Drafting Rashee Rice in the FFPC Main Event

A look at a draft where I played Rice in a tough format fit for him

For those of you who aren’t aware of the FFPC Main Event format, the regular season is just 12 weeks, at which point the top two teams advance to the Week 15-17 sprint for the big prizes, and the top four teams advance to the two-week division playoffs in Weeks 13 and 14. If you’re the No. 3 or No. 4 seed, you can potentially get into the sprint by winning your division playoffs (which usually requires beating the top two teams in your division in back-to-back weeks, which even if you’re a massive 2-to-1 favorite in both games for some reason, is still only about a 45% chance of happening).

So after 12 weeks, you’d really like to get that autobid for one of the top two regular season seeds (as well as the prize money that comes along with that), rather than needing to win in both Week 13 and Week 14 against the other best teams in your league. Or, obviously, being part of the 67% of the field that is eliminated after Week 12 from the big prizes (there are some consolation prizes which are nice, but they aren’t what we are playing for).

Part of what I was trying to articulate in the Rashee Rice piece the other day, and in the ensuing conversations I’ve had, is how hard it is to intentionally take a zero for the first six weeks with one of the first six or so players you select, and then still out-perform all the other teams in your league. It’s nice in theory that you could get a really high-scoring player through, but in practice it’s not super easy to do so.

I did mention in writing about him that a reader who wrote in asking about it that plays in a league where 8-of-12 teams make the playoffs was probably right to target Rice in that format. In that format, there’s no meaningful value to finishing first in the regular season; in an 8-person bracket, there are no byes. Do I think the payoff is worth the gamble if all I need to do is finish eighth through 14 weeks? Sure.

That’s different even in just a 6-of-12 format where you should really be shooting for the top two seeds where you can get a bye and not have to play in Week 15. Obviously you can still win the fantasy championship without a bye, but needing to win three straight games against playoff teams is tough. Needing to win two is tough! But needing to win three, and in a situation where after you win the first you have to go play one of the bye teams that is more likely to be a bit stronger — that’s tougher. When you have the bye, you also avoid the other best team until the finals. It’s not always that way — the bye teams aren’t always the very best teams — but the point is all these potential little advantages are things worth seeking.

Far too often, the mindset in situations like this focuses solely on what the benefit will be. “If I get Rice to the playoffs, my team is going to crush.” “Aren’t we supposed to draft like we’re right? If all my other picks hit, I’ll just add Rice on top of that. If the other picks don’t carry me, that team wasn’t very good anyway.”

It’s kind of absurd. Intentionally making it more difficult is a bigger handcuff than most realize. And then on top of that, what I tried to argue in the Rice piece is there is a range of outcomes to the play. Maybe instead of coming back as a guy who projects for 17-18 PPR points per game, he’s someone who projects for 15-16. Not a huge dropoff, but enough of one that suddenly there’s basically no justification for having taken the zero for six weeks. And that’s the part that’s the 100% certainty, as I wrote in the Q&A yesterday. What we know for sure is he’s going to be a total zero for six weeks, so not being 100% sure he’s an elite scorer when he comes back is meaningful.

And in a format like the FFPC Main Event, you have to be really delicate. Because of the Chiefs’ Week 10 bye, Rice is going to miss at least seven of the 12 weeks up to the point where two-thirds of the field is eliminated. Thinking that you can take that many zeroes in that high of a pick and navigate your team to advance, and then hoping that Rice will pay off with huge scores late to justify that decision, is wild. It basically suggests there aren’t other good drafters or teams in your league. And then among other things, one question I’d have is why don’t you think you could draft another player in the Round 6 range who has upside? The opportunity cost there is so high. I actively want exposure to a lot of other guys!

One of the opinions I’ve heard is to navigate that, you need to have requisite WR depth, and then you can add Rice on top of that. But because of Rice’s ADP in late Round 6, that probably means four WRs in the first five rounds, which means a weak starting lineup at other spots. As far as I’m concerned, playing a late-round QB build with a late-round TE build, or a Zero RB build, and then saying, “Well I have the WR depth to support the Rice pick,” isn’t going to get you enough points in the first 12 weeks in the vast majority of outcomes. I kind of think the optimal way to execute it, as a thought experiment, would be with elite onesies to bolster the starting lineup early, and then being thinner at WR but really playing into health and production from those spots. If you do draft like you’re right with only two or three early WRs, and have elites at other spots like QB, TE, and RB1, then add Rice to that WR group, you might be able to bridge the gap of enough early-season scoring while he’s out and carrying him through to when he strengthens your build.

