Fantasy Football '05!!

[Gadiantor]

Originally posted by Aristotle
Which means it is very easy to get a RB in the top 25, since most fantasy leagues tend to only have 10 teams. But it is very hard to get a WR in the top 25.

Of course it's hard to get a WR in the top 25. They just don't generate enough points to compete with QBs and RBs. That's why WRs are a dime a dozen, and having a quality RB is critical. At best Ward should have been a late second round pick (given the size of our league), and Bettis would have been a reach in the third round.

I disagree with your statements about RB and WR availability though.

RBs aren't "a dime a dozen" and there aren't "craploads of good RBs to pick from". There is a huge difference between the top 10 RBs and the average RB. You don't even really have 32 starting RBs in the league because of teams that do the running back by committee thing. Then, of the teams that do use a single starting back only half of them are even worth starting from a fantasy perspective. You end up with 10 or so quality starting RBs, 10 or so guys that you can start if you have no other choice, and a bunch of scrubs.

WRs are a dime a dozen because there are two starting WRs on every team, and most teams have a viable third reciever. The ball gets spread around enough on most teams that there are lots of average recievers and they all end up doing about the same in yardage and TDs. The handful of WRs that really stand out are clearly better than the average, but there isn't a significant enough difference in their statistics to make a huge fantasy impact.

To illustrate the point, if you assume that every team will carry 3 backs (two starters and one reserve) and an average 10 team league, you're looking at 30 backs on teams in the league. Looking at rushing yards, Alexander had 1,880 and number 30 was Antwain Smith with 659. Looking at rushing TDs there is a 27 to 4 spread from number 1 to 30 for that statistic. Let's assume that every fantasy team will carry 5 receivers. Recieving yards has a spread of 1563 to 686 for the top 50, and a spread of 12 to 4 for receiving TDs. There is a HUGE spread when it comes to the top 30 RBs, and a comparitavely small spread in the top 50 WRs.