Week 16 Dossier

The Great Regret - Lessons Learned From 2023

Debriefing

“I can’t believe I … if only I … how could I … I wish I had done things differently.” What happens out in the field is in the hands of an agent. They must be prepared so that they can endure and survive any obstacle in their path. A life dedicated to such rigorous standards is defined solely by success. Having the best intel, the greatest tech, and the most favorable circumstances can often lead to a sense of invincibility. Unfortunately, sooner or later, everyone encounters something they never trained for: failure. 

Circumstances beyond our control or critical errors we made on our own are learning opportunities all the same. In a game that is growing more sophisticated, learning from defeat is a rite of passage. Consider the following lessons, which come from a variety of different leagues throughout the 2023 season:

Startup Drafts

Outside of trades, there’s nothing quite as humbling and humorous as looking back on start-up drafts. It is spectacular how many drafted players completely fall short of expectations. Trying to find rhyme or reason why certain picks worked out and others failed miserably is an exercise in futility. But if we attempt to understand, here are a few key takeaways:

• Make Auction Drafts the Standard - Managers who have a plan going into their drafts, are trained in proper roster construction, exercise financial restraint, and adapt their strategy based upon the needs of their competitors will trump their leaguemates who operate purely on player evaluation. If you are drafting with a community that relies heavily upon consensus rankings, or tools like WoRP, it can be very easy to know how far to push the envelope on bids and quickly deplete the banks of your competition. Overall, the best managers draft just enough at their cornerstone positions and maintain a financial advantage throughout the draft by forgoing a top-heavy team. This allows them to clean up in the startup with multiple shots on players who are at the back end of tiers.

• Balanced Drafting - Some of the most successful rosters from this season were fearless in drafting both productive aging veterans and high-profile rookies. The key is having flexibility with players that can be traded with either contenders or rebuilders. Having name-value rookies that can be flipped comes in handy if some of your veterans have a renaissance season and push your team to the top of the standings. The inverse is also true if your team isn’t quite ready to compete but you can still trade away any productive vets to contenders for top-dollar. Picking a direction from the start and only drafting a win-now or young team comes with massive drawbacks. There aren’t any managers who are good enough at drafting to be completely self-sufficient without any help from others; they will miss on a lot of players. Contenders do not help other contenders with trades, in the same way, rebuilders aren’t doing any favors for other rebuilders; both sides hoard their resources from their immediate competitors. If we hold this to be true, the only way to further our positions in the league is by appealing to our leaguemates who have differing directions with pieces that align with their goals. 

Early Off-Season (Week 17-NFL Playoffs)

Players who were cut from their NFL teams during the regular season or have been long retired are finally dropped from fantasy rosters. Carefully review the Week 15 Dossier: “Fantasy Pruning - Preparing Your Off-Season Roster” to get a head start on the upcoming season. This is a relatively dead period, but one takeaway from this small window includes:

• From Heroes to Zeroes - The final weeks of the NFL season and the Playoffs are the most magical time in all of sports. During this period, players make or break their teams’ seasons and become household names for better or worse. Inevitably, a player flying below most fantasy radars has an incredible performance that hooks the hearts of the massive audience that tunes in. Players such as Gabriel Davis, Jamaal Williams, and Jarrett Stidham catapult themselves up fantasy rankings following blowup performances. A long-held belief in fantasy circles is that players who perform well during this critical period are rewarded with a larger role and greater opportunities the following season. Perhaps the player was buried deep in a depth chart behind other players or was previously injured, but they finally shine brilliantly once given the opportunity. These narratives, mixed with the emotions of the playoffs, create a persuasive story that unfortunately becomes more myth than reality the following season. Take advantage of the hype and sell these fringe players with very little track record for picks before draft season is in full effect.

