I don’t know, The Steelers seemed to handle the Titans stomping on the terrible towel a whole lot better than Complainian handled the Patriots doing the Lights Out steroid dance. Wasn’t he practically in tears?
You have to give him a first-round grade because he’s still going to get 300 carries, but he has 2,700 carries and another 500 catches already on his body.
I think he’ll probably duplicate his numbers from last season, and 1,500 total yards and 12 total scores is a pretty damn good year by anyone else’s standards.
2,000 total yards and 20 scores are pretty much out of the question at this point, so it’s a low first-round grade… but if, like me, you like to get a sure thing with your first round pick, he’s still the closest thing to one.
As of now, I have him in square in the middle of my second tier of running backs. And I’ve seen a lot of people taking Fitzy or the Johnson WRs before LT, which just seems weird to me. He’s LT for heaven’s sake.
From what I’ve read, he’s healthy and I think he’s really motivated to have a great year. I think I’ll move him up a bit.
Another question. What the hell is up with Vincent Jackson. The sites I’m checking out have him as a top 15 WR, but I saw last year as a statistical fluke, not a coming out party. With a healthy LT (and Sproles seeing more carries also), Norv Turner’s offense, and Gates returning to form, I just don’t see him as a top 15 WR. Sure he’s in a contract year, and sure he’s in a division with really bad defenses, but I’m not sold.
What am I missing about him?
The top of my player rankings looks like this:
-
Adrian Peterson - had to eat a lot of humble pie on him last year, when I predicted he would fail to match his 2007 numbers. He’s convinced me now, of course.
-
DeAngelo Williams - he was the highest-scoring fantasy back last season, and produced whether or not Jonathan Stewart was on the field. He’s my league MVP pick this year, and the only reason he’s not #1 is that Stewart’s share of the carries might go up slightly.
-
Maurice Jones-Drew - led all fantasy backs in receiving yards last season, and even though his rushing totals were nothing to crow about he did average 4.2 yards per carry behind an injury-squished offensive line. No Fred Taylor vulturing this year eiither.
-
Matt Forte - easy schedule, excellent receiver. I always assign extra value to guys who can catch because it means they never have a truly bad game. Slightly worried about Kevin Jones, though.
-
Michael Turner - unstoppable in the second half of the season, but he had a lot of trouble with good defenses in the first half, and he’ll see a lot of them this year because the Falcons have a top-5 schedule difficultywise. Might be a bit of a bust, especially because he doesn’t catch passes, which limits his scoring opportunities when the holes aren’t there.
-
Ronnie Brown - yes, really. He’s a year removed from ACL surgery, which is about how long a full recovery takes… and he was having an OPOTY-type year in 2007 before he got hurt. He’s also an excellent receiver, especially on screens, and Ricky Williams’ share of carries drops each year. That Wildcat passing stuff only adds to his value, even if Pat White takes over most of the… um… catback (?) duties.
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LaDainian Tomlinson - consistency is king.
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Brian Westbrook - I always grade Westbrook lower than the prognosticators, because my fantasy rankings take into account the stabby feeling you get when you hear on Sunday morning that Westbrook is going to miss a game and you can’t get to a computer. Otherwise, he’d be worth a top-5 pick.
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Chris Johnson - could be a monster, could be meh. With LenWhale shedding pounds as fast as he put them on, he could see a lot of extra carries this season. That’s bad, m’kay?
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Steve Slaton - I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop last season, and for Slaton to get tackled by a 350-pound lineman and fold in half. Didn’t happen. Maybe he really can be a feature back. If you’re going to take him, draft depth.
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Frank Gore - another guy I always downgrade, this time for inconsistency. He’ll win a couple of fantasy weeks all by himself, and score 0 in others. I think he’ll back back up around the 1,400-yard mark this year, for what that’s worth.
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Steven Jackson - well, if you want to be the guy that takes him and hopes it’s 2006 again, be my guest. I don’t.
People who didn’t make the first round:
Larry Fitzgerald - he’s a wideout, and fantasy wideouts are cheap. Don’t spend a first-rounder on a guy whose production you can match 90% of with a fifth-rounder.
Clinton Portis - he’s as old as LT, but twice as beat up. Avoid.
Marion Barber - turns out he isn’t a feature-type back… but he’s still pretty good. I could have swapped him and Steven Jackson and felt pretty much the same about either.
Kevin Smith - ran for just shy of 1,000 yards behind the worst line in football and with minimal touches, and turned out to be Detroit’s second-best receiver to boot. Could have a big year, and I’ll be very happy to get him in the second round if the elite guys are gone.
Larry Johnson - well, he can’t do any worse than last year, and you could certainly do worse than to take a flier on him with the last first-round pick or first second-round pick.
Brandon Jacobs - too brittle for the first round, and can’t catch for shit, but he can be really scary at times.
He’s big, he’s fast, and his numbers have consistently improved from year to year. I think he’s being overvalued slightly because he was projected as the top third-year breakout candidate in '07, and didn’t produce, but he’s a bona fide #2.
