Coming now is a basic outline of the role of each position for your team.  I’ll also post relevant articles from my draft guide section here.  This isn’t customized for this year, but is just a general outline for how to think about particular positions.  Make sure you check out our other articles as well for specific information for this year’s draft.

You can have Peyton Manning or Tom Brady.  You can have Randy Moss or Andre Johnson.  You can have Antonio Gates or Tony Gonzalez.  And that won’t make a difference if you don’t have a decent batch of RBs.  Far and away, the most important position on your team is the running back.  And because of this, your top priority in the first few rounds is to plug up all the RB spots.  And one of your first duties after that is to start drafting depth at the position. 

Why are running backs so important?  Why would you ever draft Larry Johnson, who likes pulling Troy Polamalu’s hair over Peyton Manning, who likes licking the cream out of big black Oreos?  Well, the answer is that top tier RBs are more likely to deliver you a reasonably high number of points on a consistent basis.  “Oh, but Steven, eight of the top ten fantasy scorers in the 2008 fantasy football season were QBs!  Why should we pass up the top scorers in favor of guys who don’t even lick the cream out of big black Oreos?!”  Because you’re a stupid piece of crap, that’s why.  To reference literature from hundreds of years ago, the decay rate of RBs is exponential, while the decay rate of every other position is geometric.  Simple, right?

Since you probably don’t know what that means.  Look at that badass chart up above.  Those are the top fifteen QBs, RBs and WRs in the 2007 season.  The change of color between gray and blue shows the different tiers.  If you’ll notice, there are seven tiers in the quarterback position.  Granted, Tom Brady’s 50 TD season was just leading you on, but since 2004, there has always been a QB sitting well above all his peers (Brady was just the “most-highest” above everyone else).  The difference between each QB tier is relatively small (look at the drop-offs between tiers at each position; 13, 11, 24 and 7 for QB while RB is 44, 24 and 10) and those guys who end up on top are tough to predict. 

While the WR position is somewhat similar to the RB (similar difference in points between the #1 and #15 players, similar tier setup), there are two things that make WRs tough to take in the first round.  Firstly, year-to-year consistency is more elusive at the WR position than anywhere else in fantasy football (at least, in the skill positions).   Of those fifteen top WRs, from 2007 to 2008, Randy Moss dropped to ninth, Reggie Wayne to fourteenth.  Anquan Boldin and Calvin Johnson flew up the charts.  Antonio Bryant came out of nowhere.  Chad Johnson/Ocho Cinco, Braylon Edwards, Plaxico Burress, Wes Welker, Tory Holt, TJ Houshmandzadeh and Bobby Engram all fell out of the group. 

Let’s tie together all this “good to crap” stuff.  Using 2007’s Average Draft Positions (on average, where any individual player is taken in the draft), Peyton Manning (ADP of 11) scored 287.1 points on the season.  Matt Hasselbeck (ADP of 69) scored 258.3 points on the season (28.8 points less than Manning).  Ben Roethlisberger (111 in ADP) scored 269.7 on the season (17.4 points fewer than Manning).  Brett Favre (122 ADP) scored 258.5 (28.6 shy).  Let’s stack this up against the season total of the top six RBs, ADP-wise; Ladainian Tomlinson, Steven Jackson, Larry Johnson, Joseph Addai, Frank Gore and Shaun Alexander (213.5 points on the season, even with a year of injuries from Alexander).  RBs taken around Matt Hasselbeck included Julius Jones, Tatum Bell, Brandon Jackson and LaMont Jordan.  The four of them averaged 66.1 points on the season (a difference of 147.3).  RBs taken around Favre and Roethlisberger?  Well, how much of Reuben Droughns, Vernand Morency and Mike Bell have you seen since?  They averaged 33.3 points, by the way.  If that isn’t the statistical proof you needed…well…I don’t know what is. 

Something else to consider is the simple fact that you will see a lot more RBs played weekly.  In a normal ten team league, you will see one QB per team (so, ten total) with at least two RB slots (sometimes you’ll see three RB slots, or two and a flex, meaning you can easily see 25-30 RBs played per week).  Just look above.  Do you want to wait until round ten to fill in that RB position?

The best place to get more info will be my Massive Board and in the Breakdown! section.  We’ll pick out all those valuable RBs and give you a relative draft value for each of them.  But while all that stuff changes year to year…what doesn’t change is the fact that you need good running backs on your team.

Other Random RB Notes:

-          Every year, there will be a handful of RBs considered “elite.”  They are usually the very first players taken off the board.  Consider yourself lucky if you get seeded high enough to take one of them.

-          Almost without fail, there will be at least one rookie RB to run for 1000 yards.  Recent examples include Kevin Jones (2004), Carnell Williams (2005), Joseph Addai (2006) and Marshawn Lynch (2007).  2008 was kind of crazy, with Steve Slaton, Matt Forte and Chris Johnson all reaching this milestone.  Kevin Smith just barely missed the mark (975 yards). 

-          2006 saw the “platoon” become standard.  A “platoon” is where you have one or more RBs receiving a relevant number of carries on the same team.  In these situations, the player with more fantasy value is typically the guy who gets more of the touchdowns (this is not always the case, however).  Elite RBs usually have little to no competition in the backfield.

-          PPR leagues completely shift around the rankings of the position.  It puts a serious premium on players who are parts of West Coast Offenses and players who often get passes dumped to them.