Week 3 Sunday Drive

Hi folks,

I want to kick things off this week with some thoughts on Chase Brown, who had 10 carries for 3 yards this week (and 4-17 in the receiving game). Folks have discussed his brutal efficiency, and it seems as though he’s going to be one of the bigger busts of the season as a Round 2 pick.

I am excited to discuss Brown because on of my least favourite parts of doing in-season content is that it feels — at least to me — that no matter what you say about a player in the moment people interpret it as either a defense of your previous position if things are going poorly, or a victory lap on something it appears you were correct on.

I’m excited to discuss Brown because I have a very even 6% in BBM (none in my FFPC mains) which makes me a touch below market but far from an extreme fader.

Whenever a player fails, there is a rush to determine why that player failed and extrapolate that reasoning into something actionable. It’s an understandable urge. At it’s most earnest, it’s an urge to make use of the information we receive in order to improve our odds of getting it right the next time. At it’s less earnest, it’s an attempt to fold in a given players’ failure to align with a long-standing heuristic an analyst might have about how to value certain types of players.

When I was on Late Round Perspectives this year, J.J. Zachariason and I discussed Chase Brown at length — and how he was an interesting case of why I felt archetypal drafting was harder to exploit in 2025.

I am predisposed to be out on a player like Chase Brown. He had limited college pedigree or efficiency (though he did handle a huge workload), and while he scored a lot of fantasy points in 2024, he did it with middling efficiency.

Similar to Rachaad White, Chase Brown is the kind of profile I tend to love drafting in rookie drafts, love taking shots on as a cheap ascending back, and usually want nothing much to do with if they hit and are being drafted closer to their ceiling.

But at least early in the season, Chase Brown’s cost was not as high as I expected it to be. Projecting as an overwhelming workhorse with no major competition on an offense which was expected to be elite, he was going in the middle of the 3rd round on a half-PPR best ball site. I wasn’t exactly smashing him, but I was mixing him in, and if I had to guess I was likely overweight Brown while he maintained his Round 3 ADP.

His ADP closed much higher, in a range where I rarely selected him, and that’s reflected in my lack of Brown exposure across my Main Event teams — which were all drafted in August.

But of course whether he was drafted in Round 2 or Round 3 made no impact on his actual production this year. What did matter was that Joe Burrow was lost for (quite likely) the season just 6 quarters into 2025. And at that point it was effectively curtains for Brown.

Because being Joe Burrow’s running back was the whole damn case! And if I had to guess, most of Brown’s biggest supporters would have told you so at the time. If you walked up to a Chase Brown bull in August and said “how do you think Brown’s season will go if Joe Burrow doesn’t play?” My guess is they would have said “poorly, hope it doesn’t happen.”

At this point Brown is dealing with the 32nd-ranked run blocking unit on a team with a non-mobile backup QB. It’s hard to imagine how any back would rush efficiently in this environment, and Brown is closer to a replacement level starter than an elite talent.

So where is the right place in drafts to push the button on a player with average efficiency but an elite environment and an elite projected workload which we had proof of concept for over a half-season? Personally I think early-mid Round 2 was too high. If you wanted to tell me Round 3 was too high, that’s reasonable. But if you’re telling me we found out the answer to that question based on how things went (or look to be going) for Brown I just don’t think that’s quite fair.

Brown will very likely be a failed draft pick this season, and the extent of that failure may result in a complete depreciation of his dynasty value. I think that’s uniquely true for someone like Brown compared to other backs who were similarly valued this season because I don’t believe he has a self-insulating level of talent.

You can look at Brown, compare him to a player taken in a similar range of drafts (Jonathan Taylor) who looks to be one of the most important players in fantasy this year, and come away saying “stop drafting for situation, always trust the talent because the situation is hard to predict.”

That is probably a little closer to my point of view on fantasy football. I prefer making bets primarily based on talent so that my price-point is generally closer to the floor if the situation goes awry and further from the ceiling if things break positively. But of course you have to be right about the talent-based bet.

My thesis for Travis Hunter this year was that his offensive role would be heavily-correlated to his ability to produce on offense. Thus far… it has been… but of course not in the way I’d like or his drafters would have hoped. He’s played 3 games in the NFL so we’re a long way from making any definitive declarations, but this is of course a talent-based bet I wish I’d made less often at this point in the season.

If you think only proven talent matters, let’s throw in Breece Hall — who despite looking fantastic in Week 1 and scoring accordingly — has struggled to score since, in large part due to a brutal supporting cast. I’m more optimistic on Hall rest-of-season than Brown, and I’m guessing more optimistic than the market. But even through just 3 games I think we’ve seen Hall demonstrate that he is still an incredible talent, but there will be frustrating games along the way due to his role and situation.

My point is that what we saw with Chase Brown was hitting a chunk of his range of outcomes that we knew existed, and knew would be terrible. His drafters (including myself on the occasions I clicked the button) made a choice that this type of downside scenario was worthwhile.

I think we should be careful with taking lessons from the manifestation of known risks come to pass.

Is everything cyclical or do we just adjust too quickly?

In the spirit of the above headline I am not going to make any definitive determinations on this matter but I’m starting to wonder if actually the nerds were right about wide receiver all along…

When I first broke into the space, the most two-dimensional divide among dynasty analysts came down to the “film” or “data” people — in particular at the wide receiver position.

At the time, the “data” hive was running particularly hot off a recent stretch of busts from players with poor or late production profiles.

But in 2021, and 2022, there were some big misses from the more traditional data community. Jaylen Waddle was aggressively faded, DeVonta Smith faced skepticism over his BMI and declare status, and Chris Olave was viewed as low-ceiling — largely due to his declare status. Meanwhile, players with some strong peripherals but questions about scalability like Skyy Moore, Rondale Moore, and Treylon Burks each flamed out in dramatic fashion.

This was a time in which a lot of wide receiver analytics in the space focused on relatively few components:

• A production input (Dominator, YPTPA, Receiving Yards Market Share)

• Breakout Age / Year

• Declare Status

• Draft Capital

The consensus over the last couple years is that we likely over-indexed on just a few metrics and lost site of the total package.

Generally I am of the view that more information is better than less information, and we should be live to context in our evaluations. But I am noticing that we (definitely including myself) may have discounted some of these more traditional metrics a touch too heavily.

Jaxon Smith-Njigba profiled as an elite prospect in a vacuum, but his draft capital told another story.

Quentin Johnston was a class case of an analytical profile that looked strong on the surface but had concerns under the hood.

Ladd McConkey was much the opposite — a weak production profile on first glance that looked far better with more inspection. You could make a very similar case for Travis Hunter.

Elic Ayomanor had a strong profile in a vacuum, but joined a long list of analytical darlings to fall to day 3 — most of whom never made much of an impact.

Surely you can find exceptions in the opposite direction — for instance Zay Flowers is a senior-declare, small boi who is in the midst of a massive year 3 breakout. But on the whole, it is notable to me that several of the less traditionally sound profiles appear to have plateaued somewhat or are at risk of doing so, while we’ve seen continued growth from players like Smith-Njigba — who ascended from a relatively average player year 1, to a very good one year 2, to an elite one thus far in year 3 — or Quentin Johnston for that matter — who ascended from un-playably awful year 1, to interesting but mistake prone year 2, to legitimately very good year 3.

I would be careful drawing too many conclusions from a handful of players’ results through 3 games but it’s a story-line I’m tracking early on. If you want some cope for your Marvin Harrison Jr. bags read the above paragraphs before you go to sleep at night.

If you want my general thoughts on some other key (non-RB) items from Week 3 please feel free to ask away in the comments.