Every August fantasy footballers are engaged in countless hours of research and mock drafts to try to land the perfect draft.
This team was the perfect 2016 fantasy football draft, and no one had it
If you had half of these players, you may have gone undefeated.
Every year, nobody nails it.
Despite all of the expert opinion, few people have the insight to truly understand who’s going to break out or bust.
Yet, all you had to do to put together the perfect fantasy football team that I’ve listed below was hit on a few early picks and guess right on a handful of late-round selections featuring No. 3 receivers who became No. 2 or No. 1. Hindsight, of course, is 20/20.
For the sake of the exercise, I excluded the players whose average Yahoo! Sports draft position were in the top 12. Regardless of where you selected, you had a chance to draft this perfect team below. And of course, if you got Antonio Brown or David Johnson, your team would have been that much better. Lesson learned: You don’t need a first-round pick in your draft to win your league.
Even without those alleged first-round picks, this team was the perfect drafted team.
1 - Le’Veon Bell, RB, Pittsburgh
2 - Jordy Nelson, WR, Green Bay
3 - LeSean McCoy, RB, Buffalo
4 - DeMarco Murray, RB, Tennessee
5 - Travis Kelce, TE, Kansas City
6 - Tyrell Williams, WR, San Diego
7 - Michael Crabtree, WR, Oakland
8 - Jimmy Graham, TE, Seattle
9 - LeGarrette Blount, RB, New England
10 - Kansas City Chiefs Defense
11 - Jordan Howard, RB, Chicago
12 - Matt Ryan, QB, Atlanta
13 - Davante Adams, WR, Green Bay
14 - Michael Thomas, WR, New Orleans
15 - Matt Bryant, K, Atlanta
16 - Tyreek Hill, WR, Kansas City
A couple of interesting notes from the draft is a reminder of how important it is to snag as many wide receivers and running backs early in the draft as you can. All of 2016’s top nine wide receivers were in the top 16 of average draft position for WR’s, and two more — A.J. Green and Keenan Allen — had their seasons cut short by injury. Some of those top wide receivers were available really late in the draft or on the post-draft waiver wires.
On the flip side, three of the top nine running backs — DeMarco Murray, LeGarrette Blount, and Jordan Howard — had ADPs of Round 5 or later.
Some of the league’s top fantasy quarterbacks — Matt Ryan, Dak Prescott — were selected late in drafts or were undrafted all together.
What sets the perfect draft aside from the rest? Everything after Round 4. People spend so much time worrying about whom they will draft in the first couple rounds, yet it’s the second half of the draft that swings your draft from a B to an A.
See More:
