DRAFT DFS Strategy Week 16: Snake Draft Advice

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

It’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.

• More Info: DRAFT Review: A Detailed Look at Draft.com

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.

 

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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.

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Good Luck