OUR DRAFT BEGINS SEPTEMBER 1, 7:00 P.M. EST
If everyone is ready to go sooner, then we can just get it on when we’re ready.
90 seconds per pick. After that, we start yelling at you.
I can pause the draft to facilitate a trade.
Trades during the draft work like regular trades. Super easy.
Notable NFL Dates
Aug. 31 – rosters cut to 53 players by 4:00 p.m. EST.
Sep. 1 – Claims for waivers process by noon EST.
What NOT to Do
Probably don’t draft a QB in the first two rounds. It has yet to pay off since we reverted to a single-QB format.
Probably don’t draft a more scarce position like TE or DL just because you see a bunch drafted in a row ahead of your pick. You never want to be on the back-end of a run. You want to start the next run. Otherwise, you’re the Bengals, hiring a QBs coach to run your whole team just because you want to catch the wave of new offense. Instead be the Vikings, who bring in a whole extra head coach just to organize their run game.
Definitely don’t be late for the draft or do anything to fuck up your early picks.
Definitely don’t get too drunk, at least not until after the fourth round.
Miscellany
Week 1 is a melee, potentially a best-ball melee if the vote passes.
The Week 1 cash game will be simple: most points. Whoever finishes the week leading our league in total points will get $10 and their choice of cash game for Week 2.
Which means pay your dues: $50 little man, put that shit in my hand.
Remember to declare your keepers via the sleeper app (like, find the setting that says something like “set keepers”) by Wednesday Aug 28.
Also, feel free to keep offering trades for people’s non-keepers up until the draft. I’m fine with that. Everyone should be fine with that. Just remember when you make that trade, you need to be aware of which keeper spot you’re using and how that affects your options.
The IR slot is now an option for players marked “Doubtful” because it’s super annoying to know a guy won’t play and yet be hamstrung by the system. The IR slot is NOT an option for suspended players or players marked “Probable.” An inconsistency in the system is the designation of holdout players, like Melvin Gordon, marked “Out” and thus eligible for IR. Remember: to qualify for keeper status, a player has to be active for at least one NFL game while on your roster. It’s okay if he stays on your bench the whole time.
Position Limits
They gone. So I’ve been looking at roster combinations, seeing what the sweet spot is for stacking RBs (obviously). It looks like I can comfortably draft seven or eight RBs depending on how lean I want to be elsewhere. I’m cool drafting one QB. I’m cool drafting zero kickers. If the good TEs go too early for my taste, I’m cool waiting basically until kickoff to get one. I’m less comfortable punting LBs and DBs, and I’m convinced I’ll take one of the earlier defenses—not crazy early but also not in any way late. So there’s, like, uh, calculated flexibility with my intention to draft a bunch of RBs. Of course, I can see this being the most obvious exploitation of the lifted restriction. So what’s the zag to this zig? What would Billy Beane do?
Hoard QBs?
Brian mentioned the possibility of drafting 15 QBs. He was oddly specific, multiple times. It’s not the stupidest plan. There’s plenty of reasons not to do it, but it’s kind of intriguing. Given that Week 1 is a melee, all you have to do is be one of the top 6 teams. If you can guarantee that six teams won’t have a starting QB, you at least have a chance to piece together a DFS-bargain-bin lineup capable of scraping out a win. If you wait until Sunday to drop, let’s say, 13 of your QBs, you can set a full lineup, and (I’m pretty sure) those 13 QBs will default to waivers, meaning they won’t be available to add until the conclusion of Week 1’s games. Then you can drop all of your shit players for as many QBs as you can recoup, and hopefully you can work out trades with whichever team got the worst of these Week 2 Waiver Wire QBs. You probably even increase the trade value of QBs considering no melee means some poor bastard is playing a legit team and actually needs something better than Case Keenum to feel confident in ever winning again. If I learned anything slinging mattresses for six months, it’s that a person’s perception of their future influences their decisions more than any physical or numerical value you can put on a thing. If there’s any fantasy-football proxy of a mattress, it’s a QB ranked between 25 and 32 in a week where you’re going up against Pat Mahomes.
