The days are getting shorter, the dew is on the leaves, and the air is getting crisp. On Sunday morning you go to get your paper, and if you listen really hard, you can hear it in the distance - the theme song for Monday Night Football. Oh, yeah - its that time.

And that time means that fantasy football drafts are just around the corner. The draft in the usual Naked Bootleggers (NB) league is on the 24th, followed by my first year in Marc's family & friends league on the 27th. That means its high time to start looking at the statistics and pretending I somehow can get a leg up during the draft (you know it never works out), but hey, its still fun. Even hard core systems hackers like myself enjoy spending time with a spreadsheet. In this installment: early round strategy. For some time now, the hard and fast rule of the first two rounds has been to take two running backs. Woe to the poor sucker who took a quarterback too early. But today's NFL is different - Peyton Manning has inspired a generation of passers, and teams are increasingly going to two back systems thanks to more aggressive rush defense and injuries. So too has the RB/RB strategy turned the corner? Read on....

In order to start playing, we need statistics. We look at two important values - average draft position (or ADP) and the projected statistics for each player. This year, ADP comes once again from Ant Sports and the projected stats come from Yahoo. ADP tells us the popular draft position for a player, and the Yahoo stats tell us how many points that player is expected to score over the year. Together, they can give us a snapshot of the relative worth of each player and when they are expected to be drafted.

Now that we have the numbers, lets crunch them. We consider four strategies: Best available player, RB/RB/QB, RB/QB and QB/RB. In each scenario, we assume that the other players will draft the best available player, and that you will select the best available player in the given category. For Best Available, RB/QB and QB/RB, the third player taken will be the best available player that isn't a QB (since you already have a starting QB). For RB/RB, we assume that you will take the best available QB for your third pick. Draft success is measured by the total number of season points that each player will give you (for per game averages, divide by 12). Without further ado, here is the graph:

Clearly, your draft position matters. In the first slot, the combination of LT and Jamal Lewis in the first two rounds followed immediately by Tony Romo in the third is tough to beat. Taking Brady with the number one pick is still more profitable then anything in slots 6-12, but Lewis certainly isn't as good as LT as a #1 RB. Best available is terrible in slot 2, where you can go strong with Adrian Peterson, but end up in slot 2 with Steve Smith. Far better to go with RB,RB and follow up AP with Jamal Lewis and Drew Brees in the third round, or even take a chance on Brady, with Lewis and Houshmandzadeh in the third. The best possible position is in the 4th, where you have the chance to take Brady a few slots early, and combine him with Ryan Grant in round 2. Watch out with the deceiving RB/RB/QB value - the first RB is Steven Jackson, who is probably over-rated and over-predicted. Go with Brady. Brady/Grant also goes in slot 5, with almost the same value as Addai/Grant/Brees which is pretty good if you can't bring yourself to pick a QB. Brady's ADP is 6, so in that position you will want to go with the best player, the only slot where best player is worth while. The rest of the slots flirt with 800 points until you get to the final slot, where the quick turn around in round two can get you Manning and Marshawn Lynch.
The RB/RB/QB in slot 8 is interesting, where you can pick up a Marion Barber followed by Jones-Drew and then Carson Palmer in the third round. This is just as good as a Barber/Romo combination, and you don't run the risk of having two high profile players with the same bye week.

Which begs the question. If RB/RB is a winning strategy for your draft position, How early do you really need to take a quarterback? Will a highly rated wide receiver float your boat higher instead? Don't ponder too long, thats the topic of our next subject, coming soon.