Mastersball

Let’s get right to work this week and look at the draft strategy, and more specifically the roster construction of another front-runner.  Turning our eyes to the NFFC Primetime Main Event, we get a dose of déjà vu.  The total points leader in my league is Ulisses Lopez. He had the third overall pick:

Stop me if you think that you’ve haven’t heard this one before: the first five picks and eight of the first nine are either a running back or a wide receiver.  Peyton Hillis was a swing and a miss, but Mikel LeShoure in the 8^th round made up for it.  The one exception to the early RB/WR mantra was Peyton Manning, whose 27.1 points per game ranks 5^th in the NFFC scoring format. Tony Gonzalez in the 10th round was a grand slam.  Old man bias kept his price ridiculously low.  The only reason I didn’t pounce was that I already had drafted Antonio Gates, who supposedly was in the greatest shape of his life; another example of pre-season hype being just noise.  Gonzalez on the other hand has never showed any signs of slowing down.  On the contrary Julio Jones and Roddy White drawing attention of opposing defenses has led a #2 ranking among tight ends.  Staying healthy is a skill and the 36-year-old future hall of famer has excelled at it while younger bucks such as Antonio Gates, Rob Gronkowski, and Jimmy Graham have all failed to stay away from the trainer’s table.  There’s not much to see in picks 11-20, but that’s pretty common.  He grabbed a defense earlier than I like, but you certainly can’t argue with the results of taking Lovie Smith’s crew in the 16^th.  The waiver wire hasn’t produced much fruit for Ulisses, producing Jeremy Kerley and little else, but his draft was strong enough to carry the day.

Michael Duewel leads the NFFC Primetime Overall Field.  Let’s look glance at his draft:

The first 9 picks: 4 running backs, 4 wide receivers, and 1 QB.  Tony Gonzalez in the 10^th and then mostly darts in rounds 11 thru 20.  The 11^th best scoring QB in the 18^th round as your backup is not a bad pull.  Notice also that he wasn’t afraid to pull the trigger on players with negative or ‘cold’ press during the time of the draft.  Arian Foster was supposedly battling an injury, which was a false alarm.  Roddy White’s stock was falling due to the Julio Jones hype, but Roddy kept doing what he’s always done, put up elite numbers.  Injuries to Tampa’s offensive line had led to Martin slipping slightly down the board, but apparently, Michael correctly read all the camp talk as noise and drafted an elite foundation in the first 3 rounds.  With this strategy you don’t have to hit on every early pick.  Garcon, Williams and Little have all been busts, but you have a decent margin for error with this approach.