2020 storylines: Wealth redistribution
(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.)
The lasting memory of the 2019 fantasy football season is going to be the dominance of some players. Lamar Jackson, Christian McCaffrey, and Michael Thomas specifically put up some monster numbers, to the point that if you had one of them on your roster, you almost certainly made the playoffs. If you had more than one, you won your league. It wasn’t exactly that simple, but also it kinda was.
(I had McCaffrey and Jackson! Yay me!)
Fantasy isn’t supposed to be that easy. Sure, someone gets hot every year — like Todd Gurley in 2017 — and carries a team through the playoffs. But it’s not supposed to be as easy as “player gets hot in Week 1 and just stays that hot all year.” Guys aren’t supposed to put up “elite” performances in 60.0%, 87.5%, 62.5% of their games. But that’s what those guys did last year.
To illustrate: There were a total of 364.6 points separating each position’s Nos. 1 and 2 players last year (77.9 at QB, 156.4 at RB, 98.5 at WR, 31.8 at TE). That’s not only the biggest combined 1-to-2 gap in the last 20 years, it obliterates the previous high. That’s 20 years, 2000-present, and in no other year has the gap even been 200 points. The previous high was in 2010, when the leaders outscored the runners-up by 187.6 (and that despite only a 5.8-point gap at QB). Again, it was 364.6 last year.
Further, in the last 20 years, at least one position has had a first-to-second gap of under 20 points except 2009, when the smallest gap was 27.5 points. The smallest last year was 31.8. The top 1% is hoarding a lot of the economy, and the top 1% is also hoarding a lot of the fantasy production.
The good news? There’s almost no chance that continues.
If you’re taking bets right now, Jackson, McCaffrey, Thomas, and Travis Kelce would likely be the betting leaders to lead their respective positions in fantasy scoring again. But there’s not much reason to think they’d obliterate the field like they did. Patrick Mahomes, Saquon Barkley, Davante Adams, and George Kittle all missed games. Jackson had an absurd touchdown rate on his pass attempts. McCaffrey played an obscene percentage of the Panthers’ snaps and now has to see if a new coaching staff lets that continue. Thomas saw a whopping 40-target leap year-over-year. Kelce turns 31 in October.
Again, all four would have to be the favorites to lead their respective positions in scoring again. That’s why they’ll all go off the board first among their peers in drafts (with Kelce possibly excepted, but I doubt it). But if you’re already betting on absurdly specific bets, you’d also be smart to bet that not only do they lead by less in 2020, they lead by far less. It’s more likely that the gap between first and second gets more than halved (182.3 would be half of last year’s lead, and that would still be the second-highest total this millennium), and in fact I’d be more likely to be it gets quartered.
Historic performances are historic for a reason, and one of those reasons is that they’re rare. When something exceedingly rare happens, the smart bet is that it doesn’t happen again. That’s not being a wet blanket. That’s just being smart.