More realistically, you could hoard a bench-full of QBs. One starter and six trade assets, most of them selected after filling out your RBs, WRs, and FLEX, maybe even one more position. As I’ve hinted at, there are multiple positions where you can competitive starters without having to spend one pick on them. If I wanted seven QBs, I could still leave the draft with five RBs, four WRs, a DL, and a DST and feel FINE. Great even. But with 32 starters out there, and probably 22 or 23 QBs drafted if I draft like a normal person, my QB-hoard would still only push the total to 30, tops. So I couldn’t even properly extort another team, given they’d have a bargain option and be willing to take that and stick it to me versus copping to my bullshit.
But what I might do is draft five QBs, all in the teens, and just sit on them for as long as it took someone else to offer me a good trade. Maybe it’s Week 4. I’ve sacrificed basically nothing since I’ve reasonably drafted starters at every position and two depth pieces. If I lose a couple games, I cut bait, but if I’m winning, and I haven’t had to use any but one of these QBs, I’m confident someone will come with a top-30 RB or WR to get my Ben Roethlisberger or Philip Rivers or whatever.
But since I’ve already told you I’m comfortable drafting one QB, I assume you’re also able to conceive the fourth-dimension of this where whoever tries to hoard QBs eventually drops most of them without getting anything for them.
(Post-draft QB hoarding, that’s a whole other set of considerations. I’ve definitely imagined a scenario where I’m 0-7, hoarding QBs in hopes of acquiring a couple extra 2020 5th-rounders.
Note: there are no rules about overall roster construction, butI expect everyone to set a full lineup every week. I’ll even go as far to say that participation in the weekly cash game is contingent on setting a full lineup, with extremely limited exceptions—e.g., during a bye-pocalypse week, I can abide an empty DST or K slot if it helps you keep your usual starters and critical depth.)
Hoard WRs?
Yeah dude, do it. I’ve always felt like waiver WRs are impossible to parse. Impars-able? -ible? Regardless, I’m expecting at least one person to think taking eight WRs is a strong option, and it probably is, especially when you know someone will take eight RBs and you can work out an easy trade before the first games.
??? Profit?
Is there another option this change affords, as in something that doesn’t involve just taking an absurd amount of one thing? I suppose you could do the combo 7 RBs and 7 WRs everyone has on their mind, just max out your flex appeal and have a pecking order in mind for when you need to dedicate a bench spot elsewhere. Or maybe you play the game as usual and have that assurance that there are multiple bloated teams out there no doubt ready to drop the late-round RBs and WRs when they don’t hit right away. This is where my particular zag emerges:
Draft for Week 1
Yeah it’s short-sighted and therefore kinda dumb, but in my obsession, I’ve decided to focus on the weekly aspect of this game and define assets by their more immediate value (i.e., overthink it). Our league is relatively shallow, even if everyone has an extra RB stashed away, so why not live in the now and just try to get a dude you feel good about this week? Well, maybe because we don’t know anything about matchups. Okay, but we never technically know anything about matchups. Okay, but then by what criteria does one even “draft for Week 1” if not by the matchups?
The way I draft for Week 1 is by making a gut call on which teams will be ready for the season and which teams won’t. That means I’m looking more at coaches than at talent. Billy Bellcheeks is a great coach, and his team will be ready for Week 1, especially at home against a perennially respected franchise in the Steelers. I’m not sure if Mike Tomlin is a good coach. He’s definitely not as good as Billy-Boy, and the Steelers’ suckage on the road during his tenure supports my contention. So I’m picking the Pats to win, which has implications like the Pats having an advantage in time of possession and run ratio, and McDaniels has a recent incentive to show his stuff Week 1 after Andy Reid out-spectacled him on opening night two years ago. So I think Jules will get his classic ten targets, mostly quick slants, and end up with 80ish yards (more if he breaks some tackles) and maybe a score. I expect Josh Gordon to get a handful of shots to make huge plays, and I expect one to be successful. If this didn’t turn out to be the case, then I wouldn’t expect the Pats to win, or at least not win in a way that allowed for the 35 rushing attempts that make Sony Michel and (believe it or not) Rex Burkhead to be quality starts that week. At the same time, I expect the Steelers to try to run until they go down by a couple scores, which leads to an all-out pass attack, which is great for whoever can get open against a really, really solid Pats defense, especially in pass coverage. Unlike Pats defenses of the past maybe six seasons, this team has no holes (just kind of a weak pass-rush, but likely only on paper). So while the increase in pass attempts should be good for the Steelers fantasy numbers, I doubt that we’ll see the big plays that lead to top-10 numbers from any one players. So your Jujus and your Conners, they’re not to be benched, but they’re not winning you the week. I was looking forward to drafting Moncrief, but I think he’ll be confined to short routes and need a lot of targets and a TD to present well on the stat sheet, meaning I might even be able to wait for him to be dropped rather than spending what I imagine would be a decent pick to get him for an extra week when I won’t even play him. How I hedge here, specifically with regard to Moncrief, who I fucking love as a talent, is to remember that I know nothing and Week 1 often gives us exactly what we weren’t expecting.
