The first mock draft following the NFL draft is one of the top events of my year, yet somehow, it seems as though I’ve gone and ruined it. When I went into the draft, I carried my best ball strategies over from last season’s successful drafts. The winning strategy tends to be drafting wide receivers early, then some more wide receivers, followed by some wide receivers to round your team out. I executed that to begin my draft, landing Odell Beckham and Michael Thomas with the 9th and 16th picks in a 12-team Draft.com fast draft. What happened after that has me begging for a redo. In fact, I contemplated doing another mock draft rather than share the results with you all in my article, but then again, isn’t the entire goal of a mock draft to prepare yourself for the real thing? What better way is there to do that than to learn (and teach) by failures. Perhaps you can join with me in learning from the mistakes of this draft rather than suffer a similar fate with real money on the line.
If you haven’t played in Draft.com’s best ball contests, I sincerely believe you have been missing out. You draft 18 players, no kickers, no defense, and there are no waiver wire moves or lineup setting during the season. Each week the site takes your best possible lineup and adds your score to the year-long cumulative total. At the end of the season, the most total team points wins real cash. There is unlimited strategy involved in these contests and after the draft, they are maintenance free. It is fantasy football perfected. Here is how my draft shook out:
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Quarterbacks
Aaron Rodgers (Rd 3), Mitchell Trubisky (Rd 13)
Yes, yes, I know, don’t draft quarterbacks early, right? Well yes, that is fitting when we are talking about top-end QBs like Russell Wilson, Carson Wentz and even Tom Brady, but when it comes to Aaron Rodgers, his ADP is far too low for the expected return. Obviously if he gets injured again, my entire season goes down the tube, but I’ll gladly take my chances. Every single full season he has played has resulted in a top 10 overall value above replacement. You can expect the same from a handful of other players like Le’Veon Bell, Todd Gurley, Antonio Brown and David Johnson, but when you consider that each of them is far more likely to miss a chunk of time than a quarterback, then you’ve got to wonder if Rodgers actually is a top-five fantasy asset. That may sound like hyperbole because it is so contrary to the general opinion, but I have not used any fallacious premise to draw the conclusion, have I? Feel free to fade him if you wish, but I’ll be laughing my way to the bank when he posts his 7th fantasy season in the past decade where he finishes in the top 12 of all players in VBD. Trubisky will be a popular breakout candidate this year considering all the new weapons the Bears have taken in, and perhaps even more importantly, the new scheme Matt Nagy will bring to Chicago. He should provide more than sufficient support for Rodgers if he should ever have a down week.
Wide Receivers
Odell Beckham (Rd 1), Michael Thomas (Rd 2), Stefon Diggs (Rd 4), Golden Tate (Rd 5), Quincy Enunwa (Rd 14)
I do realize that running backs typically come after quarterbacks. That isn’t what we are doing here though, so hold tight. Before we get to that masterpiece trainwreck, let’s take a moment to marvel at the league’s top wide receiver core. While everyone else in my league drafted 6 to 9 wide receivers, I needed only 5 to accomplish my goals. You see, in best ball leagues, it tends to make sense to load up on wide receivers because there just isn’t enough consistency among even the top players to rely on them week to week. What we have here, however, are three bonafide reception hogs:
Odell Beckham: 90+ receptions in all three full seasons of his career
Michael Thomas: 90+ receptions in both seasons of his career
Golden Tate: 90+ receptions in each of his past four seasons
They are among only a handful of other active players who have done that back to back years. With that kind of consistency, I was able to go with the 5-WR strategy which enabled me to get as much depth as possible at running back while not leaving quarterback or tight end bare. It further helped that Enunwa was sitting there for me deep into the draft as another safe bet. It isn’t that he is extraordinary by any means, but he is as good of a bet as anyone after round 10 to lead his NFL team in targets this season. The Jets’ wide receiver core is barren. Diggs doesn’t exactly fit in with my scheme of safety, but his best ball value is too good to ever pass up in the fourth round of a 12-team league. When he is on the field, you are bound to get a number of huge performances which is precisely the name of the game.
Tight Ends
Hunter Henry (Rd 6), Ricky Seals-Jones (Rd 16), Jake Butt (Rd 17)
You may not be all that excited about my picks here, but give it two months and I guarantee both Seals-Jones and Butt will be considered among the top sleepers at the tight end position. Both are ready-made pass catchers in an offense without tight end competition or much in the way of target competition anywhere on the depth chart. You can bet on a number of big games from each of these top-end athletes and that’s all we can ask for from a TE2 and TE3 in best ball. Henry just might carry the load all by himself, however. After all, he has been every bit as efficient as Zach Ertz, Travis Kelce and Rob Gronkowski with his targets since joining the league. He is young enough, too, that Henry is likely to only improve, and now that Antonio Gates is out of the way, 120 targets could be on the way which would put him well within that top tier at the position.
Running Backs
Ronald Jones (Rd 7), Tarik Cohen (Rd 8), D’onta Foreman (Rd 9), Aaron Jones (Rd 10), Royce Freeman (Rd 11), Ty Montgomery (Rd 12), Spencer Ware (Rd 15), Jordan Wilkins (Rd 18)
No, I didn’t leave out the first three names. That really is what I ended up with. In rounds 1 and 2, I always take the best available player then fill in the rest of the team as needed. Well, when Round 3 came, I either had to reach for a back with significant question marks (Carlos Hyde, Dion Lewis, Jay Ajayi), or take the best quarterback in the history of the world. Round 4 offered me even lesser options (just 7 picks later!): Alex Collins, Lamar Miller or Tevin Coleman. No matter how badly I needed a back, there was no chance I was taking one of those guys in the 4th with talents like Diggs and Tate on the board. “I’ll figure it out later”, I thought, and boy did it take some figuring out. I’ve got the say, the final product could have been much worse, as I believe I grabbed some serious volume late into the draft with Jones and Freeman. There have been rumors of Jordan Howard being dealt and/or Lamar Miller being cut from the Texans so perhaps I will hit the jackpot with Cohen or Foreman. Behind them, Jones and Montgomery were the two best backs in Green Bay last season so I believe I have a better than 50% chance of owning the always productive Green Bay starting running back on top of Jones/Freeman and the two hopeful backups. Then to close things out, I nabbed two lottery tickets. Ware is just a Kareem Hunt injury (or more likely, suspension) away from being a top 10 fantasy running back again. Wilkins appears to be the best bet to lead the Colts in carries this year, as odd as that may sound. You can say what you want about Marlon Mack‘s talent, and I will quickly agree with you, but you will have a difficult time making the case that he will be given more than a dozen touches per game. That means that the rookie needs only to beat out Christine Michael, Matt Jones and three pass catching/special teams playing running backs for the goal-line carries and early down work. Sign me up for unlimited last round Jordan Wilkins shares. With all of that being said, it would have been so much easier had I just taken Leonard Fournette over OBJ or Melvin Gordon instead of Michael Thomas. You can bet I’d have loved the final look of my team much more. While there is some hope here, it would take a few great breaks to be successful and that is not the kind of thing you want to be saying about your best ball draft. Hopefully you all learned from my mistake here and can prevent the same from happening to you this year in best ball leagues on Draft.com. Thank you for reading and good luck!
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