As for my own draft, evaluated by Varlos’ rubric for reasons that will become clear, but also because he and I did apparently have identical strategies:
Chapter One - “the single biggest area of change is at the QB position.”
Rodgers that. I know it’s de rigeur to say something like “oh, I had no idea what this draft was going to be like, I didn’t know what to expect” in any league that’s even mildly different from a standard one, but when I saw I had the third pick I was completely blank as to what that meant. I knew I didn’t want the first pick, because I was going to take a quarterback and I didn’t want to wait all that time before I could take somebody else, but I didn’t know how long the quarterbacks would last, whether the first two were going to be Rodgers and Brees, or what. In retrospect I still don’t know what to think - Rivers went 5 but Brees and Brady almost came all the way back around, so did I jump the gun or what? Not sure. But I am extremely happy having one of those 4 in this league; I had a bunch of little rules for myself coming into it and that was the first of them. The prospect of any kind of inconsistency from the position in a league where a 20 point week is pretty good is just fucking not for me.
Chapter Two - “I’m missing a Calvin… Johnson type super-stud”
Sucks for you! I don’t know if I agree with the general point about receivers - like you can start 4, but why does that mean you should? But my rule for WR was to try to get nothing but big play guys, since you only get one point all the way up to 65 yards, and you’re losing points for chipping away in small doses. The way I see it, two catches for 70 yards and a touchdown every few touches is actually really good in this league, and that’s way more fun to cheer for anyway. CJ and D-Jack are pretty ideal as far as that goes, and I’m interested to see how Dez’ role shapes up and if he gets me return yards as well (Amendola too). Ochocinco doesn’t fit the mold but I feel like that was a really good value.
Speaking of having six receivers who can play, incidentally, I’ll just take this opportunity to say that I’m not looking forward to seeing how many points we all leave on our enormous benches every week while waging 20.63 - 20.58 contests with our starters. Let’s just pretend I already posted a sarcastic congratulations on your third-of-a-point victory making reference to some player’s three touchdowns on my bench to each of you to save time.
Chapter 3 - “I managed to get an above average RB tandem”
I have no idea, to be honest. I defaulted to just taking guys who seem good when I see them play, since I couldn’t really make sense of the last few years’ worth of scores at RB. I’m honestly not certain which running backs I would like to have and which ones I wouldn’t; if he fumbles and/or gets too many carries or short passes that go nowhere, a first round pick could definitely end up scoring single digits for the year without even losing his job. McFadden seems like the kind of home run hitter I think I want, maybe, but he didn’t really score like one last year. Re: Gore and Williams, one of these years, I won’t look at some of my favorite players sticking around into the middle rounds, busted up and probably shadows of their former selves, and shout to myself VALUE!, but this is not that year. I guess maybe this is why start 4 receivers.
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Chapter 4 - “the game will mostly be won or lost by the offense”
Chapter 6, being after 4 - “People generally messed up the drafting of LBs”*
Defense wins championships. That is not true, but given the size of our starting rosters I think it was worth going after the guys we liked, though. How sure are you that we aren’t going to turn out to have been roughly as effective at picking the top 10 defensive linemen, or even DBs, as at picking the WRs from 15-25? Forced fumbles and picks and god forbid defensive touchdowns are very hard to predict, but I feel pretty confident that Ed Reed or whoever is going to do more of that stuff than, you know, Kam Chancellor. Just glancing at both the overall picture of the best players last year plus the projected (mostly bullshit, I’ll allow) scores for this coming week, it seems like roughly half the points come from defense. And our offenses are relatively shallow, so middle round offense also had less room to make an impact. Of course, I scored the great hero Amendola in the middle rounds, so your point is well-proven by now.
As for people screwing up the LBs - one of my pre-draft rules was “get all these dudes,” where these dudes were a bunch of OLBs with a bunch of sacks, but 1. nobody got all of them and 2. speaking of variance, check out sack totals from year to year. If they get 15+ sacks they’ll be head and shoulders above the MLB types, but if they get 10 they’re right in the middle of the pack. Willis scored 23 in 09 and 19 in 15 games last year, and that’s much less volatile. And Derrick Johnson, for instance, was a last-round pick, 150 picks after Suggs & Wake, even though he compares favorably the last two years. Ceiling vs. floor, I guess.
Chapter 7 - “My kicker is superb”
Kickers have the potential to be infuriating in this league. 2010 Rackers (or 2009 Janikowski/Kaeding) outscored Flacco, Welker, every TE not named Witten, Davis or Gates (get one of them or Clark was another of my rules I violated), Hillis, Bradshaw, Mendenhall, and Steven Jackson last year.
All in all I’m pretty happy with my draft. I don’t think I’m going to win the league or anything, but I think I’ll acquit myself pretty well and have some big weeks, which would be fun. And I’m going to Rack Attack somebody one week. This is going to be an awesome league.