This year I am participating in two fantasy football leagues. The first consists of 12 teams and a roster of QB, RB, RB, WR, WR, RB/WR, TE, K, D, DEF. It drafted Monday, August 28, and I had the 9th pick of 12. I went into the draft with little research, expecting to make decisions “off the cuff” based on whatever knowledge I had. The results are below:
| Round | Player | Team | Position | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rudi Johnson | Cin | RB | I went with the experts on this one, and I suppose it was a good choice. I was hoping maybe Edgerrin James or Ronnie Brown would fall to me, but since they didn’t I chose the back predicted to have the most points of those remaining. |
| 2 | Willie Parker | Pit | RB | I had Parker last year, and loved him. With rumors that he will get goal-line carries now that Bettis is out of the picture, I decided to draft him significantly before his average position. |
| 3 | Roy Williams | Det | WR | I am pretty sure I bit on him too early, but all the other receivers I liked were gone by this point. |
| 4 | Santana Moss | Was | WR | Not a great receiver, but I am hoping he will be a good one. |
| 5 | Joseph Addai | Ind | RB | This was a gamble. If he ends up being the featured back, I will be ecstatic to have gotten the main back in one of the best offenses in the league. If not, he will have been a waste of a reasonably high pick. |
| 6 | Nate Burleson | Sea | WR | I don’t know much about Burleson, but I needed another receiver. |
| 7 | Kurt Warner | Ari | QB | Another gamble. I picked him up at the end of last season to replace the injured McNabb, and he performed quite well. Unfortunately, he is quite injury prone. If he stays healthy though, I expect him to go far with Boldin and Fitzgerald catching his passes and James picking up blitzers and first downs. |
| 8 | L. J. Smith | Phi | TE | I wanted to have an Eagles player and return as many guys from my team of the previous season as possible. Smith gave me an opportunity to do both while getting a fairly good player. |
| 9 | Ben Roethlisberger | Pit | QB | This was my insurance in case Arizona’s offense didn’t work out as expected. Now he will be out for who knows how long for medical reasons. |
| 10 | Keyshawn Johnson | Car | WR | Another moderately good receiver, who I was surprised was still available. Hopefully double teams on Steve Smith make him open early and often. |
| 11 | Jason Elam | Den | K | This is what happens when you don’t realize it is your turn. Oh well, at least I got a reasonably good kicker for my waste of a pick. |
| 12 | New England | NE | D | There was a run on defenses, so I figured I should grab one that isn’t terrible while they were still available. |
| 13 | Matt Leinart | Ari | QB | Leinart is just the handcuff to injury-prone Warner, but a necessary pickup. |
| 14 | Marion Barber | Dal | RB | If he gets much playing time, this will be a great pick. If not, I haven’t lost much. |
| 15 | Correll Buckhalter | Phi | RB | I would love to see Buck get some serious touches and be the smashmouth component of Philly’s offense this year. We shall see. |
| 16 | Brian Urlacher | Chi | DEF | The idea of drafting individual defensive players is new to me, so I mostly followed the default rankings, choosing the first player I knew well. |
| 17 | Ray Lewis | Bal | DEF | Another defensive player whom I will probably drop as soon as I see something else tempting. |
My second league consists of only 6 teams, and we did our draft.on September 3. Unlike the other league, we did an auction draft, where we all sat in a room and went through an order in which a person nominated a player for the auction block and we would bid for their services. We had $200 to fill a roster of QB, RB, RB, WR, WR, RB/WR, TE, K, D and 5 bench spots.