So wait, how does one draft for Week 1?
Right, so I just don’t look past a player’s talent combined with Week 1 matchups. The thing about a really good matchup, like say, the Chiefs vs. the Jags, is I just expect offenses to play a lot better than defenses in the first couple weeks. Defenses have spent the whole offseason studying 2018, while offenses have spent that time cooking up new shit for 2019. So even when it comes to a Pats defense I expect to house the Steelers’ shit, I also low-key expect total points in the 60-range, meaning even if I let someone like Moncrief slip, it won’t be for long.
I would love to give you details on every matchup just for the chance of being right about a lot of it, but I’m way too wary of jinxes to try anything so bold. Why else would I use a Pats blowout as an example?
What else can I say about drafting for Week 1? I don’t look past Week 1 on the schedule. I just don’t care. It’s like starting a new school year. There are your Feenys (Belichick, Reid) who are consistent leaders, your Topangas (McVay, Reich, Pederson, Fangio, Rivera, Lynn) who get hot without even trying or even realizing it, your Shawns (Carroll, Tomlin, Arians, Harbaugh, Shanahan, Payton, McDermott, Kingsbury) who are so cool you don’t even care they’re barely two-dimensional, your Coreys and Erics (O’Brien, Vrabel, Patricia, Nagy, Quinn, probably Flores) who yearn to reinvent themselves but inevitably just remain inert Feenyites, and Minkuses (Garrett, Gruden, Shurmur, Marrone, LaFleur, Taylor) who are bound to get canned for four years before showing up for no reason near the end of senior year, and then there’s Mike Zimmer, who I couldn’t really pin down, so maybe he’s Mr. Turner. Mr. Turner definitely seems like the most likely guy to empty out a bag of sunflower seeds and fill it with dip. The point was supposed to be that identities can change based on people’s intentions, but now I guess the point is that people are mostly archetypes unless they literally act they’re in high school? Uh, wow, I got way deep into that metaphor, and I really had no exit strategy.
Oh wait, maybe it was this: don’t bet on bad coaches, unless you’re betting on them being bad.
Nailed it.
Now let’s have some fun. Most of us know by now this league started in 2009, but there have been a lot of changes since we drafted in marker directly on the wall of our apartment. That year, we didn’t have any waivers. Players were locked from gametime to Tuesday morning at 9:00 am, so whoever got to free agency when it opened had free run on every player available. I had a 9:00 am Demography class that I miraculously got a C in despite using pretty much the entire class to tinker with my roster. I would say it was worth it when I won that year, but I think only like four people paid the $20 dues, which is why I stopped collecting dues at all for many years after that. In the years since, we’ve gone from Yahoo to ESPN back to Yahoo back to ESPN. We’ve had probably an entire league’s worth of people who aren’t in the league anymore. I have LM Notes dating back to 2012, a year that included team names like Nipple Biters and D’Brickahsaw’s Trident. The league as it’s currently constructed has been together since 2015, which makes this our fifth season together. The last time I won was 2014, so I’m a little salty about the distinction, but I’ll get over it. In honor of this little milestone, I want to compile some numbers and some interesting tidbits.
1. Brian Cruikshank
Aggregate Team Name: Better Call Dirty Humungus Morty Penis
Record: 35-20 (.636)
Playoff Appearances: 3 (T-league-high)
Playoff Byes: 3 (league-high)
Playoff Wins: 2
Best Finish: 2nd
Avg. Finish: 4.75
Points Per Game: 121
First picks: Demarco Murray, AJ Green, Jameis Winston, Dalvin Cook
Brian’s pretty dominant for someone whose most recent championship was at least six years ago. He’s been in our championship game twice, losing by just…oh… 59 and 71. Brian has been pretty dominant until it counts. The only year he missed the playoffs was 2017, when his first handful of picks were Winston, Amari Cooper, Marshawn Lynch, timeshare Joe Mixon, Golden Tate, Sammy Watkins, and Vontaze Burfict. Brian finished 3-11, which super fucked most of his stats.
