Breaking Up is Hard to Do

In my league of record, we play a keeper format.  6 of our 8 owners make the playoffs, and those owners are rewarded with keeping 1 player off their final roster acting as their first round pick in the following year's draft.  Because this player acts as a first round pick, our owners are pressed with making the decision to keep their best possible player who represents maximum first round value.  After missing the playoffs in 2009, I drafted 1st overall in 2010 and I selected Aaron Rodgers, as he was the #1 overall scorer in our format (6 pt passing TDs, non-PPR) and the 6 keepers in that draft included 4 of the best RBs from the 2009 season.  Since that time, I have made the playoffs in every season and at the end of each of those seasons, I kept Aaron Rodgers.  I built my teams around him and he didn't disappoint, as he remained the #1 overall point scorer in 2010 and 2011.  As I head into the 2013 season after a disappointing 1st round playoff departure, I have already made the decision that Rodgers will not be my keeper going forward.  The reason for this "divorce" is simple: I am 0-3 in the playoffs (since winning the inaugural league championship in 2008) with Rodgers at the helm and my losses are directly tied to his performance.  In 2010, his 2.34 point, injury shortened performace against Detroit got me eliminated without much of a fight.  In 2011, the Packers' lone loss of the regular season came in Kansas City, which also was my 1st playoff game, and Rodgers put up a season low 18.6 fantasy points, which was 3.8% of his total scoring for the year.  Had Rodgers put up 1/16 (6.25%) of his total points in this game, he would have been worth 30.46 points.  I still would have lost the matchup in the end, but when you get to the playoffs, you need your studs to perform.  The 14.12 points he put up last week against Detroit wasn't nearly enough to help my team advance. 

The secondary reason for letting go of Rodgers is to change the way in which I build my team.  With Rodgers as my keeper and knowing that I was keeping him once the season is over, I have allowed every other player on my team over the last 3 years to become an interchangeable part.  Looking back at my final rosters over these seasons, I always built my team around Rodgers based on upside players.  These players then failed come playoff time because a great matchup fizzled out.  I have made the decision to cut ties with Rodgers and build my team around RB strength and roster stability, regardless of matchups.  Here are some strategies for keeper selection:

1) Keep an RB

The RB position is so top heavy right now.  There are currently 11 RBs who have 160 or more standard fantasy points (12.3 ppg).  The drop from 11 to 12 is 21.1 points (1.6 ppg) and the range of drop off from each player to the next from that spot is larger than that of the Top 11.  If you have an opportunity to keep a player that is AT MINIMUM going to get you 12.3 ppg as your RB1, you need to keep them.  QBs are going to score, and finding one in a later round is going to be way easier than locating an elite RB.  Factoring in my league's scoring (6 pt passing TDs), there are 21 QBs over 200 fantasy points with only 3 RBs and no WRs over that total.

2) Slot your Keeper Correctly

Whomever you decide to keep, that player needs to be your QB1, RB1 or WR1.  You can't keep a player who is currently a 2 and expect them to evolve into a 1 through the course of an offseason.  You need to keep players that can be built around, not players who are part of the plan.  For instance, if you have a roster where you're selecting a keeper from Adrian Peterson, Trent Richardson and Alfred Morris, Peterson needs to be the keeper not because he's a cyborg and easily the best football player on the planet, but because he is a clear cut RB1 and can be built around.  If you keep Richardson or Morris due to their upside, they become part of a plan rather than the focal point.  Your keeper needs to be someone that will be the identity of your team.  If you keep a Peterson-type player, your per round strategy changes because you can go out and fill needs at other positions earlier and more often because you know your RB position is stabilized by Peterson.  If Richardson is your keeper out of this group due to his upside, you probably are going to have to spend another early round pick on an RB to shore up the position, which probably prevents you from grabbing a Calvin Johnson or AJ Green type in the early rounds.  All of the RBs above are Top 10 scorers in standard formats, but the level of trust in each player is different when it comes to being an RB1. 

3) Have a Plan of Action once you've identified your Keeper

I am parting ways with Aaron Rodgers after this season and I am leaning towards keeping Ray Rice.  My plan of action with Rice as my keeper is to then spend my next pick on another RB to have the best RB group in the league.  By releasing Rodgers back into the available player pool, I allow another owner to select him, leaving more available RB options to slide to my position on the draft board.  I will be able to get an attractive, every week starting QB in Rounds 3-5 and while I might not have as good of a QB as who I'm facing on a week to week basis, that same opponent is not going to have a better RB group than me.  You can win with much more regularity if you have stronger position groupings than your opponents and while that might seem like an obvious statement, look at it this way: based on Yahoo Point Projections, I was the favorite to win EVERY MATCHUP this season because Aaron Rodgers had such a higher projected score than every other player.  His inflated projection made the rest of my team look better because I was the projected favorite to win.  I fell short of projections 13 out of 14 weeks this season and finished 7-7 (including playoffs).  I find that projections are truer when your team has more balance.  Having inflated projected scores only skews what you're actually looking at and hides what should be glaring weaknesses.  My RB corp at the end of this season was Ray Rice and Mikel Leshoure.  That's it.  I was flexing a 4th WR come playoff time because this season was a year to hoard RBs more than I've ever seen.  Now imagine if I had Rice paired with a CJ Spiller or Doug Martin type...whoever my QB is, my projections are more likely to be accurate when it's all said and done because of the balance of a position group.  My plan next year to build stronger position groups at the expense of THE elite QB can only be executed by allowing other owners to scoop up the presumed "elite" QBs and build my roster based on RB and WR strength.

I am currently developing a rankings system that I plan to unveil before preseason next year.  This rankings system will be unlike those you find on your league's homepage or on the other fantasy football sites.  My plan is to take more than just matchups and name recognition into account.  I plan on changing the game for the better...I'm tired of watching the "Experts" put out the same old rankings where you can always predict who the top names are in each position group only to watch them fall into the middle of the pack.  I am going to be ahead of the curve.  I am going to find those players whose points we chase on the Waiver Wire the weeks after they happen.  I am going to find the Danario Alexanders and Cecil Shorts before they break out on the wire.  I hope you join me in this chase. 

Follow me on Twitter @BernacK6