3 decent backup QBs went immediately before my pick in the 11th round. I would’ve taken one in the tenth if I had a pick there. It just didn’t work out. Sometimes runs on positions end up leaving you screwed.
But, as I said, had I drafted a backup QB in that area, it would’ve been Trent Edwards, so it wouldn’t have changed my results so far.
I’ve been proposing trades in leagues where I’m the #1 player. I’m always looking to improve my team, pre-draft, after week 1, and up through the trade deadline. Being later able to make trades is an integral part of my draft strategy of drafting value.
Did you know he would be elite? Did I have any reasonable expectation that he would be elite? You’re blaming me for not predicting the future here.
Hey, why didn’t you draft him at the end of the 4th round? You missed out on the chance to draft one of the truly elite players this year! Sounds like you mismanaged the draft.
The only way your apparent contradictory attitude of “you should’ve traded your spare RBs/you fool! you traded Ray Rice!” works is if it was reasonable for me to assume that Ray Rice would be by far the best of my RBs.
No, instead I landed Anquan Boldin, which was a better option than free agent receivers at that point. I solved this problem. The only way it looks bad is in hindsight with the luxury of knowing what Ray Rice ended up doing. If the other guy had been interested in Moreno, I’d have traded him instead - and then I come out looking good. It’s easy to evaluate these things in hind sight.
I know. If I only knew the future performance of all the players for sure, I probably would’ve had a better draft too!
Positional scarcity happens to everyone in the league. You have to plan for it. You said at the draft that you were drafting for value not for need, the way this season has played out its proving to be a flawed approach. I’m just highlighting the ancillary risks involved with such a strategy.
Again, I understand the concept, I just don’t personally think its a wise or reliable tactic. If you need to make a trade in the first week of the season it indicates to me that you erred in the draft.
Fantasy football is all about predicting the future. That’s pretty much the whole point. We all make errors in guessing what people will do. The odds were pretty good that Rice would be a stud, it’s why you drafted him, and you didn’t wait to see if you were right. It’s not a character judgment, just a mistake in my opinion, an avoidable one at that.
I’m not implying at all that you should have traded your RBs. I’m implying that you should never have drafted so many after your top 4, that you should have drafted a backup WR instead of McCoy and Harrison. I’m saying your should have dropped McCoy or Harrison one Gonzalez got hurt and picked up a WR off waivers instead of trading for one.
You drafted for value and then traded for need. Why introduce the extra variable? Just draft for need in the first place and patch holes ad hoc from free agency.
Of course it could have worked out great. It didn’t though, that’s why I’m pointing it out. I think you could have exercised more caution and avoided it in my opinion, but you posted the two line ups for discussion so here we are.
I’m saying it’s not evidence of the flawed approach, because if I had drafted Trent Edwards, and I’m not making this up for convenience - I said predraft that I liked him as a late round pick and I took him in the dynasty league - then my QB woes would’ve gone down the same way. Liking Edwards clearly was bad prediction on my part, but I’m saying that even if I had drafted my targetted backup QB I still would’ve had QB woes until now.
You make it sound like my team is woeful and my strategy has clearly failed. Did you not notice I upgraded WR from Steve Smith (CAR) and Anthony Gonzalez (gimp) to Randy Moss and Reggie Wayne? How about how I have the currently third scoring QB in the league? I’m a few points from being a 3-3 team on the rise, with 2 losses coming from flukes where my entire team had season or career low days at the same time.
I have 2 of the top 5 WRs, a top 3 QB, a top 5 RB with 3 RBs who could very well finish the year top 10, and a top 5 defense. I’m not so sure my team is evidence of some massive failure in strategy here.
I didn’t need to make a trade. I could’ve picked up a free agent WR instead, or gone with Cribbs or Henderson for a few weeks and saw how it shaked out. Instead I decided to use my ample RB depth to not only replace but upgrade the WR position. It looked like a good idea at the time.
You’re trade averse. That’s your call. It doesn’t mean that everyone has the same ideas about trading and it’s an automatic sign of weakness or failure if someone does. Look at Jules and I. We both send out dozens of trade offers throughout the year, and we’re top 2 in average finish in this league. Trading is an integral part of my strategy - something is wrong if I wasn’t making trades.
Ray Rice had an average draft position in the 5th or 6th round. If the odds were pretty good that he’d be a stud, he would’ve gone higher.
