Michael Dolan's Articles

Every pick you make in fantasy football comes with some level of risk – even your first-rounders. These risks come in various shapes and sizes, and some of the more common ones include risk of injury, supporting cast concerns, and worries about a player’s age (either too young or too old).    The experts at […]

Let me start off by saying — and I can not stress this enough — this article is not intended to outline an optimal draft strategy. Instead, this piece is a reminder that at the end of the day, fantasy football should be fun.    Sometimes for the sake of fun it’s acceptable to throw logic […]

Welcome to Sleepers, Busts and Bold Predictions for the 2023 fantasy football season. All summer, our analysts, two at a time, will preview all 32 NFL teams for the upcoming season. We’ll pick a pair of sleepers, a pair of busts and a pair of bold predictions. Sometimes they’ll be the same pick! Sometimes they […]

Welcome to Sleepers, Busts and Bold Predictions for the 2023 fantasy football season. All summer, our analysts, two at a time, will preview all 32 NFL teams for the upcoming season. We’ll pick a pair of sleepers, a pair of busts and a pair of bold predictions. Sometimes they’ll be the same pick! Sometimes they […]

Welcome to Sleepers, Busts and Bold Predictions for the 2023 fantasy football season. All summer, our analysts, two at a time, will preview all 32 NFL teams for the upcoming season. We’ll pick a pair of sleepers, a pair of busts and a pair of bold predictions. Sometimes they’ll be the same pick! Sometimes they […]

Welcome to Sleepers, Busts and Bold Predictions for the 2023 fantasy football season. All summer, our analysts, two at a time, will preview all 32 NFL teams for the upcoming season. We’ll pick a pair of sleepers, a pair of busts and a pair of bold predictions. Sometimes they’ll be the same pick! Sometimes they […]

It’s time to rank everybody’s favorite position – quarterbacks. It’s the most important position in the NFL by a landslide, and good or bad quarterback play can make or break a team’s season accordingly. The best of the bunch are capable of single-handedly elevating teams to greatness. Meanwhile, those on the opposite end of the […]

Welcome to Sleepers, Busts and Bold Predictions for the 2023 fantasy football season. All summer, our analysts, two at a time, will preview all 32 NFL teams for the upcoming season. We’ll pick a pair of sleepers, a pair of busts and a pair of bold predictions. Sometimes they’ll be the same pick! Sometimes they […]

Welcome to Sleepers, Busts and Bold Predictions for the 2023 fantasy football season. All summer, our analysts, two at a time, will preview all 32 NFL teams for the upcoming season. We’ll pick a pair of sleepers, a pair of busts and a pair of bold predictions. Sometimes they’ll be the same pick! Sometimes they […]

Welcome to Sleepers, Busts and Bold Predictions for the 2023 fantasy football season. All summer, our analysts, two at a time, will preview all 32 NFL teams for the upcoming season. We’ll pick a pair of sleepers, a pair of busts and a pair of bold predictions. Sometimes they’ll be the same pick! Sometimes they […]

Welcome to Sleepers, Busts and Bold Predictions for the 2023 fantasy football season. All summer, our analysts, two at a time, will preview all 32 NFL teams for the upcoming season. We’ll pick a pair of sleepers, a pair of busts and a pair of bold predictions. Sometimes they’ll be the same pick! Sometimes they […]

With the NFL Draft and the majority of free agency in the rear-view mirror, this time of year is eerily quiet in the fantasy football landscape. However, just because not much will change over the next few weeks doesn’t mean this isn’t a good time for active dynasty managers to improve their rosters. One of […]

Free agency has come and gone, and now the NFL Draft has too. Despite this there are a few players who remain NFL free agents and could provide value in the 2023 season. Most of these players offer name value more than anything else right now, but there’s still a chance that they can help […]

The NFL draft is just a day away, and basically from the moment it starts the fantasy community will be ready to overreact. It’s not uncommon for fantasy managers to drastically overcorrect some of their fantasy rankings as a result of the draft, and this behavior can create opportunities for the savvy fantasy manager who’s […]

One of the reasons fantasy football rookie drafts are so exciting is because they give us hope. The allure of drafting another Garrett Wilson, Chris Olave or Breece Hall and adding an immediate star to your roster is intoxicating, but this isn’t how it typically shakes out.   More often than not, it takes time […]

