NBA Prop of the Day
Jake Silverman
The saying goes that you can’t win your fantasy football league in the first round, but you can lose it. There are some (me included) who would argue the first half of that, but you aren’t gonna find many people arguing against the latter. If your first-round — or any super-early pick — craters, your season is either over or just so, so, so hard.
Tl;dr: Don’t screw up, you big dummy.
Unfortunately, that’s, you know, kinda hard. If we knew a player was going to bust, we probably wouldn’t be taking him early in the first place. We aren’t dumb.
So today, per a suggestion from FTN CEO Kevin Adams (Hey @MagicSportsGuy!), I’m looking at the worst draft picks of the last 10 years. Objective 1: Let’s have some fun Remembering Some Guys™. But Objective 2: Can we learn anything?
First off, a caveat: Generally speaking, I’m forgiving injury here. In 2020, Saquon Barkley was the second running back off the boards and proceeded to tear his ACL in Week 2. Unless you’re here looking for “Don’t draft guys who will get hurt a couple weeks later, you non-crystal-ball-having person,” it’s not exactly helpful for me to criticize that pick.
So to be included, a player (a) had to be drafted within the first 10 picks at QB/TE, first 20 at RB/WR in a given year, and (b) played at least 10 games. If you weren’t taken that early at your position, you couldn’t reasonably have been that bad a pick, because it didn’t take much to get you. If you got hurt halfway through Game 10, well, you’re eligible, but since I’m looking at total points and points per game, your performance up to that point was also kind of on you. And because there’s a difference between a player going second at quarterback and ninth, fourth at running back and 18th, this is not just a rundown of the lowest point totals. A higher pick could barely edge out a much lower one and still be a worse pick because of cost to acquire.
Now, fine print out of the way, let’s take a look at the worst fantasy draft picks of the last 10 years.
Honorable Mention: 2020
Dak Prescott, QB, Dallas Cowboys
Christian McCaffrey, RB, Carolina Panthers
Saquon Barkley, RB, New York Giants
Joe Mixon, RB, Cincinnati Bengals
Michael Thomas, WR, New Orleans Saints
Julio Jones, WR, Atlanta Falcons
Kenny Golladay, WR, Detroit Lions
Odell Beckham, WR, Cleveland Browns
Courtland Sutton, WR, Denver Broncos
George Kittle, TE, San Francisco 49ers
I’m exempting injuries from this exercise, but I just wanted to note the pile of suck that was 2020. The QB3 (Prescott), RB1 (McCaffrey), RB2 (Barkley), WR1 (Thomas), WR4 (Jones), TE2 (Kittle) and more high-drafted options at every position were hit pretty hard by injuries that year. Basically, if you nailed your draft in 2020, you lost your league. You didn’t screw up — the fates just hated you, and I wanted to point it out to increase your general paranoia. And if you won in 2020, you are probably actually a terrible fantasy player. (Don’t worry, I’m not mocking you, I won my home league in 2020.)
Quarterback
Peyton Manning, Denver Broncos (2015)
ADP: QB3
PPR Points: 91.4 (QB34), 9.1 PPG (QB35)
Peyton Manning was 39 in the 2015 season. So that was a warning sign. On the other hand, he was a year removed from a QB4 finish, two years removed from being one of five quarterbacks ever to top 400 fantasy points in a year. But then he was limited to 10 games in what proved to be his final season and was largely replaced by Brock Osweiler, which is a very depressing phrase to write. On the other hand, he — well, the Broncos defense, but Peyton was there — won the Super Bowl that year, so if he hurt your fantasy team, he probably doesn’t really care.
Matt Ryan, Atlanta Falcons (2017)
ADP: QB4
PPR Points: 228.1 (QB15), 14.3 PPG (QB22)
Matt Ryan was the MVP and Offensive Player of the Year in 2016, taking the Falcons to the Super Bowl. He passed for 4,924 yards and 35 touchdowns and finished as the QB2 in 2018. In between … well, he still topped 4,000 passing yards (4,095) in 2017, but he threw for only 20 touchdowns in between seasons of 38 and 35. He threw 12 interceptions in between seasons of 7 and 7. Running was never part of Ryan’s game, but he had zero scores on the ground in 2017 but then 3 in 2018 (and a receiving touchdown, because stuff be crazy). It wasn’t that Ryan was a disaster in 2017 as much as it was a big disappointment in between monster years, and if that was the year you bought in, you are allowed to be really annoyed.
Baker Mayfield, Cleveland Browns (2019)
ADP: QB5
PPR Points: 229.2 (QB19), 14.3 PPG (QB27)
Baker Mayfield was really exciting as a rookie, taking over a couple weeks into the season and setting the then-record for rookie passing touchdowns at 27. And between that and the team acquiring Odell Beckham that offseason, people lost their ever-loving minds. Mayfield’s career didn’t go the way a lot of people thought, but even if it had, drafting him as a top-five fantasy quarterback was comical on its face (and I know I’m wrong a lot, but I definitely said this at the time). He actually threw for more yards in 2019 (3,827 to 3,725, though a lower yards-per-game average), but his touchdowns fell off, his interceptions increased by 50% and all y’all people taking him in the top five felt real silly.
