When to Draft Suspended Players in Fantasy Football
Whether it was LeVeon Bell in 2016 or DeAndre Hopkins in 2022, it is always difficult to decide when to draft suspended players in fantasy football. Most people decide by just using their gut feeling. But there is a better way – a data driven, mathematical way – to accurately value suspended players in fantasy.
The mathematics of when to draft suspended players is just a starting point. After looking at the raw numbers, you need to add in all the “sweeteners” that come with suspended players. Are they coming off injury as well? Will their suspension be shortened? With all these considerations, you’ll be able to accurately value players coming off suspensions.
We’ll start by describing our methodology. Then, as an example of when to draft suspended players, we’ll study where DeAndre Hopkins should be drafted in 2022.
How to Value Suspended Players
The key to determining when to draft suspended players is to combine two players into one. This obviously sounds like nonsense, so what do I mean?
If a player is suspended for the first four games of the season, then you won’t be starting them for those four games. Instead, you’ll start your next best player at that position. That is, you’ll start the best player on your bench. So, if you draft an elite player who is suspended for the first X games of the season, you should think of them as X games of a good bench player and 16 – X games of the player you drafted. Really when you’re deciding when to draft suspended players, you need to think of them as a mixture.
The best player on your bench is what we often call a “replacement” level player. Drafting a suspended player provides the same value to your team as a replacement level value for the length of the suspension plus the elite suspended player’s value for the remainder of the season. Let’s work an example to see how this might work.
The replacement level value for a wide receiver in half-ppr leagues is somewhere around 9 or 9.5 points per game; let’s use 9.5. This means that most teams probably have a receiver on their bench who can get them 9.5 points in any given week. Suppose you are deciding where to draft an elite WR1 who you might expect to score 14 ppg but this player is suspended for the first 8 games of the season. From this roster slot you should expect an average of 8*14 + 8*9.5=188 points over the course of the season. Now, how can you use this to determine where to draft the suspended player?
When to Draft Suspended Players
In the last section we saw how to calculate the value of a suspended player. Now let’s see how to use this information to determine when to draft suspended players. The key is to use the suspended player’s season-long projections to rank them within their own position.
In the last example, the suspended elite receiver had the equivalent value of a receiver who would score 11.75 ppg over the course of a 16 game season. If you’re on the clock and choosing between the suspended player and a guy who is projected to score 11 ppg, I claim that the suspended player is the right choice because over the course of the season you’ll score more points.
The methodology is straightforward. Find out the suspended players adjusted points by adding on replacement level value for the games they are suspended (as described in the last section). Then, find the player at the same position whose projections are roughly the same as your suspended player’s adjusted season-long projections. This is roughly where the suspended player should be drafted.
At the end of the day, fantasy football is about scoring more points at a specific position than your opponents. That means you need to value players in a “points above replacement” way. Points above replacement is a finite commodity and quickly drops off as the draft goes on. We studied this effect recently in a previous article. The points above replacement for many different positions is summarized in the following graphic.
Very quickly in the draft, you no longer have a chance at drafting players with positive points above replacement. If you can snag a suspended player later in the draft in an attempt to maximize your positional advantage, it is a very good play. This should factor in significantly when you decide when to draft suspended players.
How to Factor in “Sweeteners”
Adjusting a suspended players’ projected points using replacement-level players is just a starting point. Sometimes external factors need to be taken into account. Let’s talk about two scenarios: suspensions for PEDs and suspensions for guys with shaky holds on the starting job.
If a player – like DeAndre Hopkins in 2022 – is suspended for testing positive for performance enhancing drugs, this should be taken into account. I’m not sure exactly how to do this, and there are two camps. Some people might argue that because he was taking PEDs, he’ll be a better athlete when he comes back. Maybe the PEDs were to help recover from injury and therefore the route to recovery will be easier. This might increase their value.