Obviously I understand the value of WR depth, but a big part of that is giving yourself several shots at key breakouts so you’re dominating the Flex by about Week 3, and especially by the time the bye weeks hit. In the pseudo-WR-depth-plus-Rice build, you don’t get anything from Rice at that point and need to basically hit 100% with all your early WR picks. It’s really risky with such a short regular season, where the late-round RB stuff doesn’t always have the time to manifest in a massive way.

I did a draft this morning with two of my favorite Canadians, Jakob Sanderson from the great Thinking About Thinking Substack and Lawrence Bailey, a Ship Chaser and overall great guy. Both of them were more into the Rice idea, so we talked through it before, and I wrote a lot of the above obviously. But as our draft unfolded, we did have an opening to consider Rice, and eventually did pick him.

I’ve been asked why in some recent streams with Shawn we seemed to not even consider Rice, and other questions like when I actually would take him. Part of why Shawn and I don’t consider him is the builds themselves need more than what he’s offering at certain points. But today’s build was one I thought threaded the needle well, and has a shot to be a competitive Rashee Rice team out of the 1.02.

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Quarter 1

In recent drafts, an RB tier frequently closes before 2.11, but A.J. Brown and Ladd McConkey have been making it there. We started with Jahmyr Gibbs, hoping to back him up with a couple WR options that did come to us at the Round 2/3 turn. It was a pretty straightforward start. There was some mild TreVeyon Henderson discussion at the 3.02, but he went at 3.01 to make that decision easy.

One note about the four quarters framework would be that as far as Quarter 1 picks go, Brown and McConkey probably aren’t super high upside, and these first three rounds do probably suggest you need extreme upside in Quarter 2 to maximize your high-end scorers.

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Quarter 2

You’re always at the mercy of the draft room you’re in, particularly when you’re on the turn, and in this room, the falling value relative to ADP was wide receivers who spent most of the offseason as Round 3 picks. Garrett Wilson has not been a target for me, but it was hard to pass him up at 4.11. Then after the drafter on the turn took two of my favorite targets in this range, the decision at 5.02 was two more guys who had ADPs in the front half of Round 4, Marvin Harrison and Davante Adams, meaning both had fallen more than a half round.

In the end, the Harrison pick was a bit of a swing on upside, even though Adams certainly has upside, too. The idea was with Brown, McConkey, and Wilson all being strong talents whose offensive situations hold down their overall profile just a touch, you’d want an option that when he hits, hits in a way that he could essentially look like the WR1 on this roster.

After things moved all the way back around to us, we nearly got Jaylen Waddle in Round 6, but settled for Evan Engram in a room where TEs were going aggressively, even for the TE Premium format (the drafter in the 1.09 had already taken three by Round 6, so we didn’t expect to get any falling values at the next turn when we were up in Round 8, making it a good time to get into the tier that was quickly disappearing).

After grabbing Engram, and putting some TE scoring into the starting lineup to match the Anchor RB that is Gibbs and some real routes and role stability in the other WR positions, but where WR upside was probably still a concern, I reversed course and floated Rashee Rice to the guys, after I had spent the pre-draft period arguing why we didn’t really want to build through him (knowing of course they both liked or were at least very open to that path).

I only say I floated him to say that I was very comfortable with it, rather than being in a comanager situation where I was more forced that direction. I think this is a good example of a type of build where Rice made a lot of sense, because I feel good about plugging in the top four WRs most every week in the early going — we didn’t have the bigger swings with some real risk like Travis Hunter or Waddle, though it’s important to always keep in mind there’s volatility in every profile because that’s the nature of the NFL, and Harrison is definitely adjacent to those profiles — but if Rice does hit the type of ceiling that everyone talks about, and I do very much see, then he’s the type of player that can immediately vault frankly all the other WRs on this roster and become our WR1. We’ll find someone else to bench at that point, depending on who is scoring, but Rice will just be the dude if he returns and looks like he did in 2024.

