8. Gray
The NFL has the Patriots. Baseball—the Yankees. NBA free agency—the Golden State Warriors. But the Worst League... we’ve got Gray.
It’s that team you love to hate because they’re so stinking good year in and year out. And those probably aren’t even the right teams to compare him to because they get to keep their players. Gray has to start from scratch every season.
No, Gray is not the Patriots. He’s the Nick Saban of The Worst League, which is possibly the nicest and meanest thing I could say about him. I imagine his response to be something along the lines of geaux fuck yourself.
In a league with great parity, in which six different teams have won the championship in seven years and 11 out of 12 team owners have made the playoffs at one time or another, Gray remains consistently at the top by any measure. He leads the league in wins (58), points (8,766), TW% (.643), point differential (+11.1 ppg), 100+ point games (43), 20+ point scorers (113), playoff appearances (T-1st with 5) and average finish (4.0).
He’s remarkably consistent. In seven years, he’s finished 2nd, 9th, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 3rd and 8th. And in those two down years, his final Power Rankings were actually 6th and 2nd, which is to say he’s truly only ever had one “bad” season, which was 2012. And even then, he still ranked in the top half of the league. In fact, he has finished in the top-2 of the Power Rankings in five of seven seasons including each of the last three.
He is the only owner to have achieved an 11-win season, which he has done twice, the only owner to have never suffered a losing season by TW%, and the only owner to finish a season with a TW% above .800, which he mastered in 2016. Only four teams have ever averaged more than 100 ppg for a season. Unsurprisingly, three of them were managed by Gray.
If we rank teams historically by their TW%, Gray has both the best and second-best teams of all-time, as well as three of the top five and four of the top eight.
(Deep breath)
Yet for all of his dominance, he has just one championship. One. Singular. Uno. If we’re counting rings here, he’s not the 🐐. (I wonder who that might be.)
Which means even if you’re not Gray, hope springs eternal. And if you’re not Gray, you didn’t come here to read all his plaudits. You came here to figure out how to beat him.
So what’s Gray’s secret?
Believe me, I wish I could tell you. I pored over the data. Crunched the numbers. I even crafted a new statistic called draft bias to measure Gray’s positional preference for say RBs vs. WRs. But as I paced through the halls of my new apartment building at 3AM in July, frantically whispering to myself that "perhaps the lack of a strong coefficient of determination is a deliberate obfuscation of the truth and HOLY-CRAP-I-just-realized Gray's lifetime TW% is two one-thousandths of a point away from .666—Mark of the Beast!!! and there it is—the ALL-SEEING EYE—hidden in every single fantasy team logo he's ever created and... [cough] ugh... why does this Gatorade taste like urine..." I began to wonder if I'd gone too far.
And so rather than offer up a blueprint that I don't have, instead here are four observations we can make about the way Gray plays. You draw your own conclusions.
1. Gray is an elite drafter.
This may seem obvious. But we're taking nothing for granted here. Just because a team owner wins doesn't mean he or she drafts well. There are plenty of ways to build a team. But the numbers empirically back up the fact that, at least in the modern (read: post-Josh) era for which I have stats on VBD, Gray is one of the league's best on draft night.
As a reminder, VBD stands for “Value Based Drafting” and is a tool that helps us compare the relative value of players at different positions by measuring the degree to which a player exceeds the production of a replacement-level player at his same position. A quick way to gauge a team owner’s drafting acumen is to simply add up the VBD-adjusted point totals of the players he or she has drafted in the first ten rounds. (I favor excluding rounds 11-16 for a variety of reasons.)
Based on these statistics, Gray is the league’s third-best drafter, trailing only Greco and perhaps surprisingly Jess (both by a healthy margin). Yes, Jess is the league’s best drafter. More on that in her draft preview.
But Gray is no slouch himself, having selected the third best draft of the last four years in 2016, the year he dominated the league. That year he demonstrated a knack for finding first-round talent in the middle rounds, notably drafting the 5th overall finisher by VBD (DeMarco Murray) in the fifth round and the 6th overall player (LeGarrette Blount) all the way back in the eighth round with the 95th overall pick. Those two picks are truly what unlocked his historic season.
But it’s not just late-round gems. He’s also shown an ability to draft well in those crucial early rounds. In 2014, he had the best first five picks to start a draft in the modern era, selecting two players who finished in the top-10 (Eddie Lacy, Dez Bryant) and another in the top-20 (Emmanuel Sanders). That may not sound entirely revelatory, but those are three sure-fire starters, each of which was a key building block for his team, and all of which serves as a reminder that you may not be able to win your league in the first few rounds, but you can sure as heck lose it.
2. Gray favors RBs except when he doesn't.
Okay, great. Gray drafts well. Thanks, genius. Tell me something I didn't already know. Like... how does he do that?
Now we're talking. Probably the best way to answer that question would be to take stock of all the players Gray has drafted, list out all the variables for each from age to yards after contact to favorite food, pour those numbers into a computer and then see what shakes out. We could know, for instance, that Gray targets 1,500-yard rushers from Oregon that like Chinese food. The problem is that even I have a life that would preclude that sort of sophisticated analysis.