In general, you can count on Brian to have an average draft and then build a smart team through a medium-low number of in-season transactions. He’s shown a predilection for Bengals, Bucs, SPARQ athletes, washed receivers, and Justin Tucker. He tends to sleep on TE, though it’s worked in the past. He drafted Travis Kelce in the 8th Round in 2016, the first year Kelce broke 1,000 yards.
This season, Brian’s sworn that he’s trying to win the whole thing, which he technically always is, but the implied difference this year is that he won’t draft Jameis Winston too early—a relative term, to be sure.
2. Cameron MacNeill
Aggregate Team Name: Rick and Gronky G-String Blaster
Record: 34-21 (.618)
Playoff Appearances: 2
Playoff Byes: 1
Playoff Wins: 4 (league-high)
Best Finish: Champ
Avg. Finish: 4.75
Points Per Game: 129 (league-high)
First picks: Jamaal Charles, Gronk, Lev Bell, Zeke
With minor exception, Cameron has shit all over us. His first season weighs down all of his stats. He’s led the league in scoring the last two years, posting averages of 136 and 152 (!), and that doesn’t incorporate the fat 182 he slapped on Brian’s forehead for the championship. Sure, last year was an outlier, given Cameron kept Tyreek and Kamara, then—I’m not naming names—was maybe incidentally gifted—through anonymous idiocy—an extra first round pick. (But, you know, Spencer drafted Lev Bell, and if he had just drafted Zeke instead, Cameron would have been fucked, okay? So like, not pointing fingers, but, heh, ahem, yeah, that may have uh been why he was so good, you know, so, like, give Spencer a break. It’s just luck that leads to any of this stuff anyway, so like let’s have fun and let bygones be, yeah?)
Contrary to our expectation that he’ll be a Pats homer in the draft (probably stemming from him drafting Edelman and Brady back-to-back his first year with us), Cameron tends to go chalk until the later rounds, and even then, he’s not taking big hacks on guys who haven’t proven anything until he’s good and wasted. Will he take a washed receiver every now and then? Who among us hasn’t? Wait, every year? Hmm, okay, that’s a little much. But even then, he starts each season with a solid baseline and makes a reasonable number of transactions, tending to improve incrementally. He’ll find it’s pretty hard to get significant trade action as the champ, but he’s proven he sustain success through the waiver wire.
This season, he starts pretty close to the front again, holding a top-5 RB and top-10 QB before getting two of the top 13 players available. I imagine that’ll make top-10 Q, top-5 R, and two top-5 WRs, so that’s what you’re chasing if you try to swing a trade up. But as far as a premature prediction, I think there are a lot of people working hard to make sure Cameron doesn’t repeat as champ in 2019.
3. Evan Lee Layton
Aggregate Team Name: Watt-Injected Pirate Revenge
Record: 33-22 (.600)
Playoff Appearances: 3 (T-league-high)
Playoff Byes: 1
Playoff Wins: 3
Best Finish: Champ
Avg. Finish: 4.25 (league-high)
Points Per Game: 127
First picks: Shady McCoy, David Johnson, Melvin Gordon, Nuk Hopkins
If you told me Evan made the playoffs every year—even if you told me he was final four every year—I’d believe you. Matchups against Evan are my most reversed-jinxed predictions by far because I’m always pretty certain he’ll crush me. The way he synthesizes the information seems clean and logical. He plays with the gestalt perspective player-turned-spectator, and it leads to consistent, balanced, competitive rosters year in, year out.
I like to make fun of Evan for having a lot of white guys on his roster, which is largely unfair and untrue, in addition to being not-very-2019 of me. But looking at the draft history, he has drafted a white guy in the fourth round every single year. I didn’t even dig hard to find that. So far it’s been Olsen, Rodgers, Kelce, and Wentz. While I expect the trend to continue—my guess is Hunter Henry—there’s a decent chance he bucks the trend if either Kelce or Kittle fall to his second or third picks, respectively. I would be shocked if he didn’t take Wentz in the fourth. I just don’t think Wentz will be there.
My personal consideration for Evan’s draft is that I expect him to want the same undervalued players I want, to the point that I consciously overrate them just to stay aware of them a round before I even consider drafting them. That’s the meta-fuckage egomaniacal shit I have to go through just to get Nick Chubb a round early and then not even be patient enough to keep him once the trance wears off.
