Issue #292: Claude
By Derrick Ernst
July 16, 2026
Man’s Best Friend
AI vs. your dog. I’ll take the latter every second of everyday, but the former and I had a pretty fun evening the other day. Most of today’s newsletter will be written by AI (I’ll let you know when that kicks in), not because I’m getting lazy, rather due to how much it has picked up on my teachings and it’s my way of proving it. There are too many AI platforms to count, but the one I’m leaning into most is Claude. Not sure if it’s the best or not, but I’ve sure been impressed with it’s capabilities. Perhaps a topic for another day, but it has saved my numerous hours of work on more than one tall task. If you have a few extra bucks laying around, I’d recommend paying for at least it’s Pro tier. You’ll be amazed at what it can do.
The other day ESPN released its first (I think) 12-team mock draft of the offseason: Fantasy football mock draft: How 12 teams can shift your quarterback and tight end philosophy
I was filing through it and it dawned on me that maybe Claude would have a few thoughts on its own. No more than a few minutes later it crossed my mind that maybe Claude and I could have our own mock draft, influenced by the decisions of the analysts at ESPN who conducted the mock. Consider what I’m about to share being multi-layered:
My thoughts, plus
Claudes thoughts, plus
ESPN personalities thoughts
You might be wondering “where” Claude’s thoughts are being pulled from. I’ve loaded all 290 newsletters onto the platform for it to pull from and when we conducted our mock, I told it to lean into my writing and draft a team it thought I would. Interesting thought.
Here were our ground rules:
I would draft out of the 6 slot; Claude would draft out of the 7 slot
The thinking would be that there would be some “stealing” from each other — upping the difficulty
12 team, half PPR scoring
15 rounds, snake draft
Roster (15 players): QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, TE, FLEX, D/ST, K, and 6 bench
Claude also made this determination for us on how it would simulate the mock:
I'll play the other 11 teams realistically — drafting off a blend of current ADP and sensible roster construction, not 11 clones of me. Some teams will reach for QBs early, someone will panic-grab a TE, someone will wait too long on RB. Real-league texture. I'll post each round's picks, then pause when you're on the clock.
It wasn’t specifically stated, but it was also made known that Claude wasn’t going to simply replicate the mock from ESPN, rather it would use it as one piece of it’s thinking in determining the variability of the picks made by other teams.
I’m going to give you the results up front — here’s how Claude and I fared:
Not shown: Jalen Nailor, LV (WR) who I drafted with my second-to-last pick.
Following our draft I asked Claude to evaluate both of our rosters on the basis of five areas:
Identity
Best features (the good)
Worst features (the bad) and where there’s opportunities for improvement
Psychological framework
Roster grades: (1) for the team’s drafted and (2) what each team’s potential is (if everything went right throughout season)
I only have room for one team so I’ll share what it said about mine:
Team Ernst: The Recap
1. Identity
This was a conviction draft wearing a strategy's clothes. The stated thesis emerged at pick 54: assemble multiple players with legitimate #1-overall-at-their-position cases (Allen, Nacua, Warren), then trust your own player evaluation to fill in everything else. Allen at 2.07 wasn't a reach — it was a declaration that the "wait on QB" orthodoxy doesn't apply when the safest elite asset in fantasy is sitting there. From Round 6 forward, nearly every pick was a bet the market wouldn't have made: Wilson two rounds early, Johnston off the discount rack, Nailor on a target-vacuum hunch. The roster doesn't follow a draft strategy so much as a worldview.
2. What's Good
The onesie core is the best in the league, full stop. No other roster can claim potential top-2 finishes at QB, WR, and TE simultaneously, and in head-to-head formats, that concentration of ceiling wins weeks by itself. The bench RB portfolio is sneaky-excellent process: Price (lottery ticket), Monangai (early-down grinder), White (pass-game floor), and Brooks (talent returning from injury) are four genuinely different bet shapes rather than four copies of the same gamble. That's diversification. And Aubrey in the 12th — mockable, defensible, and probably right. He's the only kicker in football who constitutes a weekly edge, taken in a round where the alternative picks league-wide were roster filler.
3. What's Bad (The Opportunity)
The WR room behind Nacua is three consecutive bets on the manager's evaluation beating the market's — Wilson, Johnston, Nailor — with zero floor plays mixed in. One hitting is plausible; the lineup needs two. Every week that WR2 slot starts regardless of whether the breakout has arrived. The Shough pick was the draft's one clear process error: with Allen's ironman history made drafting a QB2 pure luxury, Daniel Jones offered standalone value plus the Warren stack, and you picked a correlation story instead. And the room's handcuff radar was ruthless — Charbonnet, Croskey-Merritt, and Tracy all landed elsewhere, meaning the insurance policies have insurance policies against them. The opportunity is obvious: this team should be the most aggressive waiver operator in the league from Week 1, because the roster was built expecting to be.
4. Psychological Framework
The picks reflect information independence: the manager formed opinions on Wilson and Johnston before the room did and refused to let ADP negotiate him out of them. The healthy version of this framework is exactly what showed up: contrarian positions taken deliberately, with eyes open about the variance. The risk it flirts with is conviction escalation — when three straight WR picks are all market-defying bets, the line between independent thinking and doubling down to prove the first bet right gets thin. The discipline test comes in October, not August: can you cut Johnston if the evidence says to, or does the draft-day thesis become the season-long anchor?
5. Grades
Draft grade: B. Elite ceiling, waiver-dependent floor, one pick to take back.
Potential grade: A. If Allen, Nacua, and Warren all finish top-3 at their positions and either Wilson or Johnston hits, this is the championship favorite and the roster everyone studies next August.
I’m back. I like the potential. Not sure I agree with the thoughts on Wilson or Johnston. R2/3 will be the key. I was set on Allen in R2. Know your league. If managers have been historically adamant about drafting QBs early, that’s still my recommended play. If not, he should be available in R3 which makes for the best care scenario. I do think our Draft Guide needs some late rounds WR talent so be on the lookout for additions.
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