Expert DRAFTing Week 10

Photo: Kim Klement, USA Today Sports

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DRAFT offers weekly snake draft contests with 5-man rosters (1 QB, 2 RB, 2 WR/TE) with 0.5-point PPR scoring (the same as FanDuel). There is no salary cap on DRAFT which makes it unique to how you play compared to the other daily fantasy sites. Teams are built through live snake drafts that have 30-second timer per pick. The most common contest sizes are Head-to-Head, 3-Team, 6-Team, and 10-Team.

We will explore both the rankings and draft strategies for each of these four DRAFT sizes. To understand why players are ranked where they are, be sure to check out the overall rankings where I will have in-depth breakdowns of some of the top options and some personal favorites down the list. When developing these rankings we will be excluding the Thursday Night, Sunday Night, and Monday Night games and only focus on the main slate on DRAFT, which is the Sunday games.

WEEK 10 - QUICK NEWS AND NOTES

It is Week 10 and that means we have Denver, Houston, Jacksonville, New England, Philadelphia, and Washington all on bye weeks. Now with the bye weeks our player pool is left with 10 games to choose from on the main slate. DRAFT has excluded the LA Chargers vs Oakland, Minnesota vs Dallas, and Seattle vs San Francisco games because they are not on the main Sunday slate. That still leaves us 10 games and 20 teams worth of players to choose from this week. This will be a good week to try all the different sized formats on DRAFT and to play in the four different tournament options that they have available.

• Third and Short - 8-man $3 (8 max)
• Hype Train - 7-man $5 (7 max)
• First and Ten- 4-man $10 (4 max)
• Five Wide - 4-man $55 (4 max)

The popular high scoring game to target this week is going to be Arizona vs Tampa Bay (52.5 O/U), and Atlanta vs New Orleans (51.5). Whenever you are in a position to choose between two players you feel have similar upside you might just want to choose the one that is from the highest total on the week as they all seem to ones that will have some high scores and lots of fantasy points from all the star players involved.

The running back and wide receiver depth this week is strong so you might not see as much edge in the smaller sized leagues such as H2H, 3-man, or 4-man. Anything above a 4-man I feel like you can use your rankings and draft skills to give you a nice edge over your competition in Week 10. Even in H2H, 3-man, and 4-man, you will always have others that will just side with DRAFT's projections and you can use that to your advantage.

Injuries are more in play now with players getting banged up after nine weeks of action. You will want to be monitoring news leading up to kickoff and be ready for any last-minute swaps if necessary.

HEAD-TO-HEAD DRAFT RANKINGS AND STRATEGY

1. Christian McCaffrey RB1
2. Saquon Barkley RB2
3. Michael Thomas WR1
4. Alvin Kamara RB3 -- Questionable
5. Mike Evans WR2
6. Chris Godwin WR3
7. Lamar Jackson QB1
8. Aaron Jones RB4
9. Cooper Kupp WR4
10. Drew Brees QB2

For a head-to-head contest you need to look for the top 2 quarterbacks, 4 running backs, and 4 wide receivers/tight ends - For a total of 10 players. The main key to look at when drafting in H2H contests is to know what your opponent is doing. You want to watch if he takes WR/WR to start the draft you know that you can draft your WR positions with your last two picks. Same goes if he drafts a QB or RB/RB, you know that you can leverage that information and wait at those positions.

In H2H drafts I typically come in with a game plan and like to stick closely to it, and let the other drafter I am up against decide what type of team I will build depending on their picks. Often you will find others that like to draft their favorite team, maybe they just follow DRAFT's projections/ADP and stick to those numbers just going down the list. This week we have some high end running backs at the top of the draft so it might be ideal to try to get two early and build around them.

3-TEAM DRAFT RANKINGS AND STRATEGY

1. Christian McCaffrey RB1
2. Saquon Barkley RB2
3. Michael Thomas WR1
4. Alvin Kamara RB3 -- Questionable
5. Mike Evans WR2
6. Chris Godwin WR3
7. Lamar Jackson QB1
8. Aaron Jones RB4
9. Cooper Kupp WR4
10. Nick Chubb RB5
11. Drew Brees QB2
12. Davante Adams WR5
13. Marlon Mack Rb6
14. Julio Jones WR6
15. Jameis Winston QB3

For the 3-man contests, you will need to look at ranking 15 total players consisting of 3 quarterbacks, 6 running backs, and 6 wide receivers/tight ends.

The best advice for drafting in 3-mans would be to come up with your solid 15 player ranking list that you feel most comfortable with and don't get frustrated if the top players that you have on that list get taken right before your pick. If you have picks 1.01 or 1.03 you will be picking at the turn and can have an advantage in following your league mates roster construction closely and be able to know when to take certain positions or if you wanted to stack players you will have an easier time doing so with back to back picks.

