There have been whispers lately that the era of the running back has come and gone, and that next year, the top of the first round of the draft would be dominated by quarterbacks. That seems reasonable - LaDainian Tomlinson has 126 fantasy points in Yahoo, which is worse then the top 11 quarterbacks. From there it gets even worse - of the top running backs from the beginning of the season, only LT breaks 120 points, and only Westbrook and Addai break 100 points. In a standard draft - you would be hard pressed to take running backs in the first and second round that would match up to one of the top 5 quarterbacks.

But over the last few weeks, a solid argument against the quarterback first strategy has emerged in the persons of Adrian Peterson and Marshawn Lynch. Adrian Peterson is the current rush leader in the NFL, and today tore out a single game record of 296 yards, and 3 touchdowns against LT and the San Diego Chargers. And just two weeks ago, he put up 223 against Chicago. As Minnisota continues to improve their front line, Peterson's numbers are pointed up, not down.

Marshawn Lynch is a little bit lower in numbers (10th in Yahoo RB points), but Buffalo is a far worse team, and he is still consistently putting up close to 100 yard per game numbers, including 153 today. If that team ever figures out some stability and opens up their passing game more, then Lynch will be a force to be reckoned with.

So, come next August, its not nearly as clear a picture as you might think. Sure, there will be lots of quarterback points on the table, but it will sure be hard to turn Adrian Peterson if he is staring you in the face.

In part 1 of discussing my recent fantasy football draft, I left with an interesting question. My graph showed that quarterbacks were always more valuable than any other player through most of the draft. If that is the case, then it would be easy to assume that the best course of action would be to go against conventional wisdom and pick a quarterback in the first round. but I really don't believe so, and read on past the jump to find out why.

When you first start playing fantasy football, you draft on the fly, picking the best available player or drawing from the pool of hometown players and superstars you keep locked in your mind. Later, as your skills improve, you spend more time ranking your players, trying to get construct a better list then whatever the default system spits at you. Finally, you start to wonder about the mechanics of the draft itself. When is the right time to take that sleeper pick? At what point should I take a tight end, or a defense, or a kicker, and feel good about it? What mistakes have the other players made? These questions invariably lead you to try to develop a system to help you make better decisions on draft day. This is the story of my system.
Read on for details.

Welcome to September. We've survived the dog days of summer, and there won't be another weekend in 2007 that doesn't have football on television. College started on Thursday, unfortunately with a Utah loss. The NFL kicks off on next Thursday with New Orleans visiting Indianapolis.

Both of my fantasy football drafts are in the books, as well. The Buena Vista Touchdown Club drafted on Wednesday, and the Naked Bootleggers got it on last night. I picked ninth in the BVTDC draft- I was marginally happy with the results, but I'm going to have bye week problems in weeks 6 and 8. I put a lot more work into crunching the numbers yesterday, and even though I was sixth in the order for the NB draft, I was far happier with the results. I was able to make better decisions on a round by round basis, and I scored a couple of excellent steals, including Baltimore in round 9, which was a full 3 rounds below the projected draft position.

This year, I've decided to go uber-nerd, and I'm going to take a scientific look at the fantasy numbers; I'll spend a lot of time working up some spreadsheets to crunch numbers and try to make better decisions. Of course, on Sunday it will still be a combination of gut feel and luck, but chance helps those who help themselves.

I'm going to detail most of this on these pages - discuss my numbers, my roster moves for the week, and the other minutia of the day to day life of the serious fantasy footballer. Thats not to say we won't also have some fun - last year I invented a power ranking system for the leagues, so I'll be keeping you up to date with the real winners and losers of both the BVTDC and the NB leagues, starting in week 3.

We'll kick things off with a look at the numbers I crunched yesterday, and then a bit more in depth look at my rosters. Stay tuned.