Seems like the RB crop this year has more question marks than I can ever recall.
I think my top 5 would be:
- AP
- Turner
- Westbrook
- Forte
- Williams
Forte is great but Cutler will probably hurt his production as will a healthy Jones. Turner is a horse but the tough schedule and better scouting could slow him down. Westbrook is made of paper mache. I think Williams’ numbers were pretty fluky last year. He had a ton of big runs that really ballooned his numbers and I think those will even out this year. Even AP is not the sure thing, week to week, that you expect from a #1 overall guy.
Huh? He had 10 100-yard games and 12 weeks out of 16 with either 100 yards or a score or both.
And you need to do a hell of a lot better than that, and score way more than 10 TDs, to be the unanimous #1 overall. An LDT owner would have thrown a tantrum over those numbers in the first half of the decade. It’s not like his 2007 performance is irrelevant yet either.
AP is the #1 pick, but in years past his numbers wouldn’t dictate unanimous #1 status.
I’d agree with that, at least as far as touchdown numbers go.
I just take exception to your statement that he’s “not a sure thing week to week”, which is absolutely untrue- he was very consistent.
I saw every one of D’Angelo Willliams’ games last year. He’s the real deal, with a nose for holes and the burst to take advantage of them. That being said, Stewart will get a lot of touches as long as he’s healthy (achilles.) Also, rookie Mike Goodson is tearing up camp and may work his way into the offense as a 3rd down/change of pace/screen play guy. He has blazing speed and good hands. So I think Williams is Top-10 but be cautious.
He didn’t score a TD in 8 of the 16 weeks. In 2007 he failed to score in 9 weeks. There isn’t a definition out there were he’s “very consistent”.
He’s a good player and will put up numbers but he had a ridiculous number of huge 40yd+ TD runs. Those simply aren’t sustainable. Top 10 for sure, but I don’t think you can take last years numbers as indicative of future performance.
I did a few mock drafts on NFL.com today for NFL.com standard leagues (1 QB, 2 RB, 3 WR, 1 TE, 1 K, 1 D/ST) and noticed a couple of trends.
Larry Johnson and Kevin Smith are consistently available in the 6th round and beyond. Since both are almost certain to get 250+ carries, waiting until the middle rounds to take a 3rd (or even a 2nd) back seems like a worthwhile gamble this season (yes, I know, I’m still harping on Kevin Smith).
On the other hand, the top wideouts are going faster than usual. Larry Fitzgerald is hugely overvalued this year; he went 3rd and 5th overall in the last two mocks I did. Andre Johnson is getting an awful lot of love, too- he’s gone in the first round in the last three, which seems a bit steep for a guy with his injury history and general lack of touchdowns (relative to receptions/yards, at least). I know Fitzgerald was great last year and unstoppable in the playoffs, but the Cards will probably run the ball a bit more this year and there’s a good chance Kurt Warner’s arm won’t last another 600-attempt season. Think long and hard about the potential that Matt Leinart will be the guy throwing to Fitzgerald by Week 9 before you commit a first round pick.
Chad Johnson is being valued as a low-end 1/top-end 2; if you’re comfortable with him as your #1, you can probably let him drop to the fifth round.
There’s awesome quarterback depth this year, at least in the second tier. Manning/Brees are gone by round 3, but Roethlisberger, Carson Palmer, Cutler, and McNabb seem to be lasting until the fifth, sixth and even seventh. I took Cutler in the 9th in one draft, which seems like extremely good value even with the questions at WR. Brady is gone a bit earlier, which seems risky for a guy coming off an ACL injury (see Daunte Culpepper and Carson Palmer).
Randy Moss is also the beneficiary of all the Brady confidence, because he’s lasted past the end of Round 2 only once.
On the other hand, word is out that Greg Olsen is this year’s breakout TE candidate; he’s going no worse than 4th among TEs, and hasn’t lasted much past the 6th round so far. Not good value for a sleeper candidate, no matter how good his upside.
Chris Cooley hasn’t come off the board early in any draft- if you don’t need an elite TE, he’ll be there for you in Round 10.
Ronnie Brown isn’t quite the sleeper I thought he was; He’ll be gone by the early third round. LT has gone in the second half of the first round every time. Brian Westbrook seems to be out of favor; instead of a top-5 pick, he’s getting picked in the 10th, 11th and 12th spots. It looks to be a great year to be in the tail end of snaking drafts, especially with Peterson’s scoring issues.
He gets to play the Bucs twice so you can pencil him in for at least three 50+ yarders this year. Our run defense was horrible down the stretch, but instead of getting a real run stuffer to play the nose we’re hoping Dre’ Moore or Roy Miller step up. Great plan, eh?
Williams has always averaged 5+ yards per carry; he just hasn’t gotten carries until last season. His numbers last season were no fluke, aside from the 20 touchdowns perhaps.
