Has anybody else noticed that ESPN's 'your draft room is ready' chime is actually the opening riff to Bowie's The Man Who Sold The World... ?
As a big proponent of going heavy at WR in fantasy football, I thought it might be instructive to do some mock drafts to see what kind of team I could put together double-tapping wide receiver in the first two rounds from various draft slots. So as an experiment, over the last few days, I've done one ESPN 12-team mock draft (normal scoring, 1 QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, 1 Flex, 1 TE/DEF/K, 7 bench), from each draft slot, and then divided the results into groups of three (slots 1-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-12) to see if any patterns emerged.
The premises and assumptions of the experiment: as I see the player pool this year, there are only three RBs who I consider elite: Shady McCoy, AP and Jamaal Charles. By contrast, I consider there to be seven elite WRs: Megatron, Demaryius Thomas, Dez Bryant, AJ Green, Julio Jones, Jordy Nelson and Brandon Marshall. As a consequence, when I drafted out of slots one through three I selected one of those elite RBs, and then grabbed two WRs in rounds two and three. This provides something of a 'control group' to contrast against the later draft slots, where I took two WRs regardless of who was on the board. For the purposes of the experiment I ignored Jimmy Graham, even though if I were drafting 'for keeps' I would have seriously considered him in the middle drafts slots and would have snapped him up in a heartbeat if he was still on the board late in the first round. I also ignored the three elite QBs (Peyton, Rodgers and Brees).
Slots 1-3 Typical Roster:
QB: Nick Foles, Sam Bradford
RB: LeSean McCoy, Toby Gerhart, Khiry Robinson, Jeremy Hill, Andre Williams
WR: Jordy Nelson, Vincent Jackson, Torrey Smith, Riley Cooper, Brandin Cooks, Markus Wheaton
TE/DEF/K: Jordan Cameron, Chiefs, Dan Bailey
(As we go through this, you'll see a lot of the same names show up on the bench. We all have our sleeper preferences, after all.)
When you're drafting from the top of the snake, you'll be very lucky if any of those top seven WRs make it back to you in the second round. Just as likely, you'll end up with a duo like Alshon Jeffery and Jackson as your starting wideouts. Given the Flex spot I tended to triple-up on WRs (starting the draft RB-WR-WR-WR) to compensate for missing out on the Magnificent Seven. If you go RB-WR-WR-RB instead, you'll be able to grab someone like Frank Gore as your second RB, but the cost might be a downgrade in that third WR to someone like Michael Floyd.
Slots 4-6 Typical Roster:
QB: Matthew Stafford, Joe Flacco
RB: Andre Ellington, Bishop Sankey, Pierre Thomas, Lamar Miller, Terrance West, Andre Williams
WR: Calvin Johnson, Jordy Nelson, Jeremy Maclin, Rueben Randle, Kenny Stills
TE/DEF/K: Dennis Pitta, 49ers, Alex Henery
BYE WEEK ALERT!!!: Even drafting as high as fourth, you should be able to snag Megatron and still get one of the remaining elite seven on the rebound. However, at this point I need to point out the unusual bye week situation with those top seven WRs. Johnson, Jones, Marshall and Nelson all have week 9 byes, as do secondary targets of interest like Jeffery, Kendall Wright, Randall Cobb, Roddy White, and even Sammy Watkins. Week 9 this year is a receiver bloodbath.
Now, if you're a graduate of the Chris Liss School of Bye Management, you don't care - stacking your bye weeks together just means 16 weeks of dominance and one week of hoping to get lucky. If, however, you're like me and prefer to spread your bye weeks out to optimize your bench juggling and hold onto your sleeper picks as long as possible (stacked byes, to me, just means multiple players dropped at the same time when you need to fill those holes, whereas with staggered byes you can rotate your sitting players through just one bench spot), then that week 9 bye-a-palooza is a killer. I'd much rather pass up the chance at getting Calvin, pick later in the draft and get a combo like Dez and Julio, than face that week 9 bench culling. But that's just me.
Slots 7-9 Typical Roster:
QB: Tony Romo, Eli Manning
RB: Andre Ellington, CJ Spiller, Stevan Ridley, Jeremy Hill, Terrance West, Andre Williams
WR: Demaryius Thomas, Julio Jones, Torrey Smith, Kendall Wright, Andre Holmes
TE/DEF/K: Greg Olsen, Bills, Alex Henery
Now this is my kind of roster. A deep, outstanding WR corps, tons of home run potential among my RBs, I still got a good QB and I didn't have to entirely punt TE or DEF.
Note that, at least by ESPN's ridiculous pre-ranking in the 40s, Ellington has a ton of helium. He's consistently gone by at least the third round in these mock drafts, and I saw him go as high as pick 19. Bishop Sankey and Jordan Cameron are the other two players you'll almost always have to move on early if you really want them, based on what I've been seeing in these mock drafts.
Slots 10-12 Typical Roster:
QB: Tony Romo, Andy Dalton
RB: Ryan Mathews, Toby Gerhart, DeAngelo Williams, Terrance West, Andre Williams, Stepfan Taylor
WR: Dez Bryant, Julio Jones, Keenan Allen, Cordarelle Patterson, Kenny Stills
TE/DEF/K: Jordan Reed, Saints, Nick Folk
These rosters ended up fairly similar to the 7-9 slots, although in this particular case I worried too much about stocking up on upside RBs in the middle rounds and missed out on getting at least a decent defense. I find the warts tend to show a bit more when you're drafting at either end of the snake, as it becomes that much harder to judge whether players will get back to you and you have less opportunity to respond if a position run develops.
To me, drafting in the early rounds is all about acquiring the safest elite talent you can, then filling in around those studs. As I said at the top, I only judge there to be 14 such players in the pool this season: three QBs, three RBs, seven WRs and one TE. If you can roster two of those players right off the bat, while your opponents get only one or even none (if, for instance, they're drafting from a later spot and are committed to going RB-RB), you're already ahead.