Chiefs, Bills, 49ers Lead 2022 Staff Playoff Draft

NFL Wild Card - The regular season is over and it's time for the things that really matter to come to the forefront. We have whittled down the field to the cream of the crop, and we're here to find the ultimate champion, the best of the best, as the top players in the game clash against one another. Yes, it's time once more for the Football Outsiders Staff Playoff Fantasy Draft!

... oh, and also the postseason. That's happening too, I guess. Well, we'll get to that soon enough. Fantasy first!

2022 Staff Playoff Fantasy Draft

The Football Outsiders Staff Playoffs Fantasy League is back for another run! Seven staff members going head to head, with the comments section making their own best-of-the-rest selection to try to top them.

Our traditional rules are still in place:

• Six points for rushing or receiving touchdowns, four points for passing touchdowns.
• One point for every 10 yards rushing or receiving, and for every 20 yards passing.
• One point per reception.
• A loss of two points for a lost fumble or interception.
• Two points for a two-point conversion of any kind.
• Kickers: three points for a field goal under 40 yards, four points for one between 40 and 49 yards, and six points for kicks of 50 yards or longer. Plus, one point for every extra point.
• Defense: Two points for an interception or fumble recovery, six points for a touchdown, four points for a safety, one point for a sack, and a loss of one point for every seven points the defense actually allows (and a bonus five points for a shutout).

Teams are comprised of one quarterback, two running backs, three wideouts, one tight end, one kicker, and one defense. There are no substitutions, so if a player is injured or his team is eliminated, he ceases to produce points for his team. Your managers, in the random order in which they drafted:

• Tom Strachan
• Rivers McCown
• Jackson Roberts
• Vince Verhei, defending champion
• Cale Clinton
• Aaron Schatz
• Bryan Knowles

So, for those of you keeping track, over the last four years I have picked last, last, first and last. One of these years, I'll get to experience what it's like drafting in the middle. One of these years...

This is a snake draft with a two-pick eighth round. The results were as follows:

Round 1
Tom: Josh Allen, QB, BUF
Rivers: Patrick Mahomes, QB, KC
Jackson: Christian McCaffrey, RB, SF
Vince: A.J. Brown, WR, PHI
Cale: Travis Kelce, TE, KC
Aaron: Jalen Hurts, QB, PHI
Bryan: George Kittle, TE, SF

Round 2
Bryan: Stefon Diggs, WR, BUF
Aaron: DeVonta Smith, WR, PHI
Cale: Joe Burrow, QB, CIN
Vince: Miles Sanders, RB, PHI
Jackson: Ja'Marr Chase, WR, CIN
Rivers: Justin Jefferson, WR, MIN
Tom: CeeDee Lamb, WR, DAL

Round 3
Tom: Jerick McKinnon, RB, KC
Rivers: Joe Mixon, RB, CIN
Jackson: Austin Ekeler, RB, LAC
Vince: Christian Kirk, WR, JAX
Cale: Deebo Samuel, WR, SF
Aaron: Devin Singletary, RB, BUF
Bryan: Brandon Aiyuk, WR, SF

Round 4
Bryan: San Francisco D/ST
Aaron: JuJu Smith-Schuster, WR, KC
Cale: Keenan Allen, WR, LAC
Vince: Dallas Goedert, TE, PHI
Jackson: Tee Higgins, WR, CIN
Rivers: Gabe Davis, WR, BUF
Tom: Tony Pollard, RB, DAL

Round 5
Tom: Dalton Schutz, TE, DAL
Rivers: T.J. Hockenson, TE, MIN
Jackson: Dawson Knox, TE, BUF
Vince: Philadelphia D/ST
Cale: Mike Evans, WR, TB
Aaron: Travis Etienne, RB, JAX
Bryan: Brock Purdy, QB, SF

Round 6
Bryan: Mecole Hardman, WR, KC
Aaron: Jake Elliott, K, PHI
Cale: Buffalo D/ST
Vince: Isiah Pacheco, RB, KC
Jackson: Dallas D/ST
Rivers: Dalvin Cook, RB, MIN
Tom: Chris Godwin, WR, TB

