It’s a bit ironic that Brandon changed his team name this month to “Team Cleaning Y’all Up” when FootballGuys seems to think he’ll be the one getting cleaned up by the league. Even with great roster management compared to everybody else, they give him only a 45-percent chance to make the playoffs.

Brandon was already in for a tough time considering his keeper was D.J. Moore, by far the lowest ranked keeper in the league. Now, it’s not like Brandon made a bad decision. Moore was the best keeper option on his team. He could have spent a quarter of his FAAB for the season to pick up and keep Cooper Kupp, but Fantasy Pros only has Kupp ranked three receivers ahead of Moore and would have cost Brandon a 7th round pick instead of an 8th.

But FantasyPros is a little more optimistic about his team. They ranked Brandon’s draft 8th in the league. His starters aren’t all that bad, something both websites agree on. But the biggest concern here is depth. He drafted A.J. Green, who hasn’t been placed on IR but for whom there’s no real timetable on his return. At least Brandon can place him on IR and pick up somebody else. But he also drafted Kareem Hunt and Golden Tate, both of whom will start the season serving suspensions and cannot be placed on IR, and he drafted three tight ends, something I don’t recall season before in our league.

I’m not as critical of Brandon’s team as FootballGuys is, and the only reaches I might criticize for him are Green and Hunt, but there’s no doubt he’ll need to be very aggressive on the waiver wire this season. If he doesn’t bid enough to get a couple of the top waiver claims of the year, he might fail to reach 6 wins for the first time in his AFL career.

It’s serendipitous that our two lowest draft grades go to the same two who brought up the rear of last year’s grades, just flipped. Last year Andrew came away with the worst grade and ended up doing exactly what I just said might be Brandon’s fate. He failed to reach six wins, though just barely as he finished 5-9.

Brandon, who was #11 last year coming out of the draft, actually managed to make the playoffs though as he went 8-6 and held the tiebreaker over Evan for the wild card.

Sunday night confirmed my opinion that Andrew should have kept George Kittle in the 8th round instead of Le’Veon Bell in the 1st. Andrew wound up drafting Kittle in the 2nd round and, based on the six picks preceding Andrew’s first round pick that was used to keep Bell, he likely would have been able to draft Le’Veon right there anyway and still had a second round pick to use on another running back or a top wide receiver, knowing a consensus top three tight end was already on his roster.

Because of that, Andrew’s team is pretty weak at all three primary offensive positions. He drafted Tom Brady in the 9th round as the 11th quarterback off the board, despite his consensus ranking being much lower. FantasyPros classifies that pick as a reach of at least two rounds. I try to avoid criticizing people being high on certain players. Brady could certainly ball out this year in spite of his age, but Andrew almost certainly could have had him in the 11th or even 12th round of the draft.

Andrew drafted a league-high eight wide receivers. Hopefully he struck gold with a few of them. But receivers are a dime a dozen in fantasy football. You can always find them on the waiver wire. His running back corps is going to make it very difficult to replicate Brandon’s success last season. Alongside Bell, Andrew has David Montgomery, Peyton Barber, and Rashaad Penny. Montgomery has some serious upside, but I certainly wouldn’t be looking forward to plugging Barber or Penny in for his and Bell’s bye weeks.

If you recall my keeper grades from the other evening, Andrew’s decision wasn’t the only one I criticized. As much as I like Davante Adams to have a good season this year, I was surprised that Stephen didn’t keep Nick Chubb in the 8th round.

Instead, Stephen kept Adams in exchange for his late 2nd round pick and used his 2nd overall pick on David Johnson, just one pick ahead of where Chubb went. Stephen could have had Chubb much later in the draft, taken another consensus top-10 running back (like he did with David Johnson) or a top wide receiver like Julio Jones or Davante Adams with that pick, andbeen able to take another player ranked around the top 30 at the back end of the 2nd round.