This season, Evan and I enter the draft with a nearly identical set of keepers: double-RB, all four likely to be drafted between picks 15 and 35. So in addition to my baseline paranoid insecurity, I have legitimate evidence that we’ll have similar draft strategies. This is probably how I ended up trading out of the pick right behind him. I couldn’t handle the pressure of trying to discern my strategy from my counter-strategy to his strategy. Good luck, Evan.
4. Sean Simpson
Aggregate Team Name: Gubba nub Gods Curse Purge Rickdemption
Record: 31-24 (.564)
Playoff Appearances: 3 (T-league-high)
Playoff Byes: 1
Playoff Wins: 3
Best Finish: Champ
Avg. Finish: 4.5
Points Per Game: 125
First picks: CJ Anderson (for real), Lamar Miller (holy shit), Julio (whew), Gurley (we’re good)
Sean enetered the league knowing next to nothing. I mean, he knew what a football was and what it meant to make a tackle, gain a yard, score a touchdown, but I’m not confident that in 2012 he could name a position other than quarterback or tight end (the latter’s aura of entendre helping it seep into the common lexicon via broad humor, and yes that’s an overwrought tag but what can we do but move on). He figured out a couple good sites, craped some data, made an algorithm, and won the league. He got cocky and drafted IDPs in Rounds 3 and 4 one year. Sean’s pendulum swung so far toward analytics that he forgot to pay attention to whether or not a dude just looked like he could play. I wanted to take another shot at CJ Anderson here, but that’s actually the year Sean won it all, granted he won the championship 105-54 back when we were still playing our championships in Week 17. (Actually, this is a good reminder about this “league history” bit: we’ve only had a 13-week season and Week 16 championship for one season. And, to get even more particular, we’ve all only even been on the same page for two seasons in terms of how to construct a roster that doesn’t automatically suck.) For the draft, Sean has eschewed his algorithm and promised himself he’d take a simpler angle at winning the game. I don’t know what this means, other than he probably won’t draft Larry Fitzgerald and Pierre Garcon in the 4th and 5th like he did last year. But he will draft Luke Kuechly as early as he deems necessary, and he will be rewarded for that faith. Beyond that, it’s a real crap-shoot trying to pin down his picks. I know his first pick will be a runningback. I know he’ll do something unconventional early on, but I don’t know what. And I’m only 70% certain he’ll continue to wait for his QB and reach for his kicker.
This season, man, I really don’t know what to think. I could see Sean bottoming out completely after questioning his process. Retooling takes time, and if you misjudge when and how to retool, you mostly end up losing time. But this is probably wishful thinking on my part.
5. Doak Mathias
Aggregate Team Name: Meeseeks Mirror Fondlers (Solenya)
Record: 32-25 (.561)
Playoff Appearances: 2
Playoff Byes: 0
Playoff Wins: 0
Best Finish: 5th
Avg. Finish: 7th
Points Per Game: 119
First picks: Andrew Luck (5th!), N/A (traded for magic beans), Mike Evans, Antonio Brown (kind of)
I was expecting my overall record to be exactly .500 since every season I either barely make the playoffs or barely miss them. It’s amazing what a bunch of time spent obsessing over this game won’t get you. I can attest to that. When I calculated my average finish of exactly seventh, I felt that shit in my bones.
If you want draft tendencies, you won’t find them in the last few years. I start my strategy around getting particular players and build out from there. Two years ago, I wanted Jimmy Graham, I pegged him as probably a fifth rounder, and I started to negotiate with myself about what choices I’d have to make elsewhere to make that a good pick. That’s not a joke. That’s what I do. Sometimes, I’m reasonable enough to focus on early picks, but not usually. Last year, I was so focused on getting rookie RBs in the fourth and fifth rounds and Lamar Jackson in exactly the tenth that I literally didn’t care what happened in the first round anymore, and this was after I’d acquired an extra first-rounder just because I wanted to make a trade. Then I traded those picks for the first because Brian said he would take Winston 1 overall, but then Winston got suspended and it all came crumbling down to me drafting Antonio Brown with the intention to trade him before the season started, figuring he’d be less likely to get hurt in preseason and retain top value at his position than any one RB, knowing we had the entire preseason to go between our draft and the season. Well, it didn’t work out, so I went wayyy back to basics this year. Way back.
