2021 Half PPR Late Pick Draft Strategy (Picks 7-12)

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In our last article, we discussed and analyzed a few popular draft strategies for when you are picking in the first half of the first round. But how should your draft strategy change if you have a late pick? Does taking an early tight end make sense if you have a late pick? Does the no RB strategy get better? (Yes to both!)

We’ll repeat the same process as our last article and analyze the best draft strategies by looking at average points for your starting lineup over the course of thousands of simulated mock drafts. The strategies we analyze are:

• RB-RB
• RB-WR
• WR-RB
• WR-WR
• Starters First
• Early TE
• Early QB
• No Quarter Backs
• No Wide Receivers
• No Running Backs
• Best Player Available (BPA)

While we won’t repeat the description of our analysis method (you can find that information in our prior article) we will begin by explaining what these strategies mean for us and how we will make our computer draft in the simulations.

Draft Strategy Definition

All of our ADP information and all of our projected points information is borrowed from the excellent work done by the folks over at Football Absurdity with their Beer Sheets. By extension, our data we use is an aggregate of many different experts’ rankings.

When we run thousands of mock drafts, we have to tell the computer what position to take during each round. For example, to test the ‘RB-RB’ strategy, we force the computer to take the highest ADP running back remaining at each of our first two picks. If we test the ‘No QB’ strategy, then we simply tell our computer to skip drafting any quarterbacks for the first few rounds. The specifics of each strategy are as follows.

• Most of the first two rounds are running backs and wide receivers. Thus, we will test every combination of running backs and wide receivers only for the first two rounds. For example, the ‘RB-RB’ strategy means we select the best remaining running back with our first round pick and the best remaining running back with our second round pick. The rest of rounds 3+ are allowed to proceed without positional restrictions.
• Starters First (label: Start) means we fill our starting lineup as fast as possible. For us, we study one simple incarnation in which we force our team to select either a running back or receiver for the first four rounds, then a tight end, then a QB, then a flex player. The rationale here is that you sacrifice depth in order to maximize your starting lineup.
• Early TE means that we force our team to take a tight end in either round 1 or 2 (label: R1 TE and R2 TE, respectively) and let the remainder of the picks be best-player-available. The idea behind this draft strategy is that the number of dominant tight ends is much less than any other position so grabbing one of them early gives you a positional advantage. But, do you sacrifice too much?
• For us, early QB (label: EQB) means that we take a quarterback in the third while letting the rest of the draft proceed as normal. This is slightly different from our last article where we forced a quarterback in the second. We make this change because taking a quarterback with your second pick, the 13-18 range, is not realistic.The rationale here is that quarterbacks are the highest scoring position so guaranteeing yourself the best quarterback gives you an advantage without sacrificing your first round pick.
• No quarterbacks (label: No QB) means waiting as long as possible before taking a quarterback. For our simulations, this means taking a quarterback in the 8th round and not before. Many people like this strategy because, while quarterbacks are the highest scoring position, there are often many good quarterbacks available late in the draft and it can be difficult to predict which will be the best.
• No wide receivers (label: No WR) means filling the remainder of your starting slots before wide receivers. For us, we will simulate this by simply avoiding wide receivers until the 6th round – that is 5 non wide receivers will go first. The rationale here is that there is an abundance of wide receivers that all score about 10 points per game so wasting early picks on them is sub-ideal.
• No running backs (label: No RB) means filling the remainder of your starting slots before running backs. For us, we will wait to take any running back until the 6th round. The rationale for this strategy is that because running backs tend to go very early on, using this technique can guarantee yourself a positional advantage at all the other positions. But, like in the TE case, do you sacrifice too much?
• Best Player Available (label: BPA) means you pay no attention to position and just take who you think to be the best player available at each of your picks.

Now, let us go through each late pick (in the 7-12 range) and show you how each of these strategies performs over the course of three thousand mock drafts.

