2. Jess
On September 25, 2011 with 6:03 remaining in the 2nd quarter of a tie game between the Titans and Broncos, Kenny Britt motioned to his right before rolling out into the flat and catching a short pass from Titans QB Matt Hasselbeck. It was a historic moment for The Worst League.
Not because of what happened on that play, but because of what came next—a series of unfortunate events that would set into motion a chain reaction that would go on to define a pair of team owners and serve as a turning point in the trajectory of our fair league.
That's because shortly after catching that pass, Britt was met quickly by Broncos free safety Rahim Moore who attempted a diving tackle of Britt's inside leg. Twisting to avoid the contact, Britt collapsed in pain. After being carted off the field, the worst was confirmed. Kenny Britt had torn both his ACL and MCL and would miss the remainder of the season.
Meanwhile in Austin, Britt's owner Jess was presumably sent into a bit of a panic. She'd just lost her fifth-round pick who over the course of the first two weeks had been off to a hot start, playing like a WR1. In fact, entering Week 3, Britt ranked as the second overall WR with a total of 44 points in two weeks including 3 TDs and over 370 yards receiving. He had more points than studs like Calvin Johnson, Larry Fitzgerald, Andre Johnson and Steve Smith.
Then suddenly, all of that production was gone. To make matters worse, her WR depth behind fellow starter Dez Bryant was middling at best—Austin Collie, Hines Ward and Jacoby Jones. Coming off a disappointing 45-56 loss to Greco in which her leading scorer was a kicker, Jess had dropped to 1-2 and sixth in the standings. Maybe, she didn't have time to wait for her RB1, who had so far scored just 3 points in three weeks, to return from a preseason hamstring injury that had been re-aggravated in Week 2. After all, third-round pick Jahvid Best was keeping her afloat at RB, averaging 13.7 ppg over the first three weeks. She needed production now.
Then presumably a trade offer landed in her lap. It was a 2-for-1. She could trade away her injured RB averaging 1.0 ppg for two WRs—Sidney Rice and Eric Decker. The former had just started in his first game for the Seahawks in Week 3, finishing with 8 catches for 109 yards and 10 points. The latter was then a second-year WR, starting for the first time for the Broncos after an injury to Brandon Lloyd. After a returning a punt for a TD in his first game, he responded with 23 points including 113 yards and 2 TDs in his first official start. Entering Week 4, he was averaging 12.7 ppg. It was simple math. Trade away one player worth 1.0 ppg. Get back two players worth a combined 22.7 ppg in games they had played.
The only problem? That player she traded away was Arian Foster.
The league message board exploded. "Arian Foster for what?!" read the subject line to a new thread. "WTF? Trevor must be paying for this trade under the table," cracked Geoff. "This is an awful trade," typed Gray—perhaps the simplest assessment of the situation.
After just three weeks, Jess had traded away her first rounder and the sixth overall pick coming off a sophomore season in which he was named first-team All-Pro in exchange for a seventh rounder and another guy that went undrafted. Sure, Foster was dealing with a lingering hamstring injury and Rice and Decker were off to nice starts. But this was Arian Foster we were talking about here. Of course, Foster would go on to average 19.4 ppg for the rest of the season while Rice and Decker averaged 5.6 and 5.4 ppg, respectively. To put it another way, Rice and Decker would combine for 115 total points the rest of the season. Meanwhile, Foster would more than double that with 233 points all by himself.
In retrospect, it was a hallmark of those naive, halcyon early days when most of us didn't really know what we were doing. I'll be the first to admit I was no savvy operator. Heck, I drafted Michael Vick with the fourth overall pick that year. Oof. But for the league as a whole, perhaps this was a watershed moment, a learning experience, from which we would all emerge wiser. Four years later, the league would go into a similar uproar over another Week 4 trade. But this time, it was about a trade of Adam Vinatieri for the Cardinals D/ST. It was clear our grievances had evolved to argue finer points like the exchange of a kicker for a defense.
