This note is brought to you by the amount of attention I can give while a toddler and puppy roam free in the background.
Today we’ll be ranking the players I can’t possibly draft this year. My draft starts at 62 overall; with keepers, the 80th pick at best, for sure 10 QBs, 25 RBs, 30 WRs, 7 TEs, 8 IDPs, Justin Tucker. Coleman will have eleven players on his roster before I have three. By the time I make my first pick, here’s how many players will be on each roster:
11 – Coleman
10 – Shelby
8 – Brian, Corey, Spencer
7 (the normal amount) – Evan, Max
6 – Cameron, Kennedy, Sean
5 – Oliver
2 – Doak
Christ. That is steep. Just my distance from Oliver is steep.
Strategy for this… tough to say. Pray, probably.
There’s obviously no way to predict who’s going to score the fantasy points any given week. We’re all spinning a wheel. My options are I can, in order of how much I’d rather: chase future picks, try to win, buy even deeper into future picks (lol, no), or—the frontrunner—just draft the best player available. The process.
1. Christian McCaffrey
Corey’s cornered. Scary pick to make. But you must.
2. Bijan Robinson
Like if Christian McCaffrey were young again.
3. Breece Hall
Like if Bijan Robinson were in an offense that featured him.
4. Josh Allen
5. Lamar Jackson
If you are serious about winning it all, you need to invest in an elite QB.
(This is the part where I cry about having had four of these players on my roster last year)
6. Justin Jefferson
7. CeeDee Lamb
The best bets to lead the league in targets.
8. Some Trash Asshole
(hangs head in shame)
9. Sun God
Praise Him.
10. Ja’Marr Chase
And stack with Burrow rounds later.
11. Derrick Henry
I get why no one would take him this high, but I would be tempted to ride that lightning.
12-14. AJ Brown, Saquon Barkley, Jalen Hurts
Tiebreaker: who will score the most (non-passing) touchdowns?
15-16. Davante Adams, Mike Evans
Stack Adams with Bowers later, get like 70% of one team’s production at value.
Baker bombs to Evans forever.
17-19. De’Von Achane, Jonathan Taylor, Travis Etienne
20. DJ Moore
I am trying to remember to put talent ahead of situation. Rome Odunze and Keenan Allen should not factor into this decision. DJ Moore is the best receiver left. DJ Moore had as many points as AJ Brown last year on 20 fewer targets. A very repeatable 136 targets for DJ Moore!
21-22. Jahmyr Gibbs, David Montgomery
Player A in 2023: 234 touches, 1260 yds, 62 FDs, 11 TDs
Player B in 2023: 235 touches, 1130 yds, 66 FDs, 13 TDs
Does it matter which is which? Do the Lions have any incentive to change the formula that got them to the NFC Championship game?
23-24. Patrick Mahomes, Kyler Murray
Just doing my part to keep the elite QBs out of the keeper rounds.
25-27. Nick Chubb, Malik Nabers, Marvin Harrison Jr.
If these guys make it to keeper range, pounce.
28-30. Cooper Kupp, Puka Nacua, Kyren Williams
Not convinced anyone can hold up to the beating players take in this offense, but any player who can run that gauntlet emerges as an elite fantasy producer.
31-33. Isiah Pacheco, Jaylen Waddle, DK Metcalf
Speed.
34-36. Garrett Wilson, Terry McLaurin, Chris Olave
Lab-grown Buckeyes.
37-42. Drake London, Michael Pittman, Nico Collins, DeVonta Smith, Tank Dell, Deebo Samuel
Solid glob of WRs.
43-48. Travis Kelce, Sam LaPorta, Mark Andrews, Kyle Pitts, George Kittle, Trey McBride
Elite glob of TEs. I don’t want to spend high picks guessing which one scores 10 TDs. I don’t believe there’s a target-monster, 1,300-yard guy at TE this year that would make any of them worth picking before the fourth round.
49-51. Stefon Diggs, Brandon Aiyuk, George Pickens
Not crazy about these dudes as individuals but I recognize the fantasy potential.
52-53. Anthony Richardson, Jayden Daniels
In order to be an elite QB in fantasy, you have to chase 5,000 yards and 40 TDs. It’s so, so unlikely in this two-high world that a player would get there with only his arm. League leader in passing yards and TDs in 2023: 4624 (Tua) and 36 (Dak). League leader in total yards and TDs: 4800 and 41, both by Josh Allen. Neither of these QBs are likely to do that, but they’re the only ones possible. (If I knew Justin Fields was starting for the Steelers, he would be in this group.)
54-55. James Cook, Ken Walker
Amazing athletes. Juuust enough concern they are in thicker timeshares than the RBs above them.
56-59. CJ Stroud, Brock Purdy, Jordan Love, Tua Tagovailoa
Just a bunch of Spidermen pointing at one another.
60. Tee Higgins
61. Amari Cooper
I love him. I just hate his QB so much, unless it’s Jameis Winston. You know if it ends up being Jameis Winston, I am immediately instituting FAAB and spending 100% of it on Jameis while trading a future 3rd for Cooper. But let’s be serious: you can get me to pay more if you promise to give me those dirty picks in the late-middle of next year’s draft.
62-63. TJ Watt, Micah Parsons
64-65. Zay Flowers, Chris Godwin
66-67. Rome Odunze, Keenan Allen
I’m buying into Caleb Williams. I think there’s a timeline where he gets each of his top three receivers 1,000 yards, and I think the way it happens is every dog has his day, or rather every dog on the opposing defense doesn’t, and at least one of the guys just so happens to be the one cooking him. Because these Bears receivers are gonna cook. You’re gonna have to take a cold shower about it because only one of them at most will cook for three straight weeks. The bet is on Moore. After that, I’m leaning Odunze, tiebreaker: future capital.
68-70. Rhamondre Stevenson, D’Andre Swift, Jonathon Brooks
Flawed starters who won’t lose their jobs.
71-75. Josh Jacobs, Joe Mixon, Alvin Kamara, James Conner, Aaron Jones
Age-cliff bell-cows!
76. Rachaad White
Flawed starter who will probably lose his job.
77-79. Antoine Winfield, Kyle Hamilton, Derwin James
One of us won’t be able to help ourselves, and it will start a run, and I support it.
Bonus: Roquan Smith
The most valuable pick you can make is hitting on an elite LB. Because LB is so replaceable beyond the first three or four guys, there’s not much incentive to reach. But whoever gets the top three or four right, ooh wee!
Keepers who didn’t make the cut but will factor into the 82: Jared Goff, Chase Brown, David Njoku, [Shelby’s late keeper]
So after all of that, I have an idea of where my draft starts. And for my second pick, 22 more players will be taken, three of them by Coleman (good god) and three by Spencer. In terms of draft capital, Coleman and Shelby are far and away first, and Coleman might be far and away first by himself. Then Spencer, Corey, and Brian. Then the rest of you, then fifty feet of crap, then me, with my slumlord Baltic and Mediterranean, represented in this draft by three picks between 105 and 110 and four picks in the 14th round.
I am looking so forward to that 14th round flurry. Delicious RB value late this year. WRs not so much but a couple of us will hit. Taysom Hill anytime I want, and the same level of LB/K as 75% of the league.
QBs still available after you all get starters and maybe Coleman double dips: (just saying some of these guys will be available in the 14th) all the old dudes (Rodgers, Cousins, Stafford) and the discount 1st rounders (Baker, Bryce, Darnold, Dimes, Nix, Fields). I am begging of anyone serious about winning: get you a superstar QB and don’t be shy about it. I think 10 QBs separate from the pack, and the pack is 12 more QBs scoring within three points per game of one another. And I’m predicting that top ten will include a QB I draft in the 14th round (unless I draft Kyler Murray; Sean you have the power).
And that’s not even including Jameis Winston, who remains on the short list of backups most likely to get playing time this season.
When you are playing at a disadvantage, you have to take an extreme strategy in order to have a chance. If we play like the Colemans in here, we will lose to the Colemans out there. I need to employ a unique strategy, meaning I need to be the only one doing it. If I want to share that strategy ahead of the draft, it either has to be something you all can’t do or something you all won’t do.
I have toyed with the idea of spending all of my draft picks on offense and not even bothering to set a full lineup. If anyone else tried this, I would probably hold a vote to levy some sort of fine for doing this ($1 per empty lineup slot per week? We could do this anyway and give the money to whoever finishes the year first in points). So that strategy is out.
I could draft the youngest team, something the rest of you aren’t incentivized to do, but young players are generally more attractive anyway, so other people are more or less employing that strategy.
I could draft the oldest team and/or the team with the most preseason injuries. The island of misfit toys strategy. The true moneyball strategy: once-great players who have been rendered defective and thus fall to my price range. Who else would start the season with a WR corps of Tyler Lockett, Adam Thielen, DeAndre Hopkins, Odell Beckham, and Brandin Cooks in the year of our lord 2024? 32-year-old Raheem Mostert is the starting RB for the league’s most explosive offense, everyone knows this, and he’s still going to be drafted outside the top 100 because it’s a bad bet!
To repeat, one of Stafford, Cousins, or Rodgers will be there for me in the 14th. Is anyone but me willing to blow a roster spot on 34-year-old TEs Taysom Hill or Zach Ertz? Fat fucking chance! You’re all too busy chasing beautiful, shiny things. I’m chasing that Week 1 Cordarrelle Patterson kick-return TD. How about future HOF kicker Matt Prater? I bet I don’t even have to spend a draft pick for him. Get fucked, Zoomers. Millennial Prime!
The other idea I have that’s married to the millennial chase is to go back to the total failure of attempting to draft for Week 1. The difference, maybe, is that I can churn more bottom-of-the-roster spots after each week of action, do like a low-budget DFS lineup every week. Build the plane out of Greg Dortch. I think it’s obvious by now I am a fan of stacking, and every week there will be free stacks. Sign me up for that Levis to Boyd connection, baby! Or, oh my god, Brissett to Osborn, fo’ free?! DARNOLD TO TONYAN?!?!?!
So the Stream Team strategy has some legs to it. Every week there is a group of free agents that would outscore our league’s best lineup. So in that case the strategy is to get really good at TM between now and then and use the fourth dimension to pick the best players straight from the future, like Biff’s almanac but it makes even less sense. The second reason to employ the Stream Team strategy is to stay flexible for when the rest of you get impatient with your rookies. Every year there’s a rookie who gets drafted in the double-digits, doesn’t produce for the first five weeks, gets dropped, clears waivers, and goes on to be a borderline league winner. Alvin Kamara, Nick Chubb, Justin Jefferson, Jordan Love… okay, so mostly Evan benefitting, but it gives me a little more hope.
I am now in the spitting them out as they come to me stage, the true spitballing, and my next wad is simply All Whites. Lots of options at QB and TE and K always and more options at RB than there have been in 20 years. I can’t get CMC, no, but I can get the white rookie triad of Will Shipley, Dylan Laube, and Cody Schrader. WRs Ladd McConkey and Adam Thielen and… wow, are we in a white receiver drought or what? Oh man, I tuned in for like five minutes of the Patriots preseason game, where the McCourty twins are the color commentators and some 55-yo white dude is the play-by-play guy, but the conceit of their preseason broadcast is that it’s mostly just “dudes talking ball” and anyway the white guy who’s just there to transition topics referred to the Pats’ UDFA rookie punt returner as “an Amendola type” and friends, when I tell you, you can guess what this players looks like… the point is, where my Amendolas at? Scotty Miller is gonna be on the Steelers’ practice squad, Kyle Phillips is about to get bounced… well, actually, his new OC there had some white guys in Cincinnati, and there’s still those white guys in Cincinnati… there will always be white guys in Cincinnati. Here is a comprehensive list of the white receivers who will get playing time this year: Thielen, McConkey, Trent Irwin, Charlie Jones, Alec Pierce, Justin Watson, Cooper Kupp (sadly, too expensive), Braxton Berrios, Ricky Pearsall, Jake Bobo, Luke McCaffrey—wait, baby, do we got a pale stew goin’? Be serious.
I gotta tell you, there were a couple of players where I had to be like, wait, is he white, and then google him to find out if he’s pure white or just part white, and it felt pretty gross and Proud-Boy-y, and I had to take a break.
So realistically, I’m not making pale stew, but I’m also not going to let on my exact strategy, for fear someone will snipe me for Ray-Ray McCloud. I’m 95% sure I’m going to try to win games right away, 5% trying to break the rookie fever.
And finally, as a treat for reading all the way, here are some trades people need to make:
Kennedy wants to trade up. Somebody take him off his coin.
Oliver wants to trade his extra keepers, early Aiyuk or Pacheco (would be upgrades for Coleman or Evan), late keepers Kyler, Kyren, Nico (upgrades for Corey, Shelby, Brian, Cameron, and me but I can’t afford it). Other teams have extra keepers, but Oliver’s the only person I know who actively wants to trade them.
Shelby probably hasn’t started thinking about it, but she’ll want to spend at least a cheap pick upgrading her late keeper. She’s got money to burn, so she might as well check out the value out there and get like, I don’t know, ANTOINE WINFIELD two rounds cheaper than she otherwise might’ve.
Coleman has two extra picks, so he might look to consolidate or move picks to the future (generally speaking, a future pick is worth one round less than a present pick, so you offer next year’s 5th for this year’s 6th). With two weeks between our draft and the season, he might be fine just holding the extra players.
And with that, I’m tapped out until draft day.
