draft left, and it’s a crucial draft since they won’t have money for free agency until 2023 (not an exaggeration).
But in the draft, they can’t reasonably disrupt what they are for fantasy purposes. Dak, Zeke, Amari, and Gallup are your dudes. Tony Pollard is a late-round handcuff. The defense is a big, fat nope. Greg Z is on my short list of draftable kickers, though—it’s a misnomer: it’s like 15 kickers long. Could they draft a TE or a third WR? I wouldn’t be shocked, but would there be volume to sustain them?
Pre-Draft Fantasy Options
QB Dak
RB Zeke, Pollard
WR Amari, Gallup
TE Jarwin?
OL Above-average
IDP Lawrence, Jaylon, Leighton
The Broncos have one of the worst rosters in terms of name value, but they have a quality coaching staff that has the respect of the players. They were able to survive the backlash from starting Flacco for the first half of the year, going 2-6. They weren’t interested in tanking or else they would’ve just kept that train rolling. They just needed time to get Lock ready.
They like Drew Lock in Denver. They traded up to draft him. He’s the unquestioned starter, so ignore any noise suggesting otherwise. An amazing stat for the offense: in five starts, Lock was sacked once per game. In the other eleven games, the QB averaged three sacks per game. Two things account for this: first, the offensive line and playcalling were sloppy (the Broncos fired their OC after the season); second, and more importantly, Lock can move well inside and outside the pocket. Denver might employ more QB movement as part of the offensive gameplan, especially with new OC Pat Shurmur, who made Daniel Jones a rushing god last season. (Jones ran 45 times for 280 yards. Yes, that’s very good. In fact, among QBs with at least 40 carries, Jones was second in yards per attempt. Do I have to say who was first?) Jones and Lock had similar athletic measurable at last year’s combine. Lock had better times in the 40 and the shuttle; Jones had a better vert and broad jump. The jumps are more important than the other two in measuring initial burst, burst being the key to athletic improvisation. All this is to say that Lock is athletic and his fantasy floor will have some rushing upside, but we shouldn’t expect him to replicate Jones’ running success in Shurmur’s offense.
Either way, this team will predicate its success on defense and the running game before putting the game in Lock’s hands. They retained Von Miller, and they’ll get Bradley Chubb back from injury. They added Pro-Bowlers Jurrell Casey and AJ Bouye via offseason trades. They franchised All-Pro Justin Simmons. They are improving a defense that was top-10 in passing and top-20 in rushing, and they should see positive regression in their takeaway numbers, especially as the offense controls the ball more consistently with Lock at QB and Melvin Gordon at RB.
Lindsay and Freeman are still under contract, and the smart move would be to use all of them to keep each other fresh. It’s easy to assume if there were and odd man out that it would be Freeman, but Lindsay is a terrible pass-protector and he’s relatively fragile. My guess: Lindsay splits work with Gordon on early downs, and Freeman splits with Gordon on passing downs. Gordon ends up playing 50% of snaps, with the split between Lindsay and Freeman varying from 25-25 to 40-10 either way, depending on situation. If they were my RBs, Lindsay would be more of an upside/instant-offense type piece, while Freeman would be employed more for ball control and time of possession. The key is to use them to keep Gordon fresh for the fourth quarter, where I want him just punishing tired tacklers and breaking off big gains when it matters most.
In the draft, Denver has the 15th overall pick, which would be ideal for a top-3 WR. However, with the draft as deep as it is and with Sutton established as top dog, they might wait until Round 2 to grab his complement. They need a second WR. DaeSean Hamilton and Tim Patrick have made some plays, but if you compare them the #2s on any decent team, it’s ugly. Like I said, this is a defensive team, so I imagine they spend most of the good picks filling out the lineup on that side of the ball. They are able to hide their receiver deficiency by using a lot of TEs, and they have a handful of good ones, good enough to be used on runs and playaction for sure.
Pre-Draft Fantasy Options
QB Lock
RB Gordon, Lindsay, Freeman
WR Sutton
TE Fant
OL Above-average
IDP Miller, Chubb, Simmons
I find the whole “Patriot Way” thing very amusing. It’s a cult, and the only reason the cult survives is because it thrives in its environment. Try to start a new chapter, the chapter folds (or should). The Texans have made a good go of it. They tend to have a good defense and make the playoffs. I have no idea why this happens, except that Bill O’Brien had a staff of pretty successful cult alumni who believed in the cult and could confidently and honestly speak to its success. That’s all about to come crumbling down. The Patriots sustain the cult with championship. It feeds on rings. The Lions have none of what the Texans had to get their train rolling. They hate Matt Patricia and have already quit on him. They can’t even sign free agents since the word is out. It’s insane that he wasn’t fired in January. The only reason they won’t be the worst is that Patricia will be fired midseason, sparking a five-game winning streak. I hate this team because even though I know they’ll be trash every year, I somehow end up relying on them for weeks at a time, either via Stafford or one of the RBs. Not this year, though… (No promises.)
Pre-Draft Fantasy Options
QB Stafford
RB Kerryon, Scrabrough
WR Golladay, Marvin
TE Hockenson
OL Average
IDP Walker
Reminder: I don’t like Aaron Rodgers. I don’t think he’s all that good at football. He was, for sure, very good at football, especially when his offensive line was awesome and he had two awesome receivers and a competent coach and a good defense. Conspiracy theory: McCarthy got himself fired, not because he wanted to get fired but because he wanted to prove that Aaron Rodgers wasn’t able to win on his own. He wanted that big dumb dick to get a sense of reality. When the Packers won the Super Bowl (way back in 2010), Rodgers accounted for 6% of the team’s salary cap—technically, the season as uncapped and I’m using 2011 cap figures, but it’s not like teams spent whatever they wanted. In 2018, it was 12%. Last year, it was 15%. This year, it’s down to 10%, but next year it goes back up. Assuming the cap rises by ten million again (like it has the last three years), Rodgers will account for 17% of the Packers’ salary cap. Listen: Aaron Rodgers protects the ball better than any QB in the game. In his late thirties, he has league’s lowest INT% the last two seasons.
But in that 2010 Super Bowl season, his receivers were Greg Jennings, Jordy Nelson, James Jones (all between ages 25 and 27), and Donald Driver (age 35). In fact, they made the Super Bowl despite Rodgers, who threw zero touchdowns and two picks against the Bears in the NFC Championship game, only it didn’t matter since Bears starter Jay Cutler got hurt and was replaced by Caleb Hanie halfway through the game. That pair combined for three picks, and the Packers won by a touchdown.
Rodgers made the playoffs every year between 2011 and 2016, losing to Eli’s Giants, Kaepernick’s 49ers (twice), the SB Champ Seahawks, Bruce Arians’ Cardinals, and the 28-3 Falcons. He missed the playoffs in 2017 and ’18.
Last year, the Packers won 13 games and made the NFC Championship game for a reason. The team is good. Aaron Rodgers won’t hurt your fantasy team. But here’s where my relentless hate helps me out as an owner. Because I’m willing to scrutinize him any way I can, I can tell you that in the past two seasons, while he’s posted an impossibly low interception rate, he hasn’t posted near the touchdown rates that earned him his big contracts or his consistently too-high draft price. Just a few years ago, Rodgers was posting touchdown rates in the 7% range every season, which means literally 7% of his throws were touchdowns. League-average is 5%, while 7% tends to lead the league.
But in the past two seasons, Aaron Rodgers’ TD rates have been 4.2 and 4.6. The numbers can be misleading. His attempts are up near 600, so he finishes with fantasy-viable TD numbers despite low efficiency. When he was crushing efficiency, his attempts were between 500 and 550.
So draft Aaron Rodgers. Whatever. I don’t know why I bother.
The Packers should be fine this year. Their division is only getting worse. Even the Vikings are dumping pieces like the Little Rascals at the end of the big race. If the Packers could finish 13-3 last season, they can do it again. They get the AFC South and the NFC East on their schedule, meaning they could probably lose to the Colts, Eagles, and Vikings and still finish 12-4.
They have four more draft picks than the average team, but the extras are all in the 200s. Their first pick is 30 overall, so the only fantasy-relevant piece they’re likely to get there is a starting WR. I can’t tell what they think of their current corps. Obviously, they see the need for help, signing Devin Funchess to a one-year deal, but do they see him as a potential #2 or an emergency replacement in case of injury for Davante Adams? I’m staying the hell away from all of it. The way they use their RBs is maddening, and while Davante is excellent, I have other intentions for my first-rounder.
