What’s up FANation?! We kicked off the Fantasy Alarm Best Ball series on Real Time Fantasy Sports last night and it was pretty interesting to say the least! I will breakdown what caught my eye and how I feel about a few teams. The draft board can be found below.

General Thoughts

The first thing I want to start with is that I am not thrilled about my team. It started right away, as my first pick is probably my least favorite of the whole draft. I considered Derrick Henry and Kenyan Drake as well, but I didn’t really like any of the available options at eighth overall. If I could re-do that pick, I would, and I would take Henry. I would feel way better about my running back group with him, while still feeling comfortable with my wide receivers.

Speaking of Henry, a few people on Twitter said they were shocked to see Henry went in the second round. A fair reaction, but it is a full PPR, 10-team league, so while falling to 12th overall was a bit of a surprise, it wasn’t the craziest thing I have seen. Still a nice value there for Mr. Bender though!

Another thing that Twitter made clear, they loved KANGASMAN’s roster! Some responses included “KANGASMAN you get a thumbs up” and “KANGASMAN CRUSHED that draft” and lastly “Great draft Kangas! Best team IMO.” And you know what, I can’t argue with any of that. I am a big believer in stacking up on running backs early (which is a big reason why I hate this particular draft for me), and he still came away with a really strong receiving corps. He was the last person to draft a quarterback, but he got steady ole’ Drew Brees and Drew Lock brings some nice upside. I don’t really care for his tight ends, but overall, his team is strong and will be tough to beat!

One thing that can help you have the best team is landing some of the best value picks of the draft and Kangas did just that with his selections of Todd Gurley and Mike Evans in back-to-back rounds. I am not sure how we let that happen. However, my favorite pick of the draft is probably Joker’s fifth round selection of Allen Robinson . I was really hoping he would somehow fall to me and I was shocked to see him still there halfway through the fifth.

If we are going to have favorite picks, there’s also going to be least favorite picks. Jordan Howard in the sixth round of a PPR league is probably my least favorite pick of the draft (and I say that as someone who likes Howard this year). I just can’t see him producing enough to be worth that pick. This draft did see running backs going consistently above their ADP though and I am sure that factored into Josh’s selection of Howard (as well as only having one back rostered through five rounds). I hate to keep picking on Josh, but Russell Wilson in the fifth is also a tough pick for me to like, even more so in hindsight too with Kyler Murray going in the seventh and Deshaun Watson going in the ninth.

However, the biggest blunder of the draft goes to Tony for only selecting one quarterback in a Best Ball league. I needed to know how that happened so I spoke with Tony and he said “I put Drew Lock in my queue a few picks before mine and he wasn’t close to next on the quarterback list. I was busy with something that came up mid-draft and I missed the pick, but just assumed I got Lock and moved forward with the draft as if I did. Immediately after the draft, I realized that I didn’t get Lock and I probably screwed myself out of having any chance of winning this league.” I feel bad for Tony, but I also think people can learn something from this. Never assume that people are going to draft based on a site’s rankings and always make sure a pick went how you planned if you have to use a queue for a brief period of time. With that being said, if you are going to only have one quarterback, he got one of the two that you want to have. If Jackson can stay healthy and play all 16 games, he could still possibly have a chance.

Key Notes

  • Nine teams chose to grab two defenses, with only Justin Hollis choosing to have just one defense. I believe two defenses is the correct move here. Defensive scoring can vary greatly on a weekly basis and it is nice to have the bye week covered.
  • Half the teams chose to go with one kicker while the other half chose to go with two. I personally like to go with one kicker on RTS because your bench isn’t that deep and usually kickers score about the same amount on a weekly basis. Yes, you lose out on probably about five to ten points on their bye week, but I would rather give myself more position players and have more weekly upside.
  • Seven teams selected either one or two quarterbacks, with the other three teams selecting three quarterbacks. I generally prefer two quarterbacks, but I can see going three if you miss out on all of the top scoring options and decide to wait. It makes this particular draft interesting, since two of the teams that selected three quarterbacks had Murray and Watson as their QB1.
  • Half of the teams selected three tight ends and half selected two. I think you can go either way and it depends on who you get. I went three because I waited on tight end and wanted to give myself a bit more upside at the position. I like that the two teams that landed Kittle and Kelce both chose to only select two tight ends, which is exactly what I would have done in their shoes.

While I don’t like how my team turned out, I still had a blast with this kickoff draft. We plan on doing plenty more of these, so if you want to get in on the action, follow me on Twitter @JustinVreeland and send a DM my way. I look forward to seeing more of you in them!