Building a Team Around Marshall Faulk
Advanced Draft Strategy for Playoff Leagues

Congratulations! When those little folded pieces of paper were pulled out of the hat by your league’s commissioner, you came away with the first pick in your draft, and now you can’t wait to stand up and call out, “Marshall Faulk.” Then, with the game’s dominating running back on your team, all you have to do is lean back, stick to your trusty cheat sheet, and watch everybody else scramble for those second-tier RBs, right? Well, sort of. Yes, you’ll be able to put on a big grin while other players try to put together their running games, but if you’re smart, you’ll be doing some scrambling yourself – scrambling those player rankings.

Clearly, Marshall Faulk can be a decisive factor in any fantasy league. Last year, according to our numbers, approximately 25% of 8-team to 12-team public leagues were won by the team that had Faulk on its roster. In other words, by drafting Faulk, you have more than doubled your odds of taking home your league’s championship trophy, long before the draft has even reached the second round. (Incidentally, some might consider this to be a very strong argument in favor of auction leagues, where Faulk and other star players go not to the luckiest team, but to the one willing to pay the highest price for their services.) At any rate, that’s a terrific foundation to build a team on, but you can improve your chances even more by drafting a team that complements your feature back.

The first thing to do is to move Trung Canidate, Faulk’s understudy and replacement in case of injury, up on your draft list. Go ahead and take him before you’d normally take a benchwarmer – you don’t want to skimp on insurance for the most valuable player in the game. You can be certain that others in your league will want to draft Canidate as well – if only to force you to trade for him at an inflated value.

The next item of business is dropping players with major question marks surrounding them off the top of your cheat sheets. With Faulk, you’re already in the driver’s seat and should be concerned with protecting your advantage, not taking risks. Leave the high-risk/high-reward players such as Jamal Lewis or Terry Glenn to others, at least as far as the early rounds of the draft are concerned. You’re looking for reliability – there will be enough opportunity to take a gamble or two later on. If Antonio Freeman is still around in round nine, as is the case in a surprising number of drafts this year, or D’Wayne Bates still has not been picked near the end of your draft, go ahead and grab them; every team needs a sleeper or two to push it over the top. But first, make sure your team’s nucleus is composed of players that come with a low risk-factor.

Finally, at least in playoff leagues, it’s time to put the regular season behind you. What – before the opening kickoff of the first game? That’s right. Face it: unless you draft kickers in rounds two through five (and barring injuries, of course), the odds are very, very good that your team will be among those participating in your league’s fantasy playoffs at the end of the season. Yes, you should still be trying to win every single game of the regular season, but with the advantage of having Marshall Faulk to take you there, you can afford to start looking for an edge in the playoffs already.

Let’s assume that your league has a 14-game regular season followed by three weeks of playoff games. Put your cheat sheets aside for a minute and pick up the NFL schedule. Yes, you may have Michael Pittman ranked higher than Clinton Portis on your lists, but Pittman faces Pittsburgh and Chicago in the final two weeks, right when you’re looking to wrap up your playoff run. Portis only has to contend with the Kansas City, Oakland and Arizona defenses in the playoffs. Move Portis up on your draft chart, and let somebody else take Pittman.

Similarly, take late-season weather into account. Mike Hollis has a good leg, and some have tagged him as a potential sleeper at kicker this year. Two games in Buffalo and a trip to Green Bay in December aren’t what the doctor ordered for your fantasy playoffs, however. Look for kickers (and quarterbacks) with their final games in domed stadiums or in areas that are relatively safe from blizzards instead.

Obviously, these strategies don’t only apply to teams that are able to land Marshall Faulk. Every team should draft backups for its primary stars, for example. Likewise, having drafted Marshall Faulk offers more leeway when planning ahead and a greater margin of error in case things don’t turn out as expected, but all players in playoff leagues can start thinking about the playoffs before drafting, and adjust their rankings accordingly. The stronger you feel your team will be, the more you should shift a part of your focus toward the end of the season. Just don’t overdo it – if you draft James Stewart instead of Curtis Martin based on the defenses they’ll be facing in your playoffs, it’s unlikely that you’ll win enough regular season games to be able to exploit any playoff matchups at all. But if you exercise a bit of foresight, you’ll be sitting pretty for your playoffs, ready to topple teams that may have similar (or even stronger) roster strength, but haven’t planned ahead as well as you have.

Now if only there were a strategy for making the commish pull your name out of the hat first on draft day…