FANTASY FOOTBALL

I have a fantasy football team! Here are my picks, by round, with my thinking. Because this is something I want to write about, and this is MY blog. Hear me? It's MY BLOG. I had pick #6 in the first round (of an ESPN 10-team standard non-PPR snake draft with strangers), so #5 and #6 alternating after that.

RD 1 (6): Matt Forte. Love this pick. I had Forte as my #3 projected running back this season, after only LeSean McCoy and Jamaal Charles. Yes, I think Adrian Peterson is going to drop off. No, I don't want to talk about it. Leave me alone. Anyway, with McCoy and Charles off the board in the first three picks (along with Peterson, Megatron, and DeMarco Murray in the top five), I was happy to get Forte.

RD 2 (15): Doug Martin. I'm old-school. By which I mean I've been playing fantasy football for eight or nine years now (less one or two when I didn't get around to drafting a team). When I was a youngster, drafting my Frank Gores and my Steven Jacksons, before Michael Turner was a thing, before Randy Moss got to his second prime, back when Carson Palmer was a solid quarterback and not a really obscure joke in my last post, the rule was always to draft two solid running backs in the first two rounds, because they were your every-week guys, virtually guaranteed to put up solid, consistent production. To some extent they still are, but WRs have taken a bigger and bigger role in modern fantasy, while stud, every-down RBs have all but dropped off the face of the NFL. I still like to get two solid RBs in the first two rounds if I can, and I still hate the idea of taking a WR, even Calvin, in the first round. I took Martin here because I thought he'd be a solid #2, and because WR is deep as hell and I knew I could pick up a stud or two in the later rounds.

RD 3 (26): Julio Jones. Here's my stud WR. Admittedly fantasy WRs since about 2011 have consisted of "Calvin Johnson" and "the rest," but I'm totally comfortable with Jones as my #1 choice. Again, WR is deep as hell. I liked him a lot more than Jordy Nelson, the next WR off the board, and certainly more than a TE or a QB. (More on these in a bit.)

RD 4 (35): Vincent Jackson. The team who picked #34 overall took the Seahawks D/ST. I'll take this opportunity to explain why this is stunningly stupid: the BEST D/ST in the league, which last year actually was the Seahawks D/ST, scored 195 points. The average defense (Giants or Steelers) put up about 104. That's a difference of 91 points, which comes to 6.5 points per week. And that's if you started that average defense EVERY WEEK. If, say, you alternated between those two defenses, playing the Giants when they had opponents with bad offenses (12 pts vs Min, 18 vs Oak, 8 and 17 vs Wsh, etc.) and the Steelers when THEY had bad opponents (13 vs Jets, 10 vs Oak, 10 vs Buf, 21 and 12 vs Cle), you could EASILY make up that difference, or at the very least get close. Now realize that at any given time, in a 10-man league, you're realistically choosing between ABOUT 20 defenses in any given week (assuming a few idiots keep multiple on their roster), at least 6 of which are at or above the Average Defense benchmark (possibly more, if people are stupid, which they are), and at least 10 of which are reasonable competent. If you put even a little thought into it, you can find a defense that will give you production comparable to any elite D. Yes, you have to pick up a team every week, and that's a bit annoying, and yes, sometimes you'll guess wrong. Yes, maybe it'd be nice to have the Seahawks defense a lot of the time. But is it really worth a FOURTH ROUND PICK? Or a ninth round pick? I mean, come on. Anyway. Vincent Jackson is a stud, even on a team who I'm not 100% sure who their starting QB is.

RD 5 (46): Ryan Mathews. I've been burned before, Ryan. Don't hurt me again. I can't stand to get hurt again. RyMat should work as a flex play and occasional fill-in starter. I can't bear to discuss this any further. We have history.

RD 6 (55): DeSean Jackson. So I have faith in Robert Downey Griffin Junior the Second. Sue me. Or no wait don't.

RD 7 (66): Rashad Jennings. I know, who? But he got 15 points last week. For my bench.

RD 8 (75): Jeremy Maclin. I don't have that much faith in the Eagles' offense. But the loss of DJax should give Maclin some fantasy value. I don't know. These picks are boring now. Let's skip ahead.

RD 9 (86): Golden Tate. Love Tater Tot this year. He's catching balls from the underrated Stafford like Lexi Belle from James Deen (yeah that reference just happened), and he's got the most physically dominant wide receiver possibly ever drawing coverage away from his side of the field. Tate was good in Seattle, but he has the potential to be elite in North Dakota or wherever Detroit is.

RD 10 (95): Anquan Boldin. I don't like the 49ers, but Boldin has the potential to be a solid bye-week fill-in off the bench. Not that I'll ever probably need him.

