New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady is suspended for the first four games of the 2016 season, but Rotoworld’s Evan Silva is here to show you how to can draft Brady and still win your league.
I participated in a mock fantasy draft with the Rotoworld fellas on Wednesday night and I was really thinking about taking Brady to be my quarterback, but I couldn’t come around to justifying the selection. I think Brady is set to wreck the league in 2016, but how do you properly value a player that can’t play for the first four weeks?
My roster in the @Rotoworld_FB 0.5 PPR 12-team mock. Thanks for having me, fellas: pic.twitter.com/qNlG5QvqY2
— Rich Hill (@PP_Rich_Hill) July 14, 2016
Silva went about and drafted Brady in a late round and then supplemented the pick with another quarterback in the final round. In his fantasy football preview, he provides a list of quarterbacks that could fit the bill:
“Targeting soft first-month schedules,” Silva writes, “a few late-round suggestions to pair with Brady are Derek Carr (@ NO, vs. ATL, @ TEN, @ BAL), Kirk Cousins (vs. PIT, vs. DAL, @ NYG, vs. CLE), Tony Romo (vs. NYG, @ WAS, vs. CHI, @ SF), and Joe Flacco (vs. BUF, @ CLE, @ JAX, vs. OAK). Waiver-wire candidate Alex Smith could do some damage in Weeks 1 (vs. SD) and 4 (@ PIT).”
Silva wound up taking Carr and I thought the pairing was so brilliant I had to share it. Carr gets a marshmallow row of four atrocious defenses to start the season with all four teams ranking 22nd or worse in Football Outsiders’ DVOA pass defense ratings. Brady can then come in and take over for the rest of the year.
I recommend checking out the rest of Silva’s post here. He covers a lot of good ground, but here are some other highlights:
- Brady finished as a top 5 fantasy quarterback in 6 of the 8 games he played with wide receiver Julian Edelman.
- Edelman was the 6th ranked wide receiver in fantasy football prior to suffering his foot injury.
- Wide receiver Aaron Dobson has not caught more than 700 yards in a single season since he was in high school.
- Tight end Rob Gronkowski has finished as a top 2 tight end in four of the past five seasons (2013 the lone exception).
- Running back Dion Lewis was the 5th ranked running back in fantasy football prior to suffering his ACL injury.
Read the rest of the article here. Feel free to trash my fantasy team, too. I picked 4th.