Draft Diary 2004: Strategy

i am bill parcells. when your team sucks as badly as mine will this year, you have to rebuild, and have a good plan to do it. i've always wanted to be in the position to completely rebuild. it would be nice to have some assets to trade but if i'm gonna play like an expansion team, i might as well become a promising expansion team. this year i look to draft stars in the making. no name guys who will become names after i'm done with them. in previous years i liked to stock up on older veteran WRs who could put up a few numbers but had no real trade value or keeper value (keyshawn johnson anyone?). i liked to have two or three of these guys on my roster so that i could cash in on their consistency as my third WR. this year, it's boom or bust. i'm passing over all players that may still have a year or two left but have no more upside. keyshawn, joey galloway, marcus robinson, jerome bettis, tyrone wheatley, david boston, charlie garner, marshall faulk, amani toomer, see ya later suckas. these players could all have explosive years this year but i don't care. i want youth youth and more youth.

taking a page from the NBA, i will be drafting based purely on potential. this means rookies, two year men and guys on the rise. this is a high risk strategy. but the rewards could be great. at the end of the season, i'm hoping to mine one good young RB and two young WRs. not too hard of a task. i've done it before, the only difference this year is that i'll have to play these players as they grow, as opposed to sit them on the bench. i want the next steve smith, the next domanick davis. the problem with this strategy is that even if a young guy has a good game or a good season, you never know what might happen the next year. hello plaxico burress and william green. these guys had excellent freshman/sophmore seasons but then tailed off after one good year, and now nobody likes'em.

the easiest way to identify potential stars is to see who has opportunities to play. young RBs who are suddenly in charge of their destinies (thomas jones, tj duckett, michael bennett, rudi johnson). they have been handed the starting job and all they need to do is produce to become a stud. rookie RBs make the transition to the pros the easiest. what's the difference between running against college teams and pro teams? sometimes, not much. there is always one rookie RB who explodes and immediately alters the fantasy landscape. marshall faulk, edgerrin james, ladainian thomas and clinton portis all came in as rookies and set their worth. so first round backs are always promising. this year we have julius jones in dallas, kevin jones in detroit and possibly tatum bell in denver and steven jackson in st louis. these guys will be drafted based purely on their opportunity and potential.

the other way to identify potential franchise RBs is to grab backups to the stars. an injury to an aging back will open the door for your guy to step through. some guys are buried on the depth chart and can't get no playing time but have the skills to make it big. maybe deshaun foster, willis mcgahee, lamont jordan, najeh davenport, labrandon toefield and larry johnson fit this profile. but when will they get a chance? kevan barlow finally got out from underneath the shadow of garrison hearst, let's see what he can do with it.

finding quality young WRs is much tougher. i've decided on a new strategy this year. i'm going to stick all the names of young WRs i like into a hat and draft them at random. because young WRs often come out of nowhere, what's the point in trying to logic out who should be the next great thing? david terrell, peter warrick, jj stokes. great college players but busts or semi-busts as pros. why bother? i'm going to just look up random names on the depth charts of teams and go from there. it's very scientific this year, as you can tell.

young QBs are a dime a dozen so i won't even bother researching those. byron leftwich, david carr, carson palmer are all the same to me till they do something. and then i'll just grab one when i can. nobody knows which QBs will be good, you have just a good a chance going with the random no names as the stars. will eli manning, eli manning or ben roethlisberger become good pros? history says at least one of them will fail miserably. it's more efficient to wait for the kurt warners, trent greens and jeff garcias of the world to emerge and then draft them.

so this year my draft strategy will be towards the future. lose now, win later. if i'm gonna lose, i'm gonna go down in flames and come out of it next season rising from the ashes. or maybe i'll strike it rich and be good this year AND next year.