Fabiano’s Fantasy Focus: 2015 Post-Draft Edition, Volume II

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Every Wednesday during the season NFL Network and NFL.com Senior Fantasy Analyst Michael Fabiano joins Sports360AZ.com’s Brad Cesmat to share his insight on building and developing your fantasy team for success.

Here are some hi-lights from our most recent conversation with the Fantasy Sports Writer’s Association Hall of Famer.

Top five fantasy players heading into the fall–regardless of position: Adrian Peterson still number one? “Yes. I’ve got to go all running backs. I’m going Peterson. I’m going Le’Veon Bell if his appeal is successful and he gets a two-gamer instead of three then he moves past Peterson up to number one. Jamaal Charles at three. [Arian] Foster at four and Eddie Lacy at five. I can’t go with quarterbacks or wide receivers in the top five. I can’t do it.”  

What fantasy “homework assignment” would you give owners from now until camps open? “You should always be working on your rankings and always be updating those rankings as personnel moves happen. [The draft] was big for personnel moves because a lot of teams added players that strengthened positions and potentially had a collateral damage effect on some veterans. That’s one thing you want to do. Always keep tabs on players coming back from injuries and their rehabilitation is going. Todd Gurley is going to be right up there in the top five of players you’ll want to keep tabs on.”

Where do you rank Jameis Winston among quarterbacks heading into the summer? “I’ve got Winston as a low QB2. The position’s deep, Brad. I like [Marcus] Mariota better from a fantasy perspective because of what he can do with his legs. You know me when it comes to quarterbacks who can run. I really like that as an asset. That’s not to say that Mariota is much higher on the list than Winston. He’s not. They’re both really right in the conversation of borderline QB2’s as potential matchup-based starters but I don’t know if either one is going to be drafted beyond the very late rounds…Winston goes into a situation a little bit better because of the weapons around him.”  

With the Cardinals out of the Adrian Peterson sweepstakes–what do you make of their backfield? “I think Andre Ellington is a winner [in all this] because the Cardinals did draft David Johnson but Bruce Arians has already come out and Ellington is already going to play the same role. David Johnson is kind of the same running back in terms of skill set as Ellington so the Cardinals didn’t go out and draft a guy who’s going to come in and take away the potential of him being the number one running back on that depth chart…I think Ellington’s a guy whose value didn’t increase but didn’t decline.”

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