Fantasy Mashup

Appease the FB Gods

A pre-draft appeal:

O Football Gods, Hear Our Plea:

Thou Art Unfeeling and Capricious. Thou Makest Us to Draft Ryan Leaf and Lawrence Phillips, Yea, and This Really Crackest Thou Up, Apparently.

Grant Us Thy Mercy in This, The Hour of Our Drafting. Lead Our Voices To Call Out the Right Names, and Lead Us Not Into Temptation, But to Your True Studs.

First Down.

Final warning: 2007 Busts

OK, so maybe "bust" is the wrong word for some of these guys. But here are some drafting situations you need to watch carefully this weekend:

Draft review: QBs fall

I entered the 2007 MFL Draft with the idea that I wasn't going to draft a quarterback until the eighth round (that's the fifth round in our draft, since our 12 teams protect a total of 36 players) and that I wasn't going to pussyfoot around with a bunch of "next-year" theorizing. I wanted players who could contribute, now, and that includes kickers and defenses.

Here's my round-by-round review:

Draft review: Dan's way

I'm back from yet another Manly Football League draft, and I have to say that this was the least-stressful draft I can remember.

Reason? I ditched everything that was non-essential, reduced my "info-clutter" and focused my preparations on selected targets. Here's what I came up with:

MFL Draft Day

OK, so fanatics play in multiple leagues. But there's something about your home league. It's the one where you got started. It's the one with your old friends. You've got rivals, allies, trading partners, the occasional blood feud, and always history.

I have the good fortune of playing in The Manly Football League, formed in the newsroom of The Mountaineer triweekly in Waynesville, NC, in the summer of 1991. Neal Anderson was on the cover of the magazine we bought that explained how to play. We didn't include yardage in the scoring because the Web didn't exist yet, and who had time to manually add up a bunch of stats? And the first pick, ever, was Randall Cunningham (who blew out his knee in Week 1).

There are only two of us left from that original eight-team league, but most of the guys have been around for a decade. And here's the thing: This is the only league that matters to me. Everything else is just... numbers. Winning here feels great. Losing sucks. And if desire counted in fantasy football, my team would always be great on the 2-yard-line.

In honor of our 12-team league, I'm putting up one of Janet's 12-team draft sheets for you to download. No fancy crap, nobody else's logos and ads: Just an organized way for you to keep track of up to 16 rounds of draft day progress.

Download DraftOrder12Teams.pdf

The QB Platoon Theory

While we don't question the underlying logic of the Stud Running Back Theory, we're on the record as heretics when it comes to the widespread belief that uninspiring RBs should trump quality players at other positions on draft day. But what comes next? What strategy makes sense for 2007?

Well, here goes: Unless you can get Peyton Manning, Carson Palmer or Tom Brady, don't draft a quarterback in the first seven rounds. And no, we're not smoking crack.

"Stud RB" Theory, RIP

I'm from that generation of pre-Internet fantasy players who had to puzzle out the Stud Running Back Theory on our own. People tried all sorts of wild ideas at the top of drafts in the early 1990s, but ever since the rise of the Web and the explosion of professional fantasy pubs and sites, EVERYBODY knows that the key to success is acquiring two stud running backs ASAP.

I see two immediate problems with this development:

First, if everyone has the same strategy, that isn't a strategy anymore -- it's background music. It's the status quo against which you have to develop a new winning strategy.

And second: The Stud RB drafting theory would make a lot more sense if fantasy owners were better at telling the studs from the duds. Consider this "expert" mock draft from a year ago ("these are all fantasy football experts who have played in several leagues per year for at least a decade, so study the picks closely because there is a lot of knowledge here"). Check out how many of the RBs taken in the first and second rounds were either flat-out busts or season-killing under-performers...