Welcome back to the Get Better at Drafting series. While last week we discussed wide receiver archetypes to target in dynasty rookie drafts, today we’ll talk about general traps to avoid across all positions. By “traps”, I don’t mean prospect red flags, but rather mental shortcuts we take when evaluating prospects that can cloud our judgement.
When we evaluate prospects, it’s very easy to mistake conventional wisdom for fact, or to assume certain things about prospects without even realizing we’re making an assumption. These shortcuts aren’t even necessarily wrong. Conventional wisdom often exists for a reason, and assumptions can often be the result of hard-earned experience.
However, I want us to get better at realizing when we are unconsciously taking information for granted, think critically about it, and then make a conscious choice of whether to discard or accept that information. By getting into this habit of critical thinking, and by having the self-awareness to notice when we’re falling into a mental rut, we can be more accurate in our dynasty rookie drafts.
My goal for today’s article is to establish exactly what I mean by a shortcut / assumption / trap, and then to break down one trap in particular that I really wanted to get to this week. I’ll discuss the other traps next week.
Shortcut / Assumption Example
The best example from this cycle of a harmful shortcut was the pre-draft discussions around Tetairoa McMillan. This may not have been the case everywhere, but I saw a lot of discourse about McMillan, both positive and negative, that *presumed* he was a contested catch, low-separation guy.
No matter whether the opinions came down on the side of “contested catch guys are future busts”, or “no I don’t like contested catch guys, but McMillan can succeed anyways”, or anything in between, this discussion was founded on the assumption that McMillan wasn’t a separator.
It’s really easy to see a big dude with a huge catch radius and without great footspeed and go straight into a thought process along the lines of “can this guy succeed even if he’s not a separator?” If you don’t realize you’ve already made this judgement, when you watch his tape you might miss that Tetairoa McMillan separates on his routes all the time, particularly in the intermediate parts of the field.
When it comes to discussing “can Tetairoa McMillan buck the trend of contested catch guys busting”, I disagree with the premise entirely, as I went into in a lot of detail here. Nobody needs to agree with what I concluded, and I can’t guarantee McMillan will be a stud NFL player, but we can agree this assumption deserves some critical evaluation. I want to encourage everybody to realize when they’ve unconsciously made a player judgement, take a step back, and then decide consciously whether that judgement was correct.
Now that we've established exactly what I mean by a "trap", we can start discussing specific traps one by one.
Traps
False Tendencies
Have you or a loved one ever tried to identify which Chiefs tight end might inherit “the Travis Kelce role”? Have you faded Omarion Hampton’s long term outlook because Greg Roman historically doesn’t use a bellcow? You might be entitled to compensation.
False tendencies occur when we assume a coach’s preference dictates a role, but this can be extremely misleading for two reasons.
Firstly, we can incorrectly project the historical usage of great players to a prospect’s future role, and that role may cease to exist for different or inferior players.
Secondly, we can incorrectly assume that a prospect can’t forge a new, high-value role simply by being really good at football.
The issue here is that a player’s production is a very fluid feedback loop between his coach’s preferences, his own ability, his own preferences, and the contributions of the entire rest of the roster. These forces all push and pull on each other.
Trying to determine what part of Amon-Ra St. Brown’s usage will follow Ben Johnson to Chicago, and how much only existed because of the influences of St. Brown, Jared Goff, etc, is like looking at a painter’s palette, looking at a splotch of brown on the canvas, and trying to guess which colors were mixed together to make it.
For the 2025 Chicago Bears, I don’t think players will seamlessly fall into an Amon-Ra role, a Jameson Williams role, and a Sam Laporta role. Instead, players will get the usage that they earn, particularly based on how their skills mix and interact with Ben Johnson’s preferences and philosophies, but this coalescence will create new roles and tendencies that we can’t foresee.
Similarly, I don’t think it’s likely that a future tight end prospect will step into the Travis Kelce role simply because there won’t be another Travis Kelce. Consider how it’s been three full seasons and nobody has yet stepped into “the Tyreek Hill role”. The best we can come up with is Xavier Worthy struggling to connect with Pat Mahomes deep down the field.
Some coaches really might have a specific role in mind that they'd like to cram players into no matter what, but it’s nearly impossible to differentiate the true positives from the false positives, and the coach’s interpretation of that role will still evolve once a new player is making it their own.
Case Study - Greg Roman
I’ve seen some pundits argue that we should temper our Omarion Hampton expectations because he went to a team whose offensive coordinator likes to employ running back committees. Before we discuss “should we fade Hampton because his offensive coordinator is a committee guy”, we need to call out the mental shortcut. Does Greg Roman actually prefer to use running back committees?
Before I get into the weeds, don’t get me wrong, Najee Harris will most likely be a thorn in fantasy owners’ sides this year, especially early. I’m not instructing you to smash Hampton as if he’s a rookie season bellcow. But to me that's more to do with Hampton and Harris than with an illusory Greg Roman preference. Realistically, rookies take time to unseat veterans.
Let’s get into it. Below is the share of carries and rushing yards for Greg Roman’s leading running back in his previous offensive coordinator jobs, among specifically the running back room, to get a sense of how Roman divided the opportunity among that position group specifically.
So does Greg Roman prefer to use a committee or does he like to have a clear starter with backups who fill in? If you focus on the 49ers tenure, you’d conclude the latter. If you focus on the Ravens stint, you’d conclude the former. In reality, the point is there is nothing to conclude.
When Greg Roman’s best running back was Frank Gore, a veteran tank who played 64 consecutive games in his later prime years, he used a clear starter. LeSean McCoy was also the clear touch leader in games he played, but he missed a quarter of the season.
However, Roman used a committee in his last stop when his RB1 was either a fading veteran, several fading veterans, an undersized (albeit talented) rookie, and a partridge in a pear tree. Roman used a clear starter when there was somebody on his roster who deserved to be a clear starter.
All of this is to say, I don’t think we can conclude that Greg Roman prefers to use a committee, and we certainly shouldn’t assume it without thinking critically. My best guess is that 2025 will be split fairly evenly between Najee Harris and Omarion Hampton, but down the stretch and into future years it’s completely up to Hampton.
Takeaways
Assumptions are sometimes so unconscious that it’s very hard to realize you’ve made one. However, I do have a couple pieces of advice for how to avoid false tendency traps.
Firstly, just by being aware of this trap, you’ve already taken the first step towards practicing the mental discipline necessary to notice when you come across an analysis that is taking for granted an assumption that you should instead be thinking of critically.
Secondly, always be extremely skeptical whenever a new rookie or free agent signing is pegged by the dynasty community to play the same role as a former player, especially for pass catchers. No matter what a coach intends, target-earning is a skill that interacts with usage inextricably.
Fade talking points related to rookies stepping into some former player’s role, and focus instead on archetypes and how a player’s talent meshes with an archetype.
That’s all for today. Stay tuned for next week when we discuss other common draft day traps, now that we’ve laid the groundwork this week. By being aware of how all these mental shortcuts are clouding our judgement, we can check ourselves and become more accurate in our dynasty rookie drafts.