Bjorn Yang-Vaernet explains the three roster-building guidelines to follow after drafting Travis Kelce and running back in the first two rounds to more than double your baseline win rate.
In the 2019 season when Christian McCaffrey had the legendary 448.4 PPR fantasy point season, best ball managers that had him on their team won an insane 36.9% of the time. Considering 8.3% is the baseline win rate for a 12-man league and a 20.2% win rate is the 99th percentile outcome, this was astounding. However, let me frame it another way: How did 63.1% of drafters not win when the next highest running back scored 302.5 points? McCaffrey was essentially worth 1.5 times the RB2, Aaron Jones. The reason is likely that these drafters gave back their huge advantage little by little throughout the rest of the draft.
Pressing your advantage is key when you find an edge in the early rounds. One edge I found in my last article was pairing Travis Kelce with a high upside RB in Round 2. This pairing not only allows drafters to avoid the high bust rates of Round 1 RBs, but also to create a roster that has a higher floor without sacrificing any ceiling.
In this article, I will use the Roster Construction Explorer (RCE) to examine how to approach a draft in Rounds 3 to 12 after taking the RB/TE pair. I fully believe a team that is drafted following these structural guidelines can compete and win against any McCaffrey or Dalvin Cook led squad.[1]
Wide Receivers Are The Skeleton Key
Footnotes
| ↑1 | However, these guidelines can also apply to teams that have some combination of Christian McCaffrey or Dalvin Cook with Darren Waller or George Kittle |
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