Draft

We are coming into Bowl Season for College Football. The NFL Draft order is starting to take shape with four games left in the season. To me, that signals the true start to Draft Season! Starting December 6th, College Football Awards Shows will start and go throughout the weekend leading up to the Heisman Trophy Presentation December 8th.

It is football time again. Every time you think it is gone long enough it comes back and sneaks up on you. Kind of like Christmas in a way because you know it is coming and people are talking about ...

We did it! It’s back. Thank the lord above Sundays will now revolve around my recliner, sweatpants, a meatball sub and seven hours of the Red Zone channel. I kissed my wife and kids goodbye and told them I’ll be ...

When next we see an NFL game, it’s going to count. Thursday’s thrilling slate of games featuring guys who will more likely than not be delivering pizzas in a month closed out the 2018 preseason. By this point most position ...

Week 3 of the preseason — “dress rehearsal week” — is over, which means it’s once again time to analyze the tape. Since most fantasy-relevant players played limited snaps against vanilla defenses, it’s important to avoid overreacting to good or ...

After employing the process below for IDPs and getting some positive feedback from the Sharks community, I decided to do the same for the offensive players. Notice that this column isn’t about “sleepers”; it’s about identifying players who are likely ...

One of the most difficult tasks in head-to-head fantasy leagues is trying to determine who the “hot” and “cold” players will be in any given week. You can’t use historical or seasonal averages because, well… by their very definition, averages ...

Let the games begin! For those new to the annual Draft Plan, I take you through the fantasy landscape and show you how to navigate it, so that you hopefully find success at the end of the rainbow. I am ...

We’re almost there, folks. In less than two weeks, the Philadelphia Eagles and Atlanta Falcons will square off in the 2018 season opener – and another season of fantasy football will be upon us. It’s a great time to be ...

Greetings and salutations.  It is the 17th year of the Virgin Chronicles A.K.A The Diary of a Fantasy Virgin.  Football is coming and that means it is time to break out the old fancy word processor and tap on the ...

It’s here. The time has come for me to release my award-winning 2018 fantasy football sleepers list. I also want to point out this is the 20th year of The Fire Sale. I’m fortunate enough to make a living writing ...

This past weekend, I had the privilege of representing Fantasy Sharks in the King's Classic Fantasy Football Expert Drafts at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton Ohio. That's right—I drafted a fantasy football team from inside the Hall. Two, actually.

Week 2 of the preseason is in the books, which means it’s time for another recap. Since most fantasy-relevant players played limited snaps against vanilla defenses, it’s important to avoid overreacting to good or bad performances. But if you watch ...

Back in the day, before marriage and children came along, I used to watch a ton of football. I don’t mean all day Saturday and Sunday – I mean every day of the week, every spare moment. It was also ...

Welcome back one and all to the 2018 Shark Leagues! This is where we separate the champions from the chum. Once again we are offering the best free leagues on the planet where the competition gets harder the more you win.

Which players have difficult matchups the first two weeks of the season and which players have favorable matchups the first two weeks of the season? Here are three Quarterbacks with difficult matchups and three quarterbacks with favorable matchups to start ...

The new Duran Duran track just dropped and we're turning down Cam Newton. We'd rather "Take on me" with Matt Ryan. In 2017, Matt Ryan followed up an MVP season with a complete stinker. There's no way around it, Ryan was a bust given his draft position and our expectations.

Gio Bernard is great for PPR leagues as a bye week fill in or a desperation flex. Mixon is the guy but Bernard should be able to put in enough work to be worth a roster spot and he is being drafted around the same place that kicker Justin Tucker is.

From Week 10 to Week 17 of last season, Josh Doctson saw 56 targets and hauled in three touchdowns. He should easily eclipse 100 targets this coming season and Alex Smith will quickly come to realize how capable Doctson can be in the red zone on jump balls. At his current 10th round price tag, Doctson has low-end WR2 upside at the cost of a WR4.

This week’s Fantasy Forecast will take a look at the correlation, if any, between player position, age, and performance.

In the overwhelming majority of IDP leagues, the linebacker position rules the roost. While the positional value of defensive linemen has as much to do with scarcity as production, with linebackers it’s all about ‘dem stats. Linebackers are both the ...