Draft Season

The greatest time of the year for fantasy players is the unbearable suspense that builds between the Senior Bowl, the Scouting Combine, and the NFL/Fantasy Rookie Drafts. Managers hitch themselves to rookie prospects throughout their entire draft process, building them up to Olympian heights, and making sure everyone in the space knows exactly how they feel about a player. Our Agency’s process for rookie evaluations and attacking the draft is one of the most effective, which we will disclose in full detail in the future, but there are some lessons from this past season to remember for 2024:

• Scheme & Opportunity - It isn’t enough to only watch college film to understand the strengths and weaknesses of these prospects or to implement the latest analytics to discover the next bulletproof prospect. As an entity that spends its entire Spring searching for the best data to build out its rookie rankings, we have found that the best evaluators in the entire space were intimately knowledgeable of the scheme and concepts that these prospects ran in college, but most importantly, the X’s & O’s of their new coaches in the NFL. It has been a top priority of this Agency to investigate how a prospect will be incorporated into a coach’s system and if they are capable of rising through the ranks to make a fantasy impact. With former coaches and players breaking into the space to pull the curtain back, no longer is this knowledge hidden. With the amount of research that is poured into these future staples of the NFL, running a dynasty team in today’s space requires a master’s degree level of dedication. With this level of commitment, it is crucial to use your valuable time listening to those who go beyond merely giving their opinions, but instead focus on teaching their process and take the time to break down the “How’s” & “Why’s.” Matt Harmon (Reception Perception), Brett Kollmann (The Film Room), Noah Hills (NoahMoreParties), and the Underdog Network have established themselves amongst the best evaluators in the entire field for years now. We have recently added Steve Smith Sr. (CUT TO IT) and JT O’Sullivan (The QB School) to this group of trusted consultants. Incorporating the work of these individuals into the rest of your trusted process is one of the best ways to take your game to the next level.

Training Camp

We often look to OTA’s and Minicamp as the first whispers of intel for projecting the upcoming season. But is this time of year as essential for fantasy purposes as we make it out to be?

• Fade the Noise - Conjectures from Beat Reporters, propaganda from the Twitter hive, and the idle hands of fantasy players can often lead to some of the most regrettable trades during the fantasy season. For every report or trade that is spurred on by camp hype, there are twice as many trades and 10 storylines that completely fall short of what was advertised. It was previously this Agency’s stance to avoid trading valuable draft capital for high-cost players during this time of the season, except for an elite QB. After 2023, we suggest going a step further in exercising the utmost restraint by avoiding trades for ANY players! We will be discussing in future reports the correlation between the types of assets involved in trades and how often managers “win” these deals, but in short: the players that focused on pick accumulation in their trades (in SF leagues) won more often than not and typically built the most competitive rosters compared to those who focused on player acquisition. This was especially true of teams that sought after rookies in hopes of early career production. You’re better off filing away in your memory bank the “Calvin Ridley” camp storylines and not revisiting them until week 3 or 4 of the regular season. 

Pre-Season

Most agents are smart enough to treat this month as nothing more than a dress rehearsal that has little bearing on the actual season. But is there any other info we can extract at this time?:

• Flexible Roster Construction - In the same vein as the previous point, it was strongly held that the weeks immediately preceding the NFL kickoff were a critical time to apply any finishing touches to your roster construction. This urge to be in “perfect” roster construction may have driven some agents to be overzealous and spend valuable draft picks on players they deemed essential (such as a 3rd/4th QB or 2nd workhorse RB) to gain an advantage over their competitors. Countless 1st round picks were spent on these assets during this time of the year so that agents could feel secure. Every year we are quickly reminded how brutal and unforgiving this sport is in week 1, especially at the QB and RB position. This Agency does not want to overcorrect and suggest that agents should be too far separated from optimal roster construction heading into the season. This would be risky considering most managers are unwilling to part from difference-making assets early in the season if they view them as keys to their future championship. Going into next season, we recommend a far more relaxed and flexible approach to optimizing your rosters. This may include only having one player who can hold down the fort at each position and a decent group of seasoned vets for depth heading into the regular season. Being only 1 difference-making QB, RB, WR, and/or TE away from optimal construction is not a dreadful place to be considering the high variance and attrition that occurs yearly. Wait until the mid or late part of the season before you decide to start pushing your chips on these premium players to optimize your rosters. 

