A Football Life, Washington RedCapWizTerps Evaluation

Saswat Misra, No. 4 pick overall

Biggest Catch

Knowshon Moreno, RB, MIA (+34)

Biggest Reaches

New Orleans Saints, DEF (-65)

Dexter McCluster, WR, TEN (-48)

Tyler Eifert, TE, CIN (-41)

Projected Starting Lineup

QB Aaron Rodgers, GB (No. 3 QB)

RB Adrian Peterson, MIN (No. 5 RB)

WR1 Randall Cobb, GB (No. 15 WR)

WR2 T.Y. Hilton, IND (No. 21 WR)

TE Jordan Reed, WSH (No. 9 TE)

FLEX Frank Gore, RB, SF (No. 32 FLEX)

DEF New Orleans Saints (No. 15 DEF)

K Stephen Gostkowski, NE (No. 1 K)

Let me preface this by saying that Saswat had more than one catch. He actually had three. But one was only by four spots and the other was by three. I’m only listing the top three catches of more than ten spots overall. Saswat only had one of those.

Now, Knowshon Moreno probably isn’t the catch you want to get, but when seven worse running backs than him were drafted ahead of him, you’ll take him, especially since there has been talk of some sort of time-share between him and Lamar Miller to start the year in Miami. Last year Moreno started the year in a time-share and wound up being a top five RB in pretty much every league regardless of scoring. Now, Peyton Manning running backs tend to do quite well, so don’t expect that kind of production from him this year, but for being the 39th RB off the board, this is great value.

Unfortunately, Saswat undid himself with three really bad reaches. The first was the New Orleans Saints defense in the 11th round. Now, AFL teams went for defenses a little earlier than most fantasy experts would like to see, but if they’re taking defenses, sometimes you have to take one, too. But you have to get the most bang for your buck. Saswat took the ninth defense off the board, but I had the Saints ranked 15th at the position, which is honestly higher than a lot of sites have them (surprisingly, considering how well they did last year). That means at least six better defenses were on the board, and they included the Rams, Ravens and Texans. Not to mention, the next defense on the board was more than two rounds after Saswat took the Saints. If he really wanted New Orleans, he could have had them three rounds later and had better value on his bench.

Dexter McCluster is a decent option in a PPR league like ours, but keep in mind that ours is closer to the half-point PPR variety than to a true PPR league. There were 11 better receivers available when Saswat took McCluster and 48 picks worth of value given up to take him.

As for Tyler Eifert, I’ll let his 2013 numbers do the talking. He played in every game except for Week 17, yet was only the 27th highest scoring tight end in our league. He was so bad that even Jermaine Gresham managed to rank above him, and Gresham is still on the team. Now, I did bump Eifert up a few positional spots, and I didn’t even bother to rank Gresham, but I just don’t see Eifert making a jump worthy of a draft pick this season, even in the 15th round. Like I did for Prater, though, I was (relatively) merciful and just gave Eifert a No. 218 ranking since he didn’t fall in my “Next 25” list after the 192 picks.

The Washington RedCapWizTerps ended up with a -93 rating for starting value, a -124 for bench value, and a -217 for overall value-based drafting.

This ranks Saswat dead last (12th) in the AFL for overall value. His team is 8th in starter value. While that starter value could end up giving him a respectable season, his bench is so poor that it will take some real waiver wire magic to save him from any potential disastrous bye weeks.

Bonus

In order to include something without my biased rankings at its core, I’ve included the average bottom line of the evaluations by the four official evaluators at FootballGuys.com.

• With great in-season management, we think you have about a 68 percent chance of making the playoffs.
• With good in-season management, we think you have about a 53 percent chance of making the playoffs.
• With average in-season management, we think you have about a 34 percent chance of making the playoffs.

You can read the entire evaluation of this team at FantasyGuys.com.


EDIT

I made an error and listed New York Jets RB Chris Johnson on Saswat's starting lineup in the FLEX position. Chris Johnson is actually on Anthony Battle's roster (and was correctly placed in his flex position).

By incorrectly placing Christ Johnson rather than Frank Gore on Saswat's roster, I also assigned the incorrect positional value. However, interestingly enough I did include the correct overall value and the correct flex value in my notes so while the positional value of that 4th round pick changed from -1 to +1, it does not affect the overall or starter value grades or ranks for the team.