The interesting thing to note here, though, is that while Brandon and Andrew both have playoff chances lower than even the 12th spot did in last year’s draft grade post, Stephen’s 30-percent chance is better than his chances were after last year’s draft when his grade ranked 7th in the league. In fact, only the top six of last year’s draft grades indicated a 50-percent chance or greater of making the playoffs with good in-season management, a mark that everybody from Stephen through the rest of this post achieved in this year’s draft. This indicates more even drafting across the league this year and, hopefully, even more parity than we’re already used to seeing.

I’m not sure Stephen should feel too confident in David Njoku as his only tight end. He’s displayed good hands at times in the past, but he didn’t do much last year once Baker Mayfield became the starting quarterback and now he has to contend with even more quality targets for Mayfield to distribute the ball to.

But you can survive with a weak tight end. Aaron Rodgers is a consensus top-4 quarterback like usual, David Johnson and Damien Williams are both good running backs, Devin Singletary may emerge as Buffalo’s lead back as the season progresses, and I also like Justin Jackson to take over from Austin Ekeler at some point if Melvin Gordon doesn’t return to the Chargers. His receivers after Adams don’t wow me that much, but they’re all fine and, as I’ve said many times already over this and my last post, you can always plug holes at wide receiver if you pay attention to the waiver wire.

Just ahead of Stephen’s, we have our first auto-draft team of this year’s draft grades. In fact, Danny and Adam this year were the first two owners to auto-draft since a couple of owners had to rely on it during our very first draft back in 2013.

Danny should be very pleased with his wide receiver corps. While many other owners will have to put most of their waiver wire attention at that position, he’ll be able to pretty much ignore it altogether in the absence of injury. DeAndre Hopkins and Michael Thomas will be the best wide receiver tandem in the league this year. Despite their quarterback concerns, T.Y. Hilton and Sterling Shepard should be solid flex options all year; but FantasyPros classifies both players as reaches of at least two rounds by Danny, suggesting he could have had them later in the draft. I can’t say whether that’s auto-draft’s fault or the fault of the pre-draft rankings he put into the Fleaflicker system.

But Danny may find himself hurting at the RB2 position. Devonta Freeman is at a point in his career where he may be more of an RB2 himself rather than the RB1 spot he’ll hold in Danny’s lineup. Behind Freeman, Danny has a slew of guys who are very talented but who might never put up consecutive weeks with 10 or more touches. Danny typically ranks near the bottom of the league every year in our coaching metrics, so that situation will likely be a very stressful one for him to navigate.

Last year, Eric had the best draft in the league. FootballGuys gave him a stunning 87.75-percent chance of making the playoffs with average in-season management.

The big concerns for this team are at quarterback and receiver. Brees is still good and a lot of people have high hopes for Jameis Winston this year, but they’re the 10th and 11th ranked passers on FantasyPros’ consensus list, meaning that Eric has two low-end QB1s to navigate between this season.

It’s not terrible situation to be in; after all, it has become more and more common to stream the quarterback position. But by looking at Drew Brees, since he was the first of the two that Eric took, and checking FantasyPros’ list of best quarterbacks to pair with Brees for streaming purposes, we find that Winston ranks 8th on that list.

The two best pairings for Brees, according to FantasyPros, are Dak Prescott and Ben Roethlisberger, both of whom were taken at least a full round after Eric took Winston as his second quarterback. The other quarterbacks who ranked as better pairs for Brees and were available when Eric took Winston are Kirk Cousins, Lamar Jackson, and Mitch Trubisky.

Wide receiver is also considered a weakness for Eric by FootballGuys, and he no doubt lacks a true WR1 or even a lock WR2. But Godwin seems poised for a breakout season and I like Mike Williams, Christian Kirk, Tyrell Williams, and Geronimo Allison this year. It’ll be tricky to get the right combos every week, but that’s part of the game.

The important thing is that Eric shouldn’t be too concerned about running backs with Alvin Kamara and Dalvin Cook leading the charge for him. Derrick Henry is always a wild-card but should have the trust of the Titans as the lead back after the way he finished off last season, and Carlos Hyde figures to work into the Texans backfield situation, bad news for Duke Johnson owners considering Johnson was completely unplayable in fantasy last year until the Browns traded Hyde to the Jaguars, and even then Nick Chubb leapt past him on the Browns depth chart.

