In what has become an offseason tradition, my RotoViz Report co-host Hasan Rahim and I joined up with the boys from Ship Chasing — Pat Kerrane, Peter Overzet, and Ben Gretch — to co-draft and co-manage an FFPC Main Event team. In past seasons we’ve drafted live on stream. This season we’re trying something different: a slow draft.
In Part 1 we detailed the chaos of the first three rounds, including a fortuitous autodraft selection after we couldn’t come to a consensus on our first-round pick. The fantasy gods smiled upon us and we were able to snag both of the players we were debating in Round 1. Our start through three rounds is unusual for a RotoViz/Ship Chasing draft. But the 2023 ADP landscape makes the hyperfragile start look especially powerful. The key is not to get sucked into the RB values that continue to fall in later rounds. Let’s see how we fill out the squad.
To recap, here’s the draft board after three rounds:
We’d like to take one more RB in the next couple of rounds and then either zero or one more in the rest of the draft. Starting with three RBs in the first five rounds means you need to build out a ton of WR depth, and the middle rounds are the best place to do that. Once you reach the double-digit rounds, WR options that have the upside to finish inside the top 15 are scarce. In hyperfragile builds especially, taking detours away from WR in the early and middle rounds needs to be done with care, or, preferably, not at all.
Round 4
When we got back on the clock in Round 4, Deebo Samuel, one of our Round 3 considerations, was still on the board. One player we had planned to draft, Breece Hall, was also there. (Travis Etienne was our other Round 4 option, but he went two picks before us. Keenan Allen, whom we’d also considered in Round 3, went one pick before us.) Given the need for WR firepower, it’s tempting to take Samuel and then either draft J.K. Dobbins in the fifth round, or keep hammering WR and take a couple of Zero-RB options later.
Hall is one of the few RBs in this range who has real RB1 overall upside. He appeared in only seven games last year, but was the RB7 in FFPC scoring through those seven games. In fact, he was injured in the second quarter in Week 7 handling only four carries, including one for a 62-yard TD. In his previous two games, he averaged nearly 24 fantasy points, and appeared to be on pace for another RB1 performance. Even before the last two games, Hall had never finished outside the top 24.
The Jets’ signing of Dalvin Cook has pushed his ADP to the end of Round 4, so we would be reaching several picks to get him at 4.04. Samuel’s ADP has remained steady at the end of the third round, and was a mild value at 4.04.
