Just read all 10 pages of this thread. (!) This is all relative and depends on so many variables and so much luck it's impossible to generalize. Hence the frustration that the beat goes on. Anyone who hopes for a firm answer will either leave hopeless or misguided.
Whether it's RBs, QBs, or WRs late, the key is correctly/luckily predicting which players will do well, regardless of position. Some say they got good enough RBs off waiver last year but couldn't get good WRs. I picked up J.Knox (return TDs get pts), J. Maclin, and Mike Wallace of waiver wire last season. I also dropped Sidney Rice early in order to get Knox. It seemed OK at the time, but didn't work out that way. I also got C.Williams on waivers, and that worked out great. But that shows the fortune/misfortune of the draft and waiver wire.
Last season I was lucky/smart enough to pick up Schaub in the 5th but unlucky/dumb enough to take Calvin Johnson in the 3d. Going with Reggie Wayne & MJD, that's a solid core that won a championship. But It could easily have been Forte in 1st/Owens in 3d/Palmer in 4th/etc., and worked out terribly. No one would say the latter were necessarily bad picks last preseason, whereas before last season Schaub was considered high risk because he hadn't played anywhere near a full season to that point. Him over Palmer or even Hasselbeck was no guarantee. Same with Cadillac last year. He didn't have a record season, but he was an early WW pickup who served solid RB3+ on a roster.
The good examples look great in hindsight when you pick them after seeing how everything plays out. But when it goes the other way.... not so much. The year Brady threw 50 TDs, he was not a first round "guaranteed/safe" pick. Whatever team had Brady in 2007 won 90% of the leagues. The following year, when he was a "guaranteed" No 1 pick, he wound up being a wasted pick due to injury.
The best argument is to take the best player that can help you (depth or trade), considering who is left/who you think you can get next. If you're 8th in the draft and can predict that Matthews/Grant/Greene will still be there in the 16th, take Randy Moss. If feel like there's only 1 RB left who you trust to be a top RB and you don't see any others you'd want that would be gone in the next 12 picks, value that RB pick higher.
I drafted 8th this year, took AJ over Turner(!), then Brees in 2d round. When I got to third (32nd pick), I was starting to regret A.Johnson over Turner. By then great RBs were gone and there were none I wanted at that high a pick--Ronnie Brown/Bradshaw/Wells/Moreon (suspicious of his constant groin/hamstring pulls). But I saw RBs in the 4th I felt I could get--Foster/Best/etc. So I took another WR in the 3d--Colston, then got Foster/M.Bush/C.Williams/B.Scott/K.Huggins later on.
As screwed as I feel about my RBs, I don't think I'd feel much better with a Moreno/Wells in there instead of a C.Williams/M.Bush but without a Colston.
At end of season, if Foster and Bernard Scott (or whoever) blow up, I look like the geniuses who drafted Chris Johnson/R.Rice last year. If they bomb, I look like people who drafted Felix Jones, Darren McFadden, Clinton Portis or Derrick Ward last season....really dumb.
Cuffs wrote:Just read all 10 pages of this thread. (!) This is all relative and depends on so many variables and so much luck it's impossible to generalize. Hence the frustration that the beat goes on. Anyone who hopes for a firm answer will either leave hopeless or misguided.
Whether it's RBs, QBs, or WRs late, the key is correctly/luckily predicting which players will do well, regardless of position. Some say they got good enough RBs off waiver last year but couldn't get good WRs. I picked up J.Knox (return TDs get pts), J. Maclin, and Mike Wallace of waiver wire last season. I also dropped Sidney Rice early in order to get Knox. It seemed OK at the time, but didn't work out that way. I also got C.Williams on waivers, and that worked out great. But that shows the fortune/misfortune of the draft and waiver wire.
Last season I was lucky/smart enough to pick up Schaub in the 5th but unlucky/dumb enough to take Calvin Johnson in the 3d. Going with Reggie Wayne & MJD, that's a solid core that won a championship. But It could easily have been Forte in 1st/Owens in 3d/Palmer in 4th/etc., and worked out terribly. No one would say the latter were necessarily bad picks last preseason, whereas before last season Schaub was considered high risk because he hadn't played anywhere near a full season to that point. Him over Palmer or even Hasselbeck was no guarantee. Same with Cadillac last year. He didn't have a record season, but he was an early WW pickup who served solid RB3+ on a roster.
The good examples look great in hindsight when you pick them after seeing how everything plays out. But when it goes the other way.... not so much. The year Brady threw 50 TDs, he was not a first round "guaranteed/safe" pick. Whatever team had Brady in 2007 won 90% of the leagues. The following year, when he was a "guaranteed" No 1 pick, he wound up being a wasted pick due to injury.
