Tom Brady, DeflateGate and fantasy football

Last season, Arian Foster missed three games and still managed to finish 2014 as the fifth overall RB. A hamstring injury caused Odell Beckham Jr. to miss the first four games of the season, but even he returned to finish the year as the fifth-highest scoring WR (and produced otherworldly on-pace numbers). Rob Gronkowski, attempting a remarkable return from a torn ACL and MCL suffered only 11 months prior, posted single-digit scoring numbers in four of his first seven outings. Needless to say, he went on to finish the season as the No. 1 TE by a mere 30 points. But absences and a lack of productivity out of the gates isn't the only thing these players have in common. All three names were also featured on at least 11 percent of rosters (the highest individual, Beckham, being 20 percent owned) that qualified for the fantasy championship last season.

How could so many owners afford to go all-in (and prosper) with only two-thirds the firepower the rest of their leagues were starting on a weekly basis? The answer is actually quite simple. No, they didn't stumble and fall on C.J. Anderson or Jeremy Hill or Mike Evans or Harry Douglas or ... well, you get the point. They just used a replacement-level player to get by.

If you had started Julian Edelman, Eric Decker, Mike Wallace, Andre Johnson or any other WR that had averaged slightly fewer than 10 points per game through the first four weeks of the season, for example, then replaced him with Beckham Jr., you were essentially getting above-average return on your investment. The same goes for those three pesky weeks that you may have been fortunate enough to slide in one of those guys from the Cleveland backfield to replace Foster. Simply put, it's in your best interest to find value where everyone else is giving it.

Before his suspension had been doled out, Tom Brady was universally coming off draft boards during the fifth round. And why not? A full season with both Gronkowski and Brandon LaFell could easily spell 4,400 yards and at least 34 touchdowns for the soon-to-be 38-year-old. And if those numbers did in fact come to fruition, a top-five finish in the QB rankings was foreseeable. Instead, we now receive an extrapolated projection of 3,400 yards and 24 touchdowns, or what Andy Dalton typically produces with a full season of work.

Regardless of whether you took Aaron Rodgers in Round 2 or Phillip Rivers in Round 10, an absence of either player is likely to leave you starting a mid-pack QB2. For that reason, I use QB18 as a baseline for the quarterback position. A similar application of this concept to RB, WR, and TE leaves us with baselines of RB30, WR42, and TE18.

By analyzing historical and projected production at each position, we can determine expected weekly point totals from our replacement level performer. They are as follows: QB (16.0 pts), RB (8.5), WR (7.0), and TE (5.5).

It should be noted, however, that this metric relies on 2014 strength of schedule information and Fantasy Football Points Allowed. The problem there is that teams that were exploitable last season (the New York Jets, for instance) could seemingly be much better in 2015, and vice versa (like the New England Patriots.) Unfortunately, we won't know actual SOS until we can properly adjust during the season. Until then, take these suggestions with a grain of salt.

Though Nick Foles is listed with the fourth-easiest schedule among replacements, I wouldn't touch him. Not only would he be unusable Week 1 against the Seattle Seahawks, but he also travels to Arizona (whom I expect to bounce back) and Green Bay during Weeks 4 and 5. No thanks. Instead, focus more on Carson Palmer, who came in as an Honorable Mention. The metric claims Palmer faces on average only a slightly harder defense than Winston through the first five weeks (15.6 to 15.4), but really, we can depend on regression from the San Francisco 49ers (Week 3) and Detroit Lions (Week 5) due to offseason departures.