Three Person Drafts: NFL Week 16 (Sun-Mon Slate)

DRAFTIt’s time for another week of DRAFT strategizing for those who love to play one-week daily fantasy games at DRAFT.com. This time of year, fantasy owners who are calling it a season in fantasy leagues, tend to focus more on daily fantasy games like DraftKings or Fanduel. However, I have found that those who couldn’t get enough Mock Drafts and or live to draft in leagues over the summer, really do love the format and awesome app over at Draft.

Last week was a good week, but I’m really excited about 3-person drafts this week. There are so many ways to approach this week’s drafts and they all work. We’re going to be able to get a nice advantage from all the draft positions and some of those advantages are huge! Keep in mind, this is for the Sunday-Monday slate.

Let’s compare some Draft with DailyRoto this week projections:

*Projections may change throughout the week. These projections were pulled on December 21st for the Sun-Mon slate.

Quarterbacks

Quarterbacks DailyRoto Draft Draft Rank
Patrick Mahomes 24.20 20.4 1
Russell Wilson 21.73 18.5 9
Andrew Luck 21.22 19.9 2
Matt Ryan 18.83 19.6 3

Russell Wilson seems like a great play, but we don’t want to draft him unless Patrick Mahomes and Andrew Luck are drafted early. We want to draft Mahomes or Luck so that one of our opponents gets Matt Ryan who is projected for significantly less. You’ll see how this plays out later.

Running Backs

Running Backs DailyRoto Draft Draft Rank
Ezekiel Elliott 26.18 20.8 2
Todd Gurley 23.45 17.2 5
Saquon Barkley 22.39 18.0 3
Christian McCaffrey 21.71 22.4 1
Nick Chubb 21.02 16.2 7
Alvin Kamara 18.78 17.9 4
Joe Mixon 15.92 16.4 6

Once again, both sites pretty much agree on the top six RB’s, but the order is changed. Notice that Ezekiel Elliott is projected ahead of everyone else by a fair amount. Since Christian McCaffrey is projected higher on draft, Zeke should be available to us in the second and maybe even third position. There are lots of concerns with Todd Gurley this week. You can draft Saquon Barkley over Gurley without giving too much up if you don’t want to deal with the risk. Nick Chubb will be on a lot of our teams.

See More of Daily Roto’s Projections here.

Wide Receivers/ Tight Ends

Wide Receivers/TE DailyRoto Draft Draft Rank
DeAndre Hopkins 18.28 16.4 1
Davante Adams 17.25 16.3 2
Michael Thomas 17.24 14.8 4
Tyreek Hill 16.79 13.6 7
Travis Kelce 16.77 12.8 12
JuJu Smith-Schuster 16.40 14.4 5
Julio Jones 15.86 16.2 3
Antonio Brown 14.72 13.9 6

Notice that the projection between Davante Adams and Kelce are less than .5 pts. We would like to get DeAndre Hopkins early, but there’s no reason to rush in for a WR. I’d rather draft Mahomes or Luck in the second or third round than Adams or Michael Thomas.

What a difference a day makes. JuJu Smith-Schuster was the top projected WR on DailyRoto until his groin injury knocked him out of practice this week. He’s still up there, but he’s risky and you’ll have to monitor his participation in practice leading up to the game. I’m probably going to just pass on him.

Drafting in First Position

You Team 2 Team 3
Ezekiel Elliott Christian McCaffrey Saquon Barkley
Patrick Mahomes Alvin Kamara Todd Gurley
DeAndre Hopkins Davante Adams Julio Jones
Tyreek Hill JuJu Smith-Schuster Michael Thomas
Nick Chubb Andrew Luck Matt Ryan
DR Total: 106.47 DR Total: 95.36 DR Total: 97.77
Draft Total: 87.4 Draft Total: 90.9 Draft Total: 85.8

All the draft positions will work out well this week, but drafting in First Position is one of the biggest edges we’ve had in weeks. I took a little creative license and had Team 3 drafting Todd Gurley over Alvin Kamara even though Kamara is projected higher on Draft. Either way, I think the first five picks will be RBs. This allows you to draft Mahomes early and wait until the last pick to get Nick Chubb.

Even if Team 2 or Team 3 does something weird, you’re still going to get some combination of Patrick Mahomes, DeAndre Hopkins, Todd Gurley, and Alvin Kamara. As long as Mahomes and Hopkins aren’t picked before getting back to you in the second round, you’re golden.

