Around the League
The three positions where the spread was widest
Eight tight ends left the board before anyone said the words George Kittle, and only
two of them, Bowers and McBride, beat his 228. Kyle Pitts went at 55, Tucker Kraft at 60
and Sam LaPorta at 73. That is three separate managers reaching for the position while
the best tight end still available sat there untouched into the eighth round.
| Slot | Best | Proj | Worst | Proj | Gap |
|---|
| Quarterback | Lamar Jackson | 427 | Trevor Lawrence | 324 | 103 |
| Tight end | Brock Bowers | 262 | Kyle Pitts Sr. | 143 | 119 |
| Defense | Steelers | 149 | Browns | 80 | 69 |
| Kicker | Jake Bates | 146 | Mevis and Pineiro | 0 | 146 |
The kicker row decides more than it should: first to last on starting lineups is 287.6
points, and 146 of them live in the one slot every draft plan saves for the final
rounds.
Second Quarterbacks
Six of ten managers drafted one
One quarterback starts, no flex slot takes a second, and so a backup plays in exactly
two kinds of week: the bye, and the bad kind. Six managers drafted one anyway, and three
of them now store a passer within twenty-five points of their starter in a slot that only
opens when something has gone wrong.
| Team | Starting QB | Proj | On the bench | Proj |
|---|
| Dangerwich | Patrick Mahomes | 386 | Baker Mayfield | 378 |
| Spitters and Shitters | Bo Nix | 356 | Dak Prescott | 340 |
| Dungeon Masters | Brock Purdy | 356 | Drake Maye | 332 |
| San Diego Fourth and Long | Lamar Jackson | 427 | Matthew Stafford | 331 |
| The Paper Tigers | Joe Burrow | 400 | Caleb Williams | 329 |
| Downto Party | Jalen Hurts | 410 | Jared Goff | 313 |
The only two managers who declined to buy a spare were Luke and Jared, and they
finished first and third.
Team Reports
In projected order
Clints 3rd roster
Luke Troxel2239.7
1st on starters · bench 1506.7 · slot 5
Luke did not draft a running back until Tony Pollard at 56, and the one who ends up leading the position for him, Chuba Hubbard, hung around until 96. The waiting bought Amon-Ra St. Brown, Drake London, Trey McBride and Tetairoa McMillan. The rest of the league spent those rounds cornering the market on backfields.
- Best value
- Brian Thomas Jr. at 105, projecting 270. He starts ahead of McMillan, who went 69 picks earlier.
- Worst value
- Jaguars D/ST at 145, projecting 99, with New England still sitting there for 111. It went at 158.
Jayden Daniels supplies 425 at quarterback, McBride 259 at tight end, and the three starting receivers pile up 828 between them. That is how a manager finishes 69.5 points clear of second place, on a team named after Clint, without spending either of his first two picks on a running back.
Downto Party
Duane Phillips2170.2
2nd on starters · bench 1063.5 · slot 2
- Best value
- George Kittle at 79. The ninth tight end drafted projects 228, and among starters only Bowers and McBride beat it.
- Worst value
- Rams D/ST at 82, the league's first defense, taken with Nico Collins still available until 88.
Rashee Rice went at 22 and cannot crack his own starting lineup, because Flowers, Sutton and Pickens all project past him. The defense stung worse: it went at 82 to beat a run that never came. By Duane's next turn at 99 exactly one more defense had moved, and the third in the league waited until 110. Barkley at 326 and Hurts at 410 hauled the whole operation to second anyway.
Clint’s 2nd Roster
Jared Troxel2164.4
3rd on starters · bench 1148.8 · slot 3
4 autodraftedESPN made picks 58, 83, 98 and 158 while Jared was somewhere else, and its four contributions included Carnell Tate, Michael Pittman Jr., Stefon Diggs and his starting defense. His own work brought back Bijan Robinson at 339, Brock Bowers at 262 and Tee Higgins at 265, so the arrangement suited everybody.
- Best value
- Brock Bowers at 23. The first tight end taken and, at 262, still the best one.
- Worst value
- Trevor Lawrence at 78. Mayfield went eight picks later with 54 more points; Mahomes lasted to 126 with 62 more.
A manager who missed a quarter of his own draft finished on the podium, which is a terrible lesson, and the league would prefer he not learn it.
The Paper Tigers
Leo Barahona2144.9
4th on starters · bench 1013.1 · slot 1
Burrow, Chase, Gibbs, Jeanty and Nabers fill five starting slots with 1,660 projected points between them. Nabers is the strange part, 301 points found at pick 80, after the rest of that core was already in place.
- Best value
- Malik Nabers at 80. An eighth-round pick, now the roster's second-highest projected receiver.
- Worst value
- Tucker Kraft at 60, projecting 160. Kittle was still out there and went at 79 with 228.
Then there is Harrison Mevis, projected for zero and taken with pick 160, the last selection of the draft, at a moment when every other kicker in the pool was gone. The zero shows up in the lineup every week of the season, and by pick 160 there was no avoiding it; the avoiding needed to happen several rounds earlier.
Dangerwich
Bryan Cruz2128.4
5th on starters · bench 1128.2 · slot 6
- Best value
- Patrick Mahomes at 126. The fifteenth quarterback drafted projects 386 and took the starting job on arrival.