6-TEAM DRAFT RANKINGS AND STRATEGY

1. Christian McCaffrey RB1
2. Saquon Barkley RB2
3. Michael Thomas WR1
4. Alvin Kamara RB3 -- Questionable
5. Mike Evans WR2
6. Chris Godwin WR3
7. Lamar Jackson QB1
8. Aaron Jones RB4
9. Cooper Kupp WR4
10. Nick Chubb RB5
11. Drew Brees QB2
12. Davante Adams WR5
13. Marlon Mack RB6
14. Julio Jones WR6
15. Jameis Winston QB3
16. LeVeon Bell RB7 -- Questionable
17. James Conner RB8 -- Questionable
18. Derrick Henry RB9
19. Mark Ingram RB10
20. Tyreek Hill WR7
21. Kenny Golladay WR8
22. Travis Kelce WR/TE9
23. JuJu Smith-Schuster WR10
24. Kyler Murray QB4
25. Aaron Rodgers QB5
26. David Montgomery RB11
27. Odell Beckham WR11
28. Devin Singletary RB12
29. Allen Robinson WR12
30. Matthew Stafford QB6

In Week 10 it is clear that you have Christian McCaffrey at the top of your rankings followed by both Saquon Barkley and Alvin Kamara. After those three powerhouse running backs you have Aaron Jones, Nick Chubb, and Marlon Mack grouped together. These are your priority players that you want to get exposure to at the top of your drafts. At wide receiver you have Michael Thomas as the clear top option followed by the likes of Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, Cooper Kupp, Julio Jones, and Davante Adams. Lamar Jackson is the stand alone top option at the top of the quarterback ranks on the week with a great matchup against a bad Bengals secondary and also has the ability to run.

10-TEAM DRAFT RANKINGS AND STRATEGY

1. Christian McCaffrey RB1
2. Saquon Barkley RB2
3. Michael Thomas WR1
4. Alvin Kamara RB3 -- Questionable
5. Mike Evans WR2
6. Chris Godwin WR3
7. Lamar Jackson QB1
8. Aaron Jones RB4
9. Cooper Kupp WR4
10. Nick Chubb RB5
11. Drew Brees QB2
12. Davante Adams WR5
13. Marlon Mack RB6
14. Julio Jones WR6
15. Jameis Winston QB3
16. LeVeon Bell RB7 -- Questionable
17. James Conner RB8 -- Questionable
18. Derrick Henry RB9
19. Mark Ingram RB10
20. Tyreek Hill WR7
21. Kenny Golladay WR8
22. Travis Kelce WR/TE9
23. JuJu Smith-Schuster WR10
24. Kyler Murray QB4
25. Aaron Rodgers QB5
26. David Montgomery RB11
27. Odell Beckham WR11
28. Devin Singletary RB12
29. Allen Robinson WR12
30. Matthew Stafford QB6
31. Todd Gurley RB13
32. David Johnson RB14 -- Probable
33. Jaylen Samuels RB15 -- Waiting on James Conner news
34. Joe Mixon RB16
35. Ronald Jones II RB17
36. Marvin Jones WR13
37. Robert Woods WR14
38. John Brown WR15
39. DJ Moore WR16
40. Golden Tate WR17
41. Tyler Boyd WR18
42. Patrick Mahomes II QB7 -- Probable
43. Josh Allen QB8
44. Matt Ryan QB9
45. Devonta Freeman QB18
46. Christian Kirk WR19
47. Jamison Crowder WR20
48. Latavius Murray RB19
49. Damien Williams RB20
50. Jared Goff QB10

Stacking is something you will want to look at in these 10-man leagues as you will be looking for advantages to put up big points and get on top of the leaderboard. You can look to stack a QB/WR from the same team or if you are attacking a certain game you can try to draft players from both teams. In the 10-man leagues, you are shooting to win it of course but these leagues offer top-three prizes to land in the money. Even finishing in third place out of 10 teams can be a very profitable outcome so building a team with a high floor with a couple of high ceiling type players and a possible stack can help you get there.

The 10-mans are always full of quality players even in the last couple of rounds at the start of the season. There are more games to choose from, players are healthy, and we have known the news for weeks leading up to the games. Week 10 is a great time to play 10-man drafts as you can find an edge in the 31-50 player rankings and find that perfect QB/WR stack you like to take you over the top.

If you want to follow me on DRAFT my username is "Eaglezzz" as I sometimes will post contests and would love to play along with fellow Footballguys like yourselves. Please feel free to contact me on Twitter with any questions or if you would like to discuss this article or draft strategies. I welcome constructive feedback on the article.

As always best of luck in this week's DRAFTs!