613 Ballers post-draft forecast

For those of you who haven't caught the wave of fantasy sports I highly recommend it. The basic concept is that you pick a sport you like (there are fantasy leagues for almost every sport), and then you pick a format that sounds most appealing, (head-to-head, rotisserie, salary cap, etal.) and then you pick your team and go up against your friends or a random bunch of people that also presumably enjoy the same sport.

Hence, the third season of the 613 Ballers kicked off on Sunday night with the annual live entry draft to much fan fare and excitement. Anticipation was high as we had the largest amount of spectators for are draft ever, (ok three spectators is better than none).

In the first season, I finished dead last in the league. Partially due to the fact that I didn't dedicate myself at all to my team, and partially because I had no less than 6 fantasy teams across 3 sports and couldn't find the time to properly balance and pick my roster for this "permanent" team. In addition, I wasn't fully aware of the importance of knowing the scoring algorithm, and hence picked players that while good at their position, did little to boost my week to week score, thus tanking my chances at any sort of success. In the second season, I scaled back, only participated in 5 fantasy teams across 3 sports, of which the basketball and hockey teams I put on cruise control, didn't think about, didn't tweak their line up or anything. The results were astounding, I won one of the football leagues, came third in another, and improve my result in this league, the subject of sed article to 6th out of 8.

Every year in June, we protect our core rosters, the remaining players go back into the general pool to be picked up at draft time. This year we had two new teams join the league, so we protected 10 of 20 players on our team, and they were given first chance at populating their rosters from the remainder. I had two of my players taken, which left me with 13, of which I had to fill the remaining seven spots, with left overs and rookies. Since this is a "keeper" league, your core team carries over from season to season, so drafting a rookie can mean many years of success, while drafting a veteran might only be good for this year.

Each week you have an active team, they are the players that are actually getting you points. If you have someone on your team who's on "reserve" they're dead to you that week. You actually kind of hope that if they are playing, they have a crappy week because if they do better than one of your active players, well....you may a bad decision.

Here's what I was going off of in regards to active slots every week and who I had remaining on my team after the expansion draft:

QB Phillip Rivers, SD
QB Ben Rothlisberger PIT
RB Maurice Jones-Drew JAC
RB Jonathan Stewart CAR
RB Pierre Thomas NO
WR Bernard Berrian MIN
WR Jericho Cotchery NYJ
WR T.J. Houshmandzadeh SEA
WR Kevin Walter HOU
TE Bo Scaife TEN
K (none)
DST NY Jets

Reserves:
WR Micheal Jenkins ATL
DST Arizona Cardinals

And so the draft begins...draft order is determined by reverse order of last years standings, so with two new teams joining I ended up with 5th pick in each round.

Right off the bat, you can see some obvious holes in my team, I have no reserve QB, RB, TE, and no starting K. The latter two are not the biggest deal, because in fantasy football, it's the QB, RB and WR who typically make or break you. The others positions are the gravy on the fries, the icing on the cake, the tie-breakers in case it was close that week.

My first pick is a numbers game, I must play three running backs each week, I have no reserves at that position and currently all my actives are listed as "probable" for start of season...all of that is leaving a bad taste in my mouth, so I decide to fill the gap with a promising rookie, RB Donald Brown IND. He has the double benefit of being on a team where he will split the carries with their resident "star" running back, and that star has been injured in the past, giving my guy opportunity to shine on his own.

My second pick, is also a numbers game, I must play two quarter backs each week, and one of mine is a concussion prone alleged rapist, so he might not be available at times while he is either testifying against himself or sucking lunch out of a tube, so I pick the best of the worst that's still remaining and it kills me to do so, QB Shaun Hill SF.

My third pick, is to add more weight to my running core, figuratively not literally, and I pick up RB Rashard Mendenhall PIT, he's the latest addition to Pittsburgh ground assault. They have two other strong backs, but seeing that Willie Parker breaks down for 40% of the season and Mewelde Moore is less of an elegant and more of a power rusher, I'm banking on RM getting enough reps to at least be worthy of an active spot on someone else's bye-week.

My fourth pick, is more of a diversification than anything else. I need another wide receiver, even though I have bench at that position, let's just say I'm less than satisfied with Walter and Jenkins. So, sticking with my new favourite team, oh yay, I take WR Josh Morgan SF.

My fifth pick, is K Stephen Gostkowski NE, filling an obvious hole in my team with some solid veteran talent. FYI, kickers are generally the fluffers of fantasy teams. It is extremely rare that they do enough to be indistinguishable from each other. But as I "must" have one might as well pick up a veteran, seeing that kickers are the most protected position in the entire game, if you even touch them you get a 15 yard penalty and this guy has kicked some important kicks in his career. Not that that fact will stop him from missing any this year, it's just a norm, that if your kicker is under 35, he's a kid.

The air up there getting thin, I spend my sixth pick dreaming of prison rehabilitation programs and the rags to riches to rags to riches story (no I didn't stutter) that is QB Michael Vick PHI. Sure, he's tainted, but maybe he's got something to prove, maybe the tradition of the Philadelphia starter being injured for 6 weeks continues and he gets his redemption. Whatever it is, he used to be good, and we are DEEP into the available pool, just maybe.

My seventh and final pick is WR Chris Henry CIN, another guy who seems to have trouble staying on the right side of the law, but is known for his large catch and run game changers. He's not the first to go should I need to drop a player, but he's defintely going to have to fight for an active position.

So there you have it, I'm optimistic about this year and moving up another couple of spots in the league rankings, but I'm not holding out the hope that I'll be top of the table. You never know, the three teams that have dominated the top three spots since our leagues inception could be stricken by malaria or mysterious bout of gout. :-)

2nd & 20