http://fantasyfootballcalculator.com/draft/800820

I drafted in the 3rd spot, I think I really reached for a few WRs in the middle rounds and I forgot a backup QB

10 team league, 6 points per passing TD, .25 PPR, 1 QB, 2 WR, 2 RB, 2 Flex, 1 TE and bonus points for passing, rushing and receiving yards at the usual levels.

1. (8) Andre Johnson
2. (13) Tony Romo
3. (28) Greg Jennings
4. (33) Jamaal Charles
5. (48) Beanie Wells
6. (53) Matt Forte
7. (68) Brent Celek
8. (73) Pierre Garcon
9. (88) Johnny Knox
10. (93) Vincent Jackson
11. (108) Fred Jackson
12. (113) Derrick Mason
13. (128) Dallas
14. (133) Carson Palmer
15. (148) Bernard Scott
16. (153) Ryan Longwell

Romo is at least 2 rounds early there. Just because other people are drafting QBs early doesn't mean you should too (in fact it makes it even better to wait). AJ at 8 is decent, although I personally probably wouldn't take him over Turner, Gore or SJax with only 0.25 ppr. Jennings at 28 is good value, as were Charles at 33 and Beanie at 48.

To be honest most players are decent value where you got them and so you actually ended up with a decent team despite the horrendous pick in the 2nd round. The reason for that is entirely due to players dropping further than they should though and the guys you were drafting with must have been pretty bad. Your team is certainly not special and probably not the best in the league, simply because you have no useful rb4 at all in a .25ppr league where you can start 4 running backs. If you had grabbed say Cadillac/Portis instead of Garcon/Knox then your team would be 2-3ppg stronger.

In fact had you grabbed DWill instead of Romo then taken the best QB available in the 8th your team would probably be more like 4-5ppg stronger.

i think i take AJ over turner quite easily there. the 1/4 ppr compensates easily for the fact that it's 2/2 with a flex

I think it's pretty close, .25 ppr only separates AJ from WR3s by like 7-10 points over the season. In full ppr I would definitely take AJ before Turner and in non-ppr I would definitely take Turner over AJ. I'm not convinced that .25ppr is enough to tip it in AJ's favour considering how small an edge it gives him relative to other WRs (which is what should determine when you take the first WR, not how it effects AJ's points vs Turner's points specifically).

I don't know about you guys but I rather have the low variance in a high scoring QB then take a risk on Kolb or Flacco or Cutler. In the beginning of the third round, the best available QB was Favre and I wasn't going to tolerate that. I know Romo @ 13 is extremely early in most drafts but my friends were going to draft QBs early and I didn't want to be left with a high variance QB when they are supposed to deliver the most points week in and week out for your team.

If I had the option of DeAngelo + Kolb or Romo + Forte, I'm taking the 2nd all day.

I completely agree, but I guess that's not a surprise to anyone.

I didn't say I would take a QB over Forte, I would take him over the WRs which you drafted in rounds 8/9 when you should have been drafting RBs. Reducing variance is all well and good but it comes at the cost of reducing your overall EV when you do this sort of thing.

I've already made a bunch of posts about this but the main point is that the edges in fantasy football as so small anyway that giving up any sort of edge to try and reduce variance is a pretty bad idea.

Just out of interest what RBs were available when you were picking in the 8th and 9th rounds? I would estimate the RBs available would be at least 5-10 points better over the season than the WRs you took and potentially a lot more.

RBs drafted in the 8th, 9th and 10th rounds:

Marion Barber
Clinton Portis
LT
Reggie Bush
Thomas Jones
Cadallic Williams
Donald Brown

At this point of the draft I only had 3 RB but I did draft Fred Jackson later who I think is pretty similar to these RBs.

Not drafting Bush or Barber ahead of those WRs is really bad. I would genuinely expect them both to give you at least 20 and probably more like 30-40 points more over the season than Garcon. RB3s in general will put up significantly more points than WR3s with less than 0.5 ppr (at which point it's about even, at 1ppr WR3s score significantly more). Hell Barber is a high end RB3 anyway and would be better up to about 0.75ppr.

I would expect Barber, Bush, Portis and Caddy to all score more points than both Garcon or Knox.

Fred Jackson is very risky and could end up scoring more points than those WRs but it's not as likely by a long shot and he could end up simply being on the wrong end of a 60/40 timeshare if Spiller impresses.

I think Bush is crap so I'm gonna disagree that he beats Garcon. Not a fan of Caddy or Portis either, maybe I could have drafted Barber but other than that I rather have the tremendous upside in Garcon.

Garcon really doesn't have that much upside (Knox has significantly more imo). He's at best 3rd target, admittedly on a team that throws a hell of a lot, but he could end up being as bad as splitting time as the 4th target (behind Wayne, Clark and whoever is in at RB). There are too many people getting receptions for Garcon to have a large upside.

Bush on the other hand is pretty much guaranteed ~60 receptions and is also likely to to get in the 100-150 carry region, almost certainly resulting in ~1000 yards and a handful of TDs. As a Saints fan I might be slightly biased but I also know that Bush will definitely get his touches. He always has done under Payton and he's looking better running the ball than at any point in his career.

