Where Do I Decide to Pick?

My last blog was about a situation that never came to fruition. Well, I guess you never know with Favre, but I am inclined to believe that we will not see him in the NFL this year. But who knows, maybe he’ll come back for the Super Bowl if the Vikes call. Enough Favre though and let’s talk about a situation that came up in one of my leagues with an answer that evades me at this point.

The situation was that I was given the first pick on where to select in my 12 team draft. What further complicates matters is that this is a PPR league where the top QB’s, RB’s, and WR’s are on a much more even playing field due to the scoring elements. The two main questions I asked myself when trying to make this decision were

a) Is there a player(s) that are exceedingly better than everyone else?
b) At what point is there a significant drop in talent in the draft?

Looking at question a, I would say there is no player that makes themselves the quintessential #1 choice, especially in PPR. From a RB perspective, Peterson, Jones-Drew, & Forte are all in the same mold and while Peterson is the #1 choice in non-PPR formats, Jones-Drew & Forte become even with Peterson in a PPR format in many fantasy projections.

The key part as I continued to look through the positions was at WR as guys like Andre Johnson and Larry Fitzgerald were on par with the top RB’s in the league. Both guys are slated to catch over 100 passes and from a points perspective, they were even with the top 3 RB’s. The more I looked at projections for 2009 stats, the QB’s showed the least variance (4 pt for a TD) as guys like Brady and Brees did not discern themselves as much from second-tier QB’s such as Schaub and Rivers.

When going into more detail on RB’s and WR’s, the breaking point for each position varies greatly. At RB, PPR or no-PPR, the dip in talent falls after the top 3 of Jones-Drew, Forte, and Peterson. At WR, the dip is much more subjective. I would say that at the WR spot, once you get past Johnson, Fitzgerald, and Moss, the rest of the WR’s are debatable whether they are going to produce at the level of the top 3. Analysts seem high on players such as Calvin Johnson and Roddy White, but they have not proven enough consistently to illustrate they are either PPR or TD monsters to get into that echelon level of WR’s.

At this point, just looking at RB’s and WR’s, I decided I was picking 3rd or 6th, where I was getting at least one top-tier player in one of these positions. I eventually concluded on 3rd, aiming to get Jones-Drew, Forte, or Peterson. There may be more optimal strategies in this format, but I could not find any conceivable answer. And I’m definitely not trying to make a point that my strategy is correct. I am more curious about the process as the next pick that I saw was an owner who decided that the 11th pick was the most optimal choice. There may be no way to strategically find the correct position on where to be in a draft, but I am interested in how people convince themselves that a certain draft position is the optimal spot.