Daily Fantasy, Daily Life: Volume XXXVI - Fantasy Best Ball Resurrection teams
I’ve been drafting a bunch of Underdog Fantasy Best Ball Resurrection teams, and whoa momma, this isn’t your summertime’s best ball drafts.
In fact, it’s completely bonkers. Up is down, down is up, it’s insane. Bananas. It’s enough to dig up that old “mass hysteria” clip from Ghostbusters.
Seriously: If you were drafting Underdog best ball teams this summer — I may or may not have over 150 in my portfolio — you know the drill: Jonathan Taylor, Christian McCaffrey, Cooper Kupp, and Justin Jefferson were the top four picks. From there, a smattering of running backs and wide receivers. Travis Kelce and Mark Andrews were early and late second round picks, respectively. Josh Allen would be the first quarterback off the board, sometime in the third round, and the Justin Herbert’s and Patrick Mahomes’s of the world could be found in the fourth and fifth round.
Yeah. Not today.
Today, Allen, Lamar Jackson, and Jalen Hurts are first round picks. So are Kelce and Andrews. Mahomes is going mid-second round, often ahead of the injured Taylor. Herbert’s not far behind.
What gives? Is this the right way to draft these teams, or is everyone — present company included — falling victim to recency bias?
For answers, I turned to the Swolecast’s own Peter Overzet (yes, I know he does more than the Swolecast, the guy is everywhere, from co-writing Matthew Berry’s daily fantasy newsletter to his SiriusXM show to, I think, this morning in West Windsor, New Jersey, yelling at four septuagenarians in Hokas about pickleball) for some answers.
shout to everyone burning 145 cals playing 2 hours of pickleball this am
— 🚫pickleball pete (@peteroverzet) October 8, 2022
“I thought elite tight ends were undervalued heading into the season, so I’m very much on board with Kelce and Andrews going in the first round,” he said. “I think you can start to make an argument for Andrews at 1.05. Let’s just not talk about Kyle Pitts, though.”
But Overzet isn’t sold on the quarterback valuations.
”I think that feels like too much of an overreaction on the QBs,” he said. “There’s such an opportunity cost on passing on a high ceiling pass catcher or running back in those selections. The 40 point ceilings are nice, but we’ve also seen late round QBs come close in the right game environments, like Goff, Geno, etc.”
OK. So maybe the Resurrection’s (which closes before Thursday night’s game) tight end drafters are right, maybe the quarterback drafters are wrong. Time will tell.
But that’s not the only part of the draft that’s different. Once you get to round 12 or so, every pick feels terrible. Like you might as well draft your Aunt Gertie for all the points these scrubs are going to get you.
In the summer, every late round pick was a jewel. Every pick felt like the key to winning. Every pick had hope.
Today? Well, how much hope do you have for Mecole Hardman? Cole Kmet? Will Fuller, who may or may not be a Mandela Effect?
“ADP is always driven largely by projectable volume and roles, so it makes sense that the later rounds feel even more gross than they did in the summer where you could more easily lie to yourself about K.J. Hamler becoming the guy you need,” Overzet said. “Still, I think there is plenty of opportunity to draft players, mainly at the RB position, with massive contingent value. Every week a new RB is seemingly thrust into relevance.”
Huh. So who knows which ADP 215 running back you’re going to need in week 17. Maybe it’s Matt Breida. Or Hassan Haskins. Or Jerry Hatrack. Or Keaontay Ingram.
OK fine, I made up Jerry Hartrack, but still: It’s dangerous diving down there.
By the way, I can’t believe I’m talking about drafting best ball teams in mid-October. Freaking Underdog, man. Just when I thought I was out …