For our first mock draft on the Familia FFB podcast, we thought we’d make it a Familia affair. We invited several primos and compadres to fill out a 10-team draft, using standard scoring. We did the positions a little different, going single QB, and instead of a TE and Flex positions, we did 2 flexes, one WR/RB and the other WR/TE. We had a last-minute cancellation, so we filled 9 slots in the draft. 

The drafters: Manny Arredondo, Nico Gutierrez, Brian Hall, Joe Mederos, Hector Reyes, Victor Reyes, Adan Torres, Ricky Torres and yours truly. All are avid players in multiple leagues, and most are in our Familialogy league, which has been in existence for 10 years.

We drew random slots, with Manny drawing first pick in Round 1. Christian McCaffrey went off the board, and the RBs kept coming. The first 5 picks were RBs, and 7 total in the opening round. Michael Thomas didn’t get picked until #6. There were no real surprises, with Hector grabbing Joe Mixon at the end of the round.

Round 2 got off with a bang when Lamar Jackson went 2.01. Hector wanted to try something, looking to see if there is a way to get Jackson and still have good RB depth. Patrick Mahomes went 2.06 to Adan, and that was it at the QB position for 4 more rounds. Even with hammering RBs so early, it was pretty stunning to see DeAndre Hopkins, Julio Jones and Travis Kelce go in the last 3 picks of this round. To this point, only 2 teams had filled both RB slots. As many RBs that had gone off the board at that point, I expected it to be more.

In the 3rd Round, we had 6 teams snag WRs. And the TEs George Kittle and Mark Andrews were picked here. Only Austin Ekeler and Todd Gurley were RBs selected in this round. I grabbed Gurley, and got plenty of grief from La Familia for my adulation of Gurley these past several years. 

The 4th Round saw the thinning of the RBs, with rookies like Clyde Edwards-Helaire and Jonathan Taylor being selected. It was a 5-5 split between RB and WR this round, with Allen Robinson, JuJu Smith-Schuster and Adam Thielen showing the depth of the WR position at this point. What appears clear by this point is that there are still #1 WRs available, while the RBs have definite question marks related to health (Chris Carson, Leonard Fournette), or backfield job share (CEH, Taylor and Melvin Gordon). Keep this in mind for those teams going Zero RB.

That WR depth was still strong in the 5th Round, with Devante Parker, last year’s WR11, going as the last WR off the board this round. Other WRs going this round included Cooper Kupp, D.K. Metcalf and D.J. Moore, to show how strong the talent was at this point. Mark Ingram II, James Conner and Devin Singletary were the only RBs going here, again showing the disparity in depth at the positions. Zach Ertz was the lone TE going here.  

It was still amazing to see how deep WR played out in the 6th Round. In total, 5 WRs went here, with Hector starting things off with Stefon Diggs on the second half of the snake after taking Devin Singletary. More on this in a minute. But first, the other WRs going this round were Terry McLaurin, T.Y. Hilton, D.J. Chark and Keenan Allen, all clear top WRs on their respective teams. David Johnson and Le’Veon Bell still appear to have the lead caballo RB workload from their teams, though both are coming off disappointing seasons when they were drafted in the first round last year. I’ve been saying that getting those two later will make it easier to stomach owning them.

The QBs returned in this round, with Russell Wilson going to Joe and Kyler Murray to me. I don’t usually take a QB early, but the upside of Murray was too tempting, and I wanted to see what my team looked like with going for a QB this early. 

Adan’s and Hector’s teams are worth another look at this point, as they took the high-end QBs in the 2nd round.

Adan’s team: Kamara, Mahomes, Amari Cooper, Calvin Ridley, James Conner and Bell.

Hector’s team: Mixon, Jackson, A.J. Brown, Chris Carson, Devin Singletary, Stefon Diggs.

Both teams had filled 3 RB slots with lead-back roles by the 6th round, and still had picked WRs with the upside to finish top 20. Maybe even top 10. Yes, it’s 10 teams, so this strategy can be tried because the talent pool is deeper. And we’ll examine it further in future articles. Also, another fun note is that both Adan and Hector ended up stacking WRs with that top QB. 

