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Wallace in the 9th, easy decision. EDIT - Oh, and Ben in the 12th.

I do that deal. Blount is a horrible PPR RB, and Stevie Johnson is a big fat upgrade over Santana Moss. I'm not a fan of Jimmy Graham's, but meht, there's plenty of TE's available on the waiver wire.

Colt McCoy, Kevin Kolb, Ryan Fitzpatrick all have decent upside and could be on your waiver wire. Feel free to drop Braylon or Hernandez.

Well played sir. Consider dropping Chris Cooley, given his knee trouble for a TE with more upside (Jared Cook, Greg Olsen, ect.). Cooley is pretty much a replacement level TE at this point, you can get those guys on the waiver wire all day. People will give you crap for your RB group, but Best is a RB1 in PPR leagues. Handcuffing him with Jerome Harrison would also be a good idea, since most people's knock against him is how injury prone he is. Also, you're too deep at QB. QB is pretty unimportant in PPR leagues, so I'd consider trading Brees and try to get another stud WR or RB. And yes, I see that there are 6 points for passing TD's, it doesn't make that much difference.

1) QB & TE are the deepest positions, and there will probably be functional options on the waiver wire even in a league this deep. At RB, you'll be lucky if the waiver wire options step on the field. Hammer RB's early and often. 2) Be sure to handcuff your studs, especially if you have the bench space. In a league this deep, your fantasy season rides heavily on production of your top 3 picks. If you lose one to injury, you're toast. So pick guys with cheap handcuffs that are talented. If you have 6 bench spots or more, you should probably be holding 1-2 insurance policies on your top two picks. Guys like Jerome Harrison figure to have a large role if Best goes down, and he can be had after pick 120. 3) QB vs. WR in the early rounds, I'd probably lean towards WR. But its close. 4) Be the *last* team in your league to draft a tight end. You can't let them fall far enough. The Greg Olsen, Lance Kendrick, Jared Cook train should take you as far as you need to go.

Here's my picks, with my analysis for each pick. 12 team league, Interceptions = -6 points each, Fumbles = -4 points each, 6 points for all TD's QB/RB/RB/WR/WR/WR/TE/D/K, 4 Bench Spots 1.06 - Rodgers, QB --> First QB off the board, CJ2K & McCoy were other options, but with the QB scoring, QB is a more important position. 2.07 - McFadden, RB --> Highest RB on my board at the time. Fitzgerald/Calvin Johnson were the other options here. 3.06 - Hillis, RB --> Miles Austin dropped down here, but I'm not as low on Hillis as others. 4.07 - Holmes, WR --> Had to grab a WR, other options were Mike Williams, Colston, Lloyd 5.06 - Best, RB --> Tons of WR options I still liked on the board, so I went with a value pick here on a RB going a full round after his ADP. 6.07 - Finley, TE --> #1 TE on my board (and #48 on Yahoo's big board) is here at pick 67. I couldn't wait any longer. 7.06 - Smith (Car), WR --> Desperation pick. There were 5 WR's I liked when I picked Finley, none made it back to me. Other choices: Julio Jones, AJ Green, Sidney Rice 8.07 - Amendola, WR --> Other WR's available: Roy Williams, Robert Meachem, AJ Green still 9.06 - Sims-Walker, WR 10.07 - Bush (Mia), RB --> A 15 carry per game RB should not make it to round 10 in a 12 team league. Hopefully he has a good first few games, and I can trade him. 11.06 - Roberts, WR --> A breakout WR I like. 12.07 - Cardinals, D 13.06 - Henery, K

1 for 15 yards is still too high.

Past performance does not imply future results. You're too heavily weighting the past. For example, Best is very unlikely to have turf toe again this year.

I love reading how "X player looked fast" or "I believe X player is really talented". Because really there couldn't be anything more meaningless. In fact, I'll use this excerpt from FFToday's front page article" Stop. Please. Evaluating which NFL players are talented and which NFL players aren't is exceptionally difficult. Don't believe me, just look at the players teams are drafting in the 1st round. Ted Ginn Jr, Vernon Gholston, Reggie Bush. Those players were drafted by guys who get paid to evaluate talent for a living. They have giant crews dedicated to watching film and thinking about what makes a good NFL player. But they get it wrong all the time. What makes you think you can do better? Seriously? This kind of audacity is completely ludicrous. Sure, its fun to pretend we can evaluate talented players, but if you think you're better at it than other experts, you're wrong. Now, for the purposes of fantasy football, there are things you can analyze that will give you an edge over your competition. These are things you can be good at, that few people are thinking about. They are: -Determining how the scoring system of your league changes the value of certain positions. -Determining if a player's price (average draft position) is likely to return value on your investment. -Determining which players are going to be given the best opportunity to succeed. -Determining which players carry the most risk of their performance declining. So with these skills in mind, here's a list of things to think about when going into your draft. They don't require thinking about NFL talent, and they'll be far more productive in giving you an edge than trying to figure out which running back is faster. 1) Base your draft strategy around positions, as well as which players you're going to target. Should you be the first team in your league to draft a quarterback, or the last? Is it really important to load up on running backs? 2) Compare a player's price to where fantasy experts are projecting that player to finish. For example, Jimmy Graham is projected by ESPN to finish as the 11th TE. Given he's the 8th TE drafted, is he likely to return a profit on that investment? 3) Figure out which players will be given more of an opportunity to start. Hint: High draft picks and players being paid lots of money will typically be given more of an opportunity to succeed, and be given more playing time. 4) Make a "do not draft" list. Think of players in the early rounds that are most likely to see their skills decline. Which players are old? Which players have a large number of career carries? [/rant] So yeah, realistically the Oakland Raiders are probably the only NFL franchise that evaluates talent worse than you do. Stop evaluating talent. Start thinking about the things you can actually evaluate correctly.