We are only a few weeks from opening up the NFL regular season! Teams are about to break training camp, every team has at least one preseason game under their belt, and general managers are getting a good idea of ...

Football is finally here, which means it’s time to analyze what we saw in the first week of the preseason. Since most fantasy-relevant players played limited snaps against vanilla defenses, it’s important to avoid overreacting to good or bad performances. ...

Eli Manning, currently being drafted as QB25 in MFL10’s, will have 4,800 passing yards, 35 touchdowns, less than 13 interceptions and finish as a Top 5 fantasy quarterback. The talent surrounding Eli Manning in the New York Giants offense is ...

Every pre-season while pro football players are in training camp, working on their skills, analysts like myself stare at seemingly endless amounts of data, hoping to find some pattern, some insight, that’ll be of use to our readers. We start ...

Pittsburgh Steelers tailback Le’Veon Bell is one of the most electrifying talents at his position in the NFL today. After piling up 1,291 rushing yards and adding 85 catches on his way to a second-place fantasy finish among running backs ...

In the 2014 film Draft Day, Kevin Costner portrays a fictional Cleveland Browns GM who has his heart set on using the team’s number one overall pick to select linebacker Vontae Mack. Despite internal push from the Browns’ owner to ...

Chris Thompson was clutch for both Washington and fantasy owners last year before his injury. He even has my personal favorite and eternal late round quarterback love, Captain Check-down himself, Alex Smith throwing to him. Thompson will be aided by having a team of often banged up team of pass catchers around him.

Not only will Devontae Booker be a more efficient runner, he has also established himself as a legitimate pass-catching option out of the backfield. He’s racked up 61 receptions, 540 receiving yards and one receiving touchdown in his first two seasons and will continue to be a reliable option on passing downs. At Booker’s current 11th round price tag, he’s as good of a lottery ticket as any running back being drafted outside the first ten rounds.

When should you draft different positions? Should Antonio Brown be taken ahead of Le’Veon Bell? Should Bobby Wagner be grabbed ahead of Zach Ertz? Heck, where should any position be drafted as compared to any other position? To answer that ...

Kareem Hunt accounted for 272 of the 315 carries among Chiefs running backs last season. That is a whopping 86.3% of the carries that went to Hunt; it will be hard for Hunt to see the same percentage of carries in 2018 with Spencer Ware returning. A 65%/35% timeshare seems much more plausible for the upcoming season.

As a fantasy sports writer (or any sort of writer, actually), you always want to be known for something uniquely your own. For me, when I finally decide to hang up my keyboard (probably soon), I’d like to think that ...

Le'Veon Bell is the best running back in fantasy football -- period. He has finished as a Top-3 running back in three of the last four seasons. The other top running backs haven't had the sustained success that Bell has had. He is simply a stud and should be the top pick in every draft.

When I first started writing “Watt to Do?” articles here at Fantasy Sharks several years ago, there was no question regarding J.J. Watt‘s value in IDP leagues. It was the eighth-year defensive end’s world, and everyone else was just living ...

This wraps up our ADP Face-Off series and it concludes with the tight end position. Read on for some help with those draft decisions when two similar players are available.

With NFL training camp on the horizon, I’ve organized the backfields of all 32 NFL teams into tiers based on the expected usage of each starting running back. Like anything in the NFL, running back situations are fluid, and a ...

In 2015, there were two Top 10 wide receivers over 30. In 2016, there was one. In 2017, there was one. If you remove Larry Fitzgerald from the conversation you have Brandon Marshall and Jordy Nelson as the only 30-plus wide receivers to have a Top 10 season in points per reception (PPR) league format over the last three years.

Todd Gurley had a season for the ages in 2017. He finished as the best fantasy running back in just about every scoring system out there. His usage in the receiving game is something that was not expected but was a pleasant surprise... He’s one of the safest fantasy options out there and will be the backbone of many fantasy teams this season.

Do you play in a 16-team league? Or maybe you’re in a league with 10+ bench spots? Every league is different, but some formats require you to scrape the bottom of the barrel. If you play in one of these ...

We are now down to our last team for the 2017 Fantasy Postmortem series. The purpose of this column is to briefly examine the state of each NFL team’s skill positions for fantasy purposes, with an eye towards the 2018 season. ...