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MFL 10 Strategy: Maximizing Player Touches

MFL 10 Strategy: Maximizing Player Touches

Chances are if you’re a serious fantasy gamer, you have likely dove into a few MFL 10 best ball leagues over the course of your fantasy career. If you haven’t, chances are you’ve heard about it, but aren’t quite sure if the best ball format on MFL 10 is your type of league. There’s high risk, and high reward since you are completely locked out of editing your roster following the draft, but also the opportunity to watch those late-round picks pay off and lead your team to fantasy glory.

If you aren’t yet familiar with MFL 10, and how to best construct your roster, you will be following this article. So educate yourself on the leagues, the formats, and start making money as an MFL 10 gamer for the 2017 season!

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The Format

Participating in MFL 10 best ball leagues is certainly unconventional. If you’re used to a standard 12-team league with rosters consisting of no more than 15 players, prepare to become a little more familiar with NFL rosters as you will be playing in 12-team leagues with 20-man rosters. You can also enjoy the opportunity of living in a world without kickers, as MFL 10 only requires you to draft the standard position players and team defenses.

The scoring should appear pretty familiar to fantasy football veterans, however, the format is listed below to answer any questions you may have.

Screenshot courtesy of MyFantasyLeague.com

Screenshot courtesy of MyFantasyLeague.com

Quarterback Optimization

If you looked over the scoring format, you’ll notice that best ball leagues only award four points per passing touchdown as opposed to the six points that are awarded for every other touchdown across MFL 10.

The drafting of quarterbacks in fantasy football leagues should be selective as is. In my time as a fantasy gamer, I have learned that the quality of a quarterback doesn’t always matter as much as the quantity of the quarterback. Quantity, in this case, being the opportunity a quarterback has to make plays with his arm.

A lot of people will be driven to draft a guy like Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady, Ben Roethlisberger, or Andrew Luck in the early rounds of their fantasy drafts. It’s understandable that the big names will draw the high draft picks, but this isn’t a way to optimize a lineup early on when you know the player you select at quarterback will be awarded two fewer points than those wide receivers, running backs and tight ends still on the board every time they score!

Instead, find your high opportunity quarterbacks. Guys who have far lower ADPs, and play for either bad defenses or have poor rushing attacks are ideal in this situation.

Consider the ADP for players in 2016 based on Fantasy Pros 2016 ADP rankings, where you will find high volume guys floating out among the ether in late rounds. My favorite player for last season was Matthew Stafford, who carried an ADP of 129.8, which placed him roughly in round 10 or 11 of drafts.

Stafford went on to post 4,327 passing yards (No. 6 in 2016) and 24 passing touchdowns (No. 14 in 2016), while averaging the 12th highest total among quarterbacks in fantasy points per game with 18.1, according to PlayerProfiler.com.

A complete list of the top 10 quarterbacks in passing attempts for the 2016 season is pictured below, courtesy of PlayerProfiler.com. Research their ADPs for this upcoming season, consider their current roster and perhaps you can find yourself that diamond in the rough while building a stronger lineup around your quarterback as opposed to with him.

Screenshot courtesy of PlayerProfiler.com.

Screenshot courtesy of PlayerProfiler.com

Running Back Optimization

One of the biggest things I can warn against when selecting your running backs for your 2017 MFL 10 best ball leagues is utilizing the Zero RB strategy. This isn’t to say that it can’t work, but for a strategy that is largely based on success through waiver acquisitions and trades, best ball is not the place to utilize Zero RB given the roster locks.

Instead, optimize on high volume touches and opportunities. Based on the success we saw in 2016 for players like Ezekiel Elliott, David Johnson, and Le’Veon Bell, we know that while their talent plays a part in how they produce for fantasy owners, the fact that they are given so many chances to utilize that talent makes them ideal picks.

These players also play on good offenses that have the ability to spread the ball around through the air as well as in the running game. When considering that, also consider the big name backs who may not play for offenses with as much prowess (i.e. Todd Gurley).

Gurley, despite his talent and high volume, did little in the way of rewarding fantasy owners who grabbed him somewhere around his 3.3 ADP from 2016.

