Sportsandjokes.com's Annual Fantasy Football Review

I am well aware of the myriad of fantasy football sites that are promising to instruct you on how to dominate your league, win the respect and admiration of your friends and relatives and make the women swoon, but this year I've decided to start my draft prep by taking a different tack. Last year I was fortunate enough to have won my league. (Although I get the feeling that my friends still do not respect and/or admire me, and my wife's reaction could hardly be classified as "swooning".) This league is a fairly competitive ten team tilt which has been in existence for eleven years, so we've worked out any bugs and weeded out the non-competitive types. Even allowing for an elevated self-opinion of my FF skills, I consider the fact that I have only won the league twice in its history and I absolutely live for it as evidence of the level of competition. It's a snake draft, non-keeper, standard-scoring league with weekly score prizes and enough cash involved to keep everyone interested.

The tack of which I spoke earlier was to do a CSI-style analysis of my championship season of a year ago, starting with the draft and see how I did it. So, without further ado, the breakdown of a champion's draft, and what we can learn from it.

It's a humid August night, and the league's members sit in the back garden of a dive bar in Manhattan, except for me. I'm in San Diego and participating online and via speakerphone as I have for the past two years. Quite frankly, it sucks. Most of the fun of a long-lived league is getting together, drinking and eating too much and insulting each other. I, on the other hand am sitting in the playroom, wearing a headset, sipping a Stone IPA and trying to explain to my three year-old daughter what daddy is doing. Not quite an FF atmosphere. The order is picked, and I go number one. As every seasoned FF vet knows, picking number one is a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, you get the consensus number one, and the closest thing to a lock in the entire draft, on the other hand, you're then forced to sit there helplessly as every other decent pick flies off the board as fast as you can keep track. Here's how it went for me, pick by pick:

Round 1: LT, of course. You can't ask for a better first rounder than this. Piles up both rushing and receiving yards, doesn't get hurt. An anchor. And he's mine, all mine.

Round 2/3 (remember that it's a snake draft, so the order from here on out for me is irrelevant) I go with Ocho Cinco, because studs are studs, and eight-five doesn't disappoint - 1,400yds, 8tds - I'll take it. And then the RB desperation sets in. I have never played a three receiver set throughout a season and don't intend to start now. The problem? Seventeen of the first twenty picks have been RBs, and I don't love anyone on the board. I end up grabbing MoJo Drew and get relentlessly mocked as a result. After all, I had essentially picked a third down back/backup in the third round. This doesn't help my RB desperation. But, at the end of the day, MoJo racks up 1,200 total yards and 8tds for me. If that's not a number two back, I don't know what is. The lesson: Mockery is usually a good sign.

Round 4/5: Ahhh... here's how championships are won: Randy Moss. You're probably thinking "What kind of league are you in that Moss was still available?" But that type of thinking is a product of hindsight. Remember that two owners had already been burned by Moss, there were huge questions about how he would fit in at NE and, well, generally people don't like to have to root for the guy (at least before last season). 1,500yds and 23tds later, this might have been the best fourth round pick of all time. So, to balance it out - with my fifth pick, I choose... Ahman Green - ugh.

Round 6/7: Wait a second. Who's that still on the board? It's... it's LaMont Jordan! Sure the Raiders blow, but we're talking about a STARTING ENNN EFFF ELLL RUNNING BACK. In round six! I'm ecstatic. And while Jordan actually had a decent start to the season, he soon fell off the table (and my roster). Then we get to one of the most agonizing parts of having a wrap pick - the dreaded "run". This time it's TEs. I sit helplessly as they start flying off the board. Like clockwork, I cross off all of the tight end prospects. I start praying simply for a guy I can play every week. By my calculations, I'm going to end up with Todd Heap. I start to feel nauseous. Then, the FF gods smile down on me. The guy in front of me takes... Todd Heap! This leaves Tony Gonzales on the board. I breathe a huge sigh of relief and grab TG my man, pots and pans. 1,200yds, 5tds. Like a rock.