Unless Jonathan Stewart gets more than the ~200 carries he did last year (which would be a dumb move on the Panthers’ part), Williams should get pretty close to his '08 numbers.
I think this reflects a trend in moving to PPR-based scoring, the fact that RBBC has become so common in the NFL (on how many teams does the starting RB get 80%+ of the carries nowadays?) and there’s lots in the way of second tier running backs. #3 is too high for Fitz, but in a 1 PPR league, I think #5 may be a slight reach but not unreasonable. Top RBs aren’t the beacons of consistentcy they used to, and certain WRs are more reliable and more favored in the newer scoring systems than they used to be.
So, have we had any more thoughts about what to do for a new league? If anyone can come up with a way to do a redraft league I’d be extremely enthusiastic about it. If not, however, we may want to just move ahead with the efficiency league.
Hell, if we’re able to figure out the redraft league, we could (if we were so inclined) make it an efficiency league as well.
Hey, here’s a thought: what do you guys think about starting a dynasty league? I think with the He Hate Me and All-Pro leagues we’ve demonstrated that we’re able to get a core of reliable, consistent owners from the SDMB. Since a low rate of turnover is important we could start with invitations to the most active and tenured fantasy owners on the message board before opening it up to fill any remaining slots (sorry if that seems elitist, but it’s just practical, for a few reasons).
Since we’d want very deep benches the first draft would be a bear, but in subsequent years we’d only need 4-6 round rookie drafts.
There would be a lot to consider about how to set up the whole thing, but we’d have almost a whole month to figure it out. I’m moderately excited about this prospect.
Thoughts?
Is a dynasty league the sort where you keep your roster from year to year and you only draft rookies?
That would certainly be different. I’m open to the idea. And I have a pretty good idea who the most active players are.
Here’s something I’ve been thinking about.
In the All-Pro league I would often post the weekly standings to the thread. One week, on a whim, I decided to include draft position in that table, and then rank relative to draft position (ie drafted 10th, 4th in points was +6)
People asked me why I thought that the original draft order was relevant. I said - well, it’s interesting to see where you ended up from where you drafted, with the top drafting players having something of an advantage, etc.
Most of them disagreed - that the snaking system meant that it balanced out, that draft order wasn’t really a big deal, and that you wouldn’t expect team performance to map to draft order.
What does everyone think? I think drafting early does confer an advantage. A relatively small one, but notable. Snaking doesn’t offset it because, for example, the difference in value between the #1 overall pick and the #5 overall pick is greater than the difference between the (in a 12 man league) #19 pick and #24 pick. And then it snakes back. Over the top 3 rounds, the first overall drafter gets picks #1, #24 and #25 whereas the number 5 overall gets #5, #19, #30.
Obviously drafting isn’t an exact science, and top picks can blow up. But on average, the higher you pick, the higher quality player you’re supposed to take. By the time you hit rounds 4+ this order isn’t too significant, but as in the example I gave above, early on it seems that people drafting at the top have a notable advantage.
What do you guys think?
I had an idea to counter this, actually. I thought that to offset the advantage of drafting high where it’s greatest - in the first round, particularly the top half of the first round - it would make sense for the draft to snake once, and then continue in reverse order from the second round on. That is:
Round 1
A
B
C
D
Round 2
D
C
B
A
Round 3
D
C
B
A
etc.
This offsets the advantage that the first few overall picks have in that they’re drafting at the back of every other (less valuable) round.
I noticed that when going through yahoo’s draft order tool, I can actually set it up this way.
What do you guys think? Both about the expectations based on draft position, and that potential solution?
[Reply to post #116]
Right, you start off with a big draft to get, hopefully, all of the valuable and developmental players onto rosters (free agency and the waiver wire are minor parts of the league). After that, the only way to acquire players with any value is through trades and annual draft of rookies.
I’ve never done it, but it sounds like fun. The inaugural draft would be fascinating: do you go for a balanced strategy, mixing veterans and younger players with upside as value dictates, or go for one of the extremes, trying either to dominate the first couple of years or draft solely for the future.
I am definitely interested. Let’s see if we can get an interest list among known reliable players. What are we aiming for? 10? 12? 14?
[Reply to post #117.]
Whenever I’ve bothered to look, teams that drafted at the front of Round 1 have consistently outperformed teams that drafted at the end of Round 1.
I kinda like your idea, and was thinking about something similar earlier today: you could randomize the draft order every two rounds, so each snake would be different. Your way is likely better, though. In either case, I like the idea of finding a way to break up the back to back picks for the guys on the ends; some people say they confer an advantage, I don’t see how they’re not a significant disadvantage, but it’s unfair one way or another.
At least 12, in order to bleed the free agent list dry. Does Yahoo let you do the following setup for a 12 person league: Three divisions of four teams each, the division winners and one Wild Card make the playoffs. I figure with a dynasty league divisions would make sense even for a standard-size league since it would foster rivalries.