The picks are in. And more importantly the survey has been done. Let’s find out who said the meanest things about each other’s drafts!
Pete
Best player: Joe Burrow (pick 29) – 8 votes. A fairly easy call – Pete’s first pick was the #1 overall pick in the NFL draft. Curtis Weaver (pick 49) and Jeff Okudah (pick 60, 3rd overall pick in the NFL draft) each garnered a vote.
Best value: A tie with 2 votes between Curtis Weaver (pick 49), Jeff Okudah (pick 60), Malik Harrison (pick 71), Mykal Walker (pick 83). Damon Arnette and Noah Igbinoghene each got one vote. I can’t work out whether we think Pete got equally good value on all his picks, or equally bad value.
Worst value: Jeff Okudah (pick 60) – 5 votes. Taking the first QB off the board is always going to be a bit controversial. Burrow came in second on 2 votes.
Best name: Sterling Horfricther – 8 votes. Noah Igbinoghene would have been a leading candidate in most draft classes, but didn’t have a shot here.
Comments: “Apart from Burrow and Weaver I’m not sure any of the players will be better than FAs. Burrow was great value though.”; “Really need to include what Pete got for all of his early picks to fully evaluate. I suspect was very little so the rating might be generous”; “Not many picks, not much gained.”; “Late value and the first pick was a QB”
“Very little prep done this year, and it shows.”
“Nobody needs to draft 3 cornerbacks. I mean, you don’t really need to draft any. Unless they are one of about 4 players, they are largely interchangeable and/or random.”; “Tough to rate Pete’s draft due to not coming in early but he got his position of need and then stocked up on defensive prospects. Given that his team has a strong offence already I think there was good strategy at play here.”
Ben
Best player: Tie between Clyde Edwards-Hilaire (pick 1) and Jonathan Taylor (pick 2) – 3 votes. Ceedee Lamb (pick 4) and Isaiah Simmons (pick 12). It can’t be too bad when people can’t decide which is the best player out of the first 4 that you picked.
Best value: Antonio Gandy-Golden (pick 40) – 3 votes. A big week for Gandy-Golden, revealing he beat coronavirus and was a great value pick for Ben. Isaiah Simmons (pick 12) got 2 votes. 5 other players (CEH, Taylor, Gross-Matos, Lamb and Benjamin) each got a vote.
Worst value: Javon Kinlaw (pick 21) – 5 votes. I wholeheartedly agree. Isaiah Simmons completely his trifecta of runner-up spots, picking up 2 votes. Gandy-Golden, Lamb and Trevon Diggs (pick 75) each got 1 vote.
Best name: Antonio Gandy-Golden – 7 votes. I am shocked about the upset over Gross-Matos (2 votes), but I guess I’m a sucker for a rhyming name. Edwards-Hilaire got 1 undeserved vote.
Comments: “Some off the wall picks in the middle of the draft”; “Don’t feel like there’s any real value in this draft, it’s paying sticker price or higher for everyone in the early rounds and then a bunch of low-ish value late round picks”; “Not much ‘value’ per se as all the top picks have come at a premium. But you get your guy. Simmons overvalued there I think.”
“It’s tough to go wrong when you have 3 of the top 4 picks, and Ben managed to avoid any pitfalls. This should be transformational and take a team that’s not really been relevant since year one and turn them into challengers for the next 3 years. If it doesn’t then we know the GM is the problem. I look forward to his success infuriating Slatz.”
“Love the first round, but I think it lost its way in rounds 2 and 3. Good players, bad value.”; “Ben got good value out if his haul. Again you’d need to factor in what he gave up for his picks but I don’t think it was too much”
Goody
Best player: Ross Blacklock (pick 58) – 3 votes. A mixed bag as Deejay Dallas (pick 47) and CJ Henderson (pick 74) also got 2 votes and Darrell Taylor (pick 81), Jordan Love (pick 91) and Ashtyn Davis (pick 101) each got a vote. You could say that this shows he got good players throughout the draft. You could also say that this shows he had shit picks and picked shit players.
