FANTASY FOOTBALL

"I wish this were true, but Jesus would have drafted a whole lot better."

BY STEVE DUNN

This year I am making my first foray into Fantasy Football.  A very good friend of mine, Dennis Hall, invited me to join a league run by his son Josh, a professor in Tampa.  It's a Yahoo League called Tampadelphia.  In honor of my present pastoral assignment as an Intentional Interim, I gave my team the name Ship Rocks.  I am one of 12 teams, as is typical of fantasy leagues and I participated in a live draft Sunday.  It was a somewhat bewildering crap shoot for a novice who knows baseball but pays passing attention to the NFL. (I prefer my football in college form.)  Many of my competitors had spent hours researching and I am sure had preplanned lists for the strategic purposes of making pics in ever-shifting landscape of a live draft.

Me, I spent about an hour using Yahoo's default list and then proceeded to put into my computerized draft order about 10 more guys, not thinking that by round five that cue would be exhausted as others picked people  planned to pick.  I drafted 11th in the first round, 5th in the second, back to 11th in round three, etc.  Fortunately after claiming two players I had about 15 minutes to reorganize or do a quick search for more candidates, speed reading the basic info Yahoo gives you.

I started out strong, but in the end Yahoo gave my draft a D.  Here's what they said was good:

• Strongest Position: QB (12.2% above the league average) and DEF (5.9%) are projected as especially strong units for Ship Rocks.
• Hit the Waiver Wire: Ship Rocks might need to hit the waiver wire in Week 9, as both TEs they picked will be resting that week (Brandon Myers and Julius Thomas).
• Free Fallin': The GM of Ship Rocks must have had to leave their draft party early. After tallying the most projected points in the league over the draft's first half, they racked up the fewest during the second half.
• Beginning with a Bang: Ship Rocks got off to a sizzling start, amassing the most projected points in the league during the first half of the draft.
• Mr. Irrelevant: Ship Rocks may know something no one else does, grabbing Tim Hightower, who is on a squad in less than 10% of all Yahoo! leagues (0%).
• Risk Hater: Actuaries love the drafting style of Ship Rocks. They minimized risk by selecting six consistent players among their 15 picks.

Just so you know, my first five picks were:

A.J. Green

1st Round (11th Pick)

Although A.J. Green was the worst value pick of the round, he is still projected to score 31.1% more points than the average player at that position.

Aaron Rodgers

2nd Round (14th Pick)

Mr. December: Aaron Rodgers has a winning pedigree. He was the 14th-most-owned player by playoff teams across all Yahoo! leagues last season.

DeMarco Murray

3rd Round (35th Pick)

Reaching for the Best: Ship Rocks snagged the highest-ranked RB left on the board when they selected DeMarco Murray in the third round, but according to ADP, it still may have been a stretch at that spot (35th pick vs. ADP of 54.9).

Reggie Wayne

4th Round (38th Pick)

Reggie Wayne went with the 38th pick, but according to projections, he will fall outside of the top 10 in the NFL in both receiving TDs (32nd) and receiving yards (16th) with 6.1 and 1,092 respectively.

B. Green-Ellis

5th Round (59th Pick)

Although he was taken 59th overall in the fantasy draft, BenJarvus Green-Ellis is not projected among the NFL's top 10 in either rushing TDs (28th with 5.6) or rushing yards (28th with 822).

I picked Andrew Luck for my back-up quarterback which made my two choices the best in the draft and my defense, Denver and Green Bay were applauded as strong choices.  But three choices, like Reggie Hightower, that aren't even on a roster (Yahoo doesn't tell you that) drove my ranking to 10th out of 12.

It's going to be a long-season with a weekly watch of the waiver wire.

Are we having fun yet?