Everyone wants their fantasy rookies to come in and dominate right from the jump, but that’s much easier said than done. It’s rare for NFL first-timers to come in and dominate right away, and the few that do provide extreme value to their fantasy managers.    So who from the 2023 class has the ability […]

The NFL Draft is a time that brings excitement and optimism to football fans and fantasy managers alike. Dreaming about what a rookie selection could do for your favorite NFL franchise or fantasy roster is a fun exercise, but this doesn’t mean we can simply ignore the fact that the draft isn’t always good for […]

With NFL free agency cooling off, we can start to evaluate the fantasy impact of players who switched teams. While landing spots aren’t everything in fantasy football, we can’t deny they make a difference. In order to figure out how severely we should (or shouldn’t’) let landing spots impact our evaluation, we first need to […]

With NFL free agency cooling off, we can start to evaluate the fantasy football impact of players who switched teams. While landing spots aren’t everything in fantasy, we can’t deny they make a difference. In order to figure out how severely we should (or shouldn’t) let landing spots impact our evaluation, we first need to […]

Free agency is almost here, and the upcoming changes will lead to some exciting times for football fans and fantasy football managers alike. A change of scenery can do wonders for a player’s fantasy value if he winds up in the right destination, and receivers in particular can get a significant bump if they wind […]

Studying and planning for what’s next is a necessity in fantasy football. Everyone knows this.    What’s less understood is the importance of looking backward. If you want to gain an edge in your fantasy leagues, you need to learn from your prior decisions. Whether these decisions were good ones or bad ones, there’s always […]

Studying and planning for what’s next is a necessity in fantasy football. Everyone knows this.  What’s less understood is the importance of looking backward. If you want to gain an edge in your fantasy leagues, you need to learn from your prior decisions. Whether these decisions were good ones or bad ones, there’s always something […]

2022 brought us one of the wildest offseasons in NFL history. Now that the Super Bowl is officially in the rear-view mirror, it’s time to gear up for whatever 2023 has in store. A few coaching changes have already shaken up the NFL’s landscape, and with free agency in March and the draft in April, […]

The Fantasy Football offseason is typically when a lot of casual players will take a break from thinking about the NFL. But not me, and since you’re reading this, apparently not you either.    The best fantasy managers are those who are willing to make a year-round commitment to the game. They get excited about […]

It’s championship weekend in most fantasy football leagues, which means usage data has never been more important. For those of us fortunate enough to have made it to the ship, congratulations, but the job isn’t done yet.    Like last week, I’m once again looking at the previous week’s data to see who has the […]

For most leagues, Round 1 of the fantasy football playoffs is officially behind us. For those of us fortunate enough to be left standing, there’s still time to continue improving your roster and using data to make the right decisions.   In this week’s report, I’m looking at data specifically from Week 15 to try […]

It’s fantasy playoff time, and that means it’s time for us all to brace ourselves for some under-the-radar names to drastically alter the fantasy landscape. Every year there are a few players who burst onto the scene late in the season, and win (or lose) fantasy championships.   In this week’s Usage Report, I’m looking […]

In this week’s fantasy football usage report, I’m once again honing in on the 2022 rookie class, but this time I’m shifting my focus to the running backs. We all know it’s important to look at both rushing and receiving ability when analyzing the most important position in fantasy football, but sometimes the simplest way […]

In this week’s usage report, I’m honing in on the 2022 rookie class by looking at Week 12 routes run data. I try to provide a variety of different data points and perspectives in this report so fantasy managers can better understand different ways to conduct their own evaluations. Routes run is a particularly interesting […]

In this week’s usage report, I’m testing out a different format and simply looking at a handful of backfields that will make or break your fantasy playoffs. Everyone knows the running back position is the trickiest to pin down and can completely swing your season, so getting ahead of some late-season usage shifts could wind […]

In this week’s fantasy football usage report, I’m going back to a familiar exercise and looking at players who are poised for rest of season breakouts based on FTN’s Expected Fantasy Points Data. Expected points is a great way to summarize usage because it predicts how many points a player should be scoring based on […]

We’re bringing back a familiar format in this week’s Usage Report. Once again we’re doing an over-time comparison of workloads to see which players have been demanding more usage, and which players appear to be trending in the wrong direction. For this week’s piece I’m using target data to evaluate trends at the wide receiver […]