Best value: Darrell Taylor (pick 81) takes this home with 3 votes. Ashtyn Davis (pick 101) got 2 votes, though for my money he’s a better real player than fantasy player. Love, Henderson, Blacklock, Dallas and Shaquille Quarterman (pick 111) each got a vote. Again, no consensus.
Worst value: Finally, consensus! Jordan Love takes it home with 5 votes. And Jalen Hurts (pick 69) comes in 2nd with 3 votes. Picking a backup QB to a franchise QB isn’t popular. Ross Blacklock got the remaining vote.
Best name: Shaquille Quarterman – 7 votes. Deejay Dallas got the other 3, but frankly the only thing worse than the quality of players here is the quality of names.
Comments: “I basically like none of these picks – two back up QBs, a bunch of defenders and a guy who has a shot at being the lead RB on a team who like to swap them on a weekly basis, but also the 3rd RB on that team. No draft capital to speak of, but what they had was wasted.”; “Not a lot to work with, but might as well punt on two dubious QBs?”
“Jordan Love to be MVP All Pro.”
“It was fine. I don’t like his plan of taking two long-term backup QBs. Apart from them he got some decent prospects given his utter lack of capital.”; “I haven’t really heard of any of the players goody took”; Love is a terrible pick I’m glad he took, because it meant other players fell an extra slot down. Other than that, he couldn’t do much, not having a pick in the top 4 rounds. If only he could have traded one of his WRs to Pete for a first round pick.”; “It’s hard to rate a worst value pick when Goody only had two picks before the 7th round. I like the Ross Blacklock pick, i had been about to take him. I’m not convinced using two picks on QBs when you have so few is a great idea, even if they were pretty inconsequential picks.”
Geoff
Best player: Tua Tagovailoa (pick 32) – 6 votes. Not bad value to get your best player with your 4th pick (although that might say more about the first 3). His first two picks shared the remaining votes though: Denzel Mims (pick 11) with 3 and Tee Higgins (pick 16) with 1.
Best value: Tee Higgins (pick 16) with 3. Derrick Brown (pick 51) came in second with 2 votes, and Chaisson (pick 37), Gay (pick 36), Josh Kelley (pick 24), Mims (pick 11) and Grant Delpit (pick 66) each got a vote. It seems like there was general praise for how Geoff worked the middle rounds of the draft.
Worst value: Apart from picking Adam Trautman at 34. 4 votes for him. Kelley and Higgins each got 2, with Mims and JaMycal Hasty picking up a vote each.
Best name: Hasty might be bad value, but he’s a great name. 9 votes for him. Willie Gay is an underrated funny name for childish reasons, so he prevented Hasty’s clean sweep.
Comments: “I like both Mims and Higgins but better value at 24. Strnad could be good value.”; “A bit of a meh draft. Trading out of the 1st resulted in more picks but less oooomph”; “Missing out in the first round hurts a little. Mims and Higgins are an interesting pairing.”; “Lots of players, and lots who will likely be good in the nfl, but I’m not convinced they will be great in fantasy. It’s still pretty good, he got the best fantasy TE available, though in a shit year for TEs. There are quite a lot of players here I didn’t really have down as players worth picking when they came off the board, but he complained about being sniped consistently. Maybe there’s another world where he got a truly transcendent draft.”
“A class full of strong names. Getting Derrick Brown where he did was great value.”
“Mike is another who has stacked up plenty of good prospects on both sides. Really, it’s hard to have a bad draft (on first inspection) when you have so many picks so expect these comments to come out for Slatz and Chris too. I like the Tee Higgins pick a lot, Mike could well have got a WR1/2 for many years for a mid-2nd. Adam Trautman is overdrafted there though I think, maybe a round too early.”
Slatz
Best player: a tie between Jerry Jeudy (pick 7) and Chase Young (pick 6). 5 votes each. Not really hard to argue with that.
