How long have we all been beaten over the head to draft not just one but two running backs to start our draft each year? The idea was always that you had to get those elite runners early to get the proper leg up on the league. When the NFL was full of teams that relied heavily (or exclusively) on just one running back, there was a lot of wisdom in this advice. Seemingly overnight, the world of fantasy football appears to have caught up with the reality of the NFL: it's a quarterback league. Not only are teams using multiple backs to get the running game in gear, quarterbacks' stats are blowing up. While there still exists the very boring fantasy league out there that will have weekly scores of something like 25.8-17.6 (how fun does that sound!), more and more leagues are popping up that put the emphasis on passers and to some extent, receivers.
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. This allows you to to target a prolific passer early and might even cause you to be tempted to take the first receiver off the board in the next round.
Who doesn't want Adrian Peterson on their team? Not only is he fun to watch, he racks up points faster than J.R. Smith's driver's license. But if you draft #1 or #2 overall, you have to think long and hard about landing a top quarterback and hoping for a top 20 running back when your pick comes back. Depending on the way your league scores, there may very well be a steeper dip from the #1 QB to the #20 QB than from the #1 RB to the #20 RB. And while both running backs and quarterbacks have their fair share of injuries, I would much rather take the #1 overall pick risk on Aaron Rodgers than Adrian Peterson.
There are roughly twenty gazillion different ways to play fantasy football from a scoring customization standpoint. You have to figure out what works best for your league of course. But it seems to me that the days of hoarding running backs at the top of fantasy drafts are swiftly coming to an end.
What will you be doing in your fantasy draft?
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