Let’s also not leave out the option of receiving backs. Carries for running backs are almost always king, but those shifty third-down backs who average five or six receptions a game can be just as valuable, especially in MFL 10 leagues that award points per reception.

Guys like Washington’s Chris Thompson and Detroit’s Theo Riddick aren’t drawing much attention in the way of between the tackle running backs, however, the veteran backs are frequently making catches out of the backfield, and racking up easy yardage before being brought down. All of these backs can be taken in the later rounds of drafts, and all of them will yield enough opportunity to turn late-round drafting into season-long success.

Wide Receiver Optimization

There is plenty of talent to capitalize on at wide receiver in today’s current NFL. Just about any top 25 receiver from 2016 could easily propel himself to a top 10 or top 5 player in 2017. The league is churning out passes at an alarming rate and opportunities for wide receivers abound aplenty.

While those players are the easy ones to identify, and always present plenty of opportunity to make plays, what about the players who don’t receive as many targets and opportunity to produce at a high volume?

Chances are, your roster, like most fantasy teams, doesn’t consist of three or four high-volume players ready to turn multiple targets into a 10-catch, 100+ yard game on a daily basis. The same thing will happen with your MFL 10 roster.

Look for the boom or bust wide receivers, and stack your roster full of them after you have your primary receivers locked in.

Somebody like Kenny Stills is a perfect example. Stills has never caught more than 63 passes in a season, and he has yet to eclipse the 1,000-yard receiving mark in any given season. That being said, Stills has a career average of 16.7 yards per catch, and he was sixth among wide receiver in receiving touchdowns in 2016 with nine.

Even J.J. Nelson of the Arizona Cardinals is a perfect example of an explosive player who can be boom or bust on any given day. Nelson had an average target distance of 17.7 yards according to PlayerProfiler.com while being targeted 74 times in 2016. His usage for the 2017 season appears to be on the rise and his elite speed will provide him plenty of separation from opposing defenses.

There’s no need to go over the top wide receivers. You know those guys. But when trying to construct a roster that provides the most opportunity for success, consider a multitude of boom or bust guys who can turn on a good week at any given moment. Stack them, and watch em run.

Tight End Optimization

I love Gronk, Jordan Reed, Travis Kelce and other big named tight ends as much as the next fan. I just don’t like them for my fantasy team.

The tight end position is becoming a more utilized position by the year. More tight ends are putting up high fantasy point totals, and only a handful of them are being recognized for their efforts.

I am also a firm believer that not many tight ends who are taken early return the point totals that other running backs and wide receivers could at the same spot. For a complete look into my thoughts on tight end value, checkout the article I published on PlayerProfiler.com, outlining the tight end value over stream metric and how it has affected the position.

Tight end is a valuable yet tricky position for fantasy owners to balance. Even a guy like Dennis Pitta, who led the league in receptions for tight ends in 2016 with 86, had a 2016 ADP of 406.5 on FantasyPros.com. It’s safe to say he offered significant return given his status of a player who largely went undrafted.

Tight End Reception Leaders 2016

Screenshot courtesy of PlayerProfiler.com

Rookie quarterbacks or quarterbacks who tend to seek out their check down options are usually favorable places for tight end production. Kyle Rudolph of the Minnesota Vikings plays with one of the check down kings in the NFL (Sam Bradford), and turned his 2016 ADP of 192.1 into 83 receptions (No. 3 in 2016), seven touchdowns (No. 3 in 2016), and 840 receiving yards (No. 4 in 2016). He also led all tight ends in targets last season with 132. Yet another player who went undrafted in most leagues and turned in a top season.

While players like Pitta and Rudolph won’t be going undrafted in leagues this season, there are going to be sneaky options similar to them who will. Before you overspend on the top-tier guys who everybody loves, spend a little more time capitalizing on solid wide receivers and running backs, who are more prone to explosive plays, and leave the tight end guys until later, where you can still make big hauls on yardage and receptions thanks to MFL’s PPR format.

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Zachary Krueger is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Zachary, check out his archive or follow him @FFTroglodyte.

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