Reggie Bush 2015 outlook

Reggie Bush has found his way to his fourth team in his NFL career. Starting out in New Orleans, and arguably being misused in their offense, Bush moved on to Miami for two fairly productive seasons. Following Miami, Bush spent two seasons in Detroit, last season hampered by injuries. And finally in 2015 Bush will find himself in with the San Francisco 49ers. Likely his last stop entering his 10^th season in the NFL, Bush is set up for success as long as he can stay healthy.

Image source: 49ers.com

Bush has not been the model of efficiency 

using the consistency report from Bob Lung. With 24 quality games out of 41 in his last three seasons, Bush has been a 59% consistent player. He has played well against bad defenses with a 100% consistent performance on the road, and 71% at home. Bush scored well at home against middle ranked defense at 60% consistent, but bad on the road against this tier with no quality games. Surprisingly against good defenses Bush is more consistent on the road than at home.

The way I am looking at the 49ers schedule and Bush for the 2015 season is in respect to passing downs. The attrition that the 49ers faced this offseason leaves the cupboard bare on defense, and I believe they will be a shell of their former selves. This leads me to believe that they will be trailing a fair amount this season and will be throwing a lot. This is where we see the value in Bush. He will likely be inheriting the passing downs work, and if San Francisco is behind, a lot of downs will be passing downs.

In regards to defenses they will face this season, the passing defenses are the softer spot for San Francisco. They face an average pass defense of 17.87, the 10^th best. They face five Top 10 pass defenses from a season ago. Compare this to the 23^rd ranked run defense schedule at an average rank of 14.93 and five Top 10 run defenses. With the mess the 49ers will probably be on defense, and difficult run defense schedule, I can see them spending a lot of time trying to catch up by passing.

San Francisco plays in one of the toughest divisions in football. The defenses they face in Seattle, St. Louis, and Arizona are no joke. They all sport tough, hard hitting defenses. The worst rank any divisional foe had in run defense was 14 last season. The Cardinals and rams were ranked worse in pass than run last season, meaning that the vulnerability they did show favors Bush.

Additionally, the bye week for the 49ers is a late one this season. Week 10 is when San Francisco will be taking a week off. If Bush hit, you can plug him into a flex spot in the lineup for a long duration of the Fantasy season.

The big caveat for Bush will be staying healthy.

He is not a young man anymore with respect to being a running back. Entering his 10^th season in the NFL, health will be the big concern for Bush. He has missed 7 games the last two seasons, and was not particularly effective last season. In 2014 he only had about 550 yards from scrimmage and two scores. The positive in the respect is his average draft position. He amounts to a lottery ticket for Fantasy owners this year. The current average draft position for Reggie is 120 according to fantasypros.com. This means that in a 12 team league he is a pick at the 10^th and 11^th round turn. By this point in the draft he makes perfect sense as a guy with some upside after you have your starting core established.

With all the signs in San Francisco pointing towards them pushing the reset button 

on the team and cleaning house, Reggie Bush might be the diamond in the rough that can help your fantasy team in the 2015 season. If he can stay healthy, and San Francisco plays as bad on defense as it looks like they will, Bush has a big chance to see a lot of playing time. For a 10 or 11 Bush can be the lottery ticket that helps Fantasy owners bring home a championship.

Fantasy Pros Mock Draft Simulator

I firmly believe in the power of the mock draft. This time of year values of players fluctuate a lot. Mock drafting is a way to gauge values of players for the upcoming season. Unless you already know your draft pick spot, I highly recommend trying mocks from all of the different spots in the draft. The Fantasy Pros mock draft simulator is a great way to do this.
A note for mobile users: Click the link at the bottom of the page for the web version to see the banners. 

All the sites that host Fantasy leagues have mock draft lobbies. some of them are rigid, and won't necessarily meet your needs for league size and rules. Then when you get into the lobby, you often find people that stick around for the first pick, and then either time out or just auto pick the whole draft. This is annoying and frustrating. Also the time it takes for each person to make a pick can be tedious.

Fantasy Pros has solved many of these problems with their mock draft simulator. The mock draft simulator takes the blended rankings of many of the top Fantasy analysts and sites and allows you to do a mock draft based on them. You can customize these mock drafts to many different settings for league size, scoring, positions, IDP, skill level of other drafters, and you can select any pick in the draft order. A mock draft on the simulator takes about five minutes to complete. How is it so fast? As soon as you make your selection, the simulator populates all the picks between yours. This allows you to gather a lot of data in a short amount of time.

