It's an exciting day for us at Yahoo Fantasy Sports, and it's an exciting day for you, too. Your championship odds just got a little bit better, merely by opening up this newsletter and taking the first step with us. The Get to the Points fantasy football briefing is ready to become your secret weapon for the next several months.
Our goals are simple
We want to deliver actionable advice to your inbox to save you time and help you become a more-skillful and better-prepared fantasy football player. And, of course, have fun along the way.
We'll do all of this at the breeziest pace possible; you'll only need a few minutes to consume every edition, and the presentation will be reader-friendly if you prefer to skip to the items that most interest you.
You can consider Andy and I advisors, assistants, scouts, friends. We just want you to know we're all in this together. We provide the slants, you score the points.
In today's debut edition: How injuries could impact draft values, exploring changes in Yahoo ADP and more.
Get to the Points! is written by Andy Behrens and Scott Pianowski. To sign up for free, click here.
🚨 Top fantasy football news
If you've been distracted by the Olympics and are catching up on all things NFL, some key players are hurt heading into the thick of draft season. Scott determines if there's reason to worry.
🤕 Christian McCaffrey (calf injury): It makes you nervous to select any dinged-up player in Round 1, let alone first overall. But CMC has been fantasy's best player twice (including 2023); he's still my top overall pick.
😩 Jahmyr Gibbs (hamstring): Gibbs' ADP (13.1 in Yahoo) has never made sense, given that David Montgomery is still there, and probably has more goal-line equity. Now Gibbs has a hamstring injury the team is downplaying, after dealing with a soft tissue issue in June. I can't consider Gibbs at his current ADP.
🤞 Puka Nacua (knee injury): One reason Nacua fell in the 2023 draft was his extensive college injury resume. He also has a physical, all-out style, which concerns me for long-term durability. Cooper Kupp has his own red flags, but he's currently going about 23 picks later than Nacua — Kupp could easily be the better value in this passing game.
🩼 Malik Nabers (ankle injury): Brian Daboll is a good coach and will be able to feature Nabers from the jump; I also don't think QB Daniel Jones is completely a lost cause. You hope the ankle injury won't cost the rookie too many critical summer reps, but Nabers is confident he'll be ready for Week 1.
🩻 Hollywood Brown (shoulder injury): Brown has been drafted ahead of teammate Xavier Worthy in Yahoo ADP this summer, but that should flip after Brown hurt his shoulder Saturday. Surgery won't be required, but Brown is no sure thing to play Week 1; tread carefully with Brown.
🏈 J.J. McCarthy (knee injury): We knew Sam Darnold would be Minnesota's Week 1 starter, now it's a long-term assignment with McCarthy having season-ending surgery. I'm still going to draft Justin Jefferson proactively, a nod to how much I trust head coach Kevin O'Connell. Although there were turnovers in the mix, the Minnesota passing game remained productive downfield even after Kirk Cousins got hurt last season. It would help though if Vikings players stopped getting hurt.
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🔎 A look at ADP trends: Risers & Fallers
As average draft position (ADP) continues to evolve, Scott recaps why these players are moving up or down over the past week on Yahoo.
🚀 Risers
Chase Brown: I'm not totally buying this market adjustment. Brown started the preseason opener (on the heels of a strong camp), but that was also tied to Zack Moss sitting due to illness. Brown didn't do much in limited action (6 touches, 20 yards), and Moss returned to practice Monday, getting first team reps. Some ADP merging was always inevitable, but I still view Moss as the favorite to win the starting job.
Jayden Daniels: He only saw a few snaps in his Washington debut, but Daniels provided some highlight plays. He enters the NFL with a ton of rushing upside, but he was also an explosive passer at the end of his LSU career. Daniels offers similar upside to breakout pick Anthony Richardson, but Daniels is available around 5-6 rounds later.
Rashee Rice: It's starting to look like he will either avoid a suspension this season, or at worst, have a short one. He fully entered KC's circle of trust in the second part of last season, and while Rice has a far different role than injured WR Hollywood Brown, if Brown's injury lingers, it could modestly bump Rice's target share. I've raised Rice's rank in the last week or so, echoing the market.
📉 Fallers
Zack Moss: You can basically cut the Chase Brown note from above and drop it here. The Bengals should have a plus offense in 2024 — provided Joe Burrow stays healthy — and we need to monitor their backfield competition closely.
Nick Chubb: This trend surprised me, as no major Chubb news has dropped and the team has been mostly positive when discussing his progress. That said, my rule when deciphering team-speak is to believe them 100% when it's critical, but to tread carefully when it's positive. Chubb's global ADP has been about 1.5 rounds higher than his Yahoo tag most of the summer, so perhaps this is merely a market correction
Justin Herbert: Herbert is an unexciting fantasy pick, given the arrival of a run-happy coaching staff and the presence of an ordinary receiver room. His stock also took a hit with a plantar fasciitis injury two weeks ago, which could keep him out the rest of the summer. Given the overwhelming depth at QB, I see no reason to draft Herbert proactively in any format.
🧐 The 2024 QB landscape: Dual-threat dominance
Traditional pocket passers have next to no path to being league-winners in fantasy, Andy writes.
Way back in the formative years of fantasy football, in pre-internet times, we did not yet have adequate terminology to describe the unfairness of dual-threat quarterbacks.
A few players had some pretty solid nicknames — Kordell Stewart was "Slash" and Randall Cunningham was "The Ultimate Weapon" — but it wasn't until 2013 that Rich Hribar gave us "Konami Code," a perfect umbrella term to distinguish the elite rushing QBs from everyone else.
The evolution: Today, Konami Code QBs fully rule the position. Josh Allen has finished as the overall QB1 in three of the past four seasons, plus he was the QB2 in 2022. Jalen Hurts has ranked top-three in consecutive years. Lamar Jackson has a pair of MVP awards in the trophy case. Patrick Mahomes, the most dangerous and inventive passer in the NFL, has topped 300 rushing yards in four straight seasons.
If it's beginning to feel like QBs can no longer achieve fantasy relevance via passing stats alone ... well, that's because they basically can't.
Passing isn't enough: Last year, for perhaps the first time in the fantasy era, the NFL's passing yardage leader was not particularly useful in our game. He certainly wasn't a difference-maker. Tua Tagovailoa threw for a league-high 4,624 yards along with 29 scores, yet he barely squeezed inside the top-10 QB scorers. When a series of challenging matchups hit late in the year, his only path to fantasy production was closed. He was unstartable in the season's most important weeks.
We are now officially and irrevocably in an age in which Tua-level rushing stats at QB — 74 yards and zero touchdowns in 2023 — are almost disqualifying in fantasy.
There was a time when someone like Philip Rivers or Kurt Warner or Matt Schaub might land inside the position's top-three based on passing totals alone, but that ain't happening in 2024. Three years ago, Matthew Stafford erupted for a ridiculous 4,886 passing yards and career-best 41 touchdowns, yet he only finished as the overall QB6 (through Week 17).
Bottom line: Unless you think you might realistically get a 5,000-yard, 40-TD season from a uni-threat QB, the player isn't giving you an edge. If you're actually looking for a potential league-winner, you know what to do: Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start.
👍 What else is trending from Yahoo Fantasy
Draft-Day Blueprint: Your guide to building a winning team, courtesy of Matt Harmon
Rankings: Our consensus top 300 players for the 2024 draft season
Fantasy University: Our analysts will play the role of professors as they teach you the ins and outs of fantasy through a series of classes.
Yahoo Fantasy's redesigned app: Learn how the changes will make it easier to play this season.
Thanks for reading, we'll be back on Tuesday!
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