A Football Life, Team Battle Evaluation

William Battle, No. 1 pick overall

Biggest Catches (Best Value)

Knile Davis, RB, KC (+37 picks) – This means that Knile went 37 picks after his rank

Shonn Green, RB, TEN (+34 picks)

Donald Brown, RB, SD (+32 picks)

Biggest Reaches (Worst Value)

Eli Manning, QB, NYG (-84 picks) – This means that Eli went 84 picks before his rank

Carolina Panthers, DEF (-46 picks)

Keenan Allen, WR, SD (-39 picks)

Projected Starting Lineup

QB Cam Newton, CAR (No. 4 QB)

RB Arian Foster, HOU (No. 12 RB)

WR1 Keenan Allen, SD (No. 13 WR)

WR2 Torrey Smith, BAL (No. 20 WR)

TE Greg Olsen, CAR (No. 8 TE)

FLEX Joique Bell, RB, DET (No. 33 FLEX)

DEF Carolina Panthers (No. 5 DEF)

K Mason Crosby (No. 4 K)

I’ll be the first to say that William has some great depth on his squad, but his starting lineup leaves plenty to be desired. Cam Newton was his best selection among his starting squad, grabbing him 15 picks behind where I had him ranked. Torrey Smith was also a nice grab, as he lasted eight spots past my ranking. In fact, William also made a nice pick on Joique Bell. He was the 32nd flex player to go and was ranked number 33 on my list.

The problem with Battle’s team is that he made some pretty significant reaches, and two of them are on his starting lineup. He chose to keep Keenan Allen from his 2013 roster. Allen had a pretty terrific season, one of the rare rookie receivers to finish among the top 20 scorers at the position. But he was the 13th ranked receiver in the draft. Even with some other receivers being kept, guys like A.J. Green and Dez Bryant would have been available for Battle to select with his first overall pick had he opted not to keep anybody.

The other starter on that list of biggest reaches is the Carolina Panthers defense. He selected them at number 85 overall while I had them ranked at 131. That’s a 46-pick reach! There were plenty of other good bench players he could have selected in the 8th round of the draft that would have had more value. In addition, the Denver Broncos and Cincinnati Bengals defenses, both of which I had ranked higher than Carolina’s, were still on the board. Denver’s still would have been a reach, but a 20-pick reach is a lot less debilitating than a 46-pick reach.

Once you combine all value-based ranks, Team Battle ends up with a -128 for his starters, a +80 for his bench, and a -48 overall.

This ranks Team Battle 6th in the AFL for overall team value and 12th in starter value. Bench doesn’t matter much by itself so I didn’t bother ranking that.

This does not doom Team Battle to another last place finish in the league, but it does mean that there won’t be much room for error. William will have to be very accurate in starting the highest scorer on his roster at each position every week if he’s to win enough games to win his division.

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 45 percent chance of making the playoffs.
• With good in-season management, we think you have about a 28 percent chance of making the playoffs.
• With average in-season management, we think you have about an 8 percent chance of making the playoffs.

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