2019 Draft Order Revealed
About a week before packing up all our belongings and driving the 1,900 miles south from Boston to Houston this summer (yes, we moved; come visit us!), Samantha and I took the BoltBus to New York for a long weekend. Our plan of attack for the weekend—a little sightseeing, a lot of ramen and, of course, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
We’re big Harry Potter fans. The books, the movies, the theme parks. You name it, we love it. But even if you don’t know your Expelliarmus from your Azkaban, I highly recommend the show. Or shows, I should say. Yes, it’s two separate two-and-half-hour stage plays. So it’s a commitment. But it’s well worth it for the set design and the how-did-they-do-that alone. The Polyjuice Potion scene, OMG!? That’s all I’ll say.
I bring it up because there’s something about the plot that has me thinking about fantasy football. No, Harry doesn’t form a two-Seeker fantasy Quidditch league. (That’d totally be a Ron move.) But suffice to say—don’t worry, I’ll #keepthesecrets—the story involves a bit of time travel, characters who venture into the past with Time-Turner in hand to right the wrongs of years gone by.
And what is a redraft league if not an exercise in time travel? With a dynasty league, you’re maligned to bear out the repercussions of poor decision-making and worse luck for seasons on end. There is no way out. It’s a little like real life. There are no do-overs. Or Time-Turners for that matter.
But with a redraft league, every year is a chance to start over fresh. To right the wrongs of seasons past. To save yourself from that horrible decision to draft Le’Veon Bell in the first round or to find this year’s Patrick Mahomes in the 12th. Suddenly, those of us who finished with the worst TW% in league history (ahem, Geoff) are in the same boat as those who set the league record for points (props, Alex). In other words, may every Potter be a Malfoy and every Malfoy a Potter.
And so as we climb aboard the Hogwarts Express ready for a new year and new flights of fantasy, it’s all still possible. Perhaps, Nick or Josh win their first playoff game this season. Will Greco and Gray return to form? Maybe Erik or JT claim their first crown. Might league newcomer Beth Ann win it all in her first season or Samantha in her second? Can Brandon achieve the first-ever championship three-peat? (Hey, a guy can dream.) Anything is possible.
So grab your robes and your mock drafts! Speed headlong through the wall at Platform 9¾. Because a new season is upon us. And like a bag of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans, better hope it’s bubble-gum and not earwax.
The only question that remains is—where are you sitting on the train?
And so my long, rambling preseason introduction brings us to the matter at hand—the draft order. Every year, we’ve chosen the draft order by random draw and this year will be no different. (Though I am open to alternative means in the future; let’s discuss.)
If you can’t wait to open your Christmas presents, go ahead and scroll all the way to the bottom to find out where you pick. Maybe you’ve already done this. (Looking at you, JT.) But if you enjoy a little suspense, then join me as we count down the draft in reverse order starting with the 12th pick and working our way back to the lucky team owner who gets to draft first.
But before we do (and before we all start the hand-wringing over our draft order misfortune), let’s take a minute to ask a simple question. Does it really matter where you pick? Sure everybody wants the #1 pick. But does it affect winning?
The short answer: yes.
The long answer: well, yes and no.
As we touched on in Erik’s draft preview from last year, the stats back up the idea that a higher draft pick equates to a higher probability of winning your league. Generally speaking, the first pick wins most often, followed by the second pick, then the third and on and on. And those aren’t my stats, but rather ESPN’s. See this tweet from Matthew Berry.
But in our league, granted there’s a smaller sample size, we see a slightly more complex picture. Perhaps the best way to visualize this is by looking at the performance of team owners drafting from each position over the last eight seasons. And of course, rather than track wins, we’ll track TW%.
Quick aside!
For Beth Ann who’s new to the league and my obscure metrics—and as a refresher for anyone else—True Winning Percentage, or TW%, is the proportion of games your team would have won if it had played every team, every week. So in a 12-team league, rather than go 0-1 or 1-0 in a given week, TW% imagines you played all 11 other team owners. You could go 9-2 or 6-5 or 3-8. Maybe you lost, but you had the second-highest score in the league that week. (We’ve all been there.) The truth is your team’s strength is really 10-1, not 0-1.