None of us had participated in an auction draft before, and I was unsatisfied with the results of my previous draft this year. Therefore, I did quite a bit of research in preparation for this draft. I started with a list of published average values players had brought in auctions over the previous week from www.fantasyauctioneer.com. Because these were based on 12-team leagues, I took only the first 96 players (at the time, I was expecting us to draft 16 players per team). I then normalized these values so that their total summed to $1200. I rationalized that in a smaller league, the best players would be worth more than in a large league and the worst players would be worth less. I based this on the fact that, for example, if you did not get an elite tight end such as Antonio Gates, there would be little competition to get a servicable one. Based on this hunch, I adjusted each player’s value by 20% of the difference between his value and the average value among players at his position. In retrospective, I believe I was too conservative in this thought. I probably could have adjusted by as high as 50% of the difference and had a more accurate value.
Based on the values that I had calculated, I decided that the best approach would be to avoid concentrating on filling specific positions or picking up specific players, but instead to take players that would cost me less than what I believed their value to be. My hope was to get other managers to waste their money on overpriced players so I could get a full team that were great but not superstar players. As you shall see, this backfired rather spectacularly.
At the beginning of the draft, I was glad to see players going for much more than I valued them at. I don’t recall the exact order, but within the first few players nominated we had Peyton Manning for $60 ($28 value), Shaun Alexander for $70 ($51 value), Carson Palmer for $35 ($15 value), Larry Johnson for $67 ($53 value), Steve Smith for $40 ($28 value), Tom Brady for $38 ($13 value), and Reuben Droughns for $20 ($9 value). As this went on, however, I quickly realized that, although others were definitely over-valuing players, I might be undervaluing them. After all, my calculations were based on 16 roster spots, and perhaps I should have been more severe in raising the prices of the best while lowering those of the worst.
I quickly snapped up the next several players to go for near the value I predicted: Ronnie Brown for $36 ($33 value), Carnell Williams for $33 ($31 value), and Brian Westbrook for $23 ($21 value). At this point, I should have stopped bidding on running backs immediately and used the money I had saved comparatively to get top-tier receivers. Instead, I kept buying “value” running backs when they were available: Clinton Portis for $20 ($33 value), Steven Jackson for $22 ($35 value), Corey Dillon for $1 ($12 value), and Chester Taylor for $8 ($14 value). Suddenly my value-purchasing philosophy had earned me a roster of at least 4 people that would have to sit on the bench and only $57 left to get receivers, a quarterback, and the rest of the team.
Nickel-and-diming my way through the rest of the draft I managed to pick up some good value receivers: Hines Ward for $17 ($17 value), Plaxico Burress for $9 ($14 value), Randy Moss for $16 ($21 value), Reggie Wayne for $10 ($19 value), and Joe Horn for $1 ($8 value). These are certainly good players, but by the end receivers of a similar caliber were going for a dollar or two. I was really hoping to pick up one of the Arizona Cardinals starters, but they were way out of my league at this point. With my remaining $4, I managed to get two bad fantasy quarterbacks, Ben Roethlisberger and Michael Vick, and a reasonably good tight end, Todd Heap.
My initial plan, if players went for close to the values I had predicted, was to get a tier 1 back such as Larry Johnson for $53, a tier 2 back such as Edgerrin James for $33, and two tier 4 backs such as Willie Parker and Warrick Dunn for $16 and $10, a tier 2 receiver such as Anquan Boldin for $21, a tier 3 receiver such as Reggie Wayne for $19, a tier 4 receiver such as Joe Horn for $8, and a tier 5 receiver such as Terry Glenn for $2, a tier 3 tight end such as Jason Witten for $3, a tier 2 quarterback such as Tom Brady for $13, a tier 5 quarterback such as Trent Green for $3, a tier 2 kicker such as Jason Elam for $1, and a tier 2 defense such as Pittsburg for $3. Such a scheme left me an extra $5 to play around with, and if I got players for a value I could upgrade another position. If only I had stuck to that plan! I now realize that in an auction with few teams, only the elite players really matter. There is little competition for moderate to good players as backups, so they are essentially worthless.
So far it hasn’t been a very promising season, but at least I didn’t waste my second round pick on such a colossal disappointment as Jamal Lewis this year (I hope!). May the best managers win!