I continue to feel like I have more articles to write that I want to write than days in a week, so I hope it doesn’t feel on your end like I’m flooding your inbox. I know it’s a lot to keep up with, and more direct advice is sometimes helpful, but traditionally this type of excitement has led to some of the work that I am most proud of, and find most fulfilling, and I’m pretty sure most of you subscribing to my newsletter (which is still silly to me) would want me to keep firing.
But today will be one of those pieces of direct advice, where I share a high-stakes draft from Monday night, where I drafted out of the 1.03 slot. If you’re not familiar with the FFPC, it’s a TE Premium format, meaning TEs record 1.5 points for each reception, while every other player gets a standard 1 PPR. It’s also a two-Flex format, where you start one QB, two RBs, two WRs, one TE, and then two Flexes, plus a K and DST.
That creates a ton of optionality. Unsurprisingly, I’m often going in with the mindset of treating those Flexes like WR slots to get four WRs into my lineups, to the extent that I’m fine being pretty light even at RB2 and not expecting many circumstances where my RB3 or RB4 could contend to be Flex plays. But that doesn’t mean it never happens for me in these leagues! Part of the whole idea of building late RB depth is it is unequivocally the position where when you hit, it’s most meaningful, and you know the week to use the player because he’s widely projected for a significant touch increase (often because the starter is out).
But setting aside the RB element, the cool part of the FFPC is that while I like to think of the Flex as WR spots, the TE Premium element makes that position very viable there, too, and especially with the late TE depth this year, I definitely expect teams to be starting two and sometimes even three TEs in some of these leagues. I’ve definitely done that before, and it was a key part of the team that recorded my top overall finish in the shootout portion of this format (19th).
And that’s especially important drafting out of the 1.03, where the top tier in a TE Premium is fairly consistently Justin Jefferson, Ja’Marr Chase, and Travis Kelce. Kelce actually carries an ADP a bit higher than Chase, but while this was my second 1.03 of the year, I have not gotten Chase to fall there in either.
And while I did consider going another direction purely due to the risk of Kelce and not really loving being overexposed to him, Cooper Kupp or Christian McCaffrey would have been the picks, and those guys don’t exactly come with a ton less risk. It’s a tricky proposition, but early in draft season and without knowing where I’ll land in every draft going forward, I felt like it made sense to just accept what the ADP gods were giving and start with Kelce.
Here’s how the draft shook out, with some thoughts on my picks.
Round 2/3 turn
While Chris Olave was a nice consolation prize, I’ve come to think of him more in a mini-tier with Tee Higgins and DeVonta Smith than with the guys up ahead of him, which made the Jaylen Waddle pick feel like a real snipe and missed opportunity, particularly as it came right behind a falling Mark Andrews and Davante Adams. Patrick Mahomes and Jalen Hurts both went early, and things got exciting in the middle of the round before those three went back to back to back. The Waddle snipe was especially heartbreaking in that the drafter who went Stefon Diggs at 1.04 ran the clock down and was undoubtedly considering going Josh Allen there after the early QB decisions; that drafter ultimately gambled that no one at the turn would want an elite QB, and that gamble paid off when Allen made it back to them at the 3.04.
If you’re wondering, Andrews would have been the pick for me even as a TE-TE start with Kelce, had he made it. That would have been difficult structurally but provided some uniqueness in this large-field tournament. Ultimately, Olave was a fairly easy pick, with Higgins the only real other consideration, but the thought being he had a shot to come back to 3.03, where I’ve seen him in multiple drafts so far. Unfortunately, he did not make it back, as the 1.01 drafter started a Zero RB build that I (surprise!) wound up really liking.
So the 3.03 was one of the biggest decision points of the whole draft. Rhamondre Stevenson and Breece Hall would have both been considerations there just 24 hours earlier, and Stevenson likely the pick, but this was the evening of the news that both of their backfields would be adding a former first-round fantasy RB. I was curious to see where they’d fall, and they went 4.01 and 4.08, with neither becoming a consideration for me at the Round 4/5 turn.
So at 3.03, with the first Big Tier Break hitting at WR, the decision for me came down to reaching into the next tier of WRs to start to employ a similar strategy to the one I laid out for home leagues, grabbing Allen to get an elite QB (and probably frustrate the 3.03 drafter), or accepting that the value in the draft was in the uncertain RB position, with only seven RBs taken to that point compared to 14 WRs (and five total QBs + TEs). That narrowed the decision down to Jonathan Taylor and Jahmyr Gibbs, and while I do think Gibbs would have been a totally justifiable pick in this range, Taylor is a player I was ready to rank in the back end of my first round, probably as my RB3 or RB4, before his weird holdout/trade request situation cropped up. Taking on more risk to get him as an Anchor RB in the third round wasn’t an easy decision, but the upside outcomes for this roster should both Taylor and Kelce be right are not difficult to envision.
One of the sliding doors elements to the Waddle over Josh Allen pick at the 2.09 was that had I been able to take Waddle at 2.10, Olave would have been pushed into consideration (and almost certainly been selected) in the four picks at the turn, which would have increased the possibility of Higgins coming back to the 3.03. A Kelce/Olave/Taylor start was fun, but I was left feeling like a Kelce/Waddle/Higgins start was not far off.