I always make my own rankings, and I usually make it complicated. My QB rankings this year were really complicated before I took a vacation and said fuck it to anything complicated about fantasy football. I came back and said, you know what, I have a couple guys I really want, but I mostly just wan the best player at every pick and fuck the biases that sequester to me to finishing between fifth and seventh every year.
I made one big draft board and color-coded it by position using the exact colors sleeper uses in its draft boards. Now instead of getting tunnel vision or forcing my brain basically translate between a pre-fab draft sheet and the aesthetically-very-different draft board, I just click back and forth between two nearly identical images. I assume any meaningful pattern will just emerge, and in the two mocks I’ve done, this has proven to be the case. I can’t tell you what I learned, though, maybe because I want to win and maybe because it’s bullshit. But what I can tell you is I won’t have to partition as much of my brain to my draft, and instead I can focus on our draft, which should be about connecting just a little bit more, giving us just that extra pinch of momentum going into the season. It could all be bullshit, but I’m fairly certain it’s not!
As for this season, shit, I’m aiming for first place. I’m wholly unconcerned with how I get there. Know that I’ll be a hawk on waivers, and I’ll be a hawk on trade opportunities. Inevitably, as the weather grows grey, I’ll lose steam and tilt and derail my season, only to get just enough back to squeak into the playoff hunt, finishing either one game above or below .500, then losing in the first round of whatever bracket, picking in the middle third of the first round every year for infinity.
Or I’ll win.
6. Kennedy Collins
Aggregate Team Name: Cronenberg Gary, LLC
Record: 26-29 (.473)
Playoff Appearances: 2
Playoff Byes: 0
Playoff Wins: 3
Best Finish: Champ
Avg. Finish: 5.75
Points Per Game: 118
First picks: Lev Bell, AB & AP (#1 and 2 overall), N/A (traded down, won the league), N/A (traded down, made the playoffs at 6-7)
At one point, Kennedy left the league. It wasn’t a big deal. He just kind of got swamped one year and could barely set a lineup and asked if he could bail. This is how we ended up getting Sean, who I didn’t even expect to like it all that much. I didn’t expect Kennedy would be back the next year, definitely didn’t expect he would be making the playoffs on a regular basis, winning the league, and implementing a rule that basically enforces unending involvement. I’m happy about it.
Apparently, we can expect Kennedy to trade down. I remember, I’m pretty sure, it was 2017 when Kennedy hammered the concept of value during our draft. 2016 was the year he and I had the 1 and 2 overall, and we swapped my 2 for his 23/24 turn picks. I proceeded to draft four straight WRs (who maybe all busted) and snag a bunch of double-digit RBs (who maybe all hit). Anyway, I think it was making that trade and finishing 10th that led Kennedy to leave the first round two years running. So I’m always intrigued to see how he’ll get his value in the draft every year. He’s shown a willingness to punt the top-heavy positions like TE and DB while making high-leverage moves like going lean on onesie positions, amassing flex assets, and even employing an expensive QB-WR stack. Did these things work? Not last year. But they are the type of moves that when they go right, they go really right.
This season, I expect more of the same, which is to say, a similar recipe with some different ingredients. Like, he’s always baking cookies, but he’s—yeah, we get it, using different ingredients. Okay, in that case, I’ll be more specific. I think he drafts Russell Wilson again, because the value will be right but also because the Seahawks are a consistent team, and the high-floor Seahawk stack has proven to be QB-RB, not QB-WR like it is on, say, the Packers. But I also think he spends more upfront on RBs, especially with his keeper RB appearing much weaker this year than it did when Kareem Hunt was still relevant.
7. Tim Machula
Aggregate Team Name: T Mac Dumpster Fire (three years running)
Record: 26-29 (.473)
Playoff Appearances: 2
Playoff Byes: 1
Playoff Wins: 1
Best Finish: 3rd
Avg. Finish: 6.25
Points Per Game: 118
First picks: Eddie Lacy (2nd!), Julio, Antonio, Fournette
Tim is sort of the mythical dragon of our league. He was pretty much nonexistent for a couple years to start out, then two years ago he just started setting fire to the rest of us, storming the playoff race two years in a row and being a crowd favorite while he does it. He’s the people’s champ, even if he’s never made a championship game. I think I’ve given Tim a reputation of drafting the same players every year, and I don’t really know how I came to that conclusion.
