>>> I agree with Mookie - the only D I will draft early is the Ravens. I believe they are head and shoulders above any other D - including PIT, BUF, NE, etc... <<<
Corn, I think you're confusing real life and fantasy. Yes, if you gave all the NFL coaches the chance to take another team's defense and play it, Baltimore would probably be their overall top choice.
But there's more to a fantasy defense then yardage numbers. The Patriots' ability to confuse offenses leads to lots of defensive scoring opportunities, making them an excellent fantasy defense. They have a 'bend don't break' philosophy vs a 'Bucs stop here!' mentality, so their defense doesn't come off looking as dominant as one whose players think they're defending Hamburger Hill on every play.
I think the best per-game potential for high fantasy points is the Patriots D. It's like the Holmes vs. Tomlinson thing, risk vs. reward. Watch (and play on your fantasy team if possible) the Patriots defense in their season opener. They'll bend. They'll give up yardage, maybe like an untiltable pinball machine, but they'll also pick off Collins 2-4 times and we'll see some defensive players celebrating in the end zone.
Straight up, Baltimore's defensive numbers will be better. For fantasy points, I like the Pats.
I think you're missing the point here DraftDodger. The major knock on drafting defenses early is that from year to year they're so inconsistent and hard to predict. While Baltimore may not have been the #1 fantasy defense every year the last 5, they've certainly been a top 5, if not top 3 fantasy defense during those years. During that same span, NE has spent their fair share of time outside the top 10 or 15 as well as some of it towards the top. Baltimore is unique here because they're the only D that has consistently shown that they'll be near the top, and New England's loss of their DC and some of their more important defensive players certainly doesn't help their cause.
Baltimore is a great real life D and a fantasy D. They maintain a great yardage/points based fantasy defense while at the same time having some of the best defensive playmakers in the game, like Ed Reed who could practically start in the Team Defense spot by himself and outscore several fantasy defenses.
MadScott wrote:So far, two response, two busts. I'm not saying it's solid, I'm just throwing out the idea.
Does anyone remember where the top defenses where last year in overall rankings in Yahoo standard scoring?
I was crunching the Yahoo numbers the other day - of the top 25 point getters for the season last year, all positions, the top D's ranked:
11) Baltimore 12) Buffalo 15) New England 16) Pittsburgh 19) Atlanta 20) Cincinnati 23) Indianapolis & Philadelphia (tie) 24) Chicago 25) Tampa Bay
The others in the top 25 were 12 QB's; 4 RB's; 1 WR; and 1K (this adds up to more than 25 because of ties).
Thank you kindly stomper! Now if I'm not mistaken, Balt. and Buff. tied for points correct? While Balt. would have made sense being selected in the 6th rd last year seeing as it was the 11th ranked scorer in Yahoo last season.
I guess the trouble comes in when you see Buffalo, which was probably had late or via free agency tie them for points and the team that had them could use that pick for something else.
I like simple pleasures, like butter in my ass, lollipops in my mouth. That's just me.
Kensat30 wrote:I don't know if 5th or 6th round was brought up as the traditional point in the draft to grab Baltimore, but I know that 5th/6th is right around the dropoff for the "sure thing" QB options, the top tier of TEs, and the top20 WRs. If you don't grab one there, your QB is going to be more of a gamble, your probably are picking a sleeper TE 5 or more rounds later, and you NEED to pickup the sleeper WR option instead of going with sure production.
There is no such thing as a "sure thing" QB option that late in the draft. 4 of the top 10 scoring quarterbacks in 2003 didn't finish in the top 10 in 2004. The top two, Manning and Culpepper, could not have been drafted in the fifth or sixth round. So that meant that 4 of the remaining 8 "sure thing" quarterbacks, that you'd have a possibility of drafting, completely flopped.
