The Invisible Vet

   Every year before I sit down with my buddies to do our in person draft. I have my list of “must drafts”.Normally a breakout candidate by all the prognosticators. Or someone I genuinely feel will outperform his ADP. Im locked into drafting at least a few of these players. I may even reach for them by a few spots in ADP. Treyvon Henderson was my must get last year. I may have reached a bit but man that speed! Sometimes this makes me blind to some of the boring players that may be around them. I call them the invisible veterans.

   Sometimes we do have our blinders on to the invisible veterans. We hear running back dead zone and WR over 30 and we blank out. We skip over the RB dead zone. We throw the 30 year old WR out with the bath water. We cant let our insatiable need for tantalizing upside blind us to the boring vet that may be a key piece in our line up. 

   Let’s look at Davante Adams from last year. He was being drafted around WR 20ish depending on your source. He was 32 years old at the time and coming to another team. History shows us that WRs fall off a cliff past 30. But every year we have plenty of older WRs finish in the top 15. Adams finished the 2025 season as WR 9. Ahead of the much younger Drake London (ADP WR 9) and Ladd Mcconkey(ADP WR 10). 

 There is somewhat of an opportunity cost associated with writing off such aging veterans. If you drafted Mcconkey and London early thinking you had WR locked up you may of been forced to make more reaches later. At this point you may be reaching for a RB since you wrote off the dead zone WR.Another example yet somewhat extreme was CMC last year. How many people put him on your DO NOT draft list? Yes, the prospects of Malik Nabers and Aston Jeanty were  hard to pass up. Did we really think those guys could outperform CMC? I know the injury concerns were there but he is an established superstar. Derrick Henry every year we question his viability as he continues putting up points. He was being drafted in the RB 10 neighborhood and finished inside the top 10 even in PPR leagues.

 Lastly, the ageless wonder, Travis Kelce. It was getting late in my draft last year and he was scooped up ahead of Mark Andrews. I think we all spit out our beer at the pick. He was quickly accosted for such a  horrible pick. He was reminded that the year prior Kelce literally looked like he was running with lead weights in his shoes. He was completely washed. So he made a wager that Kelce would indeed outscore Andrews in all formats. Sure enough he finished as tight end 4 in PPR formats. He won that bet and he almost won the league. 

 I understand that there may be different circumstances on why an aging veteran may pushed down in drafts. We just don't want them to become invisible come draft time. There is a good price to draft any player just remember sometimes these vets still have IT.

  Drop a comment and tell me a Vet you wish you didn't skip over in a previous draft.

-FFguru24