By Scotty P. – SPM Fantasy Staff
The day finally has arrived.
You’ve been waiting since Tom Brady threw his final TD pass of the season, chucking the Vince Lombardi Trophy to a teammate on another boat during Tampa Bay’s Super Bowl victory celebration. You’ve played it out in your mind 1,000 times and mocked it on your computer even more than that. You’ve listened to podcasts, scoured the web for any tidbits of information you could find and you’ve studied all the rankings, predictions and advice columns you could get your hands on.
This has been going on for months, but after what seems like an eternity the actual day you’ve been waiting for still has snuck up on you with the start of the 2021 National Football League season less than a week away.
It’s Labor Day weekend, and you know what that means for many football fans around the country and the world. It’s fantasy football draft time!
Are you ready?
I mean, given the money you’ve spent and the time you’ve committed to being the most prepared person in your draft, you must be ready, right? Right?
Are you 100-percent sure that when the heat is on – when your team logo or icon pops up at the top of your computer screen and the clock starts ticking – that you are ready for any possible scenario and that you won’t freeze and succumb to the pressure?
The draft begins.
You’ve jumped ahead on the projected draft list and spent the last 10 minutes figuring out what you need most and who might be available when it’s your turn while sliding the guys you want most into your draft queue. But something is happening right before your eyes.
Slowly, one by one, the players you are interested in are getting scooped up by other owners. But there’s good news. The player you really want is still available, and you’re up next.
Wait, what happened? There’s your icon in the top left corner. The clock is ticking, but … but … your guy is gone! Where did he go? You’re on the clock. Get it together!
After sitting and staring at your computer screen in shock for five seconds, you spend the next five seconds cursing the owner who took your player. Then you realize that you have fewer than 50 seconds to make this potentially life-altering decision.
STOP!
Relax.
Take a breath.
You got this.
First, you have plenty of time to make this selection, so don’t panic. Second, you’ve been studying this stuff for months and know the information like the back of your hand. For you, being on auto-draft means that you’re doing another late-night mock draft and are able to literally make the picks with your eyes closed as you drift off to sleep.
This is the exact reason that you’ve done all the research and spent so much time getting ready for this day.
It’s great to be super-prepared and to enter each draft with a specific plan of attack. This is an important aspect of having a successful draft, and it’s fun to put in the time and work that might separate you from the other owners. It also should help you easily navigate through the early rounds of any draft when there are nothing but blue-chip players available. But being able to adapt on the fly and make the best possible decision when the pressure is on and the clock is winding down is what truly separates the contenders from the pretenders.
No matter what’s at stake – whether you’ve invested a few bucks or hundreds or if it’s just for family or office bragging rights – no one wants to screw up on draft day and feel like your season is over before it begins.
Keeping that in mind, it’s important to understand that one draft pick rarely makes or breaks a team. The season is an 18-week marathon with many twists and turns, ups and down, bumps and bruises and potential COVID outbreaks. Just like during the drafts, the owners who can look adversity in the eye, not panic and come up with the best possible solutions throughout the season will be on top of the heap at the end of the year.
Pretty much every team will lose a key player to injury, COVID or for some other reason during the season. So, if you really, truly feel like you botched a pick then just treat that player like an injured player and scour the waiver wire and other teams’ rosters in search of a potential game-changer you might be able to add to your lineup. You should spend a few minutes every single day during the season figuring who is available and what other teams in your league might want or need to improve their rosters.
Championships often are a result of savvy free-agent pickups made by vigilant owners. Good players who are difference-makers will be available throughout the year, so there is no reason to beat yourself up over one questionable pick.
Now, back to the situation at hand. The clock shows fewer than 30 seconds before the pick will be made for you. What do you do? When faced with this situation – and it happens to all of us – you have two options. Take the best available player or take the player on the board who has the highest value based on some predetermined criteria and not based solely on ADP.
When I say take the best available player, of course that doesn’t mean take a fourth wide receiver if you already have three but only have one running back, no tight ends and no QBs. Take the best available player that meets your most pressing need. If position doesn’t matter, then of course go with the best available player overall.
Scroll down about 20 places on your draft list to get a full understanding of who is available and make sure that your platform doesn’t have someone rated unusually low. Then, based on your own research or a set of rankings you rely on and trust, simply select the player you think is best. That can be based on projected production, last season’s production, a combination of the two or your own personal ratings.
If time is really short, you might want to just go with the top value selection. This is easy to figure out; just look at the available players and compare them to your platform’s ratings. If you are on pick number 48 and there is a player ranked No. 28 who still is available, go for it.
While the draft site’s rankings might differ from where you think a player rates, at least you know that their ratings are based on some objective criteria, which reduces your risk of completely flubbing the pick. And the risk is further minimized by the fact that you are selecting the player well below his projected value, so even if they screwed up his ranking, by drafting him later than his projection it is more likely that you are getting him in a slot that is closer to his actual value.
A situation like this is not the time to debate the website’s rating system. You’re trying to do everything in your power under pressure within 30 to 60 seconds to ensure that you don’t make a mistake that will cripple your team.
Be careful using ADP (average draft position) when deciding which remaining player has the highest value. While these numbers usually are based up on thousands – even millions – of selections that have been made to date in real and/or mock drafts, they should just be used as a guide.
Selections might have been made in drafts for free leagues, free mock drafts, small-money drafts, big-money drafts and in leagues with varying formats that don’t really apply to your situation. While fantasy sports have become a huge industry, it’s safe to assume that the majority of people drafting are doing it for recreational purposes, probably have not spent as much time as you have doing their homework, don’t know as much as you and certainly are not experts.
We’ve all been in mock drafts or drafts for free leagues where half of the people drafting or more leave the room after just a few rounds. So while ADP can be used as a general guide, do you really want to let the opinions or actions of thousands of people who just don’t care as much as you do or put in anywhere near the amount of time that you do be the basis of selections you make in a draft that you’ve been looking forward to for months? Here is an example based on drafts I’ve been involved with: A quick rundown of the ADP for Patrick Mahomes on various platforms shows that he is being selected as high as sixth on average on one platform and as low as 25th on another. Others have him being picked on average in the sixth, 11th, 15th, 16th, 18th and 25th slots.
Looking at seven drafts that I have been involved with, Mahomes has been chosen 35th, 50th, 10th, 17th, 16th, 15th and 22nd. His ADP in those seven drafts is 23.6, however you can see that the majority of picks are clustered between 10 and 15. So, if you use this ADP as your guide when making decisions under pressure, you might not think Mahomes is the best value pick available for the 25th pick of your draft when in fact he really might be a huge value in that slot.
So much of the decision depends on who else is available, what your team’s needs are and the format of your league, however it’s a pretty safe bet that Mahomes would be a tremendous pick at 25, 30 or 50 unless you already have a QB, which you shouldn’t since he’s the best.
Based on drafts I have participated in and studied, here are some players who might turn into value picks by dropping well below where they should be selected on any given draft day. Feel to refer to this list in case of emergency:
Quarterbacks
Josh Allen – consensus rank 41, drafted as high as 56
Kyler Murray – consensus rank 46, drafted as high as 60
Ryan Tannehill – consensus rank 83, drafted as high as 99
Joe Burrow – consensus rank 103, drafted as high as 117-129
Running Backs
D’Andre Swift – consensus rank 32, drafted as high as 50-63
Darrel Henderson – consensus rank 56, drafted as high as 65-78
Mike Davis – consensus rank 52, drafted as high as 65-75
Melvin Gordon consensus rank 84, drafted as high as 104-114
Nyheim Hines – consensus rank 99, drafted between 119-139
James Connor – consensus rank 97, drafted as high as 118
Wide Receivers
Allen Robinson – consensus rank 24, drafted as high as 37-39
Tyler Lockett – consensus rank 42, drafted as high as 55
Adam Thielen – consensus rank 59, drafted as high as 61-63
Julio Jones – consensus rank 44, drafted as high as 67
DJ Moore – consensus rank 40, drafted as high as 58-62
Cooper Kupp – consensus rank 38, drafted as high as 57
Cortland Sutton – consensus rank 73, drafted as high as 107
Diontae Johnson – consensus rank 43, drafted as high as 57-59
Kenny Golladay – consensus rank 68, drafted as high as 109
Tee Higgins – consensus rank 48, drafted as high as 79
Odell Beckham Jr. – consensus rank 62, drafted as high as 76-78
Robby Anderson – consensus rank 71, drafted as high as 78
Chase Claypool – consensus rank 61, drafted as high as 76
Will Fuller – consensus rank 87, drafted as high as 103-128
Jerry Jeudy – consensus rank 63, drafted as high as 88
Ja’Marr Chase – consensus rank 67, drafted as high as 84-95
Cortland Sutton – consensus rank 73, drafted as high as 107
Laviska Shenault – consensus rank 85, drafted as high as 105
Brandin Cooks – consensus rank 76, drafted as high as 106-108
DJ Chark – consensus rank 89, drafted as high as 108-111
Tyler Boyd – consensus rank 69, drafted as high as 95-97
Deebo Samuel – consensus rank 73, drafted as high as 93-94
Antonio Brown – consensus rank 86, drafted as high as 102-113
Curtis Samuel – consensus rank 102, drafted as high as 129-140
Mike Williams – consensus rank 107, drafted as high as 124-130
Jarvis Landry – consensus rank 92, drafted as high as 112
Tight Ends
TJ Hockenson – consensus rank 50, drafted as high as 70
Noah Fant – consensus rank 79, drafted as high as 107-113
Dallas Goedert – consensus rank 94, drafted as high as 116
Mike Gesicki – consensus rank 106, drafted as high as 123-130