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The Fantasy Sports Trade Association will host its summer conference at the Crowne Plaza in New York City on June 19-20. The FSTA Industry Draft will kick things off on Monday at 7 pm ET and it will be carried live on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio.

Tune in for all of the results and I'll update this thread with the draft grid once that is posted. You can follow on the air and online with RT Sports hosting the draft results.

Tom and I have reached the semi-finals each of the last two years, only to fall each time to Colton & The Wolfman in Week 15. This year we have the 2nd pick in this 14-team draft and hope to get back into the playoffs and this time into the Championship Game. We won't lie, we like the 2nd pick and will gladly take David Johnson or Le'Veon Bell to anchor this team. After that it should get fun.

Okay, listen in and root us on. There's good competition in this 14-team, 16-round straight serpentine format. Here are the participants in this draft:

2017 SiriusXM/FSTA Experts Fantasy Football League draft order

1 - Cory Bonini/Ryan Bonini, The Huddle
2 - Greg Ambrosius/Tom Kessenich, Stats Inc., NFFC
3 - Charlie Wiegert, CDM Sports
4 - Brett Baker/Ty Ward, Big Game Software
5 – Tim Jensen, RT Sports
6 - Anthony Perri, Fantistics
7 - Steve Gardner, USA TODAY Sports Weekly
8 - Mike Dempsey/Bob Harris, Football Die Hards
9 - Chris Liss, Rotowire
10 – Ray Flowers, SiriusXM Fantasy Drive (Defending Champion)
11 - Brian Gleason, Skill Draft
12 - Howard Bender, Fantasy Alarm
13 - Nando DiFino, FNTSY
14 - Rick Wolf/Glenn Colton/Stacie Stern, Colton & The Wolfman

Any predictions on our next two picks? We'll take all the advice we can get. Thanks all.

Here are the links to the draft board for Monday night's draft:

https://rtsports.com/siriusxm-fsta
https://rtsports.com/siriusxm

Follow along and feel free to post about any picks, including ours!!

Here's our team from the two hole:

QB-Matt Ryan
QB-Sam Bradford

RB-Le'Veon Bell
RB-Tevin Coleman
RB-Theo Riddick
RB-Gio Bernard
RB-Tim Hightower

WR-Brandin Cooks
WR-DeAndre Hopkins
WR-Martavis Bryant
WR-Jordan Matthews
WR-Ted Ginn Jr.

TE-Martellus Bennett
TE-Jason Witten
K-Matt Bryant
D-Texans

Tom, I bet you liked that Jay Ajayi pick at #9 overall!

CoMoHusker wrote:Tom, I bet you liked that Jay Ajayi pick at #9 overall!

I thought many of Liss' early-round picks were ... interesting.

I'll talk more about our draft on our Sirius show tomorrow night but overall I thought we had a real good draft. I love our QB, top 3 RBs and top 3 WRs. We've taken a lot of heat for the Cooks pick and that really puzzles me. We got him later than his current ADP and I love his upside in New England. He brings them the first legit vertical threat they've had since Moss and every offense in the NFL would welcome a proven, high-talent WR who can stretch the defense. I think he's a fantastic fit in New England and I believe Brady will love him.

Nuk obviously was a major disappointment last season but he's still talented and comes at a better price so we're happy to take a chance to see if he can bounce back. I am over the moon about Bryant as our WR3. He was Top 20 at the position in his last season and clearly brings big-time talent back to the Steelers. It's all about keeping his nose clean off the field. With talent like that we'll happily add him as our WR3.

One thing that's hurt our teams in recent years is a lack of quality RB depth so we wanted to make sure we corrected that in this draft and I think we did. Bell is obviously a no-brainer but I really love Coleman and Riddick behind him. Coleman was RB15 (same as Ajayi by the way) in PPR despite playing behind Freeman while Riddick was a Top 10 RB in PPR (ahead of Ajayi by the way) before his late-season injury. If all three of our RBs stay healthy, depth will not be a problem. We grabbed Gio late for the potential upside. If he can't get healthy, we should still be strong with our Top 3 RBs and if he can get healthy now we add another proven PPR RB to the mix.

Bennett is probably my favorite "If you're gonna wait on TEs go get him" targets for this season and Witten is still a productive option. So our TE depth looks pretty good.

