Fantasy Football Mock Draft: An Elite RB Falls To Round 2 On Fleaflicker

Fantasy football mock draft szn. Let's go. Great day to be great. I am PUMPED. Shoutout to the homies and our partners over at Fleaflicker Fantasy, where I conducted this mock draft—feel free to check out their product for yourself over at Fleaflicker.com.

Let's break down the draft and, as always: It's a great day to be great.

Conducting a Fantasy Football Mock Draft on FleaFlicker

Pre-draft: I got assigned the "Browns" as my team name. Bad start.

1.11: The RB value looks DEEP here with Christian McCaffrey and De'Von Achane being projected to go at the end of Round 2. I went ahead and locked in Brian Thomas Jr. to set up the squad with a baller consensus top-eight WR before likely going with an RB with my next pick.

2.02: Boom shakalaka. Christian McCaffrey, come on down! Getting, you know, the all-time leader at the position in PPR points per game in Round 2 feels pretty, pretty, pretty good. I know what you're thinking: What if he gets injured? Well, here's my rebuttal: What if he doesn't?

3.11: The end of Round 3 has the top-three QBs and TEs off the board. We also made it past the big 10 RBs, meaning I'm looking once again at WR. Give me Tyreek Hill–one year removed from leading the NFL in receiving yards and TDs, no big deal–and I'm hopeful that Rashee Rice will still be there for me in a few more picks.

4.02: I f*cking love when my best laid plans don't go awry. Welcome to the squad, Mr. Rashee Rice! Obviously there's some risk of injury and/or suspension, but Andy Reid's assertion that Rice will be 100% for training camp, combined with Drew Davenport's thoughts on the legal side of things, has me confident the rising third-year talent will be good to go by Week 1. My only hesitation here was the reality that we're only starting two WRs in this league, but hey, BTJ, Tyreek, and Rice is a pretty strong core when we already have a hero RB to work with as well.

5.11: I've decided to play the waiting game at the onesie spots with Patrick Mahomes and the top-four TEs off the board. That's okay, I'm usually pleasantly surprised at the late-round options available here–we'll see if that thought comes back to bite me or not in a bit. With the benefit of my WR room being rather loaded, I decided to spruce up this backfield in the form of TreVeyon Henderson, who possesses the sort of explosive pass-catching skill set worth betting on in fantasy land, even if Rhamondre Stevenson remains annoyingly involved. Vibes continue to inexplicably be quite high for this underdog Browns squad.

6.02: Two picks later, and we are adding another explosive pass-catcher to the team … D'Andre Swift! What if the sort of offensive line and scheme problems that everyone attributes to Caleb Williams' down 2024 also plagued the team's starting RB? The Bears' overall lack of additions to the position throughout the offseason has me perfectly fine making this bet 60-plus picks into the draft.

7.11: We went ahead and tacked on my fourth RB here in the form of Brian Robinson. This is just about the last part of the draft where you can feel at all good about still getting quality value from your RB; dudes turn into pure hopeful handcuffs in a hurry. I feel particularly good locking up B-Rob, considering the potential for Henderson's early-season role to disappoint.

8.02: Getting in a re-draft room after months of best ball—where WRs FLY off the board—is a helluva drug. Example No. 1: Nabbing real-life baller Chris Olave at the beginning of Round 8. I also had guys like Jordan Addison and Jerry Jeudy available, who also have their potential warts, but yeah: Pretty nice value this late in the draft. God forbid Olave's QB situation can be anything short of disastrous, and we could be looking at an upside WR2 with a target ceiling as high as any player in the league.

9.11: Could you imagine if Daniel Jones feeds Josh Downs (actual good football player) the same sort of gaudy target share that he afforded Wan'Dale Robinson (actual bad football player)? These are the sorts of dreams that you come up with during the course of any given fantasy draft.

10.02: One last WR before we start to address my lacking onesie spots, because man, first-round talents in offenses without a solidified No. 1 pass-game option don't exactly come around every day. Enter: Matthew Golden, who feels like a pretty f*cking great WR6 on the squad if you ask me. The depth at the position allows me to be patient here, and I wanted to get one more dude at the position before the prospects really fall off.

11.11: Things at QB still look fine, while the TE well is admittedly looking a bit rough. In hindsight, pushing things this far in a league with just one FLEX, one starting RB, and two WRs was probably a bad choice. Alas, we'll play the waiver game and start off with some darts. Give me Cowboys TE Jake Ferguson here—someone we were drafting as a top-eight option at the position this time last year, and someone I should be able to stack with Mr. Dak Prescott if my leaguemates aren't dickheads.

12.02: Good news: My leaguemates weren't dickheads! As suspected, the QB well remained very healthy even this late in the draft, as Dak was joined by quality options like Justin Herbert, Jared Goff, Jordan Love, Drake Maye, and Trevor Lawrence, among others. It's a good thing I went ahead and snagged Dak at this point, considering the next *nine* picks all wound up going to players at the position. Man, those QB runs sure can escalate quickly.

13.11: This is where things get a bit interesting: I decided to go with one more TE as a hopeful lottery ticket; ignoring the position for so long was probably my biggest miss here, so I tacked on Mike Gesicki before thinking I might be forced to fill out my DST and kicker positions with my last two picks ...

14.02: ... or not! Some fantasy providers force you to fill out these slots at the expense of tacking on extra bench players, but not FleaFlicker! Thus: Welcome, Jaydon Blue, who seemingly has a decent enough chance of earning a fairly prominent role inside this wide-open Cowboys backfield. Not having a DST or kicker might feel weird, but we are drafting in July. Bad shit can and will happen between now and Week 1, so I'd much rather take on prospective RB handcuffs who could surge up the ranks between now and September vs. the last crop of kicker and DST options who will still be free on the waiver wire by the time I need one. Honestly, this reality just makes me hate my Gesicki pick from before; loading up on late-round handcuffs is the single-best approach to stacking up the fantasy bench.

15.11: Accordingly, come on down, Roschon Johnson. Handcuffing your own RB isn't always the preferred move because it limits the best-case potential upside at hand, but I'm more willing to do so in a contained re-draft environment, and it's also not like the pickings were overly fantastic in the 15th and final round anyway.

My final roster is as follows:

QB: Dak Prescott
RB1: Christian McCaffrey
RB2: TreVeyon Henderson
RB3: D'Andre Swift
RB4: Brian Robinson
RB5: Jaydon Blue
RB6: Roschon Johnson
WR1: Brian Thomas Jr.
WR2: Tyreek Hill
WR3: Rashee Rice
WR4: Chris Olave
WR5: Josh Downs
WR6: Matthew Golden
TE1: Jake Ferguson
TE2: Mike Gesicki
K: None
DST: None

Takeaways From My Mock Draft on FleaFlicker

The depth and overall talent of my RB and (especially) WR rooms feels good, although in hindsight, I could have paid a bit more attention to the unique starting spot requirements for this specific draft and not spent *quite* as much early-round draft capital here.
Accordingly, I would have made more of an effort to get elite early at QB and TE, considering the solid mid-round options at RB and WR. Now, the reality that the top-three QBs and TEs were off the board by the time I was up at the 3.11 spot didn't help matters, but still: It's important to know your draft room—it was VERY surprising to see borderline QB1 guys like Justin Fields and Caleb Williams join hopeful low-end TE1s like Tucker Kraft and Dalton Kincaid in Round 6.
The Gesicki pick still pisses me off, and I like Gesicki's upside this year! Still, he's nothing more than a hopeful waiver wire addition whose value is unlikely to change much if at all between now and Week 1. Accepting that I'm playing the waiver wire game like I did at QB would have been ideal; I should have tacked on another potential lottery ticket in the form of a handcuff RB.