Fantasy Football Mock Draft Recap Rounds 3 Thru 8

“Adapt or Die!” Brad Pitt exclaims to his head scout in the hit movie “Money Ball.”

This should be your mindset during a fantasy football draft. You will most likely go into a draft with one plan and come out using three different back up plans just to survive. Remember it’s all about putting the best possible lineup together week in and week out, not trying to prove that the RB-RB-WR-WR-QB or RB-WR-WR-RB-TE method is the best way to win a league. Theories on drafting are like excuses for bad fantasy football teams, everyone has one.

As Mike Tyson so eloquently said, ” Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” That punch in the face is usually an extremely long WR run in the middle of a draft.

Many great owners show up to drafts with spreadsheets and laptops thinking that they planned for every possible scenario to unfold only to realize that a live draft is always a test of how one functions in complete chaos. Cellphones are constantly going off. Kids are running around using your cheat sheets to draw their favorite cartoon characters. The pizza guy is waiting to get paid like in “Home Alone.” Your high school buddy keeps drafting players who have already been taken. With all this chaos you have to try to stay in that drafting Zone.

For example, it’s round three and you have a late-round pick. The wings and pizza have just arrived and you’re starving. Your plan was to take Roddy White or Larry Fitzgeraldand can’t see how either don’t make it to your pick, so you grab some wings and start to make a mess when low and behold the two guys in front of you draft White and Fitzgerald back-to-back.

Oh no! What do you do? Do you draft the next receiver on your list that only has a fourth-round grade? Do you draft Drew Brees even though you wanted to wait until after the fifth round for a QB? Is it too early for Gronkowski? How’s his back, anyway?

All of these questions are running through your head as you wipe thermonuclear wing sauce right into your eyes. Temporarily blinded you walk up to the draft board without a clue as to who you’re actually going to pick. You look at the names on the stickers hoping one pops out at you. You search for a lifeline on the faces of your friends that want nothing more than to see you pick a kicker, until you finally draft Brees just so you can slink back to your seat.

You clean your eyes. You take a deep breath and talk yourself into your new plan. How can I be upset? I drafted a guy who can go for 5,000 yards and 40 touchdowns. What’s not to love? When Tom Brady slips to the the seventh round and your second wide receiver ends up being Greg Jennings you resign yourself to finishing your friends 12 pack just to numb the pain.

We’ve all been there and during this recent mock draft at www.myfantasyleague.com I found myself right back in the line of fire when my plan had to be scrapped in round four. While I didn’t have Buffalo wing sauce in my eyes or beer spilled on my cheat sheets, I did have something happen that I wasn’t prepared for. A GM went RB-WR-WR-WR to start the draft right in front of me. I never saw it coming. I should have, but I didn’t.

You can never discount the “human element” to a draft. Mistakes can and will happen. People do strange things when under pressure, and there is no greater pressure in late August then when you’re on the clock after your target was taken right in front of you. Just remember, you aren’t drafting against expert algorithms. You’re drafting against car salesmen, accountants, teachers, and even in some cases, stay at home dads.

This article originally was posted at www.bigblueview.com on July 12th, 2013