TW% is much more nuanced and gives a fuller picture of your team’s performance relative to the league. Because wins alone as a metric is just so damn binary. Yes, you won or lost and that’s reflected in the actual standings. But it doesn’t really tell us how good your team is. That’s what TW% is for. As a result, you’ll see TW% featured in a lot of my analysis. It’s the basis for the weekly Power Rankings and the bedrock for things like playoff odds. If you understand nothing else, understand that.
Alright, so let’s plot the cumulative TW% of team owners picking from each of the 12 draft positions and see what we get.
Surprise, surprise—the team owners who draft first do indeed have the highest overall TW% over the last eight years. And by a pretty wide margin. Their TW% of .587 is .041 points higher than the next closest competitor. That means they win 4% more of their true games than even the second-best draft position and over 15% more than the worst. Not only that, but teams that draft first, score more points, averaging 91.9 ppg. Nobody else is above 90 ppg. And league average is 86.7 ppg.
But the rest of the picture is not as straightforward as we might have imagined. Sure, there’s a drop-off from picks 1-8 (with a slight uptick in production from the fourth pick), but then TW% suddenly increases for team owners drafting from the back. In fact, it’s the ninth pick (buoyed by a championship performance last season), that has the second-best TW% of .546.
And then there’s the 11th pick, the third-best draft position, from which not one, but two owners have claimed a championship (Gray in 2013, Alex in 2015)—not to mention Samantha who finished third last year. In fact, all four picks in the back third of the draft have won at least one championship, while five of the first eight picks have never done so. That includes team owners with the #1 pick who have yet to win a championship.
So what can we take from all of this?
Maybe it’s not that it’s good to have an early pick in the draft as much as it is that it’s better simply to have a pick at the elbows. If we draw a trendline through the plot, we see a curve where generally speaking team performance starts off high, declines through the middle and then increases toward the tail. Is it a perfect fit? No. The fourth pick’s pretty great (that was Alex last year) and the 12th pick has some explaining to do. But the point remains. In fact, last year was the first time the sixth pick ever made the playoffs (thanks to Nick). That compares to the second pick, which is a playoff regular, having appeared there in five out of eight seasons.
It seems in a snake draft, the data supports the idea that there’s a benefit drafting near the beginning or the end. This elbow position allows you the chance to have two picks relatively back-to-back, perhaps allowing for better planning compared to middle drafters who always have long breaks in between picks.
So if your name’s not as high in the draft order as you would hope, don’t despair. You’re actually in pretty good company. And if you are in the middle, just chalk it all up to small sample size and prove us all wrong like Nick did last year. After all, what do I know?
The Worst Draft Order of 2019
Alright, enough with the delay. Let’s get to it. After all, this is what you came here for. Just as in previous years, Alex entered all of our names into a random draft order generator and got the following result. Unlike previous years, I asked him to allow me to share those results in a post so it could be accompanied by some additional notes and tidbits.
So without further ado, the 12th pick in the 2019 Worst League draft belongs to…
12. JT
Somebody’s gotta pick last. This year, it’s JT. Sorry, bud.
This is actually the second time in JT’s career that he’s picked last, having previously drafted 12th in 2012. But for what it’s worth, he actually went on to make the playoffs that season—one of only two playoff appearances in his career. So maybe it’s a good thing.
If you’re feeling like this is a bit of a trend, you’re not wrong. This is JT’s second consecutive year with a double-digit pick in the first round (he picked 10th last year) and third time in the last five years. In fact, he’s picked in the last third of the draft (remember, that’s kind of a good thing) in each of the last five years with the one exception being 2017. You’ll recall that was the year he grabbed Ezekiel Elliott in the second round of his will-he-or-won’t-he-be-suspended season. Interestingly, JT has never drafted from the middle rounds. He either gets a top-four pick (‘11, ‘14, ‘17) or one in the bottom third. Not bad given the curve above.
Last year, JT just barely missed the playoffs after losing a winner-take-all game to Josh in Week 13. He finished the season with a 6-7 record, placing sixth in the final Power Rankings. This year, he’ll hope to return to the explosive form he showed in 2017 when he went 9-4, finishing third.