Best value: Jerry Jeudy runs away with it with 7 votes. Brandon Aiyuk (pick 17), Justin Herbert (pick 46) and Bradlee Anae (pick 100) each got a vote. I assume people ignored what it cost Slatz to trade up to get Jeudy.
Worst value: a (surprising, in my opinion) tie. Chase Young and Herbert (pick 46) each got 3 votes. I would have bet on Young winning this at a canter. Zack Moss (pick 26), Chase Claypool (pick 10), Aiyuk and Donovan Peoples-Jones (pick 63) each got a vote.
Best name: Donovan Peoples-Jones recovers from the ignominy of being an overrated late round pick to win best name, with 5 votes. Jerry Jeudy ran him close with 3 votes and Claypool and Davion Taylor each picked up a vote.
Comments: “He picked a bunch of players around their ADP or later, which is good, but they are pretty much all players I’m not a fan of. But I’m probably wrong. I think Young is great but he’s way overdrafted, especially given that he traded a lot to then get Jeudy.”; “Really good depth across offence and defence. I love the picks of Young and Moss. Some superb value with Jeudy and McFarland”
“Seems pretty good although gave next year’s first to achieve it. No bad picks standing out.”
“Hightower and Anae are strong picks that I was lining up for my next pick when he took them. Moss is a sneaky good pick too, and Jeudy shouldn’t have fallen to him at 7 (or 6, when he also could have taken him). Herbert is a wasted pick in my book though. Not as egregious as Love but I don’t see him being a viable nfl starter over the next three years.”; “I think both of the Steelers were taken a bit too high here so I’ve dinged the overall rating slightly but Slatz’ roster, overall, is stacked now and he did some fantastic work in round 1 to come away with Jeudy at 7 and snag the hands-down best defensive player in the draft. Young may have been a small reach but he was out on his own at the top and when you have a ton more picks coming up in a deep draft it doesn’t matter if you go and get that guy.”
Neil
Best player: AJ Epenesa (pick 53) with 7 votes. Lynn Bowden (pick 44) picked up the other 2. Surprising consensus, when compared to the other guys who didn’t join the draft until late.
Best value: Epenesa again, with 5 votes. Bowden picked up 3 votes and Devin Duvernay (pick 42) picked up 1. Not bad, your first 3 picks each garnering at least 1 “best value” vote.
Worst value: Not all good though, as Duvernay picked up worst value with 3 votes. Bowden picked up 2 votes, as did Jeff Gladney (pick 94). Isaiah Hodgins (pick 64) and Epenesa each picked up a vote.
Best name: A tie, but with early picks again performing well. Lynn Bowden and Duvernay picked up 2 votes each, as did Brycen Hopkins. Gladney and Uche eached picked up a vote, but this is a very poor name class.
Comments: “Not bad given the lack of early picks. Made his highest picks count.”; “I don’t understand the CB picks. He had 4 on the books and took 2 more. They are largely interchangeable and you shouldn’t be spending more than about $5 on 3 of them for the season.”
“Negative points for too many traditional names. Seriously, none of these players were on my list apart from Uche.”
“A lot of good potential contributors and very hard to pick a “worst value” player. Good work with shit capital. He should stop trading away all his picks.”; “I haven’t heard of many of the players past AJ Epenesa so I picked the first one as worst value (this is more of an indictment of me than Neil). I’ve rated the draft pretty low more because I can’t really see what Neil has on his roster to make up for the fact he didn’t have any early round picks.”; “Considering where he started picking, there’s solid value here with a lot of offensive guys who can contribute.”
Benj
Best player: Patrick Queen (pick 10) with 7 votes. Antonio Gibson (pick 20) picked up 2 votes, and Xavier McKinney (pick 50) picked up 1.
Best value: a tie between Queen and McKinney. Gabriel Davis (pick 61) also picked up a vote.
