Pick Your Running Backs First? - Part 2

My friend/co-worker Rich and I were discussing our upcoming fantasy football draft for our work league (~14 teams). Rich told me that last year every starting RB was taken after the first two rounds (Our league settings are to have 2 RB roster spots per team). In my last post I mentioned that I am going to ignore this common draft plan and pick the best available player with each pick (assuming I have not filled that position yet). I got to worrying because if everyone else picks their running backs first and then some of them pick even more RBs for their bench before I have picked my starting running backs, then the RBs I end up might not be 2 of the best 30 RBs in the league. The graph in my last post only showed the top 30 and I worried that since their are ~30 NFL teams and ~30 starting RBs in the NFL, that the drop-off after rank 30 might be intense. Maybe my last graph failed to capture this. So here's the graph for the top 60 fantasy RBs from last season:


Phewf! There's no severe drop-off after 30. It looks like the best backup RBs in the NFL are nearly worth as many fantasy points as the worst starting RBs. Well, my strategy is reaffirmed. Please let me know if anyone can convince me that I still need to pick my RBs first!

Pick your running backs first?

I saw a fantasy football segment on Sportscenter last night. The analyst advised fantasy drafters to be sure to pick their running backs early on, before the other positions. I figured this must mean that the drop-off in talent at the RB position must be steep compared to QB and WR. I wanted to verify this myself so I calculated the 2006 Fantasy points earned by the top 30 RBs, WRs, and QBs. I graphed the fantasy points versus the position rank to check the "steepness" of the fantasy value dropoff at each position:

I assigned the typical Yahoo fantasy point values:

• QB: 1 pt. / 25 passing yrds + 4 pts / TD minus 1 pt / INT
• RB: 6 pts / TD + 1 pt / 10 rushing yrds
• WR: 6 pts / TD + 1 pt / 10 reception yrds

I can't see what on earth the sportcenter analyst was talking about, there does not seem to be any steep talent drop off with any of the positions. I can tell that the first 10 or so picks are likely to be RBs and QBs, but once the first round goes by, it looks like there should be an equal mix of all 3.

Can anyone explain to me why the analyst advised using your first 2 or 3 picks on running backs? Thanks.