Fantasy: Do rookie skill position players get overdrafted?

With fantasy football drafts approaching and training camps in full swing, it’s important to keep in mind that the league-wide excitement over rookies, especially those at skill positions, need not necessarily carry over to the fantasy realm.

Fans, teams and coaches will surely espouse excitement over how good a rookie looks in preseason games or camp drills, but recent history suggests that the narratives associated with the 24/7 coverage of the preseason work to overrate incoming rookies.

In other words, heed caution with rookies on draft day, because it’s not a sure thing that a well-hyped freshman will return a profit.

To explore that idea further, we pulled Average Draft Position (ADP) data from the past five NFL seasons to compare how the top rookies at skill positions fared.

RUNNING BACKS

Yes, Eddie Lacy was fantastic as a rookie, rushing for 1,178 yards and scoring 11 touchdowns for the Green Bay Packers, providing a tidy return on investment. Unfortunately for the prospect-mad, that marks the third best rushing season by an incoming back in the last half decade, behind 2012 campaigns from Alfred Morris and Doug Martin.

Lacy, by the way, was a second-round pick, and Morris was a sixth-rounder; these weren’t exactly sure-fire top-10s at their position. The first five rookie running backs off the board haven’t lit the world afire – while 2012 was a banner year, the group in general only performed about as expected. 

What’s more frustrating for the purposes of fantasy players, though, is that six top-five rookie backs finished out of the top-50 at the position entirely, and less than half the group finished in the top-32.

And here’s the worst part: Rookie running backs drafted in the top-32 outperformed their ADP on just four occasions, with the group of 12, on average, underperforming by eight spots. If we narrow the focus to the top-three selected each year, the average rookie underperforms their ADP by more than five spots. It seems, then, that rookie running backs can be useful, but if you’re drafting one as a starter, you’re likely to be disappointed.

It turns out there’s rookie running back value to be had, we’re just not particularly adept at identifying it ahead of time.

WIDE RECEIVERS

Keenan Allen broke on the scene with 1,046 receiving yards last season, earning the hearts of every fantasy owner lucky enough to pick him off the wire after his Week 4 breakout. The rub, though, is that he was scooped off the wire. A third round pick, Allen wasn’t selected on draft day in most formats.

The very best rookie receivers have had some success, especially the freshman at the very top, but it remains best to exercise caution in your optimism. Again, we refer to the top-five rookies selected at the position since 2009, though some seasons didn’t have five rookie receivers drafted in standard formats. 

That group basically performed right at their ADP (a half-rank below, which is splitting hairs). The issue with wideouts seems to be that they’re wildly hit-or-miss.

Just nine of the 19 high-drafted rookies finished the season in a place where you’d have been comfortable, retrospectively, starting them in your flex spot, and just seven would have been worth a nod in three-wide formats. Nine finished out of the top-50 entirely.

Unlike with running backs, we seem to have a decent grasp on where the top rookie wideouts are going to come from. Unfortunately, whether or not those players succeed seems a 50/50 proposition, making them a risky part of a draft plan.

DRAFT STRATEGY

The data from the past five years was somewhat surprising to us. When we dove in, our thought was that with the dissemination of information in the internet age, rookies would have been overhyped and thus overdrafted. That’s not necessarily the case – rolling the dice on incoming talent can be a valuable endeavor, it just comes with a good deal of risk.

Depending on your personal risk preference, this hit-or-miss nature could either drive you away from rookies altogether or see you stacking multiple frosh together to increase your chances of a return. If you can solidify your floor elsewhere, there are few ways to increase your upside better than gambling on a 50/50 proposition with one of the top rookies.

2014

For the purposes of draft preparation, here are the top rookies at each position by current ADP: