Draft Day 2019: The Robots Have Come to Destroy Your Team
It’s been almost exactly eight months since my last Keeper league re-cap but in fantasy football time, that’s at least 11 years. Reading over the championship re-cap harkens back to the time when Andrew Luck had a job, Antonio Brown had a helmet, and I had a team that didn’t make me feel nauseous.
A lot has changed in our league since that time. We added a second flex spot, a new owner, and an online draft board that didn’t make me feel nauseous. Even though all of that was happening behind the scenes, the league had been pretty quiet during the offseason. A trade or two popped up here and there but for the most part, the maneuvering and posturing that usually takes place before the draft was uniquely absent.
That is…until the draft started. For some reason, clicking the “Start Draft” button unleashed a deluge of draft pick trades that left one frantic commissioner struggling to re-assign picks to their third or fourth owner.
The draft turned into an auction where each pick had its own market of potential bidders. “Next up, pick 4.09, do I hear 5.06 and a 12th? Going once, going twice, sold! To the gentleman with 5.08 and an 11th!”
At first, the flurry of draft pick trading was a minor inconvenience but it very quickly became my absolute favorite part of the draft. Every single pick was unpredictable. ADP and team needs were thrown out the window. The mantra of the draft was, “Don’t wait, make a move, and get your guys”.
Draft pick trading is really fun, but it also takes a long time. And what began as the best part of the draft also became its downfall. The draft took longer than expected due in part to lengthy negotiations and some auto-pick drafters. This led many people to auto-draft the final rounds, where Sleeper decided to rear its ugly head and reap havoc on those rosters. Sleeper was created as an app that instantly alerted users to all fantasy football updates. However, it was pretty clear that the auto-draft feature on Sleeper was a little slow on the uptake as many league members found themselves inundated with players on the Colts and recently injured stars.
The good news is, historically very few players drafted in the late rounds make it the entire year without being dropped. The bad news is, the robots have made their first attempt to destroy your team. Throughout the season you should take all precautions against this. Write down all your passwords in squiggly letters, and wherever possible make them identify which pictures contain traffic lights. It may be your only hope.
