Positional Value in CFF: Part I.
You were born in the long summer. You've never known anything else. But now winter is truly coming.
- Ned Stark, Game of Thrones
Disclaimer: Today’s article is something different from the norm. If you’re not a College Fantasy Football (CFF) player, or don’t intend to be, this article is probably one you can skip. Don’t worry, I don’t take it personally. See you again soon. P.S. if you’re interested, you can find public CFF leagues here.
Pigs, welcome back. With Underdog Fantasy joining the fray this past month offering CFF bestball drafts with prizes, and the vast majority of regular CFF leagues starting up again around this time, I thought I’d take the opportunity to provide some thoughts on positional value in the great game of CFF.
I figure there will be a lot of new players coming into the space this year, and many of the regulars who tune out in the offseason generally start paying attention again in July/August.
With that in mind, I want to explain positional value in CFF using two variables: scarcity and consistency. These two variables are at the forefront of my mind when I weigh the value of each position group, and they are part of what influences my draft strategy.
One thing to note is that different formats influence positional value differently, but I believe the majority of average and new CFF players enjoy the game under the standard format (i.e. choose starters) and so I think it’s a good place to begin the discussion.
In terms of understanding the two aforementioned variables and keeping stock of how they influence positional value, here is a somewhat confusingly-looking table to provide a visual.
To start, I should say that I have a (loose) threshold in my mind for each position that I believe is generally required to win CFF leagues.
Productive QBs that are good enough to win the average CFF league should average 25+ PPG in four point passing formats, and 27+ in six, more or less. RBs should be around that 20 PPG threshold, regardless of scoring format. WRs in zero or half PPR should net 15+ PPG, or 17+ PPG in 1PPR. TEs should hover around 8-12+ PPG depending on the format.
In my mind—and in my experience—if you have a team that is consistently on a week-to-week basis fielding all four positions scoring in those thresholds, you win most of your games (you’ll just have to take my word for it here).
Coming back to the above table, when I say QBs are not scarce, what I mean is finding a QB who can play consistent winning CFF football (25-27+ PPG) is not hard, at any stage of the talent acquisition process (early, midway, later in the draft, or on waivers). That is, the option to get a QB who matches my criteria will generally be available throughout the entire draft and well into the season.
When I say a position is not consistent, what I’m talking about is the volatility on a week-to-week basis. WRs are the poster boy position for the ‘boom or bust’ type assets in CFF, and finding WRs that are consistently productive every week (without the volatility) is hard, because there aren’t many. In that sense, WRs match the scarcity criteria that QBs don’t, but their production is generally more volatile than the average QB.
Regular Re-Draft Formats (i.e. choose starters)
I am writing this section assuming that you start one, or two QBs in your league (which is pretty standard) and around two-to-three RBs and WRs each, plus one or two flex positions and a TE. I am also assuming a standard number of teams (10-16 managers) with waivers running through the season (or at least the ability to continue to add to your team during the year). I may do another version in the future for bestball formats with and without waivers.
QB: Consistency Without Scarcity
There are a lot of QBs that can hit the criteria you need, achieving the above mentioned threshold on a consistent week-to-week basis. By extension, that fact makes the position not very valuable when it comes to drafting, because spending a high round pick on a player that gets you 30-33 PPG isn’t going to provide a noticeable advantage when everyone else catches up in the back half of the draft and via waivers with QBs getting them 25-27 PPG. Unless you have a truly special QB asset (35+ PPG), which doesn’t even come around every year, and even when it does, the probability is low that you’ll be the one to select them even early in a draft, it is not worth it to expend significant resources on this position.
It would be one thing if the top guys were more consistent, and more productive, but in my experience this does not hold true. If you can get an asset that gives you 25-27 PPG consistently for cheap (or for free), how much do you value paying the cost of a first/second/third round pick for a different asset that gets you 30-33 PPG consistently?