Pre-Draft Fantasy Options
QB Rodgers
RB Jones, Williams
WR Adams, MVS, Funchess
TE Lewis
OL Average
IDP Smiths, Kirksey, Savage, Alexander
In 2014, Bill O’Brien went to Houston to start his own branch of The Patriot Way. He hired a bunch of former Patriot coaches and players that could speak to the success of The Way and show off their rings, and the players bought in. The Texans went 9-7 three years in a row and won the AFC South two of them. Then they drafted Deshaun Watson. He got hurt, so they went 4-12, but they’ve won the AFC South the last two years and won a playoff game. So in six years, B.O.B. has four division titles. The Texans are pretty successful, especially compared to their early days, when David Carr was getting sacked 70 times per season until he finally just quit.
Let’s take a second and appreciate the comparison to the Pats, who also get to sleepwalk through their division games year after year. Thankfully, the Colts are finally figuring how not just how to build a winner but how to, you know, win. Meanwhile, the Texans upward failure might finally reach its apex. It would be easy to point to the Hopkins trade, or the Tunsil trade, or the Clowney trade. So let’s do that and save some energy.
The defense is the same as it was last year, and the roster is unlikely to get much better since they didn’t save any money in the Hopkins deal for this year. All the savings is in the future, in Laremy Tunsil’s bank account. What a shit show. But so the defense: they are trash. They were bottom-10 in just about everything, and you can only expect a full year of JJ Watt to improve that so much. They might sign Eric Reid to play safety alongside his brother Justin. That would actually be a sick duo, which would change my mind a little about how good they’ll be. We’ll see.
Let’s look at the draft. Houston gave away their first pick in the Tunsil deal last summer, and the only reason they needed to trade for Tunsil was because they botched drafting a tackle last April. Their first pick is 40 overall, good enough to get a starting WR, especially in this draft, but other teams know the Texans will draft a WR with that pick, just like last season other teams knew the Texans would draft a tackle in the first round, which is how the Eagles’ jumped up to steal Andre Dillard.
So the Texans find themselves in this position: everyone knows they need a WR at 40. They can either wait to get screwed out of their top choices, or they can trade into the first round, which is especially choice because it offers the fifth-year option for someone who will hopefully be Deshaun’s new favorite target, you know, assuming Deshaun is there in five years. But if they trade into the first, you can just imagine what a GM can convince Billy it’s worth. He’s going to end up trading the Cards’ pick and Houston’s own pick in the second, meaning when it’s all said and done, he’ll have effectively given up Hopkins and a second-round pick for maybe the Texans’ original first-round pick this year? Sheesh.
Oh, I like David Johnson this year. I don’t care if he’s not worth the money. He’s paid to be a bell-cow. He’ll be a bell-cow. He has a running QB, which blows the top off his rushing ceiling. On opportunity alone, he’ll be fantastic. I know he’s not the David Johnson of yore, but ask yourself who’s better: David Johnson or Carlos Hyde? Look at Hyde’s numbers last year. Johnson’s going to be a steal.
Pre-Draft Fantasy Options
QB Watson
RB Johnsons David and Duke
WR Fuller, Stills, Cobb, Coutee?
TE (too many cooks)
OL Average
IDP Watt, McKinney, Mercilus, Reid
They’ve done everything right. They’ve made all the best moves and spent smart and refused to push their chips in when the cards weren’t right, and after all of it, after they assembled the ideal setting for their franchise quarterback to ascend to the status of Super Bowl quarterback. He retired and left them with Jacoby Brissett, who isn’t terrible but also clearly isn’t a Super Bowl quarterback. So they had the chance at one. They gave Brady a good look, but I guess they weren’t comfortable giving him two years or maybe they got outbid, so they pivoted to Philip Rivers. I feel like this is the first wrong move they’ve made, and everything else will unravel around it. I would have been much more comfortable with Andy Dalton in this spot. He doesn’t have quite the same reputation, definitely doesn’t have the same kind of yards and touchdowns, but dammit, Dalton is six years younger, and he has promise!
Philip Rivers is nothing special. He’s got great counting stats: he needs 800 yards and 3 TDs to join the 60K/400 club, making him the sixth member behind Brees, Brady, Manning, Favre, and Marino (same order for both lists). Historical. Cool. But right now, looking at the last three seasons, 31 QBs have attempted at least 700 passes. Rivers is 8th in TD%, 21st in INT%, 10th in comp%, and 4th in adjusted net yards per attempt. Let’s drop it to two years, 500 attempts (33 qualifiers): Rivers is 12th in TD%, 27th in INT%, 9th in comp%, and 8th in ANY/A. Let’s look at last year, 250 attempts (31 qualifiers): Rivers is 25th in TD%, 29th in INT%, 10th in comp%, and 15th in ANY/A. That’s a steep decline! We can blame his weapons if we want to (Tyrell walked; Henry and Gordon missed time), but no matter how you look at it, he’s completing the same percentage of his throws, only those throws are going for fewer yards, fewer TDs, and more INTs. Indianapolis has the offensive minds to make Rivers better, but meanwhile his weapons are getting objectively worse. He’s going from Melvin Gordon, Austin Ekeler, Keenan Allen, Hunter Henry, and Mike Williams to Marlon Mack, Nyheim Hines, TY Hilton, Jack Doyle, and Zach Pascal. These aren’t just convenient comparisons; these are the usage leaders on each offense. The Colts will probably draft an offensive weapon that evens the comparisons a little, but the 2019 Chargers’ cast (which had all of those guys for at least 12 games) will still outclass the 2020 Colts’.
But this: the Colts’ offensive line is top-3 (with the Eagles and Saints). Philip Rivers has been playing behind a dog-shit line for years. He’s been getting his ass kicked, so if he’s experiencing a drop-off in play, it could be attributed to more immediate wear and tear and not necessarily a career-ending drop-off. It’s as fair as I’ll be to Rivers here because, frankly, I don’t like him. I don’t like his prep-school-bully face or his disregard for our population’s replacement rate. I hope he sucks and the Colts turn to Brissett and win with Brissett. I don’t really care about the Colts. I like that they have a great offensive line, a good defense, and an excellent general manager. I envy their approach to team-building and culture. Otherwise, meh.
Defensively, they took a leap by adding DeForest Buckner in trade. It kills any hope they were going to draft one of those top-3 WRs to start across from TY (or for him, let’s be honest), but it vaults an already good defense into top-5 consideration. If there’s a 2020 team built to replicate the successes of the ’02 Bucs or the ’13 Seahawks, it’s these Colts. They run a zone defense, and they have depth for days. If they didn’t have such a bland uniform and a history of treating their quarterbacks like dirt, I might be intrigued.
Something I forgot: when Washington traded up to draft Dwayne Haskins, the Colts also got the Skins’ 2020 2nd, good for 34th overall. With that and their own 44 overall, they could very well draft a fantasy option.
Pre-Draft Fantasy Options
QB Rivers
RB Mack, Hines
WR Hilton, Pascal, Campbell
TE Doyle
OL Elite
IDP Leonard, Buckner, Hooker, Houston
Objectively Gardner Minshew is like a C+ QB. He’s Tom Brady without the meticulous preparation, which makes him… I thought I would be ready with something, but I guess the fact that there’s no well-known comparison for 6’1” QB with average arm talent tells you everything you need to know. Remember Bruce Gradkowski, Bucs fans? Take away the hair and the bandanna and the ‘stache, and that’s all Minshew is.
And what else do the Jags have? Tom Coughlin torpedoed this team by scaring off Telvin Smith (not retired, just not playing?), emboldening Jalen Ramsey to demand a trade (actually he faked sick and injured until the Jags couldn’t stand it anymore), and making basically every black player on the roster wonder, Am I welcome here? They had to ship off Calais Campbell for nothing.
