A New Season Dawns...

Bring on the 2018 season!!

The 2018 draft is in the books, and we are ready to begin the season!  The lead-up to the draft seemed to take forever (we hung out at Tilted Kilt for about 3 hours pre-draft to the chagrin of our clearly-annoyed waitress), but the draft seemed to fly by in no time at all.  Next year I swear I’m going to see if I can extend the time per pick, at least for the first 5 rounds or so.  But really, the only hiccups in the draft were Shawn thinking the draft was on Sunday, and Jens picking Golden Tate in the fourth round.  (Jens-There’s no way you meant to do that, right?…)  Reminder to everyone – the draft will always be the Saturday of Labor Day Weekend!

By position, the most taken was wide receivers with 48 players selected.  This was followed by runningbacks with 43, quarterbacks with 21, tight ends with 17, defenses with 11 and kickers with 10.

The NFL team with the most players selected was the New England Patriots with 9 players picked.  The Chiefs, Rams and Eagles each had 7 players selected.  The Saints, Vikings, Packers and Browns (WTF?! The Browns?!?) each had 6 players selected.  Think about that…a couple years ago there were ZERO Cleveland Browns players selected and this year they get more picked than Pittsburgh (5), Denver (4), Dallas (4), and Indianapolis (3).  The team with the fewest players selected (excluding keepers) was the Arizona Cardinals, who only had Larry Fitzgerald selected.  Including keepers, three teams only had two players picked, the Miami Dolphins, the New York Jets and the Cardinals.  (David Johnson is a keeper from the Cardinals).  Thus I’ll build the “All Unwanted” team this year from those three teams.

For whatever the Dolphins lack player-wise, they clearly make up for in other ways...

Here are some more stats and tidbits on this year's draft:

• Most of any single position drafted by one team: 6 – American BadAss drafted 6 wide receivers.  Jason went wide receiver early and often, taking them with his first three picks (Tyreek Hill in the 3^rd, Amari Cooper in the 4^th, and Brandin Cooks in the 5^th), added another in the 9^th round (R. Woods), another in the 13^th round (M. Gallup), and for good measure, one more in the 14^th round (K. Stills).  If anyone needs a receiver, contact Jason.
• Most of any single NFL team drafted by one team: 5 – Bubble Craps Bandits drafted 5 members of the Kansas City Chiefs.  The next closest was sprouts who drafted 3 members of the Los Angeles Rams.  Every team in the league drafted at least one pair of teammates.  And in spite of his team name being “Joe’s Pats”, Joe only picked one Patriot.  Both Vandelay Industries and Young Guns outpicked Joe as they both have two Patriot players.
• Most sets of teammates drafted by one team: 4 – Vandelay Industries has two players from each of the New England Patriots, New Orleans Saints, Pittsburgh Steelers and Denver Broncos. 
• Defenses slipping in the draft – Last year, the first defense was selected in the fifth round and this year the first defense didn’t go until the 7^th round when two were selected.  The Coors Light Drunk Guys were the only team to draft two defenses, courtesy of the autodraft.
• Most diverse round – 13^th Round – At least one of every position was picked, including 4 defenses.  Along with the defenses, there were 2 WR’s, 1 QB, 1 RB, 1 TE and 1 Kicker. (Four rounds (the 7^th, 8^th, 9^th, and 11^th) had all but one position selected.)
• Defending Champ following winning pattern – Defending Champ Joe’s Pats followed his winning blueprint from last year drafting the same positions by round through the first 10 rounds.  Last season Joe's picks by round were: TE, RB, WR, WR, RB, QB, RB, WR, RB, WR, and he did the exact same thing this year.  That's either some really good planning, or a really weird coincidence, but we'll see if it works for Joe this time around.

Yahoo! Predictions – Through some magical software coding and prognosis powers, Yahoo! produces draft grades and overall record predictions for the upcoming season.  Here is a summary of their predictions:

Rk	Team	Mgr	W	L	T	Pts
1	Young Guns	John	11	2	0	1,400
2	Sofa King Back	James	9	3	1	1,372
3	Vandelay Industries	Rob	8	4	1	1,362
4	Joe's Pats	Joe	7	6	0	1,389
5	American BadAss	Jason	6	7	0	1,324
6	sprouts	Russ	6	7	0	1,302
7	Longshanks	Jerry	6	7	0	1,265
8	Finders Keepers	Jens	5	8	0	1,296
9	CL Drunk Guys	Shawn	4	9	0	1,273
10	Bubble Craps Bandits	Timmy	2	11	0	1,251

So Yahoo! is predicting a showdown between the King and the Young Guns!  I shall keep track of this and see how accurate Yahoo!’s prognosticators end up being.

There’s only one thing left to say…

ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL?!?!