Fantasy Prologue: Revisiting the Past

As we start to wind out the first week of July, you're probably starting to put plans for your league together - after all, camp is in less than three weeks and after that, preseason begins in short order. Personally, I've sent out the first emails for the WCG Writer's League, which we will be bringing to you in a variety of weekly updates, so you can laugh at those of us of the writer cadre that participate in fantasy football (as well as some member entries that may be interested, hint hint) as well as learn from us and the mistakes that we might make, or the moves that we made that panned out.

It's with the learning process in mind that I'll begin to delve into last year's writer's league and take a look at some of the mistakes that I've made in my fantasy career. Hit the jump for the first of these segments - namely, drafting yourself into a hole.

My position in last year's draft was the number six spot, out of twelve - so pretty much exactly in the middle. I consider the middle of the draft order to be fairly pivotal - you don't get the top top running backs, but you have the first pick of the top quarterbacks and wide receivers. At this time last year, Chris Johnson was going through his holdout and was falling for a variety of reasons - rust concerns, a down season - but when he fell to me at 6, I couldn't turn it down. Maurice Jones-Drew fell to me in the second round, and again, I took a top running back.

What happened after that? Well, Greg Jennings became my third round pick, landing my first receiver and the tenth taken overall; Jeremy Maclin as my #2 in the fourth round, and finally my starting quarterback in the fifth round in Ben Roethlisberger. Given our setup last season of .5 PPR and six-point passing touchdowns, I almost feel like I spent my time drafting to a more traditional setup as opposed to prioritizing a top quarterback earlier.

Johnson eventually spun into Darren Sproles for me, who under the .5 PPR setup gave some extremely productive point totals, but perhaps I would have been better served to spend my first rounder on Aaron Rodgers - he was the next immediate pick.

Either way, from that point on I kind of got careless - I spent the remainder of the draft attempting to stockpile weapons to make up for my lackluster receivers. While you can find solid receivers late in the draft, not many of my options came through, and I ended up wasting a lot of spots.

Given our setup, and the way our draft came out, were you in my position, what moves might you have made as opposed to what actually happened? And no, hindsight isn't allowed here.