In mid-July, I participated in a football futures fantasy draft at RT Sports. In it, each team was given a budget of $10,000 and took turns selecting from the list of NFL, college football and even CFL futures manually populated into our draft board, assigning anywhere from $250 to $1,750 to each pick. I've finished second twice in a row since I started participating in this league, and it's always a fun time where you dive into preparation in the summer just like I do for Fantasy football, but then I can forget about it during football season until it's time to check in and see how I did.
We have a lot of great football betting minds across the SportsLine and CBS Sports extended universe, and I wanted to give them the chance to have a similar experience with NFL futures. So I organized the SportsLine NFL Futures Championship.
The concept is similar to my RT Sports draft, but I wanted to simplify things a bit to remove variable bet sizes as well as structure it in a way where each pick is reflective of the current betting market (my first pick in the other draft was Ravens Over 8.5 wins because we got -110 prices on every win total and that number is two wins off the market) and also doesn't just come down to who hits the longest shot with a big wager (i.e., win totals and player props become nearly irrelevant unless you have those massive value opportunities, as everyone just fires away on Super Bowl and award winners).
I put together a format for the draft and got some good feedback from our participants, who include: SportsLine and Early Edge experts Larry Hartstein, Emory Hunt, Allan Bell, Zack Cimini, Mackenzie Brooks and myself; SportsLine prop gurus Alex Selesnick, Sia Nejad and Dave Richard; SportsLine host Erik Kuselias; and Pick Six's Katie Mox and Will Brinson.
Below, you can find the format of our competition in case you want to put together your own futures fantasy draft. All readers can also see the first round of our SportsLine NFL Futures Championship, which began on July 31 and ran until August 29. Full results can be found below, along with my analysis of each round.
General rules
Win totals
All NFL teams are available to be selected for one Over and one Under in this group (whether standard or in the alt category). So there are 64 possible "picks," which is why the draft has a 16-manager maximum. When a manager makes a selection, they must designate which slot the pick is going in immediately (aka, Yahtzee rules) or they get the highest unit slot by default.
Playoff wagers
All NFL teams are available to be selected once per category. That means if a team is selected to make the playoffs, it can't be selected by another manager to miss the playoffs and fill that slot on their roster.
Stat props
Each player can be used once per category, so if a team selects Patrick Mahomes' Over in pass TDs, Mahomes is off the board for all pass yards and TD props for the rest of the draft.
Awards
Players can only be selected once per category, but the same player could be drafted twice to fill one MVP slot and one OPOY slot, for example.
| Category | Pick | Price | |
| R.White | 3u Win Total | PHI OV 11.5 | -105 |
| W.Brinson | 3u Win Total | SF OV 10.5 | -145 |
| A.Bell | 3u Win Total | JAC OV 9.5 | -140 |
| K.Mox | 3u Win Total | KC OV 11.5 | -140 |
| E.Hunt | 3u Win Total | MIN UN 8.5 | -110 |
| Z.Cimini | 3u Win Total | SEA UN 9.5 | -155 |
| S.Nejad | 3u Win Total | JAC UN 9.5 | +120 |
| A.Selesnick | 3u Win Total | CHI UN 7.5 | +110 |
| L.Hartstein | 3u Win Total | DAL OV 10.5 | +115 |
| M.Brooks | 3u Win Total | LAC UN 9.5 | +100 |
| E.Kuselias | 3u Win Total | ARI UN 4.5 | -120 |
| D.Richard | 3u Win Total | IND UN 6.5 | +100 |
The format tweaks I made had the intended effect, with every manager prioritizing win totals in Round 1. Payouts may be higher in other categories like 0.25u MVP and 0.25u Super Bowl winner depending on who gets the award, but with win totals being a limited resource in our draft of 12 managers, everyone prioritized getting at least one they loved.
I started with the Eagles because I had two sides in my top tier of win totals but the Philly pick has a much higher payout than the other one thanks to the -105 price, which will give me 2.86 units if it hits as expected. Interestingly, both sides of the Jaguars win total were taken as different experts' top plays within the first seven picks. We had both sides of two other teams taken by the end of Round 2.
Results for the rest of the draft will be added below as each round completes, and you'll also be able to find everyone's full roster once the draft is over along with some analysis about the results.
Which team will be the first to be selected to win the Super Bowl? And which player will be the top MVP pick among our experts? ... Join SportsLine right now to see the results of the SportsLine NFL Futures Championship!
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