With one more big draft weekend coming up, I've mostly completed nine drafts with at least three more to go, plus a handful of best ball leagues. It's a good time to take inventory on my draft portfolio to see the common threads of my teams, and to see if there are any significant omissions that I can act on in my remaining drafts. It's also good for me to help track what work needs to be done with some of my early teams (paging Marqise Lee shares). I've tried to lay out the unique league characteristics in the grid. There have been two auctions, and in the six other redraft leagues (I have one dynasty league) I've also specified my draft slot.
Draft slot really controls more than you'd think in evaluating my portfolio. So far I've drafted third, fifth, seventh, ninth, 10th and 12th (of 14) in my redraft leagues, which means that the only two shots I've had at Todd Gurley and Le'Veon Bell have been in my auctions, and I didn't get them in either spot. I've had one chance to choose between David Johnson or Ezekiel Elliott, and one more to choose between Antonio Brown and Saquon Barkley. Here's the grid of my teams so far, and I'll discuss a few particulars afterward.
and ...
Playing in a bunch of MFL's and Draft Best Ball leagues can really skew your perspective - I keep thinking that I'm weighted heavily in certain players, when that isn't really the case. Many of my "shares" are in those MFL's and Draft leagues. As an example, I've frequently said on-air that I have a ton of Marquise Goodwin on my rosters, but it turns out that most of those shares are in MFL's, as I have only two shares in my season-long leagues.
As a consequence, it turns out that my portfolio is more diverse than I anticipated when I began this exercise. I only have five players in more than two of my leagues so far, and one of those, Chase Edmonds, is just a lottery ticket / handcuff. My most-owned player so far, in four leagues, is ... Tarik Cohen. If he flops, of course I blame Liss. Fortunately three of those four leagues are PPR leagues. I keep finding myself in situations where I need to add running backs in a hurry in the 55-65 overall range, and he usually happens to be the top guy for me there. Dalvin Cook has also made it thrice - in my first two drafts in July, and then again on Monday. He's there usually as a function of draft position, as the top remaining RB available around the turn. I also have two receivers on three different teams. Davante Adams is there by design, and I'd like to get him in more leagues. I keep taking him ahead of Keenan Allen, A.J. Green, Mike Evans, and pre-injury Doug Baldwin. The other three-time receiver is Demaryius Thomas, who usually falls into the "best available" WR3 for me, though once I took him as my WR2. I confess that I'm starting to get cold feet with him a little - on Monday I passed on taking him, going with Marvin Jones instead, to get a little diversity.
Here's my full list of multi-league players:
QB (2): Deshaun Watson, Patrick Mahomes, Marcus Mariota, Alex Smith, Blake Bortles, Sam Darnold.
RB (4): Tarik Cohen
RB (3): Dalvin Cook, Chase Edmonds
RB (2): Mark Ingram, Kenyan Drake, Marshawn Lynch, Alex Collins, Aaron Jones, Isaiah Crowell, Devontae Booker, Bilal Powell, Jordan Wilkins.
WR (3): Davante Adams, Demaryius Thomas
WR (2): DeAndre Hopkins, Tyreek Hill, Robby Anderson, Marquise Goodwin, Chris Godwin, Paul Richardson, Anthony Miller, Robert Woods, Dede Westbrook.
TE (2): Greg Olsen, Delanie Walker, O.J. Howard
K (2): Justin Tucker, Stephen Gostkowski
DEF (2): Steelers, Bengals
Notable Omissions:
The omissions fall into two categories - players I've lacked the opportunity to draft (or the courage to pay for in an auction) but would be happy to own still, and those that I've purposefully either avoided or passed up when presented with an equal opportunity to draft. Nobody cares that I haven't yet drafted first or second and thus don't own Bell or Gurley (even though this is the second time I've mentioned it and no I'm not bitter, thank you very much). So let's look at a few of those from the second group of players.
Odell Beckham Jr. - I view Hopkins vs. Beckham as a 50-50 call, and I keep landing on Hopkins (while hoping for Hunt to get to me instead). For me the tiebreaker is Watson over Eli.
Melvin Gordon, Leonard Fournette - I'm starting to see these guys get jumped up, in some cases within the top 7, which I hadn't seen earlier in the year. For me, I still have them squarely after the top 7 RBs and the top 3 WRs, and thus haven't opted to draft them. I was actively avoiding Fournette (persistent ankle woes, lack of receiving chops (or, at least, history), inefficiency with his volume), but I'm starting to back away from that hot take (I refuse to purposefully misspell that to look like a cool kid - that ship has since long left the harbor).
Christian McCaffrey - I simply don't believe that Ron Rivera and Norv Turner will stick by their proclamation to give McCaffrey the volume they're promising, and thus won't take him where he's going.
Aaron Rodgers - With the exception of Watson (once in a QB-flex league, once in an auction), I'm just not taking the QBs early. You probably have heard that from 50% of the fantasy football industry, I imagine. So that also means no Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Russell Wilson, or Cam Newton either.
Jerick McKinnon - I was all hyped to get him in my PPR leagues to help ease the RB crunch, but his training camp injury has scared me away.
Jimmy Graham - This is a straight-up case of avoidance. I get that Graham is in a very friendly situation with the Packers and could get 20 red zone targets. I also owned Graham in a ton of leagues last year and had more of a chance to watch him carefully, as usually the Seahawks often played in the less-populated afternoon time slot or in a stand-alone slot. He looked very crispy, if not done, at many times. I hope I'm wrong for his sake, but it won't be on my watch this year.
Jacksonville defense - I understand and respect the rationale for jumping them early, but I'm just never there when I see teams taking the Jags defense as early as the ninth round. I just can't do it.
There are plenty others I just don't have, many which I won't have, but I don't see the need to have a long drawn out list. You can extrapolate from the grid above who I'm missing.
Good luck this weekend in what's for many people the final big draft weekend before the season starts.