Two late WR gems see draft values soar during ‘tourist season’
Fantasy football draft season is at its peak right now.
Your favorite analysts and the hardcore players have been drafting for months, but now is the time where mainstream drafts begin and with it, comes a massive spike in fantasy football ADP for those NFL players who are making positive, preseason headlines. Welcome to fantasy football “tourist season.”
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The term is not meant to be a negative, but it should serve as a warning for those who are drafting between now and the start of the regular season.
Think of it as a giant cruise ship that docks in your city.
The population of your small, coastal town is about to get an influx of another 7,500 people all doing the same activities.
When one of them hears about something fun, word spreads like wildfire and suddenly everyone is doing it.
That’s what happens when a player has a dynamic moment in the preseason and everyone in the fantasy community bumps him up their draft boards.
Don’t look now, but on the starboard side, you will notice a rookie wide receiver named Emeka Egbuka.
He’s been a popular pick among the dynasty community, but with Jalen McMillan landing on IR with a neck injury and word that Chris Godwin might not play until October, Egbuka has seen his ADP jump from the ninth or 10th round to the fifth in the blink of an eye.
The talent is certainly there, and now that the opportunity is as well, we can expect Egbuka to open the season with a strong snap-share and a healthy dose of targets on a per game basis.
If you drafted him just two weeks ago, you got him at a fantastic bargain rate.
Drafting him over the next two weeks means you are likely drafting him at his ceiling, so the return value is probably close to even-money, at best.
On the port side, you will see another young wide receiver making the climb in San Francisco’s Ricky Pearsall.
The second-year wideout, selected in the first round of the 2024 draft, gained notoriety when he worked his way back from a gunshot wound to the chest suffered during a robbery last summer.
He managed to come back and appear in 11 games last year and is slated for an increased role this season.
Pearsall has enjoyed a solid camp so far, but knowing that Brandon Aiyuk won’t be back until roughly Week 6 and Jauan Jennings currently battling a calf injury, fantasy drafters are vaulting him up their boards.
He looked good in the last preseason game, catching four passes for 42 yards, and now he is being drafted ahead of Jennings.
Their ADP numbers have recently flipped, and Pearsall is being drafted in the sixth and seventh rounds while Jennings has become the value pick a round or two later.
It isn’t that players such as Egbuka or Pearsall aren’t talented, because they are.
It is about the value you attach to them when you draft them.
Fantasy Football DVQ: The only draft rankings you need
The latest incarnation of the Fantasy Madman’s football rating system has arrived. The nuts and bolts have been tweaked and strengthened, the breadth of the database was expanded, some ingredients were added to the soup, and some that were souring the stew were removed. So we’re leaner and more flavorful. Now allow us to serve you the latest helping of the Draft Value Quotient (DVQ).
The DVQ is a system that rates players across the board, balancing value based on positional depth. A player’s DVQ rating represents the point in the draft where projected production meets draft value. Each draft slot is assigned a value for expected production, which descends at a constant rate (same amount of expected points substracted from each descending pick). However, a player’s real-world production forms an arc (steep fall at top, then flattening out), therefore there are gaps in the ratings. Example: The top player might have a 1.0 DVQ, but the second-ranked player might have a DVQ of 13.3. Deeper in the draft pool, instead of big gaps, players will only be separated by percentage points.
So saddle up, study up, then queue up a draft, and take a ride with the DVQ.
A player drafted in the 10th round who returns fifth-round value is huge.
That same player now drafted in the fifth round is even money, but only if he delivers what everyone is expecting.
Fantasy tourism routinely drives the price up. Be careful while boarding.
Howard Bender is the head of content at FantasyAlarm.com. Follow him on X @rotobuzzguy and catch him on the award-winning “Fantasy Alarm Radio Show” on the SiriusXM fantasy sports channel weekdays from 6-8 p.m. Go to FantasyAlarm.com for all your fantasy football news and advice.
Credit to Nypost AND Peoples