But for Jess, this trade defined her, rightly or wrongly, as easy money. In part due to the Arian Foster debacle, she ended the season 2-8, finishing 3-10 overall in last place. Perhaps feeling shame from this trade, she renamed her team from Plaxidental Shooting in 2011 (a reference to Plaxico Burress' accidental, self-inflicted gunshot wound) to Plaxidental Trades in 2012. (Ironically, Plaxico Burress is the player mentioned in Season 1, Episode 4 of The League in which Andre gets trade-raped by trading away Ronnie Brown for Burress without knowing that Burress is serving two years in prison.)
It was an inauspicious start.
But three years later, Jess surprised everyone with a breakout championship season.
After going 14-25 with a league-worst TW% of .297 and a paltry 72.8 ppg over the course of her first three seasons, Jess exploded to win 10 games in 2014. At the time, she was just the second owner to reach double-digit wins. To this day, Jess' 2014 still stands as the seventh-best season of all-time by TW% and has an argument to be considered the best given the fact that each of the six seasons above her in the list failed to seal the deal. Meanwhile, she brought home the 'chip. In fact, she became the first team owner to finish first in the Power Rankings and then win the championship. (Brandon became the second last season.)
Despite her championship, I think the general perception of Jess is that she is not among the league's elites. She's a good, not great player. Maybe 2014 was a fluke. After all, her career TW% currently ranks 10th. But those perceptions would be wrong.
Since her breakout in 2014, Jess has been one of the most successful team owners in the league. Over the last four seasons, Jess is 31-19-2 with a TW% of .576, which ranks second only to Gray. Over that time period, she's averaged 91.4 ppg, also second, and actually leads the league in points from the RB position during that span with 29.3 ppg. (Arian Foster would be proud.) In fact, since she flipped the switch in 2014, she has not had a single losing season, making the playoffs twice including the championship game in back-to-back seasons in 2014 and 2015. She's also finished in the top-5 of the Power Rankings each of the last four years.
But perhaps most impressively is the unequivocal fact that Jess is the best drafter in the league, at least in the modern era for which we have data on VBD.
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, Jess is head-and-shoulders above the rest of the league. Only Greco comes close. Since we've been measuring VBD, her drafts have consistently placed her in the top-half of drafts each season, ranking 1st, 4th, 2nd, and 5th. All have ranked within the top-20 of all 48 modern era drafts.
Her draft from her championship season in 2014 was especially good, ranking as the second-best draft of the modern era. That season, she drafted a pair of Steelers in Le'Veon Bell and Antonio Brown in the second and third rounds, respectively, in what would be their breakout seasons. It's hard to imagine getting either as late as the 31st pick this year, but that's what she did in 2014. Both delivered top-5 value by VBD. Meanwhile, Russell Wilson in the 6th round delivered 3rd-round value in a season in which he ran for a career-best 6 TDs. Then consider the fact that Chris Ivory, all the way back in the 10th round, proved to be a solid weekly starter with 3rd-round value, and you've got a recipe for a championship.
So what's Jess's secret?
Perhaps, she's been randomly blessed with a good position in the draft order each season. After all, data from fantasy experts confirms that a higher draft pick does increase your likelihood of winning the championship.
But that doesn't fully explain what's going on with Jess. Her average starting draft position has been 5.3, which does rank fourth highest. But typically, she's more likely drafting from the middle than the beginning of the draft. Over the years, she's selected between 6-8 in five out of seven seasons. The other two years she drafted 2nd. So, yes she's never had to draft later than 8th. But her best draft came the year she drafted 7th. The middle has been good to Jess. And if an early pick guaranteed a championship, then Erik would have won one by now. He's never drafted later than 6th.
So with draft order out of the way, let's take a look at her approach. Here are her first ten picks by position in each of the last seven years.