So the offense is Minshew, Fournette, Chark, and Dede Westbrook, plus what should be an above-average line (oh, and they signed Tyler Eifert; woohoo?) The defense is a shell of it’s 2018 self. Basically it’s two awesome pass-rushers (Allen & Ngakoue), a dynamic MLB (Myles Jack), a tackle-vacuum (Schobert), and a rising-star safety (Ronnie Harrison). That’s five players on defense worth a damn. They are better on paper than the Dolphins and Bengals were at this time last season, which I think is all the more reason they will suck. At least the Dolphins and Bengals were motivated by the constant dragging they suffered at the hands of literally everybody. The detriment to the Jaguars is that some people honestly believe they can build on the success they had last season. The ace up their sleeve is that they lost to the Texans twice last season, and the Texans are going to quit on their coach long before they face the Jags—the schedule hasn’t been released; I’m just assuming the Texans quit on B.O.B. two weeks into training camp.
I will say this: if the employ the air-raid offense that ignited Minshew’s stats in college, then they will be very useful for fantasy, especially if they’re playing catch-up every game.
Pre-Draft Fantasy Options
QB Minshew
RB Fournette
WR Chark, Dede, Conley, Lee
TE Eifert
OL Above-average
IDP Jack, Schobert, Allen, Ngakoue
P.S. Ngakoue is almost definitely getting traded.
They won the Super Bowl, so I don’t feel compelled to talk about them too much. Mahomes is unstoppable. He gave every playoff opponent a lead, usually a significant lead, and then he just bulldozed it. Even in the Super Bowl, he spotted the NFC’s best defense (and, what, second-best offense?) ten points [i]to start the fourth quarter[/i] and still won by 11. If you win 21-0 in the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl, you should get to take the other team’s conference championship trophy, too.
What’s different about these Chiefs? That’s the question we should be asking instead of giving them another Super Bowl. Fine. They aren’t even losing Sammy Watkins, who said before the Super Bowl that he would take 2020 off. They are retaining all the speedy dudes who put up filthy stats in small doses. I’m talking about Gator alum Demarcus Robinson and possible guerilla marketing cyborg Byron Pringle. The Chiefs are at least four deep at WR, and they’re all burners. What they don’t have is a backup for Travis Kelce, but they just signed Ricky Seals-Jones, which feels like as solid an answer as they could get without giving anything up.
We’ll see what they do in the draft. They basically have their original allotment of picks, except they traded away the 6th and 7th last summer, for relatively veteran players who got decent playing time, which 6th and 7th picks never do, especially not the year before they’re drafted. The Chiefs’ front office is brilliant, capitalizing on teams who just don’t understand what all these assets are actually worth in terms of winning football games. Oh, and this: the Chiefs traded away their second-round pick for Frank Clark, but they traded away Dee Ford for the 49ers’ second-round pick, so essentially traded 30-yo Dee Ford for 26-yo Frank Clark and moved up one spot in the second round in the process. Amazing.
I guess that segues to defense, but I don’t care, and I don’t think the Chiefs do either.
Pre-Draft Fantasy Options
QB Mahomes
RB Williams, Thompson
WR Hill, Hardman, Robinson, Pringle
TE Kelce
OL Above-average
IDP Jones, Clark, Mathieu
Also known as Gruden’s Grudes, the Raiders move to their new home this year. I think the Raiders are good, sure. They had a rough start to 2019 and then had like a five-game winning streak in the middle there, then fell off again. They have a good enough offensive line and RB combo to be a good team. They are super Gruden-y in that their best receiver is the TE and the second-best receiver is the slot receiver and the third-best receiver is the second TE. I’m only half kidding. Tyrell Williams is more in the mix than Foster Moreau was; it’s just entertaining as hell that a backup TE can get fantasy play in 2019. Who but Gruden is capable of that? Love him. He ruined the Bucs (unintentionally), but I love him. A ring will do that to some people.
But so Jon Gruden is giving Marcus Mariota $8 million per year to back up Derek Carr, and I think it’s a pretty weird move unless Gruden is on the fence about Carr. Backup QBs are important, though. Just reflect on the Packers’ 2011 Super Bowl again: if they Bears had a Mariota-caliber backup instead of Caleb Hanie, they probably would’ve buried Aaron Rodgers’ stupid face. Either way, plenty of teams are showing that when they can win with a backup, they—look I don’t have to finish that thought. The Saints and Chiefs needed backup QBs to win a couple games to put them in position for the playoffs. Had the Chiefs lost the games Mahomes had to miss, they would have been playing in the wild card round, and they might have had to play the Ravens or the Pats. I don’t think it would have mattered, but I think even thought those teams lost to the Titans, they had a better chance against the Chiefs than the Titans did. Their offenses are better.
But, yes, the Raiders. God, what an important team with such relevant playoff chances that they need a backup quarterback to get them over the hump and onto the Super Bowl.
They have multiple first-round picks for the second consecutive year (fucking Bears), and they should theoretically be an elite team in a couple years when the five first-rounders from these two years develop. I mean, they already choked on two of three picks last year, but they hit on some later picks (Maxx Crosby for one), so it could even out.
Oh man, they signed Jason Witten, and I’m just begging for a daily Gruden-Witten podcast when this is all over.
Pre-Draft Fantasy Options
QB Carr
RB Jacobs
WR Tyrell, Renfrow, Agholor
TE Waller
OL Above-average
IDP Crosby, Littleton, Abrams
I don’t want to be a downer. I can sense myself getting tired of writing these team “breakdowns,” mailing them in, but am I required to provide an angle for how these teams could surprise us? Am I supposed to be fair to these teams, as if I owe anything to them? If they’re not fantasy-relevant, they’re not fantasy-relevant.
I feel like if you’re drafting anybody on the Chargers’ offense, you’re overdrafting them. I’m also not here to give you fantasy advice. I’m here just to illuminate what I consider draftable pieces so that hopefully no one runs away with a superior team at the draft. I don’t have the picks to impact anybody’s ability to crush the draft, but I can spread knowledge and make it so that everyone has insights into sleepers and shit so that Evan doesn’t get all of them. I can do that, and I will do that.
The Chargers might draft a QB or a high-quality offensive linemen. Either of those choices would greatly impact their season outlook. If they draft a defender, or for some crazy reason an offensive skill player at sixth overall (or trade back), then nothing changes. I think this is the first team I’ve written about that has that high a pick. It makes it more difficult to say anything with potential to stay true after the draft.
Know this: the Chargers’ defense was already great, and they added Linval Joseph and Chris Harris without losing anything crucial. Their secondary might be the best. Their offensive line made some splash moves, but there’s no indication that the unit will play well together or even stay healthy. Bulaga and Pouncey, in particular, are huge question marks that are supposed to be two of the three best linemen. Trai Turner is legit. Everything else is up in the air. The offense has great players, but without any sense of quarterback or line play, I’m not willing to pay, especially since none of these stars on offense have played without Rivers. Not one player, not one game. All they know is Rivers. If they have to build chemistry with Tyrod or Tua (or Trubisky), or if there’s a QB controversy and they don’t know who to build it with, things could be bad. For example, Keenan Allen is an elite WR. But if I think his ceiling is capped by QB play, depending on what I think of the other elite WRs around the league, I might drop him to the bottom of that list. Hunter Henry is probably safe, but Mike Williams, as Tyrod’s fourth target, it feels like serious risk.
This is important stuff to consider, but we can’t really consider any of it until after we see the Chargers’ draft results.
Pre-Draft Fantasy Options
QB No
RB Ekeler
WR Allen, MikeWill
TE Henry
OL Suspect
IDP Derwin, Bosa, Ingram, Harris
Oh boy, LA teams, man. Originally, I wrote like 1,000 words on the Rams screwing themselves financially. Here’s a summary:
The Rams are spending 18% on QB, 7% on nothing (Gurley’s release), 2.5% on active RBs, 15% on WRs, 12% on O-line, and 6% on TE, good for 60%. Okay, not terrible to spend a little more on offense, when you’re an offensive team. I mean, the Gurley thing is a bad look through any lens, so it’s best to move past it. But so on defense, that 20% on D-line already takes us to 80%, with Ramsey taking the total up to 87%. Punter Johnny Hekker makes it 89%. That leaves 11% for the other eleven (minimum) members of the secondary and linebacking corps that will likely also makeup your special teams. Holy. Shit. That’s not even factoring in backup QB or depth on the DL.
Luckily they hit on some recent draft picks, so they have Ebukam, Hill, Rapp, and Johnson able to start, granted that’s another 5%, and that’s non-negotiable since you’re not getting talent anywhere near that level for that kind of money elsewhere. Frankly, it’s over for the Rams. Remember how good the Cardinals are getting, how good the Seahawks and 49ers already are, and recognize that the Rams supernova’d right before our eyes. (Keep in mind they can work out a lot of kinks after this year when the dead cap figures die down.)