Just to check I'm not talking out my ass here, I just checked 4 different sets of projections from people who do this stuff for a living and 3 of them had Knox significantly higher than Garcon (the other had them both doing terribly, with Garcon as 58th WR and Knox as 59th) and they all have Bush scoring 40+ points more than either of them in your scoring system.

just finished a money league auction, already have been offered brandon jacobs for mike sims walker which im very tempted to take

1qb 2rb 2wr 1 wr/rb 1 te 1k 1def

Passing Scoring 25yds/1pt 4pts/td -2pts/int
Rushing Scoring 10yds/1pt 6pts/td
Receiving Scoring 10yds/1pt 6pts/td

1. (12) Jamaal Charles $34
2. (23) Steven Jackson $47
3. (33) Calvin Johnson $30
4. (37) DeAngelo Williams $35
5. (41) Eli Manning $3
6. (49) Mike Sims-Walker $12
7. (55) Michael Crabtree $18
8. (69) Hakeem Nicks $7
9. (78) Jermichael Finley $7
10. (89) Matt Prater $1
11. (140) Matt Ryan $1
12. (145) Dez Bryant $1
13. (150) Chester Taylor $1
14. (153) Eddie Royal $1
15. (156) Fred Taylor $1
16. (159) Indianapolis $1

my bad. i should have known.

i would have probably gone with rodgers. i hate starting these drafts WR/WR.

i think wayne is pretty bad value in the 2nd

Huge fan of that team SB. Super budget QBBC is perfect for the format and getting 3 top 15 RBs when you can start 3 every week is great. Megatron solid value at $30 and you should get solid production from MSW and Crabtree as WR2s. Finley is a steal at $7 too. Basically the part of this team that isn't pretty much perfect is that you don't have a QB for week 8 but provided you can pick someone up easily off waivers it barely matters.

I've never been a fan of it either, but I think it turned out pretty well.

I don't like Wayne either. I don't think it was a reach or anything, I just think he is getting old. Do you think Austin there would be better? I actually wanted to take Austin, but it timed out on me.

Rodgers at 8 is bad. There have been a bunch of posts about why taking a QB early is bad and as of yet nobody has come close to convincing me that it is good. Basically it reduces variance but at the cost of EV.

As for the rest of your draft, Wayne is decent value at 17 and PT is solid in the 3rd. Addai is about where I'd expect him to go but Harrison is way too early. His ADP is in the 8th and although Hardesty hasn't impressed hugely recently there's still a very real chance Harrison ends up on the bad end of a timeshare. Finley is very good value in the 7th and that along with Owens in the 10th are probably your best value picks. Steelers are way to early, the only defense even worth considering that early are the Jets and personally I wouldn't touch them either. Steelers aren't a truly elite defense any more.

As for the rest, you certainly don't need a 2nd D/ST but otherwise fairly average picks, albeit not really who I'd have taken myself.

Anyone want to do a mock or even a league with the regulars in this thread? We can do a mock and everyone discuss all the pics or even a league to keep the discussion up through the season. We can put up 10 or 20 bucks even just to keep people involved.

If you would like action on this, I'll bet you Bush, Barber, or Portis vs Garcon straight up for virtually any amount of money.

i def agree i feel like dallas doesnt even know whos going to be running the ball for them haha maybe emmit will come back for some hof rushes or something by the end of the yr

I didn't say that Garcon is better than them automatically, I said I rather have Garcon's upside as my last flex spot considering I got guys like VJax, Derrick Mason and Fred Jackson on my bench. Garcon has gigantic upside, like 1200 yards and 10 TD upside, in the Colts offense. It wasn't long ago that Wayne and Harrison were both WR1s with Manning at the helm.

yeah i agree w u zbthorton..portis i think has big upside esp. if he stays healthy

You get upside with guys who will be sitting on your bench, not with guys who you will be starting every week and will hurt you badly if they end up doing very little. You were drafting someone who should be part of your starting line up every week, you have to take the guy who will average the highest points in that spot.

Besides, you're way over estimating Garcon's upside. At best he will be the 3rd most targeted player on the team, and with significantly less targets than the top 2 at that. Unless Wayne or Clark get injured the chance of Garcon getting 1200/10 is basically 0.

Garcon has tons of upside of the stud ahead of him gets hurt, but that's true of like half the players in the league.

I disagree that the guy I'm drafting in the 8th round automatically has to be a starter for me. Why can't I play the guys I draft in the 9th, 10th and 11th+ rounds on a matchup basis? I think people are way too strict in their rules and beleifs.

And of course Garcon has that upside, just look at his stats from last year from the 8th game on. And compare them to Clark's stats when Garcon was playing the split end.

"One more: Coming out of last year's bye week, from Week 7 through the Super Bowl (but not counting Weeks 16 and 17), here's a comparison of the two wideouts.

Wayne: 915 yards, seven touchdowns
Garcon: 800 yards, four touchdowns"

Stolen from Matt Berry's article but he does have a point: Garcon is explosive and was targeted a good amount by Manning. Why can't Garcon be
like Wayne when Harrison was around? He has lots of upside.

edit: Manning is going to throw for 4000+ yards. How will you guys allocate it? Say 1200 for Wayne, 1200 for Clark, leaves 1600. I think Garcon will be used a lot more than Collie or Gonzalez and then the rest of the yards would go to Addai + Brown. And that's if just 4000 yards, I would expect Manning to do more and 1200 each for Clark and Wayne is conservative.