11. Nick
Next up is last year’s surprise 1-seed, Nick, with the 11th pick.
This is Nick’s first double-digit seed since 2011 when he drafted 10th, which makes this the lowest pick Nick has ever received. Since that inaugural season, he’s often drafted from the early or middle thirds of the draft. That includes two #1 picks plus a handful of middle round selections including one in each of the last four years.
Last year, Nick actually agreed to a trade with Gray to move up from the eighth to the sixth pick (a formerly cursed position), which paid dividends, enabling him to select Saquon Barkley in the first instead of Gray’s pick of Leonard Fournette. Had that trade not occurred, it’s likely Nick would not have gone on to have his best season of his career, finishing 10-3. Though he faded in the playoffs, his was just the fifth team in league history to achieve double-digit wins. Now with the 11th pick, he’ll hope to duplicate his success albeit from a different, perhaps more favorable, position in the draft. Remember, the 11th pick is the only pick with multiple championships.
10. Samantha
In her first season, Samantha picked 11th. Now, she’s all the way up to… 10th.
Granted this is only her second season in the league, but Samantha easily ranks at the bottom when it comes to average draft position, having only drafted from the double-digits. That being said, in her one season in the league, she had great success, surviving a slew of injuries to her WRs and squeaking into the playoffs at 7-6 with the 6-seed. Once there, she pulled off perhaps the greatest upset in league playoff history, defeating 1-seed Alex thanks to some late-game magic from Amari Cooper. Though she lost to Brandon in the semis, she defeated Nick to finish in the money in her first season.
This year, she’ll hope to build on that success by hopefully advancing to the title game and possibly winning the whole thing. Despite above-average regular season performance from the 10th pick, only one team owner has actually ever made the playoffs drafting from that position—Brandon in 2017. Of course, he went on to win the whole thing. She doesn’t often like to follow in his footsteps, but maybe this year she’ll make an exception.
9. Josh
If there’s any team owner with longstanding membership in the league who has a reason to gripe about low picks, it’s probably Josh who before this year had an average draft position of 8.4. So of course this year, he picks ninth.
Outside of Samantha, no team owner has had worse luck with the randomizer. In five seasons (Josh joined in 2014), he’s picked 5th, 8th, 11th, 11th, 7th and now 9th. He is the only team owner with at least three years in the league to have never picked in the first third of the draft. Of course, if you’ve gotta pick in the back third, ninth is not a bad spot to do it. Remember, it’s the second-best draft slot by TW%, powering Brandon to a championship last season.
This is now Josh’s sixth year in the league and he is without a doubt the best team owner in the league as measured by TW% to have never won a championship. In fact, there are five team owners with career TW% above .500. All have won championships except for Josh who has yet to win a single playoff game in three appearances. Coming off his best statistical season, perhaps this is the year he finally breaks through.
8. Greco
Next up, Greco. Following the first losing season of her career, Greco finds herself in a bit of an unfamiliar territory, drafting from the back half of the draft for just the second time in her career. Aside from 2014 when she drafted 12th, Greco has had a top-five pick in seven out of eight seasons, including last year when she drafted fifth. But again, last year resulted in a 3-10 record. So perhaps a change of scenery is just what the doctor ordered.
Not to get too into the weeds on individual players, but it’s interesting to note that Greco has drafted a WR first in each of the last three seasons, including twice being the first team owner to do so in 2016 and 2018. This year with the eighth pick, Greco finds herself in the middle third of the draft where the top-tier WRs are starting to go by ADP. So perhaps this is a great match for her recent preferences. If so, she may soon return to her winning ways.
7. Erik
If Greco’s been lucky with the randomizer, Erik’s been blessed. This year he’ll draft seventh, which for Erik is catastrophic. In fact, it’s the worst draft position he’s ever had. Prior to this year, Erik had never drafted in the back half of the draft. And over the last three years, he had three straight top-three picks, including the first overall pick last season. But even with the seventh pick this season, his average draft position of 4.0 is still easily tops among players with multiple drafts under their belt.
