The 9 Most Overvalued Players in Fantasy Football
Derek Carr, QB, Oakland Raiders
The quarterback position is inherently devalued in fantasy football since each team is starting just one (in most leagues), so seeing Derek Carr in the sixth round on FantasyFootballCalculator.com isn't just bad, it's preposterous.
Carr didn't finish the 2016 season, but on a fantasy points per game basis, he tied Dak Prescott for ninth among all quarterbacks. That alone doesn't translate all that well to a QB6 ADP this season. Neither does the fact that 7 of his 15 fantasy relevant contests last year resulted in a weekly quarterback ranking of 20th or worse.
"But Derek Carr is only going to get better," says a backer. That could happen, but Carr is also working against some regression.
Here at numberFire, we work with a metric called Net Expected Points (or NEP, which you can read more about in our glossary), which helps us determine the number of real points each skill position player is adding for his team. We also deal with Success Rate, which gives us the percentage of positive expected points plays made by a particular player.
Generally speaking, high efficiency with a low Success Rate should raise some red flags. It means things are, on average, fine, but the consistency isn't quite there. Big plays are happening, and that's hard to sustain year over year.
Well, take a look at all 200-plus attempt quarterbacks over the last two years and their Passing NEP per drop back to Success Rate relationship. And note the red dot -- that's Carr's 2016 season.
Among each of these instances, no quarterback saw a bigger difference in his "should have" Success Rate versus his actual Success Rate than Carr last year. Meaning, at his Success Rate, we would've expected a much less efficient passer. And a much less efficient passer means one that isn't as strong in fantasy football.
Carr isn't necessarily a bad quarterback for fantasy purposes, but there are reasons to believe he'll be more of a fringe starter for your team. The opportunity cost in drafting him at his average draft position is just way too high.
