Every single year, we look back and think to ourselves, “Why did I pass on Player X during my fantasy draft when it was clear as day that this was his breakout year?” That could’ve been said about Chris Godwin in 2019 and then Calvin Ridley in 2020, who were both selected with fourth-round picks. Instead, many take the ‘safer’ option like Cooper Kupp.
Look, you need balance to your team, and you can’t always take the upside option. However, when you look back and see what could’ve been, you start rethinking your strategy. If fantasy football were easy, there’d be no reason to analyze it. However, we must learn from our mistakes.
You’re never going to get every pick right, but what would it look like if you did? And I’m not talking about a dream scenario where you simply take the top-three finishers from every position. No, this is an exercise where we’re going stick to ADP (average draft position) and select the players based on the round they were drafted in. So, this is a team you actually could’ve drafted based on where they were going during fantasy drafts.
For this exercise, I’ll be using the consensus ADP for half-PPR across multiple websites. It’s also important to keep in mind that just because a player scored the most points, it doesn’t mean he should be the player selected in that round, as we must keep in mind the starting requirements for each position, which includes one quarterback, two running backs, three wide receivers, one tight end, one flex (W/R/T), and one defense.
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1st Round: Dalvin Cook (RB – MIN)
There were certainly questions surrounding Cook’s contract, leading him to fall into the middle of the first round in a lot of drafts. For those who took the chance on him, you were rewarded handsomely. There were just two games all season where he finished with fewer than 15.2 half-PPR points, while scoring 20-plus points in eight of them. He gets the nod over Alvin Kamara and Derrick Henry due to consistency. The only other consideration here was Davante Adams, but getting a top-tier running back simply means too much (as you’ll see throughout the draft).
2nd Round: Travis Kelce (TE – KC)
He’s irreplaceable. If you look at VBD (value based drafting), he was worth the No. 4 overall pick in fantasy drafts, so to get him in the second round is a no brainer. Kelce outscored Darren Waller (the No. 2 tight end) by 60.9 PPR points, and outscored T.J. Hockenson (the No. 3 tight end) by 143.0 PPR points. Even better, Kelce stepped up when you needed him most, generating 100.8 PPR points from Week 13 through Week 16.
3rd Round: Allen Robinson (WR – CHI)
This pick might cause you to tilt your head a bit, but I promise he was the best pick in the third round this year. The running backs taken in this round were Todd Gurley and Chris Carson, who both failed to live up to expectations, while Mike Evans was inconsistent, and A.J. Brown was hurt for a chunk of the year. Despite dealing with poor/inconsistent quarterback play, Robinson finished as the No. 7 wide receiver on the year. There were just three times all season where he finished with fewer than 70 yards.
4th Round: Calvin Ridley (WR – ATL)
He’s going to be part of this list for a long time. We’re witnessing a change of the guard in Atlanta, and Ridley is the new sheriff. Even with Julio Jones on the field, Ridley was performing like a WR1. There was just one game (removing the one game he left with injury) he finished with fewer than 14.0 PPR points, which is just flat-out ridiculous for a fourth-round fantasy pick. He recorded 90-plus yards and/or a touchdown in 12-of-13 full games.
5th Round: D.K. Metcalf (WR – SEA)
It’s our third-straight wide receiver pick, and it’s a good one. Metcalf answered the question about which Seahawks wide receiver you should draft with an exclamation point, totaling 80-plus yards and/or a touchdown in 11-of-15 games. The best part? There’s room for more as he continues to develop into a well-rounded receiver that the Seahawks are moving around the formation a lot more. He’s going to be drafted in the second round next year.
6th Round: David Montgomery (RB – CHI)
This one is really tough because you have to acknowledge the struggles that Montgomery had to start the year. However, he was a stable presence in lineups, finishing with double-digit PPR points in 11-of-14 games, and turned things up when you needed him most, scoring a massive 126.2 PPR points over his last five games (at least 20.1 points in each of them). That led to him finishing as the No. 6 running back in fantasy football. I really wanted to put Stefon Diggs here, but we have tons of wide receivers (as you’ll see), and it’s hard to find workhorse running backs later in the draft.
7th Round: Will Fuller (WR – HOU)
“Wait a minute, you know he was suspended, right?” Well, yeah, but that doesn’t change the fact that he was the best draft pick in the seventh round. While on the field, Fuller was a borderline WR1, finishing with at least 80 yards and/or a touchdown in 9-of-11 games, including five games with 19.2-plus PPR points. The question now is where Fuller goes next year as a free agent, though Deshaun Watson has made it clear it’s very important the team re-signs him.
8th Round: Aaron Rodgers (QB – GB)
This is where we pull the trigger on our quarterback. Outside of one game against the Buccaneers where he was simply “off,” Rodgers delivered at least 18.2 fantasy points in every other game, including 21.74-plus fantasy points in 12 of them. If he throws two touchdowns in the Week 17 finale against the Bears, Rodgers will have a new single-season career-high in touchdown passes. His consistency doesn’t even require us to draft another quarterback.