In a format where you choose starters, I believe consistency is at a premium because you have to choose a player to represent you each week at the various position groups. Having a player that I know will give me 25 PPG like clockwork is extremely valuable in that type of environment, because I know they won’t singlehandedly lose me games. But, as has been mentioned, finding consistent QBs is extremely easy, so in that sense the position just isn’t all that important in my mind, especially if you only have to start one in your league. If you start two, the general theory still holds, but you can make more of an argument in favour of prioritizing the position slightly.
The deeper you make the league (e.g., more managers, smaller player pool), the less this theory holds true. The crux of this axiom is based on the abundance of QBs that can play winning CFF consistently. If the parameters of the league shift in such a way where this abundance is no longer prevalent, then the theory breaks down.
One such example is a 24-team, 45 man roster dynasty league that I partake in. In this format, QB is extremely valuable because we need to field around three (2 QBs and a super flex) and there are a lot of other managers who are holding QBs. In this environment, even finding a starting QB is gold, let alone a productive one.
WR: Volatility With Elite Scarcity
WRs are my favourite position in CFF—wait, WHAT? OK, I lied, or at least I should say: they are my favourite position to draft late and acquire via waivers.
This position is an incredibly potent one in CFF, and if you get a golden goose (e.g., Devonta Smith in 2020, Jerreth Sterns in 2021) that is so consistently elite every week, it is a huge plus. However, the notion that you will be able to identify this player ahead of time (even if you’re drafting WRs with your first 4-5 picks) is low. There are generally only a handful of WRs that will consistently produce week-to-week, and it is hard to know in advance which ones will do so.
When we’re talking about players that are going to average 17+ PPG, most of the WRs who achieve this will do so with considerable volatility in their week-to-week performance. Some weeks will be 30/40+ explosions. Others will be be less than 10. In a standard league where I choose my starters, I just don’t value this type of variability. I don’t want WRs that may singlehandedly win my matchup, I want WRs that won’t singlehandedly tank my chances of winning.
With that in mind, in this format I tend to gravitate towards slot players in air raid systems, with low average depth of targets, because they provide nice steady floors around 15 PPG. Their volatility won’t be as great as the big boundary receivers, who can light off an 80-yard pass to the house at a moment’s notice (netting you around 15 points in one play); or go scoreless on five targets, two of which they caught for say… 50 yards, because completing passes downfield is harder than the underneath stuff.
Different people will have different approaches to what they expect out of their WR group in this format, and each is equally valid. For me, I almost approach this group in a similar manner to how a defensive head coach views his QB as a game manager: I don’t care if the WRs don’t do anything spectacular (i.e. 30+ point bonanzas), just don’t lose the game for me.
Now, I don’t want to misrepresent my strategy here—it’s true that having good WRs is fundamental to winning CFF leagues (even getting 15 PPG consistently is an elite trait for this position), I just don’t think it’s necessary to pay up to achieve this goal.
In my experience, you can field a WR room that’s better than anybody else’s exclusively using the waiver wire most years. To that end, I’d advise you not to think about the draft as the final product when constructing your team. It’s more like the first half of roster construction (if that). The majority of the remaining 50% happens over the course of the first three to four weeks of the season, and the WR position is an easy one to catch up on.
I think of it as: I am going to acquire first, second, third round level RBs via the draft, and then I’m going to acquire first, second, third round level WRs via waivers. Then what’s left after a few weeks is a team filled with high end skill players at both RB and WR, almost as if I had two picks per round in the early stages of the draft instead of one.
In the above pictured draft, my pick is the seventh selection (taking Mafah in the first). Note that this is a bestball league with waivers, starting two QBs, and with other industry experts involved. Normally, I would not draft a QB that early (Greene in the fourth).
Now, the outside observer may look at this and say—with trepidation— “he’s relying on Jordan Moore as his WR1, or Malachi Fields”. However, this is categorically false.
