Fantasy (Football) Time

Just under 2 weeks until the first Sunday of the NFL season, 10 days until the big Thursday night kickoff. Finally tonight is the draft for my fantasy football league. I do hockey and baseball and basketball and even box office pools, but without a doubt the sport that is best suited for fantasy is NFL Football. The other pools I talked about require daily roster moves, baseball can be tricky in that it can be tough to figure out starting rotations, hockey I've found a certain degree of manipulation by owners attempting to preserve a pristine GAA after a couple early week shoutouts. Who exactly is playing goal for your team if you've benched all your goalies. Football is great in that you can sit back on a Sunday and watch your matchup progress. By Sunday evening you usually have some idea whether the Sunday and Monday night evening games will have any impact on your matchup. It truly makes for a tense evening when you realize every play has an impact on the outcome of your fantasy matchup.

For about 6 weeks there has been discussion about what offseason moves will result in big fantasy numbers for players, which rookies are worth drafting and which former backups. I really haven't put a lot of research into this, mostly I depend on the yahoo pre-rankings. If there happens to be a contract holdout like a Steven Jackson or a training camp/pre-Season injury like a Willis McGahee or Chad Johnson then I tend to wait a little later to draft these players. Our league, mostly at my insistence, switched from drafting team defenses to drafting individual defensive players. The logic was basically that in a league of 18 owners and 32 NFL teams there wouldn't be enough depth for every owner to have a backup plan. My basic strategy the last few years has been pretty simple, draft as many starting running backs as possible. In my league we can only start 2 running backs, but the frequency with which these players get injured, I've found that 4 or even 5 RBS is great to have. The downside of course is there is always going to be that Sunday where you leave a guy on the bench and had you started him you would have won, but at least that guy is on your bench and not on someone else's like your opponents starting roster.

The QB position is pretty important. If you can't get the first or 2nd pick and get LT or Adrian Peterson it's worthwhile taking Peyton Manning or Tom Brady, generally durable QBs who are almost guaranteed to average 2+ TD passes per game. If you are in a league of less than 10 with only 1 active QB you can always get a decent starting QB, if you are in a league of 16 + it is pretty important to draft your QB probably by round 4 at the latest. I fill out my roster with all the wide receivers and running backs I need before I even think about looking at the tight end, defensive positions or my back up qb. I frequently save my kicker picks until the very end. In season I just closely monitor injuries and look for capable running back backups like an Earnest Graham I picked up mid-seaon last year and was pretty consistent averaging I believe around 75 yards and a touchdown per game for my during that timespan.

The biggest mistake I've made in the past besides drafting Raiders has been drafting players from teams who share the same bye weeks. However if you have a vast majority of your players on a bye week and they happen to be good, during a regular season it may not be a bad idea to just concede one week rather than dropping players that you may need come playoff time.

I'm just hoping my PC won't crash during the live draft. I anticipate someone is going to get really excited and take Favre in the 1st round which I'm sure will be met with a great deal of disapproval from fellow owners. I don't know which rookie if any will have the kind of impact Adrian Peterson had last year with the Vikings, based on talent you would say Darren McFadden might be that guy, but splitting carries with a couple other running backs and a team that has traditionally had to play from behind might mean fewer opportunities. I don't think there is anyway Moss and Brady can replicate the success they had last season, but as long as they are both healthy those guys have got to be top 10 picks.

4 hrs until the live draft we will see how I do.