I’ll tell you what Tim always does. He always does something you don’t imagine someone doing, like keeping a linebacker and then using a relatively high pick on a second linebacker. He has a knack for stumbling into value, like drafting Khalil Mack in the eighth round in July, then watch him become worth a 5th-rounder when he got traded to the Bears on Labor Day weekend.
(btw, smart people are citing Labor Day as a new NFL holiday, the expectation being that good teams will have figured out their holes and trade low draft picks to fill them, eventually trading down in the draft to recoup those picks, getting better now and losing absolutely nothing in the long run.)
But so Tim does not have a specific move he’s known for in our drafts. He’s gravitated toward Julio, Big Ben, Fournette, and Chris Thompson recently, but I think only Julio is a true target at this point.
As for the season outlook, I’m looking forward to it. I’m in Tim’s corner almost as much as I’m in my own. But I’ve gotta be frank: I’m getting impatient, Tim. It was your year two years ago. It was your year last year. I’m thinking maybe it’s my year unless you get your shit together.
8. Corey Ware
Aggregate Team Name: JCOR4EVER
Record: 26-29 (.473)
Playoff Appearances: 2
Playoff Byes: 0
Playoff Wins: 1
Best Finish: 3rd
Avg. Finish: 6.5
Points Per Game: 116
First picks: Matt Forte (the Jets year), Hopkins, David Johnson, Saquon
Corey has come a long way since starting out as a co-owner of Shelby’s team. And he’s actually had other team names (Team Jaboo Wins, Team Ware, Uphill Battle), but for some reason it feels like it’s always been JCor413. And Corey has been a more consistent threat than his stats suggest. His worst finish was 9th, and that was the year his first pick David Johnson missed basically the whole season. Corey’s fatal flaw as a fantasy owner might be that he’s too easygoing when it comes to roster moves, that he believes too strongly that things will balance out over the course of the year. They usually do, sure, but at some point you have to challenge the balance and tip the scales in your favor to win the big one.
Draft-wise, I feel like I know what to expect from Corey. Like Cameron, Corey drafts proven commodities, so he’s more likely to get a washed veteran than a premature rookie. I see some SEC alums in his future. He’s also more likely to fill out his starting lineup before he starts drafting depth. There’s no value judgment implied here. It just means if you’re drafting near him, you can kind of isolate which position he won’t take in that Round 4-9 range based on which one’s he’s already filled. Note that most of our league drafts this way and it is by far the easiest way to get that extra modicum of value when drafting near the bookends.
This season feels like it won’t be the one for JCor. Playoffs, sure, but a championship? Obviously it’s too soon to say. But his keepers are meh, and his draft slot is meh, so where does he get that edge?
9. Spencer Estes
Aggregate Team Name: Buffalo Archers of FitzGlop (also Weiner Farts?)
Record: 23-32 (.418)
Playoff Appearances: 1
Playoff Byes: 0
Playoff Wins: 1
Best Finish: 3rd
Avg. Finish: 8th
Points Per Game: 117
First picks: Peterson, Zeke, Odell Beckham, Lev Bell (holdout)
I only believe Spencer made the playoffs in 2015 because ESPN says so. Keep in mind, I expect Spencer to compete because he knows things about football and watches football and, I assume, is comfortable looking at articles and statistics for long periods of time. But dude, he wasn’t even on my radar until Mahomes and Conner blew up last year. The key with Spencer has been consistency, especially when it comes to deciding who to start. He has consistently chosen the wrong QBs and WRs to start for years, and there’s not even consistency in why he’s choosing the wrong guys. One year, he’s loaded, another he’s lacking.
Spencer had a really unfortunate start to his draft last year. He took Lev Bell before the preseason started. How could he have known? He followed up with Shady, Brady, and Chris Hogan… then Watkins, Crowell, finally some relief with Kittle and later Mahomes, but man, like five of the players he kept or drafted ended up factoring into his season. So I get the sense his process will change. We know he’s drafting Saquon, so he’ll have his QB and 2 RBs covered, then it’s a long wait between his turns, plenty of time to tilt. Plenty of time to convince yourself the strategy you’d been devising for a month was stupid and you should do something else on the fly, plenty of time to talk yourself into reaching three rounds for a one-trick receiver because what you need is upside!
If you believe in due, then Spencer is due for a comeback, probably playoffs, maybe a championship, maybe two championships, hell, maybe the Bucs will win a championship, too. If Spencer is going to have success, it’s going to be because he connects on some trades. Without that piece, I don’t see how any of us has what we need to win it all.
