Draft Day

     Fantasy Football has become a large part of the sports world over the past few years.  ESPN even has dedicated writers with the sole purpose of analyzing football players, regarding their potential to earn fantasy points.  Fantasy Football has become such a fierce competition for a lot of us.  It's almost at the point where it becomes more like a job instead of simply playing it for fun.
     I've found myself in the same situation.  I've spent quite a few hours before my family's annual Draft Day party looking over Fantasy Football magazines and comparing stats on ESPN and Yahoo! that I barely noticed the fact my father, John, was participating in this year's draft.
     My father's never done a Fantasy Draft in his life but he noticed how "fun" it seemed.  So, he decided to give it a try this year.  So, for the next 12-13 weeks, I'm going to monitor his progress and see if religiously worshipping the Fantasy Sports media actually makes his team better.  I'll also see if it makes his experience enjoyable and by the end of the season, we
ll find out if this amateur really is having "fun."

 

Draft Day

     Our league has used Yahoo! for our Fantasy Football since the league began way back when LaDainian Tomlinson was an automatic 1st overall pick, so this league's been around for a few years.  Anyway, when compared to the top outlet for Fantasy Football, ESPN, Yahoo! typically awards a lot more points to players, especially Quarterbacks.  Upon hearing this tid-bit of information, John decides to draft a Quarterback with the third-overall pick.

     This kind of thing has been done before in years past, so it's not exactly a bad move.  Adrian Peterson and LeSean McCoy were already picked but there were still great options for the Runningback position available:  Ray Rice, C.J. Spiller, Arian Foster, and even Jamaal Charles would have been decent enough.  John announces he wants a Quarterback, first, so we all expected Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, or even Peyton Manning to be selected.

     But John is a rookie.  He's lived in the state of Washington, near the Seattle area for the past 5 or 6 years and only moved back to the Buffalo area, recently.  He selected Russel Wilson with the third-overall pick.  At this point, I was flipping back and fourth through my personal draft sheets which I had compiled a few hour previously but when I heard that, I looked up and turned to him.

     "You're supposed to wait until, like, the last round or something before taking him," I said.  John simply smiled and said he really wanted him.  I knew he would need some help, so I gave him my draft sheets - I didn't need them anymore because I spent nearly 3 hours going over in my head who I would take for each round.

     John, with his second pick would select Jamaal Charles which was the 16th overall selection.  What a steal, right?!  Here's a funny side-note, though... he didn't actually draft him.  John said he wanted Charles Haley.  This is partially my fault because on my draft sheet, I only put Charles' last name.  So after a lot of arguing, the rest of our family decided to let him have Jamaal Charles, instead of a Charles Haley, a Defensive End in the 90's for the Dallas Cowboys.  Yeah, I had to Google that one.

     John's next two picks were Maurice Jones-Drew and Dwayne Bowe.  He said MJD's name correctly but thought Dwayne Bowe was David Bowie, the English singer but we all knew who he meant.  The next few picks is where things got pretty awful.

     He took Jason Witten in the 5th round.  Witten was the first-selected Tight End in our league but he was also ranked behind two other Tight Ends on my draft sheets; Jimmy Grahm and Vernon Davis.  He also still needed receivers and typically, Tight Ends tend to score less than Receivers on Yahoo!

     John's next pick was Tavon Austin, a rookie drafted in the 2013 NFL Draft by St. Louis.  Austin had an 80-yrd. punt return for a touchdown during the pre-season and my father watched that on ESPN and thought that was "so cool" and reminded him of Roscoe Parish.  Unfortunately, our league doesn't award individual players points for punt or kick returns - those get added onto the D/ST (Team Defense and Special Teams) of the team the player's on.

     Next, John selected Robert Woods, also a rookie Receiver but drafted by the Buffalo Bills.  I've watched a few pre-season games and I didn't think his performance was all that good but my father wanted a Bills player.

     He wanted a Bills player so much, he drafted another one - Fred Jackson.  Now, on the particular day our league drafted, ESPN had just re-tweeted a Twitter post by Doug Marrone, or someone on the Buffalo Bills that said Jackson would receive a "limited role in the Bills offense."  John wanted "Fast" Freddy Jackson, though.

     John finished up the draft by taking Matt Schaub, funnily enough, as his back-up Quarterback and selected Pierre Thomas and a few other rookies.  At the end of the day, Yahoo! gave his team a draft grade of 'D.'  He said "it was really fun" though, and that's what counts... right?