2nd Half of the First Round

Wollnutz (I am calling you this because your last name's Woll and you're the nutz, and its a pun, and I love puns - including Big Pun), I am pretty much in accordance with you, and I think the second half of the first round is where you can lose your season (not necessarily win it though). Like I said in the previous post, I think it's most important to draft a guy who you are nearly 100% will atleast produce top 15-20 value, and good week to week numbers. So, I know you mentioned "rb's are the lifeblood of fantasy football," but reall I think that's in the past now. The NFL has slowly been turning into a "passing first"/rb committee league, and this has changed the familiar "rb in the first round" strategy.

I think after the first 8 or so picks - all running backs, you can start looking elsewhere to be sure you get that value you need to stay competetive for a chance at the playoffs. So, the rb's I trust the most to produce, as they've already shown, are Chris Johnson, Adrian Peterson, MJD, Ray Rice, Frank Gore, Steven Jackson, Deangelo Williams (2 consecutive good years), Michael Turner (injured last year, still solid #'s). After these guys, there are several different routes you can go...

Your first play and most popular im sure, will be to draft another running back. Year after year, the rb's ranked in these spots usually underproduce. But, there are a couple players here who have a ton of potential, no committee, and will very likely put up solid numbers for you. Shonn Green, Rashad Mendenhall, Ryan Mathews, Knowshon Moreno, and Lesean McCoy all stand out here as players with a load of potential. Other players to look at to round out the first round will be Beanie Wells, Ryan Grant, Ced Benson, and Jamal Charles. Notice, there are a lot of players in this pool, as well as some others so you should be able to snag some in the second round - that will be great value. However, a lot of these players are young and they will not all produce, so you must be careful. We saw last year, players like L.T., Forte, Turner, Jacobs, Ronnie Brown, Slaton, Lynch, just completely ruin people's seasons after having stellar previous seasons. This is why you could choose to go soute number 2...

With this strategy, you will be drafting a player at a different position (most likely QB), so that you will be 100% sure your getting points every week. If you get points every week, you atleast have a shot at winning your matchup. I know they changed standard scoring in recent years from 6-pt qb td's, to 4-pts. But, if your league still does 6-pts per passing td, then these qb's need to be drafted in the top-10 for sure. Either way, here are the qb's you could pick instead of a rb in the first round: Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers, Peyton Manning. These guys are getting you 20 points a week no matter what, and you can't find any safer players. Tom Brady could be in this category, but that injury and them team seem a little shaky still. Still, it's very difficult to justify picking a qb so early, when there are several other qb's who put up almost as many, if not more points, than these 3 guys (rivers, favre, schaub).

Everyone wants to hit a homerun with their first round pick, but if you draft on potential in the first round, you will get burned and can easily lose your season. Draft for production, and be sure you're gonna get it, and you'll be smiling come playoff time. Even if that means going against the popular strategy of drafting rb's in the first round.

p.s. - none of this is relevant if your Herm, cuz he's the luckiest kid ever and gets the first pick every year