Did a draft this morning...and what were they thinking?

[4Pack]

Or am I the one that missed the boat? Standard Yahoo 12 team H2H league and the 8th and 9th rounds went like so:

Round 8
1. Minnesota
2. Donald Driver
3. Heath Miller
4. San Diego
5. New England
6. Jacksonville
7. Reggie Bush
8. Kevin Curtis
9. New York
10. Chicago

Round 9
1. Nick Folk
2. Shayne Graham
3. Dallas
4. Anthony Gonzalez
5. Nate Kaeding
6. Earnest Graham
7. Adam Vinatieri
8. Eli Manning
9. Joey Galloway
10. Rob Bironas

12 picks on Kickers on Defenses (I grabbed Bush and Gonzo). WTH? Is that the very definition of getting caught up in a run on defenses and kickers? I could not believe what I was seeing.

[treat24]

Sounds like the entire draft was horrible. You should have never gotten Bush or Gonzalez that late. Graham went rounds too late as well.

Your friends obviously fall for runs on positions.

Given the runs on Ks and Ds and letting 3rd round players drop to rounds 8 and 9... sounds like your league is full of really poor drafters. How you didn't pick Bush and Graham much earlier is kind of weird also unless you didn't pick them earlier knowing that the rest of your league doesn't know how to draft.

you said 12 team, you showed 10 picks per round... did I miss something?

[Eagle Baseball]

are you sure they were at the draft? if Yahoo drafts for you they will fill all the starting positions before adding a bench player. standard leagues have 9 starting positions. so in rd 8 & 9 Yahoo will fill your Def & K if you are on autodraft.

[4Pack]

are you sure they were at the draft? if Yahoo drafts for you they will fill all the starting positions before adding a bench player. standard leagues have 9 starting positions. so in rd 8 & 9 Yahoo will fill your Def & K if you are on autodraft.

First off....it was actually a 10 team league and not 12.

I assumed all but 2 managers were at the draft since they were "logged on". 2 of the managers did however have their "auto draft" mode selected. Their was small talk between a few of us however. But...I suppose your theory could be the reason behind the odd draft.

I was actually taking the draft only half seriously (it is a Yahoo Public league afterall) and spent more time putzing around the house between picks than I did on the puter monitoring selections. It was in the 8th round that I also had my positiuon players filled and went about working on roster depth.

Their were also 4 QB's taken in the lst 2 rounds which kind of suprised me.

[Kensat30]

Yahoo leagues are pretty weak.

I did an experiment over a few of seasons on yahoo. I drafted about 50 teams for three years running and then just logged in and set my starting lineup each week. Took about 15 minutes a week to run. The first year I played all yahoo "competitive leagues". And in every year after that I played in yahoo "winner" leagues when I was able. Keep in mind that I made no waiver moves and no trades throughout the entire year and my win percentage was based solely on my drafting ability (or opponents lack of).

I made the playoffs in about 90% of those leagues.
I made the Super Bowl in about 70% of those leagues.
I won the Super Bowl in about 50% of those leagues.

So out of every 3 accounts that I made (4 teams each). Basically 11 out of 12 teams made the playoffs. 9 out of 12 made the Super Bowl. 6 out of 12 won the Super Bowl.

With the luck factor involved in fantasy, this pretty much led me to conclude that yahoo leagues are not worth the time and effort. Free leagues in general are not worth the time because people just don't pay attention. Even in the most competitive leagues, sometimes there is a 10-20% abandonment factor if there is nothing at stake.

[Free Bagel]

Yahoo leagues are pretty weak.

I did an experiment over a few of seasons on yahoo. I drafted about 50 teams for three years running and then just logged in and set my starting lineup each week. Took about 15 minutes a week to run. The first year I played all yahoo "competitive leagues". And in every year after that I played in yahoo "winner" leagues when I was able. Keep in mind that I made no waiver moves and no trades throughout the entire year and my win percentage was based solely on my drafting ability (or opponents lack of).

I made the playoffs in about 90% of those leagues.
I made the Super Bowl in about 70% of those leagues.
I won the Super Bowl in about 50% of those leagues.

So out of every 3 accounts that I made (4 teams each). Basically 11 out of 12 teams made the playoffs. 9 out of 12 made the Super Bowl. 6 out of 12 won the Super Bowl.

With the luck factor involved in fantasy, this pretty much led me to conclude that yahoo leagues are not worth the time and effort. Free leagues in general are not worth the time because people just don't pay attention. Even in the most competitive leagues, sometimes there is a 10-20% abandonment factor if there is nothing at stake.

Is 50 the actual number or were you exaggerating?

If it's the actual number, that's a pretty cool little experiment you ran there

It basically backs up my theory of skill "tiers" and a skill "ceiling" in fantasy football. With so much luck in the game, there is little differentiation of people from within a "tier", but rather only across tiers.

Meaning, if you took a league of 12 of the top FF'ers from the cafe and ran the league for 100 years, over that amount of time everyone would have basically the same amount of success. I don't think one or two guys would come out way ahead because once you hit a certain level of knowledge about the game, there's just no way to differentiate one person from the next over the course of time.

But, if you took one of those people and put them into a league with 11 other average joe's, they would come out way way on top over the course of 100 years.