FSTA Experts Draft Monday Night - Greg & Tom 2nd Pick

[Tom Kessenich]

Here's our team. This is without a doubt the ugliest group of RBs I've ever left a draft with. I love the Dion Lewis pick and handcuffing him late with James White means we should be in real good shape with that roster spot all season long. However, the rest of the RBs make me wanna projectile vomit. To be fair I really like McKinnon a lot but how many touches he gets in the same backfield with Adrian Peterson is a rather enormous question. So I guess it's only Crowell and Henry I don't care for. If I try really hard I suppose I could talk myself into liking them. Crowell could be the "starter" in Cleveland (even if Duke Johnson is the superior talent there) and if DeMarco Murray stinks again then Henry could get a chance to be the lead back in Tennessee so he could entertain RB2 potential at some point during his rookie season.

Maybe I'm convincing myself?

Maybe?

Anyway, that's the perils of a WR-WR-WR start in a 14-team league, especially one featuring a RB-crazed group like this one. The RB talent pool dries up real quick and you're just stuck if you don't get 'em quick which we decided not to do in this draft. I really like every other position on our team a lot but our RBs are pretty wretched. Greg and I are going to have to hit on the Waiver Wire big time to find some magic there. Wish us luck. I think we're gonna need it.

QB-Drew Brees
QB-Joe Flacco

RB-Dion Lewis
RB-Isaiah Crowell
RB-Derrick Henry
RB-Jerick McKinnon
RB-James White

WR-Julio Jones
WR-Randall Cobb
WR-TY Hilton
WR-Willie Snead
WR-Pierre Garcon

TE-Greg Olsen
TE-Martellus Bennett

K-Steve Hauschka
D-Patriots

[got heeem]

Think you would have been better off taking a RB in the 3rd rd.My son and I tried the 3 WR start in the ME one year.It was hard to find that other good RB in a 14 team league.As you found out.

[Tom Kessenich]

The RotoExperts show this morning on Sirius is doing a poll voting for the best team from last night's draft and Greg and I are among the final contenders. I didn't see the final results so I don't know how we did. Guess everybody's overlooking those putrid RBs.

[got heeem]

I vote for C Wiegert or C Liss to take top draft.

[Tom Kessenich]

Think you would have been better off taking a RB in the 3rd rd.My son and I tried the 3 WR start in the ME one year.It was hard to find that other good RB in a 14 team league.

Yeah we could've gone with something like:

Julio
Cobb
Lacy
Crabtree
Lewis

OR

Julio
Cobb
Lacy
Kevin White
Lewis

What that does is give us a less strength at WR/TE than we have now but far more strength at RB. You're giving something up in a 14-teamer. I don't think there's any way around that.

The decision for us really was the round where we took Brees. Greg and I were looking at several RBs but all of them had issues. We liked Abdullah but he's coming off a big injury and having taken one RB coming off a major injury we were reluctant to draft another one like that. Riddick is nice in PPR but he has a limited ceiling. Gore is about 300 years old. Rashad Jennings is about 400. Yeldon has Ivory lurking. JStew is still hurt again.

We didn't want to take a QB there but Brees is a proven stud who can get us 25-30 points per game. That's hardly a bad call if we decided to make it. Those other guys could be looking at around 10 ppg. So we went with the stud QB and hoped just one of those RBs would be there for us in the next round. Unfortunately none of them did because this group of guys LOVES drafting RBs. There were people in this league loading up on them who absolutely didn't need to at that point in the draft but as I said earlier in this thread that's just who they are and how they draft. Greg and I both knew that going in and they drafted true to form. One team in this league drafted six of them and another drafted four among their first six picks. It's what they do. So we caught after the Brees pick and then it was pretty much chaos after that for us at the RB position.

In hindsight we probably should've just taken Abdullah and said the hell with it. We were already going All In at that point with our approach. But I honestly thought Gore would keep falling or at the very least Jennings would be there because who the hell wants Rashad Jennings this year? But these guys love their RBs so nobody was there for us. We gambled and lost. It happens. Onto the Waiver Wire we go.

[CALI CARTEL]

That team looks pretty solid for a 14-teamer. Great top 3 WR (plus a solid #4), stud TE, stud QB, one stud RB (who you handcuffed with White), plus three more solid speculative RB options.

Maybe the Olsen pick was wrong since you were able to get Brees, but you can't draft in retrospect, it doesn't work like that.

[Tom Kessenich]

That team looks pretty solid for a 14-teamer. Great top 3 WR (plus a solid #4), stud TE, stud QB, one stud RB (who you handcuffed with White), plus three more solid speculative RB options.

Maybe the Olsen pick was wrong since you were able to get Brees, but you can't draft in retrospect, it doesn't work like that.

I'm fine with the Olsen pick because he's essentially a WR3 in PPR so that's another PPR asset and I think Greg would agree. I don't think taking a WR over him there makes much sense; he's just as valuable to us as any WR would be and factor in his position arguably more so. The question would be should we have doubled up on the RBs there instead of taking Olsen? Yeah that could've been an option. Something like Lewis and Gio. In hindsight that would look much better. But like you said you can't draft in retrospect and at the time we thought there would be at least one RB still on the board for us later. Unfortunately all of them were taken. Like I said we gambled and lost.

The good news is the players we took (i.e. Olsen and Brees) are great players so it's not like we rolled the dice on bums. Those guys are damn good so the bulk of our team is going to score a lot of points. We're just going to have to work some real RB magic on the Waiver Wire.

[got heeem]

Just the 1 pick in the 3rd rd and your team would have been the best.I think Snead would have been good enough as a WR3 and grabbed a top RB1 with your pick 3.JMO.

[Tom Kessenich]

Just the 1 pick in the 3rd rd and your team would have been the best.I think Snead would have been good enough as a WR3 and grabbed a top RB1 with your pick 3.JMO.

If Lewis stays healthy - and that's a big "if" I realize - he is a legit RB1 in PPR. He was RB4 in PPR scoring last season before he got hurt. So we have that top RB1 already if he can stay healthy. The issue I see is we don't have a RB2 we can rely on for a consistent 10 ppg anywhere on our roster. We have some guys who maybe can do that periodically if the stars all align for them potentially but nobody who I'm confident can do it consistently. That's without question the greatest weakness on our team.

[Greg Ambrosius]

The Fantasy Sports Network is doing a recap on the FSTA Industry Draft and on Friday I got a chance to explain our strategy with the 2nd overall pick. It's still just my ugly mug, but check out our team:

ow.ly/uU92301CV00