What’s great about this from a fantasy perspective is that their only hope to even make the playoffs in 2019 is to be incredible on offense, and we likely already know the pieces they’ll be using. I predict they’ll smooth things over with Cooks and keep the band together. Despite this being a good WR draft to replace Cooks and make it easier to move on next year, I think they spend all of their draft picks (really just a 2, a 3, a comp-3, and a 4) on defense and O-line. They have already three RBs on the roster would can start. Kelly is the best size/skill combo, Henderson has the draft capital, and Brown has the most usage so far.
Pre-Draft Fantasy Options
QB Goff
RB (wait for training camp)
WR Kupp, Woods, Cooks
TE Higbee, Everett
OL Above-average
IDP Donald, Johnson, Rapp
P.S. the omission of Ramsey from IDP isn’t an oversight. There are no fantasy settings that give points to players who blanket receivers so well that they don’t get targeted. There aren’t enough stats that lose IDPs points, and until they do, shutdown corners like Ramsey and Stephon Gilmore aren’t fantasy players.
There was this weird story floating around maybe March 30th about the Dolphins trying to trade up for the #1. The thing is, all the buzz generated around an article published March 9th. The main point of the article was just that the Dolphins have 14 picks in this year’s draft and that they are theoretically able to trade up. I know there has been similar buzz about the Chargers trading up to get ahead of the Dolphins, which might trigger the Dolphins to get involved in trading directly to one so that they get the best QB, regardless of which QB it is. The Dolphin-fan fear seems to be the Dolphins trading away significant capital just to take Tua so that the Chargers can’t. The conceit is that Burrow is better than the Dolphins, but the Dolphins are victims of take-lock since they’ve known they weren’t going to get Burrow they haven’t done any research on Burrow, so they couldn’t possibly pivot and take Burrow. But dudes, Tua is better than Burrow. I’m not interested in backing that claim with stats and anecdotes. I have a theory.
It’s based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, specifically its peak. If self-actualization is the peak, and the peak for an aspiring QB is to be the best QB in the game, there’s seemingly no greater peak than winning the Heisman and the National Championship in the same year. This isn’t an argument that these are better awards than the MVP or the Super Bowl. It’s an argument that the college awards occur at a more formative age, when the person is a softer piece of clay and when the people around them feel like more significant characters in their story. The connections these guys form with their college teams, coaches, and fans, the player doesn’t see them as having all that artifice tainting them (this would be naïve, but hey, perception is reality, for better or worse). Frankly, these people treat you better than people will “in the real world.” You get softer criticism, and you aren’t as guarded as you will be when you’re forced to be by the impersonal contact that’s so prevalent in the business world, where people can take advantage of your time and money in ways that can permanently hurt you. There’s a question of motivation but also a concern for the utter disappointment of leaving a place where everyone cares about you (again, perception) and going somewhere where all people do is expect things from you. It’s disheartening, especially when success doesn’t come immediately. Whatever. This isn’t [i]Outside the Lines[/i]. My point isn’t that we should feel bad for jocks who don’t win every game. My point is that I wonder how a Joe Burrow stays motivated when no amount of professional success could make him feel as happy or as whole as the success he’s already had. I’d rather have a Tua, who has similar physical tools and mental makeup, plus he still has something to prove.
It makes me think of Jameis Winston, and I guess since I don’t give a shit about the Dolphins, I might as well highjack their segment to get into this. Jameis is that kid from nowhere (like Burrow, who was born basically in a coal-mine in southeastern Ohio) who rose to stardom and had unprecedented success. He went undefeated and won the Heisman and won the National Championship and the he had to go back to school for another season. That career trajectory went splat with that extra year. What could possibly motivate him to win another championship? I think maybe he had social goals, romantic goals, but football? He’ll never be as beloved as he was in college. And after five years of (somewhat fair) scrutiny in Tampa, what’s left? He lasted longer than most Heisman/Championship winners. Literally one winner of both awards has had more pro success than Winston, and it’s Cam Newton, who won the MVP but lost the Super Bowl and will probably never get close to either again. But Doak, how many guys have even won both? A decent amount! In order, all the double-winners since 1966 (*denotes the player won both in same year): OJ, Johnny Rodgers, Tony Dorsett*, Charles White, Herschel Walker, Gino Torretta, Charlie Ward*, Danny Wuerffel*, Charles Woodson*, Chris Weinke*, Matt Leinart*, Tim Tebow, Mark Ingram*, Cam Newton*, Jameis Winston*, Marcus Mariota*, and Derrick Henry*. 17 players, and just seven of them lived up to their potential as professionals? I’m counting OJ, Dorsett, Walker, Woodson, Ingram, Newton, and Henry. The rest flamed out during their rookie deals.
But to stay on Jameis, he didn’t exactly flame out, not like these other guys. He kept the starting job all but a few games over these past five years, but maybe that was more sunk-cost fallacy or tool-based optimism. I don’t have any answers. I’m just bummed out.
If I can spin this into something, I guess it would be that if the Chargers do decided to leap the Dolphins and take Tua, Miami can call Winston and reunite him with FitzMagic. Maybe they can go to Jacksonville together in 2021, move it on up to Atlanta in 2022, make a whole travelling circus of it, combining for more and more TDs and INTs at every stop along the way, just narrowly missing the 14-team playoffs each time.
But okay, to be fair to Miami for a paragraph, they are rebuilding correctly. Signing a shutdown corner is a smart way to spend your money in 2020, especially when you already have a shutdown corner to start across from him. Analytics are proving pass coverage to be more valuable than pass rush. The Dolphins have enough pass rush to get by. Shaq Lawson, Emmanuel Ogbah, and Taco Charlton are going to combine for some solid sack numbers in 2020. I have a good feeling about Brian Flores. I feel like he’ll be the first member of the Belichick coaching tree to build and sustain a winning football team (notice no cult jokes here), and I think the reason is because he signs the type of guys Belichick would sign, not the guys Belichick has signed and since let walk (the Fins’ overpay for Kyle Van Noy notwithstanding).
Pre-Draft Fantasy Options
QB (patience)
RB Howard
WR Parker, Williams
TE Gesicki
OL Below-average
IDP Not right now
Kirk Cousins has a new contract. Dalvin Cook is rumored to be next. Adam Thielen got his last season. The Vikings have been very creative in how they work the books, but the bill came due this year, and they were all like, “Did we say we were covering the bar tab, too? I can’t remember. Ah, how about we split it fifty-fifty?” 10% of the Vikings’ cap is lost to dead money, which is actually only 5th highest.
They somehow appear to be in good shape moving forward, but they have to continue hitting on draft picks and developing players. They aren’t stacked like they were the last two years. Despite dumping starters Diggs, Rhodes, Waynes, and Joseph in addition to key role players Weatherly and Alexander, the Vikes not only have a few guys they can promote, they have extra first- and third-round picks on top of their normal allotment this year.
Two first-rounders will be two starters in that pristine pipeline. Even their Day 2 picks will be fixtures in the rotation. For one thing, they have to be. But even still, the Vikings have such specific expectations on both sides of the ball that it’s easy to draft a guy with the intention for him to do a little, and if he does a lot, great!
While the Vikings offense is mostly set, there is the whole Diggs thing to think about. They have Olabisi Johnson and Tajae Sharpe as the most likely to start across from Thielen, but as we know, it’s a WR draft, so…
My thinking for is that Irv Smith starts to pass Rudolph on the TE depth chart, meaning they’ll split time and neither will be worth it until a Starter emerges.
Pre-Draft Fantasy Options
QB Cousins
RB Cook, Mattison
WR Thielen
TE No
OL Good
IDP Hunter, Kendricks, H. Smith
I have half-baked ideas about what the Patriots will do to reinvent themselves. I wonder if it’s possible for them to maintain the success without Brady, not because I want any part of the Belichick-Brady dichotomy argument, but because it’s a lot easier to get buy-in when your best player is also your top advocate, and on top of that he takes less money to help the team. I don’t know how you do without that. Does anyone else on the offense qualify as team captain? From the outside, Edleman seems more like Tom’s crony than a team captain in his own right, so what do you do with that offense?
