It's Just a Sweet Sweet Fantasy

I recently had my Fantasy Football Draft. I'm in a 14-team league with my fellow CWRU Swimmming Alums. I will now offer a bit recap of my draft and thoughts regarding my team. First off my players are currently as follows:

QB - Jake Delhomme (Car)
WR - Randy Moss (Oak)
WR - Terrell Owens (Phi)
WR - Mike Williams (Det)
RB - Chris Brown (Ten)
RB - Carnell Williams (TB)
TE - Randy McMichael (Mia)
K - Mike Nugent (NYJ)
Def - Baltimore
BN - Marshall Faulk (StL)
BN - Kyle Boller (Bal)
BN - Bubba Franks (GB)
BN - Nate Goings (Car)
BN - Matt Jones (Jax)
BN - NYG Defense

I arrived in the draft room with the #4 overall pick. I was a bit perplexed with this pick. It is good to have a high pick, but I ended up picking Randy Moss first. I'm not sure if he was worth the #4 overall pick, but I'm expecting big things from him in Oakland this year and he was one of the players I really wanted. Ideally, I would have traded this pick down because I knew he'd most likely still be available later in the first round. Since the draft goes in reverse order each round, the next pick I had was #25 overall. This gave me plenty of time for players I wanted to get picked. I knew that I wanted a RB next. Examining the board I decided to go with the youngster Chris Brown. He's entering his 3rd year and should improve on his 100-yd season of 2004, right? Yes, except for one little fact that I forgot. THE TITANS TRADED FOR TRAVIS HENRY AND THE TWO BACKS WILL BE SPLITTING TIME. Arrrrggghhh! That was my first stupid move. RBs make or break your FFB team and going into the 3rd round with no dominant back, and few left, I left my backfield pretty much screwed. Round 3, I ignored my need for another quality RB and went with the mantra, "Best Player Available." To my amazement, the eternal disturbance Terrell Owens was still available here. Since my RB crew is going to suck, I may as well have a kick-ass receiving corps. TO is a bit of a wildcard here. Who knows 1) if he will play, and 2) how well he will. The popular notion is if he does play, he will produce. But there is so much up in the air with his situation in Philly that this is a risky move. It's kinda like drafting Barry Bonds this year for FBB. He was injured, but if you drafted him, you knew he'd have a big year if he played. Well here we are at the end of August and BB still hasn't played. Hopefully TO has a great year.

Round 4 I went with the rookie RB out of Tampa, Carnell "Cadillac" Williams. He is expected to be the featured back, but with all rookies, you never know how he is going to do. Round 5, I made what could be a premature move by drafting the Baltimore Defense. Was Round 5 too early to draft my defense as the next one wasn't drafted until 31 picks later? This could be debated, but ever since my RB debacle I needed to save face and I wanted the Raven Defense. Round 6 gave me a steal with Randy McMichael, a vastly underrated TE from Miami. Round 7 I picked up my QB, Jake Delhomme. I'm actually surprised he was still around. While he might not be a dominating QB, he'll still put up numbers that I'll be happy with. Round 8 I picked up Marshall Faulk. He is heading into the twilight of his career and will not be the featured back in St. Louis. He will, however, still contribute to the Rams offense. He'll be able to come off of the bench for me and either run or catch the ball for quality yards. Round 9 I picked up the rookie Mike Williams. He hasn''t played in 2 years, so who knows what he will do. Also, he's part of the receiver-heavy Lions team, so his numbers may not be as good as they would be if he was with a different team. In round 10 I got the kicker I wanted, Mr. Nugent. Following the OSU Buckeyes as much as I have may have given me the advantage here. The beauty of this league is that a lot of people are from out of state and may not have followed OSU as closely as I have and don't know the beauty that is the leg of Mike Nugent. In a few years he will be one of the best kickers in the league and I'm expecting a great rookie campaign out of him. The rest of the draft involved me bolstering my bench, getting Boller, Franks (in round 12?!), Az-Zahir Hakim, Trent Dilfer, and the New York Football Giants defense. I have subsequently dropped Trent Dilfer for Nate Goings and Az-Zahir Hakim for Matt Jones. Goings will bolster my RB crew and I got Matt Jones last night after watching him make a great catch against Atlanta. Jones is a curious case. He was a QB who could run in college, was drafted #21 overall and is now playing receiver. Apparantly he makes highlight reel catches daily in practice.

I was initially disappointed with my team, due to my stupidity with the RBs. After a couple of days and a couple of moves, I'm happy. I'm thinking that overall I've got a pretty good team. Is my strength in other places (WR, Def, K) good enough to overcome my deficiencies at RB? Only time will tell. But it should be a good year.

A couple of last things here. My team now has it's 3rd name in almost as many weeks. I started out as Awkward Moments, in reference to my still-1st place FBB team Awkward Silences. Then I changed it to Team Pretention. I wasn't exactly enamored with that name so after seeing the 40-Year Old Virgin changed to the current incarnation of Pedestal Pussies. One of the guys in the league, Mr. Kevin Day has started a FFB website, the Fantasy Football Calculator. Pretty cool, and I wish him luck with that.