Do you select Drew Brees in the third round? Aaron Rodgers in the fourth? Ian Allan looks back at the Fanex Draft and explains his reasoning.
This is from the Fanex League, and I'll concede that every league is different -- not only the rules for the league, but the behaviors of the owners.
In this particular league's you're starting 3 WRs plus a flex (RB-WR-TE), so it's nice to assemble a corps of four wide receivers who can catch the ball. Most owners tend to devalue the quarterback position.
So in that kind of league, should you take Drew Brees in the middle of the third round? And should you select Aaron Rodgers in the middle of the fourth? I had the opportunity to select Rodgers, but instead traded away picks 4.07 and 9.06 for choices 5.08 and 6.06.
Bill Rehor and Fred Haley didn't like it. They wanted to see the quarterbacks selected earlier. "This seems to go against your own (very sound) arguments in the magazine," Rehor wrote. "What's the point of knowing more than they do if you still act the same way they do?"
But now that we're finishing the seventh round, let's go back and look at the various options. Now we can look at the issue with the benefit of hindsight.
Had I selected Brees in the third round, he would have added 376 points to my lineup. He's the top quarterback on my board. And with my most recent pick (7.06), I would have selected a receiver who would have scored 190 points. Think Cecil Shorts III or Lance Moore. 376 + 190 = 566 points.
But I went with Amendola in the third. It was either him or Randall Cobb. I think Amendola will be a catches monster (PPR format). Amendola on my board projects to be worth 243 points. And having selected him, I just chose my quarterback at 7.06. Colin Kaepernick at 350 points. If you don't like Kaep, there are some other nice quarterbacks there -- Luck, Romo, Russell Wilson. Anyway, 243 + 350 = 593 points. So that's a 27-point upgrade by skipping Brees.
Similarly for the fourth round. If I take Rodgers, then it's 368 + 190 = 558 points. But if I take Antonio Brown at pick 4.07, he's worth 228. Brown + Kaepernick = 578 points -- 20 points ahead of the Rodgers package.
All of this, of course, is contingent on the projections being correct. If Kaepernick sputters and stumbles to a bad year, I'll have made a a horrible mistake. But at the same time, Brees and Rodgers aren't guaranteed. Both of those teams are trying to work in lesser guys at left tackle.
We'll see.
--Ian Allan