1. Erik
If you're not first, you're last.
So goes the immortal credo of the legendary Ricky Bobby. And this year, first place belongs to Erik. Thanks to the fantasy gods who determine our random draft order, Erik will ascend to the first overall draft pick for the first time in his career, which is no small gift.
Yes, drafting first has its perks. Most importantly, you get to pick whoever the hell you want. For a team owner like me drafting from the ninth position this year, it doesn't matter how much I favor elite RBs like Le'Veon Bell, Todd Gurley and Ezekiel Elliott or perennial stud WR Antonio Brown. I ain't getting 'em. Even Jess with the #2 pick doesn't have that kind of luxury. And we know she has some good history with Le'Veon Bell, who she's twice drafted, both times riding his production to the championship game.
No, only Erik gets his choice of all the toys in the chest. And the result of that pick is better odds at a championship. As the stat nerds at ESPN who have access to more data and crunch the numbers better than I have determined, the higher your draft pick, the more likely you are to have success. Specifically, the first pick wins most often followed by the second, then the third, and on and on.
In our own league, there are several metrics that back up the fact that team owners who draft first have more success. First of all, team owners with the first pick have a better TW% than any other pick by a wide margin. Over seven years, the team with the first pick has a TW% of .596, which is 8% better than the next closest competitor. And while the fifth and second picks have technically won more games (54 and 50.5 wins compared to 50) due to variance caused by scheduling, the first pick has scored more career points than any other team—a total of 8,381 points. That equates to 92.1 ppg, which means drafting first gives you a +6.1 ppg boost over the league average of 86.0 ppg.
It's also probably no surprise that the team with the first pick has generated the most points from the draft (compared to free agency and trade) and has the second-highest proportion of their total points come from the draft. Specifically, the first pick gets 80.4% of its points from the draft. By comparison, the 12th pick gets just 71% of its total points from the draft with a much higher percentage coming in free agency (22.3%) and trade (6.7%).
Finally, the first pick has the highest historical playoff odds with 57% of team owners who drafted first going on to make the playoffs. That's four times in seven years, which is also tied with the second and fifth pick—also four times. By comparison, the sixth pick has never made the playoffs. (Sorry Gray. Consider it your greatest challenge yet.)
UPDATE: Gray has traded the sixth pick to Nick and will now draft with the eighth pick instead. Touché Gray. Touché.
So given all that, should we just pack it up now and go home? Has Erik won the league before the season's even begun? Of course not. As Ricky Bobby once learned outside an Applebee's, the idea that "if you're not first, you're last" doesn't make any sense at all. You can be second, you can be third, fourth—hell, you can even be fifth!
And despite the fact that the team owner with the first pick has several things going for him or her including TW%, points and playoff odds, there's one glaring omission—championships. That's right. The team with the first overall pick has never won the championship in seven years. In fact, they've never even made it to the championship game.
And as Cal Naughton, Jr. AKA The Magic Man famously said, "so the last shall be first, and the first last." (Or was that 8-pounds-6-ounces-newborn-infant Jesus?) Either way, it's not the first pick or the second pick or even the third pick that has the most championships. It's the team owners drafting from the back! That's right. The teams drafting between picks 10-12 have a combined four of the league's seven championships. Four!!!
The 10th and 12th pick have each won the championship once. And it's the 11th pick that is the only two-time champion. In fact, the 11th pick is kinda sneaky good with the second-best career TW% (.553) and second-best scoring average (90.3 ppg). Which goes to show that if you're not first, maybe you really should be last. In related news, look out for league newcomer Samantha who will be drafting from the 11th position.
Certainly, draft is not destiny. Just because you have the first pick doesn't mean you're going to have the best team. Sure, maybe it sets you up a little better for the season than your competitors. There's a reason the higher picks get more of their points from the draft than those with lower picks. But it doesn't mean you're out of it if you have a double-digit pick. On the contrary, you may be better positioned. But as evidenced by a higher proportion of points coming from free agency and trade for team owners with double-digit picks, you may just have to work a little harder for it. Remember, the field mouse is fast, but the owl sees at night.
Lastly, let's not forget what happened to the team owner with last year's first pick—Alex. He drafted the consensus #1 pick, David Johnson, with the first overall pick and promptly lost him to a wrist injury in Week 1 after scoring just 6 points. Anything can happen.
In other words, ANARCHY! ANARCHY! ANARCHY!
Alright, let's get to Erik.
Though this is Erik's first time atop the draft order, it's not unusual to see him drafting in this neighborhood. This is his fourth top-3 pick in eight years. In fact, Erik has benefited the most from the randomized draft order with an average first-round pick of 3.6, which is the lowest among all team owners. Remarkably, he's the only team owner to have never had a pick in the back half of the draft, selecting 2nd, 5th, 5th, 6th, 4th, 3rd, 3rd and now 1st. Now, that's some good luck.
As a result, he's typically selected a top RB, usually reserved for those with the first few picks, in five out of seven seasons. The other two years, ironically each of the last two, he's selected elite WRs in Julio Jones and Antonio Brown. With Brown, it was the first WR off the board and with Jones, he passed up the opportunity at drafting the first RB that season in part due to preseason hype surrounding the receiver position. (You might recall 2016 was hailed as the year of the WR.)