We'll see how it all plays out but overall I really like this team. Definite advantage to having an early pick this year, especially without 3RR.

There's no doubt that having a Top 3 pick in a 14-team league with no 3RR is an advantage. I think even a BIG advantage. Team 1 was torn between Johnson and Elliott and he didn't decide on Johnson until the last second. I love Johnson, but expected Bell all the while.

The only pick Tom and I disagreed on was the 4th round pick. I felt we could take Dalvin Cook and still get Bryant coming back. But Tom wanted Bryant first and was happy with Coleman in the 5th. Team 1 took Cook right after us as expected, so we'll see what happens between those two players.

The SiriusXM hosts didn't like the Cooks pick, but I had no problem defending that pick. The last time Brady had a deep threat he threw for 50 TDs. I think Brady will find a way to get him involved in this offense. As for Bryant, it's obviously a risk because of his off-field issues, but when Jeff Mans said "I like him but I would take him 2 to 3 rounds later" I realized that the hosts didn't understand that he's not going outside of the 5th round in this format. He's just not. He's the swing that you take when you want to win it all.

It was good fun. Some interesting picks, but I think there are several good teams here. We should contend, but let's see. Should be fun.

Good job overall guys. I'm guessing 4 pts QB TD's since Arod went 4:10. I agree with Tom's "Bryant pick" in the 4th however your team is really dependent on Big Ben staying healthy with 2 Steelers in the 1st 4 picks. I'm surprised you went with Hopkins over the homer pick (Adams) but I can't argue with it. Hopkins, Adams and ARob all have big upside but only Adams has a top QB throwing to him.
Again it's early so we're splitting hairs on those guys. Coleman IMO is a perfect pairing for one of those top 3 RB's at his current ADP.
I love the Bennett pick in the 8th but I think you got a real gem in the 9th. A lot of people sleeping on J.Matthewes so far. I'll take him all day long with the 114th pick. WR 50 Are you kidding me. He finished 2016 as the WR 39 and that was with a rookie QB and no WR1 in front of him. He really wasn't bad. His TD's dropped from 8 in 2014 and 8 in 2015 to 3 last year. If he gets 8 last year he scores 201 pts. That's good for WR 19.
I think he gets at least 6 TD's this year while maintaining his 73/804 from 2016. That makes him one of the steals of your draft IMO.

There are a couple of teams I like and several that must've had intoxicated drafters but yours is my favorite. I hope your guys stay healthy. I think you have a great shot to run away with this league.
Good job!

Thanks Jeff. I'm not worried about the two Steelers. Bell is a stud and Bryant has Top 15-20 WR upside so to get him as our WR3 is amazing value in my opinion.

Nuk vs. Adams is a good question and we're banking on Nuk regaining his prior form. If he can, he'll be the clear No. 1 WR on his team, something Adams isn't and won't be unless Nelson were to get hurt (and even then Cobb can't be ruled out despite the fact nobody likes him this year).

As far as Matthews I like him but Jeffery is the superior talent and I believe will be the clear No. 1 WR there so I'm anticipating Matthews' production declining. John Hansen liked that pick more than our Cooks selection and I said to Greg that was the first pick we made at that time I wasn't entirely thrilled about. As a WR4 in a 14-team league I think he'll be OK but I don't have very high expectations. The good news is WR4 types are the easiest to find off the WW in PPR in my opinion so if Matthews falters I don't think it'll be difficult to replace him.

So one industry draft is in the books. What did we learn from that one along with all of the early NFFC drafts?

Let's count the ways to the "10 Things We Learned From Pre-July Drafts" with a look at the FSTA draft board here:

https://rtsports.com/siriusxm-fsta

1. The Top 8 Are Set: It sure looks like the top of the First Round is set in stone. The first 3 picks appear to be David Johnson, Le'Veon Bell and Ezekiel Elliott in one form or another, followed by the WRs of Antonio Brown, Julio Jones, Odell Beckham Jr. and Mike Evans. LeSean McCoy is settling in at pick 8, but after that it's more wide open. Does the draft start at Pick 9? It certainly looks that way.