The best argument is to take the best player that can help you (depth or trade), considering who is left/who you think you can get next. If you're 8th in the draft and can predict that Matthews/Grant/Greene will still be there in the 16th, take Randy Moss. If feel like there's only 1 RB left who you trust to be a top RB and you don't see any others you'd want that would be gone in the next 12 picks, value that RB pick higher.
I drafted 8th this year, took AJ over Turner(!), then Brees in 2d round. When I got to third (32nd pick), I was starting to regret A.Johnson over Turner. By then great RBs were gone and there were none I wanted at that high a pick--Ronnie Brown/Bradshaw/Wells/Moreon (suspicious of his constant groin/hamstring pulls). But I saw RBs in the 4th I felt I could get--Foster/Best/etc. So I took another WR in the 3d--Colston, then got Foster/M.Bush/C.Williams/B.Scott/K.Huggins later on.
As screwed as I feel about my RBs, I don't think I'd feel much better with a Moreno/Wells in there instead of a C.Williams/M.Bush but without a Colston.
At end of season, if Foster and Bernard Scott (or whoever) blow up, I look like the geniuses who drafted Chris Johnson/R.Rice last year. If they bomb, I look like people who drafted Felix Jones, Darren McFadden, Clinton Portis or Derrick Ward last season....really dumb.
Funny to read these threads... in my league (12 guys), top 12 are all QBs. They get the most points cause of 1pt per 25yds passing and points for comps... TD passes are the same as RB scores too
Pengh wrote:Funny to read these threads... in my league (12 guys), top 12 are all QBs. They get the most points cause of 1pt per 25yds passing and points for comps... TD passes are the same as RB scores too
That's erroneous logic. You need to think about a given QB in relation to the average QBs, not just gross points scored. As soemone else said, the 49ers D scored more points last year than DeAngelo Williams, Cedric Benson, Rashard Mendenhall, and Matt Forte. But you're not going to start drafting the D in round 2-3, are you? No. Why? It's because the gross points doesn't mean jack. Defenses aren't worth that much because DST 2 through 11 scored within 76% of the points the top D scored--a lesser disparity than the disparity between points scored by the top RB and the rest of the pack.
Chris Johnson (~340 pts - best RB) outscored Ray Rice (~240 - 4th best RB) by 100 pts. Rice's fantasy points were only 70% of what Johnson's were. With RBs scoring less points, the disparity between Johnson's points and Rice's was actually higher than the disparity between the top QB and the next 11.
QBs 2 through 11 last season scored at least 70% of the points scored by No. 1 Rodgers last season. You have to go to Donovan McNabb (12th) before you hit a QB who scored less than 70% of the points Rodgers scored. So you only go down 3 RBs before you get to RBs scoring less than 70% of the top, but you have to go down 12 QBs before you hit that same positional scoring disparity.
Even taking out Chris Johnson--the clear outlier--RBs 3 through 16 scored at least 62% of the points scored by AP last season, then the numbers drop off from there. Doing the same with QBs (taking out Rodgers as an outlier), QBs 3-18 scored at least 62% of the points scored by Schaub.
So the "QBs score more points" logic is erroneous.
Still, you have to draft right. None of this means anything if you picked Forte in round 1 over Brees or if you picked Matt Ryan in round 4 over Cedric Benson. The key is picking the right players no matter the round.
It is true that QBs shouldn't be drafted first simply because they score more points. Still a 30% difference between the top QB and QBs 2-11 is a bigger net difference than a 30% difference between the top RB and Ray Rice. While the player's value is determined relative to the others at the player's position, you can't measure it in percentage of production, you have to switch to total production. This is the extent to which the QBs scoring the most points factors into your decision making.
It doesn't matter if Eli Manning's's 17.8 ppg is 71% of Aaron Rodgers's 25.1 and Ray Rice's 15.4 ppg is 72% of CJ's 21.4.
It matters that Eli's 17.8 ppg is 7.3 less than Rodgers and Ray Rice's 15.4 is 6 ppg less than CJ's.
Because CJ was a bigger outlier at RB than Rodgers was at QB, if you compare Rodgers to any QB outside of the top 5, he's going to compare much more favorably than Adrian Peterson will to the RBs from the 6-20 range in terms of ppg. The difference between Rodgers and Romo was much bigger than the difference between AP and Frank Gore.
So yes you do compare players only to their own positions, but you then convert the results to ppg rather than keep them at percentage of production if you want to find the true pragmatic dropoff from one player to another as far as its relationship to your hypothetical W/L expectation is concerned.
As screwed as I feel about my RBs, I don't think I'd feel much better with a Moreno/Wells in there instead of a C.Williams/M.Bush but without a Colston.
This is the key IMO, and those two names are specifically ones I don't feel comfortable with. I don't like question marks in the 2nd, and especially not in the 1st. With my draft looming I'm still uncertain about my draft order at end of the 1st round, though I'm still leaning towards an RB\WR.
