Rankings are great, but at times they fail to account for the human element in your fantasy drafts. To counter that, many look towards average draft position data to try and capture what their competition is planning to do. Still, ADP can vary widely from site to site and there no guarantee that you league-mates draft as they are “supposed to.” All told, providing useful draft analysis can be much more of an art that a science, but we’ll give it a try anyway. In our ADP series we are going to work through round-by-round fantasy football ADP results from ESPN.com to identify one player who is a value at their current ADP and one player we’d pass on. We are moving into Round 2 for today’s edition of Pick ’em or Pass!
Pick ’em
Lesean McCoy (RB, PHI) – BretskyBall Rank: 6 | ADP (raw): 13 (12.5)
Just two years removed from a 20 TD season, Shady’s stock is slipping after a dip in production during an injury riddled 2012 campaign. McCoy scored just 2 rushing touchdowns last year while adding another three scores through the air but also missed four games with a concussion dropping him outside of the top-20 in terms of fantasy production. Still, his per-touch numbers and, quite frankly, his per game fantasy totals remain elite. Heading into the 2013 season there are plenty of reasons to remain optimistic about the workload McCoy will receive in Chip Kelly’s offense. The up-tempo run heavy scheme should easily afford Shady 20+ touches per game, making him a prime candidate to leap back into the top tier. McCoy sits as the No. 6 overall player in our rankings and even if you don’t have such lofty expectations, he certainly warrants a spot in the top-tier of running back. If you can acquire McCoy with anything after the seventh pick, you might as well where a ski mask to your draft because that is a steal, plain and simple.
Pass
Peyton Manning (QB, DEN) – BretskyBall Rank: 27 | ADP (raw): 14 (16.2)
With perhaps the top receiving corp in the National Football League, many owners are bullish on Manning’s prospects to improve upon his excellent 2012.
Still, we’re pumping the brakes on Peyton as a second-round selection this season. It’s not necessarily a knock on the player, but more on the notation that any signal caller should be grabbed with the top-20 picks. We can sign off on Brees and Rodgers in that range, but even then it’s difficult to pull the trigger. Reports over the offseason about Manning’s arm-strength raise some concern, though we aren’t really worried about his ability to provide top-flight numbers. The bigger issue is perhaps Manning’s upside. Last season marked just the second time in his career that Peyton tossed more than 33 touchdowns and both Manning and John Fox have show a tendency to turn to the ground game inside the 10. We’ll take the under on 35 touchdowns this season and while Peyton will put forth laods of fantasy production this season, he does not warrant a selection in the middle of the second round.