The speed with which you can complete a mock draft on the simulator allows you to quickly try out all the draft spots in the order, and will let you try out different strategies like zero RB and taking slightly unorthodox picks early in your draft. It will let you see how some players might fall in your real drafts, and give you a pretty good idea what kind of team you can build from any position in the draft. I myself have already done about 40 mock drafts this year. I have tried out strategies like taking three Green Bay Packers with my first three picks, Gronking my first round pick, and not drafting a quarterback until literally my last pick, I ended up with Teddy Bridgewater.

So give the banner at the top, or the box on the side a click and get a mock draft started today.

Josh Hill, 2015 Tight End Sleeper

Over the past few years the New Orleans Saints have been a prolific offense. Since coming to the Saints in 2006, Drew Brees has thrown for 43,685 yards and 316 touchdowns. Many people attribute a lot of his success to the addition of Jimmy Graham, but he was doing it before Graham, and he will be doing it after.

Image source: star-telegram.com

Some have said that the Saints will probably be shifting to a more run heavy offense in the coming season. Some of their personnel moves are certainly signaling this. But that doesn’t mean that the Saints won’t be throwing the ball at all. Brees has become one of the best quarterbacks of all time. Not the top guy, but in the Top 15 conversation. So why would he stop throwing now? And in a division where there is only one team that actually plays defense? Come on. The Saints themselves can’t play much defense, so of course they will be throwing the ball.

This brings me to the point of the article. Acquiring a target likely to see some good field time, and targets from Brees. A big target. A red zone target. And a big red zone target that you can currently find in the round 10 or 11 areas of the Average Draft Position on fantasypros.com.

Once the Saints traded away Jimmy Graham there was a void left to be filled. Well let’s take a look at a 6’5” 229lb void filling, red zone target in Josh Hill. The trade of Graham instantly made the situation that Hill finds himself in much better for his prospects, and the prospects of Fantasy owners that take a chance on him this season. Hill does lack a bit in experience in his two seasons of NFL football, only having a total of 20 catches for 220 yards. The fantastic thing is that of his 20 catches, a whopping six of them are for touchdowns. That is a ridiculous rate. Yes unsustainable, but it shows that Hill at least has a chance to take some of the role that was Graham’s in New Orleans.

The Saints have a mixed bag at wide receiver this season. An aging Marques Colston has seen both his catches and yards decline over the past few years. The Saints drafted Brandin Cooks last season, but he is unproven, and ended up injured last year. Nick Toon has gotten some buzz as well this offseason, but has only been able to see the field for 16 games over his first three seasons with the saints. Ben Watson is hanging around, and is the biggest direct threat to Hill at the tight end spot, but he is 34 years old and two inches shorter.

In regards to the schedule of defenses against the tight end points allowed that Hill will face this season, it looks good. The schedule is the fifth best schedule for tight ends for the year, coming in at an average rank of 18.06. Only four Top 10 teams in fantasy points allowed to tight ends are on the slate.

If you don’t end up getting one of the elite guys early in your draft, Hill starts to look pretty juicy at an ADP of 115 on fantasypros.com in PPR formats. My suggestion is if you draft Hill, take another tight end with some upside potential later in the draft and see if you hit on one of them, maybe both. Keep an eye on the playing time and target distribution during the preseason, but for a fairly late pick, he’s worth the gamble in my opinion.

Danny Woodhead 2015 Late Round Running Back

Danny Woodhead, RB, San Diego Chargers

is back this season after breaking his leg in September of the 2014 season. Woodhead was a big part of the chargers offense in the 2013 season. A sneaky value play that season, Woodhead is on my list of late round value guys you can look to plug in as a platoon at your running back or flex spots this season.

Image source: nypost.com

Taking a look at the Average Draft Position (ADP) to find value players to take in a PPR league is a good preseason practice. Sure leagues might play out a little differently, but overall I have found that the values are pretty similar. Some of that can be attributed to the rankings on a  league site influencing the players that show available at the nearby picks. So knowing the players and where they tend to go in drafts gives owners a head start over their opponents in draft strategy.

This is where we find Woodhead. With an ADP of 107 according to fantasypros.com PPR rankings, Woodhead is a good addition to a Fantasy team for a multitude of purposes. He can be used as a bye week fill in for the RB2 or flex positions. If  punting on the RB2 spot in favor of either a heavy early wide receiver draft, or take an elite quarterback or tight end in the early rounds, then Woodhead can be immensely valuable.