I'm not gonna dispute what you're saying about "no one is a can't miss player", but if you stuck with the veteran QBs last year in the middle rounds you were golden except for McNair. In all my leagues I ended up with Trent Green, Brett Favre, or Marc Bulger. Sure I could have ended up with McNair or Hasselbeck, but I don't see how you can consider the 5th and 6th round QBs high bust risks, when I hit on a top10 guy in every single one of my leagues last year.
Kensat30 wrote:If you're not buying the comparison between Baltimore/15th round pick, versus say Brett Favre(or Todd Heap)/15th round pick, I don't understand that at all. That is EXACTLY what you should be comparing when you draft a top defense in the 5th or 6th round.
No it isn't. If you value eight or nine quarterbacks equally and there is six picks after your pick before your next pick, why not take the defense and grab one of the QB's who will no matter what be left with your next pick? You can't straight up compare picks because your drafting strategy after round six is altered by who you pick in round six.
Exactly, you have to alter your draft strategy to take a defense in early. You have to choose whether you want to sacrifice a solid QB, a solid #3 RB, a solid #3 WR, or a solid TE. You just can't pick every single one of those categories "in the next round". You can choose to make every single one of those positions suffer (bumping down to the next tier at each position for a few rounds), or you can choose to let a single position suffer a ton and replace them with a 15th round pick where you would have initially drafted a defense.
Kensat30 wrote:I don't know about you, but I don't draft players based on their ADP..... I wouldn't have touched half those players you listed last year in the 6th round.
Wheatley - no Winslow - no Burress - no Steven Jackson - no McNair - yes Bruce - yes McCarreins - no Toomer - yes Green - yes J.Jones - no Stallworth - no Shockey - yes George - no Minor - no
Less than half the guys you listed would have seen my roster last year that early in the draft if at all.
It's really easy to sit back and objectively say if you would have taken x or y player last season, but isn't that pretty lame? You can say whatever you want here to attempt to prove your point even though chances are you probably would have drafted over half the players on that list.
Frankly, I don't care if you believe me. I feel sorry for you if you drafted Tyrone Wheatley and Travis Minor in the 6th round last year, but I wouldn't have touched them.
Kensat30 wrote:I went through my main leauges from last year and pulled my 5th and 6th round picks and here is what I came up with.
Look at the value I got with those picks though. Both QBs I grabbed were easily top10 QBs at year end. Suggs was a decent #3 RB for most of the year. Barber turned out to be a top5 RB. Henry and Moulds were decent at the beginning of the year and then fizzled out. I did manage to trade Moulds after he scored touchdowns in the first 3 or 4 games for Darrell Jackson.
So basically Henry was my only true bust for the picks I made in those rounds last year. You can eliminate Henry and Barber based on their ADPs from last year (even though they were there in my leagues) and you're left with Favre, Bulger, Suggs, and Moulds. Two top5/top10 QBs, a viable #3 RB, and a viable #3 WR. How are you going to replace this with a player in the 14th, 15th, 16th round?
You're proving our point pretty well here. Favre and Barber are the only two that produced well for where you selected them. Bulger was the #10 fantasy QB last year, Henry did nothing, Suggs was a disappointment, and Moulds was the 28th best reciever. And you don't replace it with a 14th round pick, you do it with a 7th round pick who is practically the same risk as the other picks with nearly the same reward.
You replace your 6th round pick in the 7th round. You replace your 7th round in the 8th round. So on and so on, every single round you're making up for what you missed out on because you took a defense. If I don't pick a defense through the first 7 rounds, I have 7 position players (QB, RB, RB, RB, WR, WR, TE). If you take a defense in the 5th round, you only have 6 position players. Which one are you going without? Starting QB, TE, WR? Backup RB?
--------
What you're saying is that Bulger was bust even though he was worth a starting QB in virtually any league?
Henry was a legimate bust, which I admitted.