Round 7
Tom: Cincinnati D/ST
Rivers: Marquez Valdes-Scantling, WR, KC
Jackson: Dak Prescott, QB, DAL
Vince: Harrison Butker, K, KC
Cale: Ezekiel Elliott, RB, DAL
Aaron: Adam Thielen, WR, MIN
Bryan: Saquon Barkley, RB, NYG

Round 8
Bryan: Elijah Mitchell, RB, SF; Robbie Gould, K, SF
Aaron: Evan Engram, TE, JAX; Kansas City D/ST
Cale: James Cook, RB, BUF; Tyler Bass, K, BUF
Vince: Trevor Lawrence, QB, JAX; Zay Jones, WR, JAX
Jackson: Mike Williams, WR, LAC; Evan McPherson, K, CIN
Rivers: Greg Joseph, K, MIN; Tampa Bay D/ST
Tom: Michael Gallup, WR, DAL; Brett Maher, K, DAL

As always, assemble your Best of the Rest team in the comments from players we did not pick, and we'll track which commenter ends up with the highest total.

Jackson: The San Francisco Forty-Bryners.

Perhaps I should explain my strategy: I want to win. I don't care if I finish second or seventh; that's all the same to me. I want to have the most points when all is said and done, and if I can't have that, I don't care how close to zero I get. With that in mind, I decided early I wanted to stack as much as possible on one team, so if they play three or more games, the odds are highly in my favor to win—the best ability being availability and all. Spreading your talent around is a great way to raise your floor, but lower your ceiling. To me, there are two teams that are most likely to play three or more games this year: the Buffalo Bills and the San Francisco 49ers. Both should have fairly easy wild-card games, both should be favored in the divisional round, and both should have at least a puncher's chance against the No. 1 seed in their respective conferences in a championship game. If pressed, I would say the 49ers have the easier path, simply because they don't have the Bengals standing in their way as a potential matchup in the divisional round, but it's very much one half-dozen or the other. So I took Stefon Diggs and George Kittle on the turn at the end of the first round and waited to see who would fall to me on the rebound. With both Deebo Samuel and Christian McCaffrey off the board, I wavered a little bit, but Josh Allen was long gone, and I liked the idea of pairing a quarterback with my receivers.

So I'm basically all in on San Francisco advancing to at least the NFC Championship Game; a loss before then basically does me in. But assuming they do get there, it's hard to see how I actually lose this one. Yes, it's possible McCaffrey and Samuel get all of San Francisco's scoring, but since Brock Purdy took over, my four offensive 49ers have scored 12 touchdowns; all other 49ers have 11. Even taking into account Samuel's return, sheer numbers should coast me to victory if the 49ers get to a third game—no one else managed to get quite such a monopoly over any team, after all.

Aaron: You guys screwed up my strategy of going heavy on the Eagles but you can't stop it entirely.

Not for lack of trying, mind you. Aaron clearly wanted to try to get a monopoly on the Eagles, going with a Jalen Hurts/DeVonta Smith stack to open his draft. But it was hard to commit to that monopoly because A.J. Brown and Miles Sanders were both gone by the time he picked again and Dallas Goedert went shortly afterwards. But hey, you could do a lot worse than having a Hurts/Smith stack atop your lineup. I probably would have taken Hurts before Patrick Mahomes thanks to the rushing value, and it's not like Smith is a far drop from Brown among Philly receivers; Brown is averaging 17.9 PPR points per game to Smith's 15.1. Having the top-scoring quarterback is a great path to victory in these things, and even though Hurts misses the wild-card game due to the bye, he's well in contention to be That Guy.

But, of course, if Philadelphia does not get to the Super Bowl, Aaron's toast. Maybe in some kind of strange, Giants-run-the-table sort of thing, with the Chiefs defense picking Daniel Jones off multiple times in the Super Bowl and JuJu Smith-Schuster winning MVP? Sounds implausible to me. And, of course, the Eagles were a very popular team to pick, so it's not even like Aaron can claim the best odds of winning should Philadelphia get to the Super Bowl. That's the trouble when you go for an all-in strategy and whiff; you put yourself in a precarious position.

