Drafting in the final spot in a 10-team league can drive a person to do some crazy things. Especially in your league of record.* You tend to over-think things.
Every second-tier running back looks like a reach. No receiver outside of Calvin Johnson seems worthy. So what do you do?
Something crazy.
I drafted Cam Newton. (Cue the Coyote falling off the cliff, replete with dust cloud.)
This was a hole I was never able to dig myself out of. Even with a great year from Jamaal Charles, I was never able to fully stack my running back position. Reggie Bush, Darren Sproles, Marcel Reece and Knowshon Moreno were some of the guys who filled my RB2 spot. (A few weeks earlier from Moreno, though, and I would have been cooking.)
And to make matters worse, my quarterbacks at the end of the season were Andrew Luck and Colin Kaepernick. Luck I took at the end of the draft, and Kaepernick I obviously plucked off the wire.
The lesson here is I'm a moron. The second is you never need to draft a quarterback in the first-round. Or in the second-round. Or the third- fourth- or maybe even the fifth. Especially this year.
The quarterback position is as deep as it's been in years thanks to a flood of second-year quarterbacks available this year: Luck, Kaepernick, Russell Wilson and RG3. If you wait until the fifth-round (or perhaps later) you will end up with Tony Romo, Matt Ryan or Matthew Stafford as your quarterback. Any of the three could rank in the top five among fantasy quarterbacks this season.
Load up on your running backs and receivers, and then take your quarterback. Learn from my mistakes.
*League of record: The one of your multiple fantasy leagues you care about the most. I love our experts league, but I can't stand it when I lose to my long-time friends from Corona, Calif.
Adam Rank has never won an award. For anything. We don't mean to be harsh, but it's true. You can follow him on Twitter @adamrank. Oh, and if you liked this (right!), check him out on the latest "Dave Dameshek Football Program". Which, come to think of it won an award. So Rank has won something meaningful. Yes, meaningful unlike this latest post. Am I right? But follow him on Twitter, please. He's taking us to lunch if he gets 25 more Twitter followers today.