And that would be some very helpful Quarter 1 production to infuse into our lineup in Week 7, on a team that does benefit from being right in that way. Still, to take Rice here, we had to forgo both Matthew Golden and Jerry Jeudy, and those are two guys that I don’t think would have been bad additions to this build either, and frankly similar cases could be made without having to lock in the certainty of six missed weeks. Which is pretty massive if any of our other WRs do miss time.

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Quarter 3

We got a nice gift in Round 8 when Patrick Mahomes fell more than a full round, and we didn’t look that horse in the mouth. Mahomes obviously pairs with Rice, and just generally he’s a very nice value at this point that I think adds some real QB scoring to our starting lineup. Mahomes and Engram at the onesies isn’t exactly elite options at either spot, but they definitely provide more scoring floor than late-round options and will help us weather the early-season thinness that Rice brings to our Flex discussions.

Cam Skattebo was the room’s favorite of the rookie RBs, which were mainly the only names in consideration, though I did float Travis Etienne a little bit. When we squared into the rookies, we decided to let Dylan Sampson and Jaydon Blue go, because they had the later ADPs in the middle of Round 10. The hope was to try to get one to come back, and we were quite pleased when that happened with Blue at the 10.11 pick. Once that tier of RBs was gone, we added some WR upside with Luther Burden in the Quarter 3 range, before the WR Window was completely closed.

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Quarter 4

While we went into the rookie RB pool with Skattebo and Blue in Quarter 3, the option was always open to come back with a more stable early-season “chaperone” in Quarter 4, when the opportunity cost was lower. The RB pick at 13.02 probably would have been Rhamondre Stevenson, so it was pretty awesome that he made it all the way back to 12.11. Despite being our fourth RB drafted, he’ll likely be our Week 1 starter. That’s how it works sometimes, to make sure you get access to the upside profiles you need, but then cover yourself with the frankly less important Week 1 lineup.

From there, we decided Harold Fannin was the piece we needed to pull up because we couldn’t accept not getting him on this team as the TE2. The TEs were going ahead of ADP, and Fannin’s ADP is right around where our next pick would have been.

Quinshon Judkins continued a massive fall from an ADP of 11.01 all the way to the 14.11, and while I frankly didn’t really care if we got him there, I was more than fine with it at that point. Jakob made a compelling case for the upside swing at that point, and he’s probably right.

Keaton Mitchell, Ja’Tavion Sanders, Jarquez Hunter, and Malik Washington rounded out our build as we continued to stack upside profiles down the stretch, then took our kicker and DST.

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Final thoughts

In the end, the build looked like this:

QB: Patrick Mahomes
RB: Jahmyr Gibbs, Cam Skattebo, Jaydon Blue, Rhamondre Stevenson, Quinshon Judkins, Keaton Mitchell, Jarquez Hunter
WR: A.J. Brown, Ladd McConkey, Garrett Wilson, Marvin Harrison, Rashee Rice, Luther Burden, Malik Washington
TE: Evan Engram, Harold Fannin, Ja’Tavion Sanders

I do think at this point, the Rice upside is a pretty exciting element to have on the roster. I think we’ll have enough early-season scoring to still be in striking distance when he returns, and if the thesis is correct that he’ll supercharge our scoring in the final weeks of the regular season, we should be right in the mix.

But I also think it took a lot of things going right to feel that good about it. Drafting from the end, we were fortunate with a ton of falling values in the even rounds, as the drafters on the wide side of the board that were closest to us didn’t seem to be the types that track ADP very closely and make their picks based on that. I’m not either, so I get it, but it did mean substantial values against ADP with Wilson in 4 (plus Harrison on the wrap), Mahomes in 8, Blue in 10, Stevenson in 12, and Judkins in 14.

We certainly couldn’t bank on having access to all those plays when we made the Rice decision, but I do think we might could worked our way into a good roster either way. I think this is a pretty fun example of how to consider the risk tradeoffs here, and how to navigate them within a build, while also hopefully offering more understanding of where my caution about Rice is, and why I don’t have him ranked higher like many of you have asked.

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Until next time!