But after that first pick, Erik tends to favor other positions, specifically receivers. In terms of draft bias, Erik has demonstrated a slight positional preference for WRs over RBs, which is reflected in his higher average career scoring for WRs (22.3 ppg) compared to RBs (20.5 ppg).
But his strongest positional preference in relation to other team owners is for QBs, which ranks highest among all active team owners. In fact, in seven years, Erik has never waited longer than the 5th round to select a QB and has done so as early as the 2nd round. Over the years, Erik's preference to select a QB in the late 4th or early 5th round has remained consistent despite the league's general move to wait on QBs. As a result, he's increasingly been one of the first few owners to select a QB in recent years and has been one of the first four owners to draft a QB in four of the last five years. This year, QBs going in the 5th round by ADP include Cam Newton, Deshaun Watson and Russell Wilson.
But is it wise to pass up RBs for WRs and QBs? An extreme version of this tactic is known as Zero-RB—a strategy that involves waiting to draft your first RB until the fourth, fifth or even sixth round. The thought is that rather than being the eighth person to draft a RB, you're better off gaining a competitive advantage at other positions, selecting elite WRs, QBs or TEs while everyone else drafts RBs, especially considering the fact that RBs are the most at risk to serious injury.
Just last year Erik demonstrated that a Zero-RB approach can work, even with the third pick. Here are the first ten picks of his draft from last season by position:
17: WR-TE-WR-WR-QB-RB-RB-WR-RB-RB
Here we see that Erik waited until the sixth round to draft his first RB, opting instead for three WRs, a TE and QB. Specifically, Erik drafted Antonio Brown, T.Y. Hilton and Alshon Jeffery. While Hilton underperformed in large part to Andrew Luck's absence, Brown and Jeffery both returned at least equivalent value to where they were drafted. The same goes for Rob Gronkowski at TE who finished as a top-20 player by VBD despite being selected just outside the top-20 picks. Finally, Matt Ryan, Erik's fifth-round QB, flopped. But free agent acquisition Jared Goff made up for some of the lost production.
Meanwhile at RB, Erik found value with this seventh and ninth-round picks of Tevin Coleman and Duke Johnson Jr., which returned fourth and third-round value, respectively. In total, he was able to get a first and fourth-round WR, a second-round caliber TE and a third and fourth-round RB. The result was a team that led the league in scoring at WR and TE, averaging 29.4 ppg and 9.4 ppg, respectively, despite finishing 10th at RB with 15.5 ppg.
Had he been able to find a little more value at RB like Alvin Kamara (Pick: 145, VBD: 4) or Latavius Murray (Pick 146, VBD: 38) or drafted Russell Wilson (Pick: 56, VBD: 10) instead of Matt Ryan (Pick: 51, VBD: 92) in the fifth round, his Zero-RB gambit might have paid off with a championship. Even still, he finished third in the final Power Rankings and made the playoffs for the first time since 2012.
This season, I doubt we'll see Erik go Zero-RB considering he has the first overall pick. But it wouldn't shock me to see him wait on a second RB until the sixth or seventh round.
Finally, this season Erik hopes to repeat his playoff performance from last season. It would be his third playoff appearance, having previously finished third in 2012 and fourth in 2017.
Erik's recent success proves any team owner can overcome a bad season. In fact, Erik's 2011 ranks as the second-worst season of all-time by TW%, a season in which he secured some of the league's most ignominious records. In Week 10 of 2011, Erik managed to score just 25 points. It was the record for lowest point total in a single game—a record he held for a total of one week. That is until he set a new low the following week, scoring just 21 points in Week 11. Then in Week 12, he somehow managed to set a lineup that had eight of nine players score just 2 points or fewer. From Weeks 9-12, Erik averaged just 27.5 ppg.
When the season was all said and done, his 813 total points (or 62.5 ppg) were a league low and to this day remain the fewest points scored in a single season in league history. Erik also owns the bottom-two single-week scoring performances, three of the bottom four and four of the bottom seven—all from 2011.
But since 2011 in which Erik won just three games, his teams have floated in and around playoff contention, winning between 6-8 games in five of six years. As was stated previously, he's twice made the playoffs, with his best season coming just last year when he finished with a career-high TW% of .622, which ranked third in the final Power Rankings. He also finished third in the Power Rankings in 2014, but failed to make the playoffs that season.
With the playoffs expanding to six teams this year and Erik owning the first overall pick, the chances of Erik making his first repeat playoff appearance are good. It's not all roses though. As is mentioned in Alex's draft preview, Erik faces the toughest strength of schedule due to the fact that he must play both Gray and Alex twice per season—two owners that rank first and fourth by TW%. Still, Erik actually has a winning record of 8-5-1 all-time against Alex. And since he's 5-9 against Gray, he's actually doing okay against these two difficult opponents with an overall record of 13-14-1. If he can overcome his struggles against historically lower-ranked opponents like Jess and Terryn (now out of the league) with whom he has a combined 4-10 record, then he has a much better shot.
The question is not if Erik makes the playoff this season, but how far can he go? Sure, his fourth-place finish from last season or his third-place finish from 2012 were nice. But you know what they say...
If you ain't first, you're last.
