Draft Dalvin Cook or Davante Adams In Round 1?
Redraft season is on the horizon and roster construction is important to your success in season long leagues. Your roster construction starts during the draft and this series will focus on the “this or that” of selecting a position during the draft and what the ramifications of that selection for your team is.
For this exercise, the position group selected with the first picks will be contrasted by the opposite position in the later pick. For example, if you took a RB in round two vs a WR in round two, the round 10 selection would compare taking a WR to pair with your second round RB and vice versa. All ADP is derived from ffcalculator.com and is based on 12 team PPR. Let’s check out part nine.
ELITE WR OR ELITE RB IN ROUND 1?
Same scenario as part eight of this series, but let’s change the players and the subsequent round of the player to be paired. Instead of taking the second player in the fourth round, let’s move it up a round. For this example you could selected WR Davante Adams (ADP 8) or Dalvin Cook (ADP 6). Here’s what they did in 2019.
Cook – RB6 (296.4 FP) RB2 (21.2 FP/G)
Adams – WR23 (212.7 FP) T-WR4 (17.7 FP/G)
Find Dalvin Cook & Davante Adams In Our Draft Rankings!
A big bounce back from injury coupled with a run-first approach by the Vikings was the perfect storm for Cook to dominate fantasy leagues. Star WR Stefon Diggs has moved onto Buffalo, but was replaced by first round WR Justin Jefferson. Maybe more important, OC Kevin Stefanski was named the HC for the Cleveland Browns. Will the new staff in Minnesota keep Cook the focus of the team? Where Cook rebounded from injury, Adams took a hit due to injury. Despite missing multiple games, Adams finished as WR2, but on a per game basis was elite. As a Lions fan, I’m happy to write that the Packers wasted their draft in 2020 and didn’t get Adams any help. For fantasy purposes, it is in the realm of possibilities that Adams sees 12 targets a game (nearly 200 over the course of the season).
WHO TO PAIR?
If you selected Adams at 8, you could pair him with RB Leonard Fournette (ADP 29). If you selected Cook at 6 you could pair him with WR Juju Smith-Schuster (ADP 35). Let’s examine their 2019 seasons.
Smith-Schuster – WR63 (115.2 FP) WR64 (9.6 FP/G)
Fournette– RB7 (261.4 FP) RB9 (17.4 FP/G)
Related | Juju Smith-Schuster Will Prove To Be An Elite WR In 2020
Juju crushed so many teams in 2019. Juju has been historically great through his first three seasons in the NFL and I think 2019 was an anomaly due to his poor QB play. Let’s be honest, QBs Mason Rudolph and Duck Hodges shouldn’t take snaps in the NFL. I think my beer league flag football QB could have performed better. Return QB Ben Roethlisberger and Juju should return to glory. The Steelers did add WR Chase Claypool in the draft and WR Diontae Johnson appears to be a legitimate WR2 in the NFL. Fournette crushed expectations in 2019. What aided his rise was his passing work. Fournette was not known as a receiving back, but dominated in that arena in 2019. The Jaguars are bad. They should be throwing quite a bit in 2020, but will RB Chris Thompson be the recipient of those check downs or will it be Fournette?
2020 PROJECTIONS
VERDICT
Last time I went with the WR in round 1. This time, I’m feeling a bit more risky and trusting that Juju returns to form in 2020. My projections for Juju have him in the top 10, and if I can take an elite RB in Dalvin Cook and pair him with a top 10 WR, I’m going to do that every time. Adams has a shot to finish as THE WR1, but I worry that Fournette is on the outs in Jacksonville. Maybe he gets used a ton because the Jags will move on next year? My confidence level is higher with Juju.
What do you think? What would you do?