But what I can do is take the 35,000-foot view and that means looking at what positions Gray favors and at what point in the draft. To do that, we're going to use that new statistic I mentioned earlier—draft bias.
Draft bias measures a team owner's preference for a particular position relative to other players. I could explain the methodology, but honestly it's an admittedly inelegant solution for which I'm not proud. Essentially, it involves totaling up the number of players that a team owner drafts at each position and then adjusting that sum using a weighted factor based on the round in which that player was drafted. For example, selecting a TE in the first round indicates a greater preference for TEs than picking one in the ninth, so it should "count" more. Then we take that score and subtract it from the average for the position based on all 84 individual drafts over the last seven years. That difference is your draft bias for a particular position. A positive number indicates a preference for that position. A negative number means an aversion to that position.
I told you. It doesn't make a lot of sense.
Regardless, you don't need to know how it works. You just need to know what it says. And what it says about Gray is that over the last seven years, he has a strong preference for drafting RBs relative to other owners. In fact, it's his strongest preference of any position and one for which he ranks tied for third. Only Greco and Josh have shown a stronger bias toward RBs.
Let's take a look at the logs. Here are Gray's draft recaps for the first 10 rounds by position:
11: RB-RB-WR-TE-WR-RB-QB-RB-DST-QB
12: QB-RB-RB-WR-RB-WR-RB-WR-RB-WR
13: RB-WR-RB-QB-RB-WR-RB-WR-WR-RB
14: RB-WR-RB-WR-WR-RB-TE-RB-QB-RB
15: RB-WR-RB-RB-WR-TE-RB-WR-WR-RB
16: WR-RB-WR-WR-RB-QB-TE-RB-RB-DST
17: WR-WR-RB-QB-WR-RB-RB-RB-WR-RB
In each of his first five years in the league including his championship season, Gray drafted at least two RBs within the first three rounds. In 2015, he used three of his first four picks to select RBs. That ranks as the fifth-most RB-biased draft in league history. In general, he typically spends four to five of his first 10 picks on RBs, more than any other position.
It probably rates as no surprise then that Gray leads all team owners in scoring from the RB position with a whopping 30.4 ppg for his career. By comparison the next closest player is Trevor with 27.7. The average is 23.5.
But just when you think you have a handle on Gray's strategy, you realize you don't know anything at all. Let's take a second look at the last two years. What do you notice?
16: WR-RB-WR-WR-RB-QB-TE-RB-RB-DST
17: WR-WR-RB-QB-WR-RB-RB-RB-WR-RB
It's not RBs, but WRs that are dominating his early picks. Last year, he shockingly went WR-WR to open the draft, selecting Michael Thomas and Brandin Cooks with the 12th and 13th overall picks. But lest you think that was a function of a low draft pick, the year before he selected a WR (Odell Beckham Jr.) with the 2nd overall pick and then went on to pick a total of three WRs within the first four rounds. And that was the year he drafted his all-world league-dominators. It was the third-best draft of the modern era, in large part due to his ability to find incredible value at RB later in the draft after banking on superstar WRs early.
So is it RBs or WRs?
Like all good players. It appears Gray doesn't have a set strategy entering the draft. He lets the draft come to him. Yes, he has a strong preference for RBs, but he's unafraid to deviate from that strategy if the right player falls to him.
3. Gray waits on QB except when he doesn't.
Like Tom Brady, for example.
Gray almost never drafts a QB early. Our draft bias statistic shows he has a strong aversion to it. In fact, only one other owner is less likely to draft a QB early—Josh, who in fairness is probably still distrustful of pass plays in general. In fact, the average point at which Gray drafts his first QB is not until the 6th round with the 66th pick. (666!!!) In fact, three times Gray has been the last owner to draft a QB. And in two of those years, at least one owner selected a backup QB before Gray even drafted a starter.
And yet last year Gray drafted Tom Brady in the fourth round. Not only that but he was just the second owner to draft a QB. What gives? Doesn't Gray hate QBs? Well, not exactly. Gray hates overpriced QBs.
If we dig deeper into the data, we notice that last year was the culmination of a larger trend within our league to wait on QB. We all remember those wild early days of The Worst League in which Mexican martinis flowed like water and QBs were drafted rampantly in the early rounds. In 2012, eight QBs were drafted in the top-30. Last year, there were zero.
The first QB didn't go off the board until the 31st pick. It was the first time a QB wasn't selected within the first two rounds in league history. So by the time it was Gray's turn to draft with the 37th pick, there stood Tom Brady—a player with an average draft position on ESPN.com drafts of 21.9. The result? Brady had another terrific season, finishing 23rd by VBD, returning late-second round value early in the fourth.
Zig when they zag.
4. Gray is one of the league's most active team owners.
Draft alone is not destiny.
Yes, the draft almost certainly has the largest single impact on your fantasy season. But a good draft alone does not a season make. If we look at the top 10 drafts of the modern era, 30% failed to make the playoffs. And if we expand that group to include the top 20, that number increases to 45%. Essentially, an above-average draft makes your playoff chances nothing more than a coin flip.
