Fantasy Guide Volume 1: How to Find Draft Steals

                                       

  By Ryan Lashin of Swish Tribune. Est read: 5 min

 All these analysts give you their players, and say draft this guy and this guy. I’m not here to tell you who to draft, but how to find these draft steals so that you can expand your fantasy football knowledge. We will divide this into 2 sections concerning the 2 most important positions to draft: wide receiver, running back, and quarterback. 

Wide Receiver:

We will begin with what to look for in the player and then where to draft them. In wide receivers we want opportunity. Opportunity is everything, so the most important stats to look for are targets and target share. Finding a player with a team target share over 25% given that they played in every game, is a big green flag when looking for players. We can use a stat like this to predict the success of Drake London and Chris Olave. Another thing to be wary of when it comes to targets, is red zone targets. As you know, 100 yards accounts for 10 points, and top receivers don’t average much more than that per game. A touchdown is worth 6 points, basically 60 yards. Finding receivers who can capitalize on this end is what makes the difference between a great football player and a fantasy football player. Players like DK Metcalf had a lot of red zone targets last year but rarely capitalized. He has the opportunity, which means that he has a high ceiling, making him a high upside player. 

Now let’s discuss where we can find these gems. Of course, you can find the cream of the crop wide receivers at the top of the first round, but by gems we mean someone who outproduces their ADP by a large margin. If we look at wide receivers who were league winners over the 2017-2022 span, only one wide receiver gave players a 17% win rate, meaning twice as likely to win your league as 1/12 is 8%. The only player was Antonio Brown in 2017. I did not believe that at first. This is crazy! All these “professionals” telling you which wide receiver to draft in the first round with their Zero RB madness, when statistically only 1 wide receiver has ever given players a league winning chance when 6 times as many running backs have. The most common rounds to find league winning receivers are in the 3rd round - 5th round. There is also 1 each year from rounds 7-10, but you have to pick the needle in the haystack there. You should be drafting wide receivers with high upside in those 3-5 rounds, and you know what they all have in common? They are young, had opportunities the previous year, and the latest round gems are almost always rookies. This is why I suggest to you that you draft at least one rookie wide receiver in one of the later rounds.

Running backs:

Unlike with wide receivers who make their own opportunities, running backs are completely reliant on the opportunities they are given. Obviously we are going to be looking for carries, but we also have to pay attention to the team’s offensive scheme, especially when it comes to newcomers or new starters. Think of how many players this applies to this year. Jamyr Gibbs, Bijan Robinson, Tony Pollard, Alexander Mattison, and so many more. Pollard may have produced last year, but the Cowboys lost Kellen Moore, who was a pass heavy coach, so Pollard may have an even better situation. The Falcons ran the ball more than anyone last year,  and that means carries for Bijan. Situation is everything for a running back more than for any other position. The other stat I would look at would be yards per attempt and red zone carries. We want them to score touchdowns and be efficient with the ball so that the team is inclined to continue to give them those carries. Let me finish with my most important point: age. Finding a young running back is everything. When a running back gets 300 carries and is 26 or younger, almost 50% of the time they finish as a top 6 running back. If you add in 50 receptions, then there is only a 10% chance they bust. 

So when do we draft these players? We draft them early. Earlier I gave you stats for wide receivers showing where the most league winners come from. Well for running backs over the span of 2017-2022, 6 running backs gave a 17% league win rate in the first round. Only 2 were drafted in the 2nd round and 1 in the 3rd. There have been no league winning running backs drafted in the 4th and 5th rounds in the previous 5 years except for Josh Jacobs. Drafting young running backs early is the best way to draft talent.