I'm not a big fan of the serpentine-style draft. They tend to favor the teams that have the initial picks.
It makes sense from an intuitive sense. If you could have the No. 1 pick in either the first or second round, which would you prefer? The first round is more valuable (those are the 12 guys, after all, who are selected before the second round even begins).
And that bias is repeated over and over. The third round is better than the fourth, the fifth is better than the sixth. And so on.
Using my player values, I ran a mock draft through six rounds, then went back and looked at which teams did the best. With those player projections, the team picking first is the winner, coming in about 20 fantasy points ahead of the 2nd and 3rd teams. That's using standard fantasy scoring.
The other nine teams - 75 percent of the league - is 30 points back, and some teams are close to 40 points behind.
To me, that's just too big of an advantage. It's not enough to overcome, but why have that pollutant in there?
A draft order also heavily influences who you pick in the first round, and those are the most important players. Suppose, for example, you really want Adrian Peterson, Doug Martin or Arian Foster. With a draft, you will only get one of those guys if you have a top-4 draft pick.
The other problem I have with a serpentine draft is the spacing of picks. Once a league gets to the seventh round, I want a regular repeating order, with each owner selecting once every 12 picks. With a serpentine draft, there are four owners at the end who are left waiting 20 and 22 picks between selections.
Auction for me, please. Then everyone has a fair chance at every player. They're more work, but it's just a far superior way to allocate the talent.
On this chart below, I'm showing the expected fantasy production of each franchise after six rounds, relative to the team picking first. The teams with the Nos. 2-3 picks should be about 5 percent behind. The other teams should be about 9 percent back.
BEST DRAFT POSITIONS
Pos Pct
1 100.0%
2 95.1%
3 95.0%
4 91.1%
5 90.9%
6 90.9%
7 90.0%
8 90.1%
9 91.1%
10 89.8%
11 91.3%
12 91.6%
Ian Allan
May 31, 2013