And so we reach the halfway mark of our draft grades. This is the second of this year’s auto-draft teams. After last year with Patrick Mahomes, I’ve learned better than to be overly critical of Adam’s draft strategy. And I couldn’t be critical this year if I wanted to since the auto-draft did everything for him.

This should be Adam’s best team by far since he joined the league in 2015. With the exception of an abysmal 2-12 2017 campaign, Adam has always finished at least .500. But the first two times he managed it, he did it through luck, based on most of our coaching and power rankings metrics. Last year it took five straight wins to finish the season to reach a 7-7 record. This year, any success he has should be legitimate.

He kept Patrick Mahomes in exchange for his 9th round pick and has a solid backup in Dak Prescott. Nick Chubb will be his RB1, though he may have some difficulty at RB2 if Melvin Gordon doesn’t return. I already mentioned the concern for Duke Johnson at this point, it’s doubtful Royce Freeman will eat into Phillip Lindsay’s carries as much as some experts are anticipating, and the jury is out on just how many of Mark Ingram’s touches from last year will go to Latavius Murray.

But Adam has a very good tight end in O.J. Howard and his receiver corps is solid. I don’t agree that this team deserves the perfect 100 that FantasyPros ECR gives it, but this is going to be a division contender for sure.

Interestingly enough, the other team to beat Eric’s FantasyPros ECR score was my own team. I fell just short of Adam’s score with a 99.

I’m actually very pleased with my draft, but I took more risks than I usually do and that makes me nervous. I should be good at the quarterback and tight end positions with Deshaun Watson and Zach Ertz.

I kept Kerryon Johnson in exchange for my 8th round draft pick. I took Ezekiel Elliott with the first overall pick in the draft, praying that the reports that he and the Cowboys are getting close to a deal are true. But I also took his handcuff, Tony Pollard, just in case and I have Marlon Mack, who should be one of the best RB3s in the league.

My receiver situation isn’t great. Antonio Brown is a head case who is amazing when he’s on the field but showed in Week 17 of last season that he may need to be considered unreliable. Josh Gordon could be great this year, especially with Demaryius Thomas out of the picture in New England, but he’s proven to be unreliable throughout his career.

I probably reached for the Bears defense too early, but now that defenses can once again score negative points in our league, I wanted to make sure I got a defense that I shouldn’t have to worry about that with. They’ll regress from last season, I’m sure, but hopefully not so much that I’ll be losing points with them in my lineup.

Evan’s strength is his receiver corps. Julio Jones and Adam Thielen may not be the best tandem in our league this year, but once you add in Cooper Kupp there’s no doubt this becomes the best trio.

His two quarterbacks are Josh Allen and Philip Rivers, putting him in a worse version of Eric’s situation. FantasyPros has Rivers ranked 16th and Allen ranked 20th at the quarterback position. Ironically, Evan drafted the two as the 16th and 20th quarterbacks off the board in our draft Sunday night. Neither quarterback is among the top six options to stream alongside the other, either, so it’s not a pairing that will lend itself to an easy streaming situation.

According to FantasyPros’ draft analysis, Evan had only two value picks and six reaches of at least one round. The site’s ECR gave him a score of 57, the fourth lowest in the league, thanks in part to his projected quarterback woes and his lack of running back depth. Aaron Jones is a solid RB1 but Josh Jacobs was never in a workhouse role in college so there are a lot of questions concerning how his body will handle what the Raiders are expected to place on his shoulders.

I like William’s team at the top end. Baker Mayfield and Jared Goff are both top-10 quarterbacks, so FantasyPros didn’t even bother looking at the pairing of the two of them on their QBBC Finder tool because you wouldn’t expect a team to have both of them.

William kept Saquon Barkley in exchange for his 1st round draft pick and then got Chris Carson as his RB2.

His receiving corps is a bit lacking, with solid players like Robert Woods and Julian Edelman at the top but some big question marks following. But I like Marvin Jones more than a lot of people this year so I think he should fill his flex role nicely.

