Well, you might not have been able to get them all. But you could have gotten more going in this order:
I don’t think Pennington would have been there, but you could have picked the best available and made a trade.
Do I hear trade talk for McCareins?
Talk to me, or I’ll start singing showtunes in a thong.
:eek:
FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY SEND HIM AN OFFER!!!
Okay, okay, I’ll send him an offer.
Hey Steelerphan, I’ll give you a quarter if you sing “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” complete with the over dramatic arm gestures.
But you’ll have to shave your butt first.
NEVER!
Really, the only show tunes I know enough to sing are from Camelot.
yah, yah, yah, we’ll all have a glorious time!
On another subject, I’d like to know who put the Teflon on Edgerrin’s hands? Nothing was sticking. (Seriously, he was carrying the ball like a loaf of bread.)
No kidding. I have him in my keeper league and I had a little action on the Colts, so I woke my wife up with a cry of dismay when he fumbled on the goalline at the end of the game. Of course, she had been up when Manning threw the int. at the goalline, and when Edge fumbled at the 18, so it’s not like she was sleeping heavily. Sigh 3 turnovers in the effin’ red zone and a missed field goal. Sigh Maybe the Edge should take a few hits in pregame to remind him to hold onto the effin ball.
(Besides not keeping up with the Arizona Cardinals)
I actually had a plan. I don’t know how many people have noticed this, but if you click on “players” on the Yahoo screen, the Fantasy points column tells you how many points the player scored using our league’s settings, and tells you that the traditional formulation of RBs being all-important simply does not hold in this system. Using these settings, in 2003:
Peyton Manning scored more points than any RB except Holmes. I fact 7 of the top 10 scorers were QBs.
The NE defense scored more points than all but Holmes and LT.
Jeff Wilkins (top K) scored more points than all but Holmes, LT and Ahman Green.
Hence my draft board had Manning ranked #1, and I also wanted to make sure to get a good Defense and Kicker; I did, and those 3 are the strength of my team.
Where I went wrong was in thinking everyone else might have figured all this out too … when in reality everyone was taking RBs high, and I could have grabbed a good QB later. Curtis Martin went before Donovan McNabb … despite the fact that McNabb scored twice as many points under this system.
So that was why I “reached” for Manning. I still think he’ll score more points than any player in the league; but in hindsight, I’d have been better off taking Deuce McAllister in the first round and getting Hasselbeck or someone in round 2 … even if Hasselbeck will be the higher scorer. When I did try to take a 2nd RB, they kept getting snagged one or two spots in front of me and I’d go with with “best availible player.” Frankly, I didn’t worry about age because I did that last season and got hosed. Oh, and then Shipp happened.
Still, though, I’m not horribly displeased; I have the best QB & Defense in the league, and a top-3 kicker, and that’ll keep me in it. If I can make a trade for a 2nd RB, I think I’ll finish over .500.
I hear what you’re saying, furt, but…
The problem is that the gap between the best QB and the 14th best QB just isn’t that great.
Using this league’s scoring, last year the #1 QB (Peyton) was at 255.88, and the #14 was at 151.40 (Quincy Carter, oddly enough). Year before the gap was from 268.03 (Gannon - how the mightly have fallen) to 189.73 (Brad Johnson).
Compare that to RBs. There will be at least 28 starting RBs, 35 if you assume that half the WR/RB slots will be filled with RBs.
Last year the #1 RB was Priest (264.50), #28 was at 73.55 (Hambrick) and #35 ranked was 57.90 (Wheatley). The drop off is just much faster.
I’m sure if you looked at DEF and K you’d see the same kind of grouping. We only need 14 of those to start, out of the 32 in the league. Quite different from RB (and WR, but the swing in WR scoring isn’t as great).
It’s more a matter of what the player’s value above average (or replacement) level is, than their raw points.
Of course, now that I’ve thought this through, I’m an idiot for taking Donovan McNabb where I did in round 2. I should have taken C. Brown there, gotten another RB (T Jones, CMart, even Tiki) in round 3. then dealt later with QB. Considering Tom Brady was still availble for me in round 4, Bulger in 5, and that decent QBs such as Leftwich, Plummer (could be the steal of the draft) and Garcia were still out there in round 10…
I did almost the exact same thing last year. Took Rich Gannon with the first pick in round 4. That worked out well…
Don’t have time to get into much detailed team by team analysis, except that I think Munch has the team to beat, with Spiritus Mundi and neuroman close behind.
Thanks to those who complimented my drafting - I’m not so convinced, in retrospect. Drafting #3 when there’s a clear #1 and #2 is an interesting spot to be in. I know McAllister isn’t the “book” pick there, but I like him better than Ahman and Steven Alexander, and much better than Clinton Portis. McNabb was way early, McGahee was a reach in 7, and I panicked when Weirddave took Gates just ahead of me and took Marcus freaking Pollard. I recovered well by getting Daniel Graham - of course, I left Pollard as the starter this week… Stokley in round 14 looks good now too.
The more I think about it, I bet my backup QB (Harrington) will probably outpoint McNabb this year. RBs first - why is that so hard for me to remember in live drafts?
I haven’t the time right now to do a complete analysis of every team, and I don’t know how much interest there would be anyway, since that ground has been well covered already. Instead, I thought I would respond to the analyses made of my team, not in defensiveness but as an eploratin of why I made the decisions I did.
