Everyone on the internet is always trying to sell you something and in the world of fantasy sports it’s no different.  Whether it’s the new fab diet or the new breakout superstar, the process is the same and it’s almost always built around selling you a bill of goods.  In order to be successful at fantasy, you have to come to a certain self-actualization.  You aren’t special.  Your fool-proof strategy of drafting second-year WRs who are primed to blowup along with anyone on the Texans isn’t re-inventing the wheel.  Groupthink can be a successful way to run a business and often times it can lead to the most rational outcome, but in fantasy groupthink is where fantasy teams go to die.  If you want to win at fantasy, you have to learn to zag and while that has almost reached trend-level buzzword status, it’s still a novel enough concept to give you an edge in your league.  Here is an exercise, write down the five sexiest players you’d love to draft this season and then go check out their ADP.   It’s shocking isn’t it?  There’s no value there and if you really want any of them, you have to draft them at their ceiling.  What is the point of that?  Sure, if they hit and a bunch of them will, it’s going to be great, but fantasy is about unlocking value, not just staying afloat.

Now, let’s do the reverse exercise.  List the five players you don’t’ want to draft at all and now go check their ADP.   Since everyone thinks the same, all the players who are either boring, been around forever or had a letdown season are seeing their theoretical value being depressed which only creates more and more of a window to extract excess value.  I’ll even simplify the process even further.  The main goal in fantasy is to draft a player in the fifth round who provides third round value.  That’s it, you do that a couple times over the course of your draft and you are going to be set up to win.

Of course, the inverse is just as deadly.  If you drafted Tony Pollard as a top-six RB and he finished as the RB23, then you lost a ton of value that is incredibly hard to make up.  The same goes for Austin Ekeler who was drafted as a top-two RB and finished as the RB28 in fantasy points-per-game.  Both these players were fantasy team killers last season and while it was hard to predict either would tank due to injury or fit, the process didn’t matter when the result was catastrophic.  The point is when you take a swing and miss, you are playing catchup for the entire season, but when you go for a bunt and hit a home run, it patches over any holes on your roster.  So, after much ado, this article is going to highlight the players who have fallen too far and who might be deserving of one last ride before we write them off forever and sail them into the fantasy sunset.

Austin Ekeler, Washington Commanders – Funny, didn’t I just mention him.  Anytime a player goes from a top-three ADP at his position to a top-30, unless he fell out of a plane without a parachute, he deserves a long look.  The good news is that he’s still on the right side of 30 and his past season was derailed by an high-ankle sprain that happened in Week 1.  He wasn’t trending down over the last couple of seasons as his yards-per-rush was between 4.4-4.6 the last three seasons.  His 3.4 YPR last season is definitely a red flag, but the Chargers were a mess from the jump and they never really got on stable footing.  Ekeler is best utilized as a dual-threat back and it was his 107 receptions two seasons ago that really propped up his value.   If Ekeler isn’t done, then there is nothing but absolute monstrous upside for him.  While he’s not likely to provide first-round value again, with an ADP outside the top-100, it’s a low risk, high reward situation.

The bad news is he’s going from a bad situation to a potentially even worse one as the Commanders have a bottom-five offensive line and new rookie QB Jayden Daniels will likely look to scramble when he faces pressure rather than check down.  Also, it’s entirely possible that Brian Robinson is just a better RB than Ekeler at the respective stages of their careers.  Either way, if last season was just a blip year, then Ekeler could be the steal of the draft and if he’s washed, well at least we will finally know.

Tony Pollard, Tennessee Titans –

Pollard is in the same boat as Ekeler as they each have fallen from grace, but for completely different reasons.  Pollard is only 27 and while last season was a failure, there is nothing to indicate that Pollard isn’t the guy who took off in the second half of the 2022 season and looked like a shining star.  Now, he gets to fill the giant shoes of Derrick Henry, but behind a Tennessee offensive line that has been a disaster the last couple of seasons.   That could all change with new HC Bill Callahan who could get the most out of the b2b first round picks the Titans have used to shore up their protection unit.

Pollard has seen his ADP skydive to the RB30 and is being picked around 90-100.  His previous season wasn’t a total disaster either, just a relative one.  His YPR dropped from 5.2 to 4.0 and he wasn’t able to replicate any endzone success in the receiving game after finding pay dirt three times two seasons ago.  Again, Pollard probably won’t bounce back all the way to a top-five RB, but it’s on the table and an RB1 finish is completely possible.  The biggest threat to Pollard is Tyjae Spears, who was great out of the backfield and could easily level up into a bell cow back.  Running backs come and go and it could be that Spears really just benefited from defenses keying on Henry.  If Spears fizzles or gets hurt, Pollard is looking at major usage and a prime opportunity to redeem himself after last year’s misstep.

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