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Drafting From The BottomBy Brandon Anderson Well you’ve made up your rankings, found some diamonds in the rough, crossed some busts off your lists, and read more opinions on more players than you can count. Now at long last it’s draft time, and despite all of your overpreparation, you’re not sure you are ready. Do you stick with the stalwart RB/RB start? Do you mix things up with a pair of WRs? Do you go QB early or wait? And how do things change if you get a top, middle, or bottom pick when that number gets drawn out of the hat? This series will attempt to answer some of those questions for you. We will be operating under the assumption of a 12 team league with 1 QB, 2 RB, 3 WR, 1 TE, 1 K, and 1 D for starting lineups. We’ll assume standard scoring with 4-point pass TDs and 6 for all other TDs, normal yardage points, and no negatives or points per reception. So it’s five minutes before your draft, and you are not sure what to think. You have drawn one of last four picks of the draft, and you like having picks close together, but you can’t shake the disappointment of missing out on all those top players in the 1st round. So how should you build your team? We’ll walk you through step by step. This is more about strategy than specific players, so be sure to check out the other articles for more information about why some of these guys are great people to take. Round 1 This is going to be a tough pick for you, and you’ll have to analyze the players and simply decide which one is your favorite. If Randy Moss falls to you, then you have to take him at your spot. Same thing goes for Frank Gore if he is available. But if both of them are gone, and they certainly will be at the end of the 1st round, then you’ve got a decision to make. You will probably think about the usual plan of taking a RB like Clinton Portis or Marion Barber, but I’m not sure either of these guys will live up their first round hype. Both of them look due for at least somewhat disappointing years, and you’ll need to read Sports Outlaw’s RB articles for further info there. You may also think about taking a WR, and this is probably a better option for you here with the players available, choosing the 2nd WR off of your board, probably Terrell Owens or Reggie Wayne. Round 2 You might have gone with a runner in round 1, but you should absolutely be looking for a WR in the 2nd round here. Depending on how high your 2nd round pick is, you should pretty easily be able to pick up one of Terrell Owens, Reggie Wayne, or Larry Fitzgerald. You can even go with Andre Johnson if you need to, but you shouldn’t have to dig that deep (though you could certainly do worse). You probably noticed that Braylon Edwards was not part of that group, and there is good reason for that. Again I refer you to Sports Outlaw’s WR pieces for some hints at why Edwards may be a good bet to disappoint this season. Take one of those other much safer WRs and you will be happy as the season moves along. Rounds 3 and 4 Since your picks are so close together, we’ll treat them as such the rest of the way out. At this point of your draft, you should either have a pair of WRs or else a receiver and a runner combo. You need to get out of round 4 having two RBs because the end of the 5th will be too late to get a back you can be very comfortable with. Thankfully, this is an absolutely fabulous time to pick up a RB or two, and chances are good that you can do just as well at RB here as you could have in the 1st or 2nd round. Thomas Jones is one of Sports Outlaw’s favorite sleepers, and this is a great spot for him. You might also see Jamal Lewis or Reggie Bush available if they have slipped, and you will see some great upside guys like Earnest Graham, Michael Turner, and Darren McFadden. The guess here is that 3 or 4 of the aforementioned RBs will finish in this year’s top 10, so you are in great shape. If you did take a RB in the first round, then you’ll probably want to snag a wideout here. If you get lucky, maybe Steve Smith will have fallen this far with his suspension, and you should snap him up immediately. If not, you can take a steady eddie type in Torry Holt or Anquan Boldin and be quite happy, or if you love a guy like Calvin Johnson, then grabbing him to start out the 4th is not the worst thing that could happen as well. Two other guys have to be mentioned here: Drew Brees and Kellen Winslow. Both of them are #1 on my board at their positions, and both would be great picks and in the perfect spot right in this area. As with the other draft strategy articles, I’ve got no choice but to ignore them as we press forward here because of the variety of combinations I might be guessing at for your team otherwise. But I would strongly recommend looking into those two guys here. As much as I love the RBs available, you would be in great shape picking up Brees or particularly Winslow. It will be extremely difficult to take both here. You would be heading to the end of the 5th with either no RBs, no WRs, or only one of each, and that is going to be a pretty tough hole to dig out of. Much as I love Brees and Winslow, I can’t recommend taking both unless you’ve done some sort of trade to know you’re going to be making another pick relatively soon. But if you want to wait on RB2 or WR2 to take someone like Winslow here, you’ll be on your own to catch up a bit, but the guess here is that it will be worth it. So who might you have so far? Here are a few of the many options:
Rounds 5 and 6 Round 5 should almost certainly be a WR round for you. That’s a common theme throughout these draft strategy threads – it’s just where the value is at this point. You don’t want to panic and take one of the middle tier of QBs, for they are no better in value than the ones you can get in a few rounds. At WR you can still get a guy like Jerricho Cotchery or Dwayne Bowe, both of whom land right at the edge of my top 10 WRs. You can also get Cotchery’s counterpart Laveranues Coles or his other “counterpart,” Donald Driver, a guy I think you will find eerily similar once he works with Favre for a whole season. Round 6 will leave you with options. Again, it’s probably too early to pull the trigger on a QB here. You can continue to wait one more time and not lose much. You’ll need to tailor your pick here based on how your team looks so far. If you only have 2 WRs on the roster (counting the one you just took in round 5), then that should be the priority, and you can get someone like Coles or Driver. Most likely, you should have 3 WRs at this point if you’ve been following along. If that is the case, then you’ve got two options here. How confident are you in your starting RBs? If you feel very good about them, then you may roll the dice on a tight end here. It’s a perfect spot to get a top 5 guy like Tony Gonzalez or Jeremy Shockey, or maybe even Antonio Gates if he starts sliding. If you do take a tight end though, you are sacrificing at your backup RB slot because you’re not going to get a backup now until the end of the 7th round. You’ll have to look at the names at RB and TE now and there and decide who your targets are. If you do want a RB now, you can take a steady type like Edgerrin James if you need some stabilizing force. If you prefer upside, you should have a slew of choices available like Selvin Young or any of the number of likely rookie starters in Jonathan Stewart, Kevin Smith, or Matt Forte. Rounds 7 and 8 At this point of your draft, you should definitely have your starting 2 RBs and 3 WRs and then you’ve got one more player as well. It might be a starting TE, it could be a QB (Brees hopefully), or it may be a RB3. Well, you’ve got one of those three so far, and this is the time for you to get the other two. Most likely, you have waited until now for a QB and you are still in perfectly good shape. Now, you don’t have Peyton Manning or Tony Romo, but you can still lose very little if you choose wisely here. There’s a pretty good chance that Donovan McNabb or Marc Bulger will still be available. Both of these guys have big injury question marks, but they also both play in passing offenses with great pass-catching RBs, and they have been top 5 QBs in the past when healthy. They may actually equal the production of Manning or Romo if you get lucky. If both of them are gone, you can also go a bit safer route with Brett Favre or David Garrard. Actually all 4 of these QBs are in my top 10. Favre is not a super high upside guy but is about as safe as they come as a passer. Garrard would’ve been top 10 last year if he had played all season, and don’t overlook the rushing stats that help his production – it’s an extra few points most weeks. If you went with a stud TE early, then you probably need a backup RB here. Fred Taylor could be the perfect pick for you. He is about as boring of a pick as you’re going to find, but you’ve got a guy who should put up a solid 50-75 yards a week with an occasional TD, and that makes for a perfect backup RB. Another guy who could be here, someone without a ton of huge upside but a steady point producer most weeks, would be Julius Jones out in Seattle. There are a multitude of upside guys available as well, but you probably need a safer, steadier option if you’ve waited this long for RB3. And if you still need a TE, you’re in pretty solid shape here as well. You may find that Chris Cooley has slipped to your pick, and he would make a nice pickup. You can also grab one of my favorite sleepers, Todd Heap, or a high upside guy like Vernon Davis. At this point you should be pretty well set up, and you are all set to start grabbing sleepers, depth, defenses, and all of that good stuff. Here’s what your team looks like through eight rounds: Team #1 | |