While it’s true that I think highly of Moore (and Fields), and hope that each will outperform their ADP, I plan to rely on Ricky White, Jalen Royals and Tez Johnson—that is, the 2024 versions of them, who none of us see coming yet. I will pick up a Pofele Ashlock, Noah Smith, Will Pauling, and Kevin Concepcion later this September. However, my opponents will generally find it difficult to replicate a room of Mafah, Brooks, Sawchuk, Buckley, and Feagin (plus others that I drafted later) at RB via waivers.
Case in point, here is a screenshot of an in-season matchup last November between me and the eventual champion of last year’s Golden Pig Invitational (my squad’s on the left):
My score beat his team and was the third highest that week. Every single receiver on my roster besides Vaughn (7th round selection) at this point was a waiver pick up. All three receivers that are contributing to his starting lineup were waiver pick ups.
Now, you might ask: if this is so effective, why doesn't everybody subscribe to this philosophy on WRs? The answer is that you have to be confident in your ability to identify the value later in drafts and on waivers before anyone else does. Dating back to 2019, most of the Biletnikoff award winners, or CFB’s leading receivers, could be acquired via waivers, or with late round draft picks:
2019: Ja’Marr Chase — Waiver
2021: Jerreth Sterns (leading receiver, CFF WR1)— Mid/late round pick
2021: Jordan Addison (Biletnikoff)— Mid/late round pick
2022: Jalin Hyatt — Waiver
The question isn’t whether you can play catch-up at this position, but rather: do you trust yourself to be able to do that?
RB: Consistency And Scarcity
This is the alpha position in CFF. It’s the position that is both consistently productive when it’s good, and is scarce due to the amount of teams that run committees, and the fact that there is usually only one RB on the field at a time.
Think of it as a numbers game: there are now 134 FBS programs in the player pool for you to choose from. Of these 134 programs, less than half will have a bellcow RB that they rely on. In fact—are you ready for this? Only 27 RBs last year toted the rock over 200 times. Only twenty. fucking. seven. In a format with 11 other managers in your league, you do the math.
Of course, there were other players who didn’t hit the 200 carry threshold that were very good in CFF, whether it be due to injury that cut them short, or the fact that they offloaded carries with receptions, there were probably closer to around 35-40 RBs that could feasibly net you around 20 points most weeks.
When I look at the list of top rushers from 2023, almost all of them were drafted in the average CFF league in the summer. Conversely, when I look at receiving leaders from 2023, players like Ricky White, Malik Washington, Xavier Legette, Elijah Sarratt, Tez Johnson, Brian Thomas, fill out the top 15, and others like Roc Taylor and Jalen Royals populate the top 25.
Coming back to my draft in Figure 1., you might ask: why does one need to draft five or more RBs in his first six picks (see Figure 2.) if the format only calls for 3-4 starters at this position?
It goes back to what I said at the top in the intro: winning CFF teams field RBs who get them 20+ points each week, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be (and in fact, it’s very rare for it to be) the same RBs every time. Injuries happen. BYE weeks happen. Bad matchups happen. Draft misses happen.
I don’t look at those five RBs drafted and say “these are my RB1-5s”. The likelihood that at least one busts is high (yes, even early round picks). The likelihood that at least one goes down with major injury is high. Bad matchups and BYEs are an inevitability.
No, this is where we plan for winter. Approach it like a lottery, scratch as many tickets as possible, hammer it so hard—beyond the comprehension of any reasonable person observing what you’re doing, such that the position simply cannot fail entirely.
It’ll feel like unnecessary abundance now in summer, sure, but come October, when the weather gets cooler, and BYE weeks start piling up, bad matchups start to materialize, as do injuries… you’ll be thanking your former self for hoarding this group like a fat boy with Twinkies. Because pigs—make no mistake about it…
WINTER IS COMING. ◾
I may do another one of these for Bestball formats in the future depending on how this article does…
Part II. Bestball Formats
. . .
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So good. So wise. Full blown subscriber of this advice. Have a stacked RB room. Used waivers and trades to build up QB and WR. Stashed Gadsden and Kuithe on IR to plug in at TE this year. Dynasty format. Win-now build. Let’s go! 💪
The bestball article would be of great help to one newbie here.