After doing my initial draft rankings for the 2009 season, I have a list that differs from most of the draft guides I have seen to date.  The top 8 players on my list are all Quarterbacks!

Over the past 10 years, it has been traditional wisdom that teams should draft RB with their first two picks of the draft in order to have a shot at winning their league, but I am not sure that the statistics really support that strategy in 2009.

One of the interesting things I have noticed in online fantasy football games this year such as the National Fantasy Football Championship and NFL.com is the fact that passing touchdowns are being given a value of 6 fantasy points.  Scoring passing TD’s at 6 fantasy points each gives a huge advantage to the elite NFL QB’s. 

The top 8 QB’s averaged 4400 passing yards, 30 passing TD’s, and averaged 12 INT last year.  If passing touchdowns are given 6 fantasy points each, passing yards are given 0.04 fantasy points each, and interceptions thrown are assigned –2 fantasy points each, then a Top 8 QB will average 332 fantasy points in 2009. 

The top 8 RB’s averaged 15 rushing touchdowns, 1200 rushing yards, 30 receptions, 200 receiving yards, 1 receiving touchdown, and 2 Fumbles.  If rushing touchdowns are 6 fantasy points each, rushing yards are given 0.1 fantasy points each, receptions are assigned 1 fantasy point each, receiving yards are given 0.1 fantasy points each, receiving touchdowns are 6 fantasy points each, and fumbles lost are assigned –2 fantasy points each, then a Top 8 RB will average 262 fantasy points in 2009. 

With top quarterbacks having an average 70 fantasy point advantage over a top 8 running back, it may be hard to pass on a quarterback in the first round of your fantasy football draft.  Another factor that you may want to consider when trying to decide if a Quarterback should be drafted in the first 2 rounds of your fantasy football draft is the fact that many NFL teams are going with multiple running backs in their offensive schemes.  Many teams have a fast running back who gets 65% of the carries and a power running back who gets the remaining 35% of the carries in short yardage situations especially near the goal line.  This division of labor has made the running back position deeper and less differentiated than in the past. 

Assuming you will be drafting in a 12-team fantasy football league that is using the scoring system above and the current fantasy football draft guide rankings from http://games.espn.go.com/ffl/tools/projections?display=alt, we can simulate the scoring potential of top 24 picks:

Doesn’t there seem to be a problem with the ESPN rankings, especially if you look at total points?  Only 5 of the top 8 quarterbacks would be drafted in first two rounds if you followed ESPN’s guide; however, only 2 runningbacks (Peterson and Jones-Drew) are projected to outscore Kurt Warner (the 5^th ranked quarterback).  

Many of the draft guides you will see in magazines and on the internet will have similar ranking orders based upon the belief that elite running backs are scarce commoditites.   Running backs would be much more valuable in a league that only awards 4 fantasy points to each passing touchdown (which was the norm five years ago), but most online games seem to be awarding 6 fantasy points per passing touchdown in 2009.

If the fantasy football masses want to continue drafting running backs in the first two rounds of the draft, then teams with the first 3 draft slots in your fantasy football draft are going to have a huge advantage.  If I get a draft slot outside of the top 5, I would definitely make my first round fantasy football draft pick be an elite quarterback.  To me, every running back in 2009 has some risk to them, although I would draft one of the top 5 running backs on ESPN’s list in round one if they were available at my slot.  If you can’t shake the need to draft a running back in round 1, then I would definitely target drafting a top 8 quarterback in the second round of your fantasy football draft.

With the nature of fantasy football success depending more on luck than draft skill, you should definitely try to maximize the potential fantasy point production in your first two rounds, rather than drafting 2 running backs and hoping that the 2^nd-tier quarterback has a breakout season in 2009 (like Kurt Warner or Chad Pennington unexpectedly did in 2008).  I think teams that grab an elite QB and gamble on 2^nd-tier running backs like Kevin Smith, Ronnie Brown, Ryan Grant, Pierre Thomas, Jonathan Stewart, Darren McFadden, Joseph Addai, Derrick Ward, Willie Parker, LenDale White, Larry Johnson and/or ReggieBush...

The RotoRank Fantasy Football Draft Guide will rank players according to fantasy point output; however, the grading scheme used allows our subscribers to see where each position’s natural clusters form, so you can easily make draft day decisions.  It is a lot easier to pass on a player if there are several other similar players that remain undrafted in his cluster, so that you can draft a player who is a similar value group with no other players remaining in his grade.