We have always individual defensive players (IDP) in the Naked Bootleggers league. It adds a mild layer of extra strategy to the proceedings, and sometimes you get lucky and one of your IDP players pulls off 8 tackles and 2 sacks on Monday night for the weekly win. Not always, but sometimes. In this edition, we investigate when to start thinking about drafting IDPs.

This weekend, Marc posted an analysis of overrated and underrated players in the upcoming fantasy football drafts as measured by the Yahoo ranking vs the ADP. Then the excellent Fantasy Football Librarian came out with a list of the average rankings (ARP) for a number of players from some of the more popular websites including yahoo, the NFL, EPSN, CBS and high quality blogs.

Last time, you saw the graph
comparing the relative point values of various first round fantasy football draft strategies. For that graph, I assumed that if you chose a running back in the first two rounds, that you would follow up the third round with a quarterback. This seemingly makes sense - the quarterback is the most valuable player on the team (points wise). But does it make sense to take a quarterback as early as possible.

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....