Hogs Haven Fantasy Football Debate--Running Back or Quarterback

If I’m a late round pick I usually go with a WR-WR-RB-RB-RB-QB strategy. This year I had the third pick and didn’t pick a QB until the 9th round.

I ended up with:

QB: Henne/Orton
RB: Mojo Drew, Ronnie Brown, Moreno, Portis
WR: Roddy White, BMarshall, Britt, Schilens, TO
TE: Gonzalez, Carlson

You can get some very good, high-upside QBs late – Joe Flacco and Chad Henne come to mind immediately, as does (surprisingly) Matthew Stafford. They’re borderline QB2s but still, the point differential between #1 and #12 (Flacco/Cutler range – both high-upside picks, too)

If I’m the 5th pick or below, I’m seriously considering taking a WR with my first pick instead of a RB. After the first few – AP, CJ2K, MJD – it gets a bit rough. Ray Rice is good but gets goal line steals from the other RBs. Frank Gore is also good but has durability issues. And after that, it gets rough. I’d prefer an Andre Johnson at 4 or 5 to the relative RBs there. He’s got better relative value over a lower WR.

I’ve done extraordinarily well waiting to draft QB’s until anywhere between the 5th and 8th rounds, for one simple reason… There are so many of them that put up good numbers. You can certainly get Aaron Rodgers at… say… 6th overall, and he may very well have an awesome year. But will he put up numbers that will be that much better than guys like Romo/Schaub/Brady/Rivers that you can get somewhere around the 3rd-4th, or even guys like Ryan/Kolb/Flacco/E.Manning that you can grab in the 6th-7th?

I try to determine what positions have drastic falloffs after the first few elite players are off the board, and try to grab those guys while I have the chance. In recent history, that was always the RB position, although last year the WR position was very thin at the top. I remember back in the day I used to try to grab guys like Tony Gonzalez or Shannon Sharpe in the late 2nd early or 3rd because there was absolute nothing behind them at TE.

This year, I think that both the RB and WR positions are extremely thin at the top, whereas the QB’s and TE’s are insanely deep. My strategy this year will probably be to load up RB’s and WR’s early and often.

Now you can get a Jahvid Best or a Larry Johnson, for example, later in the draft and the odds that at some point in the season either or both perform well for you are pretty good.

I think you may be underestimating where Jahvid Best is being drafted. He went third round in my draft with 12 teams and is probably averaging like 5th or 6th round. While Larry Johnson has been drafted in only 2% of Yahoo drafts. BIG DIFFERENCE.

I don’t have rounds in my drafts. We do auction drafts, because we’re not mental pussies.

Last year I had crap all on my team and went into the playoffs as the 1 seed almost solely on the strength of Brees, who I’d grabbed in the second round while everyone was still picking through 2nd and 3rd tier RBs.

I went with a similar strategy this year. I picked 6th of 10, so if I had an earlier or later draft spot I might have done it a little differently, but by the time I got my second pick, Chris Johnson, A Peterson, R Rice, MJD, Steven Jackson, F Gore, D Williams, Shonn Greene and M Turner were already off the board and the auto-picking computer had already delved into QBs and WRs. I briefly entertained grabbing Ryan Grant, but instead took Aaron Rodgers and I’m feeling pretty good about my team.