Issue #264: Block It Out

By Derrick Ernst

April 02, 2026

Do Not Draft

There’s a theory in the finance space that shorting a stock (expecting the price to decline) is a lot harder than buying it (expecting the price to increase). I agree. I also believe that this theory extends into fantasy football. It’s one thing to predict how someone is going to perform, it’s another to predict their demise.

When you short a stock, there’s finite return potential (-100% if it goes to $0). When you purchase a stock (get long), there’s infinite return potential (it can go up indefinitely). Going to zero and going to infinity represent the tail ends of the game. Everything else represents the in-between which equates to the return of the market we all get to realize if we park our money in something like the S&P 500.

What does this mean for fantasy? I would say the perfect short is predicting an injury. That’s nearly impossible so I’m ok saying a fantasy short is successful when you identify an overvalued player that underperforms several rounds relative to his ADP.

On the flip side, the perfect long is predicting the ultimate flyer — the kind of player who benefits from a perfect short (injury; aka a backup who becomes the lead guy). That’s equally impossible, so it’s reasonable saying the most successful fantasy longs occur when you identify an undervalued player that outperforms several rounds relative to his ADP.

Here’s why shorting is more difficult. Players are ranked relative to expectations and those expectations (by way of ADP) adjust throughout the offseason based on information as it becomes available. These adjustments make vastly underperforming a difficult endeavor unless the unforeseen occurs. People will define the success of a short differently, but I like to think of their success in the same way popular “bear” market terms are defined.

Source: X (@stocktalk_in)

Let’s think of these in the context of a 15 round fantasy draft:

• -5% (Pullback) = -0.75 rounds

• -10% (Correction) = -1.50 rounds

• -20% (Bear Market) = -3.00 rounds

• -35% (Crash) = -5.25 rounds

• -50% (Recession) = -7.50 rounds

I’d argue you’d only start feeling it at “Bear Market” and worse. If you’re R1 pick turns out to be R4 talent, you have a problem. If you’re R1 pick turns out to be R8 talent, your season was likely over before it ever started. When you make a bold claim to not draft x player, you’re signaling a severe decline in their production. So when lists of these kind begin surfacing in July/August, it irks me when I see players on them that serve more of a purpose for clickbait than an actual case for fantasy irrelevance. I hate to say it but this is the crap mainstream sites shove down the majority of fantasy football enthusiasts. Take this cover art that was featured in ESPN’s Do Not Draft List last August before the ’25 season began:

Needless to say, CMC was listed as someone who should be avoided. He finished as RB1. Javonte Williams was also another RB listed. He finished as RB11. The article read more like an article than a list, so I wanted to perform a look back analysis on another Do Not Draft List featured on Fantasy Life around the same time: Do Not Draft List: Overvalued Players To Avoid in 2025 Fantasy Football Drafts

There were 17 players featured across all skilled positions (* = missed 5+ games):

Quarterbacks

• Josh Allen, BUF = finished as QB1

• Bo Nix, DEN = finished as QB6

Running Backs

• Ashton Jeanty, LV = finished as RB12

• Jonathan Taylor, IND = finished as RB2

• Chuba Hubbard, CAR = finished as RB42

• RJ Harvey, DEN = finished as RB21

• TreVeyon Henderson, NE = finished RB19

Wide Receivers

• Justin Jefferson, MIN = finished as WR22

• Drake London, ATL = finished as WR15

• Tee Higgins, CIN = finished as WR14

• Garrett Wilson, NYJ = finished as WR63*

• Courtland Sutton, DEN = finished as WR13

• Tetairoa McMillan, CAR = finished WR17

• Chris Godwin, TB = finished as WR78*

Tight Ends

• Trey McBride, ARI = finished as TE1

• Sam LaPorta, DET = finished as TE27*

• Evan Engram, DEN = finished as TE29

That’s a dang good team. My guess is the site’s Draft List yielded not so similar results — you can’t have it both ways. These were the author’s “do not draft” guidelines:

I’m not knocking the author. I’m knocking the concept of spending brain power on identifying players to avoid. Imagine telling yourself you’re not going to draft a player atop their position before even knowing how pre-draft rankings shake out, your league’s draft flows, and how your roster is shaping up. That’s ludicrous.

I’ve basically said you should always draft Josh Allen from this point in his career onward. Apparently there are people out there who have avoiding drafting players like him as a part of their playbook. More for us. The point I’m trying to make is that predicting one’s downfall is a losing game. It’s a proposition if you so choose to lean into that is made to make you look foolish. Making upside predictions are often easier to do than the alternative. People often operate with an optimistic mindset because paths to success can come in many different forms, especially considering football being a team game. Predicting decline requires precision for why that’s in the cards. I don’t know about you, but I’ll take the side that offers many ways of being right than just a few.

Noise

This kind of all brings me to my next point:

Most of everything shoved onto us is noise. Learning how to filter what’s most valuable to you is a skill.

Get a load of this. When asking ChatGPT, how many fantasy-related articles are published daily by ESPN and their affiliates, the numbers are pretty staggering:

Too much of something = a loss of confidence/tolerance. That’s the way I see it. I suppose this is why I don’t show much favor to ESPN these days. Producing this much content effectively means you’re not missing out on something others are doing. I say you don’t need to have an opinion on everything. There’s strength in letting others make fools of themselves, so let them.