Snake drafting 3-man is a completely different beast than heads up play on Draft because there are more dimensions to consider with more people added to the mix:
- Positional scarcity become more prevalent
- Positional value tiers come into play
- Stacking becomes more difficult to avoid
- Positional awareness is more needed in these formats to maximize your tier selections
3 man primer
Your main goal in drafting 3 man is to make sure you get at least one player in the top tier of players. Having two tier 1 running backs and a tier 2 WR with a tier 2 TE can end your draft before it starts. However, just because this is the goal doesn’t mean strategy won’t change mid draft. Is their positional scarcity in a certain position? What is everyone else drafting?
The first thing to recognize is the number of players and positions being drafted in total
- 3 QB
- 6 RB
- 6 Receivers
While it doesn’t seem like a big change, depending on the week with injuries and byes, there might only be 3 running backs worth rostering. Weather implications can narrow availability to 2 receivers. You can easily find yourself in a position of ending up with an entire position in tier two or three.
The second is to have a general plan for the week and form your tiers for each position. Pretend your drafting all three positions. Lay out your perfect draft. How would you pick players and in what order? Knowing who you would pick when and why will help you highlight trends in how your opponents are drafting and give you in an edge on cutting them off.
We’re going to use week 12 as an example.
Tier List
Example Mock Draft
This was how I had players graded based on our projections, talent, match up difficulty, and gut. I could go into a 5000 word explanation on how I came to those tiers, but we’ll just skip to the strategy portion.
Looking at the tier list, we see an obvious problem. There’s only one Tier 1 WR and two Tier 1 QBs. So if you’re picking first, who do you grab? What if you’re drafting second? And lastly if you’re in the prime spot, third?
Drafting first if you guessed Brown you would be wrong. The reason being is that if you’ve read my previous articles, you know this season is all about RB. Receiver points (outside of week 12 only) have been wildly inconsistent and none of the studs really produced enough value. In a game where the Packers are reeling from constant injuries and Vegas totals, it’s a game setup for Bell to go 100/2 TD, aka 30 ish points. Brown might not be used at all in the game if they get ahead quickly. (Assume you didn’t know the outcome of week 12). Imagine you did pick a WR/TE first, in this case Brown. Can you simulate how the rest of the draft would go? Would you have a shot at a Tier 1 RB this week? What about QB? What round are they going in normally?
Drafting second it’s a RB again, most likely Gurley. For the same reasoning as above. Refer to your mock perfect draft scenario.
Drafting third is trickier because my experience had been Bell went first, Brown went second. Four picks are going to be in between you and your next pick. I guarantee Brady will be gone if you don’t grab him with your third pick. What would you do? Personally I went RB and WR here. The reason being is that from my previous articles, you know that QB value is generally flat. The top guys score ~ the same amount of points consistently within a standard deviation of 3.2 points. I’m fine grabbing the third best option on the slate at QB if it means securing a Tier 1 and Tier 2 WR knowing that the depth at both RB and WR is going to put someone into Tier 3 choices. I ended up going Kamara + Jones when I picked third.
The next round:
This is all about positional awareness and boxing out your opponent. What this means is if your opponents did a run on WR, it means you’re likely to get a better positional draft in RB or QB.
Look at the sample draft below. You’re Drafting in the third position. What positions do you pick?
The answer is receiver and Quarterback. The reason being is your opponents have already completely drafted the RB position. This means you get the pick of whoever is left, so why take him earlier than your very last pick? Grabbing a QB and WR here gives you the second best QB and third best WR/TE on the slate.
You will run into this scenario in nearly every 3-man because people do not have positional awareness when drafting with more than one other person. It’s difficult to keep track of. I recommend a spread sheet. It’s how I do it. Phone in a cradle next to my computer.
General guidelines and thoughts:
- If it’s a coin toss between two players that you want to draft, consider what your opponents have drafted already and “hate draft” the position they still have open.
- If it’s a coin toss between two players, think about who you’re going to be drafting later on based on how the draft is shaping up. For example, if you can pick Coleman or Ingram, and you know you’re going to grab Sanu later, pick Ingram so you spread your points out to multiple offenses.
- Like H2H, stacking is a mistake and a first or last strategy. 58.2 points of Bell and Brown was amazing in week 12, but it wasn’t better than Julio and Kamara at 78.6.
- With , Bell and Brown are the only consistent pair you could even consider stacking. New England’s offense is too volatile, Saints are in a RBBC, Wilson spreads the ball out to everyone, and so on.