 

 

Drafting in Second Position

Team 1 You Team 3
Christian McCaffrey Ezekiel Elliott Saquon Barkley
DeAndre Hopkins Patrick Mahomes Todd Gurley
Alvin Kamara Tyreek Hill Julio Jones
Antonio Brown Travis Kelce Michael Thomas
Andrew Luck Nick Chubb Matt Ryan
DR Total: 94.71 DR Total: 104.96 DR Total: 97.77
Draft Total: 90.5 Draft Total: 83.8 Draft Total: 85.8

We’ll call this the KC special. You can play around with different options at WR, but pairing Mahomes with Zeke and then drafting Chubb late is such a winning strategy this week. I also played with passing on Mahomes. It still works, but not as well:

Team 1 You Team 3
Christian McCaffrey Ezekiel Elliott Saquon Barkley
Patrick Mahomes DeAndre Hopkins Todd Gurley
Alvin Kamara Davante Adams Julio Jones
JuJu Smith-Schuster Russell Wilson Michael Thomas
Antonio Brown Nick Chubb Andrew Luck
DR Total: 95.81 DR Total: 104.46 DR Total: 100.16
Draft Total: 89.0 Draft Total: 88.2 Draft Total: 86.0

Remember I talked about not drafting Russell Wilson? You could draft this way, but it’s more useful to illustrate why we want to draft Mahomes or Luck early. Check out what happens if we change it up a little bit and draft Luck:

Team 1 You Team 3
Christian McCaffrey Ezekiel Elliott Saquon Barkley
Patrick Mahomes DeAndre Hopkins Todd Gurley
Alvin Kamara Davante Adams Julio Jones
JuJu Smith-Schuster Nick Chubb Michael Thomas
Antonio Brown Andrew Luck Matt Ryan
DR Total: 95.81 DR Total: 103.95 DR Total: 97.77
Draft Total: 89.0 Draft Total: 89.60 Draft Total: 85.8

Team 1 remains the same and we actually lose about half a point, but Team 3 loses almost 3 points. This is a zero sum game. What hurts our opponents, benefits us.

Drafting in the Third Position

Team 1 Team 2 You
Christian McCaffrey Ezekiel Elliott Todd Gurley
DeAndre Hopkins Alvin Kamara Saquon Barkley
Patrick Mahomes Davante Adams Michael Thomas
Joe Mixon Julio Jones Tyreek Hill
JuJu Smith-Schuster Andrew Luck Russell Wilson
DR Total: 96.51 DR Total: 99.29 DR Total: 101.60
Draft Total: 90.0 Draft Total: 91.1 Draft Total: 82.1

Meh. Let’s try this:

Team 1 Team 2 You
Christian McCaffrey Ezekiel Elliott Todd Gurley
Alvin Kamara Saquon Barkley Patrick Mahomes
DeAndre Hopkins Davante Adams Michael Thomas
Andrew Luck Julio Jones Tyreek Hill
JuJu Smith-Schuster Matt Ryan Nick Chubb
DR Total: 96.39 DR Total: 100.51 DR Total: 102.70
Draft Total: 91.0 Draft Total: 90.9 Draft Total: 82.2

Different team, but the projections are about the same.

Team 1 Team 2 You
Christian McCaffrey Ezekiel Elliott Todd Gurley
Alvin Kamara Saquon Barkley DeAndre Hopkins
Patrick Mahomes Davante Adams Michael Thomas
Antonio Brown Julio Jones Andrew Luck
JuJu Smith-Schuster Matt Ryan Nick Chubb
DR Total: 95.81 DR Total: 100.51 DR Total: 101.21
Draft Total: 89.0 Draft Total: 90.9 Draft Total: 84.5

Alright enough messing around. We want our opponents to draft Julio Jones, Joe Mixon, and Matt Ryan. Here’s how we manipulate the draft from the Third Position so our opponents draft weak players:

Team 1 Team 2 You
Christian McCaffrey Ezekiel Elliott Todd Gurley
DeAndre Hopkins Alvin Kamara Saquon Barkley
Patrick Mahomes Davante Adams Michael Thomas
Joe Mixon Julio Jones Andrew Luck
JuJu Smith-Schuster Matt Ryan Tyreek Hill
DR Total: 96.51 DR Total: 96.90 DR Total: 101.09
Draft Total: 90.0 Draft Total: 90.8 Draft Total: 83.5

Here’s how the zero-sum game works. We didn’t make our team any better, but we did make our opponents worse. The only problem with this strategy is Joe Mixon. I wouldn’t be surprised if Team 1 takes Chubb over Mixon, which would increase their projection. Even if that happens, it’s a two-team race which is still profitable for us.

Conclusion

You can anticipate these drafts changing as injury updates roll through. I wouldn’t blame you if you flex to some less risky players to avoid the madness. We definitely want to be the first or second team to draft a QB even though Russell Wilson is virtually free. Don’t stress too much about WR/TEs. It would be nice to draft Hopkins, but there’s a huge tier of WR/TEs that we choose from. Good luck this week.

 

Good Luck