Cale: Playing a game of chicken with myself seeing how long it takes me to draft a running back.

The running back position was fairly thin this year—four of the top 10 backs in PPR did not make the playoffs, and once you got past the first half-dozen or so, everything became much of a muchness. Cale and I went nearly the entire draft without touching the position, with Cale finally cracking the seal with Ezekiel Elliott in the seventh round. Honestly, Cale and I had similar strategies—we each picked one of the top two tight ends first in Travis Kelce and George Kittle, we glommed on to a 49ers YAC machine with Deebo Samuel and Brandon Aiyuk, and we avoided running backs like the plague.

The difference is that while I loaded up on players on one team, Cale ended up with a number of his players playing against one another. Elliott and Mike Evans play each other in the wild-card round, ensuring one of them will go down. His quarterback, Joe Burrow, will either get knocked out in the first round or probably go against a full third of his roster (James Cook, Tyler Bass, and the Bills defense) in the divisional round. Cale risks knocking himself right out early. That being said, he also has protected himself against losing all his players in any given round! If you're playing to finish as high as possible, as opposed to just winning, Cale's roster is very solid. He's almost assuredly going to get someone to the AFC Championship Game; it's just a matter of determining who. And as one of only two players with a Buccaneers skill player on the roster if Tom Brady can pull out some old playoff magic, he'll be in good position, indeed.

Vince: Duuuuuuuuval and whatnot.

Every year, Vince waits until the very end of the draft to take his quarterback. He is always either the last or second-to-last player to grab one, looking to lock up stars at the other positions and settle for the best option left at the end; someone he hopes can get a couple games in. And so, while other people were using picks on Allen, Mahomes, or Hurts, Vince loaded up on Miles Sanders and A.J. Brown and Dallas Goedert—he's really the one that blocked Aaron's all-Eagles strategy from kicking off.

That left him with a realistic choice between Trevor Lawrence, Daniel Jones, Kirk Cousins, or Lamar Jackson for his passer at the end of the draft. Jackson's injury makes him a hard player to trust, and picking the winner of the Giants-Vikings game is a fool's errand. That left Lawrence, whom Vince could double-stack with Christian Kirk and Zay Jones! He'll need that Jaguars win over the Chargers to have a shot at this one, but if this is the year Jacksonville rolls through the AFC, Vince is in a fantastic position—he probably wins outright if the Jaguars play four games. And he managed to do that while still having significant equity in the Eagles should worst come to worst. It's not my favorite roster, because I watched Jacksonville's offense in the fourth quarter of Week 18. In fact, I'll outright say it: I hate this roster, and it's my least favorite of the lot this year; the Jaguars a 50/50 flip to even get out of the wild-card round. And because I have declared it my least favorite, tradition dictates that Vince will easily defend his title this season.

Jackson: Bryan has taken every single 49er and forced me to adjust my own strategy.

Jackson was the first person to pick a non-quarterback: Christian McCaffrey. That would have been my first-non quarterback, too. In fact, McCaffrey would have been my first pick period. There are players who outscore him on a per-game rate this year, even if you only include his time in San Francisco. Hurts, Mahomes, Allen, and Burrow all pull past him, as does Justin Jefferson. Heck, because of sheer volume, even Austin Ekeler outscores CMC this year. But I think only Allen should be favored to score more points than CMC in this year's postseason, when you consider how many games each team is likely to play. And when you can get a Trevor Lawrence in the last round, that deflates Allen's value some; we were scraping the bottom of the barrel with Elijah Mitchell, James Cook, and Isiah Pacheco by the time all was said and done. With that in mind, Run-CMC would have been my first pick, and I'm only a little bit biased. Add him to Austin Ekeler and Jackson's running backs are going to be the envy of all of us by the time this is all said and done.