The other camp might suggest that because the player tested positive for PEDs, they will be worse now. The rationale is that in the past their play was probably elevated due to the enhancing drugs. Because they are now under the league’s microscope, they probably are not taking the PEDs anymore and their resulting play will be worse. I don’t know which camp I fall into, but I think either is valid.
The other interesting “sweetener” is more of a “dampener”. Suppose that your suspended player was the starting running back on the team but was not elite. Somebody else will be filling in their role for the duration of the suspension. There is a fairly good chance that their replacement does just as well or better and the suspended player loses their job. In this case, you need to fade the suspended player. They’ll probably be coming back to a time share or an otherwise reduced role.
When to Draft DeAndre Hopkins in 2022
L:et’s look at DeAndre Hopkins as a timely example of when to draft suspended players. I claim that DeAndre Hopkins is being underdrafted fairly significantly this year. I’ll start by considering Half-PPR leagues before moving on to the other formats. The first thing we need is a projection of how well DeAndre Hopkins will play after his 6 game suspension.
Fantasy Pros projects Hopkins to score about 12.5 points per game when he comes back from suspension. This is right about where he was last year in the games he played. However, that season was his lowest total since 2017. A much less conservative estimate is 14.5 points per game when he comes back, closer to his average the two season before that. A high end estimate would put Hopkins per game production near his career high at 16.5 points per game. We’ll investigate each of these three scenarios to help determine when to draft DeAndre Hopkins.
A replacement level player in half-PPR scores about 9.5 points per game. The following table summarizes our findings. The “Full-Season Value” row shows Hopkins’ adjusted value replacing the suspended games with replacement level. The “WR Ranking” row below shows where a player with the indicated stats would rank amongst receivers.
Low Estimate (12.5 ppg) | Medium Estimate (14.5 ppg) | High Estimate (16.5 ppg) | |
|---|---|---|---|
Full-Season Value | 182 | 202 | 222 |
WR Ranking | WR17 | WR11 | WR7 |
Most people’s gut reaction is to say “absolutely no way would I draft DeAndre Hopkins as the WR11, much less the WR7!”. But there is precedent for taking suspended players early. In 2016, LeVeon Bell was drafted as the RB6 even though he was going to serve a four game suspension. If Hopkins is anywhere near the elite levels of production that we know he is capable of, then drafting him as a top 12 wide receiver is 100% defensible.
DeAndre Hopkins is being drafted as the WR40 at the time of writing this article. There are a few ways you can explain this discrepancy, but my preferred explanation is the third one listed below.
Reasons Drafters are Wary of DeAndre Hopkins
1. Injury Concerns
DeAndre Hopkins was having his ‘worst’ fantasy season in a long time last year. He was averaging only between 10 and 12 fantasy points per game (depending on how you count his injury games). Then, after his season got off to a ‘poor’ start, he got hurt. How could you possibly be high on a player who is suspended and played this badly?
I think everyone is overrating how bad his start to last season was. No matter how you shake out the numbers, at worst DeAndre Hopkins was a (per game) mid-range WR2 and at best a low-end WR1 last year. These are the types of guys you would draft in the late second or early third round.
At the end of the day, if you’re drafting a player around WR30, you aren’t hoping for a guy that consistently score 9 points per week. You are hoping for a guy with a reasonable shot at being an every week stud. Who could better fill this role than a player who has done it before very consistently
2. Increased competition in a crowded receiver room
Many people are focusing on the addition of Marquise Brown as a big negative for Hopkins. Personally, I don’t see it. There are nearly 1,000 yards of offense vacated by Christian Kirk for Hollywood Brown to absorb. Moreover, a lot of Hopkins’ value comes from his red zone threat. I think the increased competition is blown out of proportion. If anyone should suffer from the presence of Hollywood, it is Rondale Moore.
3. People don’t know when to draft suspended players
Ding ding ding, I think we’ve realized why Hopkins is being drafted much lower than my analysis suggests. People don’t know when to draft suspended players. Everyone sees a big, scary 6 game suspension and immediately discounts that players’ value. Our methodology lets you cut through the confusion and accurately value a player.
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