Henry Ruggs is Much More Than Speed

[Cameron Giles]

Thats kind of why nobody has figured out how to draft well on a consistent basis. Most of the players getting drafted in the first round are talented enough to play in the league, but talent isn't the only factor.

People who get paid thousands to millions to do this for a living with infinitely more resources have the same problem. Ultimately, everyone adapts to the NFL differently. Tape study, analytics, talent, and whatever can only give you so much.

[Nanananananana]

Thats kind of why nobody has figured out how to draft well on a consistent basis. Most of the players getting drafted in the first round are talented enough to play in the league, but talent isn't the only factor.

People who get paid thousands to millions to do this for a living with infinitely more resources have the same problem. Ultimately, everyone adapts to the NFL differently. Tape study, analytics, talent, and whatever can only give you so much.

Yes but that is for real football purposes, this is fantasy football. Most here could take a look at his profile and watch his film and say he is very unlikely to become a target magnet at the next level. Whereas there were many others going in his same range that had that in their range of outcomes.

I think some make too many strong opinions on here of players who they've never actually watched outside of a 2 minute YouTube mix. So, things like this help in ending narratives that develop from people who aren't even doing the bare minimum on analysis.

You obviously were attracted to this volatile player and did many hours of analysis trying to defend your position, others quickly identified him as having a low likelihood of being worth the investment and crossed him off their draft boards...........which is the better skill?

[Cameron Giles]

Yes but that is for real football purposes, this is fantasy football. Most here could take a look at his profile and watch his film and say he is very unlikely to become a target magnet at the next level. Whereas there were many others going in his same range that had that in their range of outcomes.

That's such a minimal amount of football players though. It mostly applies to blocking TEs and full backs with the occasional gadget player mixed in. The majority of the time, there is a link between being a really good NFL player and a really good fantasy player.

I disagree heavily that Ruggs becoming a target magnet is not in his range of outcomes. Like I said in the first post, his route running in college improved each season and he ran a very diverse route tree. Yes, there were questions about releases and beating press, but for a player who was raw when he came to Alabama, he was on a trajectory to inspire a lot of upside at the NFL level.

Clearly that stalled last season as a rookie, but I'm not writing him off after 1 season.

You obviously were attracted to this volatile player and did many hours of analysis trying to defend your position, others quickly identified him as having a low likelihood of being worth the investment and crossed him off their draft boards...........which is the better skill?

This is like saying someone is just as knowledgeable as a local weatherman because you predicted it wouldn't rain today, he predicted the opposite, and you were right. One person used extensive research to reach a logical conclusion, while the other just went on a hunch.

Anyone can make a prediction based on little to nothing and still be right. If your process for researching rookies sucks, more times than not, you're going to be wrong. Granted, I'm not saying I'm anything more than someone who does this as a hobby, but process is always better than result. You can live with being wrong if the majority of what you concluded was in depth, practical, and supported.

Like I just said, for each of these threads I've done, my process hasn't changed much: Tyler Lockett, Michael Thomas, Isaiah Ford, Marquise Brown, Henry Ruggs. Different types of WRs. Homeruns on Lockett and Thomas. Maybe a double on Brown. Struck out on Ford. Ruggs, TBD.

[AussieMate]

What gets me every time is the confusing statement that even if the process is right, you can still be wrong. No matter how well someone can scout a player etc there are so many variables like the team they go to, maybe their personality clashed with the other players, maybe they didn't take to the new town, maybe the coach is a stubborn idiot and uses them completely wrong, maybe they just think they've made it and only put in minimum effort from then on.

We could all just draft based on the how the NFL drafts them, but where is the fun in that, at the end of the day I'd prefer to take a punt on a player I have a feeling about above someone I'm not sure on, sometimes you it works like dodging Harry and Treadwell, and others don't, like taking Reagor but I can live with that.

Basically whatever your process is, be it watching shitty youtube clips or going hard into analytics, just do whatever makes you happy and stuff anyone who tells you otherwise. I hope to see many more of these threads with well written study as well as all the analytical attempts like DD, I need something to read through whilst I'm meant to be working

[Pullo Vision]

Basically whatever your process is, be it watching shitty youtube clips or going hard into analytics, just do whatever makes you happy and stuff anyone who tells you otherwise. I hope to see many more of these threads with well written study as well as all the analytical attempts like DD, I need something to read through whilst I'm meant to be working

Lol, this. Throwing DLF Mike here in too. Definitely appreciate seeing alternate viewpoints, even if I don't always agree.

