It is no small thing to qualify for your fantasy football league's playoffs. If you've advanced, congratulations on the accomplishment!
Qualifying for the postseason requires a keen approach to the draft, quick and decisive action on the waiver wire, careful selection of weekly lineups, savvy trades and, well, good luck. Examining the list of players who most commonly propelled their fantasy teams to the playoffs, the balance of these skills is immediately apparent. You might be able to get away with a weakness in one of those departments, but you'd certainly need to be strong in each of the others.
Five of the nine players most commonly found on ESPN playoff teams' rosters were those selected within the first 20 picks of drafts on average: Dalvin Cook (fourth), Alvin Kamara (fifth), Tyreek Hill (13th), Davante Adams (14th) and Travis Kelce (20th). You read that right: Scoring the correct first- or second-round pick was imperative, though that isn't a finding exclusive to the 2020 season. Last year, for a comparison point, four of the top nine were players selected within the top 20 in ADP (average draft position). It's clear you need to hit on the earliest picks you make.
Conversely, seven of the 13 players most commonly found on the list went undrafted, on average, in ESPN leagues: Chase Claypool, Mike Davis, Myles Gaskin, Justin Herbert, Younghoe Koo, the Miami Dolphins defense/special teams and James Robinson. Four of those seven -- Davis, Gaskin, Herbert and the Dolphins D/ST -- went almost entirely undrafted, having been selected in fewer than 2.5% of ESPN leagues in the seven days immediately leading up to the first game on Sept. 10. It's clear here, too, that you must be successful on the waiver wire.
But here's an interesting, and increasingly apparent, finding: You don't need to get production from your best players each and every week. Five of the top 11 names on the list missed at least one game in 2020: Gaskin (four), Adams (two), Cook (one), Herbert (one) and Koo (one). In the modern game, mixing and matching your assets plays a critical part in your fantasy team's success, and that the list isn't comprised entirely of fully healthy, high-production players supports that lesson.
Here is the full list of 23 players who reside on the rosters of playoff teams in at least 50% of ESPN 10-team PPR leagues, along with their preseason ADPs:
A quick glance at the list reveals this would've been the ideal year for a "stars-and-scrubs" strategy that is most commonplace in salary-cap leagues, what with each of the top 11 names on the list either first- or second-round picks or otherwise undrafted players. Kelce, Kamara, Cook and Hill played for offenses that ranked among the 12 best in the NFL in both 2019 and through 13 weeks of 2020, and Adams was the unquestioned No. 1 target in this season's highest-scoring offense, meaning that investing in these elite talents playing in productive offenses would've probably guaranteed you a playoff spot all on their own. Besides, as "stars-and-scrubs" teams typically rely on an aggressive early-season approach to the waiver wire, there's an excellent chance these squads would've also picked up a few of those prominent undrafted names.
Another point in the strategy's favor: Davis, who made nine starts in place of injured No. 1 overall pick Christian McCaffrey, found himself 13th on the above list. That's not to say teams that selected McCaffrey were entirely sunk, as last year's top-scoring player in PPR formats still managed to find himself on 45% of rosters this season. The case can be made that those who rostered McCaffrey managed just fine in his absence, perhaps even picking up Davis himself.
All that said, this might well have been a one-year example, and it's dangerous to take the lessons of one season and apply them to the next. Bear in mind that in 2019, there were as many players on this list who were late-round selections as those who were undrafted, five apiece, meaning that investing in those lower-priced, yet well-known players was a wise strategy then. We're also in the midst of a season heavily influenced by the effects of COVID-19, shuffling NFL lineups more than ever before, eliminating the preseason and decreasing the amount of in-season practice time, so it's understandable that this year's biggest success stories are either stars who stayed on the field a great deal, or unknowns who got an unexpected opportunity.
Predictably, the players who have run away with their respective positional leads in PPR fantasy points this season rank high on the list. Kamara (280.8 points) and Cook (275.4), who have 53.9- and 48.5-point leads on the rest of the running back position, rank as the third- and sixth-most common players on ESPN playoff teams. Hill (274.9) and Adams (262.9), who have 48.0- and 36.0-point leads on the rest of the wide receiver position, rank fifth and ninth. Kelce (239.6) has a 48.4-point lead on the next-closest tight end, and he's the second-most common player on ESPN playoff teams. Incidentally, that No. 2 tight end, Darren Waller (191.2), has a 45.8-point lead on the No. 3 tight end and is the No. 12 name on the above list.
The one position where you won't see this effect is quarterback, which might be an odd finding to those who have been tracking the position's surge in fantasy scoring. Six quarterbacks have scored at least 276.8 fantasy points through 13 weeks -- two of them with 300-plus -- and those six rank among the top 21 seasons in history through their teams' first 12 games. Not one of these six quarterbacks ranks among the top 10 in the above list, and the top-scoring quarterback, Patrick Mahomes (310.7 points), isn't on the list at all, residing on only 44% of playoff teams' rosters.
Here is the position-by-position breakdown of the top-five most common players on ESPN fantasy teams:
Presumably, Kyler Murray's and Russell Wilson's recent slumps have caused their percentages to drop, perhaps costing a handful of teams playoff spots in the process. Through eight games -- the midway point -- of their 2020 seasons, Murray (233.5) and Wilson (228.1) had the two largest point totals of any quarterback in history through that stage of the season. In their past four games, however, Murray has 74.5 points, ninth most among quarterbacks, and Wilson has 59.4 points, which is 18th.
While those two might be the most disappointing players of the past four weeks, they're far from the season's biggest disappointments.
Taking only top-100 players in terms of preseason ADP, the chart below identifies the 10 players found on the smallest percentage of ESPN playoff teams. Excluded, however, are players who missed at least five games due to injury, a list that includes Saquon Barkley (No. 2 pick on average), Odell Beckham Jr. (No. 33), Courtland Sutton (No. 39), Dak Prescott (No. 49) and Tarik Cohen (No. 87).
Cam Akers' presence on this list immediately stands out. He has been one of the more productive running backs in fantasy the past two weeks, his 30.8 PPR fantasy points ranking 13th at the position during that time span, and he had 21 carries in Week 13 alone, tied for the third most in the league. Still, Akers was drafted as the No. 22 running back on average, but he missed two games while delivering fewer than five PPR fantasy points in four of his eight appearances from Weeks 1 to 11.
Check back in two and four weeks, when we'll update you on the players who reside on the most finalists' and championship rosters in ESPN leagues. Who will be the player who carries his fantasy teams to a title? We shall soon find out.