And on the flip side of that coin is that no roster is ever truly lost, no matter how bad the draft. If we look at the bottom 10 drafts of the modern era, 30% recovered to make the playoffs. And notably that list includes Gray.
In 2015, Gray had a bad draft, his worst of the modern era, ranking 41st out of 48 total drafts over the last four years. His middle rounds (6-10) were particularly bad, ranking 46th. Matthew Stafford, Justin Forsett, Arian Foster (the year before he retired), Davante Adams, and Victor Cruz (three years after he'd stopped being "Victor Cruz") are just some of the names. This was not an all-star squad. And yet, he rightfully made the playoffs, leading the league in TW%.
So how'd he do it? Three words. Okay, technically four—free agency and trade. Of Gray's league-leading 1,305 points that season, a whopping 564 or 43% came from free agency and trade. From the waiver wire, he scavenged 20+ and even a 32-point performance from Blake Bortles and rode undrafted Seahawks rookie RB Thomas Rawls to several double-digit games.
But it was through trade that he really shined, selling high on surging RBs/WRs in exchange for underperforming elite WRs. First it was 4th- and 13th-round picks LeGarrette Blount and Darren Sproles for 3rd-round pick DeAndre Hopkins in Week 5. That was followed by a Week 8 trade of 8th-round pick Steve Smith Sr. plus K Brandon McManus for 2nd-round pick A.J. Green. Hopkins and Green would go on to finish 8th and 15th overall by VBD while Blount, Sproles and Smith plateaued with none finishing in the top-50 of VBD.
The result? Gray charged into first place in the Power Ranks with a roster that included two legitimate WR1s in Hopkins and Green to pair with RB1 Adrian Peterson, who finished 3rd by VBD and was Gray's one truly good draft pick. Ironically, Gray's bad draft came the year he was given the first pick in the draft, which just goes to show that you can have the top pick, you can be one of the league's best drafters, and everything can still go wrong. That's why being an active team owner is so important.
And no team owner is more active than Gray. If we measure league activity by the sum total of trades, acquisitions (free agency or waivers) and activations (moving a player from the bench into your starting lineup), Gray leads the league with 125.7 per season. For context, the average owner makes 1.1 trades per season with 1.5 free agent pickups and 3.5 roster activations per week. For Gray, it's 1.6 trades, 3.1 pickups and 6.4 activations, which means he's almost twice as active as the average owner.
That last number is particularly interesting, because technically, there is another owner that's slightly more active in the trade market and on the waiver wire—yours truly. But Gray is head-and-shoulders above the field in activations. Think about it—6.4 activations per week. That means he's replacing six players out of his lineup with bench players each and every week. And you only have SEVEN bench spots total. That's a very fluid roster. Sure, some of that is probably tinkering before a final lineup is set, but I believe it speaks to Gray's incredible depth and roster management. Which brings up one more odd statistic that I have never been able to explain.
During the bye weeks, all of us routinely suffer. Your starters sit. You replace them with whatever scrubs are on your bench or you can scavenge from the waiver wire. But the end result is you score fewer points. You just do. In weeks when all NFL teams are active, league-wide scoring has averaged 88.7 ppg. During bye weeks, that number drops to 84.5 ppg. A change of -4.2 ppg. Makes sense.
Literally, every single owner experiences a drop in scoring during the bye weeks (Nick and Josh are particularly hard hit, averaging double-digit drops to their scoring), every single owner... except one. And I'll give you one guess who that team owner is. No, not Terryn. Have you been listening to anything I've been saying? It's Gray. Gray's scoring actually gets BETTER during the bye weeks, when he averages 3.2 ppg MORE than he does than when he has his full complement of starters. Ridiculous.
Yes, the draft is important. But to some extent, we're not in control of what happens to the players we draft. No one can predict the future. Not even Gray. We don't know which players are going to hit and which will bust. We pray we're not unlucky enough to lose our first round pick to injury. But what we can control is the weekly roster churn, searching for deals and sifting through the wasteland that is waivers in hopes that one day we do strike gold.
And no owner is better at that than Gray.
This year, Gray has the 8th pick after trading back from his randomly selected 6th position. To read more about the significance of that, check out Nick's draft preview.
But coming off a season in which he finished 2nd in the Power Ranks but failed to make the playoffs for the first time since 2012, Gray is hoping to return to the promised land. And this time, no doubt, with a desire to bring home his second championship.
Look for him to draft well and if not, make up for it via trade or free agency. Look for him to load up on RBs or maybe take a bunch of WRs instead. Look for him to wait on QB or surprise everyone and draft Aaron Rodgers in the second round. Definitely look for him to draft LeGarrette Blount, who is now in Detroit, which is something Gray has done remarkably each of the last three years. We get it. You like LeGarrette Blount. Get a room, you two.
But above all, look to the top of the standings. Because come Week 13, that's likely where you'll find Gray, this desperate attempt to crack his winning code be damned.