Suggs was a dissappointment? Maybe due to the fact that he missed the start of the season due to injury he was a bust (hurt me because I had Deuce in that league), but he did score double digit points in 6 out of his 10 games played. That is excellent production for a #3 RB in my book. Finishes the year as #32 RB and was #28 in PPG. Decent to good RB#3 in most leagues.
Moulds I drafted as my #3 WR and he performed as such in virtually any league.
I'm counting 1 true bust out of 6 players drafted. Looks more like an 80% success rate to me.
Kensat, I will agree with you that QB's are the one position that have a pretty high success rate in rounds 5 and 6. The trouble is, they also have a pretty high success rate in rounds 7, 8, and 9. Really, it is pretty difficult to come out of the draft without a solid QB. Going into this year (where I took Bulger in the 6th in a dynasty) I had never taken a QB before rounds 7 or 8, and I had never once had a problem with it.
Kensat30 wrote:You replace your 6th round pick in the 7th round. You replace your 7th round in the 8th round. So on and so on, every single round you're making up for what you missed out on because you took a defense. If I don't pick a defense through the first 7 rounds, I have 7 position players (QB, RB, RB, RB, WR, WR, TE). If you take a defense in the 5th round, you only have 6 position players. Which one are you going without? Starting QB, TE, WR? Backup RB? --------
The whole idea of playing "catch-up" is something I was keen upon a few years ago (although it was more in the context of a super early wr/qb and not way down in the 6th round), but lately I've come of the opinion that it is really just a myth. Everyone is playing catch-up, the only difference is whether or not you know it. If you pick a guy that busts, you're playing catch-up from there on out, you just don't know it.
Lets say we take a draft where you go RB, RB, WR, WR, TE in the first 5 rounds, and you did all your studying and nailed every one of them so none are busts. Now we go into the 6th round and your boy Lee Suggs is there (maybe a bad example because he shouldn't be around in the 6th round, but let's run with it). Now lets say that week 1 he goes 12 carries for 20 yards and Droughns goes 12 carries for 95 yards, and Droughns is the starter the rest of the way with Suggs being relegated to the same type of role he's had thusfar in his career. Think of this like you were the guy that took Wheatley or Garner or someone of the like last year. Well now, even though you THINK you have a solid #3 RB, you really don't. You're left in the exact same situation after 6 rounds (RB, RB, WR, WR, TE) lacking a real #3 RB as the guy who took the defense in that spot.
It happens to everyone, people pick busts. That's why the whole idea of "filling out your starting lineup" doesn't really appeal to me, because guys are gonna flop and your lineup isn't going to be filled out when you think it is. Just because you think you have "3 solid RB's" doesn't mean you REALLY have any more solid RB's than the guy that only has 2.
And really, I'd love to see just what percentage of 6th round RB types actually end up producing.
You look like you did well with your mid round picks last year, congratulations. Like I said initially, everyone is going to have their good years every so often in those rounds, which is what keeps drawing people back to them. But statistically, in the long haul those picks are going to end up worthless the majority of the time. FF has a very low ceiling for "skill level" for predicting players and beyond that it's all pretty much luck.
The point here is, that while 3 years ago I may have called someone a fool for picking a defense in the 6th round, 3 more years of experience have led me to a place where if I see someone take Baltimore in the 6th round, I pass it off as a viable strategy. I probably won't end up doing it, because that 6th round breakout player that comes along every few years keeps drawing me back (and with the way my 6th rounders have played the last few years I'm due for a breakout damnit ), but in the end, the guy that went Baltimore in the 6th round is going to be ahead of me the majority of the time, not leave him playing "catch-up" to me.
I agree that taking defense in the 6th round can be a viable strategy. Personally, that strategy is not for me. I don't like to waste my picks on a position that I can easily fill much later in the draft. I have much more confidence in my early-middle round picks than I would in later rounds picks for my starting positional players... And I have no problems choosing between 20+ defenses late in my draft and/or off the waiver wire after the draft is finished.
