WRs and Their Multiple Points of Failure

Now that the NFL is offically back (was there really any doubt?), players will be moving faster than ever before. Before that happens and I shift into analyzing specific moves, I have a few more general things to talk about.

One of them is why I'll never take a WR in the first round and probably not the second round ever again. Heading into the 2004 draft season (my 2nd year of playing FFB), a lot of the 'experts' started declaring that if you were picking towards the end of the first round, you HAD to take an elite WR. Their reasoning? You'll get more points from the elite WR than you would from the 'second tier' RB that's also available.

As such, I took Randy Moss. And a few weeks later, he was gone for the season.

At that point, I really began noticing all the things that can cause an elite WR to fail. Considering the Death Star was brought down TWICE by a single point of failure, I have zero desire to waste a first round pick on a player with more than one:

1. Poor weather. I remember last year I just needed maybe 4 more points from Malcolm Floyd in Week 1, but wind and rain prevented him from just catching that one more pass that would've given me a win. Luckily this is mitigated by things like gloves and domes.
2. Shutdown corners. This isn't as big a deal as it used to be since the rules changed, but there are still a few shutdown corners out there.
3. The flow of the game. Generally speaking, they don't get the ball when their team is up big and, conversely, if their team is down, they'll probably be double-covered. Again, this isn't as big a deal as it used to be as running to kill the clock is becoming a lost art, but it's something I've noticed.
4. Injuries. What? All football players get hurt? Okay, how's this: they get hurt and have lousy backups. By the time the #1 WR for a team gets hurt, the team's #2 and maybe even the #3 are already gone.
5. Just about everything else with the play has to go right. The O-line has to block long enough. The QB has to throw a good pass. The WR, himself, has to get open. This opens you up to a real-life case of the butterfly effect.
   
   Throw in an injury on the O-line or, heaven forbid, the QB and you've got a recipe for severely reduced production, at least for that game. By contrast, even a '2nd tier' RB can overcome an in-game change along the O-line and, as long as the backup QB can keep opposing defenses honest, won't be affected too much by a change there.

The constant advocating for taking a WR in the first round was my first clue that the experts weren't all they were cracked up to be, but it wasn't my last. I was still 3 years away from severely discounting what those guys had to say, coming up with my own rules and then, duh, winning (consistently).

Don't wait as long as I did. Your FFB teams are just that - YOURS. Make your own decisions and, win or lose, you'll be a lot happier. I know I am.