Even so, it seemed even more likely that Marion Barber or Pierre Thomas would also be a stud. I don’t think many people would have predicted that Ray Rice would outperform them both by this time. And he may not by the end of the year - he’s had some huge games and it’s only week 7.
If Ray Rice was such an obvious stud, and I was foolish to trade him, why didn’t you take him in the 4th or 5th round? Or even when you had a chance to take him 2 picks before where he actually went? Could it be that you didn’t know at the time that he was going to be the 3rd scoring RB at this stage?
So why didn’t you criticize my trade for Boldin at the time? If it looked good and reasonable as a decision at the time, but only falls apart in retrospect then that is exactly the sort of irrelevant results oriented hindsight criticism that I’m talking about.
Because the players who were available at other positions weren’t as valuable as the players I took. I would have less talent on my team had I drafted for need.
I’ve had a pretty good team all throughout this season. Being in last place was mostly flukey rather than anything else. Starting WR goes out with injury in game 1. My choice of 2nd QB sucked. My choice of 3rd QB goes from having a 35 point game one week to a career low the next. My 4th qb goes from having a 4 TD game one week to facing the worst pass defense in the league and putting up negative points.
I don’t think there has been a point in this league where I haven’t had a top 3 team.
Fair enough. I’m not necesarily attacking you, just defending myself. I don’t think my current win/loss record in the league is reflective of my team quality or drafting strategy. I give criticisms that factor in the decision and knowledge of the time they were made moreso than hindsight ones, where it’s easy to say “oops everyone is an idiot for passing on [productive tenth rounder] 9 times”
It’s not just about the backup QB (I liked Edwards too I confess), it’s about the starter too. Its that you marginalized the QB position as a whole in favor of going RB heavy and “value” heavy. Hasselbeck was a huge question mark and everyone knew it. A couple teams had taken a backup QB before you took your first. What happened was an extremely predictable outcome, it was predicted by several of us you might recall.
But you gave away the #1 and #2 RBs (5th and 7th overall scoring) to get them. Were we to redraft right now those players probably go in the top 3, if not the top 2. You feel like you have a better team now than you did then, based on the above statement I disagree. Hindsight and all, but it’s the way I see it now.
You valued RBs highly entering the draft and drafted accordingly. It worked out fabulously since you ended up finding the top 2 guys in a league where you can start two. We didn’t know that Rice would be awesome in week 1 but it wasn’t unlikely by any stretch.
I’m not really trade averse. The problem with trades is that they are theoretically a zero sum game. They are the least effective of the 3 ways to build a team.
I’m not saying it’s obvious Rice would be a stud. I’m saying that in Week 1 you need to wait and see what becomes of these guys before you start shaking things up. Had you held off until week 3 even you’d have known what to do.
I don’t hate Boldin. He’s a fine player. I’m just saying that the trade at the time was a change, not an improvement as most trades are. Hence my critique of the move. If you believed in the players you drafted why didn’t you stick with them? Why not wait and see what plays out and replace Gonzalez off the waiver wire and see if you can add something to your team as opposed to swapping something.
Oh yeah, I know obviously my QB situation was week. I don’t think it’s accurate to say you predicted what happened though - if he’d been lost for the season due to an aggravation of a previous injury, I’d agree. But he missed 2 games due to some hurt ribs, not exactly catastrophic. And in week 1 and 5, he put up 30+ points. I’m actually reacting more to the fact that he had a career low day against the league’s worst pass defense (and don’t tell me you predicted that one) than the injury. I’m overreacting, actually, since it’s likely he’ll be a fine starter from here on out.
Ray Rice is not going top 2 or top 3, I don’t think. He’s had a few good games - he’s not better than Adrian Peterson now.
If we redrafted now, Ronnie Brown would probably go in the 5-8 range somewhere, so I didn’t take a gigantic step down. Pierre Thomas would probably still go before pick 18. Moss and Wayne would probably be top 20 picks.
If I’m right on that, I still have 4 top 20 players.
Part of my draft strategy was to be willing to overload on a position if that’s where the value is and then move people. I liked Rice, but I also had Thomas, Barber, Moreno… even Harrison and McCoy. It would’ve been a bad idea of me to “sit” on 7 RBs while my starting WR is out (at the time it looked like it would be for the season) with injury.
Well, I massively goofed with the Steve Smith (NYG)/Trent Edwards thing, but otherwise I think I’ve improved my team fairly substantially through trade.
Obviously it would’ve been great if I had traded away Moreno or Barber instead of Rice for an upgrade at RB.
