Me? I love the silly season.
This time right now, between the NFL Combine and the NFL Draft, is particularly invigorating. We get some real, actionable information as the new league year kicks off in mid-March, and the cascade of player movement upends our dynasty rosters in ways we see coming and in ways we don't.
But other than that? It's pure, wild, drunken speculation time, Bubba. NFL mock drafts are rolling out daily, and until the real thing hits in April, we dynasty managers are left to speculate on other people's speculation.
But it isn't all empty calories, my friends. Sure, the landing spots here are imaginary, and so is the impact on NFL and fantasy rosters, but the effect that the speculation has on our abilities as dynasty players is real.
Advantages can be had in dynasty leagues by managers who are most ready to react to real-life roster changes. You need experience to be prepared, and practice is the best way to gain that experience.
So why not feed our brains that mock draft candy and sharpen our dynasty skills at the same time? We'll pick a recent mock draft and examine its dynasty fallout each week.
We. Are. Here. Finally, starting tonight, we find out where some of our favorite rookies will be playing next year. Outside of fantasy football, one of my favorite hobbies is being critical of Jeff Bell. So let's look at his three-round mock draft and see how we feel about some of these landing spots before we get to the real thing later tonight. This week, we focus on some teams that took more than one fantasy-relevant player in Jeff's three-round mock to see how we like the combinations.
Cleveland Browns
1.02 Travis Hunter, WR/CB, Colorado
2.01 Jaxson Dart, QB, Ole Miss
3.30 Cam Skattebo, RB, Arizona State
I love it, but I might be more excited if I hadn't watched the Browns mess up hauls like this time and time again. I used to watch the Lions have drafts like this all of the time. A superstar and a couple of promising players that could form the nucleus of a new dawn. Over decades of disappointment, I eventually learned that there was so much organizational rot that nothing would improve until ownership changed. I fear that might also be true in Cleveland. It's tough to use our dynasty draft capital on good players in bad environments, and we shouldn't be surprised when it ends up negatively impacting the real-life development and fantasy value of those players.
That aside, if we focus on the things that we can control, what we have here is an elite athlete, paired with a promising passer, and a tough-as-nails type running back who seems to find new ways to contribute every week. In a vacuum, I like the idea of putting these guys in a position to help each other succeed. In Cleveland, I might have to pinch my nose and wrinkle my forehead a little bit when I pick any one of them for my dynasty teams.