[AussieMate]

Basically whatever your process is, be it watching shitty youtube clips or going hard into analytics, just do whatever makes you happy and stuff anyone who tells you otherwise. I hope to see many more of these threads with well written study as well as all the analytical attempts like DD, I need something to read through whilst I'm meant to be working

Lol, this. Throwing DLF Mike here in too. Definitely appreciate seeing alternate viewpoints, even if I don't always agree.

I would have put his name in but had no interest in stirring up the crowd

[krtbuckeye]

I didn’t read through 34 pages but figured I’d throw in my $0.02, post rookie year. I like Ruggs, but I think he has far more NFL value than he will have fantasy value for the majority of his career, and I think it will be a good career. Teams are always searching for, and willing to pay up for, field stretching WRs. Kenny Stills is a great example.

The field stretcher is going to make some amazing highlight reel TDs or chunk gains scattered across the year, but his primary role is to command respect. If he can do that, he’ll have a long, lucrative career. Taking the top off a defense opens up the intermediate areas and run game so the offense can work with fewer stacked boxes, and operate more efficiently overall. This was the role Ruggs played, and he played it well. Unfortunately, it doesn’t translate into reliable fantasy points and I don’t see that changing in regard to Ruggs.

[OhCruelestRanter]

Basically whatever your process is, be it watching shitty youtube clips or going hard into analytics, just do whatever makes you happy and stuff anyone who tells you otherwise. I hope to see many more of these threads with well written study as well as all the analytical attempts like DD, I need something to read through whilst I'm meant to be working

Lol, this. Throwing DLF Mike here in too. Definitely appreciate seeing alternate viewpoints, even if I don't always agree.

You can enjoy what people write and also criticize said writing’s utility to fantasy players.

Cameron’s work is great and detailed, and the use of media is outstanding. He should be writing for DLF. If he did a write up like that for every player and then published his rankings each year, it might be useful to fantasy gamers. The single player write-ups aren’t useful information because there’s no context- we don’t know what a glowing review from Cameron represents.

Mike’s work is very well-written, even if his premise of focusing almost exclusively on small perceived film flaws while ignoring crater-sized differences in athleticism is irreparably flawed. His insistence on never-ever-ever taking an L is one of the things I come to this board to watch. Contrary to popular opinion, I enjoy him.

DD tries really hard to do something approximating analytics, although hiding what’s in his “formula” as though it’s valuable proprietary information kills his credibility, and the weird multi-tiered system with tiny subsets suggests that his model has over-fit his data. But he tries hard and he’s probably inputting some semi-valuable information in there.

Ghosted’s WR thread was a little brief, but as a class overview I thought it was really well done and I hope he does more.

To be honest, it seems more and more like people want to come here and post an unqualified opinion with little to no data or work behind it, and then be thanked for posting it with absolutely no criticism or dissent. I don’t understand the point of that, and I don’t understand how it’s supposed to make any of us better at this game. This place wasn’t always like that. People used to debate concepts and ideas and not get irrationally angry when somebody challenged their opinion. I don’t know when it changed or how to go back.

[Lumps]

To be honest, it seems more and more like people want to come here and post an unqualified opinion with little to no data or work behind it, and then be thanked for posting it with absolutely no criticism or dissent. I don’t understand the point of that, and I don’t understand how it’s supposed to make any of us better at this game. This place wasn’t always like that. People used to debate concepts and ideas and not get irrationally angry when somebody challenged their opinion. I don’t know when it changed or how to go back.

And to that I would say, I can see how the writers become frustrated as this is also a thing:

People want to come in here and reply to dozens of pages of discussion, paragraphs of well thought out and supported information, with a single sentence of an unqualified opinion with ZERO data or work behind it. The hot take Twitter era where anyone can say anything about anything, then point back to “being right” when it was merely an uneducated take.

This, among a lot of things, are why I mostly lurk around these parts and don’t say anything.

[Cameron Giles]

What gets me every time is the confusing statement that even if the process is right, you can still be wrong. No matter how well someone can scout a player etc there are so many variables like the team they go to, maybe their personality clashed with the other players, maybe they didn't take to the new town, maybe the coach is a stubborn idiot and uses them completely wrong, maybe they just think they've made it and only put in minimum effort from then on.

And that's the one caveat in the threads I do on WRs. All of these except for the Tyler Lockett thread were made well before the draft. Not that I'm using that as an excuse, because I'm going to continue to do that as long as there's a player in a class I feel strongly about.

[Nanananananana]

People want to come in here and reply to dozens of pages of discussion, paragraphs of well thought out and supported information, with a single sentence of an unqualified opinion with ZERO data or work behind it.