That’s actually not true. Rice’s value declined in the first few weeks of the season. Remember when McGahee was stealing all his touchdowns? Rice looked like he was in the wrong end of a time share for the first few weeks of the season. If I had held on to him, I might’ve actually been willing to sell him low at that point. Really, it’s a receiving explosion in the last 3 games that has put him where he was, and that was hard to predict.
What seemed like the 4th or 5th best of my 7 RBs traded for last year’s points per game scoring WR seemed like a deal in my favor at the time.
As far as believing in the players I drafted - I drafted a few of them acknowledging that I didn’t need them in the hopes that I could move them. As I said, willingness to stock up and trade is an integral part of my draft strategy.
The implication wasn’t that we knew Rice would be a big points guy it’s that in Week 3 we’d have known which of your backs not named MJD would be most valuable. Had you waited I think you’d have been loathe to chose Thomas, Moreno or Barber over him.
Busy day for me, didn’t get a chance to really follow along until now. I like the trade a lot, it seems like a balanced deal which helps both sides in profound ways. I think Court Jesters got a clear edge in the deal, but it’s still absolutely fair. I’m not exactly thrilled with Jesters getting MJD to go along with his first place ranking, but them’s the breaks.
This whole conversation between you and Omni is strange. I’ll just jump right in the middle as if I was invited. It’s obvious that you (SenorBeef) have passed up some obvious opportunities with your team, but that’s also obviously just hindsight talking. Anyone who says they thought in the preseason that Ray Rice would end up in the top 5 of his position is either lying, or… well, probably just lying actually. Nobody thought that. He had a lot of potential, but even before week one there was talk that he was losing reps and had no clear role. It’s kind of a cheap shot to criticize owners for moves they made early on in the season that ehappened to end up blowing up in their face with no legitimate means of seeing it ahead of time. I drafted Steve Smith (NYG) in the 12th round, which looks to be the best pick in the entire draft. I dropped him because I didn’t think a possession guy with questionable hands would end up being more than a poor man’s Derrick Mason or a Dennis Northcutt type. No one was predicting from him anything close to what he has done, not even fans of the Giants.
As far as your draft strategy, I thought it was flawed then, I think it’s flawed now. Arguing that Hasselbeck got hurt on an unrelated injury to his previous ones is absolutely 100% irrelevant. He’s a huge injury risk. It doesn’t matter what types. Sure, he had a higher risk for a problem related to his back spasms, but being injury prone is exactly that-- you’re prone to lots of injuries. Nobody says that Donovan McNabb isn’t injury prone because he’s never had two injuries of the same type. He’s injury prone because he always finds a way to get hurt. Hasselbeck is kinda the same way, especially lately.
The point you’re missing about your draft folly at QB is not that you would have ended up with the same situation had you taken Edwards, that’s irrelevant too. It’s that if you had taken someone good to begin with, you never would have had to start Edwards or Garrard or even Hasselbeck at all. And you absolutely could have if you had not drafted one of the RBs you still haven’t traded or needed. Again, your point about position runs happening to anyone is also moot-- had you invested a pick on a good QB, a position run wouldn’t have had as much of an impact on you as it did.
All that aside, you’ve done wonders for your team entirely through trades. Being that I too love to trade to improve (Trades are a zero sum game? Nonsense. Indefensible nonsense. No trade is ever perfectly fair or balanced, especially not over a season, and no two people value players exactly the same. Maybe that’s the intent, but even that is questionable.), I’m jealous. I’ve had offers sit on the other owner’s desks for over a week. I can’t trade this season to save my life.
I also absolutely disagree with Omni’s assertion that trading before the season or before week 1 is over is somehow a sign that you mismanaged your draft. Sometimes players get picked a spot before yours that you want more than some guys you ended up with. Picking up those guys before their owners realize what they have is a vital part of good team management. Moving guys you were high on in preseason when news comes out that their job is in jeopardy, or their coach isn’t a fan, before anyone else realizes is a key method in avoiding disappointing fantasy leeches. You are trade averse Omni, and being so is a handicap. You’re a professional race car driver who won’t pass on the outside. Sure, you might win sometimes, but not as often as you would if you’d open up an embrace all aspects of winning the race.
Damn, I thought you were going to be angry about me landing Wayne, since he’s clearly a top producer. But then I think you also probably value Boldin highly like I do, realizing he’s off to a slow start but should be a stud down the stretch.