Maybe it doesn’t matter. The defense will be good again. They’ve got the league’s best secondary—I know I said it was the Chargers, but the Chargers don’t have anybody Gilmore’s caliber, and it’s honestly fine to say multiple teams are the best; like best friends, it’s a tier, not a person. In front of that elite secondary, they’ve got maybe not the most well-known front-seven, but they have the best coach a front-seven ever could. With a few key draft picks and a couple cheap veterans acquired later in the summer, they’ll be back to their old tricks.
But back to the offense, I worry about the offensive line. Belichick chose to franchise LG Joe Thuney, when I feel like he would normally let the lineman walk and let Scarnecchia build up a cheap guy or a young guy. But Scarnecchia is gone, and the cracks in this team’s armor begin to crack a little more. The seams they are a splitting, and they’re about to be ass-out if there’s an injury along this line. I don’t care if the current line coach has been studying Scarnecchia for twenty years (he hasn’t); he’s not Scarnecchia. So while the line is good now, it’s got zero depth and limited capacity to build or acquire depth the way the Pats are used to. It’s going to be a problem. As good as Tom Brady is, the Pats still hide him behind a quality rushing attack. When they don’t have that. They use quick, short passes to mask it, and I wonder whether Stid the Kid has that kind of accuracy and awareness to complete those pseudo-runs once every five plays.
Either that, or the RBs need to improve a full letter-grade over the summer. Michel was bad last year, and Rex Burkhead is old, and so maybe Damien Harris comes into his own. This was a guy playing behind Derrick Henry and Kenyan Drake at Alabama. Those Alabama backs are legit NFL backs when the enter the program, and the Patriots badly need a legit NFL back right now. We’ll see.
But so Jarrett Stidham is a good QB. He had a year to learn under Brady, and hopefully he had some sense Brady could leave after a year because he is in position to win the “competition” with Brian Hoyer. I believe Hoyer when he says he was told there would be a competition; I don’t believe the Patriots are dumb enough to actually hold a competition, at least not one that becomes a distraction. Maybe the competition lasts for that first week of training camp. Often these competitions last only as long as teams need to make an excuse for the guy they already want. (Please take notes, Chicago).
The guy in New England is Stidham. They spent a useful pick on him, and he looked good in the preseason, or at least he and Jakobi Meyers looked good. I want the Pats to draft Jalen Hurts in the first round and take the game back to 1955 with extra fullbacks and shit, but I don’t actually think it will happen, especially since the Pats already spent a second-rounder on Sanu. Still, I won’t make too many assumptions about the Pats’ QB until after the draft.
Pre-Draft Fantasy Options
QB Stidham
RB White, Michel, Burkhead, Harris
WR Meyers, Edelman, Harry
TE (LaCosse? Vitale? It’s crazy there’s nobody)
OL Good
IDP No
The fatigue is real. I’ve spent all week writing this shit. Some of the teams take 15 minutes, but most take between 30 and 60. I’m looking at teams I don’t care about and thinking, What’s the point? So much will change. I’ve completely lost sight of my original intention, which was to talk about team identities and the few offseason moves that say something about these teams. Instead, I’ve started predicting the season like that’s the responsible move. Look, hopefully, this paragraph isn’t making sense because I end up going back and editing each team’s section to stick to my original intention, and so okay let’s at least give Future Doak less future work. (Update: I edited things but kept a lot of digressive stuff for color.)
The Saints have extended their Super Bowl window at least one more season. Technically, Brees has a two-year deal, but he’s already admitted he’s playing it year-to-year. And the Saints’ offseason moves suggest there is no long-term plan for life after Brees. They promised Emmanuel Sanders a two-year deal, but they can’t sign it because they don’t have cap space, and it remains to be seen where they will possibly get it and still field a full team. Everyone who can save them money is not only a starter but a key starter, so they have to restructure deals and push more and more money to the future, but the future is pretty much mortgaged already. Some of their best players’ contracts are up at the end of 2020, and there’s currently only $20 million in available cap for 2021. The Saints have 36 players under contract for 2021, and they have just $20 million to get the other 16 required to have a full roster. Notable names not included on their 2021 books are Alvin Kamara, Ryan Ramczyk, Marshon Lattimore, and Demario Davis. They were forced to re-sign LG Andrus Peat to a huge deal because they don’t have time to coach up a new guy, and there aren’t any veteran linemen available except via trade, and the Saints can’t afford to trade draft picks for pricey veterans. They need that pipeline to keep feeding them cheap starters. So even though there appears to be a two-year plan, the window is realistically one year. If Brees retires, they can afford Lattimore and Ramczyk, and they can cut some fat to get Kamara or David on board. But 2020 is the last year of the Saints as we know them.
Honestly, the NFL is letting the Saints cheat by letting Brees sign a two-year deal right now. He has no plans to play past 2020, and I bet he has no plans to collect the dead money owed on the second year of this deal. It’s shady. We’ll see what happens, of course, but right now, it seems like fraud to me. (What the fuck? I wrote this right after my paragraph about focusing on identity. What even is this shit?)
For the most part, I don’t care at all about the Saints except for their relationship to the Bucs. The better they are, the better the Bucs have to be. I guess I’m excited to see Brady-Brees play twice with the division hypothetically in the balance, but I can’t actually watch the Saints play unless I’m benefitting off of Michael Thomas’s fantasy production. I almost definitely can’t afford Thomas this year, so I don’t have to think about the Saints at all, and I feel great about it.
Nope. Didn’t do the thing where I talked about free agency all the way, like the signing of Malcolm Jenkins or re-signing of midseason acquisition Jackrabbit Jenkins. Forget it.
Pre-Draft Fantasy Options
QB Brees
RB Kamara, Latavius
WR Thomas, Sanders
TE Cook
OL Elite
IDP Jordan, Davis, Jenkins
They fired Pat Shurmur and hired Pats ST coordinator Joe Judge to be the new head coach. Judge hired Jason Garrett and Patrick Graham to be his OC and DC. Graham is another former Patriots. Garrett’s name you recognize from years of blame for the Cowboys’ mediocrity. As far as I know, the blame is warranted. The Giants looked great last year, especially for a team with a terrible roster and a rookie QB nobody wanted, but somehow the GM, who is responsible for the roster and the rookie QB, somehow convinced ownership that the coaches were responsible for the team’s failure. He even sold it by trading a third-round pick for the expiring contract of a stud defensive lineman. It’s masterful, I guess, but the Giants have to be good this year for the GM to keep his job, and there’s just no way that happens.
From what I can tell, Jason Garrett’s offense is bland and predictable, and it’s been successful because he’s had awesome QBs and RBs and the best o-line for the last ten years while the rest of the league was accounting for an only fair talent by actually, you know, improving offensive schemes. The Giants might be better than 4-12, but I honestly don’t see how. Their division was awful last season, and while everyone else is getting better—eh, the Cowboys are probably staying about the same—the Giants are getting objectively worse. Pat Shurmur isn’t prime head-coaching material, but he designed an offense that made a rookie battery of Daniel Jones and Darius Slayton into young stars overnight. I was into it! The Giants even have a very convenient excuse that injuries piled up and made it impossible to get momentum. They had two offensive starters play in all 16 games (the LT and LG), while each of their skill players missed at least three games. I believe (know that I didn’t dig deep enough to be sure) that their starting offense took the field together probably four times, yet somehow the whole coaching staff gets the ax. The defense, which was an awful roster anyway, had about seven starters play the whole year. But again, let’s fire the coaches.
They’re trying to improve on defense. They franchised Leonard Williams, and the signed Blake Martinez, Kyler Fackrell, and James Bradberry. The free agents are not sexy, nor are they capable of making a bad defense into a good one with their talent alone. They’re all pretty one-dimensional, and they’re overpaid, which makes it difficult to build around them.
To put it bluntly, it’s still a bad roster. The offense is okay. The line is average, and the skill players are actually pretty good. The defense has a nice-looking line and some quality pieces in the secondary. Put it all together, though, and it’s not worth much. The holes are easily exploitable, even if they make good picks in the draft. They have the fourth pick; they can get a day-one starter who makes an impact, but he will just be a rookie, he won’t be able to take over a game. Everyone thinks they will take Isaiah Simmons, or that they should. He is one of these unicorn defenders that we’ll be seeing more of: fast and strong enough to play safety or linebacker. I wonder at times how much John Lynch and Derrick Brooks were these type of guys, only they weren’t advertised as such. Brooks was as good in coverage as any safety, and Lynch hit as hard as any linebacker. It’s interesting. Anyway, the Giants should take a defender but GM Dave Gettleman has drafted RB and QB in this spot in his two years in charge, and he probably can’t stop thinking about how much of a WR draft this is. CeeDee Lamb off the board at 4 is a super reach, though, which is why Gettleman is shopping the pick. Wouldn’t be surprised to see him pull the trigger and take Lamb at 4 anyway.
(Pro Tip: if they have a bad defense and a good offense, they should be targeted in fantasy.)
Pre-Draft Fantasy Options
QB Jones
RB Barkley
WR Slayton, Shepard, Tate
TE Engram
OL Average
IDP Martinez, Peppers
Adam Gase is the new Jeff Fisher. Give him any combination of players and circumstances, and he will find a way to finish between 7-9 and 9-7. This year will be no different. Dudes, the Jets went like a month with their QB having mono; they played backup and third-string and maybe even fourth-string QBs who threw for like 50 yards per game in his absence, and they still finished 7-9.
Very little will change. The offensive line was awful last season. The team topped out at 115 yards rushing, and they only exceed 100 yards rushing three times. Those three times were against the Skins, the Fins, and the Ravens. You might be saying the Ravens are pretty decent, but the reason the Jets eclipsed 100 against them was because when they (the Jets) were down by a million, they chose to run the ball in passing situations and basically conceded the game.
The Jets’ identity (remember, the intended conceit?) is that of climbing a greased wall. They’re not quite Sisyphus since they never really get a boulder all the way up a hill. They kind of prop the boulder partway up the hill and then act surprised when it starts rolling down on its own. I mean, the Jets were good as recently as 2010, when they lost their second consecutive AFC Championship. There was this whole Jets-Pats rivalry thing going on. Mark Sanchez was called “Sanchize” and it wasn’t sarcastic. Now, they’re this hodge-podge of failure. Sam Darnold was touted as the clear #1 pick when he was a freshman at USC, and now he’s like one bad season away from being the next Matt Leinart. Adam Gase and Gregg Williams are the weirdest duo of coaches because neither of them has had any success with anything less than supreme talent. Adam Gase’s first two seasons as an OC were 2013 and 2014, during which time Peyton Manning threw 94 TDs. Well, the Bears eat this up, and they hire Gase as OC. Chicago ranks 22nd in offense in Gase’s lone season. Miami hires him as head coach the following year. He spends three years in Miami where they max out as the 17th ranked offense and get progressively worse each season, bottoming out at 30th. The Jets fucking love it. They hire Gase and finished 2019 ranked dead last in total offense. There was some time there where the Jets’ offense wasn’t just bad. It was threatening to be the worst offense since before the invention of the forward pass. Now let’s talk about Gregg Williams, and let’s avoid Bountygate since it’s too on the nose for criticizing a coach’s role as motivator, but let’s remember that the last time Gregg Williams coached a top-10 defense, it was that very season. He spent three seasons out of football. Since his return, his defenses consistently finish in the bottom half of the league. It’s disgusting.
My prediction: if Sam Darnold continues to be Jameis Winston Lite, the Jets will probably be willing to move on after this year, especially if they have a high draft pick. But the Jets are another team with a weird power dynamic. They had a GM named Mike McSomething who handed out the Lev Bell and CJ Mosley deals, and Adam Gase didn’t like that, so the Jets fired McSomething (but let him draft players first) and gave Gase control of the roster, but then they hired a real GM later, someone Gase wanted them to hire. So maybe the Jets ownership has patience and faith in Gase and maybe they are Sisyphus, but no if they’re a tortured Greek, they’re Prometheus, creating fire with the first star QB and now being forced to have their regrown liver pecked out every day for as long as the league survives.
I keep saying everyone might draft a WR. I think the Jets actually will. They let Robby Anderson walk and signed Perriman to replace him. I imagine they want three legitimate starting WRs, though.
Oh god wait, I had a reason for bringing up the GM earlier. Whoever this guy is supposed to be (because he worked for the Eagles’ front office), he’s just another Peter Principle loser because he spent like $20 million per year signing George Fant and Connor McGovern to revamp the offensive line, and if you’re like, Who? Exactly.
Pre-Draft Fantasy Options
QB Darnold
RB Bell
WR Crowder, Perriman
TE Herndon
OL Below-average
IDP Mosley, Adams
The Eagles went 9-7 in 2018, made the playoffs, won a game, lost a game. They went 9-7 last season, made the playoffs, lost a game. After Doug Pederson missed the playoffs his first season as head coach, he’s 3/3 with a Super Bowl win. And for the first time in two years, the Eagles have improved over the offseason. The year they won the Super Bowl, they stacked a bunch of talent on weird contracts and basically made any kind of extended window untenable. They have survived purgatory and are able to thrive again. Did they lose a decent chunk of that Super Bowl talent? They did. But they’ve maintained what works for them: strength in the trenches. They are stacked an offensive line, and they have like a nine-man rotation on the defensive line and defensive edge. The Eagles cut a handful of respected players that were termed “cap casualties,” but their cap situation is fine. They somehow rolled over $20 million from last season. That’s what you can do when your division is as bad as the NFC East (officially the worst division in football now? AFC South still close?). You take one season where you just let that controlled fire burn and burn and you cover your face and wait for the smoke to clear. The smoke has cleared. The roster isn’t what it was in 2016, but with the draft and the cap space to grab a couple more veterans, they are going to be good this year and return to greatness next year. It’s that easy when you run your team the right way. Instead of extending the window and extending the window, leave the window the hell alone for a minute and clean the house already.
Welcome back to contention, Philadelphia. I have nothing else to say about it.
Oh the acquisition thing, okay: the Eagles lost some talent (Darby, Jernigan, Jenkins, Bradham) but added superstar Darius Slay, rising star Javon Hargrave, and the infamous Nickell Robey-Coleman (whose name almost always makes me misspell robbery). From what I can tell, they have a need at safety but will get it cleared up.
Pre-Draft Fantasy Options
QB Wentz
RB Sanders
WR Jeffery, Jackson
TE Ertz, Goedert
OL Elite
IDP No
The defense is fine. Sometimes, the way a defense functions just doesn’t leave one guy absorbing tackles or knocking down a bunch of passes. I might be interested in whoever starts across from Slay, especially against teams with two great WRs. That guy will get tackles and PBUs.
Without getting too deep in the weeds, I expected the Steelers to challenge the Ravens for the division title. I just look at that 8-8 record without Big Ben, slide Big Ben back in, and assume 11 wins. It’s the wrong way to look at things, I know. But if they get their passing attack back together, they are a bad matchup for Baltimore. They have speed and versatility on defense enough to contain Lamar, and they can run up the score and force the Ravens into the kind of predictability that acts as Kryptonite for Lamar.
But the Steelers have holes on offense and defense, and they don’t have draft picks or cap space. Okay, technically they have draft picks, but only one is in the top 100, and it’s #49. They traded their first for Minkah (worth it) and traded their third to Denver last year to move up and draft Devin Bush (also worth it). It leaves them light, but the Steelers are the type of team that’s so well-coached that they’re automatically deep. Again, I refer you to last season, when they played like brown piss on offense and were a win away from making the playoffs.
It’s a good team. Juju had a wrench thrown into his development, and James Conner looked fragile; otherwise, everything rolled right along and will continue to roll right along in 2020.
Pre-Draft Fantasy Options
QB Roethlisberger
RB Conner, Samuels, Snell, Whyte
WR Juju, Johnson, Washington
TE Ebron, McDonald
OL Above-average
IDP Leonard, Buckner, Hooker, Houston
(Note: I don’t believe in Samuels or Snell, likely won’t have them on my draft list at all, but I believe if anyone in this backfield has one good game, they could steal the show. After Bell, Mike Tomlin will have no loyalty to any RB ever again.)
Remember when the 49ers went to the Super Bowl, like, out of nowhere? This is the question we’ll be asking ourselves for years. I believe the offense was the real deal, but I believe the defense has already started to come undone. Richard Sherman lost a step last season, and he was embarrassed in the Super Bowl. Granted, the Chiefs have the fastest receiving corps. Fine. But the 49ers’ Achilles heel is its safeties. Beat Sherman with speed, force that safety help over, and suddenly you’ve two holes and only one plug. It’s a matter of plotting the hole by design and being able to get through it one of every three tries. They’re not suddenly going to miss the playoffs, but if they expect to make the Super Bowl, they have to do it by scoring 30 points per game, and that number only goes up when they face the league’s other top offenses.
