Christmas in August -

It's that time again . . fantasy football season! While I haven't had even thirty seconds to really prepare, time waits for no man to be +EV against his friends and coworkers, and the first money draft took place tonight. It's a $20 12-team league, mostly guys having a good time - standard Yahoo scoring with bonuses (+4 for 300 yds/150 rushing/150 receiving), the only real "quirk" being that it's QB/RB/RB/WR/WR/WR instead of /Flex - I did not know this when I made my Round 4 selection, obviously. My team:

Urbanski'sWheelchair

Round	Pick	Player	Position
1.	(7)	Marion Barber	RB
2.	(18)	Braylon Edwards	WR
3.	(31)	Willis McGahee	RB
4.	(42)	Earnest Graham	RB
5.	(55)	Donovan McNabb	QB
6.	(66)	Donald Driver	WR
7.	(79)	Anthony Gonzalez	WR
8.	(90)	Matt Forte	RB
9.	(103)	Jonathan Stewart	RB
10.	(114)	Reggie Williams	WR
11.	(127)	Philip Rivers	QB
12.	(138)	Tony Scheffler	TE
13.	(151)	Drew Bennett	WR
14.	(162)	Indianapolis	DEF
15.	(175)	Josh Brown	K

Picking #7 overall is a weird spot - Steven Jackson actually fell there, but Linehan sounds serious about his contract issues, and I couldn't really pull the trigger. I'm wondering whether this is a mistake, but even if it is, it's probably only a handful of points over the course of the season and probably reduces my variance quite a bit.

The Graham pick should likely be Calvin Johnson (who went with the next pick), since it's a 2 RB league (and he has the same bye week as my two starters) - I'll likely try to package him for a middle-tier receiver if at all possible. Past that, I think this is as good as I can reasonably expect to do in a 12-team league - if my starting receivers were Edwards/Johnson/Driver (or Gonzalez, depending on whether Marvin Harrison's knees are made of glass and/or he shot someone) I'd be ecstatic, but I can't complain too much as-is, especially since projecting WRs is basically divining-rod bullshit at this point.

I love Forte, Williams and Bennett as sleepers, especially since I was able to take them incredibly low. This opens up a TON of trading opportunities for me in the regular season, and I can try to find this season's Colston or Bowe without worry of having to drop a "real" player. It's pretty win/win from this angle.

On the whole, I think this is a great example of letting the draft come to you - especially since the Yahoo auto-pick (of which there were four in this draft) overvalues receivers in this scenario because of the imbalance, I was able to parlay some very good players at late positions. I felt like I'd just nailed the prom queen after the McGahee and McNabb picks, and even have a small (very small, like Asian small) amount of backup in case those two get injured (note: both will get injured). Essentially, I got somewhere between 2 and 3 second-round picks, and picked up receivers who may just break through with 10 TD seasons with the right breaks, even after making a terrible pick in the 4th. Life is good.