The last mock of the week has me pumped.  When you get the likes of Howard Bender, Dan Malin, Ivar Anderson, Nate Marcum of Fantasy In Frames, and outstanding mock draft army members together for a great draft, it makes you want more.  We had a 12 team PPR Superflex 18 round draft and it was great.  I’ll cover two topics this week: Superflex vs. Single QB strategy/ADP and some ADP trends we are starting to see in the MDA after two weeks.

Here’s the draft board for this week’s Sflex:

And here’s last week’s:

Having participated in some superflex leagues so far, the prevailing trend is that Mahomes and Jackson go somewhere in the first four picks.  In our draft last week they went a little later in the first round but I think there may have been a slight oversight that it was a SFlex mock on the drafters early in the first round. 

Quarterbacks were taken with 8 of the first 26 picks in last week’s mock, but only 4 of 26 in this week’s. Most drafts have more than 4 QBs go in the first 26 but they room was conservative in the mock with all the heavy hitters in it.  There are definitely three ways to go when it comes to QB in the SFlex format. Take one early and wait on the second, take two early and get two studs, or wait and take two some time later in the draft whether it be two middle ranked or two later ranked QBs. 

I went with taking two studs early in this one grabbing Lamar Jackson with the 4th pick and then following that up with Russell Wilson in round 3.  I was worried it would hurt me at RB, but I came away with a very respectable duo of Aaron Jones and Todd Gurley .  You will see in all SFlex leagues that the value at WR gets moved even later into drafts as the focus on QB pushes the receivers further down the board when most who take a QB early have to get their RBs too. Allen Robinson went in the early 5th round of both SFlex mocks but was a 3rd or 4th round pick in the other mocks.

My approach as always is to get good value and get a balanced team. The Fantasy Alarm evaluator has this team 2nd in starters, but first in overall team. Not sure what Bender was doing, but he built the worst starting lineup, but managed the second best bench (behind mine hehehe).  Howard was at the turn with the 12th pick.  He took Chubb and Edwards-Helaire with his first two picks. He said he wasn’t a believer in CEH, but wanted to see what the team would look like if he took him. Was that the kiss of death or was it his picks of Daniel Jones and Big Ben as his top two QBs?

We also had some good PPR mocks the rest of the week. One question that came up was how does taking an early TE affect the rest of your team? NMSparty took George Kittle in the early 3rd round of a ten team mock. In a ten team league I think you can do well with this strategy but it may be more difficult to build a good team in larger leagues. He did well with his build, except more for his choices at RB than his early Kittle selection.  Next week I’ll test out this strategy in a 12 team mock and we’ll get into it in more detail.

So what ADP trends are we seeing early in the mock season? One interesting player is very dependent on the type of league we were mocking.  In Superflex he was a 9th round pick. In 10 teamers he went undrafted, and in 12 teamers he went around round 14.  Joe Burrow can be a boom or bust pick. No one knows if he’ll have a Pat Mahomes type of first season or a more typical rookie QB year where they struggle.  It’s important to note what the ADP you are looking at is based upon.

Melvin Gordon is another player who can be a bargain this year based on his ADP.  The problem is with no preseason games and not much coming out of camp yet, we have no idea what the plan is by the Broncos in terms of his use.  Based upon his contract you’d expect him to get a majority of the touches, but Philip Lindsay, who has done a good job the last few years, is still there to steal playing time.  Gordon’s ADP is 45 across all our mocks. Last year, despite the holdout, Gordon still had an ADP around 22.  Did he decline in ability? It’s only the unknown of how he will be used which is keeping his ADP so low.  That’s a buying opportunity folks.

Where is Rob Gronkowski being drafted?  Gronk came out of his “retirement” to play with his buddy Brady.  Gronk comes with a lot of questions as to his ability to stay healthy and how Bruce Arians will use his TEs.  Brady will be happy to be reunited with him but OJ Howard and Cameron Brate still in the picture what will be Gronk’s value.  In our mocks he is going as the TE10.  From a value standpoint, this is probably a safe place for him.  He could potentially outperform and give you value, but if he is average or fails to meet his ADP, there isn’t much risk. 

It was a great week with the MDA and hope to see you back next week. Stay safe and as always I’m happy to answer any questions on Twitter @gasdoc_spit