Of course, all that luck with the randomizer has not exactly translated to fantasy success. Over the last several years, Erik has consistently wavered just outside the realm of playoff contention, winning between six and seven games in five of the last six years, including last year when he went 6-7, ultimately being knocked out of playoff contention by JT in Week 12.
Like with Greco, maybe a change of scenery is just what Erik needs to push himself over the top. And though teams drafting from the middle third of the draft haven’t been particularly effective during the regular season, the seventh pick has probably had the most playoff luck of that group. That includes four playoff appearances of which Jess’s breakout championship season from 2014 is one. Perhaps Erik will break out in just the same way this year.
6. Geoff
Alright, six down, six more to go. And first up in the front half of the draft is Geoff who will pick sixth. Last year, Geoff drafted third, which didn’t exactly go according to plan. As you might recall, Geoff drafted Le’Veon Bell (who never played a down) and then went on to have the worst season in Worst League history, finishing 3-10 with an all-time worst .220 TW%. Hey, at least it can only go up from here, right?
But unfortunately for Geoff, he’ll be picking from the middle, which is not exactly his strong suit. In fact, Geoff has been at his best when drafting from the elbows, having made the playoffs twice in 2011 and 2016 when he drafted first and 12th, respectively—the latter of which resulted in a championship. He’ll need to buck that trend this year if he’s going to return to the playoffs for the first time since that title-winning season.
Ironically, having the sixth pick will present an interesting challenge. And that’ll be the moment in the first round when Le’Veon Bell will be sitting there as the best player available when Geoff comes up to draft with the sixth pick. Currently his ADP is 6.9. Does Geoff dare do it again? Possibly, but I’d bet not. After all, hell hath no fury like a fantasy player scorned.
5. Jess
Drafting with the fifth pick this year will be Jess, who like Greco and Erik has had a bit of luck with the randomizer. In fact, the fifth pick for her represents a downgrade from her average draft position of 4.9. That’s because, in eight years, she’s never drafted from the back third of the draft. Though she’s never had the #1 pick, she has drafted second three times, including last season.
Though fifth is not exactly familiar territory for Jess, she has drafted from the middle third five times including picks 6-8, which as we mentioned in Erik’s writeup included her breakout championship season. And she’s done so with great success. Recall from our preview of Jess last preseason that even before last year she’d already been the best drafter of the modern era (since 2014) as measured by VBD. So what’d she do last season? Had her best draft ever and the third-best draft of the modern era (rounds 11-16 excluded).
This year, she’ll hope to keep her incredible streak going. In fact, not only has she not had a losing season since 2013 (the only team owner besides Gray and Brandon who can say that), but she has the second-highest TW% of any team owner over the last five seasons. Having made the title game in three of those years, she’ll be gunning for her second title this year after coming up just two points shy last December.
4. Gray
Alright, now we’re in the homestretch. The top four picks. And first up is Gray.
Coming off a disappointing, injury-riddled season with the first sub-.500 TW% of his much-vaunted career, Gray is looking to rebound to form, and the fourth pick might be exactly what he’s been looking for. Though he has made the playoffs a record five times (tied with Greco) from a range of draft positions, he’s currently mired in a two-year slump. So after drafting 12th and eighth with little success over the last two years, the fourth pick is probably a welcome sight. In fact, the last two times Gray made the playoffs it was with the first and second picks.
Remember, the fourth pick has had quite a bit of success in league history, which includes Alex’s dominant season last year and Brandon’s inaugural championship in 2011. Gray hopes to add to that tradition and his impressive resume this season.
3. Brandon
It’s me! The third pick? Wow, even I can’t believe it.
That’s because (shifts back to third-person) this is the first top-three pick of Brandon’s career. No other team owner, including Josh who has yet to nab one, has gone as long without a top-three pick. Not only that, but Brandon has drafted from the last third of the draft in five out of the last six seasons, including three double-digit picks. So yeah, he was due.
After missing the playoffs for a four-year stretch from 2012-2015, Brandon has been on a hot streak of late, appearing in three straight title games, including championships each of the last two years. The league’s only team owner with multiple championships (3), the current repeat champion will hope to achieve the unprecedented feat of going back-to-back-to-back.
