Every year I do this and it seems a little like shooting fish in a mock draft, or something like that, but this is based on actual draft results from actual ESPN drafts. I'm not making this up. The Seahawks' defense is getting drafted, on average, in the sixth round. Just know these two simple facts: Last year, four of the five highest-scoring fantasy defenses (Bills, Eagles, Texans and Lions) were drafted outside the top 10 on ESPN. The top drafted defense, Seattle, posted an average weekly finish of 18th among D/STs through the first seven weeks. Had you just started the team that played the Jaguars every week last year you'd have had the best fantasy defense in the game, 43 points better than the current No. 1. That's impossible, of course, but it just goes to show the benefits of streaming a defense. Do not take a defense until the very late rounds and if someone else does so at your draft, I demand you get up, right then and there, laugh at them, point at them and say, "Matthew Berry thinks you're an idiot." Because I do.
My league has a transaction fee for add/drops so it cost me a little extra money to not draft a D/ST or Kicker (since I'll have to pick them up before week 1). Some years if I think I have some good sleepers targeted I will forgo drafting a K and/or D/ST, this year there wasn't anything interesting left on my board in the last two rounds so I opted to save the fees.I usually don't draft a defense or a kicker. There's not really a compelling reason to.
That's been my strategy for about 3 years now. If someone has the D playing the jags I go with Oakland.My philosophy last year was "stream the D/ST playing Jacksonville, if available" and it worked out just fine.
Obviously you can't help what auto-draft lands you, but seems like an opportunity to say another thing I don't believe in is carrying two QBs. There is always a QB available on the waiver-wire that can fill in for your QB's bye week who will score comparably well to whichever QB you leave rotting on your bench for X amount of weeks. Also in my experience QBs make poor trade-bait (your league may vary on that). In the mean time that is one less bench slot to utilize for picking up extra RBs/WRs, especially early in the season when you start getting a feel for who those break-out stars will be.My auto-pick draft actually got me two decent quarterbacks,