Delanie Walker and Jordan Reed are far from sure things at tight end, but the rest of his roster is good enough, in my opinion, to make up for that. FantasyPros ECR gives William a score of 86, good for fourth in the league, despite marking half of his draft picks as reaches of at least one round.

After losing to his younger brother in last year’s championship game, I’m sure Anthony will be happy to see his name ahead of William’s on this list as they head into their opening-week title game rematch.

Kirk Cousins is the third best quarterback to pair with Matt Ryan according to FantasyPros, and that’s the pair Anthony has headlining his team. He also has a strong receiving corps with Tyreek Hill, Tyler Lockett, and Robby Anderson leading the way.

FootballGuys says his biggest weakness is at running back, but I’d be pretty happy with Anthony’s group of RBs. Christian McCaffrey is, for some people, the best fantasy option at the position. I think Philip Lindsay will quickly remind everybody why he buried Royce Freeman on the depth chart last season and Adrian Peterson got a contract extension in Washington, so he won’t just give up the starting role outright to Derrius Guice.

It’s not a running back room that will win a title, but it’s certainly one that should provide Anthony with enough production that the rest of his team can make up for the lack of depth.

Will has just one playoff appearance to show for his six year’s in the AFL, but that has a really good chance to change this year.

Carson Wentz obviously is a concern from an injury standpoint. If he stays healthy, Will is in good shape. If he doesn’t, I’m not sure Kyler Murray is going to do it for Will.

I’m not a huge Leonard Fournette guy, but being able to keep James Conner in the 14th round gave Will a huge opportunity that he took advantage of by also drafting Mark Ingram, the Miami tandem of Kenyan Drake and Kalen Ballage (one or the other should eventually emerge as the workhorse back in that offense), and a solid group of receivers. Odell Beckham Jr., Brandin Cooks, and Sammy Watkins are a solid three, D.K. Metcalf could emerge as the second-half rookie to own, and I’m really high on Jared Cook at tight end this year.

There’s not much more to say. This is a really good team and it’s no wonder that, while FantasyPros ECR only gave him the fifth highest score with an 85, the site also projects him to finish second in the league’s final standings.

FantasyPros is not nearly as high on Sean’s team as FootballGuys is, but I’m sure Sean doesn’t want to hear that.

Since taking 2015 off from the league and then taking over another former member’s team upon his return, Sean has struggled to find his footing, amassing an overall record of 11-31 over the past three seasons. Sean kept Stefon Diggs in the 8th round of the 2016 draft. He had a solid season, but Sean decided to take his chances by not keeping anybody in 2017, the year Diggs had his real breakout.

Last year, Sean kept Larry Fitzgerald in the 4th. Fitzgerald was a solid player, but certainly not worth the high price. Finally, Sean has a legitimate keeper option this year and the rest of his draft was better for it. Sean kept JuJu Smith-Schuster in exchange for his fifth round draft pick and pairs him with Mike Evans and Allen Robinson. It’s a trio that I’d rank just barely behind Evan’s.

Travis Kelce is a big time tight end and will help Sean immensely. Clearly, receiving stats won’t be hard to come by for Sean.

The concerns for Sean lie at quarterback and running back. Lamar Jackson and Mitch Trubisky are ranked 13th and 18th respectively at the position. It’s a better situation than Evan is in, but still not the ideal streaming pair as the two are only the 6th best streaming option for their partner on this team.

Running back will also be a concern. Sony Michel should remain a solid RB1, though it’s not out of the realm of possibilities that his performance last year could be an early-career outlier and Bill Belichick could return to his ways of not wanting to give any one guy a consistent workload. I don’t think Austin Ekeler will hold on to his starting spot in LA, regardless of Melvin Gordon’s status, and Tarik Cohen, while dynamic, is now part of a busy running backs room in Chicago.

There are a lot of questions about this team that make FantasyPros less optimistic analysis understandable. Still, this is a great opportunity for Sean to at least reach the .500 mark for the first time since 2014.