Blair Andrews breaks down Chiefs/Ravens and Eagles/Packers and explains what it all means for FFPC high stakes drafts on Saturday.
One of the most exploitable wrinkles in FFPC drafts — both the Main Event and the FantasyPros Championship — is that you can draft and set your lineup after the season officially begins. Drafts for both contests are still ongoing, and will continue all day on Saturday.
Naturally, players who perform well in the early games tend to see a bump in ADP in drafts completed after those first games. The best recent example is the 2017 season opener between the Chiefs and the Patriots. Kareem Hunt had been named the starting RB about a week earlier following a knee injury to Spencer Ware. He immediately rose into the early rounds in the last week of drafts, and was routinely going in the third. Then Thursday night happened.
Hunt amassed 248 yards from scrimmage and three total touchdowns. In drafts over the next two days, he was regularly going in the first round as fantasy managers scrambled to lock his 47.6 PPR points into their lineups. Unsurprisingly, it was the best game of Hunt’s career. But he still managed to average nearly 19 PPR points per game, including over 27 PPG in the fantasy playoffs.
Hunt’s performance during the individual league playoffs in the FFPC may have been bad enough that fantasy managers who drafted him on Friday or Saturday would regret their first-round pick. But that doesn’t mean it always backfires.
In Peyton Manning’s 2013 debut on a Thursday night he passed for 462 yards and seven TDs. Drafters who took him in the first round on Friday and Saturday were rewarded with a record-setting season in which he averaged close to 30 PPG.
The beauty of these types of performances is that they not only lock in a huge number of points in Week 1, but also that they often seem to signal more to come that season.
With that in mind, let’s look at some of the top performances from the Thursday and Friday night games to see how we should respond in our FFPC drafts on Saturday.
Kansas City Chiefs
Xavier Worthy
Worthy only touched the ball three times, but two of his touches were of the scoring variety. He took his first NFL opportunity — an end around from the 21 yard line — into the end zone virtually untouched, despite running through traffic. Shawn and I considered him in the third round in a Main Event draft we did on Friday, but he ended up coming back to us in the fourth.
Given that his 20.8 PPR points are more than you would reasonably project for most WRs in the league, he slots immediately into your lineup. Yet in drafts completed on Friday, his ADP was near the end of the fourth. The question mark that’s keeping him from rising further concerns his opportunity. He was targeted only three times and handled one carry. While he was ultra-efficient, the volume is likely going to have to rise for Worthy to pay off at even a fifth-round price. Given how good he was on his few opportunities, that’s a reasonable expectation.
He scored more points in Week 1 than DeVonta Smith (who we’ll get to below) and could justifiably be drafted earlier than the Eagles’ speedster. The downside is that his presence on the field is better for his reality team than his fantasy teams.
