A Football Life, Missing Rings Evaluation

My team name comes from the episodes of America’s Game titled for the greatest teams in NFL history to not win the Super Bowl.

Cory Puffett, No. 8 pick overall

Biggest Catches

Danny Woodhead, RB, SD (+59)

Carlos Hyde, RB, SF (+49)

Kyle Rudolph, TE, MIN (+24)

Biggest Reaches

Cincinnati Bengals, DEF (-29)

EJ Manuel, QB, BUF (-15)

Projected Starting Lineup

QB Andrew Luck, IND (No. 5 QB)

RB Montee Ball, DEN (No. 7 RB)

WR1 Michael Crabtree, SF (No. 17 WR)

WR2 Julian Edelman, NE (No. 19 WR)

TE Jimmy Graham, NO (No. 1 TE)

FLEX Giovani Bernard, RB, CIN (No. 16 FLEX)

DEF Cincinnati Bengals (No. 4 DEF)

K Justin Tucker, BAL (No. 2 K)

Danny Woodhead has been a very good, if inconsistent, PPR threat in fantasy for the past couple seasons. He ranked 33rd at running back on my list and I got him as the 44th running back off the board. Even if I ranked him too high to start, that’s very good value for my RB4 from a positional standpoint.

Carlos Hyde is my RB5 but considering he’s one of the highest-ranked true handcuffs in fantasy, I really liked my value here, too. This one was a +9 catch from a positional standpoint and an overall value of +49.

Kyle Rudolph was a nice catch, too. He could be trade bait since I already have Jimmy Graham, but if I don’t trade him, I have one of the best TE2 players in the league backing up the best TE1 option in the league.

Even my two reaches weren’t too bad, which isn’t surprising since, again, I had my own rankings right in front of me for this draft. I took the Bengals 29 picks ahead of where I had them ranked, but there was a run on defenses and considering I was the 6th team to take a defense, I was thrilled my No. 4 defense was still on the board.

EJ Manuel, if anything, was my worst pick, and that was my own fault for waiting so long on my backup quarterback. The good news is that there could be some great guys to take off the waiver wire by the time we get a few weeks into the season and I have to start preparing for Andrew Luck’s bye week.

It should come as no surprise that my overall team value was a league best +167. The interesting thing is that my starter value was a -1, which was 4th in the league.

My bench is my strong point, but my starting unit is still among the league’s best. Let’s hope my rankings were pretty close to how things will actually turn out, or things won’t go as well as I expect them to this season.

Bonus

In order to include something without my biased rankings at its core, I’ve included the average bottom line of the evaluations by the four official evaluators at FootballGuys.com.

• With great in-season management, we think you have about a 76 percent chance of making the playoffs.
• With good in-season management, we think you have about a 64 percent chance of making the playoffs.
• With average in-season management, we think you have about a 48 percent chance of making the playoffs.

You can read the entire evaluation of this team at FootballGuys.com.