In 90% of the drafts I do, mock or otherwise, I don't enter with any positional strategy. Sure, I've got rankings and preferences, but ultimately the league is going to decide what positions I prioritize early in the draft. In our most recent Dynasty startup mock, the league decided I was starting with four straight receivers. Considering they were four of my top 13 Dynasty wide receivers, I was pretty happy with that result.

How does it happen? Eight of the first nine players selected were running backs. By the end of Round 2, 13 running backs and three quarterbacks had been selected. In the 38 picks before I took Amari Cooper in Round 4, 23 were not receivers. Maybe more importantly for the purposes of this draft, a couple of those receivers (Calvin Ridley and DK Metcalf) are more long-term upside guys. That matters because as I sat there with Cooper, Davante Adams, Cooper Kupp and JuJu Smith-Schuster on my roster, I had another decision to make; Keep accumulating best player available or try to win this league in Year 1? When Todd Gurley was my top back available in Round 5, that choice became easier. 

While I don't think it's a good idea to go into a Dynasty startup with a definite positional plan, it's even more important to me that I leave my options open in terms of my contending window. I'm OK trying to win Year 1, and I'm fine building a team of youth to try to win Year 2 or 3. What I don't want to do is get stuck in the middle. So once I made the Gurley pick, I committed to winning 2020 with Dak Prescott, David Johnson and Mark Ingram on three of my next four picks. It's the reason my tight end combo is Tyler Higbee and Hayden Hurst as opposed to Noah Fant and T.J. Hockenson. It's also why my backup quarterbacks are Tom Brady and Ryan Tannehill as opposed to Jared Goff and Dwayne Haskins. 

There were a couple of younger guys mixed in like Darrell Henderson and Preston Williams, but mostly this is a roster designed to win it all, and then prepare for a rebuild. The running backs on this team may very well be useless by 2021, but it won't be hard to turn Adams, Kupp and Cooper into the types of picks one needs for a rebuild in the future. Especially in a three-receiver league.

While you shouldn't have a plan you're married to before the draft, you do need to make a plan during the draft and then optimize your decision making around that plan. Other than the Henderson pick (should have been Evan Engram), I was pretty pleased with how this plan came together.

We were joined by several analysts from Razzball and one from Dynasty League Football for this mock. I'll just use their screen names below. Here's the full list of participants:

MB - Razzball
Chris Towers - CBS Sports
AlFFred - Razzball
Jeff Haverlack - DLF
B_Don - Razzball
Donkey Teeth - Razzball
Jamey Eisenberg - CBS Sports
Ben Gretch - CBS Sports
Adam Aizer - CBS Sports
Heath Cummings - CBS Sports
Ben Schragger - CBS Sports
Dave Richard - CBS Sports

And here are the results: