2020 storylines: Out to pasture
(All this week, I’m taking a look at what I expect to be some of the top storylines of the 2020 fantasy football season.)
In 2003, Priest Holmes put up 445.0 PPR points. That’s obviously incredible. It’s all the more incredible when you realize he did that at the age of 30. (Well, 29 for half the season, but still.) It was the fourth-best fantasy season of all time at an age that most running backs are basically considered geriatric.
In 2019, the top fantasy season by a non-quarterback 30 years or older came from Julio Jones, who put up 274.1 PPR points, 61.6% of Holmes’ total. Only four (Jones, Julian Edelman, Travis Kelce, and Mark Ingram) even cracked 200. Obviously, comparing numbers at the top when one offered historic numbers is going to slant things, so how’s this:
In 2019, non-quarterbacks put up 5,387.8 PPR points, 57.4% of the 30-plus total in 2004, and the fourth straight year the numbers have dropped. Since 2000, players 30-plus have only put up under 7,000 points four times — 2013, 2017, 2018, and 2019, and the last two years were both under 6,000.
Let’s say that another way: Take out quarterbacks, and players over 30 are worse than they’ve been in better than a generation of football. Even as scoring is up across football, the older set is becoming increasingly irrelevant.
There’s not much reason to expect this to change in 2020. The guys who were already 30-plus are only getting older, and this year’s class of players in their 30-year-old year is not exactly exciting — these were the top-scoring 29-year-olds in 2019:
If you want to argue Brown, Ertz, Jeffery, and Thielen might offer decent production in 2020, that’s fine, but for the most part, that is not a group of players who are going to greatly improve the fortunes of the older class, especially once you consider the ones who were already in the 30-year-old cohort are only going to get older and (likely) less productive.
Sports has increasingly become a 20-something world in recent years. Baseball players are vanishing from the league earlier than in the past. In football, for every Larry Fitzgerald — still going relatively strong as he prepares to turn 37 in August — there’s a Demaryius Thomas — who had 1,083 yards as a 29-year-old and now 1,110 as a 31- and 32-year-old combined — or a T.Y. Hilton — who went from 1,270 yards as a 29-year-old to 501 at 30.
What does this mean for fantasy drafts in 2020? There are historically a few ways to exploit the market. Post-hype sleepers, injury returnees, that sort of thing. Hit on it and you’re more likely to have a successful season. One of those ways has historically been undervalued older guys, players who are theoretically over the hill but still have some tread on the tires and can give you one more season. But as the older group of players are offering less fantasy production than ever before, it’s probably worth thinking twice about them in drafts this year.
Go ahead and draft Julio Jones, Travis Kelce. Sure. But when you look at someone like Jeffery or Thielen and expect them to bounce back after relatively disappointing seasons, consider what guys have done in recent years after hitting 30. It might be worth ignoring that particular market inefficiency, because it’s not so inefficient anymore.