Worst value: Patrick Queen picks up his 3rd win, with 4 votes. The next two picks also challenged, with Gibson and Tyler Johnson (pick 30) each picking up 2 votes. Xavier McKinney and Reggie Begelton (pick 104) each got a vote too.
Best name: Begelton might have only got 1 pick as worst value, but got 8 picks as best name. An amazing achievement for a player who shouldn’t even have been eligible for the draft (he already went undrafted 3 years ago). Troy Dye picked up 2 votes.
Comments: “An okay draft. I don’t think there is many special talents there apart from Queen. Get your guy”; “It’s tough to give a high score when your first pick is an LB and your second is a project RB (even if I like him). But a bunch of good, probably high floor players.”; “I just don’t see a lot of value here – first pick is an overpay for a defender, second is an RB who is not value at RB as he’s a WR and third is a WR who may not play immediately. This is not a draft which helps keep the team on top.”
“Not a fan of Ben’s haul overall. The 10th pick is tough though. Queen is the only pick likely to contribute much”
“I don’t think Johnson is bad value, but I understand why others do. I put him as worst because arguably he could have been got later, but I didn’t have a pick for 20 picks and he’d definitely have been gone by then. I’m largely happy with what I achieved. The fact that a tier of WRs ran out just before my second round pick really frustrated me, but I’m happier with Queen than one of the WRs. I’ve been shit at picking WRs anyway, no doubt whoever I would have taken at 10 would have turned out to be the dud.”
Max
Best player: D’Andre Swift (pick 8) with 6 votes. Michael Pittman (pick 15) and Laviska Shenault (pick 19) each got 2 votes.
Best value: Pittman and Devin Asiasi (pick 38) each got 3 votes. Quintez Cephus (pick 48) got 2 votes – I really like him. Shenault and Keshawn Vaughn (pick 18) each got 1.
Worst value: Devin Asiasi takes this one too, with 3 votes. A controversial choice. Jeremy Chinn and Keshawn Vaughn (pick 18) got 2 votes. Swift, Pittman and Shenault with 1 each.
Best name: Quintez Cephus takes this easily, with 7 votes, Shenault probably suffered from familiarity, only getting 2 votes, and Neville Gallimore, which I think is just a dull name, got 1.
Comments: “Solid draft. Swift so late in the first when a month ago he was a potential #1 overall is an indictment of the Lions, but also great value as they probably aren’t permanently bad either.”; “I like this draft. I love Pittman, Chinn and Asiasi. Some solid picks and a couple of players chosen after others of worst value”
“Max started well with the first 4 picks but then seemed to lose his way. Did he get bored?”
“I like most of the picks here, and he did really well to get two potential starting RBs at good value. Cephus is a really promising sleeper too. The obsession with Patriots at the end was weird though.”; “I said Swift was the worst value, but that’s only because Detroit is where RBs go to die. In theory getting him at 8 is great value. There are lots of people who that I don’t know who they are and I think the same might be true for Max.”
“Even I think I took Asiasi too early. I also don’t know why I have 4 New England offensive players in my draft.”
Ian
Best player: JK Dobbins (pick 5) waltzes home with 8 votes. Kenneth Murray (pick 25) and Antoine Winfield (pick 67) got 1 vote each.
Best value: Logan Wilson (pick 45) with 4 votes takes the crown. Antoine Winfield and Dobbins each picked up 2 votes. Murray and Dezmon Patmon (pick 119) got a vote.
Worst value: Joe Reed (pick 59) and Kenneth Murray (pick 25) each got 3 votes. Murray is a surprise, I really like him and its a more traditional value for a first round LB, given where Simmons and Queen went. Justin Madubuike (pick 56) got 2 votes, and Logan Wilson and Thaddeus Moss (pick 99) got 1 vote.
Best name: A high quality category, but McTelvin Agim saw off the competition with 6 votes. Albert Okwuegbunam picked up 2 votes. Thaddeus Moss and Dezmon Patomn each got a vote.