----
You can just go and say oh your 6th round RB was a bust so you could have taken defense there. I don't see how you can ignore that taking a defense DOES impact your draft.....If you want to compare a 6th round "high bust risk" RB versus a consensus #1 "low bust risk" defense drafted in the same round, you also have to consider a 15th round defense and the corresponding RB drafted in that area.
Say you take a 6th round "high bust-risk" QB, TE, RB, or WR and then follow up with a "high bust-risk" defense in the 15th. If you compare the values equally, then you have to consider that taking a "low bust-risk" defense in the 6th round means you would have to take an "EXTREMELY HIGH bust-risk" QB, TE, RB, or WR in the 15th round.
I don't see how you can disconnect the two, it's a fundamental part of drafting... If Take a stud QB early, then you have to fill in with more questionable RBs, WRs later. Take a stud TE early, fill in with a questionable WR, QB later. There is a price to pay when you decide to grab one position in front of the other, especially when you can get those positions much later in the draft. That's why 9 times out of 10 it is a MISTAKE to draft a defense early.
Another factor you have to consider is how taking one position affects your draft strategy. Do you take a QB in the 7th round and wait for a WR in the 9th, or take a WR in the 7th and then QB in the 9th. You can't just magically say oh that WR in the 7th is a bust anyways so I'll take a defense instead. Somewhere along the line you have to draft a successful WR.
You have to compare the players you took versus players you could have taken. To come to the conclusion that MOST people will be drafting busts in the 6th round anyways, and that taking a defense doesn't cause you to change your draft strategy, that's just ridiculous.
------
How is the person drafting defense any less suseptible to drafting duds with his other picks? How is the person taking a defense not one step behind everyone else who didn't? I don't know about your drafts, but when I'm in the 7th round I have 7 positional players while you only have 6 and a defense. Back when I was in the first grade, 7 was more than 6.
We're not talking success vs. bust here. During the draft it is IMPOSSIBLE to know that. You draft bodies at positions, players you think will succeed, and you don't know what happens until the season is over.
How is a player drafted after the 6th round going to have a HIGHER bust rate than later round picks anyways. Every single round is full of bust risks... But your chance of hitting on a good player is much more likely in an early-middle round verus a late-middle round. It's common sense.
MadScott wrote:Thank you kindly stomper! Now if I'm not mistaken, Balt. and Buff. tied for points correct? While Balt. would have made sense being selected in the 6th rd last year seeing as it was the 11th ranked scorer in Yahoo last season.
I guess the trouble comes in when you see Buffalo, which was probably had late or via free agency tie them for points and the team that had them could use that pick for something else.
They were close - Baltimore had 186 pts for the year and Buffalo had 185 - that averages out to 11.6 pts/week for the two of them.
Fantasy Football: "Luck is where preparation meets opportunity"
I'm all for drafting BALTIMORE early. Notice I didn't say top tier. Because there is Baltimore and then the next tier starts. It's a very decent idea to draft that defense early. They will outproduce what they did last year. They are just plain dominant.
However, I'm probably NOT going to do that because I feel Pittsburgh (honestly not a homer pick people) is a real good option too and I can probably get them 3 rounds later. I'm pretty certain the Steelers will have a very solid year AND they play Cleveland championship week.
How you remedy the "catch-up" is by selecting one position to forfeit a starter (I prefer my 2nd WR or QB; they are much easier to find viable options and WW picks)...as opposed to filling in your starting offensive lineup with the first 6 or 7 picks.
Your draft is all educated guesses based on how you think guys will perform. To fix the catch up your research should bear out players who are falling beyond where you think their value is. For example, I believe Fitz and Porter are guys who will perform like the 4th and 5th round WRs or better but they are going a couple rounds later. Carson Palmer in the 9th round is an absolute steal in my opinion. Think guys like Hass, Bulger, and Green will substantially outperform him by 4 rounds?
It's not the only option to take a D early but it's one that you can make work. Like Bagel said 75% of the 6th round picks bust out so it's nice to know you definitely have another position locked up.
