Fantasy Football PPR Mock Draft Results and Recap: Christian McCaffrey gets drafted like it’s 2023 again

Get ready for a lot of mock drafts. It’s July, and the season is rapidly approaching. With that in mind, we held our first 12-team, PPR mock draft for this month, and it was awesome.

We also had some amazing analysts join our CBS Sports staff for this mock draft with Joe Pisapia from FantasyPros, Jake Ciely from The Athletic and Joey Wright from Footballguys. It’s always fun to get a different perspective, and Joe, Jake and Joey did a fantastic job in building their rosters for this league.

The first round here was different than any other draft I’ve seen this offseason with De’Von Achane going No. 3 overall to Heath Cummings, Christian McCaffrey at No. 6 overall to Adam Aizer and Malik Nabers at No. 7 overall to Brandon Howard — all ahead of Saquon Barkley. He fell to No. 9 overall, and CeeDee Lamb also slipped to No. 8.

As much as I’m worried about Barkley this season given his robust workload from 2024 — he had 436 carries and 482 total touches with the playoffs, which is a lot — that’s still a bargain. I would have drafted Barkley ahead of Achane, McCaffrey and Nabers, and Lamb should go ahead of all of them.

You should dive into all of the rosters here and see how each team was built. I had the No. 12 overall pick, and I took a different approach than usual. That’s why we do mock drafts, to try different strategies and see what works.

My first two picks were easy with Amon-Ra St. Brown and Ashton Jeanty, and you can make the case for both to be top-10 overall picks. But my next turn in Rounds 3-4 is where things got interesting.

I didn’t want to reach for receivers like Terry McLaurin, DK Metcalf, Mike Evans or Marvin Harrison Jr at No. 36 overall, and it felt too soon for running backs like Alvin Kamara, RJ Harvey, Chuba Hubbard and Joe Mixon. So I decided to pivot and draft Lamar Jackson and George Kittle.

If you’ve followed me long enough you know that I’m a late-round quarterback Fantasy manager and have been for almost 20 years. And I never like drafting a quarterback and tight end together in the first five rounds.

But if Jackson (30.1 Fantasy points per game in 2024) and Kittle (15.8) perform like they did in 2024 then this is a fantastic start for this team, and I’ll figure out the rest of my running back and receiver options. And I love Kittle in this spot, especially with Brandon Aiyuk (knee), Jauan Jennings (calf) and Ricky Pearsall (hamstring) all battling injuries prior to training camp.

I had another tough call at the turn in Rounds 5-6, and I wanted two receivers if possible. I don’t love Travis Hunter as my No. 2 receiver, but his upside is incredible if he spends the majority of time on offense, which appears to be the case. 

After Hunter, the next two players in my rankings were David Montgomery and Jameson Williams, and I wasn’t thrilled with the other receivers who were next on the board (Chris Olave, Tetairoa McMillan and Zay Flowers). Since I drafted St. Brown, I passed on both Lions and went with Quinshon Judkins, and I’m expecting him to be the best running back for the Browns this year and perform like a No. 2 Fantasy option in this format.

In a real draft, I would have selected Montgomery since he and St. Brown can both dominate in Detroit. But I wanted to try something different for this mock draft.

From this point on, it was just about drafting the best-player available, and I filled out my roster with Darnell Mooney, Stefon Diggs, Jayden Reed, Keon Coleman, Tyjae Spears, Austin Ekeler, Dylan Sampson and Trevor Lawrence. I like the receiving corps as a whole, especially if Diggs (knee) is healthy and the No. 1 target in New England, and Coleman can take a step forward with his production in his sophomore campaign.

I probably should have drafted Raheem Mostert instead of Lawrence with my last pick to handcuff Jeanty, but that’s a move I can make off the waiver wire — if we were playing this league out. However, this is just a mock draft, one of many to come in the next six-plus weeks.

As a reference point for this mock draft, all touchdowns are worth six points, and we award one point for every 10 yards rushing and receiving and one point for every 25 yards passing. We also award one point for every reception. We feature a starting lineup of QB, 2 RB, 3 WR, TE and FLEX (RB/WR/TE) with six reserves for a 14-round draft.

Our draft order is as follows:

1. Meron Berkson, CBS Sports HQ Producer

2. Dan Schneier, Senior Fantasy Editor

3. Heath Cummings, Senior Fantasy Writer

4. Jake Ignaszewski, FFT Social Media Coordinator

5. Joe Pisapia, FantasyPros

6. Adam Aizer, FFT Podcast Host

7. Brandon Howard, Fantasy Editor

8. R.J. White, Managing Editor, SportsLine and CBS Fantasy

9. Jake Ciely, The Athletic

10. Dave Richard, Senior Fantasy Writer

11. Joey Wright, Footballguys

12. Jamey Eisenberg, Senior Fantasy Writer