In the first seven games of 2019, the 49ers’ defense held teams to 20 points or fewer every game, good for a 7-0 start. In the final 12 games, they allowed 20 points or more all but two games, against the Packers (I think I’ve established my position there) and Vikings. That Vikings game, you might remember, was an anomaly. It’s a lot to unpack, but basically the Vikings’ OC was the odd-man out in terms of team philosophy. Zimmer and Kubiak believe in establishing the run first and foremost, while Stefanski believes in using playaction to create room to pass, and then using passing success to create room to run. So the Vikings, who owe a ton of their regular season success to Dalvin Cook running the ball, only called ten running plays compared to 35 passing plays. It wasn’t like they were blown out in the first half and had to catch up; they were down by 10 after SF scored to start the third quarter, and the Vikings went three-and-out on four straight possessions, running the ball twice for a total seven yards and throwing the ball eight times for six yards and a pick, and getting sacked twice to lose 15 yards, good for negative-nine passing yards on ten plays. Maybe it’s damning for Stefanski, who got the Browns’ job anyway. But it’s really damning that this was the only time the 49ers’ defense appeared to show up for the second half in the playoffs, or even any time they had a large lead in the last half of the season.
This defense has some juice, but it’s not anything special, and it’s not getting any better. They traded away their top lineman (Buckner) for the 13th overall pick in April’s draft, and they’re expected—I know I keep saying it—to take a WR, but this time I mean it! You might be thinking two first-round picks is pretty good, but those are their last picks until the fifth round. If the flip the late first for a second and third, I’ll feel better about their overall strategy, since they’ll need to try and score potential starters on the D-line and in the secondary.
Pre-Draft Fantasy Options
QB GQ
RB Coleman, Mostert, Breida
WR Deebo
TE Kittle
OL Good
IDP Armstead, Kwon, Warner
Full disclosure: I was publishing the note to the site when I realized the Seahawks weren’t in it. I think I’ve said before that I was more of a Seahawks fan before I moved here. It’s possible that it’s just easier to be objective when your surrounded by subjectivity. The contrast is sharp.
But also the Seahawks have gotten worse since I moved here. The team has become more of a caricature of Russell Wilson running around without an offensive line, and the defense has become pretty basic. The snake is eating its tail now that Lynch has returned from two retirements and a year with another team.
I’m going chalk with my fantasy options for most teams, but for some reason the Seahawks make me more aware of it. It feels somehow obvious to me that the RB situation won’t pan out the way it looks right now. I have no facts, just vibes.
If they can come up with the money to play Clowney, the defense will be good again. The hold-up is that Clowney wanted $20 million. Luckily for the Seahawks, no one can pay that. The price has come down to $17M. Still, no one can pay it. Seattle will probably get him on a one-year, $14M with incentives that push it to $17M. If they can’t pay Clowney, I still feel like they’ll piece together a good enough defense to keep Russ in winning distance every game.
Pre-Draft Fantasy Options
QB Russ
RB Lynch, Carson, Penny
WR Lockett, Metcalf
TE Olsen, Dissly
OL Average
IDP Wagner
The moment has arrived, and I’m woefully unprepared.
For one thing, I can’t decide whether we’ve upgraded QB or not. I know that sounds stupid. It’s fine. I’m fine sounding stupid. Just remember for a second that we’re supposed to be talking about fantasy numbers. Jameis led the league in yards by over 200. He became one of twelve players to throw for over 5,000 yards in a season, and five of them are Drew Brees. Conveniently, Brees is the only other QB t break 5,000 and go 7-9 (he did it twice and went 8-8 once, too). But listen, compared to the players on that list, Jameis ranks dead last in every other meaningful stat. In comp%, he’s last by 2.2%. In interceptions, last by 11. In INT%, he threw an interception on 1.8% more of his passes than the next worst (Marino, the only other even above 3%). In QB Rate, he’s down 12 whole points. Sacks: 10 more than the next guy (which maybe is in his favor?). Pick-sixes: leads the field by four. But the clincher for me is adjusted net yards per attempt, which basically tells you how many yards he gained per play, adjusted for sacks and picks; he trails the field by almost a full yard per play. That ANY/A stat, which is accepted to be among the most crucial in defining a QB’s success, Jameis finished 18th among qualifiers in 2019. You know who finished 17th? Tawm Friggin Brady.
You might think I’m cuing up a pan of Tawm, but no. Brady moved the ball better than Winston, though Brady had only Edelman and White as reliable targets. Their running games were basically even, and Brady’s defense was way, way better. This explains why Winston had literally a thousand more yards despite essentially equal efficiency. Winston beat Brady in TD% by (only) 1.4%. It was the best TD rate of Winston’s five years and the worst of Brady’s 18. Brady threw picks at less than one-third the rate Winston did. The difference between their pick rates was as large as the pick rates of Daniel Jones and Ryan Fitzpatrick (tied for 22nd among qualifiers). Brady wasn’t just top-10 in ball security; he was so much better than Winston at protecting the ball that you can remove the worst stats of a bad QB to put them on even ground. Keep in mind their completion percentages were within 0.1% of each other, too, though both were circling career lows with those numbers. Winston played hurt for probably six games, and Arians admitted that a healthy Blaine Gabbert would’ve started some of those games. Yes, Arians said that the only reason Jameis played all 16 games was that Blaine Gabbert was hurt. Let that sink in. Speaking of Gabbert, he’s already been signed to stay on as Brady’s backup. It’s the first time in Gabbert’s ten-year career that he will have the same coach in consecutive seasons. He was once a top-10 pick (by Jacksonville, but still).
So friends, I’ll say it: strictly in terms of some sort of NFL wins above replacement, we have improved the QB position. I don’t love him the way I love Winston. I don’t even love him the way I loved Josh Freeman. Tawmmy gets to fight for like a Brad Johnson level of love from me. It’s worth something. It could be worth a Super Bowl. But he’ll never be Jameis, for better or worse.
The rest of the team is the same, though, yeah? In addition to Jameis, we lost Carl Nassib, Peyton Barber, and Breshad Perriman. They’re replaceable. Among them, I feel we’ll only miss Carl and only if Anthony Nelson doesn’t take his spot right away. I suppose Demar Dotson is a loss, even at age 34, though I also think we have Dotson on retainer if we don’t get a tackle in the first round of the draft, yes specifically the first round since no one but the top-four tackles (maybe fewer, in Arians’ opinion) will be ready to start soon enough. In short, I believe we want to draft one of those top four tackles. I also believe we have a backup plan: I think we already guaranteed to match any offer Dotson has in free agency but that he’ll have to wait until after the draft to see what shakes out. It might lose him some money, but it’s a good gamble for a guy who doesn’t want to move his family for a one-year deal. He might even agree to stay here to be a mentor/depth piece for a cool million (actually I assume the minimum is more for a veteran with ten years’ experience, as a starter no less).
Our defense is good. I think it’s easy to poke holes in our secondary since everyone is so young, but as long as they can figure out how to hold up for four seconds, I think the pass rush will get home more often than not. I see it playing out like my Madden defense. We get a lot of sacks and limit most runs to just a couple yards, but every now and then, the offense only needs to make one or two dudes miss to break a full-field touchdown. So we’re not going to set the world on fire with our defense, but it’s reasonable to expect a handful of our games to end with our opponent in single-digit points and to expect a handful more where they’re under 20. Put those hands together, and there’s the ten wins we need to make the expanded playoffs.
I’m already looking forward to 2022, not because I want the next two years to go by quickly but because I’m curious what will happen. I’m assuming Brady and Arians will retire and that Bowles will take over as head coach, with Leftwich having to wait for another team to come calling (which, let’s be honest, most won’t; not a knock on him, just thinking about Bieniemy’s plight).
For now, I’m a dumb, hopeful Bucs fan, thinking about how much we deserve this Super Bowl again.
