Dissecting a Fantasy Draft

After recently taking part in a fantasy football draft online, I thought it might be educational if I shared the results. For length and general ADD purposes, we will focus on the first five rounds, which we consider to be your core players.

The biggest part of the online poker match that is a fantasy football draft is gauging where your top prospects will fall within the first five rounds. Reaching on a quarterback in the 3rd round, for example, will typically cost you a second running back or even a top wide receiver. So it’s pretty important to get a rough idea of what the populace is thinking.

If you’re new to NGPF, then you probably are unaware that we are involved in a mock draft involving 12 sports blogging sites. The idea behind us joining was to A) do a little fantasy football warm-up, and B) demonstrate to all our vast, expansive, and often intimidating NFL knowledge.

Again, as a reminder, we were left with the #7 pick in the draft and ended up being “forced” to take a QB in the first round. This league in particular values touchdowns, both passing and rushing, as six points. Most leagues denote rushing touchdowns as six and passing TD’s as four points, so being “forced” in this situation was actually a bit of a windfall, in our ever-so-humble opinion.

Welcome Back to the Final Installment of the Fantasy Impact Series

There’s no better way to end this series than to preview what could easily be viewed as the most loaded division in terms of offensive FF studs, the NFC West. In our eyes, three of the top five fantasy running backs in the NFL reside here, as do two of the top six quarterbacks, and three of the top ten wide receivers.

None of the four teams in the NFC West possess lock-down defenses, and considering any of the players listed here will be playing against three of those units six times a year, its an added bonus for this already impressive group.

We must admit, we took this list from Curveballs for Jesus’ site:

1. LaDainian Tomlinson, RB, Chargers [TINO Sports Page]
2. Steven Jackson, RB, Rams [The Hazean]
3. Joseph Addai, RB, Colts [MWC Football]
4. Larry Johnson, RB, Chiefs [Blaine Clancy]
5. Frank Gore, RB, 49ers [Fantasy Football Librarian]
6. Brian Westbrook, RB, Eagles [Curveballs for Jesus]
7. Peyton Manning, QB, Colts [Next Gen Pro Football]
8. Laurence Maroney, RB, Patriots [Cheesesteaks & Stuff]
9. Carson Palmer, QB, Bengals [Signal to Noise]
10. Travis Henry, RB, Broncos [NFL Minute]
11. Rudi Johnson, RB, Bengals [FanProphet]
12. Willie Parker, RB, Steelers [The Extrapolater]

Welcome to the 7th Installment of Fantasy Impact 2007

It’s been a couple of days since our last Fantasy Impact, but we’re back, this time to talk about the NFC South. Tread carefully guys, this division is crammed full of 2006 FF busts. It does, however, feature some highly ranked players at quarterback and wide receiver.

And who can forget the NFL’s best running back tandem in New Orleans, Atlanta’s old reliable tight end, and the giant question mark known as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers offense?

NGPF Keeps On Truckin’ With “Fantasy” Impact #6 - NFC North

Welcome back to the NFC North installment of the Fantasy Impact series for 2007.

The players featured in the Norris division aren’t as flashy as their Eastern brethren but there are some diamonds in the rough to be found here yet, young chap.
You can find three of the top fantasy rookies here: the Vikings’ Adrian Peterson, the Lions’ Calvin Johnson, and the Bears’ Greg Olsen. You can also find plenty of young offenses struggling to gain footing.

We Don’t Just Pick. We Pick Big (Country).

Recently we here at Next Gen Pro Football were invited to participate in a fantasy football mock draft featuring owners of various sport-focused blogging sites. After the lottery balls had fallen, we were “awarded” the #7 selection in the order (out of 12) and left feeling a lot like what the Boston Celtics must have felt last month heading into the NBA draft (see: not good).

Having participated in FF for about a decade now, we’re going to take this as an opportunity to show you how to approach a draft when you’ll be drafting in the middle of each round, a notoriously tough spot.

Fantasy Impact #5 — The NFC East

It’s been a few days since our last Fantasy Impact but now that our new home has been set up we’re happy to start rolling them out again, just as fast as before.

Today we start talking about that OTHER conference: The underperforming NFC.

And the first division we’ll be discussing from said conference is one featuring names seen in the newspaper headlines quite a bit the last couple of seasons: TO, Romo, McNabb, Eli.

We’ll get right down to those guys in a second, but first, we have a promise to keep. That’s right… It’s time for your daily jewel of wisdom.

The Chicago Bears announced on Tuesday that they have come to terms with their first round choice, tight end Greg Olsen. In doing so it gives us an opportunity to introduce a new feature to go along with our brand new (.net) surroundings that we’re still getting acclimated to.

Each time a first round choice signs, we’ll tell you a little about his immediate future along with any fantasy implications his rookie season might hold.

This is part four of our Fantasy Impact series, breaking down the top players from each division

Today we’ll be focusing on the AFC West, A division that features fantasy football’s consensus #1 and #2 prospects at both running back and tight end.

Fantasy Tip of The Blog: If it’s not Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees or Carson Palmer… Let it be. There is a steep drop-off in production points from there on, and it’s better to just wait it out until rounds 4-6 to find a QB that may not be a big name but you know is a big producer.

…..Fantasy Players

Cnnsi has decided to rank the top 200 fantasy players.  So we’ve decided to rip it apart where we can.  Let the battle begin!

Peyton Manning #9
Players in front of him: Willie Parker, Brian Westbrook, Rudi Johnson

We understand as well as anyone the importance of a running back.  The best 5 fantasy players in the world are running backs.  But when it comes to the #6 pick in the draft, and somebody else hasn’t already jumped the gun for Manning, you’d be unwise to pass on him, especially in leagues that give out points for completions.  The difference between the 6th best running back and the 16th best isn’t nearly as exaggerated as the #1 quarterback and the #6 quarterback. 

I know we’ll be covering this story in more detail later, but I found it particularly interesting that CNNSI.com, the same folks that boldly predicted the Miami Dolphins to be the 2006 Super Bowl winner, advises that you draft Willie Parker, Rudi Johnson, and Brian Westbrook before Peyton Manning:




Welcome back for Part 3 of our Fantasy Impact series.

As promised, here is our free fantasy football intellectual property.

Fantasy tip #2:  Watch your byes.  Loading up on too many players with the same bye week will lead you to being the proud owner of gaping holes in your lineup during that week. 

Welcome back to the second installment of our Fantasy Football 2.0 series featuring the AFC North

Despite the label of being a hard-hitting blue collar division, these four teams have quite a few highly coveted players on the other side of the ball at several positions. 

Now before we dive into our analysis, we thought it would be a good idea to start a bit of a sub-segment in the Fantasy Football 2.0 series.  Our idea is to provide a tip or guideline for each divisional blog remaining (seven including this one if you’re counting) to newcomers of the world of fantasy football.  Over the years you can make a lot of mistakes and it usually takes a bit longer to learn a lesson in Fantasy Land.  We try to absorb that pain for you.  It’s just something we do; you don’t have to thank us.

Welcome to the first installment of Fantasy Football 2.0

This is our newest category (and perhaps the most important to some of our readers) as the fantasy drafting season is rounding the corner and heading for the home stretch.  Both of the site’s main authors participate in, oh, way too many leagues each year, so we thought we’d share some of our experience, putting you in a position to succeed.  Because we care.

Today we’ll look at some of the top players of the AFC East, and tell you which ones you’ll want to keep your eye on… and which players you can laugh openly about when someone in your league picks somebody trendy way too high.