QB Conclusion
A Hall of Famer near the end, a hotshot rookie off a great first season and a veteran in between two years of huge numbers? If you can find a common bond here, more power to you.
Running Back
Eddie Lacy, Green Bay Packers (2015)
ADP: RB4
PPR Points: 140.6 (RB32), 9.4 PPG (RB43)
Ah, Eddie Lacy. Offensive Rookie of the Year in 2013, excellent follow-up (more yards, more touchdowns) in 2014, we all bought in, and then “lol, suckers” and far too many fat jokes. And doubling down on the hurting everyone, after a terrible start to the season (308 yards on 3.7 yards per carry and 2 touchdowns through Week 10), Lacy started to show us why we drafted him (three hundred-yard games in Weeks 11-14), bringing everyone back. I even ranked him as my RB1 in Week 15! … And then he had 26 carries for 117 yards in Weeks 15-17. We were suckers again.
C.J. Spiller, Buffalo Bills (2013)
ADP: RB5
PPR Points: 154.8 (RB27), 10.3 PPG (RB33)
The first of our two disappointing C.J. running backs, C.J. Spiller had a great 2012 (1,703 scrimmage yards, 8 touchdowns, RB6) and convinced fantasy managers to draft him way too high for about a generation afterward. Someone in your league probably thinks he’s a post-hype sleeper today, and he’s been out of the league since 2017. He wasn’t actually terrible in 2013, with 1,118 scrimmage yards, but he only scored twice, and then he had only 844 scrimmage yards the rest of his career after that.
C.J. Anderson, Denver Broncos (2015)
ADP: RB6
PPR Points: 141.3 (RB31), 9.4 PPG (RB42)
In 2014, C.J. Anderson had run comfortably ahead of Ronnie Hillman, with 179 carries at a 4.7 YPA clip compared to 106 at 4.1 for Hillman. The efficiency was about the same in 2015 (4.7 YPA for Anderson, 4.2 for Hillman), but the workload flipped, with Hillman getting 207 carries, Anderson 152. Thanks for the warning, Gary Kubiak — the drafting community was all in on Anderson, taking him sixth at the position and taking Hillman barely at all (ADP RB53). Anderson rebounded to an RB18 finish in 2017 and of course was an electric fill-in for Todd Gurley in 2018, but lot of good that did his 2015 drafters.
Zac Stacy, St. Louis Rams (2014)
ADP: RB15
PPR Points: 64.5 (RB71), 5.0 PPG (RB69)
Toby Gerhart, Jacksonville Jaguars (2014)
ADP: RB20
PPR Points: 81.2 (RB51), 5.8 PPG (60)
Zac Stacy was a surprise breakout as a fifth-round rookie in 2013, with 973 rushing yards. It was most quantity-related, as he averaged under 4.0 yards per carry on his 250 carries, but still, that’s almost a 1,000 yards as a little-regarded rookie. Not bad. Fantasy managers bought in. The Rams … didn’t, immediately drafting Tre Mason in the third round of 2014 and giving him more than double the work Stacy got.
Meanwhile, Toby Gerhart had been a perfectly fine, Alexander Mattison-esque backup to Adrian Peterson in Minnesota for four years. He had been their second-round pick in 2010 and run for 4.7 yards per carry on 276 attempts in his four seasons, including a five-game stretch to end 2011 where he had three games of 90-plus yards. He parlayed his status as “prime backup” into a three-year contract to start in Jacksonville, after which totaled 370 rushing yards in two seasons and was released. Hope you weren’t all in, because it went poorly. (Also, hope the Alexander Mattison comp ended with the “good backup” phase.)
RB Conclusion
Of the running backs above, only Eddie Lacy had more than a single season as a fantasy producer before his ADP spiked, and even Lacy’s run was only two seasons. Running backs burn bright and fast, so if you’re waiting for a running back to prove himself over a long period of time to buy in, you’re going to be buying his decline, but if you invest in guys without much in their history, you’re also going to be getting a lot of career years that don’t repeat.
Also, don’t draft running backs named C.J.
Wide Receiver
Jordy Nelson, Green Bay Packers (2017)
ADP: WR4
PPR Points: 137.2 (WR46), 9.1 PPG (WR54)
Jordy Nelson had 1,300 yards and 8 scores in 2013. He had 1,519 and 13 in 2014. He tore his ACL in the 2015 preseason, but no worries, as he returned for 1,257 and a league-leading 14 in 2016. It shouldn’t take a lot to guess what went wrong in 2017 — that was the year Aaron Rodgers broke his collarbone in Week 6. Through Week 6, Nelson was WR6, averaging 15.0 points per game, despite missing most of Week 2 with an injury and getting no targets. The rest of the way, with (mostly) Brett Hundley under center, Nelson didn’t score another touchdown or top 40 yards in a game and averaged only 5.2 PPG. And he was 32, so the Packers let him leave in the offseason. Rough farewell.