Oh, and thinking about the draft for fantasy purposes, and offensive lineman would be the rising tide that raises all ships, but I especially think it would be good for RoJo. It appears we’re not bringing in any free agent pass-catchers at any position, so I’m curious whether Dare Ogunbowale (just practicing) will be our receiving back or whether we’ll trust a rookie to do it. There’s a guy named Darrynton Evans who is supposed to fall to the fourth round, but he is too small to do pass-blocking work, which wouldn’t satisfy Bruce. Among the players we could still sign: Devonta Freeman, Chris Thompson, Theo Riddick, Lamar Miller, Ty Montgomery… we’ve got options.
Pre-Draft Fantasy Options
QB Brady
RB RoJo
WR Evans, Godwin
TE OJ, Brate
OL Above-average
IDP David, White, Barrett
P.S. I could talk more about our whole team name-by-name, but I figure there’s plenty of time for that.
They were one game from the Super Bowl, and they got there with elite defense and power-running, plus unexpectedly good play from a previously written-off QB. If this story sounds familiar, it’s because it happens almost every year. Almost. Every. Year.
2019: Titans
2018: Bears
2017: Jaguars
2015: Panthers (actually made the SB!)
2013: 49ers
2012: Ravens (won the SB!)
And it goes on and on. And these teams almost never remain competitive, especially when they go through drastic changes in the offseason. The Titans are losing All-Pro veterans at RT and DT, for one thing. But I guess there’s an important distinction to be made between the Titans and these other teams, and that difference might be all the difference: the Titans have a great GM. (They also have a coach willing to cut his dick off for a Super Bowl, but we can shuffle past that.) They might be losing good players, but they were prepared to lose them. Jack Conklin is walking out, but the Titans traded for Dennis Kelly years ago to play swingman, and they developed him into a cheap starter since no one has gotten to see him play. While the Lions and Jets are paying $10 million per year to replacement-level players Vaitai and Fant, the Titans are paying $7 million for a starter that they developed themselves behind one of the best lines in the league. He’s not Conklin, but he’s a starter in a league where most teams don’t have one. The Titans traded Jurrell Casey, but they developed Jeffery Simmons for a year before doing so. They’re letting Delanie Walker walk, but Jonnu Smith has been ready to roll for two years. The one question mark is what they’ll do without Logan Ryan. He’s been important to their success. He is only decent in coverage, but he can really tackle, which is something none of their other corners can do. Ryan is open to returning to Tennessee, but he’s claiming he won’t take less than $10M from any team interested in his services. Most teams don’t have that kind of money. Any team willing to spend it on Ryan likely would’ve called already. I’m guessing he takes like $7M on a one-year to stay in Tennessee. Maybe he takes less to go to another contender, but his options are limited; most of them are cap-strapped.
But the question with the Titans isn’t their defense. Even if they look shaky to start the year, they will be good by the end. Whether or not they make the playoffs will depend entirely on Ryan Tannehill being a legitimate QB. Remember: Ryan Tannehill has less experience playing QB than any other QB his age. In high school, he played DB for two seasons before switching to QB. In college, he played two years of WR before winning the QB job. He’s got a chip on his shoulder, sure, but he’s also got a history of not being a quarterback, meaning he has gaps in his development. It’s great that he has a more complete scope of the game. In an age where specialization is under heavy scrutiny after people spent fifteen years believing in 10,000 hours, Tannehill’s varied experience might serve him well. It should make him a great coach. But you have to wonder whether he can process information at the same rate as someone who’s spent significantly more time practicing processing the images he has to work through to be a competent QB. He led the league in ANY/A (8.5) in 2019 while completing 70% of his passes. This essentially means his efficiency was elite. In the playoffs, his ANY/A dropped 5.9, even though his sacks and interceptions decreased, which basically means he was a wet cigarette in terms of efficiency, and meanwhile he only completed 60% of his passes. But the Titans won two playoff games, and they won them against the Pats and Ravens. Now scroll back up to the list I made when I started talking about the Titans. Derrick Henry is awesome, but they are doomed.
Pre-Draft Fantasy Options
QB No
RB Henry
WR Brown
TE Jonnu
OL Above-average
IDP No
If I haven’t already said it, I don’t want IDPs on Belichick-style defenses. They don’t flood points to any one area over time. Unless someone pulls a Jamie Collins and gets a bunch of turnovers and TDs, there just isn’t a predictable producer in these groups.
Or as I call them, the Skins. They got a new coaching staff. Jay Gruden isn’t a bad coach; he just flailed his way out of there. Nothing that happened last year can influence what we think about this team this year. I mean, we can probably assume Terry McLaurin is good since he ran routes like a seasoned pro and made some insane catches. We can probably assume Adrian Peterson has a bottomless gas tank. We can say things about individual players’ abilities, but we can’t talk about this team as a unit or even a collection of units. This thing was a mess last year. I don’t really care about the Dwayne Haskins selfie thing, but it’s just a sign of crazy times when the coach doesn’t know where the quarterback is when the offense is supposed to be hitting the field. It’s odd, is what it is.
But so in terms of identity—holy shit, the conceit of the piece you guys, I’m bringing it home—this team assumes the identity of Ron Rivera and his coaching staff. There will be an emphasis on winning at the line of scrimmage, a commitment to running the ball, and it will be requirement of suiting up that defenders are capable of wrapping up the ball carrier. The team will have something of a turnaround, especially after they draft Chase Young 2nd overall. Quarterbacks get the attention blah blah blah. Chase Young is the next Myles Garret, Jadeveon Clowney, whatever. He’s sick. He’s a beast. One-man wrecking crew. You got tropes and clichés? Chase Young fulfills them all.
Maybe the team only goes 6-10, but (1) that’s 200% improvement, and (2) we can at least expect some fantasy relevance this season, especially on defense, where we should see not only Young emerge as a weekly threat to break 20 points, but the middle linebacker, whoever it ends up being, will have a bajillion tackles. You might make some argument about how Carolina’s LB only did that because it was Kuechly, but dudes, Ron Rivera’s defense force the action to the middle. The LBs and the safeties will post reliable fantasy numbers.
I don’t want any part of it. I think it’s a cursed franchise until they change the name. I don’t having a name that involves Indigenous Peoples is bad on its own. I think that the name itself is ugly and crude, and I think enough Indigenous Peoples have taken up issues with this particular name that it’s clearly Wrong. So do you own research on who to draft. Even if I were desperate for RB and their starter was available, I would just duck that Occam’s Razor and pick a pass-catching back for a team set to get blown out.
Pre-Draft Fantasy Options
Get Bent
Every now and then, people ask me how long it takes to write a note. I think I type about a thousand words per hour when I’m Writing. That number goes way down when I’m researching, and I pay no attention to when I start or when I finish. When I sit down to write a note, I just go for it from any angle I can, and I typically get up when I feel like I’m forcing it or mailing it in. Sometimes I mail it in without realizing it. Sometimes I’m having fun, but I’m not always having fun. I’m trying to get better at realizing when I’m just churning out words for words’ sake, and I’m trying to make it entertaining. Sometimes I perseverate on a topic (like that Heisman/Championship tangent), and I spend an hour clicking between three Chrome tabs with my only intention being to provide hyper-accurate information, even though I realize the thing is pedantic and worthless. I’m trying to get better at remembering that fantasy football is really only good when it’s a good time.
But so for anyone wondering how long exactly it took me to write-up all 32 teams this week, I can assure you I started on Monday and finished on Saturday, and that I spent each morning Monday-Friday writing from at least 9-12, in addition to a few other hours her and there. Today is Saturday, and I think I wrote from about 12-3 (it’s 3:08 now). So 20 hours? If you include the research I did boiling down some teams for myself before even starting this, maybe 22 hours? But we’re looking at 22,000 words right now, so actually given that 1,000/hour figure, I bet it was more time. Mostly worth it. Somewhat not. Since the piece is long, and I don’t want it to suck, I’ll probably go back and pare it down (update: I did that!) but also write some extra thoughts in there along the way (did less of that!), so I’m guessing we’re looking at about 25 hours when it’s all said and done, and though the words on the page may lack significance, know that the process of sitting down every morning to write for a few hours (and then taking a few hours at the end of the week to edit it all) has been something missing from my life for a long time. So if you read this far—wow, are you bored and lonely, but so am I—thanks for spending the time. While this isn’t exactly the Opus-type shit I’d hope to write full-time, it feels good. Like I said, it had been a long time, and it feels really good. Now I’m repeating myself, mostly to remind myself: the product isn’t the point; the work is the point.
Take it easy.