Comments: “Okay but not spectacular. Would have liked some better players with the midround picks. Logan Wilson could be amazing IMO”; “I usually like Ian’s drafts, but Dobbins doesn’t necessarily help immediately, and then two linebackers to fill out his top 50, makes for an opportunity missed to improve a team which missed the playoffs again last year.”
“I missed not having a 2nd round pick. A lot of talent was selected whilst I was waiting for my 2nd pick. I did okay with what I had but not the most exciting group.”
“There are maybe 3 players here I’d quite like on my roster. I’m not convinced by Murray. Winfield is a great pick though. He also picked a player he refused to name when he announced him, which can’t do much for squad morale.”; “Ian’s done some good work here. I was torn between Wilson and Winfield as best value, both are defensive players that should challenge for his starting spots immediately. Ian will be happy to have JK Dobbins there over Cam Akers too, for my money.”
Chris
Best player: Cam Akers (pick 3) with 5 votes. You’d better hope a high pick is your best player. The next 3 picks also got votes: Justin Jefferson (pick 9) with 3, Jalen Reagor (pick 13) and Henry Ruggs (pick 14) with 1 each.
Best value: Bryan Edwards (pick 35) with 4 votes. Henry Ruggs picked up 2 votes, and Darrynton Evans (pick 33), Akers, Reagor and Jefferson each picked up 1.
Worst value: Cam Akers with 6 votes. I wholeheartedly agree, but just liked having a Rams RB when Gurley had knees, and couldn’t get any value to trade down. KJ Hamler got 3 votes and Henry Ruggs got 1. The correct answer was to leave this blank because all of my picks were great.
Best name: A poor quality category. AJ Dillon won with 4 votes, beating Darrynton Evans’ 2. Reagor, Cole Kmet and Raekwon Davis each picked up votes.
Comments: “Can’t fail to hit on a few receivers”; “As ever, a good draft. I love the Edwards pick there. Less sure of Jefferson quite so high though.”;
“Really good draft. Smashed the WRs. Akers is high at 3 (I prefer Dobbins) but could be Rookie of the year”
“I would have liked to trade down to get Akers slightly later, but I didn’t get sniped for anyone so I’m ok with how it ended up. Very happy with my draft (and lawn).”; “I mean. All the wide receivers. Just when you thought he must be done with them he wasn’t and he took some more. He’ll either end up with loads of value or no viable starters out of it. Hopefully the latter, because that would be hilarious, saving the rest of us from the dregs. I don’t like either the Akers of Ruggs picks. Akers wasn’t good value there at all and Ruggs I don’t think is good full stop.”; “Great draft overall. Chris didn’t have a huge need at defence and knows that our league inexplicably values offensive players much higher than their equivalent defensive players so he is absolutely set to have a good team going forward whilst being able to trade some pieces to draft well in future. My only knock would be that I think, given the quantity of picks he had, he could have traded down from 3rd spot for some future draft capital.”
Overall scores (averages). I’ve just kept these till here to keep you reading.
Ben A: 8.2
Chris: 7.3
Slatz: 7.2
Geoff: 6.2
Max: 6.0
Ian: 5.8
Neil: 5.0
Benj: 4.4
Goody: 4.2
Pete: 4.0
Overall conclusions
Who had the best draft: shockingly, this matches up with the average scores above. Ben A gets 7 votes. Slatz, Neil and Chris each got 1 vote.
Who had the worst draft: A tie, with 3 votes each: Pete, Benj and Goody. Ian also got a vote, so I guess wins most polarising draft.
Suggestions for how to improve the draft in future: “Nope. It’s my favourite weekend of the year”;
“People would announce their picks properly and MFL would allow more characters for comments of players after they’ve been drafted”;
“We should have to get all picks approved by Slatz in order to make sure we draft players at the right time”
“More trades. More high picks for me. More research and preparation for me. More people taking shit QBs and CBs. More rounds. Do it more often – can we have a draft once a month?”;
“I would love to do it in person again at some point if Coronavirus allows.”
