Hoff's Hot Takes - Offseason Update 1
Hello, and welcome to Hoff's Hot Takes. The weather is warming up, and winter is drawing to a close. Seems like the perfect time to throw some Teaks into the ether, and see what sticks. Today, we will have some keeper thoughts, offseason chatter around the league, and some early planning into the 2020 draft. Let us begin.
Keepers and Picks
Lets take a look at how each team is stacking up when it comes to the offseason set up and roster. Looks like we have 21 keepers that should be for sure kept by their respective teams. Other 15 up in the air.
Nick
Zeke Elliott - 16th Round. FOREVER. Nick took Zeke 1st overall in the 2016 draft and has not looked back. Zeke. He will serve as the backbone of his team for the foreseeable future.
DK Metcalf. 9th Round. FOREVER. 900 yards and 7 TD in a rookie year is good. This man looks like a refrigerator. He will continue to develop his football ability, and should get better at being a WR. Wouldn't be surprised if he got up to like 12-15 TD because of how large he is in the redzone.
Other players to watch: Kerryon Johnson. TJ Hockenson (FOREVER). Tyler Boyd. Noah Fant (FOREVER)
Picks : Has his first 11 picks. Has an extra 3rd, 6th, and 7th.
JB
Christian McCaffrey - 2nd Round. FOREVER JB took Mccaffrey a few years ago at 23 overall, and has not regretted it since. The beauty of having a perennial top 3 guy at that price is he can always trade all the way back in the second round and come out ahead because he has Christian. He will always have an extra little advantage because of that. Well done. He had 2300 yards and almost 20 TD last year. No Brainer keeper.
Michael Thomas - 8th Round. FOREVER. It would not be insane if he had a 150 catch 2000 yard season. Best WR keeper in the league. With him and McCaffrey forever, JB will always guarentee being competitive.
Other Players to Watch : Austin Eckler. Hollywood Brown. Mark Andrews.
Picks: No first. No 7th. JB has an extra 3rd
Nolan
Alvin Kamara. 8th Round. FOREVER. Just plug him in and watch him get 1500 yards and 10 touchdowns. Interestingly enough, he has 81 catches in all three years of his NFL career. I am not THAT good at stats, but I assume that is improbable at best.
Leonard Fournette. 16th Round. FOREVER
Dashaun Watson. 10th Round. FOREVER
Not much to say about those guys to be honest. One could bet that Lenny F will be a top 10 or so dude, and Deshaun is one of the 5 best QBs for fantasy. Just a real good set up by Nolan here. Makes you forget about Ameer Abdullah.
Other Players to Watch : Michael Gallup. Ronald Jones.
Picks: Has his 1st round through 15th round picks, with an extra 3rd round selection.
Jordan
David Montgomery. 16th Round. FOREVER.
Devin Singletary. 12th Round. FOREVER.
Jordan swung with two rookies last season, and is probably in a decent spot. David Montgomery for a 16th could be a steal, but if Nagy doesn't get his shit together that could be a waste of a first round pick in a few years, ala Bishop Sankey, Ameer Abdullah, Trent Richardson, et all... Singletary could be a great keeper for years. He is a true dual threat out of the backfield, and got better each game. He had over 150 total yards in that playoff loss to the Texans. Shea is still getting his heart rate down from that close game.
Other Players to Watch : JuJu Smith Schuster. Phillip Lindsey. Christian Kirk.
Picks : No 3rd. No 5th.
BJ
Miles Sanders. 3rd Round. FOREVER.
Kyler Murray. 6th Round. FOREVER.
AJ Brown : 13th.
Beej took some swings for rookie keepers, and he hit on both of them. Sanders was the 16th best RB as a rookie, and Murray was QB8 in his initial season. If Murray improves a bit going into his second season, it would be easy to see him around 4,000 yards and 25TD with about 700 yards rushing and an additional 5TD. Think sleepy Lamar Jackson numbers. Sanders had 800/500 last year with 6TD. If he improves, BJ could really look at a 1000/650 guy with 12 TD. AJ Brown came on strong at the end of the year. With Brown, BJ has a young core at QB, RB, and WR and should have his most competitive season yet
Other Players to watch on the trade market : Tyler Lockett
Picks: Has all picks except 10th. Has an extra 7th.
Tidwell
Saquon Barkley. 16th Round. FOREVER.
Barkley missed three games and had about 1500 yards last season, and came in at RB9. Barkley may be the best running back in the league, and this is an obvious no brainer. In 30 career games, he has about 3,500 yards and 23 TD. Put him in at RB1 and just worry about the rest of the roster.
Other Players to Watch: I do not know if Zach Ertz has any keeper eligibility left, but if he does, he can be a third round keeper. With TE on a premium, this may be worth it. Jared Goff is a 15th round guy who can kept as well.
Picks: Has all 16 of his original draft picks for this season. No fewer. No extra.
Peter
Peter is not really working with too much in the way of keepers, but that is okay, because as we will get to in a moment, his draft board is stacked. He could possibly keep Marlon Mack for a third round pick. Look for Peter to trade for somebody who another owner wont keep, be it Kerryon Johnson, JuJu, Tyler Lockett, or somebody else...
Picks: Peter has all of his original picks up until the 12th round. Peter also has two additional first round picks, as well as two additional third round picks. It pays to trade Kelce and Tyreek Hill, I suppose.
