Stephen Hoopes
@stephenhoopes
Fantasy football writer @4for4football.bsky.social with data-heavy game previews. FSWA member. Dynasty and best ball takes with lots of graphs. Goeh bherds 🦅
I've been working on capturing the thoughts of The Official App of Sports. Really cooking with gas on the Aaron Rodgers one.
Come for the graphs, stay for the digs at the Giants. "Matt Nagy was handed the best QB on the planet and returned a league-average offensive finish. Now he gets the chance to work with Jaxson Dart instead. What could go wrong?"
Sportsbook-implied points per game for the full season (x-axis) and specifically during the fantasy playoffs (y-axis). I periodically need a reminder to not load up on teams in the bottom-left corner.
Having some fun with this Underdog game. Now just 17 coin flips away from $1M.
I’m not a card collector. I’m an AJ Brown card collector (and one Brandon Lloyd card for my 2010 home league championship. Shoutout Brandon Lloyd).
Thanks to everyone that has checked out my best ball Chrome extension! Sim-based player recommendations right on your Underdog draft. Takes into account team and playoff week stacking, with settings adjustable by tournament. Coolest thing I've ever made. chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hoope...
Here's what it looks like. The box in the top-right is the extension.
If you're looking for a Bhayshul Tuten article that's mostly about Chris Rodriguez, boy do I have good news for you! www.4for4.com/2026/preseas...
Had some fun with this one. I think the odds Downs hits his ceiling boils down to one question. How far can he move in the top-right direction of the graph below?
This won't surprise anyone, but a RB's TD rate is highly correlated with where on the field they get the ball. Among 65 qualifying RBs, Sean Tucker led the league in TD rate last year. His average attempt was the 12th closest to the opponent's endzone. Bucky Irving was 63rd and 55th in those stats.
Colston Loveland is currently my most-drafted player on Underdog. Among 26 qualifying TEs, Loveland was 5th in targets per route run during the regular season. The biggest issue was that he was 22nd in routes per game. Fortunately, we saw those routes spike in the last few weeks of the season.
What do we actually care about for our fantasy RBs? Well, their ADP and FP per game last year are crucial. Beyond that, though, we generally want them scoring TDs, catching the ball, and generating explosive runs. Let's use Rhamondre Stevenson and TreVeyon Henderson as examples.
Our top values but round and why Josh Allen is the worst pick on the board (not really; did the clickbait work?)
Only 3/16 elite WRs had both above-average playoff and finals rates last year. That hit rate was about half the mark of RBs drafted in the same range. But Puka was on an insane 3 out of every 5 rosters in the finals last year thanks to a 12/225/2 line in the semis. www.4for4.com/2026/preseas...
If you're sticking zero-RB anyway, focus on RB routes. The graph below shows the average routes per game in 2024 for the RBs drafted on a BBMVI entry. And it's filtered only for teams that did not take an RB in Round 1 or 2. The more routes your RBs ran in the prior season, the better off you were.
That's why 4 RB builds were optimal last year. Notice as you go down the list of the constructions that it is literally sorted by the number of drafted RBs. The best options all had 4 RBs, then 5, then 6 and finally 7. And the reason is the teams that drafted RBs early tended to take fewer of them.
And it’s not just that top RBs are scoring more. It’s crucial to take into account where in the drafts you got those players. Every one of these guys was drafted in the first three rounds last year. The difference-making RBs that are separating from RB2s are both identifiable and costly in drafts.
RB1s have stayed healthier than ever, especially those we’ve drafted early. They’ve seen their share of carries increase relative to expectation. And the NFL’s run rate within an opponent’s 5-yard line has increased from 48.8% in 2021 to 51.5% in 2025. That’s great news for elite RBs.
It was another rough year for zero-RB. Below is a heatmap where red shows higher advance rates and blue shows lower advance rates. The y-axis shows what round you drafted your first RB in, while the x-axis shows the round of your second RB. You’re only going to see red with an RB1 in Round 1 or 2.
Continuing my deep dive on Underdog's BBMVI data, this time with RBs. You doubled your odds of advancing to the playoffs if you took an RB in Round 1. You tripled your odds of advancing if you started your draft with two straight RBs compared to teams that passed on RB in the first two rounds.
And then game stacking Week 17 had a similar pattern as previous years. The number of active, healthy players you have is going to dictate a lot in a one-week sample. But just like in past years, you generally want more game stacks than fewer. Link to the full article! www.4for4.com/2026/preseas...
The graph below looks at team stacking. The x-axis is the number of team stacks an entry had, while the y-axis is the rate those teams made the finals. You were twice as likely to make the finals last year if you had 3 team stacks compared to zero.