Yesterday I had the draft for the second of two fantasy football leagues for this season. Last year I played in three and it was just too much, from now on two will be my limit. For me the fun of fantasy sports is cheering for your players (and anti-cheering for everyone else), but by playing with multiple teams across multiple leagues you basically are left cheering for everybody… and also rooting against everybody. Every week you will have players on your team in one league who are on your opponent’s team in another, so everything that happens will be both good and bad. That’s just not fun for me.

Anyways, this second league is brand new this year and invitations to join were given out only to serious, hardcore friends who were willing to make a long term commitment. It is a dynasty (keeper) league: each team can retain a number of players between seasons. It is also a significantly deeper league in that there are 12 owners instead of 10 and each team starts more players. With a much larger number of players being both owned and started, the difficulty level climbs significantly because the best remaining free agent player (to be picked up as a mid-season replacement) is far worse in this league than in a shallower one. Exceptions will obviously pop up with injuries from time to time, but as a general rule every player who will start during the season will have already been selected on draft day. Every starting quarterback is owned along with every backup running back. Every WR1 and WR2 and most WR3s will already be taken, and because this is a keeper league a number of young players with no current relevance are already owned. Michael Crabtree hasn’t even signed with a team yet and he was drafted.

At any rate it should make for a fun experience and hopefully I managed to put myself in good position for both this year and those to come with yesterday’s draft. Our draft was an auction, and as predicted I did much better in this format than the standard round-robin format of my other league. I made one big mistake early on that forced me to shift completely away from my predetermined strategy, but I scrambled well and ended up with a solid team that Lukas bitterly has declared to be the early favorite to win. Usually I can expect him to ruthlessly make fun of my teams, so his reluctant praise in this case can be taken as a high compliment.

Here is the roster for my team, the Skinny Jeans Hipsters. Like I mentioned, this is a 12-team keeper league using PPR scoring with 2 RBs, 2 WRs, 1 RB/WR flex, and 1 Offensive Flex (any RB/WR/TE/QB). The number in parentheses is the price that I paid from a total starting budget of $200.

RB Steven Jackson (46)
WR Wes Welker (30)
WR Chad Ochocinco (25)
RB Darren McFadden (22)
RB Ronnie Brown (20)
RB Marshawn Lynch (16)
QB Donovan McNabb (12)
QB Carson Palmer (9)
WR Devin Hester (7)
D/ST Titans D/ST (3)
WR Michael Jenkins (2)
TE Dustin Keller (1)
RB Michael Bush (1)
WR Brian Hartline (1)
QB Brady Quinn (1)
WR Mark Clayton (1)
WR Antwaan Randle El (1)
RB Rashad Jennings (1)
K Lawrence Tynes (1)

random notes
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1. This league rewards punt/kick return yardage and so the values of Welker, Hester, and Randle El all go up.

2. I accidentally bought Steven Jackson while trying to artificially raise his auction price. My opponent quit one dollar sooner than I expected and I was forced to foot the bill. To make up for the unexpected bankroll hit I ended up taking a $1 tight-end instead of spending $15-20 on Greg Olsen as I had planned. Oh well, at least I have S-Jax.

3. Speaking of tight-ends, I made a sweet auction play against my former roommate Matt when he tried to screw me over by driving up the price on Tony Gonzalez – who I have owned on every single other fantasy team of mine over the past two years. In fairness to him I was wearing a Tony Gonzalez jersey during the draft, but his plan might have worked a lot better had he not already spent $21 on Antonio Gates in a league where you would be a bit crazy to start two tight ends. I let him push the price for a while, immediately raising every one of his bids until the price went over $20. When he put in that one extra offer I sat back, smiled, and left him to pay the $22 for a player with no value to him other than in a trade. T-Gonz is clearly not a bad player, and possibly worth that price to be your starting TE, but as a backup that seems like pretty bad value to me. For that price he could have landed so many other, better, more roster-flexible players like Housh(19), Ronnie Brown (20), Pierre Thomas (24), or Terrell Owens/Reggie Bush (21). Instead he is left with two tight-ends while forced to start two running backs from a roster of Fred Jackson, Darren Sproles, Larry Johnson, Lendale White, and Jonathon Stewart… ugh. I assume he will be making trade offers before Week 1.

4. I am pretty pumped about the value that I will be taking into next season. When a team keeps a player, the owner is forced to buy him at last year’s auction price plus an increasing inflation cost. The first year you keep a player you must pay $5 extra. The second year, $10. Each year costs more and more so every player is guaranteed to be recycled back into the system every few years. The system also means that someone like Adrian Peterson makes for a pretty bad keeper because you are already paying (more than) full price for him this year. Next year his price tag will be higher and his value will be (even further) lowered.. On the other hand, I grabbed Brady Quinn for $1 this year so if he turns out to be good then I will have him next year for only $6 – presumably far below his actual cost. As an unlikely example, let’s imagine that he turns out to be the next Aaron Rogers (who was a $1 unknown player last season but was sold for $39 this year). In that case I will be able to keep him for a serious discount every year for the next five years. Lukas robbed me by taking away Matthew Stafford for $2, but I am perfectly content with Quinn at half the price.

From a pre-season standpoint I would expect that my best values from a keeper standpoint right now are: Marshawn Lynch (16 – thanks to his impending 3-game suspension), Brady Quinn (1), Ronnie Brown (20), and Darren McFadden (22). Steven Jackson is easily my team’s best player, but is also easily my team’s worst value as a keeper. I am happy to have him this year of course, but he gets me excited to see how many massive strategy blunders will occur when it is time to keep players for next season. I thought it was insane to pay $51 for Michael Turner in the first place (our website has him at $25), but I also would bet that Bill will retain him for $56 next season anyways.

That will teach him for not buying a subscription to FantasyBlueBook.