With history comes lessons. And with lessons comes opportunities to teach. - Ancient DVFFL Proverb
The 2019 DVFFL Draft is right around the corner. But for the first time ever, I’m putting together a bit of a deeper dive into the annual Draft Report.
Simply put, the report maps out every player drafted and plots them in a round by round rank of where they finished. Teams at the end are graded on the average of where their player finished in each round. Obviously, players move, and much of the value/bust doesn’t really fall onto the drafting owner. Now I’ve been doing this report for 6 years, but fantasy football is a game of trends. And there are several interesting trends that, when you look back at last year and the previous, you can find some interesting tidbits about your opponents.
Winning the draft matters, draft positioning doesn’t (unless you’re 12th)
One easy way to go have an +80% chance to get to the playoffs is to rank in the top 5 of the draft value chart. Over the past 6 years of the report, the 4 of the top 5 teams have all gone to the playoffs (except for 2016, when only 2 did).
And draft positioning doesn’t matter at all in winning your draft… unless you draft 12th. For whatever reason, owners of the 12 seed have finished more times in the top 3 than any other team (over 4 times!)
We’re all better at drafting (yes, even Brandon)
2018 was the best overall drafting grade for the entire league. Teams are doing their research and the numbers are improving across the board for all teams. Garrett finished the the best draft grade in the entire league with a grade of 5.6. Meaning, in each round he drafts - the players he is selecting are roughly finishing around the 5th best out of 14. The lowest mark was Brandon at 8.8. Which in previous years would be as high as 3rd. It still doesn’t hold a flame to the worst draft of all time, Zach in 2016, for a 12.2 grade. But that’s what drafting Fat Eddie and a one kneed Jamaal Charles gets you in the first two rounds.
Mitch would have made the playoffs if he didn’t trade
Mitch was the only team that finished in the top 5 of draft grades to not make the playoffs. A good reason for that is trading away some of the top graded out players to Garrett. In return, Mitch received some of the Garrett’s worst graded players (Alex Collins, Kenny Stills). Now there is no way to tell that in reality this hypothesis would be the case. But it is safe to say Mitch wouldn’t have finished as the worst team in league history if he didn’t do these deals.
Brandon really should think about auto-drafting
I know I praised Brandon earlier saying this was his best draft yet (it was), it’s just looking at the finer details that makes you think that maybe auto-drafting would have served Brandon better. Oh, and before I forget, remember earlier when I said if you have the 12th seed you’re almost guaranteed a top draft grade and thusly, a 80% chance of making the playoffs? Well, the only year that the 12th seed wasn’t in the upper half of the league was in 2014 when Brandon had the 12th seed and got a draft grade ranked 12th out of 14 teams.
Back to my point.
In 2018, Brandon’s best graded out players were a QB he took in the 4th (the first one taken, Rodgers finished QB6), Cohen in the 6th and Zuerlein in the 14th. Outside of Woods and Juju - the rest of his draft was horrible.
Cody isn’t much better
He finished 13th. Right above Brandon.
But who won the 2018 Draft?
Garrett.
Find out more interesting fun facts about your draft, your rivals, your brothers or Brandon’s draft here:
https://www.dvffl.com/draft-history