Early Regular Season

After nine months' worth of hard work and careful planning, everyone enters the season wide-eyed and hopeful. Then the injury reports start piling up. Agents hold their breaths and pray they can avoid the same fates as their leaguemates who quickly start losing players. Simultaneously, they watch in disbelief as their prized assets are outperformed by mid-round dinosaurs, and Super Bowl favorites are quickly dismantled by teams no one expected to be competitive. Amid this chaos, there is some valuable instruction:

• Busts are Unavoidable, but Holding them is a Choice - Players like Bryce Young and Quentin Johnston may have been similarly ranked to other prospects like C.J. Stroud and Zay Flowers, but it didn’t take long after the Pre-Season to realize that they were not ready to make a fantasy impact and were not in position to succeed considering their coaches and their offenses. If you are competing, it is essential to spot the warning signs early so that you can trade these types of assets before your leaguemates are scared off. The Week 4 (WR), Week 6 (TE), Week 8 (QB), and Week 12 (RB) Dossiers all contain the essential “Bona Fide” metrics this agency uses to assess a player’s usage and production. Dive into the content of the specialists mentioned in the “Scheme & Opportunity” section above and decide if these players are in a position to turn things around this season or not. Lastly, use PFF to measure a player and team’s performance against the rest of the league. It doesn’t take a skilled operator to understand a QB who ranks dead last in every major category, a skill-player who isn’t being used, or a player in an offensive system with the worst grades in the league is a liability that must be dealt with swiftly and traded away. Holding onto accolades, such as a player’s draft capital, may temporarily insulate your asset for trading purposes, but it has zero bearing on a player’s production or environment. 

• Target Backup RBs - Our analysts are still experimenting with this theory, but one possible way to deal with attrition and injuries is to acquire players at a discount BEFORE they step into a starting role. Since we lack the technology to forecast the future with usage and injuries, we must be selective with the type of assets we target. Limit the candidate pool to players who are part of offenses with effective rushing attacks (and offenses that are successful as a whole), RBs who are talented (especially dual-threat weapons that can run & catch), and players who are given 30-40% of the snaps and touches. These types of players can often be had for 3rd or 4th-round draft picks during the season. 

Mid-Season & Third Quarter

Our Agency does not have any discoveries or breakthroughs to report from this portion of the season. However, we can confirm that it is essential to stay informed on the status of your players via the WoRP tool and the resources mentioned earlier in this report. We highly recommend a “Show of Force” assessment of your roster (as laid out in the “Week 10 Dossier”). Lastly, we cannot stress highly enough to remain restrained & calculated with trading your draft capital throughout the season. Staggering which draft picks you are willing to trade throughout each quarter of the season and saving the most premium picks for last yielded extremely promising results. Unfortunately, regular season performance does not guarantee playoff success.

Fantasy Playoffs

Competing in 12 leagues this year, 8 waltzed into the playoffs with strong hopes of a championship. These rosters were built far more optimally than the competition (hardly any waste/”zeros”), they featured multiple elite WoRP players at nearly every position, and to ensure victory, many of these rosters were depleted of draft capital to secure depth pieces and other top assets with the most favorable schedules. But despite the best efforts and resources, only 4 of these 8 rosters are in the championship. Having 50% of your playoff teams in the championship is nothing to scoff at - the 1st place prizes will more than double the total investment for the 2023 fantasy campaign. But as an Agency that hates to lose more than it loves to win, and is ultimately judged by its failures, it is extremely difficult to overlook two of the rosters that fell painfully short in big-money championships and are now only potentially doubling instead of quintupling their investment.  The following lessons unfortunately arose when the stakes were the highest: 

• Schedule - This first point may seem trivial, but operating in a world that is constantly vying for your time, especially during the holiday season in which these fantasy playoffs take place, it is essential to set adequate time aside for waivers and setting your lineup. In one of these big-money leagues, we had picked up the red-hot Demarcus Robinson, intending to start him. The Rams were playing Thursday night football, so it was important to spend the necessary time to have my playoff roster squared away before the game. However, that night our regular plans had changed and we became preoccupied with hosting some close friends of ours. Carried away with conversation, we had completely forgotten to set our lineup and the game was well underway before we realized. This error cost our starting lineup an extra 10 points. During the playoffs, be sure to create alarms or calendar events before your pivotal matchups so that you can devote yourself to setting your lineup. This is one of the many reasons Best Ball is superior to Lineup leagues, but such is life. 