RD 11 (106): Dennis Pitta. Okay, it's TE time. Basically, here's my philosophy with tight ends (this year at least): 1) There is one elite tight end in the league, Jimmy Graham, and he went 11th overall. I have never spent a first-round pick (or a pick in the top three rounds, as far as I know) on a tight end. Graham is good, and he might even be worth a second-round pick, but I just can't bring myself to draft him that high. There is also one more tight end with the ability to be comparably elite, and that's Rob Gronkowski, of course, but he's so injury-prone that I'm terrified to draft him. 2) There are a bunch more tight ends who occupy the space directly below Graham/possibly Gronk. These TEs usually last until the later rounds (round 9-10 at least, most often). The last TE in this group this year, in my opinion, was Jordan Cameron, who was taken shortly before my round 8 pick. I was not ready to take him in round 7. So I wound up in my third tier. 3) There are enough tight ends in this bottom tier, which is approximately defined as "decent but not great," that you can snatch one late in any-size league. Ideally, I like to end up in tier 2, but I got unlucky in this draft and ended up with Pitta. But I'm okay with that, because I think the marginal value of the skill position players I got instead of drafting Cameron in the 7th will make up for it. (Realize that every player I picked between the 7th and 10th rounds, inclusive, would have been downgraded one round worth if I'd taken Cameron.)

RD 12 (115): Philip Rivers. QB time! There are a bunch of elite fantasy QBs. They tend to go very early off the board. For instance, in my league, Peyton Manning went 7th overall; Rodgers, Stafford, and Brees were gone in the second; the immortal Eli Manning fell in the third; and Russell Wilson inexplicably was chosen in the fourth. In those four rounds, I took an elite RB, a solid starting RB, and two excellent WRs. I also upgraded all the players I drafted between rounds 1 and 12 by passing up a QB until now. In exchange, I downgraded to Philip Rivers, who last year was the #6 scoring QB. He placed a whopping 6 points behind the #3 QB, Cam Newton, and was only really outscored by a great season from Brees and a historic season from Big Daddy Manning. I'll set aside Manning because, let's be real, nobody this season is doing what he did last season. Meanwhile, the difference from Brees to Rivers last season came out to 4.5 points per game. Do you think I made that up by drafting Martin, Jones, and Vincent Jackson instead of, say, Alfred Morris, Emmanuel Sanders, and Pierre Garcon? I certainly do. (Although now I kinda wish I'd drafted Morris in the third and upgraded to AJ Green in the second. Fuck.) Never mind that I ALSO upgraded every single one of my following picks through the 11th round. Never mind that I expect Brees to do worse this season and Rivers to do similarly well. Rivers and Romo are tremendous value in these later rounds, and I'm happy with either one. I'll also take the opportunity to note here that you never need to draft more than one QB or one TE. When their bye week rolls around, pick up a decent replacement-level guy off waivers. He'll do fine. If they get injured, grab a replacement-level guy. This doesn't happen a lot. Seriously, the marginal value of RBs and WRs in these rounds is way higher than that of backup QBs and TEs, who 90% of the time will just sit on your bench forever.

RD 13 (126): Donald Brown. Not sure why I took him. I guess I wanted more RB depth and he was still on the board. Everyone says that these are the rounds where you find your sleepers, but that's bullshit. Nobody actually finds sleepers. You either get lucky or you pick them up off the waiver wire. These picks are waiver bait, the guys you drop so you can pick up the players you actually want.

RD 14 (135): James Starks. Looks like a better pick now if Lacy is out, but still not a particularly interesting pick.

RD 15 (146): Steven Hauschka. Kickers are interesting, because the successful ones are rarely the ones you expect, and the good ones tend to be consistently good in any given season. So I like to pick a decent kicker and hold onto him for a few weeks until the most productive kickers in the league bob up to the surface, then I pick up the best one available. This doesn't require thought. It also doesn't require taking a kicker earlier than the 15th round. (The first kicker taken in my draft was Steven Gostkowski, in round 5, by the same team that took the Seahawks D/ST the round before. Either he was on autodraft or he's an idiot. Actually, same thing either way.)

RD 16 (155): Redskins D/ST. I already explained my strategy with D/STs. I picked essentially at random here.


FINAL TEAM:

- QB: Philip Rivers
- RB: Matt Forte
- RB: Doug Martin
- RB: Ryan Mathews
- RB: Rashad Jennings
- RB: Donald Brown
- RB: James Starks
- WR: Julio Jones
- WR: Vincent Jackson
- WR: DeSean Jackson
- WR: Jeremy Maclin
- WR: Golden Tate
- WR: Anquan Boldin
- TE: Dennis Pitta
- D/ST: Redskins D/ST
- K: Steven Hauschka


Post-Week One Update:

This isn't really an update because I'm just now posting this article. But I dropped the useless Donald Brown for Josh Gordon, who looks like he'll be back from suspension and gives me the possibility of a stud WR for nothing (waiver bait). And I traded the Redskins D/ST for the Texans D/ST, who looked great against... the Redskins, and are facing a weak Oakland offense on Sunday. Hausckha looks solid so far, with 10 points last week, but we'll see how he fares through the next few weeks.