The first and most important thing you need to understand about any mock draft involving Fred Zinkie is that watching him assemble an initial roster is like watching a master chef cinch their apron and sharpen a knife, then seeing none of the actual food prep.
For Fred — perhaps more so than any other analyst in the fantasy industry — the draft is merely the first step on a road that ultimately leads to a very different roster (and probably a championship). He is our game’s greatest and most prolific trader.
Zinkie is a high-motor fantasy manager who will definitely pry away your team’s best players, yet leave you feeling great about the exchange. He’s ruthless. He is also bubbly and agreeable. The combination is devastating.
Honestly, Fred probably used our most recent Yahoo mock draft as an opportunity to set the rest of us up for some future fleecing in a league of actual consequence. Fred is a cunning manipulator. He sees around corners. I’m quite certain he maintains thick files on each of his industry colleagues — opposition research compiled over many years, revealing tendencies and weaknesses.
Fred is every fantasy shark’s favorite shark.
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And again, you can never assume Fred’s end-of-season roster will bear any resemblance to the squad he drafts in the spring. At some level, it’s silly to evaluate any Zinkie team in February or March.
But Dalton Del Don? Well, that’s another matter entirely.
Plenty of wild things can happen when Dalton is in your fantasy league, but a trade involving his squad is not among them. The last time Del Don clicked “accept” on a trade offer was never. He has been drafting and managing fantasy rosters for the better part of two decades and has yet to find a deal to his liking.
This is a reflection not only of the cautiousness and timidity with which Dalton moves through life, but also his absolute conviction about every fantasy pick he has ever made. Del Don is going to get his guys in a draft, then cling tightly to them for the next seven months. If you’ve seen his roster in March, you know exactly what it’s gonna look like in September.
As for Scott Pianowski and myself, we fall somewhere in between Fred’s frenetic transactional alchemy and Dalton’s extreme inflexibility on the fantasy management spectrum. We are each active on the waiver wire in-season and we are certainly willing traders, though neither of us has…