Data points are considered to be orthogonal when they are deemed to be statistically independent. Without realizing it, we as fantasy players deem data points to be orthogonal and to statistically not effect one another when it's not the case. Last season before the frightening concussions to tua, with Hill and waddle, in a Mike McDaniel led offense, tua was going scorched earth and on his way to being a fantasy MVP. This offseason questions about his health and individual talent kept his price depressed far below what it should have been. We gave far too much credence to Tua the individual and the belief that he was the driver of his fantasy success or failure when that was just an illusion of those things being orthogonal. The relatively low cost for his situation should have trumped any concerns over him the individual. There was no reason to believe he couldn't come back from the concussions and be the same quarterback he was last year, and given his fantasy success last year in the same offense with the same playmakers, any questions over his individual talent should have been thrown out the window and the situation as a whole weighed to determine his value. If that approach was taken his price this offseason would have been an instant buy.
We see a similar situation with Drake London and the Atlanta Falcons. In dynasty we very much want to bet on talent. I will never tell anyone not to do that. Drake London is a great wide reciever who deserves to be bet on long term because I fully believe that someday he will be a WR1. Too many wanted to look at his individual efficiency metrics and believe that he was so good he was bound to succeed though. Arthur Smith showed us what he wanted this offense to be last year. Then he spent a top 10 pick on a running back and continued to talk about how much work Allgier would get. Flash forward and the most likely outcome is already playing out. To make matters worse, the Falcons division is terrible and they will almost assuredly win enough games for Arthur Smith to be the coach there again next year. There were far too many that were willing to believe that drake London and his metrics and the team situation were independent variables that could be seperated from one another and he could have been sold this offseason for a price that quite frankly completely ignored his situation.
Takeaway: players team and offensive situation should almost never be ignored or dismissed. When we focus too much on the Individual player and ignore situation we play situations like Tua and London incorrectly. It's easy to take a hurestic like bet on talent and apply it too broadly. Applying this to players who already have volume and opportunity in bad situations like London is a bet you will lose more often than not. Where to apply it properly is on young players who have yet to breakout and are not yet seeing the volume, But their talent should earn them that volume as the season goes on. More on two of these guys in the buys section!
We in western culture tend to view everything with a lense of duality. Good or bad, right or wrong, black or white. In fantasy football we are so confident on what is black and what is white and spend our energy on arguing over which expensive players are which when the largest wins at the lowest cost are in the grey and we hardly talk about them at all outside of blurbs to dismiss them as not worth talking about.
Every dynasty bench has multiple low value guys on it. In deep bench dynasty leagues we will never have rosters full of high value players. So who are the low value guys we roster and who should they be? Low value players who don't possess a realistic path to greatly out preform their cost are roster cloggers and should be replaced by players who do.
And here's the key. WE DON'T HAVE TO BELIEVE THE STORY WILL HAPPEN, IF THERE IS REASON TO BELIEVE IT MIGHT, WHEN THE COST IS LOW!
Players that we were given reason to believe had a path to outperform and we're cheap as throw ins, or for less than a future 2nd, or many just free on waivers:
Kyren Williams- we were told by the coaching staff that they loved him and he would have a large role in the offense. We didn't believe them and thought it was Akers backfield. They told us and the cost to find out was almost nothing.
Joshua kelley- the coaching staff and Austin Ekeler himself told us they wanted another back to take significant work. Kelley was clearly that guy and looked great in the preseason. It cost almost nothing to find out.
Kenny Gainwell was treated as the starter for basically all of August. No one believed it.
Zay Jones was very good last year and the Jags showed us that he would be playing over Kirk in two wide sets on a team that doesn't run a ton of three wide sets. Even after that, because we didn't want to believe in Zay Jones, you could have traded Kirk for Zay plus just days before week 1.
Two QB's that we're cheap relative to other QB's:
Brock Purdy: Purdy was fantasy gold in every game he played last year and the only thing we ever heard from the coaches was that he was the starter. Given the relative prices for QB's in superflex he was an absolutely massive bargain all offseason because we were too afraid to be wrong even when the cost was low.
Mac Jones: Everyone was out on Mac Jones and like Purdy he could be had for next to nothing relative to other starting QB's all off-season when his only bad year was with a D coordinator calling his offense and an OC coming to town that threw the ball 600 times the last year he was the OC for this same team. You could have added purdy and Mac to any team for an absolute bargain this offseason.
Takeaway: On all of these players we were given, or straight up shown, paths for them to greatly outperform their cost and whether we believed the story to be plausible or not shouldn't have stopped us from paying the cheap, or sometimes free, price to find out. This game we love is too high variance and even the best are wrong all the time. we have to have the humility to admit we don't know and pay a low cost on players that could be big hits if we are wrong and only small loses if we are right.
Much like a 1920's era organized crime ran business in the front, casino in the back, week 1 presents us with situations that have fronts and rackets. In a game where, even the best players see a large variance from week to week in fantasy points scored, a one week sample size of fantasy points can often be a front and the underlying usage of the players and their teammates is the racket that holds the true story.
Closing thought: breece hall will be overall RB1 if Zach Wilson is QB all year. He has game breaking ability on any run and can score toucdowns from distance. Zach Wilson showed last year he will give the RB's a massive amount of targets. Hall will be a league winner as long as Wilson is under center.