1. Who was the 2014 season fantasy football MVP?
Andre Brown. In a PPR format he's the uncontested #1 WR. And in any other format he's got to be close. And he was going in the 2nd and 3rd rounds in many leagues. Old Man River's has been a stud for me too...and that was grabbing him out of desperation in the 9th round after I watched the first 12 QB's get run off the board. Jeremy Hill has also single handily saved my season with a couple good weeks of play. I drafted Rice, Bush, and Gerhart. Talk about a trifecta of fail there. I snuck into the playoffs in a 12 team league rolling with Hill and a tossup of Sproles or Stewart for my RB2's. Bleh. Hill has been a savior for me at RB.
2. Who was the biggest steal of the draft (top 150 consensus pick)?
Maclin, Tate, Sanders, Steve Smith Sr at least through the first half of the season. Jeremy Hill has been huge for me. Argument for Kelvin Benjamin and Hopkins. Mike Evans went largely undrafted so can't count him. Same for Forsett.
3. Who was the biggest bust of the draft (top 150)?
Too many to list. Graham, AP, Montee Ball, Gerhart, C. Patterson, Arrington, McCoy the first 3/4 of the season, Calvin Johnson, Matt Ryan, Doug Martin and so on. A lot of dead weight in early draft picks this year.
4. Who was the waiver wire pickup of the year (not in the top 150)? Forsett, Anderson (MVP for late season push), Mike Evans.
5. What lessons did you learn this year? Same as every year. It's 50%....or more pure dumb luck. Closer to 75% luck if you are in head to head leagues. You don't know when a player is going to explode or implode. And if a team will all do it at once for you or against you. Some weeks you'll win by a fraction. The next two you might loose by a fraction. Then you'll go on and win by 60 points. You can certainly do some management to help with waiver pickups (see Forsett, CJ anderson, Hillman, Evans). But overall you can't prevent injuries, can't always get those guys off the wire because you had to spend your waiver priority on a kicker that's on bye. And you certainly can't predict when a D/ST is going to go off the hook and put up a 30 point defensive effort and completely wreck your matchup while your DS/T takes what should be a low scoring game and turns it into a 50 point shootout and costs you points(looking at you Denver vs Miami!!!!)
6. For those who did make the playoffs, did you have a particular strategy? Draft for you, not what the board is doing, go with your gut, and don't bother listening to fantasy pundits ramble on about this pick or that pick or this guy being a better pick or matchup than that one. Most of them are just talking out of their ass chest thumping whatever statistic they can come up with. But the reality is that they don't control games and you just play whatever you feel better with. Then sleep well on that because you can't control what happens on a field.
It's a game of luck with a bit of skill and nothing more.
Andre Brown, lol. You mean Antonio!
1) MVP is Brown or Murray, maybe Luck (def for passing heavy leagues). Bell has been good too but only lately, he started slow.
2) Biggest steal was probably E.Sanders or the rookie WRs.
3) Vi - listing Jimmy Graham as biggest busts? Uh, no, unless you mean Garrett Graham... Jimmy is the #2 TE this year. Biggest busts, wow there were a lot this year, esp based on ADP. AP, McCoy minus the last 2 weeks with his all-world OLine back, Ball, Martin, Randle, Stacy, Andre Johnson, Jordan Cameron, Gerhart, Micheal Floyd, Bush, Spiller, Patterson, Harvin, Decker, Crapernick, Welker, Pitta, Pierce, Ridley, Rice, RG3, MJD, McFadden, Hunter, Carolina D (after losing Hardy), CJ-lickmynuts-OK to name a few that were in my top 150 spreadsheet.
4) Best Waiver wire pickups? I'd also agree with Forsett/Evans/CJ, Jordan Matthews, Detroit DST (before losing Fairley). Others to a lesser degree - ODB, Tre Mason, Kelce, Donnell.
5) That even if you are top 4 in scoring, it doesn't mean you'll finish even top 5. A lot of luck is involved, even moreso this year. I'm not going to give up other tricks of the trade but if you've been following this thread you probably know a lot of my tactics, such as burning a high waiver to dramatically up your chances of winning by fucking your opponent over, or pulling off a lopsided trade to get the player you want if you can properly identify comparable replacements on the WW (thus minimizing your trade loss). One of the bigger ones that you've probably heard many times before is don't chase points. Oh, and the squeaky wheel usually gets the oil.