Should I have compared them to current fantasy football experts? I don't think I could've found a guy last year who thought Darren McFadden was a top 20 RB in the NFL in terms of talent. I kept hearing "straight line runner", "goes down on first contact", blah blah blah. But if you ignored that BS, his *situation* was quite good. And in both cases (NFL & Fantasy Drafts) lots of people try to evaluate talent. Its just hard. Think about situation, and overall position based draft strategy. Its amazing to me that if you ask an opinion on if Josh Freeman is a good NFL quarterback, you'll get an opinion from everyone. If you ask people if they should draft a QB early in shallow PPR formats, they have no idea, even though that is based on facts and is easy to prove. 1) I'd say most successful fantasy players I know are value drafters. 2) Aren't predictions supposed to.... predict things? If a prediction is wrong quite often, isn't it useless? I understand that you can't be right 100% of the time, but it seems like being "talented" doesn't correlate super well to fantasy production.

Doesn't matter. FWIW I'd rank them: McFadden Nicks MJD Austin Forte Wayne Gore Jennings SJax

Being commish mostly means you're signing up to herd cats. Its a thankless job.

Ahem. A player's age, past workload, and injury history can all be figured out without watching a lick of film.

touche

Picking a QB first is fine. In the standard scoring mocks I've done, I usually prefer to get Vick/Rodgers and McFadden/Mendenhall. With your league only starting 2 WR's, you should wait and be one of the later teams to draft WR's.

GG you win.

Get him to give you a less useless player. Heath Miller is so boring, get him to at least add a guy with some upside. Sure, this is a great deal. But if the guy is this clueless, I think I'd try to go for more.

I'm not a fan of your WR's, TE, or QB. Looks to me like you spent too much on Romo, and it hurt you at WR. Graham is typically drafted too high for my tastes, his ADP assumes way too much improvement in year two. I'm not sure where you selected him, but if you had to pay his round 8 price tag as the 7th TE off the board, that's just too high IMO.

In rounds 10/11 you can find players with opportunity that don't need an injury to get opportunities for major upside. Nelson & Stewart will both have their opportunities cut by other players in a big way. Finley/Jennings/Jones/Driver are still around in Green Bay, and Williams is still there in Carolina on a low yield offense. In those rounds, I'd rather have: RB - Reggie Bush, Tim Hightower (especially getting 0.5 PPR) WR - Roy Williams, Jacoby Ford, Braylon Edwards, Danny Amendola, Lee Evans. All of those WR's have the opportunity to the be the #1 target on their team, not the 3rd/4th.

As an ex-UNC grad student, I've seen him play a fair bit. He's pretty big for a WR, and he was converted from runningback in college to WR. Great yards after the catch guy. Problem is, he's having mental lapses in training camp so far. So I wouldn't move him far up your WR flier list yet.

Bingo!

I've done it the past 3 years running (win one of my leagues while drafting a QB after round 8). QB in a normal sized league that starts only one is just such a deep position. Scoring systems will obviously change this some, but waiting until after round 8 is always a possibility. Especially because the decline in QB quality is exponential. There really isn't much difference between the 8th QB selected and the 15th QB selected. Especially in PPR leagues, I try to be the last team to draft a QB.

What 7 were before him? Most sites have Freeman ranked as about QB #11-13, so grabbing him 7th seems like a spot that will be hard to return value. These picks aren't the greatest. Nelson & Stewart both have very limited playing time opportunity, and at round 9-11, we should be looking for more upside than what these guys offer. Its a pretty good team you've got there, and if MJD's knee is okay, I think you've got a solid team. I don't think picking Ingram at 8 is early at all (its actually late given his ADP of 5-6ish). I just wish your bench depth had more upside.

1) This (complaining about elite QB's being gone in round 3) pretty much tells me that you're over-valuing the QB position. In a PPR league, QB is the least valuable position, and you should probably be the last person in your league to draft one. I know you think waiting on Romo is fine, but I'd keep waiting personally. Roethlisberger in round 6-7 is the first time I start looking to address the QB position in PPR drafts, and I'm usually waiting longer than that. 2) Drafting two defenses is crazy. Stop. 3) You don't need a back up TE with Witten as your TE1. At least wait longer than round 13 to select your TE2. 4) Your WR4 & WR5 spot are really poor picks, with very low upside. Cotchery & Burleson are very poor late round fliers. Aim for picks with more upside, rather than replacement level players that are freely available on the waiver wire. 5) I'd like to have another upside RB on the roster. A running back like Hightower/R. Bush/Wells/Addai/ect. Guys who catch a good number of passes and are available in the mid-late rounds.

Pat Shurmur throws the ball a TON. The Rams were top 6 last year in pass attempts per game. Shurmur runs a West Coast scheme, and is a graduate of the Andy Reid "throw the ball on 3rd and 1" ideaology. Add to that the fact that Colt McCoy is a running QB, and I'm willing to take a chance on him as a QB2 in round 14. Put me on the band wagon.