Azrael
Hall of Fame Hero
Posts: 8276
(Past Year: 21)
Joined: 29 Jun 2003
Yards this season: 1
Home Cafe: Football
Location: Keeping da cafe sucka free for 9 years straight
Part 1 of this Post (Gotta go to store, will finish part 2 when I return)
Alright, this is going to be a long post, but Kensat, this one is for you. While we, for the most part, have a disagreement in drafting philosophy, I think this post should help narrow that gap.
Before I begin I’m going to have to get you acquainted with standard deviations. Lets pretend that I average ten touchdowns per season with a standard deviation of three touchdowns. What this means is that sixty-eight percent of the time (68% is the benchmark for the first standard deviation) I’m going to score between seven and thirteen touchdowns, which is the standard deviation of three away, on either side, from my average of ten touchdowns.
This concept of standard deviations (which you can read further about online…just google standard deviation if you are interested) can be applied to ADP numbers to give you an idea of how often a certain player is going to be remaining on your draft board in an average draft. My thesis is that no matter who you pick in round six, you will be able to draft a quarterback (or third RB) with just as much value in round seven as you would have received if you picked a player from the same position in round six. This means that selecting a defense in that sixth round slot will bring back a much greater difference to your team than any other player you would have selected in round six.
Here are the ADP’s for quarterbacks based on a 12-team league with Normal lineup requirements:
The ADP values show that three quarterbacks are, on average, drafted in the sixth round (Collins, Favre, Hasselbeck). What I want to show you is that in a lot of situations one of these guys is still left for your next pick; since that is the case, you don’t lose any value from pick six to pick seven (I will discuss the rest of “catching up” later).
Lets pretend, for argument’s sake that you have the seventh pick in round six (which would mean you picked sixth in the first round). At that point in round six, half the time Collins would be left and similar odds would remain for Favre and Hasselbeck. However, if you pick them, you aren’t getting very much value for that pick…this is where they should go. If you selected the Ravens defense instead, there’s a good chance that one of these three would still be left in the seventh, making them a good value pick. Lets calculate the odds that one of these guys would still be remaining.
Collins’ ADP is 6.07 with a standard deviation of 7.91. This means that 68% of the time he’s selected between picks 5.11 and 7.03. This means that 16% of the time he’s selected after pick 7.03. 16% of the time Hasselbeck is remaining after 7.08. 16% of the time Favre is remaining after 7.06. This is an accumulative 48% of the time (have to remember these are all rough numbers…standard deviations aren’t an exact mathematical function…these are based off a limited quantity of mocks) that one of these sixth round quarterbacks is remaining in the seventh round.
So we have a 50% chance that a sixth round QB will fall to you in round seven. This is simply for quarterbacks. If you view the standard deviations position by position you see that as the draft drifts into the later rounds (sixth/seventh included) that the deviations begin to widen. This means that come your seventh round pick a player will be remaining (either at QB, RB3, WR3, TE, whatever) that you could have spent your sixth round pick on. Instead, you drafted the most consistent defense in the game and still grabbed a player with as much value as what you would have drafted in round six in round seven.
Now a lot of people will think “couldn’t you have taken a player in round six who was supposed to go in round five, but fell to you in round six”. Well, sure, that’s feasible, but, judging by the standard deviations for the earlier rounds, it (a player leaving his mean) isn’t as likely to occur.
Cafe Home
Fantasy Baseball
Fantasy Basketball
Fantasy Hockey
by Free Bagel » Wed Jun 22, 2005 4:53 pm 
Now if I'm not mistaken, Balt. and Buff. tied for points correct? While Balt. would have made sense being selected in the 6th rd last year seeing as it was the 11th ranked scorer in Yahoo last season.
), but in the end, the guy that went Baltimore in the 6th round is going to be ahead of me the majority of the time, not leave him playing "catch-up" to me.