Round 7 saw the QB run happen: Deshaun Watson, Dak Prescott, Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees and Mateo Hielo (Matt Ryan). Ricky’s team was light on RBs after taking Barkley and CEH earlier, so he grabbed Cam Akers. His team was stacked at WR with Hopkins, Chris Godwin, D.J. Moore and D.J. Chark filling up his roster. I grabbed David Montgomery here, with Mostert going to Joe after me. The RB pickings were getting slim by this point. 

So this article doesn’t get too long, I’m going to just take the highlights from each round the rest of the way.

Round 8, Julian Edelman being paired with Marquise Brown on the snake gave Hector a solid WR core (and a Raven stack with Jackson). I was WR-needy and was happy to take Michael Gallup, who’s being underappreciated this year. Josh Allen going as the QB10 seemed lower than consensus ADP is showing, though the QBs who went last round all have a good shot to finish ahead of him, even if Allen lives up to the hype. Yes, again, QB is STACKED!

Round 9, only a single WR, Tyler Boyd, goes here. The defenses start to move (I hate picking defense before the last 2 rounds). The RBs in timeshares like J.K. Dobbins and Damien Williams went here. 

Round 10, Adan snagged Will Fuller here. In our Familia text loop, we have a rule that there’s no use of the work IF after the season starts. So, IF Will Fuller is healthy, he’s a steal at this point. As it is, this is a great time to take a flyer on him, anyway. 

Round 11, the TE position is not mandatory in our Familialogy league, which lowers the number of TEs picked in our draft so that only the best players at the position are taken. Only 9 total go in this draft. Darren Waller and Evan Engram are picked in this round.

Round 12, only 1 RB goes here, Darrell Henderson. That shows how thin this position has gotten by this point. Cam Newton went as the 14th QB, which is about where he’s going in other mock drafts. John Brown, Golden Tate and Sterling Shepard went here, still showing depth at the WR position. CeeDee Lamb at 12.10 is the first rookie WR to go in the draft.

Round 13-15 saw mostly kickers and defenses, along with backup QBs and some depth RBs, though Zack Moss in the 13th to Brian has some upside. The speedsters Henry Ruggs, Mecole Hardman and Sammy Watkins (to Adan to finish a stack with Mahomes) went in the final round.

This analysis could have gone much longer, with the antics and trash talking that comes with a mock draft made up completely of Familia members. To catch that, you have to listen to the episode (https://bit.ly/2ZORJE5). 

There are some takeaways from this draft:

• Get your RBs early, as 14 of the first 30 picks were RBs. Varying strategies were played, but none of them involved Zero RB in the first 2 rounds.
• Drafting the high-profile QBs like Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson early is possible. Both went in the 2nd round, and were sandwiched between RBs. That will get more thorough analysis later.
• The WR position is DEEP. In rounds 9-12, there was at least 1 pass catcher with 1,000 yards last year selected (TE Darren Waller went in the 11th). 

For your 3 co-hosts, our drafts had some analysis worth sharing:

Ricky went WR in 4 of the first 6 rounds, and got a group with Hopkins, Godwin, Chark and Moore. He was the last one to take a QB and got Allen. After Barkley he got CEH and Akers, which is showing his confidence in the rookies.

Hector’s QB Jackson strategy got a look above, and his taking a QB early made it easy to just load up on RB and WR the rest of the time. Edelman at the 8.01 could be a steal. At RB, he ended up adding Tevin Coleman and Tony Pollard to Mixon, Carson and Singletary.

My strategy of taking Murray in the 6th didn’t backfire, as I followed that up with Montgomery, Gallup, J.K. Dobbins and Darius Slayton, the latter pair being players on great offenses in crowded skill groups. Going WR with Davante Adams in the first round didn’t end up hurting my RB depth.

We’ll have more mock drafts in the future. In the meantime, keep listening to the Familia FFB podcast, check out the analysis on this site and do your mock drafts.