Pick 7

Strategy	Points	Rank
RB-RB	105.2	7
RB-WR	104.7	9
WR-RB	105.9	4
WR-WR	103.1	11
Starters First	108.3	1
R1 TE	105.7	5
R2 TE	106.8	2
Early QB	106.6	3
No QB	105.5	6
No WR	104.6	10
No RB	100.5	12
BPA	105	8

Pick 8

Strategy	Points	Rank
RB-RB	104.7	8
RB-WR	104	9
WR-RB	105.9	4
WR-WR	103.2	11
Starters First	108.1	1
R1 TE	105.7	5
R2 TE	106.9	2
Early QB	106.4	3
No QB	105.3	6
No WR	103.9	10
No RB	100.5	12
BPA	104.9	7

Pick 9

Strategy	Points	Rank
RB-RB	104.3	8
RB-WR	103.9	9
WR-RB	106	4
WR-WR	103	11
Starters First	107.9	1
R1 TE	105.9	5
R2 TE	106.8	3
Early QB	106.9	2
No QB	105.3	6
No WR	103.7	10
No RB	100.7	12
BPA	104.7	7

Pick 10

Strategy	Points	Rank
RB-RB	104.4	8
RB-WR	104.1	9
WR-RB	105.9	5
WR-WR	103.2	11
Starters First	108	1
R1 TE	106.6	4
R2 TE	107.2	2
Early QB	107.2	2
No QB	105.7	6
No WR	103.8	10
No RB	100.9	12
BPA	105.2	7

Pick 11

Strategy	Points	Rank
RB-RB	104.6	8
RB-WR	104.5	9
WR-RB	106.1	6
WR-WR	103.3	11
Starters First	108.4	1
R1 TE	107.5	3
R2 TE	107.5	3
Early QB	107.6	2
No QB	106.3	5
No WR	104.2	10
No RB	101.5	12
BPA	105.4	7

Pick 12

Strategy	Points	Rank
RB-RB	104.7	8
RB-WR	104.3	9
WR-RB	106.1	6
WR-WR	103.3	11
Starters First	108.2	1
R1 TE	107.4	4
R2 TE	107.5	3
Early QB	107.6	2
No QB	106.3	5
No WR	104.2	10
No RB	101.2	12
BPA	105.4	7

Trends and Conclusions

Picking in the latter part of the first round really opens up what you can do with your first two picks. First round receivers are now a valid strategy. In fact, WR-RB appears to be the best combination of positions to take in the first two rounds if you are dead set on picking either a receiver or running back.

We see that early quarterbacks and early tight ends are entirely viable strategies at this point. R1 TE and R2 TE consistently rank in the top 4 of strategies. This isn’t particularly different from what we saw with early round picks except that R1 TE is now a thing. Thank you, Travis Kelce. What is perhaps more surprising is that Early QB is now such a great strategy, consistently ranking as one of the best. The idea must be that it is very important to get a stud quarterback but you have to do it at the right price. Perhaps the end of the third round is the right price.

A New Strategy

Because of the trends I’ve seen from performing all this analysis, I decided to try to put all of these strategies together to see if I could determine the best possible draft strategy. All the simulations suggest that a round 2 TE will make our team significantly better. Moreover, drafting a relatively early quarterback (3rd or 4th round) should also lead to a great draft. So, I played around with draft orders that satisfied these conditions and landed on the best draft order I could find. The best order I found was ‘RB-TE-RB-QB-WR-WR-Flex’ where flex means take any non-quarterback. Every year I will try to determine a best position in each round draft strategy like this and (self-righteously) call it the 2021 TDJ Draft Order.

One caveat: this strategy is the best draft strategy I could find of the form ‘Take this position in this round’. You will likely find more success if you pair this general draft philosophy with a healthy dose of ‘letting the draft come to you’. What I mean is, if there are a million quarterbacks left in the fourth round, maybe you can take the risk to wait until the fifth round. I will use this general idea to guide my drafting. Early tight ends, relatively early quarterbacks, running backs before receivers.

How well does this strategy do? See the table below to see how this order performs at each pick. The ‘PTS Gained’ column for each pick number shows how much better this draft order is than the best alternative at each pick. The PTS Total column is the raw number of points our starting lineup achieves simply by following this draft order.

Pick	PTS Total	PTS Gained
1	113.7	3.7
2	113	3.5
3	112.9	4
4	113	4.6
5	113	4.5
6	112.9	4.7
7	112.5	4.2
8	112.3	4.2
9	112.2	4.1
10	112.3	4.4
11	112.7	4.7
12	112.7	4.5

Comparing Draft Strategy: Early v. Late Pick

Some draft strategies get better or worse as we move from having the first overall pick to the twelfth overall pick. For example, taking a tight end in round 1 gets to be a better and better strategy as your pick gets later in the first round. This is fairly intuitive. On the other hand, taking a running back with your first two picks becomes worse and worse as your pick gets later. The trends for each draft strategy as we move from an early pick to a late pick are summarized in the two graphics below.

A Summary of Late Pick Draft Strategies

Just as before, we summarize the average points for each of the presented strategies for picks 7-12 so we can see which strategies really stand out if you have a late pick.

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