Guide to Crushing 3-Person Drafts NFL Week 2

Welcome to Week 2 of the NFL season. I have good news and bad news for 3-Person drafts this week. The good news is there's a way to get an edge from every draft position with some players that have high leverage. The bad news, there isn't a slam dunk position or play. Sometimes drafts can be manipulated to essentially eliminate one team. Sometimes the way the draft falls gives us a huge edge on both of our opponents.

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The problem this week is that projections are fairly tight. Even if our ranking is significantly higher than Draft's, the difference in projection is relatively negligible. I'm fine playing maybe 4-5 drafts, but I'm not playing the 6 or more drafts I'll do in other weeks. Here's a look at the projections:

Quarterbacks

We're only drafting three quarterbacks so there's no need to dig deep into the QB ranks. Here's what we're dealing with:

Normally, I'd advise to wait on QB but Patrick Mahomes is by far the biggest edge to this week. He's projected for four more points than Deshaun Watson and Dak Prescott who are the other two QBs ranked inside Draft's top three. It's not the end of the world if someone scoops Mahomes up before you. Simply take Lamar Jackson with your last pick.

Runningbacks

Draft and our ranks are pretty similar. There's some RBs we like later in drafts, but we can't really use them. Zeke will end up on a lot of our teams while we'll be avoiding Fournette and Carson.

Wide Receivers and Tight Ends

This is the biggest problem we have. There's not much of a difference between the WRs and TEs we like vs the ones we don't. We still want to target Thomas and Hopkins, but there's not a huge difference between them and someone like Sammy Watkins or JuJu Smith-Schuster. The one guy that's key is Keenan Allen. We want to try and keep him off the other teams forcing them to look at Kittle and Edelman.

First Position

The first pick is obviously going to be Kamara. If you get the first pick multiple times, you can sprinkle in some Barkley just to protect yourself in case Kamara throws up a stinker or Barkley destroys Buffalo.

Here's a look at what probably happens:

I'm not actually sure which team picks DeAndre Hopkins or Leonard Fournette, but it doesn't really change things. There are a couple things that are problematic about this. The first thing is, we lose Zeke in this one. Draft has Zeke, Conner, and Henry with the identical projection. I think teams will choose Zeke if given the choice with those three. I'm not particularly enamored with James Conner this week even though our projection is just slightle behind Zeke's. I liked this flow a little better:

We get Zeke here and I'm fine with Kelce and Smith-Schuster with my last two picks. If Team 3 would be better of picking Allen instead of Kittle(or Edelman). If you want to force their hand a little bit, you could pick JuJu and Allen with your last two picks. That basically forces Team 3 to choose between Kittle and Edelman.

Stuff happens in draft. This is just in case someone either picks Mahomes before us or if you feel like taking a break from getting Mahomes:

You still get just better than 35% of the fantasy points total projection. Again, getting Allen here makes your opponents look at Kittle and/or Edelman. If you get JuJu instead of Allen, any extra points you get get swallowed up by the points your opponents get. You have a big problem if your opponents avoid Carson, Fournette, Kittle, and Edelman and draft Zeke and/or JuJu.

Position Two

I like this position. I think no matter what your opponents do, you can take advantage of them. This is the largest market share at almost 36% we can get from any position and I don't think there's much the other drafters can do to keep it from you:

If Team 3 drafts Allen instead of Kittle, just draft Zeke and get JuJu or Kelce with your last pick. If Team 1 drafts Mahomes before your third pick, draft Allen and then Zeke with your next to picks and snap up Lamar Jackson with your last pick. You barely miss a beat if either of those things happens.

Position Three

Sometimes it makes sense to start WR-WR. Don't do that! You might still have a small advantage if Mahomes makes it back to your third pick, but you're in trouble if he doesn't. There's two ways to attack this and it depends on how much you like Ekeler. The first is if you like him:

It's a bit of a risk hoping Mahomes makes it back, but I think he will often enough. This is the only path that allows you to get a greater than 35% market share and the risk isn't all that bad since we can flex to Allen, Zeke, and Jackson even if Mahomes gets snagged in front of us. The second option is to pass on Ekeler, which is arguably safer, but it'll be harder to get a larger market share:

Conclusion

Hope you enjoyed this. If you have any questions about projections, starts/sits, strategies, trades, etc post them in the comments. Happy hunting!