I was sitting on 1.3, 1.9 and 2.3 as my premium picks before the draft. Had earlier traded 3.3 as part of a deal for Likely.
After the NFL draft I was having an extremely hard time deciding what to do with 1.3. I'll put it this way, I had 11 first round picks spread across my dynasty leagues and I'd say a good 80% of the mental energy I spent was focused on what to do with that pick 3. My dilemma was I needed a RB but liked Hunter over RB after the top 2 and try to avoid drafting for need. This league has not been overly zesty on drafting TE's and after I scanned the rosters of teams picking 4-8 my best guess was they'd empty out the top 6 RB's and top 2 WR's, a guess I got wrong. But under this scenario it was going to leave me staring TE as my BPA at pick 9 which was not ideal because I'm solid at TE already, would fail to address my RB need, and I really liked the value of second round TE's and had already planned to draft Mason Taylor at 2.3 unless I was left me some unexpected options.
So my concern was if I went Hunter, I'd get locked into TE at pick 9, either another TE in round 2 or revert from BPA and go for need with someone like Skattebo or Tuten. So I'd have a team with a big RB need and I'd walk out of one of the richest RB drafts in history with 3 top 15 picks and absolutely fail to address the spot and be just wonky heavy at TE and fairly deep at WR and then just hope I could work out some trades later.
Before the draft
@Penguin offered me 2/14 for 3/9 and at that time, and after, I had good tier drop from that 9 to 14. Before the draft I was thinking Henderson was most likely going to be a Bronco or Bear and he'd be my guy at 3 and that would be an easy call. Henderson the Patriot was not as exciting So I spent a few days after the NFL draft thinking of making the offer back to Penguin, with no idea if he still wanted to do it. I eventually mapped out my top 14 players, become content with the worst case scenario of player 14 being the BPA left for me and made the offer to Penguin. A little after I made the offer I took my dog on a long walk during which I kept thinking of what I'd do at pick 3 and during that one walk I probably flip flopped between Hunter and Henderson 4 or 5 times. Indecision was killing me. When I got home I saw he had made a decision on the trade and to my relief, so I'd not have to think about it anymore, he accepted.
If your ADHD has not kicked in and you are still with me this is how it went and my thinking behing the picks:
1.2 -Omarion Hampton- obviously the reason I made the trade. I'm way lower then consenus on his value next year I do think Najee's an issue. But he's still probably my RB2 next year and longterm my foundation RB.
2.2- Luther Burden- when I moved 9 to 14 he was my realistic best case scenario. I had 12 players I viewed as worth a first round pick, he was the last one.
2.3- Zay Flowers via trade -this already got a lot of discussion in trade thread. For sure not what I was planning on doing. Negative is my team, which used to be super TE heavy is now super WR heavy and I got 7 nice young WR's with Juedy as the old guy. Gives me some trade flexibilty and probably some painful WDIS calls. But this was simply a case of accepting the value.
4.1- Tahj Brooks- I have Chase Brown, he has a shot to be his handcuff.
5.3-Dontayvion Wicks- After I got Flowers as my 7th young WR I told myself I could probably not draft or spend a FA dollar on a WR in 5 years and probably be ok at the position.But I once had that thought about not bidding aggressively on Trey McBride when I thought I was loaded at TE. So went with a guy I walk of about every draft with because I still think he has immense upside. Do I think he will realize his upside potential? Probably not but for a 5th round rookie pick I'd rather he was on my team then someone else's in case he does.
6.7-Dameon Pierce- I drafted him in all 7 of my rookie drafts and there is a chance I cut him in all 7. But I liked taking the shot because I think he can play, I like his odds a lot more then a lot of the RB's going in round 3-4 and he's not much older then most of them, born same calendar year as Marks who went in round 3. Had value before, ran for 170 in his lone start last year. Yada, yada, yada. I think he's going to keep the job as Mixon's backup but that may not be enough to stick on my teams even though I'd like to roster him heading into FA. But just the same I'd rather put him on my roster now in the unlikely event Mixon should suffer and injury or the Texans make him available in a trade. I specifically dream of Bears in the Montgomery type role.
In one of the bigger surprises my TE hording self failed to draft a TE in one of the richest TE drafts. This would be my only league out of 7 that occured. But I did get Likely using pick 3.3 as I mentioned so not a total zero.
Final roster with 2 cuts needed:
QB: Maye, Purdy
RB: Hampton, Chase Brown/Brooks, Rhamondre, ETN/Bigsby and Pierce
WR: BTJ, London, Marvin, Flowers, Jeudy, Pickens, Burden and Wicks.
TE: Laporta, Kincaid and Likely