FANTASY FOCUS

Well, the fantasy football draft is fast approaching, which means I will once again have to put aside my loyalty to the New England Patriots and attempt to keep my Seattle Seahawks dynamic duo (Shawn Alexander and Matt Hasselbeck) together again (one year I got stuck with Jake the Snake Plummer at QB). The Yahoo league operates at a distinct disadvantage of having family, friends, and other fantasy sports-related pals and friends-of-friends stretching across the Northeast. Getting everyone together for the draft due to travel, family obligations (I have a freaking family birthday party almost every weekend it seems) and work schedules has been a logistical nightmare. So despite my loud exhortations, we end up with the Yahoo draft where you rank all your players and the draft unfurls in a frenzied madness of the computer picking players in the order you have pre-ranked them. Not a keeper league, though I argue for that every year.

Suffice to say, the waiver wire is ALWAYS active the next day, which in a way is the charm of that kind of draft. Anyway, I am hardly one to give fantasy sports advice since my teams always suck. But there is a method to my madness: in their first seasons with new teams (2002? 2003? Whenever) Peerless Price and Lavernius Coles were both taken by me in the early rounds of the draft. Oh I suffered. Bad, bad pain. I also remember drafting Brett Favre early in the draft that year and it was his first year of the steady decline of his stats this millennium. Lesson learned? Load up on running backs, then sift through receivers and tightends. Anyone can find a serviceable QB, kicker, and defense on the cheap.

I remember back in the days when we played Sandbox fantasy football, we used to draft defensive players instead of a team defense. You got points for tackles, interceptions, td returns, fumble recoveries (I would think forced fumbles is a more worthy stat), and of course sacks. It certainly made for another level of strategy, but I hated it so much. No point, just a sidenote because Kat was talking about if I remembered drafting defensive players this morning. I remember, it drove me freaking nuts! Anyway, I think she misses it because she cannot have Tiki & Ronde Barber both piling up stats for her unless she grabs the Tampa defense.

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Comments

Kathy said…
Ok, Dianne stole my Tiki,even I am not crazy enough to draft him first overall... but you can bet your ass I got the Tampa Bay defense.