Fantasy Football 2018: The one rule of snake drafts

If you’re stuck doing a snake draft for Fantasy Football 2018, then you need this one rule to succeed. Don’t break it, because its fool proof and an unfortunate necessity of success.

Those who do not participate in fantasy football 2018 auction drafts are resigned to snake drafts and the dread of picking order. You want Todd Gurley? Too bad; it’s out of your control unless you have the first overall pick. What if you have the fourth pick and really love Leonard Fournette? That is much too early to take him, but there is a zero chance he will be available on the comeback in round two. You’re just out of luck or forced to make a silly choice.

These are the issues with snake drafts. They hard wire owners into certain selections. The strategy of drafting is thus very different than auctions. It is about filling production spots instead of roster spots. A top-five pick has to be a bonafide star with little to no risk because you aren’t selecting again until pick 18 or so, when all of the elite players are gone. This leaves one single rule to follow for snake drafts this fantasy football season. Don’t break it!

Two brothers from New York, Dan Salem and Todd Salem, debate the Fantasy Football 2018 in today’s NFL Sports Debate.

Todd Salem:

This season feels like a 12-player elite draft, with three tiers and little room for argument. The first tier is made up of the four elite running backs. The second tier is Antonio Brown, by himself, at pick five. The third tier is the three remaining elite WRs and the next four RBs. The order within tier three can be haggled over, but there is a slight drop-off after pick 12.

What that means for the beginning of snake drafts is that owners at the top are going to get a tier one player and no one else elite. It may be best to draft at the end of round one and hope to come away with two elite guys. In a 12-team league, even that is no guarantee.

The real questions arise in the second round. For years, the common snake draft strategy involved taking RB-RB in the first two rounds. That went by the wayside with the proliferation of running back by committee (RBBC) and the takeoff of the passing game. As odd as it sounds, even though RBBC is as fruitful as ever, and the passing game is too, I think RB-RB is back to being the only way to start a Fantasy Football 2018 draft unless you are positioned to take one of the top four wide receivers.

Dan Salem:

The fact that its nearly impossible to argue with the logic behind first and second round drafting in Fantasy Football 2018 snake drafts leaves me wondering how anyone is still screwing this up. The first 12 picks are a complete lock. I’d go so far as to say that even the order of your tier three players is not up for debate. You must pick the running backs first, because you will NOT get a better one later, dumb luck aside.

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I hate the philosophy of RB-RB and the mere idea that such a thing cannot even be debated. Yet winning is still the goal of Fantasy Football 2018, so how else can an owner possibly draft? Antonio Brown is worth pick five and getting one of the other three top receivers at the end of round one is smart, because you will be picking again soon at the start of round two. Plus, someone in your league is going to make a mistake. We will get into that in our next debate. Set quarterbacks and tight ends aside in rounds one and two, or suffer the consequences of defeat.

Because of the current dichotomy of a small number of elite players and everyone else, the best draft slot is no longer pick one or two. The best pick is sixth, which will be either Kareem Hunt or Antonio Brown. This pick has the fastest turnaround time until drafting in round two, while still garnering its owner an elite player. Brown may slip a spot to sixth and Hunt is nearly on par with the top four backs. Everyone else comes with questions, but we already debated them in full.

Todd Salem:

There are three tiers of elite producers, but after that there is a batch of lead backs who must be scooped up ahead of their projected draft slots. It is simply too hard to compete with running backs who don’t play often.

For example, instead of elite WRs like Davante Adams or Mike Evans in round two, I would “reach” for Jordan Howard or Joe Mixon. Receiver production can be found later. There is nowhere to find a full-time back after the third round.

Take a look at Mixon specifically. He was kind of bad as a rookie, averaging just 3.5 yards per carry. But he played just 14 games and was given fewer than 200 carries. This year, he will be the starting back from Week 1. Forget even second-year improvement. If he is just as bad as he was last year, he will likely be a top-15 runner just based on volume alone.

If instead of going RB-RB, an owner takes A.J. Green or Michael Thomas in round two, when things come back around for a third time, the running back options will be horrid. There is a slim chance that someone like Mixon falls to the middle of the third round, but banking on that could be catastrophic. After him, what remains are: rookies who may be lead backs or may not be worthy of owning at all, washed veterans, and Mark Ingram. Go ahead and take Ingram in round three and see how your RB production is for the first month of the regular season. That’s why he’s being taken in the sixth round of many drafts.

The reward for taking wide receivers isn’t large enough to warrant passing on even average starting backs.

• Emmanuel Sanders is going 60 picks after the elite receivers. He had three straight seasons of 1,000+ yards and 5+ touchdowns before losing all semblance of quarterback play a year ago. Now he has Case Keenum.
• Randall Cobb is going 80 picks after the elite WRs. He is, once again, the second option in Green Bay after falling to third in the pecking order the past few years. The last time he was here was 2015, when he essentially had the same season breakout star Cooper Kupp just had. And the year prior, Cobb went for 1,287 yards and 12 touchdowns. He was the 14th-best non-QB in the league.
• Robby Anderson is going 90 picks after the elites. He was a top-20 wide receiver in 2017. You get the point.

I wouldn’t feel good about passing on the likes of Evans or Thomas in the early going. But it will be worth it when you see the well-rounded production of the full roster. It is simply too hard to fill starting RB spots after the first few rounds.