When you hold the No. 1 pick in a soft PPR league, you have a moral obligation to ignore the spreadsheet nerds and draft a guy who puts his hand in the dirt.
Last night, I found myself holding the No. 1 overall pick in my neighborhood’s annual fantasy football draft. My so-called friends had voted to switch us to a PPR format—Points Per Reception—a system designed to reward pampered slot receivers for catching two-yard bubble screens. I looked around the room at these grown men huddled over their color-coded ADP spreadsheets, iPad screens glowing in the dim light of a suburban garage, and I realized this league has a problem. They were looking for high-ceiling system fits. I was looking for a football player.
When you hold the first overall pick, you are the front office. You set the tone for the entire franchise. The analytics guys on the television will tell you to take Christian McCaffrey, Breece Hall, or CeeDee Lamb. But I trust the eye test. Have I ever seen CeeDee Lamb pick up a blitzing Mike linebacker in the A-gap on third-and-short? No. Does Breece Hall have the grit to play through a high-ankle sprain in December just to open up a rushing lane for someone else? I don't know, and frankly, I don't care to find out.
Back in my day, a reception was a mechanism to move the chains, not a cheap trick to inflate a fantasy score. Handing out a full point just because a running back caught a shovel pass behind the line of scrimmage is exactly why this country is losing its edge. It builds false confidence. It teaches our youth that effort is the same as execution.
So, with the clock winding down and the entire room expecting me to announce a flashy perimeter playmaker, I decided to establish a winning culture from day one. I drafted San Francisco 49ers fullback Kyle Juszczyk.
The room went dead silent. The commissioner, a guy who works in middle management and wears a lanyard on the weekends, stammered something about Juszczyk only scoring 12 fantasy points all of last year. I just smiled, tapped my temple, and told him to check the tape.
If you're relying on decimal points to tell you who won a football game, you've already lost the locker room.
You can't put a fantasy value on a guy who clears out a six-technique defensive end. The apps won't measure it. Yahoo doesn't have a column for setting the edge. ESPN doesn't send push notifications when a lead blocker successfully identifies a stunt. But ask any real fan who actually watches the game, and they'll tell you that taking a pass-catching back at 1.01 is a coward's way out.
The rest of my draft was an exercise in pure intangibles. In the second round, while the rest of the sheep were fighting over change-of-pace backs on load management, I drafted the entire Baltimore Ravens offensive line as a single collective unit. You think I care that my league’s app doesn't technically allow you to start a left guard in the flex position? That's a problem for the commissioner to take up with the league office. I am drafting a team that dictates the physical terms of the game.
I followed that up by drafting three consecutive middle linebackers. Do we play with Individual Defensive Players? No. We do not. But I want my offensive players looking across the virtual locker room and knowing that there is accountability. I want a defense that travels.
By round ten, I didn't have a single starting quarterback or wide receiver, but my roster led the league in run-blocking grades and uncalled holding penalties. The guys in the group chat are currently projecting me to go 0-14, but they’re measuring success by arbitrary, modernized metrics like total points scored. Come December, when the weather turns cold and those delicate little PPR backs start dropping passes to protect their bodies, my fantasy team will be doing what it was built to do: establishing the run, dominating the time of possession, and sitting quietly in last place with its dignity intact.