It's been a little over a week since I had the fantasy football draft for the league at my office. The league has fourteen teams and about half of the owners are fairly new to fantasy football so I expected to see some good players fall to me. A few did, though not as many as I thought.
The problem is that there is so much good fantasy football information available that you don't need to know very much about football to draft a decent team. The difference between a good team and a great team really comes down to the small details, the latest news, the in-depth analysis - it's the difference between reading ESPN.com's fantasy football section and reading sites like Fake Teams or The Pro Football Prospectus. The experienced players didn't have that level of information and the new players didn't even know what those things were. More wins for me then.
Although the new players made the usual rookie mistakes - drafting kickers too early, not understanding the league was PPR, etc - they all seemed to get the memo to draft running backs early. Fifteen running backs were taken in the first seventeen picks, the exceptions being Peyton at #4 overall (rookie) and Brady at #11 (Patriots fan).
Here's the team I drafted from the sixth position. Any draft where you can get Frank Gore at #6 is a good draft.
QB |
McNabb, Donovan |
RB |
Gore, Frank |
RB |
James, Edgerrin |
WR |
Driver, Donald |
WR |
Evans, Lee |
TE |
Witten, Jason |
K |
Reed, Jeff |
DEF |
Dallas |
BN |
Jackson, Brandon |
BN |
Betts, Ladell |
BN |
Horn, Joe |
BN |
Holmes, Santonio |
BN |
Williamson, Troy |
BN |
Campbell, Jason |
BN |
Jarrett, Dwayne |