Way Too Early Warriors PPM and Minutes Projections

Hi Team, 



First time poster here - I know best practice is to lurk forums like this for a while before posting but I'm excited to find a group of like minded NRL Fantasy followers. For reference - I finished Top 300 last year and although I'm willing to put that down to a fluke I do generally do pretty well in classic. My big result last year has boosted my enthusiasm further and so this year I'm doing early season (i.e first three round) projections for all teams. 

Why first three rounds? Well generally by round three, you are aware of who to go after and who to avoid, who to pick up now and who can wait until later, who's a must-have cashy and who's a shitbag trap. 

My methodology for projecting the PPM for 2021 is going to be based heavily on prior year performance and adjusted for changes to a players team, situation, job security, minutes and historical early season performance. Obviously, this process is subjective and I am actively looking for discussion. These projections should, and will, change as more info on the players and team compositions come to life. I am an IRL League diehard and so a lot of the minutes and PPM predictions are based on my expectations as well as comments made by teams, coaches, players etc. 

Above are my early Warriors team projections. 

A few notes;

- I believe the warriors pack this year will be FRF - Ah Mau/JTB and AFB; 2RF Harris and Ben Murdoch Masila with Jazz locking the scrum.

- I believe Egan will play 70 mins with Jazz picking up the additional hooker minutes. I do not believe they will run a backup hooker on the bench. 

- I am not high on Murdoch-Masila. If he is to score well he'll need plenty of attacking stats. I don't see this happening immediately.

- RTS generally starts slow and I think if the team clicks like many expect, he may have less tough carries to make. This could lead to increase in attacking stats, however I think the talented outside backs could absorb these points. He is also priced quite high for his past season average.

- I think CHT will start 7 and Nikorima 6. CHT's scoring at halfback is strong.

- I think the bench will be Katoa, Evans, Sironen, and JTB/Ah Mau


Cant wait to hear what you guys reckon about my projections. Any must haves? Any must avoids? Any shit calls I've made you think I need to know about?

I would expect Katoa to start and BMM to be impact second row, tbh. Katoa had a good rookie season, they rate him and will only expect him to get better.

Difficult to predict minutes with a new coach. With Payton you know Harris will switch to middle forward for a while to spell Jazz and they often carried a back on the bench, with Brown who knows? Jazz might revert to a big-minute bench role with Harris 13 and either Sironen or BMM in 2rf. Evans might start with LAM on bench. It's one of the hardest packs to predict and could change at any time.

CHT is tempting, but what puts me off is that Kodi has some games where he hogs it and tries to do absolutely everything.

Egan does actually look to be pretty good fantasy value this year but don't think I can bear to watch him closely because he's such a mud player in real life.

Welcome to the forum.
Great analysis and you definitely got the title spot on, way too early.
Everything at this point is pure speculation and guess work.
My first draft has got Egan, LAM, BMM and CHT all in it.
Once I realised there were 4 Warriors players I thought I was in trouble.
How Nathan Brown plays things is a complete unknown. Trials will hopefully shed some light on things.
I definitely feel there is a lot of fantasy relevance in the Warriors this year.