Consistency. It’s one of those traits that everyone says they look for when building a professional sports team or a fantasy team alike. However, how many people really know what they’re looking when drafting their teams or making pickups on the waiver wire? There are two different types of consistency to pay attention to when studying players and those are year-over-year and game-to-game and both are equally important in this process.

 

Year-Over-Year Consistency

One thing you will hear a lot over the next few months is the term “upside” as in “player x has a ton of upside this year if this happens.” Don’t get me wrong, upside is great to have in a player but it’s always better to have a safe floor to work from in the first place which is where consistency comes in. Consistency is also what coaches look at when deciding who’s getting playing time and targets and plays run for them during the season, so it’s something we should take into account when playing fantasy football as well.

Having guys that you can mark down for a certain stat line year-after-year is important not only in reality but also in fantasy and that’s what should be the focus of your draft strategy and not just going for players who have big upside but may not reach it. A perfect example of an early round wide receiver who fits the consistency we’re talking about here is Julio Jones . Dating back to 2014, Jones has five-straight 1,400-yard seasons and has only missed a total of two games in those seasons combined. Three of those seasons were 100-plus catch seasons too with the others being 83 (in 14 games) and 88 in 2017. LeSean McCoy , before last year, had at least 840 yards rushing in eight straight seasons and six straight seasons of 1,000-plus yards in seasons with at least 15 games played. Melvin Gordon has averaged better than 69 yards a game on the ground each of the last three seasons while posting three-straight 400-plus yard receiving seasons with 12 or more scores in each of those years as well. These are the types of guys we’re talking about when we refer to consistent producers year-over-year.

Quarterbacks are generally very consistent from year-to-year over the top-12 that are typically taken in fantasy leagues. But there are that group of guys that bring in more stats than other guys and just have a higher floor, those are the guys we really like to capitalize on for standard scoring or even scoring that weights TDs more than others. Guys like Drew Brees , Tom Brady , Ben Roethlisberger , Philip Rivers , and Kirk Cousins are the guys that really stand out in terms of year-over-year consistency basis over the last four years or so.

If you can get these types of guys on your roster, a great floor is what you’ve given yourself across your roster. Floors are the thing that is so often overlooked in fantasy drafts and during fantasy seasons but it’s why the best players win year-after-year because they constantly get the consistent guys and then fill in with those touted “upside” guys we spend all of July and August hearing about from training camp reporters and when watching Hard Knocks.

 

Game-To-Game Consistency

Here’s the thing that hasn’t been mentioned about year-to-year consistency yet though, there are different ways of compiling the same stats over the course of a season. Even the guys that put up 1,200-plus yards receiving or rushing come about it differently. Let’s flash back to 2016 for a moment. Jay Ajayi , then with the Dolphins, put up 1,272 yards and eight scores. Sounds great right? Well here’s the thing about that year that looked stellar, 735 of those 1,272 yards came in four games and five of those eight scores came in those games. So in four games he averaged 183 yards and in the other 11 (he played 15 games) he averaged just 48. How about a little bit more recent history huh? Mike Evans just last year had a huge year with 86 catches for 1,524 yards and eight scores while playing all 16 games. However looking deeper and not just taking them at face value, 1,033 yards came in eight games and six scores in those games. That means he averaged 129 yards per game for a half a season and 61 yards per game the other half, with just two scores in those eight games. Evans isn’t a guy that can be counted on regularly from week-to-week based on that and so what good does he do you in a season-long format if you have no idea what to expect from week-to-week with him in the lineup?

Would you like a more recent example for a running back and inconsistent weeks? How about we try Derrick Henry from last year. Henry rushed 215 times for 1,059 yards and 12 scores ranking him between 12th-15th in various scoring systems for running backs. Overall that’s a good season. However, 585 of those yards were compiled in the final four games of the season. Seven of those scores were in three of the last four weeks. In the first 12 weeks of the season, he never topped 58 yards and averaged 39.5 yards per game and a half a touchdown. That’s pretty useless scoring in any scoring system and hence why some were highly annoyed when they missed out on his huge scoring day the first week of the playoffs when he posted 238 yards and four scores in week 13.

 

Final Thoughts

All of the players listed in this piece, have a place on a roster to be sure, however just be careful as to how you are planning to build around them. Clearly we want high upside guys on our rosters as that’s how you top out your success in fantasy football, but to get to the place where you really utilize that upside, you have to have your roster built with consistent players that carry you through those low scoring weeks from some of the guys we talked about in this piece. Consistency is the winning strategy for fantasy football, not hitting the lottery with upside guys.