Now to RB. I have a clear cut opinion on this position, and you probably will disagree vehemently with me on it. I do NOT like Adrian Peterson to have a year even close to last year. The Vikings have one of the toughest schedules for rushing the football. Only 2 of their 16 games will be against bottom 10 rush defenses. Last year was special and those people who drafted him early and rolled the dice were rewarded handsomely for their faith in AD. I am going in a different rout I have narrowed my first rd choice to 4 backs. I value them in this order: Arian Foster, Doug Martin, MJD, and Chris Johnson. I know those last two are a little bit of head scratchers. Hear me out! Both are clearly the best players in their team, and both organizations have done a great job this off season to put help around and most importantly IN FRONT of them. In the case of Chris Johnson, some people see Shonn Greene as a hindrance to CJ2K's scoring ability. I see him as a blessing for this reason; Johnson is not a pounder anyway, he scores on 15-20 yd scampers not 3 yd plunges. The past few years he has been asked to be the pounder and it has cost him late in games. Greene will help keep CJ from taking such a beating. Foster and Martin will be first rounders, and if they are both gone by your pick I would take a flier on Lynch, he should be pretty productive again, even though he did take a pounding last year with his style of running. MJD and Johnson should be there in rds 2 or 3. To fill out your backfield you do not have to draft RB heavy in the early rds. Wait till rds 5-7 and pick up a couple of the following backs: Montee Ball, Chris Ivory, Lamar Miller, Vick Ballard and LeVeon Bell. Two of these guys should put some good bye week and flex options at your disposal. At least 1 of these 4 are going to end up a top 10 back. I would not keep more than 4 RBs on my squad. WRs carry way more scoring potential.
Speaking of wide outs here we go. I am placing Demarius Thomas at the top of my list. With Welker and Eric Decker not far behind. The Denver WRs will face only 1 top 10 pass defense all year and that is week 1. Thomas is a 3rd rd pick but worth taking in the 2nd if you covet one of the QBs I spoke of earlier. Welker is a 3-4 rounder and Decker is around the 5th. I value Welker and Decker pretty close together so Decker would be your better value in rd 5 or 6. You are going to want at least 1 of these 3 guys in your squad. My next tier of WRs is small, in fact it is two guys. I am targeting Dez Bryant and Dwayne Bowe as my other two WRs. Dez is a second rd pick and I will be targeting him with my second rd pick in every draft this year. Bowe is a different story. He is a special receiver and Alex Smith is going to be better than anticipated. Bowe will be his favorite target. Besides being in my top 5 receivers, Bowe is also a great value in the late 4th to late 5th rd. My last starter at WR is my sleeper to finish in the top 10 WR next year: Denarius Moore. He is a available in the late rounds and will be a big scorer next year.
Tight End is an easy one this year. Forget about Graham or Gronk. Forget about Hernandez or Witten. Nope, not even Pitta or Rudolph. I have my eye on two sets of TEs. You want one from each tier. Top tier is Tony Gonzalez and Vernon Davis. I know Gonzo is believable but V Davis. Yes! Davis was a beast in the playoffs last year. I know his last 5 games of the regular season were rough....and I mean ROUGH. He and Kaepernick really got on the same page in the playoffs and that will carry over into this season. Both Gonzo and Davis will be available in the 7th or 8th rd. snag one of them there. Then with a late rd pick grab up Greg Olsen or Zack Miller as a backup. I think both Olsen and Miller have a shot at being this years Pitta and Rudolph.
For defense I have a short list. I will be drafting Cincinatti or Cleveland for my DST this coming season. Heck! I might draft them both and play the one with the best matchup each week. They both have the easiest schedules in'13. All the other defenses will cost you too high of a draft pick. SD is a sleeper to have another top 10 year possible top 5.
Kicker is down to two as well. Matt Prater is my top choice. If he is gone by the time you draft your kicker Novak from SD is my second choice. Both should serve you well. On their bye week you have two choices. Drop them and get another kicker for the rest of the year or drop another player and get a 1 week fill in. I would not be against the first option as long as you can get Connor Barth from TB. He was my drafted kicker last year. Since TB had a week 4 bye I just carried two kickers until week 5 then dropped the other and rode Barth out. Turned out to be a good move.
I hope this helped you see a little bit what I see for this upcoming season. To see how to fill out the bench of your roster check out my other post on the SOSPRO ratings it will give you the draft value of all your WR2s and 3s. I recommend drafting as many Redskin and Charger WRs you can to stash on the bench. They both have very favorable schedules. Also look out for Donnie Avery WR for KC, Miles Austin, Jeremy Maclin and DeShaun Jackson; they are 4 of my sleepers to break into the top 15 WR for next year. All are late round, or in Avery's case largely undrafted, picks and worth stashing.
Good luck to all in the upcoming fantasy football season and my all your drafts go exactly as planned! (We all know at least one of our top choices will get sniped with the pick right before our own!) But we can hope right??!!
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