I’ve got another mock draft under my belt. It is a 14-team PPR league, featuring industry experts who sat down at the Fantasy Sports Trade Association in Minneapolis last week. This one includes a trophy and will be played out during the season (with roster moves and starting lineups) so everyone should be making a good effort.
The draft took place during a two-hour broadcast on the Sirius XM fantasy station.
Notable rules: PPR scoring, start 3 wide receivers plus a flex (RB-WR-TE), and no trades. This is the first 14-team league I’ve competed in about 20 years.
There was a pre-draft lottery for draft positions and I got the second choice. With the first pick spoken for, I elected to draft 2nd (and next-to-last in even-numbered round).
RealTime Fantasy Sports hosted this draft, and their site has a nice color-coded chart showing where all the players were chosen. (When hosting your draft, if you have a large or projection TV, you can hook up your computer, with all picks displayed prominently for everyone to see – it’s pretty cool.)
Two of the teams didn’t select a running back in the first three rounds. Chris Liss started with Beckham-Evans-Hilton as his receivers. He ended up with Mark Ingram, Tarik Cohen and Aaron Jones as his three backs, with Terrance West added at the end. Mike Clay of ESPN opened with Julio-Keenan-Diggs, then went with Zach Ertz in the 4th round. He later selected six running backs: Lynch, Duke Johnson, Kerryon Johnson, Devontae Booker, Jordan Wilkins and Latavius Murray. Both Liss and Clay, of course, can also add running backs later on the waiver wire.
My 16 players are as follows:
1.02 Ezekiel Elliott: With this being PPR, I think most preferred David Johnson or LeVeon Bell. They have caught lots of passes. I like Elliott’s offensive line, and I like his durability. He was never hurt at Ohio State, and in two years in the pros has never even appeared on an injury report.
2.13 Amari Cooper: When I elected to take the No. 2 spot a few weeks back, I figured Cooper would be my 2nd-round choice. He’s a lot higher on my board than on others. I like Jon Gruden’s history of building his offense around his No. 1 receiver. He’s had a 1,000-yard receiver in each of his last 13 seasons as a coach/coordinator, with most of those guys catching over 75 balls. Most famously, Gruden got top-5 receiving numbers out of 34-year-old Irving Fryar at Philadelphia in 1996 (with Ty Detmer at quarterback).
3.02 JuJu Smith-Schuster: Similarly, I was confident all along this would be my third-round pick. I’m a lot higher on him than others – I see him as very likely to put up top-10 numbers. He had a great rookie season and really came on during the second half of the year. Smith-Schuster caught 43 passes for 725 yards in his final eight games last year, with 6 TDs. He’s for real.
4.13 Aaron Rodgers: Here’s my first curveball. Everybody in this league was hoping to wait on quarterbacks. That’s what I was thinking as well. But Rodgers could be really special; he might throw 40 touchdowns. I thought he was worth a top-20 pick overall, so I couldn’t let him go when he slipped all the way down to 55th.
5.02 Lamar Miller: He’s a starting running back. I think he’s got a decent chance of putting up top-20 numbers at the position. With this being a 14-team league, I figured he made sense at this spot, giving me the flexibility to look at other positions for the next half-dozen rounds. I also considered Dion Lewis. I think Lewis might be a little better, but Miller looks like a safer choice. With this being a 14-team league, I didn’t want to miss on the pick.
6.13 Tyler Lockett: You need to start three receivers and a flex, so you really need four good wide receivers. Lockett is healthy and in a contract year, and the Seahawks will need to lean on him a lot more this season (with Jimmy Graham and Paul Richardson gone). I like Lockett enough that I chose him even though he shares the same bye as Amari and JuJu. Other receivers I considered with this selection included Sterling Shepard, Robby Anderson and Randall Cobb.
7.02 Kyle Rudolph: There are three big-time tight ends this year, and then just six more that I really like. With there being 14 teams, I wanted to get this position covered, rather than sifting through prospects on the waiver wire, trying to find somebody who can do it. John DeFilippo is running Minnesota’s offense. He comes over from Philadelphia, where the Eagles used their tight ends extensively last year. In DeFilippo’s only previous season as a coordinator, Gary Barnidge put up the most unexpectedly awesome season by a tight end ever – 9 TDs and over 1,000 yards for a bad Browns team.
8.13 Rishard Matthews: I’m not a huge Matthews fan, but I needed to add another wide receiver. I figure I’ll probably need to start four most weeks, and I have only three on my roster (all with the same bye week). Robby Anderson and Sterling Shepard went a few picks earlier; would have loved to have one of those guys. In hindsight, maybe I could have picked another receiver at 6.13 and Lockett would have made it here, but I have no way to know if I could have pulled that off.
9.02 Trey Burton: There are only nine tight ends I like, and this is the last one of that group. I don’t think he should be available here. So I’ll make the unconventional move of being the first to select a second tight end. This means there will be six teams in this league starting off with less-than-ideal tight ends (in my opinion). If something goes south with Rudolph, I might still be fine at this position. Burton should get some flex starts. Matt Nagy is re-working Chicago’s offense, and he’s planning for Burton to be their Ertz-Kelce type guy. There was no RB or WR that I loved. If I wanted to go for a depth-type running back, I could have chosen James White.
10.13 Philip Rivers: Last round I was the first to select a second tight end. Now I am first to select a second quarterback. This is a 14-team league, so I wanted to get two of the top 19 quarterbacks on the board. All of the good ones will be chosen. And by taking Rivers, I figured it would be a signal to other teams to start picking their second quarterbacks – putting the heat on teams hoping to wait In hindsight, I could have wait until the 12th and still gotten Alex Smith or Marcus Mariota.
11.02 Kenny Golladay: My plan was to be the first to chose a defense, but Jacksonville went at 11.01. So I will circle back to wide receiver. In this format, I will need four good ones most weeks, and my first three all have the same bye. Golladay is big and talented, and showed brief flashes as a rookie of maybe being as good as teammates Golden Tate and Marvin Jones.
12.13 Austin Ekeler: Ekeler did well with his limited touches last year, with 5 TDs in only 74 touches. I think they’ll start using him more as a change-of-pace this year, so he’ll probably get a couple of replacement starts when I need to plug in a warm body. If Melvin Gordon gets hurt, Ekeler could be outstanding as a fill-in.
13.02 Stephen Gostkowski: Everyone is waiting on kickers, so I will be the first to dip into this position. The Patriots have scored over 150 kicking points in five of the last six seasons.
14.13 Carolina Panthers: Scoring for defenses in this league includes 6 for touchdowns, 2 for takeaways, 1 for sacks and 3 points for allowing 10 or fewer points. Panthers are in the top half-dozen on my board, so I chose them to beat the late-round rush at the position.
15.02 Ryan Grant: Assuming Andrew Luck is healthy, Grant might be surprisingly good – maybe better than Matthews, Golladay and even Lockett. So reasonable, I think to hold his rights. I’ll see what he looks like in August and early in the season. If he doesn’t look viable, he’ll be the first guy I release to pick up a bye-week fill-in or different prospect.
16.13 Rod Smith: He’s an insurance policy. If Ezekiel Elliott were to go down with an injury, it would be difficult to outbid the 13 other teams for his replacement. I don’t want to get in that kind of situation, so I’m using a roster spot to make sure I’ll have the starting Dallas running back each week.
—Ian Allan