Audio By Carbonatix
It’s Facebook Messenger season, wherein you annually check the oft-forgotten app and begin planning your hometown fantasy football draft parties. The high school legends. The in-law obligations. The workplace cabals. They’re sending out Doodles and passive-aggressively volunteering you to bring “whatever you want to drink!”
I’ve been expecting you. And I’m here to help.
Last month a friend and I hopped in our first redraft league of the year at the FFPC, which hosts a range of contests at varying price points. For the warm up we entered a $35 draft, enough to feel like there’s something on the line without going fully into the deep end.
That mindset lasted all of about two weeks.
After putting a bow on that opening draft we took a week off and then entered one of the FFPC’s flagship contests, the Big Gorilla with a $350 buy-in. It’s a fun format that combines a 12-team redraft league with a larger tournament for the pair of teams that advance out of the initial league.
The starting lineups are fairly standard (1QB/2RB/2WR/1TE/2Flex/1K/1DST). The only noteworthy scoring quirk is that it’s tight end premium, so those players get 1.5 points per reception.
These higher stakes drafts against faceless nerds on the internet are the ultimate prep course. You get to see who is undervalued, buzzworthy, and a downright waste of draft capital. And then you use this intel to send your former roommate right back to Waffle House. Here’s what we learned from my second fantasy draft of this young draft season.
It’s Never Too Early For Brock Bowers
We drew the 5th pick so our first decision was between CeeDee Lamb and budding juggernaut Brock Bowers. In this format you can make an argument for Bowers at the 1.01 and eventually that’s where we landed. Lamb is a tantalizing pick this year, but we like going elite TE here and didn’t think Trey McBride would come back to us in the 2nd (he went 1.11).
Even in standard leagues, targeting Bowers is wise. Yes, even in the first found of a 12-team league full of your college buddies. He can produce at elite wide receiver levels and his elite profile in your lineup as a tight end creates a perpetual mismatch in favor of owners who roster him. Imagine having Dez Bryant at his peak, startable at tight end, week in and week out. With George Kittle perpetually blocking, Travis Kelce finally in decline, and Mark Andrews in an offense that will always forfeit touches to the superstar, running quarterback, there is one undisputed apex predator at tight end. And the best part is, unlike this time next year, your opponents don’t universally know this yet.
But our draft position put us in an awkward spot for the next few rounds with a flat part of the board. So we reached on players we love.
That led us to a trio of receiver picks with Drake London, Tee Higgins, and Xavier Worthy. One of my spicier takes for this season is that London finishes top 3 at his position. He’s set up for an absurd target share and the preview we got last year of the Penix-London connection was too tasty to ignore. Very few players boast the former first-rounder’s combo of talent and workload.
That put us in a pretty comfortable position. You could argue that we got too comfortable as we proceeded to draft five rookies over our next seven picks.
Rookies Remain Undervalued Assets You Should Load Up On
The picks I want to highlight are RJ Harvey at the 5.05 and Jaydon Blue at the 11.5. It’s common knowledge at this point that Sean Payton’s backfields are historically a fantasy points buffet, where there’s touches for all involved. That didn’t pan out last year as Javonte Williams, Audric Esteme, and Jaleel McLaughlin all flopped under Payton.
Esteme and McLaughlin are now buried in the depth chart, the oft-injured Williams is a Dallas Cowboy.
Harvey comes in as the talented rookie and he’ll likely start in a timeshare with JK Dobbins, an elite prospect whom you no doubt recall has suffered major injuries and missed at least four games for the past four years in a row.
This is a bet on Payton getting the production he’s looking for from his backs and that Harvey earns a sizable role during the back half of the season. He’s drawn early comparisons to longtime Payton workhorse Alvin Kamara after all.
We had similar logic for the Blue pick. The Cowboys’ offense is in a primo spot to bounce back this year and there are points there for the taking. The top three backs on the team (Williams, Miles Sanders, and Blue) are new additions, and this is a backfield you want to place a chip on. In the double digit rounds it makes the most sense to take a big swing, so we went with Blue.
I’m more than willing to draft two Cowboys backs and see where the chips fall. Blue’s offseason has been mired by rumors about his work ethic, which were quickly quelled by his new employer. But he’s so much faster than Williams and Sanders that we expect him to win the job outright throughout the season.
QB Is A Game Of Chicken. Don’t Be Scared
Things didn’t come together for us to take one of the top QBs, so we waited… and waited… and waited. We ended up pushing our luck too far and watched Drake Maye, Dak Prescott, and late-round cheat code Justin Fields get snatched up.
When Fields went off the board we lost some of the wind in our sails. We took Jordan Love and Trevor Lawrence as (hopeful) upside picks that pair with players we took earlier. At this point in the draft if we can get borderline top 12 QB production from either guy, that should be enough to carry us. In both, we have former first-rounders for whom life in the big leagues hasn’t come easy. But with revamped weapons (Love) and improved play-calling (Lawrence), consistency is likely.
Swing For The Fences Late
Before taking our kicker and defense in the last two rounds, we went on another tear of rookie picks with Tahj Brooks, Ollie Gordon, and KeAndre Lambert-Smith. Explosive youngsters sitting pretty as backups for the Bengals, Dolphins, and Chargers, respectively.
Gordon in particular has the athleticism and college production to bet on should something happen to Devon Achane. While not as elusive, the 2023 Doak Walker-winner is a Ricky Williams-esque downfield bowling ball.
This is the part of the draft where most of the guys you take are likely to be churned once waiver wire pickups start, so it doesn’t make sense to take “safe” picks. You’re likely to strike out with most of your late picks, so you may as well swing for a home run instead of a bunt.
Here’s The Final Team
QBs
- Jordan Love
- Trevor Lawrence
RBs
- RJ Harvey
- Zach Charbonnet
- Bhayshul Tuten
- Jaydon Blue
- Tahj Brooks
- Elijah Mitchell
- Ollie Gordon
WRs
- Drake London
- Tee Higgins
- Xavier Worthy
- Rome Odunze
- Matthew Golden
- Christian Kirk
- KeAndre Lambert-Smith
TEs
- Brock Bowers
- Tyler Warren
To close things out we took our good luck charm, Younghoe Koo, at kicker. No, we did not draft him for juvenile jokes about his name. He’s been a steady producer over the last few years, benefitting from an indoor, dome offense that can move up and down the field and stall out in field goal range.
We’re hoping for less stalling with London as a key piece of the puzzle, but Koo should get the job done until a better kicker option comes along.
Two drafts down, about 15 more to go before Week 1.