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Hall study Selecting an all-time fantasy team requires a solid strategyPosted: Tuesday June 17, 2003 5:17 PM
We're in the deep offseason here. We're so deep in the deep offseason that I'm going to write about something I don't even like. Fantasy Football. Why don't I like it? For the same reason I don't like thoroughbred racing. Because I'm afraid of it. I'm afraid that if I ever became interested in either of these things, and got the charts working and sat down and doped everything out in scientific fashion, I'd be able to conquer these topics -- you know, the kind of things suckers are always saying. And the time all this would take would be stupefying; I mean, it would take over a good portion of my life. That's why I don't like Fantasy Football. Better I should stay away from it altogether. But then along came the NFL's Hall of Fame dot-com or NFL dot-com ... one of those dot-com things ... with what they called the "Ultimate Fantasy Draft," and they asked me if I would be one of the selectors. Four guys would sit down with the all-time Hall of Fame list and each would draft his own team of 12 players, which we were told would be a unit to take the field. Only guys in the Hall could be picked, plus one "wild-card" entry, presumably a current player or recent retiree not yet eligible for enshrinement. Now, at one time I used to laugh at this kind of nonsense. Just a lot of self-diddling, etc. But the more I thought of it, the more appealing it became to the old ego. I would go in with a clear strategy and wipe out the competition, composed of John Clayton of ESPN, Jarrett Bell of USA Today and Vic Carucci of the house team, NFL.com, all of whom are considerably younger than yours truly. I mean, they hadn't even seen some of the guys they'd be drafting. So I called the people running the contest and the first thing I tried to do was get the rules changed. In the first round I'd be drafting third out of four. I knew who my leading pick would be. Jim Brown. And then while everyone else was fooling around with quarterbacks and receivers I'd put the greatest line in history in front of him, and I'd be off and running -- literally. But I needed that first pick, of course, to make sure I'd get Brown. I suggested to them that we pick on a seniority basis, oldest first. Sorry, they're doing it on a blind draw, and I drew the third spot. Well, how about trades? I'd trade my No. 1 and No. 12 to Clayton, who had the top pick, for his first pick. Sorry, no trades. Then I saw, with horror, that Clayton would alternate with the first round's No. 4 picker, Carucci, for the entire 12 rounds, while I'd be alternating No. 3 and No. 2 with Bell. This meant I'd never get the first pick in a round, but Carucci and Clayton would get six apiece -- and six No. 4s. Oh, brother. This seemed eminently unfair. I was told that this was called "snaking order," which was something Fantasy fans knew all about, they said. I bitched long and loud. Finally they'd had enough. To paraphrase, I was informed that if I didn't like the way their game was set up I could take a hike, and yes, maybe that would be better after all. "It's a simple matter," the Flaming Redhead told me. "If you want to play, and I know you really want to, you play by their rules. If not, you quit and spend the next week mad and snapping at me -- and everybody else." OK, release the pigeons, fire the cannon, I'm in after all. Wow! Joe Horrigan of the Hall of Fame, a co-sponsor of this game, told me I didn't have to worry about Jim Brown being taken. "They're all into more contemporary people," he said. "Bet me on it," I said. My whole strategy depended on my getting him. Horrigan wouldn't bet. "You'll see," he said. Monday this week was draft day. I knew what I'd do. Draft Brown and the linemen, but first I needed a pass rush in place, so I'd draft Lawrence Taylor, but not as an LB, as a DE, and then I'd take either Deacon Jones or Reggie White ... Lee Roy Selmon would be fine, too ... as my bookend end on the other side, and I'd have a devastating pass rush to go with my knock-'em-dead running game. My LB would be Ted Hendricks, who could do everything. The most clever part of my approach was not to waste a high pick on a QB. Nobody would take more than one of them, I reasoned, so with the 12th pick I could get the fourth-best QB of all time, certainly a guy good enough to win with. To me, the whole key was drafting a player who was clearly the leader at his position -- Brown, for instance. Or Art Shell, the greatest power tackle who ever lived, or John Hannah and Dwight Stephenson, my choices for greatest guard and center, respectively. About 10 minutes before the thing started, I decided to look at the sheet that laid out the rules. Only one player per position, it said. There goes my idea of having Taylor and Hendricks, or Taylor and Jones or White or Selmon -- if I could sell them on the idea of LT as an end. And as I was trying to figure out how this would affect my strategy, the gun sounded and we were off. Clayton led off with Sammy Baugh. Great, I thought. I had him as my fourth-best QB. Now I'd be sure of getting one of my top three, John Unitas, Joe