Just in time for your draft, two of the top wideouts went and got themselves in trouble. Their bad behavior means Carolina ’s Steve Smith is to be sidelined for two games, while Denver ’s Brandon Marshall looks to serve two-to-three. In this edition of the Stat Lab, we look at what this means for them and your draft plans.

Your Mission: Value

Drafts are about value, and not just overall value, but relative value. Your mission is to pick the guy who is going to put up the most points compared to his peers. There’s a much bigger difference between the #1 and #12 running back compared to the #1 and #12 kicker, which is why you draft your running backs early, your kickers late, and your quarterbacks somewhere in the middle in seasons you don’t expect records to be broken.

When Smith and Marshall have finished their suspensions, they’re probably going to come right back and do what they’ve been doing – outperform most of their peers. Unfortunately, this isn’t going to help us for the first couple of weeks, and we need to assess the potential damage before drafting.

You might be tempted to say, “He’s going to miss two games, so he’s now worth two games less,” but you’d be shorting yourself. If you draft one of these guys, you’re not going to start them and get a zero for two weeks. Instead, you’re going to plug in the best guy off of your bench, and get fewer points for those games. What you lose by drafting Smith or Marshall in the first two weeks, you mostly recover with your third wideout in leagues that start two receivers, or your fourth wideout in leagues that start three.

Damage Control

In the chart below you’ll see I’ve taken the Wide Receiver Rankings from the staff at FantasySharks.com for Point-Per-Reception (PPR) and non-PPR leagues, and broken out our two miscreants. At the bottom, you’ll find the values for your average WR3 and WR4, the guys on your bench depending on your starting roster.