17: RB-WR-WR-RB-WR-RB-RB-TE-QB-WR
16: RB-RB-WR-WR-RB-RB-WR-WR-QB-RB
15: RB-WR-WR-RB-WR-RB-QB-WR-TE-RB
14: WR-RB-WR-TE-RB-QB-WR-DST-WR-RB
13: RB-RB-QB-WR-TE-RB-WR-WR-WR-DST
12: QB-RB-TE-WR-RB-WR-RB-RB-QB-WR
11: RB-QB-RB-WR-WR-WR-RB-QB-RB-TE
What we see here is a wide range of approaches, ranging from RB-RB to a first-round WR to QBs and TEs both going as early as the first three rounds. Her draft bias statistic isn't all that revealing either, ranking near the middle of the pack in positional preference for all six positions. That means she hasn't really expressed a preference for any one position, indicative of a best-player-available approach.
That being said, over the last three years, we do see that she has drafted exclusively RBs and WRs in the first six rounds, waiting on QB and TE. That means she's filled both starter spots at RB and WR, one flex and even a bench player before opting for a starter at either TE or QB. And in 2017 and 2015, we do see an identical pattern where she drafted the same string of positions over the first six rounds, for whatever that's worth.
17: RB-WR-WR-RB-WR-RB-RB-TE-QB-WR
15: RB-WR-WR-RB-WR-RB-QB-WR-TE-RB
But if we examine the individual players she's drafted in the modern era during her rise to prominence, we do see a common thread emerge. She consistently finds early-round value in the middle-to-late rounds.
In each of the last four years, she's drafted a RB outside the first round that ultimately finished as a top-10 player by VBD. In other words, she got a first-round talent after the first round and in many cases, much later.
In 2014, it was the aforementioned Le'Veon Bell (Pick: 18, VBD: 2). In 2015, it was Doug Martin (Pick: 47, VBD: 10) and Devonta Freeman (Pick: 71, VBD: 1). In 2016, it was Melvin Gordon (Pick: 65, VBD: 8). And last year, it was Mark Ingram (Pick: 43, VBD: 6). And that doesn't include WRs Antonio Brown in 2014 (Pick: 31, VBD: 5) and DeAndre Hopkins in 2017 (Pick: 30, VBD: 7). That's seven top-10 players drafted outside the first round in four years. By comparison, that's as many as Greco and Gray (the two next-best drafters) combined. Or more than Brandon, Josh, Trevor, Erik, Alex and Geoff—say it with me—COMBINED. That ability to find elite talent late, not the draft order, is why Jess is such a good drafter.
So who might we expect Jess to pick this year?
We can start by looking for similarities to the RBs she drafted in previous years with the ones that are available this year. In the cases of Bell, Freeman and Gordon, they were second-year players that broke out in a big way. This year, there are a plethora of second-year backs, but many of them are going in the first round by ADP (Alvin Kamara, Kareem Hunt and Leonard Fournette come to mind). Sure, Dalvin Cook and Christian McCaffrey might also fit the bill, but they are likely second-rounders. We're looking for deep cuts. So who fits the bill? Sophomore RBs going later in drafts include Joe Mixon, Chris Carson, Tarik Cohen, Jamaal Williams, Marlon Mack and Aaron Jones.
Meanwhile, in the cases of Martin and Ingram, both returned to Pro-Bowl form exactly three years after their first appearance. Who might that be this year? RBs with an outside shot at a starting role that last made the Pro-Bowl in 2015 include Latavius Murray and Adrian Peterson.
This year, Jess has the 2nd pick. Ironically, this is the third time she's had the second overall pick with the last time occurring in 2015—a season in which she finished 8-5 and made the championship game.
This year, she'll be in search of a fifth-straight season with a record of .500 or better and a return to the playoffs from which she has been absent since 2015. But perhaps most importantly, she'll be looking to once again prove that 2014 was no fluke. That she's a skilled drafter and an elite team owner.
Will she be remembered as the team owner that traded away Arian Foster? Or as one of the league's most feared team owners?
Only time will tell.
