In my IRL Money league I had an interesting season. I drafted several of “my guys” there as I did in my leagues around here and they all basically sucked. This league has some really weird rules about rosters and scoring and being that it was my first year in the league I wasn’t remotely prepared when the draft happened. Long story short I started the season 0-7 in which I scored in the 40s twice, in the 50s twice and was never within 10 points of a win, most often I lost by 30 or more. I could have packed it in at that point but, due to a quirk of the league the last place team has to pony up $200 to the pot when the season is over to encourage people to manage their teams all season long. I wasn’t going to allow this. I battled and scraped and patched together a squad for the last 6 weeks of the regular season to finish 5-8 with none other than Tebow as my starting QB. In the Round Robin Consolation bracket I went 2-1 with my only loss coming due to Donald Brown posting a frigging 33 point game out of nowhere. This raised me to 9th place of 12 teams. It’s meaningless accomplishment in the grand scheme of things but I was awfully damn happy about it. Next year I’m winning this fucking league.
So, barring unforeseen injuries, who’s the #1 pick next year?
Arian Foster. 1800+ total yards, 12 total TDs (and 53 receptions) in 13 games. I strongly doubt LeSean McCoy will duplicate his TD total, so he, Ray Rice and AP get to fight over #2. I’d take McCoy second in a PPR league because he might duplicate his TD total, while Rice’s scoring ceiling is pretty much set. I’d take AP second in a standard league because… well, he’s AP, and I always go for consistency when grading first-rounders.
In a 6 point throwing TD league, I’d take Aaron Rodgers in a heart beat. Although I’m generally a value based drafter (if he that much better than a guy I can get later?), I think Rodgers is just hitting his prime and is so consistently great, he’s worth it. If not, I’d look much harder at Arian Foster, because great RB’s are much more hard to find than great QB’s.
Totally depends on the scoring system. I think I’m going to think long and hard about Rodgers or Brees at #1 overall next year if I have those picks. This year I pretty much went with a makeshift solution at QB in all of my leagues under the assumption that QBs were pretty interchangeable after the top 3 or so and that those top 3 weren’t far enough ahead of the pack to be scuffling at RB all season. That decision pretty much cost me the season in several of my leagues. I’m sure someone will so a report on this but I wager that teams that had Rodgers, Brees and Brady finished with a pretty high average position and the teams that landed Cam Newton for nothing won a shitload of leagues. Newton carried me to a Championship game loss (which I’d have won handily if not for the Chargers inexplicably laying an egg against Detroit) in my work league even though my roster was pretty damn weak at the start of the season.
I think Omni hit on the one thing that’s sure to affect drafts next season: everyone will be putting a premium on the top 5 quarterbacks because they were so much more productive than the rest this year.
That means the key to winning a fantasy championship next year is finding the quarterback who will be a Top 5 producer and won’t cost a top 8 pick.
[QUOTE=Hamlet]
Although I’m generally a value based drafter (if he that much better than a guy I can get later?), I think Rodgers is just hitting his prime and is so consistently great, he’s worth it. If not, I’d look much harder at Arian Foster, because great RB’s are much more hard to find than great QB’s.
[/QUOTE]
That’s why I went with Foster. Brees, Brady, Newton and Stafford could each have won you a fantasy championship this season (hell, I won one with Phillip Rivers) and I can almost guarantee Rodgers won’t produce another season as good as this one (have a look at Marino post-1983, Manning post-2004 or Kurt Warner post-1999).
I think Newton is the ultimate wild card next season. Everyone will assume he’ll be even better, but I think his passing numbers will come way down (as they did this season pretty much from Week 3 onwards).
I did win my work money league this season and I think a lot of goes to my experience in the SDMB auction league. I was surprised when our commish wanted to do an auction as well as use FAAB for a work league, but the rest of the league went along with it.
Man today is going to suck with no need to have stattracker open.
Congrats Dale. It shows that the auction league is so damn good that even our… less successful players (:P) can dominate other leagues.
I’m actually still playing in one FF league. Both the semi and final are 2 weeks each. I’m down 5 points, almost entirely due to LeSean McCoy’s injury last week - and have to finish the game with Kahlil Bell and Evan Royster as starting RBs! Going 17 weeks is loony, and I will try to get them to change it, even if I somehow win.
I know week 17 doesn’t really count, but did Gronk just become the top scorer amongst all receivers?
It figures that everyone on my super league team is having a career day as soon as it doesn’t mean anything.
The most interesting thing about this fantasy season for me was how poorly everyone did when it came to separating their opinion of real life Tebow vs. fantasy Tebow. Especially in the SDMB leagues I’m in. People just can’t figure this guy out, even in fantasy. It goes completely unnoticed just how good he is in fantasy.