Fantasy Football Draft Geek

I know, I know.... it has been a while since my last post. Guess I'm not so great at this whole blogging thing.

Well when I last posted it was just after week 1. I had lost Tom Brady and Nate Burleson for the season and I had a 1-2 overall record for my leagues. Since then my fortunes have turned.

I've been very active on the waiver wire and free agent pickups. I also took advantage of some really horrible decisions in my work league. (someone dropped Steve Smith immediately after the draft!!! ... and someone else dropped Ryan Grant). With no waiver wire in this league it is first come first serve.... That, of course, worked out great for me (although I do feel waiver wire is the more fair approach).

I've been implementing a new strategy this season for choosing the players to start or bench. I have a couple of different sources that provide me with weekly projections for the players. I have an excel spreadsheet that takes those projections and uses my leagues scoring to calculate the projected points for the week. Now because the projections are shaky at best on a week by week basis, I certainly do not use this as gospel. That being said I believe it does provide some good insight about which players may benefit by their weekly matchup. Basically my strategy is to start my studs... always... no matter who they are playing. Then use a combination of research and your gut for the rest. The excel spreadsheet is handy when I am really torn between two players. So far this has worked out fairly well for me.

That's all for now... here are my results for week 2 and 3

Week 2 Results:
League 1: 1-1 (L)
League 2: 1-1 (W)
League 3: 1-1 (W)

Previous Week Combined Record: 1-2
Current Combined Record: 3-3 (Gaining ground!)


Week 3 Results:
League 1: 2-1 (W)
League 2: 2-1 (W)
League 3: 2-1 (W)

Previous Week Combined Record: 3-3
Current Combined Record: 6-3 (Awesome week... can't do any better!)

Oh Tom Brady.... Although I thought he was going WAY too early in most drafts, I did pull the trigger on him in one league where he was still there at the 11th pick.

I thought it was a steal... Not so much.

I'm off to a pretty slow start this year. Mr. Brady scored me all of 2 points before calling it a season. Despite that I only lost by 5 points. With Philip Rivers as a back up, I am optimistic that I can pick up the pieces and at least give it a good college try for the rest of the season.

I managed to eek out a win in another league by 1 point. But that is where my good fortune ended this week. Aside from Brady, I have Nate Burleson in not 1, but 2 other leagues. Unlike Brady he at least decided to stick around for most of the game and at least score me some points before getting injured and leaving (also for the rest of the season).

So... this week was a crazy first week. I am hoping next week is much calmer for me (but not necessarily my opponents).

Season summary:
League 1: 1-0
League 2: 0-1
League 3: 0-1

Combined Record: 1-2

Well... Draft #2 is in the books.

This league is a 10 team, Point Per Reception League (PPR). I was lucky enough to get the #1 draft pick. At first I was very excited about this since I was able to grab LaDanian Tomlinson with my first pick. The problem I had with picking first is that players never seemed to drop to me, or I felt like I had to make a pick too early for fear it wouldn't be there next time around. Aside from picking my QB hunch too early (David Garrard in the 7th round), I feel like I had a pretty good draft.

My strategy going in was to avoid the high priced QBs and go for more of a QuarterBack by Committee approach. The reason I opted for this strategy is that due to the scoring for this league, QB is not a high scoring position. Also this league rewards rushing a little more. Because of this David Garrard (more of a Rushing QB) ended up ranked 5th on my QB list. I knew based on my research that David Garrard is usually drafted late 8th round or early 9th. Because of my draft position I was not sure I would be able to get Garrard on the last pick of the 8th round. Since Garrard was pretty much a center piece of my strategy for this league I opted to jump the gun and grab him in the 7th round (1st pick). This, as expected, was met by many taunts. The same people who taunted me for taking Tony Romo in the 10th round last year!! We know how that ended up.

All in all I feel the rest of my draft went fairly well. Here are my picks. Feel free to let me know what you think!

1-1 LaDanian Tomlinson
2-10 Larry Fitzgerald
3-1 Larry Johnson
4-10 Plaxico Burress
5-1 Calvin Johnson
6-10 Tony Gonzalez
7-1 David Garrard
8-10 Julius Jones
9-1 Ronnie Brown
10-10 Chris Johnson
11-1 Vikings Defense
12 - 10 Jake Delhomme
13 - 1 Javon Walker
14-10 Sidney Rice
15 -1 Reggie Williams
16-10 LJ Smith
17-1 Steven Gostkowski
18-10 Jacksonville Defense