• FAAB & Keep-Away - Having the biggest FAAB budget in the playoffs remains the most underrated advantage a competitor can have. Like clockwork, there are league winners who emerge from the waiver wire late in the season. It is also common for many playoff teams to limp into the playoffs with injury-riddled rosters and $0 in FAAB. You may not need to start assets like Joe Flacco, Jake Browning, Mason Rudolph, or Demarcus Robinson, but picking up these players and blocking your competitors' access to these lifelines is one of the savviest tactics an agent can pull off.
  However, we learned the hard way that it is vital to maintain a tight grip on the waivers after the first run. In the same league as the Demarcus Robinson error, our opponent was pitifully weak at TE, with only Dalton Kincaid on their roster (who was coming off a 0.00 pt game), and had $0 in FAAB. In an effort to block them, we put in waivers for Hunter Henry, Tanner Hudson, and Michael Mayer, and we dropped Dalton Schultz to make room. Foolishly, we did not consider that our opponent would subsequently target Schultz, and instead of making a claim to pick them back up, we allowed our opponent to acquire Schultz uncontested. The Robinson error, combined with Schultz’s #8 TE performance for that week, was just enough to send us home packing with $0 in prizes and keep us out of a championship worth thousands of dollars. Brutal.       

• Take the Production, LEAVE the Market Value - The final takeaway, and the lesson that spurred the creation of this report, originates from the other league that fell just short of a championship. This league encapsulated the best of our Agency’s process and completely overwhelmed the competition all season long. Just before our matchup, we sought to spend the very last of our draft capital on assets with prime matchups and to strengthen any possible weaknesses. The two weakest positions heading into the Semi-Finals were QB (Tua, Goff, Browning, Geno, Howell, and a last-minute waiver pickup of Mason Rudolph) and TE (Engram, Ferguson, Taysom, and Logan Thomas). We had negotiated a deal to send our last draft pick of consequence for either Dalton Schultz or Joe Flacco plus Derrick Henry. With six quarterbacks and only four tight ends in a start 2 TE league, we believed the TE position was the bigger need. But that isn’t the whole truth of the matter: in full transparency, the factor that ultimately led us to choose Schultz was weighing future dynasty value over current production value. We were confident that our current roster could easily defeat our competition and didn’t want to be weighed down with dead assets in the off-season. Further contributing to this foolish decision was ignoring how poorly our QBs, such as Howell, had been playing. It can be easy to tell yourself after a few bad games, “They were great earlier in the season, they can turn it around, no reason to do anything rash and panic!” Looking back, we recommend a far more proactive approach that treats these slumps far more seriously. There was no reason we couldn’t have offered the pick, Howell, and perhaps another player to receive the entire trio of Schultz, Flacco, & Henry. Both of these careless perspectives, along with facing Gabe Davis, Christian McAffrey, and Amari Cooper in the Semi-Finals, led to our close defeat.

Conclusion

There is a lot this Agency can be proud of from its 2023 campaign - this has been by far the most successful 12-month span of operations in our entire history. Our success is due in large part to the wonderful resources we relied so heavily upon and the great minds that created them. But to take full advantage of these materials, it took many years of trial and error to better understand how to operate successfully in the fantasy field. The goal of this Agency is to fully pull back the curtain, disclose our entire process, and leak our most coveted trade secrets to equip our agents. Our ultimate goal is to create top-tier operators who are discerning, self-reliant and can contribute their own unique skill sets to an ever-growing field. Stick with us at the South Harmon Agency, we have far more for you to learn and the training never stops.