I agree. I was responding to Ellis Dee’s comment about taking a stud WR in Round 1 over a risky RB. I understand why that’s tempting, but I think the value pool for WR and QB is much deeper than RB, so it’s still the smart play to take RBs in the first 2 rounds. If you go RB, RB, WR, QB, you could still get Greg Jennings and Matt Ryan (just examples) to go along with 2 top RBs.
ETA: The risk is still there with most of the 1st round RBs though. I think AP, Turner and Forte are pretty safe, but the rest are risky.
The risk of sucking is there, of course. What’s not there is the risk of losing carries (barring injury), which is all you can really bank on. Get a guy you know will run the ball 300 times and hope he goes for over 4.5 yards per carry.
LT is a mid to low first round pick. Jackson is a late second round pick. Jackson might strike lightning again, but have you seen the Rams’ offensive depth chart this year? They’re going to stink, and Jackson will be very lucky to come through with even mediocre stats.
I took LT with the 6th pick and was able to get Sproles in the 8th in one of my money leagues. I think he’ll have a good to very good year, but 30 TDs isn’t gonna happen again.
Ok, here’s another one: Andre Johnson. Discuss. I’ve seen him as high as the #2 WR in some projections/mocks. I think the Houston QB situation is too risky for him to be that high.
I love me some Andre. Him and Larry are the two WRs I have in my first tier, and I think he’ll do better than Larry this year. When he’s healthy, he’s a beast. He led the league in receptions and yards last year. Although he only had 8 tds, he’s still one of the best WR out there. With Slaton helping in the running game, and Daniels and Walter making teams pay for paying too much attention to Andre, he’s in a prime position to be great. I think neither Andre nor Schaub are injury prone (even less so than Warner which eases Andre into #1 WR over Larry), but you always take a chance. I’d have no problem grabbing him late in the first round, maybe even as high as 7 or 8.
The list yahoo gives you during a live draft, with the projected players list in order - if you were to pre-rank your draft, would it use your pre-ranked list in that spot? I’m planning on attending the drafts, of course - I’m just wondering if I should pre-rank so that I have my preferred players at my fingertips rather than having to search for them.
But I don’t want to bother if yahoo just gives everyone the same ranking order at a live draft.
I believe you can hop in and out of default order or preranked order at any time during the draft. Meaning there is value to preranking even if you’re there.
Calvin Johnson scored 10+ times and put up 1,300 yards last season with a draft afterthought (Dan Orlovsky), a has-been (Daunte Culpepper), and a never-was (Jon Kitna). I fail to see how it matters who plays quarterback for the Lions.
How I mean it is that I think Calvin Johnson has less fantasy upside than the other top-tier WRs with better QBs. I expect Megatron to put up about the same numbers he did last year, which is still amazing with the awful QBs he’s had.
If I was drafting a #1 WR for my REAL football team, I’d go with Calvin Johnson all the way. Dude is a freak and we probably haven’t seen his peak yet.
I think he’ll post much better numbers this year, at least if Daunte Culpepper wins the starting job.
Remember, Culpepper was signed off the street on like a Wednesday and was under center on Sunday. I’m guessing he didn’t have an awful lot of the playbook down by then, and certainly hadn’t gotten to know his receivers. He’s dropped 30 pounds in the offseason and I really think he might have a Comeback Player of the Year-type season.
Even if he doesn’t, he’s certainly going to be more effective than he or any other Lions quarterback was last season - and Johnson posted his best numbers in Culpepper’s five off-the-street starts last season.
Of course, if Stafford wins the job, all bets are off.
He sure was exciting in 2004. Since then … not so much. While it would be a nice story, I don’t envision him being anything this year that he hasn’t been the last 4 seasons: an high risk, unfocused, turnover machine with a passer rating in the 70s. Maybe, just maybe, Calvin can be his Randy Moss again, but I ain’t seeing it.
That’s just not true. With Culpepper under center, he had only 2 games over 100 yards. He had 3 before Culpepper ever signed. Johnson’s best games were in week 7 and Week 2. He certainly had his worst weeks without C-Pepp, but he didn’t have his best weeks with him either.
I don’t see Culpepper as a QB that a rookie can learn valuable information about quarterbacking in the NFL from. Between that, the Matt Ryan effect, and the need for the Lions to start anew, I think Stafford starts sooner rather than later.
In Week 7 he had all of two catches. The fact that they both went for 50+ yard touchdowns has much less to do with who his quarterback was and much more to do with the corner covering him being unable to make a tackle.
Moreover, he still had Roy Williams across from him in Week 2, so no double coverage.
Culpepper’s certainly not the ideal mentor, but he’s a 3-time Pro Bowler with a 64% career completion percentage and a passer rating a hair under 90 (despite having played in Oakland)- and though he could always run, he’s a good pocket passer.
Both numbers, incidentally, are significantly better than Brett Favre’s career averages.