This is a pretty big trade, so it’s definitely something I’ll look at again down the road. If Ronnie Brown manages to stay a top 5 RB, and Ben doesn’t regress too much, I think it was a very good trade for me.
If, on the other hand, MJD keeps putting up 35 point games every third week I may look stupid. Oh well. Seems like a good deal for both teams - it’s fairly unique in that it’s a 3 way blockbuster trade and yet seems pretty balanced to me.
Ha. Yeah, well I dropped him after picking him up after he had shown some good talent. Well, not dropped him, but traded him for Trent Edwards, which may as well have been dropping him.
Actually, no… I got the Eagles defense out of the deal too. I’m going to think of the trade as Smith for the Eagles and I’ll feel better about it. Not good, but better.
Fair enough. I don’t disagree entirely. I didn’t go into the draft with the expectation that I wouldn’t be drafting a good QB… had Brees fallen to me in the second round I probably would’ve snatched him up, or if Rodgers had been there in round 4, etc. After taking Hasselbeck I figured… well, it’s risky, but if he’s healthy, he can be good - and if he’s not, I’ll make some trade happen, which I ended up doing. Of course it was a bad trade - Edwards sucked. If I had instead made a trade for Eli Manning or Roethlisberger or Cutler or Matt Ryan like I tried to do, in retrospect my strategy would’ve seemed fine. It was only the combination of Hasselbeck getting hurt, me trading for a player who’d put up 20+ for 2 weeks and then regressed into total uselessness, then having high-floor Garrard put up a career low day, and then having Hasselbeck put up a career low day that my strategy looks like it blew up. If I landed any of my other targetted QBs, I’d have been fine. So my decision to trade for Trent Edwards (and it wasn’t my first choice - I made substantial offers for 4 other QBs at least) was arguably a worse decision than anything I did in the draft. What happened with Garrard and Hasselbeck in week 5 and 6 was just bad luck, IMO. Unpredictable.
Thanks. And I agree that trades aren’t zero sum. If one guy has QB A and QB B who are just about equal in value, but has no RB2, while guy A has RB2 A and RB2 B who are both equally good, and they swap, then both teams have been improved with very little loss. Not zero sum - they both come out better than when they started. I think it’s wrong to look at trades as an indicator of failure.
I love that Ricky Williams has 20 pts already and its only the 1st quarter. Unfortunately, I did not see that big of a game coming for him against NOLA so those points will just contribute to my bench total. If Brees keeps this pace I will be put out of my misery pretty fast. Too bad he didn’t suck more against the Giants.
Okay, so Ronnie Brown and Pierre Thomas played each other in a game where the combined score was in the 80s, and together they scored 15 fantasy points.
I saw that Thomas game coming. Well, the result, but not exactly how it came to be. I’m telling you, the Saints seem to want to give Mike Bell any excuse to beat out Thomas or force a timeshare. Ronnie Brown was a surprise. What happened that Ricky was able to score so often but Ronnie wasn’t?
Btw, I would say that a higher total score would indicate less running than anything else. Typically high scores indicate more passing scores. I don’t find it odd that Thomas or Brown or both were unsuccessful on the ground in a high scoring game. Want to know the really shocking part? The Fins and Saints combined for seven rushing touchdowns yet Ronnie Brown and Pierre Thomas together had only one. Drew Brees had more rushing touchdowns than those two. Unbelievable!
Well, higher scores tend to indicate more passing yes, but there usually end up being a decent share of rushing touchdowns. Like you said, there were 7 in this case. And it’s nuts that the #1 rushers for each team only combined for one.
As for Brown - they gave him more attempts, but there were gaping holes in some instances when Williams was back there. I guess maybe they gave Brown more respect and sold out against the run when he was in there?
Still, 9 carries for 80/3 for Williams makes me a sad panda.
So barring the Eagles defense deciding to score like 8 touchdowns, it looks like I’m going to be 2-5. Is it even practical for me to hope to get a playoff spot at this point? Seems like I’d have to win out.
I think this game was clearly an anomaly in regards to how many rushing touchdowns there were.
You’ll make the playoffs, even if you don’t win out. But to avoid the “needing to win out” scenario, you’re gonna need to put up a lot of points in the next two or three weeks to keep a window open. Just a guess, but I think 4-2 in the next 6 games would be a playoff spot for you.
I’m desperate for McNabb for put together one more TD drive ending with a pass. I wouldn’t have though that getting 2 TDs and a couple hundred yards from McNabb would be such a struggle.