Draft Night 2006

September through February is my favorite time of the year, for one reason and one reason only: NFL Football, baby.
Last night was the draft for my fantasy football league and I’m even more confident this year in my draft selections than I was going into my two leagues last year (seeing as I finished 0-12 in one league and 2-11 in the other, my confidence was obviously misplaced). I believe I learned my lessons from last year’s debacles: I was too sentimental in my picks, favoring Vikings and players whom I liked over the talented and productive ones. Well, not this year! I was bound and determined to pick wisely; I was ruthless in my selections. Nary a bit of ruth was to be found in my body, no sir! I was a veritable desert of ruth, baby.
This year’s league was quite a bit bigger than either league I played in last year; there are 4 divisions in the league, each with 10 teams and each drafting independent of the others. In other words, each 10 team division had access to the full NFL roster, so cross-divisional games could conceivably see identically constituted teams play each other (although it’s highly unlikely). The draft went for 15 rounds, with each roster needing:

• 1 quarterback
• 2 running backs
• 3 wide receivers
• 1 tight end
• 1 “utility” player (RB/WR/TE)
• 1 kicker
• 1 defense
• 5 bench players

As I said previously, I feel as though I came out of the draft in an excellent position. I drew the third pick and, in serpentine draft fasion (picks 1->10 followed by 10->1 followed by 1->10, etc.) I picked up:
QB

• Donovan McNabb, PHI
• Ben Roethlisberger, PIT

RB

• Ladainian Tomlinson, SD
• Willie Parker, PIT
• DeShaun Foster, CAR
• Mewelde Moore, MIN

WR

• Chad Johnson, CIN
• T.J. Houshmandzadeh, CIN
• Keenan McCardell, SD
• Antonio Bryant, SF
• Matt Jones, JAC

TE

• Heath Miller, PIT
• Dallas Clark, IND

K

• Ryan Longwell, MIN

D

• Giants Defense, NYG

I’m pretty confident in those picks (although Moore just dropped to 3rd on the Vikes’ depth charts, so I may have to make a move to replace him…) and, best of all, we’re no longer using Yahoo! for our league.