Taking a look at his 2013 numbers with the Chargers, 

we find that Woodhead was a very productive guy in PPR formats. He had over 1000 yards combined, 429 rushing and 605 receiving. Along with his solid yardage statistics, Woodhead also scored eight total touchdowns during the 2013 season, two rushing and six receiving. He made his hay in long yardage situations and in the red zone. On plays where the Chargers had 10 or more yards to go, Woodhead gained 625 of his yards. In the red zone he had 18 rushes, scoring on two of those. But his big key to the red zone offense for San Diego was his receiving in the red zone. In 2013 he caught 19 passes in the red zone, scoring on five of them. That is excellent efficiency, scoring on about one of every four red zone passes he caught.

The schedule for the Chargers breaks in two completely different directions. The run defenses they will face are by far better than the pass defenses. The average run defense the Chargers will face is 17.68, the ninth easiest schedule in the league. They will only face five Top 10 run defenses. The pass defenses on the slate this season are much harder. The schedule is ranked 27^th overall, with an average of 13.75. Eight Top 10 pass defenses from last season await them. Traditionally Woodhead has played well against lower ranked defenses.

The season opens with a tough game at home against Detroit, the top run defense last year, and 13^th against the pass, but it gets better from there. After Week 1, the Chargers face bottom half run defenses in five of the next six games. Fantasy playoff time finds the schedule breaking very well for the Chargers running game. In Week 14 the Chiefs stout pass defense and 28^th ranked run defense host San Diego. Week 15 finds the Chargers hosting the long traveling, pass defending, and 24^th ranked run defending Miami Dolphins. In many leagues championship games, the Chargers travel to Oakland and face their 22^nd ranked run defense and 16^th ranked pass defense. If the playoffs play to Week 17, a difficult divisional road match up awaits the Chargers in Denver. Denver sported the number two run defense and the number nine pass defense a year ago.

With the fact that Woodhead is returning from an injury

Fantasy players will definitely want to keep an eye on him in training camp and preseason games to make sure that he is healthy and still able to play. The Chargers also drafted Melvin Gordon, a solid pass catching back, who may be able to keep Woodhead at bay if he can pass block well. Branden Oliver showed well as the Chargers running back last year in the absence of Woodhead for a few games, so his usage and position on the depth chart should also be monitored.

A possible boon for Woodhead might be found in the suspension of Antonio Gates. With gates out for the first four games of the season, San Diego will be without one of their red zone targets. This may serve to boost the usage of Woodhead in the red zone, leaving his Fantasy owners to reap the benefits.

If Woodhead can win his spot back as the long yardage, third down, and red zone back for San Diego, he might be a player that can help fantasy owners win a championship in the 2015 season. His late round ADP makes him an easily attainable resource for any team. 

Jimmy Graham 2015 Outlook

Image source reddit.com

Jimmy Graham, TE, Seattle Seahawks has been one of the Top 2 tight ends in fantasy football over the last four seasons. The off season trade to the Seahawks has made some want to shy away from Graham, but I’m advocating that he should remain a high round draft pick for your teams. 

His rookie season he didn’t get much work, but since then he has averaged 88 catches per year, 1099 yards per season, and 11.5 touchdowns.

Graham has been the most consistent TE over the last three seasons 

according to Bob Lung’s consistency rankings. Find Bob's work at ffconsistency.com. Graham has had a total of 38 quality games over that span. Last season, Graham had 11 quality games of his 16 for a consistency percentage of 69. Along with his great quality games numbers, he is the only TE that has had double digit quality games in each of the past three seasons. In 2014 he had the second highest point total for tight ends at 223.9 points for a PPR league.

Graham has a great schedule ahead of him for the 2015 season.

Ranking the seventh easiest, he will only face off against three Top 10 defenses against the TE position. The average rank of the defense he will face is 17.93. The season begins with the only Top 5 defense in the St. Louis Rams that the Seahawks will face. After that game the Seahawks will not face off against another Top 10 team until week 15.

The playoff run for Graham does feature three of the most difficult match ups he will face in 2015. Week 14 has him facing off against the 14^th best defense in the Ravens. The week 15 match up gets a little harder when they face off against the 10^th ranked defense against TE in the Browns. Week 16 will have Graham meeting the Rams for the second time of the season. If your leagues play all 17 weeks of the season, a great finale awaits you in the 29^th ranked Arizona Cardinals.