I’d imagine your referring to my ‘unqualified opinion’, I guess my ‘process’ is not quite as comprehensive as some. In fairness i was replying to the latest comment not the 30 pages before.


I’ll tell you what my process told me last year , Henry Ruggs was the easiest fade on the board, Reagor was #2.

This year Kadarius Tony, Waddle and Rondale Moore are players I will happily miss on. Is their tape intoxicating, yes. Do you trust NFL teams to be creative enough to consistently scheme these guys the ball to them to make them fantasy studs, absolutely not.

The RBs, Bateman and Terrace Marshall are the picks in this range, don’t fall for the gadget guys even if Someone does 1000 word piece showing you them running NFL routes. I put a lot of hours into my evaluations, alot of this stuff is just common sense.

[Lumps]

People want to come in here and reply to dozens of pages of discussion, paragraphs of well thought out and supported information, with a single sentence of an unqualified opinion with ZERO data or work behind it.

I’d imagine your referring to my ‘unqualified opinion’, I guess my ‘process’ is not quite as comprehensive as some. In fairness i was replying to the latest comment not the 30 pages before.


I’ll tell you what my process told me last year , Henry Ruggs was the easiest fade on the board, Reagor was #2.

This year Kadarius Tony, Waddle and Rondale Moore are players I will happily miss on. Is their tape intoxicating, yes. Do you trust NFL teams to be creative enough to consistently scheme these guys the ball to them to make them fantasy studs, absolutely not.

The RBs, Bateman and Terrace Marshall are the picks in this range, don’t fall for the gadget guys even if Someone does 1000 word piece showing you them running NFL routes. I put a lot of hours into my evaluations, alot of this stuff is just common sense.

I didn’t name names nor point a finger. You seem to have taken offense though.

[Cameron Giles]

I’ll tell you what my process told me last year , Henry Ruggs was the easiest fade on the board, Reagor was #2.

This year Kadarius Tony, Waddle and Rondale Moore are players I will happily miss on. Is their tape intoxicating, yes. Do you trust NFL teams to be creative enough to consistently scheme these guys the ball to them to make them fantasy studs, absolutely not.

The RBs, Bateman and Terrace Marshall are the picks in this range, don’t fall for the gadget guys even if Someone does 1000 word piece showing you them running NFL routes. I put a lot of hours into my evaluations, alot of this stuff is just common sense.

You know who else was a gadget guy entering the NFL? Randall Cobb, Tyreek Hill, Stefon Diggs, Antonio Brown. Hell, Christian McCaffery is a gadget player. The term "gadget player" is just another word for versatility. Players who can lineup from anywhere and beat you. It's not a bad thing to be. The NFL is moving in that direction.

It's only perceived as bad when that player has manufactured touches, but can't beat DBs for routes. That was Tavon Austin's problem. Or Patterson, who just wasn't a good route runner.

I'm not a big fan of Kadarius Toney. If he doesn't work out in the NFL, it won't be because of his versatility.

You're partially right that some OCs give these players a raw deal, but I don't think you can lump all of these players in and say they won't work. You'll be right a few times, because anyone can make a simple prediction, but it doesn't explore individual cases.

[Nanananananana]

Thing is, most of the fantasy community were wise to Ruggs. The fantasy community tends to be sharper than the NFL evaluators, especially after living through Marquis Brown and John Ross. He only went in the first round in one of my rookie drafts last year.
Of course that guy took him over Justin Jefferson....ouch, talk about falling for the banana in the tailpipe.

Simpleton wannabe weathermen and our willy-nilly processes.

[Cameron Giles]

Thing is, most of the fantasy community were wise to Ruggs. The fantasy community tends to be sharper than the NFL evaluators, especially after living through Marquis Brown and John Ross. He only went in the first round in one of my rookie drafts last year.
Of course that guy took him over Justin Jefferson....ouch, talk about falling for the banana in the tailpipe.

Simpleton wannabe weathermen and our willy-nilly processes.

Draft pedigree is a significant factor in what happens during rookie drafts. So, a significant amount of your opinion is always going to be altered based on what the NFL decides for you, which makes your statement pretty weird.

Like I said, anyone can make a prediction regardless of process and they could possibly be right. You could guess answers on a 10 question quiz of a topic you know nothing about and still score a 80%. People make dumb bets in Vegas and win money.

But, good result doesn't mean good process.

If it works for you and you're making money, then do you, but it definitely weakens your approach to respond credibly to people who provide thoughtful and practical analysis to reach conclusions.