Jackson hoped to pair CMC with other 49ers, but by taking Ekeler and Ja'Marr Chase, he missed out on that possibility. That's OK—he has strong stacks with both Dallas and Cincinnati, and the best Chargers lineup around with Justin Herbert still being available. It's kind of awkward rooting for your first overall pick to drop out, but Jackson probably has more teams he can ride to the championship than any of us. If I had to swap my lineup for someone's, I'd steal Jackson's.

Rivers: Let me explain my decision to heavily stack the Minnesota Vikings: Remember that time the Arizona Cardinals made the Super Bowl somehow? Yeah, that was cool. Also all their good players fell to me.

Minnesota is 27th in DVOA and are the ninth-worst team to make the playoffs in the DVOA era. But hey, you know what? They did make the playoffs. And they get to play another team with negative DVOA in the first round. And they have somehow managed to stumble their way into close win after close win all year long; who says that's going to change in the postseason? And if you're sure Minnesota will take down the Giants, Justin Jefferson is a fantastic pick in the second round. T.J. Hockenson as the fifth tight end? Sure! And at that point, you might as well buckle them with Dalvin Cook and Greg Joseph, because if you're going to do this, you're going to do it right.

If the Vikings fall to the Giants in the first round, Rivers is going to finish last, and that's alright. But if Minnesota goes on a tear? No one else has equity in them! They could knock out my 49ers stack and Vince and Aaron's Eagles bonanza. Get four games out of Minnesota, and Rivers wins in a laugher—and even two or three might be enough, because he has Patrick Mahomes ready to put up 25 points a game starting in the divisional round. He has hitched his wagon to something, and I have to respect rooting this hard for Team Chaos in the postseason.

Tom: Good morning. I will take Josh Allen with the 1.01.

The first overall pick in the staff draft last season was Patrick Mahomes. The year before that, it was Patrick Mahomes. Two years before that, it was Patrick Mahomes. Your default option in any format should be to take Patrick Mahomes. But Mahomes gets a bye this year, which makes him slightly less valuable. He still leads all quarterbacks in fantasy points this season, but it's pretty much a toss-up between him, Josh Allen, and Jalen Hurts. And when two of those players do not get to play in the wild-card round and the other one does? That's more than enough to swing the needle away from Kansas City and over to Buffalo. All three players are going to get you 25 or so points per game, so why not take the guy who has the extra game to play? And the Bills won't even have to go on the road in the AFC title game, making him an even better choice.

Tom hadn't actually finished the draft when I started this writeup; the fun bit of time zones there. But then, do we need it? He has Josh Allen. Enough tables get jumped through, and he wins.

As previously mentioned, you can put your own best-of-the-rest teams in the comments, and we'll see which of you manages to beat one or all of us! Typically, there's at least some competitive roster left out there; while we're bickering and fighting over the top seeds, we leave the upsets wide open for the taking.

There are three teams that we didn't touch. We don't expect either of the seventh seeds to have much of a chance, and so every Seattle Seahawks and Miami Dolphins player is still on the board. If Tua Tagovailoa can come back from his concussion, you could group him with Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle and be more than good to go. Seattle's a tougher team to build around in my book—Miami looked like a top option at one point, while Seattle has fallen from "good" to "meh," so there's less excitement in a backup. Still, they get a rookie quarterback in their first game, so perhaps experience can lead to an upset there. We also ignored the Baltimore Ravens, who kind of collect the worst of both worlds from the Seahawks and Dolphins—question marks around an injured quarterback like Miami, a smaller ceiling of fantasy worthiness like Seattle. I mean, if you want to build your hopes around the Baltimore receiving corps, be my guest.

If I were constructing a team, I think I'd try my hardest to predict Vikings-Giants. Yes, I called that a fool's errand, but all that you're left to choose from are fools, so you might as well run their errands. Both Daniel Jones and Kirk Cousins are available and one is guaranteed to get at least two games. Pick right, and you're in a good spot. I think I'd still stack Hill and Waddle as my receivers, because one game from them might equal three games from, say, Jauan Jennings or Isaiah McKenzie. I might even look to Jeff Wilson, with Raheem Mostert highly questionable with a hand injury. You might well score enough points with the Dolphins in one week to keep you high in the standings throughout!