- Worst value
- Kyle Pitts at 55, projecting 143. Kittle stayed on the board another 24 picks and projects 228.
Dangerwich drafted Baker Mayfield at 86, then found Mahomes still sitting there forty picks later and did the only reasonable thing. The upgrade came to eight points. The bill came to Mayfield, projected 378, now stranded as the highest-projected reserve in the league with no route onto the field that does not involve bad news for Mahomes.
McCaffrey and Irving bring 601 out of the backfield, and McConkey, Smith-Njigba and Metcalf project within two points of one another. That argument will run all season and settle nothing. Tight end is the only starting slot on the roster under 200.
THE SQUAD
Roland Howard2116.5
6th on starters · bench 773.9 · slot 10
Drafting from the ten spot means never once seeing a board the other nine have not already picked over, and the roster wears it: last in the league on full-roster projection, with the smallest bench at 773.9. It still sits sixth on starters, because Puka Nacua slid to 70 and put 299 beside CeeDee Lamb's 318.
- Best value
- Puka Nacua at 70. A seventh-round pick, now the roster's second-highest projected non-quarterback.
- Worst value
- Seahawks D/ST at 110, Broncos D/ST at 111. There is one defense slot, and it cannot be started twice.
Threepeat Starting
Vincent Silvia2108.3
7th on starters · bench 1124.2 · slot 8
- Best value
- Nico Collins at 88, projecting 289, the best number of any receiver on the roster, found in the ninth round.
- Worst value
- Sam LaPorta at 73. Six selections of patience would have meant Kittle and 36 more projected points.
Five running backs, five receivers, two quarterbacks, two tight ends, one defense and one kicker, with no hole, no autodrafted pick and no reach anywhere in sixteen rounds. It is the most sensible draft anyone in this league conducted, and it sits seventh. That says something rude about what this league rewards. The nearest thing to a complaint on the roster is DeVonta Smith and his 223 riding the bench behind Collins and A.J. Brown.
Dungeon Masters
Clint Troxel2098.5
8th on starters · bench 1067.3 · slot 7
Achane, Jacobs and Henry all make the lineup and combine for 873 projected points, a backfield that would carry most writeups on this page. Kelce at 107 was real work too, a starting tight end at an eleventh-round price after eleven others had gone, and the pick sent eighth-round tight end Harold Fannin Jr. to the bench.
- Best value
- Travis Kelce at 107, projecting 181, taken after eleven other tight ends had left the board.
- Worst value
- Browns D/ST at 154, projecting 80, four picks before New England went at 158 with 111.
HomerThe benching matters, because Fannin turns out to be one of three Cleveland Browns on this roster. Andre Szmyt arrived in the fifteenth round and Cleveland's defense in the sixteenth, and the two Browns who start are the league's worst defense at 80 and its second-worst kicker at 120. Nobody made Clint do this. Jake Bates and the Patriots were both on the board when those picks went in, worth a combined 257 against Cleveland's 200. The 57-point difference was handed over voluntarily, out of loyalty to a franchise that does not know this league exists.
The two teams named after Clint finished first and third. The one Clint manages finished eighth, making this the rare draft where a manager gets out-picked by his own name twice.
San Diego Fourth and Long
Al Johnson2010.9
9th on starters · bench 1199.2 · slot 4
- Best value
- Lamar Jackson at 24. A third-round pick with the highest projection of any starter in the league, 427.
- Worst value
- Brandon Aubrey at 44. The next kicker to leave the board went at 115.
ESPN autopicked Jonathan Taylor at 4, Lamar Jackson followed twenty picks later, and those two account for 716 points on their own. The floor drops quickly after that: the second running back slot belongs to Jacory Croskey-Merritt and his 164 projected points, while Stafford's 331 sits behind Jackson with nothing to do but watch.
The kicker deserves its own paragraph. Brandon Aubrey went at pick 44, in the fifth round, 71 selections before anyone else in this league felt the position calling. Aubrey projects 142; Jake Bates, drafted 112 picks later at 156, projects 146. So the fifth-round kicker projects four points fewer than a sixteenth-round one. The pick was spent while Puka Nacua, Nico Collins and Brian Thomas Jr. were all still on the board. All three now start for somebody else.
Spitters and Shitters
Andrew Suberlak1952.1
10th on starters · bench 1080.1 · slot 9
There are real pieces here: Jefferson projects 316, Chase Brown 281, Jaylen Warren 250, and the Steelers defense taken at 129 leads the whole position at 149. There is also Dak Prescott, drafted at 69 and now holding a clipboard for Bo Nix, who arrived forty picks later projecting sixteen points more.
- Best value
- Steelers D/ST at 129. The fifth defense drafted carries the highest projection at the position.
- Worst value
- Eddy Pineiro at 152, projecting zero. Loop and Bates, projecting 140 and 146, were both still on the board.
Zero at kickerThe last opening on the roster was the kicker slot, and into it went Eddy Pineiro, projected for exactly nothing. Tyler Loop went with the very next pick at 153 and projects 140; Jake Bates lasted three more, to 156, and projects 146. One slot out of nine now holds a zero, and its two remedies went with the draft's next two kicker selections. A team 287.6 points back of first will open every week with nine starters on paper and eight in practice.