It’s now August Twentysomething, which means home league draft season is all the way live. If you’re just getting around to thinking about your home league, first of all: Welcome. I live here and have been preparing the place since around March. I hope you find the accommodations amenable. I cleared out the top shelf of the fridge for your six-pack. Feel free to take any seat you like. There are a dozen Sharpies on the coffee table and some assorted dips. Help yourself.
Second of all, you say you haven’t been thinking about it? Not to worry. I’ve been obsessing. I see the trends from the folding chairs that you’ve been missing out on.
I love home leagues more than any other form of fantasy football. I like the personal angle: The relationships formed, the mass text threads, and the fear physically manifesting in my opponents’ eyes in real time. Some things are worth all the money in the world.
As Shawn detailed this week, there are more ways to hold the elephant in home leagues, as the less rabid base may not be as keen on the exploitable edges, and the format tends to be more forgiving with shallower rosters and benches. Being superior at QB or TE can be an advantage, so we have free reign to shop for them in the earlier rounds. And fragility doesn’t change just because we are drafting from a living room, so we can still load up on WR as usual. This may put us in a position where we are seeking some RB help in the middle rounds. And I’ve got great news for you. There are some killer options in that range this summer. So sit back, and let’s circle a few names in that magazine of yours.
THE LATEST FROM THE EASY CHAIR
You aren’t going to believe it, but they’re finally catching on. Devin from I.T.? He’s taking Justin Jefferson first overall. Kelly, the league’s first three-time champ? If you can make her out from behind the full-size replica Lombardi trophy she’s cradling like a baby, you’ll hear her say Ja’Marr Chase’s name second. Tyreek Hill, Cooper Kupp, Stefon Diggs, CeeDee Lamb? They’ve all got first-round ADPs. A.J. Brown, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Davante Adams, Garrett Wilson? They’ve got a shot.
Antifragility, and the Myth of Value Based Drafting dropped on this site almost ten years ago. It has taken long enough – a decade of being poorly described and vigorously attacked or, in fact, barely understood at all by the outside world. Still, the general public is finally starting to warm up to the real meaning of it: stacking the deck in advance not only to accommodate but to take advantage of the inevitable chaos and fragility of the RB position as well as the point predictability of RB understudies in comparison to other skill positions. But you know all that. That’s Rotoviz 101.
Urgency has become notably higher to fill WR early in home leagues, where it once was an afterthought. As a result, it is more critical than ever to maintain your advantage with proper roster construction, which is one area where your friends may not have quite put the puzzle together yet.
Traditionally, the early middle rounds have still been a little early to draft RB if we want to enact the perfect Zero RB build, but there are exceptions. If we have an informed take on the right player, it can be worth taking the leap in the sixth or seventh round. By the back half of the middle rounds, we should be in full-on thrift store mode, adding a stable of RBs that bring out the best one-liners from our old-school league-mates under haughty smiles. Here are some names from the middle rounds that can help you get the last laugh in 2023.