Montana or Otto Graham, with my 12th-round selection. Bell on the clock, with me next. Montana, I'm thinking. C'mon, Jarrett, think passing game. How about Unitas? Or Jerry Rice? C'mon, Jarrett. C'mon, baby. "The man I think was the finest athlete ..." he's saying. Uh oh, doesn't sound good. "Jim Brown," he says. Damn you, Joe Horrigan! OK, what do I do now? I didn't really care which runner I got now, despite my commitment to a power running game. So I drafted Taylor, reasoning that he'd be a very popular choice, certain to go early. If only I'd stuck to that precept, but in the next round, three picks later, instead of getting my defense in place with another pass rusher, I decided to go for shock effect and I took Shell. A dumb move. I could have waited a couple of rounds. Hell, no one else would have gone for him that high. Then it was away-we-go with my O-line, with Hannah in the third round and Stephenson in the fourth. OK, I'd put together a blocking unit that would defy belief, and won't that have people talking? But honestly, couldn't I have waited a round to pick, say, Stephenson? Instead, while I was building this blocking machine for... who? O.J. Simpson? Emmitt Smith? I should have gotten a pass rusher in place because, as I noted with sadness, Deacon went to Clayton in Round 2, and Selmon went to Carucci a round later, and White, a wild-card choice whom I figured was sure to fall farther down, went to Bell immediately before my selection in the fifth round. I was feeling a bit disordered at this point, but I still got, in Round 5, my all-time top cornerback, Jimmy (J.J.) Johnson of the 49ers, and in the next round I got Lance Alworth, one of the three wideouts I'd bunched together as the greatest ever, Rice and Don Hutson being the other two. In Round 7 my old strategy came back ... pick the guy who you feel is clearly the best at his position, and I chose Dave Casper as my tight end, a position that was virginal up to now. Former tackle, terrific blocker. He and Shell double teaming, Hannah pulling to lead, Stephenson cutting off anything with a heartbeat ... hell, even Ron Dayne could make yardage behind a setup like that. Round 8. Pick the best at the position. Only one safety has been selected, Emlen Tunnell. Ronnie Lott was chosen, but as a cornerback. I practically have pick of the litter. Well, what kind of a safety do I want? Free or strong? Range-type, of whom Larry Wilson and Willie Wood are my favorites, or killer type, i.e, Cliff Harris? Jack Tatum, of course, is the ultimate killer-type, but he was only average in coverage, whereas Harris excelled in all aspects. So he became my wild-card choice, a guy who's been overlooked for so long that he's now a Senior candidate, also a player I've desperately been trying to get considered. This produced a bit of muttering. Wild card's supposed to be for a recent player, etc., but it died down. At least that wasn't another of their stupid rules that would bite me. Last four choices. I'm basically pinned, with three people picked in each category -- DT, DE, RB and QB. I looked at the tackles and I'd ranked Bob Lilly and Joe Greene as my top two, with Merlin Olsen closely behind at No. 3 and Leo Nomellini at No. 4. Olsen became my pick. Runners next. Gone were Brown, Smith and Walter Payton. I could go with speed and take Simpson, or with power and select a guy I've considered for many years the finest player I'd ever seen, Marion Motley. Or maybe, just for fun, grab Barry Sanders as a wild-card choice, assuming that I hadn't used that pick on Harris. Except that what I had envisioned was a team that would control the ball forever, with a merciless, punishing runner bending defenses to his will behind that all-star O-line, and all of a sudden, in a flash of inspiration, it came to me. Earl Campbell. Perfect for my kind of team (of course, Brown would have been even more perfect, but that's ancient history). Defensive end. My top three -- Jones, Selmon and White -- were gone. My No. 4 is a guy who'll never make the Hall of Fame unless I can personally escort him in, the Broncos' Richie (Tombstone) Jackson, and my wild-card was already used up. So I picked Howie Long, a sturdy force against the double-team, although not quite the pass rusher the other three were. Which left only the quarterback position to fill, and I had no problem with Graham, whom I'd rated No. 3 all-time, behind Unitas and Montana. Is my team the best of anyone's? It's in the eye of the beholder, of course. I'm not supposed to list the complete dozen for everyone else because profootballhof.com will be releasing the whole thing sometime in July. As I said, I probably should have gambled and waited a round or so to get my offensive linemen, but gosh, I get goosebumps thinking about a unit like that in place. Just to recap, my team is listed below, along with each player's most prominent team of service and the round in which I drafted him:
QB -- Otto Graham, Browns (Round 12)
Sports Illustrated senior writer Paul Zimmerman covers the NFL for the magazine and SI.com. His "Inside Football" column and Mailbag appear weekly on SI.com. To send a question to Dr. Z, click here.
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