JuJu Smith-Schuster, Pittsburgh Steelers (2019)
ADP: WR6
PPR Points: 113.2 (WR64), 9.4 PPG (WR59)
JuJu Smith-Schuster shined in his first two seasons, WR22 in 2017 and WR8 in 2018 running alongside Antonio Brown. In 2019, Brown was gone, and Smith-Schuster was supposed to take over, another in the Hines Ward-Santonio Holmes–Mike Wallace-Brown line of succession. Instead, he fell flat, with only 552 yards and 3 touchdowns on 42 receptions, barely a third of the 111 he had had in 2018. To be sure, Ben Roethlisberger’s injury (he played only two games) was the biggest factor there, but also, JuJu has never again topped 1,000 yards and only once finished as a top-25 WR since, so it’s not entirely the fault of Mason Rudolph/Devlin Hodges … but they didn’t help.
Brandon Marshall, New York Jets (2016)
ADP: WR9
PPR Points: 155.8 (WR32), 10.4 PPG (WR51)
The Ryan Fitzpatrick/Brandon Marshall/Eric Decker trio played two seasons together with the Jets. In 2015, Marshall was WR3, Decker WR14, even Fitzpatrick QB11. In 2016, Marshall was WR32, Decker WR123 (he only played three games), Fitzpatrick QB29 (also missing time to injury). Oh, and the Jets went from 10-6 and barely missing the playoffs to 5-11 and barely missing the top five in the draft. Marshall was 32 in 2016 and still played two more seasons after that, but barely — he was pretty much done.
Allen Robinson, Chicago Bears (2021)
ADP: WR12
PPR Points: 87.0 (WR82), 7.3 PPG (WR84)
Remember that Andy Dalton “QB1” graphic the Bears liked so much? For some reason, they insisted on rolling Dalton out to start the year, and then when he got hurt and Justin Fields took over, they still stuck with an Andy Dalton-y game plan, which fit Fields about as well as my high-school soccer jersey fits me now. (If you don’t get the joke, I got fat.) It’s no great wonder Matt Nagy lost his job, and the biggest loser of the whole ordeal was Allen Robinson, who had been one of the great “imagine how good he could be with a competent quarterback” receivers for a generation of football and now two years later is a journeyman who might be good for some end zone targets in Pittsburgh.
WR Conclusion
I said at the start I wanted to steer clear of guys who got hurt in this exercise because that’s not really the point, but there’s a very clear corollary at wide receiver: Maybe you stayed healthy, but if your quarterback got hurt, you were screwed anyway. All four guys above were drafted as WR1s, and all four saw their starting quarterback (of varying skill levels) get hurt. So, uh, don’t draft guys who get hurt, but also, don’t draft receivers whose quarterbacks get hurt. Good luck!
Tight End
Kyle Pitts, Atlanta Falcons (2022)
ADP: TE3
PPR Points: 75.6 (TE33), 7.6 PPG (TE22)
We don’t really need to rehash Kyle Pitts’ 2022, which is still fresh in everyone’s memories, but it’s probably the worst combination of high ADP and low production on our list, so it has to be mentioned. The worst is either him or the next guy…
Zach Ertz, Philadelphia Eagles (2020)
ADP: TE4
PPR Points: 77.5 (TE30), 7.0 PPG (TE24)
Name a stat, and Zach Ertz cratered in it in 2020. He posted his worst ever (at the time) yards per reception, his worst yards per game since his rookie year, his fewest touchdowns. He even had a comically (and career-) low 50.0% catch rate, with 36 receptions on 72 targets. Injuries didn’t help, but the biggest culprit here was the further transition of Carson Wentz from “good but enigmatic quarterback” to “dude, what are you even doing?”
Jonnu Smith, New England Patriots (2021)
ADP: TE10
PPR Points: 67.4 (TE33), 4.2 PPG (TE41)
In what really should have been the death knell for “Patriots + Tight Ends = $$$!,” Jonnu Smith and Hunter Henry arrived in New England in 2021, played a combined 33 games and didn’t even reach 900 yards together. Henry was supported a bit by his position-leading 9 touchdowns, but Smith scored only once all year and didn’t finish better than TE14 in a single week all season. The Patriots TE narrative was really just Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez, friends. That was it.
TE Conclusion
Nothing, really. Old guy who got hurt, young guy who got misused, middle-career guy who got narrative’d. Just be careful.
Or just draft Travis Kelce. That usually goes well.