10. Oliver Rigobon
Aggregate Team Name: Rickdiculous Butter-Passing Doofus
Record: 23-32 (.418)
Playoff Appearances: 1
Playoff Byes: 0
Playoff Wins: 1
Best Finish: 4th
Avg. Finish: 9.5
Points Per Game: 114
First picks: Aaron Rodgers, Gurley, Jordy, Aaron Rodgers again!
Oliver’s history in this league starts with an attempt to draft Michael Vick first overall, when Vick was not only coming back from a two-year suspension but also just a backup QB. It continues with him finding himself as a Broncos fan (based on what, we may never know) and eventually starting his own league in Amsterdam. While there’s a tradition of loving football and family and all that, there’s a also a tradition of losing… kind of a lot. An average finish between 9th and 10th speaks for itself, especially when it’s got a 4th-place finish as a buoy.
In the draft, Oliver always has an angle, something he’s decided to focus on this year. This is probably my fault. As one of Oliver’s biggest influences in getting in this game and caring about this game, I’ve imparted the need to have a “thing” every year that suddenly matters more than it ever has before. BUT since this is the first year I’m resisting that urge and trying to keep it simple, I’m thinking Oliver might do it, too. The issue with thinking this way (besides it being reductive) is that Oliver and I have almost no players in common when it comes to “our guys.” I mean, we can sway one another if we talk about the recent nugget we uncovered
As inconsistent as his team name has been, one thing has remained constant: Oliver is never a preseason favorite to win this thing, not because he’s incapable of putting together a solid roster but because he’s reluctant to keep together his solid roster, preferring instead to make one more move that takes it over the top, also known as over the edge. Does that scan as a prediction?
11. Coleman Collins
Aggregate Team Name: Shrimply Immortan Joique Train
Record: 23-32 (.418)
Playoff Appearances: 2
Playoff Byes: 0
Playoff Wins: 0
Best Finish: 6th
Avg. Finish: 9.5
Points Per Game: 114
First picks: Antonio, Odell, Shady McCoy, Christian McCaffrey (via trade)
The difference between Oliver and Coleman is one playoff win. Technically, Coleman has a playoff win, but only as part of a Week 16-17 doubleheader in which I won the aggregate, maybe. My recollection has me losing the actual game then offering a doubleheader, and Coleman graciously agreeing because there was no difference who won or lost that season. But yeah, Coleman’s teams play poorly despite usually looking pretty good at the outset. In fact, Coleman earned a 113%, the only score above 100, in last year’s Comissioner’s Draft Report—very official.
Because when Coleman drafts, he is a rigid value-based drafter. If wins were awarded based on expected points, Coleman would probably have one or two ‘ships by now. But because most matchups are based on who gets hurt or unexpectedly sucks, Coleman loses significantly more than he wins. But as far as draft strats go, you can’t break him because he’ll just take the next best guy with literal indifference.
And in the season, I’m going to predict nothing for fear I jinx his team again. Just have some fun out there, sport!
12. Shelby Ware
Aggregate Team Name: Tank Luck on Both Squads
Record: 20-35
Playoff Appearances: 1
Playoff Byes: 0
Playoff Wins: 1
Best Finish: 4th
Avg. Finish: 8.75
Points Per Game: 110
First picks: Marshawn Lynch, Cam Newton (3rd!), AJ Green, David Johnson
Shelby’s gone on a couple runs but never had the ball bounce her way toward year’s end. Now, I think it’s because she relies too much on the team she drafted to carry her all year, when instead she should take a risk on improving her roster even when things are good. I’m fine being wrong. I have less meaningful success in the timeframe we’re working with, so I really can’t be trusted for meaningful analysis.
Shelby can usually draft a solid team as long as she doesn’t reach in those early rounds. That Cam Newton year, she finished 2-12. Slot a top RB in his place, and she’s probably got a .500 record that year and leapfrogs the Coleman/Oliver/Spe fray. I also feel compelled to warn her against the washed veteran, but then again, I don’t know how to spot one in the wild.
Yeah, I feel good about Shelby’s season. I don’t have a coherent reason. Numbers-wise, six teams make the playoffs, and I think she’ll make a move or two that kick her team into an extra gear.
I did a lot of work just now, so forgive me if I don’t tie a neat little bow on this note. Talk to you all soon. We’ll work out any unturned stones closer to Sunday. Later, friends.
