The football season has arrived. I am playing in two fantasy football leagues this year; both prize leagues. One with a group from work and another that I'm commissioning for a group of friends.

I wasn't terribly satisfied with my first draft. I made one mistake early by focusing on Miles Austin, whom I was nearly certain would fall to me at pick 3.9 because several players ahead me had gone WR in the 2nd round. The guy picking in 3.8 snatched him up after having taken QB, WR in the first two rounds. To his credit, it's a PPR league so he's placing added value on WR, but his decision to take Austin with that pick left him pretty shallow at RB. He landed Jahvid Best and Jonathan Stewart with his next two picks. Maybe I'll revisit this post later in the season and realize he's a FFB genius, but right now I'm skeptical.

My mistake was not having contingency when it came time to pick and I pulled the trigger on Chad Ochocinco--whom I had as the next highest ranked WR--because I was so honed in on landing the other WR. Although I had already taken 2 RBs (Steven Jackson and Shonn Greene), there was plenty of RB value (e.g. Arian Foster and LeSean McCoy) on the board and I probably could have waited until the next round to grab a WR in the same tier as Ochocinco had he no longer been available. The misplaced pick haunted me with the 4.4 pick where I landed Joseph Addai who has been the bane of my fantasy football existence.

This mistake has made me realize that there's a key element missing from my draft strategy: understanding average draft position (ADP). Doing mock drafts seems a bit silly, but it does let you gauge where other people rank players on average. If you have a player ranked higher on your list than other people seem to be drafting him, you may be able to sit on him for a while and play the value game until it comes time to strike. You will inevitably lose out on some players with this strategy--every draft is going to have its anomalies--but generally it should help you maximize value with each pick by not reaching for players.

Team 1

• Joe Flacco
• Chad Henne
• Steven Jackson
• Shonn Greene
• Joseph Addai
• Ahmad Bradshaw
• Donald Brown
• Chad Ochocinco
• Wes Welker
• Johnny Knox
• Santana Moss
• Mike Williams (TB)
• John Carlson
• Adam Vinatieri
• Giants

The second draft is a protect 2 league which lets you keep 2 players that you drafted in the prior season, but for one year only. I opted to keep Ray Rice and Cedric Benson. Many of the big time RBs were keepers, but I still managed to, I feel, strengthen my RB picks with Ryan Mathews and Arian Foster who are potential keepers for next year.

I took a sleeper at TE with Gresham and will likely find myself keeping a watchful eye on the waiver wire for depth at that position. Also, this is not the QB corps I was hoping for, but there was a peculiar run on backup QBs in this draft that saw Flacco and Ryan taken a bit earlier than I had expected. Sanchez is obviously a bit of flyer, but there are some serviceable names on the free agent wire should I need to go digging for another backup.

Team 2

• Donovan McNabb
• Mark Sanchez
• Ray Rice
• Cedric Benson
• Ryan Mathews
• Arian Foster
• Donald Brown
• Miles Austin
• Jabar Gaffney
• Hakeem Nicks
• Mike Wallace
• Devin Thomas
• Jermaine Gresham
• Neil Rackers
• Dolphins