Week 1 is here

Last night, I completed my last 2 drafts of the season. 19 leagues in all for me this year plus 3 or 4 survivor/picks pools. The fun part is now over, and it's time to get to work. Many people think all the work is in draft preparation and the actual draft. However, I credit most of my success to the in season work.

To start, I watch as many games as possible and study box scores of the ones I don't. Stats are nice, but they don't always tell the true story. Some things I look for that don't show up in the box score are...
- targets...who does the qb look to in key situations when the team needs a first down. If he consistently targets the same receiver, you know that receiver has a good chance to be productive this season
- talent...many running backs rely on the offensive line to give them holes, but special backs can make people miss as well as lower the shoulder and gain extra yards on contact. The NFL trend is to go with the younger, more explosive running backs. After 3-5 years of heavy use, backs lose some burst and start turning 10 yard gains into 4 yard gains.
- offensive identity...from year to year, most teams keep the same offensive identity. I like to make note of the teams who are definitely running teams and those that are definitely passing teams.
- red zone...going along with offensive identity, I like to see what type of plays a team runs inside the 10 yard line as well as what players are in the game. Is a team using a specific goal line back? Does one receiver play over another in the red zone because of his size and/or strength?

I use these outside factors when drafting as well. Some people go strictly off the magazine rankings and 2009 stats. I make my own rankings which often differ greatly from the so called experts. One example is that I severely downgraded Phillip Rivers this year due to his lack of WR's. Malcom Floyd is a solid #2, but he's not the play maker V-Jax was. Combine the lack of weapons with a rookie running back who will probably mess up on pass protection occasionally, and I see him struggling. Another move I did was to put Shonn Greene in my top 8 rb's. The Jets are a running team and he will get a bulk of the carries. Last year he had 7 td's as the 2nd back and now that he's the man, he can be a stud. LT will obviously get some carries and some goal line touches, but look for Greene to have a monster week.

I want to finish by going off on a tangent. Congrats to Aaron aka Mustache Sweater Man, on getting his PFFWC contest (www.pffwc.com) up and running in short time. For his first season, he has 200 teams from 70+ different participants.
The site gets better and better every day as he pumps out more code. The draft application was easy to use and very well designed. He has great team management features which makes it easy for guys like Zebb who has 17 teams, to manage all of their teams from one screen. The best part is that he lives and breathes the PFFWC, so if something isn't right, he's on top of it and fixing the error ASAP. This one man crew is the best customer support I've ever seen for a national contest. I hope the rest of the season goes well for him and that he can build off the year 1 success and see the contest grow in leaps and bounds next year!

Good luck everyone!