Speaking of back-to-back—and this is a little anecdotal, but—this is actually the fourth time that Brandon and Gray will have drafted back-to-back, having done so in 2012 (6/7), 2013 (12/11), 2018 (9/8) and now 2019 (3/4).
Okay, two picks and two team owners remain. Are you keeping track at home?
The second pick in the draft belongs to–
Drumroll please… 🥁🥁🥁
2. Beth Ann
Well, that’s certainly a way to welcome yourself to the league.
No other new addition to the league has ever had this high of a pick. When Adan replaced Jackie in 2012, he picked 10th. Josh, replacing Adan in 2014, picked fifth. And Samantha, replacing Terryn last year, picked 11th. Now Beth Ann, replacing Trevor, will pick second.
Only Geoff and Erik (who drafted first and second, respectively, in the league’s first season) have started their careers with such a favorable position. And for what it’s worth, Geoff went on to make the playoffs, finishing third, while Erik had one of the worst seasons in league history, for which he still owns the record for fewest points scored in a single season with 813 or 62.5 ppg. So it’s a mixed bag, I guess.
But remember, the second pick has arguably been the most successful pick in the draft. Though no one has never won a championship, the team owner with the second pick has made the playoffs in a league-high five out of eight seasons, including each of the last four years where it has always finished in the money. Last year, that team owner was Jess who finished as the runner-up.
This year, Beth Ann hopes to repeat the feats of the last two newcomers, Samantha and Josh, who both made the playoffs in their rookie season, and quite possibly seal the deal as well. The fact that Beth Ann has the second pick will certainly help.
Which means the team owner with the first pick is none other than…
1. Alex
Yes, that’s right. The commissioner and the administrator of the random draft generator has been randomly generated the #1 pick in this year’s draft.
Before I post this, I can already hear it—the cries of “COLLUSION!!” resounding from the group chat. In fact, I think we even got a few skeptics before the draft order was even posted. Certainly, the fact that the person who suggested we wait to reveal the draft order through a post as opposed to allowing the randomizer to auto-email the league (i.e. me) getting the third pick is not helping matters either.
But I anticipated the skepticism. And I have the receipts. Herein is proof that no funny business is afoot.
As you can see from the screengrabs of my text conversation with Alex above, the draft order was randomly generated last Thursday morning around 10AM when I texted Alex asking for him to randomize the draft order for this very post.
Of course, coincidentally, he happened to receive the #1 pick. It’s his second #1 pick in the last three years, having previously received a pick in the top third two additional times, which includes last season’s fourth pick. In fact, Nick and now Alex are the only two team owners to have received the #1 pick twice.
But I swear this is legit! Alex sent me that screenshot, presumably of his computer screen, just three minutes after my request for him to randomize the draft order. Could he have Photoshopped that in such a limited time? Doubtful. Did he continue pressing the “randomize” button until he got the desired outcome? I mean, it’s possible. But he’s been doing this for nine years and his average draft position of 6.2 ranks exactly sixth among active team owners. In fact, he’s had a double-digit pick three times and I don’t think anybody was shouting collusion when he got the 11th pick for the second time in 2015.
We may never know the truth. But I have to think our commissioner has greater integrity than to cheat on the draft order. Though we may need a true crime podcast to truly know the answer. And if it makes you feel any better, remember that the last time Alex had the #1 pick in 2017, he drafted David Johnson first overall who went to score exactly 6 points all season after a Week 1 season-ending injury. He missed the playoffs that year, unlike the time he won it all in 2015 when he drafted—you guessed it—11th. Go figure.
Coming off the best year of his career and the second-best season by TW% of all-time, Alex is likely hoping for some postseason (not just regular season) success. Having the #1 pick is not a bad start.
And so there you have it—the official Worst League draft order of 2019!
All have been sorted into their appropriate place. But remember, your draft order is just a number. Whether you got Gryffindor or Slytherin—or worse the dreaded Hufflepuff—it’s what you do with it that matters.
At this point, it’s all still possible. Your fate still lies in your hands. The championship and the Tri-Wizard Cup could be yours for the taking. And at least for now, you won’t need a Time-Turner for that.