The average draft position (ADP) for Graham seems a bit high,

but if you draft round one and two well, you can have a guy that is in the elite ranks of TE. According to the ADP on fantasypros.com, Graham can be had at the 26^th overall pick in a standard league, and 29^th overall pick in PPR leagues. Assuming you can draft one to two elite top tier players in the RB or WR categories, Graham allows you a clear advantage over all the other TE except Rob Gronkowski.

As we saw in the Super Bowl last year, the Seahawks need a big, physical player in the red zone. Graham at 6’7 and 260 pounds can definitely provide them this. His basketball background allows him to box out smaller players and dominate the red zone. Third down is another situation where it is likely that Graham will be used, and useful to the Hawks. Getting the tough yards to keep drives alive is another spot it is easy to imagine Graham seeing a lot of usage.

While it is fairly certain that the years of 125 to 145 targets are now behind him, I can see the efficiency of the targets he will get being great. The Seahawks have a three headed monster in the read option and play action plays that they will run. Defenses will have to respect Marshawn Lynch and his running ability. In addition, many defensive units will need to keep a spy on Russell Wilson. This will likely leave a lot of open space in the middle of the field for the third head of this monster to operate.

Trading for Graham in the off season and taking on his contract, which pays him $10 million dollars a year, is another sign to me that he will remain a key offensive weapon. That is a lot of money to pay a player and not make him a big part of your offensive and game plans. If you take a look at the games in which Percy Harvin actually saw the field for the Seahawks in his time in Seattle, they have been known to manufacture ways to get the ball to players that they feel can have big upside and be mismatches for the opposition.

So for these reasons I believe that the schedule outlook for Jimmy Graham in 2015 is in great shape. His usage, needs of the team, consistency, and ability to create mismatches with defenders should all set him up to keep scoring you copious amounts of points in your Fantasy Football games this year.

Jeremy Hill and Giovanni Bernard 2015 Schedule Outlook

I listen to a lot of podcasts about fantasy football. I read a lot of tweets and articles. Recently I have heard a lot of industry folks singing the praises of both of the Bengals running backs. I'm here to give you Jeremy Hill and Giovanni Bernard 2015 schedule outlook.

Image source: Creative Commons Fletcher45005

Cincinnati is facing the third toughest run defense opposition in the league in the 2015 season. Averaging the ranks of the run defenses they will face gives you an average of the 13.75. On top of that, the Bengals have 8 weeks of facing opponents that were in the top 10 run defenses from last season. That makes for a brutal season of tough grinding to gain yards on the ground.

The first 4 weeks of the season are good for Jeremy Hill and Giovanni Bernard's 2015 schedule outlook, and then it quickly goes downhill after that. The Raiders, Chargers, and Chiefs are 3 of their first 4 opponents, and judging by last seasons numbers, those could set up nicely for the duo. After those first 4 games the only team that the Bengals will face in the rest of the season that was ranked worse than 14th in rushing yards allowed last season is their 2 division games against the Browns.

Last season Hill was somewhat streaky. According to ffconsistency.com, Hill had a consistency rating of 63%, meaning he scored 11 points in a PPR format. Of his 1124 rushing yards, 701 of them came in only 5 weeks of the season. That is a whopping 62% of his yards in only 5 weeks. Add to that the fact that Bernard missed 3 games in which Hill racked up 361 of his yards as the only real running threat, and was force fed the ball 2 of those 3 weeks. Hill did catch a few passes, but the yardage and PPR points were negligible.

Bernard was similarly streaky. His consistency rating from ffconsistency.com was 62%. Gio rushed for 680 yards last season, and caught 43 passes for 349 yards. His best receiving games were against the lower tier pass defenses. The upcoming slate of pass defenses will be difficult for the Bengals this season, and average of 14.06 ranked pass defense and also 8 top 10 opponents. He also missed 3 games with injuries last season. Now sure, injuries can't be predicted, but given his smaller frame, they can be more likely.

Add to the mix that the passing game is in for a rough season in 2015 as well. As i told you in my article on quarterbacks, Andy Dalton and the Bengals passing game have a lower third schedule of passing defenses. The combination of strong defenses all around might leave a little space for Hill and Bernard to have a few good weeks, but you can do better for your fantasy teams than what I think they will offer you this year.

Given Jeremy Hill and Goivanni Bernard's 2015 schedule outlook, and the time share in the backfield, I cannot justify the prices you will have to pay. Currently the average draft position on myfantasyleague.com is 18 for Hill, and 46 for Bernard. Bernard is definitely a slightly better value at those prices, but his workload figures to be less than Hill, and I think I would rather take a player like Jonathan Stewart, Latavius Murray, or even Frank Gore in that same spot in the draft.