I used to be totally in your camp on this. But this year I took Gates in the late third everywhere I could and all of those teams were very good, and I won the championship in my main league for the first time.
I disagree that you can draft a top 5 TE every year in the 8-10th round. Gates, Gonzo, Shockey, Heap, and Witten will go before then in every draft. Sure you might get lucky and grab a Cooley, but there will be 7 other teams also trying to find that daimond out there in the 10th round, so there is a much better chance you end up with a Pollard or Ben Watson.
This year, Gates was about 7 PPG better than the 12th TE. That is HUGE. The difference between the:
#1 QB and the #12 QB is about 5 PPG
#1 WR to the #12 Wr is about 3 PPG - to the #24 WR is about 6 PPG
#1 Kicker to the #12 Kicker is about 4 PPG
#1 D to the #12 D is about 2 PPG
#1 RB to the #12 RB is about 11 PPG - to the #24 RB is about 14 PPG,
So you are going to have a quite a difficult time making up the points difference you would gain by drafting Gates.
The big thing here also is that you KNOW who the top TE is going to be with a great deal of certainty, while picking the tops at the other positions (except RB) is pretty tough.
First, regardless of draft strategy, if you draft good players you are going to have a good team. That is always going to be more important that what drafting nuances you have.Unfortunately since we did not know how much better the #1 TE would be than the rest of the field, and we did not know that #1 TE would be Gates (especially with him missing the first game of the season) this is where good draft strategy comes into play.
I agree that 7 PPG is huge. However, by drafting according to my strategy you are not drafting the 12th TE. While you may think it is difficult finding that TE in the rough, wilked and I have done some research that makes grabbing productive late round TEs much easier than most think. I have to disagree with your certainty of who the top TE is. Many people thought Gonzo was, or was at least close to the top TE. Furthermore, by platooning two later round TEs you also erode that PPG difference that you state. It is utilizing these combinations, much like a defensive duo that make late round picks for positions other than RB and WR more valuable than most people realize.
The problem with your static VBD comparison of positions is that you are looking at one player versus one player. This is the fundamental flaw of VBD. You are not taking into consideration PPG lost due to your top 3 WRs having bye weeks (meaning that WR4 will play in over 21% of your regular season games
at a minimum). If any of your top 3 WRs sustain injuries (or do not produce) your WR4 will be playing probably in the 30%-40% range of your games. Likewise your WR5 could be playing in as many as 20% of your games if you have WRs with similar bye weeks or multiple injuries occur at once.
Grabbing WRs (along with 3 RBs) in the first 8 rounds is imperative to
team PPG and I will guarantee that by having better WRs (notice plural WRs, not just one WR) you will make up the PPG on average from drafting a TE early, especially if you target TEs in the 9th and 10th rounds according to some criteria that I apply.
You can obviously create situations where I draft Moss, Walker, and Horn and you draft Gates and two other WRs and your team production greatly exceeds mine.
However, I could do the same if the WRs I drafted hit and the ones you did late didn't. Specific examples with 20/20 hindsight really does us no good in this discussion because you do not have the benefit of knowing how all the players will do in the upcoming season.
As such you need to have a draft strategy that maximizes the probability that the players you draft will give you a better team PPG. VBD does not do this. VBD only works when you know what each player will do, which is the last thing you know at a draft. While good projections may get you in the ballpark, drafting the best team and getting value from ADP serves you better.