2. Love Affair For Jay Ajayi: Ajayi has received some early season love this year as his ADP in the NFFC is currently at 15. Rotowire's Chris Liss jumped on him with the 9th pick in the FSTA draft and several other industry writers are also very high on him. He did have three of the four 200-yard rushing games last year and he had four games over 20 points, but he also had four games between 10-15 points and seven games under 10 points. That's not the type of steady production you want from your first pick, or is it?

3. Long Last Love For Gronk: Rob Gronkowski has an ADP of 25 in the NFFC, which means he's just outside of the second round, but in the FSTA draft he went 21st and Travis Kelce went 25th. Kelce's ADP in the NFFC is 33. Gronk missed 8 games to injury last year, but he had back-to-back 1,000 yard seasons before that with a total of 23 TD receptions. Kelce had his first 1,000 yard season in 2016, but finished with only four TDs. Are both worthy of picks in the Top 35?

4. No love for Cooks at 27? Tom and I took Brandin Cooks at pick 27 and DeAndre Hopkins at 30. Their ADPs at the time were 20 and 21, yet we received criticism from the likes of John Hansen on the Cooks pick. Why? Because he and others felt that there wouldn't be enough targets for Cooks to make an impact. That seems absurd with Brady, who doesn't care about past production and will get the ball to whomever is open. The last time Brady had a deep threat like Cooks he threw 50 TD passes, many of them to Randy Moss. As for Hopkins, he will have to deal with bad QB play again this year, but can it be worse than last year? We don't think so, but others disagree.

5. Lotsa Love For Rookie RBs: We are seeing three rookie Running Backs going in the first three rounds in a lot of drafts this year. They include Leonard Fournette (ADP of 22), Christian McCaffrey (30) and Joe Mixon (38). In the FSTA draft they went 23rd (Fournette), 31st (Mixon) and 37th (McCaffrey). There isn't a rookie WR going inside the Top 100, so it's these three guys or bust for the rookies this year it seems. Will they return this value? What do you think?

6. Return Of The Running Backs: This year has an old school feel to it with three Running Backs leading off the draft and 7 of the first 14 picks being RBs. The first three rounds consist of 17 RBs and 22 WRs, something we haven't seen for years. Are people chasing last year's great Running Back stats or are RBs as valuable as top WRs these days? Time will tell if this year is a repeat of last year.

7. Wait on QBs: This point hasn't changed in years, but even the Top QBs aren't getting love in the early rounds. Aaron Rodgers is the top QB as he's going 27th in the NFFC, with Tom Brady going 31st. Drew Brees follows at 46th, but remember most of these are Draft Champions results, where QBs likely will be going earlier than in other league formats. In the FSTA, Rodgers went 52nd and Brady went 59th and this was a 14-team league. Three other QBs went in the 6th round, four QBs went in the 7th round, three QBs went in the 8th round and three more QBs went in the 9th round.

8. Top Heavy Picks in Straight Serpentine Drafts: It feels like the Top 3 teams have an advantage in a straight serpentine draft, especially in a 14-team format like we saw in the FSTA draft. Getting a Top RB early allows you to still get 2 solid WRs in Rounds 2 and 3, while still having great options after that. It just feels like there is a distinct advantage at the top without Third Round Reversal.

9. Sleeper WR Picks: Tyreek Hill is the fastest rising wideout now that he's the No. 1 option in Kansas City. His ADP in the NFFC is 44 and he went 45th in the FSTA draft. Martavis Bryant is also on the rise now that he's back with the Steelers as his ADP is 56 and we took him 55th in the FSTA draft. I also like Willie Snead at 60 as he will have a much more prominent role under Drew Brees. One other interesting pick: Is Randall Cobb really going 102nd? Okay, I get it, I understand why, but geez, seems like value to me.

10. Sleeper RB Picks: Running Backs on the rise include Ameer Abdullah (NFFC ADP of 69, 64th pick in FSTA), Mike Gillislee (74 & 72), and Tevin Coleman (64 and 58). Maybe the most interesting duo is in New Orleans where Mark Ingram went 63rd in the FSTA draft and Adrian Peterson went 84th. Are they both going to excel or are drafters gambling that one will emerge ahead of the other?

10 Lessons Learned. Let's see if things change during the next 2+ months of live drafts.