Numbers showing taking a RB before a QB is still a good idea.
Top-10 Players at QB and RB. YTD scoring. Player name, ADP. Top-20 picks in bold.
Philip Rivers, 40 Aaron Rodgers 13 Kyle Orton, 132 Peyton Manning, 14 Drew Brees, 11 Tom Brady, 31 Michael Vick (!), 80 Eli Manning, 90 Matt Ryan, 98 Carson Palmer, 103
Average ADP = 61.2 Point separation between 1st and 10th: 36 Note: Vick's superman performance lands him in the top 10 despite missing games due to his injury. Vick's surprisingly high ADP is likely due to Kolb owners' handcuffing.
Arian Foster, 75 Adrian Peterson, 2 Frank Gore, 7 Peyton Hillis, 85 Chris Johnson, 1 Darren McFadden, 111 LeSean McCoy, 59 Rashard Mendenhall, 14 Ahmad Bradshaw, 98 Jamaal Charles, 42
Average ADP = 49.4 Point separation between 1st and 10th: 63 Note: Elite backs were taken, on average, a full round before elite QBs.
Top 10 draft picks at QB, RB. Name, YTD rank. Top 20 performers in bold for RB, Top 10 performers in bold for QB. Evaluation is based on scarcity at position, i.e. most leagues start 1 QB and 2 RB. A bust is anyone not landing in the top tier at that position.
Drew Brees, 5 Aaron Rodgers, 2 Peyton Manning, 4 Tony Romo, 22 Tom Brady, 6 Matt Schaub, 17 Philip Rivers, 1 Brett Favre, 25 Kevin Kolb (lol), 32 Jay Cutler, 19.
"Bust rate" = 50%. Note: Kolb is 32nd, meaning he is actually outproducing some NFL team. I'm guessing the Panthers?
Chris Johnson, 5 Adrian Peterson, 2 Maurice Jones-Drew, 11 Ray Rice, 16 Michael Turner, 15 Frank Gore, 3 Ryan Mathews, 41 Rashard Mendenhall, 8 Shonn Greene, 38 DeAngelo Williams, 43
"Bust rate" = 30% Note: None of the first 6 RBs taken busted.
Data from Yahoo! Corrections appreciated. Comments welcome. No, these numbers do not tell the whole story, and yes, I am biased.
Good post and a good time to revisit this discussion.
This will, of course, be very anecdotal and relative because there are so many player variations, and it not only depends on what players you took instead of an RB in the early rounds and what RBs you reached for (relatively) in later rounds to make up.
Looking back at the ADP's, though, it seems like WRs are harder to predict than RBs, which might explain the higher "bust rate". There are so many variables with WRs (QB play or weather, primarily), and there are so many more receiving options on a team that can affect many WRs production from year to year.
I am in 2 leagues with similar scoring, and did the RB late method in one draft and 1st round RB in the other. Using the Late RB method, I took A.Johnson first, Brees second, Colston third, and A.Foster fourth. I am hurting at RB2 and have been filling in with L.Blount, M.Bush, and R.Torain. Week to week this has worked out OK, but I have no idea who I'll start next week.
Had I not drafted Colston in Rd.3, I would probably have taken McCoy, who was available IIRC. Still, had I grabbed Bradshaw instead of M. Bush around round 7 (or Hills in round 11!), I would be winning the league and would be fine with Colston. (As it stands I'm in
In the other league, I took Gore first, followed by WR (Marshall), WR (C.Johnson), WR (Boldin). I'm stuck with Cutler or Freeman at QB, though. The only reason I'm 1st in this league is I did grab Bradshaw in the later rounds, and he's saved my RB2 spot.
Still, looking at the other WRs available going in rounds 2-4, there is a lot of inconsistency. Greg Jennings, S.Smith (Carolina), B.Marshall, Wayne, Boldin, Smith (NYG). So as inconsistent as Colston has been, theres on'y a couple WRs with ADPs around 2-4 who have been much more consistent: C.Johnson, Fitzgerald (not amazing, but steady), and maybe D.Jackson. IMO, this inconsistency strongly supports taking an early as a lower-risk move.
There is hay to be made in each position really in the FA market but again it comes down to position scarcity. Yeah you could grab Hillis, Torain, Blount as FAs, but heck you could have picked up a guy in Garrard just this week as a matchup play against Houston. Chances are there are still startable QBs in your league out there as FAs.
The most important play looks like whether you got Gates or picked up Tamme. Dustin Keller has done squat in about 6 weeks and he's still the 4th highest scoring TE in my league. But the advantage you get from having Gates over other TEs has just been ridiculous.
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by Cuffs » Thu Sep 02, 2010 10:42 pm 