So, with that in mind . . .
I do indeed plan to alternate Dunn/Alstott depending upon matchups, injuries, etc. once Alstott has gotten a couple of full games under his neck brace. Stud RB’s are critical in a 14-team league. Dunn’s 76.4 points last year (when he lost time & starts to injury) made hime the 48th ranked flex player under this scoring system (26th RB). I like that a lot, considering 28 RB & 28 WR are taken by starters. Dunn/Alstott don’t give me the best 3rd back in the league, but they are a solid combo.
Williams is a long reach, but since I can keep him 2 years I will potentially get a first round value in year 3 at the cost of a 16 and a 14.
Nice to be back, Barbarino.
The sacrifice was something I considered carefully, but in the end it was shaped as much by the way players fell as by design. My one firm princial was that I would not reach for a WR as a need pick. The WR pool smooths out way too quickly for that under this scoring system (last year’s stats: only 50 points separated the 4th from the 26th WR, and only 23 points separated 25 from 50). Outside of Moss, Holt, and Harrison (who I valued above last year’s stats) there wasn’t a receiver on the board that truly distanced himself from the next 4 guys. Still, I would happily have grabbed Jackson or Coles had they fallen to me. I would have taken Mason, too, if Gonzalez had not been on the board for me in round 3.
Favre in round 4 (not 5) was driven by the QB run. After McNair went, Favre was the last QB in the elite pack, with more than a 20 point dropoff before the next tier, and several big question marks in that tier (Kitna [clipboard], Johnson[lost both starting WR from last year], Brooks[already drafted], Garcia[new team, no TO], Bulger[I jsut don’t trust him, mostly becuse of INT’s], Brady[best of this group, but I was sure he wouldn’t last to get back to me]). After them, it’s another 20 points down to McNabb and 20 more down to the next group. QB’s score big in this league, and I did not want to be left starting Tommy Maddox every week.
So, I was left to gamble on WR. Burress I excpect good things from this year, both because I think last year woke up him up a bit and because of teh proverbial “contract-year-bounce”. Keyshawn I also expect to bounce back. He has never been an elite fantasy WR, but I 1000/6 would make him a good value at second WR. Rice has enough in the tank to be a situational sub or even rare flex player. Gage and Givens are young and rising, but they are picks for future potential.
I don’t see how Meshawn on the back side of round 6 is a stretch, but that’s why they say the cliche.
As for Gonzo vs. TO. If I hadn’t already taken Westbrook, I might have given it longer thought, but I did not want to put myself in the position of one bad Philly offensive game knocking out 2 of my top 3 picks. I also expect TO’s numbers to drop a bit from last year. He won’t bully Reid and McNabb into forcing him the ball so often. Beyond that, though, it was simply a pick based on numbers. The gap between Gonzo and Heap last year was 45 points with another 10 to the next tier. 55 points below TO last year gets you to Mushin Muhammad. (I ended up taking Burress, 42 points back last year, and I expect Burress to have better numbers and TO to have worse.) Queue the cliche again.
Meshawn isn’t old, and losing a half-step really doesn’t hurt his game. He’s an ass, but he can be a productive receiver in this league. Rice is on his last year, but young WR’s on the rise often mean good numbers for the cagey vet on 3rd downs and in the red zone. (See Engram, Bobby.) Rice may be empty, but I’m betting a 10th round pick that he isn’t. (At least not to empty to be a situational sub). I wasn’t expecting to keep my 4th round pick. Alstott will cost me a 10th next year. He averaged 600/7 for the 7 years before last. I would happily pay a 10th round pick for that production.
I think you should be scared of Portis/Westbrook/Favre, too, but I may be wrong.
Ricky may go to the CFL. He is a “third year pick”, but the price was right.
I would add Alstott (12) and Givens (9) to the list, which is about where I planned to hunt for keepers. I thought that the (+2) penalty made the cost too steep to hope a 4th or 5th would produce enough value this year while being worth keeping next year. I decided to focus on value in the first half of the draft and look for rising talent or long reaches in the second half. It is remotely possible that Burress or Meshawn might be worth a 3/4 next year, but I am certainly not counting on it. I don’t think I will start form scratch next year. I think I will start with some value in the mid rounds but no studs. I can live with that.
Pardon the core dump, please. I thought it might interest folks to see how I made the decisions they were analyzing, but now I suspect it was merely a catharctic exercise for me. Oh well. I can live with that.
I sent you a trade offer.
Something I noticed yesterday. Is it accepted wisdom to combine a QB with his receiver? I mean, is having Peyton Manning and Marvin Harrison together the best possible power base on a team? Because when Chad threw a TD to Curtis Martin yesterday, I got 12 points in one play. Just something I noticed.
And speaking of that, I’m throwing all the bad juju I can muster at the Jake Delhomme - Steve Smith connection tonight. If they combine for 19 fantasy points, I lose. To me that means I actually have a chance. Go Packers!
To further what Wilson said, this here where you faltered. Let’s say the top defense under this scoring scored 5000 points last year. There’s no way you wouldn’t take that defense first, is there? But what if 30 of the 32 defenses scored at least 4900 points? There’d be no point in picking a defense until the last round, because they’re all pretty much the same. Now, QBs are all pretty much the same, but there’s little difference once you get out of the top 4 or so, and there’s still not a big drop-off there.