29 player roster (had 30 last year)
Tom Brady $27 9.8
Ben Roethlisberger $23 7.3
Decided to go with quality over quantity here. Brady/Rivers was my first thought. After serious consideration, changed Rivers to Big Ben. Ben is truly under rated (ie more likely to be owned by less people), schedule, tremendous depth/speed/talent combo at WR and an opportunistic defense for improved scoring opportunities. Really liked Stafford too, but am very happy with this duo barring injury.
Chris Wells $16 29.1
James Starks $16 6.3
Mike Tolbert $15 9.0
Tim Hightower $14 37.4
Willis McGahee $11 12.2
Derrick Ward $ 3 7.1
Isaac Redman $ 2 10.7
Very happy with the depth here and ownership percentages for Starks and Tolbert. Having the Packers' top RB is money. Surprised so many had Redman. I have no clue why he wasn't used more last season especially in the red zone. He will be special when his time comes. Wells and Hightower were predictably highly owned considering the bang/buck ratio. McGahee should carve out a nice role for himself & produce well at times in this format. Ward was more of a Zag to the main stream Zig of Tate. Very tempted by Reggie Bush, but he is almost destined to break down if featured. New Orleans knew what they were doing with him. Not thrilled with a heavy week 6 BYE concentration, but should be able to survive.
Mike Sims-Walker $11 14.2
Lance Moore $10 19.9
Emmanuel Sanders $ 8 2.9
Nate Burleson $ 8 30.3
Danny Amendola $ 8 23.9
Jordy Nelson $ 7 8.5
Bernard Berrian $ 5 11.3
Antonio Brown $ 3 30.8
Randall Cobb $ 3 4.1
Denarius Moore $ 3 26.5
WR by committee baby! Cheap and effective was the theme. Bye week conflicts at times, but the party atmosphere should compensate if enough picks pan out. Gut instinct was to grab VJax and Dez Bryant; glad I didn't considering the ownership stats after the fact. Conscious decision to keep Emmanuel in the lineup despite Brown's amazing performance. Figured Emmanuel would still be "cheap" and have just as good a chance as Brown any given week. Needed a low ownership % for this play to work and was rewarded with a 2.9
Rob Gronkowski $14 6.0
Owen Daniels $12 25.0
Brandon Pettigrew $11 9.4
Sometimes it's better to take the goods than what appear to be value plays. Had Daniels/Hernandez/Olsen/Kendricks combo set in stone for most of the preseason. Then went the contest thought process...must zag without hurting your team. Gronk should be owned less and have a good opportunity to out produce Hernandez. Pettigrew is a classic non-sexy high quality pick while Olsen and Kendricks are attractive, but over-hyped around these parts. 4 is generally better than 3, but not in this case.
Jay Feely $ 2 23.9
Josh Brown $ 3 21.9
Shaun Suisham $ 3 20.3
Matt Prater $ 3 5.5
Wanted 4 solid kickers. Looks like everyone else has mine too other than Prater. :(
Houston Texans $ 3 18.7
St. Louis Rams $ 3 13.0
Cleveland Browns $ 3 5.8
Like the 3 or 4 team defense strategy. Could have cut some from another position, but decided to roll with this lot. Two week 5 byes. Other positions are strong that week and this combo felt right for some reason. Arizona would have been my 4th, but I preferred to keep Brown/Cobb/Moore & Ward where they are. 4 kickers >>> 4 defenses
Good luck to everyone this season! This is by far, my favorite contest to follow each year.
See, I don't understand the bolded. You continually reference ownership stats, as if there's some intrinsic value in selecting lesser-owned players. There isn't. All that matters is scoring the most points. This isn't a serpentine draft where there might be some "value" to zigging while others are zagging and vice versa.IF you think Rivers will outproduce Roethlisberger, you're not giving yourself an advantage by selecting the lesser owned Roethlisberger. If you think Tate will outproduce Ward, there's no "value" to taking the Ward just because you think fewer people will do so. If your gut instinct is that VJax and Dez are going to have good seasons, then there's no reason to avoid them because you think they'll be too highly owned.
If everyone else has Antonion Brown, and you have Emmanual Sanders, two things can happen: either Sanders does better than Brown, or Brown does better than Sanders. It's not true at all that you "needed a low ownership % for this play to work." In order for that play to work, you need the $8 Sanders to outproduce the $3 Brown. That's all that matters. Sure, if Sanders turns out to be a better value, then you have a small advantage over the field at that position. If he doesn't, then the rest of the field has that advantage over you.
In fact, if you subscribe to the Wisdom of CrowdsTM theory, then the best values are probably the players with the
highest ownership percentages, not the lowest. Obviously there are some biases present that don't make this a truly "wise crowd" but, you know, if the majority of 10,000+ entries picked Tate instead of Ward, or Brown instead of Sanders, there's probably a good reason.
I don't mean to be picking on your entry specifically, you just happened to reference the uniqueness aspect multiple times in your post. Uniqueness is so vastly overrated in this contest. You want the roster that will score the most points. If that involves taking a bunch of highly-owned players, so be it. IIRC last year, Doug posed some hypothetical where he offered the chance, after the ownership stats had been posted, to trade in Arian Foster for Joseph Addai. The idea was that, since Foster was so much more highly owned than Addai (and everyone else) that there was some intrinsic value to taking the lesser-owned player. But there wasn't. Tons of people owned Foster, and not many owned Addai. And you know what happened? The Foster owners did better than the Addai owners, because Foster did better than Addai.