Hindsight is 20-20. And with hindsight, we can now look back at the second-round decision I made on Monday in the Fanex Draft. In that PPR league, I was faced with the decision of whether to select a second wide receiver (Randall Cobb) or whether to instead go with a running back (Jeremy Hill), potentially saving me from being backed into a corner on a running back later.
Guys in this league tend to go hard after running backs, and you’ve got to pick up a few somewhere along the line.
At the same time, the scoring system strongly favors pass catchers. You want to get a core of those guys who’ll catch 90-110 passes, churning out the big points week after week. And wide receivers are more durable than running backs. That’s why Antonio Brown was the No. 1 player on my board overall.
I ended up going with Hill in the second round. I’ve got him projected to score 226 points in this format. I followed that with Emmanuel Sanders in the third round. I like Sanders, I’ve got him in that second tier of receivers, not far behind the really big dogs – Brown, Julio Jones, Dez Bryant and Odell Beckham Jr. I have Sanders scoring 263 points, so that 489 points from that RB-WR combo.
If, on the road not taken, I had picked Cobb back at 2.05, I would have gotten his 271 points. I’ve got him 8 points ahead of Sanders. But in the third round, with a WR-WR start, I probably then would have felt it necessary to select a running back. It would have been C.J. Spiller (I think he’ll catch 70-plus passes for the Saints). Spiller I’ve got at 194 points, which is 32 less than Hill.
The Cobb-Spiller combo is worth 465 overall, and that’s 24 less than what I ended up with from Hill-Sanders. So things seem to be working out OK.
In this case, I will also note that had I opened with Beckham-Cobb, when we got to pick 3.08, Sanders would have still been sitting there, and he’d have been awfully appealing. So there’s a pretty good chance I would have taken Sanders, thinking that Spiller most likely would have been there at 4.05. If it had gone that way, Matt Pitzer still would have nabbed Spiller at 4.02, and I probably would have been flustered into forcing my fourth-round pick on Alfred Morris or Mark Ingram. Those guys are decent players, but neither is a big enough factor in the passing game to be an elite option in this scoring format.
FANEX NATIONAL DRAFT | ||
---|---|---|
1.01 | MIN | Adrian Peterson |
1.02 | PIT | LeVeon Bell |
1.03 | GB | Eddie Lacy |
1.04 | KC | Jamaal Charles |
1.05 | PIT | Antonio Brown |
1.06 | NE | Rob Gronkowski |
1.07 | DAL | Dez Bryant |
1.08 | NYG | Odell Beckham Jr. |
1.09 | ATL | Julio Jones |
1.10 | CHI | Matt Forte |
1.11 | DEN | Demaryius Thomas |
1.12 | SEA | Marshawn Lynch |
2.01 | GB | Jordy Nelson |
2.02 | BUF | LeSean McCoy |
2.03 | PHI | DeMarco Murray |
2.04 | DEN | C.J. Anderson |
2.05 | CIN | Jeremy Hill |
2.06 | DET | Calvin Johnson |
2.07 | HOU | Arian Foster |
2.08 | BAL | Justin Forsett |
2.09 | SD | Melvin Gordon |
2.10 | GB | Randall Cobb |
2.11 | CIN | A.J. Green |
2.12 | TB | Mike Evans |
3.01 | IND | T.Y. Hilton |
3.02 | CHI | Alshon Jeffery |
3.03 | IND | Andrew Luck |
3.04 | GB | Aaron Rodgers |
3.05 | PHI | Jordan Matthews |
3.06 | IND | Frank Gore |
3.07 | HOU | DeAndre Hopkins |
3.08 | DEN | Emmanuel Sanders |
3.09 | NO | Brandin Cooks |
3.10 | JAC | T.J. Yeldon |
3.11 | SD | Keenan Allen |
3.12 | CAR | Kelvin Benjamin |
4.01 | IND | Andre Johnson |
4.02 | NO | C.J. Spiller |
4.03 | PIT | Martavis Bryant |
4.04 | MIA | Lamar Miller |
4.05 | NE | Julian Edelman |
4.06 | SEA | Jimmy Graham |
4.07 | DET | Golden Tate |
4.08 | NO | Mark Ingram |
4.09 | OAK | Amari Cooper |
If you want to follow the progress of this league (each guy submits a scouting report for each of his picks) it’s being hosted at MyFantasyLeague.com.
—Ian Allan