Round 8/9: I am now wearing RB desperation like a parka. I go with DeShaun Foster. While the man did go for ~1,000ty, he only scored three times, and only cracked my lineup once (as a bye week fill-in). Ninth pick - a complete bullet hole in Matt Leinart. High risk, no return. Sometimes you've got to say WTF.

Round 10/11: Knowing the Leinart pick was a total reach, I make another attempt at QB. My philosophy on QBs has always been: If you can't get a stud cheap, just get a top ten with some upside. So who do I pick? Jay Cutler, who finished exactly tenth in QB fantasy points in our league, with no discernible upside. If I was psychic, I'd be pretty worried about my QB situation right now. Then again, if I was psychic, I probably wouldn't have taken Ahman Green with my fifth pick. Next pick: Running back, running back... oh, here we go - a sleeper (cardinal rule of FF: Sleepers are usually sleepers for a reason) Kevin Jones. He did score 8tds, but how can you ever play a guy with 700ty consistently?

Round 12/13: D.J. Hackett. ‘Nuff said. WTF? I'm not even sure I made this pick. How many Stones had I consumed at that point? They're higher in alcohol content than regular beer, you know. With my thirteenth pick, I break yet another cardinal FF rule - I draft a defense. Jacksonville to be precise. Repeat after me - kickers and defenses in the last two rounds. Keep repeating.

Round 14/15: Will I never learn - fourteenth pick - Matt Stover (see above reference to kickers and defenses). On a side note, I used to be in another league and there was one guy who loved to point out the fact that you picked the same player as you did in a previous year. Right after you made the pick, he would chime in with a Joe Pesci Brooklyn accent "Hey! That's yer guy!" Well, Matt Stover is "my guy". I can't put it any less gay-ly. I end up with this mf every year. In the league at hand, Roller insists that the reason I choose him is because he looks like me. Maybe it is, but it's deeply subconscious, I assure you. Moving on: Pick fifteen: Matt Schaub - still in trouble at QB here (although, at the time, I believe that I'm stacked).

Round 16: Mr. Irrelevant - Mike Furrey. I could not think of a more apt description. I don't think he made it to week two on my team.

In summary of the draft: sixteen picks and seven were dropped (including 5, 6 and 9) over the course of the season (including Stover and the Jags - I refuse to ever have two defenses or kickers on my roster at the same time). Sound like a championship-worthy draft? Of course not. Did I pull off a rip-off trade? In a ten team league, it's hard to pull off any major trades unless someone gets decimated by injuries at a key position and has a stockpile at another. This didn't happen. So let's look at my waiver wire pickups:

Wes Welker - that's right, someone took a flier on the guy and then dropped him after week one to get a free agent RB. I was officially a three receiver set guy for the first time in my career.

Kurt Warner - the old man. I picked him up when he took the starting job in week three, and he put up 27tds the rest of the way.

Aaron Stecker - Injury replacement pick-up. No real impact.

DeAngelo Williams - Waiting to see if he or Foster would emerge as an every-down back. Didn't happen.

Ron Dayne - What can I say? I can't resist waiver wire RBs with even a remote chance at getting carries.

Kevin Curtis - Here's a tip for this year's draft. Someone in your league will look at Curtis' numbers and pick him about four rounds early. Let it happen. He was the ultimate boom or bust WR. Half the time he'll kill you and half the time he'll put up numbers. Now that he's no longer under the radar, I suspect that ratio will shift dramatically towards killing you.

So that's how the league was won. Without Welker and Warner, no chance. With them, I take home the cup. The lesson is: Never look at your team after the draft and think you're either dead in the water or all to the good. You're probably neither. Oh, and also - be very, very lucky.

Standard starting line-up for Phil Bender last season:

QB Warner

RB Tomlinson

RB Jones-Drew

WR R. Moss

WR C. Johnson

WR Welker

TE Gonzales

K Whoever

Def Whoever

So, with that, I am off to Manhattan to participate in this year's draft as the conquering hero. I will document the proceedings in a column next week.