Fantasy Fans: Draft Day Dilemma-6th Pick?

[sportsrule90]

Great article. This was an interesting article to read on yahoo sports. Usually you think the 6th pick is pretty good since you get a middle pick, not too high/low, but in this case, it's going to be hard to decide and you'd rather have top 5 pick obviously. We know LT, AP, Westbrook, Addai, and Jackson will be top 5 picks in some order. Here's my order-AP, LT, Westbrook, Jackson, and Addai. Then the 6th pick gives you many options: Moss, Brady, Barber, Gore, and Johnson to name a few. I would go with Randy Moss after reading the below article with the disparity between him and the 2nd best WR. Who do you draft if you have the 6th pick?

Draft Day Dilemma: You're up, it's the first round, and every RB you wanted is gone

By Andy Behrens

If you launch the live draft and discover that you're picking anywhere in the top five, here's our official recommendation: Shut up.

Just say nothing. No one needs to hear from you until the second round at the earliest. Picks one through five are easy.

Sure, different experts will arrange their top five players differently, but the names themselves aren't likely to change. Nearly all of us have Adrian Peterson, LaDainian Tomlinson, Steven Jackson, Brian Westbrook and Joseph Addai at the top of our overall rankings.

And then things begin to break down.

There's a respectable case to be made for at least five players with the next selection. According to the latest ADPs at Mock Draft Central, Tom Brady (6.4) currently occupies the sixth spot in a typical draft. He's followed by Marion Barber (8.3), Randy Moss (8.3), Frank Gore (9.6) and Larry Johnson (9.7). Those are all reasonable choices...and someone will ridicule you in draft chat no matter who you take.

This is just one of the many issues with picking sixth: you're going to be insulted by somebody, no matter what you do. When you're drafting sixth, you're either going to pick against conventional wisdom by taking Brady or Moss, or you're going to reach for a running back who has health, system, and/or job-share issues.

It's a tricky spot, and we'd love to offer perfect clarity. It would be ideal if we could simply give you one name, make a few incisive, indisputable comments, and consider the question of the No. 6 overall pick resolved.

But we can't do that. Instead, we're going to give you a few different answers.

The truth is, the sixth pick is going to hurt a little. It demands some thought. The choice also requires that you take a careful look at your league settings, which is something many owners do rarely, if at all.

We normally ignore quarterbacks in the first round of a fantasy draft, and a 50 TD/8 INT season hardly seems repeatable, but there are leagues in which you'd have to take Brady at six. In this league, for example, we get a point per completion, six for a passing touchdown, and one point for every 15 passing yards. Quarterbacks are obscenely valuable, and Brady is the appropriate pick there. If you're playing in a format where passing TDs are worth six, he needs to go early -- much earlier than you're accustomed to drafting a QB.

But in a points-per-reception (PPR) league, things change. Frank Gore suddenly gets a little more interesting. He caught 53 passes last season and 61 the year before, and his new offensive coordinator is, delightfully enough, Mike Martz.

Here's the San Francisco Chronicle back in January, shortly after Martz was hired:

Looking at game film of the 49ers' just-completed season, (Martz) apparently saw Gore as a flower resolutely poking through a blighted landscape.

"Frank has receiving skills and is a capable pass-blocker," Martz said. "He's really a complete player. He can be a centerpiece and (you) build around him. To be able to run the ball effectively, the centerpiece of any offense starts with the offensive line. The next piece is the running back."

We generally like the word "centerpiece" in fantasy circles.*

No, the Niners' depth chart isn't pretty. It actually looks a bit like the final rounds of a 2004 fantasy draft: Bruce, Lelie, Foster. Still, if you're in a PPR league, it's no easy thing to pass on the possibility of a 260-carry, 75-reception season from the 25-year-old Gore.

A Yahoo! public league, of course, is non-PPR. There's also no flex position, and you're only competing against nine other owners. Running backs -- particularly non-elite running backs -- aren't really such a big deal. There are only 20 of them active each week. You can pass on Gore (or Johnson or Barber) in Round 1, and still get a comparable back in Round 2, someone like Marshawn Lynch (ADP 15.6), Clinton Portis (14.4), or Brandon Jacobs (20.5).

In Rounds 3 through 6, you'll find guys like Maurice Jones-Drew (28.6), Ronnie Brown (31.3), Michael Turner (35.2), Earnest Graham (33.3), Darren McFadden (48.9), Jonathan Stewart (65.9), and...well, there are lots of acceptable options.

That's why Randy Moss is the pick with the sixth overall selection in public leagues. There's no penalty for failing to go RB-RB in the first two rounds, and the benefit to taking Moss is that you get a wide receiver who was massively better than the average starter at his position last season -- and without doing anything too extraordinary by his standards.

Moss was actually the No. 5 overall fantasy scorer in 2007, finishing with 280 points. The average of the top 30 receivers was 154.1. While he did set the single-season receiving TD record, Moss' receptions (98) and yardage (1493) weren't that unusual, at least for him. He's caught 100 or more passes twice in his career, and he's exceeded 1300 yards six times. He's scored 15 or more TDs in a season three other times, too.

There's disagreement among experts with regard to the No. 6 running back; there's none at all where the top receiver is concerned. As a general rule, if there's very little separating the half-dozen running backs you're trying to choose between, then you're probably drafting the wrong position. In public leagues, it's difficult to pass on Moss when all the top-tier backs are gone. You'd like to get a top-tier something.

So our answer to the sixth pick question is, it turns out, a total cop-out. It's at least three different answers. In different scoring systems, we'd take different guys. And if you gave us a flex option and no points for receptions, we might take LJ. Or Barber. Or Ryan Grant...

---

(*Except in the following sentence: "The Bears defense was the centerpiece of my 2007 draft.")

[Milan]

I read this, it was pretty interesting. I have no idea who I'd take with that pick. It seems every year though, somebody does something stupid with the 4th-5th pick though, so that helps out.

[Favre]

http://www.nfl.com/fantasy/story?id=...o&confirm=true

if you cbf clicking:

im no expert, but i dont agree with some of these

Ryan Grant 2nd round? Randy 15th overall? ..

[Milan]

Ryan Grant had one good season so it might be a bit risky to pick him in the first without seeing a larger body of work. And WRs are usually saved for the mid/late 2nd-3rd round, so Randy at 15 is understandable.

[Telfair3]

Anyone who throws 50TD the previous season....oh wait, that's just one person. Pick Brady.

[sportsrule90]

Originally Posted by Telfair3

Anyone who throws 50TD the previous season....oh wait, that's just one person. Pick Brady.

I highly doubt Brady throws 50 TDS again. It's possible, but very unlikely.

[ut_jazz]

I've been doing so bad with fantasy football drafts lately.

if you saw my picks in the m2 draft last year you probably wouldn't think i finished 3rd place
don't ask me how i pulled off that miracle

and every year there is one guy that puts up crazy stats like brady last year or tomlinson 2 years ago..i never am the one who drafts that guy