User:Guldink

Fantasy football is a nationwide phenomenon that has grown rapidly in popularity over the last couple decades. Over twenty million people a year participate in the highly addictive, highly competitive contest of football savvy (Staff). This billion dollar industry thrives on pitting friends against each other in annual battles of wit and luck to determine who has the greatest insight on football knowledge.

Every year, this contest begins with the draft, where the most elite players from all corners of the NFL are selected to represent their owners on a weekly basis. Now the question remains, “Who is the number one overall pick of the 2013 fantasy football draft?” It is none other number twenty-eight, Adrian Peterson, the elite running back from the Minnesota Vikings. Out of all the worthy candidates in the NFL, Adrian Peterson is the number one overall pick in this year's fantasy draft because he has the greatest production value of any running back in the league, the Minnesota Viking's offense completely revolves around him, and the need for a reliable, high-performance running back over elite quarterbacks is more important than ever.

To cut a long story short, Adrian Peterson is the best running back in the NFL right now. Statistically, Peterson is leaps and bounds ahead of every other running back in terms of raw production. According to ESPN, the worldwide leader in sports news and coverage, Adrian Peterson led the NFL last year in rushing yards and yards from scrimmage, with 2,097 yards and 2,314 yards, respectively (“Rushing Yards Leaders”). Alfred Morris, who rushed for the second most yards last year, produced 1,613 yards, over 400 yards less than Peterson. What is even more amazing about Peterson is that he accomplished all this after having major surgery on his left knee at the end of the previous season. In late December of the 2011 regular season, Peterson suffered an ACL and MCL tear in his left knee after taking a hard tackle from Washington Redskin's safety Dejon Gomes (Siebert).

Normally, this kind of injury would end an athlete's career. However, Adrian Peterson is no ordinary athlete. This man is a machine. In only seven months after a potentially career-ending knee injury, Peterson made a full recovery and was able to play all seventeen of his regular season games, finishing only nine yards short of Eric Dickerson's single-season rushing yards record. Now, how does this translate to his fantasy value? Well, Adrian Peterson put up the most yards from scrimmage and scored the second most touchdowns by a running back in the 2012-2013 NFL season. In a standard scoring fantasy football league, Peterson yielded two hundred and ninety-seven points. Arian Foster and Doug Martin tied for second with two hundred and forty-eight points, a full forty-nine points behind Peterson. When the numbers are compared, Adrian Peterson is in an entirely different tier when it comes to both professional and fantasy football. That being said, Adrian Peterson does not score so many points by mere happenstance.

The entire Minnesota Viking's offense is centered around Adrian Peterson. Although the Vikings have a very reliable run game featuring the best running back in the NFL, their passing game is lackluster for several reasons. The first issue with the Viking's passing attack is their lack of leadership in their receiving core. The Vikings recently traded away their second most valuable asset on the offense, Percy Harvin, to the Seattle Seahawks during the off-season. Percy Harvin is one of those special Renaissance players who can do it all. Not only can he catch, he was the Viking's primary kick returner as well. In order to compensate for losing Percy Harvin, the Vikings brought in former Green Bay Packer, Greg Jennings.

Although he certainly has the experience and ability to play as a starting receiver for the Vikings, over the last several years Jennings has shown a significant decrease in the quality of his play. This trend in Greg Jennings's diminishing performance along with his lack of familiarity with the Viking's system suggests that he will not be a dependable part of the offense this year, let alone be a suitable replacement for Percy Harvin. Along with their lack of leadership in the passing attack, the rest of the Viking's receiving corps consists of mainly rookies, except for Jerome Simpson, who is not exactly a tier one wideout. Their only reliable receiver who has not hit their ceiling yet is their tight end, Kyle Rudolph, who proved his talent when he was elected the 2013 Pro Bowl's MVP (Silva).

Rudolph is a phenomenal talent, but one talented receiver out of eight does not make good team. Finally, the last issue with the Viking's passing game is their quarterback, Christian Ponder. Ponder is still considered a rookie quarterback in his fourth year of starting for the Vikings and has yet to prove himself as a franchise-caliber signal caller (Silva). Remember when this essay was about Adrian Peterson? So again, how does all this information relate to Peterson's fantasy value? With an unpredictable passing game due to a lack of experience and leadership in their receiving corps and the utilization of an unproven quarterback, the only reliable weapon the Vikings can really count on is Adrian Peterson. This means more running plays in the offense, which means more touches for Peterson. More touches for Peterson means more points for whoever owns him in their fantasy football league. Although the parameters have been set for why Adrian Peterson is the best fantasy football running back for next season, some would beg the question, “Why draft a running back first at all?”

Last year, that statement would have been relevant. However to understand it, the drafting process should be explained. In a typical fantasy football draft, each owner or team drafts one player at a time, with the goal of filling out each position on the roster, making sure they have enough players to satisfy the required amount of starters for each position each week. For the last twenty years or so the normal drafting strategy was to pick a running back for the first three picks because running backs were the rarest commodity. However, the meta changed last year with a much larger emphasis on drafting elite quarterbacks early. With new rules set in place giving quarterbacks more leniency on certain plays in the NFL, quarterbacks became the more viable option for scoring points. This led to top tier quarterbacks like Aaron Rogers, Tom Brady, and Drew Brees being picked first, second, and third overall (not explicitly in that order) in a fantasy draft, which is a big difference from being picked up in the third or fourth round two years ago.

Usually, quarterbacks score the most points on a fantasy team, so it made sense to draft them before running backs. However, in a rapid and unexpected change of events, the meta has actually reverted back to drafting running backs first over quarterbacks. Last year may have been the best rookie quarterback class ever, with rookie quarterbacks Robert Griffin III, Russell Wilson, and Andrew Luck all making playoff appearances (Schrager). With the prevalence of so many quality quarterbacks who will all probably perform even better now that they have a year of experience behind them, there is no longer a need to worry about drafting an elite quarterback early. However, running backs on the other hand are still in short supply in terms of quality and reliability. That being said, the clear cut choice for the number one overall pick of everyone's fantasy football draft will be Adrian Peterson, the best running back in the league.

Even though Peterson has the highest value in this year's fantasy football draft, a lot of people still have their concerns about him. For one, no one fully heals after having an ACL injury and surgery (Pinczewski). Despite his amazing performance last year, people are still worried that he will get injured early on in the season. What owners need to realize is that nothing is set in stone. No one really knows whether or not if a player will get injured. Every time and owner selects a player to put on their roster, what they are really doing is gambling. Sure, some bets are safer than others. For example, the odds of a quarterback getting injured are drastically smaller than the player whose job it is to get past all of the big men chasing them. However, owners need to consider something.

You can't win your league in the first round of a draft, but you can lose it. Barring any injuries or setbacks, Adrian Peterson has the raw talent, experience, and the Viking system at his back to propel owners to their fantasy championships. If owners are still concerned about Peterson, they only need to ask themselves one thing, “If I had the chance to pick up Adrian Peterson, could I let him slip away?”