9th Round: Diontae Johnson (WR – PIT)
Despite missing nearly three full games, Johnson finished as a top-18 wide receiver. Targets surely helped, as his 140 rank sixth among wide receivers, but we take fantasy points where we can get them. Johnson still has a lot left in the tank, too, as his drops were a real problem and left a lot of production on the field. Still, he scored 12.6-plus PPR points in eight of his last 10 games despite Ben Roethlisberger struggling a bit. If you drafted him in the ninth round, you were extremely pleased with his production.
10th Round: Pittsburgh Steelers D/ST
This is gross, as I really don’t want to draft a defense this early, but do you know the other candidates for this round? Sterling Shepard, Noah Fant, and Hayden Hurst. Exactly. The Steelers defense was one you could start practically every week of the season, regardless of opponent, though they did wane down the stretch a bit due to injuries. Still, this round was gross, leading us to select the best defense.
11th Round: Justin Jefferson (WR – MIN)
I couldn’t believe Jefferson was drafted in the 11th round when looking back, but it showed him as the 132nd player off the board based on consensus ADP. Jefferson started extremely slow, which likely had to do with him being on the COVID list for two weeks during the month-long training camp. But once Week 3 hit, Jefferson became an overnight superstar, racking up 74 receptions for 1,197 yards and seven touchdowns over the next 13 games. Had he played a full season with those numbers, Jefferson would finish with 91 receptions for 1,473 yards and 8-9 touchdowns. It’ll be interesting to see how high he goes in next year’s drafts, but my initial guess would be late second round.
12th Round: T.J. Hockenson (TE – DET)
We really don’t need a backup tight end with Kelce on the roster, but the 12th round was another weak spot in drafts. The only other player worth considering is Ryan Tannehill, but we also don’t need a backup quarterback. Hockenson closed the year on a low note, but he did finish with at least 9.3 PPR points in 12 of his first 13 games this year, which was before Matthew Stafford‘s injuries started to pile up. With Marvin Jones and Danny Amendola heading to free agency, targets are going to be available in this offense, and Hockenson took a major leap forward during his sophomore year.
13th Round: Antonio Gibson (RB – WAS)
It’s become a theme in this draft, but running backs were tough to justify when compared to all the great mid-to-late-round wide receivers, but Gibson makes our list in the 13th round. Despite missing a few games, Gibson finished as the No. 12 running back in PPR formats. Look, he wasn’t an RB1 as that number suggests, but he was a sturdy flex that developed into a strong RB2 as the year went on. Given the state of the Washington offensive line and quarterback position, I’ll be curious to see what Gibson can do once they upgrade the pieces around him.
14th Round: Robby Anderson (WR – CAR)
If you find a 14th round wide receiver who can give you nine top-36 wide receiver performances, you’ve done a phenomenal job, and that’s precisely what Anderson did in 2020. In fact, there were just two games the entire fantasy season where he finished worse than the WR46, so his floor was incredible. We did see him fade a bit as the year went on, as both D.J. Moore and Curtis Samuel made their marks in fantasy. Once Christian McCaffrey gets back, this offense is going to have a lot of firepower.
15th Round: Curtis Samuel (WR – CAR)
It was really neat to watch the Panthers coaching staff figure out how to use Samuel as the year went on. If you recall, they were trying to trade him this offseason. Once Samuel came back from his injury, he become a focal point in this offense, finishing as a top-32 wide receiver in 7-of-9 games to close the season, including four top-10 performances. There are a whole lot of questions about the Panthers offense going into 2021 and how much upside they present, but if we’re basing this on 2020, Samuel was a steal in the 15th round.
16th Round: James Robinson (RB – JAX)
He’s the primary reason we were able to snag so many wide receivers and Travis Kelce early in the draft. Despite having to sit out the Week 16 game against the Bears, Robinson finished as the No. 4 fantasy running back behind only Alvin Kamara, Dalvin Cook, and Derrick Henry. Not too bad for an undrafted rookie playing on one of the worst offenses in the NFL, eh? He didn’t finish worse than the RB31 all season, and in fact, he finished outside of the RB2 range just twice all year.
Best Waiver Wire Additions from Each Position (drafted outside the top-180): Justin Herbert (QB – LAC), Mike Davis (RB – CAR), Tee Higgins (WR – CIN), Robert Tonyan (TE – GB)
FINAL LINEUP
QB: Aaron Rodgers
RB: Dalvin Cook
RB: James Robinson
WR: Calvin Ridley
WR: D.K. Metcalf
WR: Justin Jefferson
TE: Travis Kelce
W/R/T: Allen Robinson
D/ST: Pittsburgh Steelers
BENCH: David Montgomery
BENCH: Diontae Johnson
BENCH: Will Fuller
BENCH: Antonio Gibson
BENCH: T.J. Hockenson
BENCH: Robby Anderson
BENCH: Curtis Samuel
What We Learned
While doing this exercise, it’s easy to get caught up in all the superstars, but if there’s one thing that’s clear, it’s that running backs are extremely hard to find in the later rounds. I hate the fact that I couldn’t put Davante Adams on this team, but there’s no way we could’ve passed on one of the top-tier running backs for him because there are very few “studs” at that position, while there were clearly plenty of wide receivers to be had in the later rounds. If you’re on the clock in 2021 drafts and are thinking, “Should I go with Davante Adams in the first round?” I wouldn’t fault you, but I promise you there’ll be tremendous value at wide receiver later in the draft while there won’t be nearly as much at running back.
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