Mike
Patrick Mahomes. 5th. Not much to say here. Best fantasy quarterback (ever if he keeps it up) for the 5th round is solid value. Mike always has that advantage.
Nick Chubb. 6th. FOREVER.
Amari Cooper. 16th. FOREVER. Cooper is not going to win Mike the league most likely, but he will provide a floor of like 1,000 yards and 7 TD for his team. For a 16th round pick, this is waaaay more than enough.
Other Players to Watch : I do not know keeper values, but Carlos Hyde, and Adam Thelien can be players to bundle to a team like Peter for a pick that will help him build around his insane draft, and good keepers.
Picks: While Mike does not have his 3rd and 4th round picks, he picked up an additional 1st, 5th, and 10th round picks. Worth.
George
Todd Gurley. 16th Round. FOREVER.
Picks: George has picks in the 2nd,4th,8th,9th,10th. He has a bunch of 12,13,14th round picks. Who knows though. These will all be different the second the trade window opens up.
Kyle
Lamar Jackson. 5th There are too many fun stats I could pull for Lamar. 50 total touchdowns with 4000 yards passing and 1500 yards rushing may be too high of a guess, but not by much. Best player to have in the whole game.
James Connor. 6th. Connor and the whole Steelers offense should bounce back now that Big Ben and his ginormous beard are back.
Derrick Henry. 4th. Forever. Tractorcito start to finish the last 20 NFL regular season games is by far the most productive runningback. Did Kyle get lucky and get his two guys to have all time seasons in the same year, or is this the beginning of Kyle being in the playoffs for 3 straight seasons?
Other Players to Watch: Terry McLauren
Picks: Does not have a pick in the first three rounds.
Joe
Josh Jacobs. 16th Round. FOREVER. Jacobs came in as a rookie and gave Joe 1300 yards and 7 TD. Keeping him forever is going to set Joe up to be successful in the long-haul.
Other players to watch: Joe has tons of options. Cortland Sutton (6th) had 1111 yards in the second year. His young offense, and his youngself should improve and give you some good production....Darius Guice is a cheap keeper for him, whom he can keep forever, but he has been hurt two years in a row....George Kittle can be kept in the 5th, and he is the best TE in football.... He also has Darren Waller who came alive last year with 1100 recieving yards. Does he trade Kittle for a big return, and keep Waller? Does he spend his 11th round pick on Guice to retain him? Wait and see!
Picks: Joe has 1,2,2,4,4,4,5,5,6,7,8,9. You have to give it to Joe for the job he did last summer. He got a stacked draft last season, drafted well, and somehow got a better draft set up this year as well. Great job by you, Joe.
2020 PLAYER HATERS' BALL DRAFT
I had sent some texts out a few weeks ago asking about ideas for a fantasy draft mini trip. Most people were receptive to this idea. The place that we came across that made sense for most people is Lake Geneva. LG is like 40 minutes from suburb people, and an hour and a half or so for city people. Quick and easy. Was thinking a steak or taco dinner being made Friday night with some drinking. Saturday morning we can play Hawksview Golf Course, which is a great track up there that is under 80 bucks. Good tough course, and it has two par threes that tee off on mega elevated tee boxes. Cool as hell. We can then draft after golf, and go out and grab some dinner post draft. AIr BNBs seem relatively affordable.
With it being so close, those who want to only come for Saturday can do so. Those who are not into the whole golf thing have plenty of daytime options, and ways to kill a few hours up there have the beach, downtown, and more. Other options that were thrown out were Galena, a course around MKE and an Airbnb in MKE, or perhaps going up to play a course on the Lake Michigan coastline in Michigan, however, 6 of the 7 people I texted informally said LG was the preferable destination.
I am planning on taking that Friday off for the weekend, and doing an early morning tee time at Thunderhawk to warm up. After golf, we could run to my house quick to regroup, or head straight up the road to LG. So we would go Friday AM Thunderhawk and go right up to LG. Possibly would take that time to go shopping for food and beer and have everyone quick pay me to make things easier. This is all way down the line however, and does not need to be thought about quite yet.
Price Increase for 2020
I have also heard some chatter from some folks about getting some extra cash in the league to reallocate some winnings. An increase of 25 bucks ($225 total) would give the league an additional 300 doll hairs. Here are some ideas that we have stumbled upon for distributing the extra winnings: King of the Hill, most points in a week, most points in a season, extra cash for consolation winner, extra cash for 1st,2nd,3rd place, and a weekly prize for the person who gets 3 points. We will be voting on this before the season, so keep that on your radar.
Rule Changes
We have not had many impactful rules changes in the last few years. I have heard chatter about the following rules being altered for the league. Again, these are all suggestions from people I have spoked to : 2 week matchups for the final 4...keep as many players you want GIVEN that you have rookie keeper draft rights to them ( So if Nolan drafted 2 great rookies next year, he could keep Watson, Fournette, and Kamara, but also be allowed to keep his two additional dudes, making him have 5 keepers in total... Scheduling changes may occur for this upcoming season due to the NFL changing of the schedule structure as well.. Again, things we will pick up down the road, but wanted to get them into the ether.
God Bless. Love your mama, and leave only your footprints.